At a time when our foreign policy is in the hands of the feckless, delusional, and incompetent, it is bracing to have Peter Collier’s fascinating biography of Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan’s smart, no-nonsense, straight-talking ambassador to the U.N. Collier, along with his sometime co-author David Horowitz, is the Plutarch of American political biography, having authored earlier books on the Kennedys, Fords, Rockefellers, and Roosevelts. Himself a convert from left-wing dogma and delusion, he brings to Kirkpatrick’s life both flawless story-telling skills and a shrewd eye for the psychological, intellectual, and social detail that tracks Kirkpatrick’s development from a reflexive liberal Democrat to a formidable opponent of appeasement and the staunch defender of political freedom who became, in William Safire’s phrase, “the courage of Ronald Reagan’s convictions.”

Kirkpatrick’s life is a paean to the American heartland and its clear-eyed realism about human nature and the limits of the politically possible. She was born in 1926 in Duncan, Oklahoma to a New Deal, Yellow-Dog Democrat oil driller named Welcher “Fat” Jordan. In 1940 the family followed the oil boom to Mount Vernon, Illinois, where Jeane’s keen intellect and restless curiosity fomented dissatisfaction with the small-town limits on both her mind and gender. Her first stop was at Stephens College, a two-year girls’ school in Columbia, Missouri. A visit to New York City convinced her that her intellectual ambitions needed larger scope, so she enrolled at Barnard, “where women could take themselves seriously,” she would write later. On weekends she hung out in the Village, and knew James Baldwin well enough to call him “Jimmy.” Yet a trajectory that seemingly pointed to becoming a conventional left-wing New York intellectual was deflected by her critical mind, which was not satisfied with the received opinions of her milieu. Contrary to her professors and classmates, for example, a reading of the Alger Hiss trial transcripts convinced her of Hiss’s guilt. Likewise she supported Truman in the 1948 elections while the “romantic leftists,” as Collier calls them, voted for Henry Wallace.

Her independent intellectual development continued at Columbia University, where she studied political science. Her mentor was Franz Neumann, a German Jew who had been a lawyer in the Weimer government. Neumann was an independent Marxist who lacked the starry-eyed admiration for Stalin that afflicted many American leftists. Her study of the inner workings of Nazi governance, which taught her, as she said later, “the human capacity for evil,” changed her life. So too did meeting Evron Kirkpatrick in Washington D.C. in 1951, who hired her as his research assistant. “Kirk,” as he was called, worked in the State Department and was a close friend of Hubert Humphrey as well as an anti-communist New Deal Democrat. Fourteen years Jeane’s senior, he became “the Pygmalion who would intellectually sculpt her in a way that brought her fully to life,” Collier writes. Her first assignment was to edit some papers detailing daily life in the prewar Soviet Union. The experience of learning what Kirkpatrick called “a hell purposefully created by government” was another critical stage in her development as a warrior against totalitarianism and its appeasers.

Kirkpatrick’s next stop was Paris, where she traveled to escape a serious illness and a burgeoning romance with Kirk. Once more, a path that would have led a less critical intelligence into leftist orthodoxy was blocked by Kirkpatrick’s reaction to the famous quarrel between one-time comrades Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre over support for the Soviet Union and its permanent revolution. Reading Camus’ The Rebel and listening to his lectures convinced Kirkpatrick that Camus had both the facts on his side and the moral high ground. She was particularly impressed by what she called “his suspicion of abstract theory and its friendship with totalitarianism; his elevation of the human dimension over the political one; his focus on the impact of ideas and the personal consequences of ideologies.” As Collier describes this transformative experience, one begins to see emerging the champion of freedom and human dignity who three decades later would give moral and intellectual force to Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy.

