Man you're smart, JS. You might consider collecting the reward posted for anyone who can determine what Frum, David Brooks, Billy Kristol, and the rest of the pukes actually do for a living.
None of the pukes have any visible means of support, unless you count:
(1) media prostitution,
(2) editing stupid magazines subsidized by offshore wire transfers,
(3) infiltrating the US government,
(4) endless think-tank pontificating on the benefits if goading the US into invading Mideast countries of the pukes choosing,
(5) cheer-leading amnesty, National Greatness, America as Empire, Endless War, and John McCain,
(6) squatting in the Repub Party, hoping to destroy it from within,
(7) religious cleansing of the Repub Party, and,
(8) kicking so/con Repubs to the curb.
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Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Pinch Me, Am I Dreaming?
by Mona Charen (revolving door conservative)
http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2008/12/02/pinch_me,_am_i_dreaming
Superstition almost forbids me to comment on President-elect Obama's appointments thus far. The news has been so shockingly welcome that I'm almost afraid to remark on it for fear of breaking the spell. Such reticence has not afflicted everyone on the right, though.
Did you notice that in introducing his choices, the President-elect used the term "defeat our enemies"?
Max Boot, conservative editorialist, author, and military historian: "I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain......(the neocon's choice) " NYT columnist (and neocon) David Brooks acknowledged that he is "tremendously impressed."
Obama's economic team of Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, and Christina Romer does not exactly send a "to the ramparts" message.
Summers (now gone), treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, is known for his belief in free financial markets, free trade, and fiscal discipline. He got into terrific trouble as president of Harvard for implying that, on average, men are more mathematically talented than women (which is true but that is irrelevant in the Ivy League).
Geithner is a Summers protege (wants to leave the admin). As president of the NY Federal Reserve Bank, he has been knee-deep in bailouts over the past three months. But that datum doesn't distinguish him from the Bush administration or anyone else in the mainstream of America's economic elite.
Romer (now back in academia) recently penned an article making the case that tax cuts can increase economic activity. Hmmm. If the economic team is centrist, the foreign policy team (and I pinch myself as I say this) leans a little to the right.
Gen. James Jones, Obama's choice for national security adviser, is a four-star Marine general who was commandant of the Marine Corps and Supreme Allied Commander for Europe (SACEUR), among other posts. Response to his nomination among conservatives ranged from cautious optimism to outright enthusiasm. "He is a thoroughly decent man" one conservative foreign policy analyst told me.
Though his political views are not known, he has received the "Keeper of the Flame" award from the hard-line Center for Security Policy. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy's (and National Review's) Michael Ledeen, no coddler of wimps, calls him "almost unbearably delightful" in the two or three conversations they've had. Everyone seems to agree that he has high intelligence and deep patriotism. If there is a hesitation, it arises from the fact that he is, like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft, a political general, and those have not always worked out so well.
As for Hillary Clinton, well, she is no Jeane Kirkpatrick. While it's true that she declined to apologize for her vote in favor of the Iraq war, she did everything but. It was only last year that she told Gen. Petraeus that his report on progress in Iraq "require(ed) a willing suspension of disbelief." She opposed the surge of troops in Iraq but then -- this is chutzpah! -- attempted to take credit for its success.
On Meet the Press in January 2008 she said "...The point of the surge was to quickly move the Iraqi government and Iraqi people. That is only now beginning to happen, and I believe in large measure because the Iraqi government, they watch us, they listen to us. I know very well that they follow everything that I say. And my commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009 is a big factor, as it is with Sen. Obama, Sen. Edwards, those of us on the Democratic side. It is a big factor in pushing the Iraqi government to finally do what they should have been doing all along."
She has criticized what she calls the Bush administration's "obsessive" focus on "expensive and unproven missile defense technology." On trade, she has made protectionist noises.
On the other hand, she is not Carl Levin or Dennis Kucinich or Anthony Lake or Samantha Power. And that, along with the other appointments, is enough to keep some of us smiling at a time when we were expecting to be in deep anguish. ####
What I don't understand is that some prominent and generally more conservative media personalities are treating Obama's constitutional eligibility problem as the taboo of all taboos for discussion. Ann Coulter and Mark Levin are two that come to mind.