Remember two years ago, when my tighty-righty compatriots couldn’t abide the GOP affronts to their ideological purity any longer and loudly declared their intention to drag them to philosophical repentence by staying home on Election Day and letting the Democrats take Congress back?  Remember how I wrote then that all this would do is convince the Republican remnant that they couldn’t count on the party’s conservative base and that they would instead scatter to the four winds in an every-Pachyderm-for-himself panic?

So they asked for it, so it is coming to pass (via Newsmax Insider):

Republicans in the U.S. House have parted ways with GOP leadership and voted for a key Medicare bill — providing a possible sign of things to come before the November elections.

Despite Minority Leader John Boehner’s aggressive push to convince GOP members to oppose the bill, 129 Republicans joined with all 226 Democrats to pass the legislation, which would prevent cuts in physician’s fees under Medicare.

The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call observed: “House Republican leaders’ embarrassing failure to hold the line against a Medicare-related bill raised new questions about whether the rank and file will adopt an every-man-for-himself strategy as the election draws near.”

Representative Wayne Gilchrest, a Maryland Republican who was defeated in a primary earlier this year, told Roll Call that he views the Medicare vote as evidence that House Republicans are realizing they have to put their own interests above toeing the party line.

The American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical industry supported the bill. The GOP leadership opposed it partly in the belief that more “palatable” legislation is being drawn up in the Senate, according to Roll Call, which added, “With more sensitive votes expected in July and September, Republican leaders’ ability to hold their rank and file in line will continue to be tested.” [emphasis added]

IOW, “their own interests” and those of conservatives have diverged.  Which will doubtless provoke the Quinn Hillyers of the cyberworld into “punishing” the GOP even more, which will further alienate whatever scattered Republican survivors even more and push them further to the Left, and so on.

‘Tis the bitterest of ironies that virtually all of the Left’s momentum in this cycle is being generated by the civil war raging on the Right.  It’s so bad it may take an Obama presidency to defibrilate my wayward brethren back to sanity.

Perhaps there is still some hope for counter-change.  But even then it probably won’t recur in my lifetime.

[cross-posted at ]

Barack Obama is on fire. The presumptive democratic nominee for president has thoroughly defeated Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House, the two of them have apparently kissed and made up, she’s now on the campaign trail hawking his wares, and all is right with the world as far as the Democratic National Committee is concerned. All polls seem to indicate that Obama is beating his republican rival John McCain. McCain himself has indicated that he is the underdog in this race, and has a lot of work to do between now and November. Obama is the oncoming juggernaut that cannot be stopped.

Hold the phone.

Obama may not even be qualified to run for president. And I don’t mean because of his lack of experience in any of the areas that the commander-in-chief and the leader of the free world has to deal with. No, I mean he may not meet constitutional requirements to run for the highest office in the land.

You see my friends, there is a little question of his citizenship. And Obama may be covering up the truth.

For several weeks now, the Internet has been abuzz with reports that Obama may not meet the citizenship requirements as laid out in the United States Constitution. Those requirements state that a candidate must be a natural born citizen. Obama’s status has come into question. Supposedly, Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, after it became a state on August 21, 1959. Obama became a citizen at birth under first section of the 14th amendment.

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside….”

Case closed. But wait.

Some questions have arisen about whether there is proof that Obama was really born in Hawaii in 1961, as well as the legal status of his mother at that time, and what is exactly on his original birth certificate…which by the way, may not even exist. When bloggers brought Obama’s citizenship into question, the Daily Kos published what purported to be the original State of Hawaii birth certificate. The problem is…the document appears to be a fake, and a poorly executed one at that. Examination of this document indicates it has been modified with Photoshop or other image-editing software, rendering it a forgery.

This could prove very troubling for the Obama campaign for a number of different reasons. If a true certificate of live birth cannot be produced to prove that Obama is a natural born citizen rather than a naturalized citizen, one would have to question whether Obama is qualified under the constitution to run for president.

So why wouldn’t the Obama campaign just lay all of this suspicion to rest by producing the real documentation rather than this cheap imitation which doesn’t cut muster? Could it be that The father listed on the birth certificate is not Barack Hussein Obama? Or the father’s race is listed as something other than African, perhaps Muslim or Arab? Or the mother was no longer at that time an American citizen? Or the child’s name is not listed as Barack Hussein Obama II?

Jim Geraghty, reporting on the Campaign Spot blog of the National Review, cited the “rumor” that Obama was born not within the United States, but elsewhere, possibly Kenya.

Geraghty stated that “If Obama were born outside the United States, one could argue that he would not meet the legal definition of natural-born citizen — because U.S. law at the time of his birth required his natural-born parent (his mother) to have resided in the United States for ‘10 years, at least [f]ive of which had to be after the age of 16.’”

He then points out that Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, was 18 when Obama was born “so she wouldn’t have met the requirement of five years after the age of 16.”

