The Conservative Soldier

We are told that the nation today is mourning the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Kennedy is a high profile American political figure from a  powerful family, thus it is a national news story.

But how will we react as a nation when we die? What will be the depth of mourning when the United States is pronounced dead? How will tens of millions of patriotic Americans endure the unthinkable grief when Democracy flat lines? What will prepare us for the numbing disbelief when we awaken to a permanently wrecked economy, terminally compromised homeland security and the sudden overthrow of freedom of speech?

The radical liberal MSNBC host Chris Matthews struggled to be eloquent as he linked the Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama to the Kennedy legacy. Matthews today declared Obama “the last (Kennedy) brother”. Members of the Kennedy clan should be outraged and demand a retraction.

For while the Kennedys were/are many things — arrogant, powerful, manipulative, scheming, reckless, undisciplined, politically savvy — I seriously doubt they were/are smart enough, diabolical enough, or angry enough to plot the undermining of America’s Constitutional foundation, or our values and way of life. Let us not forget that the Kennedys were/are unrepentant Capitalists, after all. At least, at the outset of the dynasty.

If they dared examine the subtle ways in which Obama is enlisting and deploying his Socialist Army, even Democrats might soon find themselves longing for a credible Kennedy to step forward as an alternative national figure.

As the media fixates on (rightfully) angry Americans attending town hall meetings to demand the death of dangerous Obama-led health care “reforms” (the hijacking of America’s insurance and medical industries), the real news, the shocking news, remains largely under our radar. But not for long.

Obama is systematically silencing inspectors general and empowering political appointees (Czars) accountable to no one other than Obama and his “boss”, Rahm Emanuel. The watchdogs are threatened with the dog house. The Czars are radical Socialists infiltrating federal regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Communications Commission.

The very much underrated Townhall Magazine provides an in-depth investigation of the fate of inspectors general such as Neil Barofsky and Gerald Walpin. Barofsky is being stonewalled by the Treasury Department in his quest, as the appointed inspector general (IG) of TARP, to verify where TARP funds are being used and by whom. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” has come back in another life in another context.

Walpin was fired by Obama — without hesitation — because he was “this close” to revealing that newly seated Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson (a former NBA star and current Obama supporter) had blatantly abused federal funding (AmeriCorp grants) when running a foundation in Sacramento. Walpin should have the freedom to blow the whistle as he sees fit, but not under the Obama regime.

More alarming is that Obama is forming a shadow government, an invisible cabinet of Czars. Many are avowed Communists and Socialists, such as Van Jones who was exposed this week by Fox News host Glenn Beck. Jones, Obama’s Green Jobs Czar, founded the black advocacy intimidation group called Color of Change.

And then there is Mark Lloyd, Obama’s unelected Chief Diversity Officer inside the FCC, a man who has praised “the incredible revolution” led in Venezuela by … Hugo Chavez! He admires Chavez for figuring out how to enlist the state media in his pursuit of power. What is Lloyd’s quest? To restore public (government-run) broadcasting to a dominant role by imposing massive fees on private broadcasters. Translation: Lloyd (and by extension Obama) wants to crush conservative talk radio and Fox News. He is a radical whose views are heavily influenced by Socialist Saul Alinsky. Lloyd is the author of the 2006 book, “Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America”.

Political analyst Karl Rove got to the heart of it: “Obama has centralized power inside the White House … in a way no other President has been able to achieve.”

Simply Google these names to learn more about Obama’s key “advisors”: Van Jones; regulatory czar Cass Sunstein; Enviro-Czar Carol Browner; bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel (yes, Rahm’s brother); and free speech opponent Mark Lloyd. Collectively, these individuals have spent a lifetime apologizing for and deriding the United States.

For a moment or two today, it occurred to me that Teddy Kennedy was having the last laugh. I don’t know where he is now. But it seems alarmingly obvious that the Gates of Hell have been re-located to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Washington press corps hated George Bush, but they loathed his Texas ranch even more. His visits during the Bush White House years, especially the annual relocation of the working White House every August, were derided as proof that he was a lazy leader who preferred the complete detachment of a dusty, remote family compound, even while ordinary Americans suffered through more modest vacations.

That’s all in their past now, all but forgotten, I suppose, during these past eight months of starry-eyed, tongue-tied “coverage” of the Kingdom of Barack Hussein Obama, the Great and (did we mention?) Black POTUS.

