You’d have the clearest signal yet that Bush Administration policies are creating a sea change in the Arab/Moslem world:

It’s quiet in Ramallah. At the northern entrance to the city, not far from the mall, a new fountain spouts water. Next to it lies a sign in English: “Gaza under fire.” But it seems the Gaza Strip has never been so far away. Tel Aviv, meanwhile, feels closer than ever. Almost every day at 1 P.M., a demonstration leaves Manara Square in the city center, expressing support for the residents of the Gaza Strip. The number of participants has declined, however, on a daily basis, and on Wednesday the demonstration was called off for a lack of protesters.

Dozens of men sit in cafes near the square playing cards. In the background, the television blasts the voices of Al-Jazeera reporters, who provide continual updates about the events taking place in the Strip. But even the dramatic reports do not stop the card players for a moment. Occasionally one of them glances up at the screen, but then gets back to business.

The offices of the Al-Jazeera television network overlook Manara Square. Walid Omari, the bureau chief for the Palestinian Authority and Israel, explains that “the residents of Ramallah are filling the cafes, the restaurants, watching Al-Jazeera, cursing the situation, expressing anger and then continuing with their own affairs.” Omari explains that the quiet all over the West Bank in the face of the events in Gaza stems mainly from disappointment and frustration with the leadership of Hamas and Fatah.

“The residents of the West Bank lost a great deal in the course of the last Intifada, but saw no achievements. They are very afraid of more losses, mainly in light of the crisis of confidence between the Palestinian street and its leadership.”

Do these people love Israel? No. Would they be distressed if there were some strange turn of events which pushed the Israelis into the sea? No. Are they willing to shoulder rifles and blow themselves up over the difference between Hamas, Fatah and the IDF? Not any more, if they ever really were. Like almost all people, everywhere, the average Abdul on the street in the West Bank just wants to be left alone to live his own life as he sees fit. There is clearly a fatigue with the endless Jihad and equally clear is that the Palestinian Authority is content to see the IDF wipe out Hamas. Its time to finish the war and make peace – only the die hards in the Islamist movement and the government of Iran is interested in keeping up the fight, simply because if they aren’t fighting, they are nothing.

As I’ve said before, if Obama merely continues Bush Administration policies in foreign and military affairs, he will reap stunning benefits. These benefits will, naturally, be accorded to Obama as if he stepped in on January 20th and started making the world a better place after Bush wrecked it for 8 years…you just watch our mindless liberals, a month or two from now, start crediting all the good things which started happening a year ago to Obama…just as they credited the economic recovery which started in 1992 to Bill Clinton in 1993.

But, no matter – we on the right know that it was President Bush and our glorious military which carried the load and did the things necessary to break the socio-political logjam which fed Islamism and made a conclusion of the war impossible. Only a clear choice by Obama to return to pre-9/11 ways of doing things can give Islamo-fascism a new lease on life – absent such an act of sheer idiocy, we’re now entering the terminal phase of the War on Terrorism.

This does not mean there won’t be some nasty things in store over the next two or three years before the Islamists are hunted down and/or hounded out. Fanatics who know how to make bombs can continue to cause damage long after their reason for existence is destroyed – but a steady, firm pressure in a continuation of Bush policies will finish this thing for all intents and purposes before the end of Obama’s term in office.

From the Telegraph:

Refusing to have sex on the first date ‘increases the chance of finding a good man’

Prolonging the mating courtship increases a woman’s chance of finding a “good” man, mathematicians have found.

A new study shows that refusing to sleep with a partner on the first date could be one of the keys to making a successful match.

Researchers used a mathematical model to show that more reliable men were willing to wait longer before having sex for the first time.

By contrast, less suitable men were not as likely to continue dating.

What is most amazing? That anyone actually had to do a study to figure this out.

And I mean that – you choose to hate him, because hating him fills some bizarre, twisted need in yourself. This likely the result of the overwhelming despair you ultimately feel in your lives because you either lack faith altogether, or believe that faith is trivial – so, lacking real hope or any real sense of love, you turn to hate to at least feel something…and President Bush has been your object of hatred, so much so that no matter how absurd the lies told about him, you believe every last one of them, no questions asked.

