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What Idiot Came Up With This?

Posted by Bill Crawford on Sunday, November 15, 2009 4:12:07 PM
They want to close Guantanamo, they just can't find anybody who see our new, enlightened ways and will take anybody we are holding there. So let's prosecute them. In New York. In a civilian court!
 
How stoned do you have to be to make sense of that? I understand Bloomberg thinks they are up to all the security problems- and who is paying for the extra Police? We all will.
 
I pity the poor judicial soul who gets to preside over that three ring circus. These guys were captured in a war zone- did anybody read them their Miranda Rights? How long will it take to get through the myriad of legal motions? How do they plan to fight the obvious grounds for change of venue, especially after the Attorney General got done talking publicly about how they should be prosecuted near the scene of the crime?
 
Here is the nuttiest part: one big reason we wanted a military tribunal is that the evidence rules would not compromise our anti-terror tactics. Bin Ladin left the Sudan for Afghanistan in part because he learned we held him as a terror suspect from the evidence releases stemming from the trials of the blind Sheik in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.
 
We are still at war, folks. I am not going to convince Eric Holder or his boss that we are fighting with our hands tied until they first face the fact that the war exists. They still think it is some sort of Bush political plot.
 
So let's the dancing midgets out of the Volkswagon and open court. Get it over with.
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We No Longer Have Terrorism

Posted by Bill Crawford on Sunday, November 15, 2009 3:54:37 PM
It's all been redefined. It is now "man caused disaster".
 
Well, call me an old fogey, but I was about two hours into the Fort Hood bulletins when I knew it was a terror incident. I don't care how long he served or what rank he was. He was a practicing Muslim and he was shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) while he unloaded about a hundred rounds into a military ceremony. That's enough information for me.
 
So his name, Nidal Malik Hasan, has been laundered out of the media whenever possible. They are happy to point out that he had attained the rank of Major. But, as Diane Sawyer said, "I almost wish his name was Smith".
 
Now the journalism world is trying to find a way to untie him from Al-Queda. He cracked under the pressure of hearing returning soldiers decompress. He was an Army boy. It was all too much for one person to bear.
 
Well, here is the dirty truth: we are at war with the radical Muslim world, and they are trying to use our tolerance and "diversity" against us.
 
Obama now wants Congress to back off from investigating all this. He can control the internal military investigation more completely.
 
Because, in the perverted view of the Left here, diversity is more important than national security. And Obama does not want there to have been a domestic terror incident on his watch. So, on with the white wash!
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Today's Comic Relief

Posted by Bill Crawford on Sunday, November 15, 2009 3:31:14 PM
I was getting my jollies hearing about Eliot Spitzer givng a lecture at an Ethics course at Harvard. Not as a negative example, mind you- I could have taken that with almost a straight face. I was just imagining him having problems setting up: "I forgot my speech. I'm sending a girl up on Amtrak with it now."
 
Then it got interrupted by something even farther from sublime. Obama has obviously decided that 10%+ unemployment is here to stay, and the stimulus package he passed to keep it from getting to a disastrous 9% is now officially a joke. He will be having a "Job Summit" later this year to attack the problem. Maybe they'll invite the Cop and the Professor from the last summit- they can serve up more beer.They'll need it.
 
Whatever. I can hazard a few solutions. But the Grand Uniter only unites those who already agree with him. Everyone else can go to hell. George W. had to get slapped around for a while before he stopped working with Democrats- Obama came in that way.
 
With all the disagreements between us on how government "creates" jobs, Obama and I would probably agree right now that the great health care debate is the biggest obstacle to growth now. I don't see it as any sort of panacea like he does- I think that the world of capital formation and investment doesn't like uncertainty. And nobody seems to have a clue where health care will be next year.
 
And that, folks, is as far from comic relief as you can get.
 
 
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Moon Water!

Posted by Bill Crawford on Sunday, November 15, 2009 2:14:27 PM
The biggest news of the year was the deliberate rocket crash last month into the southern pole of the Moon. It raised a pile of debris, including a significant amount of crystallized water.
 
The pole area was chosen because it had not seen direct sunlight in at least two billion years, and was at a constant -230 degrees Farenheit. This means that any surface water would not have long since been cooked off by the sun.
 
The presence of water is the single factor that makes a permanent lunar colony worthwhile. Water is the single most cumbersome life support material to ship there, and when it is broken down into it's components, there is a plentiful source of fuel available.
 
When a base is established, it provides the most constuctive platform available for launching to other places. The low lunar gravity is far better for launching than Earth, and any terrain base is better for long term projects than anything done in orbit.
 
