SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE - FINAL WEEK!

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MONDAY,  NOVEMBER 16,  2009

WONDERFUL!  LOVE IT, LOVE IT - AT 7:26 P.M. ET:  Just read this, from Andrew Malcolm's Top of the Ticket, at the L.A. Times:

Chicago politics, where voting is such a revered civic duty that people do it even after they're dead, cold, stiff, stuffed, boxed and buried beneath the permafrost for years, has now come to D.C. with the Obama administration.

This afternoon comes the most encouraging economic news, courtesy of our keen-eyed buddy Rick Klein over at ABC, that the Obama administration's $787-billion economic stimulus has, for example, thankfully created 30 new jobs in a little-known rural corner of Arizona at a cost to American taxpayers of only $761,420.

That works out to only $25,380.67 spent to create each individual job.

Seems like a lot per slot, but those 30 folks must be happy to be employed again and paying taxes.

This will be a real feather in the cap of Vice President Joe Biden, who's been left behind and assigned by the ever-campaigning president to monitor the stimulus plan, its spending and effectiveness moving into the crucial midterm elections of 2010. Might the Democrats snatch that House seat?

So the people of that 9th Congressional District in staunchly Republican Arizona should be pretty happy about this.

Trouble is, there is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona. None. Nada. Zip. Zero. Doesn't exist. Not in Arizona. Not even on paper at the Democratic National Committee.

COMMENT:  Ah, Chicago politics.  Now you vote.  Then you die.  Now you vote again.  The congressional district doesn't exist?  Who cares?  It's just a number.  It exists in the hearts of good Democrats.

Don't be shocked.  I know these people.  They've counted votes fro

WONDERFUL!  LOVE IT, LOVE IT - AT 7:26 P.M. ET:  Just read this, from Andrew Malcolm's Top of the Ticket, at the L.A. Times:

Chicago politics, where voting is such a revered civic duty that people do it even after they're dead, cold, stiff, stuffed, boxed and buried beneath the permafrost for years, has now come to D.C. with the Obama administration.

This afternoon comes the most encouraging economic news, courtesy of our keen-eyed buddy Rick Klein over at ABC, that the Obama administration's $787-billion economic stimulus has, for example, thankfully created 30 new jobs in a little-known rural corner of Arizona at a cost to American taxpayers of only $761,420.

That works out to only $25,380.67 spent to create each individual job.

Seems like a lot per slot, but those 30 folks must be happy to be employed again and paying taxes.

This will be a real feather in the cap of Vice President Joe Biden, who's been left behind and assigned by the ever-campaigning president to monitor the stimulus plan, its spending and effectiveness moving into the crucial midterm elections of 2010. Might the Democrats snatch that House seat?

So the people of that 9th Congressional District in staunchly Republican Arizona should be pretty happy about this.

Trouble is, there is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona. None. Nada. Zip. Zero. Doesn't exist. Not in Arizona. Not even on paper at the Democratic National Committee.

COMMENT:  Ah, Chicago politics.  Now you vote.  Then you die.  Now you vote again.  The congressional district doesn't exist?  Who cares?  It's just a number.  It exists in the hearts of good Democrats.

Don't be shocked.  I know these people.  They've counted votes from the Emerald City.  Dorothy won.

November 16, 2009  

WONDERFUL!  LOVE IT, LOVE IT - AT 7:26 P.M. ET:  Just read this, from Andrew Malcolm's Top of the Ticket, at the L.A. Times:

Chicago politics, where voting is such a revered civic duty that people do it even after they're dead, cold, stiff, stuffed, boxed and buried beneath the permafrost for years, has now come to D.C. with the Obama administration.

This afternoon comes the most encouraging economic news, courtesy of our keen-eyed buddy Rick Klein over at ABC, that the Obama administration's $787-billion economic stimulus has, for example, thankfully created 30 new jobs in a little-known rural corner of Arizona at a cost to American taxpayers of only $761,420.

That works out to only $25,380.67 spent to create each individual job.

