Mark Steyn is a must read:
The strange disparity between the heavy-handed community organization at home and the ever-cockier untouchables abroad risks making the commander-in-chief look like a weenie — like “President Pantywaist,” as Britain’s Daily Telegraph has taken to calling him.
The Chicago way? Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight? In Iran, this administration won’t bring a knife to a nuke fight. In Eastern Europe, it won’t bring missile defense to a nuke fight. In Sudan, it won’t bring a knife to a machete fight.
Read the whole thing:
Mark Steyn: "Mister Tough Guy"
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmZhNDExNGE3YWQwZDZmZDg2ZTBhNGFjNTQ5MWRiZjQ=&w=MA==#
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Fmr. VP Cheney calls out Obama - "Afraid to make a decision"
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/10/at-bush-administration-reunion-cheney-attacks-obama-again.html#
All I can say is, God Bless Dick Cheney !
Seriously ... that man is an accomplished and serious dude; and he has been unfairly vilified by the Dems and the Left and the Press.
His remarks effectively and articulately rebut the constant mis-information and bad policy actions emanating from the Obama Administration w/ respect to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, National Security, Russia, Missile Defense and other areas; and he makes clear that Obama's attempts to blame the Bush Admin. for the current administrations mishandling and dithering over Afghanistan is largely their own doing.
Re: Cheney Last Night [Frank Gaffney]
Dick Cheney demonstrated last night before the Center for Security Policy audience that he is far and away the most competent, to say nothing of the most robust, statesman in the country today. His critique of Obama's conduct of foreign and national-security policies was both withering and absolutely on point. Now, we need those who are still in government to translate Cheney's admonitions and prescriptions into policy.
— Frank Gaffney is founder and president of the Center for Security Policy.
All I can say is, God Bless Dick Cheney !
Seriously ... that man is an accomplished and serious dude; and he has been unfairly vilified by the Dems and the Left and the Press.
His remarks effectively and articulately rebut the constant mis-information and bad policy actions emanating from the Obama Administration w/ respect to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, National Security, Russia, Missile Defense and other areas; and he makes clear that Obama's attempts to blame the Bush Admin. for the current administrations mishandling and dithering over Afghanistan is largely their own doing.
Re: Cheney Last Night [Frank Gaffney]
Dick Cheney demonstrated last night before the Center for Security Policy audience that he is far and away the most competent, to say nothing of the most robust, statesman in the country today. His critique of Obama's conduct of foreign and national-security policies was both withering and absolutely on point. Now, we need those who are still in government to translate Cheney's admonitions and prescriptions into policy.
— Frank Gaffney is founder and president of the Center for Security Policy.
Obama & his enemies list - is O becoming Nixon ?
Sen. Alexander goes to the Senate floor with "friendly advice" to Obama: "Don't Create an Enemies List". This is a MUST READ.
Will O and his Nixonian Chicago pals pay any heed ?
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWFkMjY4MTBmZDYwOTViNjZjMWQ0ZWI4NDVjNGM5MDY=
Krauthammer:
It is one thing for the government, the administration, to attack opponents, institutions, media. It is another to go out and try and delegitimize them and destroy them.
I thought it was sort of repulsive audacity on the part of the administration to go out and to declare Fox is not a real news organization, particularly when there might be big companies out there who might think twice about having an ad on Fox or other news media who might think twice about following a Fox story because it might incur the displeasure of the administration.
Similarly, to go after the Chamber of Commerce — you can argue against it, defend yourself on the arguments — but to try to induce defections as a way to destroy it is a new level. It's Chicago-level politics.
Look, there is nothing illegal about it. It is not unconstitutional. But it is outside the Democratic norms of our society, which is Madisonian.
Our idea is that you have — as a way to protect against tyranny in government — the growth, the interaction, and the clash of what Madison called "factions" but what we call "interests," special and otherwise. You argue, interact and you clash. But you don't undermine, delegitimize, and destroy.
That is the Madisonian way, and we are getting, instead, is the Chicago way.
….It isn't a question of defending the Chamber. It is a question of being offended by a certain style of politics. And that's what I think is the problem here.
Sen Lamar Alexander:
Alexander: ‘Don’t Create An Enemies List’ [Robert Costa]
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) worries that President Obama is acting downright Nixonian. Below are Alexander’s prepared remarks for his speech today on the Senate floor:
In 1969 and during the first half of 1970, I was a wet-behind-the-ears, 29-year-old staff aide in the West Wing of the Nixon White House. I was working for the wisest man in that White House, Bryce Harlow, who was a friend of President Johnson, as well as the favorite staff member of President Eisenhower, and President Nixon’s first appointee.
Based upon that experience and my forty years since then in and out of public life, I want to make what I hope will be taken as a friendly suggestion to President Obama and his White House: don’t create an enemies list.
As I was leaving the White House in 1970, Mr. Harlow was heading out on the campaign plane with Vice President Spiro Agnew whose job was to vilify Democrats and to help elect Republicans. The Vice President had the help of talented young speechwriters, the late Bill Safire and Pat Buchanan. In Memphis, he called Albert Gore, Sr., the “southern regional chairman of the eastern liberal establishment.” He labeled the increasingly critical news media, “nattering nabobs of negativism.”
Those phrases have become part of our political lore. They began playfully enough, in the back and forth of political election combat. After I had come home to Tennessee, they escalated into something more. They eventually emerged into the Nixon enemies list.
In 1971 Chuck Colson, who was then a member of President Nixon’s staff and today is admired for his decades of selfless work in prison reform, presented a list of what he called “persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration.” He said he thought the administration should “maximize our incumbency . . . [or] to put it more bluntly, . . . use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”
that list of 20 people were people like CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr, Washington Star columnist Mary McGrory, Leonard Woodcock, the head of the United Auto Workers, John Conyers, the Democratic Congressman from Michigan, Edwin Guthman, managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, and several prominent businessmen such as Howard Stein, of the Dreyfus Corporation and Arnold Picker, vice president of United Artists. The New York Times and the Washington Post were made out to be enemies of the Republic.
Now make no mistake, politics was not such a gentlemanly affair in those days either. After Barry Goldwater had won the Presidential nomination in 1964, Daniel Schorr had told CBS viewers that Goldwater had – quote – “travel[led] to Germany to join-up with the right wing there” and – quote “visit[ed] Hitler’s old stomping ground.” — unquote. Schorr later corrected that on the air.
