In recent days, Newt Gingrich seems a lot like the post-02/24/04 Andrew Sullivan, a once-astute political thinker letting his own self-regard blind him to the principles he once espoused, principles which helped him advance in the political arena.  Ed Morrissey shows how Newt once supported the Ryan plan he decried last Sunday as “right-wing social engineering.”  Similarly, Andrew once opposed policies he would later come to embrace when Barack Obama pushed them.

Both seemed to have shifted course in order to curry favor with the media.

Newt may well still have the political acumen that helped him see a path to Republican congressional majorities in the 1990s, a acumen he often displays in his commentary on FoxNews.  If he is still attuned to the ways of American politics as he once was, he must know that he has no chance of securing the Republican nomination next spring, much less winning the White House next fall.  Perhaps his ambition for the job he covets has blinded him to reality of the situation he’s in.

You can’t succeed in the rough-and-tumble of Republican presidential politics with all the leading conservative commentators (and most of the minor ones) criticizing you.  You don’t win them back by dispatching your spokesman to call them “sheep.”

Newt should rest on his laurels — and do what he does best (dispensing political commentary).  Like Andrew Sullivan who took the slings and arrows of outrageous critics for challenging the gay orthodoxy, no matter what Newt, who took on similar slings and arrows for advancing conservative ideas, does, he has a secure role in American political history.  Sullivan’s role as a pioneer in providing politically incorrect gay opinion in the public arena will always distinguish him from the run-of-the-mill gay left-wingers.  And Gingrich will always deserve credit for forging the first Republican majority in Congress in (at least) two generations built on set of principles — and for helping elect the first successive Republican congresses since before the rise of FDR.

NB:  Tweaked the post to fix a number of glaring typos and to improve the flow.

As “Unemployment rates fell last month in more than three-quarters of the nation’s states“, including California, the Obama-Waxman-Boxer recovery still is not adding enough new jobs in the Golden State to keep up with a growing workforce:

California’s unemployment rate ticked down to 11.9% in April after the state added 8,900 jobs, a relatively small number in a state still suffering from the Great Recession.

The job gains are disappointing in light of U.S. employment figures, released earlier this month, that showed that the nation gained 244,000 jobs in April. California should have about a tenth of those gains if it is keeping track with the national recovery. The state needs to add about 12,500 jobs a month just to keep up with new entrants to the labor force.

The unemployment rate in April 2010 was 12.4% and the state has added 144,200 jobs since then.

That’s barely one-third of the “approximately 400,000” new jobs Mrs. Boxer, citing White House figures, said the $800-billion dollar “stimulus” would (save or) create here in California.  Oh, and that’s not counting jobs lost between February 2009 (when she and a majority of the California congressional delegation voted for the legislation) and April 2010.

Despite this sluggish job growth, our Democratic governor still thinks a budget which doesn’t maintain high taxes is a “non-starter.” ” Jerry Brown,” George Will wrote in a recent column, “is too eager to embrace taxes.”  Guess he’s okay with the state’s double-digit unemployment rate, the second highest in the nation.

“Don’t expect,” blogging law professor William A. Jacobson writes, “much to be made of [Senator Ben] Nelson’s comments ["splitting with his party over the [Obamacare] mandate”], because only heretical comments by Republicans are newsworthy and a big deal.”

It does seem our friends in the MSM make much of divisions in the GOP, but downplay similar splits in the Democratic Party as just civil family misunderstandings that happen from time to time in a big, diverse happy movement.  And while the Democrats are busy demagoguing Republican plans to reform Medicare as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan proposed in his budget, in the federal legislative chamber where the Democrats still have a majority, members of the president’s party, in Andrew Stiles words . . .

. . . have now gone 750 days without passing a budget in the Senate, and Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.), the budget-committee chairman, has remained steadfastly aloof regarding his plans to move forward. Conrad’s hesitance should become even more glaringly obvious now that his go-to excuse — the ongoing nature of the so-called Gang of Six negotiations — has been rendered inoperative following Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R., Okla.) decision to “take a break” from the talks.

Conrad served on President Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission and has spoken out frequently on the need for urgent action to address the debt problem. But when Conrad presented his initial budget proposal at a Democratic caucus meeting several weeks ago, he was all but chased out of the room by party leaders. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) warned members not to “draw lines” by signing on to any budget plan.

With the deficit now above one trillion dollars and the president expressing a commitment to confront out debt problem, the top Senate Democrat is telling members of his caucus to avoid committing to any budget plan.  That’s rich.  They’d rather attack the Republican plan than come up with one of their own.

