I have a new piece up at Power Line today - "The Tonight Show - Part 4," recalling one part of my sordid and dark past.  It's here.

WEDNESDAY,  DECEMBER 30, 2009

LOONEY TUNES – AT 7:48 P.M. ET:  We can only hope that psychiatry makes BDS, Bush Derangement Syndrome, a recognized ailment in 2010.  And Obamacare should provide free treatment for those afflicted, starting with its own troops.  From The Hill:

Democratic strategists Wednesday asserted President Barack Obama "has been far more aggressive in fighting al Qaeda" than the previous administration.

We've noticed the dramatic results.  We noticed them at Fort Hood, we noticed them last Friday over Detroit...

In an e-mail this afternoon to supporters -- which incidentally excoriated Republicans for politicizing the attempted bombing of Flight 253 -- the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) stressed it was President George W. Bush, not his successor, who relegated the fight against the terrorist network to the back burner by turning "its focus from al Qaeda to Iraq."

Again, Bush.  Always Bush and, of course, Cheney.  It's a BDS epidemic.  Swine flu is nothing compared to this.

The outrage here, among others, is that the Dems never noticed that we fought al Qaeda in Iraq, and defeated it.  We've seen that al Qaeda travels from place to place.  It doesn't have just one address on Cave Boulevard in Afghanistan.

Bush can be criticized for many things, but there's been a dramatic increase in terror attempts since Obama took office, and it may not be a coincidence.  When you flash weakness, an enemy notices.

It's odd that the Dems accuse the GOP of politicizing terror and then go on to attack the Bush administration on the same subject.  It's unlikely that the Democratic political planners anticipated that terror would erupt once more as a political issue, but it has.  Defense is not exactly an Obama strong point.  Add that fact to the general unpopularity of some of the domestic issues he's pushing, and Democratic political concern is likely to grow.  A year ago the Democratic Party was in political heaven.  Now it's headed in the other direction, where global warming is a constant reality.

December 30, 2009    Permalink

NEW SUICIDE ATTACK - AT 7:33 P.M. ET:  There's been a new suicide attack in Afghanistan, and the circumstances are unusual:

KABUL (AP) -- A suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest at a military base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing eight American civilians, U.S. officials said. The explosion occurred at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province near the Afghan border with Pakistan.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed that eight Americans died in the attack.

''We mourn the loss of life in this attack, and are withholding further details pending notification of next of kin,'' he said.

COMMENT:  Horrible, of course.  But was this simply a suicide attack, or an act of terrorism directed at civilians?  We don't hear of many American civilian casualties in Afghanistan.  If civilians are now being targeted, especially those involved in reconstruction, we could have an expanded security problem that might involve tying down troops or housing our people in ever-more-isolated locations.

December 30, 2009   Permalink

NO CONFIDENCE – AT 6:59 P.M. ET:  In countries with parliamentary systems, this might lead to a no-confidence vote:

Belief that the bad guys are winning the War on Terror is now at its highest level in over two years, and nearly half of U.S. voters say America is not safer than it was before 9/11.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 30% of voters think the terrorists are winning the War on Terror. That’s the first time the number holding that pessimistic view has reached 30% since October 2007.

Just 18% believed the terrorists were winning the week President Obama took office in January. At that time, 55% said America and its allies were on top. Now, just 36% say the United States and its allies are winning the War on Terror. Only once since July 2007 have voters had less confidence.

This speaks powerfully to the loss of confidence in the Obama administration.  Obama was sold to us as the man who understood the world.  Unfortunately, it's not the world any of us actually live in.

Just 27% now say that the United States is safer today than it was before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. However, 47% say it is not, That latter figure marks a nine-point jump from earlier in the month and is the highest negative finding on the question since Rasmussen Reports began surveying on it in 2002.

The people are speaking.  But will the boys in Washington listen?  Maybe not.  These figures are startling:

Seventy-five percent (75%) of the Political Class say the United States and its allies are winning the War on Terror. Mainstream voters are more narrowly divided on the question.

Similarly, 72% of the Political Class says the United States is safer today than before 9/11, but 54% of Mainstream voters disagree.

I suspect that the "political class" is more optimistic simply because its members don't want to deal with terrorism.  Not chic.  Not hip.  Not edgy.

I'll trust the people on this one.

December 30,  2009   Permalink

OH DEAR, THE BRITS NAIL OBAMA AGAIN – AT 12:58 A.M. ET:  British writers are coming down hard on Obama, a man most of them don't like anyway, over the terror issue.  Tony Harnden, in The Telegraph, nails the president:

Yes, the buck stops in the Oval Office. Obama may have rather smugly given himself a “B+” for his 2008 performance but he gets an F for the events that led to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarding a Detroit-bound plane in Amsterdam with a PETN bomb sewn into his underpants. He said today that a “systemic failure has occurred”. Well, he’s in charge of that system.

Actually, the White House thinks that Bush is still in charge of that system.

In his studied desire to be the unBush by responding coolly to events like this, Obama is dangerously close to failing as a leader. Yes, it is good not to shoot from the hip and make broad assertions without the facts. But Obama took three days before speaking to the American people, emerging on Monday in between golf and tennis games in Hawaii to deliver a rather tepid address that significantly underplayed what happened. He described Abdulmutallab as an “isolated extremist” who “allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body” – phrases that indicate a legalistic, downplaying approach that alarms rather than reassures.

And...

Today’s words showed a lot more fire and desire to get on top of things – we’ll see whether Obama follows through with action. In the meantime, he went snorkeling.

Whenever there's a flap, Obama thinks he can fix it with words.  It isn't working. We've heard the CD too many times before. 

There has been a pattern developing with the Obama administration trying to minimise terrorist attacks. We saw it with Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, a Muslim convert who murdered a US Army recruit in Little Rock, Arkansas in June. We saw it with Major Nidal Malik Hassan, a Muslim with Palestinian roots who slaughtered 13 at Fort Hood, Texas last month. In both cases, there were Yemen connections. Obama began to take the same approach with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. We’ll see whether this incident shakes him out of that complacency. Whether it’s called the war on terror or not, it’s clear that the US is at war against al-Qaeda and radical Islamists.

The president does not want to admit that.  It's a visceral thing. 

Janet Napolitano, Obama’s Homeland Security Chief, has been a disaster in this, exhibiting the kind of bureaucratic complacency that makes ordinary citizens want to go postal.

She should go, but I doubt if Obama has the guts to fire a female department head.

There’s a continued, unfortunate tendency for everyone in Obamaland to preface every comment about something going wrong with a sideswipe against the Bush administration.

The public is on to this.  Obama can't get away with it much longer.

Will there be US air attacks against targets in Yemen? Watch this space. It’s safe to say that Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or AQAP, described to me by a senior intelligence official today as “officially recognised and in corporate terms a sanctioned franchise of al-Qaeda” that is plainly now seeking to become an international rather than just a regional Islamist player.

COMMENT:  The president cannot seem to use words like "victory" or "Muslim extremist."  He wants to fight a politically correct war.  So far it's been a failure.  Next year, almost upon us, will be decisive.  If Obama is perceived as weak and drifting at the end of two years, he might have to check out the want ads.

December 30, 2009   Permalink

SOUNDS LIKE PRE 9-11 – AT 8:52 A.M. ET:  After 9-11 we learned there'd been serious warnings about Middle Easterners learning to fly at American flight schools, under unusual circumstances.  The warnings had been ignored.

As Yogi Berra said, this looks like déja vù all over again:

THE CIA was tracking a person of interest known as "The Nigerian" - who was in fact airline bomb suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - as early as August, CBS News reports.

The connection between “The Nigerian” and Mr Abdulmutallab was not made when the 23-year-old's father contacted the US embassy in Nigeria in November to warn them of his son’s radicalisation.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the intelligence agency did not have Mr Abdulmutallab’s name until November.

And they did not know he was “The Nigerian” until after his attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day.

"In November, we worked with the embassy to ensure he was in the Government's terrorist database-including mention of his possible extremist connections in Yemen,” Mr Gimigliano said.

COMMENT:  There will be investigations, as there were after 9-11.  Will anything change?  We don't know, but if you were a government employee looking at this administration's attitude toward terrorism – I mean "man-made disasters" – how encouraged would you be to work harder?

