GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE: RELIAPUNDIT AND JONAH GOLDBERG

JONAH TODAY (AT THE CORNER AND HIS BIGTIME SYNDICATED COLUMN):

Most of the criticisms aimed at McCain can be directed at President Bush himself.

... Campaign-finance reform is a great example... George W. Bush. The president signed the McCain-Feingold bill ...

Amnesty for illegal immigrants? To be sure, McCain was a big player last year in pushing legislation many on the right detest. But the biggest player of all was, again, Bush.

... Didn't McCain say something about Justice Samuel Alito being too conservative? they ask. Well, didn't Bush's instincts guide him to naming White House insider Harriet Miers before conservatives revolted and forced him to choose again?

...President Bush who pushed through the biggest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society with his prescription drug benefit — a plan McCain opposed and promises to scale back.

RELIAPUNDIT - LAST WEEK:

YA SEE: GW BUSH IS A LIB:

* HE WAS FOR AMNESTY.
* HE WAS FOR MIERS.
* HE PUSHED FOR AND WON THE LARGEST EXPANSION OF MEDICARE SINCE LBJ.
* HE PUSHED FOR AND WON THE LARGEST EXPANSION OF EDUCATION SPENDING EVER.
* HE PUSHED FOR AND WON THE MOST MONEY FOR AFRICA EVER.
* HE PUSHED FOR AND WON THE MOST MONEY FOR AIDS - AN STD - THAN EVER.
* AT LEAST HE GOT THE WAR RIGHT.

YUP: LIKE MCCAIN, DUBYA IS A LIB.

MCCAIN IS JUST A LITTLE MORE OF A DEFICIT HAWK AND A TIGHT-WAD.

IN CASE YOU THINK I'M BEING AND EGOTIST BY POINTING THE SIMILARITY OF HIS RECENT POST TO MY OLDER ONE, LET ME POINT OUT THAT JONAH HIMSELF DID THE SAME THING TODAY:

Not Quite Just In [Jonah Goldberg]

From the great minds think alike dept.

Cal Thomas opens his column today: "This just in: Ronald Reagan is dead and he's not coming back."

Here's how I opened mine, back in October: "Ronald Reagan is dead, and he’s not coming back."

02/12 07:45 AM

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE: RELIAPUNDIT AND JONAH.

• MY UNDERLYING POINT IS TWO-FOLD: WE HAVEN'T HAD A CONSERVATIVE PRESIDENT SINCE REAGAN.
• AND MCCAIN IS ONLY SLIGHTLY TO THE LEFT OF BUSH.
• TOO BAD THERE ISN'T GONNA BE A CONSERVATIVE AT THE TOP OF ANY TICKET AGAIN THIS FALL.
• THIS FACT MAY DISHEARTEN GOP VOTERS AND HAND THE WHITE HOUSE TO THE COMMIE DOVES.

GULP.

I know what you did last summer, John McCain

Feel free to steal these particular DVDs from any store. John McCain doesn't seem to picky about the enforcement of various laws.

By the way, how's that 700 miles of fence coming?

Poster idea: Reliapundit

ELLEN AND JENNA BUSH CALL THE PRESIDENT

Video Hat tip: Patrick

JR posted about this yesterday. I thought it would be nice for the readers to see the actual video. I am not a fan of the Ellen show but I thought this whole scene was neat. It really shows what a class act the President is, and why some of us still love him.

An Interesting Question

Commenter Cormac-ballz asks:

What I don't get is: Congress is less popular than Bush because they didn't stop the war/stand up to Bush etc.

But Bush should be less popular because he's the one persecuting the war in first place!

Is there something about U.S. citizens that I fail to grasp? Is it because they don't sympathise with people they view as wimpy (e.g., Congress).

The Democrats won Congress by replacing the Republicans in the South with Blue Dog Democrats.

Those Democrats who won in the South promised not to damage the war effort. This has disgusted 1/2 the Democrats. The Republicans are disgusted to begin with. The other 1/2 of the Democrats are disgusted with the disgusted Democrats and no one is interested in solving the overspending problem.

So you have the Republicans who still support Bush - 24% and no one who supports Congress.

There is also the wimp factor which underlies the attitude of the Southern Democrats. They come from a martial culture. It transcends Republican/Democrat.

In many ways the Republicans won the last election. Southern Democrats are closer to the Republicans than they are to San Francisco liberal Democrats.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

It Is Coming

I have a friend who reports on the defense industry. Nice Jewish boy.

He says via e-mail that it is no use wasting your time trying to convince idiots of the obvious (morally it is sound though).

He says a big war is coming. BIG war. Like Pearl Harbor it will unite us. He says it is a waste of time trying to talk to the idiots. He used to blog a lot on the subject. Now he doesn't bother. He says events are the best convincers. Why does it feel like October 1939 all over again? The period of the "Phony War".

Which reminded me of this piece by Herbert E. Meyer at the American Thinker.

For better or worse, it's part of the American character to wait until the last possible moment - even to wait a bit beyond the last possible moment - before kicking into high gear and getting the job done. It's in our genes; just think of how many times you've ground enamel off your teeth watching your own kid waste an entire weekend, only to start writing a book report at 10:30 Sunday night that, when you find it on the breakfast table Monday morning is by some miracle a minor masterpiece.

However horrific it may be, the knockout punch won't knock us out. Instead, it will shift us from playing defense back to offense - and this time we won't hold back. The president will ask Congress for a declaration of war and he, or she, will get it. We'll bring back the draft, send our troops into battle without one hand tied behind their backs by lawyers, and we won't waste time and energy pussyfooting with the United Nations. And if we've closed GITMO by this time - we'll reopen it and even double its size because we're going to pack it. All of this will take longer to organize, and cost more, than if we'd done it right in the aftermath of 9-11. That's unfortunate, but that's the way we Americans tend to do things. And when we do finally start fighting for real -- we'll win.

That would be my assessment as well. In my opinion once Bush took on Iraq and then won the 2004 election the die was cast. What ever political winds were blowing after that the die was cast.

H/T Reliapundit who got me to thinking about this subject with his reports of recent terror alerts.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

PRESIDENT BUSH FED UP WITH UN'S LACK OF ACTION ON DARFUR

"I promise this to the people of Darfur: the United States will not avert our eyes from a crisis that challenges the conscience of the world."--President George W. Bush

The genocide in Darfur is one of those issues that I care deeply about. I did a comprehensive post on it a year ago where I highlight what was going on and what could be done to stop it. As I pointed out a year ago, I was skeptical that the UN would make any real steps to actually solve the problem. They have done nothing but pass resolutions which isn't effective in curbing the violence and President Bush has had enough.

Steve Paterno, a Sudanese man living in the US, points out how Bush has cared about this issue and has done much more than past administrations to change things in the Sudan and of course, has gotten little credit for it. Here is some of what he had to say:

When it comes to Sudan, President Bush knows it too well that he dedicated most of his efforts and time to issues affecting Sudan. There are even rumors that he has been nicknamed within the White House circles as "Sudan Desk Officer." It has been alleged that President Bush does not only passionately taken into heart the problems affecting Sudan but also developed some level of expertise on Sudan in the course of his tenure as president of the U.S.

Now Bush is taking things a step further and issuing tough economic sanctions. He spoke on this last Tuesday. Here is some of what he had to say:

For too long, the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder, and rape of innocent civilians. My administration has called these actions by their rightful name: genocide. The world has a responsibility to help put an end to it.

Last month I announced that the United States was prepared to take new steps if the government of Sudan did not allow the full deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force; if the government did not begin living up to its many commitments, that the United States would act. I made clear that the time for promises was over, and that President Bashir had to do something to end the suffering.

The result is that the dire security situation on the ground in Darfur has not changed. And so today, at my instruction, the United States has taken the steps I announced in April. First, the Department of Treasury is tightening U.S. economic sanctions on Sudan. With this new effort, the United States will more aggressively enforce existing sanctions against Sudan's government.

BUSH SHOULD FIRE ALL 93 U.S. ATTORNEYS

I have a radical idea for President Bush: fire all 93 U.S. Attorneys. Bush is completely within his rights to fire any of the U.S. Attorneys at any time. They are political appointees! So, what he should do is say "There's a lot of controversy over the firing of 8 U.S. Attorneys, so in the interest of clearing up the matter, I'm firing all 93 U.S. Attorneys and we'll start from scratch."

The MSM and the Democrats would be furious, but it would be a strong shot across the bow and send a strong message to everyone that the president has executive powers and is granted the right to use them by the U.S. Constitution. The Democrats are going to investigate every single action the President takes from here to 2009. Bush should take a bold stand to protect the Office of the Presidency. I guarantee you that his approval numbers would go up if he made a decisive move.