What was different about Colson’s effort, though, was the open declaration of war upon anyone who seemed to disagree with administration policies. Colson later expanded his list to include hundreds of people, including Joe Namath, John Lennon, Carol Channing, Gregory Peck, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Congressional Black Caucus, Alabama Governor George Wallace. All this came out during the Watergate hearings. You could see an administration spiraling downwards. And, of course, we all know where that led.
Now the only reason I mention this is because I have an uneasy feeling, only ten months into this new administration, that we’re beginning to see symptoms of this same kind of animus developing in the Obama administration.
to Politico, the White House plans to “neuter the United States Chamber of Commerce,” an organization with members in almost every major community in America. The Chamber had supported the President’s stimulus package and some of his early appointments, but has problems with his health care and climate change proposals.
The Department of Health and Human Services imposed a gag order on a large health care company, Humana, who had warned its Medicare Advantage customers that their benefits might be reduced in Democratic health care reform proposals—a piece of information that is perfectly true. This gag order was lifted only after the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said he would block any future nominees to the Department until the matter was righted.
The White House communications director recently announced that the administration would treat a major television network, Fox News, as “part of the Opposition.” On Sunday White House officials were all over talk shows urging other news organizations to boycott Fox and not pick up any of its stories. Those stories, for example, would include the video that two amateur filmmakers made of ACORN representatives explaining how to open a brothel. That’s a story other media managed to ignore until almost a week later when Congress decided to cut ACORN’s funding.
The President has not stopped blaming banks and investment houses for the financial meltdown even as it has become clear that Congress played a huge role, too, by encouraging Americans to borrow money for houses they couldn’t afford
He was “taking names” of bondholders who resisted the GM and Chrysler bailouts.
Insurance companies, once the allies of the Obama health care proposal, have suddenly become the source of all our health care problems—because they pointed out, again correctly, that if Congress taxes insurance premiums and restricts coverage to those who are sicker and older, the cost of premiums for millions of Americans is likely to go up instead of down.Because of that insubordination, the President and his allies have threatened to take away the insurance companies antitrust exemption.Even those of us in Congress have found ourselves in the crosshairs:
The assistant Republican leader, Sen. John Kyl of Arizona, said to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the stimulus plan wasn’t working. The White House wrote the governor of Arizona and said, “If you don’t want the money, we won’t send it.” Sen. McCain said that this could be perceived as a threat to the people of Arizona.
Sen. Bennett of Utah and Sen. Collins and I as well as Democratic Senators Byrd and Feingold all have questioned the number and power of the 18 new White House czars who are not confirmed by the Senate and have suggested that is a threat to constitutional checks and balances. The White House refused to send anyone to testify at congressional hearings. Sen. Bennet and I found ourselves “called out” on the White House blog by the President’s communications director, Anita Dunn.
Even the president, in his address to Congress on health care, threatened to “call out” members of congress who disagreed with him.
This behavior is typical of street brawls and political campaign consultants. It is a mistake for the President of the United States and the White House staff. If the President and his top aides treat people with different views as enemies instead of listening to what they have to say, they’re likely to end up with a narrow view and a feeling that the whole world is out to get them. And as those of use who served in the Nixon administration know, that can get you into a lot of trouble.
This administration is only ten months old. It’s not too late to take a different approach – both at the White House and here in the Congress.
Here is one opportunity. At the beginning of this year, shortly after the President’s inauguration, the Republican leader, Sen. McConnell, addressed the National Press Club. He proposed that he and the President work together to make social security solvent. He said that he would make sure the President got more support in that effort from Republicans than President George W. Bush got from Democrats when he tried to solve the same problem. President Obama held a summit on the dangers of the runaway costs of entitlements which I attended. Every expert there said making social security solvent was essential to our country’s fiscal stability. There is still time to get that done.
On clean energy, Republicans have put forward four ideas: build 100 nuclear plants in 20 years, electrify half our cars and trucks in 20 years, explore offshore for low-carbon natural gas and for oil, and double energy research and development for alternative fuels. The administration agrees with this on electric cars and research and development. We may not be far apart on offshore exploration. And, at his town meeting in New Orleans last week, the President said the United States would be “stupid” not to use nuclear power. He is right, since nuclear reactors produce 70% of our carbon free electricity. So why don’t we work together on this lower-cost way to address clean energy and climate change instead of enacting a national energy tax?
On health care, the White House idea of bipartisanship has been akin to that of a marksman at the state fair shooting gallery: hit one target and you win the prize. With such big Democratic congressional majorities, the White House figures all it needs to do is unify the Democrats and pick off one or two Republicans.
That strategy may win the prize but lose the country. Usually, on complex issues, the President needs bipartisan support in Congress to reassure and achieve broad and lasting support in the country. In 1968 I can remember when President Johnson, with bigger majorities in Congress than President Obama has today, arranged for the Civil Rights Bill to be written in open sessions over several weeks in the office of the Republican leader, Everett Dirksen. Dirksen got some of the credit; Johnson got the legislation he wanted; the country went along with it. Instead of comprehensive health care that raises premiums and increases the debt, why should the White House not work with Republicans step by step to reduce health care costs, and then, as we can afford it, reduce the number of Americans who don’t have access to health care?
The President and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan have been courageous — there is no better word for it — in advocating paying teachers more for teaching well and expanding the number of charter schools. These ideas are the Holy Grail for school reform. They are also ideas that are anathema to the labor unions who support the President. President Obama’s advocacy of master teachers and charter schools could be the domestic of equivalent of President Nixon going to China. I, among others, admire his advocacy and have been doing all I can to help him.
Having once been there, I can understand how those in the White House feel oppressed by those with whom they disagree, how they feel besieged by some of the media. I hope the current White House occupants will understand that this is nothing new in American politics—all the way back to the days when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson exchanged insults. The only thing new is that there are today multiple media outlets reporting and encouraging the insults 24 hours a day.
As any veteran of the Nixon White House can attest, we’ve been down this road before and it won’t end well. An “enemies list” only denigrates the Presidency and the Republic itself.
Forty years ago, Bryce Harlow would say to me, “Now Lamar, remember that our job here is to push all the merely important issues out of the white house so the president can deal with the handful of issues that are truly presidential.” Then he would slip off for a private meeting in the Capitol with Democratic leaders who controlled the congress and usually find a way to enact the president proposals.
Most successful leaders have eventually seen the wisdom of Lord Palmerston, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who said, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies.”
