Thanks to one of our (highly critical) readers who sent it to us, here is a cheerful message for the new year, written by Howard Golganov:

THINK VERY SERIOUSLY ABOUT THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT:

No politician has ever done America and the Free World a greater SERVICE, than has Barack Hussein Obama and the FOOLS who elected him.

HERE’S WHY I BELIEVE IN WHAT I HAVE JUST WRITTEN:

For more than a couple of generations, North America has been sliding slowly but surely towards creeping socialism, where even our ‘pretend’ Conservatives have been playing the game.

Two perfect examples include President George W Bush and Canada’s Prime Minister Prime Minister Stephen Harper, both of whom increased spending, their respective debts, and the size of their respective governments.

Even ‘pretend’ Conservative leaders have been chipping away at INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, while imposing more and more regulations and bureaucracy.

Had Barack Hussein Obama not come along when he did, this trend to the LEFT, especially to the FAR LEFT would have continued without any REAL abatement, option, or alternative in sight.

But, because of Obama and the extraordinarily horrible people he is aligned with inside and outside of government, the shift to the LEFT that would have taken much longer has in fact EXPLODED overnight.

Had the move to the LEFT continued unabated, I sincerely believe that not only would our economies have crashed, but also, we would have lost our individual RIGHTS, which would have been irretrievable without some form of serious conflict.

Perhaps even a civil war between the RIGHT and the LEFT.

But, this SHOCK THERAPY courtesy of Obama has been a clarion wake-up call. And because of it, strong Conservative leaders have emerged before it became too late.

Even MODERATE LIBERALS are having serious sober second thoughts about the direction in which the LEFT are dragging the USA. So much so, that even they can see the edge of the precipice Obama and his coterie of co-conspirators are running hell bent to jump off of.

Here is a prediction that takes very little prognosticative skills:

Not ONLY will Obama go down in history as the WORST President ever. Even making Carter look less horrible than he actually was. Obama will go down as the MOST HATED PRESIDENT EVER.

Because of Obama, who has managed to screw everything up in less than one full year, making his LEFT base upset, losing all of his moderate and independent supporters, taking a Nobel Peace Prize while making war, and bringing America and the entire world to the brink of bankruptcy, THE AMERICAN LEFT WILL BE CRUSHED for a long time to come.

Sometimes we just don’t know how good we have it until something REALLY BAD happens to take it all away. Obama is that something REALLY BAD that has happened.

So, to all of you folk who write to me in tones of DESPAIR – Despair not.

HAPPY DAYS WILL SOON ENOUGH BE HERE AGAIN.

Nice. We follow his argument and we hope he’s right. Only we’re not so sure about the strong Conservative leaders he says have emerged. Who are they?

If he means, for instance, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, they’re doing a splendid job as providers of information that the mainstream media would rather keep hidden; and they are certainly leaders of public opinion which can influence policy decisions; but they are not likely to become policy makers themselves. If he means Sarah Palin he may be right. Anyone else?

Is it possible that food could become scarce in America? It could and would become more expensive if cap-and-trade legislation is passed. The progressive elite who run the world on opinions do not think eating should have a high priority among human concerns.

From Investor’s Business Daily:

If the cap-and-trade provisions of the Waxman-Markey bill become law, you can wave goodbye to those amber waves of grain as America’s heartland falls victim to a perverse set of incentives and a process called “afforestation.” Soybeans and wheat will give way to elms and oaks. … [A] study, which was released by the USDA [US Department of Agriculture] earlier this month, reckons that as a result of cap-and-trade, farmers with energy-intensive crops would see their cost of production go up 10% over the next 50 years. Couple that with the money to be made from carbon offsets, and it may not be long before we’re unable to see the farms for the trees.

The USDA projects that under cap-and-trade … fuel costs will rise as much as 5.3% from 2012 to 2018. “The conclusion of all the studies remains the same: that cap-and-trade has the potential to devastate the agricultural community with higher energy prices,” says Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.

Food prices have risen worldwide as farmland has been converted to the production of energy-deficient biofuels such as ethanol. They’ll rise even further as valuable acreage is taken offline for the planting of trees to absorb the carbon dioxide that was declared to be a pollutant in need of regulation. …

When the enemy was Big Agriculture, Willie Nelson started Farm-Aid and elites lined up to save the family farm. Now, it seems, saving the planet is more important. Who really needs cheap and plentiful food when we can hug trees and get rid of all those pesky barnyard animals and their greenhouse-gas emissions in the process?

