I am Aaron Walker

Michelle Malkin has the history of blogger Aaron Walker who was arrested for blogging in an ongoing fight with convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin.  Kimberlin got leftist judge Cornelius Vaughey to put out a warrant for Walker for blogging about the cyber-terrorist.  Kimberlin, aka the Speedway Bomber, used his time in prison to get a law degree that he uses as a weapon against conservative bloggers.  By any definition Kimberlin is a public figure but he was able to get Judge Vaughey to arrest Walker for blogging about Kimberlin and his fellow terrorists at Breitbart Unmasked.  One terror tactic used by the bunch is called SWATing where the group makes 911 phone calls that appear to come from the victim's home phone reporting a violent crime in progress.  Often times this will result in heavily armed SWAT teams responding to the victims home.  Patrick Frey who blogs at Petterico's Pontifications and RedState editor Erick Erickson have both been victims.  These sick attacks on free speech have been largely ignored by the MSM but may finally be coming to light.  I hadn't any idea about any of this until I saw a link to Michelle Malkin's post that darkwords posted at The Blogmocracy last night.

You can help the victims here.  Michelle has a list of other things you can do.



 

Obama crows, Intel goes.

Al-Qaeda second-in-command Abu Yahya al-Libi has been killed in Pakistan by a drone attack according to U.S. officials. The charismatic media savvy al-Libi has been highly effective in recruiting homegrown terrorists to the jihad cause.  While the official policy of the U.S. is to not publicly discuss details of drone attacks in Pakistan exceptions are always made when the news is good despite damage to Pakistani-American relations.  In fact no secret is too secret when it comes to crowing about Obama's achievements in the war on terror overseas contingency operations.

Probably the worst Obama administration leak in terms of damaging U.S. intelligence was when they wanted everyone to know they had discovered a new underwear bomb.  We had a would-be bomber on the inside that the administration burned.  Aside from blowing an extremely valuable operative's cover they disclosed methodology that would make putting in new operatives far more difficult.  It also sent a message to anyone who might think of helping the U.S., your life is not worth a minute of positive press for Obama.  That is a hard lesson that Dr. Shakil Afridi learned after being sentenced to 33 years in prison for helping Obama get Osama bin Laden.  Given the treasure trove of intel we got from that raid one wonders why we even admitted we had killed him but rather than reap the fruits of that intel we compromised most of it so Obama could run to the MSM and yell "I got him".  However narcissistic there was at least some logic in that but I can not conceive any reason why the administration  had to out SEAL Team Six.

Not all leaks are designed to further Obama's re-election.  Some are meant to damage our allies like when Obama leaked Israel's strike plan on Iran and confirmed that it was Israel who was helping kill Iranian nuclear scientists.  Some times it accomplishes both like when we recently learned that the U.S. did develop Stuxnet with help from Israel.  Sometimes info is made to discredit prior administrations like when Obama was going to release more Abu Ghraib photos.  Eventually he recanted under a deluge of criticism that opening up old wounds and putting our soldiers lives at risk wasn't worth a cheap shot at Bush.  Same thing when Holder published detailed memos describing the interrogation techniques used by the CIA.  (Hat tip Lizzy!).  Obama promised he wouldn't prosecute CIA agents involved just before going after the former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service Jose Rodriguez, someone who could keep secrets.

I'm glad that al-Libi and Osama are dead.  I'm glad that Obama is hypocritical enough to continue Bush's tactics in fighting Islamist terrorists such as renditions, indefinite detention, and keeping Gitmo open,  despite his criticisms of those tactics prior to becoming President.  In fact, he has gone further, incorporating things that make even me uncomfortable like assassinating American citizens.  Nevertheless I don't need to hear details every time these tactics are successful, lets keep the enemy guessing, not let them know they have been compromised, and not confirm what they might think  Especially when the only result is a photo op for The One.

