Archive for April, 2009
Diplomacy and Torture
It’s understandably difficult to calibrate proper diplomatic behavior when your best idea of how to treat your enemies is to waterboard them.
Just in case you don’t know what waterboarding is, here is a refresher. You force your enemy to lie on his back. Then you place a sponge or some other type of porous cloth over his nose and mouth. Then you pour water onto the sponge or cloth so that your enemy cannot breathe. It’s called simulated drowning. Journalist Christopher Hitchens has undergone the procedure so that he could write about it authoritatively. He says there is nothing simulated about it. You are being drowned for 20 seconds at a time.
With that as our cozy backdrop, let’s discuss the latest offense Obama has given the far right, for whom he can do no right. He actually shook hands with Cesar Chavez! Oh my! He didn’t read Daniel Ortega the riot act after Ortega ranted about America for 50 minutes. Treason!
The problem conservative are having is that Obama takes quaint phrases like “disagree without being disagreeable” and puts them into action. He really means it. As a result, he behaves like a gentleman with leaders of other countries, even leaders with whom we strongly disagree. Anyone watching the body language of Obama when Chavez handed him an anti-American book as a “gift” could see that the President was basically saying “thanks for the book, now go back and sit the hell back down in your seat and stop wasting my time.” Did he need to actually say that? No.
As for Ortega, why should Obama stoop so low as to go tit for tat with a thug leader? I hate to break it to you folks but this is not the playground behind the elementary school where you have to prove you can’t be bullied around. By not dignifying Ortega’s attack with a similar response, he left the Nicaraguan President looking like a silly extremist. The only folks upset about this are your macho swagger guys, Scarborough, Buchanan and Cheney. Obama’s only response to Ortega showed how foolish the 50 minute tirade was:
To move forward, we cannot let ourselves be prisoners of past disagreements. I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old. Too often, an opportunity to build a fresh partnership of the Americas has been undermined by stale debates. We’ve all heard these arguments before.
via Obama Endures Ortega Diatribe – First 100 Days of Presidency – Politics FOXNews.com.
Putting aside some historical inaccuracy (Ortega referenced the Bay of Pigs which occurred before Obama was born, not when he was three months old), Obama said all that needed to be said.
So, admittedly after eight years of acting like cowboys, the Obama approach to diplomacy may be a bit hard to swallow. Now the question is how do we deal with one of the consequences of our former shoot-first-ask-questions-later style of international relations? If you think the economy and two wars was a major turd left on our door step by Bush, you ain’t seen nothing yet. We are now getting details on how the former administration framed a legal defense of torture so that the savage practices could go on unchallenged.
Let’s first deal with the criticism that Obama’s decision to release the legal briefs “allowing” for torture has made us vulnerable. What baloney! The fact that the primary cheerleader in this meme is Dick Cheney tells you what hogwash it is. For starters, the legal memos don’t tell us anything all that new. They just tell us how premeditated all of these shenanigans were. Secondly, are we really so naive to think that Al Quada did not know our interrogation techniques? You don’t think there were communication networks that allowed for leaks out of Gitmo to the terrorist community? Do you really think Osama and his henchmen were telling their followers, “we have no idea what will happen to you if you fall into the hands of the infidels. Don’t worry, it won’t be too extreme.” Come on! Get real folks. I have to laugh when I see the likes of Cheney and Joe Scarborough acting like we’ve given away major secrets to the enemy. And in this case, does knowing that you’re going to be waterboarded make the experience any less terrible? It still sucks to be drowned for 20 seconds at a time whether it’s a surprise or not.
Then of course there is the whole debate on the effectiveness of torture. Many experts on the subject say that we don’t get reliable information from the practice. If we compare the practice to what was done to US airmen during the Korean War, we see one of the fundamental problems with our approach. In the Korean War, a form of water torture was used to force airmen to lie. It was NOT used to get the truth out of them. Hence there is a strong likelihood that waterboarding will get the prisoner to say anything that will bring him relief, not necessarily the truth.
