Oh, NO! They Can't Blame This One On Bush.

As Egyptians take to the streets of Cairo, protesting the Government of Hosni Mubarak, and demanding his resignation, Americans watch uneasily as unrest permeates the Middle East.  It is difficult to tell what the future outcome will be, especially in Egypt.  What began as a complaint of the corruption in the present government and the establishment of a Democratic government, has now been joined by the Muslim Brotherhood.  That, fellow readers, is BAD NEWS.  The Muslim Brotherhood had its origins in Egypt.  It is mostly composed of Islamic traditionalists with ties to terrorism and Al Qaeda. Many of them are radicals who despise Western civilization and particularly the United States.


Egypt is of special importance to the United States as it is strategically placed to protect the many U.S. interests in the area.  It is also the only country in the Middle East which has  a decent and necessary acquaintance with our other ally in the region, Israel.


It is our opinion that the United States  government has wasted precious days and hours before contacting the Egyptian authorities.  It is reported tonight that "U.S. President Barack Obama called on Egyptian authorities Friday to refrain from violence and to reverse any actions they have taken to limit access to the Internet in the wake of protests there.  


Obama said he spoke to the Egyptian president after he announced plans to dissolve his government and take steps with a new cabinet to implement reforms that will revitalize the economy and create more jobs."


"I told him he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words, to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise."


Reports are that Mubarak refuses to leave,  which is what protestors want.  He has ruled Egypt for 30 years.  Tonight the news from Cairo report that the Egyptian President has asked his cabinet to resign and promises to appoint a new government by Sunday.


The fate of Egypt is yet to be decided.  But after two years of hearing apologies for our country's actions and having the Bush Administration blamed  for every tragedy that befalls on our country and the world, it is gratifying to bring  you proof that former President George W.Bush and members of his Cabinet were visionaries and foresaw to warn Egypt of the problems they faced long before this week's revolt.


Two Sisters

Former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice speaking in Cairo in 2005

Who Needs a Sputnik Moment?

January 28, 2011

By Ion Mihai Pacepa

Sputnik

Never in my worst nightmares did I expect to hear the president of the United States give voice to a dream of building "our generation's Sputnik moment." For the privilege of becoming an American citizen some 32 years ago, I paid with two death sentences, both levied on me by one of those Soviet bloc countries that spawned the Sputnik era and later collapsed under its own weight. From my vantage point, ObamaCare now looms over us with disturbing reminders of the Soviet bloc's Sputnik-era health care system.

Last November, an overwhelming majority of Americans rebelled against ObamaCare, fearing that it would generate an outrageously expensive and ineffective bureaucracy which would destroy the excellent health care that we have proudly enjoyed until now. Our wealthy country thrives on a capitalist economy, and we are accustomed to measuring things in terms of cost and the quality of the product we get for our money. But this greatest nation on earth, where "We, the People" have always been masters of our own lives, has never experienced a Sputnik-style society, and therefore most Americans have trouble predicting the long-term consequences of a health care system run by a Sputnik-era bureaucracy. I've been there, and I know what would happen -- the future would be scientific stagnation and human degradation.

After I was propelled to the top of the bureaucratic ladder in the Soviet bloc, I saw with my own eyes how replacing a country's free-market health care with Sputnik-era bureaucracy drastically reduced the ability of my native Romania and the rest of the Soviet bloc countries to generate scientific progress. During the Sputnik era, the Soviet empire wielded an enormous medical and pharmaceutical bureaucracy, but it was never able to take legitimate credit for any of the 20th century's main medical inventions. Lacking the vitality nurtured by private ownership, individual incentive and free-market competition, that rigid and over-centralized health care community proved inherently incapable of generating any progress on its own.

The Nobel Prize for medicine tells the whole story in a nutshell. During the last century, the United States' free-market medical care system was rewarded with 72 Nobel prizes. The Soviet Union's socialized medical system got none. Zero. Zip. (Tsarist Russia did get one Nobel Prize for medicine in 1904, for Pavlov's conditional reflex theory.) To make up for its scientific impotence, the Kremlin ordered the bloc intelligence community -- of which I was a part -- to steal the West's medical and pharmaceutical technologies, to dress them up in indigenous clothes, and to present those clones as Soviet bloc creations.


Twenty-two years of my other life were spent supervising Romania's slice of the Soviet bloc scientific and technological espionage effort, and I know how difficult it was for even those stolen technologies to elbow their way through all the bureaucratic layers of government that had to approve their birth. A complete project for a penicillin factory stolen from West Germany in the late 1950s, when I was chief of Romania's intelligence station there, took well over ten years before the bureaucrats granted approval for it to be used to build a "Romanian" penicillin factory (in the town of Iasi).

Bureaucracy, like cancer, is a disease where a formerly useful entity spins out of control and transforms itself into a tumor that eventually kills its host. There is no better way to visualize the long-time disaster -- and yes, tragedy -- that a Sputnik-style health care system could generate than to watch the movie The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. This 2007 Romanian film, which won more than twenty international prizes, was inspired by the heartbreaking true story of Constantin Nica, a retired Romanian engineer who had the misfortune of growing old in a country that still maintained a nightmarish government health care bureaucracy -- even twenty years after its last Communist dictator was gunned down by his own people.

The movie's script follows the fictional Mr. Lazarescu, who has become gravely ill, as a Romanian government ambulance shuttles him from one government-owned hospital to the next. At the first three hospitals, although the doctors determine that he does need surgery, the government bureaucracy refuses to take him in because he is too old and does not have enough money to bribe the hospital personnel. Mr. Lazarescu stubbornly refuses to give up, but at the fourth hospital, the evil bureaucrats win -- he dies after a delayed and botched surgery. (The real Mr. Nica was in fact dumped onto a park bench and left there to die.) Mr. Lazarescu's real enemy was not his illness, but the uncaring and authoritarian attitude so deeply ingrained in bureaucratic practice. The whole movie is so realistic that even The New York Times -- a strong supporter of government-run health care -- had to admit that the movie "absorbs you into its world" [1].

I hope that all members of the 112th Congress will have a chance to watch The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. Romania, of course, need not be seen as the standard for how a government-run health care system would play out in the huge democracy we enjoy in the United States, but its example does give food for thought. In 2010, when the 111th Congress rammed through our new health care law, I felt as if I were watching how, years ago, Romania's Communist nomenklatura nationalized that country's private health care system. In both cases, the laws were approved in secret by politicians who did not really understand what was in them, but the bureaucrats' instinct for self-preservation did alert them to the fact that the new health care system would be bad for their own health. In both countries, the politicians declared "every man for himself" and scrambled for cover under exemptions for themselves.


