Jun 26 2008

Obama agrees with conservative judges?!?! Nah

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 6:21 pm

The Supreme Court has decided that the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution DOES apply to individuals, and is not some kind of group right, dependent on membership in a militia, etc.

Unbelievably, Obama claims he agrees!

So, let’s see:  out of the last three major decisions of the Supreme Court, Obama agreed with the “conservatives” in two out of three decisions.  These include both Roberts and Alito, both of whom Obama voted against in the Senate confirmation process.

The court wants Guantanamo inmates to have full habeas corpus rights.  Obama agrees with the left leaning judges.

The court decides not to let states execute child rapists, no matter how egregious the crime.  Obama sides with the “constructionists”, not the left leaning judges.

The court decides that handgun, rifle and shotgun ownership is a constitutional right, and Obama, despite previous posititions he has taken, now says he agrees with the “constructionists”, i.e., that gun ownership is an individual right, not with the left leaning judges (presumably he is still for high levels of restrictions…  he’s not saying much about it right now….  needs to get elected first).

So what can we say this means regarding Obama’s judicial philosophy?  He seems to be agreeing with the judges he voted against, more than he disagrees with them.  Does this mean he would appoint more judges like Roberts and Alito, as opposed to Ginsburg and Souter?

Nah…  it just means he wants to get elected, and will say anything to avoid offending what he regards as key voter groups.

Will the lefty media (meaning nearly all the networks and major newspapers) ask him any hard questions about why he seems to be agreeing with judges he opposed?  You’re kidding, right?

Tags: , ,

Jun 25 2008

Obama’s judgment on judges: trying to have it both ways… again

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 9:27 pm

Obama voted against John Roberts as Chief Justice, saying:

…while adherence to legal precedent and rules of statutory or
constitutional construction will dispose of 95 percent of the cases
that come before a court, so that both a Scalia and a Ginsburg will
arrive at the same place most of the time on those 95 percent of the
cases — what matters on the Supreme Court is those 5 percent of cases
that are truly difficult. In those cases, adherence to precedent and
rules of construction and interpretation will only get you through the
25th mile of the marathon. That last mile can only be determined on the
basis of one’s deepest values, one’s core concerns, one’s broader
perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one’s
empathy.


For Obama, what it boils down to is this: judges should vote with their feelings when they don’t personally like the outcome produced by the law and the Constitution. He wants judges to legislate. So he wants judges who share his feelings. For him, the appropriate question for a judicial nominee is, “How do you feel about….” Fill in the blank.

Further, his characterization of only 5% hard cases is ridiculous on its face. Cases don’t usually even make it to SCOTUS unless they are hard cases. The Court doesn’t take very many cases that are simple and easy; instead, it lets the rulings of lower courts stand. And he’s wildly wrong in suggesting that Ginzberg and Scalia agree 95% of the time. Does he have anyone doing research on things like this before he opens his mouth?

Obama voted against Sam Alito, saying:

…when you look at his record, what is clear is that when it comes to his
understanding of the Constitution, he consistently sides on behalf of
the powerful against the powerless. If there is a case involving an
employer and an employee, and the Supreme Court has not given clear
direction, Judge Alito will rule in favor of the employer. If there is
a claim between prosecutors and defendants, if the Supreme Court has
not already a clear rule of decision then, Judge Alito will rule in
favor of the state. When it comes to how checks and balances in our
system are supposed to operate, the balance of power between the
executive branch, Congress, and the judiciary, Judge Alito consistently
sides with the notion that a president should not be constrained by
either Congressional acts, or the check of the judiciary. He believes
in the overarching power of the president to engage in whatever the
president deems to be appropriate policy.


His commentary on Roberts (at the link above) makes a similar point: he thinks that judges should be prejudiced towards “the weak” and against “the powerful”. That is, of course, unless we’re talking about the very, very, very weakest among us, who, in Obama’s jurisprudence, will never make it to court at all.

And now, Obama agrees with the judges he voted against

Democrat Barack Obama said Wednesday he disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing executions of people who rape children, a crime he said states have the right to consider for capital punishment.

“I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes,” Obama said at a news conference. “I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime and if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that that does not violate our Constitution.”

