TOO FUNNY~~~~~~~~~

Bush-lite

Where is the Liberal Rage?
by Jack Langer

05/29/2009


While President Obama’s national security speech last week was meant to clarify his “new” approach, even the many gratuitous slaps he took at the Bush administration could not obscure the fact that he is leaving intact the essence of his predecessor’s national security architecture. The surprising response to this by the New York Times and other prominent Bush critics reveals an unseemly aspect of the mindset of liberals: they want to be seduced by a charismatic leader.

Obama’s continuation of Bush’s national security policies has attracted a lot of attention. “Tribunals, renditions, intercepts, Iraq, wiretaps, etc. -- they all continue, but with a kinder, gentler Obama façade,” noted Victor David Hanson. Commentary blog’s Max Boot and Andy McCarthy, a prosecutor in the trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, have made the same observation. Even before Obama’s speech, Jack Goldsmith made the same argument in detail in the New Republic, outlining how Obama’s policies in all the key aspects of the war on terrorism perpetuate those of the Bush administration, with a few cosmetic changes.

It’s hard to argue with this conclusion. Obama’s double game is even evident in his signature issue, his much-hyped ban against waterboarding, which was used on only three people. Meanwhile, he quietly kept open the option of using the myriad other “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the future, should the need arise.

Can this bait and switch be going unnoticed by the left? They spent the better part of seven years indignantly denouncing these policies as a new form of fascism. They became experts at identifying which articles of the Geneva Convention were ostensibly being violated by Bush policies. They know exactly when habeas corpus has to be granted, and when Bush allegedly failed to do so. They can tell us which of our interrogation techniques qualify as torture, and which conditions at Gitmo violate the “rights” of detainees.

So clearly, they know that the policies they’ve attacked for years are being perpetuated by Obama. When even Maureen Dowd notices something, it’s a safe assumption that everyone else has figured it out.

One would expect the left to feel a deep sense of betrayal that their leader who promised change has embraced the very policies they despise. And yet, we see no such anguish. Instead, liberals have extolled everything about the Obama presidency, especially his national security policies.

This is most evident at the New York Times, whose editorial page gushed that Obama’s national security speech brought “relief and optimism.” It continued, “President Obama told the truth. It was a moment of political courage that will make this country safer.” This was quite a turnaround for a paper that less than two years ago, in August 2007, had instructed Democrats that opposing Bush’s national security policies was their “most important duty.”

Even more jarring was the about-face done by possibly the most emotional Bush critic in the blogosphere -- Andrew Sullivan. For years, Sullivan has denounced Bush administration officials as “war criminals” and furiously demanded their prosecution. He blasts Bush’s war on terror policies as a disgraceful, inhuman, criminal negation of American values -- a descent into barbarism unparalleled in our history. Indeed, his response to Cheney’s national security speech last week was so predictable that one suspects Sullivan wrote it before he even heard it; it was, he argued, “a vile and deliberately divisive attempt to use the politics of fear and false machismo against the stability of the American polity.” Fearing his point was too subtle, he further denounced the speech as “despicable,” “disgraceful,” “callow,” “arrogant,” “reckless,” unrepentant,” and full of “lies” and “distortions.”

It was interesting, then, to read Sullivan praise Obama’s national security speech. Sullivan clearly recognized that Obama’s central message was that the Bush national security paradigm will remain largely intact. And yet, instead of criticizing the betrayal, Sullivan extolled Obama’s conservatism on the issue, praising how the president “seeks first and foremost to use existing institutions to address the new challenges of the moment, and then seeks pragmatic compromises, always open to future checks and balances, in those places where such institutions clearly need reform and adjustment.”

Coming from a guy who has made a living denouncing these same policies as “war crimes” and demanding their wholesale revocation, it’s amazing to see Sullivan suddenly speak of the need for “pragmatic compromises” to “reform and adjust” whatever little things might need reforming and adjusting. If Bush’s policies were really war crimes, then why would any compromise be appropriate at all?

One might be tempted to conclude from all this that liberals have no principles. But, in fact, the untrammeled enthusiasm for Obama demonstrates that the left does have principles, or rather, it has one principle: the Fuhrer principle.

What the left wants above all else is to follow a charismatic leader whose very existence embodies their collective will. Think about the liberal mythologizing of Kennedy. What exactly was it about Kennedy that they love? His die-hard anti-communism? His attempt to invade Cuba? His deepening of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam? His tax cuts? All that may be anathema to the left in theory, but in the end it’s irrelevant in the face of Kennedy’s magnificent charisma.

