MONDAY,  JANUARY 12,  2008

PREDICTABLE

Posted at 6:59 P.M. ET:

As we've said many times, we wish the new president well.  We want to see him and the nation succeed.  However, we expect that the next week will be filled with events and statements that will make us wince.  At the Angel's Corner, our subscription service, we have something called the Pompous Fool Award.  Standards are high.  Many seem to want the honor.  We give the award only after rigorous examination.  We expect to have many, many candidates in this next inaugural week, and may have to give the award several times, or have runner-up categories.  Already the pompous rhetoric is flowing. 

Leave it to the teachers' unions to get on the bandwagon.  Oh, wait, bandwagon has military connotations.  Maybe, so students aren't traumatized, we should say peace wagon.  Okay, the teachers' unions are on the peace wagon.  Both unions are essentially branches of the Democratic Party, they contribute, and they want results.  So they will be greeting President Obama on inauguration day with new lesson plans for our kids.  Consider whether you want your children to have a 24-hour flu that day:

The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association jointly developed five suggested lesson plans about the inauguration plus a recommended reading list...

So far, no problem.

The idea for the suggested lesson plans came from the inaugural committee and it approached the NEA and AFT to draw them up, said committee spokesman Brent Colburn.

Whoops.  Problem.  Can you imagine the reaction if a Republican inaugural committee had made the same suggestion?  Oppression!  Spying on our schools!  Thought control!  The right-wing grip on our children's throats!  I, I don't know if I can go on.

"It is crucial that our students understand that we are not only living history and making history with this inauguration, but also carrying forward the historical contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his influence on our incoming 44th president," NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said in the same statement.

Okay, but getting hooked on race is not the way to do this.  He's an American president.  All inaugurations are historic.  He will be judged on his record, not his race.  Do these unions understand that?

One of the suggested lesson plans asks teachers to generate discussion about the similarities between Mr. Obama and Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president whom historians regard as one of Americas greatest. It is entitled "Two Presidents from Illinois."

Oh boy, here it comes.  Can you feel the p.c.?

Fifteen similarities were picked out, ranging from both entering the presidency during wartime to both having been lawyers before entering politics and from both having been criticized "for being too inexperienced to run the country" to both selecting political rivals to serve in their cabinets.

Nothing like getting it wrong from the start.  Lincoln didn't enter the presidency during wartime.  The first shots were fired weeks after he took the oath. 

And this whole Lincoln comparison is enough to have us reach for the seasickness pills.  We revere Lincoln because of what he did as president.  Obama hasn't even entered the office.  Let's calm down on this.

Another suggested lesson is to have to students watch Mr. Obama's inaugural address, on TV or the Internet, and ask up to six questions in small groups.

Among them:

— "What vision does President Obama have for public education?"

— "What does he say divides us as a country and how does he want to unify and strengthen America?"

— "How will President Obama make our country more secure?"

— "What does President Obama ask Americans to do to help strengthen the country?"

I don't know about you, but that list gives me the creeps.  It sounds like something out of a socialist state.  You know, Glorious Leader says...  Glorious leader expects...

We want to welcome the new president warmly.  But what about some tough questions for students?  And what about listing the accomplishments, as well as the failures, of the Bush administration?

January 12, 2009.      Permalink          

WELCOME, ROLAND, WE REALLY NEED YOU - AT 6:18 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times:  Senate Democratic leaders today cleared the way for Roland Burris to be seated as a senator from Illinois, after his appointment by the state’s now impeached governor had turned into a weeklong spectacle shifting between the nation’s capital and the corruption scandal back in Illinois.

COMMENT:  An absolutely sordid affair, with the race card played without shame.  The first African-American president in the nation's history will be succeeded in the Senate by a mediocrity appointed by a governor on the verge of being removed from office.  We recall that one aspect of President Kennedy's transition and early presidency was the lack of influence he had over his party.  We seem to be seeing a repeat.  Either Mr. Obama chose not to intervene to prevent this embarrassment, or was powerless to act.  Either way, this is no ornament to him or his party. 

REJECTING THE TRUE BELIEVERS

Posted at 8:34 a.m. ET

The president-elect has wisely signaled rejection of any broad inquiries into how the Bush administration pursued the war on terror.  By doing this Mr. Obama goes up against the Daily Kos and Move-On crowd, which is on the fringe left of the Democratic Party.  From The New York Times: 

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama signaled in an interview broadcast Sunday that he was unlikely to authorize a broad inquiry into Bush administration programs like domestic eavesdropping or the treatment of terrorism suspects.

We're still at war.  The people pushing these "inquiries" simply want to destroy our war effort, and this is the way they're doing it.  In war, horrible things happen.  But to go after people after the fact is to shatter and demoralize the very forces needed to win.  Of course, the hard left knows that.

But Mr. Obama also said prosecutions would proceed if the Justice Department found evidence that laws had been broken.

We had one of these "purity" inquiries in the 1970s, and it almost destroyed the CIA.  Remember, there are no inquiries on the other side.

