Tag Archives: George W. Bush

Two Posts About The State Of The Union Speech From Facebook Friends

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I will post an analysis of the State of the Union speech later today, but this is a start:

MiliitaryAt SOTUThis screen shot is from bizpacreview. THIS was the exact response of our TOP military leaders at the EXACT moment Obama said that terrorists were not a threat to our nation’s existence. Houston, we have a problem.

The graphic below was posted by another friend:

StateOfTheUnion

Breitbart.com posted the following about President Obama’s claim that he has cut deficits:

“[W]e’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.” This is pure fiction. Obama has doubled the national debt, and it’s not because he cut the deficit. Rather, he spent staggering amounts of money in his first months in office–which he assigns, dishonestly, to the previous fiscal year, under George W. Bush. He “cut” (i.e. spent more gradually) from that spending, but only under protest, after Republicans took the House in 2010.

(Update: It is true that Obama’s 2015 budget deficit was about 25% of his 2010 deficit. But he referred to “deficits,” plural. Until last year, all of Obama’s deficits were worse than all of Bush’s deficits except for the last two.)

More to follow.

A Lie Told Often Enough Is In Danger Of Being Accepted As Truth

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One of the nastiest aspects of the mainstream media’s attacks on George Bush’s was the charge that he had gone AWOL from the National Guard. These charges were made by CBS Correspondent Dan Rather, who eventually was removed from his job because of the fraud involved.  Documents which the accusers of the President claimed to be the original documents involved were produced to illustrate the fact. The fact that the ‘original’ documents were written in a type font that did not exist at the time of their creation was overlooked by much of the media. Now the political left is at it again. They are bringing back the story in the form of a movie called, “Truth.” The movie would more accurately be named “Lies.”

In January 2005, The Weekly Standard posted an article relating to “Rathergate,” as the scandal eventually became known.

The article reported:

Appendix 4 of the CBS report (Compiled by independent investigators Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi) details the panel’s inquiry into the technical aspects of the memos. It relies heavily on the testimony of Peter Tytell, a forensic document examiner with impressive qualifications, including having once been called a “famous typewriter detective” by CBS’s own Andy Rooney.

Like Newcomer, Tytell came to some quick conclusions. He told the panel that even while watching the September 10 CBS Evening News broadcast at home, he’d known “within 5 seconds” that something was wrong with the documents CBS was showcasing as newly discovered memos from 1972. In fact, on September 10–the same day Newcomer sent his essay to members of the media–Tytell had contacted CBS to explain “in detail why he believed the Killian documents were likely fakes.”

Eventually, the panel hired Tytell to serve as its document expert. He examined the Xeroxes carefully and came to three conclusions: (1) Previously released Texas Air National Guard documents from the early 1970s had been created on an “Olympia manual typewriter.” (2) The four disputed Killian memos “were not produced on an Olympia manual typewriter.” And (3) “The Killian documents were produced on a computer in Times New Roman typestyle.”

Why was Tytell so sure? The Killian memos had proportional spacing, a superscript “th”, and a serif typestyle. Tytell consulted the Haas Atlas–the typesetter’s bible–looking for a typewriter model that could have produced these features in 1972, and “did not find a single match with the Killian documents.”

Now some in the movie industry are trying to reclaim Dan Rather’s reputation at the expense of George Bush. I suspect that many of the people who see the movie will be too young to actually know the truth of the events depicted. It is a shame that the movie industry finds it necessary to lie to the American people and call it “Truth.”

The Twenty-Eight Pages

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Allen West posted an article on his website on Friday about the growing demand to release the twenty-eight pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 that remains classified.  Representative Thomas Massie (R, KY-4) has added his name to H.Res.14, which was introduced by Congressmen Walter Jones (R, NC-3), Stephen Lynch (D, MA-8).

This is the resolution:

H.RES. 14

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 6, 2015

Mr. JONES (for himself, Mr. LYNCH, and Mr. MASSIE) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Select Committee on Intelligence (Permanent Select)

RESOLUTION

Urging the president to release information regarding the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks upon the United States.

Whereas President George W. Bush classified 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001;

Whereas the contents of the redacted pages are necessary for a full public understanding of the events and circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001, attacks upon the United States;

Whereas the executive branch’s decision to maintain the classified status of these pages prevents the people of the United States from having access to information about the involvement of certain foreign governments in the terrorist attacks of September 2001; and

Whereas the people of the United States and the families of the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks deserve full and public disclosure of the results of the Joint Inquiry: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that–

(1) the President should declassify the 28-page section of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001; and

(2) the families of the victims and the people of the United States deserve answers about the events and circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001, attacks upon the United States.

So far there are 19 co-sponsors of the resolution. Senator Rand Paul introduced a nearly identical resolution in the Senate to have the 28 pages declassified.

Note The Change In The Pictures

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The picture below was posted by a friend on Facebook. He noted the lack of American flags at the recent rally. I would also like to mention that The New York Times chose to use the picture on its front page that did not include former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura. The U.K Telegraph posted an article showing how President Bush and his wife were cropped from the right side of the photo.

civilrightsmarch

When American flags are absent from a civil rights rally, we have forgotten who we are. When a former President is cropped from the picture, someone is making an effort to politicize freedom.

