Is the hoped for "bump" turning into a dip?

I've had many emails back and forth with friends and other conservatives about the dissembling going on within the administration on exactly what happened during the raid that ended in the death of bin Laden.  I cannot believe that anyone is feeling more trust and love for the president and his fellow Democrats unless they already felt great trust and love.  You may have realized this but I don't feel that trust and love. I want to know what really happened.  I want the rest of the world to be able to believe the USA when we say something. 

Now via PJ Tatler I find that even Time magazine's Mark Halperin is not exactly feeling the trust, even though it would be very hard for him not to feel the love.

Five Mistakes the Obama Administration Has Made in the Aftermath of Bin Laden Killing
By MARK HALPERIN

Aftermath can be heck.

The White House's brilliant conceptualization and execution of the plan to bring Osama bin Laden to justice has, in the last 48 hours, been complicated by mistakes.

No one can question the heroism of the US military, the doggedness of the intelligence community, or the cajones of the President in making the call. But the administration has since made real errors, some with political costs, some with substantive costs, and some with both. (See pictures of Osama bin Laden's Pakistan hideaway.)

Actually Mark, this blogger can question those cojones, I've read the stories of his delaying tatics on the raid.

The major errors so far:
1. Not getting its story straight: Was bin Laden armed or not? What woman served as a human shield? Who actually was killed beyond the main target? The administration deserves mountains of credit for its painstaking, conspicuous effort to brief the world on the mission, knowing a lot of information would have to be held back to protect sources, operatives, methods, and sensitive data. Which makes the carelessness of the errors somewhat surprising. The costs: the media coverage sours, the President's opponents (especially on talk radio) go crazy, other details of the mission unfairly get called into question, and the wild theories of global enemies and conspiracy seekers get a foothold.

2. Not giving George W. Bush enough credit for helping bring bin Laden to justice: Even if the White House believes the previous occupant had nothing to do with OBL's ultimate demise, it would have been better for national unity and Obama's own political fortunes if he had gone out of his way to thank 43. His invitation to Bush to join the event Thursday at Ground Zero (an offer declined) was the right idea, but belated. (Watch "President Obama on the Death of bin Laden.")

3. Letting the photo debate get out of control: The decision about whether to release images of a dead bin Laden is not an easy one. But the administration's conflicting statements and public agonizing has created an extended distraction. The White House has stumbled by violating one of Washington's iron rules: when something becomes famous inside the Beltway for not being released, the pressure from the media to release it becomes unrelenting.

4. Letting the debate about the war in Afghanistan get out of control: There are signs that some of the president's advisers are looking to scale back the commitment in Afghanistan sooner rather than later. But by failing to go on the offensive in defining and defending whatever policy the President wants to pursue, the White House has allowed those pressing for an end of the war to use bin Laden's death as rhetorical leverage. (See pictures of Osama bin Laden's life of terror.)

5. Letting the debate about Pakistan get out of control: The congressional and media demand for a radical change in America's relationship with Pakistan is burning like wildfire. The administration knows that a shift in policy is complicated and compromising, and not necessarily in the United States' interest. Stoking the problem: executive branch officials, publicly and privately, are expressing incredulity that the Pakistanis were unaware bin Laden was hiding in plain sight in their country. There should be and will be a debate about all this, but the administration's actions and inactions is making it less likely it will be on their terms.

So, Mark Halperin has listed some of the reasons we have all been discussing.  This tells me he knows this has been a major mistake in handling what could have been a very good political play on the president's side.

Whoops! the Washington Post has some criticism of Obama's Slowness Strategy

Editorial Board Opinion
A strategy of slowness?

THE DEFINING characteristic of the Obama administration’s response to revolution in the Arab world has been its slowness. When protests first erupted in Egypt in January, the administration’s first reaction was to publicly pronounce Hosni Mubarak’s government “stable”; President Obama did not support the demonstrators’ demand for the dictator’s resignation until days before his departure. When Moammar Gaddafi launched an attempt to crush Libya’s uprising by force in February, Mr. Obama was the last major Western leader to speak out in opposition. Three more weeks passed before the White House agreed to military intervention to protect civilians.

Syria has been another case of extraordinary U.S. passivity. The first protests in the southern city of Daraa were five weeks ago, and on March 23 the first of many massacres of demonstrators by security forces was reported. Yet on March 27 Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was still referring to President Bashar al-Assad as “a reformer.” Not until Friday — when at least 42 more civilians were reportedly gunned down — did the administration finally take its first, tangible steps to pressure the regime, by bringing Syria before the U.N. Human Rights Council and imposing sanctions on several officials. It still has not backed the protesters’ demands that Mr. Assad give up power.

