Bernie Sanders: Stalking Horse or Lap Dog?

So Bernie Sanders is officially running for President.

Something had to break. The optics of the goose stepping left having only one candidate were just not palatable.

My gut says he is / will be infused with Clinton money.

I haven't heard anyone else suggest this yet, so I just wanted to get on the record. Mark my words.

 

 

 

Full Definition of STALKING HORSE

1

:  a horse or a figure like a horse behind which a hunter stalks game

2

:  something used to mask a purpose

3

:  a candidate put forward to divide the opposition or to conceal someone's real candidacy

Al Gore's High School Logic

Just like Jason from Halloween, or Hillary Clinton, just when you think you have slayed the evil monster, they come back to life. Just like in the movies.

How is it that we are still talking about Global Warming as settled science? But just like any other religion, if you use logic or ask thoughtful questions to one of it's true believers you need to expect a caustic reaction if it challenges their belief system.

So it goes with Al Gore. Since the climate gate scandal broke he's been livid.

High School Physics

That's how Al Gore described the science of climate change this week, by which we suppose he meant it's elementary and unchallengeable.

I think that is both precious and prescient. It reveals and seems to advocate the simpleton logic behind the pseudo-scientifc belief that man made carbon causes Global Warming or Climate Change or whatever ails you.

Even if the data had not been manipulated and it actually did show that that an increase in carbon coincided with an increase in temperatures; that's your scientific theory? Really? It is foolish logic on par with the reasoning that the earth is flat. It has to be flat! Otherwise the oceans would have spilled off and we would have no oceans! That's what the "scientific minds" of the day thought when a flat earth was considered settled science.

What about the 4 billion years of climate change before man even showed up? What about the ice age, and then the warming, and then the next ice age and so on and so on. How did all of that happen without man made carbon? You can't explain to me how or why all of that climate change took place, but you're positive that this time it's because of man made carbon. Great. Fine. Thanks, but I need to speak with the Jehovah's witness waiting behind you. Have a nice day.

Well, Mr. Vice President, meet Ivar Giaever, a 1973 physics Nobel Laureate who resigned last week from the American Physical Society in protest over the group's insistence that evidence of man-made global warming is "incontrovertible."

In an email to the society, Mr. Giaever—who works at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute—wrote that "The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me . . . that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period."

Mr. Giaever was an American Physical Society fellow, an honor bestowed on "only half of one percent" of the members, according to a spokesman. He follows in the footsteps of University of California at Santa Barbara Emeritus Professor of Physics Harold Lewis, a former APS fellow who resigned in 2010, calling global warming "the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist."

It's a fraud because they pretend their belief is based in science, while it is nothing more than a belief system on par with any other religion on earth.

One of the least savory traits of climate-change advocates is how they've tried to bully anyone who keeps an open mind. This is true of many political projects, but it is or ought to be anathema to the scientific method.

Climate Change Denier is just a code word for heretic. The fire and brimstone label pinned on those who would even dare question the idea that man made carbon is responsible for climate change.

Global Warming is Real!

Obama Finally Creates Bipartisanship Through Dissapointment

It's expected that over at the Wall Street Journal you will find critiques of president Obama's policies a little more in depth than at left leaning lame stream media outlets. Yesterdays opinion piece by Brett Stephens was notably pointed though well said.


Is Obama Smart?

"I think I'm a better speech writer than my speech writers," he reportedly told an aide in 2008. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm . . . a better political director than my political director."

On another occasion—at the 2004 Democratic convention—Mr. Obama explained to a Chicago Tribune reporter that "I'm LeBron, baby. I can play at this level. I got game."

Stuff we have come to expect from our promiser-in chief. But just like he explained last week that he never meant that change would come tomorrow or next week, it appears that many are wondering if he really has 'got game'.

Then there is Mr. Obama as political tactician. He makes predictions that prove false. He makes promises he cannot honor. He raises expectations he cannot meet. He reneges on commitments made in private. He surrenders positions staked in public. He is absent from issues in which he has a duty to be involved. He is overbearing when he ought to be absent.

