Spending Freeze
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
By Joy Tiz Sunday, January 24, 2010
“The beauty of being a narcissist is that even when disaster stares you in the face, you feel neither doubt nor remorse.”-Carl Vogel, “A Field Guide to Narcissism”
Telegraph reporter Stephanie Gutmann describes her reaction to Barack Obama’s appearance in Berlin: “After it was over I picked up the phone and called a friend back home. ‘It’s worse than we thought,’ I told him. ‘The guy’s actually crazy.’”
Guttman was talking about candidate Obama’s agenda as he presented it that day, in which he promised to take on the terrorists in Afghanistan, take on the drug dealers, rebuild Afghanistan, eliminate the building nuclear threat, secure all loose nukes, decrease arsenals from another era, form a new global partnership that will end terror networks, redistribute wealth, save the planet, withdraw all troops from Iraq, keep the oceans from rising, end famine, and reduce carbon output.
Incredibly, there are Obamanutz among us who honestly don’t realize that Barack Obama is a narcissist of the worst kind. Most people erroneously presume that narcissism is something akin to egomania or an unusually high sense of self-esteem. The truth is the reverse. Narcissists suffer from self-loathing, not too much self-love.
It takes a bit of narcissism to wake up in the morning and think, “Hey, I really ought to be leader of the free world.” Coming to such a conclusion in the fourth grade is a bit bombastic. Having some narcissistic traits does not a narcissist make. However, according to the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders (DSM IV-TR), grandiosity is the most important single trait in narcissism.
For all of the narcissist’s grandiosity, he is driven by a relentless need to pursue and maintain a source of narcissistic supply. A narcissist is at his most menacing when he perceives a threat to his perpetual supply of admiration and affirmation. No drama Obama showed early on the truculence typical of narcissists when they sense a threat to supply. The same president who remains steadfast in his willingness to meet with Iran’s barbarian in chief, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, bleats about imagined desecration by Fox News.
“The normal person is likely to welcome a moderate amount of attention - verbal and non-verbal - in the form of affirmation, approval, or admiration. Too much attention, though, is perceived as onerous and is avoided. Destructive and negative criticism is avoided altogether.”
“The narcissist, in contrast, is the mental equivalent of an alcoholic. He is insatiable. He directs his whole behaviour, in fact his life, to obtain these pleasurable titbits [sic] of attention. He embeds them in a coherent, completely biased, picture of himself. He uses them to regulates his labile sense of self-worth and self-esteem.“
To maintain a constant flow of narcissistic supply, he must project a confabulated version of himself as omnipotent, intelligent, or in some way superior.
“The narcissist then proceeds to harvest reactions to this projected image from family members, friends, co-workers, neighbours, business partners and from colleagues. If these - the adulation, admiration, attention, fear, respect, applause, affirmation - are not forthcoming, the narcissist demands them, or extorts them. Money, compliments, a favourable critique, an appearance in the media, a sexual conquest are all converted into the same currency in the narcissist’s mind.”
For the narcissist, nothing matters more than maintaining his supply. From Obama’s perspective, being chided by a cable news commentator really is a more pressing exigency than the possibility of Iran amassing nuclear weapons.
After twelve months of unabated blundering, the president just suffered an especially mortifying series of narcissistic injuries. The election of Scott Brown last week was a body blow to Obama. Time and again, his specialness has failed to translate into success for his fellow democrat candidates. Add to the Brown victory the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold free speech; a ruling that Obama says he is going to “fight”? Did this man actually go to law school at all?
“The narcissist is constantly on the lookout for slights. He is hypervigilant. He perceives every disagreement as criticism and every critical remark as complete and humiliating rejection - nothing short of a threat. Gradually, his mind turns into a chaotic battlefield of paranoia and ideas of reference.”
“Most narcissists react defensively. They become conspicuously indignant, aggressive, and cold. They detach emotionally for fear of yet another (narcissistic) injury. They devalue the person who made the disparaging remark, the critical comment, the unflattering observation, the innocuous joke at the narcissist’s expense.”
This time, the American people are the ones who must be devalued.
The pundit community is all atwitter. Will he or won’t he? Will Obama do a Clintonesque tack to the center following such harsh wallops to his ego and agenda?
