The myth of conservative strength: Several not-so-conservative conservative ideals proven wrong when given the chance

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There are many examples of the failed philosophy of neo (new) conservatism, such as the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute , the Project for New American Century, and last but not least, financial ‘innovation’ in the economy.  You can argue until you are blue in the face about philosophy and theory, but some evidence is empirical.  It just can’t be argued.  The outcome, or the results, of particular programs and policies in action speak for themselves, similar to how if you mix water, milk, eggs, and Bisquick just right you get pancakes.

The WPRI was a group that had advocated for school choice vouchers in Milwaukee.  After the program was instituted and studied, they issued this report which said, among other things:

“The report you are reading did not yield the results we had hoped to find,” George Lightbourn, a senior fellow at the institute, wrote in the paper’s first sentence. 

On the same topic of vouchers but not from the same report, I spent a day in Jefferson City speaking with a local Republican State Representative at the time named Jim Lembke.  It was a very cordial conversation on education policy in the Missouri.  However, the conversation ended quite abruptly after I said to him:

My grandfather was a conservative.  (I like to call him an Eisenhower conservative.) And as I understand it, in his day, they believed that public tax dollars should not be used for private purposes.  In relation to vouchers, what ever happened to that conservative ideal?

Then there is The Project for a New American Century, a conservative think tank formed during the Clinton Administration and whose membership included the likes of Steve Forbes, Bill Kristol, William J. Bennett, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, Richard L. Armitage, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, “Scooter” Libby, Dan Quayle, and more. They penned a letter that said some of the following (keep in mind, this was before 9/11 and a few years before W. was ever elected POTUS):

“That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.”

“Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction”

“Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East.”

“a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard…”

“…removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.”

“…If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Of course, we know how all of that worked out.  $150 a barrel for oil, $10 billion a month in Iraq Afghanistan, oh, and no Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Notice how almost all of the people mentioned in the letter to President Clinton seen here ended up in the Bush Administration.

The phrase that freaks me out the most from the Project for a New American Century is an excerpt from the following paper:

Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and
industrial policy will shape the pace and
content of transformation as much as the
requirements of current missions.

And last but not least, the financial market.  So far, we have talked about two of the items that the conservatives are traditionally given credit for as their strength.  Taxes, Defense, and now Finance.  It is clear that their strength in these areas is nothing more than a myth, and a very damaging myth at that.  Here is the latest from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke:

“One would be forgiven for concluding that the assumed benefits of financial innovation are not all they were cracked up to be,” the Fed chairman said today in a speech at the central bank’s community affairs conference in Washington. “The damage from this turn in the credit cycle — in terms of lost wealth, lost homes, and blemished credit histories — is likely to be long-lasting.”

Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

“Bush Insider (Michael Connell) Who Planned to Tell All Killed in Plane Crash” - Press Release

I always take conspiracy theories with a grain of salt until some real evidence is presented in a convincing manner.  That being said, this will be an interesting one to look in to.  I hope it gets the attention that it appears to deserve.

Bush Insider Who Planned To Tell All Killed In Plane Crash: Non-Profit Demands Full Federal Investigation - MarketWatch

WASHINGTON, Dec 20, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — Michael Connell, the Bush IT expert who has been directly implicated in the rigging of George Bush’s 2000 and 2004 elections, was killed last night when his single engine plane crashed three miles short of the Akron airport. Velvet Revolution (”VR”), a non-profit that has been investigating Mr. Connell’s activities for the past two years, can now reveal that a person close to Mr. Connell has recently been discussing with a VR investigator how he can tell all about his work for George Bush. Mr. Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that George Bush and Dick Cheney would “throw [him] under the bus.”
A tipster close to the McCain campaign disclosed to VR in July that Mr. Connell’s life was in jeopardy and that Karl Rove had threatened him and his wife, Heather. VR’s attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, notified the United States Attorney General , Ohio law enforcement and the federal court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody. VR also told a close associate of Mr. Connell’s not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sabotaged. Mr. Connell, a very experienced pilot, has had to abandon at least two flights in the past two months because of suspicious problems with his plane. On December 18, 2008, Mr. Connell flew to a small airport outside of Washington DC to meet some people. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.

Frank Gaffney, “4,000 People are dead because of the way you feel.” - Chris Matthews

Earlier we had a guest post from Tom Diehl on Dick Cheney’s backpedaling on the reasons for the Iraq War.  A moment ago, he sent me this video of Chris Matthews and Frank Gaffney on Hardball.

It gets very personal at the end and Matthews hammers it home:

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• Gaffney: 4,000 Americans Had To Die In Iraq

Cheney continues to lie his way out of the White House - Tom Diehl (Guest Post)

In an interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney said:

“As I look at the intelligence with respect to Iraq, what they got wrong was that there weren’t any stockpiles. What they found was that Saddam Hussein still had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feed stock.”

