Klaus Rohrich

Someone should tell the Democrats John Maynard Keynes is dead

Paul Krugman, the New York Times’s Nobel Prize winning pet economist, has it dead wrong when he claims that the so-called stimulus spending package was too small to make a difference. Au contraire, the package was so big that it made a huge difference in slowing America’s economic recovery, as government soaked up all available capital and taxed, borrowed and spent on initiatives that did not improve the economy by one iota.

A silver tongue in a mealy mouth

To say that President Barack Obama speaks “with the tongues of men and angels” is to understate his skill as an orator, as he is likely the most accomplished public speaker to hit the American political scene in two generations. Yet the context of his words is more akin to a “sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal” as most of his utterances seem contrived and mechanical. The jokes Rush Limbaugh used to make about Obama’s teleprompter weren’t that far off the mark, given the disconnect between what Obama says and what he actually does.

The banality of evil

In 1963 Hannah Arendt published a book entitled Eichman in Jerusalem, in which she coined the phrase, “the banality of evil”. Her thesis was that great evil isn’t necessarily perpetrated by fanatical sociopaths, but often comes at the hands of the most ordinary individuals. Citing the Holocaust as an example of how great evil can be wrought by even the most mundane of individuals, Ms Arendt’s book should serve as a reminder to civilized individuals worldwide that today’s intensely evil people can be quite unremarkable.

Hu Knows Wen?

After it was proven beyond any doubt that North Korea was responsible for attacking and sinking a South Korean corvette, which killed 46 sailors, civilized nations around the world took immediate and resolute action to punish those responsible.

A German beer garden at Auschwitz?

Friends and family members of those killed during the 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center were stunned to learn that construction on a 13-story Islamic center and mosque was underway just two blocks from ground zero. In fact, the site, which was home to the former Burlington Coat Factory damaged during that attack, is located on Park Place and the project is sponsored by the American Society for Muslim Advancement, in collaboration of the Cordoba Initiative.

The importance of hate

Mankind’s creator instilled some fairly important and in some cases fairly unpleasant checks and balances into organisms to ensure their chances for survival. Among these checks and balances are emotions, which are felt at a visceral level and help organisms detect threats at a subconscious level through various senses.

The Constitutional right to be an illegal alien

To hear the Latino lobby tell it, Arizona’s tough new state law passed to halt illegal immigration into that state, is just short of establishing concentration camps for Mexicans. Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderon claims the law “opens the door to unacceptable discrimination” and many liberal pundits in the US claim the law is unconstitutional because it impinges on the federal responsibility of protecting the US border. Others claim it opens the door to racial profiling, as surely no white American who was stopped by police in Arizona would be asked to provide valid proof of legal residency.

A new civil rights movement

Many Americans may not recall the civil rights movement of the 1950s, 60s and 70s that ultimately put an end to Jim Crow laws and attitudes in America and created equal opportunity for everyone regardless of race. Individuals Like Rosa Park, Medger Evers, Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King squared off non-violently against the likes of Selma Police Chief Bull Connor, Neshoba (Mississippi) County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and his deputy Cecil Ray Price. Their prime pursuit was the perpetuation of racism and segregation, a fight that they rightfully lost.

The politics of red herrings

Barack Obama and his sycophantic Democrat Party are attempting to play the American people like a musical instrument. Only problem is that, as a band, Obama and the Democrats are tone-deaf, as is proven by this week’s Pew Research poll that shows eight out of ten Americans do not trust the government.

A case for revolution

Following the Democrats’ undemocratic passage of Obamacare, a number of Americans decided to take their anger and disappointment to the next level. Members of Congress, both Democrats and Republican, received threats, had office windows broken and one Republican even had a bullet fired through his window. Never failing to grasp an opportunity for political gain, no matter how tenuous, Democrat functionaries blamed Republicans and their “shadowy right wing supporters” for all the violence, despite the fact that members of both sides were on the receiving end. And like a trained poodle, House Minority Leader John Boehner condemned the violence.

What’s wrong with David Frum?

