Render Unto Barry
by Scott Johnson
February 3, 2012

President Obama advertised some big endorsements for his tax-the-rich more policies and class warfare reelection strategy yesterday. In a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast -- text here, video below -- Obama made the case that Jesus, Muhammad, Moses and Plato (?!) are all on board with him, although that may be understating the matter:

[W]hen I talk about shared responsibility, it's because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it's hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. I think to myself, if I'm willing to give something up as somebody who's been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that's going to make economic sense.

But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus's teaching that "for unto whom much is given, much shall be required." It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who've been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.

Reverend Obama not only offers up the endorsement of Jesus for his economic policies, he also presents himself as standing in the shoes of Jesus, requiring much from those to whom much is given.

I don't recognize the teachings of traditional Judaism in the heart of Obama's teaching. Compare Maimonides' "eight degrees of charity." As for Obama's invocation of Jesus, when Obama demands that "the rich" pay their "fair share" -- the text implicitly underlying yesterday's sermon -- Obama is closer to Caesar than to God.

Good grief. Couple of points here.

The verse the president cited is from Luke 12:48, and rather than quote the the entire book I suggest readers follow the link (or whip out your bible) and read it for themselves. What it essentially means is that you should not be stingy with what you have, but that you should give generously. This includes time, talent, and money. It also means to the church as well as the poor.

But the Bible also makes clear that it's all to be voluntary (and yes I've read the entire Bible front to back). Indeed, that's the point. Giving, like Faith, must be voluntary to be meaningful. A forced conversion to any religion is no faith at all, and forced contributions to a government or any other entity defeats the entire purpose of what God is trying to achieve. He wants you to believe in Him and give generously of your time, talent, and money, but He also gives you the free will to make the decision for yourself.

It's all summed up in Matthew 6: 1-4 (NIV):

"Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

So while we are commanded to be generous, we must also not brag about it.

The Liberal Enforcers
Komen couldn't be permitted to get away with disrespecting Big Abortion.
February 4, 2012
By Mark Steyn

As Senator Obama said during the 2008 campaign, words matter. Modern "liberalism" is strikingly illiberal; the high priests of "tolerance" are increasingly intolerant of even the mildest dissent; and those who profess to "celebrate diversity" coerce ever more ruthlessly a narrow homogeneity. Thus, the Obama administration's insistence that Catholic institutions must be compelled to provide free contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients. This has less to do with any utilitarian benefit a condomless janitor at a Catholic school might derive from Obamacare, and more to do with the liberal muscle of Big Tolerance enforcing one-size-fits-all diversity.

Consider the current travails of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. This is the group responsible for introducing the pink "awareness raising" ribbon for breast cancer -- as emblematic a symbol of America's descent into postmodernism as anything. It has spawned a thousand other colored "awareness raising" ribbons: My current favorite is the periwinkle ribbon for acid reflux. We have had phenomenal breakthroughs in hues of awareness-raising ribbons, and for this the Susan G. Komen Foundation deserves due credit.

Until the other day, Komen were also generous patrons of Planned Parenthood, the "women's health" organization. The foundation then decided it preferred to focus on organizations that are "providing the lifesaving mammogram." Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms, despite its president, Cecile Richards, testifying to the contrary before Congress last year. Rather, Planned Parenthood provides abortions; it's the biggest abortion provider in the United States. For the breast-cancer bigwigs to wish to target their grants more relevantly is surely understandable.

But not if you're a liberal enforcer. Senator Barbara Boxer, with characteristic understatement, compared the Komen Foundation's Nancy Brinker to Joe McCarthy: "I'm reminded of the McCarthy era, where somebody said: 'Oh,' a congressman stands up, a senator, 'I'm investigating this organization and therefore people should stop funding them.'" But Komen is not a congressman or a senator or any other part of the government, only a private organization. And therefore it is free to give its money to whomever it wishes, isn't it?

Dream on. Liberals take the same view as the proprietors of the Dar al-Islam: Once they hold this land, they hold it forever. Notwithstanding that those who give to the foundation are specifically giving to support breast-cancer research, Komen could not be permitted to get away with disrespecting Big Abortion. We don't want to return to the bad old days of the back alley, when a poor vulnerable person who made the mistake of stepping out of line had to be forced into the shadows and have the realities explained to them with a tire iron. Now Big Liberalism's enforcers do it on the front pages with the panjandrums of tolerance and diversity cheering them all the way. In the wake of Komen's decision, the Yale School of Public Health told the Washington Post's Sarah Kliff that its invitation to Nancy Brinker to be its commencement speaker was now "under careful review." Because God forbid anybody doing a master's program at an Ivy League institution should be exposed to anyone not in full 100 percent compliance with liberal orthodoxy. The American Association of University Women announced it would no longer sponsor teams for Komen's "Race for the Cure." Sure, Komen has raised $2 billion for the cure, but better we never cure breast cancer than let a single errant Injun wander off the abortion reservation. Terry O'Neill of the National Organization for Women said Komen "is no longer an organization whose mission is to advance women's health." You preach it, sister. I mean, doesn't the very idea of an organization obsessively focused on breasts sound suspiciously patriarchal?
....

Read the whole thing.

On Israel and a Nuclear Iran
by Scott Johnson
January 31, 2012

Finding the video of Douglas Murray at the Cambridge Union debating the question of a nuclear Iran, apparently last year, I looked around for some background on the debate. I haven't found the background, but I have found a handy summary at Seraphic Secret:

This is an incredibly powerful video of the brilliant and erudite British Conservative Douglas Murray speaking at Cambridge about a nuclear Iran. It's eleven minutes long and builds to an incredible pitch of logic and emotion. Stay with it.

Allow me to underline several of Murray's most important points:

2. Murray quotes a Holocaust survivor whose life lesson is something Seraphic Secret has repeated over the years: "When someone says they are going to kill you, believe them."

3. Israel knows not to trust the Europeans who care more about their Arab oil than Jewish blood. Murray doesn't come out and say it, but the implication is clear: Europe is a boiling cauldron of Jew-hatred.

Do Wind and Solar Work?
by John Hinderacker
January 30, 2012

Everyone knows that wind and solar energy are inefficient sources of energy compared to fossil fuels. But, as the Science and Environmental Policy Project points out in the current The Week That Was, the extent to which "green" energy actually works is surprisingly opaque:

Someone experienced in analyzing potential investments in innovative industries may be surprised by the lack of hard data on the performance of solar and wind in generating electricity. Certainly, it is understandable that solar and wind companies may wish to keep certain trade secrets from the public, such as manufacturing design and techniques. But if the results are as solid as the promoters claim, than one would expect the promoters would give the hard data on performance. Yet these are being withheld on the claims that such data is proprietary - confidential.

The leaders of countries that have spent heavily on solar and wind assumed that the erratic nature of these sources, and that the lack of storage, can be compensated by installing the facilities over a broad geographical area. They were wrong. A winter high pressure system can cover a broad area of Europe, rendering wind turbines useless when solar panels can generate little electricity, and none at night. Reports are indicating that at least 80% conventional back-up is needed. [One exception may be Denmark which relies on pumped hydro storage from Norway and Sweden, selling excess wind generated electricity to pump up reservoirs when possible and buying the hydroelectricity when needed. The pricing should be quite interesting.]

A further complication is that fast back-up from conventional sources, such as coal or natural gas, is very demanding on the equipment, inefficient, and polluting - the pollution control devices do not work properly when heat output varies. According to reports, no coal plants have been de-commissioned in northern Europe rendering the claim of lower carbon dioxide emissions questionable.

Those proclaiming the virtues of wind and solar should be compelled to reveal actual output data from these sources, the required back-up, and data on the actual reduction of carbon dioxide and other emissions when alternative sources are used.

It didn't work as this chart clearly shows:

Yup, the failure of Obamanomics is on full display for all to see.

I found the above chart at one of my favorite blogs; Mike's America. Mike is a staunch conservative with a no-holds-barred approach that drives liberals nuts. Bookmark it today.

And what has the result of all of Obama's spending been if it hasn't improved the economy? To drive the federal debt to sky-high levels, as this chart from Mr Conservative shows:

Liberals will whine that "Reagan and Bush had high deficits too!" What they ignore is that their deficits were puny compared to Obama. Watch this video: "The National Debt Road Trip:"

Want some more?

* The '"misery index" today is at its highest level in 28 years.
* Long-term unemployment is at its highest level in more than 70 years.
* The national debt is $14.8 trillion -- nearly $5 trillion more than four years ago.
* The federal deficit is $1.3 trillion -- more than eight times higher than four years ago.
* Federal spending is $3.57 trillion -- nearly $1 trillion more than four years ago.
* The United States' credit rating has been downgraded for the first time in history.
* You spent $814 billion on a stimulus program so unemployment wouldn't rise above 8 percent and would drop to 6.5 percent by today. Since then, unemployment has never dropped below 8 percent and is 8.5 percent today.

For any liberals who insist that military spending is to blame, go here where I lay out chart after chart showing the history of spending on our military from 1945 to present. You'll see pretty clearly that entitlement programs are to blame for our current mess, not the military. For starters, here is a chart showing federal receipts and outlays:

Does George W. Bush bear any responsibility? You bet, and I and every other conservative complained loudly during his administration that programs like No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, and TARP were terrible mistakes. Iraq and Afghanistan (both of which Democrats initially supported until they saw the political advantage in opposing them) were minor in their costs compared to the time bomb that is entitlements. Wars come and go, entitlements go on forever.

What we need to do is start listening to people like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI-1) and less to President Obama.

Andrew Cline explains:

Obama and American Greatness The Corner at National Review By Andrew Cline January 25, 2012

If you want a good distillation of this president's wrongheaded view of the United States of America, look no further than this rhetorical bit from the end of tonight's State of the Union address: "No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other's backs."

Unity is central to American identity, but not the way Obama envisions it. E pluribus unum is not Latin for, "Hey, bro, let's invest in some infrastructure together." The notion that this nation is one big team that acts collectively toward shared goals set by the state would be completely foreign to the men who founded it. But that is Obama's concept of America.

By contrast, Ronald Reagan in his 1982 SOTU said the word four times. "In forging this new partnership for America, we could achieve the oldest hopes of our Republic -- prosperity for our nation, peace for the world, and the blessings of individual liberty for our children and, someday, for all of humanity," Reagan said. And he concluded with this: "Let us so conduct ourselves that two centuries from now, another Congress and another President, meeting in this Chamber as we are meeting, will speak of us with pride, saying that we met the test and preserved for them in their day the sacred flame of liberty -- this last, best hope of man on Earth."

We have gone from "the sacred flame of liberty" to "we get each other's backs." It gives new meaning to the epithet, "President Downgrade."