The court’s 5-4 decision Wednesday struck down a Louisiana law that allows capital punishment for people convicted of raping children under 12, saying it violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The ruling spares the only people in the U.S. under sentence of death for that crime, two Louisiana men convicted of raping girls 5 and 8. It also invalidates laws on the books in five other states that allowed executions for child rape that does not result in the death of the victim.

Obama, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, said that had the court “said we want to constrain the abilities of states to do this to make sure that it’s done in a careful and appropriate way, that would have been one thing. But it basically had a blanket prohibition and I disagree with that decision.”

Obama has two daughters, ages 7 and 9.


But wait: those judges against the death penalty for even the most egregious child-rape cases were following a higher law, that “life” is more important than “justice” when no life was actually taken in the crime. They said so. Surely Obama wanted the powerless child-rapists (probably mostly poor, lower class citizens) to be defended against the powerful prosecutors?

Don’t look for Obama to apologize for voting against Roberts and Alito, even though they are the ones with whom he now pretends to agree.

This entire sorry episode reveals what many of us already know about Obama: he is no deep thinker, he has no serious understanding of complex issues, he is completely willing to pretend anything at all to be elected, and he won’t be able to stick to his guns when a hard decision needs to be made. He knows this “let the child-rapists live” judgment goes against the grain for a large majority of the electorate, so he rushes to get on “the right side” of it, knowing that his left-leaning fans will wink and nod, accepting the political necessity.

The left has no fear of what kinds of judges a President Obama would appoint. He would appoint judges who would make many more very bad decisions, exactly like this one. And that says it all, about a great many things.

Tags: ,

Jun 21 2008

The Incurious Left: If you don’t look, you don’t have to notice.

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 5:40 pm

How long can the fiction be kept up by the Left that the situation in Iraq is more or less the same now as 18 months ago?

Michael Barone

It is beyond doubt now that the surge has been hugely successful, beyond even the hopes of its strongest advocates, like Frederick and Kimberly Kagan. Violence is down enormously, Anbar and Basra and Sadr City have been pacified, Prime Minister Maliki has led successful attempts to pacify Shiites as well as Sunnis, and the Iraqi parliament has passed almost all of the “benchmark” legislation demanded by the Democratic Congress — all of which Barack Obama seems to have barely noticed or noticed not at all. He has not visited Iraq since January 2006 and did not seek a meeting with Gen. David Petraeus when he was in Washington.

As with the Haditha Marines story, and many others, the main stream media gives enormous play to any story that hurts the Bush narrative, and downplays anything that might help it.

But the facts on the ground in Iraq continue to improve, despite the occasional bombing. To the extent that the upcoming election is a referendum on where we go from here on the Iraq war, good news in Iraq hurts the Democrats, which is why those parts of the media who are committed to Obama’s election will continue to give any good news the very minimum of coverage they can, and retain any credibility at all, while any bombing, no matter how rare or isolated, is guaranteed page one material.

McCain pretty much has to get Obama into less moderated debate formats, reducing Obama’s ability to survive on just putting out long canned speeches (which he delivers as well as any actor). The public needs to see Obama trying to respond to tough questions from McCain about why Obama was so wrong about the surge and its effects on Iraqi politics. Obama needs to own up to his opinion, expressed with great certainty in early 2007, that the surge would not, could not work.

It must be tough to be a politician whose hopes for victory depend on bad news for the USA as a whole, or at least on the public not finding out the good news.

So, the questions: how long can Obama and the media keep the American public from finding out

1) How well things are going in Iraq, and the arrow of progress?
2) What happens if we leave prematurely?
3) How wrong Obama was about the surge, and what that means about his vaunted “judgment”?

Some possible good news in this is that the “independent” voters will just start to wake up and look around in a couple of months, and if the good news in Iraq continues, it will be harder and harder to hide it, and Obama’s lack of foresight in the matter.

Prediction: If bad news happens in Iraq, or anything that can be spun that way, expect the major media to trumpet it from every orifice they have. If, on the other hand, things continue as they are, expect the major media to try to paint the election as being about “post-Iraq” issues like the economy, health-care, gas prices, etc.

