Saturday, February 11, 2012, a little after 3:0 p.m. Central, a remarkable lady gave a remarkable speech, as the Keynote Speaker at CPAC 2012.

Here is a summary from the American Conservative Union’s website:

Before a jam-packed crowd, with hundreds more watching on monitors in the convention center hallways and overflow rooms, Palin attacked the Obama economic agenda from many angles.She identified the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a key culprit in destruction of jobs in America. Instead of developing America’s own homegrown resources, the EPA has put the country in a position where it must rely upon dubious foreign sources, she said. And the EPA makes it difficult for businesses trying to expand although, Palin noted wryly, the EPA never seems to block the construction of new government buildings in Washington D.C.

“Instead of calling Washington D.C. a swamp, call it a wetland,” she said. That would be one way to slow the march of government, she suggested.

Palin also took aim at “crony capitalism,” which she said, was growing the size of government at the expense of average Americans.

“The politicians arrive as men and women (in Washington D.C.) and they become plutocrats. And they spread the wealth around to their pals.”

Palin also reminded audience members that CPAC was initiated by conservative activists who were out to remake the Republican Party. Reagan called for “bold colors, not pale pastels,” she said.

There is a certain paradox at work in the current political cycle, Palin said. “The conservative movement has never been stronger or brighter, yet the federal government has never cast a bigger shadow.”

The Tea Party has momentum because “the American people have woken up” to the dangers of big government, she said.

If the country continues on a path where policy makers attempt to tax and spend their way into prosperity, the future of America will look more like the old world rather than the new world.

“That’s the dream of the far Left, not the American dream,” she said.

Never before in American history has there ever been such a division between how the president views the “state of the union” and how average Americans view the “state of the union,” she said.

In history of our republic between how our own president sees Americans see state of union and Americans he’s elected to serve see state of the union, Palin told audience members.

Unlike President Obama, Republicans are looking to free markets and to long-standing constitutional principles, she said.

“His plan isn’t winning the future, it’s losing the country.”

What the ACU doesn’t tell you is that during the speech, she also subtly called out the winner of this year’s CPAC Straw Poll, Mitt “The Legacy” Romney:

Devonia Smith, of examiner.com reports that Governor Palin said,

“Our candidate must be someone who can instinctively turn right.” Sarah stressed that conservationism is not something a candidate learns running for office, adding, “It’s either there or it isn’t.”

And the jury’s still out on “The Legacy”.

Governor Palin continued with her stemwinder of a Keynote Address…

 …Palin hit all the hot buttons issues while slamming President Obama. The audience stood longest and cheered loudest following her shout-out to Israel, when she slammed Obama as a weak Commander in Chief, vowing, “We will refuse to accept that a weak America means a better safer world.” A president’s job is protecting “… America people and our allies. God bless Israel! (Related: Sarah Palin: Obama is ‘our temporary leader’ Israel is our lasting friend)

Rolling her eyes, shrugging, gesturing, Palin recounted the rise of the Tea Party, “because Americans woke up.” After three years of the Obama administration, Sarah underlined his chance was at a close because “We can afford no more — he mucked it up!”

Speaking of “mucking things up”, Buzzfeed.com reports that some protesters tried to disrupt Governor Palin’s speech, but got more than they bargained for:

A few protesters mic-checked Sarah Palin’s keynote speech at CPAC today but didn’t last long. Nothing could touch Palin, who had the crowd on their feet for large portions of her speech.

The protesters in the back of the room yelled “Mic-check!” and were immediately greeted with a standing crowd — and Palin herself — chanting “USA, USA.” Security quickly whisked them out of the room.

“We just won — see how easy that is,” Palin said after they’d gone.

One of her more memorable metaphors of the afternoon was aimed at the tone-deafness of the current Administration and Congress.  Governor Palin remarked that it was time that “we drain the jacuzzi and throw out the bums with the bathwater”.

