BS Removal Kit

Throwing Israel Under A Bus

Global Jihad Linked to Flotilla

Israeli defense officials now say dozens of passengers who were aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, the scene of a bloody showdown with Israeli commandos Monday, are suspected of having connections to terrorist organizations. The Israeli Army says it's identified 50 passengers on the ship with terrorist links.

It's known the flotilla of 6 ships was in part organized by the IHH group in Turkey, which reportedly has links to Al Qaeda. And three members of Yemen's Parliament, from the Islah Party, were also among the more than 600 activists detained by Israel after ships refused to stop for Israeli patrol boats and were boarded by Israeli Navy SEALs who eventually opened fire, killing 9 people. The Islah party is also said to have shadowy links to Al Qaeda. Both groups certainly support the Hamas organization in Gaza.

Israel believes the larger danger is that Turkey, a NATO ally, is becoming a foe of the U.S. and Israel. Israel's intelligence Chief, Meir Dagan, told top government ministers here that Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan has "a dream of returning Turkey's dominance through going down the Islamic hall." He cites Turkey's warmer relations with the Palestinians and Hamas, and improving relations with Syria, Iran and others. Dagan described a new anti-Israel coalition. Turkey facilitated the flotilla and the Marmara is Turkish-flagged.

When Israeli commandos lowered themselves onto the deck of the Marmara they met a violent mob armed with bats, steel bars, knives -- and even guns ripped from Israeli troops who were beaten to the point they feared for their lives. Four of the Israelis were set upon, stabbed and shot, and are still in the hospital. Why then did Israel then send its Naval commandos down to the Marmara, armed mainly with paintball guns, into what was clearly much more than a mission of crowd control? The answer is Israeli commanders now admit it was a case of "bad equipment, bad tactics, and bad intelligence."

Had the team boarding the ship not been lowered one by one to be quickly overwhelmed by violent activists, had they been trained in crowd control, the outcome may have been much different, spared the bloody ending that now has the international community in uproar.

Even close allies are under pressure. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been wobbling between supporting Israel's right to defend its borders against Hamas smuggling and the need to show sympathy for 1.5 million Palestinians under a 3-year blockade struggling to get everything from medical supplies to food. Clinton won't condemn the blockade, even though Israel itself is increasingly questioning keeping it in place, considering that Hamas manages to smuggle arms from underground tunnels in Egypt regardless.

The defense official's claim a portion of the activists aboard the 6 ships had such serious links to extremist groups raises more questions about who in Israel ultimately approved the bungled plan to board the ships. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's inner cabinet is said to be fuming about not being consulted on the actual details of the raid and is demanding answers now. Israel's political leaders and top generals are trying to avoid taking responsibility for the "fiasco at sea," as one newspaper headline screamed here this week.

A top general told Israel's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee this week that Israeli commandos also used some "gray" tactics at sea on the other 5 ships, an indication they may have somehow disabled engines on the ships. But they decided not to do the same to the Marmara, the large cruise ship where most of the activists were, fearing they would create another kind of humanitarian problem by stranding hundred of activists at sea without food and water and creating a different kind of spectacle.

There are now two more ships on course to attempt to run the Israeli blockade on Gaza, arriving sometime later this week. This is a war for world opinion and Israel knows it. But an army source told me "we will also do everything necessary to stop these ships too." Israel still believes the blockade is necessary at any cost. But the price Israel is paying is still being tallied internationally in terms of weakened support in Europe and even in America.

Robocop's Comment:



According to the UN and American Libtards, these are "activists". Reality, Hamas is a terrorist organization, associated with the very people the United States is at war with. We routinely confront terrorists in international waters. Obama is throwing Israel, our best ally in the Middle East, under a bus. He has the practice.

Royal Douche Award 05.24.10

The Winner: President Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa of Mexico.

The REASON: For coming to OUR country, talking smack about OUR laws that crack down on HIS people for sneaking into OUR country. For keeping Mexico a shit hole, thereby causing HIS people to sneak into OUR country. Funny thing is Mexico's own laws ban foreign interference into their affairs, yet his government interferes with OUR affair on a daily basis. In short, he is a hypocrite of the highest order. Senior Calderone, tu eres un douche royal.

RUNNER UP: Barrack Hussein Obama.



The Reason: Letting a foreign leader talk smack about one of our states on our land. He may not like Arizona's law, but Obama is supposed to represent us. How could he do that by letting world leaders into our soil to talk smack without putting said foreign leader in his place? The truth is that Obama DOES NOT REPRESENT US, in thought or deed. For this, and countless other reasons, Obama is a Royal Douche.

Tribute To Out President

Hold the VAT -- Taxpayers May Prefer Spending Cuts

by Michael Barone

The Obama Democrats' stealth strategy for increasing the size and scope of the federal government is well underway, despite huge voter backlash. Federal spending has been increased from a 30-year average of 21 percent of gross domestic product to 25 percent, and a bipartisan commission tasked with reducing the deficit may recommend tax increases.

Presidential economic adviser Paul Volcker has already called for a value-added tax, a form of national sales tax, and presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs has declined to rule it out.

The assumption in some quarters is that a tax increase is inevitable and that the public won't allow any significant decrease in public spending. But there's reason to question that assumption.

Spending cuts have proved politically sustainable in other advanced countries. Economist Tyler Cowen, writing in The New York Times, notes that in the last two decades Canada, Sweden and Finland all cut government spending 20 percent within a few years when faced with structural budget deficits. It may have been painful, but no one saw starving people in the streets of Ottawa, Stockholm or Helsinki.

We may also be seeing some examples in American states. The focus in Washington has been on the federal budget deficit, but state and local government spending amounts to more than 10 percent of gross domestic product and grew faster than the economy over the last decade.

When revenues crashed, congressional Democrats sent one-third of the money in their $862 billion February 2009 stimulus package to state and local governments. The stated reason was to prevent interruption of services.

The political motive was to maintain existing state and local payrolls -- while the private sector has shed 8 million jobs, the public sector has shed zero -- and to keep the dues money flowing to the public employee unions that were so generous to Democrats in the 2008 election cycle.

But that was onetime relief. As New York's Democratic Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch notes, "The stimulus package just raised higher the cliff from which we all will have to jump off." Revenues continue to lag beneath the trajectory of spending. Improvident pension promises are coming due. Crunch time is arriving sooner in the states than in Washington.

Some states and localities have responded by raising taxes. But the two governors elected in November 2009 have not.

In Virginia, Republican Bob McDonnell has shepherded "painful cuts" in spending through a divided legislature. In New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie, facing an $11 billion deficit, has used his office's unusually great powers to cut spending way back.

In the process, Christie has taken on the teacher unions. That required some guts. In 2005, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed ballot propositions to reduce the power of public employee unions. The unions spent something like $100 million -- every dollar ultimately provided by taxpayers -- to drive Schwarzenegger's numbers down and beat the propositions, sending California state government toward insolvency.

