Klaus Rohrich

A new wind blowing

Bob Dylan famously (and off key) sang, “the answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin’ in the wind.” It’s no longer blowin’ in the wind; it IS the wind and the wind has ushered in a new era in, as the Toronto Sun’s Sue-Anne Levy likes to call, Toronto’s Socialist Silly Hall. Those sleepy hog town burgers have finally opened their eyes and realized that there was life beyond social democracy and those who paid the piper were entitled to call the tune. While it wasn’t a clean Sweep through City Hall, eliminating the socialist elite altogether, it was a good start and a promise of a brighter future for taxpayers who had realized that David Miller’s brand of governance was for the benefit of his own leftist ideological allies like public sector unions and not for the benefit of the people who footed the bill for Miller’s largesse.

Liberals eat one of their own

I’ve never been a great fan of Juan Williams. One, because he comes across as really oily. The other is his willingness to bend himself into tautological pretzels in support of liberal points of view. His steadfast defense of Barack Obama’s motivation if not his policies always left one feeling lied to or violated.

Republicans undergoing a tectonic shift

The Republican Party is probably facing its most serious challenge in decades. At the heart of this challenge is a deep division between those who want to get along with what they describe as the educated class and those urging the party to return to the nation’s roots and reaffirm the founding principles of the Constitution. The former call themselves “moderate Republicans,” while the latter group is made up of Tea Party types.

Turning here into there

Anyone who dares to initiate a discussion about immigration to establish some sort of standards expected of immigrants is at risk of being labeled “racist” by liberal elites. Even if the discussion has nothing to do with race. Liberals, whose guilt complex has grown to psychotic proportions, insist that the imposition of standards on immigrants is an undesirable imposition on their rights motivated by racist sentiments.

Stimulating poverty

It isn’t surprising to learn that the number of people living below the poverty level saw a massive increase in the US over the past two years. Given that successive administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have continually promulgated policies that have had the opposite of their intended effect for the past quarter century, it is surprising that the poverty figures aren’t higher! What’s more these policies keep getting more radical with each successive administration and their shortcomings are evident to everyone but the policy makers.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf predicts violence

I know that everyone was shocked and surprised that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf told Soledad O’Brien on CNN yesterday that if the “Cordoba Initiative” mosque adjacent to Ground Zero were to be relocated, then violence would surely follow throughout the Muslim world. Who’d have thought it? Violence committed by Muslims?

A fatal error

Denis Healey, the late British Member of Parliament famously once said, “When you’re in a hole, stop digging.” It appears that President Barack Obama may not be familiar with that quote as his most recent action with regard to Gen. Stanley McChrystal will surely come back to bite him in the derriere.

Obama’s MacArthur moment

It’s not surprising that those in charge of the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan are critical of the Obama administration’s ability to run a war. The revelations about McChrystal and his staff made in an article in Rolling Stone Magazine aren’t earth shattering. That Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his staff are critical of the president and his advisors is likely the worst kept secret in the US today. A much more important question is what happens now?

Another crisis not wasted

Following the Rahm Emanuel playbook, President Barack Obama is losing no time in taking full advantage of the Gulf oil spill crisis to further his far left agenda. When he was addressing the nation from the oval office last week, his tone and demeanor were combative, as his speech was filled with words and phrases that alluded to warfare.

Why Felipe Calderon hates Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law

When Arizona’s tough new anti-immigration legislation was signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer the Mexican government took grave exception. Mexican President Felipe Calderon called the law and affront to human rights and accused Arizona of opening “the door to unacceptable racial discrimination.” The Mexican congress wasn’t far behind, using words such as “fascist,” “racist,” as well as “a perverse...law that generates hate.”

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.