 

Update:  The White House has denied any involvement in the leaks calling such allegations "grossly irresponsible."  We will see, the FBI has launched an investigation to look into the Stuxnet leaks.  This comes on the heals of a joint statement Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence Committees:

"These disclosures have seriously interfered with ongoing intelligence programs and have put at jeopardy our intelligence capability to act in the future. Each disclosure puts American lives at risk, makes it more difficult to recruit assets, strains the trust of our partners and threatens imminent and irreparable damage to our national security in the face of urgent and rapidly adapting threats worldwide."

Capitalists Pigs vs Socialist PIIGS

 

The problem with business today is that it's all about making money.  At least that seems to be the view of Obama and much of the left.  As we knew he would Obama has rehashed the attack on Bain Capitol that so enraged conservatives when Gingrich did it.

With Romney and Bain Capital the objective was to make money.

Really?

Those guys were all rich, they all had more money than they will ever spend, yet they didn't have the money to take care of the very people who made the money for them.

This is a stark contrast on two totally different views on what the function of business is.  Obama  recently said in his defense of this attack that maximizing profits is "not always going to be good for communities or businesses or workers,"  According to this view a company should exist to benefit the proletariat and if the bourgeoisie loose money in the process then that is to the common good, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.  Romney had the money and the workers needed their jobs and benefits.  Or in simpler terms, spread the wealth. 

I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message. 

We saw this attitude play out when Obama stepped in to the Chrysler bailout.  Bourgeoisie bond holders in the bailout, many of whom were average Americans with I.R.A.s or 401Ks, were forced to take 29 cents on the dollar, a 71% loss on their investments, but the proletariat 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 the biggest factor that put Chrysler into bankruptcy was the huge union pensions that they are encumbered with.  Those are encumbrances that could have been removed through bankruptcy.

Transition to this weekend when Greece will decide if they should abandoning the euro and reintroduce its own currency.  Greece is the most socialist of the PIIGS; Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain, the group of countries that are dragging down the E.U. because of massive deficit spending.  The E.U. is racing towards a breakdown rivaling the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the last failed spread the wealth conglomerate.  Europe’s banks are facing a wave of losses if Greece abandons the euro.  Should Greece default, which will be decided by the voters in June, confidence in the rest of the PIIGS ability to repay their $1.19-trillion U.S. dollars of debt will plummet.  This is the model that Obama wants the United States to embrace at the same time that Europe is about to descend into chaos.  To add to that chaos France has just decided to become a member of the PIIGS with its election of a socialist as head of the Senate.  Jean-Pierre Bel has pledged to increase stimulus spending and raise taxes on the rich.  Sound familiar?

One doesn't have to travel to Europe to see the effects of socialism on economic conditions, there are plenty of examples here at home.  A look at states run by conservatives verses states run by liberals shows a stark contrasts between the economic health under each philosophy.  Generally the bluer a state is, the worse its financial and economic numbers are.  The number one blue state is California.  California is the worst state to do business in and therefore business activity is contracting resulting in lower revenues.  High taxes and intrusive government policies are also driving productive individuals away, California is the number one looser of people to other states, followed by New York, Illinois, and Michigan, all blue.  The one blue state that actually gained a congressional seat in the recent Census was Washington which has no income tax.  Standard and Poors credit ratings for the 50 states has California and Illinois as the only ones lower than AA and of the AAA rated states only 4 are blue, 1 purple, and 9 red.  You might think that the state with the best economic health is Texas, but North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, and Iowa all have their champions for the number one position.  All are red states.  Of the nine major cities with the most underfunded pensions 7 are blue and two are purple.  

