The Hitler 'argument' again? Really?

Three different sources I've read/heard today are saying that the Democrats' attack line for the 2024 presidential election will be Trump = Hitler.  Just like Bush = Hitler was used. It's as brain-dead as it is baseless. They have no playbook anymore; You're racist.  You're sexist.  You are a homophobe.  You are transphobe.  You're a fascist. You're Hitler. If you don't agree, if you are their political adversary, that's their go to argument. That is their playbook. It's all they've got because they certainly don't have reason or sense or facts on their side. Nevertheless, be ready for it:

Let's Go Brandon hasn't learned from history

History provides a guide in how to deal with Putin's imperialism, but Let's Go Brandon doesn't know history. I'm not a fan of the Bush family, but when Iraq invaded Kuwait, George Bush (41) got a sizable international coalition together and used a coordinated invasion to crush Iraq. Europe responded, Middle Eastern nations responded and other countries did as well.  Now that we have Let's Go Brandon in charge, we've gone back to the Obama years of leading from behind.  We have a lack of coordinated effort, and we have sanctions that, despite all the claims of "harshest possible", are at best mildly annoying  to Russia while they invade Ukraine.  They may matter to some degree in the long run, but Ukraine doesn't have a long run at this point.  What's needed, if it's to be an economic battle only, is a complete financial freeze on Russia.

That means full removal from the SWIFT systems (along with anyone else who provides support for Russia, like China or Belarus), complete sanctions, impounding of foreign assets as well as other efforts such as a concentrated cyber warfare effort, war crime charges, as well as massive arming of the Ukrainians and a declaration of a No Fly Zone over the Ukrainian territory.

While people fret about Putin's threats of a nuclear war or further invasions, it's not real.  His approach is a combination of Soviet era propaganda and Hitleresque go as far as you can while the West hasn't got it's act together.  A lot of people aren't old enough to recollect the cold war, let alone WWII.  We had to live with a nuclear threat every day during the cold war, but it never happened.  Mutually assured destruction prevented it.

What needs to happen is exactly what I said above - a massive coalition with agreed upon steps, taken with the highest degree of urgency.

For Bush, family>country>politics

No political capital left, so buh-bye.

Via Hot Air, former president Bush finding his voice to criticize Trump is now real;

In 2009, less than two months after Obama was sworn in, Dubya had this to say about criticizing the new president:

“I’m not going to spend my time criticizing him. There are plenty of critics in the arena,” Bush said. “He deserves my silence.”…

“I love my country a lot more than I love politics,” Bush said. “I think it is essential that he be helped in office.”

Four years later he was still true to his word. Now he’s crapping on Trump. As a certain losing presidential nominee might say, what happened? It can’t be tactical.

Allahpundit goes on to speculate that it's personal.  It is. Bush cannot apply one standard to Obama and another to Trump without his motivation being questioned.  If what he says about country being greater than politics is true, then by extension, he should not criticize president Trump either.  But he has.  That means there has to be something greater than country.  That would be family.  Then-candidate Trump was pretty harsh on Jeb Bush, and he's family.

The Bushes seem as incapable of any level of self-reflection; Jeb Bush regardless of Trump, was not going to win the Republican nomination for president.  Even if he did he would have lost to Hillary Clinton.  Putting Clinton ahead of Trump from the perspective of most Republicans is not putting country first.  A Clinton presidency would have been the final nail in the coffin of America's future.  Either they're ignorant of that fact or clearly the Bush's took Jeb Bush's loss personally. 

For a family that prides itself on putting service to country first, this is a bad reflection on that image.

Team Bush lining up behind Hillary is good news for Trump

Hank Paulson, A Bush insider has endorsed Hillary Clinton.  No really. If ever there were a wedge for Democratic voters blind support of Hillary Clinton, a Bush team endorsement, or a Bush endorsement, would be it.  Remember, the second Bush was Hitler according to those on the left.  A flood of Bush team support for Hillary Clinton might be enough to push Sanders supporters into the Trump camp.  

It's a weird circumstance.  But it is a dramatic opportunity for Trump, and for the GOP.  Think about it - if there's no difference between Bush and Clinton, why vote Clinton if you are fed up with a status quo that's leaving the middle class behind? And if Bushites are supporting Hillary, is there really any real difference between the two?

And the wave of anti-establishmentarianism isn't just evident in the U.K. BREXIT vote.  Iceland just elected a novice outsider too. It's hitting closer and closer to home.

Bush goes after Trump, Rubio

We can't build a wall. Rubio sucks.  I'm stiff and stilted.

Not. Impressive.

Monday Thought Bubble

President Obama's reign of error has seen labor force participation rate (above) decline (~4%) by almost as much as president Bush's entire unemployment rate in 2006 (below) at approximately 4.6%.

