Thinkin’bout Stuff

George Bush is not running for president.

Let me rephrase that to make certain everyone is clear on this point…

In November 2008, when you are poised to cast your vote for our next president, you will not be able to vote for (or against) George Bush… he ain’t running for president… his name will not be on the ballot… there is nothing you can do to send him a message… there is no referendum on his presidency… you can’t send him packing, throw the bum out, kick him to the curb, teach him a lesson, make him pay…

George Bush is not running for president.

So why do I get the impression some of the candidates are running against George Bush instead of for president?

The example discussed here earlier is that of Hillary Rodham Clinton (three names and counting) essentially telling us she has no idea how to win the “war” in Iraq, or the war on terror for that matter, and that George Bush needs to wrap things up in Iraq before her coronation. In effect, Hillary Rodham Clinton has already laid the foundation for blaming her failed presidency on George Bush.

Lee Harris in TCSDaily points out that Abraham Lincoln knew he was inheriting a mess from James Buchanan. Would he have been elected president of these United States had he told all of the people some of the time: “Buchanan needs to solve this secession crises; to leave it unresolved for the next president to deal with would be the height of irresponsibility”.  Words to inspire.

But Lincoln was not running against Buchanan, nor was there any point in demanding that Buchanan fix everything before the next president took office; it wasn’t going to happen and the next president would still inherit the problem. The only possible reason for demanding that the problem be resolved prior to his leaving office is to establish an excuse for failure in the event that the next president also does not resolve the problem.

What is required of a new president is that they accept responsibility for the path our nation follows from their first day in office, regardless of where that journey begins. If you can not accept that responsibility without a predefined plan to blame your predecessor for your failures in office, then do us a favor and don’t run for president.

Hillary Rodham Clinton would be wise to look at the example set by the man she so often criticizes.

George Bush inherited a country that was in a recession and was about to be attacked by terrorists who had been entering through porous borders for years, an intelligence community that was crippled by liberals who restricted the types of intelligence gathering tactics and strategies that could be used, and an international reputation as a paper tiger that had repeatedly proven to the terrorists that they could kick us without any fear of serious retaliation or (heaven forbid) a preemptive strike.

And yet… I can not recall one instance when George Bush pointed back at Mrs. Clinton’s husband and blamed him for the mess Bush inherited. Instead, whether you agree with the decisions made or not, George Bush led; George Bush became President; he became Commander in Chief.

It is apparent that this current crop of candidates is full of weeds who are hoping to get elected by means of attacking the current president instead of offering a vision of how they will lead… or perhaps I am mistaken. It may very well be that what has been offered is truly an honest view of what we can expect if someone like Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected president: a failed presidency that was someone else’s fault. It worked before (remember the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy?)…

But this is supposed to be about my vote and how to earn it. Here’s a partial list of requirements. (A complete list available upon request. Please include a resume, five references, college transcript, and a self-addressed stamped envelope):

• Explain how you will lead us to victory in Iraq (not retreat) and secure our interests in the region
• Share your plan for preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons
• Similarly, outline your plan for eliminating potential nuclear threats from countries such as North Korea and Venezuela (yes, Venezuela… pay attention)
• Describe your plan for securing our borders
• Tell us your vision for the economic future of America (a society built upon opportunity or a society built upon income redistribution and disincentives to initiative)
• Outline your plan for ensuring access to health care for everyone without leading us down the disastrous path to socialized medical care that provides the same level of care for everyone: poor

That should be a good start, we can chat some more next time.

Excellent analysis by Lee Harris at TCSDaily that supports the view that Hillary Rodham Clinton is both clueless and dangerous based upon her apparently limited understanding that our next president needs to be prepared to offer solutions and that whining about what a mess he/she has inherited just ain’t gonna cut it. (Thanks to Gina Cobb for the link).

Folks, I’m frankly tired of the finger-in-the-air, spineless, liberal politicians who are trying to convince the American people that removing Saddam was 100% President Bush’s idea and they were all unwilling participants with no voice in the direction of our country after 9/11. 

