MONDAY,  DECEMBER 7,  2009

CHILLING - IF THAT'S THE RIGHT WORD - AT 11:38 P.M. ET:  From the Washington Post:

The Obama administration moved closer Monday to issuing regulations on greenhouse gases, a step that would enable it to limit emissions across the economy even if Congress does not pass climate legislation.

Chilling because it once again expands federal power, and makes us all disciples of the god of global warming, whether that god is godlike or not.

The move, which coincided with the first day of the international climate summit in Copenhagen, seemed timed to reassure delegates there that the United States is committed to reducing its emissions even if domestic legislation remains bogged down. But it provoked condemnation from key Republicans and from U.S. business groups, which vowed to tie up any regulations in litigation.

There is an old left-wing tactic, developed in New York in the early sixties, that floods the system with costs, bureaucracy and paperwork.  The ultimate goal is to bring down capitalism.  I can't say this is part of that strategy, but it sure comes close.  The costs here, ordered by the federal government, can be catastrophic.

In Monday's much-anticipated announcement, the Environmental Protection Agency said that six gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, pose a danger to the environment and the health of Americans and that the agency would start drawing up regulations to reduce those emissions.

Should we strive for cleaner air?  Of course we should.  But we can do it without wrecking the economy, paralyzing the recovery, and frustrating entrepreneurship.  Those economic effects will ripple down and affect poor nations the most.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a leading proponent of a Senate climate bill, issued a statement after the EPA's announcement saying, "The message to Congress is crystal clear: Get moving."

I wasn't aware that federal departments tell Congress to get moving.  I wasn't aware that John Kerry was still around either.

December 7, 2009   Permalink

BINGHAMTON UPDATE - AT 8:01 A.M. ET:  We erred this morning in saying there was no detailed update on the Binghamton, New York, murder of a professor by a Muslim graduate student.  It turns out that The New York Times did do a respectable update - although buried on its website - which revealed that authorities had been warned about the killer:

The suspect, Abdulsalam S. al-Zahrani, 46, remained held without bail on Sunday, charged with second-degree murder in the death of the professor, Richard T. Antoun...

...On Sunday, Mr. Zahrani’s roommates — who had lived with him for about three weeks in a three-bedroom apartment in downtown Binghamton — recounted how the suspect, who spoke of financial problems, often mentioned death and said he was being persecuted because he was Muslim.

“I said he was acting oddly, like a terrorist,” said one of the roommates, Souleymane Sakho, a graduate student from Senegal. “When I informed them, it was for them to understand that the guy was violent or he may be violent.”

Mr. Sakho said that he told his academic adviser who is overseeing his dissertation about Mr. Zahrani, and that the adviser referred him to the school’s counseling center. Mr. Sakho said that the head of the counseling center told him to avoid interaction with Mr. Zahrani and said he should look to move out of the apartment.

Another example of an academic institution swinging into action.

A spokesman for Binghamton University declined to comment on what university officials may have been told by Mr. Sakho about Mr. Zahrani’s behavior, citing a continuing investigation by the district attorney of Broome County.

Naturally.

About 10 days ago, the police were called to the three-bedroom apartment, according to Mr. Sakho. He said he was sick of Mr. Zahrani’s constantly asking him if he was afraid of death and told him to stop. Later that night, Mr. Sakho said he told his other roommate, Luis Pena, also a graduate student, that he “had enough of the situation.” Hearing them, Mr. Zahrani came out of his bedroom and accused Mr. Sakho of threatening him, Mr. Sakho said.

“I’m not the kind of person to make threats because I am a peaceful person,” said Mr. Sakho, recalling the conversation. “I just want you to stop what you are doing.”

Mr. Zahrani then called the Binghamton police, who arrived at the apartment several minutes later, Mr. Sakho said.

“I came out and wanted to explain what Zahrani was doing and they told me to go back to my room,” Mr. Sakho said.

COMMENT:  Does this sound familiar?  There had been plenty of warnings about Major Hasan, late of Fort Hood, as well.  Nothing was done, possibly because of political correctness.  Now we know the result.

