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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Obamaville

    The Washington Post writes about a new trend happening in the alleyways of DC. Tiny 200 square foot homes are springing up in Northeast DC.

    “This is the dream,” says Rin Westcott, 28, who lives in Columbia and came out on a wintry Saturday afternoon bundled in a flower hat to help her friend Lee Pera with a tiny-house raising.

    Pera, 35, wore safety goggles as she treated the cedar boards of her “little house in the alleyway,” one of three under construction in what is thought to be one of the country’s first tiny-house model communities.

    If these affordable homes — which maximize every inch of interior space and look a little like well-constructed playhouses — are the dream, they represent a radically fresh version of what it takes to make Americans happy.

    Yeah, you can imagine what the Post would be saying about these people building tiny houses if there was a Republican President. But, not a peep about the White House being unable to resurrect the economy, just this;

    Although the diminutive homes are made of high-quality materials, they are priced for a flagging economy. They sell for $20,000 to $50,000, less than the down payment on a two-bedroom condo in a trendy D.C. neighborhood.

    A “flagging economy” is all they squeeze out of their Thesaurus. By the way, that $50k price tag is more than half of what I paid for this three bedroom house on 5 acres, so enjoy yourselves down there with your doll-house sized home in the city that I recently abandoned.

  • Ricks on Fox

    Oops, I forgot to thank Valerie for the link.

    Yesterday, Washington Post’s Thomas Ricks was on Fox News to talk about the deaths of four Americans at the Benghazi consulate, but instead he decided to make his appearance about the only network who has had the testicular fortitude to report to Americans about those deaths and the circumstances that resulted in those deaths.

    The UK’s Daily Mail says that Rick’s appearance was cut short because of his verbal attacks on Fox News, the network he was on;

    Ricks, a respected journalist who has won two Pulitzer Prizes, responded that few people knew how many U.S. security contractors were killed in Iraq and compared that to the attention paid to ‘what was essentially a small firefight’ in Libya.

    ‘I think that the emphasis on Benghazi has been extremely political, partly because Fox was operating as a wing of the Republican Party,’ Ricks said.

    Yeah, given the current crop of Pulitzer awardees, I don’t think that gives him much credibility. During the interview, Ricks says that he’s “covered” numerous firefights. What he fails to mention is that he’s covered those firefights after they were over and from afar – he’s never heard a shot fired in anger. As I pointed out once before, Ricks has absolutely no military experience beyond his reportage. He’s so inexperienced that he has called for the return of a draft. He once put Kayla Williams’ book “Love My Rifle More Than You”, a book based on her experiences as a promiscuous female soldier, on the same level as David Belavia’s House to House.

    Says Fox News;

    ‘When Mr. Ricks ignored the anchor’s question, it became clear that his goal was to bring attention to himself and his book,’ Fox News executive Michael Clemente said.

    There have been a few times that my participation in an interview was abbreviated when it was clear to the interviewer that I wasn’t going to say what they wanted me to say. So, it’s not a rare practice. But, then, I never attacked the network I was on as a wing of any particular party.

    If Ricks had any respect for the profession of journalism, such as is it these days, he’d recognize that Fox News is informing the public, and just because that reportage makes Ricks’ political party uncomfortable, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s biased. Wasn’t it Hillary Clinton who said that Fox was the fairest of the networks when they were covering the 2008 Democrat primaries?

    Ricks also makes a quixotic comparison of the contractors killed in Iraq to the four Americans killed in Benghazi. As if one had something to do with the other. The American contractors killed in Iraq were killed in an actual war. The Americans killed in Benghazi were killed in our consulate, ostensibly US territory, not during a war. Their deaths were a result of failed security planning.

    When Ricks said “Nobody cares” about the contractors in Iraq, he’s insinuating that Fox News doesn’t care because the deaths happened under the Bush Administration. But there was a war and although tragic, they weren’t killed by any failures of security planning by the Bush Administration – and the Bush Administration didn’t try to cover up the facts surrounding the deaths. Unlike the Benghazi deaths.

    By the way, I talked to someone who works at Landstuhl Hospital in Germany this weekend where all of the casualties from Benghazi were taken and I was told they treated more than thirty casualties – something else we never heard here in our media.

    Anyway, I’m putting the video of Rick’s appearance on Fox below the jump if you’re at all interested in watching Ricks hawk his book instead of informing the public;
    (more…)

  • Panetta misleads on Afghan violence

    The Long War Journal’s Thomas Joscelyn reports that jetsetter Leon Panetta took time out last week from flying the entire Defense Department to his home in California to address those drooling morons at The Center for a New American Security and told them that the security situation in Afghanistan has improved last year and this year;

    “Violence levels, which had increased for five years, decreased in 2011, and 2012,” Panetta said.

    Joscelyn points out that while it’s true that violence in Afghanistan has decreased in 2011 and 2012, it remains higher than Enemy Initiated Attack (EIA) levels before the so-called surge. And now there are no surge troops.

    Joscelyn continues that EIAs were higher in September 2012 than it was in September 2011. He also reports that attacks against civilians are actually higher than 2010.

    I don’t suppose that the rise in the Taliban-related violence isn’t related at all to the well-publicized timetable withdrawal of surge troops. And I guess it would be inappropriate to mention that General McChrystal and the CIA both predicted this outcome if the president didn’t fully staff the command’s plan for the surge, but the President chose to placate his base and Joe Bite-Me instead. And now the same crowd is going to plan the presence of troops past the 2014 withdrawal date. But the Taliban is sure to reduce their attacks by then out of respect for us.

    But, hey, the 47% are happy with their choice.

  • WaPost defends Rice with charge of racism

    The Washington Post reaches for new lows today as their editorial staff tries to take up the fight for Susan Rice against the scores of Republican Representatives who signed a letter warning about appointing her as Hillary Clinton’s replacement as the Secretary of State.

    After attempting to make the case for her with such pointless blather as she had nothing to do with the administration’s reaction to the terrorist attack on the Benghazi consulate, so why blame her? (Um, because she was on five Sunday morning news shows spreading the party line?) And “she’s nobody’s fool” because she’s a Rhodes Scholar. So was Bill Clinton and he was impeached for lying, so it’s not like studying at Oxford teaches them not to lie.

    So, then comes the thinly veiled charge of racism;

    Could it be, as members of the Congressional Black Caucus are charging, that the signatories of the letter are targeting Ms. Rice because she is an African American woman? The signatories deny that, and we can’t know their hearts. What we do know is that more than 80 of the signatories are white males, and nearly half are from states of the former Confederacy.

    The Confederacy? Really? 147 years after the Democrat-inspired Confederacy expired? 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation? Nice. That’s all you’ve got? Racial and geographic profiling? How unenlightened and predictable. Weak sauce. Loose shit.

    On the other hand, Dana Milbank, a columnist at the Post, who it should also be revealed that he is a white male who comes from a state where anti-draft protests took place during the Civil War, lists several reasons why Rice is so unpopular in Washington, and none of them have to do with her race;

    Back when she was an assistant secretary of state during the Clinton administration, she appalled colleagues by flipping her middle finger at Richard Holbrooke during a meeting with senior staff at the State Department, according to witnesses. Colleagues talk of shouting matches and insults.

    Among those she has insulted is the woman she would replace at State. Rice was one of the first former Clinton administration officials to defect to Obama’s primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. Rice condemned Clinton’s Iraq and Iran positions, asking for an “explanation of how and why she got those critical judgments wrong.”

    […]

    It was Rice’s own shoot-first tendency that caused her to be benched as a spokesman for the Obama campaign for a time in 2008. She unnerved European allies when she denounced as “counterproductive” and “self-defeating” the U.N. policy that Iran suspend its nuclear program before talks can begin. She criticized President George W. Bush and McCain because they “insisted” on it. But, as The Post’s Glenn Kessler pointed out at the time, European diplomats were rattled by such remarks because the precondition was their idea.

    Milbanks continues in that vein. It stands in stark contrast to the Editorial Board’s cheap, tawdry and irrelevant charge of racism. Apparently, reasonable people can find plenty of reasons to oppose Rice’s appointment as Secretary of State without spending a moment talking about her race, well, unless you really can’t find any good reasons to appoint her.

  • It’s the uncertainty, stupid

    I’m not an economic genius, I’m just a middle class guy who has a knack for saving and investing for myself with a few hundred thousand bucks in my 401k, a house that I bought for cash and remodeled for about half-again as much as the purchase price with two reasonably new cars in the driveway. The extent of my economics education was one semester of Econ 101 and 57 years of living mostly in this country.

    The President called together some economics experts from academia and asked them how he could fix the economy. According to the Washington Post, they told him to forgive mortgage debt. Geitner, the tax cheat, responded; “How do we get this done through Congress?”

    Yeah, that’s the problem – getting it through Congress. Not like it adds to the uncertainty that’s already already driving this economy into the ground. Who would take any US debt instrument seriously ever again if the government forgave mortgages?

    The solution to the economic problem in this country, aside from drilling our oil and gas natural resources, is to add certainty to the economy. Employers are not hiring because there is too much guess work going forward in regards to impending tax hikes, this administration’s plan to penalize energy consumption, and their generally anti-business attitude.

    The easiest and cheapest way to fix the economy is to make the current marginal tax rates permanent – permanently, trash plans to pass the “Cap and Trade Bill”, extend the Obamacare effective date, if you won’t end it and quit trashing clean coal. Stop talking about mortgage relief. All of that might give employers a little confidence in the future of the economy so they’ll start hiring again.

    Then after you do all of that, put the Energy Department to work slicing it’s way through the red tape to get refineries and pipelines built, start drilling for our own energy resources and cut our umbilical cord to the Middle East’s oil. Let the Arabs wither on their vine and put Americans to work building the new infrastructure we’ll need to get our own energy to market with the money we’re not sending to OPEC.

    I’m no economist, but all of that is glaringly apparent to one little guy sitting on a mountain top in West Virginia, so why don’t those morons in Washington see it from their catbird seats?

  • White House refuses to give CBS pictures of the Situation Room on the night of the Benghazi attack

    COB6 sends us this link from CBS News which reports that the White House has declined to provide CBS with the photos of the Situation Room on the night of the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya which cost us four fine Americans, 3 of whom were veterans.

    CBS News first requested the images on Oct. 31. In the past, the White House has released photos showing US officials during national security incidents. A half dozen images related to the mission that captured and killed Osama bin Laden were given to the public last year. One depicts President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and members of the national security team gathered in the Situation Room on May 1, 2011.

    A White House official referred our request regarding the Benghazi attacks to the White House Photo Office. On Nov. 1, an official there indicated she would process our request quickly, but then did not respond further. Finally, this week, the White House Photo Office told CBS News it would not release any images without approval of Josh Earnest in the White House Press Office. Earnest did not respond to our telephone calls and emails.

    My guess is that the room looked something like this;

    “We have provided every bit of information that we have, and we will continue to provide information…,” the President told reporters, adding, “we will provide all the information that is available about what happened on that day…” and “I will put forward every bit of information that we have.”

    …or not. We won. COB6 says; “Could it be because someone was there who shouldn’t have been? Someone with more interest in protecting Muslims than saving Americans?

    “Or maybe Barry wasn’t there! That would actually make a little sense. A President can delegate alot of shit but he can’t delegate the order for a CBA (Cross border authority). This would explain why General Hamm’s QRF was ready in minutes but never launched.

    “But this raises even more questions. Where the hell was Barry that was more important? And the real question is who the hell is running the show? Whoever was running the show is the person who gave the Stand-down order while Americans were being killed!”

  • Panetta: New direction for terror war

    I guess the dimbulbs at the Pentagon have discovered that which we’ve discussed here over the last few years – that the US can’t just depend on withdrawal as our sole strategy in the war against terror. Probably because the public is noticing that we’re failing in Afghanistan and not because of the efforts of our troops there, but because, like Vietnam, the civilian leaders lack the political will to prosecute the war the way they should. But, they’re three years late. Anyway, the Associated Press reports on Leon Panetta’s latest theatrical proclamation on a change of strategy;

    Panetta said the evolving campaign will feature the use of small U.S. strike forces; more partnering with foreign commandos; and more training and other forms of assistance that enable partner nations to combat terrorism on their own.

    […]

    “All this sends a very simple and very powerful message to al-Qaida, to the Taliban, and to the violent extremist groups who want to regain a safe haven in Afghanistan: We are not going anywhere; our commitment to Afghanistan is long term, and you cannot wait us out,” Panetta said in a speech to the Center for a New American Security, a think tank.

    So, basically, this new strategy is just more of the old strategy, only bigger with fewer troops. I guess they’re coming to the conclusion that they understaffed the surge, and now that the surge troops have been drawn down, they find that they need more troops, but tough words will replace those troops.

    Panetta claims that they’ll “pursue” al Qaeda into Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, but it was a scant few months ago that we heard that al-Qaeda was on the ropes. So the same people who crowed that al Qaeda was dead are now getting serious about the war? Too late. Al Qaeda weren’t the only ones waiting out the 2014 date for withdrawal.

  • Obama to make Tricare better

    Jason was concerned when we reported that the Obama Administration planned on cutting a few hundred thousand veterans out of the Tricare Prime program in April, so he wrote the White House with his concerns and here’s how they responded;

    Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I have heard from many military families concerned about TRICARE, and I appreciate your perspective.

    Over the past 3 years, I have worked to address the growing cost of health care by implementing efficiencies in Government spending that will improve TRICARE and ensure military families have access to high-quality medical care. These efficiencies include the creation of virtual lifetime electronic health records that will follow service members from military to civilian life. Additionally, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, military hospitals received funding for much-needed facility improvements.

    Under the Affordable Care Act, all features of TRICARE remain in place. The law does not affect health insurance coverage received through TRICARE in any way, and the Department of Defense maintains exclusive authority over providing the highest quality care to our service members, retirees, and their families. In fact, many of the key reforms put in place by the Affordable Care Act are already common practice in TRICARE—including coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, access to preventive care services with no cost sharing, and no annual or lifetime caps on coverage. The Affordable Care Act also makes clear that those who are covered by TRICARE will meet the law’s minimum coverage provision.

    One benefit addressed by the Affordable Care Act, but not already in place under TRICARE, was allowing young adults up to age 26 to remain on their families’ health plans. As of January 2011, the Department of Defense now offers similar benefits to young adults with a parent enrolled in TRICARE through the TRICARE Young Adult program.

    TRICARE will continue to provide affordable care to over nine million service members and their families. When Americans answer the call of duty and serve in our Armed Forces, a sacred trust is forged. From day one of their enlistment through retirement, the United States must always support those who serve and have served in uniform. These men and women risked their lives to protect our freedoms, and we must do all in our power to provide them with the benefits they have earned, including comprehensive health care. For more information or assistance with TRICARE, please visit www.TRICARE.mil.

    Thank you, again, for writing.

    Sincerely,

    Barack Obama

    So, I guess that by getting rid of Tricare Prime that will make the system better somehow. Whoever wrote the letter didn’t even acknowledge that Tricare is being shut down in some western states in April. So, I guess we should stop worrying about it and start watching the squirrels instead.