Classic Orion Nebulae

Preparing the language battlefield on "Health Care"

Team Obama had it all worked out: the language to be used to convince the people of the country that the government should run health care.

Helmuth von Moltke said that "no plan survives contact with the enemy." And that has become very apparent with the Obama plan. He has been busy on defense while the forces of freedom are on the attack.

Jonathan Weisman in the Wall Street Journal:

In the rhetorical battle over health care, the forces backing President Barack Obama's overhaul have spent years polling and using focus groups to find the precise language that would win over voters -- an effort that doesn't at the moment appear to be working.

The entire article is worth reading to learn the cast of characters who formulated this plan, including tha AARP, SEIU, The American Cancer Society and Families USA (a very Liberal foundation funded in part by George Soros).

But Dr. Crittenden said no one anticipated the charges that the Obama program would include "death panels" or advocate euthanasia. Perhaps more important, said Lake Research head Celinda Lake, no one foresaw the intensity of protests at town-hall meetings.

"To the extent that we're getting our message out, it's been very influenced by Herndon work. But Dr. Crittenden said no one anticipated the charges that the Obama program would include "death panels" or advocate euthanasia. Perhaps more important, said Lake Research head Celinda Lake, no one foresaw the intensity of protests at town-hall meetings.

"To the extent that we're getting our message out, it's been very influenced by Herndon work. Our biggest problem is it's not getting out," Ms. Lake said.

Oh, I think your message is getting out Celinda. Like most Civil War generals, you expected this to be a brief series of set piece battles with Team Obama in command of the battlefield.

You expected a signing ceremony in August, before anyone knew the details of the plan. You did not keep your eye on your flanks: the Tea Parties that organized and grew well before the health care plan was written. You were flanked by the people you called "tea baggers" and your forces are retreating.

Time to find reinforcements; get help from the loony Left by attacking Bush again.

Nobody is looking to make any news

From Drudge:

OBAMA 'VACATION WEEK', DAY 1:
*Prosecutor Named to Probe CIA Abuses...
*White House Panel Warns: Swine Flu May Kill 90,000...
*Obama to nominate Bernanke to 2nd term...
*President press event in Massachusetts Tuesday...

Cheney Statement on CIA Documents/Investigation

The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda. This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks. These detainees also, according to the documents, played a role in nearly every capture of al Qaeda members and associates since 2002. The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States. The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions. President Obama’s decision to allow the Justice Department to investigate and possibly prosecute CIA personnel, and his decision to remove authority for interrogation from the CIA to the White House, serves as a reminder, if any were needed, of why so many Americans have doubts about this Administration’s ability to be responsible for our nation’s security.

Via Steve Hayes @ the Daily Standard

White House hired e-mail spam firm to send e-mails supporting its health care program.

In a stunning about face, the Obama Administration admitted it hired a private communications company, GovDelivery, to send unsolicited emails from David Axelrod in support of ObamaCare. GovDelivery reportedly handles 85% of federal agencies’ emails. The Axelrod emails were apparently paid for with public funds.

Keep your government laws off my penis!

Public health officials are considering promoting routine, universal circumcision for all baby boys born in the United States...

Journalists spied, refugees died ...

It seems that the video shot by the two Al Gore sponsored journalists will lead to torture or death ...

Other refugees, denied the assistance of a network to help them escape North Korea, will now be limited to the option of dying in place. There won’t be a Bill Clinton visit for them, and I doubt Bill Richardson raised the subject while he was whoring for the cameras.

[...] I hope that Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee will use some of the media interest they’ve attracted to bring attention to the horrors they were used to help perpetrate. I suppose there is no undoing what is done, but there is atonement in what Ling and Lee could still do to save others.

They’d better start soon. A lifetime may not be enough to repay a karmic debt this ghastly. But that’s still more than can be said for the thugs who run China.

Let me get this straight...

From Maggie's Farm

Let me get this straight...


We're going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president that also hasn't read it (and who smokes) with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke.


What possibly could go wrong?

I should feel bad about this, but given the CIA’s extensive efforts to undercut Bush, well, I hope they’re enjoying the new administration.

What goes around comes around.
Once you screw your friends, don't expect people to rush to your aide.

What if America transcended race, and Barack Obama wasn’t invited?

Jonah Goldberg asks where the racial healing that was supposed to follow an Obama victory has gone?

It was Obama’s supporters who hinted, teased, promised, and prophesied that Obama would help America “transcend race.” But now, it is they who shrink from their own promised land.