Thou Shalt Not Write Bad Things About Obama
The Weekly Standard
by Jonathan V. Last
Jan 25, 2012

Drudge has a story about Obama getting off of Air Force One in Arizona, greeting Republican governor Jan Brewer, and immediately giving her a piece of his mind. Evidently our president did not appreciate something Brewer wrote about him. According to the pool report, they had a testy exchange from which the president walked away as Brewer was still speaking.

Sound familiar? Bobby Jindal got the same treatment when Obama came to visit Louisiana and the governor met him on the tarmac. Jindal would later recount in his book:

I was expecting words of concern about the oil spill, worry about the pending ecological disaster, and words of confidence about how the federal government was here to help. Or perhaps he was going to vent about BP's slow response. But no, the president was upset about something else. And he wanted to talk about, well, food stamps. Actually, he wanted to talk about a letter that my administration had sent to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack a day earlier.

But somehow, for some reason, President Obama had personalized this. And he was upset.

There was not a word about the oil spill. He was concerned about looking bad because of the letter. "Careful," he said to me, "this is going to get bad for everyone."

Obama is a lot less concerned with the state of our country than the state of his own popularity. And why not? Throughout the campaign he experienced nothing but the fawning adoration of both voters and most of the media. He is vain, conceited, arrogant, and narcissistic.

President Obama dismisses the episode, saying that it was:

..."blown out of proportion." In the end, he said, "it's always good publicity for a Republican if they're in an argument with me. But this was really not a big deal."

More reaction by Governor Brewer:

"It was [as] though President Obama thought he could lecture me, and I would learn at his knee," she wrote, according to Capitol Media Services. "He thinks he can humor me and then get rid of me."

Knowing Obama, I'm taking the governor's side. Raw video here, watch it for yourself.

Not the way to get along with the political opposition.

This is from the same speech:

On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences. We got the industry to retool and restructure. Today, General Motors is back on top as the world's number one automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S. than any major car company. Ford is investing billions in U.S. plants and factories. And together, the entire industry added nearly 160,000 jobs.

We bet on American workers. We bet on American ingenuity. And tonight, the American auto industry is back.

And:

It's time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody.

For all his fancy talk in the first paragraph, Obama is admitting to giving big business a bug fat bailout. And we know why he did it; all those Democrat voting UAW members. Got to keep the unions happy.

We don't begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it's not because they envy the rich. It's because they understand that when I get a tax break I don't need and the country can't afford, it either adds to the deficit or somebody else has to make up the difference, like a senior on a fixed income, or a student trying to get through school, or a family trying to make ends meet.

That's not right. Americans know that's not right. They know that this generation's success is only possible because past generations felt a responsibility to each other, and to the future of their country, and they know our way of life will only endure if we feel that same sense of shared responsibility. That's how we'll reduce our deficit. That's an America built to last.

What is "fair share?" What does that even mean? Obama seems to assume that we all share his vision of a steeply "progressive" tax whereby those who have money over a certain amount are obligated to pay whatever amount he deems necessary to fund the government programs that he thinks necessary.

What is "Wealthy?"

First, how do we even define "the wealthy?" Is it someone who makes over a million dollars a year? Half a million? One hundred thousand? Is it measured in total income or in total net worth? Does it matter whether you get your income from salary, investments, playing the stock market or the horses at the track?

I'm not saying that there's no such thing as "wealthy," just that we all have our own concept of what that is, and my observation is that it's nearly always somewhere greater than our own personal situation. However much money or holdings anyone has, that person will almost all of the time point to someone else as truly "wealthy."

Further, what constitutes paying your "fair share?" Once again, Obama talks as if it's obvious. But there are no stone tables carved in the sky outlining any of this. It's all subjective.

Half Pay No Federal Income Taxes

Worse, almost half (46.4) of all Americans pay no federal income tax. This is terribly unfair, and for a number of reasons.

One, if you're going to consume services you need to pay something somewhere for them. When you have to pay for something, no matter how little, you develop the mentality of having a stake making sure it works well. When you get something for nothing, you don't care, and want more and more and more and more... and demand that someone else keep paying more and more and more for it.

Finally, if Obama's going to talk about us all being in it together and benefiting from our history, previous generations, and government a then fine. But if according to him we all share in the benefits, we all must share in the costs.

So I don't care how little someone makes, everyone should pay something in federal income taxes every year, even if it's only $10. A symbolic payment of something, just to inculcate the attitude of responsibility.

You want tax fairness? Fine; then fair is when everyone pays something.

Speaking of Fairness...

John Hood explains why "those who defend Buffett's false claim about the undertaxed wealthy are either ignorant or dishonest."

The wealthy pay a significant higher share of their income in taxes than the middle class or the poor do. If you combine federal, state, and local taxes together and divide by income, the top quintile of U.S. households pay about twice as much in taxes as a share of their incomes as the bottom quintile does. Because government spending disproportionately benefits lower-income households, the progressivity of government's fiscal structure is even more steep than the tax data alone would show.

If you want to defend this level of progressivity, fine. If you want to argue that the system ought to be even more punitive at higher income levels, go for it. But denying that the wealthy already pay a disproportionate share of taxes is an act of gross irresponsibility.

Why Do Democrats Want Higher Taxes on the Wealthy?

So why do Democrats and liberals like higher taxes those they consider to be wealthy?

Punishment is a large part of it. Liberals believe that people who they see as wealthy got that way because they cheated, stole, exploited the poor, or got lucky.

