Phyllis Schlafly writes that Obama has appointed 34 czars. There may be more. Some of them are called ‘advisers’ rather than czars, but the difference is hard to discern.

One of them, Van Jones, Green Jobs Czar  – who has come under scrutiny due to the intense and exciting efforts of Glenn Beck on Fox – is a Communist, a rabble-rouser (no, it’s not Barack Obama we’re talking about now, we’re still on the subject of Van Jones)  a racist, and a ‘Truther’.  There are others equally as revolutionary who have apparently slipped easily through any vetting process, or had none, and have moved into the White House. Examples (from Canada Free Press):  John Holdren, Science Czar, who has written about the advisability of forced abortions and sterilization; Cass Sunstein, Regulatory Czar, who has declared in Newspeak that ‘there is no liberty without dependency’; Ezekiel Emanuel, Health Czar, who wants government, once it controls the budget for everybody’s medical treatment, to be sternly thrifty with it for small children and old folk; Mark Lloyd,  Communications Diversity Czar, who wants the state to control the media and believes that  any discussion of freedom of speech is ‘a distraction’; Carol Browner,  Global Warming Czar, who wants world government.

Such as these form a constellation round the President. They constitute his actual as opposed to his official cabinet. To these he listens. Why should he not? He has chosen them himself.

The tax-payer remunerates them.

As we have said before, they should more suitably be named Commissars. They may be intended as the nucleus of the totalitarian government of an American Soviet Union that we suspect is the dream of the supreme community organizer of the United States.

Footnote September 6: News – Van Jones has been forced to resign.  Well done, Glenn Beck!

On September 1, George Will wrote that it was time to stop the war in Afghanistan. Broadly speaking, we agree with him – we have said that the war is pointless. (See A pointless war, August 20, 2009.) To us the most interesting part of the article was this:

The Economist describes Hamid Karzai’s government – – his vice-presidential running mate is a drug trafficker – – as “so inept, corrupt and predatory” that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, “who were less venal and less brutal than Mr Karzai’s government”.

We don’t trust the Economist, and the statement that people (who exactly? How does the reporter know?) yearn for the restoration of the warlords (did they ever go?) is prima facie unlikely. But that the Karzai government is corrupt, venal and brutal we fully believe. Also that his running-mate is a drug-trafficker. How many rich and influential Afghans are not well-connected to the opium industry, we wonder. And isn’t it like wondering how many rich and influential Saudis are not well-connected to the oil industry?

George Will’s article has been much discussed in the blogosphere. By far the best discussion of it, and of the Afghan war in general – the one with which we are in closest agreement – is by Diana West in Townhall:

Finally, some debate over U.S. war policy in Afghanistan. Or at least debate over George F. Will’s call to pull the plug on U.S. war policy in Afghanistan, headlined “Time to Get Out of Afghanistan.”

The negative response from conservatives was revealing. It showed that after eight years of America’s post-9/11 war efforts, which started out as President Bush’s vaguely named “war on terror” and never crystallized into a cogent strategy against the jihad driving the “terror,” ambiguity and confusion still cloud the prevailing thinking, from the conventional wisdom to war strategy.

Most conservative rebuttals ignored Will’s reckoning of just how grossly ill-suited Afghanistan is to the hallucinogenic U.S. policy of constructing a modern society out of dust as our military worms affection from a hostile population. Instead, they focused on the concept of leaving Afghanistan — a move I, too, have advocated since April in my column and at my blog as a necessary precondition to better repulsing global jihad. Such an effort is, or should be, a multi-level campaign to reverse jihad’s ultimate goal, which is to extend Islamic law by both violent and other means. In this larger context, Afghanistan is not only just one front, it is also a front too far.

Most of my conservative colleagues, however, see withdrawal from Afghanistan as surrender.

This assumption, based in the fallacy that U.S. forces are simply fighting an army called “the Taliban,” rather than struggling with a culture called Islam shared by enemy and civilian alike, makes sense only if withdrawing from Afghanistan means ending our efforts against global jihad. The point of withdrawal is not to stop destroying America’s active enemies in Afghanistan or elsewhere … The point of withdrawal is to stop trying to create an American ally out of Sharia-supreme Afghanistan, something we attempted at great expense in Sharia-supreme Iraq, and failed.

