The Dangers of Dissent

Conservatives, be on notice. Any criticism of Obama, no matter how legitimate it may be, is going to be labeled racism.

I guess that's the big advantage for the left of electing a black president.

TEA Party? Racist. Opposition to socialism? Racist. Opposition to NaziCare? Racist. Opposition to Cap and Trade? Racist. Opposition to Cash for Clunkers, the Generational Theft Act, TARP, etc. Racist.

This tactic used to be effective. One case study is the 2006 Virginia Senate race, and the destruction of George Allen's re-election campaign. A presidential contender was destroyed by a leftopathic lie, despite the fact that the charge of racism was utter nonsense.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden's insult to Native-American people went unremarked and unnoticed in the MainStreamMedia.

The media has also ignored the real significance of the Obama Joker poster. It isn't racism. It's a sign of America's rude awakening. The poster showed that backlash against Obama's far left policies has begun. It is startling. Open mockery of Barack Obama, as disillusionment sets in with the man, his policies and the phony image of a race-healing, brilliant, scholarly middle-of-the-roader. Of course, the president's supporters have condemned the image, calling it mean-spirited and dangerous.

Mean spirited? Dangerous? Racist?

For eight years, we watched spiteful and malicious attacks on President George W. Bush. He was likened to Hitler. "Bushitler" was so commonly used, it became a cliche. Vanity Fair even published an image of Bush as ... The Joker.

No one said a peep. Not a word.

Instead, we were told that "dissident is the highest form of patriotism."

And indeed it can be. Unless you cross our Dear Leader, Barack Obama.

After eight years of Bush Bashing As A National Pastime and America Hating, the New York Time's opinion makers are warning about the "Dangers of Dissent." Bob Herbert warned about "right-wing hatemongers" and "gun-crazies." Frank Rich sounded the alarm about "far-right rage." Paul Krugman worried about the "rise of right-wing extremism." Charles M. Blow came out more or less openly for a police state: "Society needs to do a much better job of creating an environment where hateful beliefs are never ignored and suspicious behavior never goes unreported."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear who these people have in mind when she lied outright about anti-Obama protesters, claiming that they're "carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care."

The left employed swastikas for years against Bush. The right has never engaged in this. At leftist rallies for eight years, the hatred against Bush was pushed and promoted relentlessly. The rallies that were organized by the far left never hesitated to orchestrate the most vicious attacks on Bush. The Daily Kos and other left blogs went as far as to hope for, and in some places call for, Bush's assassination.

When one poster mocking Obama appears in Los Angeles - a poster that was not orchestrated, not part of any moveon.org strategy - and it's the shot heard around the world. It's racist. Is dangerous. It's hateful.

Under Bush, dissident was the highest form of patriotism. Now, dissident is dangerous. And apparently, it's un-American.

Remember The War?

Remember under President George W. Bush when every car bombing and every single Iraq war death was front page news? Every week seemed to bring some new “grim milestone” having to do with the war that the media would hype endlessly? I had a love-hate relationship with that reporting. On one hand, every single US life lost in war is a tragedy and is worthy of attention and should never, ever be swept under the rug for the sake of politics. On the other hand, the media’s fascination with war casualties to the near exclusion of all other news about the war bordered on ghoulish.

Well now we’ve got a new President who, with the war in Iraq won (though nobody on the left will admit it), is focusing on the war in Afghanistan. He’s escalated the war in Afghanistan and, frankly, I support what he’s trying to do. He’s not cutting and running, he’s finishing what we started.

But what’s curious is, there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of attention being given to that war. And certainly the endless coverage and hand-wringing from the media about the war casualties is missing. The war in Afghanistan just saw its deadliest month ever, and yet I doubt 60 Minutes will be doing a special. I don’t think Katie Couric is going to be interviewing any families of lost soldiers. I doubt very much if Keith Olberman or Chris Matthews will mention it at all.

Which is a pretty disgusting double standard, no? When war was a convenient political topic for Democrats it was in the news endlessly, and all of the coverage was slanted toward the side of the issue that was most beneficial to Democrats. Troop deaths. Lack of progress. New attacks from the enemy. War protests. Those stories are still out there, but now that it’s a Democrat President prosecuting the war suddenly the stories don’t seem as important. And the perspective the stories are covered from is all different.

Funny how that works, no?

Obama's Recession

I noticed that, according to the administration, the economy is still Bush's fault.

Everything in the world that happens that's bad is directly linked to Bush and everything that happens that's good is directly linked to Obama and his Cairo speech. Funny how that works.

