Liberals/Progressives/Democrats (the whole crew on the Left) voted for Obama in significant part because they thought he was the antidote to the wars that Bush fought.  I wonder if any of them have noticed that, on Obama’s watch, there’s actually been more war in the headlines.  To his credit Obama continued the fights in Iraq and Afghanistan for quite a while, although he destroyed that credit when he announced in advance planned “pre-victory” withdrawals, giving Islamists time to re-group and turning our troops into sitting ducks.  He also expanded the fight to include Pakistan, he took the fight to Libya, and now there is every indication that our troops will be in Syria sometime soon.  In addition, civil wars are simmering and boiling all over, and there’s no doubt that the situation between Iran and Israel will soon come to a head.

(It’s worth noting that, even if the liberals have gotten their heads out of their . . . um, whatevers, they’ve been remarkably silent.  That is, they’ve ceased entirely the incessant anti-War squawking that characterized the Bush presidency.)

Unlike those few observant liberals who might be surprised by the global war frenzy, I am not surprised at all.  First, I’m not surprised that various pots are boiling over.  A weak American president is an absent cat — which means that the war-mongering mice can play all over.  Nor am I surprised that Obama himself has escalated fights, made them more vicious and impersonal, and taken us to battlefields that Americans haven’t seen before.  There is no more aggressive fighter than a cornered narcissist.  Cowardice flees when his own sense of self is finally at stake.

I’ve got to run, so this isn’t a very well-developed post, but I just wanted to get it in writing after reading the headlines today.

Simple language and documented facts create a powerful indictment of Obama’s presidency.

No, William Shirer and Hitler have not really addressed current political issues, because (of course) both are dead.  And no, I’m most certainly not comparing Obama or anyone in his administration to Hitler.  But yes, they both did in the past offer advice about direct government attacks on the Catholic Church, and Obama would be wise to heed that advice.

Now that it’s available in sleek Kindle form, so that I no longer have to lug around a 1,200 page book, I’m finally reading William Shirer’s masterful The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  As I just started reading it yesterday, I’ve only gotten as far as Hitler’s 1909-1913 sojourn in Vienna, the time during which he formulated his philosophies, both racial and political.  Vienna, the capital of a rapidly disintegrating polyglot nation that saw the Germanic minority holding political power over the Slavs, allowed Hitler to witness the rise and fall of several political movements, and to draw his own conclusions about what contributed to their success or failure.

Hitler was a man of unparalleled evil.  He was also an exceptionally astute observer of human nature and politics, who put his insights into the service of his evil agenda.  That the agenda was wrong does not mean that the insights lack validity.  One of the insights that Shirer points out would not have struck me so strongly had it not been for the events of the past week.  Georg Ritter von Schoenerer’s Pan-German Nationalist Party was one of the political movements that did not succeed during Hitler’s Vienna years, but that certainly gave him food for thought.  I’ll now cede the floor to quotations from Shirer and Hitler (at location 640 of 35703, emphasis mine):

The Pan-Germans at that time were engaged in a last-ditch struggle for German supremacy in the multinational empire.  And though Hitler thought that Schoenerer was a “profound thinker” and enthusiastically embraced his basic program of violent nationalism, anti-Semitism, anti-socialism, union with Germany and opposition to the Hapsburgs and the Holy See, he quickly sized up the causes for the party’s failure:

This movement’s inadequate appreciation of the importance of the social problem cost it the truly militant mass of the people; its entry into Parliament took away its might impetus and burdened it with all the weaknesses peculiar to this institution; the struggle against the Catholic Church . . . robbed it of countless of the best elements that the nation can call its own.

Though Hitler was to forget it when he came to power in Germany, one of the lessons of his Vienna years which he stresses at great length in Mein Kampf is the futility of a political party’s trying to oppose the churches.  “Regardless of how much room for criticism there was in any religious denomination,” he says, in explaining why Schoenerer’s Los-vonRom (Away from Rome) movement was a tactical error, “a political party must never for a moment lose sight of the fact that in all previous historical experience a purely political party has never succeeded in producing a religious reformation.”

The Catholic Church has changed because it wanted to.  In the last 50 or 60 years, it has changed, at least at the grass-roots level, because Leftists have infiltrated it.  But the Catholic Church does not change when a political movement attacks it from the front, which is what the Leftists in America have suddenly decided to do.

Incidentally, I’m not the only one seeing that, without in any way calling today’s Leftist’s Nazis, all of us can learn by examining the mistakes of the past.

Jonathan Last has as good a summation as any I’ve seen of the now open warfare between Barack Obama and his erstwhile ally, the fairly liberal American Catholic Church.  The article ends with an effort to understand why Obama would pick this battle, and why he would pick it now.  It’s certainly an interesting fight to pick during election year.

Last points out that, while the Catholic Church was blindsided, and most middle-of-the-road Americans were completely unaware that anything at all was happening, the MoveOn.org left has been agitating for comprehensive birth control and abortifacient coverage for months now.  In other words, forcing all employers to cover birth control and abortion drugs mattered to the base.   Did Obama not realize that being forced in that way would also matter to the Catholic Church?

Was Obama (and when I say “Obama” I’m referring to the president and all his minions) thinking that, when push comes to shove, Catholics, like Jews and blacks, will vote Democrat no matter what?  In that regard, Obama appears to be unperturbed by the fact that small, but significant, numbers of Jewish voters are shifting Republican.  It’s unclear if this shift is because even liberal Jews couldn’t take Obama’s continuous assaults on Israel or because even liberal Jews, looking at their white-collar world, are beginning to realize that Obama’s policies are not improving their situation.

Alternatively, was Obama thinking that an energized base is the most important thing of all, as that will be the engine that powers his election train?

Or, as some here have speculated, is this simply an example of Obama’s hostility to Western religious institutions?  After all, the man lives in a liberal bubble, and I don’t think he has the wit or imagination to understand how deeply committed religious organizations and religious people to the right to life.  To him, they’re wrong, and he’ll bring them to the light.  (This is a point Michael Ramirez nailed in his latest editorial cartoon.)

I’m asking here, not answering.  What do all of you think?  What would make Obama pick this fight in an election year?

Did you ever see Liar Liar?  In it, Jim Carrey (before he got pompous) plays an attorney who lies compulsively but, because of a spell his son places on him, is unable to tell a lie for 24 hours.  It’s a rather amusing movie especially the courtroom scenes.

Sultan Knish clearly had a dream that President Obama suddenly had the starring role in Liar Liar, because he has published a State of the Union speech that contemplates the president actually telling the truth.

When it comes to the Obama administration, Sultan Knish is not the only one trying his hand at satire.  The Anchoress although threw her satirical hat into the ring, taking on the administration’s food police.

What’s kind of weird about all the Anchoress’ effort is that its hard to tell its satire.  The Obama administration has done so many extreme and peculiar things that there is no longer a clear line separating reality from good political satire.

We tend to find what we’re looking for.  Since conservatives know that Obama comes from a socialist background, has advanced policies that are antithetical to capitalism, and has defeated opportunities and initiatives that are supportive of capitalism, we’re going to assume that, in any speech he gives, ordinary statements are actually code for a socialist agenda.  Having this predisposition (“to a hammer, everything is a nail”) can damage ones credibility.  Monomania is not normally associated with reliable analysis.

Except that, with regard to Obama’s recent State of the Union speech, I can tell you with a certain amount of assurance that all those conservatives who saw in it a strident call to class warfare, the end of an American system based upon equality of opportunity, and the destruction of the free market were probably right.  Or, if they weren’t right, they’ve met an equal, although completely opposite, monomania that manages to read the same message into Obama’s speech.

(Come on, Bookworm, spit it out!  What are you saying?)

What I’m saying is that the Occupy crowd is thrilled with Obama’s speech, which they see as a high level articulation of their beliefs and agenda:

Linking the dominant themes in Obama’s nationally televised address Tuesday to the mantras of the Occupy Wall Street movement would have been unthinkable five months ago. But in having its message echoed in the State of the Union address, the Occupy movement reached a milestone in changing the national conversation.

“Once you say the definition of my campaign is fairness, you don’t have to say anything else,” said Lawrence Rosenthal, an expert on social movements who directs UC Berkeley’s Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements. “It is the central tenet” of the Occupy movement, he added.

[snip]

Obama never specifically mentioned Occupy – and probably won’t, analysts said, because the term remains politically divisive. For some, the dominant images of Occupy are of street activists confronting police and committing vandalism, as has occurred several times after Occupy demonstrations in Oakland.

“He won’t, because given half a chance, the Republicans would try to link him to everything that’s gone on with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations,” said James Miller, a professor of politics at the New School for Social Research in New York.

Still, analysts found Obama’s speech full of several Occupy-related themes: The president said he would not reward multinational corporations who “remove jobs from this country” and demanded “no bailouts, no handouts, no copouts.” Obama even outed himself as a member of the monied class when he said that “we need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes.”

“Tax reform should follow the ‘Buffett rule,’ ” Obama said, referring to billionaire Warren Buffett, who has volunteered to pay more taxes. “If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.”

When Obama said Tuesday that “if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn’t go up,” Rosenthal said, “it’d be hard not to say that he was alluding to the Occupy movement.”

