The Torture Witch Hunt and Flippity-flopping: it’s all about Political Convenience

I think the general public is coming to the sudden (and possibly harsh) realization that the democratic fervor for prosecuting the Bush administration on the issue of waterboarding is not only slowing to a crawl but beginning to royally backfire.  Most people are aware of the CIA reports that emerged last week indicating that Nancy Pelosi had full knowledge of the “enhanced” techniques being used, despite her going on record earlier this year saying she was an innocent bystander, completely unaware of what the big bad wolf, (insert Republican leader here), was doing.

Finally, someone on a left leaning political show is willing to call her out on it. And that person is… John Stewart.

I have to admit, I love me some John Stewart. He is a hilarious guy, and even though I tend to disagree with a lot of what he says, most of it is still pretty funny. With Bush in office for the last 8 years Stewart has had no shortage of material (some would say he has had plenty of material with Obama too, but that is another story) and it’s nice to finally see him aim his barbs at the left. Lets hope that as the current leaders’ missteps pile up, he continues to skewer them, regardless of ideology. For now though, sit back and enjoy some classic John Stewart: essentially calling out Pelosi for what she is: A flip-flopper of political convenience.

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Speaking of political convenience, here are two very contradictory clips of Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer talking about Torture. (kudos HotAir)

The first one is from the Rachel Maddow show last month:

Sounds like the standard democratic posturing being peddled around MSNBC. It is worth noting he is talking about “enhanced interrogation techniques” which causes trauma, but no physical damage. Now listen to this audio of Chuck Schumer in 2004, and draw your own conclusions:

Shocking? It shouldn’t be. Quite simply, most democrats were all about safety, security, and doing what was necessary to protect America when it was politically convenient. I can only imagine the political backlash that would have ensued if anyone would have gotten up in the senate shortly after 9/11, and said something to the effect of:

“look, while we are going after these terrorists who suicide bombed our cities, I think we need to be cognizant of their rights. Even though they have no country, even though they themselves do not abide by the rules of warfare or the Geneva Convention, even though they killed innocent civilians, even though they are an invisible force bent on the destruction of western civilization, they really should have all the rights we have. When we capture them, they should not be forcibly interrogated, but treated like prisoners of war, and if they get us again… well, that is the price we pay for being the better people.”

Sure, it’s an honorable position, and I can respect it, BUT, In early 2002 even a watered-down iteration anything close to the statement above would have been political suicide. The convenient stance back then was not only “outrage combined with doing whatever it took to put Bin Laden into the ground”, but most of all there was a resounding and unanimous commitment to taking every step possible to ensure that 9/11 never, ever, EVER, happens again. Now years later, with the Iraq war dragging on and no new terrorist attacks (is that ironic?), the public tide has slowly turned against Bush and Co, and Team Obama thought it would be a politically convenient time to dig a shallow grave.

Now that the truth about the hypocrisy of leaders like Pelosi and Schumer are coming to light, and the witch hunt begins to threaten the White House, Obama cant backtrack away from this fast enough. Today he flip-flopped on the release of photos that depicted “tortured” victims, why? Because it is politically convenient to distance himself from the torture debate.

Week-end Wrap-up: What you might have missed last week.

The week is over; here is what you might have missed, with commentary from the left and right.

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Arlen Specter forgets which team he is on?

Last week in an interview with the New York Times, new democrat Specter says:

This is very interesting because most people think it was a gaffe, and even Specter himself admitted, “I misspoke”.  The problem with the gaffe explanation is Specter’s off-the-cuff remarks clearly show that he really does think Coleman should be seated, and not just because that’s who he supports, but because it would be “justice”.  It highlights the fact that this argument should not be a case of who you support; it’s a case of who got the most votes.  If someone looks at the facts and thinks Coleman should be seated, that shouldn’t change simply because the person changes parties.  It demonstrates a serious problem with our current political system, specifically how politicians tend to blindly support their own, rather than forming independent opinions, for fear of party retribution.

Commentary from the right: HotAir

Commentary from the left: Huffington Post
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Where is the political lampooning of President Obama?

The Media Begins to notice:

Lots of people, including myself, have been wondering for some time why there has been so little political lampooning of Barack Obama or his administration by the “usual suspects” in late night or political comedy shows.  Surely there has been no lack of material, with everything from $350,000 photo-terrorism to teleprompter reliance.  Last week the Washington Times addresses this trend in a great article, here.

First White House Correspondent Dinner: Sykes roasts… Rush?

Over the weekend, the comedic treatment was made even more obvious by Wanda Sykes in Obama’s first White House Correspondents Dinner.  Traditionally, this is an event for a comedian to lampoon the current administration, and some will remember Stephen Colbert’s no-holds-barred roasting of Bush last year.  (If you don’t remember, feel free to review with NewsBuster’s list of some of the strongest jokes, here.)

Syke’s jokes speak for themselves, and the entire routine clearly focuses on Obama’s opponents rather than Obama.   Check out this short video for the personal attack on Rush, and then tell me we don’t have a problem with bias.

HotAir echo’s Jim Treacher’s sentiments from Twitter:

Commentary from the right: Newsbusters

Commentary from the left: Huffington Post
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Hannity: Obama’s newest problem? He likes spicy mustard.

In this week’s most ridiculous news story, Hannity actually makes a big deal about how Obama likes his burger. I hate to say it, but this is why the left hates Hannity, and in this case, I think they have a point. This kind of nit-picking has no place in politics. A must watch:

I happen to love spicy mustard, so I know exactly what Obama was saying. (plain yellow is so… bland) In general, to criticize someone for their condiment choices doesn’t make any sense, but to do so on national TV demonstrates an extreme lack of common sense, earning Hannity’s hard hitting report the Common Sense Loss of the Week award.

Commentary from the right: HotAir

Commentary from the left: Huffington Post
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Nancy Pelosi is (re)accused of lying about knowledge of Waterboarding.

Multiple major media outlets reported last week that Nancy Pelosi knew more about waterboarding than she let on.  This obviously contradicts her current statements, making her… well, a liar.

Commentary from the right: Michelle Malkin

Commentary from the left: DailyKos

Common Sense Take: This whole waterboarding witch-hunt shouldn’t be a left vs right issue, nor should it be about prosecuting people in leadership (including Pelosi) who made tough decisions in good faith.   Forget about the relative and difficult to define term “torture”. This is simply a case of drawing the line on what is considered acceptable tactics of persuasion and what is considered non-acceptable tactics of persuasion.  My conscience tells me waterboarding is acceptable, simply because if someone is willing to subject themselves to something to prove a point, it must not be seriously damaging.  (Code Pink waterboards their members regularly and multiple journalists have subjected themselves to it over the past few years)  I don’t see anyone protesting any of the Al-qaeda’s torture techniques found in their captured how-to guide back in 2007, here.

I don’t think anyone, anywhere would be willing to take a blowtorch to the skin or be suspended from the ceiling and electrocuted, no matter how upset they were about the torture techniques which are actually being used on people captured by Al-qaeda.

Bottom line: If people willingly subject themselves to waterboarding, its can’t be THAT bad. Code Pink kills their entire point just by doing it in the first place.

Top 5 Al-qaeda Torture Techniques I am waiting to see protested right next to waterboarding:

5. The Head Vice.
4. The hot clothing iron to the skin.
3. Drilling through the hand.
2. Eye Removal.
1. Dragging victim behind a car.

Of course, how could the extreme left care about what Al-qaeda does to our troops, when they are so busy making sure Al-qaeda prisoners have the most comfortable stay possible at Hotel Obama?

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Quick Headlines

More acorn voter registration fraud:

On Monday, officials in Nevada charged ACORN with voter registration fraud.  The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on the implications of all these allegations: here.

Glenn Beck had an ACORN spokesman on his show for an interview, in which the spokesman offers up some of the most inane arguments ever presented in defense of an organization: here.
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The Air Force One Drama finally concludes (we hope):

Last week, the Obama administration accepted the resignation of the staffer who authorized the photo-op, and they finally released the $357,000 photo.  Here it is, in all of its expensive glory.

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More Attacks on Pro-family advocate, Miss California:

Miss California was subjected to new character attacks this past week, now with a scandalous photo released from her modeling days.  Over at HotAir, Allahpundit says:

“and yet NBC, the network that aired photos and video of the Virginia Tech killer glorifying himself, has decided that the pic’s simply too hot for the Peacock to handle. A cynic might wonder if they want viewers to imagine that it’s worse than it is. Good thing I’m not a cynic.”

Too scandalous for NBC? Decide for yourself: here.

Even Huffpo analyst Earl Hutchinson says “Miss California is right to scream foul”, saying the pictures are part of an attempt to smear her character.  Bravo Huffington Post, bravo.
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And that’s the Week-end Wrap-up

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ACORN Spokesman Offers Proof ACORN is Run by Idiots.

Many of you have seen ACORN in the news recently for allegedly offering incentives to employees to sign up voters, resulting in voter registration fraud by over-zealous community organizers. (not to mention the 19,000 fake registrations, according to this Gateway Pundit article)  In this great clip, Glenn Beck takes on a forgettable ACORN spokesman, who was reminding me a little bit of Nick Naylor in “Thank You for Smoking” as the chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies – They are both employed to defend the indefensible, they both really try to do their jobs properly, but they both are fighting a losing battle.  In this case, the official ACORN spokesman (from here on referred to as “ACORN”) seemingly concedes that Beck’s 20+ documented cases of fraud are accurate and was actually trying to defend the organization: he was specifically referencing multiple instances in multiple states of “rogue” employees committing voter registration fraud, saying that ACORN had no knowledge of the illegal acts.

In the hilarious exchange, Beck actually comes up with a fantastic analogy that isn’t too over the top (starts at 5:20).  Does anyone remember the kid who bathed in the Burger King sink on camera?  What about the more recent Domino’s employees who used the pizza kitchen to add disgusting ingredients to some food?  Glenn’s analogy was this:  what if there had been 20 or so cases of this behavior across BKs or Dominos worldwide?  Surely we wouldn’t think that the problem is the kids.  It would be the management.  The company.  Duh.  Well not so fast…

ACORN starts tap dancing and at first complains about the parallel.  Then he moves on to this real gem of a defense:

Is this guy a complete idiot?  Is he saying that the management is not to blame because of the low percentage of “rogue” / “illegal” / “cheating” employees?  Is this even a valid argument for a responsible company?  Does this make ANY sense?  Less than you might realize…

Lets do the math.

ACORN: 13,000 workers

ACORN’s “rogue” employee percentage: .15%.

Sure, that DOES seem pretty small… but is it? Lets look at these two examples:

Burger King: 41,000 workers

Dominos: 145,000 workers

How would that percentage stack up to BK and Dominos?  I guess if ACORN was running a pizza joint and they had a whopping 217 employees across the company (over a period of say, 1 or 2 years) all get caught sneaking “nose berries” into customer’s food, this is what their spokesperson would say:

“Folks, yes, we have had a small percentage of rogue employees, but they are in no way reflective of our wonderful management team.  The good news is that just .15% of our workers soiled your food in the last two years, which means the problem is only a few hundred rogue employees out of thousands.  Rest assured that it will not happen again.  We are on it.  This time for reals….”

Guess what, No one would eat at Domino’s until every single corporate officer, board member, and VP was fired.  Absolutely no one would think that Domino’s high school workers were solely to blame!  Shareholders would laugh in the spokesman’s face as they kicked management to the curb.  That’s because of a little thing called corporate responsibility.  It is the reason companies and large organizations continue to work well (staying efficient, profitable, ethical, etc) even as they grow very large in size.  It says one of two things about ACORN:  the organization is guilty of knowingly turning a blind eye to fraud and should be shut down, or they have the worst corporate management team ever (as demonstrated by allowing illegal activities to continually happen) and they should be shut down.

How many people think that Burger King would be in business today if 67 people had been caught bathing in their sinks over the last two years? How many people think that if BK didn’t go out of business from lack of customers the FDA would have shut them down in less than 9 months, after the first 20 infractions? Of course the government would not let a company operate with such poor leadership, especially if the “rogue employees” were doing something illegal. Now, I’m not saying ACORN members or community organizers are evil (the title picture is just a joke), but there is no doubt that there are some people running ACORN with an agenda, and they let their desire to achieve that agenda compromise their ethical responsibility by offering incentives that could potentially encourage employee impropriety (which it did). All the fuzzy math and tap dancing in the world will not be able to hide that fact from the public eye.

Get real ACORN, and stop making stupid excuses.

Ok, so I know that request is unrealistic…  But if you must make stupid excuses, at least back them up with semi-plausible arguments.

Unfortunately, after putting the spokesman up against the ropes, Beck completely misses the knockout punch, and simply moves on to some equally silly attack based on how many republican politicians ACORN has backed throughout history.  How many democratic candidates has, oh say… James Dobson of Focus on the Family backed?  Of course the answer is none, because his organization’s political ideology is closely aligned with the conservative right.  Same thing goes for ACORN (with the left).  I don’t care if they campaign and promote their ideas, just follow the law or suffer the consequences.

Glenn made a great point overall, but finishes it off with more arguments that just don’t make sense. (come to think of it, how many Democrats have you supported Mr. Beck?)

Good idea, but next time stick to your big guns.   Common Sense is always available and free of charge, you just have to use it.

For more details on ACORN’s shady inner workings, how they are even able to endorse political candidates as a non-profit entity, and how they are structured to avoid public scrutiny please see this excellent article.

UPDATE: In a new fishy twist, Michelle Malkin is reporting that Dem John Conyers is now backing down on his pledge to investigate ACORN… something stinks!

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Related Post: Week-end Wrap-up, What you might have missed last week.

Liberals vs Conservatives vs Common Sense: Most Offensive Protest Signs

In the aftermath of the tea parties, I posted a few thoughts on the CNN reporter fiasco.  I obviously felt she was very biased, but I also had a few choice words for the conservative wing-nut who compared Obama to Hitler on his sign.  There is no doubt; there were some very offensive signs at the Tea Parties organized by conservatives.  In fact, our good friends at the Huffington Post were so prepared to be offended they had their citizen reporters out at the rallies to snap photos of the most outrageous signs (I am assuming they weren’t sent there to offer support).

Since I completely agree that their “ten most offensive signs” are all in pretty bad taste and demonstrate an extreme lack of common sense, I thought I would do a little Google driven protest sign comparison and see who is willing to push the limits of common sense the farthest…  (ok, so part of me wanted to find out if HuffPo was being a big fat hypocrite)

And so, The Common Sense Republic, in conjunction with offended people everywhere, would like to present the first four rounds of the occasionally-semi-annual:

Liberals vs. Conservatives vs. Common Sense

Most Offensive Protest Signs

Round 1

The first sign here is definitely the most offensive of these two, because the dude not only called Obama a tyrant ready to enslave the human race, but a racist one at that…  And there is just no reason to go there.  This isn’t a blowout though, because #2 is basically butchering the quote from Kanye: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.“  Both protesters are essentially painting a sitting president as a racist.

Winner: Conservative

Round 2

First of all, both of these village idiots score a -3 on the Universal Tact Scale, but the guy with the weird girly shirt clearly has the least common sense.  Not just from combining “Hitler Bush” with “Insane World Criminal”… the proof is calling NBC a “Bush Slave”…  Yes, he did, look close.  Olbermann is so Uber-offended right now!

Winner: Liberal (he offends conservatives AND nbc.  Not an easy feat.)

Round 3

This is a pretty serious accusation, and I understand how the supporters of the Obama Administration could take offense.  Surely no liberals would say anything this offensive, right HuffPo?

Oops.  If it wasn’t for the Bush stickers all over his shtick, I would have thought this guy was straight from Venezuela.  Not much common sense there, either…  but at least it would be put to good use.

Winner: Liberal

Round 4

So we have another Obama-Hitler idiot now…  I already used a Hitler-Bush guy above, but he did look like a wacko with that shirt, so I will give the benefit of the doubt.  Probably a one-time thing, or maybe even a generational thing…

Or… Not.

Winner: Tie (they both say the same thing)

So, End of Round Four, Liberals lead with the most offensive signage, 3-2.

Are my votes ill-placed?  Not a fair fight?  I’m open to reason.

The bottom line is that there are a lot of different ideas out there; a lot of people who are just misguided and a lot of people who just plain have no sense. It is always fun to laugh at some of the craziest signage on both sides of the coin, while wondering how they could stand out in public making some of these statements.  Even though they are a riot (yes, it is.), these extremists do offend a lot of people and give other supporters a bad rap.  It’s just not going to get better as long as people only get offended by the extremists on the “other side”, because both conservatives and liberals have crazy people on each outside edge that are, quite frankly, embarrassing to everyone. (State of Texas included.)

If you happen to be in the middle of any kind of rally, protest, or other activity supporting your point of view, do everyone a favor and politely confront the ones in your group who make false or offensive accusations.  Not only does this protect the reputation of your cause, but it forces the blogs to talk about something slightly more serious and much more exciting… like which party to blame the swine flu on, or whether the new Disney movie is racist.

And that’s just common sense.

Come back next week for Rounds 5-8, with some of the most offensive signage in the past 10 years.

This Just In: The UN announces possible flu pandemic, 5 days past relevancy.

This new, hard hitting report highlighting the UN’s fall from global relevancy comes via Breitbart.com in its entirety.

“A deadly swine flu virus strain could unleash a new global pandemic, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned Monday.” – April 27th, 11:30am.

Thanks for the heads up UN…

*Stay tuned next week when the UN announces they will finally update their website, as it is now 25 years past relevancy… just look at this official logo montage, how old is that boat???

Can You Afford to Outsource Your Own Job?

Outsourcing is something that hits home for a lot of people, and while I am very pro-American jobs, I can also understand how some companies may need to outsource some things, some times, to stay competitive in an international market.  What I disagree with is the padding of the corporate coffers at the American workers expense. (I work in IT Staffing and grew up in Flint MI, so I have experienced the effects)

But now, The Onion brings us this shocking report on a previously unknown “benefit” of outsourcing; as it becomes more and more affordable, soon everyone will be outsourcing their own jobs, with impressive results.

More American Workers Outsourcing Own Jobs Overseas

In a perfect world,  it would be great if everyone had the option to outsource their own jobs; make more money, or even better, have that much more free time… (you can’t put a price on free time) Shockingly enough, you can actually purchase this unique brand of entrepreneurial laziness right now at GetFriday.com for a monthly subscription that includes a certain number of hours, just like your cell phone plan. And while they probably can’t do your entire job for you, the list of things that they can do is pretty amazing.

Corporate outsourcing is a serious issue; it affects lots of Americans, and there are good arguments from both sides of the issue… But when there is a service this affordable ($7/hr), available(24-7), and frivolous (wake up calls with the news and traffic), either we are in a new “gilded age” or the American worker is in some serious trouble.