No. He won’t. Not even if we assume Obama can find the center at all; nothing in his history suggests he is anything other than a radical socialist. There is virtually nothing to indicate that he knows or cares very much about the country he is supposed to lead.
Just a day after the dazzling and emblematic Brown victory in Massachusetts, Obama demonstrated how tenuous his hold on objective reality is. Rather than acknowledge the clarity of the message sent by the people in their rejection of his agenda, most particularly the monstrous health crimes legislation; a visibly choleric Obama postulated the preposterous and offensive theory that Americans simply don’t understand the genius of his plans. Hack sawing his friable connections to external reality, Obama came to the astonishing conclusion that what he must do now is make more speeches.
When Obama gives the State of the Union next week, anticipate the platitudinous gibberish we’ve come to loathe. Whoever loads the teleprompter twaddle will make sure it’s at least coherent. His demeanor and body language will be far more instructive than what he says. Obama is in the full grip of narcissistic rage. He is also prone to emotional leakage, which should get worse with as his ire escalates.
David Axelrod seems to be trying to pre-spin the image of a very damaged president by forewarning that we will be seeing a “feisty” president.Thus, they turned to David Plouffe, his 2008 campaign manager who will increase his role in the Obama administration. Recall that after the Brown victory, Obama went back on the campaign trail in Ohio, looking and sounding dreadful. He promised twenty times to “fight” for America.
Plouffe has the onerous task of protecting democrats from Obama’s toxic touch. Plouffe has announced his winning strategy for democrats in November: “No bed-wetting.”
Obama is not fighting for America, his grand jeremiad is with the American people. He wasted no time after his Massachusetts loss to declare war against the banks. The current leader of the free world is not in touch with reality. The toady press keeps accepting his fabrications and denials. And mental health professionals have shown a remarkable lack of curiosity about the mental health of the President of the United States.
It’s not in the nation’s best interest to put a narcissist in the White House. Bill Clinton’s debauchery demonstrated his willingness to put his need for narcissistic supply ahead of the well-being of the country he was hired to serve. Clinton’s narcissism was manifestly less toxic than Barack Obama’s.
Clinton was able to take in new information and change direction because his narcissism is less pathological than Obama’s. It is important to understand that we all have narcissistic traits; the quality of self sufficiency, for example, can be highly adaptive. We all need a degree of self-reliance. It’s more useful to consider narcissism and its elements as a continuum rather than a yes-or-no matter.
Blissfully unburdened by any core principles or values; it was easy for Bill Clinton to shift to the center if that was what it took to be adored. For all of his many flaws, at least Clinton was a known quantity with roots firmly planted in America.
For all of the narcissist’s grandiosity, he is driven by a relentless need to pursue and maintain a source of narcissistic supply. Clinton was driven by polls; he made major policy decisions based on poll data. His sexual acting out is also typical of narcissists.
Of course, Obama could surprise us all with a well crafted speech signaling that he has heard the message loud and clear that America does not want what he wants. Or, more importantly, what George Soros wants.
I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
“The beauty of being a narcissist is that even when disaster stares you in the face, you feel neither doubt nor remorse.”-Carl Vogel, “A Field Guide to Narcissism”
Telegraph reporter Stephanie Gutmann describes her reaction to Barack Obama’s appearance in Berlin: “After it was over I picked up the phone and called a friend back home. ‘It’s worse than we thought,’ I told him. ‘The guy’s actually crazy.’”
Guttman was talking about candidate Obama’s agenda as he presented it that day, in which he promised to take on the terrorists in Afghanistan, take on the drug dealers, rebuild Afghanistan, eliminate the building nuclear threat, secure all loose nukes, decrease arsenals from another era, form a new global partnership that will end terror networks, redistribute wealth, save the planet, withdraw all troops from Iraq, keep the oceans from rising, end famine, and reduce carbon output.
Incredibly, there are Obamanutz among us who honestly don’t realize that Barack Obama is a narcissist of the worst kind. Most people erroneously presume that narcissism is something akin to egomania or an unusually high sense of self-esteem. The truth is the reverse. Narcissists suffer from self-loathing, not too much self-love.
It takes a bit of narcissism to wake up in the morning and think, “Hey, I really ought to be leader of the free world.” Coming to such a conclusion in the fourth grade is a bit bombastic. Having some narcissistic traits does not a narcissist make. However, according to the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders (DSM IV-TR), grandiosity is the most important single trait in narcissism.
For all of the narcissist’s grandiosity, he is driven by a relentless need to pursue and maintain a source of narcissistic supply. A narcissist is at his most menacing when he perceives a threat to his perpetual supply of admiration and affirmation. No drama Obama showed early on the truculence typical of narcissists when they sense a threat to supply. The same president who remains steadfast in his willingness to meet with Iran’s barbarian in chief, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, bleats about imagined desecration by Fox News.
“The normal person is likely to welcome a moderate amount of attention - verbal and non-verbal - in the form of affirmation, approval, or admiration. Too much attention, though, is perceived as onerous and is avoided. Destructive and negative criticism is avoided altogether.”
“The narcissist, in contrast, is the mental equivalent of an alcoholic. He is insatiable. He directs his whole behaviour, in fact his life, to obtain these pleasurable titbits [sic] of attention. He embeds them in a coherent, completely biased, picture of himself. He uses them to regulates his labile sense of self-worth and self-esteem.“
To maintain a constant flow of narcissistic supply, he must project a confabulated version of himself as omnipotent, intelligent, or in some way superior.
“The narcissist then proceeds to harvest reactions to this projected image from family members, friends, co-workers, neighbours, business partners and from colleagues. If these - the adulation, admiration, attention, fear, respect, applause, affirmation - are not forthcoming, the narcissist demands them, or extorts them. Money, compliments, a favourable critique, an appearance in the media, a sexual conquest are all converted into the same currency in the narcissist’s mind.”
For the narcissist, nothing matters more than maintaining his supply. From Obama’s perspective, being chided by a cable news commentator really is a more pressing exigency than the possibility of Iran amassing nuclear weapons.
After twelve months of unabated blundering, the president just suffered an especially mortifying series of narcissistic injuries. The election of Scott Brown last week was a body blow to Obama. Time and again, his specialness has failed to translate into success for his fellow democrat candidates. Add to the Brown victory the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold free speech; a ruling that Obama says he is going to “fight”? Did this man actually go to law school at all?
“The narcissist is constantly on the lookout for slights. He is hypervigilant. He perceives every disagreement as criticism and every critical remark as complete and humiliating rejection - nothing short of a threat. Gradually, his mind turns into a chaotic battlefield of paranoia and ideas of reference.”
“Most narcissists react defensively. They become conspicuously indignant, aggressive, and cold. They detach emotionally for fear of yet another (narcissistic) injury. They devalue the person who made the disparaging remark, the critical comment, the unflattering observation, the innocuous joke at the narcissist’s expense.”
This time, the American people are the ones who must be devalued.
The pundit community is all atwitter. Will he or won’t he? Will Obama do a Clintonesque tack to the center following such harsh wallops to his ego and agenda?
No. He won’t. Not even if we assume Obama can find the center at all; nothing in his history suggests he is anything other than a radical socialist. There is virtually nothing to indicate that he knows or cares very much about the country he is supposed to lead.
Just a day after the dazzling and emblematic Brown victory in Massachusetts, Obama demonstrated how tenuous his hold on objective reality is. Rather than acknowledge the clarity of the message sent by the people in their rejection of his agenda, most particularly the monstrous health crimes legislation; a visibly choleric Obama postulated the preposterous and offensive theory that Americans simply don’t understand the genius of his plans. Hack sawing his friable connections to external reality, Obama came to the astonishing conclusion that what he must do now is make more speeches.
When Obama gives the State of the Union next week, anticipate the platitudinous gibberish we’ve come to loathe. Whoever loads the teleprompter twaddle will make sure it’s at least coherent. His demeanor and body language will be far more instructive than what he says. Obama is in the full grip of narcissistic rage. He is also prone to emotional leakage, which should get worse with as his ire escalates.
David Axelrod seems to be trying to pre-spin the image of a very damaged president by forewarning that we will be seeing a “feisty” president.Thus, they turned to David Plouffe, his 2008 campaign manager who will increase his role in the Obama administration. Recall that after the Brown victory, Obama went back on the campaign trail in Ohio, looking and sounding dreadful. He promised twenty times to “fight” for America.
Plouffe has the onerous task of protecting democrats from Obama’s toxic touch. Plouffe has announced his winning strategy for democrats in November: “No bed-wetting.”
Obama is not fighting for America, his grand jeremiad is with the American people. He wasted no time after his Massachusetts loss to declare war against the banks. The current leader of the free world is not in touch with reality. The toady press keeps accepting his fabrications and denials. And mental health professionals have shown a remarkable lack of curiosity about the mental health of the President of the United States.
It’s not in the nation’s best interest to put a narcissist in the White House. Bill Clinton’s debauchery demonstrated his willingness to put his need for narcissistic supply ahead of the well-being of the country he was hired to serve. Clinton’s narcissism was manifestly less toxic than Barack Obama’s.
Clinton was able to take in new information and change direction because his narcissism is less pathological than Obama’s. It is important to understand that we all have narcissistic traits; the quality of self sufficiency, for example, can be highly adaptive. We all need a degree of self-reliance. It’s more useful to consider narcissism and its elements as a continuum rather than a yes-or-no matter.
Blissfully unburdened by any core principles or values; it was easy for Bill Clinton to shift to the center if that was what it took to be adored. For all of his many flaws, at least Clinton was a known quantity with roots firmly planted in America.
For all of the narcissist’s grandiosity, he is driven by a relentless need to pursue and maintain a source of narcissistic supply. Clinton was driven by polls; he made major policy decisions based on poll data. His sexual acting out is also typical of narcissists.
Of course, Obama could surprise us all with a well crafted speech signaling that he has heard the message loud and clear that America does not want what he wants. Or, more importantly, what George Soros wants.
I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
Friday, January 22, 2010
A couple of very inspiring things happened on the way to this column. First, a reminder. One year ago this week President Obama was sworn into office. Rather than recap what's been written during the last year within the confines of this column, I'll take the opportunity to plug the website. plattecountylandmark.com, click on “Straight From Stigall” and you can bone up on some of my thoughts. If you're one of those goofballs that still have the creepy stickers with “Dear Leader's” Warhol-esque picture on your bumper, I'll save you the time. You won't enjoy the reading.
Meanwhile, as this paper goes to print early in the week, the special election in Massachusetts to fill Ted Kennedy's seat is underway. The early stories and polling, it can be said at the very least, have Democrats nervous about the prospects of losing this election to a Republican. Should it happen the “liberal lion” of the Senate godfather of “health care reform” the last living member of Camelot will be put to political rest forever.
No matter a Republican victory or loss, that it's even close is all you need to know about a year of President Obama. Massachusetts created the single biggest political story of a generation.
As the press and the Democrats tie themselves in knots at the prospect of an entirely blue state turning half red. As the country's electorate rages at tea parties, town halls, and protest rallies outside congressional offices to stop government overreach. I couldn't help but smile this week and think, “This is just as our Founding Fathers envisioned our system working.”
This feeling was only reaffirmed when I received a copy of an email this week by a listener to our radio show. This individual works for Commerce Bank, and he wanted me to read and even share the contents of the email with our audience (and Landmark readers, too). The email was an internal communication to all Commerce Bank employees from their CEO David Kemper.
What little I know of Mr. Kemper, I can tell you the email was unusual for its candor and direct message aimed at Washington. In a day and age of political correctness, and at the risk of offending Obama-loyal customers and employees, Mr. Kemper felt it was time to stand up and speak his mind on behalf of his company. The subject of the email addressed President Obama's new plan to levy a tax on financial institutions. Suffice it to say, Mr. Kemper felt this was the last straw. He offered some comments, and 6 points-of-fact he felt his employees needed to know. Some abbreviated highlights:
“I am writing to you to keep you informed concerning the current highly politicized debate in Washington concerning additional taxes and regulation on the banking industry. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Obama Administration has chosen to vilify the banking industry as a politically expedient way of boosting their standing in light of a very difficult economy.…The Obama Administration, the media, and some members of Congress have been making some incorrect and very misleading comments concerning the cost of the financial crisis and governmental losses on the TARP program… saying that the industry "owes" further taxes to the governmenton moral grounds or to make up for losses the government will take on advances to other industries is a very dangerous precedent and further contributes to a populist anti-business feeling that could be very harmful in the long run.
