If You Don’t Like the Image…

Then please don’t share it with the rest of us.

Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer said that it was a “vast over-reaction” and “mistake” for CPAC not to invite NJ Governor Chris Christie to speak.   Ok, good.

But Krauthammer committed a “vast over-reaction” and “mistake” of his own.  He referred to Christie’s praise of President Obama’s response to Hurricane Sandy as the “Sandy embrace,” but then added, “I thought it was more than an embrace, it was kind of a lap dance, although I’m not sure I like the image.”  Me either, eeeeeeeeew.

Krauthammer is a shrink by training.  I think what he likes is the thought of the President being crushed, either literally or metaphorically.

Drones for Dummies

I despise Charles Krauthammer’s reflexive and mindless bashing of the President — he’s bright enough to know that much of what he says is pure BS.  But I’m with Charles 110% on the drone war.  I’m just sorry that he manages to justify Obama’s policy without giving Obama any credit for following it.

From “In defense of Obama’s drone war,” WaPo:

“1. By what right does the president order the killing by drone of enemies abroad? What criteria justify assassination?

“Answer: (a) imminent threat, under the doctrine of self-defense, and (b) affiliation with al-Qaeda, under the laws of war.

“Imminent threat is obvious. If we know a freelance jihadist cell in Yemen is actively plotting an attack, we don’t have to wait until after the fact. Elementary self-defense justifies attacking first.

“Al-Qaeda is a different matter. We are in a mutual state of war. Osama bin Laden issued his fatwa declaring war on the United States in 1996; we reciprocated three days after 9/11 with Congress’s Authorization for Use of Military Force — against al-Qaeda and those who harbor and abet it.

“Regarding al-Qaeda, therefore, imminence is not required. Its members are legitimate targets, day or night, awake or asleep. Nothing new here. In World War II, we bombed German and Japanese barracks without hesitation.

“2. But Awlaki was no ordinary enemy. He was a U.S. citizen. By what right does the president order the killing by drone of an American? Where’s the due process?

“Answer: Once you take up arms against the United States, you become an enemy combatant, thereby forfeiting the privileges of citizenship and the protections of the Constitution, including due process. You retain only the protection of the laws of war — no more and no less than those of your foreign comrades-in-arms.

“3. Who has the authority to decide life-and-death targeting?

“In war, the ultimate authority is always the commander in chief and those in the lawful chain of command to whom he has delegated such authority.

“This looks troubling. Obama sitting alone in the Oval Office deciding which individuals to kill. But how is that different from Lyndon Johnson sitting in his office choosing bombing targets in North Vietnam?

“Moreover, we firebombed entire cities in World War II. Who chose? Commanders under the ultimate authority of the president. No judicial review, no outside legislative committee, no secret court, no authority above the president.

“Okay, you say. But today’s war is entirely different: no front line, no end in sight.

“So what? It’s the jihadists who decided to make the world a battlefield and to wage war in perpetuity. Until they abandon the field, what choice do we have but to carry the fight to them?”

“Less Here Than Meets the Eye”

Charles Krauthammer was on Hannity tonight, and I agree with his take on Obama’s gun control proposals.

He said that all the items in the executive order list are “useless.”

He also said that there is “less here than meets the eye” because all the meaningful stuff requires congressional approval, and that won’t be forthcoming.

I’m way beyond discouraged, I’m totally disgusted.

Madly Spinning

With the emphasis on madly…

Charles Krauthammer has gotten a lot of press for his comment to Sean Hannity that Obama is trying to provoke a “civil war” in the GOP.

Now pretend that Bush is president, that the Dems control the House, and that the GOP has a majority in the Senate, but not a filibuster-proof one.

What would Krauthammer say if Bush was trying to keep us from going over the cliff?

He wouldn’t say Bush was trying to provoke a civil war among Dems, he’d praise him for trying to reach out to what he’d call the “reasonable” Dems, who weren’t “crazy, far-left types with San Francisco values.”

Bush would be heroically trying to save the country, while the Kenyan Muslim Socialist is heinously trying to destroy it.

We need intelligent policy debates about the right level of taxing and spending, but all we’re getting is stupid personality attacks.

Evidence? We Don’t Need No Stinking Evidence.

From “Grand Old Planet,” Paul Krugman, NYT:

“What was [Sen. Marco] Rubio’s complaint about science teaching? That it might undermine children’s faith in what their parents told them to believe. And right there you have the modern G.O.P.’s attitude, not just toward biology, but toward everything: If evidence seems to contradict faith, suppress the evidence.

“The most obvious example other than evolution is man-made climate change. As the evidence for a warming planet becomes ever stronger — and ever scarier — the G.O.P. has buried deeper into denial, into assertions that the whole thing is a hoax concocted by a vast conspiracy of scientists. And this denial has been accompanied by frantic efforts to silence and punish anyone reporting the inconvenient facts.

“But the same phenomenon is visible in many other fields. The most recent demonstration came in the matter of election polls. Coming into the recent election, state-level polling clearly pointed to an Obama victory — yet more or less the whole Republican Party refused to acknowledge this reality. Instead, pundits and politicians alike fiercely denied the numbers and personally attacked anyone pointing out the obvious; the demonizing of The Times’s Nate Silver, in particular, was remarkable to behold.

“What accounts for this pattern of denial? Earlier this year, the science writer Chris Mooney published ‘The Republican Brain,’ which was not, as you might think, a partisan screed. It was, instead, a survey of the now-extensive research linking political views to personality types. As Mr. Mooney showed, modern American conservatism is highly correlated with authoritarian inclinations — and authoritarians are strongly inclined to reject any evidence contradicting their prior beliefs. Today’s Republicans cocoon themselves in an alternate reality defined by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and only on rare occasions — like on election night — encounter any hint that what they believe might not be true.

“And, no, it’s not symmetric. Liberals, being human, often give in to wishful thinking — but not in the same systematic, all-encompassing way.”  Emphasis added.

After the election, Charles Krauthammer said the GOP’s problem was a lack of “delicacy” in their communications.  But it’s really an abundance of delusion in their thinking.

 

Krauthammer Gets with the Program

Having called Ryan’s budget a “suicide note” last year, now Charles Krauthammer doesn’t just bring Ryan back from the dead, he compares him to the Gipper:  “I think Ryan has that Reagan-like quality.”

And how high would you like me to jump, Mr. Ailes?  Both funny and pathetic.

 

No Love for Mittens

Politico has a story* cataloging the slings and arrows conservatives like Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Rich Lowry, Peggy Noonan, and Rupert Murdoch have been flinging at the hapless Mittens.  It shows how loathed Mitt is by his own team.  He’s kind of the A-Rod of the GOP.  From the article:

“But in the past few weeks, the critiques have reached new levels of intensity, as columnists, commentators, operatives and donors fret that Romney is losing control of the 2012 debate amid a Democratic assault on his personal finances and stewardship of Bain Capital.

“Most of the criticism falls into one of several categories:  Romney’s not a reliable conservative.  He’s inarticulate about policy and light on vision.  He’s not tough enough for a presidential campaign.  The aides who surround Romney aren’t up to the job.”

I would add that all this was true when he ran last time, yet there was no serious Stop Mitt movement in the GOP.

I would also add that there may be years when Mitt paid no federal income taxes.  Whether we assume that from his silence or we find it out because he’s eventually pushed into disclosure, that is devastating.

* “Conservative elites club Mitt Romney,” Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman