Obama Stands Athwart History Yelling Start!

Last week during his speech from the National Archives President Obama said his single most important responsibility was keeping the American people safe. That was politics and I don’t believe he sees his main mission is keeping Americans safe at all. National security isn’t where his heart is. And the evidence is strong it’s not where his supernaturally gifted brain is, either.

Where his heart is, what Barack Obama ran on, and what he promised he was going to do at his inauguration, was to remake America. This is what makes him so dangerous.

You don’t remake the object of your love. You may tinker with it, you may repair it, improve it, give it some medicine to restore its health, you may build an addition on it or give it a spanking or go on a second honeymoon with it. But you don’t remake something you love, because then it wouldn’t be that thing you love any more. (I know there are women who search out the perfect man and then try to remake him. That isn't love. It's per se pathology). You only remake things you think were made wrong to start with.

Obama sees his single most important job as president to take America Back to the Drawing Board, with himself as Draftsman in Chief. That's why he spent the first month of his administration globe-trotting around and publicly tossing America the First Rough Draft--1776 to October 2008 -- into the wastebasket.

Rush Limbaugh understands this about Obama, and explains it better than anyone out there. I guess that’s why it’s so important for the left to discredit Rush.

This transcript is from Rush's show on Thursday:

RUSH ARCHIVE: We have here an angry man with a chip on his shoulder, not some cool, calm, collected guy, but a cold, calculating, angry man who did hear what Jeremiah Wright said for 20 years while sitting in the pews of that church in Chicago. He did hear what Bill Ayers said about America. America's unjust, it was constituted as unjust, and that unjustness permeates to this day. So now it's time to change all that and we're going to change all that by desecrating the Constitution. Hence, Sonia Sotomayor.

RUSH: Now, I think in this bite you're gonna hear Obama let his guard down at this LA fundraiser. He's with buddies, he's off prompter, and you listen. It's just a short bite, it's 12 seconds.

OBAMA: This woman is brilliant. She is qualified. I want her confirmed. I want her walking up those marble steps and starting to provide some justice.

RUSH: I want her to start providing some justice. I want her walking up those marble steps and I want her to start providing some justice. Meaning, it ain't justice coming out of there now. I want her walking up those steps, and I want her to start providing some justice. Street talk. This is the talk of somebody angry. I want her march up those steps and start providing some justice. Justice as she defines it, based on what she said. She's better at justice 'cause she's Latina, better at justice than the white guy. Now, folks, in a sane world, she would not have risen to the nomination level because of that one statement. Now, obviously the left, they believe her. The left believes what she is saying. They don't care about that. They're worried that she doesn't have an abortion record. They're worried about getting sandbagged on that.

But just as Obama is going to return the nation's wealth to its, quote, unquote, rightful owners, we're going to have justice, we're going to have Sonia Sotomayor walking up those steps, she's gonna provide justice finally. We're going to not only return the nation's wealth to its rightful owners, we're going to get even with the people who stole it in the first place, and that's the justice we're going to have. That's why she was chosen. Sonia Sotomayor was chosen for the express purpose of reflecting his racial attitudes. Let's be honest. He coulda chosen a different Hispanic; he coulda chosen a different female. He chose Sonia Sotomayor because she is the mirror image of his racial attitudes. I want her walking up those steps and providing some justice! Could have been Al Sharpton saying that.

And it couldn't have been Colin Powell saying that.

'Liz Cheney, Showing the Way'

Rush Limbaugh had a very good segment, in transcript at his webpage, about how Liz Cheney, Dick's daughter, has been kicking butts and taking names all over the cable news shows on the enhanced interrogation techniques. Rush zeroes in on how she does it, which is basically to put facts up against cliches and ignorance. The entire segment is worth reading. Rush gave this example of Liz's encounter with Anderson Cooper in a discussion of waterboarding:

She often starts by refusing to debate their cliched, fallacious premises. Here's another example. One more before we go to the break. Anderson Cooper: "More than 100 people are known to have died in US custody, some that were ruled a homicide. If these were tightly controlled things, how come so many people are murdered in US custody?"

