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Thursday, May 19, 2016

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Thursday, June 03, 2010

Obama Attacks Florida: Impeach the Beach! (Updated) 

HE'S TIRED OF ATTACKING ARIZONA BECAUSE HE DIDN'T DO HIS JOB

...so now it's time to attack Florida because he didn't do his job.

Aside from taking vacations, playing golf and attending rock concerts, the president wants you to know that the Gulf Oil Spill is Priority Number One!

Instead of Paul McCartney, though, the White House Should have invited Earth, Wind and Fire. They famously did a cover of McCartney's "Got To Get You Into My Life", and the president has been singing "Got To Get the Feds Into Your Life" for more than a year, confiscating massive new swaths of American life as Property of the State.

Yet the State clearly cannot handle--or even afford--the responsibilities it already has.

All the Social Security money has been spent, and then some. We pay more debt service on our National Credit Card than most countries are even worth, yet the government Won't Leave Home Without It! I hear public service announcements from the Park Service begging for funding. Leaving aside the propaganda aspects of a federal agency telling the public what they need to fund, why are we taking on a $50 million park in the Virgin Islands if we have "an estimated $9 billion in backlog maintenance on existing parks"? I got to get you into my life that badly?

But considering that Obama's Socialized Energy policy is turning Florida's white sand beaches black with Government Sludge, maybe we do need to buy our beaches elsewhere.

Permanent Candidate Obama has taken to campaigning against his own administration:

"There is a culture of corruption and cronyism at my agencies, and if I'm elected, I promise to get to the bottom of me!"


He desperately wants to make it Bush's Fault, or even Calvin Coolidge's--never did like that Coolidge fellow anyway. But he's stuck with his own recent off-shore drilling proposal, which is ironic, since it wasn't a serious drilling proposal in the first place. It was more like a ban disguised as a proposal, designed mostly for petty political purposes--but he can't say that. But there are lots of things that he can't say.

For example, Minerals Management Agency Director Elizabeth Birnbaum "resigned" recently. In reality, she was forced out by her boss Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as his designated fall guy. At his yearly press conference, Obama couldn't say if she had been fired or resigned, despite being "focused like a laser beam" on the problem "since Day One". I guess no one told Teleprompter.

But she was only doing the job she was assigned. You see, Salazar had tasked her with the Cape Wind Project.

Um...excuse me, but, you know, wind power is a nice little diversion and all, but...IS WIND REALLY A "MINERAL"? As in "MINERALS MANAGEMENT"?

Environment & Energy:

Birnbaum acquaintances, angered by the sudden ouster, said she had not been ordered to clean house at the scandal-stained agency, but to promote renewable energy. In particular, she was tasked with handling the politically charged issue of siting the 25-mile "Cape Wind" wind farm off Cape Cod, the MMS issue where Salazar was most active before the spill. In April, Salazar ended nearly a decade of regulatory battles by green-lighting the project.

Now with Obama's Interior team taking heat for not cleaning house at an agency notorious for its cozy ties with industry, they say she took the fall.

"She's being made a scapegoat," said one acquaintance.

Her focus on the Cape Wind project is supported by the fact that it was the first thing Salazar mentioned about Birnbaum as he praised her service to the committee.

"She helped us on issues of offshore wind in the Atlantic," Salazar said. "All I can really tell the committee is she is a good public servant."
That may be, but she was also an environmentalist. And this administration is so fixated on renewable energy that it forced the director of the non-renewable minerals agency to focus mostly on renewable wind power.

"Earth, Wind...and Fired!"

The results are now washing up on Pensacola.

Florida's magnificent pristine beaches have survived so much over the centuries--yet they may not survive a year-and-a-half of juvenile socialism and Lord-of-the-Flies leadership. Chief BP Jerk Tony Hayward may "like his life back," but a lot of good Floridians, Arizonans, Louisianans, Mississippians, Alabamians and other Americans would like their votes back, too.

Does this mean BP won't get its Pollution Prevention Award from Interior?

It is Socialized Energy that pushed oil companies offshore and into mile-deep water to begin with.
Socialized Energy focused our resources on toys like wind power rather than the real job at hand.
Socialized Energy prevented an effective response once it broke--we can't burn it, we can't siphon it, we can't disperse it, we can't build berms...but that Paul McCartney rocks, dude!

And it is Socialized, well, Everything that has taken all of Obama's and Washington's time and effort in the last year.

Wouldn't the last year-and-a-half have been much better spent trying to get a grip on the already-massive government we already have, rather than trying to quadruple the size and scope of The Fedzilla That Is Eating Florida's Beaches?

UPDATE: Obama has shut down 33 drilling platforms to protect himself wildlife even though there are no problems with them. Evidently the Gulf Coast is doing just great and doesn't need all those extra high-paying jobs anyway. Mostly Cajun:

4000 direct jobs. Indirect? Hard to say. Nothing offshore happens without a huge “tail” of support infrastructure. Helicopters weave back and forth from the shore bases to the platforms hauling personnel and critical equipment. Service boats cleave the waters hauling equipment, men and supplies. Teams of contractors show up to handle everything from painting and cooking to incredibly critical and esoteric tasks like logging (“My pipe is a thousand feet through the water and 16,000 feet into the rock. What’s down there?”) and mudding and cementing.

A lot of those companies are dependent on those thirty-three platforms to keep crews busy. We’re not talking about burger-flippers, either, for the most part. Folks all over the South have known for decades that good livings were to be made in “the oilpatch” and offshore doing jobs where sharp minds and merit carried more weight than Ivy League diplomas, places where hard physical labor in demanding surroundings resulted in good homes and money to send kids to college. Sure, it’s a tough life, but many a family clawed its way to a good living on the money paid to work out there.

In return, America got the oil it needed, and we became a great country.


More from the Oil & Gas Assoc.:

Each drilling platform averages 90 to 140 employees at any one time (2 shifts per day), and 180 to 280 for 2 2-week shifts
Each E&P (Exploration & Production) job supports 4 other positions
Therefore, 800 to 1400 jobs per idle rig platform are at risk
Wages for those jobs average $1,804/weekly; potential for lost wages is huge, over $5 to $10 million for 1 month – per platform.
Wages lost could be over $165 to $330 million/month for all 33 platforms


It's not an official ObamaCrisis(tm) until he's figured out a way to cost Americans their jobs, too.

The Young Turks and the Well-Rested Greeks (Updated) 

THE YOUNG AND THE RESTING

"Many of us English-speakers use the phrase "young Turks" without pondering the origin of the expression: The original "young Turks" were the youthful activists agitating for reform in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire. The phrase itself recognizes a connection between political energy and demography. As yesterday confirmed, today's young Turks are Islamist. The Kemalists are old Turks."--Mark Steyn

The Other Day, Andrew Sullivan wandered over to The Other McCain's for a couple of comments about himself commenting on Israel (before other commenters began posting as him--sorta' like his ghost-written blog, come to think of it. heh). Andy was pro-terrorist, naturally, but he said one thing that was particularly demented:

Israel opened fire on a ship from a NATO member, Turkey. Should NATO treat this as an attack on every member nation?

The answer to that is of course, yes.


In other words, Andy wants NATO to start World War III by attacking Israel...because Turkey already started the war by attacking Israel with a boatload of terrorists!

Sullivan's not worth much more attention, but it does bring up the Turkish Problem.

Prof. Hanson:

"Turkey has about as much business in NATO as Greece does in the EU. Both countries seem out of place in their respective organizations; both envy and resent northern Europe and the United States, and seek their attention through petulance; and both seem to traffic daily in conspiracy theories about going to war against each other.

The problem with both the EU and NATO is that, while there is always much gala celebration about who gets in and under what particular conditions, there is almost no attention given to the circumstances under which a member gets out of either organization. That will change in the next few years, given southern European debt, growing Islamization, and the apparent planned financial and military regression of the West. ...A bankrupt Greece has alienated its patrons in northern Europe, has alienated the U.S. through years of anti-American rhetoric, has little or no financial resources, and will be facing cutbacks in its military — and a newly assertive Turkey is carving..."


Col. Peters:

Turkish leaders visit the West and sing, "Democracy, democracy, democracy!" We coo and clap. Then they go east and cry, "Islam, Islam, Islam!" And we insist they don't mean it.

Then there's Turkey's unfortunate NATO membership. Since the rise of its Islamists, Turkey has been a Trojan horse, not an ally. What happens now if Ankara provokes a military confrontation? How would we respond, given NATO's mutual-defense agreements?

The madcap agenda of Turkey's current rulers is to create a 21st-century version of the Ottoman Empire. Turks even mutter about the caliphate -- headed for centuries by the Turkish sultan. This is explosive stuff. And the Turks are playing with matches.

