WingRight

1. If you’re living in the Republic of Georgia or Ukraine, you better brush up on your Russian. Within 6 months of Obama taking office, Putin will send troops in to Georgia and Ukraine. He will make certain to grab the Baku-Supsa and the South Caucasus pipelines so he can put Europe into a hammerlock, particularly with natural gas. Obama will protest and so will the EU, but nobody will be ready to push Russian troops out. Estimated probability – 80%. Once he’s in Ukraine, Vladimir will start throwing his weight around with Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Romania, etc. Estimated probability – 70%.
2. Given the timing of the Israeli election, Israel is unlikely to be in a position to take any military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities until after Obama is inaugurated. Obama will absolutely refuse to allow Israel to attack Iran, prohibit overflights of Iraq and threaten to warn Iran if U.S. surveillance facilities observe any Israeli air force planes heading in the direction of Tehran. Estimated probability – 90%. Within the first two years of the Obama administration, Iran will explode a nuclear device and will announce that it has nuclear warheads mounted on missiles capable of hitting Israel and any other country in the Middle East or Central Europe. Estimated probability – 90%. If Israelis don’t start a major program to expedite the emigration of its citizens, Iran will fire one or more nuclear missiles at Tel Aviv. Estimated probability – 60%. If the Israelis strike first, Iran will launch nuclear missiles at Tel Aviv. Estimated probability – 90%
3. Hugo Chavez will decide that he needs some additional land to govern and will start taking it from Colombia. Obama will remember how much Bill Ayers likes Hugo and protest, but do nothing more. A significant border war will break out which will give Chavez a chance to use his new Russian military equipment. Estimated probability – 75%
4. The United States will join with the European Union in a treaty that imposes significant limits on carbon emissions. Most of the countries in the EU will cheat and exceed the limits. The United States will not. This action will reduce US corporate profits by at least 500 billion dollars in the first five years and increase US unemployment to over 10%. Residential electricity and heating bills will triple in that same period and Obama will create major energy subsidies for the middle class. China will not join the treaty and its annual GDP will grow to exceed the GDP of the US during this period.

Tags: Climate Change, Economy, Energy, Liberal "Solutions", Obama, Russia by Publius
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Excellent post by Mark Levin at The Corner. I’m including a longer excerpt than normal because I think it’s so excellent.

The Obama Temptation [Mark R. Levin]

I’ve been thinking this for a while so I might as well air it here. I honestly never thought we’d see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what’s occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. I can’t help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong. Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can’t explain themselves in an intelligent way.

There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama’s name on it, which adorns everything from Obama’s plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama’s name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.

. . . .

But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama’s entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The “change” he peddles is not new. We’ve seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government. Obama’s appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the “the proletariat,” as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created. Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us — today it’s $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he’s now officially “rich.” The value of his physical and intellectual labor must be confiscated in greater amounts for the good of the proletariat (the middle class). And so it is that the middle class, the birth-child of capitalism, is both celebrated and enslaved — for its own good and the greater good. The “hope” Obama represents, therefore, is not hope at all. It is the misery of his utopianism imposed on the individual.

Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue. He’s not interested in playing around the edges. He seeks “fundamental change,” i.e., to remake society. And if the Democrats control Congress with super-majorities led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he will get much of what he demands.

Tags: Liberal Fascism, Obama by Publius
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Pay no attention to the radical behind the curtain.

Tags: Ayers, Liberal Fascism, Obama by Publius
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Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, are ready to help teach more people to hate America. Their new book (conveniently available after the election), Race Course Against White Supremacy, is described as follows on Amazon:

White supremacy and its troubling endurance in American life is debated in these personal essays by two veteran political activists. Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days—and that it is still very much with us—the discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education. The book draws upon the authors’ own confrontations with authorities during the Vietnam era, reasserts their belief that racism and war are interwoven issues, and offers personal stories about their lives today as parents, teachers, and reformers.

Think of what a sensation that President Obama will make at the Ayers/Dohrn book launch party.

Tags: Ayers, Higher Ed, Obama by Publius
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There’s a lot of good commentary about the conversation between Joe the Plumber and the Obama. My favorite so far is from Claudia Rosett.

But I haven’t heard anyone talk about Joe the investor. As a predicate for his question, Joe said he was thinking about buying a business that would generate $250,000-$280,000 per year and wanted to know why Barack would increase his taxes. Joe has worked his tail off for 15 years and has put together enough money, perhaps with the help of his local banker (who I hope still has money to lend), to buy a plumbing business. Being a careful investor, Joe wants to know what the tax landscape is going to look like if he buys this business.

There has been some discussion about whether any part of the current market crash is based upon the anticipation of investors that they’re going to get taxed more under an Obama administration. If they believe they will, they will want to adjust their investments to minimize or eliminate the increased tax.

I think that Joe is an excellent example of a main street investor who is in the process of doing exactly that. He doesn’t want to sink a lot of money into a business if the profits he earns through his hard word are headed to Washington. It appears that Joe has determined that, given the current tax structure, it makes sense for him to buy the plumbing business, but he doesn’t want to get locked into that decision if Obama and a Democrat congress are going to raise his taxes.

I suggest that all over the country, Joes and Janes are doing exactly the same thing and that we’re seeing a small preview of the consequences of an Obama administration right now.

What a shame that is. I don’t know if Joe’s a good plumber or would be a good manager, but he seems like a smart guy, the kind of guy who is likely to make a success of a plumbing business.