Failure is supposed to be a risk of our capitalist system.  Bad companies need to fail, that’s how good companies are rewarded.  Bain would buy companies that were already failing and try and make them competitive again so one would expect a high rate of failure.  However of 77 companies that Bain was involved in only 17 filed for bankruptcy protection, only 5 of those were still controlled by Bain at the time of the filing.  Romney had been gone two years before GST Steel went under. (Although Jonathan Lavine, a top Obama bundler, was still a managing director.)  Bain used its own money in gambling on those companies, Obama on the other hand is using taxpayer money to bet on green energy companies, 80% of which went to Obama backers.  So how is Obama's record compared to Bain's?  Heritage Action for America has a rundown.

For those who only hear about these failing companies one by one, the following is a list of all the clean energy companies supported by President Obama’s stimulus that are now failing or have filed for bankruptcy. The liberal media hopes you’ve forgotten about all of them except Solyndra, but we haven’t.

• Evergreen Solar
• SpectraWatt
• Solyndra (received $535 million)
• Beacon Power (received $43 million)
• AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy
• Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million)
• SunPower (received $1.5 billion)
• First Solar (received $1.46 billion)
•  Babcock & Brown (an Australian company which received $178 million)
• Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million)
• Amonix (received 5.9 million)
• The National Renewable Energy Lab
• Fisker Automotive
• Abound Solar (received $400 million)
• Chevy Volt (taxpayers basically own GM)
• Solar Trust of America
• A123 Systems (received $279 million)
• Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (received $6 million)
• Johnson Controls (received $299 million)
• Schneider Electric (received $86 million)

That's not a complete list, there are ten updates in the article.  While these companies were going under their executives were  receiving huge cash bonuses.

What's Obama's record on firing people?  Remember how Obama's auto task force pressed General Motors and Chrysler to close scores of dealerships?  In an audit of the process special inspector general for TARP Neil M. Barofsky states:

“It is not at all clear that the greatly accelerated pace of the dealership closings during one of the most severe economic downturns in our nation’s history was either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the nation’s economic recovery,”

Obama is the first president I can remember to ever attack capitalism in such a way, maybe the first in history.  It’s a tactic that plays well with his socialist base but I doubt many independents are comfortable with such a stance.  Even some staunch Democrats are uncomfortable with it. Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, Steven Rattner, Obama's former "car czar," and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, have come out against the unfair attack.  (Booker got sent to the woodshed and had to make a humiliating mea culpa.)

Marxists/Socialists/Communists for Obama

Obama, gay marriage, and black voter turnout.

The conventional wisdom is that Obama can't loose the Black vote short of being exposed as a Klan member.  However one must ask how important were Black churches in mobilizing Black voters to get out and vote for Barry?  Many of Obama's most fervent leftest supporters are less than enthusiastic about Obama this go round.  The anti-war crowd are not happy about the war for oil in Libya.  The anti-torture crowd are not happy that Club Gitmo remains open and that renditions to countries that will torture, and we are talking about real torture, not what my son and I went through, continue.  The screw the rich crowd, occupy wall street crowd, and the anti-private equity firm crowd , are not happy that Obama hosted a $35,800-a-head fundraiser at the home of the president of the nation’s largest private equity firm and has taken $15.6 million from banks and other financial firms, more than twice what Romney has raised.

While those crowds may be less inclined to race to the ballot box to pull the lever for Obama Blacks have stayed solidly in Obama's corner.  However his decision to come out in support of gay marriage has alienated Blacks in a way that 16.7% Black unemployment never could.  Blacks will still vote overwhelmingly for Obama, he got 95% in 2008 compared to Kerry's 88% in 2004, but how many will turn out?  How important were Black preachers in getting out the Black vote in the last election?  Black voter turnout increased 4.9% in 2008.  Early Sunday voting was a part of that as preachers led their congregations to the polls after services.  Churches provided buses, helped with voter I.D., and were at the forefront in registering Black voters.  According to a study by  Philpot, Shaw, and McGowen efforts to get voters to the polls was a far greater factor than Obama's race in the increase in Black turnout.

