Obama Administration brings back Bush-era "free speech zones"

Students at Wright State University who were protesting against Joseph Biden when he visited the campus last week were quarantined a quarter-mile away from the Vice President by the Secret Service. This happened not once, but twice. The rationale given by the Secret Service: they "didn't want the protesters to be too close to the motorcade."

Before any Republicans or Romney supporters cry "foul" about this, it would be well to remember that this exact same thing was routine policy during the presidency of George W. Bush! But that fact hasn't deterred a number of people on "conservative" websites from claiming that the Secret Service is violating the First Amendment, that Obama is violating the Constitution ad nauseum... when Obama's predecessor, a Republican president, was also insulating himself from public dissent with the very same methods, and on a much more chronic basis. Very many of Bush's following at the time had no problem whatsoever with the First Amendment rights of protestors being quashed. But now that the shoe's on the other foot...

"Free speech for me, but not for thee." I guess depending on who has the power, more animals really are more equal than others.

I don't want to hear any whining about Obama or Biden's use of "free speech zones" from past or present supporters of George W. Bush. As far as I'm concerned, come January we'll have had at least twelve years of regime by successive egomaniacs with narcissistic disorder. And I don't give a flying rat's butt which party either one belongs to.

So people: what's it going to take for us to quit supporting this sham?

Read More

America: Death by inconsistency

Louisiana College, a private Baptist school, is suing the federal government over the requirement that religious-affiliated hospitals and organizations must fund contraceptives as part of health care, even in spite of strong beliefs against such measures. Louisiana College and other religious organizations are quick to note that Obama's "healthcare" mandate violates their constitutional rights.

Doug Powers notes that the mainstream media is giving President Obama a "free ride" about the ridiculous price of gasoline, when it blamed George W. Bush for it at every opportunity.

(Longtime readers will know that I have never been a fan of either Obama or Bush. They're the two worst Presidents in American history, in my book...)

I juxtapose these two seemingly unrelated items before you, good readers, because I remember plenty of times during Bush's presidency when too many Christians simply "rolled over and took it" when he and his administration violated the Constitution. Not only that, but practically sang praises to the man (and even praying to Bush in at least one instance). So too, do I know fully well how many if not most of the "mainstream press" have a significant bias toward the Democrat party and for what are considered "liberal" causes.

Every day, bit by bit, I watch America die before my eyes because we the people will valiantly fight for what's right when it is in our favor but will feign ignorance and indifference when it is not. Who knows: we may not have this ObamaCare crap if a lot of us had chosen to take a stand against certain politicians during the past decade.

Read More

Obama's recess appointments: I smell hypocrisy

So it's coming out that a bunch of Republicans, including senators Orrin Hatch and Mitch McConnell, are expressing concern about President Obama making recess appointments when the Senate was not in session. Former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese is saying that Obama is committing "a breathtaking violation of the separation of powers."

Oh please...

The Justice Department headed by Eric Holder is defending the appointments as legal. Y'know, just like the Justice Department under President George W. Bush defended his firing of the United States attorneys as being legal. Just like John Yoo went out of his way to argue why his boss Bush should be given powers of a dictator in everything but name. Just like Samuel Alito sought to increase the power of the President by means of redefining so-called "signing statements".

But now the shoe is on the other foot. It's a Democrat in the White House. It's a Democrat running the United States Department of Justice. And right on cue, the Republicans are feigning righteous indignation when we all know that they would have been totally down with helping "their own kind" get away with crap like this.

Just another reason why I cannot in any good conscience support either the Democrat or Republican parties.

Read More

Iraq: Well, THAT didn't take long...

I hate to say "I told you so" buuuuuuut...