Coming Down On The Wrong Side Of History

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I don’t claim to be a historian,  but I believe in the Bible. Genesis 12:3 (and also a few other places) says in referring to Israel, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” I am not going to argue with something that is stated in the Bible more than once. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court has made a decision that could easily be considered less than a blessing to Israel.

The Wall Street Journal reported today:

Liberals have spent four decades condemning the Imperial Presidency—and especially the depredations of the Bush-Cheney regime—but all of a sudden they are celebrating the Supreme Court for its Jerusalem passports decision on Monday. We guess the “unitary executive” is fine as long as he happens to be a Democrat.

Those of us with more respect for the Constitution’s separation of powers think Zivotofsky v. Kerry is a closer legal call. But the decision is still the right constitutional resolution to a long-running dispute between Congress and the executive branch about recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

…This judicial outcome is highly unusual. For the first time in U.S. history the Court has sided with a President openly defying an act of Congress related to foreign affairs.

CBN News reported today:

Palestinian Authority leaders praised Monday’s Supreme Court ruling disallowing Americans born in Jerusalem to list Israel as the country of birth on their passports, saying it clarified that “Jerusalem is occupied territory.”

“It is a clear message to the Israeli government that its decisions and measures in occupying and annexing Jerusalem are illegal and void and that it should immediately stop these measures because it’s a clear violation of the international law,” P.A. chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

President Barack Obama also welcomed the decision as affirming his power to set the nation’s foreign policy, while demonstrating his neutrality in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

There is nothing neutral in refusing to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Last week I posted an article detailing the history of Israel beginning with the granting of the land of Israel (then called Palestine) to the Jews in 1921. The article included the following map:

The current demand for a Palestinian state is garbage. Transjordan (now Jordan) was set up to be a Palestinian state. That land was taken away from Israel (it was given to Israel in the original Balfour Declaration) in 1921.

The most telling quote in this whole distortion of history we are currently dealing with comes from Walid Shoebat, who stated, “One day during the 1960’s I went to bed a Jordanian Muslim, and when I woke up the next morning, I was informed that I was now a Palestinian Muslim, and that I was no longer a Jordanian Muslim”

The issue of a Palestinian state in land that belongs to Israel is nothing more than a plan on the part of the Arab nations to drive Israel into the sea.

As I have stated in previous articles:

Palestine was the name given to Israel at that time.  Transjordan was originally to be given to the Jewish state, but Britain reneged on its promise and gave the land to the Arabs instead.  In 1921, the Arab representative responsible for the above division of the land, Emir Feisal, agreed to abandon all claims of his father to Western Palelstine if he secured Iraq and Eastern Palestine as Arab terrorities.  We saw how well he kept this agreement. These are the borders set up for the nation of Israel.  The 1949 borders were simply an armistice.

After the nation of Israel was declared, the Arabs invaded and took control of the Old City of Jerusalem. During the time the Arabs controlled the Old City, Jews were barred from their holiest sites. Unfortunately, past behavior is often an indication of future behavior.

Why are we attempting to create another terrorist state? We are definitely on the wrong side of history with this decision.

Is There A Realist In The House?

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While I sit here in North Carolina enjoying the beautiful weather, the Middle East is falling apart. There are three articles in today’s Wall Street Journal that cause me to wonder about the future of the Middle East and the future of America.

The first article, entitled, “Sunni Tribes in Iraq Divided Over Battle Against Islamic State” deals with the problem of tribalism in Iraq. Many Iraqis oppose ISIS. They understand that ISIS is not who they want running their country. They are willing to fight ISIS–right up to the point where as Sunnis they are asked to fight with Shiites. Some Sunnis support the Islamic State being created by ISIS. Many do not. It is very difficult to fight an ISIS takeover of Iraq when all Iraqis do not oppose such a takeover.

The second article, entitled, “Islamic State Gains New Leverage in Syria” deals with the ISIS capture of Palmyra in Syria. Palmyra, home to many archaeological treasures, is now in the hands of a group that has destroyed many archaeological treasures in the past.

The article reports:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group that monitors the conflict via a network of activists inside the country, said that following Palmyra’s fall on Thursday that Islamic State now controls half of the country, including most of its oil fields. The crude provides a steady stream of revenue.

The third article (actually an editorial), entitled “I Don’t Think We’re Losing” deals with President Obama’s recent statement after the fall of Ramadi in Iraq. What does losing look like according to the President?

The article reports:

It’s also worth mulling over Mr. Obama’s claim that he always “anticipated” this would be “a multiyear campaign.” This is the same President who criticized George W. Bush for conducting endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan and vowing to end it in both places. The Iraqi city of Mosul fell last June, Mr. Obama laid out his anti-ISIS strategy in September, and eight months later he promises years of more American commitment to Iraq.

At least Mr. Bush, for all his mistakes after the fall of Saddam Hussein, ordered a change of strategy that left Iraq stable by the time Mr. Obama took office. On present trend Mr. Obama’s Cool Hand Luke generalship will leave his successor an Iraq in turmoil and a mini-caliphate entrenched across hundreds of miles. If this isn’t “losing,” how does the President define victory?

