Category Archives: Bush

Update V: BUSH IN A BRA

Bush, Foreign Policy, Iran, Just War, Neoconservatism, Political Correctness, Politics, Republicans, Sarah Palin

That’s Sarah Palin. The Age of the Idiot means that, as I write, no transcript is available of Sarah Palin’s address to the Tea Party Convention. I would have preferred to speed read through the thing, but I am forced to view this. Thanks BAB readers for your solid comments on the speech in the previous post.

• Plenty babble about democracy being beautiful. The founders founded a republic, not a democracy, because they feared majorities as much as they detested monarchy.
• National security. More nonsense. The response to the pantie bomber is far more dangerous than the Mirandized man could ever be. Terrorizing the American sheeple at airports began under Sarah’s man, Bush. She repeats the asinine idea that the American military bestriding the globe, a presence that cost us a $1 trillion a year, is protecting our constitutional rights. Poppycock.
• Terrorists are trying to destroy the American Constitution, says she. Nonsense. American governments have beat them to it. To all intents and purposes, the Constitution is dead. If the lady doesn’t get it, then…
• Support for democracy and its dissemination across the world, now that’s an idea I’ve heard before. Bush branded the United States as the world’s “partner for a better life.” He also recommitted “our nation” “abroad” “to an historic, long-term goal”: seeking “the end of tyranny in our world.” If the Tea Party doesn’t reject root-and-branch this odious neoconservative formula; I’m out of there.
• “We need a strong national defense.” Middle America, or is it Meathead America, erupted in cheers when Sarah got militant. Uttered by Sarah this is code for gallivanting around the world, which Ronald Reagan, whom she invoked, did not do. He withdrew from Lebanon, remember? I’m for strong defense—of America’s borders, of her neighborhoods via local militias and well-armed citizens.
• I’m against sanctions, which Palin trumpets. We killed enough kids in Iraq through sanctions. “Trade, not democracy, is the best antidote to war. The more economically intertwined countries are, the less likely they are to go to war. Boycott Iran less and barter with it more and it’s bound to tone down its belligerence.”
• I liked the mention of Barry Goldwater, naturally. “We can be conquered by bombs, but we can also be conquered by neglect, by ignoring our Constitution.”
• TARP and bailouts. Didn’t her ticket support the Bush bailout? Isn’t she preparing to stump for McMussolini, the man who’s all for this Keynesian kookiness?
• Only twice did Palin get worked up in a real good way, and that was when she spoke of the effects of the bailouts and TARP on the states and the toll it would take on the Tenth Amendment. She should have remained a governor. She was good at that. The other instance was when she delved into energy issues—yet another of her strengths. If you read her book, you’ll know that, “when it comes to the ins-and-outs of the oil and gas industry—ownership, extraction, contracts and leases—Sarah Palin is as sharp as a tack.”
• The federales keep “making us take these steps toward insolvency.” Good. Palin did say that the federal government was printing dollars, funny-money, or worthless paper. More of that was in order.

Someone pick up from here. I’ve had enough.

Update I: GLORIOUS GIMPS. There, I’ve said it. In her advocacy, repeated in last night’s address, on behalf of “special” children, Palin is strengthening the contemptible tradition, embraced by “traditionalists,” of a politically correct tyranny, to say nothing of statism (when she ran as VP, Palin promised a department devoted to the developmentally challenged. Have I used all the right lingo?).

Palin is no different from her buddy, blond bubblehead Elizabeth Hasselbeck, in galvanizing the PC police to mete justice to mouthy individuals.

Ha’aratz:

(Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential hopeful, demanded on Monday that President Barack Obama fire his White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, over a reported expletive [“f—-ng retarded”] he is said to have uttered, CBS News reported.)

Palin is pathetic on this front. She also has it all wrong. If anything, a traditionalist ought to defend manners. I find the plain rude “f-cking” more offensive than the legitimate colloquial “retarded.”

Update II: Palin a product of affirmative action? I can’t begin to think why anyone would so assert. Not true. Palin comes from a poor, hard-working, wonderful family. She worked like a dog for everything she has, including catching and gutting fish, and eventually owning a fishing concern with an equally rugged mate, Todd. In her family, the college-goer paid for his or her education. What parent that you know (or who partakes on this blog) has done that bit of character- building for their brats?

Read her book before you declare Sarah a product of affirmative action. Her political career is also anything but. Campaigning for governor involved getting in the pick-up with Todd and the kids—and if Todd was on The Slope in a hard hat, then without the remarkable hunk—cranking up the music and traveling for hundreds of miles around Alaska to meet the folks.

The woman is fearless.

