Bloodthirsty Liberal

Why the media is the enemy:

On Tuesday evening, “Piers Morgan Tonight” welcomed legendary journalist Dan Rather, and his remarkable blend of insight and perspective.

Joining Piers Morgan for a live, face to face interview, the longtime “CBS Evening News” anchor and “60 Minutes” correspondent opened up about the much-scrutinized 2004 report on George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service record:

“We reported a true story. That’s the reason I’m no longer at CBS News,” revealed Rather. “Those who found the story uncomfortable for their partisan political purposes attacked us at what they knew to be the weakest point, which was the documents.”

The “60 Minutes Wednesday” segment focused on a series of memos discovered in the files of Bush’s commanding officer. Though their authenticity has long been questioned, Rather noted that the documents, and his report, have stood up:

“I believed it at the time, or I wouldn’t have put them on. I believed it ever since, and believe it to this day. And I remark, the longer we go and nobody comes forward with proof that the documents were not what they report to be, the more I believe it.”

Name, rank, and serial number, Dan, and never let the bastards see you sweat (or blink, apparently). Because CBS is renowned for firing reporters for telling, ahem, truth damaging to George Bush. Okay…

Don’t anyone tell him about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He’ll think he has another scoop.

How did Obama treat him?

I guess there’s not much love lost there.

- Aggie

Interesting anecdote in Karl Rove’s column on selecting a VP:

Choosing a running mate reveals much about the presidential candidate himself. Though still only a candidate, this is his first presidential decision.

It is one best made by asking about the skills, philosophy, outlook, work ethic and chemistry of a prospective running mate. Do they have good judgment? Can they be counted on to give their unvarnished opinion? Are they loyal? Who can best help the president govern? In other words, set aside politics. Put governing first.

This was brought home to me in 2000, when then-Gov. George W. Bush was strongly leaning toward picking Dick Cheney as his VP. He knew I was opposed and invited me to make the case against his idea. I came to our meeting armed with eight political objections. Mr. Bush heard me out but with a twist: I explained my objections with Mr. Cheney sitting, mute and expressionless, next to the governor.

The next day, Mr. Bush called to say I was right. There would be real political problems if he chose Mr. Cheney. So solve them, he said. Politics was my responsibility. His job was different: to select his best partner in the White House and a person the country would have confidence in if something terrible happened to him. The country was better served by Mr. Bush’s decision than by my advice.

That was merely 12 years ago, but it feels like another era. It may take a century for Bush’s positive traits to be appreciated—but when the last smelly liberal is finally laid in his grave (or scattered over Walden Pond), the baseless slanders hurled at his reputation will be silenced.

- Aggie

In a classic Woulda Shoulda Coulda move, Socialist Candidate, François Hollande, wonders why round-ups of Muslims didn’t happen sooner.

Police were reported on Wednesday to have detained 10 suspected Islamic militants in early-morning raids across France — the latest in a series of measures apparently designed to display a forceful response to the killings seven people in the southwest of the country last month.

The round-up, with police officers and domestic security agents raiding at least five locations as far apart as Marseille in the south and Roubaix in the north, came 18 days before the first round of French presidential elections in which law and order issues have assumed prominence since the March attacks in Toulouse and Montauban.

“If there are suspicions, if there are risks, then they must be acted upon,” the Socialist candidate, François Hollande, who is leading President Nicolas Sarkozy in opinion polls, said in a radio interview on Wednesday. “But what might be surprising is why do it after an act of terrorism which has, it is true, deeply affected our spirits?”

“I am not questioning what is being done. All I am saying, simply, is that we should have perhaps done more beforehand.”

To translate: Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite… not so much. Let’s arrest before the crime.

Not to be done, Nicholas Sarkozy, responds:

Mr. Sarkozy has said the recent series of raids have no connection with the Toulouse killings or presidential politics.

I’m sure not.

And what do we know about these hapless French Muslims?

News report quoted unidentified police sources as saying the 10 people arrested were suspected of either planning to travel to or returning from Afghanistan or Pakistan for training. The 10 were said to be individuals rather than an organized network and to have the same disaffected, loner’s profile as Mohammed Merah, 23, the Toulouse gunman who claimed to have ties to Al Qaeda.

