Blogs For Victory

Jennifer Rubin provides a keen insight:

…Every president faces a rough patch or two, but Obama’s may be a bit more troubling than most. A presidency that rests on a cult of personality rather than the power of ideas is particularly vulnerable when the personality proves to be less attractive.

Moreover, Obama has not expended political capital on anything meaningful. He did not, as Ronald Reagan did, suffer a drop in the polls by doing the hard work of wringing inflation from the economy. He didn’t enrage liberals by refusing to retreat from an unpopular war or risk the ire of the conservative base to pass a largely successful Medicare Part D, as did George W. Bush. Obama lost his popularity with only a failed stimulus plan to show for it. He has not worked to sow the seeds of policy initiatives which will bear fruit later on. He has frittered away his high standing on government boondoggles.

It would be a mistake to conclude Obama is permanently hobbled. His large congressional majorities may well deliver some type of health care reform for which he can claim credit. And the economy will eventually rebound. But what has been lost is that “opportunity” which Rahm Emanuel bragged about to use both the recession and Obama’s personal popularity to enact a fundamental shift in our government.

Whether due to political overreach or to sagging employment, the chance to remake America to suit Obama’s liberal vision is quickly slipping from the president’s grasp. And you don’t get opportunities like that very often.

I expect Obama to recover – not because he’s any good, but because liberalism has invested too much in Obama. A full court press of the leftwing propaganda machine will re-burnish Obama. At least a bit, that is.

Obama’s failure – far more than the failure of Carter in the 70’s – would involve liberalism from top to bottom. Liberalism dodged away from Carter – claiming he failed because he wasn’t liberal enough. Well, Obama is as liberal as all but the kookiest of the kook left could desire. If Obama doesn’t work, then liberalism doesn’t work, and there’s an end on it. The story that Hillary’s troops remain campaign ready indicates that at least some DLC-type Democrats are realizing that they might have to run hard and fast away from liberalism in order to preserve the Democrat party, if Obama really comes crashing down.

The majority of the American people were duped in November – fed a steady diet of outright lies about President Bush, the majority wanted a clean break. Well, they got it – but it wasn’t the clean break as advertised. We were supposed to get a center-governing, moderately liberal near-genius who would bring us all together in order to conquer the many problems America has at home and abroad. Hope and change. The trouble is that we got dishonest, uber-liberal neophyte who is busily dividing us from each other, coddling our enemies and insulting our friends as we ignore our real problems to tackle secondary issues like health care, or fairy-tale issues like global warming. People are beginning to realize they’ve been had.

We don’t get “do-overs”. We’re stuck with Obama until at least January 20th, 2013. It will be a very hard lesson – as Mencken once opined, people get the government they deserve, and they usually get it good and hard. Consider Obama the political two-by-four to whack us upside the head and hopefully pound some sense in to us. If we learn this lesson, we’ll never have to deal with the likes of Obama, again.

Because there’s nothing to worry about:

The U.S. military wants to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials.

The proposal is awaiting final approval from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The officials would not be identified because the proposal from U.S. Northern Command’s Gen. Victor Renuart has not been approved by the secretary.

Some one figure out when we’re supposed to start worrying – I don’t want to be the first guy, k?

Just posted so that all and sundry may bring up whatever is on their minds (or, for our liberals, whatever is in their daily talking points).

Because Obama’s already on track to make our enemies love us:

Police arrested 7 men in North Carolina and charged them with terrorist activities that have their roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan and date back to the 1980s, before a few of them were born…

…Boyd and his two sons hail from rural North Carolina and lo these many years, Father Boyd has been plotting against his country, if the charges are true. For 20 years or more, this has been simmering.

It is the homegrown jihad we still have to fear.

I guess some domestic spying is necessary.

Now, with all due respect to Don Surber – the author of the linked article – we don’t need any domestic spying. Clearly, these well-meaning people – who only started on their actions 20 years ago because they knew that eventually we’d elect someone like President Bush – simply haven’t heard about the new, Obama-run America. The backwoods of North Carolina are not exactly fully integrated in to the modern world, so it could be that Boyd, et al just haven’t have a chance to experience that warm, fuzzy feeling all the rest of al Qaeda gets when they see Obama.

