Stuff to start the New Year *UPDATED*

I’ve got a few minutes here before the family vortex sucks me back in, so I wanted to share with you some of the articles I found most interesting this morning.  After all, just because the calendar changed doesn’t mean the forces working around us have stopped:

The New Editor has a compilation of videos that should put the fear in you when you think about our Democratic “leadership” and their followers.  These people don’t even have the virtue of being smart and misguided; they’ve got a feral intelligence that’s propelled them to power, and now they’re intent on America’s destruction.

AJ Strata has been all over the Flaming Panties attack, and I’ve been remiss in not giving you links to his articles.  Let me stop being remiss, and strongly recommend that you read A Smoking Gun Dot In President’s Report On Flight 253 Intel Failures and When Blogging Impacts National Security.  You won’t be happier when you read those posts (you’ll probably be kind of depressed), but you’ll have important knowledge about what’s working for the terrorists and what’s not working for us.

John Hawkins has compiled his picks for the Top 20 Political Quotes of the Decade.  It’s quite a march through time.  Given what’s facing us now, some of them look remarkably innocent.  Even Howard Dean’s weird howl has a benign look compared to what President Obama says and does.  (My personal favorite, by the way, is No. 20, which I quote regularly, because even though it somehow manages to sound rather foolish, there’s actually a huge amount of life wisdom packed into it.)

All governments, Democratic and Republican, systematically misrepresent unemployment.  Pierre Legrand, however, thinks that the current government may be taking this venerable tradition to new extremes.

Charles Krauthammer takes on the administration’s feckless refusal to admit that we’re at war or even that an enemy exists.  (As you may recall, Obama’s tie-free post-Flaming Panties address made no mention whatsoever of the identity of those forces united against us for our destruction.)

On a similar subject, I like Bill Kristol’s summing up of a topic we’ve all read about everywhere:  the fact that the Obama administration, as part of its denial that there’s a war going on, decided to Mirandize Mr. Flaming Panties, who is now refusing to talk.  I like even better the little summary a friend of Kristol’s offered:  “In Abdulmutallab, we have a terrorist in custody who’s probably a lot smarter than the Richard Reids and Zacarias Moussaouis of the world, at least based on his educational background, and who therefore may be a rich source of intelligence –and we’re letting him invoke Constitutional protections that he has only by virtue of coming to our country to murder hundreds of people!”

All year long, Ed Morrissey has been tracking Obamateurisms, and has having readers vote weekly as to those they find most egregious.  Naturally, he ended the year with a vote for the single most egregious Obamateurism in 2009.  Interestingly, readers (myself included) did not opt for the bows to the Saudi King and Japanese Emperor, or Obama’s resolute refusal to talk to General McChrystal (even while making time for his friends at the SEIU and the Tonight Show).  Instead, we went for Obama’s decision to do a two minute “shout out” before reluctantly turning to the subject of the Fort Hood massacre.  I don’t know about the other voters, but I know I chose the shout out because it goes to the essence of the man:  he is deeply self-involved; pathologically incapable of connecting with the feelings of others, including the citizens who are at his mercy; in deep denial about the fact that America is a war and that her soldiers are on the front line; and prone to obvious errors, in this case shouting out misinformation.  Everything we dislike about him is on view.

If you want an excellent summary of Obama’s first year as president, you can’t top Victor Davis Hanson’s One Year of Obama, which examines what Obama wants to do, and asks whether he’ll do it before he and his Congress are kicked out of office.

The Anchoress has a great compilation post looking at predictions others are making for this New Year.  Some are no brainers, some are wishful thinking, and some are scary.  Check it out.

The New York Times wanted to offer a heart-wrenching follow-up story to its original story about a charity dialysis unit in Atlanta that had to close, leaving its illegal immigrant customers without care.  The point of the first story was how much we need government care, of course.  This follow-up is meant to make us tremendously aware of the victims of this failure to have government care, as it follows dialysis patients who have had to return to Mexico for their care.  The irony, of course, is that Mexico has a form of socialized care and it is a disaster for those poor illegals who were trying to piggy-back on America’s premium care:  “Everywhere, it seems, there are roadblocks to affordable care. The dialysis unit at Guadalajara’s public hospital, which offers heavily discounted prices to the uninsured, has a waiting list that extends for months. Ms. Chavarria is not eligible for the insurance plan known here as Social Security, which is limited to salaried workers. The country’s five-year-old health program for the uninsured, Seguro Popular, does not cover end-stage renal disease.”  I don’t mean to be cold about people afflicted with horrible diseases, whether they’re American citizens or lawbreakers.  I just wanted to comment on the fatuity that lives in the New York Times building.

Michael Ramirez, the superb editorial cartoonist at the IBD, picked his favorites for the year.  Can’t do better than that.

Eugene Robinson leaps to Obama’s defense with a massive New Year’s attack on Cheney.  Robinson is unaware of his own stupidity.  Let me quote my favorite part.  You all can read and savage the rest:

Cheney’s broadside opens with a big lie, which he then repeats throughout. It is as if he believes that saying something over and over again, in a loud enough voice, magically makes it so.

“As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war,” Cheney begins. Flat-out untrue.

The fact is that Obama has said many times that we are at war against terrorists. He said it as a candidate. He said it in his inaugural address: “Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.” He has said it since.

Is it only Robinson who hasn’t figured out that you’ve got no war without a named enemy?  I didn’t know that, unless you’re Katie Couric, you could be at war with a “network.”

UPDATE:  Everyone does their best lists at the end of a year, and a lot go to town at the end of a decade.  Kurt Schlicter took a different approach and came up with a “worst” list of movies — those movies the critics adore and normal people hate.  As for me, I think Kurt and I need to go to the movies together. I saw, or tried to see about 7 of the 10 films he listed, and agree with him in every respect.  My husband is an avid film watcher. Through Netflix, he’ll try to watch 5-6 movies a week. I end up walking out on most of them within the first 6 minutes. He castigates me for my snap judgments — and then usually ends up agreeing with me after he’s slogged through the whole film

Here’s an excellent article about the way in which Israeli air security differs from ours — and why theirs works, and ours doesn’t.

Don’t miss Andrea Shea King and Kristinn Taylor’s expose of the way in Obama’s left-most friends (Code Pink, Bill Ayers) etc., are seeking to create an international incident in Egypt.