Using Cheney’s rationale, we should have invaded Canada, Brazil, the European Union, Japan, China, Russia, and most other industrialized nations. With the no-fly zones, Saddam Hussein had no means to deliver any weapons that could harm the United States. We’ve spent 900 billion dollars occupying a country that was no threat to us and have emboldened our enemies and inspired thousands of Jihadists to join the movement to destroy civilized society and wreak havoc on the world’s economy.

On the flip side, the Bush Administration ignored the warnings of Osama bin Laden; and then obligingly fell into his trap, straining our military capability; causing a spike in oil prices that bin Laden knew would come from a protracted fight in the Middle East, further enriching people who finance al-Qaeda.

Now, what was so important that we had to elect George W. Bush and Dick Cheney twice?

January 20, 2009 cannot come soon enough.

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Embarrassing actions of Justice Uncle T(h)om(as) in unworthy Constitutional attack on Obama

All Barack Obama had to do was challenge Justice Clarence Thomas in public once, just once, and you had to know he would get a legal challenge out of it.

“I don´t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time, for that elevation, setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the constitution.”

American Chronicle | Method to Thomas Madness on Obama Birth Certificate.

As you can probably imagine, that really infuriated Uncle T(h)om(as) who has spent his entire life ingratiating himself to the powers that be to get to his Supreme Court decision.

Most people think of Barack Obama as a community organizer because that was a very large part of his campaign.  Most even know that he was also a professor at the University of Chicago.  However, most people don’t know what he was a professor of.  Obama was a professor of Constitutional law.

Considering the assault on the Constitution waged by Bush and Cheney and company, I can not think of a better person that Obama to restore the sole document that makes America better than any other country on Earth.

That being said, Uncle T(h)om(as) isn’t going to make it very easy on him.  It is almost embarrassing that U.T. has decided to pick up this fight, but it is really par for the course:

The harebrained lawsuit demanding disclosure whether President elect Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen or not was laughed out of New Jersey courts in October. A few weeks later Supreme Court Justice David Souter gave it just as short shrift. He denied a stay to get Obama removed from the ballot in that state. But that didn´t end the matter. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas saw to that. He took the almost never heard of step of reopening the issue by agreeing to put the matter to a conference vote. Thomas´s ridiculous lone wolf effort to arm twist the justices to examine the birth certificate issue made no sense to most legal experts. Obama was born in Hawaii. And he has produced more than enough evidence to back that up.

But Thomas´s legal meddle on the Obama birth certificate non-issue fits perfectly in with his jaundiced interpretation of law and its practice and his private vow to get revenge on his liberal tormentors. Obama is the latest would be victim. He almost certainly stirred Thomas´s personal ire back in August. Obama was asked at a joint church gathering with Republican rival John McCain at the mega Saddleback church in Lake Forest, California which justice he wouldn´t have nominated to the Supreme Court. He didn´t hesitate. He named Thomas. And he told why.

Thanks to Phil Gounis for the heads up on this story.

Obama National Security Team Exhibits American Altruism

In the days following 9/11, I felt very close to President Bush, as did millions of other Americans.  His approval rating was over 80%.  The country rallied around him and our immediate and decisive action on the Taliban of Afghanistan.  But then things changed.  As we are all aware, the focus shifted to Iraq, and that is when my satisfaction with Bush began to decline.

It was about motive, and it was hard to trust that Bush and Cheney were not looking for any excuse to invade Iraq and Saddam Hussein from day 1 of their administration.  And with their ties to oil, the line was blurred from the outset as to whether or not the Iraq War really was about national security, or oil, or some misguided combination of the two.

Regardless, that is history.  When Obama announced his national security team today, I felt eerily at peace with his choices.  Originally I was very uncomfortable with him picking Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State because my impression that the Clinton’s, while smart and qualified, are also known (worthy or not) to be political backstabbers.

However, when I saw the picture today of Obama, Clinton, Biden and others on the stage, the feeling came over me that we are in the best of hands.  Other than the typical ulterior motives of ego and power that possess most politicians, the real and absolute motive of this team will be what is best for America as a whole is good for all Americans in the long run.

This team, I believe, radiates a sort of American altruism.  One that believes in and respects the Constitution as the one binding document that makes us what we are, and that the idea of America is what we are protecting and fighting for, not the individuals who live contained within the borders of that idea.

This team is just more evidence that with Obama, we are in the best of hands.

Obama Introduces Clinton, National Security Team - Huffington Post

President-elect Barack Obama announced Monday that Robert Gates would remain as defense secretary, making President Bush’s Pentagon chief his own as he seeks to wind down the U.S. role in Iraq. Obama picked former campaign rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state.

At a news conference, Obama also introduced retired Marine Gen. James Jones as White House national security adviser, former Justice Department official Eric Holder as attorney general and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as secretary of homeland security.