During the raging debate over the strategy that led us into Iraq, one could at least take some comfort in the belief, expounded by Vice President Cheney on his annual “Meet the Press” interview, that at least the Jihadists were fighting the U.S. military “over there” rather than killing U.S. civilians “here”. Now, President Obama, Secretary of Defense Gates and Attorney General Holder have turned that war strategy on its head by encouraging Jihadists to attack U.S. civilians.
If you are saying: “Hey, did I miss something?” The answer is yes; you missed The Law of Unintended Consequences 101, a course that seems to befall every grand liberal scheme and program.
On November 13, 2009, the Obama Administration granted the September 11, 2001 mastermind and co-conspirators a trial in a civilian, U.S. Federal court. On the same day, the Obama Administration granted the USS Cole attackers a military tribunal. Consistently, during the Bush years, the Democrats have pushed, for political purposes – and I mean relentlessly pushed – the notion that only in civilian court could one expect a Jihadist to get a “fair” trial, a major platform in their campaign plank of accusing Bush of torture and unfair treatment of the “nice” Jihadists at Guantanamo. This propaganda did more to discredit the U.S. effort against terror internationally than either Abu Ghraib or rendition (started by Clinton).
To satisfy their left-wing fringe base, you know those that actually bought the “Afghanistan is the Right War” and we must close Guantanamo, the Obama Administration is sending Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his buds to New York to stand trial. Attorney General Holder essentially suggested that we can afford to give them a civilian trial because we know we have enough evidence against them, as if that makes for a fair trial.
The real message sent by the Obama Administration to Jihadists is: “Attack U.S. civilians and we’ll give you a ‘fair’ show trial and extensive media coverage in civilian court where anything goes, anti-American lawyers abound, and who knows, you might even win or get a dismissal or mistrial. Worst case, your lawyer will get a bunch of top secret documents so, at the least, you’ll be helping the Jihadist cause. On the other hand, attack a military target, like the USS Cole, and you will get an ‘unfair’ military tribunal without the legal grandstanding, attendant media coverage, or access to top secret documents – with a commensurate reduction in manufactured propaganda.” So, fellow Jihadists, what targets would you seek out?
Under those rules, Jihadists (you know they are all Ivy League-educated) will choose to attack us, like us, like here. Who wouldn’t choose civilian targets if those are the outcomes? When President Obama campaigned on Hope and Change, some of us knew that would mean ‘Hope’ for the Jihadists. I don’t think anyone suspected it would mean a ‘Change’ in the targets Jihadists would be encouraged to pursue. Bush and Cheney proffered military targets in Iraq. How could the Obama Administration not see the incentives they have provided our enemy to kill us where we live?
And what does all of this have to do with Obama Care? This Administration, obviously naïve about the Law of Unintended Consequences and its application even when it comes to something so simple as understanding the incentives they just gave the Jihadists to attack us here in the U.S., are the same people that believe they can somehow create 100 new Federal agencies with a 2,000 page healthcare plan and have things work out just right. Predicting Jihadist behavior is simple compared to the exponentially greater difficulty of predicting market behavior in 20% of the largest economy in the world. But, no problem, right?
My advice for the next three years – pray a lot. The naiveté and hubris of this Administration is a toxically lethal combination, and it will hit you right here, at home.
Paul Porter is the host of The Paul Porter Show on WFOY AM 1240 (3 – 5 pm) in St. Augustine, Florida, a show that hopes to Bring Back America One Day at a Time by educating the audience about the spiritual principles that underlie the US Constitution.
Technorati Tags: civilian terroists, Guantanamo, Jihadists, Law of Unintended Consequences, Obama, Obama Care, USS Cole
Last week Fineman of Newsweek and Cohen of the Washington Post voiced their concerns as to whether our President, Barack Hussein Obama, is behaving in a manner suited for the Office of the President of the United States. General McChrystal, the President’s choice, upsets the White House with his honest assessment of Afghanistan, implying that the White House is failing in their prosecution of President Obama’s “necessary war.” Then, insult upon injury, Saturday Night Live parodies the President’s inability to accomplish anything on his list of the issues that he campaigned to “Change”, a scathing criticism of the President, ending with the listing of President Obama’s two accomplishments: “Jack” and “Squat”.
When the grown-ups in the traditional, liberal media, particularly the likes of Fineman and Cohen, the general hand-picked by the President, and then comics of Saturday Night Live start to criticize and satirize the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his policies and failures, “times they are a’changing.”
Over the week end, Marty Peretz, Editor-in-Chief of the New Republic calls President Obama a “Clinical Narcissist”. George Will, on ABC News’ “This Week” highlights the extraordinary numbers of “me’s” and “I’s” used by the President and the First Lady in their pro-Chicago Olympics speeches in Copenhagen on Thursday. In www.newsbusters.org on Monday, Blogger P.J. Gladnick said: “If Obama is a “clinical narcissist” that would make the MSM his enablers since months before he was elected president, they were already portraying him in images and print as having a saintly halo image. “
So we’ve got a ‘Clinical Narcissist’ and his willing enablers in the press leading our country. What is the the result of the U.S. – a President who believes that he can say whatever he wants without any consequence of “fact-checking” by those that enable him, the old media. Consequently, his address on Saturday regarding the economy and the need for health care reform to solve our economic, read unemployment, problems goes unchallenged. This week end the President used his Saturday radio address to tout how health care reform will solve our growing unemployment problems and, hence, revive our floundering economy.
When President Obama blamed the lack of health care reform as the basis for the growing unemployment problem he knew that no one would suggest the obvious, because the old media has its head up Mr. Obama’s “pant crease”. Mr. Obama provided examples of businesses that can’t grow, can’t invest in R&D, can’t get started and can’t survive without this healthcare reform. Nowhere do we see anyone point out that our unemployment problem is here today, except maybe Limbaugh, suffocating us today, and your health care bill will only tax businesses between now and 2013, but no health care reform will be implemented prior to 2013. How does that solve today’s unemployment problems caused by financial stress on small business resulting from escalating health care premiums: taxes today but no reform for four years? This is the lie of the Obama Administration, the connection between the solution for today’s economic woes with his health care plan (a bigger lie is that there is an Obama health care plan, a plan that no one has ever seen, but that’s somewhat off the subject).
On Saturday, in his Saturday morning radio address, the President got away with maybe the most misleading policy address of his Administration, bigger than the myth of “millions of green jobs” and absurd claims – that a policy that won’t even begin until, at the earliest, 2013, except for the tax component of it, will somehow solve today’s unemployment problems. This folly would have had no enablers during the Bush years, but this narcissist President is emboldened to speak nonsense in a national address, knowing that his enablers in the old media will not check even the most absurd of his policy pronouncements.
Paul Porter
Paul Porter is the host of The Paul Porter Show on WFOY AM 1240 (3 – 5 pm) in St. Augustine, Florida, a show that hopes to Bring Back America One Day at a Time by educating the audience about the spiritual principles that underlie the US Constitution.
Technorati Tags: Chicago Olympics, clinical narcisist, Obama, old media, Saturday Night Live, SNL
Neither the White House nor the “old media” could allow President Obama to appear on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Given the closeness of the “old media” with the Obama administration I wouldn’t doubt that the strategy to avoid Wallace and Fox was a coordinated one. In fact, the old media could not have feigned integrity if Obama had been interviewed by Chris Wallace of Fox.
Unfortunately for Fox, they fell into the trap set by Obama and his old media sycophants. For a week now, Fox commentators and hosts have been obsessed with the fact that Obama didn’t appear on Fox News Sunday. They have incessantly pointed out how the White House was “punishing” Fox, with Wallace’s quote getting the most play: the Obama White House is the … “biggest bunch of cry babies that I have dealt with in my thirty years in Washington.” On O’Reilly last night, Dana Perino, the former Bush press secretary, now a Fox News contributor, attempts to explain the differences in press relations between the Bush White House and Obama’s. All of this is just noise and the Obama White House and the other media know that Fox missed the point.
Obama won and the old media won. Obama could not appear on CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS and also appear on Fox. It was not an option. If he had appeared on Fox, it would have destroyed any narrative the Obama organization was attempting to create. If Obama had appeared on Fox, the Obama people knew the narrative would be the difference in the depth of the questions asked by Chris Wallace on Fox as compared to those asked by the other Sunday morning hosts.
Interestingly though, if Hannity were asking the questions instead of Walllace, Obama would have been able to control the narrative to make Fox look bad. The story would have been Hannity’s edge and negativity. It would have been a contest, not an interview. Instead, with the moderate moderator Wallace, a totally different outcome would have resulted, one that neither Obama nor the old media could have withstood.
Wallace has an establishment pedigree and strong DC reputation. He has a style he learned from his father and he is not pegged with any specific animosity or dislike of the Obama administration. He is considered fair and civil, and conducts himself in a gentlemanly and respectful manner. Consequently, if Obama had interviewed on Fox News Sunday hosted by Chris Wallace, Obama would have been asked factually-oriented follow-up questions, something the other networks refused to do. The reality of Wallace’s interview would have poked major holes in the Obama sermon and, therefore, his raison d’être.
The media blitz on Sunday night and Monday would not have been George Stephanapoulas’ dictionary question and Obama’s disingenuous comment about his lack of knowledge of ACORN. Instead, the narrative would have been Obama’s failure to parry Wallace’s fair but probing follow-up questions. Furthermore, the press bias would have been so obvious in side-by-side comparisons of the four other media outlets with Fox and Wallace. Moreover, the old media passivity and, to some extent, worship, when compared to a straight interview on Fox, would have awoken another chunk of the American electorate to the old media phoniness. Among many, this side-by-side comparison would have accentuated the old media bias. To many still unaware of the bias, the debate would have been over. Media bias would be forever established in those still undecided about the media debate. There would be a realization, an uh-huh moment, one that continue the undermining of the credibility of the old-line, pro-Obama media for the rest of his term.
Think about it, Fox might have brought up the CBO’s Elmendorf when Obama stated that his plan would not raise health care costs. When Obama claimed that Republicans refuse to cooperate on important legislation, we might have heard about how cap and trade was killed by Senators Lincoln, Nelson, Dorgan and Conrad. Obama might have been asked about the pumps being shut off by environmentalists in the California fields, killing the crops, the soil and the jobs and, worst yet, he might be informed, along with the viewers, of the magnitude of the problem and a question as to why he has not gotten involved to save the jobs, crops, and businesses. We heard about none of this.
So, Obama won, and the old media won. The American people lost. But, Fox has yet to figure out exactly what went on.
Paul Porter is the host of ThePaul Porter Show on WFOY AM 1240 (3 – 5 pm) in St. Augustine, Florida, a show that hopes to Bring Back America One Day at a Time by educating the audience about the spiritual principles that underlie the US Constitution.
Technorati Tags: ACORN, bias, Chris Wallace, Fox, Fox News Sunday, Hannity, media, Obama, old media
The Democrat media machine, also known as the “Old Media” and no longer known as the “Mainstream Media”, have created the narrative of Racism in America, and that all opposition to President Obama is not principled based on substance, but instead is based on nothing more base and hateful than unprincipled racism. That is the mantra that is being pounded daily, hourly, and minute-by-minute now that the Obama policies have fallen dramatically in their acceptance by the broad middle of America.
Jimmy Carter chimed in last night, aided by the politically biased and corrupted General Electric subsidiary, the NBC news organization and the former Carter intern, Brian Williams of NBC News. Remember, Jimmy Carter was the first former President to speak out against the foreign policy of a successor President in an overseas venue. What made that violation of established US protocol for former presidents was that his criticism overseas was specifically directed at a US President who was administering not one, but two, wars. Such an egregious failure to uphold time-tested tradition concerning past presidents, in general, and criticizing the US in time of war overseas, earned Jimmy Carter the Nobel Peace Prize, a prize he coveted, like his neighbor’s wife, and one that had eluded him for any substantive performance in his own right. As a former White House consultant during the early months of the Carter Presidency, one who saw Carter’s character flaws early and then exited, I commented that former President Carter had reached a new low in what has always been his major flaw, a general lack of class and an all-powerful personal ambition that overrode whatever spiritual principles he says he lives by, though his spirituality is not obvious to even the most casual observer and, to the more interested observer, like myself, it never has existed. I can attest to that based on my experience with him on a softball field in Plains, Georgia in 1975 — he has no heart.
Now, the America who does not want socialism, they know this is not about race. Even Rachel Maddow, who constantly says it is about race, knows it is not about race as she played on her program recently a montage of all of the “right-wing nuts” and “reactionary organizations” that confronted the same socialist agendas of Roosevelt, Truman, JFK, Carter and Clinton, and now Obama. So, Maddow says it is racist and then says “it has been the same for every democrat President. So, which is it Rachel?
Now, the racism charges are working to lower Obama’s ability to govern even more than the mistrust he has garnered through his repeated distortions in his public utterances about what was actually in HR 3200, or what he called, though non-existent, his “health care plan.”
People used to trust government. Now, the middle class knows it only rewards the rich and the poor. The great middle is paying for subsidizing the rich’s mistakes in banking, insurance and automobiles while providing ACORN, Van Jones’ green jobs organization, and other pseudo-welfare organizations with tens of billions of taxpayer money that is being used to subvert the great middle class as evidenced in the ACORN videos being released over the past week.
Now, to be robbed and then called racist, that is the unkindest cut of all, as Bill Shakespeare would intone. And Americans, real Americans who believe in the Constitution of the United States of America, are fed up.
Paul Porter of the Paul Porter Show
Technorati Tags: ACORN, Carter, Democrat, media, middle class, Obama, Rachel Maddow, racism