ORLANDO SCHOOLS BECKEL

Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit

MEAN, DIRTY & NASTY

Excerpts from Politico's interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney.

"When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.

Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”

“The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes.”

Cheney said “the ultimate threat to the country” is “a 9/11-type event where the terrorists are armed with something much more dangerous than an airline ticket and a box cutter – a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind” that is deployed in the middle of an American city.

“That’s the one that would involve the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, and the one you have to spend a hell of a lot of time guarding against,” he said.

“I think there’s a high probability of such an attempt. Whether or not they can pull it off depends whether or not we keep in place policies that have allowed us to defeat all further attempts, since 9/11, to launch mass-casualty attacks against the United States.” (Read entire article here)

DID BUSH AND MCCAIN MAKE A DEAL IN 2004?

After turning down Kerry's VP offer , McCain wholeheartedly embraced GW Bush, and campaigned his ass off for Dubya; they even hugged in public numerous times.

I think they made a deal: in exchange for McCain's support in 2004, Bush promised he'd do whatever he could BEHIND THE SCENES to help McCain - and the Bush Machine came through in FLORIDA, where McCain essentially clinched the nomination.

McCain and Dubya are both liberals: they both favored amnesty, for example - AND BUSH SIGNED MCCAIN-FEINGOLD. McCain may be tougher on the spending side, and Bush a better tax-cutter. But they're essentially BOTH libs, with McCain being the more liberal of the two.

Anyhow it just seems to me that the GOP machine always wanted McCain and, well er um.... now we got 'em.

Obama and Hilary are worse - though my final decision will come down to who McCain picks.

I have posted before that I think he MUST pick a YOUNG and VERY CONSERVATIVE Southerner. Fred is WAY too old. Demint or Frist or Coburn. Or non-southerner... MITT! (Though I agree with a commenter here, that Mitt would maker GREAT Chairman for the GOP!)

If McCain doesn't pick a true conservative, then I will vote "present" on the presidential line come this Fall.

Bush Is So Evil...#1

This is going to be a series of posts.

===

So I'm discussing the war with a guy. We are exchanging e-mails. And he is whipping me hard with the "Mission Accomplished" sign. To which I reply.

The ship accomplished its mission.

Bush accomplished his. Making American Democrats want to give up Iraqi democrats to the death squads.

Bush is so evil he has made American Democrats abandon the Iraqi democrats. It doesn't get much more evil than that.

Wait until I explain to people Bush's latest evil, they won't believe it.

Me? I'm too smart to join in that evil. I Support Democracy In Iraq.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Moran On Iraq

Armed Liberal at Winds of Change is all hot and bothered about Rick Moran's (they spelled his name wrong) suggestion that it was time to surrender to the Democrats and pull out of Iraq on the Democrat's time table.

The Answer Man has an answer for Armed Liberal:

Might I suggest joining:

I Support Democracy In Iraq

or if you are interested in a more animated version:

I Support Democracy In Iraq - The Animation

I'd love to see the Democrats argue against democracy. If nothing else just for the entertainment value.

Then in comment #4 Glenn Wishard says that despite all Bush's deficiencies including the House of Saud, he is holding firm.

My reply:

Totally with you on this one.

True, but the one thing Bush has not done is cave in to the defeatists like a rotten pumpkin, the very thing which Moran now advises him to find the "courage" to do..

As long as he doesn't cave we have time to change the terms of the debate.

It is the old "maybe pigs will fly" strategem. If we help maybe pigs can fly.

==

It is time to stop focusing on the doctors and the hospital and take a look at the real patient. Iraqi Democracy.

This is not about the "Iraqi people" such as they are. It is about the Iraqi democrats. Who may even be a minority. Doesn't matter.

It will be impossible for real Americans, even of the leftist variety, to repudiate democracy with any degree of conviction.

What will they say: Iraq is not ready? So what do we do, wait until they are ready and invade again?

Arabs can't do democracy? That is racism.

Then hit them with a good old JFK right between the eyes:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

John F. Kennedy

I'd love to hear the Democrats argue against Saint John.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

BUSH WITHDRAWS SWIFT BOAT DONOR'S NOMINATION AS ENVOY

It's not been a very good second term for George W. Bush and it's mostly his own fault. Today's decision to withdraw the ambassadorial nomination of a Missouri businessman who donated money to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is just a classic example of how the President has lost his so-called Texas swagger.

Fox was Bush's campaign chief in Missouri in 2004 and was listed as a "Ranger'" by the president's re-election campaign, meaning he raised at least $200,000. He also donated $50,000 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a political group that produced and ran advertising questioning Kerry's war record in Vietnam.

Kerry, who earned a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts as a Navy officer in Vietnam, said Bush made the right decision to withdraw Fox's nomination."

Sam Fox had every opportunity to disavow the politics of personal destruction and to embrace the truth," Kerry said in a statement. "He chose not to."

Total crap. The Swift Boat Veterans outed John Kerry as the fraud that he is, and his crying shouldn't be enough for Bush, the guy who actually won the presidency, to withdraw nomination one. If the George W. Bush I voted for were here, he'd say something to the effect of, "I won and you lost, chumley. Therefore I get to appoint who I want, and if you don't like it, we'll play hardball."

Even worse, Bush's withdrawal of the nomination is essentially a stamp of approval to all the criticism that the Swift Boat Veterans got and continue to get from those that wish to silence their political speech, and it just aids those who are trying to criminalize the executive powers of a Republican president. Very bad move.