Not Just A Creep - But A Huge One

Can Øbambi help himself?  His actions have always been bizarre, but he may be the biggest creep I've ever seen.   Big Fur Hat has some fun at his expense:

http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=142116


And lets get some iowahawk for the dogpile:

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2012/07/you-didnt-build-that.html

You Didn't Build That

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/you_didnt_build_that_boston_globing_for_obama.html

When Øbambi gets away from his tel-prompter, he will speak his beliefs - much to the chagrin of the mediots and liberals.  The mediots are in full knee-pad mode to say that this was taken out of context.  One only has to watch an unedited video to KNOW that it wasn't taken out of context at all.   Clarice Feldman is a GREAT writer and I highly recommend all of her work.  She takes Andrea Mitchell to task in this article also not just for wearing the knee-pads, but for needing the matching Øbambi bib to catch what's dripping off her face.

Even Bristol Palin pwn's Øbambi on this: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bristolpalin/2012/07/i-built-this-mr-president/ .  But this is like shooting fish in a barrel.

What Unions Mean By Shovel Ready Jobs

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/07/18/union-bosses-help-get-tax-money-for-digging-and-filling-ditches

I think that the most sickening part is the number of people that ignore this, call it staged and otherwise just make excuses for this travesty.  The people in this video are essentially enabling the stealing of taxpayer money that could otherwise be spent on the true unfortunates in society.  This should be plastered all over the news 24/7/365.  Instead, listen to the media crickets chirp - nothing to see here.  Don't forget to vote Democrat.

Why The Media Is Hated As Much As Congress

The mediots continue to make it so easy to distrust them.  They have been in full knee pad mode for the last 4 years - and they still don't grasp why they are hated.  Between the dishonest and biased media and the people that have grown dependent on government hand-outs, it's amazing that anyone other than moon-bat crazy liberals can get elected.  But something that has lain dormant for too long is actually getting tapped - the basic American spirit that refuses to let socialist ideas get shoved down their throats and our freedoms taken away.  

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-hadro/2012/07/19/cnn-four-days-late-obamas-infamous-you-didnt-build-business-commentary# 

Four days after President Obama insulted job creators by asserting "If you've got a business, you didn't build that; somebody else made that happen," CNN finally reported the controversial remarks, and only once the Romney campaign featured them in a campaign attack. In contrast, when Romney surrogate John Sununu said on Tuesday morning that he wished "this President would learn how to be an American," it only took CNN a few hours to jump on the remarks. The network mentioned them every hour between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. and anchor Wolf Blitzer even brought Sununu on for an interview to explain himself. The three major networks shared the same double standard when it came to ignoring Obama's quote, but CNN is a 24-hour news network and it did not touch the story all through the weekend. In fact, the very first mention of Obama's remark on CNN came from Republican Senator Ron Johnson (Wisc.) on Tuesday morning's Starting Point. And CNN only reported the quote when Mitt Romney made it the centerpiece of his campaign's attacks on the President. Correspondent Jim Acosta, who shadows the Romney campaign, quoted Romney paraphrasing Obama's gaffe in his campaign report that aired during the 2 p.m. hour of Tuesday's Newsroom. That evening, Anderson Cooper aired a report on both Obama's and Sununu's comments. Ironically, CNN's White House correspondent Jessica Yellin highlighted the delay in the Romney campaign's response to Obama's gaffe, but made no mention of her network's four day silence. "[W]e talk about this campaign moving so fast that everything's at Twitter speed, but It actually took a few days for Team Romney to capitalize on this soundbite, but now it's getting traction," she said on Thursday's The Situation Room. Yellin's own network should be embarrassed at catching up to a four day-old story only because the Romney campaign brought it to the forefront. Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-hadro/2012/07/19/cnn-four-days-late-obamas-infamous-you-didnt-build-business-commentary#ixzz21CkmqJ50ixzz217N53R8o

Four days after President Obama insulted job creators by asserting "If you've got a business, you didn't build that; somebody else made that happen," CNN finally reported the controversial remarks, and only once the Romney campaign featured them in a campaign attack.

In contrast, when Romney surrogate John Sununu said on Tuesday morning that he wished "this President would learn how to be an American," it only took CNN a few hours to jump on the remarks. The network mentioned them every hour between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. and anchor Wolf Blitzer even brought Sununu on for an interview to explain himself.
The three major networks shared the same double standard when it came to ignoring Obama's quote, but CNN is a 24-hour news network and it did not touch the story all through the weekend.

In fact, the very first mention of Obama's remark on CNN came from Republican Senator Ron Johnson (Wisc.) on Tuesday morning's Starting Point. And CNN only reported the quote when Mitt Romney made it the centerpiece of his campaign's attacks on the President.

Correspondent Jim Acosta, who shadows the Romney campaign, quoted Romney paraphrasing Obama's gaffe in his campaign report that aired during the 2 p.m. hour of Tuesday's Newsroom. That evening, Anderson Cooper aired a report on both Obama's and Sununu's comments.

Ironically, CNN's White House correspondent Jessica Yellin highlighted the delay in the Romney campaign's response to Obama's gaffe, but made no mention of her network's four day silence. "[W]e talk about this campaign moving so fast that everything's at Twitter speed, but It actually took a few days for Team Romney to capitalize on this soundbite, but now it's getting traction," she said on Thursday's The Situation Room.

Yellin's own network should be embarrassed at catching up to a four day-old story only because the Romney campaign brought it to the forefront.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-hadro/2012/07/19/cnn-four-days-late-obamas-infamous-you-didnt-build-business-commentary#ixzz21CkmqJ50

Øbama's MANY Gaffes and Lies - Picking up where the media won't

Barack Gaffes - He’s a machine.

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH):   May 2008 -  he claimed that tornadoes in Kansas killed a whopping 10,000 people  From his mouth: “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed.”  The actual death toll: 12.

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): May 2008 - in Oregon, he redrew the map of the United States.  “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”  So we have 57 - 58 states, now?

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): In the week of May 11, 2008 in front of a roaring Sioux Falls, S.D., audience, Obama exulted: “Thank you, Sioux City. ... I said it wrong. I’ve been in Iowa for too long. I’m sorry.”  Sioux City, Sioux Falls – what’s the difference?

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): Explaining in week of May 11, 2008 why he was trailing Hillary Clinton in Kentucky, Obama again botched basic geography: “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.”   On what map is Arkansas closer to Kentucky than Illinois?

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): Last March 2008, on the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala., he claimed his parents united as a direct result of the civil rights movement: “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala., because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born.”   Obama was born in 1961. The Selma march took place in 1965. His spokesman, Bill Burton, later explained that Obama was “speaking metaphorically about the civil-rights movement as a whole.”

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): In May 2008, in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Obama showed off his knowledge of the war in Afghanistan by homing in on a lack of translators: “We only have a certain number of them, and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.”  The real reason it’s “harder for us to use them” in Afghanistan: Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. The Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi, or other non-Arabic languages.

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): Over the weekend of May 18, 2008 in Oregon, Obama pleaded ignorance of the decades-old, multibillion-dollar massive Hanford nuclear-waste cleanup: “Here’s something that you will rarely hear from a politician, and that is that I’m not familiar with the Hanford, uuuuhh, site, so I don’t know exactly what’s going on there. (Applause.) Now, having said that, I promise you I’ll learn about it by the time I leave here on the ride back to the airport.”    I assume on that ride, a staffer reminded him that he’s voted on at least one defense-authorization bill that addressed the “costs, schedules, and technical issues” dealing with the nation’s most contaminated nuclear-waste site.

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): In March 2008, the Chicago Tribune reported this little-noticed nugget about a fake autobiographical detail in Obama’s Dreams from My Father: “Then, there’s the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin.    In fact, the Life article and the photographs don’t exist, say the magazine’s own historians.”

FACT:   there has been a pattern of Obama saying one thing on the campaign trail that was undercut by his advisers.   We saw that when his economic adviser assured the Canadians that Obama wasn't really serious about the anti-NAFTA rhetoric he was spewing in Ohio.

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): told an Oregon audience we’re “goners” if we fail to stop global warming, and he intends to ask – or tell – Americans to stop driving SUVs, turn the thermostat down, even eat less. America will have to “lead by example”:  “We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world's energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we'll be fine. Don't worry about us.   That's not leadership.”  Obama’s been legendary on how he likes to keep the White House thermostat at a balmy 80 degrees.  Him and the First Linebacker also have more personal assistants and have taken more jaunts out on the public dime than ANY previous president over a similar length of time.  I guess THAT is leadership??!!

