Many professional political observers have puzzled over the rise of Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. Here he is—a non-politician, successful businessman running a non-traditional insurgent campaign on a shoestring. And here he is—ahead of the pack in many polls or running even with the traditional political choice, Mitt Romney. Many of these professional political analysts are scratching their heads, wondering why GOP primary voters seem inclined to the unconventional candidate who sings gospel, admits he doesn’t know things when he doesn’t know them and otherwise tells it like it is.

Let me explain the rise of Herman Cain in two words: Kim Kardashian.

Kim and the entire Kardashian clan have built quite the empire for themselves. Launching from Kim’s sex tape, the family has major reality shows on E!, clothing boutiques, a clothing line and a brand that rakes in millions of dollars a year in personal appearances and other events.

Kim took her reality superstardom to new levels this summer when she announced her engagement to NBA forward Kris Humphries. Much hoopla surrounded the impending nuptials, including, of course, a major run-up to the wedding on their various reality shows. They didn’t have to pay for a thing in the $10 million affair; designers and vendors happily gave away their services for a chance to have their stuff promoted by Kim and the gang on the show. KK and KH sold their “exclusive” wedding pictures to People magazine for $2 million. Speculation is that the total amount of money they raked in over the wedding period was a stunning $17 million.

So are they dummies? No way. They are very, very shrewd businesspeople. Fine capitalists. In fact, I’m surprised Occupy Wall Street hasn’t discovered them yet and set out to Occupy Team Kardashian. Spread the wealth, KK! (more…)

Somebody’s got to point out the ironies, hypocrisy, madness, and lies of President Obama, so here goes:

July 13, 2009: Obama speaks at a rally for ObamaCare, and in response to a question, claims that his plan won’t “pull the plug on Grandma.”  Hear it here.

Two years later, almost to the day:

July 12, 2011:  Obama threatens to withhold Social Security checks if a debt deal isn’t done by the Treasury’s artificial deadline of August 2.  He told CBS News’ Scott Pelley:  “I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on
August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it,” he said.  Hear it here:

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While the world focuses its attention on the revolt against the dictator in Egypt, we’ve got an American president exhibiting his own dictatorial tendencies.

Over the past week, Obama’s signature “achievement,” the monstrous ObamaCare, was ruled unconstitutional by a second federal judge. In his opinion, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson stated that his declaratory judgment that the entire law be voided was a de facto injunction. In other words, without an administration request for a stay, Judge Vinson’s ruling stands. The federal and state governments should thus cease and desist. The current status of ObamaCare is that it’s been declared unconstitutional and all implementation must stop.

Obama’s reaction? “What? Did someone say something?”

As The Wall Street Journal reported this week, “The Obama administration said it has no plans to halt implementation of the law.” A senior administration official said, “We will continue to operate as we have previously.”

In other words: Up yours, judicial branch!

In another stunning example of the executive running roughshod over the judiciary, another federal judge, Martin Feldman in New Orleans, ruled this week that the Obama administration was in contempt for blowing off his ruling lifting the deepwater drilling moratorium. After the Deepwater Horizon spill, Obama halted offshore drilling. Feldman struck down the moratorium. Obama’s Interior Department went ahead with another moratorium, which was rescinded in October, but replaced with onerous new drilling safety rules. Feldman struck those down as well.

This week, the judge found that the Interior Department acted with “determined disregard” for his ruling when it deliberately reinstituted policies that restricted offshore drilling. “Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,” Feldman said in the ruling. “Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium, and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government’s contempt,” Feldman said.

“The government’s contempt.” Wow.

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So the new Democrat talking point is: Buck up!

Somebody—perhaps Rahm Emanuel in his last masterstroke as Chief of Staff before he leaves to wreak havoc on Chicago—said to himself, “Self! The party is in deep, deep doo-doo, so we’ve got to do two things. 1. Go negative on the Republicans and try to rip them to shreds, and 2. Fire up the liberal base by giving them a pep talk.

So word went out across Left-Wing Land to get the base moving.

Vice President Joe Biden got the ball rolling yesterday by telling them to ”stop whining.” However: calling the very people you need a bunch of whiners is not exactly a winning strategy. So Biden took another stab at it:

“And so those who don’t get — didn’t get everything they wanted, it’s time to just buck up here, understand that we can make things better, continue to move forward and — but not yield the playing field to those folks who are against everything that we stand for in terms of the initiatives we put forward,” Biden said.

