Had he lived, today would be Nobel-winning economist Milton Freidman’s 97th birthday. In light of Obama’s efforts to turn America from its free market foundation to that favored by Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, it is good to remember Friedman’s wise words:

• Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.




• Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.




• Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.




• If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.




• Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.




• Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.




• The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.




• The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.




• The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that’s why it’s so essential to preserving individual freedom.




• We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.

Milton Friedman shows Phil Donahue how easy it is for a smart man to outwit an empty-headed demagogue.









As President Obama seeks to limit our choices in life, it’s good to remember the man who’s life was dedicated to expanding our freedom to choose.

Media from every corner of the world was there. The New York Times even sent a “live blogger” to chronicle the nuanced meaning behind every gesture viewed from the media’s perch, which was out of earshot. President Obama’s “beer summit,” according to the assembled scribblers, was a tremendous success. Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley and nutty Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates met over cold beers at a picnic bench outside the Oval Office. Obama served as bartender.

According to nutty professor Gates, his family took a White House tour separate from that given the Crowley family. The families eventually met in the White House library. “Nobody knew what to do,” Gates told the Times, “so I walked over, stuck up my hand and said, ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ That broke the awkwardness.”

Now imagine if nutty professor Gates had tried that approach when he first met officer Crowley outside his Cambridge home. Instead of approaching the officer with curiosity and respect, the paranoid assumption on Gates’ part was that Crowley was a racist out to get him. The fact that Crowley had no idea who the nutty professor was, only fueled Gates’ paranoia and anger.

Of Obama’s idea to hold a cooling-off summit over cold beers, Gates said, “Only he [Obama] could have done that. I don’t think anybody but Barack Obama would have thought about bringing us together.”

And what did the nutty professor take away from the summit? “I learned about police officers and the stresses and realities of the excellent job the police do every day. At the same time, racial profiling is a very dangerous thing with a long history, and we have to make Americans more sensitive to the realities of racial profiling.” Apparently, officer Crowley’s mistake was seeing the nutty professor’s paranoid ravings as disorderly conduct and not viewing it as the racial profiling sensitivity training it was meant to be. The beer summit’s bright spot, if it can be called that, is that Gates is more ugly sober than drunk.

Of course, the most interesting thing about the summit got very little coverage. Sitting at the picnic bench with the police officer and the race-baiting professor, hoisting a cold one, was our crazy  speak-first and think-much-later (if at all) Vice President Joe Biden. The reason the press was kept a fair distance from the summit, I think,  was the vice president’s tendency to say very stupid things to the press every time he opens his mouth. One can only imagine the words of wisdom he would impart once the alcohol coursed through his bloodstream and into his very small brain. At least officer Crowley was on hand to constrain Gates if Biden offended the nutty professor with any surreal, alcohol-laced bromides.

When President Obama “saved” America’s automotive industry by giving it to the United Auto Workers, he didn’t think taxpayers were on the hook for nearly enough cash. In an effort to throw more good money after bad, Obama created the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), giving $3,500 to $4,500 to individuals for their clunkers when buying a UAW-built car. The Democratically controlled congress allocated $1 billion for the program. As of Midnight July 31st, the program went bankrupt. Sorry Obam-erica, it looks like you’ll have to keep driving your clunkers. This is just the beginning of more of the same. How long before the other “stimulus” programs run dry?

The question Obam-ericans need to ask themselves is this: “With the nation’s unemployment rate nearing 10%, how many real jobs could that $1 billions have saved?” Now think of all the other Obama “stimulus” programs and multiply that number several trillion times.

Obama’s critics limit their condemnation of the president for his petty displays of righteous arrogance – like the recent flap over the arrest of his Harvard pal Professor Henry Louis Gates. In reality, Obama’s showcases his arrogance in the grand way he reallocates of our nation’s dwindling wealth into stupidly wasteful government programs like CARS. If the U.S. government had this much power 100 years ago, the automobile would have never been invented. Instead, much of the economy would have gone into useless scheme like a National Aging Gelding program (NAG).

