God Bless Thomas Sowell

I guess I'm not much of a blogger if I often just reprint something another writer has written. My thinking is that great crisis generate great thinking and writing from great people. We are very blessed to have some fantastic writers and thinkers at this point in our history, unfortunately, none of them have any political power right now. Our government is currently run by some of the worst demogogues in US History. Barney Frank, Joseph Biden, Chris Dodd, and The One are driving the US Titanic full speed towards the iceberg.

Fortunately, we have Victor Davis Hanson, Mark Steyn, Mark Levin, and the master: Thomas Sowell.

I know that there are those who simply see his skin color...hah! I read his stuff for years before I discovered his background. His latest article reflects exactly where I was during the campaign. Watching Americans elect a president like they are voting for a class president was a painful experience for a person who follows current events and contemplates their relation to the lessons history can teach us.

SO...here is his latest, A Rookie President. Read it, and don't weep, just get organized to do everything you can to stop his statist agenda.

A Rookie President
We can lose some very big games with this rookie.

By Thomas Sowell

Someone once said that, for every rookie you have on your starting team in the National Football League, you will lose a game. Somewhere, at some time during the season, a rookie will make a mistake that will cost you a game.

We now have a rookie president of the United States, and, in the dangerous world we live in, with terrorist nations going nuclear, just one rookie mistake can bring disaster down on this generation and generations yet to come.

Barack Obama is a rookie in a sense that few other presidents in American history have ever been. It is not just that he has never been president before. He has never had any position in any kind of organization where he was personally responsible for the outcome.

Other first-term presidents have been governors, generals, Cabinet members, or others in positions of personal responsibility. A few have been senators, like Barack Obama, but usually for longer than Obama, and not having spent half their few years in the Senate running for president.

What is even worse than making mistakes is having sycophants telling you that you are doing fine when you are not. In addition to all the usual hangers-on and supplicants for government favors that every president has, Barack Obama has a media that will see no evil, hear no evil, and certainly speak no evil.

They will cheer him on, no matter what he does, short of first-degree murder — and they would make excuses for that. Even Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan has gushed over President Obama, and even crusty Bill O’Reilly has been impressed by Obama’s demeanor.

There is no sign that President Obama has impressed the Russians, the Iranians, or the North Koreans, except by his rookie mistakes — and that is a dangerous way to impress dangerous people.

What did his televised overture to the Iranians accomplish, except to reassure them that he was not going to do a damn thing to stop them from getting a nuclear bomb? It is a mistake that can go ringing down the corridors of history.

Future generations who live in the shadow of that nuclear threat may wonder what we were thinking about, putting our lives — and theirs — in the hands of a rookie because we liked his style and symbolism?

In the name of “change,” Barack Obama is following policies so old that this generation has never heard of them — certainly not in most of our educational institutions, where history has been replaced by “social studies” or other politically correct courses.

Seeking deals with our adversaries, behind the backs of our allies? The French did that at Munich back in 1938. They threw Czechoslovakia to the wolves and, less than two years later, Hitler gobbled up France anyway.

This year, President Obama’s attempt to make a backdoor deal with the Russians, behind the backs of the NATO countries, was not only rejected but made public by the Russians — a sign of contempt and a warning to our allies not to put too much trust in the United States.

Barack Obama is following a long practice among those on the left of being hard on our allies and soft on our enemies. One of our few allies in the Middle East, the Shah of Iran, was a whipping boy for many in the American media, who vented their indignation at his regime — which now, in retrospect, seems almost benign compared to the hate-filled fanatics and international-terrorism sponsors who now rule that country.

However much Barack Obama has proclaimed his support for Israel, his first phone call as president of the United States was to Hamas, to which he has given hundreds of millions of dollars, which can buy a lot of rockets to fire into Israel.

Our oldest and staunchest ally, Britain, has been downgraded by President Obama’s visibly unimpressive reception of British prime minister Gordon Brown, compared to the way that previous presidents over the past two generations have received British prime ministers. President Obama’s sending the bust of Winston Churchill from the White House back to the British embassy at about the same time was either a rookie mistake or another snub.

We can lose some very big games with this rookie.

Finally, a film about our military I can recommend

Please click on and watch the above trailer.

Last night, my wife and I were heading for Chicago where I am giving a talk on Abraham Lincoln to one of many clubs around the country who support the school where I teach.

