I just received my first email newsletter from John Kinde's humor Power. He teaches how to be funny.
I've always thought I had a sense of humor, but as I've gotten older I've taken myself much too serious. As a new member of "Humor Toastmasters" I've learned a little bit about humor. And it's been life changing.
I thought that to be funny, I had to be really funny. Because of that, when I thought of something funny, first I questioned myself if it was really that funny, and usually I deemed it was not, so I just kept quiet.
With Humor Toastmasters I learned that through observational humor, it doesn't take much to get a good laugh. After that first Humor Toastmasters meeting, I've loosened up, allowing myself to say things that come of the top of my head. Sometimes it doesn't work. But for the most part, I've made others around me comfortable and been able to enjoy each other's company through humor.
I remember when I was 5 and 6 years old. I would make jokes in the class and have all the classmates laughing. I don't know where I lost my funny bone, but I want it back. Life is a wonderful thing, and part of its joy is through humor.
Here's one of my observational humor jokes that was a lot of fun: My wife and I were in Laughlin ordering lunch. On the menu was "Bone-in ham". I asked the waitress how they put the bone in the ham. My wife thought that was so funny, she almost peed her pants. The waitress thought I was a wacko. I'm happy that my wife enjoyed my corny sense of humor.
If you don't think the bone-in ham is funny, trust me, you had to be there. And besides, when I only tell a joke once every 2 years, you'd laugh at just about anything too.
I think our Obama collective story will some day be written something like this. The leftwing anointed vision of America got stalled with the failures of the Great Society, and the high tax, big government discontent of the 1970s and 1980s.
Abroad after Vietnam, the gospel that America was the problem sputtered out — with the fall of the Soviet Union, the rejoicing in Eastern Europe with the liberation from communism, the market reforms of China, and the general rise of a murderous radical Islam, coupled with the later 9/11 attacks.
In short, doctrinaire liberalism, now to be recast as progressivism, was in trouble. About all that could be hoped for in lieu of ideological governance were entrenched liberal congressional enclaves, which served traditional Democratic constituencies — and offered occasional opposition to conservative excess and corruption of the Abramoff sort.
Jimmy Carter was simply too inept, self-righteous, and inexperienced to retake Rome from the barbarians. A gifted Bill Clinton might have; but he was too savvy for subservience to an unpopular ideology, too enslaved instead to his multifarious appetites and too malleable and worried about Bill Clinton to be a principled avatar of hope and change.
So the media, academia, the unions, the foundations, and the elite on Wall Street kept waiting for the Great Stone Face to appear — the saintly deliverer who would at last have the requisite skill and pedigree to bring a benevolent liberal statism to the unwashed, who for so long in their ignorance and selfish, petty agendas had resisted what was good for them.
Chapter Two — The Perfect Storm
Then the unexpected occurred without warning. The Iraq War was successfully demagogued as Vietnam redux. Indeed, we still apparently think it was lost, and the surge a failure. The Republican Congress by 2006 was mired in corruption. After eight years of Republican rule, conservatives of the base had tired of 50/50 deal making that had resulted in more big government and big deficits.
John McCain almost seemed more interested in losing majestically to our first serious African-American presidential candidate than conducting a hardball successful campaign. He too had alienated his base in the past, and many never forgot it, as their lackluster emotional and financial support attested.
Barack Obama, in contrast, offered to many an irresistible win/win proposition: centrist, bipartisan governance, and absolution for past sins through the election of a president of color. That Obama was young and patterned himself after JFK in his eloquence and pizzazz made a nice antithesis to George Bush’s tongue-tied speeches. And that the world promised that they would like us again only made it all the sweeter for the gullible.
Chapter Three – The Ascension
So Obama came in, quickly shed his thin centrist exoskeleton, and started in on the long promised bigger government agenda. In short order, we saw the absorption of some of the private sector, attempts at statist health care, and appointments that reflected an equality-of-result philosophy, mandated and enforced by a guardian class of Ivy-League technocrats, immune to the protocols they enforced on ignorant others, although, unlike Plato’s overseers, subject to no harsh regimen.
