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Reporter: Thank you so much for meeting with us this morning.
Edie Lively: Oh it’s my pleasure.
Reporter: So let’s get right to it. Susan Boyle and the F-bombs, any comment?
Lively: I guess it’s the age old adage that you can’t judge a book by its cover. I have to say, when she came out on that stage, on that British television show, for the first time, my immediate reaction was “Wow, I bet this woman can sing”, I have to say now, I am pretty disappointed with myself.
Reporter: How so Edie?
Lively: I never, in my wildest of dreams, would have imagined that a woman that looked like that could be capable of such profanity. The whole Susan Boyle phenomenon has been a huge learning lesson for me. I am humbled by how quick I was to judge.
Reporter: I think you speak for us all when you say that, Edie, but let’s move on to a more lighter subject, Sonia Sotomayor- any thoughts?
Lively: Are we still talking about this woman? I just don’t understand all the interest in this Octo-Mom crap, somebody explain this to me, please…Oh, wait- you mean Sotomayor? Obama’s Supreme Court nominee? I apologize, it’s still early for me.
Reporter: That’s quite alright, we understand, we are just thrilled to have the opportunity to talk with you, continue…
Lively: First let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of anyone that has such white teeth, her teeth are great, I am big on straight, white teeth. That said, some of the things she has said in the past, send up a huge red flag for me.
Reporter: Why is that? Do you believe that based on her comments she is the bigoted racist that the Conservative, Right-Wing, Extremists are portraying her to be?
Lively: Absolutely not! But, that said, I don’t think- based on her comments- that she is capable of being unbiased. She made the statement- “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.” Obviously- based on her comment- she feels that she is justified in her personal experiences having some bearing on the law, or that they, in some way should reflect on the decision making process of the Supreme Court. That scares me.
Reporter: So you don’t feel she should be appointed to the Supreme Court, based solely on what she said?
Lively: That’s right, I don’t.
Reporter: Are you saying that she should be judged based on one statement? That this one comment should come between her and a seat on the Supreme Court? You don't feel that is a bit extreme? What if it was taken out of context?
Lively: I know, it seems harsh, but I just say to myself, if she were on a jury selection somewhere, and she would have made that statement, she absolutely would not be allowed to serve on a jury. No way! Could you imagine? It would never happen, so how can she be appointed a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court? What's wrong with this picture, folks? But that does not make her a racist or a bigot. Again, the issue isn’t about the color of a persons skin, it’s about their character, and hers is in question, so she shouldn’t be appointed. I vote no.
Reporter: Well, you have heard it here first. Edie, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to meet with us today, it’s always a great pleasure to speak with you.
Lively: Oh no, the pleasure is all mine.
Taxpayers are on the hook for an extra $55,000 a household to cover rising federal commitments made just in the past year for retirement benefits, the national debt and other government promises, a USA TODAY analysis shows.UPDATE 2: The U.S. economy sank at a 5.7 percent pace in the first quarter.
The 12% rise in red ink in 2008 stems from an explosion of federal borrowing during the recession, plus an aging population driving up the costs of Medicare and Social Security.
That's the biggest leap in the long-term burden on taxpayers since a Medicare prescription drug benefit was added in 2003.
The latest increase raises federal obligations to a record $546,668 per household in 2008, according to the USA TODAY analysis. That's quadruple what the average U.S. household owes for all mortgages, car loans, credit cards and other debt combined.
Since taking the oath, President Obama has shown that he is not afraid to throw around your money. First it was his $787 billion stimulus bill, then his $410 billion omnibus spending bill, and finally his $3 trillion budget. And throughout this never-ending spending spree, the administration has been assured the American people that all of the spending would be done in transparent manner.
However, thousands of earmarks later, the list of wasteful pet projects that the American taxpayers have funded over the course of the last several months is staggering.
Tomorrow night at 9 p.m. Sean Hannity takes the Obama administration to task in a very special show, "Waste 101." He will count down the 101 most egregious examples of wasteful federal government spending. Reporters will be standing by around the country to report directly from some of the most ridiculous projects that President Obama has been funding in the name of economic recovery.
Do not miss “Hannity” tomorrow night at 9 p.m. ET
"Hey Joe, how's about a nice hot cup of shut-the-f*#k up?"When Obama's teleprompter failed, he poked fun at Obama, who's known for relying on teleprompters for his speeches."What am I going to tell the president? Tell him his teleprompter is broken? What will he do then?" Biden joked.
