Moonbat, Massachusetts

Greetings from Moonbat country.

the politics of grievance and resentment

In words, Obama is a uniter instead of a divider. In deeds, he has spent years promoting polarization. That is what a "community organizer" does, creating a sense of grievance, envy and resentment, in order to mobilize political action to get more of the taxpayers' money or to force banks to lend to people they don't consider good risks, as the community organizing group ACORN did.


After Barack Obama moved beyond the role of a community organizer, he promoted the same polarization in his other roles.

That is what he did when he spent the money of the Woods Fund bankrolling programs to spread the politics of grievance and resentment into the schools. That is what he did when he spent the taxpayers' money bankrolling the grievance and resentment ideology of Michael Pfleger.

When Barack Obama donated $20,000 to Jeremiah Wright, does anyone imagine that he was unaware that Wright was the epitome of grievance, envy and resentment hype? Or were Wright's sermons too subtle for Obama to pick up that message?

How subtle is "Goddamn America!"?

Barack Obama has carried election-year makeovers to a new high, presenting himself a uniter of people, someone reaching across the partisan divide and the racial divide-- after decades of promoting polarization in each of his successive roles and each of his choices of political allies.

Yet the media treat exposing a fraudulent election-year image as far worse than letting someone acquire the powers of the highest office in the land through sheer deception.

-Thomas Sowell

the amateur's guide to flip-flopping

John Kerry lost the last presidential election, in many people's estimation, because of his being tagged as a "flip-flopper".

John Kerry was a punter compared to the leftist demi-god messiah, Barack Obama.

In the last few weeks Obama has flipped and flopped around, with such astonishing speed, on matters of such importance like the war in Iraq, that it's actually difficult keep up with his ever changing positions and positioning.

He has twisted himself into knots at this point, as a master political contortionist.

After saying whatever he needed to in order to lock up the far left base of the Democratic party by running to the left of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, Obama shrewdly and cynically deduced that he had to move to the political center in order to begin the process of appealing to the non-far left leaning contingent of voters he would be required to successfully romance in order to win a general election. He would at least need to soften some of what many people correctly imagined as some of his more far left positions into more palatable forms for the mass consumption of the general electorate. His campaign I'm sure would argue that this all is merely a matter of emphasis. You see, by emphasizing the more conservative elements of his existing platform he could soften his hard left edge without actually changing his fundamental positions. This explanation is of course hogwash. Obama has in recent weeks, changed wholesale positions on major issues. On issues about which none are simply so nuanced as to have such conveniently ambiguous parameters that there is no real way of knowing what is triangulation and what is the simple adopting of the direct opposing position. Let's rundown Barack Obama and his 'flip flopper's guide to the galaxy'.

• (Iraq) In the case of the war in Iraq, Obama has changed from one position to another and then back to the original position in the span of 48 hours. He based his entire primary campaign against Hillary as the true anti-war candidate, but in the last few weeks has now said that he would be making "refinements" in his Iraq policy. Refinements that include listening to the commanders fighting the war rather than imposing the arbitrary timetable for withdrawal that was trumpeted as his position in the primary campaign. But now he has flipped back to the original position because of the outcry coming from his far left anti-war base who have no time for the argument that our course of action in Iraq should not be dictated by leftist politicians making academic pronouncements and judgments about a tactical and strategic military situation. This is an example of what I call the compound flip flop, where's there's a flop, then a flip and then another flop back to the original position.

•(FISA) Many of Obama's most ardent supporters have found their candidate's blatant flip-flop on the issue of FISA wiretaps and telecom immunity difficult to stomach. In the primary, Obama promised to filibuster a bill to protect telephone companies from liability for their cooperation with national security wiretaps, then he flipped and voted for the exact legislation he promised to rebuke. The diametric flip flop.

