'Two,Three,Many Obamas'

Victor Davis Hanson:

The fringe Birthers made outlandish claims for years that Obama was not born in the United States and therefore was not eligible to be president. But suddenly, after nearly four years of his presidency, we discover that for over a decade and a half Obama’s own publicity bio listed him as Kenyan-born. Why and how did this happen — given that authors customarily write their own autobiographies and have annual opportunities to edit them? Did Obama think that to fudge an identity might make his book on a mixed-race heritage more saleable in 1991, and then himself more exotic as a state legislator and senator in the ensuing 16 years — but for some reason not as a presidential candidate?
What is real and what is not? The Obama “composite” girlfriend who sort of existed and sort of did not? Was there one Obama named Barry and another who became Barack, one with the middle name Hussein that was taboo to utter in the campaign of 2008 and another with the middle name Hussein that after January 20, 2009, was supposed to resonate in the Muslim world?

One Obama was the constitutional-law professor at the prestigious University of Chicago; another was a part-time lecturer who never published and was rarely seen or heard at the law school. One Obama was a brilliant Harvard Law Review editor; another never wrote an article. One Obama had the highest IQ of any entering president and was indeed the smartest man we ever elected commander-in-chief; another Obama proved it by not releasing his college transcripts. One Obama is the fittest and most energetic of recent presidents; another Obama is the most secretive and reluctant about proving it through the customary releasing of medical records.

Why so secretive if there is nothing to hide?Imagine if Bush was this secretive?The MSM would be going bananas,hijacking press conferences,berating Bush constantly about his past,under the idiom of 'our right to know',or in Dan Rather's case,he would just fabricate a story and try to pass it off as fact.

If not for the truth,then for their own fame and fortune their has to be at least one Woodward or Bernstein in the media to go out and dig into this,finding their own 'Deepthroat' that would lead them to the truth,thus making a name for themselves?Is their not anyone in the MSM who is independent and not part of the Borg?

'Presidential Embarressment About Gas'

From Victor Davis Hanson:

It is sad to see the president of the United States not telling the truth about the current gas crisis, as he barnstorms the country ridiculing those who wish to develop more domestic gas and oil.

Yes, we are pumping more oil since January 2009, but only due to prior public leases granted before he took office and new ones on private lands that came despite rather than because of his policies. Unlike Barack Obama, someone who must remain unmentioned decided that it was wise for America to lease federal lands for oil exploration that would come on line in some cases after he left office. Likewise, U.S. demand had slacked off during Obama’s tenure not due to any administration policy, unless prolonging the recession to curb demand was intended.
And to the degree that Obama has had a role in oil production, his has mostly been negative, in denying more new federal leases than did any other recent president. Yet for all the rhetoric about flat-earthers who believe in strange things like supply and demand, Obama himself knows that increasing oil supply does matter. Why? Because he is pondering again tapping the strategic oil reserve, while Democratic senators keep reminding us that the U.S. is begging the Saudis to increase their own production. So why would increased oil from a reserve or from Saudi Arabia matter in a way that increased domestic production heretofore has not?
And the president knows that just in his first three years, there has been a revolutionary change in the known oil and gas supplies of the United States. Fracking and horizontal drilling have completely altered the potential supply-and-demand dynamic in America — a development not only unappreciated by his administration, but also apparently unwelcomed as well. Would that Obama had talked as much about the potential of fracking as he has Solyndra.
Finally the president has not been candid enough to admit that his administration’s own policy heretofore has been to encourage subsidized wind and solar energy at great expense with little to show for it, while expressing a desire for fossil fuels to increase in price. On two occasions Energy Secretary Chu has acknowledged his own wish for higher gas prices, or at least not a worry that they are rising. Interior Secretary Salazar has expressed a similar lack of worry over increased gas prices. And of course the president himself during the past campaign had talked of skyrocketing energy prices as a good thing, while later worrying mostly over the abrupt rate in the rise of gas prices, rather than the fact of high prices themselves.

