May 22, 2012
FSM HOT TOPICS
Exclusive – Oval Office Watch – Tuesday, May 11
by OVAL OFFICE WATCH May 11, 2010
Michelle Obama to visit Reno - HERE.
White House: Dow plunge wasn’t cyber attack - SEE HERE.
Watch the 'This Week' roundtable discuss the attempted bombing of New York City's Times Square. - HERE.
President Obama to Senate: Act fast
Josh Gerstein & Carol E. Lee, Politico.com
President Barack Obama nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court Monday – calling her a legal trailblazer who would embody “that same excellence, independence, integrity and passion for the law” as the man she would replace, retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.
Obama said the court with Kagan on it will be more representative of the country – and it would have for the first time three female justices, if Kagan is confirmed.
"I hope that the Senate will act in a bipartisan fashion," Obama said, "and that they will do so as quickly as possible so she can get busy."
Kagan, 50, who was the first female dean of Harvard Law School, called the court an “extraordinary institution” that can help people in their everyday lives, “because law matters, because it keeps us safe, because it protects our most fundamental rights and freedoms and because it is the foundation of our democracy.” Read article.
Times Square bomber just ‘overeager’ (?)
Mark Steyn, OC Register.com
The story of the Times Square bomber reads like some Urdu dinner-theater production of Mel Brooks' "The Producers" that got lost in translation between here and Peshawar: A man sets out to produce the biggest bomb on Broadway since "Dance A Little Closer" closed on its opening night in 1983. Everything goes right: He gets a parking space right next to Viacom, owners of the hated Comedy Central! But then he gets careless: He buys the wrong fertilizer. He fails to open the valve on the propane tank. And next thing you know his ingenious plot is the nonstop laugh riot of the Great White Way. Ha-ha! What a loser! Why, the whole thing's totally – what's the word? – "amateurish," according to multiple officials. It "looked amateurish," scoffed New York's Mayor Bloomberg. "Amateurish," agreed Janet Napolitano, the White House Amateurishness Czar.
Ha-ha-ha! How many Jihadists does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Twenty-seven. Twenty-six terrorist masterminds to supervise six months of rigorous training at a camp in Waziristan, after which the 27th flies back to Newark, goes to Home Depot and buys a quart of lamp oil and a wick.
Is it so unreasonable to foresee that one day one of these guys will buy the wrong lamp oil and a defective wick and drop the Camp Osama book of matches in a puddle as he's trying to light the bomb, and yet this time, amazingly, it actually goes off? Not really. Last year, not one but two "terrorism task forces" discovered that Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan was in regular e-mail contact with the American-born Yemeni-based cleric Ayman al-Awlaki but concluded that this was consistent with the major's "research interests," so there was nothing to worry about it. A few months later, Maj. Hasan gunned down dozens of his comrades while standing on a table shouting "Allahu Akbar!" That was also consistent with his "research interests," by the way. A policy of relying on stupid Jihadists to screw it up every time will inevitably allow one or two to wiggle through. Read article.
See No Evil
David Gerlernter, Weekly Standard.com
Daniel Pipes is one of several commentators to note that many reporters would love to dismiss each new terrorist incident as the work of lunatics, until the disappointing news arrives that the suspect is yet another Muslim Jihadist. Several observations leap to their feet immediately, and there is a deeper point too.
First: Suppose all these terrorists and terrorist hopefuls had in fact been run-of-the-mill madmen. What would that circumstance say about the age-old left-liberal dream of de-institutionalizing the insane? Are liberals ever wrong?
Second: Before 9/11 the country was basically indifferent to Muslims in America; since then it has been prejudiced in their favor. The Army’s treatment of the Fort Hood suspect during his pre-murderer phase, and its reaction immediately after the crime, show the classic modern doctrine of massive first strike against any species of bigotry--real, hypothetical or wholly imaginary. Do liberals have any concept of what this nation is like? Read article.
Denial over the bomb plot
Joan Vennochi, Boston.com
Americans can handle the truth. But when it comes to terrorist acts on American soil, government officials are reluctant to give it to us straight from the start.
Instant analysis of the Times Square bomb scare kicked off with the usual official disclaimers: Don’t presume a Muslim extremist had anything to do with it.
It was likely a “lone wolf’’ operation, suggested Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, or, as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg speculated, “somebody with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something.’’ Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, said it was being treated as a “potential terrorist attack’’ but it could be a “one-off’’ or isolated incident.
The arrest of Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, quickly ended alternative theories. Shahzad is not a Tea-Partier-gone-wild or someone unable to take the pressure of home foreclosure, as some news reports intimated. He told authorities his efforts to blow up innocent people are connected to the Pakistani Taliban.
The SUV parked in Times Square and packed with crude explosives appears to represent that group’s first effort to attack the United States. It stands as yet another, thankfully failed, effort by terrorists with Islamic ties to attack in America.
There is also well-intentioned reluctance to stigmatize all Muslims, because of the extremist views of some Muslims.
But the “lone wolf’’ theory does not make a terrorist attack any less terrifying than one connected to an official pack of wolves — especially if the lone wolf is inspired by the same pack mentality. Read article.
Times Square aftershocks: The mind of a terrorist. (Expect the unexpected.)
USA Today.com
Many Americans are surprised to find out that a terror suspect is highly educated or from an affluent family or married or even a U.S. citizen. They shouldn't be.
Terrorism has never been just for the poor, disenfranchised and hopeless — though they are often its foot soldiers. Osama bin Laden came from one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. His No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, is a highly educated physician. One of two men who tried to blow up the Glasgow airport in 2007 is also a doctor.
Within the USA, the domestic terrorists in the 1960s and 1970s known as the Weathermen had their roots among well-off, well-educated college students.
Even something as mundane as father-son strife can help turn someone into a terrorist if the mental framework is right. Both Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square suspect, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, have prominent, successful fathers who disapproved of and overshadowed their sons. Shahzad's father denied him permission to go fight in Afghanistan. Abdulmutallab's father, a wealthy Nigerian businessman, so frowned on his son's radical activities that he reported him to U.S. authorities.
Both sons apparently found purpose in fundamentalist religious beliefs and the Muslim concept of Jihad. Read article.
The End of the Welfare-State Model?
John Steele Gordon, Commentary Magazine.com
Stuart Varney of Fox Business News said Thursday on Fox News Special Report that what we are witnessing with the debt crisis in Greece and the swoon of the markets over the last week and a half is the end of the welfare-state model of governance. I think he’s right.
Markets are notorious for sometimes being oblivious to developments in the economy that, in retrospect, seem obvious — and then, suddenly, waking up and acting. The American economy began to slow down in the spring of 1929, for instance, but Wall Street — usually ahead of the economy — paid no attention and soared over the summer to heights unseen before. Then, on the day after Labor Day, for a trivial reason, the market panicked in the last hour of trading, and the mood turned instantly from “the sky’s the limit” to “every man for himself.” Six weeks later, the great crash of 1929 happened.
For years, democratic governments have been promising citizens ever-increasing benefits in the future to win votes in the present. What they haven’t been doing is arranging to pay for them. Instead, they have used phony bookkeeping to make things look under control. New York City did this in the 60s and 70s until one day the banks said they weren’t rolling over the city’s paper anymore. Now, Greece has suffered the same fate. It lied to the EU to get in and has been cooking the books to hide the gathering fiscal disaster ever since. The market has now made it clear that it thinks Greek bonds are for wallpaper, not investing. Read article.
Why do Arab governments—and the U.S.—insist the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the heart of all the MidEast’s problems?
Lee Smith, TabletMag.com
The one uncontroversial fact about the Middle East is that the Arab-Israeli conflict is inextricably linked to every other problem in the region. Known as “linkage,” this is the one idea that has won the support of a broad consensus of U.S. congressmen, senators, diplomats, former presidents, and their foreign-policy advisers, seconded by journalists, Washington policy analysts, almost every American who has ever watched a Sunday morning news roundtable, and the Obama Administration, from National Security Adviser James Jones to the president himself: “If we can solve the Israeli-Palestinian process,” candidate Obama said on Meet the Press in the spring of 2008, “then that will make it easier for Arab states and the Gulf states to support us when it comes to issues like Iraq and Afghanistan. It will also weaken Iran, which has been using Hamas and Hezbollah as a way to stir up mischief in the region.”
It is hardly surprising, then, that commanders of U.S. armed forces who during the last decade have spent more time on the ground among Arab and Muslim populations than American diplomats also subscribe to the concept of linkage and have even made it into a tenet of U.S. military strategy. For instance, in his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March, CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus explained that, “The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests” in the region.
Petraeus’s comments were used by some to advance the linkage-based argument that Israeli actions were endangering U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Petraeus himself has clarified his remarks, and last week Defense Secretary Robert Gates jumped into the fray. Read article.
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The #twittergulag saga continues: @gopfirecracker suspended, others still trapped
May 21, 2012 11:54 PM
#freegopfirecracker #freegopfirecracker #freegopfirecracker #freegopfirecracker— Dale Holt (@DaleHolt8) May 22, 2012 Come on conservatives! Everyone rallied around @ChrisLoesch when he was suspended! Now its @gopfirecracker so stand up! #freegopfirecracker— Schmoop (@RGSchmoop) May 22, 2012 Hey @twitter and @support – #FreeGOPfirecracker's account has been suspended. Please fix this mishap. Thank you.— Gabriella Hoffman (@Gabby_Hoffman) May 22, 2012 [...]
Cory Booker tweets #IStandWithObama; Hashtag hijackers flood the zone
May 21, 2012 11:39 PM
Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, the Democrat who defended Bain from the Obama campaign's attacks yesterday morning, has been backpedaling more furiously than a clown on a high wire. Tonight, in an effort to mollify his critics on the Left, he posted four tweets that included the hashtag #IStandWithObama. Conservatives immediately took over the #IStandWithObama hashtag to mock President Obama, and within an hour it became a trending topic.
Cory Booker tries to clear up his position on Bain attacks
May 21, 2012 10:25 PM
Cory Booker continued his quest to run screaming away from the apparently too candid comments he made on Meet the Press on Sunday. Despite attempts earlier today to #FreeCoryBooker from those trying to force him to apologize Booker went on the Rachel Maddow show to do everything he could to walk back what he said. Que the mockery.
Obama's 'When you're president' picture spawns hashtag
May 21, 2012 09:59 PM
"When you're president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot." -Barack Obama
Cue #WhenYouArePresident
Obama takes anti-Romney rant to Twitter
May 21, 2012 09:49 PM
It started off this morning with a video of a woman named Valerie from Indiana posted by Barack Obama’s official Twitter account. 12 hours, 12 tweets and a failed hashtag later, Obama’s reelection team took the day to tweet ongoing misinformation about Mitt Romney’s record in the private sector, specifically Bain Capital’s work with the [...]
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