LIZ: Anderson, I think that your question is highly irresponsible.

COOPER: Why?

LIZ: Because you are contemplating things that aren't conflated. When somebody dies or is "murdered" in US custody then we are a great nation and we take the people who are responsible and we put them on trial as you've seen happen throughout the last eight years. That is not the enhanced interrogation program, and to somehow suggest that those two things are the same I think willfully conflates something and ends up in a situation where we aren't able to take a truthful look at the last eight years as we go forward, because we are muddying the waters about what really happened.

RUSH: Anderson Cooper's there saying, "What's my next question?" Yeah, he's trying to probably figure out what "conflate" means and so forth. But what she's talking about here, he asked this loaded question, a hundred people died in US custody. And what he's implying is it happened because we waterboarded them or we tortured them. She said, "No, no, no. Your question is fallacious. The premise is irresponsible -- and whenever these kinds of things happen we have prosecuted." All you've gotta... We even prosecute the innocent, thanks to Jack Murtha. The Marines in Haditha. Congratulations, Liz Cheney, showing the way.

I have a video from April of Liz taking on someone named Nora O'Donnell at MSNBC, on the subject of the interrogation memos, about which Ms. O'Donnell knew almost nothing. Notice how Liz just keeps taking O'Donnell's cliches away and re-sets the argument on a foundation of facts.

Watch the video and you can see Ms. Cheney was all primed and ready to respond when Ms. O’Donnell first whipped out the “torture” libel--which Ms. Cheney certainly knew was going to be the main weapon used.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Extremist Alert

Bad media week for right-wing extremists.

If you took a look through Thursday’s Detroit News, you would have gotten a stiff booster shot of what Janet Napolitano and company tried to immunize us with when they released their now well-known report on “rightwing extremism.”

We already know, (because the media explained it to us), that some "desperate veterans" turn to terrorism and violence in insane reaction to the ideals of the Obama administration. Now we find out that the rest of the desperate veterans turn to suicide. (Suicide, murder, whatever, as long as it's a violent image). (“Desperate veterans turn to suicide”):

Several branches of the military are reporting significant spikes in the number of suicides committed by both active-duty troops and veterans returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Experts are calling the number of military-related suicides sweeping the country an "epidemic."

The article offers no empirical evidence that these veterans took their own lives because they'd served in combat. The rate of depression in the general population is already significant. It only follows that persons suffering depression, or prone to it, end up in the military as much as in civilian life. Do they think combat is going to cure depression, when modern science hasn't? Yes, some people kill themselves after living through the horrors of combat. Some people kill themselves after living through the horrors of high school, or the horror of divorce, or the horrors of life in the 21st century.

The emotional hook of the article is the myth that mental health professionals can forecast when a patient is going to commit suicide, so it's their fault for not stopping it. The article focuses on families of suicidal vets who are suing the VA for not "committing" their sons to VA psych wards against their wills. One physician called a suicide victims's mother afterwards to apologize for his role in releasing him. (I find it hard to believe this happened, frankly.) "He said he would not make the same decision again. She screamed at him: 'Why didn't you lock my son up? He might be alive if you had.'"

Committing a patient with mental-health issues involuntarily is one of the most difficult legal obstacles known to American health professionals (thanks to liberals who loved Jack Nicholson in Cuckoo's Nest).

I have no doubt that the News had the following lead on ice if any VA doctor ever dared to "commit" a suicidal vet: “After risking their lives in combat for everyone else’s freedom, America’s returning vets are finding themselves deprived of liberty by VA doctors, who are slamming them away into psych wards, with fewer rights than Gitmo detainees, forgotten in the 'black holes' of government pysch wards."

Understand, the object of stories like these is not to highlight an epidemic of suicide among veterans, but to reiterate the Left’s premises that all war is intrinsically evil, and that military service is to be avoided at all costs as unhealthy, especially to soldiers who serve valiantly.

