They came to hang a portrait of George W. Bush in the White House.

Obama was mostly nice, but couldn’t help himself to this:

“The months before I took the oath of office were a chaotic time,” Obama said, after explaining that the president’s job is isolating, and that he and Bush have a connection since so few have held the job. “We knew our economy was in trouble, our fellow Americans were in pain, but we wouldn’t know until later just how breathtaking the financial crisis had been.”

Obama did note the Bush tried to get it right. “Still, over those 2 1/2 months, in the midst of that crisis, President Bush, his cabinet, his staff, many of you who are here today, went out of your ways–George, you went out of your way–to make sure that the transition to a new administration was a seamless as possible. President Bush understood that rescuing our economy was not just a Democratic or  Republican issue, it was an American priority. I’ll always be grateful for that.”

He went on to say…

“But damn, Dubya, you really drove that car into a ditch. A bitch of a ditch! My choom gang, we got wrecked, but never that wrecked. But it’s all good, all good.

I got us out of Iraq, tidied up that mess…huh, what’s that? You negotiated the treaty that ended the war? Not according to Biden. Well anyway, nice painting.”

Bush was gracious nontheless. On the way out, Obama was heard whispering to Bush.

“You waterboarded. I smite them from the sky. Pussy.”

Jim Geraghty at the Campaign Spot

Place this one in the category of, “Oh, he’s just so farshtunken perfect, isn’t he?”

In the meeting, Obama reportedly boasted about his knowledge of Judaism, telling the leaders that he thinks he knows more “about Judaism” than all past presidents. He said he gained this knowledge of Judaism from reading.

We’ve heard the jokes about how often Obama likes to tout his actions as unprecedented. (Politico noticed way back in November 2009 that “Obama has relied on ‘unprecedented’ in more than 90 instances, using the word at least 129 times in everything from major addresses to small speeches, statements, memorandums and proclamations.)”

He says he’s among the top four presidents. Biden says the bin Laden mission was the most audacious military plan in 500 years. Everything is the biggest, the best, the grandest, the newest, the smartest . . . why does this guy not get along with Donald Trump again?

It must be nice — or blinding — to walk through life constantly telling yourself and others — and hearing others say — that you’re the best at everything. All the time.

As I mentioned yesterday, he assures us that even his humility is “profound.”

Because I’d hate for him to have to just make do with mere garden-variety humility.

I can hear the chant already.

Bernard Goldberg

You hear the one about the guy who is so fat he doesn’t have an address. He has a zip code!

How about this: Yo mama so fat when she walks outside in a yellow dress, people yell “TAXI!”

I’m guessing New Yorkers hear a lot of fat jokes, since more than half the people who live in the city are overweight or downright obese. I didn’t know that until I read the New York Times today. So the mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has come up with a plan to fight the problem: He’s going to ban “the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts, in the most ambitious effort yet by the Bloomberg administration to combat rising obesity,” as the Times explained it.

My sources tell me there are more rules on the way.

I understand that the mayor will make the sale of Ding Dongs and Ho Hos a felony.

He’s also going to ban apple pie, hot dogs, salt, cheesecake and margarine. Anyone caught selling any of these soon-t0-be illegal substances will be sent to re-education camp on Staten Island.

And if a black market pops up to provide New York’s fatsos with illegal stuff to shove down their throats, the mayor has a contingency plan to force everyone over a government specified weight to join a health club – or be expelled to New Jersey, where they should feel more at home since the governor is fat.

Okay, I made a lot of that up. But the ban on large sodas is not a joke.

“Obesity is a nationwide problem, and all over the United States, public health officials are wringing their hands saying, ‘Oh, this is terrible,’ ” Mr. Bloomberg told the Times.

“New York City is not about wringing your hands; it’s about doing something,” the mayor said. “I think that’s what the public wants the mayor to do.”

This raises a question: Where is Ron Paul when you really need him?

According to the proposed ban – it has to be approved by the city’s Board of Health, which is a virtual certainty since the mayor appointed the board members – “The sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces — about the size of a medium coffee, and smaller than a common soda bottle — would be prohibited under the first-in-the-nation plan,” according to the Times…

Holman Jenkins sums up the core of Obama’s campaign strategy: pretend there’s a free lunch because people want to believe it, although they know better.

…Here’s the real message of the Bain ads. The ads may invoke classic private-equity slurs like looter and stripper, but the real message is that private equity is exactly what it says it is: a bringer of efficiency and rationalization. Mr. Romney, the ads say, wants to take things away from you that he claims no longer are affordable; Mr. Obama, the ads say, will fight whoever tries to take things away. To the less sophisticated voter, the Obama message is a soothing “nothing has to change.” To the more sophisticated, President Obama proposes himself as the defender of every spending interest, never favoring a cut, always pushing for higher taxes.

Look at Europe. Look at California. This strategy can work electorally. As policy, it may be unbelievable, irrational and misleading—like Gov. Jerry Brown clinging to his bullet train. But it makes a kind of political sense.

Mr. Brown’s politics in fact are worth studying. His state is flirting with fiscal collapse. Businesses and workers are fleeing its high taxes. Yet he defends a perfectly senseless plan to build a $68 billion high-speed rail to nowhere. His message to his state’s spending interests: “I’m your guy. No compromise.” As in Greece, where austerity has meant the private sector shrinks but the government doesn’t, so in California, if Mr. Brown has anything to say about it.