Back from France, Kirkpatrick eventually married Kirk and settled in Georgetown, where she connected with others like herself, heartland refugees, “very American, yet slightly alien among the elites” of postwar Washington, Collier describes them, bright people from modest backgrounds who “made their way by sheer intellectual force rather than by networks,” “pragmatic ‘show me’ people, and unapologetic in a patriotism that would not be shaken even during the turbulence of the Vietnam era.” She met other recovering leftists, like onetime Trotskyite James Burnham, and former communist Sidney Hook, both of whom later would become some of flabby liberalism’s most trenchant critics. As the sixties spiraled downward into left-wing thuggish intolerance, knee-jerk anti-Americanism, and apologetics for communist tyranny, she began to see the same conditions she had studied in other countries that had degenerated into totalitarianism from a lofty, abstract utopianism. The New Left’s assault on centrist liberalism––institutionalized in the 1972 highjacking of the Democratic party and its marginalization of lower-middle and working-class constituents in favor of a “new elite” of lawyers and other professionals––was to Jeane another sign that the old anti-communist, socially compassionate but pragmatic liberal Democrat no longer had a place in a party increasingly dominated by the sectarian left. Like many of those liberals who would get mugged by reality, Kirkpatrick had to find a more independent path.

Iran announced Sunday that it was cutting off crude oil sales to France and England, a mostly symbolic act given that Iran provides England less than 1% of its crude, and France claims that it “practically stopped importing Iranian oil,”  according to the head of the Union of Petroleum Industries. A few days later, the head of Iran’s armed forces threatened to attack Israel preemptively through its terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Gaza. The Iranians are once again using bluster to counter the E.U. ban on Iranian oil slated to begin on July 1, and the threat of Belgium-based SWIFT to ban Iran from its system for facilitating transfers of payments among nations through its international network of banks. As a further provocation, the Iranians sent two warships through the Suez Canal in a show of support for global pariah Syria. This follows the Iranian-engineered terrorist attacks on Israeli targets in India, Georgia, and Thailand.

At the same time they threaten and foment terrorist attacks, the Iranians have told the “P5+1” nations (Permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany) of its “readiness for dialogue” and its “new initiatives” concerning its nuclear program, and has allowed U.N. inspectors back in the country, even though President Ahmadinejad said last week that “Our nuclear program is not a subject for negotiations.” Consistent with this position, inspectors were denied access to military installations believed to house nuclear testing equipment. Validating Iran’s lie that its nuclear program is for domestic energy, Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that “we believe we know that the Iranian regime has not decided” to make a nuclear weapon, and that “it would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option is upon us.” The ominous background to all this diplomatic chatter is the continuing speculation about when or if Israel will take military action, or whether Israel has the capacity to degrade Iran’s nuclear facilities enough to make an attack worth the risk and blowback.

It’s not hard to figure out what’s going on in this diplomatic two-step we’ve been dancing with Iran for years. We know that Iran is dead set on acquiring nuclear weapons, or at least “nuclear latency,” the ability quickly to create a weapon. Since its creation in 1979, the Iranian regime has been about more than Iran. As one ayatollah said at the time, the revolution was just “the start of the story. An Islamic and divine government, much like Iran and better, will be created” in other Muslim nations. And more recently, an editorial in the newspaper Kayhan, published by “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, proclaimed Iran’s “fixed strategic goal”: “Our late Imam [Khomeini] openly spoke of raising the flag of Islam on top of the palaces of arrogant power, notably the White House . . . as the goal and purpose of the Islamic Revolution.” Seeing itself as a world-transformative power, Iran has been the foremost inspiration and supporter of jihadist violence, its prestige enhanced by its serial humiliations of the U.S., and by its genocidal aggression against Israel, the “little Satan” to America’s “great Satan.” Given its massive oil reserves, which mean it will always have a source of revenue, an Iran with nuclear arms will be virtually untouchable, and thus able to dominate the Middle East and damage our interests, whether by holding oil exports hostage, sparking a larger arms race in the region, attacking our ally Israel, or handing off nukes to one of its numerous terrorist proxies.

Equally obvious is the feckless response of the West to this threat, which seems to have followed a Micawberesque policy of hoping “something will turn up.” Unwilling to act, for years now we have substituted inspections, “talks,” and sanctions as toothless substitutes for action. At least we are consistent, for this is precisely how the West handled the embassy hostage crisis in 1979. Then too we tried sanctions, secret offers to negotiate, and trade embargoes in order to change Iranian behavior. But political, national, and economic self-interest rendered them all ineffectual. For example, the NATO countries were begged to impose a trade embargo, but threats by President Bani-Sadr to cut off oil to Europe––sound familiar?–– led to a weakened and hence ineffectual policy. As the Economist pointed out at the time, “The denial of material things is unlikely to have much effect on minds suffused with immaterial things.” The Iranians never have acted by the materialist calculus we have used in our dealings with them.

