The Bell Tower

Considering the previous post, there’s another point that should be made. The birther thing and the Muslim thing - as kooky as they are - are conceivable. They could happen in the real world. Sure it’s a stretch to imagine a sitting president successfully hiding this information from the entire world given the vast array of people who would like nothing better than to see him brought down. It’s a stretch, but it’s not off the wall crazy.

Meanwhile, as many as a third of Democrats at one point were polled as believing George Bush was in some way behind the 9/11 attacks. In other words they believed a sitting president actively conspired to perpetrate the largest attack on American soil in the history of the republic. Not only did he know about (or even orchestrate) the attacks but he was able to conspire with a vast array of shady characters, broad swaths of the American government, foreign agents in various countries and a whole cast of different people - and he kept them all quiet while thousands of people were murdered on live television. Also, he’s so stupid he can’t spell his last name without cue cards.

Seriously, it’s unbelievable. It’s not just a little off or a little quirky. It’s loony tunes. This is Lex Luthor, super villain, comic book stuff. If it happened in an Arnold movie, you might go “Whoa, hold on now.” And the current president actually appointed a guy to his cabinet who believed in it. Van Jones didn’t just show up randomly at some campaign rally with his hacky sack and a “Bush is Hitler” sign and claim to be a Democrat. He was the Green Jobs Czar (whatever that is). He’s an actual Democrat, not a vagrant at a Glen Beck rally.

People who believe Obama is a Muslim basically are saying he’s lying about his faith. In the grand scheme of things - even if it turned out to be true - it’s a non-issue. Certainly the right would pillory him mercilessly but so what? They already do that. The birth certificate lie would undoubtedly get him impeached but it’s still a comparably petty crime from a moral perspective. People who believe Bush was behind 9/11 are calling him a murderer and a war criminal on a par with Adolph Hitler or Pol Pot. If it’s true, he’s a despicable villain who should be executed.

All the kooks deserve to be called out and exposed. Every president has crazy critics - it goes with the territory. It’s just that it’s very hard to swallow the left wing whining about the unfair treatment Barack Obama is getting while we’re barely 2 years removed from the appalling smear campaign waged against George W Bush. I’m having a hard time feeling sympathy.

Utilitarianism at its finest.

“Given that they are such a small minority in this nation, it is odd that so many of our fellow citizens see them as such a threat. Yes, the 9/11 attacks were horrific, but they were more about optics than actual harm. The economy was already taking a hit before the Twin Towers fell. The reaction of the nation to seeing two major buildings in New York fall on T.V. has boosted the attack out of proportion. While the loss of even a single life is to be condemned and the devastation these deaths caused the families of those killed, more than this number of teens are killed every year in car crashes. These are also tragic losses but we do not make the kind of high profile issue of it that the 9/11 attacks are.”

Well, except that car crashes are random, individual events. Except that car crashes are not willfully perpetrated by someone specifically intending to take innocent life. Except that car crashes are the product of free people taking a calculated and understood risk getting into a car - teens or not. Walking to the water cooler to grab a drink between meetings and being blown to smithereens by a lunatic with five o’clock shadow and a box cutter who thinks his god told him to kill Americans and Jews is not remotely similar.

Here’s what the kooks over at the Kos don’t get: “the loss of even a single life” is not always to be condemned. Steve Irwin died from a stingray barb. Tragic and untimely? Of course, but who are we condemning for it? The stingray? Irwin died in the course of living his life as he chose. Nobody took his life from him. Todd Beamer’s life was taken from him by terrorists. They intended to take it. This is in no possible way comparable to a teenager dying in a car accident - even at the hands of a drunk driver. It’s mass murder. Why does this have to be explained?

I find it ironic that in America, it seems we’re constantly ready to declare war on every sort of behavior that might threaten our own life (smoking a cigarette, shooting up heroin, not wearing a seat belt, not wearing a motorcycle helmet, not buying health insurance, eating a cheeseburger) but the minute someone specifically kills someone else, we’re filled with excuses for the behavior. Suddenly we’re lectured not to be so quick about judging others. Shouldn’t this be the other way around? Speaking of stupidity, what does this mean exactly?

“… they were more about optics than actual harm.”