Of course, what animates and drives most conservatives today is their vision of Iraq as a “success,” and their desire to repeat that “success” in Afghanistan. What has become increasingly clear to me, however, is that an infidel nation cannot fight for the soul of an Islamic nation. This, in effect, is what our “nation-building” troops have been ordered to do both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let me rephrase: An infidel nation can indeed fight for the soul of an Islamic nation. It just can’t win it.

It also turns out there is nothing there for infidels to win. After six U.S.-intensive years, Iraq remains just another OPEC-participating, Israel-boycotting, Hezbollah-sympathetic, Sharia-supreme, anti-U.S. entity with new and improved ties to Iran. Why? Our belief systems, Islam’s and the West’s, are so diametrically opposed that our interests cannot intersect. Left and Right in this country, however, scrub this truth and its centuries of confirming history from all policy — an antiseptic way to view conflict in the world that will always miss the cure by ignoring the germs.

On this count, Will’s column is no different, never once contemplating Islam. Which is why his conclusion may be a little fuzzy. Describing his “offshore” alternatives to basing a massive army inside Afghanistan, Will identifies the key mission as “concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.”

I’m not sure what Will means by calling Pakistan “a nation that actually matters.” Certainly, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal “matters” because it could hurt us, and thus our national security demands an execution-ready plan to neutralize it. But Pakistan, a jihad-based culture, doesn’t “matter” in terms of fitting into an anti-jihad alliance — the ultimate goal, whether admitted or not, of efforts to work together. It can’t. Quick facts: Pakistan’s army’s motto is “Faith, piety and holy war in the path of Allah.” Seventy-eight percent of its people, the latest Pew Poll tells us, support the death penalty for leaving Islam. Not exactly our ideal match.

But we keep such politically incorrect facts out of focus. Then we struggle to see why things go wrong. More clarity is required. More debate is essential. Eight years after 9/11, this means finally reckoning with Islam — discussing jihad, analyzing Sharia, understanding dhimmitude — as a strategic factor in U.S. policy.

One thing we can be sure of: such a ‘reckoning with Islam’ will not happen on President Obama’s watch. He likes Islam.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The White House is facing mounting pressure from lawmakers to work harder to rally flagging public support for the war in Afghanistan.

With casualties rising, the administration is struggling to persuade voters that the war can be won or is worth the human and financial costs. Afghanistan is President Barack Obama’s top foreign-policy priority [is it really? I thought ending the unjustifiable Bush war in Iraq was that … Oh, and apologizing for America  – JB], but recent polls show that a majority of voters oppose the war for the first time since the conflict began eight years ago…

Mark Steyn said on the Hugh Hewitt Show:

MS: What was interesting to me in the account that I heard on Rush’s show earlier today, we had the guy who actually found the finger call in. And he said that this pro-Obamacare protestor had deliberately selected the oldest fellow in the counter-demonstration. In other words, he picked an elderly man, gray hair, bespectacled, stooped, much smaller than him. The pro-Obamacare protestor, when he was looking for some guy’s finger to bite off, didn’t go for any of the big guys, didn’t go for the guys his own age or his own size. And it was an interesting account. This senior is very lucky to have his finger restored to him, because the guy bit it off and then just basically spat it into traffic. So Rush’s listener happened to find it, and took it to the nearest hospital, which happened to be the hospital that this guy had been taken to.

HH: This is pregnant with symbolism. If he attacked the oldest person there, that’s rationing carried to an extreme and immediate step.

MS: Yeah, this is basically, we’re seeing freelance death paneling going on now. I mean, if you’re going to have death panels, then this is one of those situations where you’ve got to have it under government regulation, obviously. It’s like everything else in the new utopia. It’s got to be government regulated. If people are going to go around doing their own freelance death panels, the whole thing’ll go to hell.

HH: Well, you pointed out California can ill afford an outbreak of finger munching out here, because this is, reattachment surgery is not inexpensive.

MS: No, it’s not inexpensive, but on the other hand, it’s cheaper than finger reconstruction surgery, which is what the guy might have been in for if they hadn’t found the finger. I mean, the reality is, this is a very good example. When an old guy loses his finger, who cares? He’s not using it, he’s not contributing to society with his finger, what does it matter if his finger gets chewed off and tossed into traffic. It is interesting to me that when we hear these stories about how nutty the anti-health care, anti-Obamacare protestors are, that in fact all the individual explicit acts of totally insane violence, like the guy being beaten up in St. Louis, or this finger munching, are actually being presented by the nice, reasonable, moderate, liberal protestors. Make of that what you will.

