A Taste of Their Own Medicine? No

I have decided to keep posting articles I think should be brought to the attention of my readers, but I have to suspend publication of new posts that I write until I get my anger under control.

As a respecter of truth and (I think) as a decent person, I don’t want to act in the mean-spirited way that so many liberals do. For eight years now, we have had to contend with a concerted drive by liberals to destroy the reputation and the moral authority of President Bush through a campaign of lies and smears, and even a book written encouraging his assassination and a movie depicting it. They do this all the while as Bush has struggled to fight terrorism and also nicely balance our Constitutional liberties with the needs of the war we are in. One of the most aggravating smears has been the stupid nonsense of the “Selected, Not Elected” mantra and bumper stickers, as if we did not know what happened in Florida in 2000. Before that we watched Judge Bork and Justice Thomas and others be destroyed with smears. We don’t do this: why do they? Unlike conservatives, this kind of vicious behavior is not limited to the fringe – it represents mainstream liberalism with Obama, Pelosi and Reid and other leading Democrats as active participants.

In this most recent presidential campaign we also witnessed the unbelievable sliming of Sarah Palin because of her traditional beliefs and her exemplary life and record. All of the smears came apart under examination, but Winston Churchill was right when he said that, “a lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on”. Post election polls have shown that most Obama voters heard only the lies; the mainstream press was careful not to publicize the truth about Governor Palin, nor did they publicize some unpleasant facts about Obama.

We conservatives do have to realize that we are in a war without rules of conduct and decency. It is not a war of our own choosing, but it is a war, and we are losing. We have to fight back, or they are going to wipe us out.

On the other hand, recently I have written three articles that I decided to scrap. I decided to scrap them because I decided that I am so angry that the articles I wrote were mean-spirited, and I don’t want to sink to the level occupied by those millions of liberals who smear people like Bush, Palin, Bork and Thomas with disgusting lies – basically because these conservatives believe in traditional values and that America remains the hope of the world. What a change in moral values over the course of my lifetime when someone who does NOT agree with unlimited abortion and infanticide is smeared as an evil person! And when they smear them they smear you and me as well.

My friend, Mason, who is a serious student of American history, points out to me that politics has always been a rough sport here. I agree, but my response is that I have followed politics closely since I was a child, even remembering the Truman-Dewey campaign of 1948, and I have never seen candidates widely accused of horrible things like causing their own child’s Downes Syndrome (as Alan Colmes and other Obamaites did). I also remember that in 1960, when Richard Nixon had good cause to throw the presidential election into the courts, this man Nixon, who many regard as evil incarnate, put his country first, unlike what Al Gore did.

I will resume publishing original articles when my anger and my bitterness are under better control. Until then I will continue to post other articles here.

Obama on Bush: Oh Never Mind?

Some of Obamas appointments (like Gates) are much more reasonable than we could ever have hoped for. Will the nonsense about the War on Terror (Bush and Cheney are war criminals and should be held accountable for war crimes) previously spouted by Obama now be put aside? In India yesterday we saw again what massacres Muslim radicals are capable of carrying out. Ironically, Bush's successes in this area have made us forget 9/11.

The Law on Terror

By Wendy E. Long on 11.26.08 American Spectator

It was not just any after-dinner speech.

Last Thursday night, at the annual gala of the Federalist Society, Attorney General Michael Mukasey delivered a keynote address that will go down as a speech of historic proportions: a solemn, powerful, and disarmingly blunt apologia for the Bush Administration's legal positions and actions in War on Terror.

The tough, no-nonsense, stoic former Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, who inherited from his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, a Justice Department that had become a shooting target for liberal critics in Congress, the legal academy, and the media, answered those critics head-on.

And he put down a marker for the incoming Obama administration: given the dangers involved and the stakes for the security of Americans, there will have to be a better reason than the empty criticisms voiced to date to justify an Obama departure from the Bush legal architecture.

The familiar refrain that the War on Terror has trampled constitutional rights, civil liberties, and even the rule of law itself rests "on a very dangerous form of amnesia that views the success of our counterterrorism efforts as something that undermines the justification for continuing them." Because the Administration's strategy has been "successful based on what matters most" -- that in the more than seven years since September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda hasn't launched another terrorist attack on American soil -- the critics seem to assume that Al Qaeda "never posed much of a threat after all."

But the threat that materialized on 9/11 was as unprecedented as it was real. The fact that "19 lightly armed terrorists could murder nearly 3,000 Americans" in the "most catastrophic attack on our homeland since Pearl Harbor," Mukasey said, created a new kind of "asymmetric warfare" that forced President Bush and his advisors to reassess and revise not just the military, but also the legal, tools to fight back. The Bush response, as he summarized it, was to:

• Declare war: Some critics still argue that "war" in this situation is unjustified.

One does not declare war on isolated instances of crime. But systematic terrorism can't be addressed after the fact, as America did as late as the 1990s, just by sending the FBI to collect evidence and then prosecuting the perpetrators. Indeed, Osama bin Laden was already under indictment for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. On September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration finally recognized the war that Al Qaeda and other groups had declared years earlier.

• Capture and detain the enemy: Unlike ordinary criminals who are apprehended, indicted, and often freed on bail, terrorist warriors captured by the U.S. military should not be returned to the battlefield (or released to join it). They needed to be detained, and where appropriate in military judgment, transferred to the U.S. naval station at Guantanamo Bay.

• Reorganize government to keep Americans safe from attack: Domestic security agencies throughout the executive branch were brought under the umbrella of the new Department of Homeland Security, and a "Director of National Intelligence" was established to coordinate intelligence efforts in tracking and preventing terrorist attacks. The FBI was restructured to gather intelligence beforehand, not just gather evidence after, attacks.

• Enhance intelligence gathering: The lightning pace of technological advances in recent years required new legislation -- the Patriot Act and modernization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- to allow analysts, investigators, and intelligence professionals to access data about the enemy's communications and movements.

Typical of the critics of these and other Bush legal policies, Mukasey said, was the head of a nonpartisan legal organization who gave a speech condemning the "oppressive, relentless, and lawless attack by our own government on the rule of law and our liberty." Mukasey noted that the lawyer didn't rely for his criticisms on the text of the Constitution, statutes, treaties, or laws. Instead, he cited the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Review of Books. There has been a widespread condemnation of the Bush War on Terror by critics who fail to distinguish between "whether a course of action is permitted as a matter of law, and whether that course of action is prudent as a matter of policy."

