Obama - Delusions Of Grandeur

From the brush of Michael Ramirez:

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A Wanted Ad For Our Times - Paper Seeking Reporter With No Belief In Objective Reality

Heh. This is postmodernism at its core. This from Slate:

Add to the list of reasons why journalists now lose their jobs: a belief in "objective reality." Atlanta Progressive News senior reporter Jonathan Springston was let go last week after he failed to live up to the paper's standards, namely, by reporting on events based on facts. In a statement issued to the Fresh Loaf blog, the APN explained that "[Springston] held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News." . . .

Only in academia, journalism and Hollywood can such people exist.

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Truth??? You Can't Handle The Truth

Rasmussen has proven the most accurate polling agency over the past decade. During the last election, Rasmussen predicted 52% to 46% for Obama, and that is in fact what occurred - making them the most accurate of all 23 major polling organizations. And indeed, never a complaint from the left was heard about Rasmussen's polls during the past decade. Yet with Rasmussen now showing poll numbers that demonstrate a real backlash against the left and has Democrat lawmakers looking over their shoulders, the name Rasmussen seems as welcome in far left circles as the name Sarah Palin. This from the Politico:

Democrats are turning their fire on Scott Rasmussen, the prolific independent pollster whose surveys on elections, President Obama’s popularity and a host of other issues are surfacing in the media with increasing frequency.

The pointed attacks reflect a hardening conventional wisdom among prominent liberal bloggers and many Democrats that Rasmussen Reports polls are, at best, the result of a flawed polling model and, at worst, designed to undermine Democratic politicians and the party’s national agenda.

On progressive-oriented websites, anti-Rasmussen sentiment is an article of faith. “Rasmussen Caught With Their Thumb on the Scale,” blared the Daily Kos this summer. “Rasmussen Reports, You Decide,” the blog Swing State Project recently headlined in a play on the Fox News motto.

“I don’t think there are Republican polling firms that get as good a result as Rasmussen does,” said Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow with Media Matters, a progressive research center. “His data looks like it all comes out of the RNC [Republican National Committee]. . . .”

Reality. It bites, eh? Heh.

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Obama, Criminalizing Politics & Thinking The Unthinkable

The above photo is of the recently deceased Aelxander Solzhenitsyn, perhaps the Soviet Union's most famous political prisoner. The crime for which he was sentenced to the Soviet Gulags was publicly disagreeing with Stalin. Thankfully, such a thing is unthinkable under a democracy founded upon Enlightenment ideals. In such a democracy, freedom of speech is the most cherished right.

Yet, today we see the far left in America salivating at the possibility of prosecuting those in and out of the Bush administration with whom they disagree.
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Conservatives have for decades largely ceded the spheres of eductation and media to the far left. Today we see the bitter fruit of that situation.

There are many things deeply troubling about the far left in America. Their disdain for democracy and utter refusal to contenance dissenting speech are at the top of the list. But, now on the verge of actually taking control of the police power of the U.S. in the November elections, the far left are going beyond intolerance and into a realm of existential threat to America and democracy. It is the talk - from Obama through his potential advisors and numerous others - to criminalize policy differnces and dissent. This is a giant step beyond mere partisan politics in a competitive democracy.

- Several weeks ago, Obama told a news reporter that he would support tribunals to investigate the Bush administration for war crimes.

- Within the past month, the Massachusetts School of Law have announced that they will convene a conference to discuss strategy for war crimes trials of the Bush administration and the possiblity of handing down sentences of execution.

- No Oil for Pacifists blogs today on Vincent Bulgosi's call to prosecute George Bush for murder based on his decision to invade Iraq.

- This from the NRO today:

One thing that hasn't received much attention in conservative and Republicans circles is the ongoing conversation on the left about the possibility of Nuremberg-style war-crimes trials for members of the Bush administration should a Democratic president take office. I'm not exaggerating or introducing the Nazi analogy myself; they actually use the phrase "Nuremberg-style" when they discuss "war-crimes tribunals." And they are quite serious (although the more moderate of them prefer a "truth commission.")

. . . I think the thing to emphasize here is that this is a serious conversation going on among people who might have influential voices or play influential roles in an Obama administration. Many of them want to put John Yoo — a special favorite of theirs — on trial, whether before a Nuremberg-style tribunal, a criminal court, or a truth commission with as-yet unspecified powers. And, of course, they wouldn't stop with Yoo; if they had their way, they would likely have a long list of former Bush administration officials to put in the dock. They are serious.

- This from Newsbusters, quoting Mike Barnicle on Hardball discussing the implication of author Ron Suskind's charge, set out in his new book, that the Bush administration forged a letter to falsely link al Qaeda with Saddam Hussein:

. . . [In] reading this book and these charges that have laid out here and because of my background, covering like city stuff and everything for years, I can't help but come to the conclusion, at the end of this book, this book is basically charging the President of the United States, or the Vice President of the United States with being an accessory, before the fact, to 4000 murders and more in Iraq. They lied us into war, according to this book.

- Ralph Peters reported the following exchange in a NY Post column several days ago:

AFTER a lecture to the Marine Memorial Association last week, a reporter thrust a mike toward me and asked if I thought I should be tried for war crimes for my columns in The Post supporting our military.

. . . [W]hat fascinated me about the silly encounter . . . was how unintentionally revealing it was about the shameless hypocrisy of the left.

Think about it: For expressing my views to readers like you on these pages, hardcore leftists believe I should be put on trial as a war criminal. . . .

- More than one person in the global warming community have called for criminal prosecution of those who dissent against their dogma. Update - and it is happening down under, also.

Prosecuting political disagreements is, as stated by Neptunus Lex, "not done to expiate [the] sins [of the dissenting party], but to serve as an example to others." The author was describing what Stalin did to Solzhenitsyn, but the principle is the same whether in Soviet Russia, theocratic Iran, or even in the U.S.

How we get to this point in America is an interesting study. Billy Hollis at Q&O blogged on a Jonah Goldberg article yesterday on the ascendence of post modern thought as regards Obama and the far left generally. Post modernism holds that reality is subjective. Thus, for many on the left who wish not only to take power, but to demonize and destroy those who disagree with them, it is beyond dispute that President Bush lied about WMD to take us into the invasion of Iraq. They wish it to be reality, and thus it is so. The bipartisan 9-11 Commission Hearings might as well never have occured. When Bush spoke his "16 words" in the 2003 State of the Union address, he was lying, irrespective that his statement relied on British intelligence and the report of Amb. Joe Wilson of his Niger trip given in debriefing to the CIA.

The fact that we are at this point in America should be chilling indeed. America is founded upon Enlightenment ideals. It is those ideals - tolerance of dissent, objective truth, reason, democracy - that have allowed our nation to prosper and to do so peacefully for nearly one hundred and fifty years since the end of our civil war. But clearly, those Enlightenment ideals have no hold over the far, post-modern left. Indeed, the far left seem far more animated by Josef Stalin than John Locke.

That the thought of political trials appeals to many should be a warning as to just how much we have strayed from our Enlightenment moorings. This is the stuff of which political oppression - and new civil wars - are made.

We are, it seems to me, very much a nation at a crossroads.

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The Dilemma Posed By Reality

The NY Times tells us the Democratic presidential candidates are grudgingly acknowledging the reality of progress in pacifying Iraq. Rather than portray the progress as a golden opportunity to be capitalized upon, and thus, advance the interests of our nation, the NYT portrays it as a political dilemma for Democrats:

As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging that success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there, and highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy.

Advisers to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama say that the candidates have watched security conditions improve after the troop escalation in Iraq and concluded that it would be folly not to acknowledge those gains. At the same time, they are arguing that American casualties are still too high, that a quick withdrawal is the only way to end the war and that the so-called surge in additional troops has not paid off in political progress in Iraq.

But the changing situation suggests for the first time that the politics of the war could shift in the general election next year, particularly if the gains continue. While the Democratic candidates are continuing to assail the war — a popular position with many of the party’s primary voters — they run the risk that Republicans will use those critiques to attack the party’s nominee in the general election as defeatist and lacking faith in the American military.

The history of the Copperheads is repeating itself. They were the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party that portrayed the Civil War as unwinnable and sought to negotiate with the South for an end to the war. The Copperheads’ anti-war perfidy was repaid by the electorate for decades afterwards. And that has got to be our modern Democrat’s ultimate nightmare. It is why portraying Iraq as a defeat and legislating an end to the war is so important to the Democrats.

If security continues to improve, President Bush could become less of a drag on his party, too, and Republicans may have an easier time zeroing in on other issues, such as how the Democrats have proposed raising taxes in difficult economic times.

“The politics of Iraq are going to change dramatically in the general election, assuming Iraq continues to show some hopefulness,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution who is a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s and a proponent of the military buildup. “If Iraq looks at least partly salvageable, it will be important to explain as a candidate how you would salvage it — how you would get our troops out and not lose the war. The Democrats need to be very careful with what they say and not hem themselves in.”

