DAVID LIMBAUGH is the author of the best selling books: "Absolute Power" and "Persecution". He is a frequent radio and television personality, and blogs at davidlimbaugh.com

June 15, 2010

Obama's Assaults on Liberty Proceed Unabated

By: David Limbaugh

I cannot be the only one who feels as if every new day brings a new assault on this nation and its people by this administration. Indeed, many people I know say they can't even watch the news anymore because it's so depressing. And it is.

Some of these assaults occur under the radar, and others are right out in the open. As an example of the former, last week, President Obama issued an executive order "Establishing the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council," which will focus on "lifestyle behavior modification (including smoking cessation, proper nutrition, appropriate exercise, mental health, behavioral health, substance-use disorder, and domestic violence screenings)." It will even recommend changes in federal policy to reduce "sedentary behavior."

The order also creates an advisory group within the Department of Health and Human Services that will answer to the surgeon general, who will serve as the chairwoman of the council.

In case you're wondering what authority the president launched this program under, he covers that in the first paragraph of the executive order: "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 4001 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148), it is hereby ordered..."

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June 11, 2010

MSM Reveal Own Bias in Bias Allegations

By: David Limbaugh

I don't know which is more pathetic, President Barack Obama's TV threat to "kick ass" or Time magazine senior political analyst Mark Halperin's suggestion that Matt Drudge's provocative headline concerning the threat intentionally played to the alleged racism of his readers.

As much as I'd like to lampoon Obama for talking tough against oil spillers to compensate for his grossly negligent aloofness on the matter, I'll go with the sanctimonious Halperin, who needs to remove his blinding liberal filter.

Obama's exact words in explaining why he consults government experts concerning the oil spill were, "We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers so I know whose ass to kick."

Unfortunately, neither black nor white liberals will let Obama's comment or certain reactions to it pass without turning it into an incident with racial implications. The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart wrote, "African American men are taught at very young ages (or learn the hard way) to keep our emotions in check, to not lose our cool, lest we be perceived as dangerous or menacing."

Similarly, Halperin got exercised over Drudge's headline "Obama goes street: seeking 'ass to kick,'" which, according to Halperin, "includes this photo of an angry-looking Barack Obama. I think it's all pretty clear to all of us what's going on."

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May 25, 2010

They're All Obama Liberals Now

By: David Limbaugh

Liberals have a learning disability when it comes to the impracticability of socialism. They are so steeped in the seductive lies of false compassion that no amount of logic, history or everyday experience registers. Thus, they continue to burden the market system to an unsustainable level.

Liberals have always denied they intend to unduly shackle the free market. They say America is exceptionally prosperous -- though it never occurs to them why -- and can afford robust entitlement and redistributive schemes. But in no way would they favor anything extreme that would push the market to the tipping point.

Well, now that they are completely in charge, we've seen what they will do. Obama liberals believe not in America's promise (and Martin Luther King Jr.'s hope) of equality of opportunity, but in equality of outcomes. Truth be told, Obama probably believes in a wholesale reversal of wealth distribution: not just equalizing it, but making the wealthy poor and the poor wealthy. But I'll leave the psychoanalysis to others.

Largely because of their worldview differences, conservatives and liberals will never agree on the moral merits of capitalism versus socialism.

Conservatives believe, generally, that economic and political freedoms are interconnected and that socialism, beyond the obvious, constricts and eventually smothers political liberties. (Hat Tip: Friedrich Hayek.) They believe that our rights are a gift from God and that it is both immoral and counterproductive for a central government to confiscate a major portion of some people's work product and transfer it to others. Nor is any man entitled to moral bragging rights for presiding over government-coerced theft.

But we're not going to reach a consensus on these moral questions, and liberals will continue to demonize, bully and attempt to shame conservatives with their phony moral arguments and ignore the overwhelming empirical evidence contradicting their intractable views.

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May 21, 2010

Obama's (Axelrod's) Choreographed Media Blackout

By: David Limbaugh

The "most open and transparent" president in American history is still playing hide-and-seek with the press, and even the liberal New York Times has begun to notice it, as indicated by this headline: "Obama Turns His Back On the Press."

If the mainstream media were not so ideologically wedded to Obama's big-government agenda, they would be doing more than pointing out his secrecy and hypocrisy with the occasional headline. They'd be skewering him daily for his marked inaccessibility. Not having a genuine news conference since July would be remarkable for the least transparent administration, let alone one that made openness a signature campaign issue.

But not everyone in the leftist press is exercising such restraint about Obama's media blackout. CBS News' Chip Reid decided to ask Obama a question following his signing of the Freedom of the Press Act. Doing his best Hugo Chavez, Obama said, "I'm not doing a press conference today, but we'll be seeing you guys during the course of this week."

HotAirPundit posted a video of Reid explaining that he asked the question because the irony of Obama's signing the Freedom of the Press Act while rarely fielding questions "in impromptu situations" was "too rich to resist." Reid asked, "Mr. President, in the interest of press freedom, might you consider a couple of questions on BP?"

When Reid took Obama up on his noncommittal pledge and tried to ask him a question at the Rose Garden "news conference" with the president of Mexico a few days later, Obama ignored him.

This should surprise no one. A case could be made that Obama's never had a news conference that he hasn't largely controlled. He and his handlers, from David Axelrod to Rahm Emanuel, understand the importance of managing the press to control the message in the interest of advancing the leftist agenda.

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May 11, 2010

Exploring Kagan

By: David Limbaugh

President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, once wrote that Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court judicial nominees should explore a "nominee's set of constitutional views and commitments." By all means, let's accommodate her and begin exploring.

We could start with the presumption, given Obama's ideology and judicial philosophy, that any nominee he chooses will be troubling for advocates of judicial restraint and interpreting the Constitution according to its original understanding. But let's put that aside for this little exploration.

On my initial research, a number of problematic areas have surfaced. Consider, for starters:

--She has no judicial experience and hardly any experience practicing law. She's mainly been an academic. I confess this one bothers me less than others, for I believe an intellectually honest academic, with proper respect for the Constitution, could make a fine appellate judge.

--Kagan, as dean of Harvard Law School, joined an amicus brief in an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit and another brief to the Supreme Court challenging a congressional law that denied federal funding to universities that didn't allow military recruiters access to their campuses. Kagan was outraged at the military because of its "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which banned openly homosexual men and women from the service, once calling it "a profound wrong -- a moral injustice of the first order."

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May 04, 2010

Obama's Planned Remarks at Quincy Just as Telling

By: David Limbaugh

Pundits are making a great deal out of Obama's ad-lib statement during his speech on financial reform in Quincy, Ill., about profits and earnings. But his prepared remarks are just as revealing, even if not obviously so, of his profit aversion and his belief in government control over the private economy.

In his prepared remarks, Obama said: "Now, we're not doing this (financial reform) to punish these firms or begrudge success that's fairly earned. We don't want to stop them from fulfilling their responsibility to help grow our economy." But live, he added, among other things, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."

Let me first address his prepared comments, about which I haven't heard much criticism. He assured us he wasn't pushing the financial reform bill -- his latest socialist (actually, it's closer to fascist, but why pick nits?) monstrosity -- to punish success that's fairly earned.

Well, why do you suppose he needs to assure us he's not intending to "punish"? A little subconscious admission perchance? Remember, he protests that he's a fierce advocate of the free market. Remember also that he is allowing the Bush tax cuts -- because they are "tax cuts for the wealthy," who don't pay "their fair share" -- to expire, not to mention the host of other taxes he is imposing on the "rich" -- and many on the rest of Americans, too, despite his pledge not to.

Please put aside for now the outrageousness of this ongoing lie designed to divide America by income groups and to win Democratic votes through propaganda and demagoguery. Of course the rich -- especially the top 1 percent, 5 percent and 10 percent -- pay a higher percentage of income taxes than the poor and also pay more in actual taxes, while the bottom half of income earners pay a negligible amount.

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April 27, 2010

Obama(doesn't)care Taking Surprise Hits

By: David Limbaugh

As President Barack Obama is attempting to steamroll yet another enormous policy change through Congress against the best interests of Americans, we would be well-advised to keep abreast of the frauds that are already being exposed about Obamacare.

Last week, reality dealt Obamacare twin blows -- not that Obama will care. An analysis inside his own administration and a report from New York state shed the grim light of reality on this monstrosity before its Draconian provisions have even gone into effect.

Economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department issued a report last week, conveniently after Obamacare was shoved through, finding that though more people will end up with health insurance (many of them against their will, of course), costs are going to increase. Shocker.

How could coverage not increase with the legal mandate forcing unwilling people to buy health insurance coverage? Today millions entitled to assistance don't avail themselves of it, but Obamacare will presumably be different because there will be a penalty for non-coverage -- an idea that Obama expediently mocked during the primary campaign.

But costs will also increase? I thought Obama promised to bend the cost curve down -- that he wouldn't add one dime to the deficit with Obamacare. But two dimes or a quarter are apparently a different matter.

The HHS analysis found Obamacare will raise projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years -- and this is without even considering the impact of numerous gimmicks and camouflaged items, such as the Medicare "doctor fix." There are presently scheduled 21 percent cuts in Medicare reimbursements to physicians, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised that they won't be implemented. What a sham!

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April 16, 2010

PARP: TARP On Steroids

By: David Limbaugh

There seems to be no limit to the Obamacrats' appetite for expanding federal power and for fabricating and exploiting crises, which must never be allowed "to go to waste."

They always have a rationale for plausibly denying their federal power grabs. But like Obama's other big agenda items, the financial overhaul bill currently in the Senate is exactly that..

Most Americans instinctively didn't like TARP -- the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program. Even those who believed it was a necessary evil to avert financial catastrophe regarded the use of government funds to bail out companies as distasteful. They considered the government's subsequent assumption of control over TARP companies as even more distasteful.

But at least they were told it would be "temporary." Just as Obama said, "I don't want to run auto companies," he said he didn't want to run banks. Right.

Apparently learning the wrong lesson from the public's outrage at their shoving through Obamacare against the people's will, Obamacrats have adopted the same model to push through their financial overhaul plan, which Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner boastfully describes as "the strongest financial reforms since those that followed the Great Depression." Have you noticed with these statists that everything has to be dramatic -- the "greatest crisis," the "most comprehensive health care plan," the "strongest financial reforms"? Believe me; we believe you. We get it. You don't like the America we like, and you want to radically change it.

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April 02, 2010

Sick Thinking From 'Mainstream' Leftists

By: David Limbaugh

The Obama left, realizing it has really stepped in it with the American people by cramming Obamacare down our throats, has decided to blunt the backlash against it by tarring, yet again, mainstream conservatives as racists, bigots, homophobes and violent. Its tactics are objectively despicable.

You know the drill. We conservatives, who happen to understand ourselves better than liberals do, know that we are largely a civil, respectable, peaceable bunch. Attendees to the Rush Limbaugh-inspired Dan's Bake Sale years ago can attest to the mature, wholesome behavior of Rush fans. Ditto Sean Hannity's Freedom Concert attendees and tea party protest attendees.

The leftists who actually believe the fraudulent bile they are spewing about conservatives as being violent are merely projecting. They know their own side often disrupts and shuts down debate and engages in hate speech and even anarchy. Witness the unruly leftist disruptions of Ann Coulter appearances or the sabotaging of Karl Rove's appearance by Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans, one of Obama's radical buddies. Look at the tea party violence from the SEIU left.

But the majority of leftists making these bogus claims about conservatives are either deeply warped or outright lying. There are some isolated acts of fringe violence from the right, but they are just that -- isolated and rare. With the many tea parties that have occurred, how much conservative-spawned violence have you heard about -- even with a liberal media champing at the bit to slander the entire movement? Hardly any -- beyond the fabrications.

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March 30, 2010

Obama's Gifts to the 'Outlier' Have Only Just Begun

By: David Limbaugh

Whatever you do, don't assume that Obamacare and the rest of Obama's statist agenda will be easy to reverse because the public is so outraged. Obama and his relentless leftist armies have only just begun to fight.

One might suspect that after strong-arming Obamacare through Congress over the objections of a substantial majority of Americans, the Obamunists would lie low for a while -- or that they would at least pretend to make conciliatory overtures to the other side to heal the rifts they've caused in this nation.

Hardly. The left wing is in full gloating mode. Liberal columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote: "Yes, we did. Finally, President Obama can use those words. ... No longer will the United States be the outlier among wealthy nations in leaving so many of its citizens without basic health coverage." Yes, that evil old United States -- you know, the "outlier" who, up to now, has not forced millions of people who don't want to buy health insurance to buy it. And who will provide further insurance to millions more who already have access to federal health assistance but don't avail themselves of it.

There will be no mea culpas for the outrageous abuses they committed in passing this bill. There'll be no humility and no interest in reconciling. If anything, they're puffed up even more, as if they're entitled to kudos for thwarting the will of the people and prepared to give them more of the same -- which they are, with the likes of amnesty and cap and tax.

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March 23, 2010

The Beginning of the End or of Rebirth?

By: David Limbaugh

The Democrats' passage of socialized medicine Sunday night will spell either the beginning of the end of this great nation or the beginning of the rebirth of its freedom. The choice is still in the hands of Americans.

To borrow a phrase from President Barack Obama, "let's be clear" on a couple of things:

First, it's not an exaggeration to say Obamacare is socialized medicine; in fact, it doesn't go far enough simply to say it represents the government takeover of our entire health care system. It is also a major step (begun long ago) in the complete dismantling of the unique American constitutional experiment and of the social compact between Americans and their government. Obama's now-realized goal of fundamental change is to make the government the people's master instead of their servant.

Secondly, we should not suffer gladly those painfully naive people who will continue to say that Obama and his obedient congressional Democrats are not radical. It may make people feel better about themselves to promote congeniality and bipartisanship, but to fantasize about such quixotic goals under this type of radical assault on our nation is tantamount to enabling it.

Thirdly, Obama and the Democrats have been unconscionably deceptive about their aims, even though Obama couldn't help but reveal his extremism from time to time. He certainly promised "fundamental change" but was so vague that many assumed his idea of "hope and change" meant something consistent with American values. Others knew full well what grandiose plans he had in store to overthrow America's social compact. There was no mistaking his intent when you examined his radical background and radical relationships; his extremist position on human life, including supporting a form of infanticide; his promise to redistribute wealth; his obvious grudge against America; and his experience as a street agitator in Chicago.

If the Democrats' motives were honorable, they wouldn't be so deceptive in everything they do, particularly in their endless drive to impose Obamacare on this nation against the unmistakable and undeniable will of the people. I couldn't fully catalog the Democratic lies and abuses surrounding this bill with the space remaining in this column, but let's just touch on a few:

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March 19, 2010

Thank You, Bret

By: David Limbaugh

I pray that President Barack Obama's interview with Fox News' Bret Baier is replayed repeatedly on Fox News Channel and circulated widely on the Internet for all to see. The more who watch it the more people will realize just how drastically the unscripted Obama varies from his projected image as God's gift to bipartisanship, compromise, congeniality and democracy.

What came across most glaringly was that there is little he wouldn't do to force Obamacare on us, from lying to evading to concealing to abusing the legislative process to violating the Constitution to dividing the nation. Consider some highlights.

Baier asked Obama whether he would support the use of the "Slaughter Rule," which would deem the bill passed so as to avoid an actual up-or-down vote. Instead of answering the question, Obama mouthed his tired talking points about his plan, most of which were just outright propaganda. He said that his plan would reduce deficits and that costs would decrease for small businesses and families because they would be in the same type of pool congressmen have. But there's not a chance in Hades that any ordinary American would have such a Cadillac plan.

For starters, in counting costs, I'm sure he's not factoring in hidden costs, including taxes. In addition, care would be rationed. Is it for congressmen? People wouldn't have choices congressmen have and would be forced, eventually, out of their private plans. That's what would happen under the Senate bill; who cares what would happen under some fictionalized scenario Obama promises under his plan? He has none. This is maddening.

The closest he came to answering the question was, "I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or the Senate." Neither did members of the Soviet Politburo when they promulgated their five-year plans. Those rules, Mr. President, are there for a purpose: to protect the interests and the will of the people.

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March 16, 2010

Without Firing a Shot?

By: David Limbaugh

During the height of the Cold War, some feared the communists would take over the United States without firing a shot. Could it be that nearly a half-century later, we're on the verge of that becoming a reality?

President Barack Obama and Democratic congressmen won their respective elections -- no shots were fired -- and they are feverishly attempting to dismantle this nation's institutions, brick by brick.

The American people are getting a bird's-eye view of what the left, which completely dominates the Democratic Party, thinks of the Constitution, freedom and the right of the people to self-governance.

The people now attempting to govern us with an iron fist are Marxist-leaning in terms of not only the policies they support but also the ruthless tactics they employ to enact those policies into law.

As long as it served Obama's Machiavellian purposes to maintain a semblance of unity for his ambitious agenda, he donned his bipartisan cap. But as soon as he encountered intractable opposition from Republicans, God bless them, he began to show his true political colors.

Barack Obama's congenial, compromising facade has disappeared. What remains, in plain view, is a narcissistic, arrogant and inflexibly ideological man who is determined to cram his socialist agenda down our throats by whatever means necessary -- irrespective of the legality of the procedures he utilizes, the truth of the words he speaks and the will of the people.

Obama doesn't care what we think -- and I'm not just talking about the majority of Americans who oppose Obamacare. Everyone who gets in his way is expendable, including principled Democrats who dare to oppose him.

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March 12, 2010

Heads Liberals Win, Tails We Lose

By: David Limbaugh

The left habitually distorts and exaggerates to demonize and discredit its opponents but squeals like a stuck pig when conservatives use colorful language to call the left out. Unfortunately, some on the right encourage the left's squealing.

As for the liberals, it's hard to take them seriously when they register their indignation at, say, Sarah Palin for her "death panels" comment, other conservatives for describing Obama as a socialist or liberals as "liberals," or, most recently, Liz Cheney for calling seven Justice Department appointees the "al-Qaida Seven."

Liberals are the ones who knowingly lied in saying that "Bush lied; people died," that supply-side tax cuts are "just for the rich" and that Bush left people on the rooftops in New Orleans after Katrina because they were black. These weren't just harmless rhetorical barbs; they had and continue to have serious, substantively damaging consequences.

Nor are the above descriptions by Palin, Cheney and other conservatives a matter of tit for tat or a case of the left's wrong mitigating the right's. The conservatives' statements above are different because they have a strong ring of truth, and they are not just gratuitous; they serve the purpose of calling attention to what is truly going on.

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March 09, 2010

Obama vs. Insurers and the People, Part 2

By: David Limbaugh

President Barack Obama obviously has no qualms about slandering people or industries that interfere with his agenda. In the same creepy manner he defamed the Cambridge Police Department without benefit of the facts, he is scapegoating the insurance companies based on his distorted version of facts.

In the past week, he has ratcheted up his war on insurance companies, who, he apparently figures, must be destroyed if he is to accomplish his Utopian dream of socialized health care. He made them the focus of his wrath again, in his umpteenth health care speech, Monday in Philadelphia. Even the White House blog, in a post titled "Moving Forward to Put the American People Ahead of Insurance Companies," frames this debate as between insurance companies and the people.

Who is Obama to be smearing health insurance companies for allegedly bankrupting people to increase their profits when his policy agenda is already bankrupting America to increase government power? As the late Milton Friedman asked the clueless leftist Phil Donahue, "Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?"

It's not the insurance industry versus the American people; it is Obama's socialist leviathan versus the American people, with the insurance companies as necessary collateral damage.

Is it fair to accuse the insurance companies of arbitrariness when they refuse to cover what their contracts don't require them to cover? And isn't Obama implying that if the government were to take full control over health care, there would be no denial of coverage? We don't have to wait for his plan to take effect to know that's false. Everyone, including Obama, is aware of Medicare's denying or reducing reimbursements so drastically that an increasing number of doctors are refusing Medicare patients. Does he call that arbitrary?

In addition, whether or not you bristle at those suggesting Obamacare would usher in death panels, you are in fantasyland if you think Obamacare doesn't contemplate increased rationing -- by the government.

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March 05, 2010

Obama versus Insurers and the People

By: David Limbaugh

President Barack Obama's obsessive, opportunistic demonization of insurance companies in his quest to pass his not-yet-written health care proposal is growing tiresome. Aren't you getting sick of a president attacking American citizens and businesses as if they -- not Obama's beloved government -- were the enemy?

His repeated implication that insurance companies are the primary reason for rising health care costs is politically expedient, but it's still untrue. Government is the main culprit.

Throughout his yearlong push for Obamacare, he has called insurance companies every name in the book. He has blamed them for soaring costs, bludgeoned them for taking profits, condemned their executives' salaries and savaged them for denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

He even says insurers are the final arbiters of who gets care and who doesn't: "And insurance companies freely ration health care based on who's sick and who's healthy, who can pay and who can't."

Obama has framed the entire debate as if it were an insurance problem. In his theatrical speech Wednesday -- while flanked from all sides by white-coated props -- he said, "We began our push to reform health insurance last March," as if the thrust of his health care efforts has been to rein in insurers and little else.

Though Obama surely hates insurance companies, we all know he is up to much more than just punishing them. This is about a government takeover, even if it takes several incremental steps. Vilifying insurers sells better than glorifying government to a center-right nation generally suspicious of government.

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March 02, 2010

Health Care Summit Charade -- A Clinic in Obama Partisanship

By: David Limbaugh

For a guy who touts himself as bipartisan and demands bipartisanship from Republicans, President Barack Obama had a funny way of showing his bipartisanship during last week's health care summit.

Obama has repeatedly promised an open, honest and bipartisan process on health care reform, but from the beginning, he has quarterbacked a highly partisan, closed-door and dishonest campaign.

In his opening remarks at the "summit," he said he wanted to make sure the participants didn't just trade "talking points" or engage in "political theater." He said, "If we've got an open mind, if we're listening to each other, if we're not engaging in sort of the tit for tat trying to score political points during the next several hours ... we might be able to make some progress."

He then proceeded to a) open the curtains for his own political theater, with one anecdotal Democratic sob story after another about the horrors of American health care; b) deliver his own talking points throughout the day, including his obligatory "tit for tat" following almost every Republican speaker; and c) demonstrate his own partisanship through (i) patronizing dismissals of the Republicans' substantive contributions as "talking points"; (ii) volleying partisan barbs at Republicans; (iii) mischaracterizing his positions and those of the Republicans; and (iv) accusing Republicans of not showing a good-faith willingness to make any movement in his direction when he made no effort to compromise with them.

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February 23, 2010

Obama Doesn't Even Fake Bipartisanship Well

By: David Limbaugh

How long will it take for every last American to realize President Barack Obama is not about bipartisanship, reconciliation (other than as a process to cram his health care bill through Congress) and uniting Americans? As his latest gyrations on health care demonstrate, he will not be deterred in his quest to saddle Americans with socialized medicine, even if it greatly increases the likelihood he won't be re-elected.

Here we have Obama, frenetically busy with at least three of his hands, pushing different buttons and sending mixed signals. I guess being a self-perceived messiah means you don't have to worry about being flagrantly inconsistent, even on the same day or in the context of one speech.

He's invited Republicans to a bipartisan summit on health care, intending to create the illusion that he's interested in conservative ideas on the subject.

But at the same time -- he can't even pretend long enough to let this ruse play out -- he is threatening Republicans that if they filibuster current congressional health care proposals, he will urge Congress to pass Obamacare by bastardizing the reconciliation process.

But wait, just like a Ginsu knife infomercial, there's more. Obama has also unveiled the outlines of his own new health care proposal, but it is hardly a model of bipartisanship.

As for his "bipartisan" summit, why would anyone believe he is interested in the Republicans' ideas on health care? Has he given any indication he is through this nearly yearlong process? Has he not shut Republicans out of the entire process until tendering this counterfeit overture -- after wholesale repudiation of his plan by the American people?

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February 19, 2010

When the Facts Don't Help Pound the Table

By: David Limbaugh

When you're president of the United States and your primary claim to fame is your economic prowess but your economic record fails by all objective measures, what do you do? You call on your skills as a virtuoso propagandist.

With the perceived catastrophic economic crisis of 2008-09, President Barack Obama captured the presidency at the perfect time in America's modern history for him to unleash his grandiose socialist policies -- policies so ambitious that the American people would never have tolerated them under any other circumstances.

With the nation in near panic over the impending doom of the economy, Obama presented his now-infamous "stimulus plan" to artificially create government demand by spending more than $800 billion of borrowed money to "jump-start the economy."

Being a die-hard Keynesian, Obama probably believed his program would create jobs. But given his attitude about the wealthy being undeserving of their good fortune, he probably wasn't risking too much in the event it didn't work. The funds would redistribute wealth to those less fortunate and whom society, in Obama's view, has cheated. It would also force allocations of money to "green" enterprises that would never be pursued if left to the sanity of private-sector consumer demand, further expand the public sector in general and provide ample slush money to reward unions and other supporters to shore up his re-election efforts.

According to Keynesian theory, as I understand it, it doesn't matter much where the government spends other people's money -- just as long as it spends it. Once the money is injected into the economy (never mind that an equal amount is taken out of the economy from the private sector), a multiplier effect unfolds to stimulate economic growth and jobs.

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February 12, 2010

Bipartisanship Equals Single-Payer-ship

By: David Limbaugh

It's not a good idea for Republicans to accept President Barack Obama's invitation to a "bipartisan" health care summit, because it would not advance acceptable health care reform. The only thing it likely would advance would be Obama's propaganda message -- and, thus, his socialist agenda.

Everyone knows Obama wouldn't be considering such a move if the American people had not so resoundingly rejected Obamacare.

From the very beginning, he has approached this issue more as a dictator than one interested in hearing genuine input from the other side. Nor has he shown good faith, having broken his cynical promise to televise the debates on C-SPAN and having misrepresented his plan in a number of particulars.

When called on the C-SPAN pledge, he glibly replied that most of the process has been televised in regular sessions of Congress and committee hearings, knowing full well that's not what anyone understood him to mean when he made his promise.

He has been as highhanded and dishonest in dealing with this issue as he has been with any other, which is quite a mouthful. He has ridiculed Republicans for their alleged obstruction and for not offering ideas of their own, when it was Republicans who first called for bipartisan talks last May and who did offer alternative plans, which Obama summarily rejected.

He looked us straight in the eye and told us, disingenuously, that in his plan, there would be no federal funding for abortion, no rationing, no interference in the doctor-patient relationship, no forcing people out of their private plans, no bill that was not budget-neutral, no single-payer plan and no decrease in patient choice with his public option.

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February 09, 2010

Lashing Out Beats Accountability

By: David Limbaugh

Conservatives understand that liberals often demonize their opponents rather than debate the merits of the issues because the tactic works. But you have to wonder whether another reason they lash out is that they are angry that reality doesn't cooperate with their ideologically driven solutions and it's easier to blame others than to face up to the unpleasant truth of their failed ideas.

It's not just the tirades of liberal talk show host Ed Schultz, who said he would cheat to keep Scott Brown from winning his Senate election, or Chris Matthews, who said Republicans indoctrinate their members in the same way Cambodian communists re-educated their subjects, or the nasty outbursts of presidential adviser Rahm Emanuel.