All the U.S. congressmen who mindlessly approved the 2,000-plus pages of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act exempted themselves from its provisions. Romania's nomenklatura did not enjoy the luxury of that simple solution, but they did build four medical centers that did not fall under the new health care law's provisions, and they designated them to serve only the Communist Party and government nomenklatura. In the mid-1970s, I myself built such a medical center for the nomenklatura of Romania's foreign intelligence service, the DIE. That new medical center, which was hidden away in a forest just outside of Bucharest, displayed no name (so as to conceal it from the eyes of the common "plebeians") and was, of course, exempted from Romania's health care laws. The "idiots," as Romania's President Nicolae Ceausescu used to call the country's 22 million non-nomenklatura citizens, had to deal with a decrepit health care system managed by underpaid government bureaucrats, where personal contacts and bribes were the key to getting any decent medical care. The difference between Romania and the rest of the Soviet bloc lay, really, only in the amount and currency of the baksheesh. Throughout the Soviet empire, everyone knew that he had to "stimulate the bureaucracy" in order to get medical care. Everyone who needed surgery was aware that the first thing he had to do was to find out the size of bribe that would be acceptable to the bureaucrats who could approve him for that particular surgery.


People in the United States are not used to baksheesh, but if our health care system is in the future run by bureaucrats, the country will soon get the hang of it. It might not start out as the blatant kind of bribes found in the former Soviet bloc, but bribery is sure to soon become the rule in one way or another. In France, for instance, the government bureaucracy recently introduced a €1 franchise on every medical consultation, described as a contribution au remboursement de la dette sociale (contribution to the repayment of the social debt). That was followed by an €18 franchise on "costly" medical procedures. Now the French patients are learning that if they discretely slip an envelope with cash into the pocket of the doctor's white lab coat hanging in his office, they'll get more "attention." And a little extra attention may be vital in a such a government-run health care system, where doctors are obliged by law to see sixty to seventy patients a day.

It is said that there's nothing certain for us but death and taxes. Bureaucracies are generated by tax money, and, as taxes, they never go away. In 1989, the Soviet bloc collapsed in the same way as its government-run economy did. The huge bureaucracy running the health care system survived, however, hiding under a new name -- just as the Soviet KGB itself did. Now the U.N.'s World Health Organization calls that Marxist health care a "Semashko" health care. Nikolay Semashko was a Russian Communist who became the people's commissar of Public Health in 1918, and he fathered the Soviet health care system. In the year 2000, a European Union report on Romania's Semashko "Health Care Systems in Transition" admitted that this system was still devastating that country, whose infant mortality rate (20.5 per 1,000 in 1998) was among the highest in Europe and whose death rate in 1998 was 70% higher than the EU average [2].


In 2008, the world's leading general medical journal, The Lancet, reported that Russia's current Semashko health care system was still being run by a huge government bureaucracy, that each doctor and nurse still had "his or her little tax," and that "they all prefer cash in envelopes, of course." Nurses took 50 rubles (U.S. $2) to empty a bedpan and 200 rubles ($8) to give an enema. Operations started at 300 rubles, but "the sky's the limit" [3]. The Lancet also noted that "there is a large gap between Russia and other G8 countries in terms of health outcomes. Life expectancy at birth is 66 years for Russians; 16 years less than for people in Japan and 14 years less than the European Union average."

A good many members of the 111th U.S. Congress seem to have forgotten that the United States spent 44 years of Cold War to free the people of the Soviet bloc from Marx's ruinous "utopia," in which people were to be rewarded simply according to their perceived needs. That Congress voted to replace our outstanding health care system with a nightmarish Sputnik-era bureaucracy, delightfully illustrated by the incredibly complicated Rube-Goldberg diagram published by the U.S. Congress itself [4]. The new leaders of the 112th House of Representatives are determined to replace that terrifyingly bureaucratic health care law with one based on our traditional free-market system, but for that, they need the help of the White House.


I hope that President Obama will come down to earth from his "Sputnik moment." We have infinitely more reasons to turn for inspiration to our historical ally, Great Britain, than to turn to Russia. A couple of days ago, British prime minister David Cameron announced that his coalition government had finally decided to get rid of the "command-and-control bureaucracy" running the country's health care system by "giving control over management to family practitioners rather than bureaucrats." Cameron said that the reform would cut red tape, improve treatment, and reduce Britain's huge deficit. It would also create a health care system that would be "part of Britain, part of Britishness "[5]. In other words, no more Semashko health care.


The United States has a well-deserved reputation for providing excellent health care. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, who can afford to seek medical care anywhere on earth, just had another checkup at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Italy's Prime Minister Berlusconi and Newfoundland's Premier Danny Williams had heart surgery in the United States. Canadians claim to love their socialized health care, but when they get really sick, they come here for treatment. The U.S. health care system can, and should, be continuously improved. This unique land of opportunity can, without a doubt, find acceptable ways to provide health care to every American who wants it. But let's do it the American way, not the Sputnik or Semashko way. And let's do it in the daylight as a unified national effort, not secretly at midnight as a Democratic Party conspiracy.










Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa was head of Romania's Presidential House, the equivalent in this country of being White House Chief of Staff and Director of the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security. In 1989, Ceausescu was executed at the end of a trial whose main accusations came out of Pacepa's book Red Horizons (Regnery Publishing, Washington DC, 1987), republished in 27 countries.


The article above Who needs a sputnik moment?
was published in today's American Thinker blog. 

The Difference - Humor

The Day After

January 26, 2011, the day after Barack Obama's second State of the Union address.  There was  really no getting away from it.  Every station on television was discussing it.  Pundits, writers, just regular every day citizens had something to say about it.  "It was the best speech he ever made!" some said, "It was so boring that I fell asleep," said others.  Our online friends discussed it, husbands and wives talked about it, and there were so many mixed feelings and emotions that we just wanted to put it behind us.



Kevin Jackson
Author of The Big Black Lie



However, we've become quite the fans of Kevin Jackson, writer of the Blacksphere, one of the blogs that we recomment on our site.  Kevin Jackson is not only intelligent and perceptive, he also has a marvelous sense of humor.  We weren't going to write anymore about the abysmal SOTU of 2011, but after reading this blog we just had to share it.  We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we did, and we encourage you to visit The Blacksphere, often. With this post we'll rest on our commentaries of the State of the Union Address.  The words have been spoken.  Let the action begin!

