thinklets

Palin's power to prevail

  

 

Alaska governor, Sarah Palin’s, entry into presidential politics last summer seemed to make Democrats a little, shall we say, defensive.

 

That was the impression I got, anyway, considering that they immediately declared DEFCON 50 and implemented the only version of the Strategic Defense Initiative the left will ever approve: insults and ridicule lobbed at the Palin family like Patriot missiles via the mainstream media.

 

Welcome to election-year politics. Disgusting, but hardly surprising.

 

What caught me off guard were all the potshots lobbed at Palin from the McCain camp – friendly fire that we now learn started well before the end of the campaign.

 

Or were they potshots? Maybe not. Perhaps Palin’s aides were just trying to show the world what a remarkable woman she really is.

 

For example, thanks to “Anonymous Staffers” we know that in private moments Palin sometimes expressed righteous anger in response to the daisy cutters that democrats were routinely dropping on her.

 

Correction. Actually those “Anonymous Staffers” used slightly differently terminology. For a moment, I forgot the rules of semantics when describing the emotions of a female as opposed to a male. Women don’t express “righteous anger” even under the most trying circumstances.

 

According to Fox News reporter, Carl Cameron, those “Anonymous Staffers” told him that Palin threw “temper tantrums.”

 

They didn’t mention whether one of those “tantrums” took place after they put her on the phone with a developmentally-delayed radio prankster and told her it was the president of France.

 

On the other hand, maybe those “Anonymous Staffers” meant to commend Palin for keeping the “tantrums” private and putting on a brave face in public.  For example, when they booked Palin for a comprehensive oral exam with CBS’s Katie Couric (called an “interview”) Palin didn’t slap Couric when she repeatedly demanded details of John McCain’s regulatory votes over the past 26 years.

 

She did seem a little gun shy about giving specific answers to other questions, though, didn’t she? Maybe because she knew it would go something like this:

 

Couric: What newspapers and magazines do you like to read?

Palin: I enjoy Time, Investors Business Daily, and the Wall Street Journal.

Couric: Can you give me a brief biography of the publisher of Investor’s Business Daily, and while you’re at it the page count and five headlines from the last issue of Time?

 

In fairness, perhaps those “Anonymous Staffers” were just expressing gratitude that Palin hadn’t fired them yet, especially after they sent her into an interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson with an fish head poultice under her blouse. (If you doubt that, look up the interview on YouTube, check out Gibson’s attitude toward Palin, and tell me if you can think of a better explanation. Although, I suppose it’s plausible that Gibson simply needed new glasses and thought the interview was with Stalin instead of Palin.)

 

Anyway, my point is if you believe those “Anonymous Staffers,” Palin is an intellectual Helen Keller, with an amazing, even miraculous, ability to achieve great things despite significant handicaps.

 

For example, those “Anonymous Staffers” said that when Palin and her family joined the McCain campaign they were a gaggle of “Wasilla Hillbillies,” dressed in animal furs, I would imagine, and spitting on the floor. Who would have known?

 

Apparently, Palin eighty-sixed the moose antlers, salmon guts, and chewing tobacco; lined up dental work and grammar lessons; popped in and out of Neiman Marcus; and then showed up at the convention with a brood that rivaled the British Royal Family – while clutching a scorched RNC credit card.

 

But that’s not all. According to Cameron’s sources, Palin is an ignoramus with “real problems with basic civics, government structures, municipal, state, and federal responsibilities” – yet boasts a stellar background as a successful mayor and governor!

 

Furthermore, Palin has conducted extensive business with Canada – as a private business owner and the governor of Alaska – yet still hasn’t caught on to the basics of international commerce and NAFTA.

 

Even more shocking, we learn that she actually passed the third grade without knowing that Africa is a continent!

 

To some this might look bad, but I say it is a testament to Palin’s ability to overcome her handicaps and get the job done.

 

Think about it. No knowledge of “Wilsonian Doctrine” (as Cameron breathlessly announced on the day after the election) and yet Palin still gets up in the morning, dresses herself, and ties her shoes.

 

I think she could be tutored in time for the 2012 election. We would only have four years to do it, but I for one think it’s worth a try. Imagine the things that woman could accomplish if she was literate.

 

Or better yet, imagine the things she could accomplish if her “Staffers,” anonymous or otherwise, are loyal and competent.

(This post was originally posted on the Oregonian web site)

Obama world

I was surprised last weekend when Obama justified higher taxes to an entrepreneurial-minded citizen: “It’s not that I want to punish your success, I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you that they’ve got a chance at success too… I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

 

Let me clarify that I was astonished by the presentation, not the sentiment. Obama is always saying things like that, but sugared-down with flowery feel-good rhetoric – channeling John Lennon as opposed to this professorial paraphrase from the “Communist Manifesto.”

 

He must be feeling quite confident in his poll-numbers to present his socialist credentials in such uncharacteristically unadorned language.

 

In the meantime his running mate, Joe Biden, is so obsessed with what’s going on at kitchen tables throughout America, that he wants to give Big Brother a special seat at each one – all the better to poke his nose into your private affairs.

 

Welcome to the Obama World.  At first you might even be glad you voted for him – until you realize that you’ve just created a snoopy Gladys Kravitz monster, and she’s no longer content to only stand at her window and rubberneck. “Abner! Marv Kowalski just got new Corvette, while the Cruxbergers are still driving that Buick with the fake wood peeling off!  That’s not neighborly!”

 

“You know perfectly well that’s because Fred Cruxberger was out shooting road signs and smashing mailboxes while Marv was studying to be a brain surgeon,” Abner replies. “Now put down the binoculars and mind your own business.”

 

Anyway, if Obama’s views are demonstrable by history, then Henry Ford and Thomas Edison contributed nothing to society, except the famine and misery that must have rose among the masses in levels directly proportionate to their success.

 

Similarly, I’m trying to recall the food shortages and bread lines of the 1980’s when Bill Gates founded Microsoft. In Obama’s view, he raked in so much money that there couldn’t have been any “chance for success” left for those “behind” him. 

 

After such horror stories, it’s easy to yearn for the sunlit, pristine Obama World now within our reach; where birds chirp, children frolic, and Americans always “share” their wealth – because if they don’t he will throw them in jail.

 

It could have been compassion for Ford and Edison’s victims that prompted prominent Chicago socialist, Saul Alinsky, to write, “‘The Prince’ was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. ‘Rules for Radicals’ is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

 

On the other hand, we have Adam Smith, also known as the father of modern economics, who believed that government should merely be an instrument of law, order, and justice, and taught that state interventions that eliminate a family’s interest in self-betterment lead to poverty and tyranny.

I wonder whose book is most likely to be found on Obama’s bedside table, Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” or Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.” I’m thinking the latter. Especially since it’s common knowledge that Obama embraced Alinksy’s methodology during his years as a Chicago community organizer.

 

Nevertheless, Smith was right. Facing big problems at the kitchen table leads to fire in the belly that in turn leads to ingenuity and a pioneering spirit that when mixed with liberty becomes the catalyst for the American dream. Oregon was built by hardworking, determined people who were driven by that fire.

 

In Obama World, if elected he says he will “take back America,” and “reclaim the American dream.” I guess he’s referring to the good old days when Americans were forced to be “neighborly” have “empathy,” and politicians were free to “spread the wealth around” as they saw fit.

 

I must have been sick that day in history class.

 

Perhaps it’s in the memoirs of pioneer girl, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Like when grasshoppers destroyed her family’s wheat crop and the Little House on the Prairie was instantly besieged by an army of left-wing community organizers who registered Ma, Pa, Laura, Mary, Baby Carrie, and Jack the dog to vote for a silver-tongued politician who blamed their neighbors for their misfortune?

 

Actually, no. If you look it up, it turns out Charles Ingalls walked 300 miles in worn-out boots, found work, paid off his debts, and Wilder never mentions anything about him blaming anyone.  

 

Senator Obama, that’s the America that needs taking back.

 

Nothing will be built by the lofty, inspirational phrases that Obama routinely swipes from stories of true American sacrifice and pastes into speeches carefully crafted to spread petulance and envy throughout our land.

 

“The journey will be difficult, the road will be long. I face the challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations, but I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people,” he said at the Democratic National Convention.

 

Indeed, it must take prodigious “profound humility” to declare yourself anointed to reach into American’s wallets and confiscate the fruits of their labor because they can’t be trusted to spend it on the things that you think they should.