That came at a time when surging prosperity seemed likely to continue forever. After losing on the ballot propositions, Schwarzenegger -- like his predecessor Gray Davis -- was unable or unwilling to stop the public employee unions and obedient legislators and local officials from spending every dollar available and many more. Lenders in California and the three other "sand states" -- Nevada, Arizona and Florida -- were busy pumping out the subprime mortgages to uncreditworthy homebuyers that produced the financial crash in 2008. Revenues crashed, and California state government faces something like insolvency.

In today's dire economic climate, Christie seems to be marshalling more voter support than Schwarzenegger was able to in prosperous 2005. He points out that teachers are getting pay raises when most people are not and that they pay zero percent of health insurance premiums. And that the head of the state teachers union makes $550,000 -- all it of derived from taxpayers -- and refused to fire a county union head who wrote a poem calling for Christie's death. Last week, New Jersey voters turned out in large numbers and defeated 260 of 479 local school budgets -- usually 70 percent are approved.

Barack Obama's project of turning the United States into something more like Western Europe has stirred strong opposition and generated much less enthusiasm. What's happening in states like Virginia and New Jersey -- and what happened not so long ago in Canada, Sweden and Finland -- suggests that voters may support spending cuts more than most American politicians and pundits have assumed. And much more than a value-added tax.



Copyright © 2010 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Tea Party Protesters Descend on D.C. With New 'Contract From America'

Fox News

WASHINGTON
-- Thousands of protesters descended on the nation's Capitol for April 15 tax deadline protests as activists offered up a new "Contract From America" aimed at using the winning formula of the 1994 Republican revolution while also developing a direction for the burgeoning movement.

Those behind the document say that by asking visitors to the Web site contractfromamerica.org to propose and vote on the agenda, the results are a list not "handed down from on high by old-bull politicians, but one handed up from the true grassroots in this country."

"After garnering nearly half a million votes in less than two months, the Contract from America has now been finalized into a blueprint that will serve notice to public officials about what the people want for their future," reads a press release
from the contract's organizers

When the votes of more than 443,000 were cast, the top ten planks were:

(1) Require each bill to identify its constitutional authorization
related links

(2) Defund, repeal, and replace government-run health care

(3) Demand a balanced budget

(4) End runaway government spending by imposing a statutory cap limiting growth in federal spending

(5) Enact fundamental reform to simplify and lower taxes

(6)Create a Blue Ribbon task force that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs

(7) Reject cap-and-trade

(8) Pass an “all of the above” energy policy

(9) Stop the 2011 tax hikes

(10) Stop the pork.

The Contract from America may be an effort at organizing the party. Tea Party insiders admit organizing them is "a lot like herding cats," but they also claim that's exactly the way they like it.

"Look we don't (need) leaders for this," said Dick Armey, the former Texas Republican congressman who now leads FreedomWorks and was part of both the 1994 Contract With America and the new contract.

"This is endemic, it's in the DNA of the American people. We love freedom, we understand what works in the world because we are in the world and we really our government to grow up and mind its own business," Armey said.

However, for a movement that prides on the absence of professional political leadership, Thursday's festivities featured some of the best known partisans on the right.

Aside from Armey, a former House majority leader, Reps. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., Steve King, R-Iowa, and Jack Kingston, R-Ga. -- all reliable partisan battlers -- were in attendance.

Bachmann fired up the crowd at Thursday's event in Washington.

"This November, what do you say, let's take back our country," she yelled.

The crowd at the earlier of two rallies scheduled for Thursday was not a huge one by Washington, D.C., standards, coming in at about 3,000 to 4,000 people.

A day earlier organizers downplayed expectations, saying only about 5,000 to 10,000 people were expected to show up because they have encouraged people across the country to cultivate protests in their hometowns.

Tax day protests did occur nationwide, with the D.C. rally marking the end of a 23-state Tea Party Express tour targeting vulnerable Democratic Sens. Harry Reid of Nevada, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Arlen Specter or Pennsylvania as well as nine House members who voted for health care reform.

Anti-Tea Party counter-protesters carried a huge banner that read "The Other 95 percent. Say thanks for your tax cuts Obama." They walked around the crowd but represented only a miniscule percentage of the ralliers.

Speaking from the podium, Kingston welcomed the counter-protesters. "Welcome. I'm hoping that you'll learn something."

Tea Party activists have been on the lookout for infiltrators. In recent weeks, Web sites such as crashtheteaparty.org have urged people to "act on behalf of the Tea Party in ways which exaggerate their least appealing qualities (misspelled protest signs, wild claims in TV interviews, etc.) to further distance them from mainstream America and damage the public’s opinion of them."

Armey offered a message to any would-be infiltrators.

"My daddy told me when I was boy, it's better to be persecuted than ignored. We must be meaning something to these folks or they wouldn't be attacking us."

However, Armey did express concern about the havoc infiltrators could wreak on the movement.

"Why don't you have the decency to be proud to be you for crying out loud? Just don't come in here like a bunch of juvenile delinquents on a lark and try to sabotage our event. We have a right to present ourselves to the American people without mischaracterization. It's hard enough for the conventional press in America to get it, who we are and what are the lessons of liberty that we are so committed to, without you confounding the picture with your antics."

Poll: Opposition to Obama's Health Law Surges

Fox News

WASHINGTON -- Opposition to President Barack Obama's health care law jumped after he signed it -- a clear indication his victory could become a liability for Democrats in this fall's elections.

A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds Americans oppose the health care remake 50 percent to 39 percent. Before a divided Congress finally passed the bill and Obama signed it at a jubilant White House ceremony last month, public opinion was about evenly split. Another 10 percent of Americans say they are neutral.

Disapproval for Obama's handling of health care also increased from 46 percent in early March before he signed the bill, to 52 percent currently -- a level not seen since last summer's angry town hall meetings.

Nonetheless, the bleak numbers may not represent a final judgment for the president and his Democratic allies in Congress.

Only 28 percent of those polled said they understand the overhaul extremely or very well. And a big chunk of those who don't understand it remain neutral. Democrats hope to change public opinion by calling attention to benefits available this year for seniors, families with children transitioning to work and people shut out of coverage because of a medical problem.

"There are some things I like, because I think that there are some people who need health care," said Jim Fall, 73, a retired computer consultant from Wrightwood, Calif.

But "I don't like the idea of the government dictating what health care should be like," added Fall. "Nor do I like them taking money out of Medicare. They are going to create more waste and they are going to take away benefits."

Seniors -- reliable voters in midterm congressional races -- were more likely to oppose the law. Forty-nine percent strongly opposed it, compared with 37 percent of those 64 and younger. Seniors' worries that Medicare cuts to insurers, hospitals and other providers will undermine their care represent a formidable challenge for Democratic congressional candidates this fall.

Analysts said the level of public wariness on such a major piece of social legislation is unusual.

"The surprise of this poll is that you would expect people to be more supportive of the bill now that it's the law of the land -- and that's not the case," said Robert Blendon, a Harvard public health professor who follows opinion trends on health care. "The election for the House is going to be competitive, and health care is clearly going to be an issue."

The nearly $1 trillion, 10-year health care remake would provide coverage to nearly all Americans while also attempting to improve quality and slow the ruinous pace of rising medical costs.

Nonpartisan congressional budget analysts say the law is fully paid for. Its mix of Medicare cuts and tax increases, falling mainly on upper-income earners, would actually reduce the federal deficit. And people covered by large employers may even see a dip in their premiums.

The public doesn't seem to be buying it.

Fifty-seven percent said they expect to pay more for their own health care, contrasted with 7 percent who expect to pay less. And 47 percent said they expect their own medical care to get worse, compared with 14 percent looking forward to an improvement.

"Based on the little information we know, somebody's going to have to pay for it, so it makes sense that taxes would go up," said Lang Fu, 48, an oil and gas engineer from Houston.

Politically, Americans are polarized. Democrats support the overhaul by 68 percent to 18 percent, while Republicans oppose it 85 percent to 9 percent. Independents are roughly even, with 44 percent opposed and 40 percent in favor -- within the poll's margin of error. That suggests there's some space for Obama and the law's supporters to make an appeal in its favor.

Donna Christian of Kingsport, Tenn., is a political independent who says she's leaning in favor of the law. A bad heart forced Christian, 45, to leave her job as a supervisor at a wireless phone company a few years ago. She and her 10-year-old daughter make do on a limited income, and have coverage through Medicaid.

"I think Americans are going to be better off in the long run even if they don't see that now," Christian said. "More will have coverage, and they'll be able to go to the hospital when they need to."

Ron Pollack, head of Families USA, a liberal advocacy group that supports the overhaul, said it will be "a real task" to turn public opinion around, but he's confident it will happen.

"When you dig deeper, individual provisions of the law have enormous support," he said. Pollack believes current polls reflect public disgust with a "very lengthy and messy process."

But Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., says Democrats have already lost their chance to persuade the public.

"They have had 16 months to explain this bill," Camp said. "Good luck trying to explain it in the next six."

The AP-GfK Poll was conducted April 7-12, 2010, by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media. It involved interviews with 1,001 adults nationwide on landline and cellular telephones. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.

Robocop's Comment:

No shit?

Tea Party Tour Brings Out Array of Activism

Fox News

From a former Delta flight attendant to the mother of a fallen Iraq Navy SEAL, the activists and organizers aboard the Tea Party Express each seem to represent a slice of America. But who are these people who drop everything to spend weeks on the road on a bus talking about the Constitution and turning '60s-style activism on its head?

TUPELO, Miss. -- From a former Delta flight attendant to the mother of a fallen Iraq Navy SEAL, the activists and organizers aboard the Tea Party Express each seem to represent a slice of America.

Travelers on the tour, a three-bus caravan barnstorming the country in protest of the Washington establishment, claim to be brought together by common principles: small government, less spending and a fierce defense of individual freedom.

But a lot of Americans hold those values. So who are these people who drop everything to spend weeks on the road on a bus talking about the Constitution and turning '60s-style activism on its head?

Some are folksy, some are strictly business. Everyday Americans make up the bulk of those on board and at the rallies, but there's also a strong organizing factor that makes the cross-country tour, which is on its third run and starting to carry some political heft, what it is.

By some appearances, the highly coordinated rallies and pulse of the 42-city national bus tour have all the markings of a political campaign.

Staff members work 18-hour days, seven days a week, and the chief strategist behind the group, Sal Russo, is a longtime Republican consultant from California who began his political career as a personal aide to Ronald Reagan.

Russo, who is head of the Sacramento-based political action committee, Our Country Deserves Better, which is funding the bus tour, has 40 years of political consulting under his belt. In the mid-1980s, Russo joined forces with former Reagan campaign director Ed Rollins to start a political consulting firm, which took on clients like former Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp.

"It has all the intensity of a campaign, but more like an old-fashioned one," Russo said of his group as the bus rolled along a stretch of highway en route from Arkansas to Mississippi. "We don't have a high-paid staff."

"The Tea Partiers remind me very much of the Reagan crowds of 1966," he added. "But this is a movement, not a party."

The Tea Party Express set off on its first national tour last August to protest the tax-and-spend policies of Congress and to cement its message with the thousands of other Tea Party factions that had formed around the country, said Joe Wierzbicki, one of the group's founding members.

The second bus tour launched in October, largely as an effort to debunk rumors that the Tea Party movement was nothing more than a passing fad.

This time around, Wierzbicki said, the purpose of the "Just Vote Them Out" tour is more exact: "To start putting together the campaigns that will change who's in office in 2010."

He added. "And health care has created the perfect storm for that."

At the tour's weekend stop in Little Rock, Ark., Tea Partiers targeted Arkansas Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln in large part over her support for the health care legislation.

The money raised by the Tea Party Express is hardly loose change. Russo's PAC raked in more than $4.5 million since forming in 2008 to help John McCain's presidential campaign -- some of it from corporate executives and high-end donors like actor Chuck Norris. Russo said the Tea Party bus tour will cost close to $1 million by the time it concludes in Washington on April 15, tax day -- a hefty sum he claims was entirely paid for by "ordinary folks" donating to his PAC.

Roughly 15 staff members, four entertainers and a dozen speakers ride in the red, gold and blue buses that have meandered across the country. A colorful map of the 50 states is painted on each side with the group's mission statement printed clearly: "Stop the out of control spending! No government run healthcare! Stop raising our taxes!"

Some organizers have given up their regular lives to work full-time for the Tea Party Express -- like Tiffiny Ruegner, a massage therapist and single mother from Sacramento, Calif., who lost 90 percent of her clientele last summer after the economy crashed.

"You have all these people who are in different situations in life," said Wierzbicki. "Some of them are married with kids and they have to leave their families for extended periods of time and it's difficult for them."

Debbie Lee, from Phoenix, took to the road after she lost part of her family.

In 2006, Lee was celebrating her birthday with friends when she learned that her son, Marc, was the first Navy SEAL to be killed in Iraq. Now, four years later, Lee is a familiar face at Tea Party rallies, speaking before crowds about the sacrifices of military families.

She says her son's death inspired her to join the movement, which she described as a place for people "who have never before attended political rallies."

The everyday logistics aboard the Tea Party Express don't always run smoothly, a sign that the movement's not quite as polished as its critics would make it out to be. Working toilets, an adequate food supply and scheduling dilemmas are sometimes problems for the over-stretched staff.

"The toilet's clogged -- again!" snapped bus driver Raymond March in the middle of one recent leg.

But Russo said the movement, like others before it, is only for believers.

"You can't do this kind of thing unless you believe in the cause," he said. "Everybody who's involved in this feels passionately about what we're doing. It's not about the money and it's not about the hours."

Independent Voters Go From Hopeful to Angry at Dems

Washington Times

President Obama and congressional Democrats face an uphill climb to reclaim the support of independent voters who vaulted them to the White House and huge majorities in Congress in 2008.

