Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
As far as I can tell, THE Andrew Stern was the top outside visitor to the White House with approximately 20 visits, or about three visits per month, including four relatively small meetings with the president and a dozen with other White House staffers. Stern has openly bragged about the SEIU's $61 million investment in Barack Obama. It certainly bought him a lot of access.
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This is one of the most cluster**ked things I've heard all year.
In a move it is hailing as "transparency like you've never seen before," the White House on Friday released nearly 500 visitor records of individuals visiting the executive mansion between Inauguration Day and the end of July.
Many of the names appear, on first glance, to be boldface ones -- such as Michael Jordan, William Ayers, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Robert Kelly ("R. Kelly") and Malik Shabazz -- but the White House warned on its blog that these names in particular were "false positives."
"The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House," wrote Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform.
Yeah. Right. "False positives"? That's a good one.
We just happen to have a "William Ayers" and a "Jeremiah Wright" on the administration's visitors' list along with Thomas Daschle, Howard Dean, Kim Gandy, Edward Kennedy, John Podesta, and Andrew Stern - all Democratic-Socialist power hitters [source].
Yep, those crazy conservatives sure are wacked out. I mean, William Ayers was "just a guy who lived in Obama's neighborhood," remember? Besides, it's not like Obama actually heard Reverend Wright preach hatred of America in nearly 20 years of attending those sermons.
Rep. Michelle Bachman is calling all Americans to join her on the steps of the Capital Building in Washington DC on Thursday November 5th to stop “the Crown Jewel of Socialism” – the democrat’s bill to take over the US health care industry.
In the span of a few short weeks, the special election in New York's 23rd congressional District has become the one result that the savviest church members are polishing off our sharpest metaphors for.
But what would a victory by the Democrat, Bill Owens, or the Conservative, Doug Hoffmann, actually mean? And is it possible that the political community will over-interpret the consequences? Most certainly. We're all lit-crits now; on Wednesday morning, the real lesson will be decided by whose explanation triumphs in a contested arena: Republicans versus Conservatives, Governing Conservatives versus Theoretical Conservatives, Palin-Beck Crazies versus Sane Modernists.
Actually, at the post, Ambinder gets sidetracked with local political minutia. Not to say that stuff's unimportant, but frankly Doug Hoffman in NY-23 is symbolic of the monumental success of grassroots conservativism this year. See, Dan Riehl, "NY - 23: Conservatives Should Declare Victory." (More at Memeorandum.)
Well it turns out that Kos has had a major change of thinking. At Dump Dede, "Kos Un-Endorses Scozzafava."
And quoting from Kos' un-endorsement (the link's at Newsbusters):
I have no love for the Democrat, Owens, and I clearly have no love for Scozzafava in that post, so only an idiot would construe that as an "endorsement". An endorsement implies love for the candidate being endorsed. I wish nothing but ill will for all candidates in this race. But the GOP is full of idiots, and they've run strong with it, making my "endorsement" part of their anti-Scozzafava narrative. And now we're in a situation in which the conservative candidate Doug Hoffman has a real chance of performing better than the Republican.
... Dede Scozzafava, the Republican, is actually the most liberal candidate in the race ....
Sure, she is a Republican, and opposes the public option. But she's been willing to raise taxes when budgets require it, and is to the left of most Democrats on social issues (including supporting gay marriage) ....
So it's official, I'm rooting for the Republican to win. As a congresswoman, she could either move even more to the left to properly represent her progressive-trending district and be a pain in the side of the GOP caucus (they have nothing like our Blue Dogs), or Democrats can field a real Democrat to challenge her in 2010.
The government has overstated by thousands the number of jobs it has created or saved with federal contracts under the president's $787 billion recovery program, according to an Associated Press review of data released in the program's first progress report.
The discrepancy raises questions about the reliability of a key benchmark the administration uses to gauge the success of the stimulus. The errors could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is released. It is expected to show hundreds of thousands of jobs repairing public housing, building schools, repaving highways and keeping teachers on local payrolls.