We applaud Dick Cheney for saying this last Tuesday, December 29 (reported by Politico):

As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war.

He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war.

He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war.

He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core Al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war.

He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war.

But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe.

Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society.

President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war.

Among the Democrats most guilty of causing the world-wide economic crisis by forcing financial institutions to provide mortgages to folk who couldn’t afford them – a roll of dishonor that includes Bill Clinton and Barney Frank  – is Senator Chris Dodd.

What other bad decisions has he made? Here’s an interesting snippet of information from the Washington Examiner:

Now that our attention is focused on airline security measures thanks to the failed airline attack on Christmas Day, it’s worth mentioning that one senator took money away from aviation security to line the pockets of a constituency that supported his presidential campaign in a big way.

Back in July, Senator Chris Dodd, D-Conn., proposed an amendment reducing aviation security appropriations by $4.5 million in favor of firefighter grants — a notoriously inneffective program. In fact, the money was specifically “for screening operations and the amount for explosives detection systems.” The amendment was also sponsored by Sen. Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. Carper, D-Del., but Dodd deserves to be singled out here because the firefighters union is a pet constituency of his. In 2007 he campaigned all through Iowa with the firefighters union. It was one of the few distinguishable features of Dodd’s ill-fated presidential bid.

How much harm he did by this may not be measurable, but his doing it is a measure of the man.

It turns out that two of the terrorist leaders, now in Yemen, who plotted Abdulmutallab’s intended Christmas Day atrocity over Detroit, were released from Guantanamo in November 2007.

Their names: Said Ali al-Shihri and Muhammad Attik al-Harbi (since changed to Muhammad al-Awfi).

They were flown off to Saudi Arabia, there to be healed of the tragic affliction of their souls which, compassion junkies believe, compelled them to be torturers and killers.

The magic cure was ART THERAPY.

Yes. Designing tiles or whatever non-representational art Islam permits.

Michelle Malkin tells us more about them:

In January 2009, the two “rehabilitated” recidivists released a video vowing to wage jihad to “aid the religion,” “establish the rightly guided caliphate” and ” fight against our enemies.” One of the duo, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September 2008.

So art therapy doesn’t work for terrorists?

Can we think of anything else that might be worth a try?

In a recent post on attempts by Jews to ‘remove Christmas from the public square’, Paul Mirengoff of Power Line – one of our favourite blogs – quoted the historian John Steele Gordon as saying: ‘It has always seemed to me that it was not Jews but atheists (a religion of its own in that it is a belief system that is untestable) who have led the charge against public celebrations of Christmas as an “establishment of religion”.’

It is with the parenthetical assertion about atheism that we join issue. Atheism is not ‘a belief system’  – it is the absence of belief in the supernatural. The statement ‘God does not exist’ is not provable, but that does not make it a religious statement, a statement of faith. God’s non-existence does not impinge on any aspect of an atheist’s life or thought. It is not just that God is not watching or does not care. He is not there, at all, ever. The Christian deity lying in a manger, the miracle of the oil in the Hannukah candles, the flying Santa Claus are all  in the same category of idea: incredible, imaginary, supernatural. If an atheist wants such religious symbols to be banned, he or she is showing an irrational superstitious belief in their power, and deserves ridicule.

If some atheists object to any display of fairy folk, or God folk, or magic objects – provided worship of them is not required – it is not because their non-belief is offended, but because they decide to put on a show of being offended in order to make political points, to flex their political muscle. Such atheists are almost certain to be on the Left. I would guess that the Jews who object to nativity displays in public places at Christmas are also politically motivated, and that they too are on the Left. I cannot see how the deification of a Jewish boy should cause religious offense to those who do not believe it. Other people’s irrationality is their own business. Religious offense-taking is the hall-mark of leftist victim politics – and is invariably fraudulent.

C. Gee  December 29, 2009

Uncountable Republicans and conservatives express outrage over, loathing for, desperation about, fury with Obama, and are amply justified in doing so we believe.

But for sheer contempt for him and rage against him it would be hard to beat this rant – from the far left.

It comes from the pen, dipped in vitriol, of one David Michael Green, a professor of political science [!] at Hofstra University in New York.