The facts are:
1) Commerce Bancshares luckily did not take any TARP funds because we did not need it, did not want to be beholden to the government and did not want to pay a very expensive rate on the money.
2) $700 billion was appropriated for the fund of which $250 billion was advanced to the banking industry. Nearly 75% of that money advanced to the banks has already been paid back.
3) It is estimated by the US Treasury that the government will make a profit on their TARP advances to commercial banks of around $19 billion. This profit is not being mentioned by politicians who are implying the government will lose money on the bank portion of this program. This is patently incorrect.
4) The government will lose money (perhaps a lot of money) on its TARP advances to AIG, GMAC and the auto companies. The government made aconscious decision to subsidize the auto industry and AIG - that is their choice but has little to nothing to do with main stream commercial banks…
5) The banking industry will pay for the losses of failed banks through the industry's recapitalization of the FDIC fund. Last year we paid $28 million into the FDIC fund, an increase of $24 million over 2008: that $24 million comes directly out of our profits… This is very expensive but the industry (not the government) is paying for the failure of poorly run banks.
6) We welcome higher capital ratios and strong regulation because we do not like paying for the failure of weak banks. We all know we have a tough economy and high unemployment and are working closely with our customers through this challenging period. We also need to communicate that weakening the banking system through unfair taxation and excessive regulation is going to severely damage our industry and economic recovery."
Now that's leadership.
America is being awakened and engaged in their country en masse for the first time in generations. Voters who would traditionally vote party line, or with their union, or with that familiar family name on the ballot know this week's vote is about something much more. The traditional assumptions about blue states and red states are dead this week. Executives and CEOs are standing up, speaking out, and even pushing back when free markets and their very livelihoods come under attack from Washington.
It's truly inspiring to watch. It's just what our Constitution ordered.
(Be inspired by Chris Stigall each week only in The Landmark. And listen to him each morning on 710 KCMO. Email him at stigall@710kcmo.com)
Meanwhile, as this paper goes to print early in the week, the special election in Massachusetts to fill Ted Kennedy's seat is underway. The early stories and polling, it can be said at the very least, have Democrats nervous about the prospects of losing this election to a Republican. Should it happen the “liberal lion” of the Senate godfather of “health care reform” the last living member of Camelot will be put to political rest forever.
No matter a Republican victory or loss, that it's even close is all you need to know about a year of President Obama. Massachusetts created the single biggest political story of a generation.
As the press and the Democrats tie themselves in knots at the prospect of an entirely blue state turning half red. As the country's electorate rages at tea parties, town halls, and protest rallies outside congressional offices to stop government overreach. I couldn't help but smile this week and think, “This is just as our Founding Fathers envisioned our system working.”
This feeling was only reaffirmed when I received a copy of an email this week by a listener to our radio show. This individual works for Commerce Bank, and he wanted me to read and even share the contents of the email with our audience (and Landmark readers, too). The email was an internal communication to all Commerce Bank employees from their CEO David Kemper.
What little I know of Mr. Kemper, I can tell you the email was unusual for its candor and direct message aimed at Washington. In a day and age of political correctness, and at the risk of offending Obama-loyal customers and employees, Mr. Kemper felt it was time to stand up and speak his mind on behalf of his company. The subject of the email addressed President Obama's new plan to levy a tax on financial institutions. Suffice it to say, Mr. Kemper felt this was the last straw. He offered some comments, and 6 points-of-fact he felt his employees needed to know. Some abbreviated highlights:
“I am writing to you to keep you informed concerning the current highly politicized debate in Washington concerning additional taxes and regulation on the banking industry. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Obama Administration has chosen to vilify the banking industry as a politically expedient way of boosting their standing in light of a very difficult economy.…The Obama Administration, the media, and some members of Congress have been making some incorrect and very misleading comments concerning the cost of the financial crisis and governmental losses on the TARP program… saying that the industry "owes" further taxes to the governmenton moral grounds or to make up for losses the government will take on advances to other industries is a very dangerous precedent and further contributes to a populist anti-business feeling that could be very harmful in the long run.
The facts are:
1) Commerce Bancshares luckily did not take any TARP funds because we did not need it, did not want to be beholden to the government and did not want to pay a very expensive rate on the money.
2) $700 billion was appropriated for the fund of which $250 billion was advanced to the banking industry. Nearly 75% of that money advanced to the banks has already been paid back.
3) It is estimated by the US Treasury that the government will make a profit on their TARP advances to commercial banks of around $19 billion. This profit is not being mentioned by politicians who are implying the government will lose money on the bank portion of this program. This is patently incorrect.
4) The government will lose money (perhaps a lot of money) on its TARP advances to AIG, GMAC and the auto companies. The government made aconscious decision to subsidize the auto industry and AIG - that is their choice but has little to nothing to do with main stream commercial banks…
5) The banking industry will pay for the losses of failed banks through the industry's recapitalization of the FDIC fund. Last year we paid $28 million into the FDIC fund, an increase of $24 million over 2008: that $24 million comes directly out of our profits… This is very expensive but the industry (not the government) is paying for the failure of poorly run banks.
6) We welcome higher capital ratios and strong regulation because we do not like paying for the failure of weak banks. We all know we have a tough economy and high unemployment and are working closely with our customers through this challenging period. We also need to communicate that weakening the banking system through unfair taxation and excessive regulation is going to severely damage our industry and economic recovery."
Now that's leadership.
America is being awakened and engaged in their country en masse for the first time in generations. Voters who would traditionally vote party line, or with their union, or with that familiar family name on the ballot know this week's vote is about something much more. The traditional assumptions about blue states and red states are dead this week. Executives and CEOs are standing up, speaking out, and even pushing back when free markets and their very livelihoods come under attack from Washington.
It's truly inspiring to watch. It's just what our Constitution ordered.
(Be inspired by Chris Stigall each week only in The Landmark. And listen to him each morning on 710 KCMO. Email him at stigall@710kcmo.com)
Thursday, January 21, 2010
ONE YEAR GONE: President George W. Bush Answered the Calling of Our Time
Adam Baldwin has always been one of my favorite actors. Loved him on Firefly!
ONE YEAR GONE: President George W. Bush Answered the Calling of Our Time
ONE YEAR GONE: President George W. Bush Answered the Calling of Our Time
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Preserved here to make sure it stays:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/01/19/jeffrey-scott-shapiro-bush-obama-president-betrayed/
America Betrayed President Bush
It's almost hard to believe but Wednesday, January 20 marks exactly one year since President Bush left the White House.
During his last public ceremony as commander in chief, he was booed by thousands of Americans who simutaneously cheered for Barack Obama as he was sworn into office on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
Except for a June 17 speech in Erie, Pennsylvania in which Bush defended his policies and criticized Obama’s, the former president has been remarkably silent about his successor. He has not fired back at Obama despite the new administration inappropriately blaming Bush for all of their failures.
One year after taking office however, Obama has done a total reversal on his isolationist, non-interventionist foreign policy, and is now pushing President Bush’s neo-conservative philosophy as a justification for starting a new war in Afghanistan. What the Democratic Party once criticized as an over-simplified good vs. evil argument has become the cornerstone of Obama’s reasoning.
“Evil does exist in the world,” Obama recently admitted. “A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of man.”
In the wake of this stunning adoption of the Bush foreign policy doctrine, there is little, if any dissent. The same people who crucified Bush for liberating Iraq are hardly criticizing Obama for using force to promote democracy in Afghanistan.
Recent Gallup polls find that 62 percent of Americans think Obama’s war in Afghanistan “is the right thing” whereas only 39 percent of Americans think Bush made the right decision by sending troops to Iraq.
Any American who thinks that Bush was misdirected when he sent troops to Iraq in 2003 can’t possibly deny that renewing war in Afghanistan in 2009 to hunt Al Qaeda, eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks is, at the least, equally fallible.
Still, Obama is receiving the kind of public support that an American president, any president, deserves during wartime. Many anti-war activists, journalists and elected officials have been remarkably quiet, affording the new commander in chief the opportunity to launch a successful war campaign.
Very few Americans showed the same faithfulness to President Bush, including members of his own party. Republicans who favored non-interventionism to nation building abandoned Bush, and Democratic senators like John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton who voted for the war turned against it before the 2004 elections so they would have the ammunition they needed to criticize their incumbent opponent.
