My Beauty Best Teacher

Let's not forget the big picture during this primary season- defeating President Obama's attempt to hold on to political power. This is not a partisan issue- I don't suggest that Obama needs to be defeated merely because he is a Democrat or a liberal or a progressive or whatever- but rather this is an issue about putting someone in the White House who is better at getting out of my way.

I'm great a working hard, creating wealth, making my own decisions in my life, living with my own mistakes, and producing goods and services for our great nation- and so are you. All you require to be prosperous, happy, and free is a government which protects your life through national defense and police services and the like, a government which protects your liberty and freedom by making sure that enemies without and within do not gain the ability to order you around, and a government which protects your happiness by making sure that the property you do earn you keep. You are all great Americans.

And yet, President Obama does not think that you are great Americans- he thinks that you make bad decisions, that you don't understand how a baby could ruin your life, and that you are not creating the right sort of property or spending your property in the right way. And this dangerous man with these dangerous attitudes has become President of the United States of America and is now using the power of that executive office to take away your liberty and freedom and property and make your life a little less full.

You've felt it, just like I have, over the years and getting worse over the last three- that feeling like people don't matter any more, like peoples lives are inconsequential, and that feeling that our world is a little less alive. It is not surprising that you've felt this way- as government has gotten bigger and more powerful and more in control with more aspects of your lives this impersonal and vast institution has dehumanized us and treated us as numbers and taken away from our life, liberty, and property.

President Barack Obama supports this dehumanizing and confiscating and controlling philosophy because he does not think that you are all great Americans.

Jay Cost on Saturday touched on these ideas in his blog post, where he spoke about just exactly what sort of person Obama was, what his vision of the world was, and why opposing him rises beyond simply a partisan or jobs or improving economy thing- it is a real battle of vision for the future for America- one in which the individual is great and free and prosperous, or another one in which the individual is a slave to the state and controlled by the state and prosperous only as much as the state lets them be.

Here is part of Jay Cost's blog post, from the Weekly Standard, called What's So Bad About Obama?

...Obama is not “radical,” at least not in the way we usually define the concept. But that actually points to the big the problem with this president and his worldview. The progressive ideology dating back to the turn of the last century, and in which Obama is comfortably situated, was never really about overturning the established order, but rather in co-opting it...

... the hallmarks of the First New Deal – were all about grand bargains between government, labor, farmers, and capital owners. The point was to draw all classes to the bargaining table, with the meeting chaired by the progressives, naturally. So it goes for modern-day progressivism. Both Clintoncare and Obamacare did not try to implement “socialized medicine,” but rather strike a grand bargain that would encompass all of the “stakeholders” to manage the nation’s health care...

...Obama has not set out to destroy capitalism. He is no socialist in the traditional sense of the word. He is not interested in controlling the means of production, as Marx put it. He’s happy to let commerce and industry remain in private hands, but that does not mean he's a free market advocate in any politically relevant sense of the phrase. He wants the free market to do its thing, so long as the government can socialize an ever-greater amount of the profit, and also take an intimate role in managing the private sector to “socially beneficial” ends....

...The principal reason for this opposition is that there has always been more than a whiff of anti-republicanism to the progressive agenda. Just consider the name "progressive," which implies a social, epistemological, or moral vanguard -- hardly the hallmark of true republicanism. And what one person views as “socially beneficial," another may rightfully call political patronage. For instance, the New Deal was full of payoffs – small and large – to Democratic constituencies....

...And so, the Democrats’ grand dreams of a “Fair Deal” always stink of unfairness to conservatives in the republican tradition... And Barack Obama, the president who promised to bring change to Washington, has been a very diligent patron to his party's extensive list of clients. On item after item, the topline claim to benefit the national interest is regularly belied by the particularism of the fine print. Klein mentions three items in particular in his column – the auto bailout, the financial reform bill, and the health care bill – that were all justified on purely nationalistic grounds, but peel off the top layer and the stench of clientelism will overwhelm you. To this list I would add the stimulus bill, the jobs bill that Obama proposed in the fall, and the cap-and-trade bill. Liberals look upon them all as fulfilling a great national purpose, but republicans (small "r") see massive payoffs to core Democratic groups.

If you want to understand the seething anger on the conservative side of the aisle, this is what you need to appreciate: It’s not just that Obama is a big government guy in the progressive tradition, which conservatives have opposed for more than a century. It’s also that he’s a client guy, meaning that his idea of big government inevitably has special payoffs hidden in it somewhere. And more than even this, he's a boundless client guy in what should be an age of restraint. Payoffs to party clients are one thing when the economy is growing at a four percent rate per year; that is a situation where the times are so prosperous that government patrons are really just drawing upon the national surplus to satisfy their partisans. But when the economy is growing at less than two percent per year, barely enough to keep up with population growth, paying off party clients is actually like robbing from Peter to pay Paul. And while Obama and congressional Democrats have put off that bill -- in the form of our trillion-plus deficit -- conservatives are not fools. They know they'll be asked to pay up sooner or later, and with a stagnant economy that means less money in their pockets, in part because the president wants to hold together his voting coalition.

That's what's so bad about Obama.

Let's get past all of our past labels- Republicans and Democrats, Romney vs Newt, establishment vs anti-establishment, Tea Party vs Occupier, right vs left, conservative vs liberal- and realize just exactly what the battle is about today: republicanism vs dictatorship. This 2012 is about returning power back to the people of our nation by empowering them as individuals to make lives, be free, and earn property. Obama opposes that desire, and that is what is so bad about him and why he must be defeated in 2012 and his vision of government rejected with extreme manliness.

