Trickery

This letter was published today at NRO. I sincerely hope that the President and the Congressional Democrats pass health care this way. An idiotic move of this dimension would be enough to bury the Democratic Party for decades, if not permanently.

If the Democrats resort to this tactic there will be hell to pay. Since they apparently don't think much of the Tea Party activities and marches or the town hall meetings, I wonder what they would think of citizens surrounding the Capital building with torches, rope and guns?

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

National Review Online has acquired a new letter soon to be sent out by the House GOP to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.):

February 12, 2010

Dear Mr. Leader and Madam Speaker:

As you know, we welcomed the President’s call for bipartisan health care talks. The American people have made it clear that they strongly oppose the comprehensive health care bills you have passed and want them shelved in favor of a step-by-step approach focused on lowering costs for families and small businesses.

Given the President’s statement that he is “open to any ideas” at the proposed summit, it is our responsibility as congressional leaders to see that the views of our Members and our constituents will be heard in good faith. The existence of any kind of backroom deal among the White House and Democratic Leaders would certainly make a mockery of the President’s stated desire to have a “bipartisan” and “transparent” dialogue on this issue.

To that end, we were taken aback by a report in the Tuesday, February 9 edition of Politico stating that President Obama “hopes to walk into the Feb. 25 summit with an agreement in hand between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on a final Democratic bill, so they can move ahead with a reform package after the sit-down.”

We were further taken aback by a report in CongressDaily later the same day in which an aide to the Speaker, appearing at the National Health Policy Conference, described the legislative “trick” Democratic Leadership intends to use to jam through a “pre-negotiated” health care bill. It has also been reported that other congressional aides present concurred with this assessment.

Additionally, the Christian Science Monitor reported today that special interest groups are calling for Democrats to finalize a deal in advance of the proposed summit.

To ensure we can move forward in good faith, we ask that you publicly disavow these reports and assure the American people that Democratic Leadership is not putting together any kind of backroom deal or plotting any kind of legislative trickery to pass it. Your response will help clarify whether Democratic Leadership is serious about genuine bipartisan negotiations and whether the proposed summit will be a truly open forum or merely an intramural exercise.

We appreciate your immediate response in this matter and look forward to further efforts to foster bipartisan cooperation.

Sincerely,

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA)

House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN)

The Wise Man Speaks

Krauthammer on Obamacare:

"At first, health-care reform was sustained politically by Obama's own popularity. But then gravity took hold, and Obamacare's profound unpopularity dragged him down with it. After 29 speeches and a fortune in squandered political capital, it still will not sell.

The health-care drive is the most important reason Obama has sunk to 46 percent. But this reflects something larger. In the end, what matters is not the persona but the agenda. In a country where politics is fought between the 40-yard lines, Obama has insisted on pushing hard for the 30. And the American people -- disorganized and unled but nonetheless agitated and mobilized -- have put up a stout defense somewhere just left of midfield.

Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.

It's inherently risky for any charismatic politician to legislate. To act is to choose and to choose is to disappoint the expectations of many who had poured their hopes into the empty vessel -- of which candidate Obama was the greatest representative in recent American political history.

Obama did not just act, however. He acted ideologically. To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something -- to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.

Perhaps Obama thought he'd been sent to the White House to do just that. If so, he vastly over-read his mandate. His own electoral success -- twinned with handy victories and large majorities in both houses of Congress -- was a referendum on his predecessor's governance and the post-Lehman financial collapse. It was not an endorsement of European-style social democracy.

Hence the resistance. Hence the fall. The system may not always work, but it does take its revenge."

KSM In NYC

The best round up on this situation courtesy of Andy McCarthy:

"Our enemies will be given a full-blown civilian trial with all the rights of the American citizens they are sworn to kill. They will get a year or more to sift through our national defense secrets. They will have wide latitude to turn the case into a trial of the Bush administration - publicizing information about anti-terrorism tactics that leftist lawyers will exploit in their quest for war crimes prosecutions in foreign courts against current and former U.S. officials.

