Chump Change

Barack Obama's famous campaign slogan was "change". At the same time, the most important issue to his supporters and cultish followers was the Iraqi War. Today, President-elect Obama announced the re-appointment of Robert Gates, President Bush's Defense Secretary. Secretary Gates has overseen recent Iraqi War policy, including the surge. Thus, his reappointment is a refreshing surprise, because it suggests a victory of practicality over ideology. But the reappointment does not represent change. It represents continuity.

President-elect Obama has played his cards smartly. But his followers and supporters are chumps. They are suckers. Marks. The suckers include both his hordes of brown shirt-like young followers and the propagandists formerly known as the mainstream media.

I have suggested over many months that Obama's young supporters have been chumps. This younger cohort is a generation that does not read books and that considers Bill Maher to be an information source. Their teachers have not read John Locke. They have never heard of him.

One of my students, a gay activist, became upset with me a few weeks ago when I mentioned during a social occasion (I occasionally have a drink with my MBA students after class) that I thought that George Bush and Barack Obama represented the same interests. His anger was palpable. When I questioned this student, a product of elite universities, whether he had read anything about the Iraqi War; the dispute between Shias and Sunnis; or anything else about the Iraqi War, his answer was "no". When I suggested a couple of books to read, he was not interested. However, he became enraged when I suggested that there would be little difference.

America's failed democracy naturally flows from its failed educational system. Like the ignorant hordes that have supported socialism, fascism and communism, Obama's supporters emphasized slogan over substance, and viewed asking questions as to Obama's vital information and true intentions with venomous hostility. One of his supporters, who calls himself "Diogenes", has seen it so important to suppress any questions that he has come onto this blog repeatedly, hurling curse words and insipid invective such as "tin foil hat" any time that I have raised questions about Mr. Obama. He recently used several insults and curse words when I suggested that Americans need to read John Locke.

In early September I argued that Barack Obama would be a George W. Bush clone and in June, I had suggested that:

"Mr. Obama claims to favor change, yet he is allied with specific economic interests, specifically Wall Street. In 2008, Goldman Sachs so far has given $2.7 million to Democrats and less than $1 million to Republicans. Goldman Sachs's contributions to Democrats has exceeded those to Republicans every year since 1990. To assuage public concern about excessive Wall Street influence on Obama, America's off-the-charts-insipid media provide testimonies from 'principled' Wall Street tycoons like George Soros and Warren Buffett that Obama is for 'change'. Of course, Messrs. Soros and Buffett do not discuss how Obama's 'change' will influence their own economic interests."

It remains to be seen how far Mr. Obama's blithe, sociopathic lying goes and whether he carries it into realms that are potentially harmful to the United States. However, for now he seems to have made clear that change with respect to the Iraqi War is not a top priority for him. In this, he has played his millions of young supporters, including the MBA student, for chumps.

Supreme Court to Review Donofrio Case

Bob Robbins just forwarded this link to WorldNet Daily:

"Most Americans don't realize it yet, but this Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court will review whether Barack Obama is indeed constitutionally eligible to become the next president.

The justices will hold a conference on the question and consider the case for formal review.

The case is brought by Leo C. Donofrio against Nina Wells, the New Jersey secretary of state, and questions whether Obama is a "natural-born citizen" as required by Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution."

"If four of the nine justices vote to hear the case in full, oral argument may be..."

Read the whole thing here.

Indian Commandos May Have Killed Some Chabad Hostages

Dan Friedman sent me this tragic Jerusalem Post story.

Nov. 30, 2008

Yaakov Lappin , THE JERUSALEM POST

Col. Yossi Turgeman, IDF attaché to India, said that the two Israelis announced missing by the Foreign Ministry were not among the dead, Army Radio reported on Sunday evening.

Israelis murdered in Mumbai Chabad House to be laid to rest in Israel on Monday

Therefore, Turgeman assessed that the missing Israelis were not killed in the Mumbai terror attacks.

Earlier on Sunday, the Foreign Ministry announced that the number of Israelis unaccounted for in Mumbai had dropped to two, after contact was made with two Israelis thought to be missing.

The Indian commando raid launched to save the lives of Jewish and Israeli hostages at Mumbai's Chabad House may have inadvertently ended the lives of one or more of the hostages, the head of a six-man ZAKA team in the terror-stricken Indian city told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

Speaking by phone from Mumbai, Haim Weingarten, the head of the Mumbai ZAKA team, said, "Based on what I saw, [although] I can't identify the type of bullets in the bodies [of the victims], I don't think the terrorists killed all the hostages, to put it gently."

All six Jewish and Israeli hostages found dead in the Chabad House were killed by either gunshot wounds or shrapnel from grenade blasts, or both, Weingarten said, adding that he didn't know who threw or fired the grenades that wounded the hostages.

Although he lacked forensic tools to determine time of death, Weingarten said his team's observations led him to believe that "some of the hostages were killed on Wednesday [when gunmen first entered the building], some on Thursday, and some on Friday morning [during the start of the commando raid]."

After a prolonged delay, an air force transport plane carrying Israel Police forensics experts and a second ZAKA team took off for Mumbai on Sunday evening. A ZAKA source told the Post the plane would probably return to Israel with the bodies of the hostages on Monday night.

ZAKA officials believe that in a final act of love, the director of the Chabad House, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, wrapped the body of his wife Rivka in a tallit before succumbing to his own wounds during the final hours of the siege.

Read the whole thing here.

Jim Crum's Puzzling Questions

I cannot send any of my children to school without:

1) an official birth certificate
2) a full physical which includes medical history of any past and current conditions and medications prescribed by a physician.

Despite repeated and insistent requests to do so, neither have been furnished by Mr. Obama.

Or do the rules not apply to Mr. Obama?

JJC.