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Democrats: Time to stop the wars

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

In 2006, American voters elected a majority of Democrats to both houses of Congress so that they would stop Bush’s wars. They didn’t.

In 2008, American voters elected Democrat Barack Obama to the presidency so that he would stop Bush’s wars. He hasn’t, and in fact is escalating the war in Afghanistan and advancing it into Pakistan.

So, Democrats, what next? Now that you have the power in the White House and Congress, are you going to stop Bush’s unconstitutional, unjust, and unconscionable wars?

Maybe.

Tom Hayden

Tom Hayden, the former 1960s anti-Vietnam War protester, says “Doubt will turn into dissent” in an interview with Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: As a veteran of the protests against the Vietnam War, you know a lot about public resistance, and now you’re promising a “storm of protest” against the US war in Afghanistan. What will that entail?

Hayden: The emotion that people are feeling is deep disappointment over the Afghanistan policy of Barack Obama and the US Congress, which now registers as a surprising 70 percent disapproval rate for the war among Democrats. Doubt will turn into dissent; it will manifest in congressional districts. The Democrats will find it hard to ignore their base. The slightest loss of support from the 2008 antiwar base will be very threatening to their electoral success.

Ironically, Obama may be able to continue Bush’s wars only if Democrats lose their control of Congress, and Republicans — who remain pro-war even though backing Bush’s wars got them booted out of power by voters — give him the support he needs. Maybe Obama should just become a Republican. After all, he’s almost exactly like Bush.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why is this disillusionment already so deep?

Hayden: Obama is caught between the social movements that made his presidency possible, including the anti-Iraq-war movement, and the Machiavellians, who are accustomed to running everything with little or no interference from the voters.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You seem to be saying that Obama should be careful about taking the support of the left for granted. How are you planning to remind him of that?

Hayden: We are currently organizing in about 75 congressional districts, where people still hope the president listens. The dissent in 75 districts will turn into 150 and keep growing when next year’s request for war funding is presented in January. At this point, we have a unique situation in which huge numbers of people want Obama and the Democrats to succeed domestically — but will not be silent about the war.

Nam then, Afghanistan now

What’s different about the anti-war movement this time is that there’s no draft. In the 1960s and early 1970s, guys got drafted and sent to Nam to die face-down in the mud, then come home in a body bag.

Even though President LBJ and Secretary of Defense McNamara didn’t believe the war could be won. These war criminals sacrificed 58,000 brave young American boys and 3 million Vietnamese on the altar of their political ambition.

I still argue with some conservatives who say, “We could have won in Vietnam.” But how can you win a war the two top leaders think can’t be won?

What that pointless war really was like was described today by Fred Reed, a wounded Marine from the Vietnam War, who still suffers from what earned him a purple heart. (All of Fred’s writing is worth reading.) A 30-year war correspondent, he writes:

Then there are the enlisted men. In these hobbyist wars, and to an extent even in peacetime, it is crucial to keep the enlisteds from thinking. In some three decades of covering the military, I saw this constantly. If I went to Afghanistan today as a correspondent, I could argue in private about the war with the colonel. If I suggested to the troops that they were being suckered, the colonel would go crazy. Next to keeping the public quiescent, keeping the troops (and potential recruits) bamboozled is vital. If a high-school kid saw what awaited, if he saw the cartilage glistening in wrecked joints, he wouldn’t sign.

After a while, the kids caught on and protested in the streets, burning their draft cards. The anti-war movement died down in 1973, when the draft ended and American troops were withdrawn from Vietnam.

Hey, Hey, Obam-A…

Even though there’s no draft, today’s Vietnam Wars - in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and maybe Iran — need to be opposed. Today, the new anti-war movement needs is a slogan. He’re’s one I came up with:

Hey, hey, Obam-A,
How many kids did you kill today?

Posted in 2008 election, Afghan War, Iraq war, Obama, Obama Presidency | 2 Comments »

Sorry, TheLiberalOC Blog, the economy ain’t improving

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

There is no instance of a nation profiting from prolonged warfare.

–Sun Tzu

TheLiberalOC.com Blog posted Obama’s weekly video address from YouTube. The summary on the blog:

WASHINGTON – In this week’s address, President Barack Obama said the newly released GDP numbers are an indication that the Recovery Act is working, but that long–term investments in innovation are needed to ensure our nation’s long-term economic growth. By training the highest skilled workforce in the world, reforming the health care system to free business from spiraling costs, and building a green energy economy, we will create a new foundation that will encourage the innovation needed to move America forward.

The War, The War, The War

It’s understandable that liberals, such as TheLiberalOC, and other Democrats would hope for the best under Obama, and would believe his words.

