Washington DC

One of the biggest issues with this Russian/Georgian conflict is the fact that there is a lack of verifiable information. One minute you hear that the conflict has ended and the fighting has stopped the very next, you hear that the fighting is still happening, and that the Russians are not honoring the cease-fire agreement. It is all rather confusing, and it makes for a very frustrated blogger. Because the last thing a blogger wants to be, is wrong.

However, more than that is the lack of the Main Stream Media’s ability to look at this entire conflict in a historical context. Many are pointing to the actions of Ronald Reagan for dissolving the Soviet Union Empire, as being the cause of this conflict. I happen to disagree with that notion. I believe personally that it was the foolish actions of President Harry Truman, that is the cause of this conflict or shall I say the harvest of seeds planted by Harry Truman’s actions.

On December 7, 1941, the empire of Japan attacked the United States naval base in Oahu, Hawaii. This act of brazen hostility brought the United States of America into World War II, despite President Franklin Roosevelt’s pledge to remain neutral in the ever-growing conflict. As history would show, The United States fought the war and finally Hitler was defeated, and Japan surrendered. However, the method used to end the war, is in my opinion the underlying cause of this conflict.

It is a known fact that the United States soundly defeated Hitler by fighting them on the ground and air, using conventional weapons. However, we stopped the war, and to end the conflict with Japan, we used atomic weapons. This I feel was a tragic mistake. This is because Truman was a different kind of a Democrat than Roosevelt. Roosevelt was an “old line” Democrat, who saw the Communist threat, knew what the Communist doctrine was truly about, the repression of freedom and he stood to defeat it. No matter how long it took.

However, Truman was another matter entirely. President Truman represented the “new line” of Democrats who felt that war was unneeded and that peace was a better path. This was a precursor to the “peacenik” Democrats of the sixties. This was evident when President Truman gave his infamous “Military Industrial Complex” speech, at the end of his term. * - See below, please.  With Hitler out of the way, Truman, feeling the ever-increasing pressure to end the war and return the country to pre-war status, devised a plan to end the conflict with Japan.

While using the Atomic bomb might have been an effective means of ending a war, its impact and stain upon the United States would be long ranging, to this very day, is to be considered a very poor decision by the United States. On many websites in Japan, including those in English, denounce America as being brutal for dropping the bomb. However, those who had friends and relatives that died at Pearl Harbor felt that Japan got what it deserved.

It is in the opinion of this writer, that the United States should have fought the war, all the way to Russia, until communism was soundly defeated. Furthermore, The United States of America, should have never dropped the atomic bomb on the empire of Japan, but rather, should have fought that war on the ground, until Japan surrendered. This would have resulted in the total defeat of communism. However, as we all know, this never happened.

Because of this obtuse neglect, the United States of America began a “Cold War” with the empire of the Soviet Union that lasted until a Conservative President, a real conservative President, whom came on the scene in the eighties to plant the seeds that would eventually bring down the soviet empire. However, as we have seen here in the last few days, Russia is not a free and democratic society; it is simply a police state, without the outright communism.

Putin, a man who is sympathetic toward the old soviet empire, filled to the brim with communist doctrine, is wagging his finger in the face of the United States and making a mockery of the supposed democracy in the European continent. This is the harvest of the neglect of the Democratic Party of the forties.

* Update: Oops! I blew it, Truman did NOT give the military-industrial complex speech, Dwight Eisenhower did. My bad. I blew it, I should have checked. But my point about the Democrats and the cold war as it relates to Russia still stands.

Worth going if you are in DC. -Patrick

MoveOn.org Counter-Rally!
 
MoveOn.org is planning a rally at the Capitol at 4:00 PM to steal media from the ongoing Republican "Guerilla Congress".
 
While the GOP is demanding a vote on offshore drilling, Democrats and MoveOn.org are frantically wave their arms trying to change the subject...
 
WE CAN'T LET THEM!
RALLY WITH US AT 5:00 PM!
 
Details
 
When: 4:45 PM
Where: Grant Memorial on the Mall, 1st Street between Penn Ave and Maryland Ave.
Why: To show America there is more support for drilling more oil
 
More Info: Call (202) 608-1411 or (720) 839-0130

It seems the Liberal sissy Moonbats have no love for one another.