So… to help us all remember, here’s a compilation of quotes that were used in a GOP web-ad. Although this is a GOP ad, it is the images and voices of the Democrats themselves that are on display. Much more difficult to lie effectively in an age where everything is recorded and available for playback on YouTube.

And let’s not forget about John “pariah” Kerry:

Update 2/12/2007: Wake Up America, in typical thorough style, reminds us how pervasive is our national amnesia, clearly initiated by a campaign by the left and the press to rewrite history to suite their purpose.

So now the latest version of the truth comes out. Hillary Rodham Clinton DOES believe in timetables for withdrawal of troops. Not only that, we now have a new 4-year rule for presidents (8-year if you are re-elected). From Yahoo! News (AP):

Hillary Rodham Clinton [comment: who always must be referred to using the three-name variation now] said Sunday that President Bush should withdraw all troops from Iraq before he leaves office, asserting it would be “the height of irresponsibility” to pass the war along to the next commander in chief.

“This was his decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy,” the Democratic senator from New York said her in initial presidential campaign swing through Iowa.

Yep, and you voted for it and your hubby thought of the idea first and might have acted on it if he wasn’t so damn busy lying to the American public, trying to redefine the meaning of the word “is”, and marching our country down a path where children now believe oral sex isn’t really sex because Bill Clinton told them so… but I digress.

“We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office” in January 2009, the former first lady said.

Aside from the obvious implication that, if elected president, Hillary Rodham Clinton expects all problems to be solved before she takes office because she has no actual ideas or plans for combating minor things like terrorism and war. Besides, who has time for that? We must get about the business of redistributing wealth and moving the United States closer to her vision of a Peoples’ Republic of American States.

“I am going to level with you, the president has said this is going to be left to his successor,” Clinton said. “I think it is the height of irresponsibility and I really resent it.”

Don’t worry about it Hillary Rodham Clinton, I’m sure we can find a president willing to continue the fight against terrorism; no need for you to resent it, it’s not like you HAVE to be president is it? Too bad Hillary Rodham Clinton can only think in terms of now while our enemy thinks in terms of decades. Remember that when she discusses the future; it’s probably a future that only includes a few months or so, unless we are discussing ways to permanently alter the tax code so that folks who currently pay no taxes will actually get large “refunds” of money they never paid which will of course need to come from the pockets of taxpaying Americans.

Our next president will undoubtedly face a huge challenge and can either fight our enemy where they live or ignore them and hope they go away:

Bush describes Iraq as the central front in the global fight against terrorism that began after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “The war on terror will be a problem for the next president. Presidents after me will be confronting … an enemy that would like to strike the United States again,”

This is what Hillary Rodham Clinton resents. President Bush needs to solve this problem before her coronation. 

The AP article does not outline, in any detail, the new requirement of our presidents to wrap up wars within their own term in office, but I suppose we can extrapolate a bit based upon what we do know:

• Any president who enters into a war must finish that war within his/her presidency
• If you can not be certain this is possible, you must not fight a war, even after your country is attacked
• If the war must begin close to the end of your presidency, you must first gain permission from any left-wing candidates who may whine if we are still actively engaged with the enemy when they might potentially take office
• If, for whatever reason, a war appears destined to extend beyond your presidency, you must declare victory (if a Democrat) or admit defeat (if a Republican) and pull out immediately without any regard to the consequences.
• Under no circumstances should any war be viewed as a valid defense of our country unless the president is a Democrat and has properly justified the war by means of lies and deceit (please see Kennedy and Johnson)
• If, during any war, or while defending against any terrorist action or insurgency, a Republican president determines that the enemy has chosen to actually fight back and behave as if there was no script that must be followed, he must admit defeat and must confess that he lied to bring us into the conflict, regardless of how many experts and politicians not only supported the war at the inception, but fell all over themselves to sound like they were the ones pushing the idea for war in the wake of the war’s catalysts (please see 9/11, Kerry, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and dozens of others who hope you have very short memories and who pretty much think you’re stupid)

Perhaps these rules were already in place during Bill Clinton’s presidency (who did not insist on being called William Jefferson Clinton); might explain why he did essentially nothing to defend this country after repeated attacks (on American soil here at home, on American soil at our embassies, against American warships (USS Cole) and troops (Black Hawk Down for example). Heck, President Clinton did so little, it’s no wonder the terrorists thought they could just keep hitting us without us hitting back.

