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POPS Lucid Links 11.09.09 Only when you get to Obama’s page do you learn that Obama a) wasn’t president, and b) didn’t make any speech at the site of the Wall last year when he campaigned for the U.S. presidency in Europe. In remembrance on the 8th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York, our president …. sent Joe Biden to Ground Zero in New York City. Deliberate ignorance: The British press was out front (HT Hot Air) in telling the world that the perpetrator of the Fort Hood attack “worshiped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a ’spiritual adviser’ to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.” That the attack was jihad-inspired is not open to real dispute. Meanwhile, the PC-addled American press does all it can to minimize the enormity (HT Mark Finkelstein at NewsBusters) of what occurred at Fort Hood and makes excuses for the perpetrator, even to the point of claiming that he might (even though he never experienced
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POPSReport: 237 millionaires in Congress
Senators’ estimated median reportable worth sunk to about $1.79 million from $2.27 million in 2007. The House’s median income was significantly lower and also sank, bottoming out at $622,254 from $724,258 in 2007. But CRP’s analysis suggests that some lawmakers did well for themselves between 2007 and 2008, even as many Americans lost jobs and saw their savings and their home values plummet. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gained about $9.2 million. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) gained about $3 million, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) had an estimated $2.6 million gain, and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) gained about $2.8 million. Some lawmakers have profited from investments in companies that have received federal bailouts; dozens of lawmakers are invested in Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. Vice President Joe Biden has often tagged himself as an original blue collar man. The CRP backs him up, putting his net worth at just $27,000.
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POPSGibbs: Obama 'not watching returns' He's probably playing basketball. He can say what he wants but it was obvious to the political hounds that he was stumping for his guys. Now it's time to distance himself. Hypocrites, ALL!!!!
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POPSU.S. Official Resigns Over Afghanistan War Policy Hoh's letter caused a stir in the Obama administration, and he was hastened to meetings with senior U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington. They praised his record of service and begged him to stay, offering him new positions in both locations. Hoh initially accepted the Washington job, but changed his mind a week later. Hoh said that his act of protest and decision to speak out were painful, even "nauseating" at times, but he was strongly motivated by the friends he had lost on the battlefield and the mental anguish he has experienced since returning home. "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right,' " he explained, adding that he "is not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love."
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POPSThe Flip Flop is back Same old Kerry. He was for the war before he was against it. Kind of like our cowardly president votes "present" rather than take a stand.
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POPSThe Record is Clear' - Dick Cheney is Not Credible For certain, Cheney is not the only one pressing Obama to hurry his Afghanistan strategy. The Neo-Conservatives have taken to every media outlet that will have them; and, if they're not talking about Afghanistan, they're second guessing the president's diplomacy with Iran, Russia, etc... For reasons I find incomprehensible, media outlets -- and not just Fox News, mind you -- treat them as if their credibility isn't completely lacking when it comes to matters of national security. That ship sailed months, if not years before Obama's election. Consider the scathing rebuke of Cheney issued by Gen. Paul Eaton (Ret.), senior adviser for the National Security Network:
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POPSNATO Agrees - Someone Else Needs To Send More Troops To Afghanistan That counterterrorism strategy is identified with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. In contrast, General McChrystal’s review calls for implementing a full-scale counterinsurgency strategy that focuses on protecting population centers and accelerating the training of Afghan army and police units, both requiring significant numbers of fresh troops. NATO diplomats noted that it was difficult to see how an acceptance of this broad strategy could be viewed as anything but an endorsement of the need to increase both military and civilian contributions. Great! The Little Red Hen has convinced everyone that planting seeds to make bread would be a great idea! Let's see where the Coalition of the Free-Riding takes this. Posted by Tom Maguire on October 23
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POPSExcuses Wearing Thin for Obama, Media Pals 
Yet just a few months ago, the Obama camp was singing a little different tune. It was under criticism for the $787 billion stimulus package it bulldozed through Congress on grounds that massive spending was needed to keep the unemployment rate from breaching 8 percent. When joblessness hit 9.5 percent in June, Vice President Joe Biden said, "We misread how bad the economy was." They inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, or the economy turned out to be worse than they thought. Which is it? It can't be both -- unless your brain is completely addled by the Obama charisma. That's the backdrop to the story of Rush Limbaugh getting booted from a group bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams. He was smeared on CNN and MSNBC with false accusations of making two racist comments. He is an abrasive critic of Obama, so he must be racist.. . Recently an MSNBC personality accused the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of lobbying for policies that amount to being "treasonous . . .
