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FRIDAY,  JUNE 4,  2010

GALLUP SURVEY BRINGS NO SMILES TO DEMS – AT 10:01 P.M. ET:  A new Gallup poll, measuring attitudes toward issues, cannot possibly bring happiness to the president or his party.

PRINCETON, NJ -- Terrorism and federal government debt tie as the most worrisome issues to Americans when they consider threats to the future wellbeing of the U.S. Four in 10 Americans call each an "extremely serious" threat, with healthcare costs ranking a close third.

And those issues are not being handled well by this White House.  Ditto for the two issues that follow:  employment and illegal immigration. 

It is striking to see the way terrorism remains at the top of the list.  It shows, once again, the wisdom of the American people, who understand that the threat of terrorism can only grow in the face of this administration's weakness, and the increasing technological expertise of terror groups and nations, like Iran, who support them.

This administration deserves to have its clock cleaned.  We hope that will happen in November, if Republicans can run a halfway-decent campaign.

June 4, 2010     Permalink

DISGRACEFUL – AT 7:58 P.M. ET:  Nutbag White House reporter Helen Thomas, who sits in the most honored position at presidential news conferences, is known for her out-of-control craziness and liberal crackpotism. 

But now Ms. Thomas, who is of Lebanese heritage, embarrasses her fellow Lebanese Americans, by saying that Jews should get out of "Palestine" and go back to...Germany and Poland.  The video is here.

This is sickening, but let's see the reaction from those on the left who endlessly scream "racism" at any and all conservatives.  It's time for Helen Thomas to resign, and take her bigotry with her.  I doubt very much if it will happen.  Instead, we will probably be told that we must understand her cultural perspective and her "frustration." 

Wonder what White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will say.

June 4, 2010     Permalink

A DISAPPOINTMENT – AT 7:43 P.M. ET:  Ah, the fortunes of politics.  I went into this political season so enthusiastic about the candidacy of Republican Congressman Mark Kirk of Illinois, running for the Senate seat formerly held by retired public servant Barack Obama. 

Kirk has been doing well in the polls in this normally Democratic state.  But it was recently revealed that he misstated his military-service record.  We came down on him for that.  Now it turns out that this was one of a number of misstatements.  How sad, how sad: 

CHICAGO (AP) -- Senate candidate Mark Kirk apologized Thursday for making inaccurate statements about his service in the Navy Reserves, while acknowledging more discrepancies.

''I apologize to everyone for these errors,'' the Illinois Republican said. ''They were my responsibility entirely and I will fix them.''

The five-time U.S. representative, who is competing with Democrat Alexi Giannoulias for the Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama, also acknowledged new incidents where public statements didn't match reality about his service.

Kirk said a letter sent by his congressional district office last year described him as a veteran of Operation Desert Storm, the first Persian Gulf war, but he did not participate in that operation.

Kirk later flew over Iraq for intelligence reconnaissance missions in 2000. He said Thursday he does not recall coming under enemy fire on those flights and added it was sometimes hard to tell whether his plane was being targeted.

But C-SPAN video shows Kirk on the House floor saying he was fired upon.

''The last time I was in Iraq I was in uniform flying at 20,000 feet, and the Iraqi air defense network was shooting at us,'' Kirk said in the undated video, which was posted online by the Giannoulias campaign.

Kirk also said last year that he once saw anti-aircraft flack when flying an intelligence mission over Kosovo and thought he might be killed.

COMMENT:  Well, what do we do now?  We know there'll be a double standard.  Connecticut Democratic Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, also a Senate candidate, was recently caught lying about his own military record.  He has since recovered in the polls, despite his outrageous claim that he'd been in Vietnam during the war, when in fact he hadn't been.  But Blumey is a Democrat, and the lying didn't seem to bother his party, which is too "sophisticated" to worry about stuff like this.

But Kirk is a Republican, a member of a party that reveres military service.  Do we accept his apology, or ask him to withdraw?  What do you think?  I'd love to hear from readers.

June 4, 2010     Permalink

THE DEFENSE-CUT SCAM – AT 9:38 A.M. ET:  Add to this administration's perfidy its attitude toward national defense.  As a leftist, Barack Obama has always had a hostility to the defense strategy that grew out of the failures of the 1930s – to be strong enough to deter major aggression, to be powerful enough to fight two wars at once if necessary, and win them. 

That realistic view of the world wasn't developed by idiots.  At one time it had the bipartisan support of both parties.  Increasingly, though, the Democratic Party, at one time truly the "national defense" party, drifted to the left, and some of it drifted to the fringe left.  There is no longer a true bipartisan support for a powerful national defense.

Defense is being cut, which leads us to our quote of the day, from the Weekly Standard:

Defense spending has gone up. But never in our history have we fought wars of this magnitude as cheaply. Take, for example, the percentage of the federal budget allocated to defense: In 1994, two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pentagon spending amounted to slightly more than 19 percent of the budget; in 2010, it is the same. And if the administration has its way, that figure will drop to 15.6 percent by 2015. Is any other part of the federal budget getting similarly whacked?

The budget increases that have occurred, moreover, are largely tied to fighting the wars. When Bill Clinton left the White House and Dick Cheney told the military that “help [was] on the way,” the defense burden stood at 3 percent of GDP—a post-World War II low. When George W. Bush headed out the door, the figure for the core defense budget was about 3.5 percent. This is an increase, to be sure, but not one to make the military flush after a decade of declining budgets and deferred procurement.

COMMENT:  We are being assured that cuts in national defense will not weaken or endanger us.  That is garbage.  True, there is waste at the Pentagon.  But our military is run down from Iraq and Afghanistan, our aircraft are aging, and our fleet at sea is smaller than the minimum that has generally been considered adequate for this nation.

In addition, this reckless president refuses to modernize our nuclear arsenal, our main deterrent.  Obama can do all the photo ops he wishes with soldiers at military bases.  He has no feeling for them or the dangers the nation faces.  The cuts contemplated in defense will do damage.  We may not have the luxury, next time, of repairing the damage if conflict erupts.

This is a terrific article, well worth reading.

June 3, 2010     Permalink

JOBGATE – AT 9:06 A.M. ET:  Wouldn't it be wonderful if this White House could generate as many private-sector job offers, instead of the political job offers it makes to inconvenient Democratic politicians?

Kirsten Powers, a liberal writer, shows her integrity (once again) by exposing the dry rot inside what we're starting to call Jobgate.  From the New York Post:

After first stonewalling, the White House yesterday confirmed that it tried to lure Andrew Romanoff out of the Colorado Senate primary with an administration job, to help its preferred candidate, incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet.

Sound familiar?

The Denver Post ran a story on the rumored job offer last September -- but White House spokesman Adam Abrams said then, "Romanoff was never offered a position within the administration."

Under the Bill Clinton standard, that's true: There was no formal "offer." But Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina's e-mail outlined in great specificity three government jobs that happened to be open, should Romanoff (who'd previously been denied an administration job) decide not to run.

The White House's reasoning is migraine-inducing: It insists it didn't offer a job -- but also that the president has an interest in influencing party primaries. But if the president wasn't offering a job, then what was he doing to prevent a primary contest?

He was offering a job. Stop insulting our intelligence.

COMMENT:  Ah, Ms. Powers, but insulting our intelligence is the way this administration operates.  It represents the attitude of America's pseudo-intellectual academic elite:  We are your betters.  We have these degrees.  We eat tofu.  Don't waste our valuable time by questioning us. 

This story is growing.  Republicans are not permitting it to go away.  There may be some elements of the press that will try to bury it, doing their thing for The One, but they might not get their way this time.  It's 2010, not 2008, and at least some Americans have caught on to the fact that the Chicago way of politics in alive and living in our White House.

June 3, 2010      Permalink

NOT SO FAST, GUYS – AT 8:42 A.M. ET:  Some Dems are already touting this morning's announced drop in the unemployment rate, and the addition of hundreds of thousands of workers to payrolls, but a look behind the numbers actually shows them to be depressing, bordering on catastrophic.  From Bloomberg:

Employers in the U.S. hired fewer workers in May than forecast, showing a lack of confidence in the recovery that may lead to slower economic growth.

Payrolls rose by 431,000 last month after a 290,000 increase in April, figures from the Labor Department in Washington showed today. The gain was smaller than the 536,000 median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey and reflected a 411,000 jump in government hiring of temporary help for the 2010 census. Private payrolls rose a less-than-forecast 41,000. The unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent as Americans dropped out of the labor force.

Staff reductions at companies such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and Citigroup Inc. indicate a slowing in the labor market that threatens to restrain consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said yesterday that unemployment was exacting a heavy toll, showing why economists forecast interest rates will remain low.