Now that we are hitting back, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who thought it was a good idea when the polls were for it, wants us to stop. Oh, right, she wants to send more troops to Afghanistan, but she doesn’t even explain what purpose those troops would serve; whereas in Iraq, where there is a clearly defined role for the additional troops, where the military is requesting more troops, where the real battle against terrorism has the most active front… that’s where she believes we should just leave. 

Not only that, she wants us to pull funding for Iraqi forces if they don’t do a better job of fighting for themselves. Using that theory of behavior modification, when Johnny can’t read, maybe we should pull funding from the schools.. that will make them teach better!

While we are at it, tell doctors looking for a cure for AIDS they have one year to show progress or we’re pull their funding too. This is good stuff Hillary Rodham Clinton is coming up with. All we need to do to be successful at anything is to threaten to pull funding and then actually pull it if results are not forthcoming in a few months.

After all, it would be the height of irresponsibility to continue the fight against AIDS, or cancer, or even terrorism beyond the term of the president and we should resent it. 

Perhaps Hillary Rodham Clinton has a point. Instead of rallying cries like “Remember the Maine”, “Give me Liberty or Give me Death”, “9/11… We will never forget”, we can take our cue from the words of inspiration that echoed through the halls of the Whitehouse during the Clinton years: Pull out now!

Others thinkin’ about this topic: Decision ‘08, Welcome Gina Cobb readers (one of my favorite blogs)

It must be so liberating for Senator Kerry. Now that he has announced he is not planning to run for president in 2008, he no longer needs to pretend, no longer needs to polish his image, he can finally proclaim to the world that which has troubled him but was left unsaid for so long (or at least for a couple of years now): the United States has become ”a sort of international pariah”.

Oh sure, he still needs to face the voters of Massachusetts, but how tough is it to get elected in a state where Teddy Kennedy keeps getting sent back to Washington year after year even after the Chappaquiddick incident and reports he tried to subvert President Reagan’s foreign policy by offering to “assist Soviet leaders in formulating a public relations strategy to counter President Reagan’s foreign policy and to complicate his re-election efforts” (which some might view as treason, but at the very least is a likely violation of the Logan Act) how likely is it that Massachusetts would ever vote Kerry out of office for simply calling the United States a pariah?

But consider how many of us were fooled in 2004; how many of us voted for this man who seems to hate America? If he loves this country, why does he visit foreign countries and speak of America in a way that confirms the worst views of this country? Is that love?

Try this for yourself, if you dare. Tell your wife (or husband or significant other) that you really love her, but she has become a sort of pariah among your friends and co-workers. Tell her that the decisions she has made have been selfish and have not considered the needs of your friends, that you are embarrassed by her behavior and that you have just told all of your friends that she is a pariah and that you are aware that she needs to change her behavior.

Then let us know, assuming you are still conscious and not writhing in pain on the floor from a well placed kick to the groin, if she understands that you are just trying to show how much you love her.

Here’s what John Kerry thinks about our great country and felt compelled to share with the world while on foreign soil, from USA Today:

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry slammed the foreign policy of the Bush administration on Saturday, saying it has caused the United States to become “a sort of international pariah.”

Kerry said the Bush administration has failed to adequately address a number of foreign policy issues, speaking during a World Economic Forum panel discussion that also included Iraqi Vice President Adil Abd al-Mahdi and Mohammad Khatami, Ahmadinejad’s more moderate predecessor as Iranian president.

“When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don’t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy,” Kerry said.

Reality check senator (from Wikipedia):

On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States”. …  Both (VP) Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations. The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.

So… the Senate rejected the Kyoto Protocol by a vote of 95-0 before it was even submitted for ratification and the Clinton administration never submitted it for ratification and somehow not only does Kerry believe it was wrong to reject the Kyoto Protocol, somehow this is Bush’s fault even though he wasn’t elected until 2000… amazing. 

