I say you’d never know it because there are no protests. There’s no screeching and howling about how Bush Obama is shredding the US Constitution. There’s no full page ads from Move On in the New York Times. There’s no noise about it at all. Isn’t that interesting?
You’d almost think that all those protests of the Patriot Act really had nothing to do with the legislation at all. One might even get the impression that all the noise in the past was just an excuse to bash Bush. How else can anyone explain this?
After a wave of news about attempted domestic terror attacks, Democrats facing a tough election year quietly voted this week to extend the Patriot Act legislation that many of them had decried under former President George W. Bush.
The House passed a one-year reauthorization of the Patriot Act Thursday night 315-97, just a day after the Senate moved the bill on a late-evening unanimous voice vote.
With the law facing a sunset date of Feb. 28, the Senate opted to vote for the extension of three crucial provisions of the act rather than opening debate on a revised bipartisan plan passed by the Judiciary Committee in October that would have imposed stricter privacy safeguards.
“In the end, it became non-controversial,” Senate Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told POLITICO. “[There was] the growing concern about increase on the pace of attacks on the homeland… and frankly, I think the Patriot [Act] got a bad name under the Bush Administration.”
I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.
I spent — I’ve been there 17 times now. I go about every two months — three months. I know every one of the major players in all the segments of that society. It’s impressed me. I’ve been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.
Biden and Obama opposed every single aspect of the Iraq War.
Biden and Obama opposed and criticized the Iraq surge.
Biden and Obama farmed every political talking point they could find to oppose the Bush Administration on Iraq.
Biden and Obama continue to bash their predecessors every chance they get.
And now they want to take credit for the success in Iraq???
Dr. Charles Krauthammer once again says so eloquently what many Americans are thinking. Obama can try to spin the Scott Brown victory into an anti-Bush vote all he wants but the American people aren’t stupid.
WASHINGTON — On Jan. 14, five days before the Massachusetts special election, President Obama was in full bring-it-on mode as he rallied House Democrats behind his health-care reform. “If Republicans want to campaign against what we’ve done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have.”
The bravado lasted three days. When Obama campaigned in Boston on Jan. 17 for Obamacare supporter Martha Coakley, not once did he mention the health-care bill. When your candidate is sinking, you don’t throw her a millstone.
After Coakley’s defeat, Obama pretended that the real cause was a generalized anger and frustration “not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”
Let’s get this straight: The antipathy to George W. Bush is so enduring and powerful that … it just elected a Republican senator in Massachusetts? Why, the man is omnipotent.
And the Democrats are delusional: Scott Brown won by running against Obama not Bush. He won by brilliantly nationalizing the race, running hard against the Obama agenda, most notably Obamacare. Killing it was his No. 1 campaign promise.
Bull’s-eye. An astonishing 56 percent of Massachusetts voters, according to Rasmussen, called health care their top issue. In a Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates poll, 78 percent of Brown voters said their vote was intended to stop Obamacare. Only a quarter of all voters in the Rasmussen poll cited the economy as their top issue, nicely refuting the Democratic view that Massachusetts was just the usual anti-incumbent resentment you expect in bad economic times.
Brown ran on a very specific, very clear agenda. Stop health care. Don’t Mirandize terrorists. Don’t raise taxes; cut them. And no more secret backroom deals with special interests.
BONUS VIDEO: Here’s Dr. K “hammering” the point home on Special Report last night. Bottom line? “This was an election about substance and the Democrats lost on substance.”
Progressives are desperately in need of leadership; more specifically, House Democrats need to be told to pass the Senate bill, which isn’t what they wanted but is vastly better than nothing. And what we get from the great progressive hope, the man who was offering hope and change, is this:
“I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on. SNIP Now I think there’s some things in there that people don’t like and legitimately don’t like.”
In short, “Run away, run away”!
Maybe House Democrats can pull this out, even with a gaping hole in White House leadership. Barney Frank seems to have thought better of his initial defeatism. But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.
In a third and equally shocking piece of news, House Democrats are suddenly suggesting that maybe it’s a good idea to extend the Bush Tax Cuts. Say whaaaatttt?????
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Some Capitol Hill Democrats want President Barack Obama to extend tax cuts for wealthy Americans now scheduled to expire at the end of 2010, arguing that a tax increase could hinder economic recovery.
“I think there is a certain logic to leaving well-enough alone for now, given the fragility of the economic recovery,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D., Va.). ” It’s a question of prudent judgment and timing.”