If the rumors that Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen are true, it would stop the campaign in its tracks. So far, no major news organization appears to be following this important story. The blogosphere appears to be the only quadrant of the journalistic universe that is attempting to bring this story to the forefront.

And this most recent development regarding the fake documentation published by the Daily Kos and touted by the Obama campaign as enough evidence to lay these “smear rumors” to rest only adds to the mystery.

Someone had better pick up the ball on this story and run with it.

If Obama is truly eligible under our constitution to run for president, then let’s get the proof out there and move on to finding other ways to prevent Obama from being elected. But if this story has legs, let’s expose it and stop Obama dead in his tracks.

Now.

Listen to America Talks Monday through Thursday at 6 pm eastern time at www.blogtalkradio.com/americatalks. Visit our website at www.americatalks.com.

Because twice is nice, and the Messiah is spinning so rapidly that he’s about to phase out of the space-time continuum, and there’s so much of this crapola that it can’t be crammed into a single hour….

….he’s doing double-duty, as only he can.

Saturdays, 1PM Eastern/10AM Pacific

Sunday, 6PM Eastern/3PM Pacific

Take a gander at the following chart, courtesy of Ensign Ed:

A recession is defined as a minumum of two consecutive quarters of “negative growth,” or what George Costanza (in this case, not a reference to Scotty McClellan) once called “significant shrinkage.”  As you can see, over the past four years there hasn’t been one quarter of economic contraction, much less two or more.  You can see where Katrina and Rita hit in 4Q 2005, and then the anticipation of a Democrat victory in the 2006 midterms and its aftermath, and the rebound once the Bush White House made clear that it wouldn’t be steamrolled.  The most recent two quarters’ fall off has been driven primarily by the environmentalist-imposed spike in energy prices, which the Donks are determined to maintain at all costs.

But there has been - and we are in - NO recession.

Those are the facts.  A pity they don’t align with what will become government-imposed public doctrine, the coming triumph of left-wing mythology and economic urban legends, all wrapped up in a false messianic package.

Facts used to matter.  Now they are irrelevant obstacles to the pursuit of hopeandchange.

Which means, I’m guessing, that Kool-Aid sales are to lead America back to the Prosperity Promised Land.  Because you can bet (and you’d better before he confiscates it) your bottom dollar that Barack Hussein Obama will never take us there.

[cross-posted at ]

Eat. Ask. Watch. With GOP Convention Communications Director Matt Burns on Friday, June 27th at 12Noon Central. Seriously, you will be sitting at your desk, with your Starbucks and snack. Here are the deets:

Via GOP Convention on Facebook:

Got any lunch plans? We’d love to get together and tell you about the preparations being made in advance of the 2008 GOP Convention, we are launching a weekly online conversation with convention staff called “Lunchtime Chats.”

With the help of Ustream.tv, the convention’s live video streaming provider, Lunchtime Chats will offer informal, interactive, and LIVE question and answer sessions with convention organizers. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the convention progress as senior staff members answer your questions LIVE from their desk at the convention headquarters in Saint Paul, Minn.

Email chats@gopconvention2008.com to submit questions prior to the LIVE chat.

Only 67 Days to go!

—Media Lizzy

The surge is working. The men and women serving our nation abroad are the difference. With the leadership of Melanie Morgan and Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Matt Lewis, and many others - an unprecedented “web-a-thon” turned out the grassroots - and thousands of average Americans…

The masterminds of this project, Melanie Morgan and Michelle Malkin, brought Conservative luminaries together with UStream, new media, and the blogosphere to raise more than $1 million dollars for care packages for the troops. ($1,055,719 at the end of the web-a-thon) The eight-plus hours of UStream video, Skype calls, and even an appearance from Matt Sanchez in Paris - brought together thousands of voices, in support of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines.

Even though the Live Stream is over, you can still contribute. Call 1.866.866.6372 to donate! Or visit www.moveamericaforward.com to learn more.

—Media Lizzy

Broadcast by Ustream.TV

Straight from Fresno… Remarks as Prepared for Delivery:

Thank you all very much. I appreciate the kind introduction from Jim Woolsey, and the warm welcome to Fresno State. I’m here to listen about energy issues as well as to talk. So let me just offer a few ideas before we begin our discussion.

All across this state and nation, people are hurting because the price of gasoline is higher than it should be, and more than many folks can afford. Because of far-off events in the world oil market, a barrel of oil has more than doubled in a year. And the bad effects of that are spreading across our economy. The cost of business is rising, the cost of food and other essentials is rising, the whole cost of living is rising. What isn’t rising is the value of your paychecks and the rate of America’s economic growth. Back in the 1970’s, they used to call this “stagflation.” And it feels the same today, because the unwise policies of our government have left America’s energy future in the control of others.

America imports about one third of its oil from Canada and Mexico and no one need worry about a reliance on friendly, stable neighbors, and partners in NAFTA. The Middle East and Venezuela are a different story. We import roughly a quarter of our oil from them, and they have a disproportionate impact on world prices. When we buy foreign oil from these and other sources, there are many consequences — all of them far-reaching and none of them good. Worst of all, by relying on foreign oil, we enrich bad actors in the world, some of whom finance terrorists.