But here is the real President Bush – the President Bush we know and love, and who is known by those who don’t choose to hate:

…under his (President Bush’s) rule, he introduced the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR), which has given shape to the fight against HIV/Aids in 13 focus countries in Africa and two outside the continent.

PEPFAR has been operational for five years on a budget worth $15 billion, and Bush recently asked the Congress to double that funding for another five years. The funding is the largest ever financial commitment from any donor for fighting a single disease.

There have been voices suggesting that the additional $30 billion Bush has requested Congress is little, but what is indisputable is that he has showed commitment to help save lives in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Obviously for Africans, any suggestion by a Congressman or Aids activist for an increment in PEPFAR money is mostly welcome.

Tatu Msangi, a single Tanzanian mother, took the story of the success of PEPFAR to Congress during a State of the Union address last month.

She is a living testimony of just how, through PEPFAR, the Bush administration has saved a life deep in a remote African village.

Msangi testified how despite living with HIV, she received the necessary counseling and Nevirapine (medication) during her pregnancy, and subsequently delivered a bouncing HIV-free baby girl. Now, her daughter Faith Mang’ehe has a future, and Msangi hope, thanks to Bush’s Emergency Plan.

This is not the only success story of its kind. In Rwanda and in other benefiting countries, such achievements are there although many remain publicly unnoticed.

“Thank you so much for the initiative. It has done so much for our people. It has given us a future,” Tanzanian President Jakaya Mrisho Kiwete told Bush on Sunday at a Dar es Salaam hospital which was partly built by the American people.

Under Bush presidency, a number of African countries have continued to benefit from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) although not many Africans have benefited yet due to a number of factors.

Africans will remember that in 2004, President Bush signed into law the AGOA Acceleration Act, which extended the legislation to 2015. The initiative has helped triple African total exports to the US since 2001 – the year Bush came to power.

Another groundbreaking initiative by Bush is the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) which he announced in March 2002.

Through MCA, the US has ‘rewarded’ poor countries that ‘govern justly, invest in their people, and open their economies to enterprise and entrepreneurship.’ Although the criteria could still be quietly disputed by some African governments, at least all well-intentioned developing countries in Africa will strive to qualify for MCA funding, thus improve their accountability and governance standards.

On Sunday, Bush signed $698 million Millennium Challenge Compact with Tanzania, a deal which will help the latter to reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth through infrastructure investments in transport, energy and water. This grant is the largest in the history of the programme.

In addition, through the Africa Education Initiative which Bush launched in 2002, the US intends to distribute more than 15 million textbooks, train nearly a million teachers, and provide scholarships for 550,000 girls by 2010 in Africa.

On conflict-resolution, the US government has over the recent years seemed to act a bit more responsibly than in the past, a shift from its costly behaviour from, for instance, 1994 when the international community stood by as the Genocide unfolded and claimed at least one million Rwandans in 100 days.

Bush and his administration officials have repeatedly described the ongoing violence in Darfur as genocide, and helped train and equip African peacekeepers, including Rwandan soldiers, for the peacekeeping mission in the troubled western Sudan region. Although the violence still continues, there is evident political will from Bush’s government to help end the crisis.

Five years ago, the US government helped end the Liberian civil war, resulting in the eventual election of the first African woman president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Did you catch that, liberals? “First African woman president”…not fostered by Bill Clinton, Obama or any other “I feel your pain” or “hope-n-change” liberal, but fostered by a conservative, Christian who sees it as his moral duty to try and help the less fortunate – and not help by putting a bumper sticker on the Volvo or sending a donation to Obama, but helping by actually doing things for people. You liberals throw an aluminum can in the recycling bin and think you’ve done a good deed…well, there are far better deeds you could be doing, if you’d leave off the hate, ask for faith and start to love a bit.