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POPS Afghanistan Syndrome Asad and Tahir would be the first ones to die. As the months dragged on, I grew to detest our captors. I saw the Haqqanis as a criminal gang masquerading as a pious religious movement. They described themselves as the true followers of Islam but displayed an astounding capacity for dishonesty and greed. Whole thing. I hope Obama, Emanuel, Axelrod, Biden, Reid, Levin, Pelosi, etal, are paying attention. You know, between Filkins and Rohde, I’m starting to warm up to the Times a little. At least until the next al-Qaeda early warning system alert goes up. What’s going on … when even the AP’s Kabul bureau seems to be starting to get it? * Though maybe not as far from Stockholm, New York, your town as some people would like to think. Yes, we’re still having this conversation in 2009.
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POPSJoe Biden: the worrying rise of Barack Obama’s Mr Wrong The real difficulty with Mr Biden, however, is his judgment. On all the big questions, he has been – to put it politely – on the wrong side of history. The problem is that Mr Obama may now be listening to Mr Biden. Having supposedly already settled on an Afghan strategy in March, he is giving a very public impression of Hamlet as he wrings his hands and conducts endless White House debates – with details leaked to the press – about what to do.
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POPS Hammer Wants An Anvil Fawning “Inconvenient Truth Teller” article inside paints him as a sort of goof savant … a bit like Chauncey Gardiner of “Being There,” he’s been in Washington DC his entire life, everyone likes him, and suddenly they think he’s a genius. The three-decade gaffe-and-reverse record requires some acrobatics, though. The Newsweek scribblers clearly like his go-lite, wack-a-mole strategy though they are big enough to admit at the end that people who actually know what they are talking about say it won’t work. It’s not exactly the Joe Biden embed that I wished out loud NYT’s Dexter Filkins would do as a counterbalance to his McChyrstal piece earlier this week,* but close. Some administration officials, led by Biden, appear to hope that American forces can rely more on counterterrorism operations"attacks by Predator drones and small elite units on terrorist hiding places"to hold Afghanistan together and defeat Al Qaeda. But critics call this “splitting the baby" and say . . .
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POPSSearching For Consensus on Afghanistan share the same strategic interests and that the return to power of the Taliban would automatically mean a new sanctuary for al-Qaeda. Is that a myth? Here is Barack Obama on March 27, 2009, announcing his first new strategy for Afghanistan: "And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban - or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged - that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." He added: The return in force of al Qaeda terrorists who would accompany the core Taliban leadership would cast Afghanistan under the shadow of perpetual violence. Later in the Post article, the reporters quote a "senior Obama official" comparing Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Eight months ago, if you had asked people which was worse, everybody would have said Pakistan is worse and Afghanistan is in good shape." Afghanistan was in good shape? 2008 was the deadliest year for American troops there. Nobody paying any attention
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POPSObama Quietly Deploying 13,000 More US troops to Afghanistan In addition to the deployments under way, McChrystal has also requested an extra 40,000 troops he says are necessary to prevent the country falling into the hands of the Taliban. The Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai, today expressed support for McChrystal's request. "I'm fully behind him for what he's seeking in this report," Karzai told ABC's Good Morning America. As part of the internal debate, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, who is cautiously supporting McChrystal, is due to meet later today the vice-president Joe Biden, who is opposed to the troop increase and favours a shift in priority to tracking down al-Qaida in Pakistan. A decision on McChrystal's troop request appears to have been postponed for a few weeks. Any extra troops will come as a result of a parallel reduction in the number of US troops in Iraq. A US military planner told the Army Times: "We've increased forces in Afghanistan before we've reduced forces in Iraq in a meaningful way.
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POPSBiden and COPS (IACP program) Communitarian
Wonder why the "COPS" have gone hog-wild? Our police force is beyond federalized. Pictyure them with blue helmets and it begins to make a lot more sense. "During debates, in interviews and in his campaign literature, Biden contends he was crucial to the crime decline because he sponsored legislation in 1994 creating the Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, program that was designed to put 100,000 more sworn officers on the streets through 2001." http://www.sptimes.com/2007/11/05/Worldandnation/Biden_stretches_COPS_.shtml A review of the COPS-funded evaluation by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO, later renamed the Government Accountability Office) severely criticized the authors’ methodology and concluded: We cannot agree…that their 2001 study shows that some COPS grants (hiring and innovative) significantly reduced crime because, among other things, important variables were omitted from their analyses, the analytic models were misspecified, and the sample
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POPSObama: Taleban can be involved in Afghanistan future I can't decide if I'm surprised or in a coma. Sending only enough troops to keep al-Qaeda at bay places those already there in increased danger. No wonder the moral has taken a huge dip over the last months. No leadership = demoralization. And this guy is a 'Commander-in-Chief'?
