What Goes Around Comes Around

Talk Smack and Get Smacked

Today General Stanley McChrystal tendered his resignation after it was revealed that he and his staff disparaged President Barack Obama and other administration officials  in an upcoming issue of Rolling Stone. McChrystal’s indiscretion was roundly condemned by Democrat and Republican alike in a rare show of bipartisan outrage. There are select conservative bloggers who would like to make this about the substance of McChrystal’s remarks but Obama made the basic issue clear in his speech today.

The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general. It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system. And it erodes the trust that’s necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan.

My multiple responsibilities as Commander-in-Chief led me to this decision. First, I have a responsibility to the extraordinary men and women who are fighting this war, and to the democratic institutions that I’ve been elected to lead. I’ve got no greater honor than serving as Commander-in-Chief of our men and women in uniform, and it is my duty to ensure that no diversion complicates the vital mission that they are carrying out.

That includes adherence to a strict code of conduct. The strength and greatness of our military is rooted in the fact that this code applies equally to newly enlisted privates and to the general officer who commands them. That allows us to come together as one. That is part of the reason why America has the finest fighting force in the history of the world.

It is also true that our democracy depends upon institutions that are stronger than individuals. That includes strict adherence to the military chain of command, and respect for civilian control over that chain of command. And that’s why, as Commander-in-Chief, I believe this decision is necessary to hold ourselves accountable to standards that are at the core of our democracy.

via Text of Obama’s Remarks on McChrystal – Washington Wire – WSJ.

I challenge anyone who “wants his country back” to dispute Obama’s statement. He has based his decision on the very premise that prevents our government from becoming a military dictatorship, namely that the military is subordinate to civilian government and serves at their command. Disrespect for the chain of command must be punished whether the source of that disrespect is a lowly Private or a General.

As the well in the Gulf gushes out of control today, Obama desperately needs a fine moment. This was one of his finer moments.

Time the Avenger

Sometimes it takes generations for wrongs to be set right, for justice to be done, even poetic justice. Such was the case yesterday when Tim Scott won the Republican nomination for Representative from the first district in South Carolina. What was special about Scott’s victory? For starters, he is black so if he wins in November he will be the first black Republican to go to the House since 2003. But the real cherry on the sundae is the opponent he beat. Paul Thurmond.

Who is Paul Thurmond you ask. Paul is the son of the late Strom Thurmond. Yes, the Strom Thurmond, a vile racist who “mellowed” in his old age and whose 100th birthday was celebrated in the Senate with a now infamous tribute from Trent Lott who talked about what a better country we would have today if Thurmond had won his 1948 bid for the Presidency.

Even if I resided in South Carolina, I probably would not be voting for Mr. Scott but my hat goes off to him. I sincerely hope ole Strom is looking down from heaven witnessing the victory of the inferior “Negro”.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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The Myth of Drill, Baby, Drill and the Slush Fund

The Myth of Drill, Baby, Drill

You know how if you hear the same foolishness enough times, it becomes second nature and you don’t stop to question it. That has been the case with me and “Drill, Baby, Drill”, the chant heard around the country telling us that we need to drill off shore so we can achieve energy independence. I always dismissed the argument because most of the world’s oil simply isn’t off our shores so total reliance on off shore oil would not satisfy our oil addiction. Alas, I was dismissing it for the wrong reason and thanks to a piece by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, I now see what should have been obvious to me.

When we drill in the Gulf of Mexico, we don’t use that oil in Charleston or Atlanta or Boise or Boston. That oil goes into a global pool of oil that is sold by the oil companies to anyone willing to pay for it. There is no such thing as our using the oil that we drill close to home. We don’t contribute to our energy independence by off shore drilling. We just contribute to the world supply of the drug that so many countries are addicted to, although none of them match our level of addiction. 2007 data shows we consume 24% of the worlds oil. So the argument made by Maddow, a correct one I think, is that we need to get off oil. That is true energy independence.

The Myth of the Slush Fund

Last week, Republican Congressman from Texas, Joe Barton made the news when he apologized to BP for our country strong-arming them into creating a 20 billion dollar relief fund for victims of the BP oil spill. He called the meeting between Obama and BP a “shake down” and the resulting financial set-aside a “slush fund”. Conspiracies abound regarding how this money will be misused. Kenneth Feinberg, the man who administered the 9/11 relief fund has been put in charge of this new Gulf fund. According to conservatives it’s all totally unconstitutional. Well let’s do a small side by side comparison of the 9/11 fund and the Gulf fund.