Again, not surprising coming from the WSJ. But it appears that the sentiment is not purely partisan. Support on the left is becoming shaky. Especially from Hillary supporters who held their nose and voted for Obama anyways.

Hillary Told You So

At a New York political event last week, Republican and Democratic office-holders were all bemoaning President Obama’s handling of the debt-ceiling crisis when someone said, “Hillary would have been a better president.”

“Every single person nodded, including the Republicans,” reported one observer.

At a luncheon in the members’ dining room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday, a 64-year-old African-American from the Bronx was complaining about Obama’s ineffectiveness in dealing with the implacable hostility of congressional Republicans when an 80-year-old lawyer chimed in about the president’s unwillingness to stand up to his opponents. “I want to see blood on the floor,” she said grimly.

"Blood on the floor". Glad to see that the left is staying the course with their appeals for civilty and their discomfort with rehtoric that could be seen as threatening or violent. But we'll save that for a different post. This post is about the left becoming unnerved with the Obama administrations continued dissapointments.

In his New York Times Sunday Review essay “What Happened to Obama?” Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen summed up the president’s lack of experience with devastating succinctness.

“Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he occasionally, as a state senator in Illinois, voted ‘present’ on difficult issues,” wrote Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.

The presidential scholar Matthew Dickinson went even further with a post under the headline “Run, Hillary, Run!” on the blog Presidential Power. “She did warn you,” Dickinson reminded his readers.

“Remember that 3 a.m. phone call? Remember the warning about the rose-colored petals falling from the sky? Remember about learning on the job? Sure you do. Doesn’t a part of you, deep down, realize she was right?” wrote Dickinson, a political-science professor at Middlebury College. “If I heard it once this last week, I heard it a thousand times: You were duped by Obama’s rhetoric—the whole ‘hopey-changey’ thing. And you wanted to be part of history, too—to help break down the ultimate racial barrier. That’s OK. We were all young once. But now it’s time to elect someone who can play hardball, who understands how to be ruthless, who will be a real ... uh ... tough negotiator in office. There won’t be any debate about Hillary’s, er, ‘man-package.’”

Wow! Is a Hillary run a possibility? During her run for the presidency, at many different points when others pronounced her demise, I never bought in. I always knew, and wrote that Hillary is like Jason from the movie Halloween or a vampire from any vampire flick you want to select. When you think Hillary is dead, DO NOT TURN AROUND AND DROP THE KNIFE, STUMBLING AWAY THINKING THAT YOU HAVE VANQUISHED THE MONSTER!

Until I see a decapitated Hillary, who has been dragged into a church and surrounded by a ring of garlic will I ever count Hillary Clinton 'out'.

Trump for President: The Art of the Spiel. Trump 1 Obama 0

It's been fun watching and listening to all the varied spin, er, I mean analysis on the Trump/Obama birth certificate story.

It was surreal to be watching cable news and hear that President Obama would be speaking to the nation in ten minutes regarding his birth certificate, and then immediately after that watch Donald Trump get out of his Helicopter in Portsmouth NH and claim credit for being the one who finally got the President to release his birth certificate.

Trump Takes Credit For Obama Releasing A Birth Certificate

"I'm taking great credit and you have to ask the president, 'why didn't he do this a long time ago? Why didn't he do it a long time ago?' When Hillary Clinton was asking, when everybody was asking, why didn't he do it? It's shocking. It's shocking," Donald Trump said at a press conference this morning on President Obama's birth certificate.

I was literally laughing out loud, shaking my head, clapping slowly and thinking "Beautiful, just Beautiful".

Having grown up in New Jersey, and having gone to college in New York City I have been exposed to the Donald a little longer than the rest of the nation. I respect and like Mr Trump, but when I heard he was running for president I thought, "here we go again". Yes, I was dismissive. But my head is now turned, and I am listening closely.