President Obama has himself in a bit of a pickle right now, not because he released the torture memos (which would probably have been requested by an international inquiry anyway) but because he has been inconsistent on how we should move forward. His initial stance was that he wanted to end the practice of torture and then move on. He wanted to look to the future and not punish people for the past mistakes. Of course this had the far left apoplectic. This stance reached its most unequivocal point this past Sunday when Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told George Stephanopoulos that neither the practitioners of torture nor the architects of the program would be prosecuted. But within the past forty eight hours, Obama has backpedaled on this, now saying that those who were “just following orders” should not be prosecuted but the folks giving the orders might be subject to scrutiny by the Justice Department (i.e. Eric Holder). Of course the list of folks giving the orders could extend all the way up to the former occupant of the Oval Office.
This leaves us on the precipice of a situation far more divisive than our current economic or foreign relations policies. I am not sure this country can handle the prosecution of our former Vice President and potentially our former President for war crimes. In 1947 we prosecuted and convicted a Japanese officer for the very acts that the recent legal memo disclosure details. We have committed acts that we once felt were criminal when committed by our enemy. With that said, I have to say that I liked Obama’s original stance on this. We stop doing the wrong thing and we move on. The far left says that if these crimes go unpunished, we will have learned nothing and history will eventually repeat itself. That may be true but my greater fear is that our country currently in so much distress, cannot afford to immerse itself in years of self recrimination. And while I would lose no sleep over Dick Cheney going to jail, my heart would go out to George W. Bush. As I’ve stated in other posts, Bush will receive his reward or his punishment from the judgment of history and that judgment is profound and long-lasting.
If the international community chooses to prosecute us, so be it. But we, as a nation have a lot of healing to do. I don’t see how we can heal if we open the wounds of our former criminal activity and potentially make George W. Bush the first former President to be tried, convicted and sentenced for crimes against humanity.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Obama Video Address: April 18, 2009
I’m posting this weekend’s video a bit late due to a busy weekend and a chest cold. In this week’s address, Obama does just what he needs to do, namely take a break from discussion of stimulus and focus on cost cutting. With the latest hue and cry of our children and grandchildren being bankrupted by current policies, it is important to see that Obama is not oblivious to the deficit. He is actively looking for ways to cut cost and in this video he announces White House appointments who will be charged with helping in that endeavor.
And now the President of the United States of America:
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Two Perspectives on Populist Rage
The Tea Parties of earlier this week really bothered me. I found them silly but as I got involved in the comments section of my post, I found myself getting downright angry. It was more than mere silliness that had me annoyed.
Over the past 48 hours I’ve encountered two perspectives on the Tea Party and the populist rage that it represents. One view was moderate and came from a black journalist (I identify the race for reasons that will become evident later). The other view was extremist, almost embarrasingly so, and was expressed by a white actress/activist. Both perspectives helped me focus on why I have been so angry.
In the Washington Post, columnist Eugene Robinson wrote the following:
The cool, cerebral White House might logically conclude that Wednesday’s decidedly uncool, uncerebral “tea bag” protests were intellectually and politically incoherent, and therefore not worth a second thought. That would be a dangerous mistake. …
Some protesters were mad about measures they feared Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress might take to strengthen gun control laws. Some were mad about illegal immigration, some about abortion, some about gay marriage. At times, the protests ventured into fantasyland. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, caught up in the excitement of the day, prattled nonsensically about Texas’s onetime status as an independent country and how, purportedly, the state had reserved the right to secede. … The protests were all over the map and thus hard to take seriously. … But the polls also point to what looks like a reservoir of simmering discontent. …
A growing sense of us vs. them, of the little guy vs. the big guy, is out there waiting to be exploited by anyone clever enough to fashion a sophisticated populist critique of the Obama administration’s policies. I know it seems crazy to use words like “clever” and “sophisticated” in connection with today’s Republican Party, but stranger things have happened. via Eugene Robinson – Why President Obama Can’t Ignore ‘Tea Bag’ Protest Anger – washingtonpost.com.
Robinson makes the point that the protests lacked focus and inspired lunatic offshoot consequences like the insane ramblings of Texas Governor Rick Perry. He also points out that the amorphous us-against-them anti-government rage conspicuously lacked a leader who could give it focus. His primary point (a moderate one, in my view) is that Washington better not dismiss this phenomenon because the “right” person could light the fire to change this fizzle to sizzle.
