A Clearer Morning

Celluloid Dreams
It would seem like a Republican fantasy: a famous actress, who has been described by her own grandmother as a Hollywood liberal, is floated as a Senate candidate in one of the country’s most conservative states, where she does not even live.

That is how Republican operatives gleefully seized on reports that the movie star Ashley Judd, who campaigned for President Obama, might challenge Mitch McConnell, the most powerful Republican in the United States Senate, when he is up for re-election next year. (NYT, 2/15/2013)

After Ben Affleck opted out of a political run, we hope that Hollywood's Liberals aren't teasing us again. Run Ashley, run!

Bogey
Economic growth is in the negative, unemployment is on the rise, Walmart's forecasting a disastrous February for retail sales, poverty's up, gas prices are up, the cost of health care premiums are up, middle class incomes are falling, consumer confidence is at a two year low, our deficit is unsustainable, and Barack Obama has just signed up for private golf lessons with two of the top teachers in the country.  
...
Safely re-elected and with no concerns whatsoever that the media will take issue with his elitist behavior (hell, the media won't even make an issue of the economy), what would certainly be the kind of optics the media would bludgeon a Republican with will likely go unnoticed, because the narrative's been set that Obama can do no wrong. (John Nolte, Breitbart.com, 2/15/2013)

Imagine the outrage if George Bush did this. The Legitimate Media would describe him as "tone-deaf to the pain of struggling Americans." Liberal politicians would call for him to be impeached. 

Instead, we get the following from the Legitimate Media:

Befitting a commander-in-chief, Obama will get top-of-the-line golf lessons from former Tiger Woods instructor Butch Harmon and his son, Claude Harmon III. (Huffington Post, 2/15/2013)


Insufficient
It’s ridiculous for critics to charge that Tuesday night’s speech was not sufficiently bipartisan. Repairing the nation’s infrastructure is not a partisan issue; bridges rust at the same rate in Republican-held congressional districts as in Democratic ones. The benefits of universal preschool will accrue in red states as well as blue. Climate change is not deterred by the fact that a majority of the Republican caucus in the House doesn’t believe in it. (Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, 2/14/2013)

A classic case of Liberal Logic from one of the prime offenders. Notice how Robinson assumes that his positions are facts: the bridges need repairing, pre-school works, and climate change is occurring. Then he declares the other side wrong because they don't accept the facts.  His "facts."


Armed
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.
...
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? (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 2/14/2013)

Two if our favorite lines from Krauthammer's defense of Obama's drone strategy.