Political intimidation is a large part of it too. "Get on board and support our policies or we'll tax you more" is the clear message. You can bet that if Mitt Romney was pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, and supported Obamacare there wouldn't be any talk about where he got his money or whether he was paying the right amount of taxes.

So when I hear politicians rail at "the wealthy," who don't pay their "fair share of taxes," you can be sure that they're simply demagogues using all the threatening power of the state to extort money for government programs that they deem are worthy.

William Jefferson Gingrich
By R. Emmett Tyrrrell, Jr.,
Special to the Sun
January 25, 2012

How long have I been saying it? At least for 15 years, but in private I have been aware of it longer. Newt Gingrich is conservatism's Bill Clinton, but without the charm. He has acquired wit but he has all the charm of barbed wire.

Newt and Bill are 1960s generation narcissists, and they share the same problems: waywardness and deviancy. Newt, like Bill, has a proclivity for girl hopping. It is not as egregious as Bill's, but then Newt is not as drop-dead beautiful. His public record is already besmeared with tawdry divorces, and there are private encounters with the fair sex that doubtless will come out.

Newt and Bill, as 1960s generation self-promoters, share the same duplicity, ostentatious braininess, a propensity for endless scrapes with propriety and the law. They are tireless hustlers. Now Newt is hustling my fellow conservatives in this election. The last time around he successfully hustled conservatives in the House of Representatives and then the conservatives on the House impeachment committee.

He blew the impeachment and in fact his role as Speaker. He backed out in disgrace. He now says Republicans in the House were exhausted with his great projects. Nonsense, I knew many of them, and they were exhausted with his atrocious leadership. He is not a leader. He is a huckster. Today Mitt Romney has 72 Congressional endorsements. Newt has 11. Possibly the 11 have yet to meet him.

Now he has found his key for hustling conservative electorate. He is playing the liberal media card and saying he embodies conservative values. Like Bill with his credulous fans, Newt is hoping conservatives suffer amnesia. Possibly some do. Perhaps they cannot recall mere months ago when this insufferable whiz kid was lambasting the great Congressman Paul Ryan for "right-wing social engineering" -- more evidence of Newt's not-so-hidden longing for the approval of the liberal media.

After his Ryan moment Newt's campaign was a death wagon, and it will be so again -- hopefully before he gets the nomination. Conservatives should not climb onto his death wagon. He is a huckster, and I for one will not be rendered a contortionist trying to defend him. I did so in his earliest days and learned my lesson.

After Newt's and Bill's disastrous experiences in government both went on to create empires, Bill in philanthropy and cheap thought, Newt in public policy and cheap thought. As an ex-president Bill has wrung up an unprecedented $75.6 million since absconding from the White House with White House loot and shameless pardons. I do not know how much Newt has amassed, but he got between $1.6 million to $1.8 million from Freddie Mac, and he lobbied for Medicare Part B while receiving, according to the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney, "Big Bucks Pushing Corporate Welfare." Now after a lifetime in Washington he is promoting himself as an outsider.

Contending with Newt for the Republican nomination are Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney. All three are truer conservatives than Newt. I like them all. But John Bolton, former ambassador the United Nations, and John Lehman, President Reagan's secretary of the navy, are for Mitt, and they are solid conservatives. Governor Christie and the economic pundit Larry Kudlow laud Mitt on taxes, on spending, and on attacking crony capitalism. Mr. Kudlow calls Mr. Romney "Reaganesque." Ann Coulter seems to loathe Newt. That is good enough for me.

Back in 1992 I appeared with Chris Matthews on some gasbag's television show. Was it Donohue? At any rate, I said candidate Clinton had more skeletons in his closet than a body snatcher. It was a prescient line then, and I always got a laugh. I can apply the same line today to Newt, though he has skeletons both inside and outside his closet.

Conservatives should not be surprised by the scandals that lie ahead, if they stick with him. Those of us, who raised the question of character in 1992, were confronted by an indignant Bill Clinton, treating the topic as a low blow. To listen to him, character was the "c" word of American politics. It was reprehensible to mention it. By now we know. Character matters. Paul, Santorum, and Romney have it. Newt has Clinton's character.

Mr. Tyrrell, Jr. is founder and editor in chief of the American Spectator.

Mitt Romney is derided as the "Massachusetts moderate," and for good reason. Yet compared to Cain and Gingrich he's a model of moral character. He's a good family man, has only had one wife with no allegations of fooling around or even a wandering eye, and no scandal to his name(other than whatever nonsense the leftists will invent).

At this point I should mention that I do think that at least some of the charges against Cain were true, and my guess is that given Newt's tawdry past, Marianne Gingrich was telling the truth about that "open marriage" proposal as well. Which brings us to today's editorial from conservative stalwart Wesley Pruden.

Newt Gingrich and the 'moral thing'
By Wesley Pruden
The Washington Times
Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Politicians can't any longer talk about "moral character" without sounding like a stuffy Baptist deacon or a stiff Presbyterian elder. "Moral character" is no longer important in a presidential campaign, even to many conservatives and evangelicals. If it is important anymore, it is only as a talking point.

Nelson Rockefeller was the odds-on favorite to be the Republican presidential nominee that year. Everybody said so. But early in the season he discarded his wife of many years, married a younger woman named Happy and survived, but only barely, as a credible candidate. He entered the crucial California primary, which was then the final test leading to the national nominating convention, as the favorite.

Alas, nature intervened. Happy delivered their first child only days before the primary, reminding everyone again of what was widely regarded as "the sordid Rockefeller romance." Barry Goldwater won the primary, the nomination, and lost the election to Lyndon B. Johnson in a landslide.