Politicians who work this vein are careful not to be heard actually saying “everything is affordable.” But voters get the message “the rich will pay.” If the proceeds of the Buffett tax were proportional to the noise Mr. Obama has made promoting it, the Buffett tax alone would solve our fiscal problems (in fact, it’s impact would be negligible).

The ressentiment campaign, then, is not about the legitimacy of capitalism, which isn’t really in question. It’s about Scott Walker in Wisconsin; it’s about Chris Christie in New Jersey. The symbolic victims in Obama’s Bain ads are steelworkers only because a 50-year-old retiree living on a government pension doesn’t make a compelling victim. The villains are rich bankers because the average taxpayer doesn’t make a good villain. The Bain ads are about the spending wars, and those who benefit from government largess and those who foot the bill…

Ed Rogers in the WaPo.

The left has a decision to make: Is it going to try to repackage the starry-eyed romance and dreamy magic of Barack Obama from four years ago or build a rationale for his reelection based on lessons learned and a plausible critique of the president’s performance in office. Perhaps it will need to acknowledge that the idolization of Obama was a one-time phenomena and that voters, desperate for some results, will be impatient with proselytizing from the Obama camp.

A good test is approaching. Next Monday, June 4, will be the four-year anniversary of the speech candidate Obama gave celebrating his delegate count, which would make him the certain Democrat nominee. He took the occasion to state what he thought his presidency foretold. Of his own nomination victory, Obama said, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.” He let others really lay it on thick. You would think the retrospective absurdity of this quote would make liberals a little cautious, if not embarrassed, and cause them to rethink how they enabled Obama. We will see how this is hidden or celebrated in the next few days.

Frank Bruni, writing in the New York Times, suggests the left is going to double-down on the theme of Obama as the chosen one and his followers as enlightened. Bruni appears to be willing to strain even harder for Obama in 2012 by neglecting to find anything particularly admirable about Mitt Romney while completely refreshing the Obama myth. He never hints that the reality of electing a president who was a little-accomplished state senator, unknown community organizer and high school stoner has produced some disappointments and required plenty of on-the-job training. You have to read it to get the full dose, but among other things, Bruni says of Obama, “He still personifies the hope that we might evolve into the colorblind, fair-minded country that many of us want. His own saga taps into the larger story of this country’s fitful unfinished progress toward its stated ideal of equal opportunity.”

Like other liberals, Bruni credits Obama’s charmed life so far as being “his journey.” Conversely, he is not only condescending to Mitt Romney but finds fault with him, saying, “He hasn’t succeeded in rummaging through his biography for the sorts of broadly inspirational chapters that can help a candidate bond with voters.” He states that Romney, like Bush, is “another child of privilege and political scion.” Bruni goes on to say that Romney “seems congenitally closed-off and palpably awkward about transforming the personal into the political.” As if “rummaging (more…)

Senator David Vitter of Lousiana

The federal government is handing out $4.2 billion a year to illegal aliens.

This isn’t some service benefit that illegal aliens are receiving, like taxpayer-subsidized health care or education. And it’s not a tax deduction or a non-refundable tax credit, which would require recipients to actually pay taxes in order to receive the benefit. It’s a refundable tax credit, a taxpayer-funded check from the federal government. And the government requires no proof that the recipient is actually eligible under the law, which illegals are not.

Abuse of this tax benefit is one of the most ridiculous examples of fraud adding to our federal deficit today. Equally harmful, it is acting as a powerful incentive for more illegal aliens to come to America.

While illegal aliens don’t qualify for legitimate Social Security numbers, the IRS allows them to apply for Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs). The overwhelming majority of returns with ITINs are filed by illegals. This is how they fraudulently apply for and receive these checks.

This tax credit was designed to help working families offset the costs of raising children. But illegal aliens — who don’t possess valid Social Security numbers because they are not authorized to work in this country — are able to receive these tax credits by simply providing an ITIN and claiming to have children. So, American taxpayers are writing checks to illegal aliens — $1,000 per child, $4.2 billion per year total.An investigative reporter in Indianapolis recently uncovered cases in which illegal aliens were claiming the child tax credit for nieces and nephews who did not even live in the United States. Some received more than $10,000 from the federal government.

One admitted that his address was used by four other illegal aliens who don’t even live there. They claimed 20 children were living in one mobile home and received returns, including the additional child tax credit, totaling $29,608. But only one child actually lives at the residence; the other 19 live in Mexico and have never even visited the United States.

The Obama administration’s own Department of Treasury, through its inspector general for tax administration, has repeatedly warned about these abuses and said that “millions of people are seeking this tax credit who, we believe, are not entitled to it.”

Vitter is introducing a bill to end the abuse.

As we noted earlier, the amount of money lost to this fraud is amount the money Obama would raise with his “Buffet rule.”

Byron York:

Mitt Romney’s refusal to repudiate Donald Trump sends a signal, both to Democrats and the voting public: With the nation’s future at stake in this November’s election, Romney will not accommodate calls that he disown supporters who make ill-considered, unpopular, or sometimes outrageous statements on matters not fundamental to the campaign.