• (Gun Control/2nd amendment) After a recent supreme court decision lifting a ban on handguns in Washington DC, Obama was seen pronouncing that he "has been a consistent supporter of the second amendment." (By the way, whenever you hear someone say that, "they have always been consistent" or John Kerry's favorite "let me be clear", you have a clear indication that the person making those remarks is in fact in the process of flip flopping.) Shortly after declaring support for the second amendment out of nowhere Obama then essentially recanted by attempting to straddle the issue by saying that he was also in fact for the regulation of hand guns by the federal government. The 2nd amendment is unambiguous. It states that The government "shall not infringe" on a citizens right to keep and bear arms. Either you support the 2nd amendment or you do not. But Obama on this is clumsily trying to triangulate by appealing to both polar opposite positions. Instead of triangulation though all he really is doing is flipping and flopping back and forth so fast that it becomes so difficult to track that people lose interest in actually figuring out where he stands on the issue. The high speed flip flop.

• (Public campaign funding) One of Obama's signature positions, as the self declared standard bearer of the "new politics", was his promise not to take private money for his campaign. That was before he saw just how much money he could raise privately. He now has completely flipped on the issue by spurning the public finance system he previously promoted. The signature issue flip-flop.

• (an undivided Jerusalem) When speaking to the Israeli lobby in a speech a few weeks ago Obama declared that he was fully supportive of an undivided Jerusalem. Then the Palestinians reacted badly and Obama flipped over to the mindset that Jerusalem should be shared by both Jews and Palestinians. The foreign policy gaffe flip-flop.

• (direct talks with Ahmadinejad, Chavez) At the You Tube debate last year, Obama famously declared that unlike the Bush administration he was in favor of direct talks with all of the leaders of various rogue nations. Obama indicated that he would be for talks with Ahmadinejad, Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez ,and Kim Jung Il with "no preconditions". These days he has heavily backpedaled into a back flip on the issue. He has done a back pedal flip flop on this issue whereas he now would want some form of "pre-conditions" before meeting with the various rogue nation heads of state mentioned in the original YouTube question.

• (town hall meetings) McCain challenged Obama to a series of town hall meetings style debates where both candidates would be subject to direct questions from the general public. Obama, not wanting to look like he was backing out of a confrontation with the lowly John McCain, initially entertained the idea to only later and quietly deny the request. Apparently Obama isn't as much of a fan of town hall meetings as his book "The Audacity of Hope" would have us believe. There's a passage in the book explaining how and why he loves town hall meetings so much. That was before he might be subjected to difficult questions I suppose. The hypocritical duality flip flop.

• (Partial birth abortions) Obama was once the champion of abortion in all of its grisly forms. Now he seems to be having doubts about the practice of partial birth abortion. Again, either you support partial birth abortion or you don't. The abortion related flip-flop.

And unlike McCain changing on domestic drilling, for example, who may do so because of drastic changes in the facts on the ground, Obama has been wildly flip-flopping for no other reason than political expediency. In other words, Obama needs to be able to adopt whatever stance at whatever time for whatever political reason on whatever issue.

This is flip flopping redefined. 'Change (of position) you can believe in' indeed.

Vive la flip-flop!

Swift Boated?

I always chuckle when I hear the term "swift boated" not only because it reminds me of that hapless effort known as the John Kerry presidential campaign, but because I am reminded that none of claims made by the swift boat veterans for truth were ever successfully refuted to this day. And yet the term has somehow passed into common acceptance, certainly in the mind of Democrats, as another way of describing scurrilous, baseless, and utterly untrue personal attacks made during a presidential campaign.

As you may know, the phrase "Swift boated" refers to a series of ads which ran in the 2004 presidential race. Apparently, a large group of veterans who served with John Kerry in Vietnam had various gripes and a wide array of non-partisan reasons as to why they felt John Kerry wouldn't make a good commander in chief of the armed forces of the USA. Whether or not you believe that the Swift Boat veterans were justified in making their complaints, I would submit that in fact, the public took away exactly only what they needed to and not much more: that John Kerry was a pompous jerk 30 years ago and for mainly that reason, he pissed off many former colleagues. The fact that Kerry responded to the ads by attacking the character of his detractors without actually bothering to factually refute the charges didn't help, but essentially the swift boat ads were merely a symptom rather than the cause of Kerry's doomed presidential aspirations.

