Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground terrorist and one of the Chicago radicals who helped launch Barack Hussein Obama's political career (and we're still not sure if the president counts him as a "friend"), has this interesting tidbit to share:
"I mean, I think the people who practice white supremacy and who benefit from it are going to have to be stopped. And I think that's a huge undertaking and I think it takes a revolution."
-- [President Barack] Obama told Woodward in the July interview that he didn't think about the Afghan war in the "classic" terms of the United States winning or losing. "I think about it more in terms of: Do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end?" he said.
-- The CIA created, controls and pays for a clandestine 3,000-man paramilitary army of local Afghans, known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. Woodward describes these teams as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens there.
-- Obama has kept in place or expanded 14 intelligence orders, known as findings, issued by his predecessor, George W. Bush. The orders provide the legal basis for the CIA's worldwide covert operations.
-- A new capability developed by the National Security Agency has dramatically increased the speed at which intercepted communications can be turned around into useful information for intelligence analysts and covert operators. "They talk, we listen. They move, we observe. Given the opportunity, we react operationally," then-Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell explained to Obama at a briefing two days after he was elected president.
-- A classified exercise in May showed that the government was woefully unprepared to deal with a nuclear terrorist attack in the United States. The scenario involved the detonation of a small, crude nuclear weapon in Indianapolis and the simultaneous threat of a second blast in Los Angeles. Obama, in the interview with Woodward, called a nuclear attack here "a potential game changer." He said: "When I go down the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that's one where you can't afford any mistakes."
-- Afghan President Hamid Karzai was diagnosed as manic depressive, according to U.S. intelligence reports. "He's on his meds, he's off his meds," Woodward quotes U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry as saying.
--By the end of the 2009 strategy review, Woodward reports, Obama concluded that no mission in Afghanistan could be successful without attacking the al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens operating with impunity in Pakistan's remote tribal regions. "We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan," Obama is quoted as saying at an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 25, 2009. Creating a more secure Afghanistan is imperative, the president said, "so the cancer doesn't spread" there.
Bob Woodward...
The part that bringing the most attention/criticism has been this: "Woodward's book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, 'We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger.'"
So, is this about"acceptable losses" or is it justifiable pride in the nation's strength and resiliency? The biggest criticism against this line of thinking is that "the best defense is a good offense." Chiefly, there are those at the Pentagon, Langley, Foggy Bottom - heck, even in the administration - who think there is no such thing as "acceptable losses."
The quote does ring a familiar bell...
General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed. President Merkin Muffley: You're talking about mass murder, General, not war! General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
Sometime later this week, it’s likely Congress will vote on one of the most far-reaching pieces of legislation in the history of the United States: the health insurance reform bill (aka: “ObamaCare”).
The GOP is doing everything it can to stop the 2,400-plus page law from being approved, but the Dems are trying anything and everything to get the bill over the hump…including a host of parliamentary tricks and unconstitutional measures.
When asked why it’s OK to circumvent our nation’s legal foundation and tradition, the answers are myriad. From the noted blog, Red State: “Lefties (Daily Kos, TPMDC, and Huffington Post) are defending against allegations that the ‘Slaughter Rule’ proposed strategy to pass ObamaCare without a vote is unprecedented and unconstitutional. The Slaughter Rule has the support of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and is the Democrats preferred strategy to pass ObamaCare. Liberals are peddling a talking point that self-executing rules like the Slaughter Rule have been done before and it was the Republicans that used this tool in the past. The fact of the matter is that there is no precedent for the House to pass a bill without a direct vote by using a budget reconciliation measure as a trigger and a means to pass ObamaCare. Nancy Pelosi’s potentially unconstitutional strategy to pass unconstitutional ObamaCare is without precedent or justification.”
The leaders of the pack...
So the question arises: why does the Constitution only seem to matter with the pro-ObamaCare forces when it applies to granting rights to terrorists, unlawful combatants, terror detainees and their abettors? Why doesn’t the Constitution matter now?
Two reasons:
First, this is about an agenda. The Rule of Law be damned.
Second, this is about cowardice. Even Speaker Pelosi admits as much.
From a Washington Post story by staffers Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane – “After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate's health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.
Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers "deem" the health-care bill to be passed.
The tactic -- known as a "self-executing rule" or a "deem and pass" -- has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.
"It's more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know," the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. "But I like it," she said, "because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill."
Republicans quickly condemned the strategy, framing it as an effort to avoid responsibility for passing the legislation, and some suggested that Pelosi's plan would be unconstitutional.
"It's very painful and troubling to see the gymnastics through which they are going to avoid accountability," Rep. David Dreier (Calif.), the senior Republican on the House Rules Committee, told reporters. "And I hope very much that, at the end of the day, that if we are going to have a vote, we will have a clean up-or-down vote that will allow the American people to see who is supporting this Senate bill and who is not supporting this Senate bill."
In closing, a bit of history: At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was buttonholed as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation, “Well, doctor, what have we got – a republic or a monarchy?’ Franklin replied, “A republic…if you can keep it.”