His bitter denunciations and criticisms may in some instances coincide with ours, but they don’t of course arise for the same reasons. We deplore Obama’s rapid shifting of America to the left and his turning it into an impoverished, weak, welfare state.

Professor Green (how aptly named he is!) thinks that Obama is failing to take America far enough to the left, so that it is not rapidly becoming a disarmed, egalitarian utopia.

He hates Obama more for failing to transform America into a command-economy collective than we do for his failing to keep America free and strong.

He hates Obama so much – and this is truly astonishing – that he would rather have Sarah Palin as president if that would be the ultimate humiliation for ‘the little prick’.

That a man with such passionately leftist opinions as he obviously holds can become a professor of political science in an American university speaks volumes, if you’re looking for an explanation for how a disciple of the Marxist Saul Alinsky came to be elected to the presidency .

It can reasonably be assumed that the far left broadly shares the views uttered, or spat out, by Professor Green. But what did they expect? That as soon as he entered the Oval Office, Obama would nationalize every business, force the rural population on to collective farms, send all dissidents into re-education camps or forced-labor prisons, make heterosexual marriage illegal, execute Bush and Cheney, recall all American servicemen from Iraq and Afghanistan and punish them for having fought there, force Israel to surrender to Hamas, give trillions of dollars to the Third World to put out ‘the fire’ that the Greens claim is ‘burning up the world’, make us wait all day in line for a loaf of bread at a state store and put our names down for medical treatment at state-run hospitals in preparation for waiting patiently for years to be given the treatment that we might or might not eventually be allowed?

Has this Green, a professor of political science, never heard that politicians ‘cannot legislate too far ahead of public opinion’? Does he not realize, professor of political science though he is, that the Constitution and the institutions of government were designed to prevent such revolutionary change? The answer to both questions is, apparently not.

Here’s part of what he has to say (all of it can be found here):

You know, I’ve really been trying not to write an article every other week about all the things I don’t like about Barack Obama.

But the little prick is making it very hard.

Like any good progressive, I’ve gone from admiration to hope to disappointment to anger when it comes to this president. Now I’m fast getting to rage.

How much rage? I find myself thinking that the thing I want most from the 2010 elections is for his party to get absolutely clobbered, even if that means a repeat of 1994. And that what I most want from 2012 is for him to be utterly humiliated, even if that means President Palin at the helm. That much rage.

Did this clown really say on national television that “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of you know, fat cat bankers on Wall Street”?!?!

Really, Barack? So, like, my question is: Then why the hell did you help out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street?!?! Why the hell did you surround yourself with nothing but Robert Rubin proteges in all the key economic positions in your government? Why did you allow them to open a Washington branch of Goldman Sachs in the West Wing? Why have your policies been tailored to helping Wall Street bankers, rather than the other 300 million of us, who just happen to be suffering badly right now?

Are you freakin’ kidding me??? What’s up with the passive president routine, anyhow, Fool? …

But, really, are you going to spend the next three interminable years perfecting your whiney victim persona? I don’t really think I could bear that. Hearing you complain about how rough it all is, when you have vastly more power than any of us to fix it? Please. Not that.

Are you going to tell us that “I did not run for office to be shovel-feeding the military-industrial complex”? But what they’re just so darned pushy?

“…I did not run for office to continue George Bush’s valiant effort at shredding the Bill of Rights. It’s just that those government-limiting rules are so darned pesky.”

“…I did not run for office to dump a ton of taxpayer money into the coffers of health insurance companies. It’s just that they asked so nicely.”

“…I did not run for office to block equality for gay Americans. I just never got around to doing anything about it.”

“…I did not run for office to turn Afghanistan into Vietnam. I just didn’t want to say no to all the nice generals asking for more troops.”

Here’s a guy who was supposed to actually do something with his presidency, and he’s … being punked by John Boehner, for chrisakes. He’s being rolled by the likes of Joe Lieberman. He calls a come-to-Jesus meeting with Wall Street bank CEOs, and half of them literally phone it in. Everyone from Bibi Netanyahu to the Japanese prime minister to sundry Iranian mullahs is stomping all over Mr. Happy.

And he doesn’t even seem to realize it.

Did you see him tell Oprah that he gave himself “a good solid B+” for his first year in office? And that it will be an A, if he gets his healthcare legislation passed?