Bush was just some obnoxious rich (did we mention?) White guy who exploited the levers of evil capitalism to buy his own ranch. (To think, if he’d just erected an elaborate swing set they might have softened their criticism a bit). And no member of the liberal media cared that Bush ran one of the most buttoned-up administrations in many years. Meetings began on time. They were run effectively and efficiently. The work got done. Bush did not do the Washington social scene. He lived a disciplined life. He was physically fit. He did not smoke or drink. He went to church on Sunday. He showed up in Iraq when he was “on vacation”. But none of it mattered. What mattered was that they hated him.

Ah, but then there is BHO. Obama is a self-made former community organizer with only a modest multi-million dollar Chicago home (that he didn’t overpay for, or maybe didn’t pay one dime for), but with no “ranch” as a refuge from the angry mobs who reject his Socialist vision for America.

The Washington Kool-Aid Corps has fallen over itself to point out that the Obamas are paying for the $35,000-a-week private home they are using as vacation HQ this week on Martha’s Vineyard. No one will dig into the facts to learn who is actually underwriting the vacation. Someone or some group of someones is. They did it for Bill Clinton back in the day. It doesn’t matter. Poor Barack needs a break. He has been working so hard to jam change down our throats. He won the Presidency but the campaigning has not stopped. So many speeches. So many teleprompters. Leave him alone. Leave those beautiful children alone. Leave First Lady Michelle alone.

Forgotten (or simply ignored) of course is that Obama transforms the “demands of the office” into an endless procession of family trips across Europe and Africa, and, more recently, to the Grand Canyon. And how can we forget “date night” to Manhattan? Or Michelle’s shopping spree in London with the girls? And the Obama family’s post-election trip to a private enclave on the island of Oahu last Christmas. Bush did not pull this kind of crap.

The Washington press — the gang of impostors who last week feigned sadness upon the death of legendary reporter Bob Novak, a man with whom it has nothing in common — would be utterly shocked to go back and review the list of world leaders and dignitaries hosted by President Bush in Crawford, Texas. It is staggering. Yet, Obama comes under zero criticism in recent days for his failure to pick up the phone to 10 Downing or Edinburgh to express America’s outrage that the government of Scotland has released the Lockerbie Pan Am bomber to Libya.

If you doubt the hypocrisy that attends Obama’s first “official” vacation as 44th President, please compare and contrast between the here and now and four short years ago.

Associated Press, Aug. 24, 2009: Close Obama friends — including White House senior adviser (and former Chicago slumlord) Valerie Jarrett and Chicago physician Eric Whitaker — planned to join the family for what White House officials described as a long-overdue break from the daily jostling of Washington.

“There are no official events scheduled in the week ahead. I anticipate that he’ll play golf a number of times,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday.

Ahead for the first family: likely trips for ice cream and salt water taffy, possibly a bike ride and plenty of quiet time at a secluded 28-acre private estate that rents for $35,000 a week.#

USA Today, Aug. 3, 2005: Except for last year when he was campaigning for re-election, Bush has spent every August at his ranch since becoming president. With this trip, he has made 51 ranch visits.#

Huffington Post, July 22, 2009: When Barack Obama kicks off his flip-flops on the Martha’s Vineyard sand next month, he’ll be adding a modern note to the island’s black history that stretches back three centuries. Decades ago, the island was a summer sanctuary for middle-class black families unwelcome elsewhere. Martin Luther King Jr. swam and wrote there.#

The Washington Post, Aug. 3, 2005: President Bush is getting the kind of break most Americans can only dream of — nearly five weeks away from the office, loaded with vacation time. The president departed Tuesday for his longest stretch yet away from the White House, arriving at his Crawford ranch in the evening to clear brush, visit with family and friends, and tend to some outside-the-Beltway politics. By historical standards, it is the longest presidential retreat in at least 36 years.

The more vociferous among Bush’s foes have noted that he spent a month at the ranch shortly before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when critics assert he should have been more attentive to warning signs. To Bush and his advisers, that criticism fundamentally misunderstands his Texas sojourns. Those who think he does not remain in command, aides say, do not understand the modern presidency or Bush’s own work habits.#

Finally, there are few — maybe zero — high profile comedians who will poke fun at Barack Hussein Obama, and certainly there will be no comedy bits about the fact that Obama delayed his arrival onto Martha’s Vineyard to await the passage of Hurricane Bill. Hillary Clinton, the diminished Secretary of State, was probably howling by contrast.