Jay Cost is the author of Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic.

The real counter-culture today is not to be found on the left, with the Occupy Wall Street people or in the liberal and progressive blogs on the internet. After all, counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of people who run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day. They aren't 'fringe groups' or 'subgroups'- rather, the counterculture are those people who are the manifestations of the zeitgeist of the day. And the group that best rejects the old way of doing things, the traditional ways of doing things, and offers new and different solutions to the problems facing society today are those people who love freedom and liberty and property rights. Ladies and gentlemen, the new counterculture is the Tea Party, and if you were hip and cool you'd join it.

The 'establishment' of today is not the restrictive, conservative white-picket fence war hero's of the '50's- rather, today the 'establishment' are those very hippies who rose to power and influence reacting against the 'establishment' of that time. Today, those in power and authority are those war-dodging self-righteous selfish drug-using types who now spend their days lecturing others around about being more friendly to the environment or to make peace not war or other meaningless garbage, while they live way beyond their means piling up debt on their children and grandchildren. These so-called 'progressives' control the modern-day Democratic Party and tint the Republican Party as well. Look around you- the entertainers on TV, the comics in the clubs, the celebrities in movies, the musicians- the culture of the day is that of the left, the establishment of politics and the media is that of the liberals, and even “The Man” is a lefty tyrant.

So what then is the new counter culture? As I wrote back in The New Counter Culture: Liberty, it is those people who love life, liberty, and the protection of property who are the new counterculture- rejecting the 'mainstream' big government progressive and liberal policies of the major parties and embracing the soaring rhetoric of the Bible and the Declaration of Independence to challenge the status quo and express the ethos of the times. The new rebels are the old rebels once again; those who fight against tyranny and oppression again and take back our nation, and they are to be found in the gatherings and celebrations of the Tea Party's, conservatives, and (to a lesser extent) the Republicans.

The real change in our society, the real difference makers, are those people who are out there at Tea Party's across the nation. Those who are going to shake the world and make a difference are not Harvard-educated community organizers committed to spending money they don't have on social re-engineering schemes while they urinate on themselves and shout about being the '99%'- rather, the counter-culture and cool group of today are those entrepreneurs who are standing up at town halls and yelling 'freedom'. They are the '1%' who are fighting for change and a return to the values that once made our nation great, and that is why their movement is so vibrant and intellectually alive, because they capture the spirit of the day and the direction our nation should go more so than the old hippy establishment culture that is the status quo now.

The Weekly Standard echo's some of these thoughts of mine in its latest article The Reactionary Left, by Matthew Continetti. Here are some of the best parts of it:

...The very notion of a backward-looking left is laughable. Since its inception during the French Revolution, the left has been the party of progress, riding the wave of history to that distant shore where man will cast off the chains of society and live a truly authentic, free, and “natural” life. It’s been the conservatives who have looked in the other direction, tapping the lefties on the shoulder and reminding them that faith and tradition are important guides to human action and shouldn’t be cast off lightly. In contemporary America the equation has been reversed: Tea Party populists support drastic measures to revitalize the American government and economy, while left-wing class warriors want nothing more than to maintain the broken structures of the welfare state....

...What happened to the American left’s utopianism, its sense of adventure, its fearless derring-do? Today’s liberals say conservatives are radicals who want to overturn the American political tradition (as liberals understand it). What remains of the liberal confidence in progress seems to be restricted to the culture, where Americans continue to perform occasional experiments of living. But even the cultural left seems withered, exhausted, ready to go to that big Oneida community in the sky. So what’s a Rousseau to do? Ruminate on his glory days, and pretend that Occupy Wall Street is something more than it is....

...The wistful left reaches back farther when it mimics the class politics of the 1930s. The “99 percent” versus the “1 percent,” Warren Buffett’s secretary versus Warren Buffett, Obama’s attacks on nameless “millionaires and billionaires” are echoes of the rhetoric of Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and Franklin Roosevelt. What is puzzling is that the strategy of division and resentment has not had a good track record. To be sure, it worked for FDR. But Roosevelt had 25 percent unemployment, a minuscule federal government, and a sunny disposition. Since LBJ, the spokesmen for American liberalism have been dour and passive and condescending. Their populism has lacked bite because it is a pose. The public has seen through their attempt to rehash the old formula for what it is: “the shield and slogan of the cunning who will rule in the name of equality,” as Martin Diamond once put it.

The longing for the culture of the ’60s, the economy of the ’50s, and the politics of the ’30s is evidence of the left’s failure. No longer able to inspire with a utopian vision of the future, the left has been forced to return to its past. The left’s failure, then, is the right’s victory, because a return to the past is what we’ve been calling for all along....

Check out the whole thing, it's pretty good. Also be sure to check out this article by James Hudnall over at Big Hollywood, which covers some of the same ideas.

UPDATE: Welcome readers of the Right Wing News! Thanks for checking out this post- look around while you are here, I'm sure you'll enjoy other posts that've I've written!

Great leaders  hire people smarter, more innovative, and better than themselves.

Great leaders care about those who work for and with them... their life stories, their hobbies, their interests. They know that personal lives can effect professional careers and realize that to know an employee and care is the key to unleashing their potential at work.


Great leaders give others credit for good things even when a lot of the credit goes to him or her. If bad things happen, the great leader steps out front to take the blame.