The very same faith in God and love for fellow man which motivated President Bush to go out on a limb for Africa motivated him to go out on a limb for the people of Afghanistan, and the people of Iraq. There isn’t Good Bush and Evil Bush, dividing the President’s time…no, its all just President George W. Bush. While he was doing this you were calling him a war criminal, saying that he lied and people died, saying that he was doing this for oil, or just because he was cruel and/or stupid. I’m sorry to have to say this to you, my dear liberals, but you have acted the part of fool for 8 years, and wicked fool at that.

There is your grand chance at redemption, here – you can, simply by asking, stop hating and obtain the faith you need. Knock and the door shall be opened – and that is absolutely certain. All you have to do is work up the will to not want to hate this decent, patriotic man who did his best by you for the past 8 years. I’m not saying “support him”, I’m not saying, “become Republican” – I’m saying “stop hating”. You do that and the Obama years might be really the best years of your life – as you work hard for your cause, freed from hatred, bitterness and despair. Its your choice, and its your fair chance.

This is the largest crisis President Obama will face – how to keep his slavishly devoted MSM alive through the 2012 election:

The Star Tribune, saddled with high debt and a sharp decline in print advertising, filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition Thursday night.

Minnesota’s largest newspaper will try to use bankruptcy to restructure its debt and lower its labor costs.

“Lower its labor costs” translates as “less workers at lower pay”. Who wants to be that the Star Tribune favored increases in the minimum wage in the past and has had a lot of good things to say about unions? Liberalism meets reality, liberalism loses.

As a conservative, I’d normally feel a twinge of regret at the downfall of such elderly institutions – but the reality is that the sooner the MSM is dead and buried, the sooner we can fully restore American liberty and dignity.

For nobody can tell what real reason – other than, perhaps, as a means of distracting attention further away from his manifold ethics troubles:

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) likely will introduce his controversial legislation to reinstate the draft again this year, but he will wait until after the economic stimulus package is passed.

Asked if he plans to introduce the legislation again in 2009, Rangel last week said, “Probably … yes. I don’t want to do anything this early to distract from the issue of the economic stimulus.”

Not now, not ever – no draft. Of all the mistakes ever made in human history, a military draft ranks up there in the top 10. A military draft produces large numbers of men in uniform, but it doesn’t give you a really good military instrument. And it won’t spread the risk around evenly because in a nation of 300 million people there are about 30 million military-aged males and as we’ll never need 30 million men in uniform there will be ways to game the system so that economically and politically advantaged never shoulder their share of the burden.

While conscripts can be as brave and intrepid as volunteer soldiers, the plain fact of the matter that you’d rather go into battle with 100,000 highly motivated volunteers than with 200,000 men conscripted into the fight and perhaps not motivated so much by victory as by a desire to get out of it alive.

Any nation which cannot raise armies of volunteers sufficient to fight for victory had better not engage in war or, if in war when the volunteers dry up, had better make peace. Men are not stupid – they don’t join failure…they can be conscripted into it, but they don’t join it. If the war is going badly and recruitment is drying up it is because the war is going badly – and if the leadership is bad, it will continue to go badly even if a million men are forced into the fight.

Let our military be made up of professional, volunteer soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines – each of them as good as ten conscripts in enemy armies. Let us be chary of the blood of our magnificent servicemembers and by reason of there not being an endless supply of manpower, let our officer corps continually study the art and science of war to perfect their plans of campaign to win wars swiftly and with the lowest possible cost to both sides.

With only one drawback, we haven’t got an actual candidate to run against him, yet:

A conservative organization is set to launch an all-out effort aimed at beating Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2010.

The American Future Fund Political Action is planning a two-year long offensive against the Democratic leader, who is already a top target of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The organization, stocked with former Mitt Romney presidential campaign operatives, is set to launch its effort this week with a Web -centered fund-raising drive.

Tim Albrecht, an organization spokesman, declined to say how much money the organization was planning to spend against Reid. In the 2008 election cycle, American Future Fund spent about $10 million targeting Democratic Senate candidates across the country

Albrecht said a fund-raising drive would start up this week with the launch of a Web site called “Watchin’ Reid.” The site intends to “shine the spotlight on [Reid’s] actions and motivate Republicans across the country.”