This pattern of torpidity has sometimes appeared to be the product of Mr. Obama’s caution about adopting major changes in foreign policy; or disputes among his advisers over the proper course; or conflicting U.S. interests. Up to a point, the confusion is understandable. It is not easy to abandon long-standing alliances with Arab regimes or bet on the unknown in a country such as Syria, even when the reward may be a democratic transformation or a body blow to U.S. enemies.

Recently, however, some of Mr. Obama’s aides have sought to portray slowness as a considered policy. Last week The Post’s Scott Wilson quoted one official saying, with respect to Syria, that “we very much see our role in these things as one that is behind what voices in the region are saying.” The New Yorker magazine quoted an aide as describing the president’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind.” (ed note: can you believe that? lead from behind?)

Could it be that American passivity is a virtue, worthy of elevation into doctrine? The record in the Middle East so far suggests that it is not. The administration’s response to Egypt was not well received by Egyptians — a plurality of 39 percent said in a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center that the impact of the policy was “negative.” Sixty-four percent said they had little or no confidence in Mr. Obama — five percentage points more than a year ago. In Libya, opposition leaders have joined U.S. NATO allies in expressing disappointment at Mr. Obama’s refusal to commit more U.S. aircraft to the fight — a posture that almost certainly has prolonged the war and Libyans’ suffering.

By insisting on following “voices in the region” on Syria, Mr. Obama effectively deferred to countries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey about whether to take a stand against a regime that has deployed troops and tanks against unarmed citizens. That is an unprecedented yielding of U.S. global leadership on matters of human rights and democracy. It is more likely to increase than lessen anti-Americanism in the Arab world. In both practical and moral terms, “leading from behind” is a mistake.

I've posted the whole editorial, but here is a link.

Chickens coming home to roost? I hope so

Liberal groups call for GE’s Jeffrey Immelt to resign from White House jobs council
By Perry Bacon Jr

Two liberal groups Wednesday called for General Electric Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt to step down as the head of the White House’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness following a report that GE paid no federal taxes last year despite more than $14 billion in profits.

“One of the chief ways GE avoids paying taxes is by shifting a large portion of its profits overseas,and jobs follow. Now GE’s CEO is the person charged with helping the President create jobs here in America. That’s just perverse, “ the groups MoveOn.org and Progressives United told supporters in an e-mail message.

President Obama tapped Immelt to head the council in January. A story in the New York Times on Friday reported that General Electric avoids U.S. tax liability through a complicated series of financial moves.

Not just lies, but slander?

I'm not a lawyer, just a little old lady, but I call this slander.

Horrible… Obama and Reuters Rewrite History to Smear Bush
Posted by Jim Hoft

Horrible.

Barack Obama smeared Bush this week while discussing Libya in Chile.

The Plum Line reported, via FOX Nation:

In Chile, Obama puts forth his doctrine, defending the Libya mission by claiming that humanitarian interventionism is the “core principle that has to be upheld.”

Crucially, Obama also took a tacit shot at Bush, comparing his own multilateral approach favorably to the former president’s:

“In the past there have been times when the United States acted unilaterally or did not have full international support, and as a consequence typically it was the United States military that ended up bearing the entire burden.”

Adding to the confusion… Reuters repeated the lie yesterday.

That wasn't confusion - that was slander.

Obama is committed to partnering with other countries rather than going it alone as did his predecessor George W. Bush, which both broadens and complicates the decision-making process.

This was a lie.

President Bush had twice as many allies in his Iraqi Coalition than Obama has in Libya.
Reuters… And Obama… Need to apologize and correct their awful smear against Bush.

Even the WAPO knows it is the same policy

Obama's new Gitmo policy is a lot like Bush's old policy
By Dana Milbank
It was another important moment in the education of Barack Obama.

He began his presidency with a pledge to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year. Within months, he realized that was impossible. And now he has essentially formalized George W. Bush's detention policy.

With Monday's announcement that the Obama administration would resume military tribunals at Gitmo, conservatives rushed out triumphant I-told-you-sos. Liberal supporters again felt betrayed. Administration officials had some 'splainin to do.

We can only hope the 'splainin is that he finally learned something.