Tags: , , , ,

Jun 10 2008

lgf: 9/11 Truth Blogs, Marxists, and Terrorist Sympathizers Allowed to Remain at Official Obama Site

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 11:27 am

lgf: 9/11 Truth Blogs, Marxists, and Terrorist Sympathizers Allowed to Remain at Official Obama Site: “The Obama campaign has been doing a lot of cleaning up and sanitizing at my.barackobama.com.”

More at the link. This is a rookie mistake by Obama camp. But not one the main stream media are likely to hold them accountable for.

And in the meantime, it’s all we need to know about Obama’s fellow travelers, since these posts, now being removed are from authorized posters, not anonymous commenters.

Tags: ,

Jun 08 2008

Obama’s site gives Communists a voice

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 10:57 pm


Commies and Socialists for Obama, STRAIGHT OFF HIS WEBSITE!: “Marxists/Communists/Socialists for the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency. By no means is he a true Marxist, but under Karl Marx’s writings we are to support the party with the best interests of the mobilization of the proletariat. Though the Democratic Socialists of America or the Communist Patty of America may have more Socialististic values, it is pointless to vote for these candidates due to the fact that there is virutally no chance they will be elected on a National level. The members of this group are not Leninists, Stalinists, etc. and do not support or condone the actions of North Korea, China, Cuba or any other self-procalimed ‘Marxist States.’ They do not in anyway represent the Marxist philosophy nor do they represent Socialism/ Communsim. We support Barack Obama because he knows what is best for the people!”

You can’t make this stuff up. Some things are beyond parody. And, in another link from the same page:

Capitalism presents an interesting dilemma for the white, upper middle class male, a demographic that, unjustly, has been and continues to enjoy the ripest fruits of capitalism. On the one hand, a person like me (or anyone else who lives in the economically secure class of citizens of a capitalist nation, especially America) can sit back and enjoy and take advantage of the limitless opportunities afforded them. Thousands of universities, both domestic and international are within their grasp. After that, countless occupations with career paths that could lead them to even greater heights on the social ladder await.

But on the other hand, this education afforded them (hopefully) enlightens them to see the reality of the perverse economic system that got him or her to the position he now occupies. He sees a system that takes from those who have less and gives to those who have more. He sees a system that rewards unscrupulous rule-bending and breaking, a system that attacks the family, moral values, the environment, and even exploits every experience in life itself for money and profit. And while often isolated and removed from poverty and the uncertainty and paralyzing fear that accompanies it, the enlightened and idealistic youth knows it’s out there and wants that wrong righted. And so naturally, the youth attacks and turns against the system that caused the suffering to begin with.

It goes on to say, “Redistribution is not enough.” I’ll say: you have to have something to redistribute.

Change you can believe in.

hat tip: Little Green Footballs via Powerline

UPDATE: they will probably take the referenced pages down, just like they removed anti-Semitic materials that they had posted earlier (not just in comments, actually posted by Obama’s own people). The picture at the top was made as a screen capture from Obama’s site.

UPDATE: as predicted, the Obama campaign has removed the communist/socialist/marxist cheerleading page. Again, just to refocus: this was not something simply left as a comment by an anonymous net-lurker, it was an official post of the Obama campaign by an approved, authorized poster on the Obama website.

Tags: ,

Jun 05 2008

History has still not ended

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 5:54 pm

There’s a lot of discussion here and there and other places about the future of the Republican party, and “conservatism” (not the same thing, of course). Some speak of the millennials as less interested in political parties, less ideological, etc. We hear that Reagan conservatism isn’t going to sell anymore, and that it isn’t just a matter of not having a great communicator anymore, but rather that the public just doesn’t see things like it did.

Almost universally, the analysis seems to involve the assumption of stability in events, in anticipation of only small changes from current circumstances, and it assumes the ability of politicians and the media to manage message to the general public. This gives extraordinary power to the message deliverers, of course, and the better message deliverers are expected to win most of the time. In sum, this approach assumes that politics is about politicians.

But it isn’t, in the end. It’s about events, most of which are beyond the immediate control of any given crop of politicians.

