The presidency of Barack Obama is full of funny things that need not follow any sort of logic. Images and ideas just pop in and out, without worry of inconsistency, contradiction or hypocrisy. It’s a fascinating mish-mash of strange heroes and bogeymen, this imaginarium of our president.

In the imaginarium, there are no revolving doors, earmarks, or lobbyists. So Peter Orszag did not go from being OMB director to a Citigroup fat-cat. Once chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel did not make $16 million for his well-known banking expertise. The more you damn the pernicious role of lobbyists and the polluting role of big money, the more you must hire and seek out both. Public financing of campaigns is wonderful for everyone else who lacks the integrity of Barack Obama who understandably must renounce such unfair impositions.

Those who now vote against raising the large Obama debt ceiling are political hucksters and opportunists; those who not long ago voted against raising the smaller Bush debt ceiling were principled statesmen. “Unpatriotic” presidents borrow $4 trillion in eight years; patriotic ones we’ve been waiting for can trump that in three…

The rest of the story via The Imaginarium of Barack Obama.

Throughout American history, citizens have been duped. It’s a word as old as the republic itself. George Washington, in his “Farewell Address,” warned about “dupes”—that is, those who, unwittingly, allow themselves to be deceived or misled by active adversaries of the United States.

That process accelerated after the Bolshevik Revolution and into the Cold War, when duping was done on a remarkable scale by crass propagandists in the Communist movement, with America’s liberals/progressives the prime target. Yet, the story does not stop there: Many of the same Americans manipulated during the Cold War have resurfaced in the battle against radical Islam, although the periods, and processes, are quite different.

Indeed, there are many ways to be duped. Sometimes, it isn’t a matter of manipulation as much as severe gullibility. As to that, few figures seem as illustrative as Jimmy Carter.

The rest of the story…

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The images steaming in from Haiti look like scenes from Dante’s Inferno.  The scale of the calamity is unprecedented.  In may ways, Haiti has almost ceased to exist.  The earthquake that will forever change that nation came as subterranean plates shifted about six miles under the surface of the earth, along a fault line that had threatened trouble for centuries.  But no one saw a quake of this magnitude coming.

The Rest of the Story:   Does God Hate Haiti? – AlbertMohler.com.

Hat-Tip:  The Volokh Conspiracy – Make Mine Freedom

via Daniel Henninger Says Barack Obama Will Radically Bind Americans to Government – WSJ.com.