Obama has shown his true colors in more than one way this week

The Wisconsin fiasco as orchestrated by the Democratic Party and approved by him has just about overshadowed what he was planning to do in the United Nations by comdemning Israel.  Here are some articles about both.

‘Class War is Here’: Video of Socialists Rallying in Wis. Supports Beck’s Theory - from Glenn Beck's The Blaze

Wisconsin Madness as Seen by the ‘Little People’
No longer basking in the glow of the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl victory, my friends on the other side of the Illinois/Wisconsin border are positively beside themselves at the insane behavior of their public servants. Pajama's Media

Obama and unions: Many in labor movement frustrated with president - read all of this one, they are frustrated not with his stance with the union but for overseas jobs. His
Wisconsin/Union stance is just fine.

US vetoes UN resolution on Israeli settlements- Washington Post

The U.N. veto and the real headline -Washington Post opinion by Jennifer Rubin
The final paragraph tells the whole story:
Sure, the U.N. once again has proven itself to be a hot-bed of anti-Israel rhetoric. But let's be clear what really happened this week. The U.S. representative, while reluctantly casting a veto, joined the pack of jackals that seek to make Israel the culprit for all that ills the Middle East. Shouldn't THAT be the headline?

Why I read the blogs

You learn so much you will not learn without spending 24 hours a dad perusing the web.  And I do spend many hours at it, there just isn't time enough in the day to read it all. So I do like to read them and then pass the information on to you.

This is from a blog on Investor's Business Daily. I read Ann Althouse several times a day so I knew exactly the points she had made but you may not have without my post.

If ObamaCare Is Valid, Could Congress Mandate Abortion?

By Ed Carson

Ann Althouse took down Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe’s pro-ObamaCare NYT op-ed in a trio of blog posts Tuesday. Althouse, herself a law professor, called out Tribe for trying to equate activity with choice, when there is a big difference.

In fact, the cases refer to “commercial activities,” and a switch from “activity” to “choice” is immensely important in the health care litigation, in which opponents stress that the failure to buy insurance is inactivity, not activity, and therefore beyond even the broadest interpretations the Supreme Court has ever given to the Commerce Clause.

Moreover, she points out that the liberal legal scholar is playing with fire. Arguing that society can stop the individual from making a choice now that possibly could have negative consequences down the road could undercut the philosophical case for a women’s right to choose, Althouse notes (cross-throughs in original):

If we take a similarly broad view of choice, we could say — as anti-abortion advocates do — that women who know they may be fertile have a choice when they go ahead and have sexual intercourse with a man. They can refrain from having sex, but if they go forward, they know that if they need emergency-room care that they can’t pay for get pregnant, the public will pick up the tab they can get an abortion.

From NewsBusters and not a surprise to most of us:

Major Media Miss: Muslim Brotherhood's Stated Goal Has Long Been 'To Seize U.S.' ByTom Blumer

While looking for something else, I accidentally stumbled across a 2007 item in my blog's archives that makes the current soft media treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood even more outrageous than it already appears.

In November of that year, the Dallas Morning News, covering the Holy Land Foundation terrorist funding trial, directly described what had been learned about the Muslim Brotherhood and its goals -- not in Egypt, but the in U.S. (link is to excerpt at my blog; DMN article is no longer available at Dallas.com or in the ProQuest library database):

Muslim Brotherhood’s papers detail plan to seize U.S.
Amid the mountain of evidence released in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, the most provocative has turned out to be a handful of previously classified evidence detailing Islamist extremists’ ambitious plans for a U.S. takeover.

A knot of terrorism researchers say the memos and audiotapes, many translated from Arabic and containing detailed strategies by the international Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, are proof that extremists have long sought to replace the Constitution with Shariah, or Islamic law.

From Roll Call on pensions for former members of congress

Former Members Get Millions From Pensions

Taxpayers are likely to foot the bill for at least $26 million in pensions for former Members of Congress this year, even as Congress embraces austerity by curbing its annual pay raises and voting to slash office budgets.

That estimate, drawn from data published by the Congressional Research Service, is based on payments to 455 former Members as of October 2009 and doesn’t include potential payouts to dozens of newly retired lawmakers who are eligible to draw their pensions.

From Canada Free Press:

Obama’s Trumpeted Super Intelligence is Strictly a Myth 

From Gateway Pundit

Blow to “O”… Egyptian VP Says There Will Be No Regime Change
Posted by Jim Hoft on Tuesday, February 8, 2011, 10:34 PM

On Tuesday the Obama Administration asked Hosni Mubarak to step aside.

