† Obama Is Just About Every U.S. President All Rolled Into One!: Time Magazine – once upon a time a respected newsmagazine - published a 2500-word fairy tale about how President Barack Hussein Obama has found “a role model” in President Ronald Reagan, although the two men “share a number of gifts but virtually no priorities”:

 

When Obama stood before Congress, the Cabinet and the American people to deliver his second State of the Union address, both the Reagan persona and policies put in appearances. …

 

At a glance, it's hard to imagine a President who had less in common with Reagan than the Ivy League lawyer from Hawaii who seeks larger federal investments, a bigger social safety net and new regulations for Wall Street and Big Oil. But under the surface, there is no mistaking Obama's increasing reliance on his predecessor's career as a helpful template for his own. …

 

Obama's affection for Reagan's political style carries with it a clear self-interest. White House aides gaze fondly at the arc of the Reagan presidency in part because they pray Obama's will mirror it. Both men entered office in wave elections in which the political center made a historic shift. Both faced deep economic downturns with spiking unemployment in their first term. Both relied heavily on the power of oratory. "Our hope," admits Gibbs, "is the story ends the same way." (Read "The Reagan Revelation.")

 

The Washington Times’ retort to Time is, essentially, “You wish”:

 

One of the least credible tales to come out of President Obama’s recent ideological makeover is the story that he is modeling his presidency on Ronald Reagan’s. …[T]o keep this preposterous public relations ploy in perspective, we have compiled a handy list to remind people how little these two men have in common [The Stiletto cut the list down to the three best ripostes]:

 

Reagan: We begin bombing in five minutes.

Obama: We begin golfing in five minutes.

 

Reagan: Made big government a bad word.

Obama: Made big government a bad dream.

 

Reagan: Stood up to the Soviets.

Obama: Bowed to the Saudis.

 

To which The Stiletto would like to add:

 

Reagan: Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.
Obama: I think when you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody.

 

Reagan: We have the duty to protect the life of an unborn child.

Obama: I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby.

 

Reagan: If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen.

Obama: It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

 

Reagan: There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

Obama: Issues are never simple. One thing I'm proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

 

Reagan: How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

Obama: I am a lefty. A lefty who wants to be remembered just like Ronnie.

 

† SOTU = Stuff Our Taxes Underwrite: If President Barack Hussein Obama really wants to “Win The Future,” Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Moore advises him to “bring spending down as rapidly as possible to reduce debt and finance reductions in tax rates—especially on investment”:

 

According to Barack Obama's State of the Union address, nearly every penny of the $2.5 trillion domestic budget—for installing solar paneling on the roofs of libraries, funding lavish teacher retirement funds, building high-speed rail lines to nowhere, erecting billboards advertising the stimulus plan -is a high-return "investment" in America's future.

 

Moore also has some advice for lawmakers:

 

As Republicans in Congress make decisions about what to fund and what not to fund, they should ask this fundamental question: Is this dollar of funding so valuable to the economy that it is worth borrowing another 40 cents?

 

Repubs know all too well what will happen if they defy the will of the people who put them in office, but Obama may be constitutionally (as opposed to Constitutionally) incapable of doing what needs to be done to WTF, as Daniel Henninger, Moore’s colleague at The Wall Street Journal observes:

 

For a while Tuesday night, it appeared Mr. Obama would replicate Bill Clinton's almost sci-fi ability to absorb his opposition's best ideas, such as welfare reform, and re-infuse them into the body politic as his own. But no. We got high-speed rail and solar shingles.

 

Barack Obama believes what he believes. The ideas he came in with are the ideas he will go out with, and nowhere in that speech was there a fully formed policy idea reflecting authentic belief in the private economy.

 

The recently promised and much-needed regulatory review was offset with a paean to regulation. "It's why we have speed limits." He somehow felt compelled to tell productive suburban families that he'll try to rescind the tax cut for them, the $250,000 "millionaires."

 

Once past the Reagan moment, the Obama policy menu had three entrees: clean energy, education and infrastructure. This was lifted, almost verbatim, from the Obama budget message two months into his presidency: "Our budget will make long overdue investments in priorities - like clean energy, education, health care, and new infrastructure." He extolled "new jobs that pay well" such as "installing solar energy panels and wind turbines."

 

This isn't a vision. It's an obsession.

 

Speaking of WTF, The Washington Times sniggers that it ‘s actually a blast from the past:

 

The president's new favorite expression is also the title of a 2005 book by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract With America,” which put less emphasis on the government for ushering in future prosperity and more on private initiatives, American businesses, families and faith. …

 

There are, however, some unsavory connections as well. Mr. Obama said, "If we want to win the future … then we also have to win the race to educate our kids." This echoes Communist revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s dictum, “We must win the youth if we are to win the future,” a common saying in Marxist circles, which also was adopted by Saddam Hussein, who notably lost his future. …

 

If anything, Mr. Obama’s presidency is killing the future. He is saddling the country with unsustainable debt. His economic policies have failed to put Americans to work. His stimulus plan was an orgy of cronyism. He has empowered unsupervised regulatory “czars” to pry into every aspect of American life. He has halted state attempts to secure our borders from the flood of illegal immigrants. He has fostered a business climate characterized by fear and mistrust. No amount of solar panels or hi-tech batteries will save this great nation from the disastrous impact of the Obama years and his WTF presidency.

 

The Washington Times also notes, “Whether it's "solar shingles" or smart grids, President Obama just can't imagine a world in which government isn't deciding how to spend your money.” But The WaPo points out – as The Stiletto did – that innovation depends more on individual moxie than on government money, citing space exploration and space science – from which federal funding is being sharply curtailed:

 

Although American dominance in space travel will temporarily end with the grounding of the last space shuttle this year or next, a new generation of wealthy entrepreneurs is providing a level of space innovation unmatched in the world.

 

They include numerous businesses founded by men who made their fortunes on Internet start-ups or other businesses that had nothing to do with space - including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, PayPal founder Elon Musk and Virgin Atlantic's Richard Branson.

 

"These are entrepreneurs who took their profits and put them where their longtime interests were - in space," said John Gedmark, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, which represents companies active in what is now called the space industry. "That personal excitement is what breeds innovation, which is the lifeblood of our industry."

 

† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race: In this Wall Street Journal op-ed DeForest Soaries, senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, NJ, chides the Conference of National Black Churches for a “preoccupation with weighing in on matters primarily political, while remaining silent on matters within its ecclesiastical reach” so as to distinguish the CNBC from “the many other civil rights gatherings that do much talking but solve few problems” that further the goals of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

 

Today the quest for the right to vote has been replaced by the need to motivate people to register and vote. The push to integrate schools has been replaced by the need to motivate black students to strive for academic excellence. The struggle for equal housing opportunities has become a struggle to ensure that blacks learn how to live financially responsible lives and recover from the foreclosure crisis.

 

As a pastor of a church that has a few thousand members, I would love to hear that the CNBC is challenging its membership to recruit 500,000 families to take in our country's half-million foster children. (My church's Harvest of Hope program has recruited 365 families to become foster parents to 700 foster children and adoptive parents to 225 children.) I would love to hear that the CNBC is instituting a financial-education program at each of its churches. I would love to hear that it is encouraging academic achievement by guaranteeing resources and mentors for every black student.

 

None of these problems will be solved by government policies alone. They need the attention of our churches and other community organizations.

 

When King announced on the eve of his assassination that he had seen the "Promised Land," he could not have imagined the levels of violence, school drop-outs, drug addiction and child abandonment that have become normal in black America. To get to the Promised Land, we will need to rebuild the infrastructure of the black family, the neighborhood and the church.

The question remains: Who will do this work?

 

There is one other very important mission the CNBC can undertake – ending slavery once and for all. Back in June 2008, The Stiletto urged black liberation theologians to "stop looking backwards at a past that the vast majority of white Americans and their ancestors living in other parts of the world had nothing at all to do with – not as slave owners, abolitionists, Confederate soldiers or Union soldiers – and to focus on where and how blacks and others are being enslaved today, and join forces with modern-day abolitionists to stamp out slavery for good worldwide." In Sudan alone, there is much work to be done, according to another Wall Street Journal op-ed by abolitionists, John Eibner, CEO of Christian Solidarity International-USA, and Charles Jacobs, president of the American Anti-Slavery Group:

 

The British suppressed black slavery in Sudan in the first half of the 20th century. But the practice was rekindled in the 1980s as part of the surge in Islamism in the region. In 1983, when Khartoum's radical leaders declared strict enforcement of Shariah law throughout the country, the Christian and tribalist South resisted. Shariah-sanctioned slave raids were used as a weapon to break Southern resistance.