President Obama apparently got the “buck up” memo too. In a Rolling Stone article published today, he said, “People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up…if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”

Again, attacking your base as “lethargic” and not “serious” probably isn’t the best Dale Carnegie way to motivate them.

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In the Mother of All Political Machines, there will be a changing of the guard. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, scion of the most ruthless and relentless political machine in American political history, has announced that he will not seek a whopping SEVENTH term. Wants to retire, he says. Interesting. Daleys don’t retire. They just stay in office, abusing power, forever.

But this Daley has decided to bow out, for some real reason we’ll find out later. That means Chicago will be getting a new mayor soon. And that new mayor just may be…Rahm Emanuel?

Obama’s Chief of Staff is a Chicago boy. He was a Clinton White House senior adviser, a Chicago-area Congressman, and head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee before his current gig. By the way, he’s just not that into his current gig. He was into it when they were riding high, but now that Obama’s sucking salt, he’s dying to get outta there.

So, he’s going to run for mayor of Chicagoland. And he’ll win, because Chicago is Chicago. Beautiful city, ridiculously stupid politics. In Chicago, if you’re not indicted, you’re not invited.

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Earlier this season, Team Obama launched a PR offensive designed to convince Americans that a real economic recovery was underway. They called it ”Recovery Summer!” Note the exclamation point. They wanted you to really, really get that they believed we were in “recovery.” It wasn’t just a ”recovery.” It was “Recovery Summer!”

We should have known it was all illusory quackery when they wheeled out Joe Biden to talk it up.

Today we learn that the “recovering” economy shed 131,000 jobs last month, the second straight month of falling employment. More and more temporary census jobs ended, and the private sector added a paltry 71,000 jobs, far fewer than most expected. In more bad news, the government revised payrolls for May and June to show 97,000 FEWER jobs than originally reported.

All of the arrows are down.

For the $1 trillion-plus that the Democrats have spent trying to “create jobs” and “stimulate the economy,” this is where we are: job losses, not job creation; a formal 9.5% unemployment rate with the real unemployment rate at 18%; stagnant growth; and an exploding deficit and national debt.

Heckuva job, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid.

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During the Bush years, when the fight against Islamic terror was still relatively new, big newspapers and other media outlets raced to publish or broadcast major state secrets of the war.  The New York Times splashed all over its front pages the secret of the warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists.  They and other papers published on Page A1 the secret of the black sites abroad, including the names of the countries that were helping us covertly detain terrorists.  They published the details of the enhanced interrogation techniques we were using to extract life-saving information from top al Qaeda terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.  USA Today
published a memorable piece detailing the specifics of the SWIFT program to track terrorist financing.

When these stories broke, most Americans were outraged at the lack of journalistic responsibility.  How dare these left-wing outfits publish secrets that would likely empower our enemies with high-value information and endanger American lives?  Normal Americans were aghast.

But the nutcases on the Left are not normal.  They were so consumed with Bush Derangement Syndrome that they were automatically opposed to everything he did and were willing to imperil the nation in order to hurt him. National security was way down the list of priorities.  The Bush White House begged these papers not to publish these state secrets, for fear of enhancing the enemy’s intel.  The papers told the White House to take a hike.

The Left elsewhere cheered the Times and the others.  They were simply doing their patriotic duty, you see: informing the public of the evils of the Bush administration.

Of course, it would have been their journalistic and patriotic duty to inform the public of the evils of the ACTUAL ENEMY, but I digress.

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Shortly after President Obama assumed the Commander-in-Chief duties, he retired the existing commanding general in Afghanistan and hand-picked his successor: General Stanley McChrystal.  McChrystal was always known as a brash and outspoken military man, an expert in counterinsurgency, greatly respected by the troops under his command, and as having little patience for fools.

His requirement to have to answer to Obama, then, was a trainwreck waiting to happen.

Last year, McChrystal made no secret of his desire to have as many as 80,000 additional troops to press the fight in Afghanistan.  He went to the press to state that objective and to dismiss those, like VP Joe Biden, who opposed any kind of surge.