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): On 5/23/08 Barack Obama spelled out his Latin America policy:  Since the Bush Administration launched a misguided war in Iraq, its policy in the Americas has been negligent toward our friends, ineffective with our adversaries, disinterested in the challenges that matter in peoples' lives, and incapable of advancing our interests in the region.  No wonder, then, that demagogues like Hugo Chavez have stepped into this vacuum.  This is pathetic. Hugo Chavez came to power during the Clinton Administration, and was first elected President of Venezuela in 1998, two years before the Bush Administration took office.  And speaking of being neglectful of our friends, he has ignored the Free Trade agreement with Colombia and sided with the Communist Party in the Honduras over an unlawful attempt to remain in office longer than their Constitution permits.  But he has made FAST friends with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.   

FACT:   As Obama traveled through Florida, he gave some contradictory statements about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and the Colombian terrorist group FARC.  On 5/22/08 Obama told the Orlando Sentinel that he would meet with Chavez and "one of the obvious high priorities in my talks with President Hugo Chavez would be the fermentation of anti-American sentiment in Latin America, his support of FARC in Colombia and other issues he would want to talk about."   OK, so a strong declaration that Chavez is supporting FARC, which Obama intends to push him on.   But then on Friday he said any government supporting FARC should be isolated.  "We will shine a light on any support for the FARC that comes from neighboring governments," he said in a speech in Miami.  "This behavior must be exposed to international condemnation, regional isolation, and - if need be - strong sanctions. It must not stand."  So he will meet with the leader of a country he simultaneously says should be isolated? Huh?

FACT:   Over the summer 2008, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, an open ally of the US and a nation armed with nuclear weapons.  What is with this asswipe and his propensity to talk tough to, or ignore US allies and embrace our enemies?

FACT:   says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have "hijacked" — hijacked — Christianity.   And now he speaks for Christians, too? 

FACT:   In New Mexico, Obama sees dead people: "On this Memorial Day (2008), as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong."  Fallen heroes in the audience? Is this Barack Potatoe Obama? This is precisely the kind of misstatement that Dan Quayle-bashers would run ad infinitum.

FACT:  While speaking in New Mexico, Sen. Obama seemed not to understand Memorial Day honors those who died in war, and claimed his uncle was one of the soldiers who liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. Since Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army, and Barack's mom was an only child, this is unlikely.  When this misstatement was spotted by bloggers, the Obama campaign said the senator had in mind his great uncle, Charles W. Payne, who, the campaign said, had served in the 89th Infantry Division, which liberated Ohrdruf, a slave labor camp that was a satellite of Buchenwald. This explanation has satisfied most journalists. But Charles W. Payne is not listed on the roster of the 89th Infantry Division, perhaps because the Kansas State Historical Society says Charles W. Payne entered the Navy on Nov. 10, 1942.  Sen. Obama has told the Auschwitz story before. But in an Oct. 2, 2002 speech, the protagonist was his grandfather:  "My grandfather signed up for the war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army," Mr. Obama said then. "He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka.”  (Stanley Dunham entered the Army on June 18, 1942. Treblinka, which, like Auschwitz, is in Poland, was liberated by the Red Army.)  Every four years, the Democrats trot out their latest version of the "brilliant, nuanced" Presidential candidate, whose intellect is far superior to the Republican dullard he will be facing. Each one ultimately proves to be dumber than the last one. They'll have a hard time topping this one for utter stupidity, though.

FACT:   Obama also (according to CBS reporter/blogger Maria Gavrilovic) talked about post-traumatic stress disorder by claiming he had an uncle "who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz," and then came home and spent six months in an attic.   BUT - Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Red Army during its Great Patriotic War to subjugate the Germans. Now we have the Obama camp backpeddling and saying Sen. Obama merely mis-spoke. That his uncle, Charlie Payne, was there when the Buchenwald subcamp of Orhdruf was liberated on 4 April 1945. To further muddle things, both 4th Armored Division and the 89th Infantry Division can claim to have liberated the forced work camp of Ohrdurf.  Oh wait a minute, talk about mis-spoke. If we are to believe this web-site the World War II Kansas Veterans Index, Charles W. Payne[there are two, so take your pick] - Obama's great uncle we are talking about - both enlisted in the US Navy.

FACT:  While his Mideast policy may have been the quickest turnaround or flip-flop on a major issue, it is not the only one. In the primary campaign, Barack Obama consistently campaigned against NAFTA, but has now changed his tune, as he has with other issues. During the primary, Obama sent out a campaign flier that said “Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA,” and called it a “bad trade deal.” He also said NAFTA was “devastating,” “a big mistake,” and in what the Washington Post labeled as a unilateral threat to withdraw from NAFTA, Obama said “I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage.”  No longer. Recently, Barack Obama backtracked on NAFTA and said, “I’m not a big believer in doing things unilaterally.” “I’m a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make this work for all people.” He explained his primary campaign opposition this way: “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified.” 

FACT:  This is of a piece with his further change of position on public campaign financing. As a primary candidate, he touted his support for the public financing of presidential campaigns, but then witnessing his own fundraising prowess, as a general election candidate he has gone the unique route of forswearing the system. As David Brooks put it in the New York Times:   Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He’s spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system. But at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck.

FACT:  When Obama was the underdog fighting against the Clinton machine he promised to work with the GOP nominee and agree to public financing for the general election campaign: “If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.”  April 2008, however, he began backtracking and seeking a way out of his promise. Clearly, having raised more money than anyone he was suddenly unwilling to keep his word. He offered this laughable excuse:  "We have created a parallel public financing system where the American people decide if they want to support a campaign they can get on the Internet and finance it, and they will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful.” Who needs public financing when you can simply redefine your own campaign as a “parallel public financing system”?  And now Obama has made it official: he will be the first candidate since Richard Nixon to not participate in public financing for the general election. In going back on his word Obama, in classic fashion, declares that this is how to declare “independence from a broken system” and “truly change how Washington works."  Only in Obama’s world can breaking a promise mean Hope and Change. For a man who puts such stock in the power of words, he abandons his own with remarkable regularity. Obama supporters laud him as a different politician; as someone who can change the way Washington works and bring real solutions to our problems. But how can you trust a candidate who so easily capitulates in the face of criticism and regularly breaks his promises? Is this really change you can believe in?

FACT:   Barack Obama's first general election ad says about 46 seconds in that the Illinois senator passed laws that "extended health care for wounded troops who'd been neglected."  The ad "Country I Love", which was released Friday, provides a citation at the bottom of the screen which reads "Public Law 110 - 181."  The problem is Senator Obama never voted for that legislation. Public Law 110 - 181 is part of the defense authorization bill which passed the Senate in January by a vote of 91 to three with six senators not voting. Barack Obama was among those six absent senators.

FACT:  Barack Obama said in Las Vegas last week (June 23, 2008): "The oil companies have already been given 68 million acres of federal land, both onshore and offshore, to drill. They're allowed to drill it, and yet they haven't touched it – 68 million acres that have the potential to nearly double America's total oil production."   Wow, how come the oil companies didn't think of that?  Perhaps because the notion is obviously false – at least to anyone who knows how oil and gas exploration actually works.  As a public service, here's a remedial education:  Democrats are pinned on one side by voter anger over expensive gas and on the other by their ideological opposition to carbon-based energy – so, as always, the political first resort is to blame Big Oil.  Democrats have taken statistical sampling to new lows by suggesting that "If we extrapolate from today's production rates on federal lands and waters”, the oil companies could "nearly double total U.S. oil production".  In other words, they want the US public to assume that every acre of every lease holds the same amount of oil and gas. Yet the existence of a lease does not guarantee that the geology holds recoverable resources.  Oil companies acquire leases in the expectation that some of them contain sufficient oil and gas to cover the total costs. Yet it takes years to move through federal permitting, exploration and development. The U.S. Minerals Management Service notes that only one of three wells results in a discovery of oil that can be recovered economically. In deeper water, it's one of five. All this involves huge risks, capital investment – and time.  At the same time, finding new reservoirs has become far more complex. Most recent discoveries have been smaller, deeper and less concentrated. The U.S. needs a continuous supply of discoveries to replace declining wells.  Yet companies are not allowed to explore where the biggest prospects for oil and gas may exist – especially on the Outer Continental Shelf.  The recent discoveries of the Wilcox Formation (an ultra-deepwater frontier) and the Bakken Shale formation in North Dakota and Montana confirm that very large reserves exist, if only Congress would let business get at them.  All of which has Democrats sweating bullets. The leadership is desperate to avoid debating a Department of Interior spending bill, because they know Republicans will offer amendments lifting the drilling moratorium that may peel off some Democrats. Last week, Chairman David Obey shut down the Appropriations Committee rather than countenance more domestic energy production. Given Democratic energy illiteracy, this is a fight the GOP can win if it keeps up the pressure.