And we see that there had been warnings in Binghamton.  Nothing was done. 

Political correctness?  We'll see, but it should certainly not be ruled out.

December 7, 2009   Permalink

AND NEXT WEEK - A MILITARY COUP! - AT 6:12 P.M. ET:  Just kidding, just kidding.  But there is a bizarre story out there about the deep concerns of some Democrats, not exactly heirs to FDR, Truman, and Kennedy, who are concerned about too much military influence in the Obama administration.  No, that's serious.  I mean it.  Too much military influence in the Obama administration.  That's like worrying about too much conservative influence at Harvard.  But the Politico has the story:

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, goes before Congress this week, and with him comes this question: Who’s really in charge here, the generals or President Barack Obama?

Did you ever think you'd see that question asked?

The long-awaited hearings, beginning Tuesday before the House and Senate Armed Services committees, are a bookend of sorts to Obama’s address last Tuesday at West Point committing 30,000 more troops to the war effort in Afghanistan. Implicit in the president’s decision is an effective cap of about 100,000 for the American force, but top Democrats fear that unless Obama is more assertive, the military chain of command will undermine his July 2011 target to begin some U.S. withdrawal.

Now, wait.  Are these "top Democrats" saying that the president is weak?  Indecisive?  Ineffective?  Hmm, we hope the GOP is taping this.

“The president’s decision is already being softened and made mush of,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told POLITICO. And within the House and Senate Appropriations committees, senior Democrats — themselves veterans of past wars — have grown increasingly concerned by the political clout of a generation of younger, often press-savvy military commanders.

These guys don't remember Douglas MacArthur, do they?  Are they really afraid that today's media is too pro-military?  The New York Times?  Are we laughing?

McChrystal and his strong ally, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. Central Command, are quotable stars in today’s modern media; their wartime budgets not only are large but also give them exceptional discretion that is the envy of their foreign policy partners in the State Department.

Well, yeah.  They're quotable.  They're stars.  They're doing a job.  Where's the problem?

There really isn't any.  In fact, it wasn't the uniformed military, but two Cabinet members - Hillary Clinton and Bob Gates - who kind of fudged the withdrawal date from Afghanistan over the weekend.  And anyone with common sense knows that withdrawal deadlines - a bad idea in the first place - can never be rigid. 

Maybe the Democrats should be more concerned about terrorism than they are about American officers.

December 7, 2009   Permalink

TERROR LATEST - AT 6:01 P.M. ET:  Another alleged terrorist on our own soil.  From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The Chicago man with roots in Pakistan who was arrested two months ago for planning to attack a Danish newspaper now faces the much more serious charge that he was deeply involved in planning the 2008 massacre in India that killed more than 150 people, according to court documents filed by the Justice Department.

Court documents charge that David Coleman Headley, 49, an American citizen who is the son of a former Pakistani diplomat and a Philadelphia socialite, conducted extensive surveillance of targets in Mumbai, India, for more than two years prior to the attacks by the terrorist group called Lakshar-e-Taiba, which is based in Pakistan.

Six Americans were among the dead in the attacks on a Mumbai train station, the Oberoi and Taj Mahal hotels and other sites.

COMMENT:  Please see our first story today, about homegrown terrorism.  The last year has seen the greatest activity since 2001.  We have been lucky so far, although Fort Hood wasn't so lucky. 

And, again, this calls into question the awful decision to try the mastermind of 9-11 in an ordinary civilian court in New York.  All this does is encourage others, who may well feel that they, too, if caught, will be given a platform to espouse their views.

Cancel that decision, Attorney General Holder!

December 7,  2009   Permalink

IT'S THE RUSSKIES, IT'S THE RUSSKIES, PASS IT ON! - AT 10:26 A.M. ET:  The Sherlock Holmes unit at the U.N. has now solved Climategate.  Who hacked those -mails?  It's the same old culprits, isn't it?