Great leaders have a great staff and tell everyone.


Great leaders focus an organization on the organization's mission. They focus on the customer

Poor leaders focus an organization on pleasing him/ her and become the only customer that matters to the employees.

Great leaders attract other great leaders.


Great leaders can turn even poor leaders into better leaders. They mentor and create other great leaders.


Great leaders work hard and smart and are able to tell which work is the most important. They never mistake urgent work for important work. They know that an open door as much as possible during working hours means that people will communicate with them.


Great leaders encourage and inspire the best and trust others to do their best. Most often they are made proud by the results. Sometimes, they are let down when someone misuses their freely given trust but believe it is still worth it to trust and give others the joy of service. Dale Carnegie is his friend.


Great leaders know that their words of encouragement are like $1000 dollar bills and look for opportunities to give honest praise and spread the wealth. They do not spend their praise for it to return to them, but it multiplies exponentially anyway in good will.


Great leaders believe that most people want to do a good job and use mistakes as teachable moments. His ability to wisely, discretely handle staff problems earns the loyalty of the flawed humans he leads. His staff is more willing to forgive his inevitable mistakes (when they happen) and are willing to provide valuable feedback to him so he can have a teachable moment as well. The leader's attitude about mistakes is ALWAYS paid back to him in his moment of need. For great leaders are also flawed humans.


Great leaders take criticism, examine it, and examine themselves to determine if there is a grain of truth in the criticism. She knows that most criticism has a grain of truth but also that there are the rare instances of a mean person (usually poor leaders) who just make stuff up. She can tell the difference.


Great leaders often have their heyday and are a living tradition of leadership. But every great leader typically has a horribly dark moment. It is most often when the great leader stands against a poor leader who has taken root somewhere and is doing harm. It is during these times of alienation, loneliness, and enmity when poor leaders and their oft-intimidated followers malign the great leader's love of the organization and the organization's mission. As the poor leaders and their followers circle, machinate, and manipulate, the great leader often questions the meaning of his whole life and if it is for naught. It is at these times the Great Leader must turn to his Maker and his mission and remain consistent with all he believes. He rarely realizes that great leaders like Churchill, Lincoln, and Roosevelt were largely made by their heroic behavior in the darkest days of their organization. The great leader clings to noble thoughts, deeds, and actions amidst even when surrounded by the most grotesque of human behavior. Great leaders eventually see the opportunity for rain amidst the dark clouds.


Great leaders have great character, mission, and are well grounded in things that are important in life. They are real but they are not always recognized. They are loved but often not by the powerful people. They are great because they make us all greater and we do great things when they are around. Their power is lasting for when they are gone, they leave a legacy of what it means to live a good life.
Poor leaders have little character, no mission but self-promotion and are not grounded in what is important. They are fakes and make sure they are recognized. They are loved by the powerful but often disdained by the average person. They are poor leaders because they make the people around them poorer in spirit, life, and love and we do worse when they are around. Their power is often temporary for when they are gone, the power vacuum is quickly absorbed by other poor leaders ready to jostle into place.


Please add your thoughts in the comments.


This article is dedicated to two of the greatest leaders I know, my husband Kip Davis (former Rotary Club president for Camilla and recipient of the Governor's Award of Excellence for his leadership in my hometown for leading the tornado recovery efforts) my father, James Lee Adams (former president of the American Soybean Association.) These two men define my thoughts of great leadership.


I would also like to say that my headmaster, Ross Worsham, is a great leader and that these thoughts have been formed from my 43 years of living, leading, and learning about what it means to lead. He is mentioned without being named in many of the "great leader" notes. We need more great leaders and we need to know that it is important to aspire to be great, to do the right thing, and to treat all human beings with respect. Power is fleeting but a person who treats everyone with respect deserves to be a leader.

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As millions of listeners have heard, Glenn's arguments with his Idiot Friend live on the air have provided some of the funniest and most insightful moments on The Glenn Beck Program. Now, in the bestselling tradition of America’s March to Socialism, Glenn collects his most memorable on-air dimwit debates in Idiots Unplugged, an original audio program unavailable in any other format.

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America is an exceptional nation- a nation that was founded and built on traditions and ideas in a way that no nation had previously tried and no other nation has since duplicated. The ideas are put forth in our Declaration of Independence- all men are created equal, no man is better than you at deciding how you run your life, government is created for very limited purposes, and that these mainly are to protect your freedom of choice, to protect your life, and to protect your property which was the product of your hard work and labor. As I have written about many times, these ideas are under daily attack by those unexceptional nations who would drag us back into their petty jealousies, and by those who support these nations out of belief that America has something to apologize for or that the monarchs and empires of the past are to be admired and emulated.

Traditionally, our nation has been a nation of immigrants who come here expecting nothing other than to be rewarded for their hard work and not be judged based on their race or class, and traditionally our nation has been a nation built on rule of law, not rule of strong men ruling by decree. These traditions are also under attack by those who immigrated here expecting others to work hard for their benefit, and rule of law is slipping badly in our nation.

One other great tradition that America was firmly built on is Christianity. This Christian spirit animated our nation and our nation's leaders from the beginning to today, and is firmly a part of our character. While other Christian nations around the world have had slipping church attendance and little vigorous debate on the nature of God and God's Word, in our nation many still go to church and healthy and moral debates continue to be engaged on the nature of God.

