Rose Colored Glasses

It's almost comical how much material Rosie O'Donnell gives me with her ignorant rants on The View. Today she was hammering Elisabeth about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession to being the mastermind of 9/11, as well as a whole host of other attacks or planned attacks. Rosie has a problem with his confession because he has been detained since 2003 in SECRET CIA prisons and then at Guantanamo, and that he has been tortured and has not had legal representation. Elisabeth asked her how she wanted Mohammed to be interrogated, and Rosie said that she is against torture, and thinks he should have legal represenation.

So, in Rosie's rosy world, we would never catch any terrorist. This is the problem with whining, complaining liberals like Rosie: they are so emotional about their views that they never offer anything substantial, they just don't like how things are being done and they loudly tell us how much they dislike it. Who is Rosie kidding? In her world, do we arrest Mohammed and then encourage him to get a lawyer, who will get Mohammed off-and forget a confession; how many suspects confess with their lawyer present?-so Mohammed can plan more attacks? Or does she think that Mohammed, unlike George W. Bush, is innately good, and when arrested and put in a comfy jail cell in Indiana (because liberals don't want problems in their backyard; she wants him out of Guantanamo and out of SECRET CIA prisons but fails to say where he should go) and equipped with the best lawyers from the ACLU, that he will tearfully confess? "Yes, I hate the people in your country; yes, I plotted the 9/11 attacks, but now I see that you are good people and I am so sorry. Please, let me off with time served." Only in Rosie's world are terrorists the victims and the U.S.A. the ones to be feared.

Echo Chamber

One criticism of the Bush administration often repeated in the mainstream media is that he surrounds himself with 'yes' men, loyalists who refuse to give him a dissenting opinion. People close to Bush have strongly denied this is true, but let's just say that it is true. There's a couple things I find ironic.

1) Every major news outlet serves as the dissenting voice. Bush doesn't need anyone close to him to present a dissenting argument when the alphabet soups will see that the dissenting, aka liberal, view is always stated. (Ever wonder who decides which news outlets are prestigious? Isn't it automatically assumed that the NY Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and CNN are all "presitgious" sources of news, the "best" in the business? Isn't it curious that anything in the U.S. with a liberal tilt automatically gets a "pretigious" endowment? Think Harvard, Yale, Stanford, the Dixie Chicks winning 5 Grammys, etc.)

2) The east coast is very liberal, especially NYC and the surrounding areas, and D.C. Hollywood is also very liberal, no surprise there. Aren't these folks essentially guilty of what they accuse the Bush administration of? How often do the journalists in these cities try to surround themselves with dissenting voices? Don't they pretty much surround themselves with like-minded individuals? Watching the train wreck that is the View, Rosie can barely contain her rage at Elisabeth because Elisabeth has a dissenting view. These people may argue that they are not the President of the United States (although sometimes I think they forget that), but the fact remains they still have a huge influence on society, and therefore a responsibility that goes with it. Life in the "flyover" states is radically different than life in these elite liberal circles, but I don't see them wanting to understand us, rather it seems that they want us to change to their way of thinking. And maybe that is what is behind their critcisms of Bush.

The Other Side of Wilson Issue

Smarmy Joseph Wilson has succeeded in deflecting attention from the real issue of the Niger trip: that it was nothing more than a boondoggle designed to smear the Bush campaign. Joseph Wilson was an interesting choice to send on that mission, almost a curious decision. The only explanation that explains him as a choice is 1) his wife set him up for it and 2) Wilson and Plame were Gore supporters and contributors, and Wilson was an outspoken critic of the war. Why didn't we question why Wilson wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times regarding his trip? Is this standard? Did the taxpayers essentially foot the bill for an anti-Bush boondoggle?

Let's just assume that Wilson's accusations of a conspiracy theory are correct, that the Bush administration sought to discredit him by outing his wife. If Wilson is allowed to make inflammatory accusations against the Bush administration, isn't it relevent that Wilson's wife sent him on a boondoggle? How else was the Bush administration to defend itself? After all, do we really believe that a former ambassador who is hostile to the Bush administration and the war was the best person to send on a "fact finding" trip? And why did Wilson's inflammatory Op-Ed differ from the CIA's beliefs that Wilson's reports actually bolstered the argument that Iraq sought yellow cake?

And for someone who loudly proclaimed his outrage over his wife's outing, he sure didn't think twice about posing for Vanity Fair, having her picture sent out world wide. He sure didn't mind making a big stink over the "outing". If my husband were truly concerned about my welfare adn safety, would I want him expressing his outrage to every news outlet that will listen? Would I want to pose with him for several spreads in Vanity Fair? Wouldn't it make more sense to take care of the problem quietly?

Why are we not focusing on Richard Armitage? All of the media blabber heads are still focusing on Cheney and Rove, but they fail to state how they think Armitage fits into the whole big mess. What made Armitage leak the name? Why did he first leak it? Do the blabber heads think he was in on this "conspiracy"? If not, why not? If so, then why is there no focus on him? Could it really be that there is no grand conspiracy after all, and that Armitage and the others didn't think Plame was covert (which she wasn't) and thought it was a relevent part of the story that Plame suggested her husband for the trip? How can the Bush administration defend itself from a partisan boondoggle if they can't share the most relevent fact?