We've come a long way since then. The wild and wanton decade of the '60s swept away standards like so much household trash and celebrity replaced "moral character" as a crucial qualification for high office. Progress: it's wonderful.

Newt Gingrich testifies to that. Newt thinks anything goes. He may be correct. Wife No. 2 revealed that when Newt demanded an "open marriage" in the spirit of fair play so he could share his wondrous self with all the women demanding to be let into his bed, she asked how he squared that with his blabber and bloviation about "family values." That was easy. "People want to hear what I have to say," he told her. "It doesn't matter what I do."

Good ol' Bubba, bless his pea-picking heart, had a Hot Springs sense of shame that instructed him to lie about it, even though it led to impeachment and the humiliation of a nation that twice bestowed its highest honor on him. "I did not have sex with that woman," he famously said, and then, as if trying to remember which one, added: " ... Miss Lewinsky." Newt not only has no shame, but doesn't understand why anyone thinks he should. "It's not about sex," says Victoria Toensing, a sometime television commentator and the lawyer for Wife No. 2, nor was it "about a wife rejected. Rather it was an insight into the persona of Newt. When he gets power he believes the rules do not apply to him."

You can't blame the slippery Newt for thinking so. But you can blame public inattention to the evidence of who he is. On election night in South Carolina the interlocutor for a CNN-TV focus group asked a young woman, identified as an evangelical Christian, why she supports Newt. She replied earnestly that it was important to have someone speak up "for morality." Many conservatives have so despaired of finding someone who will return with interest the media mockery of the standards and values that served us for so long that they're willing to cheer a four-flusher's shameless hypocrisy as the tribute that vice pays to virtue. Newt's a clever pol who understands that newspaper and television reporters and columnists are fat, easy and inviting targets.

Mitt Romney, who will never be mistaken for the people's choice, is nevertheless finally going on the attack -- not for Newt's unimaginative lady-killing but for his lack of any qualities that would make him a president the country could be proud of. "He's gone from pillar to post almost like a pinball machine," Mr. Romney said. "From item to item, in a way which is highly erratic. It does not suggest a stable, thoughtful course, which is normally associated with leadership."

Newt revels endlessly in his favorite subject. This is the common trait of politicians, of course, but Newt loves to talk and talk and talk, words colliding crazily with every vagrant thought that wanders into his head. He could never be trusted with a security clearance because he babbles about everything in an undisciplined stream of consciousness. "I think you can write a psychological profile of me," he once told interviewer Gail Sheehy, "that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to."

This qualifies him as a terrific subject for a newspaper interview. But for a president, not so much.

• Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

On January 22, 1974, the first March for Life was held on the West Steps of the Capitol. An estimated 20,000 committed prolife Americans rallied that day on behalf of our preborn brothers and sisters.

In 1974, the March for Life was incorporated as a non-profit, non-partisan, non-sectarian organization.

News reports have only mentioned figures of "tens of thousands," understandably reluctant to try and nail down a precise figure. The March for Life site says approximately have 200,000 attended each march since 2002. Whatever the figure, I can tell you that an awful lot of people were there today. From my vantage it was impossible to really get a picture that conveyed the size of the crowd.

There were the obligatory aborted fetus pictures, both on a billboard here and also on a giant-screen TV. There is a bit of controversy within the pro-life about using these photos. I am of the opinion that they do our cause more harm than good as they make us look like a bunch of nutty extremists to people who might otherwise by sympathetic to us. Sonogram videos, yes. Aborted baby pictures, no.

There was a preponderance of Catholic church groups at the march, as was the case three years ago when I last went. I saw a few protestant church groups, but they were far and few between. I'm not sure if it's always been this way, but my hat is off to the Catholics for their unbending commitment to the pro-life cause. As such, it was hardly surprising to see EWTN there.

"Byzantine Catholic" means "Eastern Orthodox" or "Eastern Catholic." They broke away from the Roman church in 1054

The March starts with a rally on the Capitol Mall, where from noon until about 1:30 a variety of speakers address the crowd. At 1:30 people start marching down Constitution Avenue past the Capitol Building, then turn right and end up at the Supreme Court, which is across the street from the Capitol. This year we didn't get there until 1:30, so we missed the speeches and the march had just started. It would have been good to get there a bit sooner, but no matter.

Turning around, here then is the U.S. Capitol

Previous: March For Life 2009

Here are the three surveys that went into the composite figures in the chart:

Fox News, 1/12-1/14:
Obama, fav/unfav, 51%/46%, +5
Romney, fav/unfav, 45%/38%, +7
Gingrich, fav/unfav, 27%/56%, -29

CBS/NYT, 1/12-1/17:
Obama, fav/unfav, 38%/45%, -7
Romney, fav/unfav, 21%/35%, -14
Gingrich, fav/unfav, 17%/49%, -32

PPP, 1/13-1/17:
Obama, app/dis, 47%/50%, -3
Romney, fav/unfav, 35%/53%, -18
Gingrich, fav/unfav, 26%/60%, -34

As the author comments, "America does not love Romney, but boy do they hate Newt."

No kidding.

Don't think it's just the polls above that have Gingrich so far down, because the RealClearPolitics composite show Obama destroying everyone except Mitt Romney:

Obama v Romney
46.9% Obama
45.0% Romney

Obama v Gingrich
50.6% Obama
39.6% Gingrich

Obama v Santorum
50.1% Obama
40.3% Santorum

So if anyone should drop out to consolidate the non-Romney field, it's not Santorum, it's Gingrich.