The British writer Edward Dicey was once introduced to President Lincoln as “one of his enemies.”“I did not know I had any enemies,” was Lincoln’s answer; and Dicey later wrote, “I can still feel, as I write, the grip of that great boney hand held out to me in token of friendship.”
So here’s my point. These are unusually difficult times, with plenty of forces encouraging us to disagree. Let’s not start calling people out and compiling an enemies list. Let’s push the street-brawling out of the White House and work together on the truly presidential issues: creating jobs, reducing health care costs, reducing the debt, creating clean energy.
Will O and his Nixonian Chicago pals pay any heed ?
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWFkMjY4MTBmZDYwOTViNjZjMWQ0ZWI4NDVjNGM5MDY=
Krauthammer:
It is one thing for the government, the administration, to attack opponents, institutions, media. It is another to go out and try and delegitimize them and destroy them.
I thought it was sort of repulsive audacity on the part of the administration to go out and to declare Fox is not a real news organization, particularly when there might be big companies out there who might think twice about having an ad on Fox or other news media who might think twice about following a Fox story because it might incur the displeasure of the administration.
Similarly, to go after the Chamber of Commerce — you can argue against it, defend yourself on the arguments — but to try to induce defections as a way to destroy it is a new level. It's Chicago-level politics.
Look, there is nothing illegal about it. It is not unconstitutional. But it is outside the Democratic norms of our society, which is Madisonian.
Our idea is that you have — as a way to protect against tyranny in government — the growth, the interaction, and the clash of what Madison called "factions" but what we call "interests," special and otherwise. You argue, interact and you clash. But you don't undermine, delegitimize, and destroy.
That is the Madisonian way, and we are getting, instead, is the Chicago way.
….It isn't a question of defending the Chamber. It is a question of being offended by a certain style of politics. And that's what I think is the problem here.
Sen Lamar Alexander:
Alexander: ‘Don’t Create An Enemies List’ [Robert Costa]
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) worries that President Obama is acting downright Nixonian. Below are Alexander’s prepared remarks for his speech today on the Senate floor:
In 1969 and during the first half of 1970, I was a wet-behind-the-ears, 29-year-old staff aide in the West Wing of the Nixon White House. I was working for the wisest man in that White House, Bryce Harlow, who was a friend of President Johnson, as well as the favorite staff member of President Eisenhower, and President Nixon’s first appointee.
Based upon that experience and my forty years since then in and out of public life, I want to make what I hope will be taken as a friendly suggestion to President Obama and his White House: don’t create an enemies list.
As I was leaving the White House in 1970, Mr. Harlow was heading out on the campaign plane with Vice President Spiro Agnew whose job was to vilify Democrats and to help elect Republicans. The Vice President had the help of talented young speechwriters, the late Bill Safire and Pat Buchanan. In Memphis, he called Albert Gore, Sr., the “southern regional chairman of the eastern liberal establishment.” He labeled the increasingly critical news media, “nattering nabobs of negativism.”
Those phrases have become part of our political lore. They began playfully enough, in the back and forth of political election combat. After I had come home to Tennessee, they escalated into something more. They eventually emerged into the Nixon enemies list.
In 1971 Chuck Colson, who was then a member of President Nixon’s staff and today is admired for his decades of selfless work in prison reform, presented a list of what he called “persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration.” He said he thought the administration should “maximize our incumbency . . . [or] to put it more bluntly, . . . use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”
that list of 20 people were people like CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr, Washington Star columnist Mary McGrory, Leonard Woodcock, the head of the United Auto Workers, John Conyers, the Democratic Congressman from Michigan, Edwin Guthman, managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, and several prominent businessmen such as Howard Stein, of the Dreyfus Corporation and Arnold Picker, vice president of United Artists. The New York Times and the Washington Post were made out to be enemies of the Republic.
Now make no mistake, politics was not such a gentlemanly affair in those days either. After Barry Goldwater had won the Presidential nomination in 1964, Daniel Schorr had told CBS viewers that Goldwater had – quote – “travel[led] to Germany to join-up with the right wing there” and – quote “visit[ed] Hitler’s old stomping ground.” — unquote. Schorr later corrected that on the air.
What was different about Colson’s effort, though, was the open declaration of war upon anyone who seemed to disagree with administration policies. Colson later expanded his list to include hundreds of people, including Joe Namath, John Lennon, Carol Channing, Gregory Peck, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Congressional Black Caucus, Alabama Governor George Wallace. All this came out during the Watergate hearings. You could see an administration spiraling downwards. And, of course, we all know where that led.
Now the only reason I mention this is because I have an uneasy feeling, only ten months into this new administration, that we’re beginning to see symptoms of this same kind of animus developing in the Obama administration.
to Politico, the White House plans to “neuter the United States Chamber of Commerce,” an organization with members in almost every major community in America. The Chamber had supported the President’s stimulus package and some of his early appointments, but has problems with his health care and climate change proposals.
The Department of Health and Human Services imposed a gag order on a large health care company, Humana, who had warned its Medicare Advantage customers that their benefits might be reduced in Democratic health care reform proposals—a piece of information that is perfectly true. This gag order was lifted only after the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said he would block any future nominees to the Department until the matter was righted.
The White House communications director recently announced that the administration would treat a major television network, Fox News, as “part of the Opposition.” On Sunday White House officials were all over talk shows urging other news organizations to boycott Fox and not pick up any of its stories. Those stories, for example, would include the video that two amateur filmmakers made of ACORN representatives explaining how to open a brothel. That’s a story other media managed to ignore until almost a week later when Congress decided to cut ACORN’s funding.
The President has not stopped blaming banks and investment houses for the financial meltdown even as it has become clear that Congress played a huge role, too, by encouraging Americans to borrow money for houses they couldn’t afford
He was “taking names” of bondholders who resisted the GM and Chrysler bailouts.
Insurance companies, once the allies of the Obama health care proposal, have suddenly become the source of all our health care problems—because they pointed out, again correctly, that if Congress taxes insurance premiums and restricts coverage to those who are sicker and older, the cost of premiums for millions of Americans is likely to go up instead of down.Because of that insubordination, the President and his allies have threatened to take away the insurance companies antitrust exemption.Even those of us in Congress have found ourselves in the crosshairs:
The assistant Republican leader, Sen. John Kyl of Arizona, said to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the stimulus plan wasn’t working. The White House wrote the governor of Arizona and said, “If you don’t want the money, we won’t send it.” Sen. McCain said that this could be perceived as a threat to the people of Arizona.