On Wednesday they said that transitioning power “now means yesterday.”

On Saturday morning the Obama Administration said Mubarak must stay.

On Saturday evening the Obama Administration said Mubarak should step aside.

On Sunday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Mubarak must stay in power.

Today the Obama Administration said that political reform will be a gradual process.

Is it any wonder then that the Obama Administration has alienated all sides in Egypt?

Obama and The Egyptian Uprising as noted by A J Strata

A J Strata has a very thoughtful take on the uprising and how it should be handled. This is such a dangerous situation we can only hope it does not desolve into utter chaos and be taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood.

This is from AJ's Stratasphere blog:

Obama A Deer In The Headlights Of Egypt’s Uprising

The situation in Egypt is not simple or clear cut. I have hesitated to write about it simply because it is complex, unstable and could result in a regional war if not handled correctly. It opens the future to two warring philosophies that have been roiling the Middle East since 9-11 and America’s efforts to instill peaceful democracies into the region.

America’s knee-jerk preference is, of course, democracy. We believe through freedom of individual rights you gain two very important results:

* Individual, family, local and regional financial success that translates into a productive and educated society that grows instead of stagnates.
* A calming of the human soul that comes from having the basic needs met, some worthy accomplishments under your belt, time to learn and gain some wisdom – all of which negates the urge for violence and hate.

The Middle East has yet to gain this serene balance so many in the West take for granted (and liberals risk through their endless and oppressive government edicts). Hosni Mubarak has been a solid and worthy ally for 3 decades. He has attempted to acclimate his people to the modern world in preparation for a transition from the Arab-Muslim autocracy to democracy. The problem is, Mubarak may have waited too long to see the fruits of his efforts bear fruit. He may have been waiting for that mythical ‘perfect moment’ where there is no risk in ringing in massive societal change.

Read the rest here. I am heartened by reports today that when looters tried to storm the Egyptian Museum others in the crowd reacted by protecting it. The military stepped in them and did a good job of keeping the looters out.

I confess, I didn't Watch the SOTU speech

So I am having to take this article on faith that he knows whereof he speaks. It is from the Pajamas Media Tatler.
Update Be sure to see Tatler's Bryan Preston's take on Ryan and Bachmann below.

What Obama didn’t mention in his speech
by Richard Pollock

Some of the most intriguing things in the Statue of Union address were the issues the president did not address:

- Climate change: The signature environmental issue of this administration evaporated into thin air. The UN conference in Copenhagen didn’t really exist. No reference to cap and trade. Not a word.

- The housing crisis: If you had tuned into planet Earth from outer space, you would not know there was a housing crisis in America. Not a word about the near bankruptcy of government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Nor did he mention the rising number of foreclosures.It was the president who unveiled his HELP program to keep people in their homes. Most evidence is that it has been a failure. Tonight, not a word about it.

- Jobs: Yes, there was the feeling of pain. But you would not know the country is still in a jobs emergency. There were words like “competition,” “innovation,” and “Sputnik,” but not a road map to explain how he will spur jobs in the private sector.

- States facing bankruptcies: Our biggest state governments are in a debt crisis, most of them led by Democrats. Does he recognize this is a looming problem? Does he wish to bail them out? Tonight there was no word.

- Closing down Guantanamo Bay and trying terrorists in civil court: Gitmo still functions and holds enemy combatants. This was a sterling commitment of his administration — to shut down Gitmo. He also failed to mention any willingness to abandon his attorney general’s effort to try terrorists in civilian courts. It’s a huge issue in New York City where the prospect of trials has been denounced by nearly every political office holder.

- War on Terror: On the basis of this speech, there is no War on Terror. There is community-building in Afghanistan and defeating the Taliban. But nothing about the worldwide terror network that is waged from Malaysia to London subways to Times Square.

- Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the UK: They are all flirting with economic catastrophe.

- Overseas human rights: A Chinese Nobel Prize-winner tonight sits in a prison cell. Nothing about human rights in Egypt or Iran or anywhere else in the world.

- Israel: Supposedly America’s most important ally in the Middle East. Nothing about Jerusalem or one of his stated highest goals of his first term: ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

- Reaching out to the Muslim world: His next trips take him to South America.

- Osama bin Laden: He’s still at large. John Kerry and the Democrats campaigned that this was the litmus test for winning the war on terror.

- George W. Bush: There was no Bush-bashing tonight. His advisers probably suggested blaming Bush no longer had currency.