This traditional Christian character of our nation is an important part of our tradition, and has been enshrined in our Pledge of Allegiance, which we all know and say from birth as:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

But this tradition is under attack as well, by well meaning individuals who believe that out nation will be improved or strengthened in some manner if God is driven underground and killed. They object to saying the pledge, usually by hiding behind nameless others who might possibly be offended by saying that the United States of America was founded and remains as one nation under God. They seek to remove the words 'under God', believing that it is possible to pick and choose what parts of America they like and support. Today they remove the phrase 'under God', but it has always been my fear that once that phrase is permitted to be removed, others will soon follow, and our traditions will be torn asunder and our foundations as a nation will shatter and we will fail.

Sadly, this is what is now happening. The election of Barack Obama was a bad gamble that our nation took, a leap of faith on someone who did not earn it, and the empowering of the liberal wing of his party, a Democratic Party that has moved far away from most people, further took our nation down a path of failed ideas and rejection of traditions. On Sunday, while many people sat down on a great Father's Day to watch the U.S. Open Golf Championship, they saw how far our nation has gone down this path when one of the major networks altered our nation's Pledge.

NBC on Sunday decided to cut the words "under God" from the reading of the Pledge of Allegiance that accompanied the beginning of its coverage of the U.S. Open Golf Championship. Seconds after that, there was another reading of the Pledge, and this time, in addition to cutting out the words 'under God', NBC went further and cut out the words 'one nation' as well, dishonoring all of the thousands of dead who fought to keep our nation one nation during the US Civil War. Watch the video yourself.

NBC later issued an apology, but I wonder, what is next for the liberals who run NBC, who support Barack Obama, and support the liberal radical left of the modern day Democratic Party? Will they next drop out the words 'with liberty', since they don't believe that I truly have the liberty to run my own life however I want and need to be ruled over by elites in Washington? Will they drop out 'to the republic', or maybe alter it 'to the democracy', thereby changing our nation from a nation of laws into one where strong men can do what they do and the rest of us must suffer under their tyranny? What is next for our nation, if the traditions of our nations can be so casually rejected by a major network?

For your classroom, think about getting one of these posters- I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag of the USA - Classroom Motivational Poster or I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America - Classroom Motivational Poster.

Happy Memorial Day Everyone!

Memorial Day means different things to different people- to some, it is the honoring of fallen soldiers, who died in service to their nation, like my distant relative James, who fought and died in the Civil War.

My grandfather passed this story on to me recently. On Jan. 27,1864, James was just a farmer, but he still went off to do his duty to keep our nation one nation, undivided, with liberty and justice for all. James enlisted in the 17th Infantry Regiment. He was mustered in on Feb. 11, 1864. His Company soon joined the regiment at Annapolis, MD on April 9, 1864- some of the worst battles of the Civil War were about to take place.

He fought in the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia, in May, 1864, and then fought in the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, which a vital crossroads which controlled the shortest route to the capitol of Virginia. It was here at Spotsylvania on May 12 that James was taken prisoner and shipped to the notorious Andersonville Confederate prison camp in Georgia. Some months later James died there of dysentery, and was buried in the National Cemetery, Andersonville, GA. He was only 40 years old.

His widow was left with 7 children- her Army pension was $8 a month, with $2 extra for each of her 6 minor children, until they reached the age of 16. James served our nation for 4 months and did his duty and died a true patriot. Thank you James, for all that you did.

To others, Memorial Day is a day to remember our roots and those who have gone before us. My grandfather remembers trips that he used to make a youth on Decoration Day (what Memorial Day used to be called) to visit their old family farm and the old cemetery too. Since the family had a poor section of the cemetery, they would all pitch-in and weed, cut the grass and put flowers on the graves. When they had done everything there, they would drive back to the old farm where they were raised and have a picnic and remember their family. When they were too old to do it together any more, some of the family continued the tradition.

Also on Memorial Day, it my grandfather's family tradition to take flowers to the graves of family members and remember them on this day, whether they died in war or not. It may be called Memorial Day now , but my grandfather is right- to all those who went before us and who raised us, they deserve our attention and respect and honor and thoughts too on Decoration Day.

Happy Memorial Day! Happy Decoration Day!

As a child growing up in a family of cantadoras (keepers of the old stories), Clarissa Pinkola EstA©s learned first-hand how a story told at bedtime can soothe away the troubles of the day and prepare the way for another night's dreams to follow. Now a beloved cantadora herself, EstA©s shares this treasured family tradition with you on Bedtime Stories, her own special collection of tales to relax and ease you to sleep. Join this world-renowned Jungian analyst and bestselling author as she explores: How to use stories as healing companions that open an aperture into the divine world of our dreams; the meaning of archetypal figures like Mother Night and the Sandman, and themes such as renewal, enchantment and transformation; original tellings by Dr. EstA©s of her bedside favorites, including Sleeping Beauty, The Mouse and the Lion, and more.

 

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Two values that are supported more by conservatives than liberals are traditional values and parent choice, and yet Republicans in Michigan keep forgetting these values that they were elected on. Seduced by the power of government and feeling empowered by their large majorities in the House and the Senate, Michigan Republicans recently supported President Obama's Race to the Top program which gives more control over education to Washingtion DC and even more recently have supported raiding the K-12 School Aid fund in violation with voters stated wishes on the subject.

And now I hear that Republicans are prepared to use the power of the state to tell parents when they think a child is ready or not to go to kindergarten, overturning over 100 years of established values on the subject.