Some in Washington seem to think that we can still persuade OPEC to lower prices — as if reason or cajolery had never been tried before. Others have even suggested suing OPEC — as if we can litigate our way to energy security. But America is not going to meet this great challenge as a supplicant or a plaintiff. We are not going to meet it with words at all — we are going to meet it with action. We’re going to produce more, conserve more, and invent more. And to a large extent, this strategy hinges on innovations in the cars and trucks we drive.

Ninety-seven percent of transportation in America runs on oil. And of all that oil, about 60 percent is used in cars and trucks. Yet the CAFE standards we apply to automakers — to increase the fuel efficiency of their cars — are lightly enforced by a small fine. The result is that some companies don’t even bother to observe CAFE standards. Instead they just write a check to the government and pass the cost along to you. Higher end auto companies like BMW, Porsche, and Mercedes employ some of the best engineering talent in the world. But that talent isn’t put to the job of fuel efficiency, when the penalties are too small to encourage innovation. CAFE standards should serve large national goals in energy independence, not the purpose of small-time revenue collection.

Innovation in the use of alternative fuels in transportation presents the greatest opportunity for energy independence. At the moment, entrepreneurs and engineers are trying to figure out which among the various alternatives to oil works best. Alcohol-based fuels are the farthest along in both development and commercial use. Some, such as ethanol, are on the market now, and new sources of ethanol are on the horizon that will not require the use of so much cropland. Corn-based ethanol, thanks to the money and influence of lobbyists, has been a case study in the law of unintended consequences. Our government pays to subsidize corn-based ethanol even as it collects tariffs that prevent consumers from benefiting from other kinds of ethanol, such as sugarcane-based ethanol from Brazil. The result is that Americans take the financial hit coming and going. As taxpayers, we foot the bill for the enormous subsides paid to corn produ cers. And as consumers, we pay extra at the pump because of government barriers to cheaper products from abroad.

Here’s a better way. Instead of playing favorites, our government should level the playing field for all alcohol fuels that break the monopoly of gasoline, lowering both gasoline prices and carbon emissions. And this can be done with a simple federal standard to hasten the conversion of all new vehicles in America to flex-fuel technology — allowing drivers to use alcohol fuels instead of gas in their cars. Brazil went from about five to over 70 percent of all new vehicles with flex-fuel capacity. It did all that in just three years. Yet those same automakers that helped Brazil make the change say it will take them longer to reach the goal of 50 percent new flex-fuel vehicles for America. But I am confident they can do more, and do it faster, in the interest of our energy security. And if I am elected president, they will. Whether it takes a meeting with automakers during my first month in office, or my signature on an act of Congress, we will meet the goal of a swift conversion of American vehicles away from oil.

At the same time, smart policy can also help to broaden the market for energy-efficient cars. Right now we have a hodgepodge of incentives for the purchase of fuel-efficient cars. Different hybrids and natural-gas cars carry different incentives, ranging from a few hundreds dollars to four grand. They’re the handiwork of lobbyists, with all the inconsistency and irrationality that involves.

My administration will issue a Clean Car Challenge to the automakers of America, in the form of a single and substantial tax credit based on the reduction of carbon emissions. For every automaker who can sell a zero-emissions car, we will commit a 5,000 dollar tax credit for each and every customer who buys that car. For other vehicles, whatever type they may be, the lower the carbon emissions, the higher the tax credit. And these large tax credits will be available to everyone — not just to those who have an accountant to explain it to them.

Furthermore, in the quest for alternatives to oil, our government has thrown around enough money subsidizing special interests and excusing failure. From now on, we will encourage heroic efforts in engineering, and we will reward the greatest success.

I further propose we inspire the ingenuity and resolve of the American people by offering a $300 million prize for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars. This is one dollar for every man, woman and child in the U.S. — a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency — and should deliver a power source at 30 percent of the current costs.

My friends, energy security is the great national challenge of our time. And rising to this challenge will take all of the vision, creativity, and resolve of which we are capable. The good news is, these qualities have never been in short supply. We are the country of Edison, Fulton, and two brothers named Wright. It was American ingenuity that took three brave men to the moon and brought them back. Think of all the highest scientific endeavors of our age — the invention of the silicon chip, the creation of the Internet, the mapping of the human genome. In so many cases, you can draw a straight line back to American inventors, and often to the foresighted aid of the United States government.

For all the troubles and dangers our energy vulnerability presents, we know that we can overcome them, because we have overcome far worse problems and met far greater goals. Together, we Americans can achieve anything we set our minds to. I believe this about our country. I know this about our country. And now it is time to show those qualities once again.

Thank you.

The McCain campaign also released a new ad today, “Energy Security.” For those of you wondering about the significance of Fresno, McCain’s California Delegation to the GOP Convention is an ethanol guru - former CA Secretary of State Bill Jones.