What does the country lose if Joe doesn’t follow his dream? Everyone has focused on Joe’s future income, but that’s only a small part of what is lost. Joe’s plumbing business is going to hire and train more plumbers. These are good-paying jobs. In a small business, each of his employees is going to know that Joe started out just like they did, but through hard work and saving his money, he bought the business and is doing well. Joe’s employees are going to think about doing the same thing themselves. Some will be happy to continue to work for Joe, but some are going to try to do just what they’ve seen Joe do and start or buy their own businesses. These little Joes are going to hire more plumbers, etc., etc.

So, which is better for the American economy and the American taxpayer? Joe buying the business or Joe not buying the business? Over the course of a 20-year run, Joe’s plumbing business is going to contribute millions of dollars to the economy and pay millions in taxes at non-Obama tax rates. If Joe doesn’t buy the business, he probably won’t pay any of Obama’s higher taxes and both the economy and government tax revenues will suffer.

Tags: Economy, Liberal "Solutions", Obama, Taxes by Publius
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Just briefly, when responding to a voter question at a town hall, the real Barack showed himself. From Investors Business Daily

But on a campaign stop in Toledo, he couldn’t assure self-employed 34-year-old plumber Joe Wurzelbacher to his face that he would get a tax cut. Poised to buy a $250,000-a-year firm, the working-class plumber of 15 years confronted Obama.

“Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?” he asked.

Obama responded with the promise of a 50% tax credit for health care, but the senator conceded that Wurzelbacher’s income taxes would indeed rise.

“It’s not that I want to punish your success,” Obama told him. “I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you — that they’ve got a chance at success too.”

Wurzelbacher, who would shoulder all the responsibility and risk of such an investment, did not look impressed. Obama then let the cat out of the bag, saying:

“I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Here’s Joe, a guy who wants to be a successful plumber in Toledo and Obama wants to spread some of his “wealth” around to other people who Obama has decided are more deserving of it than Joe, who worked for it.

The editorial says that Joe has been a plumber for 15 years. That’s 15 years of hard work, sometimes up to his knees in sewage, and now, after 15 years of 60-hour weeks, he’s in a position to make a step up and own his own business and Obama wants to tax the socks off of him because he’s “rich.”

If you want an example of putting a bullet through the head of the American dream under an Obama administration with a Pelosi house and a Reid senate, Joe the plumber in Toledo is exhibit A.

UPDATE - Here’s a video of the Obama comment:

Tags: Liberal "Solutions", Obama, Taxes by Publius
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Is Obama really the author of his memoirs?

WorldNetDailey has a fascinating commentary from Jack Cahill that explores the question of whether there is any real evidence that Obama had the literary talent to write his two books without substantial help.

He didn’t start off very well.

In 1981, Occidental’s literary magazine published two of Obama’s poems – “Pop” and “Underground.” These poems are only a little sillier than the average undergraduate’s, but they show not a glint of promise. From “Underground”:

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance …

Los Angeles media critic Kevin Roderick rightly described the exposure of Obama’s two published poems as a “semi-cruel exercise.”

In a similar spirit, the Independent of London headlined its article on Obama’s early poetry, “Pop goes myth of Obama the young prodigy.”

Somehow, Politico unearthed a single unsigned case comment from the Harvard Law Review that Obama reportedly wrote, although it is interesting that he forgot this piece until someone reminded him of it. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say, it’s pretty bad, even by law review standards. It’s clear that he didn’t win a write-in contest to become a law review member.

But then somehow, those few years later, this 33 year-old amateur with no paper trail beyond a hack legal note and a poem about fig-stomping apes produced what Time magazine has called – with a straight face – “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.”

The public is asked to believe that Obama did this on his own, almost as though he were some sort of literary idiot savant. I don’t buy this canard for a minute.

[Read more →]

Tags: Obama by Publius
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New information on the moderator of the VP debates from Hot Air.

Gwen Ifill, the PBS host and author of an upcoming book on Barack Obama scheduled for publication on Inauguration Day

The book is entitled, “Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.”

Here’s a video of the non-partisan, purely neutral debate moderator talking about Barack:

Tags: Liberal Hypocrisy, Obama, Palin by Publius
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UPDATE - This video has gotten a of attention across the web. I can’t figure out where it started. See:

Hot Air
Kim Jong Il of North Korea would be proud, Obama now has indoctrinated kids singing for hope and change
Creepiest Thing You’ll See Today, I Promise… : P.U.M.A

Indoctrination: Worshipping the The Chosen One « Pocket Change - Now Lint Free!

The Obama Jugend | Dabubbler.com

Mike’s Noise

Hyscience

The Irascible Chef

Sheer Creepiness « Obi’s Sister

Tags: Climate Change, Obama by Publius
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By their tax returns ye shall know them.

When it comes to managing their money, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are two peas in a pod.

Neither has any savings or investments other than their home and each is a tightwad when it comes to charitable giving.

Obama’s 2004 joint tax return shows $207,647 in income and not a cent in interest, capital gain or dividend income. His 2004 U.S. Senate disclosures reported not a single family bank or checking account with a balance of $1000 or more.

Biden’s 2004 joint return shows $234,271 in income and an impressive $129 in interest income with no dividends or capital gains.

Lest you think that this is an odd year, both Obama and Biden reported income of more than $220,000 per year in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

So these two guys are going to skillfully manage the US economy out of a serious financial crisis, dealing with issues involving complex credit instruments when they lived paycheck to paycheck and didn’t managed to accumulate any significant savings or investments when they were earning over 5 times the income of the average American household? (Median household income in 2004 was $43,389)

Maybe Obama and Biden didn’t have money for savings or investment because, being good liberals, they were dedicating a lot of their income to helping the poor. Forget that. In 2004, Obama’s tax return shows $2500 in charitable contributions (about 1%) and Biden shows $380 in charitable contributions.

HT to Hank Adler for an excellent analysis of the tax returns.

Tags: Biden, Liberal Hypocrisy, Obama, Taxes by Publius
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