This comes via Ann Althouse.

TNR's Dana Goldstein writes:

As anybody with high-speed Internet knows, MyDD and Daily Kos sit at the top of the liberal Netroots movement, which over the last five years has made astonishing strides in its campaign to transform the Democratic Party into a hard-fighting, proudly liberal, and, most importantly, victorious entity. Though their websites offer distinct communities and commentaries, and though they have very different personalities, MyDD founder Jerome Armstrong (a former astrologer) and Kos's Markos Moulitsas (a former Army man) have always gotten along--the two co-authored a 2006 book, Crashing the Gate, about the rise of their movement. Their bond has been rooted mostly in common foes: Republicans, namby-pamby Democrats, the Iraq War, divisive "identity politics," and the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. But the harmony that existed between MyDD and Kos since the birth of the Netroots no longer exists today, and a bitter internecine struggle within the progressive blogosphere is to blame. Just as bilious in tone as previous fights with Republicans or Joe Lieberman, it has revealed fault lines in the movement that will be tough to cover back up. There have been charges of misogyny and of bullying, and some longtime members have walked away from their cause altogether. And what's at the heart of it all is that most loaded of questions: Barack or Hillary?

[....]

After announcing her departure from the site, Alegre was the subject of insults by dozens of commenters. Moulitsas fumed on the site's front page, "People expect me to give a damn that a bunch of whiny posters 'go on strike' and leave in a huff. When I don't give a damn, people get angry that their expectations aren't being met." Of course, characterizing Clinton supporters, especially female Clinton supporters, as "whiny," didn't sit well with many. A Maryland mother of two in her mid-40s, Alegre said she won't publicize her real name because she fears harassment from anti-Clinton bloggers and commenters.

There's no doubt that the tone of the Netroots' Clinton-bashing has veered rather far from policy substance. After the Huffington Post scoop, Daily Kos front page writer Dana Houle wrote a bizarre diary (one he didn't post to the homepage) recounting how his impressions of Hillary Clinton had changed since 1992, when he saw Bill Clinton give a speech at the University of Michigan. "It was the night I learned the term MILF, and it was applied to Hillary Clinton," wrote Houle. In the same post, he described seeing a couple in the crowd at the Clinton speech engaged in a sex act. Later Houle, who is 43 and was once  chief-of-staff for New Hampshire Congressman Paul Hodes, brushed off the suggestion that sexualizing Clinton had been inappropriate. "Some people will look for a reason to be outraged no matter what," he explained, telling me that most of Clinton's support in the liberal blogosphere comes from marginal writers.

However, Ann Althouse disagrees:

Really? Upper middle class? I can believe there are more men than women, but enough to make it "relatively homogenous"?

She has a point, I did not care of Barry's style either, Being a former Conservative-Minded Democrat, He lacked substance, this was before all the Jeremiah Wright nonsense came out. He never could directly answer a question. He would always, and still does, dance around direct questions, he has zero substance, it is all flash and glam and personality. He might be a great person, but if he has no substance, what good is he? Nobody seems to want to address that question.

The answer is simply this, the Democrat Party is all about entitlements, Hillary is a Woman, she seems to believe that she is entitled to be President, because she was Bill Clinton's wife and because she is a woman, because she has a vagina, that makes her entitled to be President. The same way with Barry, He is a black man, He believes that he is entitled to be President, because of the injustices that were perpetuated against his people over 300 years ago, that makes B. Hussein Obama entitled to be President. Never mind that the fact that he is an empty suit with zero political experience. Never mind the fact that he did little or nothing of great impact in the Chicago senate, that is unless you count the cocaine snorting and gay sex.  However, because he is black, and he is the Obamassiah, he will ride into the White House on the shoulders of one the biggest liberals and communist sympathizers out there, the late Martin Luther King Jr.  By the way, the true story on Larry Sinclair's Lie detector is:

The raw computer readings showed that Larry Sinclair passed the test with flying colours. But two testers hired by Whitehouse.com re-interpreted the readings to claim that they showed deception. One of the testers was Edward I. Gelb who has been exposed by specialists in the field for claiming a phony Ph.D.

