Blogs For Victory

Video clip of White House reporters standing for Obama, remaining seated for Bush…in defense of the reporters, it might be that Obama’s people have instructed the reporters to stand as that is more in keeping with the determination that Obama will only be confronted with adulation…meanwhile, Bush didn’t give a hoot what anyone – least of all the White House press corps – thought about him.

The first Republican rightwing extremist:

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. – Abraham Lincoln

Newt Gingrich issues a timely warning with which I heartily concur:

Former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday blasted the Obama administration for setting itself on a collision course with Israel and endangering the Jewish state.

“They are systematically setting up the most decisive confrontation that we’ve ever seen,” the leading Republican politician told The Jerusalem Post, referring to news reports about the administration’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“There’s almost an eagerness to take on the Israeli government to make a point with the Arab world,” he said, speaking to the Post ahead of his speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference.

He called US President Barack Obama’s program of engagement on Iran a “fantasy,” and his Middle East policies “very dangerous for Israel.” He summed up Obama’s approach as “the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter.”

Among the things I fault President Bush over is his failure to act decisively against Iran in the 2005-06 time frame. It was, in the end, Iranian support which kept the Iraqi insurgency going and it is Iran, with its insane nuclear program, which threatens not just peace, but the very survival of the Israelis as a people. There is still time to act against Iran’s nuclear program in such a manner as to prevent any desire on the part of Israel to strike – indeed, such action may still be taken with a minimal risk of loss of life. But the time to take it is now.

My preferred course of action remains as it has been for years – blockade on the export of Iranian oil (which blockade will actually be applauded by all other oil-producing States, as well as providing no ability for the Iranian mullahs to portray Iranians as suffering…food and other aid could still be delivered…heck, we’d help deliver it, if necessary; it just cuts the mullahs off from the money supply they need to purchase nuclear technology as well as buy the goon squads which keep the Iranian people down), destruction of Iran’s oil-refining capacity; lift the blockade and assist in rebuilding Iran’s refining capacity after the Iranian nuclear program is dismantled under American supervision (or, failing that, the supervision of some nation like Switzerland…I don’t trust the UN to do a proper job). In fact, just the threat of a export blockade could force Iran to back down. If the threat and the actuality doesn’t, then we would have to so bomb the Iranian nuclear sites that Iran is knocked back at least 5-10 years in its nuclear program…five to ten years for Iran to change and for other, new combinations to form which might obviate the need for aggressive American action.

Obama can play with his fantasy that Iran’s government will become reasonable based on the theory that Iran’s government was only un-reasonable because Bush was President – he can play this, but it risks the lives of millions. More than likely, Obama’s willingness to meet the mullahs is viewed in Tehran as a sign of weakness…just as Clinton and Carter’s efforts to conciliate America’s enemies was viewed as weakness. We’re not dealing, in our enemies, with people who have Ivy League degrees and who have attended conflict resolution classes. We’re dealing with hard, cruel and wicked men who want their own way and who have no compunction at all about killing to get it – people thus sunk into moral degeneracy are not usually amenable to the velvet touch…rough men usually need someone equally rough to take care of them.

We’re balanced on a knife edge – on one hand stands the prospect of an Israeli strike against Iran and all our work in Afghanistan and Iraq undone in a fit of Moslem anti-Israel fervor; on the other stands the vast relief of most of the Moslem world that we took Iran’s nuclear program down. Its Obama’s choice of what to do; I hope he chooses wisely.

Bill Bennett offers a tribute.

As for me, I liked Jack Kemp from when he first came to my notice early in the Reagan years and I hoped, one day, that he’d be President of the United States. In his clear zest for political battle combined with gentleman’s grace and manners, I thought (and still think) that we had in Jack Kemp that rare combination of skill and judgment necessary for a great President. Unfortunately, the political fates decided otherwise – but we still had, for decades, the service and good counsel of this man, and he’ll be missed.

From NRO’s Campaign Spot:

Why Would We Suspect Democrats of Pressuring an Attorney General to Back Off?

A revealing question, and a reassuring answer (if it’s the truth), asked by BusinessWeek to New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo:

Q. There are stories saying the pay-to-play scandal may be expanding beyond New York State, and Democrats elsewhere may be involved. Are you feeling any heat from within the Democratic Party to back off?

Cuomo: No. To be clear . . . no one is above the law.

Of course, if Cuomo was feeling heat from Democrats to back off, it’s not clear he would tell BusinessWeek about it.

Now, if Cuomo actually goes forward fearlessly against all Democrats involved, that would be great. It would also be a first: the rule, for Democrats, is that scandals involving Democrats are to be ignored, covered up or as limited as possible. Or do you think that Blagojevich is the only corrupt Democrat in Illinois?

A Roman rightwing extremist:

Anger so clouds the mind, that it cannot perceive the truth. – Cato the Elder

The step-daughter was married this Saturday…and so, I’m a bit buzzed, a bit tired and a bit uninterested in wracking the thing I use for a brain to write something.

Have at it, boys and girls…

Interesting:

I Was a High-Tech Sweatshop Worker for the Obama Campaign

Why did the candidate of hope and change use workers paid less than half of the minimum wage?

The story:

A pro-family leader in Ohio is blasting pro-life Republican senators who voted to approve the nomination of Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services secretary, despite her long history of support for abortion and her connections to notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller.

Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio) was among nine Republicans who supported the Sebelius nomination on Tuesday. Phil Burress, president of Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values, says he was extremely disappointed but not surprised that Voinovich backed Sebelius.

“He comes from this perspective that the President has the right to pick this person and that the senators are supposed to rubber-stamp them, and I don’t understand why he thinks that way,” he admits. “He’s had that position on many other occasions — and so did Mike DeWine when he was in the Senate, and it cost him his job.”

Burress, a friend and ally of Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), says he was “totally shocked” that Brownback voted for Sebelius. He believes Brownback’s move was driven by his desire to become the next governor of Kansas.

Governor Sebelius is who she is – a liberal Democrat brought in by a liberal Democrat to help advance a liberal, Democratic agenda. No problem – Obama is free to pick whom he wishes and were we in the Senate majority we should only reject a Presidential nominee for moral failure of some sort (and in the Sebelius nomination, a case can be made for that given her deceptions regarding the depth of her pro-abortion support). But since we are the minority and can’t change the result, there is no reason for us to join in and give liberal Democrats our votes. It is time to stand firm – and by registering a negative vote against someone like Sebelius we would be indicating our firmness with that very large and very important part of the GOP coalition: pro-life voters and devout Catholics (Sebelius, after all, has been de-facto excommunicated by the Catholic Church).

Here was a chance for the Senate GOP to let the people know that it is on the people’s side…and nine of them went and blew the chance. What for? Likely just a continuance of that poison known as Senatorial collegiality. Such a sentiment is fine when we’re dealing with political parties which have different ideas about how to achieve the same goals – but when the parties are so starkly divided over what America should be, adhering to the good-old-boy Senate model merely helps the other side and outrages our side.

Its time for the Senate GOP to wake up – in its small minority its job is to ask the questions which expose the liberal agenda, offer up alternatives and in all activities point the way to how the GOP will govern once returned to the majority. The House GOP is very much getting its act together (but still has a long way to go), while the Senate GOP is still acting like its the majority needing too placate a strong, liberal minority in order to keep the meat-grinder of government running smoothly. Times have changed, Senate GOP…time to change with them.

Even the French have the odd rightwing extremist:

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. – Alexis de Tocqueville