You’d think this might be a story which would merit more attention in the mainstream media.

Back when I was living in Paris, trying to write a novel, I supported myself by teaching English to young French professionals.  Working late one evening, I decided to share some pastries I had bought with my fellow teachers and staff members at the language school.  When I offered some to the janitorial staff, then cleaning the classrooms, they looked at me as if I had come from Mars.  My offer was unexpected.  They didn’t know how to respond.  They turned away and continued cleaning.

One of my fellow teachers, an American woman who had lived in France far longer than I had, explained that French professionals and intellectuals treat workers with disdain, seeing the class difference as a barrier to interaction.  The attitudes of the French aristocrats which precipitated the Revolution of 1789 persist today among the educated élite.

I contrasted this Gallic class consciousness with something I observed one summer in high school when my father gave me a job working at one of the apartment complexes he owned.  I swept parking lots, trimmed bushes, transported building supplies and hauled trash.  My c0-workers, none of whom had gone to college, treated me as an equal, once even chastised me for slacking off.  One of them who later distinguished himself by grasping the ins and outs of building management later would rise to manage first that complex, then another before taking a job in my father’s front office.

In the middle of that summer, when we needed to strengthen the upper floor of a parking garage, my father helped out on the day we hauled and poured the concrete, a somewhat daunting task because the engineers didn’t think the ramp could support the weight of the cement mixer.  During the day, not only did he push wheelbarrows full of cement, but he also joked with his employees and asked them about their families.  Some called him by his first name.  One who did so, a World War II veteran who had fought on D-Day, knew all of his kids by our first names, always asking us about our lives and shared our stories whenever we toured a construction site with our father.

These stories came to mind when I read this post yesterday on Instapundit about why Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the recently resigned managing director of the International Monetary Fund, thought he could have his way with a hotel maid: (more…)

It seems that in the past whenever Hillary Clinton spoke her mind, she offended conservatives.  But, something happened in the course of her 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination as it began to dawn on her that the media were no longer covering for her.  She had to learn to fight for herself.  Maybe that experience taught her something else as well — to see the media for what they were — and by extension — to take a skeptical view of their favorites.

This week, after one of those favorites returned from visiting some rogue nations, former President Jimmy Carter, that self-righteous politician joined former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari in “hoping to visit the State Department . . . to brief officials on their recent trip to North Korea, but nobody at the State Department was available to meet“.  Seems the folks there know that Carter doesn’t have much serious counsel or sober observations to offer.   Seems they were acting on the instructions of their boss who did not mince words when asked about a meeting with the Georgia Democrat:

Chris Nelson reported on April 29 that Clinton reacted strongly when asked in a morning meeting if she wanted to meet with Carter. From the Nelson report:

The performance of President Carter and his delegation in N. Korea this week was either shameful or fatuous…or both…and exemplifies why Carter had no…zero…USG support going in, and even less coming out, per an alleged eye witness account of Sec. St. Clinton at the morning meeting the other day:

“Do you want to meet with Carter?” Clinton is looking at papers, and just says “No.” Then she pauses, looks up and adds, “HELL no!!!”

Kudos, Madam Secretary.  You’re one of the few in this administration with any balls.

(Via James Nicholas, via my former left-leaning lesbian friend on Facebook, with former modifying left-leaning, but she’s still a lesbian and always a friend.)

Tried to watch it, but found it, well, kind of dull.  His delivery seemed amazingly staccato, as if his heart weren’t in the address.

And did I hear him using Iraq as an example of what an Arab society could become if it did the right thing?  Wonder if he cited his predecessor for helping Iraq make the progress that it has.

As part of his apology tour, Newt Gingrich demonstrated why, despite his keen political insight and abundance of ideas, he is not presidential timber.  As if we didn’t know already from, to paraphrase Brit Hume, the promiscuity of his pronouncements.  Unlike the heroes of many Westerns (indeed of many myths), the former Speaker doesn’t know when to hold his tongue.  Great leaders also know to use their words sparingly — and so make them, when spoken, more significant.

You’d think Gingrich would have learned something in his 22 years (since his 1989 election as House Republican Whip) on the public stage.

Just look at how he explained his controversial statement (of which all those who follow Republican politics are now familiar) on “Meet the Press.”   As per Ed Morrissey who participated in a blogger conference call with the soon-to-be former presidential candidate, “Gingrich opened by saying that his remarks on MTP were not intended to be controversial, but says that David Gregory and the venue are partly to blame.”