But actually, the recession — really the Bush Depression — isn’t ending, and won’t end until Obama, or a successor, ends the massively expensive wars Bush started.

Wars are incredibly wasteful. George Stiglitz, a liberal Democrat himself and Nobel Prize laureate in economics, pegs the costs of the Iraq War at $3 trillion — and possibly up to $5 trillion. That’s $5,000,000,000,000.00.

The wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which Obama is vastly expanding, will cost trillions more.

Hey, TheLiberalOC, didn’t Obama win by running as the peace candidate?

Imperial Bankruptcy

Within living memory of many readers here and at TheLiberalOC, the Vietnam War bankrupted America, bringing on the “malaise” 1970s. The Soviet Union’s earlier Afghan War bankrupted them.

The Spanish Empire was bankrupted by the long Dutch Revolt, which the Dutch won. The British Empire was bankrupted by World War I and World War II. The French Empire was bankrupted by their involvement in Vietnam, ending in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu, and their troubles later that decade in Algeria, from which they also withdrew.

And here’s one analysis of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire:

The Roman Empire produced few exportable goods. Material innovation, whether through entrepreneurialism or technological advancement, all but ended long before the final dissolution of the Empire. Meanwhile the costs of military defense and the pomp of Emperors continued. Financial needs continued to increase, but the means of meeting them steadily eroded. In the end due to economic failure, even the armor of soldiers deteriorated and the weaponry of soldiers became so obsolete to the extent that the enemies of the Empire had better armor and weapons as well as larger forces. The decrepit social order offered so little to its subjects that many saw the barbarian invasion as liberation from onerous obligations to the ruling class.

Sound familiar?

It’s pathetic that South Korea, an outpost of the American Empire, still occupied by 30,000 U.S. tropps, can produce a car company like Hyundai, while General Motors and Chrysler go bankrupt. But that’s what happens when an Empire sends its capital overseas to support its legions, instead of at home on domestic industries.

Obama = Bush III

Obama promised “Change you can believe in.” But all he’s produced so far is More Bush You Can’t Believe In. He’s Bush III.

Another hallmark of crashing empires is an inability of the ruling elite to change, and to get somebody new in power who can make the necessary changes. That’s obviously what’s going on here.

Bush paid for his wars with inflation and wild domestic spending to buy support in Congress. When the crash hit hard in 2008, Bush panicked and gave us “bailouts,” the main ones of GM and Chrysler and the Wall Street banks, paid for by Main Street.

Obama is continuing the same disastrous policies, with GM now a part of the government, and Chrysler essentially given to Fiat, an Italian company. Both companies, basically, are dead. Hummer, that symbol of Yankee vehicular machismo, now is a Chinese company.

Like the antique Romans, we can’t even build our own goods. Even our flashy iPods are made in China, along with practically every doodad sold in Wal-Mart.

War bankrupts

Consider again the words at the top of this blog, from Sun Tzu, the greatest military strategist ever: “There is no instance of a nation profiting from prolonged warfare.” It’s too bad Obama, and Bush before him, seem never to have read Sun Tzu’s classic, “On War.”

Read it yourself and find out what war is really about. (My favorite translation is that by Thomas Cleary, highlighted at right. Amazingly, it’s ranked 1,206, as of this writing, on Amazon’s list of best-selling books. Not bad for a book written at least 2,500 years ago.)

As a result of our leaders’ ignorance, it’s looking like the only way the American Empire will end is a major shock to the system, a Dien Bien Phu in Afghanistan or Iraq: a catastrophic defeat of our overextended forces. If it happens on Obama’s watch, Republicans will blame him, and reap election dividends — even though Republicans remain the main culprits of American collapse because of their subservient support of Bush for 8 years.

Meanwhile, our domestic economy will keep collapsing. There is no recovery. There is only more of the Bush Depression.

Posted in Economy, Iraq war, Obama, Obama Presidency, Recession | 2 Comments »

Republicans finally good for something…

Friday, July 17th, 2009

I’ve been bashing Republicans pretty well lately. And they deserve even more bashing.

But I’ve finally found a reason for their existence: All the Republicans in the U.S. House supported Ron Paul’s bill, H.R. 1207, to audit the evil, secretive, anti-democratic, inflationary Federal Reserve Board. It’s also got 60 Democrats supporting it, and is advancing in the Senate.

Here’s a YouTube explaining it:

Posted in Gold standard, Inflation, Ron Paul | No Comments »

Paul and Paul in 2012

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Let me be the first to say it: Paul and Paul in 2012.

That is: Ron Paul and Rand Paul in 2012. Or: Paul and Paul in 12. Or: Ron Paul and Rand Paul in 12.