State of The Excuses Report

January 26, 2011

by Kevin JacksonTh

Obama’s speech went over like a pregnant pole vaulter. They should have called it the “State of the Excuses” report. What did we learn? That Obama won’t take blame for anything, and now he wants the Republicans to jump on board so he can blame them in 2012.

Everybody keeps focuses on how well he delivered the speech, or did he write the speech, and if so, how much? Shouldn’t a president be required to write the speech himself? Or is this like Harvard Law Review where you are just so happy you selected a black president, somebody else does all his work?

That speech was long on ideas and lies, but short on results. All the Left says is, “That was a great speech…he really knocked that one out of the park.” Who cares!

This speech was full of “ifs.” If a grasshopper carried a .45, birds wouldn’t mess with it, would they?!

There was nothing concrete in this speech, just telling people what they want to hear. Here’s a good one: Obama’s going to post even more stuff on the internet for Americans to review. I think we are still waiting on the first wave of information, like the ability to review bills, before they are passed. Further, given Obama’s track record for making information disappear, I’m not exactly sure that I trust him with “information” just yet.

How about this technological advance? Veterans can download their medical records. Eureka! Shouldn’t the VA have those records in the first place? Why should we make veterans have to carry this stuff around?

I swear I think I saw a thought-bubble over the head of Michelle Obama and she was getting rubdown by Raul in that lavish hotel in Spain. The Energy Czar was texting, and I think at one point Biden was checking email.

There was one good thing that I liked about the event. I was SO happy not to see Pelosi jumping up every two seconds behind Obama. I have to give Boehner credit, because I only counted him rolling his eyes about 17 times. My researcher said there were 193 opportunities for him to do so; what restraint.

Obama said that America needs to innovate, educate, and out-build. He left out pontificate, out-mandate, and out-spend. Obama can no more turn around this economy, than he can put a g-string on an alligator!

He talked about the importance of family in the education process, as he touted Race to the Top. Race to the Top of the dung heap is a better description, and the program amounts to little more than taxpayer theft. The program will not introduce more innovation in our education process, because it is still run by (1) government, and (2) teachers’ unions. RTTT is a repackaged money grab, and called by insiders, “better than the dotcom opportunity.”

Free enterprise drives the economy, Obama said. With unemployment at 9.4% free enterprise must be driving a hoop-d, or maybe one of those new Volts. While free enterprise was driving the economy, the public sector was driving Ferraris, receiving three times the pay increases of the private sector. Keep in mind who’s now driving the car…

Obama said he wants to find “common ground.” This country was not built on “common ground.” This country was built because of the oppression of the people by a tyrannical government, and nothing’s changed. In fact, the government is immensely more tyrannical today, than it was when the country was founded.

When Obama won, it was “on like a chicken bone!” Democrats were happier than clams at high tide; rubbing it in, practically DARING people to say they hadn’t voted for Obama. It was the OJ verdict all over again. Obama proclaimed, “I won.” Later he reinforced “That’s what elections are for.” He was right. Elections are for kicking a bully’s boney ass, then taking HIS lunch money. In our case, we would just be getting our money back.

Previous administrations may have fondled us, but in comparison, the Obama administration is a serial rapist. It doesn’t matter what Obama says, the threat of Obama’s actions remain.

Obama made it clear that the health insurance industry will not exploit patients; that distinction goes to the Fed. If there are any organs to be harvested they will go to the government for fair distribution…to the Chinese to pay back the debt most likely.

Obama still has an issue with the rich, the suckers who keep striving for better in America. I’ll show them. He wants clean energy and wants the oil companies to pay for it. Obama wants government to FORCE innovation, citing NASA…you know, the very same NASA that he wanted to use to make Muslims feel good about themselves.

This was a good speech, actually one of his best, particularly if you are an unemployed gay, Pakistani living illegally in the United States. Bonus if you don’t speak English.


That’s my rant!






© 2011 Kevin Jackson – The Black Sphere

Our Generation's Sputnik Moment

01/26/2011

Michael Ramirez Cartoon

Investor's Business Daily

Of One Mind -- Thoughts on the SOTU

We've read the speech, we've heard the remarks by commentators, we've emailed friends, and spoken to others.  We've expressed that we felt that the president missed a great opportunity to truly make a significant change, and to address our most troubling woes.  We've read a wonderful satirical piece which equated the SOTU to an infomercial for General Electric, in The Spin Cycle.  This speech will be dissected ad infinitum, but Jonah Goldberg, writing for the National Review Online,  comes the closest to expressing our sentiments. We even agree on his assessment of Paul Ryan's speech.  On the State of the Union Address, we Two Sisters and Jonah Goldberg are of one mind.

An excellent editorial is just too good to pass up. 
Two Sisters.

Over Confidence & Over Kindness

January 25, 2011 11:06 P.M.

By Jonah Goldberg

I haven’t been poisoned by any of the post-punditry because I watched it all on the web. But I was truly surprised by how lackluster and clichéd Obama’s speech was. My suspicion is that because he had a good month or so (START, tax compromise, Tucson speech, uptick in polls) he thinks he can go back to his comfortable talking points: Investment, Sputnik moment, green energy, high speed rail, etc. One sign of that: he was, I believe, a full ten minutes shorter than last year’s SOTU but it felt twice as long.

It’s not as if this was a speech Obama would give if the Shellacking never happened, but it’s close.

Yes, the mixed-seating of the audience definitely worked against him because the birds of a feather weren’t flocked together. But this simply wasn’t an inspiring speech. I don’t think his naked calls for what amounts to industrial policy excite anybody who won’t get a check if they’re enacted. And the theme “winning the future” sounds even more focused grouped than it did when Newt Gingrich came out with a book by that title a few years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a bump in the polls, but if I were a GOP strategist I’d take some solace in the fact that this is a guy who has, once again, misread the political moment.

As for Ryan, I thought he was really very good, particularly in the second half of his blessedly brief remarks.

My only complaint is that he was a bit too un-threatening. We are in an awful mess, and a bit more passion would suit me better.

But that might be my personal taste trumping smart politics. The left — for good reason — is setting its sights on Ryan for the threat that he is. The first thing they will do is try to cast him as a terrifying figure, particularly among seniors. I think coming across as reassuring, even soothing, is probably the right play. Ryan never comes across as a bomb-thrower, but tonight he talked like an ER nurse trying to talk down a violent hippy from a bad acid trip, which is pretty impressive given the substance of what he was saying.