Update – GOP response reax: Rep. Paul Ryan was serious and brief in his response to the president. He provided more specifics than the president did, but that’s not saying much. The response suffered from the same things these speeches always suffer from — the lack of a live audience to feed off of, the drab setting, the lone man or woman in the room approach. Ryan did about as well as can be done in those circumstances. Of the two speeches (so far), his was by far the more grown up.

Bachmann response: The content was fine, the staging was terrible. Her prompter was off to one side of the camera, making it look like she was talking to someone behind the viewer. Delivery was meh. She would have been more useful, and far more effective, going straight on MSNBC or CNN after the SOTU and fisking that speech rather than delivering her own.

Some links to read today, VDH is first!

The Post-Tucson Era

Obama—Making it up as we go along.

Tunisia's revolution should be a wake-up call to Mideast autocrats 

From the Washington Post

Massacre, followed by libel

American Thinker via Lucianne.com

30 year-old Chicagoan Wrote Tucson Speech (does anything Obama come from anywhere but Chicago?)

via Lucianne from Reuters

WikiLeaks: Iran developing nuclear bomb with help of more than 30 countries

Mediate via Lucianne
ABC’s This Week Airs Alleged Death Threat From Shooting Victim to Tea Party Leader

Theme for memorial tea shirts right off the campaign blog

It was outrageous that the memorial service turned into a cheering Obama  rally complete with tea shirts. Canada Free Press tracked down the origin of the slogan on the shirts.  

Theme of “Together We Thrive” T-shirt came from Obama’s Organizing for America
By Judi McLeod Friday, January 14, 2011

The “Together We Thrive” T-shirts that starred at Wednesday’s Arizona `Memorial’ originated from Organizing for America (here), a sad fact unearthed by The Drumbeat of Liberty and the Preservation of Freedom editor and Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Robert Rohlfing.

In the controversy of the pep rally/rock concert style Memorial for those who lost their lives in Saturday’s Arizona tragedy, the mainstream media reported that the “Together We Thrive: Tucson & America” T-shirt given to mourners as they entered McKate Center was the idea of University of Arizona brass, not the Obama administration.

Yet the “Together We Thrive” slogan dates back to a post to Obama’s own Organizing for America in a Feb. 11, 2008 post by self-described “globalist” John Berry IV.

More than passing strange that the Obama campaign message of civility was the same on Feb. 11, 2008 as it was in his Wednesday Memorial speech, and the same one, too carried by the mainstream media in coverage of the Memorial.


“For too long Americans have been set one against the other. It is a side affect of a free market society,” Berry IV posted. “How can profits be maximized, how can I get the work down for the lowest possible costs. This continually sets one group against the other, especially in the blue collar sectors of America. It has become part of the American Business model, whether it was indentured servants, slaves picking cotton, sharecroppers, the industrious people that built the railroads or today’s migrant workers. As long as we remain divided, fighting for the scraps that America has to offer it will be one group against the other.

“What I see in Obama is a chance for revolution. (Italics CFP’s). A chance for every group to be heard; A chance to live the American dream that has been denied to so many…

“In a previous career, I was the global leader of Diversity for a global fortune 500 corporation. I have studied the affects of diverse groups working together and the results can not be denied. Together we Thrive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

University of Arizona brass did not originate the “Together We Thrive” T-shirt. They merely recycled it for Obama—and recycled it in time for what should have been a dignified Memorial for the dead.

If you were a mourner who took home a “Together We Thrive” T-shirt have a look at the bottom of your shirt. “Rocking America and Rocking the Vote” is a common theme of the DNC, and it’s right there on your Memorial T-shirt memento.

Welcome to the era of Obama, where cheering and standing ovations, for the first time in history, became part of the Requiem for the Dead.

I have posted the whole article here as I feel it is important that everyone know this was a campaign rally for the democrats, but more importantly for Obama.  To see a screen shot of the Organizing for America post go here.

So much for that right wing violence rhetoric.... Bill Ayers strikes again

This was on World Net Daily, admittedly a right wing site.  I wonder if it is anywhere in the MSM/

Bill Ayers, communist provided Arizona shooter's curriculum?
High school part of learning community funded jointly by Obama and domestic terrorist
By Aaron Klein

Jared Lee Loughner, the suspected gunman in Saturday's Arizona shooting, attended a high school that is part of a network in which teachers are trained and provided resources by a liberal group founded by Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers and funded by President Obama, WND has learned.

The group, Small Schools Workshop, has been led by a former top communist activist who is an associate of Ayers.

