Blogs For Victory

Geesh:

The president’s new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth’s air.

John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.

Holdren outlined several “tipping points” involving global warming that could be fast approaching. Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of “really intolerable consequences,” he said.

Twice in a half-hour interview, Holdren compared global warming to being “in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog.”

At first, Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions.

We certainly don’t want to leave anything off the table – especially that bit about anthropogenic global warming being a hoax. But, we will – under Obamunism, we’ll officially believe that human actions – such as Al Gore talking – is making the world warm up so fast that we have to get the mad scientists busy making weather machines. Perhaps Dr. Evil will be willing to help out…

Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) program:

Peril awaits any first-term lawmaker who ventures to the House floor unprepared for a duel, but Ohio Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy had a particularly rough go of it the other day.

Kilroy took the floor to support an amendment to a popular public-service bill — only to face an ambush from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who hit her hard for her vote on an unrelated American International Group measure.

It wasn’t an accident.

Foxx is part of a team of Republican members that House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has put together to create embarrassing, YouTube-worthy moments for vulnerable Democratic freshmen.

Cantor’s floor staff has created a photo album to help identify the 42 most vulnerable Democrats. The aides send daily e-mails to the members of the attack team and alert lawmakers when these targeted members are speaking on the floor. They even draft quick scripts to help focus the questioning.

The tactic seems to be working.

Democrats have begun pulling their vulnerable members from the floor as soon as the attacks begin. And even if the targeted Democrat doesn’t take the bait, video of the episode inevitably finds its way to the Web as evidence of either ineptitude or cowardice.

The Foxx-Kilroy smackdown was so rough that Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) tapped Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), a ferocious debater, to play the part of Foxx during a subsequent exercise with his freshmen on floor procedure.

First off, each GOP House member should obtain a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order. Seriously – make it part of your nature to know this, and House rules.

Now, the really cool thing about this is that it just might make the House a debating chamber rather than a rubber stamp for whomever happens to be Speaker. If we can start to get freewheeling debate where the Representative’s better know how to defend their votes, it will just make the legislation which comes out of the House much better thought out than the backroom paste-ups we get these days (such as the now infamous “Spendulus” bill). The second best thing about this is that it does nail Democrats to the wall and make them either defend the indefensible (ie, Democrat bills) or look like fools. Its a “heads I win, tails you lose” strategy for the GOP.

The House is supposed to be the tribune of the people – the place where our voices are loudest. But its not, and hasn’t been for some time now. It is the place where our voices are drowned out by special interests who grease the machine with donations and kickbacks. But this state of affairs only goes on until the light of day is brought in – and it is brought in by real debate on the floor of the House. Heck, guys and gals, we’ll even get “better” liberalism, in a sense – the Democrats still have the votes to pass whatever liberal measures they want, but if we carefully pull out the worst aspects of upcoming bills and force individual Democrats to defend it, we can force out the worst aspects of these liberal programs. We’re doing a service to the nation by not allowing Democrats to hide their votes and views.

Woohoo! So good to have a President who is so Johnny-On-The-Spot!

He also told the troops that the next 18 months are “going to be a critical period.” He referred to an Aug. 31, 2010, deadline he has set for the withdrawal of U.S. combat brigades from Iraq as part of a plan to end the war there and pull all U.S. forces out by the end of 2011, meeting a timetable set by Iraq and the United States last year in a bilateral agreement.

“It is time for us to transition to the Iraqis,” Obama said to cheers and applause. “They need to take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty.”

Uh, Barry, we reached this point back in 2007, remember?

I have made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people — and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act. The Prime Minister understands this. Here is what he told his people just last week: “The Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation.”

This new strategy will not yield an immediate end to suicide bombings, assassinations, or IED attacks. Our enemies in Iraq will make every effort to ensure that our television screens are filled with images of death and suffering. Yet over time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad’s residents. When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas. Most of Iraq’s Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace — and reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible.

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq’s provinces…

And what did you say to President Bush waaaay back when?

On January 17, 2007, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) announced plans to introduce a resolution calling for not only a cap in troop levels, but also a phased redeployment of U.S. forces in Iraq. He stated, “I cannot in good conscience support this plan (troop surge). As I first said two months ago, we should not be sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, we should begin redeploying them to let the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever and to pressure the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds to finally reach a political settlement…Escalation is a failed policy opposed by generals, Democrats and Republicans, and now even the Iraqis themselves, and the fact that the President is already moving ahead with this idea is a terrible consequence of the decision to give him the broad, open-ended authority to wage this war in 2002.”

On the night of January 30, 2007, Obama sent his bill, the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 (S.433), to the Senate floor calling for complete withdrawal of troops by March 31, 2008.

So, Mr. President, it is great that you visited the troops and we do back you in the pursuit of victory in Afghanistan…but the “critical period” in Iraq came quite a while ago and it was President Bush – in direct conflict with you and other liberals – who carried the matter through with grace and determination. The victory in Iraq has only one father – President Bush. Without him, the whole thing would have been lost – and had we listened to you in 2007, it would have been lost. You should be taking this as a lesson in humility, not trying to strut about like Iraq is your baby, now that it is a success.

So says the Canadian “Human Rights Commission“:

I don’t have any problem with the government running electronic surveillance on, say, drug gangs or terror suspects — or even hatemongers, if there’s proof that they’re engaged in actual violence. But of course, that involves showing probable cause, and getting a judge to issue a warrant. HRC types have no time for that sort of due process. Nor, in fact, do they have any real legal training.

In fact, for an organization that is supposed to promote “human rights,” the HRC’s agents seem curiously oblivious to basic aspects of constitutional law. In one famous exchange during the Lemire case, Steacy was asked “What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?” — to which he replied “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.” (I guess Section 2 has been excised from his copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights.)

I know that some Canadians visit this website – are you guys gonna sit still for this? Do you understand that you are falling under a fascist dictatorship, step by step, in the name of protecting “human rights”, which is actually just a cover for “stop speech liberals don’t like”? Come, on, Canadians – once upon a time you poured out your blood and treasure for human liberty! You can’t really be ok with this sort of nonsense, can you?

And, now, American liberals: this is why we fight you tooth and nail on “hate crimes” laws…not because we like crimes motivated by ethnic or other bigotry, but because once down such a path there’s no way to stop a fascist busybody from essentially trying to ban free speech under the rubric of human rights.

Now what were you liberals saying about wiretaps?

The Obama administration is again invoking government secrecy in defending the Bush administration’s wiretapping program, this time against a lawsuit by AT&T customers who claim federal agents illegally intercepted their phone calls and gained access to their records.

Disclosure of the information sought by the customers, “which concerns how the United States seeks to detect and prevent terrorist attacks, would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security,” Justice Department lawyers said in papers filed Friday in San Francisco.

Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a lawyer for the customers, said Monday the filing was disappointing in light of the Obama presidential campaign’s “unceasing criticism of Bush-era secrecy and promise for more transparency.”

Yeah. No kidding.

Kudos to President Obama for having at least some sense of national security – but minus a million points for irresponsibly buying into the kook left talking points about signals intelligence during the campaign.

Naturally, you liberals out there are going to call for Obama’s impeachment. Right?

Why is everyone, even Fox News, making excuses for Obama’s inexperience and incompetence. I nearly puked when I saw this on FoxNews.com:

For several weeks now, there has been a lot of talk by pundits about whether Barack Obama has “too much on his plate.” I am sick of it. It is silly to think that Barack Obama has any more problem to deal with as any of his predecessors. To suggest such a thing trivializes the severity of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or even 9/11. WE expect presidents to walk and chew gum at the same time, but when it comes to Barack Obama, all we get are excuses as to why he suddenly has so much more to deal with then apparently anyone else…

So, why all the excuses now? Well, obviously, Barack Obama, unlike his predecessors, is unqualified and too inexperienced for the job he has. But this is what America decided. Instead of an experience leader, known to be able to work with both parties, who had a lifetime of service for his country, a majority of voters felt some  young, inexperience part-time state senator who declared his candidacy for the presidency a mere 150 days of serving in the U.S. Senate, just because he can read a speech off of a teleprompter.

Well, this isn’t a campaign anymore. We have a real country to run with real issues. We expect a president to be ready on day one to deal with these issues. Instead, we have pundits and the media basically saying that we have a president who cannot handle the issues that most Americans would expect and demand any president to handle.

But no. We have Barack Obama, and a whole bunch of people who will continue to bake excuses for his incompetence.

With all this talk of spend, spend, spend and borrow, borrow, borrow the assurances by Obama and his Democrats that they’ll only tax “the rich” are starting to fall a bit flat:

While the economy remains the top issue nationwide, taxes are moving up on the priority list. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 64% of voters see taxation as very important; it’s highest level in nearly two years.

Last month, 61% said taxes were very important to them. Prior to that survey, that number never rose above 60%.

Obama ran as a tax-cutting deficit hawk – I know, you have to think back a bit. Our liberals won’t be able to manage this trick as their minds are entirely controlled by the DNC – but those who aren’t liberals can, if they wish, stretch their mind back to last September and realize that one of Obama’s most effective ads against McCain was his assertion that McCain wanted to tax health care benefits. Obama, naturally, was being mendacious in his attempts to portray himself as something other than a tax and spend liberal – and now that he’s in office and need not face the voters until 2012, he’s all set to tax and spend us into oblivion…and thus the issue of taxation rises in national consciousness.

At the end of the day, Obama and his Democrats are handing issue after issue which if we can’t win on, then we have no business being in politics at all.

And replace the “never again” we as a people pledged after the Holocaust. On April 20th we’ll have a celebration, in a sense, of Adolf Hitler’s 120th birthday – a grand assembly of racists and anti-Semites will gather in Durban to take up, in the name of the whole world, the issue of racism:

Engagement in this U.N. forum is about giving voice to anti-Semites and racists — under the guise of combating racism. Today Iran used the U.N. megaphone to express its views about human rights as many times as the entire European Union did; Iran was second only to South Africa. Syria took the opportunity to announce it had reservations about the Holocaust paragraph, which reads: “Recalls that the Holocaust must never be forgotten, and in this context urges all U.N. members to implement GA resolutions 60/7 and 61/255.” Iran’s delegate immediately declared “a lot of support for the specific comments of Syria.”

Naturally, President Obama is wary of not “engaging” the world via the Durban conference – I mean, the damage which would be caused by American absence from this anti-Semitic hate-fest is hard to imagine, right?

The problem, dear liberals, with trying to project a favorable image of the United States is that the people who have an unfavorable view of us hate us not for what we do, but for what we are…the Islamists hate us because we’re not Islamic; the Euro-socialists hate us because we’re not socialists; the Chinese hate us because we are powerful and they are not…on and on it goes. While there is some residual hatred of Britain around the world, the plain fact of that matter is that the white-hot hatred we feel here in 2009 was directed towards Britain in 1909 for the same reasons – they were free, the most powerful nation in the world and a force for good. Nations which were enslaved, weaker and had nefarious plans for the world naturally disliked this state of affairs.

Even if we set out on a deliberate, announced policy of appeasement it would not change the world’s view of us – other than adding contempt to hatred. We are the imperial power of the world – the sole power capable of defending liberty and human decency by human agency. If we refuse our office, then there is no one to take it, and the world will become the plaything of wicked people – Britain refused its office in the 1930’s and the reward wasn’t peace, but World War Two. If we want World War Three, all we have to do is abase ourselves before the world and show ourselves unwilling to defend – by muscular and at times violent action – human decency.

Going to Durban and begging pretty-please for anti-Semites to accord some respect to Israel and some remembrance of the Holocaust is the worst thing we can do, and I hope President Obama realizes this before its too late.

Neatly encapsulated:

It was surely an act of hubris for President Obama to ask Congress to approve a $3.6 trillion federal budget for 2010 that runs a trillion-dollars worth of red ink its first year and then projects half-trillion deficits every year thereafter for a decade. Congress has never before been asked to consider spending of such magnitude, not even during wartime. Obama’s budget proposal also included provisions committing the nation to far-reaching policy changes that are certain to drive federal taxes higher, send gasoline and electricity costs soaring, socialize doctors and patients by putting Washington bureaucrats in charge of health care, and make Uncle Sam the Daddy Warbucks of college tuition for everybody. . . . So how did Congress deal with this landmark legislation? The House of Representatives gave opponents exactly 20 minutes to present an alternative, then gaveled the Obama measure to approval. The Senate approved it after considering a handful of amendments. But note that even before the 2010 budget was approved, this Congress had approved spending more than $1.2 trillion, or $24 billion per day. That’s $1 billion every hour since the 111th Congress convened in January.

We can’t do this – it isn’t sustainable (to use a favored liberal word). When it comes crashing down – and it will, sure as night follows day – we’ll be under a mountain of debt which will take decades of sustained economic growth to get out of, but we won’t have the money necessary to invest in the economic activities which will would provide the wealth necessary to discharge the debt. Essentially, Obama and his Democrats are blithely spending us into oblivion because they are ignorant and think that the New Deal helped, so the Super-Duper Newer Deal will help even more.

If only we could get into their heads a bit and make them understand – the reason it costs $5,000 a month to pay for nursing home care is because Medicaid is willing to pay that…so regular folks who can afford $3,000 a month (and thus don’t qualify for Medicaid) are priced out of the market; the reason why the average in-State tuition for a public college is $18,000 is because the government backs loans and grants which allow kids to “afford” that high a tuition; the reason why health care costs in 2008 rose at twice the rate of inflation is because Medicare and Medicaid are willing to pay such extortionate prices, thus pricing Joe Average out of the market and forcing him to seek private or government insurance…on and on it goes; the reason things cost so much and thus seem to require government aid is because government aid is distorting the market price.

We won’t be able to make them see this – but as things fall apart we can craft a message which wins for us great power, and thus we can just show them, by actions, that the best means of doing things is to not have government do them except in a genuine, and temporary, emergency.

Obama said he would unite this country. Well, he isn’t, according to Pew Researh Center. In fact, Obama has the widest partisan gap in his approval ratings of any president in the modern era.

For all of his hopes about bipartisanship, Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades. The 61-point partisan gap in opinions about Obama’s job performance is the result of a combination of high Democratic ratings for the president — 88% job approval among Democrats — and relatively low approval ratings among Republicans (27%).

By comparison, there was a somewhat smaller 51-point partisan gap in views of George W. Bush’s job performance in April 2001, a few months into his first term. At that time, Republican enthusiasm for Bush was comparable to how Democrats feel about Obama today, but there was substantially less criticism from members of the opposition party. Among Democrats, 36% approved of Bush’s job performance in April 2001; that compares with a 27% job approval rating for Obama among Republicans today.

The partisan gap in Bill Clinton’s early days was also substantially smaller than what Obama faces, largely because Democrats were less enthusiastic about Clinton. In early April 1993, 71% of Democrats approved of Clinton’s job performance, which is 17 points lower than Obama’s current job approval among Democrats. Republican ratings of Clinton at that point (26%) are comparable to their current ratings of Obama today (27%). 

I am sure the left will blame Republicans for not drinking the Obama Kool-Aid, but Obama is the one who has no record of genuine bipartisanship, and so far, he has done nothing substantive to reach out to Republicans. In fact he is using fear to push through a terrible budget and is already expanding to role of government in scary socialism-like ways.

While the partisan divide is part of a long term trend, Obama was the one claiming he’d be the one to end all that and bring this country together. Of course, he spent the whole of his campaign being as partisan as anyone could be, so this really doesn’t shock me at all.