Obama's Dog Day Week

 

We had several ranch dogs in my life.  These were working dogs, used mainly as sheep dogs to help us herd and corral sheep.  They loved the work but even more they loved riding in the truck.  As soon as we would come out of the ranch house or the house in town the dogs would jump in the back of the truck, even though this would often mean having to endure 75 to 80 mile per hour wind speeds as we drove to the ranch turnoff.  The dogs actually seemed to like the wind, they would stand on the spare tire in the bed to look over the roof.  Granted it wasn't a twelve hour trip but I never thought I was being mean or cruel to the dogs by making them ride in the back just like I never felt my dad was being mean or cruel to me and the other hands by making us ride back there or by me making my sons do the same when I became boss.

It wasn't a very good week for Obama starting with the latest salvo in the "war on dogs" that Diane Sawyer fired during an interview on ABC Nightly News.  Among all the things discussed in the interview like jobs and the economy the MSM of course focused on what America is most concerned about: Seamus the dog.  If you haven't heard the story Romney used to put Seamus in a dog carrier strapped to the roof of the family station wagon and for some reason people think this was akin to Clark Griswald tying Aunt Edna's dog Dinky to the bumper of the car.  Like our dogs Seamus enjoyed being up there and the carrier had a wind barrier but for some reason this has become a campaign issue.  The reason of course is distraction; worry about the way Romney treated his dog instead of worrying about how you're going to fill up the family car.

The meme backfired however because the MSM is no longer the only game in town.  A reader of the Daily Caller tipped off Jim Treacher about Obama's past culinary delights that he highlighted in Dreams from My Father. 

“With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy)."

 Treacher then got on Twitter and the story exploded.  The left no longer controls the information highway and the ability to shape and control the American public through the fifth column is now a thing of the past.  Obama can joke all he wants about eating dog, as he did last night at the White House Correspondents' dinner, but the dog war is over.

Then on the heels of the anniversary of  Osama sleeping with the fishes Obama decides to launch an ad congratulating himself on the great courageous decision to kill Bin Laden.  Critics immediately pointed out the oddity of having Bill Clinton  narrate the ad. seeing that he himself decided not to get Osama when he was handed him on a silver platter.  Sudanese defense minister Maj. Gen. Elfatih Erwa offered to give bin Laden to the United States.  Because the left won't deal with terrorist as enemy combatants but rather as criminals Clinton felt that we didn't have a strong criminal case against Osama that would hold up in court.  It was also odd using Bill Clinton because Hillary Clinton had been criticized by Obama of using Bin Laden to "score political points" in 2008.  However no one would have said much of Obama cheer leading a decision that any president would have made, (Romney said even Jimmy Carter would have), had he not inferred that Romney wouldn't have had the guts to do the same.  Obama's campaigned quoted Romney saying "It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.".  Forget that "moving heaven and earth" to get Osama and green lighting a single mission to get Osama are incredibly different.  Forget that killing Osama didn't make the US a whole lot safer from terrorists.  Focus instead on what happened not long after the ad came out.  


A memo from then CIA head Leon Panetta has come out and made it's way all over the internet even as it's been mainly ignored by the MSM. 

Received phone call from Tom Donilon who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The decision is to proceed with the assault.

The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McRaven at approximately 10:45 am.

The gutsy call by Obama was tempered by a classic CYA move to enable Obama to lay the blame on Admiral McRaven had anything gone wrong.  The President made the right decision to get Osama.  He made the right decision to put the SEALs in harm’s way in order to get a wealth of intel rather than just killing Osama with a drone missile.  However his cheer leading after the attack no doubt made that intel worth less and his cheer leading now ignores the fact that had we not used enhanced interrogations that Obama denounced we would not have found him.  That fact has been brought home by a new book by the former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service Jose Rodriguez.

So Obama's efforts last week were mainly diluted because we no longer get our news filtered through the liberal press.  No longer do the Dan Rathers and the thirty second sound bites from the nightly news networks get to shape the narrative.  We live in a new era where the truth is easily available to anyone paying attention.

Eating Poor Without Eating Poorly

Ed Schultz at MSNBC has decided to label Sean Hannity The Most Out Of Touch Man In America.  The reason is Sean can't understand why there are Americans going to bed hungry in a land with so much opportunity and abundance.  A caller said it was impossible to have a healthy diet on food stamps.  Sean thinks you can eat a healthy diet with little money and with food stamps you can eat quite well.  That has the left in a frenzy.  Problem is he's right.

First off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, food stamps, was meant to supplement a diet not constitute the entire food budget.  Also according to a study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association eating healthier is actually cheaper.  Under the food stamp president 44.7 million people, up 33% since he took office, were on food stamps last year.  If you are poor you are on food stamps or else you're mentally challenged or homeless.  If you have kids they qualify for free school lunches five days a week in the summer and during school they get breakfast too.  (My wife is a teacher and she says at her school the kids have to get a breakfast tray even if they ate breakfast at home, taxpayer money is going strait to the trash.)  If your kids go to bed hungry you are a negligent parent.

The Blogmacracy has a thread on the new assault on family farms and ranches by Obama's Department of Labor. Once the family farm is gone they can hammer agriculture like they do every other big business; drug companies, oil, coal, etc. Don’t forget meat production, especially cattle farts, causes global warming climate change. Food prices are already rising, it will only get worse. This will be extremely destabilizing globally, the Arab spring grew out of food riots.  As food prices rise so will the number of people dependent on food stamps and so will the amount given to families.  All Americans will need to learn how to eat cheap. 

Even if you are feeding a family of four entirely on food stamps it can easily be done.  Here some chefs have a menu that is heavy on meat, usually the priciest item on the menu, that will accomplish that goal.  Replace the meat with vegetable protein and you can save even more.  Hannity mentioned a rice and bean diet that a buddy of his ate that provided a good chunk of the nutrients he needed.  We used to live off beans on the ranch, we would cook a big pot and refrigerate or freeze what we didn't eat and have food for a week.  Americans have been living on squash, corn and beans for 10.000 years.  The beans are planted between the corn stalks and provide nitrogen, squash is planted between the rows to control weeds.  Vegetables are the easiest things in the world to grow and can provide almost every nutrient needed.  You don't need a whole lot of ground to plant either, one tomato plant in a pot can provide more than you can eat.  Even a small backyard garden can provide an abundance of food.  Get on the internet, if you don't have a computer most libraries do, and you can find tons of info on how to eat cheap.  And I haven't even mentioned Ramen Noodles.    

Angry Lib

There was an Angry Liberal, we'll call him Al, on Hannity today praising the auto bailouts, screaming about the "truth" that this was a great investment for America that saved millions, (yes he said millions), of jobs.  Sean was trying to explain how bankruptcies work but the guy would have none of it, he had his facts and wasn't about to hear anything else. 

Of course his facts were false beginning with the "fact" that the bailout money had been paid back.  No doubt Al was taken in by former GM chief executive Edward Whitacre's statement that "G.M. is able to repay the taxpayers in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu and Buick LaCrosse,”   G.M had taken $6.7 billion in loans to the U.S. and supposedly paid back $4.7 billion.  That's still short $2 billion by my math but let's overlook that detail for a moment.  The $4.7 billion that G.M. paid back was taken from a line of credit G.M. had with the Troubled Asset Relief Program, (T.A.R.P.), so in effect they borrowed money from taxpayers to pay the taxpayers.

I haven't forgotten what happened to Chrysler bond holders in the bailout either, many of whom were average Americans with I.R.A.s or 401Ks.  Bondholders were forced to take 29 cents on the dollar, a 71% loss on their bonds but the United Auto Workers got equity in the company and Chrysler still has to pay the full amount owed to the UAW's Retiree Medical Benefit's Trust.  That's ironic since what put these companies into bankruptcy in the first place was the huge union pensions that they are encumbered with.

What Sean didn't get a chance to tell Al was that bankruptcy courts exist to enable a company to restructure its debts and other obligations fairly.  When Obama stepped in and screwed bondholders while the UAW made out like the bandits they are he was doing what his administration does best, picking winners and loosers then saying that capitalism just doesn't work. 

BTW Al the CBO estimates that the total loss from the bailout will end up being $20 billion.  Only a liberal could consider that a good investment.  Had we done nothing other businesses would have come in and picked up these companies cheap, after they had ridden themselves of the unsustainable burdens imposed by union contracts agreed to by CEOs who knew they wouldn't be around when the bill came due.  FIAT wound up owning Chrysler anyway.