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1. How Many Americans Will Die Because of Barack Obama’s Weak National Security Leadership?
Barack Obama is playing a dangerous game; a game that will probably see many of us killed. And we should not be shy about saying so. ALTERNATE SUBTITLE: Had we not water boarded KSM, Janeane Garofalo might have been killed by terrorists. Seriously.
2. Obama gives Holder the green light for the left’s long-sought show trials
Show trial: a trial (as of political opponents) in which the verdict is rigged and a public confession is often extracted — Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
3. Mercedes Marquez: The latest corrupt Barack Obama Appointee
Barack Obama not only embraces the Culture of Corruption, he fills up his cabinet with it, fondles it, and cops a good feel of it every few hours just so the corruption knows how much he loves it.
4. And to think they considered RFK Jr. for EPA head.
That would have been one *fascinating* Cabinet meeting. Up to the point where RFK Jr screamed ‘TRAITOR!’ and tried to murder the President. That wasn’t a joke.
5 Barack Obama Thinks You Can’t Count
The Audacity of Budget Math Only Dr. Evil Could Love
6. You Know What We Needed? More, Cheaper Subprime Loans! And Maybe Cheaper Hookers, Too.
Why Eliot Spitzer Should Not Come Back
7. Financial crisis has been good for Senator Feinstein (D-CA)
Another Corrupt Democrat to Watch
8. Dems Have Permanent Majority … at Least Until the Next Election
Predictions of electoral locks are appealing in their simplicity and particularly persuasive in the aftermath of a one-sided election. But, like all analyses based on sample sizes of one or two elections, they’re essentially worthless.
1. How Many Americans Will Die Because of Barack Obama’s Weak National Security Leadership?
Barack Obama is playing a dangerous game; a game that will probably see many of us killed. And we should not be shy about saying so. ALTERNATE SUBTITLE: Had we not water boarded KSM, Janeane Garofalo might have been killed by terrorists. Seriously.
In Barack Obama’s rush to release memos outlining the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the Bush administration upon recommendation by the intelligence community and approval by the Department of Justice on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others, the Obama administration has curiously refused to release two key details: (1) that the enhanced interrogation techniques were highly effective at revealing crucial, life-saving intelligence and (2) that the techniques were only approved after the events of September 11, 2001.
They want us to know that the Bush administration implemented interrogation techniques Barack Obama disapproves of, the people who allowed those techniques might be subject to prosecution, but will not reveal what data was gathered or the justification for the techniques.
Why? Because the American people might realize just how effective and the enhanced interrogation techniques were. For example, water boarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed revealed enough data to prevent a second wave attack against Los Angeles, California.
Dick Cheney started calling for the release of the information yesterday.
What is really noticeable is that after Barack Obama released the memos, he raced to the CIA to do damage control with the spies whose work he just undermined.
Well, the damage control efforts did not work. Someone released a memo from Admiral Blair, the Director of National Intelligence. Adm. Blair said the enhanced interrogation techniques were effective and yielded valuable information. Funny, when Barack Obama released Adm. Blair’s memo, he left that part out, but the New York Times got a leaked copy.
2. Obama gives Holder the green light for the left’s long-sought show trials
Show trial: a trial (as of political opponents) in which the verdict is rigged and a public confession is often extracted — Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
President Obama was presented with another opportunity to rule out political retribution dressed up as investigations of the looney left-wing’s fanciful allegations of Bush administration war-crimes.
Instead of standing by his previous obfuscation that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” Obama gave a green light to Attorney General Holder to start the show trials — a political theater relic of Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge of political opponents from the former Soviet Union.
But in clear change from language he and members of his administration have used in the past, the president said that “with respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws and I don’t want to prejudge that. I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there…”
Mr. Obama also today said that if there is any sort of commission or investigation into the approval and use of these interrogation methods, he would prefer that it be an independent bipartisan commission and not a congressional hearing, though he was clear to state that he was not expressing an opinion on whether should there be hearings.
Do we choose presidents on the basis of their ability to dodge tough questions? Obama clearly thinks so. It seems that going back months, every time Barack Obama gets asked about this, he prattles on about a desire ‘to look forward, not backward.’ While that’s not an answer, at least it seems similar to ‘no.’ So what happened today? Did the teleprompter betray him?
What makes this even more embarrassing is that Obama cannot claim - as he did today - a desire to avoid ‘prejudging’ the issue. By his own statement and by those of his White House staff, he has spent weeks delving into this issue at length.
3. Mercedes Marquez: The latest corrupt Barack Obama Appointee
Barack Obama not only embraces the Culture of Corruption, he fills up his cabinet with it, fondles it, and cops a good feel of it every few hours just so the corruption knows how much he loves it.
“Barack Obama has nominated Mercedes Marquez to be Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development, Department of Housing and Urban Development.”