Like it or not, America’s automotive industry is spent. All King Obama’s horsemen and all of his knights can’t put Humpty Dumpty industries together again. In the capitalist system that Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Barack Obama despise, free people invest their dollars in areas of the economy that offer the best prospect for growth and profits. In an imperfect world, its the perfect system. Castro, Chavez and Obama, on the other hand, divert other people’s money to constituents that keep them in power. That’s why banana people’s republics, like Cuba and Venezuela, have no bananas – their wise leaders are too busy “investing” the nation’s wealth in “stimulus” programs. If Obama continues to burn our nation’s wealth on mindless government programs, the 90-mile voyage from Cuba to Florida in a leaky inner tube won’t be worth the trouble for that rare Castro refugee yearning to breath free. Instead, he will stay in Havana, laboring to keep the communal 1956 Chevy in operating condition. Now that I think of it, we could sell him vintage auto parts from Obama’s billion-dollar clunker collection.

President Obama, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and police Sgt. Jim Crowley will down a few brewskies at a picnic bench within lens-shot of press photographers. Of course this is Obama’s attempt at damage control after accusing Cambridge Police of racism after arresting his friend professor Gates for disorderly conduct. Interestingly, officer Crowley will attend the White House “beer summit” with his attorney in attendance – just in case The Rev. Jessie Jackson heralded the event as “…a teachable moment. Racial profiling is deadly; it’s costly, expensive and really bad for your health.”

While Obama is hoisting a few beers in the name of racial harmony, down the street, Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, third man at Justice, quietly approved dropping legal action against three New Black Panther Party members accused of intimidating voters outside a Philadelphia polling station. The Justice Department’s inaction raised a few eyebrows at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In a letter sent by the commission to Justice, they said the “defendants were caught on video blocking access to polls, and physically threatening and verbally harassing voters during the November 4, 2008 general election.”

Even sleepy members of congress were aroused momentarily. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said he was dismayed by, “The dismissal of the Department’s case against the New Black Panther Party and two individuals affiliated with it,” and added, “Significantly, one of those individuals carried credentials indicating he was a member of the local Democratic Committee.”

Maybe Obama can stage another White House beer summit between Black Panther head-bangers and some of Philadelphia’s knee-shaking voters. Maybe not.

President Obama has a problem making distinctions. This was made clear when he sided with nutty Harvard professor Henry Louise Gates against  police officers just doing their job. His moral blindness extends to dictatorships as well. He lowers the stature of the Unites States by insisting we treat ruthless regimes with “mutual respect.” To that end, Obama ordered the removal of an electronic billboard in Havana, Cuba that displayed pro-democracy messages and updates on the lifestyles of Cuba’s rich and famous leaders. It also gave uncensored news from around the world. The five-foot high billboard stretched across 25 windows on the 5th floor of the U.S. Interests Section at the Swiss Embassy.

Cuba’s communist regime erected their own billboard and installed 100-foot high black banners to hide the American billboard and posted guards to prevent Cuban citizens from peeking through gaps in the black banners.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said, “These dueling billboards, if you will, (were} not serving the interests of promoting a more productive relationship.” He did not elaborate on what exactly that productive relationship was. It’s worth noting that at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro demanded that his Soviet masters launch their Cuban-based short-range nuclear missiles at the United States; Khrushchev, however, was less eager to trigger World War III than Cuba’s cigar-smoking dictator. It appears that the greater the desire of deranged regimes to destroy the United States, the greater the drive of this administration to court them – like a confused high school girl, Obama is uncontrollably attracted to the “bad boy.”

Iran’s bad boy clerics wish us dead as well. Like Cuba in the early 1960s, soon they will possess nuclear weapons as well; but unlike Castro, they’ll have no one to pull them back from the brink if Allah inspires them to launch. Obama’s attraction to rouge regimes is a fundamental aspect of the Left’s self-destructive impulse.

Vice President Joe Biden placed his foot where it’s most comfortable – in his mouth. The Russian press is playing up our mentally challenged vice leader – who’s one heartbeat from the presidency – for remarks he made while his boss is in the middle of delicate negotiations with the Russian bear.

“They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they’re in a situation where the world is changing before them and they’re clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable,” Biden told the Wall Street Journal.

The Russian press is livid. The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper condemned Biden for his “boorish openness,” saying the U.S. vice president’s remarks reveals what President Obama really thinks. Hardly. The president’s response to dangerous U.S. rivals is to approach them in a spirit of “mutual respect.” Obama reserves his ire and outrage for America’s law enforcement officers.