Seems like a lot per slot, but those 30 folks must be happy to be employed again and paying taxes.

This will be a real feather in the cap of Vice President Joe Biden, who's been left behind and assigned by the ever-campaigning president to monitor the stimulus plan, its spending and effectiveness moving into the crucial midterm elections of 2010. Might the Democrats snatch that House seat?

So the people of that 9th Congressional District in staunchly Republican Arizona should be pretty happy about this.

Trouble is, there is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona. None. Nada. Zip. Zero. Doesn't exist. Not in Arizona. Not even on paper at the Democratic National Committee.

COMMENT:  Ah, Chicago politics.  Now you vote.  Then you die.  Now you vote again.  The congressional district doesn't exist?  Who cares?  It's just a number.  It exists in the hearts of good Democrats.

Don't be shocked.  I know these people.  They've counted votes from the Emerald City.  Dorothy won.

November 16, 2009  

m the Emerald City.  Dorothy won.

November 16, 2009   Permalink

FASCINATING HISTORY - AT 6:25 P.M. ET:  Many Americans are furious that President Obama bowed down, deeply, to the Japanese emperor.  The White House has shrugged it off, much to its own disgrace.

But there's a wonderful history here - a history of the tradition that Americans don't bow down to foreign royalty.  Don Smith, of the Tucson Citizen, writing in a column called Fort Buckley, informs us:

In the 1908 Olympics in London, American athletes of Irish ancestry “urged” the flag bearer not to dip the Stars and Stripes in the Games’ opening parade, as the US team passed by the British royal family. (According to a PBS documentary on the Irish experience in America, narrated by actor Aiden Quinn, some of the Irish American athletes promised the flag bearer that, if he did dip the flag, he’d be in the hospital before nightfall). The flag bearer was convinced, and the Stars and Stripes stood tall and proud as the American team walkedWOND by the King of England.

As the story goes, there was an uproar. In response, Martin Sheridan, US team captain (and a native of County Mayo) reportedly said that the flag of the United States “bows before no earthly king.” Historians dispute whether Sheridan really said this…but nevertheless, it’s now part of our tradition. To many Americans, it remains a symbol of national pride that the Stars and Stripes is never dipped to foreign powers.

Well, the President of the United States, when he’s representing our country in his official duties, IS the Stars and Stripes. Both he and it are symbols of our nation—its heritage, values, traditions and pride.

Our President is the guardian of those traditions and that spirit, not their owner. They are not his to do with as he pleases.

COMMENT:  Absolutely correct.  The president is guardian of our traditions, not their master.  Someone has not informed President Obama.  But, after all, what can you expect of Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers?

November 16, 2009   Permalink

THE ARMY AND MAJOR HASAN - AT 5:52 P.M. ET:  Superb investigative report Joel Mowbray delves deeper into the relationship between the United States Army and the murderous Major Hasan.  Joe Lieberman will begin his own committee's investigation into the matter this week, an undertaking I trust far more than the probe that will be conducted by the ultra-liberal Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.  From the Washington Times:

What officials knew about Maj. Hasan was neither trivial nor inconsequential.

In spring, Maj. Hasan wrote an Internet posting that compared suicide bombers to soldiers who sacrifice their lives by falling on a grenade. His reasoning was that suicide bombers "help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers."

No more explicit justification could be made for the terrorists who have been targeting U.S. service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet reports indicate there was no formal investigation into a soldier who praised suicide bombers who "save Muslims" by killing the very people among whom he lived and worked.

More ominous is that only mild concern was sparked by Maj. Hasan's repeated contacts with a cleric openly affiliated with al Qaeda. Although the content of the 10 to 20 e-mails has been described officially as related to "religious guidance" and Maj. Hasan's "research," no rationale could possibly exist for any soldier independently contacting a high-level enemy figure.

Yet there are commentators who are arguing, with a straight face, that it wasn't "illegal" to contact al Qaeda. 

