Obama Shoots for Mars

Larry Elder - Syndicated Columnist - 2/26/2009 9:45:00 AM

President Barack Obama, on Tuesday night, gave his first presidential address before Congress. He looked good, sounded great, and delivered his address with poise and confidence. He entered the Capitol and made his way through the applauding throng like a modern-day Moses slowly parting the Red Sea.

The moment was certainly historic, and all Americans -- or at least nearly all Americans -- took pride in living in a country that went from a Constitution that defined a black as three-fifths of a person to one where a black person could be elected President of the United States. Some journey!

But when the applause died down, the President took out a scattergun and attempted to hit everything in sight. He confidently asserted his and our intention to overcome the current economic downturn and march toward an even brighter future.

How? Government/taxpayers will spend our way to the summit.

He/Congress/we will "invest" in healthcare and education; "save or create" 3.5 million jobs; "cure cancer within our lifetime"; provide assistance to the states; "save our planet from the ravages of climate change"; save banks and other financial institutions while holding "accountable those responsible" for their problems; increase the size of the military; end torture (presumably he meant of our enemies); and cut the size of the deficit.

What?! Nothing about crafting a college football playoff?

After the President's speech, the political commentators fell over themselves in complimenting the President. Many said things like "he aimed high," "he set out an ambitious agenda," and "he outlined a vigorous list of expected accomplishments."

Economist Thomas Sowell uses a three-pronged test to examine government's "new ideas." 1) How much will it cost? 2) Who pays? 3) Will it work? Few of the post-speech analysts seemed to care.

One waited in vain for the political experts to point out that the President's spending spree must come from somewhere -- taxes or borrowing or printing.

And, as an aside, how would the press have reacted had former President George W. Bush claimed -- as did Obama -- that America "invented the automobile"?

Suppose Bush steered a shopping cart down the aisle, packed it with everything in sight that he could grab, pushed it to the cashier, and then said, "You mean I gotta pay?"

The President, on Tuesday night, promised to both lower taxes and raise taxes. He promised to both reduce spending and increase it. He promised to expand education while simultaneously claiming that education begins in the home. He promised to bail out homeowners -- "responsible" ones -- while insisting that Americans take responsibility for living beyond our means and making bad choices.

He promised to provide financial assistance to states while never mentioning the states' fiscal irresponsibility. He said, "There are 57 police officers who are still on the streets of Minneapolis tonight because this plan prevented the layoffs their department was about to make," yet said nothing about whether that state budgeted or spent responsibly.

He unilaterally abolished the notion that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Under his administration, the free lunch not only exists, but government bureaucrats provide takeout or delivery.

The President, last night, mentioned no total price tag for all this largesse. He did say, however, that he intends to raise taxes on the two percent of Americans making more than $250,000. Somehow he expects to burden "the rich" still more and not affect their behavior. Already, the top one percent pays nearly 40 percent of all federal income taxes.

The President, as he said during the campaign, promised to lower taxes on 95 percent of Americans. Of course, nearly 30 percent of working Americans pay zero in federal income taxes. But they, too, will get checks. And, Obama said to applause, the "checks are on the way."

The President sketched out a federal government grab larger than any in the history of our nation. His administration intends to bail out and oversee everything from banks to car manufacturers to lemonade stands.

Be not afraid about waste, mismanagement or politically directed spending. To ensure that our money is spent properly, the Obama administration intends to post the allocations on the Internet, ensuring wise and appropriate fund distribution.

Do those who voted against the President "want him to fail"? No, those who opposed the President want America to succeed. The formula for that success has a long and impressive track record: lower taxes, rein in government spending, and promote free trade. Let's put it another way: Remove government's boot from the neck of the American worker, businessperson and entrepreneur.

Set them free. Watch what happens.