Think about it:  Under Obama, almost as many people have left the job force entirely, as were unemployed under president Bush.

Plan of the Day: Syria's WMDs

Over at Plan of the Day, there's a brief post on Syria's WMDs that reminds us about Iraq's WMD's and connects the dots to Syria. US and Israeli intelligence knew Iraq's WMDs were moved by the Russians to the Beqaa Valley in east Lebanon.

Go read more, it's a great reminder that the Bush administration understood foreign affairs a lot better than they were ever given credit for understanding.

Why do we get the ugly guy?

This photogenic liberal, Drew Barrymore had this to say "I just didn't understand the American political system, and I felt really stupid about that." while she was busy pushing her "documentary" about the importance of voting. And she wore this shirt.

Meanwhile, Rowan Atkinson, not the most photogenic and not necessarily a conservative, came down on the side of conservatives with this comment as well as the one below with respect to the over-reach of political correctness.

 



“‘I’m not intolerant,’ say many softly-spoken, highly educated liberal-minded people,” Atkinson said. “‘I’m only intolerant of intolerance.’ And people tend to nod sagely and say, ‘Oh yes, wise words, wise words.’ And yet if you think about this supposedly inarguable statement for longer than five seconds you realize that all it is advocating is the replacement of one kind of intolerance with another.”

The law, he said, is “indicative of a culture that has taken hold of the program of successive governments that with the reasonable and well-intentioned ambition to contain obnoxious elements in society, has created a society of an extraordinarily authoritarian and controlling nature.”

But it's not likely he's going to be as respected by a lot of people for his comments as Barrymore would be for her shirt.

Bush is wrong on this

Former president Bush believes that the system is broken.  As a caller rightly pointed out on Rush Limbaugh's show yesterday, anyone who says the "system is broken" is trying to sell you a fix.  And as Rush pointed out, the fix is urgent because Democrats want everyone to believe it is urgent. And they want that because, as Rush stated, it is a political issue.  That is driving the urgency not a broken border. Democrats want more of what they perceive as safe Democrat voters. Some Republicans have fallen for the line that without amnesty the GOP has no future.

In any case, Bush, points out the "system is broken". But it isn't broken.

There are laws on the books that should be preventing the issue of illegal immigration. There are means available to enforce existing laws. What is missing is the enforcement. New rules aren't needed, proper enforcement is needed. What is broken, is the enforcement of existing laws. How can you tell if they are broken if they haven't been enforced?

Bush is wrong on this one. You can argue politically if he is wrong or right, but that's a different debate. The problem is the wording and saying that the laws aren't working and the system is broken.

Rush: They are still blaming Bush

Rush Limbaugh correctly calls liberals to task for blaming Bush, yet again, for Obama's mistakes:

We have in the Obama administration -- there's nobody even close to the violation of privacy and civil liberties, nobody even close. They can talk about Bush here, but nobody compares to what Obama's done. In fact, folks, as you know, I read the tech blogs.... And in all these tech blogs, they just love Obama.

They have bought the myth. They drink the Kool-Aid that Obama's the greatest civil libertarian, that Obama's into privacy, that Obama's just the greatest liberal that's ever been -- and they can't believe this. They just can't believe that Obama would do this! They hated Bush for doing this! They can't believe that Obama did this. I don't expect this to change anything, but our buddy Ron Fournier has this Verizon story with the NSA monitoring.

It's not monitoring. What they're doing is this: They have demanded that, for three months, Verizon turn over the records of every phone call, what is called the "metadata."...

...There's nothing like this that has ever happened. And the media, they just can't believe it, either. So our buddy Ron Fournier writes: "Welcome to the Bush-Obama White House -- They're Spying on Us."

Welcome to "the Bush-Obama Era..." Whose name is first in this story? Bush! And it's not just Ron Fournier. It's all over. F. Chuck Todd at NBC says this is all Bush's fault. If Bush hadn't been the guy that started this, Obama and Holder would not be doing it themselves. (I kid you not.) "Welcome to the era of Bush-Obama, a 16-year span of US history that will be remembered for an unprecedented erosion of civil liberties and a disregard for transparency...

They think they are Obama. They think they're the same culture, the same education, the same value system, the same pedigree, the same worldview, the same age. All of it! They think they are Obama, and they wouldn't do anything like this. So it has to be some hidden, sinister force that is tugging Obama in this direction that's totally against his own instincts -- and it has to be that Bush paved the way to make it possible!

Rush is absolutely right about this.  As theses scandals continue to spill out of the White House, the left is going to run out of excuses.  They have already gotten to the point of complete lameness.

Benghazi - nothing was wrong, this is just a lunatic right wing conspiracy to get Obama and/or Clinton

IRS persecution of conservative groups - we are outraged and we will fix it.

