This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Obama and Iran

    Last week I wrote a bit about Iran being caught (by Afghan border guards) smuggling heavy weapons and explosives into Afghanistan – a story that cropped up in the European media and has yet to be given any attention by the American press.

    That fact alone should wake up the current administration to the need to intervene on some level in the future leadership of the Islamic Republic. But what is their reaction to the questionable results of this weekend’s election? The Washington Post quotes Joe Biden;

    “There’s an awful lot of question about how this election was run,” Biden said, noting that the high voter turnout in Iran’s urban areas would argue against such a wide margin of victory for Ahmadinejad, whose conservative populism holds more appeal in rural areas. “I mean we’re just waiting to see.”

    The cautious response illustrates the balance that the Obama administration is seeking between condemning what increasingly appears to be a fraudulent election and the likelihood that it will be dealing with Ahmadinejad after the dust settles.

    Certainly, the Obama Administration saw these results coming, so why wasn’t there an appropriate response prepared to make them look less stupid? But, see, that’s why Ahmadinejad thinks he can get away with vote fraud – he’s pretty sure no one will stop him. The same reason that North Korea continues launching rockets and conducting nuclear tests. There’s a reason that George Bush put those countries on his “Axis of Evil” list.

    Despite the announcement today that the Guardian Council of Iran has ordered an investigation into fraud charges, does anyone really thing Ahmadinejad will be replaced by the Council under any circumstances?

    During the Bush Administration, we saw our allies moving closer to our our side of the political spectrum as Bush policies proved effective and made us safer. Now, under Obama we see our enemies moving further away from us – a sure sign that the governments that should fear and respect us see the Obama Administration as weak and ineffective. Even the Israelis fear for their safety with the Obama Adminstration and elected a tougher government to protect themselves.

  • Worst case of projection ever

    I came across a link at Don Surber‘s place this morning to a HuffPo piece by Rachel Weiner (I don’t know if it’s pronounced “weener” or “whiner” but either would be appropriate, i suppose) entitled Right-Wing neocons Rooting for Ahmadinejad Win. It’s a pretty sad display of projection. here’s the screen capture;
    huffpo-vs-neocons
    Don did an excellent job of knocking Weiner down a few pegs. But I’d like to add that the American Left has been rooting for Ahmadinejad for six years. they’ve been rooting for Ahmadinejad’s new buddy Hugo Chavez for ten years.

    Remember when Ahmadinejad spoke to the National Press Club for lunch? And how the Left apologized to Ahmadinejad for the crude neocons treatment of him? I remember The Nation’s piece charging the exact same neocons that Weiner says root for Ahmadinejad of provoking him. In fact, I remember Code Pink defending Ahmadinejad last year.

    But we had a different president then so everything is different now, huh?

  • DIA warns Congress against detainee transfers

    Kara Rowland at the Washington Times reports that the Defense Intelligence AGency has warned Congress in a letter about kicking loose some of the potentially dangerous detainees held by the US;

    Military intelligence officials have quietly told Congress they advised against transferring 25 of the 60 Guantanamo Bay terror detainees deemed eligible for relocation by the Obama administration, including five who are considered to be highly dangerous and likely to return to the battlefield.

    But the Defense Intelligence Agency officials did not raise any formal objections with the administration because they concluded the decision to move prisoners already had been made, according to a letter Sen. Tom Coburn, a member of the intelligence committee, sent Tuesday to Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair.

    In the letter, obtained by The Washington Times, the Oklahoma Republican senator questions whether the White House put political considerations ahead of national security.

    “The DIA told the committee that DIA has not objected to the release of many rank-and-file members of terrorist organizations ‘due to an explicit understanding that many detainees were destined to be transferred out of GTMO regardless of intelligence-based objections,’ ” Mr. Coburn wrote.

    But the Obama Administration is so set on making this a legal issue instead of a national security issue, no genuine concerns about protecting Americans here or abroad can convince them otherwise.

    After four years of war, in 1945, there were over 400,000 prisoners of war held in the United States from Germany, Italy and Japan. There was no outcry from Americans to release them back into their native countries because they hadn’t been proved to be criminals.

    Also, our troops weren’t on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific reading them their rights. Can you imagine George Patton reading the Miranda warning to the 14,000 Germans he captured when he broke out of Normandy? Or Alvin York and his seven buddies mirandizing his 128 prisoners in WWI?

    But how much criticism did we hear from the Left that George Bush was so arrogant that he wouldn’t listen to his generals? Isn’t this arrogance, too? Just to keep an ill-considered campaign promise.

  • FReep for PVT William Long

    long-freep
    My friends at Free Republic’s DC contingent were at the White House last Saturday bringing attention to the disparity in the reactions to the murder of the abortion doctor Tiller and Private William Long. From their after action review it sounds like they made some head way;

    The freep began uneventfully with our receiving a few thumbs up here and there. A group of high school age students attending the 10th Challenge, a leadership institute, asked us for details and for us to take their pictures taken holding the signs.

    An older white gentleman approached saying he didn’t understand our message. When we explained, he changed the subject or brought up irrelevant points about Blackwater and Haliburton making lots of money on the war. As the gentleman walked away and approached his wife; BufordP’s niece, who was sitting along the fence at the time, overhead him say to his wife that we had made a lot of good points.

    A young man with video equipment asked to interview us. When asked why we objected to President Obama’s response to both shootings, BufordP replied that the President and Attorney General quickly dispatched federal marshals to protect private abortion clinics yet, as Commander-in-Chief, failed to protect the recruiting stations. I added that recruiters, possibly contrary to what the public might assume, are not armed while performing recruiting duty. The interviewer then asked Buford and me if we “were racists.”

    Yeah, that must be the only way they’d dare to stand up the president – if they were racists. Stupid media.

    I wish I could have been there, guys, a few more weeks and I’ll be out of this stupid cast.

    Here’s a reminder that the DC Chapter of Free Republic stands alone every Friday night at Walter Reed to welcome the wounded troops home from the war. Since you don’t donate to me (or click the Google ads, or shop at Amazon) maybe you can see your way clear to donate to the FReepers at their website. Every little bit helps them continue doing what they do for the troops because you can’t be there.

  • “We are going to change the world. Please, don’t interfere.”

    Cigar Mike at Babalu Blog writes, “What a dick” about the Obama administration warning to Israel’s Netanyahu government quoted from Israel’s Channel One TV By CBS News;

    Netanyahu was told Tuesday by an “American official” in Jerusalem that, “We are going to change the world. Please, don’t interfere.” The report said Netanyahu’s aides interpreted this as a “threat.”

    The photo that accompanies the story shows Obama talking to Netanyahu with his feet on his desk. CBS posits;

    Israeli TV newscasters Tuesday night interpreted a photo taken Monday in the Oval Office of President Obama talking on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an “insult” to Israel.

    They saw the incident as somewhat akin to an incident last year, when the Iraqi reporter threw a shoe at President Bush in Baghdad

    Adam Horowitz at Mondoweiss writes;

    We’ve been following on the site how Israel seems to be in a state of panic and that Israeli anxiety over the US/Israeli relationship seems to be hitting a boiling point. When Obama finally does go to visit Israel, he might want to watch out for some flying shoes.

    Indeed.

    Imagine if President Bush had told any other country that same thing – how often did we hear “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” or complaints about the “axis of evil” or “bring it on” and other examples of the Bush arrogance? How is this any less arrogant? And worse, it’s with an actual unfaltering ally against terror.

    I dare him to use that kind of language in dealing with North Korea, Syria or Iran. I wonder if Bill Clinton is still ready to lay in a ditch and fight along side the Israelis, because this kind of talk is going to inspire another Arab invasion of Israel.

  • Those 600,000 jobs “saved or created”

    You probably watched the media swallow hook line and sinker that idiot line from the President yesterday about the 600,000 jobs he was going to “save or create”. And the 150,000 jobs he’s already “saved”. The Wall Street Journal weighs in today;

    [Bush Administration staffer, Tony] Fratto sees a double standard at play. “We would never have used a formula like ‘save or create,’” he tells me. “To begin with, the number is pure fiction — the administration has no way to measure how many jobs are actually being ‘saved.’ And if we had tried to use something this flimsy, the press would never have let us get away with it.”

    Of course, the inability to measure Mr. Obama’s jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one — not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics — actually measures “jobs saved.” As the New York Times delicately reports, Mr. Obama’s jobs claims are “based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs.” Nice work if you can get away with it.

    Yeah, I remember the Left complaining that the only jobs the Bush Administration was creating was at McDonald’s for eight years, but they’re perfectly content to hear ambiguous and imprecise language from their guy.