I wonder when this will be Obama's recession. A few months back Dick Morris pointed out that the current downturn began about two and a half months before the November election and about four months before the Obama inauguration. His prediction was that at the six month mark (around July 20) Obama will have had the reigns fifty percent longer than Bush during the actual recession. He said that this is the point that the American voters will hold Obama accountable.

I'm not sure if that's true. Polls are certainly indicating he could be right. Of course, Obama has the media on his side, and they will continue to blame Bush for anything bad until the next time a Republican gets into the White House, even if that takes fifty years.

What I find interesting is the excuses.

When Obama took office, the economy was his top priority. Ahead of Iraq. Ahead of Gitmo. Ahead of the gay agenda. Ahead of finding a new church. It's really what he was elected to do.

How many times was there references to the worst economy since the depression?

How often did we hear about being on the edge of an economic collapse?

Now we hear about how they underestimated how bad the economy really was. O really? Whose job was it to make those estimates? Perhaps Administration officials were too busy refiguring their tax forms to focus on the job.

Still, the blame game continues, and now we are getting Cap Prosperity and Trade it for Poverty, ObamaCare and other big spending packages. We are also hearing rumblings about a Generational Theft Act part II.

I don't know about you, but I suspect when the polls show that the American voters are largely holding Obama responsible and not buying the baloney, maybe he'll get serious about fixing problems. Of course, with his world view and his lack of knowledge and experience, he probably genuinely things the Theft Act should have worked. In that case, we'll just get more of the same.

It's A Good Time To be George W. Bush

Let's face it, this is shaping up as George W. Bush's best month in years. The last time the 43^rd president enjoyed this kind of vindication was when a bedraggled Saddam Hussein was pulled from a hole in the ground by American soldiers in 2003. All of Barack Obama's efforts to cast the Bush administration as an immoral stain on American history have not merely collapsed, but collapsed on the heads of Bush's most public and vocal critics.

Here's a non-stammering Nancy Pelosi talking about Bush last July: "God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States -- a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject."

Don't mind if I do. How about national security? It turns out that support for a criminal investigation of Bush policies yielded an important finding after all: Pelosi's own long-standing agreement with the Bush administration's toughest measures. On that point she's in sync with the rest of the country. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp poll found that Americans approve of the interrogation methods Bush okayed by a margin of 50% to 46%. In other words, she didn't have to go through the condemnation charade to begin with.

Then there's Iraq. That July interview with Pelosi is quite a goldmine. When faced with a 14% approval rating for Congress, she counters: "Everything I see says this is about ending the war. . . " Well, that's not happening anytime soon. Everything I see says "ending the war" was as phony as Nancy Pelosi's outrage. Hillary Clinton went to Baghdad three weeks ago to reassure the Maliki government that the Obama administration will not abandon Iraq. On top of that, Gen. Ray Odierno said the U.S. might "maintain a presence" in some Iraqi cities beyond the scheduled draw-down date if the Iraqis request it. Did Pelosi mean the other war, in Afghanistan? Obama has done an outstanding job of taking that challenge seriously, and for those keeping score, his pick of Gen. Stanley McChrystal (the man who hunted down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq) has met with the gushing approval of Dick Cheney.

And speaking of Dick Cheney: Not only has he proved to be an important and articulate defender of the Bush administration's national-security policy; his repeated interviews and statements have done Bush the service of drawing fire away from the former president. Bush not only looks wise these days; he looks modest and thoughtful as well. And Cheney's (denied) request to declassify more CIA interrogation memos explodes the myth of the "most secretive administration in American history."

Let us not forget the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility. For years adduced as a monument to the Bush administration's disdain for due process and human rights, Gitmo was slated to be shut down by Barack Obama as a first order of business. Today, the posture without a plan has come up against a bi-partisan roadblock. Thursday, the House denied the Obama administration a requested $80 million to close the facility. The Senate's version of the bill in question contains $50 million for the Pentagon to shutter the place, but the money can only be tapped 30 days after Robert Gates devises a plan to relocate detainees outside the U.S. -- so far France will take one. To top it all off, on Friday Obama announced the revival of Guantanamo military tribunals.

On Iran, the Obama administration is veering from its stance of bottomless "respect" and "perseverance." This week Obama set early October as a "target" to determine whether Iran is really deserving of all that extended goodwill. Additionally, the administration has drawn up benchmarks to gauge Tehran's cooperation in halting their march toward a nuclear weapon. As Robert Kagan put it, "[Obama's] policy toward Iran makes sense, so long as he is ready with a serious Plan B if the negotiating track with Tehran fails." The October non-surprise will be the revelation that Bush wasn't merely neglecting to smile at the mullahs and to ask nicely.