Biden’s critique of Russia’s economic woes sound eerily similar to warnings the Congressional Budget Office gave congress should the House and Senate enact Obamcare. Biden may not be as crazy as everyone thinks. He just aimed his mouth in the wrong direction.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is on the road attending town hall meetings in an attempt to put a human face on his shady agency and its even shadier actions. The gatherings are reminiscent of those held by President Obama when he wants to provide the media sound bites and talking points to push his political agenda. Jim Lehrer, host of “The NewsHour” program on PBS, is serving as the road show’s “moderator.” How appropriate that Lehrer, a government shill, is giving Bernanke the same cover he provides our status quo politicians during debates.

David Huston, a small business owner from Shawnee, Kansas, was damning in the preamble to his Bernanke question:

I’m very frustrated. During the past year, when I see billons and billions of dollars sent to large financial institutions…I’m especially upset when I hear the fraise, and you use this, “that company is too big to fail.” As a small businessperson, that’s very hard to swallow. I feel like a more accurate statement of policy would be “too big to fail, too small to save.” My business, and thousands of others, fall into the “too small to save” category. Small businesses employ more people than the Fortune 500 companies combined. Small businesses represent the life-blood of small cities, large cities and our American economy. Innovation and creativity is coming from small businesses. But I truly believe that small businesses…

Realizing that Mr. Huston’s testimony was better suited for a federal Grand Jury room, Jim Lehrer intervened, “Do you have a question?” Mr. Huston, however, continued:

…Small business is getting shortchanged by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department and congress. Am I wrong on this perception?

The obviously uncomfortable Bernanke answered as best he could:

…Nothing made me more frustrated, more angry, than having to intervene – particularly in a couple of cases where taking wild bets had forced these companies close to bankruptcy – there’s nothing that made me angrier than having to do that.

Why did we do it? Because, if that company had collapsed in the middle of a crisis, it could have brought everything down.

Some economists believe the Fed’s intervention only delayed the inevitable day of reckoning. The Treasury’s own Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) estimates the cost of the current bailouts will total $24 trillion dollars. Bush and Obama’s policy of “Too big to fail,” which created a phenomenal debt to service, will divert vast sums of capital away from – as Mr. Huston from Shawnee, Kansas eloquently said, the life blood of the American economy – small business – shifting it to the less efficient bailout companies managed by the financial geniuses who placed their loosing bets on Mortgage-Backed Securities.

What Mr. Bernanke will never admit is that Fed policies, which kept interest rates artificially low and money cheap, fed the speculation in housing. The Fed’s low interest rate strategy, coupled with the “affordable housing” policies of congress and the White House (to the shame of both political parties) seems destined to turn America’s economic future into a “troubled asset.”

And it begins. Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin handed the reins of executive power to her Lt. Governor Sean Parnell on Sunday, clearing the way for bigger and perhaps better things. At a time when the Republican Party is in tatters due to the incompetence of men like former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain, Palin is the only high-profile member of her party interested in rekindling its smoldering conservative embers.

To that end, she is scheduled to deliver a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on August 8th. In a very smart move, she also intends to campaign for candidates across the country. As Obama’s socialism bogs-down our already dreary economy, the former governor plans to build a bipartisan coalition on the Reagan model – by supporting candidates that stand for small government and lower taxes, no matter their party. As Reagan proved with his huge re-election victory in 1984 (49 states to Mondale’s 1) that’s the kind of “reaching across the aisle” that stays true to conservative values while expanding ones political base outside a particular party. Since a conservative Tea Party seems unlikely to form any time soon, Palin seems determined to woo disaffected voters squishy Republicans are too deaf to hear and Democrats can’t buy with “stimulus” graft. Is it any wonder her enemies used ethics charges to tie her to Alaska, hoping to deny her a national stage to poke holes in Obama’s “hope and change.”

Obama’s plan to socialize medical care in America is running into problems, not from Republicans but “Blue Dog” conservative Democrats. When Bush was president, he and Sen. McCain always sought to accommodate liberal, big-government Democrats like Sen. Kennedy. Palin, on the other hand, is the only Republican that seeks to build a bipartisan conservative coalition that wins elections.

While most squishy Republicans cower in the shadow of Obama, Palin sees his vulnerabilities and is eager to exploit them. No one knows the truth of this better than Obama’s handlers and his amen corner in the media. They mock her because they fear her.