At the end of the bitter, intensely partisan battle to pass Mr. Obama's health care overhaul plan, independent voters, once captivated by hopeful campaign promises, are feeling burned and appear eager to oust Democrats in November's midterm elections.

"There is an overall sense of frustration that no one is listening," pollster Scott Rasmussen said about a problem that has plagued the political party in power for decades.

Mr. Rasmussen said the more pressing issue for Democrats is that swing voters are not just anxious about health care; they're also angry about the stimulus package and auto industry bailouts.

"It is gathering steam in the sense that the longer the frustration goes unanswered, the more it grows," said the founder and president of Rasmussen Reports.

In 2008, Mr. Obama's hope and change messages seemed to win over independents, and he captured about 52 percent of the independent vote in the election that year.

Self-identified independents continued to back Mr. Obama through June, with about 60 percent saying they approved of his job performance. But as the year wore on and the health care battle gained steam, their approval of the president plummeted and hardened in the low 40s, according to Quinnipiac University polls.

The president's approval ratings have not rebounded since the health care vote, but the latest Quinnipiac poll shows some positive movement for Mr. Obama. The percentage of independents who disapprove of Mr. Obama's job performance has dropped nine points, from 53 percent to 44 percent.

"It may be that passage of health care eventually helps President Barack Obama's approval ratings, but at this point there's no sign of that," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

"The White House believes that now that the legislation has been signed into law they can sell it to the American people. Approval of health care reform is growing - or disapproval is shrinking - but the president still has his work cut out for him."

Independents make for fickle voters. Two former political strategists for Bill Clinton said they've already seen independents begin to recoil from Republicans.

In February, Republicans held a 22-percentage-point advantage over Democrats among independents, according to the strategists' polling, but that had slid to just five percentage points by last month. The drop was attributed almost entirely to female independents, who went from favoring the GOP to favoring Democrats.

The strategists, James Carville and Stan Greenberg, who had front-row seats for Republicans' congressional victories in 1994 when Mr. Clinton was president, said they don't see a repeat this November - mainly because the GOP's high point has come and gone. That apex was in January, when Republican Scott Brown won the seat of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

"When we look back on this, we're going to say Massachusetts is when 1994 happened," Mr. Greenberg said.

In state after state, unaffiliated voters now hold the key to elections. Mr. Brown capitalized on that momentum in Massachusetts by telling voters he would be an independent voice in the Senate.

Seeking to boost the numbers, Mr. Obama is traveling across the country to trumpet the short-term benefits of the new health care law.

On Thursday, he was in Portland, Maine, where he predicted voters will start to support health care reform, and ridiculed early polls suggesting that voters continue to be unimpressed with the changes.

"It's been a week, folks," Mr. Obama said. "Before we find out if people like health care reform, we should wait to see what happens when we actually put it into place. Just a thought."

For now, the health care debate's political effect on Republicans and Democrats is easy to spot: Both sides are more energized.

A CNN poll released Tuesday found that 56 percent of Republicans said they're extremely or very enthusiastic about voting in November, a six-point jump since January, while 36 percent of Democrats said they're similarly enthused, which marks a five-point increase.

That enthusiasm gap bodes well for Republicans heading into the elections, but Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Carville said the GOP's brand image is likely too tarnished for them to retake the House and Senate.

They said in 1994, Republicans emerged from every policy fight with a strengthened image, but this year the GOP is suffering from each policy fight.

Mr. Carville predicted that Republicans will net about 25 House seats and six or seven Senate seats - not enough to give them control of either chamber, but enough to drop Democrats' margins dramatically.

He said, though, that this will be the third election in a row in which a party has scored those big congressional wins, after Democrats' double-dip successes of 2006 and 2008, and said voters are profoundly unhappy.

• Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.

Democrats' death by suicide

Washington Times

The government takeover of health care will go down in history as the worst piece of legislation to emerge from a Congress held in general disdain by the American people. The only bipartisanship on the health bill was in the opposition.

Usually autopsies are reserved for after the patient has died, but in this case it is useful to get ahead of the matter. The malformed health legislation is not the only reason Democrats are facing political extinction in November, but it is one of the most dramatic. The legislative process in this country has never been so unseemly. Arm twisting, backroom deals, special privileges and potentially criminal "government jobs for votes" agreements became a normal way of doing business. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fixated on the mantra that the Democrats' health plan is "historic," but so was the Black Plague.

President Obama went to Capitol Hill on Saturday to give a final pep talk to Democrats, where he absurdly called his socialist health care measure "one of the biggest deficit reduction measures in history." This contradicts the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who says his staff currently has no idea what the impact of the plan is "due to the complexity of the legislation." Democrats have been hoodwinked into believing they won't pay a political price for their actions, but they will soon discover they miscalculated.

The new system will suffer a tsunami of bad publicity when states sue the federal government over unfunded mandates, when the IRS begins enforcing the aspects of the bill that voters never knew existed, when small businesses start firing employees because they cannot afford the higher costs of the new system, when new and unforeseen costs blow out the already record federal budget deficit, and when seniors begin to feel the impact of Medicare cuts. All of this is what Mr. Obama euphemistically calls "bending the curve" but which seniors will find out is better termed "denial of care." Whether the formal "death panels" will convene before the November elections is still to be determined.

Many members of Congress probably don't know exactly what is in the bill. The 2,300 pages of "fixes" to the Senate bill presented last week were only a draft, and no member can be certain what has been slipped in. A frantic Democratic Party memo sent out Thursday instructed members -- twice, in italics -- not to "get into a discussion of details of the [Congressional Budget Office] scores and the textual narrative" with the bill's opponents. But the devil was in those details. Mrs. Pelosi's offhand statement that members would learn what was in the bill after it was passed should have been a warning.

The majority party was even having problems over the weekend determining if they could vote to amend a law before it was signed by the president. It is a sad day for America when senior members of Congress either dont understand the Constitution or no longer think it applies.

Democrats in Congress refuse to believe the contempt with which the American people hold them. Gallup shows congressional approval ratings in the teens and headed downward. Gallup also found that "more Americans believe the new legislation will make things worse rather than better for the U.S. as a whole, as well as for them personally."

Democrats are in much worse shape than in 1994 when they lost power, and the opposition is far more energized. Once voters have a chance to tell the most irresponsible government in American history that enough is enough, the Democrats' brief reign will expire, and be deemed death by suicide.

5 Ways Liberals Misjudge the American People

by John Hawkins

One of the reasons liberals tend to do such an incredibly poor job of governing is that they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the American people. Given that liberals also fundamentally misunderstand Christianity, the Constitution, economics, and human nature, I guess it's no big surprise that they don't get the American people either. Come to think of it, I guess it's pretty much par for the course. I mean, let's face it, without conservatives around to help keep them in check, liberals would utterly destroy everything that is good about America and most of them would be baffled about what they were doing wrong right up until the end. But enough about the Left's general lack of common sense -- let's talk about how they misjudge the American people.

