A Bright Line

After the Paris attacks and the revelation that at least one of the suicide bombers was a recent Syrian refugee, a bright line has been drawn between President Obama's insistence that the United States accept as immigrants many thousand un-vet-able Syrians  ... and the push-back from many Republicans (and some Democrats) who believe that this is an invitation for future terrorist attacks here at home. So far the governors of 22 states have indicated that they do not wish Syrian immigrants to be relocated in their states ... defying President Obama who says that this is inhumane and unAmerican.

Hillary Clinton's former State Department attack dog, Ben Rhodes, has indicated that the United States can thoroughly vet such immigrants "from the available data" while many intelligence officials and many (Republican and Democrat) on the intelligence committees in Congress saying that this is impossible ... no such data exists. Thus the bright line has been drawn that should define the political landscape for the next year.

This bright line is also now separating the candidates for president ... with most Republicans opposing Syrian immigration while most Democrat candidates are ducking for cover. I do believe that this will be the defining issue ... at least for the foreseeable future ... in the race for the White House. Watch for the Obama administration to throw up all sorts of political gorilla dust to confuse this issue ...while most common-sense Americans push back against this political insanity.

Will Obama win this argument? He certainly has the bully pulpit of the presidency on his side ... as well as the Christian golden rule working in his favor. But then again, self-preserving common sense and the suspicion that Obama's motivations are not Christan but more Muslim-inspired work against his stance ... and the stance he expects his acolytes to follow ... including Hillary Clinton. Watch and see if she toes the line on this one. If she does, it may be her downfall.

Rush to Judgment

Let me begin by saying that I am a big fan of Rush Limbaugh. He, almost daily, offers insights that enlighten the political and social dialog. But in the last two days he has said two loopy things that have me worried.

Yesterday (or Monday) he said that the U.S. stock market is up in September because the Federal Reserve is buying stocks to prop them up before the elections in November. This clearly is nonsense. The Fed is prohibited from such equity speculation. After a while Rush tried to back off this statement (after his e-mail inbox went viral?) by saying that he meant that the low interest rates that the Fed was charging banks was essentially inflating the money supply which was then being used to buy stocks. Even this is not totally true. Most of the money that banks borrow overnight from the Fed (for essentially the doughnut) is then reinvested in government securities for a small marginal profit. However, the huge dollar amounts of these money flows still make a healthy return for these banks nonetheless.

Today, he opined on Obama’s comments in Albuquerque on how Obama’s Christianity taught him to be “his brother’s keeper.” Now, this reference comes from the Old Testament when God asks Cain where Abel was and Cain says, “Am I my brother’s keeper.” (Rush sounded very much like he had been reading a reference to this incident on the Powerline blog. See here.) However, Rush called this concept the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” said by Jesus Christ in Matthew 7.12). This mixing of religious dogma was later backtracked by Rush (after another e-mail storm?) but he never really dumped the Golden Rule reference.

Now these brain farts were so unlike Rush that I am concerned that something is afoot. I won’t speculate on what it is here, but, if something transpires in the near future, remember you heard my concern here first.