How… trite.

George W. Bush is right

Speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Understandably, Barack Obama doesn’t like his policies being aptly compared to one of the largest strategic blunders in world history. But then, the truth often hurts. If Obama has a better description of his Iraq withdrawal plan, based in reality and not fueled by hopeful irrationality, I would sure like to hear it. The sadness is that there is no other accurate description of it. One certainly cannot say he strongly opposes the terrorist forces in Iraq while advocating that we cease confronting them. Instead, he wants to “talk” with those who are uninterested in reason. With Obama, it’s as if that “positive parenting” nonsense would become our foreign policy.

Anyhow, not to say Obama supports Hamas, but there are certainly good reasons Hamas supports him.

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UPDATE More Democrats act indignant

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that Bush’s remarks were “beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation” at the celebration of Israel’s 60th anniversary.

…

As Pelosi was speaking, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel issued a statement in which he said: “The tradition has always been that when a U.S. president is overseas, partisan politics stops at the water’s edge. President Bush has now taken that principle and turned it on its head: for this White House, partisan politics now begins at the water’s edge, no matter the seriousness and gravity of the occasion. Does the president have no shame?”

Both are peculiar things to say, especially from leaders of the legislature, which remains significantly less popular than the president. If anyone knows what it means to be “beneath the dignity of the office”, it would be Nancy Pelosi, the most incompetent House speaker in recent memory, whose recent field trip to Syria makes her seem more than just a little bit ridiculous. Second to all that, I am sure that Congressman Emanuel realizes that the president is the commander-in-chief and chief diplomat. Encouraging one of our staunchest allies of his commitment to the region, and his hatred of appeasement, can only be a good thing. If that makes you feel bad, tough luck.

All the same, I find this amusing. When wimps are called out for being wimps, they get mad. Certainly they can find a way to channel that rage, and in the process, stop being wimps. These Democrats are rightly noted for their appeasement tendencies and they feign the most comical of outrage. You wanted to leave Iraq yesterday? That is called surrender. Or the redeployment of courage, or whatever euphemism you can concoct to hide the bitter tasting truth that today’s Democrats haven’t the stomach to fight for much of anything.

Related posts: Should We Kick West Virginia Out of the Union?, Taxing Crazy, Not-So-Great Expectations, Rosalind, Oh Rosalind, Obama, Testy - Hillary, Feisty

For those who think sua sponte military invention is inherently a bad thing, perhaps the relief effort in Burma deserved just that sort of response. The supplies were there. The need was there. The only thing standing between some of the most destitute individuals on the planet and survival were the four hardly working helicopters of a morally bankrupt and illegitimate military government. One aerial raid would have enabled the survival of thousands. In the interim, a government that has a vested interest in killing a sizeable portion of its population has continued to kill a sizeable portion of its population, through systematic neglect and theft.

For very little cost, the United States military (and the former countries of SEATO, to include Australia - oh, for John Howard!) could easily have diverted a humanitarian crisis of near-biblical proportions, and weakened one of the most horrific regimes on the planet. If there was a time for justifying the most minor of military interventions, the tsunami that devastated Burma is it.

Hillary Clinton is winning West Virginia because Barack Obama is unpalpable to its citizenry. He is a metrosexual socialist, and that doesn’t play with real Americans. That’s right - real Americans. Not the fair-weather Americans willing to toss their country into the deep just to be “cool”, who aren’t proud of their country until something truly self-interested happens in a campaign cycle that has the side-effect of disempowering individual liberty. Because, well - West Virginians (and many in the South, by presumption) are too ill-informed to realize the brilliance of Barack Obama.

Brilliant, hell.

The point is, whatever racist bigots may unfortunately exist, the reasons for opposing Obama are not racially based. His judgment is thoroughly suspect, and his ideology belongs more in Havana and Caracas, than Washington, DC. He chose to rise to prominence in Illinois by exploiting racial undertones, and willfully and joyfully embracing an anti-Semite reverse-racist “man of God” as his mentor. He now advances himself by saying nothing more than the bare minimum, employing substance only when required, and reluctantly even at that.

Obama will lose West Virginia tonight. He will lose it in November. And consequently, he will lose the presidency. We as a country, as lost as I sometimes think we might be, are not going to elect someone whose entire public career is Exhibit A in the Left’s case affronting the very spirit of the United States Constitution.