9/11 Fund	Gulf Fund
Established during GOP Bush administration.	Established during socialist Obama administration.
America screwed over by dark-skinned fanatic Muslims.	America screwed over by Christian capitalist Brits.
Many of the victims fat cat wall street types.	Many of the victims ordinary folks who work with their hands.
Socially responsible relief fund.	Unconstitutional, criminal, slush fund.

One has to wonder why a relief method administered by the same man during the Bush administration is suddenly under attack under the Obama administration. The bottom line is we live in a litigious society. Expecting people to get financial relief from this folly through the court system is cruel and unusual. A fund that provides timely relief and ensures that BP bears the cost of that relief is the most humanitarian and just approach.

Once again, no degree of hypocrisy is too great in the pursuit of a failed Obama administration. It’s just a shame when Republicans ignore that people’s lives hang in the balance.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Obama Oval Office Address: Even Left Says Epic Fail

I noticed recently that one of my conservative readers started quoting from liberal media sources, sources that he had previously derided. He helped me understand why and tonight I got a full blast of confirmation. You see, the liberal media is starting to turn on Barack Obama and conservative Obama-haters everywhere no longer need to seek refuge at Fox “News” to get their daily fix of Obama-ass-kicking. (That’s Obama being kicked, not the other way around.)

Tonight, Obama spent about 15 minutes broadcasting from the Oval Office his plan of action for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster. Oh wait a minute, there was no discernible plan discussed. Forget O’Reilly, Hannity or Limbaugh. Keith Olbermann, yes the left’s answer to the Fox stable of opinion-meisters, was nearly apoplectic at the conclusion of Obama’s address tonight. He wasn’t alone. His guests, Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman piled on too.

Nearly everyone on the left defined tonight as Obama’s opportunity to make the Kennedy-moon-mission speech with the new mission being energy independence. It didn’t happen. At one moment it came close. You see, Kennedy said we would put a man on the moon and bring him safely back to Earth. He threw down the gauntlet and let the details take care of themselves. That is what a President is supposed to do. He is NOT supposed to tell the American people we will change our energy policy …. I don’t know how but it is going to happen. What do you mean, you don’t know how? You don’t need to say that. That is not what we want to hear from you. Then, to add insult to injury the ghosts of George W and Sarah Palin appeared as Obama told us that with God’s help everything would work out. Is God a new cabinet appointee? Is prayer a substitute for good domestic policy? Is the Holy Father going to clean up MMS?

From day 1, Obama could kiss conservative support goodbye. His only hope of political survival is a loyal base. This base is looking for boldness. We didn’t see it tonight. Obama truly could have skipped tonight’s address and he’d be no worse off.

Memo to the President: You know you are in trouble when conservatives eagerly tune to Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to see you get eviscerated.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Prediction: Sarah Palin Will Run in 2012

I would love to say that I stumbled upon a great insight here but the fact is I simply watched an episode of “Hardball” on MSNBC and heard what I felt was a compelling argument for why we will see Sarah Palin in the Republican Presidential primary race in 2012. What follows are Chris Matthews’ views with some elaboration on my part:

After losing a presidential bid in 1960 and a subsequent California gubernatorial bid, Richard Nixon told the press they wouldn’t have “Nixon to kick around anymore”. But he really didn’t just pick up his toys and go home. Instead he spent 1966 on the stump for mid-term Republican candidates. It got his name in the news and it made him relevant again. It was the perfect set up for a 1968 run for the Presidency.

Sarah Palin’s track record for involvement in mid-term races is perhaps slightly higher than 50% wins but win or lose, it keeps her name in the headlines. As her track record for supporting winners improves, it enhances her perceived credibility. She can still talk like the mindless twit she is but imply great political chops by backing winners. The other effect that backing winners has for Palin is the old quid pro quo. Even if Sarah has absolutely no real influence, she can always call in implied IOU’s from the various winners that she backs. So when 2012 rolls around she’s got a bunch of politicians in her “debt” who must now stump for her.

Sarah can very well win Iowa appealing to the down-home religious crowd. She can possibly win New Hampshire, repeating Hillary Clinton’s feminist surge forward. Lots of folks in the South will probably love her, so South Carolina, an important primary state, may be hers as well. In primary debates, her male opponents will hesitate to eviscerate her. Unlike Hillary, she does not inspire a lot of animosity from within her own party. If her male opponents pile on, it will only make her look stronger.

Many say Sarah will not want the pay cut that winning the Presidency would entail. I say baloney. Sarah Palin is above all else an egomaniac. She is a first class attention whore. The idea of being the first female candidate for President from a major political party is something she just could not resist. On top of that, she plays by an entirely different set of rules, so if the Presidency doesn’t suit her, she’ll just up and quit. She is just that bat-dung crazy.

She says she will take her cue from God. Can you really imagine Sarah’s God telling her no?

