Category Archives: Barack Obama

Hussein/McCain & Other Invasive Species

Barack Obama, Elections 2008, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, John McCain

The excerpt is from my new WND column, “Hussein/McCain and Other Invasive Species”:

“About the interminable electioneering we’ve been subjected to for over a year, maybe two, I have less and less to say by the day. The duo dueling for the presidency doesn’t represent me, speak for me, interest me, or intend to uphold my rights. The latter Obama proves daily—most recently by voting to sunder what remains of the Fourth Amendment after Bush.

For his part, McCain didn’t even bother to show up for the vote that leaves the president with the usurped power to spy on Americans. The passing of the updated FISA, seconded by Obama and skipped by McCain, will grant retrospective immunity to telecommunications companies that have both contravened the Constitution and breached their contracts with clients. …

There is a disconnect, if you get my drift. The Hussein/McCain couple says tomato, I say tomahto. “Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto!” If only we could call the whole thing off!

But beggars can’t be choosers. With American freedoms on the wane, freedom lovers must contend with small pleasures. And there is some good news on the environmental front….

Read the rest in“Hussein/McCain and Other Invasive Species.”

Gonad-less Girls At TNR Gun For Jim Webb

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Media

The New Republic smeared rightist Ron Paul. Now it has turned its attentions to Virginian Senator Jim Webb, whose name has been mentioned as a possible VP for Obama. Webb is no lefty.

Richard Just’s windy piece is pure crud. The man needs the discipline of a good editor. (He is the editor!) And how girlie is it to open with the exasperated, “I’m amazed.” This is a manipulative strategy to prime the reader for outrage. If only popular writers were a little less banal; would that an original idea popped into their noggins now and then.

(I’m psychologizing here—something I avoid–but I can’t help think that Webb’s unabashed manliness irks the new breed of “girlie boys.” Webb has defended his country and can defend his family. Juxtaposed to a guy who can handle guns—Omigod!—we have boys accoutered in trendy eyewear who carry on in fussy falsettos. Webb is fierce and passionate, and simply does not resonate with the “whatever” generation.)

I’ve tracked Webb’s recent political moves in a few blogs. (Here, here and here.) I like him. We had a personal exchange during the ramp-up to war. Webb would send me his pieces against the invasion, and voice his approval of my own WND ones. The man has the kind of ethics the gonad-less girls at TNR ought to envy and emulate.

Also curious is the emphasis in the Just piece on Webb’s worldview. Touching is the sudden concern about philosophy among the liberal left. Where was the “in-depth” worldview evaluation when it came to Obama’s adopted philosophy of two decades? I refer to the Black Liberation Theology preached at the church in which Obama worshipped for 20 years.

Updated: Hand-Out Hussein

Barack Obama, Democrats, Economy, Political Philosophy, Taxation

Obama is right; the Bush administration has been one of the most fiscally reckless administrations in American history. Obama pointed today, in particular, to the never-ending spending on the occupation of Iraq.

What is Obama’s antidote to these wrack and ruin policies that have given us deficits and an upward of $9 trillion in national debt, causing prices of all commodities, gas included, to soar?

Hussein’s solution is not to stop spending, but to spend that money AT HOME. What money? Didn’t you just say, Sir, that there is no money to spend?

Of course, “A debased dollar, price inflation, dwindling availability of seed capital, malinvestment and speculation (bubbles)—these are some of the consequences of the government’s promiscuous spending and inflationary practices.”

“The first stage on the road to recovery is to pinpoint the problem and take responsibility for it. You’ve spent more than you’ve produced and have switched to living on credit. Having exhausted your creditor’s good will, but not your insatiable appetites, you turn to counterfeiting cash in the basement—that’s where the U.S. finds itself today.”

“The second stage in getting solvent is to quit spending and borrowing, live within your means, and start paying down what you owe.”

Yet deficit spending is the centerpiece of Obama’s domestic policies.

And the band of fools plays on…

Update (June 11): On who ought to have the vote:

“A sizeable majority of the people ‘receives in disbursements more than it pays in taxes.’ The minority funding the orgy ‘pays in taxes more than it receives back in disbursements.’ The latter, not the former, should have the vote.”—ILANA (April 24, 2007)

&

“Taxpayers ought to have the vote, not so tax consumers. And that goes for politicians, who pay taxes out of what they loot from the taxpayer.”—ILANA (April 24, 2007)

Update II: Mindless Monolith: Media Pick Obama

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Intellectualism, Journalism, Media

“I suspect most media cheered for Obama reflexively, rather than consciously—too stupid to ask themselves whether what they were doing was journalism or advocacy. A couple of older news guys, ABC’s Charles Gibson comes to mind, failed to take sides. Consequently, the pack pounced on him and on George Stephanopoulos for asking the senator some pointed questions. But good newsmen are a dying breed. Good newswomen are mostly dead already. By the time she died, the brilliant and brave Oriana Fallaci had long since been buried professionally by mediocrities like Barbara Walters of the ‘cutting edge’ anti-aging reportage and colonic crusader Katie Couric.”

“So how did a mindless monolith’s hunger for Hussein help the Obama momentum?”

Find out by reading “Mindless Monolith: Media Pick Obama.” The column leads the WND Commentary Page today.

Update I: A friend, who’s no fan of Katie Couric, thought my description of her as a “colonic crusader” should be patented. Fun aside, to be a “good” newsman today means taking up a disease and fighting against it. The triumph of sentimentality over reason. Couric’s thing is colon cancer, an awful illness, indubitably, but, consider Fallaci who’d been blown-up covering many a revolution–she never so much as discussed the breast cancer that killed her. I suspect that given the kind of mind she had, it didn’t much interest her. I too switch off most newscasts when they start on the kiddies, cures, and critters crap. Part of the takeover by women.

Update II (June 7): In reply to the reader from Lewrocwell.com, who asserts that I have singled out “comrade” Obama for criticism for some reason he simply cannot fathom:

I too cannot quite understand why readers assert baselessly, rather than argue based on facts. The reader has clearly not read “Ilana’s” scathing commentary on the other candidates. It’s on this site, for those willing to do a wee search—two mouse clicks away really.

Of course, it’s also a no-brainer that the most prominent candidate—the frontrunner—would garner more commentary than the rest. Is it not? Perhaps not to all. Genghis Bush got my undivided attention in years past.

Here’s some of the commentary Mr. Allen “missed”:

“The Hillary, Hussein, McCain Axis of Evil”

“Mitt’s Gone; Bill’s Back”

“Axis of Economic Idiocy”

“Lexicon Of Lies”

“Busybody Hillary’s Bhutto Blather”

And more; practically every column of mine, here’s another example, is peppered with derogatory comments about the candidates and their positions, or lack thereof, as applied to the issues discussed in the column. I guess people see what they want to see.

A different perspective on my rather matter-of-fact narration of the media’s crowning of Obama comes from a rather independent-minded gentlemen I’ve come to know—he happens to be Sean Hannity’s producer, although as much as he often likes what I have to say has not succeeded in getting me on the program:

“This is your typical iconoclastic clarity – some people fight PC, you remind me more of some Buffy who stakes it through the heart and then cuts its head off on the backslash.”