Touched With Fire

2011-12-12T16:07:00.000-06:00

Happy Yule!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season. I'm taking a break for awhile. I can't go to Hawaii for 17 days like the Obamas and spend a gob-zillion bucks, but I can enjoy the holidays just the same. God bless, and see you after the New Year.

2011-11-20T13:43:00.002-06:00

Photo of the Day

Photo credit: The Brigade.

2011-11-17T08:10:00.011-06:00

Allen West to Media: "Stop being afraid of this president"

Rep. Allen West (R, FL) made these remarks on Tuesday at a press conference in support of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline.

“It’s about time that I asked this from the media: Stop being afraid of this president,” said Rep. West. “Stand up to him and call him out on the shirking of his duties and responsibilities. The House Republicans are passing pieces of legislation, after pieces of legislation about jobs.”

“And here we got a president that’s gone off to Australia, playing golf in Hawaii, and you guys allow him to make this decision to shut down this Keystone XL project,” said West. “The media needs to call out this president and stop coming over here to the House Republicans and telling us what we’re not doing. We’re the ones taking action. The guy sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is destroying this country.”

West made his remarks in light of President "Present's" decision to put off the decision about the pipeline until after the 2012 election. Obviously there's nothing more sacred to Obama than his own re-election; a decision in favor of the pipeline would anger his base; a decision against the pipeline is something he would have to defend during his re-election campaign. So Obama had decided to kick this one down the road, regardless of the how often he tells people he's focused like a laser on jobs for Americans, or focused on getting this country off of its dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

Update: "President Priss," by Mark Hyman at American Thinker. Contrary to the Obama hype that was fed to us during the 2008 election cycle, Hyman asserts that Obama is of average, pedestrian intelligence; his looks, rather than "handsome," are best described as the post-adolescent Steve Urkel minus the oversized plastic rim glasses; he is of barely average athleticism, and probably not even that--no one is allowed to see him play golf or basketball, except for the well-inside-the-two-point-range jump shot; he received the Nobel Peace Prize, even though he authorized more drone strikes in a year than Bush in eight years (and don't forget Libya); he believes himself the most successful president a half century, even though our job market is worse than during the Great Depression. He can't bowl, he rides a girl's bike (the only thing missing from that bike were the handlebar streamers and woven basket), he drinks effeminately, using his fingertips to hold the glass and extending his pinky, and he's labeled a "fashionista." When he goes on "The View" instead of a hard news show, he crosses his legs just like the women on the show, etc. etc.

I'm not sure where Hyman was going with this article, but he lets readers come to their own conclusions. Some of the commenters were in a snit, their noses out of joint because Hyman assumes that a man with all of these "personality tweaks" (??) is effeminate. That obviously wasn't the point of Hyman's article. The point of it, for me, is not who or what Obama is, but who and what he was portrayed to be during the 2008 election cycle. Clearly, his biography was filled with misrepresentations and lies, and unlike what the media is doing now to one Republican candidate after another, our leftwing lapdog media wrote literally thousands of fawning articles, all about their love affair with their brown-eyed boy.

Had Obama been seen riding that bike before the election, even the sycophant press couldn't have helped him out enough to get him elected; that photo would have done for him what the tank picture did for Michael Dukakis. It's just a fact of life: Americans don't want a sissy pantywaist for a president.

And we sure as hell don't like it when he badmouths Americans when he's out of the country. (What is this, a new bowling shirt?--(h/t Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog for the pic). Yet again, Obama is out of the country when he should be here showing leadership on the economy, and while abroad he's taking cheap shots at Americans--this time it was American kids. He just can't seem to help himself. Every time he goes abroad, he has to run down this country. There truly never has been an American president like this one.

2011-11-16T11:24:00.008-06:00

"I don't talk to the press"

Chelsea Clinton hates the media--she always has. She's never given an interview, not even to 9-year-old kid reporter Sydney Rieckhoff, who asked her a question in 2009 for Scholastic News when Chelsea was out on the campaign stump for her mother.

Kid reporter: "Do you think your dad would be a good 'first man' in the White house?" young Sydney asked.

Chelsea Clinton: "I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press and that applies to you." WTF?

OK, so that would be fine, I suppose, except that now little Chelsea has a new job as a special correspondent for NBC News, no less. Seriously? "Chelsea Clinton has loathed the news media for most of her life," wrote Don Van Natta, reporter for the NYT, via Twitter. So what does she do? She takes the plumb job in prime time at NBC News--and refuses to be interviewed. Haha. No, you can't make this stuff up.

Says Erik Wemple, who has an opinion blog on news media at the Washington Post: After all, you can’t say it’s not relevant — if you’re going to interview other people, it might be helpful to have spent a moment or two on the other side of the mike. . . . Now Clinton will be asking lots of questions. She just won't answer any. What a great media world we inhabit.

I'm pretty sure no one has even heard this woman speak. At least Brian Williams hasn't, since he recently said, in a "gushing defense" of her hire at NBC: "She just wants to work for us and she just wants to do our "Making a Difference" stories. . . . Most Americans haven't heard her voice. . . . I don't know her well, but what an impressive, impressive woman . . . .I can't wait to hear her voice and her viewpoint. Oh for the love of God.

Chelsea has a master's in Public Health from Columbia and a bachelor's in history from Stanford. She has lived her life off of her trust fund (daddy's money); her life experience, and Brian Williams clearly attests to this, consists of "travel." Whoo-hoo. She schmoozes with her other 1% friends on her expense account and then goes to the head of the line in prime time at NBC. I'm looking forward to hearing about the first person who stiffs her for an interview. Heh.

Rush Limbaugh said yesterday that this was being done so that Chelsea has an opportunity to get used to being in front of the camera, a skill necessary for neophyte politicians, since obviously her intent is to run for some political office at some point or another. We remember the disaster that Carolyn Kennedy made of her Senate bid, sounding like a New York Valley Girl with all of her "you know's." Wow, Chelsea Clinton for Senate. That's really something to look forward to. Although Carolyn Kennedy's "you know" disaster (repeated 142 times in one interview) came during an interview. It would seem that the skill that Chelsea really needs is talking to people, one that up to and including the present day she has consistently run from.

Update: A must-read from Clarice Feldman at American Thinker: "Secrets of the American Nomenklatura." "TV News is now officially entertainment and if you are looking for journalism turn it off and look elsewhere."

2011-11-13T13:40:00.009-06:00

Michelle Obama in Hawaii

Seriously. This is our First Lady?

And this. I'm sorry, but this woman has no business representing our country. I wish this woman would get a clue about the amount of her flesh that we really all would rather not see. Then she greases herself up like a skank. What is wrong with this woman? Seriously, I think she's pretty much wasted most of the time that she appears in public. Wasted on alcohol--and whatever else I wouldn't know.

This behavior is NOT APPROPRIATE. Do we really have to say this? Can they not "handle" this woman, or is she just totally out of control? You know, I get it that this woman probably doesn't get any at home. So can't her handlers do something about that--like bring someone to Big White to service her or something. And then keep her away from the ALCOHOL when she's in public like this?

This is from Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog--one of the commenters.

I do not want to be walking thru a heavily flora'd area and see a very large, bent over something coming toward me. That stance is agressive, threatening, precharge mode.

Who is that man locked in mortal combat with her? His hands are restraining her arms while she is heaving to pull him in to grind her breasts against him; and he isn't even wearing medals.

The Russian is terrified.

Can anyone blame him?

A quote from Dolly Parton: "You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap." Michelle Obama needs to get a grip and realize that she's not 20 years old. . . she's not even 30 years old. As FLOTUS, showing off all that skin and backfat is inappropriate.

Update. While touring an organic farm in Hawaii, Mrs. Obama suggested that poor children need to learn to eat--need to "get their palates adjusted." Evidently the reason they aren't eating vegetables is because "there are no grocery stores." If they would only learn to eat arugula (and steak--her favorite meal) then they wouldn't grow up obese. This woman is walking, talking proof that affirmative action is a really bad idea--it just doesn't work.

2011-11-10T00:00:00.016-06:00

Is the Tide Turning for Herman Cain?

Updates below.

Read the article by Ann Coulter, "David Axelrod's Pattern of Misbehavior." No matter what you think of Ann Coulter, if you've read any of her books, you know that one of her skills is research. I'm so glad to see that someone is interested in these questions that don't seem to bother the heads of anyone in the mainstream media.

How did Politico, the blog that broke the Cain story with 96 stories in six days, get their hands on Herman Cain's personnel records from the National Restaurant Association (NRA)? Well, Coulter thinks she knows. It seems that a woman named Sheila O'Grady, who is a close friend of David Axelrod, went straight from being former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley's chief of staff to president of the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA). O'Grady has issued a denial that she had anything to do with obtaining the records. [Prove you didn't, Sheila. Oh, that's right, it's really tough to prove a negative, isn't it?]

The Daley-controlled IRA works closely with the NRA. And, as Ann Coulter points out: "strangely enough, Cain's short, three-year tenure at the NRA is evidently the only period in his decades-long career during which he's alleged to have been a sexual predator."

Herman Cain has never lived in Chicago, but David Axelrod has. And who lived in Axelrod's building? None other than Sharon Bailek. She admitted when she made the rounds of the morning shows that she knows Axelrod. I think she put it something like, It's a friendly building and we would "wink" when we saw each other going to the gym. This is exactly the sort of thing that ObamaTeam did to get Obama elected as an Illinois state senator and then as the Junior Senator from Illinois--his campaign was able to obtain sealed divorce records which he used against his opponents. I don't think for one second that the Chicago Machine had nothing to do with this Cain slander.

Coulter goes into great detail about the two people Obama ran against and how their divorce records were used to knock them out of the race. The entire article is worth the read.

I have the strangest feeling that there are going to be a lot of people with egg on their faces once this whole thing is over. Cain gave just about the best debate performance tonight that someone under this sort of stress and scrutiny could have given. I think we're going to be looking back on this night and saying, This is where events started to turn around for Herman Cain.

Do I think he's going to be the Republican nominee? No, I do not. But what I do think is this: Thank God Caine had the brass to fight back against this ugly sort of takedown tactic. It's about time somebody stood up to these Chicago thugs.

I hope Herman Caine is innocent, and I hope his lawyer scares the crap out of Sharon and Karen and slaps them both with a lawsuit. And Politico as well. We all know there's a higher standard for libel and defamation of character for public figures; but that doesn't mean there's no standard.

Update. I forgot to mention that last night, when the moronic CNBC debate moderator, Maria Bartiromo, asked Cain about "leadership" and being accused of "inappropriate behavior," the audience booed her and her question. Then when Cain answered, they applauded and cheered. The look on Bartiromo's face was the debate moment of the night. Priceless. These media-types don't get it. The American people are essentially decent and fair, and they don't like to see the kind of pile-on that's been happening to Cain in the media.

Update #2. This is interesting, from an article that I found at CBSAtlanta.com. Maybe it proves nothing, I have no idea, but it's interesting, nonetheless. Anyone ever heard of speech software that analyzes the stress in a person's voice? Private Investigator TJ Ward analyzed Cain's speech from his press conference: "If he is hiding something this thing would have spiked way down here," said Ward. "He is being truthful, totally truthful." During the speech, when Cain denied the claims, the detector read "low risk." According to Ward, that means Cain is telling the truth.

Ward also analyzed Sharon Bailek's speech during her press conference. During the analysis of the section where she reads that Cain grabbed at her genitals and shoved her head towards his crotch, Ward says the detector read "high risk statement," meaning Bailek was not telling the truth about what happened.

The technology being used here is called Voice Stress Analysis, or VSA. "Stressed speech" is defined as speech that exhibits a change in characteristics cause by mental stress caused by anxiety and/or fear."

Mark Levin is incensed about all of this, asking, "Have you ever heard of a presidential candidate being asked to take a lie detector test?" the way Cain was asked by a "journalist" at his press conference. Levin asks, did they ask Barack Obama to take a lie detector test, when he said that in all those years of sitting there in the Rev. Wright's church, he never heard the vile bilge that came out of that man's mouth on a weekly basis? Or how about Ted Kennedy? Did the media ever ask him to take a lie detector test? Levin sounds like he's ready to choke someone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGBbLRfU5MA&feature=youtu.be

Is the tide turning for Herman Cain? John Nolte at Big Journalism is reporting on the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), leftist media watchdog, saying this: "Let's Slow Down the Cain Train," where we learn that Politico has published "144" Cain-centric stories. From CJR: "Yet, while allegtions against Cain are significant [oh, you have to love that--allegations are significant], it is irresponsible the extent to which some segments of the political press has allowed them to dominate the political news cycle for these past nine days." Ya think?

Nolte continues: "Politico and the Washington Post are using this story not only as a way to destroy Cain but also as a distraction from Obama's growing pile of failures and brewing scandals. This is all about getting Barack Obama that second term and if 'CJR' looked at the last 10 days through that prism all of the confusion would simply melt away."

Update #3. This is Thursday afternoon. I would have predicted this morning that the firestorm would soon die out over this Cain business. And I seem to be right. Here's what I'm thinking: that the lawyer for Herman Cain has probably by now sent around a letter or two to these people, discussing libel and defamation of character. It's Thursday afternoon, and we haven't heard a doggone word from Lawyer Joel Bennett about the circle-jerk press conference with all of Cain's "accusers." Except for this:

From CNN: "Kraushaar won't do news conference without other accusers." She says she won't do a presser if it's only going to be Sharon and Karen under the hot lights. Hilarious. The other two "accusers," according to the article, aren't returning Karen's calls. The article states that earlier this week, Kraushaar told CNN she has copies of records detailing allegations against Cain. So what is she waiting for?

It would seem that the firestorm these accusers created is fizzling. Big, big, big surprise. I still want to see Herman Cain and his attorney go after Politico. That would be worth the price of admission. I'd also like to see Karen Kraushaar lose her cushy federal job and benefits, including her retirement that my tax dollars would be paying for.

2011-11-09T06:13:00.018-06:00

The Circus Continues

Now we know the identity of the woman who was awarded a cash settlement of about $45,000 when she was relieved of her job at the National Restaurant Assn. She is Karen Kraushaar, and she would like a joint press conference with Sharon Bialek in order to present a "body of evidence" against Herman Cain. So get ready for the women to show up together in front of the microphones, along with their two lawyers.

Who is Karen Kraushaar? She is the woman represented by the lawyer we heard from earlier, Lawyer Joel Bennett. The one who said she didn't see any value in coming forward, wanted to stay anonymous, and simply wanted to live her life. Evidently she's changed her mind. The National Restaurant Assn. waived her confidentiality agreement in the case so that she could come forward. As far as I can tell, although this is unclear since it's a question that apparently doesn't interest anyone in the media, Kraushaar's lawyer was the one who asked the NRA that his client be released from the confidentiality agreement--although she was obviously for at least a week before talking on background to the people at Politico, so how that didn't violate the agreement is a little bit confusing to me. Anyway, the NRA waived the agreement, so now of course the woman is talking. --Yes, there's a story that Joel Bennett, on behalf of his client Karen Kraushaar, requested that she be released from the confidentiality agreement.

Kraushaar is currently a federal employee, working as a spokesperson for the Inspector General of the IRS. She is a Brown graduate with a master's degree from the U of Michigan and has worked as a career federal government official for various federal agencies.

It might also be instructive to add that after settling the sexual harrassment complaint against Herman Cain in her job with the National Restaurant Assn. in 1999, she went on to work as spokesperson at the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the Justice Department. It was in that job, in 2002 or early 2003 and with the assistance of the same Lawyer Joel Bennett who successfully got her a five-figure settlement in 1999, she again filed a workplace grievance, this time for job discrimination. Maybe it would have seemed too much like a "pattern" to be accusing her boss of sexual discrimination two jobs in a row.

In her second job-related suit, Kraushaar was asking for thousands of dollars in a cash settlement, a reinstatment of leave she used after a car accident in 2002 (which as a federal employee would mean $$ in her pocket), promotion on the federal pay scale (more $$ in her pocket), and a one-year fellowship to Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. This was according to a former supervisor familiar with the complaint. The promotion alone would have increased her salary between $12,000 and $16,000 per year. The complaint was based on Kraushaar's supervisors denying her request to work full time from home (how exactly would you do that if you are a spokesperson for a department--just asking). Included in the complaint against her supervisors was an email, cited by Lawyer Bennett as objectionable, circulated by one of her managers, comparing computers to women and men. This was one of those joke lists that arrive in a person's email box every day: women are like computers because even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.

You can't blame a girl for trying, since it had worked for her ($$) at the NRA. However, this time she and Lawyer Bennett were unsuccessful, and she dropped the complaint in 2003 and went to work at the Treasury Dept.

Interestingly, Karen doesnt seem to have quite the memory for this second unsuccessful workplace lawsuit that she does for the one against Herman Cain. She says she considers the complaint "relatively minor" (really?--well, maybe she does; maybe in her world a workplace lawsuit is a normal, minor way of responding to conflicts at work); however, she said in an interview on Tuesday that she "doesn't remember" details about the complaint, doesnt remember asking for a payment, a promotion, or a Harvard fellowship. She told the AP reporter that the complaint at the immigration service was "nobody's business" because it had nothing to do with her settlement with the NRA. Lawyer Bennett declined to discuss the case with the AP reporter, citing confidentiality.

You can't make this stuff up. h/t to AP Exclusive: Accuser Filed Complaint in Next Job.

Here's a newsflash for you, Karen. Like it or not, engaging in a workplace lawsuit in two jobs in a row within five years says something about how you roll as an employee. You come across as a person looking to put money in your pocket at someone else's expense. You come across as a cranky, dissatisfied malcontent. Now maybe you just had a lot of bad luck in a couple of jobs. Maybe Herman Cain really did sexually harass you. Maybe you really were treated unfairly in your next job. However, in my experience, the kinds of people who file workplace grievances are the worst sort of people to have to work with. That's just me.

Seriously, it's time for the NRA to release the non-redacted report of what Herman Cain was accused of doing and the findings of same. This he-said, she-said crap has gone on long enough.

Update. The Los Angeles Times confirms that Gloria Allred and Lawyer Joel Bennett will hold a joint news conference with their clients, time and place to be announced. Bennett says that his client will hold a joint news conference with as many of the women who complained of sexual harassment by Herman Cain who will participate. They are evidently hoping that by banning together they can establish a pattern of bad behavior. Evidently the irony of their clients' patterns of bad behavior is lost on the two attorneys. The statute of limitations has run out on any of these charges--but wait!--better than a court of law is the court of public opinion, where allegation and innuendo are the only proof needed.

Update #2. Not to be outdone by the accusers' high profile attorneys, Herman Cain has hired L. Lin Wood Jr. to advise/represent him. Wood is a libel and defamation lawyer who has represented other high profile clients. He is said to be highly respected within the legal community and very good at what he does. Frankly, I wouldn't really want to be in Karen Kraushaar's shoes, represented by ~~ambulance chaser~~ Lawyer Joel Bennett.

In a 2005 interview, Wood said, I believe that courts, since the 1964 decision in the New York Times v. Sullivan, have steadily eroded the ability of individuals and entities to redress false attacks on reputation by overemphasizing the need to safeguard First Amendment rights.

As usual, the media seems to have missed the real story of Cain's news conference. The fact that Cain has hired Wood, a high-powered attorney who has a reputation for competence, persistence, and aggressiveness, ought to be giving the other side pause. Herman Cain has hired one of the best libel and defamation lawyers in the country. This thing isn't over yet.

Update #3. Evidently what Karen did in her job at the Justice Dept. isn't all that uncommon for women (and I wonder if it's just women) working for the federal government. I wish we had some real journalists who were actually curious about these kinds of things who would look into how many of these sorts of suits or complaints get filed every year in the federal government. Anyway, this is from a commenter at GatewayPundit:

This is and was a common career ladder for many women in the Federal Government. Filing a complaint once or twice usually got their careers jump started and they were able to climb to their current grade level. All it takes is one or two successful attempts. If one looks really hard, they’ll probably find another complaint filed by this woman somewhere along the line.

A one-year fellowship to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government usually included not only their full pay for the full year but also included per diem expenses for food and housing. Not a bad arrangement on the tax payers dime.

One should ask what grade level she is. I’ll bet it’s in the very high level range.

Update #4. Doubling Down. So days ago she was so media shy she wouldn't give out her name. Sometime between then and now, Karen Kraushaar found her voice, doubling down on her history with Cain, telling ABC that Herman Cain is a "monster." And this is rich. Now she says that the reason she didn't want her name to be used is because she fears "retaliation" from Cain supporters. Darlin', you have the wrong party. That would be Democrats who would retaliate. OK, Cain is a monster. Would you care to elaborate on that, Karen? I guess not. ABC evidently decided not to print whatever else, if anything, she said. I guess information from these women will continue to dribble out, bit by bit, which is the strategy. This woman is starting to tick me off.

. . . . Like I said, dribs and drabs. ABC News has printed a longer article with a few more details. The Lawyer Joel Bennett now says that the complaint about the "monster" [I added that, he didn't] involved "multiple" unwanted advances by Cain over the course of "at least a month or two." Nothing further in the article about the "monster" characterization. You know, the guy at Penn State who was sodomizing little boys--I would characterize him as a "monster." A serial killer like Ted Bundy was a "monster." If what Cain was doing to her actually came up to the standard of monstrous, then clearly there would be people who would remember such over-the-top behavior. And also, this sort of thing by Cain wouldn't be a one-off; there would be women lined up around the block with similar complaints.

Am I the only one who would like to see Cain's fellow candidates come out at the debate tonight and defend him?

2011-11-08T13:38:00.005-06:00

Golddigger

Thats what women like this used to be called. Clearly, Sharon Bialek, 50 years old, is looking for a payday of some kind. Shes been called a smooth operator living way above her means. She was out of a job (fired) when she talked to Cain 14 years ago and shes apparently out of a job now. Seriously, she says shes kept this story about Cain to herself for 14 years, telling only two people during all that time about what happened to her. That was 1997. In 2000, Cain ran for president; in 2004, he ran for the U.S. senate. Cain entered the current presidential race in May. Where has this woman been with her story of scary sexual predator Herman Cain?

What has Sharon been doing all that time? Well, for one thing, Sharon is a courthouse frequent-flyer, plus shes been employed by nine different employers in 17 years.

Lets do a little timeline.

1991, her first personal bankruptcy. At that point her assets were $5,700; her liabilities were $36,000. She had four credit card companies after her seeking payment plus a landlord who wanted his back rent. At the same time she accused a former boyfriend of harassing her for repayment of a loan.

1993-1996, she worked for four different companies in promotion and marketing positions.

1996-1997, she worked for the National Restaurant Assn. When she was fired from that job, says she met with Herman Cain for help in getting another job.

1999, her son was born and a paternity lawsuit was filed by the father. Otherwise, I suppose she would be claiming that Herman Cain was her sons father.

2000 she was a defendant against Broadcare Management.

2000 she was a defendant in a lawsuit against Broadcare Management--twice.

2001, her second personal bankruptcy, filed after sizeable legal bills.

2001-2004, worked for WGN radio.

2005 she was a defendant in a lawsuit against Mr. Mark Teatovic.

2007 she was a defendant in a lawsuit against Midland Funding.

2009 she was a defendant in a lawsuit against Illinois Lending.

2009 the IRS filed a tax lein against her for $5,200. The State of Illinois was after her for more than $4,300, including penalties and interest.

Nine jobs, two bankruptcies, unpaid taxes, and in court just about every other year in the past decade. This is normal behavior in whose world? Andrea Peyser at the New York Post has a hilarious article about Sharon, describing her as prancing into the press conference yesterday with her lawyer, Gloria Allred, all tricked out in patent leather do-me pumps. The Boston Herald calls it a mixed portrait. And I just fell off my chair laughing, somewhat like Sharon did yesterday. Her demeanor when reading the script Gloria Allreds minions wrote for her was bordering on giddy.

Predictably, Mitt Romney came out today and said that the allegations are serious and must be addressed. So just like any good RINO or leftist, its the seriousness of the charge that is the important criterion. Just wait, Romney, your time is coming, but the left will wait to do their hit job on you until you become the Republican candidate.

2011-11-07T06:48:00.022-06:00

Herman Cain

Updates below.

[I still dont have my laptop apostrophe/double quotes key fixed. Annoying.] I dont care how you feel about this guy. What the media has done to this man over the past week is simply beyond belief, which I guess shows how seriously the Left takes this guy and his campaign. But its not just the Left. If you listen to just about every journalist out there, including conservative journalists, its pretty clear that all of them, for whatever reason, want Cain and his candidacy to disappear. The Washington wonks are wetting their pants over this guys numbers in the polls. Imagine if a guy like him, with lots of life experience and virtually no political experience, was actually elected. Their heads are spinning. So what do they do? What they do is, straight up, a high-tech lynching.

Jonathan Martin of Politico is the one who broke the story of Cain and the sexual harrassment from 15 years ago. That was a week ago, and 94 stories later they still dont have any more details (facts) than they had on day one. No wonder they call these sleezeballs the drive-by media. Heres what they have: Two unnamed female National Restaurant Assn employees lodged sexual harrassment complaints against Cain when he served as head of the trade association from 1996 to 1999. One reportedly received $45,000 while the other received $35,000. They dont have names and they dont have details.