I had seen that the movie "Brothers at War" was going to be shown in Decatur, Illinois, so we made plans to stop there and see it before arriving in Chicago. Little did I know that Decatur was the hometown of the family of the subjects of the film. The director of the film, Jake Rademacher, and oldest of the brothers, had decided to make the film about his two younger brothers in order to get an idea why men were signing up to return over and over again to go back to Iraq.

He showed up for the film last night, being greeted by so many old friends, and gave us a little Q & A after the film. The audience had a decidedly supportive cachet but even more of a frustration with the way the mission in Iraq has been treated by Hollywood and the US press media. It was clear this was one reason that Rademacher made the film, but it is really refreshingly free of politics and polemics. What it is truly a tribute to is the sacrifice that the men and their families make to support their highest sense of service to the United States of America and a chance to help oppressed peoples who have been bullied by dictators like Saddam Hussein.

The last 30 minutes of the film are the most rewarding because we finally get a sense of the Iraqi people, and more importantly, the nascent new Iraqi army. Most of the film was shot in two stints Jake took with his brothers, and their comrades, in Iraq.

We see many things we never see on the TV news: Iraqis telling us our troops are "the good guys", GIs saying "I'd give my life for America...without hesistation", the boredom, the good-natured four-letter word joshing, a firefight...and casualties.

It's not a whitewash...it was clear that the Iraqi army isn't going to be the US Marines anytime soon, but the looks on their faces when they get praise from their Marine advisor for running TOWARDS the gunfire, and taking on the "wahabis" as the enemy is called, is priceless. The men kiss each other on the cheek, and you can see that if we are willing to have the gonads to hang in there with the Iraqi people, and not just for a few months or years, that they just might make a difference in that insane part of the world.

I stopped wiping away the tears after the first few minutes of the film an just let the salt dry; a mark of pride in what I was viewing.

There is no word yet on when there will be a DVD of this film, but I encourage anyone to go to the website and click on either "theaters near you" or "join a task force." As you can imagine, there were plenty of theaters showing junk like "Lions and Lambs" or even "Redacted", but getting "Brothers at War" has been a real challenge. Even with the financial and connective support of Gary "Lt. Dan" Sinese and Jon Voight has not made it easy for Rademacher to get this film distributed.

Any city that can sell 1000 pre-paid tickets will get the film there, so the producers are organizing "task forces" in various states to get the film shown in their area. As you can imagine, much of the focus has been in towns with a large National Guard or military base population.

But this is a film that should be seen by all US citizens so they have a better understanding of what military families sacrifice in order to keep us safe.

I, for one, would love to be able to show it in my classroom someday. There will be issues with that, it's rated R for language and a brief shot of a pretty tough war wound, but the message to our culture needs to be heard.

Coach

Meet the new blog, not same as the old blog

I wish I can say that we can "meet the new boss" and consider him "same as the old boss", but we will have to make do...

I have started a new blog and deleted two of the old ones. This is the one I am going to give most of my time and soul to. It's my intent that this blog will eventually result in some kind of writing project with an eye towards publication.

I hope to see you there! The link is over to the side...

Coach

All statements by Barack Obama come with an expiration date...Episode 8

Obama during the campaign

When soldiers return from fighting, they deserve nothing but the best in medical care, he said. More needs to be done, he said, to understand the effects of post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury on soldiers returning from war.

"We'll have to keep our sacred trust with our veterans and fully fund the (Veterans Administration). We'll have to look after our wounded warriors, whether they're suffering from wounds seen or unseen

Obama this past week...

The American Legion Strongly Opposed to President's Plan to Charge Wounded Heroes for Treatment

And, in case you think the American Legion is making it up, here's a newspaper article...

What's next?

Here comes the next crisis...credit cards.

This article from the Wall Street Journal online is pretty deep in jargon.

In a nutshell, look for your bankcards to cut back on their credit lines...and many who carry a balance will get cut off completely.

What happens to the buying power in the economy when that happens?

I think this one should hit sometime this summer.

Stay tuned...

Coach

a quick update

I am getting ready for Spring Break, so I hope to get finished a number of drafts I am working on during that time. Meanwhile, I want to get one incredibly intelligent analysis of the current dust-up over the Obama vs. Limbaugh controversy going on right now.