Last night's Boston "D"(ebate) Party. (L-R: Scott Brown-R, Martha Coakley-D, Joe Kennedy-L)
The best line of the night...
When Massachusetts lost its senior U.S. senator back in August, there was grave concern among those in the Obama Administration - and those in Congress pushing for a nationalized health care system - that with their “lion” now gone, much of their fight would disappear as well.
Edward M. Kennedy is gone but certainly not forgotten. At almost every turn, his name is intoned. Among liberals, especially in Massachusetts, it’s “let’s do this for Teddy.” Among conservatives in Massachusetts – and everywhere else – it’s “never again.”
To be sure, there are strong personalities in the U.S. Senate but none carried the Kennedy mantle/gravitas and none made liberal causes – particularly health care/insurance “reform” their legacy like Teddy did.
Since his "departure," we’ve seen Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Fisherman’s Wharf) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-ialects) come together with the president to buck the polls, despite them showing the majority of Americans against the trio’s bill. The proposed Obama-Pelosi-Reid law managed to get by in the House with relative ease (thanks to a Dem majority), but the bill before the Senate passed on party lines (60-40) only after the votes of certain Democrats were bought by Reid and paid for by taxpayers.
One of the last hopes opponents of the bill have is that the race for Kennedy’s seat – there is a special election on Jan. 19 – might result in a Republican being elected and bring a filibuster-enabled minority (59-41) to the fore.
They can dream, can’t they?
It’s a mighty big dream. In Massachusetts, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least 3-1, there hasn’t been a GOPer representing the Bay State in the upper house of Congress since 1956. When it comes to Blue States, Massachusetts is among the bluest. You could say it’s “Kennedy Royal Blue.” Despite all this, the contest represent s the Republicans’ best chances in more than a half-century.
Enter Scott Brown. He’s a lot like Mitt Romney, only not as wealthy or Mormon. The State Senator, Army Reserve Lt. Colonel (JAG Corps) and former Cosmo model (true) pledges to be tough on terrorists, wants to finish the job in Afghanistan, doesn’t like Obamacare, and is giving the Democrat – Martha Coakley – a run for her party’s money. Coakley, who has run a horrible campaign, is the state’s Attorney General. She’s fully invested in passing Obamacare and wants the U.S. out of Afghanistan quicker than you can say, “Let’s invite the Taliban and al Qaeda over to Pakistan to play with the nukes.” The biggest issue in her very liberal quiver: she’s pro-abortion. Oh, and she also detests George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh. (There is a third candidate, Libertarian Joe Kennedy – no relation to Teddy – who is smart and able but doesn’t stand a chance; though he could siphon votes from Brown.)
Currently, Brown is trailing in all polls but many have him behind by a very small margin. This has Coakley – and the DNC – very, very nervous. In fact, between now and the 19th, you’ll be seeing a parade of Democrat big guns roll into town to prop up Coakley’s sagging campaign. (They’re thinking, holy cow! This is a state where – sort of like the old Woody Allen joke goes – to win in Massachusetts, 80 percent of winning is being a Democrat and showing up.)
In last night’s final debate, which was between all three candidates, it appeared that Brown cleaned Coakley’s clock. In addition to her clear stand on getting out of Afghanistan (Brown says to stay til the job is done…and that he agrees with the president’s position to finish the war), the Massachusetts AG was very fuzzy when it came to how she would deal with terrorists (Brown decries detainees like Khalid Sheik Muhammad not only getting a trial on U.S. soil, but being given Constitutional rights.) Kennedy’s main thrust was to cut spending across the board – entitlements, Obamacare proposals, even funding for the war. (Further pointing to growing voter interest in Brown: prior to, during and after the debate, his campaign ran a special online fundraising effort, boosting his hopes an d chances as it raked-in more than $1 million in one day.)
The two biggest lines of the night came from Brown. The first was his response to moderator David Gergen calling it a race for “the Kennedy seat.” Brown corrected him quite smartly as evidenced in the clip above. The other line had to do with what it would mean if he were elected. I will be the 41st vote against the Obamacare scheme, he said.
And that’s what it comes down to, plain and simple: If Coakley is elected, the only delays the national health care/insurance bill will face in being implemented will be procedural. If Brown wins, it’s a whole new ballgame.
Special bonus from The Bliss Index™: The attack ad (below) released by the Coakley campaign today didn't last long. In fact, her campaign team pulled it after just a couple hours. The chief reason? They spelled "Massachusetts" incorrectly. (Maybe if Coakley is elected, she'll sit on an education committee.)
If you're going to run for the U.S. Senate, you should at least know how to spell the name of the state you want to represent...
Late notice: I know you’re busy recovering from Christmas festivities, but I’ll be on The John Batchelor Show around 9:05 p.m. PST tonight to discuss news surrounding the attempted bombing of the Delta Airlines flight in Detroit yesterday. You can listen to the show on WABC-AM 77 NYC, WMAL-AM 630 Washington, D.C., and... on XM/Sirius Satellite Radio. If you’re not in one of the listening areas, you can tune-in via those stations’ websites. And as always...thanks for listening (or not).
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