dailybeacon

President Obama’s decision to not release photos of interrogation techniques, even though correct, is none the less remarkable but most glaringly hypocritical.  Prior to January 20th, his cries for such were consistent.  I applaud him for the realization that the release of such information does not fall under the auspices of the “right to know”, as well as the fact that any publication of such would create the very real possibility of putting our troops in greater harms way.   The fact still remains that a majority of folks will accept his decision now, even though it was the same decision of the previous administration, only now because it is Obama it’s O.K.   Every administration makes mistakes.  Bush made many but this was not one of them.  To suggest that terrorists should have the same rights as non-terrorists is ludicrous.  To suggest that we should not do everything possible to gather information to protect ourselves should be only common sense but unfortunately it is not.  The very nature of terrorism should trump any rights short of execution, which by the way, is the interrogation limit of our enemies clearly displayed by video.   The left has NEVER demonstrated the same indignation to those executions as it does now to Gitmo or any other practices we use, all of which are far more humane than our enemies.  Other than with the Moveon.org crowd,  President Obama’s decision will hardly cause a ripple.  If any conservative had made the same, it would be editorial fodder for weeks.  No bias in the press though.

Remember, during the campaign, how we were told that a more compatible approach to our enemies was what was missing in our reputation world wide and that a change would elevate our status around the world?  In one fell swoop, one lost week end, North Korea detonates a nuclear weapon the size of the Hiroshima bomb, Iran rejects the nuclear plan of the west and sends warships into neutral waters, and it is speculated that Hugo Chavez is sending Uranium to Iran, I’m sure for peaceful purposes.  Do you feel better about ourselves now?  Safer?  The kinder, gentler President’s joking with Chavez seems to have certainly moved him towards our side.  But of course we can depend on the toothless UN to bail the west out.  NOT!!

   There is no policy or approach that will get any of theses governments to have any respect for the U.S., none, they HATE us period.  The only approach to protect ourselves is to aggressively prevent these things from happening.  Do I want to see lives lost.  Absolutely not but the reality is, lives will be lost either way, so at least let us die fighting to save ourselves.  The announcement that a real, not imagined, missile terrorist plot was prevented, reported by Iran’s president no less, had better wake us up or 911 will seem like small potatoes in the loss of life of innocent non-combatants.  This is not a drill.  We are under legitimate attack and will likely be for the rest of time.  This President is not ready, is delusional about the non-threat and thinks if we don’t acknowledge that there are terrorists they will stop being such, forgetting that enemies don’t buy into rhetoric like people who will do anything to feel hope, even ignoring facts to feel better, like those who voted for him in the last election.  Our enemies believe they are honored by their God dying for their “just” cause.  If they are honored for killing us, what makes anyone believe that they are going to stop trying?  Wake up or die.  There is no grey area in between.

   Too many have forgotten the high pressure pitch that we were given to pass the stimulus package within the first three weeks of Obama’s administration or who knows what was going to happen.  Three and a half months later, over ninety-five percent of the money is still not being distributed, yet somehow the economy is showing some signs of recovery without the money!  This was the cry of every true conservative that spoke on the issue, the economy will recover with the passage of time because we have the greatest economy ever devised.  The needless money will be distributed, strapping the next ten generations with debt that they will never repay but of course, the Obama administration will take the credit, the news media will give him the credit and the One will have saved the world from destruction.  Absolute garbage. 

   The Republican bank plan is just as bad.  Banks that received TARP money are not lending it or they are spending it on bonuses for their wonderful administrators.  Money continues to be straight jacket tight and not accessible to most who need it, never mind want it.  As predicted by conservatives, it won’t do anything in a timely fashion to exhibit the change sold to Congress and the public.  But the housing market is still improving, financed mostly by banks who didn’t receive any TARP funds.  Who’d have thunk it!