No one knows what Cain was accused of doing. No one knows anything about the credibility of his accusers. One of the women was released from her confidentiality agreement by the NRA, but her lawyer, Joel Bennett, who is speaking for her in the media, has said that the unnamed woman sees no value in revealing additional details. As reported by the New York Post, the Restaurant Assn and the first woman entered into an agreement to resolve the matter without admission of liability. Mr. Cain was not party to that agreement. The second accuser was a short-term employee, according to the NYTimes, who reportedly (dont you love those weasle words?) received the severance pay because she was uncomfortable working for Cain.

As Lawyer Bennett told reporters, Theres an expression: Where theres smoke, theres fire. Lawyer Bennett was quoted as saying that the fact there is more than one accusation is meaningful. Seriously? How about the fact that there was a second accusation shows that someone decided she could get an easy cash settlement by piling on? Isnt that scenario at least as credible?

What they have is a five-figure settlement involving the CEO of a major corporation. A five-figure settlement, somewhere in the range of $35,000 to $45,000, is what it would take in lawyers fees to go to court and win a baseless harrassment suit. Harrassment suits are often resolved with the input of insurance companies, who have the power to force the insured to agree to settle or face loss of coverage. Its a legalized combination of blackmail and fraud, created by trial lawyers, insurance companies, and the courts.

Now the first woman, through Lawyer Bennett, has decided she wants to shield herself from the media frenzy. Lawyer Bennett: She has a life to live and a career, and she doesnt want to become another Anita Hill.

Jonathan Martin, the Politico hack who broke the story, was interviewed at MSNBC. When asked, What did Cain do? Martin replied: We have to be careful about that, obviously, because we are sensitive to the sourcing involved here. The MSNBC sycophant interviewing him nods his head seriously at that point. And also--what actually happened to these women as well--we want to be sensitive to that too. He says the women felt uncomfortable and unhappy about their treatment. We are just not going to get into the details of what happened with these women besides whats in the story. Breitbarts video of Martin talking on MSNBC is here.

Breaking News: It has been revealed that Jonathan Martin has been accused of untoward activity with a herd of goats in his basement. Details will not be forthcoming, however, as we want to be careful and sensitive to the sourcing involved here (that is, the goats). The lawyer for the goats has come out with a statement, saying that his clients see no value in discussing the incident further; however, said the lawyer, since there have been multiple accusations from the herd, the accusations are, of course, meaningful.

Some people are beginning to say that the media has overplayed its hand on this story about Cain. Do you think?

Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters writes that CNN in the past six days has also done at least 94 reports on the sexual harrassment allegations involving Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, while they did a total of 77 stories on Democratic candidate Barack Obama and his ties to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, convicted real estate developer Tony Rezko, and America-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Sheppard asks, Would Obama be president today if CNN had covered his scandals with the same gusto its now reporting Cains?

John Nolte at Big Journalism asks, How much is too much? And oh by the way, Nolte has looked at Politicos search engine and found that there have been fewer than 40 stories, total, about the Fast and Furious scandal since it broke months ago. Nolte continues, can we all come together and at least agree that the punishment doesnt fit the crime? Unnamed sources hurling unknown allegations from over a decade ago and Politico launches the story as though its *Watergate Two: The Reckoning* and does so quite intentionally on a Sunday night during a week when Cain has a number of high-profile appearances scheduled.

I agree with Nolte, who says I don’t know if Cain is guilty of what he’s accused of. Hell, I don’t even know what he’s been accused of other than making a few women uncomfortable and what Politico themselves described as gestures of “a non-sexual nature.” What I do know are the facts I see above, and they all point to a coordinated attempt to take out another one of our candidates with an unprecedented media assault.

Politico and their MSM counterparts treat us like political enemies. Unless we want four more years of Obama, I suggest we return the favor. Amen to that, brother.

Update. Cain leads the Republican presidential field by 15 percentage points in Iowa, according to a new poll taken four days after news broke of accusations of sexual harrassment. Among Iowa GOP caucus-goers, Cain has 30%, Romney 15%, Newt Gingrich 12%, Ron Paul 9%, Michelle Bachmann 8%, Rick Perry 6% and our hero from the Sunday talk shows, RINO Jon Huntsman bringing up the elephants rear end at 2%.

The poll indicates that Iowans react to the unnamed sources with their unknown allegations with one big yawn. It also says, and Washington Wonks might want to take note of this, that candidates who have spent more time and have better organization in Iowa have fared worse than Herman Cain.

Update #2. Just one example of a Washington wonk dismissing Cain and his supporters. Bill Kristol was on Fox News Sunday yesterday, where he said that regardless of his popularity and whether or not the harrassment scandal will hurt or help him, Herman Cain was never going to be the Republican nominee. He calls the support for Cain a symbol of conservative and Republican distrust of the frontrunners, a willingness to reward someone for being bold, for being an outsider--but the air is going to slowly go out of the Herman Cain bubble.

Update #3. Gloria Alred just came out with her client, a woman who says Cain grabbed for her genitals (what--you mean he missed?), although she never filed a complaint. So is this how its done? Is this how we take down EVERY CANDIDATE not acceptible to the mainstream media? We just find somone to accuse them of sexual harrassment and then say--well, if its not true, then prove that its not true. For the love of God. A country gets the government it deserves. If we let the left do this to us, and then choose our candidate for us, then we DESERVE to have Barack Hussein Obama re-elected to a second term and then watch him take apart this country piece by piece. Maybe when the left is finished destroying this country, then we can stand back and watch while they destroy each other.I have an idea--move to Texas, and then vote for seccession.

Update #4. The accuser from yesterday is named Sharon Bialek, from Chicago. The statement Cain released is here. Unfortunately, I dont see how Cain recovers from this one. Gloria Allred is a piece of work. Shes the same person who brought Meg Whitmans undocumented housekeeper before the cameras; Whitman subsequently lost the gubernatorial election. Allreds quote is priceless: If all of these allegations are true, then I for one am disgusted at Mr. Cains serial sexual harassment of women. So if they are not true. . . how exactly would Cain prove that? Regardless, I think the man is toast.

I dont mean to be catty here, but Allred couldnt have found a better candidate to put a *face* on these accusations if she had chosen this woman from central casting. This is from the website Free Republic: We have been doing internet searches on Sharon Bialek. Her linkedin and all social networking/employer networking sites where her name appears seem to have been scrubbed. When you are telling the truth, why make the attempt to scrub your past? It doesnt prove anything, but its an interesting factoid nonetheless.

Last night someone had the Rachel Maddow show turned on so loudly in another room that I couldnt ignore it. (If you listen to Maddow without watching her, she sounds like a crazy person, by the way. Maybe she sounds like a crazy person even if you do watch her, although I wouldnt know because I dont watch her show.) Anyway, I heard someone on the show say, Weve gotten rid of Donald Trump; weve gotten rid of Michelle Bachmann; weve gotten rid of Rick Perry; now weve gotten rid of Herman Cain (oh, and dont forget, you also got rid of Sarah Palin). Whos next?

Update #5. OK, heres NUMBER FIVE: Fifth woman raises questions about Cains behavior. And so it goes. What she has to say is even less than he-said, she-said. Its less than nothing, except that something about Cain made her uncomfortable--but this is how Republican candidates will be taken down from now on--dont doubt me.

Update #6. OK, Im going to stop with the updates and just continue on. This is Tuesday morning, and Im thinking we are going to hear about this all day long.

This is from the Chicago Sun-Times: Witness: Cain accuser hugged him during Tea Party meeting a month ago. The upshot of the article is that someone witnessed Sharon Bialeks encounter with Cain last month in Chicago. This morning where naturally shes having a high time making the rounds of the morning shows, she says, I shook his hand, and he remembered me. He looked a little uncomfortable. Contrary to Bialeks statement, the witness says they hugged each other backstage in a full embrace like old friends. Then she grabbed his arm and whispered in his ear. The witness is WIND radio co-host Amy Jacobson. She said when she turned on her TV to see who was accusing Cain, I almost fell over. . . . I was surprised to hear she claims she did not know Cain was going to be there, since the witness recalls that Bialek was hell bent on going backstage . . . where she cornered him. The encounter looked sort of flirtatious. . . . I had no idea what they were talking about, but she was inches from his ear. This witness says she had encountered Bialek at the bar earlier in the evening, where she said she was anxious to meet Cain again and had once gone to an afterparty with him and her boyfriend years ago.

The money line from the article: Bialek has since applied for employment in sales at WIND radio and is scheduled for a second interview Thursday.

Evidently there are plenty of people in Chicago who know this Sharon Bialek. As they say, she has a history. Right now shes having a grand old time making the rounds in New York City. I just saw her on the Today show, her tarted up look from yesterday toned down a bit for the morning crowd. This morning she also appeared on CNN, ABCs Good Morning America, and CBSs The Early Show.

She just showed up on Fox News, so obviously shes not done yet.

Also early this morning, the pushback against this woman has begun. Bill Kurtis, a prominent Chicago radio personality, says that given her track record, if you put Sharon and Herman together in the car at the same time, the roles may even have been reversed. She has a history. I can assure you there will be far more to the story. Theres a lot more to the story and its just developing.

You can hear Bill Kurtis at WLS this morning. So he says the woman has a history, if you put Sharon and Herman together in the car, the roles may actually have been reversed as to who was the aggressor, based on her past conduct. Hilarious, since what Kurtis is doing here is pretty much what Politico and others did to Cain for a solid week--a hit job based on speculation and innuendo.

A website called LegalInsurrection is all over this. Heres another website, MacsMind: Sharon Bailek [sic], Remembered by a co-worker as a time-waster and rabble-rouser. If she didnt get her way she cried sexual harassment. Now that comes from an anonymous email source--at least I dont have a name for the person who wrote that email, but as we know from the Left, its the seriousness of the charge that counts, and that seems pretty serious to me. Sharon, can you prove what this person wrote about you isnt true?

I have a question: If Bialek wanted to talk to Herman Cain about a job, why didnt she ask for a meeting in his office?

2011-11-01T06:20:00.009-05:00

NRA to Holder: Resign!

The National Rifle Association is calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign over Operation Fast and Furious. His part in the scandal can be summed up this way: either 1) a lethally irresponsible knowledge (and presumed authorization of the program) or 2) a lethally irresponsible ignorance of the program. Either way, Holder needs to go.

No surprise, Obama has come out and said he has complete confidence in his attorney general. Big O might want to rethink that stance. As late as this past October, Obama stated that Holder indicated he was not aware of what was happening in Fast and Furious, and then added, Certainly, I was not. Certainly. Maybe you have spent too many hours on the golf course, Barry, instead of paying attention to what is going on in your own administration.

Roger Aranoff, editor of Accuracy in Media, has written a commentary wondering: Will Fast and Furious Topple Obama and Holder? The October 21 article begins: As much as the media have tried shielding the Obama administration from responsibility for corruption and malfeasance, the combined weight of the fallout from the Solyndra fiasco and the Operation Fast and Furious scandal have begun taking a serious toll on the administration.

Aranoff says that many times when scandal hits, it is the coverup rather than the wrongdoing that eventually takes down a politician: example, Richard Nixon and Watergate, Bill Clinton and Lewinsky, and of course our recent friend, Anthony Weiner and WeinerGate. However, in some cases, the crime or the lapse in judgement is definitely worse than the coverup. That appears to be the case in the simmering scandal, Operation Fast and Furious, engulfing the Obama administration that the mainstream media have tried their best to ignore for many months.

Aranoff goes on in the article to give an excellent synopsis of F&F, tells about the one person in the mainstream media who has been reporting on the program, Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, and give details of Holders testimony before Congress where he later stated he misunderstood the question. (OK, then, Eric, that is proof enough for me that you are not up to holding the office.) Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, has publicly accused Holder of a lack of trustworthiness.

Holder will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee next Tuesday, November 8, where it is hoped Holder will be asked to explain the multiple documents and memos addressed to him in 2010 about the program--and how he squares that information with his testimony that he only knew about the program in May of 2011. Holder has explained in a letter to Congress that he did not read those memos. Seriously? You know, Eric, that excuse might work if you are an affirmative action scholar at Columbia, but it doesnt work in the real world. Really.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking member of that committee, has been investigating the program since last January. Previously Sen. Grassley has accused Eric Holders Justice Department of a cover-up by limiting information to Congress. Grassley has been working closely on the matter with Rep. Darrell Issa. Both Grassley and Issa have complained about the slow document production, excessive redaction in the documents that have been given to the committee, as well as alleged misinformation from the Justice Department. Said Issa: There are two kinds of coverups. There is one in which you lie to people in order to mislead them. There is also one in which you delay and deny in an attempt to simply not have the facts come out. Issa has called the redaction excessive. We have the unredacted versions from the whistleblowers. We believe they did excess redacting, which again is denying us that which would be reasonable to deliver to us. We are hoping that has changed. We hope that...there is in fact a change in the administrations view in order not to be embarrassed.

Currently there are 17 congressional representatives calling for Holder to resign. Now we can also add the National Rifle Association, which has launched a national campaign calling for Holders resignation. Call the president and tell him you want Holder to be held accountable.

Update. The Holder resignation drumbeat is getting louder. Eleven more congressmen have called for Holders resignation, bringing the total up to 28 members as of the end of Monday. They want him to resign immediately. So late Monday, the Justice Department responded by dumping more than 650 pages about Operation Fast & Furious on congressional investigators. Read the article at The Daily Caller.

Update #2. For more about the corruption and ineptitude of the ObamaTeam (TM) Justice Department headed by Attorney General Eric Holder, read the new book by whistleblower J. Christian Adams, Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.

Note: My single and double apostrophe key isnt working, so until its fixed, this site will have to be written without the apostrophe and quotation marks. For some, thats no big deal; for me, the misuse and abuse of the apostrophe is one of my pet hates. Oh woe.

2011-10-27T10:20:00.006-05:00

Listen up, Obama: I will not pay for Suzy Creamcheese's
$212,000 George Washington University "Education"

Obama is bailing out the current student loan crowd, by executive order. Or in other words, he hopes to buy as many votes as possible in 2012 from the 33 million voters who are under 30.

Here's how it works. Sad, sad Suzy Creamcheese decided to major in Art History at George Washington University, borrowing $212,000. Evidently Suzy was not conversant with the meaning of the term "borrow." Since her Art History degree makes her virtually unemployable in her field, Suzy decides to heed Big O's call for public service where she takes a service job making $25,000 a year (recall, Suzy has a debt of $212,000, which doesn't even count the credit card debt she ran up when she was living large for four years at school).

Enter Obama with his new plan to bail out the 36 million "students" with school loans. Under his plan, based on her income, Suzy's payments will be limited to $1,411 a year after the $10,890 of poverty-level income is subtracted from her total exposure. Unlike Obama and his Team (TM), and also I'm just guessing, unlike Suzy, who voluntarily took out the $212,000 loan to attend four years at college, I can do math. Since O's plan will limit the life of the loan to 20 years, and since Suzy will be paying less than $1,500 per year on the loan, that means that taxpayers (that is, you and me) will recoup from our little Suzy a grand total of $28,220 on her $212,000 loan. HEY KIDS, FREE MONEY! How cool is that?

Can I get a deal like this? I want to buy a $212,000 second home. I want to pay about $100 a month for it, and I'd really like my obligation for paying off the loan to end after 20 years, because after all, by that time I'll be up in years and I'll want to be spending my money on other things. I'll have paid off less than $30,000 on that loan, but I think that should be plenty. So what government program can I sign up for that will cut me that deal?

Now if Suzy can also get Obama to give her a plan by executive order to forgive her credit card debt, she will be in jake shape. That shouldn't be hard, since Obama's justification for the student bailout is this: since these nitwits will now have more money to spend every month (save?--are you stupid?), that money will juice the economy. So just forgive all their debt why don't you, Barry, and then our economy will burn right along.

Obama, you fracking jerk. And yet we have no one but ourselves to blame, as he told us he was going to fundamentally change this country.

h/t to Chris Stirewait for the numbers at "Obama Taps Taxpayers for Student Loans," FoxNews.com.

Update. It's all here at Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog, the best blog in the blogosphere. Hi-larious, if you can stop crying.

Update #2. See the article A college-loan scam posted at the New York Post. The staggering inflation in the cost of higher education since the federal government got involved in lending money to Americans for college in 1965 beggars description. One federal study found that between 1982 and 2007, tuition costs rose 432 percent while family income rose only 147 percent.

2011-10-20T07:11:00.002-05:00

"Who Are You With?" --Seriously?

Jason Mattera from Human Events, asking Biden if he regretted the rape language he used when defending O's "jobs" bill. Clearly Biden ~~doesn't like~~ isn't used to being asked the tough questions. Look at the finger-poke to the chest that he gives to Mattera: "Don't screw around with me." But the best line comes at the very end, when the screechy-voiced woman Biden-handler asks Mattera, "Who are you with?"

Hilariously, Biden's "defense" of O's bill is that "murder is up, rape is up, burglarly is up." So crime is "up" in the Obama administration, according to Joe Biden. The O administration is admitting here that their law enforcement efforts are so bad that crime is up on their watch. This stuff just writes itself for the Republicans. Uncle Joe, you're a gaffe a minute!

2011-10-18T08:43:00.010-05:00

Delicious Irony of the Day (maybe the whole year)

I know, I said I couldn't post on these OWS maroons, but seriously, this article from the NYPost is just too good to pass up: "Thieves preying on fellow protesters." And these people who are occupying someone else's property and say they have no intention of leaving are SHOCKED that someone is stealing their stuff.

Oh, boo hoo. Who could have seen this coming? "Packs of brazen crooks" have infiltrated the WTF/OWS, robbing their "fellow demonstrators" of pricey cameras, phones, laptops, donated cash, and food. One of them was whining that she had her $5,500 Mac stolen. Another was robbed of his "special bed" that he'd brought with him because of his bad back. No, you can't make this stuff up.

Security volunteer Harry Wyman, 22, has "vowed to get tough" with the predators. What's he going to do--whine them into submission? Gee, here's an idea: CALL THE COPS. I bet they'll be happy to rush right down and help out. Your best bet might be to ask Obama to send some goons who will beat beat up these thieves so that you don't have to get your precious little hands dirty. RENDITION FOR OWS! Heh.

So here's a question: Why aren't these people thrilled about fellow demonstrators taking what they "need"? You would think that they would be happy to be "giving something back" to people who obviously don't have what they have. From each according to their ability; to each according to their need. Right? Obviously the guy who stole the $5,500 Mac didn't have one and needed the one he found on the ground, so he took it. So what's her complaint, exactly? She wants to take money out of my pocket because she "needs" it to pay for her college loans, so how is people "taking" money, cash, beds, phones, etc. from her any different? Oh, and what's the chance that she actually paid for that Mac out of money from a student loan that she never intends to repay? I'm guessing about 99%.

Update. As long as I'm posting about the P-OWS, I might as well post a link to an article at American Thinker: "OWS links." Thomas Lifson has written this article, saying that the movement is a "serious, orchestrated effort, promoted by media anxious to counter the growth of the tea parties. It bears the closest possible scrutiny."

In the article are links for these categories:

Jew Hatred
Violence
Filth
Profanity
Drone Drumming
Misc. Stupidity, Absurdity, Debauchery, Hypocrisy &/Or Irony
MSM Coverage
Commentary
Financial Cost
Endorsement/Support from Public Officials & Others
Endorsements from Repressive Dictators & Dubious Groups/Individuals
Revolution to Overthrow Our Government
OWS Fundraising & Commercialization
Counter Movement: 53%

2011-10-16T14:48:00.000-05:00

I simply cannot post about these juvenile, smelly whiners
who are "occupying" Wall Street. I cannot do it.

2011-10-12T09:26:00.005-05:00

Obama's Presidency Is Imploding

Now if only the MSM would report on it--but make no mistake, with the help of the MSM or not, O is going down. And the MSM can go down right along with him, as far as I'm concerned. Reading around the internet about what's going on with the Obama administration these days, it's possible to believe he won't even last until 2012.

This morning Drudge has a picture perfect example of the difference three years makes in people's attitudes about our Affirmative Action President.

Here's an Obama rally, Pittsburgh 2008:

And here's the latest Obama rally, Pittsburgh 2011. The difference is so obvious, even oblivious, narcissistic O must be able to see it.

An article came out in the Washington Post the other day titled "Obama, the loner president." It could just as easily been titled "Obama the Loser." If you read the entire article, you get the impression that the young writer (Scott Wilson) was trying in some way to compliment, or at the very least, excuse O for his very odd style, "enduring with little joy" the people smarts that most politicians are so good at. The article begins well enough, but then it veers off onto a course where he seems to be trying to excuse O's strange behavior. The article was mainly confused and very much inside-the-beltway twaddle. However, it's interesting that any such article would appear in the WP.

A better article is one posted today at American Thinker: "The Obama Problem," by Monty Pelerin. "President Obama's political career is in free-fall. He will not be reelected. Many Democrats and media personalities now understand what appeared impossible even mere months ago. . . . To put matters in perspective, it took George Bush almost eight years to hit bottom. And Bush always had little support from the media, a force that continues to protect Obama." The article continues: "President Obama is little more than a run-of-the-mill Hollywood extra hired to play president of the United States. A brilliant marketing campaign coupled with the perfect storm put him in office. . . . the "man with no past." .... Obama's only strength was Axelrod's ability to play on the imagination of voters. That strength no longer exists. . . . Richard Nixon was never liked, but he was at least thought competent. Obama was liked but was never competent." etc.

Then recently there was a very disturbing piece about Obama becoming increasingly isolated, even within his own administration: "Aimless Obama walks alone," in the New York Post. "The reports are not good, disturbing even. I have heard basically the same story four times in the last 10 days, and the people doing the talking are in New York and Washington and are spread across the political spectrum. The gist is this: President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government. He talks mostly, and sommetimes only, to friend and advisor Valerie Jarrett and to David Axelrod, his political strategist." This sort of thing makes a person hope that there are people responsible for watching this guy and GETTING HIM OUT if his pathology gets out of control.

Then there's the current Ulsterman Report from White House Insider: "They Are Cumbling in Amongst Themselves." At first these reports from Ulsterman were simply amusing; however, as the things reported on were found more and more to be true, the credibility of these reports has increased along with their very troubling nature. "Regarding the dynamics of the White House at this time it is same as it ever was which is batsh-t crazy 24/7 there." He paints a portrait of Michelle Obama that is hardly flattering (no surprise): "those inside know she is as big a potential liability as anything associated with the administration. They are using her in controlled environments only. That's the word from on high." --Which goes along with yesterday's report that FLOTUS was leading a "jumping jacks" challenge out on the White House South Lawn. I mean really, I guess she can't get herself or the administration into too much trouble doing that. Just once I would like to see this woman interacting with a white child. Consistently, however, she is shown surrounded only by non-white children. It hardly matters, though, since this woman has made herself such an irrelevancy with her "fashion icon" status, her expensive trips taken at taxpayers' expense, and her refusal to engage in any meaningful way with her position as First Lady. Seriously, who would have thought that the nation's first African American First Lady would be such a nonentity?

Here she is doing her "Eleanor Roosevelt does exercise" imitation. Seriously, what's with that hair? The Black Eleanor Roosevelt is the only thing that comes to mind. Michelle, you are no Eleanor Roosevelt.

Update. The news this morning, Wednesday, is that Rep. Darrell Issa has subpoenaed Att Gen Eric Holder in the "Fast and Furious" investigation. Issa's letter to holder was nuclear. Now this: "Top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Holder, know more about Operation Fast and Furious than they have publicly acknowledged," Issa's statement read. "The documents this subpoena demands will provide answers to questions that Justice officials have tried to avoid since this investigation began eight months ago. It's time we know the whole truth."

Then there's an article about another failed solar panel company that received government funds: "SunPower: Twice as Bad as Solyndra, Twice as Bad for Obama." This failing company received a $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee. Just how many failures and scandals does it take to remove a Democrat president? I guess we'll find out.

2011-10-05T07:34:00.005-05:00

Radical, Out-of-control, Obscenity-slinging Tea Partiers
Inflict Their Racist Torch Parade on St. Louis /

And here's an example of one of the extremists in the crowd. h/t to Jim Hoft at GatewayPundit for the photo.

President Obama came to our town last night to raise more dough for his re-election campaign. Good thing Obama doesn't have a day job, since we know what kind of a work ethic the guy has--you wouldn't expect him to be working night and day, would you? Tom Carnahan, brother of failed Senate candidate Robin and Representative Russ Carnahan, spawn of a well-connected Missouri Democrat family (children of Mel Carnahan, former Missouri governor and the Widow Carnahan, who replaced her husband--oh, those Carnahans), hosted a $25,000-per-person fundraiser on Tuesday night at his home in St. Louis city. Tom Carnahan was awarded $107 million of stimulus dollars for his Missouri wind farm, Lost Creek Farm, so the fundraiser was a "Thank you, Obama" event--or "pay for play," if you will.

The St. Louis Tea Party was there to greet the President.

Rush Limbaugh, a Missouri native, was all over the Carnahan fundraiser, calling it a "money laundering operation. Tom Carnahan gets money from Obama for a fake solar company and then hosts a fundraiser for Obama. . . . So what Obama has done, and numerous times, is generate campaign contributions that are taxpayer dollars." You can read the entire transcript of Lindbaugh's remarks here.

Update. In a related story, discounted access to First Lady Michael Obama is being sold for an upcoming D.C. fundraiser for Barry Soetoro's re-election campaign. Originally asking $1,000, access to the self-absorbed FLOTUS has been marked down to $250. "Make a contribution of any amount today so your commitment can be represented in the financials that pundits will be dissecting in the weeks ahead." Snort.

2011-10-01T08:52:00.001-05:00

TeaCon Midwest this Weekend

If you haven't heard about it, this is what's going on this weekend in Chicago: TeaCon Midwest, bringing together "Tea Party activists, conservatives, and like-minded citizens from around the Midwest for a unique event that will seek to educate, inspire, and activate."

Here's a link at HotAir to the kickoff by Steven Crowder. This guy is hilarious and of course politically incorrect, which evidently continues to twist up the sad sacks on the Left who have no sense of humor about themselves or anyone else, judging from what they have to say about him.

Don't even bother googling "teacon midwest 2011," since Google will take you to HuffingtonPost, which of course is exactly my go-to site for information about this event. Google sucks.

2011-09-29T12:55:00.001-05:00

If you have work...

...don't whine, work hard, do a good job...even if it isn't the job of your dreams. There are a whole lot of people out there who would be happy to take your job.

Cripes, this is starting to remind me a whole lot of 1974--and then after that we got Carter. For those too young to remember those nasty, bad times--you're lucky.

2011-09-29T07:06:00.002-05:00

Chris Christie's Address at the Reagan Library

It seems a shame that what Christie had to say the other night has been overshadowed by the "will he-won't he" BS in the media. If you've forgotten what a leader looks like because of the inexperienced whackjob in the White House, watch Christie speak.

"It is a simple but powerful message," said Christie. "Lead on the tough issues by telling your citizens the truth about the depth of our challenges." Christie said that Obama hasn't found the courage to lead, and he labeled Obama a "bystander in the Oval Office" who is dividing the country to "achieve re-election." He was similarly critical of Congress.

"When there is a problem, you fix it...and you can't wait for someone else to do it when you're in the Oval Office."

Here's the text.

Here's a video of the speech.

2011-09-23T16:23:00.001-05:00

Is there any good news out there?

This was the Dow's worst week since October 2008.

2011-09-21T08:56:00.001-05:00

Solargate

I'm a news junkie, and I remember well when the whole Watergate mess was unfolding, the hearings being held, and finally when Nixon was forced to resign. It never seemed inevitable, at the time, that Nixon would have to go.

I'm starting to hear a drumbeat in the media: Barack Obama is in more trouble with this Solyndra mess than he thinks. Political survival trumps loyalty. The Democrats know that their careers are on the line if they can't do something about this inept Obamafraud before 2012, and in the Solyndra debacle they may have found the answer to their problem.

Here's an article at American Thinker by Monty Pelerin: "Will Scandal Drive Obama Off the 2012 Ticket? "The reality is that Obama is spent. His false magic is no longer. He has become a cartoon figure to many Americans and more foreigners. Familiarity has produced contempt. He is a fraud, a man who never was anything other than a carefully scripted and wonderfully executed marketing campaign. . . . Snake oil is never purchased a second time." Perelin says a tipping point for this president has been reached "in the last month or so. The myth of Obama has ended. There is now open talk from the media that Obama cannot win in 2012."

Perelin says, and I think it makes perfect sense, that the mainstram media isn't interested in covering for a failed candidate. They have to realize how much credibility they've lost in the minds of their consumers of news: "The press is more interested in saving what credibility they have left, rather than justifying an increasingly indefensible and broken presidency." Perlerin believes that entrepreneurs within journalism's ranks are likely to focus on filling in the blanks of Obama's missing past. "Now that it is acceptable to attack, if not destroy, the fallen hero, look for lots of new information to come out. . . . This is a very dangerous time for the president."

Pelerin links to a very interesting website in his article at zerohedge.com: "Why was Congress forced to subpoena head of Obama's Budget Office to get info on Solyndra?" Be sure to check out the slideshow. Those slides are devastating for ObamaTeam.

Here's a Reuter's article about crony capitalism and Solyndra: "Solyndra, the logical endpoint of Obamanomics." --"At its core, Obamanomics is about the top-down redistribution of wealth and income. Government spending on various "green" subsidies and programs, along with a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions, would enrich key Democrat constituencies: lawyers, public sector unions, academia, and non-profits. . . . Obamanomics, essentially, would divert taxpayer dollars to the Green Lobby--and then into the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party. . . . And Obama almost pulled it off." It's a great read.

Here's Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review Online: "The Solyndra Fraud." --"The Solyndra debacle is not just Obama-style crony socialism as usual. It is criminal fraud." McCarthy goes on to describe the "sweetheart deal" signed off on by the Obama Energy Department--"cozily connected private investors would be given priority over American taxpayers" when the company went belly-up. And as McCarthy points out, criminal law targets anyone who attempts to influence the issuance of government loans by making false statements. "The penalties are steep: Fraud in connection with government loans, for example, can be punished by up to 30 years in the slammer." This long article is a must-read for understanding just how much trouble Solyndra may be, not just for people in Obama's administration, but for Obama himself.

How does it end? asks Perlerin. "My guess is that investigations go forward and are used to leverage Obama out of office. He will 'choose' not to run for reelection. He understands Chicago-style politics, even when he is on the wrong end."

2011-09-18T12:42:00.004-05:00

Finally...

Are we finally seeing realistic analysis of Barack Obama coming from the lamestream media? In an article at National Post, written by Rex Murphy: "The media's love affair with a disastrous president."

I just have one question. Where were these people in 2007-2008? Murphy informs us that much of the Obama coverage during the campaign and his first couple of years as president was "orchestrated sychophancy [sic]." NO KIDDING. So where were you, Rex Murphy, when this guy was campaigning for his first term as president?

From Murphy's article: "The media trashed Hillary. They burned Republicans. They ransacked Sarah Palin and her family. But Obama, the cool, the detached, the oracular Obama--he strolled to the presidency."

This is a good article and worth the read: "Palin, in particular, stands out as Obama's opposite in the media's eyes. As much as they genuflected to the one [the Won], they felt the need to turn rotweiler toward the other. If Obama was sacred, classy, intellectual, and cosmopolitann, why then Palin must be malevolent, trashy, dumb, and pure backwoods-ignorant."

Update. Then there's the Chicago Tribune, editorializing that maybe it's time for Obama to withdraw from 2012: "Why Obama should withdraw" by Steve Chapman, who says "The vultures are starting to circle."

Then on one of the Sunday shows, George Will delivered a really devastating smackdown of The Won: "His default position is to give a speech. He has astonishing faith in his persuasive powers. It's refuted by the evidence. He went to Massachusetts to campaign against Scott Brown. Brown is now a senator. He went to New Jersey to campaign against Chris Christie, who is now governor. He went to Virginia to campaign against Bob McDonnell, who is now governor. He campaigned for the health care plan extensively. It became less popular. He campaigned in 2010 for the Democrats. They were shellacked. He began, in a sense, his presidency flying to Copenhagen to get Chicago the Olympics. Chicago was the first city eliminated. There is no evidence that the man has rhetorical powers that he is relying on."

Oh, and P.S. This is reported by the Los Angeles Times. We recall how urgently Obama has been speaking about passing the jobs bill "Now!" Even though it's taken him 961 days of his presidency to talk so urgently about jobs. So where is the bill that the president is so urgently browbeating to pass NOW? Well, it hasn't actually been written yet, but it will probably be ready in a week or two. And then it won't be taken up by the Senate until sometime after they return from "recess."

This is from Candy Crowley on CNN's "State of the Union":

CROWLEY: When is the bill going to get to the floor?

DURBIN [Dick Durbin, Democrat Senator]: The bill is on the calendar. Majority leader Reid moved it to the calendar. It is read and poised. There are a couple other items we may get into this week not on the bill and some related issues that may create jobs. But we're going to move forward on the president's bill. There will be a healthy debate. I hope the Republicans will come to...

CROWLEY: After the recess, so next month? Or when will it actually begin to act on?

DURBIN: I think that's more realistic it would be next month.

2011-09-15T07:49:00.006-05:00

The Solyndra Obscene Boondoggle Scandal

I can't help but wonder, when is one of these scandals surrounding the Obama administration actually going to stick to the Bamboozler-in-Chief? Will the Solyndra scandal be the one? If you haven't been keeping up with this one (and who can, with all the crap going on in this administration), here's the cliffnotes version at Townhall.com.

Mark Levin is all over this thing, and The Right Scoop (Sept. 14) has the audio from Levin's radio show.

Levin had a caller a week ago who was a self-described "low level" employee at Solyndra. Levin says, "She made it quite clear that this was fraud from day one, and even she, a fairly "low level" worker, quote, unquote, was well-aware that this was unfeasible from day one. We now know there are emails, from certain individuals, senior up in the Obama administration, suggesting they not pursue this. We know the money came from the phoney stimulus bill. We know there were meetings with executives at the White House, and we know that top executives of this firm contributed heavily to the Obama campaign."

This is the "green" company that received half a billion in taxpayer money from the Obama stimulus bill. Levin says that this was a Potemkin Village, and the problem is, it went bankrupt too fast--it was meant to last at least until after the 2012 election.

Levin: "In the name of green energy, in the name of the environment, they think they can get away with anything, folks."

So we're hearing that the Treasury Department, the FBI, and the Energy Department are all pursuing investigations into this obscene fraud. Since the "loan" given to this company was arranged by the Energy Department, isn't this like the fox guarding the hen house? Just askin'.

A House panel is looking into the role the White House played in the half a billion dollar loan to the company. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations began hearings yesterday, Sept. 14, into the approval of the loan to Solyndra. The chairman of the committee is Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.).

From the website Human Events, and article by Audrey Hudson: "House Panel Probes White House Role in Solyndra Loan" - "Republicans said Solyndra was the hallmark of the President's green jobs program and widely promoted by the administration as a stimulus success story, right up until its bankruptcy and FBI raid. [Energy] Secretary Chu did attend the groundbreaking even on Sept. 4, and Biden spoke at the ceremony via satellite."

Naturally the White House is now in full ass-covering mode. Yes, hilariously they're blaming...wait for it...George Bush!

Updates to follow...

Update. This is from American Thinker, "Solyndra is just the tip of the iceberg," by Ed Lasky.

Update #2. From Jon Stewart and the Daily Show. I might just have to start watching this guy. This is hilarious. h/t Michelle Obama's Mirror's blog

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

2011-09-12T08:30:00.008-05:00

Are we getting the whole story?

UPDATE: Whoo-hoo! The Republican won the Dem New York House seat; the Republican won the Dem Nevada House seat. Mark Amodei won in Nevada over Dem Kate Marshall in an election that two weeks ago was considered a shoe-in for the Dem. Last night the Republican won: 57 to 36 percent. Amodei's closing message: "We've been promised recovery, and we've been given misery. Let's send a message to Washington."

Obama is poison in Nevada; Obama is poison in New York. Who would have thought? /sarc.

Despite the fact that the Queens County Democrat Party machine kicked into high gear, Dem David Weprin lost over Rep Bob Turner. With 80% of the precincts reporting, the race wasn't even close: 54% for the Republican and 46% for the Dem. The district has NEVER SENT A REPUBLICAN TO THE HOUSE. Democrats have a 3-1 ratio registration advantage in the district. The Dem candidate should have won: an Orthodox Jew and member of a prominent Queens political family, he should have won easily in this largely white, working-class district which is nearly 40% Jewish. The Republican is a Roman Catholic former media executive and "political novice." Wow. Simply wow.

UPDATE #2: Read Andrew Breitbart's story at BigGovernment: "After Turner Earthquake in Weiner District, Democrats' Civil War Against Obama Begins." Says Breitbart: "I predict a tectonic shift among American Jews and within the Democratic Party if Obama doesn't quietly retire....Many Democrats are awakening to the reality that their party has been hijacked by a radicalism completely unfamiliar to their parents' and grandparents' Democratic Party." Amen, Brother.

********************************************************

The obivous answer to that question is "No." The "story" I'm referring to is how badly--really--is Barack Obama doing in the polls? Tomorrow people in New York's 9th Congressional District are going to vote for a new representative to replace the disgraced Anthony Weiner. As of yesterday the Republican, Bob Turner was showing numbers that would have him pulling off a huge upset: Turner leads Dem David Weprin 47-41, with the Socialist Worker candidate at 4% and "undecided" at 7%.

This is a heavily Democrat district, and an article at Public Policy Polling says Turner is leading for two reasons: He's ahead by 32 points with independents; and he's winning 29% of the Democrat vote.

"If Turner wins on Tuesday it will be largely due to the incredible unpopularity of Barack Obama dragging his party down in the district. Obama won 55% there in 2008 but now has a staggeringly bad 31% approval rating, with 56% of voters disapproving of him. It's a given that Republicans don't like him but more shocking are his 16% approval rating with independents and the fact that he's below 50% even with Democrats at 465 approving and 38% disapproving."

Ouch! If these numbers for the 9th District are even close, it's more than realistic to believe that Barack Hussein Obama may be in for the biggest epic fail in 2012 that any sitting president has ever had for a second term election. Stay tuned for tomorrow's election results. You have to wonder at some point if the Dems are having second thoughts about their guy running for a second term.

The "War Room" at Salon.com is saying that the race is "actually pretty meaningless"--seriously?--since the 9th District "is liable to be redistricted out of existence soon." That seems to me to be missing the point. This is New York City, and it was a formerly safe seat for ANY Democrat. A Siena College poll has Turner at 50% to 44% for his Dem opponent. The Salon article, naturally, says nothing about the reasons for the vote going for the Republicans, except to say that these voters are a "pro-Israel crowd" and "some residents are a bit... wary of President Obama." Good grief, that's some spin. At the end of the article, they do admit, however, that the psychological effect of a Democrat loss in the district "would be devastating--And that's why the DCCC is throwing a ton of money into a pointless race."

The leftist press--still carrying water for Barack Hussein. Let's see where that gets them in 2012.

P.S. The photog above is Obama at Shanksville, PA yesterday, greeting attendees at the Wall of Names, the newly dedicated Flight 93 memorial. One of his handlers should have told him that this really wasn't a "grip & grin" campaign opportunity--that it was actually a solemn occasion.

2011-09-11T08:51:00.000-05:00

September 11, 2011

2011-09-10T10:33:00.010-05:00

Good Lord, this woman has serious anger issues

This is one seriously angry black woman--and I could respect her for that--except, what exactly is the source of her rage? For the love of God, Michelle Robinson was handed a seat at Princeton and at Harvard Law, not because she earned a place at either school, but because she was born black in 1964. Did she really think that her affirmative action status put her on a par with people who earned their way? She was one of only a handful of blacks at the prestigious law firm in Chicago, Sidley Austin (yeah, I bet she sure "earned her way" into that job). She was handed a $300,000 job at the U of Chicago Hospital system, where she "rarely" showed up for work for the last year she was there (the job was eleminated once she left).

I'm really tired of this woman's angry, nasty attitude. She's been handed things all her life. I guess that goes to show how little good giving handouts does for people.

And what the hell is this? Here's the First Lady of the Land responding to the recent Jobs Speech given by Barack Obama at the joint session of Congress. What a selfish, self-aborbed bitch she is, telegraphing to anyone watching her disgust/disdain/or whatever it was that she wanted to communicate. When I was a kid, if I had tried using that nasty, sulky face in public, my mother would have told me to stand up straight and put a smile on my face.

P.S. Michelle, here's a tip. Your "guns" are no longer toned; your self-indulgent elitist lifestyle has made you FAT. Cover up. She was the only one in the room that night in sleeveless attire. It's time for her to get a clue--she is no fashion icon, no matter what Essence Magazine says about her.

2011-08-31T15:29:00.000-05:00

Not a Good Summer for O'Bummer

The latest Rasmussen (dis)Approval Poll on the last day of August, 2011. I want to see his numbers rival those of Congress.

2011-08-27T05:51:00.013-05:00

The Happy Family Returns from Their Tony, Pricey Vay-Cay

Somehow it doesn't look like their time at Martha's Vineyard did them much good. Oh yes, "Who can begrudge," the lapdog press endlessly suggests, the president some time with his family. Just looking at Lady Michelle's face, I'm thinking that "more family time" with that woman must be a pure delight. Oof.

And knowing the cameras were going to be there when they landed (for all of 15 seconds), I would tell those girls to stand up straight and put a smile on their faces. Did these parents somehow not realize their children were going to be in the public eye when he ran for President of the United States? The family was left alone by the press on this vacation for almost the entire 10 days, with the exception of a very few structured photo-ops. The least this family can do is recognize that there is responsibility that goes along with privilege.

--Although clearly the tone is set for the "attitude" by Lady Michelle, and the children are simply following her lead . . . a "lead" which is angry, sullen, and entitled. Undoubtedly Lady Michelle and her entourage would have stayed for the entire vay-cay at MV instead of coming back one day early with Mr. Obama, except that Lady M has been recently and publicly outed for her lavish and out-of-control vacation expenses, including taking a separate plane so that she could land on Martha's Vineyard four hours ahead of her husband. I'm sure she doesn't appreciate the criticism, and believes "because I don't get paid, I get to do whatever I want to do" and that she's entitled to any and all perks she can manage to squeeze out of the American taxpayer. When you think of the good that any First Lady might do with her position, this woman is a pathetic waste.

As far as President Downgrade is concerned, some believe that this vacation at this time has been "the strangest PR debacle of a weird presidency." Optics matter, says John Hayward at Human Events. "Spending a fortune to jet off to a fabled playground of the rich, while the country suffers from his recessionary economic policies, was a bizarre slap in the face to an electorate that has already come to view this President as arrogant and out-of-touch."

I honestly don't begrudge the Obamas wanting to get away, but instead of going to a place where "millionaires and billionaires" hang out, he could have gone to Camp David with his family for a week, where he wouldn't have needed his 40-vehicle entourage every time he wanted to step out. Or how about this--visit a city for a few days where the economy is struggling (I'm sure there are boatloads of cities like that to choose from). I'm just guessing, but Obama and especially his wife simply aren't mature enough to make such a decision. He can tell the American people that they need to sacrifice, but clearly that's for the little people, not for Obama and his family.

Update. A good article from American Thinker by Jeannie DeAngelis: "Michelle Blames it on the Kids." --"Every couple of months Michelle has to pray that America is either consumed by the economic pain inflicted by her husband or afflicted with short-term memory loss, because between tagalong official trips barely a couple of months pass before the first lady partakes of on-site international cuisine and global sightseeing, compliments of the nation's taxpayers. If White House sources are correct, Michelle is doing one of the following: either floating another lame excuse to bunk in somme exclusive $2,500-a-night hotel somewhere, exploiting lunch with her daughters as an excuse to shop in Paris, or treating her liberal body to an expensive massage accompanied by a martini made with "top-shelf vodka." And every trip, of course, rationalized by the standard "Obama-family-Hallmark-moment excuse." Snort.

And from lucianne.com: Here's how it looks on Martha's Vineyard when the Obamas go out to dinner...and lunch...and to the beach...and out for icecream. The locals are sick of them. Here's a commenter from the site, one of the locals at MV: "The Moocho had the Edgartown waterfront closed down for 3 hours while she had lunch, the town's parking was closed and no one could enter or leave, people were trapped inside stores. This is no BS. I live here and work on the waterfront; did the same thing last year. He is a duffer not a golfer, in more ways than one."

2011-08-22T15:49:00.002-05:00

Today's Rasmussen Obama (Dis)Approval Index -
Tied for "The Worst, Evah"

Way to go, Champ!

Update: Uh-oh. We're no longer tied for worst. Today's IS the worst. I don't think that people care much for this guy going off to vay-cay with millionaires and billionaires. Just sayin'.

2011-08-17T12:39:00.009-05:00

Could President Vay-Cay's Timing Be Any Worse?

Update #2: The market is down by almost 500 points today--again; the weekly jobless claims are up "unexpectedly" (haha, that's a joke, although it's not funny) again; and NObama's disapproval ratings over at Rasmussen are minus-23, tying the lowest disapproval number of his presidency--again. Yet Obama is off on his fantasy, preppy, getaway New England vay-cay to Kerryland where he can hang out with the millionaires and billionaires--again. I have a theory: this dude knows he has no chance of re-election, so he's thrown in the towel and decided to live large at America's expense for as long as he can. It's clear the First Narcissist has no intention of being pushed around by the opinions of Regular American Joes and Janes. Have fun, Barry; your days are numbered, dude.This Vineyard vay-cay is about perception and optics, and this vacation at this time couldn't be any worse for this president. Too bad he's too tone-deaf to figure that one out.

When is this hell going to end? After he gets back from his blah, blah "listening" (I talk, you listen) bus tour (he bought buses that were made in Canada--how rich is that?), he goes to Martha's Vineyard for his 10-day-vay-cay. He played golf yesterday after telling us that in "September" he'll put out his jobs plan. But not to worry: everyone without a job and getting unemployment insurance is giving the economy a BOOST. Double that if someone is also on food stamps. Isn't that GREAT?

Quote from Donald Trump: "Well, the fact is, he takes more vacations than any human being I've ever seen. . . .I mean, it sends a bad message. Here we have a country that really is going to hell in a handbasket. Let's not kid ourselves. What's happening to this country is horrible. All over the world, they're talking about it. And we have a president that's constantly--whether it's Martha's Vineyard or someplace else--constanly on vacation. I mean, all the time he's on vacation! so I think it sends a very, very bad message. We have to work in this country to bring it back."

Hey Barry, I think they LOVE you in Iowa. Heh. Not exactly the huge cheering crowds he was hoping for, is my guess.

Update. I saw Rep Allen West on TV tonight (R-Florida). His comment: "People are upset because the big black bus isn't going into any black neighborhoods." Was there ever a bus trip by any politician that was a bigger failure than this one? By the way, where is the First Lady? MIA, as usual, when it comes to doing anything that might be construed as "work." She "doesn't get paid" for the job, so I guess she isn't going to do it.

2011-08-14T10:13:00.024-05:00

Part I: The Bin Laden Raid, the New Yorker Article, and Useful Idiots

Apologies while I continue to add to this post; it's definitely morphing into something beyond the scope of the original title.

How do you know where to even start with this stuff? The August 8, 2011 edition of the New Yorker has an article by Nicholas Schmidle titled "Getting Bin Laden." The article is filled with "you are there" details, right down to what one of the Navy SEALs had in his pockets. However, we are rarely told by Schmidle specifically where he gets his detailed information.

Schmidle contends that the story was built on "about two dozen" interviews, including one with John O. Brennan "and other senior officials." He said he didn't interview any of the 23 SEALs involved in the mission, but a casual reader of the article would come away with the impression that he had direct access to at least some of them for this article--an impression that apparently Schmidle is happy to leave the reader with, an impression he continued to give in an NPR interview, an impression that NPR later had to correct. If you listen to the interview or read the transcript at NPR, and ditto with the NYer article, you would swear that Schmidle was right in the middle of this raid.

Some are calling the story a fraud. I don't think the story itself is a fraud, but I do think that Schmidle was schwindled--he was given the government-approved story about the raid, he wrote it up as if what he was told was all true, and soon (October 2012, right before the presidential election) we will have a movie based on the "facts" of this story. In short, Schmidle (as well as the New Yorker) is a useful idiot. He apparently took dictation for this article from government sources--all of which could be successfully "fact-checked" by the New Yorker staff, a magazine which prides itself on its "fact-checking" capabilities. David Remnick, the editor, says that he's satisfied with the accuracy of the account: "The sources [emphasis mine] spoke to our fact-checkers," he said. "I know who they are. Those are the rules of the road around here." But the distinction must be made between fact checking and source checking. What the New Yorker staff did was check the sources for the story, as Remnick's quote indicates. No one questions that certain sources gave Schmidle certain information and that Schmidle accurately repeated what he was told (dictation). The crux of the argument is this: if these were all simply government-approved sources from the Obama administration, then the story Schmidle was fed was the "correct" party line story of the raid, but it was not necessarily an accurate account of the event. To believe so is criminally naive. It would be as if Woodward and Bernstein had written about Watergate based on approved sources from Dick Nixon's White House.

And who were the stated sources for the story? Remember, Schmidle states that the story was built on "about two dozen" interviews. My contention is that very few of these "interviews" that Schmidle sites are interviews actually conducted by him--primary sources. I believe that the article is a pastiche of secondary sources, and that's the basis of my "dictation rather than journalism" claim. Schmidle just can't seem to help himself from adding these kinds of coy details: "It's a circuitous process," Schmidle said. "One source was willing to share something that gets a second source to talk. That opens up a third source. And then you go back to the first source." Yes, that's the process followed by journalists, but based on the article, that's not the process followed by Schmidle.

Here's an interesting article, posted at Columbia Journalism Review on August 12, 2011: "New Yorker keeps mum on fact-checking process for bin Laden piece." No.Duh. See below.

The "sources" mentioned in the article.