Can you say, Cover up? I knew you could!

Like I said, it is all about the entitlements. It is what the Democrats are all about. That and identity Politics, and we all know, Barry is a master at that.

(Taken from Here)

A bomb exploded inside Washington, D.C., this week, and, no, it was not the work of a Middle Eastern terrorist. It was the work of former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. He, perhaps more than anyone else, was the face of President Bush's White House. He faithfully served President George W. Bush for close to a decade and served as Bush's Press Secretary for some three years, resigning on April 19, 2006. He was also regarded as one of the most loyal and tight-lipped of the Bush insiders. However, his new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception" has exploded in the face of what history will probably regard as one of the most deceptive and manipulative Presidential administrations in American government. The Washington Post (and a host of other media) released a report regarding McClellan's book this past Wednesday.

According to McClellan's book, the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President George W. Bush himself. McClellan charges that Bush aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war." He also says he was deceived by some within the President's inner circle about the leak of a CIA operative's name.

He has especially harsh criticism for former White House advisor Karl Rove for misleading him about his role in the CIA case. He also accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of being "deft . . . at protecting her reputation," and called Vice President Dick Cheney "the magic man" who steered policy behind the scenes.

In a chapter titled "Selling the War," McClellan says the administration repeatedly "shaded the truth." He also stated, "In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage." In what might be the most disturbing statement in the book (at least among those that were released by press reports), McClellan said, "What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."

McClellan said his motive for writing the book was this: "Like many Americans, I am concerned about the poisonous atmosphere in Washington. I wanted to take readers inside the White House and provide them an open and honest look at how things went off course and what can be learned from it. Hopefully in some small way it will contribute to changing Washington for the better and move us beyond the hyper-partisan environment that has permeated Washington over the past 15 years."

I am confident the reaction that will spew forth from both sides of the political aisle will simply reinforce McClellan's basic assertion. Republicans will attempt to impugn McClellan's credibility, while Democrats will shout, "We told you so!"

In previous columns, I have written much regarding the poison of deception that emanates from Washington, D.C., which is mostly due to the preoccupation with political partisanship. It seems the only time the Republican and Democratic parties care about "ethics" and "honesty" is when it condemns the other party. Otherwise, life in Washington, D.C., is exactly as McClellan describes it: a culture of deception.

McClellan's book will be a bitter pill to swallow. To think that the war in Iraq was "unnecessary" creates angst and even anger in the meekest of men. Yet, how many times have governments spent the lives and fortunes of their people for causes and reasons that historians would later judge to be "unnecessary"? It might even be safe to say that most of history's wars have been "unnecessary."

The propensity of rulers to engage in war for personal, transient, or even adolescent purposes is exactly why America's Founding Fathers created a constitutional republic in this country. In America, the Constitution--not the President, Congress, or even the Supreme Court--is the Supreme Law of the land. Each branch of government is to remain separate from the other, and no branch is supposed to be able to run roughshod over the other. It is fidelity to constitutional government that forms the vanguard of our liberty, not to mention our safety.

This is why our President and members of Congress take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. They are not sworn to uphold the will of party bosses or special interest groups, or even the whim of the people. They are required to uphold the Constitution.

Sadly, America's civil magistrates (especially at the federal level) have been ignoring the Constitution for much of the 20th Century, and--for the most part--still ignore the Constitution today. And it has not mattered to a tinker's dam which party has been in power. Both major parties are equal opportunity violators of the Constitution.

None of us (including this writer) wants to believe that McClellan's bold assertion is true. None of us wants to believe that we are spending trillions of hard-earned tax dollars and sending thousands of brave soldiers and Marines (not to mention tens of thousands of Iraqis) to their deaths "unnecessarily." I sincerely pray that McClellan is wrong about that.

One thing I do believe to be true, however, is this: Unless the American people begin demanding that their civil magistrates uphold their oaths to the Constitution, and until the American people rid themselves of this blind loyalty to the two major political parties, we are going to be continually subjected to "Washington's Culture of Deception."

Chuck Baldwin's Personal Website

Chuck Baldwin - Constitution Party Candidate for President 2008 - Official Website