December 30, 2009   Permalink

THE WHITE HOUSE JOINS THE NATION – MAYBE – AT 8:21 A.M. ET:  There are things you read that makes you wonder if the Obama administration is partially detached from the United States, a country in the Western Hemisphere.  From the Washington Post:

The president and his top advisers now believe there is "some linkage" with al-Qaeda, and the administration is "increasingly confident" that the terrorist group worked with suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to secure the deadly chemical mixture that he took aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253, a senior administration official said Tuesday.

Some linkage?  Some linkage?  They're out there bragging about it.  The perp's daddy visited the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria twice to warn us.  And these guys are talking about "some" linkage.

White House officials also said the government had intelligence suggesting a possible attack on the United States by al-Qaeda around Christmas, although the reports were not specific.

They could've warned us.  They could have raised the threat level.  But that would have meant using the threat-level system developed by BUSH (!!) and CHENEY (!!!!).  Can't do that.  Of course the reports weren't specific.  If they were specific, we could have stopped the plot in its tracks.  But the public could have been alerted, assuming the White House wasn't focused on planning the president's vacation, with accompanying menus.

Obama has now admitted a "systemic" failure.

Obama's stark remarks came two days after his homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, said information provided by the suspect's father before the failed bombing plot was so vague that it did not merit further investigation. Napolitano also said that "the system worked" in this incident, drawing a political outcry from Republican lawmakers and national security experts.

As the Obama administration reviewed the government's actions, investigators in Yemen on Tuesday visited an Arabic language institute attended by Abdulmutallab and asked about his ties to a mosque in the capital's historic section.

That's nice.  I'm glad they're visiting.  They should take pictures for their travel scrapbook.  Even Yemen's foreign minister admits the country is crawling with terrorists, and we're now just waking up.

Yemen is where the USS Cole was attacked...nine years ago.

December 30, 2009   Permalink

THE PRESIDENT FLOPS – AT 8:12 A.M. ET:  President Obama is getting a large number of failing grades over his handling of the airline terror attack.  Clear-headed analyst Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations puts it well, via The Politico:

A lot of the things that presidents have to do are hard. That is all the more reason why they should do the easy stuff well. Handling an incident like the Christmas bombing is something they teach in White House management 101. The easy part is managing your response to the news and making sure you get the optics right. The hard part is the policy: figuring out what went wrong, taking the right steps to address the problem, and pressing on with your strategic vision of how to deal with the threat. The problem for the White House at this point is that when you fluff the easy part, the public starts to wonder if you have what it takes to do the hard part of the job.

Ouch. 

What the White House seems to be missing is that this sort of moment is an opportunity to connect with the public while its attention is focused and to get out the message about this administration's approach to the terrorism threat. In particular, it's a chance to connect with women. He's lost the angry white male vote -- not that he ever had much of it. His danger is that he'll lose the soccer moms: voters who like a lot of what this President stands for but who are worried about security and worried about debt.

COMMENT:  More ouch.  If Obama loses women over the security issue, he's a one-termer, which may be the case anyway.  You get the feeling that he's overwhelmed by the job, not that interested in actually doing it, and enjoys the perks rather than the challenge.  Sometimes it appears he'd rather be basketball commissioner, or a restaurant critic. 

December 30, 2009   Permalink

PANIC IN TEHRAN – AT 7:53 A.M. ET:  There are signs the regime in Tehran is starting to panic, aware that both its legitimacy and its longevity are being seriously challenged.  From Martin Fletcher at the Times of London, via the superb Planet Iran website:

Iran’s panicking regime is once again seeking to suppress the Green Movement by decapitating it.
Just as it did after June’s hotly-disputed presidential election, it is arresting high-profile reformists, academics and journalists who support the opposition...

...The tactic will prove as futile now as it did in June. Decapitation will not work because the opposition is a bottom-up movement run not by Mr Mousavi or Mehdi Karroubi, its nominal leaders, but by its grassroots members. It is a massive campaign of civil disobedience.

The response of the president of the United States has been some gosh-darned nice words about the right to protest.

“Ahmadinejad, Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards still don’t get it,” said one Iranian academic. “The Green Movement is a decentralised popular front run by local cells and local leaderships across the country. The main opposition figures do not control it. They are spiritual leaders, but do not provide any direction in regard to demonstrations or slogans.”

And...

