A Foolish and Unconstitutional War

by Patrick J. Buchanan

"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

So said constitutional scholar and Senator Barack Obama in December 2007 – the same man who, this weekend, ordered U.S. air and missile strikes on Libya without any authorization from Congress.

Obama did win the support of Gabon in the Security Council, but failed with Germany. With a phone call to acquitted rapist Jacob Zuma, he got South Africa to sign on, but not Brazil, Russia, India or China. All four abstained.

This is not the world's war. This is Obama's war.

The U.S. Navy fired almost all the cruise missiles that hit Libya as the U.S. Air Force attacked with B-2 bombers, F-15s and F-16s.

"To be clear, this is a U.S.-led operation," said Vice Adm. William Gortney.

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies," said Winston Churchill. Obama is a quick study.

In his Friday ultimatum, he said, "We are not going to use force to go beyond a well-defined goal – specifically, the protection of civilians in Libya."

Why, then, did we strike Tripoli and Moammar Gadhafi's compound?

So many U.S. missiles and bombs have struck Libya that the Arab League is bailing out. League chief Amr Moussa has called an emergency meeting of the 22 Arab states to discuss attacks that have "led to the deaths and injuries of many Libyan civilians." We asked for a no-fly zone, said Moussa, not the "bombardment of civilians."


What caused Obama's about-face from the Pentagon position that imposing a no-fly zone on Libya was an unwise act of war?

According to The New York Times, National Security Council aide Samantha Power, U.N. envoy Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton flipped him. The three sisters feel guilty about us not invading Rwanda when Hutu were butchering Tutsi.

They did not want to be seen as standing by when Gadhafi took Benghazi, which he would have done, ending the war in days, had we not intervened.

A Tough Old Bird - Playboy Interviews Helen Thomas

By David Hochman
April 2011 - Playboy Magazine

For more than half a century, Helen Thomas owned the most valuable piece of real estate in the White House briefing room. Her front-row seat at presidential press conferences and its attendant benefits—she was often called on first and usually ended the gatherings with a signature “Thank you, Mr. President”—made her the unofficial dean of the White House press corps. Her bold, irksome questions were like hot pokers to 10 U.S. presidents, and her fearless approach rattled press secretaries and set a tone for generations of straight-shooting, badgering reporters.

Last summer, still working full-time at 89, she saw her decades-long career fall to pieces after a two-minute video clip went viral on YouTube. A Long Island rabbi and blogger visiting the White House turned his camera on Thomas on May 27 and asked for “any comments on Israel.” Thomas instantly shot back, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine,” adding that the Jews “can go home” to “Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else.” Endless media outrage ensued, prompting Thomas to issue an apology and abruptly “resign” from Hearst Newspapers on June 7. Her speaking agency dropped her, journalism schools and organizations rescinded awards named in her honor and she lost that prized seat in the White House.

Thomas’s comments were not a complete shock to those who follow her. In recent years she practically scolded presidents and their gatekeepers for favoring Israel. She had previously asked the White House about Israel’s “secret” nuclear arsenal and why President Obama did not condemn last May’s Israeli attacks on the aid flotilla headed for Gaza.

The Myth of Abstract Money

The most powerful dogma of the modern world is the belief in abstract money. It led to the financial meltdown and is at the center of the current debt crisis.

As the following graph shows, if the world economy had continued on the same track as it had for the first seven years of the new millennium, World GDP would have reached about $77 trillion by 2009, instead it decreased between 2007 and 2009 to wind up at $64 trillion. So the financial crisis cost the world about $13 trillion. How much is that? Total United States GDP in 2009 was about $14 trillion, so the financial crisis cost the world almost all the goods and services produced in the United States in one year.

World - GDP (purchasing power parity) (Billion $)



What caused this calamity? Was it war, pestilence, natural disasters, lack of natural resources? No. Nothing happened in 2008 to stop the world economy in its tracks other than a series of numbers on a computer screen changing from black to red.

Underworld

I didn’t want to like Don Delillo’s Underworld. I am not sure why, sometimes books, like people, just strike you the wrong way. In general, I trust my instincts. I grudgingly began the big tome, hoping I was right. This is not a book that sucks you in easily. It keeps you interested as it slowly paints an enormous canvas. Underworld is a very ambitious novel, with a complex structure that, as a writer, is very humbling to watch unfold.

The novel begins on October 3, 1951 in the Polo Grounds with Bobby Thompson’s legendary home run to beat the Dodgers. “And the Giants win the pennant! And the Giants win the pennant!” The famous call. ‘The shot heard round the world’, very over the top New York, very American. This book is so steeped in Americana that I would be reluctant to reccomend it to a non-American. On that same day (in the novel), the Soviets detonate their first nuclear weapon. The Soviets actually detonated their third nuclear weapon on October 18, 1951; they tested their first weapon in 1949. The shot heard round the world is not that atomic bomb, its Bobby Thompson’s home run. I want to imagine the moment Delillo made the connection, the step back, the epiphany so immense that it inspired an 800+ page novel.

Barack Obama: The Film

Much of America saw Barack Obama as a savior. After eight years of George W. Bush and a country literally run by oil men, military contractors and Neo-Cons promoting a pro-Israeli agenda, many people had the feeling that their government was the same as the mega corporation they worked for; all lies, marketing, and incredible amounts of money going to a select few.

Barack Obama had something about him that reminded us of a Hollywood film. That should have been the first warning sign. I was a late comer to the Obama bandwagon only because I didn’t own a television and was living out of the country when he gave his famous key note address at the 2004 Democratic convention. A speech he gave as an Illinois State Senator and candidate for the US Senate. What state senator gives the Keynote Address at the Democratic Convention?

I now look back at my infatuation with Obama and think I should have known better; I work in advertising. But I, like so many Americans, wanted to believe that he was real. Akin to watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and wanting to believe in Jimmy Stewart. I am afraid Barack Obama is no Jimmy Stewart, and the director of this film is no Frank Capra.

The Magic of Baseball on the Radio

Baseball on the radio is one of the most authentic sounds of the American spring and summer. Double plays are turned, the bottom falls out of breaking balls, pitches are tapped foul, nubbed, dribbled tomahawked, drilled, driven and crushed. Pitchers look in, check runners, shake off signs, go in to their windups, batters check their swings, chase pitches, lay down bunts, flail, are way ahead of, caught looking and rung up.

The beauty of the game on the radio is that for the knowledgeable listener, a good broadcaster can create a very complicated scene with just a few brush strokes. The first baseman is holding the runner at first, the infield is in, left and right fielders are covering the lines to protect against the extra base hit, the center fielder is playing deep and shading towards left, and the pitcher is throwing out of the stretch, one out, runners on the corners. A very complicated scenario has just been described and can be completely seen in the mind.