Someone falling into the lure of jihadist ideology becomes a threat long before he even discusses violence. Danger begins with the embrace of a paranoid worldview in which the United States has waged war on pious, peace-loving Muslims. That the United States is fighting self-identified Muslims in two Islamic nations, of course, only makes it easier for jihadists to win over Muslims.

Maj. Hasan didn't just parrot jihadist lines about evil America, though. He openly argued for Islamic violence against the United States. And that was just what he said in front of his colleagues.

And what about the Army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, who worried out loud that Major Hasan's case would affect "diversity"?  Perhaps the word "retirement" might be placed anonymously on the general's desk.

Much of the evidence points to a critical question: Was Maj. Hasan treated differently because he was a Muslim?

Perhaps the simplest analysis is by way of comparison. In one reported instance, Maj. Hasan told his colleagues that he supported the Muslim who shot two soldiers, killing one, at a military recruitment center in Little Rock, Ark.

Imagine if Maj. Hasan had instead been a secular, garden-variety anti-American radical who told his colleagues that he supported the murder of his fellow soldiers. Is there any doubt such remarks would have generated at least more than the indifference Maj. Hasan's various comments did?

No doubt whatever.

If the military doesn't change the mind-set that allowed those actions to be ignored or shrugged off, the consequences could be even more devastating the next time.

COMMENT:  Those changes can only come about with the assent of the civilian authority.  And look who's in the White House.  True, this politically correct trendiness began long before Barack Obama came to office, but he can put a stop to it.

He won't.

November 16, 2009   Permalink

WHAT?  WHAT?  THIS CANNOT BE - AT 5:39 P.M. ET:  These constant insults toward the peaceful government of Iran must stop.  They offend our multicultural sensibilities.  From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — International inspectors who gained access to Iran’s newly revealed underground nuclear enrichment plant raised questions in a report released on Monday about whether the country may have also concealed other nuclear factories.

Oh the smears. 

So far Iran has denied that there are other hidden sites in addition to the one built deep underground on a military base north of the holy city of Qum. The inspectors were given access to the half-built plant late last month and reported that they had found it in “an advanced state” of construction, but that no centrifuges — the fast-spinning machines needed to make nuclear fuel – had yet been installed.

They confirmed American and European intelligence reports that the site was built to house about 3,000 centrifuges, enough to produce enough material for one or two nuclear weapons a year. But that is too small to be useful in the production of fuel for civilian nuclear power, which is what Iran insists was the intended purpose of the site.

Just a misunderstanding.  Undoubtedly.

The plant’s existence was revealed in September, as many as seven years after construction had begun.

Certainly gives us confidence that we know all we should know.  And, as Obama dithers, Iran gets closer to a nuclear weapon. 

November 16, 2009   Permalink

SOMETIMES YOU DON'T KNOW WHETHER TO LAUGH OR CRY - AT 5:35 P.M. ET:  This is an actual headline being run today by The New York Times:

G.M., Citing Progress, Reports Loss of $1.15 Billion

COMMENT:  If that's progress, I wonder what a disaster is.

November 16,  2009   Permalink


THERE THEY GO AGAIN - AT 9:58 A.M. ET:  You may remember the story of Pauline Kael, the prominent movie critic, who, after the 1972 election, expressed amazement that Nixon won, because no one she knew voted for him.

Stories about the insularity of our elites are legendary, but they keep proving it, over and over.  Consider, for example, the sneering review of Sarah Palin's new book in The New York Times.  Now, no one expected The Times to give Sarah a good review.  I'm amazed they reviewed her at all, given their history of ignoring books by those who don't take the correct line on key issues like abortion.  But the review is there, and contains this comment:

Yet Mr. McCain’s astonishing decision to pick someone with so little experience (less than two years as the governor of Alaska, and before that, two terms as mayor of Wasilla, an Alaskan town with fewer than 7,000 residents) as his running mate underscores just how alarmingly expertise is discounted — or equated with elitism — in our increasingly democratized era, and just how thoroughly colorful personal narratives overshadow policy arguments and actual knowledge.