Somebody please pick me up and set me back on my chair, wouldya? …

I can’t even begin to describe how insulting Obama conducting a “jobs summit” is to me, or what an unbelievably ham-fisted piece of public relations that was for the White House, which is increasingly showing itself not just to be sickeningly regressive, but also fully inept. I think I speak for a whole lot of Americans when I say that, one year into his stewardship over a destroyed economy that was actually atomizing for at least six months before inauguration day, I don’t want my president sitting around a table, running a dog-and-pony show, pretending to kick around ideas on how to generate jobs. I wanted him to have those ideas, himself, before he was inaugurated. …

If Democrats think they’ll be screwed next November because of unemployment, wait till Congress passes this healthcare monstrosity. Or doesn’t. At this point, either way they’re gonna get slammed for it, and rightly so.

If they don’t pass anything, they will be seen as unable to govern. …

On the other hand, the Democrats and their hapless president are probably in worse shape if they actually pass this legislation. Especially now that it’s been stripped of nearly every real progressive reform imaginable, it has become an incredibly stupid bill, from the political perspective. …

This will be a total train wreck for the Democratic Party … You know, elite Republicans may be sociopaths, and they may be lower on the moral totem pole than your basic cannibal, but they’re not stupid. I bet they’re salivating at the idea that this thing passes. I bet they’d even have Olympia Snowe vote for it if necessary, just to put it over the top. They must be laughing their asses off at this gift. All they have to do is oppose it right down the line, then say “Told ya so!” at the next election, squashing the pathetic Demognats, one after the next. …

This is President Nothingburger’s great gift to America, along with doing nothing about jobs, doing nothing about the Middle East, nothing about civil liberties, nothing about civil rights, and now doing nothing at Copenhagen. Regarding the latter, the world is literally on fire, and he jets in, gives a speech haranguing the delegates that “Now is not the time for talk, now is the time for action”, then splits even before the vote in order to beat the snowstorm headed to the east coast that might delay him getting home to his comfy bed. I’m not kidding. You can’t make this shit up, man.

This guy is killing me, though at the same time I still can’t quite figure him out. …

Is he just massively deluded? I wouldn’t have thought so, but watching the guy give himself a very good grade for 2009 straight face and all during the same year he’s lost twenty points off his job approval rating, and at a moment when even blacks and gays are deserting him, you know, you have to wonder.

Is he happy just to be a one-term president just to say he’s been there and done that, and then sell some more books even if he is reviled as one of the worst in history? … Obama looked like he could’ve been something different. He ain’t. …

Fine and dandy. With the help of political enemies like this, the conservative right may regain the White House in 2012. Strange, though, to have to welcome such allies!

Carol Platt Liebau, writing in Townhall, trumpets a note of optimism for the coming year:

Suddenly, the liberty and free enterprise most of us have taken for granted seem to be in the greatest jeopardy of our lifetime. Worse yet, Democrat politicians have ignored the public outcry, ramming through unpopular legislation that would put one-sixth of the economy (and every American’s health care!) under government control. Regular Americans – the ones more inclined to watch sports or go shopping than to organize protests – have taken notice. They’ve also taken umbrage.

By overreaching and arrogantly ignoring the widespread public discontent with them and their policies, Democrats from the President on down have succeeded in awakening a sleeping giant – regular Americans. They are people who may often take their freedom for granted, but who don’t intend ever to let it be taken away.

They are the male and female heirs to the Sons of Liberty of Revolutionary times, the people who understand the danger of a government leviathan, and who insisted on “No taxation without representation.” After watching the politicians they voted into power last year ignore the common good, instead seeking only power and political advantage for themselves, they’re appalled – and perhaps even a little frightened.

Certainly, 2009 was a dark and disheartening year for lovers of economic and individual liberty. But if next year shapes up in accordance with current trends, the tide is about to change. With a growing recognition of the preciousness (and fragility) of liberty and a renewed appreciation of our founding principles, America is poised for a rebirth of freedom. Hail 2010: The Year of the Citizen.

Has a year of being ruled by a Marxist community organizer and the corrupt majority in Congress made tens of millions of Americans who are not usually much concerned about what their government does, suddenly become aware that they must sit up and take notice of what’s happening to their country? Realize for themselves that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom?

If so, the horrible year will have been worth living through. Obama will have served a worthwhile purpose after all.

We would like to believe that, but we read the signs differently and remain pessimistic.

