PostHeaderIcon Hope & Change?

What happened to the message of hope and change? Let’s connect some dots. Six weeks ago, the Bush administration started giving Obama and Biden security briefings:

Barack Obama, who has not been “vetted” by the FBI for the position of president of the United States, received his “first high level briefing” on Tuesday from the office of the Director of National Intelligence, CNN has reported. “Obama was given the briefing at the FBI field office in Chicago,” the cable channel said, from a “team of intelligence experts.” But why should Obama, with a documented history of contacts with communists and terrorists, be trusted with this information?

What procedures are in place to make sure that Obama and/or his aides do not disclose any of this information to foreign or hostile interests? Will somebody in the media stop digging into Sarah Palin’s family life long enough to look into this?

Because of his 30-year association with people who hate the United States, including communist Frank Marshall Davis., anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright, and communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, it is highly doubtful that Obama could get a security clearance in the U.S. government he wants to lead.

But rather than raise this issue, the major media want to investigate Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and her husband’s driving record.

The implications of that article are troubling enough; but now that they have seen the intelligence that keeps George Bush from playing to popularity polls and doing the politically expedient, it seems to have put a damper on the Obama/Biden theme of “Hope and Change.” To hear Loose-Lips-Biden tell it now, there is no hope of the most inexperienced candidate ever to get this close to becoming President, who promises to change the whole world with the power of his persuasion, to avoid instead being severely tested by hostile forces. Presumably, they are unimpressed with his preference for casual diplomacy and soaring rhetoric. In fact, he admonishes Americans to “Gird Your Loins,” and prepare for a Herculean task:

ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe Reports: Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., on Sunday guaranteed that if elected, Sen. Barack Obama., D-Ill., will be tested by an international crisis within his first six months in power and he will need supporters to stand by him as he makes tough, and possibly unpopular, decisions.

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

Really, Senator? What do you know that you shouldn’t be telling us? Perhaps well-connected strategic thinker, Ralph Peters, has a clue:

IF Sen. Barack Obama is elected president, our republic will survive, but our international strategy and some of our allies may not. His first year in office would conjure globe-spanning challenges as our enemies piled on to exploit his weakness.

Add in Sen. Joe Biden – with his track record of calling every major foreign-policy crisis wrong for 35 years – as vice president and de facto secretary of State, and we’d face a formula for strategic disaster.

He certainly has your number, Senator; and his list is daunting:

Where would the avalanche of confrontations come from?

* Al Qaeda. Pandering to his extreme base, Obama has projected an image of being soft on terror…

* Pakistan. As this nuclear-armed country of 170 million anti-American Muslims grows more fragile by the day…

* Iran. Got nukes? If the Iranians are as far along with their nuclear program as some reports insist…

* Israel. In the Middle East, Obama’s election would be read as the end of staunch US support for Israel…

* Saudi Arabia. Post-9/11 attention to poisonous Saudi proselytizing forced the kingdom to be more discreet in fomenting terrorism and religious hatred abroad…

* Russia. Got Ukraine? Not for long…

* Georgia. Our Georgian allies should dust off their Russian dictionaries.

* Venezuela. Hugo Chavez will intensify the rape of his country’s hemorrhaging democracy…

* Bolivia. Chavez client President Evo Morales could order his military to seize control of his country’s dissident eastern provinces…

* North Korea. North Korea will expect a much more generous deal…

* NATO. The brave young democracies of Central and Eastern Europe will be gravely discouraged…

* The Kurds. An Obama administration will abandon our only true allies between Tel Aviv and Tokyo.

* Democracy activists. Around the world, regressive regimes will intensify their suppression…

* Women’s rights. If you can’t vote in US elections, sister, you’re screwed…

* Journalists. American journalists who’ve done everything they can to elect Barack Obama can watch as regimes around the world imprison, torture and murder their foreign colleagues…

Go read them; they are sobering and render his conclusion inescapable:

Sen. John McCain’s campaign has allowed a great man to be maligned as a mere successor to George W. Bush. The truth is that an Obama administration would be a second Carter presidency – only far worse.

Think Bush weakened America? Just wait.

Indeed. Carter II? <shudder> More from Biden’s remarkable stump speech:

“This guy has it. But he’s gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?’ We’re gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I’m asking you now, I’m asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you’re going to have to reinforce us.”

“There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision’,” Biden continued. “Because if you think the decision is sound when they’re made, which I believe you will when they’re made, they’re not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they’re popular, they’re probably not sound.”