Like I said, "Hey Joe, how's about a nice hot cup of shut-the-f*#k up?"
When Senator Obama picked Joe Biden to be his running mate, I guess he didn't anticipate Joe would be spending so much time "keeping it real".
Obviously, he can't blame anyone but himself. He should have known better when Biden called him out on his lack of experience during the 2008 Democratic campaign. After Biden made his profound "we can't afford on the job training" statement, when asked if Obama was qualified to run the country, you would have thought somebody, more importantly Obama, would have had some doubts about appointing him.
But what I don't get is how the media can praise Obama for being so "eloquent and articulate", while criticizing Biden for being the White House gaffe machine?
Does Biden occasionally put his foot in his mouth? Sure he does, but he doesn't have the luxury of having a teleprompter telling him what to say each and every time he opens his mouth. Give Biden the teleprompter and let's see the President keep it real for a while.
Could you imagine? Look what happened when Obama's teleprompter went rogue back on March 18th, when the Irish Prime Minister was giving a speech at the White House. During the PM's speech, Obama's speech started scrolling across the teleprompter screen. After reading a few lines of the speech- the President had just given- the Prime Minister turned to Obama and said "this is your speech". Obama scurried to the podeum to save the day and get this, he starts re-reading his speech but by then somebody had fixed the problem.
Obama didn't even realize he was now reading the Prime Minister's speech until he got to the part where he thanked HIMSELF for coming!
Who knows, maybe he did know what he was reading and just wanted to thank himself. My source at the White House said it isn't uncommon to come around a corner and catch the President kissing himself in a mirror.
(This is the same source that broke the story on the choice of name for the White House dog. You may recall how Michelle and the girls were at a standoff with the President because the President wanted to name the dog Barack Obama. When the President wouldn't compromise they all settled on B.O.)
Again, it means “Goodbye to the Dutch”.
Is it rare to see so clearly, the direct and rapid consequences of national passivity? The disappearance of non-Islamic Holland is due to the contradictions of limitless European “tolerance”, where it demands tolerance - and even promotion - of forces and movements inimical to tolerance itself.
Once you forego the energetic practice of self-defense, you quickly lose the power to discern that which is worth defending. This is the effect of America’s protection of Europe since 1945, and hobbles them even today.
We subsidize their welfare states (their “farewell states” is better) by removing the need for homeland defense sectors, and our presence has always been their alibi for the things that go wrong.
Islamization in Holland and, eventually, the rest of Europe and Britain is, I think, inevitable because the new arrivals have the power, conviction and certainties of the resentful and dispossessed.
The pampered sheep they’ll replace will, at some point, feel the final prod, then the hammer and maybe the skinning knife, and bleat of American malignity no more. Most of us on this blog will live long enough to see what the New Old World will look like.
I never in my life thought I could possibly see a Supreme Court pick as bad as Sonia Sotomayor. Barack Obama is quite clearly trying to upend all the underpinnings of American society in order to create his own version of a Brave New World. Government takeovers of banks and car companies, firings of executives, politically based decisions on which individual car dealerships remain open, world tours apologizing for supposed American sins, mollycoddling our enemies while insulting our friends, broken promises about transparency combined with selective release of classifed documents to serve political purposes.... and so much more, and now.... THIS. He nominates the most radical possible choice for the Supreme Court, a woman whose speeches and writings are so obscenely racialist that no white male could possible get away with saying anything like those things and live, professionally, for even a single additional day. Obama's emphasis today, in introducing Sotomayor, on biography over all else was absolutely sickening. And despicable. To which all decent Americans ought to respond: No, it does NOT make a difference whether she grew up rich or poor, black or white or Hispanic, left-handed or right-handed, ill or healthy, Jew or gentile. All that matters is whether or not she will uphold her oath to serve the Constitution and laws as written, including the explicit and tacit restrictions therein on judicial authority. In America, judges are not supposed to be fonts of wisdom, not supposed to "feel" the right things and not supposed to be demigods purveying some sort of cosmic notion of fairness. Instead, they are supposed to apply the laws as provided to them by the political branches within these United States. Period. As Justice Potter wrote in a famous dissent, later echoed by Clarence Thomas, a judge's duty is not to decide whether or not a law is wise or fair or even whether it is "uncommonly silly." His duty is just to do what the law says, and let the political branches change it if its silliness or unfairness is manifest.
