In honor of the MASSIVE victory (61-39%) of Indiana State Treasurer, Richard Mourdock over 6-term U.S. Senator Richard Lugar in yesterday’s primary election, an open thread to discuss how the various 2012 campaigns are shaping up around the country. Less than 30 days before the recall election in Wisconsin, Governor Walker will go up against the mayor of Milwaukee, whom Walker beat in 2010 by 5 points.
Did Obama Wait Nearly A Year To Take Out Bin Laden for Political Reasons?
Talk about karma… Obama isn’t just experience backlash for politicizing the death of Osama bin Laden, but new details are emerging that contradict the White House version of the story. This week we learned of a memo indicating Obama has preemptively assigned blame to the military had the raid gone bad, and other details about how Leon Panetta had actually issued the order the take out bin Laden, and that Obama was essentially “overruled” in taking action.
Now retired Top General Jack Keane reveals that Obama knew of Osama bin Laden’s location for nearly a year before he was taken out.
One has to ask why would Obama hesitate to act for nearly a year? Was it really about confirmation of the target? Doubtful. I think the answer is obvious, based on Obama’s current reelection strategy to take credit for the raid. Obama wanted to hold off as long as possible in order to gain the most political advantage from bin Laden’s death. He did get a measurable, but short-lived bump in the polls, but Obama is now trying desperately to keep the event in the voters’ minds, which is a hard task when they are preoccupied with losing their jobs or trying hard to afford to fill up their gas tanks.
Obama is lucky that his hesitation didn’t result in bin Laden’s whereabouts being lost again.
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Looks like Obama blew the cover of a Brit intelligence asset in order to score a political point. Liberals, of course, were outraged when the non-covert Plame was “exposed”…bet we won’t hear a peep from them about this.
FORWARD!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WbQe-wVK9E&feature=player_detailpage
Either ignorance, stupidity or reverting to his roots…
I am sure it was just a simple accident. It has to be. Wikipedia is considering taking down the slogan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_(Obama-Biden_Campaign_Slogan)
The Crusades, Reconsidered
From an excerpt of Jonah Goldberg’s new book, Tyranny of Cliches’:
…Until fairly recently, historically speaking, Muslims used to brag about being the winners of the Crusades, not the victims of it. That is if they talked about them at all. “The Crusades could more accurately be described as a limited, belated and, in the last analysis, ineff ectual response to the jihad—a failed attempt to recover by a Christian holy war what had been lost to a Muslim holy war,” writes Bernard Lewis, the greatest living historian of Islam in the English language (and perhaps any language). Historian Thomas Madden puts it more directly, “Now put this down in your notebook, because it will be on the test: The crusades were in every way a defensive war. They were the West’s belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world.”…
You can, of course, bring up some bad things which happened during the Crusades – most notably the massacre of the both the Muslim and Jewish population of Jerusalem when the Christians took the city in 1099 as well as Richard the Lionheart’s massacre of 2,700 Muslims at Acre during the Third Crusade. Bad things. Should not have been done. No decent person in 2012 would ever contemplate doing any such thing. But, by the standards of 11th and 12th century warfare, not at all remarkable. And any Muslim who wants to whine about it is directed to what Muslims did when they took Constantinople in 1453…many centuries later, when we were all supposed to be much more civilized.
So, I leave aside such complaints – war is always nasty and the hard men of the 11th and 12th centuries, on both sides, did many a cruel act. But the main facts cannot be disputed: the Crusades were a counter-attack. The Muslim attack upon Christianity began, entirely unprovoked, in 634 when some rapacious Muslim barbarians from the Arabian peninsula launched what was at first no more than a large scale plunder raid in to Christian Syria. Quickly noticing how weak the Christian forces were (the Christian government of the area – the Byzantine Empire – was greatly weakened by a recently concluded, 20 year long war with Persia), the Muslims just poured in to a military vacuum. For centuries thereafter, Muslim armies conquered Christian lands, massacred and enslaved Christians, treated Christians like dirt when they didn’t murder or enslave them and generally acted like pirates. Europe was weak from the 7th to the 10th century as the new, Christian civilization developed upon the debris of the old Greco-Roman civilization…and that build up was hampered by the “barbarian wars” which absorbed the energy of Europe often over a period of centuries. Because of this, the Christians could do no more than hold on…once Europe recovered a bit, there was a chance to push back…and it wasn’t just a push in to the middle east (though that was by far the more famous part), but also a push against the Muslims in Spain.
The only thing bad about the Crusades was that they ultimately failed – they did not extirpate the Mohammedan heresy. And it is high time that people started to learn the truth about the Crusades.
Natural Born Citizen
This is the second in a series of Constitution-related posts.
Natural-born, Native-born, and Naturalization
Let’s start this discussion with some definitions, dispel some assumptions, and request some civility in the follow-up discussion. This discussion is going to be, as much as possible, restricted to the qualifications for the Office of President of these United States and the portion of U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1 which states “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President”.
Uh Oh! The Proggies Won’t Like This: Study Finds Red States More Prosperous Than Blue States!!!
A study has found out something that proggies and unions are not going to like:
Red States Are More Prosperous Than Blue States
Some of the highlights:
GDP in lower taxed Red states grew 20% more than Blue states with higher tax rates.
Population Growth 4x higher
And the low tax rates didn’t exactly break the budgets of the Red states that embraced them either. Those jurisdictions actually realized substantially larger increases in the growth of state and local tax revenue than did their more confiscatory counterparts.
Tax policy was not the only measure of comparison. The authors of the study also compared and contrasted the performances of right-to-work states with states where union membership is compulsory. The results (not surprising, but proggies would call it “unexpected”): GDP growth was more than 10 percentage points higher in right-to-work states.