For quite a long time now and most recently five days ago, I have argued that going to war in Iraq would have disastrous long-term consequences and chief among those is that without a "strongman" to hold that country together, Iraq will tear itself apart into sectarian strife. The classic model for my thesis is Yugoslavia: a "nation" that much like Iraq was cobbled together from leftover realms in the aftermath of World War I. And just as Marshal Tito kept the various factions like the Croats, the Bosnians, the Serbs etc. from killing each other, so did Saddam Hussein put a lid on the Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds and everyone else from destroying Iraq from within.

That's NOT any justification for Saddam Hussein, mind you. The man was an evil bastard. It's just the peculiar dynamic of any artificial nation like Iraq that it has to have a powerful central figure wielding exorbitant military force to keep the peace among the various ethnic and religious factions. That central figure was Saddam but when the United States deposed him, we took responsibility for Iraq!

(Okay, not the American people per se, but our government certainly did... and for the moment I'll let it remain an exercise for the reader as to whether our government is beholden to We the People anymore. But I digress...)

So with the United States military not even 24 hours departed from Iraq, that country's Shiite-controlled government has put out an arrest warrant for Iraq's vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, who is a Sunni.

Expect this sort of thing to continue to happen.

Incidentally, it was former president George W. Bush who had the "genius" idea of putting the Shiites in charge of Iraq. Some will try to blame Barack Obama for that, but there's no basis for it. And I ain't an Obama supporter by any means either. I'm just an American citizen who expects better of his elected representatives. Including a greater than basic grasp of history and culture of the places we muck ourselves up in.

Read More

The Iraq War is officially over

On this day, the Iraq War has officially drawn to a close. It began in March of 2003, lasting nearly nine years (more than twice as long as the United States took to fight and win World War II across both the Pacific and European theaters).

The Iraq war cost our own country nearly one trillion dollars. It also cost the lives of more than 4,500 American military personnel and more than 100,000 Iraqis (many of whom were innocent civilians not attached to Saddam Hussein's army).

Now... can anyone finally tell me why it is that we went to war in Iraq in the first place? "Enforcing sanctions" won't cut it. We lost too many lives and wasted way too much money on this fiasco. What has come of it? An Iraq which will sooner than later tear itself apart across ethnic and religious lines (specifically Sunni, Shiite and Kurd) and a wide-open corridor from its western border for Iran to get pokey with Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

In short: we took an already unstable world region and primed the fuse for even worse potential for globe-rattling mayhem.

The only reason we honestly went into Iraq to begin with is because we had, at the time, a small-minded narcissist in the Oval Office. A man who only got there because of his friendships and his family connections. A control freak who was too used to getting his own way. A simpleton who had no grasp of history and yet wanted to be remembered as a "war president". An individual detached from sympathy, empathy and sincerity. A man who thought himself and was allowed to think of himself as "favored of God" and that all others as such were expendable according to the whims of his divine right to rule.

Yes, George W. Bush and all of his kind... by all means, "Take a Bow".

Future generations will look upon this conflict - and what it will eventually spawn - and accordingly rank our own era as being among the most foolish in American history.

Read More

"And nothing of value was lost..." ... or gained

Feelin' extra cynical and disgusted about some things this morning...

So the Republican party thinks it can "win back" control of Congress from the Democrats in this year's election.

How does that matter? Really... how does that matter?

I have been observing politics for most of my life. I'll admit that once upon a time I did believe that there were fundamental differences between the Democrats and Republicans and that those were "the only" parties that seriously existed. So I was in the same mindset as the vast majority of Americans.

Then I grew out of it. Woke up. Came to my senses. Saw things for how they really are...

Saw too much of what's running this country as one big damned fabrication. Not a government of enlightened individuals but a glorified puppet show entertaining the masses with smoke and mirrors.

And now, now... it doesn't bother me one whit about which party is "in control" in Washington.

Because, let's get real folks: do things ever honestly change for the better depending on whether it's the Democrats or Republicans that are in power?

This country endured sixteen consecutive years of the worst Presidents in its 200-plus year history. One was a Democrat and the other was a Republican. Neither left this nation in a better state than how they found it (the Republican one was hands-down the most destructive "President" yet).