 

America, wake up! You don’t want Barack Obama and Joe Biden at your kitchen table, oozing virtuous concern while they drone on and on about “empathy gaps” and “fairness issues.” It might sound good at first, especially if you are on the receiving end of the largesse, but you soon find out that Big Brother is the ultimate unwanted guest who won’t leave.

 

And then where will you be if that greedy neighbor who pays for everything and still gets kicked in the teeth, someday decides to quit?

(This post was originally published on the Oregonian web site)

McCain's motives

I’m worried about, Chloe, our little dog. Right now she is under the table, sleeping on my feet. Fifteen minutes ago she was gazing up at me with an expression of rapt adoration. Soon she will awaken and have a drink of water and then check to make sure the front yard is still there.

 

She is doing what she has done every day for the seven years that we have owned her. I’m worried about her erratic behavior. 

 

My husband left for work an hour ago wearing his scrubs, ID badge, a CD in hand for the drive as well as a briefcase of paraphernalia for a night of sewing up lacerations and treating children with ear infections and adults with bellyaches. On the way he called to tell me about something he heard on the radio.

 

He does the same thing every workday. Today, though, I’m wondering if he has selfish motives.

 

This morning our daughter-in-law stopped by with our grandsons. She is always dropping in, calling, and touching base. I often call her the sunshine of my life. Today, however, I’m wondering if her visit was a cheap stunt.

 

I’m a seeing things a little differently today, after watching a few hours of cable news pundits announcing that the United States is facing a crisis as dire as the September 11th terrorist attacks, Pearl Harbor, and the stock market crash of 1929. 

 

Because as Washington D.C. was staring down the abyss yesterday, one familiar face was missing. Senator John McCain -- a man who became infused with a compulsion to serve his country in a filthy communist prison cell 40 years ago and who has been at the front lines of every struggle since.

When America is in trouble, McCain puts everything else aside. He always has. So he flew back to Washington yesterday and was promptly accused of erratic behavior, selfish motives, and staging a cheap political stunt.

 

If that is true, then Chloe, still asleep on my feet, is behaving erratically. And my husband’s long hard nights at the ER are motivated by selfishness. And our daughter-in-law’s cheerful, loving presence in our lives is only a sham, hiding a nefarious agenda that only she knows about. 

 

Because if McCain returning to Washington D.C. during an American crisis of historical proportions, is nothing but a cheap political stunt, then everything is suspect.

 

Including the sun itself when it rises in the East.  

(This piece was originally posted on the Oregonian web site)

Mission improbable

These are trying times. Wall Street sunk like an elevator yesterday as the interminable convulsions of the current banking/housing correction grind along.

 

We’re pretty sure Osama Bin Laden isn’t dead yet – which means he’s still cowering in that cave, waiting for his hellfire missile and wishing he’d never messed with George W Bush.

 

Who knows when touchy Vladimir Putin will decide the next journalist, rival, or sovereign nation isn’t holding its mouth right, dispatch the problem faster than you can say “Polonium 210,” all the while whining about belligerent Poland having the gall to install protective anti-missile shields within their borders.

 

What is it about non-aggressive defensive measures that make Putin so crazy? I bet beekeeping suits and safety goggles drive him apoplectic. 

 

And now, as if there isn’t enough bad news out there, I hear that Jon Voight will portray the father of our country, George Washington, in a new Hollywood motion picture, “An American Carol,” which debuts next month.

 

That’s right. Voight was once again entrusted with the character of a beloved American icon – even after what he did to Jim Phelps, the main character of the 60’s television show, “Mission Impossible.” Voight portrayed Phelps in a 1996 movie called something like “High-Tech Rambo With Ripped-Off Theme Song” that was spuriously touted as Mission Impossible’s big screen reincarnation.   

 

Now I’ve heard it all. Why don’t they just appoint Reverend Jeremiah Wright special ambassador for inner city race relations?  Or place Captain Joseph Hazlewood in command of a nuclear submarine? Or put Representative John Murtha in charge of troop morale in Iraq? 

 

Because, in a fine piece of character evisceration, Voight’s version of Phelps apparently swapped brains with a psychopath in between the television show and motion picture, because when re-introduced on the big screen, he was no longer a dedicated patriot but a cowardly, murderous traitor.

In Voight’s defense, I suppose that he, along with everyone involved with the Mission Impossible movie and sequels, never actually watched the television version.

 

If so, they would know that instead of all-about-me Tom Cruise monopolizing the screen with mindless fist fights, explosions, and gunfire, The Impossible Mission Force (IMF) of the TV show carried out complex plans, revealed to a thinking audience in deliciously graduated stages as they used ingenious tools to manipulate their quarry’s perception of their world. Then as the villains turned on each other and their schemes imploded from within, Phelps and his team would fade into the background. 

 

Putin, for example, would have been a cinch for the IMF. They could have tricked him into thinking he was on a submarine in the Baltic Sea when al-Qaida attacked Israel and Europe with Iranian nuclear weapons. Poland, however, was spared because of the anti-missile shield that Putin had found so threatening. At least that’s what he thinks until he is discovered inside a plywood submarine mock-up in Moscow, begging the Poles for sanctuary over a fake radio.

 

Or they could manipulate him into a catfight with Russian President Demitri Medvedev after he trounces him in the first round of an IMF-staged “Sexiest Russian Alive” contest.

 

I could think of many other scenarios, but one way or another, by the ending credits I guarantee there would be no more gas pipeline blackmail, bombers to Venezuela, nuclear secrets to Iran, and peace would reign in the Caucasus. And all in one hour, minus commercials. 

 

That’s why I’m still miffed at Voight. I realize that he has made some sensible comments lately regarding presidential candidate, Barack Obama’s big-government liberalism and the importance of not losing our nerve in the war on terror. I realize that he has shown a reasoned perspective of the true dangers and perils that face us – a balanced outlook that is not easy to find in Hollywood these days. 

Sensible and reasoned, yes. But sensible and reasoned doesn’t power up any self-destructing Aiwa TP-30 in my book.

(This piece was originally posted on the Oregonian web site)

Bill Clinton: Backseat driver

 

Last week the Democrats got together for a convention, the theme of which was something like “George Bush Bites Heads Off Bunnies.”  Not surprisingly, former-president Bill Clinton was there, once again loudly trumpeting his successor’s many flaws.

 

It’s sad, such animosity. Clinton and Bush are the same age. In another world they could have been buddies. After all, Clinton had that 1970 El Camino-with-Astroturf thing going, which might have appealed to a drunken frat boy the IQ of a doorknob like Bush. (The consensus last week at the convention. Personally, I doubt your typical doorknob could earn an MBA from Harvard, but what do I know? )

 

Think about it, though. Wouldn’t you love to ride along on that one? Clinton is at the wheel, the sun is shining, the road is straight and clear… except, knowing Clinton, he probably breezed past a few signs that read, “Warning! Danger ahead!”

 

Then, after Bush takes the wheel, things would get bumpy, which I would imagine might make Clinton testy (doesn’t everything?), so he starts poking Bush, calling him stupid and incompetent, until someone points out all the warning signs that Clinton passed up, which really riles Clinton, and he denies ever seeing them, and then it turns out it can’t be proved because Sandy Berger stole them all and stuck them in his pants.

 

So, like I said, Clinton and Bush could have been friends. But back to Clinton’s address at the Democratic convention last week, a speech that somehow reminded me of other former leaders in other times and places in history.

 

Like James Buchanan – who earned the distinction of being our worst-ever president by trying to placate the pro-slavery southern states with the following strategy: “We’ll pass the fugitive slave act, toss the Missouri Compromise, and allow new territories to own slaves just like you do. Just don’t secede from the Union…. pretty please?”

 

That plan worked for maybe five minutes, but by the time Lincoln took over, the Union was a seething cauldron. What a shock.

 

Nevertheless, while Lincoln wrestled with his inherited mess, at least Buchanan didn’t have the Clintonian gall to blame him for the Civil War.

 

Similarly, Clinton could only fantasize about achieving the integrity level of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the foreign policy genius best known for telling Adolph Hitler, “You can keep Czechoslovakia if you cross your heart and promise to be nice from now on.”

 

 At least Chamberlain didn’t taunt his successor, Winston Churchill, after the London Blitz and say, “I had achieved peace in our time! This mess is all your fault!”

 

Saddam Hussein could have won an Oscar for acting like the guiltiest man on earth when he threw the arms inspectors out of Iraq, but Clinton did little, even as Hussein flagrantly violated the terms of the first Gulf War cease-fire, violated multiple U.N. resolutions, shopped for uranium in Niger (Yes he did, calm down.), and played benevolent sugar daddy to al-Qaida and al-Qaida wannabesall over the world.