People’s memories are short. “We will never forget” has morphed into “maybe we weren’t in so much danger after all”. A decade ago, the left blocked drilling in Anwar and other places, because the oil wouldn’t come on line for a decade, and, “It won’t help us right now.” But the decade has passed, and I just filled my tank with regular gas at $4.35 per gallon, self-serve. If they’d drilled then it would have helped now. Most people don’t know that the two hottest years in the last century are 1934 and 1998 (1934 was the hottest, with a cooling period in between, and no one can claim the 1930s warming was due to CO2 emissions), and most people don’t know that we appear not to be warming up since 1998, but cooling, if anything.

But there are likely to be developments that totally change the dynamic of things, and to quote our second president, “Facts are stubborn things.”

When there is a major attack on US soil (inevitable, according to many serious observers), or possibly even on one of our allies, peoples’ attention will be re-focused. If there is any obvious link between the left’s less forceful approach to terrorists and their enablers (likely), there will be a re-energized right. Let’s be clear: if Islamicist extremists do the deed, and if the left has curtailed programs that might have detected or stopped the attack, or removed pressure that would have diverted the attackers’ attentions, or (shudder) if there is a nuclear attack carried out by anyone who got the materials to do it from an Islamic nation, the blowback will be enormous, and a very large price will be paid by the party that is identified in the public mind as having been asleep at the switch. Fool me once….

Does anyone think that Congress will be able to resist public demand for drilling when gasoline is $6.00 per gallon? If so, how about $8.00? $10.00? At some point, the dynamic changes. Sure, the left will try to pin the blame on the evil oil companies, and that miserable resource hog, the American driver. And that works for awhile, when people aren’t paying that much attention. But at some point, instead of just wondering why prices are so high in a vague sort of way, people are going to DEMAND to know. There will be debate, and the old answers will be trotted out, but inevitably someone is going to get peoples’ attention with the simple idea that as demand goes up and supply doesn’t, the prices will rise. Few people want to drive less.

So, I think drilling is going to happen. It’s just a matter of time, and public desperation. And the party that had a history of blocking it, and fights it to the end, is going to suffer, for awhile.

By the end of an Obama administration (two terms to 2016!), if we have not had a year hotter than 1998, it will be impossible to claim global warming is even real (with a straight face, anyway), let alone caused anthropogenically. (The activists have begun to suspect this… that’s why they’ve changed the scare-phrase to “climate change”, which works no matter what happens, since the climate always changes.) If the left has forced a very costly scheme to control carbon emissions in the meantime, and the economy has suffered because of it, gas prices are higher, etc., then the campaign slogan for the conservative candidate in 2016 could be, “WHAT global warming?”

None of this will stop Obama from getting elected this year, unless the terrorists are stupid enough to mount an attack on US soil before the election, or gas goes up to $6.00 per gallon immediately. I expect neither to happen immediately.

Unfortunately, I expect both during Obama’s presidency, though this is one time I’d love to be wrong.

The only (very cold) comfort will be that the winds of politics will probably change direction again… for awhile, at least. It will be too late to immediately undo Obama’s disastrous effect on the courts, the economy, and our national security… but it may bring an opportunity to staunch the bleeding, at least. Until, of course, the stupid Republicans who come to power in the reaction get complacent, fat and greedy, like the last crop that just lost Congress in 2006.

Pray for McCain to win, but the nation will weather an Obama administration, painfully.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Apr 27 2008

Frankie and Jeremiah: The "Wright stuff" nobody needs

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 11:07 pm


I had a lengthy discussion with a friend on the Frankie Shaeffer assertions comparing his father to J. Wright. As a result, I did a little research into it. If you’re interested, read on… Otherwise, just hit the delete key! I wrote all this to put up on a blog I’m working on.

Transcripts and audio here, providing all the context we need to judge the good reverend’s loopy elocutions… And the context is worse, if anything, than the original quotes.

Is there really anything this incendiary from Francis Shaeffer?

Some quotes made by son Frankie from Francis Shaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto:

If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]… then at a certain point force is justifiable.

Would like to see more context… Maybe I’ll get a copy of the book, I’m curious. But, on it’s face, it’s true, is it not? Though I suspect the context when the brackets enclose the US government reference….

In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools… There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union….

This is essentially true, is it not?

There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate… A true Christian in Hitler’s Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion… It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God’s law it abrogates it’s authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation…

Again, I harbor some suspicion at the elipsis … Used to associate phrases that may not be so clearly associated in the text.