Sen. Bennett of Utah and Sen. Collins and I as well as Democratic Senators Byrd and Feingold all have questioned the number and power of the 18 new White House czars who are not confirmed by the Senate and have suggested that is a threat to constitutional checks and balances. The White House refused to send anyone to testify at congressional hearings. Sen. Bennet and I found ourselves “called out” on the White House blog by the President’s communications director, Anita Dunn.
Even the president, in his address to Congress on health care, threatened to “call out” members of congress who disagreed with him.
This behavior is typical of street brawls and political campaign consultants. It is a mistake for the President of the United States and the White House staff. If the President and his top aides treat people with different views as enemies instead of listening to what they have to say, they’re likely to end up with a narrow view and a feeling that the whole world is out to get them. And as those of use who served in the Nixon administration know, that can get you into a lot of trouble.
This administration is only ten months old. It’s not too late to take a different approach – both at the White House and here in the Congress.
Here is one opportunity. At the beginning of this year, shortly after the President’s inauguration, the Republican leader, Sen. McConnell, addressed the National Press Club. He proposed that he and the President work together to make social security solvent. He said that he would make sure the President got more support in that effort from Republicans than President George W. Bush got from Democrats when he tried to solve the same problem. President Obama held a summit on the dangers of the runaway costs of entitlements which I attended. Every expert there said making social security solvent was essential to our country’s fiscal stability. There is still time to get that done.
On clean energy, Republicans have put forward four ideas: build 100 nuclear plants in 20 years, electrify half our cars and trucks in 20 years, explore offshore for low-carbon natural gas and for oil, and double energy research and development for alternative fuels. The administration agrees with this on electric cars and research and development. We may not be far apart on offshore exploration. And, at his town meeting in New Orleans last week, the President said the United States would be “stupid” not to use nuclear power. He is right, since nuclear reactors produce 70% of our carbon free electricity. So why don’t we work together on this lower-cost way to address clean energy and climate change instead of enacting a national energy tax?
On health care, the White House idea of bipartisanship has been akin to that of a marksman at the state fair shooting gallery: hit one target and you win the prize. With such big Democratic congressional majorities, the White House figures all it needs to do is unify the Democrats and pick off one or two Republicans.
That strategy may win the prize but lose the country. Usually, on complex issues, the President needs bipartisan support in Congress to reassure and achieve broad and lasting support in the country. In 1968 I can remember when President Johnson, with bigger majorities in Congress than President Obama has today, arranged for the Civil Rights Bill to be written in open sessions over several weeks in the office of the Republican leader, Everett Dirksen. Dirksen got some of the credit; Johnson got the legislation he wanted; the country went along with it. Instead of comprehensive health care that raises premiums and increases the debt, why should the White House not work with Republicans step by step to reduce health care costs, and then, as we can afford it, reduce the number of Americans who don’t have access to health care?
The President and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan have been courageous — there is no better word for it — in advocating paying teachers more for teaching well and expanding the number of charter schools. These ideas are the Holy Grail for school reform. They are also ideas that are anathema to the labor unions who support the President. President Obama’s advocacy of master teachers and charter schools could be the domestic of equivalent of President Nixon going to China. I, among others, admire his advocacy and have been doing all I can to help him.
Having once been there, I can understand how those in the White House feel oppressed by those with whom they disagree, how they feel besieged by some of the media. I hope the current White House occupants will understand that this is nothing new in American politics—all the way back to the days when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson exchanged insults. The only thing new is that there are today multiple media outlets reporting and encouraging the insults 24 hours a day.
As any veteran of the Nixon White House can attest, we’ve been down this road before and it won’t end well. An “enemies list” only denigrates the Presidency and the Republic itself.
Forty years ago, Bryce Harlow would say to me, “Now Lamar, remember that our job here is to push all the merely important issues out of the white house so the president can deal with the handful of issues that are truly presidential.” Then he would slip off for a private meeting in the Capitol with Democratic leaders who controlled the congress and usually find a way to enact the president proposals.
Most successful leaders have eventually seen the wisdom of Lord Palmerston, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who said, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies.”
The British writer Edward Dicey was once introduced to President Lincoln as “one of his enemies.”“I did not know I had any enemies,” was Lincoln’s answer; and Dicey later wrote, “I can still feel, as I write, the grip of that great boney hand held out to me in token of friendship.”
So here’s my point. These are unusually difficult times, with plenty of forces encouraging us to disagree. Let’s not start calling people out and compiling an enemies list. Let’s push the street-brawling out of the White House and work together on the truly presidential issues: creating jobs, reducing health care costs, reducing the debt, creating clean energy.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Voting "Present" in Afghanistan - O continues to dither
Or is Rahm Emmanuel in charge ?
Voting Present Is Not an Option [Victor Davis Hanson]
These are the facts in the Afghanistan troop debate:
(a) We have a Democratically controlled Congress that by and large has supported, since 2004, the Kerry-Obama-Hillary narrative of a “good” war in Afghanistan — a war shamefully neglected by George Bush during his neocon adventure in Iraq but absolutely vital to the security of the United States, and entirely winnable if only we allot sufficient resources.
(b) We have a proven command in Gens. McChrystal and Petraeus and their circle of subordinates. They crafted a counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq that defeated the terrorists, ensured stability for the fragile constitutional government, and took a tremendous toll on the human and material resources of al-Qaeda, as well as the reputation of radical Islam on the Middle East street.
(c) We have thousands of battle-hardened, experienced veteran soldiers and their officers who know far more about the Middle East in general, and counterinsurgency in particular, than our military knew when it first deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.
(d) The Islamic world is much less in thrall (polls tell us this) to Osama bin Laden and his advocacy of suicide bombing and terrorism than it was five years ago. Pakistan, victim of numerous terrorist attacks, is far more willing to take concerted action that aids our cause than at any time in the last 8 years. And we have a president who by his own admission resonates abroad in a way not true of his predecessor, and who will receive a level of international support not usually accorded to American efforts in the Muslim world.
(e) The president has a domestic opposition — entirely unlike that of George Bush — that is eager to support him if he tries to fulfill his promise to win in Afghanistan by devoting more resources to the effort.
(f) We have media mesmerized by Obama, and they will withhold criticism of him in Afghanistan in a way that was simply not true of the Bush effort in Iraq (which nonetheless ultimately proved successful).