One activist said: “Do Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and the elite of the Revolutionary Guards really think that I, or anyone else, after being beaten by the police, witnessing the murder of Iranians on the streets, hearing stories of rape and murder in the prisons, and knowing of electoral cheating, will ever remain passive and quiet? None of us will ever accept the rule of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei after what they have done.”

Tehran's police chief today promised increased brutality toward the demonstrators.  That is likely to make matters worse for the regime.

The pot is boiling.  An informed source told me that March may well see the tipping point. 

We're making a list and checking it twice, and noting the silence of "human rights organizations," especially those who've been obsessed with Guantanamo. 

And, by the way, we haven't heard a word from the secretary of state. 

We're following this.  Iran may well be the biggest foreign story of 2010.

December 30,  2009   Permalink

TUESDAY,  DECEMBER 29,  2009

AND THE IRANIAN THREAT – AT 9:19 P.M. ET:  We have been focusing on the newly revived terror threat, but Iran remains a giant story.  There is rioting in the streets of Tehran.  Some analysts predict that the regime could in fact be brought down by the democracy movement, although that moment does not appear to be close.

There is, in addition, the nuclear program:

VIENNA (AP) -- Iran is close to clinching a deal to clandestinely import 1,350 tons of purified uranium ore from Kazakhstan, according to an intelligence report obtained by The Associated Press. Diplomats said the assessment was heightening international concern about Tehran's nuclear activities.

Of course, they need this emergency shipment to build a power plant because so many iPods are waiting to be charged.  It's a terrible problem.  Even Steve Jobs has complained.

Such a deal would be significant because, according to an independent research group, Tehran appears to be running out of the material, which it needs to feed its uranium enrichment program.

The report was drawn up by a member nation of the International Atomic Energy Agency and provided Tuesday to the AP on condition that the country not be identified because of the confidential nature of the information.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said, ''the transfer of any uranium yellowcake ... to Iran would constitute a clear violation of UNSC sanctions.''

COMMENT:  Yeah, it would be a violation.  Might have to give them a summons.  The UN just raised the fine on that to $140, and it affects insurance premiums.

The president is facing an avalanche of problems.  He is also facing declining poll numbers and an increasing perception that he's mortal.  Even some reporters believe that.

December 29, 2009   Permalink

BULBS GO ON ABOVE CERTAIN HEADS – AT 8:29 P.M. ET:  Reader Brian Kuhn writes: 

"Watching ABC News tonight, and for the first time EVER, I’m hearing a report on how these terrorists aren’t just downtrodden, poor, backwoods jihadists, but coming from wealthy families as well, and the reporter goes back to Mohammed Atta, a leader in the 9/11 attack, to make his point, listing name after name since ….
 
"Well, duh."

COMMENT:  Please notice how the leftist propaganda about terrorism parallels the leftist propaganda about domestic crime that was pounded into our ears from the fifties onward.  Criminals?  Why, they're just products of their environment.  They're victims.  If we didn't oppress them, they'd all behave.

And the fact is, a good chunk of America, especially "elite" America, bought it, and continues to buy it, because it sounds so respectable, so intellectual.  So, so un-cop. 

That leftist idea was properly satirized in the song, "Officer Krupke," in West Side Story. 

Now we're given the same story, by many on the left, about terrorists, despite Harvard studies that debunked the "victim" idea years ago.  Terrorism is based on an ideology.  Victimhood may be part of it, as long as it feeds the ideology, but the ideology comes first.

By the way, one of the most notorious propagators of the terrorist-as-victim myth is Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, a vastly overrated man who did a pretty good job in the battle against apartheid, but has, in recent decades, often been an apologist for leftist theology.

December 29, 2009   Permalink

DOT CONNECTING 101 – AT 7:54 P.M. ET:  Apparently the airline bomber, and the Fort Hood shooter, have a friend in common – you know, the way you have a friend on Facebook.  But this is some friend:

The Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner had his suicide mission personally blessed in Yemen by Anwar al-Awlaki, the same Muslim imam suspected of radicalizing the Fort Hood shooting suspect, a U.S. intelligence source has told The Washington Times.

And...

The intelligence official, who is familiar with the FBI's interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, said the bombing suspect has boasted of his jihad training during interrogation by the FBI and has said it included final exhortations by Mr. al-Awlaki.

"It was Awlaki who indoctrinated him," the official said. "He was told, 'You are going to be the tip of the spear of the Muslim nation.'"