© National Review Online 2011.
JonahNRO@gmail.com

State of the Union by Michael Ramirez

MICHAEL RAMIREZ CARTOON

01/25/2011

When Summer's Over and Dark Clouds Hide the Sun

Our guest writer is today is Richard Carroll.  Rich has studied Islam and the Islamic growth in the United States for several years.  Two Sisters From The Right are quite concerned about the topics discussed in this article.  We are presently researching "honor killings" which are occurring more and more frequently in the United States.

With the threat of home grown Radical Islamic terrorists becoming even more alarming daily, we suggest that many of our fellow citizens who refuse to admit, even to themselves, that we are in danger of losing our traditional way of life, not only read this carefully, but begin to research on your own.
Two Sisters.

When Summer's Over and Dark Clouds Hide the Sun



By Rich Carroll


How old will your children and grand children be in the year 2020? Let’s take a peak at their future:


At our current rate of allowing illegal immigrants to pour into the U.S., in the year 2020 America will have 20 million Muslims, and another 20 million Mexicans, both imported by a political administration that wants “global open borders.” This figure is greater than the populations of Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Florida, Idaho and Kentucky combined. Food stamps will cost Americans $130 billion per year, jobless benefits $286 billion, welfare $48 billion, Medicaid for 23 million people will cost $716 billion per year. To pay this yearly “bill,” YOUR LIFE, and the lives of your children, will need to change drastically. You wanted “change,” well, here goes:

The total of these services is 3.4 times the amount required for the year 2010. The price of “cultural diversity” will require police and fire departments to be cut significantly. Parks and recreation, libraries, public transportation and many school programs will be cut. These large foreign families will need your money! Of course with police services cut, anticipate an increase in crime. Expect wide-spread looting and anarchy in some cities.

Do you remember the fun of making Christmas and Halloween decorations in elementary school? Your children and grand children won’t be able to experience that excitement and joy because Muslim students would be “offended.” So far, every lawsuit filed against a school for honoring our customs and traditions has been won by the Islamists. The Pledge of Allegiance will be gone, and the flag that hung from your classroom because both might “offend” someone who has no desire to blend in with this country we call “The United States.” Your children have been forced by a liberal pointy-headed judge to eat “Halal” meals at school; the traditional Islamic food (similar to the Jewish Kosher meal.) Yes the 20 million Muslims living in America have demanded and won every court case.

They represent the antithesis of American history and tradition. In the year 2020 we will practice Sharia law and Sharia finance (in addition to our traditional Constitutional law) but Muslims feel they are entitled to their “own” laws and financial systems since they had no intention of “blending in” with our way of life when they immigrated here, and this began when Barack Hussein Obama loaded Insurance giant AIG $45.7 billion tax dollars to explicitly promote Sharia law - the 1200 year old body of Islamic canon law based on the Quran, which demands the destruction of Western Civilization and the United States. This is the same law that prompted the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and it’s the same law responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Christians throughout the world. AIG, which is now a government owned company (and controls Senate and Congress pensions) engages in Sharia finance which subjects certain financial activities, including investments, to the dictates of Islamic law and religion. This specifically includes any profits or interest obtained through such financial activities. AIG itself publicly describes Sharia as “Islamic law based on the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet.“ Your tax dollars are being used to seal your children’s fate thanks to a Muslim administration.

Your children will read textbooks written by Islamic publishers with no mention of God or Christianity but will include an ample brainwashing of the Islamic culture. These books began entering our public schools in 2008. YouTube - US Textbooks: Muslims Discovered America By 2020 these books will dominate the classroom.

The liberal Supreme court has ruled that it is perfectly fine for that Muslim Mosque to blare-out their 5 daily calls of prayer down your neighborhood streets, but the sound of Christian church bells are too “offensive” for Muslims to withstand. In 2008, Judge Joseph Charles, a non-Muslim Superior Court Judge, heard a case involving a 17 year old Muslim girl in an arranged marriage who had been repeatedly beaten and raped by her husband. An Imam was called to the stand who testified that a wife must comply with her husband’s sexual demands. Judge Charles decided the husband was acting within the norms of Muslim practice, and could not be held accountable for it.


Synagogues are being bombed in 2020 in your town. Of course these are only “isolated incidents” and in no way should reflect upon the growing Muslim community.


Your doctor, and your children’s doctor is a Muslim from Pakistan now and you must wait for long periods to see him because he is too busy. You see thousands of doctors have left the medical field; the patient loads are too much, and the care you can expect has been reduced by 50 per cent. If you are Jewish this Muslim doctor may even refuse to see you as a patient (See England).


Your children will suffer from the “fatal deception” of the 2008 Presidential election. Stopping the inevitable will only happen with you reconnecting your inner strength and heart. Only your determination can stop what is being orchestrated for your children’s future.


© Rich Carroll 2011


Mr. Carroll may be reached at crossedrifles@hotmail.com

The Centrist President

Our sentiments exactly.  No one can say it better that this IBDEditorial. We present it to you in full form.


Editorial: Our So-Called 'Centrist' President

Posted 06:59 PM ET

Politics: Will the man who conned the public into believing he was a moderate, but who has governed as the most immoderate leftist in the country's history, now try to pull the same con so he can be elected again?

How naive does he think we are? Well, pretty darn naive, given the polls that everyone is bending over backward to cite. They show President Obama's approval rating turning up in large part because he didn't let the Bush tax cuts expire, enlisted cronies to help him appear more "business friendly" and paid lip service to regulatory reform.

Such moves, according to the spinmeisters, are part of a grand "repositioning" of the president as a "centrist" who "got the message from the November election" and who is now less hostile to the free-enterprise system he's been trashing for more than two years.

Give us a break. Does anyone think that the Barack Obama who set out to "transform" the America that he found so distasteful has himself been transformed? Does anyone believe that if the mid-terms went the other way and the odds of his re-election hadn't gone south, Obama would be considering any detour whatsoever on the leftist low road he has charted?

Call us skeptics, but we don't. But then, we were among the few in the media who saw through Obama's facade in 2008, who feared he'd put the U.S. on a path that could only be described as socialist (the day after the Nov. 5, 2008 presidential election, we expressed our concern that "we may be installing the first president who openly favors 'change' that ... can only be described as socialistic") and then watched as it all came to pass.

Based on the polls, however, many Americans are paying no more attention now than they were two years ago. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in January found that fewer people — 45% — consider Obama to be "liberal" today than they did during the 2008 campaign, when 56% attached that label to him.

This after he effectively nationalized the auto industry, signed an $862 billion "stimulus" bill, used the $700 billion TARP program to reward union cronies, placed Wall Street under national supervision, oversaw the passage of a U.S. takeover of the health care system, and approved a record surge in U.S. federal spending.

The "new Obama" Kool-Aid has gone down so smoothly that a supposed conservative commentator, Ben Stein, thinks the president is the Republican Party's — yes, the Republican Party's — best alternative come 2012. "What's not to like?" Stein asked on CBS' "Sunday Morning," given Obama's decisions on keeping tax rates in place and troops in Afghanistan.

The sometimes-tongue-in-cheek Stein notwithstanding, the president has made the most progress among independents who backed him in 2008 but then turned against him last year. Well, they may be "fickle," but they aren't stupid.

In our own polls, independents have shown themselves to be dead-serious when it comes to government spending. And until Obama makes some serious moves to address the deficit and debt he has run up, we doubt he'll win over that many in the middle.

We also doubt that the president's alleged moves to the middle are going down very well with the liberals who form the president's base. In fact, we're surprised we haven't heard more from them if the stories are true that Obama is prepared to leave them high and dry to improve his chances for re-election.

Then again, the silence among liberals may signal they're no more confident than we are that Barack Obama intends to do anything substantive that qualifies him as a moderate.

China Makes Crap - Buy American!

It's come to this? At the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, Chinese pianist Lang Lang began tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie “Battle on Shanganling Mountain.” The film depicts a group of “People’s Volunteer Army” soldiers who are first hemmed in at Shanganling (or Triangle Hill) and then, when reinforcements arrive, take up their rifles and counterattack the U.S. military “jackals.”   The movie and the tune are widely known among Chinese, and the song has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades

Quite obviously Chairman Hu Jintao has to have recognized the song as did the Chinese watching on the Internet.  We've read that early morning TV viewers in China knew it would be played an hour or two beforehand.  Our question is this, was no one at the White House aware of the tune that was being played? Where were the experts on China and Chinese propaganda on this humiliating evening?

The name of the tune that Lang Lang played is called "The Motherland".  It is used in Chinese propaganda as an anti imperialist America song.  The message it brings is that the United States attacked North Korea as a means to invade China.  The defeat of the Americans at the battle of Triangle Hill is a victory against the imperialists Americans. 

The Chinese who are all about pride and "saving face," will see this as having perpetrated a magnificent insult against the United States, right here on their own soil, within the walls of the most important home in the country. As we continue to be indebted to the Chinese, take our business to China, and purchase merchandise that is made in China, we are not aware of the deep anti American sentiment that runs deeply through the country and its people.  The anti Americanism is fueled by the governments propaganda machine. 

Throughout China, days after the White House State dinner, the video clip of Lang Lang's great moment is being seen throughout China.  The song has been deemed, the “right place, right time, right song” and is a declaration of victory over the United States.  In China students are taught that the United States lost the Korean war, and the fact that this song was triumphantly played in the White House before the American President and other dignitaries, was great coup for Chinese propaganda signifying yet another defeat for the United States. The Chinese are notorious for using moments such as this or misinterpreting photographs and other events to tout their superiority over Americans and making the Chinese people believe it'
We first learned about this disgraceful event today  as we read an article which appeared in THE EPOCH TIMES.  It was sent to us via email.  As we read the article, the film "Casablanca" came to mind.  In that classic American film the inebriated Nazi officers drinking at "Rick's Café Américain" in French controlled Algiers, are raucous and noisy as they play on the piano the German song, "Die Wacht Am Rhein", which is a patriotic song dating to the 1840s. In the song the Germans vow to defend the Rhineland from a French invasion.  It is, of course, an insult to all the French patrons at Rick's.   With just a nod, the apolitical Rick, an American expatriate, gives  an order for  the orchestra to play "The Marseillaise". This turns out to be one of the most electrifying scenes in movie history as all the bar patrons stand and sing the French anthem in unison, drowning out the drunken Germans. 
 

Casablanca Marseillaise
Uploaded by RioBravo. - Arts and animation videos.

 

 

It was not so at the White House on Friday night.  The invited Americans sat placidly there as Chinese pianist Lang Lang, in a pre planned act, humiliated the United States of America, in the people's house, and not one American stood in protest. 
 
We're told that when the president gives the State of The Union address on Tuesday he will be remarking on the creation of jobs and employment.  He has said that we will be doing things the American way.  What that means to this president remains to be seen.  Hopefully it will mean that Americans and the government will think twice before moving our factories and manufacturing overseas especially to China.  Americans must understand that without the work we provide for the Chinese to produce at much lower wages than Americans will accept, the Chinese economy would collapse.
 
China, dear friends, does not like us.  They are not to be trusted.  This degradation perpetrated on Americans at the White House State dinner is a bold example of how far they are willing to go to belittle and demean us.  The fact that no one has expressed anger or offense against this deliberate act of provocation is astonishing.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been accused of "putting his foot in his mouth" when he called Hu Jintao a "dictator".  To our knowledge, that is the only thing Harry Reid has ever said that is worth quoting.  We are pleased that neither Reid, Senator Mitch McConnell or House Speaker Boehmer attended the event.  That makes three less Americans that were present at the bold degradation of our country  It appears that the only ones with the courage to come face to face with China were the protestors outside the White House who stood there every day of Hu's visit.
 
Is the Obama administration aware of what went on that day?  We don't know about them, but once it was brought to our attention, We cannot  get over this insult easily.  Does one forget a stinging slap in the face?  As the Chinese go about repeating the phrase "right place, right time, right song", we are once again reminded of the movie Casablanca, and we feel a kinship with Rick when he says about Ilsa, "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."
 
Paraphrasing him we say about Chairman Hu Jintao and his piano player Lang Lang, "Of all the Houses, in all the cities, in all the world, they walked into ours?"  The Chinese were not only rude, they were uncultured, lacking in delicacy and refinement.They were not worthy of a State Dinner in OUR White House.  It was a humiliating insulting  act we cannot soon forget, and although no one in that audience saw fit to do anything about it, we can.  We can by beginning to snub the Chinese in our own small way: always BUY AMERICAN.

The Search Is Officially Over

Just yesterday the headlines read that Obama's birth records could not be found.  Today the Governor of Hawaii announces that he will not release Obama's birth information.  For us, this is one of those "scratch your head in confusion" moments.  How can you refuse to release that which you cannot find?