Moreover, today’s Iran has North Korea as the model for dealing with the West by using diplomatic and inspections processes to create time for achieving nuclear capability. And North Korea is an economic basket case that can’t even feed its own people, unlike Iran, whose oil somebody will figure out a way to buy no matter how many allegedly “crippling” sanctions the West imposes. Yet despite this history, Western leaders continue to assert that “sanctions are working” and that a bit more time will bring Iran to its knees, as Dennis Ross, who was Obama’s Middle East advisor, recently asserted. Meanwhile, Iran’s thousands of recently announced new-generation centrifuges will soon start spinning out even more enriched fuel necessary for weapons.

Tehran is making lots of noise about closing the Strait of Hormuz, boasting that it would be “easier than drinking a glass of water,” according to Iran’s naval chief, and warning U.S. aircraft carriers to steer clear of the vital waterway. The Iranians have punctuated their threats with missile tests, naval maneuvers and other provocative acts. What if the president responded by explaining that closure of the Strait of Hormuz “would constitute an illegal interference with navigation of the sea,” by making it unambiguously clear to Iran’s leaders that “we will protect our ships, and if they threaten us, they’ll pay a price,” and by deploying and even using military force to ensure that Tehran had “no illusions about the cost of irresponsible behavior”?

As a matter of fact, the president has already responded to Iranian provocations in this manner. Of course, the president who did so was Ronald Reagan.

It happened in 1987-88, after Iran launched cruise missiles at ships in the Persian Gulf, attacked unarmed oil tankers, laid mines that destroyed cargo ships, harassed U.S. warships and aircraft deployed to ensure freedom of the seas, and deployed ship-killing missiles on its side of the Strait of Hormuz.

After an Iranian mine ripped through a U.S. warship, Reagan had enough and ordered a series of punishing military responses against Iranian naval assets all across the lower half of the Persian Gulf. While most Americans forget this war on the Gulf, Tehran doesn’t. On a single day in 1988, the U.S. crippled Iran’s navy: U.S. helicopters disabled and then captured an Iranian ship; U.S. warships set Iranian oil platforms ablaze; and the U.S. armada eliminated six Iranian warships, effectively turning Iran’s military into a land-only force. Even the New York Times called it “The right response to Khomeini.”

Today, Tehran is even more capable of wreaking havoc in and around the Strait of Hormuz. Military analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Security and International Studies has noted that “Iran has given modernization of its naval forces high priority,” acquiring sophisticated anti-ship missiles from China and Ukraine, submarines from Russia, high-speed attack boats from France and an arsenal of some 2,000 mines. In Cordesman’s view, Iran may have the “potential capability to close the Gulf until U.S. naval and air power could clear the mines and destroy the missile launchers and submarines.”

Although now may not be the time for Reaganesque military action against Iran’s navy, it’s certainly the time for Reaganesque words from this president. All we’ve heard so far in response to Iran’s threatened closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a brief but blunt warning from the U.S. Fifth Fleet that disruptions of the vital transit route “will not be tolerated.”

Russians have grown tired of their Prime Minister. Despite widespread election fraud, Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party struggled to get 50 percent support in recent parliamentary elections.

Yet, Putin told supporters, “we can ensure the stable development of the country with this result.”

He’s not going away. Neither is the growing Russian threat.

Twenty four years ago this month, President Ronald Reagan signed his name next to Mikhail Gorbachev’s and both eliminated intermediate nuclear and conventional missiles. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was a landmark agreement, one that satisfied Reagan’s “Zero Option.”

Vladimir Putin is no Mikhail Gorbachev.

Perhaps it’s why Illinois Senator Mark Kirk is blocking President Obama’s nominee for ambassador to Russia.

Kirk told the Associated Press that he wants “written assurances that the United States will not provide Russia with any currently classified information on the missile defense system.” Kirk is especially concerned with Russia’s “record of espionage and cooperation and dialogue with Iran.”