The latest arrests came a day after a state prosecutor said judicial authorities will indict 13 Muslim radicals suspected of plotting terrorist acts in France, though he acknowledged that any plans of violence by them had remained at an “intellectual” stage, including a plot to kidnap a magistrate in Lyon.

Using the same metric on the French that they typically use on Israel, or on the United States when it was led by George W. Bush, I’d have to conclude that they are moving in a fascistic direction. On the other hand, I have deep sympathy for the problem: What to do with citizens who wish to kill other citizens for political gain? It is a problem for all societies that have the rule of law and some semblance of equality and due process. If, during the Bush years, we had had mass round-ups of Muslims on suspicions of thinking of possibly doing something dramatic, the pages of the NY Times would have been dripping with sarcasm, accusations about the loss of our constitution, our freedoms, etc. Ad nauseum. Without mass round-ups, we experienced that. It was just a fantasy on the part of the cultural elite, but we did experience it. Today we have examples of their great fears coming out of Europe, and it is reported as a straight news story, sans commentary.

What gives, liberals? Shouldn’t you organize sit-ins and marches outside the French consuls across the US with little French flags dripping in red paint? Pictures of the arrested, maybe even a few of young Merah thrown in for good measure? Are you guys getting lazy?

- Aggie

I know Obama has a rather large extended family. Here in Boston, we host two of them, both illegally. It occurs to me that even Obama’s Kenyan half-brother squats in his own place, while Auntie Zeituni lives on the dole in public housing.

But did you know how many bequests Obama has received? He is truly blessed:

President Obama has passed the buck to others – mainly George W. Bush – for no less than 13 problems that characterize his presidency, suggesting time and again that his own policies are not to blame for his difficulties and he is simply doing the best that can be done with the cards he was dealt.

Even so, Obama is aggressively staking a claim for successes for which Bush shares significant or nearly all responsibility, including increased drilling for oil and natural gas, the end of the Iraq War, and the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

What follows is a roster of Obama’s efforts to assign blame for 13 problems that prevail or have faced him during his presidency. In several cases, the quotes here are just one or two of many that show Obama passing the buck on a particular issue.

Oil Prices

“The key thing that is driving higher gas prices is actually the world’s oil markets and uncertainty about what’s going on in Iran and the Middle East, and that’s adding a $20 or $30 premium to oil prices.”

- March 23, 2012

Solyndra

“Obviously, we wish Solyndra hadn’t gone bankrupt. Part of the reason they did was because the Chinese were subsidizing their solar industry and flooding the market in ways that Solyndra couldn’t compete. But understand, this was not our program per se. Congress–Democrats and Republicans–put together a loan guarantee program.”

- March 22, 2012

Afghanistan

“When I came into office there has been drift in the Afghanistan strategy, in part because we had spent a lot of time focusing on Iraq instead. Over the last three years we have refocused attention on getting Afghanistan right. Would my preference had been that we started some of that earlier? Absolutely. But that’s not the cards that were dealt. We’re now in a position where, given our starting point, we’re making progress.”

- March 14, 2012

Iran

“When I took office, the efforts to apply pressure on Iran were in tatters. Iran had gone from zero centrifuges spinning to thousands, without facing broad pushback from the world. In the region, Iran was ascendant.”

- March 4, 2012

The Economy

“We’ve made sure to do everything we can to dig ourselves out of this incredible hole that I inherited.”

- February 23, 2012

That’s just this year. But he’s been “inheriting” his entire presidency.

We ration our usage of “What if Bush had done that?” constructions in reference to Obama. A person has to watch one’s bandwidth, and Obama is a walking binge.

But Politico finally strapped on a set of balls to ask the question itself:

President Barack Obama has forged a surprising consensus on opposite ends of the political spectrum: They wonder how on earth he gets away with it.

A series of recent moves — from aggressively filling his reelection war chest to green-lighting shoot-to-kill orders against an American terror suspect overseas — would have triggered a massive backlash if George W. Bush had tried them, say former Bush administration officials and a few on the political left. Even Obama’s love for the links draws only gentle ribbing rather than the denunciations that helped drive Bush to give up the game for the balance of his presidency.

