WHATEVER YOU DO: Please do not share this chart with the left-wing economedian Thomas Piketty

I only say that to spare random passersby from being wounded by a Piketty cranium explosion.

Wouldn't it be nice if could turn back the clock? @OkeyMor57 @Abanob_Hany @wwjdtoday4u @DrMartyFox @jjauthor pic.twitter.com/ynbhJRyNO3

— HCS (@hankishtwit) April 30, 2014

Via @hankishtwit.

Reagan and Levin drop science on Rand Paul, Mike Shedlock, and the rest of the isolationist war-mongers

I respect and often link to Mike Shedlock's Global Economic Analysis site for his take on macroeconomics. His opinions are usually sound and his reasoning and research solid.

On Thursday, April 17th, Mark Levin tore the isolationist-Code Pink-McGovern libertarians a new orifice using a Ronald Reagan speech as an exclamation point. You can listen to it here (MP3 - courtesy of The Mark Levin Show Podcast Downloader Widget).

But when he veers into national defense and international diplomacy, he makes a complete fool of himself. He advocates the Ron Paul/George McGovern strategy of appeasment and weakness, which history tells us is far more dangerous than the alternative.

I like Rand Paul, who appears to be an attractive candidate, except for his isolationist rhetoric that echoes his father's bizarre statements. Isolationism is not conservatism. Appeasement is not conservatism. Weakness is not conservatism.

Today we are witnessing a slow-motion replay of the 1930s with Russia's annexation activities. Putin's actions are bringing instability, fear and trepidation to all of Europe.

And why are we seeing Putin act so aggressively? Because he knows Obama is all bluster and no stick. He sees Obama unilaterally disarming the U.S. military -- eviscerating advanced fighter systems, dismantling nuclear weapons, killing the Tomahawk missile program, to name but a few -- and knows that the president's core belief is that America must be weak.

After all, America is an imperialist war-monger in the view of Obama, Shedlock, Paul, and the other nuts.

I repeat: nuts. Can they not comprehend history? Those bases in other countries? They're there for us. They're there to project power when it's needed. They're there to reassure allies, to demonstrate resolve, and -- ultimately -- to prevent conflict.

A strong national defense? It's for us. It's to ensure that no one dare pick a fight with the United States or its allies. It there to prevent conflict.

That's how Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot.

And today we are witnessing all of those gains vanish as the most destructive president in American history orchestrates the rise of a nuclear Iran, a Middle East afire, Red China laying claim to ever-increasing swaths of the Pacific, and Russia creeping ever westward into Europe.

It is the isolationist, Code Pink libertarians that are the war-mongers.

Obama, Shedlock, Paul, and the other isolationists seek war. They seek death and destruction. They ignore the lessons of history that teach us -- over and over again, century after century after century -- that weakness and appeasement beget conflict.

Obama, Shedlock, Paul and their ilk are the war-mongers. They must ignore all of human history to arrive at their bizarre ideology; it is certain that their ignorance will get a lot of people killed.


Hat tip: BadBlue News

What would Reagan do with a punk like Putin?

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Russian Aggression: Instead of a foreign policy that's a blend of Neville Chamberlain and Monty Python, the U.S. should trade flexibility for some backbone, scrap the reset button and start digging some missile silos.

It takes a lot to make Jimmy Carter look like Winston Churchill. But President Obama, who bats not an eye as a Russian warplane buzzes a U.S. warship in the Black Sea, has accomplished that with his pusillanimous policy regarding Moscow's creeping anschluss in Ukraine.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's comparison of current events to the days before World War II is on the mark. On Saturday, March 7, 1936, Hitler ordered three battalions of the German army to cross the Rhine bridges into an area of Germany demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I.

The British and French, fearing war, did nothing. The rest, as they say, is history.

Crimea was Putin's Rhineland, and the sanctions involving travel restrictions on low-level oligarchs was laughable. Tyrants do not move swiftly. They test the waters. They nibble. They watch. Weakness and inaction only delay the inevitable.

When Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev met Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, he hoped the U.S. president would be willing to trade his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) away in exchange for arms-control agreements and vague promises of making nice with America.

SWEET FANCY MOSES: Ted Cruz Posters Appearing In... Beverly Hills

Dude.

Mysterious posters of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) with his face photoshopped onto a tattooed body were plastered around various locations in Los Angeles, like the Beverly Hilton Hotel, late Thursday night.

The title above the image of the Texas Republican gives a March 15 date. The poster goes on to say, "TED CRUZ'S SO - CAL BLACKLISTED & LOVING IT TOUR."

Although the location of the poster says the Hilton, Senator Cruz is expected to be the keynote speaker at the Claremont Institute's annual Winton Churchill dinner on Saturday night at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

The black-and-white images have appeared in front of popular L.A. clubs: the Viper Room, the Seventh Veil, Whiskey-a-Go-Go, as well as on car windshields and utility poles among other places.

Ted Cruz. Ronald Reagan.

It's about to get real.


Hat tip: Twitchy

DEMOCRAT LOGIC COMIX: Tolerance

Another @BiffSpackle exclusive:

You can see the rest of Biff's comic collection here.

BOOM: Chart Illustrates the Difference Between Competent President and Incompetent Ideologue

But, but, but... Bush!

By any measure -- GDP, jobs, labor-force participation rate, whatever -- Reagan is to Obama what James Bond is to Inspector Clouseau.


Hat tip: @Gerfingerpoken.

Dichotomy, Illustrated

The first word of that headline is bound to confuse Democrats.

Can you think of another, equally valid headline for this De-motivator?

How about "Obamanomics vs. Reaganomics"?


Via: @1NYconservative.

Mark Levin responds to Charles Krauthammer: How is it that he missed three separate Reagan Revolutions?

Very good question:

MARK LEVIN: Part of what I was responding to was Tucker Carlson and Charles Krauthammer, you know, having giggles over Cruz being Canadian. Which is what the liberals bring up. Oh, the Canadian Ted Cruz. So, I thought that was pretty low.

KRAUTHAMMER: I stand exposed as the longest mole of liberals and Democrats in the conservative movement in the history of the republic. Alger Hiss is a piker beside me.

LEVIN: That’s all very funny, but my point is this -- Ronald Reagan ran for president of the United States three times and Krauthammer didn’t support him once. Excuse me, ran for president twice, but ran in the Republican primary three times. Ran in the Republican primary three times. I guess technically the last time is four times, but competitively three times. He was elected twice. He was a great conservative, a statesman. And somehow, Krauthammer, who wasn’t a child, was writing speeches or something for Walter Mondale.

Again, I don't have a problem with the fact that people change. That isn't even my point, but to take a shot at Cruz because -- Oh, the Canadian Ted Cruz, as they were giggling the other day. And not only that, they're not the font of all wisdom about the conservative movement. They missed the most important aspect of the conservative movement in modern history -- it was right in front of them and they missed it, which is exactly why they are missing Ted Cruz. They miss it.

Nothing personal, although they made it personal with Cruz. It's nothing personal with me. I'm not attacking them; I'm not attacking him.

I like Charles Krauthammer. I respect Charles Krauthammer.

The problem, however, is that he and so many like him -- George Will, for instance -- live inside a cloistered Beltway cocoon where it would seem they can no longer distinguish right from wrong nor politics from principle.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Obama waives ban on arming known terrorist groups

It just keeps getting better and better, don't it?

Obama waives ban on arming terrorists to allow aid to Syrian opposition

President Obama waived a provision of federal law designed to prevent the supply of arms to terrorist groups to clear the way for the U.S. to provide military assistance to "vetted" opposition groups fighting Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

Some elements of the Syrian opposition are associated with radical Islamic terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, which was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa., in 2001. Assad's regime is backed by Iran and Hezbollah.

The president, citing his authority under the Arms Export Control Act, announced today that he would "waive the prohibitions in sections 40 and 40A of the AECA related to such a transaction."

