Monthly Archives: February 2010

Politics, War On Terror

Cheney, Biden, And The War On Terror

In his interview on Meet The Press today,Vice President Biden affirms Cheney’s assessment that this administration is not fighting the enemy as our enemy. I would add that the administration does not know or will not acknowledge who the enemy is.

MR. GREGORY: What about the general proposition that the president, according to former Vice President Cheney, doesn’t consider America to be at war and is essentially soft on terrorism? What do you say about that?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: I don’t think the vice–the former vice president, Dick Cheney, listens. The president of the United States said in the State of the Union, “We’re at war with al-Qaeda.” He stated this.

Biden’s answer obfuscates who the enemy is. It’s Biden and Obama who are ignoring reality, if not re-writing history.


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The real enemy here is Islamic extremists all over the world. It is not only alQaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In that respect, Cheney is right and Biden is just trying to spin his way out of Obama’s inability or unwillingness to express the truth of exactly who our enemy is and what it is we are fighting.

For a real look at who our enemy is and the religious fanaticism that is aimed at killing us, check out this piece from David Horowitz from 2002 entitled Know The Enemy.

Link: ‘Meet the Press’ transcript for February 14, 2010 |  David Horowitz, Know The Enemy

Energy, Politics

New Energy Strategy? Not!

President Obama called for “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants” in his Jan. 27 State of the Union speech. According to the AP,  “He wants to use nuclear power and other alternative sources of energy in his effort to shift energy policy.”

Right, and he also wants Iran to quit its nuclear bomb ambitions, and Republicans to participate in health care reform in a bi-partisan fashion from square two instead of square one.

Don’t buy this as a new shift in energy strategy. It is his community organizers way of appeasing his critics, which is everyone to the right of  Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

The other thing that community organizers do to avoid personal responsibility, like voting ‘present,’ is to appoint commissions. It is how he allows the environmentalists to shape America’s energy policy. Which explains why Obama has cut funding for the long-planned nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository started in 1987, was approved by Congress in 2002, and in 2009 Mr. New Energy Shift cut funding for it. Instead, he has appointed a commission to find a ‘safe’ solution for dealing with nuclear waste, but in the meantime the government has no long-term plan to store commercial radioactive waste. ‘Safe’ for Obama must mean politically safe, not materially safe.

So what’s the end result? There won’t be any new nuclear plant construction unless and until a place to put the waste is operating. That, and higher energy cost, continued dependence on foreign energy sources, and the crippling of our economy on the energy front.

Link: Obama nuke plant loan reflects new energy strategy

Politics, War On Terror

Criticizing The President Strengthens Our Enemies?

According to White House assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism John Brennan, if you criticize the President, you’re helping the enemy.

Imagine that? Gee, I thought John Brennan’s wanting to release the remaining Gitmo detainees from Yemen back to Yemen would strengthen the enemy.  Silly me. Flashback to January 4, 2010 . . .

According to John Brennan, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, sending them back to Yemen isn’t a problem. Today on CNN’s “State of the Union” show, he said . . .

“We are making sure that we don’t do anything that’s going to put Americans at risk,” Brennan said. {emphasis added}

Sorry, anyone with our national security in mind would conclude that sending these folks back to Yemen is doing way more than ‘anything’ to put us at risk.

Besides all that, the short memory span of this White House hack (and winner of the M.R.I.O.T.D. award) is breathtaking. That, and criticism of the President or the administration apparently is only warranted when a Republican is in The White House. Need a few examples? Who’s politicizing the war effort again?

Remember the Hillary screech? Here it is . . .


Link: Criticizing The President Only Strengthens Our Enemies – haystack’s blog – RedState.

Media, Pensacola

How Independent Is The News Media?

Not to belabor the point that there is a bias in news reporting because in a general sense that notion isn’t even debatable. But what do you call it when news is not published, not printed?

Rather than call that a bias, it seems to me to be a matter of independence. Left talkers like Mike Papantonio say that the media is owned by the political Right. Ridiculous I know, but that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

So here’s an example of bias by omission, where a news media outlet doesn’t print a legitimate news story, when on the same subject and with the same players, the news story was front page, above the fold, and front cover.