From The Heritage Foundation (whose work we greatly appreciate):

According to the Polish daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, sources in the United States have confirmed that the Obama Administration has made the decision to abandon the U.S. anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, this news is not surprising at all. In March, President Obama “secretly” offered to give up the missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for Russia’s help in discouraging Iran from building nuclear weapons.

This is a grave mistake for several reasons. First, the decision to abandon the “third site” deployment of missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic violates President Obama’s pledge to support missile defense that is “pragmatic and cost-effective.” Ground-based missile defense is effective, affordable and available now. Second, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), alternatives to the third site do not provide a comparable level of defense. The CBO concluded that the estimated $9-14 billion 20-year cost of the third site was half of the estimated costs of a sea-based alternative. Third, reneging on our promise to Poland and the Czech Republic sends a terrible signal to our allies in the region. Abandoning our best missile defense option in Europe only encourages Iran to speed up their ballistic missile program so that they can get their threat in place before a European missile defense system is available. This abandonment is not simply a mistake, it is a sign of weakness to countries like Iran, North Korea and even Russia.

President Obama is passing up the opportunity to protect the region against Iran, assert our authority and power to protect less powerful nations and present a strong and united front to the world. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton assured the U.S. allies in the Middle East that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the U.S. will offer a “defense umbrella” to protect them. What does this mean in the context of Obama’s abandonment and proposed $1.4 billion cuts in the missile defense budget?

What does it mean?  Could it possibly mean that Obama does not want to protect Europe against Iran – or Russia? Or protect ‘less powerful nations’ at all? Or ‘present a strong and united front to the world’?

How much longer will  people tolerate the Green dictatorship?  How much longer will we permit human sacrifice on the altar of Environmentalism, one of the most sentimental and stupid cults of all time?

Among their many cruel ukases,  the Green pontiffs ordain that corn be turned into an expensive fuel called Ethanol rather than let cheap fuel be pumped out of the earth and sea, because the pumping process might harm some beast of the field,  fowl of the air, or monster of the deep. The result? Multitudes in Africa go hungry.

And now the destruction of food in America, as explained in this report by Ben Shapiro at Townhall:

In December 2008, the federal government decided that Fresno County, a farming-rich area which provides half of America’s vegetables, no longer needed water. The farmers whose ancestors built the canals to irrigate the Central Valley have been totally cut off from their water supply, even though they’re still paying bills for it. Hundreds of acres of prime farming land lie fallow, crops withered and dead. All because the federal government thinks that smelt — tiny 5- to 7-centimeter fish — are more important than human beings. It seems that these annoying little creatures have been filleted by the water pumping systems necessary to make irrigation possible. They are now endangered. As the Fish and Wildlife Service put it, “it is the Service’s biological opinion [! an intelligent opinion would serve far better – JB] that the coordinated operations of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project … are likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the delta smelt.” In other words, all water supply must be shut down, lest the world lose the incomparably valuable smelt… The prices of staple foods will rise all over the country as farmers plow the sun-scorched crops into the ground.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s take on this tyrannous economic outrage:

California has a new endangered species on its hands in the San Joaquin Valley—farmers. Thanks to environmental regulations designed to protect the likes of the three-inch long delta smelt, one of America’s premier agricultural regions is suffering in a drought made worse by federal regulations.

The state’s water emergency is unfolding thanks to the latest mishandling of the Endangered Species Act. Last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what is known as a “biological opinion” imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley and environs to safeguard the federally protected hypomesus transpacificus, a.k.a., the delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channelled away from farmers and into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land fallow or scorched.

For this, Californians can thank the usual environmental suspects, er, lawyers. Last year’s government ruling was the result of a 2006 lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other outfits objecting to increased water pumping in the smelt vicinity. In June, things got even dustier when the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that local salmon and steelhead also needed to be defended from the valley’s water pumps. Those additional restrictions will begin to effect pumping operations next year.

The result has already been devastating for the state’s farm economy. In the inland areas affected by the court-ordered water restrictions, the jobless rate has hit 14.3%, with some farming towns like Mendota seeing unemployment numbers near 40%. Statewide, the rate reached 11.6% in July, higher than it has been in 30 years…

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that he “doesn’t have the authority to turn on the pumps” that would supply the delta with water, or “otherwise, they would be on.” He did, however, have the ability to request intervention from the Department of Interior. Under a provision added to the Endangered Species Act in 1978 after the snail darter fiasco, a panel of seven cabinet officials known as a “God Squad” is able to intercede in economic emergencies, such as the one now parching California farmers. Despite a petition with more than 12,000 signers, Mr. Schwarzenegger has refused that remedy.

