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shut up and pull
climber
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Nov 18, 2010 - 12:05am PT
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FASCIST NANNY STATE:
With full White House approval, of course. Because if college students can’t control their intake, why should any of us have the chance?
Drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said he welcomed a ruling by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that would effectively ban drinks like Four Loko and Joost, which have come under scrutiny for their alleged role in several cases of alcohol intoxication on college campuses.
“These products are designed, branded, and promoted to encourage binge drinking, and I commend the FDA for acting promptly to curb their sale,” Kerlikowske said in a statement. “These drinks are especially unhealthy and dangerous because they combine alcohol and caffeine — and present a further concern when used by young people.”
I’ve lost the plot on state/federal policy towards health and hazardous substances. For instance, it’s okay to ban sugary drinks — but only for consumers who are on food stamps. It’s not okay to ban cigarettes, but it’s okay to put photos of corpses on the packs to discourage people from buying them. For caffeine/alcohol blends, it’s okay to ban ‘em straightaway; no need to bother with a picture on the can of a kid ralphing on himself or whatever, which I guess makes them the beverage equivalent of Happy Meals. Is there any logic to that that I’m missing, or is it a simple case of Four Loko’s lobbyists not being half as good as R.J. Reynolds’s? And if you think that’s confusing, have a look at Jacob Sullum’s post at Reason. Apparently, the difference between banworthy and not banworthy caffeinated alcohol drinks is highly nuanced indeed.
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shut up and pull
climber
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Nov 18, 2010 - 12:05am PT
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OH MY -- THE LEFT'S MONEY MAN WAS A NAZI HELPER?
George Soros is an even worse person than we thought. His real name is George Schwartz and he was a Jew living in Hungary when the Nazis invaded.
George’s father changed the family name to something less Jewish-sounding (Soros). As a teenager George went to work for the Judenrat (the name is self explanatory). This was a council of Jewish collaborators set up by the Nazis to aide them in their extermination efforts.
Then his father found him an even better gig:
Theodore hatched a better plan for his son. He bribed a non-Jewish official at the agriculture ministry to let George live with him. George helped the official confiscate property from Jews.
By collaborating with the Nazis, George survived the Holocaust. He turned on other Jews to spare himself.
After the war, George moved to London and then New York where he became a stockbroker and a billionaire. He’s the 35th richest man in the world to be exact.
You could say that young George was just doing what he had to in order to survive, right? Fair enough, but the fact that he aided in the near extermination of his own people probably still haunts him to this day, right?
Not so much.
Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes asked him that. Was it difficult? “Not at all,” Soros answered.
“No feeling of guilt?” asked Kroft. “No,” said Soros. “There was no sense that I shouldn’t be there. If I wasn’t doing it, somebody else would be taking it away anyhow. Whether I was there or not. So I had no sense of guilt.”
That explains a lot about the man who almost single handedly funds the radical left.
http://www.thehotjoints.com/2010/09/07/george-soros-not-sorry-he-helped-nazis-kill-his-fellow-jews-in-wwii/
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 18, 2010 - 12:08am PT
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shut up and pull
climber
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Nov 18, 2010 - 12:10am PT
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CAN YOU IMAGINE IF THIS GUY WAS A REPUBLICAN, WHAT THE LEFT WOULD SAY?
West Virginia's Democratic United States Senator Robert C. Byrd was a recruiter for the Klan while in his 20s and 30s, rising to the title of Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of his local chapter. After leaving the group, Byrd spoke in favor of the Klan during his early political career. Though he claimed to have left the organization in 1943, Byrd wrote a letter in 1946 to the group's Imperial Wizard stating "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia." Byrd defended the Klan in his 1958 U.S. Senate campaign when he was 41 years old.[10]
Despite being the only Senator to vote against both African American U.S. Supreme Court nominees (liberal Thurgood Marshall and conservative Clarence Thomas) and filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Byrd has since said joining the Klan was his "greatest mistake." The NAACP gave him a 100% rating on their issues during the 108th Congress.[11] However, in a 2001 incident Byrd repeatedly used the phrase "white niggers" on a national television broadcast.[12]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan_members_in_United_States_politics
At least Republicans disown their embarrassments.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 18, 2010 - 12:11am PT
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shut up and pull
climber
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Nov 18, 2010 - 12:14am PT
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It is very very difficult to embarass the liberals. Look at George Soros -- their main financier. This guy was a Nazi collaborator, and today the left just shrugs and says, "ahhh, no big deal. He gives us money."