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): "Let me be absolutely clear.  Israel is a strong friend of Israel's.  It will be a strong friend of Israel's under a McCain...administration.  It will be a strong friend of Israel's under an Obama administration.  So that policy is not going to change."  Israel is a strong friend of Israel?  The man cannot talk without prepared remarks on a tele-prompter.

FACT:  From the Los Angeles Times:  The drama began with a tiny ad in a local newspaper — a notice that asbestos was about to be removed from the management office at Altgeld Gardens, the all-black public housing complex where young Barack Obama worked as a community organizer.  "You think it's in our apartments?" a worried mother asked. "I don't know," Obama replied. "But we can find out."  What followed, Obama says in a memoir, was a life-altering experience, an early taste of his ability to motivate the powerless and work the levers of government. As the 24-year-old mentor to public housing residents, Obama says he initiated and led efforts that thrust Altgeld's asbestos problem into the headlines, pushing city officials to call hearings and a reluctant housing authority to start a cleanup.  But others tell the story much differently.  They say Obama did not play the singular role in the asbestos episode that he portrays in the best-selling memoir "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance." Credit for pushing officials to deal with the cancer-causing substance, according to interviews and news accounts from that period, also goes to a well-known preexisting group at Altgeld Gardens and to a local newspaper called the Chicago Reporter. Obama does not mention either one in his book.

FACT:  Obama repeats the oft-refuted canard that “Despite decades of progress, women still make only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. A recent study estimates it will take another 47 years for women to close the wage gap with men at Fortune 500 corporate offices.”  Barack Obama believes the government needs to take steps to better enforce the Equal Pay Act, fight job discrimination, and improve child care options and family medical leave to give women equal footing in the workplace.  But does Obama practice what he preaches? A non-partisan group, LegiStorm looked into it, and Deroy Murdock of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on what they found:  Based on these calculations, Obama's 28 male staffers divided among themselves total payroll expenditures of $1,523,120. Thus, Obama's average male employee earned $54,397.  Obama's 30 female employees split $1,354,580 among themselves, or $45,152, on average.  Why this disparity? One reason may be the under-representation of women in Obama's highest-compensated ranks. Among Obama's five best-paid advisors, only one was a woman. Among his top 20, seven were women.   More:  Again, on average, Obama's female staffers earn just 83 cents for every dollar his male staffers make. This figure certainly exceeds the 77-cent threshold that Obama's campaign website condemns. However, 83 cents do not equal $1. In spite of this 17-cent gap between Obama's rhetoric and reality, he chose to chide GOP presidential contender John McCain on this issue.  What about John McCain's Senate staff. According to the same study, his female staff makes more than their male counterparts--$1.04 for every $1.00 a McCain male staffer makes.  Last week Obama made said something quite audacious about Sarah Palin, "But I've got to say, she's opposed -- like John McCain is -- to equal pay for equal work. That doesn't make much sense to me."  But if you are a female staffer working in Barack Obama's Senate office, you might want to consider applying for a job with John McCain.  Oh, John McCain and Sarah Palin support equal pay for women.

FACT:  In 2007, the average Senator voted with his own party 84 percent of the time.  Obama voted with his party 96 percent of the time. In the prior two years, his number was 95 percent, making him the fourth most partisan member of the Senate. And not just partisan, but also highly ideological. In 2007, according to the National Journal, Obama’s voting record made him “the most liberal Senator.” Throughout his Senate career, according to Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the dean of liberal advocacy groups, Obama voted “right” 90 percent of the time. Actually this is misleading, since ADA counts an absence as if it were a vote on the “wrong” side. If we discount his absences, Obama voted to ADA’s approval more than 98 percent of the time.  This is change?

FACT:  Having lashed himself to the ridiculous, unprecedented promise of unconditional presidential negotiations -- and then having compounded the problem by elevating it to a principle -- Obama keeps trying to explain.   He declared in Pendleton, Ore., that by Soviet standards Iran and others "don't pose a serious threat to us." — cluelessly arguing that “tiny countries” with small defense budgets can’t do us harm. (On the contrary. Islamic Iran is dangerously apocalyptic. Soviet Russia was not.) The next day in Billings, Mont.: "I've made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave." 

FACT:  Obama cites John Kennedy meeting Nikita Khrushchev as another example of what he wants to emulate.   He said that Kennedy talked with the Soviets to defuse the Cuban missile crises.   Really? That Vienna summit of a young, inexperienced, untested American president was disastrous, emboldening Khrushchev to push Kennedy on Berlin -- and then near fatally in Cuba, leading almost directly to the Cuban missile crisis. Is that the precedent Obama aspires to follow?  Kennedy threatened to blow their ships out of the water if they tried to deliver missiles to Cuba.   Yes Kennedy talked to Khruschev, but that was eight months before the Cuban crisis developed. Some historians think that the meeting where the Soviet leaders met in person with Kennedy revealed to them how weak and unimpressive he was in person, and led them to take a chance over Cuba.   While the Cuban missile crisis was going on, there were only very blunt telegrams exchanged between the two countries.

FACT:   Obama cited Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as presidents who met with enemies. Does he know no history? Neither Roosevelt nor Truman ever met with any of the leaders of the Axis powers. Obama must be referring to the pictures he's seen of Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, and Truman and Stalin at Potsdam. Does he not know that at that time Stalin was a wartime ally?  During the subsequent Cold War, Truman never met with Stalin. Nor Mao. Nor Kim Il Sung. Truman was no fool.

FACT:   While in Islamabad, Hillary Clinton hailed the “historic agreement” that the U.S. forced upon Honduras, enabling self-appointed strongman Manuel Zelaya to subvert his country’s democracy and reclaim the presidency.  This administration is on the wrong side of just about everything. What’s more, there’s not a single Plan B in sight.

FACT:   Barack Obama won praise for Dreams From My Father, a 1995 memoir of his life that was published when he reached the grand old age of thirty-four. The provenance of the book has come into question, led by a series of American Thinker columns by Jack Cashill, who used textual analysis to ascribe its writing --or at least a good portion of it -- to Bill Ayers, Obama's neighbor, former Weatherman, Obama campaign supporter and partner in various activist groups in Chicago. This claim has been echoed in a new book by best-selling author Christian Andersen, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage who wrote that sources close to the Obamas told him that Barack Obama turned over his notes and tapes to Bill Ayers to compose the book.  Subsequently, under questioning by Cashill on a nationally-syndicated radio program, Andersen averred that two separate sources in Hyde Park confirmed to him the story of sending the notes and tapes to Ayers.

FACT:   Whoever wrote Dreams clearly embellished Obama's work history following graduation from Columbia. Obama claimed to have worked at a high powered consulting firm as a research assistant. A former colleague who sat down the hall from him debunked Obama's puffery in 2005:  First, it wasn't a consulting house; it was a small company that published newsletters on international business. Like most newsletter publishers, it was a bit of a sweatshop. I'm sure we all wished that we were high-priced consultants to multinational corporations. But we also enjoyed coming in at ten, wearing jeans to work, flirting with our co-workers, partying when we stayed late, and bonding over the low salaries and heavy workload.  Barack worked on one of the company's reference publications. Each month customers got a new set of pages on business conditions in a particular country, punched to fit into a three-ring binder. Barack's job was to get copy from the country correspondents and edit it so that it fit into a standard outline. There was probably some research involved as well, since correspondents usually don't send exactly what you ask for, and you can't always decipher their copy. But essentially the job was copyediting.   Obama may have felt the need to polish a resume that would fit on the back of a postage stamp, as my colleague Kyle Shiver has characterized his curriculum vitae. But the problem goes deeper than Cashill may have uncovered.

FACT:   Allison Davis, a founding name partner of the firm that hired the young Barack Obama out of law school had this bit of history to share:  "Some of my partners weren't happy with that, Barack sitting there with his keyboard on his lap and his feet up on the desk writing the book."  Obama's fellow associates were none-too-pleased, either. They were doing the work that paid for his salary. To whom did he bill his time? Tony Rezko? We will never know, since Barack Obama refused to release his billing records.  Incidentally, he did not finish the book when he was contractually required to do so. He jetted off to Bali, purportedly to work full-time on the book. Now, I ask you dear reader, is there any place in the world less conducive to work -- especially the arduous, thankless task of writing -- than a lush tropical paradise like Bali? Even the novelist James Michener had to wait until returning to the states to write a book about his time in the South Pacific. Nevertheless, somehow, miraculously, the manuscript was later completed -- but by whom?

