Humor used skillfully cuts with the fineness of a scalpel and exposes the absurd to the full light of many suns. So it is today with A.B. Hinkle and Mark Steyn, both writing on Obama, the State of the Union Speech, and the conjoined beliefs of the left that government is the answer to all problems and, if the unwashed masses don't get it, then the answer is to explain it to them better. First up is Mr. Hinkle, giving voice to the unwashed masses:
This is a complex issue, and the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became. I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people.
--Barack Obama, State of the Union.
There's a lot in the bill that people are going to like. It's just a question of understanding it.
--ABC's Cokie Roberts, Dec. 20.
What are the immediate plans for recalibrating the message or intensifying the message to explain better to the American people what you're trying to do?
--Question to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Jan. 20.
It mighty big of man with nice voice to take blame like that. Him not need to. Head honchos not often take blame. Most times after big screw-up, head honchos say they have "full confidence" in someone who work for them -- right before pushing someone off edge of cliff, or letting someone twist "slowly, slowly" in wind, like tricky Nixon guy did with man who ran FBI.
Man with nice voice not like those other head honchos. Him bring change to Washington already, see?
But him right. Him not explain health care good. Use too many big words. Say too many compound-complex sentences. Confuse American people. American people not want that. American people want simple explanation. Simpler the better.
Me feel kind of sorry. It must really get on nerves for man with nice voice and people on his side, like lady on TV and cheerleaders in White House press pool. Why can't lamebrain American people get idea through thick skulls? Them not know how to make choices in own best interests! Need enlightened leaders to make choices for them. (Enlightened = smart. Me look this up in thing called "dictionary." Dictionary good! Try sometime!) . . .
I wonder if Hinkle is any relation to Mongo from Blazing Saddles.
At any rate, next up is Mark Steyn, who notes the mind killing, soul numbing verbosity of our Talker in Chief on his way to pointing out that, for Obama and the far left, there is but one answer to all life's problems - more government:
The world turns.
In Indonesia, the principal of a Muslim boarding school in Tangerang who is accused of impregnating a 15-year-old student says the DNA test will prove that a malevolent genie is the real father.
In New Zealand, a German tourist, Herr Hans Kurt Kubus, has been jailed for attempting to board a plane at Christchurch with 44 live lizards in his underpants.
In Britain, a research team at King’s College, London, has declared that the female “G-spot” does not, in fact, exist.
In France a group of top gynecologists led by M. Sylvain Mimoun has dismissed the findings, and said what do you expect if you ask a group of Englishmen to try to find a woman’s erogenous zone.
But in America Barack Obama is talking.
Talking, talking, talking. He talked for 70 minutes at the State of the Union. No matter how many geckos you shoveled down your briefs, you still lost all feeling in your legs. And still he talked. If you had an erogenous zone before he started, by the end it was undetectable even to Frenchmen. But on he talked. As respected poverty advocate Sen. John Edwards commented, “After the first hour, even my malevolent genie was back in the bottle.” . . .
Heh. Even Saul Alinsky recognized the value of humor in Rules for Radicals. But as we see, it is a sword for all to brandish. And as Obama and the left become carcatures of themselves, the humor nowdays practicaly writes itself.
The situation surrounding our government's handling of Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Undiebomber trained and armed by al Qaeda, has gone from bad to scandalous with the recent revelations regarding the inner workings of those agencies charged with counterterrorism. As a result of these revelations, we now know that:
Nine years after 9-11, Obama has, for all practical purposes, reduced our ability to interrogate al Qaeda operatives for actionable intelligence, to something approaching zero.
Nyuck-Nyuck-Nyuck.
As a threshold matter, intelligence gleaned from captured enemy combatants has been far and away our most important source of actionable intelligence in the war on terror. Yet a recent AP article recounts that the FBI questioned the Undiebomber for less then two hours in toto before reading him his rights. [Update: Former CIA Chief Michael Hayden expands on this in a WaPo op-ed:
. . . In the 50 minutes the FBI had to question him, agents reportedly got actionable intelligence. Good. But were there any experts on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the room (other than Abdulmutallab)? Was there anyone intimately familiar with any National Security Agency raw traffic to, from or about the captured terrorist? Did they have a list or photos of suspected recruits?
When questioning its detainees, the CIA routinely turns the information provided over to its experts for verification and recommendations for follow-up. The responses of these experts -- "Press him more on this, he knows the details" or "First time we've heard that" -- helps set up more detailed questioning.
None of that happened in Detroit. In fact, we ensured that it wouldn't. After the first session, the FBI Mirandized Abdulmutallab and -- to preserve a potential prosecution -- sent in a "clean team" of agents who could have no knowledge of what Abdulmutallab had provided before he was given his constitutional warnings. As has been widely reported, Abdulmutallab then exercised his right to remain silent.
In retrospect, the inadvisability of this approach seems self-evident.]
That revelation comes in the aftermath of Congressional hearings on how it was that Abdulmutallab, the undibomber went, in about twenty-four hours, from roasting his own chestnuts on an open fire during a Christmas Day flight to Detroit, then to a jail cell, complete with a lawyer, a Constitutional right not to anwwer questions, and presumably the mother of all ice packs. This from Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard:
. . . Four top counterterrorism officials testified before a congressional committee that they were not consulted about how to handle the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the al Qaeda operative who attempted to blow up Flight 253 on December 25, 2008.
That group included all three senior Obama administration officials who testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday: Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security; Michael Leiter, chairman of the National Counterterrorism Center; and Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence. It also included FBI Director Robert Mueller.
With surprising candor, Blair, the nation's top intelligence official, explained that these officials were not deliberately excluded from the decisionmaking process in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Rather, he told the Senate Homeland Security Committee, there was no process at all.
"I've been a part of the discussions which established this high-value interrogation unit, [HIG] which we started as part of the executive order after the decision to close Guantanamo. That unit was created for exactly this purpose -- to make a decision on whether a certain person who's detained should be treated as a case for federal prosecution or for some of the other means. We did not invoke the HIG in this case," he said. "We should have."
We learn from NewsWeek that the White House responded with anger to Blair's admissions, calling his testimony incorrect:
[O]fficials who have worked on the issue said Blair was wrong on almost every count. Abdulmutallab couldn't possibly have been questioned by the HIG because the unit doesn't exist yet. The task force had recommended it be created to handle the questioning of "high value" Qaeda leaders who might be captured overseas—a criterion that clearly doesn't apply in Abdulmutallab's case. But the proposal is still being reviewed by the National Security Council, and the actual unit has not yet been created.
The specific recommendation, one source said, was to have a collection of intelligence officers and FBI agents who are knowledgeable about the background of the Qaeda leaders and deploy them—along with language and regional experts—as soon as a Qaeda leader was captured. But since Abdulmutallab was not a Qaeda leader, and was captured in Detroit, not overseas, the HIG wouldn't apply in any case, said the source, who worked closely on the proposal. . . .
Administration officials said the comments by Blair were especially galling because they seemed to vindicate the chief Republican criticism of the handling of the Detroit incident. . . .
