Friday, February 8, 2013
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
NO SKEETS WERE HARMED IN THIS PHOTO-SHOPPED SKEET SHOOT
!!!!
Secret Plumbers and Shooting Skeets
by garnet92
http://peskytruth.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/secret-plumbers-and-shooting-skeets/
Three men and one woman were ushered from one of the black SUVs into Building R-uh by a half-dozen Secret Service bodyguards. They were Obama’s plumbers, a covert team of Photoshop experts, called up for another project: Obama had to be shown shooting a skeet (whatever that was).
All of them were wearing fake Groucho Marx glasses with fake nose, eyebrows, and moustache attached to hide their identities.
They were an elite team, the best of the best when it came to creating or editing any kind of document or photograph. They could work miracles, and their work defied detection (except when other experts dissected it).
They were guarded 24/7 and had sworn fealty to their lord and master, B. Hussein Obama. In exchange, they were handsomely paid and lived in palatial comfort, but were not allowed to communicate with the outside world – that was verboten. The main enticement was that their families also lived like kings. Even if some freaky “accident” were to befall them, their families would be taken care of – it was like a fabulous living insurance policy.
They were the elite of the specious document world, living like rock stars or professional athletes, but only in the controlled surroundings of Stalag Barack.
The compound’s only identification was a simple sign showing it to be a Cook County Correctional Center, and it looked just like you’d expect a prison to look (from the outside), complete with razor wire topping high masonry walls and guard towers at strategic points surrounding the facility.
Multiple guards and a ram-proof vehicle gate was the only entry point into the compound. It was a fortress.
It was also the plumber’s home.
They were initially recruited (ostensibly) to correct discrepancies in commercial imaging and to create complex legal documents for a fictitious company. Competition was fierce and testing was stringent – only the best survived. The few who passed all of the functional tests were then subject to security testing.
They were required to pass a Sigma level of security (absent his election, Obama couldn’t even pass a Confidential level). The Sigma level was created specifically for the plumbers unit. It surpassed all other levels of security, even those granted to members of Obama’s cabinet and the Joint Chiefs. That was not surprising, since the public exposure of any of the unit’s projects could literally bring down the Presidency.
In the end, each was offered an iron-clad, lifetime contract – it was not unlike selling one’s soul to the devil. A leak of any kind was considered a traitorous act (an Obama Executive Order says so), punishable by life in prison, or death.
They would work directly for the Office of the President and answer to no one but Valerie Jarret. She was the EIC (Executive in Charge) and set out the particulars of what they were to do and when.
Today, they were tasked with creating several pictures of the President shooting at skeets (whatever they were) while at Camp David. Jarret had decided that several pictures of the president confidently blasting away with a shotgun would endear him to gun enthusiasts and soften their opposition to his new gun control measures.
Perhaps they’d even show the president holding up several skeets he’d bagged. She wondered if it was appropriate to mount a skeet – perhaps they could show one mounted on the wall in the president’s quarters? Did skeets have horns? Could they be mounted to appear vicious; mouth open showing fangs? Did they run in packs? Prides? Pods? She needed to know more about the elusive creatures.
When Valerie had first approached the president about his “skeet shooting all the time” remark, she suggested that they should validate the remark by actually staging some pictures of the president really shooting a skeet. Otherwise, real skeet hunters would want to see some hard evidence that Obama truly went skeet hunting often and sometimes even skinned and gutted the animals himself. Without pictures as proof, he’d be ridiculed (again) and be called a liar (again).
Unfortunately, our fearless leader didn’t react well. “Are you shittin’ me?” “Ain’t no way Ahm gettin’ close to a gun, I might shoot mah eye out.”
Later it was learned that Obama’s mama was scared by fireworks the night before he was born (it was at one of those typical Kenyan celebrations), and to this day, he loses control of his bladder whenever he hears a big BANG nearby. So, actually operating any kind of thing that went BOOM was vetoed.
So Barry wee-wee’d out and refused to hoist a shotgun, that pretty much shot Plan A to hell. On to
Plan B.
Plan B was to create “evidence” that the president did actually shoot some skeets and by golly, he hit one of them right below the antler – great shot! He quickly got his bag limit and graciously allowed the other hunters in his group to continue without him “hogging” all of the shots on the elusive skeets.
When PDF (President de facto) Valerie explained what she wanted to the plumbers, they admitted that they didn’t know anything about skeets. One, Barb Dwyer, was the only one who was skeptical that a skeet was even an animal.
Barb was one of the stars of the plumbers unit since “developing” an entire series of college transcripts from Occidental College, Columbia and Harvard showing Obama as 4.0 student who was named to the Dean’s List for his grades. They’d not yet been released to the public; they were awaiting a serious assault on Obama’s refusal to release any school documents – that’s when they’d eviscerate any detractor by releasing the “transcripts” to refute the accusations and validate Obama’s elite intellect at the same time.
Barb was eager to see her work published. It would be akin to a gallery showing of her art.
But in the meantime, the skeet research occupied center stage and time was short.
Cy O’narra was responsible for the research and quickly set to work. It only took one quick Google to learn that they’d been hornswoggled. A skeet wasn’t an animal at all, it was a clay disk that was flung out in front of a shooter to simulate the flight of a bird.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
O’narra quickly contacted Valerie and gave her the news. She was aghast – she had to get to Obama quickly before he made any other dumbass statements about skeets. Luckily, she had him on lockdown. He dare not say anything to anybody without her express consent; she had clamped down on his extraneous comments following the “all the time” skeet reference. Every time he opened his mouth, he wound up with Michelle’s size twelve brogan in it.
So, on to Plan C. They would stage a single photo of the president with gun in hand and layer in some shots from Camp David’s skeet shooting area. This would be simple since a full digital video studio had been created at Stalag Barack and they had access to thousands of stock images taken at Camp David.
When Valerie was inaugurated as PDF, she commissioned two professional photographers to take digital shots of all areas of the White House from varying angles and in different lighting conditions. She did the same at Camp David. Those stock images could be used via Chroma keying (green screen) to place anyone anywhere, doing anything at any time.
Valerie was not to be trifled with; she would stop at nothing to retain her power as the crone behind the throne – and she was prepared.
She could easily produce an image of Obama anywhere on the grounds of Camp David doing manly things like riding a horse, crotch-grabbing, whittling and spitting.
It was widely whispered that if negotiations with Congress made it necessary, she (and the plumbers) could easily produce an image of Speaker of the House John Boehner in a guest bedroom practicing husbandry with a polka-dotted sheep named Baa-baa-rella.
But now, she had her work cut out for her. She had to (somehow) get Obama to hold a gun, a big shotgun at that, in a shooting position as if he were shooting at a skeetie (or whatever it’s called), all without wetting himself.
Later that day, she had the administration’s property master bring by a bona fide shotgun, a Browning Citori 12 gauge. She summoned Obama and convinced him to hold the loathsome killing machine by promising him a menthol Virginia Slim cigarette (his favorite). He wasn’t going for it, so she promised him a joint. He agreed to the weed. Michelle would slap him silly if she ever found out, but he decided to “be a man” and choom up.
Sharp woman that she is, Valerie had the official plumber photographer shoot the smoke exhaled by the president (without showing his face). They could use the smoke later to make it appear as if it was coming out of the gun when Obama shot at that clay thingy.
The green screen was set up in Obama’s meditation room, a room designated as private and off limits to even the Secret Service. The president required complete privacy to mull and ponder the difficult decisions he had to make as president. It was also where he kept his stash of “Big Uns” for when he felt the need to work on a “stimulus” program.
He was given the Browning to hold (Valerie had to help him hold it up) and told to aim at the target (a silhouette outline of Michelle) on the far wall. Obama grinned, maybe he had a use for the shotgun after all. He grumbled when told that he had to wear protection, stating that he didn’t like those things and didn’t understand why he had to wear one. Valerie explained that protection meant eye and ear protection. “Oh, uhhh, ok.”
The dark safety glasses were no problem, but Valerie had a devil of a time finding ear protection that would fit Obama’s ears. Finally the propmaster found a set of Pro Ears jumbo, model grandé muffs that fit the president’s “generous” appendages.
He was set. They shot several images of him from different angles and with varying lighting to cover all the bases. The shotgun was heavy and he had to stop and take a hit every now and then to regain his strength.
Finally, the deed was done and Obama went back to playing his latest video game “Super Mario Brothers Play House With Honey Boo Boo.”
Gray Poupon was the group member tasked with compositing Obama’s image with one selected from the Camp David image database. When he completed his work, he was pleased and thought that his creation was “A work of art.”
He notified Jarret and copied his work to a special folder on her personal computer. She was elated at the speed with which Poupon had completed his project.
She immediately sent an image to Obama’s press and media supporters at all of the major networks and big city newspapers.
All went well until someone noticed that the president’s finger was behind the trigger while the gun was supposedly firing. Additionally, the choom smoke was more dense than modern smokeless powders emitted, and if that weren’t enough, even though Poupon had deleted the smoke exhaled from Obama’s last hit, it was still there.
OMG, Valerie had released the wrong version of the composite - one that still retained a cloud of smoke being exhaled upwards by a reclining Obama. It ended up looking like it was coming from the right side if the gun barrel itself.
But it was too late.
In her haste to disseminate the evidence to Obama’s supporters, Valerie had attached the wrong version of the image and sent it to her entire “Friends of Obama” address book and it was now popping up everywhere ... and being ridiculed everywhere.
~~~
Now, dear reader, in observance of common propriety, we must censor Valerie’s comments when she learned that the image had gone viral. But know that even drunken sailors would be embarrassed by her tirade. The most we can pass along is:
“mother*!&&#=sonof&&$#%@feeble@++^`#jerk^&^&dumb?>?frakin#$**&&.”
In the end, even though the fault for releasing the wrong image was solely hers, there are openings at the White House for four Photoshop experts again. Get your resumé ready!
Rest in Peace, plumbers unit 4.0, we hardly knew ye.
Legal disclaimer: No skeets were harmed during the production of this account.
garnet92 | February 6, 2013 at 2:44 PM | Categories: Political | URL: http://wp.me/pL408-aD
Secret Plumbers and Shooting Skeets
by garnet92
http://peskytruth.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/secret-plumbers-and-shooting-skeets/
Three men and one woman were ushered from one of the black SUVs into Building R-uh by a half-dozen Secret Service bodyguards. They were Obama’s plumbers, a covert team of Photoshop experts, called up for another project: Obama had to be shown shooting a skeet (whatever that was).