White House officials are preparing to unveil their 10-year budget plan on Feb. 2, which will include a decision on what to do about the pending expiration of tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush.
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Josh Gerstein at the Politico argues that everything would be better if people would just stop attacking Obama and treat him with the respect everyone gave George W. Bush…
“Eight years ago, a terrorist bomber’s attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner was thwarted by a group of passengers, an incident that revealed some gaping holes in airline security just a few months after the attacks of September 11. But it was six days before President George W. Bush, then on vacation, made any public remarks about the so-called “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, and there were virtually no complaints from the press or any opposition Democrats that his response was sluggish or inadequate.”
“That stands in sharp contrast to the withering criticism President Barack Obama has received from Republicans and some in the press for his reaction to Friday’s incident on a Northwest Airlines flight heading for Detroit.”
Here’s a thought, Josh. Maybe if Obama wasn’t phoning in his response from the 9th green we’d take it more seriously…
“In his studied desire to be the unBush by responding coolly to events like this, Obama is dangerously close to failing as a leader. Yes, it is good not to shoot from the hip and make broad assertions without the facts. But Obama took three days before speaking to the American people, emerging on Monday in between golf and tennis games in Hawaii to deliver a rather tepid address that significantly underplayed what happened.”
“The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-six percent (46%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21 That’s the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President.”
Generation X, those of us born somewhere between the Vietnam War and the Iran Hostage Crisis, have spoken truth to power pretty consistently. When Gen X was young and angry, we distrusted the Reagan Administration. Between trips to the video arcade to play Space Invaders or hours long MTV watching marathons, back when MTV played music videos, we grumbled amongst ourselves about the old man running the country who seemed out of touch with us and our interests. It’s only in recent years that many of us have come to realize how well Ronald Reagan was actually looking out for us, our freedom and our safety.
Generation X was suspicious of the George Herbert Walker Bush Administration. Many of us had fathers, uncles, cousins and brothers who were Vietnam Veterans and when George Bush announced Operation Desert Storm, there were those of us who feared a repeat of Vietnam.
Then to DC, came Bubba and his frau. Clinton made an effort to connect to young people, appearing on MTV, wearing sunglasses and playing the saxophone. Lots of Gen Xers bought it but plenty of us didn’t.
Gen X was never a friend to W.
Now we have Obama and I find more and more people of Gen X disillusioned if they voted for him and ever more suspicious if they didn’t.
The point is, with Gen X our suspicion has never been tersely left or right as much as it was a general distrust of government. A natural predisposition to Libertarianism which is itself a member of Gen X, since the Libertarian Party was born in 1971.
Generation Y is doomed.
Generation Y is marching in lockstep with Obama. They voted for him, they like him, they want what he wants and they’re working to help him pass his agenda. They are naive and if they don’t figure out how grandly they’re shooting themselves in the foot and placing the handcuffs on themselves they will live to regret it.
For Gen X, rock and roll is about being anti-establishment. For Gen Y, rock and roll is about being part of the herd, celebrating the head of our government on the cover of Rolling Stone and clinging to Bush hatred even though Bush has not uttered a single word since Obama took office.
Gen Y somehow thinks they are anti-establishment. They actually believe they are anti-establishment as they nod their heads, donate money and work for Obama – The establishment! No one has clued them in that W. is no longer “the man” who is taking away their liberties and crushing their idealistic dreams.
Gen Y is gullible and way too trusting of the new “man” in DC. It’s embarrassing to watch. In cases like the video below where MTV hipster types “pledge” to Obama, I become sick to my stomach. In fact, I couldn’t even make it through this entire video.
I look forward to the day when Gen Y figures out what they so eagerly signed up for. Many of them will be living in their first home, working in their first good-salary job, maybe raising their first kid. Suddenly, they’ll start noticing what a nuisance it is when the government can tell them what to do and how much of their money they can keep.
It’ll be like a bunch of kids who sat down for a large meal at a fancy restaurant and then go into an angry panic when the bill comes and they realize they should have just gone to Wendy’s.
I suspect there will be hell to pay. Unfortunately for them, their name will be the only one on the tab.
"I became a Conservative by being around Liberals. I became a Libertarian by being around Conservatives."
-Greg Gutfeld
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ABOUT the name... American Glob is a pretty silly name for a conservative leaning libertarian blog, isn't it? There's a reason for that. A long time ago, American Glob was a parody news site. With the country in its present state, I no longer have to make stuff up. Capiche?
-Aleister