Lieutenant General (Ret.) Ed Rowny knows a thing or two about Russian deception. As chief arms control adviser and negotiator for President Ronald Reagan, Rowny’s memories of the Geneva and Reykjavik summits are still vivid.

It was “usually the case,” Rowny recalled as he sipped a cup of coffee at his D.C. retirement home, “the secretive Soviets would never come prepared to negotiate. Rather, they would just repeat the party-line.” To the likes of Andrei Gromyko or Leonid Brezhnev, “facts were meaningless.”

Even today, Rowny can still feel the cold-as-ice Soviets. He remembered a time when it was his turn to “warm things up.”

After a long morning of “go-nowhere negotiations,” Rowny hired a boat on Lake Geneva for the American and Soviet delegations. At first, the boat was split down the middle with Americans sitting on one side and Russians, not budging, sitting on the other.

Rowny pulled out his harmonica and began playing a Russian nursery rhyme, which the Soviets began to hum to. They then sang to his rendition of “Moon over Moscow.” Not before long, Rowny had the Russians forming a conga-line to the tune of “We are the Communists.”

“I was too diplomatic to play a tune from Dr. Zhivago,” Rowny said of a film, based on a Russian novel, which exposed the brutality of Soviet tyranny.

In a speech to Moscow State University students in 1988, Ronald Reagan wasn’t so cautious. “One of the most eloquent passages on human freedom,” Reagan said, “comes, not from the literature of America, but from this country.” After quoting from Dr. Zhivago, Reagan went further: “freedom is more even than this. Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. … It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people.”

The top headlines this morning read (and I paraphrase):  Obama performs ultimate act of redistributing your wealth-donate now! Followed by:  Obama wants a billion?  WE can give YOU 4 TRILLION in 2012!

The political attitude towards money is priceless–until it involves your dwindling bank balance.  The Obama Campaign’s “official introduction” into the 2012 campaign (a race that some would say he’s been running since November 3, 2008) makes no official statements, yet illustrates his political platform very clearly: “All of you who are still unemployed, those of you who are now in the midst of fighting a third Middle Eastern war without Congressional approval, and all of you who sent an overwhelming majority of Republicans to Congress in November because you didn’t like my NCAA draft picks: Give me your money so that I can have the biggest campaign bankroll EVER.”  No wonder Obama viewed former Press Secretary Gibbs’s $172,000/year salary as “modest”: This President needs One BILLION Dollars to raise his self-esteem.

You can’t totally blame the guy.  After all, his Presidency has been an abject failure in the eyes of anyone whose politics are right-of-socialist.  The Administration has been busy waiving the white flag of truce when it comes to the illegitimacy of their firstborn son, Obamacare.  After being ”shellacked” in the 2010 mid-terms, Obama and his press team worked hard to reform his image; in 2008, it was Lincoln, but 2010′s election results clearly proved that the first Republican was old news.  It was time for someone newer, hipper, fresher.  And, all of a sudden, the MSM covered Obama’s reclamation of the Bush-Era Tax Cuts like white on rice while his team refashioned our most left-wing President to date into the most Conservative of political figures, President Ronald Reagan.  Their staunch efforts even garnered Obama a Photoshopped pose with Reagan on the cover of TIME.

Going into 2011, it seemed as if Obama would be in the clear.  He may have stunk at listening to the will of the people when it came to health care, but hey, all you Republican-loving Independents out there:  This man found his inner-Reagan!  It’s smooth-sailing from here …straight into Libyan territory.  If Obama’s tacit support of the Egyptian socialist rebels wasn’t enough, the tipping point came with everyone’s favorite African dictator: Moammar Gadhafi.

You can almost hear the Obama team’s situation-room discussion now: Reagan had a pivotal Gadhafi moment during his Presidency!  This is sweet!  This is our Pearl Harbor moment!  Forget two-terms — amendments are outdated anyway — this is going to seal us in the White House for life!  True to their postmodernism, the Obama team got the players right, but the game very, very wrong.  Reagan’s quarrel with Libya involved one key element that our current conflict does not:  A “sense of direction and confident purpose.”  We have yet to know who these anti-Gadhafi rebels are, let alone what their goals for the new Libyan government might be.  Moreover, if we’re trying to use oil as an excuse to engage in international military action, why is President Obama trying so desperately to re-focus the American eye on “green job” production and consuming less oil?