Obama provided the group with funds in the 1990s when he worked at an education reform group alongside Ayers.

Loughner attended Mountain View High School, which is part of Arizona's Morana Unified School District.

Since 2003, Mountain View has been part of what is known as the Smaller Learning Community, a network of schools that have been restructured to create a more personalized learning environment where students often have the same teachers and fellow students from grade to grade.

Read more here.

The Constitution - Is Obama and the Congress following it?

There is plenty of talk about this as the new Congress plans to read it aloud in chambers.  It may be the first time many of the Democrats (and some Republicans) have read it completely through.  I think listening to something being read will sometimes make it clearer.  We tend to scan when we read long documents. David Limbaugh has an article published by Creator's Syndicate that is a long discussion of overriding of the Constituion by executive fiat.

The Administration's Administrative Tyranny Marches On

This administration is abusive enough when it acts outside its constitutional authority, but it is even more tyrannical when it affirmatively thwarts the express will of the Congress on matters within the legislative domain.

When Congress denied Obama authority to transfer money to the International Monetary Fund, he did so anyway, issuing an executive order promising to give that body $140 billion for redistribution to Third World countries.

Now he's made another mockery of bipartisanship and the Constitution in making six recess appointments, including two people so objectionable that a near supermajority of Democratic senators wouldn't confirm them: James Cole as deputy attorney general, whose lax position in the war on terror is disturbing, and Francis J. Ricciardone Jr. as ambassador to Turkey.

Meanwhile, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is gearing up to engage in a defiant end run around Congress by attempting to impose cap-and-trade-type regulations by administrative fiat after Obama's failed attempt to shove this nightmarish disaster through Congress.

It obviously doesn't matter to these zealots that an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress couldn't pass cap and trade or that the Clean Air Act gives them no authority to regulate so-called greenhouse gas emissions. It doesn't matter that their proposed regulatory blitzkrieg would further damage an already anemic and precarious economy.

What matters is that the earth goddess Gaia beckons, and she is not to be denied. Just as her global warming cultists view every environmental development and incident as confirmation of their cataclysmic myopia, including the ones that flatly contradict their theories, her disciples in government march to her orders, irrespective of the rule of law and silly capitalistic concerns.

Unlike those annoying evangelical Christians, who employ gentle persuasion techniques in their efforts to proselytize, Gaia's acolytes use the coercive power of government to bring us all into the fold. And all this time, libs have been telling us they abhor state-sponsored religion.

Mr. Rush LImbaugh Sr. raised some really bright boys. Go read the rest of this article for some great insights into how far the Constitution has been trashed.

Obama, Honduras and Venezuela

I am not condoning the Wikileaks actions, but I have to admit there are some things we wouldn't have known without them.  On the whole I think we have learned a lot about this administrations intriques because of them.  But if your only source of news is MSM you may never learn the most of it.  Because I read Lucianne.com daily I found this from Commentary magazine.

Honduras, Obama, and Occam’s Razorby
by Rick Richman 

In the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote that cables released by WikiLeaks show that the administration knew Honduran President Manuel Zelaya had threatened Honduran democracy — but supported him in order to offer President Obama a “bonding opportunity” with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and a chance to ingratiate himself with Latin America’s hard left.

I have a simpler explanation — not inconsistent with O’Grady’s analysis but closer to the common theme in Obama’s foreign policy in other areas. The day after Zelaya was removed, Obama pronounced it a “coup.” That snap judgment remained American policy even as more and more facts contradicting Obama’s description emerged.

Go read the rest and be sure to link to the WSJ article if you can.  It reinforces the view of how badly America's foreign policy has been handled under this administration. It is an embarrassement.

Sunday Links, Dec 12, 2010

It's hard to believe it is almost 2011, but time flies when you are getting old!
It's a busy day so here are some links to what I think are important articles.

From the New York Times a scary thought:
As the Ground Shifts, Biden Plays a Bigger Role

From the Boston Globe an article on SSI. I know for a fact that schools try to get people to have their children diagnosed with ADHD or anything that can get the on those rolls. -it's a long one:
The other welfare
A legacy of unintended side effects

From American Thinker - it's a long one, too:
An Extraordinary Speech

From the Washington Post: - In my opinion this is when all the hate and vitriol began.
Bush v. Gore, 10 years later

From The Hill - more apologizing.
Obama expresses regret to foreign leaders over WikiLeaks

From the Washington Post - now we know why he is so grouchy lately.
Obama kicks his smoking habit

Are you worse off under Obama

If not you may be the exception. According to Bloomberg news .