America quickly forgot about how President Bush charismatically lifted our spirits during some of the darkest moments of our nation’s history when the Twin Towers collapsed. After all, even Senator Kerry admitted Bush’s handling of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was “terrific,” during the 2004 presidential debates.
But after President Bush successfully secured America in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, he was rewarded with accusations of committing human rights violations and war crimes – an incredible irony since his policies were responsible for liberating tens of millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some Americans accused Bush of lying and starting a war under false pretenses simply because our troops never found actual weapons of mass destruction.
Despite what Michael Moore implied in his film "Fahrenheit 9/11," Congress did not base their 2002 authorization for the Iraq War solely on the premise that Saddam Hussein either had or was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Their legislation reads very clearly that America’s purpose in sending troops back to Iraq was to enforce U.N. resolutions, some of which were violated in the 1990’s and probably should have been enforced by President Clinton. Whether actual weapons were found or not, the war in Iraq was legally and morally justifiable, and necessary.
In addition to enduring criticism for his war policies, millions of Americans demanded the new Obama administration prosecute Bush for his decision to indefinitely holding detainees charged with war crimes. When President Obama signed an executive order in May that reinforced that same Bush policy, the far left was mute.
Almost no one said a word. Apparently, its acceptable for Obama to indefinitely hold detainees, just not Bush.
As Obama continues to make decisions that mirror the Bush doctrine, it is becoming apparent that the former president was not ignorant or irrational in his foreign policy decisions despite the harsh criticism and disloyalty he endured. He was in fact, ahead of his time, a visionary who understood politics and warfare in the modern age of terrorism.
That is why Obama is now following his lead.
It should be obvious now, even to Obama’s most passionate supporters that shielding the free world requires more than mere words like “hope” and “change.” Bush’s detractors should be embarrassed having arrogantly thought they could do it better, and those Republicans who abandoned Bush when he needed them most should take a moment to reflect on their fortitude or lack thereof.
Americans who chastised President Bush for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq should apologize and show him the same respect they are now showing President Obama as he neutralizes the Taliban in Afghanistan.
George W. Bush seemed to have an almost mystical understanding of what the American people needed when we needed it most. He reminded all of us of why we should be proud to be Americans at a time when there was a whisper that we brought the Sept. 11 attacks upon ourselves for promoting democracy abroad.
President Bush deserves our respect, not our betrayal.
Another awesome article:
I know it has been a while since I last posted.
First off, Yeah Brown!
But that is not what I want to blog about this morning.
On my way in to work today, I was listening to Chris Stegall.
He played a clip of John Freaking Kerry during the concession speech last night.
OMFG.
I SCREAMED at the radio.
He said, I am paraphrasing here:
Tax cuts are not targeted.
If you give a tax cut to an individual, or small business, then there is no guarantee they will invest the money. There is no guarantee that they will invest it in the United States, or at all. Government, yes Government, is the only one who can make sure the money is invested in programs that work......
HE DOES NOT GET IT. THEY STILL DO NOT GET IT!
It's called Liberty, Freedom Senator. I earned that money. It is MY money, not yours. If I want to spend it on a big mac, porn magazine, or set it on fire, guess what I SHOULD be able to. Because it is MINE. Not yours. That is what the US is all about. It's none of your damned business what I do with it.
When I find the exact quote, I will post it here.
First off, Yeah Brown!
But that is not what I want to blog about this morning.
On my way in to work today, I was listening to Chris Stegall.
He played a clip of John Freaking Kerry during the concession speech last night.
OMFG.
I SCREAMED at the radio.
He said, I am paraphrasing here:
Tax cuts are not targeted.
If you give a tax cut to an individual, or small business, then there is no guarantee they will invest the money. There is no guarantee that they will invest it in the United States, or at all. Government, yes Government, is the only one who can make sure the money is invested in programs that work......
HE DOES NOT GET IT. THEY STILL DO NOT GET IT!
It's called Liberty, Freedom Senator. I earned that money. It is MY money, not yours. If I want to spend it on a big mac, porn magazine, or set it on fire, guess what I SHOULD be able to. Because it is MINE. Not yours. That is what the US is all about. It's none of your damned business what I do with it.
When I find the exact quote, I will post it here.
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