This week we had President Obama hosting a seven hour talkathon on his stalled healthcare initiative.  His purpose was to show his reasonableness and willingness to listen to Republicans.  Republicans took the position that the Democrats couldn’t pass their bill despite having large majorities in both houses of Congress, so why not start over and be truly bipartisan?  Doing so might actually produce some bipartisan legislation.

But this was not about bipartisanship it was about a performance.  If the Republicans didn’t subscribe to the Democrats definition of bipartisanship (see previous post), then the Democrats would jam it through using  a highly controversial technique.  Although 60% of Americans oppose the healthcare plan, President Obama will ignore the will of the people because, “a majority vote makes sense.” (See video: Obama Defends Reconciliation: A majority vote makes sense).  He is referring to the Republicans using the filibuster in the Senate to block the legislation.

That was Then,  This is Now

But it wasn’t too long ago when Republicans objected to Democrats stonewalling President Bush’s judicial nominees.  Republicans threatened to change the rules so that judical nominees could not be filibustered.   Now tradition holds that a President generally gets approval on his jutidial nominees unless they are unqualified, even if you disagree with their judicial philosophy.  For example, Ruth Bader Ginsburg clearly votes with the liberal bloc of the Supreme Court with regularity.  The Senate confirmed her 96-3.  Stephen Breyer, another solid liberal won confirmation 87-9.  President Obama, the great uniter, while a memeber of the Senate voted against both John Roberts and Samuel Alito.  So much for bipartanship.  So when the Republicans talked about changing the rules for confirming judges, not nationalizing 1/6 of the U.S. economy, Democrats had a very different view.  (See video:  “Nuclear Option” is Arrogant Power Grab Against the Founders Intent).  Could there be a greater hypocracy?  Biden: “”I pray God when the Democrats take back control we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.”  Joe Biden, call your priest.

Americans are Disgusted

Americans are rightly fed up with Washington incumbents who are only interested in increasing the scope of their power and getting themselves re-elected.  Their pompous arrogance borders on nauseating.  They should all be voted out.

When will our President come to the realization that the government does not have any money save that which is provided by its citizens?  If he understood that, he wouldn’t have said this:

“Just as it would be a terrible mistake to borrow against our children’s future to pay our way today, it would be equally wrong to neglect their future by failing to invest in areas that will determine our economic success in this new century,” Mr. Obama said at the White House.

Let me posit a translation: we shouldn’t borrow against our children’s future, so we should borrow against our children’s future.  And let me add another pet peeve and that is how the statists have redefined the word “invest”.  What they really mean is spend, but invest sounds so much more grown up.  However, most intelligent people understand invest to mean when you put your money into something with the belief you will get all your money back plus a premium.  You don’t invest in the stock market with the idea you will never see your money again and will subsequently put more money into it next year.  You invest in a house with the idea that you will sell it later for more money.  You don’t invest in a house if you expect it to go down in value.  But our elected representatives would have you believe that pouring money down a rat hole is an investment.

Immature and Irresponsible

Like a child caught standing over his mother’s prized china lying shattered on the floor, President Obama wants us to believe it’s not his fault, no, we are going to have trillion dollar plus deficits for the next ten years because of Bush and the Republicans.  He is one year into his presidency.  This is his budget, not Bush’s.  If he can’t handle the job he should resign and turn it over to, er, Biden?  Check that.  Perhaps he can just go watch television in the White House for the next three years and leave the rest of us alone.  Doing nothing would cause less damage than what he has planned.  He jacked up spending 24% and then “courageously” instituted a freeze on that spending for three years.  Think about it.  If I gave you a 24% raise on Monday and then came back on Friday and said, “Gee, I’m really sorry to have to do this, but times are really tough.  I’m going to have to freeze your new salary for the next three years.  Can you ever forgive me?”  Could you not burst out laughing?

We’re Going to Make Some Tough Decisions…Next Year

We are in a fiscal crisis, but don’t think for a moment you are going to see any tough decisions in an election year, particularly when so many Democrats are in danger of having to find jobs in the real world.  So this year is tough talk.  Next year we get busy!