The Justice Department versus the media - it was necessary for national security (specifics will not shared)

The Prism program spying on everyone in America - blame Bush

And as each of these scandals become more involved and more is revealed the rationalizing and excuses will expand and change over time.  They will get weaker and weaker and less intelligible. They will become, in a word, laughable.

What's next on the scandal parade?  I think there's a money scandal to come. Just a hunch.

Bush in retrospect? Not yet.

I was never a huge fan of either Bush presidency.  Both men, Bush 41 and Bush 43, were decent and honorable men.  Both  had some core conservative principles.  But both were definitely not standard-bearers of true conservatism the way that Reagan or Goldwater were.  Both had some significant lapses in stewardship and conservative consistency.  I had a lot of issues with Bush 43 as president (from the national debt, to Harriet Myers) even as I realized any Democrat alternative would be far worse.  Nevertheless, Bush did do some good things and he was certainly far better than his successor.

In that regard, his popularity has been rehabilitating over time to the point that his approval ratings have climbed to the point where they are on par with the current president's.  Granted that is no longer a high bar but it says something about him as much as it says about president Obama.

Recently George W. Bush's presidential library was opened and all the living former presidents and the current president attend, as is custom.  Rather than provide a full retrospect - it's still too early for that - here is Bush's speech from that gathering.  It's a nice reminder of his decency.

Sore winners, 'sorer' losers

Remember back in 2008 and early 2009 when the Obama euphoria hadn't cooled? Progressives and liberals were all giddy with hope and change. As were those only slightly engaged in politics and were caught up in the hype.  They won, they believed the world was their (free) oyster.

That euphoria, that tingle down the leg, didn't really last very long. Sure, the left was still in love with Obama but you could see mean-spiritedness creeping back in to the way they interacted with their political opponents. They won, but they were angry - perhaps because they had been forced to endure 8 years of Bush, or maybe they are just angry people. You could see it in the "I won" comment from the president when he wanted them to sit in the back seat and shut-up. Republicans were along for the recovery ride and had no say. You could see the utter lack of attempts at bi-partisanship from the president and Democrats in Congress and the Senate on every issue from 209 through 2010. Afterwards you could see they engaged the GOP in Congress only because they were forced to do so. And when they did it, they did it with shrill ads about Paul Ryan pushing grandma off the cliff.

More politicizing Hurricane Sandy

Elections can wait...

Yesterday I postulated that the impact of Hurricane Sandy would be used as an excuse for Obama's impending loss in the 2012 election (after the fact). I neglected to consider that liberals would try to use the storm as a time out on the election clock countdown.

WASHINGTON (AP) - One week before a close election, superstorm Sandy has confounded the presidential race, halted early voting in many areas and led some to ponder whether the election might even be postponed.

It could take days to restore electricity to more than 8 million homes and businesses that lost power when the storm pummeled the East Coast. That means it's possible power could still be out in parts of some states on Election Day next Tuesday - a major problem for precincts that rely on electronic voting machines.

But as the storm breached the coast, even some of those intimately involved in the election seemed in the dark about what options are available to cope with the storm. Asked Monday whether President Barack Obama had the power to reschedule the election, White House press secretary Jay Carney said he wasn't sure.

Not sure? The real storm is going to be a GOP tsunami on election day, and trying to postpone it for voters to 'come to their senses' and return to Obama, is an act of desperation.  A few facts - the storm has had a major impact in a relative small geographic portion of the country.  New York and New Jersey are locks for Obama already, as is most of New England.  The impact in a swing state like Ohio is not enough to justify making special considerations there.  In other words, the impact on the outcome of the election is negligible unless a lengthy delay could actually help Obama.  It's the equivalent of a do-over but before the fact.

One last consideration for liberals to ponder.  If this was 2008 and Bush were president and his press secretary Dana Perino said that she didn't know whether Bush had the power to reschedule an election you would be screaming Martial Law and bloody murder over it.

There is ZERO justification for delaying the election.  Disenfranchising voters is peanuts compared to moving the goal posts or changing the rules right before the end of the game.  That's pure manipulation.

Anemic Obama recovery

Back in September of 2009, The Economist declared that the recession the country was in was over as of June of that year.  That being the case, how has the recovery been for you?  It has by standards of recent recoveries, not been so good for the United States.  After a steep decline you'd expect a steep recovery, would you not?  That hasn't been the case with the Obama-(mis)led recovery.

For real?

I've waited the last almost four years for the 2012 election.  My blog started back in 2008 as a reaction to the Obama election, even though I've been a political junkie much longer - in fact most of my life.  What's been a source of frustration of late is that getting closer to the pivotal moment, and into the home stretch on the four year cycle, I've had a full plate at work, a full plate in my personal life, and some issues with my Internet Service Provider (ISP) that have conspired to prevent me from engaging in the consistent level of blogging that I've been able to do in the past.