At the same time, there is no assurance that the ebbing of violence is more than a respite or represents a real trend that could lead to lasting political stability or coax those who have fled the capital to return to their homes. Past military successes have faded with new rounds of car bombings and kidnappings.

The NYT is going to have to explain that one. The facts that allowed Iraq to explode in February, 2006 with the bombing of the Samarra Mosque have changed dramatically. A second bombing of that mosque in June had no impact on the level of violence. Al Qaeda in Iraq may still pull off the odd suicide attack, but that is a far cry from the carnage that they were able to carry out a year ago. Al Qaeda in Iraq has no more home bases, and has been in large measure defeated as their base of support, the Sunni population, has turned dramatically against them. And in Southern Iraq, there are a lot of Shia more than a little perturbed with Iran’s deadly meddling. The pacification resulting from the offensives against al Qaeda have resulted in Shia now turning against the Mehdi army as the Mehdi army's raison d'etre, protecting the Shia from Sunni violence, has disappeared. The real surge is taking place as a trained and equipped Iraqi Army is being fielded to take the place of Americans. The return of refugees to Iraq is in happening in "dramatic numbers." Yes, Iraq is not yet fully pacified and hostilities continue. But this admonition from the NYT, implying that the peace descending on Iraq could well be a nothing more than a lull in hostilities, seems much more like wishful thinking than a reality based assessment.

As to Michael O’Hanlon’s warning to the Democrats that they should address how to capitalize on the pax Americana in Iraq – which echoes similar warnings from other well known liberals - seems to be falling on deaf ears. The Democrats embrace of defeat is simply too entrenched.

Neither Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama nor the other Democratic candidates have backed away from their original opposition to the troop escalation, and they all still favor a quick withdrawal from Iraq. But Mrs. Clinton, for one, has not said how quickly she would remove most combat forces from Iraq or how many she would leave there as president.

. . . Lately, as the killing in Baghdad and other areas has declined, the Democratic candidates have been dwelling less on the results of the troop escalation than on the lack of new government accords in Iraq — a tonal shift from last summer and fall when American military commanders were preparing to testify before Congress asking for more time to allow the surge to show results.

This is a delicate matter. By saying the effects of the troop escalation have not led to a healthier political environment, the candidates are tacitly acknowledging that the additional troops have, in fact, made a difference on the ground — a viewpoint many Democratic voters might not embrace.

This is amazing. So the Democratic candidates have to keep spinning fantasies of failure and defeat to keep their base happy? We are involved in a war that, like it or not, has significant, if not existential ramifications for our national security, our long term foreign policy, and the threat of radical Islam. Could there possibly be a greater cognitive dissonance? There would seem very little reality indeed in the "reality-based" party.

“Our troops are the best in the world; if you increase their numbers they are going to make a difference,” Mrs. Clinton said in a statement after her aides were asked about her views on the ebbing violence in Baghdad.

If that is Ms. Clinton's position now, it shows an incredible lack of consistency. Nine months ago, she was arguing on the Senate floor that the surge was a “tried and failed” tactic that would not work. And then in May she introduced legislation to “sunset” the authority for the Iraq war, ostensibly because the “facts on the ground” proved we needed to end the war. And as late as July 10, 2007, she wrote in an op-ed that the surge was not working and that our troops were caught in a “civil war." That was twenty days before Michael O'Hanlon of the left leaning Brookings Institution, wrote his essay in the NYT, calling Iraq "A War We Might Just Win." He noted in his essay just how surreal the posturing in Washington was in light of the reality on the ground in Iraq. And then there was Ms. Clinton's performance in September when she, in essence, called General Petraeus's testimony to significant progress in pacifying Iraq a lie, saying that to believe him required her to engage in a "willing suspension disbelief."

“The fundamental point here is that the purpose of the surge was to create space for political reconciliation and that has not happened, and there is no indication that it is going to happen, or that the Iraqis will meet the political benchmarks,” [Mrs. Clinton] said. “We need to stop refereeing their civil war and start getting out of it.”

As to how this can possibly still be spun as a civil war, that is just one of the many questions Ms. Clinton needs to address, hopefully in a debate moderated by Tim Russert. I am sure we can get 3 or 4 good, if conflicting, answers from her on that one. As to the benchmarks, Charles Krauthammer addressed those yesterday. The Democrats as a whole are refusing to acknowledge the bottom up progress in Iraq that has rendered the "benchmarks" largely moot.

While the war remains a top issue for many Democratic voters, the candidates are also turning to pocketbook concerns with new intensity as the nominating contests approach in early January. . . .

Read the entire article here. We will see how attempting to change the subject plays a little less then a year from now.

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