Just speaking from personal experience, before we could apply for Social Security benefits, we had to go on a search of old documents, including birth certificate, to prove that we were eligible.  We feel that this experience has been a "teaching moment" for all Americans.  There should be a rule set in stone that no one can even throw his/her hat in the ring until they have been fully vetted, and all required documentation is in order.  As for Hawaii's secretive laws barring the release of private documents, this isn't any Tom, Dick, or Harry, we'd like vetted.  It's the leader of the free world.  We have a right to know.

 APNewsBreak: Hawaii won't release Obama birth info

By MARK NIESSE
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 22, 2011; 12:08 AM

Is it real, or is it Memorex?

HONOLULU -- Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie will end his quest to prove President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii because it's against state law to release private documents, his office said Friday.
State Attorney General David Louie told the governor he can't disclose an individual's birth documentation without a person's consent, Abercrombie spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said.

"There is nothing more that Gov. Abercrombie can do within the law to produce a document," said Dela Cruz.

"Unfortunately, there are conspirators who will continue to question the citizenship of our president."

Abercrombie, who was a friend of Obama's parents and knew him as a child, launched an effort last month to find a way to dispel conspiracy theories that the president was born elsewhere. The governor said at the time he was bothered by people who questioned Obama's birthplace for political reasons.

But Abercrombie's investigation reached a dead end when Louie told him the law restricted his options.

Hawaii's privacy laws have long barred the release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who doesn't have a tangible interest.

So-called "birthers" claim Obama is ineligible to be president because they say there's no proof he was born in the United States, with many of the skeptics questioning whether he was actually born in Kenya, his father's home country.

Hawaii's health director said in 2008 and 2009 that she had seen and verified Obama's original vital records, and birth notices in two Honolulu newspapers were published within days of Obama's birth at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu.

Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo again confirmed Friday that Obama's name is found in its alphabetical list of names of people born in Hawaii, maintained in bound copies available for public view.
That information, called index data, shows a listing for "Obama II, Barack Hussein, Male," according to the department's website. The president was born Aug. 4, 1961.
"The index is just to say who has their records within the department. That's an indication," Okubo said. "I can't talk about anyone's records."

The Obama campaign issued a certificate of live birth in 2008, an official document from the state showing the president's birth date, city and name, along with his parents' names and races.

Online:
http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/obama.html

Counterpunch

By Rich Carroll


The inspiration for my article today comes from Cathy Cruz Marrero of Reading, Pa., who, while making a public nuisance of herself trying to cell phone text and walk at the same time, fell into a shopping mall fountain. One small thrill of our “live 24/7 all video all the time” world is that Ms. Marrero’s self induced mishap was captured on video tape and has now ‘gone viral.‘ (One would assume, exacerbating the much ballyhooed ‘humiliation.‘) Cathy believes her falling into the mall fountain is someone else’s fault and she plans to “sue” because she is “offended and humiliated.” Suing what and or whom is still unclear, as her lawyer admits they are still “investigating,“ but keeping “all options open.“ If she is successful every unemployed idiot will be running to the mall; cell phone in hand! This story only gets better because we find our “humiliated,” indignant mall shopper charged five thousand dollars on a stolen credit card. Maybe she is simply trying to ’defray costs,’ but that’s pure supposition. Cathy and her moon battery machinations force me to strike-back at everyone who thinks the rest of us “owe them” and that uncomfortable emotions equate to financial gain, so here is my response to anyone like Cathy:


I am “offended and humiliated” that I have to sign 2 legal documents for a five dollar package of over-the-counter antihistamines while our foreign President allows drug smugglers to walk-across our open borders with cocaine and marijuana and calls anyone wanting these borders secured a “bigot.”


As a decorated combat veteran of the United States I am “offended” that this Muslim President and his lesbian “Homeland Security Director” call me and my brother veterans “Domestic Terrorists,” and I am “humiliated” that Barry Soetoro or Barack Hussein Obama or whatever the f…k his name is can walk in to The United States Military Academy at West Point and talk down to these fine young warriors who actually had to (unlike him) survive the thorough “vetting process” to gain admission.


I am “offended,” Cathy, that Obama (or whatever his name is) and his Muslim minions work tirelessly destroying my beloved sovereign nation. Obama’s importing 80,000 Muslims into the United States at a time when our unemployment stands at a grotesque 15 per cent “offends me.” His job killing 14 trillion dollar health fiasco “offends” me. Whom do I sue? The fact that this usurper has taken 71 days of vacation and played 55 rounds of golf in only 2 years in office is “humiliating” and highly “offensive” to me and my fellow conservatives. May I sue someone for his dereliction of duty? My personal automobile gas costs over three dollars per gallon because this Anti-American (whatever his real name is) won’t drill for oil OR build nuclear power plants to ensure America’s future needs for electricity. Will my grandchildren have power? Whom do I sue?


I am “offended” that a leftwing Bush hating pothead shot a Democrat Congresswoman and the left-wing Communist media CNN ran 80 stories on Sarah Palin from January 8 through January 16th, which is roughly nine pieces per day, during which her name was mentioned hatefully 664 times or over 70 times every 24 hours. These liberal freaks tried to tie the shooting to Sarah Palin, then had the brass to attack her for defending herself. I would think even lefties would be “humiliated” at this since their media failed to mention thief Charlie Rangel, or any number of the hateful rhetoric spewing from the mouths of Democrats. Does my humiliation (and outrage) merit litigious action? Can I expect a “payout?”


I am personally “offended” that loud mouth liberals like Catie Couric made waves asserting the United States needed a “Muslim version of ‘The Cosby Show’” to help fight off Islamophobia when Muslims have murdered hundreds of thousands of Christians and Jews in 16,546 terrorist acts in the past 9 years. Islamophobia or genuine concern for freedom and life? Of course the grossly overpaid overhyped “Perky” mouthpiece endorsed the Mosque at ground zero; something else that “offends” me. Do I get to sue anyone?


My final word to Cathy Cruz Marrero is to ‘man up, and look in the mirror.’ If you’re so humiliated, get off TV. If you want to lighten up, check out you tube, “the fountain lady.” It’s a scream. (AND I wouldn’t have even known your name or who you were if you hadn’t put yourself out there, whining.)


Also, I can explain to your attorney, “how it happened.” Hey, I’m just trying to help……… so sue me.


Rich Carroll is the author of "Orphaned Heroes" and "Terrorists' Crossing."