When I was a boy, I was a huge Star Trek fan.  Now that I’m a middle-aged man….I’m still a huge Star Trek fan.  But now I can afford real starships and real phaser rifles and a real holodeck and a real clone of Counselor Troi (thanks to George W. Bush’s tax cuts, natch).

But this post isn’t about now, it’s about then.  Actually, it isn’t about my Trekkerdom at all - that’s an analogy for what the post is about.  But you probably knew that.

One of my older cousins (they were ALL older, actually) knew I was a huge Trek mark and got me a model of the U.S.S. Enterprise for my birthday.  Not the Constellation-class NCC-1701-A; not the Excelsior-class NCC-1701-B; not the Ambassador-class NCC-1701-C; not the Galaxy-class NCC-1701-D; not the Sovereign-class NCC-1701-E; not even Jonathan Archer’s original NX-01.  I mean the original, the classic, the Constitution-class NCC-1701.  For a five-year old Trek nut the year after 2001: A Space Odyssey and the year Neil Armstrong took that giant leap for mankind, that was the equivalent of sex.

I carried that model around with me everywhere.  And I do mean EVERYwhere, if you know what I mean.  It was my answer to Linus’ blanket.  I’d have gotten it welded onto my body if I could have.

There was only one other thing I wanted as much as I loved that Enterprise model:  a model of a Klingon K’tinga-class battlecruiser to go with it so I could stage the epic space battles that NBC didn’t have the budget or the special effects technology to depict forty years ago.  The problem was, this was in the days before Klingons were cool, even before Gene Roddenberry had the resources to create the forehead crest prosthetics that weren’t seen until Star Trek: The Motion Picture ten years later.  There were no Klingon starship models to be had.

I was heartbroken.  But I also had a robust imagination.  So I did what any other lower middle-class kid would have done in those circumstances: I used a fly swatter and pretended it was a K’tinga-class heavy instead.

FWIW, my IKS GhIlab Ghew outlasted Captain Kirk’s ship by years, won many battles, and brought great honor and glory to the Klingon Empire.  But it was still, underneath all that Kahlessness, a fly swatter.

And Barack Obama came up with his equivalent:

What the hell?  What is this?  He’s so impatient to be president that he makes up his own personal seal?  What is he, twelve?  Sheesh, when I was fifteen and refused my learners’ permit because I was too nearsighted and stupidly went joyriding in my dad’s 1968 Ford Galaxy without my too-weak glasses and got away with everything except the big scratch I put in the side chrome when I tried to back it into the driveway and cut the corner where my mother’s painted rock was, my mother told me that was the stupidest thing I’d ever done.  My father wanted to run me through with his d’k tahg, but Mom always kept the family bat’leth handy for just such emergencies.  This is one of BO’s PR equivalents.  One of many.

I mean, look at it.  It’s the size of a monster truck hubcap.  Make a saucer out of it and he could take his kids sledding, or pirate DirecTV.  And what’s with the Dukakis pose at that podium - is he standing in a hole?

And did this little exercise in premature ego gratification run afoul of the law?  The Weekly Standard considers the possibility:

18 USC Sec. 713 …
(a) Whoever knowingly displays any printed or other likeness of the great seal of the United States, or of the seals of the President or the Vice President of the United States, or the seal of the United States Senate, or the seal of the United States House of Representatives, or the seal of the United States Congress, or any facsimile thereof, in, or in connection with, any advertisement, poster, circular, book, pamphlet, or other publication, public meeting, play, motion picture, telecast, or other production, or on any building, monument, or stationery, for the purpose of conveying, or in a manner reasonably calculated to convey, a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the Government of the United States or by any department, agency, or instrumentality thereof, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

(b) Whoever, except as authorized under regulations promulgated by the President and published in the Federal Register, knowingly manufactures, reproduces, sells, or purchases for resale, either separately or appended to any article manufactured or sold, any likeness of the seals of the President or Vice President, or any substantial part thereof, except for manufacture or sale of the article for the official use of the Government of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Was it the long arm of justice or the avalanche of ridicule (His Latin version of “From many, one”: “Truly, we are able” - aka “Yes we can!”) that would get him first?  We’ll never know, because Team Hussein has already pulled it:

Succumbing to an avalanche of criticism, Senator Barack Obama’s campaign has apparently decided to back away from its trial balloon of a new presidential seal.

Newsmax’s lead story Monday morning reported on Obama’s new version of the presidential seal, but a campaign spokesman now says it won’t be used again.

“That was a one-time thing for a one-time event,” Robert Gibbs asserted to CNN about the rather intricately designed seal that made its debut last Friday.

Yeah; kind of like a quadrapelegic going streaking, or meeting your girlfriend’s parents and asking her mother if she’s up for a threesome.  And the best part of all?  It’s another Obama flip-flop!  Man, he doesn’t even stand by his own mountainous conceit, even if it does keep humping his leg.

I think I’ll design my own seal.  It’ll look like a dinner plate with a pudgy, dozing eagle holding a TV remote in one foot and a teriyaki New York steak in the other, and the paunch covered by a shield featuring this handsome fellow….

….and the tlhIngan Hol motto, “DaHjaj ghaH QaQ jaj Daq Sop” (”Today is a good day to eat!”).

It’ll blow away Possumus Playa’s pathetic plate….

[cross-posted at ]

It’s been another {*ahem*} busy week at the office, so while I sleep it off in the back seat of the Wayback Machine, y’all can revisit polar bears, pagan superstition, In The News, and the REAL star of the show.

Here’s hoping absence….

….really does make the heart grow fonder.

Saturdays, 1PM Eastern/10AM Pacific

UPDATE
You can listen to the podcast Here
Related article here

Monica Showalter of Investor’s Business Daily joins us today at a special time, 10AM Eastern.

We’ll talk about the US’s dependence on foreign oil, Latin America and American politics, and how all these topics are related.

Chat’s open by 9:45AM and the call-in number is 646 652-2639. Join us!

Cross-posted at Fausta’s blog

Left wingnuts are forever trying to play down the distinct possibility that our intelligence estimates of when Iran will cross the nuclear weapons threshold are vastly, complacently overstated.  Ditto the possibility that al Qaeda may in fact have some manner of nuclear weapons capability.  Recall Barack Hussein Obama’s “Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, et al are ‘tiny countries’ that don’t pose a ’serious threat’” speech.  As though erring on the side of caution is criminal, but taking whimsical chances with the lives of millions is perfectly okay.

Well, guess what, gentles - things are worse than we thought:

An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups.

The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and more than a dozen developing countries, the report states.

The computer contents — among more than [a tera]byte of data seized — were recently destroyed by Swiss authorities under the supervision of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, which is investigating the now-defunct smuggling ring previously led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

But U.N. officials cannot rule out the possibility that the blueprints were shared with others before their discovery, said the report’s author, David Albright, a prominent nuclear weapons expert who spent four years researching the smuggling network.

So.  Not only will Iran have the capability of churning out nukes within as little as two months, but they probably already possess the means of deploying them as soon as they come off the assembly line.

And, evidently, nobody cares.  Nobody realizes, nobody is willing to face the sober fact, that the “international community,” but especially Europe, Israel, and the United States, are teetering on the edge of the unthinkable abyss.  All they still are capable of is chest-puffing about yet another round of useless, toothless “sanctions” that will be irrelevant at best, just like all their predecessors (see the twelve years of sanctions that didn’t slow down Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs one jot or tittle), or at worst will encourage Iran, convinced time is no longer on their side, to strike us like Imperial Japan sixty-seven years ago - only with a much bigger “stick”.

As if to pointedly highlight their oceanic contempt for our galloping impotence, Iran bellicosely reiterated - again - the facts of mullahgarchic life:

Iran said on Tuesday uranium enrichment was its “red line” and would continue, despite an enhanced offer of incentives from big powers to stop activity the West fears could yield nuclear bombs…

The incentive package agreed by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany last month and delivered by Solana is a revised version of one rejected by Iran in 2006…

The incentives package offers Iran the chance to develop a civilian nuclear program with light water reactors — seen as harder to divert into bomb-making than the technology Tehran is now developing — and legally binding fuel supply guarantees.

It also offers trade and other benefits, including the possibility of Iran buying civil aircraft from the West.

You know, I read things like this and the absurdity of it makes me want to gag.  The fact that this morony is putting my life and the lives of my family in potentially mortal danger is something I know intellectually, but even I have difficulty wrapping my mind around the reality of what it would mean in practical terms.  Not, I suspect, unlike those who were beholding world events in 1939, 1940, and 1941.  “Oh, no, the Japs will NEVER attack US; they know better than to commit national suicide.”  “C’mon, all Hitler wants is the Sudetenland - he explicitly said so!  If we give it to him, he’ll be satisfied and we can maintain the peace.”  Almost nobody in the West had any grasp of the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Adolph Hitler DID want to conquer the world and WAS willing to wage total war to do it, and the Japanese WOULD attack us believing that we were (drumroll) soft and would quickly tire of any attempt at resisting their conquest of the Pacific once we encountered the savagery of their warriors and sue for peace instead.

Thus did our grandfathers go from sitting at home listening to our politicians drone about “peace in our time” to flying bomber fleets firebombing German cities and cutting their way across one jungle-covered Pacific island after another within the space of three years.  Thus did sixty million human beings - including, of course, six million Jews - needlessly perish in a planetary conflagration that could so easily have been pre-empted with a little military action applied early enough to make a difference.