Wait a second, wait a second.  As the TV guy used to say, "Stop the music!"  Is the reviewer talking about Sarah Palin?  Wasn't there another candidate last year who fit that description?  A kid from Chicago with a funny name?  Some time as a community organizer, a bit more time in the Illinois State Senate, and some months as an absentee U.S. senator before declaring himself ready to lead the world?  That one?

Isn't it remarkable that liberal journalists, when rapping Sarah Palin for lack of experience, are actually describing Barack Obama...and they don't realize it?  What a mindset!  What minds!  What lack of minds!

You'd think an editor would pick up the contradiction.  Not these days.

Another day in the life of a once-great newspaper. 

November 16,  2009   Permalink

OBAMA'S AFGHAN TRAP - AT 9:32 A.M. ET:  There has been some remarkable press buzz, very rare, about Obama's inability to make a decision on Afghanistan.  Even liberal columnists, like David Broder, have rapped the president's knuckles.  You'd think, from the way the White House is acting, that no American president ever had to make a serious decision before.  Or, you'd think that this president, elevated above all, has some special wisdom, some secret cerebral cunning, that he's bringing to bear on the problem.

Well, the superior president got pretty testy when asked about Afghanistan on his current Asian trip, as The Politico reports:

SHANGHAI, China – President Barack Obama made no effort to conceal his irritation when his press corps used the first question of his maiden Far East trip to ask what was taking him so long on Afghanistan.

Jennifer Loven of The Associated Press had asked: “Can you explain to people watching and criticizing your deliberations what piece of information you're still lacking to make that call.”

“With respect to Afghanistan, Jennifer,” the president scolded, “I don't think this is a matter of some datum of information that I'm waiting on. … Critics of the process … tend not to be folks who … are directly involved in what's happening in Afghanistan. Those who are, recognize the gravity of the situation and recognize the importance of us getting this right.”

The cool president’s heated response reflected second-guessing from the press and Pentagon about a process that has spanned eight formal meetings with his war cabinet, totaling about 20 hours.

One problem with this president is that he's process oriented, not result oriented.  He thinks the process is the result, a concept he shares with many who think they're intellectuals. 

But the American people don't care how the president arrives at a decision.  They care about the decision.  Other presidents have made far more momentous decisions, and what history cares about is the impact of those decisions.

His handlers portray Mr. Obama as "thoughtful."  Well, someone slip them a note and tell them that no one outside the chattering classes cares if the president is thoughtful.  The public cares about the thoughts. 

Another problem, by the way, is that this is one of the most insincere presidents I've seen in my lifetime.  You don't know what he really believes, or if he believes anything.  Therefore, we don't know how seriously he actually takes Afghanistan.  At one time he called it a war of necessity.  Now he thinks it's a war of maybe.

Not good, not good.  The neighbors are watching.  Some of them live in Iran and North Korea.

November 16,  2009   Permalink

 
QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  From Dick Morris: 

As he flew to Asia on Saturday, President Obama told the media in Alaska that he opposes a congressional investigation into the Fort Hood massacre, saying that we must "resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into political theater." Yet, even as he was posturing against political theatrics, he had just decided that the prosecution of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would proceed on the greatest of public stages -- New York City.

That's exactly right.  Obama has made scores of mistakes since taking office, but the decision to try Mohammed in New York City has struck a particular chord.  For the first time we can truly say, and prove, that the president of the United States is placing American civilians at risk.

And for what?  To show off our justice system to the world?  I doubt it.  I suspect the motives are far more political.

A federal court is an institution, not a building.  A federal court can be established in a grocery store, if need be.  It would have been comparatively simple to try Mohammed in a court established on a military base, where severe security can be maintained.  Instead, the trial will take place in a populated area, a few blocks from City Hall, Ground Zero, a few colleges, Wall Street, and major bridges.  Brilliant.

It is not political theater itself to which Obama objects -- but theater that highlights issues that liberals would rather forget. He is quite content to let the Mohammed trial become the theater of the left. Perhaps even eager.

That is correct.