What Obama and his corporate cronies don't understand -maybe they do but don't care as long as they get paid- is the fact that who ever can provide or obtain an abundant supply of energy sources at an affordable cost will dominate the 21st century.Right now China understands this and we are well behind them in the race for energy superiority.

'Now What?'

Verbatim post from Victor Davis Hanson:

The Obama administration’s real problem is existential: What if it gets what it wants, but then finds that either it or the country really is uncomfortable with what it got?

Take energy. We were long ago lectured by hot-house administration plants, including the president himself, about the desirability of high-cost energy in curbing fossil-fuel use and making subsidized wind and solar power and electric transportation competitive. By midsummer, the technocrats may get their wish with $5 or even $6-a-gallon gas (not quite as high as Secretary Chu may once have wanted). Will they say, “But $7 or $8 would have been more truly European”?
And if we were to go back to the “Clinton tax rates” as the president repeats as a daily mantra, then what? The deficit would not drastically be cut, given the huge rates of borrowing, and the budget would not even come close to being balanced. Would the president then come back with, “We need to raise taxes a lot more than just those pay-your-fair-share Clinton-era rates”?
And Obamacare? Once it passed, there were new taxes leveled to pay for it; health-care premiums are rising; the latest squabble with the Catholic Church reminds us that few Americans had any idea about what was in the 2,000-plus-page bill; and soon Medicare will be trimmed to pay for it. In reaction, will the administration say, “We need a truly comprehensive Obamacare II bill?” or “Next round we will offer you a single-payer plan”? or “We had too little government control the first time around”?
Abroad, what comes after “reset” and “outreach”? Outreach 2.0 in which we issue another four to five deadlines to Iran? Reset 1A in which we reapproach Putin from a different direction, or reopen again the reopened and reclosed embassy in Damascus? Leading from way, way behind?
What comes after “the most transparent” administration in history? No more super PACs or a return to public financing of campaigns — in 2016? The revolving door for only ten departing officials, but not 15? Will there be post-class-warfare with fatter cats, corporate-jet fleet owners, “the 10 percenters,” and lots of points at which you need to stop making money? Alligators, moats — and piranhas? Punish all of our enemies?

Socialism never ever delivers the utopia it has promised.In fact it rather exasperates the problems it was supposed to solve in the first place.

The Fox News GOP Debate Put Into Perspective

Victor Davis Hanson correctly sums up last nights Fox News GOP debate and all other future debates:

A good debate that reminds us by now that all that was to be said has already been said.

'Slick Willism?'

Victor Davis Hanson:

There are some preliminary reports about Bill Clinton’s purported $50,000-a-month retainer — paid out to Teneo, a firm where he is chairman of the board — from his friend Jon Corzine’s now broke MF Global. It reminds of Newt Gingrich’s getting $30,000 a month for his work as a “historian” for Freddie Mac up until the eve of its crack-up. One comes away with a sort of despair that our most prominent politicians, who have already done quite well in private and public life, still cannot refrain from cashing in on their contacts for even more cash.

The symptoms are depressingly the same: the big retainer fee, the financial insolvency of the clients, the lack of financial expertise on the part of the consultant, the apparent lack of any quantifiable value in the service rendered, the euphemisms employed to disguise the lobbying efforts (Clinton was supposed to improve the “image” of CEO Corzine, rather than be an historian of the company). 
One can think up all sorts of new rules and regulations to stop this sort of insider influence peddling (the various ways of making millions are endless, as the Freddie and Fannie vets attest — cf. Emanuel (Freddie), Gorelick (Fannie), Johnson (Fannie), Raines (Fannie), etc. — but there would no doubt be ways of circumventing them. In the end, the only antidote we are left with is shame, and a general public weariness with affluent and pensioned figures maximizing profit in ways made possible by their past public office.

I have to disagree with Professor Hanson here.It is not shame that will stop the Newt's and Clinton's from cashing in on their postitions and influence.Lets face it,these men have no shame.What will stop all of this is reducing the size of the Federal government and limiting its in influence in the private sector.When you do this the political in-crowd have nothing to peddle.

'Obama Unbound'

Victor Davis Hanson: 

If we get to the scary point of Iran’s going nuclear in 2012, expect the Obama administration — up for reelection and without much of a domestic record to run on in these hard times — to consider a preemptive strike. Be assured that if it does, there will be no outrage in the Democrat-controlled Senate, no campuses on fire, no ad hominem Moveon.org ads in the New York Times — all the sorts of anti-war hysteria that once sought to turn a moderate like George W. Bush into a caricature of some trigger-happy yokel from shoot-’em-up Texas.

Obama is desperate and will do anything to get reelected.Sometime between now and election day next year Obama will bomb Iran to boost his sagging approval numbers.

"An Exceptional Fourth Of July"

From Victor Davis Hanson;

Yet there has never been any nation even remotely similar to America. Here’s why. Most revolutions seek to destroy the existing class order and use all-powerful government to mandate an equality of result rather than of opportunity — in the manner of the French Revolution’s slogan of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” or the Russian Revolution’s “peace, land, and bread.”
In contrast, our revolutionaries shouted “Don’t tread on me!” and “Give me liberty or give me death!” The Founders were convinced that constitutionally protected freedom would allow the individual to create wealth apart from government. Such enlightened self-interest would then enrich society at large far more effectively that could an all-powerful state. 
Such constitutionally protected private property, free enterprise, and market capitalism explain why the United States — with only about 4.5 percent of the world’s population — even today, in an intensely competitive global economy, still produces a quarter of the world’s goods and services. To make America unexceptional, inept government overseers, as elsewhere in the world, would determine the conditions — where, when, how and by whom — under which businesses operate.
Individual freedom in America manifests itself in ways most of the world can hardly fathom — whether our unique tradition of the right to gun ownership, the near impossibility of proving libel in American courts, or the singular custom of multimillion-dollar philanthropic institutions, foundations, and private endowments. Herding, silencing, or enfeebling Americans is almost impossible — and will remain so as long as well-protected citizens can say what they want and do as they please with their hard-earned money.
Race, tribe, or religion often defines a nation’s character, either through loose confederations of ethnic or religious blocs as in Rwanda, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia, or by equating a citizenry with a shared appearance as reflected in the German word “volk” or the Spanish “raza.” And while the United States was originally crafted largely by white males who improved upon Anglo-Saxon customs and the European Enlightenment, the Founders set in place an “all men are created equal” system that quite logically evolved into the racially blind society of today.
This year a minority of babies born in the United States will resemble the look of the Founding Fathers. Yet America will continue as it was envisioned, as long as those of various races and colors are committed to the country’s original ideals. When International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of sexual assault against a West African immigrant maid in New York, supposedly liberal French elites were outraged that America would dare bring charges against such an establishment aristocrat. Americans, on the other hand, would have been more outraged had their country not done so.
The Founders’ notion of the rule of law, coupled with freedom of the individual, explains why the United States runs on merit, not tribal affinities or birth. Most elsewhere, being a first cousin of a government official, or having a prestigious name, ensures special treatment from the state. Yet in America, nepotism is never assured. End that notion of American merit and replace it with racial tribalism, cronyism, or aristocratic privilege, and America itself would vanish as we know it.
There is no rational reason why a small republican experiment in 1776 grew to dominate global culture and society — except that America is the only nation, past or present, that put trust in the individual rather than in the state and its elite bureaucracy. Such confidence in the average free citizen made America absolutely exceptional — something we should remember more than ever on this Fourth of July.

The greatness of America doesn't lie in our government-though our government has the potential to display it-but it lies in the ordinary men and women,who live extraordinary lives because they are free to do so.This is what we are fighting to preserve and hold on to in this country,against a large and powerful,tyrannical-though it poses as caring and benevolent-Federal government,that wishes to dictate to us every detail of our lives,thus taking away our liberties.The age old question is this,would you rather exist secure in slavery,or would you rather live and die as a freeman,that's the choice?

Victor Davis Hanson Defines "The West"