Speaking of the debut of Air America Radio host Mike Papantonio and his Ring of Fire radio program. In January 2004 it was big news in the Pensacola News Journal, front page, above the fold. In the Independent, another local weekly paper it earned a front cover. Two of them in fact. Including a spot on ABC’s WEAR-TV

In 2007, AAR filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The PNJ printed a 2 column inch AP syndicated blurb. Nothing else. It was portrayed by the Independent as entering its Golden Age. Later in 2007, Independent publisher Rick Outzen credited AAR as being a good thing. Providing a ‘refreshing voice’ for talk radio. He also said this . . .

News media should give perspective to the news. More voices are better. Then the public will truly be informed.

So last month, when Air America filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, liquidating all remaining assets, did you even know? Not if you depend on the Pensacola News Journal and the Independent for your news and information.

I know it shouldn’t be the case, but do you think that online sponsorship and advertising dollars has a deleterious effect on a publisher’s independence when it comes to reporting the news? Specifically these publishers?

Seems like Papantonio has caught on to the same game that he accuses the political Right of doing because his advertising ‘investments’ in the PNJ and the Independent seem to have payed off.

Politics

Inside The White House Bubble

It’s not only The White House personnel, but Democrats in Congress. They’re all in the enact-health-care-legislation-at-all-cost bubble. By contrast, other Americans are outside that bubble more concerned with the state of the economy, which is broke now and for generations to come.

Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.

Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration’s failure to provide clarity or direction on health care and the other big bills it wants Congress to enact.

Failure to provide clarity? For whom? Clarity is what spelled the end of Hillary-care. When the folks learned what was in it, they found that it wasn’t the kind of ‘reform’ they wanted. Or is Franken upset at the realization that neither clarity nor direction comes from an empty suit? Maybe the clarity Franken is talking about is how can we fool the folks this time to get it passed? Or at this point, maybe it’s all of the above?

Democrats seem content to ignore everything rational about fixing the economy first, then chipping away at health care reform in some sort or any sort of bi-partisan way. Gaining the intimate control of the lives of Americans has been their brass ring for decades, and they plainly see this as their moment to grab it.

Updated: 1/6/2010

Link: Al Franken lays into David Axelrod over health care bill – Manu Raju and Andy Barr – POLITICO.com.

Economy, Politics

Spend More, Cut Little

The House has an important vote today that directly affects your wallet and those of future generations, again. Apparently, all the new cuts and freezes that Obama is talking about requires raising the debt limit another $1.9 trillion.  That amounts to $6,000 for every U.S. resident. Already, the accumulated debt amounts to $40,000 per person. What is important about today’s vote is that if the House does not pass this increase, then there’s not enough borrowed money to implement the budget that Obama just presented to Congress.

The nut of Obamanomics is for the government to spend its way into prosperity and borrow its way out of debt. So in order to say he wants to cut spending and freeze spending (by less than 1%), he first needs to borrow and spend another $1.9 trillion, raising the cap on federal borrowing to $14.3 trillion. It’s obvious that neither Obama or his advisers are economic geniuses, but rather tax and spend idealogs where increases are cuts and up is down.

Related links: FOXNews.com – House Faces Tough Vote on $1.9T More Debt. | Obama’s Economic House Of Cards

Economy, Politics

Obama's Economic House Of Cards

It’s a good thing the President has a handle on the economy now. I mean, after all, the deficit he inherited from the Bush administration was enormous. Last year’s deficit surged to $1.42 trillion, more than three times the record of the previous year. So Bush’s last year budget deficit was $454.8 billion. Obama’s budget deficit last year was $1.42 trillion. That’s nearly $1 trillion more that he added to it in fiscal 2009. This business that he “inherited a $1.3 trillion budget deficit” is a lie. It’s a lie through and through. He has added $1 trillion.

Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) went on MSNBC today to put the lie to what Obama had said at the retreat in Baltimore to rest. Hensarling . . .

If you look at the 12 years when Republicans controlled the Congress, the average annual deficit was about $104 billion. I’m not proud of that number. That’s too high. But in the three years that Democrats have controlled Congress, the average annual deficit is now $1.1 trillion. Do the math. What used to be an annual deficit under Republicans has become a monthly deficit under Democrats.

But he’s got a grip on it, or us, now. Now, his budget is built on a house of cards that takes the deficit to between $8-15 trillion dollars (depending on whose numbers you want to use) in the next 10 years. And that is dependent upon Congress voting to raise the debt ceiling another $1.9 trillion. In just this past year, his budget is a mere 35% greater than they said it would be 12 months ago. Imagine how their estimates for health care and all the other government-building spending they propose will be?