(g) We have a split public, but one far more amenable to a surge in Afghanistan than it was to a surge in Iraq late in 2006.(h) We should be bolstered by our success in Iraq, and the enemy demoralized by its failure, rather than vice versa.Given the above, and given that George Bush made a far more difficult choice that saved Iraq, it is hard to figure out why Obama cannot make a simple decision to send the troops requested by his commanders on the ground
Voting Present Is Not an Option [Victor Davis Hanson]
These are the facts in the Afghanistan troop debate:
(a) We have a Democratically controlled Congress that by and large has supported, since 2004, the Kerry-Obama-Hillary narrative of a “good” war in Afghanistan — a war shamefully neglected by George Bush during his neocon adventure in Iraq but absolutely vital to the security of the United States, and entirely winnable if only we allot sufficient resources.
(b) We have a proven command in Gens. McChrystal and Petraeus and their circle of subordinates. They crafted a counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq that defeated the terrorists, ensured stability for the fragile constitutional government, and took a tremendous toll on the human and material resources of al-Qaeda, as well as the reputation of radical Islam on the Middle East street.
(c) We have thousands of battle-hardened, experienced veteran soldiers and their officers who know far more about the Middle East in general, and counterinsurgency in particular, than our military knew when it first deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.
(d) The Islamic world is much less in thrall (polls tell us this) to Osama bin Laden and his advocacy of suicide bombing and terrorism than it was five years ago. Pakistan, victim of numerous terrorist attacks, is far more willing to take concerted action that aids our cause than at any time in the last 8 years. And we have a president who by his own admission resonates abroad in a way not true of his predecessor, and who will receive a level of international support not usually accorded to American efforts in the Muslim world.
(e) The president has a domestic opposition — entirely unlike that of George Bush — that is eager to support him if he tries to fulfill his promise to win in Afghanistan by devoting more resources to the effort.
(f) We have media mesmerized by Obama, and they will withhold criticism of him in Afghanistan in a way that was simply not true of the Bush effort in Iraq (which nonetheless ultimately proved successful).
(g) We have a split public, but one far more amenable to a surge in Afghanistan than it was to a surge in Iraq late in 2006.(h) We should be bolstered by our success in Iraq, and the enemy demoralized by its failure, rather than vice versa.Given the above, and given that George Bush made a far more difficult choice that saved Iraq, it is hard to figure out why Obama cannot make a simple decision to send the troops requested by his commanders on the ground
"Obama the Graceless"
Great column by Rich Lowry:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmNmZjRlMTZkMjNmNjhlMmJmNDViNjcxY2FmY2M3MjU=#
Obama the Graceless
Bush will be Obama’s eternal foil
Republicans needn’t trouble themselves to nominate a presidential candidate in 2012. No matter what, Pres. Barack Obama will be running against George W. Bush.
Bush will be Obama’s eternal foil. At this rate, when Obama writes his post-presidential memoir, it will be titled: An Audacious Presidency, or How I Saved America from That Bastard Bush. His presidential library will have a special fright-house wing devoted to Bush’s misrule. He will mutter in his senescence about 43, like the Ancient Mariner about his albatross.
Obama clearly wants Bush to be the Hoover to his FDR. Since his predecessor left office with 34 percent job approval, Obama understandably feels moved to scorn and berate him. But Obama’s perpetual campaign against Bush is graceless, whiny, and tin-eared. Must the leader of the free world — if Obama still accepts that quaint formulation — always reach for the convenient excuse?
No doubt, Obama inherited formidable challenges, but it’s usually thus. The presidency is a miserable job. During our first inaugural marking a presidential transition, John Adams thought he could almost hear George Washington thinking: “I am fairly out and you fairly in! See which of us will be happiest.”
Obama complains of having to clean up what he charmingly calls “somebody else’s mess.” Obama took office during a stomach-churning financial crisis, and he now brags, “We’ve rescued our economy from catastrophe.” Who’s “we”? When then‑Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke confronted Bush with the magnitude of the crisis last fall, he told them to do anything necessary to fight it.
Bush’s support of the ideologically uncongenial TARP legislation, together with Bernanke’s expansive actions at the Fed, rescued the system. But Obama takes the credit, while pretending Bush heedlessly let the economy burn — a tack that is in equal measures petty and dishonest.
Obama also blames Bush for the deficit, now at $1.4 trillion. Whatever his own profligacy, Bush didn’t compel Obama to spend money nearly as fast as it could be printed, or to roughly double the projected debt over the next decade. Obama’s motto apparently is, “Stop Bush — before he makes me spend again!”
In international forums, Obama acts as if Bush were the former president of another country, or a disgraced former leader ousted in a coup. No calumny is too much to heap on him, and no defense is ever offered. Obama might at least avoid implicitly accusing his predecessor of war crimes. He might at least credit his predecessor’s, and his country’s, good intentions in toppling Saddam Hussein and promoting democracy in the Middle East. No, he’s incapable of it.
Obama should be grateful that Bush ordered the surge in Iraq against Obama’s opposition. If he hadn’t, Obama likely would have — on top of everything else — inherited a strategically central Middle Eastern country in full-scale civil war. Does Obama express any appreciation, or any humility about his own mistaken call? Of course not.
But his aides blame Bush for the state of the Afghan War, which White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says was adrift “for eight years.” If the war was under-resourced, the complaining about Bush has the whiff of pre-emptive excuse-making should Obama pull up short in his “necessary war.” We would send Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan only if Bush hadn’t already lost the war.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmNmZjRlMTZkMjNmNjhlMmJmNDViNjcxY2FmY2M3MjU=#
Obama the Graceless
Bush will be Obama’s eternal foil
Republicans needn’t trouble themselves to nominate a presidential candidate in 2012. No matter what, Pres. Barack Obama will be running against George W. Bush.
Bush will be Obama’s eternal foil. At this rate, when Obama writes his post-presidential memoir, it will be titled: An Audacious Presidency, or How I Saved America from That Bastard Bush. His presidential library will have a special fright-house wing devoted to Bush’s misrule. He will mutter in his senescence about 43, like the Ancient Mariner about his albatross.
Obama clearly wants Bush to be the Hoover to his FDR. Since his predecessor left office with 34 percent job approval, Obama understandably feels moved to scorn and berate him. But Obama’s perpetual campaign against Bush is graceless, whiny, and tin-eared. Must the leader of the free world — if Obama still accepts that quaint formulation — always reach for the convenient excuse?
