Jack's Newswatch

Various polls report that George W. Bush in some states is now better liked than President Obama. Even some liberal pundits call for Bush, the now long-missed moderate, to draw on his recognized tolerance and weigh in on the Ground Zero mosque or the Arizona anti-immigration legislation. Apparently the erstwhile divider is now the healer that the healer Obama is not.

As President Obama’s polls dip, as Congress is widely disdained, and as the economy slumps, suddenly George Bush is missed. Why so? Let me list ten likely reasons.

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I suppose there are many good reasons why past presidents in the US maintain their silence after they have left office (most that I can think of).  The strongest reason might be that they want to go back to their private lives and get away from the maddening crowds.  Beyond that, it might be they feel it “good form” to butt out and let the next man (or woman) do the job without political interference.  That would be true if you’re a conservative but not if you’re a Democrat (Democrats are evil).

Witness Jimmy Carter running around like someone possessed at an age when he should be making peace with his god or “Big Willy” who is quite a bit younger still out prancing around and impressing the ladies.  Why that would be I don’t know but there you have it.

He thinks he’s doing a good job.

“Anyhooo”, it has struck me that George Bush “the latter”  (alias “the shrub”) has remained very quiet as Obama and crowd continue on a daily basis to bash him with big sticks and it didn’t really strike me until I started to follow this train of thought why that might be.

It has recently occurred to me as I watch the US polls and Democrat bloviators expound on why their problems are all “the shrubs” fault that they are losing all credibility with the dimwits they so despise.  There are “shrubs” everywhere — so many the Democrats can’t see the forest for little bushes and since they aren’t very smart (and not very tall) they have a serious problem.

I guess the answer to why “Big George” is remaining so silent is that he needs to do nothing at this point by way of rebuttal.  Why would he open his mouth when the Democrats are doing such a fine job of destroying themselves, probably for several generations, as they “boogy on“?

Watching Hillary Clinton today on Fox News as she got the latest round of Israeli – Palestinian negotiations underway I was struck by the look on her face and the sharp edge in her voice.  I thought “This is Obama salvation?” and I noted “Bibi” lost his train of thought several times as he spoke, probably because he was thinking exactly the same thing.

“God Almighty!”

The Democrats are not going to “just lose” on November 2nd — they are going to be crucified — and “the shrub” never said a word.

How’s that for “cool”?

Just asking.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The entire idea behind Iran’s proxy warfare is to have deniability so the regime can escape retribution and still position itself as the power broker that all must cater to. If the Iranians needed any reassurance that their strategy is working, they got it from Vice President Joe Biden on August 23.

In an address in Indiana to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Biden made the remarkably ignorant and damaging statement:

Iranian influence in Iraq is minimal. It’s been greatly exaggerated.

To prove his point, Biden said that Iran had spent over $100 million to influence the last Iraqi election, and “they utterly failed.” Biden is right that the election was a major defeat for Iran, and the regime has lost the war for the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, but Iran’s campaign is much more than a popularity contest.

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Lisa Murkowski is conceding the senate primary in Alaska to RedState and Sarah Palin endorsed Joe Miller.

This news is bigger than Lisa Murkowski. While Establishment Republicans will bristle at it, this is a near total kneecapping of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, not to mention another rejection of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Consider this inside baseball fact: McConnell has chosen as his loyal lieutenants at the leadership table Robert Bennett (R-UT), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX).

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“Ideas may be cut loose from experience in two senses: either they have no roots in experience, or they are not submitted to the test of experience. Either way, they are free to be foolish.” So wrote Jeane Kirkpatrick in the Introduction to her landmark book, Dictatorships and Double Standards (New York, 1982, p. 10).

Kirkpatrick’s statement applies perfectly to the band of naïve idealists now in change of our government. The youthful dreamers guiding the Obama administration have almost no private-sector experience. Like Obama himself, the Cabinet and host of czars who direct policy have spent their lives in politics or academia, be it as Democratic political consultants, professors, nonprofit directors, or community organizers.

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Earlier this week, the media once again displayed why no one can take them seriously. The Fourth Estate is totally insolvent and is declaring bankruptcy, morally and otherwise. In this recent instance, having to do with Tuesday night’s Republican primary in Alaska, it was at least quite hilarious.

You see, Sarah Palin had endorsed Joe Miller over the incumbent alleged Republican Senator, Lisa Murkowski. As Jim Treacher at The Daily Caller lays out, and as Ace of Spades also noted, the media was so hell-bent on a way to discredit Sarah Palin that they indulged in the child-like behavior of squinting your eyes closed to reality and wishing really, really hard that fantasy comes true. First up was Alex Gutierrez at Slate, who was clearly desperately hoping for a way to spin Palin as politically detrimental:

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I’m not paying attention to the 8.28 rally today to be honest. It is Evelyn’s 5th birthday and we’re on our way to look at dinosaurs and zoo animals in Atlanta.

But I am struck by the left-wing outrage over all of this.

The same people who have been saying for weeks it is a sign of tolerance to build a mosque at Ground Zero are screaming how intolerant it is for Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin to go to the Lincoln Memorial and give a speech today.

The convenient constitutionalists who laud the first amendment out of one side of their mouth want nothing to do with the first amendment out of the other side of their mouth.

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“Whites don’t own Abraham Lincoln and blacks don’t own Martin Luther King,” says Glenn Beck as he defends his right to rally and restore honor at the same place and on the same date as Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech. That Beck has to say this seems ridiculous in itself, for most of us know that Martin Luther King is an American legend, with cherished monuments and a nationally celebrated holiday honoring his birthday each year. But Beck has to say this because he is white. And sadly, he is addressing the same critics: certain black reverends who never miss an opportunity to exploit race and black history.

The Reverend Al Sharpton, the Reverend Walter Fauntroy, and the Reverend Timothy McDonald have been recently quoted in an uproar over Beck’s 828 rally this weekend. They are suggesting that Beck is “hijacking” Dr. King’s dream. Says Reverend McDonald, “To use this weekend when we remember that great march on Washington in 1963 as a pretense to give credence to their cause and their agenda is insulting. We were there.” Had the hijacking of the dream been a sincere concern for the reverends, they would have had a standing reservation to obtain a permit in order to honor the legacy of Dr. King and the “I Have a Dream” speech that made history on August 28, 1963. But they did not.

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Decline is a Choice

As the summer winds down, there is more and more talk of decline in the air. Some of it comes from the left, as a sort of giddy notion that we are now, at best, devolving into what the Greeks called prôtos metaksu isôn, first among equals, enjoying traditional prestige but otherwise nothing much special in comparison to the Europeans, India, and China.

In the age of Obama, the notion of not being exceptional or preeminent comes as a relief to millions on the left who pretty much are in sync with the protocols of the United Nations. On the right, there is a sense that Obama is the ultimate expression of downfall; given the wild spending, the iconic efforts abroad at apology, and the rampant entitlements we simply aren’t what we once were. In between, most aren’t quite sure—but sure are worried that we may never climb out of our self-created indebtedness crater, and that the culture’s education, the nation’s borders, and the civilization’s values are eroding.

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It’s pretty much a given these days that whenever someone of a conservative bent enjoys even the slightest whiff of popular success, Heather Mallick is going to be wailingly upset about it. And of course these days everyone’s writing about how Rob Ford looks to be a shoo-in for mayor, which makes today’s offering by Ms. Mallick almost inevitable.

There are a few passages, of course, where Ms. Mallick unveils her true fear:

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