FACT:   Not content with the practice of law -- or whatever he was doing at the office, Obama left the law firm for greener pastures. While he was on the verge of running for the state Senate, he was tapped (by Bill Ayers, no less) to head the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a donor-funded effort to improve Chicago schools. This was the only time that Obama had experience running anything. How did he do?  He wasted over 100 million dollars and the program was declared a failure in an independent audit. Did we hear much about this failure?  No. A cover-up shielded Barack Obama from being blamed for the program's failure. Access to records was denied to researchers. Stanley Kurtz appeared on the Milt Rosenberg radio show on WGN in Chicago to report his findings. The show was bombarded by the talk radio equivalent of computer denial of service attacks: a blizzard of phone calls, intimidating and harsh, that tried to shut down the show and silence Kurtz. The attack was coordinated by the Obama campaign. So much for transparency, and welcome to 1984, delayed two decades or so.

FACT:   When he became a state senator there were instances that revealed work practices that rubbed people the wrong way.  His state senate colleagues took umbrage at his modus operandi. He was what came to be known as a bill-jacker: someone who takes credit for legislation that others had written and worked the aisles to get passed.  He had a powerful patron, state Senate leader Emil Jones, who blessed this practice as a way to promote the career of a friend:  Back in his days as a state legislator, one of Obama's early claims was that he passed a "major" ethics bill in Springfield, Illinois the State Capitol. But, author David Freddoso's research for the book The Case Against Barack Obama finds that Obama didn't actually write the legislation but that Illinois State Senator Emil Jones merely allowed him to take the lead of an already crafted bill. Freddoso calls Obama's role "bill-jacking" as opposed to crafting.

FACT:  Abner Mikva, a former congressman and federal judge, had recommended to Jones that he give Obama a popular piece of legislation barring political fundraising on state property and barring lobbyists and contractors from giving gifts to legislators. The bill had enough loopholes to be relatively harmless, but it was a step in the direction of reform. Jones gave it to Obama. Obama proposed it. It passed, 52-4.  18 The "Friends and Family" man, the old ward-heeler, was even capable of making Obama look like a reformer.

FACT:   Instead of taking the lead in writing and proposing legislation, it has been Obama's practice to join bills crafted by other people and attempt to take a partial or full measure of credit not due him.  Old habits die hard-he carried on the noisome practice when he became a U.S. Senator.  After weeks of arduous negotiations, on April 6, 2006, a bipartisan group of senators burst out of the "President's Room," just off the Senate chamber, with a deal on new immigration policy, including John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward M. Kennedy.  Obama made a request common when Capitol Hill news conferences are in the offing: "Hey, guys, can I come along?" And when Obama went before the microphones, he was generous with his list of senators to congratulate -- a list that included himself.   "I want to cite Lindsey Graham, Sam Brownback, Mel Martinez, Ken Salazar, myself, Dick Durbin, Joe Lieberman . . . who've actually had to wake up early to try to hammer this stuff out," he said.  To Senate staff members, who had been arriving for 7 a.m. negotiating sessions for weeks, it was a galling moment. Those morning sessions had attracted just three to four senators a side, Sen.. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) recalled, each deeply involved in the issue. Obama was not one of them. But in a presidential contest involving three sitting senators, embellishment of legislative records may be inevitability, Specter said with a shrug.  He "embellished" his role-as the Washington Post politely put it.

FACT:   Barack Obama had the audacity to claim to have worked across the aisle with John McCain on ethics legislation (a two-fer: he claimed bipartisanship and having worked on a bill) when in fact, that was a "misrepresentation" or "blooper" as FactCheck.Org (a highly regarded, non-partisan monitoring group) so delicately put it:  "I worked with John McCain" on ethics legislation. In fact, the two worked together for barely a week, after which McCain accused Obama of "partisan posturing" and added, "I won't make the same mistake again."  Obama offered a twisted account of his working with a Republican and "against party loyalty." He said he "worked with John McCain" on ethics legislation, when in fact their short-lived collaboration collapsed into bitter public wrangling long before any bill resulted.

FACT:   On the campaign trail, Barack Obama today boasted about a bill in "my committee,'' a committee on which he has no seat.  While speaking to the press in the Israeli town of Sderot, Obama mistakenly put the U.S. Senate banking committee on his resume, although the Illinois senator does not serve on the committee and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is the chairman.   The Republican National Committee distributed an e-mail pointing out Obama's mistake with a subject line of "Obama's Gaffe Machine Rolls Into Israel."  During the press conference, Obama said, "Just this past -- this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon."   There he goes again.

FACT:   During the campaign, it was clear that he had plagiarized the speeches of his friend, Deval Patrick, Governor of Massachusetts.   That revelation became widely-known. They shared a campaign strategist in David Axelrod.  What worked for Patrick, worked for Obama. The same type of ringing phrases, the same cadences, the same ideas. They had passed the test and helped to elect Patrick. Market-proven and battle-tested.   But what is not as well-known is the provenance of his famous "race-speech" made in Philadelphia after revelations of the bigotry of his Pastor-Jeremiah Wright-became public. Obama's campaign for the Presidency was at risk. What to do? Well-give a speech, of course-because the media loved praising his speeches. In this notable case, they went into overdrive with over the top praise for the brilliance of Obama who -the story was-had written the speech himself. Except, of course, that he hadn't. He didn't write it: it was manufactured for him by his ghostwriter-speechwriter Jon Favreau (Kennedy had his Ted Sorensen; Obama has his Jon Favreau). We had to wait for this revelation until after Barack Obama assumed office.

FACT:   Remember Barack Obama's big race speech back in March 2008, the one that invited comparisons to Lincoln? Neither does anyone else, but it seemed like a big deal at the time. On March 18, The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder did a short item called "Speechwriter of One" (quoting verbatim):  This wasn't a speech by committee... Obama wrote the speech himself, working on it for two days and nights.... and showed it to only a few of his top advisers.  This now appears to have been puffery, at least if the Washington Post has the story right:  One Saturday night in March, Obama called [Jon] Favreau and said he wanted to immediately deliver a speech about race. He dictated his unscripted thoughts to Favreau over the phone for 30 minutes--"It would have been a great speech right then," Favreau said--and then asked him to clean it up and write a draft. Favreau put it together, and Obama spent two nights retooling before delivering the address in Philadelphia the following Tuesday.  "So," Obama told Favreau afterward. "I think that worked."  Favreau was/is now one of the most highly paid of President Obama's staffers.  A matter of fact, he earns as much as he can legally earn at the West Wing-hundreds of thousands of dollars every year .  I suppose he is worth every one of our hard-earned dollars -- at least he is to Barack Obama.

FACT:   A side effect of his sorry work habits is what he does when he cannot avoid having mistakes pinned on him. What does he do then? Jake Tapper of ABC News noted a very discreditable practice of Obama's: he scapegoats staffers as the ones to be blamed.  Is this the type of person anyone of us have ever enjoyed working with-let alone enjoy watching ascend the corporate ladder. Is this the type of person we want as President?  Has he continued this type of behavior as President?  Yes he has.

FACT:   

When his policies have come up a cropper he makes Cabinet and other leading officials fall on their swords so he can be shielded from owning up to his responsibility. . Greg Craig took the dive for Obama's Gitmo policy disaster. He was the latest fall guy.   The buck does not stop at Obama's desk.  But we should have known that from his budget-busting deficits.  Is this why he dithers in the face of major geopolitical challenges? Is he afraid of making a mistake? Can he just vote present as President? Is this why he outsources so much domestic policy to Congress and foreign policy to the United Nations? Does he carry on his practice of voting present -- as he did as a state Senator -- while being President?  Does it seem he just doesn't like to do hard work?  Are all these habits just manifestations of a horrible ethic when it comes to work?

FACT:   Unmasking Obama by Thomas Lifson (9/29/2009) - It is now abundantly clear that the image of Barack Obama sold to the American electorate was tightly edited, air-brushed, and exaggerated. He has worn a series of masks -- eloquent orator, brilliant scholar, centrist, and literary sensation. All of these masks are coming off as he copes with a job for which image will not suffice.  For instance, hiding behind the eloquent orator mask is a guy who says "uhh" a lot when he is winging it, and who makes lots of factual and grammatical mistakes.

Now, thanks to Jack Cashill, the literary mask has been removed. Obama is a literary pretender.  The evidence is overwhelming that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Dreams from my Father, the book which established Obama's pose as a brilliant writer (and therefore a fine mind, in the estimation of many). The stylistic resemblance between the Dreams and Ayers' work is stunning. Now we know, thanks to Chris Andersen's new book,that Obama hit a brick wall trying to fulfill his contract to produce a book, and shipped off his notes and tapes to Ayers. That is the classic description of a ghost writer's assignment. And it completely fits the theories Cashill had inferentially reasoned from the data of his literary studies.

The revelation that Chris Andersen had two separate sources means that this fact meets the journalistic standard of reliability, provided by a respected, established bestselling author. Obama's dismissal of Ayers as "just a guy in the neighborhood" has been shown to be an outright lie.