Clinton similarly coddled Osama Bin Laden, but why rehash that?   

 

Even though Clinton didn’t take effective action while he was president, you gotta give him credit for being a good talker.  He clearly stated that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat that needed to go– just before he kicked the problem down the road. 

 

 So, of course, nowadays he spends his time pronouncing loud, frequent, and public judgments upon Bush for actually dealing with the threat.

 

What a guy.   

 

(This piece was originally posted on the Oregonian web site)

The missionary heart

Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision, once said, "Let my heart be broken with the things that break God's heart."

 

One day last fall God saw Clara, a critically ill Guatemalan woman, and His heart was broken. She had two children, a useless prescription for antibiotics that she couldn’t afford, and two pieces of scrap lumber.

 

The Good Samaritan who found Clara and brought her to our makeshift medical clinic near a Guatemala City shantytown called “the Hole,” told us how Clara used those sticks that day to painfully propel herself down a dirty street in a last desperate search for help.

 

By the time she was carried to us, she was hysterical, feverish, and close to shock with infected legs, both blackened to the knees. 

 

Oscar and Lidia Banegas, Guatemalan missionaries who arranged that medical outreach last September, have broken hearts, evidenced by their passion to alleviate suffering and poverty – the same passion that has burned for centuries and conceived hospitals and schools all over the world.

 

When Oscar and Lidia see children denied education because their parents can’t afford paper and pencils, their hearts are broken. So last year they distributed 800 backpacks filled with school supplies. Then they brought 35 donated computers to Guatemala City and established English and computer training at a local church. When they see hunger and sickness, their hearts are broken, so they assemble and distribute bags of staple foods for distribution and are planning our next medical outreach. 

 

Because Oscar and Lidia’s hearts are broken by the things that break God’s heart, our team was in Clara’s neighborhood last fall, and she received professional care, medicine, and God’s love. As we administered IV fluids and antibiotics, our host ministry, “Living Stones,” located her children and brought them to her. After Clara responded to treatment and began to rally, they provided food for the destitute little family.

 

“The very practice of medicine is an opportunity to live out the Gospel.  Love, mercy, compassion, sacrifice, and healing are all aspects of Christ’s work,” Keith R. Bucklen, M.D., stated in Global Medical Missions.

 

Unexpectedly, a broken heart often contains the most joy. Like the joy of giving an elderly Filipino woman a pair of dollar-store reading glasses and discovering from her tears, hugs, and smiles that you had just handed her the world. It takes so little to give so much.

 

After Karen Watson, a missionary in Iraq, was killed in 2004, the following lines were found in a letter she had written:

 

The missionary heart:

 

Cares more than some think is wise

Risks more than some think is safe

Dreams more than some think is practical

Expects more than some think is possible.

 

(This piece was originally posted on the Oregonian web site)

 

Level of semantic hysteria 'worst in history'

Last week former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, pronounced the Iraq War the “worst disaster in American history,” proving something that I’ve been suspecting for a long time: those darn Democrats sure love their superlatives.

 

It’s especially true this election season. You can’t turn on your radio or television without hearing some form of shrill grammatical extremism: Usually “never/always/most/worst” frequently followed by “in history.”

 

It figures. Immersed as we are in an election-year war of words, declaring something the “worst in history,” has so much more punch than just saying that it “needs improvement.”

 

Nobody mentions that all this hysteria going unchallenged could mean that the level of history knowledge in the United States may well be the worst in history.

 

Ironically, even as they swing wildly from one spurious semantic extreme to the next, Democrats still find time to accuse Republicans of scaring Americans into thinking that crazed religious fanatics want to kill us, because Republicans crave war more than anything – except maybe Wal-Mart hotdogs. (Republicans love Wal-Mart. They always pick a line with an overworked checker, always snarl about the delay, and always choose “no” when asked if the store was clean.)

 

Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, announces every hour that the War on Terror is a Republican delusion, cleverly designed to keep Americans from noticing the truly dire problem that our country faces: five percent unemployment.

 

It seems to be working. Both Democratic presidential candidates are so adept at semantic extremism, that they have got a large percentage of Americans believing that the office of the presidency comes with supernatural powers.