Will Republican Senators ask her about the following:
“The Los Angeles Housing Department has paid thousands of dollars to a Zen Buddhist priest from Hawaii for management training that includes teaching breathing with sphincter control, learning “how to stand” and playing with wooden sticks.”
Who hired the Zen Buddhist priest? Mercedes Marquez. Marquez was willing to pay Norma Wong, a former legislator from Hawaii, $18,819.00 for the sessions.
Another attendee described how executives were asked to encircle Marquez with their backs to her while holding their sticks, saying they were instructed to imagine that they were shielding their boss from opposing forces such as City Council members or other departments.
According to a letter written by a Los Angeles County Housing Department employee obtained by RedState, “Mercedes hired Norma and after the training was paid for Mercedes became a Priestess. After the next training, Mercedes was elevanted to High Priestess. The whole purpose of the Zen training was to elevate Mercedes’ stature in the Buddhist Temple. After a half hour, the building management sent security guards out to the parking lot to stop the spectacle.”
But more so than the Zen training, there are some serious concerned raised by a former employee that need addressing.
Marquez is alleged to have purchased a condominium for herself and her partner in a building Marquez’s department financed.
She is alleged to have promoted her partner several times outside Los Angeles’ civil service rules.
Under her administration, Los Angeles allegedly had a net housing loss of affordable housing units of 13,500.
Marquez is alleged to have spent $5 million on the Housing Department’s LIMS computer program, only to throw it out and start over.
She is alleged to have used city funding to cover over mistakes her partner, Mirta, made relating to the Hotel Cecil project in LA. Allegedly, the City Attorney told the Housing Department that Mirta’s action were illegal, but Marquez still used tax dollars to pay legal fees, etc.
4. And to think they considered RFK Jr. for EPA head.
That would have been one *fascinating* Cabinet meeting. Up to the point where RFK Jr screamed ‘TRAITOR!’ and tried to murder the President. That wasn’t a joke.
So let’s start off by reviewing the basic statement:
“Clean coal is a dirty lie,” says environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who calls President Barack Obama and other politicians who commit taxpayer money to develop it “indentured servants” of the coal industry.
Let us stop here, for a moment. This isn’t about clean coal, per se. That debate is actually irrelevant to this post. Also irrelevant - for this post - is whether Kennedy meant anything racial by use of the term ‘indentured servant.’ You can decide for yourself whether that was a code phrase for ’slave.’ But what we have to establish here is that Robert F Kennedy referred to the President of the United States as an indentured servant to the coal industry. So conceded that it happened?
5 Barack Obama Thinks You Can’t Count
The Audacity of Budget Math Only Dr. Evil Could Love
[W]hat I’ve proposed, you’ll hear Sen. McCain say, well, he’s proposing a whole bunch of new spending, but actually I’m cutting more than I’m spending so that it will be a net spending cut.
-Barack Obama, Second Presidential Debate, October 7, 2008.
OBAMA: …[W]hat I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut. I haven’t made a promise about…
SCHIEFFER: But you’re going to have to cut some of these programs, certainly.
OBAMA: Absolutely. So let me get to that. What I want to emphasize, though, is that I have been a strong proponent of pay-as- you-go. Every dollar that I’ve proposed, I’ve proposed an additional cut so that it matches.
-Barack Obama, Third Presidential Debate, October 15, 2008.
If ever a public policy proposal deserved universal ridicule, it has to be President Obama’s effort to convince the public that [cue Dr. Evil voice] 100 million dollars in spending cuts are a significant dent in federal spending. Since Obama looked the nation in the eye and made that read-my-lips promise of a net spending cut in those two debates, we have sat and watched as he signed into law a colossal $787 billion ’stimulus’ bill, proposed a $634 billion fund to begin offsetting the projected trillion-dollar cost of his health care plans, and unveiled a $3.6 trillion budget that’s projected to consume 26% of GDP, the biggest share for federal spending since World War II (it hasn’t been above 21% since the last budget before the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994).
6. You Know What We Needed? More, Cheaper Subprime Loans! And Maybe Cheaper Hookers, Too.
Why Eliot Spitzer Should Not Come Back
So, Ezra Klein wants Eliot Spitzer back in public life, and argues that New Yorkers should take him back just like his wife did, and presumably for the same reasons. This is part of Spitzer’s rehab tour (more here and here). But Klein has picked the wrong man, and for the wrong reasons.