But we've obstinately ignored every warning sign. First, our "ally" stabbed us in the back on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom, denying our troops their planned routes into Iraq. Then the Turkish media intensified its anti-American fantasies. ...

Then, just last month, the Turks moved to provide the Iranian regime with cover for its nuclear program. And we still didn't get it. The most dramatic transformation in the Middle East since the fall of the shah is playing out before us. And we can't see behind the mask of the "plight of the Palestinians" (a key Obama administration concern).

In yesterday's confrontation, Israel behaved clumsily. The peace activists behaved savagely. The Turks behaved cynically. The world reacted predictably. And Washington scratched its head.


This is a peace activist. And this is a terrorist.

The Turkish Flotilla Mavi Marmara was a state-sponsored terrorist attack on Israel.

UPDATE: Seth Cropsey:

The flotilla had been planned for a year. ... But this incident is less about Israeli-Palestinian issues than it is about Turkey, whose Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told parliament that “today is a turning point in history. Nothing will ever be the same again.” This observation is probably the most important and to-the-point remark about the incident.

Israel and Turkey have had good relations for virtually all of Israel’s existence. These included military, economic, and most important, strategic cooperation. Whatever Turkish leaders saw in the importance of Israel to the moderate Middle Eastern politics they favored, there was no doubt of common cause with Jerusalem in limiting Soviet ambitions in the region. This ended when Russia withered. Erdogan has been shifting Turkey’s course away from a secular state that looks westward to a religious one that looks to the east since he became prime minister seven years ago. Domestic critics accuse him of leading Turkey toward establishing an Islamic state. “Iran is our friend,” Erdogan told the Guardian in October 2009. Earlier the same year he stormed out of the Davos Economic Forum in Switzerland telling Israeli President Shimon Peres that “I know well how you hit and kill children on the beaches.” Last month Turkey and Syria held joint military exercises for the second time in as many years: This is a significant change. In 1998, Egyptian President Mubarak was mediating to keep Turkey and Syria from going to war with each other. The Islamists have the upper hand in Turkey today and the Mavi Marmara incident, as Prime Minister Erdogan understands, is a custom-made tool in his hands for sealing the fate of strategic cooperation with Israel.

...What does the Obama administration make of all this? Does it understand the effect of its policy toward Israel? Does it see that gradual diminishing of U.S. support for Israel encourages the suggestion advanced by Prime Minister Erdogan’s friend Ahmadinejad that Israel can be wiped off the map? Does the Obama administration think, for example, that the resolution it supported in the UN on Friday, May 28 for a nuclear-free Middle East, which singles out Israel but is silent on Iran, encourages or discourages the belief that maybe, just maybe, Israel will be forced on terms regardless of their consequences for its security to accede to Palestinian rulers, i.e. Hamas? ... President Obama’s first trip abroad was to Europe and his first stop was Turkey. How could it have turned into this? ...

This one is not about the Mavi Marmara. It is about the strategic mass created by the increasingly convergent paths of the two of the Middle East’s largest, most powerful, and influential states, one of which could become a nuclear power and the other of which is on the threshold.

An Inconvenient Wife: Al Gore Demands Recount of His Wedding Ceremony 

"It's my belief pride is the chief cause in the decline of the number of husbands and wives."--Roger Miller

Sad.

Smitty's right. Ed, too.

My Strange New Respect* for Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich III 

YOU CAN TRUST YOUR CAR TO THE MAN WHO WEARS A RED STAR

and lifts.

"And guess what this Liberal would be all about? This Liberal would be all about socializing…er, uh. [Pauses for several moments] …would be about… [pause] … basically… taking over, and the government running all of your companies."--Rep. Maxine Waters, to the president of Shell Oil during a competency House hearing

Michelle Malkin:

Banking. Auto manufacturing. Health care. Now oil. There’s no such thing as a “temporary” government power grab, let alone a “temporary receivership” in the hands of Team Obama control freaks:

Reich: "It’s time for the federal government to put BP under temporary receivership, which gives the government authority to take over BP’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico until the gusher is stopped. This is the only way the public know what’s going on, be confident enough resources are being put to stopping the gusher, ensure BP’s strategy is correct, know the government has enough clout to force BP to use a different one if necessary, and be sure the President is ultimately in charge."


I don't agree with him. Yes, BP is going to have to cough up billions. They cut corners just like the administration did. But "temporary"? It took 108 years to finally repeal the "temporary" luxury tax on telephones, meant to fund the Spanish-American War. And only after the FCC legislated a secret, hidden Al Gore Phone Tax.

And if you want "the public to know what’s going on", why would you trust the Sestak Society, who took three months to cook up a phony, lawyered-up Clintonspeak pack of lies?

And if you want the president to be in charge, don't tell us--tell his caddy.

No, I don't agree with Sec. Reich...but at least he's honest about seizing the means of production.

Robert Reich was also one of the few Democrats who stood with Sarah Palin, looked her straight in the midriff and told America "Yes, America, there will be Death Panels!":

“We’re going to have to, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.”


If Democrats socialized Snap-On Tools, there would only be one tool in the tool chest: Government. It's the only tool they've ever heard of. Evidently, it fixes everything:

* Your 30-year-old student needs condoms? Government!
* Poor old Microsoft needs an $11 million bridge to connect two portions of headquarters? Government!
* Public safety demands a $1.15 million guardrail around the lake--except it’s a dry hole? Government!

But Reich's proposal makes a kind of sense when you think about it:

You go to Driving School on a Government Student Loan.
You get driver's license from the DMV.
You get your tags at the Dept. of Revenue.
Your license plates were made at the State Prison.
You get your insurance at your Government Insurance Agency.
You get your car loan at your Government Bank.
You'll drive on DOT highways after you buy your new 2012 Buick Bureaucrat at Government Motors.

So why wouldn't you put Government Gasoline and Government Oil in your car?


And could you check the tire pressure while your down there, Mr. Secretary?

(*Un-strange old respect: Bob Tyrrell)

UPDATE: In this column, Reich says Obama's awesome double-digit unemployment has liberated entrepreneurs:

"These Americans are now liberated from the bureaucratic straitjackets they thought they had to wear. They can now fulfill their creative dreams and find their inner entrepreneurs. All they needed was a good kick in the pants."
This from a professional bureaucratic straitjacket designer who has never had a real job in his life.

The caveat: we'll need massive new government programs to assist these new entrepreneurs. Call it "Socialized Entrepreneurship". After all, Fedzilla has proven its business savvy with Freddie and Fannie and the Socialized Mortgage Meltdown. And now with Government Oil.

Hate Floats 

"All My Terror Pals (Have Settled In)..."--Country legend Hank Hussein, Jr., from the album "Kenya Kountry Klassics and Kriss Kraft Kommissars"

WND:

The flotilla was organized by the Free Gaza Movement, a coalition of leftist human rights activists and pro-Palestinian groups engaged in attempts to break a blockade imposed by Israel on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Ayers, Dohrn and Evans' Code Pink have led several recent Free Gaza Movement initiatives, including attempted marches into the Gaza Strip. Dorhn was in the Middle East just last month on behalf of the movement.

Ayers and Dohrn were close associates for years with President Obama, while Evans was a fundraiser and financial bundler for Obama's presidential campaign.
I told you that old sea-dog Billy Ayers could really turn a nautical phrase!

Weekly Standard:

The Turkish nonprofit [IHH] belongs to a Saudi-based umbrella organization known to finance terrorism called the Union of Good (Ittilaf al-Kheir in Arabic). Notably, the Union is chaired by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who is known best for his religious ruling that encourages suicide attacks against Israeli civilians.

In 2006, both the U.S. government and the United Nations designated the IIRO branch offices in Indonesia and the Philippines for financing al Qaeda. French magistrate Jean-Louis Brougiere also testified that IHH had an "important role" in Ahmed Ressam's failed "millennium plot" to bomb the Los Angeles airport in late 1999.

The U.S. government, it should be noted, also views the Union of Good as a terrorist organization. ... U.S. Treasury announced the umbrella group's leaders as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), stating that the group was "created by Hamas leadership to transfer funds to the terrorist organization."

... The Treasury, drawing from declassified documents, stated unequivocally that the Union of Good "compensated Hamas terrorists by providing payments to the families of suicide bombers.


Five boats were boarded peacefully. Only on the sixth boat loaded with terrorists was there violence, as they chanted slogans celebrating the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arabia by Muhammed.

There is no "humanitarian crisis" in Gaza. Only a terrorism crisis. Tons of supplies come in all the time. Indeed, the UN treating these people as permanent welfare pets is part of the problem.

Why don't these "activists" ever yell at Egypt? After all, Egypt has miles of border with Gaza. You see, it's not about helping Gazans, it's about attacking Israel.

This is just an attempt to get the naval blockade stopped, so missiles may be transported freely into Hamas-stan and then fired at Israel's cities...yet another Bill Ayers bombing campaign!

