He also said if you don’t support Private Obama then you’re a racist pig: The Free Lance-Black Hole strikes again!
FYI: Obama’s a private — specifically an E-1 — now because he said talking about abortion is “above his pay grade”.
Category: Barack Obama
I guess Obama’s an E-1.
Via The Drudge Report and Matt “threat to democracy” Drudge: Obama says pointed abortion query ‘above his pay grade’…
He isn’t ready to be the Commander-in-Chief of this nation’s armed forces, that’s for sure.
Forget about investigating “Big Oil”; you know who we should investigate? Big Corn.
From The Corner on National Review Online (they’re quoting “Kim Strassel’s Wall Street Journal article on the Senate’s ‘Gang of Ten.'”) [emphasis mine throughout]:
… it was probably too much to assume every Republican would work out that their side was winning [the energy] issue. And so, last Friday, in stumbled Sens. Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Saxby Chambliss, Bob Corker and Johnny Isakson — alongside five Senate Democrats. This “Gang of 10” announced a “sweeping” and “bipartisan” energy plan to break Washington’s energy “stalemate.” What they did was throw every vulnerable Democrat, and Mr. Obama, a life preserver.
That’s because the plan is a Democratic giveaway. New production on offshore federal lands is left to state legislatures, and then in only four coastal states. The regulatory hurdles are huge. And the bill bars drilling within 50 miles of the coast — putting off limits some of the most productive areas. Alaska’s oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is still a no-go.
The highlight is instead $84 billion in tax credits, subsidies and federal handouts for alternative fuels and renewables. The Gang of 10 intends to pay for all this in part by raising taxes on . . . oil companies! The Sierra Club couldn’t have penned it better. And so the Republican Five has potentially given antidrilling Democrats the political cover they need to neutralize energy through November.
There’s one word that explains why these five Republicans are selling out: Biofuels. The gang’s “compromise bill” contains billions in subsidies for research into biofuels, and for the manufacture of ethanol-burning cars.
Thune is from the corn-producing state of South Dakota and has always been a big advocate for corn ethanol. The flagship university in Corker’s home state of Tennessee houses a major biofuels research center, specializing in cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass. Chambliss is the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. He and Isakson both represent Georgia, where they are trying to figure out how to turn Georgia peanuts into fuel. And Graham — well, Graham just seems to have a mania for joining bipartisan gangs.
The worst part — as Strassel points out — is that the gang would raise the money for these new ethanol ventures by repealing tax provisions that allow oil companies to write off the cost of expanding refinery capacity. Whatever this bill is, it’s not a cheaper-gas bill. In fact, despite its meager drilling provisions, it looks a lot like the opposite.
Why, isn’t this just brillant, let’s waste more money on ethanol and other bio “fuels”.
Here’s a few facts about ethanol:
Ethanol pollutes the air more than gasoline does (CBS News, NPR, FOX News).
Ethanol provides fewer miles per gallon than gasoline does (AP via Newsday).
It takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than that gallon of ethanol provides! That makes ethanol a net loser when it comes to energy.
And switch grass, wood biomass, soybean, and sunflower bio “fuels” are even worst than corn ethanol according to researchers at Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley (Green Car Congress):
In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production, their calculations determined that:
- Corn requires 29% more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
- Switch grass requires 45% more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
- Wood biomass requires 57% more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
In terms of energy output compared with the energy input for biodiesel production, the study found that:
- Soybean plants requires 27% more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
- Sunflower plants requires 118% more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
The World Bank has stated that the use of ethanol as a fuel source has increased food prices by 75% world wide (The right-wing liberal).
So, because Americans are using corn as a fuel source instead of a food source, people in developing nations are starving to death because they don’t have money to pay for the massive increase in food costs.
This ethanol bull@#$% is required as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Care to guess which Presidential candidate voted against the bill four times in the United States Senate?
John McCain (Roll call vote 152, 158, 212, 213).
Care to guess who voted for the bill four times and is now complaining about it? (The right-wing liberal again, different link)
Barack Obama (Ibid).
Care to guess whom I’m going to vote for this year?
(Read more at The right-wing liberal too.)
Another myth about Barack Obama destroyed.
In an effort to cast himself as independent of the influence of money on politics, Senator Barack Obama often highlights the campaign contributions of $200 or less that have amounted to fully half of the $340 million he has collected so far.