These probes are often pushed by people who say they want us to remain  "true to our ideals."  But these are the same people who'd sell out those ideals in a second.  They pushed withdrawal from Vietnam, leaving the Vietnamese and Cambodians to their fate, and never batted an eyelash.  Some ideals.

“A new president doesn’t want to look vengeful,” said a former Bush White House lawyer, Bradford A. Berenson, who was a Harvard law classmate of Mr. Obama and has represented administration figures as a private lawyer, “and the last thing a new administration wants to do is spend its time and energy rehashing the perceived sins of the old one.

“No matter how much the Obama administration’s most extreme supporters may be screaming for blood, the president himself doesn’t seem to share that bloodlust.”

In that, the new president is acting wisely.  He might get some points from the America haters, foreign and domestic, if he went after the Bush people, but he apparently understands the damage he could do.

Sadly, the usual suspects in Congress haven't gotten the message:

The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, has already introduced a measure to create a commission to investigate Mr. Bush’s detention, interrogation and rendition policies. Mr. Conyers’s bill would establish a bipartisan nine-member commission with subpoena power and a mandate “to investigate the broad range of policies” undertaken with claims that Mr. Bush’s wartime powers as commander in chief trumped laws and treaties.

Conyers is a political extremist who got to be chairman of a critical committee through longevity.  A bomb thrower in an important position.

Mr. Obama is facing even more intense pressure from liberal, human-rights and civil-liberties groups to allow some kind of investigation into the Bush administration’s terrorism policies.

I love the term "liberal, human-rights and civil liberties groups."  Yeah, right.  Consider:

Some groups are focused on prosecution. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecution efforts were justified, even if they did not lead to convictions, as a way to deter future officials from undertaking a similar “assault on the law itself.”

Translated:  We don't want any of these people to get the job done.  The Center for Constitutional Rights is a hard leftist operation, frankly a front group.  As usual, The Times whitewashes what some of these groups are really about.

The blogging army must be vigilant toward those who constantly call for these probes.  While we clearly support the rule of law, many of these critics have other, uglier motives.  They must be exposed, or we will lose this struggle.

January 12, 2009.       Permalink          

DOCUMENTING THE MADNESS - AT 7:56 A.M. ET: Ace blogger Andrew Berman (http://www.bermanpost.com/) photographed the anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-freedom rally in New York's Times Square yesterday.  His pictures are here.  Many of these hate rallies are descending into violence, and there apparently was some at this one as well, with police officers injured.  The "Arab cause," whatever it is this week, has been taken up by the far left, something the mainstream media refuses to report.  That same refusal was present, by the way, during the Vietnam War. 

GAZA UPDATE - AT 7:46 A.M. ET:  From The New York Times:  Senior Israeli officials said for the first time in the war that they believed that the Hamas military wing was beginning to crack and that Hamas leaders inside Gaza were looking for a cease-fire. News reports said Hamas fired at least one missile out of Gaza into southern Israel without causing casualties.

COMMENT: Let's hope so, although I'm always concerned about reports saying that fanatical, suicidal movements are about to crack.  We learned about that the hard way in our war to defeat Japan.

THE COUNTDOWN

EIGHT DAYS TO THE AGE OF OBAMIUS

Posted at 7:03 a.m. ET

In eight days the Age of Obamius begins.  You can see the smiles on the faces of all the anthropologists already.  Ditto ethnic studies departments.  Finally, they won't have to meet in back allies and faculty lounges.

We can report the following:

- Michelle Obama admitted she doesn't know what her husband actually stands for either, but promised to find out and tape it.  Her mother says she's coming to live in the White House because she wants to learn what Barack Obama is really like.

- CIA Director-designate Leon Panetta was stopped by guards when he tried to get into a transition meeting wearing a CIA disguise.  The guards knew it was a fake because Monica Lewinsky never wore red.

- After being denied his request for a 19-gun inaugural salute, Joe Biden is negotiating for Jack Bauer to visit and fire a cap pistol.

- Frustrated by his inability to find a new secretary of commerce, after Bill Richardson's embarrassing withdrawal, President-elect Obama gave the assignment to Chicago political operatives, who immediately put the seat on e-bay.

- Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who had some criticism last week of the president-elect's transition team, arrived in the Senate wearing a head bandage, and giving effusive praise to the whole Obama operation.  It's rumored she was kidnapped over the weekend and given an Obatomy.

January 12, 2009.      Permalink          

SUNDAY,  JANUARY 11,  2009

GIVING CREDIT

Posted at 9:38 a.m. ET

We've pledged here to give credit where it's due, even to our opponents.  We wish the other side would do the same.  The Bush administration is coming to an end, and the lack of any graciousness by the liberal press is telling.  The fact is that Mr. Bush, with all his shortcomings, has accomplished a great deal, but the party-line media simply won't acknowledge it.  Peter Brookes, of the Heritage Foundation, does acknowledge it, in a column today.  It is welcome:

It's not just by chance that there hasn't been another terrorist strike here at home since the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in the skies over Pennsylvania - more than seven years ago now. While far from perfect in execution, the Bush administration pulled out the stops in fighting terror at home and abroad, which, prior to 9/11, had been considered by many to be little more than a law enforcement problem.

Since 2001, the government has thwarted a number of plots, including conspiracies to blow up airplanes and fuel farms, assault an army base, and attack Los Angeles and Chicago skyscrapers - and surely others.

Mere luck, say the Bush haters, the same "luck" that saw a drastic drop in crime in New York under Rudy Giuliani.

Aiding this success has been a reinvigorated national security establishment, including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence and joint intelligence and law enforcement centers.

Of course, they're a threat to civil liberties, say the Bush bashers.

Ties with Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, have been normalized after years of troubled relations. Japan is now making increasing contributions to international security across the globe.

Indonesia?  Isn't that where Obama grew up?  Why, he would have made the Indonesians love us, say the Bush detractors.

While progress has been glacial, Washington did get Pyongyang to agree to end all its nuke programs.

US-India relations are better than ever due to Bush administration efforts.

And...

Today, Afghanistan is a lot better off: more than 30 million Afghans no longer labor under terrorist Taliban rule. Healthcare access is up; child mortality is down. Six million kids go to school, including nearly 2 million girls who would not otherwise be allowed to.

Don't expect any credit from "feminist" organizations.  They'll follow whatever line their leftist idols give them.

And don't expect "human rights" groups to give credit on this one:

In Africa, President Bush spent more on fighting HIV/AIDS than any previous American president. As a result, medicine is reaching more than 2 million African HIV/AIDS patients. Anti-malaria programs have gained traction, too.

In a shocker, Libya's Colonel Qaddafi renounced terrorism and gave up his weapons of mass destruction programs, including one for nukes. We now have a Tripoli embassy for the first time in three and a half decades.

And...

President Bush also kept his campaign promise of fielding a missile defense system to protect the American people from the threat of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction from the likes of North Korea and Iran.

Won't work, say the bashers.  But it will.  Finally...

Sure, there are still challenges in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Russia and China - plus al Qaeda - that the next administration will have to grapple with. The same was true for the Bush team when it took over in 2001 from the Clinton administration.

The fact is international relations is a tough business - and will continue to be. Countries pursue their national interests - often at others' expense, including ours. But the Bush administration has made real progress in advancing our interests during its tenure, especially in preventing another terror attack right here at home - no small feat.

Accordingly, it deserves more credit than the conventional wisdom affords it.

Lotsa luck.  Given who controls the universities, and the media, it may take decades before Mr. Bush is given proper credit. 

January 11, 2009.      Permalink          

GOOD ECONOMIC MOVE - AT 8:49 A.M. ET:  WASHINGTON (AP) -- President-elect Barack Obama wants more transparency and strict guidelines for using the second $350 billion of the bailout fund Congress approved last fall to stabilize the nation's financial system.

COMMENT:  Right on.  Good move by Obama.  The handling of the first chunk of bailout money was a disgrace, and an embarrassment for both the government and the free-enterprise system.  Much of the money has disappeared.  It went to bankers who then thumbed their noses at both administration and public by refusing to say how the money was being used.  If these jerks want socialism, that's the way to guarantee it.

LET THE SYMBOLISM BEGIN - AT 8:39 A.M. ET:  From pool reports on President-elect Obama's day yesterday:

The president-elect, his wife and two daughters departed the Hay-Adams hotel in the motorcade at 7.03pm and after driving past the Washington monument arrived at the Lincoln Memorial at 7.12pm.

The family climbed the steps to the monument alongside scaffolding erected for a platform. At one point the president-elect appeared to pause in front of Lincoln's statue. They spent fifteen minutes inside, exiting at 7.26pm and entering the monument's underground exhibit.

COMMENT:  Okay.  Perfectly appropriate.  But there are also reports that the president-elect and celebrants will be served a lunch on inauguration day that is designed to reflect what Lincoln might have had on his inauguration day.  Enough already.  But look, if you've got to channel an American president, Lincoln is the guy.  At least we don't hear the name "Jimmy Carter."  And that is change we can believe in.

THE COUNTDOWN

NINE DAYS TO THE AGE OF OBAMIUS

Posted at 8:08 a.m.

In nine days, Barack H. Obama Jr. becomes president, and a halo will form around Washington.  We can report these developments:

- CIA director-designate Leon Panetta requested that from now on he be known as "008."  Obama turned him down, and ordered him to stop introducing himself by saying, "Panetta.  Leon Panetta."

- Obama shocked reporters when he displayed his new book, written in secret, called, "What I Really Believe."  He claimed it can be read at one sitting - all three pages.

- Joe Biden missed a high-level intelligence briefing after he left his I.D. at home.

- All key members of the new administration have been invited to watch the season premiere of "24" tonight.  Eric Holder, nominated to be attorney general, was ordered to prepare a memo on the bad guys' legitimate grievances.

- Mr. Obama was reportedly skeptical when his top global-warming advisers were asked to do the climate forecast for inauguration day, and predicted bikini weather.

January 11, 2009.      Permalink