Partial Posts

When President Clinton pardoned “billionaire fugitive” Marc Rich, there was no accompanying video of the sort Sarah Palin’s critics are laughing at as I write this post. But imagine if you can, what that video would look like. Picture Clinton standing in front of a large movie screen as he grants the pardon. On the screen behind him, we see Rich and his partner, Pincus Green, striking deals with Iran, even as American hostages languish in captivity in our embassy in Tehran. We later see them in some smoke-filled back room conniving ways they could screw the Treasury and, by extension, the American people out of millions of tax dollars. Suddenly U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani appears on screen with a grand jury at his side, waving an indictment for all to see. And just as suddenly, we’d see Marc wandering through Geneva’s Les Rues-Bassess, cell phone at his ear.

“Denise, maybe a few donations to the Clinton Library would get his attention. See what you can do.”

“Sounds good. What do you think? A million, $2 million?”

The rest of the conversation is hard to hear because Clinton’s voice grows louder and more firm as he offers up one lame excuse after another for his pardon. “These things usually get handled in civil court,” he claims, “and besides Ehud Barak and Bernard Wolfman and Scooter Libby say Mr. Rich didn’t do . . .” his voice trails off, as Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder appears on the screen. He’s talking to Jack Quinn, Rich’s attorney. We hear him say, “You should go straight to the White House with this. The timing is good.”

On the screen we see words highlighted from a Quinn e-mail. “The greatest danger [to our securing a pardon] lies with the [New York prosecutors],” it says. “I’ve worked them hard and I am hopeful that E. Holder will be helpful to us.”

We then see some more words appear on screen, this time it’s Holder’s words from his assessment of a potential pardon, indicating that he is “neutral to leaning favorable” on a pardon for Rich. 

Finally, we get to see Mr. Quinn on screen one more time, this time testifying that Holder called him after the pardon to tell him “good job” and to ask him to think about hiring two former aids, one of whom had already contacted Quinn at Holder’s suggestion.

The video fades to black.

Now, I’ll grant that the video I describe is not nearly as funny–as in “ain’t that Redneck governor funny,” funny–and it’s hard to top a guy in insulated overalls stuffing a turkey into some sort of turkey bleeder, but you have to admit that my little video would get the blogosphere laughing and talking about how change is good cause we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of either the Bush or the Clinton years. And I mean, can you get much funnier than the irony we see playing out currently, what with Eric Holder being first in line to be the next Attorney General. Now that’s Rich!

As I wrote the other day, Obama is my President. I will not call him Hitler. I will not call him stupid. I will not say he is a fascist. And I will hope and pray for him to do his best for us. That said, I will express my concerns here and again. And here is one of them.

This is a screen shot from Obama’s transition site as it appeared on November 7, 2008 at 19:05:13 GMT that I retrieved from Google cache. Note the words “When you choose to serve” at the beginning of the block quote. Now read the 5th line of the explanation below the block quote: “by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service . . .” 

What’s going on here? When have “you choose” and I “require” ever meant the same thing? Words? Just words? Words have meaning, and the moment that you “require” something, my choice goes out the window. 

This is not the first time that our President-elect has played with the English language to make a point. Near the end of the recent Presidential campaign, then candidate, now President-elect Obama chided McCain/Palin for calling him a socialist because of his Joe-the-Plumber “spread the wealth” comment. According to Jake Tapper, Obama was stumping for his tax policies the other day and let loose this little gem:

“John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this [his desire to spread the wealth] socialistic,” Obama continued. “You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.”

Now, I’m seeing a pattern here. In this case, Obama seems to feel that we become selfless when we involuntarily pay taxes, as opposed to becoming selfless by donating or giving away our hard-earned money. In the case of service, he talks of choosing to serve because that way “you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness . . . for all Americans,” yet instead of allowing us to choose to do that, he’s going to require us to do it.

Apart from his obvious sleight of hand that results in his requiring that we choose or his acting as if mandatory taxes are selfless, there’s a larger point here: You can’t mandate character, so please Mr. President-elect, don’t talk as if character is one of the prizes that comes in your package of promises.

And speaking of character, I had to go to Google cache for that image above because soon after another blogger started talking about that page, someone at Obama HQ airbrushed the word “require” out of the picture. Instead, in the screen shot below, you’ll find the words “by setting a goal.”

We’ll see. As Instapundit points out, this is another pattern we’re seeing with President-elect Obama.

I did not vote for him, and I’m troubled that he comes to the task with so little experience and so many views that I oppose; however, on January 20, 2009, he will become my president, and I will support him. That support will take the form of kudos when he does right, criticism when he does wrong, and prayers that he is protected from harm and granted the wisdom to do the best job possible.

Joe the Plumber is famous. And so is Barack Obama’s response to Joe’s question:

Barack Obama told a tax-burdened plumber over the weekend that his economic philosophy is to “spread the wealth around” — a comment that may only draw fire from riled-up John McCain supporters who have taken to calling Obama a “socialist” at the Republican’s rallies. 

Obama made the remark, caught on camera, after fielding some tough questions from the plumber Sunday in Ohio, where the Democratic candidate canvassed neighborhoods and encouraged residents to vote early. 

“Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?” the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed “more and more for fulfilling the American dream.” 

“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too,” Obama responded. “My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” 

But let’s take a little look at the bolded part of the quote, the redistribution part. Who is the ‘you’ in Barack’s world? Your neighbor? Your best friend? Me? You? No, of course not. The ‘you’ is Uncle Sam, or better, some bureaucrat in Washington who feels that s/he knows better than you what to do with your money–which brings us to ‘the wealth.”

Whose ‘wealth’ is the good Senator referring to? Again, you know the answer: Your wealth. The wealth that you created by your own hard labor. But the way Barack says it, people instinctively think of their neighbor or that banker fellow downtown or Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, anybody but them. 

And finally, who is the ‘everybody’ in “it’s gonna be good for everybody”? Certainly not me. Barack has taken something away from me, with no guarantee that I’m going to get anything in return for it. I don’t even get the good feelings I receive when I voluntarily give something to someone or some organization of my choice. In fact, I probably end up feeling resentful because what I ‘gave,” the government actually took from me. 

So, given that Barack is going to take my wealth and spread it around, allow me this one feel-good exercise. Allow me to change his quote, so it’s an honest reflection of what will happen when he gets into office:

When I and my ACORN and other liberal buddies grab your money without your permission and  give it to our political constituency–which probably doesn’t include you–it’s good for them (maybe) and for us (certainly). And by the way, by doing this year after year, it virtually insures that we’ll be in Washington D.C. for a long time, so don’t get too attached to your paycheck.

There, I feel better.