1. Shuja Nawaz, "an expert on the Pakistani Army" and author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within. Nawaz is a native of Pakistan and the "first director of the new South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council--"a leading authority on South Asia." --"told me"

2. "A Pakistani senior military official in Rawalpindi." --"whom I reached at his office"

3. Does he count as part of the "two dozen" a July 2009 CBS report that he cites? --secondary source

4. "John Brennan, Obama's counterterrorism advisor, told me that the President's advisors began an 'interrogation of the data, to see if [they could] . . . disprove the theory that bin Laden was there."

5. Does he count as part of the "two dozen" "a recent report in the Guardian that he sites? --secondary source

Most of the article is completely uncited as to source, with statements like these throughout: "In late 2010, Obama ordered Panetta to begin exploring options for a military strike on the compound. Panetta contacted Vice-Admiral Bill McRaven, the SEAL in charge of JSOC." I guess we're just supposed to believe this to be true because Schmidle says it's true. Is this the outstanding "fact checking" referred to by Remnick?

6. "A senior counterterrorism official" is the source he gives for the office used by "Brian" and "half a dozen" JSOC officers who supposedly planned the raid.

7. A "senior Defense Department official told me" that the lines between the C.I.A. and military personnel have increasingly blurred: "These people grew up together" is the quote from the official.

8. "John Radsan, a former assistant general counsel at the C.I.A., said that the Abbottabad raid amounted to "a complete incorporation of JSOC into a C.I.A. operation." On his website you can find multiple links to John Radsan in the news, so the Radsan quote is almost certainly a secondary, not a primary, source.

9. "There was a real lack of confidence that the Pakistanis could keep this secret for more than a nanosecond," a senior advisor to the President told me."

10. "'Special operations is about doing what's not expected, and probably the least expected thing here was that a helicopter would come in, drop guys on the roof, and land in the yard,' the special-operations officer said."

11. Schmidle quotes Gates, but it's not a quote that Gates gave to Schmidle--there's no "Gates told me" in the article, and I've seen the quotation elsewhere. Secondary source.

12. General James Cartwright, the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Schmidle says he favored an airstrike, but "thirty-two smart bombs" which would be "required to penetrat thirty feet below ground, insuring any bunkers would collapse" --"That much ordnance going off would be the equivalent of an earthquake," Cartwright told me.

13. "This wasn't a hard op," the special-operations officer told me. "It would be like hitting a target in McLean." So is this the same special-operations officer of #10? So that would count as one of the "about two dozen" interviews.

14. "As the counterterrorism official put it recently, 'If you land and everybody is out on a milk run, then you get the hell out and no one knows.'" Is this the same one as #6? "The counterterrorism official told me that the percentages 'ranged from forty per cent to ninety or ninety-five per cent,' and added, 'This was a circumstantial case.'" It would appear from these quotations that Schmidle actually did have at least one personal interview with a "counterterrorism official."

15. "Yet as Ben Rhodes, a deputy national-security advisor, put it to me recently, the longer things dragged on, the greater the risk of a leak, 'which would have upended the thing.'" Ben Rhodes, on the White House webcast, looks 30-something. No way did he speak to Schmidle without White House authorization.

16. Schmidle consistently, throughout the article, refers specifically to two sources: "the counterterrorism official" and "the special-operations officer." I'm taking these as two interviews. "The JSOC planners, determined to keep the operation as secret as possible, had decided against using additional fighters or bombers. 'It just wasn't worth it,' the special-operations officer told me. The SEALS were on their own."

17. "A former helicopter pilot with extensive special-operations experience said of the pilot's situation, 'It's pretty spooky--I've been in it myself. The only way to get out of it is to push the cyclic forward and fly out of this vertical silo you're dropping through. That solution requires altitude. If you're settling with power at two thousand feet, you've got plenty of time to recover. If you're settling with power at fifty feet, you're going to hit the ground.'"

18. "'Eternity is defined as the time between when you see something go awry and that first voice report,' the special-operations officer said." Same interview as 16, 13, and 10.

19. "The senior advisor to the President compared the experience to watching 'the climax of a movie.'" But since "senior advisors" (five of them) gave a phone interview at midnight on May 2, did he simply take this quotation from one of those senior advisors? Secondary source. Same as #9?

20. "The senior Defense Department official told me that 'this was not one of three missions. This was one of almost two thousand missions that have been conducted over the last couple of years, night after night.' He likened the routine of the raids to 'mowing the lawn. . . . Most of the missions take off and go left,' he said. 'This one took off and went right.'" Same as #7?

21. Schmidle has a quotation from Ahmed, the translator, but as for eveythting in this article that discusses the details of the raid, Schmidle offers no source. "'Go back to your houses,' Ahmed said, in Pashto, as Cairo [the dog] stood watch.'" --no source.

22. "The SEALs were not wearing helmet cams, contrary to a widely cited report by CBS." --no source. Here Schmidle contradicts many other sources who say there were helmet cams. WHY NO SOURCE? Oh, that's right, New Yorker editor Remnick has checked all of this out for us, so we're just supposed to believe their excellent fact-checking department. Bull shit. Let's ask this, just one time. If this were the Bush administration, would Remnick believe that "fact" from the Bush administration? Would he?

23. "The counterterrorism official claims that Khalid was unarmed, though still a threat worth taking seriously. 'You have an adult male, late at night, in the dark, coming down the stairs at you in an Al Qaeda house--your assumption is that you're encountering a hostile.'" Same as #14 and #6?

24. "'You can only be hyper-vigilant for so long,' the special-operations officer said. 'Did bin Laden go to sleep every night thinking, The next night they're coming? Of course not. Maybe for the first year or two. But now now.'" Same as #10, 13, 16?

25. "The SEAL instantly sensed that it was Crankshaft." This is what bothers me about this article--no sources for this kind of "fact." This is screenplay-writing, it's not journalism. Schmidle goes on to say, "The counterterrorism official asserts that the SEAL first saw bin Laden on the landing, and fired but missed." So, Editor Remnick, just how to we FACT-CHECK that one??? (same as #6, 14, and 23?)

26. "Fearing that one or both women were wearing suicide jackets, he [the SEAL] stepped forward, wrapped them in a bear hug, and drove them inside. He would almost certainly have been killed had they blown themselves up, but by blanketing them he would have absorbed some of the blast and potentially save the two SEALs behind him." NO SOURCE--zip, zero, nada. But that's OK, we'll just believe the outstanding fact checkers of the New Yorker.

27. The special-operations officer told Schmidle about the pornography found at the compound: "We find it on all these guys, whether they're in Somalia, Iraq, or Afghanistan." Same as #10, 13, 16, and 24?

28. The SEALs destroyed the damaged Black Hawk. "'You're not going to hide the fact that it's a helicopter,' the special-operations officer said. 'But you want to make it unusable.'" #10, 13, 16, 24, 27.

29. "I'm glad no one was hurt in the crash, but, on the other hand, I'm sort of glad we left the helicopter there," the special-operations officer said. "It quiets the conspiracy mongers out there and instantly lends credibility. You believe everything else instantly, because there's a helicopter sitting there." #10, 13, 16, 24, 27, 28

30. Ben Rhodes, the deputy national-security advisor, who travelled with Obama, is quoted in the article with information about Obama's meeting with "the DEVGRU unit and the pilots who pulled off the raid." Said Rhodes, The President was "in awe of these guys. It was an extraordinary base visit. They knew he had staked his Presidency on this. He knew they staked their lives on it." This is Obama's very young speech writer who would not be speaking for attribution with the OK from the White House.

31. Schmidle has quotes from "James" from the meeting at Fort Campbell, KY. But of course he doesn't say where he got the quotes, yet is happy to leave the impression that he was there, taking this down first-hand in his little reporter's notebook. But since he later had to admit that he hadn't talked to any of the SEALs, how exactly did the New Yorker "fact check" this one?

My conclusion: there's nothing in Schmidle's article that wasn't vetted and blessed by the Obama administration. This is the party line version of "Getting Bin Laden," and if I were a betting person, I would expect to see the "October surprise" movie version, starring brave, decisive Rhambo Obama, will be very close to what we have here in the Schmidle article.

One woman who says she knows Schmidle well is obviously uncomfortable with Schmidle's "deeply detailed" and "riveting" account: C. Christine Fair in "The Schmidle Muddle of the Osama Bin Laden Take Down." Fair goes into detail about what bothers her in the article, including this detail: "He even describes how the translator Ahmed hollered in Pashto at the locals that a security operation was ongoing to allay their suspicions about the nature of the cacophony in the cantonment town. (This detail caught my eye as the majority of persons in Abbottabad, where the raid took place, speak Hindko rather than Pashto.)"

So after reading the New Yorker Schmidle article, I wanted to compare the article with what we were told and when we were told it about the Osama bin Laden death raid by the Obama administration. It's clear that Barry's collective White House "team" as he is so fond of referring to (the buck doesn't stop with Barry, it stops with his "team"), had a heck of a time getting their stories straight.

How many different stories did we hear of this picture alone? I think the first fairy tale about this "official" WH photo from the Situation Room [they said it was the Situation Room, but even that wasn't true] was that "the White House security team watched the entire raid, live and in real time." That was such a ludicrous story that the WH immediately had to come out with a ~~different lie~~ correction. The descriptions of what this gang of liars was doing in the official photo op changed almost daily. Maybe to try to understand what was going on, we need a timeline.

The blue-colored font is from The NYer article.

August, 2010. Panetta went to the White House with the news that C.I.A. analysts believed they had identified bin Laden's courier. He's the one who led them to the compound in Abbottabad. The speculation at that time was that one of the men living in the compound was Osama bin Laden.

"Late 2010." Obama ordered Panetta to begin exploring options for a military strike on the compound. So what were they doing from August to "late" in the year? If the C.I.A. thought they knew where OBL was, then what was the holdup?

January, 2011. Vice-Adm Bill McRaven, in charge of JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command), contactacted a JSOC official named "Brian" to present a raid plan. "The next month," Brian moved into an unmarked office at the C.I.A.'s printing plant in Langley, VA and worked with "half a dozen" JSOC officers to come up with a plan.

February, 2011. This is according to the National Journal article (see below, May 2): The C.I.A. could say with "high probability" that bin Laden and his family were living in the Abbottabad compound.

Wednesday, April 20. The release date of Dr. Jerome Corsi's book, Where's the Birth Certificate? is announced as May 17, and pre-sales begin on Amazon.com. Within hours, the book is #1 on Amazon.

Wednesday, April 27. Obama's Team (TM) releases a PDF image said to be a scan of his original long-form Hawaiian BC. The image is debunked within hours as being an "astoundingly incompetent forgery."

Wednesday, April 27. From an article posted on the NYer website by Ryan Lizza, "Leading from Behind": "The phrase "leading from behind," which an Obama advisor recently used in an interview with me to describe the Administration's approach to Libya,...." It's very possible that April 27 was actually one of Obama's worst, if not THE worst, day of his administration. If you read Lizza's entire article, it looks as though he's pretty aggressively trying to rehabilitate that quotation.

Friday, April 29. According to an Associated Press report, published May 2, "Obama approved an operation to kill bin Laden." The article, posted on the Fox News website, reported that "Obama tapped a small contingent of the Navy's elite SEAL Team Six and put them under the command of CIA Director Leon Panetta."

Sunday May 1 - Monday May 2. The story is, Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by Navy Seals on May 2, shortly after 1 a.m. local time. So that means this photo was taken in Washington, D.C. at 4:00 p.m., Sunday, May 1.

Sunday, May 1. Obama makes a statement from the White House about the killing of OBL. The WH alerted the press corps at 9:30 p.m.EDT that the president would speak within the hour.

"Sunday night." According to the National Journal account by Marc Ambinder (see below), C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta sent out a memo that "provides some hints of how the information was collected and analyzed."

Monday, May 2. Immediately, news of the raid in amazing detail is reported in several outlets. The Huffington Post has a report of the raid, first posted at 3:44 AM ET: "Osama Bin Laden Dead: Inside the Raid that Killed Him." "Details were provided in interviews with counterterrorism and intelligence authorities, senior administration officials and U.S. officials. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation." [More accurately, they spoke "on background," unless these "senior officials" were giving Huff Po information that wasn't given out at the press briefing at midnight on May 2--see below. It may be splitting hairs to make the distinction, and it's probably more than can be expected of the Huff Po people that they would get this right--or even understand the distinction.]

Monday, May 2, The New York Times, official mouthpiece of the Barry Soetoro Hussein Obama administration, came out with the STORY OF THE RAID. We can be sure that, at that time, this was the "official" story of what happened that day--the one that Obama Team (TM) wanted the world to hear: "Behind the Hunt for Bin Laden." The raid took place on May 1-2. Can someone tell me how The NYT was able to come up with the information for this article for their May 2 newspaper? The details are sourced as "administration officials" or "the officials." Again, like the New Yorker Schmidle story, this story as well can only be described as dictation, not journalism.

[Update: On the White House website, dated 2 May 2011 and timed 12:03 A.M. EDT, there is a document titled: "Press Briefing by Senior Administration Officials on the Killing of Osama bin Laden." "Senior Administration Officials" are quoted as sources; the briefing was via conference call. Call me cynical, but I'm just imagining that this transcript version of the conference call was doctored for the wide, general audience of the WH website. It's interesting to note that this version of events says that bin Laden was "killed in a firefight." --at the end: "Just to remind everyone, this call is on background, as senior administration officials." The call lasted for about 20 minutes. The information is quite detailed and was given out at midnight on the day after the raid--which begs the question, why was so much detailed information given about a SEAL team operation? Has this ever been done before?] According to the National Journal account posted on Monday morning (see below), five "senior administration officials" were involved in the press briefing.

Monday, May 2, the National Journal posted an article by Marc Ambinder (9:40 A.M.): "The Secret Team that Killed bin Laden." This is yet another hugely detailed article put out by yet another left-wing source. Obviously someone in Barry's administration wanted this level of detail out there. So by at least 9:40 on Monday morning, the word was out about exactly who had executed this raid. Ambinder says that bin Laden was "done in by a double tap--boom, boom--to the left side of his face." Ambinder goes on to say that the special-missions units of JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) "report to the president." He adds, "Though the general public knows about the special SEALs and their brothers in Delta Force, most JSOC missions never leak." --OK, brother, tell us of even ONE other JSOC mission that has leaked--ever. The article goes into great detail about JSOC, it's organization, types of missions, intelligence gathering, where it gets its funding, etc. This writer either had all of this in the can, ready to use when something broke, or he was given all of this by someone--to what end? If you are JSOC, are you happy that this information is out there? I think not.

Monday, May 2, the Huffington Post reported that the White House had released "behind the scenes" photos of the Situation Room during the mission to kill bin Laden. HuffPo had an entire slide show of photos, one of which was the photo of the "tense" group in the Situation Room [It wasn't the Situation Room, according to the NYer article; the room where they were sitting during that photo was a "small adjoining office" where the group wnt to view "the only video feed in the White House showing real-time footage of the target."]. The photo was also used in The NYT article from the same day.

Monday, May 2, John O. Brennan, White House counterterrorism chief, told reporters during a Monday briefing that the woman killed by U.S. forces in the raid was one of Bin Laden's wives: her body was positioned in a way that suggested "she was being used as a shield." By the end of the day, the White House had to back off of Brennan's statement, saying the woman was not bin Laden's wife and she may simply have been caught in the crossfire. In the same briefing, Brennan said that bin Laden had "joined in the fight" against the Navy Seals. Brennan: "He [bin Laden] was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in. And whether or not he got off any rounds, I quite frankly don't know." That statement also was "corrected" on Tuesday, May 3 by White House Press Sec'y Jay Carney. One "U.S. official" gave this excuse for the mix-up: "This is hours old and the full facts are still being ascertained as those involved are debriefed."

Then here's an idea for O's "team," if they're still really trying to figure out what happened on Monday, May 2 (or more likely, trying to figure out how to spin what happened): STFU!

Monday, May 2, posted at 4:23 p.m. ET: "A senior White House official tells NBC News that the U.S. has completed the DNA analysis and it has come back with a nearly 100 percent match to his relatives." The post goes on to say that "the test explains why President Barack Obama was confident to announce the death to the world Sunday night." A detailed explanation of the DNA evidence and how the test would have been done was posted at National Journal: "Did DNA Finger bin Laden?" Also, we are told, "the body was photographed before being buried at sea."

Monday, May 2, from an interview between Jeffrey Brown and Margaret Warner, Senior Correspondent on PBS's nightly news program, the PBS NewsHour. Warner is also the lead correspondent for the PBS NewsHour's Overseas Reporting Unit, reporting from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and etc. Warner: "They also, of course, planned for every eventuality, taken dead or alive, what to do with the remains, how to do quick forensic analysis, so they could dispose of the body within 24 hours." Warner goes on to report what Brennan said about the raid: "the minutes passed like days, and every moment was tense. But the tensest [sic] moment came when one of the helicopters they had taken in there essentially stalled out. It got on the ground, but it stalled out. And they needed it to get out." Then Warner discusses the decision about whether or not to release the photos of dead bin Laden, and she said: "Brennan said, you know, you don't want to do anything that could encumber or threaten any future missions. Jeffrey Brown signs off at the end of the interview: Margaret Warner from the White House, thanks a lot.

As if putting out all this freaking information about the mission might not THREATEN FUTURE MISSIONS? Give me a break.

Monday, May 2, the Washington Post reports that Osama bin Laden was "buried at sea" on Monday. The same article gave information about the Navy SEALs: "The raiding team reportedly was led by U.S. Navy SEALS." And this: "A senior defense official told reporters at the Pentagon that bin Laden's body was buried at sea from the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson after traditional Islamic rites including washing of the corpse." This same article says that bin Laden was killed by U.S. bullets after a 40 minute firefight at the compound--which is an incorrect interpretation of the information given out by "senior administration sources." This gang at the WaPo evidently can't even take correct dictation. In another article published by WaPo, the specific Navy SEAL unit involved in the raid is named.

Monday, May 2, WaPo reports on their online blog about Sohaib Athar's tweets from his home in Abbottabad during the attack--tweeting in real time. His tweets are here.

Monday, May 2, The Hollywood Reporter: "How Will Osama Bin Laden Death Impact Kathryn Bigelow's 'Kill Bin Laden' Movie?" I kid you not, that's a for-real post, dated May 2. "We hear Bigelow and Boal are digesting the news and will spend the week figuring out their next move. We can be sure that Boal will be using his extensive intelligence connections to get the inside dope on the mission. And if they move forward, the final film will no doubt be authentic and timely."

Tuesday, May 3, more "you are there" information put out by "White House officials" on Monday had to be walked back. Evidently someone on Barry's "team" decided that Brennan was a loose cannon, so they jerked him off the stage and replaced him with Leon Panetta. In a "newsmaker interview" with Jim Lehrer at PBS, CIA Director Leon Panetta described "the final tense seconds of the commando raid on the compound." He told Lehrer that neither he nor Obama watched the raid in real time. Panetta: "once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn't know just exactly what was going on."

Tuesday, May 3. Here's something for the rumor mill. I don't like being called a whacko conspiracy theorist; I don't think anyone does. However, I'll put this out there: there's a persistent story on the internet that says Panetta was the one who ordered the bin Laden raid--that President Dither could never come to a decision about the raid, that Valerie Jarrett was opposed to it, and her opposition was enough to plant uncertainty in Obama about giving the go-ahead. This story matches what we know about Obama's personality and how it's part of his leadership style to dither for days, weeks, or months on end before making a decision--or often to fail to take a position altogether. So that this is what's being said about the bin Laden raid is no surprise--that he continued as the months went by to avoid having an opinion about what and how they should go forward with the intelligence on bin Laden. I don't know how to evaluate this information; I haven't found another source that corroborates this version of events. All I can say is, read it for yourself in light of the (ever-changing) "official" version of events.

Tuesday, May 3, Leon Panetta, CIA Director, is interviewed on CBS News by Katie Couric, when he said that "U.S. officials had assumed 'from the beginning' that Osama bin Laden would be killed in the raid on his compound."

Tuesday, May 3, Leon Panetta is interviewed on NBC News by Brian Williams. Panetta told Williams, "I don't think there's--there's was any question that ultimately a photograph [of dead bin Laden] would be presented to the public. Obviously I've seen those photographs. We've analyzed them and there's no question that it's bin Laden." He also said that the Pakistanis "did not know anything" about this mission. Panetta said once and then repeated again that they had the best intelligence on the location of bin Laden "since Tora Bora" and that the President felt "we had that obligation to act."

Tuesday, May 3, The NYT reports that while White House officials were still deciding what to do about the photo, "one official" said they were "leaning toward releasing the photo."

Tuesday, May 3, The NYT Opinion Pages: Maureen Dowd posts her op-ed column, "Cool Hand Barack." Don't read this thing unless you have a strong stomach. She writes that Obama's "studied cool and unreadable mein" allowed him to put on a tuxedo and give a comedy speech on Saturday night in a Washington ballroom "after giving the order for members of a Navy Seals [sic] team to execute a fantastically daring plan to, let's be honest, execute Osama bin Laden." Dowd says the timing was "good, blunting the infelicitous remarks made recently to The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza by an Obama advisor, who described the president as 'leading from behind.'"

Tuesday, May 3, the website Blackfive weighs in on the raid with a post titled, "Squandering Our Victory": "Of course, this White House has never been very good at sharing credit and it is that infantile demand for attention that is causing this victory to become muddled in conflicting accounts and naked political point scoring."

Wednesday, May 4, The Guardian reports on the photo: "US confirms it will not release Osama bin Laden death photo." Obama's reasoning: the photo would be "an incitement to additional violence." I remember all the BS back-and-forth about releasing the photo, and frankly, at the time it seemed to me to be just something to divert people from more important issues--"Look at the shiny thing over here!"

Wednesday, May 4, The Telegraph reports that "further doubts emerged about the US version of events."

Wednesday, May 4, The NYT reports on the "SEALs' All-Star Team." This is beyond belief. This sycophantic newspaper, mouthpiece of Barack Hussein Obama, makes me want to puke. From the first paragraph: "the success of the mission turned on some two dozen men who landed inside the Qaeda leader's compound, made their way to his bedroom and shot him at close range--all while knowing that the president of the United States was keeping watch from Washington." It will be a happy day when The NYT goes out of business.

Thursday, May 5, Leon Panetta, CIA Director, states that there was no live video footage of the raid, that there was a period of "20 to 25 minutes where we really didn't know just exactly what was going on," he said in an interivew with PBS. It's impossible to know whether Panetta's claim of "no live footage" is BS or true. But evidently, from other reports, the SEALs were wearing helmet cams and caught the raid on tape.

Thursday, May 5. Fox News publishes a detailed report about the firefight in the compound on its website: "Sources: Bin Laden Acted 'Cowardly,' Confused in Final Moments."

Thursday, May 5. Ann Barnhardt writes in her article, "Execution of SEAL Team Six" that she had an email conversation on this date with a "retired military man with spook contacts. All were in total agreement that the Bin Laden episode was pure theater. The SEALs were sent into a compound as evidenced by the lost chopper on the site. But Osama Bin Laden wasn't in that compound. Osama Bin Laden has been dead for years." [The article was posted August 7, 2011.]

Thursday, May 5. The White House, with Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications as the speaker, put on a webcast, billed for middle school and high school students. He sounds like a Valley girl?, with his sentences all ending in a question? He can barely get through a sentence without "um's" and "uh's"--quite a wordsmith. What I find fascinating about his remarks is that he says the president's National Security Team was "literally receiving real time information" when that picture was taken and during the raid. He told the students: "That means that I’m responsible for all of the president’s speech writing on foreign policy issues and national security issues, as well as our, uh, communications, uh, both here in the United States and abroad."

Friday, May 6, Hillary Clinton tells the press that she had "no idea" what she was watching when the photographer snapped the picture. Said Clinton: "Those were 38 of the most intense minutes. I have no idea what any of us were looking at that particular milisecond when the picture was taken. I am somewhat sheepishly concerned that it was my preventing one of my early spring allergy coughs. So, it may have no great meaning whatsoever."

Friday, May 6, Obama travels to Fort Campbell, KY where the helicopter pilots are based. [This is from the CBS 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft, below.] "He reportedly met them behind closed doors along with the Navy SEALS who carried out the assault. It's unlikely you will ever see the faces, or learn the names of those who avenged 9/11 and finally disposed of its mastermind. Their identities are classified and likely to remain so."

The Washington Post reports that Obama met with "some" of the Navy SEALS who raided Osama bin Laden's compound. "The identities of the men who killed bin Laden are likely to remain secret. White House officials released few details of Friday’s meetings and would not formally confirm whether Obama met members of SEAL Team 6, whose existence is classified." Was there some reason for the White House not to confirm that Obama met with the SEAL team? I mean, considering all the other details that were immediately reported by Obama's "team," why not confirm that Obama met with the SEALs? Reportedly, joining Obama and Biden in the private meetings were Adm. Eric T. Olson, the commander of U.S. Special Operations, and Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, the head of Joint Special Operations Command [JSOC] and the man who directed the SEALs' mission. "Nearly 80 U.S. commandos were involved in the top-secret mission, including about two dozen who entered bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan....Obama used his appearance to speak broadly about the war in Afghanistan, where he has pledged to start reducing troops by July."