Finally, there's the strange and frankly unsettling image makeover of the Saudi royals. The Bush family's alleged intimacy with an extremist monarchy formed the very backbone of the anti-Bush industry. Yet, upon taking office Barack Obama commented on the bravery of King Abdullah and went on to virtually adopt the Saudi Peace Initiative as American policy. The administration is also seriously considering sending released Guantanamo detainees through the Saudi "jihad rehab" program. A week ago, "60 Minutes" aired a prime-time broadcast praising the same absurdity. The free pass Barack Obama gets on his all-encompassing embrace of Riyadh leaves the score of anti-Bush best sellers and documentaries looking a little less than credible.

President Obama, and the country at large, is finding out that George W. Bush's most controversial policies were not born of ideological delusion, American arrogance, or missionary zeal. They were imperfect but sound (with the exception of our ties to Riyadh) responses to complicated threats. But the validation of the last president runs a very distant second to the most compelling aspect of all this: the drama over CIA interrogations and Guantanamo will hopefully serve to set the administration on a more serious national security course. And it would be helpful if the American public finally dropped moral outrage as the preferred mode of political argumentation.

Who Said This?

I'm curious if anyone knows who made the following statements?  (All made by the same person, by the way.)  The statements were made about Judge Janice Robert Brown, an African American woman nominated by George W. Bush for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

• Now, the test for a qualified judicial nominee is not simply whether they are intelligent. Some of us who attended law school or are in business know there are a lot of real smart people out there whom you would not put in charge of stuff. The test of whether a judge is qualified to be a judge is not their intelligence. It is their judgment.
• The test of a qualified judicial nominee is also not whether that person has their own political views. Every jurist surely does. The test is whether he or she can effectively subordinate their views in order to decide each case on the facts and the merits alone. That is what keeps our judiciary independent in America. That is what our Founders intended.
• Unfortunately, as has been stated repeatedly on this floor, in almost every legal decision that she has made and every political speech that she has given, Justice Brown has shown she is not simply a judge with very strong political views, she is a political activist who happens to be a judge.
• Judicial decisions ultimately have to be based on evidence and on fact. They have to be based on precedent and on law. When you bend and twist all of these to cramp them into a conclusion you have already made -- a conclusion that is based on your own personal ideology -- you do a disservice to the ideal of an independent judiciary and to the American people who count on an independent judiciary.
• Because of this tendency, and because of her record, it seems as if Justice Brown's mission is not blind justice but political activism.
• Supreme Court Justice Scalia is not somebody with whom I frequently agree. I do not like a lot of his judicial approaches, but at least the guy is consistent. Justice Scalia says that, generally speaking, the legislature has the power to make laws and the judiciary should only interpret the laws that are made or are explicitly in the Constitution. That is not Justice Brown's philosophy. It is simply intellectually dishonest and logically incoherent to suggest that somehow the Constitution recognizes an unlimited right to do what you want with your private property and yet does not recognize a right to privacy that would forbid the Government from intruding in your bedroom. Yet that seems to be the manner in which Justice Brown would interpret our most cherished document.
• Moreover, I am not somebody who subscribes to the view that because somebody is a member of a minority group they somehow have to subscribe to a particular ideology or a particular political party. I think it is wonderful that Asian Americans, Latinos, African Americans, and others are represented in all parties and across the political spectrum. When such representation exists, then those groups are less likely to be taken for granted by any political party.
• I do not think that because Justice Brown is an African-American woman she has to adhere to a particular political orthodoxy, something that has been suggested by the other side of the aisle. Just as it would be cynical and offensive that Justice Brown be vilified simply for being a Black conservative, it is equally offensive and cynical to suggest that somehow she should get a pass for her outlandish views simply because she is a Black woman.
• I believe if the American people could truly see what was going on here they would oppose this nomination, not because she is African American, not because she is a woman, but because they fundamentally disagree with a version of America she is trying to create from her position on the bench. It is social Darwinism, a view of America that says there is not a problem that cannot be solved by making sure that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It requires no sacrifice on the part of those of us who have won life's lottery and does not consider who our parents were or the education received or the right breaks that came at the right time.
• Today, at a time when American families are facing more risk and greater insecurity than they have in recent history, at a time when they have fewer resources and a weaker safety net to protect them against those insecurities, people of all backgrounds in America want a nation where we share life's risks and rewards with each other. And when they make laws that will spread this opportunity to all who are willing to work for it, they expect our judges to uphold those laws, not tear them down because of their political predilections. Republican, Democrat, or anyone in between. Those are the types of judges the American people deserve. Justice Brown is not one of those judges. I strongly urge my colleagues to vote against this nomination.

That's right.  These statements were made by (then Senator) Barack Obama.