Snyderman was chatting with White House advisor Melody Barnes, who didn't seem to take the possible defeat as hard as did her host . . .
NANCY SNYDERMAN: Melody, it was all going so well. It was all on track. The president went to Europe and--honest to God--I could feel sitting in this chair, that the energy sucked, just sort of went out of the whole thing. And then, frankly, the rumors, the innuendoes, the half-truths, the mistruths, the frank lies, have they all hijacked the conversation? So if it's stability and reassuring the American public, how do you address those sort of hot-button issues that frankly I think need to be reframed? How do you take something like the public option and give it a new name?
Originally, the New York Times reported on President Barack Obama’s visit to Dover AFB and the arrival of fallen serviceman by explaining that the White House wanted Obama to be seen as concerned and aware of the sacrifices made in America’s war policies:
A small contingent of reporters and photographers accompanied Mr. Obama to Dover, where he arrived at 12:34 a.m. aboard Marine One. He returned to the South Lawn of the White House at 4:45 a.m. <…> The images and the sentiment of the president’s five-hour trip to Delaware were intended by the White House to convey to the nation that Mr. Obama was not making his Afghanistan decision lightly or in haste.
Following that link now, the second paragraph quoted is nowhere to be seen. The Jeff Zeleny report contains no editorial announcement of changes after its publication, and no indication of any retraction. Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette and Nice Deb both noticed the change, however, and Greyhawk also noticed that the NYT didn’t quite redact that paragraph from everywhere on its servers. The story now reads like this:
The trip was a symbolic one for Mr. Obama, given the gravity of his coming announcement of a new strategy for Afghanistan.
The image of the commander in chief standing on a darkened tarmac, offering a salute to one of the soldiers, highlighted the poignancy of a decision he is facing.
People often criticize me for "dishonoring" the office of the president (the anarcho-socialist James Webb, for example), but I wrote a respectful post yesterday in response to President Obama's visit to Dover: "Obama Honors Fallen Troops at Dover." Sure, the president's visit was perhaps the worst instance of political grandstanding since taking office, but knowing he's already stabbing our troops in the back, I imagine Obama sleeps better having staged the Dover event.
It's too awful to think that the President would be so base and cynical as to use the death of these brave and worthy men to prop himself up. One is inclined to hope that he only had the best of intentions.
The images and the sentiment of the president’s five-hour trip to Delaware were intended by the White House to convey to the nation that Mr. Obama was not making his Afghanistan decision lightly or in haste.
That line was changed to this:
The image of the commander in chief standing on a darkened tarmac, offering a salute to one of the soldiers, highlighted the poignancy of a decision he is facing.
Greyhawk noted that the President’s approval ratings on Afghanistan have been in free fall:
How to turn the situation around? Some say more troops, some say change strategy, others say withdraw – but someone in the White House got the bright idea that now would be a good time for a photo op.
Obama could have visited Dover at any time during the past 8 months - 10, if you take into account the fact that there was no need to have the press document his visit for the TV cameras. But I don't think the facts matter to these people at all. Their hatred is so strong that it blinds them to anything but simmering anger and poisonous contempt. To them, fallen warriors are nothing more than cannon fodder, conscripted against their will - even in death - to fight an obscene war against a President who is no longer in office. Consumed by hatred, they just can't let it go.
What they cannot understand is that unlike Barack Obama, who makes sure the few sops he throws to the military are well documented by the press, George Bush understood our wish not to be used as photo ops. It ought to be simple to understand why George Bush was never photographed at Dover: under George Bush, the press were not allowed at Dover. So there would be no photograph. But more importantly, President Bush understood that the families of the fallen had given enough. The last thing grieving families want is to have a camera or a microphone shoved in their faces; to have legions of Secret Service, White House aides, and other support staff invade an exquisitely private moment that ought to be reserved for those who knew and loved the deceased. Our funerals are not public spectacles, but private observances of grief. Our last President, unlike the antiwar left, understood and respected that.
