The Washington Post reports today that “authorities are inching toward an agreement that would secure cooperation from the suspect in the failed Detroit airliner attack.” Inching is the operative word here. It’s been over a month now that this terrorist has been exercising his “right to remain silent.” Each day that goes by when he does not talk is an outrage.
The Post adds that “public defenders for the Nigerian student are engaged in negotiations that could result in an agreement to share more information and eventually a guilty plea, the sources said. Negotiations could still collapse before the next scheduled court date, in April, the sources said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.”
April? Negotiations “could still collapse”? Are they kidding?
What Obama officials don’t seem to understand is that the intelligence Abdulmutallab has is perishable. He was supposed to be vaporized with the plane when it exploded. As soon as al-Qaeda learned he had survived, they began shutting down e-mail accounts, bank accounts, moving and hiding operatives, and closing the intelligence trails he could lead us down. Every second, every minute, every day he did not talk resulted in lost counterterrorism opportunities. If he starts talking three months from now, that’s not good enough.
The Post also reports that Abdulmutallab “clammed up even before he was informed of his right to remain silent” and suggests this “complicates” the GOP narrative that reading him his rights cost us valuable intelligence. To the contrary, it complicates the narrative from the White House that they got all the valuable intelligence they needed from him before reading him his rights. And it makes the case stronger that coercive interrogations might have been necessary to get the information we needed from him.
The more we learn about this incident, the more outrageous the story becomes.
— Marc Thiessen’s new book is Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Fuzzy Math In The Washington Examiner
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
01/29/10 6:29 PM EST
A trade publication is reporting this afternoon that President Obama's 2011 federal budget proposal will assume receipt of billions of dollars in revenue generated from the cap-and-trade program even though that proposal appears now to be all but dead in Congress.
"The White House told Sen. John Kerry's office that the president plans to assume revenue from the controversial climate policy approach. Kerry aides said they had assurances the revenue won't be designated for issues unrelated to energy policy and combating climate change.
"Obama last year proposed in his fiscal 2010 budget that a cap-and-trade program would raise some $650 billion over 10 years via a full auction of emission credits, with the money primarily going to pay for middle-class tax cuts and development and deployment of clean energy technologies," Energy and Environment News senior reporter Darren Samuelson wrote in the publication that is subscription-only.
Obama repeated during his State of the Union address Wednesday evening his hope that Congress would pass the energy reform bill that featues as its anti-global warming centerpiece establishment of a cap-and-trade program of government credits for carbon emissions reductions that businesses would buy and sell.
The proposal's main Senate co-sponsors are Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who is chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat. A similar bill co-sponsored by Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts was approved by the House last year.
The House bill projects cap-and-trade revenues of $873 billion.
Whether it's the $650 billion projected by the Senate bill or the $873 billion of the House bill, it appears highly unlikely, to put it charitably, that either measure will make it to Obama's desk with the cap-and-trade program intact. That means Obama will be counting phantom revenue as part of his next federal budget proposal.
But then Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program has produced two million phantom jobs located in phantom zip codes in phantom congressional districts, so perhaps nobody should be surprised to see phantom revenues in a White House budget proposal.
Editorial Page Editor
01/29/10 6:29 PM EST
A trade publication is reporting this afternoon that President Obama's 2011 federal budget proposal will assume receipt of billions of dollars in revenue generated from the cap-and-trade program even though that proposal appears now to be all but dead in Congress.
"The White House told Sen. John Kerry's office that the president plans to assume revenue from the controversial climate policy approach. Kerry aides said they had assurances the revenue won't be designated for issues unrelated to energy policy and combating climate change.
"Obama last year proposed in his fiscal 2010 budget that a cap-and-trade program would raise some $650 billion over 10 years via a full auction of emission credits, with the money primarily going to pay for middle-class tax cuts and development and deployment of clean energy technologies," Energy and Environment News senior reporter Darren Samuelson wrote in the publication that is subscription-only.
