Rather, that was one of the very reasons for enacting ObamaCare in the first place.

As many of us said back in 2009, the purpose of ObamaCare was never to give health insurance to needy people who couldn’t afford it. First, that category was nearly empty:

• The deserving poor were already covered by Medicaid; and if necessary, its qualification threshold could have been temporarily lowered to allow more people to benefit — say, by expanding availability to those who had recently lost their jobs (hence health insurance) but were not yet living below the Medicaid poverty line.

• The biggest chunk of those who did not have health insurance comprised the rich (who prefer to pay for their health care as necessary, rather than buy insurance), and the young, healthy, and shortsighted, who can afford health care but choose instead to gamble that they won’t get so sick or injured that they need expensive treatment. Making such a choice, even if it turns out to be a big mistake, is part of individual liberty. The proper “solution” is to allow us that liberty, then hold individuals accountable for their own decisions; actions have consequences. (Innocents swept up in those bad decisions, such as children, can be helped separately.)

• Finally, a small percentage of the uninsured could have afforded a cheaper, stripped-down policy, but cannot afford the “Cadillac” health-care plans whose costs are driven up by government mandates and regulations.

  For those unfortunates, the easiest fix — which would have benefitted everyone else as well — was to eliminate all the government meddling the caused the problem in the first place: Requiring health insurance by law to cover a littany of specialized services; policies that make it difficult for insurance companies to offer greater variety in policies, such as a medical savings account coupled with catastrophic care (which encourage more parsimony among patients, as they must pay to refill their MSA if depleted); regulations prohibiting insurance companies from offering policies cross-state and cross-border; overly plaintiff-friendly (and especially lawyer-friendly) medical malpractice laws; and so forth.

Real problems, such as people with pre-existing conditions (the faux “casus belli” for the war against private insurance), could have been handled the same way bad drivers are handled for automobile insurance: Create an “assigned risk” pool among health insurers to spread the cost; allow a reasonable increase in rates for those with such conditions, and have a reasonably short waiting period (e.g., six months) before full coverage occurs; and allow for temporary government assistance for those who truly cannot wait and incur unpayable costs. (This isn’t laissez-faire Capitalism, of course; but it’s a reasonable and inexpensive compromise between liberty and safety net.)

Such reforms would have cost a fraction of the trillion dollars that ObamaCare expropriated from the private sector. In fact, once the lifting of government mandates and the squelching of “jackpot justice” malpractice suits lowered actual health-care costs, insurance reform might have wound up cheaper than the original system it replaced. And in any event, it would have been a move towards greater freedom of choice for employers and individuals.

But the Obamunists had precisely the opposite purpose from the beginning; rather than freedom, their ultimate goal was to put more Americans than ever before under the iron boot-heel of the government. Never was it about health insurance for the poor and uninsured; it was always about the federal government seizing control not only of the health care of individuals but also nationalizing those state and local health programs already in place. ObamaCare was, first and last, a power grab by the federal government at the expense of states, local governments, and individual Americans.

So please, let’s not imitate Captain Renault in Casablanca — shocked, shocked to discover that Barack Obama has violated our First-Amendment right to freedom of religion! In fact, that specific mandate was at the heart of ObamaCare tyranny: a frontal assault on the Catholic church in particular, which is so virulently hated by the gay-activist and feminist wings of the Left.

The only element of this policy that should shock anyone is the unbelievably hamfisted way that Obama decreed it: A politically savvy politician would have patiently held off until after the election, giving himself two years to allow the furor to die down.

Instead, the president once again mistook unanimity among his left-liberal friends for a Progressivist “consensus” among the American people; he lives in a bubble of epistemic closure, talking only to true-blue believers on the left. I formerly gave him the nickname “Lucky Lefty,” because (a) he is left handed, (b) he is left-leaning, and (c) he was extraordinarily lucky. Well he’s still (a) and (b), but not so much (c) anymore, so I can no longer call him that.

Obama’s new nickname is “Bubble Boy,” honoring his world view.

But what’s done is done and cannot be undone; Obama has ripped off the mask, and he can’t put it back into the bottle. We now see ObamaCare in all its naked savagery and unAmericanism. Thank goodness for Obamunist “dumbth!”

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

Financial disclosure documents filed by two of President Obama’s illegal appointments to the National Labor Relations Board show that one will continue to receive payments from a major labor union during his time on the board.

Richard Griffin, the former general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers, will receive regular payments under two different IUOE pension plans. The payment amounts are not listed on the disclosure form. He will also receive a single lump sum payment equal to three weeks of salary (one week for each of the three years since he enrolled in the plan). Griffin’s annual salary as the IUOE’s general counsel was $376,778, according to the disclosure form.

Well… that’s just super. I was worried about the guy, you know? I mean, a recess appointment isn’t exactly the definition of Job Security, particularly when the man keeping you employed may himself be out of a job next January. At least now Mr. Griffin will be able to keep food on the table through the long, cold winter to come. (Or AGW induced massively hot winter as the seas continue to rise and… never mind.)

But all jokes aside, if you are in one of the most powerful positions in the country, specifically in terms of striking a fair and equitable balance between unions and employers, how does this not set off some alarm bells? You are acting, in effect, as a type of arbitrator between the two sides while collecting a steady paycheck from one of them? Are you serious?

Click through the link above to see the pertinent financial disclosure forms helpfully provided by Heritage. Of course, it may not be that big of a deal to you. I’m probably just being overly sensitive.

The Obama administration entered the fierce national debate over voting rights, rejecting South Carolina’s new law requiring photo identification at the polls and saying it discriminated against minority voters.

Friday’s decision by the Justice Department could heighten political tensions over eight state voter ID statutes passed this year, which critics say could hurt turnout among minorities and others who helped elect President Obama in 2008. Conservatives and other supporters say the tighter laws are needed to combat voter fraud.

Two of the things that the left constantly claims when such measures are passed is it is A) it will mostly cause an adverse effect among minorities and B) there’s no evidence of voting fraud.

We’ve dealt with “A” before. If you write a check, buy liquor or any of a myriad of different transactions throughout the year, you are asked or required to produce a valid state issued ID. Does that adversely effect the ability of minorities to write checks or buy alcohol? Then there’s driving. No license, no driving. It’s a nonsensical argument. And most states issue free photo IDs to those who don’t drive.

As for “B”, it’s rather hard to prove fraud when anyone on two legs can walk up and vote without having to prove they are who they say they are, isn’t it?

In any case, here is the existing SC law:

When any person presents himself to vote, he shall produce his valid South Carolina driver’s license or other form of identification containing a photograph issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles, if he is not licensed to drive, or the written notification of registration.

• Voter registration certificate
• South Carolina driver’s license
• South Carolina Dept. of Motor Vehicles photo ID cardVoters without ID may be permitted to vote a provisional ballot. This varies from county to county. Whether the provisional ballot is counted is at the discretion of the county commissioners at the provisional ballot hearing.

OK? Here’s the new law the DoJ has rejected:

When a person presents himself to vote, he shall produce a valid and current ID.

• South Carolina driver’s license
• Other form of photo ID issued by the SC Dept. of Motor Vehicles
• Passport
• Military ID bearing a photo issued by the federal government
• South Carolina voter registration card with a photoIf the elector cannot produce identification, he may cast a provisional ballot that is counted only if the elector brings a valid and current photograph identification to the county board of registration and elections before certification of the election by the county board of canvassers.

I’ll leave it up to you to determine what “new” provision suddenly makes this particular law, in light of the existing law, suddenly something which deserves rejection by the DoJ for the reasons stated? Also note that SC voters will still need to produce an ID to vote.

In fact, more methods of identification have been added and the same provision for those without ID remain, i.e. the provisional ballot that then requires they present a valid ID before their vote is counted.

In fact, this is the opening salvo in a political war with the Department of Justice in the vanguard. The same DoJ that refused to prosecute the voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers documented on video in Philadelphia in the 2008.

The federal action — the first time the government has rejected a voter-identification law in nearly 20 years — signals an escalating national legal battle over the laws as the presidential campaign intensifies. The American Civil Liberties Union and another group recently filed a federal lawsuit contending that Wisconsin’s new voter-identification measure is unconstitutional.

Laws approved in Mississippi and Alabama also require federal approval but have not yet been submitted to the federal government. States can get such approval for changes to voting laws from Justice, a federal court in the District or both.

There is no concern for the integrity of the voting system whatsoever in the action by DoJ. This is raw politics. There is nothing notably different or onerous about the new SC law. But it provides a precedent for rejecting other state’s “new” laws in the near future.

Here’s the Georgia law which has been in effect for years (passed in 2005) for comparison:

Each elector shall present proper identification to a poll worker at or prior to completion of a voter’s certificate at any polling place and prior to such person’s admission to the enclosed space at such polling place.

• Georgia driver’s license, even if expired
• ID card issued by the state of Georgia or the federal government
• Free voter ID card issued by the state or county
• U.S. passport
• Valid employee ID card containing a photograph from any branch, department, agency, or entity of the U.S. Government, Georgia, or any county, municipality, board, authority or other entity of this state
• Valid U.S. military identification card
• Valid tribal photo ID

If you show up to vote and you do not have one of the acceptable forms of photo identification, you can still vote a provisional ballot. You will have up to two days after the election to present appropriate photo identification at your county registrar’s office in order for your provisional ballot to be counted.

This law functioned beautifully in 2008 and no one whined about “disenfranchisement”.

Again, this is about politics. Why am I saying this? Here’s a clue:

It is unclear if the four states not subject to the Voting Rights Act requirement — Wisconsin, Kansas, Rhode Island and Tennessee — will face challenges to their laws. Justice lawyers could file suit under a different provision of the act, but the department has not revealed its intentions.

Depends on how close the election appears to be in 2012 is my guess as to what will guide “its intentions”. After all how can dead people vote if they have to produce a valid ID?

I have absolutely no confidence in the current director of the Department of Justice nor do I believe he has any concern about justice. He’s the ultimate political hack hired to push a political agenda (see Fast and Furious for further proof) and this is just another warping of the concept of justice by Eric Holder.

Back in July, at a conference of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul, Clinton pledged that the US would take action against “religious intolerance” in America.

It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on that.  Clinton said, in her remarks, “No country, including my own, has a monopoly on truth or a secret formula for ethnic and religious harmony.”  But if any country comes close to having such a monopoly, it is, in fact, the United States.  One of the core principles of our founding was religious freedom; the purpose of guaranteeing it was, explicitly, to discourage religious strife; and to fulfill that purpose, the drafters of the Constitution prohibited Congress from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

The US has not avoided religious enmity entirely, but we have kept the law and the government on the side of enforcing a peaceful, quiescent environment for the practice of religion, to a greater extent than any other nation that has ever existed.  This environment has existed side by side with robust and sometimes disgusting criticisms of other people’s religions, which we have always allowed as free speech.

And it is worth taking another moment to remember why we determined to allow such free speech.  We didn’t do it because it is “good,” in any positive sense, for people to say vile things about each other’s beliefs.  It may be perfectly good, or at least not repulsive, for people to say reasonably critical things about religious beliefs.  But whether it’s ridiculous allegations about Jews, absurd accusations against Catholics, or today’s fresh-milled 20-something atheists calling Christians “Christofascists,” the point of free speech was never to encourage idiocies of this kind on the theory that we need more of them.

The point of free speech is to keep the government out of the business of deciding whether they’re “bad” or “good.”  Government is incompetent to decide such questions, and they should therefore not be within its scope of authority.  Precisely because government has civic authority, its involvement in classifying critical speech should be somewhere between severely limited and non-existent.  The step from government having an opinion to government repressing intellectual freedom is perilously short.  Government can’t wave a magic wand to kindly and gently fix people’s thoughts; it has only the hammer of force and punishment, and that means making every unapproved thought into a “nail.”  The American Founders understood this about government, and insisted therefore on keeping its powers limited, constitutionally explicit, and federally divided.

 So when Hillary Clinton promises the following, she is on wholly un-American, anti-liberal ground (emphasis added):

In the United States … we are focused on promoting interfaith education and collaboration, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, protecting the rights of all people to worship as they choose, and to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.

OK, so the US government is going to use peer pressure and shaming on us.  (The tools, by the way, of “worker soviets” in the sanguinary workers’ paradises of the last century.)

What exactly is it that we abhor?  Elizabeth Kendal has an excellent summary at her Religious Liberty Monitoring website of the history behind the UN push to “combat religious intolerance,” and it is worth talking the time to understand how a number of terms – Islamophobia, “defamation” of religion, and “incitement” against religion – have been conflated over the last decade.  Getting forms of intellectual discretion wrapped up in “what we abhor” is an ongoing project in the misnamed effort to “combat religious intolerance.”

But another entry point is the definition of “Islamophobia” cited by the typical Islamophobia watchdog.  The definition was produced by a British think tank, The Runnymede Trust, in the 1990s, and was consciously constructed as an analogue to definitions of Judeophobia or anti-Semitism.  These are its basic elements:

1)  Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
2)  Islam is seen as separate and “other.” It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.
3)  Islam is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.
4)  Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism and engaged in a “clash of civilizations.”
5)  Islam is seen as a political ideology and is used for political or military advantage.
6)  Criticisms made of the West by Islam are rejected out of hand.
7)  Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural or normal.

Most of these elements are susceptible of extremely ambiguous interpretation.  Credentialed academics like Samuel Huntington and Victor Davis Hanson would be indicted by some of them.  And in almost any case you can think of, deciding that these criteria correctly classify the actions of non-Muslims is a matter not of objective judgment but of partisan opinion.

Regarding #6, for example, both non-Muslims and Muslims are likely to reject some criticisms from each other out of hand – because our beliefs about some things are fundamentally different.  There are Muslim leaders, after all, who constantly reject Western criticisms of sharia out of hand.  And there are Muslim leaders who don’t.  There is no valid reason why any Westerner should be charged with “Islamophobia” for ignoring or rejecting criticisms of Western practices by Muslims.

Consider the practice of veiling women.  When an imam criticizes Western society for failing to veil women, I have no heartburn whatsoever in rejecting that criticism as invalid and inapplicable to my life and my society.  How absurd to suggest that I am being “Islamophobic” by doing this.

I recognize, of course, that many Muslim women don’t wear a veil, and many clerics are fine with that.  Muslims don’t do the same things in every part of the world.  And I prefer civic approaches in the West that seek to live with the practice of veiling where it is important to some citizens.  I disagree with the veil being imposed on women, but 99% of the time, the issue isn’t one that affects me directly or requires me to register an official political opinion.

But the fundamental issue here is the status of women.  Declaring it to be a “phobia” when people adhere to their original opinions about that is something no government should be in the business of doing.

At what point would a government decide that it was not Islamophobia when a person “rejected out of hand” criticisms of the West made by “Islam”?  Where would the line be drawn?  Can I reject, for example, Islam’s criticism that the West doesn’t accept Mohammed as a prophet of God?  Or does this criterion indicate that I am allowed to reject it, but only after giving some positive display of having considered it without “prejudice”?  And if so, how will that work, exactly?  Will I carry a card with me, certifying that I was observed by a competent authority to give due consideration to the criticisms of my society made by Islamic leaders?

This is not a laughing matter; the 20th century was a vast, vicious playground for exactly such measures of control over the intellectual lives of peoples and societies.  The criticism we should be leveling here is not against “Islam” or “Muslims,” it is against our own government, and the factions of our own, Western/American political spectrum that conceive of government as a method of administering anti-phobia measures.