Blaming the venue and a talk show host known for his hostility to Republicans?!?  Where has Newt been for the past forty-odd years?  Had he ever seen Gregory in action in the Bush era?  The NBC journalist has not been particularly successful at concealing his bias.  When he agreed to go on “Meet the Press,” Gingrich should have been prepared for a hostile round of questioning.

Calling Gregory’s question asking “whether Republicans ‘ought to buck the public opposition” and “really move forward to completely change Medicare” ”tendentious“, Michael Barone provided an answer that should have come naturally to the lips of a seasoned political professional:

The smart response would have been to challenge the premises of Gregory’s question. The Ryan plan is not necessarily unpopular; public sentiment depends heavily on how poll questions are worded. And the plan wouldn’t completely change Medicare. The current system would remain in effect for everyone now 55 and over.

But Gingrich accepted Gregory’s premises. “I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,” Gingrich responded. “I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.”

So a former Republican speaker of the House who wants to become a Republican president has just given Democrats a warrant to label a major Republican proposal “right-wing social engineering” and “radical change from the right.”

I had once been a fan of Newt Gingrich, having interned for him before he became Speaker.  He has a first-rate political mind.  Without his leadership in the early 1990s, Republicans would likely not have won back the House.  But, he never learned verbal discipline.   (more…)

Peter Fonda does not mince words when criticizing President Obama for his “handling of the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill“:

The star of the 1969 road movie “Easy Rider” was in Cannes for the premiere of “The Big Fix” by Rebecca and Josh Tickell, the only feature documentary in the official selection at the Cannes film festival this year.

Fonda — a keen environmentalist and co-producer of the film which centres on the explosion of the BP oil rig Deepwater Horizon, the ensuing spill and its consequences — accused Washington of trying to gag reporting on the issue.

“I sent an email to President Obama saying, ‘You are a f(expletive) traitor,’ using those words… ‘You’re a traitor, you allowed foreign boots on our soil telling our military — in this case the coastguard — what they can and could not do, and telling us, the citizens of the United States, what we could or could not do’.”

Jane Fonda could not be reached for comment.

With the exception of property taxes, California tax rates are among the highest the nation. According to the Tax Foundation, “California ranks 49th in the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index.” Its “Top Individual Income Tax Rate Is Third-Highest in the Nation.” Its “Corporate Income Tax Rate is the Highest in the West”. (” Nationally, only 8 states have a higher top corporate tax rate than California.) And its “Sales Tax Rate Is Highest in the Nation.”

Businesses are fleeing the state. Storefronts sit vacant on major commercial thoroughfares. The unemployment rate is among the highest in the nation.

Given all this, you’d think that the state’s leaders would be looking for means to reduce the tax burden in order to keep businesses in the state and encourage them to expand, jumpstarting the economy and creating jobs.  Yet, when it comes to fixing the state’s fiscal mess, Democrats have sought to balance the state’s budget by a combination of tax extensions and budget cuts.  Governor Jerry Brown, to be sure, has done yeoman’s work in rooting out wasteful state programs, but he hasn’t touched public employees’ compensation or considered significant reforms to their pension program.

Seems he’d rather raise taxes than risk offending those who paid for his party’s Get-Out-the-Vote operation last fall.

He has balked at Republican proposals to balance the state budget without extending tax hikes.  According to Allysia Finley in this morning’s WSJ.com Political Diary (available by subscription), the Democratic governor “insists that an all-cuts budget is a non-starter.” Interesting that he’s not even willing to consider a budget that attempts to hold the line on state tax rates.

Wonder why he has such a knee-jerk reaction to a budget plan that holds the line on taxes.

Ever since AOL bought the Huffington Post, it does seem that the internet company has been using its homepage to flak for the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party. Its “latest headlines” column regularly features stories favorable to the president and critical of the GOP. Today, they’re leading with a story about the latest product of the Obama campaign:

The Obama campaign is selling T-shirts on its website that show Obama’s face on the front along with the words “Made in the USA.”

On the back is an image of the president’s long-form birth certificate from Hawaii — the one the White House finally produced in April in an attempt to squelch the “birthers” who claim Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen, and therefore ineligible to be president.

Yet, this latest ploy may well backfire on the Obama team — and the Huffington Post.

Calling this appeal “shameless,” the Blaze blogger Stu Burguiere, who “never doubted” that “the president was born in Hawaii”, contends that “Obama LOVES birthers“:

Why?  Every time it is addressed, he wins. He even has people like me siding with him on it.  He loves talking about it.  He loves when the media talks about it.  And now, he loves raising money off of it.