But records show that a third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more – a total of $112 million, more than the total of contributions in that category taken in by either Senator John McCain, his Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries.
Behind those large donations is a phalanx of more than 500 Obama “bundlers,” fund-raisers who have each collected contributions totaling $50,000 or more. Many of the bundlers come from industries with critical interests in Washington. Nearly three dozen of the bundlers have raised more than $500,000, including more than a half-dozen who have passed the $1 million mark and one or two who have exceeded $2 million, according to interviews with fund-raisers.
While his campaign has cited its volume of small donations as a rationale for his decision to opt out of public financing for the general election, Obama has worked to build a network of big-dollar supporters from the time he began contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate.
He tapped into well-connected people in Chicago before the 2004 Senate race, and, once elected, set out across the country starting in 2005 to cultivate some of his party’s most influential money collectors.
[…]An analysis of campaign finance records shows that about two-thirds of his bundlers are concentrated in four major industries: law, securities and investments, real estate and entertainment. Lawyers make up the largest group at about 130, with many working for firms that also have lobbying arms. At least 100 Obama bundlers are top executives or brokers from investment businesses – nearly two dozen work for financial titans like Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. About 40 others come from the real-estate industry.
The biggest fund-raisers include people like Julius Genachowski, a former senior official at the Federal Communications Commission and a technology executive who is new to big-time political fund-raising; Robert Wolf, president and chief operating officer of UBS Investment Bank; James Torrey, a New York hedge fund investor; and Charles Rivkin, an animation studio head in Los Angeles.
Read the whole thing as they say.
Is Barack Obama the personification of narcissism?
Obama’s section of the plane rivals that of any first class. Recently the front cabin of the Boeing 757 was retrofitted to install four individual chairs that resemble La-Z-Boys. They are free-standing and made of plush leather with pockets on the sides. There is also a booth which seats four for a meeting or a meal.
His chair has his name and campaign logo embroidered on the back top — “Obama ‘08” on one line and “President” underneath. To one side is a small table stacked with newspapers ready for the candidate’s arrival. The table of the booth is always covered in snacks and cheese and is where Obama spends most of his time during flights meeting with staff and sitting for the occasional interview.
I’m sure his donors are loving hearing about this…
By the way, what’s his carbon footprint?
H/t: Ace of Spades HQ
Why Barack Obama shouldn’t be President: Make sure you read Osama bin Laden his Miranda rights!
Read every line of this stupidty from The Examiner:
Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers said Tuesday that Osama bin Laden, if captured, should be allowed to appeal his case to U.S. civilian courts, a privilege opposed by John McCain.
Responding to questions from The Examiner, Sen. John Kerry and former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said bin Laden would benefit from last week’s Supreme Court decision giving terrorism suspects habeas corpus, the right to appeal their military detention to civilian courts.
“If he were to be brought back,” Clarke said of bin Laden, “the Supreme Court ruling holds on the right of habeas corpus.”
Kerry, who applauded the Supreme Court ruling, said it will be carried out by whichever candidate wins the presidency.
“The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that they have those rights,” he said. “If John McCain were president, he would have to give them those rights.”
Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser, said those rights should not be extended to bin Laden or the hundreds of terrorism suspects being held by the U.S. military at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“The individuals we hold at Guantanamo are very, very dangerous people,” Scheunemann said. “To give them full access to the federal courts and the criminal justice system is fraught with danger, moving forward, and likely to make America less safe, unlike Senator Obama’s claim of supporting the decision that it made America safer.”
On Monday, Obama applauded the civilian prosecution of terrorists before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“In previous terrorist attacks — for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center — we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial,” he told ABC. “They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated.”
First, apparently, Barack Obama isn’t aware of that fact that Omar Abdel-Rahman (the “blind sheikh”) was far from “incapciated”. His defense attorney, Lynne Stewart, was convicted in 2006 for “carr[ying] messages between the sheik and top members of an Egypt-based terrorist organization [al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya], helping spread Abdel-Rahman’s call to kill those who did not subscribe to his extremist interpretation of Islamic law” according to CNN.