Good for him. He’s no fool.

But since Team Obama brought up the subject here’s a list of people for Obama to repudiate:

1. John Corzine, possible Wall Street crook, who is still welcomed as a money bundler for Obama. He was also the first guy Obama called for advice on the economy when taking office, at least according to Biden.
2. Bill Maher — an aggressive vulgarian who donated $1 million to Obama and continues to pimp for him on his HBO show.
3. Jeremiah Wright
4. Al Sharpton
5. Van Jones — Obama’s Marxist onetime “green jobs czar”
6. Debbie Wasserman Schultz — even a year after the Gabby Giffords shooting, she was claiming GOP rhetoric was partly to blame.
7. Joe Biden –uh, take your pick.

Jim Geraghty

…Wisconsin Democrats, who fled the state to avoid voting on Walker’s reforms, who let protesters take over the state capitol for several days, who compared the governor to Hitler,  and who forced recalls of state legislators and the governor (putting state voters through seven elections in one year), have coalesced behind one final closing argument: Scott Walker has divided the state.

Really.

Obama’s great political talent has been his knack for granting his admirers permission to think highly of themselves for thinking highly of him.

— Holman Jenkins, WSJ

Mexican drug cartels are not strictly drug cartels. One of their fastest-growing markets is extortion of private citizens and businesses. Don’t pay, and you can be threatened — or worse. But largely, the cartels target small businesses and individuals, and stay away from the larger industries. Now several arson attacks over the weekend against a Mexican snack chip subsidiary might be the first time the cartels have targeted a multinational corporation.

That corporation would be PepsiCo. According to press reports, masked men attacked five warehouses and vehicle lots on Friday and Saturday nights belonging to the U.S. snack and soft drink giant. More specifically, PepsiCo’s Mexican subsidiary: Sabritas. Dozens of yellow delivery trucks — which transport Sabritas chips and Fritos, Cheetos and Ruffles (among other brands) for the Mexican market — were burned. The good news: No one was injured or killed. At least one member of the Knights Templar cartel was reportedly arrested. Video has also emerged of firefighters battling the blazing trucks and the European Pressphoto Agency released images of Sabritas’ smiley-face mascot illuminated by the flames.

“What we cannot allow is for this kind of isolated case to become generalized,” Gerardo Gutierrez, president of Mexico’s Business Coordinating Council, told the Associated Press.

LA Times columnist Pat Morrison interviews Michael Dukakis, a visiting professor of politics at UCLA, about the current political scene. There’s this nugget:

Has the electorate changed much?

I don’t think so. I think a lot of Americans are better informed, yet there’s more required than just having information. It’s trying to make judgments about where we want this country to go. And there’s no question that moderation is not exactly the name of the game.

In fact, the one moderate politician these days is Obama. It seems to me that [Sen.] Richard Lugar’s defeat in Indiana, [Rep.] Mike Castle’s defeat in the primary in Delaware in 2010 and [Sen.] Olympia Snowe’s retirement now makes it official: Moderate and thoughtful Republicanism in the U.S. is dead.

Obama a moderate? That shows how he calibrates his politics. (Dukakis carried only 10 states in his 1988 loss to Bush 41, so apparently he hasn’t grown much intellectually.)

Richard Lugar is 80 years old and served 36 years in the Senate. It’s not exactly radical to think he’d been there long enough.

Now consider the case of Senator Joe Lieberman. He was the Democrats vice-presidential candidate in 2000.

Six years later he was run out of the party for having an independent mind about the Iraq war.

Clearly, the Democrats could not and would not tolerate a diverse opinion.

Ancient history? Well consider the case of Corey Booker, who dared speak his mind about Obama’s cheap-shot political ads. He was being thoughtful and moderate, no?

Kathleen Parker:

The past several days of Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s life have been painfully amusing to watch.

Painful because Booker, a rising Democratic star, is such a good guy. Amusing, because rarely are Americans treated to such premier seats in the political theater of truth and consequence.

That is, tell the truth and beware the consequences.

Booker has gained much unwelcome attention from his own political party, while being nearly sanctified by Republicans, for the singular offense of telling the truth.

And then untelling the truth

And then … stay tuned.

To know Booker is to like him. He’s one of those political figures whose persona telegraphs “honest broker.” Educated at Stanford, Oxford and Yale Law School, he’s also a popular mayor in one of America’s toughest, most challenged cities. Open-minded and solution-oriented, he’s what we hope for in public officials. Or say we do.

But honesty is not always a rewarding trait in politics, especially during high-stakes election years, as Booker promptly learned when he recently spoke from the heart on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He said that attacks on Bain Capital, where Mitt Romney made a fortune, were “nauseating” to him, as were similar attacks from the right to resurrect the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

“I have to just say from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. To me, it’s just this — we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America, especially that I know. I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, it ain’t — they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses.”

Hearts leapt.

While regular folks shielded their eyes from the blinding light of Truth, political operatives left and right shifted into warp speed. Republicans produced an insta-ad capitalizing on Booker’s remarks — See? Even Democrats dislike the president’s attack on Bain — while their counterparts on the left began launching correctives.

Finally, Artur Davis, a Democrat and early, prominent Obama backer, has left the Democrat party.

…wearing a Democratic label no longer matches what I know about my country and its possibilities,” he said.