The issue now turns to the Obama Administration and the courts, though the farmers have so far found scant hope for relief from the White House. In June, the Administration denied the governor’s request to designate California a federal disaster area as a result of the drought conditions, which U.S. Drought Monitor currently lists as a “severe drought” in 43% of the state. Doing so would force the Administration to acknowledge awkward questions about the role its own environmental policies have played in scorching the Earth…

It’s like a bizarre story of some crazy nation that Gulliver happed upon in the course of his astonishing travels!

Now in the US, as always  in socialist states, the many, for whom the collectivist and redistributionist policies are ostensibly enacted, suffer; while the few who hold the the reins of power benefit beyond the dreams of avarice.

Tait Trussell reports at Front Page Magazine:

President Obama is adept at rewarding those who put him into office. And hard-left financier George Soros is emerging as a leader of the patronage pack.

A payback to Soros was due. As the chief moneyman behind left-wing political action committees like MoveOn.org, Soros, an early supporter of Obama, played an instrumental role in drumming up voter mobilization and political advertising on the novice candidate’s behalf. In no small part, Obama’s triumph in the Democratic primary over better-known rivals was a testament to Soros’s deep pockets and his political commitment.

Now it’s time for Soros to collect on his investment. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Obama administration has committed up to $10 billion to Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance oil exploration off of Brazil’s coast… The company just happens to be the largest holding in Soros’s investment fund. Soros’s connection to the company is no secret; he has been investing in Petrobras since 2007. A profitable venture, Petrobras has estimated recoverable reserves for the so-called Tupi oil field of between 5 and 8 billion barrels. With his billion-dollar loan, Obama has taken patronage politics to striking new level… The president has elected to help another nation with the same type of drilling that he opposes so vehemently for this country, and the reason seems to be Soros’s $811-millon investment in Petrobras.

The Petrobras loan may be a windfall for Soros and Brazil, but it is a bad deal for the US. The administration is prepared to lend up to $10 billion to a foreign company to drill off its coast, when it could bring in $1.7 trillion in government revenue, as well as create thousands of new jobs, by allowing drilling off the coast of the United States.

This is no empty speculation. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that oil exploration in the U.S. could create 160,000 new, well-paying jobs, as well as $1.7 trillion in revenues to federal, state, and local governments, all while fostering greater energy security. Federal data from the Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of Interior says the U.S. has enough oil and natural gas to fuel more than 65 million cars for 60 years, and enough natural gas to heat 60 million homes for 160 years. In fact, the government estimates that there are 30 billion barrels of undiscovered technically recoverable oil on federal lands currently closed to development. But rather than investing in the country’s energy future, the administration seems to be offering an expensive kickback to a political ally in a time of economic recession and high unemployment.

The oil deal stinks for other reasons, as well. For instance, there is the rank hypocrisy of Soros – an enthusiastic proponent of global warming theory and environmental liberalism – investing in the fossil fuels whose use he otherwise condemns – and doing so in part with the aid of taxpayer funds. For years, Soros has urged the adoption of a global carbon tax that would punish companies that contribute to global warming. But that didn’t prevent him from plowing money into Petrobras…

With his backing for a billion-dollar oil loan to a Brazilian company, the president has proven more generous to Soros than to the American voters who put him in office.

Even if its ruinous cap-and-trade intentions are finally frustrated, the radical left now governing America will proceed to ‘redistribute’ wealth – which means, to destroy it. New taxes will help to impoverish the nation and the world.

Investor’s Business Daily warns of the dire effects of a proposed tax on stock trades …

The AFL-CIO and congressional Democrats are proposing a one-tenth of 1% tax on all stock trades as a way to pay for things like infrastructure. This so-called Tobin Tax — named for Nobel prize winner James Tobin, who came up with the idea to lower volatility in the financial markets — would raise as much as $100 billion from investors. But it’s really nothing more than radical redistribution of wealth masquerading as fiscal rectitude… And when the U.S., Britain and other members of the G-20 meet later this month, they are being encouraged by “activists” — that is, wealth-hating leftists — to consider an international Tobin Tax on all financial transactions as a kind of social leveling device. This is the dream of all the global social engineers — a massive tax on wealth that could be used by unaccountable international bureaucrats for their grand schemes to make a better world. What will come of it is what has come from all international organizations of governance — incompetence, corruption, malfeasance and endless misery for those whom they supposedly want to help… Put a tax on stock transactions, and you tax creation of new businesses and new jobs… In short, it’ll prolong the recession, and you’ll be poorer now and in the future as a result. So will the rest of the world, by the way.