Related posts: Taxing Crazy, Not-So-Great Expectations, Rosalind, Oh Rosalind, Obama, Testy - Hillary, Feisty

White people won’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black. I guess we’re supposed to use West Virginia as our star witness to prove this point, but never call Idaho to the stand. (I know … the people in Idaho have more formal education and those pieces of paper make them more enlightened and able to choose a leader. We need to pity those poor, simple folks of West Virginia who don’t understand what is best for them.)

The sexist pigs who run this misogynistic society won’t vote for Hillary Clinton because she doesn’t have a pair and men enjoy making comments like, “I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die” while spitting and grabbing their crotches.

So, let’s all lament the racist and sexist nature of our country. At the same time, however, bias against the elders of our population is downright legitimate and acceptable.

John McCain can’t run our country … he’s almost 72 years old! Do you hear that, senior citizens across the land? The Democrats want to put you out to pasture. You can no longer be trusted to make important decisions. Your years of experience are not valued. You are senile and out of touch. You could die at any moment. Now, go away quietly and let the younger people run this country. Just worry about your upcoming bridge tournament and what time the mail is going to arrive. There, there now. Isn’t that better?

John McCain is in good health and wore out the much younger reporters who were following him on the campaign trail during the Republican primaries. He has not given any evidence that should make us fearful of his age. Yet, liberal pundits everywhere love to mock that he’s “older than color TV” and has “senior moments”.

So, will Democrats use McCain’s age against him? You shouldn’t vote for him simply due to the year of his birth? How is that any different than not voting for someone based on race or gender?

Hillary can still cause trouble - and I hope she does. But the fact of the matter is, unless Obama is caught with a communist gay goat, Hillary Clinton has lost the nomination.

Now the adults can discuss things. And in a frank discussion, real matters of global import must be discussed. Is Obama ready for this discussion?

Well, decidedly, no. Since Barack Obama has decided to equate the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the office of the President of the United States, its president has stated that (well, since denying the Holocaust in 2005) Israel is “a stinking corpse.”

His desire to sit down with anyone, anywhere, and “talk” brings memories of the initial John Kennedy / Nikita Krushchev meeting in Vienna, where Kennedy was kicked around and viewed as weak by the Soviet premier. This perceived weakness empowered Krushchev, and directly resulted in the Soviets’ gambit in the Cuban Missile Crisis. What is most puzzling is that Obama has learned nothing from history, and apparently understands little about the inherent value of a diplomatic meeting at the highest levels when a president of the United States is involved. As far as Obama seems concerned, the president is a pedestrian commoner, fit to mingle with the nuttiest, most oppressive authoritarian governments. Let’s just talk, and understand.

How utterly stupid.

This has been done, and it does not work. The same liberal press that derided George W. Bush for looking into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and seeing his soul ought to be dicing and mincing Obama’s foreign policy intentions into the proper insignificant, trifling little bits they so deserve. Unsurprisingly, that is not the case. He gets a pass - and it’s not because he’s otherwise qualified.

Always, no matter the time in history or the year of election, foreign policy is the most important public policy factor in a presidential election (but not always the most important politically, unfortunately). It’s the sort of thing serious thinking people ought to agree on. Domestic policy lies irrelevant if national security is left unchecked. The left chides Bush for being diplomatically inept. Whether you agree with Bush’s actions, at least Bush was able to justify and confirm his diplomatic posture through the use of force. If we get Barack Obama, not only will he be diplomatically inept, he will refuse to use force (remember, he has already taken the nuclear option completely off the table), which further marginalizes his diplomatic advances, and has the added bonus of diminishing the stature of the United States in the process.

I don’t want our country to necessarily be liked. I am perfectly fine with being feared and respected - being “liked” is a high school emotion. With an Obama presidency, we will be hated not for our arrogance, but for our weakness, and the world would suffer because of it. The Bush presidency has deposed two of the planet’s most awful regimes, both in one term. Given odds, I would take the under on two terms of Obama.

Perhaps Obama should check out Ahmadinejad’s blog.

My mom’s side of the family is from West Virginia, and I have quite a few relatives who live in that fine state. They all own multiple pairs of shoes, are literate, and enjoy friendships with every color and creed. Bizarre, isn’t it?

I had to see if the “Comments” section following the article was filled with the ridiculous, hateful stereotypes that many people hold for the people of West Virginia. Here is a sampling of the posted comments, maybe of which ended with something like “OBAMA ‘08!!”. (Way to unify, by the way)

Remember the movie ‘Deliverance’ ? Need I say more ?

Wrong state … wrong part of the country. This movie took place in Georgia … a state that went for Barack Obama.