Recently, Americans commemorated the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. With computers less powerful than today’s pocket calculators, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin piloted and landed their fragile spacecraft on the lunar surface. What most Americans don’t know is that we will soon be without a manned space program. Plagued with engineering flaws and suffering the effects of age, NASA’s shuttle program will end operations sometime within the next two years. Until the new Constellation program – a scaled-up version of Apollo – is ready for use, the United States will have no direct method for sending American astronauts to the International Space Station. This means that soon Russian Soyuz spacecraft will be essential to U.S. manned spaceflight.

And how have our fine Russian friends been conducting themselves regarding the joint operation of the International Space Station? It’s a tourist destination for those willing to pony up the $20 to $34 million fee to experience 7 to 12-days of weightless fun aboard the American/Russian orbital boondoggle. Six wealthy tourists paid handsomely for the privilege of claiming the title space cadet. It was announced that Guy Laliberte, 49, of Canada will join the list of billionaires to vacation in space. Appropriately, he is the founder of Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil – the popular circus troupe of contortionist acrobats and mimes, with franchises around the world. Soon, the duties of an American astronaut may include offering complementary peanuts, headphones and pillow to the paying customer strapped in the seat next to him.

Public support for the Apollo program was never very high. As NASA sent Apollo 11 to the moon, only 40% of the American pubic thought the expense was worth the cost. NASA attempted to bolster support for the space program by telling Americans of the benefits space technology made in their daily lives – such as advances in medical technology. Now, after billions wasted assembling a manned orbital platform, the payoff is the vacation benefits the flying tube offers billionaires with money to burn.

In 1975, the last Apollo mission did not go to the moon, but docked with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in Earth orbit. Little did we taxpayers know it would all culminate in a joint venture to create the world’s most expensive bed ‘n breakfast.

When I first heard of the Obama birth certificate controversy, I thought it was – as many on the left insist – merely one in a long list of silly conspiracy theories – like the one claiming Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin never really walked on the moon. It alleges that Obama was born in Kenya and not in Hawaii, and that the president’s birth certificate is a fake. Though only a digital copy of the certificate was released to the media, document experts have never scrutinized the original. Since Obama’s election the conspiracy theory lingers on websites of those their detractors call “birthers.”

Then Lou Dobbs of CNN carried the story on his evening program:

President Obama promised transparency and openness in his administration. Yet he’s chosen not to release his original birth certificate or a copy of it; and a number of Americans are asking, “why not?” The left-wing media has attacked me because I simply asked the question. Meanwhile, the State of Hawaii says it can’t release a paper copy of the president’s original birth certificate because, they say, the state government discarded the original document when the health department records went electronic some eight years ago. That explanation, however, has not satisfied some critics.

Since the broadcast, Dobbs and CNN have been on the receiving end of an avalanche of criticism. In a letter to CNN’s President Jon Klein, J. Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote:

Respectable news organizations should not employ reporters willing to peddle racist conspiracy theories and false propaganda. It’s time for CNN to remove Mr. Dobbs from the airwaves.

The far-left blog the DailyKos.com says:

This guy [Dobbs] is a complete and utter disgrace, his self-proclaimed “independence” and thinking he is the voice of the “common man” is ridiculous. His anti-immigration tirades are problematic; his anti-Obama screeds are ridiculous.

He is embarrassing your network on a daily basis. SHUT HIM DOWN!

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann even bestowed his “Worst Person in the World” award to Dobbs.

The pressure has proven too much for CNN’s president. In a memo to CNN staffers, Klein said:

It seems this story is dead – because anyone who still is not convinced doesn’t really have a legitimate beef.

The reason behind the effort to prove Obama’s Kenyan birth is that the U.S. Constitution allows only native born citizens to run for and serve as the nation’s president. That Obama’s original birth certificate was destroyed pretty much puts an ends to the matter. Still, the fury over the lingering question of Obama’s legitimacy to govern sends so many in the left over the edge. Why are they so concerned now that the evidence no longer exists?

My own theory is that Obama’s policies to fundamentally “change” America from what it once was into something utterly foreign and self destructive is undermined by the slightest whiff of illegitimacy. So much of England’s blood-drenched history revolved around the question of rightful rulership. Any man or woman with the slightest claim to the crown could raise an army to contest their rivals.

The conspiracy theorists and the paranoid Left battle over Obama’s birthright to serve as the nation’s elected president. In reality, his illegitimacy is not due to his place of birth but his dangerous ideas. As the cancer of his socialist agenda devours the tissue of America, his legitimacy will fall with his polling numbers. This is already beginning to happen. Eventually, only the lunatic Left will be shouting, “Long live King Obama.”