Rush Limbaugh Gives Republicans Hope Again

When Barack Obama won the election by appealing to voters' hopes, Republicans were surprised that it actually worked. There didn't seem to be that much to be hopeful for, especially with Obama as President. A lot of us were pretty down in the dumps. But then Republican leader Rush Limbaugh came along and gave us hope for the future, too. "I hope he fails." Limbaugh said of Obama. "We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president."

While Obama seems like a nice young man, kind of like a young Sidney Poitier, is handsome and polite, seems well educated and articulate, and even brought Republicans candy and flowers, Limbaugh was not fooled for a minute. If Obama succeeds, who knows what kind of man America's daughters will bring home to dinner next? Since Obama is trying to seduce Americans by giving them hope, Limbaugh knows that we Republicans must have our own message of optimism and hope. So here are some of the things that we are hoping for:

We hope Obama fails change the tone in Washington.
The worst thing Republicans can do is to join President Obama in any bipartisan effort to make things better. If he succeeds, he'll get all the credit and then he'll be free to turn America into a socialist country and no one will be able to stop him. And if he fails, who will Americans turn be able to turn to? So Republicans finally realized that they have to be against whatever Obama is for, whether it is the stimulus package or delaying the transition to digital television.

We hope Obama fails to fix the economy.
If Obama succeeds in fixing the economy, Americans will get the wrong idea that socialism works. Although the next few years will be difficult for some people if the economy gets worse, most Republicans will do fine thanks to President Bush's tax cuts. The rest of us will just have to suck it up until America comes to her senses and elects Sarah Palin in 2012. By that time some of Bush's tax cuts should have trickled down to us anyway. The worst thing we can do now is panic and put into place all kinds of programs we will be stuck with for years to come, which is what happened during the Great Depression. Economic depressions aren't all bad since they sweep away the dead wood in the economy and force the government to cut worthless programs. And at the same time, the people who do get hurt we'll blame Obama for it.

We hope Obama fails to get people to stop hating gays.
Despite all of Hollywood's best efforts, there are still a lot of people who hate gays and we need to encourage that as much as possible as it is our best wedge issue. One of the reasons we succeeded in ruining Clinton's first term was because of his attempt to allow gays to serve in the military. Although we suffered a few major setbacks in our efforts to marginalize gays when Clay Aitken and Lance Bass came out, we have to remain vigilant. We must encourage a huge outcry if Obama tries to allow gays to serve openly in the military or supports gay civil unions, which will just lead to gay marriage and people marrying their pets and livestock. And we can encourage homophobia among African-Americans, which shouldn't be too hard since we have a lot of preachers and rappers on our side. It may be our best chance to win blacks over to our side again.

We hope Obama fails to institute universal health care.
The reason America has the best health care in the world is that we don't just give it away to anyone. It stands to reason that the fewer people who have health care, the better it will be for those who have it. Republicans should not only resist any efforts by Obama to give more Americans health care, we should try to limit health care even more, which will only make our country stronger by weeding out the weak and sick, who mostly vote for Democrats anyway.

We hope Obama fails to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Surely, this is not too much to hope for. Although President Obama claimed during the election that he supported Israel, his overtures to Arab countries, like his giving his first interview as President to al-Arabiya, shows that he is not 100 percent behind Israel. Republicans know that peace in the Middle East will require Israel to make some sort of concessions, such as the creation of a Palestinian state. The only way to safeguard Israel's security is to discourage any kind of peace. So Republicans should encourage Israel not to back down. Of course, that means there will probably be a few terrorist attacks in Israel and it will have to defend itself occasionally by bombing the hell out of the Palestinians and probably the Lebanese as well, but Israelis are used to that by now.

We hope Obama fails to prevent a big natural disaster from devastating an American city.
Unfortunately, a lot of Americans got the impression from Hurricane Katrina that there is something government can do to help people when there is a natural disaster. Republicans, of course, know that it is blasphemous to try to fight acts of God. So far our efforts to convince people that there was nothing we could do to save New Orleans, or at least to blame local officials, have not been very successful. So it looks like the only thing that will convince people that they are on their own is if an American city is destroyed despite all of Obama's best efforts. Since God is on the Republicans' side I'm sure He already has something in the works, but it wouldn't hurt to pray a little.

We hope Obama fails to prevent a terrorist attack on American soil.
Although this is one thing we shouldn't actively hope for, at least out loud, a terrorist attack on American soil would go a long way to restoring George Bush's image by proving that all of his efforts to prevent another one after 9/11, which President Obama is unraveling, worked. Americans will undoubtedly blame Obama for a terrorist attack especially if we point out that it was probably due to his closing Guantanamo and ending waterboarding of suspects. This is something that Republicans should quietly pray for, especially if it happens in a place where there are a lot of Obama voters like New York, then deplore it when it happens and unite behind the President for a week or so before we point out through anonymous spokespeople that it was Obama's fault. Rush Limbaugh, however, can start blaming Obama as soon as it happens. That's why Republicans are lucky to have him as the voice of the party. He's the only one who can say what we are really thinking.

