KSM

“What in the hell is wrong with these people”, is pretty much the question of the year.

It’s impossible, really, to caricature this White House; even Josiah Bartlett didn’t run through this many liberal stereotypes in his first season. Obama needs new writers. Blow up the World Trade Center and kill 3,000 Americans? Jail! Don’t buy health insurance? Jail! Win the Nobel Prize for doing jack squat. Travel to Copenhagen to beg and grovel unsuccessfully for the Olympics, and pledge to go visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but blow off traveling to Berlin to commemorate the victory of freedom over Communism (then give a tepid speech on the subject that refuses to acknowledge Ronald Reagan). Commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland by unilaterally abandoning missile defense installations in Poland. Insult and disdain one faithful ally after another – Britain, India, Israel, Poland, Colombia, you name it – and cozy up to our enemies, with nothing to show for it – nothing to show for anything he’s done in foreign affairs. All but ignore democratic protests in Iran while supporting an illegal effort by Honduras’ president to stay on beyond the end of his term. Suddenly complain about corruption and electoral fraud in Afghanistan, while seeking the favor of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and Vladimir Putin – heck, Obama endorsed half a dozen people in Chicago more corrupt than Hamid Karzai.

(ht my sister)

Good Question

The OAS is at it again as concerns Honduras. They are discussing whether or not to “recognize” the results of Honduras’ upcoming election if Zelaya is not returned to office first.

LaGringa takes the time to listen through these meetings and found the American, yes the American ambassador asking a simple question:

I just want to know, what does that mean in the real world? Not in the world of words and magical realism, but in the real world? What does that really mean?

Are embassies going to be closed? No trade? No travel? No investment with, to, or from Honduras? And if so, for how long?

Are we going to apply that same standard to each and every country in this room that has experienced a disruption of its constitutional order [pointing his finger at the person next to him who was out of view] and saved itself through elections? [shrug]

If we do, this room is going to be pretty empty!

She makes a list.

Thank you Veterans

President Obama had a great line in the memorial service yesterday for the men and women who were killed at Ft. Hood.

“Neither this country, nor the values that we were founded upon, could exist without men and women like these 13 Americans.”

Amen.

May those who have died rest in peace and may those of you who live know that I am grateful every day for your service.

IP Address Request

IP address request, PLUS a gag order?!

Mr. Kranz is right, this IS creepy.

In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.

The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site “not to disclose the existence of this request” unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

The day was June 25, 2008. ??

The subpoena has since been revoked and the attorney general’s office claims no knowledge of this meaning “U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison and Assistant U.S. Attorney Doris Pryor did not follow department regulations requiring the “express authorization of the attorney general” for media subpoenas”.
What the hell were they looking for and why this route??

Links

Kelo was for naught. New London gets to choke on all that non existent new tax revenue now.
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Losing Longmont candidate seems to think we voters are hos. Bought and paid for by Montana groups, yet forgetting the amounts of outside money spent in the last election to get the left elected.

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Sarah Palin deals with the fact that she’s attractive, while the attractive Huckabee just whines about it.
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Matt Lauer and Lech Walesa seem to think the US didn’t have much to do with the Berlin Wall going down. Lech gives credit to Gorbachev being so weak (without noting that a Reagan buildup might have had something to do with that weakness) Matt just thinks we think the world revolves around us and wants to deflect. Meanwhile, did you know Obama was black? Isn’t it amazing?
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David Brooks takes on the old Hasan needed therapy front notes in the news.

The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.

It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.

Amen.
And Ralph Peters answers the question I’ve been asking. How did Hasan get promoted?

A dirty big secret in our Army has been that officers’ promotion boards have quotas for minorities. We don’t call them quotas, of course. But if a board doesn’t hit the floor numbers, its results are held up until the list has been corrected. It’s almost impossible for the Army’s politically correct promotion system to pass over a Muslim physician.

ps – he was making 6 figures. Where is the money?

Ft. Hood

A couple things on this today.

One – George Bush quietly visited Ft. Hood on Friday along with Laura. I am certain those folks laid up in the hospital there relished that visit.

Two – the Telegraph reports that the nutbag shooter worshiped under an Iman who was a spiritual leader of some of the 9/11 terrorists!

Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a “spiritual adviser” to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.

Was this missed during the FBI investigation, or just ignored for expedience??

Health Care Reform (?)

Thomas Sowell writes of the “need” for reform.

Ironically, it is politicians who have already made medical insurance so expensive that many people refuse to buy it. Insurance is designed to cover risk. But politicians have mandated that insurance cover things that are not risks and that neither the buyers nor the sellers of insurance want covered.

A commenter at Three Sources notes an Ayn Rand quote concerning the coming criminality of not buying health insurance and not paying the government approved fine:

“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power the government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

I still don’t know, along with most of Congress, what all is in it based on the newpaper articles today, but I did write my congresswoman Betsy Markey-D- and thanked her for voting against the thing.

Toyotas and Lexus’

Apparently they “suddenly accelerate” yet investigators are dismissing a lot of the cases, because…well, read this:

In reviewing consumer complaints during its investigations, the NHTSA relied on established “positions” that defined how the agency viewed the causes of sudden acceleration. Cases in which consumers alleged that the brakes did not stop a car were discarded, for example, because the agency’s official position was that a braking system would always overcome an engine and stop a car.

This reminded me of the Paul Krugman opinion on the British health care system. (repeated often by James Taranto of the WSJ)

In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.

Ft. Hood

There is a story today in the NYTimes about Muslims voicing outrage at Hassan and his murder of those at Ft. Hood. I’m always happy to read genuine outrage from Muslims about Muslim violence and they did.

Then I got to this major twist from the Times:

It was Major Hasan, though, who increasingly felt let down by the military, and deeply conflicted by his religion, said those who knew him through the mosque. Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old substitute teacher whose parents worked at Fort Hood, said Major Hassan was told he would be sent to Afghanistan on Nov. 28, and he did not like it.

“He said he should quit the Army,” Mr. Reasoner said. “In the Koran, you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.”

Mr. Benjamin, who worked as a private contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan after leaving the Army in 2000, said the military should have let Major Hassan resign. “They should take more consideration of the human beings in the uniform,” he said, “rather than simply say, ‘We invested our money in you and need to get our money’s worth.’ ”

Still, Mr. Benjamin added, Major Hassan had overlooked an important, and peaceable, tenet of Islam. “We do have the right to retaliate,” he said, “but he who does not is twice blessed.”

Major Hassan is a 39 year old doctor! He joined the military for whatever reasons and while I can’t find the story he MUST have re-upped during a time when we were fighting Islamic terrorism. The FBI had already been looking out for him and other psychiatrists did not feel comfortable sending patients to him yet he was promoted and never formerly investigated.

Why is that? Read the quote from the effing Times again.
Because of political correctness, this paper feels the need to say that the military let Hassan down. What job doesn’t? Somehow the stress of dealing with other people’s stresses of war caused Hassan to create war stress of his own so he doesn’t need to go to war and kill people of his faith. Bull shit.

Gateway Pundit and Hot Air have stories worth reading today and Ralph Peters gives his take too.

Ralph is right. In the name of political correctness, in order to appease noisy groups like CAIR, this Hassan, who seemed to have some serious problems and yet was allowed to council our military people was never investigated or talked to or sent to a psychiatrist of his own. He was ignored and 13 people are dead because of it. Whether Hassan did it because he’s a Muslim or because he’s a lonely antisocial douchebag doesn’t matter. He was ignored because of our wanting to be loved by everyone. (oh – except Hondurans and Israelis…we’re ok if they hate us)

Honduras

Al Jazeera has an inaccurate article out on Honduras that mentions the “military coup”, the big “movement” in Honduras against the “ruling elite”, but it has some interesting parts to it.

This quote for one.

He [Zelaya] had clearly come to confuse his personal drama with the fate of the country. Sounding like France’s 17th century monarch Louis XIV, Zelaya claimed that peace would be restored to Honduras once he was returned to power.

true, so true.

And some predictions:
The writer seems to think this whole thing is going to end up with a smoldering regional war between Colombia and Venezuela.

Another prediction:
The US administration’s reputation will gain another instance of “clumsiness”

and finally,
Boeing will lose out on a potential contract with Brazil.

Since Al Jazeera earlier told me that Micheletti was quitting and he hasn’t yet, I don’t hold a lot of stock in their predictions, but we’ll see.