I don’t have the answer to the problems in the Middle East (and the rise of ISIS). However, I do know that there are some very good leaders in our military who do have answers. I question whether or not they are currently being listened to. I do not support ground troops, but also do not support standing idly by as innocent civilians are being killed or forced to flee with only the clothes on their backs. We said ‘never again’ after the holocaust killed millions of Jews. This is our ‘never again.’ ISIS is killing both Jews (if there are any remaining in the Middle East outside of Israel) and Christians. I believe God will hold us accountable for our inaction.

Rewriting History To Help An Election Campaign

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Yesterday the Daily Caller posted an article entitled, “Stop It Liberals: Bush Didn’t Lie About Iraq Having WMDs.” Please follow the link to read the article, I am simply going to focus on the reason this is important.

The seemingly only candidate the Democrats have right now is Hillary Clinton. She has some basic scandal problems. If the media can get the focus off of Hillary Clinton’s scandals and back to Bush Derangement Syndrome, they can tell people that a Republican President is not a good idea–without talking about Hillary or her scandals (or qualifications).

There was much more to the Iraq War than WMDs. Andrew McCarthy posted an article at National Review yesterday talking about the reasons for invading Iraq. Please follow the link and read it–it is extremely insightful.

Like it or not, the 2016 Presidential Campaign is upon us. The press has been given its marching orders and is dutifully following them. Unless Americans begin to look past what the mainstream media is telling us, we will have another President who does not believe in the basic tenets that America was founded on. It is our choice. That is the reason the articles at the Daily Caller and National Review about the invasion of Iraq are important.

 

One Set Of Rules For Thee, One Set Of Rules For Me

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Oh, the outrage! There were many Democrats recently screaming, “Logan Act” or “Treason” because 47 Republicans signed an open letter reminding everyone how the U.S. Constitution is supposed to work. Oh, the horror of it all. Well, sometimes you need to check your own closet for skeletons before you start hauling out someone else’s skeletons.

On August 29, 2014, PJ Media posted an article about President Obama’s Iran policy.

That article contains the following:

During his first presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama used a secret back channel to Tehran to assure the mullahs that he was a friend of the Islamic Republic, and that they would be very happy with his policies. The secret channel was Ambassador William G. Miller, who served in Iran during the shah’s rule, as chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and as ambassador to Ukraine. Ambassador Miller has confirmed to me his conversations with Iranian leaders during the 2008 campaign.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article that included the following:

According to Pajamas Media columnist Michael Ledeen, in 2008, a Democratic senator sent a personal emissary to Tehran encouraging the mullahs not to sign an agreement with the outgoing Bush Administration as negotiations would take on a much friendlier tone following President Bush’s departure from office.

That senator was a presidential candidate at the time. His name was Barack Obama. (read more)

Politics used to end at the water’s edge, but I guess Democrats don’t think that way. Quite frankly, this is a disgrace.

I would suggest that you read the entire PJ Media article linked above to see President Obama’s plans for Iran.

Rewriting History When It Is Convenient

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BuzzPo posted an article today about some recent remarks made by Secretary of State John Kerry.

The article reports:

Later, Kerry was asked to comment on Netanyahu’s criticism of a hypothetical deal with Iran as a threat to Israel.

“The prime minister was profoundly forward-leaning and outspoken about the importance of invading Iraq under George W. Bush,” Kerry replied. “We all know what happened with that decision.”

Well, isn’t that special. Benjamin Netanyahu became Prime Minister of Israel in 2009–long after the invasion of Iraq. John Kerry, as a Senator, voted for the invasion of Iraq.

Facts are such inconvenient things.

The Purpose Of This Post Is To Stop The Constant Rewriting Of History On This Matter

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There are a lot of Americans who believe that President George W. Bush lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in order to get America into a war with Iraq. That is not only not true–to believe it may be dangerous for America’s future.

On February 8, Lawrence H. Silberman posted an article at the Wall Street Journal explaining why this misconception is dangerous for the future of America.

Mr. Silberman writes:

In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq.”

I found this shocking. I took a leave of absence from the bench in 2004-05 to serve as co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction—a bipartisan body, sometimes referred to as the Robb-Silberman Commission. It was directed in 2004 to evaluate the intelligence community’s determination that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—I am, therefore, keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli. It is astonishing to see the “Bush lied” allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact.

Please read the entire article to understand the dangers of letting this lie go unchecked.

Meanwhile, John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article yesterday providing more information on the subject. Mr. Hinderaker cites a New York Times article from February 15th which stated the following:

The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.

Defending America and American allies should not be a partisan matter. Unfortunately, there are those in Washington who have chosen to make it so. The fact that some Democrats are boycotting the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a disgrace. Israel (and Prime Minister Netanyahu) have a history of successfully dealing with terrorism and of understanding how it works. Israel is willing to share that knowledge. America needs to listen.

I Hadn’t Really Considered This Angle

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PJ Media posted a story today that I think ads an interesting dimension to President Obama’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast. As you remember, the President reminded us that we should get up on our ‘high horse’ about what the Islamic terrorists are doing because some of the history of Christianity is not so pure–the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, support of slavery, etc. First of all, the Crusades were a response to Muslim aggression, and the Christians were the ones who fought slavery.