They believe the American people want liberal policies. When you're a conservative, it's almost impossible to filter out liberal views. Your kids are exposed to liberalism at school, Hollywood forces liberal ideas down your throat when you watch TV, the local paper leans left -- you just can't get away from it. On the other hand, if you're a liberal, you really don't have to hear what conservatives think. This can lead to the sort of groupthink that once inspired film critic Pauline Kael to exclaim,

"I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where (Nixon voters) are I don't know. They're outside my ken."

Now, some liberals know better -- which is why every Democratic President runs as a centrist even though they immediately intend to veer way off to the left the moment they're elected.

However, the belief that liberalism is genuinely popular with the American people is still pervasive. For example, on a daily basis, you can hear the netroots claiming that Obama's approval rating is slipping because he's not getting enough of his legislation passed. This ignores the fact that Obama's legislative agenda is having trouble getting passed because it's about as popular as strychnine milkshakes in our center-right country.

Liberals believe that many Americans don't know what's in their own best interests. Liberals tend to falsely believe that they're better, smarter, and more caring than the average person. This often leads them to make rather glib and far reaching assumptions about the "best" way for OTHER people to live.

Why would anyone need a SUV or a gun? You don't REALLY need those things. Also, liberals know what your salary should be, how your children should be taught, and what words you should be allowed to use without hurting anyone else's feelings. Oh, you want to pick your own lightbulb? Nonsense: You might do it wrong! Let liberals tell you which one you need.

There's just something about liberalism that turns most of its practitioners, no matter how dumb or incompetent they may be, into finger wagging professors who want to lecture the rest of the country about how to live their lives. See the man running the show at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a real world example of how that works.

Liberals believe that the American people want to be treated like children. Sure, there are always going to be losers who want the government to do everything for them, but bottom feeders who want to be taken care of by the government have never represented the majority of the American people. If they ever do, liberals will undoubtedly be happy about it, but the rest of us won't because it'll mean the end of America as a great nation.

However, for the moment at least, a large percentage of Americans not only don't want the government's help, we would be pleased if the government didn't even know we existed. In essence, we want the government to defend the country, maintain the roads, enforce the law and leave us alone as much as possible. This, by necessity, puts us at loggerheads with liberals who are obsessed with controlling as much of people's lives as possible.

Liberals believe that most conservatives are evil. The problem with pegging people who merely disagree with you as greedy, evil, malevolent racists is that it tends to lead to kneejerk disagreement with everything they believe. That's why people go to such great lengths to compare their political opposites to Nazis -- because the thinking goes, the Nazis are bad and if they're like Nazis, no matter what they're saying, then it must be bad. Incidentally, the Nazis were socialists, animal rights activists, advocates of bigger government, supporters of the social welfare state, and supporters of unions -- just like liberals -- but that's neither here nor there.

The problem with believing that conservatism is evil, besides the fact that it's not true, is that it leads even well-intentioned liberals to disregard conservative ideas. That's especially relevant because if you look through American history, you'll find ideologies are much more malleable than people might think. For example, at times in our history, liberalism has looked favorably upon tax cuts, Christianity, and patriotism as opposed to fighting against all those things while pretending to do otherwise. Put another way, if liberals were to examine conservative ideas with an open mind, they might learn something.

Liberals believe they can lie to the American people without consequence. Saying that politicians lie is like noting that rats like cheese. Without question, politicians from both parties are guilty of lying.

However, in the political realm, liberals lie much, much more often than conservatives. Why? There are two reasons for it. Conservatives tend to believe liberals are stupid, but liberals tend to think conservatives are evil. Is it wrong to lie about someone who's dumb? Yes. Ok, now would it be wrong to lie to stop Hitler? Ehr -- probably not. Because so many liberals view conservatives as evil, in their culture it's considered acceptable for them to lie about the Right. Very, very seldom will you ever hear a liberal criticize another liberal for lying about a conservative even though it's an every day thing in the liberal media.

Also, because the Left controls the mainstream media, they can often get away with lies no conservative ever could. Put another way, conservatives tend to be more honest because they have to be while liberals are used to having the mainstream media cover up, ignore, and explain away their lies.

The problem with that is that over time, the MSM has become less powerful and the new media has filled the gap. For example, when a cranky Harry Reid claimed at the health care summit that no one has talked about reconciliation, a video was quickly put out proving him wrong. Now that same video is in circulation, in the new media, proving that Harry Reid is a shameless liar with no personal integrity. The mainstream media is no longer the only gatekeeper for the news and it's allowing Americans to see through the lies of the Left faster than ever. That's why Barack Obama, who sometimes has trouble keeping his story straight from day-to-day, has dropped so far, so fast.



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Priceless Pic

Now This Is Funny

Mystery Solved? Ad Firm Says 'Anonymous' Business Owners Behind Bush Billboard

Mystery solved?

A Minneapolis-based advertising firm has cleared the air, sort of, surrounding a mysterious billboard that went up in Minnesota featuring a picture of former President George W. Bush with the words "Miss Me Yet?"

Bev Master, office manager with Schubert & Hoey Outdoor Advertising, said the billboard -- which the firm owns -- was rented out by a "group of small business owners and individuals who just felt like Washington was against them."

"They thought it was a funny way to get out their message," she added.

However, Master told FoxNews.com the ad buyers wish to "remain anonymous."

The billboard, which Master said has been up since December, stirred an online frenzy in recent days as it started to attract more attention.

With nobody initially claiming ownership, local newspapers and blogs wondered aloud whether pictures of the billboard were real, who put it there and whether the message was meant as a slap at President Obama's performance to date or a dig at Bush's unpopularity.

Minnesota Public Radio answered the first question on Monday. Reporter Bob Collins wrote that he saw the billboard on I-35 in Wyoming, Minn., last week, and posted a giant picture of it online.

"It's real," he wrote. Wyoming is about 40 miles north of the Twin Cities.

And all indications are the billboard was a slap at Obama.

"My personal feeling is it's probably anti-Obama," Mark Drake, a spokesman for the Minnesota Republican Party, told FoxNews.com. Drake said he first caught word of the mystery-board a couple weeks ago and has "no idea" who designed and paid for it.

Wyoming Mayor Sheldon Anderson said he's gotten lots of "positive" responses about the sign from people in the community, which he said generally leans "right" on political issues.

"I've had people willing to make donations to keep the billboard up longer," Anderson told Fox News. "They're free to send any message they want, and I think it's very creative."

In another sign that the billboard was not intended as an Obama compliment, a company that bills itself as "The Mother of all Anti-Obama Superstores" has started selling bumper stickers featuring the "Miss Me Yet?" caption and the same photo of Bush -- only one showing him facing in a different direction.

A spokesman for the company, Megatudes, told FoxNews.com that the company had nothing to do with the billboard.

Robocop's Comment:

No, I do not miss Bush, but he is nowhere as bad as Obama.