And even when legal arguments are raised against the Bush policies, they fail to acknowledge that there is an equally, if not more, powerful legal justification to support the Bush course in uncharted waters when Americans' safety and security is at stake. For example, the Bush position that such non-citizens held abroad cannot use the U.S. civil courts to challenge their detention is grounded in the text of the Constitution, historical practice, and -- before several months ago -- Supreme Court precedent.

As Mukasey noted, even the majority of the Supreme Court in the recent Boumedienne decision (allowing Guantanamo inmates to file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. federal courts challenging their detention) acknowledged that the Court had never before held that noncitizens detained by our government outside the United States had any rights under our Constitution. (Hitler's "willing executioners" would doubtless have been pleased to assert their rights under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention while awaiting trial at Nuremberg.)

Now that a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court has given those detainees such "rights" (the text of Constitution actually calls the writ of habeas corpus a "privilege," and says that it "shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it"), the first federal court rulings handed down last week ordered 5 of the first 6 detainees released. In an op-ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal the morning after his speech, Mukasey said the general problem with these hearings is the attempt to apply "a civil litigation framework to wartime decisions that often must be made on the basis of the best available intelligence." Accordingly, he warned, courts are going to arrive at different answers in the some 250 Guantanamo habeas cases now pending. And "I fear," he said, that some of those answers will "create risks for our national security."

Bush antagonists in Congress have asked the Attorney General to appoint a special counsel to open a criminal investigation into the actions of the President, cabinet members, administration lawyers, and intelligence officers in connection with CIA interrogation of captured members of Al Qaeda. Mukasey said they've presented no evidence that these government officials acted with "any motive other than a good-faith desire to protect the citizens of our Nation from a future terrorist attack," and there is no indication that any government official "sought to authorize any policy that violated our laws."

IRONICALLY, IN THE MIDDLE of Mukasey's speech about opponents of the War failing to make their case in law or reason, he was interrupted by a heckler -- a state court judge -- who stood and shouted at him, "Tyrant! You ARE a tyrant!" Pausing briefly to look in the direction of the heckler, but returning immediately to his speech, Mukasey was too much of a gentleman to quash the outburst by saying that such wild charges and name-calling illustrated precisely the point of his remarks.

The Attorney General made it almost to the end of his speech, and then, suddenly and inexplicably, he faltered and collapsed. Shock and concern over his collapse overshadowed his final point: that the Bush administration had tried "to make sure that our counterterrorism efforts stood on a sound institutional and legal footing so that the next Attorney General and the new Administration have what they need to assure the safety of the Nation."

The Obama administration, as he noted, will review those institutions and legal decisions that have kept us safe for the past seven years. He expressed "hope" that the Obama administration "understands the threat we continue to face and that it shares the priority we have placed on remaining on the offense to prevent future terrorist attacks."

As we left the ballroom after the Attorney General was rushed to the hospital, those present had a dual sense of uncertainty -- about his condition and about the future course of the War on Terror.

As to the former, thankfully, the word came within hours that the Attorney General was well. As to the latter, one can say only one thing for sure: the Mukasey speech is one that history will vindicate, in one way or another.

The GOP Pile On By David N. Bass

The undermining of Sarah Palin by the RINO's on John McCain's staff, both before and after the election, should not be forgotten by conservative Republicans as the battle begins for the soul of the GOP.

The GOP Pile On

By David N. Bass 11.24.08 The American Spectator (Excerpt)

"Frustrated by their trouncing on Election Day, Republicans are regrouping, rebuilding, and reenergizing to present a unified conservative message in time for the mid-term elections.

Just kidding.

Actually, as we've seen, the party is shooting its wounded. Witness the chorus of Republican pundits blaming the election on that favorite whipping boy of the party elite: social conservatives.

Kathleen Parker does it with abandon in the Washington Post, fingering what she calls the "evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP" for the drubbing. P.J. O'Rourke, writing in the Weekly Standard, lists abortion opposition and the Clinton sex scandal as two areas where conservatives have "blown it" since 1980. Not to be outdone, David Frum says the only hope for Republican recovery is becoming "less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarizing on social issues.".

The blame flaming is ironic. In 2004, evangelicals played a major role in Republican victories. Few complained. But after electoral blood baths in 2006 and 2008, why, it's those Bible-thumping, one-toothed voters who are at fault. Purging time.

Granted, fiscal conservatives are not the only ones piling on. In his new book, Mike Huckabee says the Republican Party's real threat is "libertarianism masked as conservatism." No, the real threat is the spendthrift, big-government, scandal-ridden wing of the party, which apparently has become the party. Shifting the blame to libertarians isn't the answer.

But neither is shifting the blame to social conservatives. And unfortunately, party elites are far more likely to condemn values voters than fiscal libertarians, exposing an undercurrent of disdain that has existed for years. Show up on Election Day and vote for our candidates, they say, but shut up the rest of the year. That attitude has to change.

Social conservatives are not the culprits of the '08 massacre. Any honest observer of electoral trends knows this. Political models forecast a Democrat victory this year for a reason. Since World War II, the party in the White House has changed every eight years (Jimmy Carter's one-term stint and Bush Senior's win in 1988 were two exceptions). Economic woes, the scorched GOP brand, and scandalized pols such as Ted Stevens (he won't be missed) only reinforced the slaughter.

Given the political reality, it's asinine to blame the GOP's turn at the whipping block on religious conservatives. Social issues played a small role in the campaign.

Abortion came up in one of three presidential debates, and it was discussed less than five minutes. Rick Warren raised the topic at a forum in August, prompting Obama to make his infamous "above my pay grade" statement, but even at this evangelical event, sanctity of human life was only one of many issues discussed.
Ditto for other social issues. Marriage redefinition was brought up a handful of times. Both candidates viewed the topic as radioactive. McCain did get poetic justice for his coyness -- more voters in California and Florida voted for a marriage amendment than for the maverick.

In contrast, the candidates discussed (ad nauseam) taxation, wealth redistribution, health care, government intervention in markets, and immigration. This election was more about the economy, Iraq war, and Bush presidency than Roe v. Wade and marriage redefinition. If we are going to blame the loss on issues, blame gas prices and an unpopular war, not the pro-life cause.

The truth, however, is that issues played a negligible role. Obama would have won regardless of what McCain said or did, barring some enormous calamity (a suitcase nuke going off in Manhattan comes to mind). Retrospective in-fighting is useless.

Mitt Romney has the right approach to party cohesion: unite the fiscal, social, and foreign policy conservatives. Reagan did it masterfully. He earned the support of Bible-believing Christians, marijuana-legalizing libertarians, union-card-carrying blue-collar workers, small-town families, and even a few liberals who were scared of being the only ones in their state to vote for Mondale.

Republicans need another unifier of that ilk, a leader who knows that venting frustration on a fundamental part of the Republican base is not the way to win elections. Keep your rhetorical powder dry for the real enemy."

David N. Bass is an associate editor with the John Locke Foundation.

Constitutional Crisis or Nutjob?

The conservative blogosphere has been filled for months with speculation about whether or not Barack Obama is, in fact, a “natural born citizen”, as required by our Constitution to hold the office of president. If you ‘Google’ the words, “obama birth certificate supreme court”, you get about 245,000 hits or references. Many lawsuits have been filed and dismissed over this question, the most prominent one filed by an attorney named, Philip J. Berg.

I have stayed away from this issue because I could find no believable source of information anywhere, however Forbes has now issued the report shown below. This conspiracy theory would have been stopped in its tracks except for some strange circumstances: 1. a copy of Obama’s supposedly valid Hawaiian Birth Certificate produced by his campaign raised serious questions. 2. The original birth certificate that would prove his place of birth has never been shown, and, reportedly, the state’s health department and the governor of Hawaii sealed the original document right after Obama’s visit to the state to say goodbye to his dying grandmother.

Mr. Berg claims that Justice Souter has issued an order for the original certificate to be produced on or before December 1, 2008. This issue will all go away or become a constitutional crisis after that.

Obama’s Birth Certificate Challenger Keeps Going

November, 2008 Forbe.com

You've got to hand it to Philip J. Berg: he doesn't give up easily. You might recall that Philadelphia attorney Berg tried, and failed, to halt the presidential election of Barack Obama on the grounds that he is not a native-born citizen. Game over, right? Wrong.

Berg filed a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court in late October, asking that the highest court review the decision of the U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania. The latter court dismissed Berg's claims because he lacked standing to bring them. Standing requires plaintiffs to prove they are directly affected by the issue at hand, with evidence of injury that is concrete and particular. In its decision the district court said Berg "does not, and we believe cannot, establish injury in fact." It also dismissed his claims as frivolous.

Berg takes this in stride. His writ, he says, requires Obama and the Democratic National Council to respond by December 1. Also, he has another arrow in his quiver.

He's filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., under the False Claims Act, which is often used in Medicaid fraud. "I am basing this on the fact that as a U.S. senator [Obama] is collecting money illegally because he is not a citizen of this country," he says.

One of the pillars of Berg's argument is that Obama doesn't have a legally-valid U.S. birth certificate because he was born in Kenya. Though debunking specialists from Snopes.com and Factcheck.org have asserted the validity of a birth certificate released by the Obama campaign and affirmed by the State of Hawaii, Berg remains unconvinced. Factcheck.org, he said, is suspect because it is run by a group called Annenberg of Chicago, where Obama once sat on a board with William Ayers. Snopes.com worked off the same false document, he said.

Brooks Jackson, director of Factcheck.org, admits that his group is a part of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, but says the Obama board connection is a canard.

The only connection Obama had with Annenberg came in 1995 through 1999 when the president-elect was the board chairman for The Annenberg Challenge in Chicago. The Challenge was charged with distributing $49 million in order to improve public education.

"The connection with us is that Obama was the board chairman of a group that benefited from Annenberg's philanthropy years before we came into existence," Jackson says. "Somehow that was twisted into Obama sat on our board." Factcheck.org, in fact, does not have a board of directors.

The seeming last word on the subject came from Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the director of Hawaii's department of health. On October 31 she issued a press release stating that she had personally seen and verified that Hawaii's state department of health has Obama's original birth certificate on record.

Berg responds that nowhere does the press release say this original certificate is actually American. Instead, he says, the certificate in Hawaii's vaults is from Kenya.

Hawaii's answer to this will surely fuel more fires. "Unfortunately the way state laws are written we are not allowed to confirm vital information and vital records," said Janice Okubo, a spokeswoman for Hawaii's department of health. "I cannot confirm individual information because that is against the law."

She added, though, that Dr. Fukino does have authority over and maintains records for individuals born in Hawaii.

The Dilemma of the War We Shrink from Facing

In previous posts I have been trying to come to grips with the dilemma of an Obama Presidency, the problems the country faces that need a coming together to solve, and the bitterness the left has engendered in me after eight years of trying to destroy President Bush and now Sarah Palin. Just as fanatic Islamists declared war on us, and we did not know it, the left has declared war on conservatives. We are just waking up to that fact, and the ground rules that they have set are that there are no ground rules.

Throughout all my adult years, and especially after serving as an officer in the Army Reserve, I have speculated that, if my President ever called on me, my answer would be, “Yes Sir”. That’s gone now. The eight-year long campaign of lies, smears and attempts to undermine Bush cannot now be set aside. It went well beyond ‘just politics’. There isn’t much I can do, but I will do what I can do to bring down this demagogue. Republican politicians should cooperate with any reasonable attempts to cure our economic ills (this does not include supporting a bailout of the auto industry), while fighting off all other policy moves - smiling and pretending to be non-partisan all the while.

If you do not think a war is going on, or if you think I am being overly concerned and an alarmist, read the following report, which mirrors thousands of incidents across the country recently (two Obama-stickered cars tried to run my car bearing a McCain sticker off the road on I75 in Florida – they were not just cutting in front of me – they tried to kill me):

Evil on a Minneapolis Campus

By Gary Larson FrontPage.com 11/20/2008 (Excerpt)

“Years ago youthful thugs murdered a young man for his high-priced sneakers. Decent, law-abiding folks wondered again What Is This Country Coming To? In another case, not long ago in Minneapolis, a youthful thug was murdered for his designer sports jersey. Evil happens, its very banality -- as political philosopher Hanna Arendt wrote in 1963, coining the phrase "the banality of evil" -- is taking on the mantle of practically normalizing once unthinkable events in a civilized American society.