Ultimately, what the left really wants is to submit to the cult of personality. They want to adulate a maximum leader who will keep them safe from conservatives. Obama reassures them on this score with his compulsive focus on the perceived faults of the Bush administration and the occasional hint that trials of Bush officials may be in the works.

In Obama, the left has found the most charismatic Democratic president since Kennedy. Because Obama alone ended their brutalizing and humiliating experience of the last eight years, liberals are more than willing to flatter his messianic pretenses. Obama’s policies can veer right as far as is necessary, he can capriciously betray them when he must, but his supporters’ only duty now is to ensure they are worthy of him.

THE ANTI-ISRAEL ADMINISTRATION

What would you expect from a President who hasn't decided what Church to attend 6 months after being elected? Thank God his true colors are not so hard to find.

The following is from Aaron Klein at World Net Daily:

President Obama and his administration told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting last week the U.S. foresees the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, according to a top PA official.

"The American administration was very friendly to the position of the PA," said Nimer Hamad, Abbas' senior political adviser.

"Abu Mazen (Abbas) heard from Obama and his administration in a very categorical way that a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is in the American national and security interest," Hamad said.


Another PA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WND today that Obama informed Abbas he would not let Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "get in the way" of normalizing U.S. relations with the Arab and greater Muslim world.

"We were told from this new administration they will not allow a Netanyahu government to hurt their efforts of rehabilitating U.S. relations with the Arab and Islamic world, which is a high priority of Obama," the official said, speaking during a visit to Cairo.

Also in Cairo today, Abbas met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, where the Palestinian leader briefed Egypt's president on his recent trip to Washington, saying the U.S. was committed to bringing about an end to Israeli construction in the West Bank.

Hamad's comments about Jerusalem today come as controversy abounded regarding the U.S. position on Israel's capital city.

Last week, the State Department refuted a speech in which Netanyahu said Jerusalem never will be divided.

"Jerusalem is Israel's capital," Netanyahu said at an event marking Jerusalem's reunification. "Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided."

In response, the State Department released a statement that Jerusalem "is a final status issue."

"Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to resolve its status during negotiations. We will support their efforts to reach agreements on all final status issues," the statement said.

Also last week, a top Palestinian Authority official claimed in a WND interview that the Obama administration told the PA that Jerusalem will never be united under Israeli sovereignty.

This is a striking reversal from the previous, oh say, 43 administrations. This President seems hell-bent on forcing his idea of "Change" down not just Americans throat's, but the worlds as well.

Said one source in Netanyahu's administration, "This was very frustrating to us. Can you imagine if a foreign government came in and told a city office in the U.S. not to tear down a house that was illegally constructed on someone else's property?"

While Clinton opposed the Palestinian house demolitions, informed Israeli officials said the Obama administration is carefully monitoring Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem and has already protested to the highest levels of Israeli government about evidence of housing expansion in those areas.

Has there ever been a more arrogant leader in the Oval Office?

SHE'S A RACIST

The "Apoligizer in Chief" has now placed in nomination Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a Latino Woman who puts feelings above law. She has an over 60% reversal rate and has been reprimanded by higher court judges for her lack of dedication to law and focus of feelings. Three of the five majority opinions written by Judge Sotomayor for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and reviewed by the Supreme Court were reversed. This is the biggest joke since Harriet Myers got the nod from George W. Bush 4 yrs ago. But this nomination is far more damaging then that. This is a woman hell bent on emotion over law and racial payback over revers discrimination.

In a speech published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2002, Judge Sotomayor offered her own interpretation of this jurisprudence. "Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases," she declared. "I am . . . not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, . . . there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

I quote at such length because, even more than her opinions, these words are a guide to Ms. Sotomayor's likely behavior on the High Court. She is a judge steeped in the legal school of identity politics. This is not the same as taking justifiable pride in being the first Puerto Rican-American nominated to the Court, as both she and the President did yesterday. Her personal and family stories are admirable. Italian-Americans also swelled at the achievement of Justice Antonin Scalia, as Jewish-Americans did at the nomination of Benjamin Cardozo.