Analysis

I am frankly astounded that Newt Gingrich is doing as well as he is. Ever since he resigned as Speaker, I've always held the same opinion of him; great policy analyst, brilliant speaker, articulate defender of the conservative cause, and terrible candidate. No way I ever imagined he'd ever win the nomination because the other Republican candidates would expose his weaknesses in a flash.

The explanation, though, is a pretty simple one; the rest of the field is pathetically weak. Herman Cain and Rick Perry were jokes. Ron Paul is a nut, and not a conservative. Rick Santorum is boring and looks like he's about 30 years old. Mitt Romney is not really a conservative and comes across like a wind-up Ken doll.

Another problem is the debate-heavy format of the Republican primary system. This is crazy because it favors the candidate who has the best debating skills, not necessarily the best campaigner or who would be the best president. We're only going to get three debates with Obama, and Gingrich is nuts if he thinks he's going to get the series of Lincoln-Douglas debates he wants. But Newt shines in debates, so this format favors him.

Further, Newt Gingrich does have some good history. It was he who single-handedly changed the mindset of House Republicans in the 80s and early 90s and instilled the attitude that we could capture control of that body. Before he came along we had pretty much resigned ourselves to permanent minority status. Newt was the original "Yes We Can" man, and sure enough, he did.

Newt Gingrich will therefore have a secure spot in he conservative hall of fame. He's a great speaker and if he wasn't running for president I would pay good money to see him.

But the numbers above should give even his most ardent defenders pause. It's one thing to not have a high favorable as long as your negatives are low (meaning people aren't sure about you, the number need not add up to 100). This simply means you have to come across well the a vast body of undecideds. Hard, but hardly impossible.

But high negatives mean you have to first convince them you're not the devil, then second convince them to vote for you. This is not just hard, it's just about impossible.

The fact is that once you get out of hard-right Republican circles, Newt Gingrich is hated. And this isn't just a recent development; it's been this way since a year or two after he took over as Speaker. You simply cannot turn this level of negative opinion about a candidate around.

Mitt Romney can't close the deal with the Republican/conservative base, and Newt will never close it with the independent swing voters. However, if nominated, most of the Republican/conservative base will vote and even campaign for Romney, because he will most assuredly pick a hard-right Tea Party type running mate like Senators Jim DeMint and Marco Rubio, or Representative Michelle Bachmann.

Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, will have the Republican/conservative base all sewn up if he wins. However, he will never win the independent swing voters.

So I retain my assessment of a few weeks ago; it'll be hard for Mitt Romney to beat Obama, very difficult for Rick Santorum, and impossible for Newt Gingrich.

Few people have been involved in as many administrations and important world events as Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1941, he came to Washington in 1969 as an intern for a congressman, and from there was hired by Donald Rumsfeld, who was then Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. When Ford became president Cheney went to the White House, eventually becoming Chief of Staff. In 1978 he was elected to the House of Representatives from Wisconsin, where he served for 12 years, eventually became House Minority Whip. President George H.W. Bush appointed him Secretary of Defense, an office held throughout Bush's term. During President Clinton's time in office Cheney worked at the American Enterprise Institute and Council on Foreign Relations (1993 to 1995). In 1995 he was made Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton. He was chosen to be George W Bush's running mate in 2000, and served as Vice President from 2001 - 2009.

All this is told in his memoir, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir. His oldest daughter, Liz Cheney, is listed as a contributor.

I don't have time these days to do as full a summary as I used to, so following are just some highlights that I noted while reading the book.

Structure

As is typical of most autobiographies, the book is weighted so that most of it is about his time as Secretary of Defense and Vice President. Of it's 527 pages, only about 40 are about his childhood and high school, another hundred or so about his time in the Nixon and Ford White Houses and as a congressman from Wyoming, and then it's on to Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Another hundred pages are about his time out of power, and then we quickly move to the election campaign and George W Bush Administration, with all of the issues we are familiar with. As is also typical, the book starts off with his account of what he saw and did on the most important day of his life; in his case September 11, 2001.

Evaluation of Contemporaries

Many political figures use their memoirs to settle scores. Although Cheney criticizes some of his contemporaries, this is kept fairly sparse, and it's not really "settling scores" as the term is generally used. For major figures come under some criticism in the book:

Of the four, has the most critical view of Colon Powell, and even with him it's only in a few paragraphs here and there. During Desert Shield he notes that General Powell "seemed more comfortable talking about poll numbers than he was in recommending military options." To temper this, however, he notes that this was understandable in that one could say that Powell was simply trying to avoid another Vietnam. On the other hand, as a general Powell spent too much time talking politics and not enough developing military options for the president.

Cheney believes that the "watershed moment," in his relationship with the White House came in the spring of 2002 with his trip to the Middle East. Without authorization Powell had announced a Middle cast conference and had been forced to issue a retraction. Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, took it as a personal affront and relations went south from there. After this, Cheney notes, he he started hearing that the two were not only unsupportive of the president's policies, they "were openly disdainful of them."

Time and again Cheney heard that Powell was opposed to the war in Iraq. Yet at no point when they were in power did he ever actually hear it from Powell; not in any meeting, not in any memo. It seemed that Powell operated through leaks to the press.