All of them were wearing fake Groucho Marx glasses with fake nose, eyebrows, and moustache attached to hide their identities.
They were an elite team, the best of the best when it came to creating or editing any kind of document or photograph. They could work miracles, and their work defied detection (except when other experts dissected it).
They were guarded 24/7 and had sworn fealty to their lord and master, B. Hussein Obama. In exchange, they were handsomely paid and lived in palatial comfort, but were not allowed to communicate with the outside world – that was verboten. The main enticement was that their families also lived like kings. Even if some freaky “accident” were to befall them, their families would be taken care of – it was like a fabulous living insurance policy.
They were the elite of the specious document world, living like rock stars or professional athletes, but only in the controlled surroundings of Stalag Barack.
The compound’s only identification was a simple sign showing it to be a Cook County Correctional Center, and it looked just like you’d expect a prison to look (from the outside), complete with razor wire topping high masonry walls and guard towers at strategic points surrounding the facility.
Multiple guards and a ram-proof vehicle gate was the only entry point into the compound. It was a fortress.
It was also the plumber’s home.
They were initially recruited (ostensibly) to correct discrepancies in commercial imaging and to create complex legal documents for a fictitious company. Competition was fierce and testing was stringent – only the best survived. The few who passed all of the functional tests were then subject to security testing.
They were required to pass a Sigma level of security (absent his election, Obama couldn’t even pass a Confidential level). The Sigma level was created specifically for the plumbers unit. It surpassed all other levels of security, even those granted to members of Obama’s cabinet and the Joint Chiefs. That was not surprising, since the public exposure of any of the unit’s projects could literally bring down the Presidency.
In the end, each was offered an iron-clad, lifetime contract – it was not unlike selling one’s soul to the devil. A leak of any kind was considered a traitorous act (an Obama Executive Order says so), punishable by life in prison, or death.
They would work directly for the Office of the President and answer to no one but Valerie Jarret. She was the EIC (Executive in Charge) and set out the particulars of what they were to do and when.
Today, they were tasked with creating several pictures of the President shooting at skeets (whatever they were) while at Camp David. Jarret had decided that several pictures of the president confidently blasting away with a shotgun would endear him to gun enthusiasts and soften their opposition to his new gun control measures.
Perhaps they’d even show the president holding up several skeets he’d bagged. She wondered if it was appropriate to mount a skeet – perhaps they could show one mounted on the wall in the president’s quarters? Did skeets have horns? Could they be mounted to appear vicious; mouth open showing fangs? Did they run in packs? Prides? Pods? She needed to know more about the elusive creatures.
When Valerie had first approached the president about his “skeet shooting all the time” remark, she suggested that they should validate the remark by actually staging some pictures of the president really shooting a skeet. Otherwise, real skeet hunters would want to see some hard evidence that Obama truly went skeet hunting often and sometimes even skinned and gutted the animals himself. Without pictures as proof, he’d be ridiculed (again) and be called a liar (again).
Unfortunately, our fearless leader didn’t react well. “Are you shittin’ me?” “Ain’t no way Ahm gettin’ close to a gun, I might shoot mah eye out.”
Later it was learned that Obama’s mama was scared by fireworks the night before he was born (it was at one of those typical Kenyan celebrations), and to this day, he loses control of his bladder whenever he hears a big BANG nearby. So, actually operating any kind of thing that went BOOM was vetoed.
So Barry wee-wee’d out and refused to hoist a shotgun, that pretty much shot Plan A to hell. On to
Plan B.
Plan B was to create “evidence” that the president did actually shoot some skeets and by golly, he hit one of them right below the antler – great shot! He quickly got his bag limit and graciously allowed the other hunters in his group to continue without him “hogging” all of the shots on the elusive skeets.
When PDF (President de facto) Valerie explained what she wanted to the plumbers, they admitted that they didn’t know anything about skeets. One, Barb Dwyer, was the only one who was skeptical that a skeet was even an animal.
Barb was one of the stars of the plumbers unit since “developing” an entire series of college transcripts from Occidental College, Columbia and Harvard showing Obama as 4.0 student who was named to the Dean’s List for his grades. They’d not yet been released to the public; they were awaiting a serious assault on Obama’s refusal to release any school documents – that’s when they’d eviscerate any detractor by releasing the “transcripts” to refute the accusations and validate Obama’s elite intellect at the same time.
Barb was eager to see her work published. It would be akin to a gallery showing of her art.
But in the meantime, the skeet research occupied center stage and time was short.
Cy O’narra was responsible for the research and quickly set to work. It only took one quick Google to learn that they’d been hornswoggled. A skeet wasn’t an animal at all, it was a clay disk that was flung out in front of a shooter to simulate the flight of a bird.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
O’narra quickly contacted Valerie and gave her the news. She was aghast – she had to get to Obama quickly before he made any other dumbass statements about skeets. Luckily, she had him on lockdown. He dare not say anything to anybody without her express consent; she had clamped down on his extraneous comments following the “all the time” skeet reference. Every time he opened his mouth, he wound up with Michelle’s size twelve brogan in it.
So, on to Plan C. They would stage a single photo of the president with gun in hand and layer in some shots from Camp David’s skeet shooting area. This would be simple since a full digital video studio had been created at Stalag Barack and they had access to thousands of stock images taken at Camp David.
When Valerie was inaugurated as PDF, she commissioned two professional photographers to take digital shots of all areas of the White House from varying angles and in different lighting conditions. She did the same at Camp David. Those stock images could be used via Chroma keying (green screen) to place anyone anywhere, doing anything at any time.
Valerie was not to be trifled with; she would stop at nothing to retain her power as the crone behind the throne – and she was prepared.
She could easily produce an image of Obama anywhere on the grounds of Camp David doing manly things like riding a horse, crotch-grabbing, whittling and spitting.
It was widely whispered that if negotiations with Congress made it necessary, she (and the plumbers) could easily produce an image of Speaker of the House John Boehner in a guest bedroom practicing husbandry with a polka-dotted sheep named Baa-baa-rella.
But now, she had her work cut out for her. She had to (somehow) get Obama to hold a gun, a big shotgun at that, in a shooting position as if he were shooting at a skeetie (or whatever it’s called), all without wetting himself.
Later that day, she had the administration’s property master bring by a bona fide shotgun, a Browning Citori 12 gauge. She summoned Obama and convinced him to hold the loathsome killing machine by promising him a menthol Virginia Slim cigarette (his favorite). He wasn’t going for it, so she promised him a joint. He agreed to the weed. Michelle would slap him silly if she ever found out, but he decided to “be a man” and choom up.
Sharp woman that she is, Valerie had the official plumber photographer shoot the smoke exhaled by the president (without showing his face). They could use the smoke later to make it appear as if it was coming out of the gun when Obama shot at that clay thingy.
The green screen was set up in Obama’s meditation room, a room designated as private and off limits to even the Secret Service. The president required complete privacy to mull and ponder the difficult decisions he had to make as president. It was also where he kept his stash of “Big Uns” for when he felt the need to work on a “stimulus” program.
He was given the Browning to hold (Valerie had to help him hold it up) and told to aim at the target (a silhouette outline of Michelle) on the far wall. Obama grinned, maybe he had a use for the shotgun after all. He grumbled when told that he had to wear protection, stating that he didn’t like those things and didn’t understand why he had to wear one. Valerie explained that protection meant eye and ear protection. “Oh, uhhh, ok.”
The dark safety glasses were no problem, but Valerie had a devil of a time finding ear protection that would fit Obama’s ears. Finally the propmaster found a set of Pro Ears jumbo, model grandé muffs that fit the president’s “generous” appendages.
He was set. They shot several images of him from different angles and with varying lighting to cover all the bases. The shotgun was heavy and he had to stop and take a hit every now and then to regain his strength.
Finally, the deed was done and Obama went back to playing his latest video game “Super Mario Brothers Play House With Honey Boo Boo.”
Gray Poupon was the group member tasked with compositing Obama’s image with one selected from the Camp David image database. When he completed his work, he was pleased and thought that his creation was “A work of art.”
He notified Jarret and copied his work to a special folder on her personal computer. She was elated at the speed with which Poupon had completed his project.
She immediately sent an image to Obama’s press and media supporters at all of the major networks and big city newspapers.
All went well until someone noticed that the president’s finger was behind the trigger while the gun was supposedly firing. Additionally, the choom smoke was more dense than modern smokeless powders emitted, and if that weren’t enough, even though Poupon had deleted the smoke exhaled from Obama’s last hit, it was still there.
OMG, Valerie had released the wrong version of the composite - one that still retained a cloud of smoke being exhaled upwards by a reclining Obama. It ended up looking like it was coming from the right side if the gun barrel itself.
But it was too late.
In her haste to disseminate the evidence to Obama’s supporters, Valerie had attached the wrong version of the image and sent it to her entire “Friends of Obama” address book and it was now popping up everywhere ... and being ridiculed everywhere.
~~~
Now, dear reader, in observance of common propriety, we must censor Valerie’s comments when she learned that the image had gone viral. But know that even drunken sailors would be embarrassed by her tirade. The most we can pass along is:
“mother*!&&#=sonof&&$#%@feeble@++^`#jerk^&^&dumb?>?frakin#$**&&.”
In the end, even though the fault for releasing the wrong image was solely hers, there are openings at the White House for four Photoshop experts again. Get your resumé ready!
Rest in Peace, plumbers unit 4.0, we hardly knew ye.
Legal disclaimer: No skeets were harmed during the production of this account.
garnet92 | February 6, 2013 at 2:44 PM | Categories: Political | URL: http://wp.me/pL408-aD
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
INSTEAD OF AIMING AT THE SKY WHERE CLAY PIGEONS FLY, THE PRESIDENT AIMED STRAIGHT AHEAD AT GUN OWNERS
FEBRUARY 5, 2013
Shooting blanks at the pigeons
BY WES PRUDEN
President Obama has probably put the Secret Service on this one, and the FBI, the CIA and the D.C. cops, too. Who came up with that really dumb idea of putting out an official White House photograph of the president stalking clay pigeons with his shotgun?