Friday, May 6. Michelle Malkin posts this article on her website: "The Fog of Fog": "the hourly revamping of key details of Sunday's raid suggests something far beyond the usual realm of situational undertainty that accompanies any military operation."

Sunday, May 8, Barack Obama gives a 30-minute interview about the bin Laden raid on 60 Minutes. The interview was conducted on Wednesday, May 4 and shown on Sunday, May 8. The interview was conducted by Steve Kroft, and the questions have the tone of, "How does it feel to be so cool?" Predictably, Kroft lets Obama blather on with his answers. Kroft asks Obama how involved he was in the planning process. "About as active as any project that I've been involved with since I've been president." He says he wasn't involved in "designing the initial plan." Obama says he knows Osama was in that compound for "five years." At the end of the day, he says, "this was still a 55/45 situation." They couldn't say definitely bin Laden was there. He says he made the decision "Thursday night, informed my team Friday morning....This was in the back of my mind all weekend." He says that the "vast majority of my most senior aides did not know we were doing this." He says the mood in the room was tense: "doing a lot of listening as well, 'cause we were able to monitor the situation in real time. Getting reports back from Bill McRaven, the head of our Special Forces operations as well as Leon Panetta. There were big chunks of time in which all we were doin' was just waiting. And it was the longest 40 minutes of my life with the possible exception of when Sasha got meningitis when she was three months old and I was waiting for the doctor to tell me that she was all right. It was a very tense situation. [Like when Sasha had meningitis? Seriously?] Kroft asks Obama, "What could you see," and the dancer-in-chief deftly parries that one by saying, "We were monitoring the situation . . . but we could not get information clearly about what was happening inside the compound. . . . We had a sense of when gunfire and explosions took place." Really? Could that answer be any more nebulous?

Tuesday, May 10. Maureen Dowd posts an article at The NYT. "Maybe it's because I watched the videos of Osama bin Laden released by the Obama administration...." So Maureen Dowd and who else had access to the videos of OBL? What videos, exactly? Dowd continues: "Now Hollywood will have its say....The inside track goes to director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, the pair who won Oscars for 'The Hurt Locker,' a movie about a bomb-defusing team of soldiers in Iraq....Then the Navy Seal Team 6 dropped from Pakistan sky. And now the duo, planning for a 2012 release, have an exciting ending and excited financiers."

Thursday, May 12, Attorney General Eric Holder told the BBC that the raid on bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan was a "kill or capture" mission. "What happened to bin Laden was not an assassination," Holder said. And that would be true--how? Also, see Tuesday, May 3, Leon Panetta's comment which directly contradicts Holder.

Thursday, May 12, Defense Sec'y Robert Gates speaks at a town hall meeting at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. "Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the Situation Room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden. That all fell apart on Monday, the next day. [Actually, it "fell apart" as early as a midnight telephone conference with "journalists" (I use the term loosely, thus the scare quotes) and "Senior Administration Officials"--see above.

At the meeting, a Marine asked Gates what measures were being taken to protect "the identities and lives" of the SEALs involved in the takedown of bin Laden from a threat of retaliation. "The Marine's question underscored sentiment among military and intelligence communities that identification of the team signified an unprecedented breach of confidentiality."

Gates's answer: "The one thing I would tell you, though, is that I think there has been a consistent and effective effort to protect the identities of those who participated in the raid, and I think that has to continue."

Thursday, May 12. CBS reports that "SEAL helmet cams recorded entire bin Laden raid." "CBS news national security correspondent David Martin reports the 40 minutes it took to kill bin Laden and scoop his archives into garbage bags were all recorded by tiny helmet cameras worn by each of the 25 SEALs."

Saturday, May 14. Daily Mail Online reports on the helmet cams: "Navy Seals helmet cam DID film whole Bin Laden raid: Extraordinary blow-by-blow details of terror chief's final moments." The ONE attribution in the article is "according to CBS news." The article is filled with details not found in the "CBS reports" article of May 12.

Wednesday, June 22. Obama announces the Afghan troop withdrawal. O'Bama declared in his address to the nation: "the tide of war is receding," and he announced a plan to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year.

Friday, August 5. A Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan, killing 30 Americans, 7 Afghans, and 1 interpreter. According to an LA Times article that was posted on August 6, White House national security advisor Tom Donilon notified Obama of the incident shortly after 8 p.m. on Friday.

Saturday, August 6. Posted as an op-ed column at The NYT by Maureen Dowd: "Downgrade Blues." "The White House clearly blessed the dramatic reconstruction of the mission by Nicholas Schmidle in The New Yorker--so vividly descriptive of the Seals' [sic] looks, quotes and thoughts that Schmidle had to clarify after the piece was published that he had not actually talked to any of them." And then this: "The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama's growing reputation as ineffectual....The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration. It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president's image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently--to the surprise of some military officers--at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero Seals [sic].

Monday, August 8. Posted at National Review Online, "Media Blog: NRO's MSM watchdog": "Maureen Dowd: How Hollywood Can 'Man Up' President Obama." One of the commenters at the site is suggesting that Steve Urkel will play Obama. Haha.

Monday, August 8. The New Yorker publishes the Nicholas Schmidle article: "Getting Bin Laden: What happened that night in Abbottabad. "Bin Laden's death provided the White House with the symbolic victory it needed to begin phasing troops out of Afghanistan."

Wednesday, August 10. From "Congressman Pete King's" website: "King Calls for Investigation of Reports of Obama Administration-Sanctioned Film on Classified bin Laden Mission." The text of the letter is found at the link. One of the questions King wants answered is "how many human intelligence sources and how many Agency intelligence methods have been compromised due to leaks about the May 1st raid?"

I hope as Rep. King is making his investigation, someone will clue him in on the article that this Mark Boal, "screenwriter," wrote for Rolling Stone, published March 27, 2011: "The Kill Team: How U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Murdered Innocent Civilians" (Subtitle: "Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime images the Pentagon tried to censor." And this was the guy invited to a "C.I.A. ceremony celebrating Navy SEALs"? (see Maureen Dowd article, Aug. 6, above) The RS article is complete with "THE CENSORED IMAGES." [See also a critique of the article, posted March 30, 2011, by Carl Prine: "Rolling Porn," who says "the article "wasn't very well written, researched or edited, which is a shame because most of the facts it details are true." The article also doesn't mention until PAGE 5 that SPC Jeremy Morlock pleaded guilty to his role in the murders and now faces a quarter century in prison--and that he and others in the squad were charged in May 2010.

Wednesday, August 10. There's a guy I like and respect very much, who used to go under the name of "Doc Zero" at HotAir. Now he publishes his stuff at Human Events under his name, John Hayward. "Gutsy Call: The Movie. Hollywood's love letter to Barack the Slayer." He references Maureen Dowd's article: "Dowd doesn't think any of this reflects badly on Obama or the filmmakers. The rest of us can only marvel at the stupendous value of the completely unregulated campaign contribution Hollywood is making to the failed President." Hayward wonders, as do I, "How will they depict Obama's 16-hour delay in making history's gutsiest call?"

Thursday, August 11. Posted at the American Thinker by M. Catharine Evans: "Maureen Dowd's Loose Lips About Navy Seals [sic] Movie Causes Inquiry." The article says that Rep Peter King (R-NY) read the NYT article and "quickly penned a letter" to Gordon S. Heddell, Inspector General at the DOD. The movie, according to Evans' article, is set to be released "3 weeks before voters head to the polls in 2012." Evans says that King has asked for an investigation into the "attendance of filmmakers at a meeting with special operators and Agency officers at CIA Headquarters."

Sunday, August 14. From the LA Times opinion page: "Hunt for Bin Laden Profits." The gist of the article is that the timing of the film about bin Laden is "driven by money not politics." Sure. Any chance it's driven by both money and politics?

In Part II I want to look at the Chinook helicopter crash in light of what we "know" about the death raid on bin Laden.

2011-08-09T22:20:00.005-05:00

Who leaked the information that "Seal Team 6" was aboard that helicopter?

Updates below.

Frankly, this whole "Seal Team 6" thing--both with the Bin Laden raid and now with the Chinook helicopter going down--is starting to stink on ice.

First question: What happened? Second question: Why was the information leaked about special operators being aboard that helicopter? "We demand, Mr. President, a special Congressional investigation"--who in your White House leaked this information, and why wasn't it suppressed?

linked from Ann Barnhardt Scroll down her website and read related posts, one of them about the debunking of the New Yorker article about the Bin Laden raid.

Asks Barnhardt: "Why would you hand your enemy, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, a massive propaganda coup? WHY?" Good question, Ann.

Updates. I've been reading more of the posts and links at Ann Barnhardt's website. This whole deal is very wrong.

Point: Lt. General Jerry Boykin confirms that the National Guard Chinook was "inadequate" and "not designed for Special Operations missions." You can find the link to that at BigPeace.com.

Point: There also seems to be some serious confusion over whether the helicopter was shot down or it crashed; whether they were inbound or departing. Like Barnhardt says, it can't be both. Barnhardt posts a piece from Reuters: "What happened on night of deadly Afghanistan helicopter crash?

2011-08-01T12:29:00.004-05:00

We are in deep shit...

But let's pretend that everything's great. In fact, we have the perfect theme song, straight from FDR's successful 1932 presidential campaign. And we all know how that worked out.

2011-07-27T14:28:00.002-05:00

Let's Understand the Debt

2011-07-25T05:45:00.007-05:00

Updates on the Debt Ceiling War

More Updates below.

We don't need a body language expert to decode this picture for us. The photo comes from the Saturday meeting--the one Obama issued an imperial command performance for to the leaders of the House and Senate. The meeting evidently went nowhere and lasted for all of 45 minutes.

I saw John Boehner on Chris Wallace's Sunday show yesterday where he said he hoped to have a deal by the time the Asian markets opened (4 p.m. Eastern time). Evidently that was the new, new "drop dead" deadline coming from Obama Team (TM)--August 2 evidently isn't soon enough for Barry to be guaranteed that he'll be able to go on his millionaires & billionaires vaycay to Martha's Vineyard.

Treasury Sec'y Timothy the Tax Cheat Geithner was all over the Sunday morning talking heads shows, using scare language about the apocalypse that will occur in the Asian markets if the 4 p.m. deadline comes and goes without a debt ceiling agreement. Timmy the Tax Cheat went on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and accused Republicans of "praying for default." So did Tax Cheat Timmy at least have the guts to name the names of these Republicans praying for this fiscal disaster? Well of course that isn't a serious question.

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley was on NBC's Meet the Depressed and called the Republican short-term plan a "gimmick." He also said that Obama will veto any plan that doesn't get the country past the 2012 election (well, actually he put it differently, saying any plan that "doesn't get the country through 2013). John Boehner was very clear on Fox News Sunday, saying in so many words that he believes Obama's refusal to consider a short-term deal is all about 2012: "The president's worried about the next election, but my God, shouldn't we be worried about the country?" And frankly, I don't think President Present has the balls to veto anything. When Obama walked out of the meetings last week, he hilariously said to Eric Cantor "Don't call my bluff"--well, I say go ahead and call it, because that's what it would be--a bluff. The petulant president might hold his breath until he turns blue, but he's not going to use the veto.

Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post has what she says comes from "sources familiar with the call" that Speaker Boehner made to House Republicans on Sunday. The whole thing is here. The money quote from Boehner: "We've seen this coming all year long. But here's the challenge: To stop him, we need a vehicle that can pass both houses." Rubin suggests that House Republicans will pass a bill, send it to the Senate, and let the Dems decide if they want to send the country into default. As Boehner is reported to have said to Obama: "As I read the Constitution, Congress makes the laws; you get to decide what you want to sign." Or not. Go ahead, Barry, make our day: Veto a debt limit bill. What a tool.

8:00 a.m. Eastern time, Monday. An update from Jennifer Rubin: "White House stokes debt-ceiling crisis." Rubin says that she's had an email from a Republican aide, saying that Harry Reid took a bipartisan plan to the White House and the President turned it down. If this is true, as both Rubin and HotAir's Ed Morrissey say, then Obama is playing with fire, plus, he now owns the debt-ceiling crisis and whatever happens because of it. Good luck with that, Champ.

Monday's opinion piece from the WSJ: "Toying With Default--The President isn't serious about real spending cuts"

Today's Rasmussen Presidential (Dis)Approval Index is back to the highest disapproval number, evah. Get a clue, Barry. The American people don't like what you're doing.

2011-07-20T08:37:00.005-05:00

What is this August 2 "drop dead date," really?

President Obama and his "team" have told us that if we don't increase the debt ceiling by August 2, all hell will break loose. It will have disastrous consequences, which Obama likens to Armageddon. August 2, huh? Is there anything else going on around that same time? Why yes, coincidentally, there is a big, big event coming in August: for the third year in a row, the Obama family will be spending August in Martha's Vineyard--at the swank Blue Heron Farm, to be exact.

So after panicking the oldsters that he can't guarantee they will get their August Social Security checks, Obama will head off in August for his relaxing, "casual" zillionaire's vaycay. Even some liberal columnists are begging this guy with the titanium ear not to go on yet another lavish vacation: "People are concerned, not about whether they can go to Nantucket but about whether they can put food on the table....The Obama family's third Vinyard excursion comes as 55% of U.S. adults said they won't be taking a summer vacation," according to a Marist poll.

So let's see, while the rest of us act like adults, enduring our staycays and staying within our budgets, which for most of us means SPENDING LESS, something Washington evidently will never understand, the Obama family will be spending their summer "break" and our tax dollars on a $20 million retreat, exclusive playground of the wealthy, where they will look out at 28 acres on the water from a pristine white Victorian farm house, the five bedroom "main house," which also features a guest house, swimming pool, and basketball court, and of course a golfing facility. It's a mere $50,000 a week to rent the house alone--in 2009, before the economy was facing "Armageddon," that sounded like pretty cheap digs to the MSM.

Here's a picture of the little white farm house.

Updates:

GOP says Obama must work, too. While Obama tells Congress to stay in town and get things done, almost at the same moment he announces his Martha's Vineyard vacation.

Boehner calls Obama "AWOL"

Obamas heading to Blue Heron Farm? it might be time to make an exception because Obama’s frequently stated top priority actually involves having him “in the room.” Hilarious, when you think of it: Obama scolding others for "walking out of the room" when there is still work to be done.

So where are you going on vaycay this year? Or, as it will be for some more accurately a "naycay"?

2011-07-16T06:56:00.000-05:00

No Budget, No New Spending

Wow, is it possible the Republicans in the Senate are growing a spine? Ten GOP senators took to the Senate floor yesterday to say they'll block any new spending bills until the Senate Dems agree to produce a budget, something they haven't done in over 800 days. Who knows why all of a sudden the Repubs have found religion, but I'll take better late than never at this point.

2011-07-14T08:06:00.009-05:00

POUTUS

On Wednesday Obama got huffy and flounced out of the debt ceiling negotiations after giving Eric Cantor a "dressing down" when Cantor told the president that "not a single proposal" on the table would be able to pass the House of Representatives. So much for speaking truth to power--haha. Insiders report that Obie also whined, "Ronald Reagan wouldn't sit here like this." Barry, you are correct--and you, sir, are no Ronald Reagan. What a child. If Big Zero can't even handle Eric Cantor, do we really expect him to be able to stare down--oh, Putin, for example...or China?

The Dems offered their own view of the meeting. Granny Pelosi (notice how ragged she's looking these days, now that she's out of the spotlight--that plastic stuff is just hell to keep up) said that she had never seen a president "more gracious" than Obama. They also accused Cantor of "not being productive." ROFLOL.

h/t FreeRepublic for the image

Update: From The NYT Blog: "Eric Cantor Is the Democrats' New Boogeyman." "Democrats appear to have settled on one thing: The person to blame is Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia."

Update #2. If someone depends on leftist NPR for their view of the world, then they will get a rather hilariously watered down version of what happened at the end of Wednesday's meeting. According to NPR's "news blog" (scare quotes appropriate), NPR has settled on the AP version, naturally couched in passive voice: "The AP says it's been told...that the climax came when Obama said 'enough is enough...I'll see you all tomorrow,' and departed." I like my word "flounced" better--I think it has a more realistic ring to it--ever noticed how Obama walks? Usually it's a prance, but I'm imagining that when he's in a huff, then it becomes a flounce.

Update #3: From one of the extremely excellent commenters at my favorite blog, Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog:

On Ace a commentor, talking about the "don't call my bluff" comment, called BO "Bluffy, the Empire Slayer." And another said, "What will he do next? Threaten to kidnap himself?"

2011-06-24T07:28:00.006-05:00

Commander-in-Chief gives a "sorry, sorry performance" at Fort Drum

I'm running out of words and ways to express my disgust for Obama. And not only for Obama, but also for the damned media that covers for him all day long. Yesterday, our "commander-in-chief" gave a bumbling, bungled performance at Fort Drum, where he couldn't be bothered to get the details right about two Medal of Honor recipients (he called them "winners"--he is such a buffoon).

Barry, you have two names to remember: SFC Jared Monti, KIA in Afghanistan in 2006, posthumously awarded the MOH by Obama in 2009; and SSG Sal Giunta, the first living recipient of the MOH, hung around his neck by Obama in a ceremony at the White House. As Blackfive said in his blogpost yesterday:

How does the Commander-in-Chief mix these heroes up? He put that medal around Giunta's neck and he stood with Monti's parents as they grieved. These fallen heroes leave such a great legacy, and we should know all their names. The ironic part of the speech, and this comes after the announcement of the politically pressured drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, was Obama's closing remark, "Know that your Commander-in-Chief has your back."

At American Thinker, Russ Vaughn has further remarks for President Super-Smart:

If you are going to be the Commander-in-Chief, Barry, then as this old sergeant would have instructed one of his troops after such a disgraceful performance, "Soldier up fool and get your sh*t straight. You are talking about recipients of the highest award for valor their nation can bestow upon their warriors. You have flippantly dishonored the award itself and all those to whom it has ever been awarded. You are an embarrassment to the world, your country, and most importantly to the troops you supposedly command."

The "excuse" for this sorry mess put out afterwards by the White House? No teleprompter. For the love of God. And this is the man who is billed by the lamestream media as the smartest man evah to live in the White House. I'm simply running out of words....

Here's the video of the OBumbler-in-Chief speaking at Fort Drum, posted by Gateway Pundit. Seriously, this is a guy who can barely string together a coherent sentence when he's speaking off the teleprompter--unless, of course, he's speaking about HIMSELF.

Oh, and note the faces of those soldiers sitting behind him--not exactly enthralled to be used as photo-props. Note also the polite golf-clap from these soldiers when Obama is introduced.

This sort of thing is seriously disturbing. What is wrong with this man? Listening to someone describe Obama's lapses of memory and studied, stuttering speech, one physician friend said, without hesitation, "That's from cocaine." I don't know what it's from, but we all remember that Obama was billed by the lamestream media all during the 2008 campaign as the smartest man ever. And he's still billed that way--the smartest man ever to live in the White House. Well, clearly, he's not. But I'm really starting to worry that this sort of major gaffe-a-minute is coming not from simple inattention to detail, as some have said; and not simply because he "doesn't care" about the military or whatever subject he's speaking about on a particular day. I'm starting to think that this man is seriously impaired.

This POS dishonors our military when he says, like he did at Fort Drum, that his "greatest and most conscientious duty" is to be commander-in-chief.

This is from Don Dickinson, a retired US Army Colonel of Infantry, speaking yesterday on TalkSouthRadio.com.

Who are the cretinous morons who call yourselves military aides to Obama, cretinous morons who are the speechwriters to Obama, cretinous morons who are the handlers to this man, that after all the flubs he's made, you let him go and flub honoring a dead American soldier who has received the highest honor our country can give to a soldier? This was not an off-the-cuff remark....This is just so disgusting and egregious, it's beyond belief. Would he make a flub like this at a fundraiser? It shows that not only does Obama not care anything about the military. What's more disgusting, he's surrounded himself with military people who don't care enough to get it right. He's certainly surrounded himself with an incompetent Chief of Staff who doesn't care enough to get it right, and the people who planned this trip who don't care enough to get it right. And whoever the morons are who control that WhiteHouse.gov website, who apparently don't care enough to even check the press, who is now all over the net with this flub. Nobody is even correcting this....

I guess they finally "corrected" the horrible flub at the White House website--they simply took out the whole thing about the Medal of Honour winners--like it never happened, they just silently redacted Obama's careless error. Later Press Sec'y Jay Carney said, "At Fort Drum, the president misspoke when discussing the first Medal of Honor he present posthumously to Jared Monti, who was a member of the 10th Mountain Division. The President paid tribute to Monti in his remarks to troops in Afghanistan in March 2010. Last year, the president presented the Medal of Honor to Salvatore Giunta, who was the first living recipient of the Medal who served in Afghanistan."

That was an apology? It wasn't even a decent explanation. So add Carney to the cretinous morons who Obama has surrounded himself with. But make no mistake, the biggest cretinous moron of all is the POTUS himself. 2012, baby. It can't come soon enough.

Update. HotAir is reporting this, Saturday morning: On his Facebook page this evening, Monti’s father, Paul, posted: “FYI- President Barack Obama telephoned me personally this afternoon to apologize for his error in his speech to the 10th mountain division re: Jared’s medal ceremony. Apology accepted.”

2011-06-18T12:43:00.002-05:00

You gotta love the trend...

h/t to Rasmussen Presidential Tracking Poll

Update. Here's an interesting article by Walter Russell Mead at The American Interest: "Can This Presidency Be Saved?" Mead, who appears to be largely sympathetic to the Obama presidency, says that Obama has blundered into unforced errors, setting goals for himself which he has failed to meet. Just one example: remember the "days, not weeks" remark about how long we would be involved in the Libya campaign?

Mead contends that Obama's image as president has become "fuzzy and perplexing." What does he stand for--really? "What [the American people] aren't hearing from President Obama is a compelling description of what has gone wrong, how it can be fixed, and how the policies he proposes will take us to the next level." No kidding. All of those things are what comprise leadership, a quality that Obama has shown he clearly lacks, to the point where his administration spokespeople tout his actions as "leading from behind"--supposedly a good thing, although I think most people would call that "following," something we do not expect from an American president, either at home or abroad.

Says Mead, "At a time of historic anxiety and tension like the present, the President of the United States cannot be an administrator, a fence-sitter, a finger-pointer. He must first and foremost stand for something--and he must be able to make that something resonate with the voters. The President's job is to lead." Too bad all you swooning Obamabots voted in a guy whose main strategy as a senator, when he wasn't out campaigning, was to vote "present." If you hadn't been so self-congratulatory and blinded by voting in your big, big historic FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN PRESIDENT, maybe someone would have vetted this guy and found out that leadership wasn't part of his thin resume. Can this presidency be saved? Not a chance.

2011-06-16T06:49:00.012-05:00

Obama's Campaign Trajectory: Lincoln to Clinton to Carter to Hoover

There's a fascinating article over at The American Interest by Walter Russell Mead: "Is Carter a Best Case Scenario?" which suggests that if the economy doesn't sharpen up, then Obama can only wish that the worst comparison that will be made about him is of Jimmy Carter. At the rate he's going, says Mead, increasingly Obama's problems with the Great Recession are beinging to look Hooveresque.

"Like Hoover," writes Mead, "President Obama faces the possibility of a devastating second downturn due to economic problems in Europe--and like President Hoover, President Obama can't do much to prevent it. Like Hoover, President Obama is harried by a domestic populist revolt against his leadership and the policies he supports, and like Hoover, President Obama's once unassailable popularity is being slowly ground down by economic bad news."

"Lincoln, Clinton, Carter, Hoover: that is a trajectory no President should want--nor will the country benefit from 18 more months of Presidential subsidence. One hopes the White House realizes just how much trouble it, and we, are in."

Some campaign slogans work better than others. This one for Hoover doesn't seem brilliant, but I guess it worked for him--the first time.

I can think of other former presidents Obama might be channeling.

Remember this one? This was Ford and his "Whip Inflation Now" scheme. Heh.That worked well for him. Snort.

Ford's WIN campaign puts me in mind of the one that I honestly think is hands-down my very favorite: Obama's "Winning the Future" campaign. Wouldn't you like to know what super-smart at ObamaTeam (TM) came up with this one? You can only imagine that he's now working for Biden in a basement office somewhere. Brilliant, Barry. Strangely, we haven't heard too much about the WTF campaign lately from Barry's team. Snort.

And here's another president that I guess Barry Obama might be looking to emulate, since he's been saying these days that a one-term presidency doesn't look so bad to him right now (we're with you there, champ!): Lyndon Johnson didn't run for reelection either. A girl can dream.

Update: And while we're speaking of comparisons and campaigns, there's a good article over at the Weekly Standard by Jay Cost: "Blue Smoke and Mirrors," discussing the dynamics of ObamaTeam (TM) and the 2012 election, where Cost says that the president's "political theater" can do nothing to create the impression that a) the economy is in better shape than it is in; and b) in any event, Obama is not to blame. "If we've learned anything in the last 50 years of the modern campaign, it's that the billion dollar efforts of campaign technocrats, who now dominate our politics, cannot convince people that the sun rises in the west." It's a good article.