But Robinson got me in touch with one aspect of my own rage. I like my protests to have a coherent theme. I like focus. In the past eight years, there was focus. We (liberals) did not like the war in Iraq — specific — we did not like wire tapping and violation of civil rights — specific — we did not like government incompetence evidenced by Katrina — specific. When we protested the topic was clear. What I see now and what frustrates me is that the Tea Party crowds want go grab anything and everything all at once and go nuts. Taxes, guns, abortion, gay rights, deficits. It’s a kind of protest that looks chaotic and out of control with no reason behind it, no specificity. It resembles mob protest. It’s scary. And then there is that one other thing which leads me to the ultra-liberal actress/activist.
I often get the nagging feeling that when folks are talking about everything at once, it is a way to avoid talking about the ONE thing that is really bothering them. I know that publishing the following interview between Keith Olberman and Janeane Garofalo will enrage my conservative readers. Janeane’s style of argument is condescending and represents everything conservatives HATE about liberals. But here it goes:
The video starts with a clip of a Pensacola Tea Party where the speaker is getting a warm reception until he points out Republicans’ role in our current mess. Once he goes down that road, he loses the crowd. Clearly they are not there to consider facts. They are there for catharsis. Enter Janeane Garofalo and her extremist liberal analysis. Oh no she didn’t!!! She did NOT just play the race card! Well, yes she did and in doing so she tapped into the other factor in my vitriolic reaction to the tea parties.
Where are the blacks in these Tea Party crowds? Don’t blacks stand as much or more to lose in this economic mess than white folks do? So you say, blacks aren’t there because they love Obama ‘cos he’s black. Well then, doesn’t that invite the flipside question?
I kinda picture the pathological liar character played by Jon Lovitz in the old days of SNL. “I am pissed off about ehhhh, taking my guns away and ehhhhh, deficits and ehhhhh taxes and ehhhh bailouts. Yeah, that’s the ticket.” When in fact, a good number of folks may not be able to articulate “Dammit, there’s a black guy in the White House! What the hell is THAT about?”
I don’t want to go there, believe me. When Obama got elected, I put myself on alert not to reach for the “you just don’t like him because he’s black” excuse. But all one needs to do is look at some of the signage at the protests to see that a good amount of the rage is focused on Obama, not on our current conditions. For example a sign that read “Americans are the Jews for Obama’s ovens.” Lots more like that one! If Obama were the alienating sort, I might understand his being a magnet for the rage. But Obama has spoken in consistently moderate and conciliatory tones. He has at every juncture tried to explain to the American people the reasons for his policies. He has communicated up the proverbial wazoo. When we combine that with the fact that much of what we’re doing (e.g. TARP) is similar or identical to the last months of the Bush administration one has to wonder where was all the protest under Bush? Why has this black man suddenly sparked all this populist angst? Particularly when the black man in question speaks in some of the most populist tones of ANY recent president.
So there you have it. This whole tea party thing has me by the throat because first, I am offended by the total anti-intellectual, ignorant tenor of the protest, unfocused without any intelligent leader to show the way and second, because I suspect that a good portion of the populist rage is fueled by that omni-present American tumor called racism.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Let’s Party Like It’s 1773
The utter foolishness of today’s Tea Party protests simply abounds. A bunch of folks who, if they bothered to look at their paycheck this week, would have seen that they got a tax reduction are yelling and screaming about tax increases.
These same folks whose roads and bridges are falling apart, are yelling and screaming about unnecessary stimulus.
These same folks who were silent during the last eight years of the Bush administration now have their panties in a knot about a huge deficit.
I’d call these “teabaggers” hypocrites but quite frankly I don’t think most of them have the intelligence to deserve that label. When I looked at coverage of the Tea Parties today, it seemed that most of the folks assembled really just wanted to party, and not much more.
Embarrassing for all concerned.
Kudos to my wife who supplied the dialog for this strip in a tweet on Twitter today!
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Obama to Pirates: Do You Feel Lucky, Punks?