Galling?!?!?!? Our Moralizer In Chief has utterly emasculated our ability to gain timely and actionable intelligence from people who have nightly wet dreams about setting off nuclear explosions in every city in our country. Yet the Obama administration shows far more concern about being publicly criticized by Republicans. All emphasis is on the political, none on the substance. The Obama administration has their priorities completely upside down.
To restate the revelations from the hearing and the NewsWeek article, this is the position in which Obama has placed our national security: There is no specific procedure for our government to deal with captured enemy combatants, nor are the tools in place to be able to conduct interrogations coordinated across those agencies charged with countering terrorism. By Executive Order, the CIA cannot interrogate high value detainees and, for the past year through today, the designated replacement for the CIA interrogators, the HIG, a task force under FBI leadership and direct White House oversight, is still on the drawing board. For al Qaeda leaders or operatives captured in the U.S., it is Obama's de facto policy that they would go into the criminal justice system.
The national security imperative of gathering intelligence is no longer the top priority. It is trumped in the Obama administration by the political imperative of giving substance to the far left's calls to treat terrorism as a criminal matter and terrorists as people with constitutional rights. Given Obama's ostentatious grandstanding on terrorism and in particular the issue of interrogating enemy combatants, given Obama's many rhetorical efforts to establish himself as our Moralizer in Chief on this issue, and yet given the reality of his horrid national security effort, it is apparent that while Obama has more than talked the talk, he has stumbled, fallen, stubbed a toe, pulled a hammy and broken both legs on the walk.
To continue from Mr. Hayes:
That's quite an admission. Blair wasn't finished (see the 51:00 mark of this video). "Frankly, we were thinking more of overseas people and, duh!, we didn't put it then. That's what we will do now. And so we need to make those decisions more carefully. I was not consulted and the decision was made on the scene. It seemed logical to the people there but it should have been taken using this HIG format at a higher level." . . .
Blair admitted that Abdulmutallab was not interrogated for intelligence purposes because the Obama administration had not considered using the newly-created elite interrogation unit on terrorist in the United States.
If Blair considered the handling of Abdulmutallab a mistake, FBI Director Robert Mueller, testifying at the same time before the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not. Mueller, like Blair, acknowledged that the crucial decision about how to treat Abdulmutallab was made by local FBI agents.
Now think about that for a second. It's not merely that the Director of the FBI, the DNI, and the DNCC were not contacted and that this was a systemic failure arising out of the lack of any procedure for a very forseeable contingeny. I think (hope and pray) that it is safe to assume these three stellar civil servants had heard about the attempted bombing in real time. But the fact is that after the undiebomber was captured, none of these individuals lifted so much as a finger to insinuate themselves into the situation to ensure that the undiebomber was interrogated for every bit of actionable intelligence that he possessed. Not a one of them made so much as a phone call. They sat with their thumbs up their collective asses in blissful ignorance while the Undiebomber was questioned by local FBI - who may or may not have the slightest background in counterterroism and the specifics of our intel on Abdulmutallab - and shortly thereafter, read his rights and given a lawyer. Lacking a procedure for this eventuality in year nine of the war on terror is unfathomable. Displaying this degree of placidity and lack of proactivity even in the abscence of a procedure is utterly unforgivable.
As an aside, it is not clear what role the DOJ directly played in that decision and, if they played any such role, whether Eric Holder was directly involved. That said, inquiring minds really, really want to know. The administration has refused to answer that question.
It should be noted that the White House, which, as previously noted, publicly trumpeted in August of 2009 that they had assumed a direct oversight role in high value interrogations, equally did nothing to intercede in this case. And let's not forget that the director of the National Counterterrorism Center was on vacation while all of this going on and that he, like Obama himself, saw no reason to cut his vacation short. All of this adds up to incompetence on a cosmic scale, a Three Stooges scale. And our national security is in their hands? Nyuck-Nyuck-Nyuck indeed.
. . . Mueller testified that those FBI agents interviewed Abdulmutallab about "ongoing and other threats." What the FBI director did not mention was that his agents interviewed the terrorist without any input from the National Counterterrorism Center — the institution we now know was sitting on top of a small mountain of not-yet-correlated information about the bomber.
So whatever information Abdulmutallab provided, he gave up in response to general questions about his activities, not in response to specific questions based on the intelligence the U.S. government had already collected on him. And within 24 hours — according to Senator Jeff Sessions, whose tough questioning left Mueller stuttering — Abdulmutallab was Mirandized and he stopped talking. (It would be nice to learn, from Mueller or someone else in a position to know, precisely when Abdulmutallab was read his rights.) . . .
Just unbelievable. If heads don't roll now for this level of ineptitude, we can rest assured that heads will roll in the future. It will be the heads of Americans who have placed their trust in Obama to protect our nation. Soaring rhetoric will stop neither bullets nor blast waves. Nor will Obama's moralizing be sufficient to keep a crippled jet in the sky. It seems inevitable that American blood will be spilled as a direct result of an Obama national security apparatus not merely in disaray, but Three Stooges-esque in its degree of incompetence.
Given that the Obama administration has already found criticism of their performance to be "galling," it is clear that the Obama administration is not going to do anything to correct this situation, Understand that there is no reason the Obama administration cannot, at this very moment, pull the Undiebomber out of our federal justice system, treat him as an enemy combatant, and interrogate him his every waking minute without the presence of a lawyer. Instead, Obama is refusing to pull the undiebombler out of the District Court docket now because it would be a tacit acknowledgement of the the glaring holes in - and gross incompetence of - his national security apparatus.
I documented in detail two weeks ago how Obama had weakened our national security during his first year in office. I was far, far too easy on Obama. I had assumed that our national security apparatus was, nine years on from 9-11, still a well oiled machine, but that Obama had made a command decision to move Abdulmutallab to federal Court. I had no idea that the reality is that Obama had made sufficient changes to the procedures and tone of our national security apparatus that it stands today as uncoordinated, incompetent, operating on autopilot without appropriate procedures in place and unfathomably lacking in proactiveness at the very highest levels. After Obama has had a full year in office, and after he had inherited a functioning system from the Bush administration, this is truly scandalous - not to mention incredibly dangerous for America. Call it Undiegate.
Update: The Washington Post Editorial Board arrives (a bit late) at some of the same conclusions:
. . . The Obama administration had three options: It could charge [the undiebomber] in federal court. It could detain him as an enemy belligerent. Or it could hold him for prolonged questioning and later indict him, ensuring that nothing Mr. Abdulmutallab said during questioning was used against him in court.
It is now clear that the administration did not give serious thought to anything but Door No. 1. This was myopic, irresponsible and potentially dangerous. . . .
According to sources with knowledge of the discussions, no one questioned the approach or raised the possibility of taking more time to question the suspect. This makes the administration's approach even more worrisome than it would have been had intelligence personnel been cut out of the process altogether.
Update: Charles Krauthammer is on precisely the same sheet of music this week.
