Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody

I Thought It Was Only the Right Who Hated America...

Sen. Conrad Suggests That People Who Don’t Believe in Civilian Trials for Terrorists Should Leave America and ‘Go Somewhere Else

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told CNSNews.com that civilian courts are well-suited to prosecute al Qaeda terrorists and that "if people don't believe in our system, maybe they ought to go somewhere else.”

Conrad also dismissed a question about the rights of terrorists captured on foreign battlefields and the rules of evidence in terms of a civilian court trial as not serious.

The Left used to mock the "America: Love It of Leave It" bumperstickers. Now they agree with the sentiment. Of course, they miss (or dismiss) the reasons people are concerned about trying terrorists in the U.S., which has nothing to do with hating America.

Those White Racists

Obama's Approval Slide Finds Whites Down to 39%

Matthew Yglesias thinks the answer is too many white pundits. That doesn't answer why white Democrats are the ones disapproving of Teh One.

Allahpundit digs into the numbers and notes Obama's terrible showing with independents (whom, we can assume, aren't racists, you know).

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 37% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent…
Voters not affiliated with either party continue to heavily favor Republicans, 44% to 20%.

That Obama Transparency

Thanks to Chuck Serio for this tip:
Obama’s Labor Department Ignores Freedom of Information Act

On Friday, 20 November 2009, The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation (Foundation) decided enough was enough and filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court demanding that they compel the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to comply with the Foundation’s April 6th Freedom of information Act (FOIA) request.

Barack Obama promised during the 2008 campaign that his presidency would be a model of transparency. So far, this administration has broken virtually every promise for open government that it originally made.

Ever Wonder How Two People Can Read the Same Thing and Reach Completely Different Conclusions?

That's the feeling I had after reading David Brooks's column and the Firedoglake screed linked to it at Memeorandum.

Brooks's column, titled The Values Question, goes into a philosophic tale about what American was, is, and hopes to be.

During the first many decades of this nation’s existence, the United States was a wide-open, dynamic country with a rapidly expanding economy. It was also a country that tolerated a large amount of cruelty and pain — poor people living in misery, workers suffering from exploitation.

Over the years, Americans decided they wanted a little more safety and security. This is what happens as nations grow wealthier; they use money to buy civilization.

Occasionally, our ancestors found themselves in a sweet spot. They could pass legislation that brought security but without a cost to vitality. But adults know that this situation is rare. In the real world, there’s usually a trade-off. The unregulated market wants to direct capital to the productive and the young. Welfare policies usually direct resources to the vulnerable and the elderly. Most social welfare legislation, even successful legislation, siphons money from the former to the latter.

Brooks then goes on to compare these earlier attempts at creating the welfare state with Obamacare, and discovers that when promising additional goodies (especially after you've already maxxed out the credit card), you have to figure out how to pay for them. And Democrats don't really like having to figure out how to pay for these things because it's not terribly popular with the pitchfork set. Brooks concludes that how we decide to deal with the supposed health care crisis says more about our values than anything, and he implies that we're really shitty people if we don't swallow the Democrats' solutions.

Earlofhuntingdon at FDL must've read a different column than the one I did, because the spittle-flecked post about Brooks' writing didn't really seem to address what Brooks actually said, but rather, what EH wanted him to say to fit the cruel, heartless conservative stereotype:

The "moral choice" for Bobo is clear: future business vitality trumps individual vitality and family health. He gets there by neatly synthesizing Republican talking points and by reducing to passive abstraction millions of Americans denied medical treatment by our bizarre and unsustainable health insurance system. He then reassures Republicans that they will be "responsible stewards" of tomorrow when they say no to demands for greater "comfort" today. Because we just can’t afford it.

I searched in vain for the part of Brooks' column where he said that "future business vitality trumps individual vitality and family health." Quite the contrary, really:

Reform would make us a more decent society, but also a less vibrant one. It would ease the anxiety of millions at the cost of future growth. It would heal a wound in the social fabric while piling another expensive and untouchable promise on top of the many such promises we’ve already made. America would be a less youthful, ragged and unforgiving nation, and a more middle-aged, civilized and sedate one.

Exactly what part of that statement shows that Brooks thinks "future vitality trumps individual vitality and family health"? This quote was used in the FDL piece, yet it's obvious that EH either didn't read it (entirely possible) or completely misread it (most probable). If anything, Brooks' statement seems to lean in favor of Obamacare because taking care of the poor and weak is what civilized societies do. But, I guess, if you are looking for a reason to hate conservatives--any conservatives--you really do have to misread what they say to get to the point you want.

Obama: Give me 34,000 More Troops for the "Necessary War," But Just Till I Can Blame Someone Else for Retreat

That's the impression one gets from President Obama's proposal, to be announced next week, to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan...but with "off ramps" to allow the POTUS to retreat but still blame someone else for his decision to bug out.

This is really quite distressing. Barack Obama and the Democrats running Congress spent the last 2 years telling us that Iraq was the "wrong war" and Afghanistan was the "necessary war," that we needed to provide more troops and give more support to our allies in Afghanistan to win the "real" war. Now, that appears to all have been a sham. Of course, the cynics among us (raises her hand) knew Democrats weren't serious about fighting any war, and that the real reason they disliked Iraq so much had nothing to do with sympathy for embattled Iraqis or concern for the budget, but rather, they hated the war in Iraq because we're winning there. We ousted a ruthless dictator, helped create democratic elections and have built and rebuilt much of the country's infrastructure.

But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were never about winning for the Democrats. They were merely propaganda tools to bash Republicans for the tiny number of American deaths in the Middle East, multiple deployments of our troops and the inconveniences that come with such things.

From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

The increase in troops is a good decision, but the off-ramps almost completely undermine it. The point in extending our footprint is to win the trust of the local communities and prove our reliability in providing them security, which is the central thrust of McChrystal’s COIN strategy. By getting them to trust our commitment, we can get them to help fight the Taliban themselves, as we did with the Anbar Awakening in Iraq against al-Qaeda, and greatly improve the intel we get from the locals. If we send 34,000 more troops but give ourselves a six-month time frame for success or bug-out, the locals will very quickly come to the realization that allying with us will be suicide. The COIN strategy only worked in Iraq because George W. Bush was adamant that we would stay until we won.
A Commander in Chief doesn’t need “off-ramps.” Any President can call an end to a deployment based on his own judgment. Putting these conditions into the American strategy signals weakness — a desire to pull out without getting blamed for the decision. Obama wants to be off the hook for an eventual withdrawal by claiming that he’s forced to do it because of these benchmark failures. And if Obama’s that keen to retreat, he should just do it now.

Question: When will the Democrats impose the war tax, then tell us there was nothing else they could do?

The Senate Health Care Bill: 5 Paragraphs You Must Read

Here it is:

What most of us know about the Democratic bill is that it requires nearly all Americans to have health insurance. What most of us don't know is that it requires us to buy a minimum level of insurance approved by the federal government, and forces health plans and providers to share our personal health information with the federal government and other entities.

If this bill becomes law, we could each be assigned a national beneficiary ID number or card (possibly an electronic device). And our personal health information will flow electronically to the US secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) – and many others – without our consent.

Sound farfetched? Buried in the Senate bill's 2,074 pages are provisions that actually permit and foster such things. Freedom and privacy are often lost in the fine print – which is why we've been studying the Senate bill since it was released Nov. 19 to help uncover the facts.

Read the whole thing.

Why Do We Mistreat the Poles So?

Via Brothers Judd:
U.S. Honors Stalin on Hallowed Ground, Will Saddam Hussein Be Next?

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians began taking down their statues of Josef Stalin, the mass murderer who killed millions of people. Astonishingly, in America, the National D-Day Memorial is honoring Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at its museum in Bedford, Virginia.

This misguided move will haunt millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Jews, etc. whose families were massacred by this Soviet tyrant. Stalin's killing machine slaughtered more people than Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did.

Hitler and Stalin were allies and started World War II in 1939 by both attacking Poland at the same time. But William McIntosh, the D-Day Memorial's president says that because Stalin became a U.S. ally after Germany invaded Russia, he deserves to be acknowledged along with Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

McIntosh is wrong. Stalin only gave lip service to the allies so that they would attack Nazi Germany on the Western front. Stalin did not liberate Eastern Europe from the Nazis in 1945; he sent in Soviet troops that occupied half of Europe until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Stalin the communist barely hid his disdain for capitalist America during WWII, and once the war ended, he began the Cold War and ordered his scientists to work on missiles and nuclear weapons that could destroy the United States.

You really have to wonder about the thought process that goes into some of these decisions. We allied with Stalin because we needed to squeeze Hitler to defeat him. And then we turned to defeat the USSR. For any American museum to honor Stalin is despicable.

Dean: Dems 'In Deep Trouble' On Health Care, The Only Options Are A Bad Bill Or 2010 Losses

That's from the HuffPo hand-wringing piece regarding the mess Democrats have put themselves in with Obamacare. By demanding legislation Americans don't want and can't afford, they are suddenly becoming aware of the dire consequences (for themselves) regardless of which way they go.

"I think if you passed the Senate bill tomorrow it would be OK. But then the problem is they don't have any defense for their members in 2010," Dean said, noting that the public option would not become operational until 2014. "On the other hand, if they drop the public option [to placate moderate members], I think they lose seats."

"So this is really tough. I didn't anticipate being in this position. I thought it would pass. Maybe Harry has some magic up his sleeve. But I don't see how he gets those four votes [Sens. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.)] without compromising the bill," Dean concluded.

What Dean and most liberal bloggers I've read seem to miss is that the bill they want will lose them seats anyway, since many of the Dems Dean is counting on are in Republican or Republican-leaning districts. Losing seats is OK with Nancy Pelosi, who considers the bluedogs who gave her her majority leader status to be vermin better off gone. But in the Senate, Reid can ill afford to piss off any of his coalition.

Steve Benen likens it to a hostage negotiation.

(I)magine there's a big meeting with every member of the Democratic caucus in both chambers. You stand at the front of the room and make a presentation: "If health care reform falls apart after having come this far, tens of millions of Americans will suffer; costs will continue to soar; the public will perceive Democrats as too weak and incompetent to act on their own agenda; the party will lose a lot of seats in the midterms and possible forfeit its majority; and President Obama will have suffered a devastating defeat that will severely limit his presidency going forward. No one will even try to fix the dysfunctional system again for decades, and the existing problems will only get worse."

For progressive Democrats, the response would be, "That's an unacceptable outcome, which we have to avoid."

For conservative Democrats, the response would be, "We can live with failure."

This necessarily affects negotiations. One contingent wants to avoid failure; the other contingent considers failure a satisfactory outcome. Both sides know what the other side is thinking.

The truth, of course, is something less hyperbolic. For one thing, millions of Americans will suffer if Obamacare passes, since none of the bills do anything to deal with spiralling health care costs. Nor will it give more people more choices or affordable choices where there are choices. And there's the devil in the details of both the House and Senate bills: the crushing taxes on everybody in America, from business owners to employees. And there's that pesky threat of jail time if you refuse to get insurance.

Moreover, Americans are already seeing Democrats as dysfunctional and unable to govern. It's not merely the ram-through of Obamacare, watching Pelosi and Reid bully, threaten and cajol Democrats to force them to vote for this monstrosity. It's everything the Democrats have done generally for the last 3 years, and specifically for the last year. What, exactly, have Democrats done that has improved the lives of Americans? We have double digit unemployment and an economy showing no signs of lowering that figure any time soon. We have a budget-busting stimulus package that didn't stimulate and a president too busy kowtowing to emperors and taking his wife on a taxpayer-paid date night to spend his time governing the country.

Worse still, Americans are becoming quite aware of the various accounting tricks Democrats have been and continue using to make their spending sprees look better. The stimulus plan was supposedly backloaded, so that most of the money would be spent in 2010...just before the midterm elections. And both the House and Senate health care bills don't even offer any benefits for several years, stockpiling taxpayer money to pay for it, then counting the "savings" from before benefits kick in. The lies are so blatant at this point that most people simply can't stomach it anymore.

The Left would just as soon punish bluedogs who don't sign on to their health care takeover. But the American people will punish them if they do sign on. It seems to me that Democrats have forgotten what representative democracy looks like. They think they get to ram through whatever crackpot ideas they want us to accept.

What's 2,600 Lives a Year?

That's the human cost of the EPA's push for higher car efficiency standards.

Tired of having to drive safe, affordable vehicles? Can’t make a decision at the car lot and want the government to narrow down the decisions for you? Well then you’re in luck. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a great new regulation in store for you.

The agency is intending to use the Clean Air Act to improve the fuel efficiency to 35.5 miles per gallon fleetwide by 2016 - four years ahead of schedule when President Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.


Sounds like a good deal. Most everyone wants his or her vehicle to get more miles to the gallon. It’s one of the things people first inquire about when buying a car. But there are many other reasons people choose certain vehicles: safety, reliability, horsepower, style, price, comfort, handling, and environmental impact. For instance, Americans use larger vehicles for practical reasons: to take their kids to practice, to tow their boat to the shore, or on small farms to haul equipment or produce. Of course, to meet these new standards, cars and trucks will need to be lighter, making them less safe. The National Academy of Sciences study pegs the cost of downsizing at 1,300 to 2,600 lives per year.

But we’re saving the planet, right? Touted as a measure to curb global warming, fuel efficiency standards have very little environmental impact. Newer vehicles with better efficiency standards may emit less carbon dioxide per mile, but increased fuel efficiency often leads to more driving and new cars “constitute a miniscule source of overall carbon dioxide emissions.” Our friends at the Institute for Energy Research note that “the rule will lead to global mean temperature being 16 thousandths of a degree Celsius lower (0.016°C) in 2100.”

Hard to continue making the global warming argument after the truth has been leaked out.

Worse than Murderers

It's no secret that I find the current obsession with sex offenders to be overblown and dangerous. I've documented various cases where people have been falsely branded sex offenders because of errors or hysteria. This includes going to jail for hugging a student.

Now, add a new twist: being branded a sex offender because a virus on your computer pulled up porn.

A months-long investigation by the Associated Press (AP) found cases in which innocent people have been branded as pedophiles after their co-workers or loved ones stumbled upon child porn placed on a PC through a virus.

Being branded a sex offender is worse than being a murderer these days, and there's a much higher chance of false arrest.

It's a Good Thing There Wasn't Obamacare to Tell Him He Wasn't Alive

Man trapped in 23-year 'coma' reveals horror of being unable to tell doctors he was conscious

Or, as Orrin Judd notes, it's a good thing Michael Schiavo couldn't benefit from his death.

They Don't Believe in Representative Democracy, Part 2

The strangest part of the Democrats' suicide pact to pass Obamacare is their blatant disregard for the will of their constituents. Wasn't part of civics class about how we elect representatives to go to Washington to do our bidding? Somebody needs to tell these people they work for us. Not that they care about that because, remember, they know better than you.

Apparently, Democrats are working on the RINOs from Maine to invoke cloture. This is the sort of thing that gives rightwingers fodder for their "throw out the moderates" stance. If Collins and Snowe showed any backbone, it would be encouraging, but I don't expect that.

Quote of the Day

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions"--James Madison

13 Democrats from Republican States Voted for Obamacare

It's time to throw those bums out.

Just a Reminder of What Happened the Last Time We Tried a Terrorist in Our Courts...

During the trial of the blind sheik, his attorney, Lynne Stewart broke the law by providing material support to the terrorist in the form of passing notes, so to speak, from her terrorist client to other terrorists.

With the news that Democrats haven't learned a damn thing from 9/11 and want to put more terrorists on trial, it was interesting to see the following story on Law.com:

Lynne Stewart Told to Surrender; Court's Split Over Light Sentence Remains

A procedural muddle kept Lynne Stewart out of prison for another day, but even as she prepared to surrender today, the possibility remains that one or more judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals may want to revisit her controversial sentence en banc.

Despite the 2nd Circuit's decision Monday directing Judge John G. Koeltl to revoke Stewart's bail and order her to "surrender forthwith" to begin serving her sentence, it was, for a moment, unclear whether Koeltl had the authority to issue that order without a mandate from the 2nd Circuit.

But Koeltl, in an order last night, said he must follow the 2nd Circuit's directive and he revoked bail for Stewart and a co-defendant, Mohamed Yousry. The judge nonetheless stayed the order until 5 p.m. today.

On Monday, a divided three-judge panel vacated the 28-month sentence Koeltl imposed on Stewart in 2006 for providing material support to a terrorist conspiracy. The panel said the sentence was too light, and it directed the judge to re-sentence the 70-year-old disbarred lawyer and make a finding on whether she committed perjury at trial.

There are many problems with trying terrorists in the U.S. as opposed to dispatching them in Guantanamo before they can come here. Traitorous defense attorneys are only one of those problems.

Lindsey Graham Stumps Eric Holder

Via Newsbusters, we have Senator Lindsey Graham stumping Eric Holder about the consequences of President Obama's policies:

GRAHAM: If bin Laden were caught tomorrow, would it be the position of this administration that he would be brought to justice?

HOLDER: He would certainly be brought to justice, absolutely.

GRAHAM: Where would you try him?

HOLDER: Well, we'd go through our protocol. And we'd make the determination about where he should appropriately be tried. [...]

GRAHAM: If we captured bin Laden tomorrow, would he be entitled to Miranda warnings at the moment of capture?

HOLDER: Again I'm not -- that all depends. I mean, the notion that we --

GRAHAM: Well, it does not depend. If you're going to prosecute anybody in civilian court, our law is clear that the moment custodial interrogation occurs the defendant, the criminal defendant, is entitled to a lawyer and to be informed of their right to remain silent.

The big problem I have is that you're criminalizing the war, that if we caught bin Laden tomorrow, we'd have mixed theories and we couldn't turn him over -- to the CIA, the FBI or military intelligence -- for an interrogation on the battlefield, because now we're saying that he is subject to criminal court in the United States. And you're confusing the people fighting this war.

I remember hearing the Left scream and holler about how we needed to bring terrorists into federal court because it wasn't "fair" otherwise. You know, they're entitled to all the rights of U.S. citizens. Or something.

Now that the hapless Obama administration is making good on these idiotic policies, we're beginning to see where those policies lead.

You Gotta Have Your Priorities

Andrew Sullivan is a vile, disgusting excuse for a human being, largely because of his bizarre obsession with Sarah Palin and her son Trig. Now Sullivan is taking time off, one can assume, to count typos in Palin's book as "lies" and fact check whether she chopped one cord of wood a day at her grandma's house. Cuz there's nothing more important going on in the world, dontcha know.

Cassandra pulls out just a few things Sullivan could actually write about if he was actually a serious person and not simply a clown piling out of the Left's clown car:

Let me see if I have this straight:

Double digit inflation.

Recession.

A President paralyzed by indecision: Should he fully resource the war of necessity that's vital, not just to the security of the United States but to the security of the world??? Decisions, decisions.

An historic reform of our entire health care system hanging by a thread...

But fear not, gentle readers! For in the midst of all these heavy matters, we can rely upon Andrew Sullivan to deeply delve into matters of transporting significance... like the highly suspicious 5th pregnancy of a married woman who isn't holding a political office at the moment and isn't expected to run for anything anytime soon.

The Left's obsession with Palin (and the idea that she heads the GOP) would be hilarious if it weren't so deadly serious.

That Obama Diplomacy Is Working So Well

Iran’s Foreign Minister Rejects Nuclear Deal

Today Iranian Foreign Minister Manochehr Mottaki publicly rejected the U.N.-backed proposal to send about 70 percent of Iran’s known supplies of enriched uranium out of the country. Mottaki suggested that instead Iran would exchange its low-enriched uranium for an equivalent amount of slightly higher enriched uranium, but only on its own territory. This clearly would be unacceptable since it would put Iran closer, rather than slightly farther away from, acquiring sufficient quantities of enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon, if the uranium were to be further enriched.

And this is only the beginning!

I'm Gonna Faint...I Agree With Media Matters on Something!

Of course, it could just be that Media Matters finally noticed the blatant sexism with which the MSM treat former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Or maybe Newsweek just went so far over the top that even Media Matters could no longer ignore it.

Like her or not, Palin is a former governor and vice presidential candidate. She deserves the same respect every single one of her male counterparts receives when they are featured on the cover of the magazine. I must have missed the cover of Vice President Joe Biden in short shorts or of Mitt Romney in a bathing suit.

I've frequently noted the sexism that was blatantly on display during the presidential campaign of '08, from the outrageous behavior towards Hillary Clinton to the nasty, hateful and sexist attacks on Sarah Palin. It's nice when Media Matters notices these things for a change. It would be nice if they did it a little more often.