 

Armed by the government in Khartoum, Arab militias would storm African villages, shoot the men, and capture the women and children. The captives were beaten and raped immediately. Some who resisted had their throats slit.

 

Taken North - roped by their hands into lines or carried individually on horseback - they were distributed to masters. Boys were used as goat and cow herders, little girls as domestics. As they grew, they became concubines and sex slaves. Slaves slept with the animals and were given rotten scraps from the masters' table. Boys were killed for losing a goat.

 

There is a racist aspect to this slavery. Blacks were cursed as Äbd (black slave) and kuffar (infidel). Many were forcibly converted to Islam. The North-South war, lasting 23 years, was ultimately declared a "jihad" by Sudan's Islamist President Omar al-Bashir.

 

The U.S.-brokered Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 ended the slave raids and confirmed the South's right to self-determination. But it failed to create a mechanism for the return of slaves.

 

Over 35,000 people, according to representatives of the Committee to Eradicate the Abduction of Women and Children, remain in bondage today.

 

† No One – Not Even Bush – Understands “The Bush Doctrine”: The Stiletto and The Heel braved the elements (notably, waist-high berms of snow and shin-deep puddles of muddy water one had to negotiate at many intersections) to see Colin Quinn’s "Long Story Short" - a 75-minute caffeinated history lesson about the rise and fall of the major empires of the world that is nearing the end of its limited run at the Helen Hayes Theatre. Quinn makes an observation that explains -better than most analyses The Stiletto has come across - why the Bush doctrine (the Kennedyesque iteration that was concerned with spreading democracy throughout the world, in particular, the Muslim world) failed: “We just assume everyone wants our way of life. But they want American-style democracy the way it looked in 1960, when it was the Beach Boys and The Mickey Mouse Club. Now, it’s Lil Wayne and Girls Gone Wild. Not everybody wants that.” And this is something to ponder as the Mubarak regime is unraveling in Egypt and we wait to learn whether the upheaval will plant the seeds of a secular democracy or enable another theocratic Islamic republic to take root.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (penultimate item, Restorative Capital Punishment): Lundbeck Inc., the sole U.S. manufacturer of pentobarbital, sent letters to officials in OH and OK protesting their plan to use fatal doses the sedative to carry out executions, because the drug is not intended for this use. Federal courts have upheld the use of pentobarbital to carry out death sentences. Both states are making the switch from the three-drug cocktail that includes thiopental sodium, because the anesthetic is in such short supply some executions have been delayed.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, A To Z Approach On Illegal Immigration In AZ): “Currently, Georgia, Mississippi, Indiana, Florida, Nebraska, Kentucky, Utah, Pennsylvania, Texas and South Carolina are among the states where Arizona copycat bills have been drafted, reports The Washington Post, but are unlikely to be enacted:

State budget deficits, coupled with the political backlash triggered by Arizona's law and potentially expensive legal challenges from the federal government, have made passage of such statutes uncertain.

 

In the nine months since the Arizona measure was signed into law, a number of similar bills have stalled or died, or are being reworked. Some have faced resistance from law enforcement officials who question how states or communities could afford the added cost of enforcing the laws.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Is Obama’s Birth Certificate Fake?): A bill introduced in the HI state Legislature meant to disprove birther conspiracy theories would change a privacy law preventing the release of birth records to anyone other than a close family member. The measure was introduced state Rep. Rida Cabanilla and four other Democrats but has not been scheduled for a public hearing, reports The Associated Press:

 

The idea behind the measure is to end skepticism over Obama's birthplace while raising a little money for a government with a projected budget deficit exceeding $800 million over the next two years. …

 

The $100 fee would help offset the extra work by state employees who handle frequent phone calls and e-mails from people who believe Obama was born elsewhere, Cabanilla said.

 

But the number of birther requests has been declining from the 10 to 20 weekly inquiries received early last year, according to the Department of Health.

 

"Requests have decreased significantly over the years. Currently we receive anywhere from zero to five per week," said department spokeswoman Janice Okubo.

 

If political trends hold up, on January 20, 2013 the matter will become moot and HI department of health employees will have one thing less to do.