Uh oh.  Must not say that.  No use of the M-word.

Mr. al-Awlaki had e-mail contact with Maj. Hasan as many as 20 times from December 2008 until the Fort Hood shootings, where Maj. Hasan is accused of killing 13 people. Mr. al-Awlaki praised Maj. Hasan's actions as a "hero" and said all Muslims in the U.S. military should "follow the footsteps of men like Nidal."

Those e-mails were intercepted by the U.S. Government.  And yet, nothing was done.  If proper attention had been paid, it's possible that Fort Hood would have been prevented and the airline bomb plot detected. That is what investigators should be looking at.

In his FBI interrogation, according to the U.S. intelligence official, Mr. Abdulmutallab spoke of being in a room in Yemen receiving Muslim blessings and prayers from Mr. al-Awlaki, along with a number of other men "all covered up in white martyrs' garments," and known only by code names and "abu" honorifics.

The official said such clothing and the lack of familiarity among the men suggests al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula intends to use the men in that room in suicide missions.

Finally...

Yemen's top diplomat said Tuesday that hundreds of al Qaeda militants are in his country and pleaded for foreign help and intelligence in rooting them out.

They may actually plan attacks like the one we have just had in Detroit. There are maybe hundreds of them -- 200, 300, Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi told the Times of London.

COMMENT:  Do we need a map drawn for us?  Will the president now grow up and realize that all his "outreach" does no good with people like this?  We are facing a threat similar to the Japanese kamikaze of World War II.  If someone is willing to give up his life gladly, he becomes a human bomb – a bomb with the best guidance system ever devised, the human mind.

December 29, 2009   Permalink

ON SECOND THOUGHT – AT 7:26 P.M. ET:  It's pretty clear that the Obama political wing realizes the president has a serious problem with the airline terror incident.  Mr. Obama was out front again today, escalating his rhetoric, as if to prove that he's serious about this:

President Obama said Tuesday that a "mix of human and systemic failures" allowed a known extremist to board an airplane with explosives, and he demanded that federal officials report quickly to him on airline security procedures.

Well, let's see, it's four days after the incident and the pres is first making demands.  The things he's saying we knew about from Junior Scholastic on Saturday.

"It's essential that we diagnose the problems quickly and deal with them immediately," Obama said from Hawaii, where he is vacationing.

Let the record show that he went right back to vacationing after the statement, which was made without a tie on.  Nothing like presenting an image of authority.  Next, a bikini?

Obama added: "When our government has information on a known extremist, and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been, so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could have cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred. And I consider that totally unacceptable."

Several words are missing.  One is "terrorist."  The other is "jihadist."

Reader John Catherwood wonders whether Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will be the first Obama cabinet officer to walk the plank.  Of course, they'll put her through security before allowing her on the plank.

December 29,  2009   Permalink

QUICK, A PILLOW!  A BLANKEE! – AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  I consider this a national emergency, as serious as war itself.  From AP:

WASHINGTON – After a sleepless, overnight flight to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month, President Barack Obama made a not altogether surprising admission. He was tired.

I feel my heart breaking already.

Who could blame him? The president was on his ninth foreign trip to his 21st country; he added a 10th trip the following week. The year had been bookended by the two most intense periods of his young presidency — the early decisions to bail out the nation's banks and automobile industry, steps the president deemed unpopular but necessary, and his December orders to deploy 30,000 additional U.S. troops to fight the war in Afghanistan.

Well, actually the bank bailouts began under Bush, but who needs facts?  As for the rest, that's what presidents do.

Not that the commander in chief really thinks he can escape his duties, even on an island. Amid golf, tennis, gym workouts and dinner, Obama has been called on to monitor the airliner attack in Detroit last Friday...

Wait.  Didn't he apply for this job?  What does he want, overtime?  Look, we'll give him his letter of recommendation and he can go.

That weight was particularly striking during the president's exhaustive, three-month review of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Images of a visibly tired Obama, his black hair now flecked with gray, greeting the bodies of fallen soldiers at Dover Air Force Base and walking through rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery sparked rumors that he was skipping meals and losing weight.

Is this a weird story, or what?  The reporter obvious adores the guy – maybe a little too much.  She's writing about soldiers killed in action and she's worried about her guy losing weight?

