Star One Smart Blog's

Remember the days when the Left would celebrate every Bush gaffe, pointing out that the 'rest of the world hates America because of BOOOOOOOOOSH!' ? Well, it seems Mr. Obama is considered even less of a leader than George Bush. There's no world acclaim and respect, sorry. At least George Bush was respected as the leader of the greatest nation on earth, as a man of his word, and, yes, a man that the bad guys feared. This president is considered incompetent and, frankly, a walking doofus.

What did we conservatives expect? Democrats are always weak on foreign policy, and are treated as weak on the world's stage, by foreign leaders. This we knew was coming.

Look at Jimmy Carter (D, Doofus). He was scorned by the Iranian revolutionaries who held our embassy staff hostage for years, until Ronald Reagan was sworn in in 1980. Promptly, the hostages were freed.

Because those Iranians, they knew what was gonna happen.

Morton Zuckerman writes...

President Obama came into office as the heir to a great foreign policy legacy enjoyed by every recent U.S. president. Why? Because the United States stands on top of the power ladder, not necessarily as the dominant power, but certainly as the leading one. As such we are the sole nation capable of exercising global leadership on a whole range of international issues from security, trade, and climate to counterterrorism. We also benefit from the fact that most countries distrust the United States far less than they distrust one another, so we uniquely have the power to build coalitions. As a result, most of the world still looks to Washington for help in their region and protection against potential regional threats.

Yet, the Iraq war lingers; Afghanistan continues to be immersed in an endless cycle of tribalism, corruption, and Islamist resurgence; Guantánamo remains open; Iran sees how North Korea toys with Obama and continues its programs to develop nuclear weapons and missiles; Cuba spurns America's offers of a greater opening; and the Palestinians and Israelis find that it is U.S. policy positions that defer serious negotiations, the direct opposite of what the Obama administration hoped for.

The reviews of Obama's performance have been disappointing. He has seemed uncomfortable in the role of leading other nations, and often seems to suggest there is nothing special about America's role in the world. The global community was puzzled over the pictures of Obama bowing to some of the world's leaders and surprised by his gratuitous criticisms of and apologies for America's foreign policy under the previous administration of George W. Bush. One Middle East authority, Fouad Ajami, pointed out that Obama seems unaware that it is bad form and even a great moral lapse to speak ill of one's own tribe while in the lands of others.

Even in Britain, for decades our closest ally, the talk in the press—supported by polls—is about the end of the "special relationship" with America. French President Nicolas Sarkozy openly criticized Obama for months, including a direct attack on his policies at the United Nations. Sarkozy cited the need to recognize the real world, not the virtual world, a clear reference to Obama's speech on nuclear weapons. When the French president is seen as tougher than the American president, you have to know that something is awry.

Vladimir Putin of Russia has publicly scorned a number of Obama's visions. Relations with the Chinese leadership got off to a bad start with the president's poorly-organized visit to China, where his hosts treated him disdainfully and prevented him from speaking to a national television audience of the Chinese people. The Chinese behavior was unprecedented when compared to visits by other U.S. presidents. [emboldenings mine -ed.]

Even the liberal whacadoodles to the far left find Barack Obama disappointing, because he isn't moving fast enough to satisfy their immediate wants for the earthly nirvana promised by far-left liberalism. If we would only give, give, give, they would take, take, take and then they could be freeeeee! Isn't gonna happen, ever; but still they perpetually dream of the day when they can be nurtured from cradle to grave, by benevolent Government.

Dream on. The rest of the world will keep on laughing at you.

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TANSTAAFL, you arrogant European Socialists.

The New York Times sadly reports...

Europeans Fear Crisis Threatens Liberal Benefits

PARIS — Across Western Europe, the “lifestyle superpower,” the assumptions and gains of a lifetime are suddenly in doubt. The deficit crisis that threatens the euro has also undermined the sustainability of the European standard of social welfare, built by left-leaning governments since the end of World War II.

Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism.

Europeans have benefited from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella. They have also translated higher taxes into a cradle-to-grave safety net. “The Europe that protects” is a slogan of the European Union.

...

Changes have now become urgent. Europe’s population is aging quickly as birthrates decline. Unemployment has risen as traditional industries have shifted to Asia. And the region lacks competitiveness in world markets.

“The easy days are over for countries like Greece, Portugal and Spain, but for us, too,” said Laurent Cohen-Tanugi, a French lawyer who did a study of Europe in the global economy for the French government. “A lot of Europeans would not like the issue cast in these terms, but that is the storm we’re facing. We can no longer afford the old social model, and there is a real need for structural reform.”

Did I see in that blurb the word CHANGE ? Yes, I did. CHANGE, such as Barack Hussein Obama is desiring in the 'austere' Capitalist system that 'harsh' America is known for? Aren't  we undergoing forced CHANGE to a Eurosocialist model that we now see is admittedly unsustainable?