“On the specifics, I have regularly criticized an agenda that would punish businesses and job creators with more taxes just as they are trying to thrive again,” he said. “I have taken issue with an administration that has lapsed into a bloc by bloc appeal to group grievances when the country is already too fractured: frankly, the symbolism of Barack Obama winning has not given us the substance of a united country.”

Mister smooth flubs it again. One wonders, did he pronounce Polish like shoe polish?

US President Barack Obama’s description of a Nazi German Holocaust site as a “Polish death camp” shocked Poland, whose leaders insist the record be set straight 67 years after World War II.

Obama on Tuesday labeled the Nazi facility used to process Jews for extermination as a “Polish death camp.” The White House later said the president “misspoke” and expressed “regret”.

The linguistic faux pas overshadowed Obama’s posthumous award of the highest US civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Jan Karski, a former Polish underground officer who provided early eyewitness accounts of Nazi Germany’s genocide of European Jews.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Wednesday Obama’s words had hurt all Poles and he expected more from Washington than just “regret”.

“I am convinced that our American friends can today allow themselves a stronger reaction than a simple expression of regret from the White House spokesman — a reaction more inclined to eliminate once and for all these kinds of errors,” Tusk told reporters in Warsaw.

“Today, this is a problem for the reputation of the United States,” the prime minister said.

Poland’s anti-communist icon Lech Walesa meanwhile termed Obama’s error a “golden occasion” to set the historical record straight.

Between 1939 and 1945, nearly six million Polish citizens perished under Nazi Germany’s brutal World War II occupation of their country.

More than half of Poland’s victims were of Jewish origin and they, in turn, accounted for half of the six million European Jews who perished during the Holocaust.

Many were killed in death camps set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland — including the most notorious, Auschwitz-Birkenau…

by Burt Prelutsky

How do I hate Barack Obama? I might spin Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s immortal words and say, “Let me count the ways. I hate him to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.” But even that doesn’t quite cover the contempt I have for this past and present community agitator.

Fifty long years after Martin Luther King suggested we judge a person by his character, this slug is still waging race warfare. While we are all well-aware that he is basing his entire re-election campaign on separating Americans and playing to wealth envy, religious differences and even engendering gender divisions, it is his insistence on stoking up racial hatred that makes him the archenemy of everything decent that America represents.

Only Obama would have made the openly racist Eric Holder his attorney general. Only Obama would have remained silent when Holder refused to indict the Black Panthers for voter intimidation. Only Obama would have said that Trayvon Martin reminded him of the son he never had.

On the other hand, only Obama would have remained silent when his cohorts, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, converged on Sanford, Florida, and incited the black mobs to demand George Zimmerman’s bloodied head on a platter. Only Obama would have prevented his Department of Justice from demanding that the Black Panthers be indicted for offering a bounty on young Mr. Zimmerman, dead or alive.

Only Barack Obama would encourage his re-election team to connect Mitt Romney to polygamy when it was Obama’s own Kenyan father who was still a married man when he tied the knot with Obama’s mother. Of course it soon turned out to be a slip-knot when the bigamist scurried back to Africa, leaving wife number two and child behind.

Only Barack Obama would encourage his re-election team to tar Romney for having conveyed the family dog on his car’s rooftop, which was not only safe, but provided the dog with all the wind in his face that every dog craves, when, by his own admission, young Obama had dined on dog. Which in certain civilized circles, is comparable to cannibalism.

According to his book, “Dreams From My Father,” Obama’s stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, belonged to a brand of Islam that believed that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate. One can’t help wondering if in his dreams, Obama chases cats.

Although in 2008, Harry Reid boasted that Obama doesn’t speak like a black man and Joe Biden topped him by alerting us to the fact that Obama is clean, the silliest thing anyone ever thought to say about him is that he’s a genius. I’m not even alluding to his contention back in ‘08 that he had visited 57 states and only had one more to go, or his references to the Austrian language and the U.S. Marine Corpse. But I am suggesting that for a man who regards diplomacy as his strong suit, telling the presidents or prime ministers of Denmark, Norway, the Philippines, Ireland and Holland, that their little nations all “punch above their weight,” indicates that he has either let his membership in the Cliché of the Month Club lapse or that he has hired a very lazy relative to be his speechwriter.

Lest anyone think those gaffes are the exception to the rule, Obama has also announced on 11 different occasions that the United States has no stronger ally than Australia, Poland, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, South Korea, Israel, Holland, France, Italy and Japan. Frankly, I think he is showing undiplomatic favoritism to Holland and Denmark by telling the world that they are not only our strongest allies, but that they also punch above their weight.

Would someone who is even slightly brilliant tell 11 different countries that they are his very favorite? Does he really think that these countries don’t talk to each other, even if it’s not in Austrian? Doesn’t it even occur to Mr. Tact that Germany and France are always on the verge of a major spat without anyone’s needlessly provoking a cat fight? Doesn’t he realize that a young woman who carried on the way he does would be referred to as the town slut?

Finally, as if any additional evidence were required to prove that Obama is only the smartest man in the room when he’s standing in a very small closet, during his highly trumpeted visit to the Summit of the Americas, he tried to show himself on the side of Argentina when he referred to the Falkland Islands as the Malvinas. That happens to be the Argentine name for the British crown colony they have long coveted, and over which Margaret Thatcher, with Ronald Reagan’s blessing, went to war.