Obama repeated during his State of the Union address Wednesday evening his hope that Congress would pass the energy reform bill that featues as its anti-global warming centerpiece establishment of a cap-and-trade program of government credits for carbon emissions reductions that businesses would buy and sell.
The proposal's main Senate co-sponsors are Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who is chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat. A similar bill co-sponsored by Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts was approved by the House last year.
The House bill projects cap-and-trade revenues of $873 billion.
Whether it's the $650 billion projected by the Senate bill or the $873 billion of the House bill, it appears highly unlikely, to put it charitably, that either measure will make it to Obama's desk with the cap-and-trade program intact. That means Obama will be counting phantom revenue as part of his next federal budget proposal.
But then Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program has produced two million phantom jobs located in phantom zip codes in phantom congressional districts, so perhaps nobody should be surprised to see phantom revenues in a White House budget proposal.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
On Third Thought. . .
When Obama gives the usual review of all the programs, stimulus efforts, and new entitlements he's overseeing, almost no one seems to conclude that he is simply detailing how he is going to redistribute nearly $2 trillion a year in annual borrowing. When we cut through all the soaring Great Society rhetoric, we are left with a "Gorge the Beast" strategy in which money is borrowed and given to favored constituencies before being paid back by less popular groups through higher taxes.
Given the aggregate $7-10 trillion in additional debt envisioned over the next four years, Obama may well become the greatest redistributor in U.S. history, at last addressing his 2001 lamentation about the absence of meaningful "redistributive change" in America. The only question at this point is whether Obama's gargantuan deficits are aimed primarily at lavishing constituencies with cash, or rather at making it necessary to raise taxes in a way that serves to reduce income inequality.
Given the aggregate $7-10 trillion in additional debt envisioned over the next four years, Obama may well become the greatest redistributor in U.S. history, at last addressing his 2001 lamentation about the absence of meaningful "redistributive change" in America. The only question at this point is whether Obama's gargantuan deficits are aimed primarily at lavishing constituencies with cash, or rather at making it necessary to raise taxes in a way that serves to reduce income inequality.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Barry? Time To Come In. . .
Obama the tax cutter, Obama the gas-and-oil driller, Obama the budget freezer, Obama the anti-lobbyist reformer, Obama the bipartisan healer?
This half-hearted pivoting was quite transparent: Obama made these about-faces without acknowledging that the Obama of 2010 is now and then rejecting the Obama of 2009, much less that the partisanship and bickering of the past year stemmed largely from the hubris of having both houses of Congress and an obsequious press. Instead, Obama seemed miffed that after Scott Brown’s victory he had to offer half-hearted sops.
After Obama spent 2009 ignoring jobs in order to focus on health care, he tells us that 2010 will be the year of jobs. So after a year of promiscuously talking about higher income, payroll, health-care, and inheritance taxes on “them,” Obama suddenly believes that small business is the engine of growth, and will therefore get new tax cuts and credits.
Likewise, after ignoring or negating his campaign promises about coal, gas, and nuclear power in his first year, suddenly Obama announces that we’re going to develop them!
Same with federal spending freezes. Same with ethics reform — the first general-election presidential candidate to refuse public campaign financing now deplores the weakening of McCain-Feingold.
We also heard many of Obama’s familiar rhetorical devices:
1) He trotted out the usual straw men: “I was told by some,” “Washington has been telling us,” etc. And once these awful straw men are set up, our hero Obama answers defiantly, “I don’t settle for second place!” The straw-man ploy is now stale.
2) The “I didn’t ask for” trope: Obama acts as if he bravely endures persecution on our behalf, rejects the easy path, and presses ahead on the difficult path.
3) The “they did it” trope: So when Obama talks of “lobbying” and “horse trading” on health care, apparently some right-wing nut in the Senate started buying votes at $300 million a clip? The Washington insider who has the White House and Congress blames . . . Washington!
4) The “Bush did it” trope: So Obama’s deficits are the result of Bush’s spending and weak economy — but is a relatively quiet Iraq due to Bush’s successful surge? No. Obama himself will bring the war in Iraq to a close. He did not offer one word of praise for Bush in a speech calling for unity.