The Obama administration has a clear agenda here:

1) Stop people from focusing in how his administration permitted the worst domestic terror attack in eight years.

2) Avoid a national airing of how liberal policies -- restraints on the intelligence community, political correctness in the armed forces -- might have inhibited the military from reining in Hasan.

3) Re-ignite a firestorm on the left and abroad against the aggressive anti-terror policies of the Bush administration.
Making all this particularly important for Obama are his other political needs.

As he likely decides to send more troops to Afghanistan and eyes abandoning the "public option" to secure Senate passage of his health-care plan, Obama has to rebuild his credibility on the left. A public circus that focuses on waterboarding and interrogations could be just what he wants and needs.

Even if it means putting Americans at risk, and placing our security in the hands of a New York jury, which may well be selected the way the O.J. Simpson jury was selected.

Despicable.

November 16,  2009   Permalink

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY - AT 8:39 A.M. ET:   Mr. Obama has written extensively about himself, and little else, it seems.  It's a logical extension to think that he might soon be painting himself.  Reader John Catherwood alerts us to this cartoon, which pretty much tells the story:

You know, he's a pretty good painter.  But he has to work at getting the likeness more accurate.

November 16, 2009   Permalink

THE POLITICS OF IT ALL - AT 8:15 A.M. ET:  One of the things that struck me in the last week was that the president's poll numbers were holding pretty firm, despite a string of blunders and setbacks - his weird behavior after Fort Hood, the passage of an unpopular health "reform" bill, and, too late for most polls, his disgracefully deep bow before the emperor of Japan and the announcement that the mastermind of 9-11 will be tried in an ordinary courtroom in densely populated Manhattan.

A pollster cautioned that the president's approval numbers, hovering around 50% in many surveys, may not go that much lower because he has such a solid base of support.  That is true.  This White House is run like the old political machines of New York (Tammany Hall) and Chicago:  It is built on constituent groups on whom favors and funds are lavished, the better to keep them loyal.  And loyal they stay.  When checks are written to ACORN, they aren't written to purchase good government.  They're written to purchase loyalty.

It's the job of the Republican Party to analyze the flow of loyalty to this president, and interdict it whenever possible.  Recent polling shows that Mr. Obama's least loyal followers are independent voters, who gave him his margin of victory in 2008.  They are peeling away, growing louder in their complaints and their sense of disillusionment.  But they are not necessarily gravitating toward the Republican Party for any purpose other than a protest vote.

That is not good enough. 

The president is revealing himself to be the passionate leftist that many of us thought he was during the campaign.  It's in his blood, in his cultural traditions, in the choices he made of friends.  He is also a superb campaigner, his way made easier by NFL-quality blocking from the mainstream media.

Yes, it is possible for Republicans to do very well next year simply by opposing.  But they will never return to full power, and continuing power, without an affirmative program and a slate of attractive, winning candidates.  That work is still in progress.  In my view, it is proceeding too slowly.

November 16,  2009   Permalink 

SUNDAY,  NOVEMBER 15,  2009

GIULIANI BLASTS TRIAL DECISION - AT 9:34 P.M. ET:  The decision to try the self-confessed mastermind of 9-11 in a federal courthouse in New York is turning out to be one of the most controversial of this administration.  It is also one of the worst.  Former New York City Mayor Giuliani, who, covered with soot and debris from the falling towers, walked right past that U.S. federal courthouse on 9-11, blasts the Obama administration for its recklessness and arrogance: 

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani accused the Obama administration of "repeating the mistake of history" by bringing the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and his accomplices to New York for a civilian trial, saying the administration has definitively reverted to a "pre-9/11 approach."

The mayor who oversaw rescue and recovery efforts in the wake of the attacks on lower Manhattan told "Fox News Sunday" the president is only granting the "wish" of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad at the expense of the American people and that the conspirators should be tried in a military tribunal.

It is not only the wish of Mohammad.  It is the wish of the hard left, which wants to put America on trial.  The left sees creatures like KSM as temporary allies in anti-Americanism.  Remember, the left in 1939 made common cause with Adolf Hitler in the Hitler-Stalin pact.  The hard left is without conscience, but believes it is possessed of a higher morality.