On election night in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a blue state, comes a criminal horror story short of murder, but no less disturbing. It happened at Augsburg college, a private liberal arts school named after a place in Germany the reformer monk Martin Luther served in the 1500s.

After taunting 18-year old freshman Annie Grossmann for wearing her McCain-Palin campaign button at an election night get-together, and "getting in her face," four women beat her for political views which, obviously, they did not share. Grossmann took verbal abuse at the party, then left for her dorm after it was clear, about 10 p.m., that her candidates had lost. She was followed by the four women into the shadows of a nearby skyway.

There she was beaten. The four women, all black, called Grossmann a "racist." She knew none of them. Nor did they know her, to her knowledge. It was that damn campaign button that evidently caused their frenzy. Their earlier taunts proved that. They were, Grossmann said, "rubbing her face in Obama's win."

"Why do you call me a racist when you don't even know me?" she screamed. Made no difference. Grossmann was felled by the largest of the four. She hit her head on the brick wall, and staggered back to her dorm. The other three black women at the beating chucked at this dark manifestation of partisan evil. They walked away laughing, offering no help to their victim. The banality of evil had asserted itself. And at four-to-one, it was also a cowardly act of mindless violence which, presumably, the four thought "normal."

Right here, right here in these United States, it happened, in my home state. A cruel re-awakening to the excesses of partisanship, in this case mixed with racism. That it happened on a college campus is hardly surprising. Not today. Campuses ooze with crazed partisan intolerance, places mostly where left-wing academia hold forth, along with politically correct staff, inculcating students with staunch, impenetrable biases, often leading to violent confrontation.

(Not surprising at all, at another private "liberal arts" campus in Minnesota, a professor was recently dismissed for stealing McCain-Palin lawn signs and delighting in his crime online. Such is the hubris of the clueless left, maybe beyond redemption.)

Freshman Grossmann had been booed roundly at a freshman "mixer" when she identified herself (gasp!) as a Republican. She is from Delta Junction, Alaska, you see, where her mom is a Republican Party leader, a big fan of Gov. Palin. Annie considers her governor to be a role model, something the ardent left must deplore as part of their article-of-faith, damn-conservatives mind-set. Annie's mom, Dawn Grossmann, had sent her daughter a McCain-Palin sweatshirt. Just think: Imagine the consequences if she had worn that on campus, instead of just a McCain-Palin campaign pin.

Newspaper reports say the four attackers might not have been Augsburg students. Somehow that makes a difference. Well, to the college, perhaps, concerned with its image. But what were the four thugs doing hanging out at a campus election-night party taunting anyone disagreeing with their choice of Obama? Who stood up for Annie? For principle?

She is a member of the college's ladies' hockey team, a hockey player in her native Alaska. She was excused temporarily from practice after suffering a concussion and blurred vision from the attack. Thankfully her injuries are not thought permanent. Psychic scars will remain, though, along with a lesson in intolerance, at the clubbing hands of her hyena-like laughing attackers.” FrontPage.com

Moderate and decent Obama supporters, please note: these are the kind of thugs you have thrown in with and helped put into power, and I hope and pray that Governor Palin has a permanent security force assigned to protect her.

Howobamagotelected.com

John Ziegler, a Libertarian, former talk-show host around whom controversy usually swirls, has created a website with some interesting content. Believing that an informed public is critical to the success and survival of our American democracy, Ziegler set out to show that the ignorance and stupidity of many Obama voters was the main factor in his election. From his website:

“Promote then as an object of primary importance, Institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened."
George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796

On November 4th, 2008 millions of Americans were shocked that a man of Barack Obama's limited experience, extreme liberal positions and radical political alliances could be elected President of the United States. For many of these Americans, the explanation was rather simple... the news media, completely enamored with Obama, simply refused to do their job.

On Election day twelve Obama voters were interviewed extensively, right after they voted, to learn how the news media impacted their knowledge of what occurred during the campaign. These voters were chosen for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities and willingness to express their opinions to a large audience. The rather shocking video below seeks to provide some insight into which information broke through the news media clutter and which did not.

Because obviously interviewing a relative handful of Obama voters, while interesting, is hardly scientific proof of anything, we also commissioned a Zogby telephone poll which asked the very same questions (as well as a few others) with similarly amazing results.

Zogby Poll

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points
97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls Congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet.....

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we "gave" one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

Freezing Heat and a European Revolt

With an Obama presidency looming, soon we are going to see incredibly expensive and fruitless drives to tame global warming. Here are two reports relating to global warming that appeared in a British newspaper recently. Chances are you didn’t see these stories in the American press, which basically print only the feeds they get from their associations with the New York Times or the Associated Press, two organizations that are propaganda mills for the left. Question: Why do global warming alarmists have to lie about their data?

The world has never seen such freezing heat

By Christopher Booker Nov. 16, 2008 Telegraph.co.uk

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal.

But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with.

This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change.

(He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

******************

EU facing revolt over climate change target enforcement

By Bruno Waterfield Oct. 16, 2008 Telegraph.co.uk (Excerpt)

“The European Union is facing a revolt from poorer members over tough climate change targets at a time when the global economy is heading for recession.

Italy has teamed up with seven east and central European countries - Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia - to threaten a veto over Brussels legislation that implements an EU target to cut Europe's CO2 emissions 20 per cent by 2020.

Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, attacked the target as an unnecessary burden on European businesses at a time when recession was intensifying international economic competition.

"I have announced my intention to exercise my veto," he said.
"We do not think that now is the time to be playing the role of Don Quixote, when the big producers of CO2, such as the United States or China, are totally against adherence to our targets."” Telegraph.co.uk

Politics 101

Recent polls and exit polls continue to show that a solid majority of Americans identify themselves with conservative values. A recent NBC poll indicated that more than 80% believe that God belongs in public life and discourse. Why, then, did the Democratic candidate, espousing radical views, such as support for infanticide and associations with hate-America types, win the election? Answer: 1. getting and keeping a good job is the most important single force in the lives of most people, if they do not feel threatened by external forces, and 2. strong conservatives did not accept John McCain as a conservative and stayed home.

McCain was actually slightly ahead in most polls until the state of the housing crisis and the credit and mortgage meltdown required urgent and unprecedented action, which left most people very concerned about their own future economic security. In the face of such concerns, whichever party is in power has no chance to win an election, no matter where the fault may lie.

In other words, values count, and will be a deciding force in an election only if the basics that concern Americans are thought to be under control. Ronald Reagan came into power due to the disastrous economy under Jimmy Carter, but Bush 41 came into power on the basis of values, because the economy seemed under control at the time of the 2000 election.

Most of us have accepted an active government role in the economy, but not everyone understands that free-market capitalism is the basis for the vast increases in standards of living that have occurred in developed countries over the last 100 years, even though capitalism occasionally goes through periods of excess and cleansing, known as the business cycle. It is the role of government to ease the pain of recession and to prompt growth through tax cuts and incentives, not to micromanage the economy. Liberal Democrats, in particular, do not seem to understand this point, and that is their main weakness.

If history is any guide, over the next four years we are going to see many failed policies put into effect. If this scenario plays out, and the economy remains in recession or worse, the chances of a Republican turnaround are quite good, irrespective of the strength of the candidate’s conservative values. If the economy improves significantly, the Republican candidate must represent strong traditional values and inspire the Republican base.

This analysis argues strongly for a Romney candidacy if the economy remains weak, and a Sarah Palin candidacy if the economy improves significantly.

Darkness at Dusk, but Now, seize freedom!

Darkness at Dusk

By DAVID BROOKS November 11, 2008 New York Times (Excerpt)

“It’s only been a week since the defeat, but the battle lines have already been drawn in the fight over the future of conservatism.

In one camp, there are the Traditionalists, the people who believe that conservatives have lost elections because they have strayed from the true creed.

George W. Bush was a big-government type who betrayed conservatism. John McCain was a Republican moderate, and his defeat discredits the moderate wing.

To regain power, the Traditionalists argue, the G.O.P. should return to its core ideas: Cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration. Rally behind Sarah Palin.

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the most prominent voices in the Traditionalist camp, but there is also the alliance of Old Guard institutions. For example, a group of Traditionalists met in Virginia last weekend to plot strategy, including Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. According to reports, the attendees were pleased that the election wiped out some of the party’s remaining moderates. “There’s a sense that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are freer of wobbly-kneed Republicans than they were before the election,” the writer R. Emmett Tyrrell told a reporter.” New York Times

Those who, like me, believe that it is crucial that the Republican Party return to its conservative roots, the legacy of Reagan and Goldwater, have a major ally in Thaddeus McCotter, the chairman of the Republican House Policy committee.

Now, Seize Freedom!

By Thaddeus G. McCotter The American Spectator November 5, 2008

Welcome to "Republican Rock Bottom."

Possessed of no vision, no principle, no purpose, and no appeal, we deserved our fate.

Now, seize freedom!

Finally, we are divorced from self-deceits. Dead is the self-indulgent imbecility of "re-branding" -- as if the Republican Party was a corporate product to be repackaged, not a transformational political movement to be led. Despite what the media will tell you, and what so-called "conservative leaders" will discuss ad nauseam during "secret" meetings, this situation is not a crisis. It is an opportunity. Today, we are as the Great Emancipator proclaimed during another time of national trial: unbound by the tired dogmas of the past; and free to think and act anew.

First, we must not mindlessly mimic the momentarily triumphant Left. Sleek, detached, media savvy non-entities posing as existentially anguished leaders are neither in our nature nor our future. We are not teeny-bopper, pop-star politicians or the ideological dinosaurs of wealth redistribution.

At heart, we Republicans are flesh and blood and backbone, the proud servants of people. If we re-orient our vision, renew our purpose, and reaffirm our principles, the times will demand us -- not as we were, but as we must be!

While our party has pretended otherwise, this is no ordinary time. It is a transformative time in the life of our free republic. The economic, social, and political turmoil of rapid globalization has created chaos and, thereby, fertile fields for the Left. As Russell Kirk warned in The American Cause during the Industrial Age:

What really creates discontent in the modern age, as in all ages, is confusion and uncertainty. People turn to radical doctrines not necessarily when they are poor, but when they are emotionally and intellectually distraught. When faith in their world is shaken; when old rulers and old forms of government disappear; when profound economic changes alter their modes of livelihood; when the expectation of private and public change becomes greater than the expectation of private and public continuity; when even the family seems imperiled; when people can no longer live as their ancestors lived before them, but wander bewildered in new ways -- then the radical agitator, of one persuasion or another, has a fertile field to cultivate.

Fertile, indeed, are America's fields for the Left. In their Reflections on the York, PA, Focus Group (July 3, 2008), Peter Hart and Alex Horowitz studied 12 working Americans in a county President Bush won by a margin of nearly 2-1. In the excerpts below, we encounter working Americans' despair about tomorrow:

This (focus group) was among the most difficult and disturbing that I can remember….

The group sees this election as being about big issues, not some of the small ones… The America they see is facing major and serious issues, and it is in need of visionary and serious solutions to its problems… These participants do not speak in terms of policy details and do not focus on numbers or the candidates' platforms… The fault lines in this group are about a deeper and more personal sense of how the world is right now and what the country needs."

But the authors' dismay pales before that of two working women staring into the abyss of the despicably christened "Post-American World":

Sheryl: "I just don't see (my children) being as successful, even as I was. And I'm not even as successful as my father was…I'm a single mom, and I'm taking care of three kids. And, I just…want to make it better for them too. So I'm thinking we do need change. I'm not sure that either one of the candidates are going to bring the changes that we need, but we certainly need change to make it better for (my children)…."

Janell: "Well, I think that, for most of my life, my decisions have been made, based on morals and family values, and like that whole belief system that I've had instilled in me since birth. And now, all of a sudden, our country is just like turned upside down with all these economic issues that we, I haven't encountered in my lifetime. And it's really making me second-guess, you know, voting for those ideals, instead of voting for some of the other issues that need to be dealt with."

Sheryl and Janell are Republicans.

How do you think Sheryl and Janell felt about their party when it abandoned principle for expediency, and proposed and helped pass the $700 billion Wall Street bailout? If this -- the greatest expansion of government into the private sector since the "New Deal" -- was "just a little socialism to prevent a lot of socialism later," why won't Main Street demand the same little bits of socialism to tide them over? Clearly, if Republicans refuse to accept globalization as a process to be channeled into constructive change for Americans, the public will continue to demand we remain the minority party.

This will not happen, if at Republican Rock Bottom we think and act anew.

At a similar transformational time, amidst the Great Depression's economic disruption and despair, Franklin Delano Roosevelt asserted the need for "leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified." Amen. Thus, Republicans must heed Demosthenes' plea to his endangered fellow Athenians -- "In God's name, I beg of you to think!"

Heeding this call, I submit the following:

Why is there a Republican Party? We exist to keep America the greatest nation on earth.

What is the Republican Party's vision of America's present and future? We believe America simultaneously faces and must transcend four transformational, generational challenges.

Specifically, Republicans see the historical parallels between the Greatest Generation and our Global Generation.

America's Greatest Generation surmounted a quartet of transformational challenges:

economic, social, and political upheavals; a world war against an evil; the Soviet Union's rise as a strategic threat and rival model of governance; and the moral struggle for equal civil rights.

Today, America's Global Generation must also transcend a quartet of transformational challenges born of our interconnected world: economic, social and political upheavals; a global war against an evil enemy; Communist China's rise as a strategic threat and rival model of governance; and moral relativism's erosion of our nation's foundational, self-evident truths.

What are the Republican Party's principles that will be employed to meet and surmount these challenges? We have five enduring principles:

1. Our liberty is from God not the government.
2. Our sovereignty rests in our souls not the soil.
3. Our security is through strength not surrender.
4. Our prosperity is from the private sector not the public sector.
5. Our truths are self-evident not relative.

What are the Republican Party's goals? We will advance liberty, preserve tradition, and achieve constructive change for Americans in this trying time.
This we will do!

So, please, don't despair at Republican Rock Bottom. Despite our party's dark hour in this dawning millennium, by thinking and acting anew, Republicans will champion American principles and ensure that our nation remains inspired and guided by the virtuous genius of our free people; and forever blessed by the unfathomable grace of God. We will seize freedom. We will be freedom!

Where Do conservatives Go From Here?

I am rethinking something I said earlier in anger, particularly at the sliming of Sarah Palin. While it is imperative to ward off the more damaging aspects of the radical policies that Senator Obama may wish to impose on us, like redistributing wealth, the “Fairness Doctrine” and senseless gun laws, the housing and mortgage crisis has so damaged the nation’s economy that all Americans have to come together to solve it. It is plunging our nation into a serious recession, and Americans of every political outlook and income situation may suffer. Of course, we Americans have short memories, both institutional and individual, and we will not remember that all the government remedies that President Roosevelt tried in the 1930’s failed. Nevertheless, we should cooperate in whatever attempts are made to jump-start the economy.

One intriguing statistic that emerges from the housing mess is that home prices are now probably where they would have been, if there had been no bubble to burst. A modest 6 % a year inflationary increase in home prices would have put us where we are today. Current owners who need to sell or who are upside down in their mortgages are suffering, but young people entering the market can now find something that they can afford.

Another intriguing set of statistics that conservatives need to take into account is first, the total of votes cast last Tuesday for McCain and Obama was the same (actually even a little less) as those cast in 2004 for Bush and Kerry. We know that Obama brought out a large increase in the African-American vote and that he also brought out an increase in the youth vote, so who stayed home? When you couple that statistic with the results of the exit polls indicating that more than 60% identified themselves as conservatives, the conclusion is inescapable that conservative Americans either stayed home or voted for Obama.

Since McCain was leading in the polls prior to the mortgage meltdown and credit disaster, clearly the economic situation scared lots of people into switching to Obama to effect a change. Also, McCain clearly did not shake the label of being a liberal, and the sliming of Palin worked.

Except for Susan Collins, there are no more liberal Republicans left in the entire Northeast. Rebuilding the party should start with the acceptance of the fact that Republicans who run as liberals or conservatives who run as conservatives and then turn into or pretend to be liberals doom themselves and their party. What we need to do is work to elect true conservatives in the Reagan-Goldwater school so that Republicans will, once again, stand for something.

Finally, I’d like to reproduce a letter to the editor that appeared in one of today’s Florida newspapers:

From Bush's shoulders to Obama's

Published: Sunday, November 9, 2008

To all of those still upset about President Bush's victories in 2000 and 2004, you can finally let it go. I did not support Obama's campaign but, on Jan. 20, he will become my president too.

Unlike the people who have NEVER supported President Bush, I WILL support President Obama when I agree with him. When I disagree, I will burn up the e-mail and telephone lines to my senators and congressmen. That's the way a democracy works.

To have lived with the intense anger and rage I hear people talking about had to have destroyed many hearts and souls. One day, people will look back and realize that this country has been divided by the people in it and not those chosen to lead us.

The problems in this country are not President Bush's alone, but I do thank God that he has big shoulders.

Yes, he could have communicated better. But when so many hate you, what's the sense? He speaks, he gets called a liar.

The members of the Senate and the House have a lot of responsibility for the problems that plague this great country, but they had the option of changing their minds. The leader must stand by his decisions.

We live in the greatest country in the world, no matter the leader! We the people are the power of this great nation.

I have been promised four great years and the love of the world -- quite a lot for one man's shoulders. I will pray for him.

Kimberly Horvath
Myakka City

Conservatives, Regroup to Defend Rush and Talk Radio

When I was in business, I owned one of several retail locations in a 50-50 partnership with another person. There were seven locations in total that I owned and managed as a single business, and it was my only occupation. The business partner referenced above became unhappy with results that we were getting during a recession and needed cash for his own reasons. He named a price he wanted me to pay to buy him out, and I refused. He then began to enter the location at various times and make trouble, vilifying employees and making changes that were destructive. He knew that I was a reasonable and responsible person who would try to straighten things out, and would soon decide to meet his price. He was right, and I did.

The reason this memory comes back to me now has to do with the calls that Republicans and conservatives are getting to put differences aside and be helpful to the incoming Obama administration. After seven years of vilifying President Bush and even calling for his assassination, after the most disgusting campaign of sliming and smearing Sarah Palin ever seen in presidential politics, now the left is calling for reasonable behavior? The only reasonable behavior that makes sense to me is to rebuild the conservative movement and fight the socialists and America-haters with every means available.

The first place to start is to try to ensure that Obama is not able to go forward with his plans to “establish a civilian defense force as large and well-funded as the present military”. This smacks way too much of Hitler’s ‘brown shirts’ and the analogy and the intention should be easy for everyone to understand.

The second place to start is to gear up to defeat the attempt to reimpose the “Fairness Doctrine”. The very next day after the election, Senator Schumer appeared on television to announce that the time had come to reconsider the “Fairness Doctrine”. Since the left relies on lies, smears and intimidation to win the day, destroying the business model of Rush Limbaugh and other talk radio hosts has a high priority on their agenda.

I have also noticed that a liberal is a liberal whether they call themselves Democrat or Republican. I am referring to the lies and smears now coming from some members of the McCain campaign staff regarding Sarah Palin. Governor Palin was the only good thing to come out of this campaign, and liberals on both sides of the aisle fear her and want to destroy her. It’s not going to happen.

Bush Warns of Vulnerability in a Transition

November 7, 2008 New York Times (Excerpt)

"“For the next 75 days, all of us must ensure that the next president and his team can hit the ground running,” Mr. Bush said in an emotional speech to hundreds of employees of the executive branch on the South Lawn of the White House. He urged them to “conduct yourselves with the decency and professionalism that you have shown throughout my time in office.”

Mr. Bush has said he is determined to conduct an orderly transition. The White House wants to avoid a repeat of the kind of news reports that plagued President Bill Clinton when he left office amid questions about whether members of his staff, irked at having to turn their offices over to Republicans, removed the letter W from some computer keyboards." New York Times

We also remember all the other acts of vandalism, theft and pettiness left behind by the departing Clinton staff.

World waits to see Barack's true colours

World waits to see Barack's true colours

November 06, 2008 The Australian

SO now we know for sure. The Noam Chomsky-John Pilger-Phillip Adams view of America is wrong. In George W. Bush's America, a land allegedly rife with militarism and racism, the white military hero lost and the black memoirist won a slashing election victory.

In a nation supposedly enthralled by fundamentalist religion, the presidential ticket with two mainstream, Protestant, capital-C Christians lost to the ticket with a vice-president of Catholic background who favours abortion on demand, and a presidential candidate who drifted into religion when he drifted into politics and who has one of the most pro-abortion records of any legislator.

In a sense all of this is beside the point. These were not the issues on which this election was fought.

Nor are they the dynamics of American society.

It is indeed a wonderful thing for the US to have its first black president. No African-American child need ever fear there is any limit to what they can achieve.

Whatever you think of Obama's policies and capacity to govern well -- and I have my doubts -- his election is a powerful symbol of America's inclusiveness and opportunity. Which other big, rich, predominantly white society has elected a member of a racial minority to be its head of government? Not Australia.

So as we salute Obama, let's salute America as well.

The left liberal caricature of America was always nonsense. The militarism of American society is vastly overstated, just as its profound willingness to make sacrifice for other people's freedom is under-appreciated. This is the fifth presidential election in a row in which the candidate with the stronger military record lost to the candidate who didn't serve, or served only in the National Guard.

The last war hero to be elected president was George H. W. Bush in 1988. The same Bush lost to the draft-dodging Bill Clinton in 1992, as did another genuine war hero, Bob Dole, in 1996. Al Gore was no war hero but he had served in Vietnam, and John Kerry famously won the Purple Heart. And they both lost.

Similarly on race, the dynamic has been the opposite of the left liberal caricature of America for a long time. As Shelby Steele has argued, America has been ready for years to elect a black president. Of all the exit polls CNN conducted, perhaps the most revealing was the one that found only 20 per cent of Americans believed race was an important factor in how they voted. And a clear majority of those people voted for Obama.

Obama won nearly 100 per cent of a bigger-than-usual black vote, and it is clear his race was not a significant negative for the tens of millions of whites and Hispanics and Asian-Americans who also voted for him.

While it is historic to have an African-American president, in some ways it is almost equally historic that a northern liberal won the presidency for the Democrats. That has not happened since John F. Kennedy in 1960, and calling Kennedy a liberal is a bit of a stretch.

All of the other Democratic presidents since then -- Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton -- came from the south and sold themselves as southern conservatives. The two parties have almost reversed identities: the Republicans to a southern working class party, with the Democrats becoming the home of the liberal elites.

John McCain surely did just about as well as any Republican could have. He certainly made mistakes. But at the time of writing the popular vote was about 52 per cent to 47 per cent. That means Obama got about 1per cent more than Bush did four years ago. This was no landslide comparable to Ronald Reagan's victory of 1980, Richard Nixon's in 1972 or Lyndon Johnson's in 1964.

The world had been waiting for an "October surprise", a late external event that would transform the election. It was thought this might be a security crisis that would emphasise McCain's national security gravitas and Obama's lack of experience.
Instead it was the Wall Street crisis, which forced Americans' attention back on the economy. It destroyed McCain's efforts to run as a de facto non-Republican. Before the Wall Street crisis, McCain was ahead. Given that he was outspent two to one, and the mainstream media was vigorously campaigning for Obama, McCain can hold his head high.

Nonetheless Obama showed himself to be superbly well organised and disciplined, and ran a smooth and professional campaign. Politically, he deserves his success. Now is the time for the Obama celebrations. Soon, however, reality will set in. Obama cannot govern by dint of his exotic identity or smooth talking. But these features will afford one advantage. At least temporarily, and perhaps for quite some time, the routine, stupid and dully uninformed anti-Americanism of many opinion makers around the world will be untenable. But all that will be less important than how Obama decides to govern. History here has plenty of cautionary lessons. The US political system works around checks and balances. History tells us that when one party controls the presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives, it is often pretty ugly. There is overwhelming evidence that unified government in Washington spends and taxes more than a divided government, and that will be a temptation for Obama and congressional leaders.

After all, when Bush had a Republican Congress he got into a lot of political trouble.

The Republican commitment to small government gave way to big government conservatism. When Clinton was elected in 1992, his fellow Democrats controlled the Congress. These were disastrous years for Clinton and led to a massive backlash against Democrats in the 1994 mid-term congressional elections. Similarly, Carter had a Democrat-controlled Congress that helped make him a one-term president.

Obama has an ideological record on the left-liberal side of US politics. However, during the general election he ran hard to the centre. He presented himself as a tax cutter, a conservative on education. He supported Bush's domestic surveillance legislation and took a hard line on security issues, vowing Iran would not get a nuclear weapon, that he would increase the US troop commitment in Afghanistan, that he would bomb terrorists in Pakistan and only withdraw from Iraq over 16 months if, on the advice of his commanders, conditions permitted.

But at this stage we have no idea of how Obama will govern. The first real sign will come when he appoints his cabinet. Then perhaps we can answer the question this long campaign has so far not addressed: politically, who is Barack Obama?

An Election Day Note: Thanks, President Bush

An Election Day Note: Thanks, President Bush

By Andrew Breitbart November 04, 2008 RealClearPolitics (Excerpt)

I have a dark secret to tell before the election so that it's on the record. It's something that is difficult to say to certain friends, peers, family and, lately, many fellow conservatives.

I still like George W. Bush. A lot.

For starters, I am convinced he is a fundamentally decent man, even though I have read otherwise at the Huffington Post.

President Bush is far smarter, more articulate and less ideological than his plentiful detractors scream, and, ultimately, he will be judged by history - not by vengeful Democrats, hate-filled Hollywood, corrupt foreign governments, an imploding mainstream media or fleeting approval ratings.

George W. Bush is history's president, a man for whom the long-term success or failure of democracy in Iraq will determine his place in history. He may end up a victim of his own tough choices, but the cheerleading for his demise when Iraq's outcome is yet determined has hurt America and possibly set up the next president for the same appalling partisan response.

The fact that the United States has not been attacked since Sept. 11, 2001, far exceeds the most wishful expert predictions of the time. Perhaps facing another al Qaeda-led barrage would have reinforced our need for national unity, caused us to recognize the gravity of the Islamist threat and fortified Mr. Bush's standing at home and abroad.

Yet, thankfully, that never happened. And Mr. Bush has been punished for this obvious success.

By most accounts, al Qaeda is reeling from the damage inflicted by our efforts against the once-thriving terror network. Yet reflexive enemies of the president - including Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee - shamefully mock him for not having caught Osama bin Laden.

It's a playground taunt from the same people who never seriously advocated for a strong military foray into the regions where bin Laden could have been caught. These Daily Kos armchair generals also rhetorically ask why we don't invade North Korea or Saudi Arabia. Yet no one takes this hypothetical warmongering seriously, or expects a President Obama to go on the offense in any of these conveniently preferable hot spots. It's meant to hurt, not help, the president.

While President Bush has been marshaling a multinational force to take on modernity's enemies in foreign lands, the American left has decided to go to war against not only Republicans but also moderate Democrats.

Bush hatred was a fait accompli.

Back in November 2000, when Al Gore contested Florida and the demonizing of George Bush began full-bore ("President Select," "Bush Chimp," "the illegitimate president"), I told Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, "You watch, the Democratic Party will never grant Bush his humanity, and they will never let up."
And they never did.

The Democratic Party chose to send a clear message that the impeachment of President Clinton incurred by the newly minted Republican-led Congress and the upstart new media - talk radio and the Internet - would be countered by unprecedented partisan fury.

The media will shape "the truth" that Democrats were always behind the initial Afghanistan effort or were poised to grudgingly accept the president whom they previously mocked as "illegitimate."

But those brave liberals who stood by the president were mostly a small minority, and all of them have since been excommunicated for their apostasy.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and actor Ron Silver were presented as cautionary tales to left-of-center politicians and public figures who would lend support to a wartime Republican president.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who was described as the "conscience of the Senate" when he ran for vice president with Al Gore in 2000, was summarily dismissed from the Democratic Party for dissenting over one thing.

And the youth movement that is fueling Obama-mania is riddled with minds that do not have the perspective of what happened before Mr. Bush, and why the media and the Democratic Party have stood against Mr. Bush and his motivations from the word go.

Much of Mr. Bush's 28 precent approval rating is born not of "failed policies" - of which there are many - but of the ill-gotten gains pilfered from a pre-Bush inauguration strategy to send the message to Republicans that the Democrats play politics harder and better.

Mr. Obama said it best: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

I don't think Albert Einstein could have devised an equation to guide the leader of the free world during the wildly tumultuous post-9/11 realities without a modicum of help from the opposition party and the vast majority of the print and electronic media.

Right now, America appears to be leaning toward electing a man for whom popularity is a paramount concern. That means he must trust the American media and the American electorate to guide him to difficult decisions, not the other way around.

The American people pay closer attention to "Survivor: Gabon" than to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yet the majority will soon have a greater say in how we proceed in the war on terror. We are headed to the "American Idol" presidency. The last thing I want is my text vote on the financial crisis to have a say on how we proceed."

Note: The only reason that this is marked an "excerpt" is because I deleted its last paragraph that I show below. I do not agree with it. I believe that the only way we can avoid a second civil war in this country is for the Obama presidency to fail sooner, rather than later, and that conservatives should do everything they can to hasten its demise. More on that to come.

Continuation of article:

"If Barack Obama is elected the next president of the United States on Tuesday, I hope the Republican Party and conservatives take the higher road. The republic cannot handle another four years of undeclared civil war while we have real enemies out there to fight." RealClearPolitics

Andrew Breitbart is the founder of the news Web site breitbart.com and is co-author of "Hollywood Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon - the Case Against Celebrity."

McCain for President

McCain for President

By Charles Krauthammer October 24, 2008 RealClearPolitics

WASHINGTON -- Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory.

The "erratic" temperament issue, for example. As if McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

McCain the "erratic" is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the last year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts, but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

Who Is Obama? See This Video That Puts It All Together

If you think this is just another election, and you can't be bothered to vote, at least watch this video and then decide. Never before has the future of this nation as a free, capitalist society with liberties guaranteed by a written constitution been so much at stake. Watch, and then vote.