Paul Ryan to Give State Of Union Response

We are very excited to learn that Paul Ryan will give the Republican rebuttal to Obama's State Of The Union Address.  Paul Ryan is extremely articulate and poised in front of the cameras.  The main problem facing our nation is the economy and the lack of jobs and unemployment.  Ryan is extremely qualified to speak for the GOP on a subject that has become  one of his fields of interest and expertise.

Ryan to Give State of Union Response

By Patrick O'Connor -- The Wall Street Journal

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, who will spearhead GOP efforts to slash federal spending, will deliver the Republicans’ response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union next week.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)Hours ahead of the president’s speech, House Republicans are scheduled to vote on a largely symbolic measure to grant Mr. Ryan, the new chairman of the Budget Committee, authority to set spending levels for the rest of the current fiscal year.

Mr. Ryan is a favorite among conservative activists. Even the president has singled him out as a Republican with serious ideas about trimming the deficit – albeit ideas with which Mr. Obama largely disagrees.

A year ago, Mr. Ryan wrote a sweeping proposal to balance the federal budget. His plan, entitled “A Roadmap for America’s Future,” would gradually shift Social Security into a program of individual investment accounts and drastically re-work both Medicare and Medicaid through a system of vouchers and regional high-risk pools that reduce the costs of covering the most expensive people to insure.

Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.,Ky.) announced their choice of Mr. Ryan Friday morning. After Mr. Obama delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday, the Wisconsin Republican will deliver his response from the Budget Committee’s hearing room.

In the release announcing his selection, the two Republican leaders highlighted the Democrats’ failure to pass a formal budget resolution last year – the first such lapse since the modern budget process was crafted in the mid-1970s.

“Paul Ryan is uniquely qualified to address the state of our economy and the fiscal challenges that face our country,” Mr. Boehner said in the release. “We’re broke, and decisive action is needed to help our economy get back to creating jobs and end the spending binge in Washington that threatens our children’s future. I’m pleased that Paul will be outlining a common-sense vision for moving our country forward.”





Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company

Recommended Reads:

Chinese Tiger ate US Dove for lunch


Hawaii governor claims record of Obama's birth 'exists in archives' but can't produce the vital document


Krauthammer Attacks Media's 'Bogus' Call for Civility: Where Were They When Bush was Being Called Hitler?

First Black Tea Party Forms In Houston

House GOP begins long drive to dismantle Obamacare

Hubris heading for a fall

Why Everything Starts with Repeal

MEET TIM PAWLENTY

Chatting with friends recently, we were banding about names for possible GOP candidates for 2012.  Most hoped that the field wouldn't be listed until January of next year, so as not to give the liberal media a heads up to begin bashing the candidates.  Names like Huckabee, Romney, Palin, Daniels, Jindal, Christie, and other notable Republicans were thrown into the mix. 

When I suggested that I like Tim Pawlenty for President I was met with resistance.  "He lacks charisma" some said, "He has no personality" said another.  One person even suggested he get a coach to teach him how to speak animatedly.  I was somewhat perturbed by the tone of the conversation because I have always believed that we voted for the man we felt to be best suited to govern our country and to lead it in the right direction. 

Barack Obama is said to have "charisma."  "Look where voting for charisma has gotten us," I said. "Well how about Marco Rubio, he's eye candy!"  And the chat went on and on.  Granted it was all being said in fun and jokes, but with a bit of seriousness tossed in now and then. Then, it started me thinking what is it that I want in a president? 




Just a regular guy

Later in the evening my brother called and asked me if I'd gotten a Kindle, to which I replied that I wasn't interested in one.  I spend a lot of time looking at an electronic screen as it is, when it comes to reading a book, I like to turn pages.  "That's because, like me, you're Old School!" he said.  I guess he's right and I'm old school about my politics too.  When it comes to choosing a presidential candidate, I want someone wholesome, wise, patriotic, experienced, honest,

conservative, fiscally responsible, intelligent, and the list of qualities goes on.  Most of all I want a president who loves the United States of America, who is proud of his country and doesn't need to apologize for it.

I believe that right now, Tim Pawlenty is the man who better suits that "old school" criteria of mine.  He might not have that "Wow factor," but I do believe he will be a great leader when and IF he decides to run for president. 


Here is an introduction to the real Tim Pawlenty by someone who has had the time to observe him and get to know him.




NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE    
The Quiet Contender
by Robert Costa

Governor Tim Pawlenty

Tim Pawlenty isn’t in the spotlight, yet. But he could charm voters in 2012.


As others kept their distance, Tim Pawlenty took a knee.


It was late, and most undergraduates had long since left the auditorium at George Washington University, but a lone young man in a wheelchair remained. He waited patiently near the door, his shoulders twitching. Flocks of coeds fluttered by. Minutes passed. Then, as Pawlenty finished his last handshake with a clean-cut College Republican, he noticed the fellow at the exit and approached him.


The student struggled to ask a question. Pawlenty, an athletic 50 year-old, dropped to his side. Behind him were empty pizza boxes and trash cans; his aides were watching the clock. But the former Minnesota governor’s eyes stayed fixed upon the face of the young man, who haltingly asked him about the tragedy in Tucson.


“Our hearts and prayers go out to the people who had loved ones who were lost or injured,” Pawlenty replied softly. “We are still heartbroken over that.” Their conversation continued for a couple of minutes, touching on the personal and the political. Pawlenty remained perched on the carpet, his tie and jacket rumpled.


For Pawlenty, it was a quiet moment — one of many I witnessed as I followed him around Washington last week. Out of office after serving two terms in Saint Paul, he has been making the rounds this month, talking up Courage to Stand, his new memoir, and winking at a potential 2012 presidential bid.


Pawlenty’s promotional tour, of course, has coincided with days of half-staff flags — a publicist’s nightmare. Copies of the tome aren’t exactly flying off the shelves. Yet the timing has strangely been a boon for Pawlenty. His low-key Midwestern persona — often scorned by Beltway politicos as flat and tepid — has garnered attention, even accolades, for being just that.

Gov. Pawlenty and Jon Stewart

The day before his Foggy Bottom stop, Pawlenty appeared on Comedy Central’s Daily Show, where he calmly sparred with comedian Jon Stewart for 20 minutes. At the top of the program, Stewart challenged Pawlenty about GOP rhetoric, asking whether leading Republicans “believe we are as close to tyranny and socialism as the tone of their rhetoric would signal.”

Pawlenty did not take the bait. Rather than paint himself as a Tea Party spokesman, or as a chin-pulling critic of the movement, he noted that behind such heavy words lay real political differences, not just ammunition for partisan battle. He pushed back on Stewart’s premise, turning the interview away from a discourse on discourse toward a back-and-forth on policy.