And finally, is it really a good idea for a CIA operative to suggest her husband for a fact finding trip when he plans to come back and write an inflammatory, partisan Op-Ed?

The Libby Verdict

The Libby juror came back and found him guilty on 4 of the 5 counts against him. It's really unfortunate. There was no crime in outing Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. Richard Armitage, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration, was the original source of the leak, and he chose to sit on that information like a coward while the Bush administration endured an accusing media firestorm. There was no conspiracy. Had Libby been the original source, maybe there would be something to the conspiracy accusations, but a cowardly Bush critic in on some big conspiracy? Nope, don't think so. Given all of this, what possible motive would Libby have had for perjuring himself? Doesn't anyone question the stupidity of perjuring himself in the manner he was accused of? Why name Tim Russert? If you put yourself in Libby's shoes, would you really lie about someone that has no reason to lie for you? If you truly had something to hide, wouldn't you say you couldn't recall where you heard about Valerie Plame? Or take the Clinton way out and dissect every definition possible? There's no underlying crime, and hopefully the judge will see that when it comes time to sentence Libby.

Pictures as Propaganda

I used to despise watching Rosie O'Donnell blabber her thoughtless diatribes on the View, but now I've come to realize that she's actually pretty inspirational, because she is indicative of what is wrong with liberals.

She recently blasted the lone conservative on the show, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, wanting to know what Elisabeth thought about the administration not allowing soldiers' coffins to be shown. Elisabeth felt that the media wanted to use the coffins as propaganda and that it was the right call to make. Rosie stated that it was propaganda to not allow them to be used.

Rosie wants them to be used simply because she knows pictures are powerful, and she has an agenda behind that desire: to make Americans push for an end to the war. The libs know pictures are powerful. That's why the media decided to quit airing scenes from 9/11. They felt the pictures were too inflammatory and incited a 'get even' mindset. Rosie has conveniently forgotten this. Libs also think it is in bad taste any time an abortion protestor uses pictures of aborted babies to make their point. Would Rosie be okay with conservatives showing pictures of aborted babies? Most likely not. Why not? Most likely because she knows how effective the pictures would be at getting the point across, and this would border on propaganda in her mind. Maybe we can make a deal with the libs: we'll use whatever pictures we want in voicing our side of the debate, and she can use whatever pictures she wants for her side of the debate.

The No-Win Situation

Today I received a newsletter in my e-mail. The author was frustrated that the Bush administration has been taking our liberties away. He is not a fan of the Patriot Act, and is also questioning language that the administration used to make it easier for the government to declare martial law.

Shortly after I read this newsletter, I watched Rosie O'Donnell spar with Dennis Miller regarding the Patriot Act. Miller had no problem with the administration listening to phone calls from the US to the Middle East. Rosie chimed in that the administration wouldn't stop there, and that was the problem with the Patriot Act.

Let's revisit how the liberals and their allies in the media, which is essentially every news outlet except for Fox News and AM radio, created their own mass hysteria surrounding the major events of the Bush administration. It didn't take the liberals long after 9/11 to begin to place the blame right at Bush's doorstep. 'What did he know and when did he know it?' 'This happened on his watch'. 'He was on vacation while terrorists plotted to kill 3000 Americans'. (He was also governor of Texas while terrorists plotted 9/11) 'George Bush didn't do anything to stop 9/11'. We all remember the hysteria that continues to this day.

Now let's also revisit the hysteria after Katrina. 'Bush doesn't care about black people'. 'We can spend billions of dollars in Iraq while our American citizens wait to be rescued.' The libs and the media were only too happy to let Bush take the fall for the Katrina response. Anyone who has looked beyond the media hysteria knows that Nagin asked for the feds to take over the rescue operation, but that Blanco denied that request. Anyone who is being intellectually honest knows that for Bush to have the feds take over would have created an uproar about him being a dictator and trampling on the rights of the state of Louisiana and Governor Blanco. The federal government does not have the right to just go in and take over; there are checks and balances to keep the federal government out of local government. But neither Nagin nor Blanco took the fall for the inept Katrina response; Bush did.

The libs made it very clear that they were unhappy with these two disastrous situations and for Bush's perceived role in them. In response, Bush created the Patriot Act, giving the feds much more freedom to spy on our enemies. He is now also making it easier for the president to use the military as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any “other condition.” I see these actions as a direct response to the criticism that has been leveled against him.

But the libs don't see it that way. They refuse to see the role they played in this. Now their criticism is that Bush is a dictator who is trampling on our civil liberties. What would they have Bush do? How do they think the federal government gets intelligence in the first place? They're mad because Bush didn't interpret an old, vague piece of intelligence to mean that hijacked planes would slam into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. How do they think we got that intelligence in the first place? By respecting everyone's civil liberties? What do they propose our government do to prevent another 9/11? Out of one side of their mouth they're angry that 9/11 happened, and out of the other side of their mouth they're angry over every single method we might use to prevent another one. What do they want? Should we have a coffee talk with our enemies and sing "Kum Bayah"?

It's the same with Katrina. Had Bush allowed the feds to take over the rescue, the libs would have screamed that he's a dictator. The very ineptitude of the local response made the libs scream for a federal response, and Bush has now seen to it that he or any future president can more easily intervene. The way I see it, the libs got exactly what they asked for.