As far as the Spanish Inquisition, PJ Media says it better than I can:

But perhaps it is Obama who should avoid getting on his high horse, since according to recently published statistics, Obama’s drone campaign has killed more people during the six years of his presidency than were killed the 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition.

…At least 2,464 people have now been killed by US drone strikes outside the country’s declared war zones since President Barack Obama’s inauguration six years ago, the Bureau’s latest monthly report reveals.

Of the total killed since Obama took his oath of office on January 20 2009, at least 314 have been civilians, while the number of confirmed strikes under his administration now stands at 456.

Research by the Bureau (Bureau of Investigative Journalism) also shows there have now been nearly nine times more strikes under Obama in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than there were under his predecessor, George W Bush.

And the covert Obama strikes, the first of which hit Pakistan just three days after his inauguration, have killed almost six times more people and twice as many civilians than those ordered in the Bush years, the data shows.

The figures have been compiled as part of the Bureau’s monthly report into covert US drone attacks, which are run in two separate missions – one by the CIA and one for the Pentagon by its secretive special forces outfit, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

The research centers on countries outside the US’s declared war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

‘Nuff said.

The Unspoken Legacy Of President Obama

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On Monday, The Daily Signal posted an article about President Obama’s legacy. It’s something that the press has not really highlighted.

The article reports:

In President Barack Obama’s second term, the Senate has confirmed more than twice the number of judicial nominees than were confirmed in President George W. Bush’s second term. This is due mostly to the fact that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., succeeded in eliminating the filibuster for judicial nominees (excluding the Supreme Court, at least for now) in November 2013..

The chart below illustrates how the elimination of the filibuster has impacted the nomination process:

Infographic by John Fleming

I am not a big supporter of the filibuster, but I am also not a big supporter of stacking the courts with judges with a political bias. That is what has been going on. Since many of the problems with ObamaCare will be decided in the courts, the Obama appointments to the lower courts could easily move America further to the left than Congress would have been able to do. Our Constitution was designed to create a representative republic. The idea was that laws would be made in Congress. People could hold their Congressman accountable and vote him out of office if they did not like the laws he supported. (Actually, that is not totally true. Initially, the House of Representatives was elected by the people, and the Senators were appointed by the state legislatures. In 1913, Congress passed the 17th Amendment, which called for the direct election of Senators. Up until that point, the state legislature could recall their Senator if he was not supporting bills that were in the interest of their state. The direct election of Senators changed the balance of power in the U.S. government and seriously diminished the power of the states against the much larger federal government.) Unfortunately, we have now reached a point where our courts are making laws. As the courts lean left, we may find ourselves living in a country with a very different form of government than what the Founding Fathers envisioned.

When Congress Doesn’t Follow Its Own Laws

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Townhall.com posted an article today about the crisis America is experiencing on our southern border.

The article reminds us:

Wouldn’t $3.7 Billion better be used to build a concrete wall across the border of the United States? The fence that the American people were promised when President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act of 2006 saying “This bill will help protect the American people. This bill will make our borders more secure. It is an important step toward immigration reform.”

The Fence Act passed the Senate 80-19 and approved $1.2 billion to be used to build a physical barrier more then 700 miles along the Mexico-United States border.

Theoretically Congress solved the southern border problem in 2006, promising to build a fence that would stop the flood of illegals. Somehow Congress never actually got around to acting on the law it passed.

The article further reports:

In a press conference on Wednesday night, President Obama refused to acknowledge the fact that his “Dream Act,” as well as his 2012 Executive Order of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is what motivated this surge of illegal children. The President continued his normal pass the blame policy, putting the blame on the Republican lead House of Representatives for the problem because they have not passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

America is quite capable of closing the southern border. However, there is one thing about this current crisis that I don’t understand. Mexico has very strict laws about who they let into their country. Mexico does not have illegal aliens–they put them in jail or send them home. How is it that all these unaccompanied children are getting into and through Mexico?

Forgetting Our Past Promises To Israel

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Evidently the Middle East peace process has unraveled. Yesterday Commentary Magazine posted an article reminding us of some of the promises made in the past.

The article points out:

As it happens, tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of one of the more important items of history the Brzezinski group ignored: the April 14, 2004 letter from President George W. Bush to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. In Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Abrams recounts how the letter went through “many drafts, as words, phrases, and paragraphs came in and out,” ending with a “headline” that was clear: “There would be no return to 1967 and Israel could keep the major settlement blocks.” In her  own memoir, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recounted spending three hours on the letter with Sharon the night before it was issued, and described the agreement to apply a “Google Earth test” for settlements: no new ones, no expanding the boundaries of them, but allowing building within existing settlements, since that would not reduce the land available for a Palestinian state.

When John Kerry was running for President, he went on the record supporting that agreement.

The Obama Administration has taken a slightly different view:

The Obama administration, when it took office in 2009, repeatedly refused to answer whether it was bound by the Bush letter. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denied there were any “enforceable” understandings with Israel. The day before Palestinian President Abbas met with President Obama, Clinton told the press Obama had been “very clear” with Prime Minister Netanyahu that he “wants to see a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions”–and that this had been “communicated very clearly, not only to the Israelis but to the Palestinians and others.” The same day, Abbas told the Washington Post he would do nothing but watch the Obama administration pressure Netanyahu. The administration eventually got a ten-month construction freeze, which both Clinton and Obama envoy George Mitchell called “unprecedented.” It produced nothing from the Palestinians other than a demand in the tenth month that it be continued.