Even though Governor Palin did make a dig at “The Legacy”, she had an important message for Conservatives, as CBS.com reported:

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin gave her marching orders to the Republican base at the Conservative Poilitical Action Conference here on Saturday, telling conservatives to “stand united” around the eventual Republican presidential nominee to defeat President Obama.

“We must stand as conservatives,” Palin said to a rousing standing ovation. “For the sake of our party, we must stand united with whoever our nominee is.”

Palin steered clear of directly injecting herself into the Republican fight for the nomination, declining to endorse a candidate.

“In America we believe that competition strengthens us. Competition elevates our name,” Palin told the CPAC crowd. “Competition will lead us to victory in 2012. We must stay true to our principles. I believe that the competition has gotta keep going but let’s make sure this competition brings out the best in our party.”

Governor Palin’s absolutely right.  This competition must continue, in order to prepare the eventual Republican Candidate for the withering firestorm of insults, falsehoods, and downright dirty politics that they will be forced to endure from the Re-election Campaign of President Barack Hussein Obama and his minions in the Main Stream Media.

Too bad the best Republican Candidate is sitting this one out.

Tags:  Sarah Palin, CPAC, Conservative

Sometimes, power brokers are so convinced of their own intelligence that they overlook whether the American public actually wants the product they’re shoving down our throats, and the result is a major fiasco.  America witnessed a classic example of this in the 1980s.

Start the Wayback Machine, Sherman.

MSNBC.com has the story:

It was early 1985, and the news was slowly leaking out: The Coca-Cola Co. was working on a new kind of Coke, a variation of a product that reached back through American history, a rejoinder to the emerging challenge from an upstart called Pepsi.

The company, already two years into taste tests and research, was working with the secrecy of a military operation.

Then on April 23, New Coke was launched with fanfare, including prime-time TV ads. Company Chairman Roberto C. Goizueta proclaimed New Coke “smoother, rounder yet bolder,” speaking of it more like a fine wine than a carbonated treat.

But public reaction was overwhelmingly negative; some people likened the change in Coke to trampling the American flag.

Soon people were hoarding cases of the old stuff. In June 1985, Newsweek reported that savvy black marketeers sold old Coke for $30 a case. A Hollywood producer, giving an old vintage its proper respect, reportedly rented a wine cellar to hold 100 cases of the old Coke.

On July 11, Coca-Cola yanked New Coke from store shelves. “We did not understand the deep emotions of so many of our customers for Coca-Cola,” said company President Donald R. Keough.

New Coke thus joined rabbit jerky, clear beer and the eight-track tape in the pantheon of marketing goofs, products that seemed like good ideas at the time.

Sam Craig, professor of marketing and international business at the Stern School of Business at New York University, pointed to what he and other industry observers have long considered a fatal mistake on Coca-Cola’s part. “They didn’t ask the critical question of Coke users: Do you want a new Coke? By failing to ask that critical question, they had to backpedal very quickly.”

Back to the present…with some help from washingtontimes.com:

Mitt Romney tried to erase any doubts about his conservative credentials, arguing that he’s fought against government overreach as governor of Massachusetts, while reminding the thousands of grassroots activists gathered here that he’s the sole candidate in the Republican presidential race who is not a creature of Washington.

[Just Boston.]

Speaking at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, Mr. Romney vowed to be pro-life, abide by the Constitution and slash federal spending — without cutting the nation’s military budget.

“My family, my faith, my businesses — I know conservatism because I have lived conservatism,” Mr. Romney said, arguing that “I understand the battles we conservatives must fight because I have been on the front lines.”

Coming off his disappointing showing in the three nomination contests earlier this week, Mr. Romney is looking to recapture the momentum that he carried out of his back-to-back victories in the Florida primary and Nevada caucus. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s three-state sweep in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado has fed the lingering doubts about Mr. Romney’s ability to rally conservatives to his side.

With that as a backdrop, Mr. Romney assured CPAC delegates that he would fight for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and woman. He noted that as governor, he fought against the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s decision to allow same-sex marriage and to prevent couples from across the nation from traveling to his state to obtain a marriage license.