2011-06-15T09:56:00.007-05:00

The Comedy Gold of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

Little Debbie has herself a new job, as Democratic National Committee chair, mouthpiece for Barry Obama. It's a perfect job for her, since she's obviously willing to say ANYTHING to buck up the Obama administration, no matter how moronic her words make her appear. Here's a recent ad created by the Republican Party, featuring her Sunday talk show ridiculous claims about the economy. h/t HotAir

Update. Little Debbie is doubling down. Now she says, "We own the economy." Well, darlin', you are so right. The economy, she says, "has turned around." Sure. 9.1% unemployment, more than 6 million foreclosures, a million construction jobs lost, 865,000 manufacturing jobs lost, $3.7 trillion added to the national debt. Yes, Debbie, Obama owns this turn around.

Update #2. This is from the American Thinker.

2011-06-09T14:03:00.002-05:00

He's a perfect personification of the Left:
Do as I say, not as I do

The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wants us all to save the planet by working less and owning less. Really? But as Gateway Pundit shows us, pompous ass elitist Friedman is just a typical leftist with the attitude, "austerity for thee, but not for me." Here's a picture of the pompous jerk's estate. Here's a link to his recent column, at The NYT, "The Earth Is Full," in which he suggests that "we" are in denial: "We will realize...that the consumer-driven growth model is broken and we have to move to a more happiness-driven growth model, based on people working less and owning less." Fine, Friedman, you first. Show us the way, you leftist hypocrite snob.

2011-06-07T11:37:00.004-05:00

Resign? Hell No--Kick the Bum Out

The opportunity for this arrogant POS to "resign" has passed. This worm is a serial, practiced liar, and the less we see of him from here on out, the better. If he stays, then let that fact reflect on the House of Representatives and on his constituents--that they were unwilling to get rid of this perv.

Not that I believe A SINGLE WORD this bag of puke has to say, but his website says he's the son of a public school teacher, raised in Brooklyn, and the product of "our public schools." Well, Anthony, I'm sure over the past 10 days or so you've made your mother proud.

Update. One of my loyal followers said that he was talking to a friend yesterday who said, "No way he cannot resign."

"On the contrary," said my commenter, "I would be very surprised if he did. There isn't even such a thing as disgrace for politicians anymore. E-bezzle millions? Avoid taxes? --minor 'judgment error.' Send naked pictures of yourself out to women for three years? He's only human! After all, can't he make just one mistake?...over and over again, with multiple people over three years, while simultaneously forgetting that the internet is somewhat less private than his office? And then reflexively lie about it. I loved his 'I am accepting full responsibility' speech two days after lying about it, ignoring it, and yelling at the media. The moment I'm caught, I take FULL responsibilty. --Huh? I'm pretty sure that's not what responsibility is about."

Update. Why am I not surprised that somewhere south of 60% of this perv's constituents want him to stay in office?

2011-06-03T08:35:00.005-05:00

No Way this POS Gets Re-elected

There's nothing but bad news on the jobs front. Drudge is all over this today and so is Gateway Pundit. The economy added 54,000 jobs in May. Obama is the worst jobs president since the Great Depression. I heard a pundit on Cavuto yesterday saying that the middle class is disappearing right in front of our eyes.

Update. Let's not forget fewest number of jobs created in 8 months; housing starts down (again); housing prices down (again); consumer confidence down (again). Meh. A good discussion of all of this on my favorite blog, Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog.

And the price of gas--ah yes. And yes, Barry, we do remember when you said that energy prices would necessarily "skyrocket" under your administration.

2011-06-01T08:57:00.005-05:00

Obama Smarter than Smart--No, Not Really

There's a can't miss article today at the American Thinker by Dov Fischer: "Stop It Already--He's Not So Smart." Fischer makes the point that it's been part of the mainstream media's "analysis" for decades to portray liberals as "just plain smarter than mortal humans" and conservatives not all that smart--in fact, just plain stupid.

Fischer's listing of former presidents and presidential candidates and how they've been treated by the media--for example, genius AlGore, moron Ronald "Bedtime for Bonzo" Regan--isn't new, but by putting all the names together from the past 30 or 40 years along with their media treatment, he makes a strong point that even the most "stupid" of us people on the right can't fail to see.

Then he goes on to discuss the current smarter-than-smart liberal in the White House.

Dov Fischer was himself Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, a position comparable to the one Obama held at Harvard Law, president of the Harvard Law Review. Fischer points out, as have others, that to hold such a position one normally publishes something "fabulous, a real scholarly piece of work." And yet, go searching for such a work from Obama, and it doesn't exist in any database. Says Fischer, "I cannot find any scholarship published by him that reveals the exceptional brilliance that paved the way to his achievement." The truth is, Rav Fischer, just like his "qualifications" for being President of the United States, that scholarship doesn't exist. Obama made it where he is by being the right black man in the right place at the right time--that goes for his affirmative action position as the president of the Harvard Law Review just as it does for President of the United States. History is going to judge us harshly for putting this unqualified pos into the world's most powerful office, and well it should. Fortunately we have to go through this "historic first" crap only once. Hopefully from now on, anyone, regardless of the color of their skin, their religious affiliation, or please God, their gender, will be expected to be qualified for the job.

Rav Dov Fischer has a blog at rabbidov.com.

2011-05-30T07:09:00.005-05:00

Happy Memorial Day. Remember Our Troops

Update. If you have real good eyesight, you can almost see Google's "tribute" to Memorial Day--you know, the site that celebrates every non-American holiday you can think of? Keep it real, Google. Seriously, if this is the best you can do, then just forget it.

2011-05-26T04:56:00.002-05:00

What we'd like to see more of...

Obama has been dumped by a top Jewish donor, according to American Thinker. Haim Saban is a billionaire Israeli-American donor who gives his money to--who else--the Dems. The article calls him one of the biggest individual supports to the Dim Party; he says that Obama needs to visit Israel as he has other Middle East countries. --Oh, they could sell tickets to that!

It's starting to become clear that Obama blundered, big time, with his speech last Thursday. In key swing states, says AT, --Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio--Jews are more numerous than in most of the country. If these people will actually WAKE UP and see that Obama is no friend to the Jews (exactly what else does he need to do to get the attention of these people?), a swing in the Jewish vote away from Obama in 2012 could keep him from being reelected.

Here's an interesting article that asks the question, "Why is [Obama] so quick to distrust Israel, while so eager to appease Palestinians?"

Bret Stephens has written this article for the WSJ: "An Anti-Israel President." Stephens calls Obama's behavior--his sandbagging speech on Thursday and his speech at AIPAC on Sunday--"contempt...a thin tissue of falsehoods, rhetorical legerdemain, telling omissions and self-contradictions. Let's count the ways."

I found this video about Israel's borders on one of my favorite sites, Seraphic Secret.

2011-05-24T12:06:00.014-05:00

She has 29 people to help her look (and act) the part of First Lady

Seriously. Is this the best Michelle Obama can do? Any professional, adult woman knows that shiny full mini-skirts are best left for a middle-school end-of-year dance. Will someone please tell this woman that no one--seriously, no one--wants to see her looking this way. It doesn't take some genius advance people to predict that FLOTUS might encounter wind on this trip, so she ought to dress appropriately. Frankly, she ought to dress appropriately, regardless. Does this woman not own ONE soft suit or dress/coat ensemble that she could wear for these daytime events--instead of that shiny bubble gum pink (too tight--her personal sartorial signature) bolero? Pink? A great color for six-year-olds. And those sling-back kitten heel pumps in goose-shit green for midday--don't get me started.

h/t to MOTUS and the wonderful commenters at my favorite blog, Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog. These kinds of shots only happen when the O's are outside of U.S. control and real pictures (rather than the constantly photoshopped beauties) of our MOOCHelle are given to the press. A pic like this would never get past White House censorship control in the U.S. This woman is embarrassing. Note too that she's the only one laughing.

The Telegraph describes the above photo as "US first lady Michelle Obama...desperately protecting her modesty" during a windy ceremony. "The blast also caused havoc with the first lady's hair [um, we call that her 'wig hat'], which was left standing on end at one point." Snort.

MailOnline said Mrs. Obama's said her pale blue floral Fifties gown "is just too prom and girly for the wife of the President." I'll translate that for you, Michelle. You're not being taken seriously on the world stage.

Oh, and P.S. Is it not a fact that Mitchell is from "the Windy City"? Just askin'. So it's sort of like she's not ever not encountered wind before, right? These people are such an embarrassment. Don't get me started on Barry's toast (read from NOTE CARDS, no less) to the Queen. Meh.

2011-05-24T10:05:00.007-05:00

Benjamin Netanyahu Speaks

Here is a link to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at AIPAC on Monday night. Today he will speak to the U.S. Congress.

Update. Netanyahu made his speech to Congress. He was interrupted 57 times with applause. He was also interrupted once by a noisy protester, which was nothing--quickly dealt with--yet that's the headline at CBS News. Is it any wonder that the lamestream press is becoming increasingly irrelevant?

We are not occupying the region--Israel is our homeland, Netanyahu told Congress. Jerusalem must remain undivided. Also, "We will not return to the indefensible boundaries of 1967." And in case Obama isn't paying attention, while he's off on his Obamaland vaycay in Great Britain or whatever he's doing, he should check out the response to that statement, here.

Update #2. One of my favorite blogs, Seraphic Secret, weighs in on Netanyahu's speech.

2011-05-23T07:57:00.000-05:00

A picture is worth 1,000 words

This is Bibi and Barry, both pictured in their early 20s. h/t Lucianne.com

2011-05-22T07:03:00.009-05:00

Herman Cain Is In

Herman Cain threw his hat into the ring yesterday, running as a Republican candidate for POTUS. I don't know Herman Cain, but I think he's certainly someone to watch. Chances are he's not going to be a leftist media darling like John McCain was--just sayin'. His background: from South Carolina, Cain has a Bachelor's degree in math, Master's degree in computer science, former Navy analyst, former president and CEO of the fourth largest pizza chain in the country (Godfather's), former chairman of the board for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, great speaking ability (able to think on his feet, probably won't have to be constantly plugged into a teleprompter), and an abiding commitment to conservative principles and small government.

You know, one thing we have to thank Obama for: we've already done the blackety, black, black, black, awesome, awesome, awesome thing with him, so we don't EVER have to do that again. We can simply look at the guy's qualifications and not the color of his skin (gee, where have I heard that one before--oh yeah, Martin Luther King). So thank you, Barry Barack Obama Soetoro Soebarkah! Although considering the double standard and hypocrisy of the left, watch for them to come out with an "Uncle Tom" meme for Cain.

This is Herman Cain taking on a group of liberals who were looking for a fight at one of his events. He gave them one. Heh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOJxQ7umeVw&feature=related

Charles Krauthammer has said that Herman Cain's candidacy is for "entertainment purposes only." Really Charles? I don't think people like you get it, Charles. We are sick of the status quo, coming from both sides of the aisle.

Update. In his interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this morning, Herman Cain just had a "Sarah Palin moment"--Wallace asked him about Israel and Palestine and the "right of return," and it was pretty clear that Cain didn't know what Wallace was referring to. He managed to stumble through an answer, but it was a very bad moment.

2011-05-21T07:25:00.015-05:00

Stand With Israel

You don't have to be "the smartest guy in the room," Barry Soetoro, to understand why

(--oh, he doesn't use that name anymore? What is his legal name, anyway? I guess I'll just change my name to Bernadette Fricke--and don't ask me for my documents proving my name change, please. We should all, just like Barack Hussein Barry Soetoro Soebarkah Obama get to use whatever name we fancy. Plus if I want to use some dead guy's SSN from Connecticut, a state I've never set foot in, that should be OK, too. --but I digress--)

the Golan Heights, land captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, is important to Israel's security. Just look at a map. For a discussion about why surrender of the Golan would be a "reckless act" for Israel, see "Defensible Borders on the Golan Heights," by Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland.

I'm very glad to hear there are some principled people in Washington who are unwilling to just sit by while Barack Hussein Obama sells one of our oldest allies down the river. On Friday, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) announced that he would introduce a congressional resolution disapproving of Obama's stance on Israel's border lines, saying that his position "threatens Israel's security."

Says Hatch, "Rather than stand by Israel against consistent unprovoked aggression by longtime supporters of terrorism, President Obama is rewarding those who threaten Israel's very right to exist. This is not only ridiculous, but dangerous.

"There is strong disapproval in Congress for the President's new posture towards Israel, and I will introduce a resolution next week affirming Israel's right to maintain its territorial integrity."

This is from an article at American Thinker by Joshua Lipana, "Why Israel cannot trade land for peace": "Israel [unlike the Islamists in Palestine]...respects its citizens' individual rights. It is by this virtue that their sovereignty is legitimate. It is also the reason why Israel is supported by liberty loving people all over the world."

And, for a little comedy relief--with a point--go to Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace and read: "Netanyahu Urges U.S. Return to 1845 Borders."

Here are the shifting sands of Obama's position on Israel. h/t UK Mail online.

2011-05-20T14:45:00.011-05:00

Slapdown!
Bibi to Barry: "Watch me and I'll show you how it's done"

CAPTION CONTEST??

Watching Netenyahu today school Obama in statesmanship was a thing of beauty. Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has the video. h/t to GP who has been all over this issue ever since Obama's speech.

Update. Rush Limbaugh has a nice discusion of the meeting between the Adult in the room and President ManChild. Someone said, let's get Bibi a Hawaiian birth certificate so he can run for POTUS--haha. Limbaugh is calling Benjamin Netanyahu the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Rush has a transcript of Netanyahu plus his running comments. Screaming.

Limbaugh: The Republican Party was shown all they have to do--and it doesn't involve shouting, and it doesn't involve pointing fingers. It just involves telling the truth. Benjamin Netanyahu was fearless. Stood up to a president that nobody to date has had the courage to stand up to....It was wonderful to see. Bibi Netanyahu.

h/t the Limbaugh website for the pics.

2011-05-19T11:28:00.028-05:00

Stand With Israel

Barack Obama does not represent me or my values (or my country either, as far as I'm concerned). This is the Certificate of Honour given to my great-uncle, Jan Roorda and his wife Rein, awarded to them by the Yad Vashem for their heroism in saving Jewish families during WWII. They were part of the Dutch resistance during the time that the Netherlands was occupied by Nazi Germany. They and others in their town stood with the Jews and took care of "about one hundred" people in hiding, according to Uncle Jan. Jan and Rein Roorda received the Medal of the Righteous, and their names are inscribed on the Honour Wall in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.

Here's what Rush Limbaugh had to say about Obama's "big, big" middle east speech yesterday. Limbaugh believes that Obama is feeling his oats because of the Osama assassination. Obama's foreign policy is "reelect Barack Obama in 2012."

All right, so now we know, ladies and gentlemen, it is official, and the instincts of many, including mine, were correct. The Arab Spring is an uprising of Middle Eastern nations against Israel, and they have been aided and abetted by President Barack Obama of the United States of America. That's what's going on, and that's what this speech was all about.

Obama wants Israel to go back to the 1967 borders, which would include giving up buffer areas like the Golan Heights. Although Limbaugh says also that going back to the 1967 borders is "not that big a deal" to the Israelis, that apparently it was going to be a bargaining chip that Netanyahu was prepared to use, but he can't use it now because Obama beat him to it and gave it away. So instead of the 1967 borders being an end-point in the negotiation, Netanyahu has been handed the issue as a starting point. The real issue, says Limbaugh, is the "right of return," meaning that Palestinian refugees from 1948 demand a return to their homes in pre-1967 Israel. That's something that the Israelis will never agree to and the Palestinian's won't compromise on, so realistically there can never be a two-state solution. So really Obama's speech was pure grandstanding, which if true would be pure Obama.

Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is obviously more of a diplomat than Obama (although my goofy black Lab named Docker is more of a diplomat than Obama), replied to Obama's speech: "The viability of a Palestinian state cannot come at the expense of Israel's existence." He also called the pre-1967 borders "indefensible."

OK, this is obviously a complex issue, and I'm not sure I understand all the nuances. This is from Fox News: Though Israel occupied East Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Six Day War, Obama said Thursday that the "future of Jerusalem" remains to be worked out, as does the fate of Palestinian refugees.

A leading Jewish American group, ZOA (Zionist Organization of America) is calling for AIPAC to rescind their invitation to Obama, where he is scheduled to speak on Sunday. AIPAC is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, America's pro-Israel lobby. The AIPAC website says the conference will include more than 10,000 delegates from all 50 states, among them more than 1,500 students from 400 college campuses. Even before Obama's speech on Thursday, AIPAC had sent out an email telling attendees not to boo Obama.

Here is what ZOA had to say about Obama's speech on Thursday.

President Obama is either extraordinarily naïve or extraordinarily hostile to the Jewish state of Israel, despite his claims of commitment to Israel’s security. One cannot claim to care about a neighbor’s young children while renting out rooms to child predators.

It is breath-taking, shocking and frightening that at a time when the Nazi-like terrorist group Hamas (a proxy of Iran), whose charter calls for the murder of every Jew (Article 7) and Israel’s destruction (Article 12), merges with Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah, forming a unity government, Obama can now call for a PA state and on the ’67 indefensible lines yet. Obama was recently given a Noble Peace Prize; he should now receive the Nobel War Prize for increasing the likelihood of a Mideast war and endangering Israel’s very xistence....President Obama mindlessly and shockingly ignores all this vile hatred, vile actions, and continuing threats. The last thing the world needs, Mr. Obama, is another Islamist terrorist state.

As Congressman Allen West (R-FL) of Florida said today, “Today’s endorsement by President Barack Obama of the creation of a Hamas-led Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders, signals the most egregious foreign policy decision his administration has made to date, and could be the beginning of the end as we know it for the Jewish state."

Today, we are ashamed of and frightened by America’s policy regarding Israel. The ZOA prediction several years ago that President Obama will become the most hostile president to Israel ever, has come true. Helen Thomas, Rashid Khalidi, Ali Abuneimah, J Street, and George Soros, and every anti-Semite in America, are surely thrilled by this speech. All thhose who love peace, justice, and Israel – are not.

We urge friends of Israel and enemies of Islamist terrorism to contact your Members of Congress to fight against Obama’s anti-Israel policy.

The Jews in America who voted for Obama had better wake up. Because after they're finished with Israel, they're coming for you. And the rest of us in America, particularly my liberal friends who would rather go on with their nice lives and not pay attention to what's going on in the world, had better wake up too.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
--Pastor Martin Niemoller, 1892-1964

Updates. I'm looking around the internet, trying to find some other responses to The Barack's speech.

Here's something from and Israeli news source: Netanyahu associate: Obama detached from reality. --"Obama apparently does not understand the reality in the Mideast."

Something from The NYT: Obama and Netanyahu, Distrustful Allies, to Meet. The article says that "Obama has told aides and allies that he does not believe that Netanyahu will ever be willing to make the kind of big concessions that will lead to a peace deal." The article also characterizes a phone call between Netanyahu and Hillary Clinton on Thursday as "furious"--and then of course, The NYT writer says, in full Obama-suckup-mode: "Obama did not back down." Oh. Gag. Me.

Obviously one of the big issues that Netanyahu is trying to deal with is coming this September, when the U.N. General Assembly is set to vote on Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu is counting on Mr. Obama, says the NYT article not only to veto the vote in the Security Council, but also to lean on America's European allies to get them to reject the vote as well.

There's some background in the NYT article about why Obama chose Thursday for his Middle East address. According to this article, Netanyahu heard about Obama's plans for the Middle East address, so he alerted Republican leaders that he would like to address a joint meeting of Congress, which he will do on Monday. So the White House timed Obama's speech on Thursday to make sure he went first.

An article in The Jerusalem Post, PM slams Obama call for 'Palestine' based on '67 lines, called Netanyahu's repsonse to Obama's speech "quick and bitter."

Here's columnist Linda Chavez at the Washington Examiner, Obama abandons Israel, saying that Obama's Middle East speech on Thursday will come back to haunt him. Her take on the issue is that Obama wants unilateral territorial concessions from Israel in return for empty promises. I think I heard Charles Krauthammer say the same thing, something like, Israel is asked to give up land in return for promises--not a good bargain. Chavez's last line: "Obama has abandoned Israel. Now it's time that Israel's supporters in the U.S. abandon him.

Here's a radio interview with Melanie Phillips, saying that the Obama administration believes Israel is "expendable." Phillips is the author of a fascinating book, Londonistan.

HotAir makes an interesting point this morning. This seems like a WTF? moment in Obama's speech yesterday that went little noted: "As for security, every state has the right to self-defense, and Israel must be able to defend itself--by itself--against any threat."

So did Obama just say that the U.S. won't defend Israel if attacked?

Obama is making Glenn Beck look like a visionary as he focuses these days on Israel and his "restoring courage" event this summer.

2011-05-17T06:36:00.000-05:00

Taking a Break

I'm finding things in general on the political scene to be just too depressing for words right now, so I'm taking a little break from the blog for awhile. I'm not sure whether the break will be long or short, but I hope you will rejoin me when I return.

2011-05-09T11:55:00.002-05:00

Is everybody just about sick of the "gutsy Obama" meme?

If you hear someone referring to the "chipmunk in the small chair" photo, that would be the one at the left.

You would think Dude Obama has "former Navy SEAL" on his resume, the way he's being gushed over for ACTUALLY MAKING A HARD DECISION. Everybody's seen it, right? It's already been described as an "iconic photo," posted on the White House website last Monday, purportedly a shot of O's security team watching the raid on the Osama compound in Abbottabad.

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit spells out in detail the various stories the White House has put out about this one photo:

1. There was the AP report that said Obama and his team "monitored the strike on Osama bin Laden's compound in real time, watching and listening to the firefight that killed the terrorist leader."

2. There was the story that White House press sec'y Jay Carney told the press: "The president and his top national security aides in the Situation Room had available to them minute-by-minute updates on the operation, and that photograph was taken during the operation."

3. Then there was a walkback of that story from Leon Panetta, reported by The Telegraph: Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the special forces was cut off."

4. Then on Sunday there was White House security advisor Tom Donilon telling Chris Wallace on Fox News on Sunday that he wasn't sure what they were watching when the photo was taken.

5. And finally (and of course this won't be the end of it), we have Obama on Sunday night in his interview on "60 Minutes" who said in answer to a simple question about whether they could hear the gunfire, Obama said they had a sense of when gunfire and explosions took place." Huh??? "But," big Zero added, they "could not get information clearly about what was happening inside the compound."

Well, that's a pretty damned far walkback from the original report that they were "watching and listening" to the firefight that killed Osama.

What can you do with such serial fabulists? Well, you can take a page from Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: Rule #5--"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."

This is from Wendy Chamberlain in the Green Room at HotAir: "In an attempt to make the Jr. Chipmunk sitting in the small chair in the so-called "iconic" photo seem more than he is, we have our word of the day spread by the usual suspects: GUTSY. The article is hilarious and worth the read.

One of the astute commenters, "mount hood" over at GatewayPundit had this to say this morning: I laughed so hard about the chipmunk comment that I almost wet myself. I had a mental image of the Army General arriving in the room early and alone just so he could screw that adjustable height government issued chair down to its lowest setting, then sitting back with a smile on his face while our President-in-Training came in to take the eyes-just-above-the-level-of-the-tabletop-chair view, sort of like those old WW II Kilroy was here cartoons, Kilroy peeking over a fence. I wonder where Obama hid the mirror since 40 minutes would be a long time for him go without looking at an image of the smartest man in the room!

Hood, you nailed it! Haha.

Exit Question: So was the plan to get Osama bin Laden one of those things that Obama has been whining about INHERITING from the Bush administration? Just askin'.

Update. The Marvel Comic version of the "iconic photo."

2011-05-02T05:45:00.002-05:00

Birthers vs. "Racers"

This is from NewsBusters, Tony Katz, talk show radio host, appearing on MSNBC News Live with Contessa Brewer, whoever she is--do people really still watch MSNBC? Whatever. Anyway, I like Katz's point: media members and other people who blame all criticism of Barack Obama on the color of his skin are "Racers." Let's hope the term catches on.

Katz: But this whole idea of race, you know what, if there are birthers and they're all crazy and silly for actually wanting to see a birth certificate, well let's talk about the racers, the people who believe that everything is a conspiracy about race. It's Obama’s race that people want to see the birth certificate. It's Obama’s race that people don't like the out of control spending. It's not his race. It's that he's awful. The policies are terrible. ObamaCare is a lie and a failure. QE1 and QE2 didn't work. It's crazy.

For another article about the Left wanting to resurrect the "racism" theme, see Douglas Herz at American Thinker: "The Racism Racists." It seems the Left has chosen its 2012 presidential campaign theme: racism. But a legitimate question to ask is: who are the real racists?

2011-04-29T13:57:00.002-05:00

The Document Is an Amateurish Fake, So Why?

Maybe it's because the Boy King thinks it's funny to jerk half the country around. I dunno. If you listen to him talk about the issue (see below), you can tell he's having an hilarious time with all of it. Obviously he has no reason to put this issue to rest, since the more he makes his political enemies look like "crazy racist birthers," the better for his base. Plus, I'm sure he's hoping that Independents will jump on the "those ridiculous birthers" bandwagon as well.