CREATORS SYNDICATE COPYRIGHT 2009 LAURENCE A. ELDER

President Obama's $1 Trillion Tax Hike Plan

Thursday, February 26, 2009 4:59 PM

By: Chris Gonsalves


Looking to fund an ambitious healthcare program and put more money in the hands of the poor and the non-working, President Barack Obama wants wealthier Americans and businesses to pay nearly $1 trillion in higher taxes over the next decade.

In his proposed 2010 budget, released today, Obama suggests bringing back the top two Clinton-era tax rates of 36 percent and 39.6 percent for the nation’s highest earners. Those taxpayers currently pay 33 percent and 35 percent. More than 2.6 million Americans would be forced to pay the higher rates, according to Bloomberg News.

Tax rates on capital gains and dividends will rise to 20 percent for top earners, up from the 15 percent rate set by former President George W. Bush in 2003.

“It’s a clear repudiation of Bush’s policy,” Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland in College Park, tells Bloomberg. “It’s more Obama Robin Hood.”

As if the rate changes weren’t enough, Obama also proposes punishing the rich by stopping the scheduled repeal of the controversial estate tax next year. The president suggests imposing a 45 percent tax rate on any family’s estate worth more than $7 million.

The Obama tax hikes also include new restrictions on itemized deductions for families that earn more than $250,000 per year. Deductions for things like charitable donations, mortgage interest and investment expenses will be capped at 28 percent for the wealthiest taxpayers, some 30 percent less than they currently get.

By 2020, taxpayers in the wealthiest households will pay $636.7 billion in additional taxes according to estimates in the budget proposal.

The changes would be phased in gradually over the next few years, according to an analysis of the budget by the Wall Street Journal. For the 2009 tax year, the 33 percent tax bracket starts with couples with adjusted earnings of $208,850. A taxpayer in the top bracket paying $1,000 of mortgage interest, for example, would see a tax break worth $350 reduced to $280.

According to estimates from Deloitte Tax, a married couple with 2 children under age 17 and income of $500,000 a year would owe approximately $11,300 more than under current law if all of the tax provisions in Obama's budget request outline were enacted, CNN reported.

The remainder of the $1 trillion tax hike would come from $353.5 billion in additional levies on businesses, especially U.S.-based multinational corporations. Obama’s proposal calls for significantly rewriting the rules on the taxability of profits earned overseas, increased enforcement of international tax collections and changes in accounting that would serve as a “windfall profits tax” aimed largely at the oil companies.

"This budget plan is once again a missed opportunity for American taxpayers — it raises taxes on all Americans, implements massive new spending and fails to make any tough choices to control the deficit," Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the top Budget Committee Republican, told the Associated Press. Gregg was nominated by Obama to join his Cabinet as commerce secretary but later withdrew.

Great Pro-Life Speech by Young Girl in Canada

This is an awesome speech and I would recommend watching it on the link provided below.  What a well researched and thought out speech for a child, or even most adults... 

Preteen pro-life speech goes viral

Pete Chagnon - OneNewsNow - 2/20/2009 6:15:00 AM

The mother of a 12-year-old girl whose pro-life speech has become a hit YouTube video says her daughter's passion for the unborn is genuine.

Lia is a preteen from Canada who decided to speak out against abortion in her school's speech contest, despite teachers and school officials who encouraged her to pick a different topic.

"What if I told you that right now someone was choosing if you were going to live or die? What if I told you that this choice wasn't based on what you could or couldn't do, what you had done in the past, or what you would do in the future? And what if I told you [that] you could nothing about it? Fellow students and teachers, thousands of children are right now in that very situation," she says in her speech.

Kimberly, Lia's mother, says Lia was told by school officials that if she chose the topic of abortion, she would not be allowed to participate in the speech contest. But both were surprised when Lia's pro-choice teacher had a change of heart.

"Her teacher was really impressed by this speech and perhaps moved by it, and therefore her teacher kind of was a real supporter of [Lia] winning for the class," Kimberly notes. "And she had to go through a couple of hoops and get clearance from a couple of other teachers before she could be declared winner of the class."

Another controversy erupted when the panel of judges had a supposed big disagreement and one stepped down. Initially Lia was disqualified, but later the panel declared her the winner. She was asked to take out this portion of her speech: "[F]etuses are definitely humans knit together in their mother's womb by their wonderful Creator who knows them all by name."

Kimberly says after Lia was told to remove that portion of her speech, she took time to think about her decision and ultimately decided to leave it in. Lia also competed in a regional speech competition but did not win. However, her speech has been viewed by over 200,000 people on YouTube.

Letter from Barbara Boxer in response to my letter against Obama's "stimulus" bill

Dear Mrs. Dorcich:

Thank you for contacting me regarding H.R.1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. I appreciate hearing your views on this critical bill, which has passed Congress and was signed into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009.

There is a very simple, urgent reason for this legislation: We need to save jobs and we need to create jobs. We need to act quickly and boldly because at the rate we are shedding jobs, we are heading into deeper economic turmoil.

This is a time when the nation must come together. In my view, the Senate had three choices:

One was to do nothing. Doing that, to me, would be a hostile act because it continues the dangerous status quo. Our second choice was to wait for the perfect bill, and of course each Senator would write his or her perfect bill and we'd stall. Or our third choice was to pass the compromise; that is the choice Congress made, and I believe it was the only common-sense choice before us.

I also want to point out that without Republican votes in the Senate, a Republican leadership filibuster would have succeeded. The Republicans who voted for the bill did so out of a deep concern that doing nothing is unacceptable.

H.R.1 will inject $787 billion into our economy through tax cuts and spending on projects to save and create jobs. It will make significant investments in vital infrastructure projects, give much-needed aid to our states, and help to create and save millions of American jobs.

This legislation is far from perfect. But we are in a deepening economic crisis, and I believe it was necessary for Congress to move swiftly to stop it from sliding further. California's unemployment rate is an unacceptable 9.3 percent, and nearly 600,000 jobs were lost nationwide in January alone. Now is the time to invest in our country and our people.

We know that this package alone will not solve the entire problem; we must also address the housing and financial crises, and we will do so.

Again, thank you for writing to me on this important issue. Be assured that I will keep doing all I can to help get America's economy back on track. I will continue working with the Obama Administration and my Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle to enact legislation to stimulate growth, create jobs, and make American businesses more competitive in the global economy.

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

Please visit my website at http://boxer.senate.gov

Sooo... what exactly is the "compromise" she is referring to?  This was a totally partisan plan and NO Republicans in the House voted on it and only three Republican sell-outs voted for it in the Senate.  ACORN is getting a lot of this money... what a surprise.  Notice she doesn't mention that this bill is in response to a problem set off during the Democratic leadership of Carter and Clinton.  Equal housing opportunity for all, right?  Last time I checked, home ownership isn't a civil right.  Of course they are doling out civil rights to people based on behavior now too, so what do I know.

The rush to wait

Thomas Sowell - Syndicated Columnist - 2/18/2009 7:20:00 AM

The big story last week was the incredible Congressional rush to pass a bill that was more than a thousand pages long in just two days -- after which it sat on the President's desk for three days while the Obamas were away on a holiday.

There is the same complete inconsistency in the bill itself. Despite the urgency in President Obama's rhetoric, as well as in Congress' haste in passing a bill which few -- if any -- members had time to read, much less consider, most of the actual spending will take place next year, at the earliest.

Not even the most Alice-in-Wonderland actions will arouse the suspicions of those who have what William James once called "the will to believe."

Nowhere was that will to believe greater than in the election of Barack Obama to be President of the United States, not on the basis of any actual accomplishment, but as the repository of hopes and symbolism. His supporters among the voters and in the media are not going to stop believing now.

It will take a lot more than blatant inconsistency for the faithful to lose faith. It may take catastrophe -- and there may well be catastrophe.

For some, even catastrophe under Obama can be blamed on George Bush. After all, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented third term in 1940, after two terms in which the unemployment rate never fell below 10 percent and was above 20 percent for 21 consecutive months.

FDR also inspired the will to believe -- and he also had Herbert Hoover on whom to blame all the country's troubles.

It may seem strange, to those who never lived through those times, that someone could be President of the United States for eight straight years and nevertheless escape responsibility for mass unemployment by blaming his long-departed predecessor. But we may yet see a re-run of that scenario in our own time.

Nothing in the amateurish way the current administration has begun suggests that they have mastered even the mechanics of governing, much less the complexities of the huge national problems looming ahead, at home and abroad.

The multiple Cabinet nominees withdrawing before their nomination can come to a vote in the Senate are just one example of this amateurism.

Another example was the Secretary of the Treasury holding a much heralded unveiling of his recovery plan, only to publicly embarrass himself and the administration when his speech made painfully clear that there is no plan, but only pious hopes. The plunge in the stock market after his speech suggests how much confidence he inspired.

There is far more to fear from this administration than its amateurism in governing. The urgency with which it has rushed through a monumental spending bill, whose actual spending will not be completed even after 2010, ought to set off alarm bells among those who are not in thrall to the euphoria of Obama's presidency.

The urgency was real, even if the reason given was phony. President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, let slip a valuable clue when he said that a crisis should not go to waste, that a crisis is an opportunity to do things that you could not do otherwise.

Think about the utter cynicism of that. During a crisis, a panicked public will let you get away with things you couldn't get away with otherwise.

A corollary of that is that you had better act quickly while the crisis is at hand, without Congressional hearings or public debates about what you are doing. Above all, you must act before the economy begins to recover on its own.

The party line is that the market has failed so disastrously that only the government can save us. It is proclaimed in Washington and echoed in the media.

The last thing the administration can risk is delay that could allow the market to begin recovering on its own. That would undermine, if not destroy, a golden opportunity to restructure the American economy in ways that would allow politicians to micro-manage other sectors of the economy the way they have micro-managed the housing market into disaster.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Stimulus Bill Would Bring Return to Welfare

Posted By Bobby Eberle On February 12, 2009 at 7:36 am

One of the major accomplishments of the 1990s combination of President Clinton and a Gingrich-led Republican Congress was that of welfare reform. Some may argue that it was Clinton's plan. Others would say that the Republicans forced him to do it.

Regardless of where the credit ends up, the notion and structure of the welfare program was fundamentally changed. Now, through Obama's stimulus plan, all that work and effort may be wasted.


As noted in an editorial in National Review, "Democrats have inserted provisions into the catch-all stimulus bill that will reverse Clinton-era welfare reform, re-establishing the wasteful, incentive-killing system whose transformation was the bipartisan pride of the 1990s."

First, some background... Prior to the welfare reform measures promoted by Clinton and Gingrich, there was no incentive to move off the welfare rolls. Rather than a temporary station in life, welfare became a way of life.

As the editorial explains, before the reforms, "the federal government simply gave the states more money for every family they added to the welfare rolls." Of course, the states wanted all the money they could get. So, the more people on welfare, the more money for the state treasuries.

The Clinton-Gingrich reforms replaced that bounty-hunter system with a flat rate for each state, based on population and other factors. That gave state-level welfare authorities a better set of incentives, encouraging them to use their resources in the most effective manner and to reserve them for the truly needy.

The results were successful—spectacularly so. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was followed by reductions in both the number of families on welfare and the rate of poverty. Single women entered the workforce in substantial numbers and the household incomes of former welfare recipients went up. In other words, the incentives to reduce welfare dependence and help people to find work, worked.

The editorial points to a report by The Heritage Foundation which states that "little-noted provisions in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate stimulus bills actually abolish this historic reform."

Authors Robert E. Rector and Katherine Bradley note that in Obama's stimulus plan "the federal government would begin paying states bonuses to increase their welfare caseloads."

Indeed, the new welfare system created by the stimulus bills is actually worse than the old AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) program because it rewards the states more heavily to increase their caseloads. Under the stimulus bills, the federal government will pay 80 percent of cost for each new family that a state enrolls in welfare; this matching rate is far higher than it was under AFDC.

Votes in the House and Senate could come as early as Thursday or Friday for the stimulus plan. As the American people slowly start to digest the impact of the massive government takeover of the economy, public opinion is starting to fall. Karl Rove points out in National Review that "CBS News polling reveals a 12-point drop in support of the bill over the past month." A recent poll by Rasmussen Reports indicates that 67% of those surveyed believe they could do a better job on the economy than Congress.

We must continue to put pressure on our legislators to fight this plan. This is not just a spending plan that America can't afford. It is massive government intervention and left-wing social engineering. Making more people dependent on welfare is not the American way.

++ Click here to contact Congress. Take a stand against the stimulus bill!

Back on Uncle Sam's plantation

Star Parker - Syndicated Columnist - 2/9/2009 8:00:00 AM

Six years ago I wrote a book called Uncle Sam's Plantation. I wrote the book to tell my own story of what I saw living inside the welfare state and my own transformation out of it.

I said in that book that indeed there are two Americas -- a poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism.

I talked about government programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS), Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children (EANF), Section 8 Housing, and Food Stamps.

A vast sea of perhaps well-intentioned government programs, all initially set into motion in the 1960s, that were going to lift the nation's poor out of poverty.

A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation. Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from "How do I take care of myself?" to "What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?"

Instead of solving economic problems, government welfare socialism created monstrous moral and spiritual problems -- the kind of problems that are inevitable when individuals turn responsibility for their lives over to others.

The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city schools, and broken black families.

Through God's grace, I found my way out. It was then that I understood what freedom meant and how great this country is.

I had the privilege of working on welfare reform in 1996, passed by a Republican Congress and signed 50 percent.

I thought we were on the road to moving socialism out of our poor black communities and replacing it with wealth-producing American capitalism.

But, incredibly, we are going in the opposite direction.

Instead of poor America on socialism becoming more like rich American on capitalism, rich America on capitalism is becoming like poor America on socialism.

Uncle Sam has welcomed our banks onto the plantation and they have said, "Thank you, Suh."

Now, instead of thinking about what creative things need to be done to serve customers, they are thinking about what they have to tell Massah in order to get their cash.

There is some kind of irony that this is all happening under our first black president on the 200th anniversary of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.

Worse, socialism seems to be the element of our new young president. And maybe even more troubling, our corporate executives seem happy to move onto the plantation.

In an op-ed on the opinion page of the Washington Post, Mr. Obama is clear that the goal of his trillion dollar spending plan is much more than short term economic stimulus.

"This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending -- it's a strategy for America's long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, healthcare, and education."

Perhaps more incredibly, Obama seems to think that government taking over an economy is a new idea. Or that massive growth in government can take place "with unprecedented transparency and accountability."

Yes, sir, we heard it from Jimmy Carter when he created the Department of Energy, the Synfuels Corporation, and the Department of Education.

Or how about the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 -- The War on Poverty -- which President Johnson said "...does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done. It charts a new course. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty."

Trillions of dollars later, black poverty is the same. But black families are not, with triple the incidence of single-parent homes and out-of-wedlock births.

It's not complicated. Americans can accept Barack Obama's invitation to move onto the plantation. Or they can choose personal responsibility and freedom.

Does anyone really need to think about what the choice should be?

ACLU supported bill

A call to action from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and U.S. Senator Jim DeMint to stop ACLU supported bill
Democrats vote to discriminate against Christians and people of faith
President Obama's stimulus bill discriminates against Christians and people of faith. The stimulus bans universities and colleges from using funds to renovate buildings where students engage in "religious worship."

U.S. Senator Jim DeMint made the following statement after Democrats voted 43-54 against his amendment to strike from the economic stimulus bill language that discriminates against people of faith. Senator DeMint's amendment would have eliminated a provision that bans any university or college receiving restoration funds, from allowing "sectarian instruction" or "religious worship" within the facility. This would in effect bar use of campus buildings for groups like Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Campus Crusade for Christ, Catholic Student Ministries, Hillel and other religious organizations.

"This is a direct attack on students of faith, and I'm outraged Democrats are using an economic stimulus bill to promote discrimination," said Sen. DeMint. "Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for siding with the ACLU over millions of students of faith. These students simply want equal access to public facilities, which is their constitutional right. This hostility toward religion must end. Those who voted for this discrimination are standing in the schoolhouse door to keep people of faith from entering any campus building renovated by this bill.

"This is now an ACLU stimulus designed to trigger lawsuits designed to intimidate religious organizations across the nation. This language is so vague, it's not clear if students can even pray in a dorm room renovated with this funding since that is a form of 'religious worship.' If this provision remains in the bill, it will have a chilling effect on students of faith in America" he continued.

"Our culture cannot survive without faith and our nation cannot survive without freedom. This provision is an assault against both. It's un-American and it's unconstitutional. Intolerant and it's intolerable."

This funding restriction is unconstitutional. In the 2001 Good News Club v. Milford Central School Supreme Court decision, the court ruled that restricting religious speech within the context of public shared-use facilities (or schools) is unconstitutional.

Pages 164-165 of the stimulus contain the following prohibitions on the use of $3.5 billion available for renovation of public or private college and university facilities.

(2) PROHIBITED USES OF FUNDS. No funds awarded under this section may be used for - (C) modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities (i) used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity; or (ii) in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission; or construction of new facilities.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich urges Christian activists and other conservatives to e-mail and call their representative and senators demanding that the language discriminating against people of faith be removed.

Gingrich feels that if Christian activists would have enough courage and holy anger to e-mail and call their representatives and senators, a number of Democrats would vote no on final passage. We should demand that this anti-religious provision be removed.

Christians have not expressed enough outrage focused on the concept that people of faith are being taken advantage of by the stimulus bill during a time of crisis. They are being stolen from them when they are down and out and looking in good faith to the government for help. Instead of the stimulus we need, the liberals are getting the pork that they want -- for themselves, their families, and their friends. They are pickpockets and thieves preying on the down and out.

It's as if the Good Samaritan had come over to the man who was robbed and left for dead, bent over, and reached for his wallet and ran on his way instead of helping. It's like the looter who takes advantage of a natural disaster to steal."

The liberals are taking advantage of a crisis, just like Rahm Emanuel said. His quote: "'You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,' Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama's new chief of staff, told a Wall Street Journal conference of top corporate chief executives this week." - WSJ, Nov. 21, 2008.

America is in crisis, and the liberals are looting America's future to pay off their special interests. This is corruption of the highest order. E-mail and call your representative and two senators today!

Republicans as Democrats

Thomas Sowell - Syndicated Columnist - 2/3/2009 10:45:00 AM

A brief glimmer of sanity among Congressional Republicans has been followed, almost immediately, by a return to the more traditional Washington insanity.

Last week, every single Republican in the House of Representatives voted against the Obama administration's "stimulus" package -- which had stimulated an orgy of runaway spending by Congressional Democrats on everything from sports arenas to sexually transmitted diseases.

This was a rare smart move by the Republicans. If the Republicans had gone along, pursuing the will o' the wisp of "bipartisanship," then if the stimulus had by some miracle succeeded, it would have been a bill for which Democrats would claim credit at the next election.

On the other hand, if the stimulus failed -- which seems far more likely -- then it would be called a "bipartisan" bill, meaning that the Democrats would pay no price at the next election for a colossal failure.

Since President Bush started the "stimulus package" game, this was also an opportunity for Congressional Republicans to cut themselves loose from the political baggage of the Bush administration's unpopularity.

Within 24 hours, however, Republicans in the Senate came out with a plan to have the government fix mortgage interest rates at four percent -- and use taxpayers' money to cover the losses that lenders would otherwise sustain.

It is painfully obvious that government intervention in the housing markets over the past several years has been at the heart of the boom and bust that has led to a huge economic downturn.

It was not the market, but the government, that pushed for abandoning traditional standards for making mortgage loans. That was what got both borrowers and lenders way out on a limb -- and set off economic shock waves when the limb broke.

The last time the Republicans pushed for price controls was during the Nixon administration. It was very popular in the short run. But, in the long run, even Nixon admitted in his memoirs that it was bad for the country.

Price controls have been tried and failed, in countries around the world, going all the way back to ancient Rome and Babylon. Moreover, politicians intervening in the economy is the hallmark of Democrats.

What principle separates the Republicans from the Democrats? If they are just Tweedledee and Tweedledum, then elections come down to personality and rhetoric. If that happens, you can bet the rent money on the Democrats winning.

Those considered to be the smart money among Republicans have been saying for some time that the party has to become more "inclusive" and jettison "outmoded" principles of the Reagan era. But no one has to pass an IQ test to be considered part of the smart money.

Looking at the track record, rather than the rhetoric, the smart money doesn't look nearly as smart.

When have the Republicans won big? When they stood for something and told the people what that something was.

Ronald Reagan was the classic example. But another example would be the stunning Republican victories in the 1994 Congressional elections, which put them in control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years.

Articulating the message of Newt Gingrich's "contract for America" was a key to that historic victory.

Too many Republicans seem to think that being "inclusive" means selling out your principles to try to attract votes. It never seems to occur to them that you can attract a wider range of voters by explaining your principles in a way that more people understand.

That is precisely what Reagan did and what Gingrich did in 1994. Most Americans' principles are closer to those of the Republicans than to those of the Democrats.

It is the only advantage the Republicans have. The Democrats have the media, the unions, the environmental extremists and the tort lawyers on their side. Why should Republicans throw away their one advantage by becoming imitation Democrats?

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Obama’s Message to Muslims Called ‘Pathetic’

In his interview with a Saudi-owned TV channel on Tuesday, President Barack Obama referred to “an illusionary past” in the Muslim world that was in fact plagued by turmoil, a leading Middle Eastern expert declared.

Amir Taheri, in a New York Post column headlined “Pathetic Message,” said Obama “looked to the past rather than the future” when he told an Al-Arabiya interviewer he wanted a return to “the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.”

But 30 years ago, Taheri noted, American diplomats were being held hostage in Iran, Soviet troops were seeking to annex Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein was preparing to invade Iran, Saudi Arabia was under siege by Muslim militants, and Syrian troops were preparing to invade Lebanon.

Iranian-born Taheri, whose books include “Holy Terror: Inside the World of Islamic Terrorism,” wrote in the Post that “other features of this ‘golden age’” were “the seizure of power by mullahs in Tehran, the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the coming to power of communists in the Horn of Africa, the military coup in Turkey, the first Islamist terror attacks in Algeria, unprecedented waves of repression in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and the imposition of military rule in Pakistan.”

Twenty years ago saw the U.S. arming the mujahedin in Afghanistan, Iraq gassing thousands of Kurds and preparing to invade Kuwait, Iranian mullahs arming Hezbollah units in Lebanon, Turkey launching all-out attacks on Kurdish secessionists, and the Libyan terror network killing American soldiers in Europe and blowing up U.S. jets.

Meanwhile Obama offered only “trite” remarks regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and did not offer any support “to democratic forces facing crucial elections in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Egypt and Algeria,” observed Taheri, who has written for more than two dozen publications around the world.

“Nor was there any nod toward reformers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.”

Obama sought to portray himself as a “bridge” between the U.S. and the Muslim world, according to Taheri, who added:

“Casting himself in the role of a ‘bridge’ and dreaming of a return to an illusionary past, Obama appeared unsure of his own identity and confused about the role that America should play in global politics.”