No wonder the president refused for so long to release the certificate. He wanted it to appear that his adversaries were focusing not on his policies, but his person.  Seems the Obama camp is still trying to remind people of its most extreme (and conspiracy-minded) critics.  In the end though, this may make Obama and his team appear as the ones most obsessed with the issue.

He would have done well to release the birth certificate without fanfare and just move on.  That said, this latest gimmick gives us a hint of the kind of campaign the president intends to run, one focused not on the president’s policies, but on his critics.

In the past few years, I have been reading pretty regularly about certain great historical figures who have long fascinated me, notably Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. Earlier today, I started John Lukacs‘s The Duel: The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler, having previously enjoyed the author’s Five Days in London: May 1940 about how that great Briton came to become Prime Minister in the early days of World War II.

In the second chapter where the historian contrasts the “decisive turning point” in the life of the Nazi leader to a similar transformation in that of Charles de Gaulle — how each man found the resolve to lead his nation, Lukacs notes:

In de Gaulle’s prose there is the essence of a bitter love of his nation, a love that was stronger than his hate of his enemies.  With Hitler the opposite was true.  No one can gainsay Hitler’s love for Germany; but that love was only implicit, subordinated as it was to his hatreds of what he saw as his enemies, external and internal ones.

In the margin, I wrote, “sounds a lot like Al Qaeda.”  Instead of harkening back to the great days of Islamic civilization, Baghdad at the turn of the second millennium of the Common Era, its leaders dwell on their hatred of Western civilization in general and the United States in particular.  No wonder they devote themselves to destruction and cheer at the murder of civilians.

Bruce forwarded me a missive he received from the Courage Campaign, “an online organizing network that empowers more than 700,000 grassroots and netroots activists to push for progressive change and full equality in California and across the country“, urging their supporters to join them and the left-wing “Media Matters to tell Orbitz: stop using pro-gay dollars to advertise on anti-gay Fox News!”

It does seem that a lot of folks on the left identify anyone who diverges from their “progressive” and “equality” agenda as “anti-gay.”  In the e-mail referenced above, Adam Bink, the Courage Campaign’s Director of Online Programs pulls comments out of context and even claims that FoxNews “will be doing all it can to elect [Newt] Gingrich and the rest of his friends to our nation’s highest offices”! Guess Bink missed Brit Hume’s harsh criticism of the former Speaker on Monday’s “Special Report“:

“Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee have voluntarily departed the Republican field, but Newt Gingrich appears to have taken an involuntary step in the same direction, only four days after entering the race,” Hume said. “The former speaker’s Sunday comments about the Ryan budget plan as it regards health care were simply politically inexplicable.”

Yeah, a network working to elect Gingrich to a high office allows one of its more respected commentators to call the soon-to-be former candidate a “promiscuous talker.”

Does seem that in bashing FoxNews, facts don’t really matter.  It’s all about attacking a news network that gives fair hearing to conservative views.  It’s too bad that some gay organizations are so biased against conservatives that they believe anyone who treats conservatives fairly is worthy of censure.

So, if you find Orbitz‘s services beneficial, as long as the online travel company continues to advertise on FoxNews, please continue to patronize the site.  If they give into this left-wing blackmail (and stop advertising on FoxNews), well, they have numerous competitors worthy of your patronage.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Lori Heine‘s observation reminds us just how selective Mr. Bink was in his choice of quotations:

There are several on-air personalities on FOX who are actually very supportive of gays. Stossel, Judge Napolitano and the “Red Eye” crew come most readily to mind, but I know there are more.

It does no good to tell this to most gay leftists I know, though. Their response to any mention of FOX is Pavlovian. Immediately, they begin to salivate into a froth. It’s fun to get them going. “FOX News…ding-ding-ding…”

No wonder the FoxNews obsessives needed to demonize Juan Williams.  That the news network would regularly feature a thoughtful liberal undermines their narrative about Fox.

With gas prices north of $4 a gallon across the Golden State, both of California’s Democratic Senators voted for a bill more likely to increase than decrease gas prices.  Yesterday, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara “Call Me Ma’am” Boxer voted in favor of a motion to proceed on a bill which would “big oil tax loopholes“.  In actuality, all the legislation would do would be to deprive certain oil companies of a benefit Congress granted to all companies in 2004.  Christopher Taylor explains:

. . . the tax breaks in question are part of IRS Code Section 199, which allows any business to deduct certain expenses from their tax returns. The maximum allowable deduction is 9% of those expenses, and this is part of the tax code passed in 2004 under the American Jobs Creation Act.