The idea of government, for too many in America, has gone wildly off-track.  Hillary Clinton’s acknowledgment that the Obama administration can’t make black-letter laws against free expression about Islam, but that it will use peer pressure and shaming to try to shape and discourage the people’s expression, is a perfect example of the corruption of the governmental idea in our once-constitutional nation.  Our basic problem in this regard is not Islam; our problem is the growing failure of our governments at all levels to adhere to America’s own standard of individual liberty and limited government.  We chose that standard not because criticism of others is necessarily or absolutely “good,” but because intellectual liberty itself is.

Judaism and Christianity are, along with Western philosophy, the progenitors of that idea of liberty.  The positive, absolute good of liberty is what we must proclaim and defend.  And in our nation, on our terms, Islam has the opportunity to thrive as Judaism and Christianity have, by being consistent with it.  It cannot be the other way around.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

The reason cited for Daley’s demotion is his “management style [which] has been heavily criticized as confused and ineffective.”

Of the shakeup, which was announced in a staff meeting on Monday, the Wall Street Journal notes that Daley’s new responsibilities have not yet been fully defined but that in recent weeks his attention has focused increasingly on “managing relations with influential outsiders.”

The Journal report continues:

The recalibration of Mr. Daley’s portfolio, agreed to by Mr. Obama, is designed to smooth any kinks in the president’s team as it braces for the overlapping demands of governing while campaigning for re-election, people familiar with the matter said. The West Wing is preparing for budget battles with Congress and is seeking to use its executive powers more extensively.

The new set-up effectively makes Mr. Rouse the president’s inside manager and Mr. Daley his ambassador, roles that appear to better suit both men’s talents. Mr. Rouse served as interim chief of staff before Mr. Daley arrived, and his White House bio boasts he is “known as the ‘101st Senator’” for his extensive knowledge of Congress.

But as The Blaze points out:

[I]f ‘ambassador’ is Daley’s best role … he might want to think about what he says in interviews. Late last month he boasted to Politico that the White House is trying to ‘figure out what we can do [without Congress] and push the envelope on some of these things.’ He also quipped about the president’s low approval ratings.

Although Daley’s reassignment is not an official staff turnover, it nevertheless adds to the sense that the Obama administration—which in a single term has lost its entire team of economic advisers—has never quite achieved a rock-solid footing.

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I’m guessing you didn’t know the White House even had an Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, let alone a Facebook page dedicated to this worthy cause with 3,859 followers.

But it does. And last Saturday the administration sent officials associated with that initiative to Hunter College here in Manhattan, to meet with local parents, teachers, students, and community leaders at a bullying prevention summit. The stated purpose of the conclave was “to address the safety of Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Muslim American students.”

To be honest, I didn’t know there were any Pacific Islanders living in the Big Apple. Since the Census Bureau fixes the percentage of Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders at 0% for 2010, I would imagine their numbers are relatively small. I also wouldn’t think that Asian Americans are that much at risk unless it’s of having other test takers copy their answers. Forgive my racial insensitivity, but the vast majority of my sons’ classmates and friends at the brainiac high schools they went to were Asian, and they placed extremely well when it came time for college applications.

And what of Muslim Americans? I recall hearing fears expressed after 9/11 that Muslims in this country were likely to be targeted, but those fears were never realized. Sure, there were random offenses, but no massive hate-fueled campaign against the American Muslim community, no rash of attacks on mosques.

Yet, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Education, Muslim American students and their pan-Asian counterparts are likely targets of bullying. In a statement, Thomas Mariadason, an attorney at the Manhattan-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said:

Post 9/11, bias-based bullying toward religious and immigrant communities has been a consistent issue, and it continues to be under reported.

We’ve seen the egregious effects bias-based harassment has on students when there is a failure to intervene, from the violence at South Philadelphia High School in 2009 to reports we received in years past from the former Lafayette High School in Brooklyn. The problem persists, and it is a critical time for the White House to address these issues.

The incident in South Philadelphia Mariadason refers to involved some two dozen Vietnamese students who were jumped and beaten by black students. The motivations for the attacks were never scrutinized. The number of victims varied between 7 and 13 depending on the account; all were treated at an area hospital for scrapes and bruises and released.

The event precipitated a response within the school—50 Asian immigrants led a boycott—and the community at large. A year later, the Notebook, a Philadelphia public school blog, which had done extensive reporting on the incident initially, wrote:

[T]here’s no doubt South Philadelphia High School is a very different school. A new principal, an energized student base, emerging partnerships, a commitment to addressing school violence—all have resulted in striking progress. The violence and chaos of last year is largely gone, and students report a changed attitude from staff members, some of whom had participated in the harassment by mocking their accents and refusing to take seriously their reports of racial bias.

In brief, the incident was one-off. Corrective action was taken, and everyone has since moved on—except Thomas Mariadason. His mention of Lafayette High School in Brooklyn is doubly ludicrous since the hates crimes alluded to are close to a decade old and the school hasn’t existed since December of 2006. It’s a pretty safe bet that closing a school down will end any racial animus within its student body.

That still doesn’t answer the question of whether American Muslim students are likely targets of bullying on account of their race. But this does (h/t Creeping Sharia). It is a table from the FBI’s most recently published Hate Crime Statistics Report (dated 2009). The table, headed “Incidents, Offenses, Victims, and Known Offenders by Bias Motivation,” reveals that there were 132 victims of anti-Islamic crime in 2009. It also shows that there were 1,132 victims of anti-Jewish crime for the same year. Since Jews outnumber Muslims in the U.S. by only about 3 to 1, the Muslims still come out ahead. If they want to avoid persecution, all they need to do is be careful that their salaams don’t sound too much shaloms.

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Congressional investigators tell CBS News there’s evidence the U.S. Attorney’s office in Arizona sought to cover up a link between their controversial gunwalking operation known as “Fast and Furious” and the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Terry was murdered in Arizona near the US border last December. Two assault rifles ATF had allegedly allowed onto the street without interdiction were found at the scene…

…the lead prosecutor on Fast and Furious, Assistant US Attorney Emory Hurley, learned almost immediately that guns allowed onto the street in his case, had been recovered at Terry’s murder. “(I)n the hours after Agent Terry’s death,” says the letter from Grassley and Issa, Hurley apparently “contemplated the connection between the two cases and sought to prevent the connection from being disclosed.” The Justice Department recently transferred Hurley out of the criminal division into the civil division…

…An internal ATF email dated the day after Terry’s death reveals the quick decision to not disclose the source of the weapons found at the murder scene: “… this way we do not divulge our current case (Fast and Furious) or the Border Patrol shooting case.”

Another ATF email indicates that the justification both offices used to not charge the suspect with crimes related to the murder scene “was to not ‘complicate’ the FBI’s investigation.”

ATF whistleblowers revealed the link between the two cases to Congressional investigators and CBS News, saying their supervisors were attempting to cover it up.

To their credit, Reps. Grassley and Issa have announced they are expanding the Gunrunner investigation. Particularly galling:

…a court filing by the Phoenix office seeking to deny Mr. Terry’s family rights under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, and expressed concerns about conflicts of interest in prosecuting the Terry case. “Since your office directed and approved the daily tactical decisions in Operation Fast and Furious, it is hard to avoid the perception that a conflict of interest exists,” the two wrote.

What did Eric Holder know — and when did he know it?

And just how high does the coverup go?

Related:
08/28/11: Heard about the New Mexico city officials smuggling guns to drug cartels in U.S. police cars?
07/17/11: ATF facilitated sales of guns to cartel members, who were actually FBI informants using taxpayer money
07/12/11: More proof that Holder lied and people died

Texas has challenges. The record speaks for itself. Lots of other states have challenges too. But there is a lot of hard work that needs to be done in Texas and a lot of children who need a chance to get a great education.

Far too few of their high school graduates are actually prepared to go on to college. I feel very, very badly [sic] for the children there.

Putting aside the secretary’s grammatical infelicity (after all, he’s only Sceretary of Education), his criticism is baseless.

In an article in “TIME,” Andrew Rotherman, head of a nonprofit organization aimed at improving educational outcomes for low-income students, challenges Duncan’s claims. Writes Rotherman:

Overall, Texas students scored right around the national averages in reading and math on the NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress ]. And according to an Aug. 17 report by the group that administers the ACT college-admissions exam, Texas high school graduates only narrowly trail national averages for college readiness. True, the national averages aren’t great, but Texas is right there with the pack. So why is Duncan dissing the Lone Star State?

But Rotherman’s criticism of Duncan doesn’t stop with the Ed Secretary wrong-headed assertions about Texas schools. Rotherman further states:

[Texas’s] minority students outperform minority students in Chicago, albeit by smaller margins. And with a high school graduation rate of about 73%, Texas may be slightly below the national average, but it’s doing a lot better than Chicago, which only graduates about 56% of its students.

Any why is that relevant? Because in Duncan’s previous life, hewas head of the Chicago school system.

After presenting his facts, Rotherman asks why Duncan is “dissing the Lone Star State.” The question is coy. I’m confident that the author knows that the state’s chief executive is running for the job currently held by Duncan’s boss. The attack on Texas schools is nothing more than a thinly veiled attack on Rick Perry. And a bogus one at that.

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No s***. He really said that.

Well, obviously, it’s putting people to work. Which is why we’re going to have some interesting things in the course of the forum this morning. Later this morning, we’re going have a press conference with Secretary Mavis and Secretary Chu to announce something that’s never happened in this country — something that we think is exciting in terms of job growth…

…I should point out, when you talk about the SNAP program or the food stamp program, you have to recognize that it’s also an economic stimulus. Every dollar of SNAP benefits generates $1.84 in the economy in terms of economic activity. If people are able to buy a little more in the grocery store, someone has to stock it, package it, shelve it, process it, ship it. All of those are jobs. It’s the most direct stimulus you can get in the economy during these tough times.

Bask in the sheer genius of Tom Vilsack, peons: the government taking money from you hard-working Americans — and giving it to others, without regard for their ability to work — stimulates the economy!

Why didn’t we think of this before?

In fact, let’s put everyone in America on food-stamps! That’ll be the ultimate Stimulus!

Ultimate, I say!

As an aside, my fellow Tea Party terrorists, Vilsack’s wife is running against Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a true fiscal conservative.

Do we need another economic illiterate in Congress? I think not. Therefore I urge you to give $5, $10, whatever you can spare to Steve King’s campaign.

We need exactly zero Vilsacks in office in 2012.

 
Related Fun: So the Democrats Finally Want Fiscal Responsibility? Great. Let’s End Their Disastrous “War on Poverty”

Nothing says the administration has the issue of the border well under control, like publicly posted threats towards your chief enforcers of anti-drug smuggling policy. Following on the heels of some disastrous results in the entire keeping-the-illegal-guns-out-of-the-hands-of-these-guys efforts, one wonders how long The One can continue to afford these types of headlines to hit…

…CBS News.

Next thing you know, some mischief maker in the middle east will decide to start sending weapons to Iraq and Afghanistan to give President Obama a bit of encouragement to draw down even faster… Ooooooops!

Parting “Binge Think” Question: Does President Obama even think any of this stuff is real? Or is it like a virtual game of ’24′ for him?

I’m Kevin McCullough and that’s how I “Binge Think.”
I also was the first to say it…

Included in the charges were two counts of heavy focusing, four counts of failure to recognize, one count of felony myth-perpetuating, and a misdemeanor count of weighing in.

The delegates convicted Duncan on all counts, and approved the measure.

Later on, NBI 8 came up for debate. It sought a middle ground among factions within the convention hall arguing for and against approving the NEA board of directors’ early endorsement of President Obama for re-election in 2012.

The delegates will vote on the endorsement by secret ballot on the 4th. The endorsement requires 58% of the vote to pass.

The item proposed a mail-in ballot from delegates next January. It was defeated, but not until there was some debate over the early endorsement.

A little background is necessary. It was in NEA’s mind back in 2007 to endorse a presidential candidate a year before the election, and not wait until July of election year, when traditionally the nominations have been all but wrapped up.

But NEA’s timing was bad. It sought to speed up its endorsement process during the one election cycle when two candidates – Obama and Hillary Clinton – split the Democratic Party right down the middle.

Unable to choose between the two, the union hemmed and hawed and stalled until Obama had clinched the nomination, then endorsed him. Of course, they fully supported Obama in the general election, but I don’t know of a single political analyst who has claimed that NEA was uniquely instrumental in the Obama victory.

Fast forward to today, when the stars seem to finally align for NEA. They have a Democratic incumbent president with no primary challenger, and a host of Republicans they believe will send them back to the day when Pleistocene Man had to teach his children to hunt and fish without the benefit of a state pension.

Except many delegates are not thrilled with Obama and his Secretary of Education. Oh, they’re pretty happy about the money he’s disbursed to save their jobs, but he’s too pally with the education reform wing of the Democratic Party. So they’re trying to come up with a compromise between kissing his rear and telling him to go to hell.

Some of them think they’ve hit upon the solution: getting rid of Duncan. Duncan’s scalp is to be the price of an early endorsement.

But if they think that’s going to happen, they’ve misread Obama, and not for the first time. Here’s something I wrote after last year’s convention:

So here we are, not quite at the stage of open warfare between NEA and the White House, but headed down that road. Neither side shows an inclination to back down. In Congress and in statehouses, the clarity of its Professor Wagstaff stance will benefit the union. Obama and the Democrats will need NEA activism in what promises to be a challenging election year.

But when it comes to public and media relations, NEA’s entrenchment is disastrous. If the union rails against an Obama administration, it signals that it can’t work with anyone short of a hand puppet. An “us against the world” battle cry works wonders for union activism, but it’s problematic because “the world” has a lot more votes.

The teachers’ unions don’t like to be attacked, but what they are really worried about is being ignored. If we ever reach that point, then we’ll know the political climate has truly changed.

Tomorrow, Vice President Biden is scheduled to appear before the delegates. Whatever he says, it won’t reassure the delegates about the general direction of the Obama administration.

Will Obama effectively ignore NEA? Will he win anyway? And if he does, what then would his second term bring to public education? It’s hard to paint a happy picture for the union in national politics under these circumstances.

Stephen and Kevin CARE about your health!

As I was beginning to write my new best-selling book, “No He Can’t: How Barack Obama is dismantling Hope and Change” my heart grew increasingly sad. As I watched the entire health care debate in 2009, the tea-party revolt and the repeal push in 2010, and the reality of where we are now–I grew even MORE sad.

And this is why…

In all of the discussion about repeal, replace, Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, it just felt like the voice of common sense had completely died.

In my book I advocate a serious engagement by the reader into the debate of the day and the “rolling up of the sleeves” to take the process of finding solutions to problems into their own hands and to begin to leverage their abilities of thoughts, behavior, and impact to implement solutions that they find distasteful in the public arena.

It was over a year ago that Stephen and I founded XtremeCharity and through it we have been able to raise awareness and dollars for things like feeding those who were hungry, housing those who are homeless, and getting other resources to people in need.

But we didn’t have any solutions for the challenges of how people were forced to deal with their own health care. The maintenance of costs associated with staying well, or getting well, much less access to doctors that were in the least bit reasonable.

Our frustrations led us on a mission to uncover methods that could be discovered, put into place, and begin to genuinely change the look and process of taking control of one’s health. That mission culminated this morning with the announcement on national television and radio of “The Cares Project 2011.”

Combining free market principles with former top minds in the health care industry, and formulating innovative approaches with health maintenance and control of costs we are significantly reducing the expense of the process, increasing the access to medical resources, and exposing the corruption of outdated systems all at the same time.

Let me give you an example.