Here is what others are thinking and saying.

Right, Wing-Nut!: Birthers 1, Obama 0

Even with an offical long-form birth certificate, Obama has lost this round badly to the "birthers".  If they're the crazy nincompoops that the media makes them out to be, and yet are able to bend the president to their will, well...what does that say about his mental capabilities,exactly?

Keith Olbermann: Maguffins 1 Obama 0

It is another reflection of our well-meaning but sometimes utterly tone-deaf President that he really dug up the long-form birth certificate – even after the previous one had been released,

Going on to say that of course this is all due to racism.

And then from the Wall Street Journal.

Born in the U.S.A. 

As for Mr. Obama, he easily could have allowed the birther bubble to grow, further tarnishing the mainly right-leaning crowd that either fell for it or, as with Sarah Palin, was willing to give it too much credence. He then could have pricked that bubble by releasing the certificate at a moment of maximum political convenience to his re-election campaign. That the President didn't do so is an act of leadership that deserves a note of appreciation.

Pretty charitable of the WSJ. But, sorry, I can't agree. Obama did this to himself. He could have put this to bed a long long time ago by releasing the very same birth certificate he released yesterday, but the fact of the matter is that he did not. The super genius - smarter than all of us president held it back for all of the cynical political evil genius motives that the WSJ suggests, and insiders have confirmed. And sorry, it was not an act of leadership that lead him to release the birth certificate, it was Donald J Trump who was beating the president like a baby seal over this issue, and the president wanted it to stop. I think that is a form of Karma when you do something for evil selfish purposes and it comes back to bite you. Mr Obama really has no one to blame but himself.

Not ever being a "birther" myself I do have to admit to taking immense amusement and schadenfreude over the whole ordeal. After all, it was the democratic party that first went after John McCain as being not qualified to serve as president because he was born in Panama. More Karma, don't you think?

And in the Irony department? This whole movement was born of a Clintonista dirty trick. Her team originally made the assertion. The "birthers" are not just GOP'ers as the main stream media would have you believe. There are a lot of female Hillary supporters out there who hate the president for what he did to their Hillary.

Anyways, I guess in the big picture, it is good when the circus leaves town, but somehow you still miss it a little.

Symbolic to Ironic: Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton Agree

It is ironic that Rep Gabriel Giffords read the first Amendment from the well of the House of Representatives in a historic and symbolic reading of the constitution in it's entirety, and that now her purported allies want to pass laws to curtail that very right guaranteed by the Constitution.

Rep Robert Brady has said that he will draft legislation to do just that.

In an interview on CNN, Robert Brady (D-Penn) said he wants to make it a federal crime to use threatening language or symbols against federal officials.

 There are already so many laws providing special protections to members of congress, this particular law would do nothing but provide incumbents a cudgel to any rival that might dare to challenge. After all, what is 'threatening language or symbols'? It's up for interpretation I guess.

---

Sit Down, Shut up, and Pay up.

Rather than attacking the Tea Party directly, Yesterday Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick took a swipe at anyone who might disagree with the current administration.

Patrick reaches back to decry Obama foes

“It seems like child’s play compared to what’s going on in Washington, where it is almost at the level of sedition, it feels like to me,’’ the governor told students and faculty at a candidate’s forum at Suffolk Law School’s Rappaport Center. “People who have just resolved: If the president says, ‘Up,’ we will say, ‘Down.’ If the president says, ‘Go that way,’ we will say, ‘Go the other way.’ ’’

Wow! Along the same lines as the derision of the Tea Party, rather than debate the accusations merely state that there is no thought, and absolutely zero room for opposition

---

---

" I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you're not patriotic and we should stand up and say we are americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration!"

One Man's sedition is another man's free speech. The level of "hate Bush" rhetoric was like nothing else I have seen in my lifetime, and won't soon be forgotten. Although I was not a huge Bush fan and disagreed with him on many issues, I always thought the hate speech and hate imagery was over the top. And now, this thin skinned president is sending his friends out to set the stage for squelching the voice of opposition.

Obama uses drama to get his legislation through. You saw it in health care with the Wellpoint attacks. You saw it on financial reform in the Goldman Sachs attacks. Neither law addresses the issue's used as ammunition to get the bill passed, but that doesn't matter. Rhetoric is reality in the state-run-media era. And now, we set the stage for the next drama to unfold. The war on talk radio terrorism and the continued fear mongering of Tea Party activities.

---

se·di·tion

   [si-dish-uhn]  Show IPA

–noun

1.

incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government.

2.

any action, esp. in speech or writing, promoting such discontent or rebellion.

3.

Archaic. rebellious disorder.

---

Declaring speech as rebellious is lazy and stupid. It has happened in the past:

Sedition Act of 1798

The most important provision of the act codified the English common law of seditious libel and made it a crime punishable by fine or imprisonment to speak disparagingly of the national government or government officials in a manner intending to hold them up to public ridicule and erode their authority. Still, the act liberalized the English common law insofar as it allowed evidence of the truth of a charge against the government to be entered into the defense at a trial and insofar as it allowed the jury to be the judge not only of the fact of publication, but also of the allegedly seditious character of the published matter. Both of these reforms were also part of the roughly contemporaneous English Fox's Libel Act of 1792, widely viewed as a triumph for English liberals. 

The act resulted in several important trials for seditious libel in the late 1790s, most notably those of Matthew Lyon, Thomas Cooper, and James Thompson Callender. Lyon was a feisty Irish Vermont congressman who had made intemperate remarks about the unnecessary pomp displayed by President Adams. An unsympathetic Federalist judge, William Paterson, presided over his trial (United States v. Matthew Lyon, 1798), and although Paterson instructed the jury that they must find Lyon guilty of having made his seditiously libelous statements beyond a reasonable doubt, he was still convicted, fined one thousand dollars and costs, and sentenced to imprisonment for four months. 

Thomas Cooper was a transplanted British social critic who allied himself with Thomas Jefferson against John Adams in the presidential election of 1800. Cooper had published remarks critical of Adams, notably that he had borrowed money at too high a rate during peacetime, that he had maintained a standing army and navy, and that he had interfered with the independence of the judiciary in a matter involving extradition of a British murder suspect. Cooper's statements were probably matters of opinion rather than fact, and though they were arguably more false than true, the presiding justice, Samuel Chase, in his jury instructions, required Cooper to prove the truth of his assertions “beyond a marrow” before he could be acquitted (United States v. Thomas Cooper, 1800). This was in stark contrast to Paterson's standards in the Lyon trial, and probably flowed from some understandable confusion in Chase's mind over whether he should apply the standards from English private libel law (which he did), or liberalize the standards in keeping with emerging American ideas about the value of free speech (which he did not). Cooper was found guilty and sentenced to pay a fine of four hundred dollars and to be imprisoned for six months. Like the other seditious libel defendants he was later pardoned by Thomas Jefferson, but he refused his pardon, with what one historian later called “commendable perversity,” and insisted on serving out his sentence. 

Look for similar legislation coming soon to a medium near you.

Political Karma

This is beautiful. Really, just beautiful.

Hillary Clinton: Partisan gridlock at home hurts U.S. abroad

Really? Partisanship is bad on the global stage?

"We're now more than a year into a new administration and whether you agree or disagree with a particular policy, a president deserves to have the people that he nominates serving him," Clinton told the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Blah ha ha ha ha! This is just too good. You cannot make this stuff up. The same lady and the same party that let nary a political appointment by then President Bush, is now frustrated at the system.

Does anybody remember when the Republicans had the majority in Bush's first term, and the Democrats filibustered virtually every appointment? And when the Republicans got so frustrated they considered using their majority to change some of the parliamentary rules to go around the super majority requirement for nominations, the democrats howled and gnashed their teeth. Remember the protests that erupted due to the accusations of partisan grid lock?