I was also reminded of this, on a subtler level, when reading a Washington Post piece on David Plouffe, Barack Obama's presidential campaign manager, who recently returned to the Obama camp to quarterback the Democrats' election efforts in 2010 and beyond.

Plouffe said: "Politics is a comparative exercise. This isn't just a referendum on Democrats. ... It's a choice. ... Republicans right now are just sitting back and slinging arrows. We need to ... shine some light over their side of the fence."

Plouffe said he would remind voters that Democrats have spent two years trying to fix problems, whereas Republicans want to wheel a "Trojan horse" into Washington and spill out bankers and health insurance executives. Sure, why not vilify bankers and insurers when it helps your guy avoid accountability for his policies?

It's shamelessly Machiavellian of Democrats to accuse the GOP of going negative, when Democrats use Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" (e.g., "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it") as an instruction manual. But hey, they're out of fresh ideas, so what other choice do they have?

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February 05, 2010

This 'Messiah' Isn't Delivering Peace

By: David Limbaugh

President Barack Obama's delusional perspective on fiscal issues is only surpassed by his surreal approach to the war on terror, which he doesn't even consistently recognize as a war. The ideological extremism of his policies is only surpassed by his flailing incompetence in administering them.

During his presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly denounced President George W. Bush's "unilateralist" and "imperialistic" foreign policy.

Obama carefully cultivated an image as a domestic and global healer who could leverage his personal background to rise above internal and foreign bickering and address the root causes of this conflict en route to a peaceful resolution. Frighteningly enough, he obviously believed his own hype.

What about those root causes? Well, Obama's entire approach to the war (he seems to prefer "law enforcement issue") is driven by his belief that Muslim extremists didn't become terrorists because of their ideology but because we have mistreated them. He thinks we have goaded potential terrorists into becoming terrorists and given existing terrorists further cause to hate us. "Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al-Qaida recruit terrorists to its cause," he said. "Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained."

Well, he was going to turn all that around with euphemisms ("man-caused disaster," "overseas contingency operations"), a flurry of lofty rhetoric (his world apology tour), a few symbolic steps (closing Gitmo) and certain policy reversals (Mirandizing terrorists and trying enemy combatants in civilian courts).

The result -- his posture of relaxation and retreat -- has been an unmitigated disaster. He went out of his way to avoid identifying the Fort Hood jihadist as a terrorist; he admonished us not to jump to any conclusions about the Christmas underwear bomber; he promised to close Gitmo with no plan to relocate the prisoners; he moved the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to ground zero with utterly no consideration for the local or national security implications involved; and his Justice Department allowed the Christmas bomber to lawyer up after only 50 minutes of interrogation.

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February 01, 2010

An Unusually Bad Prevaricator, Unusually Bad

By: David Limbaugh

Former Sen. Bob Kerrey famously said that Bill Clinton was "an unusually good liar. Unusually good." Well, then, President Barack Obama is an unusually bad liar. Unusually bad.

Obama said in his State of the Union speech (and similar statements several times since): "By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. All this was before I walked in the door."

Though it's true that the deficit for President George W. Bush's final year in office was close to $1.3 trillion, it must be noted that Obama and his fellow Democratic-controlled Congress members approved the TARP bailouts and are largely responsible for the other budget expenditures leading to that record deficit.

Plus, The Heritage Foundation's blog, "The Foundry," says that Obama's claims concerning the causes for that deficit are "clearly misleading." Despite those factors, "the budget deficit still stood at just $162 billion when the recession began in late 2007. The larger subsequent deficits have been driven by the recession (which Obama did acknowledge), the financial bailouts, the President's stimulus bill, and large discretionary spending hikes enacted by a Democratic Congress."

Also, there is major disagreement over Obama's assertion that Bush's projected deficits over the next 10 years were $8 trillion. But even if you let Obama slide on that claim, the more relevant comparison, as pointed out by Rep. Jeb Hensarling, is the annual average deficit for the 12 years that Republicans most recently controlled Congress -- $104 billion -- versus that of the past three years under the Democratic-controlled Congress -- $1.1 trillion.

Indeed, before the financial meltdown -- which was mostly caused by liberal mortgaging and housing policies -- Bush's deficits had been significantly reduced, even cut in half before he predicted they would be. In addition, Bill Clinton would never have been able to co-opt credit for those deficits or "his" surplus if not for the Republican Revolution and Contract with America.

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January 29, 2010

There Was the President's Speech, and There Is Reality

By: David Limbaugh

Watching President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech makes me wonder whether the reason he tells so many fibs is that he believes them himself. Either that or he is an even better actor than he is a teleprompter reader.

Obama not only wasn't contrite about his broken promises and disastrous record; he was on the attack, daring anyone to oppose his agenda -- even in the face of the Massachusetts rebuke. But let's see how some of his statements match up with reality.

On health care, he taunted congressmen to "let me know" if any of them have "a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses," as if his own plan would do those things.

Even the Congressional Budget Office has said most of the Democratic plans would increase the budget. Besides, you can't reduce overall costs when government forces an increase in demand, even if it caps insurance premiums and shifts costs elsewhere and/or imposes rationing. The CBO has also reported that with Obamacare, millions would remain uninsured. So under his plan, costs would rise, quality and choice would decrease, care would be rationed, millions would remain uninsured and, worst of all, the government would acquire an unprecedented level of control over all aspects of our lives.

Do conservatives have better ideas? Of course. Restore market forces through tort reform, strengthening health savings accounts, abolishing government coverage mandates, allowing consumers to purchase policies across state lines and eliminating the tax laws incentivizing employer-provided health care, which unnecessarily increase demand by making prices invisible to consumers.

A candid Obama would have said, "If any of you have a plan that does not involve restoring market forces and reducing government's role in the health care industry, I'll at least pretend to look at it." "Make no mistake," neither Obama nor his Democratic colleagues will support genuine health care reform, because to reduce costs, we must reduce government control, and they can't abide that. Period.

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January 26, 2010

'It's Not About Me' -- Wink, Wink

By: David Limbaugh

The more painful exposure we have to Barack Obama -- and we're talking hyper-exposure at this point -- the more we realize how narcissistic he is. Indeed, we are treated to this overexposure precisely because of his narcissistic impulses. He can't keep himself out of the spotlight.

So it was that on the heels of his crushing personal defeat in the Massachusetts senatorial election last week, Obama's principal reaction was, "This isn't about me."

When someone says that one time or a few times, you might believe him. But when he says it repeatedly (see below), you have to conclude he is protesting too much and means just the opposite.

Given what we've learned about Obama's self-absorption, it's not a stretch to infer that when he says "it's not about me," he wants to project an air of humility while receiving personal credit for that which he denies seeking credit. What he really means is, "The causes I am working on are greater than self, but -- wink, wink -- I darn well expect you to applaud me anyway, not just for my transcendent accomplishments but also for my being humble and selfless about it."

The context of his "not about me" statement following the Massachusetts election bears this out. After the obligatory disclaimer, he added: "This isn't about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America's families, breaking America's businesses and breaking America's economy."

Forget the distortions for now. But notice that he is seeking plaudits for his important work, which he's willing to do even if it damages him in the polls. He also gets the added benefit here of deflecting blame for the defeat by implying the election results weren't about him.

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January 22, 2010

Obama's 180 Degrees Out of Phase With the People

By: David Limbaugh

Reading excerpts of President Barack Obama's interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos underscores how tone-deaf and self-absorbed Obama is -- and that his tone-deafness is a function of his self-absorption and rigid ideology.

Obama said: "One thing that I regret this year is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values. And that I do think is a mistake of mine. I think the assumption was, if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or are we making a good, rational decision here ... people will get it."

Let's unpack that mouthful. It's all about him; in almost every line, he is bragging or excusing himself. No wonder he can't see any farther than his navel.

Note in the opening sentence his umpteenth gratuitous reference to "crises" he inherited; he doesn't use the word "inherited" there, but his meaning is clear.

In the next sentence, he pretends to criticize himself (for not speaking directly to the American people) as a backdrop for patting himself on the back for "just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises." Even if he hadn't immediately turned the phony self-deprecation into a boast, we'd know he wasn't sincere because the substance of his statement is flat-out false.

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January 19, 2010

New Column: A Cadillac Exemption From a Cadillac Tax From an Edsel Administration

By: David Limbaugh

This past Sunday marked the first time President Barack Obama graced a Washington, D.C., church with his presence since Oct. 11, but apparently it was not to sit in a pew and worship. Instead, he was doing the sermonizing and politicking -- gloriously intermingling church and state as only liberals are allowed to do in this country.

Don't get me wrong; I'm no scold when it comes to the church-state separation mania, which I think has been grossly expanded by liberals not to preserve the constitutional protection of religious liberty, but to selectively suppress it. But here I am digressing before I've even gotten started on the main focus of today's rant.

Instead of quibbling over the propriety of Obama's turning the church service into a political rally for health care, let's focus on the outrageous substance of his message.

He told the congregants at Vermont Avenue Baptist Church that Obamacare would help more than 30 million Americans -- "men and women and children, mothers and fathers" -- to get health insurance. "This will be a victory not for Democrats," he said. (He's got that one right.) "This'll be a victory for the United States of America." (Yes, once he and his party get thrown out on their ears for this monstrosity.)

But it's another one of his statements that really sticks in the craw: "This'll be a victory for dignity and decency, for our common humanity."

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January 12, 2010

Obama Must Know His Spending Yields Bankruptcy, Not Growth

By: David Limbaugh

Could we all agree that we are doomed as a nation if President Barack Obama continues his deficit spending at unprecedented levels? Can you think of any reason, then, to justify this spending? Oh, our president says it's to jump-start the economy? Sorry, that dog won't hunt. So what's his real motive?

Obama has been saying from the beginning that his stimulus plan was for the purpose of spurring economic growth -- though when we did have economic growth during the George W. Bush administration, the likes of which Democrats can only fantasize about during Obama's term, they trashed it as a "jobless recovery."

On Jan. 16, 2009 -- about a year ago -- Obama said: "The first job of my administration is to put people back to work and get our economy moving again. That's why I've moved quickly to work with my economic team and leaders of both parties on an 'American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan' that will immediately jump-start job creation and long-term growth." Obama made similar statements repeatedly.

Notice he said "immediately." Here we are a year later at 10 percent unemployment after Obama promised it wouldn't exceed 8 percent. Is anyone holding him accountable for this outrage? Is he humbled? No, he wants a second stimulus, on top of his nationally bankrupting health care and cap-and-trade plans. He has the audacity to demand $75 billion more to stimulate construction jobs. A bill approving the plan has already passed the House, and the Senate is expected to take it up later this month. Unbelievable!

Obama's top economic advisers also said at the time that his stimulus package would create mostly private-sector jobs. We know how that turned out: just the opposite.

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January 08, 2010

His 'Highness' or His 'Highhandedness'?

By: David Limbaugh

The more we read about Obama's health care scheme and his handling of it the more obvious his arrogance and contempt for the people become.

This is stunning behavior, really, for any administration (and his party), but especially one that holds itself out as a servant of the people and a model of transparency.

Just consider headlines from the past few days: "Obama Reneges on Health Care Transparency: As a Candidate, President Obama Promised to Put Health Care Reform Negotiations on C-SPAN," "White House REFUSES To Discuss Broken C-Span Promise," "Dems Will Bypass Conference Committee To Get Health Care Passed," "Sources: Obama, Dems to sidestep GOP on health care," "Hatch: Healthcare bill 'rich' for challenges on constitutionality," "AP sources: Obama OKs taxing high-end health plans," "Obama Pushes for Quick Health Care Deal," "Conference Committee Bypassed," "House Will Vote on Pro-Abortion Senate Bill" and -- get this one -- "Pelosi: 'There Has Never Been a More Open Process.'"

Seriously, who do these people think they are? No wonder they always assumed the worst of former President George W. Bush and then accused him of sinister motives he never had and actions he never committed. As I've noted before, they were projecting. They knew how they would behave if in power. Now, once again, they're proving it.

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January 04, 2010

War on Terror? What War?

By: David Limbaugh

Can you imagine an administration so arrogant that it will not reconsider its decision to return Yemeni terrorists now being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility back to Yemen, much less its decision to close Gitmo in the first place?

President Barack Obama is obviously a man who won't permit any facts to penetrate his airtight ideological force field, from deficit spending to health care to global warming to his non-prosecution of the war on terror -- I mean "overseas contingency operations."

Last week, Sens. Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Joe Lieberman sent a letter to President Obama telling him his decision to transfer six Yemeni nationals back home is "highly unwise and ill-considered," especially in light of the attempted terrorist bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. The senators pointed out that the terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, revealed to interrogators that he had traveled to Yemen for training and to gather explosives for the mission.

Even Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, weighed in, saying "detainees should not be released to Yemen at this time. It is too unstable." But the White House is undeterred, and even the closing of the U.S. Embassy in terrorist-rich Yemen is not causing the smug Obama to reconsider.

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December 29, 2009

It's Not the Economy, Stupid! It's National Survival!

By: David Limbaugh

The Washington Post's Dan Balz thinks that "with new priorities, Obama and Democrats can recover in 2010." Sorry, Dan; it's about more than priorities. It's a matter of their worldview.

Balz dutifully cites "the size of the problems President Obama inherited" and "the battles he chose to take on during his first year" as mitigating factors that may lead to the public's understanding and allow Obama an opportunity to hit "the reset button."

Balz says Obama's advisers believe he can "pivot" in the first few months of 2010 and restore his standing with the American people. Balz offers four "elements" that "might allow that to happen": refocus on the economy; move Congress offstage; get serious about the deficit and spending; and avoid overloading the circuits.

Let's briefly examine Balz's analysis -- an analysis that is doubtlessly typical for Beltway media elites.

First, Obama's free-falling approval ratings are not a result of problems he inherited. How long are he and his liberal media shills going to milk this "blame Bush" mantra like a bunch of reprobate school kids? Balz is onto something, however, in citing "the battles he chose to take on during his first year." But he's wrong that it is a mitigating factor.

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December 22, 2009

Obamacare Hazardous to America's Health

By: David Limbaugh

At least common thieves don't destroy an entire health care system and socialize the American economy when they commit their felonies. Too bad we can't say the same for our illustrious Democratic senators who sold out the nation.

In exchange for criminally unconstitutional favors for their respective states, they voted to pass the Senate health care bill just 38 hours after it had been made available to the public for review.

Everyone knows about Sen. Mary Landrieu's negotiating $300 million for her state in non-guaranteed Medicaid payouts. She was even cocky about her institutionalized larceny.

Sen. Bernie Sanders finagled $10 billion worth of earmarked greenbacks for the funding of community health centers in his home state, Vermont, to support a bill he vehemently opposed just three days earlier.

Sanders and Sen. Patrick Leahy secured additional Medicaid funding for Vermont, while senators from Pennsylvania, New York and Florida achieved Medicare Advantage protections for their constituents even as benefits from this program are being cut nationwide.

And why not? The end always justifies the means for these liberals. And the end, in this case, is their long-held Utopian Marxist dream of socialized health care. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was not only unapologetic but also defiant about these bribes. "You'll find a number of states that are treated differently than other states. That's what legislating is all about. It's compromise," said Reid.

But this wasn't compromise. It was blackmail. And the payoff was at the expense of our bankrupt heirs.

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December 15, 2009

If B's Were F's, Obama Still Wouldn't Deserve a B-Plus

By: David Limbaugh

It's bad enough for America that President Barack Obama is a committed far-left ideologue, but when you couple that with his narcissism, you've got a recipe for a major disaster.

He told Oprah Winfrey he deserves "a good solid B-plus" for his first year in office. The only things standing in his way for that coveted A are -- for the most part -- other people, such as evil Republicans who oppose socialized medicine.

It's obvious that Obama is as self-absorbed as he is delusional. While most Americans are worried about the financial destruction of our country and our resulting inability to bequeath our heirs a land of liberty, Obama is fretting over the stresses the job is placing on him.

"The biggest burden on me right now is that economic growth has happened, but job growth has not happened." Note the "burden on me." Similarly, he said his painfully belabored decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan hit him "in the gut."

Obama insists economic growth has returned and job recovery is just a matter of time, but many are not so sure of either. But all are sure that his unwavering debt path is unsustainable and suicidal.

When the George W. Bush economy was humming for almost eight years, Obama and his media friends gave Bush no credit because, they said, we were experiencing "jobless growth." These partisan charlatans characterized 4.5 percent unemployment as "joblessness." What does that make 10 percent -- especially in light of Obama's promise to keep it less than 8 percent?

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December 11, 2009

Obama Reducing the Debt? Dream On

By: David Limbaugh

Two recent news stories illustrate, more clearly than ever, the Obama Democrats' contempt for the free market and individual economic liberty. If given the chance, they will expand government and spend as much of our money as they can get away with.

First we learn that Obama and his party simply will not agree to keep their grubby government hands off the estimated $200 billion the banks are going to repay under TARP. Just when we finally receive this glimmer of good news to ameliorate our reasonable panic over the ever-increasing national debt, Obama announces that he intends to intercept a good portion of the debt repayments and spend it on job creation and assistance to certain debtors.

I assume we're supposed to be too dense to remember that his stimulus spending to date hasn't created jobs and that most of it hasn't even been used for that purpose. So when this administration says its first priority is reducing debt, understand we are being played -- by consummate cynics.

Likewise, the Democrats' various health care plans contemplate $500 billion in Medicare savings between 2010 and 2019. But instead of using the savings to shore up this entitlement's solvency, they are charging forward with a new entitlement: major subsidies to the uninsured to buy health insurance.

They just can't help themselves, what with their firm control of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. They barely have to pretend to like capitalism anymore.

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December 09, 2009

Defenseless Enviro-thugs Go On Offense

By: David Limbaugh

At a time when leftist enviro-tyrants ought to be hanging their heads in shame, they are, instead, taking the offensive. They are not only dismissing the staggering ClimateGate scandal as insignificant but also redoubling and accelerating their push to enslave the world with their progress-swallowing treaties, laws and regulations.

It's the same old leftist playbook: Approach every desired major policy change as a crisis, and demand immediate action. If the public begins to wise up to the distortions and exaggerations, elevate the threat warning from dire to urgent.

We saw it in our domestic politics in the United States when President Barack Obama's leftist Democrats manufactured a simulated crisis over health insurance, deliberately overstating by multiples the number of uninsured as a predicate to Obama's demand that a comprehensive bill had to be passed before Congress' August recess.

Shortly thereafter, it came to light that Democrats had also grossly manipulated the projected costs of their proposals and flagrantly lied about such issues as rationing and government-funded abortions. All the while, these "progressives" concealed from the public the underlying facts and data and their ultimate aims, obliterating Obama's pledge for greater transparency in government.

Like-minded global and American leftists know the jig is almost up on the fabricated global warming "consensus," as the public is catching on to their deception (reflected by fresh polling data) and the ClimateGate scandal has lifted the veil on the leftist scientific community's global conspiratorial corruption. They tell us to pay no attention to the ClimateGate behind the curtain and to join with them in launching the reverse thrusters on modernity and progress in deference to the global warming hoax. Meanwhile, the Obama-leftist Environmental Protection Agency has hedged its bets (in the event Copenhagen is a bust) by declaring the air that we exhale an environmental hazard.

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December 04, 2009

Gibbs: Don't Confuse Copenhagen-bound Obama With Global Warming Facts

By: David Limbaugh

Despite the unfolding international "climate change" scandal involving the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, President Barack Obama's ideological presuppositions on global warming remain unshaken, and he will still happily attend the Copenhagen global warming conference.

This unprecedented fraud by a "team" of politicized scientists whose research has generated some $20 million in research grants for the CRU hasn't deterred Obama from his energy- and economy-destroying agenda any more than double-digit unemployment figures have dissuaded him from his failed Keynesian policies. Nor is Obama bothered by the incestuous relationship among the CRU, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Copenhagen summit.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs sniffed that corruption at the highest levels of climate change intelligentsia -- corruption, mind you, that bears directly on the underlying science -- doesn't alter the president's firm opinion that "climate change is happening."

"I don't think that's anything that is, quite frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore," said Gibbs. "I think there's no real scientific basis for the dispute of this."

Oh? Is this administration so myopic as to be dangerously ignorant? So arrogant that it deems dissenting opinions unworthy of acknowledgment? Or just old-fashioned liars?

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November 30, 2009

They Call It Fiscal Responsibility; We Call It Socialism

By: David Limbaugh

As President Barack Obama and his party conspire to destroy -- not reform -- the greatest health care system in the world in their quest to remake America into a full-blown Eurosocialist state, it is instructive to remember the premise upon which Obama launched this disaster.

In July, Obama said that if we do not control our health care costs, "we will not be able to control our deficit." He continued: "I've also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it. ... In addition ... the bill I sign must also slow the growth of health care costs in the long run." Just to be sure there was no misunderstanding, Obama said, "The entire cost of that has to be paid for, and it has got to be deficit-neutral."

Those who didn't know this was hogwash in the first place have no excuse not to see it now. There's nothing deficit-neutral about the plans currently under consideration. There's nothing fiscally prudent about them. Indeed, they would greatly exacerbate our existing fiscal crisis -- not to mention usher in the largest socialistic transformation we've yet seen in this nation.

With the information that has now come to light about the costs of "reform," there is no other rational explanation for Obama's obsession to enact Obamacare than his desire to increase government control over every aspect of our lives.

As others have noted, Obama and company have employed multiple gimmicks to conceal and misrepresent the true costs of Obamacare. Like other groups wanting to destroy America from the outside, liberals are patient. By backloading their spending, they hope to deceive Americans into thinking their plan is budget-neutral.

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November 24, 2009

A National Nightmare, Indeed

By: David Limbaugh

In a Democratic fundraising speech in Iowa over the weekend, Vice President Joe Biden told party loyalists that opponents of the Obama administration's agenda "should be worried about us, for we are their worst nightmare." Duh.

Finally we can agree on something, Joe. Even the liberal New York Times reports that at the current level of federal spending, the annual interest on the national debt will exceed $700 billion by 2019 -- compared with $202 billion this year. Some forecasters predict it will be much higher. This additional half-trillion dollars a year in interest is more than our current combined expenditures on education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Oh, and the Times isn't even factoring in the cap-and-trade nightmare you and Barack have in store for us, Joe -- you know, that urgent legislation to catapult the nation back into Third World status based on hysteria generated by fraudulent science and corrupt zealots and politicians.

Nor is the Times including in its calculations the additional debt that would result from Obamacare.

Joe, when The New York Times is sounding the warnings over the exploding national debt, you and Barack insist not only on not reversing your disastrous course but also on making it worse. How can reasonable people assume anything other than that you are trying to run this nation into the ground financially?

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November 19, 2009

Sally Quinn on Sarah Palin -- Versus Reality

By: David Limbaugh

It seems the mainstream media's favorite pastime is to ridicule Sarah Palin. Of all the screeds I've read, I don't think any are snarkier than The Washington Post's Sally Quinn's "On Faith" blog post "Sarah Palin's 'rogue' Christianity."

Do we need further proof of the secular orientation of our dominant media culture than the fact that Quinn, an avowed atheist, pens the Post's "On Faith" blog? That would be like featuring a column by Fidel Castro on free enterprise and individual liberties.

On her mini-bio, Quinn writes: "I announced to my parents when I was 13 that I was an atheist. And I was a committed atheist all of my life. My view was that more evil had been done in the name of religion than anything else in the world. I saw no redeeming value in it at all. Then I met Jon Meacham and we began talking. No, Jon didn't convert me, but he did convince me that religion was not a subject to be dismissed or disdained."

If that's true, why did Quinn devote her entire blog post to dismissing and disdaining Sarah Palin's profession of faith in her book, "Going Rogue"? I must admit, though, it's difficult to tell whether Quinn is motivated more by her disdain for Sarah Palin, whom she has a history of berating, or mainstream Christianity.

Quinn says: "Sarah Palin writes that one summer at Bible Camp she 'put my life in my creator's hands and trust Him as I sought my life's path.' For Palin, this grand divine plan was 'a natural progression.' She writes. And later, 'I don't believe in coincidences.'"

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November 16, 2009

Civil Trial for Jihadists and Obama's Third World Vision for America

By: David Limbaugh

I can think of a number of motives President Barack Obama might have for his egregious decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other high-profile al-Qaida terrorists to New York for trial in our civil courts. Regardless of which motives apply, one thing is clear: Our enemy is at war against us while we are in a suicidal, 9/10 state of denial.

I've heard at least three possible reasons for his decision, which fall into the categories of political, ideological and strategic, respectively. These motives are by no means mutually exclusive and are overlapping.

My friend Andy McCarthy, at National Review Online, emphasizes: "The decision ... is one of the most irresponsible ever made by a presidential administration. That it is motivated by politics could not be more obvious." Andy surmises that these proceedings will put the Bush administration on trial, giving the anti-war left, Obama's base, "its promised feast." The left's "shock troops, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights," will add each new disclosure to "the purported war-crimes case they are urging foreign courts to bring against President Bush, his subordinates, and U.S. intelligence agents." Andy's analysis is difficult to refute.

Another bright friend of mine doesn't dispute Obama's political motivations but calculates that in the end, though appeasing the hard left, his strategy will end up costing him dearly because of the national security nightmare (and public backlash) it will generate -- a scenario Andy McCarthy himself thoroughly lays out with foreboding. Given the inevitable and foreseeable blowback awaiting Obama, my other friend reasons that Obama has decided to do it because he is a true believer. That is, it's not just a matter of feeding his base. He is his base. He is a hard-left anti-war ideologue. Again, I would be hard-pressed to poke holes in this assessment.

Then we also have to consider as a motivating factor Obama's stunningly naive belief that by being solicitous toward Islam and overly kind to terrorists, we can convince them that we are good people after all and not an enemy they should attack. That Obama harbors this belief is scarcely deniable. His various statements on American foreign and domestic policy reveal his conviction that America's past behavior and attitude, up until the precise nanosecond he was inaugurated, have contributed to our unpopularity in the world and served as a terrorist-recruiting impetus throughout the world.

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November 13, 2009

More White House Economic Baloney

By: David Limbaugh

Of the many thoughts I had watching President Barack Obama's umpteenth speech on the economy Thursday morning, the most troubling was his refusal to accept responsibility for his disastrous policies.

With unemployment having soared to 10.2 percent, wouldn't it have been reasonable to expect that any Obama speech on the economy would at least acknowledge that his "stimulus" plan didn't come close to achieving the results he promised, starting with his claim that unemployment would peak at 8 percent?

Even a fallible leader would be humbled by this failed performance, but enjoying messianic stature, the expectations bar is rightfully much higher for Obama. Yet instead of showing contrition, he took to the microphone in a surreal, boastful mode, as if calculating that assuming an offensive posture would fool people into ignoring reality.

He bragged about the "bold steps" he had taken "to break the back of this recession." He said he'd prevented "responsible homeowners from losing their homes ... cut taxes for middle-class families ... and created and saved more than a million jobs." But, "We all know that there are limits to what government can and should do, even during such difficult times."