UN officials have likened the theft of e-mails from university climate researchers to the Watergate scandal, after claiming computer hackers were probably paid by people intent on undermining the Copenhagen summit.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said that the theft from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was not the work of amateur climate sceptics, but was a sophisticated and well-funded attempt to destroy public confidence in the science of man-made climate change. He said the fact that the e-mails were first uploaded to a sceptic website from a computer in Russia was an indication that the culprit was paid.

“It’s very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services,” he said. “If you look at that mass of e-mails a lot of work was done, not only to download the data, but it’s a carefully made selection of e-mails and documents that’s not random at all. This is 13 years of data and it’s not a job of amateurs.”

COMMENT:  This is the first time the U.N. has ever blamed the Commies for anything.  Someone at headquarters apparently didn't get the party line.  Tomorrow they'll get it right and blame Americans.

December 7, 2009   Permalink

HEALTH CARE UPDATE - AT 9:36 A.M. ET:  There's a major vote involving the health "reform" bill in the Senate today, and it could have a profound effect on the final outcome.  From the Washington Examiner:

A pep talk by President Obama wasn't enough to give Senate Democrats the votes they needed to pass a massive health care overhaul, but a Monday vote on abortion funding could determine whether the legislation survives.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the chamber would take up an amendment by Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., that would strictly prohibit taxpayer money from being spent on abortion.

"I want to get it out of the way," Reid said. "I think we all do."

But the amendment could ultimately stand in the way of the bill's final passage, no matter what the outcome of the Monday vote.

The decision on the abortion amendment will be a decisive moment. If it fails, anti-abortion Democrats including Nelson and Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., may vote against the final bill. But if the amendment passes, the party's many senators who support abortion access, such as Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., could walk away.

COMMENT:  Passage of a final bill is not at all certain, although Democrats are determined to pass something, anything, just to say they've passed it.  There has still been no coherent explanation of what's in this monstrous bill.  Most Americans are against it, probably because they intelligently don't want something passed unless they understand it fully.

December 7, 2009   Permalink

ADVENTURES IN PRESS FREEDOM - AT 9:07 A.M. ET:  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.  This is really incredible, from The Politico:

Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.

Fox's political bias?  Fox's?  Has anyone ever listened to NPR?

According to a source, Liasson was summoned in early October by NPR’s executive editor for news, Dick Meyer, and the network’s supervising senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. The NPR executives said they had concerns that Fox’s programming had grown more partisan, and they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.

At a follow-up meeting last month, Liasson reported that she’d seen no significant change in Fox’s programming and planned to continue appearing on the network, the source said.

NPR’s focus on Liasson’s work as a commentator on Fox’s “Special Report” and “Fox News Sunday” came at about the same time as a White House campaign launched in September to delegitimize the network by painting it as an extension of the Republican Party.

COMMENT:  Mara Liasson is an honest, effective contributor to Fox News.  The action by Meyer and Elving strikes me as grossly inappropriate and humiliating.  If NPR wants to discourage its people from appearing on all television outlets, fine.  But singling out Fox appears to be a case of blatant bias, not that NPR has ever been guilty of bias.  I choked on that.

December 7, 2009    Permalink

PETRAEUS ON AHMADINEJAD - AT 8:45 A.M. ET:  From Economic Times, via the invaluable Planet Iran:  General David Petraeus, head of Central Command, believes that the Iranian president is serving at least one useful purpose:

WASHINGTON: Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is driving worried Gulf countries into US arms with his threats to expand Tehran’s suspect nuclear programme, the top American general in the region said on Sunday.

“President Ahmadinejad and the Irani (Iranian) leaders continue to be the best recruiters for Central Command as we embark on our partnership plans,” General David Petraeus said on Fox News.

“They’ve caused enormous worry and concern by those on the western side of the Gulf,” said Petraeus, the head of US Central Command.

He also said most experts question Iran’s ability to build 10 more uranium enrichment plants, “or anything remotely approaching that," as the Iranian leader threatened last week.