Cheney wanted a harder line against North Korea, and thought that Secretary of State Condoleza Rice was dedicated to diplomacy for diplomacy's sake and lost sight of the objective. She made concession after concession and got nothing in return

Although George W. Bush is generally praised, Cheney does express disappointment with him near the end of of his second term. Cheney thought he was too accepting of Rice's recommendations, should have pardoned Scooter Libby, and a few other small things I can't quite remember the details on....

President Obama comes under some criticism for the obvious reasons. Obama criticized the Bush Administration's conduct of the War on Terror in ways Cheney thought unjust. He doesn't spend a lot of time on it, but in three of four pages Cheney pretty much says that Obama doesn't know what he's talking about.

Desert Shield / Desert Storm

Cheney leaves no doubt that he never thought that sanctions would work and that the military would have to be used to evict Saddam from Kuwait. In retrospect, it is hard to imagine that he was anything but correct. Yes, diplomatic pressure and sanctions were worth trying for a few months, but dragging them out would only delay the inevitable.

The other theme is that the Pentagon generals and admirals doubted at first that the president meant business with the buildup in the Gulf. General Schwartzkopf made clear that the first deployment of 200,000 or so troops was not sufficient to guarantee success. When Cheney made it clear that he would send as many troops as the generals thought necessary, they sat up and paid attention.

War on Terror

Much political hay was made of the alleged use of "torture" by the United States, with the liberals and Democrats joining the fray. Legitimate inquiry and questioning is fine, but most of the time it went overboard into a hate-America sentiment. Bluntly, it was and is used as a political tool by the kook left to attack America in general and the Bush Administration in particular.

Of all the methods we used, water boarding was arguably the most controversial. Cheney cites the statements some Air Force pilots who had been Vietnam POWs to bolster his case that water boarding was not torture. Medal of Honor recipient Colonel Leo Thorsness said that it was "harsh but not torture. Medal of Honor recipient Colonel Bud Day concurred, saying that "I am a supporter of water boarding. It is not torture. Torture is really hurting someone," and when asked what he would say to the CIA officer who used it on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he replied "You did the right thing."

No need to go into the whole controversy here, but suffice it to say that the use of harsh measures was controlled, used sparingly, and certainly got a lot of results. And despite what a few congressional Democrats have tried to say, the evidence is overwhelming that they were fully aware and supportive of the program when it was occurring.

Iraq and WMD

CIA Director George Tenant doesn't come in for any criticism for the mis-evaluation of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. All the stories are in the book; the "It's a slam dunk, Mr. President. It's a slam dunk" and "most Iraqis will rejoice when Saddam is gone."

But Cheney's evaluation is the correct one; the analysts did the best they could with the information they had. As I have discussed ad nauseum here at Redhunter, Saddam was playing double (or triple) game; he tried to convince his countrymen and regional neighbors that he had WMD while simultaneously trying to convince the US and UN that he didn't have them. Given his history of deception (much of it quite successful), we took the contradictory signals as evidence of more deception and concluded that he had stockpiles of WMD. Far from evidence that "Bush lied," it is evidence of just how hard intelligence work is. More than that, what so many in the hate-Bush crowd forget is that the burden of proof was always on Saddam.

Further, while we did not find actual WMD, inspectors David Kay and Charles Duelfer concluded that "Saddam wanted to re-create Iraq's WMD capability... after sanctions were removed," something that he was working hard to do and which would probably have been the end result anyway.

Resignation Attempts

Three times before the 2004 campaign got going he offered to take himself off the ticket. The first two times Bush brushed it aside, but the third time Cheney demanded he take it seriously. Cheney had seen enough of power, and was willing to give it up so that the larger goal of a second Bush term could be met.

Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld made the same offer to Bush (twice, actually) in the wake of the Abu Ghraib revelations, and as with Cheney demanded that the president take it seriously. As with Cheney, Rumsfeld saw the larger objective.

Hard Core

Cheney was never one to back down on anything in the face of public pressure. He thought that Rumsfeld shouldn't have been asked to resign in 2004.

He also wanted a harder line against North Korea, and thought that Rice was dedicated to diplomacy for diplomacy's sake and lost sight of the objective. She made concession after concession and got nothing in return

When Israel presented us with irrefutable evidence that North Korea had supplied Syria with a nuclear reactor suited only for production of bomb-grade material, they told us that either we needed to attack it or they would. Alone in the cabinet, Cheney wanted an American attack.

My Take

As with most books about political figures, it's pretty simple; if you like Dick Cheney you will love this book, if you don't you'll hate it. If you're somewhere in the middle you will find it useful and helpful, if for no other reason than you'll come away with a better understanding of one of the most important politicians of our time.

To readers of this blog it's no revelation that I am an admirer of Mr. Cheney. He was more focused and principled than any of the presidents he served under, and certainly more than the Democrats in the intervening years. Our nation would be better off had they listed more closely to him. Even so, his council was accepted often enough so that our country, and thus the world, is the better for it.

Obama's Keystone pipeline rejection is hard to accept
By Editorial Board
Published: January 18

ON TUESDAY, President Obama's Jobs Council reminded the nation that it is still hooked on fossil fuels, and will be for a long time. "Continuing to deliver inexpensive and reliable energy," the council reported, "is going to require the United States to optimize all of its natural resources and construct pathways (pipelines, transmission and distribution) to deliver electricity and fuel."

It added that regulatory "and permitting obstacles that could threaten the development of some energy projects, negatively impact jobs and weaken our energy infrastructure need to be addressed."

Mr. Obama's Jobs Council could start by calling out . . . the Obama administration.