7 Lies Under Two Minutes

Ran into this on the Christian Zone Forum.

Obama Changes Message, Trips Up

Jillian Bandes

President Obama delivered a State of the Union address that was very different than the one he was planning on giving just a few weeks ago.

The State of the Union was supposed to be a victory speech for health care. It was supposed to showcase lower unemployment numbers, and a stronger national defense effort, buttressed by his recent shift of troops to Afghanistan.

Instead, the speech was an omnibus apology by President Obama on his failure to accomplish anything.

"We face big and difficult challenges. And what the American people hope – what they deserve – is for all of us, Democrats and Republicans, to work through our differences; to overcome the numbing weight of our politics," said Obama.

No actual apology was made, of course. But it was clear by the tone of his voice, and the frequent references to agenda items that were unlikely to be accomplished, that there was little room for optimism.

The issue in the speech most demonstrative of his apologetic approach was, of course, the health care. All Obama said on the issue was a somewhat timid reminder that people should "take a second look" at an effort which even Democrats think will probably be futile. He said he didn't get into the issue to make friends, and then quickly recognized his wife for her "healthy kids" initiative. The brevity of his remarks health care demonstrated a further resignation to failure; the issue dominated his schedule just a few weeks ago.

Instead, the Obama talked about jobs – a key political action item for the 2010 mid-terms, and his own re-election in 2012. He honed in on a “jobs bill” that ostensibly pushed small business investment, infrastructure, and manufacturing, with an emphasis on “green jobs.” It would potentially use the remainder of the $700 billion that hasn’t been used for the financial bailout program.

Scott Hodge, the president of the Tax Foundation, said using that money for a jobs bill was exactly opposite of the approach the President should have taken towards decreasing unemployment.

"The most harmful taxes for economic growth are high corporate taxes, and high personal income taxes. The U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world," said Hodge. "He's acting contrary to what the real current wisdom is to not only foster, but sustain long term economic growth."

Obama’s other big push was for a “spending freeze,” which critics have viewed as throwing ice cubes at a forest fire. The freeze would be a partial, 3-year cut in “discretionary spending” – less than 1 percent of the federal budget. This has received widespread criticism, such as that launched by Sen. Cathy McMorris-Rogers, (R-Wa.), who said that the focus of cutting spending was off-base.

“We need to get serious about entitlement reform, in addition to just balancing the budget,” she said.

One item that has garnered bipartisan support was increased bank regulations that he said would end the “too big to fail” phenomenon, reign in profits from financial institutions that have accepted federal bail out money, and increase the amount of information that consumers get from financial institutions. These regulations have largely been viewed favorably by the right and left.

Obama also dealt – in veiled references – to the blow Democrats had suffered after the special Massachusetts Senate election. Unfortunately, words cannot fix the terminal blow Scott Brown’s win dealt to the Democrats’ 60-vote supermajority.

"We have finished a difficult year. We have finished a difficult decade. But it's a new year. Let's start anew," he said.

Obama as Hitler

by Kevin McCullough

This week in a bold move the President broke a barrier that his supporters should be quite concerned about. For in doing so he has broken a barrier that should always be seen as sacred. However, this will likely be marginalized by the leftist media that offers it’s blind support regardless of any mastery of facts.

Case and point... Rachel Maddow.

She is MSNBC's less funny and perhaps more butch version of Keith Olbermann. And on this past Friday night she did an entire "bit" on anyone who would compare Obama's policies to socialism as "not very serious people." Of course people seeing the “bit” were a good deal uncertain of Maddow as she herself kept interchanging the terms socialist and communist. But liberals often are confused by facts and frequently either do not understand what they are discussing, or discuss it purposefully with deception. Whatever the case Maddow thought herself witty.

We're supposed to believe her because... ...well... ...she said it. It does not matter to Maddow if President Obama’s policies are in substance moving us towards centralized control where the Government becomes the caretaker/nanny and the individual is lulled into mind-numbing moronic infancy suckling off the government's “all-sufficient” teet.

But if she got that worked up over a few people calling Obama’s socialist policies by name, imagine what she will say about the title of this column?

And yet simply because Maddow, and others who defend their loyalty to Obama in irrational ways, still contend that he produces nothing but rainbows, ponies, and butterflies, doesn't mean we shouldn't compare what Obama is doing with others in history who have already tried those policies.

Which brings us to this point: This week President Obama exercised for the first time a policy decision that shares a trait held in common with Adolf Hitler.

The headline was leaked late in the Friday afternoon news cycle so that as few people as possible would pay attention, but here's the crux of a very real problem: President Obama is moving policy on public health into the direction of doctors being forced to act against their conscience. (For liberals educated in public schools, a conscience is that little voice inside you that used to inform you as to what was right or wrong.)

President Obama wants them performing abortions, whether they believe it to be an immoral thing or not. And while the comparisons to Hitler are made either on eugenist or racist grounds--but you cannot escape the impact.

In the 1930's and 40's as Hitler wished to use his captive “lesser-humans” for "experiments" in his final solution. He too forced doctors to do things they did not wish to do. Everything from injecting living humans with horrible chemicals to see the effect, to trying differing grades of poisonous gases in what eventually became death chambers. These doctors, who were purveyors of those things that helped save lives, were suddenly forced to use the medical knowledge they had of death--to end them.

In today’s scenario Obama wants doctors to exterminate “lesser humans” for the purpose of immediate solutions to his social experiment. And he wishes them to do so regardless of whether or not they are compelled by the higher call of morality on an individual basis.

Put another way Obama's policy shift would be the equivalent of forcing those who believed slavery to be immoral and never even owned slaves, to begin purchasing them, beating them, raping them, and exploiting them.

This policy shift that Obama has attempted to slide under the radar screen is grossly immoral, and doctors should disobey it and run a medical mutiny against the administration if it becomes law.

The President did this, as he has done most things since coming to power as a pure, pragmatic, political move to pay off the campaign favors of those special interest groups he railed against during his campaign. In this case the abortion industry which is increasingly under attack from the next generation who understand the taking of innocent life to be horrific.

As to all the comparisons that the left made in 8 years of the previous administration, they never once had such a clear comparison that so vividly laid out the exact parallel between the dictator who thought it moral to gas people in chambers, and now a President who believes that live babies should be left to starve in soiled utility closets of hospitals, even if it violates the voice of God telling the doctor to do otherwise.

This stroke of the policy pen, moves the administration into its first conflict with the first amendment right of religious belief and expression, and he should be penalized for it quickly.

Friday, Ms. Maddow, President Obama took a demonstrable step in the shoes, actions, and example of Adolf Hitler.

What have you to say about that?

I’ve Got a Great Idea: Let’s Kiss Some Terrorist Butt!

by Doug Giles

I’ve got a great idea: Let’s kiss some terrorist butt! I’m talkin’ a big, slobbery wet one right on their back forty. We might as well, as we are about to muck up the rest of our country with a stimulus package that will stimulate only a liberal government’s lug nuts.

