Voters said 'No you won't!'

Isn’t it amazing how bad policy, bad people and bad politics can turn a message of hope, into, just a mess. You’ve heard it all…Hope and Change…Yes we can….Change we can believe it…No more Bush…blah, blah, blah. Turns out they were actually messages of destructive change, that will forever change our country….and not for the better I’m afraid! Editor: Rob "Sunny" Roseman now does a daily commentary on 560 KLZ in Denver at 755am, during the Laura Ingraham show. This piece will air tomorrow.

Well, Tuesday's election turned out to be the beginning of real change…. Yes we can, turned into no you can’t and no you didn’t! We began the process of turning it into No You Won’t….not with my money at least!

Your hope and change turned into “We hope we don’t lose”….a work in progress by Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

As the old song says…..Hear me roar…No, we don’t want your form of European Socialism….No, we don’t want your out of control spending, your government control of our medical system, our corporations and banks. No we don’t want jobs created by the government, and for the government!

Now let’s take a look at what really happened the other day……The so called “Independents” that mistakenly bought the lies and voted for Obama and his gangs…well, they turned around and by a margin of 2 to 1 voted for the conservative message of turning the government back to the people. Except for the ones with the Obama stickers still on their cars…the ones that didn’t get turned in with the cash for clunkers program…..the rest came to their senses, and woke up. They’ve seen who and what these people really are about….they have finally forgotten about Bush!

Now we have a chance to defeat Crap and Trade. Now we have a chance to defeat Obamacare! Reid is already talking about delaying a vote til after the first of the year. If you were a moderate or conservative Democrat, would you be willing to walk the plank with Pelosi and Reid…..I don’t think so.

If the conservatives can put together a cohesive message….we’ll stop these horrible bills. Bennett, Polis, Salazar and Udall…..As Richard Pryor said….the gig is up. If you vote for these bills….we will make sure you lose your JOBS! And no government bailout for you!

I’m the inconvenient Sunny Roseman. Have a great day.

Obama: Healer or Bully?

"What's up with this guy Barack the Good," asks John Andrews in the November round of Head On TV debates. "Is he a healer or a bully?" But Susan Barnes-Gelt says criticism of the president's vendetta against "Fox Snooze" is a tempest in a teapot, recurring in every White House. John on the right, Susan on the left, also go at it this month over congressional races, health care, Afghanistan, and what John calls "the Seinfeld Peace Prize." Head On has been a daily feature on Colorado Public Television since 1997. Here are all five scripts for November: 1. WHITE HOUSE TAKES ON FOX NEWS

John: For someone who ran as a healer, Barack Obama governs like a bully. Cross him, and he’ll take you down. Ask the insurance companies or the Cambridge police or the tea-party movement. Now he demeans his office with a thuggish campaign against Fox News. Ever hear of the First Amendment, Mr. President?

Susan: Every president in modern history took on the media. JFK cancelled White House subscriptions to the New York Herald - Bush jr. pilloried the NY Times - it comes with the territory - politicians are notoriously thin skinned. Both your guys and mine!

John: I still need you to explain this president, Barack the Good. Is he a healer or a bully? His foolish vendetta against Fox News doesn’t hurt my side. Fox only looks bigger while he looks smaller. The damage is done on stories like Acorn and Van Jones. Shooting the messenger is stupid.

Susan: Tempest in a teapot, though it's fun to watch the same folks who refused - for 8 years - to let the N Y Times interview Bush the younger - feign outrage. The country has more important issues to address than the politics of Fox Snooze.

2. COLORADO CONGRESSIONAL RACES

John: With Obama so unpopular, Democrats may lose dozens of congressional seats next year. Two of those could be here in Colorado. Betsy Markey of Fort Collins is vulnerable to several Republicans, led by Cory Gardner. Ed Perlmutter of Golden has to face the charismatic Ryan Frazier or tea-party leader Brian Campbell.

Susan: Only 20-percent of voters identify with the Republican Party and more than half support aggressive health care reform. Of course congressional D's may be vulnerable - the only entity with lower poll numbers than Congress, are Republican ideologues.

John: Your vague generalities won’t decide the congressional races, Susan. It boils down to the pocketbook issues, peace and prosperity. Democrats in Congress like Markey and Perlmutter aren’t getting the job done. The recession drags on. The wars drag on. Republicans like Gardner and Frazier look better and better.

Susan: Perlmutter is safe as the Rock of Gibraltar and Markey will have a tougher time against Gardner but will prevail - especially if Marilyn (black helicopter) Musgrave throws her weight behind him. Voters are smart. And I like the tune you're whistling in the dark!

3. HEALTH CARE – WHAT NEXT?

John: Five of every six Americans like their health insurance. Forty million rely on Medicare. Why on earth would Obama and the Democrats push a plan that diverts half a trillion dollars from Medicare and makes health insurance less attractive for everyone? Because this isn’t about health care. This is about government power.

Susan: Medicare's administrative costs are under 10-percent. Private insurers pull down 25-30 percent for admin, big salaries and profit. What is it about Wall Street the Republicans are so enamored with that they're willing to sacrifice health care on the altar of free enterprise?

John: I repeat. This is really not about health care. This is about government power. If liberals cared about seniors, they wouldn’t squeeze Medicare. If they cared about the 15% with poor coverage, they wouldn’t socialize the other 85%. But no. Liberals dogmatically prefer bureaucratic regimentation to personal freedom.

Susan: Government power my ……foot! This is Wall Street v Main Street - Big Pharm, insurance giants and K Street campaign dollars and special interests versus the health of Americans. A vigorous public option is the only way to hold greedy insurance companies at bay. Obama must step up.

4. AFGHANISTAN

Susan: Dick Cheney accuses the President of 'dithering' while he and his advisors consider the ramifications of sending more troops to Afghanistan. Too bad Bush and the boys didn't dither before launching a full-scale invasion in Iraq, rather than considering the real source of terrorism - Al Quida - then in Afghanistan.

John: Bush and Cheney no longer in power. Obama is President now, but so far this commander-in-chief is not very commanding. This leader of the free world has led zilch. He ran on a promise to keep us safe from jihad by cleaning up Afghanistan. Stand and deliver, Mr. Big Talk.

Susan: October witnessed the highest American casualties in Afghanistan - ever. The Afghans and our so-called friends in Pakistan must 'stand and deliver.' Until there is a credible government in Afghanistan and Pakistani control of a rogue tribal state, we've no business sending our troops to slaughter.

John: New York, Massachusetts, Texas, two in Illinois, and one right here in Aurora, Colorado – six Muslim terrorist plots broken up in just the past six weeks. Most of them with training and support from the very Afghan-Pakistan region you shrug off. It is tough there, but we have to persist.

5. OBAMA'S NOBEL

Susan: It's perfectly logical to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. His intelligence, thoughtfulness and global sensitivities represent a sea-change from the myopic, narcissistic and belligerent anti-cooperative tenor of Bush Jr's foreign policy. Obama has brought the U.S. into the 21th Century - that is worth recognition.

John: I’m just tickled the Great Messiah is finally taking his lumps from the comedians. Laughter greeted his beer summit -- and his wimpy reaction to feminist whining about men’s basketball. Left and right both laughed at the Seinfeld Peace Prize, his award for doing nothing. Way to go, Nobel Committee.

Susan: The Nobel Committee got more publicity about their award to Obama than they've received in the 100 plus years the Peace Prize has been around. Maybe they hired a new marketing firm with instructions to up the profile. Obama's careful analysis of Afghanistan suggests the Committee got it right.

John: The President was embarrassed by this, and he should be. It was a putdown by jealous Europeans who resent the idea of a strong and confident America. Obama’s foreign policy has three planks: Undermine our allies. Embolden our enemies. Weaken our country. Many of us vehemently disagree, Nobel Prize or not.

The decline of Western civilization

The West has been warned with increasing frequency, most recently by Netherlands MP Geert Wilders, that radical Islam is making such great strides that Europe will become "Eurabia" in a few decades and that the United States is not far behind. In a speech he gave at Columbia University on October 21, Wilders spoke alarmingly of numerous incidents and ominous trends as evidence that a dynamic Islam is growing at the expense of what used to be called the Christian West.

Wilders himself has been caught in the middle of this rise and fall. For his outspoken opposition to radical Islam, he was even barred from the United Kingdom until the British courts intervened.

Because the "cultural sensitivities" are so great on this issue, it has become virtually a crime to speak frankly and truthfully about what is going on. Here is a sampler that Wilder provides, taken from the mass media reports over the last several years:

The Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard made a Muhammad-cartoon and all of a sudden we were in the middle of the so called 'Danish cartoon crisis'. The Italian author Oriana Fallaci had to live in fear of extradition to Switzerland because of her book 'The Rage and the Pride'. An Austrian politician, Susanne Winter, was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence because she spoke bluntly about the prophet Muhammad. The Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot was arrested by 10 policemen because of his drawings. And the Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered in the streets of Amsterdam by a radical Muslim.