It was silly enough that the President attacked a talk-show host, raising him up to the level of discourse that was unnecessary, and I think in the end, damaging, to his presidency. Many have taken on Limbaugh, Senator Harry Reid comes to mind, and ALL have been worse the wear for it. If you don't like Limbaugh, the best way to harm him is to IGNORE HIM. Obama isn't so wise in that way, and any short-term benefits he got from this ill-advised move will carry long-term baggage.

Now Newsweek has employed a former Bush speechwriter to carry their water in a piece of invective masquerading as an analysis piece. David Frum will go down as the Benedict Arnold of the conservative movement. There are plenty of both Republicans and conservatives who will blanch at Limbaugh's bombastic daily rant over culture and ideology, but few will be stupid enough to do so in a magazine who has been so busy kissing Obama's derriere that they need a year's supply of Chap-Stick every week.

Into the fray steps one of my favorites, Victor Davis Hanson. As per usual, I am overcome by envy. I would love to write like this man! Here it is:

Frum vs. Limbaugh

In the end, the controversy boils down to an argument of the moment versus one of the ages. Frum believes that conservatives have to change their message to appeal to new constituencies without which the Republican party will lose future elections. Limbaugh argues that conservatism’s message is not predicated on transitory appeals to particular groups, but rests on sound principles that, mutatis mutandis for new circumstances, don’t really change. Frum, the politico, wants to return to power and so make the necessary adjustments; Limbaugh, the talk-show host, would rather stay in the wilderness if it means forgoing principles.

I don’t see how Frum can win this argument, since he does not seem to understand the Limbaugh brief, which I think is something like the following:

Conservatism, to the degree it is failing, either has gotten off message (e.g., the mega-deficits of the irresponsible Republican Congress between 2001 and 2006, or the shamelessness of a Ted Stevens or Duke Cunningham or Larry Craig, or the inability of the Bush administration to convey to the public our aims and objectives in Iraq) or simply cannot communicate in an effective way why lower taxes, smaller government, individual freedom, muscular national defense, and traditional emphasis on the family and community are of interest to everyone, regardless of age, race, or class.

Accordingly, conservatism will return to prominence when it uses time-honored and unchanging free-market principles to address new problems, and when it finds advocates who both are adept at communication with non-traditional audiences (e.g., why it is in the interest of African-Americans to be skeptical of abortion on demand, why Hispanic small-business people need to be wary of intrusive regulations, why Asian-Americans should fear affirmative-action-driven de facto racial quotas at the University of California, why talented teachers should not have to join bureaucratic, ossified unions, why today’s young people should not have to pay off Obama’s annual $1.7 trillion deficits, etc.) and believe in their message’s resonance, without trimming[?] for the applause of the moment.

This all could be discussed in reasonable terms, but Frum unwisely chose to conflate the role of a political analyst and strategist with that of the nation’s premier talk-show host. The genre of talk radio hinges on entertainment — satire, invective, bombast, humor. A Limbaugh succeeds or fails not just by his ability to analyze politics (millions can do that), but by his acting ability, impersonations, ad hoc quips, and comedy, which hold an audience of 20 million for 15 hours a week (only a handful of people in the country can do that).

As a result of that confusion of genres, we get something incoherent like the analyst Frum, in ad hominem invective, decrying Limbaugh’s past problems with prescription drugs, three marriages, weight problems, cigar smoking, wealth, etc., as he weirdly accuses Limbaugh, the talk-show host par excellence, of resorting to ad hominem crudity in saying that Obama is using his biracial heritage to his advantage, and that it improperly shields him from normal scrutiny.

The other issues likewise weaken Frum’s case. Plenty of candidates, left and right, who are purported role models (in a way talk-show hosts need not be) have had divorces and admitted illicit drug use, smoke, and are not in top shape; the Democratic advocacy groups have had plenty of spokespeople, from the Daily Kos and Michael Moore to the Durbin/Kennedy/Murtha outbursts on Iraq, that make Limbaugh seem moderate in comparison; so far the venom that was expressed against Bush dwarfs any legitimate criticism of Obama (we haven’t yet, thank God, had novels like Checkpoint about Obama); the notion that a businessperson like Limbaugh is wrongly profiting from his criticism of Obama is far less persuasive than the suspicion that political operatives are wrongly scrambling to reinvent their message, either to regain power or to become acceptable to those now in power; and finally, the notion that a moderate D.C. insider, in this groupthink Age of Obama, should be deemed courageous for taking on Rush Limbaugh is, with all due respect, completely laughable.

Meanwhile, Obama fiddles with our capitalist system while the financial markets burn...