But still, too many people in this country are entranced by the projected allure of these mere mortals. They look for the quick fix of "someone else" and ignore the wisdom that God has not only given us, but expects us to use on our own.

I don't see how this country will prosper for much longer when most of us refuse to think for ourselves and instead let the Republicans, or the Democrats, or Barack Obama, or Sarah Palin, or Glenn Beck, or anyone else but God carry our hopes for something better.

Read More

"...Only to God and woman."

Last week President Barack Obama met with Akihito, the titular Emperor of Japan. You might have heard about it: Obama made a ceremonial bow to Akihito and it's purportedly caused a lot of his political enemies to seethe with outrage...

Interestingly, many if not most of these same critics defended George W. Bush when in April 2008 (when he was still President) Bush not only held hands with but also gave a big fat slobbering fat kiss right on the lips to the visiting king of Saudi Arabia...

Bush's supporters at the time claimed that Bush was just "following protocol", exactly as Obama's defenders are doing now.

Me? I can't see a difference between what either of these two Presidents have done. And regardless of who's doing it, it sickens me to no end.

If either Bush or Obama had acted like this as private citizens, that would have been their right. But Bush and now Obama, as elected head of state of the United States of America, each ceremoniously capitulated their nation to a foreign sovereign power. This ain't about our home-grown assumption that the United States is "the greatest" country on Earth and everything with our understanding that in the roll call of nations ours is equal - no more and no less - to any other.

That's not a small matter, folks. And I can't see how it can be defended.

A little over a hundred and fifty years ago in 1859, John E. Ward arrived in China. Ward, a proud native of Georgia and former mayor of Savannah, had been dispatched by President James Buchanan to begin trade relations with China in accordance with the Treaty of Tientsin. But before such could happen Ward would have to come to Peking: a place that no American had been allowed to enter. Ward was allowed to proceed but on every step of the journey he asserted his native land as equal to China and not as a vassal state, as the Russians and the British and everyone else had done according to "diplomacy". The final act of "insolence" on the part of this American "barbarian" was his refusal to kow-tow: a low bow before the Emperor.

John E. Ward refused to bow. The representatives of the Emperor told Ward that he must bow not only for purposes of diplomacy but out of respect for the land's religion.

The reason Ward gave the Chinese: "I kneel only to God and woman."

True to his word, Ward did not bow to the Emperor of China. He never got the audience with the Emperor that he had been sent to have, but Ward wasn't fazed. He still delivered his letter about the treaty (to a minor official) and returned to America, his pride upheld... and China beginning to respect "the Country of the Flowery Flag". You can read more about John E. Ward at AmericanHeritage.com.

Y'know, I can't even begin to imagine either Bush or Obama getting up the nerve to think of something as brazenly principled as "I kneel only to God and woman." In the chronicle of American statesmanship, John E. Ward is certainly the greater man than our two or three or four most recent Presidents of the United States.

And if we had men (and women) of Ward's caliber and character, this nation would no doubt have more respect and standing among the countries of the world today.

Read More

Hypocrisy: Republicans launch site to track wild spending

So the House Republican Conference has just started up a new website dedicated to helping "the public and the press keep track of the billions of taxpayer dollars spent each year on government projects".

Who the hell do these people think they're kidding?

WHERE was this kind of concern from the Republicans about "billions of taxpayer dollars" between the years 2001 and early 2009, when they had the White House and for most of that time control of the House and Senate?

George W. Bush and his allies misspent more money from the public treasury than any other presidential administration in modern American history. Thus far the fiscal practices of Barack Obama have not been intrinsically different or substantially more wasteful than those of his predecessor. And it could be readily argued that Bush and his Republican colleagues certainly paved the way for whatever Obama will be doing for the next three or seven years.

The Republicans may complain about Obama's reckless abandon... but it was certainly the modern GOP that showed Obama and the Democrat party how to do it big and bold and without apology.