Liberals thought they were being "nice" when they humored Arafat, letting him murder our diplomats with impunity. Instead, they have turned the Palestinian people into the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth.

Europeans and leftists will yammer about "proportionality", but if Europeans could do proportionality, the Jews would have never been forced to flee Europe. Masquerading as occupiers of the moral high ground, leftist Europeans are merely trying to save their own skins from Iran's Bomb or their own Islamist Fifth Columns.

Q: What Smells So Fishy?
A: The New Euro-Vichy.

Which is just like the old Vichy in its pro-Nazi nastiness. And is not improved by the presence of the same old tired commies, too.

Prez on the Run: Listen To What The Gov Said! 

"LENIN/MCCARTNEY"?

"Danny [Ortega's] speech was a long one. There are no brief excuses for communism."--P.J. O'Rourke

KTAR:

Cuban lawmakers denounce Arizona immigration law

HAVANA (AP) - Cuban lawmakers have passed a resolution denouncing Arizona's new immigration law as "racist and xenophobic," recalling an old dispute in the process: the argument that the United States' purchase of Arizona from Mexico in the 19th century was tantamount to theft.

The Arizona law has caused controversy since it was signed by Gov. Jan Brewer on April 23. It requires police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are in the country illegally. ...

But the denunciation of the law by Cuban lawmakers, who called it a "brutal violation of human rights," is sure to raise anger among U.S. backers of the law.

The tightly controlled, communist-run island has long been criticized for its human rights record, which includes the jailing of 200 political prisoners, the banning of a free press and the outlawing of opposition political parties.

Cuban citizens are required to carry identification with them wherever they go, and can be stopped by police and sent home if they are found in a part of the island where they don't belong. ...

The lawmakers' resolution, dated Wednesday and reprinted in the Communist Party daily Granma on Thursday, says the Arizona law "has a profound racist and xenophobic character, and permits police to use racial profiling." ...

The lawmakers said the Arizona measure "aims to close the doors on immigrants to territories that were stolen by force from the noble Mexican people."
Thieves Against Theft, eh?

Doug Powers:

Can it be long before Raúl Castro is invited to speak before a joint session of Congress?

From Human Rights Watch:

... The 123-page report, “New Castro, Same Cuba”, shows how the Raúl Castro government has relied in particular on the Criminal Code offense of “dangerousness”, which allows authorities to imprison individuals before they have committed any crime, on the suspicion that they are likely to commit an offense in the future.


American Glob:

Surprise! Obama Won’t Meet With Arizona Governor Jan Brewer

No surprises here…

"President Obama has turned down Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s request to meet while she’s in Washington next week as tensions mount between his administration and Arizona over the state’s new law cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Brewer will be in Washington to meet with other governors. She said Friday that she had asked to meet with Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to discuss border security and immigration. But Obama’s schedule “doesn’t allow for a meeting” with her..."

Actually, it is surprising, given this:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said at tonight’s CNN debate in Austin that he would be willing to meet immediately with Cuba's new leader, Raul Castro. But Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said she would not.

In fact, Obama broadly extended his policy of being willing to meet with dictators without preconditions...

“Not just in Cuba, but I think this principle applies generally,” Obama said. “I recall what John F. Kennedy once said: 'We should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate'."


In the tried and true Democrat style, this president isn't too busy to whip up George Wallace-style racial strife for get-out-the-vote purposes...but he can't meet the governor of Arizona? He's got a Paul McCartney concert to attend, lady!

I think it was the late great Hoyt Axton who put it best:

Well I never been to Phoenix
But I kinda like the Beatles
Told people not to go to Vegas
As I take my front row seat-le
In Old Havana, not Arizanna
What does it matter
What does it matter
Let me be clear


I quote from memory. Tommy Chong's.

Meanwhile, it's also Date Night in Caracas, as Hugo Chavez takes his date Oliver "Mancrush" Stone out to the movies. Their matching outfits are a nice touch; they just scream "Soy con Estúpido!"

What is it "good" for? 

THE STREWING WITH FLOWERS

Me:

"War Throughout History"

Did I say "war"? Sorry; I meant “overseas contingency operation”. I must have been thinking of the immortal words of Lt. Sen. John Oprah Chopra “Butch” Kerry, who famously said:

“I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive War on Terror that reaches out…”

Ah–the old “sensitive” war. In other words, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ah…hey, watch out for those baby ducks!” It brings to mind the famous quote by Robert E. Lee:

“It is well that war is so effective, thoughtful, strategic, proactive, sensitive & inclusive, else we should grow too fond of it.”

So true.

You almost couldn’t tell if Kerry was talking about war or a new federal tattoo-removal outreach program. Sorry, Mike.


G.K. Chesterton:

"The cheapest and most childish of all the taunts of the Pacifists is, I think, the sneer at belligerents for appealing to the God of Battles. It is ludicrously illogical, for we obviously have no right to kill for victory save when we have a right to pray for it. If a war is not a holy war, it is an unholy one--a massacre."


Ernie Pyle:

The Italian mule-skinners were afraid to walk beside the dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies at the bottom, so an officer had to do it himself, and ask others to help.

The first one came early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule and stood him on his feet for a moment, while they got a new grip. In the half light he might have been merely a sick man standing there, leaning on the others. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the low stone wall alongside the road.

I don't know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being alive, and you don't ask silly questions.

We left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the cowshed and sat on water cans or lay in the straw, waiting for the next batch of mules.

Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything more about it. We talked soldier talk for an hour or more. The dead men lay all alone outside in the shadow of the low stone wall.

Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went out into the road. Four mules stood there, in the moonlight, in the road where the trail came down off the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. "This one is Captain Waskow," one of them said quietly.


Francis Schaefer:

"The Bible is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we live - this lost world - means that we desert the people who need our greatest help."


Peter Schramm:

I had a fine ride yesterday, a good long one. Almost no one driving, just me and Isabella dancing along (and a few other bikers, from time to time). I was contemplating peace and its pleasures in that easy way her purr allows, visits with my Marine son and other good pleasures, when I came around a bend and there on a flat piece of earth were about a hundred large American flags implanted in the soil of a cemetery. It took my breath away, the thing in itself and the surprise of it. A truly lovely moment of somber gratitude and I had to pull over for a bit, much too dangerous to ride with moist eyes. Later that night I watched parts of The Pacific and my gut was reminded of the horror of war, that terrible waster of men, the brutish and primitive hatred, the guts spilling from once men and now no more. And of course there was the bravery, the incredible bravery. And then a different kind of gratitude for those who didn't make it out. I'll do it again today, it's the least I can do.


P.J. O'Rourke:

One more thing about this generation of soldiers - they grew up in video arcades. It's no coincidence that watching the Gulf War's high-tech weapons on our TV screens is so much like watching computer games. This war is the daddy of all Mario Brothers, the Gog and Magog of hacker networks, the devil's own personal core dump. And our soldiers have an absolutely intuitive, Donkey Kong-honed, gut-level understanding of the technology behind it. Thank God they do. It's why we're winning. So here's what you folks back home can do to help with the war effort. If you happen to have any kids and they're outdoors exercising in the healthy fresh air and sunshine, give them hell: "YOU GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW AND PLAY NINTENDO!" The future of our nation may depend on it.


Mac Owens:

"The 30th day of May 1868 is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers and otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land." Logan’s order in fact ratified a practice that was already widespread, both in the North and the South, in the years immediately following the Civil War.

It’s hard to get Americans in this day and age to remember the true meaning of Memorial Day. ...

For instance, how many Americans know the story of Marine Lieutenant John P. Bobo, who received the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam? Here is part of his citation:

When an exploding enemy mortar round severed Lieutenant Bobo’s right leg below the knee, he refused to be evacuated and insisted upon being placed in a firing position to cover the movement of the command group to a better location. With a web belt around his leg serving as a tourniquet and with his leg jammed into the dirt to curtail the bleeding, he remained in this position and delivered devastating fire into the ranks of the enemy attempting to overrun the Marines. Lieutenant Bobo was mortally wounded while firing his weapon into the main point of the enemy attack but his valiant spirit inspired his men to heroic efforts.…

The reason for this disparity in coverage is simple. My Lai fit the conventional narrative of the anti-war left. Bobo’s story did not.

The Vietnam-era narrative lives on today. The conventional wisdom concerning Vietnam has been absorbed by today’s press, even those too young to remember the America’s Southeast Asia misadventure, resulting in a troubling predisposition on its part to believe the worst about those who are willing to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan. Thus long before an investigation was complete, opponents of the war used the alleged killing of Iraqi civilians in Hadithah three years ago to apply the Vietnam narrative to Iraq. Thus Rep. John Murtha, D-PA, a vociferous critic of the war, broke the story, claiming that Marines in Hadithah had "killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

In April of 2005, Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, US Army, became the first soldier in the Iraq war to be awarded the Medal of Honor. He was killed in action when his outnumbered unit was attacked by Iraqi forces at the Baghdad airport on April 4, 2003, and is credited with saving hundreds of lives.

