NEOAVATARA

Democrats are waking up from their ‘Obama dreamin’, and all of a sudden, realize they are in serious trouble politically.

Well, you know it is bad when ‘ole snake eyes’ is calling for armageddon.  If you want to see the key quote, go to the 5 minute mark…but in reality, the entire ABC/Washington Post poll is spelling ‘D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R’ for the Democrat Party.

And heck, look at liberal outlets like Time, and what they have to say:

Under pressure, the Democrats are cracking. On both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, there is a realization that Nancy Pelosi’s hold on the speakership is in true jeopardy; that losing control of the Senate is not out of the question; and that time, once the Democrats’ best friend, is now their mortal enemy.

Democrats hinged their re-election hopes on two critical factors:  Obamacare’s ability to woo the public into believing the ‘greatness’ of this President; and a recovering economy.

Neither have turned out the way that they planned.

So now, Democrats have two arrows left in their quiver for their November hopes.  One, that Republicans will shoot themselves in the foot (frankly, quite likely, from what I have seen of the current crop of Republicans).  The second, however, is less likely:  that Barack Obama will be able to wave his magic wand and spell some miraculous electoral success by pure will of force.

In the inner circles of the Democrat Party, you hear that the polls simply reflect bad luck.  It was Bush’s fault that the economy is so bad; the Republicans stopped the Democrat agenda; and that the public simply is angry, and not really supportive of the Republican agenda.

Well, they can blame Bush all they want, but the public elected Mr. Obama and the Democrats because they were under the belief that they would bring competence to Washington.  Shockingly (but no surprise to conservatives) they appear even more incompetent than their predecessors.  And to top it off, they spend like there is no tomorrow.  A bad combination.

As for Republicans stopping the Democrat agenda…we could only be so lucky.  I almost wonder if the polls would be closer if the Republicans only had stopped Obamacare, the Stimulus, and FinReg.  Instead, they passed…much to the horror of the majority of the public.  It is specifically the Democrats agenda which has turned the public, especially independents, against them.

As for the Republican agenda…sadly, there is not really one.  Republicans, other than Paul Ryan and a few scattered others, have not put forward a plan to carry out their promise of narrowing the deficit gap, while at the same time promoting economic growth.  I do, however, believe that a coherent and fiscally sound conservative agenda is just what the doctor ordered.  When you look at the few politicians that have been successful during the current economic downturn, such as Gov. Christie of New Jersey, they have made tough decisions that cut costs but also spread out the fiscal pain, while avoiding the tax increases that would forestall the economic recovery.

So, November looms large for both parties.  The real question is not how badly Democrats will lose.  The better question is, are conservatives ready to use the opportunity?

Michel Germaneau was beheaded by Al Qaeda members in North Africa

“We are at war with al-Qaida,” Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Tuesday, a day after President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the death of 78-year-old hostage Michel Germaneau. The killers will “not go unpunished,” Sarkozy said in unusually strong language, given France’s habit of employing quiet cooperation with its regional allies—Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Algeria—in which the al-Qaida franchise was spawned amid an Islamist insurgency.

So, there is an obvious question of course.  Um, where were you guys for the better part of this past decade?

The French, under the previous leadership, went out of their way to obstruct American anti-terrorism efforts.  Mostly, this was secondary to the disagreement over Iraq.  But even with issues ranging from Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran and Indonesia, the French and Americans have rarely been on the same page.

Now, the simple killing of an elderly French humanitarian worker has awoken the fear of the French public.   It is quite ironic…many more French actually died on 9/11 (about 30, according to different reports), but they saw no reason to act at that time.

It is a very European reaction; when confronted, back away.  Spain did something similar.  When they were attacked by multiple bomb attacks on their train system by Al Qaeda on 3/11/2004, 191 people in Madrid died with thousands injured.  But ultimately more significant, it was the day before their national elections; it was a clear political message. And Al Qaeda achieved all their goals in that incident:  they forced a change in the Spanish government, and forced the Spanish military to pull out of Iraq, where at the time they were the third largest member of the international force.  Spain has since maintained a low profile as videos by the al-Qaida franchise regularly call for the conquest of “al-Andalus”—a reference to the period of Muslim rule of much of Spain in medieval times.

France, in turn, has been quite lucky. France is a potential hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism.  The French have a huge Arab population, one of the largest in Europe.  Their Arab minority is also poor, uneducated, and therefore, quite pliable to outside rhetoric.  They have long been blind to the threat.  It is frankly surprising that they have not had more home grown terror attacks before now, especially with their strong antimuslim laws such as banning burqas.

How these events will affect the global war on terror (or whatever the Obama Administration wants to call it today) is uncertain.  The French are still unlikely to aid us in any broad attack on terrorist interests.  However, the French do have intelligence assets, especially in the Middle East and Africa, which could be quite beneficial if used correctly.  But the French move against terror groups in North Africa can only be thought of as a sign of progress, even though it comes on the heels of a tragedy.

Story of the Day

In an amazing release of tens of thousands of documents on the website Wikileaks.org, along with publication in the Washington Post and New York Times, provides the public with never seen documentation of the realities and failures in the Afghanistan War.

The White House immediately condemned the release. White House National Security Adviser James Jones issued a statement that begins: “The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security.

Now, first, anyone with a brain needs to condemn this leak.  Much like past leaks, this does more damage to the country and the military than good.   Uncontrolled information kills soldiers.  That is not an understatement.

That said, I really don’t know why the media is in an uproar about this, in regards to the conflict itself.  The information was either widely known or inferred.   We know the war is going badly, and nobody in the higher echelons of the military are in the ‘cloud of war’ on the subject.  David Petraeus, now in charge of Afghanistan, has said that we may not be losing the war, but we certainly are not winning.  That is about as accurate a statement as anyone can make.

Is anyone surprised that Pakistan is playing both sides in this conflict?  Are we really surprised their intelligence service, the ISI, is covertly supporting the Taliban?  Do we believe we are winning and holding more territory?  Anybody want to wager that the Afghans have bought into the democracy, and willing to fight and die for the survival of their country?  Who among us really thinks we have been winning this fight?

So this is, other than the potentially damaging leak of classified information, much ado about very little.

Politically, it is another issue for the Obama Foreign Policy machine.  At a time when public support for the Afghan war is lagging, a big news story about past failures (under the Obama Administration, no less) is less than helpful.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs downplayed the event, other than the crime that likely occurred.  And when asked about the similarity between the WikiLeaks/Afghan story versus the closest historical analogue, the Pentagon Papers vis-a-vis Vietnam, Gibbs bristled.  “I don’t see they are in any way comparable,” Gibbs told reporters at today’s briefing.

Daniel Ellsberg, famous for releasing those same Pentagon Papers (and ironically, a ‘friend’ of President Obama’s), agreed…sort of.

“These documents are not the Pentagon Papers – we still await their equivalent for Afghanistan,” Ellsberg told the FT’s Ed Luce. “But they do add to the strong doubts that most of us have about a war that has cost us more than $300bn (€231bn, £194bn) so far in which the Taliban only appears to get stronger with each passing year. They reinforce the question: What is the point of this war?”

Not exactly the supportive comment Obama hoped for, I am guessing.

In short, this is not new news.  It is the same old bad news.  Obama and his people have yet to course correct in regards to the Afghan war, a war, which I agree, must be won.  But Obama has scaled up the war to a great extent, and the mission creep is now more obvious than ever.  The Wikileaks story will simply fuel the fire of the opposition.

Inception, the new movie by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento) and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is probably the best movie of the year.

But it is certainly not for everyone.

Nolan has become a master of new storytelling, and Inception is no exception.  This movie is a mixture of Memento, with a touch of the Matrix and The Dark Knight mixed in.

The movie is based on the concept of extraction.  Extraction is performed by memory experts, in this case Dom Cobb (Dicaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who is Cobb’s key partner.  There usual jobs entail invading a person’s memories and dreams in order to steal valuable information.

But inception is a variant of this, and much harder.  During an ‘inception’ procedure, you don’t try to steal information…you try to implant it.  This is much more difficult, because you have to make the target believe that they themselves came up with the foreign thought.

But in reality, although this is what the core of the story is…it is not the heart of the story.  At its heart is the simple need for Cobb to return to his family.  Without giving too much away, Cobb’s past decisions have cost he and his family dearly, and he is trying to atone for those mistakes as best he can.  But his guilt, especially in regards to his wife (played by Marion Cotillard), as well as his memory of those past events, continually invade the dream world in which he is working in.  This guilt and invasion of his own past life into the ‘Inception’ scenario is what takes this movie from a simple science fiction ‘B’ movie such as Dreamscape or A Scanner Darkly (two very mediocre movies), into the realm of potential Oscar discussion.

The cast is superb.  Gordon-Levitt (best known for Third Rock from the Sun but also last years 500 Days of Summer) is brilliant as Cobb’s partner.  And he has a brilliant, zero gravity sequence reminiscent of The Matrix.  Ellen Page (Juno) is remarkably good here.  I thought she was miscast, but I was wrong.  After seeing this, I really wonder if she could pull off the American role in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao and the ever entertaining Ken Watanabe fill out the team, with Cillian Murphy filling out the role of the target of these memory invaders.

After the series of disappointments this summer regarding movies (though I enjoyed Iron Man 2, although I appear to be in the minority), this movie lives up to its billing.  But as I started to say in the beginning, this movie is certainly not for everyone.  The twists and turns are hard to keep up with.  I counted, at least, 12 different ‘worlds’ or ‘memory states’ or what ever you would like to call them during the movie, and some of the other scenes arguably could have been considered alternate realities as well.  So if you have trouble keeping up with complicated movies, this is NOT the movie for you.  Additionally, there is a science fiction component that many may not like; understanding and accepting the ability to enter another person’s memories, for some people, may seem difficult.

That said, there are touching moments to this film that I think many people can feel attached to.   Dicaprio’s need to bond with his family ultimately is the driving force of the movie, and his relationship to his children and his wife are both moving and heartbreaking.

Ultimately, however, Nolan and Nolan alone could have written this story and made this movie into a success.  This is a movie whose storyline was built for disaster.  With its complicated backdrop, without an expert storyteller almost everyone would have been lost.  But Nolan somehow allows the viewer to keep track of events in multiple realities, and does it beautifully.

Inception, I think most movie lovers will agree, is the first movie of 2010 that you will really, really want to see again.  You can debate many portions of the film, not to mention have a long and strenuous argument about the signficiance of the top (I will leave it at that).  It may take me several viewings to really comprehend and put all the pieces together.  But for someone like me, that loves getting into the intricacies of a fascinating movie, that is pure heaven.

The NAACP this week past a resolution stating that the Tea Party (in its diverse and many iterations) are  “harboring racist elements that are a threat to our democracy.”

What a ridiculous joke this is.

Racism in the current political climate has been now relegated to a political tool, and nothing more.  I would compare it to anyone’s comparison of someone to Hitler and Stalin (and yes, I am referring to the idiotic billboard in Iowa).

Let us be clear.  There is NO occasion, short of genocide, when you should compare anyone to Adolph Hitler.  Period.  End of story.

And racism?  You better have clear and indisputable evidence of racism before you call anyone a racist.  Ever.

The NAACP, which for many decades has been a simple wing of the Democrat Party, now is such a left wing organization they simply are not worth listening to.  They have lost all credibility on anything…even, sadly, speaking on the real issues of racism in this country.

Now, leftists would argue that there are clearly a few fringe members of the right that are racist.  I would never deny that.  Anymore than the left should deny racists elements on their fringe.

But painting the entire Tea Party movement with the broad brush of racism is an act of cowardice.  For example, where was the NAACP when Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pasteur, was making racists comments about Jews and other groups?  How about Jesse Jackson, or Rev. Al Sharpton’s common racist rants?

Of course, what can you expect from an organization that possibly put out the most embarrassing political ad of race baiting in American history against George W. Bush in 2000?  The ad, in grainy black and white, show a pickup truck with a chain dragging across a dirt road. The voice-over is by Renee Mullins, the daughter of James Byrd, a black man dragged to his death two years ago chained to a pickup in Jasper, Tex.  Mullins accuses Gov. Bush of refusing to support a new hate-crimes bill, saying, “It was like my father was killed all over again.” The unmistakable message: Bush condones lynching.  What the ad didn’t say was that two of the men who killed her father have been sentenced to death by a Texas court for the murder, while the third serves a life-sentence. What’s more, the hate-crimes bill she supported would not have added one whit to their punishment.

But that race baiting apparently is acceptable.

Groups like the NAACP are not making race relations better, but worse.  There is real racism in this country.  The double standard in education standards alone is costing us generation after generation of African-American youths.  But no one talks about that…instead talking about irrelevant issues that have no meaningful impact on anyone.

And that doesn’t even speak to those African-Americans who are directly benefiting from the Tea Party movement.

“I have not experienced the charges of racism that the NAACP is touting,” Vernon Parker, an African-American tea party congressional candidate in Arizona, told POLITICO.  “The NAACP should be concerned about bringing jobs to people in depressed areas,” he added, “not the tea party.”

Tim Scott, a GOP congressional nominee in South Carolina, echoed Parker’s sentiments in a statement.  “I believe that the NAACP is making a grave mistake in stereotyping a diverse group of Americans who care deeply about their country and who contribute their time, energy and resources to make a difference,” Scott said.“As I campaign in South Carolina, I participate in numerous events sponsored by the tea party, 9/12, Patriot, and other like-minded groups, and I have had the opportunity to get to know many of the men and women who make up these energetic grass-roots organizations.  Americans need to know that the tea party is a color-blind movement that has principled differences with many of the leaders in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans.”

African Americans would benefit from more power within the Republican party, instead of simply being the shills of the left.   But for the NAACP, that is unimaginable.

The NAACP now if feeling push back…and is backtracking.  The President of the NAACP, Ben Jealous, said Thursday that the resolution passed by the group on Wednesday does not call the tea party racist.  “What we’re saying is that with their increasing power comes an increasing responsibility to act responsibly…and to call out when they see those things on those signs.”

Of course, that is precisely the message that NAACP allies such as Democrats and other liberals have tried to portray over the past several days.  So the message screams ‘racists!’, even if the resolution does not.

The NAACP and its members should be ashamed.

The Man With The Plan? Maybe...

The search for the perfect conservative platform started the day Barack Obama won the Presidency in November 2008.

And so far, I have not been sold.

Oh, sure, there are stable of adequate candidates.  But tell me, honestly, has any ‘wowed’ you yet?  I think not.  And each platform has its own liabilities.

But the best out there may be Paul Ryan’s Roadmap for America.  An overview of the plan and its legislative language can be read here.  And unlike many of Ryan’s detractors, Ryan has a complete CBO analysis which can be read here.

Now, look.  I am a Ryan fan.  Have been ever since he joined Congress after being elected in 1998.  I met him around that time in a Congressional meet-and-greet, and I have to say, even at that time I was impressed.

Now, many have reservations about Ryan’s Roadmap.  Most notably, this morning Erick Erickson of RedState coincidentally has his own piece on it.  And I agree, it is not perfect.  But in retrospect, either was Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, nor was Reagan’s Presidential platform in 1980.

But here is what I generally like about Ryan’s plan:

1.  Health Care Reform:  Ryan’s plan echoes many of the ideas I stated a year and a half ago, before the debate on Obamacare even began.

• More individual control…less employer mandated healthcare.  A true transformation of the system, with the individual and not the state in control.
• It promotes auto-enrollment, to ‘nudge’ people into insurance plans if they are apathetic.
• It provides much more relief for small businesses, and is much less onerous on them, than Obamacare.
• Complete overhaul of the overburdened Medicaid and SCHIP programs.
• Real Medicare reform, actually confronting cost issues, unlike the Democrat plan.

2.  Overhaul of Social Security

• Individual accounts with personal ownership.
• Shifting the retirement age upward (an absolute necessity).
• Overall decreasing the cost burden to the state.

3.  Tax Reform

• A simplified (flatter?) tax structure, with less carve outs and exemptions.  A 10% rate below $100,000, and a 25% rate above that.  But that said, one can choose the current code or the revised one…it would be your choice.
• Repeal of the alternative minimum tax.
• Business consumption tax in lieu of corporate taxes.  This is on of Erick Erickson’s main complaints.  His argument is that this is a virtual VAT tax on business.  It sort of is.  But Erick is wrong in arguing that this is much different than what we have now.  Corporate taxes, in general, are consumption taxes.  I would much prefer that to what we have today, which is among the highest corporate taxes in the world.

4.  Budget Process Reform

• I would argue this will be the hardest to actually enact.  Both parties benefit from the nonsensical process we have today.
• Limiting the power of the purse of Congress (such as a supermajority for tax increases) is great, but I doubt it would ever happen.

Now, I think the biggest weakness in Ryan’s plan is the budgetary considerations.  Ryan is very conservative (small ‘C) when it comes to deficit reduction.  That said, Ryan is somewhat hamstrung because he is stuck using the Congressional Budget Office’s current numbers…which are always wrong.  If you think that Ryan’s less onerous regulations and taxes will provide long term growth, fiscal soundness will follow.  And one thing I am sure of:  Ryan would support more cuts if he can get the votes for them.

But even the CBO feels the Roadmap would at the very least put us on a sound path to fiscal sanity:

Using CBO’s “textbook growth” model, it is not possible to simulate the effects of the alternative fiscal scenario after 2058 because deficits become so large and unsustainable that the model cannot calculate their effects. The Roadmap would put the federal budget on a sustainable path, generating an annual budget surplus of about 5 percent of GDP by 2080.

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Many of you know the outcry over the failure of the Holder Department of Justice to prosecute the Black Panthers in Philadelphia who were accused of voter intimidation on election day 2008.

The heat on the story has been turned up with the outcry from career lawyers in the Department of Justice arguing that the political higher-ups had argued that they would not pursue any voter intimidation cases involveing minorities.  A whistleblower has come out and said he has evidence that such a statement was made.

Well, above is the video of Megan Kelly interviewing Kirsten Powers on Fox News today…and it is a fun exercise in watching the two views on the case go at it.

Who is right?  Well, who knows.  Clearly the Black Panthers did intimidate voters…I think there can be little doubt of that.  But Powers prefers to give this administration the benefit of the doubt on the issue…something, I believe, that the rest of  us are unwilling to provide.

Australia's economy...bouncing back.

I have heard liberals say over and over again that Obama’s policies of more regulation and taxes, more government bailouts and stimuli, and more government programs is the only way that we can hope for an economic recovery.

In a very practical and real way, Australia is proving liberals wrong.

The IMF’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) shows that Australia remains a world leader in the global recovery, with stronger growth, lower unemployment and much lower debt than other advanced economies.  Together with today’s strong employment figures, the IMF’s report shows the Australian economy is still well ahead of the curve and continues to benefit from the Government’s strong economic management.

The IMF forecasts the Australian economy to grow by 3.0 per cent in 2010 and 3.5 per cent in 2011 – a stronger outlook than that of the advanced economies as a whole.The IMF notes that recent financial market turbulence and concerns around sovereign debt in some European economies ‘casts a cloud over the outlook’, but states that so far ‘there is little evidence of negative spillovers to real activity.’

The Asian region is leading the global recovery, with the IMF forecasting growth of 7.5 per cent for Asia in 2010 and 6.8 per cent in 2011. Notably the IMF has revised upward its growth forecasts for China and India in 2010 to 10.5 per cent (up from 10.0 per cent) and 9.4 per cent (up from 8.8 per cent) respectively.

The Australian economy is well placed to benefit from our proximity and links to the world’s fastest growing region, with the IMF pointing to robust commodity prices which are boosting domestic demand in our economy.