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President Bush's Legacy: One of Our Greatest Presidents

As I recently predicted, in few months, with the benefit of hindsight, historians will look back on the Bush presidency as an unalloyed success and consider President Bush to be one of our greatest presidents. Although the White House has sent around its own talking points highlighting the President's accomplishments, I don't think they go far enough. So I have put together my own list of talking points, which should convince anyone why George W. Bush belongs on Mount Rushmore, along with Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and the other guy.

After Hurricane Katrina President Bush kept our cities safe.

In the three years and a half years since Hurricane Katrina not a single American city has been destroyed or partially destroyed. There are more than 10,000 cities in the United States and because of George Bush every single one of them, except for New Orleans, is still largely intact. Of course, no one could have predicted Hurricane Katrina, and if President Clinton had not left us so woefully unprepared, New Orleans would probably be in a lot better shape than it is now. But since Katrina, there have been numerous hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, blizzards, fires and earthquakes and none of them has gotten out of hand and wiped out an entire city because of the disaster preparedness policies President Bush put in place. For national security reasons we may not know until records are declassified how many other potential disasters, like epidemics or nuclear power plant meltdowns or alien invasions, were averted because of the work that government agencies did behind the scenes. Unfortunately, Presidents don't usually get credit for all the disasters that don't happen. But I think we should congratulate the President for doing a heckuva job on keeping America safe in the years since Katrina.

After the October 2008 stock market correction there have been no Great Depressions.

Although the excesses of the Clinton administration's failed economic policies finally caught up with us in October 2008, in the seven years before this economic downturn the economy was doing really well. Not every President can boast of seven years of prosperity. What's more, even since October there have been no Great Depressions, which means President Bush has given us eight completely depressionless years. Although some credit Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's swift and bold moves after the market tanked for staving off a depression, I think most economists will come to agree that it was Bush's 2001 tax cuts that really kept the economy afloat. Bush's prescient tax cuts lifted up the economy to such a level that any economic downfall just brought us back to where we were before instead plunging us into depression. Meanwhile, because of easy credit during the Bush years, more people had the opportunity to buy the homes of their dreams and live in them for a few years before they had to give them back. If Obama's economic policies do plunge us into a Great Depression, Americans will look back on the relative economic prosperity of the Bush years wistfully and have only themselves to blame.

After Iraq and Afghanistan took a turn for the worse, President Bush kept us from losing any wars.

Although some presidents can claim that they did not lose a war during their administrations, not many presidents can claim that they did not lose two wars. President Bush is leaving office with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still going strong and not lost. In 2007 Iraq almost broke out into civil war because we did not have enough troops in there. Another President might have decided that the War in Iraq was lost and pulled American troops out of there. Not President Bush. By instituting the surge he prevented Iraq from breaking out into civil war and scoring a loss for the U.S. for the first time in our history. What is even more remarkable was that he was able to stave off defeat in Iraq and at the same time keep just enough troops in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from completely retaking the entire country. Quibblers might say that he didn't actually win either conflict outright or that Afghanistan would be in better shape if we had kept more troops there and not invaded Iraq or offer all sorts of other coulda shoulda woulda arguments but the fact is that we didn't lose any wars and Bush deserves credit for that.

After the District Attorney firing scandal, the outing of Valerie Plame and other scandals, President Bush restored integrity to government.

After a few overzealous Justice Department officials trying to restore balance to our justice system, which had been tainted by the partisanship of the Clinton years, went a little overboard in trying to clean house, President Bush immediately took action and patiently convinced those who were responsible to resign eventually. Since that time no district attorneys have been fired for political reasons. In 2003 when CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity was compromised, President Bush vowed to get to the bottom of it and eventually Scooter Libby was prosecuted and threatened with jail time until President Bush mercifully decided he had suffered enough and commuted his sentence. Everyone else who was involved was either persuaded to resign or given a very severe talking to. Because of President Bush's bold stand against compromising the identities of members of our intelligence community, for the last five years not a single undercover CIA agent has been outted. There were a number of other scandals, too numerous to mention here, that President Bush took strong and immediate measures to clean up, such as the level of care veterans were receiving at Walter Reed Hospital. As soon as President Bush found out about it, he fixed it and now veterans receive better care there than they have in years. But perhaps President Bush's most remarkable achievement when it comes to restoring honor and dignity to his office is something he didn't do. Many Americans were understandably disillusioned with government after President Clinton violated the sacred trust that had existed for more than 200 years between presidents and their interns. But in the entire eight years President Bush has been in office he did not have sex with a single intern that we know about, which is an extraordinary accomplishment considering how young and pretty and undoubtedly tempting some of those interns are. It is a testament to President Bush's discipline and character that he did not succumb to temptation and history will certainly remember him for that.

