A primer is something that provides elementary lessons; it teaches the basics. There is a segment of the American public that needs a primer on what happens when the government tries its hand at directing the economy. Personally, I think the lessons are quite obvious, but ignorance is widespread.

The first lesson is that our political leaders [depending on who is in charge, of course] often believe that government spending is the key to prosperity. In fact, President Obama has stated this explicitly. Now if the concept of spending one’s way to prosperity seems a trifle contradictory to you—well, that means you have a grasp of how logic works. That’s not always the case with the government. It would be nice if Obama and his allies would at least admit they have a logic problem. Perhaps they some help in discovering this.

I guess some people never do learn to take personal responsibility for anything. That’s another one of those basics we need to learn, by the way.

Lesson #2 is that instead of learning from the mistakes of out-of-control spending, the government decides to solve the problem by allowing even more spending.

There, problem resolved.

A third lesson is that it doesn’t matter if a program goes bankrupt. The best thing to do is simply ignore reality. Life is less stressful that way.

Finally, government never gives up on its plans to take over more and more of the economy, no matter how awful the idea, how resistant the public is to it, or how dead it seems.

I hope this primer has been helpful. Feel free to spread the word.

Before I start, I want to acknowledge the fact that a camera can catch anyone in a pose that is unflattering. We probably all have pictures we would like to burn.

So, that point is made.

Regardless, if someone is continually caught in a certain pose, it could be that he or she has a habit of striking said pose. In the case of President Obama, he has the tendency to stick his chin in the air and come across as someone who is above it all—particularly the peons upon whom he has deigned to bestow his blessings. In other words, he comes across as arrogant quite often. The first picture is from campaign days. But there are others.

In fact, here are two more from his State of the Union speech on Wednesday. Mark Steyn, in a comment in National Review, flashes his usual wit on this topic:

One problem . . . is that upturned chin. Just as a matter of angles, it looks wrong on TV. So it would be a problem for Hillary or McCain or Ron Paul or whoever would have won. But it’s worse for Obama because it plays into the aloof-and-arrogant meme. I don’t know why he does it. Are the prompters notched up a hole too high? What’s the deal? Why doesn’t one of his supersmart advisers get out the wrench and lower them?

We don’t have to speculate too much, though. Pictures and words together give us a pretty accurate measure of the man.

There were many bets placed on which words or phrases he would use most often. Those who predicted that his favorite word would be “I” win the prize. Never has a president been so self-centered. He speaks and acts as if he is the embodiment of the nation. There have been presidents who truly did embody the nation, but part of the reason they were perceived in that way was their humility. The prime example for me is Ronald Reagan.

In his State of the Union speech, Obama never once really took the blame for anything. He scored the Supreme Court for allowing corporations to give to political campaigns [as the Supreme Court members sat immediately in front of him---rather unprecedented in a speech like this] and castigated “Washington” for politics-as-usual. Well, wait a minute here. Just what is this nebulous “Washington” to which he refers? Who controls the executive and legislative branches? Isn’t it Mr. Obama and his confederates?

Some will say he did place blame on himself, but consider the context: he only took responsibility for not explaining his healthcare “reform” clearly enough. Really? He has been everywhere explaining it for months. No president has given so many interviews as this one. The nation is practically complaining of a new syndrome: Obama Fatigue.

The subtext for this personal “fault” is that these poor Americans just cannot understand the intricacies of his wisdom unless he speaks in simple language—you know, lower himself to their level.

No, the public understood his healthcare plan quite well. They rejected it precisely because they did understand it.

Three more years.

To the great chagrin of liberals throughout the nation, Sarah Palin is once again front and center in American politics.

Since resigning as governor of Alaska last July, she has built a Facebook following of over one million. She has used that vehicle to post her thoughts on a number of high-profile national issues. Her posts have been direct and based on analysis of public policy that relies on excellent academic research. This obviously has been her platform to make it clear that she is not a lightweight in the policy realm.

As if that weren’t scary enough for those who don’t like her or her policies, she now has completed her memoir of her life thus far, which includes pointed remarks about the presidential campaign last year.