Optics? Were they declaring war on Isaac Newton or something? If he’s trying to say that the intent of the terrorists was more about perception than the actual physical results, so what? Maybe this was a calculated effort to destroy America’s morale by manipulating the executive branch to massively increase law enforcement through a police state thus slowly eroding morale and faith in the American political system. Maybe a bunch of idiots in the desert thought it would be easy to take over an airplane, figured out planes full of fuel made bigger explosion than empty ones and decided to crash them into the biggest targets they could find. I tend to side with the second analysis but it’s an irrelevant discussion, not to mention an extremely ignorant statement. Talk to someone who was in New York City that day and ask them how much “actual harm” they think was perpetrated. Can we convince this blogger to strike up the discussion with a New York City police officer in a dark alley when nobody else is around?

As for the Mosque conversation that spawned this brain dead discussion in the first place, the whole dust up seems ridiculous. It’s obvious that building this thing so close to the scene of 9/11 was meant to stir up controversy. Bloomberg’s hyperbolic outbursts of phony tolerance aside, this is on purpose. It’s meant to make people like Sarah Palin angry. Unfortunately, the right are like a monkey in a cage getting prodded by an idiot trying to impress his girlfriend at the zoo. I can sympathize with the monkey but as long as he reacts to the stupid prank, the dummy with the stick is going to keep poking him. Why can’t we concentrate on more important subjects - like removing Bloombergian imbeciles from office altogether? Perhaps November will be a good start.

Blaming the President

“When asked by Judge Napolitano why he should not be held responsible for potential deaths caused by the leak, Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, answered that he contacted the White House about the leaks before they were released and asked them to review them.

Someone in this administration has blood on their hands, and Congress must demand a full disclosure of who knew what and when. It is imperative that this scandal is investigated and not covered up.”

Politicizing the President’s role in this seems almost worse than the leak itself. I agree with much the Browns say in this article about Obama’s mismanagement of the war (and I wonder where all the loony left wing war protesters who compared Bush to Hitler are now). What I find unconscionable is the right wing impulse to hang the President out to dry on this matter for precisely the wrong reasons.

Julian Assange is a terrorist. If the administration made a mistake here, it’s that they have so far failed to clarify this fact and bring the man to justice. When a foreign agent seeks attention from the President of the United States via leverage that could risk the lives of American soldiers and citizens, he should be dignified with only one response: “Release the information at your peril. We will find you and bring you to justice.”

Obama apparently chose not to dignify this attempt at blackmail with any response at all. Obviously as President, he has information that the rest of us do not. Provided that he is putting significant effort into capturing Julian Assange and prosecuting him, Americans should stand behind him. Trivializing the President’s difficult response to this matter for political gain is a disservice to the office and the country.

Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday he worries that the leaks won’t stop “until we see someone in an orange jump suit.”

Orange jump suit? This guy should be labeled an enemy combatant and we should be doing everything we can to get him extradited to America and prosecuted as soon as possible. American forces should be instructed to capture or kill him on sight. There’s no room for putting American soldiers on the battle field at risk. Ever.

Oh, you didn’t know?

“As John Fund reports in the Wall Street Journal, Sens. Jay Rockefeller, Kent Conrad, and Tom Harkin are already looking forward to what they might get passed in a lame-duck session. Among the major items being considered are card check, budget-balancing through major tax hikes, and climate-change legislation involving heavy carbon taxes and regulation.”

This is why I hate reading Charles Krauthammer.

Tits on a bull

“The NRA is a non-partisan, single-issue organization made up of millions of individual members dedicated to the protection of the Second Amendment. We do not represent the interests of other organizations. That’s their responsibility. Our responsibility is to protect and defend the interests of our members. And that we do without apology.”

If you are a member of the NRA, cancel your membership. The Second Amendment has no value without the larger context of the entire Constitution. If the NRA’s purpose is merely to protect the interests of its members, then they also have no value. Basically, this is a doctor walking by a man suffering from a heart attack in the street and announcing “I’m on lunch break.” The Second Amendment is not a “single issue” and those who pursue it as such are no different than the teacher’s unions or ACORN. They do harm to the Constitution and by extension to the Second Amendment they claim to support.

If you don’t know what H.R. 5175 is, take a look. Not only has the NRA ceased opposing this bill, they’ve taken a bribe from Congress that will exclude them from jurisdiction. So, the government can force other organizations to disclose their donors but the NRA will be exempt. As long as they are, that’s fine with the NRA. They’re more than happy to look the other way while other less organized or represented groups of citizens are abused under the law. Don’t buy their cynical attempt to hide behind the outstanding men and women who serve in our armed forces or law enforcement agencies. That is a red herring attempting to divert your eyes from the fact that they care only about one thing, and it isn’t the Second Amendment. Nobody is asking the NRA to take up the cause of other organizations. However, when you withhold criticism of a bill you’ve clearly described as a “draconian” measure designed to “intimidate speech” because Congress has bribed you to keep your mouth shut, you’re not serving any cause at all.

My message to Chris Cox and the rest of the NRA is this: Take your seven pieces of silver and shove them up your ass. I’ll keep my shotgun anyway.

So let me get this straight.  North Korea torpedoes and sinks a South Korean ship in cold blood - an act of war by almost any conceivable measure.  The world stands idly by.  Other than some vapid grandstanding from Hillary Clinton, the United States has done nothing to counter this naked and reckless act of tyranny against our close ally.

Meanwhile, Turkish “peace activists” refuse Israel’s offer to allow them to dock at an Israelil port, be inspected for arms and let their cargo of peaceful supplies into Gaza.  Instead, they illegally cross an Israeli blockade and then proceed to peacefully beat and stab Israeli commandos who board the flotilla in a legal effort to defend their own border.  These peace loving innocents even throw one commando overboard - perhaps a sort of physical gesture of their peaceful agenda.  The commandos - in fear of their life from these peaceful protesters - dispense with their paintball guns and use real ones.  The world is outraged.

Where is the President?  Where is the Secretary of State?  In less than two years, this administration has managed to completely isolate Israel - without any doubt our most important ally on this planet.  The Obama administration has made some abominable decisions during its two year run:

Barack Obama’s World Appeasement Tour set the tone for his administration’s weak pseudo-philosophy of appeasement and what the President mistakes for empathy.

As actual peace protesters in Iran struggled for freedom, this President stood idly by.  His diplomatic hubris and approval rating were more important than the lives of Iranian revolutionaries fighting for their freedom and their lives.

This President allowed the President of Mexico to come before Congress, criticize an American state and lecture Americans about how we treat our illegal immigrants.  Never mind the horrid treatment immigrants to Mexico face nor is there any thought of the barbaric slaughter going on between rival drug gangs under Felipe Calderon’s administration - except of course to blame guns in America.

Obama’s effort to halt Iranian nuclear proliferation has been a complete and utter fiasco.

Instead of denouncing the anti-Semitic charade taking place on the UN Human Rights Council, Obama took a seat on it.

Remember Darfur?  Neither does the President.

Remember Guantanamo Bay?  See above.

This President has been swindled by the Russians, bullied by the Turks, embarrassed by the Brazilians, insulted by the French, rebuffed in Copenhagen, marginalized in the United Nations…

All of these gaffes over the past 2 years have been ugly.   But this?  Isolating Israel and ignoring the security of the Jewish state will disrupt the balance of power in the Middle East to the detriment of the entire world - most especially the Jewish people.  How many Jews have to die before this planet learns that anti-Semitic hatred is real, virulent and the enemy of peace?  Israel faces enemies who are committed to the “annihilation” of Israel.  They believe the Holocaust during World War II - which saw the systematic slaughter of six million Jews - is fabricated.  Thousands of rockets have been fired into Israeli neighborhoods, which is why the blockade exists in the first place.  What would the United States do if Mexico was repeatedly firing rockets into the suburbs of California?  Cede them Texas?

President Obama’s flaccid moral relativism thus far has been appalling as foreign policy.  His abandonment of Israel is unforgivable.

He’s Furious!
“I would love to just spend a lot of my time venting and yelling at people,” the president said, “but that’s not the job I was hired to do. My job is to solve this problem.”

No it’s not. Your job is to manage public expectations, not react to public opinion. This is the difference between the successful modern presidents (Clinton, Reagan) and the rest. Obviously he can’t control public opinion but he can be honest. People are foolish to expect inhuman things from their president but he’s the bigger fool for allowing those illusions to persist.