But these men saw themselves as judges first and ethnic representatives a distant second. Judge Sotomayor's belief is that a "Latina woman" is by definition a superior judge to a "white male" because she has had more "richness" in her struggle. The danger inherent in this judicial view is that the law isn't what the Constitution says but whatever the judge in the "richness" of her experience comes to believe it should be.

There are signs of what this means in practice in her lower court decisions. One of them is Ricci v. DeStefano, involving the promotion of white firefighters in New Haven and now pending before the Supreme Court. In the case, heard by a three-judge panel including Judge Sotomayor, the city refused to certify promotion exams when the results of the exam would have elevated 18 white firefighters and one Hispanic -- an outcome that would have underrepresented minorities. The firefighters sued, charging discrimination.

After the three judge panel issued a brief opinion repeating the district court's decision, the appeals court declined to rehear the case en banc, an outcome which infuriated Ms. Sotomayor's colleague and fellow Clinton appointee Jose Cabranes. In a dissent joined by five of his colleagues, Judge Cabranes criticized the slip-shod handling of the case by a majority that lacked the courage of its racial preference convictions. The "perfunctory disposition" of the opinion, he noted, "lacks a clear statement of either the claims raised by the plaintiffs or the issues on appeal."

Judge Cabranes added that the discrimination issues raised by the case were "worthy of review" by the Supreme Court, which took the case and may well overturn the Sotomayor panel's ruling. The case raises the question of whether a judge with an avowed commitment to applying her own "experience" to cases was disinclined to an argument made by those not sharing that personal experience.

Or consider the result last year in Knight v. Commissioner, in which the Supreme Court unanimously upheld her ruling in a tax case involving individual tax deductions, even as her reasoning drew a rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts. The Second Circuit opinion "flies in the face of the statutory language," he wrote for the Court.

In April, the Supreme Court overturned 6-3 her 2007 ruling in Riverkeeper v. EPA in which she found that the EPA could not consider cost-benefit analysis in judging whether companies need to upgrade to the best technology available, even when the costs were wholly disproportionate to the benefits. And in the 2006 case of Merrill Lynch v. Dabit, the Court ruled 8-0 to overturn her position that a state class-action lawsuit against Merrill Lynch was not pre-empted by federal law.

Even the best judges get overturned, of course, but the issue here is less the result than Judge Sotomayor's legal reasoning. As a lower court judge, she was restrained by a higher authority. On the Supreme Court, she is limited only by the other Justices she can win over to her arguments.She's only winning over criminals and loonie lefties. But of course she is entitled to be PATHETICALLY INCORRECT... But you be the judge. But be careful, she's a racist.

"I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them. Yet, we must try to honor them -- not for their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice. Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper."

Ronald Reagan

DICK BRINGS OUT A BIG OL' CAN OF WOOP-ASS

The new President got his butt kicked, cooked and caned by one who is so villified by the media it would have been imposible to do had it not been for facts.

Facts that Mr Obama refuses to acknowledge.

It would have been heresy to write those words any other time, so commanding has President Obama been with the spoken word. But the real Mission Impossible was to imagine that wheezy old Dick Cheney would be the speaker to best Obama.

Yet that happened last week, and I predict it won't be a fluke. From here on out, results will increasingly trump the sensation of Obama's high-toned lectures every time.

Especially if they are as dreary as last Thursday's, which was so disingenuous and self-reverential as to be one of the low moments of his presidency. Besides not being able to clearly lay out his plan for Guantanamo detainees, Obama never mentioned what will happen to others we capture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps we will take no more prisoners?

Meanwhile, the occasion showed that Cheney, the darkest of dark horses, is emerging as a fact checker in exile. With Democrats holding all Washington power, the ex-veep's willingness to challenge Obama's narrative of the war on terror is a poor substitute for an institutional check-and-balance, but it's all we have.

In that sense, Cheney's ability to outduel Obama could mark a turning point in the debate on this and other critical issues. His TKO over the President recalls the three most important things in real estate: Location, location, location.

The key to Cheney's powerful performance: Facts, facts, facts.

Cheney, whose wife jokes that calling him Darth Vader "humanizes" him, coughed his way through a 40-minute defense of the Bush administration's anti-terror strategy. He glossed over huge lapses, such as the flawed intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq, but used to great effect the most compelling fact - no successful attacks on America since 9/11.

In a contrast-and-compare sequence, he challenged Obama's approach, including the release of the so-called torture memos and talk of prosecuting Bush officials.