But, as for President Bush, the late night comedy writers were not similarly restrained. To wit:

“Hurricane Katrina has been particularly hard on President Bush, who was forced to end his vacation two days early. He was supposed to be clearing brush in Texas until Friday. Now he’s going to get back to the White House tomorrow. You know, if he doesn’t use his vacation days, he loses them, so this is hard on everybody.” — Jimmy Kimmel

“President Bush is going on his annual vacation. The White House says he goes to his Texas Ranch to unwind. I’m thinking, when does he wind?” — David Letterman

“As you know, President Bush is taking five weeks off. It’s like he’s still in the National Guard.” — Jay Leno

What do you suppose the writers will propose when Obama visits Hyannis this week to meet with a dying Ted Kennedy? What one-liners will be generated as Obama luxuriates on 28 private acres while the war in Afghanistan deteriorates, even as the deficit builds and the outlook for Democrats up for re-election in 2010 worsens?

I can only assume they will suffer an enormous case of writers’ block.

The number of people who claim to have witnessed historic moments is always inflated, but I was seated shoulder to shoulder recently with someone who actually had a very good seat in Chicago’s Grant Park last November on the night Barack Hussein Obama claimed victory in the race for the White House.

To my left, as we shivered inside an enormous, mega-air conditioned ballroom at McCormick Place on Wednesday was none other than one of Obama’s former teleprompter operators from Campaign 2008. Youthful guy. Maybe mid-30s. Pleasant. And extremely competent.

Of course, never lacking sarcastic jabs, I wanted so badly to point a finger into his shoulder blade and shout, “Oh, so youuuu’rrrreee the one!”

Alas, we didn’t talk politics. We were working a live event, he as the prompter guy, I as the script writer in the wings, waiting for someone to request a late edit. One of us is a skilled technician, the other determines the tone and tenor of the content. The relationship is entirely symbiotic.

Before the event started, he happened to share a photo, summoned from a laptop, with another member of the crew. And there it was, Obama standing amid a crowd of handlers, backstage at a campaign stop, while hovering over his beloved prompter operator.

Putting aside the chilling reality that Obama used well-crafted words loaded into prompters (by writers sensitive to radical left wing messages softened by clever tone and tenor) to mislead 53% of the voting populace as it sloshed back gallon upon gallon of Hope-n-Change Kool-Aid, I was fascinated by Prompter Guy’s observations from deep inside Obama 2008.

Basically, he told his fellow union member (all of these event production people tend to be, perhaps under coercion, union labor) that prompter gigs have exposed him to numerous powerful and famous speakers. Prompter Guy said Obama easily is one of the five most intellectually gifted people he has encountered in his lifetime. He explained that the former junior Senator has a capacity to grasp complex subjects very quickly and thoroughly.

I was not surprised, frankly. Some of the most diabolical people across human history have been born with, and have brashly abused, gifted intellects. I won’t name any examples because, well, you know, that’s hate speech.

But this point is extremely important. This intellectual superiority, this coolness, a certain other worldliness, takes us precisely to what concerns so many millions of Americans who will never come within 100 miles of the man. Essentially, B. Hussein Obama was born to be the Socialist’s President. He is the ideal conduit because he has been a willing vessel his whole life, filled from his most formative days with contempt for free market capitalism, individual self-reliance, Constitutional sanctity, and the exceptionalism that defines this country to its core. And he is a genius when it comes to repackaging Socialism as something everyone can embrace, making it sound like … change, hope, a better America. Roll it up, Mr. Prompter.

Dorothy Rabinowitz, writing in The Wall Street Journal, just flat out said it. While Obama comprehends the complex social constructs of Socialism, and is stringently adherent to the raw brutality of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”, Rabinowitz observes that “despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.”

And former President Bush strategist Karl Rove echoed a similar sentiment today in a Journal opinion column. “What worked in the Obama campaign,” he writes, making reference to those glorious days when rhetoric rolled on the prompter screen and out of Obama’s well trained mouth, “will often backfire on the Obama presidency. But old habits are hard to leave on the trail.”

They are especially hard to foresake when there are always willing accomplices who will sit in the chilly shadows, producing the words and rolling them up on the magic prompter.