In the military system, we could have denied them access to classified information, forcing them to accept military lawyers with security clearances who could see such intelligence but not share it with our enemies. In civilian court, the Supreme Court has held an accused has an absolute right to conduct his own defense. If KSM asserts that right - as he tried to do in the military commission - he will have a strong argument that we must surrender relevant, top-secret information directly to him. And we know that indicted terrorists share what they learn with their confederates on the outside.

Finally, as policy, the administration's decision is perverse. A half-century of humanitarian law, beginning with the Geneva Conventions, sought to civilize warfare. To receive enhanced protection, combatants must adhere to the laws of war and refrain from targeting civilians. Under Obama-logic, the Cole bombers get a military commission while the 9/11 savages are clothed in the majesty of the Bill of Rights.

So here's the message to terrorists: If you kill thousands of civilians, we will give you better rights than if you attack military assets. That is dangerously irresponsible."

This show trial is strictly political in nature. KSM will spend the rest of his life behind bars in the US regardless of the outcome here. This trial is strictly red meat pay back for Obama's supporters who want revenge against the Bush administration. It will also act as a suitable shiny bauble distraction while the balance of the progressive agenda gets ram roded through the Congress.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain....

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

For not being George W. Bush. Nominated after only 10 days in office - how can this be perceived as anything other than some sort of ridiculous joke?

Cue the rainbows and unicorns.

9/12 March On Washington, DC

From The Rhetorican:

"I dunno if that’s 2 million. But really, who the hell cares? Put any number you want on them. The video speaks for itself. And this is what it says: It’s not just a Mob. It’s a popular movement."


It was easy for the administration and the MSM to dismiss the the Tea Parties because they were dispersed all over the country. But if you took the time to tally up attendance numbers you would have found 500,000 in March, over a 1,000,000 in July and the only thing I can say about the August town halls is Congress is lucky there were only 31 days in the month. EVERYDAY CITIZENS DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO TRAVEL TO DC. WE'RE BUSY MAKING THIS COUNTRY WORK AND WE ONLY WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO GET OUT OF THE WAY.

But yet here they are, and yes indeed, that is a lot of folks by any measure. As I have said from the very beginning - this administration is working overtime to piss off all the wrong people. I wish I could have been there myself but instead I am flying my Gadsden flag and am there in spirit. When you have that many everyday citizens that feel they need to march on Washington to show their disapproval for the current administration's policies, someone, somewhere had better start to pay attention. If they don't, this isn't going to end well for them.

Any other interesting side note from Instapundit:
"I’ll tell you what I find impressive. I’m watching the Fox news video about 15 minutes after the end of the event. The crowd has thinned out enough that you can see the ground and there is not a speck of trash on the grass. Absolutely clean. To contrast, google ‘pictures of litter on the mall after the inauguration.’”

I Think His 15 Minutes Are Just About Up

H/T American Digest

Krauthammer On Obama

From The Washington Post:

"After a disastrous summer -- mistaking his mandate, believing his press, centralizing power, governing left, disdaining citizens for (of all things) organizing -- Obama is in trouble.

Let's be clear: This is a fall, not a collapse. He's not been repudiated or even defeated. He will likely regroup and pass some version of health insurance reform that will restore some of his clout and popularity.

But what has occurred -- irreversibly -- is this: He's become ordinary. The spell is broken. The charismatic conjurer of 2008 has shed his magic. He's regressed to the mean, tellingly expressed in poll numbers hovering at 50 percent.

For a man who only recently bred a cult, ordinariness is a great burden, and for his acolytes, a crushing disappointment. Obama has become a politician like others. And like other flailing presidents, he will try to salvage a cherished reform -- and his own standing -- with yet another prime-time speech.

But for the first time since election night in Grant Park, he will appear in the most unfamiliar of guises -- mere mortal, a treacherous transformation to which a man of Obama's supreme self-regard may never adapt."

Van Jones - The Gift That Keeps On Giving

UPDATE SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 6: VAN JONES RESIGNS. From a Washington Post blog: "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones, special adviser for green jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement announcing his resignation just after midnight Saturday. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."

He continued: "I have been inundated with calls -- from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.' But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past."

Could it be that no one has that much time and energy?

