Free Frank Warner

Bill Clinton’s speech ignored his real record

Last night, former President Bill Clinton tried to color his eight years in office as wonder years for life and liberalism. Then he tried to contrast his two terms with President Bush’s two terms:

“Our position in the world has been weakened,” Clinton said, by:

“Too much unilateralism and too little cooperation.”

Clinton bombed the Serbs in Kosovo with neither a U.N. resolution nor congressional authorization. He bombed Saddam’s Iraq for a few days with no congressional authorization. And when Europe showed no interest in stopping the genocide in Rwanda, he cooperated by letting 800,000 people die.

“A perilous dependence on imported oil.”

Clinton did absolutely nothing to reduce America’s dependence on imported oil.

“A refusal to lead on global warming.”

Clinton claimed to care about global warming, but in 1997 he didn’t even submit the Kyoto protocol to the U.S. Senate for a vote. And that was when average global temperatures had been rising for 10 years.

“A growing indebtedness and a dependence on foreign lenders.”

In 1996, Clinton took more illegal campaign money from Communist China than any leader in American history, making him personally dependent. Under Clinton, the national debt more than doubled, even after paying off billions in loans by emptying the Social Security fund.

“A severely burdened military.”

Certainly, the armed forces are not so obviously burdened when they’re not involved in two difficult and prolonged ground wars. But under Clinton, the invisible burden increased by allowing threats to grow with the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq, and by fleeing Somalia in cowardly fashion.

“A backsliding on global non-proliferation and arms control agreements.”

Clinton had allowed both India and Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons in 1998, allowed North Korea to develop a nuclear weapons program with rewards like free oil, ignored Iran’s nuclear plans and hadn’t even noticed Libya’s nuclear program.

“And a failure to consistently use the power of diplomacy, from the Middle East to Africa to Latin America to Central and Eastern Europe.”

I doubt Clinton used diplomacy more actively or more consistently anywhere. His Middle East peace talks were crammed in near the end of his administration, and they failed. And of course the power of his diplomacy did nothing to stop the Rwanda genocide or the Sept. 11 attacks.

Last night, Clinton also said:

“Clearly, the job of the next President is to rebuild the American Dream and restore America’s standing in the world.”

If our “standing in the world” is restored only by letting totalitarians add to their victims, then I don’t care about our standing in the world. I’d rather lock up the tyrants and live in a Free World than win a popularity contest.

“Everything I learned in my eight years as President and in the work I’ve done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job.”

Candidate of change. Maybe Clinton has learned that Obama would do things he wouldn’t do. On energy, debt and proliferation, and in many areas that Clinton didn’t mention, it’s time for change for the better.

Frank Warner

Roll call of the 32 states?

The Democrats blew it yesterday without the full roll call of the states. Every four years, as Americans watch each presidential nominating convention on TV, they listen for how their state’s delegation describe the state in a few (or many) words, and split the votes. But not this year at the Democratic convention. Suddenly, after 32 states, Barack Obama was winner by acclamation.

Every state alphabetically after New York got no chance to take a bow and connect with the voters back home. The Arapahoe Indian who was supposed to announce Wyoming’s votes was really upset.

I don’t get it. All the attention to giving Hillary Clinton a “catharsis” really has sucked the joy out of this convention. How did the delegates from my Keystone State vote? I don’t know.

Frank Warner

Obama rehearses acceptance

Click picture for imperial size.

Confidence in winning War on Terror at 54%, a 4-year high

Rasmussen Reports:

Fifty-four percent (54%) of American voters now think the United States and its allies are winning the war. The previous high-water mark for optimism--52%--was reached a handful of times in September and October 2004.

Optimism about the situation in Iraq is also at an all-time high. Forty-eight percent (48%) now expect the situation in that troubled country to get better over the next six months. Only 17% expect things to get worse. In addition to being the most optimistic assessment ever recorded, these numbers reflect a remarkable turnaround over the past year. Last August, just 27% thought things were going to get better while 47% were pessimistic.

In the long run, will America's mission in Iraq be judged a success or a failure?

Aug. 2007: 29% success. 57% failure.

Aug. 2008: 38% success. 41% failure.

Iraq confident, too. It’s hard to miss the victory in Iraq when the freely elected government of a former totalitarian police state is telling U.S. troops that it is confident they can go home by the end of 2011.

Before the 2003 invasion, Joe Biden was saying we’d have to have large numbers of troops in Iraq until 2013. So 2011 would be better than expected.

Today, we don’t hear many Democratic leaders saying we should have withdrawn all the troops by 2006 or 2007 or even early this year, as they once proposed, under the “this war is lost” banner.

In Iraq, once one of the most heavily oppressed nations on Earth, 25 million people are free.

Frank Warner

With so little Bush bashing, Democrats feel empty

Check the Democratic activists’ blogs. Listen to the zealots in Denver. They’re depressed by the Democratic National Convention.

Why? Not enough Bush bashing.

On MSNBC last night:

Chris Matthews: Keith, I am amazed why they don’t have more fun with the man who calls himself Dick Cheney. Why more references? Why no, why don’t they talk about these villains, as they see them? Why don’t they talk about Bush, who they see as a villain.

Keith Olbermann: I know it works for me. I, sorry.

Matthews: It seems like they’re pulling their, ha! They’re pulling their punches and I’m waiting.

The Democratic partisans seem particularly bummed we’re about to win the Iraq war, and they’re pained every time Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton talk of “ending the war responsibly.” It sounds too much like leaving Iraq better off than it was, and they hate that idea because President Bush is responsible for it.

Electrifying issues? So if you hate Bush and can’t lose the war, what can you be for? Well, there is saving Social Security, for which Obama has the decent beginnings of a plan. But because Bush wanted to save Social Security three years ago, the Bush-hating faithful were told to believe that Social Security is “not in crisis,” so they can’t get fired up about that problem.

How about reducing CO2 emissions and achieving energy independence? They know solar and wind power aren’t coming along on a major scale any decade soon, and the Democratic religion forbids any investment in nuclear power or oil drilling, so what would the plan be? Nancy Pelosi might profit from expanded domestic natural gas, but what’s sexy about that?

The Democrats are up against the malaise, and they have little to stir them from it. They have a young, energetic presidential candidate who is so straight-jacketed by the party’s pointless orthodoxy that he’s in a dead heat in a race against John McCain, an old, energetic Republican who is much freer to speak his mind.

Air of hostility. In Denver, the Bush bashers want more Bush bashing. They are so blinded by their hatred for Bush (when they set aside their hostility for one another) that they still don’t see how their relentless irrationality might keep the Democrats out of the White House for another four years.

Frank Warner

Michael Totten: South Ossetians and Russians started Georgia war

Michael Totten:

TBILISI, GEORGIA – Virtually everyone believes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili foolishly provoked a Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, when he sent troops into the breakaway district of South Ossetia. “The warfare began Aug. 7 when Georgia launched a barrage targeting South Ossetia,” the Associated Press reported over the weekend in typical fashion.

Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn't start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war.

Read the whole thing.

Frank Warner

Wrong as usual: Jim Leach at the Democratic convention

Jim Leach, Republican, tried to pretend he was a friend of Ronald Reagan as he endorsed Barack Obama last night at the Democratic convention in Denver.

But I couldn’t help but remember where Leach was on March 8, 1983.

Leach, then a congressman from Iowa, was at the U.S. Capitol, announcing to a cheering crowd of “nuclear freeze” proponents that the House Foreign Affairs Committee had just voted 27-9 in favor of sending a nuclear freeze resolution to the full House.

Frozen idea. Later that day, President Reagan in Florida delivered his “evil empire” speech, urging Americans to oppose a nuclear freeze, and to support the deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe to counter the new missiles of the Soviet “evil empire” in Eastern Europe.

Against passionate opposition, those NATO missiles were installed in Western Europe. And using those missiles as bargaining chips, Reagan was able to negotiate with the Soviets, not for a “freeze” on the number of nuclear weapons, but for the first reduction of nuclear arsenals in history.

The 1987 U.S.-Soviet treaty removed all short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe. That wouldn’t have happened if Leech had his way. With Leech, the world would have been frozen in its nuclear tracks.

Topsy-turvy. Twenty-five years later, it’s no surprise to see Leech playing to the Democratic partisans and other appeasers of tyranny. Last night, he talked of “four debates” in American history, the first three being over inalienable rights, ending color-based bigotry, and the necessity of equal opportunity.

He said:

“The fourth debate, which acquired grim relevance with the dawn of the nuclear age, is the question of whether any rights are possible without peace and environmental security.”

Real peace? As usual, on the nuclear age, Leach has reality backwards. The question isn’t “whether any rights are possible without peace and environmental security.” The question is whether peace, progress and environmental security are possible without democracy and freedom.

Leach never learns.

Frank Warner

Nancy Pelosi: That California Gas Lady

When I heard about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s personal investment in natural gas, I wondered why she hadn’t mentioned it as she blocked the leasing of federal lands for oil drilling.

But on second look, I’m encouraged by Pelosi’s betting her own money on a practical domestic energy supply.

It’s the first solid evidence that a Democratic leader realizes the United States has to get real about expanding traditional energy sources for the next two or three decades.

The big secret. Pelosi might have been more open as she fought oil drilling in the lands where most of the oil is likely to be. It doesn’t look good to be choking off oil while you’re investing in natural gas. She should have disclosed much earlier her stake in Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a gas company headed by T. Boone Pickens.

The Republicans have their Texas Oil Men who get rich from Democrats keeping domestic oil scarce. Now I don’t want to see Republicans returning the favor to the California Gas Lady.

If the U.S. has 842 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in untapped shale formations, Congress should make it easier to tap. Clear the way for the California Gas Ladies.

Frank Warner

Ed Rendell cut off by Judy Woodruff when he calls Obama news coverage ‘embarrassing’

This was in a Denver panel discussion with Tom Brokaw, George Stephanopoulous, Bob Schieffer, Ariana Huffington, Al Hunt and Gwen Ifill in the hall.

“Why  don’t we let Governor Rendell sit down?” Judy Woodruff asked, cutting him off as he laid into MSNBC as “the official network of the Obama campaign.”

It’s wonderful when Democrats finally notice what the old media has been doing to Republicans and Independents for decades. Now, when will the Democratic zealots notice they no longer are liberals, but stuffy, status-quo conservatives?

Frank Warner

The run to natural gas

The New York Times is reporting a U.S. “drilling boom” for natural gas, and why not?

This is the fuel that T. Boone Pickens says is the best hope for energy independence, at least over the next few decades. Even Nancy Pelosi is investing in a company that makes natural gas usable in cars. What does that tell you of the Democrats’ willingness to open new areas for natural gas drilling?

The Times says there are giant fields of natural gas in the black or brown shale formations of 23 states. The story notes a particularly high potential for new natural gas finds in Texas, Louisiana and Appalachia.

Better day. Let’s get to work on more natural gas, and more nuclear, oil, cleaner coal, geothermal, wind and solar power. Solar power could give us all our power in 50 years, who knows? But we’ll need all those other energy sources to carry us through to that better day in the sun.

Frank Warner

NOTE: Pelosi and her husband, Paul, last year invested $50,000 to $100,000 in Clean Energy Fuels Corp., which is owned by Pickens.