No doubt, Obama inherited formidable challenges, but it’s usually thus. The presidency is a miserable job. During our first inaugural marking a presidential transition, John Adams thought he could almost hear George Washington thinking: “I am fairly out and you fairly in! See which of us will be happiest.”
Obama complains of having to clean up what he charmingly calls “somebody else’s mess.” Obama took office during a stomach-churning financial crisis, and he now brags, “We’ve rescued our economy from catastrophe.” Who’s “we”? When then‑Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke confronted Bush with the magnitude of the crisis last fall, he told them to do anything necessary to fight it.
Bush’s support of the ideologically uncongenial TARP legislation, together with Bernanke’s expansive actions at the Fed, rescued the system. But Obama takes the credit, while pretending Bush heedlessly let the economy burn — a tack that is in equal measures petty and dishonest.
Obama also blames Bush for the deficit, now at $1.4 trillion. Whatever his own profligacy, Bush didn’t compel Obama to spend money nearly as fast as it could be printed, or to roughly double the projected debt over the next decade. Obama’s motto apparently is, “Stop Bush — before he makes me spend again!”
In international forums, Obama acts as if Bush were the former president of another country, or a disgraced former leader ousted in a coup. No calumny is too much to heap on him, and no defense is ever offered. Obama might at least avoid implicitly accusing his predecessor of war crimes. He might at least credit his predecessor’s, and his country’s, good intentions in toppling Saddam Hussein and promoting democracy in the Middle East. No, he’s incapable of it.
Obama should be grateful that Bush ordered the surge in Iraq against Obama’s opposition. If he hadn’t, Obama likely would have — on top of everything else — inherited a strategically central Middle Eastern country in full-scale civil war. Does Obama express any appreciation, or any humility about his own mistaken call? Of course not.
But his aides blame Bush for the state of the Afghan War, which White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says was adrift “for eight years.” If the war was under-resourced, the complaining about Bush has the whiff of pre-emptive excuse-making should Obama pull up short in his “necessary war.” We would send Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan only if Bush hadn’t already lost the war.
When Obama first burst on the scene, he seemed to respect the other side. That refreshing Obama is long gone. Now, he impugns his immediate predecessor with classless regularity, and attributes the worst of motives — pure partisanship and unrestrained greed — to those who oppose him. Their assigned role is to get the hell out of his way.
The acid test of the White House inevitably exposes a president’s character flaws: Nixon’s corrosive paranoia, Clinton’s self-destructive indiscipline, Bush’s stubborn defensiveness. Obama in the crucible is exhibiting an oddly self-pitying arrogance. It’s unbecoming in anyone, let alone the most powerful man on the planet.
Obama's In Town ...
for a fundraiser at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in NYC near Columbus Circle.
Big police presence all day.
Fundraiser (for Dems ?) priced at $15,000 per person.
That's above my paygrade.
I don't give money to politicians anyway, no matter who they are !
Big police presence all day.
Fundraiser (for Dems ?) priced at $15,000 per person.
That's above my paygrade.
I don't give money to politicians anyway, no matter who they are !
Monday, October 19, 2009
Meanwhile O Dithers in Afghanistan; Flounders on Iran
AFGHANISTAN: Michael Yon
The War in Afghanistan Is Winnable [Michael Yon]
I respect the work of Dexter Filkins, who wrote this weekend’s New York Times Magazine story “Stanley McChrystal’s Long War.” Filkins is a seasoned war correspondent whose characterizations of Iraq ring true. Much of his latest piece resonates with my ongoing experiences in Afghanistan. Despite the great length of the article, the few points that did not resonate were more trivialities for discussion than disagreements. Filkins did a fine job.
To be clear, I have developed a strong belief that the war is winnable, though on current trends we will lose. Filkins seemed to present a similar argument. In my view, we need more troops and effort in Afghanistan — now — and our commitment must be intergenerational.
Keep reading this post . . .
'Gates Blindsided by Rahm' [Rich Lowry]
From Bill Kristol:
Yesterday, in light of Rahm Emanuel’s comments on delaying the decision on troops for Afghanistan, I asked: “Are Sunday talk show declarations by Emanuel and political advisor David Axelrod an appropriate way to announce the considered judgment of the president at this stage of a long Cabinet-level review process? Or is Emanuel end-running the process? Do Secretaries Gates and Clinton agree with Emanuel? Were they consulted before Rahm popped off?”
I’ve now been told by an authoritative source close to Defense Secretary Robert Gates that he had no advance warning that Emanuel would be saying any such thing.
IRAN:
Bolton: Obama’s ‘Virtual Reality’ [Robert Costa]
Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton tells NRO that President Obama is living in a “virtual reality” if he believes that the talks this week in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program will yield any significant results. The meetings, hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are aimed at convincing Iran to ship low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for more processing, in order to prevent Iran from enriching uranium on its own. “Obama’s intent for direct interaction is just read as weakness by Tehran,” says Bolton.
“President Obama doesn’t understand the nature of the regime he’s facing,” says Bolton. “He doesn’t understand the determination of the Iranians to get nuclear weapons, and he doesn’t understand the risk that a nuclear Iran poses to the region. On all three critical points, he fails.”
“The president, so intent on rejecting the eight years of Bush, is ignoring important history,” says Bolton. “On Iran, Bush policy is indistinguishable from Obama policy. They are both based on the idea of negotiations and threatening sanctions, all of which have failed for years. That strategy will not work now, either.”
Keep reading this post . . .
Romney Speaks Out on Iran [NRO Staff]
From the Washington Post:
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) condemned the Obama Administration's approach toward Iran, a republic he described as "unalloyed evil" and controlled by "ruthless and fanatical" leaders in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee today in San Diego.
"Stop thinking that a charm offensive will talk the Iranians out of their pursuit of nuclear weapons," said Romney. "It will not." Later in the address, he punctuated that sentiment by noting: "Once an outstretched hand is met with a clenched fist, it becomes a symbol of weakness and impotence."
Romney's speech comes on the same day that negotiators from the United States, France and Russia meet with Iranian officials in Vienna to discuss the country's controversial nuclear program.
More here.