Ron Paul should run for president again — and his son Rand should run for vice president!

Here’s the formula:

Ron Paul + Rand Paul = Victory

For short:

Paul + Paul = Victory

It would be the greatest ticket in American history, and give Republicans their only chance to beat President Vladimir Ilich Obamov.

Ron Paul you know about. The Texas congressman was the only Republican or Democratic candidate in the 2008 election who supported restoring the U.S. Constitution, liberty, and economic common sense, such as abolishing the inflationary demon known as the Federal Reserve Board.

He warned, for years, that war, Federal Reserve inflation, and massive deficits and debt would ruin America, and the Bush Depression of the past 2 years has proved him right.

Meet Rand Paul

Randall Paul — Rand for short — is Ron’s son, and a chip of the old Ron. Rand, like his pop, is a medical doctor, meaning he has competency and experience in a field outside politics — unlike about 99% of politicians. And he holds his father’s views on the Constitution, the wars, the economy, etc.

Now, for 2010 Rand is running for U.S. Senate from Kentucky. Here are some short videos of his positions. And unlike almost every politician ever heard of, he actually believes his positions, and would do his best, in office, to implement them.

Naturally, Rand is being opposed by Kentucky’s corrupt Republican establishment, which is running a Clinton Democrat against Rand in the GOP primary!

As in 2008, rather than have a Paul come to office and start restoring the Constitution and decency to government, they’d rather have a Democrat win and maintain the corrupt existing system.

Here’s Rand Paul’s Web site. If you can, click here and send him a few campaign bucks. He’ll need them against the filthy money the Republican establishment is throwing against him in the primary — which really is your tax money flushed through the sewers of Wall Street firms and other corrupt entities as “bailouts,” then sent out to pollute our democracy.

1776 — That’s the Spirit!

However Rand does in his Senate bid in 2010, he should be on the national ballot with his father in 2012.

Paul and Paul in 2012 – it’s a ticket made in the Spirit of 1776.

Posted in 2012 Election, Ron Paul | 1 Comment »

State Sovereignty movements sweeping USA — California next?

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

President Bush’s tyrannies sparked State Soverignty movements that only are increasing under the further oppressions of President Obama.

28 states now have introduced legislation asserting state sovereignty “partly in response to the conditions” under the Bush-Obama “stimulus” bills that vastly increased the tyranny of the central regime in Washington, according to The Christian Science Monitor. Four of the resolutions have passed, in Idaho, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. Two have been rejected, in New Hampshire and Arkansas. 22 are still pending.

This isn’t just a bunch of Southerners still sore about losing the Civil War. Most of the states are in the North and West. Here’s a map:

Americans are starting to remember that our country was born in revolt against the British tyranny of 1776. Today, the Washington, D.C. tyranny is much greater than King George III ever could have imagined.

Taxes now are half of our incomes, and going higher. Mutitudinous federal security agencies — NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS, etc. — spy, coerce, and jail us. Massive bureaucracies control every minute portion of our lives. And now, the feds have taken over the banking, insurance, and auto industries. America rsembles less the free country of 1789 than the Soviet Union of 1939.

So far, there isn’t such a movement in California’s Legislature. But someone ought to start one.

As Karen De Coster writes:

There is a secession movement afoot and its proponents are determined to put a halt to the federal government’s ambitions to destroy and reconstruct an entire economy and dissolve the last remnants of individual liberty….

The speed with which the federal government intends to take over private institutions and usurp states’ rights and individual autonomy is unprecedented. When the Bush-Obama regime maneuvers are compared to the Hoover-FDR New Deal era, it looks like today’s hare vs. yesterday’s turtle. The state’s various propaganda arms, from big media to institutionalized special interest forces, are being empowered to publicize and sell the agenda of the totalitarian state by painting it in glossy colors that warm the hearts of unresisting Americans.

There are, however, growing pockets of dissenters who conclude that life, liberty, property, and the futures of their children are more important than the trivial things that occupy the minds of the submissive class. For that reason, the state’s militarized police force, which has been given unparalleled powers by the contrived crises following 9-11, has snowballed in size and is being fortified in expectation of confronting rebellion from those citizens who intend to resist the tyranny of an over-reaching Leviathan.

Since the Bush II regime took control and 9/11 became its launch pad for sweeping hegemony, the police state has moved more swiftly than ever to demonize resistance and criminalize dissent. The most recent example is the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) report that profiled individuals according to their political convictions, especially those ideas that agitate against the institutionalization of unconstitutional acts that are intended to grow state power at the expense of individual liberties. Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr (!), guns & ammo, taxes, the Federal Reserve, secession, and resistance to universal government service or anti-privacy actions – all of those topics have become keywords in the crusade to criminalize individuals who refuse to be rounded up like cattle and marched toward serfdom.