More than 50 percent of Americans say they are worse off now than they were two years ago when President Barack Obama took office, and two-thirds believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a Bloomberg National Poll shows.

The survey, conducted Dec. 4-7, finds that 51 percent of respondents think their situation has deteriorated, compared with 35 percent who say they're doing better. The balance isn't sure. Americans have grown more downbeat about the country's future in just the last couple of months, the poll shows. The pessimism cuts across political parties and age groups, and is common to both sexes.

Read it all here.

VDH on Calling a Swede a Swede and the News you Didn't Read in the newspaper or see on TV

Anyone who reads this blog is familiar with my love of what Victor Davis Hanson writes.
Today he has hit it out of the park again.

Calling a Swede a Swede
Imagine an alternate universe where terrorists are Scandinavian — Swedes, to be specific.

Imagine, if you will, an alternative universe where perception is slightly altered to reflect a different reality. In this universe, terrorists are Scandinavian — Swedes, to be specific.

We should not generalize, and it is clear that not all Swedes are terrorists, but all terrorists are Swedes. These radicals have perverted the beautiful Nordic religion of peace and turned it into an ideology of hatred.

The facts clearly show that the men who try to smuggle bombs onto airplanes have blond hair, blue eyes, are between twenty and forty years old, believe in the supreme god Odin, and carry names like Ingmar Johansson.

They talk funny and they love smorgasbord, which is a traditional Nordic meal with lots of raw fish, and every Swede can drink alcohol in amounts that would kill six reindeer within three minutes.

How do we make sure these bomb-laden Swedes don’t board our airplanes? How can we recognize these radical Nordic terrorists? Should we check dark-haired Asians called Honda? Italians called Ferrari?

Would it be acceptable to single out Swedes trying to travel by air? Or should we, trying to avoid offending Swedish sensibilities, check every person with an airline ticket in general and especially focus on inspecting their crotch? After all, Swedes love to wear their bombs in their underwear, so maybe non-Swedes also wear bombs in their underwear, right?

Read the rest here.

And now for the news you didn't read:

When News is No News

Here are a few important developments that remain strangely ignored. I say strangely, but most readers understand why some news becomes news and some does not.

1) Iraq. The United States military between 2007 and 2009 crushed al-Qaeda in Iraq. It destroyed cadres of radical Islamists and Baathists. It stabilized the country. It was one of the most stunning military performances in modern history, and helped to destroy the image of a competent and scary al-Qaeda. Yet everything from the recapture of Fallujah to the sheer number of Islamists that were taken out of Anbar Province was largely ignored. It is as if we went to sleep in 2007 with “Iraq is lost” and then woke up in 2010 with “Of course, it is quiet now. Why wouldn’t it be?” — but with little thought of what transpired in between. We know few names, fewer stories of the heroic Americans who turned Iraq around after 2006 — or kept it from imploding from 2003 onward.

But wait there's more:

2) Chinese Roguery. China’s Communist Party predicates foreign policy on mercantilism — period.
3) The Gulf Oil Hysteria. We were told that aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico would be ruined for generations.
4) The Great Obama Flip-Flop. For over a year of hope and change, we were told by Obama that renditions, preventative detentions, and tribunals were anti-constitutional, that Guantanamo was synonymous with a gulag, that Iraq was lost, that Predators were a sort of airborne terror, that KSM and other terrorist killers should be tried in civilian courts — and what happened? Suddenly the world was turned upside down and what was once bad was now tolerable. And not a whimper about why, just the quiet assumption of “that was then, this is now.”
5) The Europe-America Cool-Off. Europe wanted Obama, got Obama, and now its elites are quietly whispering: “Why did you fulfill our childish wishes?”
6) The EU Meltdown. Surely the great story of the age is the serial meltdown of Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece and the furor of Germany and more Protestant northwestern Europe — all at a time when the September 15, 2008 ,Wall Street implosion supposedly had proved the triumph of socialism over the free market system.
7) The Implosion of the Green Movement. (be sure to read all of this one.)
8) The Nexus between California’s Financial Plight and Illegal Immigration. The state has the highest income, sales, and gas taxes and the largest deficits — and the largest number of illegal aliens.
9) The Implosion of Debt. There is very little said about the failure of Keynesian economics to restart the economy.
10) Obama and Race. We read of occasional slips from Obama and his associates, but never of the effect of lots of slips in the aggregate.