Try as his new Press Secretary might, he can’t distract the MSM from the fact of Libya and the reality that, as gas prices rise to $4/gallon, telling Americans to cut their oil consumption doesn’t really cut it.  Especially not when you’re spending your days playing golf, charting your March Madness picks, and flying to Brazil in your diesel-fueled jet in order to encourage a foreign nation to reap the benefits of their natural resources while curtailing America’s ability to do just that.  But it’s ok: While Brazilians are awash in the billions of dollars environmental distaster that is offshore drilling, the American economy will be booming thanks to green jobs.

That’s right: The President’s biggest move towards job creation this year so far has been to sink $2.3 billion deficit-dollars into jobs that revolve around, as Glenn Beck so aptly put it: Wind, Solar, and cow farts.  Moreover, as Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute points out, governments don’t “create jobs”:

“All the government can do is subsidize some industries while jacking up costs for others. In the green case, it is destroying jobs in the conventional energy sector—and most likely in other industrial sectors—through taxes and subsidies to new green companies that will use taxpayer dollars to undercut the competition. The subsidized jobs ‘created’ are, by definition, less efficient uses of capital than market-created jobs.”

That’s right, America: The President that has redistributed your jobs overseas (and sent you overseas to fight someone else’s battle for the sake of the “international community”) needs your money.  Why?  Because he’s taken billions of your dollars already and that’s just not enough.  2008′s slogan was all about hope and change — and, quite frankly, I don’t think we need much re-wording.  In 2012 I, for one, am hoping for some more change, and for a change, I’d like to put it in my own pocket.

Have I ever told you about how, back in the Reagan years, my fellow lefties and I used to get drunk and watch “The 700 Club” and make fun of the televangelists?

I have? OK, sorry…

I’ve come a long way, and so has the show, apparently. Defying all cynical liberal expectations, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) is still around, looking more polished and “big time” than ever. Not a potted fern or cheap suit in sight (which is more than you can say about some secular newscasts…) Along with “The 700 Club,” CBN’s signature show is “The Brody File;” hosted by David Brody, the program attracts A-list guests like, well, President Obama.

And… Andrew Breitbart.

Breitbart, the conservative online media mogul, sat down with Brody this week for a  candid, revealing and inspiring interview. The man behind Big Hollywood didn’t pull any punches, saying:

I was made to counter-Alinsky Alinsky. I was meant to take on the left. (…) I like to get into the gutter with these people. I derive a sick pleasure from it. These people don’t fight fair. The left does not fight fair and so I’m basically saying to conservatives you don’t have to fight fair.

Christian turn-the-cheek-tactics do not work against this crowd.

I’m a Jewish conservative. I understand what it’s like to be looked at weird at a Passover Seder because you voted for George W. Bush.

The  show will air May 13 on (I can’t believe I’m typing this) “The 700 Club,” but here’s an enticing preview:

This article is reprinted from MindingtheCampus.com.

Teaching in the universities about the so-called McCarthy era has become an area most susceptible to politically correct and one-sided views of what the period was all about. One historian who strenuously objects to the accepted left-wing interpretation that prevails in the academy is Jennifer Delton, Chairman of the Department of History at Skidmore College.

In the March issue of The Journal of the Historical Society Delton writes:

However fiercely historians disagree about the merits of American Communism, they almost universally agree that the post-World War II Red scare signified a rightward turn in American politics. The consensus is that an exaggerated, irrational fear of communism, bolstered by a few spectacular spy cases, created an atmosphere of persecution and hysteria that was exploited and fanned by conservative opportunists such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy. This hysteria suppressed rival ideologies and curtailed the New Deal, leading to a resurgence of conservative ideas and corporate influence in government. We may add detail and nuance to this story, but this, basically, is what we tell our students and ourselves about post-World War II anti-Communism, also known as McCarthyism. It is fundamentally the same story that liberals have told since Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss of being a Communist spy in 1948.