Environmentalists have fought Keystone XL furiously. In November, the State Department tried to put off the politically dangerous issue until after this year's election, saying that the project, which had undergone several years of vetting, required further study. But Republicans in Congress unwisely upped the political gamesmanship by mandating that State make a decision by Feb. 21. Following Wednesday's rejection, TransCanada promised to reapply -- so the administration has again punted the final decision until after the election.

We almost hope this was a political call because, on the substance, there should be no question. Without the pipeline, Canada would still export its bitumen -- with long-term trends in the global market, it's far too valuable to keep in the ground -- but it would go to China. And, as a State Department report found, U.S. refineries would still import low-quality crude -- just from the Middle East. Stopping the pipeline, then, wouldn't do anything to reduce global warming, but it would almost certainly require more oil to be transported across oceans in tankers.

Environmentalists and Nebraska politicians say that the route TransCanada proposed might threaten the state's ecologically sensitive Sand Hills region. But TransCanada has been willing to tweak the route, in consultation with Nebraska officials, even though a government analysis last year concluded that the original one would have "limited adverse environmental impacts." Surely the Obama administration didn't have to declare the whole project contrary to the national interest -- that's the standard State was supposed to apply -- and force the company to start all over again.

Environmentalists go on to argue that some of the fuel U.S. refineries produce from Canada's bitumen might be exported elsewhere. But even if that's true, why force those refineries to obtain their crude from farther away? Anti-Keystone activists insist that building the pipeline will raise gas prices in the Midwest. But shouldn't environmentalists want that? Finally, pipeline skeptics dispute the estimates of the number of jobs that the project would create. But, clearly, constructing the pipeline would still result in job gains during a sluggish economic recovery.

There are far fairer, far more rational ways to discourage oil use in America, the first of which is establishing higher gasoline taxes. Environmentalists should fight for policies that might actually do substantial good instead of tilting against Keystone XL, and President Obama should have the courage to say so.

Ok, so if killing Keystone was dumb, why did he do it? Post columnist Robert Samulson gives us the answer; to placate the envirocrazy left:

Rejecting the Keystone pipeline is an act of insanity
By Robert J. Samuelson
Published: January 19

President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is an act of national insanity. It isn't often that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming virtues and -- beyond the symbolism -- won't even advance the goals of the groups that demanded it. All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed with his reelection that, through some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his chances.

Aside from the political and public relations victory, environmentalists won't get much. Stopping the pipeline won't halt the development of tar sands, to which the Canadian government is committed; therefore, there will be little effect on global-warming emissions. Indeed, Obama's decision might add to them. If Canada builds a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific for export to Asia, moving all that oil across the ocean by tanker will create extra emissions. There will also be the risk of added spills.

Now consider how Obama's decision hurts the United States. For starters, it insults and antagonizes a strong ally; getting future Canadian cooperation on other issues will be harder. Next, it threatens a large source of relatively secure oil that, combined with new discoveries in the United States, could reduce (though not eliminate) our dependence on insecure foreign oil.

Finally, Obama's decision forgoes all the project's jobs. There's some dispute over the magnitude. Project sponsor TransCanada claims 20,000, split between construction (13,000) and manufacturing (7,000) of everything from pumps to control equipment. Apparently, this refers to "job years," meaning one job for one year. If so, the actual number of jobs would be about half that spread over two years. Whatever the figure, it's in the thousands and thus important in a country hungering for work. And Keystone XL is precisely the sort of infrastructure project that Obama claims to favor.

The big winners are the Chinese. They must be celebrating their good fortune and wondering how the crazy Americans could repudiate such a huge supply of nearby energy. There's no guarantee that tar-sands oil will go to China; pipelines to the Pacific would have to be built. But it creates the possibility when the oil's natural market is the United States.

There are three things to remember about Keystone and U.S. energy policy.

First, we're going to use lots of oil for a long time. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that U.S. oil consumption will increase 4 percent between 2009 and 2035. The increase occurs despite highly optimistic assumptions about vehicle fuel efficiency and bio-fuels. But a larger population (390 million in 2035 versus 308 million in 2009) and more driving per vehicle offset savings.

The more oil we produce domestically and import from neighbors, the more we're insulated from dramatic interruptions of global supplies. After the United States, Canada is the most dependable source of oil -- or was, until Obama's decision.

Second, barring major technological breakthroughs, emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, will rise for similar reasons. The EIA projects that America's CO2 emissions will increase by 16 percent from 2009 to 2035. (The EIA is updating its projections, but the main trends aren't likely to change dramatically.) Stopping Canadian tar-sands development, were that possible, wouldn't affect these emissions.

Finally, even if -- as Keystone critics argue -- some Canadian oil were refined in the United States and then exported, this would be a good thing. The exports would probably go mostly to Latin America. They would keep well-paid industrial jobs (yes, refining) in the United States and reduce our trade deficit in oil, which exceeded $300 billion in 2011.

By law, Obama's decision was supposed to reflect "the national interest." His standard was his political interest. The State Department had spent three years evaluating Keystone and appeared ready to approve the project by year-end 2011. Then the administration, citing opposition to the pipeline's route in Nebraska, reversed course and postponed a decision to 2013 -- after the election.

Now, reacting to a congressional deadline to decide, Obama rejected the proposal. But he also suggested that a new application with a modified Nebraska route -- already being negotiated -- might be approved, after the election. So the sop tossed to the environmentalists could be temporary. The cynicism is breathtaking.