“It’s going to be a long haul,” Michael Englund, chief economist at Action Economics LLC in Boulder, Colorado, said before the report. “We really aren’t adding many jobs. We’ve lost some momentum in the economy and final sales clearly aren’t enough to generate job growth.”

COMMENT:  With the Gulf spill, and proposed energy legislation that will raise costs to the American consumer and burden industry still more, the future does not look promising.  Add please the near bankruptcy of many of our states.  We are in trouble, led by a president who doesn't understand that he's got to unleash the American economy, not constrain it, to diminish that trouble.

June 3, 2010     Permalink

IS IT POSSIBLE? – AT 8:20 A.M. ET:  Anyone reading Urgent Agenda knows that we are not, emphatically not, a red-meat site.  We try, I think with some success, to be thoughtful here, to weigh the evidence, and avoid the screaming headlines. 

Our readership would probably be larger if we went in the other direction, but I have to look at myself in the mirror every day...and a magnificent sight it is.  (Okay, laugh now.)  There's this bit known as conscience.  We avoid conspiracy theories and wild speculation.

And yet, I must ask the painful question:  What is behind Mr. Obama's stunning indifference toward the Gulf oil spill?  Oh, yes, he's attending to it now, and there's even an anemic attempt by the White House spin machine to paint the president as mad as hell.  But he isn't mad as hell, and it's been clear.  He will be returning to the Gulf to do what?  To stare out at the water and maybe pick up some votes?  To denounce BP?  To snub Governor Jindal?

Is it possible, just possible, that the president welcomes this catastrophe?  This is an administration, after all, that thrives on America's misfortunes.  For each disaster there is a radical, leftist, government-first series of proposals.  Rahm Emanuel openly said that no crisis should be left unexploited.  And of the fundamental rules of the radical classes is that catastrophes, man-made or otherwise, are actually good, for they can be used to help bring down "the system."

From the viewpoint of the leftist radical, the Gulf spill is a blessing, and the more damage the better.  This is an opportunity to shut down offshore drilling, to place higher taxes on carbon fuels, and even to nationalize still more of the economy.   No matter that thousands of drills have been dug without incident.  No matter that environmental extremism is preventing our drilling for the oil we need on our own American land, where any accident can be quickly contained. 

I am reminded of a sign placed outside Buckingham Palace in London after the death of Princess Diana, and Queen Elizabeth's seeming indifference:  "Show us that you care."  That is what Americans have been saying to President Obama since the oil started to spill, and even Democrats are expressing their amazement at how slow Obama's response has been, and how indifferent he seems.  Ah, but if he sees benefit to his leftist agenda in what is happening, his moves, or lack of them, can be explained.

I raise this as a question.  To the radical left, every tragedy has its uses, including genocide.  People are simply pawns on a board.  "The personal is political" is the slogan they like to use.

But think of who gains from this mess, and I believe my question has, as they say in Hollywood, legs.

June 3, 2010      Permalink

OBAMA AT HIS WORST – AT 8:05 P.M. ET:  The president's vulgar, pathetic remarks about the Israel raid, made on the tired old Larry King program last night, represent our leadership at its worst.

That the president is hostile to Israel, and indeed toward other American allies, can no longer be doubted by serious observers.  He's proved that hostility since his first day in office, taking periodic time out for love fests for Israel, the better to keep Israel's supporters in line.

Some pundits are openly speculating that Obama's hostility toward Israel led directly to this week's clash between the Israeli Defense Forces and that "peace" ship.  In effect, Obama has given what the late film star Joan Crawford used to call "the big okay" for the rest of the world to bash Israel.  If America won't stand up for its ally, why should they, when there is money to be made in the Muslim world, and a domestic left-wing "intelligentsia" to satisfy?

Obama had an opportunity, on the King show, to come down hard on the Islamic extremists and Western Communists who are behind the international anti-Israel campaign to, finally, exterminate Israel.  Instead, he pretty much blamed Israel for the whole affair, all the while saying the necessary things about Israel's right to defend itself.

In the meantime, Mr. Obama has, for the second time, canceled a trip to Indonesia and Australia, because of the oil leak in the Gulf.  Maybe we'd be better off if he were out of town.  I don't really care about the canceled tourist visit to Indonesia, his boyhood home.  They'll love him anyway.  But Australia is one of our closest friends, one of the few nations always there for the United States.  Like our other allies, they've been treated like a doormat by Barack Hussein Obama Jr.  Now he's wiping his shoes on them again. 