Danka, Obama. Good job, Pelosi. Suffering succotash, Barney Frank.

Barney Frank. What an SNL skit waiting to happen. If I were named Barney, I’d be pissed. (Though given his sexual proclivities, he does have quite the apropos surname, eh?)

In addition to the FUBAR governmental enslavement our nation’s about to be saddled with, we’ve officially begun the mainlining of secularism, the okaying of nation-sinking sins, the Ex-Laxing of our immigration laws, the acceleration and radical funding of abortions aplenty, and the real possibility of the government duct-taping any mouth that does not repeat Obama’s mantras. I’d say we’re pretty much sunk.

Welcome to hell, America. Can I take your coat?

As America begins its swirl around and down the global toilet, I say we expedite our demise and put on some buttsmacker lip balm and kiss some terrorist booty. We’re courting other failed strategies, why not be nice to those who want us on ice?

What’s that? You say we already are smooching Achmed’s arse? Oh wow! I didn’t know. I’ve been watching MSNBC, and since Obama’s been elected all I’ve seen on that unwatched network is that everything is beautiful in its own way.

Check this out.

According Martin Mawyer, President and Founder of the Christian Action Network, we’ve been turning a blind eye and deaf ear to Islamic death camps, not in some sucky Suckistan country around the world but in our own backyard and, and, we’ve been doing this for quite some time.

Mawyer informed me on my talk show last Thursday of something the American public was never supposed to know:

“The 2006 Justice Department document that exposes 35 terrorist training compounds in the U.S. was marked ‘Dissemination Restricted to Law Enforcement.’ All the copies of Sheikh Muburak Gilani’s terrorist training video, ‘Soldiers of Allah,’ had been confiscated and sealed—all of them, that is, except one—that Christian Action Network now reveals in the documentary Homegrown Jihad: The Terrorist Camps Around the U.S.

It seems unfathomable—nearly three-dozen terrorist training compounds in the U.S.—and the FBI, Homeland Security, and State Department are no help at all? But the evidence is irrefutable: as Jamaat ul-Fuqra (known in the U.S. as Muslims of America) leader Sheik Muburak Gilani professes on the Soldiers of Allah video, ‘We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are America.’ Gilani’s strategy to off us infidels is ‘Act like you are his friend. Then kill him.’

The Soldiers of Allah training video teaches American students how to operate AK-47 rifles, rocket launchers, and machine guns; how to kidnap Americans and then kill them; how to conduct sabotage and subversive operations; and how to use mortars and explosives.

With almost 50 terrorist attacks on American soil linked to Jamaat ul-Fuqra—ranging from bombings to murder to plots to blowing up American landmarks—what will it take for the government to protect its citizens from self-professed enemies of Americans? They hide across 35 American cities as innocuous-sounding as Hancock, NY; Red House, VA; and Seattle, WA.

The allegations are serious, which is why Christian Action Network took more than two years to research Muslims of America—going inside the compounds with their video cameras and questions to confront violence and confirm the truth. Their mission? To make Americans aware of the threats and have Jamaat ul-Fuqra placed on the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organization Watch List, thereby shutting down the camps in the U.S. run by ul-Fuqra's front group, Muslims of America.

The State Department issued a statement on January 31, 2002, regarding why the group was no longer recognized as a terrorist organization: ‘Jamaat ul-Fuqra has never been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. It was included in several recent annual terrorism reports under ‘other terrorist groups,’ i.e., groups that had carried out acts of terrorism but that were not formally designated by the Secretary of State. However, because of the group’s inactivity during 2000, it was not included in the most recent terrorism report covering that calendar year.’

The effect of being removed from terrorist reports? In January 2002 Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and later beheaded while attempting to attend an interview with Jamaat ul-Fuqra leader Sheikh Muburak Gilani.

Was this an isolated incident? Hardly. In March 2003, Fuqra and al Qaeda member Lyman Faris pled guilty in federal court to a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, and the list goes on.

Political Battle Brews Over 2010 Census

Fox News

A political battle has erupted over next year's census with Republican lawmakers protesting President Obama's decision to take a bigger role in supervising the process.

The Census Bureau director, who reports to the commerce secretary, now also will keep the White House directly in the loop.

The White House says it is following a historical precedent and that this simply shows that the census is a priority for the president. But Republicans say it looks like a political power grab.

"The United States census should remain independent of politics," House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. "It should not be directed by political operatives working out of the White House."

"I'm very concerned," Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told FOX News. "The Census Bureau has worked for decades to get rid of the cronyism and the partisan politics that had permeated that agency.

"And they have done it by bringing professionalism to the agency and making certain that individuals that came there went through a very thorough process. Anytime there is an administration that will tamper with that, this is a concern to anyone."

Blackburn, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, says the committee will hold hearings to investigate the change.

The census count is supposed to be a non-partisan process. But it also helps to determine how congressional lines are drawn. And it shows the demographic changes of the nation of the past 10 years, which could shift billions of dollars in federal funding for things like schools and roads and job training.

Some Republicans suspect this could be a move by the White House to gerrymander those political boundaries so they benefit Democratic candidates.

The move comes after some advocates worried that Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Obama's nominee for commerce secretary, wouldn't push hard for a count of Hispanics and other minorities in the census.

Boehner said the White House oversight "appears to be motivated by politics" because Gregg has been picked by Obama to take over the Commerce Department.

But Obama officials insist they're simply returning to the model used under President Clinton.

"I think the historical precedent of this is there's a director of the census that works for the secretary of commerce, the president and also works closely with the White House to ensure a timely and accurate count," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

The Clinton and Bush administrations had different ways of dealing with the census. The Clinton administration placed a panel of experts at the Census Bureau in charge of adjusting data for people the census missed or double-counted. Clinton officials said it would insulate the decision from political pressure.

The Bush administration changed those regulations before that panel ruled on the 2000 results, leaving it up to the commerce secretary to oversee the bureau's work.

Why Close Gitmo?

By Andrew C. McCarthy

A much-anticipated report laments that prisoners “live under conditions, rules, and policies designed” for “incorrigibly violent” detainees. The security controls were found to be “extraordinary,” employing “isolation and lack of in-cell as well as out-of-cell programs and activities.” Even allowing that these measures were in fact designed for some of the most savage of killers, the report nonetheless asserted that the strictures imposed were “pointlessly harsh and degrading.” They included “extreme” measures such as “lack of windows, denial of reading material, a maximum of three hours a week out-of-cell time, [and] lack of outdoor recreation.”

In sum, the report concluded, the detention conditions imposed by the United States government “can only be explained as reflecting an unwillingness to acknowledge the inmates’ basic humanity.”

In short, the federal penitentiary at Florence, Colo., is no Guantanamo Bay.