Update: Maine's Susan Collins - of all people - goes nuclear on the Obama administration over this.
. . . when a moderate like Collins calls the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab “irresponsible,” “dangerous,” and “inconceivable,” that has a broader political impact. When Collins says that “Foreign terrorists are enemy combatants and they must be treated as such,” and calls the current Obama policies a “charade,” that will make it more difficult for people to write it off as knee-jerk, right-wing contempt for Obama instead of his policies:
While Collins is on the money, she does not go quite far enough. Few people, Collins included, seem to be catching on to the degree to which Obama has deconstructed what was once a highly functional national security apparatus, not to mention the equally scandalous degree of institutional passivity at the top of that apparatus now.
About two months ago, in a post discussing how, while conservatives in general have long been on the right side of seeking equality for all in America, identity politics and racism pervade the left, I wrote:
As to the NYT decision to provide gift ideas based on race, it is at once a tempest in a teapot and a window into the soul of the left. When they see a person, their natural reaction is to attempt to categorize them into a victim group which, thereafter, becomes their defining characteristic. It is in itself a form of racism - more belevolent then that practiced by Democrats of old, but a form of racism nonetheless. That fact is lost on the left, but it is easy to spot as it manifests in so many ways, the NYT decision to run a seperate but equal page of gift ideas being but a minor one. Affirmative action is another, as is the left's fanning of the flames of reverse racism discussed in the quote above.
I would love to see a poll that asks what it is you think of each time you, for example, look at Obama. I see a man. The fact that he is black never makes it into my consciousness unless brought to my attention by an outside source. I would imagine that is what the vast majority of conservatives also experience. On the flip side, I wonder how many on the left see a "black man." It would be interesting to know from a psychological standpoint, would it not?
File this one under the heading of "ask and ye shall be answered."
Here is Newsweek's Michael Isikoff's opening paragraph of a short article telling us about the Justice Dept.'s review of the legal work of OLC attorney's:
For weeks, the right has heckled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for his plans to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City and his handling of the Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now the left is going to be upset: an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.
Having actually read the memo's on enhanced interrogation - not "torture" - I would have been amazed to find a result by any neutral agency that was different. What really struck me about the above paragraph was Isikoff's incredibly inappropriate comparison between complaints about dangerous procedures with far left complaints about an outcome that they wanted. It is comparing two completely different things as if they were mere polar opposites along a linear scale.
The right's complaint as regards the Undiebomberis that valuable intelligence of the kind that could save American lives was not farmed. We now know that is because, after a year in office, Obama has utterly emasculated our national security apparatus, at least as regards interrogation of captured enemy combatants. As to KSM, the complaint was about giving him a civilian trial that would risk exposing national security secrets and that would provide KSM with the world's greatest platform to spread alQaedapropaganda. The right's complaint, in both instances, is about what procedures will best protect our nation.
The left's complaint is of a wholly different cloth. The left wants an outcome - the lynching of the OLC attorneys. They want the blood of those attorneys and they do so wholly irrespective of the law regarding what does and does not constitute "torture." The left, from Obama on down, have demagogued this issue, slapping a bald label on enhanced interrogation of "torture." They have used it as a tool to crush the right politically, regardless of the ramifications for our national security. Thus Isikoff forecasts their unhappiness that the final bloodbath will be denied them.
How Isikoff conflates these complaints and casually reduces them to their lowest common denominator is troubling indeed. It gives moral relevance to two things that stand on wholly different moral planes. But then again, that seems to be a habit of those on the left.
Once or twice a year, I compose a post that is in complete sync with a later article by my favorite pundit, Charles Krauthammer. The unfortunate part is that the topic this time around is the scandal that is Obama's national security apparatus. It is a scandal exposed by the Obama administration's handling of the Undiebomber, Abdulmutallab. After nine years, Obama has deconstructed our national security apparatus to the point that it is dysfunctional and passive. What is equally as troubling is that this is being largely ignored by the MSM. This one will get people killed.
On most things of consequence, the gulf between Obama'swords and his deeds is large indeed. But few are so obvious and blatant as listening to Obama demonize lobbyists in the State of the Union Speech only to see his administration on the next day inviting the lobbyists to a private meeting to "discuss issues raised in Obama's speech." This from the Hill:
A day after bashing lobbyists, President Barack Obama’s administration has invited K Street insiders to join private briefings on a range of topics addressed in Wednesday’s State of the Union.
The Treasury Department on Thursday morning invited selected individuals to “a series of conference calls with senior Obama administration officials to discuss key aspects of the State of the Union address.” . . .
This is getting comical.
On a related note, the AP fact checked Obama's speech, finding several questionable Presidential claims. They include
- Obama seeks a freeze on certain items of discretionary spending as a means to lower out out of control deficits. The AP notes that, while Obama made this the centerpiece of his new pose as a fiscal hawk, Obama neglected to mention that, even if fully enacted, his plan will only cut the budget deficit by 1% in ten years. AP doesn't go far enough, though. The reality is that Obama and the Dems already raised discretionary spending by 25% last year, so freezing such spending at current levels is kind of like cutting off the alcohol only after the patrons are already drunk.
- The AP opines that Obama's call for a "bi-partisan" commission to recommend changes to the economy will be "toothless." That said, the AP ignores that this was always about politics rather than fixing the economy. The left wants to tax us so that they can continue to spend. Congress is required by the Constitution to make all binding decisions on taxing and spending. The only reason to toss up a "bi-partisan commission" to duplicate this function is to protect Congressional Democrats - to give them some cover for their decisions. It is not exactly a portrait in moral courage.
- As to Obama's health care claim that "[o]ur approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan," AP gives a post speech shout out of "you lie."
- As to Obama's claims regarding two million jobs saved by the stimulus, the AP notes that there is reason for cynicism. What the AP does not note is that even of the jobs claimed, they are virtually all in the public sector, with a few in heavily subsidised "green jobs" that could not exist in the private sector without government largess. They will fade away the moment the government tit drys up. Update: Gateway Pundit runs to ground Obama's claim of the Phoenix "small business" that is tripling its work force thanks to the stimulus. It is Ecotality, owned by a Democratic donor whose company received $100 million in stimulus funds - for which it added 27 jobs in 2009 and is planning on adding another 15 in 2010. That is well over a $2 million per job. So do you feel stimulated yet?
- Obama shamelessly repeated his calls for "transparency" in government - after giving us a year of the least transparent government in decades. Even hard core Obamiacs had to be doing the face-palm on that one.
- As the AP lastly notes, Obama claimed to have killed far more alQaeda members than the Bushies did in 2008. But, AP points out, this is a claim that is impossible to verify. They also note that drone attacks, which are likely the basis for the claim, "increased dramatically in the last 18 months." Hmmmm, let's see, eighteen minus twelve . . . . what do you know - the increase started on Bush's watch. So Obama's claim to being superior to Bush in the war on terror is predicated on . . . carrying on a Bush policy.