Obama is an embarrassment.  He is also the most dangerous man ever to be president.

June 4, 2010       Permalink

THURSDAY,  JUNE 3,  2010

CARLY ROMPS IN CALIFORNIA – AT 7:56 P.M. ET:  There'll be a hugely important Republican primary in California on Tuesday.  It looks like Carly Fiorina has the edge in the Senate contest.  From Power Line:

Tom Campbell has pulled his TV ads for the U.S. Senate race in California less than a week before the Republican primary, according to this report. Campbell reportedly has only $400,000 left to spend on his campaign, which is not enough to pay for a statewide media blitz. His main opponent, Carly Fiorina, by contrast seems to have all the money she needs to complete her primary campaign in strong fashion. Much of the money apparently is her own.

Campbell is not conceding the race. However, by pulling his ads, he is seen as all but conceding to Fiorina, who now is well ahead of him in the polls. A LA Times/USC poll from late May has Fiorina ahead of Campbell by a margin of 15 points (38 percent of Fiorina, 23 percent for Campbell, 16 percent for conservative Chuck DeVore, and 20 percent undecided).

Although she lacks a record, Fiorina has made inroads with conservatives.

COMMENT:  Campbell, something of a RINO, has been hurt by revelations of an embarrassing closeness to jihadists.  It may be unfair, but appearances matter, and Campbell has a history of having close relationships with those from the Muslim community who have somewhat extreme views. 

Still, Fiorina would have to run against Barbara Boxer.  Yes, Boxer is weaker this year than in earlier races, but California is a strongly Democratic state, and Dems use the race card, the immigration card, and the bigotry card freely.  This will be a tough fight.

June 3, 2010     Permalink

WE'VE JOINED THE CLUB – FEEL HONORED – AT 7:45 P.M. ET:  Well, at least it isn't only Israel the UN is anguished about.  We're apparently number two on the list.  There are grave concerns, very grave:

(CNSNews.com) – The targeted assassination of terror suspects by remote control, a program expanded significantly under the Obama administration, comes under the spotlight Thursday, when the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council considers a report warning of the “risk of developing a ‘PlayStation’ mentality to killing.”

The report by Philip Alston, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, deals with various types of “targeted killing” carried out by states, paying considerable attention to the use by the U.S. of unmanned drones to fire missiles at terror suspects along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Earlier this week it was reported that Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, purportedly the al-Qaeda terrorist network’s No. 3 figure, had been killed in a missile strike in Pakistan’s North Waziristan last month.

The U.S. is a member of the Human Rights Council, having joined last year after the Bush administration steered clear of it. Some of its members hostile to the U.S. have frequently used the forum to attack American policies, particularly those associated with what used to be called the war on terrorism.

Joining the Council was a big mistake.  Bush was right in ignoring it.  It is an organization run by dictators and Muslim states, a wonderful combination.

Alston raises concerns about the fact the drone program is run by the Central Intelligence Agency, suggesting that a military-run operation would be preferable because the U.S. military has a relatively public – if “by no means perfect” – accountability process.

Tut, tut, tut, America.  You're getting rough again. 

The sad fact here is that Barack Hussein Obama Jr. might well take the UN's "concerns" seriously, and put Americans at risk. 

The UN has become worse than the old League of Nations, which failed to prevent World War II because it was indifferent to the rise of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan.  At least the League didn't have all these hypocritical subdivisions, panels and councils, many of them run by the kind of people the UN was originally set up to stop.

June 3, 2010     Permalink

THE REALITY OF THE OIL SPILL – AT 10:43 A.M. ET:  Reader Wendell P. Menard alerts us to an excellent piece by Apollo astronaut and geologist H. Harrison Schmitt, containing much common sense about the oil spill, and our president's reaction to it:

The President, without any experience in real-world management of anything, much less a crisis, has no idea how to deal with a situation as technically complex as the Gulf oil spill.

Oh dear, the man is engaged in truth telling.  Do we stop him now?

Whatever may be the culpability of British Petroleum and its federal regulators in causing and dealing with the accident, it has been left to BP engineers and managers and to Gulf State officials to respond as best they can in a regulatory environment that is politically charged, incompetent, fearful and hesitant.

Absolutely no reason exists to assume that any part of the Federal Government has engineering expertise comparable to the petroleum industry that can be applied to this or any future energy-related crisis. Certainly, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu have no more experience in these matters than does the President.

And...

Salazar’s empty threat to “push BP out of the way” has no basis as a realistic option and best illustrates the floundering of the Obama Administration. Indeed, from “day one,” the expertise of the entire U.S. and British drilling and production industry should have been mobilized to combat this spill, with a single experienced engineering manager in charge.

Not a bad idea.  But the only thing the Obamans run well is a campaign, so what can we expect?

President Obama’s and his Administration’s otherwise rambling response to the Deepwater Horizon explosion has been to stop offshore oil exploration by the United States. How misguided and, indeed, how either ignorant or devious can our President be!?

Watch.  The left will try to ban this former astronaut's thoughts as "hate speech."

President Obama has shown repeatedly that the best interests of the American people are a lower priority than his ideological goal of changing America from what it has been, to some mystical, socialist utopia with a renewable-energy-based standard of living equivalent to that of the late 1800s. As if the Administration could not make its ineffective, disjointed response to the Deepwater Horizon accident any worse, it did not even use previously established sea surface burn-off and dispersant procedures to minimize the effects of the spill.

As we understand it, that proven method upsets the environmentalist classes.

In addition, it has inexcusably delayed approving and assisting in Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s request to protect the state’s shores and wildlife habitats, by building offshore sand barriers – as unnecessary as having to make that request should have been. And this is the government that Congress and the President want to run healthcare, immigration, banking, carbon emissions, auto manufacturing, and everything else in American life?

Well, at least until November. 

Elimination of access to most on-shore and near-shore oil production prospects has driven American exploration away from more easily discoverable and producible resources – and into the much more dangerous and technically challenging deep waters of the seas and oceans. Even then, drilling and production accidents are exceedingly rare, in spite of the geological, engineering and weather-related difficulties that explorers and producers face as a consequence of these misguided restrictions.

That, maybe, is the most important point here.

Long-term, history reminds us that naturally and accidentally released oil in the oceans disappears due to bacterial action. Remember that the fuel oil which blackened the world’s beaches as a result of World War II ship destruction disappeared after only a few years, and ocean life survived. The Gulf oil spill will not be this Nation’s most serious environmental crisis: World War II tops it by orders of magnitude in more than just this respect.

Fascinating point.  How many of us knew that?

Until economically competitive alternatives become fully feasible, fossil fuels will remain the mainstay of our economy. Our dependence on unstable foreign sources of oil has become one of our greatest national security vulnerabilities, and only domestic production can solve it in the next 50 years.

COMMENT:  That is common sense, reality, and truthfulness.  It's what the radical left doesn't want you to hear.  This is one of the best pieces I've read recently, on any subject.

June 3, 2010      Permalink

UNBELIEVABLE – AT 10:09 A.M. ET:  I guess this is what happens when a "sophisticated" state makes its choices.  Despite outrageous faking of his military record, Connecticut's Democratic attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, seems to have a lock on the state's Senate race.  Scott Rasmussen reports:

Democrat Richard Blumenthal apparently has weathered charges that he exaggerated his military service in Vietnam for years and is running as strongly as ever against both his Republican challengers in Connecticut’s race for the U.S. Senate.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Connecticut finds Blumenthal with 56% support versus 33% for Linda McMahon, the officially endorsed GOP candidate. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided. McMahon has come under criticism recently as people have focused on her role in World Wresting Entertainment, a corporation that one conservative pundit compares to the Gulf oil spill as “a relentless gusher of pollution."

So, a man who said he served in Vietnam and didn't is considered entirely acceptable by the upscale Democratic voters of Connecticut.  After all, what's a little fibbing about a war we were all against, right dearies?

At the same time, we have to grit our teeth.  Blumenthal only stands at 55%.  He's beatable.  But it's pretty clear that Linda McMahon is not the candidate to do it.  That WWF background pulls her down.  In a Democratic state, the GOP needed a first-class candidate with a pristine reputation, and it hasn't got that candidate.  Her entire appeal to the party, apparently, is that she can finance her own campaign.

The current figures put the race back where it has been for most of the year, a likely Democratic victory in a challenging year for the Democratic Party.

COMMENT:  Unless something else comes out about Blumenthal, he'll probably be elected in this very blue state.  Then he'll present himself to the United States Senate as a man who faked his military record.  Very impressive.  There are still parts of the country where such things matter.