Democrats or Republicans or maybe the Tea Party movement is going to have to act, sooner rather than later.  Here is how the federal government breaks down:

• Medicare and Medicaid — 33%
• Social Security — 21%
• Interest on the Debt — 8%
• Defense — 20%
• Non-Defense Discretionary — 18%

The first three items continue to grow with no signs of slowing and interest will really take off when the Fed stops the easy money program.  Defense can shrink as Iraq and Afghanistan stabilize, but not a lot as this is still job number one for the federal government.  So do you see the problem?  You can thank Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson for the first ticking time bomb above.  You can thank Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the second ticking time bomb.  You can now thank President Barack Obama for what is becoming the third ticking time bomb and that is without his Health Care, and Cap and Trade.

So how is President Obama going to “solve” this problem?  By tinkering with the last item, Non-Defense Discretionary spending.  But don’t worry, he will also tax those evil rich and make sure they pay their fair share.  But before he goes too far down that path I have a suggestion for him:

1. Listen closely to the Beatles song “Taxman“
2. Ask yourself why the members of the band moved to the United States?

High tax states like New York and California are finding that a significant number of their wealthy citizenry are moving to lower tax states, exacerbating those states’ fiscal problems.  If you look at the percentage of the population that pays the lion’s share of the taxes you will quickly see that if a relatively small percentage of the population, who can afford to live anywhere, actually decide to leave the United States of Tax the Rich, the resulting fiscal problem will be very, very severe. Obama can only poke his tax stick in that cage so long before he gets a nasty reaction.

We’re All Standing On the Third Rail

Social Security has been called the third rail of politics, but the reality is that we are all standing on the third rail trying to keep our balance and if anyone slips and touches the ground, we’re all fried.  We have to suck up the courage to address Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  If we can’t slow the growth of these programs so that they take a smaller amount of the budget pie each year, we are toast.  None of those programs is in the Constitution, but the liberals/progressives created them with empty promises of benefits without costs.  This should have been the first clue:

“Ida May Fuller worked for three years under the Social Security program. The accumulated taxes on her salary during those three years was a total of $24.75. Her initial monthly check was $22.54. During her lifetime she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits.”

Ida May Fuller was the first recipient of monthly S.S. checks when she retired in 1940. She lived to be 100.

She almost got paid back in full with her first check. She got 926 times more than what she paid in. That’s a 92,600% return on “investment.” Not bad, huh?

She got back almost everything she paid in with her first check.  Instead of ringing alarm bells all over the country, politicians patted themselves on the back for the great system they created.  We sent Bernie Madoff to jail, why should Congress be exempt?  What Bernie Madoff did was child’s play in comparison.  Where he fell short was that he couldn’t force people to participate through payroll taxes, and he couldn’t print money.  So why is what he did criminal and what Congress is doing not?  He had to get his participants to voluntarily turn over their money.  He promised returns of 40% per year.  Ida may got 92,600% return on her investment.

Burn the Ships

There is the story of a general who landed on a beach to face an formidable enemy.  He ordered that the ships that brought them there be burned.  By doing so, he knew his men would fight ferociously because there was no escape, either they fought to win or they died.  Perhaps we should do the same with Congress and President Obama.  Fix Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid or you join Bernie Madoff in Cell Block “C”, for running a massive Ponzi scheme.  What has kept Congress from fixing this in the past is the fear of not getting reelected.  Let’s raise the stakes so that not getting reelected would pale in comparison to incarceration.  It’s time our elected officials started paying attention to the people and not their perks.  The disaster train is going downhill and picking up speed, headed for a cliff.  It’s time ALL politicians put the country first and fixed this problem that, after all, they created.  It’s fun to give out the goodies, but this is a crisis that cannot be shunned.  It must be dealt with head on.

When you are waiting for someone an hour can seem like a long time, but when you really want to accomplish something an hour is really not that long.  Here are some things you can’t do in an hour:

1. Run a marathon
2. Watch a feature length movie
3. Read a novel
4. Watch a baseball or football game
5. Make a good batch of chili

However there are some things that you can accomplish in less than an hour, such as:

1. Eat a doughnut
2. Watch a M*A*S*H re-run
3. Walk a mile
4. Take a shower
5. Brush your teeth
6. Take out the garbage
7. Change the oil in your car
8. Order and pick up a pizza
9. Check your e-mail
10. Complete the interrogation of someone named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a plane using a bomb in his underwear

That’s right #10 was completed in 50 minutes before the FBI decided to read him his Miranda rights and put him into the criminal justice system.  You will probably not be surprised to find out that he soon had a lawyer who advised him to stop speaking to the FBI.  So now if they want him to divulge any information they will have to go the plea bargain route up to and including setting him free.  Aren’t you glad we got rid of Bush and Cheney?  I mean, seriously, don’t you feel safer?