Addressing CPAC

“I think there are a lot of us in the conservative movement who view government — whether it is personalized to Barack Obama or anyone else — as government that crowds into more space that used to be for individuals, that used to be for private markets, that used to be for charity, that used to be for entrepreneurial activity, that used to be for faith organizations,” Pawlenty said. “There are a lot of us who say, ‘you know, that feels like government stepping on us, pushing us to the side.’ There is a continuum between liberty and tyranny, and sometimes it happens very incrementally.”


For the next few minutes, Stewart kept digging for newsy red meat, but Pawlenty never dished it. By mid-interview, the comic recognized that across from him sat a debate partner, a Republican willing to wrangle on tax rates, the size of government, and the federal deficit — not a polarizing bomb-thrower. So he kept Pawlenty on-set for an extended confab, far beyond what he could air.

As the chat closed, Stewart leaned across the table. “You know what’s crazy? I don’t think you and I disagree that much.#…#Do we?” he asked. To which Pawlenty deadpanned, “Yeah.” Both chuckled.

At GW, Pawlenty recounted the exchange. “We had a great discussion. It uncharacteristically went serious — away from the normal comedy routine,” he recalled, as students munched on greasy slices. “I respect [Stewart], he’s smart — he does his homework.”

The audience, mostly collegiate conservatives, nodded and perked up. They may not have known much about Pawlenty, but this early impression was, if anything, different: soft-spoken, earnest, and extemporaneous — the opposite of a glad-handing salesman.

Tim Pawlenty and daughter Anna

By approaching political action with strong principles and an open hand, Pawlenty predicted that the GOP could make major gains in coming years. “Our party needs to understand that we need to connect with people who have not yet joined our team,” he said. “That does not mean that we run around and pretend we are Democrats or liberals.” Instead, he said, the GOP’s future success rests in making a “hopeful and optimistic” case, with a “can-do and constructive spirit.”

With progressives still roosting in Washington, holding onto the Senate and White House, Republicans, Pawlenty argued, need to do more than criticize — they have to be strategic and civil. “I got a lot of experience doing that in Minnesota,” he mused. “It’s a pretty liberal place; it’s a place where Al Franken is a U.S. senator. I mean, think about that.” Still, creating villains out of political opponents, he cautioned, will keep Republican ranks thin.

Pawlenty turned to a theme that has propelled his political career — that the GOP should be the party of Sam’s Club, not the country club. “We don’t want to go to people who are hurting or in doubt, maybe challenged in ways that we don’t directly understand, to condemn and to judge and to scare them,” he said. “We’ve got to identify the problem, but we’ve also got to identify the solution — to say there is a way forward, there is a way out, there is a better way.”

Pawlenty’s recommendation got polite applause. Some, of course, resisted his neighborly charm. At the Q-and-A following the speech, one cheeky student flicked at the governor’s at-ease, Minnesota-nice politics. “Some pundits don’t think that you could be president, and see you more as a vice president,” he said. “Would you be the vice-presidential nominee for the GOP?”

It was a direct citation of the central rap on Pawlenty — that he’s too milquetoast to lead a ticket. The College Republican organizer looked horrified. Yet the governor grinned and ate it up. “If I decided to run, it would be for president, not for vice president.” At that, the students gave him the biggest cheer of the night — one worthy of a contender.

Winning over skeptics will be the crucial challenge for Pawlenty as he eyes a presidential run. Unlike many of his potential rivals, Pawlenty has little baggage. Some could quibble with certain gubernatorial decisions — such as the time he raised cigarette fees to reach a budget deal — but his overall governing record is strong: He resolved a $4.5 billion deficit in his first term, instituted performance pay for public-school teachers, cut billions from public-employee pensions, and issued 299 vetoes. For his efforts, the libertarian Cato Institute gave him an “A” rating on its biennial fiscal report card.

In recent weeks, Pawlenty has brandished his reputation as a fiscal hawk and social conservative. On Sunday he called on Republicans to not raise the federal-debt ceiling, which now stands at $14.3 trillion. “You’ve got to draw some lines in the sand,” he said on Fox News Sunday. And on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the just-repealed military policy on homosexuality, Pawlenty said last week that he would fight to reinstate the policy should he become president.

Beyond his record, Pawlenty’s hardscrabble upbringing is what resonates most. Pawlenty grew up near the stockyards of South Saint Paul. Hockey, and all of its bruising glory, was his passion. His father worked in trucking. Then, at age 16, his mother was taken by cancer. Before she passed, she pushed him to be the first in the family to attend college.

After working his way through college and law school at the University of Minnesota, Pawlenty ran for the state legislature, where he soon rose to become majority leader. He was elected governor in 2002 and reelected in 2006, a tough year for Republicans, especially those in blue states. In 2008, John McCain put Pawlenty on his veep shortlist, giving him a brief flicker in the national spotlight.

But he has not managed to catch fire since. In the early states, Pawlenty has languished in the single digits: One Public Policy Polling survey shows him at 4 percent among Iowa Republicans; a Magellan poll has him at 4 percent in New Hampshire. Gallup also shows that he is hardly a known figure to most Republicans nationwide.

Vin Weber, a former GOP congressman and Pawlenty’s senior adviser, tells me that the early enthusiasm gap can be overcome. Pawlenty, he says, offers something different than the rest — Upper Midwestern values, eight years as a successful, conservative state executive, and a background that resonates with voters who are frustrated with Washington.

“I’ve known Tim Pawlenty since he was in college; I know his family — they’re blue-collar people,” Weber says. “What he is saying is that the Republican party had those voters when Ronald Reagan was president, and when George W. Bush was president, early on, only to lose them. Now we’ve got to get them back in 2012 and he’s the guy to do it. If Republicans can’t explain why conservative policies are right for average, working-class people, then we’ll be consigned to being a permanent minority.”

Governor and Mrs. Pawlenty

For now, as he trudges across the country peddling his book, Pawlenty is keeping his ambitions on low simmer. Retail politics at the local Barnes & Noble, not Iowa, is on the agenda. But as he showed at GW and elsewhere, he’s more than a Minnesota stiff — he has heart, know-how, and a fresh outlook on his party’s future. Voters, like that young man at the door, may not know much about the even-tempered guv, but they’re curious. In what is shaping up to be a raucous and bloody-fisted field, the mild have room to rise.

— Robert Costa is a political reporter for National Review.