5) The meaningless token: So after piling up the two largest budget deficits in U.S. history, Obama promises fiscal sobriety and spending freezes — but only in 2011, after we pile up yet another year of trillion-dollar-plus red ink.
6) The above-it-all lecturing: After blaming Bush for 30 minutes and castigating the Republicans for “just saying no to everything,” Obama lectures on Washington’s partisan bickering. And after a year of hardball Chicago politicking, a politically weakened Obama calls for bipartisanship and a new tone. That will go over really well.
7) The meaningless deadlines and promises: No speechwriter should invoke Iran and a deadline to comply on nonproliferation; no one believes Obama after the past four failed deadlines, and he should give it all a break.
8) The final hope-and-change flourishes: The emotional end of the speech, which used to set crowds afire in 2008, seemed more rote.
All in all, this was a nonchalant performance that ran for well over an hour. The president’s above-it-all cynicism, mocking, and dry humor didn’t work. The whole thing reminded me of a flat grad-school seminar with a snickering prof talking down to clueless students.
This half-hearted pivoting was quite transparent: Obama made these about-faces without acknowledging that the Obama of 2010 is now and then rejecting the Obama of 2009, much less that the partisanship and bickering of the past year stemmed largely from the hubris of having both houses of Congress and an obsequious press. Instead, Obama seemed miffed that after Scott Brown’s victory he had to offer half-hearted sops.
After Obama spent 2009 ignoring jobs in order to focus on health care, he tells us that 2010 will be the year of jobs. So after a year of promiscuously talking about higher income, payroll, health-care, and inheritance taxes on “them,” Obama suddenly believes that small business is the engine of growth, and will therefore get new tax cuts and credits.
Likewise, after ignoring or negating his campaign promises about coal, gas, and nuclear power in his first year, suddenly Obama announces that we’re going to develop them!
Same with federal spending freezes. Same with ethics reform — the first general-election presidential candidate to refuse public campaign financing now deplores the weakening of McCain-Feingold.
We also heard many of Obama’s familiar rhetorical devices:
1) He trotted out the usual straw men: “I was told by some,” “Washington has been telling us,” etc. And once these awful straw men are set up, our hero Obama answers defiantly, “I don’t settle for second place!” The straw-man ploy is now stale.
2) The “I didn’t ask for” trope: Obama acts as if he bravely endures persecution on our behalf, rejects the easy path, and presses ahead on the difficult path.
3) The “they did it” trope: So when Obama talks of “lobbying” and “horse trading” on health care, apparently some right-wing nut in the Senate started buying votes at $300 million a clip? The Washington insider who has the White House and Congress blames . . . Washington!
4) The “Bush did it” trope: So Obama’s deficits are the result of Bush’s spending and weak economy — but is a relatively quiet Iraq due to Bush’s successful surge? No. Obama himself will bring the war in Iraq to a close. He did not offer one word of praise for Bush in a speech calling for unity.
5) The meaningless token: So after piling up the two largest budget deficits in U.S. history, Obama promises fiscal sobriety and spending freezes — but only in 2011, after we pile up yet another year of trillion-dollar-plus red ink.
6) The above-it-all lecturing: After blaming Bush for 30 minutes and castigating the Republicans for “just saying no to everything,” Obama lectures on Washington’s partisan bickering. And after a year of hardball Chicago politicking, a politically weakened Obama calls for bipartisanship and a new tone. That will go over really well.
7) The meaningless deadlines and promises: No speechwriter should invoke Iran and a deadline to comply on nonproliferation; no one believes Obama after the past four failed deadlines, and he should give it all a break.
8) The final hope-and-change flourishes: The emotional end of the speech, which used to set crowds afire in 2008, seemed more rote.
All in all, this was a nonchalant performance that ran for well over an hour. The president’s above-it-all cynicism, mocking, and dry humor didn’t work. The whole thing reminded me of a flat grad-school seminar with a snickering prof talking down to clueless students.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Conservatives, Liberals & Reality
I continue to hear a lot of talk among liberals that the reason their health-care reform effort is in trouble, the reason Obama has mediocre-to-lousy approval ratings (particularly on the economy and health care), the reason Democrats are losing big races, and the reason 2010 is looking like an impending political bloodbath is essentially right-wing "misinformation campaigns."