Anyone who doesn’t recognize Sarah for the remarkable lady she is a plain fool. I challenge him or her to read Sarah’s book, the worst sections of which entail her entanglement with the man Barry Goldwater despised, McMussolini; the best tell of her early familial and political years (and too little of the Love of her Life).

The press lied about the content of Going Rogue. Despite the shoddy treatment Palin received at the hands of a bunch of sleazy McCain handlers, she remained gracious and genteel. Moreover, the book is substantive. Liberals simply consider the kind of ideas Palin expresses and the way of life she likes an abomination.

Having said all that, problems remain with her stunted politics.

Update III: I’m shaking; Iran and Sudan are talking. (In reply to the odd comment hereunder, which I had hoped someone else would do on my behalf). And in reply to “Ms Palin’s advice for Mr Obama, on Sunday, to attack Iran”:

WHY on earth? Iran is no danger to the US. If it sends a missile our way, we’ll intercept it. But if the missile lands on a city (DC?), Iran will be communing with the 12th Imam in a matter of minutes. One push of the button is all it takes for the US to nuke Iran out of this hemisphere. Obama, who has been very active in bombing Afghani terrorists, their families and villagers with the aid of drones, will press the button.

Any American who says he’s afraid of Iran is lying, is chicken, or is really afraid for Israel.

I too am afraid for Israel. As I’ve said, Israel has been threatened by Iran. If the Jewish state perceives an impending danger of a nuclear attack from Iran, then the Israelis must do what it takes to defend themselves.

Since backward, poor Iran poses no danger to the US, what our somewhat disingenuous neoconservative contributors are in fact suggesting is that the US fight Israel’s battles. I cannot condone that—certainly not while pretending that Iran poses a danger to the US, when it does not.

Update IV: PALIN STATISM. Other than perpetual war and a department for the disabled, Sarah Palin is a staunch supported of some other big-government items.

Larry Auster notes that “she is a passionate advocate of Title IX, the federal statute barring ‘discrimination’ against females in education which, in Atlas Shrugged manner, [I don’t get this obfuscating reference Auster has inserted] by requiring that there be an equal number of girls’ and boys’ sports teams in each school, has forced hundreds of schools around the country to discontinue boys’ sports teams. And she supports an expansion of federal aid to education–the very essence of the big government, socialist mindset!”

Update V (Feb. 8): BACK TO IRAN.

WALLACE: How hard do you think President Obama will be to defeat in 2012?
PALIN: It depends on a few things. Say he played—and I got this from Buchanan, reading one of his columns the other day – say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really [to] come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do, but – that changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today I do not think Obama would be re-elected. But three years from now, things could change if—on the national security front …
WALLACE: But you’re not suggesting that he would cynically play the war card?
PALIN: I’m not suggesting that. I’m saying if he did, things would dramatically change. If he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would, perhaps, shift their thinking a little bit and decide, “Well, maybe he’s tougher than we think he’s—than he is today,” and there wouldn’t be as much passion to make sure that he doesn’t serve another four years.

Naturally I oppose a Palin foreign policy whereby we send our men to die for the safety of our satellite states.

One more pesky detail, for those of you itching for some war games (as you are not going to be fighting the war you promote): The US can’t afford the wars it’s in.

That said, you’d have to be an idiot to deny what Iran has been broadcasting: The Islamic Republic is cooking-up a Bomb. The French are afraid. So are the Germans.

So for America, war is out. All else is in. Get the IAEA’s ElBaradei working. He did a good job in Iraq before Bush kicked him out and flattened the place. Have the Europeans strain their nukes on Iran and create Cold-War deterrence. The peaceful options are endless.

Updated: Obama Goes Getto On America (But Easy On Himself)

Barack Obama, Bush, Democrats, Healthcare, Politics, Republicans

HERE’S “what this bum thinks of America,” writes Larry Auster, and manages to capture the cretinous petulance of Obama’s response, at a town hall meeting in Ohio today, to the building resentment:

“… he is still ensconced in his little world, his little gnostic bubble, where reality is supposed to bend to his desires no matter how harmful and irrational they may be, and if it doesn’t, it’s other people’s fault–people who do nasty, ‘ugly’ things, people who ‘scare the bejesus out of everybody,’ people who ‘buzz-sawed’ his beautiful health care bill to smithereens in Massachusetts. Yes, that’s right, he described a peaceful, lawful election in the state of Massachusetts as a ‘buzz saw.’ That’s what this bum thinks of America. All of which is a good sign. It suggests Obama will not adjust to reality, will not ‘grow’ in response to defeat, but will remain a bitter, hostile alien in this country, clinging to his health care bill and his cap and trade, which in turn will make it more and more difficult for him to impose his will on us in any area, and will also make it a reasonable possibility that he will be a one-term messiah. Which is sort of a contradiction in terms, isn’t it?”