The muted public response has fueled frustration – and more than a little envy.
“A little bit of consistency from the media would be appreciated — and from the left-wing groups,” said Mark Corallo, director of public affairs at the Justice Department from 2002-05. “I don’t see anybody standing up. … Where is the outrage?”

Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald, an icon of what the Obama White House famously dubbed “the professional left,” also sees a strange lack of interest toward some of Obama’s policies. Among them: his administration’s claim that the Constitution allows executive use of armed drones to kill U.S. citizens abroad deemed to be terrorist operatives.

“Virtually all the Democrats who were apoplectic about Bush and were constantly complaining about him ‘trampling on our values’ over eavesdropping and detention have been silent about assassination, even though it’s so much more severe,” Greenwald said. “It isn’t that Obama is necessarily any worse on civil liberties than Bush. The point is he’s able to get away with so much more.”

Here’s a look at five areas in which critics on the left and right say Obama’s gotten a relatively easy ride:

A green light to kill U.S. citizens abroad

Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder visited Chicago to lay out his rationale that the U.S. government has the legal right to kill U.S.-citizen terror suspects overseas — and that there’s no role for the courts in reviewing such use of lethal force.

…

Fundraising and swing state travel

Obama, who came into office bemoaning a broken electoral system, has proved surprisingly energetic at fundraising from wealthy donors and using his office to his political benefit in states that could decide his reelection.

He’s attended 103 reelection fundraisers — about double the 52 such events Bush had attended at this point in 2004, according to tallies kept by CBS’s Mark Knoller.

Obama also changed course and recently blessed the efforts of super PAC Priorities USA Action, allowing top campaign aides and even Cabinet members to appear at its fundraising events.

And while Bush and his Cabinet members were slammed by Democrats for official travel to swing states before key elections, Obama has made more than 60 trips to swing states since taking office. His travel after his State of the Union address this year was exclusively to states potentially pivotal this fall: Iowa, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Michigan.

Let me interject that Michelle Obama is no stranger to this behavior either. She just hops a plane to a swing state (New Hampshire last week), spews some nonsense about her Let’s Move program (a front organization if I ever saw one), then squeezes in a few fundraisers and friendly interviews.

But back to her old man:

Closed-door CEO courting

When Vice President Dick Cheney met privately with oil company executives to talk about energy policy, he was excoriated for being an industry stooge and wound up on the receiving end of lawsuits that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Yet, Obama has repeatedly met with CEOs behind closed doors with little outcry about whether he’s in the tank for business interests.

Last February, he had a sit-down in Silicon Valley with the CEOs of Twitter, NetFlix, Apple, Facebook and Google. In August, the heads of American Express, Xerox, Wells Fargo and Johnson & Johnson were among those who won a cozy Roosevelt Room meeting with Obama. And in 2010, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon had a one-on-one with Obama in the Oval Office. All had the chance to plead their case, and their companies’ case, privately with the president.

The private confabs generate less suspicion because the media consensus — and, to some extent, that of watchdog groups — is that Obama and the business leaders have a strained relationship. Since he’s not seen as being in the pocket of business, the secrecy produces few complaints — even though the potential for the kind of lobbying Obama has criticized is obvious.

Another interjection: sure, Obama talks smack about business; but let them contribute heavily to his campaign, and he’s all smiles. He is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Electric, and General Motors is a wholly owned subsidiary of the US government.

A leak crackdown that could send reporters to jail

The Obama administration has launched an unprecedented drive to put alleged leakers of government secrets behind bars — a campaign that could end up putting reporters in the same place.

Since Obama took office, prosecutors have filed six criminal, Espionage Act cases over leaks — more prosecutions than under all prior presidents combined. In one, the Justice Department is trying to force New York Times reporter James Risen to identify his confidential sources and has argued to a federal appeals court that journalists enjoy no privilege against being called as witnesses in a criminal case. If the government prevails, Risen is likely to end up in jail for contempt.

The anti-leak drive and the potential for journalists to be caught in the crossfire is an occasional subject of news stories and editorials, but Bush officials are convinced they could never have gotten away with what has happened under Obama.

Hey Aggie, we got any of those much coveted Ya Think?™ Awards? Maybe a dented one?