Let's examine his claims. Bold actions to end the recession and "created and saved more than a million jobs"? Well, he has engineered massive spending and debt explosions, but many weren't even calculated to stimulate the economy, especially in the short run.

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November 10, 2009

Suicidal Political Correctness

By: David Limbaugh

Even as more and more realize oppressive political correctness is damaging our nation and killing our people, we still hold ourselves hostage to it. We can't criticize Obama on his policy agenda without absurd accusations of racism, and now our authorities' first instinct after the mass murder at Fort Hood is to victimize the identified shooter -- Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- rather than to protect our soldiers.

The military is the last place we should expect political correctness to flourish. We recognize, after all, that our armed forces exist primarily to safeguard our national security, not as a laboratory for social experimentation. Or do we?

Forget "don't ask, don't tell" policy for now. I'm referring to the reaction of the Army's top brass to the Fort Hood slaughter in the news conference and television interviews following the shooting.

The first question to Army chief of staff Gen. George Casey (and Army Secretary John McHugh) was whether he believed "this was a wake-up call to the nation that the Army is simply too small to carry out the tasks that it's been given." "You've been having suicide rates that are off the charts," the reporter went on. "Your soldiers are under great stress from multiple deployments."

Our military manpower is a legitimate concern, but I think it would be more appropriate for this type of question to come up in the context of whether we have the troops necessary to perform our missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Instead, it surfaced in relation to whether an overly stretched Army might have contributed to causing this mass murder.

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November 06, 2009

White House Postelection Arrogance

By: David Limbaugh

The White House arrogance on display in denying that Tuesday's election results were a repudiation of President Barack Obama's radical agenda is of a piece with its arrogance in attempting to advance this agenda against the people's will.

One of the great ironies of this administration is its promise of returning power to the people but governing with an iron fist and its back turned to the expressed wishes of the voters. The White House claims a mandate for its extreme blueprint to restructure America, but the voters had no idea Obama would go this far, even if many of us listening closely to his statements and studying his relationships and voting record did.

It's possible, given the relatively monolithic embryo in which Obama was politically incubated, that Obama believed the majority of Americans held the same contempt for America's political and economic system as he did. It should be clear to him now, though, that he's not on the same page with them -- perhaps not even in the same book. But if you're paying attention, you know that this cold, hard slap of reality hitting Obama in the face isn't slightly deterring him from pressing forward. If anything, it has strengthened his resolve to implement his agenda with increased urgency, before the public turns even more against him.

Obama's attitude in over-reading his mandate and dismissing the significance of Tuesday's elections is, I believe, consistent with the liberal mindset that liberals know better than the people what is in their best interests. Sen. Jim Webb, whose fellow Virginia Democrat was soundly defeated Tuesday, said the election results indicate that "people up here on our side need to get their message straighter."

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November 03, 2009

Democratic Deficit Duplicity

By: David Limbaugh

I nearly fell out of my chair as I read this New York Times headline: "Democrats Push for Plan to Cut Deficit." From the headline alone, I couldn't tell whether this was before, during or after they supported President Barack Obama's intentional, exponential escalation of the deficit to $1.4 trillion.

That's simply immeasurable chutzpah. But just in case you're ready to be taken in yet again by these fair-weather deficit watchdogs, the first sentence of the Times article reveals their true -- and true to form -- motive.

"Faced with anxiety in financial markets about the huge federal deficit and the potential for it to become an electoral liability for Democrats, the White House and Congressional leaders are weighing options for narrowing the gap, including a bipartisan commission that could force tax increases and spending cuts."

Those elections have a stubborn habit of forcing even drunken sailor politicians to pretend to care about other people's money they otherwise have an unlimited appetite for squandering.

But wait; I thought concern about runaway federal spending was the concern only of those "tea party" protestors the administration has dubbed "potential domestic terrorists" who were carrying "political paraphernalia" -- copies of the U.S. Constitution -- and engaging in "right-wing extremist chatter" focused "on the economy."

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October 30, 2009

The Public Option Is Not an Option

By: David Limbaugh

Can you imagine the brazenness of President Barack Obama and his cohorts in going so far as to ridicule opponents of Obamacare for rightly pointing out that its ultimate goal is single-payer socialized medicine?

These people are propaganda virtuosos of the highest order. You might expect grand artists of deception just to silently dismiss such claims from critics or, at most, to summarily deny them. But they go further and mock the critics, trying to reduce them to acutely paranoid, tinfoil-hat-wearing, black-helicopter-hallucinating Cuckoo's Nest inpatients.

What better way to distract attention from what is right in front of our faces? It's brilliant reverse jujitsu: using the outrageousness of your own plan to discredit as preposterous the allegations of your opponents about your truly outrageous plan. Shameless!

Obama and his minions are indeed conspiring to foist socialized medicine on this nation through whatever means necessary -- including outright deception over the nature and purpose of the so-called public option. But before presenting proof of that, let me pose a few questions bearing on the likelihood Obama would be involved in such a deception in pursuit of this goal.

Didn't Obama repeatedly threaten to "spread the wealth"? Isn't he deliberately indebting us through government expenditures of borrowed funds not remotely designed to appreciably increase employment? This "stimulus" monstrosity is a massive redistributive scheme not only in its direct transfer payments but also in the confiscatory tax increases it will necessitate to retire the debt it is generating.

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October 27, 2009

Obama's War on Fox Is Liberalism's War on Dissent

By: David Limbaugh

Can you imagine the outrage that would have ensued had former President George W. Bush declared off-limits those media outlets he thought (correctly) treated him unfairly?

Heck, the left declared him a dictator simply because he led a war on Iraq that Congress approved. He never tried to shut down his critics. He rarely even objected to their abuse.

But liberal politicians have been spoiled with mainstream media favoritism for so long that they believe anything other than sycophancy is mistreatment. Their selective outrage is as hollow as it is risible.

In fact, Fox News seems much more conservative than it is because no other television network over the past half-century has been anything but decidedly liberal. When the media norm is liberal, liberals equate liberalism with objectivity and deviations from it as bias, just as liberals preach tolerance toward all ideas -- except conservative ones. Their self-delusion is surreal.

Thus, Fox News Channel -- which has a number of liberal hosts, scores of liberal contributors, and nonstop liberal guests -- is painted as conservative because it is the only network that has more than one token conservative host.

Perhaps more of Fox's prominent hosts lean conservative than liberal, but unlike other networks, it scrupulously attempts to present both sides and to delineate its news from its editorializing.

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October 20, 2009

Barack's Enemies List

By: David Limbaugh

Sorry to disillusion those of you who are still in denial about President Barack Obama's true socialistic and dictatorial nature, but this guy's militancy against his perceived enemies puts Richard Nixon's White House to shame. His war on Fox News is just his latest salvo.

Obama's perceived enemies are all those who have the temerity not to roll over for his extreme agenda. They all must be demonized, marginalized and silenced by a president who has turned the Oval Office into a glorified street organizing headquarters to attack his opponents. Indeed, this self-described uniter is the most divisive president in memory, and his uncontrollable ego can't countenance legitimate dissent.

Consider:

--He has smeared medical doctors with reckless charges that they administer unnecessary courses of treatment for profit, e.g., tonsillectomies and limb amputations.

--He publicly berated Chrysler's senior creditors as a "small group of speculators" who "endanger Chrysler's future by refusing to sacrifice like everyone else," merely because they wouldn't acquiesce to his demands and insisted on asserting their contractual rights.

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October 15, 2009

This Isn't About Rush

By: David Limbaugh

There will be no voluntary mea culpas from Rush's race slanderers despite the irrefutable fact that they spread poisonous and damaging lies with actual malice. To the left, Rush is the most prominent face of conservatism and the most influential opponent of President Barack Obama's destructive agenda and so must be stopped -- irrespective of the despicable means employed.

The left systematically destroyed President George W. Bush with the most egregious lies, repeated to the point that people who knew better even began to believe them. The formerly respected CBS News anchor Dan Rather was so convinced by his liberal bias that Bush was evil that he refused to apologize for slandering him with a story later proved to be manufactured -- and that's giving Rather the benefit of the doubt that he was unaware the story was fabricated from the get-go. To Rather, it didn't matter because he was convinced Bush possessed the character of someone who would have engaged in the acts of which he was falsely accused.

And what was it about Bush that led Rather to the conclusion that he possessed such low character? In Rather's eyes -- though many conservatives would strongly dispute this -- he was a conservative and conservatives are evil.

The parallel with Rush's leftist slanderers is striking. It's one of the first things that occurred to me as I heard their sniveling responses, one by one refusing to utter a syllable of apology and instead using the occasion of being caught red-handed in malicious lies as a further opportunity to reiterate their libel.

"How dare you suggest that we have done anything wrong in attributing statements to Rush he never uttered? Even if he didn't say those words, you know he was thinking them or something much worse."

On what basis do they make such preposterous statements? Purely and simply for the reason that Rush is an unabashed conservative and unabashed conservatives are presumptively racist.

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October 12, 2009

Wealth Redistribution on Steroids

By: David Limbaugh

Is there no problem Obama and his mesmerized Democrats think cannot be solved with money -- other people's money? Just when you think you've heard it all, more news stories about this bunch surface to shock you.

The Sunday Times reports that the administration is considering a novel approach to the war in Afghanistan: outbidding the Taliban to persuade Afghan villagers to lay down arms.

So much for a "war of necessity," which was just an opportunistic sound bite for Obama to demonize Bush while cynically pretending to be hawkish enough in the war on terror to appeal to Middle America. No, for Obama, Afghanistan must just be another "street" to organize, another constituency to schmooze in his permanent -- now global -- campaign.

Even when the Bush administration employed strategies to win over Sunnis, it was coupled with a redoubling of our military effort and a marked alteration in our strategy to "hold" territory once we had taken it. This idea that you can reduce this war to an auction, divorced from the required steps needed to strengthen the security there, is insane.

That's not merely my independent assessment. One general close to Gen. Stanley McChrystal told the Times he was taken aback by the administration's attitude. "It surprised a lot of us -- we thought the policy decision was made to come down on the counter-insurgency course of action." The general said the notion that "we can just cut deals with the Taliban without having to do anything" is a "crazy" idea.

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October 08, 2009

Cloistered Media Libs Don't Get It

By: David Limbaugh

CNN "senior political analyst" Gloria Borger doesn't get it. Like so many cloistered mainstream media liberals, she just can't imagine why anyone would oppose Barack Obama's agenda. To her, it's all politics.

Where was Borger when Democrats, purely for partisan purposes, pummeled President George W. Bush for eight years? But let's stay focused on the present, because Republican opposition isn't about paybacks or getting even.

Borger argues that "Republicans don't really want to work with Obama" because they stand to regain congressional control simply by opposing his agenda without offering any ideas of their own. Their opposition couldn't possibly be grounded in principle because, to narrow-minded liberals such as Borger, the only legitimate ideas are liberal ones.

"In my next life," she writes, "I'd like to be an opposition party leader. What fun to go to work every day knowing you will always be right, largely because your ideas will remain untested. ... If we were in charge, you sing, the people would have tax cuts! More money in their pockets! And no deficits! But more jobs!"

Sorry, Gloria, but our ideas have been tested -- since the beginning of this republic -- and the record is pretty solid, though you might not view America's history with similar pride, given the left's revisionist mindset about America's mythical "imperialism" and capitalistic "exploitation."

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October 06, 2009

Obama Administration Defiantly Defends Another Radical Appointee

By: David Limbaugh

I continue to be amazed at the naivete of people who keep giving President Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt concerning his radical appointments, saying his administration isn't doing its job in vetting the appointees. When will they wake up to the reality that Obama is deliberately picking people, such as Kevin Jennings, who share his radical values?

When prescient commentators were warning of Obama's radical friends and colleagues, such as Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, during the campaign, his apologists diverted proper scrutiny, saying it's absurd to judge Obama by association. Even flawed cliches can work wonders when you have the entire mainstream media flacking for you.

Then when the radicalism of "green czar" Van Jones came to light, the left's reflexive reaction was that Jones was being victimized by an extremist element on the right and that the Internet itself had now been exposed as "an open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information." It was only when Jones' own extremism became too obvious to deny that the left shifted its line of defense to: Obama's team let him down by failing to vet Jones.

As I wrote at the time, "It's not Obama who didn't vet Jones, but the MSM who have never vetted Obama. Had they vetted Obama, they would have realized that he is Van Jones."

It seems that if you wait long enough, the Obama administration will get around to vindicating its legitimate critics, such as those of us who warned that Obama was insincere when he pretended that the public option was not an indispensable component of his health care scheme. (We hear that he's recently conducted a series of secret meetings with members of Congress, trying to cobble together a majority on a bill that includes the public option.)

Indeed, with his appointment of Kevin Jennings to head the Education Department's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, Obama has vindicated those of us who said that the Jones selection wasn't a failure of vetting, but about Obama's appointing a like-minded radical.

Now that Jennings' radical homosexual activism has been exposed, the Obama administration hasn't said: "Oh, sorry, another one slipped through our relatively new vetting process. The president will fire him, and we'll pick someone who reflects the president's values."

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September 24, 2009

Obama's Competing Waterloos

By: David Limbaugh

Sen. Jim DeMint predicted that Obamacare would be President Barack Obama's Waterloo. While that's certainly a strong possibility, Obama has other Waterloos in the wings competing for the prize, such as his monstrous deficits and his disastrous foreign policy.

The Heritage Foundation reports that Obama's budget would produce $13 trillion in deficits over the next decade, even more than the outrageous $9 trillion previously projected. This is nation-shattering stuff, folks, and Obama and his minions remain unflappable, intent on staying the bankrupting course, sporting Alfred E. Neuman, "What, me worry?" expressions. The fact that we know they can't be that oblivious is what makes us wonder whether something more sinister lurks in their motives.

But Obama's foreign policy is shaping up to be every bit as dangerous. Because he has lived in a relatively cloistered political world -- surrounded and shielded by mostly fellow leftist radicals -- he apparently doesn't realize just how repugnant his appeasement policies and mantralike derision of this nation are to most Americans.

When I first heard that he was Mirandizing al-Qaida on the battlefield, I thought it was political satire. But it wasn't, any more than his scrapping of long-range missile defense or his apparent plan to unilaterally disarm us of our nuclear weapons.

Then there's Afghanistan, which Obama and his fellow Bush-hating Democratic machine exploited merely to bludgeon Bush on his Iraq policy. It was transparently obvious that this appeasement bunch wasn't serious when they said they wanted to ramp up our efforts in Afghanistan and evacuate Iraq because the former was supposedly part of the war on terror and the latter was not. The political strategy was simple: Let's vent our anti-war spleen on Iraq under cover of beating the war drums on Afghanistan.

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September 22, 2009

Obama At Odds With Majority, but Undeterred

By: David Limbaugh

While I couldn't bring myself to watch President Barack Obama's 1,000th-1,004th health care propaganda spiels on the Sunday shows, I did read some transcripts and watch a few video highlights. What is it about this guy's personality that compels him to keep beating his head against the wall?

Why does he keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result?

The more Obama stumps for socialized medicine the less popular it becomes. Yet Obama keeps going back to the well, apparently believing that if he just explains it one more time -- or maybe 10 more times -- to the ignorant masses, his wards will finally come around to his way of thinking.

On the one hand, it seems that Obama truly believes that the majority of people are as sick as he is of America and reject many of its founding principles. After all, during his formative years and beyond, he was always surrounded by those -- family and mentors -- who had bones to pick with America and its "exploitive" capitalistic economy. To say that most of his role models were outright Marxists is hardly inflammatory hyperbole.

When it was time for him to make his own associational choices, he opted to continue the pattern in which he'd been raised, from the church he chose to the angry, activist, anti-establishment street agitation he embraced in Chicago.

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September 15, 2009

Memo to Dems: Spare Us the Phony Wilson Outrage

By: David Limbaugh

Memo to the Democratic leadership threatening to censure Rep. Joe Wilson if he doesn't publicly apologize on the House floor for calling President Barack Obama a liar on that floor: You don't have the moral authority to be demanding apologies.

Not only has their own decorum in that very chamber been abysmal at times, such as when they booed President George W. Bush during his 2005 State of the Union address; they do much worse damage every week to this nation and its institutions than Joe Wilson conceivably could have done with his temporary breach of decorum.

While Democratic leaders are wagging their fingers at the Republican Party's alleged descent into incivility over Joe Wilson's unplanned, indignant outburst, they have a very short memory about their own partywide monopoly on incivility, as they savaged President Bush throughout his presidency. I researched and wrote a 400-plus-page book documenting the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of these hypocritical scolds in 2006, in case you need a refresher course.

Unlike Rep. Wilson, these offending Democrats have never apologized for their outrages. Did Rep. John Murtha apologize for prejudging and slandering our battlefield Marines who were later vindicated? Did Sen. Harry Reid ever apologize for calling President Bush a liar? Al Gore? John Kerry? Has suspected tax evader Rep. Charles Rangel apologized for his conduct while devising new ways to confiscate even higher taxes from honest, hardworking Americans who actually pay their taxes?

Did Sen. Dick Durbin retract the substance of his remarks in comparing Gitmo to the gulag? Did House leader Nancy Pelosi repent for defaming the CIA?

While we're at it, is anyone calling Obama and his colleagues on their opportunistic attacks on the Bush administration for not capturing Osama bin Laden, just as bin Laden has reportedly issued another taped lecture against the United States from some undisclosed cave somewhere?

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September 09, 2009

The Mainstream Media's Temper Tantrum

By: David Limbaugh

With the resignation of green czar Van Jones despite their efforts to protect him, the mainstream media have finally been reduced to sputtering incoherence, as they've observed the un-deification of their anointed messiah and experienced firsthand their own diminishing relevance.

The MSM are engaging in a colossal temper tantrum over their lost news monopoly -- a monopoly they forfeited through their bias, arrogance and self-imposed insulation. (Consider Rathergate and their shameless effort to "Swift boat" the Swift boaters, to name a few.)

This is an especially hard pill for them to swallow considering that during the past year, they've been stewing in the intoxicating delusion that they were again supreme, as they appeared to be getting away with their conspiratorial enthroning of King Barack Obama. And they're not handling rejection well.

On "Meet the Press'" round-table discussion, retired "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman were protesting the grass roots' and alternative media's unmasking of Van Jones as a radical leftist.

Brokaw said: "A lot of people will repeat back to me and take it as face value something that they read on the Internet. And my line to them is you have to vet information. ... It is across-the-board ... and it's something that we all have to address, and it requires society and political and cultural leaders to stand up and say, 'This is crazy.' We just can't function that way."

As opposed to "functioning" what other way? Perhaps he means the old way of having his beloved mainstream media spoon-feed us ignorant masses only the information and slant they want us to hear. Does Brokaw believe his colleagues properly "vetted" Barack Obama and his mysterious past and dubious associations during the presidential campaign? Do they ask him any penetrating questions today? Have they ever pressed him to explain his voluminous inconsistencies and deceptions on health care alone?

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September 03, 2009

No Compromise, No Retreat, No Surrender

By: David Limbaugh

The key to stopping Obama's far-left agenda is to understand where his heart is. If politicians let their guard down and compromise, the Obama steamroller will regain its momentum and forge ahead to gobble up our individual liberties.

Obama's heart is and always has been on the farthest reaches of the left wing of politics. His driving ambition is to force fundamental change on America. That should go without saying, but it must be repeated -- and repeated -- lest people's forgiving spirits and short memories generate just enough complacency to allow Obama to get back on track.

It is remarkable that Obama has lost public favor so quickly. But the other side of that coin is that he is receiving a wake-up call early enough in his first term to allow him to recover well in time for the crucial 2010 elections.

Some erroneously believe that Obama will continue to bash his stubborn leftist head into the wall against the wishes of the public. I don't believe the modern myth that Obama is an erudite political philosopher, but I do think he's savvy enough to understand that he must significantly repackage his message in order to win back popular support for his policy goals.

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August 31, 2009

Obama's Shameless 'Torture' Prosecution Reversal

By: David Limbaugh

President Barack Obama is either extraordinarily politically tone-deaf or arrogant beyond bounds, as indicated by his relentless pursuit of policies strongly rejected by the American people. His decision or acquiescence in the Department of Justice's decision to reinvestigate CIA terrorist interrogators is the latest outrage.

Obama's approval ratings have cratered even further since my most recent column, and he's either Mr. Magoo, driving along in blissful oblivion, or Fearless Leader, who will do what he wants, American people be damned.

Based on Obama's oft-articulated mindset -- "I won, so the other side should just quit talking" -- I think it's safe to say he's closer to dictator than to Magoo. Besides, Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to begin a new investigation of the CIA interrogators has Obama's national security-emasculating fingerprints all over it.

Obama has been railing against alleged "torture" of terrorist detainees since early in the presidential campaign. He has endlessly apologized for American "imperialism," even going so far as to castigate our policy toward Iran of more than three decades ago, but giving that mullah-run state a pass for its egregiously hostile policies and behavior toward us.

On top of this, Obama is closing Gitmo with no plan to relocate the dangerous prisoners; he has directed that many of these terrorists be tried in civilian courts; he's abandoned the term "war on terror" in favor of "overseas contingency operations"; his administration has ordered that captured terrorists be Mirandized on the battlefield; and he's now going to further weaken the CIA by reassigning terrorist interrogation duties to an interagency entity operated out of the White House.

What more evidence do we need that this decision is Obama's handiwork?

"Heavens, no," say his defenders. "Obama is to be commended for distancing himself from the Department of Justice, which has finally achieved some independence, unlike during the Bush years." Eric Holder, they say, is being guided by the law, not politics, and Obama is choosing not to intervene, despite his earlier promise that he would "look forward and not backward" with regard to the CIA torture issues.

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August 28, 2009

Reclaiming Popular Sovereignty

By: David Limbaugh

It's true that Barack Obama's approval ratings began at the North Pole and are already hovering around the equator. But given what he's said and done, it is quite remarkable, frankly, that they aren't firmly planted at the South Pole.

The deceptions and contradictions are astounding. His premises for policy change are consistently duplicitous. He's embarked on a course to deliberately bankrupt the nation; he is at war with mainstream American values; he is undermining our national security during wartime (prosecuting our protectors -- and otherwise); and he's pursuing unprecedented government control of the private sector.

Just look at his handling of Obamacare. His stated goals aren't arguably fraudulent, but verifiably so. He says he's motivated to cut costs, but the Congressional Budget Office, even using static economic analysis, says Obamacare would increase costs by $1 trillion. This is without factoring in the inevitable inflation that would occur from further dissociating health care demand from market prices.

Obama also continues to use the counterfeit figure of 47 million uninsured when he knows that only a fraction of those are American citizens who both can't afford insurance and are not eligible for government assistance.

Some experts have estimated this number to be less than 10 million, and yet Obama wants to wholly revamp the system to make sure they are covered. Note I said "covered," not "given access to health care." But the CBO has projected that millions would remain uninsured after Obamacare, and history shows that access to care would shrink drastically under the socialized system Obama envisions.

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August 20, 2009

Obama's Brick Wall: The American People

By: David Limbaugh

President Barack Obama has run into a brick wall: the American people, who cherish their liberty and revere their nation and do not want it remade in Obama's socialist image.

Obama's free-falling poll numbers are not the result of a misinformation campaign from a small sliver of unruly conservative opponents, as the administration wants you to believe. They are a reflection of the public's reaction to Obama's policies and his own comprehensive misinformation campaign to dupe the people into believing America is unsalvageable without fundamental change.

When Obama promised to bring fundamental change to America, most Americans, fortunately for him, did not take him literally. He offered them "hope" at a time when the economy was going south; political partisanship had reached new levels of acrimony, and people were weary of a protracted, albeit successful, war in Iraq. But most voters had no idea just how much change Obama had in mind.

But Obama was dead serious. If it wasn't obvious to trusting people then, it is abundantly so now. He doesn't share the majority's vision of America as the most wonderful experiment in constitutional governance in history. He sees it as a land of plenty, all right -- plenteous inequities, with maldistribution of resources, oppression and imperialism.

Surely people can now see that it is no accident that he sat at the feet of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, that his mother was a leftist activist and cultural Marxist, that his main early mentor was radical Frank Marshall Davis, that he was a member of the far-left New Party in Chicago, that his main vocation in life has been street organizing and agitation and that he didn't think the revolutionarily, transformative Warren court was liberal enough.

Since assuming office, Obama has been on a mission to fundamentally alter the social compact between the government and a once powerfully sovereign people.

Continue reading "Obama's Brick Wall: The American People"

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August 18, 2009

Public Option Not Optional for Obama

By: David Limbaugh

As I write this, I don't know whether President Barack Obama and his Democrats will end up pretending to abandon the public option aspect of Obamacare, but I do know that if they do, it will only be a matter of time before they resurrect it because that's where their heart is.

That's why, among other reasons, neither Blue Dog Democrats who oppose socialized medicine nor Republicans should consider compromising with left-wing Democrats to pass a bill. If they do, Obama will eventually -- and probably sooner than you think -- achieve his goal of nationalized health care.

Don't think I'm advocating Republican obstructionism. I would like nothing more than for conservative congressmen to quarterback real market reforms to the health care system. But if you understand liberals at all, you know that they'll never agree to market-based solutions for ideological reasons and because an expanding dependency class is their most essential power source.

Just watch conservatives propose an expansion of health savings accounts or an eradication of coverage mandates, including those prohibiting crossing state lines to buy health insurance, or tort reform or changing the tax code to eliminate the incentive for employer-provided health insurance and see what happens.

Obama will be all over state-run TV telling Americans that uncompassionate conservatives are going "Katrina" on the poor again. Democrats are the true obstructionists because they'll stop, at any cost, the only reforms that could reduce health care costs without rationing, creating waiting lines, or decreasing choice and quality of care.

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August 14, 2009

Obama's Forfeited Credibility Sabotaging Obamacare

By: David Limbaugh

President Barack Obama apparently came to believe the myth of his messiahship and has accordingly abused and squandered his good will and political capital and possibly self-sabotaged his socialized medicine scheme.

Of all the newsworthy aspects of this desperate "reform" effort, none is more so than the robust democratic processes it has reinvigorated in this nation. While Democrats insist the nationwide grass-roots movement against his Draconian measure is contrived and illusory, it is just the opposite.

Nothing could be so real as the American people, emboldened by their passion for liberty, standing up against a callous, dishonest government trolling for its freedoms in exchange for false promises.

All the proof we need that Obama and Democrats recognize the authenticity of this grass-roots protest is their hysterical reaction to it. They wouldn't be hyperventilating about it if they believed it to be fake, but would use their supermajorities to ram through this bill.

Indeed, that congressmen have not been able or courageous enough (against the threat of being removed from office in 2010) to pass this bill is the story of the year. Integral to that story is the unraveling of the Obama mystique, occasioned by Obama's ongoing arrogance and duplicity, most recently on the Obamacare issue.

Let's just look at some of the myriad ways Obama has betrayed the enormous trust bestowed upon him -- on the health care issue alone.

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August 11, 2009

"Conservatives, Shut Up and Step Aside"

By: David Limbaugh

The hubris, arrogance and deceit of President Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership are breathtaking. In their maniacal frenzy to assume control over every aspect of our lives through socialized medicine, they are behaving like the thuggish autocrats they have proved themselves to be.