OK, so President Barack Obama didn’t exactly quote Clint Eastwood as one of his predecessors, Ronald Reagan did back in the 80′s (“Make my day.”) but just the same Obama laid to rest any concerns that he might be, let’s just say it, a wuss.
NAIROBI, Kenya – Navy snipers on the fantail of a destroyer cut down three Somali pirates in a lifeboat and rescued an American sea captain in a surprise nighttime assault in choppy seas Easter Sunday, ending a five-day standoff between a team of rogue gunmen and the world’s most powerful military.
I’m not much of a hawk but I’ve been personally waiting with great anticipation for our Navy to blow these clowns out of the water. I was even at a point willing to sacrifice the poor Captain Richard Phillips who found himself taken hostage by the Somali thugs. My attitude has been that the United States will not be held hostage, particularly not by common criminals who don’t even have a political axe to grind. Fortunately, Obama was a bit more restrained than I would have been and ordered that force be used only if the Captain was in imminent danger. When Navy Seals spotted an AK-47 being pointed at Captain Phillips’ back, their snipers fired off shots aiming at the heads of the criminals. They scored three for three and the Captain is now safe and I could not be happier.
Unfortunately, this defiant organization of seafaring thieves has sharpened their rhetoric, declaring the United States an enemy. You know what? I could care less. I hope that we follow the French example from now on. When these delinquents capture our ships and take our men hostage, they should get bullets instead of ransom. We should blow their asses away every time.
It’s hard enough dealing diplomatically with recognized governments who are behaving badly. We don’t have time to be dilly-dallying with petty criminals. My message: When you screw with the United States of America, matey, it will be the last pirate games you ever play.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Obama Video Address: April 11, 2009
In this week’s video address, President Obama uses religion as a unifying theme for our common goals. He points out the shared celebration and commemoration of lessons learned during Passover and Easter. As uncomfortable as I am with government and religion mixing in any way, I understand that it is Obama’s goal to use religion … all religions … as a tool of moral leadership. To the extent that Mr. Obama wishes to be the moral leader of the free world and encourage cooperation among all countries, I applaud him.
President Obama talked about his recent trip abroad. Unfortunately, this trip highlighted the chasm between his ideals and the real world in which we live. Liberal and conservative pundits alike agree that not enough substance came out of the G-20 summit or the other meetings held by Obama last week. Parts of Europe still resist participation in economic stimulus. Support for the war in Afghanistan is still weak. And as the President called for worldwide reduction of nuclear weaponry, North Korea defiantly tested a long range missile. Obama’s condemnation of the act was met by a tepid response from the United Nations.
Has mankind gone beyond the point of no return where international cooperation for our self preservation is unfeasible? Has Obama arrived on the scene too late to really change things dramatically for the better on a global scale? Only time will tell.
And now the President of the United States of America:
Respectfully,
Rutherford
It’s My Tea Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To
Before MSNBC’s Keith Olberman started razzing him, I had never heard of Fox personality Glenn Beck. Then, on another blog I caught one of his videos:
Some may say Glenn is patriotic to the point of weeping. Some may say he is unhinged. I tend to think he is a master showman in the tradition of Morton Downey Jr. and Jim Cramer. The man you watch because you’re not quite sure what he will do next. However, Beck is exploiting a mood in this country held by a small but vocal minority that if unchecked and encouraged could prove more troublesome than mere entertainment. As we dig deeper into Glenn’s rhetoric and that of his 9-12 Project we see themes that, in my opinion, depart from reality. The question is how many people in history have followed the lead of a madman to very destructive ends?
Let’s start with this whole notion of the Tea Party (to which Beck devotes an entire page on his web site). Sorry folks but Barack Obama is not King George III. I find it particularly disturbing that there is a growing theme in this country that government, particularly the head of state, is the enemy. We do not have taxation without representation. On the contrary, Barack Obama and the Democratic majority were ELECTED by Americans who wanted what is now being delivered. There are precious few surprises in the direction this country is taking. Obama has not done a 180 from his campaign promises. If any fault can be found it might be that Obama has not been as moderate as some might have hoped and has let the Democratic congress go too far left. But it is hardly a 180. Americans are getting what they sent their representatives to do. These are not the dictates of a monarch.