The IMF is now forecasting the world economy will grow by 4.6 per cent in 2010 and 4.3 per cent in 2011.

The IMF has again reinforced the importance of credible fiscal consolidation strategies.  Consistent with this, G20 advanced economies have committed to at least halving their budget deficits by 2013.

By contrast, Australia will be returning to surplus in 2012-13 – three years ahead of schedule and well ahead of any major advanced economy.  This represents the fastest positive turnaround in the Government’s budget position since the 1960s, and is underpinned by the Government’s commitment to strict fiscal discipline.

Australia’s net debt is expected to peak at 6.1 per cent of GDP in 2011-12 and then declines. This is half the level expected a year ago and is dramatically lower than that of every other major advanced economy.

How did Australia recover so quickly?  Well, they followed the historical lessons of the past; they listened to Reagan and Kennedy.

The Australian government is putting in place a range of fundamental reforms that will strengthen our economy and enhance our growth potential – cutting business taxation, reducing red tape for small businesses, boosting national saving and investing in critical infrastructure, including the National Broadband Network.

And even though the Australian economy is recovering, the government is not stopping there.  They are planning to deliver athird round of tax cuts starting from 1 July this year, as well as a range of other measures to help with cost of living pressures, such as the Education Tax Refund, the Childcare Tax Rebate and an historic boost to the aged pension.

And because of this pro-growth policy, Australian businesses (unlike their counterparts in America) are starting to heavily invest in growing their businesses…which will eventually lead to more jobs and more profits.

Now, to completely compare Australia to the United States is somewhat unfair.  Australia is much more dependent on commodities such as mining.  And increasing commodity prices have helped their recovery.

That said, business outlook in Australia is much better than in the United States.  They also had a stimulus in 2009 that was quite large relative to their economy.  But the government has promised to keep taxes and regulations low in order to grow the private sector, in sharp contrast to the anti-business approach of the Obama Administration.

So the next time a liberal tells you Obama had no other choice in regards to economic recovery, point to Australia.

I always considered President Obama intelligent but clueless in an academic-not-real-world sort of way.

Now I am starting to wonder if he is just plain clueless.

During an interview with an Israeli TV station Wednesday, when confronted with the anxiety that some Israelis feel toward him, Obama said that “some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”

“Ironically, I’ve got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors. My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the U.S. Senate,” Obama said.

“I think that sometimes, particularly in the Middle East, there’s the feeling of the friend of my enemy must be my enemy, and the truth of the matter is that my outreach to the Muslim community is designed precisely to reduce the antagonism and the dangers posed by a hostile Muslim world to Israel and to the West,” Obama went on to say.

First of all, it has nothing to do with Obama’s name.  Although always less popular in Israel than his predecessor, Obama enjoyed relatively high approval rates within Israel at the time of his election.  He won over 60% of the American Jewish vote.

That is all in the past.  Israelis now highly distrust the Obama Administration.  And American Jews, a dependable Democrat Party ally, have fallen by the wayside.

The reason is not because of Obama’s name, appearance, or any other superficial reason.  It is for the obvious reason:  Obama appears to not consider Israel an ally.

Until the recent Gaza ship assault issue, the Obama Administration had rarely supported the Israelis on anything, even in the realm of public relations.  Obama went out of his way to ignore Benjamin Netanyahu in his first year in office, including cancelling White House visits and purposefully avoiding him at the United Nations General Assembly.  These were not perceptual misunderstandings; these were purposeful disdain toward the Jewish state.

Now, in fairness, the Israelis are often hard to love.  They go out of their way to try to show their independence from Washington.  I often think that their announcement of settlements in the West Bank has more to do with PR than any practical reason.  Obama had good reason to be annoyed by that.

But, if you are really going to be a fair arbiter, you have to play it…well, fair.  This week, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, wrote a moving obituary regarding the passing of Mohammed Oudeh.  Who is Mohammed Oudeh?  Mohammed Oudeh, better known as Abu Daoud, was the leading figure in Black September, an off-shoot of the Palestine Liberation Organisation formed after the violent expulsion of the PLO from Jordan in September 1970.