Even if you HAVE health insurance drug coverage, even government assistance for drug coverage, did you know that the drug manufacturers, in conjunction with pharmacies, have worked together with lawmakers to rig the prescription drug game? Even if you have a co-pay on your drug benefit–you are likely getting cheated. Here’s how:

Pharmacies are legally allowed to charge you the maximum co-pay on your policy every time you go for drugs. $25, $30, $45 – whatever your co-pay is they are legally allowed (and will) charge you that amount at almost every possible chance. Yet with the emergence of generics and the mass quantities drugs are produced at today some prescriptions will not cost the pharmacy more than $6-$12 to fill.

Well if you have a $45 co-pay and the drug is $6 – the pharmacy is allowed to pocket $39.

So step one of the CaresProject 2011 we wanted to immediately bring down the cost of your out-of-pocket cash, and with the help of a tremendous consortium of talent we have created the CaresCard. AND WE MADE IT AVAILABLE FOR FREE!

When you click and create one, take it with you to your pharmacy. It is honored at 60,000 pharmacies across the nation. There are only 62,000 or so pharmacies (not counting the 3,000 operated in prisons.)

No matter what type of feedback they give you, (positive, inquisitive, or negative) you instruct them to enter the CaresCard2011 into your prescription file into their system. The card, once entered, will automatically provide a trip wire so that if your drug is LESS than your co-pay you will never be charged the higher cost. And if you have no insurance at all it will also automatically discount generics as much as 55% and name brand drugs as much as 15-23%.

Bottom line is, you will IMMEDIATELY begin to save on every prescription you fill. And you IMMEDIATELY begin to put more money directly back into your own pocket. THIS is free market innovation, over turning the apple cart of Big Pharm, Big Government, and Big Brother.

Tomorrow on the show I will roll out the 2nd part of the CaresProject2011 and it will include a feature that will give you access to a U.S. Board Certified American doctor 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — UNLIMITED — for the entire year, for less than the cost of a single office visit.

But for now, please accept our CaresCard2011 as a personal gift from XtremeCharity and let a little hope fill your heart, that no matter how tough these times get, it will be our innovation, our determination to solve the problem, and our incredible charity towards one another as Americans that will ultimately solve the problem.

I’m Kevin McCullough, and that’s how I “Binge Think!”
I’ve been called a “MuscleHead”
And many say I’m full of “Hot Air”

Given that tabula rasa, we must identify at least a few of the conundrums:

• Most urgently, can Petraeus actually master an out-of-control, leak-crazy, internationalist progressivist CIA… or at least render it somewhat less anti-American?
• Does the appointment mean that the CIA will actually become more like it’s “predecessor,” the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II? That is, will the CIA show more interest in furthering America’s military aims and less in trying to pick the next president?
• Does the appointment mean that David Petraeus is interested in heading into electoral politics next?
• Does it show Petraeus is going to “come out” as a Democrat to run against the Republican incumbent in 2016?
• Does it mean Obama has changed his mind about the need for the United States to have a strong and vigorous intelligence community to further American goals… or does it mean Petraeus has grown in office and now supports Obamunism, full and stark?

• What will happen to the Afghanistan war effort as Petraeus withdraws, ushering in Marine Lt.Gen. John R. Allen as Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) — a man who has no Afghanistan experience whatsoever? Though Gen. Allen certainly does have battlefield experience in the War Against Radical Islamism: He was Deputy Commanding General in al-Anbar province, Iraq, during the Iraq war.

  But what type of commander is he? Is he like Petraeus, with a deep understanding of contemporary counterinsurgency strategy? Or is he more akin to the Shinseki-ites devoted to the Powell Doctrine of endlessly refighting WWII in all the dorky, little countries found in what Thomas P.M. Barnett, author of the Pentagon’s New Map, aptly calls the “Non-Integrating Gap?”

I doubt anyone can answer these questions authoritatively at this juncture in time, as Nixon was wont to say; but they are indeed critical queries.

And here is the last and most pregnant:

• Will the appointment receive vigorous examination during Senate confirmation hearings, in order to answer some of these unknowns, among others? Or will Republicans and Democrats alike give the war hero a pass — the former because he is a war hero; the latter because he will have been appointed by the Obamacle, whom all Democrats must prop up and buttress in every imaginable way for the 2012 election?

At the moment, President B.O.’s deft and crafty move has handed us a Petraeus in a poke.

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

Complying with the records request from the House Energy and Commerce Committee “would constitute a vast and expensive undertaking” and could “implicate longstanding executive branch confidentiality interests,” White House lawyer Robert Bauer wrote the committee. Translation: Nice try.

Before the Democrats rammed through the Obamacare bill (and don’t think for one little ol’ minute that our narcissistic President doesn’t love that branding), Obama and WH officials met with several high-profile insurance executives as the WaPo lists:

The list included George Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Health Plans; Scott Serota, president and CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association; Kenneth Kies, a Washington lobbyist representing Blue Cross/Blue Shield, among other clients; Billy Tauzin, then head of PhRMA, the drug industry lobby; Richard Umbdenstock, chief of the American Hospital Association; and numerous others.

The most concerning is George Halvorson as he was the only executive to meet with Obama.  And here is why:

“There really are two Americas when it comes to health care — the fully insured, primarily white America and the disproportionately uninsured minority America,” Halvorson wrote. “More than half of the total uninsured people in this country are minority. That fact alone should make the need to cover everyone in America a pure ethical imperative. This issue is not about economics — it is about equality. Universal coverage should be the next major civil rights issue for this country to face.

Halvorson also wrote an article in 2007 equating health reform to the “unfinished business of the Civil Rights agenda.” Halvorson discusses the disparities between the races and health care coverage and states:

If we considered no other issue than racial and ethnic disparities, this nation’s leadership — like the leadership of a number of states — should be moving this country down the path to an American form of universal coverage as quickly as possible. There is no more vital or meaningful way for us to honor and extend the great legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Again, Halvorson was also the only insurance executive to meet with Obama at that time.  Why?  Is it because Obama wants a single-payer system and sees himself as finishing the Civil Rights Movement, and Halvorson has the same viewpoint and the most to gain via Kaiser Permanente?  But, hey, there’s nothing to see here, right?  Or, is it that those meetings were, as Halvorson stated:

“The real discussion this time, behind those closed doors, is about changing the way care is delivered. Not about the cost.” 

Now, that is confusing.  According to former WH Budget Director, Peter Orszag, I thought that we were on an unsustainable path, so how could costs not come up in these meetings?  So, if we now know that those meetings were about how our healthcare is to be delivered, wouldn’t that be cause enough for alarm?  Some questions that pop into my mind are: how are those changes going to be implemented, what type of practitioner has direct access to patients, who has the ability to refer to specialists, who orders advanced tests/images, who makes the medical decisions, what protocols are being set/followed and who sets them, and do patients have access to all available treatment options.

Additionally, the Washington Times article cites that the Clinton and Bush administrations thwarted such calls:

President George W. Bush’s administration beat back efforts to reveal the dealings between Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force and industry. President Bill Clinton’s administration successfully resisted demands for records of its failed push to remake the health care system, which was overseen by then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

However, unlike the previous scenarios, this is now the law of the land, American taxpayers will be footing the entire bill, and will potentially ultimately have their healthcare decisions placed in the government’s control.  Doesn’t that give us the right to that information trumping the “implicate longstanding executive branch confidentiality interests” excuse.  And since when does this administration give a hoot about costs, nullifying the argument that the compliance with the records request “would constitute a vast and expensive undertaking.”

To quote NRO’s Jim Geraghty, did the Obama administration just administer the Cee-Lo Green option on Americans?

Typo correction: I’ve corrected the WaPo citation as it should have been Washington Times.

“Aha!” I thought. “Now we’re getting down to something important. The administration has been choking off domestic oil production and the unrest on the Arab street is bringing things to a boil. This is a great chance for somebody to step up with a concrete plan.”

Well, it turns out that the White House certainly is considering a plan, but not one that anyone outside of a rubber room could have predicted.

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley said on Sunday the Obama administration is considering tapping into the U.S. strategic oil reserve as one way to help ease soaring oil prices.

Speaking on NBC television’s “Meet the Press,” Daley said: “We are looking at the options. The issue of the reserves is one we are considering. … All matters have to be on the table.”

There has been support among Senate Democrats for tapping the reserves. Senator Jay Rockefeller on Thursday became the third Democrat to ask President Barack Obama to tap America’s emergency oil supply to cool prices that have risen past $100 a barrel on the strife in Libya.

I’d like to tell you what was said during the rest of the interview, but I threw a brick through my television screen at that point.

So let me see if I’ve got this straight:

• Oil and gas prices are rising in response to well established laws of supply and demand. Since we’re not going to magically produce all the energy we need for the next few years through “green initiatives” a good portion of this will have to come from fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.

• We’re not producing enough oil domestically because the federal government is sitting on drilling permits like they’re holding hostages.
• The foreign sources of oil from many of our overseas suppliers (who we’re supposed to be reducing our dependency upon because most of them don’t like us very much to start with) are now endangered as several of these countries totter on the brink of collapse.

And your solution to the problem may be to start draining our strategic reserves?

Before checking myself into a home for the terminally confused, I dropped a note to Jane Van Ryan of the American Petroleum Institute to see what they thought of such a plan. She writes:

API traditionally has opposed using oil from SPR to address price issues. The reserve was established to protect the United States against an interruption of petroleum supplies, such as occurred after the hurricanes Katrina and Rita. At that time, a few of the oil companies purchased oil from the SPR to maintain the flow of oil products to U.S. consumers.

At this time, there is a significant amount of oil available in the United States, and Saudi Arabia has said it has enough spare production capacity to make up for any shortfalls that might result from the Libyan conflict.

Those reserves are there to protect us, as Jane points out, in the event of a massive disruption in the flow of oil supplies. And for the moment, let’s put aside the commonly held opinion that the Obama administration is currently acting as the biggest disruption of domestic oil supplies. With Libya and other nations in the region experiencing unrest – or the threat of it – I would think that this is precisely the time when the United States would be seeking to top off those reserves, if not expand their total storage capacity. Draining them even before foreign supplies are cut off is nothing short of the height of folly.

And all the while, domestic producers are standing around by the Gulf of Mexico – as our British friends might say – with their tallywhackers in their hands, ready and willing to produce the oil we need, but waiting on Washington approval.

The inmates are running the asylum. I’ve lost most of my capacity to remain civil and balanced on this question. This is a matter of not only energy independence, jobs and fiscal recovery, but of national security. And these sorts of answers rob the Obama administration of any and all credibility when it comes to possessing a sane energy policy.

“The president has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny,” Mr. Holder said. “The president has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the president has instructed the department not to defend the statute in such cases. I fully concur with the president’s determination.”

All I can say is — thank goodness! Three cheers for Obama’s moral resolve and newly grown spine — because that smirking trick of his clears the decks for for legal challenges to be answered by attorneys for House and Senate Republicans, who actually support traditional marriage and oppose the same-sex inversion of marriage.

And before going one nanometer further, I once again strongly support and defend both the repeal of Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of forcing gays in the military to remain in the closet, and also the seminal U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas overturning all “anti-sodomy” state and federal laws. In other words, I have not budged on any of my positions:

• I support allowing gays to serve openly in the military.
• I support the fundamental liberty of consenting adults to have any kind of sex they want, so long as it does not cross the line into assault, battery, homicide, or public exhibition.
• But I completely and adamantly oppose instituting same-sex marriage (SSM).

Back to Lucky Lefty, the Obamunist. Note the traditional liberal hubris and megalomania: First, he is not content to leave findings of constitutionality to the courts; Obama has discovered somewhere in Article II of the Constitution a clause that allows him to nullify, by presidential diktat, any federal law he dislikes, even though duly enacted by Congress and signed by the president. Second, he seemingly could not care less what voters in the United States think about the definition of marriage; he has concluded that SSM is cool with him, and the rest of us should simply fall in line.

But it’s not as if he even believes that he can prevent such defenses, thus forcing — as the state of California and its new (and its former) governor are trying — to deny all potential defenders standing, then eighty-six the laws due to lack of defense. Rather, the administration seems almost giddy at the thought of Congress defending traditional marriage, while the president attacks it:

The decision effectively throws the defense of DOMA into the lap of Congress, which can instruct its own attorneys to defend federal laws. Mr. Holder said he had informed members of Congress of the decision so that “members who wish to defend the statute may pursue that option.”

Supporters of traditional marriage immediately called on the Republican-majority House to intervene in the DOMA lawsuits.

“With this decision, the president has thrown down the gauntlet, challenging Congress,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “It is incumbent upon the Republican leadership to respond by intervening to defend DOMA, or they will become complicit in the president’s neglect of duty.”

Many on the left are likewise giddy to the point of vertigo, calling the president’s principled act of unprinciple a tremendous victory for the forces of radicalism and transformation, hastening the eventual Europeanization of the United States.

But not so fast; lefties may be missing the point.

When the Attorney General or the Soliciter General of the United States undertakes to defend a law under constitutional assault, the courts surely consider that defense much more seriously than some outside, third-party, amicus curae brief; I’m sure they privilege those arguments, since it’s the official policy of the United States. Thus, if the administration’s defense is deliberately lame and incomplete, the law stands in grave danger of being overturned… even if a better argument was available but unused.

And evidently, the administration has been doing exactly that, offering an intentionally impaired defense of DOMA while ignoring winning arguments that have prevailed in state cases, hoping that the feds’ feeble efforts will “fail” to uphold DOMA; the crafty Obamunists will then have gotten a major policy change while leaving their own hands clean, thus sidestepping voter vengeance:

While it was sudden, Wednesday’s move did not come out of nowhere. Opponents of same-sex marriage had grown increasingly frustrated with the administration for what they called its underzealous defense of DOMA and its omission of key arguments.

In a brief filed Jan. 13 in defense of DOMA at the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Justice Department states that “the administration supports repealing DOMA,” but that the department must do its job to defend the law “as long as reasonable arguments can be made in support of their constitutionality.”

Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, told The Washington Times recently that he suspected the administration of purposely tanking its case.

“They purposely avoid arguments that are winning time and time again in court,” he said. “Even scholars on the other side of this issue have said, ‘What is going on here is wrong.’ Anyone who cares about constitutional government should be very concerned about what’s happening in the DOMA case.”

But Obama, Holder, and the entire administration are now openly at war with traditional marriage while aiding and abetting same-sex marriage, and congressional conservatives have been given the green light to vigorously defend the sanctity and necessity of a legal marriage being between one man and one woman. That very fact means that DOMA has a much greater opportunity to be upheld yet again.

Inadvertently, the tremendous victory is ours, not theirs, a gift from the smug and cocky Left. As usual, “Progressivism” overreaches and draws back a stump, setting itself up for voter blowback as well.

Thank you, mask man!

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

WASHINGTON — Nearly two-thirds of cars on the road could have more corn-based ethanol in their fuel tanks under an Environmental Protection Agency decision Friday.

The agency said that 15 percent ethanol blended with gasoline is safe for cars and light-duty trucks manufactured between 2001 and 2006, expanding an October decision that the higher blend is safe for cars built since 2007.The maximum gasoline blend has been 10 percent ethanol.

This decision was made despite repeated warnings from industry experts who have been pleading for more time to perform exhaustive testing. Were they being overly cautious? That’s a difficult argument to make, particularly since we told you last month that one delay in testing came from the fact that the higher ethanol blend fuel was melting down the seals in pumps and storage tanks during testing.

The laundry list of potential problems from this decision is extensive. Asking distributors to carry yet another fuel (even if it doesn’t melt their pumps) will require logistical juggling, equipment changes, new signs and other expenses which are inevitably passed on down to the consumer. Ethanol burns hotter than conventional fuel, leading to earlier failure of catalytic converters. (An expensive fix, as any of you who have been hit with it at the garage will attest.)

All of this is still being pushed under the cloak of a more environmentally friendly solution to energy challenges, a claim which current science has increasingly put in doubt. But would it at least produce any type of savings as we fight to get the budget under control? Precisely the opposite, as noted by Craig Cox of the Environmental Working Group.

Rather than furthering his goal to make America “the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” however, Obama’s focus on biofuels as the way “to break our dependence on oil” would have the opposite effect if it means sending billions more taxpayers dollars to corn country to finance ethanol infrastructure, Cox said. “Building an ethanol infrastructure at taxpayer’s expense will just lock us further into the past rather than lead us to tomorrow’s energy future,” added Cox, who heads EWG’s Ames, Iowa, office.

This is clearly a victory for King Corn, but lies in stark contrast to the President’s stated goals of Winning the Future. Exit question: Even if gas stations manage to offer this for cars built in 2001 and after, how will they ensure drivers of older vehicles don’t wind up putting it in their vehicles without retooling the entire delivery system?

The Medicare policy will pay doctors for holding end-of-life-care discussions with patients, according to the Times. A similar provision was dropped from the new healthcare reform law after Republicans accused the administration of withholding care from the sick, elderly and disabled. However, an administration spokesman said the regulation, which is less specific than the reform law’s draft language, is actually a continuation of a policy enacted under former President George W. Bush.

“The only thing new here is a regulation allowing the discussions … to happen in the context of the new annual wellness visit created by [healthcare reform],” Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin told The Wall Street Journal.

In 2003, Medicare added a consultation visit for seniors new to the program, according to the Journal. Another 2008 law, enacted under Bush, said the visit can include “end-of-life” planning discussions.

However, what The Hill’s Jason Millman forgot to mention in his article was that President Bush VETOED the 2008 bill and the Democrats, along with some “good-willed” Republicans OVERRODE Bush’s veto forcing him to sign the legislation into law.*  The bill dealt with doctors’ reimbursements and more, but the Democrats slipped in the end-of-life planning by opening up the Social Security Act, which I have stated many times is dangerous, because once changed, it is difficult to amend again and allows for tinkering with the Medicare fee schedule and covered services definitions and requirements.

For the record, here is the text that the Democrats changed:

(b) Revisions to Initial Preventive Physical Examination-

(1) IN GENERAL- Section 1861(ww) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395x(ww)) is amended–

(A) in paragraph (1)–

(i) by inserting ‘body mass index,’ after ‘weight’;

(ii) by striking ‘, and an electrocardiogram’; and

(iii) by inserting ‘and end-of-life planning (as defined in paragraph (3)) upon the agreement with the individual’ after ‘paragraph (2)’;

Comedy gold indeed, when Democrats blame Bush for, um, everything wrong in America, and then use him for cover on healthcare.

Updated:  *President Bush did not sign this bill into law as the congressional record mistakenly notes.  After Congress overrode Bush’s veto, President Bush was not required to sign the bill to enact it.

The Justice Department said the transcripts couldn’t be provided, according to a letter from Swiss officials to the U.S. Embassy in Bern, Switzerland. The letter was dated Monday and obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday night.

The Swiss officials said that the denial of access to the information was the key factor in the refusal to extradite Polanski.

The testimony was taken, it appears (though the reporting is quite vague), during a Los Angeles Superior Court hearing this last January, held to determine whether Polanski could be sentenced “in absentia;” eventually, Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that he could not be, that he had to be physically present for the hearing to occur.

The request was particularly risible and frivolous in this case — given that Polanski already fled from a previous sentence, which he seems to have believed was only an additional 48 days of “diagnostic study.” What are the odds that, were he sentenced in absentia today for a more reasonable term in jail, he would actually show up to serve it? Obviously, the only purpose of such a hearing would be for Polanski’s lawyers to refight the original charge — then only allow him to return if he was victorious and “vindicated.”

Retired Prosecutor Gunson’s testimony during that hearing remains sealed, per the DoJ; however, it’s easy to guess what Gunson said: I presume he repeated the claim he made in a statement in June, 2008 — and earlier that year in a pro-Polanski documentary — that the original judge, Laurence J. Rittenband, had been “coached” during the original trial in 1977 by another prosecutor, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney David Wells. I’m not quite sure what “coached” means in this case, probably the allegation that the prosecutor and judge colluded against Polanski.

Gunson also claimed in documentary and statement that in 1997, twenty years after, he and Polanski’s attorney Douglas Dalton met in chambers with Judge Larry Paul Fidler. Fidler, they say, agreed that Polanski could return to the United States and be sentenced only to probation with no prison or jail time.

But President Barack H. Obama’s Justice Department denied the Swiss request for that testimony. They must have known that withholding it guaranteed that Swiss authorities would reject extradition: Swiss law allows extradition only in cases where the defendant would be sentenced to at least six months in jail; yet the Gunson testimony went to the question of whether Polanski faced any jail time at all. Obviously, without being allowed to read that testimony for themselves and weigh it against other, more pertinent evidence, the Swiss were bound to err on the side of Polanski, who owns property in Gstadt, rather than the distant United States.

I see only two plausibilities, neither of which redounds to the credit of Attorney General Eric Holder or President Obama:

• The Justice Department reflexively withheld the testimony because top personnel were afraid the Swiss would seize upon it as proof that Polanski didn’t qualify to be extradited under Swiss law. This is “teen logic,” like a high-schooler having a fender bender, then parking the car on the street so Dad would think it was a hit-and-run in the middle of the night.
• Justice deliberately withheld the testimony to ensure that Polanski would not be extradited, would not stand trial again for the brutal rape and for fleeing prosecution, and would not be punished. It is at the very least curious that Polanski hired a new attorney, Reid Weingarten, four days after his arrest in Zurich… an attorney who is a “close friend of Attorney General Eric Holder.”

The Weingarten angle is tantalizing; did Holder’s pal broker a Washington deal to keep Polanski free? Did Holder agree — he does have a history of killing prosecutions, doesn’t he? — in order to keep faith with Obama’s supporters and donors among the Hollywood Left?

Polanski, 76, was arrested last weekend at Zurich’s airport on a 31-year-old fugitive warrant issued after he skipped sentencing for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. The addition of Weingarten, who has known Holder since the two worked together in the department’s Public Integrity Section in the 1970s, means Polanski now has a powerful advocate in Washington.

The New York Times reports:

The recruiting of Mr. Weingarten was a strong signal that Mr. Polanski’s legal team intends to push hard on the Washington end of the case. Mr. Polanski was arrested on his way to the Zurich Film Festival after Swiss authorities received a letter from the Department of Justice requesting that he be held for possible extradition to the United States.

The question now is, from how high up the chain at Justice came the decision to refuse the Swiss request for the Gunson testimony?

Under the first hypothesis, it was just a boneheaded mistake by either Eric Holder himself or one of his top deputies. There is ample evidence that Polanski actually faced far more than six months, possibly as much as twenty years. As Patterico pointed out in early May, both Polanski’s plea transcript from 1978 and a Christmas Eve Day decision in 2009 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rebut the urban legend that Roman Polanski had a sentencing “deal” with Judge Rittenband to “serve” only 42 days of a diagnostic study as his sole “punishment.” In fact, Patterico notes, such studies are not punitive at all and cannot constitute a “sentence;” they’re meant to help determine what sentence the convict should receive.)

Nobody, not even Polanski’s attorneys, claims that the defendant was legally authorized to flee the country to avoid further court proceedings; so at the very least, he should be subject to prosecution for unlawful flight, which would likely net him at least six months on that charge alone. Too, serving some sort of sentence following the full 90 days of evaluation — even if only probation — was surely part of any plea agreement; since he failed to fulfill his side of the agreement, the plea bargain is off — and Polanski is now subject to the full set of charges, including oral, vaginal, and anal rape of a minor by drugs and force. If convicted, and I suspect he would be, I’m sure he would be eligible for life in prison (de facto if not de jure, as he turns 77 years old next month).

Instead of refusing to hand over the ramblings of an obviously biased witness, Roger Gunson, Obama’s Department of Justice should have released it and simply made the argument that Gunson’s testimony is not dispositive anent the punishment that awaits Mr. Polanski upon his return. It’s possible the Swiss law-enforcement officials would have found some other excuse not to extradite; but it’s also possible they would decide, if the petition was strong and all documents included, that they couldn’t brush it aside so easily.

And of course, the other hypothesis — that Holder once again quashed prosecution of a politically favored defendant in a sensational case — is even more reprehensible. It forms a pattern of biased conduct verging on political bribery at the DoJ that would further erode any confidence among the American people that Barack H. Obama is fit to serve as President of the United States… or at the very least, that Eric Holder is fit to serve as Attorney General. (But who appointed Eric Holder?)

The botching of the Polanski extradition case — or its corrupt quashing — opens yet another vista of the Democratic culture of corruption, an inexhaustible oil spill of moral rot and political turpitude seeping throughout all three branches of the federal government.

Drip, drip, drip.

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

The Commission finally got so frustrated by the complete lack of cooperation by the Civil Rights Division of the DoJ that it fired off subpoenas, demanding answers to four dozen questions and the documents to support those answers. But Justice continued to waffle, finding one excuse after another not to produce any paperwork or even respond directly. At the same time, in a burst of petulance, the nomenklatura at Justice banished Coates himself to the far-away country of North Carolina.

Thank goodness we now have an incorruptable president and attorney general who would never, ever politicize the Department of Justice.

But that was then; this is now, and at last, la Casa Blanca has formally responded: All the president’s men categorically reject the insolent idea that the Executive has to answer to anyone at all… not even to the congressional commission charged under statute (the Civil Rights Act of 1957) with the mission “To investigate complaints alleging that citizens are being deprived of their right to vote by reason of their race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin, or by reason of fraudulent practices”:

The Justice Department refused Tuesday to turn over most of the information and documents sought by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights explaining why a civil complaint was dismissed against members of the New Black Panther Party who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place in the November 2008 elections.

In a 38-page response, the department objected — except for a few court records, letters and procedural documents — to “each and every” question and document request submitted by the commission, saying the subpoenas violated existing executive orders, privacy and privilege concerns, and were burdensome, vague and ambiguous.

The lengthy response, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, also said the requested information and documents were protected by the attorney-client privilege or were not subject to disclosure because they included attorney or law enforcement work products.

The department also refused to release any information about an investigation of the New Black Panther Party case by its office of professional responsibility, saying the ongoing review was privileged information or was covered by the Privacy Act.

To slice it down to the bone, Attorney General Eric Holder is telling Congress to go flap somewhere else.

Now I would heartily agree with such a sentiment — were we talking about senators and representatives horning in on foreign policy or the president’s warfighting powers. The Constitution leaves those up to the Executive, by and large. But this isn’t a case of national security: I scent the strong, smoky whiff of collusion and corruption in ObamaLand: The White House is covering up its own complicity; it should be declared an unindicted co-conspirator in voter intimidation alongside the NBPP.

My personal belief is that Holder (to a very large extent) and Barack H. Obama (to a somewhat lesser) actively support the Black Panthers’ program of intimidating and frightening elderly white voters away from the polls. Why would Democrats in general support such a scheme? That’s easy; they believe race-war is the health of the party.

They know that blacks will vote 95% for the Democrats, but they’re pretty sure that white senior citizens, businessmen, and military veterans will vote strongly for the GOP. So the Democrats have decided it’s in their interest to suppress the latter votes “by any means necessary,” even buddying up with a racist organization such as the NBPP or ACORN — or openly discarding military ballots during the election, as we saw in 2000.

(Sidebar: One of the Democrats’ most narcissistic crimes against America is the ruination of the word “racism” via tendentious redefinition; the term is now so tainted by false accusation and political manipulation that the word itself has lost all meaning. If George Orwell is right, when the word goes, the concept itself soon follows into oblivion. Now that “racism” means nothing, I wonder what word we can use tomorrow to describe the Klan, skinhead “Nazis,” and what was done to James Byrd, jr.?)

Some, like Michael Barone, argue that Republicans need a positive plan for action in 2010, not just their status as “not the Democrats.” Others (e.g. Paul Mirengoff of Power Line) believe a “contract with America”-type agenda might just get in the way, turning off Independents and moderate Republicans who may disagree with conservatives about important elements.

But virtually everybody would agree that campaigning against corruption and thuggishness — clearly defined, undeniable, inexcusable, and squalid — has nothing but upside for the GOP. After all, liberal Democrats have already painted themselves into a hole; they have preened with unendurable pomposity and condescension, congratulating themselves on their own superior moral code, for three years now; and that’s long enough to own their own policies.

Now hypocrisy — that seemingly venial sin that Americans hate almost worse than murder, treachery, and treason — looms over the incumbents’ heads like the Sword of Damocles.

Let’s find a pair of scissors sharp enough to slice a strand of horsehair. This particular sword is two-edged; but in this case, both edges cut against the supermajority.

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

It appears at the website fredericksburg.com. The author, one Kenneth P. Vogel, writes somewhat gleefully about Glenn Beck’s production company having tax problems.

As Beck evolved from a medium-market local radio personality to a one-man media empire with top-rated radio and television shows, best-selling books, a monthly magazine and a traveling one-man comedy tour, his production company, Mercury Radio Arts, has at times struggled to keep up with the heightened tax and filing demands accompanying his success.

Mercury, a private corporation that lists Beck as chief executive officer and his wife, Tania Beck, alternately as vice president or secretary, since 2007 has fallen behind on its New York City business income taxes and has been cited for filing errors related to its obligations under Texas franchise tax and New York state workers’ compensation insurance rules.

Okay, let’s stop and review so far, shall we? Beck’s company has grown rapidly and, by Ken’s own lights, “at times struggled to keep up with the heightened tax and filing demands accompanying his success.” The company, moreover, “has fallen behind on its New York City business income taxes.” All right. I think I understand the situation. But what of it?

To understand why author Vogel finds delicious irony in this turn of events, you have to read the rest of the column. Actually, the first paragraph will suffice to give you the flavor and general tenor of the rest of the article:

No one has been less forgiving than Glenn Beck when it comes to Democrats with tax problems. Not just the well-known ones like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner but also less serious ones such as Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, whose husband only recently paid off $6,400 in tax liens on his auto repair business, and Nancy Killefer, who withdrew her nomination to be White House chief performance officer, citing a $946.69 tax lien on her Washington home.

So Vogel’s point is that Beck has made fun of employees of the federal government with greater or lesser tax problems. Obviously, any fair-minded observer will concede that Nancy Killefer’s tax lien problem is a fairly minor one. And Beck’s (“In October 2007, New York City issued a tax warrant against Mercury Radio Arts, indicating that the company had been penalized $10,927.49 for overdue 2006 general corporation taxes. . .”)—well, it’s impossible to say without knowing the company’s adjusted gross, which information Vogel does not provide.

But again, what of it? Let’s suppose Glenn Beck’s company owed $80 million. I still ask, “What of it?” Glenn Beck is not an employee of the federal government. He is a television personality. In contrast, the people he holds up to ridicule, such as Timothy Geithner, are employees of the federal government. Because they are charged with the responsibility of running some aspect of the nation’s government, they are expected to live according to a higher standard of behavior. Which part of this do liberals have trouble grasping?

Cross-posted at Manhattan Conservative Examiner

I wonder if Barack Obama has begun to experience a relentless feeling of constantly falling. Despite his repeated protestations that he would close Gunatanamo by the first of the year, that he would play the prophet Isaiah to Iran’s looney secular leader, that he would spend us out a recession, the world as president that he envisioned must have evaporated by now even for him.