It is understandable that liberals would push to overturn tradition and take away choice from parents on when they send their own children to school, since liberals thrive on power and control, but I would never have thought that the tea party and conservatives in our good state would have swept into power people who now are about to meddle in parent's choice and established values in the name of new-age science.

Feeling that every month in a child's life makes a big difference, that young kids lack the stamina for kindergarten, and that the youngest ones have a harder time integrating socially, emotionally, physically and academically, Michigan State Senator Darwin Booher (R-Evart) and Michigan State Representative Ray Franz (R-Onekama) are planning on introducing legislation that would move up the kindergarten cutoff date from December 1 (where it has been set for over 100 years) to September 1. This would act to prevent children who turn 5 from September to December from attending kindergarten, even if their own parents feel that they are ready.

If parents still want their children to go to school earlier than the government mandated cutoff date, they would be forced to sit down with a government committee which would judge them and issue a decree on whether or not their child was ready to go to school or whether they would have to pay thousands more in daycare for another year until the state deemed it now appropriate for them to send their child to kindergarten.

State Senator and Education Chair Phil Pavlov (R-St. Clair) also apparently supports this attempt to take away choice from parents and overturn tradition. It is unclear why the state has to get involved with setting arbitrary deadlines on when a parent is allowed to send their own child to school, and I suggest that in coming elections that conservative and tea partiers keep these thoughts in mind and work to knock off these corrupted-by-power Senators and Representatives.

Parental choice and tradition, dear state government- that's the way to go.

UPDATE: For those who asked...

• Representative Ray Franz- RayFranz@house.mi.gov
• Senator Darwin Booher-either darwinbooher@senate.mi.gov or dbooher@senate.mi.gov
• Senator Phil Pavlov- either phipavlov@senatoe.mi.gov or ppavlov@senate.mi.gov

UPDATE II: Thank you all for the comments- they support my original point that I'm pissed at Republicans running as conservatives and then not being conservative- so thank you for supporting my argument.

While many feel that children should be older before going to kindergarden, that's their choice. No offense intended, but I don't want anyone to have the power to control when my children start going to school- that's my call as a parent. I do not want any sort of government committee to telling me that if I (as the parent) choose to send my kid to school earlier, that the government will not allow it. That's not how our state has run in the past.

Tradition and parental choice- those are conservative values, and they are the values I support.

Have you ever had an itch-and not scratched it? In the Buddhist tradition, this points to a vast paradox: that by refraining from our urge to "scratch," great peace and happiness is available. On Getting Unstuck, Pema Chodron introduces a valuable teaching on what in Tibetan is called shenpa. "An urge comes up, we succumb to it, and it becomes stronger," she teaches. "We reinforce our habits and addictions by giving in to them." Now, Pema guides us through this "sticky feeling"-exploring the moments when we get hooked-and offers us a look at the freedom available when we uncover shenpa, and work with it intelligently and compassionately. This full-length recording offers tools for learning to stay with our uneasiness, and shows us how to recognize shenpa, catch it as it appears, and activate the wisdom and confidence that lies beneath it.

 

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Every single year there is an event called The White House Correspondents' Dinner. The White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) is an organization of journalists who cover the White House and the President of the United States, and every year they host a dinner reception, which in recent decades has become more of a roast of the President, where comedians and the President himself take turns making fun of the President and his policies. It's all in good fun and the humor is light and playful- or at least it used to be.

President Obama has brought change to the The White House Correspondents' Diner- it is no longer light and in good fun and the target of jokes is no longer the President himself, now under Obama, the dinner is all about making fun of everyone that the President doesn't like, taking personal shots at his rivals, and using the power of the office of President to make bitter and mean attacks on other people.

A google news search of "White House Correspondents' Dinner" from 2001-2008, which was the time period that Republican George W. Bush was President, reveals the picture. Way back then when politics was less bitter and partisan and vindictive, the stories that the dinner generated included:

• In 2006, laughter and discussion regarding Stephen Colbert's mock tribute to President Bush at the dinner, where Colbert mocked Bush and his policies and the whole room laughed in good humor.
• In 2007, Bush said it was important for people in Washington "to learn to laugh" and that the ability for a nation to poke fun at its leaders is good for democracy.
• In 2005, Laura Bush ripped off a series of pretty funny jokes on the President, mocking her husbands TV habits, laziness, and mother-in-law.
• In 2004, Bush has a serious message, because he was being criticized by Democrats over a performance a month earlier at the Radio and Television Correspondents' dinner in which he made a humorous slide show of his personal search for WMD's in Iraq.
• In 2002, Bush did an extensive routine that ranged from mocking his ability to pronounce names to his policies in the Middle East.

A quick scan of results from the Clinton years also returns results that show that the dinner has in recent years been an opportunity to make fun and light of the President and his policies. Obama changed this tradition.

Via memeorandum, we see that Obama once more used the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner to rip into his opponents, mock his opponents policies, roll off a series of non-funny and mean jokes, and generally turn the event into a cold exercise in bitter partisanship. There was no 'learning to laugh' at Obama and he continues to demonstrate his inability to learn anything about being a better person, directing his attacks and jokes and mockery outward rather than inward. Our democracy was not improved by demonstrating its ability to make fun of its leaders, since under Obama this democracy is moving more towards tyranny, where you don't make fun of your leaders because there will be retribution.

