THE WEIRS TIMES, Thursday, April 29, 2010
5
JOHN S. MCCAIN, WILL YOU PLEASE GO NOW?
I need a Dramamine
by Michelle Malkin
Syndicated Columnist
to cover GOP Sen. John McCain’s re-election bid. With his desperate lurch to the right, he’s induc- ing more motion sickness than a DisneyLand tea- cup. McCain’s campaign represents the same self- serving political cynicism that American voters have grown tired of stomaching from the current White
House. We need choices, not carbon copies. After decades of embracing the liberal
media moniker “maverick” for his frequent derision of the conservative wing of the Re- publican Party, McCain has now abandoned the label. He told Newsweek magazine earlier this month: “I never considered myself a mav- erick.” But countless YouTube videos show McCain and vice-presidential running mate Sarah Palin invoking the “m” word. Here’s a typical bit of self-puffery from a McCain stump speech on Oct.14, 2008:
“It’s well known that I have not been elected
Miss Congeniality in the United States Sen- ate, nor with the administration. I have op- posed the president on spending, on climate change, on torture of prisoner, on … on Guantanamo Bay. On a … on the way that the Iraq War was conducted. I have a long re- cord, and the American people know me very well, and that is independent and a maverick of the Senate, and I’m happy to say that I’ve got a partner that’s a good maverick along with me now.” With veteran tough-on-illegal-immigration
GOP challenger J.D. Hayworth (whom I sup- port) just five points behind McCain in the latest Rasmussen poll, Not-Maverick has now abandoned (or rather re-abandoned) his notoriously long-held open borders stance. Just a few short years ago, Not-Maverick was attacking Rush Limbaugh as a “nativist” for opposing the Bush-Kennedy-McCain am- nesty plan. When GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions in- troduced an amendment to bar illegal aliens from receiving the earned income tax credit, McCain likened it to Jim Crow laws.
Sessions: “…I do not believe we should award people who have entered our country illegally, submitted a false Social Security number, worked illegally… I do not believe we should reward them with $29 billion of the taxpayers’ money. That is a lot of money.” McCain: “What’s next -- are we going to
say work-authorized immigrants are going to have to ride in the back of the bus?” When Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman of
New Mexico called for a cap on the num- ber of visas for legal permanent residents at 650,000, McCain called it un-American and accused Bingaman of “discriminating” against poor foreigners (never mind that the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill itself had a visa cap of 290,000). Like the true progres- sive he is, McCain never lets the facts get in the way of playing the race card. Unless it’s an election year, that is. When McCain’s friend GOP Sen. Tom Co-
burn of Oklahoma put forth an amendment to “require the enforcement of existing border security and immigration laws and congres-
See MALKIN on 26
ATOMIC AYATOLLAHS
WASHINGTON -- If there
by Oliver North
Syndicated Columnist
was ever any doubt, it must be clear to everyone now that the Obama administration has no idea how to stop the Iranian regime from acquir- ing nuclear weapons. Earlier this month, as he warmed up for what the White House
billed as “an unprecedented Nuclear Security Summit,” President Barack Obama trotted out a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia and announced new, self-imposed restrictions on building, testing and using U.S. nuclear weapons in his Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR. He also made the meaningless claim that “outliers,” such as Iran and North Korea, will be increasingly iso- lated as “long as they are operating outside of ac- cepted international norms.” Thankfully, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty,
or START, requires ratification by the U.S. Senate. The O-Team’s NPR will be debated in congressional committees, because even unilateral disarmament has to be funded. But the absence of any foreign policy on Iran’s headlong pursuit of a nuclear arse-
nal is the sole prerogative of the executive branch. Threats to “isolate” the theocrats in Tehran or the despots in Pyongyang are hollow -- and everyone knows it. Last week, someone at the Pentagon was worried enough about the lack of coherent policy or plan- ning that he leaked to The New York Times what one officer dubbed “The CYA, ‘What If?’ Memo.” The document to which he refers is a classified memorandum Defense Secretary Bob Gates sent in January to the White House “national security team” urging it to consider how we are going to deal with a nuclear-armed Iran. This memo -- and the talk it has spawned --
makes very good news for the ayatollahs. They now know that short of armed intervention, the Obama administration cannot deter Iran from building all the nuclear weapons it wants. The mullahs were never worried about the United Nations’ toothless nuclear watchdog, the Interna- tional Atomic Energy Agency; Iranian lies to IAEA inspectors fill volumes. Nor were they concerned about “severe” economic and diplomatic sanctions from the U.N. Security Council. Unlike Mr. Obama, the ayatollahs on the Supreme Council don’t care
whether anyone likes them; they want to be feared. And now there are increasing reasons to do so. The O-Team effort to shore up anxious allies
has proved to be one of mixed messages and little reason for optimism -- especially in Tehran’s Target No. 1, Israel. In the aftermath of the leaked memo, Gates took pains to reiterate that “all options are on the table” for Iran and North Korea despite new restrictions in the Obama NPR. But just hours lat- er, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, said that military action against Iran is a “last option.” Last week, Michele Flournoy, undersecretary of
defense for policy, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that “we are working to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons” and told the solons that “it’s a top priority of the administration.” But this week, she told a gather- ing of security officials in Singapore that military force is “off the table in the near term.” Meanwhile, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, reportedly has been busy assuring Arab states in the region that Aegis-equipped ves- sels in the Persian Gulf and U.S.-provided Patriot
See NORTH on 21
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39