Someone said to me today that they wouldn't be surprised it ObamaTeam (TM) photoshopped a document that's almost identical to the one he's holding on to, just to make his political enemies appear even more unreasonable. The other possibility is that there really is something on the original that he doesn't want people to know about. Or, the original doesn't exist.

This fake document that was put on the White House website does NOTHING to prove the authenticity of a 1961 Hawaiian birth certificate. And they know it.

Anyway, it's a fake, for what it's worth. h/t from one of my followers who is a Peter Boyles fan in Denver.

2011-04-29T07:06:00.006-05:00

My name is Bond--James Bond

My name's Barack Obama. I was born in Hawaii. The fiftieth state. Of the United States of America. No one checked my ID on the way in. But just in case....

This is the face of contempt and arrogance. Our man Barry is riding high, feeling pretty pleased with himself. Has there ever been a more pompous, arrogant, narcissistic a$$ in the White House than this guy? Well, let him continue to smirk and riff and laugh at half the country--for what? Proving that he was born here? Really? Let him and ObamaTeam (TM) continue to underestimate people, particularly "carnival barker" Donald Trump. Just remember Barry, he who laughs last, laughs best. This is childish behavior from the President of the United States, something we've come to expect from The Won, but something I will never get used to from a sitting president. I'm always astounded when he pulls this $hit.

So to be clear, the Left continues to throw down the race card for this guy, and any sort of criticism of him will be found, at best, to have "racial overtones." Do they really think this "racist" stuff is going to work again? Evidently they do, because this theme is being pushed again like it was a brand-new thought. Maybe it worked before Barry Baffoon had a record to run on, but it ain't gonna work anymore.

Ed Schultz: "This is what the Republican Party stands for, though--racism. I think Donald Trump is a racist."

Bob Schieffer is just an embarrassment. He criticizes Trump for mentioning Obama's grades and how he got into Harvard Law: "That's just code for saying he got into law school because he's black. This is an ugly strain of racism that's running through this whole thing." Hey Schieffer, what do you think affirmative action is all about? Do you really think a mediocre (at best--maybe he wasn't even that good, who knows?) white male student at Columbia could get into Harvard Law?

Idiot Joy Behar, I can barely listen to the woman: "It's very racist, because, in other words, you say he couldn't get into Harvard on his own, he didn't write his book, [Trump] can't fathom that a black man could be that smart. That's what's behind this."

The New Yorker blogs, posted on 27 Apr by David Remnick: Trump, Birtherism, and Race-Bating. "Let’s say what is plainly true (and what the President himself is reluctant to say): these rumors, this industry of fantasy, are designed to arouse a fear of the Other, of an African-American man with a white American mother and a black Kenyan father....Let’s be even plainer: to do what Trump has done (and he is only the latest and loudest and most spectacularly hirsute) is a conscious form of race-baiting, of fear-mongering.

Here's Richard Butrick at The American Thinker, Trump Smells a Rat. Williams Smells a Racist: "The point is that most "birthers", who think that Obama is a slick talking crypto-Marxist with a distain for America, would go after Obama if he were white. Now maybe Obama is a pragmatist and a sincere champion of America as a force for good in the world and the birthers are all wrong. That makes them wrong. It doesn't make them racist. And it doesn't make Trump a racist. Trump smells a rat. Trump has dealt with a lot of duplicitous sneaks in the business world and he smells a rat. Ok. He just smells something fishy." Thank you, American Thinker.

Of course Obama's paper of record (TM) has weighed in on the issue: A Certificate of Embarrassment. Of course, The NYT instructs us, we can only see this issue as racist: "It is inconceivable that this campaign to portray Mr. Obama as the insidious "other" would have been conducted against a white president."

So, that's where the Left is going, again, when their brown-eyed boy (oops, racist) is criticized: racist, racist, racist. We'll see how that works for them.

And if you haven't gotten enough of Boy King Barry yet, you can see him on Oprah on Monday. That's where he went on Friday after he scolded the country in his "press conference" (where he of course took no questions from the press) for not being "serious" about issues and wasting his time with "silliness," asking question about his birf certificate. He said he hoped the release will put the issue to bed so he can focus on more serious and important things--like campaigning for 2012 and appearing on Oprah Winfrey's show. After taping her show, he was headed to New York to do some fund raising, because maybe a billion dollars isn't going to be enough to get him put back into office for another four years--you never know.

2011-04-27T07:00:00.003-05:00

Want a Passport? You're gonna have to
give the gov't a whole lot more information

Coming to you from Obama's State Department--What fresh hell is this? There's a proposed new form for acquiring a passport that is, quite simply, beyond belief. If this were coming from any except the current administration in Washington, I would think it was a joke. Some of the questions:

List your mother's residence one year before you were born.

Did your mother receive pre-natal or post-natal care? Give the hospital, the address, the name of the doctor, and the dates of the appointments. WTF?

Please describe the circumstances of your birth, including the names (as well as address and phone number, if available) of persons present or in attendance at your birth.

Other questions you'll be asked if this new form goes through: all addresses since birth; your lifetime employment history, including employers' and supervisors' names, addresses, and telephone numbers (jeeze, I sure wish I'd kept better records when I was babysitting at the age of 11); personal details of all siblings (like what, for instance?); any "religious ceremony" around the time of your birth--oh for the Love of God.

This is the biggest laugher of all--the State Dept. estimates that this will take a person--wait for it--45 minutes to fill out. I guess that's the time it will take to physically write the words on the paper. The research for this thing would probably take me months. And there's this: "failure to provide the information requested may result in...the denial of your U.S. passport application." Well, duh.

According to the website Consumer Traveler, some, but not all, applicants will be required to fill out the new form, but no criteria have been made public for determining who will be "selected" for the new "biographical" form. So evidently, if the passport examiner wants to deny your application, all he or she will have to do is give you this impossible new form to complete (I'm thinking, don't wear your Tea Party lapel pin when you apply for a passport--heh). The State Dept. calls these people "passport adjudicators"--government paper-pushers who will now be able to decide who gets a passport and who doesn't. Brought to you by the Obama Administration.

Exit Question: Would Barack Hussein Obama (or is it Barry Soetoro?) be eligible for a U.S. passport if he had to fill out this form?

2011-04-26T10:38:00.003-05:00

Trump Continues to Hound Obama
about His Unavailable Life Records

Trump is keeping up the heat on Obama about his unavailable records. What about Obama's college transcripts no voter has ever been allowed to see? Why does it matter? Well, for one thing, Obama was sold to the country in the 2008 campaign as Mr. Super Smart, the smartest guy evah to seek the office of POTUS. Really? Then why are his college transcripts sealed? Trump thinks he knows why.

On Monday, Trump gave an interview to the AP:"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible," Trump told the AP. "How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard? I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."

Hilariously, CBS News called Trump out on the issue, saying that Trump "provided no 'evidence' of Obama's terrible marks...." Yes, how true. And that's the rub, ain't it, Barry. Trump is demonstrating how not showing the records can be a double-edged sword for Obama. ObamaTeam can say anything they want to about the guy, with no records to back up what they say--but so can anyone else. And Trump is doing it.

In a related story over at GatewayPundit, Jim Hoft has a post about Khalid Abdulla Tariq al-Mansour, a Muslim lawyer and black nationalist who made news in 2008 when it was revealed that he was one of Obama's patrons and had recommend Mr. Super Smart for admission to Harvard Law School in 1988. Al-Mansour, says Hoft, "is an outspoken hater of the United States, Israel, and white people generally. In the 1960s, Khalid Abdulla Tariq al-Mansour, aka Don Warden, was a San Francisco Bay Area founder of a group called the African American Association. Al-Mansour helped establish the Black Panther Party, but later broke with them when they aligned themselves with white radical groups.

From the interview. I don't know who the old black guy is who is speaking. I almost can't follow someone who speaks so slowly, but I'll do my best. Good Lord, who is this guy? Is he brain-impaired? What's with his sloooooow speech pattern? Seriously, it took this man three minutes to speak three sentences.

Crazy old slow-talking man: Mr. Obama. I think he's the brightesss [my goodnesssss, he has that same sort of hissss to the end of his s's that Obama hasss], most wonderful person who has come across the starting line, and I was introduced to him by a friend who's raising money for him. The friend's name is Dr. Khalid Tariq al-Mansour, from Texas. He is the principal advisor to one of the world's richest men. He told me about Obama, he wrote to me about him, and his introduction was, "There's a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends left there, because you used to go up there to speak. Would you pleassss write a letter in support of him?" That's before Obama decided to run.

[Uh, yeah, duh, that would have been pre-1988, so I guess he hadn't yet decided to run for president. This guy is another super-smart. Who the hell are these people and how have they gotten into such positions of influence?]

And he interjected the advice that Obama had passss [sic] the requirements, had taken and pass the requirements necessary to get into Harvards and become president of the Law Review. That's before he ever ran for anything. And I wrote a letter in support of him to my friends at Harvard saying to them I thought there was a genius that was going to be available. And I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly.

Sycophantic Interviewer: And this is before the World knew of Barack Obama!

Crazy old slow-talking man: That's right. That's right. That's right.

Good holy grief! This guy is saying more than he knows. Obama had passed the requirements necessary to get into Harvard and become president of the Law Review? All in one fell swoop? Gee, I didn't know it worked that way, but I guess if you have such a super genius like you had in Obama, then there's no question that this applicant would three years later become Law Review President. This mediocre student from Columbia. This community organizer. Haha.

The slow-talker being interviewed, the one who wrote the letter for "genius" Barry Hussein Obama, was useful idiot Percy Sutton [maybe I shouldn't be so hard on an old man, but he was allowing himself to be used], a civil rights attorney who represented Malcolm X. Naturally, ObamaTeam immediately denied Sutton's story, back in 2008, when this interview was given: Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt [where is he now, I wonder?] said, "Obama did not know and does not know Khalid al-Mansour." Well, clever. You don't have to "know" someone to have connections with them. Although by now we understand that everything the Obama people say is a lie. Heck, they'll like when they don't have to just for practice.

Sutton died in 2009. You can believe that ObamaTeam wished the old man had died before he gave that interview, but they obviously believed that Sutton's death would flush his statements about Obama's connection to al-Mansour down the memory hole. Thank you Donald Trump for bringing all of this up again.

Watch and listen to the video of Percy Sutton, if you can.

Update. At PajamasMedia, there's an interesting article about al-Mansour, written 26 Aug 2008 by Richard Fernandez: "The wrong man, sir." The article underlines how little was known about Barry Obama even at that point in 2008--and how apologetic people were for even questioning the man. Meh.

Also, Pamela Geller on her website, Atlas Shrugged, was all over this issue 'way back on 27 Aug 2008.

2011-04-19T10:12:00.005-05:00

Obama Gets Cranky with a Texas Reporter

Big Zero is a guy who really doesn't like to be challenged--no narcissist does. Here he is, being interviewed by a Texas reporter, who has the gall to point out that Obama lost Texas by 10 points in 2008. Obama had a cake walk from the media during his first campaign. Does he really think it's going to be that way the second time around? Hey Zero, welcome to politics! What you have here is just a tiny window into your new world. This guy is the most thin-skinned politician I think I've ever seen. Affirmative action got this guy all the way to the top, but it won't keep him there.

That phony smile at the beginning--no one believes it anymore, champ.

He says "two million" and then has to correct himself to say, "two trillion dollars worth of cuts." A million--a trillion--what's the difference?

Oh, I love this guy's question, "Why do you think you're so unpopular in Texas?" Haha. The irritated, clueless look on Zero's face while he tries to answer that question at 0:34 is priceless. Zero is obviously pissed that he's not getting a question about his awesomeness.

Obama: "We lost by a few percentage points in Texas..."

Reporter: [having the audacity to interrupt The Won] "Well, you lost by about ten...[interrupting Zero's "uh, uh uh"]...fifty five to forty four." Oh string this guy up--interrupting, not sitting there letting Zero run out the clock, not kissing his ring--oh, this reporter should definitely plan on getting a tax audit for the rest of his natural life.

I have never in my lifetime seen a sitting POTUS who slams people in the other party the way Zero does. He simply doesn't understand how to "act presidential," he doesn't understand being an executive, he doesn't understand that he's President Obama, not Campaign Obama.

Obama: "Governor Perry [certainly no fan of The Won] balanced his budget with about 6 billion dollars worth of Federal help, which he happily took, and then, uh, started blamin', uh, the members of Congress who had offered that help."

The video continues at 2:06, after the interview is finished. The reporter's voiceover--"After the interview, Mr. Obama pointed out that he doesn't like a reporter challenging his comments."

Obama: "Let me finish my answers the next time we do an interview, all right?" [Which of course will be a cold day in hell.]

Great job, Brad Watson! Showing journalism isn't completely dead, and no coincidence that the guy is from Texas. How soon do we secede?

You know, watching an interview like this with Obama, which doesn't happen often because he's always so heavily handled and scripted, you have to wonder, what is with this guy? An interesting article that goes in that direction, attempting to answer it from a psychological point of view, is written by Robin Berkeley at American Thinker. Berkeley has written several think pieces along the same lines. This one was written 11 June 2010: "A Shrink Asks: What Is Wrong with Obama?" Writes Berkeley: "Obama's odd mannerisms intrigue a psychotherapist like me. He also presents a serious diagnostic challenge....Obama is flat when passion is needed; he's aggressive when savvy is required. What's most worrisome is that Obama doesn't even realize that his behavior is inappropriate."

2011-04-18T13:05:00.010-05:00

Could the Issue of "The Hidden Records" Unravel on Obama?

See the Update below about Obama's Social Security numbers.

With Donald Trump coming out and making it "safe" for politicians to mention the birth certificate issue, is it possible that this whole mess of the missing/hidden/locked down documentation for Big Zero might just unravel?

People are starting to say, Well, you know, the "birf certificate" thing is just shorthand for the larger issue of Obama's failure/unwillingness to disclose any of the documents that prove his background. At first I thought he was just ducking the birth certificate issue, in essence actually creating the issue, loving this issue because the "birther" thing made people who asked these questions look stupid. But what the "birther" thing really is comes down to an issue of eligibility: is Barack Hussein Obama constitutionally eligible for the office? We'll get more about that when Jerome R. Corsi's book comes out on May 17: Where's the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to be President. Some people say, Who cares? Well, I do.

The more I think about it, I've come to the conclusion that this clown has a whole lot in his background that he must hide.

HIS FATHER WAS--WHO?

He only gets one: 1) Barack Obama Sr. I mean, seriously, there isn't even the slightest physical resemblance between Barack or anyone in his family and his "son" Barry; 2) Frank Marshall Davis; or, my personal favorite, 3) Malcolm X. Someday we'll know, but probably not within my lifetime. People have remarked about the outstanding rememblance between Malcolm X's sister and Barry Soetoro's oldest daughter ("Brother, stop it"). The audience participation of the video clip is hilarious--the mound venus? Gasp.

Seriously, though, I can envision a day when someone is going to make a whole career out of "outing" the truth about Soetoro/Obama.

There are other, even more "interesting" ideas about Obama's father. One I haven't heard much but that is particularly unusual but not impossible is that Barry's "mother," Stanley Ann Dunham, is really his half-sister, and Barry was fathered by Stanley Dunham who had some sort of fling with an AfAm woman. This is the kind of thing that happens when a public figure refuses to make his public documents--public. P.S. The enormous ears come from the Dunham family.

Of course, another possibility is that after he was born in the manger, Barry Hussein was left in a willow basket among the rushes, near a sacred river. Haha. That came from one of the clever commenters at my favorite blog, Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog, where yesterday they were discussing O's family genetics.

COLLEGE YEARS

The truth about his college years would probably make interesting reading. Those years seem to be something of a black hole (haha, no pun intended). Occidental College? He was a student there for two years, starting in 1979. No transcripts from Occidental.

The summer of 1981, before he started at Columbia, he traveled to Indonesia to visit his mother and half-sister. That was when he spent 3 weeks in Pakistan, supposedly traveling with a college friend whose family lived in Karachi. He spent 3 weeks in Pakistan? How long did he spend with his mother? That passport would probably tell us something about him; has anyone ever seen a non-redacted version?

Columbia University? No transcripts, where he supposedly majored in political science "with a specialty in international relations"--really? Whoever made that one up must have fallen off his chair laughing. It is said he graduated with a B.A. in 1983.

One of the questions that keeps coming up is about how he financed his education, and this one I think just might be the lynchpin of them all. The buzz surrounding the financing is that perhaps Barry Soetoro was a Fulbright Scholarship winner--something he would have been eligible for only as a citizen of a foreign country. If he were a Fulbright Scholar, then either 1) he gamed the system and lied about being a foreign citizen; or 2) he has dual citizenship. Either scenario would certainly be something worth hiding if you're running for President of the United States. Oh, and P.S. The Fulbright Scholar Program is overseen by the State Department, so it's not very likely we'll ever see any records from that source.

And don't even get me started about how he got into (and out of) Harvard Law and the Law Review.

How about Medical Records? Haven't seen any of those, but his doctor has told us he's in good health. Yes, that sets my mind right at ease. Here's this anorexic, fey little man, he's lost a lot of weight since he came into office, he smokes, he may bounce a basketball now and then and he certainly drives a golf cart around on a weekend, but so much of the time he just simply doesn't look well. Oh well. I guess his health is the least of our worries, but it does seem like we have a right to know if this man is healthy, or not.

Anyway, whatever Trump finds out in his investigations and whatever he reveals, plus whether he runs or doesn't run, I think we all owe Donald Trump a big "Thank-you" for putting this issue out into the light of day--again. I would say at the very least, "Stay tuned because we haven't heard the last of this stuff."

And P.S., for a great new video from Granny Jan, a commenter-extraordinaire at Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog, see the YouTube sensation, "The Campaign to Stop the Bullying at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave."

Update. And how could I forget about this one--Obama's many Social Security numbers. What's up with that, anyway. Jack Cashill whose book (above) has a section about this, writes an article, "Another Look at Obama's Social Security Number," 17 Mar 2011. He hired an investigator who discovered that Obama had used a Social Security number that was issued in Connecticut between 1977 and 1979. Connecticut? What's up with that? Yet any time this sort of thing is brought up, immediately it's ridiculed and laughed off as some sort of "birther" conspiracy, which is actually a brilliant strategy that we all must admit has worked extremely well, up to now.

Susan Daniels was the investigator who found the Connecticut number for Cashill, and she had this to say: "All I can say," says Daniels of the 042-68-4425 number, "is that it's phony and [Obama] has been using it, with it first appearing on his selective service document in 1980." Recently Bill O'Riley of Fox News used half a show to debunk these controversies, saying about this one that perhaps since Barack Obama Sr. attended college in Connnecticut, then . . . what? I didn't follow O'Riley's argument at all. --And I thought B.O. Sr. went to Harvard, which last time I knew was in Massachusetts, but maybe I'm just too stupid to follow that nuance.

Daniels adds that even though she found this number used with his Selective Service application, she can't vouch for its authenticity. Some have argued that the Selective Service information was forced and backdated once Big Zero became a presidential candidate. If so, says Daniels, "They were stupid to use the CT number on the [Selective Service] card, because now there is no way for [Obama] to back out of that number."

Update #2. Carol A. Tabor has written an excellent article, posted at American Thinker: "Trump Needs to Shift to Second Gear on Birth Certificate Challenge." Anyone who's concealed his documents (and hired lawyers to fight efforts in court to reveal his place of birth), as Mr. Obama has, appears not trustworthy; his actions alone demand forensics testing for any document he produces as proof of his "natural born" status. As Ronald Reagan famously put it, "Trust, but verify."....Clearly, Obama's life documents -- which remain sealed from public view -- pose a problem for him, and the behavior of his inner circle proves it.

2011-04-11T07:42:00.009-05:00

Whatever his aim, what he's doing is brilliant

New Updates below.

Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is going at Barack Obama head-on, and it's brilliant. Here's what Trump said on NBC's Today Show recently. Who else could say this and get away with it. The brilliance of it is that Trump can say anything he wants to say:

During a discussion about Obama's birth certificate, Meredith Vieira said, "In the state of Hawaii, they say they have seen this document, that he was born in the United States. That's good enough for them." [Them?? Who the hell is them? An aside: Doesn't it seem odd that the press doesn't seem to have one ounce of curiosity about this issue? As someone who followed Watergate on an almost daily basis the summer of the Watergate hearings, I do find it very strange that even what passes for a "journalist" today (and the term can be used only very loosely), this issue doesn't have any interest for them. Why not?]

Trump: A birth certificate is not even close. A certificate of live birth is not even signed by anybody. I saw his -- I read it very carefully. It doesn't have a serial number. It doesn't have a signature. He spent $2 million in legal fees trying to get away from this issue, and if he weren't lying, why wouldn't he just solve it? I wish he would because if he doesn't it's one of the greatest scams in the history of politics and in history, period.

Meredith Vieira couldn't handle it--her eyes were spinning in her head. And the most hilarious thing is that NBC has to handle this guy carefully because he's got the highest-rated show on their network. Haha. So she tried another way, asking Trump if there was anything he thinks Obama has done well. Haha.

TRUMP: Get elected. I think he did a great job when he ran for office. If I had my choice of having Obama do great as a president and do a really great job for this country and not running, as opposed to running and doing -- I'd prefer that he did a great job. I love this country. But this country is going to hell. I would run a great, great country. This country will be great again. It is not great right now. We have huge deficits. We have huge unemployment. We have huge problems, and we're not respected. We're not respected in the world. The world laughs at us. They won't be laughing if I'm president.

Rush Limbaugh's reply to all of this is that Trump is providing a blueprint for the way to beat Obama in 2012--just go straight at him: Everybody lives in this media-created fantasy that the guy's unbeatable, that he's the greatest orator in the world. You get him away from the prompter, I'm serious, and he's lost. He's a gaffe machine. He and Biden are in the same class, and it doesn't take long to call the roll.

On the ABC Sunday talking heads show with Christiannnne Amanpoooourrr, who heads the A-list of water-carriers for Big Zero, asked Obama's Whiz Kid David Plouffe, [don't you just want to slap that contemptuous smirk off that guy's face?] about the issue. Plouffe responded that Donald Trump is a "sideshow." Really? Oh please, you nasty little punk, underestimate Donald Trump--please!

Christiannnnne: "He seems to doubt, yet again, President Obama. He's talking yet again about the whole birth certificate issue.....I know that you've answered all the questions on this birth certificate issue, but what do you make of Donald Trump raising this issue? Do you think it's going to be a big issue during the campaign?"

Pluff: Uh, I don't. I saw Donald Trump's kinda rising in some polls, and his behavior and spectacle the last couple of weeks, I hope he keeps on rising, cause I don't think, there's zero chance that Donald Trump would ever be hired by the American people, uh, to do this job. There may be, uh, a small part of the country that believes these things [hey Pluff, it's not a matter of belief--or faith. Just put the stupid thing out there. What's the big deal?], uh, but mainstream Americans think it's a sideshow, and what they want our leaders to do is focus squarely on the issues in front of us--and blah, blah, blah, talking points.

Actually, I'm thinking that Pluff and the gang are wetting their collective pants over what Trump can do to them. At the very least, he's a big distraction for them--haha, another of their favorite talking points--living rent-free in their heads, boring into their brains like a cancerous worm. Go Trump. He doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks about him, nor does he have to. In the Emperor's New Clothes world that Pluffie lived in throughout the campaign in 2007, anyone who dared to question or criticize Barry Hussein Obama was raaaacist. Admittedly, that worked well for them for a long time, but they finally used the word so often that it lost its sting. So then they went to calling "birther, birther, you're a birther nyah-nyah" if anyone actually asked for Barry Soetoro to give up his legal papers like everyone else in the country has to do if they want so much as a driver's license. Well, thanks to Trump, that's not going to work so well for them anymore either. Hey, Pluffie, it ain't 2007 anymore pal!

Update. I heard a very strange interview with Ann Coulter tonight who insisted that the birth certificate is a non-issue, that "everyone" has seen the long form, that the short form is no different legally, blah blah. I don't understand her position on this, except that maybe she thinks that the issue has been used too often to marginalize people on the right as "crazy birthers." Usually I like what she has to say, but I think she's dead wrong on this issue.

Update #2. This is from a Denver radio show, an interview with Bob Unruh, investigative reporter. They shred Bill O'Reilly's "proof" from Tuesday night about Barack Obama's records--"What a running con that was last night." It's interesting.

04132011PETE7A.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object)

2011-04-09T13:21:00.004-05:00

This Is Sweet

Brought to you by the Daily Kos: "Ignore this Mr. President. You already ignore me."

Dear readers, I apologize for what I am now writing. It will not be coherent, because I am responding to the policy and actions of an administration that are not coherent.

It is an expression of ... what? Disappointment to be sure, anger, almost despair.

This ~~screed~~ babyish tantrum goes on and on--it's hilarious, but funnier still are the 783 comments. Oh, boo-fucking-hoo! Comments, below, taken at random. They go on and on like this, 783 of 'em.

****************************
I gave up on him a long time ago.

The only time I pay any attention to him these days is when he continues to enable Republican talking points and screw the working class over. Unfortunately, that happens more and more these days.