Now that the FBI has kindly reached out to them, its certain they will start to read the Washington Post, New York Times and Daily Kos and realize that all their efforts in the backwoods were for naught – the American people, wise as long as they back Obama, have already saved the day. These nice people can now get on with their true ambitions, which probably run to providing low-cost day care to working mothers, or some such.

We can’t just “make nice” our way to liberty:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. – Ronald Reagan

Posted without additional comment:

Chicago Sees Coldest July In 67 Years

Average Temperature Only 68.9 Degrees

Geesh:

The U.S. government said Tuesday it has revoked the diplomatic visas of four Honduran officials, stepping up pressure on coup-installed leaders who insist they can resist international demands to restore the ousted president.

The U.S. State Department did not name the four, but a Honduran official said they included the Supreme Court magistrate who ordered the arrest of ousted President Manuel Zelda and the president of Honduras’ Congress.

The State Department is also reviewing the visas of all officials serving under interim President Roberto Micheletti, department spokesman Ian Kelly said.

Micheletti’s Deputy Foreign Minister Marta Lorena Alvarado said Supreme Court Justice Tomas Arita and Congressional President Jose Alfredo Saavedro were among those whose visas removed.

In other words, Obama’s Administration has revoked the visas of those Honduran officials who, acting in their official capacity, enforced the constitution of Honduras.

Meanwhile, we’re willing to deal with the Iranian thugs who gun down innocent people…

I’d like to say we can’t get any stupider than this, but is only 6 months in to Obama-nation…

This is worrisome:

Jack Shaw, a Jersey City political consultant who was among 44 people charged in a federal corruption probe, has died.

Two officials with knowledge of the investigation said Shaw was found at home with several bottles of pills nearby. One of the officials said Shaw, 61, had an unspecified medical condition, and authorities are not jumping to conclusions about the cause of his death.

I’m not jumping to any conclusions, either…but given that this is New Jersey, I think extra vigilance is needed by the authorities to keep the principals of this case alive at least until they testify. Now, this could have just been one of those things – or, he could have been “helped” along here by people with a lot to lose. Not to put too fine a point on it, but New Jersey is a State where strange things happen to people who place the political-economic power elite at risk.

Mr. Obama, are you listening?

…once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end.

War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.

In war there is no substitute for victory.

There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease (our enemies). They are blind to history’s clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative. – Douglas MacArthur

And President Obama doesn’t seem to understand this – from Blackfive:

There are reasons that military people use words like “victory” to describe winning…

President Obama has put securing Afghanistan near the top of his foreign policy agenda, but “victory” in the war-torn country isn’t necessarily the United States’ goal, he said Thursday in a TV interview.

“I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur,” Obama told ABC News…

WTF Over? We don’t want to “win” now? Well, I have news for the President, every one of the men and women in uniform that is sweating, shooting, bleeding and dying to accomplish our mission there is looking for “victory.” They know what is measurable and what isn’t. And they definitely know what it looks like at the end.

Now, I know that in the COIN battle-space that it is difficult to get hard measurements for the Powerpoint Rangers to put in briefing slides, but I do know that one of the many “measurable goals” of war-fighting (thereby leading to “victory”) is the surrender/capture/death of the enemy. Economic development and stabilizing the government are all legs of the stool, but the the rock solid base of the stool, the thing that “contracts the ability of Al-Qaeda to operate” is killing or capturing (although capturing now has a greatly lessened effect) the enemy. That is what makes all of the other things possible.

But our CINC, having never been at the point of anything except petitions drives and organized protests, may not understand what I am getting at…

As I’ve said before, President Obama has my backing for whatever efforts he makes in the pursuit of victory. He must, to retain my support, pursue victory – relentlessly and regardless of how difficult it proves. I will not support military actions I perceive as being designed to merely prevent defeat or, worse, merely prevent bad news from hitting a President’s polling in the United States. In spite of Obama’s foolish statement quoted above, I will currently suspend judgment and consider it just a bad use of words – the sort of words a liberal would use, because liberals simply dislike any word which might indicate a bit of manly resolve.

Let us not have a real repeat of Vietnam – the continual effusion of blood without the clear cut goal of American victory at the end of it. We owe it to the magnificent men and women of our Armed Forces – we must back them to victory, because that is what they want. They’ve shed their blood, and they didn’t do it to merely prevent a loss but to secure a victory. If we break faith with them – as we broke faith with our soldiers and allies in Vietnam – then we will deserve whatever calamity befalls us.

Please, Mr. President, win.