"To the very end of our administration, we kept Al Qaeda terrorists busy with other problems," Cheney said. "We focused on getting their secrets, instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again. After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized. It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed."

For his part, Obama sounded like a put-upon plaintiff arguing a Supreme Court case. The heavy symbolism of his setting, the National Archives in front of an original copy of the Constitution, added to the worrisome impression he is lost in the legal and political weeds.

Ironically, his criticism that Bush took his eye off the ball to invade Iraq has a corollary in Obama's fixation on interrogation techniques. He is missing the larger point.

After conceding terrorism presents unique challenges, Obama argued "the decisions that were made over the last eight years established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable - a framework that failed to rely on our legal traditions and time-tested institutions; that failed to use our values as a compass."

Whoa Nellie - are the terrorists going to hit us again or not? That's what people want to know, not whether a bunch of lawyers think we're being too tough on them.

Unfortunately, Obama was less than reassuring, saying: "Neither I nor anyone else standing here today can say that there will not be another terrorist attack that takes American lives."

That's a fact, of course, but it's also a fact that he's been warned his policies will make it more likely we will be hit again.

It's a warning he dismisses at America's peril.

The top ten lines of dicks speach tell the story so well.

No. 10: The administration has found that it’s easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo. But it’s tricky to come up with an alternative that will serve the interests of justice and America’s national security.

No. 9: In the category of euphemism, the prizewinning entry would be a recent editorial in a familiar newspaper that referred to terrorists we’ve captured as, quote, “abducted.” Here we have ruthless enemies of this country, stopped in their tracks by brave operatives in the service of America, and a major editorial page makes them sound like they were kidnap victims, picked up at random on their way to the movies.

No. 8: If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field. And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don’t stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for – our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.

No. 7: Yet having reserved for himself the authority to order enhanced interrogation after an emergency, you would think that President Obama would be less disdainful of what his predecessor authorized after 9/11. It’s almost gone unnoticed that the president has retained the power to order the same methods in the same circumstances. When they talk about interrogations, he and his administration speak as if they have resolved some great moral dilemma in how to extract critical information from terrorists. Instead they have put the decision off, while assigning a presumption of moral superiority to any decision they make in the future.

No. 6: To completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and would make the American people less safe.

No. 5: This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the President himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It’s another version of that same old refrain from the Left, “We brought it on ourselves.” It is much closer to the truth that terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by, not by some alleged failure to do so. Nor are terrorists or those who see them as victims exactly the best judges of America’s moral standards, one way or the other.

No. 4: Intelligence officers of the United States were not trying to rough up some terrorists simply to avenge the dead of 9/11. We know the difference in this country between justice and vengeance.

No. 3: To the very end of our administration, we kept al-Qaeda terrorists busy with other problems. We focused on getting their secrets, instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again. After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized. It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed.

No. 2: In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States. Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy.

No. 1: Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.

If I Were The Devil... By Paul Harvey

The greatest name in radio once wrote this. I thought it would be good to read again.
Thank You Paul for everything...

IF I WERE THE DEVIL I WOULD:
I would gain control of the most powerful nation in the world;

I would delude their minds into thinking that they had come from man's effort, instead of God's blessings;

I would promote an attitude of loving things and using people, instead of the other way around;

I would dupe entire states into relying on gambling for their state revenue;

I would convince people that character is not an issue when it comes to leadership;

I would make it legal to take the life of unborn babies;

I would make it socially acceptable to take one's own life, and invent machines to make it convenient;

I would cheapen human life as much as possible so that the life of animals are valued more than human beings;

I would take God out of the schools, where even the mention of His name was grounds for a lawsuit;

I would come up with drugs that sedate the mind and target the young, and I would get sports heroes to advertise them;

I would get control of the media, so that every night I could pollute the mind of every family member for my agenda;

I would attack the family, the backbone of any nation.

I would make divorce acceptable and easy, even fashionable. If the family crumbles, so does the nation;

I would compel people to express their most depraved fantasies on canvas and movie screens, and I would call it art;

I would convince the world that people are born homosexuals, and that their lifestyles should be accepted and marveled;

I would convince the people that right and wrong are determined by a few who call themselves authorities and refer to their agenda as politically correct;

I would persuade people that the church is irrelevant and out of date, and the Bible is for the naive;

I would dull the minds of Christians, and make them believe that prayer is not important, and that faithfulness and obedience are optional;

I guess I would leave things pretty much the way they are.