Ahmadinejad issued the threat after the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, censured it for building a second undeclared uranium enrichment plant, which the United States fears is aimed at producing fissile material for nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad, spurning a Western offer for foreign countries to enrich its uranium for a research nuclear reactor in Tehran, has gone on to vow that Iran would enrich its uranium stockpile to 20 per cent on its own.

COMMENT:  Iran will be a giant issue in 2010.  The question is how seriously the civilian leadership of the United States takes it.  So far, all we've heard is talk, and vague plans for new sanctions, which would have to have the approval of nations, like China, which has already said it opposes them.  Not much of a strategy, I think.

December 7, 2009   Permalink 

THE THREAT - AT 8:01 A.M. ET:  We observe December 7th, as our generation has observed it for decades, as the "day of infamy," when the United States, in the midst of peace negotiations with Japan, was suddenly attacked by that nation.  Pearl Harbor was the center of the assault, with attacks elsewhere in the Pacific as well.

Since December 7, 1941, the notion of a sudden, sneak attack has resonated with Americans.

On September 11, 2001, we learned again the reality of a sneak attack.  More Americans died that day than at Pearl Harbor.

The threat is still very real.  The great Ed Lasky of American Thinker alerts us to a piece in the Los Angeles Times that reports on just how real it is:

Reporting from Washington - The Obama administration, grappling with a spate of recent Islamic terrorism cases on U.S. soil, has concluded that the country confronts a rising threat from homegrown extremism.

Anti-terrorism officials and experts see signs of accelerated radicalization among American Muslims, driven by a wave of English-language online propaganda and reflected in aspiring fighters' trips to hot spots such as Pakistan and Somalia.

Europe had been the front line, the target of successive attacks and major plots, while the U.S. remained relatively calm. But the number, variety and scale of recent U.S. cases suggest 2009 has been the most dangerous year domestically since 2001, anti-terrorism experts said:

And yet, there has also been a studied indifference by much of the mainstream media.  Indeed, it often goes beyond indifference.  After the Fort Hood massacre, mainstream journalists did backflips to avoid mentioning the possibility that this was an act of terrorism, although the evidence was plainly there.  We were assured that Major Hasan, the shooter, was just one stressed out guy.

Just a few days ago, a professor in Binghamton, New York, was shot to death by a Muslim graduate student.  News reports say the student had made extremist comments, believed he was persecuted, and, today, we find out he ridiculed his Christian roommates over their religion.  The deceased professor was apparently a Muslim convert to Judaism, and his wife worked for a Jewish organization.  Yet, we look in vain this morning for any detailed examination of this murder by the mainstream media.  Nothing to see here folks, nothing to see.

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued her strongest public comments yet on the homegrown threat.

"We've seen an increased number of arrests here in the U.S. of individuals suspected of plotting terrorist attacks, or supporting terror groups abroad such as Al Qaeda," Napolitano said in a speech in New York. "Home-based terrorism is here. And, like violent extremism abroad, it will be part of the threat picture that we must now confront."

Officials acknowledged that her tone had changed, though they said terrorism has been her focus since becoming Homeland Security chief.

And...

Some feel radicalization in the United States has been worse than authorities thought for some time.

"People focused on the idea that we're different, we're better at integrating Muslims than Europe is," said Zeyno Baran, a scholar at the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington. "But there's radicalization -- especially among converts [and] newcomers, such as the Somali case shows. I think young U.S. Muslims today are as prone to radicalization as Muslims in Europe."

Why not?  On some college campuses their extreme views are portrayed as just "another narrative."

Finally:

In contrast to the heightened extremist activity in the United States, Europe has remained relatively calm this year. But the West needs to keep up its guard on both sides of the Atlantic, said Farhad Khosrokhavar, an Iranian French scholar who interviewed jailed extremists for his book "Inside Jihadism."

"You can be middle-class and have bright prospects but become a jihadist," he said. "We have to broaden the analysis. This idea of American exceptionalism, the comparison with Europe, should not blind us to the fact that we are going toward a broader participation in jihad."

COMMENT:  The Los Angeles Times, a very liberal paper, is to be commended for this report.  Please read the whole thing. 