What Did He Know?

Does anyone believe what the Obama administration is telling us that they got everything they could out of this 23 year old novice in 50 minutes.  The kid was definitely talking, so why stop him?  He just got back from Yemen and probably had a wealth of information to give up.  He belongs in Guantanamo.  Are we not, as Obama finally admitted, at war?  Or are we at war, but just not with this guy?  (And by the way, Obama has been in office a year now so why hasn’t he captured Osama bin Laden?  During the campaign he snorted that McCain wouldn’t even follow him to his cave, as if Obama had the address).

Regardless of your position on “enhanced interrogation techniques” and let’s just say you put those aside.  You want to keep this guy where you can interrogate him again and again.  Where you can work to gain his trust, and where you can corroborate other information you find until he has been in your custody so long his information is stale and no longer of use.  Here’s a little secret for the Obama administration… it takes longer than 50 minutes.

An Embarrassment of Incompetence

Close on the heels of Janet Napolitano’s blundering at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security we have this astonishing exchange between Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, as reported in the Washington Examiner by Byron York:

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked White House spokesman Robert Gibbs whether President Obama was informed of the decision to read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights before or after it was done. Gibbs avoided the question, saying, “That decision was made by the Justice Department and the FBI, with experienced FBI interrogators.” Gibbs stressed that “Abdulmutallab was interrogated and valuable intelligence was gotten as a result of that interrogation.”

Wallace pressed. “But we now find out he was interrogated for 50 minutes,” he said to Gibbs. “When they came back, he was read his Miranda rights and he clammed up.”

“No,” Gibbs answered. “Again, he was interrogated. Valuable intelligence was gotten based on those interrogations. And I think the Department of Justice and the — made the right decision, as did those FBI agents.”

“Let me just press one last question,” Wallace said. “You really don’t think that if you’d interrogated him longer that you might have gotten more information, since we now know that Al Qaeda in Yemen — ”

“Well, FBI interrogators believe they got valuable intelligence and were able to get all that they could out of him,” Gibbs said.

“All they could?” Wallace asked.

“Yeah,” Gibbs said.”

Has President Obama lost the one skill he has relied upon so heavily?  Has the magic oratory suddenly gone leaden as indicated by his campaign speech for Martha Coakley?

“Here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts but the mood around the country — the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” Mr. Obama said. “People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.” — New York Times, “Obama Trying to Turn Around his Presidency.” – 1/21/2010

Really?  “…what’s happened over the last eight years.”  Is he kidding me?  Does he not remember that Bush was reelected four years ago.  Is this just one more elitist swipe at the “stupid” American people who are so dumb that they don’t even know things are bad for four years such that they reelect their president? When is he going to get off the campaign trail and start governing?  When, with one-fourth of his term over, is he going  to realize this is his gig now, and stop crying about Bush?  The anti-Bush attacks against Scott Brown by Coakley in the closing days of the campaign fell flat.  That doesn’t work any more.  This isn’t about the last eight years, but about the last twelve months.  The American people are sick of the Democrats trying to spend us into oblivion.

It seems that he may be betting the ranch on the State of the Union address, which runs the risk of Obama fatigue.  President Obama seems to confuse speeches with leadership.  Coming into office with zero executive experience, he let the inmates (Pelosi and Reid) run the asylum.  With the election of Scott Brown, Reid just lost his iron grip and Pelosi may not be far behind.  So what does Obama do?  Give another speech?  He has given more speeches than any president in memory, but there is time for talk and time for action.  But he seems to avoid holding another press conference as the fawning press may be finding its backbone and he doesn’t have an answer for his C-Span promises on the health care debate.

