Who Does Barack Obama Remind Me Of? BUSH. The indignant protestations from the Republicans notwithstanding, the two parties and potentates are interchangeable.
Dec 11, 2009: “… leaders say they will try to raise the ceiling to nearly $14 trillion as part of a $626 billion bill next week to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other military programs in 2010.”
September 11, 2003: Bush increasesthe ceiling on a whopping $6.8 trillion national debt.
Pleasing neoconservatives: Bush’s preemptive war doctrine never failed to bring a smile to Bill Kristol’s face. Pursuant to last week’s Nobel War Speech address, Obama too is making Bill warm all over.
Update (Dec. 15): The two converge on war and on chasing “fat cats” (bar the likes of Barney Frank):
Bush: “The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, courtesy of the Republican Party, cost American companies upwards of $1.2 trillion. The capital flight it initiated caused the London Stock Exchange to become the new hub for capital markets. Given America’s habit of forcing its habits on others, SOX struck fear into quite a few Liberal Democratic hearts in the House of Lords. Lord Teverson worried about the ‘increasing danger of regulatory creep from American regulators that threatens [Britain’s] own light-touch approach to financial regulation.'”
Barack: “A regulatory tsunami is on its way. ever-increasing regulation, stricter corporate-governance standards and the threat of higher taxes in response to the ballooning deficit. This week the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it considered carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant, raising the spectre of clumsy administrative measures to reduce emissions—a prospect even more terrifying to business than the cap-and-trade scheme currently under consideration in Congress. Meanwhile, hopes of business-friendly reforms to America’s convoluted corporate-tax regime, among other things, have fallen by the wayside. …
‘The concern is pervasive but rather amorphous in the sense that different executives have very different worries,’ says Joe Grundfest, a former member of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) who now runs a ‘boot camp’ at Stanford University for corporate directors. ‘Some fret over tax policy. Others agonise over cap-and-trade, or health-care reform. Many worry about additional corporate-governance regulations. It’s a smorgasbord of corporate neuroses out there.'”
Update II (Dec. 15): Peter Schiff, of course, is hip to the Bush/Barack overlap: “Through aggressive monetary and fiscal stimuli, we are trying to re-inflate a balloon that is full of holes. This was the Bush Administration’s exact response to the 2002 recession. It’s shocking how few observers note the repeating pattern, especially the fact that each crash is worse than the last.”
With his substandard professional performance, do you think Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Jihadi who committed fratricide at Fort Hood, would have survived for long in the private sector? In a Veterans’ Administration Hospital, on the other hand, nothing threatened Hasan’s employment status, rank, and six-figure income. In the venerated VA system, damaged soldiers are left to the mercies of a man—Major Nidal—whom the mother of one such soldier describes as scary, inappropriate and without empathy.
As you cheer on the state’s encroaching monopoly over medicine, give some thought to the number of Jihadi-prone practitioners the codified laws of political correctness will admit into the new system.
Meantime, the London Telegraph reports that, “Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a ‘spiritual adviser’ to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.”
“What does seem clear is that the army missed an increasing number of red flags that Hasan was a troubled and brooding individual within its ranks.
“‘I was shocked but not surprised by news of Thursday’s attack,’ said Dr Val Finnell, a fellow student on a public health course in 2007-08 who heard Hasan equate the war on terrorism to a war on Islam. Another student had warned military officials that Hasan was a ‘ticking time bomb’ after he reportedly gave a presentation defending suicide bombers. … expressed anti-Jewish sentiments and defended suicide bombings.”
“Hasan had, in fact, already come to the attention of the authorities before Thursday’s massacre. He was suspected of being the author of internet postings that compared suicide bombers with soldiers who throw themselves on grenades to save others and had also reportedly been warned about proselytising to patients.”
“At Fort Hood, he told a colleague, Col Terry Lee, that he believed Muslims should rise up against American ‘aggressors’. He made no attempt to hide his desire to end his military service early or his mortification at the prospect of deployment to Afghanistan. … [and made] strident attacks on US foreign policy.”
More from ABC about the the Army’s dereliction of duty:
U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.
According to the officials, the Army was informed of Hasan’s contact, but it is unclear what, if anything, the Army did in response.
At all times, retain your cynicism about Repbulican posturing. When it traspired the Bush’s administration ignored all the memos about Muslim men training to fly, not land, jets, what did Bush do? Nada! When “Skeeza” Condoleeza got intelligence about bin Laden, she called it “analytical,” as opposed actionable, and proceeded to ignore the deafening chatter.
“PROTECTED SPECIES”: Lt. Col. Ralph Peters: If Nidal had been a white supremacist, he would have been gone long ago. But becasue he was a protected species, he got a pass again and again. Hasan proselytized for Islam, preached death to the infidel, logged onto to Jihadi websites, and ran around in his Islamic playsuit…—and we are told this has nothing to do with Islam?