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Nov 18, 2010 - 12:27am PT
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Cutting edge stuff SUAP...fascinating...snore..
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Nov 18, 2010 - 01:01am PT
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dang, rottingjohnny, if only my armchair was one of them there vibrating ones.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 18, 2010 - 01:59am PT
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The Fet,
I enjoyed greatly your post of the differences between conservatives and liberals -- even if I resemble several of those remarks!
John
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Nov 18, 2010 - 02:34am PT
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Thanks, it's important to retain a sense of humor and even better when you can laugh at yourself.
I do feel sorry for those who get caught up in the hate. ALL of use here want what we think is best for our country.
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shut up and pull
climber
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Nov 18, 2010 - 11:03am PT
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IS OBAMA A SOCIALIST?
FROM POWERLINE, THE BEST CENTER-RIGHT BLOG IN THE U.S.
This is the second in series of posts that, inspired by Stanley Kurtz's compelling book Radical-In-Chief, considers whether Barack Obama is a socialist. In Part One, I suggested two ways to analyze the question -- biographically and doctrinally -- and then proceeded to examine Obama's ideological biography from his time in college until 1996 when he first ran for elected public office.
I found that Obama unquestionably was a socialist as a college student; pursued the career path -- community organizer -- recommended by socialists as the best means of advancing their agenda; and did in fact advance such an agenda as a community organizer. As a result of his successes in this enterprise, he ran for the Illinois State Senate as the handpicked successor to an avowed socialist, Alice Palmer. He launched that campaign at the home of a communist (and former terrorist), his political collaborator Bill Ayers.
Now let's turn to the ideological content of Obama's career as an office holder.
In the Illinois State Senate, Obama won high marks for his legislative skills and his ability at times to work with Republicans. But the substantive thrust of his work in Springfield was quite consistent with the contemporary socialist agenda.
Obama ardently pushed for redistributionist social welfare legislation. Two political scientists who graphed the legislation Obama sponsored as a state senator found that the bar for social welfare legislation towered over every other category. The result was similar for legislation that Obama co-sponsored. The two professors concluded that other than social welfare and a sprinkling of government regulation, Obama devoted very little effort to most policy areas. This is how we would expect a socialist state legislator to behave.
Not surprisingly, Obama was focused on health care. Working with a socialist colleague, Quentin Young, Obama repeatedly proposed a state constitutional amendment mandating universal health care. And he openly favored a single payer system. Again, his conduct is entirely consistent with the hypothesis that, during this period, Obama was a socialist. Coupled with the evidence that he came to the state Senate as a socialist, there is little basis for concluding that he was other than a socialist during the state Senate years.
As a state Senator, Obama probably was best known for his effort to combat racial profiling by the Chicago police. The Republicans thwarted his anti-profiling legislation when they held the majority, but when the Democrats took control in 2003, the bill passed.
Anti-profiling legislation is not distinctively socialist, of course. But Obama pursued such legislation in a way that dovetailed with the hard left's long-time goal -- the goal of his allies Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger -- of promoting "liberationist" black churches. Thus, in 2001, the Hyde Park Herald praised Obama for organizing a "grassroots lobbying effort" on racial profiling that featured, among others, Pfleger and the associate pastor of Wright's church. This effort was straight from the socialist-community organizer playbook by which a mainstream liberal grievance becomes the vehicle for organizing discontent around a hard-left, incendiary narrative promulgated by radicals.
Perhaps the most telling ideological judgment of Obama the State Senator comes from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and its stance in 2000, when Obama ran for Congress against Bobby Rush. Rep. Rush, a former Black Panther, had received a 90 percent rating from the liberal ADA in 2000 and a 100 percent the year before. His ACU rating was zero.
Obama was a long shot in his race against Rush, and the Chicago branch of the DSA wisely remained formally neutral. However, it tilted towards Obama, speaking of him in glowing terms while describing Rush as a disappointment to the left. It's doubtful that there is any non-socialist space to the left of Bobby Rush.
Four years after his failed bid for Congress, Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate. It's well known that Obama was rated by one prominent index as the most liberal member of the Senate. Sometimes overlooked is the fact that the U.S. Senate contains an avowed socialist member -- Bernie Sanders of Vermont. To the left of Sanders there plainly is no non-socialist space.
Thus, Obama's biography strongly suggests that, when elected U.S. president, he was, and had long been, a socialist. In my next post on the subject, I'll consider whether his presidency is consistent with the thesis that he is a socialist.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Nov 18, 2010 - 11:08am PT
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STFU - "CAN YOU IMAGINE IF THIS GUY WAS A REPUBLICAN, WHAT THE LEFT WOULD SAY?
At least Republicans disown their embarrassments."
That's rich...
Limbag, Beck, Buche, Chiny, Rice, Hatch, Savage, O'Rauly, Gingrich...
That list goes on....
Good try, I'll use the oldest repugnicant verbiage
"He has renounced his ways, and has become a better man for it"
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Nov 18, 2010 - 11:11am PT
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Crowley - Is that a Uncle Fester/fat separated at birth photo?
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shut up and pull
climber
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Nov 18, 2010 - 11:11am PT
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OBAMA'S FOLLY OF TRYING TERRORISTS IN U.S. COURTS, VIA POWERLINE TODAY:
1993 WORLD TRADE CENTER PROSECUTOR ANDREW MCCARTHY:
Both sides have adjusted their presentations to the civilian justice system rules that, as I've been noting in recent columns (including today's), have resulted in the suppression of key evidence against the defendant.
I imagine this must infuriate people -- it still infuriates me after 25 years in the biz. Here you have Ghailani: he has confessed to the bombings; he continued to be a top al Qaeda operative (even a bin Laden bodyguard) for years afterwards, until his capture in 2004; and he not only bought the TNT used in Dar es Salaam, but identified whom he got it from -- a witness who corroborates his confession and is prepared to testify. Yet, because of a court ruling and DOJ concerns about opening up the interrogation can of worms, defense lawyers know the jury will learn none of this information. So what happens? Ghailani's lawyer opens the case by telling jurors that, in 1998, his client was a babe in the woods who was never a member of al Qaeda, never "agreed or signed on to" bin Laden's edicts to kill Americans; and, in his naivete, was duped by a friend into buying a truck he had no idea would be used by terrorists to bomb an embassy. The lawyer looked the jury in the eye and said, Ghailani "is not simply presumed innocent. He is innocent."
Powerline comments:
Having failed to convict Ghailani on more than a single count, the administration can only hope for a substantial sentence. Absent that, they presumably will continue to hold him indefinitely, much as they are holding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, thus demonstrating the essentially sham nature of the proceeding that has just concluded. The Obama administration is truly a ship of fools. Some are already speculating that this disaster will be the occasion for Eric Holder to step down as Attorney General. I have no idea whether he is on the way out or not, but if so, Republicans in the Senate should question his replacement closely about Holder's politicizing of the Department of Justice, and should extract whatever commitment they can from his successor not to pursue the same course.
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shut up and pull
climber
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Nov 18, 2010 - 11:12am PT
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Jingy -- you are so forgiving of a Klan member.
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shut up and pull
climber
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Nov 18, 2010 - 11:29am PT
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To a liberal -- government creates jobs. Hilarious.
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shut up and pull
climber
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Nov 18, 2010 - 11:35am PT
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BEING NICE TO TERRORISTS AINT SO SMART:
FROM HOTAIR TODAY:
The failure of Holder’s DoJ to win anything more than a single conspiracy count against Ghailani as a result of using a process designed for domestic criminals than wartime enemies shows that the critics had it right all along. It also shows that both Obama and Holder have been proven spectacularly wrong, since a man who confessed to the murder of over two hundred people will now face as little as 20 years, with a big chunk of whatever sentence Foopie receives being reduced by time already served.
The administration is left with three choices in regards to Ghailani: announce that they will release him at the appointed date whenever his sentence ends, announce that they will hold him indefinitely without regard to the court’s ruling on the matter while referring the case back to a military commission despite his acquittals, or refuse to state which they will do and hope the issue falls to the next administration. The first will mean that the US will knowingly release a master al-Qaeda terrorist with more than two hundred murders under his belt; the second will mean that the trial they staged was nothing but a sham. And the third will be a cowardly dodge.