That will certainly be the verdict of history, regardless of whether or not the issue of Obama's ghost written book ever breaks through into the national discussion. My bet is that the media will not be able to suppress discussion. The image of Obama packing boxes full of tapes and notebooks and hauling them over to Ayers' house a couple of blocks away, is simple and compelling evidence of a ghost writer being put to work. Jack's literary detective work made the case, and Andersen's two neighborhood sources confirm it.

Anyone who refuses to deal with this issue is willfully avoiding topics that make Obama look bad. The facts are in the public domain.

FACT:   But the "literary genius" foundational myth is not the only one in need of serious examination. The very notion that he merited admission let alone degrees from these rigorous and competitive institutions is called into question every time Obama makes an extemporaneous remark. He knows little or nothing about history, economics, law, geography  and  the grammar rules of his native tongue.  "I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur...."   (Hirohito never attended the surrender ceremony and you don't "sign a surrender".)

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): "... profit and earnings ratio." (The correct term is the Price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio. Profit and earnings ratio is nonsensical.)

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): "The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system," Obama said in remarks after a health care roundtable with physicians, nurses and health care providers. 

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): "Paying for what you spend is basic common sense."  "Think about that," he said, "California producing jobs, their economy keeping pace with the rest of the country and yet they've been able to maintain their energy usage in a much lower level than the rest of the country."  Duhhhhhh

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): So Medicare and Medicaid -- those programs in which the government is involved and honing up [emphasis supplied] dollars, I think taxpayers would expect that we spend that money wisely. We don't want to see that money wasted on weapons systems that aren't needed. We don't want it spent on welfare programs that don't work. And we shouldn't want that spent on tests that aren't making people better.

Or he misuses them:

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): "I could have calibrated those words differently" [emphasis supplied]

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH):"The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries"--Barack Obama, Jan. 29, 2010

Obama Law

FACT It has always been a source of great irritation that Obama is credited for high intelligence by those who should know better. The fact that he graduated in Law with high honors seems , to them, to be proof positive of superior intellect. They manifest the attitude which has contributed to a large degree to the success of the scam the Alinsky/Axelrod organization has perpetrated: an insistence on" being fair" - a fatal weakness in defeating an enemy whose strategy is based on deceit and guerilla tactics.

It isn't just a matter of errors in speech, in elementary history, or geography, or economics, or simple business practices. It is also in lying in matters where his dishonesty is obvious to any reasoning mind. He sat for 20 years in Wright's Cathedral of Black Liberation Gospel and never once observed an anti-American rant. Bill Ayers was just an acquaintance that he ran into occasionally in the neighborhood. He is a lover of Urdu poetry. Of Pushkin. These are simple-minded, flagrant lies. No person of intelligence would expose his inadequacies by such obvious lying.

And there is the desperation of his team to maintain total and complete silence on anything that relates to actual achievement: no scholastic records at any level. All "lost". No reference to his performance as a manager in Ayers Annenberg Challenge debacle. No quotes from his publications in Chicago's black newspaper.

And the dim-witted things he does in foreign relations. Gives the Queen of England an ipod of his speeches. A full bow from the waist to an Arab potentate whose high state is totally due to sitting on an ocean of oil. Endlessly criticizing his predecessor. Cottoning up to communist bana public tin-pot Jefes. These are not the acts of an intelliigent person, aware of his world stature. His rhetoric, delivered with great panache and air of plausibiliy, does not stand up well to fair analysis. It is largely elaborate platitude.

The aggregation of all these revealing clues of a second-class mind, of great limitations in wisdom and probity, of a lack of sound reasoning and judgment in areas critical to good governance and leadership, makes claims of an IQ of 145 (approaching that of Einstein), or of being the smartest guy ever to be President, laughable.

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): Add this to Obama's lack of education - "Hitler who spoke Austrian" - what an ignorant boob.   Yeah I could never understand Bobby Clarke of the Philadelphia Flyers because he spoke "Canadien".

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): Has anyone else noticed that President Obama always uses "a" instead of "an" in front of words beginning with a vowel? This consistent mistake makes me question the education he received in the United States. If his biggest role model was his intelligent guardian grandmother, how could he not have picked up on this basic English rule for speaking and writing?

There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that the One posesses any of the intellectual or scholarly qualities ascribed to him by the left. I have made somewhat of a study of this attribution phenomenon, though I must admit the research is rough going. As everyone knows, verifiable facts with respect to the Obama are difficult to come by.

Nevertheless:
1. It is known that Obama did not take AP courses in high school. Thus his GPA (even with straight A's) would not be competitive with those who took AP's and did even reasonably well. For example, I took AP history, physics, english, and introductory calculus. This put us in a far more competitive position, GPA-wise. But, not to worry, if one is applying to Occidental. Their tradition has been (and continues to be) that there "is no set formula or minimum criteria that will ensure admission." Of the hundreds of schools to choose from, Obama chose from the much shorter list of quasi A-level schools whose admission policy is not centered around pesky things like GPA's and SAT's. Hmmm.

2. Next we move on to Columbia, where (surprise!) there is "no minimum grade point average, class rank or SAT/ACT score one must obtain in order to secure admission." This is wonderful news to those who perhaps shunned the plastic penholder for the plastic beer cup but were nevertheless involved in all manner of worthy extra-curricular pursuits, but alas, it doesn't seem that Obama had much to go on in that department either, unless of course you count his involvement with Students For Economic Democracy at Occidental. What a coincidence! It's a relative of Billy Ayer's old group, the SDS. Hmmm again.

3. We do know that getting into Harvard Law without having an honors level undergrad is quite rare. In building on what appears to be a theme, we also know that Obama did not graduade with honors from Columbia. However, with the help Khalid al-Mansour, Obama was accepted. Hmmm, Hmmm, and Hmmm.

These facts raise a plethora of questions and issues, but there is one thing they absolutely do not confer: the notion that Obama is highly intelligent.

No, this man is not propelled by intelligence. It is guile.

The President is a mediocrity, a bore, and probably a genuine mean spirited bastard.

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): We say acted goofy, not acted goofily
acted silly, not acted sillily
acted creepy, not acted creepily
acted tired, not acted tiredly
acted upset, not upsetly
acted hungry, not hungrily

We do this because in this case, these words are states-of-being. There is a hidden phrase in there: What we are actually saying is, "He acted (as if he were) upset." "He acted (as if he were) silly." He acted (as if he were) crazy, (as if he were) tired," "(as if he were hungry")

So why does BO get away with saying the police "acted stupidly"? Seems like he was really saying the police officer acted (as if he were) stupid," not stupidly -- which is almost like calling the officer "stupid," it seems -- or else wouldn't have acted as if he were.

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): It was May 4 when Barry wished his audience a happy "Cinco de Cuatro," trying to impress them with his superb grasp of Spanish by cleverly extrapolating from Cinco de Mayo. It takes a special kind of stupid to look at "Cinco de Mayo" and assume that the word meaning "May" is "Cinco."

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH): Obama consistently uses bad English grammar when speaking.

NOTE: It is Substandard English to say "between he and I' -- the correct phrasing should be "between him and me" -- he used the wrong case after the preposition BETWEEN.

Obama used the nominative case of the prepositional pronouns "he" and "I" instead of using the Objective case forms "him" and "me."

HEH. THE DUMBING DOWN OF THE PRESIDENCY.

Makes him sound like a dumb high-school drop-out... sure doesn't sound eloquent to my ears. Makes him sound stupid and uneducated. Yeah, I can believe his speeches are written for him, but his speech writers don't use very good grammare either.

This make Obama look and sound like a total fabrication of the media and Madison Avenue marketing -- and the first real affirmative action president.

---

FACT (FROM HIS MOUTH):  I just heard a TV Public Service announcement he did on being a good dad. Barry said, "Help your child do their homework." He can't make a pronoun-antecedent agreement in a simple sentence like this? This is the smartest guy to ever become president?

Here's a missed error: "I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and...." (He means EVOKES.)

FACT:   --In March, the President gave the visiting English prime minsiter, Gordon Brown, a set of 25 DVDs. We hear that much like jazz music, this uniquely American art form is growing in popularity on the Continent. Even if the legally-blind Brown enjoyed watching films, it turns out that the DVDs presented to Brown use the Region 1 NTSC -- techspeak for "won't work in U.K. DVD players." Even more embarassing is how thoughtful Gordon Brown's gifts were:

Mr Brown’s gifts included an ornamental desk pen holder made from the oak timbers of Victorian anti-slaver HMS Gannet, once named HMS President.

Mr Obama was so delighted he has already put it in pride of place in the Oval Office on the Resolute desk which was carved from timbers of Gannet’s sister ship, HMS Resolute.

Another treasure given to the U.S. President was the framed commission for HMS Resolute, a vessel that came to symbolise Anglo-US peace when it was saved from ice packs by Americans and given to Queen Victoria.

Finally, Mr Brown gave a first edition set of the seven-volume classic biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.
 

A couple of notes here: While the significance of the pen holder made from the anti-slaver is obvious, the story of the HMS Resolute and how it came to symbolize the 19th-century thawing of tension between the young American republic and it's former ruling country is simply amazing and underscores how thoughtful Brown's gift was. Further, take note of that last gift -- Martin Gilbert's Churchill biography. It's a subtle slap at Obama for an impolitic gesture he made toward the U.K. the month prior:

FACT:   A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government's art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.

The rejection of the bust has left some British officials nervously reading the runes to see how much influence the UK can wield with the new regime in Washington.

Now it is likely that Gordon Brown will offer a alternative symbol of Anglo-American fealty when he visits Washington to meet Mr Obama for the first time since he became President. Diplomats are still working to finalise a date for the visit which is expected in the final week of this month or early in March.

Note the prescient observation that "Brown will offer a alternative symbol of Anglo-American fealty." Well-played, Mr. Prime Minister. But wait -- there's more! Fleet Street had a field day with this:

Equally insulting, decided the Times of London, was Michelle Obama's "solipsistic" and "inherently dismissive" gifts to the Browns' two little boys, Fraser and John.

The offending souvenirs? Toy models of Marine One, the President's helicopter — gifts no doubt plucked from the White House gift shop at the last minute, The Times decided.

Brown's wife, Sarah, by contrast arrived with dresses for Sasha and Malia from the UK's trendy Top Shop (with matching necklaces) and a selection of books by British authors.

"A bit of thought had clearly gone into choosing them," crowed The Daily Mail. "Lovely."

FACT:   Are you cringing yet? Well, in case you were wondering how the White House could further turn normally inconsequential geopolitical niceities into a full-blown goat rodeo, during the return visit to the U.K. in early April the Obama's met with the Queen. The First Lady broke protocol by putting her hand on the queen's back. And then the Obamas gifted the Queen an iPod. It was loaded with showtunes that the queen supposedly likes, but it also with the President's speeches. Sure, she survived the Battle of Britain -- but when it's all about the O, you haven't really lived until you've seen Obama's 2004 address to the Democratic National Convention!

FACT:   --In April, the President bowed to the Saudi king, while the White House denied he was bowing, ample photographic evidence to the contrary. Weirdly, after this denial the White House is defending the bow to the Japanese emperor as appropriate. The criticism has always been that it's inappropriate for the leader of a nation that declares "all men are created equal" to bow before any head-of-state, let alone a monarch who has claims to power via divine right.

Now anyone of these things amounts to a problem, but when you look at all of the mistakes the White House has made when it comes to handling protocol it sure looks like the wheel at 1600 Pennsylvania is turning but the hamster is dead. Between the White House Social Secretary, Desirée Rogers, and Ambassador Capricia Penavic Marshall in Office of the Chief of Protocol at the State Department (who to be fair took over in August from acting Chief of Protocol Gladys Boluda) these gift and protocol issues are supposed to be taken care of. Clearly there's been a big breakdown -- though I will note Ms. Rogers sure seems to be good at getting flattering press from Washington's fawning media establishment as a "brand promoter—casting the Obamas as occupants of a 'People's House.'"

A 'people's house' where they bow to monarchs? Hmmm. Whatever the Obama branding strategy may be, all I know is that whenever the White House occupant meets with a foreign leader, it's we the people who end up embarrassed.

FACT:   Even as congressional investigators demolish White House explanations for its firing last summer of a key inspector general, new documents show that an entire second area of misleading administration statements has gone largely unexplored. Each new revelation in the case suggests that Gerald Walpin, the fired IG for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), ought to be reinstated to his job.

 

We'll get to that second area of dispute in a few moments; it's a doozy. First, though, because this is all rather confusing, a review of the particulars is in order.

By law, inspectors general can be "removed" by the president only with 30 days' notice to Congress that is accompanied by an explanation for the removal. The goal is to protect the independence of the IGs. However, after Mr. Walpin issued two reports critical of close allies of the Obama White House, he was removed by a phone call, without prior notice, on June 10 and placed on administrative leave, without access to his office or his e-mails. Only the next day was Congress told, without explanation, that he had been fired. On June 16, the White House finally and belatedly provided several members of Congress with more explanations. None of those explanations has held up.

The Obama administration said Mr. Walpin appeared "confused" or "disoriented" at a May 20 CNCS board meeting, raising questions about his competence. However, not a single shred of evidence, before or since, has emerged to suggest any lack of mental acuity by Mr. Walpin.  The administration said the board was dissatisfied that Mr. Walpin often telecommuted between New York and Washington. However, the telecommuting arrangement was, by design, an experiment to be reviewed at the end of June anyway. Nobody, not even once, has identified any work that fell through the cracks because of the arrangement.

The administration made much of an ethics complaint filed against Mr. Walpin by the acting U.S. Attorney in Sacramento, Calif., but the complaint itself contained flagrant inaccuracies. In October, it was formally and summarily dismissed by the Integrity Committee of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency.

Meanwhile, Mr. Walpin's most contentious charges against political allies of President Obama's have held up quite well. He said Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson had misused AmeriCorps funds for private services. That was true. He said the arrangements for Mr. Johnson and his previous nonprofit organization to repay the government were weak. They were. He said there appeared to have been an attempt to cover up e-mail evidence in Mr. Johnson's case. The FBI indeed found reason to investigate that matter.

Finally, a report prepared by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, and Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, disclosed a previously unknown controversy involving allegations that Mr. Johnson had made inappropriate sexual advances to AmeriCorps workers. Officials testified that D.C. Schools Superintendent Michelle A. Rhee, now Mr. Johnson's fiancee, said she would intervene in the case and that shortly thereafter, other officials offered the purported victims what appeared to be "hush money."

Finally, on Friday afternoon, the White House released a portion (but only a portion) of the remaining documents requested by Mr. Grassley for his investigation. Those documents seem to show the administration scrambling in the days after the firing to come up with a justification for having done so.

Here is where the new, largely unexplored second area of dispute arises. In addition to the report about Mr. Johnson, Mr. Walpin had issued a report critical of one of the largest of all AmeriCorps programs, a teaching fellowship at the City University of New York (CUNY) that Mr. Walpin said wasted "upwards of $80 million of taxpayer money." Other than in a June 16 editorial in The Washington Times, the report on the CUNY program has gone almost entirely overlooked.

Yet just two days after Mr. Walpin was removed from his job, as the administration hustled to try to find retroactive justification for the firing, CNCS press aide Ranit Schmelzer drafted, for distribution to all CNCS board members, a memo of "suggested guidance in the event you get press calls on IG Walpin." At that time, all reports on the matter had focused on the Sacramento case alone. Yet the Schmelzer memo, in a strange fit of defensiveness, included this talking point: "If asked whether this was connected to Walpin's action in the CUNY case, say no. The decision was made before Walpin's reports on CUNY were issued."

That is false. On April 2, Mr. Walpin's office issued its draft report on CUNY, which was critical of both CUNY and of the CNCS board for lax oversight. On April 30, CUNY responded. On May 4, the CNCS management responded. On May 5, Mr. Walpin told Senate staff that he feared CNCS management would "retaliate" against him. On May 20, before Mr. Walpin supposedly became "disoriented" at the board meeting, the major reason for the contentiousness of the meeting was that Mr. Walpin excoriated the board for its failures related to CUNY. On June 4, the IG issued his final report on the CUNY matter. Yet the White House did not fire Mr. Walpin until June 10.

How, pray tell, could it be that "the decision [to fire Mr. Walpin] was made before Walpin's reports on CUNY were issued" if the reports were issued on April 2, May 20, and June 4, while the firing came on June 10? And why would the memo specify that the board members should "say no" about the CUNY connection while the memo mentioned not a word about a single other specific, potential line of press questions?  This looks like the classic case in which an administration "doth protest too much." Defensiveness about one issue, and only one, when nobody has yet raised the issue, is often a telltale sign that there is something to hide. This is especially the case when the information provided is demonstrably false.  Former White House counsel Bernard W. Nussbaum, who served under former Democratic President Bill Clinton, had this to say last week: "I think the Obama administration made a mistake here." He's right, and it's a big mistake at that.