More importantly, he travelled to Germany in 1972 in advance of the Olympics to prepare for the kidnapping of the Israeli team at the Games.  Two athletes were ki lled in the raid and a further nine, along with five of the terrorists and a German policeman, in a botched rescue effort.  He was proud of his role in the Munich attack until his death, which he said was planned in a cafe in Rome, but insisted that the intention had been to use the Israelis as hostages for negotiations for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

But apparently, when the leader of the Palestinian Authority helps honor such a man, that is not reason for criticism from the White House.

Obama’s duplicity, and not his name or his Muslim father, have much more to do with Israel’s distrust of this President.   Obama’s excuses simply make him look even more clueless than we already believed.

This is a failure on so many levels, it is amazing.

First and foremost is the failure of the federal government to uphold one of its most basic responsibilities, that of securing the border.

Second is to regulate immigration competently.

But maybe least important, although most relevant to the case before us, is the failure to make any reasonable judicial argument whatsoever that the Arizona law is unconstitutional.

The Justice Department has decided to file suit against Arizona on the grounds that the state’s new immigration law illegally intrudes on federal prerogatives, law enforcement sources said Monday.

The lawsuit, which three sources said could be filed as early as Tuesday, will invoke for its main argument the legal doctrine of “preemption,” which is based on the Constitution’s supremacy clause and says that federal law trumps state statutes. Justice Department officials believe that enforcing immigration laws is a federal responsibility, the sources said. …

The preemption doctrine has been established in Supreme Court decisions, and some legal experts have said such a federal argument likely would persuade a judge to declare the law unconstitutional.

But lawyers who helped draft the Arizona legislation have expressed doubt that a preemption argument would prevail.

It should not prevail for a multitude of reasons:

1.  The 10th Amendment

Maybe someone at the DOJ should read it sometime.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Now, the Federal Government could argue that Arizona is interfering with its priority on immigration issues.  No one is denying that.  The problem is that the Arizona law largely supports the adherence to federal statutes. The irony here is that the State of Arizona is more closely following the federal law than the federal bureaucracy.

And also, the Feds have a method of recourse available to them:  Congress has the Constitutional right to define what the states have the right to enforce and not enforce in regards to immigration law, if they wish.  But until such time they redefine the states responsibilities, federal law stands as-is.

2.  Federal Jurisdiction

This would be a reasonable argument, except for the fact that the Department of Justice, for decades, has trained local and state police and officials in how to carry out federal law on immigration.  Some programs, such as the Basic Immigration Enforcement Training (BIET), are specifically designed for that purpose.

In other words…the DOJ itself has designated local officials to carry out some of the federal laws.  To now criticize them for doing the same does not seem logical.

Here is the other problem with the jurisdiction argument.  Are the idiots in the Obama Administration seriously arguing that state officials should not prosecute and arrest people under federal law?  Can state officials, for example, simply ignore the violation of environmental laws on the federal level?

3.  No racial discrimination?

The lawsuit nowhere states that racial discrimination, the most commonly pointed to theoretical problem with the AZ law.  Actually, there are no civil rights accusations at all within the law.  It is simply a federal versus state jurisdiction issue.  If they can’t make a racial discrimination case, all other lines of pursuit are unlikely to succeed.

4.  Simple Political Common Sense

What is the upside here for the courts and Demcorats?  What is the political angle here?

Well, 70% of Arizonans support the law, and a majority of Americans across the country support it.  Democrats will now have to defend the Obama decision going into the midterms.  I am sure Democrats in competitive races will be enthralled by that prospect.  They are already going uphill…and now the Obama Administration has added a headwind.

Now, this is purely a political argument…but do you really think, if this gets to the Supreme Court, that they won’t look at the political angle of this?

In short, this is a ridiculous decision by the Obama Administration, Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice.  They would have been better served by using it as a political argument for pushing immigration reform.  Now, they simply look detached from the majority of the American people.