Read More

I'm having a damned hard time harboring any sympathy for people being abused by Obama's goons

And lemme tell you why.

Because as much as it does bother me to see those who have expressed outrage at President Obama's health care plans being labeled as an "angry mob" by officials and now being officially targeted by what can only be called Obama's own army of brownshirts...

...I have to remember that much the same thing was happening during the previous eight years during George W. Bush's tenure, what with "free speech zones" and loyalty oaths and people getting arrested for showing dissent... and sometimes arrested for no clear reason at all.

Hell, I was threatened with physical violence by one of Bush's thugs before he was President, just because I was a reporter with an independent newspaper (i.e. outside the grasp of Bush's control-freak nature).

I remember all too well telling Bush supporters what kind of a man he really was, and how the way he was treating American citizens wasn't the way that an elected official beholden to the people is supposed to be. Almost invariably I got that "empty glazed look" back in return. Like they didn't want to hear about it.

And now many of these very folks are getting much the same treatment from Barack Obama... and have no problem showing anger and indignation about it.

The only reaction I can muster is "Cry me a river."

Read More

Stating the obvious

Barack Obama's public approval ratings are plummeting through the floor.

His opponents are crowing about how Obama is now officially not as bad as George W. Bush was.

But let's call it for what this really means...

All this seriously demonstrates, unequivocally, is that twice in a row we have had Presidents of the United States who were/are so bad that they suck donkeys balls to no end.

Read More

Ramos and Compean finally free (they never should have been in prison to begin with!)

This morning, former Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos were freed from the federal prisons they had been in, and rejoined their families.

About time. But then, their imprisonment was a travesty of justice from the beginning. Regardless of their sentences being commuted, a whole lot of people in this country will never forgive George W. Bush and his lackey Johnny Sutton for taking sides with a known drug smuggler against two men who were trying to protect their country's safety and sovereignty.

No, I won't be one to forgive Bush for that, either.

That said: it's good that Ramos and Compean are back home.

Read More

Obama keeping controversial "rendition" practice

Even though he has pledged to end outright torture (no matter what its supporters have tried to brand it as), is closing the CIA secret prisons and has vowed to empty the camp at Guantanamo Bay, President Barack Obama is going to continue the policy of "foreign renditions" started by his predecessor George W. Bush.

Rendition means that the United States can secretly abduct a "suspect", and have him or her covertly transferred to another country that doesn't have the same official policies against torture. But it's not the United States that will be doing the torture or whatever, see? Officially, our government gets to keep its hands clean.

Some will call that "plausible deniability". I call it "using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law" at its most grandiose.

Still waiting for that "change" that I was hearing so much about...

Read More

Some random musings on things...

A few months ago George W. Bush proposed wasting hundreds of billions of dollars of our money and it was called "bailout" and some politicians approved it. Today Barack Obama is proposing wasting hundreds of billions of dollars of our money and it's being called "stimulus" and those same politicians deride it as unacceptable.

I would like to quote "Oceania is at war with Eurasia, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia" to the Powers That Be, but sad to say, they most likely wouldn't get it.

And now that he's President, doesn't Obama have better things to do than to get into the proverbial "pissing contest" with a radio commentator who is nothing more than a shameless shill for the "other side"?

Don't we have better things to do than to even care about such a non-story involving two men with apparently arrested development?

Pat Buchanan is right: we have become an unserious people in a serious time.

Read More

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss..."

President Obama plans to uphold the power that George W. Bush asserted in regards to spying on Americans without a warrant.

So much for not sacrificing our ideals for safety that Obama kept talking about this past week after he got sworn into office.

I hate to say "I told you so" but... many people, including myself, were screaming as loud as we could during the past several years that the horrible precedents that Bush was setting, would likely come back to haunt us. For almost eight years, Bush got away with violating the Constitution - in both rule and spirit - and his cheerleaders kept assuring us that Bush "had no choice" but to do these things to keep us secure.

Now those same powers have gone to a man that many of these same people have not been able to hide their sheer hatred toward. And however it is that Obama might choose to exercise those powers, these same people have no moral or logical grounds to oppose him.

Consider whatever else I might have otherwise posted about this, as an exercise for the reader.

Read More

All that needs to be said about today

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

---

"Sic transit gloria mundi"

Read More

Bush commutes prison sentences of Ramos and Compean

On his last full day as President of the United States (thank God), George W. Bush commuted the prison sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.

And even with this, the worst President in American history managed to completely screw it up.

The sentences of Ramos and Compean have been commuted: the two former Border Patrol agents have not received full pardon. And it is nothing less than a pardon which Ramos and Compean deserve for doing their jobs as best they could. The fact remains that each of the two has a conviction on his record that will follow them after release from prison. And speaking of which, their release isn't immediate anyway: Bush made it so they couldn't see freedom until March 20th.

And they wouldn't have received a commutation of their sentences anyway had it been left to the "conscience" of Bush. Millions of people and several elected officials rose up to defend Ramos and Compean in demanding their pardon and release. Bush steadfastly refused to free them. Is there any doubt that today's development was motivated purely out of politics, and Bush's frantic desire to salvage his "legacy" as President?

So I won't thank Bush for "doing the right thing" when he should have done it to begin with as part of his job responsibilities. And I can't let it be credited to him as an act of kindness either, when we all know it was anything but that.

And if Barack Obama were smart, he will grant Ramos and Compean their full pardons before the week is out.

Read More

George W. Bush leaving with lowest approval of a President EVER!

With a 22 percent approval rating - the lowest ever since the Gallup Organization first started asking the question more than seventy years ago - George W. Bush leaves office as the least popular President in modern history.

Comparatively, both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton left with their approval ratings at 68 percent. George Bush Sr.'s was 54 percent. Jimmy Carter had 44 percent and Harry Truman had 32 percent, the previous all-time low.

(Incidentally, I'm seeing many of the few remaining supporters that Bush has demanding that "their guy" be judged by history as favorably as Truman has been. But I don't see that happening. Truman holds the title of the real "Decider", whereas posterity will note that Bush had no appreciable principle at all.)

Well, it can't be said that Bush doesn't deserve such outrageously low approval. He has nearly single-handedly destroyed the underpinnings of America, doing more to wreck the United States than Clinton ever did. And it's going to take decades, if ever, before the country recovers from the damage this sad little man - who otherwise would not have been been in any position to be given such dire responsibility were it not for family favoritism and a corrupt political system - has inflicted upon it.

EDIT 11:36 p.m. EST: Someone else who's a fan of The Simpsons also used that cartoon to convey their feelings about Bush. What sayeth Comic Book Guy?

Read More

Bush declares federal emergency so Obama inauguration can get bailout money

How bad are things when paying for the swearing in of a new President of the United States requires bailing out by the United States government?

George W. Bush has declared an emergency in and around Washington D.C. in anticipation of what is expected to be the record number of people who will be coming to town over the next several days to witness the inauguration of his successor, Barack Obama. Doing so "frees up" contingency funds that usually go toward hurricane relief or for other natural disasters. In this case that same money is going toward the inaugural celebrations. Providing for facilities is expected to cost the city $75 million and the state of Maryland, $12 million.

Quite a few things that could be observed about what this says regarding the American people and their government...

Admittedly, presidential inaugurations have always been a bit festive. Probably none on record was as wild as the one for Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 (his had Chief Geronimo among others: kinda hard to top that, folks). But at least for the better part of the past two decades, I've witnessed something revealed about our national character at large during the arrival of every new executive administration lately. Namely, the cult of regarding the President as something more than what the office is supposed to be. And that is, one of public servant. We have instead turned the Presidency into what should not be asked of it and should never be expected of it: practically the right hand of God Himself on this Earth.