After all, it was not Obama’s detractors who immediately fell into the comfortable groove of racial grievance and familiar “narratives” when Henry Louis Gates insisted that a police instructor in racial sensitivity had to be a racist. That was Obama and his choir of heralds.

A "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta

Leon Panetta is a loyal Democrat but he's also loyal to his country. So when Team Obama decides to put operatives in his agency in jail he had a fit. These are people who risked their lives to extract information from the most intransigent Jihadist to protect the American people from further attacks after 9/11. And now the second-guessers, the lawyers whose primary risk is a paper cut, will decide if they acted "appropriately."

Eric Holder is a mendacious and corrupt slime ball who aided Bill Clinton in is pardon of Marc Rich. He's now Obama's consigliore and appears to be ready to ruin good men with the courts. Because if you have to defend yourself from the federal government, you will be financially ruined, win or lose.

Panetta has released a CIA Inspector General report that exonerates interrogators.

As Director in 2009, my primary interest-when it comes to a program that no longer exists-is to stand up for those officers who did what their country asked and who followed the legal guidance they were given. That is the President's position, too. The CIA was aggressive over the years in seeking new opinions from the Department of Justice as the legal landscape changed. The Agency sought and received multiple written assurances that its methods were lawful. The CIA has a strong record in terms of following legal guidance and informing the Department of Justice of potentially illegal conduct.

I make no judgments on the accuracy of the 2004 IG report or the various views expressed about it. Nor am I eager to enter the debate, already politicized, over the ultimate utility of the Agency's past detention and interrogation effort. But this much is clear: The CIA obtained intelligence from high-value detainees when inside information on al-Qa'ida was in short supply. Whether this was the only way to obtain that information will remain a legitimate area of dispute, with Americans holding a range of views on the methods used. The CIA requested and received legal guidance and referred allegations of abuse to the Department of Justice. President Obama has established new policies for interrogation.

The CIA must also keep its focus on the primary responsibility of protecting the country. America is a nation at war. This Agency plays a decisive role in helping the United States meet the full range of security threats and opportunities overseas. That starts with the continuing fight against al-Qa'ida and its sympathizers. There, alongside all its other contributions, the CIA is helping our government chart a new way forward on interrogation, one in keeping with the President's Executive Order of January 22nd. You, the men and women of this great institution, do the hard work and take the tough risks that intelligence and espionage demand.

Never has a peanut farmer seemed so smart by comparison.

The thrill is gone for Obama and the media.

Let's amend that: the thrill if gone for some in the media, not because they don't agree with his plans to made America a socialist country, but because he's screwing it up. They see their dreams and hopes on hold.

THE REAL REASON AMERICANS ARE ANGRY...IT'S THE BIG GOVERNMENT, STUPID

It's been a hilarious August, watching media supporters of President Obama's health care package puzzle over the obscure motivations of the noncompliant Americans rallying against it.

"Racial anxiety," guessed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

"Nihilism," theorized Time's Joe Klein.

"The crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy," historian Rick Perlstein proclaimed in the Washington Post.

While the commentariat's condescension is almost comical, the whole evil-or-stupid explanation misses the elephant in Obama's room: Americans of all stripes, it turns out, aren't very keen about the government barging into their lives.

An ABC/Washington Post poll from June showed people preferred "smaller government with fewer services" over "larger government with more services" by 54% to 41%, up from 50%-45% a year earlier (independents were even more pronounced, at 61%-35%). A Rasmussen poll from April showed that 77% of Americans preferred a "free market" economy over a "government managed" economy, up seven percentage points from just last December. A July CBS poll found that 52% of Americans think that Obama is trying to do "too much."

After 11 months of federal bailouts and freakouts, Americans have become bone tired of panicky power grabs from Washington. It's the big government, stupid.

What do they think a stimulus is?

In selling its stimulus plan, a large part of the White House's strategy appeared to be marginalizing those who held dissenting views. According to one published report, the president mocked the opposition party for labeling his initiative as a "spending" bill rather than a "stimulus" bill. He quipped to a group of his supporters in Congress: What do they think a stimulus is?

Well, it could ... you know ... stimulate the economy and create more jobs.

Latest Rasmussen: Presidential Approval Index rating of -14

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -14. These figures mark the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President.

It took about 8 years and relentless attacks by the media in concert with the Democrats to drive Bush' poll numbers down. I'm surprised that Obama's are not lower. I have no doubt that the polls will continue to plummet. It's because he's a arrogant fraud surrounded by unsavory allies: a biased media that no one trusts, a Democrat congress that's out of control and doing what it has dreamed of doing, crooks as part of the cabinet and dozens of czars that resemble commissars.