"What the Obama administration is telling us loud and clear is that both in substance and reality, the War on Terror from their point of view is over," Giuliani said. "(Mohammad) should be tried in a military tribunal. He is a war criminal. This is an act of war."

To the Democratic left, 9-11 wasn't an act of war, it was an awkward political expression of aggrieved people.

The Obama administration's decision Friday to bring the alleged conspirators to New York has triggered a backlash from those who say a civilian trial affords the defendants rights they do not deserve, treats them as ordinary criminals and could be used as a platform to spew anti-American rhetoric as well as critique the actions of the Bush administration.

Giuliani said the biggest problem is that the United States is treating terrorists as it did after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which was followed by a string of other terrorist attacks on Americans overseas and finally by the Sept. 11 massacre.

And he suggested that such a high-profile trial in New York City would burden New York City both with the added risk of an attack and the added cost of security expenses.

COMMENT:  The administration doesn't care, Mayor.  It has political points to make, and George Soros to please.

November 15,  2009   Permalink

BULLETIN - AT 5:49 P.M. ET:  Iran has now proclaimed its sacred judgment on Barack Obama:

U.S. steps to renew sanctions and seize a New York skyscraper linked to Iran show that President Barack Obama is no better than his predecessor George W. Bush, Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani said on Sunday.

Larijani's statement, which was followed by chants of "Death to America" among MPs in the legislature, was the latest from Tehran voicing disappointment in the new U.S. administration's policies toward the Islamic Republic.

It came as Obama, during a visit to Asia on Sunday, said time was running out for diplomacy in a dispute over Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes but which the West suspects has military aims.

Since taking office in January, Obama has sought to reach out diplomatically to Iran, but the dispute over Tehran's atomic activities continues.

"After one year of giving speeches and baseless slogans, it is a disgrace to see the behavior and the attitudes of this president are not better than his predecessor's," Larijani told parliament, the official IRNA news agency said.

COMMENT:  Y'mean, they can't tell the difference?  And these guys are building nuclear weapons? 

Larijani's comments may well panic the Obama White House, which will have to explain them to the Massachusetts and California delegations to Congress, as well as to Christiane Amanpour and Keith Olbermann.

November 15,  2009   Permalink

WE'RE NOT THERE YET - AT 5:10 P.M. ET:  There will be at least one Congressional investigation of Fort Hood, but I don't think it's satisfactory.  From The Politico:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) plans to hold a committee hearing this week searching for clues about why the accused Fort Hood shooter was never flagged as a danger to troops on the base.

Appearing Sunday on CBS's “Face the Nation,” Leahy said Congress would be keeping close watch on the investigation.

Yeah, yeah, but Leahy is one of the most left-leaning members of Congress.  Maybe he'll do a good job, but maybe he'll be running interference for the administration.

“We don’t want to step on things that will make it more difficult for prosecutors, but obviously in this Congress, we have reason for oversight,” Leahy said.

The ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, indicated that congressional investigations will help pressure the government to speed up its release of information about the alleged shooter.

“The government has been too slow about giving us answers,” he said.

That's because it doesn't like the answers.  It wants better answers.

Oh, and get this one, also from The Politico:

Council for American-Islamic Relations national communications director Ibrahim Hooper said Sunday that the U.S. still isn't clear if the shootings at Fort Hood were an act of terrorism.

"To call it an act of terror is to jump to conclusions, to rush to judgment," Hooper said in an appearance on TV One’s "Washington Watch."

COMMENT:  Ah, yes, I remember it well.  "Rush to Judgment" was the name of the first major conspiracy-theory book about President Kennedy's assassination.  It was written by Mark Lane, a controversial left-leaning lawyer, who questioned the Warren Commission's official account.   The book made Lane famous, and rich.  The term "rush to judgment" has been a favorite in some circles ever since.