As we have seen, there are certainly problems when the very weak men who come into this office, start to believe the hype.

I wrote four years ago when Bush was getting sworn in again that it should not cost anything for a new President of the United States to put his or her hand on the Bible, and swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. To that notion I hold also regarding Barack Obama. And Bush betrays how sincerely weak he is as a so-called "conservative" when he wastes the public treasury on perpetuating this folly... but then, wasting other people's money is the only thing that George W. Bush has ever known, so why should now be any different?

Perhaps there should be a law enacted that mandates no public funds for the festivities of swearing or affirming the oath of office. Who knows: with much less distraction, it might be an incentive for future Presidents to actually take their oaths far more seriously.

Read More

Lest anyone believe this blog will be soft on Obama...

Ever since this blog began five years ago, I have very often broken bad on George W. Bush. Because he has consistently proven himself to have been the worst President of the modern era (and quite possibly the worst ever). There have been a few times when I have not hesitated to praise his actions, but those have been few and far between. It will be decades before the damage that he has done to America can be fully repaired, if at all.

But don't think that The Knight Shift is going to be a safe harbor for pro-Obama sentiment either...

This blog and the admittedly off-kilter guy behind it do not cotton to any ideology. If anyone enters my dojo with the sad notion that I should admire or fear them because they are a self-styled "conservative" or "liberal", then they are wrong... and I won't hesitate to land them square on their ass for their assumed bravura. People can have conservative or liberal opinions about a given issue, but to deride others as blanket "conservative" or "liberal" is to not give those people the respect that they deserve and to give such a label to one's entire identity is the acme of shallowness.

So Bush is finally going away, and it can't come a moment too soon. How much confidence do I have with incoming Barack Obama? If this next story is any indication: not much at all.

According to a video that Obama had posted on YouTube, as part of "economic stimulus" he wants to create three million new jobs, with 80% of those being in the private sector.

But that translates into 600,000 jobs that will be in government. In other words: more bureaucrats. What these new employees on the federal dole will be doing that government employees are not already busy with, I haven't a clue. And I would be remiss if I did not mention that no nation in history ever created prosperity for itself by increasing the size and scope of its own government. The George W. Bush years alone proved that.

What I'd love to know even more though, is how exactly does Obama believe he can create 2,400,000 employed positions in the private labor force? The most robust way that I can recall that ever being possibly done, is for there to be wartime conditions like World War II, when vast segments of the population went to work for defense contractors.

There is only one way that Barack Obama can help create economic growth and recovery for America's finances: cut taxes - especially slashing income taxes and corporate taxes so as to encourage more domestic industry - and cut spending. Not just one and not just the other, but both together.

If Barack Obama does that, he will truly go down in history as one of the greatest American Presidents of all time.

We'll see what happens, over the next four years or eight...

Read More

Bush wants gate on public street to limit access to new home

I defy anyone to tell me that these people don't think of themselves as elitist royalty who believe they are better than the rest of us...

George W. Bush wants taxpayer money to pay for a gate to be installed on the public street where he will soon be living in Dallas after he leaves office in a few weeks. The gate will be a hindrance to those who already live on the street.

So because George W. Bush as a private citizen has chosen to live in a certain place, the right to free movement of not just his neighbors but all other Americans will be limited by act of government, paid for by our money, if this goes through.

Even without having it actually declared, is this not tantamount to granting Bush a de facto "title of nobility"?

If Bush is that concerned about his safety - though God only knows what ever gave him such a notion - then he should retreat to a house located a remote distance from any public thoroughfare, where he can provide for a gate and guards paid for out of his own pocket.

And isn't it funny that Bush wants to secure himself away behind a fence... when he hasn't done a damned thing about building a real barrier against illegal invasion along the border with Mexico?

America will not long survive tolerating this brand of hypocrisy. Maybe it's time for another storming of the Tuileries.

Read More