This president will be lucky to serve out his term. Smart Democrats are beginning to distance themselves as a matter of self-protection. The dumb ones will not be re-elected.

Lockerbie bomber

It's time for a reality check.

In what country is it customary to release killers from prison if they have a fatal illness?

It has been quite a while – the better part of a decade - since the once-“Christian” West has been reminded that the Moslem world does not share our moral strictures. The release of the Lockerbie bomber and his hero’s reception in Tripoli for blowing a passenger plane filled with Westerners out of the sky with a bomb is a jarring reminder, to me at least, that the hate that bloodlust that was behind 9/11 is not past. And it also reminds us that it is not an evil restricted to Osama bin Laden or the Taliban.

Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, a Lybian intelligence agent, is the only person convicted of the bombing, in which a Pan Am jet carrying 259 passengers -- most of them American -- was blown up over Lockerbie in Scotland in December 1988, killing all those on board and 11 people on the ground.

I have no doubt that the people who are responsible for Abdel Basset al-Megrahi’s release did not expect the public adulation that he received. Now they’re in clean-up mode.

Gaddafi hugs Lockerbie bomber; Britain denies deal.

Britain dismissed suggestions of a link between the Lockerbie bomber's release and energy deals with Libya on Saturday, ...

London and Washington have condemned the 'hero's welcome' given to Abdel Basset al-Megrahi on his return to Libya after being freed from a life sentence in a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds because he is dying of cancer.

'The idea that the British government ... would sit down and somehow barter over the freedom or the life of this Libyan prisoner and make it all part of some business deal ... it's not only wrong, it's completely implausible and actually quite offensive,' said British Business Secretary Peter Mandelson.

In Washington, FBI director Robert Mueller released an angry letter he sent to Scottish minister Kenny MacAskill, who ordered the release, calling it inexplicable and detrimental to justice.

'Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law. Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world,' Mueller wrote in the letter posted on the FBI's website.

The British may have had had a hint that the release of the bomber could create a public relations nightmare because ...

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's office issued a copy of a letter he wrote to Gaddafi on Aug. 20 expressly asking him to refrain from a 'high-profile' welcome for Megrahi.

That request was ignored

Gaddafi met Megrahi on Friday, embracing him and getting a kiss on the hand in return. The beaming Libyan leader expressed gratitude to Brown and Queen Elizabeth.

More than 1,000 Libyans gathered at an airport in Tripoli on Thursday to welcome Megrahi home, cheering and waving national flags, despite the fact relatives of the American victims said they had received assurances there would be no hero's welcome.

And while British officials went into full bare-faced lie mode, Gaddafi gave the more believable story for the reason behind the release.

'This step is in the interest of relations between the two countries...and of the personal friendship between me and them and will be positively reflected for sure in all areas of cooperation between the two countries,' he told Libyan TV.

His son Saif al-Islam went further, saying that whenever he had met British officials to discuss business, the issue of Megrahi's release was a condition of any deal being struck.

Mandelson said he had met Gaddafi's son twice in the past year and the issue of the Lockerbie bomber had been raised both times, but his release was not tied to business deals.

'It's not only completely wrong to make any such suggestion or insinuation, it's also quite offensive,' he told reporters.

The Daily Mail headline:
Gaddafi embraces Lockerbie bomber and thanks his 'courageous friend' Gordon Brown for releasing him

The growing sense of unease in Downing Street intensified today after Col Gaddafi praised 'my friend' Gordon Brown and the British Government for their part in securing Megrahi's freedom.

'To my friends in Scotland, the Scottish National Party, and Scottish prime minister, and the foreign secretary, I praise their courage for having proved their independence in decision making despite the unacceptable and unreasonable measures that they faced. Nevertheless they took this courageously right and humanitarian decision,' he said.

Implicating the British royal family:

'And I say to my friend Brown, the Prime Minister of Britain, his Government, the Queen of Britain, Elizabeth, and Prince Andrew, who all contributed to encouraging the Scottish government to take this historic and courageous decision, despite the obstacles.'

Defending the release on compassionate grounds, members of the Scottish government spokesman said all the proper procedures were followed, as was Scottish law:

...a Scottish government spokesman said the decision was reached following proper procedures.

"The justice secretary reached his conclusions on the basis of Scotland's due process, clear evidence, and the recommendations from the parole board and prison governor," the spokesman said.

"Compassionate release is not part of the US justice system but it is part of Scotland's," he added.

"Mr MacAskill could not have consulted more widely -- he spoke with the US families, the US attorney general, Secretary of State (Hillary) Clinton and many others.