Hope and change? He sees unwelcome change inevitably coming down the pike that has nothing to do with the milk and honey they have been peddling, and he hopes the vox populi will stick with him:

“We do not have the military capacity, nor have we ever, quite frankly, in the last 20 years, to dictate outcomes,” he cautioned. “It’s so much more important than that. It’s so much more complicated than that. And Barack gets it.”

Oh, that will play well in the international press, the caves of Pakistan, and the cabinet rooms of tyrants, petty and grand. “Speak vociferously and wield a small stick.” Obama should whack yours, Senator; but it remains to be seen if he is astute enough to find you embarrassing yet. And the cosmopolitan intelligentsia regards Sarah Palin a national embarrassment…

After speaking for just over a quarter of an hour, Biden noticed the media presence in the back of the small ballroom.

“I probably shouldn’t have said all this because it dawned on me that the press is here,” he joked.

You think?

I seriously doubt it; but he asks us to:

“Gird your loins,” Biden told the crowd. “We’re gonna win with your help, God willing, we’re gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It’s like cleaning the Augean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than – think about it, literally, think about it – this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets. This is a systemic problem we have with this economy.”

OK, Senator, that is what we are doing here – thinking aloud. I’m unclear as to what he is trying to impart. I get that the next year is not going to be quite Obamadice yet, and it will all be George Bush’s fault. That was predictable to the least intuitive; but he is warning us that they are going to have to do things that will drive their poll numbers into the tank. The big question is who are they going to piss off?

After the calculated effort by the Progressive wing of the Incumbrepublocrat Party to beat George Bush to a pulp over the decision to open the Iraq Theater of WWIV, and do everything in their power to separate it from the larger war for political advantage, the resurgence of patriotism, and any semblance of united national will, has evaporated in partisan distrust. We are again a deeply divided nation, and if anything more distrustful than ever of fellow citizens we just can’t relate to. Actions have consequences and this one was easily predictable, for it was their very purpose.

Roughly half of us are cosmopolitan Progressives, and Utopian dreamers, once again imbued with an anti-war, peace at any cost, we deserve to be hated, but desperately want to be loved, mindset. The other half are flyover country Traditionalists, still in love with the American Dream instilled by our founders, and are not only willing, but insist that we fight all challengers to preserve it. In this climate, it is rather axiomatic that any military adventures we engage in are going to automatically alienate a third of the population and resonate with another third.

The fickle third in the center can be swayed either way, with emotion or reason; but we are an impatient lot and our support for foreign adventures is easily lost over incompetence or at the slightest hint that we aren’t in it to win. Indeed, this is one of the biggest lies perpetrated by the Left over Vietnam or Iraq. The American people as a whole are never anti-war; but they get disgusted with one in a hurry when it appears that we are not even trying to win it.

Obama and Biden reckon that they are about to take the reins of a powerful government; but what is a government if not an aggregation of force, with the ability to impose its will. On the international stage, which is the only place the executive branch of our government has any effective power, and where their performance really matters or is judged by history, our military might is worthless if we refuse to use it. Of course, some tin horn tyrant in the real world will test the mettle of the peacemaking Obamessiah. How could it be otherwise.

Surely, in the rough and tumble of Chicago politics, Obama noticed the function and necessity of “Muscle” to keep the rabble reliably “organized.” He should have thought of that before he effectively sold out to the anti-war crowd on his way to the top. Now what will he do if Russia decides it is time to re-annex Ukraine, or China decides the time is right to retake Taiwan, or Iran decides to close the Straights of Hormuz, or…?

Such acts of war could happen overnight, before he even had a chance to bring his vaunted powers of persuasion to bear on the tyrants who have already calculated that he will not, or as Biden thinks – cannot, do anything to stop their righteous (to their minds anyway) cause. Biden is already convinced that whatever decision they make will be the right one; but is predicting that a significant percentage of us won’t understand that, and he will lose his mandate to govern us through sinking poll numbers.

On the last point, he is absolutely correct, and I predict the fawning press will turn on him just as fast as they turned on their favorite maverick when Hillary started running, and turned on her when The One they were waiting for appeared on the scene. George Bush could have the last laugh; but I suspect he will be weeping for his country with the rest of us, as we enter our death spiral. On that, I disagree with both Biden and Peters. I don’t see our Republic surviving… at least not with any semblance of still being the home of the brave and land of the free. That will already history to my mind, the moment the sheeple elect their new toothless messiah. â—„Daveâ–º

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