I can't wait for things to get back on the rails, but if they don't I'm going to borrow a page from Obama and blame my inability to get things done on George Bush.

No?

Well if I can't get away with it, how the heck does the president?  Is he really planning on running on a blame Bush or a blame Congress message? For real?

If you want to take credit for the successes on your watch, you have to be prepared to accept blame for the failures.  I think the president would actually win some voters back by accepting that he has not done a good job on the economy.  He's score some integrity and some credibility points with voters.  Whether it would help him or not is a moot point since the administration is either incapable of recognizing that there is a problem, or incapable of admitting it.

In my case, if I don't post enough over the next 6 months I'll have no one to blame but myself.  Reasons be damned - if I don't do it, if I don't take advantage of the political 'high season' - I will be the one responsible, and the one to have missed out.

I'm just saying.

Miss me yet?

George Bush was no Barack Obama, but is this untimely or what?  He's right about this but is a reminder of the Bush years going to help the Democrats get out the vote effort?  It certainly might.  If I were conspiracy minded I'd really question the motivation for this.  As it is I'll just question the wisdom of the 'miss me yet?' president's timing.

It's hard to be a security hawk these days.

OMG, I've gone hippie! Or not.

Back in 2003, conservatives rallied around president Bush when the decision to go into Iraq was made.  Even many Democrats who later disavowed denied their initial position rallied behind the decision.  Back then, so close after the events of 9/11, it was easy to believe that Iraq and Afghanistan were necessary endeavors.  In fact it was hard to argue that they were not. But after a decade of war, war-weariness has set in for much of the country.  In addition, there has been a diminishing rationale for the continued effort, especially in light of the killing of Osama Bin Laden.   What's a national security hawk to do? Give up on a robust national defense force? No.  Give up on the the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters?  Yes.  


There's a way to consolidate the GOP base and force an Obama stumble in one move - guess what it is.

Russia heading into 'free' elections.

If there's one item in the news before the coming Russian election that proves the country is no longer en route to a democracy, despite elections, this might be it.

Via BBC News;

The leader of Russia's only independent election monitor was detained for several hours, in a move she described as government pressure on the group ahead of Sunday's parliamentary vote.

Golos leader Lilya Shibanova was held at Moscow's main airport after refusing to hand over her laptop "for checking".

On Friday, the group was fined for allegedly violating election law.

Russian MPs have questioned why Golos, a foreign-funded organisation, is allowed to monitor Russian elections.

Golos (meaning "voice" or "vote" in English) is a widely respected election watchdog funded by the EU and US. It provides training for observers and runs a website compiling complaints of voting violations.

By Friday, it had recorded over 5,000 complaints related to Sunday's election, many involving the politically dominant United Russia, which is chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

This raises questions about how George Bush was able to look into Putin's eyes and get a sense of his soul. He must have been wearing rose colored glasses.

Hey CBS, Bush Still Won't Be On The Ballot

Change you have to see to believe.

CBS and Vanity Fair have either let the cat out of the bag, or wasted 90 seconds of a bunch of people's lives.  They've concocted a poll that shows that in a head-to-head match up, President Obama would beat President Bush 40/31 in an election.

Not only will that race never happen, it never did.  What an absolute waste of time!  Of course maybe that's not the case.  Maybe Obama 2012, in an effort to sound fresh, will run against Bush instead of the eventual Republican nominee.  Maybe CBS in its leftist agenda, has let the cat out of the bag.  After all, Obama spent the first 2+ years of his presidency blaming Bush for everything.  Now, seeking to deflect any blame directed at him, perhaps he'll resort to his winning formula of 2008 - class warfare, blame Bush for everything, and promise vague hope and change and hope nobody calls you on the details you are throwing out there.  Rely on a complicit media like CBS to whitewash your own flaws and mistakes, while tearing apart the opposition for you, and voila, you're all set for another term.

This is why I'm leaning more and more towards Gingrich as the nominee.  He'll mop the floor with Obama in debates and no manner of whitewashing will be able to hide that.  I'm not seeing that potential from other nominees whom I would rather see beat Obama than Newt.  But massive defeat in head-to-head debates is the one thing the press can't sugar coat enough.

Dan Rather is as pointless as a headless arrow

Via the Washington Examiner a clip of Dan Rather pontificating on Newt Gingrich;

Rather is the one who ran with the phony George Bush documents because he sooooo didn't want Bush to win.  When it turned out to be a hoax, Rather equivocated, and never really admitted he or anyone had done any wrong.

And of course Rather believes Huntsman is the best candidate for the GOP - because Huntsman really isn't a Republican, he's a liberal.  Keep your pointless advice to your liberal self Dan.  And while you are at it, just go away and don't come back.