That outspokenness got him into trouble: Obama summoned him aboard Air Force One in Europe and dressed him down a bit.  And while McChrystal was right on policy (never commit militarily to an operation without committing overwhelming force and having a clear plan), he was wrong to go public with his troop level requests, and his concerns and reservations.

Today we’ve got another trainwreck smash-up.

McChrystal is being recalled to the White House to meet with Obama tomorrow to explain disrespectful comments he and his aides made to Rolling Stone magazine about Obama, Biden, other top national security officials, and the war strategy.  Once again, McChrystal is right on policy (Obama is a destructive, disengaged, uninterested fool whose withdrawal timetable and
ridiculous hamstringing rules of engaement are costing us lives and progress), but he was wrong to go public with that criticism.

Obama will decide if he’s Harry Truman and McChrystal is Douglas MacArthur.

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Since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up on April 20, President Obama has been rightly and roundly criticized for his lethargic, passionless, and ineffective response to the crisis.  We’re now into the 7th week of this catastrophe, and the president still looks weirdly disengaged: not only that he either doesn’t know what he’s doing or isn’t that interested in the crisis.  It’s that he looks like he doesn’t belong in the job.  He looks like a little boy stomping around the house wearing his father’s suit and shoes.

Stung by the attacks on his competence, character, and emotionlessness, Obama contrived some “passion” the other day.  In an interview with the “Today” show, he said, “I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar.  We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”

Oh no!  Anything but a Bama ass-kickin’!  The terror of that prospect I’m sure has BP shaking in its boots. (By the way, running college seminars is ALL the Bama knows how to do, so he probably should be doing that.  Maybe some college senior somewhere has a Descartes-inspired idea on how to plug the damn hole.)

Rule #1 in politics:  Do not try to be something that you’re not.When President George H. W. Bush was running behind Bill Clinton in 1992, he went into a grocery store and pretended to love beef jerky.  You know: to demonstrate that he was just a regular guy.  The problem was: he wasn’t just a regular guy.  He was Andover and Yale and the Eastern establishment.  His father had been a U.S. Senator.  Bush didn’t even know what beef jerky was, for crying out loud.  He lost the election.

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Now that we are well into the 6th week (Day 43) of the catastrophe in the Gulf, furiously gushing oil continues to destroy one of the world’s most gorgeous and valuable estuaries: it’s lapping up in and around New Orleans and the rest of the Louisiana coast, as well as the coastlines of Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. The destruction to the Gulf region is now reaching—and some say even surpassing—the levels of damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina.

Here’s a question:  I wonder when Spike Lee is going to make a film about the oil spill like the one he did about Katrina, with the underlying theme being that New Orleans was abandoned by the essentially racist federal government led by President Bush.  I also wonder when we’ll hear from Kanye West, who raged on national television that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

The oil spill is destroying the exact same areas in the Gulf region.  Hey, Spike: Does Obama’s lethargic and passionless response to the oil disaster make him a racist?  Hey, Kanye: Does Obama’s lack of any kind of coordinated and effective federal response make him a hater of black people?

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Over the past decade or so, there’s been a movement in our schools to make every kid a winner.  In gym class, in sports events, in spelling bees, in tests of every kind, every child was often given an award or citation to cushion their fragile self-esteem.  Competition was eliminated and “winning” was downgraded to a mere technicality.  If you came in second, you still won!  No losers here, kids.  You’re all equally mediocre.

This politically correct virus has now spread dangerously into the U.S. military.  The armed forces exist for this reason: if called upon, to kill the enemy.  The military also exists to deter the enemy so that lethal force is not needed.  But if necessary, our troops are trained and ready to wipe out our enemies before they can wipe us out.

Now, thanks to same Pentagon social engineers who brought us the ideas of gays serving openly in the military and women on submarines, the military is considering a “courageous restraint” award.  What on God’s green earth is THAT, you ask?  Good question.  Apparently, you will now be able to win a medal for “holding your fire” and avoiding civilian casualties.  Implicit in this utter ridiculousness is that our troops do not NOW show “courageous restraint,” do not NOW “hold their fire” until absolutely necessary, and do not NOW avoid civilian casualties.  This is an insult to the fine and selfless men and women in uniform who give up their lives—in some cases,
literally—to prosecute a war and defend the American people.