Do we learn from this lamentable history?  Of course not.  It’s not in human nature to learn from past mistakes.  Why else do they get endlessly repeated?  And so we keep offering the rabid theocrats in Tehran bigger and bigger dollops of appeasement to cease developing nuclear weapons that they see as the ticket to the return of their Messiah and the Global Islamic Caliphate, and they keep telling us to shove it.  A literally vicious cycle that will continue right up until the the nuclear-tipped Shahab-3s and Shahab-5s and 6’s fly for Israel, Europe, and the US, respectively.  And, I imagine, the appeasement dollops grow proportionately.

Well, boys and girls, at least one group in this crisis isn’t paralyzed by historical amnesia:

A large Israeli military exercise this month may have been aimed at showing Jerusalem’s abilities to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.

In a substantial show of force, Israel sent warplanes and other aircraft on a major exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean early this month, Pentagon officials said Friday.

Israel’s military refused to confirm or deny that the maneuvers were practice for a strike in Iran….

The big exercise the first week of June was impossible to miss and may have been meant as a show of force as well as a practice on skills needed to execute a long-range strike mission, one U.S. official said.

The New York Times quoted officials Friday as saying that more than 100 Israeli F-16s and F-15s staged the maneuver, flying more than 900 miles, roughly the distance from Israel to Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, and that the exercise included refueling tankers and helicopters capable of rescuing downed pilots.

You have to love Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s scolding the Israelis against attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities on the grounds that there’s “no proof” that the mullahs are building nukes.  That’s a hoot considering that his implied threshold of “proof” would be mushroom clouds rising above the atomized remains of Tel Aviv and Haifa - after which he would be quick, I’m sure, to extend Russia’s “condolances” for the Second Holocaust that his intereference-running for the mullahs had helped to fruition.

The Jews are not going to sit there like a potted plant and let their enemies gain, mount, and deploy the means of their annihilation against them.  If nothing else, they will ensure that if they do go down, so will the mullahs.

Meanwhile, we were generously given another reminder of Iran’s other ability to strike the U.S. homeland, and what, aside from the alleged absence of nuclear ordnance, is holding them back:

Intelligence officials tell ABC News [Hezbollah] has activated suspected “sleeper cells” in Canada and key operatives have been tracked moving outside the group’s Lebanon base to Canada, Europe and Africa…

Suspected Hezbollah operatives have conducted recent surveillance on the Israeli embassy in Ottawa, Canada and on several synagogues in Toronto, according to the officials.

Latin American is also considered a possible target by officials following Hezbollah’s planning…

Officials say the CIA, the NSA, and British and Canadian intelligence agencies began to pick up a steady stream of information - from electronic intercepts, human sources and surveillance - about a possible Hezbollah attack on February 17, just days after the Beirut funeral of Mugniyah where Hezbollah leaders publicly declared they would seek revenge…

[Former CIA intelligence officer Bob] Baer says his Hezbollah contacts told him an attack against the US was unlikely because Iran and Hezbollah did not want to give the Bush Administration an excuse to attack.]

But next year, when the Winnie the Pooh Doctrine is firmly in place?  The sky’s the limit, baby.

Thus does Yates’ question arise anew: “What rough beast, its hour come round [again], slouches towards Bethlehem to be [re]born?”

The rough beast is on its way.  The Hundred Acre Wood won’t know what hit it.

[cross-posted at ]

Further insight into the pacifist sewer that is Barack Hussein Obama’s “strategic thinking”:

Barack Obama says if Osama bin Laden were captured on his watch, he’d want to ensure he doesn’t become a martyr if he were prosecuted. Obama said he’s not sure that the terrorist mastermind would be captured alive.

But if he were, Obama said he would want to bring him to justice “in a way that allows the entire world to understand the murderous acts that he’s engaged in and not to make him into a martyr.”

Uh, don’t you have to be killed in order to become a “martyr”?  If you’re captured alive, that doesn’t fit within that definition, right?

And why would it require a “way of bringing him to justice” for “the entire world” to understand his murderous acts?  Didn’t “the entire world” spend the morning of September 11, 2001 sitting in either shock or racous celebration (you know in which part of the world) before their televisions as passenger jets flew into both towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and, but for the heroism of four passengers on the fourth one, the White House or the U.S. Capitol?  And how much of a “martyr” would bin Laden really be if he got captured after the meat-grinder through which al Qaeda has been fed by the U.S. military over the past six years at the Bush Administration’s direction?

No, Senator, the danger isn’t that he’d become a martyr, even by your misdefinition; it’s that he’d become a hero, as his trial would take place in a U.S. civilian court, with bin Laden accorded full constitutional rights, including the right of discovery into every intelligence secret on al Qaeda the U.S. government has, and the ability to turn his trial into an O.J. Simpson-like media circus and ultimate mockery of justice.  That IS what the U.S. Supreme Court decreed last week.  Which makes it far more likely that he would be killed on the battlefield - martyred in actuality, and in the anonymity he doubtless fears - an anonymity to which you would doubtless contribute as you wouldn’t want to be known as the man who “murdered” George W. Bush’s “public enemy #1″ without due process and all that rotgut.

Given that Senator Obama did, almost by rote, praise that oligarchical atrocity, it’s all the more emblematic of his candidacy that he exposed his off-the-cuff ignorance yet again in butchering his “don’t make bin Laden a martyr” metaphor:

Obama, a former senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, cited “that principle of habeas corpus, that a state can’t just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process — that’s the essence of who we are. I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday.”

(Though Obama was clearly referring to the principle of giving criminals a day in court, it’s worth pointing out the distinction here, that the Nuremberg trials did not give Nazi war criminals access to U.S. courts, but to a special international military tribunal created by the U.S., USSR, France and the U.K. Though Nuremberg currently is considered a model for international law, it’s not as if Rudolph Hess had access to challenge his detention in U.S. federal court.)

Ensign Ed piles on with further clarification:

It’s not as if the military tribunals offered by Congress and the Bush Administration fell below Nuremberg standards, either. They allowed for even more rights for the defendants than Nuremberg, or would have if the Supreme Court hadn’t twice stopped them before determining whether they worked. In fact, the tribunals as conceived in the last iteration closely match what American soldiers receive for their own trials under the UCMJ.

And just imagine: under traditional international law and rules of war, it is entirely within a country’s rights and privileges to summarily execute, without trial OR due process, captured un-uniformed, illegal enemy combatants.  The Bushies bent over backwards for the terrorists even before they came under relentless pro-jihadi harassment by congressional Democrats and their counterparts on Olympus, who have now added the powers of commander-in-chief of the armed forces to their trophy case.  And now Barack Hussein Obama is either blantantly lying about de facto American citizenship for al Qaedastanis being analogous to the Nuremberg war crime tribunal, or he really is too chowder-headed to understand the difference.

Or, to put it in Ace-ian terms:

Apparently Obama is to be praised for doing the simplest and easiest things, like he’s a [bleep]ing retard who needs to be unduly complimented for making it through a tapioca break without [bleep]ing himself too much.

Maybe the MSM knows something about Barack Obama’s cognitive powers we don’t. Maybe he should be lavishly praised for a [bleep]-free tapioca.

And this man is going to be the next president of the United States?

UPDATE: Here’s how Khalid Sheikh Mohammed expressed his appreciation to Justices Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer:

“I cannot accept any attorney who is not governed by sharia [Islamic] law. I will represent myself. I will not be represented by anybody even if he is a Muslim, because he will be sworn to your American Constitution. I consider all the U.S. Constitution and laws evil. They are allowing for same-sexual marriages and many things that are very bad … Do you understand what I said?”

You can see where this is headed, cantcha?

[cross-posted at ]

A tripartite follow-up on Barack’s ballsy, bellowing bellicosity….

First, from Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on Barry’s “nebulous” commitment to stage an Iraq “publicity stunt”:

Mr. Zebari, who has served as foreign minister in every Iraqi government since 2003, finds Mr. Obama’s proposal worrying. In a meeting with Post editors and reporters Tuesday, he said that after all the pain and sacrifices of the past five years, “we are just turning the corner in Iraq.” A precipitous withdrawal, he said, “would create a huge vacuum and undo all the gains and achievements. And the others” — enemies of the United States — “would celebrate.”

Mr. Zebari said he told Mr. Obama that “Iraq is not an island.” In other words, an American withdrawal that destabilized the country would also roil the region around it and embolden U.S. adversaries such as al-Qaeda and Iran. “We have a deadly enemy,” Mr. Zebari said. “When he sees that you commit yourself to a certain timetable, he will use this to increase pressure and attacks, to make it look as though he is forcing you out. We have many actors who would love to take advantage of that opportunity.” Mr. Zebari says he believes U.S. forces can and should be drawn down. His point is that reductions should be made gradually, as the Iraqi army becomes stronger.

Sounds like BO was doing more listening than talking, doesn’t it?  And that Minister Zebari was telling him what he didn’t want to hear.

So, in keeping with False Messiah’s neurotic conflict aversion, he evidently told the Iraqi poobah what he thought the man wanted to hear - nebulously, of course:

The foreign minister said “my message” to Mr. Obama “was very clear. . . . Really, we are making progress. I hope any actions you will take will not endanger this progress.” He said he was reassured by the candidate’s response, which caused him to think that Mr. Obama might not differ all that much from Mr. McCain. Mr. Zebari said that in addition to promising a visit, Mr. Obama said that “if there would be a Democratic administration, it will not take any irresponsible, reckless, sudden decisions or action to endanger your gains, your achievements, your stability or security. Whatever decision he will reach will be made through close consultation with the Iraqi government and U.S. military commanders in the field.”

This is, of course, diametrically the opposite of what he has said pretty much forever on this subject, while still leaving enough wiggle room (It depends on what the definition of the words “irresponsible,” “reckless,” and “sudden” are….) to pursue an immediate retreat as quickly after noon next January 20th as humanly possible.  Besides, who’ll ever know what Lucifer promised a nameless, faceless Iraqi official who’ll be among the first executed by the Iranian/al Qaeda terror regime that conquers Iraq after we leave?