On the contrary, Gitmo — despite being repeatedly condemned as a blight on America’s reputation by the Obama campaign, congressional Democrats, alleged human-rights activists, European solons, and the legion of lawyers who’ve volunteered their services to al-Qaeda — is a model facility. According to a Pentagon investigation to be presented at the White House this week — a study ordered with great fanfare by Barack Obama in the first hours of his presidency — the detention camp, where about 245 alien enemy combatants are held, is in full compliance with the humane-treatment requirements of the Geneva Conventions.

The Human Rights Watch report cited above was a study of conditions in American civilian prisons, including those maintained by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Specifically, it addresses “supermax” prisons, such as the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Colorado. In these prisons, the government houses convicted terrorists alongside some 20,000 of the most violent offenders in U.S. custody — many of whom are Americans, not foreign jihadists.

The HRW report was completed in February 2000, in the last days of pre-9/11 obliviousness. That fact should remind us of the danger we invite by allowing transnational progressives to define our national-security priorities — as the Left has been allowed to do with Gitmo.

It seems like ancient history but, since history is repeating itself, it’s worth revisiting: Before nearly 3,000 Americans were slaughtered on September 11, 2001, the great progressive crusade was against American incarceration practices. Putting criminals in jail and keeping them there for appropriate periods of time was the 1980s course-correction that led to dramatic declines in crime rates, which had skyrocketed after the criminal-rights revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

The success of these reforms led to predictable caterwauling on the Left about root causes and rehabilitation, and to the claim that imprisonment causes more crime (in much the same way that we’re today told that defending ourselves against terrorists causes terrorism). This campaign against our effective anti-crime policies often took the form of maddening stories in the New York Times, which frequently and hilariously puzzled over the supposed paradox that crime rates had plummeted “and yet” prison populations were still high. The anti-incarceration campaign also was conducted through studies such as the HRW report, which posited that supermax prisons violated U.S. treaty obligations, that prison authorities were failing to “respect the inherent dignity of each inmate,” and that they were subjecting “prisoners to treatment that constitutes torture or that is cruel, inhuman, or degrading” — that they were, in short, operating prisons “in ways that violate basic human rights.”

It sounds familiar because, following 9/11, this litany was repackaged as the case against Gitmo, the Bush torture-chamber of lefty lore where, in reality, prisoners have mostly gained weight, because they’ve never in their lives eaten better (scrupulously halal) meals or gotten better medical care. And when they aren’t exercising or praying on their government-issued prayer rugs, they are free to spend their leisure time studying the government-issued Korans distributed to inmates by ceremonially gloved Muslim prison guards — despite the fact that the prisoners believe the book instructs them to kill Americans.

This narrative repackaging, though, was done with a strange twist. We needn’t be concerned about shutting Gitmo, we are told, because we have perfectly good prisons in the United States for detaining dangerous terrorists — the very facilities the same critics described as human-rights outrages before 9/11.

We don’t seem to recognize this game, no matter how often it is played. Before 9/11, the bane of the ACLU’s existence was FISA (the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). The FISA court, critics said, was just a rubber stamp for “domestic spying,” its judges mindlessly authorizing national-security surveillance and searches. After 9/11, Bush, like all wartime presidents, ordered monitoring of potential enemy communications without seeking court permission. The Left’s response was to denounce this as an outrageous violation of FISA, whose laudable checks and balances, we were now told, provided the careful judicial oversight that was our insurance against domestic spying.

Or take Afghanistan. Remember when it was a quagmire? It was futile. We were going to be stuck there for decades. But then came Iraq, and suddenly Afghanistan was the “good war” in our campaign against jihad — the war all Americans supported. But Afghanistan was the bad war before it was the good war, and our military operations there had been lambasted by the Left because they reflected Bush’s post-9/11 conclusion that the law-enforcement approach to terrorism (the one we are now backsliding into) was not working.

And even the ineffective law-enforcement model was once too robust for some: Before they discovered the glories of the criminal-justice system in the rubble of the World Trade Center, the Left had insisted that our legal approach was a sham, with kangaroo courts where terrorists were serially convicted (at a 100 percent rate) because the Justice Department had incited an atmosphere of intimidation in which prosecutors, using elastic conspiracy laws, could convict innocent men simply because they were Muslims or Arabs, or because they were engaged in political dissent.

The only thing we can be sure of is that the minute the critics get their way they will immediately move the goalposts. If Gitmo is too harsh and prisoners are sent to federal supermax lockups, then those will be too harsh, too. If military-commission trials are considered unfair, the same people will say that terrorists convicted in civilian courts were railroaded by overzealous prosecutors, fearful juries, and suspect evidence.

Gitmo, as the new study documents, is a model prison. It is also a necessary one. Even the Obama administration has come to terms with the fact that we must be able to detain dangerous people who cannot, for various good reasons, be tried in our civilian courts. We need to hold those people, and interrogate those people, somewhere — and Gitmo is the best place we have. We could close Gitmo, and undermine our national security, in an attempt to satisfy the critics. But we’re kidding ourselves if we think they will ever be satisfied.

Change in black politics

Washington Times

Amid the focus on Barack Obama being the first black president, there has been a change, subtle and largely unnoticed by most, regarding black politics in the Democratic Party. Black Democrats - and the great majority of blacks are Democrats - have almost entirely moved away from pulpit politics and are now firmly rooted in traditional politics with only a marginal influence by pastors.

The Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy's retirement as pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church last Sunday was the embodiment of a change in political leadership that has taken more than 40 years to ripen. Mr. Fauntroy truly embodies the political and ministerial confluence as a pastor deeply involved in the civil-rights movement who became the District's first delegate in Congress in 1971. He was preceded in Congress by the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, who represented that part of New York City from 1945 to 1971. And black ministers who succeeded Mr. Fauntroy included the Revs. William Gray, pastor of Philadelphia's Bright Hope Baptist Church, who became the first black House Majority Whip; Floyd Flake, pastor of Greater Allen African Methodist Episcopal Cathedral, who represented Queens, N.Y.; and (although they have never been congregational ministers) Jesse L. Jackson Sr., the first African American to win a statewide presidential nominating contest, and Al Sharpton, who also ran for president.

"I will be touring the nation with many other pioneers of the civil rights movement at historically black colleges and universities, holding 'pass the torch' ceremonies and symposiums," Mr. Fauntroy said. He gave more than a hint that his retirement represented a passing of the torch of political power to black politicians and activists whose values may be rooted in faith but who are not persons of the cloth.

It may seem presumptuous to say anyone succeeded or preceded Mr. Fauntroy, but he does represent a political culture that is waning in influence over Democratic and civil-rights politics and activism. The current NAACP president, Ben Jealous, and for that matter the two preceding him, Kweisi Mfume, a professional politician, and Bruce Gordon, a corporate executive, have not been ministers. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was founded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has had two presidents since 1997 - Martin Luther King III and current president Charles Steele Jr., neither of whom is a minister.

It seems that with the ascension of Mr. Obama - but only in small measure because of it - the days of the political minister-activist are over in the Democratic Party. And that may be a profoundly unsettling change for some who are involved in black politics.

Robocop's Comment:

Maybe the whining will stop.