{Two years} ago today (Thanks Aaron, for the math assistance. This is why my career as a civil engineer was stillborn) “I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and — you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows — (know) this war is lost [...]“ This is a rainy Monday (where I live) open thread.
Since the Easter rescue of Maersk Alabama captain Richard Phillips a lot of electrons have been expended proclaiming what it means, and to a lesser extent what it doesn’t mean. While we should all be happy at the release of Captain Phillips, we should be chary of this episode, its management, and the implications.
I consider Patterico to be an indispensable daily read but yesterday I think he gets something wrong and dangerously so. He takes David Horowitz to task over a post called Obama Derangement Syndrome. Horowitz, in essence, says that Obama really isn’t doing anything extreme and we are wasting time and energy worrying about him. I agree with Patterico in part. Horowitz is whistling past the | Read More »
Yesterday on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft elicted the most insightful comments from President Obama that we’ve seen to date on the financial crisis he doesn’t want to waste. Obama:I just want to say the only thing less popular than putting money in the banks [begins to smile] is putting…ha ha ha… money in the [continues to chortle and doesn’t finish the answer]. Kroft. Eighteen | Read More »
Tim Geithner should probably start packing his stuff. Now. Because what we have in the article in today’s Washington Post called “How the Fed Failed to Tell Obama About The Bonuses” is nothing more or less than an attempt to load up Mr. Geithner with unique responsibility for the AIG bonus fiasco, set him ablaze, and send him drifting out to sea. When one cuts | Read More »
Yesterday Alex Conant, the spokesman for the RNC during the 2008 presidential campaign, posted an interesting article at Politico called “The 5 biggest myths about Obama.” Conant provides a good starting point for examining Obama’s modus operandi but I think, based on what we’ve seen thus far, that he may not be totally correct.
In the aftermath of the $1 Trillion spending orgy foisted off on us by the crisis driven Obama Administration, Barack Obama and his court jester, Joe Biden, are encouraging the states to be responsible in their visit to the trough. Obama stopped by a conference Thursday with state officials gathered in the capital to discuss carrying out the $787 billion economic stimulus program. He said | Read More »
Throughout the course of the 2008 campaign we heard a relentless woof-woof from the Obama campaign of how they were going to take care of veterans and how John McCain, an actual disabled veteran, was going to screw veterans. When McCain proposed allowing veterans to seek treatment outside the VA medical system by using vouchers, a blessing if there ever was one, he was pilloried | Read More »
Barack Obama’s first choice to head the National Intelligence Council has withdrawn his name for consideration. We can be thankful for his doing so. Freeman is a member of that school of diplomacy that sees the United States as being the root of a lot of the evil in the world. He’s referred to by the Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair as a “briliant, | Read More »
Despite being engaged in a war in Afghanistan, what President Obama has termed the “central front” in our war on terror (or our hissy fit on terror as it is shaping up with this administration), the administration is pressing ahead with cuts in the defense budget. It is clear that the decision on the procurement of a replacement for the aging fleet of KC-135 tankers, | Read More »
By any reasonable measure, GM, or at least its North American operation, is mortally wounded. The auto industry in the US is a mature one with very little room left to grow. The industry in general, and GM in particular, is saddled with excess and inefficient manufacturing capacity, extortionate union contracts which, for reasons known only to them, management agreed to, and enormous pension and | Read More »
I’ve never been one to particularly care about the the opinions of other countries — no permanent friends, just permanent interests and all that — but I am a believer in the principle of never being unintentionally rude.While intentional rudeness has a valuable place in relationships between nations and people, unintentional rudeness is nothing more than poor breeding. It is one thing to walk out | Read More »
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. This is an opportunity. What used to be long-term problems — be they in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area — things that we had postponed | Read More »
You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. This is an opportunity. What used to be long-term problems — be they in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area — things that we had postponed | Read More »
According to Politico (which has somehow found time to detach itself from Obama’s bodily parts and publish this): President Barack Obama doesn’t go anywhere without his TelePrompter. The textbook-sized panes of glass holding the president’s prepared remarks follow him wherever he speaks. Resting on top of a tall, narrow pole, they flank his podium during speeches in the White House’s stately parlors. They stood next | Read More »
Former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, who is President Obama’s nominee to be the U.S. Trade Representative, failed to pay almost $10,000 in taxes during the past three years Washington Post Treasury secretary nominee Tim Geithner admits he failed to pay $34,000 in taxes MSNBC [HHS Nominee Tom Daschle] offered up a timeline to explain how he had overlooked taxes on more than $300,000 worth of | Read More »
From the NY Daily News compare with classic Larson:
At Mass on Sunday we were asked to sign a postcard for our bishop to deliver to our congressional delegation on the importance of not passing the Orwellian named Freedom of Choice Act or FOCA. The instructions for the card read, in part, The “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA) is a radical piece of legislation that creates a “fundamental right” to abortion throughout the nine | Read More »
One of The One’s first acts was signing an Executive Order which is supposed to close down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Other than Jack Murtha’s offer to move them all to his district, there seems to be no plan to deal with the dangerous prisoners. Apparently sending them home is out of the question for reasons I’m not terribly clear on. Off course, | Read More »
If Eric Holder is confirmed as Attorney General, I have a suggestion for a venue for his swearing in. The historic Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan. Of course, it looked a lot different in 1975.
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}