Abdel-Rahamn was arrested and convicted in 1995 “of seditious conspiracy, solicitation to murder Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, conspiracy to murder President Mubarak, solicitation to attack a U.S. military installation, and conspiracy to conduct bombings.” (Foundation of American Scientists)
Among some of the attacks by his group al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, include the Luxor massacre in Egypt which killed 59 foreign tourists in 1997.
Obama said President Bush has relied too heavily on military prosecution of terrorists, which has “given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, ‘Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.’ ”
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Obama wants “to take a step back to the failed policies that treated terrorism solely as a law enforcement matter, rather than a clear and present danger. Barack Obama appears to believe that terrorists should be treated like criminals — a belief that underscores his fundamental lack of judgment regarding our national security.”
The attack sounded familiar to Kerry, who was the Democratic presidential nominee four years ago.
“This is exactly what they tried to say back in 2004, and the record absolutely contradicts it,” Kerry told The Examiner. “Every Democrat voted to go to war and attack the Taliban and al Qaeda, the people who attacked us. That is not a [legalistic] approach.”
Despite what some people seem to think (e.g., John Kerry, Barack Obama), the police and the armed force have different and distinct jobs:
The military’s job is to blow up and kill the enemy’s armed forces with the minimal lost of life on the United States’ side; or as George C. Scott states in the film Patton, “that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”
The police’s job is vastly different, the principal jobs of police are a) prevent crime; b) when a crime occurs, respond effectively; c) collect evidence and investigate to enable the successful of prosecution of said crime; d) adjust their tactics based on previous events to prevent crime in the future.
When you have the military doing the police’s job and vice versa, there’s something seriously wrong.
Since the “privilege of the writ of habeas corpus” (United States Constitution; Article I, Section 9) has been given to terrorist combatants, it’s only a matter of time before some judge starts throwing out evidence that collected without reading a detainee his Miranda rights (United States Constitution; Amendment V) or was procured without a search warrant (Untied Stations Constituion; Amendment IV).
In fact, one detainee has already challenged the admissibility of a confession he gave, since he was not given a Miranda warning (Ace of Spades HQ).
So, I have a hypothecial going back to the title of this post, illustrating the difference between what a soldier is supposed to do, and what police are supposed to do:
Let’s say that the United States military has received “credible intelligence” that Osama bin Laden is hiding in a cave on the Afghani side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
In a proper and sane world, the United States military would gather every soldier, vehicle, and aircraft, surround the area and capture/kill bin Laden. If he managed to survive the encounter (let’s just say I pray he doesn’t), he would be sent to Gitmo, tried and executed.
Just like what happened to the German infiltrators that wore American uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge. They were lined up and shot.
Or the German spies that were caught on the United States mainland during World War II, tried by a military commission and executed by electric chair.
However, in the insanity that is this world, where terrorists have rights to United States civilian courts and the rights provided to United States civilians under the United States Constitution, no one bloody knows:
Osama bin Laden does have a warrant for his arrest after he was indicted for his involvement in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, so his arrest wouldn’t be a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
However, who does the cave belong to?:
Another question is: Does Osama bin Laden have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” while he is in someone else’s cave?
If the cave belongs to a third person, an arrest warrant does not authorize the search of a third person’s home while seeking to arrest the original person (Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204 [1981]). If you want to search a third person’s home and there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy”, you must also have a search warrant for those premises in addition to the original arrest warrant.
Now, assuming we haven’t violated the precious rights of a piece of crap that’s responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, and we have said piece of crap in custody: You better read him his Miranda rights before you interrogate him! (Maybe I can get in on the Miranda-rights-in-Arabic/Farsi/etc.-pocket-cards-for-the-military industry?)
Now, again, assuming that we haven’t violated “reasonable expectation of privacy” and are able to use any evidence collected in the cave against bin Laden, and assuming we have properly given him his Miranda rights before interrogating him; there’s another question: Do a couple hundred armed to the teeth soldiers/sailors/Marines/airmen constitute a threat of violence that would render a confession invalid?
Do you see the point I’m making here?: The sheer absurdity of giving people that would gladly strap a bomb to themselves and detonate themselves in a crowded place in an attempt to kill and wound as many people as possible have been given rights normally reserved to United States citizens.
We are so screwed.
As a aside: Of course, we all know that Barack Obama’s opinion of police officers isn’t too high in the first place, especially when his campaign staffers set up porta potties on top of a memorial for fallen police officers (Police Link).