Ever eager to discuss anything other than the actual substance of their Health Care Travesty, Democrats and Liberal-Progressives have found a new red herring in Joe Wilson. The GOP congressman from South Carolina was the last and loudest voice of many members of congress who verbally objected the obvious lie that the Health Care Travesty would NOT cover illegal immigrants (it does).
The Leftists (especially on Twitter) went berserk, upset the Office of the President had be besmirched by some disrespectful hooligan! Of course you only respect the POTUS when a Democrat is in office – you’re only approved to call the Prez a liar if he’s a Republican.
I don’t think Wilson’s skewering will last long, but, at least for a little while, the left will point their hypocritical fingers and say SEE How DisReSSpectful the GOP is! Don’t listen to them!
Many conservatives are understandably flipping out about the Obama speech to kids today, but I implore my fellow conservatives to remember that your voice matters more than Obama’s voice, more than your kid’s government teacher’s voice. Democrats, Liberals & Progressives badly want to replace you with themselves as parents, but it is thankfully easy to prevent that.
After seeing the text of Obama’s speech, it’s unsurprisingly innocuous – I’m sure Axelrod himself scoured it to maximize it’s innocuousness. Michele Malkin is correct that the subtext of the speech is partly our concern, as well as potential abuses from government indoctrinators posing as schoolteachers. The speech presents an opportunity to conservative parents to use it as a learning exercise. What better way to teach your kids critical thinking skills?
For conservative parents whose children are exposed to the speech, here are some questions you can ask them:
How did the speech make you feel?
Was the speech fun, boring, or just OK?
Would you want to listen to President Obama’s speech again? Why or Why not?
Is there anything in President Obama’s speech that stands out? Good? Bad?
What was your teacher’s attitude toward the speech? Did he/she like it, dislike it or you couldn’t tell?
In the last election, do you think your teacher voted for Obama or for someone else?
What activities did the teacher have you do after the speech?
How did the activity make you feel?
Do you feel like it’s more important to listen to the President, your teacher, or me?
Did you learn anything President Obama? What was it that you learned?
Nearly anything can be an opportunity if you choose to view it as such.
“The president is also speaking in code. The Pope [John Paul II] spoke in a code which was implicit and understood support for the forces of freedom. The code the administration is using is implicit support for this repressive, tyrannical regime,” - Charles Krauthammer.
Unbelievable. Stuck in the ancient past.
Would you mind explaining please, Sullivan? How is supporting the forces of freedom being “stuck in the ancient past?”
Obviously Sullivan is greatly displeased with Krauthammer’s criticism of the stance Obama is taking on Iran. But, why? Hmmm.
So, Obama is desperately worried about displeasing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei whom he referes to as “the Supreme Leader.”
From Ralph Peters:
Silence is complicity. Our president’s refusal to take a forthright moral stand on the side of the Iranian freedom marchers is read in Tehran as a blank check for the current regime.
The fundamentalist junta has begun arresting opposition figures, with regime mouthpieces raising the prospect of the death penalty. Inevitably, there are claims that dissidents have been “hoarding weapons and explosives.”
Foreign media reps are under house arrest. Cellphone frequencies are jammed. Students are killed and the killings disavowed.
And our president is “troubled,” but doesn’t believe we should “meddle” in Iran’s internal affairs. (Meddling in Israel’s domestic affairs is just fine, though.)
We just turned our backs on freedom.
Again.
Yeah. Don’t you just love the postmodernist diplomatic flair Obama brings to the world stage? While he’s fretting over how to make good with whoever wins, the mullahs are busy trying to kill freedom that may eventually come to fruition.
It’s painfully obvious who we should be supporting in Iran. But Obama wants to play his naive diplomacy games, disgracefully worrying about not offending the Mullahs instead supporting a few million disenfranchised Iranians whose last glimmer of freedom is being stamped out before their eyes.
Does Andrew Sullivan really support a free Iran? Is he, like Obama, trying to have it both ways?
SILENCE is complicity. Our president’s refusal to take a forthright moral stand on the side of the Iranian freedom marchers is read in Tehran as a blank check for the current regime.
The fundamentalist junta has begun arresting opposition figures, with regime mouthpieces raising the prospect of the death penalty. Inevitably, there are claims that dissidents have been “hoarding weapons and explosives.”
Foreign media reps are under house arrest. Cellphone frequencies are jammed. Students are killed and the killings disavowed.
And our president is “troubled,” but doesn’t believe we should “meddle” in Iran’s internal affairs. (Meddling in Israel’s domestic affairs is just fine, though.)
Left to Right: You WILL BELIEVE Waterboarding is TORTURE! GAGHKAAAAAAAA!!!!
OMG, the left has dramaticly convulsed with faux indignance about the not-torture memos foolishly released by Obama. The topic has now reached feverish proportions. I’ve noted, in their discourse, leftists are purposely confusing actual torture with hard core interrogation in order to keep themselves outraged enough to distract from the the painful truth they don’t want to face. The left needs something to be Extremely Upset about to keep themselves going, and the not-torture memos fit the bill quite nicely.