Maybe it was the campaign consultant who gave Michael Dukakis a ride in an Abrams tank. (Maggie Thatcher had taken a similar ride two years earlier and looked like George S. Patton.) Or the wizard who decked out John Kerry in a lab suit that gave him the appearance of a giant sperm. The dodo who did that could have been the campaign consultant who advised Jimmy Carter to tell the famous story of how he was attacked by a killer rabbit.
Whoever it was, he or she made it worse by accompanying the photograph with the stern warning that “this [photograph] may not be manipulated in any way.” This was similar to telling a four-year-old that he should “never try to put a pea up your nose.”
Some of the manipulated, or “Photoshopped” images on the Internet are hilariously telling. In one of them, the president fires his gun and a bouquet of petunias emerges from both barrels; in another, the president fires at the house where a celebrated terrorist was captured, over the caption: “the truth about how we got bin Laden.” In still another, he draws a bead on Bambi. Even Michelle and the girls may be laughing, but not as hard as the gun owners and Second Amendment fans to whom this moment in the president’s grand gun-rights offensive was aimed. If the idea was meant to show that the president is just one of the good ol’ boys, as comfortable with shotguns and clay pigeons as he practicing his three-point shot, the early and unanimous word is that the scheme went poof! Or maybe plouffe!
Indeed, the early speculation in the flackery shops in Washington was that David Plouffe, the political adviser who modestly identifies himself as the genius of the last two presidential elections, thought up the scheme and sold it to the president. Mr. Plouffe, not heretofore recognized as a wordsmith or coiner of memorable phrases, is leading the defense of the worst marketing idea since Coca-Cola came up with New Coke nearly two decades ago, only to concede three months later that New Coke was a colossal boo-boo. Mr. Obama has been called a lot of names – secret Muslim, native Kenyan, socialist-in-waiting – but none can sting like being likened to Elmer Fudd, the great white hunter in the world of Bugs Bunny.
Hunters and shooters cherish the photograph of the president staring down the barrel of a Browning 12-gauge shotgun, aiming it not at the sky where clay pigeons fly but straight ahead, as if aiming at a beer can atop a hickory stump.
“That looks pretty pathetic,” Rick Davenport of the Erie County (New York) Sportsmen’s Federation told the New York Post. “That’s not skeet shooting. This is nothing but pandering to the sportsmen and hunters.”
Presidents have played good ol’ boy at their peril. Calvin Coolidge, who didn’t suffer fools gladly or otherwise, nevertheless made himself look foolish when he cheerfully posed for a photograph in the full feathers of an Indian chief. However, he actually was a chief of the Sioux, if only by adoption, and he liked as well to be photographed in a Boy Scout uniform, short pants and all. Teddy Roosevelt was photographed with his guns, and no one doubted that he knew which was the business end of an elephant gun. But when John Kerry, as a candidate for president, called in the photographers he had to borrow a gun for a portrait of himself in a hunter’s camouflage suit. He had the look of a man who would rather be wind-surfing in France.
The president put the arts of persuasion behind him with the beginning of a new week, and flew off to Minnesota to sit down with a group of cops and sheriffs to talk about guns, children, and how awful guns are. The president spent his hour in Minneapolis in a neighborhood described as “traumatized by abundant illegal guns.” But he was safely lodged deep in the bowels of the police department's Special Operations Center. Everything was closed to the public, so it was not clear who he was trying to influence, since all the “attendees” were safely in agreement with him. Just to take no chances, though, no shotguns and no cameras. There would be no manipulation.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
Monday, February 4, 2013
THE SILENCE OF THE JEWS: SILENCE ON THE CONFIRMATION OF CHUCK HAGEL SHOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR MEN AND WOMEN OF CONSIENCE
!!!!
Contentions
Can Jewish Groups Speak Out on Hagel?
Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 02.03.2013 - 12:46 PM
One of the interesting subtexts about the debate over the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be secretary of defense has been the relative silence from the organized Jewish world. Though there was widespread shock from most pro-Israel activists, even those who were loyal liberal Democrats, about the president’s decision to choose one of the least Israel-friendly members of the U.S. Senate in the last generation to run the Pentagon, none of the major groups, aside from the Zionist Organization of America, spoke up publicly about his unsuitability for the post or his out-of-the mainstream views.
The reasons for this silence were obvious to anyone who understands their missions and how they operate. The refusal of the major Jewish organizations was rooted in their natural reluctance to embroil themselves in fights they think would hamper their ability to do their jobs. But at this juncture in the Hagel saga, after the nominee flopped at his Senate confirmation hearing and demonstrated how insincere his conversion from being tough on Israel and soft on Iran to a garden-variety backer of the Jewish state, it is time for them to reconsider. Though the odds still favor his confirmation, and with some senators, including Chuck Schumer and Claire McCaskill, citing their silence for their support for the nominee, the rationale of the organized Jewish world for staying out of this contretemps has evaporated.
Groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee or even AIPAC are not in the business of involving themselves in partisan fights. Nor are they interested in futile gestures that embroil them in squabbles that would make it more difficult for them to gain access to decision makers. These are things that often infuriate people who rail at them for not being representative of ordinary Jews or being “self-appointed” leaders. But these are generally unfair criticisms.
All Jewish groups in this country are voluntary associations. If the heads of these groups are not elected by a broad cross-section of the community it is only because most Jews don’t take the trouble to get involved with these organizations. We can argue about whether many of the so-called “major” groups still perform any vital functions. Indeed, many of them are vestigial remnants that have long ceased having any rationale other than institutional inertia. Others are mere partisan fronts for the political parties (the Republican Jewish Coalition has actively campaigned against Hagel while the National Jewish Democratic Council has tried to downplay the appointment) or Jewish surrogates for other liberal causes. Many are merely fundraising outlets for various causes. But some do still perform vital tasks, like compiling data about anti-Semitism or advocacy on behalf of Israel, and don’t deserve all of the scorn that is thrown in their direction.
However, the Hagel nomination illustrated that groups that see themselves as above politics can’t entirely avoid some fights. The nomination of a person who has publicly bragged about his standing up to the “Jewish lobby” and opposed sanctions or even the threat of using force against Iran should have crossed the line between something that merely raised eyebrows and battle that needed to be fought.
Some of the major organizations, or at least their leading donors, are dyed-in the-wool Democrats who would never put themselves in direct opposition to the president. Yet even those who were privately upset about Hagel reasoned that the campaign to stop Hagel was doomed. After abandoning Susan Rice, his preferred candidate for the State Department, there was good reason to believe that President Obama would fight harder for his “soul mate” at Defense. A popular president whose party has a majority in the Senate is not liable to lose such a nomination fight, so they thought it made more sense to shut up about Hagel and retain their access than to fight and lose.
This was a not unreasonable conclusion, but it was also a self-fulfilling prophecy. While many Jewish leaders were hoping that Hagel could be stopped without their help, by their very silence they gave cover to pro-Israel Democrats who decided that avoiding giving offense to the president took precedent over defending their principles. On this point, Schumer, whose announcement of public support for the nominee seemed to take all the drama out of the confirmation battle, has been quite candid, as he has explained that it was impossible for him to fight Hagel while Jewish groups kept their own counsel.
But my expectation that Schumer’s move would more or less end the controversy was confounded by Hagel’s catastrophic performance at his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday. At this point even those who have no problem with Hagel’s troubling positions are grappling with the fact that the president’s choice has given the appearance of incompetence and an inability to articulate the president’s stated positions on the issues.
It was assumed that Hagel’s confirmation conversion to positions that affirmed the alliance with Israel and hostility to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran would be done in such a manner as to at least quiet concerns about his transformation from foe to friend of the pro-Israel community. But at his hearing, Hagel was not just unprepared; the insincerity of his flip-flops was transparent. He refused to admit that he was wrong to refuse to vote to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group. Nor did he disavow his slanders about Israel’s conduct during the 2006 Lebanon War. And he could not give a straight answer as to his views about containment of Iran even when given three tries to do so.
At this moment, when even partisan Democrats are expressing their discomfort about Hagel, it is time for the major Jewish groups to, at the very least, express their belief that the nomination should be reconsidered. They needn’t issue an outright call for a no vote on his confirmation or directly fight the president. But they can speak out about the problematic nature of what Hagel said at his hearing and whether the president ought to think twice about insisting on shoving him down the throat of an obviously troubled Democratic caucus.
Doing so would involve some risk and cause them to be criticized by some Democratic partisans. But as they already know, the only people who are actually enthusiastic about Hagel are those, like the vicious Israel-basher MJ Rosenberg, who think the nominee is lying about changing his views about Israel and Iran.
Let’s also dispense with the notion that if Jewish groups speak out on Hagel, they will be confirming the myth that the “Israel Lobby” is an all-powerful force that, as the nominee said, “intimidates” Congress into doing “stupid things.” It is true that that is what some foes of Israel will say if Hagel loses. But the truth is they are already saying it and the vast majority of Americans—who are the backbone of the bipartisan consensus in support of Israel—reject these slanders. The question now is whether an advocate of those views, even one who has now disavowed some of that statement, albeit in a manner that lacks all credibility, will be elevated to one of the highest positions in the government.
Whatever it was that Hagel has been telling Democrats like Schumer or even the big Jewish groups who got a private meeting with the nominee, no one who watched that hearing can seriously believe his protestations of a change of heart. Though he may still be confirmed if the president goes to the mat for him, the outcome is by no means certain. That means this is a moment when the major Jewish groups must drop their reticence and speak truth courageously to power.
Though it is often wise for such groups to stay out of fights with the White House, this is not the moment for such caution. Were the major groups to call for a reconsideration of his nomination, it could be the tipping point in the debate. Should they fail to find their voices now about Hagel, many of the good people inside these organizations may have reason to look back with regret on their decisions. Hagel’s appointment raises genuine doubts about this administration’s commitment to stopping Iran’s nuclear threat and continued support of Israel at a time when its enemies (such as the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt) are gaining strength. Silence at such a moment is impossible for men and women of conscience.
Topics: AIPAC, Anti-Defamation League, Chuck Hagel, Chuck Schumer, Jewish organizations
Contentions
Can Jewish Groups Speak Out on Hagel?
Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 02.03.2013 - 12:46 PM
One of the interesting subtexts about the debate over the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be secretary of defense has been the relative silence from the organized Jewish world. Though there was widespread shock from most pro-Israel activists, even those who were loyal liberal Democrats, about the president’s decision to choose one of the least Israel-friendly members of the U.S. Senate in the last generation to run the Pentagon, none of the major groups, aside from the Zionist Organization of America, spoke up publicly about his unsuitability for the post or his out-of-the mainstream views.
The reasons for this silence were obvious to anyone who understands their missions and how they operate. The refusal of the major Jewish organizations was rooted in their natural reluctance to embroil themselves in fights they think would hamper their ability to do their jobs. But at this juncture in the Hagel saga, after the nominee flopped at his Senate confirmation hearing and demonstrated how insincere his conversion from being tough on Israel and soft on Iran to a garden-variety backer of the Jewish state, it is time for them to reconsider. Though the odds still favor his confirmation, and with some senators, including Chuck Schumer and Claire McCaskill, citing their silence for their support for the nominee, the rationale of the organized Jewish world for staying out of this contretemps has evaporated.
Groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee or even AIPAC are not in the business of involving themselves in partisan fights. Nor are they interested in futile gestures that embroil them in squabbles that would make it more difficult for them to gain access to decision makers. These are things that often infuriate people who rail at them for not being representative of ordinary Jews or being “self-appointed” leaders. But these are generally unfair criticisms.
All Jewish groups in this country are voluntary associations. If the heads of these groups are not elected by a broad cross-section of the community it is only because most Jews don’t take the trouble to get involved with these organizations. We can argue about whether many of the so-called “major” groups still perform any vital functions. Indeed, many of them are vestigial remnants that have long ceased having any rationale other than institutional inertia. Others are mere partisan fronts for the political parties (the Republican Jewish Coalition has actively campaigned against Hagel while the National Jewish Democratic Council has tried to downplay the appointment) or Jewish surrogates for other liberal causes. Many are merely fundraising outlets for various causes. But some do still perform vital tasks, like compiling data about anti-Semitism or advocacy on behalf of Israel, and don’t deserve all of the scorn that is thrown in their direction.
However, the Hagel nomination illustrated that groups that see themselves as above politics can’t entirely avoid some fights. The nomination of a person who has publicly bragged about his standing up to the “Jewish lobby” and opposed sanctions or even the threat of using force against Iran should have crossed the line between something that merely raised eyebrows and battle that needed to be fought.
Some of the major organizations, or at least their leading donors, are dyed-in the-wool Democrats who would never put themselves in direct opposition to the president. Yet even those who were privately upset about Hagel reasoned that the campaign to stop Hagel was doomed. After abandoning Susan Rice, his preferred candidate for the State Department, there was good reason to believe that President Obama would fight harder for his “soul mate” at Defense. A popular president whose party has a majority in the Senate is not liable to lose such a nomination fight, so they thought it made more sense to shut up about Hagel and retain their access than to fight and lose.
This was a not unreasonable conclusion, but it was also a self-fulfilling prophecy. While many Jewish leaders were hoping that Hagel could be stopped without their help, by their very silence they gave cover to pro-Israel Democrats who decided that avoiding giving offense to the president took precedent over defending their principles. On this point, Schumer, whose announcement of public support for the nominee seemed to take all the drama out of the confirmation battle, has been quite candid, as he has explained that it was impossible for him to fight Hagel while Jewish groups kept their own counsel.
But my expectation that Schumer’s move would more or less end the controversy was confounded by Hagel’s catastrophic performance at his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday. At this point even those who have no problem with Hagel’s troubling positions are grappling with the fact that the president’s choice has given the appearance of incompetence and an inability to articulate the president’s stated positions on the issues.
It was assumed that Hagel’s confirmation conversion to positions that affirmed the alliance with Israel and hostility to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran would be done in such a manner as to at least quiet concerns about his transformation from foe to friend of the pro-Israel community. But at his hearing, Hagel was not just unprepared; the insincerity of his flip-flops was transparent. He refused to admit that he was wrong to refuse to vote to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group. Nor did he disavow his slanders about Israel’s conduct during the 2006 Lebanon War. And he could not give a straight answer as to his views about containment of Iran even when given three tries to do so.
At this moment, when even partisan Democrats are expressing their discomfort about Hagel, it is time for the major Jewish groups to, at the very least, express their belief that the nomination should be reconsidered. They needn’t issue an outright call for a no vote on his confirmation or directly fight the president. But they can speak out about the problematic nature of what Hagel said at his hearing and whether the president ought to think twice about insisting on shoving him down the throat of an obviously troubled Democratic caucus.
Doing so would involve some risk and cause them to be criticized by some Democratic partisans. But as they already know, the only people who are actually enthusiastic about Hagel are those, like the vicious Israel-basher MJ Rosenberg, who think the nominee is lying about changing his views about Israel and Iran.
Let’s also dispense with the notion that if Jewish groups speak out on Hagel, they will be confirming the myth that the “Israel Lobby” is an all-powerful force that, as the nominee said, “intimidates” Congress into doing “stupid things.” It is true that that is what some foes of Israel will say if Hagel loses. But the truth is they are already saying it and the vast majority of Americans—who are the backbone of the bipartisan consensus in support of Israel—reject these slanders. The question now is whether an advocate of those views, even one who has now disavowed some of that statement, albeit in a manner that lacks all credibility, will be elevated to one of the highest positions in the government.
Whatever it was that Hagel has been telling Democrats like Schumer or even the big Jewish groups who got a private meeting with the nominee, no one who watched that hearing can seriously believe his protestations of a change of heart. Though he may still be confirmed if the president goes to the mat for him, the outcome is by no means certain. That means this is a moment when the major Jewish groups must drop their reticence and speak truth courageously to power.
Though it is often wise for such groups to stay out of fights with the White House, this is not the moment for such caution. Were the major groups to call for a reconsideration of his nomination, it could be the tipping point in the debate. Should they fail to find their voices now about Hagel, many of the good people inside these organizations may have reason to look back with regret on their decisions. Hagel’s appointment raises genuine doubts about this administration’s commitment to stopping Iran’s nuclear threat and continued support of Israel at a time when its enemies (such as the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt) are gaining strength. Silence at such a moment is impossible for men and women of conscience.
Topics: AIPAC, Anti-Defamation League, Chuck Hagel, Chuck Schumer, Jewish organizations
Saturday, February 2, 2013
WHAT DO JEWS REALLY THINK ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE OF SCHUMER AND LEVIN AT THE HAGEL HEARING
!!!!
Contentions
Hagel’s Credibility Left in Shreds
Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 01.31.2013
COMMENTARY MAGAZINE
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/01/31/chuck-hagel-credibility-left-in-shreds-hearing/
It’s not clear if administration sources that leaked the story that Chuck Hagel had three practice sessions before a mock committee before his actual Senate confirmation hearing were trying to help or hurt the former senator. Hagel’s performance was so shaky that even some of his liberal supporters like Peter Beinart were lamenting on Twitter about his stumbling and bumbling answers to tough questions.
That he flopped so badly after being rehearsed speaks volumes about how bad he was. Indeed, he had so many misstatements that it will be hard for news organizations to choose which of them to broadcast in their highlights of the hearings. But as much as his inability to speak coherently and present a plausible defense of his record while under pressure was exposed today, in what was probably the worst showing by a presidential nominee in a confirmation hearing in memory, it was his credibility that took the biggest hit.
Time and again throughout the day, Hagel bobbed and weaved when presented with examples of the contradictions between the voluminous record of votes and statements about Israel, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah and what he has been saying in public since President Obama nominated him to be the next secretary of defense. Under tough questioning from Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte, Roger Wicker and Ted Cruz, Hagel’s pose as a consistent and ardent friend of Israel and foe of Iran was shown to be nothing but a hastily constructed façade that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
As I have written repeatedly since his nomination was announced, Hagel has been working hard to disappoint those who have always shared his views since he was so eager to discard principles that he had ardently supported. But one such supporter was unfazed by his reversals. Former Media Matters staffer MJ Rosenberg is a bitter critic of Israel and its supporters to the point where he is considered toxic even by many on the left. But as Twitchy notes, Rosenberg wasn’t particularly helpful to Hagel today since he tweeted:
I spent a couple of hours with Hagel a few years ago. Talked with him about Israel. Happily, he is lying today & knows it. He’ll be a good SeDef.
But you didn’t have to have that kind of inside information to understand that what was happening in the confirmation wasn’t particularly honest. Throughout the day when faced with offensive quotes or votes that were inconsistent with his current stands, Hagel rationalized about changing times or context. But the more the context of each incident was examined, the less truthful the Nebraskan sounded. It wasn’t just gaffes like his statement that his opposition to designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group was rooted in his belief that the Islamist regime was a “legitimate and elected government,” which he later walked back. It was his inability to explain why he refused to support Israel during the intifada or branded its defensive war against Hezbollah as a “slaughter.”
But his deceitful approach wasn’t solely focused on his views about Israel and Iran. His attempt to explain his role in producing a report about America’s nuclear deterrent was just as bad. He refused to own up to his views and the plain language of a document that he co-authored. His inability to be honest about his opposition to the Iraq surge when pressed to do so by John McCain was not so much outrageous as it was transparently weak.
By the end of the day, Hagel was reduced to saying something that shouldn’t inspire much confidence in his leadership when he said his opinions didn’t matter so much because he was not being appointed to a policymaking position. Hagel’s defense of himself as a mere bureaucrat may be in line with the Obama administration’s top-down approach to policy but it is a dispiriting exhibition for someone who is actually being tapped for one of the most important positions in the Cabinet.
Chuck Hagel demonstrated today that he isn’t fit for such a senior post. His incompetent testimony should have embarrassed the president and backers like Chuck Schumer, who gambled his own reputation on a man who has little credibility. That may not be enough to derail a nomination that is being rammed through on a partisan basis by the Senate’s majority caucus. But today’s disappointing show by Hagel shamed not just Democrats but a nation whose defense is being entrusted to an incompetent liar.
Topics: Chuck Hagel, Chuck Schumer, Kelly Ayotte, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
WE HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE AND IT IS FRIGHTENING
!!!!