“We fought hard and prevented Massachusetts from becoming the Las Vegas of gay marriage,” he said.

Mr. Romney trained his heaviest fire at President Obama, saying that if conservatives lead with conviction and integrity, “then history will record the Obama presidency as the last gasp of liberalism’s great failure and a turning point for the conservative era to come.”

And he looked to distance himself from his three rivals — Mr. Santorum, former House speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas — by playing up his executive experience in the private and public sphere and casting himself as a Washington outsider.

“I happen to be the only candidate in this race — Republican or Democrat — who has never worked a day in Washington,” he said, sparking applause from the crowd. “I don’t have old scores to settle or decades of cloakroom deals that I have to defend.”

“Any politician,” he said, “that tries to convince you that they hated Washington so much that they just couldn’t leave, well, that is the same politician that tried to sell you a ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’” he said, alluding to the infamous — and never built — pork-barrel bridge project in Alaska. The Romney camp has hammered Mr. Santorum for supporting the project when he served in Congress.

Gov. Romney went on to say during his speech,

I am severely Conservative.

I’ve never heard it phrased that way before.  Neither has Rush Limbagh:

I’ve… Look, I don’t want to make anybody mad here. It’s the end of a really hectic and busy week here — and you know I’m not a complainer. You people have no idea of the distractions that each program has had this week that I’ve had to fight through and try to ignore because I don’t complain. So don’t get mad. I may be a little giddy here. I have never anybody say, “I’m severely conservative.” Don’t get mad. I’m not… (interruption) No, I’ve never heard anybody say it. (interruption) No, I’m not challenging his claim to be conservative, don’t misunderstand. I don’t want to get inundated here by Romney supporters. I’m not putting him down.

I’m just observing here. I’ve never heard it said, “Yeah, I’m a severe conservative.” But I know what he’s trying to say. Now, I should add something here. Remember last year during the early days of the campaign — before the votes even began, before any of the primaries had taken place — I successfully, correctly identified for you what the Republican establishment strategy was. They were running a primary campaign 180 degrees out of phase from normal. The way you normally run a primary campaign, either party, is (and this is conventional wisdom) to get the base of your party’s votes, you pander to them. You speak to them. You just go, in this case Romney’s, and you be conservative.

Or, in the case of the Coca-Cola Company, you throw a different formula out there and call it “Coke”.  

Just like the New Coke, which they tried to force-feed Americans in 1985, was rejected by the public, so also, is this “New” Conservative, which the Republican Establishment is trying to ram down our throats, being rejected by American Conservatives.

They should have asked us first.

Everyone has heard the old expression, “An army travels on its stomach”.  Everyone, that is, except First Lady Michelle Obama.

Reuters reports:

In an event at Little Rock Air Force Base, Obama announced a new Pentagon obesity and nutritional awareness campaign that will change nutrition standards across the services for the first time in 20 years.

The changes will bring more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and food choices that are lower in fat to 1.45 million troops a day at all 1,100 American military dining facilities in the coming months.

“This isn’t just a drop in the bucket – this is really a big splash,” Obama said.

“It’s happening because our military leaders know it’s not just a diet issue, it’s not just a health issue. This is truly a national security issue,” she said at the base, which already has a pilot program to improve nutritional quality of food available to service members and their families.

Obama cited a recent army study that says more than one quarter of 17- to 24-year-olds are too overweight to serve in the military. Active members of the military are also becoming more overweight, a Pentagon official said, and that causes a “readiness problem.”

“The military is always taking the lead in terms of setting standards,” said Assistant U.S. Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Jonathan Woodson. “Now we have an opportunity to take leadership … as we face this epidemic of obesity.”

Woodson said the U.S. military spends about $4.65 billion in food services each year. It also spends an estimated $1.1 billion a year on medical care associated with excess weight and obesity.

To promote good choices, the military will redesign menus and supply healthier foods in mess halls and in vending machines and snack bars on military bases.

The first lady, who has been doing the rounds of television talk shows and late-night comedy shows to promote her “Let’s Move” campaign to improve the nation’s eating and exercise habits, said changes by the Pentagon would send an important message to the country.

“Simply put, this is America’s entire military once again stepping forward to lead by example,” she told airmen at the base after touring a dining facility.

Whether they want to, or not.

It was intrusive enough when the first lady decided to sic the Food Police on our children, as if America’s parents were not bright enough or responsible enough to feed their own children properly.

The New York Times published the following story on January 25th:

Hoping to combat the growing problem of childhood obesity, the Obama administration on Wednesday announced its long-awaited changes to government-subsidized school meals, a final round of rules that adds more fruits and green vegetables to breakfasts and lunches and reduces the amount of salt and fat.

The announcement came months after the food industry won a vote in Congress to block the administration from carrying out an earlier proposal that would have reduced starchy foods like potatoes and prohibited schools from counting a small amount of tomato paste on a slice of pizza as a vegetable. Under the latest rules, potatoes are not restricted, and tomato paste can qualify as a vegetable serving.

The rules were announced by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Michelle Obama at Parklawn Elementary School in Alexandria, Va.

“As parents, we try to prepare decent meals, limit how much junk food our kids eat and ensure that they have a reasonable balanced diet,” Mrs. Obama said in a statement. “And when we are putting in all that effort the last thing we want is for our hard work to be undone each day in the school cafeteria.”

About 32 million children participate in school meal programs each day. The new rules are a major component of Mrs. Obama’s campaign to reduce the number of overweight children through exercise and better nutrition.

The rules are the first changes in 15 years to the $11 billion school lunch program. They will double the amount of fruits and vegetables children are served in school and will require that all grains served are whole grains.

All milk served must be low fat, and for the first time the rules set limits on levels of salt and trans fats. They also set a minimum and maximum calorie intake per day based on student age.

The government estimates that the rules will add about $3.2 billion in costs to the program, about half the cost of the proposed rules that were blocked last year.

Past First Ladies always took a cause to tackle during their husbands’ terms.

Usually, it was a non-intrusive cause such as literacy or combating hunger in America.

Not, in the case of our globe-trotting (on our dime) present First Lady, “Moochelle” Obama.  Under the guise of battling Childhood Obesity, she has decided to sic the food police on America’s school menus, turning our children into the Liberal Administrations’ own personal lab rats.

Furthermore, now that she has America’s children under her thumb, she has decided that our Best and Brightest need to be eating arugula…or something.

C’mon, Moochelle.  You Libs are already using our military as lab rats in one social engineering experiment…leading to the demise of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

Our Best and Brightest are grown men and women.  They don’t need you telling them what to eat.

Do Americans a favor, Mrs. Obama.   Stand in front of a full-length mirror, with your back to it, and look over your shoulder.  Perhaps then, you’ll realize just how hypocritical you’re being.

You know…Glass Houses?

Tags:  Moochelle, Childhood Obesity, Food Police

The 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, recently performed a self-assessment, which aired on NBC before the Superbowl last Sunday.

Thehill.com reports:

President Obama in a pre-Super Bowl interview aired on Sunday said that despite being unable to completely turn the economy around in three years, he still deserves to be re-elected.

“I deserve a second term but we’re not done,” Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer in an interview broadcast from the White House.

Lauer noted that in a pre-Super Bowl interview three years ago, Obama had said “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

Obama said that three years ago the economy was losing 750,000 jobs a month and the latest unemployment data from Friday shows. “Now we are creating 250,000,” he said.

Obama said that more needs to be done to boost manufacturing and improve worker skills.

“The key right now is just making sure we aren’t turning in a new direction that could throw that progress off,” he said.

In the NBC interview, Obama reiterated that at this stage military options are not off the table in dealing with Iran’s possible quest for a nuclear weapon.

Obama said that diplomacy is preferred because of the risks of military action.

“Obviously any additional military activity in the Gulf is disruptive and has a big effect on us,” he said, noting “it could have a big effect on oil prices.”

Obama said that he doesn’t think Israel has decided whether it would attack Iran, but indicated his belief the U.S. would not be blind-sided.

“We have closer military and intelligence consultations than we ever had,” he said.

The president’s glowing self-assessment of his job performance hardly represents a consensus of America’s opinion.

According to realclearpolitics.com, the president’s job approval stands at 48.6% favorable, 47.4% expressing disapproval, representing an average of 5 different polls.

Regarding the direction America is heading in, again, per an average of 5 different polls by realclearpolitics.com, 29.6% of American believe that we’re heading in the right direction, compared to 63.4% of us who believe that Obama’s leading the country to Hell in a hand basket.

Those polls help to explain the resurgent popularity of a painting completed in 2010 by Christian Conservative artist John McNaughton.

KXNT CBS Las Vegas has the story:

Sales soared for a painting depicting Obama trampling on the Constitution after a story CBS Las Vegas produced last weekend went viral.

John McNaughton’s “The Forgotten Man” sold in one day “what we would sell in three months.”

The amount of traffic the story generated even crashed his website.

“I hate to think of the sales I lost with the site being down, but I’m pleased that the message got out,” he told CBS Las Vegas.

His webmaster needed to increase the amount of bandwidth for the site four times before it went back up Saturday night.

While sales of the painting went up, McNaughton said he got reactions from a “mixed bag of people” over the story.

“People really loved the painting and some were really angry,” he told CBS Las Vegas. “Our country is really divided and emotions run high on both sides of the aisle.”

Because of the delicate subject matter raised in his art, McNaughton was often accused of racism.

“I think racism is a legitimate issue. But I think if you want to speak out against Obama and his policies is one thing, but being called a racist gets tiresome when it has nothing to do with the painting.”

McNaughton was hesitant to paint “The Forgotten Man” before it was released in 2010, but “pushed to do it” despite his friends’ reservations.

Since “The Forgotten Man” was released, McNaughton painted what he described as “a sequel.”

The painting is called “Wake Up America” and it features “The Forgotten Man” trying to saw himself out of the chains of debt.

Throughout the tableau there are faces of sadness, blame, and desperation. President Obama is also prominently featured as a ring leader to the madness.

McNaughton also did another painting called “Via Dolorosa” in which historical figures bear witness to Jesus’ crucifixion.

“A lot of it has to do with modern day Christians and where they stand in history,” McNaughton said about the painting.

As for his next work, McNaughton is keeping the details under wraps.

“It’s called ‘One Nation Under Socialism.’ It’s political, but I want to keep it under my hat. I want to surprise people so there are no misconceptions.”

“One Nation Under Socialism” will be released in about a month.

Barack Hussein Obama is turning out to be the most divisive president in U.S. History.

With his recent decision to force Catholic Hospitals to offer all forms of birth control, including the controversial morning-after pill, he has demonstrated a laser-like focus on completing the socialist course which he has charted for the greatest nation on God’s green Earth (i.e., “spreading the wealth around”)…regardless of the consequences or the wishes of its citizens, and, in the process, ignoring the oath he swore on January 20, 2009:

Going into last night’s trifecta of Caucuses in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, Mitt “The Legacy” Romney had already been declared the presumptive Republican Nominee by his Conservative-website-invading horde of obnoxious paid and unpaid posters.

Which was remarkable in itself, considering that Romney had only amassed 101 of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the Nomination as the Republican Presidential Candidate.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to Mitt’s coronation.

2 out of the three states , Minnesota and Colorado, actually had delegates at stake last night (a total of 70).  The third state, Missouri, had no delegates at stake, and was labelled by the media and political pundits as a “Republican Beauty Pageant”.

Rick Santorum, who had already won the Hawkeye Cauci, was declared the winner of the contest in Missouri early in the evening, eventually winning by the margin of 55% of the vote to Romney’s 25% .  Gingrich was not on the ballot.

By around 9:00 p.m. Central, Santorum had been declared the winner of the Minnesota Caucus, as well, leading Ron Paul, with 45% to 27% of the vote.  “Mr. Electability”, Mitt Romney, was in third place.

Finally, as we woke up this morning, we were greeted by an upset, as Santorum beat Romney, 40% – 35%,  in Colorado.

Per the Associated Press, Santorum has worked hard in preparation for last night’s contests:

He campaigned more aggressively this week than any of the other contenders, and he spent the day hopscotching from Colorado to Minnesota to Missouri in hopes of nailing down a victory in one of the states. Touting himself as a true conservative – a slap at Gingrich – he sought to undermine Romney’s electability claim at the same time by predicting the former Massachusetts governor would lose to Obama.

Romney responded by assailing Santorum as an advocate of congressional earmarks – shifting the criticism he had leveled at Gingrich when the Georgian seemed a more imposing threat.

In the hours before the caucuses convened, the front-runner sought to lower expectations.

“Mitt Romney is not going to win every contest,” Rich Beeson, the campaign’s political director, wrote in a memo for public consumption.

“John McCain lost 19 states in 2008, and we expect our opponents will notch a few wins, too,” Beeson wrote. McCain, the Arizona senator, won the Republican nomination four years ago.

In fact, Colorado and Minnesota were among the states that McCain failed to win, and he lost them to Romney.

In the four years since, the GOP has become more conservative in both. That posed a challenge for Romney, who runs as the Republican most likely to defeat Obama and is still trying to establish his credentials among tea party activists suspicious of a one-time moderate who backed abortion rights.

Two years ago in Minnesota, establishment candidates for governor were swept aside in the primary, and tea party-backed insurgents for governor and the Senate in Colorado won the party nominations.

In all three cases, Democrats won in the general election that fall.

Gingrich spent the day campaigning in Ohio, one of the primary states on March 6.

His campaign went into a downward spiral after he won the South Carolina primary in an upset. The former speaker was routed in the Florida primary to Romney, then finished a distant second in Nevada over the weekend.

Last night’s winner remarked to a jubilant crowd in St. Charles, Missouri:

Tonight, we had an opportunity to see what a campaign looks like when one candidate isn’t outspent 5- or 10-to-1 by negative ads impugning their integrity and distorting their record. This is a more accurate representation, frankly, of what the fall race will look like.

I don’t stand here to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.

Regarding the political issues of health care, cap and trade and the Wall Street bailout, Santorum added:

Mitt Romney has the same positions as Barack Obama.

Speaking to supporters in Denver, Romney congratulated Santorum:

This was a good night for Rick Santorum. We’ll keep on campaigning down the road, but I expect to become our nominee with your help.

And then, he offered a bit of solicitous prophecy:

When this primary season is over, we’re going to stand united as a party behind our nominee to defeat Barack Obama.

Of course, that is what Romney hopes.

The gigantic hurdle he faces, is the fact that he is about as appealing to the Conservative base as the incumbent president he will be facing if he becomes the Republican Nominee.

Earlier in this post, I mentioned the hordes of supporters, both paid and upaid, that have seemingly invaded the comments sections of Conservative websites, in what can only be described as a slash and burn Romney offensive, designed to convince Conservatives that Romney is “a man of the people”.

Unfortunately for the Romney Campaign, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”.  The posters offering their support for Romney, through rude and obnoxious comments and insults aimed at everyday posters on these sites, have actually done more to reinforce the image Conservatives in the Heartland hold of Romney as a pompous, stuffed shirt.

These supporters have basically helped to, at least temporarily, stall whatever momentum Romney was building.

Whether he can get that momentum back or not, depends on whether he’s willing to actually campaign in earnest among average Conservative Americans in the Heartland, or he remains content to allow his internet operatives to continue to cajole and insult Conservatives into begrudgingly voting for him as the “last man standing”.

Tags:  Santorum, Romney, conservatives

The Mid-East remains a power keg, with a very short fuse attached.

Israel is getting ready to turn Iran into a parking lot, and the Obama Administration-lauded Arab Spring has replaced the Moderate Despots we knew with Muslim Despots we don’t.