The jig is up on their designs, evidenced by the very contents of the health bill they're promoting. As increasing public awareness has translated into increasing grass-roots opposition to the bill, the Democrats have ratcheted up their bullying tactics and deceit.

Our self-styled bipartisan president is telling his critics to shut up, while his partners in crime, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues, are calling them un-American and Nazis.

Understand this: The people who are showing up in droves with righteous anger befitting a body politic steeped in a unique liberty tradition are exercising the very type of bottom-up citizen protest and government watchdogging our Founding Fathers envisioned. They are not the artificially driven "AstroTurf" phonies the Democrats are depicting them to be. No, such activities are the province of Alinsky/Obama-type "street organizers" and union thugs enlisted by the administration to discredit these legitimate protests.

Continue reading ""Conservatives, Shut Up and Step Aside""

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August 04, 2009

Obama Can't Afford To Tell Truth on Health Care

By: David Limbaugh

President Barack Obama is spreading disinformation about health care almost as quickly as he's driving up the national debt, such as that 47 million Americans can't get health care and that a government takeover would be a panacea.

Democrats have constantly demagogued the 47 million uninsured figure to gin up public fear about the scarcity of health care access, especially for the poor. They follow up with the promise that under their plan, we would achieve universal access. But both are untrue.

In "The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care," Sally Pipes points out that while there are some Americans who simply can't afford health insurance, many millions who can afford insurance choose not to buy it and "very likely would not want to be 'rescued' by mandatory socialized medicine."

In the first place, the 47 million number is grossly inflated. The Congressional Budget Office survey generating it included those who were uninsured for any part of a year, despite the fact that almost half of these remain uninsured for an average of only four months.

Some 38 percent of this 47 million -- almost 18 million -- make more than $50,000 a year, and 10 million of them make more than $75,000. Of all the uninsured groups, this is the only one that is growing, because in a still-free country, they've made their own decision not to buy expensive insurance while (most of them) are young and healthy. The Census Bureau also reports that more than 10 million of the uninsured are not American citizens.

But how about the very poor? Well, it turns out that the Democrats are shedding crocodile tears here, as well. Pipes explains that "as many as 14 million of the 45.7 million uninsured -- poor and low-income Americans -- are fully eligible for generous government assistance programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP." But "they're just not enrolling in the programs."

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July 30, 2009

Preparing for War: Boning Up on the Left's Health Care Myths

By: David Limbaugh

I am gratified that an awakened public has sent Congress an unequivocal message not to socialize our health care system, but note that this war is just beginning. Gen. Barack Obama is not the slightest bit deterred by the public's negative reaction, because he knows more than they do about what's best for them.

As we go forward, it's imperative we recognize that the current hiccup in Obama's momentum is a result of so-called Blue Dog Democrats' refusing to go along with his plan -- and this, largely because their constituents are raining down "tea party" speed bumps on their heads warning them against endorsing this disaster.

But if we're not careful, Obama will negotiate a path around this opposition, and it's important we anticipate it and prepare accordingly. The key lies in understanding the main reason for the Blue Dogs' resistance.

The Blue Dogs see themselves as being all about fiscal responsibility, even though most of them enthusiastically signed on to his budget-busting trillion-dollar porkulus scheme and his cap-and-tax debacle. Those little details aside, they have based their opposition to the bill thus far on their fear that the program wouldn't be able to pay for itself.

If that's true, then all Obama has to do to capture their support (he may already have) is to convince them it will be deficit-neutral -- or better. He can do that either by manipulating the numbers or by making adjustments to create the illusion it would pay for itself.

Continue reading "Preparing for War: Boning Up on the Left's Health Care Myths"

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July 27, 2009

A Teachable Moment Indeed

By: David Limbaugh

The Henry Louis Gates Jr./Cambridge police flap is most significant for what it tells us about President Barack Obama, his approach to the presidency, and his general attitude, including on matters of race.

In his July 22 news conference on health care, one member of the media asked Obama, "What does (the Gates arrest) incident say to you, and what does it say about race relations in America?"

Without hesitation, Obama launched into what appeared to be a pre-considered response. Had he been caught off guard by the question, we might assume he would hesitate -- at least briefly -- and then decline to inject himself into the matter.

We should expect Obama, of all people, given his reputation for coolness and sagacity, to act presidentially, not only in measuring his thoughts before speaking but also in declining to comment on local matters beyond his duties and about which he doesn't have all the facts.

But Obama's attitude toward the presidency is not particularly aligned with what our constitutional Framers had in mind. He obviously believes it is his prerogative to micromanage any and every aspect of American life, from the catastrophic to the mundane.

He's displayed this attitude in town hall meetings, where he has given advice to attendees concerning their specific problems, as if it were his place to make personal house calls on matters ranging from people's health care problems to their mortgages. All of this is consistent with Obama's perception of government's cradle-to-grave caretaker role and his effort to cultivate a dependency mindset in Americans.

But in this case, Obama decided to weigh in, even after admitting that "Skip" Gates is his "friend," that he "may be a little biased here," and that he didn't "know all the facts." We know he made this decision with premeditation, because White House press secretary Robert Gibbs admitted they had anticipated and prepared for the question.

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July 21, 2009

More Health Care Lies

By: David Limbaugh

It's no wonder the White House is delaying release of the latest dismal budget figures. It's not just that they are grossly more dismal than the projections. It's that they will undercut already-waning public support for Obama's socialized medicine scheme.

The White House was supposed to release the budget numbers this month but has delayed their release until mid-August, which even has The Associated Press raising questions about its motives.

But you don't have to be in journalism to realize that Obama is playing hide the ball with the facts in his desperate rush to ramrod this disaster through Congress before the public wakes up. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that not only are Obama's disapproval ratings soaring but support for his health care debacle is now less than 49 percent -- a new low. And you can bet it will get much lower the more the public learns about his plan -- a plan whose promotion has been riddled with lies.

Why else would Obama, who was very tardy for his most recent news conference, arrogantly refuse to answer any questions following his terse, combative and defiant remarks about his plan? Is this the new transparency we can believe in?

Here are some inconvenient truths Obama must conceal from the American public:

--Despite White House-generated hysteria about the urgency of reform, the only urgency is in preventing this fiasco because it would destroy America's economy and liberty. Doing nothing -- even given the many problems that exist under the present system -- is far preferable to adopting this monster.

Continue reading "More Health Care Lies"

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July 16, 2009

Calling All Blue Dogs

By: David Limbaugh

The most important thing to understand about the Democrats' domestic agenda is that they care more about establishing government control over our lives than they do about the stated policy goals of their proposals.

It's true of their fraudulently named stimulus packages, their cap-and-tax scheme and especially their universal health care plans.

With all of these programs and more, their driving aim is not only to acquire power for the sake of acquiring it but also to use government to impose their values on us and, effectively, destroy our personal liberties. The subject of liberty -- the very impetus for the founding of this nation -- is rarely mentioned in the public debate.

That is why we'll never convince them with evidence, from the growing scientific skepticism about global warming to the proven failed track record of Keynesian economics to the universal failure rate of socialized medicine throughout the world.

But it is also why they'll never persuade the public to go along with their mischief if the facts get out, which explains their unilateral declaration of a consensus on global warming and their refusal to debate the issue, their historical revisionism on the failures of New Deal stimuli, and their perpetual urgency in rushing their entire agenda through simultaneously -- before the public can even digest their proposals, much less organize to oppose them.

Health care is this week's crisis. Here, it's imperative we recognize that they're more interested in imposing their values on abortion, end-stage medical care, and economic equality than in the quality of health care.

Continue reading "Calling All Blue Dogs"

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July 09, 2009

Cap and Tax: Government vs. America

By: David Limbaugh

There is still time to stop the legislative monstrosity known as the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill before the Senate approves it. But for that to happen, Americans must learn how bad it is.

Let's briefly review the basics: The bill is ostensibly designed to curb man-caused carbon emissions (presumably without outlawing breathing) to retard global warming.

Even if we accept, for purposes of argument, the assumptions of radical, hysterical leftist environmentalists that man-caused global warming will destroy the planet if evil, rich capitalists don't radically curtail their own contributions to the catastrophe, Waxman-Markey would not prevent this Armageddon.

Climate scientist Chip Knappenberger, of New Hope Environmental Services, calculates that the bill would only reduce Earth's temperature by 0.1 to 0.2 degree Celsius by 2100. The Heritage Foundation's Ben Lieberman says he's found no "decent refutation of the assertion that the temperature impact would be inconsequential."

Unfortunately, the bill's negative impact on the economy would not be inconsequential. Lieberman says the bill would cause estimated job losses averaging about 1.15 million from 2012-2030, and the cumulative projected loss in gross domestic product would be almost $10 trillion by 2035. The national debt from this bill alone, disregarding the multiple bailouts, stimulus packages and health care "reform," would increase by 2035 for a family of four by 26 percent, or $115,000.

Heritage is not alone in making these claims. The far more liberal Brookings Institution estimates the bill would cost 1.8 percent of GDP in 2035 and 2.5 percent by 2050. Heritage's "Foundry" blog concludes, "Economists from liberal think tanks, conservative think tanks, and industry associations agree that Waxman-Markey will reduce income by hundreds of billions of dollars per year."

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July 06, 2009

King Barack

By: David Limbaugh

Oh, how quickly times have changed. Just a few short years ago, Democrats were up in arms over King George III's (President George W. Bush's) "unconstitutional" executive power grabs. Where are these people now?

I'll tell you where they are: right in the thick of it, enabling President Barack Obama to consolidate and exercise unprecedented power.

Remember when Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy complained that the constitutional "checks and balances that have served to constrain abuses of power for more than two centuries in this country" were at risk because Republicans controlled the executive and legislative branches? How about Sen. Russ Feingold, who was looking at impeachment as a remedy to keep the president in check and prevent him from acquiring power "like King George III"?

Today these same senators are not just passively mute about Obama's power grabs; they are co-conspirators.

You might think the repeated conservative complaint about Obama's egregious lack of transparency is, by now, a tired talking point. But we're not just referring to minor procedural matters that are substantively inconsequential.

Continue reading "King Barack"

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July 02, 2009

None Dare Call It Marxism

By: David Limbaugh

All right already. I won't call Obama a Marxist in this column. Instead, I'll point to some signs that indicate that Barack and Karl might well be soul mates. At least, they have similar attitudes about capital, labor and profits, er, surplus value.

Liberals, even those of the Marxist variety, take umbrage when you point out their ideological kinship with Marxism.

I suppose this dates back to the days when being a communist was tantamount to being an enemy of the United States, in that there was a global communist movement intent on -- and coming darn close to -- world domination. Though global communism has been defeated, there remains a strong contingent among us, whose nerve center is the Democratic Party leadership under President Obama, committed to obliterating America's free market.

Without getting into the intricacies of Marxist theory, suffice it to say that at the core of this political and economic philosophy is a belief in the historical class struggle. The capitalist (bourgeois) exploits the industrial worker (proletarian) by underpaying him and adding on unnecessary charges to the prices of goods and services, driving up costs to the consumer, and pocketing the profits.

In "Basic Economics," Thomas Sowell puts it this way: "Profits may be the most misconceived subject in economics. Socialists have long regarded profits as simply 'overcharge,' as Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw called it, or a 'surplus value' as Karl Marx called it." The theory is that under socialism or Marxism, these surplus charges would be eliminated and goods and services would become more affordable.

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June 29, 2009

The Censorious Left's Global Warming Denier Deniers

By: David Limbaugh

There is so much misinformation on the subject of global warming and so little consensus -- as to what environmental changes are occurring, whether human behavior is contributing to them, whether they are causing significant environmental damage, and whether the proposed cap and trade legislation would do anything to alleviate any of this -- it is no wonder our freedom-hating majority in the House insisted on cramming it through before they could even read, much less digest, what it contained.

It would be bad enough if they passed innocuous legislation to address an alleged problem (man-caused global warming) without first verifying there is a problem and then analyzing and assessing the extent of it, but it's outrageous that they would pass a measure that could have crippling effects on our economy and American taxpayers.

Who do these people think they are -- that they can claim a mandate to do anything they want to, that they can grab as much power as they want, that they can transform our government overnight into an enemy of the people, with no fear of accountability? Oh, I know; the government has already behaved like the people's enemy all too often, but never on the scale we're witnessing today -- from a party that had the audacity to accuse President George W. Bush of abusing his authority.

Just where is the journalistic skepticism in today's dominant media culture or the professed open-mindedness of Democrats?

What is their response when people have the temerity to challenge their assertions on catastrophic global warming? It is ridicule and abuse. Not only are the doubters flat-earth Neanderthals; they are darn near treasonous, according to the dogmatic left.

Continue reading "The Censorious Left's Global Warming Denier Deniers"

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June 25, 2009

Throw the Bums Out

By: David Limbaugh

Here they go again -- our faithful representatives in Washington, that is. They're about to pass, without reading its 1,200-plus pages, an incredibly expensive and destructive cap and trade bill, which has little prayer of accomplishing what it sets out to accomplish but satisfies their urgent need to pay homage to their liberal ideology and secular humanist worldview.

Do you remember when Barack Obama was forced to give an answer to justify his advocacy of a capital gains tax increase in view of such taxes' history of actually decreasing revenues? The revenue reductions are worth it because it's a matter of "fairness," he said. Spread the misery. Likewise, with cap and trade, Obama and his congressional cohorts will wreak untold destruction on the economy and get little benefit in return.

I'm not exaggerating here. Doesn't it make sense that before enacting legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the purpose of reducing man-made global warming, Congress would investigate whether significant man-made global warming is occurring (as opposed to watching Al Gore's propaganda film and simply declaring, by fiat, that scientists have reached a consensus on the issue when they clearly have not)?

And if, after a thorough and balanced inquiry, they determine that it is occurring, shouldn't they next examine whether their proposed legislative remedy is likely to significantly ameliorate the problem?

But they not only have not conducted a bona fide examination of the man-made warming issue but also have not attempted to examine, in any remotely scientific way, how much their proposed bill would reduce global warming (assuming it exists to the extent they contend) or whether any such reductions would make any difference at all to humanity's short- or long-term health or happiness or anything else.

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June 22, 2009

Reasons for Cautious Optimism

By: David Limbaugh

American freedom lovers studying the reign of Obama have been in a constant state of anxiety over the administration's assault on capitalism and America's very solvency, its thuggish political style, its PR war against America's history, its radical social policies and its Carteresque foreign policy. But for the first time, there are signs that America is starting to wake up.

The latest daily Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll has Obama slipping into negative net approval territory, with more Americans strongly disapproving of his performance (34 percent) than strongly approving (33 percent). Just 54 percent of voters say they at least somewhat approve. Even the Gallup Poll reports a decline in his approval rating to a new low, albeit still at 58 percent. The decline results from a drop in support among independents, as well as Republicans -- but not Democrats.

Can you imagine what these numbers would be if the mainstream media weren't invested in Obama's success or, better yet, if moderate Democrats weren't still blinded by their lingering excitement over regaining the presidency and their vulnerability to Obama's cultish aura?

But it's not just the polling data that are encouraging. Obama's blame-it-on-Bush mantra is starting to wear thin. Another Rasmussen survey found that 39 percent of voters now think our economic problems are caused more by Obama's policies -- a 12-point jump from just a month ago.

Also, support for Obama's most dangerous agenda item, nationalized health care, is waning. A recent ABC News//Kaiser Family Foundation/USA Today survey indicates that 89 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care. Worse (for Obama), congressional Democrats have warned that his plan is in jeopardy because its projected costs range between $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion, according to Congressional Budget Office scoring, and it would not even reduce by half the number of uninsured (the fraudulent impetus behind the administration's manufactured crisis). Just wait until further damaging truths come to light about the horrors awaiting America's health care system if it is nationalized, including government rationing and dramatically lower-quality care.

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June 18, 2009

Obama Protects Cronies at Taxpayers' Expense

By: David Limbaugh

The more we learn about the White House's summary firing of AmeriCorps' inspector general, Gerald Walpin, the more it smells of lawlessness, cronyism and a flagrant disregard for transparency and government accountability.

Remember President Barack Obama's commitment to oversee the expenditure of taxpayer funds to avoid waste and inefficiency -- to the point that he deputized Vice President "Mean" Joe Biden as the executive enforcer?

That was then. This is now. As has proved customary with this administration, the walk has not matched the talk. Biden's casual admissions that the administration "guessed wrong" and that money has been wasted don't begin to describe the fiscal recklessness and corruption that define this White House.

Walpin -- in investigating the misuse of AmeriCorps funds by St. HOPE charity, which is under the direction of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a strong Obama supporter -- discovered that St. HOPE had failed to use the federal monies for the purposes specified in the grant and improperly had used AmeriCorps personnel to drive Johnson to personal appointments, run other errands for him and wash his car. On Walpin's recommendation, an official at the Corporation for National and Community Service, the organization that runs AmeriCorps, ordered Johnson's suspension.

Walpin also referred the matter to the local U.S. attorney's office for a criminal inquiry. Though no criminal charges were filed, St. HOPE agreed in a settlement to repay half its $850,000 of AmeriCorps grants.

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June 16, 2009

America's Fatal Attraction

By: David Limbaugh

Excuse my mastery of the obvious, but I have to believe the greatest obstacle to America's return to policy sanity is the electorate's cultish adoration of Barack Obama.

If it weren't for this disturbing phenomenon -- not to discount a healthy dose of blind partisanship -- it is inconceivable that the majority of people would tolerate Obama's dismantling of America's free market system, his returning America to a pre-9/11 mindset against terrorists, his increasing usurpations of power, and his corrupt ties and practices, from the public funding of ACORN to the summary dismissal of the case against the Black Panthers to his firing of inspector general Gerald Walpin apparently for uncovering corruption by Obama's friends.

I don't quite understand how people, especially religious people, can place their trust for salvation in a fellow mortal, but history shows they do, and present-day America shows they are. From MSNBC's Chris Matthews' admitting Obama sends a thrill up his leg to audience members' fainting at his speeches to young girls' kissing his statue like brainless bookends, the trend continues unabated.

Even some not entranced by his supposed charisma are indirectly affected by it, evidenced by their unbounded willingness to give him the benefit of every doubt. They are impervious to his narcissism, indifferent to his megalomaniacal pursuit of power, ceaselessly forgiving of his childish scapegoating of the previous administration, and oblivious to his extremism.

The mainstream media are his biggest institutional enablers, drooling over his every utterance, irrespective of his many contradictions, his assaults on the Constitution and our liberties, and his spate of broken promises.

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June 12, 2009

From the Battlefield to the Courtroom

By: David Limbaugh

During the presidential campaign, when some warned against Barack Obama's soft approach to the war on terror, I doubt they had any idea he would greatly exceed their worst expectations. But he has.

A common refrain of the Bush administration and its defenders in the prosecution of the war was that prior to the 9/11 attacks, the American government had been treating Islamo-terrorism as a law enforcement problem. The 9/11 attacks forced us, kicking and screaming, into the realization that the Islamo-jihadists were indeed in a war with us and that we would have to wage war against them, as well.

This new approach seemed to have been accepted as a necessity by both parties, and the nation united -- temporarily, at least -- around our new policy to adopt a proactive and comprehensive military approach to fight terrorism. For a time, we achieved a degree of bipartisanship on such ideas as breaking down the forced walls of separation imposed by the Clinton administration that discouraged our intelligence agencies from sharing information on terrorist activities.

Before long, though, Democrats reverted to their perennial practice of politicizing every exploitable issue and began systematically attacking and undermining our newfound war-oriented approach. They began their specious assaults, in the name of protecting the privacy of U.S. citizens, against the various programs we were using to monitor terrorists and prevent future attacks.

Their war against the war included criticizing the National Security Agency's terrorist surveillance program, which they slandered as "domestic spying," the NSA's tracking "data mining" of terrorist calls to and from the United States, and the administration's Terrorist Finance Tracking Program. In all these cases, their claims were eventually shown to be overblown at best -- and trumped-up at worst.

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June 08, 2009

Tickling the World's Itching Ears

By: David Limbaugh

The apostle Paul said: "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from truth and turn aside to myths" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

Indeed, this generation is loath to tolerate not only biblical doctrine but also other truths. President Barack Obama tickles the world's ears with promises of hope, change, peace, harmony, diversity, pluralism and "tolerance," but in too many cases, he has allowed truth to become a casualty -- and more than a harmless casualty. Nowhere was that more clearly demonstrated than in his speech in Cairo to the Muslim world.

Many judge Obama's speeches, not to mention his policies and actions, on his high-sounding rhetoric and professed good will. They ignore his obvious errors and contradictions, duping themselves into believing that supposedly good intentions alone will trump facts and reality and insulate us from the negative consequences that will flow from his distortions.

In his Cairo speech, Obama, as usual, served up a plentiful smorgasbord of platitudes sufficient to appeal to the appetites of almost everyone (except, notably, our steadfast ally Israel). His idolaters in the mainstream media obediently praised him for his "honesty" in trashing America and for his equal-opportunity softball scolding of the Muslim world.

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June 04, 2009

Conservatives Aren't the Extremists

By: David Limbaugh

Mainstream conservatives are routinely mischaracterized as extreme by liberals and squishy Republicans, when it is America's liberals who are, by any fair measure, more extreme.

Conservatives are not the ones who sermonize about tolerance yet demonstrate intolerance toward conservative and Christian thought; support exterminating babies in the womb; apologize the world over for America; or gut the military and missile defense because of some dangerously egotistical notion that they have the magic to turn evil into goodness with their charisma and eloquence or, even worse, because they refuse to recognize evil in the world, except as emanating from the United States.

Conservatives aren't the ones who have so little faith in their fellow human beings that they diminish their dignity by expanding the welfare state and increasing man's learned dependency on government; judge people by the color of their skin instead of the content of their character; pit economic groups against one another, stoking the flames of envy and greed; punish success, reward failure and promote mediocrity; side with the world's tyrants and dictators; slavishly attach themselves to leftist propaganda about impending environmental catastrophes; promote a secular humanist worldview that considers government a quasi-deity that can perfect the human condition; or morally equate the practice of enhanced interrogation techniques to save innocent lives with that of beheading innocent people.

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June 02, 2009

Obama Knew What He Was Getting With Sotomayor

By: David Limbaugh

It amazes me that for all the attention Judge Sonia Sotomayor has attracted for a racially charged statement in a 2001 speech, few are tying her attitude to President Barack Obama's. Just as he knew precisely what his 20-year pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was about and approved, he knew, prior to nominating her, what Sonia Sotomayor is about and approved. In both cases, he just didn't want us to know.

In her 2001 speech at Berkeley, Sotomayor said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Obama's apologists claim Sotomayor's statement was taken out of context. But the context of her prepared remarks makes the statement more -- not less -- incriminating.

The sentences preceding the statement were: "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge (Miriam) Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice (Sandra Day) O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am ... not so sure that I agree with the statement."

First, it's important to note that she's not talking about trial judges, for example, who might be more or less lenient in their sentencing within the prescribed sentencing guidelines, but about appellate judges applying the law.

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May 19, 2009

Abortion Doublespeak Part of Pattern

By: David Limbaugh

With due respect to the millions who adore President Barack Obama, I just don't understand what causes people to hear only his lofty rhetoric and appeals for unity while turning a deaf ear to his polarizing language and actions, for example, on the subject of abortion.

In his book "The Audacity of Hope," he seemed determined to address every issue from the perspective of achieving some kind of common ground. We'll give a little bit of this to liberals and a little bit of that to conservatives and all live happily ever after.

I'm sorry, but I believe Obama calculatingly employs this approach mainly as a smoke screen to hide his real agenda, which resides anywhere but on common ground. He specializes in paying superficial respect to his opponents' arguments while proceeding to bury them. The examples are endless.

He calls forced union membership "free choice." He masquerades as a fiscal disciplinarian while authoring nationally bankrupting budgets in perpetuity.

He endorses capitalism as a superior economic system while undermining it with other words and actions. He condemns it as "unfair" and decries achievers as "selfish" and "greedy." He's set on restructuring our economy away from the free market and toward government control, from taking over private businesses to setting executive salaries to subsidizing mortgages to nationalizing health care. But he knows better than to condemn capitalism outright, because if he did, the American people finally would wise up to his endgame.

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May 15, 2009

Next on the Statists' Menu: Health Care

By: David Limbaugh

Since Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, proponents of socialized medicine have bombarded us with nonstop demagoguery about the 40 million-plus uninsured to create a crisis mentality sufficient to catalyze sweeping "reforms." Their efforts didn't stand much of a chance until the advent of the pseudocrisis-exploiting administration of President Barack Obama, which never met a "crisis" it couldn't leverage.

The number of uninsured people is grossly misleading. Just because you are uninsured doesn't mean you have no access to medical care. And just because you are insured under universal systems doesn't mean you will receive care.

If you don't think the administration is parlaying the crisis angle, then you must have missed the feigned urgency in Obama's declarations that "reform" must be completed this year.

Obama wasn't kidding when he promised fundamental change. With him, many big things must happen, and they must happen yesterday, for he knows he has a finite window of time available to effectuate his mischief before people finally awaken to the horrors of the Obama hurricane.

What about this 47 million uninsured figure we've heard so much about -- thanks to the Clintons, Michael Moore and armies of George Soros disciples?

With the left, which forever complains about the religious right's moralizing, it's always a moral issue. Hillary Clinton said, "It's really indefensible that we now have more than 45 million uninsured Americans, 9 million of whom are children, and the vast majority of whom are from working families."

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May 11, 2009

Fearing Our Government

By: David Limbaugh

Of the dozens of reasons to be concerned about the ever-growing and unchecked power of the federal government under President Barack Obama, the upcoming assault against conservative talk radio may surpass them all.

It's not enough that liberals dominate the executive and legislative branches, liberals are poised to control the judiciary, and, at liberals' direction, government is absorbing ownership and control of large chunks of the private sector. They must also shut up the opposition.

We have genuine cause for alarm on multiple fronts -- and actual alarm indeed exists among increasing numbers of people, not all of whom are predisposed to excitability.

The government has declared war on innocent life in the womb in the name of "free choice." It is spending unconscionable amounts of money it doesn't have and can't possibly acquire without taxing the primary producers in this nation into abject servitude. It's set to impose "cap and trade" taxes in the name of protecting an environmental threat that exists mostly in the data-resistant prisons of their ideological minds, which will yield no environmental benefit but will cause irreparable economic harm.

It has passed constitutionally repugnant and morally odious legislation, carving out new crimes for violent acts motivated by "hate" against certain protected groups. Neither military veterans nor conservative males are among the protected groups, but pedophiles very well may be. The proscribed "hate" under the statute may not be "hate" at all, but mere political or theological disagreement with the view of the dominant media culture and the ruling class on, for example, the normalcy of homosexual behavior. Meanwhile this same ruling class and its enablers, who are so selectively indignant about certain majority opinions they mischaracterize as "hate," openly bask in the kind of behavior no one can rationally dispute as hateful at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

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May 04, 2009

Obama's Propaganda Campaign To Mainstream Extreme Liberalism

By: David Limbaugh

A fellow conservative I highly respect told me last week that he doesn't see how Republicans can ever regain the majority without reaching out to moderates, because, he said, only 30 percent of Americans are conservative. Let me try to clear up this growing misconception.