Hillary's Future
DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
Tuesday, 29 January 13
It
was impossible to miss the foreshadowings of the future as Hillary
Clinton's week of public appearances wound down to its ending. This,
was, of course, the arranged love fest on "60 Minutes," a program that
was once the pride of CBS, an unequalled model of investigative
journalism.
Whatever the object of this piece of investigation was would
have been hard to say—but its results, like Mrs. Clinton's appearance
before the Congress earlier in the week, left us with a powerful sense
of the candidacy to come in 2016. A candidacy not only very much like
the one that culminated in the victory of Barack Obama—but one modeled
on all its claims, its assumptions.
Mr.
Obama had won office despite an astounding lack of experience and a
negligible record. His indisputable political skills, his race and all
symbolic values attached thereto—not to mention the promise, now
apparently abandoned, of a new and unified America that transcended
race—had swept him into office. No one can miss the parallel track the
outgoing secretary of state is set to pursue.
What
is already clear—what should stand out blazing in neon—are the
extraordinary claims now being made for Mrs. Clinton's achievements as
secretary of state. One of the greatest secretaries of state America has
known, according to the president—and his is one of the more modest
assessments. It's not the sort of view, to be sure, for which she can be
held responsible, but it is an indicator of the passions that would
drive her candidacy for the White House: the first woman president.
No
one would dispute Mrs. Clinton's hard work, her travels across the
globe, her famous capacity to show up armed with encyclopedic detail on
every issue, every side of every question. She has been the most dutiful
of secretaries of state, has obligingly and diligently carried forth
Mr. Obama's designs for shrinking the American presence in the world.
She leaves office having left behind no imprint of a vision, no evidence
of concerns other than the dictates of diligent obedience.
None
of that is likely to matter in the race to come. If Mrs. Clinton is a
candidate, her record and her achievements will be accorded sacrosanct
status—a kind that will be familiar to Americans who have watched the
past two elections. The 2016 election is, we're regularly reminded, a
long way off, but to watch Hillary Clinton this week was to grasp, with a
small chill of recognition, just how close it actually is.
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, OUR GUN-TOTING PRESIDENT, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?
!!!!
JANUARY 29, 2013
The skeet shooter among the pigeons
BY WES PRUDEN
Barack Obama is really just one of the guys. He wants to take away Joe Sixpack’s guns, but he wants everybody to know that he’s a shooter and intends to keep his own shootin’ iron.
Mr. Obama hunts pigeons, not deer or ducks or even pigeons with feathers, but clay pigeons. He’s quite a marksman in a sport that attracts even the country-club elites. “Up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” he says. “ I have a profound respect for the traditions that trace back in this country for generations, and I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake.”
No more about “God and guns” this week. He learned his lesson about that one. This ain’t San Francisco. In an interview with New Republic magazine, he sounded like he might join the National Rifle Association if only someone would ask him. “If you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were 10, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles and that became part of your family traditions, you can see why you’d be pretty protective of that. “
But he took pains to say neither of his daughters, 11 and 14, join him and the guys for a round of skeet shooting. He wouldn’t dream of exploiting children, at least not his own. Nevertheless, trapshooting, as hunting for clay pigeons is formally called, is popular with the ladies. The president might not know there’s a Trapshooting Hall of Fame and many women have been honored with membership.
Some of the loudest and shrillest Democrats in the campaign to disarm those who don’t get to shoot pigeons at Camp David are now discovering repressed memories of happy days with a trigger. Joe Biden, the vice president and the man Mr. Obama put in charge of his disarmament campaign, boasts that he owns a shotgun. No word yet on whether he frightens the clay pigeons in his neighborhood.
More secret gun owners are expected to slip out of the closet in coming days, now that the president has put his seal of approval on hunting and shooting, at least in certain highly restricted and supervised circumstances. We might even see Michael Bloomberg and Dianne Feinstein posing with their Red Ryder BB guns. The mayor sometimes gets to hold one of the guns worn on the hips of his bodyguards, and Mrs. Feinstein, who so far as we know does not “carry,” is always at risk of getting smacked with an errant omelet pan when she strolls the streets of San Francisco.
The mayor’s bodyguards recently hassled a reporter, Jason Mattera of Talk Radio Network, for asking His Honor whether “in the spirit of gun control, will you disarm your entire security team?” The mayor replied with the familiar eloquence of the politician cornered by an embarrassing question: “Umm, uh, we’ll get right back to you.”
The mayor didn’t, but his bodyguards did, asking the reporter for his identification, his address and the date of his birth, not necessarily to send a birthday present or even a card. Mr. Mattera, famous for asking the impertinent questions that all reporters once routinely asked, once so provoked Joe Biden that the vice president all but challenged him to pistols or sabers at dawn under the dueling overpass somewhere in the wilds of New Jersey, where almost anything with guns and knives can happen, and often does. “Let’s get it straight, guy,” the veep told him. “Don’t screw with me.”
The natives are definitely getting restless. The White House received a petition Monday from a group called “We, the People” (not necessarily the same We the People in the Declaration of Independence, but a reasonable facsimile thereof) asking that, in the spirit of the times, all government officials, from the president on down, forgo their armed government bodyguards. The idea, obviously, is that if the congregation can’t defend itself with a gun, the preacher shouldn’t, either.
Despite the president’s caution and compassion, the campaign against guns continues. Louis Farrakhan, the eminent divine, noted constitutional scholar and leader of the Nation of Islam, told his congregation Sunday that the Second Amendment is irrelevant and the right to bear arms is a right for the trash bin. It might be dangerous to the government. He's been building to the idea. “This nation was built on violence,” he said in a sermon a couple of weeks ago. “Uncivilized, uncultivated, brutal, wild . . . “
Louis Farrakhan
And that was just the good part. No wonder the president and his veep have armed themselves against the pigeons.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
JANUARY 29, 2013
The skeet shooter among the pigeons
BY WES PRUDEN
Barack Obama is really just one of the guys. He wants to take away Joe Sixpack’s guns, but he wants everybody to know that he’s a shooter and intends to keep his own shootin’ iron.
Mr. Obama hunts pigeons, not deer or ducks or even pigeons with feathers, but clay pigeons. He’s quite a marksman in a sport that attracts even the country-club elites. “Up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” he says. “ I have a profound respect for the traditions that trace back in this country for generations, and I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake.”
No more about “God and guns” this week. He learned his lesson about that one. This ain’t San Francisco. In an interview with New Republic magazine, he sounded like he might join the National Rifle Association if only someone would ask him. “If you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were 10, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles and that became part of your family traditions, you can see why you’d be pretty protective of that. “
But he took pains to say neither of his daughters, 11 and 14, join him and the guys for a round of skeet shooting. He wouldn’t dream of exploiting children, at least not his own. Nevertheless, trapshooting, as hunting for clay pigeons is formally called, is popular with the ladies. The president might not know there’s a Trapshooting Hall of Fame and many women have been honored with membership.
Some of the loudest and shrillest Democrats in the campaign to disarm those who don’t get to shoot pigeons at Camp David are now discovering repressed memories of happy days with a trigger. Joe Biden, the vice president and the man Mr. Obama put in charge of his disarmament campaign, boasts that he owns a shotgun. No word yet on whether he frightens the clay pigeons in his neighborhood.
More secret gun owners are expected to slip out of the closet in coming days, now that the president has put his seal of approval on hunting and shooting, at least in certain highly restricted and supervised circumstances. We might even see Michael Bloomberg and Dianne Feinstein posing with their Red Ryder BB guns. The mayor sometimes gets to hold one of the guns worn on the hips of his bodyguards, and Mrs. Feinstein, who so far as we know does not “carry,” is always at risk of getting smacked with an errant omelet pan when she strolls the streets of San Francisco.
The mayor’s bodyguards recently hassled a reporter, Jason Mattera of Talk Radio Network, for asking His Honor whether “in the spirit of gun control, will you disarm your entire security team?” The mayor replied with the familiar eloquence of the politician cornered by an embarrassing question: “Umm, uh, we’ll get right back to you.”
The mayor didn’t, but his bodyguards did, asking the reporter for his identification, his address and the date of his birth, not necessarily to send a birthday present or even a card. Mr. Mattera, famous for asking the impertinent questions that all reporters once routinely asked, once so provoked Joe Biden that the vice president all but challenged him to pistols or sabers at dawn under the dueling overpass somewhere in the wilds of New Jersey, where almost anything with guns and knives can happen, and often does. “Let’s get it straight, guy,” the veep told him. “Don’t screw with me.”
The natives are definitely getting restless. The White House received a petition Monday from a group called “We, the People” (not necessarily the same We the People in the Declaration of Independence, but a reasonable facsimile thereof) asking that, in the spirit of the times, all government officials, from the president on down, forgo their armed government bodyguards. The idea, obviously, is that if the congregation can’t defend itself with a gun, the preacher shouldn’t, either.
Despite the president’s caution and compassion, the campaign against guns continues. Louis Farrakhan, the eminent divine, noted constitutional scholar and leader of the Nation of Islam, told his congregation Sunday that the Second Amendment is irrelevant and the right to bear arms is a right for the trash bin. It might be dangerous to the government. He's been building to the idea. “This nation was built on violence,” he said in a sermon a couple of weeks ago. “Uncivilized, uncultivated, brutal, wild . . . “
Louis Farrakhan
And that was just the good part. No wonder the president and his veep have armed themselves against the pigeons.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
"WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?" THE NATION CAN GO TO HELL, BUT WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?
!!!!
The Obama Simulacrum
This administration sneers at reality and its consequences.
Whether Beyoncé was lip-syncing to the band or the band were lip-syncing to Beyoncé is like one of those red pill/ blue pill choices from The Matrix. Was President Obama lip-syncing to the Founders, rooting his inaugural address in the earliest expressions of American identity? (“The patriots of 1776 . . . gave to us a republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.”) Or maybe the Founders were lip-syncing to him as he appropriated the vision of the first generation of Americans and yoked it (“preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action”) to a statist pitch they would have found utterly repugnant.
The whole event had the air of a simulacrum: It looked like a presidential inauguration, but the sound was tinny and not quite in sync. Obama mouthed along to a canned vocal track: “We reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.” That’s great! It’s always reassuring to know the head of state is going to take issue with all those people wedded to the “belief” that America needs either to shove every granny off the cliff or stake its newborns out on the tundra for the wolves to finish off. When it comes to facing the music, Obama is peerless at making a song and dance about tunes nobody’s whistling without ever once warbling the real big numbers (16 trillion). But, like Beyoncé, he’s totally cool and has a cute butt.
A couple of days later, it fell to the 45th president-in-waiting to encapsulate the ethos of the age in one deft sound bite: What difference does it make? Hillary Clinton’s instantly famous riposte at the Benghazi hearings is such a perfect distillation that it surely deserves to be the national motto of the United States. They should put it on Paul Krugman’s trillion-dollar coin, and in the presidential oath:
“Do you solemnly swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States?”
“Sure. What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Well, it’s the difference between cool and reality — and, as Hillary’s confident reply appeared to suggest, and the delirious media reception of it confirmed, reality comes a poor second in the Obama era. The presumption of conservatives has always been that one day cold, dull reality would pierce the klieg-light sheen of Obama’s glamour. Indeed, that was the premise of Mitt Romney’s reductive presidential campaign. But, just as Beyoncé will always be way cooler than some no-name operatic soprano or a male voice choir, so Obama will always be cooler than a bunch of squaresville yawneroos boring on about jobs and debt and entitlement reform.
Hillary’s cocksure sneer to Senator Johnson of Wisconsin made it explicit. At a basic level, the “difference” is the difference between truth and falsity, but the subtext took it a stage further: No matter what actually happened that night in Benghazi, you poor sad loser Republicans will never succeed in imposing that reality and its consequences on this administration.
And so a congressional hearing — one of the famous “checks and balances” of the American system — is reduced to just another piece of Beltway theater. “The form was still the same, but the animating health and vigor were fled,” as Gibbon wrote in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But he’s totally uncool, too. So Hillary lip-synced far more than Beyoncé, and was adored for it. “As I have said many times, I take responsibility,” she said. In Washington, the bold declarative oft-stated acceptance of responsibility is the classic substitute for responsibility: rhetorically “taking responsibility,” preferably “many times,” absolves one from the need to take actual responsibility even once.
In the very same self-serving testimony, the secretary of state denied that she’d ever seen the late Ambassador Stevens’s cables about the deteriorating security situation in Libya on the grounds that “1.43 million cables come to my office”– and she can’t be expected to see all of them, or any. She is as out of it as President Jefferson, who complained to his secretary of state James Madison, “We have not heard from our ambassador in Spain for two years. If we have not heard from him this year, let us write him a letter.”
Today, things are even worse. Hillary has apparently not heard from any of our 1.43 million ambassadors for four years. When a foreign head of state receives the credentials of the senior emissary of the United States, he might carelessly assume that the chap surely has a line of communication back to the government he represents. For six centuries or so, this has been the minimal requirement for functioning inter-state relations. But Secretary Clinton has just testified that, in the government of the most powerful nation on earth, there is no reliable means by which a serving ambassador can report to the cabinet minister responsible for foreign policy. And nobody cares: What difference does it make?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, January 23, 2013.
This administration sneers at reality and its consequences.
If
I’m following this correctly, according to one spokesperson for the
Marine Corps Band, at Monday’s inauguration Beyoncé lip-synced to the
national anthem but the band accompanied her live. However, according to
a second spokesperson, it was the band who were pretending to play to a
pre-recorded tape while Beyoncé sang along live. So one or other of
them were faking it. Or maybe both were. Or neither. I’d ask Chuck
Schumer, the master of ceremonies, who was standing right behind her,
but he spent the entire performance staring at her butt. If it was her
butt, that is. It might just have been the bulge of the Radio Shack
cassette player she was miming to. In an America with an ever more
tenuous grip on reality, there’s so little to be sure of.
Whether Beyoncé was lip-syncing to the band or the band were lip-syncing to Beyoncé is like one of those red pill/ blue pill choices from The Matrix. Was President Obama lip-syncing to the Founders, rooting his inaugural address in the earliest expressions of American identity? (“The patriots of 1776 . . . gave to us a republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.”) Or maybe the Founders were lip-syncing to him as he appropriated the vision of the first generation of Americans and yoked it (“preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action”) to a statist pitch they would have found utterly repugnant.
The whole event had the air of a simulacrum: It looked like a presidential inauguration, but the sound was tinny and not quite in sync. Obama mouthed along to a canned vocal track: “We reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.” That’s great! It’s always reassuring to know the head of state is going to take issue with all those people wedded to the “belief” that America needs either to shove every granny off the cliff or stake its newborns out on the tundra for the wolves to finish off. When it comes to facing the music, Obama is peerless at making a song and dance about tunes nobody’s whistling without ever once warbling the real big numbers (16 trillion). But, like Beyoncé, he’s totally cool and has a cute butt.
A couple of days later, it fell to the 45th president-in-waiting to encapsulate the ethos of the age in one deft sound bite: What difference does it make? Hillary Clinton’s instantly famous riposte at the Benghazi hearings is such a perfect distillation that it surely deserves to be the national motto of the United States. They should put it on Paul Krugman’s trillion-dollar coin, and in the presidential oath:
“Do you solemnly swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States?”
“Sure. What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Well, it’s the difference between cool and reality — and, as Hillary’s confident reply appeared to suggest, and the delirious media reception of it confirmed, reality comes a poor second in the Obama era. The presumption of conservatives has always been that one day cold, dull reality would pierce the klieg-light sheen of Obama’s glamour. Indeed, that was the premise of Mitt Romney’s reductive presidential campaign. But, just as Beyoncé will always be way cooler than some no-name operatic soprano or a male voice choir, so Obama will always be cooler than a bunch of squaresville yawneroos boring on about jobs and debt and entitlement reform.
Hillary’s cocksure sneer to Senator Johnson of Wisconsin made it explicit. At a basic level, the “difference” is the difference between truth and falsity, but the subtext took it a stage further: No matter what actually happened that night in Benghazi, you poor sad loser Republicans will never succeed in imposing that reality and its consequences on this administration.
And so a congressional hearing — one of the famous “checks and balances” of the American system — is reduced to just another piece of Beltway theater. “The form was still the same, but the animating health and vigor were fled,” as Gibbon wrote in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But he’s totally uncool, too. So Hillary lip-synced far more than Beyoncé, and was adored for it. “As I have said many times, I take responsibility,” she said. In Washington, the bold declarative oft-stated acceptance of responsibility is the classic substitute for responsibility: rhetorically “taking responsibility,” preferably “many times,” absolves one from the need to take actual responsibility even once.
In the very same self-serving testimony, the secretary of state denied that she’d ever seen the late Ambassador Stevens’s cables about the deteriorating security situation in Libya on the grounds that “1.43 million cables come to my office”– and she can’t be expected to see all of them, or any. She is as out of it as President Jefferson, who complained to his secretary of state James Madison, “We have not heard from our ambassador in Spain for two years. If we have not heard from him this year, let us write him a letter.”
Today, things are even worse. Hillary has apparently not heard from any of our 1.43 million ambassadors for four years. When a foreign head of state receives the credentials of the senior emissary of the United States, he might carelessly assume that the chap surely has a line of communication back to the government he represents. For six centuries or so, this has been the minimal requirement for functioning inter-state relations. But Secretary Clinton has just testified that, in the government of the most powerful nation on earth, there is no reliable means by which a serving ambassador can report to the cabinet minister responsible for foreign policy. And nobody cares: What difference does it make?
Nor was the late Christopher Stevens any old ambassador, but rather
Secretary Clinton’s close personal friend “Chris.” It was all “Chris”
this, “Chris” that when Secretary Clinton and President Obama delivered
their maudlin eulogies over the flag-draped coffin of their “friend.”
Gosh, you’d think if they were on such intimate terms, “Chris” might
have had Hillary’s e-mail address, but apparently not. He was just one
of 1.43 million close personal friends cabling the State Department
every hour of the day.
Four Americans are dead, but not a single person involved in the attack and the murders has been held to account. Hey, what difference does it make? Lip-syncing the national anthem beats singing it. Peddling a fictitious narrative over the coffin of your “friend” is more real than being an incompetent boss to your most vulnerable employees. And mouthing warmed-over clichés about vowing to “bring to justice” those responsible is way easier than actually bringing anyone to justice.
And so it goes:
Another six trillion in debt? What difference does it make?
An economic-stimulus bill that stimulates nothing remotely connected with the economy? What difference does it make?
The Arab Spring? Aw, whose heart isn’t stirred by those exhilarating scenes of joyful students celebrating in Tahrir Square? And who cares after the cameras depart that Egypt’s in the hands of a Jew-hating 9-11 truther whose goons burn churches and sexually assault uncovered women?
Obama is the ultimate reality show, and real reality can’t compete. Stalin famously scoffed, “How many divisions has the Pope?” Secretary Clinton was more audacious: How many divisions has reality? Not enough.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2013 Mark Steyn
Four Americans are dead, but not a single person involved in the attack and the murders has been held to account. Hey, what difference does it make? Lip-syncing the national anthem beats singing it. Peddling a fictitious narrative over the coffin of your “friend” is more real than being an incompetent boss to your most vulnerable employees. And mouthing warmed-over clichés about vowing to “bring to justice” those responsible is way easier than actually bringing anyone to justice.
And so it goes:
Another six trillion in debt? What difference does it make?
An economic-stimulus bill that stimulates nothing remotely connected with the economy? What difference does it make?
The Arab Spring? Aw, whose heart isn’t stirred by those exhilarating scenes of joyful students celebrating in Tahrir Square? And who cares after the cameras depart that Egypt’s in the hands of a Jew-hating 9-11 truther whose goons burn churches and sexually assault uncovered women?
Obama is the ultimate reality show, and real reality can’t compete. Stalin famously scoffed, “How many divisions has the Pope?” Secretary Clinton was more audacious: How many divisions has reality? Not enough.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2013 Mark Steyn
THE EVIL MAD GENIOUS OF SENATOR RICHARD DURBIN
!!!!
Senator Richard Durbin
The Madness of Dick Durbin
When partisan prevarication trumps statesmanship.
NATIONAL REVIEW
Senator Richard Durbin
When partisan prevarication trumps statesmanship.
In his 1960 book We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition
(which remains, happily, in print), Jesuit theologian John Courtney
Murray raised a cautionary flag about the American future that seems,
today, eerily prescient:
What is at stake is America’s understanding of itself. Self-understanding is the necessary condition of a sense of self-identity and self-confidence, whether in the case of an individual or in the case of a people. If the American people can no longer base this sense on naïve assumptions of self-evidence, it is imperative that they find other more reasoned grounds for their essential affirmation that they are uniquely a people, uniquely a free people. Otherwise the peril is great. The complete loss of one’s identity is, with all propriety of theological definition, hell. In diminished forms it is insanity. And it would not be well for the American giant to go lumbering about the world today, lost and mad.
An example of an America lost, mad, and dangerous to itself and
international security was on offer at the January 23 Senate Foreign
Relations Committee hearing on the Benghazi disaster. There, Senator
Richard Durbin (D., Ill.), a man who my Chicago friends tell me
considers himself a future president, had the following to say after
several of his colleagues dared to raise questions with Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton about the Obama administration’s
anti-terrorism strategy and the administration’s decision-making during
the Benghazi attack:
That’s a hearing I, for one, would welcome. In addition to straightening out Senator Durbin on who invaded what in 2003, a serious hearing on the decision-making prior to the invasion of Iraq and the deposing of the Saddam Hussein regime would clarify the following essential points:
1. Every American intelligence agency and every allied intelligence agency, as well as the United Nations, was convinced that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. and an international coalition invaded Iraq.
2. The decisions made by the U.S. government were based on an acceptance of that unified judgment by the intelligence community (which CIA director George Tenet described, it may be remembered, as a “slam dunk,” an image with which a Chicago Bulls fan like Durbin should be reasonably familiar).
3. The authoritative Duelfer Report, with which the Bush administration cooperated as it was being prepared, made patently clear that, while Saddam had no operational WMD at hand when the U.S. and its allies invaded, he maintained the façade that he indeed had WMD for his own political and strategic purposes (which explains his continued defiance of the U.N.) and he was ready, eager, and willing to operationally ramp up his WMD programs again after the U.N. sanctions regime had crumbled and the no-fly zones over Iraq had been lifted.
4. While concern about Iraqi WMD was a prominent part of the case for taking Saddam and his regime out (and was the case pressed at the United Nations because Tony Blair insisted on it, to cover himself with squirrely Labour backbenchers), it was in fact one component in a complex tapestry of causation, which included Saddam’s innumerable and horrific human-rights violations, his support of various terrorist organizations and sheltering of international terrorists, and the perceived strategic imperative to break up the variables in what had become a manifestly lethal Middle East combination of dictatorship plus oil plus support for terrorism plus defiance of international law. (On this last point, perhaps Senator Durbin could call as a witness Professor Fouad Ajami of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, as the senator clearly has not read Ajami’s book The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq.)
Such a hearing might also be an occasion to instill a little seriousness in the U.S. foreign-policy debate, which got off to a bad second-term start when the president, in his inaugural address, said that the past decade’s worth of wars was coming to an end — a claim that was surely news, if welcome news, to al-Qaeda and its affiliates throughout North Africa, the Gulf, and South Asia. Whatever the president may say in fits of rhetorical exultation that seem better fitted to his “permanent campaign” than to serious policymaking, these wars are manifestly not over, and they are not going to be over for decades.
Moreover, it will be impossible for the United States to form the political will to successfully prosecute this new, extended, and strange form of national defense and international security-building in the future until Americans with serious public responsibilities, like Senator Durbin, stop prevaricating about the past, and doing so by invoking the memory of juvenile slogans like “Bush lied and thousands died.” President Bush did not lie. The thousands who died gave their lives in an honorable cause (the positive results of which we may hope the second Obama administration does not completely fritter away), and it is despicable to suggest that they died in vain.
If Senator Durbin and other Democrats cannot acknowledge these elementary facts of the historical record — if foreign policy and serious strategic thinking are trumped time and again by the “permanent campaign” and its toxic partisanship — then we may well expect the worst, as Father Murray predicted in 1960. Durbin’s comments were disgraceful, and the fact that they were not immediately called out as such is yet another depressing indicator of national decline.
To repeat: “It would not be well for the American giant to go lumbering about the world today, lost and mad.”
— George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
One should not forget that it was Senator Richard Durbin who, as Chairman of the Senate Committee charged with writing the Afordable Healthcare Act (OBAMACARE), gave the American people that monstrosity of a bill that Nancy Pelosi said would have to be passed so that we could find out what was in it. We are now finding out what was in it!
- Leo Rugiens
I do want to make a point, for the record here, about whether the American people are told everything right away, in the right way, so that they can be fully informed. And I would like to refer to five words for them to reflect on: Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. We were told by every level of government here there were Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that justified a war, the invasion of the United States. We’re still searching for those weapons. They didn’t exist. Thousands of American lost their lives. We could have a hearing on that, if you like.
That’s a hearing I, for one, would welcome. In addition to straightening out Senator Durbin on who invaded what in 2003, a serious hearing on the decision-making prior to the invasion of Iraq and the deposing of the Saddam Hussein regime would clarify the following essential points:
1. Every American intelligence agency and every allied intelligence agency, as well as the United Nations, was convinced that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. and an international coalition invaded Iraq.
2. The decisions made by the U.S. government were based on an acceptance of that unified judgment by the intelligence community (which CIA director George Tenet described, it may be remembered, as a “slam dunk,” an image with which a Chicago Bulls fan like Durbin should be reasonably familiar).
3. The authoritative Duelfer Report, with which the Bush administration cooperated as it was being prepared, made patently clear that, while Saddam had no operational WMD at hand when the U.S. and its allies invaded, he maintained the façade that he indeed had WMD for his own political and strategic purposes (which explains his continued defiance of the U.N.) and he was ready, eager, and willing to operationally ramp up his WMD programs again after the U.N. sanctions regime had crumbled and the no-fly zones over Iraq had been lifted.
4. While concern about Iraqi WMD was a prominent part of the case for taking Saddam and his regime out (and was the case pressed at the United Nations because Tony Blair insisted on it, to cover himself with squirrely Labour backbenchers), it was in fact one component in a complex tapestry of causation, which included Saddam’s innumerable and horrific human-rights violations, his support of various terrorist organizations and sheltering of international terrorists, and the perceived strategic imperative to break up the variables in what had become a manifestly lethal Middle East combination of dictatorship plus oil plus support for terrorism plus defiance of international law. (On this last point, perhaps Senator Durbin could call as a witness Professor Fouad Ajami of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, as the senator clearly has not read Ajami’s book The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq.)
Such a hearing might also be an occasion to instill a little seriousness in the U.S. foreign-policy debate, which got off to a bad second-term start when the president, in his inaugural address, said that the past decade’s worth of wars was coming to an end — a claim that was surely news, if welcome news, to al-Qaeda and its affiliates throughout North Africa, the Gulf, and South Asia. Whatever the president may say in fits of rhetorical exultation that seem better fitted to his “permanent campaign” than to serious policymaking, these wars are manifestly not over, and they are not going to be over for decades.
Moreover, it will be impossible for the United States to form the political will to successfully prosecute this new, extended, and strange form of national defense and international security-building in the future until Americans with serious public responsibilities, like Senator Durbin, stop prevaricating about the past, and doing so by invoking the memory of juvenile slogans like “Bush lied and thousands died.” President Bush did not lie. The thousands who died gave their lives in an honorable cause (the positive results of which we may hope the second Obama administration does not completely fritter away), and it is despicable to suggest that they died in vain.
If Senator Durbin and other Democrats cannot acknowledge these elementary facts of the historical record — if foreign policy and serious strategic thinking are trumped time and again by the “permanent campaign” and its toxic partisanship — then we may well expect the worst, as Father Murray predicted in 1960. Durbin’s comments were disgraceful, and the fact that they were not immediately called out as such is yet another depressing indicator of national decline.
To repeat: “It would not be well for the American giant to go lumbering about the world today, lost and mad.”
— George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
One should not forget that it was Senator Richard Durbin who, as Chairman of the Senate Committee charged with writing the Afordable Healthcare Act (OBAMACARE), gave the American people that monstrosity of a bill that Nancy Pelosi said would have to be passed so that we could find out what was in it. We are now finding out what was in it!
- Leo Rugiens
Monday, January 21, 2013
THE JEWISH VOTE AS ANALYZED BY A JEWISH RABBI
!!!!
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky
Please take a moment to digest
this provocative article by
a Jewish Rabbi from Teaneck , N.J.
The article appeared in The Israel
National News, and is directed to Jewish readership.
It is far and away the most
succinct and thoughtful explanation of how our nation is changing.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is
the spiritual leader of
Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in
"The most charitable way of explaining
the election results of 2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo – for
the incumbent President and for a divided Congress. They must
enjoy gridlock, partisanship, incompetence,
economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility. And fewer people voted.
But as we awake from
the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile explanations for the
Romney defeat that will prevail among the chattering classes.
Romney did not
lose because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor
did he lose because he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the
Republicans could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose
because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the
economy due to the business cycle. Romney lost because he didn’t get
enough votes to win.
That might seem
obvious, but not for the obvious reasons.
Romney lost
because the conservative virtues – the traditional American virtues – of
liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and aspirations to
moral greatness – no longer inspire or animate a majority of
the electorate.
The simplest reason
why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete against
free stuff.
Every businessman knows
this; that is why the “loss leader” or the giveaway is such a
powerful marketing tool.
Obama’s America is one
in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food
stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they
did, by the tens of millions; those who – courtesy of Obama –
receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course,
both dis-incentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to
work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom
to vote. The lure of free stuff is irresistible.
The defining moment of
the whole campaign was the revelation of the secretly-recorded video in
which Romney acknowledged the difficulty of winning an election in
which “47% of the people” start off against him because they pay no taxes and
just receive money – “free stuff” – from the government.
Almost half of the
population has no skin in the game – they don’t care about high
taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money
for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children and from the
Chinese.
They just want the free
stuff that comes their way at someone else’s expense.
In the end, that 47%
leaves very little margin for error for any Republican, and does not bode
well for the future. It
is impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against such
overwhelming odds.
People do vote their
pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a Congress who will not
raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them free stuff, never
mind who has to pay for it.