This is the same Argentina that recently showed its dedication to democratic ideals by nationalizing the nation’s largest oil company and banning foreign books.

But, as is his wont, Obama displayed his vaunted brilliance by calling them the Maldives, which is an actual group of islands, but one that’s located in the Indian Ocean, not the Atlantic, and is nowhere near Argentina.

So, at one fell swoop, Obama not only stabbed the Brits in the back, but made America an even bigger laughing stock than the horny Secret Service agents had done by turning Hotel Caribe into the most infamous brothel in the world.

As if it’s not bad enough that we are constantly told that Obama’s IQ is too high to be accurately measured, his wife recently told a crowd in Nashville, Tennessee: “This president has brought us out of the darkness and into the light.”

If one is to believe certain eyewitness reports, as the collection plate was being passed among the Obama faithful, the blind could suddenly see, the lame got up and tap-danced and the dead all registered as Democrats.

And don’t forget, you owe Uncle Sam a lotta dough.

David Ogilvy was a giant in advertising in the ’50s and ’60s.

When I began writing advertising copy I bought his book, which was short and sweet.

In a memo to his staff, he offered ten writing tips, among them:

2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.

3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.

4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.

This is context for a silly article based upon a silly study (they’re a plague) about the level of speech in Congress.

Discourse in the House and Senate has dropped a full grade level — to the equivalent of high school sophomore, according to a new study.

Call this the dumbing down of Congress in a partisan age. Or a shift to plain-spoken populism ignited by the new class of tea party Republicans.

But what has become clear in the new research is that the soaring oratory that once filled the floors of the House and Senate with million-dollar diction and sophisticated syntax is making way for a more modest approach.

“Congress is changing as an institution, and what you see is more and more members gearing their speeches as sound bites or YouTube clips,” said Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, which compiled the study released Monday.

Brace yourself.

In an analysis of floor debates over the last several years, the study found that newer lawmakers tended to speak at a lower grade level than the veterans of congressional speechifying.

And political moderates among both Republicans and Democrats tended to carry on at a higher grade level than those more partisan liberals or conservatives.

With that framework in mind, it should come as no surprise that the lawmakers at the bottom of the list, speaking at the lowest grade level, are among the most ardent tea party Republicans in the freshman class. Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, Rep. Robert Woodall of Georgia and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky were the bottom three — speaking at about an eighth-grade level, the study found.

I bet you saw that coming. Tea Partiers are so dumb they talk simple.

“We look at it as a badge of honor,” said Mulvaney, a graduate of Georgetown University and the University of North Carolina Law School, who notes that he often speaks on the floor “extemporaneously.”

“It’s a conscious decision on my part. We are trying to be clear and trying to be concise,” he added. He said he and his wife had been known to diagram sentences at the dinner table, a byproduct of having schoolteacher parents.

“I can explain the difference between ‘fewer’ and ‘less,’” Mulvaney said, but he acknowledged that he still stumbled over the difference between “farther” and “further.”

“I don’t think people see the polysyllabic words — or the number of words — in a sentence as a sign of your intelligence,” he said.

Intelligent people don’t.

No way.

It seems that everybody wants a hand in the massive cookie jar known as the Internet. The latest group that wants some form of control over the Internet is the United Nations. I don’t need to tell you how bad of an idea that is and it seems that our government finally agrees with the Internet on something.

The House of Representatives will be examining the proposal this week. According to The Hill, the UN backed proposal is already supported by China, Russia, Brazil and other countries that would benefit greatly from being able to control the Internet. If there’s one thing that we’ve learned, it’s that the U.S. hates it when foreign countries try to control the Internet.

Hey, we invented it and let the world use it. So Putin and other tyrants can pound sand.

Fortunately, there is bipartisan opposition to this absurdity.

…two dictators walk into a bar….

Sorry, not that kind of joke.

With a line-up that includes Drew Barrymore, David Beckham, Orlando Bloom, and Ricky Martin, the UN’s choice of ambassadors has been known to cause raised eyebrows or the odd smirk.

Seldom, however, has there been such anger, or questioning of the organisation’s credibility, as that greeting the appointment of a new international envoy for tourism: Robert Mugabe.

Improbable as it seems, the Zimbabwean president, who is widely accused of ethnic cleansing, rigging elections, terrorising opposition, controlling media and presiding over a collapsed economy, has been endorsed as a champion of efforts to boost global holidaymaking.

Despite that fact Mugabe, 88, is under a travel ban, he has been honoured as a “leader for tourism” by the UN’s World Tourism Organisation, along with his political ally, Zambian president Michael Sata, 75. The pair signed an agreement with UNWTO secretary general Taleb Rifai at their shared border at Victoria Falls on Tuesday.

The UN has credibility?

Oh, yes, those Progressives still believe in it, the same crowd that mocks religious folks.