These results have been the trend for some time. Yet, proggies will continue to deny despite the evidence shown in this study as well as others. Their ideological beliefs are not the golden goose as they have been touting for some time.
UPDATE:
Another study says the same:
http://news.investors.com/article/610481/201205080802/blue-states-jobs-suffer-under-obama.htm
Poor ideological proggy drones, the evidence is mounting against you and your ideals and your dumbed down talking points.
Today’s Food For Thought…
The Results of Race Baiting
From Bob Owens over at Pajamas Media:
The assaults on a pair of Virginian-Pilot reporters in Norfolk, VA, two weeks ago at the hands of 30 black youths, reported for the first time Tuesday, are the latest in a series of attacks driven by a warped sense of racial vigilantism hiding behind calls of “Justice for Trayvon.” At least 15 mostly isolated whites have been beaten not just with fists, but with potentially deadly weapons including hammers and lengths of chain. Many of the victims have been hospitalized, some may never fully recover, and one lingers on the verge of death.
David Forster and Marjon Rostami are just the latest victims of brutal beatings tied to the Trayvon Martin shooting, and some Virginians are outraged that the newspaper did not report the attack for “politically correct reasons.” The attack was revealed not as news, but in an opinion piece…
While none of us – not a single person who has spoken or written about the Martin case – knows all the facts, the evidence we do have clearly goes against the narrative which was created about the case: the accusation that Zimmerman stalked and killed Martin because Martin was black. That is clearly false. Whether or not Zimmerman is guilty of a crime remains to be seen – that will be decided by a trial. But in spite of the easily ascertainable facts showing that whatever else happened, the shooting was not racially motivated, we still got a story of racial motivation. How? My theory from just a few days after the case came to national attention was “grandstanding lawyers”.
It’s All About ME!!!!
‘I said that I’d go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did. If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they’d do something else, then I’d go ahead and let them explain it.’
-Barack Hussein Obama-
Truth be told, I wouldn’t have a problem with the above statement if President Obama had said, “I said that WE’D go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and WE did.”
He didn’t do anything but pull a Marlin Perkins, watching from behind the proverbial blind while Jim Fowler tagged the lion.
Instead, he acts no different than a mind-numbed narcissistic rooster, taking credit for the sunrise as he crows. Gawd, he’s pathetic.
SEALs slam Obama for using them as ‘ammunition’ in bid to take credit for bin Laden killing during eThe SEALs spoke out after the Obama campaign released an ad entitled ‘One Chance’, asking whether Mitt Romney would have gone after Osama bin Laden as President.
The Ryan Budget and Catholic Social Teaching
The American Catholic has an excellent round of commentary on the Ryan budget and the ensuing debate carried out on the question, “is the Ryan budget in accordance with Catholic social teaching, or not?”. While this might seem an arcane debate for only Catholics to engage, the fact is that the debate is ultimately about what sort of America we will have.
There are two words everyone has to familiarize themselves with:
1. Subsidiarity.
2. Solidarity.
In a nutshell, “subsidiarity” is the Catholic teaching that all decisions should be made as far as possible at the lowest level. This covers all sorts of decisions – political, economic and religious. While the higher authorities play a vital role, their role is rather one of support and instruction rather than mixing in the day to day activities of life. It is for you and me, dear reader, to take care of the poor in our midst – just as it is our duty to work and earn our own living; it is for the federal government to assist us in this – mostly by ensuring law and order, the execution of justice and our common defense against outside enemies; but, also, at times by directly aiding us when our own good, solid efforts are insufficient to secure what is necessary for the liberty, safety and dignity of ourselves and our fellows.
And that leads us in to “solidarity” – none of us is an island; we are not a law unto our selves. We are part of a group and while we have absolute rights vis a vis the group, we also have absolute responsibilities to the group. We do, indeed, have a right to our property and the fruits of our labor – but we also have a duty to ensure that our neighbor does not lack the necessities.
Liberals tend to concentrate on the “solidarity” aspect and use it as a justification for the welfare State. Libertarians tend to concentrate on “subsidiarity” and use it as a justification for government so small as to be incapable of doing the genuine tasks of government (especially in terms of ensuring justice and the defense of the nation). Paul Ryan’s plan is a judicious mix of subsidiarity and solidarity – as it should be, because while the laws of God are absolute, the actions of human beings within the parameters of those laws are subject to many varying pressures and needs and thus prudential judgement is needed in each particular instance in figuring out what is best. Neither libertarianism nor statism is the answer – in some cases the State must take a strong stand, in others the State must butt out…in most cases it has to be a little of both.
Ryan is being furiously attacked, especially by liberal Catholics who see in the Ryan budget the moral justification for dismantling the welfare State. They are attacking Ryan’s plan because they say it will harm the poor – but the fact is the plan wouldn’t do anything of the sort; it would, though, harm the vested interests of the welfare State who do little for the poor, but seem to make quite a lot of money ostensibly caring about the poor. But do have a care – if Ryan’s budget is ever passed (say in January, 2013 and then signed in to law by President Romney) then the attacks will start to come from the other side – libertarians who will be upset that the State refuses to become morally neutral and still seeks to have a role in American affairs.
While Ryan’s plan has a great deal of Catholicism in it (no surprise given Ryan’s Catholicism), it really brings up and clarifies the real debate – super welfare State, libertarian anarchy, or a well reasoned approach which understands that things don’t resolve themselves in perfect, little boxes? The whole of the American experiment – our whole Constitutional order (currently hibernating) – is based upon the Founders’ realization that (a) no one has all the answers and (b) a wise system will leave great latitude for individual and local action while still retaining a government strong enough to act forcefully when necessary.
We’ll see how it comes out – but Ryan has earned the gratitude of all Americans who wish to see the Founders’ vision restored to America.
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