So let's get the economy restarted and get on it. Oh, wait- that's at least two years off, and possibly longer. Oh, well.
 
 
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My Campaign

Posted by Bill Crawford on Sunday, November 15, 2009 10:55:35 AM
I took a couple of weeks off from this, in order to gather my own life back after a month or so of campaigning for Mayor of my home town.
 
It is never easy to pour your life into an effort like that, and end up on the losing end. It would be a denial of humanity to say otherwise.
 
That was momentary, though, for one big reason: this was not about me, it was for the reasons that I ran. One should never enter political candidacy because you are looking for a job.
 
I did well enough where many people have asked me to run again in two years. I will likely do so, because I don't see the issues I ran for changing markedly during that time.
 
I've been in this game long enough to know that one of the biggest hallmarks of a losing campaign is not adapting and spending too much time fighting the last war.
 
In the meantime, I will be a lot more active locally, and try my best to be some sort of watchdog on the prediliction of some politicos here to be some sort of progressive, regional focus instead of overseers of a small town that, in some ways, wants to stay a small town.
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Obama's Bluff

Posted by Bill Crawford on Monday, November 02, 2009 10:36:00 PM
The President has been holding back his Afghanistan troop strategy decision, ostensibly to avoid affecting the runoff election there.
 
Well, it's been 48 hours now since the opposition withdrew and handed the government to Karzai, and still...silence.
 
So, I guess it becomes more obvious that the elections he doesn't want to affect are the ones here involving the turnout of the Democrat base.
 
Which means that his priorities are politics first, military issues second.
 
No surprise here.
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Election Day Prelude

Posted by Bill Crawford on Monday, November 02, 2009 10:28:39 PM
Before I kick off with the twenty hour day I have in front of me Tuesday, I must  warble one more time about what is coming nationally.
 
Earth to Obama Nation: I've been waring all of you about this for months now. The reaction has been bubbling up for a while now, and the only time the national press has noticed is when it spilled into Town Hall meetings. You see, this is a conservative reaction, and thus is brought by people who the national press corps don't speak to or hang out with.
 
Much is being made of the declining party identification, especially among Republicans. What has been largely ignored is the concurrent surge in conservative identification, without a corresponding movement in 'liberal'.
 
This is borne out in the 23rd CD in Watertown, NY. The third party put forth a conservative candidate, and the support and money for the GOP nominee died. She backed out because she was going nowhere fast. Her ploy that she was doing it for the party was shown to be farce when she turned and endorsed the Democrat the same day.
 
The Democrats have put all their eggs in Governor Corzine's basket- the only race they think they have a chance in. If Christie wins, Michelle Obama will be wearing funereal black Tuesday night, and it will no longer be a country that she can be proud of.
 
One way or another, 2010 can be a banner year for Republicans- IF they learn the lesson that the groundswell happening around them is a conservative one. If they can tap into that and tie in with the swing voter buyer's remorse in Obama, it will be an amazing year.
 
If the health care monstrosity passes, all those semi-conservative Democrats they ran to win the swing districts in 2006 and 2008 will be on the endangered species list. The crazy thing is, there is nothing the Dem leadership can do about it. Their only hope is that the Republicans will screw up the opportunity be being convinced that running "moderates" will get them back in power.
 
There are no guarantees in this life.
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The Importance Of Off Year Elections

Posted by Bill Crawford on Saturday, October 31, 2009 5:30:44 PM
This year is the beginning of what pollsters call a "reaction cycle". It's what happens when a strong wind blows through the electoral playground, and the American voters, who as a group are not strongly attached to either end of the spectrum, show a little buyer's remorse and do a little janitorial work.
 
I first encountered this after Nixon swept everything in sight in 1972. The following year, the Watergate stories that were in the Washington Post wilderness during the presidental election were getting mainstream traction, and there were a few key elections that the Democrats did very well with. In 1974, Nixon resigned, and the Democrats elected their Watergate Congress.
 
In 1993, after Clinton brought back the Democrats running everything for the first time since before Reagan, the Republicans won some prominent elections- notably Giuliani as NYC Mayor at Christine Whitman as NJ Governor. Those races became a harbinger of the Contract With America and the Gingrich Congress. That one was made possible by a horrendous, ham handed exploration into universal health care by the White House.
 
Segue to 2009. A year after the Obama windstorm swept through here, both parties are concentrating on three off year elections: the Governorships of New Jersey and Virginia, and the 23rd CD in upstate New York, vacated by an Obama appointment. Virginia is a dead issue already, as evidenced by the White House's Clintonian recriminations ('You would win this if you just listened to me'). Corzine is in a dead heat with Christie in Jersey.
 
The NY Congressional race was highlighted by an internecine Republican squabble between the GOP nominee and the conservative who was entering because he thought her views on many things made her party affiliation a joke. Well, Dede Scozzafava has dropped out, and the Democrats have all but given up hope on picking off a Republican seat by splitting the opposition.
 
That's starting off with a two handicap, folks.
 
And now, Obama Care is coming off the press, filled with all the goodies the frustrated Dem base demanded, but pushed just under the surface to (hopefully) allow just enough deniability to collar the last few dozen votes that Pelosi and Reid need, but do not yet have.
 
The only chance the Dems have to hold Congress in 2010 will be for this to fail on the House floor. If it passes, and it is what I think it is after perusing the first 200 pages, all hell will break loose next year.
 
That's a hell of a Faustian bargain. I don't envy Obama, and the "hope and change" expectations he brought with his own mouth.
 
 
 
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Goebbels Still Lives

Posted by Bill Crawford on Friday, October 30, 2009 1:44:09 PM
A couple more "WTF" moments, where one simply stares at the television with an open mouth.
 
The new zombie creation (now that HR 3200 died it's Town Hall death) is a 2000 page monstrosity. They managed to get the CBO scoring below the $900 billion goal by remanding most of the Medicare revisions into another omnibus. Doing their best to overlook these games, Reid, Pelosi and Obama all swear that none of this will add a dime to the deficit, now or ever.
 
WTF?
 
After news reports (including CBS, for gosh sakes) spend a few cycles reviewing how the Administration job creation reports stemming from the Stimulus package (A.R.R.A.) are so erroneous as to be laughable, Press Sec Gibbs is out there today citing "one million jobs saved or created" by the sucker.
 
WTF?
 
Is there anybody in that press room willing to call them on this? Do they spray the room with something first?
 
How stupid do they expect to look before they start to feel used?
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The New Enemies List

Posted by Bill Crawford on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 12:15:38 PM
This is only an unholy surprise to all the Obamaites last year who chose not to dig below the surface of his unflappable image.
 
The few times during the campaign that his forward progress was halted- in the middle of the primaries and in early September- his Chicago roots would begin to show. When he wind is mostly at your back and the mainstream media is cheering you on, there won't be many of those moments.
 
Now Obama is approaching crunch time. Not only is he getting heat over his military posture, but his siimultaneous forays into energy policy, health care, union reform and budget management are all coming to a head. Next year is a campaign year, and everybody in his party knows it will be a damage control year. Everything that is going to get done has to get done now.
 
And in the process, a few declared enemies have cropped up. The Chamber of Commerce and the health insurance industry are almost self-explanatory. Why Fox News?
 
I'll tell you why. It wasn't so much because of the effect they had on Van Jones and ACORN (and oh, boy, did they ever have an effect). It was because the other media made public notice of what they were missing, and started talking about how they would start following up on Fox and where they were going. This was made especially public by the NY Times, who made a point of appointing an Editor for the purpose, whose staff would be responsible for (among other things) monitoring Fox 24-7.
 
What does that mean? It means that the Fox News reporting that has been shunned by many to date will start bleeding into the mainstream on a real time basis. They won't allow that because they think Fox is better- they just see Fox's ratings going through the roof and may need a piece of that to survive.
 
The NY Times still provides copy to the lazy, sloth ridden news staffs at the network news divisions in New York City. I think that this  phenomenon was too much for the White House to tolerate.
 
I told you that Obama was a street thug from Chicago. He surrounded himself with the same. It ain't a surprise to me.
 
So, all of you Obamaites out there, think about this: if he decides to keep going in Afghanistan and doesn't close Gitmo Bay, and his doubletalk rationales stop working with you, when you speak up and protest him, how will you be with him turning on YOU this way?
 
Because he will.
 
 
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Afghanistan Again

Posted by Bill Crawford on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 11:44:00 AM
This is an issue that gets more dangerous with each passing day. The request for extra troops made by Obama's hand-picked theater commander in Afghanistan still sits in his in box. Two months now, if I'm not mistaken.
 
And now word is coming out that a decision will be announced- after Election Day. You don't mean the runoff election in Afghanistan? No, I mean the ones in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
 
So our national security and the safety of our troops in harm's way are a lower priority than political considerations here. Do I have that right? Please, somebody chime in here and show me where I missed out in my reasoning. Educate me.
 