The article's writer, Marney Rich Keenan, is so irresponsible she repeats, unexamined, slanderous trial-lawyer accusations of the VA “manipulating suicide statistics to downplay the problem and systematically misdiagnosing returning combat soldiers who suffer mental illness because their resources are tapped.”

Then there’s the article by Charlie LeDuff. (“Masculine meltdown: When men brush aside old ideals, they become nearly irrelevant”).

LeDuff has a Pullitzer and used to work for the New York Times. Aside from that he strikes me as a having a load of talent, a quirky point of view, but a writing style that follows a meandering path that—for me—never manages to make any actual point. Yesterday he was writing about average, working U.S. males, who are getting hit hard buy the failing economy, which, as he sees it, makes them “potentially violent.”

“The cheerleaders of globalization (remember them?) said the American man is profligate, lazy, a relic in the new economic order. And that may be true. But sweeping a living generation into the ashbin of history is a dangerous proposition. To ignore these men is to be unaware of what lies on the horizon. Violence is one possibility. We shall see.”

Meaning what, exactly, Charlie? Whaddya mean, "we shall see"? Isn’t violence one possibility for just about any group you want to mention, the homeless, the gay, illegal immigrants, draft-dodgers, burnouts? Or for that matter, nurses, cops, clergy, pizza delivery drivers, community organizers? Just about anybody walking is capable of violence. Or capable of heroic virtue. Or steady, stick-with-it competence. The point is, what business have you got drawing a line between the word “violence” and the U.S. males you’re maligning, when you never actually illustrate them being resorting to violence?

Trying to get a fix on LeDuff’s model U.S. male isn’t easy, but we know who he doesn’t like:

“Men crave dignity and fulfillment. And when they cannot attain those, they become unhappy, quarrelsome, small-minded, cowards, dopers, racists, talk show know-it-alls and bloggers.”

I don’t know who he has in mind for unhappy bloggers, but I do know no “talk show know-it-all” is more hated by one side than Rush Limbaugh, whom I admire, and Sean Hannity, whom I admire much less. Then there are Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, Dennis Miller, and Bill Bennett. But one thing you can’t call any of them is unhappy. On the other hand, ever listen to Randi Rhodes? Keith Olbermann? ("Quarrelsome, small-minded, cowards.")

And then, somehow, Thursday's News had nothing to report about Wednesday's national anti-tax tea parties, except in one swiping story, also written by Charlie LeDuff, about a Michigan Militia gathering on Wednesday:

"Am I angry?" asked the unemployed commander, with a semi-automatic rifle strapped across his pectorals. "Yeah, it sets you off a little bit."

Come to a Michigan Militia picnic and you realize the commander is not alone. The farm where they rallied was chockfull of people like him, people boiling on the back burner, struggling to make ends meet, carrying around a knapsack of resentment for a government that they claim has taken almost everything from them and given nothing in return. (“Anger boils among Michigan militia members”).

Get the "boiling" image? Gun nuts on holiday, right? ready to go wild in a spray of bullets? According to LeDuff, "The militia is not alone in placing their faith in the gun and bullet."

Except LeDuff never quotes any militia members appealing to the gun and the bullet as the place they put their faith. LeDuff himself says they love the Bill of Rights. Omigod! Talk about a recipe for "potentially violent"!

He never describes one threat of violence, one example of these poor, "boiling" rightwing extremists actually "boiling over."

And then Thursday's News somehow managed to fail to report on the Department of Homeland Security report on rightwing extremists. Which speaks volumes, in my view.

The Audacity of Cheerfulness

Rush Limbaugh on Thursday, the day after Governor Palin's address to the RNC:

This lady has turned it all around. We're much more upbeat this week. We have been since last weekend because we see beyond November with a lot of hope. She's just fabulous. I was laughing myself silly during this speech. I was laughing myself silly during Rudy. I mean Rudy and Palin, what do we have up there? We had good cheer. We had people having a good time. We had people who were getting in some huge digs with smiles on their faces. In fact, Joe Biden is all over the board today. He said first he didn't see it. Then he said he only saw half of it. The one guy in this country we know who saw all of it, and has probably watched it three times, is Joe Biden.