This conventional narrative of the left has been told over and over for so many years that it has all but become the established truth to most Americans. It was exemplified in a best-selling book of the late 1970′s, David Caute’s The Great Fear, and from the most quoted one from the recent past, Ellen Schrecker’s Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. My favorite title is one written by the late Cedric Belfrage, The American Inquisition 1945-1960: A Profile of the “McCarthy Era.” In his book, Belfrage told the story of how he, an independent journalist who founded the fellow-traveling weekly The National Guardian, was hounded by the authorities and finally deported home to Britain. American concerns about Soviet espionage, he argued, were simply paranoia.

Here is my talk last night at the Young America's Foundation High School Conference in Santa Barbara, California, at the Reagan Ranch Center.

MSNBC’s “Countdown” show host, Keith Olbermann, recently claimed that today’s “federal budget debt” is “far less than it was throughout the Reagan administration.” He also said it is “about the same as it was in 1970.” Is he right? Tonight’s countdown:

10) What is a “federal budget debt”? No researcher, intern or night security guard told him that there is no such thing? No one fact checked him before he went on-air? Add this to the ever-growing catalog of Olbermann’s greatest hits kept by the indispensable NewsBusters.org.

9) There is a federal (or national) debt . There is an annual federal budget deficit .

Let’s assume he meant the “federal debt” — the amount of money the government owes. This number can be stated in dollars. It can also be stated as a percentage of gross domestic product (total value of goods and services we produce in a given year).

It makes more sense to talk about these numbers as a percentage of GDP. Consider two scenarios. Suppose you make 10K per year. You also owe 10K on your credit cards. Now suppose you make 100K per year. But, again, you owe 10K. In the second case, your debt is far less of a big deal because — as a percentage of your earnings — your debt went from 100 percent to 10 percent. Our economy usually grows every year, so stating debt as a percentage gives a better idea of its impact.

Either way — as dollars or a percentage of GDP — Olbermann was wrong about the debt.

At the end of 1988, the final full year of the Reagan presidency, the debt stood at $2.6 trillion. As a percentage of GDP, the debt stood at 52 percent.

Now examine President Barack Obama’s first year in office. It is part former President George W. Bush’s and part President Obama’s. (But as senator, Obama voted for the 2009 budget, which included the TARP bank bailout, since expanded.) In 2009, the debt was over $12 trillion. As a percentage of GDP, the debt was over 83 percent.

Obama’s first-year debt, therefore, is higher than the debt of any Reagan year by far — both in dollars and as a percentage of GDP. And 2010 is projected to continue this upward spiral.

7) Assume Olbermann didn’t mean “federal debt,” but meant “budget deficit” — the annual gap between what the government takes in and what the government spends.

During the Reagan presidency, the year in which he incurred the largest deficit in dollars was 1986.

The deficit was $221 billion. That year, the deficit, as a percentage of GDP, was 5 percent. Reagan’s deficit in 1983 was less in dollars — $207 billion — but it was 6 percent of 1983′s GDP, the highest percentage under his administration.

The 2009 deficit was $1.4 trillion — 9.9 percent of GDP.

Obama’s first-year deficit is higher than the deficit of any Reagan year by far — both in dollars and as a percentage of GDP.

6) Now examine Olbermann’s mind-boggling assertion that Obama’s “federal budget debt” is “about the same as it was in 1970.” In 1970, the deficit was 0.3 percent of GDP, or a total of almost $3 billion. The debt was 37.6 percent of GDP, or $380 billion. Whether compared with today’s deficit or debt, the 1970 numbers were microscopic.

5) Olbermann asserts that “federal budget debt” (assuming we understand what he means) is “a good thing.” Case closed? If a country runs up bills largely to fight a war to protect national security, one could argue that it is a good thing. If a country spends primarily on domestic programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and/or “stimulus” — one could argue that a “federal budget debt” is a bad thing.

The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Thomas Hoenig, calls the current and projected deficits “stunning.” He says they run the risk of igniting inflation. He urges a reduction in spending, along with a call to increase revenue. The slippery slope of the housing bailout, he warns, could lead to demand to bail out other weak sectors of our economy. Where will it end, and at what cost to our standard of living and productivity?

4) Suppose Sarah Palin offered a wildly inaccurate take on the “federal budget debt”?