And people wonder why we say that a good chunk of the media is in the tank for Obama.

Aides who have known Obama since before he took office say he seems more sober than he did a year ago, but also increasingly focused on the issues facing the country.

Now just wait a second.  What are they admitting here about the "old" Obama?  Weren't we told by the media during the campaign that he was the Second Coming? 

You mean he wasn't?

As a presidential candidate, Obama was known to get grumpy about grueling travel schedules, questioning why so many events had to be layered on top of each other and why the days had to be so long. He not only hated being away from his family for long stretches but, in his typically rational style, questioned the reasoning behind the craziness of the campaign trail. Aides came to dread having tell him about certain aspects of his schedule.

I don't know how much more of this I can take.  Do we laugh?  Do we cry?  This is the president of the United States we're talking about.  Maybe he thought it was Student Government.

But for all of its stresses, the presidency has provided Obama ways to cope. He persuaded advisers early on to let him keep his beloved BlackBerry to stay in touch with a handful of friends outside the White House. Aides try to include time in his schedule for morning workouts in the White House gym and weekend rounds of golf.

Good God, this is embarrassing.  Imagine what historians will think.  Compare please to Lincoln fighting the Civil War, or FDR, in a wheelchair, fighting World War II.

In a city where virtually anything can become political, Obama has said that one of the things he values most about his wife and daughters is the refuge they provide him from the folly of Washington.

Yeah, and the greatest folly of all was electing a guy who thought it would be easy.

December 29, 2009   Permalink

GOP ON THE ATTACK – AT 9:24 A.M. ET:  Related to the story just below, the Republicans aren't wasting any time in branding the Obama administration, correctly, as soft on terrorism.  From The Politico:

Republicans have wasted no time in attacking Democrats on intelligence and screening failures leading up to the failed Christmas Day bombing of Flight 253 — a significant departure from the calibrated, less partisan responses that have followed other recent terrorist activity.

This incident was clear-cut, and the United States had been given warning – by the terrorist's own father – that the kid was a bit off. 

The strategy — coming as the Republican leadership seeks to exploit Democratic weaknesses heading into the 2010 midterms — is in many ways a natural for a party that views protecting the U.S. homeland as its ideological raison d’etre and electoral franchise...

...“In the past six weeks, you’ve had the Fort Hood attack, the D.C. Five and now the attempted attack on the plane in Detroit … and they all underscored the clear philosophical difference between the administration and us,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

Good.  Make those contrasts and don't withdraw the criticism.  The GOP must make clear its differences with this administration.

“I think Secretary Napolitano and the rest of the Obama administration view their role as law enforcement, first responders dealing with the aftermath of an attack,” Hoekstra told POLITICO. “And we believe in a forward-looking approach to stopping these attacks before they happen.”

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) went even further, telling FOX News that the Christmas attack proved President Obama’s talk-to-your-enemies approach might actually be encouraging terrorists.

“[S]oft talk about engagement, closing Gitmo, these things are not going to appease the terrorists,” he said. “They’re going to keep coming after us, and we can’t have politics as usual in Washington, and I’m afraid that’s what we’ve got right now with airport security.”

Now Republicans must counter with a plan of their own.  We hope, of course, that all attempts at terror are defeated.  But the last year – since Obama took the oath – has been distinguished by the sheer number of incidents, Fort Hood being the most deadly.  A strong argument can be made that terror groups feel empowered by Obama's projection of weakness, or even indifference.   Terror is both a military and law-enforcement issue, but the Dems put too much emphasis on the latter.

December 29, 2009   Permalink

A KATRINA MOMENT - AT 8:55 A.M. ET:  The Obamans are having their Katrina moment, following the attempted terrorist airline bombing.  And they well deserve it.  From The New York Times:

HONOLULU — To the list of phrases it may be best for political leaders to avoid after a major security incident, add “the system worked” right after “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

Just as the public did not really share President George W. Bush’s assessment of how things were going after Hurricane Katrina, so too was there a good deal of skepticism when President Obama’s homeland security secretary declared faith in a system that failed to stop a guy who tried to blow up a passenger jet on Christmas Day.

Brownie didn't last long as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  Janet Napolitano, she of Homeland Security, must be wondering how quickly she'll be sent back to Arizona. 