Obama took his time at the dinner to systematically work his way through all of his political rivals and potential challengers in 2012, mocking each and ripping each as the adoring crowd lapped it up, except for the people who were being ripped and mocked, who sat there in cold silence and anger that the President of the United States was ripping them. I know, comedy is hard, and that making fun of other people is difficult and requires skill and tact and grace, but once again we see that President Obama lacks skill and tact and grace and turned this dinner into an exercise to send people home angry and upset and lessened by his comments.

Unlike past events when the target of the jokes and humor was the President, this dinner was an attempt to turn his main rival Donald Trump (according to recent polling) into a punching bag. I've seen the video- at one point, the joking does go too far, and everyone can see that the line was crossed from gentle making fun of a person to personally attacking them in a mean spirited manner, and it's at that point that the room looked for leadership to our President, but he was busy laughing too, enjoying the slicing and ripping on a rival and sucking in the vileness of the room.

President Obama and those who laugh and joke in such a manner deserve to be thrown out of office. Our nation has no place for such meanness and smallness.

UPDATE: TheBlogProf sums up what the dinner has become under Obama:

I think most people would agree that repeatedly punching someone in the face while your friends hold that person from responding is less than fair and amounts to bullying in the extreme. It is also gutless. Yesterday, it was pretty much the same thing as Obama attacked Donald Trump from the bully pulpit without Trump being able to respond. This was simply classless and has become Obama's MO.

UPDATE II: I agree with Trump- Obama's use of the White House Correspondents' Dinner as yet another forum for him to engage in his bitter partisanship attacks is 'not the greatest' and 'inappropriate.' It is worth noting that Donald Trump appears to have more class than Obama in this situation- but at least when Donald dropped inappropriate F-bombs earlier in the week that was at a partisan event.

UPDATE III: To all of those liberals and Democrats commenting, here are some more jokes that I am sure you will find witty, clever, and all sorts of funny. There are dozens of jokes like this over at Big Hollywood- here are some of the best:

• So, have you heard about those Republicans? Yeah, I hate them and I think they’re stupid.
• The funniest thing about Obama is how SO MANY people don’t get how cool and smart and physically attractive he is.
• Q: Why did the blonde get confused by an ordinary household object? A: Cuz she was a Republican. And Republicans are stupid.
• “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Republicans.” “Republicans who?” “Republicans sure are stupid and evil.”
• So, a Republican walks into a bar, and I get super upset.
• A black man, a Hispanic, and a Jew enter a bar. They all say in turn, “Voting Republican would make us traitors to our races!”
• So, what’s the deal with the Tea Party? Is it racist, or is it SUPER racist?

Recently I have been critical of President Barack Obama's New START Treaty. My criticism is relevant because one of the most important roles of a President is negotiating treaties and this treaty is the most important one that Obama has negotiated. It is also relevant because this treaty was ratified in the Senate by Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and she is up for re-election, and should be held to account for her vote on this important issue. And my criticism of this treaty is relevant because it critiques a larger viewpoint held by many on the liberal and left of the spectrum that reductions in weapons are always a good thing. Let's not forget about this issue just because in the meantime Obama has messed up on several others (Egypt, gasoline prices, etc).

In My Thoughts on the New START Treaty I wrote:

President Change and his party in Congress continue to cause trouble, even though most of us have turned our attention to happier things during this holiday season. For the first time ever in our nation's history, a lame-duck Senate confirmed a major arms treaty, defying convention and tradition and the historical role of the Senate to give due deliberation to treaties of this sort in favor of a quick ratification in recognition of the fact that the treaty is a bad one and the next Senate would never ratify it because it is bad....

....Well, to be correct, it isn't a bad treaty, it just is one that my six-year old daughter could have negotiated, if she did a bad job. It is a treaty that gives everything away with getting little in return, and a fair and honest assessment of the treaty leads one to lead to a 'no' vote on it and to be critical of Obama. Of course, politics and scoring wins are very important to Democrats, so they don't really care about the reality of the treaty, but I do, and so I think Obama did a bad job with this treaty, 71 Senators voted incorrectly to confirm it, and those who celebrate its passage are weak-minded fools....

....Let's look at what this treaty does in the wider scope of international affairs. Under this treaty, the US becomes a weaker nuclear power, less able to defend itself from attacks, less able to keep tabs on its main nuclear rival, and less able to attack other nations using nuclear weapons. Of course no one wants to ever attack anyone using nuclear weapons, but the main way this is done is to be just crazy enough to threaten overwhelming nuclear attacks (for evidence see the continued existence of the world after US adopted this policy). Russia knows this is the best way to get things done too, and is letting its conventional forces weaken while it strengthens its nuclear weapons (at lower numbers) (under Obama's watch), because then it will continue to wield international power without having to maintain all those conventional forces. Iran and North Korea both also see that the US is weaker and less able to check their advances and so will continue building up their nuclear forces (under Obama's watch) free from the threat of nuclear annihilation (although we all know it never would have happened, the possibility was always there)....

I also wasn't surprised to find out that Obama Sold Out British to Russians in Deal to get New START Treaty, since I knew it was a bad treaty I figured there was a lot of bad stuff in it, although I was a bit surprised about the audacity of Obama to give the Russians information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain as part of the deal.

So if the New START treaty was such a poor treaty, why did Obama negotiate it and many Senators vote to ratify it? Because of their mistaken belief that the best way to achieve lasting peace is through unilateral disarmament.