December 7,  2009   Permalink

SUNDAY,  DECEMBER 6,  2009

THE COPENHAGEN EXPERIENCE - AT 8:10 P.M. ET:  Just read this, from London's Telegraph:

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world," which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says.

"We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen.

It tells us something about the attitudes of the "environmentalists" who will attend.  "Environmentalism for thee, but not for me."

And this:

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

Let us be sickened.  And yet, let us praise the professional enviros for doing more for the limo and private aviation industries than any group in history.

Yuch.  Double yuch.

I'd make it a triple yuch, but I don't want to leave too big a yuch footprint.

December 6, 2009   Permalink  

DID WE THINK WE'D SEE THE DAY? - AT 7:48 P.M. ET:  Well, yes.  The left is starting to turn on Barack Obama.  You see, he won't follow every item in the leftist liturgy.  The New York Times reports on the latest episode:

It looks like President Obama is unlikely to get the Nobel Peace Prize without the occasion being marked by protests. At least one antiwar group is already calling for a midday march to the U.S. Armed Forces Recruiting Station in New York’s Times Square to coincide with the award ceremony in Oslo City Hall on December 10, the date on which Alfred Nobel died.

Days before the event protesters were already handing out leaflets headlined: ‘You Don’t End a War By Sending More Troops! Stop the Occupation of Afghanistan.”

Another group has already posted an online petition criticizing it as an “absurd” and “premature” decision.

What is really absurd here is the simplistic description of these groups as "antiwar."  That's a throwback to Vietnam-era language.  The mainstream media, even then, absolutely refused to go beyond "antiwar," despite overwhelming evidence that many groups were, quite obviously, pro-Communist.  You know, you didn't want to be called a McCarthyite.  I'm sure you understand.

Now, get this.  The Times story links to the website for one of the "antiwar" groups.  Here's what that website says.  You cannot make this up:

Lets express our objection against the absurd decision to award B. Obama Nobel Peace Prize. His activity had not yet abounded the unusual achievements. And although it can not be denied his potential, a decision the Nobel Committee is definitely premature, and in addition the political. Unfortunately, such a choice Stockholm committee is directed at existing laureates this prestigious Prize, who have spent years devoted themselves to working hard and consistently for their ideals.

Gee, nothing like English as a second language. 

Oh, I would just love to know who's really behind this.  But who are we to question someone else's culture? 

Right?

Wrong.

December 6, 2009   Permalink

CLIMATEGATE - THE SIMMERING SCANDAL - AT 7:26 P.M. ET:  Once again, British writers are ahead of their American counterparts in nailing down the machinations of the political left, and its allies, this time its environmentalist allies.  Christopher Booker points out the importance of Climategate.  This is not a minor-league scandal.  From The Telegraph:

To appreciate its significance, as I observed last week, it is first necessary to understand that the people these incriminating documents relate to are not just any group of scientists. Professor Philip Jones of the CRU, his colleague Dr Keith Briffa, the US computer modeller Dr Michael Mann, of "hockey stick" fame, and several more make up a tightly-knit group who have been right at the centre of the last two reports of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). On their account, as we shall see at this week's Copenhagen conference, the world faces by far the largest bill proposed by any group of politicians in history, amounting to many trillions of dollars.

And which country will be expected to pay the biggest chunk of that bill?  Guess.

The scientists involved had to prove that the Earth is warmer now than ever before in recorded history:

The most celebrated attempt to demonstrate this was the "hockey stick" graph produced by Dr Mann in 1999, which instantly became the chief icon of the IPCC and the global warming lobby all over the world. But in 2003 a Canadian statistician, Steve McIntyre, with his colleague Professor Ross McKitrick, showed how the graph had been fabricated by a computer model that produced "hockey stick" graphs whatever random data were fed into it...

...Although McIntyre's exposure of the "hockey stick" was upheld in 2006 by two expert panels commissioned by the US Congress, the small group of scientists at the top of the IPCC brushed this aside by pointing at a hugely influential series of graphs originating from the CRU, from Jones and Briffa.

