Up is down, down is up, good is evil, evil good, cold is warm, warm is cold…

Details at The Ice Palace.

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…

Some on the left have criticized my attacks on Obama, or my predictions of doom over the next four years, arguing that he hasn’t even taken office yet, and I should “give him a chance.”

Okay, there is something to be said about that. But, I’d like to suggest to the same liberals who claim Barack Obama will “unite this country” or “turn the economy” around to similarly recognize their lack of psychic abilities and stop arguing that he will do all these glorious things and “give him a chance” to actually do these things before declaring him a success.

From Glenn Beck’s website:

GLENN: Right. But it’s interesting also that Janeane Garofalo and Jon Voight are in the same series this year.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: The right and the left actors. Okay. So she’s in that one scene, and I’m not going to give anything away but, you know — I’m not going to spoil the scene for you if you have it on TiVo. But there’s this one scene where you know character — I’m trying to be as vague as I can — this one character is with Janeane and they need to interrogate. It’s 24. You knew this was happening. So they interrogate and the one character says, “I’ve got to get the answers.” And Janeane Garofalo says, “You can’t do that. This is America. That’s against the law.” And the other character says, “They’ll kill a bunch of people and we’ve got to do it! A lot of people will die and it will be a horrible situation!” Janeane Garofalo’s character says, “This is against everything we stand for! This is against code, this is against all regulations, this is against the law! I won’t have anything to do with it!” And then the character turns with tears in their eyes, says, “This whole thing has been my fault. I’ve got to set this right. Please, I’ve got to get the answer. I’ve got to do this because it’s — I’ve got to set it right! Please, for me!” And the progressive says, “Okay, I’ll wait outside.” It wasn’t because people are going to die. It wasn’t because this guy knows and we need to get it. It wasn’t, “We’ve got to protect our country.” She was convinced by, “Please? It will make me feel better.” You didn’t even have to say, “But okay, let me make the case. I don’t think the law applies here or here or here.” All you had to do was look at her with puppy dog eyes and say, “Please, it will make my booboo go away.”

STU: If that’s not every liberal policy.

GLENN: It is.

STU: Feel good emotional.

GLENN: It is. It’s wrong. If you want to do it for any other reasons. But if it will make us all feel good, well, then maybe we should.

That about sums it up.

(h/t Gary Gross)

(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.

Obama has totally botched his transition, with yet another one of his picks being under a dark ethical cloud. The latest is his pick for Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, who failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001-2004. 

Most of the taxes were paid back shortly before he was “nominated,” after Obama’s transition team discovered it, but what really gets me is that they kept it quiet. For someone who claims be about openness and transparency, this proves that secrecy and lies will be common elements of Obama’s administration.