Americans will be in deeper debt. Iran will have its nuclear bombs. Islam will wage its jihad ever more fiercely against the rest of us. Environmentalists will press on towards their impoverishing, collectivist, crushing goal of world government.

If the new Sons and Daughters of Liberty decide to fight it will be a tremendous battle. Do they have enough courage, passion, and tenacity for it?

We can only hope so.

With the Senate health care legislation, America is going over that precipice Obama shouted about with such eager excitement.

From REDSTATE:

With the passage of ObamaCare, the United States may be passing the point of no return on its downward journey to becoming a middling country, shorn of the sheen and substance of Exceptionalism. It will become but another average player in a United Nations of the World where the rhetorical goal of government is to ensure that everyone has their equal share, where no one ever wants for anything, where everyone lives in perfect harmony. This is not just because the basic elements of the legislation are sufficiently onerous as to cause America to spiral into a third world country, which it is, but rather by unconstitutionally forcing citizens to purchase a “good” in order to retain their liberty, it explicitly elevates the whims of the federal government above the rights of the citizens. Now that police power of the state can be used to force citizens to pay for health care, how long will it be before those same powers are used to force citizens to pay for food that is provided at the direction of the government, to pay for clothing provided at the design of the government, to pay for transportation or leisure activities provided or approved by the government?

Madison and the Founding Fathers understood that man is prone to anger, passion, faction and hubris and that neither the Constitution nor any government could change that. What the Constitution and its resulting government could do however was provide a framework where free men could live together as equals as they pursued their individual notions of happiness and basked in the exercise of their liberties. … [Obama] believes that with ObamaCare America will parachute into a land of milk and honey. He’s wrong. There is no parachute, there is no milk and honey and there will be no soft landing. A mirage of rhetoric, fables and lies hide the gritty reality of the soon to be rusted hulk of American enterprise that for two centuries was an engine that drove the advancement of the human condition. That train spent 212 years charging over the horizon, into the great unknown, into a universe of possibilities on the rails of a U.S. Constitution that let free men create and innovate and build a better world. With ObamaCare we will see the removal of those rails and with them the essence of American Exceptionalism. As the engine that has provided so much to so many careens, buckles and lurches forward without the constraints of Madison’s Constitution, we can no doubt expect that the vices which it was constructed to contain will begin to rear their ugly heads. …

Yes, but the future of America looks even worse than that.

Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York state, lists 10 dreadful provisions in the bill. Read them all here. They take away your freedom of decision. Even if you want to and can pay for treatment the government denies you, you may not be allowed to do so. If you are old, you may not be admitted into a hospital. If you are hospitalized you will have little comfort, because the egalitarians whose ideology is now beginning to shape our lives believe that austerity is best for us (though not for themselves).

Hospital budget cuts will mean shortages of nurses, equipment and cleaning staff. The president’s chief health advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, argues that hospitals in the U.S. offer more privacy and comfort than hospitals in Europe, and this “abundance of amenities” drives up costs.

And then there is this:

Money is allocated for adult preparation activities, including lessons on positive self-esteem and relationship dynamics, friendships, dating (and) romantic involvement (Senate bill, p.612).

Let’s ponder that for a moment.

Your friendships, your love life, the way you think and feel about yourself, is the government’s business?

Nosy little bureaucrats are charged with poking into your emotions and your intimate relations?

This is super-totalitarianism. Not even Mao or Pol Pot thought of reaching that deeply into the entrails of the people they trod on to squeeze them into conformity.

Invention depends on individuals, even if they work in teams, having new ideas and incentive to develop them.

Socialized medicine takes away incentive for innovators to advance medical research.

This is from Investor’s Business Daily:

There are many problems on the health care road the country is being forced to take. But one not getting as much attention as it should is the harm done to a critically important sector: medical innovation.

The high costs, restricted choices and eventual rationing that will result from the Democrats’ health care plan are being discussed to varying degrees by those who are uncomfortable with what’s being rushed through Congress. But the final legislation’s effect on medical innovation has been somewhat lost with so much attention focused elsewhere. So let us clarify:

The Democrats’ plan will slow innovation of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. …

If the profit motive is removed or weakened by legislation increasing Washington’s control of health care, drug companies and medical device makers will lose the incentive to bring lifesaving and life-enhancing products to market. For now, the rest of the world follows America because the socialist health care systems abroad discourage innovation. But the U.S. will fall back to the pack under a health care regime designed by the Democrats.