Napolitano is also the culprit who coined the phrase "manmade disaster" to replace "terrorism."  I suspect that "manmade disaster" is now part of history, unless applied to Ms. Napolitano herself.

Ms. Napolitano’s statement was just one of the targets for criticism after the botched Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines plane approaching Detroit. Critics also took aim at Mr. Obama for continuing his Hawaii vacation for three days before appearing in public to address the threat, and they cast the incident as part of a broader assertion that he is not serious enough about terrorism.

And the critics are correct.  One gets the sense that, secretly, the very exotic Mr. Obama blames the United States for the incident, and others like it.

By late Sunday, administration officials realized they had a problem on their hands, and made sure that Ms. Napolitano would clarify when she made a previously scheduled appearance on the “Today” show on NBC the next morning. Still, she was being chided by editorial writers across a spectrum from The Washington Post to The New York Post.

The Washington Post's editorial page once again showed its independence from the party line by rapping Napolitano's knuckles. 

Ms. Napolitano, a former Arizona governor and federal prosecutor, has drawn conservative arrows before for eschewing terms like “war on terror.” But she appears comfortably safe in her job. White House officials consider her one of the stars of the cabinet for what they see as her firm handed management of an unruly department comprising 22 agencies and 180,000 employees.

As they used to say in the 1950s about Lewis Strauss (pronounced "straws"), the irascible head of the Atomic Energy Commission, "Admiral Strauss is a man who manages things." 

When you're safe in a critical security job just because you manage personnel matters well, there's something very wrong.

December 29, 2009   Permalink

THE LEFT AT ITS WORST – AT 8:16 A.M. ET:  There are some stories that are so appalling that they must be reported, even though they are, at least for now, local.  Consider what is happening in the symbolically left-wing city of Berkeley, California, home to a goodly number of awful ideas:

Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.

The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High's School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley's dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.

Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.

Aside from the militantly anti-intellectual nature of the idea – not unusual in liberal precincts – this is a gratuitous insult to black and Hispanic students.  The school is, in effect, saying that the science labs are a bit too difficult for these kids.  No they're not, not with the proper encouragement and guidance.  Black and Hispanic kids "do" science all the time.  Please note:

Sincular-Mertens, who has taught science at BHS for 24 years, said the possible cuts will impact her black students as well. She says there are twelve African-American males in her AP classes and that her four environmental science classes are 17.5 percent African American and 13.9 percent Latino. "As teachers, we are greatly saddened at the thought of losing the opportunity to help all of our students master the skills they need to find satisfaction and success in their education," she told the board.

COMMENT:  You can be sure that it's white leftists who came up with this idea.  In the 1960s it was white leftists in New York, led by the extremist New York branch of the ACLU, who championed "community control of schools" and "open admissions" in city colleges.  Those measures came close to destroying the greatest urban school system in the United States and did destroy the "poor man's Harvard," City College of New York.  The college is now recovering thanks largely to a gutsy Hispanic leader, Herman Badillo, the nation's first Puerto Rican-born congressman, who led the battle to restore standards to the revered institution.

Berkeley does it again.  Don't be shocked if other "progressive" schools get the same idea.  After all, when you're destroying English and History, why not go all the way?

December 29, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:06 A.M. ET:  From Matthew Continetti's excellent summation of political 2009, in The Weekly Standard:

You won't find it in the "year in review" features in the papers and newsweeklies, but the story of 2009 was that a young, attractive, postpartisan presidential candidate decided to govern as a partisan liberal. The results have been declining public support, bad legislation, demoralized lefties, and a resurgent conservative movement. The gap between the American people and those who govern them from Washington, D.C., is widening.

It turns out John Edwards had a point: There really are two Americas. There's the America of the "expert" schemers, planners, and centralizers inside the Beltway, who think they know what's good for the people, whether the people like it or not. And there's the America of just about everyone else. They are no doubt the ones Irving Kristol had in mind when he wrote, "The common people in such a democracy are not uncommonly wise, but their experience tends to make them uncommonly sensible."

COMMENT:  That is correct, and the Weekly Standard piece is well worth reading. 

But a cautionary note:  Continetti's analysis also covers the fact that the national Republican Party remains unpopular.  We'll be writing about that because it is a liability that can severely impact what should be a successful 2010 for our side.

December 29,  2009   Permalink