(Read the rest here.)

Apparently while Occupy the White House was a bust from the sidewalk point of view, it worked perfectly when it came to occupying the Oval Office.

Clark S. Judge sent to Hugh Hewitt a great note analyzing what Obama really said during the SOTU.  I’m going to do something here that I almost never do, which is to reprint the note in its entirety at my own blog, albeit reformatted from the original.  Why?  Because the paragraph breaks vanished at Hugh Hewitt’s site, making it very difficult for those of us who are struggling with glasses versus computer glasses versus bifocals to read the darn thing:

SOTU: Did I hear that right?

By Clark S. Judge: managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc.; chairman, Pacific Research Institute.

It sounded like such a soft, even conservative speech.

But let me get this straight:

1) banks will be punished (do I understand this right, by a committee headed by Eric Holder?) if their lending is too risky,

2) and they will be required (by the same committee) to give more home loans (meaning, it must be, to people who would otherwise not qualify for the loans, or else the government would not have to be involved) at lower rates (which means rates that do not compensate them as much as the market says they need to be compensated for the risks they are taking, all of which sounds like a new edition of the policies that brought on the financial collapse),

3) which must mean that they will have to pull back on risky lending someplace other than homes,

4) the only place that most banks would be able to pull back on riskier customers would be loans to small and new businesses,

5) but these are the businesses that have created just about all the jobs over the last 20 years and he said early in the speech he wants to encourage them,

6) so maybe their growth capital will come from selling stock to the kinds of people who invest in new and small businesses,

7) but through the Buffet Rule he’s going to double the tax rate on investment income for those people, meaning that, like the banks, they can’t be fully compensated for the risk of backing small and new businesses,

so they will not invest more in small and new companies but in big established firms,

9) so more of those small and new firms will have to turn to the government for capital,

10) which luckily he said would up its investing in early stage businesses with “the best” ideas,

11) “the best” ideas meaning, I guess, as with Solyndra, ideas that advance his agenda through companies whose owners support his candidacy),

11.2) or maybe it would be companies that agree to invite unionization (since the unions have failed to organize the new and dynamic sectors of the economy, which is why they have been shrinking),

12) but then with the big businesses, he wants to punish American companies if they invest overseas,

13) and he wants to increase exports,

14) but being competitive in the global markets often means having part of your production near your markets, which is why many companies have opened production facilities abroad and many foreign companies (BMW and Honda, for example) have opened their facilities here,

15) so he’ll make these companies less competitive, meaning less able to export anything that might be paired with some other product the company makes abroad in order to attract buyers,

16) and it also means he’ll have the U.S. ignoring many of the international trading rules of which we have been the principal sponsor since the end of WWII, rules that have led to an incredible growth in widely shared wealth all over the planet,

17) which means that, if he follows through, he’ll blow up the post-WWII global economic system,

18) which in the very short run may help the uncompetitive American labor unions but in the not-so-long run would devastate every economy on earth,

19) but it would also mean he would be in a position to decide where big companies could invest, and when, just as he’ll be in control of all new and small businesses, too,

20) meanwhile he is going to tell states and localities what their budget priorities should be,

21) and make them adopt his policies for running their schools, leaving me to wonder, when he’s through, what won’t he control?

I believe that’s what I heard the president advocate last night. But one term I didn’t hear, maybe I missed it: “The Constitution.” Then again, wasn’t he suggesting that, in brave times like these, we need to put aside those old rules. Do I have this straight?

One of my father’s favorite stories concerned his niece, who lived on a farm in Israel.  Daddy was visiting there one day when he saw his niece, who was then about 5, playing with a wee little baby goat.   At this point in his narrative, Daddy would always stop and explain to the city-bred people around him that there are few things cuter than a frolicking kid.  Here, see for yourself:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What Daddy found so amusing was what his niece was saying to the cute as they played:  “Oh, little goat, little goat!  I love you so much.  [Pause for kissing the goat.]  We’re going to have you for dinner tonight!”

Our president might have been listening in on that story.

In his State of the Union address, Obama began and ended by billing and cooing about the wonders of a military that perfectly carried out his order to kill Osama bin Laden. His very first words were an encomium to the troops:

Last month, I went to Andrews Air Force Base and welcomed home some of our last troops to serve in Iraq.  Together, we offered a final, proud salute to the colors under which more than a million of our fellow citizens fought — and several thousand gave their lives.

We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world.  (Applause.)  For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq.  (Applause.)  For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.  (Applause.)  Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated.  The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.

These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces.  At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations.  They’re not consumed with personal ambition.  They don’t obsess over their differences.  They focus on the mission at hand.  They work together.

Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.  (Applause.)  Think about the America within our reach:  A country that leads the world in educating its people.  An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-paying jobs.  A future where we’re in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world.  An economy built to last, where hard work pays off, and responsibility is rewarded.

By the way, am I the only one who finds that last paragraph a bizarre non-sequitur?  How does praise for the troops carrying out their mission transform into our following their example by having lots of (government-funded) education, (presumably green) energy independence, and a big high-tech sector?  Mr. President, need I remind you that Rule Number One of timeless oratory is that it should make sense.

Eventually, after almost an hour of standard campaign bloviation, all of which involved the government spending more and more and more taxpayer money on green energy, on Leftist education, on tried-and-failed social welfare initiatives, and on other Big Government boondoggles, Obama got himself back to his beloved troops (emphasis mine):

Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.  (Applause.)

That’s not the message we get from leaders around the world who are eager to work with us.  That’s not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin, from Cape Town to Rio, where opinions of America are higher than they’ve been in years.  Yes, the world is changing.  No, we can’t control every event.  But America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs –- and as long as I’m President, I intend to keep it that way.  (Applause.)

That’s why, working with our military leaders, I’ve proposed a new defense strategy that ensures we maintain the finest military in the world, while saving nearly half a trillion dollars in our budget.  To stay one step ahead of our adversaries, I’ve already sent this Congress legislation that will secure our country from the growing dangers of cyber-threats.  (Applause.)

Above all, our freedom endures because of the men and women in uniform who defend it.  (Applause.)  As they come home, we must serve them as well as they’ve served us.  That includes giving them the care and the benefits they have earned –- which is why we’ve increased annual VA spending every year I’ve been President.  (Applause.)  And it means enlisting our veterans in the work of rebuilding our nation.

[snip]

Which brings me back to where I began.  Those of us who’ve been sent here to serve can learn a thing or two from the service of our troops.  When you put on that uniform, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; Asian, Latino, Native American; conservative, liberal; rich, poor; gay, straight.  When you’re marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails.  When you’re in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one nation, leaving no one behind.

One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden.  On it are each of their names.  Some may be Democrats.  Some may be Republicans.  But that doesn’t matter.  Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates — a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary — and Hillary Clinton — a woman who ran against me for president.

All that mattered that day was the mission.  No one thought about politics.  No one thought about themselves.  One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission.  It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job — the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs.  More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other — because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s somebody behind you, watching your back.

“Little troops, Little troops, I love you so much.  [Pause for kissing up to the troops.]“  “I’ve proposed a new defense strategy that ensures we maintain the finest military in the world, while saving nearly half a trillion dollars in our budget.”  “I’m going to have you for dinner tonight.”

Making our troops pay for the Democrats’ frenzied spending binge is a disaster in the making, for them and for us.  The troops are the canary in the coal mine.  If Obama uses his budgetary powers to eat them all up, they are sitting ducks on the battle field and we, suddenly, are sitting ducks at home.  Obama’s great love for his troops is meaningless if he fails to provide them with the financial support they need to have the best weapons and the best training in the world.  I’m all for trimming fat, reducing redundancies, killing bureaucracy, and generally increasing efficiency.  Bankrupting the military, however, will not achieve those goals.

I started this post with a true story, and I’ll end it with an old, rather bad joke:

A famously miserly farmer informed his neighbors that his donkey was costing him too much, and that he was going to train the animal to do without food.  His neighbors were skeptical.  When they next saw him, they asked how the experiment went.

“It went very well,” he said.  “The first week, I cut the oats out of his diet.  That donkey kept going just fine and I saved me a bunch of money.  The second week, I cut the grain out of his diet, and he was still doing his job, and I was saving even more money.  It was only in the third week that I had some problems, but I think I can fix them.  I cut the last thing — the straw — out of his diet, and the damn thing up and died.”

If you can’t run on your current record, just rinse, repeat, reuse:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obama has consistently handed out cash to the unions and his cronies, but he’s planning on stripping the military to its bare bones.  This is not the same as trimming the fat and increasing efficiency.  Instead, he envisions the American military in say, circa 1917 or 1941.  Yes, we won both those wars, but at a terrible cost.  Had we been stronger and more pro-active, each might have ended more quickly and with less bloodshed.

Because my brain works in mysterious ways, I have visions of Obama saying that all the kids playing Call of Duty are pretty much pre-trained, making much of boot camp unnecessary.  That’s so not true.

Doesn’t Obama’s oration remind you of that old commercial “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.”  This SOTU has a soundtrack:  “I’m not an executive, but I play one on TV.  I’m not a statesman, but I play one on TV.  I’m not a Commander in Chief, but I play one on TV.”