Abroad, at last we would fulfill the old pledge of the United Nations, follow global consent, back out of worthless old alliances, reach out to misunderstood nationalists, admit prior guilt, appreciate the role of race, class, and gender oppression in world affairs, scoff at artificial Manichean divides and inherit a multilateral world in which an unexceptional United States became simply one among many, unqualified to judge others, unable to enforce artificially constructed rules of international behavior.
Obama was the ultimate homeopathic — cure the patient by giving more of what caused the symptoms in the first place. If for a half-century an encroaching government, ever more regulations, politicized education, therapeutic stifling of free expression, higher and higher taxes, and expanding entitlements had threatened to make America less competitive, less free, and less prosperous than it could be, Obama in reaction would apply more of the same to cure the patient. Bush’s deficits? Expand them fourfold? Unfunded Prescription Drug — try Unfunded State Health Care. Fifty-percent of income given over to local, state, and federal taxes? — raise them far higher.
Chapter Four — The Resistance
Yet all that was not easy for a variety of reasons.
1) The United States had become so fabulously wealthy, so unimaginably free, and so roundly envied precisely because for two centuries it had promoted individual freedom, equality of opportunity, and free market economics in contrast to the other Western variant of mandated egalitarianism, government control of behavior, and state-run commerce. As the tea-party protests proved, traditions die hard and free peoples do not easily surrender their prerogatives to Ivy-league philosopher-kings.
2) While Obama was certainly a new and gifted candidate, and while he was surely to the left even of Carter and Clinton, and while he inherited majorities in both houses of Congress, and while the stars really did line up for him in autumn 2008, he was in many respects to prove a flawed leader of the leftist renaissance.
Obama knew little of Middle America and had little desire to learn. His idea of the nuances of the United States was gleaned from the university seminar and the federal payroll. Hyphenated racial-self-identity had always proved lucrative and was not to be abandoned. Postmodern indifference to the truth and facts ensured that much of what the President asserted, in reality, was not merely inaccurate but the exact opposite of what he claimed.
While Obama, the quick study, understood the role of deception, triangulation, and fudging in free-for-all politics, it was nevertheless difficult for him for long to disguise forty years of inculcation. So like a leaky faucet, the drops of an entrenched and rather scary philosophy now and then splashed upon us — Van Jones, Ron Bloom, and Anita Dunn echoed a prevailing ideological landscape.
Then there was the presidential insistence that police stereotype and act stupidly. We heard non-stop the old-time gospel that the better off must pay their fair share and spread their ill-gotten wealth, if they are to be deemed patriotic. As in the 1960s, America should apologize, given that it was as culpable as Europe or Islam for current global tensions. And so on.
3) The hypocrisy of left-wing redistribution politics and the enjoyment of the high-life, brought about by the fruits of capitalism, is a heavy anchor for Obama. Tim Geithner does not like to pay high taxes. Nancy Pelosi does like nice jets. Barack Obama likes junkets. So does Harry Reid. Charles Rangel likes hiding income on resort property. John “two nations” Edwards likes “John’s Room” in his mansion, and Green Al Gore enjoys his most ungreen estate. In other words, “progressivism” is easily identified as cynicism, as a condescending plaything of the well-off, who are exempt, either by government largess or private capital, from the very strictures they would impose on less knowledgeable others.
U.S. troops in Afghanistan are having a hard time understanding what is a strange Afghan cultural practice to them. The practice can be summed up in the ages old Afghan phrase, "women are for children, boys are for pleasure."
Yes, that phrase means what you think it means. It has been well known for a long time that some parts of Afghanistan have an odd sexual practice ensconced in its culture. Men have sex for pleasure with boys often eschewing women. Sometimes these men even claim to be disgusted by the idea of sex for pleasure with a woman. Yet none of these Afghani men think of themselves as homosexual because they don't "love" their male sex partners. They just love the sex.
This fact had become well known by Americans back in the 1980s when we were assisting the Mujahadeen to fight the Soviets. CIA operatives, social psychologists and cultural experts working with the government and Army personnel learned this strange habit long ago. But now that we are back in force in Afghanistan we are encountering this practice again and it is causing no end of confusion for U.S. forces -- especially medical personnel.