Read the whole thing. Cassandra includes this video, and adds: "When hatred is so strong that its adherents fear the truth, no factual rebuttal is likely to pierce the wall of lies that surrounds the willfully ignorant. But the truth remains, regardless of their stubborn refusal to admit it":
It appears my post yesterday got the teabaggers all riled up.
Apparently, their position is that George W. Bush’s refusal to honor fallen Americans as they return to this country for the last time — something his predecessors all did — is proof that a) he loves the troops more than anyone else and; b) because Obama did so, he shamefully, cynically exploited our dead.
As much as I hate to have to interpret plain English for someone who apparently does not know how to read, there are times when such measures are necessary.
Nowhere in Confederate Yankee's, Donald Douglas' or Gateway Pundit's posts (the three Blue Texan linked to "support" his dishonest claim) do any of these bloggers claim that Bush loved the troops any more than any other President.
When the only way you can "win" an argument is to manufacture false claims and then "disprove" them, you're in trouble.
Furthermore, the Dover ban was not in effect when Reagan was President.
It was put in place by President Bush, Sr. in 1991 in response to CNN doing exactly what Firedoglake just did - politicizing the deaths of American soldiers ...
Larry King gives Communist Michael Moore a soapbox (and at around 12:00 minutes Moore would make ANSWER proud with his comments on Afghanistan):
On healthcare, Moore might as well have been separated at birth from Paul Krugman, "The Defining Moment" (via Memeorandum):
Past efforts to give Americans what citizens of every other advanced nation already have — guaranteed access to essential care — have ended not with a bang, but with a whimper, usually dying in committee without ever making it to a vote.
I doubt anyone with half a brain didn't see this coming. With Doug Hoffman continuing to pull ahead in New York's 23rd congressional district, Republican Party hacks are left with little choice but to get behind the conservative ideological insurgent. From the Politico, "In Shift, GOP Leaders Embrace Hoffman":
The House Republican leadership is prepared to welcome Doug Hoffman into its ranks, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) said Thursday, a sign that the GOP establishment is recalibrating its approach toward the contentious New York special election and the Conservative Party nominee whose candidacy has divided the party.
“He would be very welcome, with open arms,” Sessions told POLITICO in an interview off the House floor.
Sessions’s comments came as polls showed Hoffman surging in the Nov. 3 special election against Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava, a moderate who supports abortion rights and gay marriage, and Democratic attorney Bill Owens. Nearly a dozen rank-and-file Republican members announced their endorsements of Hoffman Thursday.
While the NRCC–along with House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.)—have all thrown their backing to Scozzafava, grassroots conservatives have revolted against the GOP nominee, asserting that she is too liberal for them to support. Some have even called for conservatives to withhold donations from the NRCC in protest.
On Thursday afternoon, Sessions appeared to tacitly acknowledge that Hoffman may represent the GOP’s best chance to keep the Republican-held seat from being picked up by a Democrat.
It's just the way I was raised, but in my family there was never any expectation to win the pity of others. Personal responsibility was the guiding identity, especially from my father, whose mother died when he was 12 years old. My father never finished high school, but many years later attended NYU for his BA and MA degrees. A proud man, he expected people to work hard for security in life. A Roosevelt Democrat, I wonder what my father would think of the party now? Like all socialists, today's Democrats attack the "harsh" competition of free markets, and they practice supreme guilt-mongering to browbeat individualist Americans into supporting their agenda. While the "desecrated flag" video has created a stir online today, I find videos like these below - among the top 20 finalists at the Organizing for America "Health Reform Video Challenge" - to be even more pernicious. If there are some who continue to reject the Democrats as socialist, just take a look at some of these entries:
It's just pathetic. Is this what Democratic Party arguments for nationalized healthcare have been reduced to? Tearjerker images of folks drowning at sea, asking if "you'd help this person if you could?" Or young, politicized little Obamunists with the browbeating line, "everyone should have healthcare".