And how will all those MSM outlets Byron York mentions below explain this to their readers/viewers - that an Obama appointed czar given $30 billion tax payer dollars to spend on "green jobs" has suddenly resigned? And their readers/viewers don't even begin to have a clue why? They don't have a clue because their sources for news are so in the tank for Obama. And the MSM figures if they don't report on it, it's not newsworthy. Out with the old media - in with the new. If you were getting your news on the web you knew about Van Jones weeks ago.

One down...

My original post begins here.

And to think that I was getting tired of the Van Jones-athon on Glenn Beck's radio show. I think Van is about to meet Obama's grandmother - under the bus.

From Glenn Thrush at Politico:

Rep. Mike Pence, the no. 3 Republican in the House, is calling on Obama green jobs czar Van Jones to resign.

This sort of thing would usually be laughed off by Democrats -- a conservative Republican telling a Democratic appointee to quit.

But the Obama team isn't exactly jumping to back Jones today in wake of revelations that in the past he signed on to one of the "truther" groups that claimed 9/11 was an inside job. Oh, and he called Republicans a**holes in a video earlier this year before he was appointed.

Asked about Jones' affiliations with the 9/11 group at the daily briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs would only say: "It's not something that the president agrees with." And then Gibbs referred other questions to a statement Thursday by the Council on Environmental Quality in which Jones said he never backed any of these 9/11 conspiracy groups.

"Given recent revelations concerning the associations and statements of the president's green jobs czar, Van Jones should resign his position and if he is unwilling to do so, the president should demand his resignation. His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this Administration or the public debate," Pence said. "The Constitution of the United States vests Congress with the responsibility to advise and consent in the appointment of high ranking officials by the president. To date, President Obama has appointed more than thirty individuals to ‘czar’ positions within his Administration without permitting the Congress or the American people to properly examine their backgrounds or public records."





The Van Jones (non) feeding frenzy
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
09/04/09 11:30 AM EDT
From a Nexis search a few moments ago:

Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.

If you were to receive all your news from any one of these outlets, or even all of them together, and you heard about some sort of controversy involving President Obama's Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, your response would be, "Huh?" If you heard that that adviser, Van Jones, had apologized for a number of remarks and positions in the recent past, your response would be, "What?" And if you were in the Obama White House monitoring the Jones situation, you would be hoping that the news organizations listed above continue to hold the line -- otherwise, Jones, who is quite well thought of in Obama circles, would be history.

H/T The Drudge Report

Suffer The Little Children To Come Unto Me

Our president has officially "jumped the shark" with his proposed address to the nation's schoochildren (sic), as The White House web site put it the other day. The emphasis on governmental authority figures in the speech and accompanying teacher's study guide is truly appalling. The authority figures children should be dealing with are their parents - not the government. I would certainly not expose my children to this propaganda.

Ask yourself - if this isn't about indoctrination then why is the president even concerned about addressing children in the first place? Has he run out of adults to talk to? And whatever happened to "I went to my congressman and he said - quote - I'd like to help you son but you're too young to vote."?

God give me strength. This man is such a maroon.

Day By Day Strikes Again

And the article the strip links to can be found here.

Who Is Craig Fugate?

File this under "Only Nixon Could Go To China". Craig Fugate is the Obama appointed head of FEMA. If Michael Brown said this after Katrina he would have been drawn and quartered. From The Atlantic (emphasis added):

“We need to change behavior in this country,” he told about 400 emergency-management instructors at a conference in June, lambasting the “government-centric” approach to disasters. He learned a perverse lesson in Florida: the more the federal government does in routine emergencies, the greater the odds of catastrophic failure in a big disaster. “It’s like a Chinese finger trap,” he told me last spring, as a hailstorm fittingly raged outside his office. If the feds do more, the public, along with state and local officials, do less. They come to expect ice and water in 24 hours and full reimbursement for sodden carpets. But as part of a federal system, FEMA is designed to defer to state and local officials. If another Katrina hits, and the locals are overwhelmed, a full-strength federal response will inevitably take time. People who need help the most—the elderly, the disabled, and the poor—may not get it fast enough."

