After Obama’s Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs simpered that critics of the administration’s handling of the Christmas panty-bomber case owe the Obama administration an apology, my Senator didn’t hold back. No apologies were forthcoming, and no quarter. He says the administration owes the American people an apology:
John Brennan claims that GOP leadership in Congress had been briefed by the Obama administration about the arrest of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and the decision to handle his case through the criminal justice system.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, and Senator Bond both deny it.
Bond says:
Sen. Bond responds, saying Brennan “never told” him of the plan to Mirandize Abdulmutallab. Bond’s entire statement:
["]Brennan never told me any of plans to Mirandize the Christmas Day bomber — if he had I would have told him the administration was making a mistake. The truth is that the administration did not even consult our intelligence chiefs, as DNI Blair testified, so it’s absurd to try to blame Congressional leaders for this dangerous decision that gave terrorists a five week head start to cover their tracks.["]
Ed Morrissey adds:
If the White House didn’t consult Mueller or Blair, why would they have picked up the phone and called Bond and Hoekstra? Brennan’s claim that a call giving the two the outline of the attack somehow amounts to acquiescence of the point of Mirandizing a terrorist before fully interrogating him is ludicrous, and obviously self-serving. It’s almost as bad as Janet Napolitano’s “the system worked” spin on the Sunday after Christmas.
Apparently the left is all atwitter over Sarah Palin’s use of crib notes written on her hand for her tea party convention speech. I’m shocked, yes shocked…..not that Sarah palin was using crib notes, but that the left would even want to make an issue of it given their master’s obsessive and excessive need for teleprompters even in grade school classrooms.
The words say, “Energy. Tax cuts. Lift American Spirit”. Those would be themes that she expanded upon in her speech, and the fact that she wrote them down on her palm is just another reminder that she’s human, and it adds to her appeal. Not sure what the hubbub is all about.
Natural Fake uncovered more notes found on Sarah Palin’s knuckles and wrist, and Doug Ross dug up a photo of Obama using palm crib notes. Oh yes, even with the teleprompters…
The Corner’s Stephen Spruiell is calling this, “Hand-Gate” (*groan*), and attempts to explain the left’s fascination with the story:
I get that it’s a sort of “turnabout is fair play” from the set that must be very annoyed by now at all the prompter jokes. But it misses the point of why the prompter jokes have caught on. A prompter feeds your remarks to you word for word. The idea that you would need such a device to talk to a room full of sixth graders or a meeting of your own staff is funny.
On another level, the prompter jokes took off because they reinforce the substantive argument that Obama is in over his head, because they indicate that he can’t perform the the presidency’s basic public-speaking duties without a major safety net. I’m not sure what substantive argument Palin’s hand-notes are supposed to underline, and I suspect it’s not an argument so much as an attitude. The attitude would be that writing on your hand is dumb and low-class. On the left, where this opinion of Palin already prevails, anything which reinforces it will be picked up and cheerfully passed around. And, to the extent that anyone not on the left notices this giddy snobbery, it will play to Palin’s strengths.
Sarah Palin has President Obama in her sights, telling FoxNews.com she “would be willing” to challenge him in the 2012 presidential race.
The former Alaska governor, in an interview Saturday on the sidelines of the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, said President Obama’s “lack of experience” has held him back his first year in office and that she would put her credentials up against his any day.
“I would be willing to if I believe that it’s right for the country,” Palin said when asked if she would run for president in 2012.
She qualified the statement, adding that she sees “many” other potential candidates who are “in as strong or stronger position than I am to take on the White House and if they’re in a better position than I in three years, I’ll support them.”
But the former GOP vice presidential nominee told “Fox News Sunday”: “I won’t close the door that perhaps could be open for me in the future.”
Here is her interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, via The Right Scoop. Part three contains the talk about the run in 2012:
Did I ever mention that I was planning to go to the Nashville Tea Party? In fact My husband and I had reservations, and were planning to take a couple of kids, until I found out there was a $500.00 price tag to attend, and started hearing words, like “scammy” to describe the event. I decided to stick with CPAC, and skip, the first annual Tea Party Convention in Nashville. But I’m paying close attention to see if anything positive comes out of the gathering. So far, I’ve been I’m hearing both good things, and not so good things.
Big Government: The media reported that a group of a National Tea Party Convention counter-protesters were going to flock to the Opryland Hotel for a showdown.
UPDATE:
In case you missed the live coverage, here’s Sarah Palin slamming Obama’s foreign policy:
“…when I ran for president, I promised I wouldn’t just do what was popular – I would do what was necessary..”:
“If there’s one thing that has unified Democrats and Republicans — and everybody in between — it’s that we all hated the bank bailout. I hated it. You hated it.” — President Barack Obama, Jan. 27, 2010
***
“I don’t oppose all wars. … What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.” — Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama, Oct. 2, 2002
So is the President right? Was TARP a success, and the Iraq War a failure?
Charles Krauthammer perfectly encapsulates the Dems’ condescending attitude towards voters in his oped, this morning:
…after stunning Democratic setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Obama gave a stay-the-course State of the Union address (a) pledging not to walk away from health-care reform, (b) seeking to turn college education increasingly into a federal entitlement, and (c) asking again for cap-and-trade energy legislation. Plus, of course, another stimulus package, this time renamed a “jobs bill.”
This being a democracy, don’t the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don’t they understand Massachusetts?
Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.
Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking “in the plain words of plain folks,” because the people are “suspicious of complexity.” Counseled Blow: “The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, ‘Mr. President, we’re down here.’ “
Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, he chided himself “for not explaining it [health care] more clearly to the American people.” The subject, he noted, was “complex.” The subject, it might also be noted, was one to which the master of complexity had devoted 29 speeches. Perhaps he did not speak slowly enough.
Then there are the emotional deficiencies of the masses. Nearly every Democratic apologist lamented the people’s anger and anxiety, a free-floating agitation that prevented them from appreciating the beneficence of the social agenda the Democrats are so determined to foist upon them.
Really, you’ll want to read the whole piece, from beginning to end. Especially, Krauthammer’s dry observation that to Democrats, the expression, “the peasants are revolting” is a pun. That would be you and me, the PUMAs, the independents, the “bitter clingers of guns and religion”, the “effing retards”, (wait, no…those would be liberals, according to Emanuel).
How many Americans really have anything to gain from this grotesque expansion of government that is happening before our eyes? Perhaps a few of the neediest among us?… while everyone else is brought down. Is it revolting of us to suggest that the government can not create prosperity? Are we being stupid and bitter when we suggest there’s a better way?
U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter, Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee, has written a new pamphlet, “We the People: Wide Awake for Our Newest Birth of Freedom,” in which he clearly and succinctly explains the challenges, duties, and principles the Republican Party currently faces.You can order it, here, or download it in PDF form, here.
An excerpt:
We Are Wide Awake
They were “Wide Awakes” – Americans marching through sleepy hamlets for candidate Abraham Lincoln and the cause of human freedom. They were “Republicans!”
Today, Republicans continue to embrace our enduring duty to:
1. Expand human liberty and self-government;
2. Conserve our cherished way of life and its foundations of faith, family, community and country;
3. Empower Americans to achieve constructive, necessary change; and
4. Defend America’s national security
And we act upon five permanent principles:
1. Our liberty is from God not the government;
2. Our sovereignty is in our souls not the soil;
3. Our security is from strength not surrender;
4. Our prosperity is from the private sector not the public sector; and
5. Our truths are self-evident not relative
Check it out – with very little fanfare, and basically through word of mouth, and the internet, tens of thousands of these pamphlets have been distributed.
Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable; understanding, as President [Kennedy] said, that “civility is not a sign of weakness.” Now, I am the first to confess I am not always right. Michelle will testify to that. (Laughter.) But surely you can question my policies without questioning my faith, or, for that matter, my citizenship. (Laughter and applause.)
Challenging each other’s ideas can renew our democracy. But when we challenge each other’s motives, it becomes harder to see what we hold in common. We forget that we share at some deep level the same dreams — even when we don’t share the same plans on how to fulfill them.
He also employed the civility card to promote the stalled health care bill and other favorite liberal causes:
We may disagree about the best way to reform our health care system, but surely we can agree that no one ought to go broke when they get sick in the richest nation on Earth. We can take different approaches to ending inequality, but surely we can agree on the need to lift our children out of ignorance; to lift our neighbors from poverty. We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are — whether it’s here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.
That’s all well and good, but why did I get the feeling that this lack of civility of which he speaks, was aimed not so much at the Democrats but at Republicans?
This would have been a good time, (since he was on the subject of civility), to chastise people who call tea partiers “tea-baggers”, and other abhorrent terms, but then, he would be chastising himself, and the people close to him, and the Democratic party’s cable news arm, MSNBC. So we didn’t hear anything about that.
The Obama administration revealed to the surprise of many on Tuesday that they had gained the cooperation of family members of Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab to help get the Christmas Day him talking.
They claim that the cooperation has led to actionable intelligence that “could help prevent terror attempts on U.S. soil”.
The revelation is part of an aggressive attempt by the White House to push back on Republican claims the Obama administration mishandled the terror investigation, with AbdulMutallab being read his Miranda rights shortly after he began cooperating with investigators.
In other words they are in acute CYA mode.
In releasing the new information, senior administration officials were direct about saying they’re trying to show the case has been handled properly and the Obama administration is doing all it can to keep the country safe from future attacks.
One of the senior administration officials said, “We are in a very active war against al Qaeda” and “very experienced individuals who know what they’re doing” are handling the interrogations well, despite the charges by Republicans.
Marc Thiessen at The Daily Caller explains why this news does not in any way justify the Obama administration’s handling of the Christmas bomber.
That anyone can consider five weeks of utter silence from this high-value terrorist as a success is stunning. Abudulmutallab was supposed to be vaporized along with Northwest Flight 253. The moment al-Qaida learned that he had survived and was in U.S. government custody, they began taking countermeasures to cover his tracks.
Every hour, every day, every week that went by gave them precious time to close bank accounts, e-mail addresses, phone numbers he knew about, and shut down training camps, safe houses, and other intelligence leads he could have given us. Terrorists he knew about have been put into hiding, and other leads that were hot in the days immediately following his capture have since gone cold. The intelligence he possessed was perishable. Each moment that passed that he was not speaking meant lost counterterrorism opportunities.
The mishandling of Abdulmutallab’s questioning is an intelligence failure of massive proportions. And it highlights the problem with the Obama administration’s approach to terrorist interrogation. The administration’s approach is built on a law-enforcement model unsuited for the challenges of the war on terror. Here is why:
Have you heard about the 12 year old kid, Zack, from NJ, who was given a zero on a school test because he didn’t buy into global warming b.s? He called into the Mark Levin Show, last week to tell his story.
His mother called back several days later to give Levin an update about her meeting with the principle, and the tearful teacher (and her union rep).
(sorry – the video has been taken down – Deb).
They can keep trying to push the global warming baloney on kids, but the cat is out of the bag, now, thanks to Climategate. It’s not gonna fly, anymore. There are too many other Zacks out there. Are they going to flunk them all?
To think, that just a year ago, he was considering a position in the Obama administration.
I saw this clip on Fox, this morning, and meant to find it on Youtube, and post it, earlier, but it totally slipped my mind. A visit to The Other McCain jogged my memory.
A fiery Judd Gregg, the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, blasted the White House budget chief yesterday over his boss’ plan to transfer bailout funds to a new small business loan program.
While President Obama was visiting Nashua, Gregg’s birthplace, the three-term senator was on Capitol Hill skewering Peter Orszag over the plan to funnel $30 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Gregg erupted as Orszag spoke of the TARP use to solve lingering problems with access to credit for small businesses.
“No! No! No!” he yelled out. “You can’t make that type of statement with any legitimacy. You cannot make that statement.”
That was VT Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, who snidely chimed in at the end, “That is how laws are made usually, Congress passes them.”
Not on the tape:
Gregg fired back, “Did the senator from Vermont make a statement? Well the senator is wrong. This is the law as it stands today. There is no law on the books.”
The exchange was about to escalate when the committee chairman, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-ND, banged his gavel to restore order.
Oh yeah, uh huh. This thing is definitely gonna happen…if we all hold hands, think positively, chant, mmm mmm mmm, and call our members of Congress like the President says we should!
Is it unseemly for a President of the United States to tell its citizens to lobby on behalf of his policies? Has this ever been done before? Did Bush tell people to call their Congressmen to pass Social Security Reform?
Why can’t Obama just stay in the White House for a few days, instead of constantly traveling and being on a non stop political campaign to pass Obamacare?
Mary-Katherine Ham blogged at the Weekly Standard about the specific strategies the WH is using to get us there:
Mark Knoller of CBS News asked whether that was a new deadline, and if the president had specific dates and plans. Bill Burton:
“I think the urgency of getting health care done because of the impact that the cost has on our fed deficit, that it has on small and large businesses, and that it has on individuals, didn’t go away and the president wants to get it done as soon as possible.
We don’t have a specific deadline for what the next phase of this is, though.”
Knoller also asked whether the president had said how he envisioned it might be passed this year, through reconciliation, etc.
At a recent meeting with Democrats, Obama took pre-selected questions, but after he left the room, Senators pressed White House officials about healthcare reform, The Hill reports.
Democrats expressed their frustration with the lack of a clear plan for passing healthcare reform, according to one person in the room.
One Democratic senator even grew heated in his remarks, according to the source.
“It wasn’t a discussion about how to get from Point A to Point B; it was a discussion about the lack of a plan to get from Point A to Point B,” said a person who attended the meeting. “Many of the members were frustrated, but one person really expressed his frustration.”
Senators did not want to press Obama on healthcare reform in front of television cameras for fear of putting him in an awkward spot.
“There was a vigorous discussion about that afterward with some of his top advisers and others,” Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) said regarding the healthcare discussion.
“I think people were probably aware that there was no easy answer and this is being broadcast on live national television and didn’t want to put him on the spot,” Bayh said.
MORE:
As far as Obama’s comments to Democrats went, it was basically- just keep doing what you’re doing: overplay your hands, be “honest” (aka lie through your teeth), and blame Republicans, (because all that has been working out so well for them):
In a blunt election prescription for his own skittish party, President Barack Obama on Wednesday implored Democratic leaders to swing big, be honest with an angry public and expose any obstructionism by Republicans.
“We still have to lead,” Obama told Democratic senators in a pep talk that unfolded on live TV.
That line alone revealed how much the political dynamic has changed in just two weeks, as Senate Democrats watched their voting numbers slip from 60 to 59 in a special Massachusetts election that sent shudders through the party. That one vote cost them the muscle to overcome Republican stalling tactics, forcing the Democratic president to adapt in hopes of salvaging this year and his agenda.
They’re “leading” us off a cliff. I’m counting on Republicans to obstruct their deadly path.