Military awards are bestowed for uncommon valor in combat.  They should not be given for doing what the good and decent American armed forces are trained to do anyway: use force judiciously.

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In 2005, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement. 
President Bush (with the oh-so-”helpful” suggestion from Democrat Harry 
Reid) then named White House Counsel Harriet Miers as his choice to replace 
her.

A firestorm erupted.  Critics on the right and left complained that she had 
never served as a judge, had no judicial experience or paper trail from 
which to gauge her judicial philosophy and temperament, and that she was 
named strictly because she was a woman.

Her nomination did not survive the withering criticism, and she withdrew, to 
be ultimately replaced by Samuel Alito.

Fast forward to today.  President Obama has just nominated Elena Kagan, the 
current Solicitor General, to replace John Paul Stevens on the Court.  In 
many ways, Kagan mirrors Miers: a female legal eagle with no judicial 
experience, paper trail, or known guiding legal philosophy.

Miers’s nomination went down because fellow conservatives criticized those 
things.  Don’t expect Kagan’s fellow liberals to attack her on the same 
basis.  Conservatives were intellectually honest about what they saw as 
gaping holes in Miers’s qualifications.  I guarantee that liberals will not 
openly question the same voids in Kagan’s experience.  Conservatives raised 
legitimate issues about Miers; liberals will circle the wagons on Kagan.

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Islam? Islam? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?

We awake to news that after extraordinary police work, investigators have made an arrest in the attempted car bombing of Times Square in New York.  Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani native-turned-naturalized-U.S.-citizen, was taken into custody late last night. He was naturalized last year, and shortly thereafter, made a trip to Peshawar, Pakistan–a hotbed of Islamic terrorist activity and recruitment.

I have read countless reports about the arrest, in newspapers and websites big and small.  So far, I have not seen a single mention of his faith.  Not a single reference to his being Muslim.  We’re left to deduce that by his Pakistani ethnicity and name.

Political correctness has stripped us of our ability to be brutally honest about the nature of the threat we face.  It’s not from a bunch of maniacal Catholics or Jews or Hindus or Buddhists.  The lethal threat is coming from radical Muslims.  Even after September 11, even after repeated terror attacks and attempts here and abroad, we still cannot be truthful and outspoken about it?  Pathetic.

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Today is Earth Day, so if you haven’t already, sprawl yourself on the ground 
and give Mother Earth a great big hug.  The president and vice president 
decided to mark Earth Day by hightailing it to New York City.  I know: New 
York City isn’t exactly the most logical place to spend Earth Day: acres of 
earth are paved over and under for high rises, streets, and subways.  But 
Earth Day wasn’t the reason they trekked to the Big Apple.  They had another 
reason.  Obama was in Manhattan to deliver a sanctimonious dressing-down of 
Wall Street.    (Biden just came to sit for a hard-hitting interview with 
the ladies of “The View.”)

At the same time Obama was blistering the big banks, we learn that the head 
of the Biggest, Meanest, Greediest Bank, Goldman Sachs, has been to the 
White House at least 4 times for meetings with Obama and his chief economic 
adviser, Larry Summers—WHILE Goldman’s lawyers were negotiating with the 
SEC over civil fraud charges against Goldman.

Now THAT’S weird!  The president who pledged to bring a new kind of politics 
to Washington, stripped of conflicts of interest and lobbying and big money 
and special favors seemingly engaged in all of those things?  At once?!

Say it ain’t so!  Of course, it’s so.  In the immortal words of Obama’s 
former pastor, Jeremiah Wright: “No messiah here, just another politician.”

Obama was on Wall Street today, acting the hypocrite. He went on about the 
damage done by the big banks while he and his White House are up to their 
eyeballs in the big banks.  They love them well enough to take—and 
keep—their money.  They love them well enough to schmooze with their 
Chairmen.  They love them well enough to court their votes.

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In old movies (and a lot of new ones too), there is the usual formula of romantic tension between the leading man and the leading lady.  They usually start out hating each other but ultimately find themselves drawn to each other.  This usually culminates in a climactic argument, during which the woman expresses her total contempt and disdain for the man:  “I hate you!” He then grabs her, pulls her close, and plants a big, passionate kiss on her.  She, of course, succumbs, and the two then declare their undying love for each other.