I have to say I like this guy and the self sufficiency he stands for - because during the next big disaster he's going to need help - from you:

To avoid “system collapse,” as he puts it, Fugate insists that the government must draft the public. “We tend to look at the public as a liability. [But] who is going to be the fastest responder when your house falls on your head? Your neighbor.” He criticizes the media for “celebrating” people who choose not to evacuate and then have to be rescued on live TV—while ignoring all the people who were prepared. “This is a tragedy, this whole Shakespearean circle we’re in. You never hear the media say, ‘Hey, you’re putting this rescue worker in danger.’”

It seems Mr. Fugate watched what happened right after 9/11 when people were still being dragged out of the rubble. Or how the ferry boat captains and others immediately organized to rescue the airplane passengers and crew that crash landed in the Hudson River. For the most part this is how we Americans roll. You do what needs to be done because most of us sure don't sit around waiting for the government to do it for us.

Besides, I've been looking for a reason to post this video.


H/T TigerHawk

Reductio Ad Hitlerum

As defined by Wikipedia:

"Reductio ad Hitlerum is rationally unsound as guilt by association (a form of association fallacy), it illogically attempts to shift culpability from a villain to an idea regardless of who is espousing it and why."

Apparently Nancy Pellosi has not heard of this or Godwin's Law. Again, citing Wikipedia:

"For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress. This principle itself is frequently referred to as Godwin's Law."

Speaker Pellosi recently accused the "AstroTurf" protesters of showing up at town hall meetings carrying swastikas.



What????????? I've seen a lot of American flags but no swastikas. And I wouldn't really think the Nazi Party or any of their symbolism would get any kind of love or understanding from a Tea Party type of crowd. However it does make for a pretty wide brush to smear your opponents with, now doesn't it?

And you know, I wasn't going to put up a copy of the poster that is taking L.A. and the Internet by storm - until I ran into an article in The Washington Post that contends the poster is racist.

Edgy? Yes. Racist? Give me a break. The tortured logic (if you can call it logic) employed by the writer doesn't stand up to even casual scrutiny. But it sure is effective when it comes to quelling that viral poster and branding anyone associated with it.

This is already ugly and it's going to get worse.

UPDATE - Frank J. Fleming weighs in:
"In reality, it’s up to the Republicans to stop Obama. And as they try to work with him and make some compromises with him, I have something to tell them: some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like bipartisan support. They can’t be influenced by polls, reasoned with, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Priceless

This must be seen to truly be believed. Is this the beginning of the Washington Press Corps reawakening? Not that it matters. They are "shocked" to find out that some of them have been manipulated by the White House.

I personally have no use for Helen Thomas strictly because of her unabashed liberalism. But you have to give the old girl credit - she really gives Gibbs a beating. Though if she doesn't get with the program I predict Obama will accomplish what the Bush White House could not - she will be drummed out of the press corp while all of her colleagues watch.



Update: CNSNews.com - Following a testy exchange during Wednesday’s briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.

“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.

“When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.

“I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well--for the town halls, for the press conferences,” she said. “It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.”

Krauthammer On Iran

In today's Washington Post:

"Moreover, this incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren't dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.

This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What's at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime -- and the future of the entire Middle East.

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

No Doubt Left

ABC will air programming about government run health care from inside the White House next week without a dissenting opinion in sight. Apparently, ABC has been given access to government health care and opted for a collective lobotomy. The debate over health care, like the debate over global warming, must have already been decided; I missed the memo again.

This is the last nail in the coffin of the MSM. Most certainly they will not disappear after this programming is aired but their credibility is already gone and they have exposed themselves in all their glory as the propaganda machine of the Obama White House.

Obama Knows Best

From Coyote:

Bill Whittle makes a great point in this video which is at the heart of the problems with this administration: While Obama and his young policy wonks may be smarter (or at least think they are smarter) than other folks individually, they cannot possibly be smarter than the sum of 300 million well educated, realtively affluent Americans making decisions for themselves. Every technocrat founders on these rocks, when they substitute their decision as command and control planners for individual decision making. Everyone talks about a revival of interest in Ayn Rand, and that is great, but it is Hayek who has never been more relevent.

Just Make Stuff Up

Victor Davis Hanson over at NRO (emphasis added):

Why has President Obama developed a general disregard for the truth, in a manner far beyond typical politicians who run one way and govern another, or hide failures and broadcast successes?

First, he has confidence that the media will not be censorious and will simply accept his fiction as fact. A satirist, after all, could not make up anything to match the obsequious journalists who bow to their president, proclaim him a god, and receive sexual-like tingles up their appendages.

Second, Obama is a postmodernist. He believes that all truth is relative, and that assertions gain or lose credibility depending on the race, class, and gender of the speaker. In Obama’s case, his misleading narrative is intended for higher purposes. Thus it is truthful in a way that accurate facts offered by someone of a different, more privileged class and race might not be.

Third, Obama talks more than almost any prior president, weighing in on issues from Stephen Colbert’s haircut, to Sean Hannity’s hostility, to the need to wash our hands. In Obama’s way of thinking, his receptive youthful audiences are proof of his righteousness and wisdom — and empower him to pontificate on matters he knows nothing about.

Finally, our president is a product of a multicultural education: Facts either cannot be ascertained or do not matter, given that the overriding concern is to promote an equality of result among various contending groups. That is best done by inflating the aspirations of those without power, and deflating the “dominant narratives” of those with it.

The problem in the next four years will be not just that the president of the United States serially does not tell the truth. Instead, the real crisis in our brave new relativist world will be that those who demonstrate that he is untruthful will themselves be accused of lying.

And Now A Word From Pravda

American capitalism gone with a whimper by Stanislav Mishin:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

We're All Rightwing Extremists Now

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has decided in a recently released report that the specter of violent rightwing extremism now stalks the country.

First, let’s start Homeland Security’s definition of rightwing extremism:
“Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

Just take the hate-oriented groups off the table for the purpose of this discussion. It’s safe to say that they are by no means a major player in 21st century domestic American politics. So that leaves us with “those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority” and “groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

Since rejecting federal authority makes you a rightwing extremist – can you tell me who said this earlier today?
“I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state,”
“That is why I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country to reaffirm the states’ rights affirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I believe that returning to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and its essential 10th Amendment will free our state from undue regulations, and ultimately strengthen our Union.”
That would be Governor Rick Perry of Texas. Apparently he didn’t get the memo just like more than half of the states of this country which already have bills pending in their state legislatures telling the federal government to re-read the 10th Amendment and back off.

Even being “dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration” is enough to qualify you as a rightwing extremist. Surely Homeland Security must mean “illegal immigration” since not many folks are upset by lawful immigration. Even so, that’s a mighty big brush they’re painting with. It just seems that a differing opinion is all that is required to be labeled a rightwing extremist.

“Proposed imposition of firearms restrictions and weapons bans likely would attract new members into the ranks of rightwing extremist groups, as well as potentially spur some of them to begin planning and training for violence against the government. The high volume of purchases and stockpiling of weapons and ammunition by rightwing extremists in anticipation of restrictions and bans in some parts of the country continue to be a primary concern to law enforcement.”
That, of course, would be the firearm restrictions and weapons bans that the President promised he would not impose when he was running for office and needed your vote. I can’t imagine why concern over something as basic as usurpation of our Second Amendment rights would cause citizens to buy every gun and box of ammunition in sight or how that would swell the ranks of rightwing extremist groups.

“Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election timeframe to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in
expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential
sympathizers.”
“Perceived stance on a range of issues”? You must be kidding – his actual stance on a range of issues is enough to make most of us rightwing extremists take another inventory of our weapons caches. But I keep forgetting no one is allowed to have a different opinion about, well, anything. So get in line, speak only when spoken to, drink the Kool-Aid and remember that The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is working tirelessly to keep you safe from those dreaded rightwing extremists.

Howard Fineman Stumbles Over What Many Of Us Already Know

Make way for the clue bus - here comes Newsweek (emphasis added):

"Surfer that he is, President Obama should know a riptide when he's in one. The center usually is the safest, most productive place in politics, but perhaps not now, not in a once-in-a-century economic crisis.

Swimming in the middle, he's denounced as a socialist by conservatives, criticized as a polite accommodationist by government-is-the-answer liberals, and increasingly, dismissed as being in over his head by technocrats.

Luckily for Obama, the public still likes and trusts him, at least judging by the latest polls, including NEWSWEEK's.But, in ways both large and small, what's left of the American establishment is taking his measure and, with surprising swiftness, they are finding him lacking."