And in place of the hosannas he was certain would be sung at his never-ending coronation as World’s Greatest Everything have been the relentlessly grim falling poll numbers. They arched upward slightly after the Senate made its Christmas Eve deadline of passing its version of the health care reform bill, but then reality set in once again. The War on Terror that had never existed reared its ugly head, he and his Homeland Security Secretary both dropped the ball in their initial responses to the narrowly averted disaster, and those dreaded poll numbers are back down to an even 49 percent aggregate.

But Obama has advisers, and they always know what to do. And the thing to do in this case, they decided, was shoot the messenger. As reported at Politico, Democrats have trained their rifles on the pollster Scott Rasmussen, the reasoning being that his data at best must be “the result of a flawed polling model and, at worst, designed to undermine Democratic politicians and the party’s national agenda.”

That’s gotta be it. What else could it be? Well, let’s examine the data. Rasmussen has the president today with an approval rating of 47 percent while Quinnipiac fixes his positives at 46 percent. Is the ineluctable conclusion to draw that Quinnipiac also has it in for the Dems? And how about Gallup? Those guys have been around forever, and they have Obama at 49 percent — only two ticks higher than Rasmussen. Are they also using flawed data-collection models?

First, the administration went after FOX News Channel, and that worked like a charm. Obama — a first for a president — has even called out specific FOX commentators by name. Good thing that doesn’t look petty or demean the office.

Here’s a thought: Maybe one way for Obama to overcome that relentless feeling of constantly falling, and certainly this would be novel for him, would be to try leading the country that elected him as its leader. Try being honest with the American people. Admit that the term “saved job” is a fictional construct of your administration and not a genuine measure of economic health. Admit that if we have in fact turned a corner economically, as you insist, it is not because of your stimulus. Or at least admit that you erred in your prediction that the stimulus would prevent the rate of unemployment from going above 8.5 percent.

When Congress presents you with a health care bill in February, as they likely will, tear it up. Tell the electorate that this bill is not the fix to a damaged health care system that the country needs but a recipe for disaster. Then listen — for the time — to the minority party and give serious consideration to their ideas, many of which are very good and will cure current health-care ills without costing an arm and a leg or taking the country in a direction it doesn’t want to go on.

Or . . . you can continue listening to the voices that have been advising you since the start. In which case that feeling of constantly falling is to going to grow more intense until at last the ground comes up to meet you.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

A year into the star-crossed presidency of Barack Obama, I find myself cobbling together a list of scenes I’d like to see. This is but a select few of many, some of which I can’t mention in polite company. Feel free to add your own.

1. Obama admitting that the surge in Iraq worked and that he had been wrong.
2. Obama admitting that he was wrong about the effects of his $787 billiong “stimulus” package on the rate of unemployment.
3. Obama inviting a group of Republican Congress members the White House to hear their ideas on health care reform, national defense, etc.
4. Obama announcing that he may have been mistaken about global warmism and is canceling his plans to go to Copenhagen pending further scientific investigation into this issue.
5. Obama making a statement about anything without having to deliver a formal speech in a setting carefully chosen for its dramatic import.
6. Obama admitting that George W. Bush had been right about something.
7. Obama admitting that he (Obama) had been wrong about something.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

Take Richard Cohen’s lastest round of soul-searching in a column interestingly titled “Missing Barack Obama.” Cohen’s main argument is that Obama’s decisions so far in his young presidency lack the moral clarity Cohen claims to have seen in Obama during the campaign. (There is something obscene about mentioning Obama and morality in the same sentence; you expect mirrors around you to start cracking.)

But Cohen is unable to register even the most reserved, the most qualified of grievances without effusively celebrating Obama, the man and the president. In the very first sentence of the article, for example, Cohen tells us that in his circle he is “known as the guy who always had some reservations about Barack Obama.” Ouch, Richard, that’s pretty brutal. You sure you’re allowed to write that in a family publication? Not to worry, though, because by sentence 2, he has begun his atonement for lashing out so grievously at his beloved president by reminding anyone who will listen that he voted for Obama “with both glee and enthusiasm.”

He moves on to Obama’s so-called “race speech” in Philadelphia. (Remeber that?) Cohen apparently had a moment of moral clarity himself when Obama unburdened himself on the American public, essentially blaming the country for his own decision to sit in the pews of a black nationalist church for 20 years, listening to some lunatic spew anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-you-name-it venom week after week. Cohen didn’t like the speech at first — even though, he hastens to tell us, he saw both style and dignity in Obama’s sniveling. (In fact, he has since reread the speech and now understands that it belongs in the National Archives, next to the Declaration of Independence.)

In fairness to Cohen, he does go on to critique several of Obama’s recent actions and decisions, such as his bowing to the Japanese emperor, his snubbing the Dalai Lama, and —worst of all — his agreeing to let his attorney general try the mastermind of 9/11 in a criminal court. But this is today’s column. Wait a day. Cohen is sure to see the error of his ways and prostrate himself in front of the White House, hoping to receive Obama’s forgiveness.

Oddly, other, less reliable sources report that “the state has lost 732,700 jobs over the last year.”

And those same other sources also seem to be under the impression that California has only 53 congressional districts; we certainly have only 53 U.S. representatives! But if that’s true, how could the federal incompetocracy of Barack H. Obama report the specific number of jobs “created or saved” — along with the total stimulus spending required to create or save them — in California congressional districts 57, 64, 67, 76, 80, 91, and 99? Not to mention district 00, and the inexplicable district labeled simply “congressional district?” (Those last two are always colored green on our maps, while the other 99 alternate between red and black.)

Our higher-numbered districts (and the unenumerated one) aren’t doing well by the stimulus policy, alas. California congressional districts that do not actually exist created or saved a scant 24.2 jobs (I think the last two-tenths of one job comprise teenaged baby-sitters, drunken bums who won’t stop singing “Crazy Train” until you give them a quarter, three-card monte experts, and community organizers). Worse, they sucked up $5,740,757 to create or save those 24 jobs (sorry, 24.2 jobs), which works out to $237,221.36 per job per seven months (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was passed in February, and the recovery.gov figures are from September) — or $406,665.19 per job per year.

Even assuming that 67% of the cost per job is overhead — federal building maintenance costs, salaries for government employees, payoffs to ACORN and the SEIU, etc. — that means each job must offer an average compensation package of $134,199.51. Wow — where do I sign up to be created or saved?

With the new transparency, it’s easy to see exactly how the administration is able to report such stellar economic improvement so quickly. All I can say is hip hip, chin chin for the One!

Oh — and can we have our 44 other congressmen, please? (Hat tip to Power Line’s Scott Johnson.)

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

Well of course Medved opposes the scheme; he is (generally) a conservative, and what conservative could possibly support such an asinine policy?

But I was driven to distraction when Medved explained why he was against it. Because of the danger it would provoke another terrorist attack against New York? Because of likely attempts by terrorists to free the Gitmo Five? Because of the horrible risk that they might be acquitted, simply because we would be hamstrung by threats to national security?

Why no: Michael Medved’s main argument, which he repeated over and over, was that such a trial would cost too much money.

“This could cost as much as a hundred million dollars!” he hyperventilated — which, by the way, is less than one one-millionth of the cost of ObamaCare. Several callers took their cue from Medved, calling to complain about wasting all that taxpayer money.

Where to begin? Talk about missing the dead cow on the tennis court. The reason the Holder decision is utterly insane is not the money; and it’s not that it would give a “platform” for the terrorists to spout their anti-American propaganda, which Medved also mentioned en passante. I’m sure the courtroom will be closed; and even if there is a TV feed, it will be court controlled, which the judge can order shut down if the defendants begin ranting. (Not that a raging Khalid Sheikh Mohammed screaming “God damn America!” would be a good recruiting tool to convert Americans to jihadist Islam anyway.)

The real danger is twofold:

1. It establishes a precedent that such terrorist attacks, launched from a foreign country by foreign nationals, with the aid and support of other foreign nations, are simply criminal acts that should be tried in civilian court, alongside carjacking and check kiting cases.

We must understand that such attacks are the future of warfare. We’re not going to be subject to a missile barrage directly from Iran; when Iran attacks us in future, it will be through the agency of another KSM and Ramzi Binalshibh.

2. It carries the distinct risk that terrorist attorneys can “game the system” to get all five terrorist detainees acquitted… on grounds that demonstrate once again why we need to try these terrorists via military tribunals, not the civilian justice system (which was never set up to prosecute unlawful enemy combatants).

The defendants’ attorneys, probably supplied by CAIR or some other terrorist-linked organization, can use a peculiar tactic to practically force an acquittal: They can claim that they cannot possibly defend against the charges without knowing exactly how they were found, how they were captured, what intelligence led them there, who were the sources for that intel (so they can be subpoenaed into court), what methods were used to collect it, and so forth. Thus, they will demand all such documents — probably more than a million pages of heavily, heavily classified material — during discovery.

Obviously, we cannot possibly hand that over to the defendants’ attorneys. Even if the attorneys are Americans, how do we know we’re not putting such vital intelligence data into the hands of another Lynne Stewart? Even the incompetocracy of Obama will be bright enough to realize it cannot release such intel… which will give the attorneys the perfect opening to demand all charges be dismissed.

In addition, they’re sure to move to dismiss charges against KSM on the grounds that Mohammed was “tortured,” i.e., waterboarded. This will give the federal courts yet another crack at formally declaring waterboarding to be torture — which would make it much easier for Team Obama to prosecute our anti-terrorist interrogators… and once again blame George W. Bush for all the woes afflicting America.

At that point, all will be in the hands of a federal judge, then an appellate court panel, then the Supreme Court, where it will ultimately be decided by how Justice Anthony Kennedy feels that day. If he woke up grumpy, we could find all five of them (or perhaps just the most well-known terrorist, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) acquitted, out on the streets, and quickly back in Iran or Pakistan or Indonesia, receiving a hero’s welcome — and returned once again to the terrorist fold.

(Medved did mention one other problem: That the civilian trial itself, no matter how carefully managed, would almost certainly compromise American intelligence gathering. But he presented it only as a quote from somebody else, at the very end of the hour.)

Honestly, the hundred-million dollar cost is the least of the perils to which such jackassery exposes us.

Queerly enough, the Justice Department also announced that other terrorists from the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility will be tried — by military tribunals!

But the administration will prosecute another set of high-profile detainees now being held at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen, and four other detainees — before a military commission.

Why the difference? Because Nashiri attacked a military target, the U.S.S. Cole? But the 9/11 plotters attacked the Pentagon — which is also a military target, I would reckon. Both KSM and and Nashiri were captured abroad, in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, respectively. Both are foreign nationals: KSM is a Kuwaiti, Nashiri is Saudi Arabian. Both planned their crimes abroad.

The only difference appears to be that Nashiri’s target was an American ship sitting at anchor in Yemen, while Mohammed’s targets were all in the United States; but this hardly seems such an important distinction that we couldn’t have tried Mohammed and his five pals in a military tribunal as well, where we could much more securely control the circulation of any discovery documents that could compromise American national security.

I just don’t understand what’s so hard to understand about the insanity of this grandstanding move — whose real purpose, I suspect, is to find yet another way to blame everything on Bush. But evidently, it’s too subtle a point for Michael Medved to grasp. Yes, I agree, we spend too much federal and state money; we should significantly reduce spending and dramatically drop the tax rates.

But for heaven’s sake, that’s not the big problem in this case.

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

So reads a t-shirt often worn by Adam Savage, one of the two original starts of the Discovery Channel’s series Mythbusters, which I have slavishly watched since the very first episode (I think that was the episode where they busted the myth of the rocket-propelled car launching into the air).

The tee commemorates a pithy summary Adam Savage delivered on the show, I can even remember whether he meant it optimistically or sarcastically: “I reject your reality and substitute my own!” I remember Adam saying that, but I can’t recall now what precipitated the remark. But after today, I suggest he send his wonderful t-shirt to another fellow who now has a greater claim to it: President Barack H. Obama.

Take a look and tell me I’m exaggerating:

President Barack Obama rejected the Afghanistan war options before him and asked for revisions, his defense secretary said Thursday, after the U.S. ambassador in Kabul argued that a significant U.S. troop increase would only prop up a weak, corruption-tainted government.

“I’m not happy with the options reality has offered me; I demand you produce new fantasy options more to my liking!”

Let’s take an Eikenberry detour. Yes indeed, he was once a military commander in Afghanistan; but he’s not the commander now, and he hasn’t been for well over two years — during which time the situation has changed dramatically. Note that he also left before Gen. David Petraeus achieved such a thorough and remarkable victory in Iraq using a very similar strategy.

In 2007, as the Iraq COIN was picking up, Eikenberry was named Deputy Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, and NATO was not officially involved in the Iraq War (as they are in Afghanistan). Thus I see no evidence that Eikenberry has spent any significant time studying the Iraq COIN — or even talking to David Petraeus, who, as Commander of CENTCOM, is now McChrystal’s boss.

Nor was Ambassador Eikenberry a COIN specialist when he wore a uniform instead of a suit. So why should his advice trump McChrystal’s in the Obamacle’s mind? (Except for the obvious explanation: Because what Eikenberry says, by happenstance or design, precisely matches what Obama wants to hear.)

Eikenberry’s argument for why we should abandon Afghanistan is not exactly subtle; I think it boils down to the peculiar idea that the purpose of a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy is to “prop-up” the existing government, whatever it may be; therefore, since we don’t like the fellow that Afghan voters elected, Hamid Karzai, we shouldn’t prop it up by implementing a COIN strategy. Instead, we should focus on “training” the indiginous Afghan troops.

Most others experts on the subject I’ve read — I’m certainly not an expert, so I must rely on others, such as Fred Kagen or David Petraeus — seem to believe the purpose of COIN is to improve civilian security throughout the country, thus to enlist civilian support for the war effort against the insurgents and deny the latter the chaos and collapse they need to seize the government.

It needn’t incorporate any support for the specific civilian government at all, just for the concept of democratic voting. All we need from Karzai is that he not interfere with Afghan troops’ participation in COIN-related joint patrols and operations… which is, incidentally, exactly how we go about training the local forces, both military and tribal militia, in the first place. No joint ops — no training.

Here is the Eikenberry thesis on display:

Obama’s ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, who is also a former commander in Afghanistan, twice in the last week voiced strong dissent against sending large numbers of new forces, according to an administration official. That puts him at odds with the current war commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is seeking thousands more troops.

Eikenberry’s misgivings, expressed in classified cables to Washington, highlight administration concerns that bolstering the American presence in Afghanistan could make the country more reliant on the U.S., not less. He expressed his objections just ahead of Obama’s latest war meeting Wednesday.

But there is an even more disturbing possibility: If AP is accurately recounting Eikenberry’s objections (and I don’t know that to be the case), then he, too, believes that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendations consist of nothing but “send 40,000 more troops” — rather than “implement a COIN strategy, then decide how many troops we need.” (McChrystal adds, “Psst… it turns out to be about 40,000 more than we have right now”). This would put the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in the same conceptual box as the elite news media.

It’s hard to swallow the contention that a former lieutenant general (that’s a 3-banger) in the United States Army would be blissfully unaware of what counterinsurgency strategy is, and how it differs from a counter-terrorism strategy… where we “fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt”. I hope that’s not the problem. But if not, then what makes Eikenberry think he’s more fit to opine on Afghanistan than the general that Barack Obama himself hand-picked to do just that? (And who is, as I understand it, an expert on COIN strategy.)

(There is a third, even more disturbing possibility: That Eikenberry knows very well that McChrystal is right, that a COIN strategy is the only one that leads to victory; but the ambassador believes that victory is the last thing Obama wants. In that case, Eikenberry may be quietly conspiring to lose the war, either to give Obama’s leftist supporters the terrible American defeat they demand, or to deny President Bush the victory he earned. Or both. I certainly hope this is not what’s going through Eikenberry’s mind!)