Pardon me for pointing and laughing.

Seems the USA's Social Democrats are promising, and their mooching voters are demanding, a system that Europe must now flush away.

Who knew?

Well, Milton Friedman knew.

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ACORN office director Katherine Conway-Russell and far-left Media Matters lied.

Katherine claimed that ACORN won! their encounter with the intrepid undercover agents provocateurs James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles in the Philadelphia office; that the two poseurs who visited their office were not accommodated. But, as exposed in this latest video Big Hollywood video, those claims were false. There was no police call; James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles were not asked to leave the building; they certainly were not "thrown out" of the Philadelphia ACORN facility, as was reported in various sympathetic media.

Don't you love it when the chattering left media is exposed as, at best, apologists; at worst, liars for the cause? I know I do.

See also: ACORN San Diego Child Prostitution Smuggling Part I and II

ACORN San Bernadino Child Prostitution Smuggling Part I, II and III

ACORN NYC Child Prostitution Smuggling Part I and II

ACORN DC Prostitution Investigation Part I and II

ACORN Baltimore Prostitution Investigation Part I and II

h/t HotAir

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The heart of American Leftism isn't found on the cross streets of Hollyweird Heights and ACORN Place, or hidden away in various SEIU or AFL-CIO Union halls. Those flawed institutions might be considered as elements of the hands and feet. (Oh, the asshole(s) of the Leftist body? well, the media certainly fulfills that role.) No, you need look no further than your own State Institute of Higher Learning, in the halls of mindless academe, to find the throbbing heart.

But, you say, shouldn't you consider that the academics make up the brain? Are they not the best of the best, the ones with intelligence?  No, the brain would be the politicians, and the laws they pass and enforce. Politicians, although elected by voters, are dependent on the heart; the academics prepare the voters to accept the politician's direction without much thought. And, the politicians, the 'brains', give direction to the various peripheral organs, the Unions, the ACORNS, and of course to the assholes. These academic leftists aren't really possessed of the diversity of intelligence necessary to be considered as a functional 'brain'; they simply accept and force a circulating dogma and continue to pump it back into circulation...carried throughout the body in the form of their mostly unquestioning students and graduates.

No, academics represent the heart. In their structured and isolated Ivory Towers, they collectively ignore thought that is considered 'heretical' and force compliance to far-left memes. There is little 'thinking' involved in that process.

Dr. Ron Lipsman pens an excellent essay posted today at American Thinker entitled "Swimming Upstream: The Life of a Conservative Professor in Academia". Well worth your study.

Here's the essence of the Leftist Elements that Dr. Lipsman succinctly points out that these institutions promulgate without questioning...

The overwhelmingly liberal atmosphere on campus is well known. In the one place in society at which there should be diversity of thought, exploration of conflicting ideas and a propensity to challenge conventional wisdom, we have instead a mind-numbing conformity of opinion and a complete unwillingness to entertain any thought or idea that deviates from the accepted truth. That conformity encompasses:

• The legitimacy of virtually any program that promotes the interests of minority and female faculty, staff and students, even if the program is blatantly racist or sexist -- justified by a belief that America's past unjust treatment of blacks, American Indians and Japanese-Americans, and its unfair treatment of women render such discrimination necessary and lawful.
  
  
  
• A multicultural mentality, which preaches that America's Eurocentric, white, Christian heritage is responsible for colonialism, imperialism, racism and sexism, and that its replacement by a culture that "celebrates diversity" will transform the US into a more just and humane society.

• A distrust of free markets and democratic capitalism, and its severe limitation in favor of a centralized, government-controlled economy that will redistribute the wealth of America more fairly.
  
  
  
• A denigration of religious belief and its replacement by the "worship" of secular humanism, with mindless environmentalism occupying a central place in the new religion.
  

Barack Hussein Obama spent a decade in the thrall of these leftists in various academic institutions. Columbia is a hotbed of leftism; Harvard is staunchly insular and even farther left. In Barack Obama they finally found a Voice, an actor that was then sent along to the brain of the beast...into politics. Before entering the political arena, he trained the hands and the feet, as a community organizer; he has the wide-eyed and loving service of the assholes in the media; now he's putting together a complete Leftist package that will usurp the United States of America.

Where are the Conservative voices? We are being rejected, ejected. Slowly but surely the mindset that brought this country it's greatest moments of success is  being moved out of the mainstream. That movement signifies, I believe, the beginning of the end of the Republic.

What does this mean? Well, I believe the Leftism that is our current direction now is a cancer of our collective soul, an abnormality, a degradation. We need a conservative resurgence, a different direction. We won't get that as a product of these academic institutions, if they can help it.

Oh. Sarah Palin is not the product of any of these far-leftist-dominated institutions.

Neither was Ronald Reagan. Just sayin'.

And, send your donations (and your kids) to Hillsdale, or a like-minded institution of higher learning, NOT to a State-run facility. That includes MTSU, where there abides a far-left Professor of Guitar.

Dr. Ron Lipsman's book "Liberal Hearts and Conservative Brains".

(Oh, that image courtesy of LIFE; it brings a smile to my stone face.)

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UPDATE:

I just found this, written by a Columbia professor (h/t Antiquitopia)...

By the end of the 1980s—when I was an undergraduate—it had become clear to seemingly everyone in authority that the notion of "Greatness" was a tool of illegitimate power; Adler and Hutchins were racist and sexist in their choices of texts; their valorization of the "Western World" made them complicit with imperialism and worse. "This is more than a set of books, and more than a liberal education," said Hutchins. "Great Books of the Western World is an act of piety. Here are the sources of our being. Here is our heritage. This is the West. This is its meaning for mankind."

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Sets the exit stage left, doesn't it?

I've always said that Leftism has captured and stolen the soul of the Democrat Party.

This essay, written by a Liberal (NOT a Leftist) educator explains exactly what is the difference between a liberal and a Leftist.

We liberals should sharply distinguish “liberal” from “Leftist.” The latter characterized by anger, hatred, bullying, intransigence, and intellectual dishonesty. These spiritual diseases, legacies of the French Revolution and its Terror, began to infect liberalism in the early 20th century. This ugly spirit has contaminated much of academic life outside the hard sciences, economics, and business schools. As a consequence, many of the ideas and attitudes in the humanities and social sciences are profoundly, tragically misguided.

A checklist of Liberalism. Note that there's no embrace of Marxist ideas; rather, liberals appreciate the fact that our capitalistic economic system is a giver to anyone willing to work.

A checklist to determine whether or not Liberalism has returned to our campuses:

1. Are most students and professors aware that under 19th century free market capitalism in the United States and Britain that it was not true that “the rich got richer and the poor got poorer?” i.e., that the working class standard of living steadily increased under laissez-faire capitalism?
2. Do most students and professors understand that wealth is created almost exclusively by private enterprise (given a framework based on the rule of law)?
3. Are most students and professors aware that Marxist governments murdered over 100 million people in the 20th century, vastly exceeding the loss of human life due to the Nazis?
4. Do most students and professors acknowledge that those humanely-motivated academics who self-identified as Marxists should, indeed, accept responsibility for having advocated a repeatedly murderous ideology? (“We didn't intend those outcomes” is not an adequate excuse after the fourth totalitarian Marxist regime, predictably enough, committed mass murder.)
5. Do most students and professors understand public choice theory?
6. Do most students and professors understand the necessary relationship between economic freedom, on the one hand, and creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, on the other?

So, read the thing, and weep for what's happened to the Democrats, to the liberals. There's no turning back, now; because Barack Obama is a Leftist.

h/t Dan Collins @ PW

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Jeff Goldstein...

" I needn’t repeat my argument that the aim of the New Left, having adopted “progressivism” as its retro face, and having strategically moved its base back into the Democratic party among the “liberals” it once spat at for being hopelessly bourgeois and unwilling to engage in the kind of immediate, violent happenings of the radical set, has been to soften the face of radicalism, reframe it as “moderate” by dint of empty populism, and to package it for the masses in a pleasing and “historically important” candidate — one who represents the apotheosis of the progressive strategem: a young, charismatic minority candidate who promises hope and change without having to answer to how he plans on bringing such about, a man whose appeal is based on soaring oratory, the multiculturalist PC push of our media, corporate, and and educational institutions, historical timeliness of his candidacy (and its supposed “symbolism” and how such symbolism will be embraced by the “rest of the world”), and the outward advocacy of a progressive media culture trained with activism in mind by our “top” journalism schools."

Pretty much sums up where we're at, and what they've done.

Where we're going with this? One more sentence...

" If and when what some are calling the “Cold Civil War” comes, it will be fought along ideological lines between neo-Jacksonians and the coastal elites — the former not wishing to be ruled by the latter, and the latter indignant that the former would refuse to be so ruled, and absolutely adamant that they will no longer be subject to the “ruling” whims of their inferiors."

There's 20 posts, there, from most of us. And we still wouldn't have said the right thing.

Two freakin' sentences.

I think I checked off every category except, maybe, Baseball.

Oh...my World Series pick, Phillies over the Rays in 6.

And, PacMan was suspended, indefinitely, for drunken brawling. With his bodyguard. That'll cost the Titans a 5th round pick to the Cowboys. For sending them that worthless piece of crap.

Can we just call up Floyd Reese and chew him out, for old time's sake?

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