Wednesday, January 27, 2010
No Answer to Terrorism
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Bin Laden’s latest message, real or memorex, is an uncomfortable reminder for the current ruling party of the United States that terrorism did not go away just because they found it inconvenient or thought global warming was a much more crucial threat.
Like every terrorist, Bin Laden does not measure victory against a much stronger enemy in terms of strategic assaults, but in terms of staying power. And so Bin Laden’s message to Obama is a very simple one.
“I am still here. The Mujahadeen are still here. What are you going to do about it?” [snip]
How can we win a war when we won’t even define who we’re fighting. The lead up to and the aftermath of the Fort Hood Massacre is a tragic demonstration of what the greatest military in the world fighting blind, wrapped in a blindfold of denial, looks like.
As long as we can’t define what we’re fighting, then we have no answer to terrorism, except to huddle together for comfort and be as defensive and reactive as we can be after every successful or unsuccessful terrorist operation.
No answer to terrorism, oh we have an answer. We’re ignoring it, until we can’t ignore it anymore, and then we shout a lot, make loud threatening noises and wait for it to go away, so we can go back to ignoring it. And we throw money at any terrorist willing to pinkie swear that he will go home to his wives and adorable children, and practice terrorism no more. That’s our plan. Is it any wonder we’re losing?
We can win, but first we have to fight. We can win, but first we have to know who the enemy is. We can win, but first we have to take off the handcuffs, toss away the blindfold, and take the safety off.
Imagine if US soldiers had spent the Cold War learning about the wonders of Das Kapital and the Communist way of life. Imagine if during WW2, Bundists worked freely in the defense establishment and Charles Lindbergh was the President of the United States. Imagine if we went into every war insisting that we were not fighting the enemy, but a tiny minuscule minority of their extremists. Imagine if respect for Das Kapital and Mein Kampf had been taught to every US soldier.
Imagine it? We’re living it right now.
We can win, but first we have to start fighting back.
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Al Qaeda terror leaders have eye on chemical, biological or uclear attack on U.S. soil: report
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Al Qaeda planners are lying in wait, plotting another major attack on U.S. soil involving weapons of mass destruction, according to a dire new report. Osama bin Laden's terror network continues to work toward acquiring large-scale biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, sais Mowatt-Larssen, who led the U.S.'s probe into whether or not Al Qaeda had aquired WMDs in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,
Former high-ranking CIA official Rolf Mowatt-Larssen reported in a paper for Harvard's Kennedy School that al Qaeda operatives are desperate to launch the most devastating terror attack yet.
"We have done things that have made the country safer," ... "But we have to ask ourselves does that mean they can't mount another attack like 9/11 with 19 core, well-trained terrorists?
"It doesn't require a giant organization to pull off a spectacular terrorist attack like that. We have to be careful that we don't become complacent."
One of the motivations for his report, Mowatt-Larssen said, was the concern that government officials were getting too bogged down in focusing on the potential for smaller scale terrorist attacks like individual suicide bombers or plots to bring down a single aircraft.
"Just like a football coach that might say, 'We're never going to fumble, we're never going to have an interception,' well that's not going to last long," he said. "In the war on terror, we're going to have to -- as hard as it is for people to hear this message -- we're going to have to get used to making risk management decisions that means we're not going to stop everything.
"But the important thing, the most important thing, is stopping the next 9/11."
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Chairman of Senate Homeland Security Committee: Does Everyone In Obama Administration Know We’re At War?
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The chairman and ranking Republican of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today urged the Obama administration to transfer the Christmas Day bomber into military custody, and harged that though President Obama
“has said repeatedly that we are at war, it does not appear to us that the President's words are reflected in the actions of some in the Executive branch, including some at the Department of Justice, responsible for fighting that war.”
In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and the president’s top homeland security adviser, John Brennan, Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Me., urged for the immediate transfer of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab into Pentagon hands to be
“held as an unprivileged enemy belligerent (UEB) and questioned and charged accordingly.”
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What Activism?
Subject: txt gwot nsec msm bias fnn -
Amanpour’s Viewership Soars -- on Fox News
CNN spiked a hot story on Sunday. But if their plan was to keep a lid on a heated and unflattering Christiane Amanpour interview, it didn’t quite work out. Christiane Amanpour interviewed author Marc Thiessen about his hot new book,
Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack last Wednesday, January 20. But Thiessen turned the tables on Amanpour and instead confronted her about her biased reporting.
Here’s where the story gets interesting. Fox News Channel then grabbed the CNN video clips off YouTube and aired parts of the revealing interview on its two top rated shows, "The O’Reilly Factor" and "Hannity."
The net effect was that parts of the interview were seen domestically by more than ten times the number who would have seen it had the show simply aired on CNN alone...
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Times Study: Only Fox News Offered Obama Historically Normal Scrutiny in 2009
Subject: txt msm bias reps libs crpt hstry - reality check -
The Washington Times’s Jennifer Harper picked up on a new study from the non-partisan Center for Media and Public Affairs showing President Obama getting much more flattering news coverage from ABC, CBS and NBC (46% positive vs. 55% negative) during his first year in office than did Presidents Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush, all of whom received roughly three times more bad press than good from those same broadcast networks.
But one network did offer scrutiny roughly equal to that provided by the old networks in the past, according to CMPA: the Fox News Channel. Reviewing the first thirty minutes of FNC’s Special Report with Bret Baier, CMPA found roughly three times more negative coverage of Obama (78%) vs. positive coverage (22%) during 2009. This compares to the broadcast networks doling out 74% bad press for Ronald Reagan in 1981 and 77% bad press for George W. Bush in 2001. In 1993, Bill Clinton fared better than his GOP counterparts (28% positive vs. 72% negative), but much worse than President Obama. (Chart below the jump).
As the MRC’s Tim Graham noted in a just-released special report from MRC, Omitting for Obama, the three broadcast networks were routinely late in picking up on negative storylines about the Obama administration, and gave paltry attention to major scandals such as the radical affiliations of ex-White House aide Van Jones, ACORN, and the pro-communist musings of then-White House communications director Anita Dunn. Instead, those stories were brought to light by alternative news sources, such as Fox News, talk radio and the conservative blogosphere, and then only grudgingly covered by the old media.
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Clinton 'deeply resents' foreign criticism on Haiti
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WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday she "deeply resents" foreign criticism of the US response to the earthquake in Haiti, saying the United States was doing as much as it could.
"I deeply resent those who attack our country, the generosity of our people and the leadership of our president in trying to respond to historically disastrous conditions after the earthquake,"
Clinton told State Department...
[Good for her.]
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Reality Check Re: GIVERS AND MISERS
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Last week, Tom Miller, president and CEO of the United Nations Association of the United States, told the Westport Rotary Club that
"as the richest nation in the world, the United States could do more for Haitian earthquake victims."
Considering Miller's position, perhaps it would be instructive to contrast the U.S. contribution and support for Haiti to that of the other members of the United Nations:
- The United Nations' ReliefWeb database showed contributions from the U.S. government (a.k.a. U.S. taxpayers) worth $90 million, or 44 percent of the grand total pledged.
- That's just a fraction of the real U.S. contributions, which include millions in private donations plus a huge relief operation by the U.S. military.
- America has been sending ships, air-dropping rations and pouring in thousands of troops to open relief corridors and provide security; all this is politely styled as 'backup' to a U.N. effort, which is in reality propped up by the United States.
Just behind the United States in contributions to the U.N.'s Haiti appeal is a roster of Western democracies, starting with France (12.7 percent of the total pledged to date), Sweden (7.4 percent), Spain (3.5 percent), Germany (2.8 percent), Brazil (2.6 percent), with Australia, Finland, Canada, Italy, and Denmark giving even less... [snip]
Rosett goes on to note the paltry donations of the oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, but the main point that Miller should glean is that the United Nations and the world are lucky that America is ready and willing to act and financially support efforts to address crises like that in Haiti.
There doesn't seem to be a long queue of countries ready to take our place as the world's most generous and effective humanitarian nation...READ MORE
About That Corporate Takeover of Politics
Subject: txt lbrty crpt msm bias bbro - 2010 -
New York Times editorial board members, as noted last week, believe that Citizens United vs. FEC "has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding." They should think about reading their own paper, where David Kirkpatrick on Sunday asked "legal scholars and social scientists" about corporate corruption of politics, and found that "the evidence is meager, at best." From the piece:
"There is no evidence that stricter campaign finance rules reduce corruption or raise positive assessments of government," said Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "It seems like such an obvious relationship but it has proven impossible to prove." [...]
Australia barely regulates political money. Individuals and corporations can give without limit. Parties can spend freely. And there is not much disclosure about who gives what to whom. But political corruption has not threatened a vibrant democracy there.
In the United States, studies comparing states like Virginia with scant regulation against those like Wisconsin with strict rules have not found much difference in levels of corruption or public trust, several scholars said. Jeff Milyo, an economist at the University of Missouri, has compared states with strict bans on corporate contributions to political parties against those with no limits at all. "There is just no good evidence that campaign finance laws have any effect on actual corruption," he said.
Whole thing here.
[They're used by established powers to restrict the influence of the little people.]
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Want to know what campaign finance reform is really about?
Subject: txt lbrty 2010 libs -
I've read more newspaper and magazine articles, court cases, and blog posts on various aspects of campaign finance reform than I care to remember, but none of them captured the essential points of what is at stake as well as this video produced by the Cato Institute:
[HIGHLY RECOMMENDED {5 mins}]
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Poll: 3 of 4 Americans say much of stimulus money wasted
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Washington--Nearly three out of four Americans think that the money spent in the federal stimulus plan has been wasted, according to a new national poll.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday morning also indicates that 63 percent of the public thinks that projects in the plan were included for purely political reasons and will have no economic benefit, with 36 percent saying those projects will benefit the economy.
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Reality Check Re: "Stimulus" Spending...
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"Then you get the argument ‘Well this is not a stimulus bill; this is a spending bill." Whaddya think a stimulus is? That's the whole point! No, seriously. That's the point." Barack Obama, February 2009.
"[The stimulus is] doing more, faster, more efficiently, and more effectively than most expected." Joe Biden, September 2009.
"... the road to recovery is never straight... Last month, however, we slipped back, losing more jobs than we gained, though the overall trend of job loss is still pointing in the right direction. What this underscores, though, is that we have to continue to explore every avenue to accelerate the return to hiring." Barack Obama, January 2010.
Source: Heritage Foundation.
Job gains or losses in recent months (2009):
- December: -589,000
- November: +139,000
- October: -526,000
- September: -665,000
- August: -384,000
All 2009: -5,396,000
Dept. of Labor, Household Survey data, via the St. Louis Fed.
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Meanwhile, in our Professional media..
..
On his segment of CNN Newroom today, anchor Ali Velshi cited a CNN/Opinion Research poll showing that only a quarter of Americans believe Obama's stimulus program has wasted little or no money. He then set up an interview with a pro-stimulus academic:
Let's talk about this with Kenneth Rogoff, professor of public policy and economics at Harvard University. Ken, you have looked at this very, very carefully. I have to say, back when the stimulus bill was being discussed, very few said there is no need for an economic stimulus bill at all. Do you think this was a necessary thing to do a year ago?
Velshi's claim that few economists opposed government spending to stimulate the economy is false. Last January, Frank Ahrens, the Washington Post's business reporter, wrote "Cato Lines Up 200 Economists Against Obama's Stimulus." It began:
The conservative Cato Institute bought a full-page ads in The Washington Post and New York Times in the form of a letter to Obama, signed by some 200 economists, including three Nobel laureates -- Edward Prescott and George Mason's Vernon Smith and James Buchanan -- listed prominently at the top.
A group of 200 economists, including three Nobel laureates, doesn't qualify as "very few." Many in the mainstream media are eager to protect and defend the man they helped put in the White House.
We can expect more rewriting of recent history as that crusade continues...
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Democrats pull back on health care bill
Subject: txt hcare - fnn - 
WASHINGTON – Democrats retreated Tuesday from a quick push to pass President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, lacking a workable strategy to salvage the sweeping legislation that has consumed Congress for more than a year.
"There is no rush,"
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said after a meeting of Senate Democrats
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FLASHBACK:
The chutzpah of Harry Reid
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Unions Strike Deal With White House on Health Care Excise Tax
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House and Senate negotiators have agreed on significant changes to the tax on high-dollar insurance plans in the health care bill, Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, announced Thursday.
The tax had become a critical area of disagreement between the House and Senate, with unions objecting to the tax on grounds it would unfairly burden middle class workers.
The modifications are a major victory for one of Obama's biggest donor groups...
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Ignoring ‘Climategate’
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At first glance, Climategate’s leaked correspondence is the Dangerous Liaisons of the scientific world. Despite the drumbeat informing the public that science strongly supports the climate-change thesis, the leaked data paint a picture of a community of experts afraid of scrutiny, willing to use underhanded methods to silence doubters, and content to eliminate evidence that might undermine both their theories and their funding.
Yet the scandal has not led to serious policy reconsiderations or even significant stigmatization for many of the scientists and organizations implicated. Instead, even as fundamental suppositions about climate change were being challenged, the Environmental Protection Agency took initial steps to implement the most extensive carbon-emissions regulations the United States has ever seen. And only a few weeks afterward, the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, with 192 countries in attendance, began without meaningfully addressing the Climategate e-mails.
The extent of the planet’s warming and the idea that an increase in its temperature is the fault of humankind are matters that scientists may be able to prove decisively someday. But the Climategate e-mails show that, for now, the evidence is far from conclusive. For all the talk about the need for public policy about warming to be governed by science, Climategate illustrates that the belief in global warming may be rooted less in detached science than in the West’s uneasy conscience about capitalism and development.
Those skeptics who argue that the environmental alarmism on display at Copenhagen and elsewhere is the product of a modern pantheistic faith and not the result of empirical reasoning must be taken seriously. The best that can be hoped for in the aftermath of Climategate is that the community that cares about science will live up to the purpose of its studies: to ask questions and observe the evidence with cold eyes.
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U.N. Offiicial Won't Quit for Climate Report Error
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The head of a panel of United Nations climate scientists said Saturday he would not resign despite a recent admission that a panel report warning Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035 was hundreds of years off.
But Rajendra Pachauri, who heads the panel, said no action would be taken against the authors of the report and he would not resign...
[Of course - that would be too close to accountability. Mistakes happen. The more indicative actions are those in response to their discovery...
And the Obama administration is supporting this outfit's ability to tax us directly for its operating revenue...]
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Economic growth 'cannot continue'
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Tom Clougherty, executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, a free-market think-thank, said Nef's report exhibited "a complete lack of understanding of economics and, indeed, human development".
"It is precisely this economic growth which will lift the poor out of poverty and improve the environmental standards that really matter to people - like clean air and water - in the process, as it has done throughout human history,"
he told BBC News.
"There's only one good thing I can say for the Nef's report, and that's that it is honest. Its authors admit that they want us to be poorer and to lead more restricted lives for the sake of their faddish beliefs."
[What they're literally saying is that we need turn the whole world red...]
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SWEDISH SCHOOLS MORE AMERICAN THAN AMERICA'S
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Our one-size-fits-all public education system leaves students in Dallas with less choice and opportunity than their counterparts in Stockholm. That needs to change, say Clayton M. McCleskey, a columnist with the Dallas Morning News.
The Swedish model is built on a voucher system at both the primary and secondary levels:
- According to the political adviser to the Swedish minister of education, if a public school isn't meeting a student's needs, he or she can take advantage of the voucher system and leave.
- Students have the option to switch to another public school or they can leave the public system altogether and opt for a private school.
- The government attaches money to each student, which then follows him wherever he goes, says the Swedish Wire.
According to the Stockholm County governor and former education minister Per Unckel: "Choice is for everyone, whatever income you have. The right of the kid is to get a good education. If the public sector cannot offer it, he or she should have the right to go somewhere else:
- When Sweden introduced the voucher system in the early '90s, it was controversial; but now it is widely popular, and the results have shown rising standards across the board.
- The program has also helped desegregate schools in cities with large immigrant populations, such as Stockholm.
- It's a way for the high achievers to get out of the environment that is holding them back.
Another feature of the Swedish system is that it allows high schoolers to choose from a smorgasbord of high school programs centered on three paths: college preparatory, vocational and a more remedial track.
So, Swedish students go to schools their parents like and students are able to follow their interests and passions...
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Poll: GOP primary for US Senate seat in Fla. a tie
Subject: txt 2010 NPAC >>>
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Former Florida legislator Marco Rubio has closed the gap in the race for the state's Republican U.S. Senate nomination and is in a virtual dead heat with Gov. Charlie Crist, according to a poll released Tuesday...
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Florida Senate Race Leads Nation in Fundraising
Subject: txt 2010 NPAC >>>
The Republican primary race for a Senate seat from Florida is one of the most watched in the nation, and the fundraising numbers released Tuesday morning are matching those lofty expectations.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist pulled in $2 million for the last three months of 2009 and has $7.5 million in cash on hand, with no outstanding debts.
Meanwhile Crist's opponent, conservative Marco Rubio, continues to keep pace with Crist, raking in $1.75 million in the same period with $2 million cash on hand.
Senior Rubio campaign adviser Todd Harris added,
"Charlie Crist's fundraising advantage is quickly disappearing..."
The latest polling shows the Florida Senate race tightening. Rubio has gone from a 31 point underdog in June to neck and neck with Crist...
The Florida race is pulling in big bucks as grass roots Republicans across the country are pouring money into the state.
"We're on pace in meeting our goals, and I am as confident as ever that we will have the resources to deliver our message and be successful,"
Rubio said.
NPAC >>
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Rasmussen Reports Ahead of the Curve on Massachusetts Race
[There's been some left-wing (Daily KoS, etc.) trying to disparage Rasmussen lately because they increasingly don't like what Scott (Rasmussen) & Co. are finding - as often as not directly contradicting what the MSM 'polls' (used very loosely) often 'say'.
There's a reason I'm so comfortable frequently referencing their work: their track record. Again and again Rasmussen's accuracy leading up to elections (not just the last poll prior to; often mickey'd by other outfits to finally represent truth), is consistently the most accurate - only sharing that honor with IBD's polls.
So buy any of the misinformation re: their accuracy - it's sour grapes at best.
To whit: ]
The Washington Post has released an interesting review about the
media coverage of the Massachusetts Senate race.
Rasmussen Reports provided the first news feed suggesting that Democratic candidate Martha Coakley might be in trouble on January 5, two full weeks before the election. In that poll, we showed Coakley’s lead down to single digits and noted that Republican candidate Scott Brown was within two points among those certain to vote. A week later, of course, we showed the race a toss-up with Brown leading among those certain to vote. About that time, Public Policy Polling also released a poll showing the race to be even.
But while Rasmussen Reports was picking up the trend 14 days before the election, The Washington Post says some traditional outlets didn’t report on the possibility of an upset until just two days before the election. Part of the reason is that many of the old media outlets were relying on a Boston Globe survey showing Coakley ahead by 17 points.
While the traditional outlets missed [ignored] the story, the new media picked up on it early. In fact, The Politico credited the Rasmussen Reports release with being the turning point in public perception. Prior to that release, “The overwhelming conventional wisdom in both parties … was that Martha Coakley was a lock,” The Politico’s Ben Smith wrote. He added,
“It's hard to recall a single poll changing the mood of a race quite that dramatically.”
[And what kicked of the aforementioned liberal-left attack dogs against Rasmussen.
Another liberal belief (Rasmussen's conservative bias) not supported by facts.]
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