Friday afternoon round-up and Open Thread

Victorian posy of pansiesA friend sent me an email yesterday:

Today I see the Pres says Congress needs to do something about immigration. But I seem to recall him also saying this: “With or without Congress I am going to act on my own. I have got a pen and I have got a phone.”

***

An “Obama is delusional” round-up:

Keith Koffler who, while conservative, tries to remain objective in his reporting, seems to have reached his limit: “Is this man delusional?” he asks about Obama’s recent peculiar behavior.

Neo-Neocon demonstrates her strong grasp of mental health issues by suggesting that Obama’s bizarre behavior shows all the signs of a narcissistic wound. I honestly think it’s one of the best analyses I’ve seen about Obama’s narcissism, which is a subject I’ve been pounding away about since he was a mere candidate.

I keep wondering whether one of the founding members of the Choom Gang hasn’t reverted to his old standby of marijuana. That would help explain the swings between inappropriate somnolence and even more inappropriate giggles.

Rick Moran has noticed the same bizarre behaviors and swings in energy.

When he’s not sleeping his way through meetings with constituents, giggling at governors faced with Obama-engineered border collapses, or engaging in his endless quest for more money, Obama can be found hobnobbing with far-Left religious leaders, in the Jeremiah Wright mode. It turns out that one of the things that made it easy for Obama to toss Wright under the bus was his knowledge that there are a lot more Wrights out there.

For all Obama’s faults, it’s unlikely Republicans will try to impeach the first half-black president. However, there is a move afoot to impeach his right hand man, Eric Holder.

***

If you’d like to help put a spoke in the DemProgs’ wheels during the last 2.5 years of Obama’s presidency, please think about funding a documentary that Trevor Loudon is planning. The documentary will be based upon his extensive research about the way in which people with proud hard Left credentials have infiltrated and taken over most major American institutions.  You can contribute here. You can also learn more about Trevor’s project at Noisy Room.

***

The Israel round-up:

Obama ignored Israel when hundreds of rockets were raining down upon her, an unprecedented insult from an American leader to one of the country’s oldest and truest allies. Only when Israel began to defend herself did Obama pick up the phone, at which time he immediately insisted that there was no difference between Hamas (aiming at population centers) and Israel (providing advance notice of strikes so as to protect women and children). (These videos dramatically demonstrate the difference between the two sides.)

Recognizing that Obama is the most anti-Israel president ever, Bibi Netanyahu apparently didn’t give him the time of day.

Perhaps Bibi and his cabinet have wised up to the fact that, with Hamas aiming Iranian rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, this is a war that must be brought to a definitive conclusion — preferably the annihilation of Hamas. What’s clear is that the behavior of administration officials is not endearing the Israelis to the administration’s delusional insistence that events in the Middle East are Israel’s fault.

Thankfully, Congress still reflects the will of the American people, which is expressed as support for Israel, not for a terrorist organization like Hamas. Those outside the White House seem to understand that Israel and America face the same enemy, and that this enemy must be routed everywhere.

No wonder Obama is the most popular American president ever . . . amongst Muslims.

***

Newly released emails strongly indicate that Lois Lerner and others in the IRS were working overtime to figure out how to make it impossible for Congress to subpoena material about the IRS’s conduct toward Tea Party organizations. I think the phrase I’m searching for is “smoking gun.”

***

America is in the top tier of wealth because it’s had a 200 year history of smart economic behavior (i.e., free market behavior). A few other countries live up there too, with the usual managed-economy suspects invariably wallowing in poverty at the bottom. The question is whether we can remain in the top tier, or if Obama will have damaged the American brand too badly for it to survive.

If the economy goes south, it won’t be entirely Obama’s fault. The Federal Reserve Bank will be guilty too. Monty has an excellent explanation about inflation, deflation, monetary policy, and the jiggery-pokery currently taking place with the dollar.

***

While I’m talking about things going south, other news from the south is the ongoing collapse of America’s southern border (thank you, President Obama). If you think this wasn’t planned, you’re mistaken. How else can one explain the fact that the TSA, the same organization that makes all of us show drivers licenses and passports at airports, not to mention stripping us practically naked, inspecting all our luggage, and x-raying and groping us, is just boarding these illegal arrivals on planes, no questions asked and no papers required. Someone had that administrative order ready to go.