Like my father, I've worked hard to get where I am, and I'm confident that others who work hard will do well in providing health security for themselves. And for those facing setbacks and hardships, as I've shown before, there's phenomenal health resources and clinical networks at the state level pushing to achieve universal coverage closer to home. There's simply no good reason to add another gargantuan federal bureaucracy (with an increasedtax burden) to the political system today. The Democrats have failed to convince the American people of a national health crisis, but OFA goons are obviously still trying to pull a what-would-Jesus do guilt-trip on us, just as ObamaCare comes down to the wire.
If Scozzafava's fade continues, Hoffman will win this thing. Democratic chances hinge on halting the Hoffman surge, which is why the DCCC has trained its guns on the conservative party candidate.
And actually, Kos is more right than even he realizes (or admits), since his internal polls are badly skewed toward the Democrats. (More at Memeorandum.)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) unveiled a health-care reform bill Thursday that includes a government insurance option, as well as a historic expansion of Medicaid, and seemed to have the potential to draw support from a broad range of Democratic lawmakers.
Democratic House aides said party leaders had yet to resolve long-standing disputes over provisions to block illegal immigrants from receiving benefits and to prevent federal funds from being used to subsidize abortions. But lawmakers also said there was a growing realization among Democrats from across the political spectrum that the time had arrived to compromise and move forward after weeks of internal battling.
"At the end of the day, we've got to pass something," said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). "The whole debate, I hope, has been about more than just therapy."
Yeah, that's Jim McGovern of the Progressive Democrats of America, where he serves on the Advisory Board with terrorist-enablers Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans of Code Pink, Tom Hayden, the '60s radical and founder of SDS, and Congressional Black Communists Barbara Lee of Oakland and Maxine Waters of Los Angeles - both of whom have made many a junket to Castro's Cuba and have praised Cuba's healthcare system as a model for America.
With Washington’s gaze fixed on the contentious, three-way House special election in upstate New York on Nov. 3, California’s 10th District contest on the same day has been largely overlooked.
But with just over a week to go before Election Day, California Republicans continue to hold out hope for an upset victory by Republican David Harmer in his bid to replace former Democratic Rep. Ellen Tauscher.
Harmer faces Democratic Lt. Gov. John Garamendi in the Bay Area special election, held in a district where Democrats hold an 18-point voter registration advantage. Tauscher traded her House seat for a top job at the State Department earlier this year.
While the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican National Committee have been spending far more time and money in the GOP-held New York district where Republican Dede Scozzafava faces Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, Harmer’s campaign contends that the West Coast race could prove to be a sleeper.
“I understand they’re tied up in New York, but the fact is, we think we’ve pulled close,” Tim Clark, Harmer’s lead strategist, told POLITICO. “We are not yet a target [race]. We would like to be a target, but we do anticipate some help” with getting out the vote.
The terrorists in Afghanistan are hoping to get their own Sergio Vieira de Mello. In August 2003, the United Nations left Iraq after the organization's top diplomat was killed in a massive truck bombing at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. The attack, which killed another 22 along with de Mello, was denounced by then-U.N. chief Kofi Annan - who promptly pulled the organization out of Iraq, signaling a victory for the terrorists.
Now, in Afghanistan, Taliban terrorists attacked a U.N. guest house, killing 8, and raising questions about continued multilateral humanitarian operations in the country. From the Los Angeles Times, "Afghan Attack Puts Aid Programs at Risk":
The deaths of five U.N. employees in a Taliban assault on a Kabul guesthouse Wednesday is forcing the world body and humanitarian agencies to reevaluate the way they operate in Afghanistan, officials said, putting at risk programs aimed at helping millions of people and stabilizing the war-torn country.
U.N. special representative Kai Eide said the attack, which killed eight people, including an American, would not deter his organization from continuing its reconstruction and development work.
But already the ability of U.N. workers to deliver aid has been compromised. With less than two weeks to go before Afghanistan holds a runoff presidential election that is the focus of the world body's current efforts, all employees across the country were placed under lockdown, said Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
"This is the most serious incident that we have experienced in Afghanistan," Edwards said. "Previously when U.N. staff have been killed, they have usually been in close proximity to the military. It is not often that we are specifically targeted."