The 9-12 Project is a pun of sorts, suggesting that we all must return to the way we were the day after we were attacked by Al Quada, one nation against a common enemy, and that there are nine principles and 12 values that should guide us. The 12 values don’t particularly bother me. They are:
- Honesty
- Reverence [toward what? This one I'm not so sure about.]
- Hope
- Thrift
- Humility
- Charity
- Sincerity
- Moderation
- Hard Work
- Courage
- Personal Responsibility
- Gratitude
With the exception of reverence, I can’t argue with these as decent values for all Americans to share. It’s when we get to the 9 principles that things get a bit sticky (italic statements are mine):
| 1. | America Is Good.
Ehhhh, no America is not always good. |
| 2. | I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life. |
| Glen follows this up with a quote from George Washington implying that our country is founded on a belief in God. Hogwash. Despite protests to the contrary, this is a secular country with the occasional bow to religion in the form of, for example, our currency (“In God We Trust”). | |
| 3. | I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday. |
| Fine no problem there. | |
| 4. | The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government. |
| What I fear is a tacit call for insurrection. | |
| 5. | If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it. |
| Nice idea, no argument there. | |
| 6. | I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results. |
| A veiled excuse to keep the poor poor and the rich rich. | |
| 7. | I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable. |
| Another call to keep the poor in poverty. | |
| 8. | It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion. |
| This is true so long as the disagreement does not take the form of insurrection or treason. |
|
| 9. | The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me. |
| This is not new news but this concept in the wrong hands can spell real danger for our country. |
There is an undercurrent in much of this rhetoric that our government is in need of such massive change that we the people must wrest control back from it. The 9-12 crowd seldom gets right down to advocating overthrow (violent or otherwise) but the mood is still there and it’s troubling.
Within the past two weeks I stumbled upon two communications that clarified for me how off the hook some of this nouveau patriotism has gone. The first was a blog so disturbing that I will not link to it here. The blogger is a man down on his luck, terminally ill, jobless and soon to be homeless. He has decided that what ails America is money (our financial system) and government (our set of rules). His solution is anarchy. His method, so he says, is violent protest. He makes it clear that he is willing to be a martyr and he has called on his readers to join him in a rampage that is only alluded to (an explicit call to violence might get him arrested, I would gather). It would be fine to write this fellow off as a disturbed individual but he is the extreme that arises from this 9-12 Project–re-invent-America-in-your-own-image movement.
The other communication came in the form of an e-mail from a reader named “Bones”, no doubt probably intended more for my conservative writing partner The Rigorist, than for me. The e-mail had nothing but a link. A link to the 9-12 Project Petition. Here’s an excerpt:
We the People, in seeking Redress of Grievances, as is our right under Amendment I of the United States Constitution, ask this question of each branch of Federal Government:
“Where in the Constitution do you find authorization for each and all of the following?”
1. The redistribution of property by force and subterfuge; and the unequal application of tax laws amounting to punitive action against certain groups of American People and providing favored status to other groups
2. A paper money system that is morally and economically equivalent to counterfeiting
3. Willful and purposeful devaluation and destruction of American currency
4. Deploying military to fight undeclared wars
5. Targeting and labeling law-abiding American citizens as domestic terrorists
6. Declarations that disagreeing with policy is unpatriotic or disloyal to our country
7. Intrusions into the privacy of law-abiding American citizens
8. Perpetual massive indebtedness to foreign countries
9. Infringement upon the rights of the People to keep and bear arms through oppressive regulation and taxation designed for the very purpose of infringement
10. Passing laws and taxes without deliberation and without reading the legislation; said action is tantamount to the American People not having any representation
11. Enacting ex post facto laws and Bills of Attainder
12. Granting Constitutional rights and privileges to illegal aliens and prisoners of war
13. Funding mercenary organizations that engage in voter fraud and paid harassment of law abiding American citizens
14. Maintaining and deploying armies in peace time on United States soil
15. Unprecedented and arbitrary federal power, through the United States Treasury, for government intervention into, control of, and confiscation of, private property, private industry including but not limited to banking, insurance, manufacturing, farming and other sectors of the private economy (current and proposed)
16. Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war, or pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law (proposed)
17. Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law (proposed)
18. Acts regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press (proposed)
The list is to a small extent bipartisan. Items 4 and 7 started on Bush’s watch. That is beside the point. What is troubling is the perpetuation of myths such as item 9 which spews the ridiculous notion that Obama wants to take your guns away. However it is the tone, more than the specifics that trouble me. It’s like a bunch of people went on vacation to Colonial Williamsburg but came back unaware that they are back in the 21st century. It’s like these folks are in some sort of time warp where Obama is King George III and a new revolution is necessary and imminent. It is truly like we are feeding and nurturing a growing and vocal minority of madmen.