Regarding AIDS in Africa, this is our problem how? Is it because we care about the well-being of others? Feel compelled, as a compassionate nation, to help the people of other nations who are suffering? Kind of like the people of Iraq under Saddam Hussein perhaps? Did you know that the United States global commitment to fight AIDS is greater under President Bush than it was under President Clinton? Why would you… the press can’t report anything that will contradict the lies of the left:

C. HIV/AIDS Global Funding: Historic High Levels and Climbing…

• $988 million in FY2002, a 36% increase over FY2001
• $1.1 billion in FY2003, doubles level of funding when he took office
• $500 million to Global HIV/AIDS Fund, first and largest contributor

Promote Health and Education; Combat HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria

• Created HIV/AIDS Cabinet Council co-chaired by Powell and Thompson
• Jump-started Global HIV/AIDS Fund with first $500 million contribution, represents one quarter of the Fund’s total resources
• New $500M Mother and Child HIV Prevention Initiative
• New $200M Africa Education Initiative to train over 400,000 teachers; provide 250,000 scholarships for African girls; and provide 4.5 million textbooks

Continuing with the USA Today article: 

“So we have a crisis of confidence in the Middle East — in the world, really. I’ve never seen our country as isolated, as much as a sort of international pariah for a number of reasons as it is today.”

Kerry criticized what he called the “unfortunate habit” of Americans to see the world “exclusively through an American lens.”

“We should be less engaged in this ‘neocon’ rhetoric of regime change and more involved in building relations and living up to our own values so that people make a different judgment about us.”

So this is a neocon plot is it? Is Bill Clinton a neocon too? Check this out from Amy Proctor:

Today I am signing into law H.R. 4655, the “Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.” This Act makes clear that it is the sense of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter reality of internal repression and external aggression that the current regime in Baghdad now offers.

Let me be clear on what the U.S. objectives are: The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.

The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq’s history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.

On October 21, 1998, I signed into law the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, which made $8 million available for assistance to the Iraqi democratic opposition.

Those dirty-rotten Clinton neocons!

Clearly the Democrats’ support for any foreign policy has much more to do with who is in office at the time than what the policy happens to be.

Word to the voters of Massachusetts. Do us all a favor and turn this guy into a private citizen. We’ve had more than enough of this America-hating liberal who can’t keep his mouth shut, and his facts straight, when the opportunity to criticize this great nation presents itself on foreign soil.

By the way… whatever did happen to that Logan Act:

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

Sounds like a potential violation of the Logan Act to me. Too bad we never seem to enforce this law.

By the way… Welcome back Hanoi Jane! So good to see all the nuts from the Vietnam era climbing out from under their rocks now that they see a chance to lose another war for us.

Gina Cobb’s blog-post today, Hillary Lite, asks an important question: Will we be fooled by Hillary’s makeover? In Hillary: Mommy or Mommy Dearest?, we barely scratched the surface of the senator’s makeover, focusing on the image softening that is being used to establish a connection to our prospective new national mommy. Gina points us to an interesting editorial that comes to us from across “the pond”, written by Gerard Baker. To be fair, I usually am not much interested in the opinions of folks outside the US on the topic of who we elect to lead our country, but since the writer is clearly very perceptive, (which I know because I agree with much of what he says), I’m sharing it

The article is titled “The vaulting ambition of America’s Lady Macbeth” and here are a few excerpts:

(Discussing the State of the Union Address) … Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton … arranged for the son of a New York policeman sick with lung cancer to be there. As it happened, the man’s father died that day, and the son’s grief became a sad and very visible coda to the event.

This little incident, the skilfully choreographed exploitation of a human tragedy, the cynically manipulated deployment of public sympathy in service of a personal political end, offered a timely insight into the character of the politician who this week launched the most anticipated presidential election campaign in modern history.

As you consider her career this past 15 years or so in the public spotlight, it is impossible not to be struck, and even impressed, by the sheer ruthless, unapologetic, unshameable way in which she has pursued this ambition, and confirmed that there is literally nothing she will not do, say, think or feel to achieve it. Here, finally, is someone who has taken the black arts of the politician’s trade, the dissembling, the trimming, the pandering, all the way to their logical conclusion.