The idea at the time was to make it possible for businesses to take some risks and if those risks didn’t pan out to get a tax break to reduce the pain and cost. This in theory would encourage businesses to expand and hire more.

These tax breaks appy to all businesses, not just oil companies, but the tax code specifically states that oil companies can only get a 6% break, not a 9%.

The Democrats backing the bill are merely grandstanding by bashing the oil companies.  They seek to deflect anger over high gas prices directed at the incumbent Administration and onto big oil.  Fortunately, the legislation failed, so, it was mostly a feel-good gesture for Senate Democrats, giving them the chance to vent against one of their favorite demons.

Even if the bill had passed, it would have done nothing to lower the price of gas.  Indeed, if Congress punishes the companies supplying the product, they’re likely to see their costs increase.  And said companies may well have to pass that cost onto consumers.  The New York Times reported that even some Democrats

. . . criticized the initiative, saying it was misdirected and would do nothing to ease gasoline prices and could cost American jobs. (more…)

Chris Matthews calls Sarah Palin ‘profoundly stupid’

ADDENDUM:  It seems the editors at Yahoo! give this story such prominence because they agree with Mr. Matthews statement, but most people will wonder at his obsession.

In the past three days, two conservative blogs have posted on issues which get at the heart of the anemic private sector job creation in the Obama administration — and demonstrate why if the Democrats continue to set economic and regulatory policy, we won’t see the level of job growth promised when the president sold us his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (AKA the “so-called stimulus”).

The first piece relates directly to that legislation.  Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker quotes from a study of the near-trillion dollar bill by economists Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor.   Reporting “their findings in a paper titled ‘The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Public Sector Jobs Saved, Private Sector Jobs Forestalled‘, they found that the “stimulus”

. . . created/saved approximately 450 thousand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs. State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment.

By sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the states, the Democratic legislation helped bail out many spendthrift jurisdictions, delaying their day of reckoning.  No wonder so many states have been struggling this year to find ways to cut spending.  Thanks to the 111th Congress, they, in the early Obama years, had federal resources to balance their budgets — and no incentive to economize.

So, the “stimulus” didn’t stimulate the private sector because so much of it went to state and local governments.

Today, at the Washington Examiner, Conn Carroll details how the National Labor Relations Board is trying to game the system in favor of unions, thus making it more difficult for private companies to expand and innovate:

Unions are a major drag on a firms competitiveness. Studies show that unionized firms spend 15% less on research and development than non-unionized firms and 6% less on capital investments. If a firm is in a competitive industry, this can mean death. If a firm is in an international industry, which pretty much all of them are today, it means less (sic) jobs here in the United States.

Read the whole thing!

First, on this occasion, I disagree with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.  He should let the state’s domestic partnership registry stand.  And as chief executive of the Badger State, he is wrong to ask that the state be allowed to stop defending it:

Gov. Scott Walker believes a new law that gives gay couples hospital visitation rights violates the state constitution and has asked a judge to allow the state to stop defending it.

Democrats who controlled the Legislature in 2009 changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some – but not all – of the rights afforded married couples.

Wisconsin Family Action sued last year in Dane County circuit court, arguing that the registries violated a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar.

It does seem I already blogged about this.

But, while gay groups may bellyache about Walker’s actions here, they have helped make the case for Walker’s request of Dane County Circuit Judge Daniel Moeser.  Recall how HRC worked to pressure the law firm of King & Spalding from representing the House in its defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which, like the Wisconsin legislation in question, was passed by an elected legislature and signed by an elected chief executive.

Other gay groups have commended California Governor Jerry Brown and the state’s attorney general for failing to defend Prop 8, an amendment to the state constitution ratified in the manner stipulated by said document.

For these gay groups, it seems it’s only right for the state’s elected officials not to defend the constitutionality of a law when they don’t like the law.  Otherwise, it’s just jim-dandy.  But, in praising a state for not defending a provision enacted in accordance with its constitution and criticizing an elected legislature from defending a law similarly enacted, they have endorsed the rationale Governor Walker is using to drop the state’s defense of the state’s domestic partnership registry.

Seems some believe the rule of law means the rule of the laws they like, not the laws enacted in a republican manner.

NB:  I revised and expanded this piece shortly after posting it.

UPDATE:   (more…)

In commenting on the president’s El Paso speech, Scott Johnson sums it up:

Those who disagree with Obama are not credited with respectable views. Obama disparages his opponents as acting in bad faith. In this context, of course, the bad faith amounts to racism.