That engenders the
second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that
the electorate is ignorant and uninformed. Indeed, it does not pay
to be an informed voter, because most other voters – the clear majority – are
unintelligent and easily swayed by emotion and raw populism. That
is the indelicate way of saying that too many people vote with
their hearts and not their heads. That is why Obama did not
have to produce a second term agenda, or even defend his first-term record.
He needed only to
portray Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who
throws elderly women over a cliff, when he is not just snatching away their
cancer medication, while starving the poor and cutting taxes for the
rich.
During his 1956
presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson:
“Senator, you have the vote of every thinking
person!” Stevenson called back: “That’s not enough, madam, we
need a majority!” Truer words were never spoken.
Obama could get
away with saying that “Romney wants the rich to play by a different set
of rules” – without ever defining what those different rules were; with
saying that the “rich should pay their fair share” – without ever defining
what a “fair share” is; with saying that Romney wants the poor,
elderly and sick to “fend for themselves” – without even acknowledging that
all these government programs are going bankrupt, their
current insolvency only papered over by deficit spending.
Similarly, Obama (or
his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a Romney victory would
lead them back into chains and proclaim to women that their abortions and
birth control would be taken away.
He could appeal
to Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and
shipped to Mexico and unabashedly state that he will not enforce the
current immigration laws.
He could espouse
the furtherance of the incestuous relationship between
governments and unions – in which politicians ply the unions with public
money, in exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes,
in exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions
provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone.
Obama also knows
that the electorate has changed – that whites will soon be a
minority in America and that the new immigrants to the US are primarily
from the Third World and do not share the traditional American values that
attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries.
It is a different
world, and a different America .
Obama is part of
that different America knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is
why he won.
Obama also proved
again that negative advertising works, invective sells, and harsh
personal attacks succeed.
That Romney never
engaged in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his
“negative ads” were simple facts, never personal abuse – facts about high
unemployment, lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige
abroad, a lack of leadership, etc.
As a politician,
though, Romney failed because he did not embrace the devil’s
bargain of making unsustainable promises.
It turned out that it
was not possible for Romney and Ryan – people of
substance, depth and ideas – to compete with the
shallow populism and
Obama mastered the
politics of envy – of class warfare – never reaching out to Americans as such
but to individual groups, and cobbling together a winning majority
from these minority groups.
If
an Obama could not be defeated – with his record and his vision of
America , in which free stuff seduces voters – it is hard to envision any
change in the future.
The road
to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy
– those very economies that are collapsing today in Europe – is paved.
For Jews, mostly
assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results demonstrate again that
liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a president widely
perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as hostile to Israel
.
They voted to secure Obama’s
future at America’s expense and at Israel’s expense – in
effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu
Under present
circumstances, it is inconceivable that the US will take any aggressive
action against Iran and will more likely thwart any Israeli initiative.
The US will preach the importance of negotiations up until the production of
the first Iranian nuclear weapon – and then state that the world
must learn to live with this new reality.
But this election
should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent empire,
nor is there an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile.
The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has
been exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens
that decline.
Society is permeated
with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic excess. It has lost
its moorings and its moral foundations. The takers outnumber the givers, and that
will only increase in years to come.
The “Occupy” riots
across this country in the last two years were mere dress rehearsals for what
lies ahead – years of unrest sparked by the increasing discontent of the
unsuccessful who want to seize the fruits and the bounty of the successful,
and do not appreciate the slow pace of redistribution.
If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. And, sad for the world, it is not coming back." |
Friday, January 18, 2013
BRING YOUR OWN PORTA-POTTIE
!!!!
JANUARY 18, 2013
The second time and the thrill is gone
BY WES PRUDEN
Ike rekindled romances, presidential inaugurations are rarely much fun the second time around. Been there, done that, the bloom is off the rose, familiarity breeds boredom, et al. Barack Obama can’t believe that déjà vu comes even unto him.
Four years ago, the nation’s capital was electric with excitement, the airports and Union Station abuzz with the noise of arriving political thrill-seekers, many of them in Washington for the first time. Nobody could find a hotel room, and some residents with grand-enough houses rented them to high rollers for big-enough bucks.
This time, not so much. The gaiety, what there is of it, is forced, like the gaiety of Christmas dinner at the home of your mother-in-law.
The president is trying manfully to manufacture a few cheap thrills. He recruited eight people who have had nice things to say about him and he’s bringing them to town so they can say them again and ride on a float down Pennsylvania Avenue. One is a Detroit auto worker, another is a gay pilot in training, still another is a woman with a brain tumor who, by the president’s telling, has been saved by Obamacare. Organizers are said to be scouring orphanages to scare up a few more children to use as presidential backdrops.
Four years ago, celebrity entertainers were bumping each other out of the way to sing, dance or crack jokes. “Anybody who could croak a note was looking for a microphone,” recalls one organizer in 2009. Nobody goes to an inaugural ball to dance, and a good thing, because there aren’t nearly as many balls this year and everything is definitely B-list. So is most of the entertainment. One ball will be entertained by something called the Goo Goo Dolls. No Aretha Franklin or Jon Bon Jovi this time.
The crowds will be smaller, too. Nearly 2 million men, women and children jammed the National Mall four years ago. Organizers are expecting less than half that this time. More than that and a lot of folks will be squirming from one foot to the other, because this year they ordered only 1,500 Porta-Potties, down from 7,000 four years ago.
President Obama may try to electrify the crowd, or at least bump up the wattage a little, with his eloquence. He must keep in mind what happened to William Henry Harrison in 1841. Arriving on horseback, having ridden from his rooming house in a steady rain with neither hat nor coat, Harrison proceeded to speak for more than two hours. He came down with a cold three weeks later, not likely because of his speech in the rain, but his death-by-bloviation, according to one of the most popular inauguration legends.
More likely he was killed by his doctors. His cold quickly worsened, and became pneumonia and pleurisy. He couldn’t rest because the White House was being noisily plundered by office-seekers. His doctors applied several “cures,” using opium, castor oil, leeches and snakeweed. On April 4, 1841, he called in his vice president, John Tyler, to hear his last words, which would shame the Obama White House: “Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.” He had nothing else to say, and promptly died.
No danger of any of that now. The president and the first lady will ride to the Capitol in bulletproof splendor, and if it rains, there will be someone to hold two umbrellas over him. He can talk as long as he likes; there’s no one with a hook for a president even if he goes on too long. But some things don’t change.
Tip O’Neill, the late longtime speaker of the House, recalled sitting next to one George Kara, a wealthy fat cat but otherwise obscure Boston businessman at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. Kara nudged the speaker and said, “you know, one day historians will look at the photographs of this and wonder how I got such a good seat.” O’Neill saw the new president that night at a ball at the Mayflower Hotel, and told him of George Kara’s remark. The president grinned and replied: “Tip, you’ll never believe it. I had my left hand on the Bible and my right hand in the air, and I was about to take the oath of office, and I said to myself, ‘how the hell did Kara get that seat?’”
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
JANUARY 18, 2013
The second time and the thrill is gone
BY WES PRUDEN
Ike rekindled romances, presidential inaugurations are rarely much fun the second time around. Been there, done that, the bloom is off the rose, familiarity breeds boredom, et al. Barack Obama can’t believe that déjà vu comes even unto him.
Four years ago, the nation’s capital was electric with excitement, the airports and Union Station abuzz with the noise of arriving political thrill-seekers, many of them in Washington for the first time. Nobody could find a hotel room, and some residents with grand-enough houses rented them to high rollers for big-enough bucks.
This time, not so much. The gaiety, what there is of it, is forced, like the gaiety of Christmas dinner at the home of your mother-in-law.
The president is trying manfully to manufacture a few cheap thrills. He recruited eight people who have had nice things to say about him and he’s bringing them to town so they can say them again and ride on a float down Pennsylvania Avenue. One is a Detroit auto worker, another is a gay pilot in training, still another is a woman with a brain tumor who, by the president’s telling, has been saved by Obamacare. Organizers are said to be scouring orphanages to scare up a few more children to use as presidential backdrops.
Four years ago, celebrity entertainers were bumping each other out of the way to sing, dance or crack jokes. “Anybody who could croak a note was looking for a microphone,” recalls one organizer in 2009. Nobody goes to an inaugural ball to dance, and a good thing, because there aren’t nearly as many balls this year and everything is definitely B-list. So is most of the entertainment. One ball will be entertained by something called the Goo Goo Dolls. No Aretha Franklin or Jon Bon Jovi this time.
The crowds will be smaller, too. Nearly 2 million men, women and children jammed the National Mall four years ago. Organizers are expecting less than half that this time. More than that and a lot of folks will be squirming from one foot to the other, because this year they ordered only 1,500 Porta-Potties, down from 7,000 four years ago.
President Obama may try to electrify the crowd, or at least bump up the wattage a little, with his eloquence. He must keep in mind what happened to William Henry Harrison in 1841. Arriving on horseback, having ridden from his rooming house in a steady rain with neither hat nor coat, Harrison proceeded to speak for more than two hours. He came down with a cold three weeks later, not likely because of his speech in the rain, but his death-by-bloviation, according to one of the most popular inauguration legends.
More likely he was killed by his doctors. His cold quickly worsened, and became pneumonia and pleurisy. He couldn’t rest because the White House was being noisily plundered by office-seekers. His doctors applied several “cures,” using opium, castor oil, leeches and snakeweed. On April 4, 1841, he called in his vice president, John Tyler, to hear his last words, which would shame the Obama White House: “Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.” He had nothing else to say, and promptly died.
No danger of any of that now. The president and the first lady will ride to the Capitol in bulletproof splendor, and if it rains, there will be someone to hold two umbrellas over him. He can talk as long as he likes; there’s no one with a hook for a president even if he goes on too long. But some things don’t change.
Tip O’Neill, the late longtime speaker of the House, recalled sitting next to one George Kara, a wealthy fat cat but otherwise obscure Boston businessman at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. Kara nudged the speaker and said, “you know, one day historians will look at the photographs of this and wonder how I got such a good seat.” O’Neill saw the new president that night at a ball at the Mayflower Hotel, and told him of George Kara’s remark. The president grinned and replied: “Tip, you’ll never believe it. I had my left hand on the Bible and my right hand in the air, and I was about to take the oath of office, and I said to myself, ‘how the hell did Kara get that seat?’”
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)