This discouraging trend can only be explained by the dynamics of radical Islam as contrasted with the decline of European Christendom. This, in turn, points to the likelihood that religious conviction, thought to be some to be irrelevant in the "post-modern" world, is decisive. Islam, after several centuries of decline, has been reshaped into a messianic force. There is nothing comparable to this among Christians.

As ominous as the constant threat of violence may be, the long term trends in Europe may be more worrisome. For decades, Europeans have permitted large-scale immigration of Africans and Asians to provide cheap labor. Unlike the United States, European nations do not encourage assimilation or movement toward citizenship. As long as Americans pledge loyalty to the principles and institutions of our country, anyone can potentially become a citizen. Not so in Europe.

As a result, millions of largely Muslim inhabitants have no compelling reason to adopt the customs of their host countries. Indeed, as their numbers increase, it is their customs and their laws that take root. Those periodic riots in Paris among unemployed Algerians or Moroccans stem from their permanent outsider status. Increasingly there is pressure to allow Muslims to govern themselves by Sharia law, a repressive code that is the rule in the despotic Muslim nations today.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has even suggested that the United Kingdom acquiesce in the establishment of Sharia there, indicating that preemptive surrender is the proper response.

Europeans generally have acted as if the Christian religion which gave their continent its distinctive identity for centuries can be abandoned without consequences.

In Europe there are many massive–and empty–Christian cathedrals. Meanwhile, Muslims are increasing their numbers through birth rates far in excess of the Europeans’, which have fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 per family.

Another way of putting this is that one cannot oppose something with nothing. If the Europeans altogether abandon the faith that inspired millions of people before them, they can be sure that Muslims will not. Some analysts have predicted that the UK, France and Germany will lead the way into a Muslim future by 2050. Major cities are already dominated by Muslims.

The American birthrate among citizens has fallen below 2.1 as well, with the vast influx of illegal aliens from south of our borders keeping that figure up for all inhabitants. The percentages of Muslims are still far below Europe but the official deference to their sensibilities is strong.

The evidence is overwhelming that as this trend continues in Europe, the change from Christianity to Islam will not be peaceful but increasingly violent. There will be increasing persecution of non-Muslims wherever Muslims are sufficiently numerous to impose their will. The Western world’s half-hearted response is not working. One can pray that a powerful spirit returns to Western civilization, but it will not come as long as it holds that what men believe about God makes no difference.

Frank Rich: proof positive that the left doesn't get it

Frank Rich, the former NY Times drama critic turned left-wing opinion guru, has today written an opinion piece which provides a great window into how liberals view the world. Not surprisingly, they believe that only right-wing fascist nut-jobs are crazy enough to oppose their enlightened policies and programs. There is no rational, intellectual basis for why conservatives do anything -- except to roll the clock back to the dark days of back alley abortions and segregation.  Its a caricature worthy of a comic book. Rich sees the uproar over the New York 23rd Congressional district race as a sign that the Republicans are in a civil war between "reasonable moderate Republicans" and right-wing conservative ideologues of the Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin school. And, predictably, he believes that it will show the nation that the Republican Party is lurching rightward, to a place of armed militias where "angry white men" stalk innocent women, children and minorities. Rich sees what has happened in New York as a "gift" to the Democrats -- and says that the Republican infighting will be "a gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats through 2010, and perhaps beyond." This view, of course, reflects a belief widely shared among liberals that the "rest of America" doesn't share the basic values that have spurred the pro-Doug Hoffman movement -- limited government, low taxes, and fealty to the Constitution.

According to Rich, such beliefs are "wacky and paranoid":

"The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck, neither of whom has what Palin once called the “actual responsibilities” of public office, would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity. Over the short term, at least, their wish could come true."

This is typical left-wing spin. The Republican Party in upstate New York hand selected a liberal Republican who fully supports the Obama stimulus and is both pro-choice and pro gay marriage -- a candidate who is clearly out of step with the conservative demographics of the district. The uproar was created not because of a cabal of "wacky cultists" but because conservatives want a candidate who is not on the Obama socialist bandwagon. That's hardly a radical position. Rich makes it seem -- as liberals often do -- that if you aren't for abortion-on-demand and deficit busting spending you are some right-wing zealot. They are so certain of the moral rightness of their positions that anyone who disagrees is crazy, stupid or both. It is the height of arrogance.

"The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we’re seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes. Writing in 1964 of that era’s equivalent to today’s tea party cells, the historian Richard Hofstadter observed that the John Birch Society’s “ruthless prosecution” of its own ideological war often mimicked the tactics of its Communist enemies.

The same could be said of Beck, Palin and their acolytes. Though they constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators, it is they who are re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode. They drove out Arlen Specter, and now want to “melt Snowe” (as the blog Red State put it). The same Republicans who once deplored Democrats for refusing to let an anti-abortion dissident, Gov. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, speak at the 1992 Clinton convention now routinely banish any dissenters in their own camp."

Rich's misread of what is going on here is just staggering. Fortunately for conservatives, Rich's view of the summer tea parties and the conservative awakening is typical of the liberal establishment, which believes that its 2008 election victory marked a fundamental shift in America's politics from center-right to center-left.

The Democrats just don't get what has happened in the 9 months since Obama took office and began his naked power grab. The mood of the country has changed -- and the Congressional race in New York is a reflection of the level of frustration that conservatives have over what is taking place in this country. The more dismissive Rich is, the better it will be for those who want to take back the country in 2010 and 2012. Its a freight train coming, and the left remains deaf and blind to it.

Shhhh...let's not tell them the truth, ok?

Will Obama blink on Iran?

This morning the New York Times reports that (surprise!) Iran has rejected the deal its negotiators agreed to last week that would have compelled Iran to ship its uranium to Russia for enrichmentinto fuel rods that could be used only in nuclear power plants. Leaving aside the (significant) question as to whether Russia could be trusted as a partner in this program, the agreement that was supposedly reached by the IAEA and Iran in Vienna promised to at the very least slow down Iran's bomb making program, "buying time" for Obama and the Europeans to figure out a way to resolve the nuclear "standoff" peaceably. Many news outlets had praised the apparent agreement in Vienna as a major step forward in the Obama Administration's diplomacy-centered foreign policy. Oops. Not so fast. The Iranian theocracy has apparently nixed the agreement, putting yet another spin on the on-again, off-again diplomatic machinations of dealing with the Iranians. This cannot seriously be a surprise to Barack Obama, who though living largely in a fantasy world of his own making, has to be aware of the past decade of smoke and mirrors that has marked U.S. engagement with Iran. As I have written many times, Iran's nuclear program is really non-negotiable -- so any pretense to serious discussions on it are bound to be met with failure. This has not, of course, kept the great Obama from trying to bend metal with his brain, or to use his x-ray vision and leap tall buildings in a single bound. But it should be of no surprise that the results with Iran are the same as those that confronted George W. Bush -- even in the midst of Obama's fig leaf to the Mullahs that he's ready to listen to their myriad grievances, etc.

So now that the Iranian's have apparently given Obama the proverbial finger, what's next? If his grand plan for engagement fails (as it inevitably will), will Obama be able to play hardball? Robert Kagan at the Washington Post asks this very question, and comes to the conclusion that Iran is clearly testing Obama to see whether he will blink -- and whether Tehran's friends in Moscow will be persuaded to launch sanctions that truly have a bite:

Tehran is obviously probing to see whether President Obama can play hardball or whether he can be played. If Obama has any hope of getting anywhere with the mullahs, he needs to show them he means business, now, and immediately begin imposing new sanctions.

This is precisely correct -- and the key now will be Obama's response to the Iranian rejection. Will be move forward aggressively to put together a program of aggressive penalties for Iran's non-compliance? Will he move to put a credible military option back on the table to show Iran that he means business? Can he play hardball?

For Kagan, it is an open question:

Many of us worry that, for Obama, engagement is an end in itself, not a means to an end. We worry that every time Iran rejects one proposal, the president will simply resume negotiations on another proposal and that this will continue right up until the day Iran finally tests its first nuclear weapon, at which point the president will simply begin negotiations again to try to persuade Iran to put its nuclear genie back in the bottle.

This is exactly my fear: that our president is a talker, and lacks the steel in his spine to move forcefully against this real and present threat to security in the Middle East. And as for Russia -- it is equally clear that Putin is working Obama as effectively as the Mullah's are:

Russia, meanwhile, will continue to be accommodated as a partner in this effort, on the perpetually untested theory that if Obama ever did decide to get tough with Iran, Moscow would join in. Russia thus reaps all the rewards of engagement without ever having to make a difficult decision.

This is a bad spot to be in: Iran continues to buy time to further its enrichment program, and we continue to court an "ally" in Russia that has its own economic stake in maintaining productive relations with Iran. We are caught in the middle, being played by both sides.

The rubber has hit the road concerning Obama's "talk first" policy on Iran.   Will we now get run over?