"Mr Megrahi has been sent back to Libya to die a convicted man."

It appears that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, and a host of other US officials have some explaining to do. And perhaps we can inquire of noted Scottish Law expert Arlen Spector about compassionate release of mass murderers under Scottish law.

The Gum Nebula

The Peasants Are Revolting

Count de Monet: “It is said that the people are revolting.”
King Louis XVI: “You said it. They stink on ice.”

– “History of the World: Part I”

Out of the mouths of babes … and B-movie comedies come our words of wisdom. The people are indeed revolting. It makes sense. Americans have found their politicians revolting for decades. Now the tables are turned.

And no matter how often and loudly Donny Luzzatto tells the public to shut up and sit down, it's not going to work. The MSM will never again be the dominant voice in the public square.

The new tools enable voters of both sides to speak out and organize more easily. Whichever side is in power will discover that opposition can form even when the media ignore an issue.

The Internet revolution is inflaming political activists and politics may never recover. It’s less messy than the guillotine, but the tech rebellion is severing ties with old media just as cleanly.

buh, bye Donny. You are excess overhead.

Video: Marine goes nuclear on Democrat over ObamaCare

The Democrat in question is Brian “Brown Shirts” Baird, thus the pounding he takes here is extra gratifying.

Baird made headlines last week by comparing town hall protesters to Nazi guards.

"What we're seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics," Baird told the Columbian. "I mean that very seriously."

Czar Power

The focus on Obama’s czars has mostly been on their number. As of now, there are roughly three dozen, or thirty two, depending on your headcount.

The issue that should be highlighted is the power of these czars. The American Thinker recalls the power, in another time and place of “commissars.”

The three dozen or so people that Barack Obama has surrounded himself with to handle this problem or that issue, and yet are not confirmed by the Senate or operating an agency created by Congress, are not really his "czars." These people are, instead, his "commissars." Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany both called those vague, undefined figures appointed by the Leader to carry out his intentions "commissars" ...

Congress has the right and the duty to review, confirm, or reject the chief officer of the federal executive and legislative branches (except, of course, for the president and vice president.) And Congress has the right and the duty to remove any important federal officer who is corrupt or exceeds the powers of his office. The duty of Congress to remove corrupt principal officers of the executive and judicial branches is often simply forgotten. If the Secretary of the Treasury, for example, engages in some stinky behavior, he usually simply resigns. But whether he does -- indeed, even if he does -- the House can impeach him and the Senate can convict him.

That is a deliberate check the Founding Fathers intended to give Congress over the Executive Branch. But could the House impeach or how could the Senate convict an Obama commissar, who had never been confirmed by the Senate and who held a position not created by Congress? Cabinet secretaries and heads of agencies are accountable both to the president and to Congress. These commissars, on the other hand, could not be impeached and removed from office because they do not, formally, hold an office.

The question becomes, where do these czars – or commissars – derive their authority? The question is important because the authority some claim to possess is vast. From The Gartman Letter:

...we are growing weary of the number of “Czars” that President Obama is appointing for the US, and we are even more wary of the power that these men and women are and shall be wielding over the course of the next three years. We fear the centralization of power in Washington more than we fear almost anything these days for these “Czars” believe that they have been anointed rather than appointed, and their lust for power is really quite frightening.

We say this in light of the statement from the newly appointed “Pay Czar,” Mr. Kenneth Feinberg, who was, until recently, Sen.Ted Kennedy’s Chief of Staff. His official title is “Special Master for Compensation,” a title that only a Politburo member or a Social Democrat would find comforting. It is, however, his own comments regarding his area of overview and the power that he believes he has that cause us the greatest concern. When asked what powers he shall wield, Mr. Feinberg said

The statute provides guideposts, but the statue ultimately says I have the discretion to decide what it is that… people should make and that my determination will be final….Anything is possible under the law.

Re-read this again and consider for a moment what it means. He did indeed say that “Anything is possible” and he did indeed say previously that his “determination will be final.” If this is not central planning, we know not what is? If this is not overreach, what is? If this is not dangerous, what is? This is not the change that many of our friends on Wall Street thought they were supporting with their money, their time and their votes last November. At this pace, Atlas will not be allowed to shrug; he will be shackled instead.

We have a commissar who believes his authority extends to setting the pay of people … without limit … since he has discretion to do anything and from his determination is no appeal.

That’s an issue of pay.

Now the same government will surely be appointing a health czar, because you can be sure that if “health reform” passes, it will require a commissar whose determination is final and whose discretion is infinite.