The article explains the specifics of why the negotiations fell apart:

The peace process went “poof” not because of 700 units in Jerusalem, but because–for the third time in three years–the Palestinians violated the foundational agreement of the process, which obligates them not to take “any step” outside bilateral negotiations to change the status of the disputed territories. For the third time, the Palestinians went to the UN; for the third time, there was no American response; for the third time, there was no penalty for the violation; and on April 8, there was not even an honest assessment of the situation by the secretary of state.

Unfortunately the Obama Administration has unilaterally undone many past agreements made with our allies. This has resulted in many of our allies wondering if they can trust agreements made with America. President Obama has considerably lowered America’s standing in the world.

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Why Foreign Policy Matters

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None of us have a 100% chance of predicting the future, but we expect our leaders in Congress and the White House to be well enough informed to make sure they don’t do anything that will hurt us internationally in the future. The current situation in Ukraine is one example of a Congressional bill that later had serious unintended consequences.

Today’s U.K. Daily Mail posted a story about a bill passed by Congress that destroyed the stockpile of weapons Ukraine needs to defend itself against Russia.

The article reports:

As a U.S. senator, Barack Obama won $48 million in federal funding to help Ukraine destroy thousands of tons of guns and ammunition – weapons which are now unavailable to the Ukrainian army as it faces down Russian President Vladimir Putin during his invasion of Crimea.

In August 2005, just seven months after his swearing-in, Obama traveled to Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine with then-Indiana Republican Senator Dick Lugar, touring a conventional weapons site.

The two met in Kiev with President Victor Yushchenko, making the case that an existing Cooperative Threat Reduction Program covering the destruction of nuclear weapons should be expanded to include artillery, small arms, anti-aircraft weapons, and conventional ammunition of all kinds.

After a stopover in London, the senators returned to Washington and declared that the U.S. should devote funds to speed up the destruction of more than 400,000 small arms, 1,000 anti-aircraft missiles, and more than 15,000 tons of ammunition.

…Many of the artillery shells shown in photographs from Donetsk, multiple weapons experts told MailOnline, would be the same types of ammunition required to repel advancing Russian divisions as they advanced to the west, had they not been destroyed.

…’Vast stocks of conventional munitions and military supplies have accumulated in Ukraine,’ Obama said in am August 30, 2005 statement from Donetsk. ‘Some of this stockpile dates from World War I and II, yet most dates from Cold War buildup and the stocks left behind by Soviet withdrawals from East Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungry and Poland.’

‘We need to eliminate these stockpiles for the safety of the Ukrainian people and people around world, by keeping them out of conflicts around the world.’

More than a year later, President George W. Bush signed into law a proposal authored by Obama and Lugar.

In addition to the destruction of these weapons, many of the weapons were sold to the United States, Libya, and Great Britain. There is no way any of this activity made the world one bit safer.

The article concludes:

Sky News video broadcast on Tuesday showed Russian troops firing automatic weapons over the heads of apparently unarmed Ukrainian Air Force personnel near a contested airfield in Crimea.

Foreign policy matters. This is an example of what happens when Congress and the White House do something that down the road endangers the freedom of people in other nations.

 

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What Is Appropriate To Discuss In A Campaign?

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Byron York posted an article at the Washington Examiner today discussing what is appropriate to bring up in a political campaign. There has been some recent discussion as to whether or not it would be appropriate if Hillary Clinton runs for President to bring up the Clinton scandals prior to and during President Clinton’s presidential term.

The article points out:

…Of course Clinton’s recent experiences are relevant to a presidential run. But so are her actions in the 90s, the 80s and even the 70s. It’s not ancient history; it reveals something about who Clinton was and still is. And re-examining her past is entirely consistent with practices in recent campaigns.

In the 2012 presidential race, for example, many in the press were very interested in business deals Mitt Romney made in the 1980s. In the 2004 race, many journalists were even more interested in what George W. Bush did with the Texas Air National Guard in 1968, as well as what John Kerry did in Vietnam that same year. And in 2000, a lot of journalists invested a lot of time trying to find proof that Bush had used cocaine three decades earlier.

So by the standards set in coverage of other candidates, Clinton’s past is not too far past.

Turn-about is, after all, fair play. The article points out a few other reasons why past events might be relevant to the discussion. Younger voters know Hillary Clinton as President Obama’s Secretary of State. They might be aware of some of the problems surrounding Benghazi, but generally they have no idea of the Clinton’s history. Other than the Lewinsky scandal, there is the problem of firing the White House travel office personnel in order to give the job to some friends. There is also Hillary’s rather successful attempt to divert attention away from the Lewinsky scandal by claiming a ‘vast right-sing conspiracy.’ The truth might have never come out without the blue dress and Matt Drudge.

Mrs. Clinton does not have a wonderful track record when it comes to telling the truth. Even if the scandals of the Clintons are in the past, Mrs. Clinton’s pattern of behavior has continued. That is what voters need to know.

