Free Frank Warner

In Obama’s Iraq war speech tonight, he should thank Bush

I’m eager to hear what President Obama has to say about the Iraq war tonight.

Will he say the forces of democracy won? Will he even mention democracy and freedom? Will he say the “surge” worked? And will he finally recognize President Bush for having the courage to lead the “surge” when leading Democrats were demanding we surrender Iraq to the totalitarians?

Robert Gibbs, Obama’s spokesman, said yesterday that Obama has suggested in the past that the “surge” worked. Power Line’s John Hinderaker remembers at least a few Obama comments that didn’t sound so supportive:

Since Gibbs says it is important to examine Obama’s old statements on the surge, there is this, from January 2007: “We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war,” Obama said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “And until we acknowledge that reality, we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops. I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believe that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.”

A few months later, in July 2007, Obama told an audience in New Hampshire, “Here’s what we know: the surge has not worked.”

By January 2008, with the surge working, Obama revised his remarks at a debate in New Hampshire: “Now, I had no doubt -- and I said at the time, when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place 30,000 more troops in there, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence.”

Bipartisan victory. When Obama speaks tonight from the Oval Office, will we see a little more humility and honesty about how the Iraq war was won? The Democrats -- the quieter, realistic Democrats, at least -- do deserve a share of the credit for the victory of freedom in Iraq. Indeed, it was the Democratic Congress that approved more than half the $735 billion that’s been spent on the liberation of Iraq.

So Mr. President, give your party some credit and take some credit yourself, but give some props to the “decider” who led an unpopular, but overwhelmingly successful final campaign to defeat tyranny and win the Iraq war in 2007 and 2008.

Frank Warner

Professor Robert Barro: Unemployment rate would be 6.8%, not 9.5%, if jobless benefits were not extended to 99 weeks

If I had been without a job the last year, I’d be only too happy to have unemployment benefits that go 99 weeks. It’s hard to favor a limit, especially when that limit hurts you personally and immediately.

But according to Harvard economics Professor Robert Barro, the extension of unemployment benefits from the standard 26 weeks to 99 weeks has had the effect of adding about 2.5 percent (or more) to the unemployment rate.  That’s at least 3.85 million people.

Barro also has been critical of the Democrats’ $800 billion “stimulus” program, which he accurately predicted would stimulate no additional jobs because it included no incentives to increase work effort, investment or productivity.

Frank Warner

* * *

See also: Germans know that debt can kill an economy.

 

 

Glenn Beck rally, not bad

Glenn Beck recognizes the power of and right to freedom, and everyone can admire him for that. He’s off track when he sees a conspiracy of “progressives” out to destroy all that is good, but at least his line of questioning makes people think. And it forces the powerful to explain what exactly it is they think they’re doing.

Beck’s rally two days ago in Washington, D.C., was impressive for its passion and its numbers. Whether it was 87,000 people, as CBS claimed (citing a company with no experience in crowd estimates), or more than 200,000, as others estimated, it was big. And it reflected a national uneasiness about a government that seems to treat our biggest problems by simply making those problems bigger.

Beck this year moved his politics deeply into the world of religion. Though the evangelists love him for this, I think he’s gone too far here. His new crusade is likely to turn off Tea Partiers, who are more libertarian than devout, and many other independents, who want a separation of politics and piety.

That said, if Glenn Beck can muster the faithful in the defense of freedom, amen.

Frank Warner

President Obama: ‘I can’t spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead’

I can’t believe President Obama actually said, “I can’t spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead.”

But I can believe NBC’s Brian Williams didn’t follow up yesterday by asking why the president won’t authorize the Hawaiian government to show us his original birth certificate.

I totally believe Obama was born in Hawaii. But I’m curious to know why he has spent so much time and money to prevent the public from seeing the original long-form document. Just let us see it.

And if you have another chance, Brian Williams, get curious. Ask to see it. The original certificate isn’t plastered publicly anywhere.

Frank Warner

Hold-out juror Chiakulas: Blagojevich rambled a bit, so I had to acquit

Illinois Gov. Rob Blagojevich two years ago told an adviser the U.S. Senate seat that Barack Obama would soon be vacating:

“is a f---ing valuable thing. You just don’t give it away for nothing. …. And if I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself.”

At the time, Blagojevich, who had the power to pick Obama’s Senate successor, was shopping around for a candidate willing to bribe him for the appointment, either with cash or with a high-paying job for his wife. The evidence was overwhelming that Blago was committing the crime of trying to sell a political office.

Single hold-out. But when it came time for 12 jurors to decide whether Blagojevich was guilty or not guilty, one juror held out not to convict. She is JoAnn Chiakulas, 67, of Willowbrook, Illinois.