No feces, Francis!

What’s the consistent theme behind all these curious omissions? The media, and liberals in general. They’ve got his back, facts be damned.

And Aggie and I have cited many more examples over the years. Who can forget, for example, when Obama and Holder defended civilian trials for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al on the grounds that they’d be found guilty anyway! Prejudge much?

Don’t just listen to us grumpy conservatives. The proof is there. Obama’s shady background and his dangerous administration remain unvetted by the media—and always will be.

Update: I found an old, bent-up ‘Ya Think™ Award for Politico reporter, Josh Gerstein. And, frankly, it’s more than anyone in the media deserves. What nerve to notice this now. – Aggie

He’s made us less safe. The world hates us.

Remember the talk about how Bush made the world hate us? Lefties, I know it is early and today the time changed, but wipe the sleep from your eyes and let’s do a time travel experiment. Once we put Obama into office, our prestige was going to shoot up in the world, and the Muslim world in particular would love us.

How’s it working out so far?

Fifteen Afghan civilians were shot by an American soldier in Kandahar province Sunday, with seven of them feared dead, the provincial government said.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force confirmed that a soldier had gone off base and fired on civilians before turning himself in, but did not say how many victims there had been.

Capt. Justin Brockhoff of ISAF said there had been “multiple” casualties and that the injured Afghans were being treated in ISAF facilities.

“One of our soldiers is reported to have killed and injured a number of civilians in villages adjacent to his base,” ISAF’s deputy commander, Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, said in a statement that expressed “deep regrets and sorrow at this appalling incident.”

There has been confusion about the number of casualties since the shooting outside a military base in eastern Afghanistan.

A provincial council member, Ahsan Noorzai, said earlier that 18 people were killed, but did not say where his information came from.

The Taliban claimed that 50 people had been killed, but the Islamist militia regularly exaggerates casualty figures.

I want to deconstruct the last sentence first, the one I bolded. Am I the only one who finds it interesting that the media is aware of the fact that the Taliban exaggerates their casualties? I’m surprised, because Palestinian terror groups do this too, and we never hear a word about it from the MSM. Curious.

But I digress. What it sounds like, and remember, this is coming from the media, so we can’t be certain, but it sounds as if a soldier went nuts and committed atrocities. On Obama’s watch. On Panetta’s watch. Now, in a former lifetime, I would have given our leadership some slack. How can they be responsible for the mental health and good judgement of every single soldier?

That was then. Today I note that the standard has been established. Every time someone stubs their toe, it is Bush’s, sorry, Obama’s fault. And Panetta’s. Think about the lack of discipline, the weakness of the command, and the general racism that this implies. What lousy leadership. I guess they’re in real trouble now. There will be front page headlines demanding impeachment, no doubt.

- Aggie

1 in 4 citizens lack access to bomb shelters

A harsh dose of reality. When was the last time you checked your access to a bomb shelter?

Israel’s civil defenses are not ready to protect the population in a missile war, an opposition lawmaker said on Monday, fueling debate about the feasibility of an attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

Almost one in four Israelis lack access to bomb shelters, whether communal or reinforced rooms in private homes, said MK Ze’ev Bielski (Kadima), chairman of a parliamentary panel on Israel’s home defense preparations.

“Are we prepared for a war? No,” he told Reuters. “Things are moving too slowly and we are wasting very precious time.”

Such shelters could be vital if Israel were to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and Tehran struck back, either directly or through its allies on Israel’s borders.

Israel says 100,000 rockets and missiles are pointed at it, many of these held by Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas, although they may decide to sit out any war between Israel and Iran.

PS: Those 100,000 rockets? Blame George W. Bush and the UN for that. Israel was promised that if she pulled back from Lebanon in 2006, the “International Community” would guarantee that Hezbollah wouldn’t use the opportunity to put those missiles there. And Bush, the UN, and the “International Community” simply lied.

All of which makes me very grumpy.

- Aggie

Our boy, Barry

President Obama ran — and won — in 2008 on the idea of uniting the country. But, each of his first three years in office have marked historic highs in political polarization, with Democrats largely approving of him and Republicans deeply disapproving.