Economic distress is one of the leading causes of broken marriages and it is also a leading cause of broken countries. History shows that a country demoralized by economic woes can turn in very dangerous directions. The tearful calls of Glenn Beck and people like him to join Tea Parties and protest our oppressive government might have played well a few years ago when our vulnerability was not so great. I fear now that this rhetoric borders on treason and if left unchecked may inspire consequences far worse than failed banks, high unemployment and national debt.
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Obama Video Address: April 4, 2009
Forty-one years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down. Many thought at the time that his dream might have died with him. Some two generations later the dream while not fully attained is much more realized than many could have imagined. For the first time in American history we have a black man as President of the United States and this week Barack Obama made it clear that he is also the leader of the free world. On a tour of Europe that started with the G-20 summit in London, Obama has held unprecedented town hall meetings with the citizens of France and Germany. He has taken questions from ordinary folks in these countries and they seem to look to him for salvation to the same degree that we do.
In this week’s video address, Obama discusses the outcome of the G-20 summit and the vital importance of international cooperation. Whether the agreements made at the G-20 bear real fruit remains to be seen. On HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher”, conservative pundit David Frum said that Obama ultimately failed in his mission to get massive foreign stimulus going in Europe. Germany’s Angela Merkel famously declared prior to the summit that no one would dictate to her how to spend German money.
The one thing that is irrefutable is that Obama is succeeding at restoring our good name abroad. Our foreign allies now see a President intent on listening and not just playing cowboy. This can only be a good thing.
And now the President of the United States of America:
Respectfully,
Rutherford
C’mon, Let the Old Man Alone — Part II
Middle of last year, I made a plea for then 84 year old Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens who had been indicted on several fraud charges.
Last fall, the senior Senator from Alaska was the poster octogenarian for political corruption. As of yesterday, Ted Stevens is merely another casualty of abusive prosecutors out to make a name for themselves.
The Justice Department yesterday moved to set aside an October conviction on ethics charges and forgo any future trials for Senator Stevens. He walks free, in other words, an innocent man. In the motion, Justice said it “recently discovered” that prosecutors withheld from the defense notes about an interview last April with the state’s star witness, Bill Allen, that contradicted his subsequent testimony. Under the Brady Rule for evidence, Justice was obliged to share that with Senator Stevens’s lawyers.
This was one of many prosecutorial missteps that came to light after Mr. Stevens was found guilty less than two weeks before Election Day. The Republican narrowly lost his bid for a seventh term. Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday promised a “thorough” probe into the conduct of prosecutors, which is the least the Department owes Mr. Stevens.
via Ted Stevens Conviction on Ethics Charges Dismissed – WSJ.com.
So, Eric Holder’s Justice Department, under a Democratic administration restores justice to a former Republican Senator. It’s nice to finally have a Justice Department we can look up to (do you hear that Alberto?).
And as for Stevens, it’s so nice to be able to say:
I told you so!
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Obama Video Address: April 25, 2009
This week President Obama discusses his plans for government reform. In the background of course is the quagmire his administration finds itself in as it wrestles with what to do about new revelations of our torture program under the Bush administration. Maybe I’m influenced by comments I saw posted on YouTube but I can see the stress on Obama’s face. He wants to focus on the economy and our two wars and he doesn’t need the distraction of prior administration shenanigans. Unfortunately, this is a genie that even Obama with all his persuasive talents will not be able to put back in the bottle.
And now the President of the United States of America:
Respectfully,
Rutherford
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April 26, 2009 at 1:00 am Rutherford 31 comments