That was then….

What Could Go Wrong?

(from an email received from a friend)

Let me get this straight.

…we’re going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it,

passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it but exempts themselves from it,

to be signed by a president that also hasn’t read it and who smokes,

with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes,

all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese,

and financed by a country that’s nearly broke.

What could possibly go wrong?

Bringing al-Qaeda to New York

So now we have our “genius” attorney general announcing that the planners of 9/11 and the USS Cole attack are going to be tried in civilian court in New York City. Aside from the incredible stupidity of putting these monsters under the jurisdiction of some of the most notoriously “pro-defendant” judges in the country, there is the small matter of the splashing of classified national intelligence information across the world as the result of infinite discovery motions and testimony in open court. Of course, that’s assuming that there is anything else left that the New York Times hasn’t already provided to al-Quaeda by plastering it on their front page in bold type.

The multiple problems with this decision are outlines in Bringing al-Qaeda to New York by The Editors on National Review Online:

Friday’s announcement that KSM and the other 9/11 plotters will be sent to federal court in New York for a civilian trial is the most significant step to date in Obama’s determination to turn back the clock to the time when government believed subpoenas rather than Marines were the answer to jihadist murder and mayhem.

It is difficult to quantify how dangerously foolish this course is. As they demonstrated in offering to plead guilty while bragging about their atrocities, KSM and his cohorts don’t want a trial so much as they want a soapbox to press their grievances against the United States and the West. With no real defense to the charges, they will endeavor to put America on trial, pressing the court for expansive discovery of government intelligence files. Having gratuitously exposed classified information on interrogation tactics and other sensitive matters in order to pander to Obama’s base, the Justice Department will be in a poor position to argue against broad disclosure, even if it were so inclined. As the court orders more and more revelations, potential intelligence sources and foreign spy services will develop even graver doubts about our capacity to keep secrets. They will reduce their intelligence cooperation accordingly, and the nation will be dramatically more vulnerable.

Moreover, the transfer of the worst al-Qaeda prisoners into the U.S. will grease the skids for many, if not most, of the remaining 200-plus Gitmo terrorists to be moved here. This will be the worst of all possible outcomes. These are trained terrorists who have been detained under the laws of war, but most of whom cannot be tried because the intelligence on them cannot be used in court. We are still holding them because they are deadly dangerous and because no other country is willing to take them off our hands. Once inside the United States, they will indisputably be within the jurisdiction of the federal courts — which are staffed by judges predisposed against wartime detention without trial. As long as the terrorists were at Gitmo, those judges were reluctant to order them released into the U.S. — a transfer that would violate federal law. If the terrorists are already here, though, judges will not be as gun-shy. Inevitably, some will be freed to live and plot among us….

But of course, that could never happen…could it?  We have been assured of this by our genius attorney general…who, just coincidentally, was the driving force behind the outrageous pardons granted on the final day of the Clinton administration to such paragons of virtue as international fugitive financier Marc Rich and convicted Puerto Rican terrorists in prison for setting off bombs in New York.

Why would we ever have cause to doubt the judgment of such as genius as AG Eric Holder?  He’s always been right…hasn’t he??

And how does that make sense?

The Job Con

As one of the current 10%+ unemployed, as well as someone who predicted months ago that the “stimulus package” was destined to fail, I second the sentiments of the above titled editorial in National Review:

The unemployment rate has hit 10.2 percent. All those laid-off Americans must be wondering why Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein still have jobs. Romer and Bernstein, economic advisers to the Obama administration, warned back in January that, unless Congress enacted the $787 billion stimulus package, the unemployment rate would hit 9 percent by 2010. The stimulus would prevent this disaster, they promised, causing the unemployment to level off at 8 percent and then fall.

This can’t be simple incompetence; Romer and Bernstein are too smart. Nor was the extent of the crisis unknowable at the time. None other than stimulus-worshipper Paul Krugman called the team’s predictions “kind of optimistic.” That leaves fabrication: The administration sold the stimulus to the public on false pretenses.

The odds that the stimulus package would “create or save” millions of jobs, per the administration’s promises, were never good. The government is borrowing enormous amounts of money to pay for the stimulus. That money should be funding job creation in the private sector. Instead, it is going to shore up insolvent spendthrift state governments, to expand Medicaid and unemployment benefits, and to lay the groundwork for an aid-dependent green-energy sector that is going to drain the nation’s resources for years to come….

…Government can provide a social safety net for workers, but the Obama administration has taken the concept to absurd extremes. The president just signed yet another extension of unemployment benefits, stretching the eligibility period to nearly two years in some states. The bill funds the additional benefits by extending a payroll tax on employers that was scheduled to expire at the end of the year. In other words, the administration is simultaneously providing incentives for workers not to work and for employers not to hire them.

Gollllleeee!  Who could have seen that coming?  Oh wait, just about anyone who understands how economies actually work as opposed to those clowns who legislate on the basis of how they simply wished economics would work!

Read the rest of the column here.

Good observation

The “brave artist” strikes again

How’s that again?