Even as Republicans talk up their effort to knock off no viable Republican candidates have stepped forward to run. Nevada Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki had announced his interest in a bid, but last fall he came under indictment for his management of a student loan program. Former Rep. Jon Porter, a moderate Republican from suburban Las Vegas, has also been mentioned as a potential candidate, but he lost his congressional seat in the November election.

“Certainly, we’re looking to be the most high-profile effort aimed at unseating [Reid],” Albrecht said.

American Future Fund launched in early 2008. It is staffed by a long line of former operatives from Romney’s failed presidential campaign, including Larry McCarthy, Ed Tobin, and Ben Ginsberg.

The indictment against Krolicki looks bogus, but its also not something amenable to easy resolution…and even if resolved entirely in Krolicki’s favor, it still taints him. Right now, the Nevada GOP’s bench is rather thin – but Harry Reid is the most beatable Democrat in the nation for 2010. He’s terribly unpopular out here and entirely identified with the political system which has now seized up in budget crisis and is talking about cutting teacher pay and raising taxes. The giant may be slain…

This will get our liberals to have conniption fits, always a worthwhile object:

THE VICE PRESIDENT: We now find ourselves in the situation where we’re five years later; we’ve achieved most of the objectives that you would have set out in the spring of ’03 when we launched into Iraq. We’ve got the violence level down to its lowest level since ’03. We’ve had three national elections, a constitution written, a new government stood up, new army recruited and trained, the Iraqis increasingly able to take on responsibility for themselves. And we’ve now entered into a strategic framework agreement with the new Iraqi government that will provide for the ultimate withdrawal of U.S. forces.

You could not have asked for much more than that in terms of the policies that we started on in ’03.

Q But Mr. Vice President, getting from there to here, 4,500 Americans have died, at least 100,000 Iraqis have died. Has it been worth that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think so.

Q Why?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Because I believed at the time what Saddam Hussein represented was, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, was a terror-sponsoring state so designated by the State Department. He was making payments to the families of suicide bombers. He provided a safe haven and sanctuary for Abu Nidal and other terrorist operations. He had produced and used weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological agents. He’d had a nuclear program in the past. He killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. And he did have a relationship with al Qaeda.

We’ve had this debate that keeps people trying to conflate those arguments. That’s not to say that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. It is to say as George Tenet, the CIA Director, testified in open session in the Senate, that there was a relationship there that went back 10 years. This was a terror-sponsoring state with access to weapons of mass destruction. And that’s the greatest threat we faced in the aftermath of 9/11, that the next time we found terrorists in the middle of one of our cities, it wouldn’t be 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters, it would be terrorists armed with a biological agent, or maybe even a nuclear device.

And so I think given the track record of Saddam Hussein, I think we did exactly the right thing. I think the country is better off for it today.

While I have my doubts about the incoming Obama Error, I am very relaxed and in a great humor these days. Of bitterness, I have none – I am entirely forgiving of all that has happened before, and I will pray regularly for the success of Obama (though, to be sure, the success I’m hoping he’ll wind up having won’t sit well with our liberal friends – I’m praying that he’ll accept the guidance of Our Lord: he does that, and I’ll be mighty pleased, even if there are higher taxes and a plethora of worthless, new spending). I’m ready for Obama – creeped out by the sycophancy I see in many Obama supporters; amused as the way the dinosaur media still covers for him; bemused that “change” apparently means “lots of corrupt and/or incompetent party hacks in Administration positions”; figuring out that the deal to get Hillary out of the primary race was an agreement to appoint said hacks; laughing up my sleeve about our prospects.

I have my regrets about the past 8 years – being human, this is natural – but as regards my support for the liberation of Iraq, that will always be something I’ll count to my credit. I believe that Vice President Cheney will, too. I wonder, though, how our liberals will view it – are they proud they nearly got us to cut and run? Proud that while our soldiers were covering themselves with glory liberating an oppressed people, they were covering our soldiers with verbal sh**? Proud that the enemy was able to use them in their propaganda?

Time will tell in all things – eventually we’ll all know who was right and who was wrong, and who acted from noble motives, who from base. I rest content – the past is now past, the future is not promised to anyone; each day I will get up, be grateful for what I have, and do what I believe is the right thing.