After divisive elections President Bush united our country.

When President Bush took office we were a nation starkly divided between blue states and red states, Vice President Al Gore's attempt to steal the election had left many Democrats bitter and unable to get over it and Washington was a city riven by the political partisanship fostered by Clinton's divisive leadership. But by the end of Bush's first year in office this country was united as it never had been before and the President had a 90% approval rating. Although Democrats continued to try to divide this country and exploit every issue for partisan gain, President Bush continued to rise above the fray and worked with Democrats like Sen. Ted Kennedy to pass No Child Left Behind and probably some other bills, too, though I can't think of any off the top of my head. He encouraged Democrats to join him in fighting terrorism although some continued to resist and preferred instead to coddle the terrorists. And yet President Bush was able to persuade the American people to elect him to office again over an elitist, French, latte-swilling, wind-surfing, traitorous, terrorist coddling, Iraq War-losing, Genghis Khan-mispronouncing, lesbian-outting, gay marriage-loving, Anti-American liberal. And when Democrats took over both houses of Congress in 2006, he even won them over to his side with his gentle powers of persuasion. In the end Democrats didn't have the heart to really oppose Bush on anything significant at all, going along with him on such issues as whether to end the war in Iraq and whether to allow the NSA to wiretap our phones. It was hard, apparently, for the Democratic leadership to resist President Bush's charms. And so Obama will take office with the country a lot less divided than it was when Bush came in and divisions between red and blue states much less stark than they once were. President Bush promised that he would be a uniter instead of a divider and if you look at the polls, which show Americans more united than they have been in many years, it is clear that President Bush kept his promise.

After Abu Ghraib, President Bush reaffirmed America's adherence to the Geneva Conventions and against torture.

After Abu Ghraib, some America haters used the photographs that soldiers stupidly took of harsh interrogations of prisoners as evidence in their propaganda that the Bush Administration did not care about upholding the Geneva Conventions. But President Bush took decisive action to prosecute the bad apples, mostly soldiers and low-level commanders, who were solely responsible for what went on there to show the world that we take the Geneva Conventions very seriously even though it is just a treaty and not technically binding especially when we are trying to fight an enemy that does not follow its rules. In the wake of 9/11 some presidents might have been tempted to ignore the Geneva Conventions completely and do whatever was necessary to protect us, but President Bush knew that we couldn't totally abandon all of our ideals in the War on Terror and so he followed the Geneva Conventions to the letter, applying its rules to every soldier who was not an enemy combatant outside the treaty's jurisdiction. And he strongly reaffirmed this nation's stance against torture, preferring instead to waterboard suspected terrorists instead of torturing them, and sending particularly difficult cases to countries where they unfortunately don't have our strong ideals. And even at Guantanamo, which technically is outside the jurisdiction of our laws, President Bush made sure that every prisoner was given due process even if it is understandably taking a while to decide what process they are due. During his entire term of office President Bush never wavered once in maintaining publicly that America does not torture. In fact, I think President Bush may have said, "We do not torture" more than any President in American history.

After 9/11 President Bush kept America safe from terrorist attacks on American soil.

Surely, President Bush's greatest accomplishment, and the one achievement he will most be remembered for in history, was that he kept America safe from terrorist attacks after 9/11. Seven years without a single terrorist attack on American soil is certainly a remarkable accomplishment. The fact that the Clinton Administration's foreign policy blunders left America vulnerable to the worst terrorist act in our nation's history will always be a black mark against President Clinton in the history books, while President Bush's quick and decisive action to correct those mistakes after 9/11 is what he will always be remembered for. And we will probably not know for many years until records are declassified how many shoe bombers and wannabe jihadists were stopped in their tracks. Unfortunately, seven years was just not enough time to capture those responsible for the attacks, but he certainly has Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda on the run. I'm sure Obama will try to take credit if he does capture Bin Laden, but no one can take away from President Bush the credit he is due for keeping America completely safe from terrorist attacks for seven years, eight if you don't count 9/11, which wasn't really his fault. Based on that accomplishment alone, can anyone doubt that George W. Bush was one of our greatest presidents?

Vote for Jon Swift here in the 2008 Weblog Awards.

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Glenn Beck Sees the Good Side of the Fires in California

Looking at the pictures on TV of the raging wildfires in California, which have led to the evacuation of 500,000 people and the loss of thousands of homes, it would all be so depressing if this natural disaster were a bad thing. But it turns out that there has been a plus side to the fires. For one thing, many evacuees are enjoying gourmet meals and massages. And as CNN's Glenn Beck pointed out on his radio show, some of the victims of the fires actually got what was coming to them. "I think there is a handful of people who hate America," Beck said. "Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today." So while the wildfires raging near San Diego and Los Angeles might seem like an unmitigated disaster on first glance, they actually aren't all bad.

Of course, Beck was not saying that all of the people who lost their homes in the fires hate America. Only some of them. As Jammie Wearing Fool points out (linked with approval by Glenn Reynolds), "It's Beck's opinion that some who hate America live in that area. Is this even debatable?" Of course not. The rest of the people who lost their homes are what we might call collateral damage. Fire is a very imprecise method of punishing our enemies but a very effective one. Although Beck didn't mention the people who don't hate America who lost their homes, I'm sure he feels bad for them and wishes there were another way of giving the people who do hate America what they deserve.

Beck probably didn't mention all the non-America-haters who lost their homes in California because he doesn't like to dwell on the negative. He sees a raging wildfire as a glass half full instead of a glass half empty (although I am sure there are some former homeowners who wish that glass had been all the way full so that they could have thrown it on the fire.) In fact, Beck's observation came in the context of an uplifting colloquy about America coming together. "We're all one America," he said, with the exception, of course, of those now homeless America haters. "Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean you hate America, and I love America. We all love America. We just disagree on how we should function." Even Democrats love America, Beck said, peering through his rose-colored glasses. Unfortunately, there are some people who want to divide America, but if we could all come together and burn down the houses of those who really do hate America, think of how great this country could be.

There are some who might say that Beck is too optimistic, that his vision of America is too Utopian. Although many conservatives are opposed to Islam, Beck has said, "I know Muslims. I like Muslims." He even gave the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison a chance to show that he wasn't a traitor on his program, saying to Ellison, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies." I'm sure that Ellison was very grateful for the opportunity to show why his house should not be burned down.

This is not the first time Beck has talked about all the good that forest fires do. In July when forest fires raged in Utah, Beck wondered why liberals, who think Charles Darwin is so great, wanted to put the fires out. "While liberals embrace Darwinism, they reject it every step of the way, because they'll take impractical applications, they will put out every forest fire from lightning strikes," he said. "I'll meet you halfway. Let's put out the forest fires that man causes. If I'm -- if I'm there on a campfire and we forget to put it out, well, let's go fight that one. Lightning strike, hmm, we let it burn."

Seeing fires as bad, Glenn "Burn, Baby, Burn" Beck, believes, is just a matter of interpretation. "The only way anything bad ever happens to you is that you've interpreted it as bad," he went on to say. "Look for something positive, not negative. And at [sic] you decide to just build on negative, well, then that's your choice, and you've chosen to destroy yourself, and that's your choice."

Fires are not the only kind of natural disaster where the almost Pollyannaish Beck has emphasized the positive. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, he pointed out that the people who stayed behind were actually "scumbags" who basically got what they deserved so we don't really need to feel sorry for them. Of course, some of the people who lost their homes were not scumbags, but focusing on their tragedy would be too much of a downer for Beck. It would be like talking about all the people who died in Iraq instead of focusing on all the good news, like the fact that Iraq might have electricity by the year 2013. I must admit that Beck does make me feel a lot better about what happened to New Orleans.

While a lot of conservatives see immigration as a big problem, Beck does not just complain about it. Instead, he has sought out the kind of solutions that can turn a negative into a positive. "The country needs cheap, alternative fuel source," he said on his radio show. "Two, the human body is 18 percent carbon. Three, carbons can be turned into hydrocarbons. Four, we have a buttload of illegal aliens in our country." The solution: turn the bodies of illegal aliens into a fuel called Mexinol. Of course, Beck was only joking, but I think his little joke gives you a good idea of the kind of mind he has, the kind of mind that sees every problem as a means to a solution.

There are some tragic events where Beck is not able to see the good side until some time later. "It took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families," he said. I'm sure it was a difficult year for Beck as he desperately grasped for anything positive to say about September 11. I'm sure he looked at the footage of the World Trade Center towers coming down every day for a year and thought, Where's the good angle on this? Imagine the relief he must have felt when he realized that some obnoxious people actually deserved to lose their loved ones on that day. Suddenly, 9/11 didn't seem so bad after all.

There is so much negativity in politics these days that it is refreshing to have someone like Beck to show us the silver lining in every cloud. I'm glad that CNN, which always seems to focus on the bad news, has given Beck a relentlessly upbeat daily platform to show the other side. A day without Beck would be like a day without sunshine.

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Jon Swift, Glenn Beck, California Fires, Hurricane Katrina, CNN, Politics, Beltway Traffic Jam