There were a lot of false or unverifiable claims made by Obama last night that the AP missed. Hot Air notes that Obama's blame of Bush for the deficits is one. Another is Obama claiming credit for "ending" the war in Iraq. It mystifies me that any commander of U.S. troops could sit stone-faced listening to that one. And then there was Obama's claim that the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizen's United would open up the flood gates for foreign influence in our elections when the reality is that the laws pertaining to foreign money in campaigns were explicitly left untouched by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision.
From the NYT article, "Professor Is A Label That Leans Left." The cloistered world of academica draws liberals, but is the 5 to 1 imbalance because so few conservatives apply for jobs in academia? Or is it because so few conservatives are hired into a profession where the liberal professors are themselves the gate keepers?
Sorry for the absence. Someone was doing construction a few miles from here and and cut the phone lines to my area. The phone company finally just got around to repairing the lines. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . . .
Obama's poll numbers are tanking - as are the poll numbers for his signature legislative effort, universal Obamacare. Obama's coattails are not merely short, but after Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey, apparently non-existent. Unable to fathom how he has gone from being the hope 'n change Messiah during the campaign, carrying the Democratic party with him to electoral victory, to someone who makes Jimmy Carter look like a model President, Obama has decided to go back to his comfort zone - campaigning - in a big way.:
After last week's devastating defeat in Massachusetts, President Obama ordered a review of Democratic strategy and has decided to bring back some of the key people who helped him win the presidency, hoping they can work their magic on troubled Democrats. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, the president is taking greater control over party strategy and is bringing back his former campaign manager, David Plouffe, to oversee congressional and governors' races in hopes of preventing a Democratic massacre in November. . . .
The reality is that Obama does not seem yet to have left the campaign mode. Some might think that a detriment in a sitting President. Not Obama and his clique, however, whose response to the problems or governance is to campaign more and harder. Who are we to judge? Oh, that's right. We're the electorate. That's our job.
At any rate, Plouffe, he of campaign magic, is apparently equally as clueless as to the reasons for Obama's downfall. Plouffe has has outlined a sure fire strategy to change Obama's fading fortunes in an op-ed at the Washington Post. Democrats will survive a November massacre if they just "do what the American people sent them to Washington to do." Given that Obama campaigned to the center during the general election, I would have to agree with that. But what Plouffe means is actually to do what the far left base of the Democrats wants them to do. That means, explains Plouffe, first and foremost, immediately passing health care.
One wonders if Plouffe bothered to turn on a t.v. covering the Massachusetts election for TED KENNEDY'S ANCESTRAL SEAT. Apparently not. That said, there might be more to this than meets the eye. Plouffe adds a "P.S." that "[h]ealth care is a jobs creator." Who knew? We can solve all of our problems at once. Given that health care bill would create over 100 new bureaucratic entities, Plouffe's probably not even gilding the lilly with that one. Pass health care and solve our unemployment problem all in one fell swoop. Genuis. No wonder the left feels that they are meant by birthright to govern we, the unwashed masses, by fiat. And if we don't understand that, well, they'll just make a greater effort to explain it to us in the future.
Second on Plouffe's list is that "[w]e need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them." Top down job creation is not how a capitilist system works - or at least not if the goal is the creation of permanent jobs. Government funded jobs from a spending bill are by definition temporary. Of course, it may well be that Plouffe is only concerned about jobs lasting from October to mid November of this year.
On a related note, just on Sunday, the left took credit for creating a whole bunch of jobs - the only problem was that none of the President's staff doing the Sunday talk show circuit could agree on how many. The numbers ranged from "thousands" to "1.5 million" to "2 million." Quite a spread there. Plouffe might want to start out his effort to convince the electorate of the veracity of Obama's job creation claims by making sure that whatever number Obama's speech writer dreams up while on a "fairy dust" bender is the same one used by the rest of the Obama Administration in public.
Plouffe does note, rightly, that "full recovery will happen only when the private sector begins hiring in earnest." What he doesn't explain is why, then, did the Democrats only allocate 2.6% of the $787 billion stimulus bills to helping small business - the hands down best engine of new job creation in America - with another 10% for infrastructure improvements. Well, at least Obama and Plouffe can point to public sector jobs. They did very well from the stimulus.
Unfortunately, as a high school student could probably have explained to Obama and Plouffe, the public sector itself creates no wealth. Public sector employment is wholly dependant upon tax receipts from . . . the private sector (or money borrowed from China which has to be repaid by private sector tax receipts, as the case may be). While public sector functions may be necessary, paying for them is a leech, not a benefit, to the economy. So Obama pissed away close to a trillion in borrowed money for virtually no return on investment. Since Plouffe glosses over those facts, I guess he is taking a mulligan on that one.
Plouffe's ultimate solution is to tell America not to be fooled by Republican criticism as the Bushies are responsible for all of Obama's ills. Apparently Obama was never inagurated and Bush is a year into his third term. If only.
And Plouffe, lastly, calls on Democrats to loudly trumpet their many achievements during the past year. He cites as one of them the great "transparency" instituted by Democrats. Whatever else you may say about Plouffe, the guy obviously has a world class sense of humor.
I am sure the return to a campaign mode that Obama, in reality, never left will work out well for Obama and the Democrats. Indeed, I applaud them for doing so as an alternative to governing and would remind them that, should they fail, not to give up hope. The answer is just to campaign, campaign ever harder.
You know, if this wasn't so deadly serious for our nation, it would be fun just to sit back with some popcorn and watch. These jokers are caricatures - of themselves.
The Washington Post is the latest paper to do a liberal primal scream over the failure of Obama to destroy capitalism and enact a full transition to socialism in his first year in office. They find multiple people and acts to blame, but topping the list is . . . wait for it, . . . Republican obstructionism. Who could have guessed that the party holding a minority in the House and with too few seats in the Senate to filibuster could be the cause of Obama's epic failure in 2009? Coming in second for WaPo's opprobrium was Harry Reid and disloyal Senate Democrats:
For House Democrats, who enjoy a 256 to 178 majority, the main obstacle in 2009 was not Republicans, but the Senate. Even with 60 Democrats, Reid was unable to advance the climate-change and student loan bills that the House approved last summer. The Senate regulatory-reform bill is still in the banking committee.
One might think that with this admission, the authors would realize that it exposes the lie of their headline theory of Republican obstructionism. But it seems that one of the great achievements of the modern far left is their ability to hold a belief in the truth of two or more diametricaly opposed thoughts at the same time.
No matter. According to Wapo, the problem was that Republicans unreasonably refused to take any part in Obama's "remaking of America." Obama's proposals amounted to a vast expansion of government, massive increases in deficit spending, and new taxes, whether directly or indirectly on every American. Yet WaPo seems mystefied why Republicans should object to any of that on substantive grounds. Their alternative take on it is that "[s]ome of the bills . . . were perhaps too unwieldy for voters to digest and too easy for GOP opponents to demagogue." Of course, that's it. There's nothing wrong with any of the legislation. It is just Republicans taking partisan advantage of an electorate that is too stupid to understand the great things Obama was doing for America. The arrogance and hubris of the far left knows no bounds.
WaPo also seems to have a dim memory of the facts reported in their paper over the past year. From the very start - indeed, within three days of taking office, Obama told Republicans who attempted to engage and have input into bipartisan legislation - specifically the Stimulus - that "I won." So much for bipartisanship. Facts are such inconveinient things for the left - unless you are very selective about them of course.
The left, from Obama through Reid and Pelosi, felt no need to engage in bipartisanship other than for some minimal political cover. And indeed, when one looks at the internal problems that Democrats had in 2009, the fact is that Pelosi and Reid treated most Congressional Democrats the same way they treated Republicans. Radical legislation was drafted behind their closed doors, only to be unleashed on Republicans and many Democrats alike vitrually on the eve on which they were to be voted. It was not merely bipartisanship that Obama and the Democratic leadership felt no need to consider, it was deliberative democracy itself. And indeed, the reason for that is the that the legislation, from cap and trade to health care to financial regulation, was so over reaching that even moderate Democrats blinked at the degree of the radical changes proposed by Obama-Pelosi-Reid.
WaPo concludes looking at what 2010 holds in store.
Before the Massachusetts loss, the White House officials touted 2009 as the most productive legislative year in decades. Prodded before Tuesday's election whether Obama and his team would change anything about its Hill strategy, Axelrod replied, "I've thought about that and I don't see how."
Lawmakers expect Obama to set a course for 2010 on Wednesday, in his State of the Union speech. Democrats want the focus on one issue: jobs. But on Friday in Ohio, given a few days to digest Brown's upset, Obama defended and promoted the same long to-do list he brought with him to office.
"I didn't run for president to turn away from these challenges," he said. "I didn't run for president to kick them down the road. I ran for president to confront them -- once and for all."
It would seem that Obama and his administration have as tenuous a grasp on reality as do the WaPo authors - though Democrats seeking reelection in 2010 seem to be grasping it well enough. I think it safe to say that we will be hearing primal screams from the left for at least the next few years. No matter to me, at least, as I find them oddly comforting.
Among the many fictions Obama sold us was that Democrats were not repsponsible for our economic meldown (Fannie, Freddie, moral hazard, race based lending standards - nothing to see there) - but rather that our finacial sector was. Obama tried to use the financial crisis to push his priorities of health care and cap and trade while tossing the infamous Stimulus into the economy in the hopes that a bill - only 2.6% of which was aimed at small business - would somehow stop the unemployment hemmoraging.
Now here we sit, well into a recession that is second only to the Great Depression in the depth of its effects and length. So what does Obama plan for an Act II that will put our economy on better footing? How about new bank regulations to limit their size and trading abilities as well as taxing our most productive banks in what amounts to a public scourging. Perhaps even more horrifying is the plan for Washington's most toxic asset, one of the primary architects of our finanical disaster, Barney Frank, to do away with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and replace them with a new agency created by him. What could possibly go wrong.
Obama has floated a plan to encumber banks with a host of new regulations to limit the size of banks and the type of transactions in which they can engage. This is nothing more than an Axlerod inspired attempt to fan the flames of class anger to raise poll numbers. It does nothing to solve the problems that got it us into this financial catastrophe and it will likely put a stake in our global financial competitiveness, but it does play to the socialist meme of capitalism as the root of all evil. Thus it works for Obama, but Treasury Sec., Tim Geitner is finding it a bit difficult to get behind:
President Barack Obama's newest Wall Street crackdown was met with hesitation from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who voiced concern that politics could sacrifice good economic policy, according to financial industry sources.
Geithner is concerned that the proposed limits on big banks' trading and size could impact U.S. firms' global competitiveness, the sources said, speaking anonymously because Geithner has not spoken publicly about his reservations.
He also has concerns that the limits do not necessarily get at the root of the problems and excesses that fueled the recent financial meltdown, the sources said.
A White House official said both Geithner and Lawrence Summers, the director of Obama's National Economic Council, worked closely with Paul Volcker, who heads a White House economic recovery board, in developing the proposals.
"The plan was submitted to the president with a unanimous recommendation from the economic team," the official said.
Obama's proposals would prevent banks or financial institutions that own banks from investing in, owning or sponsoring a hedge fund or private equity fund.
Obama called for a new cap on the size of banks in relation to the overall financial sector that would take into account not only bank deposits, which are already capped, but also liabilities and other non-deposit funding sources.. . .
They come as the administration has sharpened its rhetoric against Wall Street where the announcement was met with disdain. Bank shares slid and the dollar fell against other currencies. . . .
Lawrence White, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business and a former regulator, said Obama's proposals were "a solution to the wrong problem."
"They have this rhetoric that it was proprietary trading that was the problem," White said. "That's wrong."
Mr. White's problem is that he does not understand that, for Obama, all problems, from national security to economic, are political - and in his world, it it is the ideology of the far left that are driving Obama's politics. Capitalism is evil. It must be controlled by government and there is nothing wrong with using it as a whipping boy to gather votes. The real problems that led to our fiscal meltdown in fact have to be ignored because they implicate nearly every Democrat in Congress today, including our resident Acorn enabler, Obama himself.
In the same vein is Obama's new punitive bank tax, designed to garner votes by punishing select banks. Warren Buffet, an Obama supporter during the campaign, finds himself not exactly impressed by this latest attack:
Warren Buffett opposes President Barack Obama’s proposed levy on financial institutions because firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. already repaid bailout funds.
“I don’t see any reason why they should be paying a special tax,” said Buffett, the chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., in an interview on Bloomberg Television today. Supporters of the plan to tax the banks “are trying to punish people,” he said. “I don’t see the rationale for it.”
Obama announced a plan last week to impose a fee on as many as 50 financial companies to recover losses from the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. The levy would apply to firms with more than $50 billion in assets, including Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs, two companies that Berkshire has investments in. It would exclude Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage lenders taken over by the U.S.
“Look at the damage Fannie and Freddie caused, and they were run by the Congress,” said Buffett. “Should they have a special tax on congressmen because they let this thing happen to Freddie and Fannie? I don’t think so.”
Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and other beneficiaries of the bailout such as Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. repaid the money they got from the government. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac owe about $110 billion, according to Bloomberg data.
“Most of the banks didn’t need to be saved,” Buffett said. “Including Wells Fargo.” . . .
The president’s proposed tax would be imposed on firms including bank holding companies and some insurers. The administration estimates the tax will raise $90 billion over 10 years and $117 billion over 12 years.
“My determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people,” Obama said Jan. 14 when he announced the Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee. “We want our money back, and we’re going to get it.”
Let's be clear, when you tax a corporation, it always, always, gets passed through to the clientele. It will not create one new job to lessen the record unemployment in America. It will merely make our banks a little less competitive so Obama can pose as a populist champion.