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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The Strange Case of Alvin Greene

Sarah Palin, step aside. We have someone new for Katie Couric to interview who makes Palin look like a rocket scientist. First let’s enjoy a flight of fancy.

1. Let’s say you’ve got a real dumb-ass Republican named Jim DeMint and you want to pretty much guarantee that he wins another term in November.
2. Then let’s say you’re real stupid and you want to stack the deck way in old Jim’s favor, even to the degree that you would do something totally preposterous.
3. So you give $10,400 to an unemployed Veteran/accused sex offender and tell him to use it to file for candidacy in the Democratic primary for Senator.
4. Now let’s throw in the fact that your state (South Carolina) is in the bottom half of the country intellectually.
5. Finally, for good measure, we take note that the Democratic primary in South Carolina is open, i.e. anyone can vote in it, Dem or GOPher.
6. Your plan works brilliantly and said Veteran wins the primary without even campaigning. How can Jim DeMint not beat this guy?

Now you would think I made this scenario up, pulled it right out of my patooty so to speak. No, my friends, on Tuesday Alvin Greene won the Democratic primary for Senator from South Carolina and he is poised to face Jim DeMint in November. Alvin is an army Veteran (kudos for that). Alvin is unemployed (so are many of us). Police say Alvin showed dirty pictures to a college kid (now THERE is an unusual Senate qualification)!

Alvin Greene

If this weren’t bad enough, Alvin gives one lousy interview. I saw him on MSNBC’s “Countdown” tonight and his appearance was cringe-worthy to say the least. A show called The Big Picture demonstrated how Mr. Greene might have held up against Katie Couric. In another Big Picture interview, a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, Bakari Sellers suggested that Greene’s win by 59% of the vote may have involved some “divine intervention”.

The only divine intervention that I can imagine is that someone put Greene up to running and South Carolinians were stupid enough to just vote for the first name they saw on the ballot. Alvin is now in a pickle. From every interview I’ve seen of him, he would rather be getting root canal than be running for office. He has to juggle this campaign against DeMint with a pending felony trial. Your heart almost has to go out to him.

Representative Jim Clyburn has cried foul. He says there is no way Greene was ever a legitimate candidate. Personally, I have no idea how Alvin will last until November. Expect to see him drop from the campaign within the next few weeks (if not days).

Alvin Greene is pretty clearly somebody’s tool. The question is whose. If the answer comes up GOP, I hope that is enough to turn voter outrage against DeMint so that he joins old Alvin on the unemployment line.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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The Myth of Blacks Voting Black

In the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama’s election one of the cries I heard from conservatives was that he got 99.999% of the black vote. This assertion wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t followed by an implication (sometimes pretty explicit) that whites discern whom they vote for. They think about the issues. Blacks, however, just see the dark skin and blindly pull down the lever for their bro. Of course this ignores that blacks initially supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race until Obama won the lily white  Iowa caucus and it dawned on some blacks that the dude might actually win the whole enchilada.

Fast forward to last Tuesday night in the Alabama Democratic primary for Governor. Artur Davis, a black congressman, was seeking to become the first black Governor of Alabama. To do this he would have to win a substantial amount of the white vote. His preoccupation with how he would fare in the general election made him lose sight of the fact that he needed to win the primary first. He apparently bought the old “blacks vote for blacks” line and he got the surprise of his life. Blacks in large numbers contributed to Ron Sparks, a white challenger, giving Davis a good old-fashioned Southern ass-whupping.

Davis made two key mistakes. First he voted against health care reform in the House of Representatives, a bread and butter issue among the liberal base. Then he basically ignored the very people whose vote he thought he had in the bag. He would not speak to black organizations. He would not appear on black oriented media outlets. He discovered the hard way that black folk are no different from anyone else. They don’t like being ignored. They want to be taken seriously. And yes, they will evaluate a candidate before voting for him.

Personally, I was absolutely delighted by this outcome. It always irks me when elections seem to fulfill some demographic profile. It was refreshing to be reminded that when the individual enters the voting booth, regardless of race, he brings his unique considerations to the table. No one’s vote should be taken for granted.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Random Thoughts on the Sad State of Affairs

It’s harder and harder to be a happy liberal nowadays. I miss the good old days when Republican obstructionism could be blamed for everything. Lately, things seem more off kilter than usual and the GOP has little to with it.