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Hoping That The American Voters Are Either Stupid Or Forgetful

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Yesterday the Daily Caller posted a story about the interview that Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly did with President Obama.

The interview included the following exchange:

The president also refused to acknowledge that the IRS illegally targeted tea party groups in the run-up to the 2012 election. “Absolutely wrong,” he said when O’Reilly broached the subject. “These kinds of things keep on surfacing, in part, because you and your TV station will promote them… We’ve had multiple hearings on it!”

“So you’re saying there was no corruption there at all?” O’Reilly asked.

“Absolutely not,” the president replied. “There were some bone-headed decisions out of a local office.”

“But no mass corruption?” O’Reilly persisted.

“Not even mass corruption,” a visibly-annoyed Obama replied. “Not even a smidgen of corruption.”

This is a very interesting contrast to a story filed by NBC News on May 13, 2013, which stated:

A partial draft report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration — obtained by NBC News — shows that top officials knew about the targeting nearly a year before then-IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, testified to Congress in March 2012 that no singling out of conservative groups ever occurred.

The House Ways and Means Committee announced after the president’s remarks that it will hold a hearing on the alleged targeting on Friday, May 17. Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller and J. Russell George, the Inspector General who headed up the IRS report, are expected to testify.

And the IRS confirmed Monday night that Miller was informed in May of last year that “some specific applications were improperly identified by name and sent to the [IRS] Exempt Organizations centralized processing unit for further review.”

In a statement earlier Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president is “concerned” about the reported conduct of “a small number of Internal Revenue Service employees.”

The investigation into the IRS is being done by a major Democrat party campaign donor.

On January 17 2014, Fox News reported:

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI did not expect to file any criminal charges in connection with the IRS’s admitted, systemic, multi-year targeting of conservative nonprofits for improper scrutiny.

To be clear, the FBI made this decision without interviewing even a single one of the American Center for Law and Justice’s 41 targeted clients. And we’re not alone. Other Tea Party attorneys report their clients weren’t interviewed either.

Put simply, the FBI leaked its conclusions in a criminal investigation without even interviewing the victims of the potential crime.

So there was no crime. That conclusion was reached without interviewing any of the people who were targeted. This is the equivalent of refusing to interview a robbery victim and then claiming that since you did not interview the victim, there was no robbery.

Is the American voter that stupid? We will find out in November.

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Rewriting History As You Go Along

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It has been thirteen years since the disputed 2000 election. Younger voters who voted in the 2008 and 2012 elections probably do not have a clear picture of exactly what happened in that election. Chris Matthews isn’t helping.

The Daily Caller posted a transcript of a Chris Matthews discussion with Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe on MSNBC.

Christ Matthews stated:

Obama “has had a very difficult opposition out there … who from the very beginning wanted to destroy this presidency,” he said. “And some of it is ethnic, and some is good old ideology. But they way they treated this guy is unusual in our history.”

“Al Gore accepted the fact, even though he won by 600,000 votes, that W. was president. And the Democrats accepted the legitimacy of George W. Bush 100 percent,” he added, when host Joe Scarborough tried to push back a bit.

On November 12, 2001, The New York Times stated:

A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year’s presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.

Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court’s order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.

Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff — filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties — Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations.

The New York Times is certainly not a conservative newspaper. They were generally not kind to George W. Bush, but they got the facts about the recount right. Either Chris Matthews is badly misinformed or he is lying. Either way, I suspect many young voters or voters who have forgotten or were not paying attention believed him. Rewriting history is a true danger to our representative republic. It is the media’s job to tell the truth. It is a shame that they have forsaken their responsibility.

Just for the record, President Obama has not been treated badly by the opposition. There have been people questioning the amount of secrecy surrounding his past–his education, some of his activities in Chicago, some of his campaign tactics, etc. Those are legitimate questions that should be asked of any candidate. Unfortunately, an element of practicing personal destruction instead of debating political issues has crept into our politics in recent times. We saw that element in the 2012 presidential election. Policies took a back seat to scare tactics and claims that Mitt Romney was a rich man who had no compassion for the poor. As someone who lived in Massachusetts during the time Mitt Romney was governor, I can tell you that there is no truth in that statement. However, the press worked hard to present that image. Until the media ignores those people practicing the politics of personal destruction, all Presidents will be treated badly by some element of the opposition. The mainstream media however, will continue to be cheerleaders for the Democrats and complain when anyone says anything negative about their candidates or the policies of their candidates. Unfortunately, that is where we are.

Meanwhile, we need to guard against the rewriting of history and challenge it whenever possible.

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Sometimes There Are Just No Words

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This is a copy a letter suggesting a link to Thanksgiving dinner conversation guidelines put out by Organizing for Action, a group that supports ObamaCare. The photo below is posted at HotAir.

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Please follow the link above to read the entire article. Can you image the outrage if an organization supporting President Bush had put out this letter? Do these people ever stop campaigning? Do you really want a political group giving you talking points for the family holiday dinner table?

A website called TheFederalist gives the correct response if someone in your family took the above memorandum seriously:

Here’s a sample response you might use. “That would be great. Except that I’m going to be washing dishes and cleaning up for a bit. How about you go into the guest room and use the computer in there to sign me up. As soon as you’re done, you can have some pie.”

The key is to get them to make a commitment not to come out until they’ve finished signing you up. Remember their conversation tip — Ask them to make a plan, and commit to it. Ask them to commit to finishing the sign-up before they come out of the room.

Since nobody can actually sign up for Obamacare, they’ll be busily trying to operate the web site for the duration of your visit. And the beauty of the disaster zone that is the Obamacare website is that whether you plan to visit for hours or days, the crazy family member will be out of your hair. For added giggles with the sane portion of the family, be sure to follow the last tip — Don’t forget to follow up: “Have you signed up yet?”

Every time you pass the room, knock on the door loudly and ask them that exact question. Once your crazy uncle is holed-up with a laptop in the guest bedroom, you and your more tolerable relatives can enjoy the rest of the holiday in peace.

What an amazingly creative solution!

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Changing The Numbers To Fit The Situation

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Remember when 5 percent unemployment under George W. Bush meant that we were in horrible economic straits? Remember when gas prices hit $3.00 a gallon under George W. Bush and it was the end of the American economy as we knew it? Anyone else long for those days?

We are being told that the unemployment rate is currently hovering around 7 percent. We are also watching the labor participation rate fall to 62.8 percent (Investor’s Business Daily). This puts the true unemployment rate at about 11.8 percent.

Investor’s Business Daily reports:

When the economy fell into recession in December 2007, the jobless rate was 5% and the labor force participation rate was 66%. As job losses surged, unemployment doubled to 10% in October 2009, a few months after the recession officially ended. The jobless rate slowly began to edge down, but held at 9% or above for nearly two years, and above 8% for nearly three years.

But the drop largely reflected job market weakness rather than strength. During this time, labor force participation steadily fell. In October 2009, when official unemployment peaked, participation was 65%. A year later it was 64.4%. Now, more than four years into the expansion, it’s 62.8%, the lowest in 35 years.

But wait–there’s more. The New York Post reported yesterday that Congress will begin an investigation on how unemployment numbers have been calculated and released particularly during the run-up to the 2012 election.

The article at the New York Post reports:

Last week I reported exclusively that someone at the Census Bureau’s Philadelphia region had been screwing around with employment data. And that person, after he was caught in 2010, claimed he was told to do so by a supervisor two levels up the chain of command.

On top of that, a reliable source whom I haven’t identified said the falsification of employment data by Census was widespread and ongoing, especially around the time of the 2012 election.

In 2009, before the 2010 census was taken, the White House changed the rules on how the census would be reported. The Census Bureau would report to senior White House aides. I will admit that at the time I thought this would result in some population statistics being altered to increase the number of votes in blue states and decrease the number of votes in red states. It didn’t occur to me at the time that these numbers could also be used to skew unemployment data.

The New York Post continues:

Back in 2010, I started getting reports that the Census Bureau had some very unusual hiring practices. Census takers and supervisors — at risk of heavy fines — were reporting to me that large numbers of people were being hired only to be fired shortly afterward. And then rehired.

I theorized at the time that Census was trying to make the job-creation totals look better nationwide in those bleak months leading up to the midterm congressional elections.

This employment policy seemed too coordinated. The regional higher-ups at Census couldn’t be doing this on their own; there had to be a grander plan.

I still don’t know what was going on.

But then I heard about the falsification in Philly. This time, however, it wasn’t the employment numbers that were being doodled with. This time it was the unemployment data, which are gathered at the Census Bureau and handed over raw to the Labor Department.

Please follow the link and read the entire story. Unfortunately most of the media is unaware of this or ignoring it. As voters, all of us need to be aware of what is taking place here.

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Rewriting History Subtlely

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This is the opening paragraph in an article about President Obama’s second term posted by the New York Daily News:

This wasn’t a war started on a lie about weapons of mass destruction the way Iraq was for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Affordable health care for all Americans was Barack Obama’s war, one started with noble intent, the way so many big ideas all the way back to Social Security have started.

The opening sentence of that paragraph is amazing. First of all, America’s intelligence organizations showed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Britain’s intelligence organizations showed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and Israel’s intelligence showed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. There is also a book called Saddam’s Secrets which details Saddam Hussein’s wmd program. The book was written by one of Saddam Hussein’s top generals and details the program and the exportation of those weapons during the run-up to the war. Regardless of whether or not you believe the weapons existed, the President did not lie. He spoke based on the information he had at the time.

ObamaCare is a very different situation. As reported on rightwinggranny yesterday, four years ago it was obvious to many people that people would lose their health insurance under ObamaCare. Christina Romer did an amazing job of avoiding that very question in her testimony before a House Education and Labor Committee hearing of June 23, 2009.  You could make the argument that President Obama was not told that people would lose their insurance, but that would lead to the question of his basic competence.

The article at the Daily News points out that many Democrats are already supporting Hillary Clinton for President in an effort to distance themselves from the debacle of ObamaCare. The Democrats are also very anxious to change the subject.

The comparison of the ObamaCare roll-out to President Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina does not work either–President Bush did not create Hurricane Katrina–President Obama did create ObamaCare (or at least he allowed Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy to create it).