Well of course she holds a 60% lead in WV, their all related to one another over there…

First of all, I don’t get the connection. Why does Clinton naturally get the inbred vote? Second, your argument loses more water when you confuse “their” with “they’re”. Apparently even those without jumbled genetic compositions encounter difficulties with grammar.

I’m so glad the bigoted WVs dont’ represent the rest of this wonderful country.

Again, a proofreader would have serious issues with this post. And, I am so tired of the assumption that a person is a bigot if he chooses Clinton over Obama. Is the African American population bigoted for choosing Obama in overwhelming numbers?

What the people of WV should be doing, is working to educate themselves on the issues, and not the color of someone’s skin.

What a condescending remark! There are countless reasons not to vote for Obama, and none of them involves the color of his skin.

West Virginia is, and always will be, backwards. Perhaps she’ll hold a victory speech on the back of a pickup at a Klan rally.

As I mentioned earlier in the post, I don’t think they seemed so backwards in 1863.

That’s because people in West Virginia are poor and uneducated.

You see, Mountaineer simpletons. If you just had more book learning, you wouldn’t be duped by this woman.

Who cares? It’s just a bunch of “backwards” country racist hicks!! They probably think having shoes is elitest. Look for HRC to be barefoot a lot this week!

This is showing true concern for the poverty-stricken who may not be able to afford shoes. Mock them! Why put the “backwards” in quotes? Just wondering. That must be some elitist technique of which I am not aware.

Hmmm West Virgina who really freakin cares. That state is dominated by republicans and if she wins the state who really cares

Really? Are Byrd and Rockefeller aware of that? Or, how about the Democratic governor Joe Manchin? How about the fact that the state went for Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton twice?

There are many more comments from which to choose, but I believe the above sampling is sufficient. West Virginia is a swing state, Obama voters. But, please, be as offensive and bigoted as you can … I’m sure the good people of the Mountaineer State won’t mind come November.

Amazon.com is suing the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance (DTF) over a new state law that requires Internet retailers to collect sales tax on purchases shipped to state residents.

Amazon has argued that since it does not have a physical presence in the state that it should not be required to collect taxes on shipments going to New York. “Amazon has no physical presence in New York,” according to the suit. “It does not own, lease, or otherwise occupy any physical property in the state, and none of its employees works or resides in the state.”

In addition Amazon says the New York law is unconstitutional based on a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that claims states are prohibited from requiring out of state retailers to collect sales tax unless the company has a physical presence in the state.

In the Quill v. North Dakota case, the Supreme Court re-established the rule that a state could not impose sales tax collection on a business unless the company had employees or property in the state.

New York defends the law by arguing that the Amazon Associates program, which allows Web site publishers to receive commissions by promoting Amazon items through their sites make Amazon liable to collect taxes on its behalf for those affiliates who live in New York.

I’d think that if New York could legally screw anyone, it would be the Amazon affiliates. That, however, is too difficult a task. The affiliates are hard to track, and most make supplemental income at best (or typically, not even that). The commerce clause be damned, then. That’s not where the deep pockets are.

Amazon is likely to prevail, but not before the grace period for registration passes, leaving them (potentially) on the hook for back due taxes and penalties if they do in fact end up losing the fight. These kinds of attempts at taxation are akin to imposing tariffs between and among the states. One of the central and most overlooked reasons the United States has been such a successful country is that the fifty states are the largest free-trade zone in history. Regional comparative advantage, the free flow of capital and the unrestrained flow of labor is built-in to the domestic American economy on an unparalleled scale.

New York is hurting the rest of us by doing this. The Department of Justice should step in and put the impetuous Empire State in her place.

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Related posts: Rosalind, Oh Rosalind, Obama, Testy - Hillary, Feisty

Hillary Clinton’s inner circle now fears a stinging defeat is likely in North Carolina.

“Look, we worked hard and gave it our best shot, but the demographics, well, they are what they are,” a top campaign source explained to the DRUDGE REPORT as voting began Tuesday morning.

The campaign now believes a 15 point loss, or more, would not be surprising. Her team will work hard throughout the day to lower all expectations in North Carolina.

The campaign hopes media attention will stay fixated on the competition in Indiana, where 72 delegates are on the line, and Clinton internals show a victory!

So, if she loses by only five in North Carolina, her case regarding electability remains strong (which I think it was, anyway, lowered expectations or no).

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I have a sneaking suspicion it’s GoDaddy’s revenge for canning their hosting services, though I have no proof whatsoever.

For those not from around here, there has been a multi-year debate regarding cable television and franchise uniformity in the state. Before, providers had to obtain numerous local franchises to operate in Tennessee. Once the so-called “AT&T bill” becomes law (because AT&T has been pushing for its passage), cable providers need only get one franchise license from the state. Some oppose it, but for the life of me, I cannot find a logical reason why.