The result of the chicanery:

Yet it is on a blind acceptance of this kind of evidence that 16,500 politicians, officials, scientists and environmental activists will be gathering in Copenhagen to discuss measures which, if adopted, would require us all in the West to cut back on our carbon dioxide emissions by anything up to 80 per cent, utterly transforming the world economy.

This could have a devastating effect on poor nations.  If the economy of the West gets a cold from all this, poor nations will get pneumonia.

Little of this extraordinary story been reported by the BBC or most of our mass-media, so possessed by groupthink that they are unable to see the mountain of evidence now staring them in the face. Not for nothing was Copenhagen the city in which Hans Andersen wrote his story about the Emperor whose people were brainwashed into believing that he was wearing a beautiful suit of clothes. But today there are a great many more than just one little boy ready to point out that this particular Emperor is wearing nothing at all.

Wonderfully said.  Finally:

...as we can see from the CRU's website, the largest single source of funding for all its projects has been the European Union, which at Copenhagen will be more insistent than anyone that the world should sign up to what amounts to the most costly economic suicide note in history.

But from the point of view of the militant left, that is entirely desirable.  Their ultimate aim is to destroy capitalism, especially American capitalism, and replace it with their socialist utopia.  To them, the loss of economic, scientific, engineering, and agricultural progress, even if it involves the loss of life, is a small price to pay for their egotistical dreams.

December 6, 2009   Permalink

GET TOGETHER, FELLAS - AT 11:57 A.M. ET:  More confusion from the administration, whose thought processes are so deep and wonderful that no mistakes can possibly be made.  From AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) - National security adviser James Jones said Sunday that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden still spends some time inside Afghanistan.

Most recent U.S. estimates have placed bin Laden inside Pakistan. But Jones, a retired general, said the best estimate is that bin Laden "is somewhere in North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border."

Jones described it as "very, very rough, mountainous area. Generally ungoverned and we're going to have to get after that to make sure that this very, very important symbol of what al-Qaida stands for is either, once again, on the run or captured or killed."

Now wait.  Let's just wait.  The story goes on to say this:

Earlier, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the U.S. hasn't had any good intelligence for years on bin Laden's whereabouts. He said he couldn't confirm reports that bin Laden had been seen recently in Afghanistan.

COMMENT:  Do these boys talk to each other?  Exchange e-mails?  Valentine cards?   Before administration officials talk to the press, they should sit down and get their stories straight.

December 6, 2009   Permalink

OBAMA RUSHES IN TO SAVE HEALTH "REFORM" - AT 11:31 A.M. ET:  Senate Dems, not quite making it on passing a health "reform" bill, have called on the ultimate weapon:

Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama plans to head to the U.S. Capitol to press Senate Democrats to agree on health legislation as lawmakers struggle to resolve disputes over issues including a proposed government-run insurance plan.

Democrats met throughout yesterday to seek an alternative to Senate Majority Harry Reid’s plan to create the new national program to cover the uninsured. Opposition within his party leaves Reid at risk of falling four votes short of the 60 he needs to pass the legislation, the most sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health-care system in more than four decades.

And then there's federal funding for abortion, which is even more volatile.

Obama’s scheduled visit comes as the bill’s backers need a jolt to come together, said Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry.

“We have to talk about how to put the final pieces together,” Kerry said. “It’s good to hear from the president now, because it’s getting to that stage where you have to come to a decision with your heart as well as your head.”

In other words, don't think too much.

Reid called the rare weekend session to meet his deadline of getting a bill by year-end. Republicans, unified in opposition, forced the Democrats yesterday to reiterate their support for cutting more than $40 billion in home health-care services funding under Medicare. It was the latest Republican effort to highlight the bill’s potential impact on the elderly.

Are the Dems completely nuts?  I can just see "the Democratic war on the elderly" as a major campaign theme.  The elderly vote.  They don't vote as often as the deceased vote in Chicago, but they do vote.  I recall when Democrats championed the elderly.  Not now.  Guess they're not pretty enough for Aspen.