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POPSBREAKING: Obama Starts Acting Presidential, Declares War Against The Moon For Heldmann, she's prepared for impact day...ready to scan and span the spectrum of data to be gathered. "It has been a lot of work for four minutes of data...but it's a really important four minutes of data," Heldmann said. "Hopefully, we'll have a variety of data sets that we can combine and make a coherent story. That's the going-in plan." Video - Why Bomb the Moon? Images: Full Moon Fever How to Watch NASA's LCROSS Smack the Moon Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than four decades. He is past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999. http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20091007/sc_space/targetingthemoonobservatoriesgearupforfridaylunarcrash
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POPS Chaos-istan The big question now is whether this is going to be about Obama’s ego, or about winning in Afghanistan. If any general is ill-advised to shoot his mouth off, this business may also teach the administration something about blowing off generals at (unnecessarily extended) criticial moments and insisting that political parameters trump military ones in wartime. Maybe if he wasn’t so distracted with trying to have Democratic Christmas in October … an expensive tax-and-fee-subsidized health care giveaway in the middle of economic crisis and war. To be followed on by cap-and-trade’s assault on business, industry, utilities and consumers. And then you’ve got Iran, unresponsive to the extended hand of friendship. AFP, “On Afghanistan, US military puts Obama on the spot,” NYT with a look at Petraeus includes the unfortunate news that this president is less interested in listening to his generals than his predecessor was.... LA Times: “Afghanistan assault points out .....
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POPS6 Justices, Biden, and Hundreds of Lawyers Attend Annual Red Mass "And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:" Rev 17:4 "With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication." Rev 17:2
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POPSObama Can't Outsource Afghanistan FTA: Biden in 2002.... "Security is the basic issue in Afghanistan. Whatever it takes, we should do it. History will judge us harshly if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan to evaporate because we failed to stay the course." One commentator has suggested that he's going to "outsource" it to NATO.
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POPSObama to Meet High-Powered Aides for Afghan Review were the top ranking civilian officials expected for a bracing session on a war some supporters fear could swamp Obama's presidency. War commander General Stanley McChrystal, who warned in a leaked report that the conflict could be lost within a year without more troops, was also due to to take part, either in person or by video link-up, the White House said. Other top military brass included were General David Petraeus who heads US central command, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair. CIA chief Leon Panetta was also due to take part, along with Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as the US ambassadors to Islamabad and Kabul. Obama warned after meeting NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday that the United States could not fight the battle in Afghanistan alone, in remarks apparently aimed at European partners.
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POPSWill NATO's 60th Anniversary Be Its Last?
The painful truth is that NATO may be suffering from a terminal illness. Its current mission in Afghanistan, the alliance's most significant and far-flung muscle-flexing to date, might be its last. Afghanistan has been the graveyard of many an imperial power from the ancient Macedonians to the Soviets. It now seems to be eyeing its next victim. For NATO, this year should have been a celebration, not a dirge. After suffering a transatlantic rift of epic proportions during the Bush years, the alliance thrilled to the election of Barack Obama and his politics of conciliation. The new American administration swore it would shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to give NATO more of what it wanted to fight "the right war." Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both promised to push the "reset button" on U.S.-Russian relations, potentially removing one of the greatest obstacles to NATO's health and well-being. And in a final flourish for the alliance's diamond jub
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POPS Obamlet What any prosecutor or defense attorney will tell you about jury deliberations … how long they’re out doesn’t necessarily tell you anything. It could mean they are trying really hard to convince themselves that abandonment will work … and to find a way to convince America and the world that an easy out is the considered, sensible thing to do. Or it could be that they know what they need to do, they are just afraid to do it. Afraid of the consequences of angering their anti-war lefty base, afraid of remaining committed to a war with a horizon past 2010 and 2012. But that’s about as charitable and optimistic a view as is possible, and assumes they actually want to find a way to do the right thing. Unfortunately, there has been little to indicate that is what they are interested in doing. What makes this less like jury deliberations and more like a Shakespearean tragedy, though, is that every now and then, a major player sticks his head out to shout something.
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POPSObama phenonemon I think the idea that someone like Obama can take on the whitehouse has opened up a lot of doors where previously were locked and impossible to open
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POPS President Interdum Fidelis Let's include the stated reason for the review: Obama is shocked - shocked! - to learn that there is corruption in Karzai's government: But the Afghan presidential elections, widely marred by allegations of fraud, undermined the administration’s confidence that it had a reliable partner in President Hamid Karzai. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden already had raised doubts about Mr. Karzai, which were only exacerbated by the fear that even if he emerges from a runoff election, he will have little credibility with his own people. “A counterinsurgency strategy can only work if you have a credible and legitimate Afghan partner. That’s in doubt now,” said Bruce O. Riedel, who led the administration’s strategy review of Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year. “Part of the reason you are seeing a hesitancy to jump deeper into the pool is that they are looking to see if they can make lemonade out of the lemons we got from the Afghan election.”
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