Auster rounds off with a Mark Steyn quip (“I’ve never denied that Steyn has his moments,” Larry writes. Ditto.) in response to “Obama’s astounding remark that the reason the voters of Massachusetts chose Republican Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley and thus destroyed the Democratic Party’s revolutionary legislative agenda was that they were angry at eight years of Republican President Bush”:

Presumably, the president isn’t stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it’s dispiriting to discover he’s stupid enough to think we’re stupid enough to believe it.

Update (Jan. 23): Here is the prepared text of Obama’s “jobs” speech in Elyria, Ohio.”

Précis:

* BO sets the scene by blaming the big banks for this latest bubble created by loose monetary policy and compounded by decades of affirmative-oriented lending policies imposed on banks by government legislation.

* Pats himself on the back for the Recovery Act, bailouts, and nationalization of The Big Three, and for single-handedly averting a Second Great Depression through delirious spending, and by designing functioning, efficient, fair markets (in Obama oratory: “creating the jobs of tomorrow”). Yes, command economics worked in the Soviet Union; it’s working in these United States. Amen, Bro.

* BO then bemoans rising prices. In other words inflation—the increase in the money supply promulgated by the government-owned Federal Reserve’s habit of mucking about with interest rates or plain printing paper. Fiddling with the money supply courtesy of the government-Fed syndicate—and for the purpose of funding, if clandestinely, Big O’s debt—that’s inflation. “The truth is that inflation is caused by government,” observed Ronald Reagan. “It’s caused by government spending more than it takes in, and it will go away just as soon as government stops doing that.”

* Throw into the mix dollops of class warfare and you have a pacified crowd. “[S]ome Americans made huge amounts of money,” blasted BO, “while many others pedaled faster and faster, only to find themselves stuck in the same place.”

Yes, I agree. Do read “Life In The Oink Sector” to find out whose ranks you need to join if you want your wages to rise continuously—up to 50% higher than the average salary out there—never have to fear downsizing; being fired, reprimanded, or worked to the bone, and to retire after 30 years of abusing your “clients” on an annual income of a $100,000. Hint: It’s not the private productive economy.

Remember Lilly Ledbetter (it’s in the speech)! In the little lady’s honor, as Barack reminds us, he unleashed on struggling American businesses armies of strong-arming (and buff-armed, no doubt) Girls Gone Wild, eager for their pound of flesh. Read about it in Barack Against the Boys.)

Shout out for the Obama-expanded SCHIP program, the entitlement plan known as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

More self-congratulations. Barack leaves.

I’m off to barf.

Updated: Neocon Redux

Ann Coulter, Bush, Intelligence, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Race, Reason, Republicans, Terrorism

“WE WANT TO FIGHT THEM OVER THERE, RATHER THAN HERE.” Ann Coulter repeats that embarrassing, Bush-era non sequitur, also a center piece of Bush’s foreign policy. With that line, Bush bamboozled Boobus Americanus into believing that war in Iraq and terrorism in America were mutually exclusive conditions.

Andrew Breitbart prefers to forget the many times Bush betrayed “red-state Americans.” But worse than that: AB seems to be accusing the “MoveOn.Org crowd” of maligning Bush’s efforts at preventing 9/11. Is he seriously defending the stumble-bumble Bush administration’s criminal negligence in the year before the most devastating terrorist attack on US soil?

Let us reminds Breitbart of Condoleezza Rice’s bafflegabs:

She ignored “a 1999 report by the Library of Congress stating that suicide bombers belonging to al-Qaida could crash an aircraft into U.S. targets,” stating that it belonged to the realm of analysis, and wasn’t ‘actionable intelligence.'”

Condy Cow then blamed her ineptness on the need to reform Washington’s atrophied alphabet soup of intelligence agencies. (Ten years on, the Obama administration is doing the same.) But the National Security Council headed by Rice was an office created to advise the president on anything relating to national security and to facilitate inter-agency cooperation. “If suspicion existed – analytic, synthetic, prosaic or poetic – Rice should have put the squeeze on the system she oversaw.”

On Condy’s watch America experienced perhaps the worst intelligence lapse ever: Remember the Phoenix FBI agent who wrote a memorandum about the bin Ladenites who were training in U.S. flight schools? Agent Ken Williams’ report was very specific. Over and above the standard sloth the memo met in the Washington headquarters, it transpired that the FBI was as concerned about ‘racial profiling’ then as it is today.