Back on point - the bill passed 29-0 in the state senate. Senator Bill Ketron, a Republican, has been targeted and lambasted by Nashville’s largest circulating daily because his wife works for AT&T’s wireless division and he didn’t wear a sandwich board declaring it. Or at least, that’s what they imply they would have needed to be happy

What the Murfreesboro Republican didn’t mention then was that his wife, Theresa, works for AT&T Mobility, the company’s wireless unit, which he had noted on his ethics disclosures this year. Nor did Ketron mention the tie when he earlier acted as an unofficial spokesman for behind-the-scenes wrangling over the bill.

Wait a minute. He disclosed it, but then … what? He also disclosed his wife as an income souce. I am failing to see the ethical travesty here. What’s worse, the headline The Tennessean chose is an outright lie: “Senator discloses AT&T link after vote”.

As if any more criticism is necessary, what makes this story even more irrelevant is that the AT&T bill passed 29-0. If the vote had only been 15-14, I very well could see (somewhat) the paper’s point. But that’s not what happened and the possibility of Ketron’s recusal from the vote, which would have been voluntary in this case under the ethics rules, would have made no difference whatsoever. The Tennessean saw a chance to smear an up-and-coming Republican senator, and they jumped at the opportunity.

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The bill in question has a provision sponsored by Sen. Rosalind Kurita (D-Clarksville) that explicitly prohibits attorneys from advertising that they specialized in DUI cases, from advertising a discounted rate for DUI defense, guaranteeing a certain judgment in the case or claiming that the attorney had more expertise than another on drunken driving defense.

Well, guaranteeing an outcome is already prohibited by the rules of ethics. The rest of it simply reeks from a variety of directions. But why did Senator Kurita introduce this obviously unconstitutional bill?

In response to the [Attorney General's] opinion, Kurita said she’ll “have to find another way” to curtail drunk driving.

Kurita sponsored the amendment because she said she was tired of seeing suspected drunk drivers not be convicted.

Her response to increasing DUI convictions is to curtail the accused’s right to counsel, which is dubious on a variety of fronts, including the commercial speech aspect that Attorney General Bob Cooper noted in his opinion.

Anyhow, what’s the real reason for Kurita’s amendment?

Her opponent in August’s Democratic primary, Tim Barnes, is an attorney whose practice area includes DUI defense.

I hope he kicks her derriere.

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A Christian mom moves in with an agnostic family and she quickly begins to share her views. Meanwhile, the agnostic mom moves in with the Christian family and gets an earful from Granny. Some comments include,

“Being a good person isn’t enough. You are going to hell.”

“There is only one true faith. Can I read to you from The Bible so that you can know the truth?”

“You are damaging your child by not having religion in this house.”

Yep … that will work every time! Make sure you insult and scare people while implying that they are ignorant and abusive towards children. Who wouldn’t be drawn to learn more about your faith?!

I didn’t become a Christian until I was twenty-nine. When I was in high school, an ex-boyfriend offered to show me how to walk with Jesus. I wrote him a five-page letter explaining all the problems that organized religion had caused in the world. Another friend told me, “If you would just understand the story of Christ and his resurrection.” I’m not oblivious … I grew up knowing the meaning of Easter (even if my focus was on Cadbury eggs).

I distinctly recall watching some news coverage of gay marriages in San Francisco. My fellow viewer said, “I should go out there and read to them from The Bible. I’m sure if they heard those words, they wouldn’t be doing this.”

Yes, they would! I’m sure the dudes getting married had heard of that obscure book known as the Holy Bible. And, if you want to starting reading from the Good Book to sinners, why don’t you start with the 400-pound guy eating McDonald’s (not exactly treating the body like a temple) or the middle-aged guy who refuses to care for his elderly parents (a far cry from honoring his mother and father)? I’m sure you wouldn’t have to hop a plane to the West Coast to find some offenders.

I get frustrated with my fellow Christians who take a condescending approach towards unbelievers. I don’t believe you bring people to Christ by telling them they are sinful people who need to be shown the light. I believe being a good person who treats others with kindness and generosity is the best way to open doors.

I certainly believe that Christians should share their faith and testimony, but not in a confrontational and berating manner. I know that such an approach never worked in attempts on me. In fact, it drove me further away from any interest in Christianity and church. And, I think that shows showing characters like those on Trading Spouses this week have a negative effect as well. Maybe that was the plan.