The War in Afghanistan Is Winnable [Michael Yon]
I respect the work of Dexter Filkins, who wrote this weekend’s New York Times Magazine story “Stanley McChrystal’s Long War.” Filkins is a seasoned war correspondent whose characterizations of Iraq ring true. Much of his latest piece resonates with my ongoing experiences in Afghanistan. Despite the great length of the article, the few points that did not resonate were more trivialities for discussion than disagreements. Filkins did a fine job.
To be clear, I have developed a strong belief that the war is winnable, though on current trends we will lose. Filkins seemed to present a similar argument. In my view, we need more troops and effort in Afghanistan — now — and our commitment must be intergenerational.
Keep reading this post . . .
'Gates Blindsided by Rahm' [Rich Lowry]
From Bill Kristol:
Yesterday, in light of Rahm Emanuel’s comments on delaying the decision on troops for Afghanistan, I asked: “Are Sunday talk show declarations by Emanuel and political advisor David Axelrod an appropriate way to announce the considered judgment of the president at this stage of a long Cabinet-level review process? Or is Emanuel end-running the process? Do Secretaries Gates and Clinton agree with Emanuel? Were they consulted before Rahm popped off?”
I’ve now been told by an authoritative source close to Defense Secretary Robert Gates that he had no advance warning that Emanuel would be saying any such thing.
IRAN:
Bolton: Obama’s ‘Virtual Reality’ [Robert Costa]
Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton tells NRO that President Obama is living in a “virtual reality” if he believes that the talks this week in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program will yield any significant results. The meetings, hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are aimed at convincing Iran to ship low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for more processing, in order to prevent Iran from enriching uranium on its own. “Obama’s intent for direct interaction is just read as weakness by Tehran,” says Bolton.
“President Obama doesn’t understand the nature of the regime he’s facing,” says Bolton. “He doesn’t understand the determination of the Iranians to get nuclear weapons, and he doesn’t understand the risk that a nuclear Iran poses to the region. On all three critical points, he fails.”
“The president, so intent on rejecting the eight years of Bush, is ignoring important history,” says Bolton. “On Iran, Bush policy is indistinguishable from Obama policy. They are both based on the idea of negotiations and threatening sanctions, all of which have failed for years. That strategy will not work now, either.”
Keep reading this post . . .
Romney Speaks Out on Iran [NRO Staff]
From the Washington Post:
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) condemned the Obama Administration's approach toward Iran, a republic he described as "unalloyed evil" and controlled by "ruthless and fanatical" leaders in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee today in San Diego.
"Stop thinking that a charm offensive will talk the Iranians out of their pursuit of nuclear weapons," said Romney. "It will not." Later in the address, he punctuated that sentiment by noting: "Once an outstretched hand is met with a clenched fist, it becomes a symbol of weakness and impotence."
Romney's speech comes on the same day that negotiators from the United States, France and Russia meet with Iranian officials in Vienna to discuss the country's controversial nuclear program.
More here.
Blame Game, revisited ...
Putting aside for the moment Obama's jihads against Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, consider this:
Krauthammer: On Obama’s San Francisco speech complaining that he and Nancy Pelosi are mopping up “someone else’s mess”:
It is defensive with a touch of desperation. It is almost ridiculous to be running against George Bush — that's what the mess that he refers to is — you know, nine months in….He was elected almost a year ago now. So he pretends that he is the guy that is mopping up.
Look, he has got all kinds of troubles.
He is dithering on Afghanistan, a war he said had to be won, essential war, et cetera.
He is the guy who has lost his popularity at an alarming rate — and support of
independents — over health care — [which is] his initiative, on which he has given, what, 28 speeches — and still has the majority of Americans opposing it.
He is the one who caved in to the Russians on missile defense. He sold out our friends the Poles and the Czechs supposedly as a way to get Russian support on Iran. He sends the secretary of state, [and] this week she gets humiliated in Moscow and the Russians indicate they won't help or budge on Iran at all.
This is all his doing. It is not the Bush doing.
So what does he have on his account? A stimulus package which hasn't done anything to the economy except create an undeniable $1 trillion dollar debt that is going to be added on to our debt at a time when the dollar is under attack.
Look, this is his doing and you can't complain until the end of time over what his predecessor has done. I think it's a little bit unseemly to walk around as president once you are in office this length and to pretend it is all the fault of your predecessor.
Krauthammer: On Obama’s San Francisco speech complaining that he and Nancy Pelosi are mopping up “someone else’s mess”:
It is defensive with a touch of desperation. It is almost ridiculous to be running against George Bush — that's what the mess that he refers to is — you know, nine months in….He was elected almost a year ago now. So he pretends that he is the guy that is mopping up.
Look, he has got all kinds of troubles.
He is dithering on Afghanistan, a war he said had to be won, essential war, et cetera.
He is the guy who has lost his popularity at an alarming rate — and support of
independents — over health care — [which is] his initiative, on which he has given, what, 28 speeches — and still has the majority of Americans opposing it.
He is the one who caved in to the Russians on missile defense. He sold out our friends the Poles and the Czechs supposedly as a way to get Russian support on Iran. He sends the secretary of state, [and] this week she gets humiliated in Moscow and the Russians indicate they won't help or budge on Iran at all.
This is all his doing. It is not the Bush doing.
So what does he have on his account? A stimulus package which hasn't done anything to the economy except create an undeniable $1 trillion dollar debt that is going to be added on to our debt at a time when the dollar is under attack.
Look, this is his doing and you can't complain until the end of time over what his predecessor has done. I think it's a little bit unseemly to walk around as president once you are in office this length and to pretend it is all the fault of your predecessor.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Anita Dunn (Obama Advisor) Hearts Mao
Another (!) Communist Advisor / Sympathizer in Obama's inner circle.
Why am I not surprised ?
Anita Dunn and Mao Zedong [Hans von Spakovsky]
Glenn Beck showed an absolutely damning video of Anita Dunn on his show yesterday. As everyone knows, she is the White House communications director who has declared war on Fox News. The video shows Dunn giving a speech in which she highlights the two most important political philosophers shaping her outlook on politics: Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa. The first “political philosopher” Dunn is praising was a tyrannical dictator who imprisoned, tortured, and killed millions of his own people. In fact, it is estimated that the Chinese Communists — led, inspired, and controlled by Mao — have killed 65 million Chinese citizens since 1949 through the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the Gulag system of slave-labor prisons (the “Laogai” system) that Mao implemented.
