This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • The politics of low expectations

    Gateway Pundit has a post up about accidental New York Governor David Patterson announcing that a vote for Obama is a vote against racism (conversely, a vote for McCain would be a vote for racism, I suppose). Quoted in the New York Sun, Patterson said;

    “Can America go past the crippling way that we’ve shot ourselves in the foot over and over, denying opportunity to people who are bright, to people who are qualified, to people who are able because they didn’t look like us, or they didn’t come from where we came from, or they are from a different gender, or they are from the African continent? Can America push that away and find new leadership? We’ll find out in the next few months what America can do.”

    (more…)

  • Attention whores at “Recreate 68”

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    Rurik sends me this link from a Colorado Fox affiliate. The “Recreate 68” crowd thinks that their little drama play in Denver is so important that local police are threatening them to stop it;

    Members of “Denver CopWatch” and several other activists say they received an email threatening a police riot during the convention.

    The top of the email message says “We beat you then, we’ll beat you again,” apparently referencing what is called a “police riot” during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

    Part of the email text reads: “Think your tough hippy? Get ready to get down!! We’re celebrating 40 years of beat-down!!”

    Denver CopWatch tells us the email came from a Hotmail account and was written by a rank-and-file police officer.

    Well, I don’t know how they figure it’s a “rank-and-file police officer” because later in the article;

    Some of the people who received the threatening message plan to take the email to the office of the Independent Monitor and they will also ask for an investigation to determine who sent the threatening message.

    So the email was sent through a Hotmail account, and no one really knows who sent it…so it must be a cop. First of all, I don’t think a cop even cares about these aged hippies, or when they protest – the Denver police are probably looking forward to the overtime pay. And if they were indeed going to cause trouble, they wouldn’t telegraph ahead. The only people living in 1968 are the folks trying to “recreate” it.

    It sounds to me like a publicity stunt to get the media to pay attention to them for a minute or two. I doubt it’ll work. Just like the IVAW, Code Pink and all the rest, they’re old moldy news.

  • Washington Post turns on Obama briefly

    In yesterday’s editorial, the Washington Post editorial board harshly denounced Obama’s inability to change his 16-month time table withdrawal policy for Iraq;

     BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: “They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down.” Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency.

    […]

    Mr. Obama’s charge against the Republicans was not entirely fair, since Mr. Bush has overseen the withdrawal of five American brigades from Iraq this year, and Mr. McCain has suggested that he would bring most of the rest of the troops home by early 2013. Mr. Obama’s timeline would end in the summer of 2010, a year or two before the earliest dates proposed recently by members of the Iraqi government.

    The Post went on to criticize Obama’s position as the surge began;

    At the time he first proposed his timetable, Mr. Obama argued — wrongly, as it turned out — that U.S. troops could not stop a sectarian civil war.

    The Post is just getting all of this out of the way so they can call it “old news” in October and still maintain a semblance of even-handedness. But the fact remains that Barack Obama has been wrong on Iraq since the beginning. The Left criticizes President Bush for being strong-willed when they’ve thought he was wrong. How about Barack Obama who can’t see the truth in front of his stupid face?
    All of his judgments through the entire war, from the beginning, if we can believe that he was against the war from the beginning, have been wrong. Even if he changes his position today, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s been wrong since the get-go.

    That’s not good leadership, just making the popular decision – that’s Jimmy Carter /Bill Clinton political maneuvering. It’s the failed politics of the past.

  • The soft bigotry of low expectations

    While Jesse Jackson tosses around the forbidden word and threatens Obama’s gentalia, there many more important leaders in the Black community who are saying much more important things – things like educating Black youths. At the NAACP convention yesterday, John McCain chose to speak to the membership about just that (Washington Times editorial);

    Sen. John McCain, who spoke Wednesday, chose a mostly educational theme. This was an issue at the time of the civil-rights movement that demanded educational opportunity and access for all. Today, students have achieved equal access to be replaced with an inexcusable achievement gap afflicting mostly poor black children. As Mr. McCain pointed out: “What is the value of access to a failing school?”

    Many conservatives, from President Bush to Condoleezza Rice, Rod Paige and Colin Powell, have argued that the glaring disparity in black and white educational achievement is this nation’s present-day “civil rights” issue and that our challenge is to overcome “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

    But the NAACP and Barack Obama have a vested interest in keeping Black children uneducated. As long as the children remain low performers, Obama and the NAACP can point to bigotry, they can blame there’s not enough money being spent by the government on Black children. The last time I checked, the District of Columbia spent $12,000/year educating a child and they’re churning out illiterate kids – so money really can’t be the problem.

    Both the NAACP and Barack Obama oppose vouchers, but according to the Washington Times 7,000 families in the District of Columbia have applied for DC Opportunity Scholarships (the equivalent of vouchers) this year.

    Because Obama and the NAACP have bound themselves up with the teachers’ unions, they refuse to see what DC parents see – the politics of education are destroying the future of our children. The disparity in education leads to an economic disparity, but Obama and the others on the Left are perfectly comfortable allowing that disparity to deepen for short term political gain.