Listening to them talk, some Democrats would have you believe that the sole reason as to why John Kerry lost the '04 election was because of the swift boat veterans for truth ads. This interpretation of the impact and nature of 'Swift Boating' is now widely accepted amongst Democrats. And now, perhaps the most recognizable and revered modern Democrat of all time, Bill Clinton, has raised the dreaded specter of the almighty "Swift Boated" effect. On Monday of this week, Clinton compared the recent criticism of his wife in her most recent and most dreadful debate performance to the effective 2004 election political ads. While it's funny to get into just how awful and how flip-floppy Hillary was the other night, what I'm interested in here is that the term 'swift boated' has now morphed into yet another iteration of itself. Bill Clinton now sees swift boating as something that refers to the posing of legitimate questions that the public is dying to know the answer to. The other night in Philadelphia, Tim Russert simply wanted to have some clarification on a few black and white issues that we still to this day do not know the answers to. Namely, is Hillary for or against the issuing of driver's licenses to illegal aliens. And, will Hillary Clinton, who is most certainly in charge of her own records, authorize the release of certain archived correspondence between herself and Bill during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Needless to say, Hillary's responses to these inquiries were less than illuminating. And the longer Hillary dances, confuses and/or stonewalls on these issues the worse she looks.

One lesson to take away from this episode of the Clinton saga is that for many Democrats and especially for Bill Clinton, reality is simply what you make it. For Clinton and anyone who believes what he is saying on this matter to be with merit, objective truth is merely an abstract notion. If you repeat something enough times in your mind like a mantra, no matter what objective truth dictates, it becomes true. It becomes your reality. So for example, the fact that the swift boat veterans were actually telling the truth is extraneous to the new imagined reality.

Also reinforced for us was the lesson that the Clintons, to their core, really do disdain from being subjected to difficult and/or probing questions. Since the now infamous Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace interview with Bill, we have been exposed to a new extra prickly and super indignant side of Mr. Clinton. No longer is he the fun loving party guy who played saxophone on Jay Leno. Those without concrete memories of the 90's will regard Bill Clinton as an indignant victim, which is how he currently portrays himself and most recently, Hillary. Claims of victimhood have never seemed to be particularly attractive qualities for a presidential candidate, but now we are being asked to simultaneously believe that Hillary Clinton is the victim of sexism/'swift boating' and also that she is a bare knuckles, rugged politician ready to take on anyone. The phrase 'wanting to have it both ways' is an understated characterization of this particularly laughable chapter of the Clinton saga. Watch out Clintons, incoming probing questions, commence obfuscation. Failing that, just claim victim status.

Bludgeon

In a classic blunder, John Kerry has given Republicans an implement to bash Democrats over the head with just days before nationwide elections. Speaking about the value of education at a campaign event to a group of students at a Pasadena City College, Kerry said the following:

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Ouch. Whatever Kerry insists his intent was, reading the remarks and listening to the audio of this obvious gaffe is painful, and as John McCain has said about the remarks “The words speak for themselves”.

These remarks, appropriately delivered on All Hallows Eve, play as a nasty trick to fellow Democrats and glorious treat to Republicans. Whether Kerry meant what he said or not has become immaterial at this point. Rather than apologize immediately, he elected to fight back viciously in an obvious effort to not get "swift boated" again. And apologies and disclaimers aside, the remarks speak to a pre-existing notion of Kerry as an out of touch elitist and limousine liberal who still sees everything (including the all volunteer army) through the prism of a Vietnam protestor.

And it is not just Republicans who are weighing in on the appropriateness of Kerry's remarks. Dems everywhere are running away from Kerry “…faster than embattled Republican candidates have been avoiding President Bush.” Says Clarence Page of Real Clear Politics. It's also been suggested that this is the final of three strikes for Senator Kerry on this matter. The first was his Winter Soldier testimony, famously proclaiming that our troops conducted themselves “...in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan.” The second strike came last year when Kerry accused our troops of acts of terror in Iraq “…in the dark of night”. With this latest blunder, otherwise known as strike three, Kerry has officially jumped the proverbial shark. He no longer is a viable candidate in the next Presidential election. It is the "coup de grace" as Michael Barone said on ‘Special Report’ “…in a language.” he added, “...that Mr. Kerry is fluent in.”.

The self-immolation of Kerry paves the way for the ascendancy of her majesty herself, Hilary Clinton. The Clintons never really liked Kerry, so no love is lost, but I bet the Clinton’s shared a good laugh at Kerry’s expense in light of this most recent jaw dropping misstep. While the field of Democratic presidential hopefuls is contracting in front our eyes, it was Democratic strategist Joe Trippi who suggested that in fact it is perhaps Howard Dean who will profit most from Kerry’s epic gaffe. If the results of the mid term elections are not as spectacular for National Democrats as have been projected, Dean can now shift any blame that might come his way as head of the DNC to Kerry and his politically tone deaf gaffe.

Apparently this Kerry surprise Halloween gaffe will have implications up and through the upcoming elections. Are Kerry’s remarks a Trick or a Treat? Well…that depends on your perspective.

Clintonian Revisionism

With the mid-term elections scant weeks away, political operatives everywhere are scrambling to raise issues and dig up dirt on any candidate under the sun. From Mark Foley to down and dirty political TV ads, the gloves are coming off. Along with all of this, I am seeing an emerging strategic trend, which is being adopted by mainstream Democrats. In a combined effort to polish the Clinton legacy and to re-cast Democrats as tough on matters of national security, there seems to be a growing effort to re-write or at least revise certain chapters of the history of the Clinton Administration.

Lately, there have been two fallacious thrusts of this Clinton Administration revisionist history, one more egregious than the next. First, during the now famous Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace interview, Clinton did everything he could to suggest that he had done everything possible to kill or capture Bin Laden and that his administration did a tremendous amount to thwart the plans of Al Qaeda. Secondly, and more recently, Democratic operatives are attempting to re-write the Clinton Administration’s handling of the People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK) and their acquisition of nuclear technology and weaponry. Both of these Clinton failings are being recast as triumphs in order to “take back” national security as a winning issue for Democrats. The theory being that if Democrats can revise enough of the history of the Clinton Administration, they can achieve three important goals. If successful, Clinton’s somewhat sordid legacy can be repaired, the Democrats take a winning issue into the elections, and Hilary Clinton’s stock rises as somehow being tough on terror because her husband was (even though he wasn’t).


The facts on both of these issues have been known and touted by conservatives for years now, rarely if ever challenged. To must of us, it seems rather unusual to suddenly want to re-debate issues long since resolved. In the Bin Laden case, I was of the understanding that neither the Bush Administration nor the Clinton Administration had done nearly enough to prevent terrorism pre 9-11. Even though Clinton had many more opportunities and more time to fight Al Qaeda than Bush did, the issue, politically speaking, I considered to be a wash. It stands to reason that not much political mileage can be made on an issue where both sides of the aisle essentially failed. In a way, the whole country failed. We all failed to see Al Qaeda terrorism as the threat that we now know it to be. For example, the American public most likely would not have been behind a pre-emptive military attack on the Taliban, which now in hindsight would have been a brilliant move. So hindsight being 20/20, both administrations can be blamed for failing to prevent 9-11. To me, at least it seemed, that if blame were to be doled out, then the Clinton Administration would receive the lion’s share. I never imagined that Democrats would attempt to point to what Clinton did against terrorism pre –9-11 as a winning issue! A truly bizarre strategy over an issue, which I assumed, was a wash.