    “The expression ‘create or save,’ which has been used regularly by the President and his economic team, is an act of political genius,” writes [Harvard economist and former Bush economic adviser Greg] Mankiw. “You can measure how many jobs are created between two points in time. But there is no way to measure how many jobs are saved. Even if things get much, much worse, the President can say that there would have been 4 million fewer jobs without the stimulus.”

    Mr. Obama’s comments yesterday are a perfect illustration of just such a claim. In the months since Congress approved the stimulus, our economy has lost nearly 1.6 million jobs and unemployment has hit 9.4%. Invoke the magic words, however, and — presto! — you have the president claiming he has “saved or created” 150,000 jobs.

    But MSNBC is ready to drink the Koolaid;

    Just how much of an impact Obama’s recovery program had on the pace of job losses is up for debate.

    Obama has claimed as many as 150,000 jobs saved or created by his stimulus plan so far, even as government reports have shown the economy has lost more than 1.6 million jobs since Congress approved funding for the program in February.

    Republicans remain critical of the stimulus spending, slamming it as a big government program that ultimately will do little for recovery.

    With only a fraction of the federal money actually spent thus far, it’s premature to give the stimulus plan credit for economic trends, congressional Republicans said last week.

    Of course, if the media is just going to take everything that Obama says at face value, why do we have a media? Just turn over MSNBC to the White House.

    ADDED: The folks at Newsy read my post and sent this video to accompany it;

  • Five working days later

    Monday morning two US soldiers were senselessly shot, one was murdered, within our borders while they were on a break. They were shot by what now appears to be a lone whacko, although the circle may widen soon. That shooter was apparently trained, or at least influenced to commit this crime, in a foreign country. And here we are five working days later and not one word from our President on the incident. I’ve heard about some statement that his office released to Arkansas media about the shooting, but I haven’t seen it.

    In the circles I travel in, there’s only one place to look for a statement from the President – on the White House website. it’s where I found this statement on that website about a similar crime that happened the day before the shooting in Little Rock;

    That particular shooting happened on a Sunday and was released the same day – a non-working day for many of us. But five working days later, there’s nothing about PVT Long’s death in the five pages preceding that particular link. Nothing.

    I cut Obama some slack – maybe he didn’t want to anger the “Muslim world” before his Big Speech, but that speech is over…he’s in Germany today. The President and Commander-in-Chief plans on honoring the US military members who gave their lives for their country on Normandy beaches tomorrow – yet he can’t honor one lone soldier who was murdered solely because he happened to be a soldier taking a break last Monday in Little Rock, Arkansas under Obama’s command.

    Five working days later.

  • American Legion Commander urges strength, not apologies

    Well, it seems that President Obama can’t do much to please the American Legion national commander these days. David K. Rehbein’s office released this statement today in regards to the President’s speech to Muslims in Egypt this week;

    The head of The American Legion is stressing the need for strength as well as conciliation in President Obama’s current campaign to improve relations with Muslim countries.

    “Although The American Legion does not believe that the United States has anything to apologize for, we appreciate the spirit of President Obama’s call for what he termed a ‘new beginning’ in our relationship with the followers of Islam,” said David K. Rehbein, national commander of the nation’s largest veterans service organization.

    “We must demand reciprocity of both spirit and deed,” he said. “When the president pronounces, as he did in his conciliatory address in Egypt, that the events of September 11, 2001, in his words, ‘led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals’, he must, in our opinion, demand equally public admission from the Muslim world that elements within its community have been responsible for egregious acts of terrorism including mass killings, torture and public beheadings – acts that must be contrary to their traditions and ideals.

    “When the President announces that, to quote him, ‘we are taking concrete actions to change course,’ with reference to the exercise of certain interrogation techniques and the very controversial order to close detainee housing at Guantanamo Bay, then it is incumbent upon him to demand that the Muslim community take concrete and demonstrable action to suppress and eliminate those within their own ranks who are responsible for uncounted, unprovoked acts of terrorism.

    The national commander writes this in regards to the Guantanamo prisoners and the soldiers murdered in Arkansas this past week;

    “Even if these detainees were to be housed in the most secure premises possible,” said Rehbein, “they might still be free to communicate their radical beliefs to fellow prisoners, thus converting already known criminals to their murderous points of view – much as the Arkansas killer was persuaded to commit his act of terror.

    Read the whole thing, Rehbein echoes many of our own thoughts here.