The Council for American-Islamic Relations is a very problematical group that the FBI once worked with.  The Bureau has severed its connections.  Good for the Bureau.

November 15,  2009   Permalink

ABOUT THAT PICTURE - AT 5:01 P.M. ET:  You've all undoubtedly seen the photo of President Obama deeply bowing to the emperor of Japan, son of Hirohito.  There has been an entirely appropriate uproar, and the administraton has reacted...with an anonymous statement, as the Weekly Standard notes:

Politico reports that “A senior administration official said President Barack Obama was simply observing protocol when he bowed to Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko upon arriving at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on Saturday.”

Why won’t that “senior administration official” come out from behind the curtain and make that assertion in his own name? Because it’s nonsense....

...numerous heads of state and the former U.S. vice president didn't bow to the emperor; they shook hands. The New York Times criticized Bill Clinton in 1994 for almost bowing to the Japanese emperor.

We await the release of a State Department briefing paper that says it’s “protocol” for an American president to bow to a Japanese emperor.

COMMENT:  The term "senior administration official" normally applies to someone very senior - the president, the secretary of state, the White House chief of staff - that level.  It is remarkable that someone that senior would claim that the photo represented protocol.

The president's bow was inappropriate, embarrassing, and disgraceful.  But, of course, it was Bush's fault.

November 15,  2009   Permalink

WHO NEEDS THOSE SENIORS?  THEY DON'T SKI IN ASPEN ANYWAY - AT 12:59 P.M. ET:  My, my, my, how the Democratic Party has changed.  At one time it was the champion of the elderly.  Now it doesn't care.  After all, people get more conservative as they get older, don't they?  Who needs 'em?  About as useful as the unborn.

The truth is starting to come out about the Democratic health "reform" plan.  The Washington Post, admirably for a liberal paper, reports:

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.

Congress could intervene to avoid such an outcome, but "so doing would likely result in significantly smaller actual savings" than is currently projected, according to the analysis by the chief actuary for the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid. That would wipe out a big chunk of the financing for the health-care reform package, which is projected to cost $1.05 trillion over the next decade.

COMMENT:  One of the scare lines used by Democrats over the decades was that the Republicans would take away Social Security.  Of course, they never did.  Now we find that it's the Democrats who are short-circuiting their own creation, Medicare.  And why?  Because they really don't care about people.  They care about political theory, and radical theory at that.

This is the same crowd that "wept" for the "people of Vietnam," but said nothing when those people were enslaved.  These are the same people who run to Cuba to marvel at its health-care system, but are silent about the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners.

Expect no good of these people.  Harry Truman must be fighting to get out of his grave and shout.

November 15,  2009   Permalink

THE GROWING FEELING - AT 11:15 A.M. ET:  There's a growing feeling, reflected in press articles even in the liberal media, that Mr. Obama is weak and indecisive.  Surprise!  Consider Doyle McManus in The Los Angeles Times:

Barack Obama is in danger of giving deliberation a bad name.

The decision about whether to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan was never going to be easy, but events -- and a collision of egos in Kabul -- have conspired to make it even harder.

Obama was right to insist on a full review of whether U.S. interests are better served by expanding the American military footprint in Afghanistan or shrinking it.

But now, two months into his second "comprehensive policy review," after eight Cabinet-level meetings and several slipped target dates, the president still hasn't made up his mind.

In George W. Bush, we had a president who shot first and asked questions later. In Barack Obama, we have a president who asks the right questions but hesitates to pull the trigger.

Three weeks ago, former Vice President Dick Cheney accused Obama of "dithering." At the time, the charge sounded premature and partisan -- but now some of Obama's own supporters have begun to wonder whether Cheney was right.

COMMENT:  Whether Cheney was right?  Did you ever think you'd hear that?  From Obama's own supporters?  Maybe the clergy is right.  There is redemption.  It may be morning in America again...after the long Obama night.