In the home of the Sphinx, the Egyptian Revolution and the subsequent elections have produced results that those purveyors of Smart Power!, President Barack Hussein Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the State Department, weren’t exactly counting on.

Israelnationalnews carried this story last December:

Americans can be thankful President Barack Obama never pursued a career as an investment banker.

The Obama administration spent some $200 million backing liberal and pro-Western political parties in Egypt’s elections.

But with 65 percent of the vote going to Islamist parties – including the Muslim Brotherhood – it looks like a poor investment.

According to Campaigns & Elections magazine the money was funneled into Egyptian politics through the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute.

Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, told C&E the focus of the monies – officially ear-marked for “infrastructure development” – was primarily spent on helping smaller political parties compete against the better organized Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s party.

The first round of Parliamentary elections in Egypt this week saw voting in nine of the country’s 27 provinces. The staggered elections will continue over the coming months.

The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party – whose leadership advocates implementing Sharia Law – won 40 percent of the vote on Wednesday. An additional 15 percent went to hard-line Salafi Islamists.

In addition to an utter failure to organize Egypt’s moderate and secular parties into a meaningful force at the polls, Obama’s left-handed funding of foreign political parties outside the United States has fueled an underlying anti-American sentiment and accusations of US “meddling” on the banks of the Nile.

Amid the Islamist electoral avalanche, Egypt’s military ruler has sworn in a new government that he says will have more powers than its predecessor. Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi promised to transfer some of his ruling military council’s executive powers to Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri.

The interim junta did not go into specifics on what new powers the Cabinet will have, but said only that it will continue to control the judiciary and the armed forces. Egypt’s generals have been tightly in control of managing the country’s affairs since Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February, infuriating critics who accuse them of maintaining the status quo – and demand civilian rule.

The interim junta has sought to maintain the geopolitical status quo – including the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty – as a means of protecting the billions of US foreign aid dollars that have turned Egypt into a regional power-player.

The Obama administration’s meddling in the domestic politics of foreign countries is not limited to Egypt. USAID dollars under Obama have been routinely routed into NGO’s in Israel that pursue political agendas – raising the specter of sanitized US government monies potentially finding their way into Israel’s elections as well.

I’m sure, by now, you’ve heard President Obama described as Carter on steroids.

President Carter had his Hostage Crisis…and now President Obama has one of his own:

washingtontimes.com reports:

Ignoring a stern U.S. threat, Egypt on Sunday referred 43 NGO workers, including 19 Americans, to trial before a criminal court for allegedly using illegal foreign funds to foment unrest.

The decision marked a sharp escalation of the dispute between Cairo and Washington over Egypt‘s crackdown on U.S.-funded groups promoting democracy and human rights. The two countries have been close allies for more than three decades, but the campaign against the organizations has angered Washington and jeopardized the $1.5 billion in aid Egypt is set to receive from the U.S. this year.

On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Egypt‘s foreign minister that failure to resolve the dispute may lead to the loss of American aid. The Egyptian minister, Mohammed Amr, responded Sunday by saying the government cannot interfere in the work of the judiciary.

“We are doing our best to contain this but … we cannot actually exercise any influence on the investigating judges right now when it comes to the investigation,” Mr. Amr told reporters at a security conference in Munich.

Among the Americans sent to trial is Sam LaHood, the head of the Egypt office of the Washington-based International Republican Institute and the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Five Serbs, two Germans and three non-Egyptian Arab nationals are also among those referred to trial.

All 43 have been banned from leaving the country. A date has yet to be set for the start of the trial.

Obama has been diplomatically wooing the Muslim Brotherhood, the Terrorist group who is rapidly becoming the nation’s Power Brokers in Egypt.

A fat lot of good that’s doing.

Just ask those 43 prisoners.

It appears Smart Power! is neither.

tags:  Egypt, Smart Power!, Obama, Foreign Policy, Arab Spring, revolution, Muslim Brotherhood, Mubarak