The issue is quite timely, considering that GOP-defecting Sen. Arlen Specter is rationalizing his self-serving move as necessitated by an increasingly intransigent conservatism in the Republican Party. He echoes the David Frum Republicans that the party is too conservative, backward-looking, stale and out of fresh ideas.

It's true that a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that only 21 percent of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans, compared with 35 percent as Democrats and 38 percent as independents. But there's a huge difference between party identification and ideological identification.

The bipartisan Battleground Poll, as recently as Aug. 20, 2008, revealed that 60 percent of Americans identify themselves as conservative and only 36 percent as liberal.

So it's the Republican Party that's in trouble, not conservatism. The GOP's shrinkage can't be because it's too conservative. George W. Bush, our most recent Republican president, was hardly an extreme conservative. His most outspoken critics today include wide swaths of conservatives who decried his failure to rein in federal spending and control illegal immigration, among other things.

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May 01, 2009

Gay Tail Wags Hetero Dog

By: David Limbaugh

Ordinarily, we would probably be wise just to move on from last week's flap over Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean's truthful pageant answer on same-sex marriage, but subsequent news reports reveal we are drawing the wrong lessons from the brouhaha.

Prejean -- in response to the trick question from gay activist blogger Perez Hilton, one of the pageant's judges -- refused to endorse same-sex marriage, which probably resulted in her losing the crown she was favored to win.

Not satisfied with unilaterally disqualifying Prejean and possibly damaging her career, Hilton publicly excoriated her, saying she "gave the worst answer in pageant history" and calling her a dumb B-word and worse.

Prejean, in stark contrast, said that as a Christian, she loved Hilton and was praying for him, a graciousness met with further ungraciousness from Hilton.

Hilton told the "Today" show's Matt Lauer: "I personally would have appreciated it had she left her politics and her religion out, because Miss USA represents all Americans. ... The answer she gave alienated myself (and) millions of gays and lesbians. ... Miss USA is not a person that's politically incorrect. Miss USA ... represents ... all America and is inclusive and give(s) the right answers. ... I want someone who is going to (say) things that will make everyone feel welcome. ... For example ... she's a Christian, but I don't want her talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, because that's offensive to all of the Jewish Americans, to all of the Muslim Americans, to all of the atheist Americans."

But it was Hilton, not Prejean, who injected politics. Hilton's clear message, denounced by no one from the gay activist community or secular left, is that Prejean should have lied or ducked the question because her honest answer offended some. Had she high-fived same-sex marriage, you can bet Hilton wouldn't be decrying her lack of inclusiveness toward the majority and not making them "feel welcome." So if Prejean had agreed with Hilton's minority position -- or pretended to -- she would have represented "all of America"; if she had agreed with the majority, she wouldn't have. Go figure.

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April 28, 2009

Beware Abhorrent Hate Crime Legislation

By: David Limbaugh

Homosexual activists aren't easily deterred. Unable to persuade even the people of California to change the definition of marriage to legitimize their lifestyle, they're resorting to a backdoor approach to accomplish the same thing: pushing federal hate crime legislation while few are paying attention.

Well, people better wake up, because the House Judiciary Committee has already approved Barney Frank's bill, H.R. 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The full House is expected to vote on the bill April 29, and various liberal groups, from gay activists to liberal religious organizations, are engaged in a full-court press to get this bill passed.

The bill would make it a federal crime to willfully cause bodily injury to someone (or to attempt to do so with firearms or explosives) because of his or her actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

If states want to pass their own hate crime legislation, they are free to exercise such poor judgment. But they don't need the long arm of the federal government cramming it down their throats.

Not only is there little constitutional justification for the federal government to legislate in this area but also the bill further impinges on state sovereignty by subjecting people to criminal liability for acts for which they've already been acquitted under state criminal systems.

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April 24, 2009

Lifesaving Memos

By: David Limbaugh

I sincerely hope our justifiable anxiety over government spending and taxes will not obscure our vision in regard to other alarming threats to our liberties resulting from radical policy changes from the Obama administration, including those concerning our national security.

The administration's endless multi-continent America-bashing expeditions, its hostility to strategic missile defense, its look-the-other-way approach to the ongoing nuclear and ballistic missile advancements of rogue nations while flirting with dismantling our own, and its reported termination of assembly line production of F-22 fighters -- while China and Russia are engaged in the full-tilt manufacturing of fifth-generation fighter jets -- are representative of its new approach.

But in my view, the second-biggest outrage unfolded this week, with the administration's gratuitous decision to release internal CIA memos broadcasting our enhanced interrogation techniques against enemy combatant prisoners following the 9/11 attacks. The ultimate outrage is the administration's green light to Congress to prosecute Bush administration officials for these policies, which manifestly prevented terrorist attacks and saved American lives. If these efforts make it past the partisan fantasies of such congressional charlatans as Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont, the slumbering public might finally awaken to the totalitarian thuggery of the leftists currently in charge of the government.

Here are just a few things to consider as we contemplate these outrages:

--The administration voluntarily surrendered and published these memos instead of objecting to their discovery by the American Civil Liberties Union, assuring us, quite unconvincingly, that President Obama wrestled deeply with the issue.

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April 21, 2009

Peace Through Weakness

By: David Limbaugh

Observing the Obama administration's approach so far to the war on terror is somewhat reminiscent, if you'll accept the crude analogy, of watching Panamanian boxing legend Roberto Duran's rematch against American boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard. Duran was within his rights to say "no mas" and quit, but it didn't keep him from losing.

But here the analogy breaks down. While Duran could avoid further Leonard blows by quitting, a nation under attack by a warring force cannot prevent further attacks against itself simply by declaring an end to hostilities. Yet that's precisely what the Obama administration appears to be doing in the war on terror, most recently with its outrageously reckless public release of classified Justice Department memos on the legality of CIA interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners.

Democrats ceaselessly complained about the Bush administration's allegedly misguided approach to the war, contending it was too broad (Bush should have focused almost exclusively on al-Qaida in Afghanistan), that he engaged in cowboy diplomacy, and his treatment of enemy prisoners was inhumane.

Deny it if you choose, but the gravamen of these complaints was that the United States, in many ways, was the bad guy, the aggressor nation that attacked Iraq without provocation or justification, was inflicting gratuitous "collateral damage" on Iraq and its people, and routinely -- and as a matter of policy -- was brutalizing and torturing enemy prisoners in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and everywhere else our heartless authorities could get their hands on them.

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April 17, 2009

Homeland Security Slanders

By: David Limbaugh

There has been a lot of outrage over the Department of Homeland Security's leaked summary report on "Rightwing Extremism," but by far its most odious aspects are its implications that military veterans are fertile targets for radical, violent groups and that right-wingers are inclined toward racism.

Information from this April 7 report was provided to law enforcement officials to help them prevent terrorist attacks against the United States.

The "Key Findings" are way light on objective facts but heavy on subjective opinion -- opinion clearly colored by the worldviews and biases of those issuing the report. Right off the bat, DHS admits it "has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment."

There's more. "The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks."

At the risk of incurring the scrutiny of the DHS, I must say that these gratuitous sentences are outrageous. In the first place, I don't know anyone playing on "fears about several emergent issues" more than the current administration, of which the DHS is a part. Even when President Barack Obama is delivering a speech on the economy purportedly geared toward reassuring Americans that things will be all right, he has to stoke their fears and anxieties about other financial shoes he expects to drop in the near future. He and his aides are the ones who have signaled they have something to gain from keeping the public in crisis mode, that "something" being the opportunity to make foundational changes to our economy and the relationship between government and the private sector.

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April 14, 2009

Radicalizing Even the Faith-Based Program

By: David Limbaugh

President Barack Obama's recent appointment of Harry Knox to his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships adds another redundant nail to the coffin of the irresponsible myth that he is a bipartisan unifier.

In light of the daily outpouring of evidence, one wonders whether our "moderate" Republican Obama apologists will ever admit their error in willingly suspending their disbelief in Obama's radical leftism all because of what Michael Gerson refers to as "his moderate instincts and conciliatory temperament."

Perhaps Obama's appointment of Harold Koh as legal adviser to the State Department despite Koh's unapologetic belief that American courts should sometimes refer to foreign law in interpreting our Constitution doesn't bother you. Or even his selection of Indiana law professor Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel despite her taking such positions (in a Supreme Court brief, no less) that pregnancy can be comparable to involuntary servitude.

How many in-your-face radical leftist appointments must Obama make before some realize this apparently conciliatory man is indeed a polarizing radical?

Let's just look at the Knox appointment. Former President George W. Bush originally established the faith-based program, wisely or not, to help faith-based groups participate in the public square.

Many were delighted when Obama decided to continue with the program. But with the Knox appointment and other similar ones, we have to question whether Obama is shifting the focus of the group while retaining its innocuous-sounding name. Obama has been stacking the 25-member board with like-minded leftists inclined to allocate its funds to liberal, secular causes.

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April 10, 2009

A Christian Nation?

By: David Limbaugh

President Barack Obama said in Turkey: "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

Well, I don't know what "we" consider "ourselves," but I do think we ought to examine that statement and why Obama felt compelled to make it a part of his world apology tour.

Can you imagine the Saudi king coming to America and bragging that his nation is not Muslim? I assure you that he's not ashamed of the Islamic character of his nation, even though his nation is demonstrably less tolerant of other religions.

So is (or was) America a Christian nation? If by that we mean that America is a Christian theocracy, that our government should give Christians preferential treatment, or that members of other faiths aren't welcome, the answer is an emphatic "no."

But if we are talking about the ideals that led to the very colonization of this land, our declaration of independence from Britain, and the formulation of our Constitution, then the answer is certainly "yes."

In the words of professor John Eidsmoe, "If by the term Christian nation one means a nation that was founded on biblical values that were brought to the nation by mostly professing Christians, then in that sense the United States may truly be called a Christian nation."

Why does this matter? Simply because our dominant secular culture delights in demonizing Christianity, distorting its character, conflating it with less tolerant faiths, and associating it with all our societal woes. History revisionists have convinced many that we mainly owe our liberties to secular humanist ideals and those borrowed from the Greeks, Romans and the French Enlightenment.

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April 07, 2009

Somewhere Under the Rainbow

By: David Limbaugh

Alfred Hitchcock dedicated his 1940 film "Foreign Correspondent" to "those intrepid ones who went across the sea to be the eyes and ears of America ... who early saw the clouds of war while many of us at home were seeing rainbows."

Kind of brings into focus the old saw that history repeats itself. Only this time, it's our commander in chief who is seeing rainbows -- everywhere except, apparently, in America.

It's bad enough when the George Soros brigades continually disparage America, but it's almost unbearable for the president to do it -- and even worse when he's on foreign soil.

At a town hall meeting with French and German citizens in Strasbourg, France, President Barack Obama proved he hadn't just been posturing on the campaign trail when he castigated then-President George W. Bush for his "unilateralist" foreign policies. It's now clear that Obama wanted not only the American electorate to understand his disdain for his predecessor and the country he led but also the rest of the world to know it.

He told his European audience: "It's always harder to forge true partnerships and sturdy alliances than to act alone. ... In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of ... seeking to partner with you ... there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."

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April 03, 2009

Holder's Injustice

By: David Limbaugh

Remember the cacophonous wailing of the left over the Bush administration's alleged politicization of the Justice Department? We always knew they were just projecting, but now we have even more proof.

I first learned from my friend Andy McCarthy's blog post on National Review Online that Attorney General Eric Holder had rejected the legal opinion of his own Justice Department lawyers that the D.C. voting rights bill, which would give the District of Columbia a voting member in the House of Representatives, is unconstitutional.

Why would Holder reject the legal opinion of his own deputies? Dumb question. Because he doesn't like the answer and neither does his boss, President Obama. They both strongly support passage of the bill and do not believe a little trifle, such as an express constitutional provision forbidding it, should be permitted to get in their way. How many times do leftists have to demonstrate that they are an ends-justify-the-means bunch before it sinks in?

The Washington Post confirms that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, "an elite unit that gives legal and constitutional advice to the executive branch," did issue an unpublished opinion earlier this year that the voting rights bill is unconstitutional. Holder couldn't let that stand, so he went back to the well, hoping for a different opinion.

Lo and behold, the solicitor general's office dutifully served up that opinion and said it could defend the legislation in court should the bill be challenged on constitutional grounds. Hmm.

Now, those of you who don't like it when lawyers muddle up the plain meaning of language should follow me into the next paragraph, where I'll recite to you the pertinent constitutional provision. Please excuse me while I reach up to the shelf to retrieve my pocket Constitution.

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March 31, 2009

Another Day, Another Scary Nomination

By: David Limbaugh

As usual, President Barack Obama is multi-tasking the dismantling of the American system on so many fronts that not all of the outrages can be properly monitored. So while you should be mortified by his dictatorial power grab with General Motors, please don't miss his recent nomination of former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as legal adviser for the State Department.

In his new position, Koh not only would represent the United States before international bodies, such as the U.N. and the International Court of Justice, but also would influence the degree to which laws of other countries should influence American jurisprudence.

After reading an alarming piece by Meghan Clyne in the New York Post concerning the Koh nomination and the degree to which Koh believes it's appropriate for courts to consider other nations' laws in interpreting our Constitution, I read a number of Koh's legal writings and speeches.

Clyne reported that New York lawyer Steven Stein said that Koh, in addressing the Yale Club of Greenwich in 2007, claimed that "in an appropriate case, he didn't see any reason why sharia law would not be applied to govern a case in the United States."

It turns out that on March 21, 2007, Carol Iannone, on Phi Beta Cons blog, published a letter from Stein to Dean Koh about his Yale Club remarks. Stein wrote, in part, "In your discussion of 'global law' I recall at least one favorable reference to 'Sharia', among other foreign laws that could, in an appropriate instance (according to you) govern a controversy in a federal or state court in the US."

Whether or not Koh ever responded to Stein's letter, Stein's representations of Koh's remarks are certainly consistent with Koh's writings that I reviewed.

In Fordham Law Review, Koh asserted that the U.S. "Supreme Court is divided between two judicial camps: the transnationalists and the nationalists." Koh considers himself a transnationalist and justices Roberts, Scalia and Alito nationalists.

Koh explained the differences between these two judicial philosophies. According to Koh, transnationalist judges look to U.S. interdependence, whereas nationalists tend to look to U.S. autonomy. Transnationalists think about how U.S. law fits into a framework of transnational law, while nationalists see a rigid foreign and domestic divide. Transnationalists think that courts can "domesticate" international law (make it part of our law), whereas nationalists think that only the political branches can. Transnationalists favor the development of a global legal system, while nationalists prefer a national legal system.

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March 24, 2009

Beltway Arrogance and Blind Faith

By: David Limbaugh

Rep. Charles Rangel's recent comments about President Barack Obama's budget exemplify the liberal ruling class's Beltway arrogance and blind faith in an ideology that compels it to press on the accelerator as we head for the cliff toward the nation's financial ruin.

How else do you explain the administration's and Congress' seeming indifference to the inevitably bankrupting consequences of their profligacy; their disguising a $1 trillion political patronage bill as an economic stimulus package when only 23 percent of it is arguably stimulative in the short term; and their audacity in forcing (and rewarding) banks to make uncreditworthy loans, pressuring Freddie and Fannie to "securitize" them, encouraging AIG and others to traffic in "derivatives," and then punishing all of them instead of taking the blame themselves? They are the ones who created this havoc and then refused to take corrective regulatory action when warned of the impending financial disaster.

Chris Wallace, the host of "Fox News Sunday," asked Rangel whether he was troubled by Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obama's deficits will be $2.3 trillion higher than the already-astronomical White House projections.

"I am more impressed," said Rangel, "with the fact that Obama is looking for a better-educated and a healthy -- a stronger work force, going into a new green economy, that this has to show that America can get off the ground with the deficit and move to where we were under the Clinton administration -- drawing a strong surplus. The only way for us to get out of this is to change our way of living in this country, and that's the direction in which the Obama budget is going, and I strongly support it."

When Rangel says we need to "change our way of living in this country," he does not mean that the solution to our unsustainable budgets is to tighten our federal belt and curtail government intervention in the market.

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March 20, 2009

Mark Levin's 'Liberty and Tyranny'

By: David Limbaugh

Mark Levin's "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto" couldn't be more relevant or important. It is a masterful restatement of conservative principles that is succinct (205 pages) and yet comprehensive. It is thoughtful and deep but highly readable. It is timely yet timeless.

Conservatism is under attack from puffed-up liberals, feeling their oats with the ascendancy of President Barack Obama and the huge Democratic congressional majorities, and from a disgruntled group of conservatives who believe that conservatism, to remain politically effective, needs a face-lift.

Liberal columnists are writing with unrestrained glee about conservatism's internecine wars, and conservatives are engaged in intramural debates about which principles and policies conservatives should be promoting. Levin's book will go a long way toward muting the liberals' premature gloating and refuting the arguments of those who, perhaps with good intentions, would hijack conservatism from within and transform it into liberalism lite, all in the name of political pragmatism. "An 'effective' government that operates outside its constitutional limitations is a dangerous government," Levin writes. "By abandoning principle for efficiency, the neo-Statist, it seems, is no more bound to the Constitution than the Statist. He marches more slowly … but he marches with him nonetheless."

There has not been a widely read conservative manifesto as such since Barry Goldwater's "The Conscience of a Conservative" in 1960. Given the unbridled assault on conservatism today, not to mention the personal attacks on its leading proponents, we must celebrate the release of "Liberty and Tyranny" as the modern road map back to our conservative roots.

Having eaten, breathed, slept and studied conservatism, politics, law and history his entire life, Levin, who is my friend and client, is uniquely qualified and situated to have written this book. In undertaking this formidable task, he stands on the shoulders of the giants who have preceded him but has made those giants very proud with this work.

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March 17, 2009

Calling on Democratic Capitalists

By: David Limbaugh

I don't use the term "Marxist," in connection with President Barack Obama's policies, lightly or even to inflame, but to express my genuine fear that if we don't put the brakes on his agenda to remake America in his image, we'll end up both enslaving and bankrupting America by the end of his tenure.

Perhaps conservatives used the term "Marxist," "socialist" or even "Commie" too loosely on some occasions to describe the liberals' political sympathies, but that debatable question now seems moot, given our new president's overt contempt for capitalism.

This guy makes Bill Clinton look like John Birch, and yet to this day, few Democrats have dissociated from him. So where are the Democrats who have always professed their conservatism? How can they sit by idly as we witness this administration's ongoing assault on capitalism?

Where are those liberals who have always insisted that on economic issues, they differ with conservatives only in degree, not in kind -- that they are actually committed capitalists who just believe in somewhat greater government control, a somewhat larger safety net and marginally higher taxation? Where are those Democrats who, for the past 20 years, have been condemning soaring deficits and an exploding national debt? Is there anything Obama could say or do that would cause them to break ranks in defense of the capitalistic system to which they claim allegiance? With a few exceptions, it does not appear so.

When President Clinton initiated his class warfare rhetoric against Reaganomics and "trickledown economics," when he described a slightly slowed-down economy as "the worst economy in 50 years," he was mostly trying to get elected, and it worked. Remember "it's the economy, stupid"? True, he did raise taxes when elected, and he and his wife tried to nationalize health care. But in the end, he was more about himself than permanently transforming the country.

While President Obama may also be narcissistic, as some have noted -- consider his utter lack of discomfort at being deified -- he is truly devoted to changing this nation structurally and has inherited an ideal "crisis" climate in which to actualize his ambitions.

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March 13, 2009

Obama's Relentless War on the American Dream

By: David Limbaugh

It's probably poor form to piggyback onto another columnist's work, but Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger's disturbing discoveries about President Barack Obama's budget summary justify an exception. Those not blinded by the Obama cult fog have produced abundant evidence of Obama's grudge against capitalism, but Henninger's revelations are hard to top.

Despite Obama's later denials, he was most serious when he cavalierly told Joe the Plumber he wanted to "spread the wealth around." We've seen it born out in his policies so far and in the promises of those to come.

He will restore the Clinton tax hikes on higher-income earners, but there is so much more. He'll reduce the effective charitable gift deduction, thus reducing charitable giving. This is no surprise, though, because he believes "charity" is the province of government -- not the private sector.

He'll impose a cap and trade tax on corporations under the pretense of making them "greener," raise the tax rates on capital gains and dividends, reverse welfare reform, and nationalize health care.

He'll eliminate the ceiling on payroll tax contributions, which is presently about $110,000. This will be a major hit to those earning more than $110,000, not that Obama cultists will have any sympathy for those greedy beneficiaries of life's lottery, to borrow from the Al Gore vernacular.

Some might argue that this is only fair because the entire income of lower-income earners is subject to that tax. But to make that argument surrenders any illusion that this tax funds Social Security. If you eliminate the ceiling, higher-income earners will pay exorbitant amounts into a mythical fund (it's never been segregated from general revenue) with no expectation of getting appreciably more back on retirement. Fairness? Only if you believe the wealthy should be punished.

Funny you should mention that, because it's precisely what our president appears to believe, which brings me back to Henninger, who took the trouble to read the president's budget summary for lay readers, "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise."

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March 10, 2009

The Orwellian Presidential Bully Pulpit

By: David Limbaugh

Does the following statement from Melody C. Barnes, director of President Barack Obama's Domestic Policy Council, strike you as a) patronizing or b) Orwellian? "The president believes that it's particularly important to sign this (presidential memorandum authorizing federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research) so that we can put science and technology back at the heart of pursuing a broad range of national goals."

Your answer should be both a and b, especially when considered in conjunction with another presidential memorandum "aimed at insulating scientific decisions across the federal government from political influence."

The president brazenly sermonizes against scientifically challenged conservatives while triggering federal funding of research that is scientifically controversial and preparing to impose cap and trade penalties on corporate America in deference to global warming junk science.

While you won't hear much about this in the mainstream media, there is a meeting currently taking place in New York City that serves as an ironic backdrop for Obama's embryonic stem cell order.

OneNewsNow.com reports that more than 70 scientists -- representing the views of tens of thousands more scientists -- are meeting at The Heartland Institute's second annual International Conference on Climate Change to make the case that politically motivated alarmism, not science, is driving climate change activism, which potentially threatens the sovereignty of the United States.

At the conference, European Union and Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus likened those pushing global warming hysteria to the communists of Old Europe, who refused to listen to opposing views. Their goal, Klaus warned, is to control the public.

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March 06, 2009

There'll Be No Debate

By: David Limbaugh

While the erudite, urbane left demonstrates its sophistication and collegiality by personally attacking Rush Limbaugh, the nation is going down in financial flames, largely because of the unchecked policy insanity being unleashed by our new president. Yet his flacks in the media continue to shield him from even rudimentary questions that any other president would receive.

That's why you don't have to wait in suspense to see whether the president will accept Rush's offer to debate the issues. It would not be in Obama's personal interests to shift the public's attention from childish insults about Rush to substantive policy.

Do you honestly think President Obama wants public scrutiny of his policies? Do you think he'd feel comfortable being challenged on his inconsistencies, misrepresentations and astonishingly early breaches of his campaign promises?

You've surely seen his reactions on those rare occasions he's been challenged. Take his response to the Republicans' appeal that he fulfill his promise of bipartisanship on the stimulus package: "I won."

I suppose that if the president were in a debate, he could continue to dodge and obfuscate, but at least someone would be putting questions to him instead of giving him free rein to wreak havoc on our capitalistic system with the undisciplined destruction of a juvenile delinquent playing with his new chemistry set.

I'm just wildly speculating, of course, but I suspect that Mr. Obama would not be too keen on having to answer the following questions, among many others:

How could you sign a bill to spend more than a trillion dollars this nation does not have, purportedly to stimulate the economy, and then immediately convene a fiscal responsibility summit?

Why did you promise to end earmarks and then preside over a bill in your first month in office that includes some 8,500 earmarks?

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March 02, 2009

This Is Way Bigger Than Rush

By: David Limbaugh

The Democrats, along with those on the right who seem more worried about incurring the disdain of the wrongheaded left than of their fellow patriots, are feverishly promoting their Saul Alinsky-inspired scheme to demonize and divide their most effective political opponents.

What would be amusing, were matters not so gravely serious today, is the utter juvenile transparency in the liberals' efforts to vilify Rush Limbaugh.

They've been doing it for 20 years, but this time, they're better-organized and have a broader purpose. So those who haven't had the courage to stand by him should understand that Rush is not the ultimate target here. We all are -- those, that is, who oppose their Marxist agenda and Stalinist tactics.

Have you noticed their coordinated effort to label Rush the leader of the Republican Party? Do you think it's accidental that James Carville so describes him? Do you think it's just coincidental that Obama called Rush out personally and that the entire flock of mainstream media sheep followed suit? Is it just serendipitous that liberal Chris Matthews baits his guests nightly to castigate Rush? Is it fortuitous that Obama's, er, ABC's George Stephanopoulos demands his guests, such as Republican Rep. Eric Cantor, to either defend or denounce Rush?

But again, they're not just after Rush. They want to destroy the Republican brand -- as if they need any help doing that.

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February 24, 2009

The Usurpers

By: David Limbaugh

America's Founders believed that federal power was a necessary evil that would swallow the liberties their ancestors left Europe to obtain unless it was severely limited. But today we seem to have forgotten that freedom cannot survive the unrestrained governmental encroachments that are raining down daily from our nation's capital.

You need not have written a doctoral thesis on the political theories espoused in the Federalist Papers to understand that socialism impoverishes nations despite the professed good intentions of its benefactors. You needn't have a master's in history to realize that America is the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world because its prescient Framers devised a constitution that would maximize liberty by imposing restraints on government. And you don't need to be a rocket scientist to grasp that unless we put the brakes on our out-of-control federal government soon, we will go the way of all other great nations before us.

While there has long existed a tension between liberty's usurpers and watchdogs, rarely have the usurpers been in such ascendance. They are in firm control of the executive and legislative branches and are using the full force of the federal government to stack the deck in their favor in perpetuity. Just look at the taxpayer-funded payoffs of defaulting mortgagors, unions, governors, big-city mayors, liberal "public interest" groups, and ever-expanding dependency constituencies, including illegal immigrants.

But why can't they be honest about what they're doing? Have they even tried to dispute the charge that an untold amount of this so-called stimulus money will not be spent in the near future and that much of it, even when spent, will not stimulate? No, because they cannot explain away their subterfuge in such shenanigans as allocating billions of taxpayer dollars to community organizing groups, such as ACORN, whose real function is to secure elections for like-minded "progressives."

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February 18, 2009

Uncanny, Disturbing Historical Parallels

By: David Limbaugh

Recently, I reread the chapters on the New Deal in Larry Schweikart's superb "A Patriot's History of the United States" to review parallels with Barack Obama's radical economic agenda. Here is an eye-opening, side-by-side sampling, with Schweikart's observations on FDR and the New Deal, along with mine on President Obama and his policies.

Schweikart wrote, "During the campaign, FDR, a man whose presidency would feature by far the largest expansion of the federal government ever, called for a balanced budget and accused Hoover of heading the 'greatest spending Administration in ... all our history.'"

Obama's stimulus bill sets frightening new records for federal spending. But while campaigning, he said, "I'm running for president because I believe we can choose our own economic destiny ... to go another four years with the same reckless fiscal policies that have busted our budget, wreaked havoc in our economy, and mortgaged our children's future on a mountain of debt; or we can restore fiscal responsibility in Washington."

Schweikart wrote, "Roosevelt heaped dishonor on the defeated Hoover, denying him even a Secret Service guard out of town."

At Obama's inauguration, his supporters booed, heckled and chanted tauntingly at President George W. Bush. Obama went to dinner during President Bush's farewell speech and repudiated the Bush era in his inaugural address and on his new White House Web site.

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February 12, 2009

The Worst of All Worlds

By: David Limbaugh

At the risk of beating a very live horse, the worst of all the horrible things about President Barack Obama's "stimulus" bill is that even if it worked to stimulate the economy beyond the president's wildest expectations, it would cause a further explosion of the national debt, which would become a worse "catastrophe" than the one this bill promises to alleviate.

Yet the president is so eager to start spending the people's money he can barely be trifled to acknowledge the growing debt as a concern. When backed into a corner, all he can do is attack the credibility of his critics on the issue, as if pointing fingers at the other kid in the schoolyard either exculpates him or addresses the problem.

Twice during his tightly controlled prime-time marketing infomercial, billed as his first presidential news conference, he aimed partisan fire at Republicans for daring to raise the issue.

He said: "When it comes to how we approach the issue of fiscal responsibility ... it's a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they've presided over a doubling of the national debt. I'm not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility."

He used the same specious argument to deflect another objection to the bill: that it's long on pork and short on stimulus. He said, "First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt ... I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit ... and the economic crisis that we have right now."

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February 09, 2009

No Consensus on 'Stimulus' Bill

By: David Limbaugh

President Barack Obama has done more in the first three weeks of his presidency to validate the suspicions of his critics than I thought possible. But of all his objectionable actions, nothing compares to his falsely labeled "stimulus" bill, which he is trying to force upon us with fear and deception.

Just consider his smug assertion that "there is no disagreement that we need action by our government to jump-start the economy."

Maybe Mr. Obama has been cooped up in the White House too long and hasn't seen the dissent, such as that expressed in a strong protest letter signed by umpteen respected economists: "With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true. Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance." The letter cites the failed record of "stimulus" spending in the Depression era and in Japan in the 1990s and recommends lower tax rates and reduced government as the best remedies.

But even if you accept Obama's disputed premise that spending is the panacea, his bill fails his own criteria. It's just smoke and mirrors aimed at blurring his larger goal of radically restructuring the economy. But he pleads urgency anyway, as if he were trying to set speed records for breaking faith with the electorate.

The blogger Calafia Beach Pundit trenchantly observed: "Very little of the bill involves immediate stimulus or anything that might be actually stimulative; only a little over 10 percent of the money gets spent this fiscal year, and about 30 percent gets spent next fiscal year. ... About 30 percent of the money goes to transfer payments. ... Only $20 billion would be spent over the next 18 months on highway construction; and about 20 percent of the bill doesn't get spent until 2012-19."

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February 05, 2009

Liberalism on Full Display

By: David Limbaugh

Perhaps the silver lining to the new Obama administration's frenetic flurry of executive orders, proposed legislation, "diplomatic" rhetoric and autocratic commands is that people are getting a bird's-eye view into the misguided perspectives of liberals.

By deifying Obama, his cult followers in the media and grass roots stoked his already exaggerated sense of self-confidence and encouraged him to unmask his true liberalism and unleash, full-bore, his paternalistic mischief. Let's hope that with all the hype, people are focusing and will wake up to the dangers of a hyper-energetic, intermeddling federal government and the unbridled arrogance of those who believe they are better-suited to run our lives than we are.

In just these first few weeks, we have seen alarming shifts in our approach to national defense, the war on terror, international relations, ethics in government, social issues and domestic policy.

First, there was his in-your-face executive fiat reinstituting America's support for foreign agencies performing abortion and then his proactive endorsement of the militant homosexual agenda. Then his edict on automobile emissions standards. Next, his stunningly hypocritical support for nominees manifestly guilty of wrongdoing and his self-serving exemptions for appointees from rules he has promulgated.

These were followed by the outrageously inappropriate programs Obama and his congressional colleagues tried to sneak through under cover of the sheer volume and complexity of their budget-busting pseudo-stimulus package. Then there was Obama's autocratic dictate to corporate-CEO recipients of "bailout" money to reduce their salaries to what he deems appropriate.

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February 03, 2009

Senate Must Reject Faux Stimulus

By: David Limbaugh

Americans should contact their congressmen before it's too late about their instinctive concerns over efforts to convert the world's greatest engine of free market prosperity into a socialistic leviathan under the euphemistic cover of possibly successive rescue "stimulus" bills.

The stated rationale for the original Troubled Asset Relief Program "bailout" wasn't to stimulate the economy to get it moving again, but to toss it a liquidity life raft to loosen credit markets and keep it from drowning. That is, the idea was to prevent a catastrophe, not to empower little Napoleons in government to play God with the economy.

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's scare tactics -- heartfelt or not -- panicked the country into action, and TARP became a reality. Yet not much seemed to change. Politicians will always be able to say that if we hadn't implemented TARP, America's economy would have tanked beyond our wildest nightmares. And being without the supernatural power to prove a negative, we'll never be able to disprove their claims.

Of all the concerns we had concerning TARP, our greatest should have been that once we opened the door to this magnitude of governmental intervention -- especially under a Republican administration -- we'd have even greater difficulty in resisting efforts by politicians to reopen it in the future anytime they pronounced there was a crisis.

Sure enough, Mr. Obama and his confidants view this "crisis" with eager anticipation as an opportunity to actualize their dreams for government to assume its rightful place as Master of the Universe and choreograph the economy on a super-macro level.

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January 29, 2009

Targeting Rush: Saul Alinsky Would Be Proud

By: David Limbaugh

In his eight full years as the recipient of endless vile, often-delusional slander, President George W. Bush rarely grumbled, much less counterattacked his tormentors. Yet before he completed his first week in office, President Barack Obama -- a dedicated disciple of Saul Alinsky, who is to left-wing radicalism and social agitation what Karl Marx is to communism -- declared war on Rush Limbaugh.

This was a calculated move by a man who professes to be open to all ideas but apparently brooks no dissent. He not only does not tolerate dissent well but also really doesn't even like to be questioned, as we saw during the campaign, when he accused the normally fawning press of grilling him for merely asking a follow-up question. We caught another glimpse of this last week, when he showed irritation at the White House press corps for daring to ask him a policy question after he had decreed that the sole purpose of his visit was to press the flesh.

But Obama's effort to target Rush is not just his ego at work. He has begun a full-court press to advance his extreme left-wing agenda and was angling both to garner enough Republican support to insulate himself against future accountability for failure and to validate his self-styled image as a bipartisan uniter.

That's why he invited a group of Beltway conservatives for dinner, in a move reminiscent of Hillary Clinton's "listening tour" -- as if discerning observers believe that listening, as opposed to projecting an image of openness, was either Clinton's or Obama's purpose. That's why he surrounded himself with big-business CEOs as he unveiled his misnamed "stimulus" package. That's why he often throws meaningless, abstract bones to conservatives in his speeches while having no intention of diluting his specific concrete liberal policies.

Obama is savvy enough to realize he can't eliminate all dissent. But he's enough of an Alinskyite to know that marginalizing and demonizing his strongest opponents could intimidate the fainthearted into supporting or withholding criticism of his policies and increase his chances for success.

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January 27, 2009

Gitmo Questions for Press Secretary Robert Gibbs

By: David Limbaugh

During his first week in office, President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year. Later communications from his office disclose that he hasn't yet fully explored the potentially negative consequences of closing the facility. The problem, he said, is more complicated than it first appeared. This raises a number of questions, Mr. Gibbs:

--How can President Obama credibly maintain that the issue is more complicated than he thought, when people have been raising these problems for years? Is he just now discovering that there are serious consequences involved, or did he already know and finesse the issue during the campaign for political purposes? If he didn't know (and even more so if he did know), doesn't he owe former President George W. Bush an apology for his unfair criticisms? Doesn't he owe the American people an explanation as to how he could possibly have been unaware of such rudimentary aspects of this fundamentally important national security issue?

--Given that he now concedes there are unexplored complications, wasn't it precipitous and imprudent of him to issue the closure order? What if further research indicates there are no reasonable alternatives other than to bring these prisoners to the U.S. mainland and grant them the full panoply of constitutional rights? Or does he actually favor full-blown constitutional rights for terrorists? If so, will he not be leading America back to its pre-Sept. 11, 2001, mindset, which treated terrorism as a law enforcement matter rather than a military one?

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January 23, 2009

They're Poor Winners Too

By: David Limbaugh

Leftists are always lecturing Republicans and conservatives on the importance of civility and bipartisanship yet revealing, whether winner or losing, that they are the ones who need lessons in manners and collegiality.

If you aren't convinced of the left's nonpareil arrogance and nastiness from observing their behavior toward President Bush and Vice President Cheney for the past eight years, then contrast the behavior of Mr. Bush's staff leaving office and that of Mr. Clinton's, who literally trashed the White House like juvenile delinquents.

Fast-forwarding to this week, did you see Obama supporters booing President Bush at the inauguration, singing, "Na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye"? Pure class.

The Washington Times reported that these same Obama supporters mocked Mr. Cheney "with derisive laughter when he appeared on huge TV screens by the Capitol grounds, rolling down a ramp in a wheelchair after suffering a back injury moving out of his Naval Observatory home. 'Good riddance!' one man yelled."

Nor was it just rude mobs at the parade. "Hardball" host Chris Matthews wasn't content to bask in his euphoria over Obama's assumption of office. Like many of his colleagues, he needed to kick Bush as he was going out the door. "There'll be no more bullying of the world, no more acting like one of the bad guys on occasion. We're going to try again to be the good guy of the world and to get along with our fellow democracies. It is a dramatic change that's to come." Dramatic, indeed, Chris.

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January 19, 2009

Republicans Must Turn Down the Kool-Aid

By: David Limbaugh

It's going to take real courage the next four years for Republicans to swim against the tide and oppose Barack Obama -- in whom so many have placed their hopes, almost to the point of idolatry. But if Obama governs in a way that's consistent with his promises, the country's future security and prosperity will depend on spirited opposition.

It's bad enough for the liberal media to deify Obama, but it's almost unbearable for right-wing commentators and politicians to jump on this bandwagon, as well, as if Obama's personal attributes have blinded them to the policy dangers he represents.

During the Bush years, the left blamed Bush for the absence of bipartisanship, when, by any rational measure, they were the ones whose relentless vitriol made bipartisanship impossible.

Forgive the analogy, but their reversal of blame is reminiscent of a memorable scene in the movie "Animal House," when fraternity hotshot "Otter" pressured the hapless legacy pledge, "Flounder," into lending him his brother's car. When Otter returned the car after having demolished it, Otter chastised Flounder for entrusting the car to him. "You (screwed) up. You trusted me."

Now, after eight years of this poison, the same specious theme from the Bush bashers has found a new application: "Republicans must work with Barack Obama and restore a spirit of collegiality to Washington," as if they have any moral authority to be lecturing, but even more importantly, as if a spirit of collegiality will solve America's problems.

To be clear, I am not advocating that Republicans return the same mean-spirited partisanship with which the left pummeled Bush. But conservatives must not abandon their principles in pursuit of the seductive, illusory goal of bipartisanship.

You'd think this principle too sophomoric to articulate, and so do I -- almost. But have you been listening to Republican politicians and "conservative" commentators lately behaving as if their eternal salvation depends on jumping aboard a train headed in the opposite direction from everything in which they profess to believe?

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January 12, 2009

Obama's Conflicting Goals

By: David Limbaugh

President-elect Barack Obama's enormous stimulus package would be scary enough without learning the details. To inject the same staggering amount of government-created or borrowed money into the economy as has already been spent or set aside for the government bailout when there's no proof it will jump-start our economy and no thought given to how we're going to recoup this money is madness. But when you hear some of the uses he has for this money, it is way beyond madness.

Let's put aside for a moment our valid objections to the Keynesian idea that the government can create prosperity simply by printing and distributing money as if it were "Monopoly" money. If that were true, the only limit to our sustained prosperity would be the amounts of paper and ink we could produce.

Let's also put aside the enormity of the liberal hypocrisy of railing against deficit spending for the past eight years, as Obama stands blissfully poised to dwarf those records.

Instead, let's just examine Obama's inflexible commitment to two conflicting goals, as evidenced in his interview on "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos: 1) spending the "Monopoly" money in a way most likely to stimulate the economy (assuming here the validity of Keynesian theory) and 2) spending the money in a way most likely to satisfy liberal social planners.

Obama said: "Here are a few things we're going to do. We are going to double alternative energy production. We are going to weatherize 2 million homes. We are going to create a much more efficient energy system."

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January 09, 2009

To Your Battle Stations, Conservatives

By: David Limbaugh

The best long-term solutions for our ailing economy are to restore market forces in every possible sector, reduce the crippling tax burden, and restore responsible fiscal practices to the federal government. Sadly, the incoming Obama administration plans on moving in the opposite direction in all these areas and believes it has a mandate to do so. Are conservatives asleep or just worn down?

Too many Americans have succumbed to the propaganda that the market is inherently evil and fraught with excesses fueled by "capitalistic greed" and that such systemic corruption has led to our economic woes. Only large-scale government intervention can rescue us from this pernicious system.

Under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, we have advanced ever more rapidly away from a free market environment and toward a command and control economy. Steadily we have accepted the notion that politicians should pick winners and losers based on their ideas of fairness rather than having market forces be the ultimate arbiter.

We have swallowed the fearmongering admonitions of public officials who insist that even apart from the moral question of picking winners and losers, our government must bail out "essential" segments of the economy, such as the automobile industry, lest the entire economy be doomed for extinction. Indeed, this word "essential" has proved to be an essential tool for the left in these difficult times.

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January 05, 2009

Are They All Democrats Now?

By: David Limbaugh

Barack Obama, itching to implement his gigantic stimulus package as soon as possible, is dangling the idea of combining his spending package with a tax cut in hopes of securing another kind of stimulus: Republican support for his package. Republicans should remember that when you polish manure, you still have manure.

Obama went to Capitol Hill Monday to promote his stimulus plan of between $675 billion and $775 billion. An estimated 40 percent of the package (between $270 billion and $310 billion) would consist of tax cuts.

Obama strategists say the proposed tax cuts are based on historical and empirical evidence of what works, not ideology. But despite his denials, Obama's intention to target the cuts to the "middle class" and exclude higher-income earners, whose stimulated activity has been shown to have the greatest economic impact, betrays his crippling bondage to ideology.

The lion's share of the relief would involve $500 tax cuts per individual or $1,000 per family for income earners and an equal amount in credits for those who qualify for the "earned-income" credit. But he would phase out those cuts and credits for households with incomes of $200,000 or more, which is inexplicable apart from ideology and class-warfare populism.

Also demonstrating his ideological motivations, Obama's plan envisions short-term relief via one-time tax credits or refunds rather than long-term changes to the tax code. As others have noted, long-term changes are far more effective at stimulating growth because producers and consumers look to the long term in making their investment, hiring and spending decisions.

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December 29, 2008

Biden's Bogus Feud with Cheney

By: David Limbaugh

If Vice President-elect Joe Biden were slightly less enamored with his own voice he might not confuse himself so often on issues that matter so much, such as his views of presidential and vice presidential authority.

We've all heard about Biden's feud with Vice President Dick Cheney over Cheney's supposed view of executive authority relative to the other branches of government and Cheney's view of the vice president's role.

These happen to be two separate issues. Whether the president encroaches on the constitutional authority of the other branches is a different issue from whether the vice president oversteps his bounds inside the executive branch, or in his limited role in the legislative branch.

The problem is that Biden conflates these issues. He can't seem to keep straight whether he's exercised about an overreaching executive branch or an overreaching vice president mostly inside that branch.

My guess is that he confuses the two issues because, like other Democrats and liberals, he sees Cheney as the real villain in both cases. He blames Cheney, Bush's presumed puppet master, for Bush's alleged executive power grabs and he blames Cheney for overstepping his bounds as vice president.

Let's try to look at these issues separately, even though the players, in this case, overlap.

Reasonable people can disagree whether President Bush acted outside his scope of executive authority in various aspects of prosecuting the war on terror, such as in his handling of the NSA terrorist surveillance program. I believe history will soundly vindicate him, showing that he did consult and obtain the tacit approval of Congress on most of these matters. Moreover, the Constitution designates the president as commander in chief, never intending that wars be prosecuted by congressional committee.

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December 22, 2008

Beware of Obama's Middle-Class Task Force

By: David Limbaugh

When you read reports that President-elect Obama is going to establish a "task force to assist middle-class families" and that incoming VP Joe Biden will be its point man, keep a very sharp eye on what's going on here. It's an appeal to form over substance designed to convince voters he cares so much that even if he fails, he should be lauded and, of course, re-elected.

Modern Democrats have perfected the art of political propaganda, as seen in their demonization of "the Bush economy" for most of Bush's two terms despite the mostly positive economic numbers during that period. My guess is that under President Obama, they'll seek to do the reverse, if necessary: wooing the public with constant overtures to "the middle class" designed to mollify it irrespective of actual economic conditions.

Analogous to a teacher "teaching to the test," when a teacher imparts information to students to help them score higher on college entrance exams as opposed to increasing their actual knowledge of the material, President Clinton mastered the art of governing to the polls.

He had an entire team working 24/7 on enhancing his image and eulogizing his policy agenda. It's true that their task was aided by a robust economy, but the Clinton "war room" was still undeniably powerful well beyond the elections.

How much more shocking it was, then, for the young neophyte to take the Clintons to school, especially in the organizational and grass-roots aspects of the campaign. It would have been no less amazing if one of Muhammad Ali's sparring partners, such as Jimmy Ellis, had knocked Ali out instead of being knocked out himself.

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December 18, 2008

Recapturing Supply-Side Coherence

By: David Limbaugh

It is widely assumed in conservative circles that Republicans, even under President Bush, pretty much had tax policy right but failed on the spending side. Unfortunately, there's more to it. If conservatives plan to recapture ascendancy on economic issues, they better come to a clearer understanding of supply-side theory. Then perhaps they can articulate it and recapture it as a powerful electoral weapon.

Even when history is on their side, Republicans seem to find a way not to capitalize on it and routinely forfeit the narrative to Democrats, who dwarf them in the communications department from sheer repetition, if nothing else.

The Reagan tax cuts were so phenomenally successful that it's amazing Democrats were able to recover politically as quickly as they did. Despite historical revision to the contrary, all income groups did much better under the Reagan cuts. Remarkably, a Treasury Department study showed that 86 percent of people in the lowest 20 percent of income earners in 1979 graduated into higher categories during the '80s.

The tax cuts skewered then prevailing Keynesian economic theory, producing sustained peacetime economic growth without inflation. The reductions in marginal-income- and capital-gains tax rates even increased revenues.

It doesn't matter how much we repeat this truism or how blue our faces become in the process; the relative deficit explosion during the Reagan years was not caused by the tax cuts but by increases in government spending. Yet Democrats succeeded in establishing the narrative that the tax cuts were at the expense of essential government services and that the cuts increased the deficit and the national debt, thus dubbing the '80s the decade of greed.

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December 16, 2008

What's in a Middle Name?

By: David Limbaugh

When I first heard that Barack Obama said he had decided to include his middle name, "Hussein," in his swearing-in ceremony, I wondered whether the satirical Web site ScrappleFace had tricked the mainstream media.

Surely, after Obama's acolytes scolded commentators for using Barack's Muslim-sounding middle name during the campaign, the president-elect himself wouldn't so quickly reverse course. But, in fact, he did.

In an exclusive interview with the Chicago Tribune, Obama said he'll use his full name in the ceremony like every other president.

I have no problem with that, as far as it goes. But Obama went further. He's not using his middle name simply because it's his middle name, but as part of a deliberate strategy to "reboot America's image" among the world's Muslims. He also plans to deliver a major speech in an Islamic capital, possibly within the first 100 days of his presidency.

Why, you might ask, is all this necessary?

Simple: because of President Bush's myriad sins against Muslims since 9/11. The Associated Press reports, as if imparting objective fact, "The U.S. image globally has taken a deep hit during President George W. Bush's two terms in office, primarily because of opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, harsh interrogation of prisoners, the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and mistreatment of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq."

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December 11, 2008

No More Bailouts

By: David Limbaugh

If our government's economic experts really knew what they were doing, they wouldn't be frenetically experimenting with the people's money, treating billions like nickels. They wouldn't be so hellbent on dampening expectations and instilling fear as if oblivious to the real impact of public psychology on the economy.

I'm just not buying their doomsaying anymore. Even if they're right and we do end up in a full-scale financial meltdown, at least it will be finite and America's best days will still be ahead of us. But if we don't stop this panic-driven government intervention madness now, the chances are we'll still face a major meltdown and pass the point of no return into the bottomless pit of socialism.

The auto bailout and future proposed gargantuan government interventions must be rejected.

Government bailout architects ominously warned that unless we adopted their original "$700 billion" bailout proposal to purchase distressed mortgage assets, we'd face catastrophic economic consequences rivaling or exceeding the Great Depression.

Just weeks later, these same architects betrayed their own warnings and said their do-or-die plan would not work after all. Buying the troubled assets wouldn't inject capital into the banks quickly enough, so instead the government would have to distribute the money directly to major financial institutions.

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December 09, 2008

Responding to the Relentless Liberal Tide

By: David Limbaugh

If there's one thing I've learned in my 55 years, it's that liberals are relentless and will win through sheer persistence if conservatives abandon the fight.

The incoming U.S. government stands poised to forever alter the balance between governmental power and individual liberties and to replace the free market economy with socialist planning.

And what do we hear from many conservatives? That we should be encouraged that President-elect Obama has announced certain key centrist appointees and that we should convince ourselves this means he will not pursue the agenda he plainly tells us he will pursue. Savvy liberals must be laughing themselves silly.

Pro-life forces have made inroads into the collective consciousness and against the abominable practice of abortion, and they've been gratified by the appointments of two strict constructionist justices in Roberts and Alito. That said, Americans have just elected the most life-hostile president in our history, who got a complete pass on social issues during the campaign and who might be in a position to appoint three or more liberal activist judges.

But what are many conservatives saying? That Republicans got trounced because of the Christian right's uncompromising positions on social issues. That analysis doesn't square in theory (the majority of Americans are not pro-choice) or in reality (social issues were on the backburner in the national election, and social conservatism triumphed in state ballot initiatives, even in the liberal California).
Liberal secularists tell us Christians are insinuating themselves into government and thereby are threatening our liberties by intruding on the sacred prohibition against church-state interaction. They say our liberty tradition is grounded in secularism.

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December 04, 2008

What the Obama Cult Factor Portends

By David Limbaugh

The cult mystique of Barack Obama continues while his fawning supporters blindly accept every move he makes, proving their support for him in the general election was not based as much on policy as personality. This could play right into Obama's hands if, as I believe, he does have major change on his mind.

From a policy standpoint, Obama's campaign was fueled -- initially, at least -- by his unequivocal stance against the Iraq war. He was the only credible candidate (excluding such buffoons as Dennis Kucinich) who maintained from the outset that he opposed the war.

Apart from his charisma and superior organizational operation, especially in the caucus states, his opposition to the war might have been the single most important factor contributing to his defeat of Hillary Clinton. Clinton, thinking she was the inevitable nominee, presumably believed she could sporadically assume the role of hawk with impunity looking to the general election. By the time Hillary was done posturing back and forth on the war, no one could be sure what her position really was, other than that she would say what she needed to say, consistency be damned, to best preserve her presidential viability.

Obama shrewdly capitalized on Hillary's ambivalence, parlaying his opposition to the war to his maximum advantage. Given the nation's Bush fatigue -- no matter how unjustified from a broad historical perspective -- and Bush's very low approval ratings, it only made sense for Democratic presidential aspirants to make themselves the anti-Bush.

Because the Iraq war was perceived as Bush's greatest sin and almost all other sins flowed from Iraq or were somehow conflated with it -- Abu Ghraib, rendition, waterboarding, "unilateralism," NSA surveillance, Halliburton, Gitmo, etc. -- Obama was uniquely positioned to be the anti-Bush.

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December 01, 2008

Obama a Centrist? Like I'm a Liberal

By: David Limbaugh

I am far less convinced than many that Barack Obama will be a centrist in office. Despite his announced future Cabinet appointees, I find it amazing that people are so willing to believe he'll change his stripes that fast.

Just what about Obama's very liberal voting record to date causes one to believe he'll be any different as president? I could see an aspiring presidential candidate establishing a centrist legislative record in the state and federal senates to make himself more electable as president, but not the other way around.

There's another red flag that should give pause to those hoping against hope -- pun intended -- that Obama will indeed govern as a centrist. The very liberal mainstream media are giving Obama nothing but plaudits for his presumed centrist appointments. If they truly believed he had changed his governing philosophy, they would be anything but sanguine.

Even the far-left blogosphere has not thrown in the towel yet. They're not ecstatic, but I think deep down, they know they have a fellow traveler about to take the oath of office. As one writer for the liberal Huffington Post put it, "He will be the president we want him to be."

Also, just because this or that appointee was in the Clinton administration does not mean Obama is a centrist. The media have whitewashed any liberalism associated with the Clintons and portrayed them as committed moderates.

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November 24, 2008

Bipartisanship: For the Common Good?

By: David Limbaugh

Many say that now that Barack Obama has been elected, we should all work together for the common good. That sounds wonderful until you realize that we don't all agree on what is the common good.

Notice I don't take the position that Republicans should refuse to cooperate with Mr. Obama because Democrats have been indescribably partisan, cruel and unfair to President Bush for the past eight years. Those are certainly grounds to call them hypocrites, but we must always put the best interests of the nation above petty partisanship -- obviously.

So we must ask: Would it be in the best interest of the nation for Republicans to work with Barack Obama?

The only sensible answer is: It depends on what policies Obama pursues. As much as people want to believe that getting along is the highest good, there are many more important things.

If Democrats were being honest, they would agree with that statement. Otherwise, they owe us an explanation as to why they opposed President Bush at every turn. Could it be they think their ideas on Iraq, the war on terror, education, stem cell research, judges, the environment, immigration and the rest are more important to them than simply getting along? I thought so.

And while certain conservative "intellectuals" have anesthetized or deluded themselves with feel-good platitudes, I daresay that camaraderie in furtherance of policies that could permanently erode our liberties is hardly for the common good.

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November 20, 2008

Evangelicals -- A Drag on or Essential to the GOP?

By: David Limbaugh

A good friend of mine (let's call him Bob) is convinced that unless the GOP puts abortion "aside as its focal point, it simply cannot win and regain power." That's especially interesting in light of Kathleen Parker's latest column, which disses the evangelical wing of the GOP.

Bob's point is that "we've lost a majority of women over this issue as they have become one-issue voters." It's not only liberal women but also others who believe it's simply not the government's business.

Kathleen Parker broadens the point considerably beyond abortion: "The evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh." Since the 1980s or so, says Parker, the GOP "has become increasingly beholden to an element that used to be relegated to wooden crates on street corners. ... The GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows. In the process, the party has alienated its non-base constituents."

I'll resist the temptation to respond specifically to Kathleen's uncharitable indictment of us knuckle draggers because I like Kathleen personally and because I want to respond to her and Bob's overlapping contention that certain social conservatives are dragging the party down.

Bob's opinion is largely based on his personal conversations with women, and Kathleen writes, "If one were to eavesdrop on private conservations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that ... armband religion is killing the Republican Party." But do their anecdotal reports justify their conclusions?

2004 exit poll data reveal that President Bush got 55 percent of the male vote and 48 percent of the female vote, while 2008 data show that McCain got 48 percent of the male vote and 43 percent of the female vote. McCain's percentage of the male vote dropped more than his percentage of the female vote, so it's hard to see how alienated women made the difference.

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November 17, 2008

Toward the Tipping Point

By: David Limbaugh

In the aftermath of the 2008 Republican electoral bloodbath, many are discussing what direction the party should take to recapture its vitality and viability. Liberals -- as if they have the best interests of the GOP at heart -- and so-called elitist, Northeastern Republicans seem to agree the party should tack center. I disagree.

Traditional conservatism and its advocates invariably get bad raps. They're painted as uncompromising, uncompassionate extremists who won't adjust to the realities of the 21st century.

But those familiar with modern history understand that these intramural debates have been going on for decades. I remember my father complaining about Rockefeller Republicans in the early '60s, so the schism had to have begun much earlier than that.

From what I can gather, the David Brooks and David Frum wing of the conservative movement wants conservatism to grow, sort of like liberals want the Constitution to be a "living document." Big government -- at least, an active, energetic government -- is here to stay, and we better get on board. Our debate with liberals must be one of minor degree rather than kind. We should accept, rather than resist or attempt to roll back, the leviathan and instead address how best to direct it, lest we relegate ourselves to political irrelevance.

We traditionalists should acknowledge that in one sense, the Davids have a point. After all, it was no less a traditionalist than Mark Steyn, if I may categorize him as such, who recently lamented that "settled democratic societies rarely vote to 'go left.' Yet oddly enough that's where they've all gone."

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November 14, 2008

Sanctimonious Stone Throwers

By: David Limbaugh

God bless Sarah Palin, and shame on elitists from both sides of the aisle who have denigrated, demonized and dissed her. I don't care how many "smartest people in the room" types offer pseudo-sophisticated analyses to prove she was a drag on the GOP presidential ticket. They are all manifestly and embarrassingly wrong -- and woefully out of touch -- which is par for the course for elitists.

Speaking of elitists, it's time to address their contempt for rural and southern America, particularly their ongoing smear of the South (and, truth be told, rank-and-file conservative Republicans) as racist.

For all the accolades Barack Obama is receiving, he should acknowledge a bit of egg on his face for invoking race with his failed prediction that his opponents would play the race card. "They're going to try to ... make you scared of me," he said. "You know, 'He's not patriotic enough; he's got a funny name.' You know, 'He doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills."

Then there was Newsweek's poster boy for liberal smugness, Jonathan Alter, hypothecating a scenario in which Obama could lose because of racism. Alter said the following factors would have contributed:

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November 10, 2008

Liberal Censorship and Its Roots

By: David Limbaugh

The most unnerving aspects about the Democrats' sweeping victory Nov. 4 are their intolerance for dissent and their willingness to censor and otherwise suppress their opponents. Consider:

We keep hearing that Sarah Palin's criticism of Obama for "palling around with terrorists" increased death threats against him, which is bogus in the extreme but consistent with the inveterate liberal tactic of chilling conservative speech by saying it incites violence.

Ohio state employee Vanessa Niekamp said she was ordered to run a child-support check on Joe the Plumber, the man who asked Barack Obama an innocuous question about redistributing taxpayer income. Niekamp doesn't remember ever having checked into anyone else without having a legitimate reason to do so, such as discovering that someone recently came into money.

Democratic prosecutors in St. Louis threatened criminal prosecution against candidate Obama's critics. In Pennsylvania, lawyers for Obama wrote intimidating letters to TV and radio stations that aired unflattering ads documenting Obama's anti-gun record. The Obama campaign complained to the Department of Justice about the American Issues Project's ad tying Obama to William Ayers. Obama supporters flooded Chicago radio station WGN with harassing calls during its interviews of conservative writers investigating Obama.

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November 04, 2008

Sorry, but Obama Scares Me

By: David Limbaugh

The prospect of a Barack Obama presidency makes me very nervous.

Obama's entire campaign has been based on the need for radical, transformational change, which implies there is something very wrong with America.

It's hardly surprising, then, that he has painted the bleakest picture of America instead of acknowledging, as a starting point, that we are still the greatest nation in the world.

For the past eight years, Democrats have slandered America as an imperialistic country that always prefers force to diplomacy; that attacks nations without provocation to enrich itself and to project its power; that intentionally targets civilian lives; that encourages sadistic torture of enemy prisoners, as opposed to tough interrogation techniques to extract information to save the lives of its people; that eavesdrops on private conversations among its citizens rather than monitoring terrorist communications into its borders; and that abuses rather than goes out of its way to accommodate the savages in Guantanamo's prison. None of it is true.

For eight years, Democrats have poor-mouthed the mostly growing economy. They've lied that Bush's tax cuts for all income groups were only for the wealthy and that the cuts reduced revenues. They pretend to be deficit hawks, when Obama's new spending plans alone will make Bush look like Scrooge. They said Bush wanted to destroy Social Security, when he's the only one in the past 20 years who had the courage to try to reform it. All lies.

They've preached bipartisanship while exhibiting the nastiest partisanship in my lifetime, calling Bush "King George III," "Hitler," a "murderer," a "war criminal," a "reckless cowboy," a "moron" and a "Christian throwback." They've caricatured Bush as an unbending partisan who wouldn't reach across the aisle, in the face of his countless and mostly rebuffed bipartisan overtures and legislation. More disinformation.

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October 30, 2008

From Being Watchdogs to Needing Watchdogs

By: David Limbaugh

The mainstream media, who forgot Felix Frankfurter's admonition that "freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society," long ago abdicated their role as government watchdog and now require a watchdog themselves. Never has that been clearer than in the 2008 presidential election, during which they are covering up rather than covering Barack Obama's shady past and alliances, his knee-deep involvement in corrupt practices threatening the very core of our democratic system, and his many policy misrepresentations.

Consider some items the MSM would have explored if they were guardians of liberty instead of the Obama campaign.

--When Democrats insist every vote must count, do they also mean multiple votes from individuals and votes from dead and nonexistent people? If not, why aren't the MSM demanding answers about Obama's incestuous relationship with the criminal enterprise ACORN, whose serial crimes could alter the outcome of this election?

--How can the MSM allow ACORN's dissemblers to deflect the charge that they are seeking illegal votes with "these are registrations, not ballots," as if there is any purpose in procuring illegal registrations apart from maximizing illegal votes?

--The MSM preach that money in politics necessarily corrupts, so why do they ignore Obama's broken promise to accept public financing, his record-breaking campaign receipts, and the large number of untraceable contributions?

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October 27, 2008

Obama: Fundamental Change? Count on It

By: David Limbaugh

I am sincerely worried that if Obama wins, the checks and balances incorporated into our Constitution may not be enough to prevent a radical and irreversible diminution of our individual liberties because a confluence of factors has emerged to create a climate conducive to fundamental change.

These factors are: a shockingly unknown candidate, whose mysterious past and numerous shady alliances are deliberately left unexplored by a corrupt, supportive media; the candidate's charismatic qualities that inspire a cultish loyalty; his intellectual trappings that create a fascination and allure among the intellectual elite, including some hypnotized conservatives; a major financial crisis that exacerbates the people's fears and uncertainties; a largely manufactured cloud of negativity placed over America by the media and a grossly partisan Democratic Party that places its self-interest above the national interest; and an apparently discredited Republican Party and conservative movement that have been blamed for our actual and perceived problems.

All of these could lead to entrusting this man with unprecedented power, giving him a license to operate with minimum scrutiny and an opposition party effectively impotent to oppose his radical blueprint for America.

More than ever, perception is trumping reality. An unprincipled Democratic Party, aided by a morally decadent media, has demonized President Bush, the Republican Party and America itself with distortions and polarizing propaganda designed to dispirit and divide Americans on the bases of race, class and gender. Just look at the domestic and foreign policy picture they have painted the past eight years.

While we are having serious financial problems now, we had a strong economy for most of President Bush's two terms, but the media pushed the Democrats' critique that it was in perpetual recession. As for our real financial crisis, objective observers understand Democratic programs and policies primarily caused it, but Democrats have successfully blamed Republicans for it.

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October 20, 2008

OK, Let's Skip the Liberal Label

By: David Limbaugh

There's little doubt America is a center-right nation, which is why Barack Obama denies and conceals his liberalism and packages himself as a harbinger of hope and change.

Obama's policies represent change all right: change from almost everything our Founding Fathers considered sacred and vital to the preservation of individual liberty in America.

He also offers hope: hope for those who share his shame in what America has become, what it stands for, and what makes it unique in world history. Hope that an unenlightened America can be remade by this "transformational" man in an image pleasing to George Soros, the Hollywood elite, MoveOn.org, the Daily Kos and Michael Moore.

But if labels bother you, let's look at Obama's alliances and policies and let them speak for themselves.

If you are so intoxicated with "hope" that you believe Obama wasn't aware of and not in sync with the Rev. Wright's militantly racist and anti-American views or his black liberation theology, then it's probably too much to ask for you to be objective about his links to Bill Ayers and ACORN.

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October 16, 2008

Socialism! There, I've Said It

By: David Limbaugh

In certain unscripted moments, Barack Obama has given us a glimpse of his socialist inclinations, but I wonder what percentage would vote for him if they truly understood the extent of his radicalism.

Yet the financial crisis has created a climate of fear and uncertainty and unleashed an unprecedented tolerance for large-scale government intervention, which is playing perfectly into Obama's hands. People are blaming this largely Democratic-spawned mess on Republicans because Bush is still president.

Maybe I'm being too much of an alarmist, but I'm worried for the first time in my life that the election of a presidential candidate could lead to a fundamental change in our system of government. Just listen to the comments of post-debate focus group members expressing a knowing willingness to accept Obama's socialism, such is their angst at the subprime mortgage mess.

Already some 38 percent of Americans do not pay income taxes, and Barack Obama wants to increase that percentage dramatically. How ironic that he and other Democrats pretend to be targeting their message to "working-class" people when many of their constituents aren't working. But such is class warfare that the upper-middle class and wealthy are demonized as not earning an honest living.

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October 13, 2008

Still Time for Voters To Wake Up

By: David Limbaugh

Strapped to a polygraph on national TV, I would assert quite confidently that I would strongly condemn thuggish and criminal tactics by a candidate I supported. The ends do not justify the means for me and most other conservatives I know. I wish I believed the same were true for liberals, far too many of whom are deliberately turning their backs on the corruption defining Obama's campaign.

It would be bad enough if the Stalinesque stench engulfing the messiah's campaign were limited merely to its efforts to elect him. But what we fear is that these campaign tactics are of a piece with his policy agenda and his vision for America.

Sincerely intending no melodrama here, it's hard not to conclude that Obama aims to change America in fundamental ways, the common denominator of which would be to diminish individual liberties, the most distinguishing feature of the unique American system. Sadly, most Obama supporters have no clue what Obama is ultimately about or how his innocuous-sounding ideas could permanently destroy our freedoms.

It's inconceivable that even a low-level Republican candidate could have Obama's associations and employ his campaign tactics without being driven from the race. And yet we've got a man running for the highest office in the land surrounded with anti-American allies and covert election burglars, all protected by an unprecedented mainstream-media cover-up.

Democrats tell us they place the highest possible value on the integrity of the election process, yet their uniform response to ACORN's systematic assault on the voter registration process is unmitigated indifference and denial.

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October 09, 2008

The Stealth Candidate

By: David Limbaugh

Democrats assume Republicans are raising Obama's many questionable relationships in a desperation effort to salvage the election. You might think this is splitting hairs, but I believe the reason is that these relationships scare the daylights out of us.

Conservatives were very much opposed to Bill Clinton for myriad reasons, but with decades in elective office in Arkansas, at least he wasn't a stealth candidate. Though rumors and mysteries abounded, Clinton was hardly a blank slate who emerged out of nowhere.

Obama is different. He burst onto the political scene and has risen with such alacrity that even many of his supporters don't have a clue what he's about or where he would take America.

It's no wonder the conspiracy types are whispering that he's the Manchurian candidate. It's not as if he's embracing his past; it's more as if he's concealing it, and for good reason. People have a right to know just how radical this man is because America's destiny is in the balance.

I've always been extremely confident that no matter which party is in power, it can only do so much damage in four years because of the ingenious safeguards our Constitution contains to preserve the essential structure of government that maximizes individual liberty. But I admit I'm more concerned today.

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October 06, 2008

Don't Go Wobbly; Follow Sarah

By: David Limbaugh

There are many reasons that Sarah Palin is energizing the conservative base. It's not just her authenticity, freshness, noble defense of traditional values, and vivaciousness. This lady is finally giving red-state conservatives a voice, and she's taking it to the other side without apologies.

Democrats are crying foul because she's confronting Barack Obama for his worrisome attitudes about America and his way-more-than-casual association with unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. Some squeamish conservatives are counseling that we ignore this issue either because it is unpleasant and unfair or that it's a distraction from the "substantive" issues.

Nonsense. This issue is neither unfair nor a diversion. It is imperative that we learn the extent of Obama's intimacy with this man. It's vital that we examine whether this relationship is part of a pattern of Barack Obama associating himself with people and causes that are hostile to the foundational principles of this nation.

We must reject the Democrats' convenient talking point that McCain and Palin can't walk and chew gum at the same time. That if they focus on Ayers, they can't explore Wright, Rezko, Raines, ACORN, the Democrats' primary culpability for the financial crisis, the evils of socialized medicine, the danger to America in Obama's retreat-and-defeat foreign policy, or his hostility to the free market.

Indeed, we must applaud Sarah Palin for standing up to her opponents and returning hostile fire. We're ready for her to lead the charge, not only on Obama's sordid relationships but also in articulating the monumental differences between the liberal and conservative approaches to governance.

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October 02, 2008

Election-Altering Media Bias

By: David Limbaugh

It would be foolish of me to deny the obvious truth in a recent e-mail message I received pointing out how different the presidential polls would be today if the mainstream media were not so liberal.

Quit complaining, you say; there's an alternative media led by your brother, you whiner. Quit calling me a whiner, especially about the current plight of Republicans. It's my party, and I'll whine if I want to.

Unlike the MSM, the alternative media are honest that they are in the opinion business and freely admit their ideological leanings. They don't pretend to exemplify objective journalism. But unlike the MSM, their ethical commitment to truth is not routinely compromised by their mind-altering bias, as with that disgraceful episode known as Rathergate.

The MSM are a case study in psychological anomalies. They don't just deny their biases to us; they deny them to themselves, all while conspiring to affect the outcome of the election.

How do you reconcile their sincere self-denial of bias with their simultaneous demonstrations of bias? An epidemic of liberal insanity, with one side of the liberal brain forgetting to inform the other of what it's up to?

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September 29, 2008

Pinning the Tail on the Donkey

By: David Limbaugh

I believe John McCain won the foreign policy debate hands down, but he was unimpressive on economic issues, which, in fairness, were not supposed to be the subject of the first debate. But he can redeem himself in the next debate. Thankfully, Obama is exceedingly vulnerable here, even more so than on foreign policy, which is a mouthful.

McCain must attack Obama's class-warfare assertion that every economic problem we face, including, preposterously, the financial crisis, is a result of the Bush tax cuts. If McCain's going to be a supply-sider, he must begin talking like one. He must also steer far away from the silly populist line that the free market is somehow to blame for the crisis. Leave such blasphemy to the Obama Democrats.

But McCain's first order of business must be to address the financial crisis head-on -- instead of in generalities, as both he and Obama did in round one.

McCain should not consider this a problem but a softball served up by recent history and the comparative behavior of the two political parties and the two presidential candidates that he must knock out of the park. If McCain is willing to hit Obama in the gut with the full truth about the genesis of the crisis, he could emerge from the next debate as the clear favorite.

McCain's opportunity here is even richer when you consider that on this matter, despite his scant political record, Obama has very dirty hands. He cannot be allowed to pretend to have been a bystander when it's incontrovertible that the policies leading to this crisis were vintage Obama. The people who caused it are Obama's political allies and close friends.

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September 25, 2008

Hiding the Ball

By: David Limbaugh

Why does Barack Obama play hide the ball with his personal resume, concealing his extreme leftist ideology and denying his damning associations? Question kind of answers itself, wouldn't you say? Be concerned, very concerned.

Obama hides his liberalism for the same reason every other liberal presidential candidate has: The electorate tilts center-right. This isn't just my gut speaking or some self-serving theory I'm propounding.

The Battleground poll -- a well-respected bipartisan affair conducted by the Terrance Group, a Republican polling organization -- and Lake Research Partners, a Democratic organization, tells us 60 percent of Americans identify themselves as conservatives.

But the specifics are even more telling. Twenty percent consider themselves very conservative, 40 percent somewhat conservative, 2 percent moderate, 27 percent liberal, 9 percent very liberal, and 3 percent don't know or didn't answer.

So John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 didn't deny they were the most liberal senators because liberalism has become a dirty word through a clever conservative propaganda campaign. They denied it because liberalism is a minority position in reality, albeit an extraordinarily effective vocal minority.

Obama will only come clean about his liberalism when he thinks he is in safe territory, as he did at the San Francisco fundraiser where he trashed small-town Americans, thinking his words wouldn't reach those he was belittling. Nor is Obama upfront about the liberal nature of his policy proposals, choosing instead to mask their liberalism and even disguise them as conservative.

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September 22, 2008

The Hair of the Dog

By: David Limbaugh

The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it," said Barney Frank, which illustrates why conservatives often say liberals have a socialist bent.

Free market conservatives understand that many problems have been caused by government's officious intermeddling in the private sector. The subprime mortgage crisis is no exception.

History has shown that liberal prescriptions don't work, but when they fail, liberals invariably not only deny responsibility for their do-gooder manipulation but also insist on even more government intrusion. Think of it as "the hair of the dog" remedy on steroids.

For example, many of our health care problems can be traced to increased government control and the reduction of market forces. Yet the liberal solution is full-blown nationalized health care. Never mind that it doesn't work anywhere in the world and always leads to waiting lines and inferior health care. Never mind that the United States has the best health care in the history of the world, notwithstanding admittedly serious problems.

Another example is Social Security. Instead of creating a trust fund segregated from general revenues, congressional liberals with an insatiable appetite for spending raided Social Security revenues from day one. The system has been one big Ponzi scheme funded by IOUs from one arm of government to another. Bill Clinton and Al Gore had the audacity to propose a "lockbox" to secure Social Security, when their ideological predecessors happily breached their promise for the original lockbox.

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September 18, 2008

Scapegoating Tax Cuts

By: David Limbaugh

One has to wonder just how much more Democrats will milk class-warfare politics before people wake up to their deception.

No matter what economic problems we face, Democrats always find a way to blame them on the "rich" and the Bush tax cuts. Why? Because it rallies their base and -- they hope -- will alienate enough others against evil Bush Republicans to give Democrats a prohibitive advantage on domestic issues.

Joe Biden even blamed the current mortgage crisis on the Bush tax cuts. He said: "We should try to correct the problems that caused this ... (which are) the profligate tax cuts to the very, very wealthy that John (McCain) wants to continue."

Never mind that low- and middle-income earners received greater tax rate reductions than the highest-income earners; that doesn't fit within the Democrats' class-envy template. Forget the reckless legislation forcing financial institutions to lend money to people who probably couldn't pay it back -- to satisfy the liberals' obsession with looking compassionate and pandering to minorities. Forget that Obama was the second-highest recipient of campaign cash from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (according to the Center for Responsive Politics), cash aimed at keeping congressional regulators off their backs. Forget that big fat cat Democrats served in executive positions at these quasi-governmental entities and milked them at taxpayers' expense. Forget that Obama chose one of those fat cats, Jim Johnson, to serve on his vice presidential search committee.

Despite the Democrats' destructive practice of blaming every economic woe -- from Enron to rising oil prices -- on the Bush tax cuts, the tax cuts had nothing to do with those problems, including the mortgage crisis.

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September 15, 2008

On Theocracy and Double Standards

By: David Limbaugh

In the next few weeks, we're going to hear a lot of hot air from Joe Biden as he tries to recapture the spotlight from Sarah Palin. One thing I doubt we'll hear from him is that rare sensible gem he uttered a few years ago about Democrats and people of faith. But he would do well to remember his fleeting words.

Biden said: "We have too many elites in our party who look down their nose on people of faith. ... That's the big problem with my party."

You can say that again, Joe. But next time, you ought to try listening to your own words instead of just talking to hear your head rattle.

If Biden was sincere, why won't he take issue with liberals in the media and elsewhere who routinely demonstrate their contempt for Christians?

Whether it's Whoopi Goldberg hyperventilating about the separation of church and state, Charlie Gibson distorting Sarah Palin's views on the intersection of faith and governance, or Obama himself disparaging small-town Christians for their unashamed reliance on the Bible, liberals just don't get it. For them to occasionally pretend they do just adds insult to injury.

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September 08, 2008

Palin's a Tough, Smart Conservative Woman: Deal With It!

By: David Limbaugh

Liberals excel in blinding themselves to their own biases and hypocrisy and blaming conservatives for their own sins, all of which they are showcasing in their frantic reaction to the Sarah Palin nomination.

Not only are they trying to destroy Palin. They are straight-facedly denying it and accusing Republicans of manufacturing this charge to exhibit phony sympathy for women.

Conservatives, after all, couldn't possibly be supportive of female Palin based on merit; it's just a political ploy to purloin Hillary voters. Liberal captives of identity politics just can't comprehend that neither gender nor race matters to conservatives. It's all about the candidate's political philosophy, approach to governance and qualifications to serve -- not those artificial constructs that liberals have exploited through the years.

Don't get me wrong. Palin's beauty and tough-as-nails femininity are refreshing icing on a delicious cake for conservatives, but if she were not demonstrably conservative, they'd be depressed -- not energized.

But you'll never convince the liberal press, which sees everything through the lens of gender and race consciousness and indiscriminately projects that propensity onto conservatives.

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September 02, 2008

Who's Being Hypocritical?

By: David Limbaugh

Liberals are outraged at the supposed hypocrisy of Sarah Palin (and conservatives) for supporting abstinence-only education and family values generally in light of revelations concerning the pregnancy of her teenage daughter. It's only fair, then, that they should be called upon to explain their own hypocrisy in the compassion, privacy, gender and race departments.

Liberals are sick and tired of conservatives lecturing them about family values. Yet it is liberals who do most of the moralizing and sermonizing, seeming to derive their entire sense of superior self-worth in favorably comparing themselves with heartless, bigoted conservatives.

Liberals claim a monopoly on compassion for the poor, minorities, women and homosexuals. Yet when they get the chance to score political points, they abandon their allegiance to these groups as quickly as Barack Obama threw the Rev. Jeremiah Wright under the bus. Just ask Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice or Michael Steele.

Liberals are fed up with conservatives for trying to regulate their "private" behavior. Yet it is they who want to regulate every minute aspect of our lives, from smoking to eating to weapons to energy consumption to confiscatory taxation to health care to retirement security.

Liberals insist that what a public official does in his private life is irrelevant to his public fitness or conduct. Yet they're now telling us that the private conduct even of a relative of a conservative candidate is fair game.

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August 26, 2008

Party Unity, My, er, Eye

By: David Limbaugh

In one sense, it's incomprehensible that Barack Obama would forgo an opportunity to reunite his party by picking Hillary Clinton as his running mate. But in his place, wouldn't you be willing to sacrifice a little if it guaranteed you'd never have to view and smell Bill Clinton's sock feet propped up on the Oval Office desk?

But whatever will this messianic emissary of change do to unite his party? That is a legitimate question, is it not, since unity, harmony, love and bliss have been Obama's main campaign themes since his entry onto the presidential campaign stage?

How, inquiring minds wonder, can Obama join us all together -- bitter clingers and all -- in one big communal bond of sentimental good will if he can't even inspire unity in his own party?

That's unfair, you say? It's not his fault? It's those grudge-holding Clintons and their die-hard supporters who won't bury the hatchet?

Oh? I thought it was George W. Bush's fault that the countries of Old Europe wouldn't support the American efforts against Iraq. I thought it was Dubya's fault -- that evil, unilateralist, go-it-alone cowboy -- that the United Nations wouldn't do the right thing and enforce its own resolutions that Saddam Hussein had violated at will.

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August 18, 2008

Pro-Choice McCain Veep Equals Political Suicide

By: David Limbaugh

I hate to rain on John McCain's parade right after he trounced Barack Obama at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church forum, for which I heartily applaud him, but McCain's trial balloon consideration of a pro-choice running mate demands a response.

The prospect of an Obama presidency is so horrifying that many conservatives have temporarily put aside their misgivings about McCain to focus on defeating Obama.

They hold their noses on McCain's immigration record, his campaign finance reform zealotry and his newfound acquiescence to the propaganda narrative of environmental extremists. But they are profoundly appreciative of his tougher stance against tax increases and mindful of his undeniable superiority over Obama on foreign policy and national defense. Recent world events, including Russia's naked aggression against Georgia, magnify this already-glaring contrast.

But while national defense necessarily occupies the front burner, McCain would make a fatal mistake to assume that social issues, especially abortion, are ever off an equally blazing front burner for an inestimable number of social conservatives, the Republicans' most reliable voting bloc over the past three decades.

Last Wednesday, McCain "floated the prospect" of picking a pro-choice running mate and said that former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge would be an acceptable -- and possible -- selection.

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August 14, 2008

Relentless Race Narrative

By: David Limbaugh

Sadly, there isn't the slightest chance liberals will forgo the race narrative in this presidential race because painting the other side as racist is essential to their need to feel morally superior.

They can't accept Obama's candidacy as evidence of progress toward racial equality. They can't permit the advancement of colorblindness because they sense it is detrimental both to their political interests and their self-esteem. After all, if liberals lost their self-anointment as moral paragons, they'd have nothing left because their policy agenda has the track record of an Edsel, with the exception that it won't ever be taken off the market.

A mainstream media favorite, MSNBC's Howard Fineman, in a piece criticizing McCain for allegedly painting Barack Obama as less American and patriotic than McCain, couldn't help but throw in a pointed reference to race.

In describing the attendees at a Pennsylvania event for McCain that McCain surrogate Joe Lieberman headlined, Fineman wrote: "The crowd comprised a slice of America that McCain needs if he intends to win Pennsylvania and the election. And that slice is: white (I did not spot a single African American in the crowd), rural, 'exurban,' and mostly Protestant, with local roots stretching back centuries."