This is coming from someone who may have suspected that the whole Iraq war-bad, Afghanistan war-good thing was a political ploy last year- a wedge issue to beat over Bush and McCain and still stay away from the 'soft on security' problem. Suspected, but willing to give the benefit of the doubt because after the Iraq surge worked, pushing the terrorist elements towards the Pakistan border was a good thing to do. You can hide in the mountains, but you can't train there. Taking Afghanistan away was clearly the next step.
 
Why political motivation? Why would Obama request that the Bush Afghanistan report from the transition remain secret, and then send his Chief of Staff out to the talk shows to pretend that it didn't exist- and Afghanistan was just an untouched swamp that they were left to clean up? If you act that crassly, somebody is bound to call you on it and have it bite you back.
 
When it seems clearer by the day that you are holding up support for the troops so you have a better shot of getting your base out in a couple of elections here, the bite back will be that much harder.
 
 
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Campaigning

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 11:02:27 PM
My campaign in my home town is a bit of a shoestring operation. I've been outgunned, outspent and outmanned. His signs are bigger, his supporters are more vocal, his placards are fancier.
 
The grunt work is old hat to me. I've been doing phone work and door to door stuff for other people for years. Being out in the elements, and the damage it can do to your health is nothing I haven't dealt with before.
 
It is the main reason why I took a leave from this blog for almost two weeks. But I am at the end of the first phase. Tomorrow starts early voting, and that's where I'll be planted for the rest of the month.
 
It is inevitable when you are the name on the ballot to be drawn to personalizing this process. You have to keep in mind two things: one, you shouldn't be going into this to get a job. Two, it's not about you, it's about the issues.
 
Anyone who loses track of that should get the hell out. Politics is full of self-centered, movie star wannabes. The ones who are there just to get things done are the ones who usually get things done.
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Afghanistan Bananistan

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 10:49:45 PM
This is farce, and is rapidly turning to tragedy.
 
Obama, you wanted this war. I'm trying like hell to give you the benefit of the doubt on this one, and not believe that you signed onto this county as the "good war" just so you could beat Bush and McCain over the head with Iraq on the campaign trail while staying away from the 'soft on national security' label.
 
You took office and hammered out a startegy for Afghanistan. You handpicked a General to oversee it. You completed (your word) your mission direction last March.
 
Now, six months later, your General, who is one of the world's foremost experts in antiterrorism tactics, tells you that antiterrorism is not the right path, and counterinsurgency is.
 
So, while our people are putting their hides on the line in a situation that everybody agrees is deteriorating, you want to think about it all for another few weeks? I thought you already thought it through?
 
One other thing: your foriegn policy "expert" of a VP was the guy who was promoting breaking Iraq into three ethnic parts while the CentCom was developing the counterinsurgency that worked so well there. Why doesn't Joe have a sock in his mouth yet?
 
Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way. If you don't send him the 40,000 troops, get out entirely. Please don't pull a Solomonic compromise and send a few thousand more in- not enough to get the job done, but more fresh targets for the Taliban.
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Comic Relief Hits The White House

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 10:34:47 PM
Even the smart, hip, urbane Black man finally gets the pinata treatment.
 
It took about six months of well spoken dithering before it became obvious that there was nothing to be seen beyond the dithering.
 
The same week that Jon Stewart rips Obama for not eating anything on his full plate, Saturday Night Live plays out all his non-accomplishments on a report card.
 
It was just a matter of time. Welcome to the real world, Barrack. The bubble you've been living in couldn't last- the Left has been seething here for years, and they will not allow you to sweet talk any more.
 
Your problem is, if you try and deliver an agenda that 30% of the country wants, you will get hell from many of the rest. That is your Town Hall lesson for today.
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Ig-Nobel Prize

Posted by Bill Crawford on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 10:27:59 PM
Let me start by stating that I think Obama was as taken aback by all this as the rest of us were. He showed a genuine humility in accepting something he clearly didn't think he earned yet.
 
The Nobel standards are still there in most of the categories, especially math, the sciences and medicine. The Peace prize has been a joke for over a decade. If Jimmy Carter and Al Gore didn't devalue it, giving it to Yassir Arafat turned it into farce. That was as bad as the UN allowing Libya to sit in on their Human Rights Commision.
 
Liberals here idolize Europeans because they share so many standards. In this case, if your intentions are good, who gives a whit if you've actually accomplished anything? This sort of mentality is what allows hellholes like Bosnia and the Sudan to become bigger hellholes, under direct UN supervision.
 
Because if your heart is in the right place, you can't possibly be held responsible for genocide, right?
 
 
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