Many yesterday wanted to focus on the troubling section of the President’s speech to the U.N. regarding Israel.  While that’s truly important, I don’t want to ignore another section that gave me pause as I read through the speech:

In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero-sum game.  No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation.  No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.  No balance of power among nations will hold.  The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.

The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people. They lead nations to act in opposition to the very goals that they claim to pursue — and to vote, often in this body, against the interests of their own people.  They build up walls between us and the future that our people seek, and the time has come for those walls to come down.  Together, we must build new coalitions that bridge old divides — coalitions of different faiths and creeds; of north and south, east, west, black, white, and brown.

I went back and looked up other references he’s made to a “zero-sum game” and found one in his commencement speech to Notre Dame:

Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game.  The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice.

I’ll be honest – I’ve never considered America’s pursuit of prosperity to be a zero-sum game.  In fact, many people from around the world come here because of the simple fact that it is NOT a zero-sum game.  This is the land of opportunity – the land in which a man can do well for himself if he applies himself.

We have become the wealthiest nation in the 20th century for a reason and there’s no reason to look at that with disdain.  It’s not that we aren’t without our problems, as capitalism isn’t perfect.  But it’s unmistakably the best system the world has ever known in terms of liberty and prosperity.  It’s clear though, that our President doesn’t see it that way.  He sees the US as a nation that exploits the world in order to amass wealth and he wants to set the record straight that going forward that it’s his expectation that no other nation should engage in such activity.  No nation should be elevated above another.  Prosperity must be shared among all nations, or redistributed.

And this explains alot.  Why does our president feel that we need to offer amnesty to every illegal alien living here?  Because he has a guilty conscience.  But I digress.

The statement, however, that bothered me most from above is this:

The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people.

I’ve just got one question here: WHY? Why do old arguments no longer apply?  Once again I looked back and found he said it back in Feb. when talking about energy:

It’s what America needs right now, and we need to move forward today.  We can’t keep on having the same old arguments over and over again that lead us to the exact same spot — where we are wasting previous energy, we’re not creating jobs, we’re failing to compete in the global economy, and we end up bickering at a time when the economy urgently needs action.

Wow.  It’s never been more clear to me that his intention is to replace our current system with one where the government can control and shape society to fit their ideological bent.  And ultimately this control must be ceded to a world body, one that can regulate the actions of all nations to create the paradigm in which everyone is equal and no one can succeed above another.

And this was his message to the world.

Scott Baker provides some interesting detail on Obama’s political genealogy with reference to Valerie Jarrett and others.

Enjoy.

Not that we need any more evidence on our new FCC Chief Diversity Officer, but hey, let’s keep up the pressure, right?

The video below is from 2007. If you want to listen to the entire video you are more than welcome. But this clip provides all the context you need to understand that Lloyd wants to implement some form of the fairness doctrine, probably via regulation.

If you’ve got some time on your hands and you want to fully understand how he feels about regulating the air waves, then take a gander at this.

So we decide to scrap our missile defense shield today. Why?  Oh, Joe Biden has an answer for us:

“The whole purpose of this exercise we are undertaking is to diminish the prospect of the Iranians destabilizing that region in the world. I am less concerned — much less concerned — about the Iranian potential. They have no potential at this moment, they have no capacity to launch a missile at the United States of America.”

Oh, well that’s good to know.  At least the U.S. is safe.

We also know that Russia didn’t want us to put a missile defense system in their ‘back  yard’.  According to Fox News (tv), when Obama visited with Russia, much of their talks were about the missile defense system. So maybe we are also doing this to appease Russia in exchange for their help with Iran.  But why would Russia of all countries help to disarm Iran of nuclear capability, when in fact they helped Iran to create it?

“Russia is helping Iran build its first nuclear power plant as part of a program Iran says is purely peaceful. The United States and Israel say it is meant to develop atomic weapons.”

Honestly this makes absolutely no sense.  Robert Gates says that Iran isn’t developing long range ballistic missiles as fast as the US had thought.  But if we know Iran is already building nuclear weapons, wouldn’t it make sense to assume that they will eventually get long range ballistic missiles?  Don’t we want to prepare for the future?

I know the ideology of some in the administration is if we put down our nukes, then others will do the same.  In fact, these slides are from a powerpoint presentation from John Holdren back in 2007:

But this just doesn’t jive with the practical nature of what we are dealing with.  I’m no expert on foreign affairs, but I don’t know anyone who thinks Iran is not a threat.  And I sincerely hope that as our current administration seeks to negotiate with Iran and Russia, that it won’t be at anyone’s peril.

Boy, I hope Maureen Dowd has thick skin:

Talk about a wake up call in 2007.  David Walker, former US comptroller, gives 60 minutes a doom and gloom picture that is ominously magnified today.  And guess what it all centered around? Rising health care costs.  Although, I think that’s probably the only point of agreement that he would share with the current administration.  Given that he was very critical of the spending during Bush administration, I wonder what he’d say about or Spender-in-Chief.  Here’s a quote:

The prescription drug bill was probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s…We’ve promised way more than we can afford to keep.

Watch to the end for some retro fiscal advice from Kent Conrad.

These are photos and videos of 9/11 that I had saved on a CD back from 2001 (videos at the bottom).  May God provide a special blessing today for the families who lost loved ones on that day.

Ann Coulter stands toe to toe with a Bill O’Reilly point for point on how competition will fix everything that the democrats are complaining about. O’Reilly concedes that competition will help, but concludes that only the federal government can make an insurance company honest. Ann defends with an example recent history.

Enjoy the debate.

While CK has always been impressed with Obama’s performance when it comes to delivering speeches, you can guess he was less than impressed with Obama’s lofty promises of not adding to the deficit.  The clip showed before this video starts was in fact from the speech last night where Obama did promise not to sign a health care bill that adds to the deficit now, or in the future.

He does pose one question that I actually heard Rush pose earlier today that is quite valid:

“If there’s all this waste and abuse in the system waiting to be squeezed out, why hasn’t he started already? …Why do you have to have a bill?”

It’s clear with the economy that during the speech the president tried to paint a picture of economic recovery.  But there is no denying the fact that the unemployment rate is rising to historic levels, currently at 9.7%.  And as a side note, if you are going to compare our current rate with the Great Depression where unemployment reached 25%, then you must use our current true unemployment rate is 16.8% (we changed the way we measured the unemployment rate when Lyndon Johnson was President).  It’s simply a bleak picture all the way around.  And Cantor points out that it’s really jobs and spending that are on the minds of his constituents which stands in disagreement with the economic picture the president created.

I could go on, but Cantor does a great job of pointing out absurdity of the claims in Obama’s speech.  I would like to note that many believe that the president just doesn’t understand the dynamics of the private industry (insurance, etc) when he makes false claims during his speech.  But it’s not incompetence,  as the president is not stupid.  He simply creates a false reality to support his claims. It’s all about selling and it’s that simple. America bought it when they elected him, so why not stay on the same road.

Here’s a quote from the interview:

“This was, for an Obama speech, something that I was taken aback by in the partisan nature of the speech.  Listen, we all know that the status quo is unacceptable… But when he goes and starts pointing fingers and casting blame I think it’s just a smoke screen.”