But back to the One, who is ultimately calling the shots here. His philosophy of “I reject your reality and substitute my own” is, in fact, the standard modus vivendi of liberalism. As in:

• “I reject the reality that one must work hard, or at least smart, to live well; I substitute the reality where I can sit around and smoke pot all day but still receive a national income (big enough to pay for my dope).”
• “I reject the reality that says the best remedy for bad speech is more good speech; I substitute the reality where we can simply outlaw or ban bad speech, and then all that will be left is good speech.”
• “I reject the reality that increasing health-insurance demand (via mandate) while decreasing supply (by driving companies out of business) will result in much more expensive insurance; I substitute the reality where a complete government takeover will lower costs, improve care, and expand the pool of those covered.”
• “I reject the reality that we need cheap energy; I substitute the reality where we can tax the hell out of it, raise energy costs through the roof (as Obama himself gleefully predicted), declare more and more energy sources off-limits, and therefore make America stronger and more prosperous.”
• “I reject the reality that doubling taxation of the average Joe will leave him with less money to spend; I substitute the reality where doubling taxation results in an explosion of new economic growth, causing the economy to take off like a rocket.”
• “I reject the reality that Israel needs the ability to defend itself, or it will be destroyed; I substitute the reality where, if Israel will only give the Palestinians everything they want, while demanding nothing in return, the latter will be so grateful they will become fast friends with the Jewish state.” (Alternatively: “I reject the reality that Jews should be allowed to have a state; I substitute the reality where Jews are so uniquely evil that they are the only “race” who should be barely-tolerated strangers wherever they live.”)

To the liberal, reality is infinitely malleable: If you don’t like it, just hold your breath, close your eyes, strain really hard, and intensely visualize the new reality. When you open your eyes and gasp in a lungful, the new reality will miraculously have been subbed in!

This seems to work in some environments but not others. It works great in Hollywood; and it works reasonably well in two-party politics — averaging out to being successful about half the time. However, it doesn’t seem to work much at all in warfare, where the default reality has a depressing way of contradicting the happy-facers, rudely and abruptly.

Alas, even that catastrophe could play into the hand of Barack Obama and his incompetocracy; after bargaining down the number of troops we need — and implementing Slow Joe Biden’s counter-terrorism strategy, rather than a COIN strategy — we might be handed a signal, Vietnam-style defeat. Then B.O. could declare:

1. “Clearly this means the war was unwinnable from the beginning, and my predecessor should never have invaded Afghanistan in the first place.”
2. “I gave the policy of the previous administration every opportunity; I even sent more troops — not once, but twice! It’s time to admit that the whole adventure was a terrible miscalculation, pull out, accept that defeat was inevitable, and MoveOn.”

3. “Now the whole country understands why I have embarked upon a new era of Strategic Reassurance, talking to our enemies without preconditions, instead of the “cowboy militarism” of the Republican Party.

   “We’re going to redouble our efforts to talk Iran and North Korea into doing what’s best for America, rather than what’s best for themselves. I know we’ve tried it again and again, and it’s never worked yet; but by the Law of Averages, that means we’re due to hit the jackpot really soon now!”

In the long run, I don’t think a strategy of denying reality is a military winner; and a long-run strategy of hoping for American defeat will not be a political winner in 2010 or 2012. But as John Maynard Keynes is reputed to have said, “In the long run, we’re all dead.”

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

They learned (if they read the news ) that — drum roll, please: The betraying endorsement was engineered by the Barack H. Obama White House.

Politico reports that the administration and Friends of Barack lured Scozzafava to the dark side by playing on her senses of grievance and entitlement:

The story of how it went down began in Washington, where the White House and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee quarterbacked the effort to secure Scozzafava’s endorsement.

According to several senior Democratic officials, Rep. Steve Israel, a Long Island Democrat and DCCC official, was dispatched to meet face to face with Scozzafava in her upstate New York district, within hours of her departure from the race, to make the case on behalf of the national party. He carried the proxy of the White House and congressional Democrats.

Scozzafava, according to one account, was receptive to the entreaties after becoming a target of intense conservative opposition over the past month. The nomination of the moderate to liberal assemblywoman who was backed by the national GOP establishment had become a rallying point for conservative grass-roots activists, who argued that she was far too liberal for them to support.

“She’s devastated that these outside interests are trying to hijack her moderate wing of the party,” said one New York Democrat who had spoken to Scozzafava.

Hijack? Those forces (outside or in) were trying to push the moderates aside and support the conservative wing… just as the moderates did the exact opposite when eleven GOP party bosses anointed DIABLO Scozzafava to succeed RINO John McHugh, who jumped at the chance to join the Obama administration. (For those of you who have lived in Plato’s cave for some months now, RINO is of course “Republican in name only,” while DIABLO, coined by Mark Steyn, stands for “Democrat in all but label only.”)

Of course, by “outside interests,” the unnamed “New York Democrat” meant only conservatives across the country who rallied to Hoffman’s cause, and possibly Hoffman himself, who resides in a nearby district. For some reason, the specter of a far-left president and his top aides, most from Chicago, don’t count as “outsiders;” and neither do other New York Democrats who reside all over the state.

What they’re really saying seems clear to me: Dede Scozzafava thought the fix was in, and she was gobsmacked by the speed of the unraveling.

She was selected by the Republican nomenklatura to succeed John McHugh; sure, she was trailing Bill Owens in the polls, but that was all just for show. When election time rolled around, Scozzafava was sure the conservatives, having made their displeasure known, would hold their noses and vote for her. After all, they had nowhere else to go.

(The same dynamic had already happened with the national GOP and several big names in the party; having nowhere else to light, they smiled and nodded and gave Scozzafava their blessings.)

She would be elected, and her life would be set: She would serve several terms then be appointed a federal judge; or perhaps she would receive a succession of appointments at la Casa Blanca, culminating in a minor cabinet position… perhaps Secretary of Health and Human Services or Director of the EPA under President Biden.

Sure, this is rank speculation on my part; but her reaction to conservatives in her own district rallying to Doug Hoffman, the collapse of her own support, her whiny departure, and her immediate embrace of the Democrat tells me that she herself feels “betrayed” by her own party… and she’s lashing out in angry revenge. Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.

In fact, Dede Scozzafava reminds me a lot of David Brock. Brock is a former Republican investigative writer who flipped to the Democratic side, reportedly because he was furious over being snubbed by a few conservatives at cocktail parties. (He could only name one such snubbery, by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. of the American Spectator, Brock’s former employer.)

Short detour: Brock was the toast of Washington after his first and still best book, the Real Anita Hill. In that book, he took apart the self-serving portrait of Clarence Thomas’ wannabe political character assassin, Nina Totenberg of NPR, exposing her as an ultra liberal, Democratic Party hatchet-girl. Brock argued (with good evidence) that Totenberg and her fellows in the anti-Thomas brigade of the “shadow government” suborned perjury by Anita Hill.

They worked hand in sock puppet with top Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to attempt to destroy Thomas — for the crime of being a conservative black man. Or as Emerge, a black magazine, so graciously put it — “Uncle Thomas, Lawn Jockey for the Far Right.”

Brock did yeoman work exposing this dark undercurrent of Democratic racism and dirty tricks. He rightly noted that if Republicans had tried the same vile tactic to defeat a black liberal Democratic Supreme-Court nominee — accusing him of uncontrollable sexuality, a traditional racist attack on black men — the screams of rage from Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the usual ranks fo the perpetually aggrieved would have rolled three times ’round the world. David Brock was feted and petted, courted and bedded.

But after his second book, the Seduction of Hillary Rodham — in which he was perceived as having cuddled a bit too close to his subject — he drifted off everybody’s A-list.

Gone were the invites to cocktail parties starring top congressional Republicans, the talk-show circuits, the frequent appearances as guest commentator on TV (“the Republican,” given twenty seconds to counter the six Democrats who had yammered on for twenty minutes about whatever issue burned that day).

Brock reportedly flew into a Rumplestiltskin-like rage at his maltreatment, especially at parties; he flipped completely, turning not only Democrat but attack-dog Democrat. He published Blinded by the Right, an unreadable screed against everyone he had formerly worked with; and he accused Republicans of rejecting him because he was openly gay.

Of course, he was openly gay when he published the Real Anita Hill, and that didn’t seem to bother Republicans. Logic is not the long suit of avatars of self pity.

I have no idea whether Scozzafava ever met David Brock; the latter quickly dropped off the radar, after the sensation of his complete betrayal and subsequent toadying up to the far left lost its novelty. But she is following the same pattern as he, and I strongly suspect for the same reason: Thwarted entitlement.

Just as Brock believed his future was set (he was going to be the next conservative icon, a literary Rush Limbaugh, and incidentally a multimillionaire best seller), so Scozzafava — judging by her campaign, her collapse, and her subsequent openness to complete betrayal of her former party — saw the actual vote as mere formal flummery. She had already won the seat when the boys in the back room anointed her. They promised!

It turns out, Politico notes, that Scozzafava was promised power, prestige, and support if she flipped — especially if she formally turned her coat. Such promises are invariably part of the wooing process… and almost always disingenuously so:

Also critical was [New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon] Silver’s assurance, in a phone conversation with Scozzafava, that the state Assembly Democratic caucus would embrace her if she chose to switch parties, now viewed as a real possibility after her endorsement Sunday of Owens.

Yep. I’m sure that next year, New York state Democrats will be eager to shove aside some life-long Democrat in favor of a humiliated and crushed erstwhile Republican, hated by a huge number of voters in the district, who just lost an election that was expected to be a shoe-in. Lots of luck, Dede.

I make a further prediction: After tomorrow, when Hoffman wins the race — or even if Democrat Bill Owens squeaks out a narrow victory — the Chicago Left will toss Scozzafava aside like a used Kleenex.

She may think she will be showered with gratitude from the president; she may fantasize that she’ll have an honored place in the pantheon of New York liberals; but the reality is that nobody ever trusts a traitor again, especially not the beneficiaries of her partisan treason. Instead, Scozzafava will be utterly marginalized and shunted aside, abandoned, and embittered… just as was David Brock. (Anybody hear from him recently? Perhaps, continuing our Rumplestiltskin comparison, Brock stamped his foot so hard, he opened a crack and fell through the Earth.)

Such is the fruit of betrayal. I can’t work up much sympathy, either for the party bosses who called themselves “the moderate wing” of the Republican Party or for Dede Scozzafava herself; I’m repelled by those who see the democratic process as nothing but a necessary and annoying evil, the klunky mechanism for their own career ambitions — and to hell with what their constituents want.

But I do feel some pity for those honest moderate GOP voters: It’s bad enough to lose what amounts to a post-hoc primary against the conservatives, without having to be humiliated by the thoughtless and insulting antics of their erstwhile standard bearer. Gracious and fairminded Democrats must have felt the same sinking horror in 2000, as they watched Al Gore try to sue his way into the White House.

Perhaps moderate New York Republicans should likewise think a second time before picking the next champion of their cause.

Cross-posted to Big Lizards…

Stands to reason, really. With all the truth-stretching that Obama does (his imaginary “saved” jobs statistic, for example), it makes perfectly good sense that he would have someone on board to dream up these little fictions while he’s busy out on the links or taking the missus on promised dates. (I wonder if Jarrett is also the guiding force behind his Straw Man Initiative — one of the hallmarks to date of his presidency.)

So there Jarrett was yesterday on TV. And there Stephanopolous was, doing his best frankly to keep it real. And did Jarrett respond in kind? You be the judge. Consider this opening exchange:

STEPHANOPOULOS: [O]ne year ago this week, . . . President Obama accepted the verdict of the country’s voters. [. . .]

One year later, the president’s economic plan has passed, but with no Republican votes in the House, only three in the Senate. It sure looks like right now no Republicans support the health care bills as they are going forward in the Congress. And our polling shows that this partisan divide persists on issue after issue after issue. Why has that core promise of the president’s campaign, healing the divide, gone unfulfilled?

JARRETT: Well, you should ask that question to the Republican Party. I mean, frankly, just listening to the president’s words again, it brought back terrific memories, and I think his message was a profound one. And he has stayed true to that message. He has reached out. He has listened. He has reached across the aisle.

Ask the Republican Party, eh? Capital suggestion.

Let’s go back to May of this year, when GOP leaders sent a letter to the president expressing a desire to work with him to find “common ground” on healthcare reform. What was the administration’s response? A tersely worded letter stating that they had healthcare reform under control.

In early June, a group of 10 key Republican senators, 9 of them from the Senate Finance Committee (one of the two panels responsible for health care legislation), sent another letter to the White House. The gist this time was to highlight seemingly insurmountable differences between Republicans and Democrats on health care and to underscore the importance of a bipartisan effort. The reply from Obama on this occasion? Nada. Nothing. He wasn’t in the White House, or even the country, to receive the letter. He was in Paris, sightseeing with his family.

But what about all the White House meetings with members of Congress? Surely, the Republicans got a chance to air their proposals at one of those confabs. They might have had they been invited, but the GOP leadership has not been invited to the White House since April.

OK, back to the show. After Jarrett took a brief recess to put out the fire that her pants were on, Stephanopolous pressed her, noting that Obama has not incorporated any of the Republicans’ ideas into his health care proposal.

JARRETT: Well, actually, that’s not true. There have been examples of where he has included their ideas. And ultimately whether they vote for a piece of legislation or not doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been an open and fruitful process.

And those ideas would be . . . [drum roll]. The administration and Democrats in Congress have turned a deaf ear on the recommendations to sell health insurance across state lines, which would encourage real competition, and tort reform. (Obama did say he would “look into” the last of these suggestions, which I believe has the same meaning as when parents answer a “Can we. . . ?” question from their children with “We’ll see.”)

Finally, there is this exchange:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Our latest polling shows that there is not majority support for the president’s health care plans.

JARRETT: Well, we actually think that there is. And I suppose it depends upon what poll you’re looking at. . . .

This is actually true up to a point. For example, if you look at this New York Times/CBS News poll, you see that there is, as the Times reported, “wide support for government-run health care.” Just don’t look too close because the poll was conducted back in June. If you look at this poll, conducted by the same organization in September, you see that much of that support has eroded.

And this is one of the more optimistic polls. The Rasmussen survey, which interviews likely voters, shows a steady decline in support for health care reform and an equally strong opposition to it between June and October.

Obama ran on all sorts of promises, including transparency and a change in the way Washington politics are transacted. So far, those promises have proven to be false. Job well done, Val!

Cross-Posted at Zombie Contentions

It’s a good thing Obama keeps reminding us that he is not a socialist because, if you had to judge solely from the company he keeps, you sure might conclude that he was one. Consider his appointments so far as president, which include people who variously have expressed admiration for the likes of Karl Marx, Mao Tse Tung, and Hugo Chavez, while exhibiting contempt for capitalism, American exceptionalism, and all-around love of country.

Of course not all of Obama’s appointments are demonstrably socialist. Some are merely radicals who have no business working in any facet of American government. Take his most recent nominee for a federal judgeship — please! His name is Edward Chen, and Obama has nominated him to fill a seat on the Northern California federal district court. Chen is currently a federal magistrate in San Francisco, and and was for a long time a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

So what are some of Chen’s beliefs? For one, he believes America is inherently racist and that judges should let their “ethnic and racial background” impact their decisions from the bench. (Why does that sound familiar?)