Well said!
Update I (Nov. 10): “We are commanded to terrorize the disbelievers.” WND broke the story about this group. Here are its leaders in the flesh.
Update II (Nov. 10): The president is about to speak at the memorial for the victims of the Jihadi, Major Nidal. He will rhapsodize over the incomprehensibility of this event. That perspective is reprehensible and incomprehensible. There is perfect logic to this event if one doesn’t buy into the “Look Away Doctrine.”
Update III: THE STELLAR DOC. Grunts, here’s more information about your government and how it protects you from in-house homicidal Jihadis. According to the WaPo, late in June of 2007, Nidal gave a powerpoint presentation with a difference. It was titled, “The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.”
“Maj. Nidal M. Hasan was supposed to make a presentation on a medical topic of his choosing as a culminating exercise of the residency program.”
“Instead, … he stood before his supervisors and about 25 other mental health staff members and lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by The Washington Post.”
‘It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,’ he said in the presentation.”
“Other slides delved into the history of Islam, its tenets, statistics about the number of Muslims in the military, and explanations of ‘offensive jihad,’ or holy war.”
[SNIP]
You’d think that his supervisors would have at least failed him for his curricular creativity (read laziness). Instead they confined themselves to “looking really upset.” With each, escalating display of deviance our Jihadi got the green light, the Go Ahead.
Update IV: It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. Whatever gets you kicked out of the American dhimmi force, it is not radical-Muslim status. This confers you with protections. We learn, Via ABC, that authorities had intercepted Hasan’s extensive e-mail exchange with radical cleric, and al Qaida recruiter Anwar al Awlakis, “but later deemed them innocent or protected by the first amendment.”
Investigators are also telling ABC “that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan had ‘more unexplained connections to people being tracked by the FBI’ than just radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. The official declined to name the individuals but Congressional sources said their names and countries of origin were likely to emerge soon.”
With his substandard professional performance, do you think Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Jihadi who committed fratricide at Fort Hood, would have survived for long in the private sector? In a Veterans’ Administration Hospital, on the other hand, nothing threatened Hasan’s employment status, rank, and six-figure income. In the venerated VA system, damaged soldiers are left to the mercies of a man—Major Nidal—whom the mother of one such soldier describes as scary, inappropriate and without empathy.
As you cheer on the state’s encroaching monopoly over medicine, give some thought to the number of Jihadi-prone practitioners the codified laws of political correctness will admit into the new system.
Meantime, the London Telegraph reports that, “Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a ‘spiritual adviser’ to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.”
“What does seem clear is that the army missed an increasing number of red flags that Hasan was a troubled and brooding individual within its ranks.
“‘I was shocked but not surprised by news of Thursday’s attack,’ said Dr Val Finnell, a fellow student on a public health course in 2007-08 who heard Hasan equate the war on terrorism to a war on Islam. Another student had warned military officials that Hasan was a ‘ticking time bomb’ after he reportedly gave a presentation defending suicide bombers. … expressed anti-Jewish sentiments and defended suicide bombings.”
“Hasan had, in fact, already come to the attention of the authorities before Thursday’s massacre. He was suspected of being the author of internet postings that compared suicide bombers with soldiers who throw themselves on grenades to save others and had also reportedly been warned about proselytising to patients.”
“At Fort Hood, he told a colleague, Col Terry Lee, that he believed Muslims should rise up against American ‘aggressors’. He made no attempt to hide his desire to end his military service early or his mortification at the prospect of deployment to Afghanistan. … [and made] strident attacks on US foreign policy.”
More from ABC about the the Army’s dereliction of duty:
U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.
According to the officials, the Army was informed of Hasan’s contact, but it is unclear what, if anything, the Army did in response.
At all times, retain your cynicism about Repbulican posturing. When it traspired the Bush’s administration ignored all the memos about Muslim men training to fly, not land, jets, what did Bush do? Nada! When “Skeeza” Condoleeza got intelligence about bin Laden, she called it “analytical,” as opposed actionable, and proceeded to ignore the deafening chatter.
“PROTECTED SPECIES”: Lt. Col. Ralph Peters: If Nidal had been a white supremacist, he would have been gone long ago. But becasue he was a protected species, he got a pass again and again. Hasan proselytized for Islam, preached death to the infidel, logged onto to Jihadi websites, and ran around in his Islamic playsuit…—and we are told this has nothing to do with Islam?
Well said!
Update I (Nov. 10): “We are commanded to terrorize the disbelievers.” WND broke the story about this group. Here are its leaders in the flesh.
Update II (Nov. 10): The president is about to speak at the memorial for the victims of the Jihadi, Major Nidal. He will rhapsodize over the incomprehensibility of this event. That perspective is reprehensible and incomprehensible. There is perfect logic to this event if one doesn’t buy into the “Look Away Doctrine.”
Update III: THE STELLAR DOC. Grunts, here’s more information about your government and how it protects you from in-house homicidal Jihadis. According to the WaPo, late in June of 2007, Nidal gave a powerpoint presentation with a difference. It was titled, “The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.”
“Maj. Nidal M. Hasan was supposed to make a presentation on a medical topic of his choosing as a culminating exercise of the residency program.”
“Instead, … he stood before his supervisors and about 25 other mental health staff members and lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by The Washington Post.”
‘It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,’ he said in the presentation.”
“Other slides delved into the history of Islam, its tenets, statistics about the number of Muslims in the military, and explanations of ‘offensive jihad,’ or holy war.”
[SNIP]
You’d think that his supervisors would have at least failed him for his curricular creativity (read laziness). Instead they confined themselves to “looking really upset.” With each, escalating display of deviance our Jihadi got the green light, the Go Ahead.
Update IV: It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. Whatever gets you kicked out of the American dhimmi force, it is not radical-Muslim status. This confers you with protections. We learn, Via ABC, that authorities had intercepted Hasan’s extensive e-mail exchange with radical cleric, and al Qaida recruiter Anwar al Awlakis, “but later deemed them innocent or protected by the first amendment.”
Investigators are also telling ABC “that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan had ‘more unexplained connections to people being tracked by the FBI’ than just radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. The official declined to name the individuals but Congressional sources said their names and countries of origin were likely to emerge soon.”
He finds great merit in the crocodile tears Bush shed in his presence over soldiers the former president as good as coffined. Obama’s grim visit to Dover, Delaware, to bear witness to the sad specter of young men carrying the coffins of their fallen comrades—this he find utterly unbelievable.
He “thinks” the “president should give the generals, the commanders on the ground, as many troops as theyneed to win.”
To insure the estimated 12 million uninsured, he suggests taking “some of the unspent stimulus. We have 85 percent of the stimulus unspent. … For 35 to $40 billion a year, you could insure those people, not $2 trillion, not 1.4.”
Vis-a-vis ObamaCare, he doesn’t know “any Republican who would try to take over one- sixth of the U.S. economy.” Evidently this Oracle had not heard of the Bush Medicare prescription-drug program. It may not have been a sixth of the economy, but George sure began the ball rolling with that behemoth of a bill.
Neither is he familiar with “one Republican who would put forth the — this irresponsible cap-and-trade bill.” How about that hypocrite he voted for? McCain fulminates against Obama’s tax-and-trade, but “in January 2003, the Senators from Arizona, together with Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), “introduced legislation to cap and trade emissions of greenhouse gases.” (While electioneering, McCain suspended this particular plan to sunder the economy.)
I give you the King of Irrational Partisanship, RUSH LIMBAUGH, in a Sunday interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace.
Update I (Nov. 3): From the Comments Section: “When somebody more ‘acceptable’ turns out an effective opposition to the left maybe I’ll get excited about Rush’s shortcomings.”
That’s amazing. Republican’ chest-thumping warfare projects have brought us to this economic disaster. Yet, nothing changes in the mind of the dyed-in-the-wool Republican. Ron Paul exists; vigorously so. I exist. Chuck Baldwin exists. But no matter how often you point out the deep chasms between Republicans, on the one hand, and Constitutionalists, Taft Republicans, and classical liberals, on the other—the same people keep cheering for the blowhards and blonds of the Stupid Party. Face it, people are collectivists who have to belong to a group, no matter how errant it is in its philosophy.
Update II: We’ve had this attempt at a conversation whereby a non-interventionist foreign policy—my own—was mischaracterized for the purpose of discrediting. Constitutional principles aside, the mind boggles at the blind support for the Bush war boondoggles given their miserable failure.
So let me repeat—probably not for the last time—what I wrote here:
“We’ve adjudicated the last 8 years of foreign policy here on BAB in blog posts and in article on IlanaMercer.com. My perspective, which comports with that of Paul, albeit with some differences, has been vindicated. I’m surprised war mongers are unrepentant, and are still plumping for preemptive war against countries that have not aggressed against the US given the lessons of Iraq. I guess when it’s not your kid who’s hobbling around on prostheses or dead, it doesn’t much move the mind, much less the heart. The “isolationism” pejorative is lobbed by neoconservatives when they wish to discredit those of us who believe in fighting just wars only. It’s like pacifist.”
The idea that defending your borders and controlling who enters your country and stays in it are passive is ludicrous. We don’t do any of these basic housekeeping duties; but we level far-away countries and drop dumb bombs on their impoverished neighborhoods. Way to go! How brave! Individuals who still support this moral perversion are twisted sons of bitches.
Oh, there’s another thing ditto heads forbid, so let me break the rule as is my wont. The military most certainly does commit atrocities. Ask Abeer Qasim Hamza. Wait a sec; you can’t, becasue she’s dead, raped first by the American untouchables.