On the other hand, what would Reinhold Neibuhr have to say about abortion? I wonder.

I’ve often thought that the church’s rhetoric on abortion doesn’t match its action, as far as that goes. If there was a place in Victorville where I knew that people could take their four year olds in to be murdered, and it was legal, and people were actually doing it, I would be a good deal more active than I am in fighting abortion (in which I am somewhat active… We can talk about that sometime). I don’t see the people who say “abortion is murder” doing the same things they’d be doing if the murder of 4 yr olds was legal and common and advertised in the yellow pages.

The question for me: is this failure to act because of lack of courage, or because we don’t really believe what we say?

One of Frankie’s own statements in his Huffington article, including my inserted responses in CAPS

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father’s footsteps) rail against America’s sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the “murder of the unborn,” [IT SURE IS] has become “Sodom” by coddling gays [IT’S MOVING QUICKLY IN THAT DIRECTION, SOME WOULD SAY QUITE FAR ALREADY], and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists [UH… THEY ARE] and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children [WELL… NOW THAT YOU MENTION, THEY ARE]. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, “under the judgment of God.” [I’M AFRAID THAT MIGHT BE SO…. I HOPE FOR REDEMPTION, BUT WE HAVE SURELY SQUANDERED MANY OF OUR BLESSINGS]

I guess, from my point of view, the paragraph above, even though stated in the most incendiary way possible, is arguably true. I didn’t say that it is absolutely demonstrably true, but a reasonable person could make the argument that it is, and have quite a bit of evidence to make the claim.

Here is the transcript link again for Wright:

In contrast: Jeremiah Wright tells vile lies mixed in with some truth, and those few truths give the lies the sheen of believability. Yes, America has been racist, but it is less so all the time. Yes, some awful things have been done. On the other hand, America has done a great deal of good, which he doesn’t mention. But: absolutely no credible person can try to make (apparently gullible) people believe that the US government invented AIDS to kill blacks. (Although the love of abortion by Margaret Sanger and her ilk has certainly helped keep the black population down.) His anti-military rhetoric is inexplicable… Without the Civil War, he would have been a couple of generations closer to being a slave (assuming the South would have been shamed into ending it sooner or later). Pacifist blacks in general always stun me on this point…. His comparison of Al Queda to the USA as morally equivalent is simply repugnant, an assertion that could only be made by a moral idiot, or worse. He tells the big lie that the war is “about oil”, but we haven’t had a drop from Iraq yet… We surely could have, if we chose. He makes the most vile assertions imaginable about all kinds of people and institutions, and because about 10% of them might be true, his audience laps it up. I won’t go through all the lies here… Read it yourself, if you wish, it’s at the link above. The thing is, he’s consistent, at least, since this is all the straight liberation theology rhetoric, slanted for American blacks of a certain ideological stripe.

He teaches hate and encourages class warfare and jealously and anger, pure and simple.

I don’t think you can say that about Francis Shaeffer.

And I think the fact that Obama calls this man his mentor and “spiritual leader” (even as he backpedals recently) tells me all I need to know about what animates Obama… And really helps to explain why Obama’s wife is proud of America for the first time THIS YEAR… Because Barack is doing well in the primaries. Her statement makes perfect sense in the light of the ideology she apparently bathes in.

I’m willing to make a bet: that in all of Francis Shaeffer’s recorded speeches, sermons and books, you won’t find anything even close to this stuff from J. Wright.

It is a bit sad that Frankie Schaeffer can’t tell the difference between assertions backed by evidence and plain lies. The Orthodox are big believers in rationality, along with their mysticism, having imbibed a good deal of the Greek philosophical tradition… It seems not to have sunk in. Frankie Shaeffer can’t tell the difference between a criticism of the USA and a simple lie about it. Francis criticized, accurately, from an ideological perspective that one may disagree with, but can’t totally discount as non-factual. Wright simply tells lies… BIG ones, evil ones, guaranteed to make his parishioners angry (if they believe him) and to distort their attitudes towards white people and the USA in general.

Wright knows it isn’t true, of course….. I’m sure he’s a smart guy. The mere fact that he’s still around running his mouth is proof of the benign intentions of the government he so calumnies.

Tags: ,

« Previous Page