June 3, 2010     Permalink

NO RAVES FOR THE ECONOMY – AT 9:24 A.M. ET:  While the White House tries to convince us that prosperity is right around the corner, and that there'll be tofu in every pot and two electric vehicles in every garage, consumers are voting with their wallets, and holding back the vote.  From AP:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Americans, uninspired by cool weather and feeling fresh concerns about the economy, spent with caution in May after a tepid April.

Retailers' May sales reports, released Thursday, underscore how fragile the consumer spending recovery remains.

A mix of stores found business challenging during the month.

Target Corp.'s chairman, president and CEO Gregg Steinhafel, noted in a statement that its recent performance reinforces his belief that we will continue to "experience volatility in the pace of economic recovery." The chain posted a small gain that was below internal forecasts.

Department store chain J.C. Penney and many teen merchants including Abercrombie & Fitch Co. and American Eagle Outfitters Inc. reported declines in revenue at stores open at least a year.

Costco Wholesale Corp. reported a gain slightly below Wall Street expectations. Gap Inc. reported a small gain overall, but its namesake chain in the U.S. saw revenue decline. The results are being compared with depressed spending a year ago.

COMMENT:  This recovery is worse than fragile.  The Gulf oil spill may well devastate the economies of Gulf states.  Individual state governments around the country are running out of cash.  National governments around the world, ditto.  During the last major economic hit, in 2008, national governments had some cash reserves to cover downturns.  Those reserves have been largely used up.

And unemployment continues to grow.  Happy days aren't here again.  And who's at fault?  Why, it's BUSH (!!).

June 3, 2010    Permalink

DOES ANYTHING GO RIGHT WITH THESE CHAPS? – AT 8:53 A.M. ET:  The Obaman White House is beginning to resemble Nixon's bunker.  Now there are new questions regarding a possible bribe to get a guy out of a primary race.  From Fox:

The White House faced fresh questions over back-room dealmaking after the White House acknowledged one of President Obama's top advisers had suggested to a Democratic candidate the potential for an administration job in lieu of challenging the candidate whom the president favored in the Colorado Senate race.

Former Colorado House of Representatives Speaker Andrew Romanoff on Wednesday night released a copy of an e-mail in which White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina described three federal international development jobs that might be available to him if he were not challenging Sen. Michael Bennet for the Democratic nomination.

"He added that he could not guarantee my appointment to any of these positions," Romanoff said in a statement. "At no time was I promised a job, nor did I request Mr. Messina's assistance in obtaining one."

Oh, come on.  Please.  Why did Messina send that e-mail?  Was he practicing his computer skills?

Earlier in the day, a White House official said no formal offer was ever made and insisted there was nothing inappropriate in the contacts -- rhetoric similar to the explanation given last week when the White House admitted it orchestrated a job offer to Senate candidate Joe Sestak in the Pennsylvania primary.

COMMENT:  One case you can maybe explain away.  Two cases?  I don't think so.  At the very least, it's sleazy.  However, it's possible that no laws were broken.  In that case, the press will cover for Obama and the Justice Department, under the proprietorship of one Eric Holder, will refuse to investigate.

Look, this is Chicago politics on a national level.  In Chicago, everybody's doin' it, doin' it.  Maybe this White House saw nothing wrong in dangling these possibilities before greedy eyes.  The American people, we trust, will see things differently.

June 3, 2010      Permalink

THE MARCH OF WEAKNESS – AT 8:30 A.M. ET:  Naturally, the justifiable Israeli raid on a "peace" ship near Gaza is being put to good use at the United Nations, where no dictator need fear anything.  From The Politico:

A U.N. vote on Iran nuclear sanctions will likely be pushed back because of fallout from the Israeli raid on the Gaza aid flotilla, sources said Wednesday.

The Obama administration had been planning to bring a new Iran sanctions resolution to a vote at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday but diplomatic sources said the vote is not likely to take place this week.

In a breakfast meeting with journalists Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu criticized the United States for not outright condemning the Israeli actions.

He also expressed longstanding Turkish opposition to imposing economic sanctions on Iran, which Davutoglu said would severely impact the Turkish economy, just as Iraq sanctions did a decade ago.

COMMENT:  Hey, what's another week or two, right?  I mean, the Obama foreign policy machine has already squandered almost 17 months on the Iran nuclear issue, so let's not get picky as to timing.  And, you know, we can always blame Israel and its penchant for protecting its people. 

All the while, the centrifuges in Iran continue spinning.  They're on their way to a nuclear weapon.  We hope Obama shows some interest in that.  In fact, we hope Obama shows some interest in his job.

June 3, 2010     Permalink