Moving along briskly with this thread:

Colin Powell held a press conference in Washington, D.C., Friday, touting the launch of Barack Obama’s new Web site, USAService.org, which allows Americans to find — and to promote — local service opportunities that are searchable by zip code.

President Bush’s former secretary of state said he was on the site this morning and vouched for its usefulness.

But here’s betting that Powell didn’t have time to go through all of the events on it.

Wanting to see how the Web site works, I typed in my hometown zip code in Los Angeles to find events within a 10-mile radius.

It pointed me to several events, including a blood drive, a graffiti cleanup, and an “Obama Celebration and Bush Shoe Toss.”

The event, which was listed as a “Day of Service — January 19,” is taking place at the soon-to-open Carnivale Café on the corner of Vermont and Normal.

“Come celebrate with us,” wrote Gilbert Gazan, 46, in the event’s description. “Say goodbye to old Georgie … Throw a shoe at a poster of Bush and win a free drink.”

And then, from the reader comments:

Nice!

Bush deserves no less than feces to be thrown on him. If there is any justice in this world he will rot in prison.

Can you feel the love from our tolerant liberals? I’m all warm and fuzzy inside, let me tell you…

(Ed. Note: As Obama is supposed to unite us and America will cease to be Red and Blue but red, white and blue, we here at Blogs for Victory have decided to keep a running catalog of attempts by members of the Democratic party and/or known supporters of Obama in any attempts they make to keep the hatred of the past 8 years going. We hope this will be one in a very short series, but we suspect we’ll be continuing this thread for a long, long time.)

Ah, nothing like looking to the future with bright hopes and dealing with the problems of today rather than rehashing the past, right? Well, not for our Democrats:

The incoming Obama administration should launch a criminal investigation of Bush administration officials to see whether they broke the law in the name of national security, a House Democratic report said Tuesday. President-elect Barack Obama has been more cautious on the issue and has not endorsed such a recommendation.

Along with the criminal probe, the report called for a Sept. 11-style commission with subpoena power, to gather facts and make recommendations on preventing misuse of power, according to the report by the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee.

Yep, that’ll bring Bush supporters over to Obama and make us all fall in to a love fest. Nothing like politically inspired witch hunts against your opponents to bring us all together!

They just happen to be a couple months late:

A document has emerged suggesting that Obama had taken more public, liberal stands in the past than had been revealed in the digging of reporters and opposition researchers over two years of campaigning, the latest of several pointing to a rightward shift as he moved into national politics.

In a 1996 questionnaire filled out for a Chicago gay and lesbian newspaper, then called Outlines, Obama came out clearly in favor of same-sex marriage, which he has opposed on the public record throughout his short career in national politics.

“I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages,” Obama wrote in the typed, signed, statement.

There was no use of “civil unions,” and “no compromise whatsoever,” the Windy City Times story today notes.

On another questionnaire the same year, Obama said he would support a resolution in support of same-sex marriage.

The editor of the Windy City Times, a successor of Outlines, Tracy Baim, said she hadn’t deliberately held onto the news until after Obama’s election. Baim, who had been the editor of Outlines at the time, said that just before the election, she ran across the old Outline story saying Obama backed same-sex marriage, but only dug his forgotten questionaire out of an old box this week, having assumed that she’d lost it.

We can find GW’s 25 year old DUI the weekend before the election in 2000, but we can’t find this from 1996? Yeah, I really believe this was just an oversight…

Policy-wise, there’s not much here – like most of Obama’s leftist radicalism, this has been firmly shoved down the memory hole to hang out with Wright, Ayers and Obama’s gun control record, but these are the sorts of things the voters needed to know prior to November 4th, not just prior to January 20th. We can expect more and more like this – the slow dribbling out of all the dirt and radicalism of Obama’s past in order to complete defuse it for the 2010 mid-terms and the 2012 general election. Democrats have learned the lesson of Clinton – if you leak the garbage slowly, people don’t catch on that you’re leading them in to a sewer.