Jim Geraghty

New York magazine analyzes the president’s reelection campaign:

Thus, to a very real degree, 2008’s candidate of hope stands poised to become 2012’s candidate of fear. For many Democrats, this is just fine and dandy, for they believe that in the Romney-Republican agenda there is plenty to be scared of. For others in the party in both politics and business, however, the new Obama posture is cause for concern. From the gay-­marriage decision to the onslaught on Bain, they see the president and his team as coming across as too divisive, too conventional, and too nakedly political, putting at risk Obama’s greatest asset — his likability — with the voters in the middle of the electorate who will ultimately decide his fate.

Whichever side is right, one thing is undeniable. For anyone still starry-eyed about Obama, the months ahead will provide a bracing revelation about what he truly is: not a savior, not a saint, not a man above the fray, but a brass-knuckled, pipe-hitting, red-in-tooth-and-claw brawler determined to do what is necessary to stay in power — in other words, a politician.

Three questions: First, is anyone still starry-eyed about Obama? Two, if you’re still starry-eyed at this point, with the results he has generated, would a nasty, negative campaign really be what removes the stars from your eyes? And third . . . considering that a significant number of us never saw Obama as a savior and a saint, and always argued that he was a ruthless politician . . . wouldn’t it behoove the bright minds at New York magazine to acknowledge we were right?

No one would be. No one wants to kill innocents. But…

“Awake” on NBC seemed like a gimmick show that could not hold up past a few episodes. Creatively it sure did, adding layers of nuance and emotional depth each week.

Alas, it was cancelled. The premise might not have worked in a second season, but this one is worth it. You can watch the whole thing on Hulu or wait for it to come out on DVD.

It was a good ride.

Progressives despised Dan Quayle from the moment they saw him: he looked like frat boy, and that was enough. He became caricatured as an idiot.

This is the notion of civility that has long ruled among the self-described cognoscenti.

Isabell Sawhill in the Washington Post

On May 19, 1992, as the presidential campaign season was heating up, Vice President Dan Quayle delivered a family-values speech that came to define him nearly as much as his spelling talents. Speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California, he chided Murphy Brown — the fictional 40-something, divorced news anchor played by Candice Bergen on a CBS sitcom — for her decision to have a child outside of marriage.

“Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong,” the vice president said. “Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this. It doesn’t help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.”

Quayle’s argument — that Brown was sending the wrong message, that single parenthood should not be encouraged — erupted into a major campaign controversy. And just a few weeks before the ’92 vote, the show aired portions of his speech and had characters react to it.

“Perhaps it’s time for the vice president to expand his definition and recognize that, whether by choice or circumstance, families come in all shapes and sizes,” Bergen’s character said.

Her fictional colleague Frank, meanwhile, echoed some of the national reaction: “It’s Dan Quayle — forget about it!”

Snark, snark — he’s an idiot remember? We need not consider his point with respect.

Twenty years later, Quayle’s words seem less controversial than prophetic. The number of single parents in America has increased dramatically: The proportion of children born outside marriage has risen from roughly 30 percent in 1992 to 41 percent in 2009. For women under age 30, more than half of babies are born out of wedlock. A lifestyle once associated with poverty has become mainstream. The only group of parents for whom marriage continues to be the norm is the college-educated.

Some argue that these changes are benign. Many children who in the past would have had two married parents could have two cohabiting parents instead. Why should the lack of a legal or religious tie affect anyone’s well-being?

There are three reasons to be concerned about this dramatic shift in family life.

First, marriage is a commitment that cohabitation is not. Taking a vow before friends and family to support another person “until death do us part” signals a mutual sense of shared responsibility that cannot be lightly dismissed. Cohabitation is more fragile — cohabiting parents split up before their fifth anniversary at about twice the rate of married parents.  Often, this is because the father moves on, leaving the mother not just with less support but with fewer marriage prospects. For her, marriage requires finding a partner willing to take responsibility for someone else’s kids.

Second, a wealth of research strongly suggests that marriage is good for children. Those who live with their biological parents do better in school and are less likely to get pregnant or arrested. They have lower rates of suicide, achieve higher levels of education and earn more as adults. Meanwhile, children who spend time in single-parent families are more likely to misbehave, get sick, drop out of high school and be unemployed…

Ann Althouse has some off-base thoughts on this, but her commentors have plenty of good insights.

One that stood out:

With so many nice people minds, like Althouse, nitpicking Quayle while willfully ignoring the fact that all their sophisticated equivocations about the relative quality of single parent households are only made possible by the state as provider there is no hope…other than collapse of the whole obscene monstrosity. May that day come soon.

Way, way before Dan Quayle, Daniel Patrick Moynihan sounded the alarm on rising levels of out-of-wedlock births. He was a liberal, so he was allowed to live.

Jay Nordlinger

Last week, I wrote about a visit to the hydroelectric plant in Telemark, Norway, where those brave saboteurs on skis slowed the Nazis’ drive for an A-bomb. I said I had a memory from student days. It was the historian Ernest May, I think, who told us, “When you study World War II, don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Allies assumed they would win all along. Oh, no. It wasn’t until the Casablanca Conference that they even decided to go for total victory — a total victory rather than a negotiated peace. When you study the war, try to rid yourself of the notion that the outcome was inevitable.”

In response to this, a reader from Silicon Valley writes with a memory of his own. Thought you would enjoy it:

Dear Jay,

. . . My father told me something long ago. He was a war refugee, arriving from Hungary in late 1941. He settled in Boston and began a medical career. Shortly after moving to Boston, he went one night to the movies. A newsreel was played. It featured General Stilwell making his famous comment, “I claim we got a hell of a beating.” The audience cheered.