Real patriots

As to me, my political views haven’t change much over my 53 years, always favoring limited government and opposing tyranny. Yet I’ve gone from being a patriot to, under Bush-Obama, someone considered a threat to the government Establishment!

Well, I’m still a patriot — a real patriot. It’s Bush and Obama who are the real traitors to America’s sacred legacy of liberty and limited government.

May the State Sovereignty movement continue to grow until it tames, or if necessary abolishes, the central tyranny. As a famous document once put it:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Posted in Bush, Obama, Tyranny | 5 Comments »

Republicans continue to push tyranny

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

Achtung!

Wiped out in two general elections, Republicans still haven’t learned that Americans don’t want your stinking tyranny!

Yet there they go again. 18 Republicans in Congress, including 3 from California, are pushing to pass a new bill that would extend Soviet tyrannies they passed when they were the majority in Congress.

It’s H.R. 1467, the “Safe and Secure America Act of 2009.” A better name: The SS Amerika Akt, or Amerika Akt.

It extends parts that soon would expire from the 2003 USA PATRIOT ACT, which Congress passed in a panic after the 9/11 attack, and which would be better termed the USSR TRAITORS’ Act. It repealed our sacred liberties and turned American into a tyranny.

Three of the co-sponsors are from Kalifornia: Reps. Dan Lungren, Duncan Hunter, and Elton Gallegly.

Hunter ran a risible campaign for president last year.

Lungren is notorious as an enemy of American liberties. In the early 1980s he authored the Lungren Law, which allows the government to seize your property for any reason — even if you’re innocent — without a trial. A senile Ronald Reagan signed it. It’s a total violation of the Fourth Amendment guarantee against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” He’s still at it, getting Congress to pass a new seizure law. Herr Lungren belongs in the Reichstag in 1939, not the U.S. Congress in 2009.

So long as Republicans keep proposing, and imposing, the Amerika Act and similar tyrannies, they should lose every election — and deserve to.

Posted in 4th Amendment, Bill of Rights, California, Congress, Obama, Terrorism | No Comments »

Obama “stimulus” = Bush “stimulus”

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

Didn’t we have an election for “Change you can believe in”?

Obama’s first imperial press conference showed nothing is changing except the new prez is a smoother talker, not hard to do after 8 years of Bush’s tied tongue.

Obama sayeth:

What I won’t do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested and they have failed. And that’s part of what the election in November was all about. Okay?

Okay, okay, okay. We get it.

But what happened the last eight years? Bush blew $5 trillion on the Iraq War (not to mention all the dead Americans and Iraqis) and paid for it with inflation, deficits, and debt. To pacify upset voters, he went on the biggest domestic spending binge since LBJ.

What’s Obama doing? Continuing the Iraq War, escalating the Afghan War, conducting even more attacks on Pakistan, and spending even more wildly than Bush. And Obama isn’t ending the Bush inflation. (The decline in some prices in recent months is temporary, as people cut back spending and inventories piled up. Now inventories are clearing and prices are rising again — as you see at your gas pump — and soon will rise even faster.)

Bush also had two “stimulus” packages last year. Neither worked. Both made matters worse.

Bush tax increases = Obama tax increases

And as to taxes, Obama is just continuing Bush’s tax policies. Most of Bush’s tax cuts already were scheduled to expire in 2010. Call them the 2010 Bush tax increases. Obama is letting that happen. So where’s the change?

Oh, and the impending tax increases are a big Sword of Damocles hanging over the U.S. economy right now. Persons and businesses have no idea what tax levels will be imposed next year or in the following years.

Obama attacked Republicans for opposing his “stimulus.” Yet just a few months ago they supported both of Bush’s “stimulus” schemes. So it’s just partisanship — therefore irrelevant.

Cold turkey

Quoth Obama:

But at this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life.

The analogy is to a patient on a gurney in the ER with heart failure, being shocked back to life with those electric paddles. That’s the wrong analogy.

Rather, the economy has been on the heroin of wildly increasing government in recent years under Bush and needs to go cold turkey, withdrawing from the opiates of high taxes and high spending. It will be painful. But the alternative is more addiction, economic depression, and even more painful withdrawal symptoms later.

John Lennon got it right:

Posted in Bush, Economy, Obama, Recession | 1 Comment »

“Feeling Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag” for Obama’s Afghan War

Monday, January 26th, 2009

country joe Top Obama foreign policy aide Richard Holbrooke believes Obama’s escalation of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan “will last a long time – longer than the United States’ longest war to date, the 14-year conflict (1961-75) in Vietnam.”

And new VP Joe Biden — a chickenhawk like Obama — says U.S. casualties in Afghanistan are going to go up.

So, it’s time to update that old anti-Vietnam War classic song, by Country Joe and the Fish (original lyrics here; YouTube audio here):

Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag (Afghan Version)

Well, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Obam needs your help again.
He’s got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Afghanistan
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun.

And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Afghanistan;
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.

Come on Wall Street, don’t be slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go
There’s plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of its trade,
But just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on a wedding throng.

And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Afghanistan.
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.

Well, come on generals, let’s move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Now you can go out and get those beards
‘Cause the only good Afghan is the one that’s dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we’ve blown ‘em all to kingdom come.

And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Afghanistan;
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.

Come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Afghanistan.
Come on fathers, and don’t hesitate
To send your sons off before it’s too late.
And you can be the first ones in your block
To have your boy come home in a box.

And it’s one, two, three
What are we fighting for ?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Afghanistan.
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.

Posted in 1960s, Afghan War, Obama | No Comments »

Why Bush really may have been the worst president

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

I don’t know if Bush was America’s worst president. We’ve had so many terrible ones. If you’re old enough, remember LBJ and Nixon?

But Bush very well may have been the worst.

That’ s because what makes America unique in the annals of human history isn’t our prosperity (gone now anyway), the Super Bowl, or rock and roll. It’s the U.S. Constitution, which protects our liberties by wrapping hoops of steel around government.

Bush, more than any president since at least FDR, ripped off those hoops of steel and made a massive assault on our liberties. After him, there’s not much left of the Constitution. In the name of “protecting” us, he shredded our real protector: the Constitution.

All the vast new totalitarian powers Bush seized, last week he bequeathed to Obama.

I’ve written about this for 8 years. But a good summary comes from Christopher Manion:

Fact: Bin Laden spent half a million on 9-11, with the audacity of hope that Bush’s response would bankrupt America. It did.

Fact: 9-11 was not the most catastrophic event of the past eight years. Nor was the politically-derived collapse of our economy.

Fact: The most catastrophic event of the past eight years was the evisceration of the U.S. Constitution by a bipartisan gang of thieves and egomaniacs who show no remorse or regret for their crimes.

Fact: Bush did everything he could to destroy the fabric of comity among nations; now his spear-carriers spurn the option of their humble, honorable exit and instead fiendishly prepare to blame Obama for the consequences of Bush’s travesties.

Fact: Obama will create enough travesties of his own, thank you.

Fact: The same bipartisan peanut gallery that propounds fear of another 9-11 actually celebrates the 600,000 unnecessary deaths of the Civil War. Like Madeline Albright cheering the deaths of half a million Iraqi children **before** 9-11, these fanatics think those 600,000 deaths were “worth it.”

Fact: Our long national nightmare is not over, because the fulcrum upon which we must rely to leverage a recovery of our liberties — the Constitution — is ignored. All that is left is schoolyard taunts and mindless legacy-building.

Posted in Bill of Rights, Bush, Constitution, Obama | No Comments »

Obama continues his Bush impersonation

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

Maybe we should just elect impressionist Rich Little as president. Because all Obama is doing so far is an impression of Bush. What happened to “change we can believe in”?

Obama is continuing the ridiculous secrecy Bush imposed. Isn’t this supposed to be an open society, with an open government? The latest:

The White House press operation got off to a fumbling and stumbling start Thursday, with the day’s opening briefers insisting on being identified only as “senior administration officials,” followed swiftly by the new president’s spokesman accidently outing one of the secret aides less than two minutes into his first White House briefing.

Although President Obama swept into office pledging transparency and a new air of openness, the press hammered spokesman Robert Gibbs for nearly an hour over a slate of perceived secretive slights that have piled up quickly for the new administration.

And Obama is continuing Bush’s use of the “war on terror” phrase, even though terror is a tactic, not a country. It’s like saying “war on berms.”

No, one fights groups of people, not tactics.

But the “war on terror” is an open-ended phrase that lets the president do whatever he wants with the military, with no one — not Congress, the press, the people — being allowed to question him. Wouldn’t want to damage the “war on terror,” would you?

Again, we might as well have made Rich Little a Bush-impressionist president who would continue this secretiveness, saving the $170 million cost of the inaugural.

By the way, someone ought to give Obama a copy of “The Art of War,” by Sun Tzu. It makes von Clausewitz look like Bush.

There’s a free copy online here.

Posted in Obama | No Comments »