3) Viewers, at least some of them, now falsely believe Obama’s debt and deficit are about the same as Reagan’s. Since vile “right-wingers” love Reagan, they are, goes the argument, committing hypocrisy by complaining about today’s debt and deficit. Olbermann frequently accuses people of lying, something that requires an intention to mislead. Was he lying? Was he just ignorant? Anyone can have a bad show. It doesn’t make him — as he calls others — “the worst person in the world.”

2) How will Olbermann handle this blunder? A retraction? A correction? Ignore it and hope nobody notices because almost nobody watches?

1) Jon Stewart, at least, is funny.

How sweet – Obama and his woobie are never far apart. He took it along when speaking to 6th graders, as I noted the other day.

And yet again he had his good old buddy by his side when talking to a task-force — of, like, a dozen people. No – really.

Here’s Obama dropping in for a chat with his middle-class task force. And people made fun of Reagan because of his notecards!

Image courtesy of NRO

Instead of those books “Where’s Waldo?” they should now come out with a series called “Where’s Prompty?”  Wouldn’t that be adorable? Children’s books based on the woobie of our first “playing dress-up” President.

I miss a President who wore big boy pants to work. And who could, you know, speak on his own without being spoon-fed words. A little mispronunciation of words like — I don’t know, say, nuclear – doesn’t seem so bad now, does it? At least Bush’s mispronunciations didn’t have to be typed into a teleprompter before-hand (Pah-key-stahn).

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Follow Lori  on Twitter and read more of her work at Snark and Boobs, iOwntheWorld and Right Wing News.

Related posts:

1. Gun Owners Must Travel in Boxes – Obama Signs Bill With Major Typo
2. Obama: Raising the White Flag to America’s Terrorists
3. Obama Promises to Not Stop Fighting…You?

Reagan and Obama

Is America a city on a hill or a country in decline?

by Jean Kaufman

10/07/2009 12:00:00 AM

Ronald Reagan believed in America.

One way he expressed this faith was through the image of “a shining city on a hill,” a phrase Reagan uttered in one form or another in many of his speeches, including his 1989 Farewell Address in which he said, “I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life.” It was an expression with religious as well as historical origins, and referred to American exceptionalism.

In a 1974 speech Reagan expanded on America’s special place among nations:

…I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage…

Somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere…We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men that set foot on the moon…

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, “The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.”

via Reagan and Obama.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2009/10/07/reagan-and-obama-by-jean-kaufman-%e2%80%93-weekly-standard/feed/ 0 http://frontpagemag.com/2009/10/04/%e2%80%9cbrain-dead-conservatives%e2%80%9d-redemption-is-found-in-reagan-roots-by-craig-shirley/ http://frontpagemag.com/2009/10/04/%e2%80%9cbrain-dead-conservatives%e2%80%9d-redemption-is-found-in-reagan-roots-by-craig-shirley/#comments Mon, 05 Oct 2009 06:48:17 +0000 MB Snow http://sroblog.com/?p=16730 ]]>

“Brain-dead conservatives:” Redemption is found in Reagan roots

By: Craig Shirley

OpEd Contributor

October 4, 2009

Ronald Reagan once joked that Harvard was not the answer to juvenile delinquency. Nor are elite college degrees for the ailing GOP, as my friend Stephen Hayward seemed to suggest in today’s Washington Post.

Indeed, many of the conservatives he cited with advanced degrees are not traditional, populist Reaganite conservatives but rather neoconservatives, who believe that power is not derived from the citizenry but from the state.

The confusion for some lies in the difference between elitism and intellectualism and what modern conservatism stands for. Elitism is not the answer for the suffering Republicans nor is attacking conservatives gratuitously, as some others like Columnist David Brooks have, nor is “big government Republicanism”—aka Bushism—the answer.

Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Al Gore and Barack Obama are all products of the Ivy League and no one would accuse any of them of being an intellectual, though a good case can be made that each is an elitist.

via “Brain-dead conservatives:” Redemption is found in Reagan roots | Washington Examiner .