    As always, the answer from the Left will be to throw more money at the problem. That’s not the new politics we hear about from Barack Obama. That’s not hope, it’s not change…it’s the failed politics of the past.

  • Democrats and hoaxes

    Monday, Nancy Pelosi called President Bush’s lifting of the Executive Order banning off-shore drilling a “hoax”. She said that it would do nothing to lower the price of gasoline today. Instead, she said we should he should release the oil in our strategic reserve – gasoline for about 34 days consumption (we use about 20,687,000 barrels/day and there are 700,000,000 barrels in the strategic reserve). Yeah, that’ll help.

    So let’s look at Obama’s plan. He must have a plan that lowers our needs today, since that’s Nancy Pelosi’s biggest concern;

    Obama’s plan will reduce oil consumption by at least 35 percent, or 10 million barrels per day, by 2030. This will more than offset the equivalent of the oil we would import from OPEC nations in 2030.

    […]

    Obama will double fuel economy standards within 18 years.

    […]

    He’ll also establish a national goal of improving new building efficiency by 50 percent and existing building efficiency by 25 percent over the next decade to help us meet the 2030 goal.

    […]

    Obama will require 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels to be included in the fuel supply by 2022 and will increase that to at least 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol by 2030.

    Yup, all of that will help Americans today, I’m sure. We’ll all feel so good about ourselves that our general collective vibe will just drive the price of gasoline to new lows. Now that’s change we can believe in.

  • Bush is no Jimmy Carter

    Politico writes that an AP reporter asked the President if he’d instruct Americans to drive less and conserve gasoline ala Jimmy Carter. The President responded that he would certainly not;

    “They’re smart enough to figure out whether they’re going to drive less or not. I mean, you know, it’s interesting what the price of gasoline has done,” Bush said at a news conference in the White House press room, “is it caused people to drive less. That’s why they want smaller cars: They want to conserve. But the consumer’s plenty bright. The marketplace works.”

    “You noticed my statement yesterday, I talked about good conservation and — you know, people can figure out whether they need to drive more or less,” he said. “They can balance their own checkbooks.”

    “It’s a little presumptuous on my part to dictate how consumers live their own lives,” the president added. “I’ve got faith in the American people.”

    Imagine that; a President that thinks we’re smart enough to figure what we can afford without him telling us. Compare that to Jimmy Carter in 1977;

    …the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it.

    […]

    I cant tell you that these measures will be easy, nor will they be popular. But I think most of you realize that a policy which does not ask for changes or sacrifices would not be an effective policy.

    […]

    I am sure each of you will find something you don’t like about the specifics of our proposal. It will demand that we make sacrifices and changes in our lives. To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful — but so is any meaningful sacrifice. It will lead to some higher costs, and to some greater inconveniences for everyone.

    But the sacrifices will be gradual, realistic and necessary. Above all, they will be fair. No one will gain an unfair advantage through this plan. No one will be asked to bear an unfair burden. We will monitor the accuracy of data from the oil and natural gas companies, so that we will know their true production, supplies, reserves, and profits.

    The citizens who insist on driving large, unnecessarily powerful cars must expect to pay more for that luxury.

    We can be sure that all the special interest groups in the country will attack the part of this plan that affects them directly. They will say that sacrifice is fine, as long as other people do it, but that their sacrifice is unreasonable, or unfair, or harmful to the country.

    He sounds just like Barack Obama doesn’t he? In fact, if you look at Obama’s US Senate webpage, he says the same thing Carter said in this speech combined with blather from his 1979 “malaise speech”. Carter formed the Energy Department with the Secretary of Energy the new “Energy Czar”, Obama advances the idea of another Energy Czar;

    Senator Obama believes that America must commit to a new national energy policy focused on improvements in technology, investments in renewable fuels such as wind and solar power, and greater efforts in conservation, efficiency, and waste reduction. Shifting from our current investment and consumption practices to this new direction will be one of the great leadership challenges in the coming decade.

    With the Department of Energy telling us that U.S. demand for oil will jump 40% over the next 20 years and with countries like China and India adding millions of cars to their roads, the price of oil is approaching a breaking point.

    In addition to the high economic costs of our foreign oil dependence, the current consumption of fossil fuels has threatened the future health and well-being of not only our citizens, but our natural resources and air quality as well. Investments in cleaner and more efficient energy technologies must play a central role in mitigating these threats to our health and our environment.

    Recognizing the importance of energy security to national and economic security, Senator Obama has proposed the creation of a Director of National Energy Security in the Office of the President. This position, akin to the National Security Advisor, would oversee and coordinate all administration efforts on national energy security and policies.

    How is any of that “change”?

  • Obama threatens Pakistan…again

    Suddenly finding his cowboy side, Obama has decided that Pakistan is a bigger threat than Iran. TimesOnline reports that he has once again threatened to invade Pakistan;

    “We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary, and as president, I won’t,” Mr Obama said. “We must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights.”

    He’s so tough with our allies, isn’t he? Yet he trembles at thought of Ahmadinejad or talking tough to the Islamic Republic – the real source of the threat to this nation.

    Disregarding the fact that thousands of al Qaeda operatives have given up the ghost in Iraq, Obama continued to deride the operation in Iraq;

    Insisting that Iraq is not now and never was the “central front in the war on terror”, the White House hopeful dismissed John McCain’s contention that his withdrawal plan amounted to surrender. His Republican rival had focused exclusively on a country which had no involvement in the September 11 attacks at the expense of wider strategic aims crucial to America’s security, he said.

    McCain’s campaign was quick to counter Obama’s tough talk;

    “Senator Obama is departing soon on a trip abroad that will include a fact-finding mission to Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said in remarks released by his campaign.

    “I note that he is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to General Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq, and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time.

    “In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: first you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy.”

    Since when has Obama presented a coherent policy on anything. That evil McCain campaign expects him to start now?

    Added: In related news, someone (forgive for not remembering who) emailed me this morning about Obama scrubbing his website of his policy statements against the surge. This writer asked me if I could chase down cached copies like I did on Kokesh last month. Before I could get my hands free today, Gateway Pundit and Wizbang beat me to it.

    Meanwhile, The Jawa Report writes that Michael Yon has declared the war in Iraq won. So Obama missed cleaning up the record of his policy by a coupla days. The thing is, when you’re President, you don’t get any Mulligans when it comes to policy. Ask Jimmy Carter. Bush and McCain have been right all along – cleaning up the whiney BS from your website and acting like a cowboy after the tough part doesn’t count.

  • Arkin: Bush’s Nixonian withdrawal plan

    Remember little Billie Arkin who told us all that the troops in Iraq were living La Vida Loca and that we didn’t need to support them, they needed to support us instead? Well, the Washington Post let him out of his cage (now that mud season has ended in Vermont) and let him moderate a discussion on their “Planet War” forum. Rather than say that the President is planning for pulling the troops out of Iraq because they’re not needed any longer, Arkin blames the defeat of the US military in Iraq for the President’s decision;

    Cynics might dismiss the maneuvering as “just politics,” but in fact [Obama and Bush] are struggling with the same objective and reality: how to end the Iraq war favorably and without admitting defeat, and how to preserve the honor of the American military.

    For the Bush administration, the task is to balance success on the ground and a new yearning and confidence on the part of the local government with long-term security. And of course, there is a heavy dose of pressure from the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, who both deeply want to be relieved of the exhausting duty. Accelerating withdrawals before the elections aren’t intended to help McCain, as some have speculated. They are motivated by a desire to leave the White House redeemed, and to give the American people what they want.

    Obama, on the other hand, is not flip-flopping or changing course or doing anything in his “refinement” other than being presidential. Everyone wants to “end the war,” the question now is how to get there. I would argue that the issue is not “defeat” of the terrorists or even the kind of stability in Iraq that would satisfy a tough auditor. The universal imperative has become to preserve American military honor.

    Now, keep in mind, that Billie Arkin made this brilliant assessment from the wilds of Vermont. He makes no indication that any of it is quoted from any source or any amount of research – it’s simply his unsupported opinion…from Vermont. From Vermont, Arkin has made the decision that we’re losing in Iraq (despite the mounds of evidence to the contrary that is publicly available) and that the President just wants to pull the troops out to save their honor – like Nixon in 1972. Arkin, as in his previously famous writings, blames the military’s ineptness for this imagined failure in Iraq and blames the Administration for keeping them there to spare their feelings.

    What Arkin won’t admit is that the only reason our troops have been involved over there so long is because him and his peace-freak buddies can’t shut up while the troops do their jobs. Even after the job is nearly done, he continues to berate them.

    And, of course the commenters in the forum suffer mightily from BDS;

    Bush has always said he wants to leave Iraq, and its easier when the country you occupy doesnt want you there. Bush has had 8 years of deception and misinformation that has led us deeper then we were ever promised we would be in Iraq. So to now say that his policies are similar to Obama’s is a stretch. Obama has a record of being opposed to the war from the beginning. Any refinement is seen as flip-flopping because the press is so used to a President that doesnt change anything he doesnt want to. The universal imperative of American Military honor has not chance under Bush. His entire history of ignorance and NOT listening to the generals on the ground (contrary to popular belief) had led us to hurt our military honor. This honor can be regained by winning the war on terror in its main battlegrouns- Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is something that Obama sees as a priority and Bush has seen as a secondary to his fiasco is Iraq. So I dont see the similarities.

    (Spelling and punctuation errors are from the original author, probably the result of pounding on his keyboard in frustration at being wrong once again)

    I should probably point out that Arkin did a brief tour in the Army as an intelligence officer in Berlin (during the late 70s) and that he went to work for Greenpeace after that. Besides blathering on for Washington Post, he seems attached somehow (his email address) to the Institute of Global Communications, a “progressive community” consisting of PeaceNet, EcoNet, WomensNet, and AntiRacismNet – so there’s probably no agenda there.

    Crossposted at Eagles Up! Talon

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