According to Black Church News Obama will need a higher Black turnout this year in order to win five key states, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.  Most Black voters shrug off Obama's new stance on gay marriage thinking that he doesn't really believe what he's saying or taking the "we can agree to disagree" attitude on this issue.  Still he will loose some of that 95%.  Dr. Boyce Watkins asks: "Will churchgoing Black women choose their pastor or president?"  Some no doubt will choose Obama but not all.  The effect of Obama's owning up to his feeling regarding gay marriage on Black pastors is even greater however and their enthusiasm or lack thereof towards reelecting Obama will reverberate across the landscape.  

This is Obama's Waterloo.  He has jumped the shark.  I will predict today that barring a war with Iran Obama will loose big in November.

Update:  He won't be getting as many Jewish votes this year either:
  
The End of the Jewish Left

Update 2:  Larry Elder wonders: 

Will Gay Marriage Force Black Churches to Reconsider Democratic Party?

Update 3:  He won't get 54% of Catholic voters again either.

Catholic voters key to presidential win.

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.

Accordion rock

Obama; Job Killer

I wish during the years I was in public office I had this firsthand experience about the difficulties businesspeople face. ... We are choking off business opportunity.

That quote came from Senator George McGovern who tried to start a business after leaving office and ran into a wall of regulations he helped create.  I found the quote today in an article written by John Stossel explaining why job creators are fighting back against the demonizing of business by Obama, another policymaker who has zero business experience.  Please read it but I’ll give you the money quote:

Tom Stemberg, founder of Staples, got involved with the Job Creators Alliance because he's annoyed that the government makes a tough job much tougher.  He complains that government mostly creates jobs — that kill jobs.  "They're creating $300 million worth of jobs in the new consumer financial protection bureau," Stemberg said, "which I don't think is going to do much for productivity in America. We're creating all kinds of jobs trying to live up to Dodd-Frank ... and those jobs don't create much productivity.

I have a school principle that can’t get a loan to buy my late mom’s house because of Dodd-Frank.  He has excellent credit, a good job, but because the house is in a small town and there haven’t been enough home sales in the area to meet the appraiser’s mandated requirements for comps the banks can’t lend.  Small businesses everywhere are running into the same problem, lending to small companies is at a five year low. 

Dodd-Frank is preventing them from getting loans and thereby killing jobs.  Think about that; Congress’ response to a crisis they created is creating another crisis.  This should not be surprising; Dodd and Frank had a big hand in creating the first crises through irresponsible bank regulations.  Ronald Reagan once remarked that “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'.”   Thomas Sowell recently wrote Gridlock to the Rescue? where he shows how history proves that government intervention into the economy has always resulted in a worse outcome than doing nothing. 

Of course according to leftists if you are against government regulation then you want dirty air and dirty water.  Problem with such simplistic thinking is that regulation has long ago cleaned up most pollution problems.  Nevertheless leftist politicians continue to try and put more and more restrictions on business just to show that they are earning their salaries by eliminating imaginary threats.  Witness how Obama is trying to regulate the newest pollutant, carbon dioxide  (essential to all life and nontoxic at 100 times ambient levels),  as a back door cap and trade move that is predicted to increase energy costs by $129 billion and according to a Commerce Department analysis  would cause job losses of 40,000 to 60,000.  Obama promised to bankrupt coal and openly admitted that “electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket”.  Fewer dollars in everyone's pockets will cripple an already shaky economy causing even more job losses.  Proposed EPA regulations on 200,000 boilers and process heaters will have companies trying to measure trace amounts that are so small it will be difficult if not impossible to achieve, yet Barbra Boxer says if we don't we "will kill 8,100 more people more than would have otherwise been killed from pollution".