In one of our International Relations classes here at my high school, students watch a video called Disarmament: The Quest for Lasting Peace. This video confronts the major issues of disarmament by clarifying the terminology and describing the most recently developed weapons and their effect on world disarmament negotiations. It explores the past attempts, the problems of present negotiations, and future trends of arms control, with a goal of convincing students that the best way to achieve lasting peace for the world is through disarmament of world powers. But students don't watch a video on Peace Through Strength and about how disarmament is just silly unless it is from a position of strength and done in such a way so not to jeopardize the security of America and its allies.

Nope, in our school, like most schools around the nation, students only hear one point of view in their International Relations class and then the teacher leads discussion on this one point of view asking students to talk about disarmament and talk about lasting peace and talk about how disarmament can lead to lasting peace. And then these students grow up and vote or run for political office or become President, and their silly ideas about disarmament leading to world peace get put into policy, and America signs bad treaties like the New START Treaty, and the world is a less safe place because of it. It all fits together.

UPDATE:

Until now, I haven't really commented on the FCC's latest ruling granting it control over the internet. For those of you who don't know, last week citizens for the first time got federally approved rules regulating what they view on the Internet. These rules are not based on any sort of constitutional provision and clearly do not fit with our tradition of a limited and defined national government. The new regulations will likely lead to future regulation, control, censorship, and taxes of companies and citizens that use the internet. The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday voted 3-2 (3 Democrat appointments vs 2 Republican appointments) to back (Democrat appointed) Chairman Julius Genachowski's plan for what is commonly known as "net neutrality," or rules prohibiting free companies from deciding how they run their businesses in an environment of competition and openness. Democratic President Barack Obama, in classical double-speak, said that having a limited number of unelected rules control our behaviors in a free society will "help preserve the free and open nature of the Internet."

The move to take freedom and future property from free citizens was prompted by liberal groups that love power and authority over freedom. Recently private companies have begun to experiment with ways to handle the growing problem of network congestion. But the Chairman of the FCC felt that instead of having private industry experiment with the best way to run its business that he wanted to instead control that business, even though he lacks the long record of experience and accumulated wisdom of being in business of all of those trained professionals whose whole life is running internet companies. In politically-appointed Mr. Genachowski's opinion, instead of selectively slowing certain traffic to cope with congestion he thinks providers could consider charging consumers for how much data they consume, but no one was listening to him, so he issued a royal decree to make people listen to him. He doesn't have to live with the consequences of that decision or have thousands of employees salaries be dependent on that position, and is unaccountable to voters, and thus this move marks yet another way that our nation slips into tyranny and oppression.

Our elected branch of officials, who are given the just and moral power to make decisions such as this, decided not to give this power and authority to the FCC. But the FCC didn't like that, and so unjustly and immorally seized this power and authority. A tyranny is marked by such behavior and such decisions. Decisions that were made by Democrat appointments. Vote appropriately next election, and for fun, read this book: Law and Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm.

Merry Christmas everyone! Here is something you probably didn't know about Christmas:

On December 25, Christians around the world will gather to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Joyful carols, special liturgies, brightly wrapped gifts, festive foods—these all characterize the feast today, at least in the northern hemisphere. But just how did the Christmas festival originate? How did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus’ birthday?

The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus’ Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season; in the cold month of December, on the other hand, sheep might well have been corralled. Yet most scholars would urge caution about extracting such a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical.

The extrabiblical evidence from the first and second century is equally spare: There is no mention of birth celebrations in the writings of early Christian writers such as Irenaeus (c. 130–200) or Tertullian (c. 160–225). Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as “pagan” practices—a strong indication that Jesus’ birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time. As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this point.

Finally, in about 200 C.E., a Christian teacher in Egypt makes reference to the date Jesus was born. According to Clement of Alexandria, several different days had been proposed by various Christian groups. Surprising as it may seem, Clement doesn’t mention December 25 at all. Clement writes: “There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place on (May 20 in our calendar), or (March 21), or (April 21), or (April 15), or (April 20 or 21).”

Clearly there was great uncertainty, but also a considerable amount of interest, in dating Jesus’ birth in the late second century. By the fourth century, however, we find references to two dates that were widely recognized—and now also celebrated—as Jesus’ birthday: December 25 in the western Roman Empire and January 6 in the East (especially in Egypt and Asia Minor). The modern Armenian church continues to celebrate Christmas on January 6; for most Christians, however, December 25 would prevail, while January 6 eventually came to be known as the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem. The period between became the holiday season later known as the 12 days of Christmas.

So, almost 300 years after Jesus was born, we finally find people observing his birth in midwinter. But how had they settled on the dates December 25 and January 6?

The first theory is popular (based on existing pagan celebrations) but doesn't hold up under further analysis- early Christians rejected pagan connections and tried to be different, and there isn't even a hint mentioned that Christmas was based on pagan traditions until the tenth century. So I reject this theory and instead point you towards the second (lesser known) one:

Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar. March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus’ conception. Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.

This idea appears in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which appears to come from fourth-century North Africa. The treatise states: “Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March [March 25], which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.” Based on this, the treatise dates Jesus’ birth to the winter solstice.

Augustine, too, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399–419) he writes: “For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.”

In the East, too, the dates of Jesus’ conception and death were linked. But instead of working from the 14th of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, the easterners used the 14th of the first spring month (Artemisios) in their local Greek calendar—April 6 to us. April 6 is, of course, exactly nine months before January 6—the eastern date for Christmas. In the East too, we have evidence that April was associated with Jesus’ conception and crucifixion. Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis writes that on April 6, “The lamb was shut up in the spotless womb of the holy virgin, he who took away and takes away in perpetual sacrifice the sins of the world.” Even today, the Armenian Church celebrates the Annunciation in early April (on the 7th, not the 6th) and Christmas on January 6.