Such is the state in which Holder as Attorney General has left the US. Either the US is so inept that it will eventually release a man who attacked two of its embassies abroad (which was an act of war by al-Qaeda) or that the DoJ may commit an impeachable act by knowingly submitting a defendant to double jeopardy, whether in this administration or a future administration. By committing to the civilian criminal system and assigning judicial jurisdiction where it never belonged, those are the only options left.
It was that decision that created the entirely predictable set of decisions that forced the judge to exclude the evidence gleaned by intelligence interrogation that proved Ghailani guilty — a cascade of consequences foreseen by critics and arrogantly sneered at by this administration as “politicization.” It’s both the arrogance and the incompetence that requires Eric Holder’s termination as Attorney General. Holder made these decisions and hotly defended them as perfectly reasonable, with no reduced chance of getting convictions in these cases.
A less arrogant — and less ideological — Attorney General would have heeded Congress’ warnings and reconsidered the wisdom of the idea of shoehorning foreign-captured war criminals into venues where they have never been adjudicated before now. And a less arrogant administration would have not defied the will of Congress, which three times set up military commission processes for these very cases, and for the very reasons that the DoJ spectacularly failed this week.
There could be no greater failure by the DoJ in this war on terror than to get these decisions wrong, especially in light of the avalanche of criticism over those decisions and the administration’s reaction to it. Holder should hand in his resignation before he makes the same mistake with the other terrorists our military and intelligence assets risked their lives to keep off the battlefield forever. His continued presence insults their work, insults Congress, and insults our desire for justice for 9/11, the USS Cole bombing, the two embassy bombings, and the other terrorist attacks and plots we’ve managed to stop through a forward strategy on the war on terror. If a resignation is not forthcoming, the Senate and House Judiciary committees should start hearings to determine why Holder remains in this position.
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shut up and pull
climber
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Nov 18, 2010 - 11:43am PT
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INSTAPUNDIT COMMENTS:
And making an even bigger mockery of the whole thing is the Administration’s claim of “post-acquittal detention power.” So the whole thing was just a show trial anyway. Ah, remember the fierce moral urgency of change? Apparently, it was the fierce moral urgency of show trials. But that doesn’t get Holder off the hook. He botched a show trial, after all . . .
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shut up and pull
climber
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Nov 18, 2010 - 11:54am PT
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Fat -- it is absolutely amazing the amount of failures of Obama. At some point, you lose count.
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shut up and pull
climber
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Nov 18, 2010 - 11:55am PT
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OBAMA'S COUSIN HAS A FEW CHOICE WORDS FOR AMERICA:
WOLF: My journey into the belly of the beast
Republican establishment needs to stand with the Tea Party
By Dr. Milton R. Wolf
The Washington Times
6:25 p.m., Wednesday, November 17, 2010
In six months I went from a political outsider to the only Tea Partier our president actually knows. Until recently, I had never been to a political rally, much less been an activist. I frankly found politics to be a repulsive display of backroom deals, dishonesty, personal attacks and smear tactics designed to intimidate normal Americans from joining the process. But everything changed with Obamacare.
Many years ago, I took an inviolate oath to my patients that has become increasingly difficult to keep each time the government forces itself between my patients and me. I must admit that I may take this assault on our health system - and on our freedom - personally because I am not only a physician but also Barack Obama's cousin.
I made the difficult decision to "go public" and take a stand for my patients, my profession and my country. This launched a dizzying whirlwind of television shows, reporters, newspapers, Op-Eds columns, radio programs, criticisms, praise, speaking engagements and, yes, the very political rallies I always had avoided. My first rally was on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol, where I joined Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Republican, and actor Jon Voight as a headline speaker standing before 30,000 Tea Party patriots. My first taste of politics was a drink from a fire hydrant.
The Republicans took notice, and I agreed to meet privately with party insiders. I was warned that there would be sharp minds and sharp elbows, and no one in attendance was too bashful to put them on display. Indeed. I entered this belly of the beast not knowing what to expect or even whom to expect.
What I saw was not just a who's-who list of power brokers and officials, but also genuine, normal people. Some faces I recognized; others I did not. They ran the gamut from those who have run and funded campaigns to those who have humbly knocked on doors and manned phones for a cause. There were people in the room who had dedicated years of their lives to serving our nation; some, decades. And there were people in the room who knew that the Republican Party had gone astray.