According to Fox News, American doctors are trying to teach Afghani men that they are getting sexually transmitted diseases from the anal sex they are having with each other. The docs are telling these men that they must stop the practice.
The problem is, though, that these Afghani men refuse to take the doctor's advice because they say it is their cultural practice. In fact, they say that the Koran tells them to do this.
The Fox report includes this statement by an Afghani that surely reflects his cultural bias on the issue. The report mentions that the U.S. medical personnel was trying to tell these men that sex with women will keep them from getting these diseases. The Fox News report said, "when it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, 'How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.'"
So why do I peg this to a backwards Islamic practice? Because the problem here isn't just a weird interpretation of Islam isolated in one small corner of the earth it is Islam itself that is the problem.
Certainly we don't necessarily see this homosexual practice in every Islamic culture, though it does exist in larger numbers than one might think. But the root of the problem is wrapped up in what the Afghani man above said about women. "They are unclean," he told the U.S. doctors. This idea that women are “unclean” is ubiquitous throughout the religion.
This disgusting devaluing of women doesn't just happen in Afghanistan, though it seems to be especially virulent there. This devaluing of women is rampant throughout the Islamic world. Islam hates its women. Islam beats its women. Islam rapes its women. Islam murders its women. From every corner of the earth Islam is anti-female.
So, it is no surprise that in at least one Islamic culture even having sex with women makes Islamic men sick.
For Islam to come from the 13th century into the 21st Century it must learn to treat its women with respect.
Jesus said, "Give, and it shall be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over".
The idea that life is some kind of zero sum reality is foolish. To think that the only way to be rich, is to take from someone making him poor. That can sometimes happen, but it's usually the poor, who take from the poor. The rich gain, by making others around them better off.
Bill Gates did not get his billions by stealing from the poor. And ultimately his wealth is not only saving millions of lives, he's making the lives of many better. Mr Gates could not make this possible if he was poor. It is through his wealth that others will gain life, where before they never had a chance.
As humans, we're designed to seek pleasure and shun pain. In my younger days I enjoyed my share of drinking alcohol. Seeking pleasure for my own selfish gain was the end in itself. Now, where I find joy is on a higher level. Instead of just taking care of my own needs, by creating value, I help those around me while I too am enriched.
Here's a small example: I hope you find value in this post. I'm giving you something, and I get value in that I express my ideas.
Creating value/wealth whether in the world of ideas, finances or politics makes the world a better place in some small way. A simple smile to a stranger can manifest to others.
What do you think about value? I'd like to hear your ideas?
Obama chose to call out the only 9 guys in the room that did their homework in law school. And the rest who ended up settling for politics stood and cheered it
.
When Obama made the misinformed comment in his SOTU address about the Supreme Court decision, I found it in utter distaste. And then for the democrats to stand and applaud while the SC Justices have to sit there with no response. Reminds me when Saddam Hussein stood up in his Congress and said there were spies in the room. He called them out by name, no one else said anything, and the men were soon executed.
I remember watching the US Tennis Open in New York and President Clinton was introduced to the crowd. He was booed. Though I was not a Clinton fan, I thought the booing was inappropriate.
You may not respect the man, but respect the office.
Obama continually criticizes Bush to this day. To me it shows an absolute lack of class.
The bloggers are all over the UN IPCC 2007 report, the bible of global warming, which predicted all manner of dire outcomes for our planet unless we got a grip on rising temperatures -- and it seems to be crumbling in some pretty significant areas.
The dam began to crack towards the end of last year when leaked e-mails from one of the temples of global warming, the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, suggested that a few sleights of hand were being deployed to hide facts inconvenient to the global warming case. An official investigation into these e-mails is on-going.
But the flood gates really opened after the IPCC had to withdraw its claim that the Himalayan glaciers would likely all have melted by 2035, maybe even sooner.
This turned out to have no basis in scientific fact, even though everything the IPCC produces is meant to be rigorously peer-reviewed, but simply an error recycled by the WWF, which the IPCC swallowed whole.
The truth, as seen by India's leading expert in glaciers, is that "Himalayan glaciers have not in anyway exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat."