Boxed In

Reid is losing control of the Senate.  He no longer has  a filibuster proof majority and he will probably not get reelected.  He is one very lame duck.  Many of Pelosi’s party in the House see Brown’s stunning victory as a major wake up call.  Any Democrat in the House who is not planning on retiring, will not be eager to sign on to any more far left government takeovers.  So without Reid and Pelosi setting his agenda, and him still stuck in the anti-Bush mode, what can he do?  As charming as he may be, he promised bipartisanship but really wasn’t serious about it, he hasn’t cultivated any  relationships with conservatives.  As Dennis Miller put it on O’Reilly last night, “I hope he’s an ideologue.  If not, it means we have a dolt in the White House.”

President Obama has to realize that the job entails more than him just strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage, and get down to work and that means following Clinton’s lead and working with the Republicans.  There are a lot of ways to improve Health Care without spending  a trillion dollars (e.g., tort reform), stop bashing business when you need business to create jobs, drop cap and trade to fix global warming when oranges are freezing in Florida.

His inexperience continues to glow brightly.  He better figure out what the job entails, quickly, and get busy with it.  The referee just fired the gun signaling the end of the first quarter and Team Obama looks dazed and confused.  Not a good sign, sports fans.

Do you remember the scene in the movie “Saving Private Ryan” where after storming a machine gun nest and losing their medic, the Americans have to deal with how to handle a prisoner they captured?  Some say shoot him on the spot others disagree.  They know they can’t take him with them as he will slow them down.  After much vigorous debate Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) decides to untie him, point him toward the American line and tell him to keep walking, with the hope that he will be captured by the advancing American forces. 

Later in the movie as Miller’s unit is in a pitched battle to the last man, the released German prisoner is among those killing Miller’s men.  After reinforcements arrive to turn the battle in the Americans favor and the remaining Germans surrender, the former prisoner smiles and nods to the soldier in Miller’s unit that acted as translator and argued for sparing him as if to say, “Hey, how’s it goin’ pal?”  The soldier lowers his rifle and kills the German.

I am reminded of this by the current situation with Yemen.  Started under President Bush was the insane idea of releasing enemy combatants where they can find their way back to the battlefield.  This stupid policy was, until recently, going to be accelerated under President Obama.  Either we are at war or we are not.  You can’t fight a war with half measures.  Either you fight it to win or let the enemy have their way.  If we are in a war and we capture the enemy they stay captured until the war is over.  We don’t need a bunch of lawyers standing on the sidelines tapping their foot and their watches and saying, “how much longer are you going to hold these people without charging them?”  Answer: until the war ends or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

 Is It a War Yet Mr. President?

 Backed into a corner, on his fifth (?) try to explain what his administration is doing on the War on Terror (am I allowed to call it that?), he actually called it a war, at least against Al Qaida.  He has spent the better part of his first year in office giving the back of his hand to the Bush administration.  But after seven years of Bush keeping us safe and two terrorist attacks on our soil this year with Obama at the helm and his poll numbers sinking, he has come to the realization that he owns this now.

The tough Harry Truman talk is nice (“The Buck Stops Here”), but it is just words until you actually do something with the buck that just stopped on your desk.  Why is the spectacularly incompetent Janet Napolitano still drawing a salary?  In Obama’s world it seems to be that what he means when he says the buck stops here is that he is the only one subject to firing and since we can’t fire him, everyone under him keeps on keeping on.  But who appointed these people?  It was Obama.  So he should recognize that he blundered and if the underlings don’t have enough sense to fall on their swords and resign, he should flat out fire them.

 Vacations are Important.  Anti-terrorism, Not So Much

 After the terror attack at Fort Hood, you would think that perhaps President Obama would be a little more responsive to another attempted attack, but hey, he was on an Hawaiian vacation.  Nobel Prize?  Chicago trying to win a bid for the Olympics?  President Obama will travel across the sea for that.  But an attempted attack on America?  Chill, baby, chill.  How about his director of National Counterterrorism, Michael Leiter, taking a ski vacation?  Just because stopping such an attack might be considered counterterrorism and just because that organization just failed miserably at stopping such an attack, and just because we didn’t know why it failed or if another attack might be on the way, why interrupt time with the family over that?  Family time is important, so said his boss. Don’t worry, Mike, we’ll wait.

Behind the Curve

It seems that with each attempt the enemy is one step ahead of us.  So discussions heated up about these new body scanners that can find anything, so it is claimed.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a big advocate of technology, but I guess the real problem is best summed up by one pundit comparing our methods to the Israelis:

“The Israelis look for terrorists, we look for tweezers.”