Last week, following passage of the Democrats’ much-hated healthcare bill, David Frum penned an article on his web site stating that Republicans and conservatives had suffered their “most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s”. The article went on to explain that the Republican Party had caved to its intransigent lunatic fringe headed by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and would prove to be the party’s undoing.

How much did Obama’s two million jobs cost?

Last week on the anniversary of the enactment of the Obama stimulus bill, the president bragged about having saved or created some 2 million jobs thus far and said that the stimulus was on target to create or save 1.5 million more jobs, bringing up the estimated total to 3.5 million jobs saved or created.

Islamists suffering from paranoid schizophrenia

Last weekend an Islamic conference on the “Media War on Islam” was held at the Islamic Society of York Region, just north of Toronto. The function, which was attended by some 300 Muslims, focused on complaints that Western media were biased against Islam and that a vast conspiracy was in play to discredit that religion and its followers.

“A second depression is no longer a possibility”

These were the words that most struck me as particularly spurious when President Obama crowed about the success of his stimulus plan on the anniversary of its enactment. While it’s unclear whether he was referring to 1929 or 2008 as being the “first” depression, what is clear is that a second, much deeper recession is just around the corner and this one will be the direct result of Mr. Obama’s policies.

A legacy of failure

It’s very difficult to keep track of all of Barack Obama’s plans and initiatives as they assume a chimeric quality, keeping Americans wary and guarded, lest another attempt at a costly and intrusive program originates from the chastened, but unbowed Democrats. It’s clear that the American people are most concerned with the economy, and that message seems to have finally penerated the President’s tin cochlea and now appears to be working toward his brain. Recent pronouncements following the tectonic shift in the Senate indicate that the President is promising to focus on “job creation”. Only problem is he’s attempting to create jobs through more stimulus spending.

The bare facts

Like cornered rats, when all else fails, Democrats often go nuclear in their attempts to survive. So it appears that a story surfacing in, of all places, the on-line version of The Kansas City Star, purports to lay bare the naked truth about newly elected Senator Scott Brown (R-MA). The blog post features a photo of the June 1982 version of Cosmopolitan wherein the future senator appeared in the buff on a centre spread along with the caption “America’s sexiest man.”

Turning voodoo into rocket science

The idea that there are people who actually believe that governments create wealth and political leaders who claim that we can spend our way to prosperity using borrowed money has always fascinated me. After all, there is plenty of empirical evidence going back to the founding of the nation that gainsays these conceits. Yet every so often a perfect storm of voter credulity, hatred for the incumbent and misguided idealism combines to create governments like the one currently running the nation. That’s how America wound up electing a cabal of socialist politicians bent on “fundamentally changing the face of America,” whether Americans want it changed or not. And of course, today all political change involves economics, which brings me to the realization that what passes for economics in Washington these days is a lot closer to faith healing than it is to that time honored social science.

Are the rats jumping ship or being thrown overboard?

The announcements this week, all on the same day, that Democrat Senators Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan and Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, also a Democrat, will not seek reelection looks like a case of rats jumping a sinking ship. But it could also be a case of the rats being thrown overboard by the Democrat leadership as polls are indicating that their chances of being reelected in their respective states are somewhat less than an ice cube has in hell.

No smoking gun?!

It seems the only way the Obama Administration will be able to spot terror, er, sorry, “human caused disaster” suspects is if they saunter into an airport pushing a shopping cart loaded with bombs, fuses, guns, ammo and box cutters. At least that’s the impression one gets listening to the various administration officials blithely attempting to explain away the terrorist attack against a Northwest Airlines plane over Detroit on Dec. 25.

It wasn’t a “failed” terrorist attack

The drama that took place over Detroit on Christmas Eve, after one Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was prevented from blowing up a Northwest Airlines plane inbound from Amsterdam has been dubbed a “failed” terrorist attack by the former mainstream media. But the truth is, that attempt to blow up the plane in midair was every bit as successful as if the bomb had detonated and blown the plane and all aboard to smithereens. V.I. Lenin said, “The purpose of Terrorism is to terrorize.” And terrorize the Yemeni contingent of al Qaeda did in this so-called “failed” effort.