The title of the book, Going Rogue, is appropriate for someone who tackled the entrenched political interests of her own home state, and who shook the political world in a way seldom seen after her selection as the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

The subtitle, An American Life, is precisley what Ronald Reagan called his memoirs. Maybe that’s intentional as she tries to position herself as the heir to the Reagan legacy. Even before the book was released, pre-release orders shot it to the top of the bestseller list.

What’s just as fascinating is that the Associated Press put eleven “fact-checkers” to work on it, attempting to undermine her credibility. None of the points they have scraped together amount to much, but they certainly tried.

By the way, did the AP [or any other news organization, for that matter] hire a bunch of fact-checkers for Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth? The answer is easy: no. That’s a shame because they would have had a field day.

How about both of Barack Obama’s books? Did the media descend upon them to pick them apart? Do you remember all those reports in the mainstream media about the discrepancies they found? The answer is easy again: no and no.

I won’t belabor that point. The double standard is well established. Only those who refuse to see it remain blind.

I plan to get Palin’s book and read it carefully. I’ll wait a while, simply because I’m in the middle of other books right now, not to mention a semester that’s heating up as we go into the final weeks. When I do read it, I’ll be glad to offer a review.

Meanwhile, don’t wait for me. Get it yourself and judge for yourself. Is she the new Reagan or not?

President Obama’s news conference Wednesday night [which some have called a speech in the guise of a news conference, since he doesn't allow many questions--his answers go on forever] was supposed to be about healthcare. Well, most of the time was spent on that, but at the end, he allowed himself to get drawn into a situation of which, as he admitted, he had limited knowledge. That didn’t stop him, though, from coming to a conclusion.

Gates Being Arrested

The picture on the left is of Henry Louis Gates being arrested at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Here’s what happened. Gates, a Harvard professor, returned home from a trip and had trouble getting into the house. To a passerby, it looked as if he was trying to break into a house, since the person didn’t know he was the owner. So, the concerned citizen called the police to check on it.

When the police arrived, they asked Gates for identification. Gates, it seems, became irate over being questioned and started accusing the officer in charge of being a racist. According to the officer, Gates became abusive and wouldn’t follow any instructions. He was summarily arrested for refusing to cooperate due to his angry behavior. By the way, did you notice the black policeman in the photo? Is he racist, too?

Officer Crowley

That officer, pictured here, is James Crowley. He adamantly denies being a racist. All of his coworkers back him. In fact, everyone who has ever known him can’t believe such an accusation. He even teaches a racial profiling class at the police academy. Some of his comments suggest he voted for Obama. Yet now he is accused of racism.

Let’s dig deeper. Just who is Henry Louis Gates, besides being a professor at Harvard? Well, he is the chairman of Afro-American Studies. That may sound nice, but these programs are usually avenues for spreading anger, discontentment, and resentment over past wrongs committed against African-Americans. Those wrongs are real, but that kind of response to them is certainly not an example of Christian forgiveness.

What does Gates believe? He says that persons of color should not be forced to homogenize themselves into “an America in cultural white face.” What ever happened to the original goals of the civil rights movement, where we all learned to live together, not dividing ourselves into racial groups?

As reported in Townhall.com,

Gates identified what he called “a rainbow coalition of blacks, leftists, feminists, deconstructionists, and Marxists” who had entered academia and were “ready to take control.” It would not be much longer before that day came, he predicted. “As the old guard retires,” Gates proclaimed, “we will be in charge. Then, of course, the universities will become more liberal politically.”

So, we have a committed Marxist who wants Marxist thought to take over the universities crying out that he is being abused by racist police. This is an old tactic. It’s almost as if the police checking on what might have been a home break-in gave him the golden opportunity to become a celebrated victim. It was an opportunity someone of his mindset probably couldn’t pass up.

Yet what did our president say about the situation? He decided that the police “acted stupidly.” How does he know? Well, it turns out that Gates and the president are good friends. You mean our president is a good friend of a Marxist? Who would have ever guessed?

 For him to insert his opinion into this situation without all the facts is patently unpresidential. But that is becoming par for the course.

This is another one of those busy times, so once again I’ll let the political cartoons carry the commentary. Enjoy.

This administration is a cartoonist’s dream.