Look, conservatives spent much of 2007 and 2008 arguing that Obama was a pleasant, charismatic man with few legislative accomplishments, no experience as a manager, few concrete results in any area where he had worked, some naïve beliefs hidden by extraordinary eloquence, and no idea of just how hard the job of the presidency is.
He underestimated the intractability of certain problems (Middle East peace), wildly overestimated the effectiveness and efficiency of government programs (stimulus spending), had a bad eye for talent (Biden, Geithner, Richardson, Daschle, Napolitano), often had bad first instincts ("I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother"), seemed to trust those who didn't deserve it (Iran), and had sailed along in the world of politics because up until now, everyone was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Throughout that time, a large percentage of the American people rejected that argument. "He seems to know what he's doing. His campaign was a well-run ship. Look at that calm temperment. He was editor of Harvard Law Review. He'll be fine, and he'll probably be great," they concluded.
From 2007 to now, the arguments of the Right haven't changed; what has changed is that now the evidence to support the Right's initial perception — collected by watching this president in action — is becoming more and more compelling by the day.
Look, conservatives spent much of 2007 and 2008 arguing that Obama was a pleasant, charismatic man with few legislative accomplishments, no experience as a manager, few concrete results in any area where he had worked, some naïve beliefs hidden by extraordinary eloquence, and no idea of just how hard the job of the presidency is.
He underestimated the intractability of certain problems (Middle East peace), wildly overestimated the effectiveness and efficiency of government programs (stimulus spending), had a bad eye for talent (Biden, Geithner, Richardson, Daschle, Napolitano), often had bad first instincts ("I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother"), seemed to trust those who didn't deserve it (Iran), and had sailed along in the world of politics because up until now, everyone was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Throughout that time, a large percentage of the American people rejected that argument. "He seems to know what he's doing. His campaign was a well-run ship. Look at that calm temperment. He was editor of Harvard Law Review. He'll be fine, and he'll probably be great," they concluded.
From 2007 to now, the arguments of the Right haven't changed; what has changed is that now the evidence to support the Right's initial perception — collected by watching this president in action — is becoming more and more compelling by the day.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Barack & Buyer's Remorse
Many saw Obama's polls dropping for a variety of reasons, and can anticipate what's next.
People took the candidate at his word of bipartisanship, fiscal seriousness, and centrism, and from day one got instead shady Cabinet nominations of tax cheats and lobbyists, indifference to congressional corruption as symbolized by Rangel and Dodd, a whiny monotony of "Bush did it" for a year, a 1,000-page health-care monstrosity, fiscal insanity, serial appeasement of enemies with conscious neglect of old allies, and on and on.
No hope, less change.
And when the polls showed that almost the entire Obama agenda — more stimuli, more new government programs, statist health care, cap and trade to come, no gas/oil/nuclear promotion, apologetic foreign policy, "comprehensive" immigration reform as envisioned by the La Razistas — was unpopular and polling poorly, congressional Democrats, for much of the summer and fall, sighed something like, "Oh, no matter, the rock-star president's ratings are still untouchable and he can come in here and by osmosis put me over the top."
But not now.
The former celebrity Obama has lost that luster, point-by-point over a year, bleeding by a thousand small cuts until he nears 40 percent approval.
In themselves, the bad jokes like the flippant remark about the Special Olympics, the lunatic appointments like Anita Dunn and Van Jones, the serial untruths about airing the health-care debate on C-SPAN or shunning lobbyists, the phony deadlines on Gitmo and the Iranians, the bribing of senators with hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayers' funds, the bowing, the snubbing of the British, the use of the race card against tea-party critics, the Skip Gates mess, the Orwellian NEA business, constant fluff photos ops, but rare real press conferences — all that in the aggregate brought Obama to his present state.
And now the question is not whether the president's charisma can save his unpopular agenda, but rather whether the president's growing unpopularity makes things even worse. This takes place, of course, in a landscape of 10 percent unemployment, a nearly $2 trillion debt, and rising energy prices. Somehow more deficits and subsidized wind and solar won't be winning issues.
An obvious prediction: The upcoming show trial of KSM, cap and trade, and amnesty are not winning issues — and will have to be Gitmoized or they will threaten to destroy the Democrat party for years.
Finally, how ironic — Obama was elected as a reaction to Bush's mistakes of deficit spending and big-ticket new entitlements that nullified his otherwise effective anti-terrorism war; instead, he took what people liked about Bush and ridiculed them, while trumping Bush's spending that had turned so many off.
People took the candidate at his word of bipartisanship, fiscal seriousness, and centrism, and from day one got instead shady Cabinet nominations of tax cheats and lobbyists, indifference to congressional corruption as symbolized by Rangel and Dodd, a whiny monotony of "Bush did it" for a year, a 1,000-page health-care monstrosity, fiscal insanity, serial appeasement of enemies with conscious neglect of old allies, and on and on.
No hope, less change.
And when the polls showed that almost the entire Obama agenda — more stimuli, more new government programs, statist health care, cap and trade to come, no gas/oil/nuclear promotion, apologetic foreign policy, "comprehensive" immigration reform as envisioned by the La Razistas — was unpopular and polling poorly, congressional Democrats, for much of the summer and fall, sighed something like, "Oh, no matter, the rock-star president's ratings are still untouchable and he can come in here and by osmosis put me over the top."
But not now.
The former celebrity Obama has lost that luster, point-by-point over a year, bleeding by a thousand small cuts until he nears 40 percent approval.
In themselves, the bad jokes like the flippant remark about the Special Olympics, the lunatic appointments like Anita Dunn and Van Jones, the serial untruths about airing the health-care debate on C-SPAN or shunning lobbyists, the phony deadlines on Gitmo and the Iranians, the bribing of senators with hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayers' funds, the bowing, the snubbing of the British, the use of the race card against tea-party critics, the Skip Gates mess, the Orwellian NEA business, constant fluff photos ops, but rare real press conferences — all that in the aggregate brought Obama to his present state.
And now the question is not whether the president's charisma can save his unpopular agenda, but rather whether the president's growing unpopularity makes things even worse. This takes place, of course, in a landscape of 10 percent unemployment, a nearly $2 trillion debt, and rising energy prices. Somehow more deficits and subsidized wind and solar won't be winning issues.
An obvious prediction: The upcoming show trial of KSM, cap and trade, and amnesty are not winning issues — and will have to be Gitmoized or they will threaten to destroy the Democrat party for years.
Finally, how ironic — Obama was elected as a reaction to Bush's mistakes of deficit spending and big-ticket new entitlements that nullified his otherwise effective anti-terrorism war; instead, he took what people liked about Bush and ridiculed them, while trumping Bush's spending that had turned so many off.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Obama Does Club Gitmo
Among President Obama’s quite strange statements about the foiled Christmas Day bombing attempt, the strangest of all were his comments about Guantanamo Bay.
After declaring that he will not release any more detainees back home to Yemen, Obama reiterated his intention to close Guantanamo. Indeed, he claimed that the detention center was a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda (and thus indirectly may have been a prompt for the likes of Mutallab?). This is quite silly and raises a number of embarrassing questions:
Did a nonexistent Guantanamo terrorist detention center encourage al-Qaeda’s attacks all through the 1990s that culminated in 9/11? If Guantanamo serves no useful purpose other than to encourage the enemy’s efforts at recruitment, why has Obama kept it open for a year — and why is he not likely to close it for another year? Why not simply close it now?
If Obama is really looking to identify the conditions that might have created a landscape for renewed attempts to harm the U.S. (there have been more terrorist attempts in 2009 than at any time since 9/11), he might consider his own administration’s rhetoric over the past year.
Describing anti-terrorism efforts as “overseas contingency operations” aimed at “man-made disasters”; making references to a litany of American sins; confessing to underappreciation of pseudo-Islamic accomplishments like the printing press and the foundations of the Renaissance and Enlightenment; constantly trashing a prior American president — all of this has fostered the impression abroad that America no longer sees radical Islamic terrorists as an existential threat.
If I were an Islamic terrorist, I would conclude that the present administration simply has lost interest in fighting, and that the time is ripe for a counterattack. At some point, we need an end to the three-year “Bush did it” whining by candidate and now President Obama, and a redirection of such animus and pique toward our real enemies.
After declaring that he will not release any more detainees back home to Yemen, Obama reiterated his intention to close Guantanamo. Indeed, he claimed that the detention center was a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda (and thus indirectly may have been a prompt for the likes of Mutallab?). This is quite silly and raises a number of embarrassing questions:
Did a nonexistent Guantanamo terrorist detention center encourage al-Qaeda’s attacks all through the 1990s that culminated in 9/11? If Guantanamo serves no useful purpose other than to encourage the enemy’s efforts at recruitment, why has Obama kept it open for a year — and why is he not likely to close it for another year? Why not simply close it now?
If Obama is really looking to identify the conditions that might have created a landscape for renewed attempts to harm the U.S. (there have been more terrorist attempts in 2009 than at any time since 9/11), he might consider his own administration’s rhetoric over the past year.
Describing anti-terrorism efforts as “overseas contingency operations” aimed at “man-made disasters”; making references to a litany of American sins; confessing to underappreciation of pseudo-Islamic accomplishments like the printing press and the foundations of the Renaissance and Enlightenment; constantly trashing a prior American president — all of this has fostered the impression abroad that America no longer sees radical Islamic terrorists as an existential threat.
If I were an Islamic terrorist, I would conclude that the present administration simply has lost interest in fighting, and that the time is ripe for a counterattack. At some point, we need an end to the three-year “Bush did it” whining by candidate and now President Obama, and a redirection of such animus and pique toward our real enemies.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Thank You For Calling, Joan
Over at Salon.com, Joan Walsh kicks off the New Year with a revival of our favorite self-pitying talking points from the soy-'n'-socialism set: Liberals lose out in politics because they are too:
1. nice;
2. honest;
3. pure;
4. loving;
5. decent.
Yeah, tell that to a Charlie Rangel, Barney Frank or a Chris Dodd. Tell it to Bill Clinton. Tell it to the ghost of any of the Kennedys or LBJ. Tell it to Joan Walsh, for that matter, editor of "petrified chimp" hit pieces.
Too pure is not the elected liberals' problem; too squirelly is.
1. nice;
2. honest;
3. pure;
4. loving;
5. decent.
Yeah, tell that to a Charlie Rangel, Barney Frank or a Chris Dodd. Tell it to Bill Clinton. Tell it to the ghost of any of the Kennedys or LBJ. Tell it to Joan Walsh, for that matter, editor of "petrified chimp" hit pieces.
Too pure is not the elected liberals' problem; too squirelly is.
Top 10 Cable Shows Of 2009
TVNewser has the list. Here's the top ten:
1. The O'Reilly Factor - 3.34M
2. Hannity - 2.51M
3. Glenn Beck - 2.32M
4. Special Report - 2.04M
5. On The Record - 1.97M
6. The Fox Report - 1.88M
7. O'Reilly Factor (11pm Rpt) - 1.51M
8. Your World - 1.48M
9. Americas Newsroom - 1.43M
10. Studio B - 1.21M
Do you detect a pattern?
1. The O'Reilly Factor - 3.34M
2. Hannity - 2.51M
3. Glenn Beck - 2.32M
4. Special Report - 2.04M
5. On The Record - 1.97M
6. The Fox Report - 1.88M
7. O'Reilly Factor (11pm Rpt) - 1.51M
8. Your World - 1.48M
9. Americas Newsroom - 1.43M
10. Studio B - 1.21M
Do you detect a pattern?
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