Dad’s first reaction was sheer terror. He was sure the police would storm the theater and arrest the projectionist for showing the newsreel, and the entire audience for cheering an American defeat. That most certainly would have happened in Admiral Horthy’s Hungary. But nothing happened, except that the movie was shown after the news reel.

At the end, there weren’t any police at the theater, and my dad went home relieved. But he was confused. In the following days, he thought a great deal about what had happened at the theater. Until that point, he was absolutely convinced that the Axis would win the war, and that someday the Wehrmacht would invade the U.S. The Germans had of course been winning everything up to then, and, to a newcomer like Dad, the U.S. in early 1942 did not seem strong or serious enough to resist the Germans.

But it finally occurred to him that we were in fact quite strong — far stronger than the Germans — and serious as well. General Stilwell’s full statement had been, “I claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back, and retake it.” The cheering was in response to the call to get our act together and retake Burma.

Dad told me that from then on he never had any doubt about our eventual victory, or about how fortunate he was to have come to the U.S. when he did…

…another ideologue in a position of power.

Wasn’t Obama sold to America as a pragmatist? If so, then why appoint her to run the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?

Robert Zubrin

….Allison Macfarlane is the author of the book Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High Level Nuclear Waste. This book, which is endorsed by antinuclear activist Victor Gilinsky, makes the absurd argument that rather than risk unknown consequences 10,000 years in the future should geological conditions affecting remote underground desert repositories change, that high level nuclear waste should continue to be stored in cooling ponds adjacent to nuclear power plants located near heavily populated urban and suburban areas. Thus for Macfarlane, as for Jaczko, the clear goal is to not to make nuclear power as safe as possible — which is the purpose of the NRC — but to make it as unsafe as possible — which is the agenda of those seeking to shut down the nuclear industry.

Macfarlane’s fundamental commitments are thus directly at odds with the purpose of the organization she is being nominated to lead. In addition, Macfarlane has no experience or education in engineering, and is also technically unqualified to lead an organization whose purpose is to intelligently regulate the nuclear industry.

If Obama is so concerned about green house gases, why kill nuclear energy?

Victor Davis Hanson:

Can We Still Win Wars?

Given that the United States fields the costliest, most sophisticated, and most lethal military in the history of civilization, that should be a silly question. We have enough conventional and nuclear power to crush any of our enemies many times over. Why then did we seem to bog down in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan? The question is important since recently we do not seem able to translate tactical victories into long-term strategic resolutions. Why is that? What follows are some possible answers.

No—We Really Do Win Wars

Perhaps this is a poorly framed question: the United States does win its wars—if the public understands our implicit, limited strategic goals. In 1950 we wanted to push the North Koreans back across the 38th parallel and succeeded; problems arose when Gen. MacArthur and others redefined the mission as on to the Yalu in order to unite the entire Korean peninsula, a sort of Roman effort to go beyond the Rhine or Danube. Once we redefined our mission in 1951 as one more limited, we clearly won in Korea by preserving the South.

In Vietnam, the goal of establishing a viable South was achieved by 1974. Congress, not the president or the military, felt the subsequent peace-keeping commitments and air support were too costly. They allowed a renewed Northern invasion that led to a second and lost war, and then were surprised that the North Vietnamese proved to be not campus radicals but hardcore Stalinists.

Panama, Grenada, and Serbia were successful small enterprises. In the first Gulf War, the strategic aim was to oust Saddam from Kuwait—or so we said. That succeeded, though it did not solve the problem of what Saddam would in the future do with his vast oil revenues. In the second war, the mission was to remove him, birth a democracy, and then leave Iraq better than before. That more ambitious aim too succeeded—not, however, without enormous costs.

Our strategic objective in Afghanistan was to oust the Taliban and ensure that it did not return to host terrorists on Afghan soil. The former mission was done over a decade ago, the latter hinges on the Afghans themselves after we leave. We vowed to rid Libya of Gaddafi and we did—and did not exactly promise that what followed would be immediately better than what we removed. In such special pleading, the U.S. has won its wars as it has defined them. Note the great success of the Cold War that ended with the destruction of the Soviet Empire.

Not So Fast

But wait—North Korea was on the ropes and now over a half-century later still threatens our interests, and with nukes no less. Should not the destruction of that system have been the real aim of the Korean War? North Vietnam united the country under a communist government, whatever way you cut it. Iraq was a mess, and its democracy may in time prove no more than an Iran-backed Shiite autocracy. In Afghanistan, does anyone think our Afghan partners will keep out the Taliban after our departure? Are the Libyan riffraff that took over all that better than Gaddafi as they kill tribal rivals, hunt down blacks, and desecrate military cemeteries? What exactly were we doing in Lebanon and what did we do after terrorists killed 241 of our people?

Read it all.

Romney tops Obama by 28 points.

A new Gallup poll released on Memorial Day shows male veterans breaking strongly for Mitt Romney over President Obama.

The presumptive GOP nominee receives support from 58 percent of all veteran registered voters surveyed to Obama’s 34 percent. Among non-veterans though, Obama holds a four point edge, with 48 percent to Romney’s 44.

Gallup says veterans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population.

The breakdown of the veteran vote also mirrors the gender gap seen among all voters and male voters are seen giving Romney a solid block of support. Romney has the backing of 60 percent of male veterans to Obama’s 32.

As always, a special thank you to the Gertson family.

by Burt Prelutsky

First off, I would like to thank all of you who took part in the first annual Prelutsky Survey.

I am pleased to report that I received responses from 43 states, plus Puerto Rico. In addition, I heard from France, the Philippines, Canada, Norway, the Virgin Islands and the United Kingdom. Actually, I heard from two readers in the U.K. and three from Canada. The seven states that weren’t represented were Alaska, Hawaii, Wyoming, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Kansas and Rhode Island.

My main motivation, I will confess, was to find out how people in Hong Kong, Russia and Finland, ever came to be subscribers. I realize that a great many people show up once because they Google someone I’ve written about, but when they keep returning, as my tracking device tells me they do, I can’t help wondering why I have a fan or fans in, say, Finland. Alas, I may never find out. In the same way, I may never find out why my regular readers in Anchorage were no-shows.

All told, I had about 320 respondents, 75% of whom were men. The majority were 55 years old or older, with about 10% falling in the 35-44 age range and another 30% between 45 and 54.

Nearly everyone was a Republican, although 17 were Independents, eight were Libertarians and one identified himself as a Constitutionalist. But even among those 26, most confessed they had voted for McCain in 2008, although some made it very clear that they had actually voted for Sarah Palin.

Romney was overwhelmingly the person regarded as the strongest possible candidate against Obama, although there were eight or nine hold-outs for Santorum and Gingrich, and one each for Herman Cain and Paul Ryan.

In terms of education, 11 stopped going to school once they received their high school diploma. About 25% attended college, while 30% stuck around to get their four year degree and 40% stuck around even longer in order to pick up their doctorates.

Racially, almost everyone who got back to me was Caucasian. The exceptions were two blacks, one Asian, one Cherokee and one wisenheimer who insisted he was second generation Irish.

When it came to favorite news sources, the great majority mentioned Fox, Drudge, CNN, various blogs and the Wall Street Journal.

Slightly over 70% of those polled are married. Of the remaining 30%, most are divorced, followed by those who have never been married, while about 5% are widowed.

Only a third of those surveyed identify themselves as urban dwellers, while two thirds either live in the suburbs, rural areas or small towns.

I will confess that I expected that the largest response would come from Texas, and while I did hear from 35 Texans, I heard from 50 readers here in California. What that led me to realize is that Texans are simply far more likely than other people to identify their home state, and even their hometown, in their messages. The only other states that reached double figures were Florida (21), Arizona (15), Colorado (12), Georgia (12), New York (12), Illinois (11) and Alabama (10).

By a 2-1 margin, people who insist they aren’t influenced one way or another by a candidate’s religion out-numbered those who admit they are.

In something of a surprise to me, those who are influenced by a Tea Party endorsement turned out to be the exact same number as those who say they’re not.

When it came to Barack Obama, those who believe he is destined to lose the election in November out-numbered the more depressed among you 80% to 20%.

Only a quarter of those surveyed believe Obama is constitutionally qualified to be the president, while three quarters either doubt that he is a natural-born American or are absolutely convinced he is not. When it comes to his religion, nearly the same percentage of people suspicious of his nationality also suspect he is really a Muslim.

One of the survey results that gladdened my heart was that everyone who had ever written to me, which was roughly a third of you, was either “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with my response.

I was even given a reason to get over my bitter feelings about the way I was unceremoniously dumped a few years ago by Townhall.com. It seems that nearly half of those polled had first come across my articles during the few years I was a regular contributor to that website, and once I was cut loose went to the trouble of tracking me down.

My biggest shock was the response to the question regarding what you would say to Barack Obama if you had the opportunity to sit down and talk to him for half an hour. I really had no idea that God-fearing conservatives knew half those words. Especially not God-fearing conservative women!

…because imagine what it must be like to learn. This is an old email that’s made several round trips, but it’s still good.

_______________________________________________

You think English is easy??

I think a retired English teacher was bored.

THIS IS GREAT!

Read all the way to the end……………..

This took a lot of work to put together!

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture..

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert..

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear..

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig..

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. – Why doesn’t ‘Buick’ rhyme with ‘quick’ ?

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this ..

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is’UP.’

It’s easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?

Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends.

And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and cleanUP the kitchen.

We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.

In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.

It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.

When the sun comes out we say it is clearingUP.

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn’t rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I’ll wrap it UP,

for now my time is UP,

so…….it is time to shut UP!

Now it’s UP to you what you do with this email.

We bring you a round-up of fact-checking, cowpie-destroying facts about Obama’s supposed stingy stint as prez.

Veronique de Rugy at The Corner kills ‘em with facts.

Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post awards 3 Pinocchios (not good.)

There are many more. And they’re only doing what Obama’s press flack, Jay Carney asked of them:

“I simply make the point, as an editor might say, to check it out; do not buy into the BS that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration. I think doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness.”

Poor Carney. He probably didn’t have time to check things about before asking the press to check things out.

So here is a quick visual cheat sheet, created by Political Math at HotAir