And last but not least in doubling down on failure is perhaps the scariest finanical news yet to come out of Washington in decades. It is a plan for Barney Frank, one of three central architects of our financial meltdown, to write the next chapter of America's march to the finanical precipice. This from the WSJ:
A top House Democrat on Friday said his committee was preparing to recommend "abolishing" mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and rebuilding the U.S. housing-finance system from scratch.
"The remedy here is...as I believe this committee will be recommending, abolishing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their current form and coming up with a whole new system of housing finance," said Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
. . . Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee around half of the nation's $11 trillion in home mortgages. . . .
An EU/German corporation has announced a major deal with Iran to transfer technology that will allow Iran to largely circumvent what are expected to be American led sanctions targeting their gas industry. This from Yahoo:
Iran has signed a one-billion-euro (1.44-billion-dollar) deal with a German firm to build 100 gas turbo-compressors, an industry official said in newspapers on Wednesday.
The contract provides for the unnamed German firm to transfer the know-how to build, install and run the equipment needed to exploit and transport gas, said Iran's Gas Engineering and Development Company head, Ali RezaGharibi.
The German company has already delivered 45 such turbo-compressors to Iran, Gharibi said, according to Iran Daily. Industry experts said he was apparently referring to Siemens. . . .
The government daily Iran Daily said the contract was signed at the start of the week and would be a "relief for many German businesses that have long complained about restrictions on trade with Iran" under sanctions.
The illegitimate Iranian regime is going at full speed towards a nuclear arsenal. The regime is unstable, fanatical, bloodthirsty on a level not seen since Khmer Rouge, and it is a regime in large measure responsible for the increasing destabilization of the Middle East. The regime is an intractable enemy of freedom, the West and its own people. They present the greatest threat to the world since Nazi Germany. Yet Germany is quite willing to partner with them. This goes beyond amoral and greed.
I have little doubt American blood is going to be spilled to end the theocracy's scourge. Yet the Germans, who have relied on America to rebuild their economy from utter ruin after WWII and have relied on America to protect their nation ever since, are doing nothing more than exacerbating the problem with Iran for their own profit. This is not merely scandalous, but a critical issue of national security - not only our's, but Germany's and the EU's also. Germany is now a province of the European Union. If Germany is going to engage in this conduct and the EU is going to condone it, then Obama and Clinton should be making this a cause celebre in the press. Someone pass the message to our President of the World.
With 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases last season, this could be the draft of the decade for the Catholic League. Indeed, it is being reported that a disembodied voice from a burning bush behind homeplate in Vatican Field was heard to say "great pickup." The B'nai B'rith Bombers are already hollering "ringer" before the next interfaith tournament.
“You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”
Abraham Lincoln, September 1858, Speech in Clinton, Illinois
This from Mark Steyn on the travails of Obama:
So what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”
But you schlubsaren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”
Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He only gave (according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president — and maybe more than all of them put together. But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview — I believe the top-rated Grain & Livestock Prices Report — 4 a.m. Update with Herb Torpormeister on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House.
But what will the president be saying in all these extra interviews? In that interview about how he hadn’t given enough interviews, he also explained to George Stephanopoulos what that wacky Massachusetts election was all about:
“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” said Obama. “People are angry and they’re frustrated, not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years but what’s happened over the last eight years.”
Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they’re voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts. Boy, I can’t wait for that 159th interview.
Presumably, the president isn’t stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it’s dispiriting to discover he’s stupid enough to think we’re stupid enough to believe it. . . .
Americans may, by and large, be politically ignorant. And true, they voted for Obama and the snake oil he was selling as our corrupt MSM spared no effort to insure that they would be kept in ignorance. But Americans are not stupid. A year on, they can take stock for themselves. So long as the democratic process remains not yet wholly corrupted by vote fraud and selective recounts, they will take revenge. And as Obama'scrashing poll numbers (and the crashing ratings number for liberal media) would seem to indicate, once Americans have seen the artifice, they really get a little annoyed at still being treated as idiots.
This is a real problem for far left ideologues, since at the very center of their world view is a heartfelt belief in the superiority of their intellect and, thus, both the absolute truth of their cause and the necessity of imposing their will. It is a paradigm that will never allow the ideologue to realize that they might be wrong. As we see it being played out by Obama, if the voters don't agree, that can only be because they don't understand. Left wing ideologues conflate the temporary ignorance of an electorate that voted them into office with a congenital stupidity that only exists in the arrogance of their imagination.
No matter. By all means Mr. President, talk on, talk on.
There has been some news to note on the issue of race in America. The first, from Fox, is that the tea party movement may perhaps be a bit more diverse than the far left wants to admit:
Though the tea party movement has attracted criticism for its supposed lack of diversity, minority activists who are involved say the movement has little to do with race, and that it is attracting a more diverse crowd every day.
. . . [Lloyd] Marcus, a black conservative who is now involved in the growing tea party movement, attributes the problems of his childhood neighborhood, his extended family and the black community in general to a "cradle-to-grave government dependency" that in the case of his cousins enabled an idle life of crime and drug abuse.
To Marcus, President Obama's policies perpetuate that dependency. That's why, he says, it baffles him and other black conservatives when the tea party movement is dismissed as somehow anti-black, as a rowdy bunch of ignorant, white protesters who have it in for the nation's first black president.
"This is the nicest angry mob I've ever seen," Marcus said.
Marcus is one of a number of black conservatives who have joined up with, and helped lead, the conservative tea party movement since its inception. Though the movement has attracted criticism for its supposed lack of diversity -- MSNBC host Chris Matthews recently called the groups "monochromatic" and "all white" -- those minority activists who are involved say the movement has little to do with race, and that it is attracting a more diverse crowd every day.
"I think a lot of black people are waking up from their Obama night-of-the-living-dead fog," Marcus said. "They were walking around like zombies going Obama, Obama, Obama."
He and other black conservatives connected with one of the hundreds of tea party groups across America were largely active in conservative and Republican causes before the movement's start in early 2009. They spoke and wrote about the need for smaller government, lower spending and lower taxes and warned that Obama's candidacy would pose a threat to those values.
But in the tea party movement they found a group that not only reflected their views but provided a platform. . . .
Well, at least in that regard, Obama is having a positive effect on race relations. A recent poll suggests that, beyond the mere fact of his election, Obama has had no further positive impact on race relations in America. This from the Washington Post:
Soaring expectations about the effect of the first black president on U.S. race relations have collided with a more mundane reality, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
On the eve of President Obama's inauguration a year ago, nearly six in 10 Americans said his presidency would advance cross-racial ties. Now, about four in 10 say it has done so.
The falloff has been highest among African Americans. Last January, three-quarters of blacks said they expected Obama's presidency to help. In the new poll, 51 percent of African Americans say he has helped, a wider gap between expectations and performance than among whites.
Although most of all those polled view Obama's election as a mark of progress for all African Americans, three in 10 say it is not indicative of broader change. About two-thirds see Obama's election as a sign of progress for all blacks in the United States, a figure unchanged from last year, but about half say his time in office has not made much difference in race relations. One in eight say it has hurt relations. . . .
The truth is that America largely exists in a post-racial society irrespective of Obama. That said, Obama is a product of the far left, a group whose raisond'etre is identity politics. Thus there was never a chance that Obama would act to move us forward on race relations. And indeed, Obama's acts as President in the arena of race have, if anything, moved America backwards, reinforcing the status of blacks as societal victims unable to achieve without special help. A few months ago, he signed a color-centric hate crimes bill into law. And recently, he announced his intent to reintroduce race into the center of our financial system.
What will be interesting to see in the future is how much the mere election of Obama erodes support for the far left's toxic, marxist brand of identity politics. How much and for how many on the left has the election of Obama erased their liberal guilt for the original sin of slavery in America? For the far left, it is a sin that must be held up as unerasable since it is the entire basis for their political power. That is a reality distorting position - a cognitive dissonance - that cannot forever withstand the push in this country towards true equality.
As much as I wish it were otherwise, there will always be some sort of proactive racism in America - practiced by some small minority of people of every race - (just as there will apparently always be short white guys of questionable intelligence who can't jump). We can minimize it by using public opinion to condemn it and by using our laws to severely punish it in appropriate cases and venues. But the simple fact is that we will not move any closer to improving race relations in America than where we are today until the far left is broken and the scourge of identity politics is consigned to the dustbin of history.
From the sharpened quill of Mr. Krauthammer in today's Washington Post:
After Coakley's defeat, Obama pretended that the real cause was a generalized anger and frustration "not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."
Let's get this straight: The antipathy to George W. Bush is so enduring and powerful that . . . it just elected a Republican senator in Massachusetts? Why, the man is omnipotent. . . .
You would think lefties could discern a proletarian vanguard when they see one. . . .
Democrats must so rationalize, otherwise they must take democracy seriously, and ask themselves: If the people really don't want it, could they possibly have a point?
"If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake-up call," said moderate -- and sentient -- Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, "there's no hope of waking up."
The situation surrounding our government's handling of Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Undiebomber trained and armed by al Qaeda, has gone from bad to scandalous with the recent revelations regarding the inner workings of those agencies charged with counterterrorism. As a threshold matter, intelligence gleaned from captured enemy combatants has been far and away our most important source of actionable intelligence in the war on terror. Yet we now know that nine years on from 9-11 and with one year in office, the Obama administration has not constituted an entity to interrogate high value targets. We now know that nine years on and with one year in office, Obama does not have any system in place to interrogate for intelligence an al Qaeda leader or operative caught in the U.S. . Obama took the CIA completely out of the interrogation business for all high level targets in August. He has not patched that gaping hole in our counterterrorism capabilities. Thus when Abdulmutallab, the Christmas undiebomber, was captured, he was by default sent into the criminal justice system and given a lawyer.
Let me restate that.
Nine years after 9-11, Obama has, for all practical purposes, reduced our ability to interrogate al Qaeda operatives for actionable intelligence, to something approaching zero.
Nyuck-Nyuck-Nyuck.
We were treated yesterday to Congressional hearings on how it was that Abdulmutallab, the undibomber went, in about twenty-four hours, from roasting his own chestnuts on a Christmas Day flight to a jail cell in Detroit, complete with a lawyer, a Constitutional right not to anwwer questions, and presumably the mother of all ice packs. This from Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard:
. . . Four top counterterrorism officials testified before a congressional committee that they were not consulted about how to handle the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the al Qaeda operative who attempted to blow up Flight 253 on December 25, 2008.
That group included all three senior Obama administration officials who testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday: Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security; Michael Leiter, chairman of the National Counterterrorism Center; and Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence. It also included FBI Director Robert Mueller.
With surprising candor, Blair, the nation's top intelligence official, explained that these officials were not deliberately excluded from the decisionmaking process in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Rather, he told the Senate Homeland Security Committee, there was no process at all.
"I've been a part of the discussions which established this high-value interrogation unit, [HIG] which we started as part of the executive order after the decision to close Guantanamo. That unit was created for exactly this purpose -- to make a decision on whether a certain person who's detained should be treated as a case for federal prosecution or for some of the other means. We did not invoke the HIG in this case," he said. "We should have."
We learn from NewsWeek that the White House responded with anger to Blair's admissions, calling his testimony incorrect:
[O]fficials who have worked on the issue said Blair was wrong on almost every count. Abdulmutallab couldn't possibly have been questioned by the HIG because the unit doesn't exist yet. The task force had recommended it be created to handle the questioning of "high value" Qaeda leaders who might be captured overseas—a criterion that clearly doesn't apply in Abdulmutallab's case. But the proposal is still being reviewed by the National Security Council, and the actual unit has not yet been created.
The specific recommendation, one source said, was to have a collection of intelligence officers and FBI agents who are knowledgeable about the background of the Qaeda leaders and deploy them—along with language and regional experts—as soon as a Qaeda leader was captured. But since Abdulmutallab was not a Qaeda leader, and was captured in Detroit, not overseas, the HIG wouldn't apply in any case, said the source, who worked closely on the proposal. . . .
Administration officials said the comments by Blair were especially galling because they seemed to vindicate the chief Republican criticism of the handling of the Detroit incident. . . .
Galling? GALLING? Our Moralizer In Chief has utterly emasculated our ability to gain timely and actionable intelligence from people who have nightly wet dreams about setting off nuclear explosions in every city in our country. The Obama administration though shows far more concern about being publicly criticized by Republicans. All emphasis is on the political, none on the substance. The Obama administration has their priorities completely skewed. And correct me if I am wrong, but do those conditions on the HIG as to whom they might interrogate sound like Obama is recreating something akin to the infamous Goerlickian wall?
To restate the revelations from the hearing and the NewsWeek article, this is the position in which Obama has placed our national security: There is no specific procedure for our government to deal with captured enemy combatants, nor are the tools in place to be able to conduct fully coordinated interrogations. By Executive Order, the CIA cannot interrogate high value detainees and, for the past year through today, the designated replacement for the CIA, the HIG, a task force under FBI leadership and direct White House oversight, is still on the drawing board. For al Qaeda leaders or operatives captured in the U.S., it is Obama's de facto policy that they would go into the criminal justice system. This is completely gratuitous - and wholly screwed. Given Obama's ostentatious grandstanding on the issue of interrogating enemy combatants, given his many rhetorical efforts to establish himself as our Moralizer in Chief on this issue, and yet given the reality of his horrid national security effort, it is apparent that while Obama has talked the talk, he has stumbled, fallen, stubbed a toe, pulled a hammy and broken both legs on the walk.
To continue from Mr. Hayes:
That's quite an admission. Blair wasn't finished (see the 51:00 mark of this video). "Frankly, we were thinking more of overseas people and, duh!, we didn't put it then. That's what we will do now. And so we need to make those decisions more carefully. I was not consulted and the decision was made on the scene. It seemed logical to the people there but it should have been taken using this HIG format at a higher level." . . .
Blair admitted that Abdulmutallab was not interrogated for intelligence purposes because the Obama administration had not considered using the newly-created elite interrogation unit on terrorist in the United States.
If Blair considered the handling of Abdulmutallab a mistake, FBI Director Robert Mueller, testifying at the same time before the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not. Mueller, like Blair, acknowledged that the crucial decision about how to treat Abdulmutallab was made by local FBI agents.
Now think about that for a second. It's not merely that the Director of the FBI, the DNI, and the DNCC were not contacted and that this was a systemic failure arising out of the lack of any procedure for a very forseeable contingeny. I think (hope and pray) that it is safe to assume these three stellar civil servants had heard about the attempted bombing in real time. But the fact is that after the undiebomber was captured, none of these individuals lifted so much as a finger to insinuate themselves into the situation to ensure that the undiebomber was interrogated for every bit of actionable intelligence that he possessed. Not a one of them made so much as a phone call. They sat with their thumbs up their collective asses in blissful ignorance while the Undiebomber was questioned by local FBI - who may or may not have the slightest background in counterterroism and the specifics of our intel on Abdulmutallab - and shortly thereafter, read his rights and given a lawyer. Lacking a procedure for this eventuality in year nine of the war on terror is unfathomable. Displaying this degree of placidity and lack of proactivity even in the abscence of a procedure is utterly unforgivable.
As an aside, it is not clear what role the DOJ directly played in that decision and, if they played any such role, whether Eric Holder was directly involved. That said, inquiring minds really, really want to know.
It should be noted that the White House, which, as previously noted, publicly trumpeted in August of 2009 that they had assumed a direct oversight role in high value interrogations, equally did nothing to intercede in this case. And let's not forget that the director of the National Counterterrorism Center was on vacation while all of this going on and that he, like Obama himself, saw no reason to cut his vacation short. All of this adds up to incompetence on a cosmic scale, a Three Stooges scale. And our national security is in their hands? Nyuck-Nyuck-Nyuck indeed.
. . . Mueller testified that those FBI agents interviewed Abdulmutallab about "ongoing and other threats." What the FBI director did not mention was that his agents interviewed the terrorist without any input from the National Counterterrorism Center — the institution we now know was sitting on top of a small mountain of not-yet-correlated information about the bomber.
So whatever information Abdulmutallab provided, he gave up in response to general questions about his activities, not in response to specific questions based on the intelligence the U.S. government had already collected on him. And within 24 hours — according to Senator Jeff Sessions, whose tough questioning left Mueller stuttering — Abdulmutallab was Mirandized and he stopped talking. (It would be nice to learn, from Mueller or someone else in a position to know, precisely when Abdulmutallab was read his rights.) . . .
Just unbelievable. If heads don't roll now for this level of ineptitude, we can rest assured that heads will roll in the future. It will be the heads of Americans who have placed their trust in Obama to protect our nation. Soaring rhetoric will stop neither bullets nor blast waves. Nor will Obama's moralizing be sufficient to keep a crippled jet in the sky. It seems inevitable that American blood will be spilled as a direct result of an Obama national security apparatus not merely in disaray, but Three Stooges-esque in its degree of incompetence.
Given that the Obama administration has already found criticism of their performance to be "galling," it is clear that the Obama administration is not going to do anything to correct this situation, Understand that there is no reason the Obama administration cannot, at this very moment, pull the Undiebomber out of our federal justice system, treat him as an enemy combatant, and interrogate him his every waking minute without the presence of a lawyer. Instead, Obama is refusing to pull the undiebombler out of the District Court docket now because it would be a tacit acknowledgement of the the glaring holes in and gross incompetence of his national security apparatus.
The second threat to our national security from Obama's decision to put terrorists in our civilian justice system comes from all the negative ramifications of a trial in our federal courts - as pointed out on numerous occasions by Andrew McCarthy. That brings us to the case of Aafia Siddiqui, once known as the most wanted woman in America for her al Qaeda ties. She is today on trial in NY District Court. You can read about her background here. Siddiqui is a Pakistani national who attended MIT. She was arrested in Pakistan with documents in her possession related to al Qaeda and that dealt with proposed mass casualty attacks. During questioning, she attempted to shoot her U.S. interrogators. Instead of leaving her in the military commission system, she is now being tried soley for the attempted shooting. As an aside, I have no idea whether she was ever interrogated before being given a lawyer and placed in the judicial docket for trial. Regardless, as to be expected, her trial on day 1 is turning into a circus. No Oil for Pacifists has the story. Among other things, she is loudly demanding that Jews be kept off the jury and the Judge, amazingly, has ruled that her ties to al Qaeda cannot be raised in the trial because it would be overly prejudicial. Let that sink in. This is a relatively easy trial. I can't wait to see the judicial rulings in KSM's trial.
I documented in detail two weeks ago how Obama had weakened our national security during his first year in office. I was far, far too easy on Obama. I had assumed that our national security apparatus was, nine years on from 9-11, a well oiled machine, but that Obama had made a command decision to move Abdulmutallab to federal Court. I had no idea that the reality is that our national security team is uncoordinated, incompetent, operating on autopilot without appropriate procedures in place and unfathomably lacking in proactiveness at the very highest levels. After Obama has had a full year in office, and after he had inherited a functioning system from the Bush administration, this is truly scandalous - not to mention incredibly dangerous for America. Call it Undiegate.
Update: The Washington Post Editorial Board arrives (a bit late) at the same conclusions:
. . . The Obama administration had three options: It could charge [the undiebomber] in federal court. It could detain him as an enemy belligerent. Or it could hold him for prolonged questioning and later indict him, ensuring that nothing Mr. Abdulmutallab said during questioning was used against him in court.
It is now clear that the administration did not give serious thought to anything but Door No. 1. This was myopic, irresponsible and potentially dangerous. . . .
According to sources with knowledge of the discussions, no one questioned the approach or raised the possibility of taking more time to question the suspect. This makes the administration's approach even more worrisome than it would have been had intelligence personnel been cut out of the process altogether.
Update 2 - It gets even worse. According to an AP report, the total amount of time the undiebomber was subject to questioning before being read his rights amounted to about two hours divided between two local FBI units, with the second interrogation being done by a unit that was, because of concerns with admissibility, not even briefed on the results of the initial fifty minutes of questioning.
Update 3: Charles Krauthammer is on precisely the same sheet of music this week.
Update 4: Maine's Susan Collins - of all people - goes nuclear on the Obama administration over this.
. . . when a moderate like Collins calls the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab “irresponsible,” “dangerous,” and “inconceivable,” that has a broader political impact. When Collins says that “Foreign terrorists are enemy combatants and they must be treated as such,” and calls the current Obama policies a “charade,” that will make it more difficult for people to write it off as knee-jerk, right-wing contempt for Obama instead of his policies:
While Collins is on the money, she does not go quite far enough. Few people, Collins included, seem to be catching on to the degree to which Obama has deconstructed what was once a highly functional national security apparatus, not to mention the equally scandalous degree of institutional passivity at the top of that apparatus now.
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