Obama’s failure so far isn’t his inability to fix the spill. It’s his inability to convey to the public the limitations of reality. They are the following:

• The President of the United States is a limited executive position that was restricted – by design – from having an omniscient power over the population. Through his administration he can enforce laws and encourage certain behaviors but (fortunately) he is not all powerful. Private companies and citizens retain autonomy over their actions – and maintain responsibility for those actions. Announcing that you take responsibility for everything that happens under the sun is irresponsible.

• Unless he plans on summoning Poseidon to unleash the Kraken, there is no human being who could resolve this problem any faster. The limitations of technology and nature are clearly significant. Even if he were His Majesty the Mighty and Omniscient King of the United States, he would still have to contend with nature and technology. Such are the frailties God has bestowed on the human body.

The disappointment about Obama’s handling of this crisis (and really his entire presidency to date) is his knee jerk reaction to anything and everything. Great leaders find solutions before they point fingers. Obama’s administration has been a study in the opposite – from day one. There’s no doubt BP needs to be held accountable but there is plenty of time for blaming.

At the moment, the good people at BP are tasked with cleaning up the spill. Rather than wagging his finger at them and letting his administration run wild with ignorant threats about boots and regulations, he should be reining his team in and providing any assistance he can. The one hole he can plug is the verbal deluge of ignorance steadily flowing from officials like Lisa Jackson and Ken Salazar.

Second, it would be nice if his administration demonstrated the capacity to understand that a company is made up of many various individual people. A few of them clearly made some bad decisions and ultimately, those problems need to be addressed but that doesn’t mean the whole company is corrupt. BP is not just one big, evil entity bent on destroying earth and humanity. That only happens on Captain Planet – which Democrats appear to have watched entirely too much of as children.

This is not rocket science. The truth is Obama has so far proven to be a horrible leader. He’s the guy on the team who sells out his teammates at the first sign of trouble. He has a far too grandiose view of himself and his position. It’s never his fault, it’s always someone else.  He has the unique ability to say he takes responsibility while simultaneously pointing his finger at everyone else.  He’s basically the Ryan Leaf of US presidents. Surprisingly for a law professor, he seems to have a fairly trite and simplistic view of the world around him. Government good.  BP bad.  Democrats good.   Republicans bad.  There doesn’t appear to be any subtlety to his mind at all.

Above all else, he is missing one important quality. The great Presidents like Washington and Lincoln had something that Barack Obama seems to have absolutely no concept of whatsoever: humility. Without that, any US President is doomed to failure.

How many delicious ironies can we find in the reaction to this oil spill?  Let’s count!

• A president insisting on an oil drilling moratorium as he gasses up Air Force One to fly down to Louisiana and order the cleanup crews to drive their boats faster.

• Speaking of boats, let’s add the environmentalist community lamenting this disaster as the result of our greedy pursuit of oil while they in turn gas their own boats up to get out there and clean oil off the delicate birds and turtles.  At least when the birds and turtles inevitably try to bite the hands that clean them, they won’t know any better.

• Speaking of the environmental community, how about the cheek they have to complain that this oil spill is the worst in American history after insisting that oil drilling not be allowed in places where cleaning up spills would have been far easier, cheaper and less damaging to the environment: closer to shore or on land (IE: Alaska)?  Now the president is planning on making easier drilling even more difficult.

• An administration insisting that it is 100% focused on jobs as it systematically destroys jobs in the energy sector, increases the cost of gas for consumers and business and increases our dependence on foreign oil – which will also send even more jobs overseas.   Further, has anyone considered the increased size of our carbon footprint as we import more and more of a commodity that we could very easily produce much more of right here in America?  They always seem to leave that part out.  It’s like saying “Gee, my breathing is laborious.  I think I’ll shoot myself in the chest to let more air in.”

• The press corps finally giving heat to this  president for the first good decision he’s made:  standing back and allowing the technical people most qualified and most interested in a quick resolution to solve this problem.  Nobody could possibly have a more urgent interest in cleaning up this mess than BP.  The turtles themselves couldn’t have a more desperate need to make this spill go away.  The only difference is that the turtles don’t have the technology to clean it up.  Neither does the government.

• People in coastal communities outraged at the suggestion of drilling near their pristine beaches as the cost for filling up their fishing boats and jet skis inevitably rises due to the artificial scarcity of oil sure to follow.  When they go out of business because energy is too expensive, they will blame everyone else that they don’t have a job.  Deee-licious!

Welcome to American politics in the 21st Century.  Leave your brain at the door.