Brutal, Unpleasant Reality
The anti-interrogationists label those who oppose their view as “pro-torture,” but, here’s the thing of it:
Did you know that America trains some of it’s citizens to kill people with guns? It’s called an Army. Do you know what happens to the bodies fo the people on the receiving end of American Army guns? The bodies of people shot by guns die, are torn to shreds, mutilated beyond recognition or sometimes their brains explode, being hit with such extreme force that they spatter all about in a stomach-churning goopy mess. If a targeted person happens to survive being shot by a gun, the bullets that penetrate their body cause excruciating pain, internal bleeding and/or infection that often kills them anyway. If they survive that, the target can face major surgery, possibly amputation of a limb, and months or years of physical recovery. On top of this they will likely face years of psychological recovery – if they ever fully recover. Quite an unpleasant affair, no? Americans have been killing non-American people with guns for some time – no memos justifying that, though. Perhaps we should ban killing by Army guns too, considering how morally repugnanat it is.
Oddly enough, people have been involved in killing Americans, too. For example, this event happened about 7 1/2 years ago:
That video always puts things in perspective.
Facts of the Matter
Speaking of perspective, strange how the left didn’t stage a freak out when Obama recently fired missiles killing 15 people, including three children. So the left is OK with America killing children when necessary, but they have an epileptic seizure when a deranged psychopath bent on killing Americans capitulates after being strapped to the floor and having water poured on him six times a day for a month. And, some more moderate voices have joined the anti-interrogation madness. Fox News’ Shepherd Smith exclaimed recently, ”we are America, we do not f**king torture.” But Shep has no such problem with an American Predator drone strike killing children who happen to be in the vicinity of their terrorist relatives. Can you say ‘cognative dissonance?’
We encounter more dissonance in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. telephone poll released in November 2007. 58% of respondents said the government should be not be allowed to use waterboarding to try to get information from suspected terrorists. Altering the question to include the caveat ‘if the safety of you and your loved ones was credibly threatened’ would have significantly altered the percentage, probably placing pro-waterboarding respondents solidly in the majority. Asking that question (including the caveat) of the populace of New York in the months immediately after 9/11/2001 would likely show a dramatic majority in favor of waterboarding. It is easy to hold to lofty, unrealistic ideas over the telephone from the safety of home after six years of no subsequent terrorist attacks. Things change when people feel their safety is truly threatened.
Part of the reason there have been no subsequent attacks is because hard core interrogation has proved effective. The CIA confirmed that Khalid Sheik Mohammad supplied the intelligence that aborted 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles:
In the memo itself, the Justice Department’s Bradbury told the CIA’s Rossi: “Your office has informed us that the CIA believes that ‘the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qa’ida has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.”
That’s called “actionable intelligence,” but the left is convinced we have placed ourselves in Grave Moral Danger by obtaining it through harsh coercion.
Blood-Colored Glasses
The humiliating truth is the left doesn’t have the stomach to face harsh, ugly reality. Protecting America is a dirty business and most leading liberals don’t like dirty – it offends their delicate sensibilities. They’d rather put the terrorists in therapy or send them home with reparations.
The debate the left is trying to usurp is about where we draw the line, about what is and isn’t too much. Waterboarding and the other coercive techniques used by the CIA walk up to that line, but not past it. It is good for America to question itself, to ensure we are doing the right thing, but the left keeps trying to rescue us from the thoughts they’re afraid we’ll have. They tell us there is no way they can be wrong, no way any opinion other than theirs can possibly be considered – and you’re vilified if you do. But, the leader of the left has already showed signs of retreat from his previous life as an anti-”torture” leftist.
Obama knows that he’s in dangerous territory by “banning” these techniques. His adminstration’s waffling shows he wants it both ways; to obtain vital intel without using harsh coercion – but I can’t help but get the feeling he wants the “torture” option in his back pocket. Obama is responsible for protecting the U.S. from another terrorist attack; he knows he has undermined himself and, believe you me, he’s worried about the ramifications. He needs hard core interrogation to stop those insane maniacs from killing more innocent Americans, but he promised to shut down Gitmo and gave the terrorists an interrogation resistance manual to boot.
Left wing opinion leaders have made a major misstep in selling the waterboarding-as-torture narrative, though given their warped ideology it was probably inevitable. The attitude which produced that narrative, ignoring all unpleasantries and hiding inside a hero costume made of faux morality and self-righteousness, is what undermines American security and will be ultimately responsible for the needless, preventable deaths of more Americans at the hands of terrorists.
Good news for Obama, zippy890 at Democratic Underground says this:
Instead of speaking in generalities about good-and-evil or the democratic transformation of an entire region, Obama laid out a clear and focused goal – “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.” It may not be easy to reach that goal, but by delineating specific, limited objectives Obama gave the public definite criteria by which his strategy may be evaluated.
So, Obama won’t be judged by the number of American soldiers killed like Bush was?
If there is another terrorist attack in the US, methinks Obama will be judged by that.
The power-elite neo-aristocracy have nearly quashed our constitutional democracy. They will not go down w/o an epic fight. #TeaParty#p203:45:06 AM September 01, 2010from web