***

A photo has emerged of a skinny Bowe Bergdahl looking happy in a posed picture with a Taliban leader. There are, of course, numerous reasons for that smile: he could be genuinely happy; he could have been told “smile or die”; he could have been drugged; and he could be mentally ill. I’m somewhat inclined to the latter two choices. There’s something wrong with that boy’s eyes.

Meanwhile, even as Bergdahl gets constant care from the government, the Obama administration continues to do nothing about reserve Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi. He continues to languish in a Mexican prison after a wrong turn put him on a “no way out” road that led directly into Mexico, where he properly declared the weapons he carried, and was promptly arrested.

***

Planned Parenthood is being sued after it gave an abortion to a 13-year-old girl who was brought in by a male adult, who did not share her last name, and who did all the paperwork on the child’s behalf. Had PP made minimal inquiries, it might have discovered that the man was a pedophile rapist disposing of evidence.

Unfortunately, you won’t have any luck explaining the realities of child abuse to unhinged abortion supporters, such as this woman, caught on video hurling obscenities at pro-Lifers, spitting in their faces, stabbing them with her fingers to make a point and then, as the piece de resistance, destroying their display.

***

When I was at Cal, back in the early 1980s, the area would periodically be festooned with flyers from NAMBLA — the North American Man Boy Love Association. The flyers were distributed anonymously because, a mere 35 years ago, even Berkeley people accepted that this was an abusive, perverted behavior. Fast forward 35 years and homosexual pedophilia is being openly advocated at British universities.

Maybe Nixon was right on the money when he suggested that, while there’s nothing wrong with homosexuality per se, a society is on a steep downward trajectory when it embraces it as a mainstream activity, rather than acknowledging that only a small percentage of the population is naturally drawn to it.  That decline hastens when adults forget that they are responsible for protecting children’s sexuality from both male and female predators.

***

One of my DemProg Facebook friends was terrified by a poster purporting to show the U.S. turning into the Sahara as the result of global warming. I directed him to a Forbes article pointing out that America’s temperatures are declining, not increasing. He was unconvinced. Too bad he won’t read this post explaining how temperatures are in fact going down. (And he won’t read it because it’s from a conservative publication. He only reads DemProg-vetted material.)

I doubt this guy can be educated about fracking either. At least you and I will know that everything the DemProgs think they know about fracking is wrong.

***

From the department of “It depends what you mean when you say things are going well”

Yesterday, I linked to an article claiming that everything is wonderful in Colorado, with money flowing in and crime down. David Murray argues otherwise, saying that Colorado is being devastated by the new, entirely uncontrolled drug culture.

Also yesterday, the New York Times said that those who have new insurance under Obamacare are happy. Well, duh! Those who were uninsured and are now insured are obviously going to be happy. I’m very glad for them, in fact. One of my friends just had much-needed surgery thanks to her heavily subsidized Obamacare policy and, as I said, I’m glad for her.

The problem isn’t the small percentage of newly insured, though. The problems with Obamacare stem from (1) the millions of people who lost insurance; (2) the millions of people who have seen their insurance rates skyrocket to subsidize the small number of newly insured and to fund mandatory coverage for birth and other things, whether they need that coverage or not; (3) the people still without insurance thanks to the terrible Obamacare exchange; (4) the loss of privacy as the federal government digs its tentacles deeper and deeper into American’s health care; (5) the increasing wait times for all sorts of treatments; and (6) the steady rise in deaths due to people losing their coverage thanks to Obamacare and to the death panels Palin warned about.

***

If you’re confused about the plethora of scandals exploding in Obama’s second term, you’re not alone. Before you watch Andrew Klavan try to sort it out, I’ll just throw in my two cents, which is that what we’re seeing unfolding now is bad by any metric.

That is, no one can say, “You’re just unhappy because things are successful, but not in the way you want them to be successful.” A tax collecting agency that’s became a partisan arm of the Democrat party; a government spying on its people; a completely porous border; a third hot war starting in the Middle East; the rise of ISIS, China, and Vladimir Putin; the longest recession in American history . . . there is no way to spin these events as anything other than failures. The only way in which Obama’s presidency can be viewed as a success is to admit that he and his compadres desired corruption, economic failure, global instability, and the rise of tyrants.

And now back to the video: