Category Archives: Republicans

UPDATED: Robert Gates Aka ‘Yoda’ Aka Yaddah-Yaddah, Blah, Blah, Blah …

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Military, Republicans, War

Let’s see where on the continuum of stupidity are Republicans situated with respect to the recent revelations of former defense secretary Robert M. Gates.

Eighty two percent of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan. Like most Americans, B. Hussein Obama, hardly a peacemaker, questioned the mission in that G-d-forsaken hellhole of a country, and was skeptical of the military brass’s motivation in securing for itself a long-term commitment to that theatre of war.

So far, it sounds good to this writer—who has approved of Obama a total of perhaps twice.

What’s Gates, “whose nickname in the Obama White House was Yoda,” on about?

Yoda, Yaddah-Yaddah, Blah, Blah, Blah.

UPDATED (1/13): I heard that Gates cried himself to sleep over the (wasted) lives he was sending to battle. Could he too have had misgivings about the mission?

* NPR Interview.
* WSJ Gates Archive.

Left And Right Bamboozling You On Benghazi

Democrats, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, History, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Terrorism

“Left And Right Bamboozling You On Benghazi” is the current column, now on WND. A excerpt:

“Us against al Qaeda”: This has been—still is—the narrowly conceived narrative among neoconservatives. As the politically provincial neoconservative foreign-policy paradigm has it, those were the forces that played out in the Benghazi affair, in which the American mission was left undefended, resulting in the slaughter of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans (who, given the pecking order in the Empire, generally go unnamed). …

… Uncovered by The Times’ investigation, however, was a very different reality in Benghazi—”murkier than either of those story lines suggests. Benghazi,” contends Kirkpatrick, “was not infiltrated by al Qaeda, but nonetheless contained grave local threats to American interests. The attack does not appear to have been meticulously planned, but neither was it spontaneous or without warning signs.”

In particular are neoconservatives fulminating over the findings that “turned up no evidence that al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault,” and that “the attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Col. Gadhafi.”

How can that be? Easily: The history of Libya is festooned with similar ransacking and burning of consulates by angry local mobs. Alas, in the ignorance it cultivates about the past, America is Cicero’s perpetual child. By the definition of the great Roman statesman, “Not to know what happened before one was born is to be always a child.” …

… The facts in the Benghazi affair have likewise been unwoven and retied into two contradictory narratives to suit the respective sides.

Think of lab rats racing through a maze, as you watch the sub-intelligent, dual-panel “dialogue” conducted on the teli. Hosts Stephanie Cutter (left-wing, social-democratic rat) and S. E. Cupp (right-wing, social-democratic rat): Each rat runs with a designated, neatly bifurcated (Republican or Democratic) political orthodoxy. Each is a “maze-bright” rat, and not the possessor and giver of any truth. …

Read the complete column. “Left And Right Bamboozling You On Benghazi” is on WND.

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‘Fat And Furious’ And Other ‘Complicated’ Folderol

Gender, Intelligence, Media, Politics, Republicans

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was christened “fat and furious” at GlenBeck.com, following what appears to be the governor’s feigned outrage over his administration’s intentional closing of the George Washington Bridge as political retribution.

I got a kick out of the reaction of those “great minds” of Crossfire.

“Great minds don’t always agree” goes the once-illustrious show’s new motto. Nothing they can say or write will even make Cupp, Cutter and the other two co-hosts worthy of the great-mind moniker. At best one can call Neut Gingrich a mercurial mind.

Rasped S.E. Cupp the cretin:

“[I]f you’re in not New Jersey or not D.C., you look at this story, which is actually pretty complicated, … and you think, he did what, to who, when, where, what?”

Replied co-host Stephanie Cutter, who is indisputably less of a fool than Cupp:

“I think it’s not hard to follow the story, regardless of where you live.”

… somebody is seeking political retribution and … somebody is bullying somebody on the other side of the aisle

Pretty much politics as usual.

UPDATED: Chucky Krauthammer’s Keynesianism (Neocon Chucky: Tinkering Technocrat)

Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Intellectualism, Neoconservatism, Regulation, Republicans

On Special Report today, Chucky Krauthammer could be heard quickly correcting his characteristic Keynesianism when fellow Fox-News panelist neoconservative George Will made him look, well, silly. As she knows nothing about economics, the blond Kirsten Powers, also empaneled to discuss the economy, was none the wiser. Neither did host Bret Baier notice Chucky stumble and recover.

The Fed had set the price of money at zero, Krauthammer noodled. In his opinion, this served as a positive impetus for steady but slow economic growth. The far cleverer George Will jumped on this, pointing out that quantitative easing was the Democratic equivalent of faux trickle-down economics. In other words, the manufacturing of paper money inflates prices on the stock exchange, enriches a few big players, and leaves the rest of us holding devalued dollars and struggling to survive. (Naturally, this is not verbatim. I paraphrase from memory, since few news outlets bother with the written word any longer.)

Like greased lightening, Krauthammer leaped to finesse his Fed demand-creation Keynesianism.

As mentioned, other than the two men involved, nobody (except a few Austrians like myself) noticed.

UPDATE (1/3): EPJ on Chucky’s Nutty Two Tier Minimum Wage Proposal. Our neocon is such a tinkering technocrat.

This is truly goofy. It would result in businesses hiring teenagers over breadwinners. Since the advocate Charles Krauthammer seems to understand that raising the minimum wage causes unemployment, his proposal has to be classified as pathological altruism.

Here’s Philip Klein on the problems with Krauthammer’s proposal:

On a Fox News panel earlier this week, Charles Krauthammer floated a proposal for a two-tiered minimum wage system in which the rate would be raised for individuals who are the breadwinners of their families and remain the same for others. But this would be an absolutely terrible idea.

MORE.