So the 40% of the world's population that relies on the seven major river systems supplied by these glaciers can sleep a little more soundly in the knowledge that their water won't run out in 25 years after all.
Then at the weekend another howler was exposed. The IPCC 2007 report claimed that global warming was leading to an increase in extreme weather, such as hurricanes and floods. Like its claims about the glaciers, this was also based on an unpublished report which had not been subject to scientific scrutiny -- indeed several experts warned the IPCC not to rely on it.
The author, who didn't actually finish his work until a year after the IPCC had used his research, has now repudiated what he sees has its misuse of his work.
His conclusion: "There is insufficient evidence to claim a statistical link between global warming and catastrophe loss." Yet it was because of this -- now unproved -- link that the British government signed up to a $100 billion transfer from rich to poor countries to help them cope with a supposed increase in floods and hurricanes. It was also central to many of the calculations in Britain's Stern Report, which might now need to be substantially revised.
Now after Climate-gate, Glacier-gate and Hurricane-gate -- how many "gates" can one report contain? -- comes Amazon-gate. The IPCC claimed that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests were risk from global warming and would likely be replaced by "tropical savannas" if temperatures continued to rise.
This claim is backed up by a scientific-looking reference but on closer investigation turns out to be yet another non-peer reviewed piece of work from the WWF. Indeed the two authors are not even scientists or specialists on the Amazon: one is an Australian policy analyst, the other a freelance journalist for the Guardian and a green activist.
The WWF has yet to provide any scientific evidence that 40% of the Amazon is threatened by climate change -- as opposed to the relentless work of loggers and expansion of farms.
Every time I have questioned our politicians about global warming they have fallen back on the mantra that "2,500 scientists can't be wrong", referring to the vast numbers supposedly behind the IPCC consensus.
But it is now clear that the majority of those involved in the IPCC process are not scientists at all but politicians, bureaucrats, NGOs and green activists.
They may -- or may not -- still be right or wrong but what has become clear in the past couple of months is that, contrary to what many leaders have claimed, the science as promulgated by the IPCC is very far from "settled" and that there are important questions still to ask. The mainstream media has been slow to do this.
The bloggers, too easily dismissed in the past, have set the pace with some real scoops -- and some of the mainstream media is now rushing to catch up.
The sceptics may be about to get their first scalp. Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman often wrongly described in the media as the world's leading climate scientist (he's actually a railway engineer), at first attacked those who questioned the IPCC's alarming glacier prediction as "arrogant" and believers in "voodoo science".
He's since had to retract the prediction but can't quite manage an apology -- and is now under mounting pressure in his Indian homeland to resign.
Everyone on this subject is an expert. So why write?
We're all experts, but we always want to read what others say, perhaps to realize the author is full of shit, or maybe to actually realize the writer is giving value.
What I find disturbing about most weight loss tomes is the idea that "I did this" now "I'm this". The people who claim they are "Now this", let me see them again in a few years. I don't think there is this "I did this, and now I'm perfect" scenario. With weight loss and proper nutrition, it is a daily exercise until one dies. In other words, it's an ongoing process.
There is such a thing as good foods, and there are bad foods. Bad foods are foods that are animals, derived from animals, processed food and drinks. Good foods are those grown from the earth: nuts, seeds, fruits, legumes, cereals and vegetables.
Those who are now the perfect weight, must have eaten the perfect diet. I've been conscious of what I think is good nutrition for several years, and the days I eat "perfectly" are a hell of a lot fewer, than days where I make nutritional compromises. In fact, for me to go a day and eat a 100% (in my opinion) nutritional diet rarely happens. It's what I strive for, but indiscretions are part of life, it happens, and I move on.
One of the greatest ways to lose weight is to fast. Don't eat any food, and only drink water. It may sound harsh, but research it. It's the greatest gift you'll ever give yourself--bar none.
Another thing I notice in diet plans is that if you choose "their" special diet, you won't be hungry. It's almost a sin if you actually get hungry while trying to lose weight. Let me give you this freedom: It's okay to be hungry. And it won't kill you.
Previously, I mention the good foods. Eat the good foods, stay away from bad foods, and exercise. I try to exercise 3-4 days per week. I don't overdo it, but I would bet at my little bit of exercise, I surpass 95% of most people in my age group for calories expended in exercise.
I'm presently doing something that is folk medicine. There are no studies proving its benefits, but I do it anyway. (And you can search for yourself the so-called benefits via the Internet.) What I do is when I get up in the morning, I drink a bottle of water, then I put some water in my mouth, along with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, and drink it. Most everyday.
The US leads the world in obesity. I think about children going to race go-carts and governors are built into the motors, allowing the children to only go so fast. They don't have the wisdom and maturity to realize that if they went as fast as they wanted, most likely there would be deleterious consequences.
So too with the American diet. There's no governor on how much food we eat. We Americans don't know what is actually good to eat and what is not. Most of us believe that we need more protein (IE. eat more animals and animal products) and less carbohydrates. I believe the exact opposite. Look at the rest of the world. They are vegetarian mostly because of poverty, but their sickness does not happen because of diseases of affluence.
Here's the standard. And go to any weight loss table view what is a normal weight. It comes out to this: at 5'0" one should weigh 100 pounds. For every inch after, add 5 pounds. So a person 5'4" should weigh 120 pounds. Most of you reading this and doing the math are saying "No fn way". Go back in history and look at how much people weighed. It pretty much falls on that formula. We have removed ourselves so far from what is ideal, it's now normal to be obese. In fact, in America if you're not overweight you are in the minority.
Do you have secrets on how to lose weight? Please share.
The details of 'glaciergate' (for reference, see my post last night) keep coming out and they are more than disturbing. In an interview Dr. Murari Lal, the scientist behind the bogus claim that the Himalayan glaciers would be completely melted by 2035, comes clean admits that the statement was an outright fabrication.
The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.
Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report's chapter on Asia, said: 'It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.
'It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.'
Emphasis mine. This isn't the first time we've heard of this approach. The former leader of Greenpeace Leipold defended the exaggerated claims of polar ice melt with similar reasoning.
Although he admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization's practice of "emotionalizing issues" in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.
It would seem that some tried to stop the inclusion of the fanciful claim in the report.
Last week, Professor Georg Kaser, a glacier expert from Austria, who was lead author of a different chapter in the IPCC report, said when he became aware of the 2035 claim a few months before the report was published, he wrote to Dr Lal, urging him to withdraw it as patently untrue.
Dr Lal claimed he never received this letter. 'He didn't contact me or any of the other authors of the chapter,' he said.
The damage to the IPCC's reputation, already tarnished by last year's 'Warmergate' leaked email scandal, is likely to be considerable.
The last point there is particularly important. This scandal is completely separate from climategate. Think about the scope of what has been discovered. And then think about how the MSM has failed to cover it much, if at all. Your average American, your average person worldwide is likely still only vaguely aware of either event. Their belief that we are in imminent danger of death and destruction from rising oceans due to catastrophic ice melt is still safe and secure. I can only hope as the evidence mounts the media will have no choice but to report on it and these so-called world leaders will forced to acknowledge it.
John Edwards Admits He Fathered Rielle Hunter's Child Exclusive: Former Aide Says Edwards Had Him Steal Diaper to Secretly Check His Paternity By LEE FERRAN, BRIAN ROSS, NADINE SHUBAILAT and CHRIS FRANCESCANI Jan. 21, 2010
The senator admits he fathered a child with a former campaign worker.
"I am Quinn's father," Edwards said in the bombshell statement this morning. "I will do everything in my power to provide her with the love and support she deserves."
The former senator and presidential hopeful had an affair with campaign cinematographer Rielle Hunter, 45, and she later give birth to Frances Quinn.
Edwards' admission comes a week before the man who had claimed he was the baby's father, former aide Andrew Young, was scheduled to appear in an exclusive interview on "20/20".
In an excerpt from his upcoming interview with ABC News's Bob Woodruff, Young alleges that Edwards asked him to arrange a fake a paternity test.
"Get a doctor to fake the DNA results," Young said Edwards told him. "And he asked me ... to steal a diaper from the baby so he could secretly do a DNA test to find out if this [was] indeed his child."
I think it is important to give credit where credit is due. Regular readers know that I have been critical of President Obama in this column. Doubtless there will be future occasions for disagreement. But the president got one big thing right a few days ago, and it is incumbent upon fair-minded people to acknowledge his candor and percipience: the Massachusetts Senate race really was a referendum on the Obama agenda.
What is the Obama agenda? All eyes have been focused on the proposed bills to transform the way health care is managed, delivered, and paid for in the United States. The Democrats scored a rhetorical triumph by getting everyone, opponents as well as supporters, to refer to this proposed government takeover of medicine as “health care reform.” “Reform”? What is being proposed is “health care reform” in approximately the sense that Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture in the late 1920s was “agricultural reform.” That effort to bring hope and change to the Kulaks succeeded in what President Obama described as his goal of “spreading the wealth around,” though not, perhaps, in precisely a way that the local (de)population appreciated.
The fate of the Democratic proposals to collectivize medicine is a big issue, no doubt about it. And I for one hope that Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts last night will put the brakes on that ruinous piece of stealth-socialism masquerading as “reform.”
It is important, though, to recognize that the effort to expropriate the delivery and financing of health care — let’s stop calling it “reform” — is one spoke in the wheel of the Obama Offensive. What this administration has been about in its first year includes the collectivization of medicine. But that is only one part of a much larger goal, a goal adumbrated by Governor Mitch Daniels when he spoke of the Obama administration’s “shock and awe statism.”
This past summer, Senator Jim DeMint suggested that, were Obama foiled in his plans to collective medicine, the defeat would prove to be his “Waterloo.” Perhaps. Were the effort to collectivize medicine fail, I suspect it would be more like the battle of Leipzig: a defeat, but not a final defeat. I take the President’s threat to “double down” in the face of a victory by Scott Brown seriously. My PJM colleague Richard Fernandez is probably right that “The fundamental theme of 2010 will be a struggle for power.” As Fernandez, observes, “The polarization which began in early 2009 has increased rather than diminished. . . . Massachusetts is not the last, but the first in a series of meeting engagements between two rival factions. My own sense is that fundamental issues are now at stake.”
What are those issues? One concerns the proper role of government in American life. The Constitution was primarily an effort to define, to set limits, to the power of the state. The Founders understood both the need for federalism and the dangers of statism. In their effort to “form a more perfect Union” and “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” they were everywhere at pains to circumscribe the reach of state power. Having tasted tyranny first hand, and having pondered the melancholy lessons of history, they understood the awful metabolism of servitude. President Obama was quite right when, way back in 2001, he described the Constitution as “a charter of negative liberties.” What he did not understand then — and what he clearly still cannot get his mind around — is that fact that this “negative,” “merely formal” quality of the Constitution is one of its great strengths, not a weakness. In 2001, Senator Obama complained that the Constitution only told you what the state and federal government “can’t do to you,” not what it must do for you. As I noted at the time,
For a couple thousand years, people were desperately eager to frame constraints that would apply to their governments, that would limit, for example, the government’s ability to expropriate their property, to force them to educate their children in a certain way, or subscribe to certain government-mandated beliefs.
That sort of traditional political freedom is not enough for left-wingers. Ever since Marx decried bourgeois freedom as merely “formal,” the left has set out not to preserve freedom but to remake society according to a utopian scheme.
This is exactly what Obama wants to do. The “tragedy” of the civil-rights movement, he said, is that in focusing on “negative” freedom, it tended to “lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.”
Bringing about “redistributive change” is what the Obama administration is all about. The victory of Scott Brown is a reminder that even in the most liberal state in the Union, that statist imperative inspires fear and loathing, not support. How Obama and the powers that be in Washington (and I mean Republicans as well as Democrats) respond will determine the nature and comity of our public conversation for years to come. The victory of Scott Brown was a sign, a portent, an admonition. The question is, who is paying attention?
It's almost hard to believe but Wednesday, January 20 marks exactly one year since President Bush left the White House.
During his last public ceremony as commander in chief, he was booed by thousands of Americans who simutaneously cheered for Barack Obama as he was sworn into office on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
Except for a June 17 speech in Erie, Pennsylvania in which Bush defended his policies and criticized Obama’s, the former president has been remarkably silent about his successor. He has not fired back at Obama despite the new administration inappropriately blaming Bush for all of their failures.
One year after taking office however, Obama has done a total reversal on his isolationist, non-interventionist foreign policy, and is now pushing President Bush’s neo-conservative philosophy as a justification for starting a new war in Afghanistan. What the Democratic Party once criticized as an over-simplified good vs. evil argument has become the cornerstone of Obama’s reasoning. “Evil does exist in the world,” Obama recently admitted. “A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of man.”
In the wake of this stunning adoption of the Bush foreign policy doctrine, there is little, if any dissent. The same people who crucified Bush for liberating Iraq are hardly criticizing Obama for using force to promote democracy in Afghanistan.
Recent Gallup polls find that 62 percent of Americans think Obama’s war in Afghanistan “is the right thing” whereas only 39 percent of Americans think Bush made the right decision by sending troops to Iraq.
Any American who thinks that Bush was misdirected when he sent troops to Iraq in 2003 can’t possibly deny that renewing war in Afghanistan in 2009 to hunt Al Qaeda, eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks is, at the least, equally fallible.
Still, Obama is receiving the kind of public support that an American president, any president, deserves during wartime. Many anti-war activists, journalists and elected officials have been remarkably quiet, affording the new commander in chief the opportunity to launch a successful war campaign.
Very few Americans showed the same faithfulness to President Bush, including members of his own party. Republicans who favored non-interventionism to nation building abandoned Bush, and Democratic senators like John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton who voted for the war turned against it before the 2004 elections so they would have the ammunition they needed to criticize their incumbent opponent.
America quickly forgot about how President Bush charismatically lifted our spirits during some of the darkest moments of our nation’s history when the Twin Towers collapsed. After all, even Senator Kerry admitted Bush’s handling of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was “terrific,” during the 2004 presidential debates.
But after President Bush successfully secured America in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, he was rewarded with accusations of committing human rights violations and war crimes – an incredible irony since his policies were responsible for liberating tens of millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some Americans accused Bush of lying and starting a war under false pretenses simply because our troops never found actual weapons of mass destruction.
Despite what Michael Moore implied in his film "Fahrenheit 9/11," Congress did not base their 2002 authorization for the Iraq War solely on the premise that Saddam Hussein either had or was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Their legislation reads very clearly that America’s purpose in sending troops back to Iraq was to enforce U.N. resolutions, some of which were violated in the 1990’s and probably should have been enforced by President Clinton. Whether actual weapons were found or not, the war in Iraq was legally and morally justifiable, and necessary.
In addition to enduring criticism for his war policies, millions of Americans demanded the new Obama administration prosecute Bush for his decision to indefinitely holding detainees charged with war crimes. When President Obama signed an executive order in May that reinforced that same Bush policy, the far left was mute.
Almost no one said a word. Apparently, its acceptable for Obama to indefinitely hold detainees, just not Bush.
As Obama continues to make decisions that mirror the Bush doctrine, it is becoming apparent that the former president was not ignorant or irrational in his foreign policy decisions despite the harsh criticism and disloyalty he endured. He was in fact, ahead of his time, a visionary who understood politics and warfare in the modern age of terrorism.
That is why Obama is now following his lead.
It should be obvious now, even to Obama’s most passionate supporters that shielding the free world requires more than mere words like “hope” and “change.” Bush’s detractors should be embarrassed having arrogantly thought they could do it better, and those Republicans who abandoned Bush when he needed them most should take a moment to reflect on their fortitude or lack thereof.
Americans who chastised President Bush for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq should apologize and show him the same respect they are now showing President Obama as he neutralizes the Taliban in Afghanistan.
George W. Bush seemed to have an almost mystical understanding of what the American people needed when we needed it most. He reminded all of us of why we should be proud to be Americans at a time when there was a whisper that we brought the Sept. 11 attacks upon ourselves for promoting democracy abroad.
President Bush deserves our respect, not our betrayal.
Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is a journalist and lawyer who served on Senator John F. Kerry’s legal team during the 2004 election. He is currently organizing a nationwide effort called “Honor Freedom” to correct the historical record about President Bush and the Bush foreign policy doctrine, which can be reached at www.honorfreedom.com and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=41317929699&ref=ts or Twitter at http://twitter.com/honorfreedom.
For the past few years http://www.snopes.com/ has positioned itself, or others have labeled it, as the 'tell-all final word' on any comment, claim and email. But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind HREF="http://www.snopes.com/">http://www.snopes.com/.
Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it - kinda made you wonder what they were hiding. Well, finally we know. It is run by a husband and wife team - that's right, no big office of investigators and researchers, no team of lawyers. It's just a mom-and pop operation that began as a hobby. David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California started the website about 13 years ago - and they have no formal background or experience in investigative research. After a few years it gained popularity believing it to be unbiased and neutral, but over the past couple of years people started asking questions who was behind it and did they have a selfish motivation?
The reason for the questions - or skepticisms - is a result of http://www.snopes.com/ claiming to have the bottom line facts to certain questions or issue when in fact they have been proven wrong. Also, there were criticisms the Mikkelsons were not really investigating and getting to the 'true' bottom of various issues.
A few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the internet, 'supposedly' the Mikkelsons claim to have researched this issue before posting their findings on http://www.snopes.com/. In their statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into taking down the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort 'ever' took place. I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back to me) thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this and I gave him Bud Gregg's contact phone numbers - and Bud was going to give him phone numbers to the big exec's at State Farm in Illinois who would have been willing to speak with him about it. He never called Bud. In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg no one from http://www.snopes.com/ ever contacted anyone with State Farm.. Yet, http://www.snopes.com/ issued a statement as the 'final factual word' on the issue as if they did all their homework and got to the bottom of things - not!
Then it has been learned the Mikkelsons are Democrats and extremely liberal. As we all now know from this presidential election, liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be conservative. There has been much criticism lately over the internet with people pointing out the Mikkelsons liberalism revealing itself in their website findings. Gee, what a shock?
So, I say this now to everyone who goes to http://www.snopes.com/ to get what they think to be the bottom line facts ... 'proceed with caution.' Take what it says at face value and nothing more. Use it only to lead you to their references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself. Plus, you can always Google a subject and do the research yourself. It now seems apparent that's all the Mikkelsons do. After all, I can> personally vouch from my own experience for their 'not' fully looking into things.
I have found this to be true also! Many videos of Obama I tried to verify on Snopes and they said they were False... Then they gave their Liberal slant...!!! I have suspected some problems with snopes for some time now, but I have only caught them in half-truths. If there is any subjectivity they do an immediate full left rudder. Truth or Fiction's web-site http://www.truthorfiction.com/ is a better source for verification, in my opinion.
I have recently discovered that is http://www.snopes.com/ owned by a flaming liberal and this man is in the tank for Obama. There are many things they have listed on their site as a hoax and yet you can go to YouTube yourself and find the video of Obama actually saying these things. So you see, you cannot and should not trust http://www.snopes.com/ for anything that remotely resembles truth (SIC ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO LIBERAL vs CONSERVATIVE CONCERNS)! I don't even trust them to tell me if email chains are hoaxes anymore..
A few conservative speakers on MySpace told me about http://www.snopes.com/ a few months ago and I took it upon myself to do a little research to find out if it was true. Well, I found out for myself that it is true. Anyway just FYI, please don't use http://www.snopes.com/ anymore for fact checking and make your friends aware of their political leanings as well. Many people still think http://www.snopes.com/ is neutral and they can be trusted as factual. We need to make sure everyone is aware that that is a hoax in itself.
Thank you,
Alan Strong, CEO/Chairman Commercial Programming Systems, Inc. 4400 Coldwater Canyon Ave. Suite 200 Studio City, CA. 91604-5039
Phone: 888-277-4562 EX. 306/ Direct 888-812-9234 or 818-308-8561 Mobile 818-522-9319 FAX 818-301-2054