**********************
It's another betrayal.

Obama doesn't seem to understand a basic tenant of democracy: we elected him to fight for our interests. Now he seems to think it's his job to convince us to give up our interests so that we can work together with the side that lost a democratic election.

No, Mr. Obama, if we had wanted a president who could work with congressional republicans, we would have elected McCain.

*****************************************

I'm done with this president.

Until further notice and evidence of his will to fight for the PEOPLE, I am out.

•He says he wants my contributions for his reelection campaign? NO.

•He says he wants me to work for his campaign again? NO.

•He says he wants me to canvass for his campaign again? NO.

•He says he wants me to phonebank for his campaign again? NO.

Not until he shows me that he is FIGHTING for the American PEOPLE and not the corporations, bankers and those with "special access" to power. Not until he has shown that he won't triangulate and capitulate to Tea Partiers and corporate interests over those of the PEOPLE who elected him.

Where the hell is your "fierce urgency of now", Mr. President? Until I see it, you can count me "out". I've had enough - and spare me your flowery celebratory flowery "bullshit" address afterwards. When we needed you, you CAVED (again) and that was one time too many for me.

**********************************

Until this weekend, I've tried to stay open-minded

...but I've reached my breaking in point. Fuck 'em all and fuck it all. I'm OUT.

If Obama doesn't need me, then fine - we're even.

**********************************

I read both of his books

I never said I thought he was a progressive

and I was quite critical of his educational policy while he was a candidate

but I think given some of his rhetoric during the campaign and early in his presidency, it was not unreasonable to have expected a number of things to be different.

**********************************

Are you over him yet? Hahahaha

2011-04-06T22:52:00.016-05:00

Ann Barnhardt: Warrior and Cultural Hero

Update: See the transcripts below, since I'm pretty much convinced that these clips will disappear from You Tube at some point.

There are leftist elitist radical slobs like Samantha Power (see post below). And then there are warrior cultural heros like Ann Barnhardt.

I found these YouTube clips at one of my favorite websites, Seraphic Secret, posted on April 06, 2011. Here she is discussed at PajamasMedia.

I'm going to let Ann speak for herself. These are must-see videos. In the first one you will see Ann tearing into Senator Lindsey Graham (R, SC) for his ignorant comments about free speech and the recent Koran burning by the Florida pastor, Terry Jones.

Now you will see Barnhardt reading passages from the Koran, bookmarked with strips of bacon. After reading, she torches the offending pages, burns the entire book, and at the end says, "You want a piece of me?"--and gives her address. Wow. Simply wow.

Finally, if you can't get enough of her (I can't), here's an interview with Ann Barnhardt.

**************
Transcript from clip one.

Hello, my name is Ann Barnhardt, and I’m apparently one of the very, very last people left in Western civilization who possesses any quantity of brains and balls simultaneously. I saw that Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Face the Nation this morning and said the following when asked by Bob Schieffer if there was anything that could be done about Americans burning the Koran. Quote: “Yeah, I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war. During World War II, you had limits on what you could say if it would inspire the enemy. Anytime we can push back here in America against actions like this that put our troops at risk, we ought to do it.” Unquote.

Lindsey Graham is a Republican, and if John McCain had been elected president in 2008, Lindsey Graham would be the attorney general of the United States today. Remember this as I go forward. Let’s take Graham’s words sentence by sentence.

First sentence. Quote: “Yeah, I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable.” Unquote. Hold people accountable? For what? For exercising their Constitutionally protected and divine right to freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion? Hey Jackass. Have you not read the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States? Here, let me read it for you. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or bridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government of redress of grievances.”

So what Lindsey Graham wants to do is elevate the totalitarian political system masquerading as a religion, called Islam, to a status that supersedes and overrides the First Amendment of the Constitution and thus places it in a position of specially protected legal superiority, wherein criticism of Islam or failure to show proper and sufficient deference and honor for Islamic texts is a crime. Hey Lindsey you Jackass. You know what that’s called? It’s called sharia. What the hell is wrong with you? I’m gonna burn a Koran here in a moment. Lindsey, why don’t you come and hold me accountable, player. Go ahead, have me arrested for exercising my First Amendment rights. Drag me before Congress and hold me to account. Do it. Nothing would make me happier. I would relish the opportunity to explain to you how exactly it is that we do things in the United States of America. If you want to pick a fight, sir, you go right ahead, but understand that if you pick a fight with me, the only way it ends is with you sobbing in the men’s room.

Next quote. “Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war.” Unquote. Free speech is a great idea? It is a bedrock principle of Western civilization and the United States. Individuals are free, sovereign agents. Individuals are not property or drones of the State. The government doesn’t tell the people what to think and say. The people tell the government what to think and say, through the mechanisms of representative republic governance under the Constitution. But what I suspect this really has to do with is intellectual snobbery and elitism. Lindsey Graham, you look at Terry Jones, and you see a redneck with a handlebar mustache who speaks with a southern drawl, without the benefit of a fancy Ivy League education. And you determine that a man like him cannot be trusted with his own personal, intellectual sovereignty under the First Amendment, and therefore you, in your superior intellectual state, have to reign him in. Listen Jackass, it doesn’t work that way. The First Amendment applies to all American citizens equally. It does not operate on a sliding scale based upon how expensive an education one receives, what one’s income is, or whether or not one is invited to tony soirees in Georgetown. But if that’s the game you want to play, that’s fine. If you want to go head to head with a person of intellectual parity, I’m your huckleberry. Come after me. Debate me. I stand foursquare with Terry Jones and am proud to do so.

Next sentence. Quote. “During World War II you had limits on what you could say if it would inspire the enemy.” Unquote. Lindsey, you Jackass. The only prohibitions on speech during World War II and all other wars pertained to speech which would give aid and comfort to the enemy, not speech which demoralized, discouraged, or degraded the enemy. Have you ever seen the WWII posters depicting the Japanese as “Japs” and the Nazis as bloodthirsty animals? Have you never seen the Warner Brothers cartoons? Yes, that’s right, “Loony Tunes,” produced during the war, that ruthlessly mocked and degraded the Germans, Italians, and Japanese? The informal prohibition on speech during the war was on speech that was defeatist or conciliatory towards the enemy, which is exactly what you are engaging in, you stupid, stupid Jackass.

Next sentence. Quote. “Anytime we can push back here in America against actions like this that put our troops at risk, we ought to do it.” Unquote. Push back? Since the free speech in question is by a loyal, law-abiding American citizen, against the sworn enemy of the United States and its Constitution, which is Islam, and you Senator Graham are talking about “pushing back,” using the force of the government of the United States, it sure sounds to me like you have decided that the United States government is aligned with Islam against the people of the United States, who do not show sufficient deference and respect for Islam. Senator Graham, you can take your dhimmitude and shove it up your ass. And don’t you dare accuse patriotic Americans, who are exercising their First Amendment rights, of putting our troops at risk. The only thing that is putting our troops at risk is the suicidal, defeatist rules of engagement which prevent our brave soldiers from actually fighting and defeating the enemy. You hang our boys out on the line in battle, and then you refuse to give them ammunition, refuse to allow them to engage the enemy without permission from a flipping attorney, and refuse to allow them to engage “civilians” while fighting a force that is 100% comprised of civilians. How dare you accuse us of putting our troops at risk.

Final quote. “So I look forward to working with Senator Kerry and Reid and others to condemn this, condemn violence all over the world based in the name of religion.” Unquote. I have just one question: What act of violence did Terry Jones or Ann Barnhardt perpetrate? Did we kill anyone? Did we assault anyone? Did we saw anyone’s head off? What act of violence did we perpetrate? How is burning paper with ink on it an act of violence? How is an object made of paper equivalent to the life of a human being? Are you honestly arguing that tearing and burning a book is equivalent to killing and beheading a human person? What is the matter with you? Do you know why we Christians don’t get too terribly upset about people who burn bibles or create horrific sacrilegious images using Christian symbols? Because we understand that a Bible can be reprinted and that an image is just an image. The image of a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine makes us sad, and sad not because we believe that it’s physically Jesus being drowned in urine. It makes us sad because of the implied hatefulness, misery, and despair of the artist who would do such a thing and the patrons who would applaud it. Christians don’t want to kill Robert Mapplethorpe while he was still alive. We wanted to pray for him so he would come to know God and be released from his obvious torment so that hopefully we can all be together in Heaven someday.

This is why we are burning the Koran: because it is the manifesto of an evil, totalitarian political system, and it enslaves human beings in a culture of misery, hopelessness, perversion, despair, true violence, and unnatural death. And if you weren’t such a monumental Jackass, Senator Graham, and didn’t spend all of your time kissing the ass of the very political system that would cut your throat in a heartbeat, maybe you would understand that.

******************

Transcript from clip two:

Now, the main event. Here is my Koran. It is printed in English and Arabic, so it’s a completely legit, official Koran. I have bookmarked several passages, and, um, the passages I’ve bookmarked I’ve bookmarked with bacon, because raw bacon makes the best koranic bookmark. I’m just going to go through these in order, from front to back, and read them off, and then, um, once I’ve read them off, I will tear the page out of the Koran, put it in my fire bowl, and ignite it here.

First one, you might want to jot these down. Surah Two, Verse 191: “and fight the infidels wherever you find them, and expel them from the place where they turned you out from.” Evil, evil garbage [as she rips the page from the book], and it goes . . . up in flames. Go back to hell where you came from. And I’ll discard my bacon bookmark here [splat].

Next up, Surah Two, Verse 193: “fight them till idolatry comes to an end and the law of Allah prevails.” Evil. Pull that out. . . garbage. On fire. Burn baby, burn.

Next up, pull my bacon bookmark out. The smell is divine, by the way. Alright, we are in Surah Four, Verse 24: “also forbidden are married women, unless they are captives of war, such is the decree of Allah.” What this is talking about is who a man can or can’t have sex with, so what this is doing is that it is ratifying the rape of women captured in jihad. Let me read it again, this is Surah Four, 24: “also forbidden are married women, unless they are captives of war, such is the decree of Allah.” Well Allah is an evil son of a bitch, so he can go to hell. Next up is also within Four: 24: “then give those of these women you have enjoyed the agreed dower. It will not be sinful if you agree to something else by mutual consent after having settled the dowry. Allah is certainly all-knowing and all-wise.” What this verse is doing is it’s ratifying prostitution. If a man pays a woman a dower or a dowry or certain quantity of money, he can have sex with her, without obligation. And certainly Allah is all-knowing and all-wise because Allah is an evil son of a bitch. [and the bacon goes, “splat”]

Alright, next, onto Surah Four, 34. This is talking to a man, who, one of his many wives, will not have sex with him willingly. Surah Four, 34: “As to women you feel are averse, talk to them persuasively, then leave them alone in bed without molesting them. Then beat them, and go to bed with them when they are willing.” So this ratifies beating your wife if she won’t have sex with you. Evil, evil, evil. [lights the page on fire] And we’ll burn this, because that has no place in a civilized society.

Next up, let’s go to, this is Surah Five, 33: “the punishment for those who wage war against Allah and his prophet [who is Mohammed], and perpetrate disorders in the land, is to kill or crucify them, and have a hand on one side and foot on the other cut off.” Evil. [rip] Burn, burn, burn.

OK, pull my bookmark out [splat]. Next up, we’re in Surah Eight, 12: “and Allah said to the angels, ‘I am with you, go and strengthen the faithful. I shall fill the hearts of infidels with terror, so smite them on their necks, and every joint, and incapacitate them.” This is the call to the beheading the infidels, this is where that all comes from. [rip] And it’s evil, so we will burn that. Back to hell where you came from. [another bacon bookmark goes “splat]

And let’s see now, what do we have next, we have, ah, Surah Nine—Surah Nine, Verse 5, this is the big one: “but when these months, prohibited for fighting are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive or besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every likely place." [rip—and her smoke alarm goes off]

Next up, still in wonderful Surah Nine [splat], Verse 29: “fight those People of the Book who do not believe.” By the way, Judeo-Christians, that’s us, People of the Book. “Fight those People of the Book who do not believe in Allah and the last day. Do not prohibit what Allah and his apostle have forbidden, nor accept divine law, until all of them pay the [Jizyah] tax in submission.” Evil [rip]. I’m paying no frickin’ tax. Burn, burn, burn.

Next up, [splat] still in good old Surah Nine, Verse 80: “whether you plead forgiveness for them or not, Allah will not forgive them, even though you plead seventy times. For they disbelieved in Allah and his apostle, and Allah does not show transgressors the way.” Evil. [rip, burn]

Next up, we’re still un Surah Nine [splat], Verse 123: “Oh believers, murder the unbelievers around you, and let them find harshness in you.” Really. [rip] Yeah, go to hell. There you go.

Now we are in Surah Thirteen, Verse 42 [splat]: “surely those who had gone before them did deceive, for Allah is all-deceiving, for he has knowledge of what each does.” This is calling God a deceiver and a liar, which implies that, really, Allah’s true identity is Satan. [rip] And I think we can all agree to that. Go back to hell, Allah, from whence you came. [burn]

Next up. Surah Twenty-three, [splat] Verse 1: “The true believers will be successful who are humble in their service, who shun all frivolities, who strive for betterment, who guard their sex, except from their wives and women-slaves of old.” This ratifies, um, concubines. Evil. [rip] And we’ll burn that.

Next up, Surah Forty-seven [splat], Verse 4: “So when you clash with the unbelievers, smite their necks until you overpower them, then hold them in bondage.” [rip] Yeah, I’d like to see you try. [burn] There we go.

Next up, Surah Fifty-two [splat], Verse 24. This goes to man-boy sex, which is highly prized in Islam. “And young boys, like pearls within their shells, will go round.” Uh, there’s all kinds of verses about this [rip]. It’s twisted. [burn] And I’ll be writing an essay on homosexuality and homosexual pedophilia and heterosexual pedophilia within Islam very, very shortly. Because it’s a cultural norm.

[splat] Next up is Surah Fifty-six, Verse 17. “Boys of never-ending bloom will pass round to them cups and decanters.” Never-ending bloom means, never-ending pubescence, and that’s what the Muslim man is taught to find sexually attractive [rip], is pre-pubescent and pubescent boys. [burn] It’s truly, truly disgusting. Most boys in Islamic culture do not escape their childhood without being anally and orally raped—by men. And they, in turn, perpetuate the cycle of sexual abuse. And most men in Islamic cultures are homosexual/homosexual pedophiles.

Now to Surah Sixty-five [splat], Verse 4: Divorce. “As for your women who have lost hope of menstruation and in case you have doubt, the prescribed period of waiting for them is three months, as also for those who have not menstruated yet.” What this is doing is ratifying sex with pre-pubescent girls. Let me read it again. “As for your women who have lost hope of menstruation [that would be older women], and in case you have a doubt, the prescribed period of waiting for them is three months, as also for those who have not menstruated yet.” So this is ratifying sex with girls who are under 12 [rip], 13 years old. Which is evil, [burn] there is no other word for that, it’s evil. So we’ll burn that.

And then finally, last citation here, is Surah Seventy-six [splat goes the bacon for one last time], Verse 19: “And boys of everlasting youth will go about attending them. Looking at them, you would think that they were pearls dispersed.” [rip] Again, young boys, as sex objects. Disgusting. [burn] Filthy, evil, satanic, disgusting. The whole thing, front to back. I just picked out a few, every single page has something like that. There’s either ratification of rape, ratification of sex with boys, or violence, violence, violence—kill, maim, behead, show no mercy, blah, blah, blah. This [holds up the Koran] is evil. Evil, evil garbage. [rips off the cover] And it will be a cold day in hell before I bow down to this crap. [burns the cover]

I would encourage all of you out there watching who share my feelings to do something similar. Because we have to make a stand right here and right now. We can’t wait around for 20 years, we can’t wait around a generation for our kids to fight this war for us. This war is on us right here and right now. Either we make our stand right here, or it’s over. Burn a Koran. Put it on You Tube. Show the world that we are not gonna back down. Backing down is not what Christianity is about. There’s a reason why the church on earth is called the Church Militant. OK? You can come after me, if you want, boys. You come after me. That’s fine. I have no problem laying down my life, for my fellow Americans, for my fellow human beings, and for the Church. I have no problem with that. Come and get it. But I’m not going to lay down. That is not what Christ commands. There are times when we have to fight. We fight evil, we fight the evil in the world, and this crap is evil.

My name is Ann Barnhardt, I live at 9175 Cornbreast Circle, 80124, in Lone Tree, Colorado. Anybody who wants a piece of me is more than welcome to come and get it. That goes for Lindsey Graham, anyone in the government who thinks that this is a crime, or any Muslims who would like to come and get a piece of me. I’ve had enough of this crap. I’m not gonna bow, I’m not gonna submit to Islam, ever. Ever.

2011-04-06T08:35:00.006-05:00

Samantha Power--Obama's New Sec of State?

You know, maybe O's administration just floats these trial balloons to make people crazy, I don't know. But the newest thing out there is that this woman, Samantha Power, is going to be nominated as Big Zero's Secretary of State. Oh why not? The U.S. is the laughing stock of the world at this point anyway, so what could it possibly matter?

Who is Samantha Power? Glad you asked. You remember her, right? She was the Obama campaign advisor who called Hillary Clinton a "monster." She was allowed to "resign" after those remarks which were published in a Scottish newspaper, despite her efforts to keep the remarks from appearing in print. Demonstrating her diplomatic skills, Power said, "She's a monster, too--that is off the record--she is stooping to anything." Quite the diplomat, our Samantha. She sounds like the perfect face for the Obama adminstration to negotiate the U.S. position around the world.

Now it seems as if she's also the one to whom Obama outsourced the decision to go to Libya. Huh? Evidently our involvement in Libya is a trendy new concept among foreign policy wonk-elites like Power called Responsibility to Protect (or preciously, R2P). According to Ed Lasky in his article about Power at American Thinker, "The Power of Samantha Power," her opinion "eclipsed the views" of her boss, Nat'l Security Advisor Tom Donlin and also of O-Bomb-A's Defense Sec. As Lasky says, we shouldn't be surprised at Powe's influence with The Won, since he consistently has made a mockery of the concept of the org chart throughout his executive branch, with the appointment of his Czars and recess appointments who do an end-around the advice and consent of the Senate. But I don't know how you can do a "do-around" with the position of Sec State. We'll see, they must have something in mind, because surely the Senate would't confirm this woman, would they?

One reason for believing this nomination is really going to happen is that The NYT has published a very approving profile of Ms. Power: "Still Crusading, but Now on the Inside." She spoke at Columbia University last Monday night, just hours before O-Bomb-A addressed the nation about his incoherent plans for Libya: “I’m not going to talk much about Libya,” she began, though when it came time for questions she could not help herself. “Our best judgment,” she said, defending the decision to establish a no-fly zone to prevent atrocities, was that failure to do so would have been “extremely chilling, deadly and indeed a stain on our collective conscience.” The Times goes on...That the president used almost precisely the same language was hardly a surprise. Great. So Zero is not only outsourcing his military leadership to NATO and the UN, he's also outsourcing his military decisions to a 40-something radical with--what experience to make that sort of decision, exactly???

It's also at Obama's Paper of Record (TM) that we find out who this woman is and what she "believes" (I put "believes" into scare quotes because I think it's pretty clear that to be part of Barry's administration, you can't really "believe" anything--ask Eric Holder about that one). She's called a "human rights crusader," and is a member of the National Security Council which advises The Won on foreign policy. (Other members of Big Zero's security council are here.) The NYT calls Obama's decision to pursue military intervention in Libya "something of a personal triumph for her." Isn't it a bit early to call Libya anyone's "triumph"? Just askin'. The Times tells us, alternately, that Ms. Power was a "vocal opponent" of the Iraq war. Well, then, her anti-war creds are solid.

Stanley Kurtz has an article about Power posted April 5 at the National Review Online: "Samantha Power's Power" where he says that when we view the full sweep of her life's work, Samantha Power emerges as "a patriot's nightmare--a woman determined to subordinate America's national sovereignty to an international order largely controlled by leftist bureaucrats." While her stated public goal ("superficial" goal, Kurtz says) is to put a stop to genocide, in reality, "her goal is to use our shared horror at the worst that human beings can do in order to institute an ever-broadening regime of redistributive transnational governance."

The article is a must-read. Kurtz spells out in detail the long-time influence this woman has had on Obama's thinking about foreign policy. For example, it's fascinating to note that a 2007 piece by Power in The New York Times Book Review attacked the phrase "War on Terror," which of course the Obama administration has since dropped. Kurtz also details how Power's framing of the issue of "interest-based" rationalizations for intervention (I'm sure she would never use the word "war") has been adopted wholesale by Obama.

Kurtz further states that Power's eagerness for a humanitarian showcase has led us to intervene in what is really a tribal war. Her outlook is "post-American"--read further in the article for the details on that. "Power sees herself as a clever sort of radical who works from within established institutions, without ever really sacrificing her rebellious ideals." He quotes Tom Hayden as saying that Power's "originality" was "to see war as an instrument to achieving her liberal, even radical, values."

Kurtz says that Power has a lot to teach us about Barack Obama: "She herself draws analogies between the need to redistribute wealth via health-care coverage and the need to divide military and diplomatic power (and implicitly, wealth) more evenly through the international system."

Kurtz says that one of Power's longstanding goals (which she now disavows) is to impose a "two-state solution" on Israel. She has also been a long-time defender of the International Criminal Court, which if she has her way, it sounds as if she would happily help to enlist leftist Europeans to place American soldiers and politicians (Bush/Cheney) on trial for supposed war crimes.

And oh, did I mention, Samantha is married to--Cass Sunstein, Barack Obama's "regulatory czar"--dubbed by Esquire magazine as "The Fun Couple of the 21st Century." Oh for the love of God. Here's the darling little fun power couple themselves. Don't they look--fun?

Kinda "fun" in the same way that Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers are fun. You remember our friend Cass. He's the one who thinks that bloggers have been rampaging out of control and that new laws need to be written to corral them. What should be of no particular surprise to anyone is that all his own records, like transcripts at Columbia, his senior thesis on Soviet Nuclear disarmament, and records from his time in the Illinois state senate have mysteriously "disappeared" (~~sort of~~ exactly like those of his boss). God knows what this man is really doing behind the curtain in his position as Obama's thought-control Czar. Fun power couple, indeed.

2011-04-02T08:24:00.007-05:00

A simple question: Why don't we care about
the checks and balances for going to war?

Why aren't more people speaking out--screaming--about what Obama is doing in the Middle East? Where are the rabid anti-war protesters that were so vocal during the Bush years? Oh, I guess those were really anti-Bush protesters. Hypocrites.

Obama, Boy King. Is that's where all of this is going? Why isn't he being pushed to get permission from Congress for what he's doing in Libya? His actions are protected by the War Powers Resolution? Really? No, they really aren't. Look it up.

Here is Rand Paul (R-KY) speaking on the floor of the Senate. "The decision to go to war is so important that we shouldn't leave it up to one person. Our founding fathers agreed with this....There is no threat to our national security, and yet we're involved in a third war....While I'm new here in the Senate, I'm appalled that the Senate has abdicated their responsibility. The Senate has chosen not to act and to allow this power to gravitate to the president....without Congressional review, without Congressional votes, without the representatives of the people having any say....We should force a debate in this body."

Rand Paul references an article from the Washington Times by Gen. Mark Kimmitt: "Jumping the Gun in Libya."[n]o-fly and humanitarian protection missions are insufficient to topple an entrenched dictator, and even the military leaders acknowledge they could see a post-intervention scenario that leaves Col. Gadhafi in power." Does anyone remember how long we had in place a no-fly zone over Iraq? For ten freaking years. The no-fly zone policy didn't do anything to get Saddam Hussein out of power. So why do we think it's going to work in Libya?

Exit Question: When was the last time you heard ANYONE report on U.S. casualties in Afghanistan? The goddamn lamestream media protects The Won all day long. Why?

Update. Here's an interesting ariticle from the UK Guardian: "By merely bolstering the weaker side, we are prolonging Libya's civil war" : "Welcome to 21st-century war, liberal style. You do not fix an objective and use main force to get it. You nuance words, bomb a little, half assassinate, scare, twist, spin and make it up as you go along."

2011-03-30T11:25:00.001-05:00

Big Zero's approval numbers--
lowest evah

A new poll out this morning from Quinnipiac of over 2000 registered voters nationwide puts Obama's approval number at 42%, the lowest in any Q-poll for The Won, with 48% disapproving. Also, 50% to 41% say he does not deserve to be re-elected in 2012, both all-time lows. Hooray. It's a start in the right direction. I'm hoping for something in the mid-30s. Hope & change, baby.

What's causing his numbers to tank? Q says that it's coming from O's handling of: "the budget deficit, the economy, foreign policy, health care, and energy policy." Oh, only that? heh.

P.S. Big Zero's job approval among independents, that group he "must have" for re-election: 39/50.

Ed Morrissey at HotAir makes a good point: normally a military action allows a President an opportunity to demonstrate his strong leadership qualities. Zero squandered his by ~~leaving the country~~ running away to Rio without addressing the country. Morrissey says that if O can't turn this around, then he's in big trouble: "Few Presidents win a second term on a 41/50 re-elect number, especially when seen as a weak leader on top of it."