Chiakulas said she didn’t see Blagojevich’s seeking of a bribe as Blagojevich seeking a bribe. Why not? Because he didn’t talk about just one way to take a bribe. He kept so many bribery options open. And on some occasions, he talked nice.

“I thought he was narcissistic. I thought he was all over the place. I thought he was just rambling.,” she told The Chicago Tribune. “Some people in [the jury room] only saw black and white. I think I saw, in the transcripts and in the testimony, shades of gray. To me, that means reasonable doubt.”

Because his rambling didn’t always talk about profiting from the “f---ing valuable thing,” she voted not guilty 23 times. She voted to convict on only one relatively minor count of lying to the FBI.

Historic waste. So because Blagojevich didn’t say “bribe me” in every sentence he breathed, we got a hung jury. JoAnn Chiakulas sabotaged the most obvious case of political bribery in American history.

She has assured the most corrupt of our politicians that there never will be a penalty for their crimes.

Frank Warner

Hurricane Frank

This must be the first Hurricane Frank. It seems to have been deadly in Mexico, but now it's moving out into the Pacific.

Frank Warner

Madison, Wisconsin, thief caught on vacationers’ family picture

Check out this photo.

The John and Katharine Myers family of Bloomfield, N.J., was visiting the Wisconsin state capitol Aug. 21 in Madison. They set their bags down to take a picture with a camera timer. And as they posed for the shot, a homeless man sneaked up and snatched one of their bags.

Quickly noticing the missing bag, the family checked the photo they had just taken. In the background of the picture, there was the thief (look - click to enlarge the shot), going through their bags. They showed the photo to police, and the thief was arrested with the bag -- missing just a few items -- within 15 minutes.

Eyes everywhere. Cameras seem to be everywhere. They’re helpful in cases like this one, but I have to wonder if soon we’ll have so many high-tech cameras on us that, before we've had a chance to object, we’ll have lost all our privacy.

The thief gave up his right to privacy, but most of us haven't.

Frank Warner

Hugo Chavez’s Caracas, murder capital of the world

It took a Miss Universe to alert the world to the horror would-be dictator Hugo Chavez has inflicted on Venezuela.

Investors Business Daily reports:

The silent protest at Monday night's Miss Universe Pageant in Las Vegas was invisible to nearly everyone — except Venezuelans. On her final catwalk, the ranking Miss Universe, Stefania Fernandez, suddenly whipped out a Venezuelan flag in a patriotic but protocol-breaking gesture.

Fernandez waved her flag for the same reason Americans waved theirs after 9/11 — to convey resolution amid distress. Her flag had seven stars, significant because Chavez had arbitrarily added an eighth, making any use of a difficult-to-find seven-star banner an act of defiance.

Fernandez’s countrymen went wild with joy on bulletin boards and Facebook, showing just how worried they are about their country. Their greatest fear is violent crime.

Ever since Chavez became president in 1999, Venezuelan cities have become hellholes in which murder rates have more than quadrupled. At 233 per 100,000, or one murder every 90 minutes, the rate in Caracas now tops that of every war zone in the world, according to an official National Statistics Institute study released Wednesday.

But Chavez says he is popular, and Oliver Stone likes him. So what’s the problem?

Frank Warner

Freedom and control

Freedom allows the economic gears to engage snugly and efficiently on the power of millions of wants and needs.

Control can build a bigger gear, but it's not likely to fit in anywhere it can do any good.

Frank Warner

Poll: 60% of Iraqis want U.S. troops to stay

Most Iraqis don't want U.S. troops to leave yet, a recent poll by an Iraqi group has found.

When asked if it was the right time for American soldiers to leave -- the US military earlier confirmed troop numbers in Iraq had fallen under 50,000 for the first time -- 59.8 percent said no, compared to 39.5 percent who said yes.

Some 53.1 percent of respondents said they disagreed with President Barack Obama's decision last year to end the combat mission in Iraq on August 31, a move that triggered a major reduction in the US military presence here.

However, 46.2 percent of those questioned agreed with the decision.

In other questions, 51 percent said the withdrawal would have a negative effect, compared to 25.8 percent who said it would be positive.

Fear of vacuum. The poll was conducted by the Asharq Research Centre, a private Iraqi company, from Aug. 15 to Aug. 23. The pollsters interviewed 1,150 Iraqi adults.

So far, it appears the gradual withdrawal is going well. President Obama's determination to push the pull-out probably is making Iraqis think more seriously about defending themselves.

The U.S.-backed forces of democracy won the Iraq war in 2008. The question has been, would the U.S. withdraw its forces so fast that the totalitarians and terrorists would fill in the vacuum?

We have to keep a close watch.

Frank Warner