The President asked for ideas from us serfs during his SOTU speech. Here’s one. Repeal the drug program that you criticize Bush for creating, the one you voted for as a Senator. The one that you said couldn’t be paid for. OK, so kill it. Now. Viola, look how much of the deficit you just ‘saved.’

Do you get the impression that this administration doesn’t care how much they spend as long as they reach their goal of destroying the economy so as to reduce it to a socialist utopia via his facist economic policies? I do.

The house of cards, which I call this budget, is based on tax increases, it is based on the economy growing, it is based on taxes from cap and trade, it is based on costs of health care decreasing. Essentially, this budget buster is based on receiving trillions of dollars from from programs that are not in place and based on the most optimistic of projections. It is the definition of ‘smoke and mirrors.’

Here’s something else to ponder about our economic circumstances. At the current interest rate on bonds, which is at 3%, a historic low, in 5 years the interest on our debt will be nearly a trillion dollars a year. That’s over a third of our GDP and about equal to all the money raised by income taxes. What happens when China stops buying our debt, which it is already signalling it intends to do, and interest rates rise? The interest on this debt, and by this debt I mean the debt we’ve got right now. That’s not including the debt that Obama wants to pile on. When interest rates go up further, the interest payments on this debt will be more than our GDP. The only way out then is hyperinflation, the devaluation of the dollar.

After taxing the rich, the spending programs will end up taxing the rest in increase cost all the way down the scale. So what’s left for the government to get their hands on when all else is maxed out? Your retirement plans, your 401K’s, your IRA’s. Whether this happens before or after hyperinflation kicks in is just a matter of timing. They’ve already got their eyes on the trillions of dollars Americans have managed to save for themselves. If only the government ran its business like you and I have to, we wouldn’t be in this precarious economic condition.

Best bet now is to salvage what you have left before the government takes it and gives you an IOU like they did with your Social Security. Asset protection now means cashing in your retirement funds and investing it somewhere where the government can’t get its greedy little hands on it.

You’ve heard it before, but it’s worth repeating. You can’t spend your way into prosperity, nor borrow your way out of debt. Sir Winston Churchill

Updated: 9:43
link: Big bang gives way to busted budget

Judiciary, Media, Politics, War On Terror

Why Civilian Trials For Terrorists?

1 Comment

To understand why President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder chose to try five of the worst terrorists in New York City, putting the brakes on their military tribunal process in which they already plead guilty, all you need to know is where he came from.

That, plus the sensationalism of having the opportunity to put the previous administration on trial is a ‘crisis’ too good to pass up. Especially after Obama said on this matter, that he was going to look forward and not backward.

Holder said he was going to speed up justice for these detainees. He didn’t say it was his friends in the al-Qaeda bar that caused the trial delays he now criticizes.

Holder is a partner in a law firm, Covington & Burling, which has been representing 18 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. You may have seen a picture of one of the other lawyers at C & B, David Remes. A natural defense attorney for the panty bomber don’t you think?

Where are the conflict of interest concerns? Not to mention the increased security risk the administration is putting upon New Yorkers. Not to mention the world stage that this dog squeeze will be put on, using their new found freedom to resume their jihad in a media that will be hanging on their every word.

The motivation is purely political. Obama ran on closing Club Gitmo without a plan on how he was going to do it. To fulfill this promise, who better to do that than Eric Holder, a lawyer in a law firm with a track record of attempting to criminalize the prosecution of the war by the Bush administration. He and Holder both enhanced these terrorists’ defense when they said that they deserve the same protection of our judicial system and Constitution afforded to U.S. citizens. They enhance their defense when they both said publicly that these enemy combatants were tortured. And in a civilian criminal trial, they enhanced their defense because they were not Mirandized.

Remember this. They all had already plead guilty in the military tribunal court system. Rather than let that play out, Holder resurrected it in favor of a show trial.  Reckless behavior for a Commander in Chief don’t you think?

Populating the Justice Department with terrorist defense lawyers is one thing. But what about people with direct ties to terrorists and loony radical groups?

Having heard an earful from New Yorkers, including Mayor Bloomberg and the Democratic Senators, Obama is looking for a way to back peddle, a way to save face. The only right thing to do here is to leave it all under the purview of the military court system and to send the panty bomber to Club Gitmo to face his fate as well. Watching this dance between the American people and his far-left base will be a show in and of itself. Not one I’ll take any enjoyment in seeing.

The President has not shown himself to be on the side of the American people when it comes to the war on terror. If Americans are left with no other alternative than the ballot box to make a correction, I’m confident that they will.

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