   But now, let’s allow government to run healthcare because its track record past and present is so good.  I easily join the chorus that says it’s not going to work.  I have a successful Canadian business friend who says he is enjoying watching the once powerful U.S. attempt to implement the socialistic systems that their government did and now are trying desperately to get rid of.  Getting rid of something the government starts is like believing that a tax will disappear once the need it was created to meet is completed.  It’s not going to happen.  Add to the list, the Democratic claims of the past fifteen years that all conservatives are doing is whining to the wind when we warned that Social Security and Medicare will  be bankrupt.  Never happen they said.  We’ll borrow the money from Social Security.  It’s O.K.  We’ll be able to pay it back.  Now their own Democratic Reporting Bureaus say in four years they will both be out of money.  Wow!  Didn’t see that coming.  Four years is when the greatest number of baby boomers will be entitled, their term not mine, to receive these benefits.  Keep in mind, President Obama said emphatically, under my plan no one who makes less than $250,000 will experience one dollar of tax increase during my administration (paraphrase).  So, no one in that income bracket will pay the necessary tax increases to provide the aforementioned benefits, or none of them smoke so they won’t have to pay the taxes proposed on smokers, or none of them use electricity whose rates will go up dramatically with his Cap proposals?

  Who can you believe?  Likely no one whose been in government long enough to be initiated into the way things are done around here and if they don’t buy in, they are blackballed to obscurity.  Maybe term limits have some value after all.

About a month ago, ABC News committed a flagrant act of journalism, something you won’t hear me say very often, when they reported on the remarkable pork spending at the John Mertha Airport in Pennsylvania.  Literally millions of dollars of tax money have been spent on an airport that serves twenty passengers a day, no lie, an average of twenty passengers a day.  Despite this fact, this airport has a reinforced runway that is long enough and strong enough to handle any of the largest jets that fly in the continental U.S.  Of course, they never fly there but they could.  Don”t ask the obvious why, that would be requiring a common sense check.  It’s named after the Democratic Congressman, John M. Mertha, from Pennsylvania, who is arguably the greatest pork vendor in Congress.  Three flights a day to Washington D.C., with every ticket on every flight being subsidised by our tax money. 

   Despite this expose, yesterday the FAA approved $800,000 of stimulus money for this airport, to resurface an alternate runway at the sight.   Why do they even need an alternate runway?  Common sense again.  Stimulating the economy or buying more votes for Mertha?  About $50 million total during Mertha’s tenure and still counting.  I’m glad the Obama administration is monitoring stimulus dollars so closely that none of it is being wasted.  You and I will never know how much has just been flushed down the toilet in the time it took me to write this.  Transparency and responsibility promised but not being delivered.  What a surprise.

In a yet another of a continuing series of amazing events under President Obama’s watch, someone thinks it is a good idea to burn $328,000 plus for a photo op that has the additional advantage of sending New York’s financial district into a panic.  Can’t imagine how someone wouldn’t think that seeing a jumbo jet  flanked by one of our fighters wouldn’t cause people in New York to panic, can you?  Can’t imagine what wold have happened if this had occurred during the evil Bush’s Presidency, of course, no one in that time would have been stupid enough to allow it to happen either.  Has anyone in the green party calculated the carbon footprint of this obviously critical operation?  How is it that President Obama didn’t know it was going to happen?  So much for being Commander and Chief.  Add this to hiring a tax evading treasury secretary and a Homeland Security Chief who doesn’t know where 9-11 terrorists came from and we continue to see examples of the good hands people who are watching our backs in our current ruling party.  Just the first stellar 100 days.  It’s getting gooder and gooder.

In a classic example of the obscure getting media face time, Perez Hilton’s completely inappropriate question of a Miss Universe candidate has created a firestorm because the contestant, Miss California, stated her opinion and beliefs.  To do so in the face of an openly gay blogger who for some reason was a judge at this pageant, (a gay man judging women? what’s wrong with this picture?) and in front of thousands of viewers demonstrated more courage than most could muster.  Perhaps there is some value to faith after all.  Of course, the fact that those stated beliefs are the same as 70% of all Americans, not the least significant being President Obama and Vice President Biden, seems irrelevant to the media and to gay rights activists.  Even Elton John has stated that marriage is not appropriate for gays but rather civil unions.  The fact that she is a person of faith, a believer in the principals of the Bible, and blonde seems to be Mr. Perez’s rant.  In comments after the pageant, he used his blog to call her a dumb b-t– but later stated he apologized only to later change his mind again to stand by his original comments saying that he really wanted to call her a c word instead.  Ah yes, the compassionate, enlightened left encouraging understanding and acceptance of everyone, that is everyone that agrees with the enlightened left, otherwise you are stupid, or dumb, or worse.  Of course, most times the left can’t carry on a conversation without a cursing diatribe.  Enlightened indeed.  I’d rather be dumb, thank you, and right which is why we are called the right.

An old success adage says, “you are the books you read and the people you associate with.”  If that is true, we could be in trouble.  I don’t know what the President reads but add Venezuela’s president and overtures to Iran to President Obama’ list of Ayers, Wright, Blagojevich and likely others that we don’t even know about.  That reality should give us all pause.  The question is why would he not call Iran and Venezuela to task for their policies instead of cow-towing.  Can he possibly believe that there is anything that can be done that would change their hatred of the U.S.?

   With all do respect, Mr. President, there isn’t.  The real question should be, do we care if Hugo Chavez likes us?  The answer should be a resounding NO because the reality is that no matter what we do and no matter what he says, he will never like us.  The other reality is that he needs us more than we need him anyway.  As Citco gas usage falls, it directly effects his economy.  The more negative he does, the more it falls.  Giving the President a book with a smile is nothing more than a photo op to help oil sales to the U.S.

   Iran will never like us and after the rants at the U.N. yesterday, frankly, we should never like them.  Their culture’s true beliefs came to the fore and it should send chills down every reasonable American’s spine but unfortunately it won’t.  The terrorist results, if we let down our guard, will be what we deserve. 

   The challenge that President Obama faces is to not give in to the belief that his great personal charisma is enough to solve all the world’s problems.  Because of the positive way that people appear to respond to his charm fosters the ego of that belief but like all who have that gift, the down side is that such people tend to believe their press clippings as an affirmation of their own internal belief and diminishes their ability to discern reality.  Unfortunately, there is far more at stake now and his response to situations effects three hundred and fifty million people, not just himself.  “To whom much is given, much is required.”  I pray he never forgets that truth.

Chrysler isn’t owned by the government but you would never know it since our government has now told them they have to accept a buyout by Italian Fiat.  So, our government is forcing a private company to be sold to a foreign company.  Should there be a continued meeting of the minds to help the company survive?  That would certainly seem reasonable, however, if this was the only option when Chrysler accepted stimulus money, why were they allowed to accept tax dollars in the first place?  The money is gone, with nothing to show for it.  Billions of dollars down the tube.  Taxpayers get bit in the butt again and the government continues to expand its powers into uncharted territory, uncharted and dangerous territory. 

Apparently the government isn’t in a recession.  President Obama can rationalize taking 500 people to England for the upcoming G2o summit, 500 people?  I wonder what the carbon footprint of that trip is?  Is this Obama’ s individual stimulus plan for five hundred staffers and England, to the additional demise of our own economy, as he spends our tax dollars overseas.  Another off the chart decision.  Other people’s money strikes again.  This is becoming more like a monarchy every day.  Maybe that’s why they’re really going to England, so they can take notes on how it is done.

Are you kidding me!!!  Obama’s latest attack on the free enterprise system proves that his view of our economy is getting closer to a dictatorship than a free economy.  The forced removal of GM’s CEO should send chills down every American’s spine.  Rationalizing that if GM takes bailout funds that the government somehow has the right to administrate their business is just that, “rational lies.”   Have automakers done things wrong, yes, and the marketplace is responding to that.  If a socialist country like Sweden won’t even bail out their auto maker, thaat should clearly indicate the first problem in this equation but then to forcibly remove the head of a private company in a free society, is over the top.  Almost every day, it just gets more ridiculous and frightening at the same time.

We’re in trouble.  If you don’t see it, you’re living in the wrong country.