President Obama and the Democrats are engaged in this coy Love-Hate faux drama with Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street.  Obama has railed continually against the “fat cats” on the Street, whom he blames loudly and repeatedly for the financial crisis.  They do, of course, bear some of the responsibility.  But wouldn’t it be nice and refreshing to hear him level
his ire at the ACTUAL main perpetrators of the crisis: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?   Of course, he can’t do that, because that would mean admitting fault with the social engineering of the Jimmy “My Name is Earl” Carter and Bill “Bubba” Clinton-supported Community Re-Investment Act and other misguided and destructive left-wing economic policies.

No, he’s stuck to the safe script: the surefire populist message that all of the banks are bad, Goldman is the worst of the worst, and that they need to be spanked like a Terrible Twos Terror Child.

Just one problem:  Obama accepted nearly $1 million from Goldman folks during the 2008 presidential campaign.

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On the issues that matter most, the president is always somewhere else.

Exhibit A)  For most Americans, the economy is the most pressing issue.  We just got last week’s jobs report, and it wasn’t good.  For the second week in a row, first-time jobless claims spiked.  The unemployment situation is getting worse, not better.  Home foreclosures have also just reached record highs.  And where has Obama been?  Focused on health care.

Exhibit B)  While Iran is working at breakneck speed on a nuclear weapon and is defiantly telling the U.S. where to go, Obama has been dusting off old Cold War treaties with Russia and holding meaningless nuclear summits to secure Canadian and Chilean nuclear material.  To recap:  Iran is over here, developing a nuke.  And Obama is over there, clinking glasses with the
Canadian prime minister.

Exhibit C)  Today is April 15th, the most dreaded day of the year.  Tax Day. If you are two seconds late with your tax return, the IRS begins compiling interest on what you may owe.  (Of course, many states are broke and handing out IOUs instead of tax refunds.  Try giving the IOU to the barista at Starbucks for that latte.)  Of course, nearly 50% of the American people pay
no federal income tax at all, so for them today is just another Thursday.

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Here we go again.  President Obama bowed to the Chinese President and the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Jintao, when they met in Washington yesterday.  This latest bow comes after a string of previously humiliating and ridiculous Bama bows: to the Saudi king, the Japanese emperor, and (my favorite) the Mayor of Tampa, Florida.

After all of this deferential bowing, the Saudis are still supporting and exporting Islamic terrorism and radicalism and the Japanese are still in our face about our military bases there.  I’m pretty sure Tampa must still have some sort of beef with Washington.  But the point is that no matter how much groveling the Bama does, the result is the same: total contempt from those
he’s trying desperately to charm with his “humility.”

The latest example is Hu, who looked completely baffled and slightly amused at the sight of the President of the United States and supposed champion of freedom, bowing before him.  Of course, he read it as American weakness (as he and everyone else in the world had read the Bama’s previous bows).  The result?  Earlier yesterday, Team Obama rushed to the media to trumpet a
breakthrough of sorts with the Chinese over sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program.  Jeff Bader, a top Obama national security official, proclaimed, ”They are prepared to work with us.”

Not so fast.

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In an blockbuster interview airing this weekend on my nationally syndicated radio show, a prominent black conservative blew the lid off the racism of the Left. Dr. Christopher Metzler, Associate Dean of Continuing Studies at Georgetown University, told me of the racist attacks he endured after going public with his opposition to the Democrats’ health care bill and President Barack Obama’s overall agenda.

After an appearance a few weeks ago on “The O’Reilly Factor” on the Fox News Channel, Metzler began to receive despicable, racist voicemail messages.  One caller swears at him profanely and tells him to get his “black ass back to Africa.” Hear it here:

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Another caller tells him that he looked like a “slave” and expresses his “embarrassment” over Metzler’s public position. Hear it here:

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As Metzler explained to me, the Left engages in exactly the kind of disgusting, racist behavior which they unfairly and incorrectly accuse the Tea Party and all others who oppose Obama of engaging in. Unlike the Left, Metzler actually has the evidence to prove it. During his stunning interview, Metzler exposes the Left’s hypocrisy and dishonesty—and its very real racism.

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