Fifteen years ago there was once a principled, if somewhat rebarbative and unelectable politician called Hillary Rodham Clinton. A woman who aggressively preached abortion on demand and the right of children to sue their own parents, a committed believer in the power of government who tried to create a healthcare system of such bureaucratic complexity it would have made the Soviets blush; a militant feminist who scorned mothers who take time out from work to rear their children as “women who stay home and bake cookies”.

Today we have a different Hillary Rodham Clinton, all soft focus and expensively coiffed, exuding moderation and tolerance.

Her first Senate campaign was one long exercise in political reconstructive surgery. It went from the cosmetic — the sudden discovery of her Jewish ancestry, useful in New York, especially when you’ve established a reputation as a friend of Palestinians— to the radical: her sudden message of tolerance for people who opposed abortion, gay marriage, gun control and everything else she had stood for.

Once in the Senate she published an absurd autobiography in which every single paragraph had been scrubbed clean of honest reflection to fit the campaign template. As a lawmaker she is remembered mostly, when confronted with a President who enjoyed 75 per cent approval ratings, for her infamous decision to support the Iraq war in October 2002. This one-time anti-war protester recast herself as a latter-day Boadicea, even castigating President Bush for not taking a tough enough line with the Iranians over their nuclear programme.

All politicians, sadly, lie. We can often forgive the lies as the necessary price paid to win popularity for a noble cause. But the Clinton candidacy is a Grand Deceit, an entirely artificial construct built around a person who, stripped bare of the cynicism, manipulation and calculation, is nothing more than an enormous, overpowering and rather terrifying ego.

Wow! This is a great start to what will need to be a lengthy reminder of who Hillary Rodham Clinton really is, not based upon her words and newly found soft-spoken, let’s all chat demeanor; but through her actions and the radical positions she holds on many of the critical issues facing this nation that would eliminate her from any consideration for election to the presidency if the people of the United States could remember the truth and see who the good senator really is through the smoke and mirrors of her handlers.

There is nothing wrong with taking a stand for what you believe in. For example, you may believe in partial birth abortion on demand; we have a right to disagree and even debate the issue. But if you are running for office, I have a right to choose not to vote for you based upon a fundamental disagreement on an issue of great importance to me.

On the other hand, there is nothing but wrong with pretending to be someone you are not, trying to fool just enough people for just enough time, to get elected to the presidency so that you can push your own agenda. The ultimate in arrogance is to believe so deeply that you are right on an issue that you will deceive those who disagree with you to gain their confidence, and their vote, and then write them off as so much dirt beneath your boots once they have served their purpose (your election) and are no longer even worth your disdain, let alone your honesty and respect.

This goes for all of the 2008 candidates for president. Tell us who you are and what you believe in; tell us what path you intend to lead this country down. We will decide whether your path is one we choose to follow. And if you choose to lie about who you are, there’s a whole new voice in America just waiting to expose the truth… just ask John Kerry.

Which is it? The headline writer for Yahoo News! for an AP story on US existing home sales for 2006 insists they plummeted while the headline writer for CNNMoney.com insists they plunged. So… did they plummet or plunge?

Actually, neither. They dropped, they were lower, they adjusted from recent high trends, the continued to be healthy despite rising sales prices… I can think of several, more accurate, less negative headlines that would have been more appropriate if the headline write was trying to share news instead of influence opinion.

True, 2006 sales were 8.4% lower than in 2005, but viewing results from one year to the next without looking at the overall trend is foolish. For example, when 2006 is compared to 2000, the final year of President Clinton’s second term, sales in 2006 were 26.44% greater than in 2000. This linked chart shows that this is the first decline in housing sales in the entire Bush presidency; do you think there’s a chance the housing market has been so hot that it needed to cool down a bit?

Headline writers who try to influence public opinion instead of reporting facts annoy the heck out of me. Why do headline writers use words like “plummet” and “plunge”? Because they have an agenda folks. They want you to believe things are bad and getting worse. They don’t want you to realize that, even with a drop in housing sales of 8.4%, sales continued to be higher than they were before Bush was elected president.

Unfortunately, too many folks are too busy to read passed the headlines and essentially get their news from one liners in the printed media and sound bites in the over air media.

Previous thoughts on headline writers here.