December 6, 2009   Permalink

DRAWDOWN OR NO - AT 11:14 A.M. ET:  We are thinking of offering a reward to anyone who can figure this out.  From The Politico:

SECRETARIES CLINTON AND GATES TAPED JOINT INTERVIEWS yesterday with the three broadcast networks, producing the HuffPost banner: “HE SAID, THEY SAID: Clinton, Gates Contradict Obama's 'Locked In' Date For Afghan Draw-Down.”

--CBS’s Bob Schieffer, to Secretary Gates, on “Face the Nation”: “Mr. Secretary, is there a deadline or is there not?”
GATES: “There isn’t a deadline. What we have is a specific date on which we will begin transferring responsibility for security district by district, province by province, in Afghanistan to the Afghans.”

--Secretary Gates, from downtown, to Schieffer: "We are not going to abandon Afghanistan like we did in 1989. But the nature of the relationship will change."

--Secretary Clinton, to Schieffer: "We want to show urgency about our aims here. And we do expect to start this transition in July 2011. And I think everybody is very clear about that. All of the generals are. We certainly are. But it’s hard to sit here today in Washington and predict exactly what that pace will be.”

--Secretary Clinton, to NBC’s David Gregory, on “Meet the Press”: “We're not talking about an exit strategy or a drop-dead deadline. What we're talking about is an assessment that in [July] 2011, we can begin a transition … to hand off responsibility to the Afghan forces. That is what eventually happened in Iraq. You know, we're gonna be out of Iraq. We have a firm deadline, because the Iraqis believe that they can assume and will assume responsibility for their own future. We want the Afghans to feel the same sense of urgency. We want them to actually make good on what President Karzai said in his inaugural speech, which is that by five years from now they'll have total control for their defense.”

COMMENT:  Compare please to Obama's pretty clear date of July, 2011.  There will be a presidential election in this country the following year.  Draw your own conclusions.

December 6, 2009   Permalink

AND AGAIN - AT 10:24 A.M. ET:  It seems we're getting incidents like this every few months:

An upstate graduate student was charged yesterday with stabbing a beloved anthropology professor to death.

Saudi national Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani, 46, was held without bail for the murder of Binghamton University professor Richard Antoun, 77, an expert on comparative religion, authorities said.

Al-Zahrani, a cultural-anthropology grad student, allegedly pulled out a six-inch kitchen knife and stabbed Antoun four times in the chest in the professor's campus office Friday.

Student Devin Sheppard said the suspect was at the scene when cops arrived.

COMMENT:  Obviously, we make no prejudgments.  But once again an individual with a specific background commits a murder.  It may be entirely a personal matter, but law enforcement has an obligation to the public to ask questions about motivation and background...and so does the often blind, often politically correct press.

The victim was reportedly Jewish, but we cannot yet confirm that.  There is a report, again unconfirmed, that he was a convert from Islam.  We know that his wife works for a Jewish organization.

UPDATE AT 10:36 A.M. ET:  More is coming in on the Binghamton slaying, this from the local press:

The two apartment-mates of the man charged with stabbing a Binghamton University professor to death on Friday said Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani was confrontational, argumentative and "acted like a terrorist."

And...

Souleyman Sukho, a Senegalese doctoral student at BU, said during the three weeks the men lived together, Al-Zahrani "came at me with a knife."

"He asked me if I was afraid of dying," Sukho said. "Then he went into his room. I told him, 'don't ask me the question if you don't want to hear my answer.'

"He behaved like a terrorist," Sukho said. "He would open his door and would be screaming on the phone."

And...

Sukho said he didn't understand what Al-Zahrani was screaming about because he was speaking in a language Sukho didn't understand. "He claimed he was persecuted."

When have we heard that before?  Does the name "Major Hasan" ring a bell?

This is early information, and we stress the importance of confirmation.  But based on a number of points, this doesn't look good.  It also looks ripe for the usual cover-up, especially since a university is involved, and universities are great at covering things up.

Stand by.

December 6,  2009   Permalink