We could sure use a lot less Jane Harmon out here on the westside . . . hmmmm, one never knows ’cause as Ace reminds us, “. . . the basic operating theory this election: Virtually no Democrat is safe.”

From his keyboard to . . .

Philly requiring bloggers to pay $300 for a business license — Wow! That’s not anything we like to hear — hope it doesn’t become a trend. Wonder if it’s really for revenue generation or just a new means to control freedom of speech?

Mark Tapscott presents a quick list of facts to help us ward off the Democrat meme of how terrible the cost of the Iraq war has been and sure — it’s all Bush’s fault. Yawn.

* Obama’s stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War — more than $100 billion (15%) more.

* Just the first two years of Obama’s stimulus cost more than the entire cost of the Iraq War under President Bush, or six years of that war.

* Iraq War spending accounted for just 3.2% of all federal spending while it lasted.

Plenty more facts there so go and read it. In another piece, Mark highlights this little piece of financial terror:

* By 2020, half of all income tax revenues will go toward paying interest on a $23 trillion national debt.

Over at the Telegraph, they are discussing whether Obama believes that he’s bigger than the Presidency.

They might also be a glimpse of the future. For Obama, the crowning moment of his presidency have been speeches abroad – the statement in Strasbourg that America had been “dismissive and arrogant”, the address to the Muslim world from Cairo, the acceptance in Oslo of the Nobel Peace Prize.

In Berlin in 2008, Obama cast himself as a “citizen of the world”. He has dismissed the bedrock notion of American exceptionalism by describing it, also in Strasbourg, as little more than narrow patriotism. Elite opinion among liberal Ivy League types – of which Obama is the embodiment – holds that we are already living in a post-American world.

There are few Americans who see themselves as bigger than the presidency but Obama could well be one of them.

Uh . . . oh goody, another speech coming. Bated breath, not.

At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey drops this bomb:

Remember in December when the White House said it would make a “hard pivot” from health care to jobs? That “hard pivot” didn’t materialize until months later, and in a completely different form than one might have assumed. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration’s moratorium on drilling in the Gulf cost Americans 23,000 jobs — and that Barack Obama knew it when he ordered it:

Michelle Malkin has more on that, along with this quote from the Chamber of Commerce about another one of Obama’s pet projects:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce economist Martin Regalia on Monday said the tax increases advocated by President Obama would essentially kill any chance for an economic rebound.

“That’s what you’re suggesting, is a corporate bullet in the head,” Regalia said. “That is going to be a bullet in the head for an awful lot of people that are going to be laid off and an awful lot of people who are hoping to get their jobs back.”

Hang on tight kiddies . . . it’s a gonna be a wild one!

Just watched this at Iowahawk via a link from Ace:

My dad was a Navy guy in WWII, and if he was still with us I’d ask him if he was in Honolulu on that day, Aug. 14, 1945. If I ever get through reading and transcribing my dad’s letters to my mom, maybe I’ll find out. Richard Sullivan put this together from film that was shot by his father. Touching . . .

It’s getting to the point that every time I check Drudge, or watch Fox News, or even open the LA Times, I start to see red. Today, it’s even redder!

Obama Strongly Backs Islam Center Near 9/11 Site is the headline of a Friday NY Times article. No getting around that one with ever more befuddled backpedaling! At the sunset dinner on Friday, the iftar at the start of Ramadan, they quote him as saying this:

“I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground zero is, indeed, hallowed ground,” the president said in remarks prepared for the annual White House iftar, the sunset meal breaking the day’s fast.

But, he continued: “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.”

And, Obama’s aids told the NYT privately “he has always felt strongly about the proposed community center and mosque[.]”

Dudes and dudettes — ain’t very private now!

Why all the fuss? Why do it’s critics keep calling it the Ground Zero Mosque? Check this out and you won’t have any further questions about that. EternalVigilance remarks:

It should be mentioned that part of one of the hijacked planes went through the building in question. That makes it very much a part of Ground Zero.

Sarah Palin weighs in on her FaceBook page:

Legitimate Questions for the President

Mr. President, should they or should they not build a mosque steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3000 people? Please tell us your position. We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they? And, no, this is not above your pay grade. If those who wish to build this Ground Zero mosque are sincerely interested in encouraging positive “cross-cultural engagement” and dialogue to show a moderate and tolerant face of Islam, then why haven’t they recognized that the decision to build a mosque at this particular location is doing just the opposite? Mr. President, why aren’t you encouraging the mosque developers to accept Governor Paterson’s generous offer of assistance in finding a new location for the mosque on state land if they move it away from Ground Zero? Why haven’t they jumped at this offer? Why are they apparently so set on building a mosque steps from what you have described, in agreement with me, as “hallowed ground”? I believe these are legitimate questions to ask.

- Sarah Palin

Newsweek’s Farid Zakaria proclaims: Build the Ground Zero Mosque. Along the way he issues some crafty Liberal drivel about this being an excellent way to promote the moderation of Islam in America. Zakaria even uses a partial quote from historian and radical-Islamist-watcher Daniel Pipes to intimate that Pipes supports this position. Hardly, Pipes understands the true meaning of placing a mosque and Islamic learning center so close to radical Islam’s greatest hit against Western Civilization:

• Moslems have habitually asserted the supremacy of Islam through architecture, building on top of the monuments of other faiths (as in Jerusalem and Ayodhya) or appropriating them (e.g. the Ka’ba in Mecca and the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople)
{…}
May 7, 2010 update: A zoning board in lower Manhattan has approved the application by the Cordoba Initiative to build a $100 million Cordoba House two blocks from Ground Zero, the site of the former World Trade Center. This smacks of the same triumphalism noted in the first bullet point above.

Obama’s support for building this monstrosity on clearly, and even recognized by him, hallowed ground isn’t playing very well. And, Independent voters are shedding Democrats like a dog scratchin’ fleas.

Over at Ace, Laura W. picks apart an especially egregious and totally disingenuous part of Obam’s iftar speech, where he makes the claim, “Islam has always been a part of America’s story”, which seems to be some kind of theme with this guy. She calls his comment “so deceitfull” as to be a “laughable fraud.”

First of all, the term ‘a part of America’ needs some thoughtful defining. I think we can mostly agree that the implication is that the mere act of feting the Tunisian envoy during his diplomatic mission to the US is some sort of general inclusion of Islam into the American experience at that early date.

How? Merely through his temporary presence in our country? Even though we were in conflict with his state at the time?
{…}
This particular piece of history cannot be rewritten to suit current PC needs. The reasons for the envoy’s visit cannot be recast into some pap about multicultural understanding.

And this earliest merging of Islam into ‘the American story’- where we invade and punish them for their banditry- is not the sort of event someone with half a brain uses as a bragging point about American inclusiveness.

If you’re not familiar with Treaty of Tripoli and the story of America’s conflict with Islamic pirates, she gives a capsulized version, but way-too-much-info can be found here.

And, to wrap up this screed, I urge you to go to Hot Air and vote for your favorite Obamateurism of the Week. Mine ended up being the one in the lead. Heh!

In case your feeling a bit taxed, and who isn’t? Here’s a little chuckle or two from Chris Muir’s Day by Day cartoon:

Double heh!