Listening to Breitbart and Coulter, you’d think that security breech involving Mr. Hot Pants Abdulmutallab, AKA the Christmas Bomber, rivaled the one that allowed 9/11.

Watch the duo:

Update (Dec. 31): Sigh. Just as long as they spell your name right, right? From where I’m perched, I’ll settle for “them” reading what I write.

In response to the missive accusing me of, hitherto, misdiagnosing Ms. Coulter’s Craft, here’s an excerpt from my 2006 “Coughing Up Some Coulter Fur Balls”:

Mencken certainly would have had few kind words for dirigiste Dubya, the ultimate statist. Coulter, conversely, has shown Bush (who isn’t even conservative) almost unquestioning loyalty, other than to protest his Harriet Miers indiscretion and, of late, his infarct over illegal immigration. Such singular devotion would have been alien to Mencken. Nor would the very brilliant elitist have found this president’s manifest, all-round ignorance forgivable or endearing—Bush’s penchant for logical and linguistic infelicities would have repulsed Mencken.

About foreign forays, Mencken stated acerbically that “the United States should mind its own business. If it is actually commissioned by God to put down totalitarianism, let it start in Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Santo Domingo and Mississippi.” Mencken believed that “waging a war for a purely moral reason [was] as absurd as ravishing a woman for a purely moral reason.” Not in a million years would he have endorsed Bush’s Iraq misadventure.
Since he was not a party animal, but a man of principle, conformity to the clan would not have seen Mencken fall into contradiction as Coulter has: she rightly condemned Madeleine Albright’s “preemptive attack” on Slobodan Milosevic, as having been “solely for purposes of regime change based on false information presented to the American people.” But has adopted a different—decidedly double—standard regarding Bush’s Iraq excursion.
To repeat: Coulter is sui generis, but a Mencken she is not.

What readers find confusing is my unfem knack for fairly detailing the woman’s obvious talents, without fulminating excessively and vindictively about her failings. Coulter is a very talented Republican hack. Since I am quite comfortable in my unappreciated abilities, I see no need to denigrate hers. I know this is unusual, but it’s why rational individualists gravitate to this site.

Updated: Contemptible Chris Calls For Profiling

Bush, Crime, Homeland Security, Islam, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Terrorism

Ten years too late, Chris Matthews voices discomfort with America’s airport insanity, where “old women and old men are taken out of their wheelchairs, having to do this Lord’s Walk for about 20 yards to prove that they can walk. It’s insane.”

The Johnnie-come-lately anchor of “Hardball” asked for common sense, as deployed by the Israelis (again; ten years too late): “And then you hear about this guy who raises all the red flags and the walks right through. Why to we put up with this? Is this going to come down to profiling?”

Watch:

Could this creep be alluding to what I termed “Rational Profiling”? This from “Rational Profiling: Cabbies Do It Too: Cabbies Do It Too”:

Bush, we presume, is aware of the shared characteristics that distinguish Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Khalid al-Mihdhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi, Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah, Hani Hanjour (all of the 9-11 “fame”); Mohammad Sidique Khan, Hasib Mir Hussain, and Shehzad Tanweer (of 7-7); Ayman al-Zawahiri’s and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Bin Laden’s Capo Bastones).

If not, his security detail knows “Muslims proportionately commit more airline hijackings and suicide bombings than non-Muslims.” The taxpayer-funded security squads watching over our legislators certainly do not confine their protective efforts to frisking old ladies.

Yet the Bush administration has severely punished airlines “whose pilots have refused to carry Muslim men whom they regard as a security risk.” The Department of Transportation—and resentful Muslim advocacy groups—has no qualms about continually suing airlines for attempting to put the safety of passengers first.

From “Lunatic Government Occupies Airports”:

“Compiling a composite of the criminals most likely to hijack an airline or blow up a building isn’t hard. … The menace faced is invariably from ‘young Muslim men of North African, Middle Eastern and South Asian origin.’ … officials keep telling the believing ‘Boobus Americanus’ that safety lies in pretending everyone is equally weighted in his propensity to blow up an airplane. If we were on the lookout for an abortion clinic saboteur, would we be patting down Islamists, or Southern Baptist survivalists? In every other whodunit, behavioral scientists attempt to construct a criminal profile of the suspect. In the case of Islamic terrorism, however, the state won’t even use the compelling evidence it has.”

Update (Dec. 29): SMILE; YOU’RE BEING STRIPPED. Is it to be “rational profiling” or this strip-search (courtesy of Drudge)? We know the answer, as well as we know our overlords.

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