Instead of reading body scanners, perhaps we should be training the TSA agents in reading body language.  That’s what the Israelis do.  If you are a Palestinian, sorry, but you go in a different line and you get more closely screened and questioned.  You may pass, but you are going to be thoroughly checked out. We should do the same.  Where is your passport from?  What visa stamps do you have in your passport indicating where you have been?  Why don’t you have any luggage Mr. Abdulmutallab?  Why did you buy a one way ticket?  Who are you staying with in Detroit?  I see you paid cash for your ticket, how much cash do you have left for your trip after you land in Detroit?  Do you have a credit card?  No?  Hmmm…maybe you should wait over there, while we check further.

 No technology is foolproof.  Having worked in technology for over thirty years I can say that with some degree of confidence.  It only takes one failure of the technology for a disaster to strike.  But if we spend less time trying to find that box cutter, shampoo bottle, tweezers, jar of honey, etc., and spend more time spotting someone who doesn’t look like they are on a nice business trip or a visit to relatives or who otherwise fit the profile of a terrorist, that’s right I said it: profile, we could probably become a lot safer without having to lock the bathrooms for the last hour of the flight.  If we had pulled the young Abdulmutallab aside and questioned him, he probably would have cracked like an egg.  Does anyone think for a minute that this kid would have given off no body language signals if questioned by a trained professional?  The right combination of skilled human observers and questioners along with technology, is what we need to be safer.   Rather than this:  We”re the TSA and You Can Count on Us!

Intelligence Sprawl

We also need to collapse the intelligence arms of our government back into one and shut the others down.  Roll back Homeland Security into the Department of Defense, put the myriad intelligence gathering arms back into the CIA, make people accountable and lessen the need for a coordinating center to gather intelligence from a dozen agencies correlate it and send it back out to the dozen agencies.  All that does is create more fiefdoms that don’t want to talk to the dummies in that other agency who aren’t as smart as we are.  As the old saying goes, “When everyone’s responsible, no one is responsible.”  Government is neither nimble nor overly cooperative.  The fewer handoffs between agencies necessary to connect the dots, the better off we will all be.

For the second time in two months there has been a terrorist attack or an attempted attack on U.S. soil.  How is this administration responding?  Well, if grandma is planning to visit the family for the next holiday and she has a bladder problem, she had better drive or take the train, because she won’t be allowed to use the bathroom during the last hour of an airplane flight.  Whew!  That was close.  I feel so much better now that we kept grandma from flying.  Don’t you feel safer?

Who’s Minding the Store?

As pointed out in several other posts, Barack Obama was elected with zero executive experience and we hold our breath as he stumbles about trying to learn what an executive is supposed to do.  He put Janet Napolitano in charge of the Homeland Security department, because her home state borders on Mexico, but without any security experience.  This was put on full display when she went on the Sunday talk shows to say the administration response to the terrorist bomber went very well and then goes on the Monday morning news shows to say they failed.  President Obama put Leon Panetta in charge of the CIA even though he has no intelligence experience.  Feeling a little uncomfortable?

Planning to Fail

President Obama has taken just about every step he can to dismantle what Bush and Cheney put in place and to discredit how they kept us safe.  Even today, Obama insiders were whispering to the Washington Post that this was all Bush’s fault.  Let’s look at the Obama record:

• Closing Guantanamo — this is one of Obama’s top priorities.  Rather than keep these enemy combatants off shore and in military hands, as any battlefield captives should be held, he is planning to release Yemenis back to Yemen.  Where did the bomber obtain instructions?  That’s right Yemen.
• Curtail Interrogation techniques — calling a technique that has no lasting physical effects on prisoner torture, and requiring that prisoners be asked only name, rank and serial number, this administration cuts off sources of valuable information that can save lives.
• Calling the War on Terror, the Overseas Contingency Operation and changing us from a war footing to a law and order footing.
• Letting the bomber lawyer up — instead of treating the bomber as a foot soldier in the War on Terror he is treated like some delinquent trying to knock over a Seven Eleven.  We should be putting him under intense interrogation to find out everything we can from him on the operation behind him.  Instead we are reading him Miranda rights, getting him a lawyer, putting him in one of the best burn center hospitals in the country, and planning to give him skin grafts.  I guess he’s part of the new health care plan.

Correctness or Political Correctness

Profiling works.  When are we going to stop ignoring this simple fact?  Look at any one of the known terrorist attacks around the world.  When someone gets on line at an airport who fits the profile of a young, male, single, Middle Eastern, African or South Asian, then pull them out of the line and give them a more thorough screening.  Pat them down.  Swab every bag for explosive residue rather than a sampling, open and examine closely everything.  Don’t say we can’t check this one because we have already checked two others and until we check our quota of old men, white grandmas, Asian children, etc. we cannot check another Middle Eastern man because we may hurt their feelings.

If enough of them get their feelings hurt, maybe all the other fair minded and peace loving Muslims around the world will rise up and take back their faith from those who have hijacked it for their own murderous aims.  Until then, we should err on the side of caution and pray that this administration figures out what they are doing to protect us.  If they don’t know what to do they should leave what Bush and Cheney did well enough alone.  It kept us safe for seven years.

I am sure you all recall the video played ad nauseum starring the Reverend Wright railing against America defending itself.  It now seems to accurately describe the results of the new hope and change administration.  After his worldwide apology tour, and banning the term “War on Terror,” replacing it with the limp “Overseas Contingency Operation,” so that, like his presidential campaign, no one would know what he actually meant or stood for, his own chickens are coming home to roost.

Actions Have Consequences

The left used to attack the Bush administration’s approach because being tough on terrorists only served to aid them in their recruiting.  Maybe so, but I am less concerned about lines of recruits in Afghanistan than crazed terrorists in New York.  Obama’s apology tour shows his weakness and as the terrorist mindset abhors weakness, it encourages attacks.  So what would you prefer, attacks on American soil, or an uptick in recruiting on the other side of the world?

War vs. Law and Order

Bush recognized the War on Terror for what it was, a direct attack on the United States and our way of life.  In a war, you go after the enemy, you don’t wait for him to come to you.  You take prisoners and hold them, until the conflict is over.  You dismantle their ability to wage war.  It is aggressive and proactive.  It is the way America has prevailed in wartime.

The Obama approach is Law an Order.  Each act is seen as separate an isolated and as a crime to be investigated and prosecuted after the fact.  First responders are more important than the first wave of Marines.  To quote today’s Wall Street Journal:

Brian Jenkins, who studies terrorism for the Rand Corporation, says there were more terror incidents (12), including thwarted plots, on U.S. soil in 2009 than in any year since 2001. The jihadists don’t seem to like Americans any better because we’re closing down Guantanamo.

But the Obama Administration is currently considering releasing prisoners held in Guantanamo to Yemen.  How long do you think it will be before they are back on the front lines trying to kill us?

Add to the mix the Obama administration’s, or should I say Eric Holder’s, decision to try the 9/11 terrorists in a civilian court.  Holder’s testimony before Congress justifying his decision was painful to watch how he had no credible justification.  Don’t forget to give  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, his Miranda rights and get him a good lawyer. Let’s pretend his claims to be associated with al Queda is just tough talk and braggadocio.

The reality is that whenever America fought a war and politicians pulled punches (e.g., Viet Nam) we lost.

Things are Working Swell

Janet Napolitano, Obama’shead of Homeland Security had this to say, according to the New York Times

“The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days,” Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary said, in an interview on “This Week” on ABC. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, used nearly the same language on “Face the Nation” on CBS, saying that “in many ways, this system has worked.”

How chilling is that?  What exactly does she mean by the system worked?  She refers to the number of organizations that were alerted after the fact.  How about notifications before the fact?  How about listening to the terrorist’s own father who reported him to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria.  How about denying him a visa?  Or is Napolitano too busy adding funeral homes to her list of organizations to notify after the fact?

Where’s Obama?

If there’s a chance Chicago might get the Olympics, don’t worry, Obama’s on a plane to give it the old presidential push!  If there’s a Nobel Prize to pick up, Obama is your man!  If there is a terrorist attack on our country, hey, don’t bother me I’m on vacation in Hawaii.