Obama’s Failures:

• Using the Gulf Oil Spill to promote Green Energy – instead of cleaning it up.
• Thinking the Tea Party is a passing fad – or that they are racists.
• Pulling out of Iraq with no clear victory over insurgent forces.
• Trying to re-write history through speeches – with inaccurate information (i.e. Statue of Liberty)
• Getting a Nobel Prize for being the most ineffective President in the history of the United States, though some say it was for his pigment.
• Putting all legislation on the Internet for five days before it comes to a vote.
• Returning the bust of Churchill to the Brits.
• Giving a collection of DVDs to the British PM.
• Denying the notion of American Exceptionalism.
• Promising to close Gitmo — failing to do so.
• Securing the Olympics for Chicago in 2016.
• Naming numerous Communists/Socialists/Progressives to his various Czar positions and then watching them scurry for cover when Beck begins to call them out, forcing them to resign.
• Government races for NJ, VA and the Senate Seat in Mass.
• The midterm elections, which Obama himself called a shellacking.
• Prediction that stimulus would ensure that unemployment doesn’t exceed 8%.
• Bowing to just about everybody.
• Proposing amnesty for illegal aliens to increase the population of voters for Democrat elections
• Most expensive inauguration. Ever.
• Appointing tax cheat Tim Geithner.  Choosing tax cheat Timothy Geithner to be his Treasury Secretary was such an incredible screw up that it deserves it own entry. It's mind boggling that any Administration would choose a tax cheat to run the department that's in charge of the IRS. Moreover, in Obama's case, he has already announced plans for the largest tax hike in American history, nearly a trillion dollars, and the man in charge of that effort doesn't pay his taxes? Prediction: a few years from now, if the New York Times isn't out of business by then, they'll write an article telling you that they're baffled, baffled I tell you, by the massive increase in the number of people cheating on their taxes.
• Appointing under investigation Bill Richardson.
• Appointing tax cheat Tom Daschle.
• Appointing Marc Rich and terrorist pardoning Eric “Nation of Cowards” Holder.
• Appointing Janet “Man Caused Disasters” Napolitano.
• Appointing Hilda Solis (OK, her husband has the tax liens).
• Appointing anti-Semitic Charles Freeman Jr.
• Appointing tax cheat Ron Kirk.
•  Appointing fund-raising cheat Gary Locke.
•  Appointing under investigation Adolfo Carrion.
•  Bumping his head on the Marine One helicopter.
•  Banning offshore oil again.
•  Funding abortions overseas.
•  Using the word “crisis” 25 times in a speech, then later complaining that people are too negative about the economy.
•  Letting Nancy Pelosi write the $787 billion “stimulus’ plan.
•  Relying on Tim Geithner to explain it.
•  Putting Joe Biden in charge of making sure the stimulus money is not — wink, wink, nudge, nudge — misspent.
•  Setting the Oval Office thermostat at 80.
•  Going to a press conference without a TelePrompTer. I… Uhh… Umm… Could you repeat the question?
•  Using a TelePrompTer at a press conference. Big boys don’t need training wheels.
•  Opening a press conference with: “Good evening, everybody. Please be seated. Before I take your questions tonight, I’d like to speak briefly.” 1,228 words later he took his first question.
•  Ethics waivers.
•  Going after Rush Limbaugh.
•  Going after Rick Santelli.
•  Going after Jim Cramer.
•  Trying to run the Census out of the White House.
•  Adopting the motto: “Never waste a good crisis.”   
•  Writing a love letter to Vlad and Dmitry.   Obama wrote a "secret" letter to Dmitri Medvedev offering to leave Poland and the Czech Republic twisting in the wind on missile defense in return for Russia's help in stopping Iran from getting nukes. The problem was that the letter went public even as Russia turned down the deal. So, in other words, our friends in Eastern Europe were publicly alerted that we were willing to sell them down the river to the Russians, who they were already afraid of, and yet we got nothing out of the deal. That's a real "welcome to the Big Leagues" maneuver from the Russians for our naive, rookie President.
• Throwing Poland under the bus.
• Throwing Tibet under the bus.
• Throwing Israel under the bus.
• Taking Cuba out from under the bus.
• Ticking off Switzerland by having his tax cheat go after the tax cheats in Switzerland. Cognitive dissonance.
• Saying: “Karzai has a bunker mentality.”    
• Reaching out to the Taliban.  
• Iran has plans to Marine One helicopters. 
• Explaining his refusal to work with Republicans with the words: “I won.”
• Having a BlackBerry that can easily be hacked by the Chinese.
• Saying to the people of Peoria: “If Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off.” CEO: No. There will be more layoffs.
• He gave a gift to the “wrong region” to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
•  Making the president of Brazil change his meeting so O’Bama could celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
•  Telling the American people: “You can’t take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime.” Vegas convention bookings nosedive.
•  Serving $100-a-pound wagyu — on the taxpayers’ dime.
•  Sending a “reset” button to Russia, presumably to diss the last 70 years of America standing up to communism.
•  Having the “reset” button say “overcharged.”
•  Taking a 4-day holiday weekend before signing “emergency” legislation.
•  Stiffing Chicago for nearly $2 million for that Election Night party.
•  Telling Caroline Kennedy she would, you know, make, um a good, you know, senator.
•  Bombing Pakistan.
•  Sending the bust of Sir Winston Churchill back to the British.
•  Telling reporters privately: “President Obama has accomplished more in 30 days than any president in modern history.”
•  Walking into a White House window thinking it was a door.
•  Signing an order that doctors must perform abortions, in violation of the Hippocratic Oath.
•  Signing earmarks while denouncing them.
•  Adding signing statements while denouncing them.
•  Quadrupling the deficits, while denouncing them.
•  Considering having the VA charge veterans for service-related injuries.
•  Thanking himself in a Teleprompter malfunction.
•  Banning pilots from carrying guns on airplanes.
•  Trade war with Mexico over 97 trucks.
•  Saying his bowling is “like the Special Olympics.”
•  Saying he didn’t know the AIG bonuses were included in the bailout package he signed.
•  Banning the press from covering his acceptance of a press association award
•  Writing that Jacques Chirac is the president of France.
•  Skipping the Gridiron Club dinner.
•  He had a meeting last Monday, with the national commander of the American Legion, who said, after the meeting, the President “intended to move forward” with the proposal. Finally, on Wednesday, his press secretary announced, “The president has instructed that its consideration be dropped.”  The outrage at the proposal should have been easily predicted. For example, here are some of the comments found in published reports:
• •    Eleven veterans’ organizations, in a letter to the president, wrote the proposal is “a total abrogation of our government’s moral and legal responsibility” to treat service-connected medical problems.
  •    An Amvets spokesman said the proposal “flew in the face of the government’s covenant to care for all service-connected needs of our veterans.”
  •    A Congressman said, “Our budget cannot be balanced on the backs of our nation’s combat-wounded heroes.”
  As far as I’m concerned, this proposal, backed personally and advocated personally by Mr. Obama, shows the incompetence of the White House from Mr. Obama on down.
•  Obambi: “Now, movies I've been doing OK [with] because it turns out we got this nice theater on the ground floor of my house … So Star Trek, we saw this weekend, which I thought was good. Everybody was saying I was Spock, so I figured I should check it out and--[the president makes the Vulcan salute with his hand].  So The One likes to be called Mr. Spock, eh? That is bad enough, but the fact that he so automatically called the White House "my house" is simply as arrogant as it comes. It isn't "your" house Mr. President. It's the people's! The man's sense of entitlement is disgusting.
•  Obambi: “I used to love Star Trek. You know, Star Trek was ahead of its time. There was a whole--the special effects weren't real good, but the storylines were always evocative, you know, there was a little commentary and a little pop philosophy for a 10-year-old to absorb.”  Its amusing that the "Spock" of the White House, the smartest president evah doesn't know the difference between "evocative" and "provocative." By the later half of his sentence Obama clearly meant provocative, not evocative.  The word evocative simply means to provoke emotional response or memories. But by focusing on "philosophy" and "commentary" Obama obviously meant that Star Trek provoked thinking so it was intellectually provocative not emotionally evocative. Additionally, how much evoking can a 10-year-old indulge?  So, why doesn't the smartest man in the world know the difference between provocative and evocative?  Maybe he isn't as smart as the left would have it?
•  Obama has as much trouble with numbers as he has with maps. Last March (2008), on the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala., he claimed his parents united as a direct result of the civil rights movement: “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala., because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born.”  Obama was born in 1961. The Selma march took place in 1965. His spokesman, Bill Burton, later explained that Obama was “speaking metaphorically about the civil-rights movement as a whole.”
•  Earlier this month (May 2008) in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Obama showed off his knowledge of the war in Afghanistan by homing in on a lack of translators: “We only have a certain number of them, and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” The real reason it’s “harder for us to use them” in Afghanistan: Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. The Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi, or other non-Arabic languages.
•  Over the weekend (May 2008) in Oregon, Obama pleaded ignorance of the decades-old, multibillion-dollar massive Hanford nuclear-waste cleanup: “Here’s something that you will rarely hear from a politician, and that is that I’m not familiar with the Hanford, uuuuhh, site, so I don’t know exactly what’s going on there. (Applause.) Now, having said that, I promise you I’ll learn about it by the time I leave here on the ride back to the airport.”  I assume on that ride, a staffer reminded him that he’s voted on at least one defense-authorization bill that addressed the “costs, schedules, and technical issues” dealing with the nation’s most contaminated nuclear-waste site.
•  Last March (2008), the Chicago Tribune reported this little-noticed nugget about a fake autobiographical detail in Obama’s Dreams from My Father: “Then, there’s the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. In fact, the Life article and the photographs don’t exist, say the magazine’s own historians.”
•  And in perhaps the most seriously troubling set of gaffes of them all, Obama told a Portland crowd over the weekend (May 2008) that Iran doesn’t “pose a serious threat to us” — cluelessly arguing that “tiny countries” with small defense budgets can’t do us harm — and then promptly flip-flopped the next day, claiming, “I’ve made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave.”
• After doing the "We've got to have this stimulus package passed right this second or the economy is going to explode" routine so convincingly that not one single soul in Congress actually had time to read the entire bill before it was signed, Barack Obama then promptly went on a three day vacation to celebrate before he signed it. If the bill was so important that no one could even have time to read it before it was passed, then why wasn't it important enough for Obama to skip dinner at Table Fifty-Two in Chicago to immediately make it a law?
•  In a juvenile stunt, reminiscent of something a third grader might come up with, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov a button that was supposed to say "reset." However, incredibly, the word on the button translated to "overcharge," not "reset." Apparently, despite the enormous deficit the government is going to run up this year, Team Obama forgot to budget enough money to hire someone who speaks Russian for the State Department. If only America could just press a button and reset the entire Obama presidency so far and start over.
•  When Barack Obama was trying to sell America his stimulus bill that will put the country more than a trillion dollars in debt, he alerted America that, "Caterpillar's chief executive…told him the company will rehire some laid-off workers if the stimulus bill passes." But, when he was asked about Obama's statement, Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens said, "I think realistically no. The truth is we're going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again."
•  A large part of Barack Obama's appeal was the idea of racial reconciliation. The implicit deal was that by putting our first black President in office, America would prove once and for all that it wasn't racist, and we could put all this silly squabbling about race in the rear view mirror once and for all. However, not only has it failed to work out that way, Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder issued an an insulting challenge on the topic to the American people, "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."  Maybe someone should ask the poor guy who did an innocent cartoon for the New York Post that made fun of the stimulus bill and the rampaging monkey that was in the news why people might be afraid to get dragged into a debate about race.
•  Typically, Presidents don't pick fights with pundits and talk radio hosts for obvious reasons. It draws more attention to their criticisms, elevates their status, and comes across as thin skinned and a little creepy, much like Richard Nixon's "Enemies list."  But, the Obama Administration hasn't figured this out -- yet. They've launched attacks at Rick Santelli, Jim Cramer, and most prominently, Rush Limbaugh. Ratcheting up the creepiness factor a couple of notches in Limbaugh's case, the President of the United States, members of the mainstream media, and liberal interest groups are all coordinating an attack on a private individual for daring to criticize Barack Obama. That sounds more like something that would happen in the old Soviet Union than in the United States.   But happily, if you look at the results of the White House campaign, it has backfired in every instance. Rush Limbaugh is on pace to make more revenue by the end of March than he made all last year, there are Santelli inspired "Tea Parties" popping up all across the country, and every criticism of Obama that Jim Cramer utters is now linked by the Drudge Report. 
•  The first task a new President engages in is bringing a staff on board. After choosing Joe Biden, who has behaved like he was kicked in the head by a horse as a child, things have really gone down hill from there. Bill Richardson quit as Commerce Secretary after coming under investigation. Republican Senator Judd Gregg accepted, then declined Obama's offer to be his Commerce Secretary over irreconcilable differences. Tom Daschle quit after having tax problems. So did Nancy Killefer. Ron Kirk also has tax problems, but he's trying to hang in there like Hilda Solis and another cabinet member who gets his own special entry -- and keep in mind, Obama has a considerable number of positions left to fill. Hey Barry, the word of the day is "vetting." You should look into it.
•  George Bush spent a lot of time strengthening our ties to Eastern European nations like Poland and the Czech Republic during his two terms in the White House. Yet, it took Barack Obama less than two months to undo much of Bush’s good work with those nations.
•  After making a stink by sending back a Winston Churchill bust, Barack Obama blew off a press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- but, the real kicker was the gifts.  After Brown presented Obama with a pen holder crafted from the timbers of the 19th century British warship HMS President (whose sister ship, HMS Resolute, provided the wood for the Oval Office's desk), Obama offered up ... 25 DVDs of American movie classics.  The Brits offered Obama a thoughtful, priceless gift and he handed them back a bad Netflix queue that was probably picked up at Wal-mart earlier that day.
• He advocates negotiating with terrorists. One week after he told AIPAC, a pro-Israel group, that Jerusalem "must remain undivided," he backpedaled, did a shameless about-face, and now declares that the status of Jerusalem will need to be negotiated in future talks. Obama naively wants to pull our troops out of Iraq without first ensuring stability in the area, which will put all of America at risk.
•  Accusing Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Sergeant James Crowley of "Acting Stupidly"
  When a politician is asked about an ongoing judicial matter it is customary for a politician to say that it is a matter before the court that he cannot comment upon.

But instead of displaying propriety in his response, President Obama let his friendship with Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. cloud his judgment. Although Obama admitted he didn't have all the facts before him, he nonetheless concluded that Sergeant Crowley had "acted stupidly." To his credit, Sgt. Crowley stood his ground and called Obama's comments "way off base."

Of course, the air would be cleared with a beer summit at the White House. But there would have never been a need for such a meeting had President Obama politely declined comment.

• Declaring War on the Fox News Channel
  What was the White House thinking when it decided to single out the Fox News Channel for derision? Sure it might have impressed some of Obama's most ardent followers, but as a general rule it's not a good idea to insult the viewing public. After all, Obama won over a lot of FNC viewers when he appeared on The O'Reilly Factor in September 2008.

President Obama did himself no favors by dismissing FNC as "a talk radio format."

Shortly after White House Chief of Staff David Axelrod stated FNC was not "a legitimate news organization" the White House attempted to exclude the network from a press pool interview with the White House pay czar Ken Feinberg. The other networks, to their credit, refused to play ball and the Obama Administration relented.

This was a fight the Obama Administration picked and lost badly.

• Scrapping Missile Defense Programs in Poland & the Czech Republic
  It's difficult to see how it is in the interests of the United States to scrap the construction of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. In fact, there are only two reasons for President Obama to have made this decision -- to placate Russia and to take yet another swipe at President Bush.

Now Russia is supposed to help us rein in Iran. Yet scarcely a month after abandoning the missile defense program, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said,

"We are convinced that threats, sanctions, and threats of pressure in the present situation are counter-productive." Lavrov made this comment right after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had paid him an official visit in Moscow. Gee, great work guys.

The Obama Administration hasn't exactly endeared itself to its Eastern European allies. Czech parliamentarian Jan Vidim remarked, "If the (Obama) Administration approaches us in the future with any request, I would be strongly against it."

Talk about rewarding your enemies and punishing your friends.

• Saying We Will Not Meddle in Iran
  So overwhelming has President Obama's desire been to engage Iran he was prepared to throw its democracy activists under the bus even when it became clear its "elections" were a fraud. "It is not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations to be seen as meddling -- the U.S. president, meddling in Iranian elections," said President Obama last June. But that didn't stop Iran's regime from accusing Obama of meddling, now did it?

Of course, this is the same President Obama who was more than happy to meddle where it concerned Honduras, Israel and Sri Lanka.

• Transferring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to U.S. Civilian Court
  KSM and four co-defendants were quite prepared to plead guilty before a U.S. military tribunal last December. But last November, President Obama came to their rescue and transferred them into civilian court. So now KSM and his lawyers can compromise national security interests and put the Bush Administration's interrogation techniques on trial all in one fell swoop.

This decision was ostensibly Attorney General Holder's to make. Yet when appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Holder could not tell Senator Lindsey Graham if an enemy combatant seized on the battlefield had ever been tried in U.S. civilian court. As Graham told Holder, "We're making history here and we're making bad history." And if KSM gets acquitted, then we're also making stupid history.

• Closing Gitmo
  President Obama's dumbest decision of 2009 took place his first day on the job.  It was a clear message that he does not take terrorism committed in the name of Islamic fundamentalism seriously. If he did then KSM would have his day in court before a military tribunal. Nor would Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the man who attempted to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, be in a position to ask for a lawyer, maintain his right to be silent while telling us there are others like him.