The article continues, smashing Republicans as it goes, but the bias is obvious. The rewriting of history is inexcusable, but until voters learn to do their own research, history will remain rewritten. Welcome to 1984.

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Does The Debt Matter?

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The chart below was posted at zerohedge.com on Thursday:

Debt-vs-GDP-101713

The article cites what it considers the most disturbing sentence uttered during the debt ceiling debate/government shut down, that should raise some concerns by both political parties:

“We must increase our debt limit so that we can pay our bills.”

When you think about it, that is an amazing statement.

John Hinderaker at Power Line made the following observation yesterday:

The declining deficit is due to the election of a Republican House in 2010, which led to the sequester, and to tax increases. But in historical perspective, a $650 billion deficit is nothing to celebrate: the U.S. has never run a deficit anywhere near that big in any fiscal year when Barack Obama was not president. Don’t be fooled by Democrats who try to attribute FY 2009 to George Bush. The Democratic Congress didn’t pass spending bills covering the vast majority of FY 2009 spending until Obama was safely in office, and FY 2009 includes the Obama/Pelosi/Reid “stimulus” spending, with which George Bush, obviously, had nothing to do. The largest deficit of the George W. Bush years was $459 billion, in FY 2008, the year when financial markets collapsed. The largest deficit of the Clinton years was $255 billion; of the George H.W. Bush years, $290 billion; and of the Reagan administration, $221 billion.

As Americans, we need to be concerned about the deficit. Until we get the deficit under control, it acts as a ticking time bomb that will eventually destroy the American economy. We need to elect people who will bring spending under control. If we do not do that, then we are responsible for our own demise.

 

 

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The Latest Executive Order From President Obama Is Not What It Appears To Be

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Executive Orders are getting old. According to Snopes, a sometimes reliable source, President Obama had issued 138 Executive Orders as of September 2012. In his two terms as President, George W. Bush issued 291.

Today the Daily Caller posted an article about an upcoming Executive Order to be issued by President Obama. The Order will “ban almost all re-imports of military surplus firearms to private entities.” Other than the fact that it is gun control law the President can’t get through Congress, it sounds rather harmless. Unfortunately it isn’t. This Executive Order will effectively shut down the 110-year-old Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP).

The article explains:

The CMP tightly controls the importation of obsolete military weapons. The program was created by the U.S. Congress as part of the 1903 War Department Appropriations Act with the purpose of allowing civilians to hone their marksmanship skills, should they later be called into military service.

…There are no data indicating any of the weapons involved in homicide were imported surplus military rifles. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s homicide crime statistics, rifles accounted for only 323 deaths out of 12,664 homicides in 2011, the most recent data set provided by the FBI.

“Apart from a donation of surplus .22 and .30 caliber rifles in the Army’s inventory to the CMP, the CMP receives no federal funding,” the CMP website states, adding that they have been overwhelmed by requests and orders are taking 30-60 days to ship product.

This is an end run around Congress to take guns away from innocent, hard-working civilians.

The article concludes:

The rifles that the Executive Order would affect are typically from U.S. allies and are pre-Vietnam era. Without the importation of these rifles, the CMP is likely to become defunct and thus destroying a 110 year tradition of saving military arms and their civilian ownership.

I don’t know how much power Congress has in relation to Executive Orders, but Congress needs to develop a backbone and fight this one. This Order has nothing to do with crime or keeping Americans safe–it is simply a move by a petty tyrant to take firearms and firearm training away from Americans.

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The Real War In The Middle East

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Michael Ledeen posted an article at PJMedia today about the Syrian civil war.

Mr. Ledeen reminds us of the history of the war in Iraq:

We invaded Iraq in the name of the War Against Terror, which President George W. Bush defined as a war against terrorist organizations and the states that supported them.  That should have made Iran the focus of our strategy, since Tehran was (and still is, now more than ever) the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.  Nothing would have so devastated the jihadis as the fall of the Iranian regime, which–then as now–funded, trained, armed and gave sanctuary to terrorist groups from al-Qaeda and Hezbollah to Islamic Jihad and Hamas.  Unless we defeated Iran, it would not be possible for Iraq to have decent security, no matter how total the defeat of Saddam and the Baathists, and how well-intentioned the successor government.  As you can plainly see.

Mr. Ledeen points out that we have again arrived at the same place.

He further explains:

So, as in Iraq, if you want to win this battle in the terror war (Syria), you must defeat the Iranian regime.  And, as in the early years of this bloody century, you can do it without dropping bombs or sending Americans to fight on the ground, because the overwhelming majority of Iranians want to rid themselves of Khamenei and Rouhani and all the rest of their tyrannical oppressors.  They can do it, with a bit of political, technological and economic support.  They could have done it in 2003, when they were on the verge of declaring a general strike against the regime.  Colin Powell and W abandoned them, and it never happened.  They could have done it in 2009, when millions of them took to the streets in demonstrations larger than those that led to the downfall of the shah.  Hillary Clinton and O abandoned them, and a brutal repression ensued.

We keep trying to take down the tree by only removing its branches because they are easier to chop off. Well, they are not really easier to chop off, and we are never getting to the root of the problem. Unless our Middle East policy drastically changes, we will be fighting the Muslim Brotherhood there for the next fifty years or more.

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