See who always brings up this subject? What conservative would spend his time obsessing on skin color to the point of surveying the crowd for evidence of racial diversity? And what conservative would refer to American Caucasians as a "slice" of America, as if whites were some monolithic voting bloc?

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August 11, 2008

The 'Making Abortion Rare' Hoax

By: David Limbaugh

ABC reports that the group "Democrats for Life," whose title gives new meaning to "oxymoronic," decided last week not to press the Democratic Party to restore a life-tolerant "conscience clause" to its party platform. Isn't it time the party quit this charade that it wants to make abortion "rare"?

The "conscience clause," which appeared in the 1996 and 2000 platforms, at least paid lip service to tempering the platform's express support of a woman's "right to choose," stating: The "Democratic Party is a party of inclusion. We respect the individual conscience of each American on this difficult issue, and we welcome all our members to participate at every level of our party."

But the party ended all pretense of inclusion in 2004 by replacing the "conscience clause" with a statement that Democrats "stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine" abortion rights. And despite the obviously halfhearted efforts of Democrats for Life, the clause will also be absent from the 2008 platform.

As Democrats for Life's Director Kristen Day asked during the 2004 platform debate: "So what are they saying, that because we want to protect the rights of the unborn, our own party says we're automatically Republicans? This has to be one reason that our party is having trouble appealing to many people in churches."

Amen, Kristen. But perhaps instead you ought to be asking yourself why you are still a Democrat and why you gave up in 2008 with barely a whimper. Just how committed can you and your organization possibly be to protecting the lives of the unborn when you shamelessly roll over on the issue that presumably matters the most to you?

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August 07, 2008

It's Obama's Viability, Not McCain's, That Should Surprise Us

By: David Limbaugh

The press is shocked that Barack Obama has "yet to close the sale," given the "political logic" that favors Democrats in this election. They must not have been paying attention during the final segment of the primary season, when Hillary Clinton consistently thrashed the hollow superstar.

That said, Obama's handlers betray not the slightest concern because they believe that despite the statistical tie in the polls, Obama's supporters are much more intense than McCain supporters. "That is going to mean more favorable turnout patterns; it is going to help us register voters; it is going to help us organizationally," said Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe.

Indeed, political analysts have been speculating for months now that Obama could transform presidential politics by energizing a whole new class of voters.

If that's true, McCain has his work cut out for him because the voters Obama is inspiring seem more enamored with his image than who he really is and what he stands for. Being largely apolitical and emotionally driven, they won't be as receptive to the ever-unfolding, troubling revelations about Obama.

While the media are stunned that Obama is not resonating in line with their expectations, others wonder how he can resonate at all, given his McGovernesque, leftist agenda and his damning associations with America-hating preachers (Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger), terrorists and radicals (William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn) and a mentor (Frank Davis) who was a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA and who, according to Investor's Business Daily, "fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his 'subversive,' 'un-American activities.'"

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August 04, 2008

Liberal Press Circles Wagons Around Obama

By: David Limbaugh

The liberal media are unhinged over John McCain's recent ad campaign against Barack Obama, which erased Obama's 9-point lead in the polls and tied the race. How dare McCain challenge their anointed one?

Obama is not the only one convinced he is "the one we've been waiting for." The media are also annoyed they have to endure this irritating uprising from McCain, who is officiously intermeddling with the inexorable flow of history.

Sunday show hosts, editorial pages, and both print and TV news stories this past weekend were pregnant with outrage over McCain's "negative" campaigning -- "negative" being defined as anything, truthful or not, that places Obama in a less favorable light than they require.

Their attitude toward Obama is not unlike their approach to the global warming issue: They accept the environmentalists' edict that man-made, apocalyptic warming is occurring, and no one is allowed to dissent.

So if McCain exposes Obama's policy inconsistencies, questions his character, highlights his presumptuousness, inexperience or superficiality, lampoons the media's crush on him, criticizes his injection of race into the campaign, or responds to Obama's attacks, the media yell "foul."

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July 29, 2008

Obama's Ongoing Foreign Policy Implosion

By: David Limbaugh

There is one unexpected gift that John McCain's presumptive nomination brings to the GOP. McCain was certainly not my choice, but if any other Republican candidate were running, it's unlikely we'd be seeing as much emphasis in the campaign on foreign policy, and Obama's unfolding incompetence in this area might have escaped essential scrutiny.

Democrats were no doubt looking to capitalize on the Iraq issue before it became apparent that the success of the surge had exceeded all but our most optimistic expectations. Because McCain is perceived as one of the most ardent proponents of the surge and Obama fiercely opposed it, Obama finds himself caught in a trap over the entire issue.

Obama's arguments, echoing the perennial anti-Iraq-war line Democrats have been peddling for years now, that we shouldn't have attacked Iraq in the first place are falling flat, given the radical reduction in violence levels the surge has produced. He is reduced to him-hawing, sputtering, spinning and misrepresenting his unequivocal opposition, which he was earlier showcasing -- during the Democratic primary season -- to contrast himself with chief rival Hillary Clinton.

In the process, Obama's worst attributes are coming to the fore: his pride and arrogance, which paralyze him from admitting any real weaknesses, such as his egregious foreign policy judgments, and his astounding shortcomings as a would-be commander in chief, starting with a profound naivete, inexperience and either ignorance or fundamental dishonesty.

Although liberals generally confer a presumption of sophistication and erudition on fellow left-wingers, they have to be shaking their heads in disbelief, wondering just what their nomination contest has wrought. They can't help but realize that Obama is proving himself daily to be woefully unprepared for the presidency.

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July 24, 2008

The New York Times and Liberal Fairness

By: David Limbaugh

I don't know which troubles me more: the liberal media's fawning over Barack Obama or the great number of people who are buying into his mystique so uncritically. But what bothers me more than either of these is the arrogance of the liberal press, which sadly is typical of so many liberals.

The media's deification of Obama is largely responsible for the perception that Obama is superhuman. Their coverage of his European tour -- the most breathtakingly presumptuous junket we've witnessed in American politics in ages -- is but the latest example.

How anyone can fall for the media's Obama rock star charade, given his repeated demonstrations of unfitness for the presidency, is a subject better suited for psychoanalysts.

But we can chalk up the media's irrational exuberance to their eagerness to have someone of like mind -- someone sufficiently socialistic and appeasement-oriented -- back in the Oval Office. With their insane aversion for President Bush and their craving for undefined change, it's hardly surprising they're blind to Obama's increasingly obvious flaws.

What's more difficult to stomach is their reckless obliviousness to their own close-mindedness, intolerance, unreasonableness and conceit -- and their mistaken projection of these attributes onto their conservative opponents.

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July 22, 2008

Obama: Milking His Failures

By: David Limbaugh

Isn't it enormously ironic that Barack Obama now finds himself the unintended beneficiary of the Iraq surge that he so vocally -- and wrongly -- opposed?

It seems that Obama's untimely calls for a withdrawal timetable have lingered long enough to have some merit in the eyes of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Al-Maliki told Der Spiegel, a German magazine, that U.S. troops should withdraw from Iraq "as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

Assuming al-Maliki said it, and there has been some dispute, it doesn't make Obama right -- even now. But it's hard to imagine al-Maliki would be saying anything helpful to Obama's campaign today if the United States had followed Obama's disgraceful surrender policy instead of implementing the surge in 2007 -- over his strenuous objections.

Obama Democrats have been adamantly opposed to our intervention in Iraq from the beginning, including when they voted for it for political expediency and then later claimed they were duped into it.

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July 17, 2008

The Liberal Establishment's Race Race

By: David Limbaugh

One would have hoped that Barack Obama's presumptive capturing of the Democratic presidential nomination would have dampened the mainstream media's obsession with race, but instead, they've figured out a way to obsess even further about it since Obama's putative victory.

You almost can't read election headlines in a major newspaper without some reference to race issues. Earlier this week, Google News featured three back-to-back stories in its "Elections" section highlighting race:

"McCain looks to make gains among black voters," "Race, Foreign-Policy Plant Doubts for Obama" and "Poll Finds Obama Isn't Closing Divide on Race."

The last one is a New York Times article analyzing results from the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. It proves the Times just can't let race go, whether it's because of the liberal guilt of its reporters and editors or because they want to keep the racial pot stirred for purposes of newspaper sales or because they deem racial polarization advantageous to Obama.

The story's lead paragraph reads: "Americans are sharply divided by race heading into the first election in which an African-American will be a major-party presidential nominee, with blacks and whites holding vastly different views of Senator Barack Obama, the state of race relations and how black Americans are treated by society, according to the ... poll."

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July 14, 2008

Tony Snow

By: David Limbaugh

I can't pinpoint the precise date I met Tony Snow, but I remember it was over the telephone. We talked about one of his passions: radio. And we became fast friends. From that point on, we talked every few months, until about three or four months ago when I could only get his voice mail.

I knew something was up because he was always good about returning calls. Still, I probably would have chalked it up to his busy schedule, except that I read news reports that he was forced to cancel a number of speeches because of illness.

I remember e-mailing a few mutual friends: Lucianne Goldberg and Kathryn Lopez. Both shared similar concerns, but we were all cautiously relieved when follow-up news stories reported Tony was OK.

I had no idea Tony had taken a turn for the worse, so the news of his death Saturday completely shocked me. The last time I talked to Tony about his disease, he was entirely upbeat and optimistic.

In retrospect, I have to wonder whether he wasn't sparing some of his friends the extent of his illness because he never wanted to dwell on himself and certainly was never seeking sympathy.

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July 10, 2008

Ashamed of America?

By: David Limbaugh

Some say Obama's critics have taken their eye off the ball in focusing on his associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, thus giving his far-left policies a pass. But that's a false choice.

Those criticisms would have more validity but for the fact that Obama's associations and his approach to policy are inextricably intertwined, flowing from a particular -- and consistent -- mindset.

It's no accident that Obama sat for 20 years and had his children baptized in a church whose pastor revved up his congregation by denouncing America with expletives, that he had a working relationship with a professor who expressed pride in his past anti-American terrorism, or even that his wife admitted a first-time pride in the United States with the advent of her husband's electoral success.

Repeated references to Obama's close connections with these people and others are not drive-by attacks designed to incriminate Obama merely by association. Their purpose is to shine a spotlight on Obama to help determine whether he embraces or is sympathetic to the same negative views about America as his soul mates.

When you couple Obama's associations with his many statements and policies, a disturbing picture emerges, suggesting Obama might lack a robust pride in America -- at least in what he considers to be its present state. This point was driven home again this week, as Obama expressed "embarrassment" that American children can't speak foreign languages while European children can speak English.

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July 07, 2008

Behind Enemy Lines

By: David Limbaugh

While everyone is focusing on Barack Obama's shifting positions on issues such as campaign finance, NAFTA, telecom immunity and Iraq, we're missing his incursion into enemy territory to capture those reviled, though politically coveted values voters.

His recent proposal to adopt a modified version of President Bush's faith-based initiative is just another piece of his strategic plan to seduce evangelical voters to his cause.

Obama is aiming for a threefer: wooing values voters, reconciling with small-town Americans, and neutralizing the taint of Jeremiah Wright and turning the religious issue into a net plus for his campaign. Hey, no one says this guy is politically naive.

You see, most liberals aren't really concerned about the intermixture of church and state unless it involves the Christian church, and only then if it involves the promotion of biblically based ideas and values. They have no problem with the government's endorsement of the values of other religions, New Age, or secular humanism. Even the state's or politicians' endorsement of nominally Christian values don't bother them, as long as they are watered down enough to detach them from any legitimate connection to Bible-centered Christianity and reframed to embrace the secular liberal worldview.

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July 03, 2008

Obama Protesteth Too Much

By: David Limbaugh

Sen. Barack Obama spoke on the subject of patriotism this past week in an effort to undo some of the damage he has already inflicted on his own image -- through his associations, his statements and policy positions -- and to obscure his liberalism.

Liberals rightly feel defensive about their patriotism because they always seem to find themselves blaming the United States for this or that, exhorting us to be more like the "enlightened" nations of Europe or forever shouting that we are a "laughing stock" in the eyes of other nations.

It was not a conservative who wrote in an editorial this week: "Tuck the soaring speeches in a drawer for another time. This year, America doesn't deserve to celebrate its birthday. This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement. For we have sinned."

It was Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Chris Satullo, who, like so many liberals, is angry at America because he sees it as standing for torturing prisoners, imprisoning enemy combatants without hearings, rendition and other denials of human rights. According to Satullo, America isn't safer because our alleged abuses have "spawned new enemies by the thousands, made the jihadist rants ring true to so many ears. So put out no flags. Sing no patriotic hymns. We deserve no Fourth this year."

Sorry, but you just don't hear much of this type of rhetoric from conservatives. And Obama and the entire Democratic establishment know it.

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June 30, 2008

Obama's Leftist Armies

By: David Limbaugh

Be afraid; be very afraid. If you think Barack Obama is arrogant and leftist, you ought to see those he will have to cater to if elected -- and, according to them, even to get elected in the first place.

These leftist "netroots" are none too pleased with Obama's feint to the center the past few weeks, his "capitulation" on retroactive immunity for telecoms for cooperating with the government to monitor terrorist communications, his alleged disagreement with the Supreme Court for invalidating the death penalty for child rapists, and his flip-flop on the D.C. handgun case.

They are abuzz about the messiah's apparent abandonment of their orthodoxy. Interestingly, though, not many of the complainers really believe Obama has left them. Like Obama's longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, they realize Obama is quite willing to mask his inner self to get elected. But many are disgusted that he's even playing the game.

One blogger at The Huffington Post writes: "Sen. Barack Obama is risking his brand as a political reformer, according to reports today in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. In recent weeks, he has moderated or changed positions on a number of politically-charged issues, leading to criticism from demoralized Democratic activists."

Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, added, "I've been struck by the speed and decisiveness of his move to the center."

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June 26, 2008

Evolving Standards of Indecency

By: David Limbaugh

The Supreme Court's barring of the death penalty for child rapists in Kennedy v. Louisiana underscores the hazards in the court's abandonment of moral absolutes in favor of "evolving standards of decency" and the court's unbridled arrogance in substituting its subjective judgment for the legislatively enacted will of the people.

In Kennedy, the court reversed the decision of the Louisiana Supreme Court to uphold the capital punishment of a convicted child rapist, holding that the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment clause prohibits executing such offenders "where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim's death."

A United States Supreme Court with a majority of Constitution-respecting justices would have evaluated the Louisiana statute in light of the originally understood meaning of the cruel and unusual punishment clause.

Instead, today's sometimes Obama-inclined liberal activist majority subordinated to the lowest rung the clause's original meaning in favor of "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."

And how does the majority identify that new, enlightened standard applicable to child rape cases not resulting or intended to result in death?

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June 23, 2008

It's Only About Winning

By: David Limbaugh

The Washington Post reports that Sen. Barack Obama is aggressively trying to reintroduce himself to voters, echoing the spin of Obama's advisers that not everyone knows him yet. In reality, Obama's major campaign challenge will not be to reveal, but to conceal his true identity.

Obama is not trying to introduce himself to unreached voters, but is engaged in damage control with many he's already reached -- and insulted and disillusioned.

As long as he was soaring above the fray with the lofty rhetoric of hope, change and unity, Obama could masquerade as a quasi-messiah figure. But once forced into the nitty-gritty of contested issues and debates, his false visage began to crack. Those cracks expanded into campaign-threatening fissures when voters learned about Obama's sordid associations and left-wing elitist snobbery toward small-town America.

The Post says that in his reintroduction, Obama has "offered a clear road map for the kind of candidate he is likely to become...: an ambitious gamer of the electoral map, a ruthless fundraiser and a scrupulous manager of his own biography in the face of persistent concerns about how he is perceived."

What the Post left out is that Obama has also shown himself to be an unscrupulous master of the politics of calculation and expedience. Whether on public finance, NAFTA, Iran, Iraq, Jerusalem, special interests, Cuba, illegal immigration or the decriminalization of marijuana, Obama has demonstrated a propensity for flip-flopping that could embarrass the grandmaster himself, Sen. John Kerry.

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June 19, 2008

Ravi Zacharias: 'Beyond Opinion,' Part 2

By: David Limbaugh

In my most recent column, I introduced you to "Beyond Opinion," a Christian apologetics book, edited by Ravi Zacharias, that offers suggestions on how to approach the skeptic, depending on the skeptic's background or reasons for doubt or non-belief. Before leaving the subject, let me give you a stronger flavor of this interesting apologetics method and this fascinating book.

Ravi tells us an effective apologetic "pays very close attention not just to the question but to the questioner. That, in turn, leads to the relevance of the answer." He cites Jesus' walk on the Emmaus road as an instructive example.

The disciples find themselves walking with the risen Lord, wholly oblivious to his identity and telling him -- with unmatched irony -- that he must be the only one in the world unaware of what had happened in the past few days (Jesus' death and resurrection), when, in fact, he was the only one who fully comprehended it and its significance.

Instead of just dramatically proclaiming, "It is I," Jesus "explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." Why did he take that approach? It's not that he hadn't proclaimed his identity at other times, e.g., John 4:26. Rather, "Jesus did what was needed in this moment: he pointed out to these two disciples a vast context of fifteen hundred years to show why the event on Calvary had to take place."

Among other things, he opened their eyes to understand why their presuppositions clouded their vision of who he was. They were expecting the Messiah to bring political deliverance, crushing their Roman oppressors. Instead, they crucified him. But he showed them he had come to offer a different kind of deliverance, which only his sacrificial death could achieve. As an apologist, it's best if you -- like Jesus -- approach people mindful of their circumstances and their possible presuppositions.

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June 16, 2008

Ravi Zacharias: 'Beyond Opinion'

By: David Limbaugh

As a former skeptic, I have a particular interest in Christian apologetics: the defense of the Christian faith. I've read and recommended many excellent books on the subject but want to call your special attention to one I've most recently read because of the uniqueness of its approach and content.

"Beyond Opinion: Living the Faith We Defend" is a compilation of essays by renowned Christian apologists compiled and edited by my friend and Christian philosopher and apologist, Ravi Zacharias, that together "suggest a new vision for Christian apologetics in this century."

I love apologetics because it helped me overcome certain intellectual hurdles that I believed, rightly or wrongly, were obstructing my faith. As I delved into the subject, I was immensely gratified to learn that most of my doubts and questions had been asked and answered by biblical scholars who embraced, rather than dismissed, such challenges.

If, for example, you can't reconcile the notion that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God could permit evil and suffering in the world, you might be surprised to discover that your concerns are hardly new. Such questions have troubled people for millennia. Brilliant and scholarly works exist addressing such questions, as well as seemingly problematic scriptural passages.

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June 09, 2008

McCain's Potentially Fatal 'Exit, Stage Right'

By: David Limbaugh

Sen. McCain could be making a fatal strategic blunder in thinking he can cobble together a winning coalition in November via the unorthodox route (for a Republican) of courting moderates and jilting the conservative base, including Christian conservatives.

It's possible that McCain will win in November, but if that happens, it will more likely be a result of Obama beating himself -- assuming Obama's campaign doesn't disintegrate before he formally secures the nomination.

McCain must begin with the bad news that his historic appeal to centrist voters is in jeopardy in two major ways. The first concerns Obama's natural fit with these voters. His mythical narrative that he can unify Americans and usher in an era of "hope" will be irresistible to many who are hungrier for kumbaya than any particular policy agenda.

Second, McCain's favorable image among centrists could disappear as quickly as the mainstream media withdraws its opportunistic love for him -- a process that has already begun. Their affinity for McCain was purely a function of his being a thorn in the side to President Bush, Republicans and conservative causes. But now that he is the GOP presidential candidate, he represents the evil Republican Party, which must be destroyed at all costs.

If this weren't enough, he is running -- how dare he? -- against their chosen messiah, Barack Obama. If they turned on Hillary Clinton over it, McCain is way beyond crisp toast. This heretical challenge to the savior from a Republican will not be tolerated.

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June 05, 2008

The Arrogance of Obama's Leftist Supporters

By: David Limbaugh

It's interesting that the main people pushing Obama in the name of unity and civility are the same ones brutally trashing Hillary (and Bill) Clinton. They seem to have no sense of their own hypocrisy in defending the Clintons yesterday for far greater misconduct than that for which they are mercilessly excoriating them today in their editorials and so-called news reporting.

The hypocrisy and absence of self-reflection of this group -- mostly the mainstream media and the leftist cabal of the Democratic Party -- is born of its profound arrogance. This arrogance is also evident in the striking incoherence of their assumption that Obama can be a unifying force while working to change America in ways that are repugnant to a large plurality, if not a majority, of Americans.

You have to recognize that something about this group is just not natural when its members, such as MSNBC's Chris Matthews, can say without embarrassment that Obama sends shivers up his leg or when swooning crowds of supporters faint in his presence.

The group's obliviousness is demonstrated in its stunning state of denial over Obama's virtual free fall since the revelations about his associations with such unsavory characters as Tony Rezko and William Ayers and his longtime membership in a Christian church whose pastors and theology seem more race-oriented than Christ-centered.

You would think these fawning zealots would take notice of the backlash against Obama since he issued his outrageously divisive critique of small-town America as embittered gun- and Bible-clingers. But their Obama-intoxication blinded them to seeing anything other than that Obama still had an insuperable lead in the delegate count.

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June 02, 2008

Obama's Unity Charade

By: David Limbaugh

The $64 million question is how long Barack Obama can carry forward this ruse that he is a uniter, when he has placed himself in a climate that is, at the very least, quite accommodating to an anti-white racist perspective, vulgarity and anti-Americanism. How many more shoes can drop without Obama's presidential quest completely imploding?

It strained credulity that Obama could have been unaware of the toxic environment of his Trinity United Church of Christ and its pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Actually, that didn't pass the laugh test.

But now we have the Rev. Michael Pfleger bursting on the scene -- the scene being the now-infamous Trinity Church -- and spewing the most offensive, racially charged remarks imaginable.

Truly, if Obama weren't the protected darling of the mainstream media and if the Democrats were not horrified of losing their monopolistic hold on the African-American vote, superdelegates would abandon Obama in stampedes -- yesterday.

Have you watched the video of the Rev. Pfleger's racist bilge before Obama's former congregation? Just as importantly, did you witness the approving reaction of the congregation? After all, as I said at the time the Rev. Jeremiah Wright tapes surfaced, what was as disturbing as Wright's tirades was the congregation's approving reaction.

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May 29, 2008

McCain and National Security

By: David Limbaugh

I'm aware of the widely held assumption that John McCain's path to victory in November requires him to capture a healthy percentage of independents and even Democrats. But his strategy could backfire if he doesn't restrain his urge to betray conservatives.

Because of his military record, his POW experiences and his pro-defense Senate record, McCain has a decided advantage over Barack Obama on national security, the most important issue for many voters and plenty important for the rest, as well.

Even McCain's outspoken support of the "unpopular" Iraq war, ironically, adds to his favorable national security image. This despite the Democrats' propagandizing against the war, their attempt to sever it conceptually from the overall war on terror, and their phony yet persistent argument that we've diverted resources away from fighting al-Qaida. The Democratic Party goes into any election with the burden of proving it can be trusted with power during times of war.

Yet for all our talk about McCain's comparative advantage on national security, many conservatives are nevertheless mystified at some of McCain's anomalous positions on the war on terror and his penchant for moving to the left here, as in so many other areas. Of all policy areas, you would think McCain could score a 100 percent among conservatives on national security, but his apparent desire for mainstream media approval and his addiction to projecting an image of unpredictability must be overwhelming.

Just this week, The Washington Post reported that McCain appears to be flip-flopping on his earlier position in favor of granting telecoms immunity for cooperating with President Bush in Bush's warrantless surveillance program to monitor terrorist activities. McCain has always sided with conservatives to deny the liberal trial lawyers their bonanza in going after these companies for rising to the president's call.

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May 28, 2008

McCain Takes Obama to School on Iraq

By: David Limbaugh

On Monday, John McCain wisely urged Barack Obama to join him in visiting Iraq, something Obama hasn't done since 2006, when he declared the war lost. This is exactly what McCain ought to be doing: taking it to Obama on an issue that appears to favor Obama but in reality favors McCain.

In thrashing President Bush over Iraq since before we invaded, the mainstream media and the Democratic Party have succeeded in convincing much of the public that the war is a failure and that we must withdraw immediately. The propaganda effort has been so relentless that this perception remains to a great extent, even after the dramatic turnaround occasioned by the surge. But this is primarily because the media do their best to suppress any good news coming out of Iraq.

According to Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion researcher at American Enterprise Institute, while polls indicate a majority of Americans believe the war in Iraq was a mistake (also thanks to the Dems and the MSM), they also believe substantial progress has been made because of the surge. Surprisingly -- you'd never hear this emphasized by the MSM -- only 18 to 20 percent of Americans consistently say we should remove our troops now.

A Quinnipiac University poll conducted May 8-12 basically validates Bowman, saying 22 percent believe we should withdraw ASAP, compared to 48 percent who believe we should set a timetable and 28 percent who insist we should keep troops there as long as needed.

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May 23, 2008

The Real Obama OR Change We Don't Dare Believe In

By: David Limbaugh

Columnist Robert Novak reports that John McCain will not yield to Barack Obama's efforts to shame him into running a vanilla campaign. Instead, he says, McCain is lining up crack research operatives. Interestingly, their charge is not to gather dirt on Obama per se, but "to focus on the real Barack Obama." From where I'm sitting, that looks like one whale of a target-rich environment.

That is, McCain's operatives don't have to dig up dirt on Obama to damage his chances; they merely have to dig through the facade and uncover the real Obama. Even with the damning revelations concerning his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former terrorist William Ayers, I suspect Obama explorers have barely scratched the surface.

While Obama will continue to complain that an examination into his associations is dirty politics, it is anything but. We are known by the company we keep, and this goes for applicants for leader of the Free World as well.

But in Obama's case, the McCain researchers will just be getting started with Obama's sordid associations. Where he's really vulnerable -- the area where he most doesn't want you to find out who he really is -- is on policy.

Given his George Soros brand of extreme leftism, Obama will do his best to conceal his real policy self, except to the San Francisco environmental- and social-issues anarchists, the arts and croissants crowd of the Northeast Corridor, and the neo-Marxist professorial elite in academe. Of course, now that he knows microphones and bloggers can pop up anywhere, he won't even feel comfortable letting his guard down in these friendly venues to edify us about such things as small-town bitterology.

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May 19, 2008

Over the Top Barack

By: David Limbaugh

Based on Barack Obama's hysterical, paranoid reaction to President Bush's remarks to the Israeli Knesset condemning the practice of appeasing terrorists, one might infer Obama was lying in wait for just such an opportunity to capture some national security street cred.

After all, Democrats begin any presidential race with a national security credibility deficit, and this one should be no different, notwithstanding the unpopularity of the Iraq war. Democrats like to think they gained congressional seats in 2006 because of the war, but a better read is that Republicans did themselves in through reckless spending, scandals and other abandonment of conservative principles.

Despite his puffed-u