I’ve started reading a great book written in 2004 called Reagan’s Path to Victory: The Shaping of Ronald Reagan’s Vision: Selected Writings.  The book examines the strategy Reagan used to win the presidency in 1980.  While reading the introduction, it struck me that former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has seemingly chosen to duplicate Reagan’s plan himself.  And it just might be working.  This past week he was the clear leader among Republican 2012 presidential hopefuls at the Values Voter Summit.  Here’s Chris Matthews talking about it:

Huckabee won the straw poll (28.5%) by more than doubling the totals for Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, and Mike Pence (who each garnered about 12% of the votes).  Huckabee, who finished second in the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, just may may be the next Reagan that conservatives have been looking for.  He’s at least trying to follow Reagan’s strategy.

Reagan, like Huckabee, was the governor of a large state who ran for president shortly after finishing up his term of office (Sarah Palin obviously decided to not follow this path).  Reagan ran in 1976 as a true conservative against an incumbent Gerald Ford, who was neither a conservative nor a formidable candidate; Ford emerged as the Republican nominee for President but ultimately was defeated by Jimmy Carter, who would go on to distinguish himself as one of the biggest disasters ever to set foot in the Oval Office.

Here’s the parallel: In 2008 Huckabee competed against John McCain, who, like Gerald Ford three decades earlier, was neither a conservative nor an effective candidate. And as we know, McCain emerged as the nominee, only to be defeated by Barack Obama in the general election.

Let’s examine the strategy Reagan pursued after his 1976 defeat, setting the stage for his successful presidential bid four years later. Then we can determine if Huckabee is duplicating the plan.

After 1976, Reagan knew he needed a platform that would permit him to stay in the public eye and make his views known to the American people leading up to the 1980 election. In 1974 Walter Cronkite had offered him an opportunity to do a bi-weekly commentary segment on CBS, with the stipulation that Reagan’s views would be counterbalanced by someone on the left. But Reagan was afraid that he would not have enough control over which topics he could discuss. He didn’t just want to be another talking head; he wanted to offer his own commentary to America, and to have total control over the content.

According to Reagan’s Path to Victory, two strategy documents that were dated November 4, 1974 “provided an outline and guide for Reagan’s post-governorship activities, now two months away.”  One of those documents advised Reagan to use a nationally syndicated radio program (along with speaking engagements and a newspaper column) to “maintain influence in the Republican Party; strengthen and consolidate leadership as the national conservative spokesman; and enhance [his] foreign affairs credibility.”

As we all know, Mike Huckabee, after losing his 2008 presidential bid, looked like he might just become another talking head on other people’s shows (like the Hannity and O’Reilly programs).  But then Huckabee, like Reagan, chose another path — one that would give him a forum where he could air his own commentary in any way he saw fit: He created a weekly Fox News television show that was different from the typical shock-jock or “info-tainment” political-battle format.  He decided to have a program that was described as a weekly “town hall meeting.” If you’ve seen the show (which is rated #1 in its time slot), then you know Huckabee gives short commentary about his views on things in a very friendly sort of way.  Then he dialogues with guests of all political persuasions, treating them with unwavering respect and humility.  He also makes speeches and writes columns from time to time, but his television show is his bread and butter.  One paragraph in the Reagan book seems to foreshadow exactly what Huckabee is doing:

“The personal campaign machine that Reagan built and ran from 1975 to 1979 was his pathway to the presidency.  His speeches and columns were important and necessary, but his radio commentaries were the driving force.  The radio program gave Reagan a national platform that no other politician had at the time.”

Does this sound a bit like Huckabee’s Fox News program?  I think so.

Reagan had a large audience for his radio show, and, according to Reagan’s Path to Victory, he “cast a wide net in looking for sources and subjects of his radio commentaries.”  Moreover, “Reagan sometimes used his airtime to advocate causes he thought exemplified American values.” The same can be said of Huckabee.

Reagan wrote in 1980, “I have had a five-day-a-week radio commentary on more than 300 stations nationwide.  I took up virtually every subject mentionable and stated my view on those subjects.”  And the editors of the Reagan book conclude, “It is doubtful whether he could have become president without them.”

It was said of Reagan that he “had reached America long before he accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidency on July 17, 1980, and before his November landslide.” Huckabee, too, is reaching America with his television show. Will his 2012 evoke memories of Reagan’s 1980?  Only time will tell.