---

---

Like they say....
"What goes around comes around".
"What is good for the goose is good for the gander".

"People don't understand the way our system operates, they just don't get it," she said. "And their view does color whether the United States ... is in a position going forward to demonstrate the kind of unity and strength and effectiveness that I think we have to in this very complex and dangerous world."

Oh, poor thing........

Does this mean she regrets hobbling the Bush administration?

I doubt it, but I am glad to see her get a taste of her own medicine.

Kiss My Hamas: Part IV

Q: How long does foreign policy on-the-job training take? 

A: Almost one year.


After giving Iran another year to build it's nuclear bomb, and to quell what was a real and nascent democratic movement, it has dawned on the Obama administration that 'reaching out and talking with our enemies' might not be working.

File this one under "No shit Sherlock"!

The beautiful irony here is that then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had taunted then Candidate Obama about the naivete of extending direct talks to Iran and now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has to announce to the world that diplomacy is not working. Boy, does she look annoyed! What I want to know is who is she annoyed at? Iran? or Obama? (tee hee hee hee)

I have made this prediction before, and this latest development only reinforces my intuition that Hillary will quit her post in late 2010 or early 2011, and then oppose Obama in a primary for the 2012 election. a la Kennedy vs Carter.

Good Times!

What is she talking about?

Mrs Clinton has been bumbling her way around Pakistan for the last 3 days. To accomplish what we really don't know. It started out like there was going to be some tough talk about rooting out Al Queda, but just like her mealy mouthed, what is she talking about response to piracy back in the spring, Mrs Clinton mumbled some nonsensical 'ya knows' and strung them together like they made sense.

Clinton faces Pakistani anger at Predator attacks

When the U.S. gathers evidence that al-Qaida fugitives are hiding in Pakistan, Clinton said Friday during a Pakistani media interview, "We feel like we have to go to the government of Pakistan and say, somewhere these people have to be hidden out."

What?

"We don't know where, and I have no information that they know where, but this is a big government. You know, it's a government on many levels. Somebody, somewhere in Pakistan must know where these people are. And we'd like to know because we view them as really at the core of the terrorist threat that threatens Pakistan, threatens Afghanistan, threatens us, threatens people all over the world," Clinton said.

Imagine me trying to use sign language as I scream "what are you saying?".

Good thing the world loves us again for the mere fact that we elected Obama, otherwise this could be a huge embarrassment.


x

This is a Pirate Policy???

This mealy mouthed answer to a press question about actions we will take to combat piracy is a disgrace. It clearly expresses that we really don't have any idea what to do. Said another way "C'mon ye hardies! Strike now!"

---

---

The right answer would have been:

"We don't know how to resolve this issue for the world at large, but the pirates should be put on notice. The taking of non US flagged vessels may yield them rewards, however when US Flagged vessels are taken by pirates, they will be dealt with by all the force the US Navy can bring to bear"

More embarrasing was her recount of American History and the pirates of the barbary coast. I am not sure what she found so funny. Was she trying to recall that 'shores of Tripoli' reference? But alas she could only come up with "ya know, we dealt with them all those years ago off of Moracco". Another lost opportunity to send a message of strength to the pirates. A right answer might have said:

"It is not lost on the American people that the ship sent to deal with the pirates, the USS Bainbridge, is named after the Commander of the USS Philadelphia who was taken by pirates near the bay at Tripoli. He and what was left of his crew were eventually rescued by Marines who bravely marched towards Tripoli, rescued the Commander and crew and essentially solved the pirate problem for the next 200 years."

But I am pretty sure she does not even know that story. Bainbridge? That sounds familiar? To the shores of Tripoli? That sounds familiar?

Janeane Gorafalo derides the Tea Partier's because they don't know their history. But a historically ignorant secretary of state? I'm sure she doesn't see a problem.