Thus, we have Christians in two parts of the world calculating Jesus’ birth on the basis that his death and conception took place on the same day (March 25 or April 6) and coming up with two close but different results (December 25 and January 6).

So, there you have it- the reason why we today celebrate Jesus' birth on December 25. Merry Christmas!

Dayo Olopade's

The Bright Continent will report a phenomenon that is not new but has been overlooked: that people are Africa’s most abundant natural resource, and that a long tradition of individual resourcefulness, creativity, and straight hustling is the best hope for the continent’s social and economic development.The book takes inspiration from the massive failures of the traditional aid industry—and from the promise of the guys selling Christmas trees in Lagos traffic.

President Change and his party in Congress continue to cause trouble, even though most of us have turned our attention to happier things during this holiday season. For the first time ever in our nation's history, a lame-duck Senate confirmed a major arms treaty, defying convention and tradition and the historical role of the Senate to give due deliberation to treaties of this sort in favor of a quick ratification in recognition of the fact that the treaty is a bad one and the next Senate would never ratify it because it is bad. The AP and media though hail the win without thought or criticism:

The Senate on Wednesday ratified an arms control treaty with Russia that reins in the nuclear weapons that could plunge the world into doomsday (suggests the writers of the AP story), giving President Barack Obama a major foreign policy win in Congress' waning hours. Thirteen Republicans broke with their top two leaders and joined 56 Democrats and two independents (a Socialist and a Democrat) in providing the necessary two-thirds vote to approve the treaty. The vote was 71-26.

Most major arms control treaties are passed by votes of 98-2 or 100-0, but this one (which is claimed to be 'bipartisan' under the AP policy that 1 GOP member voting on the bill makes it bipartisan) had a quarter of the Senate rejecting it because it was a bad treaty. Oh, I know Obama needs a victory, and the Democrats are desperate to make it look like Obama is doing a good job, and during the campaign season everyone is going to say 'Obama passed a major arms control treaty', but it is a bad treaty.

Well, to be correct, it isn't a bad treaty, it just is one that my six-year old daughter could have negotiated, if she did a bad job. It is a treaty that gives everything away with getting little in return, and a fair and honest assessment of the treaty leads one to lead to a 'no' vote on it and to be critical of Obama. Of course, politics and scoring wins are very important to Democrats, so they don't really care about the reality of the treaty, but I do, and so I think Obama did a bad job with this treaty, 71 Senators voted incorrectly to confirm it, and those who celebrate its passage are weak-minded fools.

The treaty does restart the verification process, so Obama can correctly claim that he has restored 'trust but verify' and the media can celebrate his restoration, but the verification process that he restored is a watered down form of it, weaker and easier to circumvent than the verification processes established in previous treaties. Inspectors are barred from more facilities, have fewer inspections, and there are few barriers to the Russians increasingly MIRVing their missiles under this new treaty (thus negating any benefit of less missiles).

The US and Russia both do lower the number of missiles under this treaty, but the US and Russia were both going to lower their numbers regardless- the US under Obama was planning to let our nuclear forces wither away and atrophy, while Russia under Putin was planning to retire older missiles and modernize their nuclear forces with fewer but vastly better missiles. Agreeing to this arrangement therefore is not really any sort of victory, but rather an acknowledgement of what is happening with additional clauses that are bad, like the worse verification process and the barriers to missile defense.

The missile defense clauses are the most controversial. These clauses bar any more development in missile defense systems, the kind that would give the US some sort of protections from a rouge nation threatening or (god forbid) firing a missile at the US. Although Obama has already slashed funding for these sorts of operations, agreeing with enemies and terrorists abroad that it is unfair of the US to protect itself from attacks from terrorists and rouge nations, determined scientists in the US do continue to make advancements on this front. The US claims that the clauses are not binding, but the Russians claim they are- this sort of disagreement means that the Russians could feel that we are breaking the treaty and thus they don't have to follow other important provisions in it. This is just the sort of disagreement that leads for treaties to be considered poorly done.

Let's look at what this treaty does in the wider scope of international affairs. Under this treaty, the US becomes a weaker nuclear power, less able to defend itself from attacks, less able to keep tabs on its main nuclear rival, and less able to attack other nations using nuclear weapons. Of course no one wants to ever attack anyone using nuclear weapons, but the main way this is done is to be just crazy enough to threaten overwhelming nuclear attacks (for evidence see the continued existence of the world after US adopted this policy). Russia knows this is the best way to get things done too, and is letting its conventional forces weaken while it strengthens its nuclear weapons (at lower numbers) (under Obama's watch), because then it will continue to wield international power without having to maintain all those conventional forces. Iran and North Korea both also see that the US is weaker and less able to check their advances and so will continue building up their nuclear forces (under Obama's watch) free from the threat of nuclear annihilation (although we all know it never would have happened, the possibility was always there).

Under my analysis, this treaty is not a very good one. Obama did a poor job in negotiating it and Senators, like the two from my state, should not have voted to confirm it. Our nation and the world is lessened by their actions.

See The new START Treaty: central limits and key provisions.(Treaty on the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, 2010, United States-Russia)(Report): ... Service (CRS) Reports and Issue Briefs for more research.