Imagine what would happen if a White House communications director cited Adolf Hitler as one of her favorite political philosophers. Not only would it be an above-the-fold, front-page story in every major newspaper in the country, but there would also be outraged howls in the editorial pages. Mao killed more people than Hitler — they were two of the three worst mass murderers of the 20th century (the third being Joseph Stalin). However, the revelation of Dunn’s comments will probably be greeted by the mainstream media with a big collective yawn.
Re: Anita Dunn and Mao Zedong [Andy McCarthy]
Let me just add two points to Hans's post.
1. While Dunn's anabashed affection for the most execrable mass-murderer in history is shocking, the Maoists in Obama's attic are not a new story — just a story obstinately ignored by the mainstream media. Before the election, I wrote a column ("Another Communist in Obama's Orb") about Obama pal Mike Klonsky. Here's a sampling:
Here’s what you need to know. Klonsky is an unabashed communist whose current mission is to spread Marxist ideology in the American classroom. Obama funded him to the tune of nearly $2 million. Obama, moreover, gave Klonsky a broad platform to broadcast his ideas: a “social justice” blog on the official Obama campaign website.... Klonsky’s communist pedigree could not be clearer. His father, Robert Klonsky, was an American communist who was convicted in the mid-Fifties for advocating the forcible overthrow of the United States government — a violation of the Smith Act, anti-communist legislation ultimately gutted by the Supreme Court. In the Sixties, Klonsky the younger teamed with Ayers, Dohrn, and other young radicals to form the Students for a Democratic Society. It was out of the SDS that Ayers and Dohrn helped found the Weatherman terrorist group.
Klonsky took a different path, albeit one that led inexorably to a new partnership with Ayers, which Obama mightily helped underwrite. Upon splitting off from the SDS, Klonsky formed a Maoist organization, first known as the “October League,” which ultimately became the “Communist Party (Marxist Leninist).” Klonsky was CP(ML)’s chairman. He was so highly thought of by Mao’s regime that he was among the first Americans invited to visit Communist China. When he was feted there in 1977, a year after Mao’s death, the communist leadership hailed Klonsky’s party as “reflecting the aspirations of the proletariat and working people.” Klonsky was a regular guest of the Chicoms until 1981, when the relationship soured over the post-Mao leadership’s free-market reforms. (Yes, Klonsky is apparently more committed to communism than China’s own Communist Party.) So what was a Leftist radical without platform to do? Why, what else? He became an American college professor specializing in education. After getting his doctorate, Klonsky eventually made his way to Chicago and hooked up with his old SDS comrade (and self-professed “small ‘c’ communist”) Bill Ayers. Together, they co-founded the Small Schools Workshop in 1991. The goal — as Ayers has repeatedly made clear, most prominently in a 2006 speechbefore Hugo Chavez at an education forum in Caracas — is to bring the same Leftist revolution that has always galvanized them into the classroom.
2. At his blog, Roger Kimball offers trenchant thoughts on Dunn and Mao:
N.B.: Anita Dunn is not just an Obama hanger-on. She is part of his inner circle, one of his top aides, along with David Axelrod, Rahm Emmanuel, and Robert Gibbs. What does it mean that someone in that position proffers one of the greatest monsters the world has ever seen for emulation? Anita Dunn calls Mao a “political philosopher.” In fact, as a real philosopher, the late, great Leszek Kolakowski, understood, Mao’s real achievement was as “one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, manipulator of large masses of human beings in the twentieth century.” His violent peasant revolution mouthed Marxist slogans, but at its core was less Marxist than a particularly rebarbative form of anarchic and anti-intellectual tyranny. “The obfuscation of Western admirers of Chinese Communism,” Kolakowski observes toward the end of his magnum opus, Main Currents of Marxism, “is scarcely believable.” I wish he were still here for Anita Dunn. In the 1960s and 1970s, many American universities, along with some other Western redoubts of privilege and irresponsibility, harbored a few deluded characters who declared themselves Maoists and were found of toting around his pathetic compendium of absurdity, “The Little Red Book.” These creatures were the sorriest detritus of our own cultural revolution. Some destroyed themselves. Others grew up, in whole or part, and were absorbed by a rich and forgiving society into the tissues of American life. Only now is it clear that some of the most radical and benighted have subsisted long enough in the outer corridors of power to find themselves suddenly translated into its inner sanctum, the White House and other top agencies of the Untied States government. It is an eventuality that would be risible were it not repulsive and, indeed frightening. So, we have a self-professed admirer of Mao Tse-Tung in a top job at the White House. Where does it end? Where? Fox and CNN [Jay Nordlinger] The White House communications director, Anita Dunn, contrasted Fox News with CNN: Fox News is just a Republican opinion outlet, she said, while CNN is a real news network. Of Fox, she said, “Let’s not pretend that they’re a news network, the way CNN is.” She said this on CNN, of course. (In the 1990s, conservatives used to refer to it as “the Clinton News Network.”) I got to thinking. Fox has some opinionists, such as O’Reilly and Beck. Fox also has news anchormen and correspondents. CNN has those, too. One of the CNN anchors is Anderson Cooper — he’s their star, as I understand it. The hurricane guy. When the “tea party” protests got going earlier this year, Cooper interviewed David Gergen. Gergen said, “They [Republicans and conservatives] still haven’t found their voice, Anderson. This happens to a minority party after it’s lost a couple of bad elections, but they’re searching for their voice.” Then Cooper said, “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging.” He said this smirkingly. He was referring to a sexual practice defined by the Urban Dictionary as follows: “the insertion of one man’s sac[] into another person’s mouth.” [note: sounds like something Anderson Cooper would know about from firsthand experience !] Would a Fox News anchor ever, ever say anything like this — ever? Can you conceive it? But that is what CNN anchormen do, apparently. When people tell you that CNN is a real news network, whereas Fox isn’t — I would just smile at them. P.S. It was Anderson Cooper, the mainstream news anchor, who started the derogatory references to anti-Obama protesters as “teabaggers.” Democratic pundits and politicians quickly picked it up. (I wrote about this in a recent issue of National Review.) P.P.S. Another CNN anchorman, Rick Sanchez, spread racist quotations allegedly from Rush Limbaugh. These quotes were fabrications, meant to damage Limbaugh. Do Fox anchormen engage in slander and defamation? P.P.P.S. Anita Dunn tried to pass off her tribute to Mao as something she once heard from Lee Atwater. Has Lee Atwater become the Democrats’ standard — the arbiter of Democratic discourse? What an interesting turn of events.
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