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January 4, 2010
Exclusive – Oval Office Watch – Monday, January 4
President Obama’s weekly address HERE
A Smoking Gun Dot In President’s Report On Flight 253 Intel Failures - HERE.
Obama Got Pre-Christmas Intelligence Briefing About Terror Threats to "Homeland" - CLICK HERE.
Obama Quietly Changes U.S. Immigration Policy - Will this make us safer? SEE HERE.
War? What War? The Obama administration refuses to admit that we are at war.
Charles Krauthammer, NRO.com
Janet Napolitano — former Arizona governor, now overmatched secretary of homeland security — will forever be remembered for having said of the attempt to bring down an airliner over Detroit: “The system worked.” The attacker’s concerned father had warned U.S. authorities about his son’s jihadist tendencies. The would-be bomber paid cash and checked no luggage on a transoceanic flight. He was nonetheless allowed to fly, and would have killed 288 people in the air alone, save for a faulty detonator and quick actions by a few passengers.
Heck of a job, Brownie.
The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration’s response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism “man-caused disasters.” Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management.
And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term “war on terror.” It’s over — that is, if it ever existed.
Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term “asymmetric warfare.”
And produces linguistic — and logical — oddities that littered Obama’s public pronouncements following the Christmas Day attack. Read article.
Cheney: Obama pretending 'we are not at war'
Alexander Mooney, Worth-Reading.com
In blistering comments Wednesday, former Vice President Dick Cheney said President Obama's reaction to the botched terrorist attack on Christmas Day is proof that the president "is trying to pretend we are not at war."
In his first statement since the December 25 terror attempt on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit, Michigan, Cheney hit Obama for what he described as the president's "low-key" response to the events last week and criticized the administration's broader approach to national security.
"He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won't be at war," Cheney said. "He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won't be at war. He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won't be at war." Read article.
The Imprudent Tyranny of Harry Reid
Washington Examiner.com
"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is proving once again the maxim that darkness hates the light.
Buried in his massive amendment to the Senate version of Obamacare is Reid's anti-democratic poison pill designed to prevent any future Congress from repealing the central feature of this monstrous legislation.
Beginning on page 1,000 of the measure, Section 3403 reads in part: "... it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection."
In other words, if President Obama signs this measure into law, Reid intends that no future Senate or House will be able to change a single word of Section 3403, regardless whether future Americans or their representatives in Congress wish otherwise." Read article.
Gutierrez bill would give millions citizenship
Erin Kelly, Worth-Reading-Blog.Blogspot.com
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a leading congressional advocate for immigrants' rights, has introduced a bill that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to become U.S. citizens and would end a controversial program that enlists local police to enforce immigration laws.
The bill is widely viewed as too liberal to pass.
Obama administration officials have said they are looking instead to a more moderate, bipartisan immigration-reform bill to be introduced in the Senate early next year by Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Still, the Chicago Democrat made it clear that he and his allies expect a seat at the negotiating table as lawmakers and the White House seek middle ground on the polarizing issue.
Gutierrez's bill, endorsed by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Black Caucus and Asian Pacific American Caucus, would allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country while they apply to become legal residents or citizens. Read article.
Obama union push stymies contractors
S.A. Miller, Washington Times.com
President Obama's plan to force contractors to hire union workers for large government construction projects is proving easier said than done, confusing and costlier than expected.
It's been more than a decade since a federal project required bids that include union representation of workers, known as a "project labor agreement" or PLA, and a $100 million project to modernize the 12-story Lafayette Building that houses federal agencies is highlighting the kinks that need to be worked out.
The General Services Administration (GSA), for example, first called for PLAs to win bids to rehabilitate the Washington office complex, but earlier this month backtracked, saying the solicitation was in error and it would instead ask contractors to submit two bids, one with a PLA and one without - a highly unusual and costly requirement.
"It's crazy to try to do that. ... It is just pure confusion on their part," said Brett McMahon, vice president of business development for Miller & Long Co. Inc., the country's largest concrete subcontractor and the largest employer of construction workers in the Mid-Atlantic region.
He estimated that a general contractor would spend more than $100,000 putting together a single bid for a job of that size and submitting dual bids would increase the cost by about $75,000.
GSA officials said the dual bids were part of its effort to comply with Mr. Obama's order to use PLAs. Read article.
Taxpayer Robbery Gate
Paul Driessen, Townhall.com
Aside from ideologues, hydrocarbon haters, Gaia worshipers, profiteers and power-grabbing politicians, most of the sentient world now realizes that the hysteria over global warming disasters is based on dubious to fraudulent temperature data, analyses, models, reports and peer reviews.
Climate Research Unit emails, HARRY_READ_ME.txt computer memos, and blatant tampering with Australian, Russian, UK and US temperature data make the scandal impossible to ignore or explain away. They certainly helped Copenhagen descend into an expensive, carbon-emitting gabfest, and cause China and India to reject any deal that would force them to curtail their energy generation, economic growth and poverty reduction programs.
Senator Barbara Boxer is an exception. Not only does she ignore the obvious. She is doing her best to divert attention from the scandal, circle the alarmist wagons, cover up the fraud, obstruct justice – and ram through yet another legislative power grab.
“This isn’t Climategate,” the California Democrat insists. “It’s email theft gate.” The problem isn’t the fraud; it’s that a hacker or whistleblower revealed the fraud.
Wrong, Senator. It’s not theft gate. It’s Taxpayer Robbery Gate.
We, the taxpayers, We the people – paid for this “research.” We paid billions of dollars for it – and providing the data, computer codes and analytical methods is a condition of the employment and research grants for these scientists. The work belongs to us. We own it.
We the People, our elected representatives and our climate realist scientists have a right to examine this supposed evidence of planetary disaster, to ensure that it’s driven by science, and not ideology. That it’s complete, accurate – and honest. That it backs up the alarmist scientists’ call for draconian, life-altering restrictions on energy use. That the CRU Cabal did not alter, lose, ignore, toss or destroy “inconvenient” data and evidence that might get in the way of their agendas and predetermined results.
We need to get to the bottom of this mess. We need a full and complete investigation, by an independent, incorruptible team of knowledgeable scientists, modelers, lawyers and statisticians. We need to start over on the global warming science and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – with honest scientists who do everything in the open.
We need to bring honesty, transparency, robust debate and accountability back to the legislative and public policy process. Read article.
To Be Shot at Without Result
Jennifer Rubin, Commentary Magazine.com
At the end of 2009 many conservatives will have renewed appreciation for Winston Churchill’s admonition: “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” Conservatives and their fellow citizens were not generally (unless engaged on the battlefield) shot at, but they were bombarded with an avalanche of leftist policy proposals. And yet, as Bill Kristol observes: “The Obama administration (so far) hasn’t succeeded in doing too much damage to the American economy. Major parts of American society and the American polity are resisting the allure of a slide into European decadence. The climate change fear-mongers are increasingly discredited, and Copenhagen was a farce.”
In short, the Obama team didn’t succeed to the degree many of us anticipated and feared it would in refashioning domestic policy and achieving its free-market-killing initiatives. Card check is off the table. Cap-and-trade has been postponed. The stimulus bill did not endear the country to the wonders of big government. The health-care bill is not yet law, but is grossly unpopular. It is worth asking: why? Why did the most heralded politician to assume the White House in a generation, in the midst of a collapse of the private sector, and with huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate not do any better (or do more damage, depending on your perspective)?
The answers are three-fold, I think. First, this president showed no inclination or talent to engage in the nitty-gritty business of lawmaking. He did not set forth his own specific proposals on key agenda items, set a deadline, or whip Congress into line. He preferred endless speeches, innumerable TV talk-show appearances, and campaign-style events, none of which solved the hard questions as to what it is that key legislation should contain.
And then Congress did what it does best — squabble, debate, reach gridlock, churn out pork-a-thon legislation in lieu of serious policy prescriptions, and show themselves to be obsessed with shielding their own constituents from measures they would willingly foist on others. The result was low output and an absence of thoughtful or innovative policy. And most glaringly, on his most important agenda item, Obama did not make substantive arguments nor focus on a coherent legislative health-care scheme that was designed to fulfill his objectives. Read article.
Serfdom vs. liberty in 2010
Colin McNickle, Pittsburth Tribune-Review.com
It was in 1774 that John Adams reminded how the "most sensible and jealous people are so little attentive to government that there are no instances of resistance until repeated, multiple oppressions have placed it beyond a doubt that their rulers had formed settled plans to deprive them of their liberties."
And that's not merely to "oppress the individual or a few," he added, "but to break down the fences of a free constitution, and deprive the people at large of all share in the government, and all the checks by which it is limited."
Mr. Adams, of course, would have been labeled a "right-wing extremist" or a "militia maniac" by today's "progressives" in Congress who have been working so assiduously to soil the fabric of America. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would dismiss Adams' sentiment as "un-American" and tap dance around its implications of unconstitutional freelancing.
Pennsylvania, the State of Independence, now is the State of Corruption. Grand jury allegations more than suggest the state Legislature operates as a corrupt, criminal enterprise. And the words of the Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights from 1776 never have tolled more clearly: "The community hath an indubitable, inalienable and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish government, in such a manner as shall be by that community, judged most conducive to the public weal."
"Suckling at the public teat," you'll notice, is missing.
Americans and Pennsylvanians face a crucial test in 2010. They can either continue traveling down the road to serfdom or return to liberty's boulevard. The republic's future hangs in the balance. Read article.
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