First of all, Spitzer should never be entrusted with any sort of executive authority ever again. The reasons for this are too numerous to recount here, but let’s start with the obvious: the man held the State’s top two law enforcement positions (Attorney General and Governor) while pursuing a lengthy and illegal prostitution habit, which he surrendered (so far as we know) only when exposed by a federal investigation. Yes, some politicians have survived hookers and other sex-and-crime scandals before: Barney Frank is still in Congress two decades after paying for an affair with a prostitute who operated a brothel out of Frank’s apartment; David Vitter is running for re-election in the Senate after being exposed as a former client of the DC Madam; Gerry Studds kept a commitee chairmanship in the House after an affair with an underage Congressional page; Ted Kennedy is still in the Senate four decades after leaving a woman to drown in his car, an event that in a just world would have resulted in a charge of second-degree murder. But bad as our tolerance for such scandals in legislators may be, they are another thing entirely when you are talking about a man who was charged not only with casting votes and writing laws but with taking care that the laws be faithfully, fairly and uniformly enforced while he was creeping around choking hookers.
It should also not be forgotten that fair and reasonable law enforcement was never Spitzer’s thing. Before the hooker scandal broke, he was already mired in investigations over improper use of state troopers to dig up dirt on political foes. He pursued a thuggish investigation designed to intimidate crisis pregnancy centers while giving a pass to abortion clinics. He forced out the successful management of AIG over charges that seem terribly penny-ante compared to what happened afterwards, and pursued a petty and ultimately unsuccessful vendetta against former NYSE chairman Dick Grasso. He tried to issue drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens, and while he was going after New York’s leading industries, his parole board dramatically increased the number of violent felons it let back on the streets; Spitzer never had much interest in violent crime. His signature move was applying vague laws to conduct they’d never been extended to; over and over again, he prosecuted things people had done that they’d never thought illegal. His targets, when they fought him in court, often won, a reflection of the weakness of his cases on the merits; Spitzer’s MO depended on suing businesses who couldn’t afford the consequences of an ongoing government campaign against them and had to settle rather than fight. Oh, and let’s also not forget, as we watch New York suffer under the bumbling regime of David Paterson (who even Klein admits is a “disaster”), that Spitzer was the guy who picked Paterson (already known for such lunacy as his ’shoot to wound’ bill) to take over in case Spitzer had to resign, at the same time that Spitzer was engaging in the pattern of criminal activity that forced him to do just that.
7. Financial crisis has been good for Senator Feinstein (D-CA)
Another Corrupt Democrat to Watch
The democrat Senator and her real-estate investor husband, Richard Blum, have done very well from the current economic downturn, thanks in no small part to the senator’s timely legislation.
From the Washington Times:
“On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.
“Mrs. Feinstein’s intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn’t a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments - not direct federal dollars.”
Most real estate firms earn a 6% commission on sales. However, from its FDIC contract, CBRE is receiving 8% as well as monthly maintenance fees for each foreclosed property it handles. This is a “sweetheart” deal by anyone’s standards. Hmmm “sweetheart” deal where have we heard that phrase recently? Oh, I remember it was in regard to senator Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) mortgage dealings with Countrywide.
8. Dems Have Permanent Majority … at Least Until the Next Election
Predictions of electoral locks are appealing in their simplicity and particularly persuasive in the aftermath of a one-sided election. But, like all analyses based on sample sizes of one or two elections, they’re essentially worthless.
“Since November, I’ve become accustomed to predictions that the Republican Party is on its way to irrelevance. Nonetheless, I was disappointed to hear that sentiment voiced by University of Virginia professor and pundit Larry Sabato, who generally tries to provide a relatively objective analysis. On MSNBC’s Hardball today, Sabato opined that “we’re on our way from being a two-party system to being a party-and-a-half system. And the Republicans are the half a party.” Here’s Sabato’s analysis followed by my thoughts on why such predictions are silly.”
Essentially, it boils down to this. Minorities are going to be the majority by 2042. It could even be by the 2030s. Young people 18 to 29, they voted more than two to one for Obama, and their turnout is going to go up with each additional year as they age. The same with people with graduate degrees, who used to vote Republican on fiscal issues. Now they’re so turned off to Republicans because of [conservative rhetoric] and the social issues, they turned Democratic. Hey, you can`t just win with white male voters in the South, and that’s what the Republicans have left.
This sort of analysis sounds quite logical but is reminiscent of what the pundits said following the re-election of both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. After the 1984 election, expert after expert explained why the shift of population and thus electoral votes to the Sun Belt had given the Republicans a “lock on the Electoral College.” Despite my youthful eagerness for a GOP presidential monopoly, this electoral analysis struck me as too sweeping and simplistic to be correct. Unfortunately, I was right.
Following the 2004 election, the message from the experts was the same, though the explanation had changed. Now the Democrats had little chance of winning presidential elections because they were only competing in states that accounted for barely half of the 538 electoral votes. It was a seductive argument, but again it was too simplistic and backward-looking to be true.
Better for 100 Americans to be beheaded than for 1 Jihadist to be waterboarded.
bk Wednesday, April 22nd at 5:16AM EDT (link)The Obama Doctrine becomes clearer by the day.
Better to have the full
itdiehard Wednesday, April 22nd at 7:11AM EDT (link)force of government come down on right wing Christians that believe in God, second amendment and life….