Obama was saying pass my jobs bill when he hadn’t even submitted one while at the same time he delayed signing free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.  He finally just signed them but since he was praising them in his 2010 State of the Union address no one can understand the year and a half delay.  Obama’s own trade website reveals that the South Korea agreement alone would create more than 60,000 jobs.  Obama has delayed the Keystone pipeline even though his own State Department has said there is no real issue about the environment that requires further investigation.  He wants to wait till after the election so as to not anger his base at the expense of 20,000 jobs and five billion dollars in property taxes that TransCanada will pay over the lifetime of the project.  He delayed a shale gas project in Ohio to study how hydraulic fracturing might contaminate groundwater despite the fact that there are no confirmed cases of groundwater contamination from fracking ever anywhere.  Groundwater contamination has occurred but not as a direct result of the process, it is the result of waste water evaporation ponds and poorly constructed pipelines taking the waste water and chemicals to processing facilities.  These are normal haz-mat concerns that every industry must monitor and control but is being used as a straw man to vilify a new energy boom that in the Marcellus Shale region alone could create 280,000 new American jobs and add $6 billion in new tax revenues.  The left always bemoans the fact that we are loosing so many jobs to China but never say why.  When a communist country has a lower corporate tax rate than the United States you know we are screwed.  The left's answer, raise those taxes more even though the United States has the fourth highest corporate tax rate in the 30-nation Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.  The Cato Institute reports:

The combined U.S. federal and average state rate of 40 percent is almost 9 percentage points higher than the average OECD top corporate rate of 31.4 percent. Only Belgium, Italy, and Japan have higher rates than that of the United States.

  As one disillusioned Obama donor recently noted:

"Businesses adding jobs" is a headline every elected official loves to read. Sadly, it's one that's getting harder and harder to find because of a policy and regulatory landscape that makes it increasingly difficult for businesses to see why and where creating new jobs makes sense.

Obamacare, the biggest job killer of all needs several posts all by itself.  With all the delayed jobs, lost jobs, and killed jobs Obama and the left have caused one might wonder how unemployment could be dropping.  Easy answer, they are cooking the books.  315,000 people who have given up looking for work and have no job are no longer counted as unemployed.

Obamacare Power Grab

 “For the power given to Congress by the Constitution does not extend to the internal regulation of the commerce of a State, (that is to say of the commerce between citizen and citizen,) which remain exclusively with its own legislature; but to its external commerce only, that is to say, its commerce with another State, or with foreign nations, or with the Indian tribes.”

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition." 

Thomas Jefferson

The idea that the commerce clause can be used as a catch all that will allow Congress total control over our lives will be challenged next year in what is arguably the most important Supreme Court decision since the founding of the Republic.  Is this hyperbole?  I don’t think so and apparently at least one congressman doesn’t either. 

Here you see Rep. Fortney “Pete” Stark (D-Calif.) at a now infamous town hall meeting being asked about slavery and constitutional limits to congress.

“I think that there are very few constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from rules that could affect your private life.”

The questioner then outlined those very parts of the Constitution that were meant to place limits on the federal government.  She then asks:

“So my question is, how can this law be constitutional? But more importantly than that, if they can do this, what can’t they?”

His answer to we the people?

“The federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country.”

 Hopefully everyone saw that clip but I replay it here because it is the foundation of Obama's and most leftists beliefs.  The government is all powerful and the people need to just let our betters tell us how to live.  For our own good, for the children.  The idea that if the government can mandate we buy health care then they can tell us to buy anything, a Chevy Volt or broccoli or whatever, was recently admitted in court.  In writing for the majority confirming the constitutionality of the Obamacare mandate Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals flatly stated that he can’t find any limit to congressional power:   (emphasis mine)

“We acknowledge some discomfort with the government’s failure to advance any clear doctrinal principles limiting congressional mandates that any American purchase any product or service in interstate commerce. But to tell the truth, those limits are not apparent to us, either because the power to require the entry into commerce is symmetrical with the power to prohibit or condition commercial behavior, or because we have not yet perceived a qualitative limitation.”

 This is no dumb congress critter saying this.  Hope you all like broccoli.

 

Obama's Gift to Iran

Iranian Military Examine Obama's Holiday Gift

I found it hard to believe that Obama chose not to destroy the drone that Iran has captured.  Surely we couldn’t locate the drone or some other impediment to protecting a highly classified strategic asset was in play.  However it seems that Obama made a deliberate decision not to target the drone for fear that Iran would consider this a hostile act.  

Iran certainly has no such qualms; they have cost the lives of countless American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan with support to the insurgents including providing the deadliest of Improvised Explosive Devises, IEDs, to the terrorists.  Recently they themselves tried to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador by attempting to blow up a D.C. restaurant.  But Obama doesn’t want to piss them off?  The only reason I can think of, aside from conspiracy theories regarding Obama’s loyalties, is that he still holds out the hope that he can negotiate Iran into giving up its nuclear ambitions.  The man is so assured of his silver tongued oratory that he even thinks that politely asking Iran to give us the drone back a day after they said they wouldn’t might actually work. “We’ll see how the Iranians respond,” Obama says. 

 

Rick Santorum recently commented on Obama's appeasement in the Middle East to which Obama responded, “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement,”.   Of course we can’t ask Osama anything because he’s dead, but Obama’s newest dumb statement highlights another of Obama’s decisions that, aside from conspiracy theories regarding Obama’s loyalties, is hard to figure out.  Osama had barely reached room temperature, or sea temperature, before the President started crowing about how he had killed him.  No thought to how that compromised the tons of intelligence the mission had captured just as no thought to how releasing the fact that we had obtained tons of intelligence compromised that very intelligence.

The man is in over his head and apparently no one around him is willing to let him know how badly.  By a vote of 100-0 the Senate passed its most stringent Iran sanctions bill to date. Obama opposed it.  Why?  Aside from conspiracy theories regarding Obama’s loyalties I just can't say.

Obama helping Al Qaeda?

Al Qaeda flag flown above Benghazi courthouse

Gaddafi certainly was no friend of America, Ronald Reagan called him the “Mad Dog of the Middle East” before dropping a bomb on his tent, but recently he was behaving himself.  Since he wasn’t an actual ally it wasn’t quite the betrayal that throwing Mubarak under the bus was when Obama decided to go to war with Libya.  Still Gaddafi did call Obama a friend and said “He is a man whose policy should be supported, and he should be assisted in implementing it in any way possible, since he is now leaning towards peace.”  Now that we have killed Gaddafi and replaced him with a Sharia government that embraces Al Qaeda what is Obama’s next move concerning Libya?  Why help them build up their military of course.

Iran War

Iran has again attacked American soil.  Remember attacking our embassy in 1979 was by international law an attack on American soil .  We did nothing.  They are killing our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and we do nothing.  They are developing a nuclear capability to "wipe out" one of our best allies in the Middle East and we do nothing.  Finally they have been caught planning a 911 type bombing right here in the U.S., as well as an assassination of an ally's ambassador, and because we foiled it we do....nothing.  What is the difference between the Al Qaeda attack on  the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001 and the attack on the Twin Towers in 2/26/1993?  After the 93 attack we did nothing.  We went at it like it was a law enforcement issue instead of an act of war.  Like we are doing with Iran today.  Well we know how that turned out then and we are doomed to repeat it now.

Fast and Furious in New Mexico

The Mayor of Columbus New Mexico Eddie Espinosa, Police Chief Angelo Vega, Village Trustee Blas Gutierez, and seven other men were arrested  March 10, 2011 for allegedly selling over 200 guns to a Mexican drug cartel.  Now that's all well and good, I hope they get very long sentences for adding fuel to an already horrific drug war being waged on both sides of the border.  If any of those guns were involved in murder those gunrunners should also face charges for those crimes.

Still I have to wonder at the hypocrisy of a Justice Department that indicts those smugglers while ignoring the fact that it's own boss, Eric Holder, is complicit in smuggling well over 1,500 guns to those same cartels.  The ATF "Fast and Furious" guns actually were used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry as well as over 200 Mexicans.

Libyans Massacring Blacks

Obama's intervention into Libya in order to prevent the massacre of civilians has resulted in a massacre of civilians.  CBS reports, on its web page at least, that Libyan rebels are indescrimently killing Black immigrant "mercenaries". 

Osama Sleeps with the Fishes

He's dead Jim. Finally, Osama has passed on! This terrorist is no more! He has ceased to be! He's expired and gone to meet his virgins! This is a late Jihadi! He's a stiff! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! If the Navy hadn't dumped him off the fantail he would be pushing up the daisies! His metabolical processes are of interest only to historians! He's hopped the twig! He's shuffled off this mortal coil! He's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This.... is an EX-AL QUEDA!

Big debate now is should we release the photos? Obama says no because it would inflame the sensibilities of the Muslim world and endanger Americans. I agree but wonder where this concern was when it came to other photos and information that encompassed the same danger but also put America in a bad light? Obama was all for the release of that intel. Those for the release say that we need to prove to the extremists that he is not only merely dead, he's really most sincerely dead.

The above photo is from the web sight Bert is Evil. Photos that place Bert at some of the most infamous events and with some of history's most infamous people prove that Bert is evil. Given today's technology what will a photo of a dead Osama prove?

Michael Uliano

Never forget.

Michael Uliano probably would have preferred to be somewhere other than at the 105th Floor of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. An options broker for Cantor Fitzgerald, Michael enjoyed his work but would rather have been an actor. Surpassing his love of the stage was his love for fishing. To his fishing lure customers on the net he was known as Artie Fishhills, a play on the word artificial because of his knack for tying fishing flies. So if he could have Mike might have been fishing and clamming off Cape Cod in his old ’73 Jeep with the Shark’s mouth grill instead of one of millions of New Yorkers reporting to duty at thousands of desks across the world’s financial nerve center.

Michael's quilt at the United in Memory Gallery.

Michael acted off Broadway and was working on a screenplay. He so loved acting that he endured the amusement of his fellow Ithaca College football players and took ballet lessons. Many of those expressing fond memories of Michael at Legacy.com remember him on the stage or the football field. As quarterback of Canton high school Mike’s Number 10 was retired. He is survived by his wife Linda Buffa, his mother Gail, and eight brothers and sisters.

Blogmocracy has a thread up today to post your experience during the attack.

Obama today agreed to commit an additional 40,000 troops

...to help fight Fox News. Jay Leno

In an attack on the press that we haven’t seen since Nixon’s “enemies” list Obama continues his war with Fox News.

“This is an administration that's getting very arrogant and slippery in its dealings with people. And if you dare to oppose them, they're going to come hard at you and they're going to cut your legs off." Karl Rove

No kidding. It’s ominous but in keeping with the attacks on the health care and insurance industry when they oppose him. When managed care provider Humana published a letter to its members warning them of potential drastic cuts to the Medicare Advantage program Centers for Medicare and Medicaid sent this order:

“As we continue our research into this issue, we are instructing you to immediately discontinue all such mailings to beneficiaries and to remove any related materials directed to Medicare enrollees from your Web sites”

When the insurance industry’s trade association released a report saying a measure in the Senate Finance Committee would produce sharp increases in premiums for millions of people who currently have insurance the Dems launched a drive in both Houses to strip the industry of its decades-old exemption from federal antitrust laws. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has come under attack even though they began with a friendly attitude towards this administration. Disagreements with Obama over the “crap and tax” legislation and on socialized medicine have put the Chamber square in the sights for punishment. These attacks against the Second Amendment rights of citizens are part and parcel of the Chicago Way and should come as no surprise to anyone who was aware of the political climate Obama came out of. Still one could only wish they would fight the war in Afghanistan with the same zeal they attack domestic opponents of Obama’s policies.

“If the Afghan government falls to the Taliban – or allows al-Qaeda to go unchallenged – that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.” March 27, 2009 Barak Obama announcing a comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan.

“I will give you a clear mission, defined goals, and the equipment and support you need to get the job done. That’s my commitment to you.” August 17, 2009 Obama’s promise to America’s armed forces speaking at the VFW.

Granted this President hasn’t had a stellar performance in fulfilling his promises, Jim Geraghty’s quip that everything he says has an expiration date has really caught on, but that promise has life and death consequences, not just to our troops but to the security and reputation of our nation. It has now been seven weeks since General McChrystal requested 40,000 additional troops be sent to Afghanistan ASAP, and the President has yet to decide whether he will listen to his handpicked General on the ground or follow the advice of military genius “Oh that Joe!” Biden. Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that Obama had not even decided when a decision would be reached. Obama has only managed to squeak McChrystal into his busy schedule a couple times and Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters Tuesday that he is working to get face time with the commander in chief.

Having turned the tide in Iraq by routing the radical Islamists there, a front Al-Qaeda’s Ayman Zawahiri said was crucial to restoration of the Caliphate; the terrorist enemies of Democracy have stepped up their efforts in Afghanistan. This makes sense because there is nowhere else to go to fight for global jihad. None the less, having won the war on one front President Obama may have decided that we should abandon it on the other; this at a time when Pakistan has finally begun to recognize that the Taliban presents more danger to its fragile Democracy than its value as a thorn to India justifies. Reacting to a Taliban breakout from the Swat region that threatened Islamabad itself as well as stepped up terror attacks the Pakistani forces have launched a major offensive against Taliban sanctuaries in South Waziristan. While pressure is being applied in Pakistan the situation presents itself for a modified hammer and anvil tactic against the Taliban forces in both regions. While there are not enough forces on either side to be a classic hammer or anvil that could crush and destroy the Taliban the Pakistanis can drive significant forces out of the region. If we could gain sufficient control of the areas they would like to flee into we could then further stress those troops into giving up or retreating into Iran. However we need to be more than a collection of isolated firebases spread out over the countryside. General McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy is designed to actually clear and hold territory and that would give us the presence and intelligence to be at least a modified anvil to deny them a safe haven.

Obama will wait till after the November elections before angering his base and probably sending some troops, a McChrystal light strategy that he will figure is the most politically expediant course. It may be too little too late. It's too bad that he will be a politicain first and Commander in Chief second but that's where we are. If he would commit to victory can anyone doubt that this military can win?

Weekend at Khamenei's

The “free” Iranian press did its best to put fears to rest today that Supreme Leader and election fraud supporter Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei is in a coma or dead. He was shown meeting with President Ahmadinejad and the President of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade. Unfortunately for those of us familiar with faux photography this is not enough and so conspiracies abound whether this is real or photoshop. First we have the photograph from the Supreme Leader’s official website.


President Wade is in the same garb that he is in when he met with Ahmadenijad in this set of pictures from the Fars News Agency.


So far so good. Enter the Fars News Agency’s story on the meeting and the picture they use.


Turns out someone screwed up because this is a picture from a meeting that occurred in 2006. So is this.

So the question for the experts out there, is the first picture legit?


In the new picture the color of the wall is lighter, Khamenei’s suit color is darker and Ahmadenijad’s is lighter. Same couch three years later and the thing on the table, a Koran?, is the same. Just to add one other point, The Islamic Republic News Agency’s story has a blank space where the photo should be. Tons of pictures from the 2006 meeting, one lousy picture for the 2009 meeting that proves he’s alive? We may be reading a lot more into this than is actually there, but there you are. They are really just going to have to trot this guy out for all to see to kill this rumor.

Hat tip to Michael Ledeen and Enduring America for the story and pics.

Update I:

A few other photos of the new meeting are up a SL's web site, I don't thing they are photoshopped. Too bad.