 

Bush, they cleverly imply, could use that presidential power to end poverty, illness, and Cialis commercials; but being as he is the most sadistic president in history, he prefers to let those things continue. 

 

That is when Hillary angelically assures voters that she would use the presidential power to outlaw foreclosures, freeze interest rates, provide healthcare for all, and usher in a thousand years of peace.

 

If she is elected, I’m going to ask her to reverse the course of the Columbia River every year, so the salmon won’t have to work so hard to spawn.

 

Not to be left out, Barack Obama says he would use the power to implement what he calls “shared prosperity.”

 

Here’s how it works: He will require that America’s top wage earners, small business owners, and corporations:

 

• Buy health insurance for everyone
• Raise the minimum wage
• Increase teacher’s salaries
• Provide the “best education the country has to offer,” preschool through college, for all children
• Always make payroll
• Create more and more high-paying jobs
• And never ever lay anyone off

 

Sounds great… except one thing bothers me. If it is so easy, surely someone has tried it before. But in order to know when, you’d have to know your history.

 

(This post was originally published on the Oregonian web site)

Dubya soup

You can always tell by the noise when a fresh supply of Dubya Soup has hit the streets. That’s because people start yelling, “Torture! Wire taps! Abuse of power! Bush lied! Impeach!”

 

The latest infusion took place shortly before the Pentagon released its exhaustive study of 600,000 Iraqi documents – 1600 pages of analysis, which hit the airwaves with a dull thud.

 

That’s because by then it was old news. The report’s executive summary had been leaked to Warren P. Strobel of the McClatchy News Service prior to the release date, and he had already trumpeted it to the world with his spin firmly installed: “No evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime has any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network.”

 

It was quite a surprise to Pentagon officials who had seen the documents and knew they contained a symbolic avalanche of Iraqi connections to al-Qaida grandpas, fathers, sons, brothers – and Osama bin Laden himself.

 

It seems that Saddam Hussein didn’t spend all his time terrorizing his countrymen, invading his neighbors, and making confetti out of United Nations Security Resolutions. He was plenty busy providing global terrorists with what Wall Street Journal Online called “financial support and weapons amounting to a ‘state-directed program of significant scale.’”

 

An abstract of the Pentagon Report stated it this way: “Because Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups.”

 

Perhaps because no photo was found of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden pricking their fingers and becoming blood brothers, the analysis stopped short of declaring an “operational link” between the two. And it was that tiny part of the 54-page summary that McClatchy decided to run with.

 

Apparently, Strobel just couldn’t pass up the chance to make Dubya Soup.

 

Steven Hayes of the Weekly Standard described how officials involved with the of the report saw the misleading McClatchy spin catching on and approached Karen Finn at the Pentagon Press Office about hastening the study’s release.

 

Fearing a deviation from bureaucratic protocol more than the character assassination of her boss, Finn refused – providing ingredients for more Dubya Soup in Strobel’s suspicious, Bush-addled view.

 

“The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for a broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaida terrorist network…” was the next objective analysis that he sent down the wire, citing the “politically sensitive nature of it’s conclusions,” as the reason for the delay.

 

It makes you wonder whatever happened to the gruff, hotheaded newspaper editor in the movies. Like Ben Bradlee in All the President’s Men, hollering at eager young reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, to dig up more sources before he would print an expose that would destroy reputations and careers. 

 

I hate to think that he became extinct after Memogate.

(This post was originally published on the Oregonian web site)

Iraq "Greatest Disaster" Albright says hopefully

"I have said that I'm afraid that Iraq is going to go down in history as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy," Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright informed students and faculty at the University of Florida Levin College of Law on Wednesday. "The American forces are both the solution and the problem," she said. "They are like fly paper that attracts everybody who hates us."

They’re terrorists, Secretary Albright. Those people you refer to that "hate us." Angry and stomping their feet because we stop them from doing those nasty things that terrorists like to do.

About the flypaper part, I can only respond, "Duh." We’re in a war. You know, that thing where our troops are locked in a desperate struggle against a determined enemy who wants to kill them?

My mother’s kid brother was flypaper to the Japanese when he was wounded in the Philippines, on Leyte, only to be patched up, sent to Luzon, where he was killed.

And my dad, likewise. Only flypaper would be wounded twice in the Philippines and then go on to receive a souvenir from Okinawa that he would carry in his chest for the rest of his life – a piece of a grenade.

Would Secretary Albright dare to indict heroes like my dad and uncle of emboldening the enemy and creating more German and Japanese soldiers when they spilled their blood to resist tyranny?

Gateway Pundit put it this way:

In her latest attack on the United States, the military and President Bush, Madeleine Albright blamed the US for creating more terrorists and said that our soldiers were the problem in Iraq… Albright says that the US needs to fight the War on Terror without creating more terrorists... Because it is our fault that the terrorists hate us, you know.

Nineteen thousand Americans were killed in the Battle of the Bulge. Does Secretary Albright blame America for emboldening and multiplying the German Wehrmacht with our aggressive march across Europe?

Or, here’s a thought… perhaps a former Secretary of State’s vocal criticism of our president, denigration of our troops, and declaration that America is in the wrong emboldens our enemies most of all.

Pictured below is a newsreel frame showing my dad, Lt. Kenneth Vancil, in Okinawa during WWII.

Scooter Libby Disbarred

Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was disbarred in the District of Columbia because of his convictions last year for perjury and obstructing justice in a White House leak investigation for which he was sentenced to 30 months in jail and a levied a $250,000 fine. President Bush subsequently commuted the jail term.

I remember that travesty-- I mean case.

I even posted some rambling thoughts as I tried to get my head around the bizarre spectacle of Pat Fitzgerald helping Boris and Natasha hustle little Richie Cunningham.

Joe Wilson was content to let the whole world think that the White House was masochistic enough to send him on an African fact-finding mission to prove that the Executive Branch is filled with intelligence-manipulating, war-mongering liars. Also to show that Wilson is smarter and more capable than British intelligence, but mostly to prove that the White House is inhabited by intelligence-manipulating, war-mongering liars.

But when Wilson's report turned up -- not in a White House intelligence briefing but in the New York Times -- mouths dropped open all over the executive mansion, because apparently nobody there even knew about the trip to Niger.

...Now Scooter Libby, Chief of Staff to the Vice President, is facing up to 25 years for perjury and obstruction of justice for ratting out Plame to journalist, Robert Novak. His motive? To kick sand in Wilson's face for embarrassing the president of course!

Actually, that's not quite correct. Libby didn't tell Novak about Plame. It was Richard Armitage. Mean, jealous, vindictive Richard.... Wait. Hold on. Armitage is a vocal Bush critic and probably wouldn't care if Wilson embarrassed the president.

Enter Federal Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. Obviously somebody was out to get revenge on Wilson. Armitage didn't fit the description, so Fitzgerald kept looking until he found Libby.

Libby knew that Plame cooked up the African mission to prove Bush a liar and Saddam Hussein a pussycat who would never ever think of trying to purchase uranium from anyone. (Incidentally, Saddam Hussein did try to buy uranium from Niger, but that's not the issue here.)

...But first he indicted Libby for blowing Plame's cover as a CIA spook on a covert, top secret mission overseas.

Actually, that's not true. Plame had a desk job in Washington and was not covered by the Secret Agents Identity Act. Maybe that's why Fitzgerald never went after Armitage, the guy who really blabbed Plame's name to Novak.

So, let me see if I understand... Fitzgerald indicted Libby for something he knew Armitage did and, by the way, wasn't illegal in the first place?

...I hate to belabor this, but if what Libby told the guys was legal, why did it matter who he told it to first, and incidentally why was he under grand jury indictment in the first place?

There are lessons to be learned here. Never allow yourself to become consumed by jealousy and vindictiveness that festers, boils, and builds inside until one day you snap, blurt the name of a CIA desk jockey to a couple guys and then a year later claim under oath not to remember which guy you told first.

So, to the obvious glee of left-wingers everywhere, Richie was hauled above decks today for another public flogging.

A little excessive? In comparison to what?  California Yankee had these thoughts:

"Compare the sentence received by Libby to the slap on the wrist received by former National Security advisor to President Clinton, Sandy Berger. Berger stole classified documents and lied about the theft. The Justice Department negotiated a guilty plea to a misdemeanor, a $10,000 fine and loss of security clearance for three years for Mr. Berger. A settlement which was so lenient it was rejected by the Judge Deborah Robinson and replaced by a $56,000 fine, two years probation, 100 hours of community service and loss of security clearance."