Be sure to click this link to read ALL of these listed topics.
If you have not read Victor Davis Hanson before this will show you why I think so highly of his intellect and reasonings.

"the country is just not into you"

That is part of the closing line of of the last paragraph of one of the most interesing analogies I have ever seen.  In a post written by  by Oleg Atbashian.  He compares Obama's lies with a teenage boy trying to score with a girl.  He says, "When my old lies didn't work(ing) anymore and I needed to up my game, I sounded exactly like post-midterm Obama.

He goes on: I wonder how many American voters had elected Obama, not because they shared his theories or understood any of his hope and change rhetoric, but simply because they shared the same political hormones. Perhaps the number of voters with the hormone-impaired thinking can roughly be calculated by taking the amount of votes for Obama in 2008 and subtracting the much smaller amount of Democratic votes in 2010. Easy come, easy go.

I know how American liberals feel. Most of my Ukrainian girlfriends in my younger years must have been archetypal conservatives, while my endocrinal excesses made me an untrainable liberal. I thought I had their mandate, I didn’t listen, I pushed my agenda, and they voted me out of their lives.

Go read it all, it's a very interest concept.

Now some Democrats think He doesn't get it

From the Washington Post:

Assessing midterm losses, Democrats ask whether Obama's White House fully grasped voters' fears
By Karen Tumulty and Dan Balz

President Obama's failure to channel the anxieties of ordinary voters has shaken the faith that many Democrats once had in his political gifts and his team's political skill.

In his own assessments of what went wrong, the president has lamented his inability to persuade voters on the merits of what he has done, and blamed the failure on his preoccupation with a full plate of crises.

But a broad sample of Democratic officeholders and strategists said in interviews that the disconnect goes far deeper than that.

"There doesn't seem to be anybody in the White House who's got any idea what it's like to lie awake at night worried about money and worried about things slipping away," said retiring Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen (D). "They're all intellectually smart. They've got their numbers. But they don't feel any of it, and I think people sense that."

Bredesen had voiced such reservations long before the election, but more Democrats are saying the same thing after Tuesday's defeats - although few are willing to cross the White House by doing so publicly.

[....]

Still, Democrats remain divided between their moderate and liberal wings over whether the president should continue to push hard with his agenda or move to the center to try to accommodate the Republicans in Congress.

Read it all, much more to discuss.

Something to Ponder, or is it?

David Broder occasionally get it right, sort of.  This column of his sounds like he is very reasoned until you get to the last three paragraphs and see it is a recommendation for the Republicans and Obama to comprimise.  I certainly don't think that can happen and pray that it doesn't.
The title sounds reasonable enough What America might learn from the British austerity model.
The first two paragraphs seem reasonable:

The most important political news last week came from across the Atlantic, where the coalition government of British Prime Minister David Cameron ordered an austerity budget that radically reduces government spending on the welfare state. Both the policy and the political circumstances that brought it about have profound implications for the United States.
This country has wandered far -- not quite as far as Britain has -- toward the pending fiasco that threatens leftist regimes worldwide, and the reaction here in the Nov. 2 midterm elections is likely to be as painful for President Obama and the Democrats as the May 6 election was for Labor's Gordon Brown.

This sounds reasonable:

George Osborne, Cameron's chancellor of the exchequer, did not mince words. He told Parliament, "Today is the day when Britain steps back from the brink, when we confront the bills from a decade of debt." Britain's budget deficit, now 11.4 percent of the size of its overall economy, is not that much larger than the United States' -- 8.9 percent -- but the debate has been similar in both countries.

The middle explains what is happening in Great Britain and somewhat reasonable (read it here)
UH OH!  Here's where reasonable ends:

The American political system virtually precludes the possibility of a coalition government. But the midterm elections provide the opportunity for a similar breakthrough. If Republicans emerge next month with sufficient leverage in the House and Senate to approach Obama with a proposition, they could insist that he "do a Cameron" when it comes to federal spending: a radical rollback now in the welfare state in return for a two-year truce on such policy questions as repeal of the health-care law.  (This is a part I could go for)


The vehicle could well be Obama's strong endorsement of the Dec. 1 report from his fiscal responsibility commission, which is expected to emphasize spending discipline over raising revenue. This would offer major gains to both parties, and set the stage for another experiment in the British model. (This is where you just know David Broder expects us to compromise)

Can't we just all get along? NO!!!  Am I being too hard on Broder? Let me know what you think.