Obama has invited a war over the very meaning of being an American, a war over whether government still is legitimate only if and when it is based on the duly determined consent of the governed. This is a war for our civic souls. We dare not lose it.
She also approvingly quoted several law professors who said that “to judge is an exercise of power” and that “there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives.”
“Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see,” she said.
Sonia Sotomayor, an appeals court judge, gave a speech declaring that the ethnicity and sex of a judge “may and will make a difference in our judging.”
Wow, she sounds like a real winner, huh?
Dick Cheney is giving the Republican Party a demonstration of how to fight a popular president. Stake out defensible high ground, do not surrender an inch, then go onto the attack.
The ground on which Cheney has chosen to stand is the most defensible the Republicans have: homeland security. In seven-and-a-half years after 9-11, not one terrorist attack struck our country.
And, unlike Obama's position, Cheney's is 100 percent reality based. He was there. He lived through this. He made the decisions to use the harsher techniques on the worst of the enemy who could yield the greatest intelligence to save American lives.
"The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful and the right thing to do." And they "prevented the violent deaths of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of innocent people."
Having defended every decision he took, Cheney then counterattacked. He charged The New York Times with virtual treason in exposing the program to intercept calls from al-Qaida and mocked its Pulitzer Prize. He accused liberals and Speaker Pelosi of "feigned outrage" and "phony moralizing," asserting they were fully briefed on "the program and the methods." He charged Obama with endangering national security by "triangulating," adopting a policy designed less to secure America than to unite and appease his political coalition.
"There is never a good time to compromise when the lives and safety of the American people are in the balance."
Cheney comes to this quarrel armed with credibility, certitude, consistency and conviction born of eight years of success. Listening to Obama's disquisition, one gets the sense his homeland security policy is the collective view of the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review, with a sign-off by the local chapter of the ACLU.
That Cheney is winning seems undeniable.
Not only has his approval rating risen to 37 percent, probably higher on national security, Obama's coalition is cracking apart.
Speaker Pelosi's credibility has been shredded over what she knew and when she knew it regarding waterboarding. Her comrades are all howling that the CIA lied, but no one wants an investigation.
The left wing of the party believes Obama double-crossed them when he refused to release the photos of abused prisoners, kept the military tribunals and sent 22,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
And Harry Reid and a Democratic Senate voted 90 to 6 to humiliate Obama by denying him the funds needed to close Guantanamo until he comes up with a plan to hold the 240 hard-core inmates somewhere other than in the United States.
Again, Cheney is winning because he has been there and his position is reality-based. For, while the use of harsh interrogation techniques is a legal question, it also presents a moral dilemma. A moral case can be made that, given the murderers we confronted, the prospect of more U.S. dead, the non-lethality of the techniques and the value of the intelligence acquired, it was the right thing to do.
And the Democrats are losing because, with few exceptions, they have been neither consistent nor honest.
Their key leaders were read in on the interrogation techniques. Few protested. They went along when America seemed in imminent peril. Recall: Democratic Sens. Dodd, Daschle, Edwards, Kerry, Reid and Clinton all voted to authorize war in Iraq.
But, by the time the primaries of 2008 came around, they had all moved -- some 180 degrees -- to get right with the Democratic base. And this is Obama's problem.
He ran to the left of Hillary and pledged to close Guantanamo, as the prison camp had come to be twinned, though unfairly, in the liberal mind and Muslim world with the sadistic abuses at Abu Ghraib.
Obama never thought through what he would do with the hard-core al-Qaida housed in Guantanamo.
This is a recurring problem of liberals. They are forever into posturing, assuming heroic moral stands, but rarely consider the consequences in the real world. It was brave to denounce the Shah, Anastasio Somoza and Ian Smith. But when they fell, we got the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Sandinistas and "Comrade Bob" Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
In his speeches, Obama is all abstractions. While listeners may say he speaks beautifully, 24 hours later, who remembers what he said? Cheney deals with the concrete. We remember that scene in the White House bunker, with that plane headed for the Capitol, and we remember Khalid Sheikh Mohammad saying he will talk after he gets to New York and sees his lawyer.
The Republican Party needs to get off the psychiatrist's couch, and stand up and fight for what it believes. You don't need a moderate with a pretty face to deliver a moderate message. The former vice president with the crocodile grin has just shown the way.