The question is not just why the president insists on disparaging his opponents, but also why some many of those in the media so ready to disparage his predecessor as a divisive leader refuse to denounce the incumbent a rhetorical style which borders (as Johnson puts it) on demagogic and is hardly presidential.

As Donald Trump bows “out of the 2012 contest in true Trump fashion on Monday, saying that while he would not be a candidate this year, if he had run, he would have been able to win the primary and the general election too“, the only question is why it  is generating so much media buzz.

Perhaps it’s because since the media who brought him to the forefront of the 2012 campaign needed to find their own kind of closure to the circus they created.  In his brief moment in the political limelight, the real estate mogul and reality star did nothing to further the debate on the important issues of the day.

That said, he did contribute to our understanding of our compromised political discourse.  To be sure, he did end for once and for all (save for those who can never be pleased) the “birther” controversy, getting the president to do something he should long since have done to quiet the controversy.

He also showed us two things we already know.  First, that many in the media will do whatever they can to sensationalize the presidential contest (and attempt to make Republicans look extreme, crazy or both in the process).

And he provided yet another example of just how prickly the president is, taking everything so personally.  Why did the Democrat have do hold a press conference when the White House released the certificate, lecturing us on civil discourse or national priorities or whatever when all he needed to do to trump Trump was to have some minor administration aide take questions when the certificate was released?

Seems that way. (h/t - Instapundit)

John Williams, over at Shadow Stats, compiles economic data for inflation and unemployment the way it used to be calculated pre-1990. Based on that data, the CPI inflation rate is over 10%, and the unemployment rate is over 15% (see charts). The Misery Index is the sum of the current inflation rate and the unemployment rate. If it were to be calculated using the older methods, the Index would now be over 25, a record high. It surpasses the old index high of 21.98, which occurred in June 1980, when Jimmy Carter was president. Most believe the height of the Index along with the Iranian hostage crisis is what caused Carter to lose his re-election bid.

Verrrry interesting. But I still stick to my steak dinner bet with Little Miss Atilla that come Jan 20, 2013 it will be Barack Obama taking the Oath again.

P.S. – Employment rates among African Americans is the worst ever.  They told me if I voted for McCain that there’d be discrimination against minorities from The White House — they were right!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Here’s the thing… I read this article and thought — “Duh, no kidding.”

But then it dawned on me that many lib/progressive drones will never accept these facts. Because they are so blinded by their anti-military views and too infected with Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of U.S. special operations forces is a major success in our country’s war against al-Qaeda. As a result of the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation program and the intelligence gained from detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a major fraction of al-Qaeda’s senior leadership has been captured or killed since 2001.

This conclusion was inadvertently reinforced recently by WikiLeaks’ illegal disclosure of more than 700 classified Defense Department files on Guantanamo Bay detainees. Their publication has harmed our security and cemented the impression among allies that America is incapable of keeping secrets. But the material also provides compelling evidence of the effectiveness of Bush administration anti-terror policies after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The illegally released files, in addition to a host of declassified documents on U.S. detention policies posted at www.rumsfeld.com, record complex decisions and excruciating trade-offs that President Bush and national security officials had to make. They document the deadly techniques and intentions of hundreds of Guantanamo detainees who still desire to return to the fight, and the labors of analysts and interrogators who enabled us to stop additional attacks.

Gathering intelligence is a painstaking process. Some information comes in an immediately actionable form. More often, the significance of particular data, whether provided by senior or lower-ranking operatives, does not become apparent for months or years, as happened with the years-long effort to patch together information that led our forces to bin Laden.

The classified files from Guantanamo Bay, particularly those on senior operative Abu Faraj al-Libi, contain clues about al-Qaeda’s courier network and even mention Abbottabad. Had bin Laden closely followed WikiLeaks’ release of these documents April 25, it is unlikely he would have been there when U.S. Navy SEALs descended into his compound days later.

The primary documents are the best public evidence yet of our systematic efforts to ascertain detainees’ links to terrorism and to weigh the dangers of their potential release or repatriation. In a war in which our nation’s terrorist enemies hide among civilians and do not carry their arms openly, the question is not whether some unfortunate detention mistakes are made but whether there are appropriate protections to detect errors and correct them when discovered.

Read the whole thing — it is chock full of FACTS.

I can only hope that the most important lib/progressive sees the error of his previous anti-Bush, anti-American world view. He lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I am not holding my breath.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)