An editorial in this past Sunday’s Washington Times features some of Chen’s more revealing comments. Upon hearing “America the Beautiful” sung at a funeral, Chen told the audience of his

feelings of ambivalence and cynicism when confronted with appeals to patriotism — sometimes I cannot help but feel that there are too much [sic] injustice and too many inequalities that prevent far too many Americans from enjoying the beauty extolled in that anthem.

In a speech following the attacks on 911, Chen spoke of a

sickening feeling in my stomach about what might happen to race relations and religious tolerance on our own soil. … One has to wonder whether the seemingly irresistible forces of racism, nativism and scapegoating which has [sic] recurred so often in our history can be effectively restrained.

I kind of understand Chen’s point. Reading his words gives me a sickening feeling in my stomach about what might happen to the greatest country on earth if Barack Obama continues in his radical, socialist ways.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

As for the whining about his “inheritance,” here is the president himself, at a Democratic fund-raiser in San Francisco:

And here is James Taranto’s pointed reaction at BOTWT:

This has been a recurring theme in President Obama’s rhetoric. As we noted last week, he frequently refers to the ‘mess’ that he ‘inherited.’ But the presidency is not an inheritance, it is a responsibility that Obama sought. To the extent that the country is a ‘mess,’ it is not ‘somebody else’s mess’; it is all of our mess. If Obama’s policies make matters worse rather than better, it won’t be his mess either; all of us will have to live with the consequences.

It’s fine for an opposition candidate to decry the ‘mess’ created by he party in power, as Obama did last year and Republicans are doing now. But this style of rhetoric is unpresidential. It’s reminiscent of the petulant teenager who tries to evade responsibility by asserting, ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’

Except that the teen’s statement is literally accurate. No one asks to be born. Barack Obama did ask to be president.

Steve Huntley, writing in Obama’s hometown paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, covers appearances on the Sunday news show circuit (excluding the “enemy,” FOX News, of course) by White House top mouthpieces, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel. Said Axelrod (who might as well have been speaking for both, since each used the same script): “He walked in the door, we had the worst economy since the Great Depression.”

This sudden return to the “mess” meme is in reaction to the report that the federal deficit has risen to an historical $1.4 trillion. It may just be me, but didn’t Obama himself have a little something to do with that deficit? Maybe it’s my faulty memory, but I seem to recall Obama rushing Congressional passage of an $787 billion “stimulus” package early in his administration. I’m pretty sure I remember reading in January that passing a bill of this magnitude would force the deficit up toward the $2-trillion mark.

As for those enemies and all the dissemblers whose sole mission is to spread enough lies to take down the administration, FOX News is merely the tip of the iceberg. Other un-American voices include those of the health insurance industry, who was a direct recipient of Obama’s personal wrath during this past Saturday’s radio and Internet message. “Smoke and mirrors,” is how he reacted to their claim that the Senate approach to health care reform would raise premiums 18 percent more than otherwise would happen over the next decade. Take that, ya chiselers! You, too, you sniveling doctors who cut off legs and pull out tonsils just to fatten your purses!

Luckily, the president has friends in the media to offset his enemies. Huntley writes about an MSNBC personality who recently accused the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of lobbying for policies that amount to being “treasonous to this country.” It’s easy to understand why Obama would favor such fair and balanced coverage as that over the swill served up by FOX News!

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

As I noted here, attacking a news organization can’t possibly help any White House, but it can severely damage the reputation of this White House, which ran on a promised end to partisanship and petty bickering. You would think the administration would have learned its lesson from the blowback to Anita Dunn’s rant last Sunday.

Instead, it released two more of its attack dogs this weekend. Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff, appeared on John King’s “State of the Union” on CNN, and David Axelrod, White House senior adviser, made an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos.

Emanuel helped clarify the argument thus:

Well, no, it’s not so much a conflict with FOX News. But unlike — I suppose, the way to look at it and the way we — the president looks at it and we look at it, is, it is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective. And that’s a different take. And more importantly, does not have — the CNNs and others in the world basically be led and following FOX, as if that — what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization in the sense of both sides and a sense of value (ph) opinion. [Editor's note: This passage will be sent out for translation as soon as we can figure out what language it's in.]

Axelrod was slightly more on point, stating that

[t]he only argument that Anita was making is that they are not really a news organization, if you watch even it’s not even their commentators, but a lot of their news program. It’s really not news, it’s pushing a point of view and the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours, ought not to treat them that way…

At least, in Axelrod’s defense, he wasn’t in the MSNBC studio when firing off this volley.

So how much is the continuing war “helping” the White House? It received the attention of Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik, hardly a conservative sympathizer, who wrote, “As many problems as I have with Fox News, I am fundamentally opposed to any administration trying to bully any part of the press into submission.”

To summarize, this weekend marked Round 2 of this not-so-heavyweight bout. The lone aggressor in the fight, despite reeling, continues to lunge forward and flail. And all FOX News needs to do to counter the assault is continue to report the news.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

Now that he has, for all practical purposes, taken off the table any military action against Iran — which all now agree is indeed developing nuclear weapons, along with long- and medium-range ballistic missiles to deliver them anywhere in the world — Russia is finally coming around to the sort of broad, sweeping sanctions that could produce a meaningful change in Iran’s behavior:

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned major powers on Wednesday against intimidating Iran and said talk of sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear programme was “premature“.

Via the brilliance of the One and his mind-numbing rhetorical ability, his charm, his willingness to throw the goal of spreading democracy and liberty around the world into the dustbin of Obamunism, and his rejection of American exceptionalism, he has achieved what eluded two previous administrations — one Republican, one Democratic… clear, specific, harsh, and biting sanctions that can only shake the nuke-loving mullahs to their very cores:

“There is no need to frighten the Iranians,” Putin told reporters in Beijing after a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

“We need to look for a compromise. If a compromise is not found, and the discussions end in a fiasco, then we will see.”

“And if now, before making any steps (towards holding talks) we start announcing some sanctions, then we won’t be creating favourable conditions for them (talks) to end positively. This is why it is premature to talk about this now.”

It turns out Obama’s choice of Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham as secretary of state, a.k.a. the Mouth of Obama, was absolutely inspired; she has turned out to be a gem, a diamond. (A diamond who throws the occasional lamp; but you can’t expect the superintelligent and supercompetent to abide by rules of decorum written for We the little people.) Her tough, no-nonsense negotiating skills and pleasant, sunny demeanor have blessed the One We Have Been Longing For, leading to a Russia that now listens to America and shows tremendous respect for our needs and desires (and for our top government officials):

Putin, who many diplomats, analysts, and Russian citizens believe is still Russia’s paramount leader despite stepping down as president last year, was speaking after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Moscow for two days of talks….

Clinton failed to secure any specific assurances from Russia on Iran during her visit, leaving her open to criticism at home that she had not received anything from Moscow after earlier U.S. concessions on missile defence….

Clinton said she would have liked to have seen Putin but that their agendas did not coincide. Putin left for a trip to the Russian Far East and China before her arrival in Moscow.

She has given him the tool he needs to excavate mountains of ill will left behind by the previous regime, anger, misunderstanding, and hopelessness that soured Russia on working hand in hand with us on sanctions. Now that the dross has been cleared away by change we can believe in, and the Millennium of Revelations has finally commenced, everything is falling into place.

It’s no wonder that the One received the Nobel Peace Prize — it was perhaps the most justly earned such award ever! (Only those given to Woodrow Wilson, Le Duc Tho, Yassir Arafat, Jimmy Carter, and Al Gore are even in the running.)

The world (outside the United States) loves him unconditionally, just as they loved the greatest figures of American history, from Michael Jackson to Mickey Mouse. What a change from the ogre we used to have, who the rest of the world merely feared and respected:

On the contentious issue of missile defence, which has divided Russia and the United States in the past, Putin said he hoped the United States would not renege on its promise to scrap plans for an anti-missile system in central Europe….

Putin said however Moscow “feels no euphoria” about Bush’s successor Barack Obama’s promise to roll back the shield plans.

“We treated this decision with reserve, calmly,” he said. “In any case, the country’s leadership accepted it with understanding and gratitude. We believe this was Obama’s right and courageous decision.”

I can only feel profound gratitude that so many conservatives and Republicans were big-hearted enough in 2008 either to vote for Barack Obama directly, or at least to throw away their vote by pulling the lever for Babar or writing in Ron Paul. If it hadn’t been for them, who knows? We might have been deprived of the most transformative figure in all of American history.

Bless you, Christopher Buckley and Colin Powell! We could never have accomplished all this without your help.

Cross-posted to Big Lizards…

If you don’t already know the name Julius Genachowski, you should. In June of this year, he was confirmed and sworn in as Obama’s new FCC Commissioner. And what has the new commish been up to since his hiring? To the delight of opponents of free speech everywhere, he has been waging a zealous campaign for “net neutrality.”

Net neutrality — despite its benign, almost positive-sounding ring — is defined at a site called Save the Internet as a way “to expand the rules to protect a free and open Internet . . . against increased efforts by providers to block services and applications over both wired and wireless connections.” You don’t need a scorecard to understand that a phrase like expand the rules is liberal-speak for more government regulation. As to “providers” blocking “services and applications,” that too should strike a familiar chord to anyone following the health-care reform debate. Its alternative names include free enterprise and healthy competition, both anathema to big government in general and the current administration in particular.

Save the Internet, by the way, is sponsored by Free Press, a name that will be familiar to Glenn Beck viewers and listeners. The group’s founder, Robert W. McChesney, is a self-avowed Marxist who favors a complete overhaul of communications as we know it — a “communications revolution,” to use his phrase of choice — as one means to combatting social inequality. By a remarkable coincidence, Genachowski selected as his press secretary a woman named Jen Howard, whose previous credentials include a stint as a Free Press spokeswoman.

But the coincidences don’t stop there. Free Press also has ties to Obama’s Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd, himself no stranger to Marxism and radical ideas. Lloyd has expressed admiration for Hugo Chavez and Venezuela’s “incredible democratic revolution” and has demanded that white people” step down from important positions so power can be handed off to “people of color” and “gays.”

And what are Lloyd’s views about free speech? For one thing, he believes the Fairness Doctrine never went far enough in fostering “coverage of important issues in a way that spoke to the diversity of interests in local communities across our country.”

If you find Lloyd’s views troubling, you are not alone. Last month, Oregon Congressman Greg Walden, a member of the Congressional Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, expressed grave concerns over some of Llyod’s stated positions. He asked Genachowski to make Lloyd available for questioning by the subcommittee, which the FCC Commissioner agreed to do. That interview before Congress has yet to occur.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

I’ve been engaging in selective non-listening as the brouhaha grows about Kevin Jennings, President Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar.”  It’s a defensive reaction, I think.  You simply can’t be worried and indignant about everything.

Today, however, I heard “Kevin Jennings” and “NAMBLA” discussed together, with the implication that there is a connection, and I had to give up and pay attention.  Oy to the veh, this Obama presidency will wear a feller out.

Not having caught exactly what the deal was with “Jennings” and “NAMBLA,” I went into my online research with the expectation of finding that Jennings had not actually been a member of NAMBLA (the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which promotes pederasty).  I believe such individuals are still watched closely by the FBI.  Although I am happy to report that my expectation was fulfilled – there’s no evidence Jennings has ever been a member of NAMBLA – it turns out to be true that Jennings praised a long-time supporter of NAMBLA during a conference speech in 1997.  It also turns out to be true that this, along with other information, sheds significant and informative light on Mr. Jennings.

Jennings founded the Gay-Lesbian Straight Education Network, GLSEN, in 1990.  He has been active ever since in the movement to incorporate instruction about homosexuality in K-12 education.  He edited the 1994 book Becoming Visible:  A Reader in Gay and Lesbian History for High School and College Students, and wrote the forward to Q***ring Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue About Sexualities and Schooling.  As the WorldNet piece reveals (by direct quotation, so be warned), the latter work apparently dispenses with any coy film of outdated prudery, and gets right down to the ins and outs of sexualizing seven-year-olds.  It’s obligatory in right-wing commentary to note that Bill Ayers provided a jacket endorsement for this book, so, there it is.

Lori Roman at Regular Folks United has a link-packed piece on this.  The Minority Report and Gateway Pundit have also posted useful items.  It’s in the context of his long association with the agenda of bringing homosexuality to the K-12 curriculum that Jennings’ laudatory remarks about Harry Hay, a really long-time gay activist, must be viewed.  At a GLSEN conference in 1997, Jennings – GLSEN’s founder and leading light – devoted a long paragraph in a speech to praising Harry Hay, whom he described as “one of the people that’s [sic] always inspired me.”  The transcript of the speech is here.  Harry Hay (see his Wikipedia entry) had a long and checkered history as a gay activist, having founded his first group in 1948.  In his later years, as the Wikipedia bio demurely notes, he began to insist on the right of NAMBLA (which advocates felonious sexual assault on minor children) to march in gay pride parades.  Lori Roman’s link to the NAMBLA site, meanwhile, shows a list of Hay’s collected writings in explicit support of NAMBLA and “Man-Boy Love.”  The exculpatory theme emerging on the left, that Hay wasn’t a member of NAMBLA either, and that Jennings’ praise of him in 1997 was not in the context of NAMBLA’s peculiar portfolio, is inane and properly dismissed.  There’s beef in this burger.

Hard as it may be to believe, I wouldn’t even have to know about the indirect NAMBLA thread to find Jennings’ background wholly inappropriate to the Orwellian position of “Safe Schools Czar.”  That’s just the reference that persuaded me to pay attention.  Jennings’ association with the two books mentioned above does it for me.  Some things it is suicidal to be cynical about, and the influences we allow on our children are a whole set of them.  It is not OK that there is a political movement dedicated to teaching elementary school children about homosexuality, in defiance of anything their parents or the community at large may prefer.  And it is not OK that advocates of a radical political and social agenda are using the schools to reach America’s minor children with it.

If possible, it’s double not-OK that Obama appointed this individual to supervise a federally-administered concept of “safe schools” for the country.  Quite obviously, what “safe schools” means in this context is “schools in which straight kids of all kinds, including conservative and religious kids, are required to demonstrate positive affirmation of homosexuality, and in fact are taught to do so from their earliest years, well before they are of an age to understand the complex emotional matter of sex, or think critically about moral issues.”  “Safe schools” means “assuming that any failure to positively affirm homosexuality – even just remaining politely silent about it, or avoiding discussion of it – is evidence of a bigotry that may well be criminal, or at least may foster criminal tendencies that must be averted by forced indoctrination.”

Where does Obama find these people?  Hannity is right.  Jennings needs to go.

J.E. Dyer blogs at The Optimistic Conservative and “contentions“.

“This is not a war of choice,” Barack Obama told the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Aug. 17. “This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9-11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaida would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

But that was nearly seven weeks ago. Now, it appears that Obama is about to ignore the advice of Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, whom he installed as commander in Afghanistan in May, after relieving his predecessor ahead of schedule. McChrystal, who came up as a Special Forces officer, is an expert in counterinsurgency. Not surprisingly, in his Aug. 30 report to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he recommended a course that seems certain to require a substantial number of additional troops.

Barone notes how little time Obama spent meeting with his military and security advisors anent the Afghanistan war; he only met once in September, the very time that Gen. Stanley McChrystal was compiling the final version of his report and sending it to the Commander in Chief.

When it landed on the Oval Office desk, Obama held a major, three-hour White House meeting with his senior advisors, including Slow Joe Biden. The president chose to hold the meeting when Gen. McChrystal was scheduled to be out of the country; and of course, McChrystal was not invited to confuse matters by participating in the discussion in person, where he could make sure he was heard, but only by easily ignored “videolink.” (I wonder how many times senior White House officials hit the Mute button?)

Later, these wise old men (and, one presumes, two wise old woman: nagging Secretary of State Hillary “Can We Tawk?” Clinton and shrill Secretary of Homeland Security “Dammit” Janet Napolitano) concluded that McChrystals assumptions were just next door to being “myths,” which the Obamic advisors “exposed to the light of day”… including the myth that “the return to power of the Taliban would automatically mean a new sanctuary for al-Qaida,” as the Washington Post put it.

That WaPo article gives us a stunning insight into BarackThink:

Senior White House officials asked some of the sharpest questions, according to participants and others who have been briefed on the meeting, while the uniformed military, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, did not take issue with McChrystal’s assessment.

According to White House officials involved in the meeting, Vice President Biden offered some of the more pointed challenges to McChrystal, who attended the session by video link from Kabul. One official said Biden played the role of “skeptic in chief,” while other top officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, were muted in their comments.

Notice what’s missing? Where is a single White-House staffer who supports McChrystal’s recommendations — as evidently Gen. Petraeus and other “uniformed military” do — and is willing to argue for them?

We appear to have an appeasement of White House officials — La-Z-Boy leaders who are highly skeptical, led by Joe “Skeptic in Chief” Biden (with his vast military experience) — arrayed against a gaggle of apathetic, close-mouthed chair-warmers with window seats, led by Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham. But nobody to speak for the Afghanistan campaign except some guy on closed-circuit TV who can’t even get a table at the Willard Room without a closely reasoned debate with the maître d’.

Who are you going to believe anyway? Vice President of the Whole United States Joe “Divide We Stand” Biden, who was so prescient on the futility and failure of the counterinsurgency “surge” strategy of the previous regime? Or Stanley McChyrstal, David Petraeus, and your own lyin’ eyes?

At the end of the WaPo article, several administration officials — speaking anonymously — blamed everything on George W. Bush. I actually found this very surprising; after all, they’re usually so quick to claim credit by name while they blame everything on Bush.

Let’s give the last word to Michael Barone:

It’s not clear yet that the “senior advisers” who were mocking McChrystal’s assumptions will prevail. In his 25 minutes on Air Force One, McChrystal may have used his knowledge and experience to convince Obama that his judgment was better than that of the armchair generals that the president had listened to for three hours the day before. Maybe Obama will choose to wage his “war of necessity” in the way the general he selected believes is necessary for us to succeed.

But I wouldn’t bet heavily on it — not any more, in fact, than I would have bet on Chicago’s chances of hosting the 2016 Olympic games.

To liberals, and especially to this president, reality is infintely malleable if you but close your eyes and wish really hard. I think Barack Obama truly believes that you don’t have to “navigate from where you are,” as McChrystal said; you can simply start from “where you wish to be” instead. All you must do is forcefully declare that that’s where you’re starting from, and the world will rearrange itself to make it so.

Obama is going to reject Gen. McChrystal’s report — though likely he’ll announce that he’s accepting it, while he issues orders that unambiguously countermand its every particular. Thus will he have the best of both cakes… until the power falls upon us like an avalanche.

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

1. First, Kristol now believes for the first time that President Barack H. Obama is paving the groundwork for rejecting Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendation of a COIN strategy for Afghanistan, including increasing troop levels.

Note that it was the Obamacle Himself who appointed McChrystal to head up his present commands, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A), just three months ago; and he it was who ordered McChrystal to undertake a complete review of the Afghanistan policy.

I suspect Obama expected McChrystal to recommend declaring defeat and pulling out. But in response to Obama’s order, McChrystal released a 66-page report to continuing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that called for significantly increasing troop levels there and redeploying the force in a counterinsurgency mode, similar to Iraq.

Ever since, as several bloggers have argued (notably John Hinderaker at Power Line), Obama has acted like a man who deeply regrets having picked an actual fighting general in the first place — and who wants to prepare the American people for the complete rejection of his own appointee’s report, in favor of a phased withdrawal from “the war we should be fighting,” as some guy named Barack Obama called it during the campaign (in contrast to Iraq, the war we were supposed to lose, one presumes).

2. Second, and far more shocking, is some political intel that Kristol received from a person who is in “cose contact” with top Defense officials: That holdover George W. Bush Defense Secretary Bob Gates will be asked by Obama to step down at the end of the year… and that Obama plans to name former senator Chuck Hagel, who never met a war he didn’t want us to withdraw from, as his new Secretary of Retreat and Defeat.

Hagel was an infantry grunt in Vietnam for two years, leaving shortly after the Tet Offensive; that experience seems to have colored his attitude towards all subsequent conflicts: He sometimes votes for them (as for example the Iraq war); but as soon as the going gets tough, Hagel demands an immediate and aggressive surrender.

• He was one of only four Republicans in July 2007 who voted in favor of cloture on a bill to force withdrawal from Iraq starting 120 days from that vote; the other three were Olympia Snowe (ME, 12%), Susan Collins (ME, 20%), and Gordon Smith of Oregon, liberals all.
• In railing against the Iraq COIN strategy of Gen. David Petraeus, Hagel called it “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it’s carried out.” (I don’t recall Hagel ever issuing an apology, or even a statement, after the Petraeus strategy proved decisive in our victory in Iraq.)

• Speaking about Israeli’s incursion into Lebanon to stop Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on their northern cities, Hagel blurted out:

  “The sickening slaughter on both sides must end and it must end now…. President Bush must call for an immediate cease-fire. This madness must stop.”…

  “How do we realistically believe that a continuation of the systematic destruction of an American friend — the country and people of Lebanon — is going to enhance America’s image and give us the trust and credibility to lead a lasting and sustained peace effort in the Middle East?” asked Hagel, the No. 2 Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Yes, the perfect man to defend America — Barack Obama style. I can just picture the furious and manly letters of strong disapproval Hagel will shoot off whenever some dictator funds and gives safe haven to a terrorist group while they blow up another American embassy.

Currently, Chuck Hagel is Chairman of the Board of the Atlantic Council, a foreign-policy think tank cum policy advocacy group that appears to lean heavily towards diplomacy above everything — talking loudly and forgetting to bring any stick at all, big or small. (E.g., its International Advisory Board is headed by Brent Scowcroft and includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Edelman, Lawrence H. Summers, and a huge inflation of bankers and CEOs of vast multinational corporations.)

Hagel replaced outgoing Chairman Jim Jones, who was tapped to serve as Obama’s National Security Advisor; Jones was last seen offering what we called “the weirdest explanation to date for cancelling the long-range ballistic-missile defense system in Eastern Europe — while simultaneously betraying our allies, Poland and the Czech Republic.”

Since the Jim Jones appointment as security sock puppet worked out so well for Obama, it certainly seems plausible that he would go back to the same well to draw out a bucketful of Defense Secretary. Admittedly, Kristol just lost his father, Irving Kristol; but it was hardly the sort of shocking or unanticipated demise that might throw William Kristol into a blue funk and darken his normal optimism.

The threatened appointment of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense would be catastrophic for the war efforts, all of them: Iraq, Afghanistan, the war against the Iran/al-Qaeda axis, intelligence gathering, interrogations, dealing with Pakistan, North Korea, China, Russia… and of course, Hagel would be a disaster for Israel, as he would almost certainly back Obama to the hilt in the latter’s quest to force Israel back to the indefensible borders of the pre-Six Day War era. (In exchange for the Palestinian’s promise that they might seriously consider deciding whether or not to recognize Israel sometime in the distant and not very likely future.)

Appointing Hagel would seriously diminish our ability to protect our allies or even defend ourselves, and in general would signal the end of American power and leadership in the world, at least for a while (say until 2013). Therefore, I conclude that Obama is already plotting to make the appointment.

I must also conclude that the Senate will swiftly approve the nominee;, Hagel was once one of them… therefore, “comity of the Senate” and all that, Republicans will probably support him, though he rarely supported them while in that august body.

And there you have it, your recommended minimum daily allowance of political pessimism and national-defense despair.

Gross-toasted to Big Lizards…

Summit-level negotiations “without preconditions” was the new way; it would lead to a new world order of peace, understanding, diplomacy, and global cooperation among nations. Imagine, using the golden oratory of the One the World Was Waiting For to talk Iran out of pursuring nuclear weaponty — nobody had ever tried such a thing before!

(Well, technically true, perhaps; I don’t think any previous president was naïve enough to believe that mere talk could persuade enemies to agree to positions that helped the democratic West against the enemy’s own interests.)

Included among the assumptions such a policy requires is, quite naturally, that our diplomatic partnets can be trusted. When Obama insisted that he would go anywhere, anytime to have a sit-down and a cuppa with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and just, you know, talk things out, the Obamacle was screaming in subtext that Ahmadinejad could be trusted not to cheat and not to lie: After all, how could we possibly cut a deal with someone who had no intention of abiding by his side of it? In legal terms, there is no “meeting of the minds,” hence no contract exists.

So one would think it a staggering blow to the Obamic metapolicy of “diplomacy not defense” (my term) to learn that for years, Ahmadinejad has been playing the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for saps – lying to the West and lying to America in particular about such a material fact as the existence of another hardened, buried, concealed nuclear enrichment facility in Qom, besides the two known sites: Lashkar Abad (allegedly shut down) and the main uranium-enrichment site at Natanz.

One would think, that is, that the revelation of systematic lying on an international scale (in flagrant violation of international agreements), while building a secret facility that even the Obama administration admits is not suitable for producing fuel for peaceful energy production, might put a crimp in the idea that Iran and its president can be trusted to honor any future international agreements on the very same program.

One might also conclude that, since Obama says he has known about the Iranian deception at least since inauguration and possibly even during the campaign, therefore the One Himself was also lying to the American people and playing us for saps; he knew the Iranians were cheats and liars, but he told us we could trust them to honor agreements and tell the truth.

But one would be wrong… for the Obama administration (and its liberal allies) instead see the entire incident as adding to the luster of the president’s foreign-policy acumen. And in a bizarre twist of the tale, so too does the Washington Times, previously thought to be a “conservative” newspaper:

Mr. Obama’s disclosure Friday that Iran had a secret nuclear facility and that he had known about it since taking office introduced a new way of looking at many of his decisions since January. [Yes, we now look at his past statements and see that he lied to the American people and misled us to believe we had negotiating partners. -- DaH]

“You have to go back and look at the nine months and all the moves he’s made since then, and that he knew Iran was lying to him, and he still went ahead with it,” said Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a Washington advocacy group devoted to eliminating nuclear weapons from the world.

“He played Iran perfectly, to isolate Iran, unite all the other countries around him, with an open hand to Iran, and then he springs the trap.”

Not only did the president look strong, he looked cunning.

The last line is not in quotation marks; it’s the opinion of the reporter, Jon Ward, hence of the Washington Times itself.

More fawning from the Times:

Now, a question for the White House is whether it can capitalize on this moment and direct this sense of momentum toward its domestic agenda, namely health care reform.

The president’s top advisers, after returning to Washington from the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, acknowledged that Mr. Obama had cut a compelling figure during a week of maneuvering to hem in Iran’s nuclear program.

“The president played a strong and effective leadership role this week on the world stage, and I think Americans appreciate that,” said David Axelrod, one of the president’s closest advisers.

Well, I’m certainly impressed that Barack Obama has the vote of confidence of his own closest confidants!

This is the sort of high-RPM spinning I expect from the Washington Post, not Times, as they frantically pirouette and tapdance, trying to make a silk purse out of a pig’s breakfast. Note that this story includes no analysis by even a single conservative group or person; just three liberals, including the president’s own top advisor, David Axelrod.

Like the elite left media, this fairy tale reads as though it was written by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, under a “nom de rotation.”

Yet conservatives have not been silent; they’ve already opined on what the hasty, overdue revelation means; and any newspaper writer or editor should have been aware of that fact.

After all, the Obama administration is certainly not known for self-effacing modesty; it has never shied from admiring itself the mirror. Maybe, just maybe, Obama’s opinion of himself is not particuarly newsworthy.

For just one example, John Hinderaker at Power Line wrote a lengthy post taking a look at how this revelation re-colors a series of inexplicable foreign-policy missteps that now should fairly be seen as direct appeasement of a powerful enemy:

• Knowing that Iran was lying in its teeth, cheating us and the U.N., and laughing at our unwillingness to hold it accountable in a meaningful way, Obama still begged Ahmadinejad for a face-to-face meeting “without preconditions.”
• Knowing what he knew, he nevertheless betrayed Poland and the Czech Republic by reneging on the missile shield.
• Knowing what they knew, our allies still refused to join Obama in any tough sanctions regime against Iran.
• And knowing what everyone but “we the people” knew, and even now after all has been revealed, the president is still publicly dithering about whether to grant the plea of Gen. Stanley McChrystal for a change to a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan that would require more troops.

Rather than making the Obamacle look stronger, this revelation makes his foreign policy look pathetic and limp, almost surreal. We know that Obama rushed to reveal the existence of the Qom nuclear site because he knew Iran itself was about to disclose it:

Mr. Obama’s hand was forced, however, after Iran, apparently learning that the site had been discovered by Western intelligence, delivered a vague, terse letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday disclosing that it was building a second plant, one that it had never mentioned during years of inspections.

Given Obama’s earlier willingness to play along with Iran and trick the American people into believing the mullahs and Ahmadinejad were reliable partners, the only rational conclusion is that Obama thought he could better spin the suddenly looming disclosure if he jumped out and did it first himself. Was he hoping the American people would never find out about it, so he could continue his appeasement tour of the Middle East?

And one more question: Is Obama considering rejecting McChrystal’s request because he’s afraid that when next-door Iran gets its nukes, which likelihood he seems strangely complacent about, they can then hold our entire Afghanistan force hostage?

The Washington Times article ends thus:

The biggest impact of the Iran secret-site announcement may be that in the future, when critics level the boom [sic] on the president for a decision they don’t like, they might hesitate for fear that, like the past week, he might have an ace up his sleeve. ["Level the boom" must be a mangling of "level their sights" and "lower the boom"; I'll have to remember that one and steal it later!]

So critics might hesitate to “level the boom” on the One — because they’re worried he might be concealing other material facts from the American people that make him look weak and weird? I’m unfamiliar with this political calculus.

Sadly, but not unpredictably, conservatives seem just as eager as liberals to cooperate in retailing President Obama’s paralogical reimaging of his own pratfalls into examples of unalloyed genius. Lying to the American people and trying to trick us into supporting “negotiations” with a “partner” who is utterly untrustworthy is evidently not a bug. It’s a feature.

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

The man who initiated the call, one Michael Skolnik, is not himself a government employee, though he plays one (more or less) in the call in which he declares at the outset that he is acting on behalf of the administration:

I have been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA about a month ago in a conversation that was had. We had the idea that I would help bring together the independent artists community around the country.

So what’s the problem, you ask, with a bunch of artists getting behind the president? Isn’t that good old red-blooded patriotism at work?

Depends. When the artists in question have received government grants through the National Endowment for the Arts, then the question of loyalties versus quid pro quo becomes a little stickier.

In a summary of the proceedings and their aftermath, John Nolte writes at Breitbart’s Big Hollywood blog:

[Yosi] Sergant [of the NEA] then turns the call over to Thomas Bates from “Rock the Vote,” who offers up an example of local environmental activism involving a garbage sculpture. Within days after this call Rock the Vote would launch a “health care design contest.”

A mere two days after the call a group of 21 art organizations endorsed health care reform.

Of those 21 organizations, “16 of the groups and affiliated organizations received nearly $2 million in grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in the 150 days before the conference call.”

Is this what Barack Obama meant when he spoke about changing the way business was done in Washington? It will be interesting to see (1) if any mainstream media pick up the story (so far none has) and (2) what the White House’s response will be in the event they do.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions