Recommended reading for a late evening or an early morning
Check out these wonderful motivational posters based upon Churchill’s sayings. Obama should be forced to memorize each of these and to recite them daily, morning and evening, to his face in the mirror. Given the international scene right now (and Obama’s feckless and wuss-ish approach) I particularly like the one for “fortitude”: “Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”
IBD notices that Congress is working hard to make sure that General McChyrstal doesn’t get heard: “When Bush and Petraeus proposed the surge in Iraq, Democrats demanded that the general testify before Congress. So why has the Senate blocked a similar invitation to our commander in Afghanistan? [Para] Those with memories longer than the 24-hour news cycle recall that in the dark days of the Iraq War, David Petraeus was summoned to Washington to explain the surge strategy that would eventually lead to victory in Iraq. [Para] Democrats hoped for a show trial. [snip] But as it turned out, Petraeus gave a virtuoso performance, giving a realistic assessment of the situation on the ground and explaining to Congress and the American people in unfiltered words how his strategy would work and why it was necessary.”
Charles Krauthammer, of course, has just the right thing to say about the feckless Obama and the situation in Afghanistan: “You have the best generals in the world – McChrystal on counterterrorism and Petraeus on counterinsurgency – the best in the world who know exactly how this is done and who conclude you cannot do a counterterrorism strategy, only counterinsurgency. [para] And all of a sudden he is relying on Biden, Rahm Emanuel, and himself to go against the advice of these experts? Hard to believe.”
If you’re the City of Oakland, California, and you have a thriving, competitive business community, what would you do? Leave it alone? Naw. Encourage it? Come on! No. What you do is stifle it. Even I can’t fathom this obsessive need for government control. (Did I mention that Oakland is a complete Democratic city?)
Karl Rove believes that Republicans are winning the health care debate and, as far as the public is concerned, he’s right. People have soured on the idea tremendously. The problem, of course, is that House and Senate Democrats may not care. I think they’re so deeply invested in the morality of the public option that they will pass it regardless — and we’ve got the president who will sign it as passed. In a bizarre way, the fanatics in Congress will be willing to sacrifice themselves based on their belief that they’re doing the Right Thing.
Benjamin Kerstein writes compellingly about the fact that Obama, despite his aversion to action, has managed with his words to destroy, perhaps irrevocably, the special relationship Israel and America have always had. Sadly, I suspect that Obama won’t be kept awake at night by the thoughts about what he destroyed. Indeed, knowing his past and his friends, I’m sure he considers this severance a significant accomplishment.
