A telling event occurred on Sept. 15, Day 6 of the drip, drip, drip ACORN video rollout. President Obama met for lunch with former President Bill Clinton at trendy Il Mulino in New York City.
For the second consecutive day, the New York Post featured the ACORN scandal on its cover – complete with James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles in their outrageous “pimp and ho” costumes.
Does anyone think the president and the former president were unaware that the city in which they were dining was mesmerized by the ACORN scandal – especially since ACORN had bragged that its employees had kicked Mr. O’Keefe and Ms. Giles out of their New York office?
I missed the first part of this epic call from Susan in “left coast la-la land” California, earlier today. Her impassioned voice caught my attention about halfway through. By the end of her rant, I was in tears.
The number of attacks in Iraq has dropped 85% over the past two years, the top U.S. commander testified Wednesday.
Gen. Ray Odierno said security has continued to improve in the three months since American forces withdrew from cities as part of a agreement to remove all American forces by the end of 2011.
On Feb. 14, 2007, against the wishes of the Democrat party, the U.S. began increasing the presence of troops in and around Baghdad as part of a troop surge for which the United States had committed an extra 30,000 troops.
This is as good a time as any to remind readers of what then Senator Barack Obama told CBS News on January 14, 2007:
“We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality — we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.” (CBS’ “Face The Nation,” 1/14/07).
Given President Obama’s track record on the troop surge in Iraq, you would think he’d want to defer to his commanders’ advice on a troop surge for Afghanistan.
Related:
Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on the Greta Van Susteren Show, last night to discuss Afghanistan:
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, isn’t the whole idea to be decisive. I mean, each day – I was looking at the numbers of people, and this year the numbers of American military deaths in Afghanistan is 218 so far this year, which is already 40 percent more than in 2008. So we – we need to do something.
GRAHAM: Yes, ma’am. And my view is that General McChrystal has thought of – thought well – long and hard about what that something is. The something is to regain lost ground, to take the 40,000 additional troops, deploy them in areas where the Taliban have reemerged, 1,000 percent increase in IED attacks.
We learned in Afghanistan – in Iraq, when we put more troops in, the people trusted us. They told us more about what was going on. So more combat power will win the population over to our side, and if we don’t act quickly, the casualties are going to go up. But worst of all worlds is to keep in place what we have now. It’s an unsustainable situation. It needs to change one way or the other, and I think more troops is the way it needs to change.
VAN SUSTEREN: Do you have any doubt in your mind that President Obama is going to do as his general on the ground, McChrsytal, says needs to be done?
GRAHAM: You know, I worked really hard for Senator McCain. This is not President Obama’s war. I want him to be successful. I want to help him. If he ignores the general’s advice and we don’t send those troops, I don’t see how we win. I know General Petraeus and General McChrystal very well. They understand what they’re asking – the people going to Afghanistan are going to come from Iraq.
So I would urge the president to listen to his military commanders. These people know what they’re doing. They turned Iraq around, they could turn Afghanistan around.
1st Sgt. Jose San Nicolas Crisostomo
59 years old from Spanaway, Washington
August 18, 2009
You can read Sgt. Crisostomo’s story here and here. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham (R) recently returned from his trip to Afghanistan as a reservist. And during his stay he had a moving encounter with the now-deceased U.S. Army Sergeant Jose S.N. Crisostomo, originally from Inarajan. While on duty “Colonel Graham” was fortunate enough to spend time with Sergeant Crisostomo prior to his final mission.According to GreenvilleOnline.com, Graham’s stirring experience with Crisostomo has led him to “ask President Barack Obama to send more troops and resources tied to requirements that the Afghan government…clean up ‘rampant’ corruption.” There is no doubt that Cristomo’s warm personality touched Graham with a sense of sincere sentimentality. Clearly, ratcheting up the amount of resources to Afghanistan will speed up the push for Afghans to better govern themselves and thereby help protect treasures like Crisostomo.
Crisostomo’s disarming personality also affected Afghans, who “packed the memorial service for the man who was known for leading morning physical training by carrying an American flag as he ran around the track and always called the Afghans ‘brother’ and ‘sister,'” Graham told Greenville Online. For any other soldier this kind of attendance may have come as a surprise, but not for Crisostomo. This remarkable individual possessed an innate gift that allowed him to connect with people across cultural lines under the most proscribing conditions.
Whatever fueled Crisostomo’s contagious ability to bring people together was not quelled by four tours in Vietnam, nor even by the improvised explosive device that took Crisostomo from us on August 18, 2009, because his spirit lives on through the inspired actions of Senator Lindsey Graham. The silver lining in this story is that if Crisostomo and Graham had not crossed paths Graham may not have been as inspired to push a request for more troops and resources to bolster what evidently appears to be a protracted venture in Afghanistan.
These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero. We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.
Earlier this month and despite the public scrutiny over the voter fraud and felony criminal activity associated with ACORN, the Department of Homeland Security went ahead and granted $997,402 to ACORN under the FY 2008 Fire Prevention and Safety Program.
To most people, the timing and the amount of the grant would seem off base, but when you take into account the fact that DHS awarded ACORN–an organization with no clear expertise in fire safety and prevention–a fire prevention and safety grant, it’s just plain offensive.
I don’t think “offensive” is quite strong enough. How about obscene… disgraceful…despicable, vile?
What are they thinking?!
Is it okay to be “outrageously outraged” over something like this?
Vitter wrote to Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of DHS, last week, requesting that she rescind the grant. So far she hasn’t responded.
President Barack Obama made a “public option” his centerpiece not because it’s the answer to what’s broken in the U.S. system, but because it’s a halfway house to a single-payer setup that liberal Democrats have always wanted. Team Obama also knew the public is concerned about rising costs, so they jammed together a hooey-filled argument that the public option was somehow the solution to rising costs.
Obama repeatedly tried to convince the American people that he wasn’t interested in government run health care, only “competition”, and driving down costs. But he and the Dems were on record espousing their support for a single payer health care system, and were caught on tape saying so. Those videos were posted on YouTube for everyone to see:
Jenkins concludes:
Mr. Obama’s health-care thinking always lacked the bite of real “reform.” He never claimed he was a wonk. He claimed he was a political mobilizer. He meant it.
He might have honestly sold the Democratic dream of a single-payer system, forthrightly explaining how resources would be allocated. He might have spoken of putting the price tags back on health care so consumers could decide instead. He did neither—and has botched an opportunity for real progress.
Ironically, as I write this, Obama is on t.v. giving yet another speech to the Natl. Institute of Health, characterizing ObamaCare as real progress.
Nice Deb 