Really? This is the same fella who thinks Americans aren't responsible enough to own firearms?

.@BarackObama ended the gun control debate when arming Syrian rebels with heavy weapons without background checks: http://t.co/6HL5U8R9NK

— Doug Ross (@directorblue) September 15, 2013

This is going a ways back, but y'all remember the incessant shrieks of the anti-Reagan kooks regarding Iran-Contra?

Yeah, good times.

Cue the explosion of the Hypocrisy-meter in the background.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

With the combination of minimum wage hikes and Obamacare, destroying jobs is this president's job one

At some point in the not very distant future the complete failure of Barack Obama's economic policies will become evident to even the most obtuse liberal. But I repeat myself.

Case in point: the destructive combination of Obamacare and hikes in the minimum wage.

Here's the saddest thing about President Obama's proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour — because "no one who works full time should have to live in poverty."

A fine sentiment, but many full-time, low-wage workers he aims to help are sure to become part-time as employers dodge ObamaCare's hefty fines. Undoubtedly, even after a minimum wage hike, many who now earn less than $9 an hour would have paychecks that are no bigger — or even smaller than today.

In his State of the Union, Obama didn't mention ObamaCare could add $2.40 an hour to an employer's cost for a full-time, very-low wage worker. Add it up and Obama is really proposing a full-time minimum wage of as much as $11.40.
The economic cost of raising the minimum wage is fiercely debated and likely overstated. But there's little doubt about how employers will react if they can simply sidestep ObamaCare's equivalent of a steep minimum wage hike for full-time workers: By making them part-time.

ObamaCare's potential $2.40/hour cost to employers would result from a $3,000 fine for offering coverage deemed either too pricey or too skimpy. Tack on an additional $1.75/hour wage hike and the pressure would be extreme on employers to cut hours to avoid ObamaCare fines.

...For profit-making firms facing a combined 40% state and federal tax rate, ObamaCare's nondeductible $3,000-per-worker penalty is the equivalent of $5,000 in deductible wages. Divided by 52 weeks and 40 hours a week, that fine would equal $2.40 an hour.

But because employers would owe no fine for a 29-hour-per-week worker, the $5,000 cost could amount to $96 an hour for the 30th hour of work. That's why the 30-hour workweek may disappear.

Let me repeat: thanks to a tsunami of unintended consequences unleashed by Obamacare -- a massive bill that not a single Democrat lawmaker bothered to read -- paying a worker for a 30th hour of labor in a week might cost a company around $100.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, for six decades we've sought to solve the problems of unemployment and affordable health care through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.

But there's a simple recipe for success. It's called the Constitution and a federal government limited to the enumerated powers specified therein.

Our blueprint embraces all races, all religions, all creeds and all colors. Our formula is the biggest tent of all, because it is not achieved by pandering to smaller and smaller slices of the population, but by embracing and celebrating individual liberty, private property rights, free markets and -- most of all -- limited government.

These aren't complicated concepts. They aren't difficult to embrace. But the powers that be -- the corrupt, the immoral and those tempted by the trappings of Washington -- must be dislodged post haste if we are to save this Republic, this shining city on a hill.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN: Another "can't lose" moderate... loses

Jeffrey Lord pens another must-read that is certain to be ignored by the Beltway class and, yet, contains within it certain incontrovertible truths.

Number one: another "can't lose" RINO moderate... fails. Do the terms McCain, Dole, Bush 41 and Ford ring a bell?

Number two: where were first principles in this campaign?

One cannot plunge the country into astronomical debt without there being a financial come-to-Jesus reckoning. One cannot tempt aggression with weakness. One cannot tax one's way to prosperity. One cannot build a behemoth federal government and expect the country to prosper. One cannot, as Mark Levin puts it, not understand the "interconnection of liberty, free markets, religion, tradition and authority" -- and not pay a price for that lack of understanding.

Were these conservative principles true in 1980? Yes. They were also true in 1780 and 1880 and they will be true in 2080. They are to the world of politics and government what Newton's law of gravity is to the physical world. And to the extent that they are ignored, one is -- politically speaking -- jumping off the Empire State Building without a parachute.

Has the country changed since 1980? I would hope so. Change in human life is unstoppable. But as Reagan himself -- a staunch advocate of change -- smartly said: "History comes and goes, but principles endure…"

Barack Obama will come and go. The next Apple iGizmo will appear -- and eventually disappear to be a relic. Katy Perry and Lena Dunham will grow old. America will not even be in this moment of 2012 for very much longer. Life will go on. Time will move on. And yes, some absolutely inevitable and foreseeable crisis will confront the new romance with American socialism and send Americans running back to their roots.

Lord insists we need more "New Reagans" -- people of all backgrounds, all races, all religions -- who are well-versed in conservatism.

And where did Marco Rubio, now hailed by the Republican establishment as a 2016 favorite, come from? Not from the RINO establishment. It backed Charlie "Tan-in-a-Can" Crist and fought Rubio tooth and nail. It was the Tea Party and Constitutional Conservative movement that gave birth to Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, etc.

There are flawed candidates, to be sure, among those backed by the conservative wing of the Republican Party. RINOs point to Sharon Angle and Richard Mourdock, for example, forgetting that no one wins 100 percent of their slate. Until the afternoon of election day, when the unions started busing in voters from places unknown, Angle was in fact leading Harry Reid handily.

And one inappropriate and/or misconstrued remark by Mourdock (and a crackpot third-party candidate) helped cook his campaign.

It's not the conservatives who need to go away. It's the RINO establishment that should make themselves scarce. Once again, a mushy centrist -- who supposedly would appeal to wide swaths of the electorate -- lost in a race that should have been a slamdunk.

And in this existential showdown between liberty and tyranny, Mitt Romney could not even attract the same number of voters as... John McCain. Constitutional conservatives, Tea Party conservatives, and fiscal conservatives don't need to retreat. The RINO country club set needs to cede control to the true heart of the party. And if they refuse to cede power, we will defeat them as we have time and time again.

Instant fact-check: Bill Clinton's assertion that no one could fix the economy in only four years

Is he a liar, just ignorant, or all of the above? Hint for you drones reading along -- moving your lips, no doubt -- that's a rhetorical question.

Ronald Reagan inherited a far worse economic crisis: double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment, an energy crisis, a Soviet Union on the rise and an Iranian hostage crisis.

But he actually knew what he was doing. And -- strangely -- it was the complete opposite of Obama's agenda that includes punishing small business owners, restricting access to energy, killing our manned space program, and devastating our national security posture.

Chart: Major Leaguer vs. Rookie Leaguer

I wasn't blessed to know Ronald Reagan, but Mr. Obama -- you are definitely no Ronald Reagan. In fact, you're not even in the same league.

Forget the Reagan recovery. What if the Obama recovery was just, you know, average? Maybe in some alternate reality Obama’s stimulus plan involved cutting taxes for investors and entrepreneurs. And maybe Earth-Two Obama took a pass on government-centered healthcare reform.

Here is what the economy might look like today:

...Investors Business Daily has the rest of the chart.

As I've mentioned before, Mr. Obama is historic, but not in any way that can be construed as good for America.

Bumper Sticker o' the Day: We're Coming For Ya

Via Moe Lane and RightWingNews:

What can you do? If you have a few spare bucks, support Rick Santorum for President.

What's Old is New Again: A Time For Choosing

How brilliant, how timeless, how relevant was this 1964 speech by Ronald Reagan?

...Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We've raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And we've just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.

...Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.

This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down—[up] man's old—old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people. But they've been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say, "The cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism." Another voice says, "The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state." Or, "Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century." Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the President as "our moral teacher and our leader," and he says he is "hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document." He must "be freed," so that he "can do for us" what he knows "is best." And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as "meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government."

Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government"—this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.

...The President tells us he's now going to start building public housing units in the thousands, where heretofore we've only built them in the hundreds. But FHA [Federal Housing Authority] and the Veterans Administration tell us they have 120,000 housing units they've taken back through mortgage foreclosure. For three decades, we've sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.

...We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they're going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer—and they've had almost 30 years of it—shouldn't we expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?

But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we're told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a year. Welfare spending [is] 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We're spending 45 billion dollars on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you'll find that if we divided the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9 million poor families, we'd be able to give each family 4,600 dollars a year. And this added to their present income should eliminate poverty. Direct aid to the poor, however, is only running only about 600 dollars per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.

Now—so now we declare "war on poverty"... do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add 1 billion dollars to the 45 billion we're spending, one more program to the 30-odd we have—and remember, this new program doesn't replace any, it just duplicates existing programs—do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic?

...Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we're always "against" things—we're never "for" anything.

Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.

Now—we're for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we've accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.

But we're against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They've called it "insurance" to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term "insurance" to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they're doing just that.

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary—his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he's 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can't put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they're due—that the cupboard isn't bare?

...can't we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provision for the non-earning years? Should we not allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn't you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under this program, which we cannot do? I think we're for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we're against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as was announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program is now bankrupt. They've come to the end of the road.

...I think we're for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we're against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world's population. I think we're against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in the Soviet colonies in the satellite nations.

I think we're for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we're against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We're helping 107. We've spent 146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought 7 billion dollars worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So governments' programs, once launched, never disappear.

Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth.

Federal employees—federal employees number two and a half million; and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation's work force employed by government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man's property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury? And they can seize and sell his property at auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier over-planted his rice allotment. The government obtained a 17,000 dollar judgment. And a U.S. marshal sold his 960-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work.

...But as a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn't the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration, because back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his Party was taking the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his Party, and he never returned til the day he died—because to this day, the leadership of that Party has been taking that Party, that honorable Party, down the road in the image of the labor Socialist Party of England.

Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the—or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men—that we're to choose just between two personalities.

...Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we'll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy answer—but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.

We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second—surrender.

Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum. And what then—when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." "There is a point beyond which they must not advance." And this—this is the meaning in the phrase ... "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits—not animals." And he said, "There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

Absolutely brilliant.

Absolutely timeless.

And proof positive that the Democrats really haven't changed much in the last half-century.

Bumper Sticker o' the Day: Nostalgia

Papa B:

Spotted this today in the mall parking lot.

I do too.

ThinkProgress Celebrates Ronald Reagan's Birthday By Marketing Its Top Ten Lies Intended to Smear the 20th Century's Greatest President

That was quick--ThinkProgress attacks Ronald Reagan with their usual slate of laughably fraudulent fabrications

It didn't take long for the loons at ThinkRegress to begin attacking the memory of the 20th century's greatest president. The culmination of their effort -- '10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan' -- is a list of Reagan's policies that conservatives supposedly want to hide from the general public.

Reagan was not the man conservatives claim he was. This image of Reagan as a conservative superhero is myth, created to untie the various factions of the right behind a common leader. In reality, Reagan was no conservative ideologue or flawless commander-in-chief. Reagan regularly strayed from conservative dogma — he raised taxes eleven times as president while tripling the deficit — and he often ended up on the wrong side of history, like when he vetoed an Anti-Apartheid bill.

ThinkProgress' "top 10 things conservatives rarely mention when talking about President Reagan" are as follows:

" 1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser" - Reagan suffered from overwhelming Democrat majorities in Congress when he took office. While he desperately wanted to strip away huge swaths of government (including eliminating the then newly created Department of Education), he had no choice but to compromise with the Democrats who controlled the budgetary purse-strings. When Reagan left office, the top marginal tax rate was 28% (today's it's 35% and under Bill Clinton it was nearly 40%).

"2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit by enacting a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously" - Another flat-out lie. Before his 25 percent across-the-board cut in individual income-tax rates went into effect, government receipts from individual income taxes trickled in at $244.1 billion. The year Reagan left office, they totaled $445.7 billion -- an 82 percent jump. As for the deficits, Democrats outspent every one of the nine budgets Reagan proposed but one. Further, Democrats refused to make corresponding cuts in wasteful domestic programs to offset the defense appropriations Reagan needed to combat the Soviet Union after the Carter administration's foreign policy disasters (e.g., Iran, Afghanistan, et. al.).

"3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts" - Before the full tax-relief package was passed -- against the wishes of many Democrats, by the way -- the jobless rate hit 9.6 percent. But as the cuts rippled through the economy, unemployment dropped every year after 1983, reaching a low of 5.3 percent in 1989. And tax cuts benefited minorities, too. The jobless rate among blacks plunged from 19.5 percent in 1983 to 11.4 percent in 1989.

"4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously" - this again omits the role of Congressional Democrats who controlled the purse-strings and refused to axe the programs and agencies that Reagan requested. In fact, the media portrayed Reagan as "heartless" and depicted him as "laughable and malevolent" for his attempts to strip away the federal bureaucracy. But the only way the Democrat Congress would accept a defense buildup and tax cuts was for Reagan to agree to their domestic spending agenda. In fact, the budget deficits of the 1980s made the surpluses in the 1990s possible; the balanced budget was aided by surging tax revenues from a healthy, low-tax economy and immense defense savings made possible by the fall of the Soviet Union.

"5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to chose [sic]" - Reagan was adamant about ending the practice of 'abortion on demand' and proposed that legislation be drafted to do so (you can hear Reagan's 1983 address on this subject); but he "had little success in gaining its acceptance by Congress."

" 6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.”" - this is sheer revisionist idiocy; Reagan believed, first and foremost, in peace through strength. He gave dozens of speeches on this topic, rebuilt the U.S. military after Carter had stripped it bare, and created the impetus for the oft-derided SDI ("Star Wars") program that has since become an essential part of U.S. national security strategy. His famous slogans on this topic were "peace through strength" and "trust but verify".

" 7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants" - The Democrat leadership in Congress promised to enact strict enforcement measures as a trade for a one-time amnesty deal. In an effort to control the border, Reagan went along with the deal. At the time (1986), the measures were marketed by Democrats as as being able to stop illegal immigration. Ted Kennedy himself sold the enforcement clauses of the law as strong enough to ensure that only a one-time amnesty would be needed. But, as is their standard practice, Democrats lied about sealing the border.

Reagan himself said, "This country has lost control of its borders. And no country can sustain that kind of position."

" 8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran" -Democrats launched a six-year, $40 million investigation of Reagan in a politically inspired witch-hunt. Reagan was, in fact, found guilty of absolutely nothing. Furthermore, indictments were intentionally handed down mere days before the 1992 election that pitted George H. W. Bush against Bill Clinton -- presumably to levy the maximum amount of political damage on the GOP candidate. Near the end of the investigations, The Baltimore Sun reported that a "federal trial judge in Washington dismissed Oliver North's conviction" and that "[c]riticism of Mr. Walsh's prosecution and of the law that authorized it will become more intense [because the] public has gotten precious little from his [at the time] $30 million, four-year effort".

"9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act" - Reagan vehemently opposed apartheid ("Apartheid is morally wrong and politically unacceptable [... the] United States cannot maintain cordial relations with [such] a government") but he did not support the approach advocated by Congress. He issued an executive order restricting trade with the Pretoria government and virtually ended inter-bank dealings. But he believed that Congress' unilateral sanctions would harm blacks most of all and eradicate all of the leverage he wanted to bring to bear on South Africa. He wanted a timetable for the elimination of apartheid laws, the release of all political prisoners (especially Nelson Mandela) and a removal of the ban on black political movements. He felt he could not negotiate with the South African government if he had nothing to trade. His 1986 speech -- "Ending Apartheid in South Africa" -- comprehensively described his plans and approach.

" 10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden" - Gee, next they'll be complaining that we had to side with the Soviets to defeat the Nazis. This sort of leftist lunacy simply rewrites history. We needed to sabotage the Soviets' efforts in Afghanistan to prevent a dramatic power-shift in the Middle East. Blaming Reagan for the Taliban and Bin Laden is like blaming Henry Ford for the problem of too many scrap tires.

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Happy Birthday, Mr. President. Rest assured that the Left is just as stupid, dishonest and disingenuous as they were when you were in office.

Barack Obama: As American as Apple Pie and Ronald Reagan

Or so he and legacy media would have you believe.

Liberal pundits have recently found a new epithet for President Obama: "Reaganesque." But for that to fit, our current president would have to do a dramatic about-face, especially when it comes to policy... As America celebrates the 40th president's 100th birthday, the current White House occupant should think about his predecessor's bedrock philosophy and actual accomplishments that led to his success.

...our president would be wise to delve a bit deeper into his subject. He would find Reagan was successful not because of his personality — his well-known optimism, his ability to communicate — but because he had powerful conservative beliefs that resonated with Americans' own deeply held ideas of right and wrong...

Reagan emanated optimism. He did so because he believed — indeed, he knew — that his principles were the right ones. He believed in individual rights and responsibility, small but effective government, a strong defense and the rule of law.

Comparing how Reagan brought the economy roaring back with Obama's lack of success is instructive...

As they say, read the whole thing.

Obama to Egypt's Coptic Christians: "If I were in your shoes right now I’d be..." "LEAVING! What a GOOD idea!"

Or, as Jim Hoft puts it: "Egypt is the New Iran". Hoft's friend Ari David describes the implications of Mubarak's fall and Obama's culpability in stark terms.

The circle is now complete. This week Barack Obama truly became what many people believe he was all along, the long lost second term of Jimmy Carter’s presidency. The parallel between the snakebit presidency of Carter and the snakebit Presidency of Obama is stunning...

How is Obama handling such a crisis in order to not let it go to waste? The exact same way that Jimmy Carter let the congruent 1979 situation in Iran go to waste.

First he criticized the weakened leader of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak. Next Obama threatened to emasculate Mubarak’s standing with the Egyptian military by reducing US financial aid if Mubarak didn’t allow the protests and revolution in the streets to continue.

Obama followed up by tacitly signaling that he supports the violent Islamic protests which are backed by the Shariah-compliant extremists of the Moslem Brotherhood, which is the only real opposition party in Egypt to the thirty-year dictator Mubarak. After that, like Carter, Obama showed constant indecision and weakness, which is having the result of undermining our allies and empowering the forces of insanity and evil on the ground in Egypt and other destabilized countries in the region like Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan.

Just like Carter, Obama got us to this point by undermining our only ally in the area, Israel, and empowering all of her regional enemies for the first two years of his presidency. That undermining has led us directly to these out of control events.

At this moment, of the four nations that border Israel, two of them, Syria and Lebanon, are client states of Iran waging constant war and the other two which both have brokered peace are facing internal turmoil, Jordan is facing Islamic protests in her streets and the relatively stable tourist destination Egypt, is exploding in revolution.

...Iran has been a bastion of total evil since Jimmy Carter allowed her to become an Islamic theocracy in 1979. No country in the world has been more responsible for atrocious evil acts than Iran in all of these years and is now at the doorstep of possessing nuclear weapons. All of this pain is the Jimmy Carter legacy bequeathed upon our generation...

The irony is not lost on David. As Obama travels down the same path as Carter, the nation celebrates the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth.

The contrast between Democrats and Republicans could not be more clearly delineated than during crises like these.

Sneak Preview: 10 Photos of the Reagan Rose Bowl Float #awesome

In honor of President Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday, the Rose Bowl Parade will celebrate the life of the greatest president of the last century with a monumental float. Courtesy of Hope for America, here's a sneak preview.










If you're as big a Reagan fan as I am, it's also worth visiting the Reagan Library on the web or -- better still -- in person.

Hat tip: CB.