What may be missing here is that Obama heads a wing of his party that is fundamentally hostile to national defense.  It is a wing that was produced by the 1960s - national defense bad, enemies of the United States merely misunderstood.  Our legitimate fear is that Obama honestly believes that wing to be correct.  If he does - and he does - we are in for major trouble, and our children will pay the price.

November 15,  2009   Permalink

THE RISKS OF OBAMA'S LEGAL STRATEGY - AT 10:35 A.M. ET:  Several days after the bombshell announcement that the mastermind of 9-11, and some of his closest friends, will be tried in an ordinary federal courtroom in New York, an increasing number of experts are warning about the dire consequences that could result from that and other legal decisions made by the Obamans, including the possibility that judges could release terrorists on American soil.  From The Politico:

While some Americans fear that Guantanamo prisoners brought to U.S. prisons might break out, a far more likely possibility is that some of the terror suspects will simply walk out at some point in the future on the order of a federal judge.

On Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced plans to bring five men from Gitmo to New York to face trial in a civilian court for allegedly plotting the Sept. 11 attacks. The Justice Department is likely to transfer several dozen inmates to the U.S. later for open-ended detention, and dozens more could join them if the U.S. can’t find another country to accept them.

Critics are warning that prosecutions are inherently unpredictable and that bringing prisoners onto U.S. soil dramatically improves their chances of being released here some day.

“All the media focus on bringing them into the U.S. has talked about the physical threat [of an escape]. That’s the least of our problems. We’ve got prisons that can contain a physical threat.” said Jan Ting, a law professor at Temple University and a top immigration official under President George H.W. Bush. “That’s really the wrong question to ask. There are legal entanglements that happen when you bring people to the U.S.”

Gives us confidence in the decisions of this administration, doesn't it?  Not that we've had such confidence before.

What's obnoxious is the cynical comments coming from the very top:

During a speech in May, Obama vowed not to release Guantanamo prisoners who pose a threat to the U.S., but stopped short of promising that no one presently at Gitmo would ever be free in this country.

“I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people,” Obama declared.

However, the president also made clear that he would not defy the courts. “I cannot ignore these rulings because as President, I, too, am bound by the law. The United States is a nation of laws and so we must abide by these rulings,” he said.

It's the old "my hands are tied" game.  But his hands wouldn't be tied if he'd pursued the sane policy of treating the prisoners as enemy combatants, which they are, rather than as shoplifters.  That, however, would go against the grain of his hard-left beliefs, which are becoming clearer by the week.

November 15, 2009   Permalink

ACCEPTING REALITY - AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  There may, stress may, be some rationality coming to the climate-change issue, as nations begin to take a second look at the fast hustle that's been imposed on them by the Gore Groupies.  From the Times of London:

President Obama and other world leaders at a trade summit in Singapore have accepted that next month's Copenhagen summit is now unlikely to produce a legally binding deal on emissions, with agreement on climate change set to be deferred until the middle of 2010.

A meeting of 19 leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum, which included Mr Obama and Chinese president Hu Jintao, agreed that the forthcoming United Nations summit in Copenhagen should merely aim to make progress on cutting emissions.

Instead they backed a face-saving proposal from Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, who jetted in at short notice after climate change was belatedly inserted into the agenda for Singapore, aimed at forging a political statement of intent at the December meeting.

Complex negotiations towards a legally enforceable successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which expires in 2012, would then continue to work out differences between rich nations and developing countries including China, with agreement delayed until a meeting in either Germany or Mexico in mid 2010.

COMMENT:  There are times when delay is good.  It allows the debate to blossom. 

As time slips, we get closer to America's 2010 midterms, when Obama will be reluctant to agree to anything that will threaten the American economy.  In the meantime, more and more people are questioning the "scientific consensus" about global warming, a consensus that often seems more contrived than real. 

Science, of course, isn't about consensus.  There is no show of hands.  Science is about observation and proof.  Much of the "proof" is coming under increased scrutiny.

And there is more and more observation, indicating that some of the effects of "warming" may well be greatly exaggerated and distorted.  Or, as the observing songwriter once wrote, "Baby, it's cold outside."

November 15,  2009    Permalink