In his October 4, 2007 Wall Street Journal piece, "Modern Heroes", Robert Kaplan observed that "according to LexisNexis, by June 2005, two months after his posthumous award, [Smith’s] stirring story had drawn only 90 media mentions, compared to 4,677 for the supposed Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay, and 5,159 for the court-martialed Abu Ghraib guard Lynndie England." This is nothing short of a scandal. ...

In the history of the world, many good soldiers have died bravely and honorably for bad or unjust causes. Americans are fortunate in that we have been given a way of avoiding this situation by linking the sacrifice of our soldiers to the meaning of the nation. ...

By all means, have a hot dog or a hamburger this weekend. If you’re close to a beach or a lake, take advantage of the nice weather and go. But on Memorial Day, take some time to remember the John Bobos and the Paul Ray Smiths who died to make your weekend possible.


(Hat-tip: The Sanity Inspector)

Voting "Present" Has its Price, Vincent 

Or, In The Nuclear Midnight Amateur Hour, When My Post-War Consensus Comes Tumblin’ Down, Pt. 2

"It is not good for the stability of the world, or its safety, that the leader of "the indispensable nation" be so weakened. I never until the past 10 years understood the almost moral imperative that an American president maintain a high standing in the eyes of his countrymen."--Peggy "Capt. Renault" Noonan, who is shocked, shocked that Obama and BP are shocked, shocked by the spill.

Prof. Hanson:

Very soon German workers are going to grasp that all the financial reserves they piled away the last two decades from not doing what a Spain or Italy did are essentially gone. Someone in Munich worked 40 hours a week until age 67 for someone in Athens not to — and for someone in Athens to demand that someone in Munich do so or else. The idea that nations like Greece, both overtly and implicitly, insult nations like Germany has no basis in historical terms.

In short…

Even European bankers now claim the euro is suspect. The European Union may well devolve into something other than its present form within a few years. NATO is an alliance mostly in name. Germany is angry. So far all the traditional restraints upon its pique — allied military rivals on its two borders, a divided country, fear of a nuclear Soviet Union, incorporation within the EU and NATO — are either nonexistent or increasingly problematic.

If it should choose, Germany could go nuclear in six months, its arsenal reflective of a country that makes Mercedes and BMWs. That is not so wild an idea in an age when unstable nations like Iran and North Korea boast of their arsenals and their aggression, while others such as Turkey and Brazil flout U.S. faculty-lounge sermons on non-proliferation.

If Iran should go nuclear — and I think it will within a year or two — we should imagine that a Brazil, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria would too. As the European Union collapses, as third-rate nations become nuclear, and as the United States abdicates its postwar role in ensuring the safety and security of the West, why would Germany continue to subsidize southern Europe while receiving mostly blame for its efforts, while its airspace would be in theory vulnerable to the likes of a theocratic Iran?

Back to the 19th century?

In a sane world, a financially solvent United States would now step up to the plate, reassure Germany of both its long-standing financial and military support, and seek through its friendship and alliance to deflect any natural German inclination to translate its economic power and present seething into something other than mere anger at the EU.

But we don’t live in a sane world. U.S. finances are following the Greek example. President Obama either does not understand the West or perhaps does not care to. To the new America, a Germany is no different from a Pakistan or Venezuela, just another member of the international community, no better or no worse than any other. Our commitment to NATO and the U.S. defense budget will soon be redefined, as even more entitlements along the lines of the recent trillion-dollar health care plan are envisioned.

In other words, in such a vacuum, very soon, if we are not careful, we are going to have a German problem — again.
When liberals survey the world, they see America as the problem, America as the bully, America as the rogue nation. Not Iran. Not North Korea. Not even Russia.

This would be an amusing little tic, like a Zimbabwe printing a one hundred trillion dollar-bill, were it not for the fact that voters foolishly and dangerously entrusted them with real power. This worldview therefore has real consequences--and all of them bad.

They view America as giant Gulliver to be tied down by Lilliputian nations, and pickpocketed at the same time for good measure. America must be defanged, weakened, and humbled. It must be reverse-engineered. Like geo-political alchemists, they're hell-bent on reformulating America with enough base material to forever alter it into a compliant, mediocre power, no better or worse than any other.

They hope to turn gold into lead.

And when America is finally weak, they believe, Peace Will Dawn At Last. Strength will at last flow from Peace, rather than Peace coming through Strength.

They have learned nothing from 400 years of American Experience, not to mention thousands of years of human experience.

Prof. Hanson mentions a re-armed Germany--and what about a similar Japan? Do you really think they are reassured when Obama bashes, disarms and bankrupts America?

We've been here before and we can again learn from our American Experience:

Few Americans accept the belief of some of those now in positions of importance in guiding our foreign policy that America's purpose in the world is to appease the mighty out of a sense of fear or to appease the weak out of a sense of guilt. ...

Its policy is rooted in well-meaning intentions, but it shows a woeful uncertainty as to America's purpose in the world. The administration means to do good by espousing a human rights doctrine it cannot define, much less implement. In the process, this policy has met with scorn from our enemies and alarm from our friends. ...

But, by using a combination of heavy-handed moves against allied countries, on the one hand, and making "pre-emptive concessions" toward unfriendly or potentially unfriendly countries on the other, the...administration has managed to convey the view that it desperately wants the whole world to have democratic institutions that would be the envy of the most ardent ACLU lawyer, and that wishing will make it so.

That view of the world ranks along with belief in the Tooth Fairy. But confusion of purpose and a false sense of guilt are not the only elements in this administration's foreign policy. ...

The problem...is that they know too little, not too much, of history. And, they have lost faith in their own country's past and traditions.

Too often, that team has operated under the assumption that the United States must prove and reprove and prove again its goodness to the world. Proving that we are civilized in a world that is often uncivilized -- and unapologetically so -- is hardly necessary.

The themes of a sound foreign policy should be no mystery, nor the result of endless agonizing reappraisals. They are rooted in our past -- in our very beginning as a nation.

The Founding Fathers established a system which meant a radical break from that which preceded it. A written constitution would provide a permanent form of government, limited in scope, but effective in providing both liberty and order. Government was not to be a matter of self-appointed rulers, governing by whim or harsh ideology. It was not to be government by the strongest or for the few. Our principles were revolutionary. We began as a small, weak republic. But we survived. Our example inspired others, imperfectly at times, but it inspired them nevertheless. This constitutional republic, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, prospered and grew strong. To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world -- nothing more and nothing less.

To carry out that purpose, our fundamental aim in foreign policy must be to ensure our own survival and to protect those others who share our values. Under no circumstances should we have any illusions about the intentions of those who are enemies of freedom.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Memorial Day, 2010 

MISS THEM YET?

Excerpted from Naval Aviation News 67 (March-April 1985) By JO2 Timothy J Christmann:

On that sunny morning of September, Bush woke aboard San Jacinto prepared to fly one of the 58 attack missions he would fly during the war. However, this particular mission would end a little differently than his other 57. The target was a Japanese radio station on ChiChi Jima, located about 600 miles southwest of Japan in the Bonin Islands. For a time, the enemy on that tiny island had been intercepting U.S. military radio transmissions and warning Japan and occupied enemy islands of impending American air strikes. It had to be destroyed.

Before 0900, Bush and two aircrewmen --his regular radioman, Radioman Second Class John Delaney, and substitute gunner Lieutenant Junior Grade William White-- strapped themselves inside an Avenger and catapulted off San Jacinto. Three other bomb-laden VT-51 aircraft, as well as a number of VF-51's F6F Hellcats, joined the mission.

"ChiChi was a real feisty place to fly into," Stanley Butchart, a former VT-51 pilot and friend of Bush, agreed. "As I remember, it had gun emplacements hidden in the mountain areas. In order to get down to the radio facility, you had to fly past the AA batteries, which was risky business." As expected, projectiles belched from the enemy's AA batteries as soon as Bush and his squadron mates were over the island. Tiny black puffs of smoke thickened around his plane as he approached the target and dove steeply -- so steeply that Bush felt like he was standing on his head. But before he reached the radio facility the plane was hit.

Ltjg. Bush, who felt the plane "lift" from the hit, continued his dive toward the target and dropped his payload. The four 500-pound bombs exploded, causing damaging hits. For his courage and disregard for his own safety in pressing home his attack, he was later awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross.

Bush maneuvered the Avenger over the ocean with the hope it would make the journey back to San Jacinto. But the plane began to blaze and clouds of smoke soon enveloped the cockpit. Choking and gasping for air, Bush and one of his aircrewmen wriggled out of the plane and leaped from about 1,500 feet. His other crewman, dead or seriously injured from the blast, went down with the Avenger. Bush parachuted safely into the water, dangerously close to the shore. Unfortunately, the aircrewman fell helplessly to his death because his parachute failed to open properly.

Vice-President Bush said that he chose to finish the bombing run rather than bail out early because as a Naval Aviator, he was disciplined to do that. "We were trained to complete our runs no matter what the obstacle," he remarked.

Once in the water, Bush unleashed his inflatable yellow lifeboat, crawled in, and paddled quickly out to sea. The Japanese sent out a boat to capture him. Luckily, Lieutenant Doug West, a fellow VT-51 Avenger pilot, strafed the boat. "He stopped it," said Bush. [he was blessed; other captured pilots were brutally tortured to death--you know, like we did to KSM--ed.]

Circling fighter planes transmitted Bush's plight and position to the U.S. submarine Finback (SS-230), patrolling 15 to 20 miles from the island. "This was 1944 and there were very few enemy targets left," said retired Capt. Robert R.Williams Jr., 73, who was Finback's commanding officer then. "So, the main reason for our being on patrol was to act as lifeguard and pick up aviators."

According to Lieutenant Commander Dean Spratlin, Finback's executive officer at the time, the submarine had an area of 200 to 300 square miles to cover, which included Iwo Jima, ChiChi Jima and HaHa Jima in the Bonin Islands. A few hours after transmitting Bush's position, Williams, then a commander, sighted him on the periscope about seven miles away from ChiChi. He ordered the submarine to the surface.

"I saw this thing coming out of the water and I said to myself, 'Jeez, I hope it's one of ours,'" Bush remarked. Spratlin, who is now in the real estate business in Atlanta, Ga., said he and Williams weren't worried about surfacing in daylight so close to an enemy island because they had several U.S. fighters flying cover.

"We had a big sub (312 feet long), so we rigged out the bowplanes which gave us a platform where we could step down and pull him aboard," added Spratlin. While several of Finback's crewmen were helping Bush aboard, Ensign Bill Edwards, the sub's first lieutenant and photographic officer, filmed the rescue. The 8mm film later was sent to Bush while he was a congressman from Texas and was shown recently as part of a biographical sketch during the Republican National Convention.

Bush was taken inside Finback and the sub submerged. "Once he was pulled aboard, he as taken to the wardroom," said Thomas R. Keene, a TBF Avenger pilot from USS Franklin, who was shot down the day before off Iwo Jima along with his two enlisted aircrewmen. "It must have seemed like a dream to him. One minute he was all alone on the ocean, and the next he was on board a submarine being served food in a red-lighted compartment that had music playing on a record player."

"I thought being rescued by the submarine was the end of my problem,"Bush said. "I didn't realize that I would have to spend the duration of the sub's 30 remaining days on board." The following day, Finback retrieved Lieutenant Junior Grade James Beckman, a fighter pilot on USS Enterprise who was shot down over HaHa Jima. "We put Bush and the other four men to work as lookouts," Spratlin said. "Four hours on, eight hours off.''

As lookouts, they helped make sure that enemy planes and submarines didn't sneak up on Finback during daylight or at night. The submarine did much of its patrolling on the surface in the daytime and always at night because that was when Finback recharged its batteries. "Bush and the other aviators really got into the submarine experience," Spratlin remarked. "Every time an enemy plane would force us down, they'd curse it just like we did."

Bush said that the most beautiful time for standing watch was between 2400 and 0400. "I'll never forget the beauty of the Pacific -- the flying fish, the stark wonder of the sea, the waves breaking across the bow," he remarked. The 30 days aboard Finback weren't all beautiful, however. Some of the more dramatic moments included being depth charged and bombed by enemy ships and planes.

"I thought I was scared at times flying into combat, but in a submarine you couldn't do anything, except sit there," he said. ''The submariners were saying that it must be scary to be shot at by antiaircraft fire and I was saying to myself, 'Listen brother, it is not really as bad as what you go through. The tension, adrenaline and the fear factor were about the same (getting shot at by antiaircraft fire as opposed to being depthcharged). When we were getting depth charged, the submariners did not seem overly concerned, but the other pilots and I didn't like it a bit. There was a certain helpless feeling when the depth charges went off that I didn't experience when flying my plane against AA.''

"I can't say anything but good things about him," remarked Jack Guy, who was one of Bush's closest friends in VT-51. "In WW II we all felt we could depend on George to do his job. We never had to say, 'Where's my wingman?' because he was always there."
I promise you President Bush's thoughts and prayers today are with his crewmen Radioman John Delaney and Lieutenant William White and all the others who gave everything, just as our thoughts and prayers should be.

Those generations came home from wars, built and bequeathed to us the greatest nation on earth, and now another generation defends it--defends us--anew.

And we'll remember them, too.

Why We Fought 

AND STILL FIGHT TODAY

...and will fight tomorrow.

How many times have I written "Doc Zero nails it"?:

America was born a land of liberty and responsibility, where citizens would own both their time and ideas. Her government was obliged to focus on its duties in the present, rather than designing the future. The future is the exclusive property of free men, not the State. The government does not have the right to decide when freedom has failed, and should be discarded. ... As this ideology reaches the ugly and bankrupt end of its century-long existence, its nervous acolytes are desperately in need of validation. That’s why they were so eager to hear a hostile foreigner describe their domestic enemies as hateful and greedy.

The passage of ObamaCare dispelled the myth of the moderate Democrat. The illusion of the patriotic Democrat died in their thunderous applause for Felipe Calderon. The Democrats obviously find more in common with this shadowy foreign ally than the people of Arizona… or the wider American population, which supports Arizona’s immigration law by lopsided majorities. Any sense of unconditional loyalty to the United States is obviously not distributed evenly across all fifty of them.

When we embrace liberty and responsibility, we see our countrymen as partners, employers, customers, and honorable competitors. It becomes easy to revere the great nation that sailed against the tides of history to destroy imperialism, fascism, and communism… as it will defeat the challenge of moral and intellectual exhaustion that swept the final generation of American socialists into power over the past decade. We can be at peace with those who disagree, because none of us has the power to compel submission.

Those who embrace collectivist economics, and political dominion over every aspect of our lives, will inevitably come to see the stubborn and disobedient conservators of the old America as enemies to be despised and defeated. Even their most high-minded and well-intentioned designs can only be fulfilled by forcing dissenters to participate. Barack Obama and his party have a lot of big plans that require the meek compliance of people who think like me… and we aim to misbehave. Small wonder the Democrats, and a sad number of Republican attendants, find themselves more comfortable in the company of foreign leaders who have already secured the abject submission of their impoverished subjects.


I was at once reminded of this post by David Pryce-Jones, which is too compelling to just excerpt:

I spent the week-end celebrating a wedding. The bride and bridegroom made a fine couple. The church was very old, with a magnificent Norman arch and medieval wall decorations. Afterwards we repaired to a nearby great house built in the seventeenth century of beautiful grey stone, with a chapel of its own, mullion windows, statues, a vast lawn and gardens which I in my ignorance only then learnt are famous. Everything was perfect, in other words, here was a traditional moment of the kind that has made England what it is, and formed the loyalty of its daughters and sons.

In the course of his speech in her honour, the father of the bride then informed the audience that the European Union has passed a Gender Equality Bill. One provision of this preposterous and impudent measure is that fathers are no longer allowed to give away their daughters in the traditional church ceremony. Apparently that is to treat daughters as chattels. The whole European Union is on the point of breaking up, Greece is in flames and the Germans about to rebel, several countries in the eurozone are bankrupt beyond redemption, the euro itself has failed and soon there may be no currency for Europeans to trade in — and the giant statesmen of Brussels come up with a prohibition on fathers giving away their daughters in marriage as fathers have done in country after country, century after century.

All is not lost. Princess Victoria of Sweden is engaged to be married. I shall never forget the grace and elegance with which she escorted an aged prize-winner who could hardly walk to dinner at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm in 2000. She has presence. Heir to the throne, she is insisting that her father, the King, give her away. The more the Swedish church says this can’t now be done, the more she protests that she will have her way. May she and the King remember their Vasa royal predecessors, Queen Christina, Charles XII, the days when Sweden was a great power, and may they help cover the great statesmen of Brussels with well-deserved ridicule.
What they deserve only begins with ridicule.

And Princess Victoria is a natural-born American.

Are we?

"Paging Oliver Stone, Paging Oliver Stone: Wet Slobber Clean-Up in the Chicken-Rationing Aisle..." 

STUCK ON STALIN, STUPIDO

Via Citizen Feathers, this ABC "entertainment" report:

CARACAS (Reuters) - Film director Oliver Stone said on Friday Venezuela's Hugo Chavez was misunderstood by the Western media, but said the socialist president should consider cutting back on his hours-long television appearances.

Stone, in the Venezuelan capital Caracas for the local premiere of his documentary "South of the Border," which profiles Latin America's leftist leaders, told reporters he admired Chavez and his record since coming to power in 1999.

"He behaves well. I think he's compensating those businesses that he has nationalized. ... Most peoples' lives in this country have improved under Chavez," Stone said.
Oh, he's "compensating", alright...

Venezuela's president says he is reversing decades of exploitation in the OPEC member nation with policies for the poor including free clinics and schools.

His opponents say his administration is scaring away investors and wrecking the economy in a country that should be one of the continent's richest, given its huge oil wealth.

"There is no question that the American press, the Anglo press, does not understand the way he speaks," Stone said.

"I'm not an expert on the local day-to-day issues, but I admire Hugo. I like him very much as a person. If I can say one thing, he shouldn't be on TV all the time."


"Why not, Ollie? They're his TV stations now!

Meanwhile, on the other side of Caracas, far from the presidential palace, those pesky "local day-to-day issues" must be fed, watered and branded.

Publius Pundit:

Some Chavistas functionaries are angry at the market forces that drives these shortages and have decided to take control. That’s why they’ve decided to force poor people, like cattle, to submit to a sort of ink branding on their bellies, to control just how much chicken they purchase. It probably goes for other products, too.

What it really amounts to is the first steps toward rationing of food, the logical consequences of turning Venezuela’s once-abundant agricultural production (the Venezuelan Agriculture Department is now under the control of Cuban party hacks) into the same disaster Zimbabwe is.

But although this dynamic resembles the exact same failed socialist policies of old, there’s something new and unique about it, this branding policy is spectacularly degrading. Stalin never came up with this. Castro never did either. But the thuggish government of Hugo Chavez has. It’s like marking people as cattle. I’ve never seen anything so disgusting. Chavez is treating the poor he champions …. literally …. like animals.


If Hollywood ever did a spoof of "The Three Communist Stooges", Stone could play all three. And write and direct.

He's already pre-seduced himself on the Proletarian casting couch.

(Hat-tip: Legal Insurrection)

He rented the house in Alaska... 

...BUT SHE LIVES IN HIS BRAIN RENT-FREE!

Peepin' Joe McGinniss is a victim. Just ask him. He's his own favorite subject. Wanker.

In this bizarre ramble, he claims he only moved in next door to protect Palin's children. Creepy.

Todd got in his face. Awesome. In part, for this.

His Portfolio piece starts dishonestly enough, with an editor's note hinting at dark ethics charges, rather than the truth: dozens of frivolous, malicious and dismissed ethics charges. And it goes downhill from there.

Accorning to Peepin’ Joe, Palin is stopping Alaskan energy production by being too mean to the nice oil companies.

The Obama fan's article goes on to accuse her of “magical thinking”, of using Alinsky-ite tactics and labels her a “f***ing psychopath”.

Peepin' Joe bewails “her ability to incite hatred” while bemoaning the fact that she hasn't brought him baked goods like Mommy used to.

Wait a minute--who's that knocking at the Freud door with the chocolate chip/caribou jerky cookies?

UPDATE: Didja' notice that it only took Todd one day to secure the border and build the fence?

The Vanities of the Bonfire 

TINDER IS THE NIGHT-SWIM IN THE GULF OF REALITY

“A single spark can start a prairie fire.”--Chairman Mao Tse-Dunn

Mark Twain-Steyn plumbs the depths:

The Vanity Of Big Government

One of the chief characteristics of Barack Obama's speechifying is its contempt for words as anything other than props of self-puffery. Consider, for example, his recent remarks to the graduating class of the United States Military Academy:

"America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation — we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice."

"Steering those currents"? How could even a member of the president's insulated, self-regarding speechwriting team be so tin-eared as to write that line? How could the president be so tone-deaf as to deliver it in May of 2010? Hey, genius, if you're so damn good at "steering currents," why not try doing it in the Gulf of Mexico?
The only reason Ulysses S. Blamebush went to West Point on Satyrday was so his media lackeys could burnish his military street-cred as CINC on Sunday, before springing his Don't Ask/Don't Tell-repeal effort on Monday.

Why didn't he discuss his DADT policy push with the graduating class; after all, aren't they the ones who would have to live with it? Instead, he just used them as props, patting them on the head and pardoning them from after-school detention. No wonder so many of them declined to shake his hand.

Or maybe it was just because Obama's "new international order" sounded a lot like "whatever dictators tell me to do".

Like those of many great "thinkers," words for Barack Obama and his coterie seem to exist mostly in the realm of metaphor rather than as descriptors of actual action actually occurring in anything so humdrum as reality.

And so it is that, even as his bungling administration flounders in the turbulent waters of the Gulf, on the speaker's podium the president still confidently sails forth deftly steering the ship through the narrow ribbon of sludge between the Scylla of sonorous banality and the Charybdis of gaseous uplift.

Two years ago this week, then Sen. Obama declared that his very nomination as Democratic Party presidential candidate (never mind his election, or inauguration) marked the moment when "our planet began to heal" and "the rise of the oceans began to slow."
I don't care what anyone says--that Billy Ayers can really turn a nautical phrase!

In fact, they say that Anita Dunn's husband Robert Bauer wrote the NavyGate Navigational Charts, but this kind of polished fiction reads like Ayers' best. And it doesn't take Billy three months to get all his lies straight, from Prairie Fire communism to the Pants Fire Chronicles.

Almost every problem we face today arises from the vanity of Big Government. Why has BP got oil wells 5,000 feet underwater in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico? Because government regulated them off-land, off-coast, and ever deeper into the briny.


The State-Run Media also "leaked" that the Top-Kill plan worked, just long enough for Ogabe to give his stenographer fan club press conference, even though it hasn't worked yet.

The UnterBus Regime bussed in--and out--400 worker-bee props, just in time for his Shoreline Showbiz Review. Bill Ayers, you magnificent bastard!

True, BP went along. Its initials stand for "British Petroleum". You may not be aware of that if you've seen any of their commercials in recent years: "BP — Beyond Petroleum." They were an oil company ashamed of their product, and advertising only how anxious they were to get with the environmental program. And a fat lot of good that did them.
Maybe they should have focused on getting petroleum right, before moving beyond it. Now the petroleum is moving beyond them.

But Democrats are also ashamed of their product, too. That's why they run as conservatives, like the Murtha-clone in PA. Didja' notice that liberals always run as conservatives...but conservatives never run as liberals?

BP, not to mention its customers, would have been better to push back against government policies that drive energy suppliers into ever more unpredictable terrain in order to protect the Alaskan breeding grounds of the world's largest mosquito herd. Instead, we'll do the opposite. There'll be even more government protection of "the environment," and even more government regulation of the oil industry, and BP will be drilling for oil in that Icelandic volcano.
Does "BP" stand for "Boy President"? 'Cos I'm not sure America's golf courses can take the presidential pounding they've been getting if this crisis continues.

It's the same in Europe. Greece's problem isn't so very difficult to diagnose. Like many western nations, its government has spent tomorrow today. As in New York and California, public-sector unions have looted the future. This is the entirely foreseeable consequence of government policy.
Looting the Future is not the "consequence of government policy", Mark--it is the policy itself.

As Billy A. put it:

“This is why I chose teaching: to share my life with young people, to shape and loot touch the future.”


Like the man said, "This Wouldn't Be Happening If Obama Were President!"

The Smell Test Administration is failing, just as Rush predicted.

Must be something in the airs.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

No Jive Left Behind: The Flunking of the Smell Test Administration (Updated) 

THE NEW TRANSPARENT LIES POLITICS

“Can I be one?” Elvis asks his new friend.

“Well, federal agents-at-large – we just don’t have those,” Nixon stammers.

“I’ll look into it,” Krogh promises.

Elvis is crestfallen, visibly wilted under the weight of all that gold, a man who could have anything – cars, women, houses – except the one thing he wants most.

Nixon takes one look at him and caves.

“Get him the badge.”--"When Elvis Met Nixon"


Newsbusters:

WASHINGTON — Not long after news leaked last month that [former Colorado House speaker] Andrew Romanoff was determined to make a Democratic primary run against Sen. Michael Bennet, Romanoff received an unexpected communication from one of the most powerful men in Washington.

Jim Messina, President Barack Obama's deputy chief of staff and a storied fixer in the White House political shop, suggested a place for Romanoff might be found in the administration and offered specific suggestions, according to several sources who described the communication to The Denver Post.

Romanoff turned down the overture, which included mention of a job at USAID, the foreign aid agency, sources said.
This election-tampering is habit-forming.

Meanwhile, Joe Sestak qualifies to become NavSec in just a few weeks, five years after leaving the Navy.

"What really hurts is if you try to cover it up.”--Richard Hussein Nixon


UPDATE: Sestak wastes no time learning his new tune. He's All Shook Up.

The Blue Hawaiian UPDATE:

“We’re looking to fundamentally change the status quo in Washington. It’s a status quo that extends beyond any particular party, and right now that status quo is fighting back with everything it’s got, with the same old tactics that divide and distract us from solving the problems people face…we’re up against the idea that it’s acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election, such as trading pardons of Puerto Rican terrorists for ethnic votes in a Senate race.” – Candidate Obama, Night of the South Carolina Democratic Primary

I quote from Memories.

Jailhouse Rock UPDATE:

Obama finally saves or creates one job...and it's voluntary?

NavyGate Bribe Co-Conspirators Meet, Compare Stories: "It's not broken; it's fixed!" 

BEG YOUR PARDON SALESMAN

“If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.”--Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama

Robert Costa:

An old Washington hand gives NRO his take:

Fox reports that the White House asked Bill Clinton to talk to Sestak about getting out of the race. Clinton had lunch with Obama yesterday, says Fox. The White House talks to Sestak's brother, a lawyer, about what they are going to say on the whole affair.

Do the words "obstruction of justice" ring a bell?


More:

Rahm Emanuel, via Bill Clinton, had offered Sestak some kind of unpaid advisory job in exchange for dropping out. We're really confused about the unpaid part, but the whole thing looks a tad [un]seemly.


Just a tad, Tad.

What's so "confusing"? The "unpaid" part means the lawyers told G. Rahm Emmanuel and the Big Pardon-Seller that offering Admiral Sestak a paid job was a felony--adjust your stories accordingly!

Hot Air:

Having someone outside of the administration as a buffer would be very convenient for Obama at this juncture. It allows Obama to offload the blame to someone other than a staffer. And like all buffers, it provides the President with plausible deniability for any legal problems that might ensue.

Friday, May 28, 2010

If they can't win the argument, then they stop the argument 

FREE SPEECH, NOT MUMIA!

Read this:

The words of Patrick Henry still ring true 235 years later, “Why stand we here idle?,” he said, “What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Secondly, We the People must not only inform ourselves on our Core Principles, must inform ourselves about Contrary Principles. If our core principles serve to secure and maintain the liberty we wish to enjoy, then it stands to reason that there are contrary principles that threaten that same liberty, and we must be able to identify these enemies of our liberty.

Sun Tzu says in his Art of War, “Know thine enemy as thyself.” We must always remember that our enemies are not people or parties, but the freedom-destroying principles that they espouse. We must inform ourselves on the principles of progressivism, socialism, communism; and the mechanisms these philosophies use such as redistribution of wealth, centralization of power, progressive taxation, and restrictions on free speech. Once we are informed on these principles we will then recognize them. And we must oppose them regardless of the party or personality attempting to employ them.

I say again, We must not give a free pass because of personality or party affiliation. It is ironic that Teddy Roosevelt is heralded as a great hero of the Republican Party, when in fact history testifies that he was the leader of the anti-constitutional progressives in 1912. It was also under the Republican Party that the refundable tax credit was enacted, allowing progressives to engage in redistribution of wealth and enslave citizens with the tax refund.

Am I anti-Republican? No; but these enemies of our liberty entered in because we put party over principle. The president recently suggested that his program of socialized medicine was okay because Republican Mitt Romney proposed the same program. It is not wrong because of who proposed it; it’s wrong because it is based on principles that are contrary to Liberty.
I have a better opinion of Teddy Roosevelt. He was for legal immigration and dead-set against Identity Group politics. He was for big strong families and a big strong military. And his progressivism at least contained some real progress, like building the Panama Canal.

And I've voted for Mitt Romney. I was trying to stop McCain--even though he admires TR, too. This was before he picked Palin. I sure wasn't going to vote for Huckabee, even though we share some views. I didn't like Huck's Mormon-bashing, since I regard Mormons as loyal conservatives. Even though I disagree with Mormonism vehemently.

Complicated, huh?

Well, so was that Glenn Beck-ish piece I quoted. It was written by KrisAnne Hall, a veteran, an assistant state attorney and a Tea Party activist in Florida. I don't agree with every last word, but I think as an American, especially as a vet, she has a right to say it. Right?



“You can’t take a job advocating for the state and go out and take a position against the state,” Jarvis said. “I advised her from my first learning of her activity that she was free to say and do whatever she desired within the law, but she could not do so while assistant counsel for the state.”

Hall, 40, said she spoke about the original intent of the U.S. Constitution, smaller government, budget deficits and Florida’s lawsuit against health care reform. Describing herself as a disabled Army veteran, she said all are federal issues she’s passionate about.

“I never said anything bad about the state. I never said anything bad about Mr. Jarvis,” said Hall. “I love being an assistant state attorney, [but] I’m not ready to give up on my constitutional rights.”


I won't give up on them if you won't, sister.

White House Investigates Self, Asks Self Tough Questions, Gives Self a Good Talking-To, Then Exonerates Self in Sestak's NavyGate Bribe Offer! (Update 

ROBERT GIBBS' 18 & 1/2 WEEK GAP

Doug Powers:

It was back in February that Joe Sestak told a Philadelphia radio station that the White House offered him a job [Sec.of Navy?] if he’d drop out of the House race — an offer which would be a felony and could come with all sorts of possible impeachment implications depending on what levels it reached.


Weekly Standard:

I don’t have anything to add to what I said in March.

I don’t have anything to add today.

I don’t have anything to add to that.

I gave that answer in March, and I don’t have anything to add to that.

Jake, I don’t have anything to add to what I said in March.

I don’t have anything to add to what Jake asked me.

I will just refer you to what I said in March."


Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has been doing his best "Groundhog Day"-impersonation for months, endlessly repeating himself, leaving reporters twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.

"I'm told that whatever conversationS have been had are not problematic. I think Congressman Sestak has discussed that this is — whatever happened is in the past, and he's focused on his primary election."
So was CREEP, the Committee to Re-Elect the President.

A White House investigates itself and finds nothing wrong. A press secretary stonewalls and stonewalls, hoping the questions will stop, yet they don't stop, even as the once-whispered word "impeachment" becomes a growing clamor.

Where have I heard all this before? It all seems so familiar...ah, yes--now I remember:

August 29, 1972: 'Internal Investigations Have Found No Wrongdoing in White House'


Nixon Speaks:

"...[W]ithin our own staff, under my direction, Counsel to the President, Mr. Dean, has conducted a complete investigation of all leads which might involve any present members of the White House Staff or anybody in the Government. I can say categorically that his investigation indicates that no one in the White House Staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident. ...

Before Mr. Mitchell left as campaign chairman he had employed a very good law firm with investigatory experience to look into the matter. Mr. MacGregor has continued that investigation and is continuing it now. ...

What really hurts in matters of this sort is not the fact that they occur, because overzealous people in campaigns do things that are wrong. What really hurts is if you try to cover it up."


The question remains:

What did the president know and when will he find a hole in his schedule between tee times to know it again?

UPDATE: "Obama's Watergate"

"Paging Fred Thompson, paging Fred Thompson..."

UP-UPDATE:

White House Calls Sestak's Brother


Sestak "answered honestly" when asked if asked if he's coordinating cover stories with the Regime's Dept. of Official Truths(tm).

Leader of the Pack (Updated) 

'RATS

Fox News:

"As you probably know, some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, D.C. as the 'capital of the free world'. But it seems to me that in this great city, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union, and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title."
Last week, Democrats thought it was Mexico City. This week, Brussels. Next week, Havana?

He's right about this, though; it sure ain't Ogabeville.

It's Jerusalem.

Or even Tehran. And Shanghaied Caracas.

UPDATE: Jonah G.:

Joe Biden’s Brussels Spout

Then there’s the fact that the EU has set up shop in Brussels. Surely this was really Biden’s only point. He was telling the unaccountable Lilliputians of the Eurocracy that Gulliver sees them as equals now.

We’ve gone through the looking glass. Brussels has no love for freedom as we define it in the American sense, and it has little to no power to promote it in any sense. The pencil pushers in Brussels have almost as much contempt for democratic sovereignty and free enterprise as they do for common sense. Indeed, in the endless quest to ratify the EU’s constitution, the leaders of the effort insisted that the voters’ opinion didn’t matter.

Brussels doesn’t stand for freedom, it sits for its own self-aggrandizement, social engineering, the tyranny of legalisms, and diplomatic argy-bargy.

It’s not just offensive that Biden thinks Brussels might deserve the title over Washington, it’s terrifying that he might actually think Brussels is in the freedom business at all.

What Are Wrong With Arlen? 

HINT: IT'S NOT KANSAS ANYMORE!

"In all ex-Senator Specter's eighty years, he never learned that when you chase two rabbits, you don't catch either one."--Furious Nation

Dana Milbank:

He is ornery, vain, disloyal and a brazen opportunist. He lacks a discernible ideology, puts his finger to the political winds before casting a vote and in the end does what is good for Arlen Specter.

I will miss him.
You would.

Milbank goes on to decry The Polarization(TM) of Our Politics(TM), *sniff*(TM). Oddly, the "blame" for that polarization always seems to fall on one side of the island--even polarization is polarized! Europe has the Tweedle-Dee/ Tweedle-Dum political parties--I'd rather have a choice, myself, Dana.

Some people like power a little too much. In fact, almost all people can learn to. It's human nature. And exactly why our Founders gave us a Limited Government with checks and balances--the limited government Arlen Specter has worked so hard to delimit.

It seems to me Arlen Specter clung to power for a lifetime because he was afraid his life would dry up and blow away without it. But we created those positions as a way for free people to govern themselves, not as therapy for politicians; "The Jung-ian Gentleman yields to the Senator from Self-Discovery, Madame Power-Crazed President."

Was Arlen Specter an open-minded, independent voice for the nation...or a wishy-washy, mediocre self-centered power-broker? Did he vote his conscience so often that he finally ran out?

If your politics are big enough to encompass endorsing both a Constitutional giant like Clarence Thomas and a Constitutional midget like Barack Obama, maybe your "bigness" is really all about you. aka; "smallness".

His impeachment vote of "Scottish Law; Not Proven" is a pretty good summation of his philosophy; aconstitutional, neither this nor that, irrelevant, odd and mostly meant to benefit Arlen Specter.

Milbank praises him for trading his Stimulus vote for $10 billion in medical research funding for the NIH.

But shouldn't this be decided on the merits?
And is it really heroic to borrow another $10 billion from the Chinese and put somebody else on the hook to repay it?
Is the NIH the best way to accomplish this and could taxpayers create better health outcomes for themselves with their own money?
And what will be history's verdict on Arlen Specter?

"Not proven?"

You May Not Be Smarter Than a Fith-Grader...but You're Wiser Than a Wise Man! 

"Men need myths -- and until capitalism can come up with a transformative myth of its own, it may well be that many men will prefer to find their myths in the same place they found them in the first part of the twentieth century -- the myth of revolutionary socialism.... Bad myths can only be driven out by better myths, and unless capitalism can provide a better myth than socialism, the latter will again prevail."--Lee Harris, "Why Isn't Socialism Dead?"

Van Helsing:

"Marxism has "the only economy system expressing concern of equal distribution (of wealth); that is moral ethics," the Tibetan Buddhist leader told a news conference at the start of a four-day New York visit. …

But in practice, he added, Marxism as applied by authoritarian governments, such as China's, is oppressive, because it lacks an independent judiciary, a free press and human rights for his fellow Buddhists in Chinese-governed Tibet."


How communism could possibly be imposed while preserving any meaningful human rights whatsoever was once again left unexplained.


Ronald Reagan: "The Idiocy of Karl Marx".

George Moneo:

Hello, Dalai…
You're so swell, Dalai
Now I know what I have known for all along
You're just a red, Dalai,
'nother red, Dalai,
I'm just wonderin'
What the hell your
Chicom bosses think of you!


The guy who never worked a day in his life thinks Marxism is "fair". And can be imposed fairly, "with a human face", if we'll only give it One More Chance(tm)!

The reason Marxism has never worked is because it is contrary to human nature, not to mention God's laws. Because it is contrary to human nature, it must always, in the end, be enforced at the point of a gun.

That's why the bumper stickers say "Free Tibet!", not "See Tibet!", Dalai.

"And Dalai can never go that way
The Commies won't let him home to stay
They won't let Dalai go that way
A--gaiiiiin!"


UPDATE: Doc Zero:

Virtually every subsidy is an expensive attempt to reverse market forces, and undo the will of the American consumer. A nation which pours its gross domestic product into entitlements and subsidies is essentially trying to short-circuit itself. It will eventually succeed.

It’s imperative for the American people to understand this is the inevitable result of collectivist economics. Political control of the marketplace always degenerates into the political class robbing independent citizens and unpopular industries, to maintain the support of indentured constituents. Packaged votes and bundled political donations, from loyal and motivated groups, are a far easier route to power than somehow keeping the majority of the country happy – a goal that always eludes socialism, because compulsion and ideology make poor substitutes for ambition and innovation.

That explains why socialism is miserable. It turns feral because it always makes promises it cannot keep, and the primary skill of a successful politician is the ability to avoid responsibility. As of this writing, it remains the official position of the Democrat Party that not a single one of its members bears any responsibility for the subprime mortgage crisis.

What a Tangled Web We Weave, When First We Created the Federal Dept. of Fairness 

MISSION CREEPS

"In a sense, proponents of "social justice" are unduly modest. What they are seeking to correct are not merely the deficiencies of society, but of the cosmos. What they call social justice encompasses far more than any given society is causally responsible for. Crusaders for social justice seek to correct not merely the sins of man but the oversights of God or the accidents of history. What they are really seeking is a universe tailor-made to their vision of equality. They are seeking cosmic justice."--Dr. Thomas Sowell, "The Quest for Cosmic Justice"

David Harsanyi:

As there is no real problem with the Internet, it's not surprising that some of our top minds have been diligently working on a solution.

In a 2001 interview (one that's only recently gone viral and caused a brouhaha), Cass Sunstein, now the nation's regulatory czar, is overheard advocating for government to insist all websites offer opposing viewpoints — or, in other words, a Fairness Doctrine for the Web.
Cass Sunstein--I thought he choked on a ham sandwich with his band back in the Sixties...oh, wait--I must be thinking of Bruce Sunstein.

"If we could get voluntary arrangements in that direction it would be great," said Sunstein at the time, "and if we can't get voluntary arrangements maybe Congress should hold hearings about mandates." After all, Sunstein went on to say, "the word voluntary is a little complicated. And sometimes people don't do what's best for our society." Mandates, he said, were the "ultimate weapon designed to encourage people to do better."

Actually, the word "voluntary" isn't complicated at all. And mandates do not "encourage" people to do better; mandates "force" people to do what those writing regulations happen to think is better. ...

I know it sounds wonderfully fair. But the reality of net neutrality makes as much sense as mandating that tricycle riders have the same rights and privileges as cars and trucks on our roads — highway neutrality.
Actually, this administration has already done that.

Sec. of Tricycles Transportation Ray LaHood:

"Today, I want to announce a sea change. People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized."


The Cold Fury Corollary: "Don't Tell Jokes Around Liberals--They Legislate the Punchlines."

I see what's coming.

Net Neutrality is important to this administration, as are many other kinds of neutrality; for example, the strict neutrality between trucks and tricycles, and CIA interrogators and terrorists. Or between China and Arizona.

Here at Cold Fury, we represent conservative and libertarian viewpoints, and a few that are better left uncategorized.

But if we are to maintain our independence, we must cave in and present liberal points of view also. It's only mandated fair. As much as we dislike the Fairness Doctrine, we must try to see the other guy's point of view and walk a mile in his shoes, even if we have to tackle him and remove those shoes forcibly. And let me be the first to apologize to the Forcible Shoe Removal Community for that horribly, horribly insensitive joke.

And the toenail fungus.

You'd better put something on that.

Anyway, in the interest of Cosmic Fairness, Cold Fury proudly presents...

THE TOP TEN THINGS LIBERALS SECRETLY THINK!

10.) "How did we ever get our guy Shepard Smith on Fox?"

9.) "What 'Second Amendment'? Black people can't be trusted with guns!"

8.) "Hitler had some good ideas, but he went too far. Stalin had some good ideas, but he went too far. Mao had some good ideas, but he went too far. The Ayatollah had some good ideas, but he went too far. Reagan had some good ideas...My God, what am I thinking?"

7.) "I wish Hillary had won."

6.) "He knows so much...yet accomplishes so little."

5.) "Why would anybody want to lie about being in Vietnam?"

4.) "Obama is the best president his country ever produced. Whatever country that is."

3.) "The Dalai Lama is a Marxist? That’s an amazing coincidence, because Karl Marx was also a Dalai Lama! At the age of two the child Karl Marx was recognized as the reincarnation of the 1st Dalai Lama, Otto Roddum Klinton, East German border guard. The German Dalai Lamas are believed to be manifestations of Schnitztelhosen, the Bodhisattva of elaborate record-keeping and patron saint of work camps, bad haircuts and deeply confused undergraduates.”

2.) "Some days, I...I... I miss Dick Cheney! There--I've said it!"

And the Number One Thing Liberals Secretly Think:

1.) "This time, Socialism will be different!"


(Via Goldstein)

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