Next, behind Door #2, we have this nicely done RNC reminder of St. Barack’s anti-terrorism instincts from a Donk primary debate last summer:

Q: Senator Obama, if, God forbid a thousand times, while we were gathered here tonight we learned that two American cities had been hit simultaneously by terrorists, and we further learned beyond the shadow of a doubt that it had been the work of al-Qaeda, how would you change the US military stance overseas as a result?

A: Well, the first thing we’d have to do is make sure that we’ve got an effective emergency response, something that this administration failed to do when we had a hurricane in New Orleans. And I think that we have to review how we operate in the event of not only a natural disaster, but also a terrorist attack.

The second thing is to make sure that we’ve got good intelligence, a., to find out that we don’t have other threats and attacks potentially out there, and b., to find out, do we have any intelligence on who might have carried it out so that we can take potentially some action to dismantle that network. But what we can’t do is then alienate the world community based on faulty intelligence, based on bluster and bombast. Instead, the next thing we would have to do, in addition to talking to the American people, is making sure that we are talking to the international community.

Because as already been stated, we’re not going to defeat terrorists on our own. We’ve got to strengthen our intelligence relationships with them, and they’ve got to feel a stake in our security by recognizing that we have mutual security interests at stake.

That the perps of this hypothetical attack were al Qaeda was explicitly stated in the question.  But apart from it is where His Eminence’s emphasis falls: maybe he’d take some potential action if he’s ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY SURE that it’s al Qaeda, but only if he gets undisputed permission from the “international community,” because “we can’t defeat terrorists on our own.”  After the way he’ll gut what’s left of the military after Bill Clinton disembowled it, that’ll probably be correct.

Senator Obama forgets that, for the time being, no other member of “the international community” has anywhere near the multi-faceted military capabilities we do.  So if we “can’t defeat the terrorists on our own,” the “international community” won’t be any help, even if they were inclined to view the war on terror as anything but the “law enforcement operation” that Ba-ROCK sees it as.  Which they’re not.

And leave us not forget that in the intelligence game, there’s no such thing as having all the facts.  There aren’t any sure things.  There are only educated guesses.  No president EVER has complete knowledge of a crisis situation, and he can’t afford to sit on his thumb and wait indefinitely in the forlorn hope that he will, or countless more Americans and allies will die.

Do you even want to contemplate this man facing an Iranian nuclear ultimatum?

Which brings us to Door #3:

Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else.

Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: “Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.”

I swear I’m not making that up.  Or, at the very least, if somebody is, it’s way up the cyberstream from me.

But there’s more:

Mr Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children’s classic, which says: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.”

This man is actually saying that the national security policy of the most powerful nation on the planet should be patterned after the whimsical antics of a miniature, taxidermized, exhibitionist, bulemic ursine mammal named after excrement.  And he’s going to be the next National Security Advisor of the United States.

But leave aside the puerile, mentally unbalanced metaphorical imagery, and focus in on the guiding principle underlying it: “If it” - our national security strategy - “is causing you too much pain, try something else.”  This, by implication, is a reference to the insurgency we’ve been fighting for the past five years in Iraq.  Or, rather, the fact that we’ve been fighting it instead of just running away, abandoning the Iraqis to get slaughtered (again), providing our enemies with a huge strategic victory, and encouraging them to further escalate their already existing war against us.  The last time the Pooh Doctrine guided our national security decisions, the result was an escalating series of al Qaeda and Hezbollah attacks culminating in “Holy Tuesday” six years, nine months, and seven days ago.  It seems to me that losing three thousand American civilians in the space of forty-five minutes was all kinds of “too much pain,” and fleeing the Islamic Fundies now would cause us a grievously huger load of it.

One can, of course, more succinctly and candidly rephrase Danzig’s slogan: Take the easy way out.  Cut & run.  Wave a worthless piece of paper around, crow that “it is peace in our time,” and watch the world - or at least Israel, Europe, and our own homeland - go up in atomic flames, one city at a time.

These are the people on whose judgment the lives of you and your loved ones will depend for at least the four years beginning next January 20th, gentlebeings.  My only questions are two:

1) Now are we expected to trot off into bovine obedience by Barry’s manly swagger or just moo?

2) You don’t really think you’re going to get any sleep tonight, do ya?

[cross-posted at ]

Only liberals, who believe in nanny state for life, would make an ad saying that “even when my child is 18 I will not allow them to make their own choices.”To the “mother”: You are dumb, if elected your child will only be 9-10 when McCain leaves office! Either you are making a BS point or you honestly believe there are pre-teens in the US Armed Forces. Either way…DUMB.

In conclusion, this is the type of garbage that made me start CIR. People trying to bash the military and its leaders. And look at where it is coming from… THE LEFT! It used to be Uncle Sam saying “I want You.” And the country responding with “yes.” Now the left has their MOTHERS speaking for them telling Uncle Sam to “F OFF.”