They said to me that I could bridge the gap between the Republican Party and the Tea Party. I knew immediately that this was a unique opportunity for me to get a few things off my chest. Here was my answer to them:
If you think one person can bridge the gap between Republicans and Tea Partiers, then it's bigger than you realize. I can't bridge the gap, but I can tell you how to close it: Stand with the Tea Party people. Embrace their three founding principles: (1) Follow the Constitution, (2) stop the runaway spending and (3) protect the free market.
I told them that I have been a Republican all my life, but I haven't always been a proud Republican. The nation entrusted itself to my party, and we lost our way. I don't care if you have a D or an R behind your name, if you violate these bedrock principles, if you serve to grow the government at the expense of our liberty, if you seek to increase our tax burden, if you trust Washington elites more than the American people, you are part of the problem.
Furthermore, both the Ds and the Rs are so busy insulting each other and the Tea Party people that they conveniently forget to address the actual issues at hand.
I admit I probably take some of the attacks against Barack too personally, but there's no place for such attacks against anyone. We all know the drill: Republicans are stupid, greedy, racist, rich evildoers, and Democrats are narcissistic, anti-American, tree-hugging, pocket-picking dilettantes. The Tea Party people are the dangerous, mouth-breathing, crazy, Nazi-inspired, racist fringe.
Yawn.
The truth is there's nothing to be gained by insulting each other, and I won't have it. I told them I will be the first to defend Barack or anyone from personal attacks. Besides, I'd rather win in the marketplace of ideas. But for the sake of our republic, I would launch the mother of all family feuds, if that's what it takes, and take my cousin Barack to task not for some petty, spun-up inference, but for his actual policies. It would be an epic showdown for the heart and soul of America.
I would make him defend the bank bailouts, the failed $814 billion stimulus, double-digit unemployment and the auto-industry takeover. Make him defend the disastrous health care takeover, the 16,000 new IRS agents. Make him explain why he broke his eight pledges to hold health care hearings in public.
I'd make him explain why he became our appeaser-in-chief, bowing (sometimes literally) to the demands of dictators. Make him explain why he abandons Israel, our strongest ally in the Middle East, but won't "meddle" in Iran while it is racing for a nuclear bomb. Make him explain why he wants to grant constitutional rights to the Sept. 11 terrorists but disregards his own constitutional obligation todefend America's borders from invasion.
I'd make him explain why taxpayers should pony up for yet another borrowed-money stimulus when the first one failed so miserably. Why he gave a second round of permanent big-bank bailouts but ignores Main Street businesses that actually create jobs. Make him explain why he broke his pledge not to raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 and, for that matter, why he thinks families making more than $250,000 - the people who actually create jobs - aren't already taxed enough. Make him explain why each baby born today is welcomed into America with the shackles of more than $40,000 of debt.
I'd make him explain why a government that can't even plug an oil leak can somehow manage the complexities of our lives better than we can ourselves. It's time he explained why he or any president should exercise the unholy power to choose which Americans will be winners and which will be losers.
It's not a smear to say Barack Obama is just flat-out wrong. To disagree with him is not racist, and it's not a personal attack to say he's got some explaining to do. But even that's not the point.
The Tea Party movement exists, I told them, not because of the Democrats. We know who they are, with their tax increases, endless spending and Washington-knows-best takeovers. No, the Tea Parties exist because of the failures of the Republican Party. We were supposed to be the ones Americans could trust.
For too long, the Washington establishment - including Republicans - has been more interested in growing its own power than honoring the ideals upon which generations before us have built the greatest nation in history.
I realize that other serious issues exist. Some of those, in fact, are very important to me. But our nation is in a collapse of our own making because we have violated these basic principles, and if we don't get them right and do it now, we won't survive long enough to fight for those other causes. There comes a time when we must be Americans and take a stand, not for party, but for nation. That time is now.
So, no, neither I nor any other person can bridge that gap between the Republican Party and the Tea Party, but I can help close it. Republicans are now given a second chance for a rendezvous with destiny. Embrace the American bedrock principles of constitutionally limited government, true fiscal responsibility and free markets. And thank the patriotic people of the Tea Party movement for reminding us all just how it was that America became the greatest nation on God's green earth.
Dr. Milton R. Wolf is a board-certified, practicing diagnostic radiologist and President Obama's cousin. He operates the website miltonwolf.com.
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