Some pundits on the news pointed out that President Bush didn’t speak out against the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, for several days, so cut Obama some slack.  The problem is that no one doubted for a minute that Bush was engaged in the War on Terror, some even saying he was obsessed.  Well that obsession kept us safe for seven years.  In less than one year we have had Fort Hood and now this airline bombing.

Furthermore, why is Eric Holder making such a monumental decision regarding trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York?  Why isn’t this Obama’s decision?  Just like so much in this administration, Obama campaigns and gives speeches, and Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Eric Holder make policy decisions on their own.

Here’s to the Heroes

The heroes in this case were a Dutch citizen and the flight attendants, who subdued the terrorist and extinguished the fire.  To quote again from the Wall Street Journal:

The lesson here is the same as Flight 93 on 9/11 and shoe-bomber Richard Reid, which is that civilians willing to act in their own self-defense are a crucial part of “homeland security.”

May I suggest that the statists drop their efforts to weaken the 2ndAmendment?  As part of  “homeland security” we may need to bear arms like at no time since the Civil War.

On Tuesday night President Obama gave an uncharacteristically bland speech regarding his way forward in Afghanistan.  In one sentence he said he was adding 30,000 troops while shortly thereafter he said he would be removing them.  It’s enough to make one nostalgic for John Kerry’s “clarification” of how he voted for the war in Iraq before he voted against it.  So our Waffler in Chief has given the enemy their battle plan: hunker down;  keep a low profile;  don’t back me into a corner, and beginning in July 2011, while we’re packing up you can be ramping up.  Bush never committed to an end date certain for that very reason.  They way you defeat the enemy is by making it clear that you will finish the job, no matter how long it takes.

It’s All Karzai’s Fault!

With this administration, it’s always somebody else’s fault.  But put yourself in Karzai’s shoes.  If you have the U.S. on one side, and the Taliban on the other with the U.S. packing up and the Taliban sharpening their knives, who are you going to cut a deal with?  They guy who plans to be there for the next 20 years or the guy who plans to be there for the next 20 months?  There is one way to deal with the bad guys who plan on being there for the next 20 years and that’s to make sure they spend those next 20 years six feet under.

We had similar challenges in Iraq, but once Bush ordered the surge and the bad guys knew we were going to finish the job, they started cutting deals of their own.  Many came over to our side and helped end the violence in a number of provinces.  Peace through strength.  It works.  Weakness fires up the enemy and emboldens him.  You decide which is the better strategy.

Reading one of the liberal pundit’s pan of Sarah Palin’s new book and how the reviewer harps on her inexperience, anyone with a room temperature IQ cannot help but ask, what about the guy who won?  You can say she had little executive experience, only two years as governor of Alaska and two terms as mayor of 7,000 resident Wasilla.  But while one may argue she had little executive experience, he had none.  For that matter, neither did McCain or Biden.  Legislative experience?  Sure.  Executive experience? No, and it shows.

Decisions, Decisions

What has he actually made a decision on?  The economy?  The porkulus package that is “saving” so many jobs, was put together by Pelosi.  It was as if she brought it to him and said, “Here, sign,” and he did.  Health care?  He talked a great deal about it, but five or more proposals sprouted from different committees and like a demolition derby, banged around until there was one left, dented, but still moving.

Guantanamo?  Iraq? Afghanistan?  A decision, no, no, no, we need to ponder and confer more. Despite putting the commander, McChrystal, in place, Obama can’t seem to agree or disagree with his recommendation.  And now, the granddaddy of them all, trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York.

Who’s the Boss?

This is what Barack Obama said:

“‘This is a prosecutorial decision as well as a national security decision.”

Er, no.  This is a decision for the Commander in Chief.  Don’t slough it of on some underling, no matter how lofty his title, so that at some future date you can put the blame on him.  As Harry Truman (D) said, “The buck stops here.”  It’s time, Mr. President, to step in, assert your constitutional authority and put a stop to this.  The military tribunals were set up and authorized by Congress for just this purpose.  It’s time to do the right thing.  You took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to bow to your left wing base. 

 After 9/11, President Bush kept us safe  for seven and half years.  Less than a year into your presidency, we have had the worst terrorist attack on our soil since then.  This was preventable.  But we are already starting down the slippery slope of liberal happy talk and putting all Americans in harm’s way.  Consider this, if the jihadists had their way and actually defeated us and took over, the first place they would go to slaughter the devils would be Hollywood.  If you don’t want to protect America because it’s what you took an oath to do, then do it to save your Hollywood friends from themselves.