Since the Clintons want to re-debate and blame game who did what when pre 9-11, all of the same cast of characters have re-emerged from those days immediately following 9-11 when the American public wanted to know what the hell happened. Members of the 9-11 Commission, Richard Clarke, and Michael Scheuer all principal players in the post 9-11 political drama, are now getting a renaissance of face time on the various television news outlets and programs. If one listens closely to Michael Scheuer , head of the Osama Bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999, it is clear that President Clinton had many more opportunities to kill or capture Bin Laden than the Bush Administration ever did. The disarmingly candid Scheuer, by the way, is no fan of the Bush Administration. In his initially anonymously published book Imperial Hubris , he takes The Bush Administration's characterization of Osama Bin Laden to task as overly simplistic and incorrect by saying amongst other things that, “It's American foreign policy that enrages Osama and al-Maida, not American culture and society.” While the nature of our enemy in Al Qaeda is a matter worthy of debate, the facts surrounding our opportunities to kill Bin Laden are not a matter of dispute, rather they are a matter of historical fact. The self-deprecating and humble, self described bureaucrat Michael Scheuer is about as straight a shooter as there is when it comes to the facts surrounding Bin Laden and American counter terrorism measures pre 9-11. Among other condemnations, Scheuer points out that President Clinton had "eyes on target" many more times than any other administration ever came close to having. To make a long and well publicized story short, what we find after only a little research is that in reality the bulk of any blame that should be assigned vis a vis 9-11 should fall squarely on the shoulders of the Clinton Administration. Again, the Bush Administration, like the American people as a whole, is not blameless. But because Monday morning quarterbacking and blame gaming are not productive endeavors, I had issued all parties involved even Clinton, a pass. That we now find Democrats wanting to make what Clinton did pre 9-11 somehow a winning issue, to me is laughable.


The other area of history that Democrats are attempting to re-write of late surrounds North Korea. However ridiculous it would seem to point to Clinton’s handling of Bin Laden as a positive, attempting to recast Clinton’s handling of North Korea as adept, takes the ludicrous cake. I thought this issue as well had been put to rest long ago. I had no idea that suddenly now, weeks before an election, Democrats would point to the Clinton Administration’s handling of North Korea, by literally handing them nuclear technology, as a positive. This somewhat controversial ad created by David Zucker, director of the Naked Gun movies and Scary Movies, sums it all up nicely. As history has proven, dealing directly with North Korea in bilateral talks brings us nowhere because, when North Korea eventually blows us off and breaks the framework of an agreement, the rest of the world does not care. Other countries like China and Russia laugh at us when crackpot despots blow us off. Having learned that lesson, it seems clear that any type of agreement that would hold up would have to be a multilateral effort which Bush has been attempting to undertake. A strategy, by the way, that one would think Democrats would be in favor of given their carping vis a vis Iraq. As usual however, Democrats are always in favor of doing the opposite of whatever it is that we are doing. Suddenly now Democrats are in favor of unilateral action when it comes to North Korea (and Darfur by the way). Also, Democrats are now suggesting that the reason that North Korea desires nuclear weapons and broke their agreements with us is because they were offended for being included in the “axis of evil” speech given by President Bush. The theory being that Bush is to blame for not coddling or cozying up to Kim Jong Il. It's amazing that Democrats still have not abandoned the strategy of appeasement when it comes to dealing with our enemies. It's as if Democrats are suddenly Rip Van Winkle, just now waking up from a slumber in which they were not aware of the last 20 years of history.

All of this goes to the idea that Democrats want to make national security their own issue. Their mentality is “not to get swift boated” again, meaning that because of the swift boat ads, defense and national security had been taken away from John Kerry as his own issue in the 2004 presidential election. It is of course silly to cite the largely truthful swift boat ads as the reason why Americans didn’t buy into Kerry as tough on terror, when the real reason was in fact that Democrats are in reality weak on terror. Meaning, It is not a question of spin and political ads as much as it of actual facts and voting records.

In the end, I believe it to be a losing strategy to attempt to re-write history by casting Clinton and the Democrats as all knowing national security gurus. A better strategy would be to actually vote for measures that are tough on terror, such as the wiretapping of potential terrorists, risk profiling at airports, and tracking the finances of terrorists. But because Democrats don’t actually believe in these and many other anti terror tactics, they (unless directly involved in a mid term election), cannot bring themselves to vote for them. So the strategy is: rather than actually be tough on terror, try to revise history to a point whereas the American people begin to somehow believe that they are tough on terror. At the end of the day, trying to confuse the American people into believing that Democrats are and have been tough on terror is a poor substitute for actually being tough on terror.