There's a horrible irony here for the Obama administration. The election of Barack Obama to the presidency lifted the hopes of liberal internationalists, seeing the Democratic victory as a validation of Obama's call for "a new era of global partnership" and of building "bridges of cooperation with the U.N. and other nations." Of course, now the president - who is stalling a decision on U.S. General Stanley McChrystal's request for troop reinforcements - is himself destroying that very vision of a new era in international relations.
It's a tragic shame.
God bless the families of those who were lost in Kabul.
President Obama made a solemn pre-dawn visit to this military outpost Thursday to honor 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan earlier this week.
Obama--who is deliberating over how to reshape his war strategy in the face of growing violence and political unrest in Afghanistan and deepening public unease at home--left the White House by helicopter just before midnight on Wednesday, flying through the crisp night sky to pay homage to the fallen as their remains were flown back into the United States.
Marine One came to a halt just behind the military transport plane that brought the remains of 15 soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Agency agents killed in two different incidents Monday and Tuesday.
Wearing a suit and a topcoat, Obama was greeted by the airlift wing commander before getting into car for the short drive to a base chapel, where he met with family members of the deceased.
Afterward, the president took part in the military's precise, solemn transfer of the cases holding the bodies of the fallen from the plane to the vehicles that would transport them to a base mortuary.
Four times, Obama marched up the ramp of the transport plane and bore witness as Maj. Richard S. Bach, an Air Force chaplain, offered a prayer over the remains. Afterward, he joined other officials, including Attorney General Eric C. Holder, standing at attention and saluting. The officials held their salutes during the silent transfer, as a six-person Army carry team wearing fatigues, black berets and white gloves moved the flag-draped cases holding the bodies to a white mortuary van.
The carefully choreographed visit to Dover, the nation's entry point for U.S. military personnel killed in action, brought Obama face-to-face with the grimmest realty of war as his administration mulls the best way forward in Afghanistan.
Although I am a conservative, I have noticed that liberals in Congress feel that the very existence of conservatives is a threat to this nation. Since it is the job of our leaders, currently on the left, to protect Americans and keep us safe, why don’t they just pass legislation to kill all conservatives?
No, I have not fallen off the cliff of sanity. Far from it. I am following the logical train of thought.
The Nazis felt that the Jews were an enemy of Germany. They were subversives, an enemy within. Now as the son of a Holocaust survivor, I will be the first to attest to the pure evil that the Holocaust was. Yet at least the murderers followed a logical progression. They dehumanized the Jews first. Once the Jews were reduced to mere vermin or insects, treating them with the dignity that one treats human lives was unnecessary.
According to the liberals in Congress, conservatives are not human beings. They are a scourge. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to just eliminate them forever.
This is not me deciding this. I am just listening to their own words.
One Florida Congressman decided to take over the role of leading bigoted lunatic in Florida now that Robert Wexler is leaving. His words were inspiring to anybody who found warmth in hatred.
“People who watch Fox News are collaborators with the enemies of America.”
Collaborators? I had no idea that people who watched Fox News favored putting my relatives into ovens.
For those who think that using the word “collaborators” is a reference to anything besides the Holocaust, separate your liberal head from your liberal hide. It is absolutely a Nazi reference.
Enemies of America? Would that be Al Queda? Saddam Hussein? Khadafi Duck? Armageddonijad?
This cannot be, given that Fox News does not seem supportive of any of these men, based on what I have seen on the network.
I watch Fox News. Maybe he means me. Apparently I collaborate with enemies of America.
A year or two ago, only the most radical leftists would have dreamed that we’d be living in a country where the government owns a majority share in GM, bailed out private insurers, took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and handed over billions of dollars to the financial sector ....
But as I am listening to the hearing on executive compensation and TARP special master (how crippy is this title?), I realize we are now officially living in a world that resembles an Ayn Rand novel.
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