There is panic in the ranks of the left this Halloween.  In today’s Times, Frank Rich, does his level best to whistle past the graveyard, but the fear is clear.  He astonishingly titles his piece, “The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York.”  I guess they feel the Hitler moniker has lost its zest, so the leftists resort to calling those on the right, Stalinists.  Their disorientation could not be more palpable.

What has them in such a tizzy?  It centers around the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District.  The local Republican party bosses chose a candidate, Dede Scozzafava, who would never be mistaken as a conservative, although Mr. Rich actually called her, “a mainstream conservative by New York standards.”  That’s like saying David Letterman is chaste by liberal standards, as if these things are measured on a relative scale.  But that’s the way liberals and statists think.  If your neighbor is more promiscuous than you, then you must be celebate.  If you want to make Nancy Pelosi a moderate, move her to Cuba.

Ground Shift

What has Mr. Rich and his cohorts nervously clearing their throats, is that the uprising against the entrenched statists, led by the Tea Parties, actually delivered results.   Ms. Scozzafava is pro-abortion, pro-same-sex marriage, pro-Obama stimulus package, pro-card check to make it easier to form a union without a secret ballot election, and supported by ACORN.  This is what Mr. Rich calls a conservative, “by New York standards.”  What sticks in his craw is that the election was a win-win, for him and his friends.  Elect the Republican or the Democrat and it doesn’t matter much, they both hold the same basic views.  Then along came Doug Hoffman.

Doug Hoffman threw his hat in the ring on the Conservative Party line.  By this Saturday, with support pouring in all across the country from true conservatives, Hoffman was in a dead heat with the conservative and the Republican Scozzafava was fading fast.  So she decided to suspend her campaign, and Mr. Rich and company hit the panic button.

So how does Mr. Rich frame his argument?  Well he starts by saying Hoffman has no grasp of local issues.  Uh, the position is United States Congressman, not city alderman.  He well understands the issues at the national level and how the policies of the Obama Administration are bankrupting the country.  Those policies will negatively affect the people in his district.  But leave it to Mr. Rich to scoff at Hoffman, because he doesn’t know how much pork barrel spending the district needs. A true patriotic Congressman, like John Murtha, finds a way to build an airport in the district that nobody uses and hands the bill to people in other districts like, well, New York’s 23rd.  He’s going to Washington to fight those who are bleeding the Treasury dry.  So Mr. Rich fights that by calling Fort Drum, home to the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, a “pork-dependent military base.”  Hmmm…the last time I read my copy of the Constitution, it specifically required providing for the national defense.  I couldn’t find in my copy where it required building airports no one needed so that John Murtha could get re-elected in perpetuity.  I understand it is a fine distinction, but I would have thought someone employed by the New York Times would be able to make it.

Frank Rich’s Happy Talk

Mr. Rich oddly calls the developments in New York as good news.  With a recent Gallup Poll, showing that for every self-described liberal there are two self-described conservatives, Mr. Rich says the ideologues that brought about the events in New York’s 23rd, may then start picking off other conservatives and destroy the party.  Does he mean conservatives like Arlen Spector, Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, Charlie Crist, oh my!  With 73% of GOP voters saying that Congressional Republicans have lost touch with their base, this is not good news for Mr. Rich and company.  What he believes is that a small cabal of conservatives will put unelectiable candidates on the ballot that voters will reject and the Democrats will gleefully reap the rewards.  In reality, the GOP leadership has for too long put weak candidates on the ballot that Democrats easily beat because the Republican base cannot get excited about them.  McCain is a war hero and worthy of our admiration, but just look at his signature legislation:  McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy.  He was not a conservative on many fronts. 

Nixon was a conservative, Ford was not.  Reagan was a conservative, Bush 41 was not and  Dole was not.  George W. started more conservative than not, but then drifted to become a big spender.  McCain was not a conservative.  Do you see a pattern here?  Conservative Republicans win.

With Obama’s approval rating going down in a virtual straight line, Mr. Rich confidently proclaims that the only politician Obama has to fear is Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.  By all means, Mr. Rich, you keep telling your pals that.