For 2011, Obama’s third year in office, an average of 80 percent of Democrats approved of the job he was doing in Gallup tracking polls, as compared to 12 percent of Republicans who felt the same way. That’s a 68-point partisan gap, the highest for any president’s third year in office — ever. (The previous high was George W. Bush in 2007, when he had a 59 percent difference in job approval ratings.)

In 2010, the partisan gap between how Obama was viewed by Democrats versus Republicans stood at 68 percent; in 2009, it was 65 percent. Both were the highest marks ever for a president’s second and first years in office, respectively.

What do those numbers tell us? Put simply: that the country is hardening along more and more strict partisan lines.

Let me put it more clearly: The country has become completely cynical. We no longer expect the media to cover events accurately; we no longer expect the Justice Department to work to maintain Justice; the court system is largely corrupt, and of course politicians are liars.

All of this is worse now than it was four years ago – much, much worse.

Take a small example, the media coverage of drone attacks. During the Bush years, Israel used drones a couple of times to take out terrorists. The outcry was louder than the bombs themselves. Israeli politicians couldn’t travel to Britain because there were motions in Parliament to arrest them and drag them before The Hague. One politician remained on the airplane to avoid this. Then the Bush administration started using drones and, if anything, the raging of the Left became louder.

During those years, I concluded that the Left was a group of child-like, naive people, kind of like well-brought-up 11 year old kids. They wanted a just, safe, honest world and they were willing to risk your lives and mine on the idiotic assumption that Ahmadinejad felt the same. I viewed liberalism as a serious learning disability, marked by a lack of development of the ability to observe and learn from social cues. As they called the conservatives stupid, I privately held the same view of them.

But recently the Obama administration has shown that it too knows how to use drones. Why in fact we have used more drones during the Obama years than all other administrations in the entire world combined. It gets better. He is going to downsize our military because so much of what they can do can be done by drones on ships, strategically located, plus smaller groups of special ops forces.

My problem with this isn’t the military strategy: I don’t know from military strategy. My problem is the hypocrisy. Getting back to the seed of this rant, the fact that we are more divided than ever, I say that the media needs to look in the mirror. If they at least attempted to report fairly and consistently about these matters, we would still disagree sometimes, but the sense that we are no longer connected to one another might not be as strong.

- Aggie

Mitt Romney has been criticizing Obama for playing too much golf. He well remembers, and so do we, that President Bush was harshly criticized for playing golf and gave up the game during his presidency. Obama just loves it too much, so CNN has produced a little puff piece about Presidents Who Love To Golf.

Clearly, there has been a long association with the ancient game and the American presidency. In fact, Obama is the 15th of the last 18 presidents to play golf. Not only is he a hugely avid golfer, but a pretty fair one, too. As far as how much time he spends on the links, his annual rate of play is about the same as President Dwight D. Eisenhower, with President Bill Clinton right on their heels.

It’s clear, the presidency and our great game have quite a thing going. And it seems the golf bug is bipartisan.

Many people fondly recall Eisenhower and his utter passion for the game. During his presidency, he played some 210 rounds at Augusta National, the home of the Masters, many with his good friend Arnold Palmer. Such was his fervor for the game, he even had a putting green installed on the White House lawn.

But Ike didn’t play the most golf among our presidents, nor was he the best.

The honor for the most golf played goes to Woodrow Wilson. It’s said that he played at least a few holes each day — even in the snow — reportedly logging more than 1,000 rounds in his two terms. Maybe that’s why the League of Nations failed.

Yadda, yadda, yadda… Tell us about Bush and Iraq, will you please?

Here we go! Paragraph 15:

Continuing the family tradition, George W. Bush, our 43rd president, is also an avid player, currently sporting a 12 handicap. But in his presidency, as a sign of respect for the U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said he decided to stop playing golf while they were in harm’s way.

After all, a president has to know his priorities.

That little cherry occurs four sentences from the bottom of the article, tucked away in a place that anyone who questioned the different set of standards applied to Obama surely won’t find it. Almost anyone, I guess. I found it.

- Aggie

Newsweek isn’t even very creative. Here we see the Brits using the theme back when Bush won re-election. Obama is so smart, right Brits? Are you missing George W. Bush?

- Aggie