Katrina, wups, The Gulf of Mexico

We’re more than forty days into this and it’s only getting worse. Did Obama cause the well to blow? Of course not. Can Obama fix it? Of course not. With that said, optics are everything and one just doesn’t get a warm fuzzy that the Obama administration has a plan. They’ve put a dude with zero name recognition as their point man on this … I can’t come up with his name as I type this and I’m not gonna Google it to find out. I shouldn’t have to. Some administration big shot who has a reputation with the people should be the mouthpiece for this on a 24/7 basis. Maybe Joe Biden if he’s not too busy? My fellow liberals cringe at the Katrina comparison but I’m sorry, the major factor that this crisis has in common with Katrina is an unconvincing commitment from the Federal government. Yes, with Katrina, lives were lost and property destroyed. With the Gulf, an entire ecosystem is in danger. It’s been called Katrina in slow motion.

Robert Reich, former Clinton Secretary of Labor, suggests forcing BP into receivership so we can control how they allocate resources to fix the problem. Oh, can’t you just see the conservatives losing their lunch over that idea? Obama, the Socialist takes over another company. Watch out private sector, if you screw up in the least, you’ll give the Fed an excuse to take you over. How Reich could suggest this without knowing the likely blow-back is beyond me.

The disappointment here goes beyond politics. It’s yet another sad comment on human nature. BP spends its R&D money on learning how to make more money, not on how to fix major disasters. The result is we have one Rube Goldberg fix after another. As I write this, the saw that was supposed to cut off part of the well apparatus to lessen the stress is now stuck in the well apparatus. It’s the Keystone Kops while sea animals die, Gulf dependent industry falters and the BP CEO says, “I want my life back.”

The other comparison that has been made by pundits is to the Iran hostage crisis of the late 70′s. That crisis, perhaps more than any other, made Jimmy Carter appear impotent and made the climate ripe for a wise old grandfather, Ronald Reagan, to come in and take charge. Obama risks that same label of impotence if he cannot reassure the American public of the government’s ability to problem-solve.

I have no prescription for Obama this time. The only thing he can do is get someone we know and trust (maybe Colin Powell?) in charge of this thing and in front of the cameras so we can at least have the illusion that our government is competent.

Sestak-gate

Will the whole brouhaha over what job Joe Sestak got offered so he wouldn’t challenge Arlen Specter in the PA Senate primary boil over real fast? Yes, I think it will. Will a special prosecutor be appointed? No, I doubt that will happen. So as a liberal, shouldn’t I be happy that this tempest in a teapot will be yesterday’s old news very shortly? Well, politically, yes I am happy. As a human I’m kinda pissed off.

Let’s start with Sestak himself. What purpose beyond self-aggrandizement was served by Sestak hinting at impropriety on the part of the Obama administration? None. It was a pure ego move on his part. If he wins in November, I don’t see how anyone in the Democratic caucus can trust him. Quite frankly, I find the dude such a  self-righteous windbag that if I were a PA resident, I might just vote for Toomey to spite him.

It doesn’t end with Sestak though. Even if we accept the most benign version of this story, namely that Rahm Emanuel dispatched Bill Clinton to offer Sestak a non-paying appointment in exchange for not running, we’re still left with a broken promise. I didn’t vote for Obama to see business as usual in the White House. I thought I was gonna see things cleaned up. No, it’s the same old same old. The only thing worse than conservatives hypocritically jumping on Obama for this, is the sight of liberals abandoning their own moral compass when confronted with corruption. Our message should be loud and clear. This is not a big deal, but it is a big disappointment. We can’t even admit it’s a disappointment.

While I’m on the subject of pure politics, I think it’s high time for Obama and every succeeding President to declare:

While I am in office I will not attend a single solitary fundraiser. My job is to be President, not to get folks elected.

Just about every dumb-ass thing Obama has said in the past 18 months has been at a fundraiser where he totally forgot that his words were being heard by everyone, not just the Democratic insiders in the audience. The week that he flew down to NOLA for the Gulf crisis, he stopped in CA first for a fundraiser. STOP IT! Let Barbara Boxer take care of herself. We need you to run the damn country!

Al and Tipper’s Inconvenient Truth

Israel shoots up a boat, North Korea gets stupid with South Korea, Greece is friggin’ bankrupt and Gary Coleman is dead. Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse, out of the friggin’ blue, Al Gore and his wife Tipper announce they are separating after 40 years of marriage. I must say this is consistent with Rutherford Lawson Rule #1207, which states:

Couples who are overly affectionate in public places are always suspect.

When Al put that seemingly endless lip-lock on Tipper at the 2000 Democratic Convention my marriage-in-trouble radar went off immediately. It’s only a surprise that it took ten years for the thing to implode. Now the only question is, was Al’s dick to blame? I hope not because I am so sick of politicians and pseudo-politicians letting their gonads run the show.

Maybe I’m just going through a rough time but I don’t see a whole lot to be happy about nowadays when it comes to being a liberal.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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