… and on US energy producers …

When lawmakers return to Washington, the Senate will take up legislation that would impose $31.5 billion in new taxes on America’s energy producers. These taxes will harm every aspect of our domestic energy industry, from producers to refiners and every supporting business in between… [and] further reduce America’s refining capacity — which supplies only 84% of domestic demand. It would also give a competitive advantage to foreign refiners, who would be unaffected by the provision. Reducing American refiners’ ability to bring products to market will transfer more American jobs and revenue overseas — the last thing our struggling economy needs… By levying a heavier tax burden on U.S. suppliers, domestic production will drop, and we will have to import even more oil. This will make the U.S. more dependent on foreigners to meet the nation’s energy needs. The government also plans to place new taxes on the important work our energy producers do around the globe. Congress wants to change the rules that apply to certain international earnings called foreign oil and gas extraction income, and foreign oil-related income. These proposed changes would burden the industry with billions in new tax obligations over the next decade… Ultimately, American workers, businesses and consumers will bear the burdens of new taxes on the energy industry…

One of our readers, Nietrick, has raised a very important question: who are acceptable political fellow travelers ? The US has a two party system, so if power to make law is desired, we are left with a choice between the GOP and the Democratic Party.   I would guess that many atheists are Democrat, because they associate Republicans, or conservatives generally,  with the religious.  And statistically they would be right. But they must also have an ideological leaning towards collectivism, and an anti-free-market, authoritarian government. (Perhaps the bias is inspired by the wish to squash religion.)  For an atheist to consider himself a Republican, the free-market, individual freedom and  small (federal) government principles must be of paramount importance. If the religious vote Republican because they want government either to legislate religious values, or because it is more likely to support values that are traditionally in line with religious beliefs (heterosexual marriage, pro-life, creationism), does the GOP become a hostile place for a rational, free-market atheist?  No.  Leaving out the extreme religious agenda (establishing a state upon a constitution based on fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible),  political policies attached to marriage and abortion should be decided at the State level. The GOP has been a strong supporter of States’ rights precisely because it allows local majorities to decide social issues – and therefore allows for the most self-determination, and diversity. Should Kansas decide to demand creationism be taught in schools, foolish as it is, it has only local effect, and individuals are still free to work around it. Meanwhile, other states will ban creationism from science class to another forum, or altogether. Given the need for qualified scientists, I believe that the creationist jurisdictions will fade away.  Indeed,  I believe that the free market permits the free market of ideas, and backward leaning ideas will be crowded out as they always eventually have been, by innovation and progress, which occur only under free-market and individual liberty systems. For these reasons, I believe that for atheists who want rationality to flourish and individuals to arrange their lives as they will (within the law),  the GOP is the right choice, although there are more atheists on the other side. I would also add that the left desires a uniformity of opinion, which we are seeing propagandized nationwide in schools, whereas the right likes  genuine diversity of ideas.

C. Gee  September 2009

With his usual clarity of perception and expression, Thomas Sowell writes in an article titled Suicide of the West? (read it all here):

Those who are pushing for legal action against CIA agents [as is US Attorney General Eric Holder] may talk about “upholding the law” but they are doing no such thing. Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the Geneva Convention gives rights to terrorists who operate outside the law.

There was a time when everybody understood this. German soldiers who put on American military uniforms, in order to infiltrate American lines during the Battle of the Bulge were simply lined up against a wall and shot– and nobody wrung their hands over it. Nor did the U.S. Army try to conceal what they had done. The executions were filmed and the film has been shown on the History Channel.

So many “rights” have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don’t meet the terms of the Geneva Convention, then the Geneva Convention doesn’t protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you.

That should be especially obvious if you are part of an international network bent on killing Americans. But bending over backward to be nice to our enemies is one of the many self-indulgences of those who engage in moral preening.

But getting other people killed so that you can feel puffed up about yourself is profoundly immoral. So is betraying the country you took an oath to protect.