Phony Soldiers Again!

With the following lede the Drudge Report links to this video (language warning) purportedly about the G20 protests:

See U.S. Military Snatch Protester...

This bit of amateurish fakery, complete with phony soldiers, is unsurprisingly being linked to and carried by a host of leftist sites.

Obama Takes Credit for Bad Economy

Speaking to the UN, President Obama said:

And I am proud to say that the United States has done more to...reduce carbon pollution in the last eight months than at any other time in our history.

From the International Energy Agency:

The International Energy Agency has put a quantitative estimate on an effect that we all suspected — this year’s economic recession is contributing to a reduction in global carbon emissions. They estimate that 2009 carbon emissions will be 2 percent lower than 2008, with 75% of the reduction attributable to the economic slowdown and 25% attributable to carbon-reduction policies...

Call it "Green Unemployment"!

Rhetoric and Responsibility - Now!?

Paul Kane of WaPo dutifully twists the truth to arrive at what is palatable for the left:

…Speaker Nancy Pelosi choked up…recalling the anti-gay rhetoric in the late 1970s…which culminated in the assassinations of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay S.F. Board of Supervisors member, and Mayor George Moscone.

The killings of Democrats Moscone and Milk by deranged Democrat Dan White had nothing to do with any kind of inflamed rhetoric, anti-gay or otherwise. The theme used here is the same as that which blamed the assassination of JFK by a communist on a ‘climate of hatred’ in Dallas, fueled by – of course - the right wing! As author and consultant Thomas P.M. Barnett recently wrote:

Remember: before Oswald got Kennedy, the climate was clearly encouraged by all manner of right-wing groups…

See Jonah Goldberg’s ‘Liberal Fascism’ for an in depth detailing of this Kennedy assassination phenomenon.

Speaker Pelosi then went the next obligatory step in warning (telegraphing) that the left, including the Palace Guard Media (PGM), intends to see that the right is blamed for any violence that occurs, no matter who the perpetrators or what the motivation. As she said:

Anyone voicing hateful or violent rhetoric, must take responsibility for the results.

Frank Rich of that PGM, NYTimes division, joins in:

It is getting louder each day of the Obama presidency. No one, not even Fox News viewers, can say they weren’t warned.

There can of course be a valid connection made between inflammatory rhetoric and ensuing violence, even if certain connections made by the left are absurd on their face and self serving politically. Some are pushing back and legitimately pointing to the inflammatory rhetoric we have heard and still hear from the left about the right, very notably during the Bush years, that did not cause any qualms in the PGM or among Democrats. However, I’d like to give three examples among many of rhetoric and affiliated actions by Democrats for which a convincing argument can be made that they encouraged, supported and even culminated in violence against - our men and women in uniform.

The Kerry Campaign - 2004

In September of 2004 we were engaged both in an increasingly violent war in Iraq and a domestic election. The previous June, Ayad Allawi was unanimously elected by the Iraqi Governing Council to be the Interim Prime Minister of Iraq, thus receiving the handover of sovereignty from the U.S. Allawi had received what would normally for a Democrat be the closest thing in this world to a Divine mandate – the unanimous endorsement of the 15 nations of the United Nations Security Council!

That September Allawi came to address the U.S. Congress as the head of an allied state in a time of war. Allawi’s people were fighting and dying in the same cause as our troops and Allawi himself (and his family) were in constant extreme danger. Yet a significant number of Democrat Senators and House members boycotted the speech in which Allawi thanked the United States for standing with the Iraqis and for freedom! They were concerned that listening to an ally might help the Bush campaign!

If that weren’t enough for the Democrats to seek to undermine an ally of a fragile but free government (The Poles and Czechs understand this) in a time of war and provide some good PR for Al Qaeda in Iraq, candidate John Kerry’s senior advisor and spokesman Joe Lockhart was quoted saying of Allawi’s speech:

The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips.

The actions of Democrats followed by the political rhetoric of a high level functionary close to the man who might be the next President certainly gave credence to what were recruiting and propaganda claims being made by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni Insurgency and Muqtada al Sadr – that the Iraqi Interim Government was a puppet of an imperialist America and Iraq was not and would not be free.

Former Vice President Al Gore -2006

In February 2006, former VP and questionable prognosticator Al Gore was paid a sum believed to be well into six figures to speak in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Gore used the occasion to stir up anti-American sentiment. He told his Saudi audience and was quoted in the Middle Eastern media as saying that in the aftermath of the 911 attacks, Arabs were:

…indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa and not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable.

Those claims by Gore were lies, yet these too could certainly promote and feed an atmosphere and climate of anti-American hatred in the Middle East, thereby providing recruiting help to, say, Al Zarqawi! Gore, from a credible position of former VP presented the US as a bigoted anti-Arab country, which country had fought to liberate Arab Kuwait, prevented the slaughter of Shia Arabs in Iraq for well over a decade (No-Fly Zones) and was then fighting for the freedom of all Iraqi Arabs.

Congressman Jack Murtha – 2006

It is common knowledge that Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are close, Murtha having helped Pelosi gained the Speakership. Pelosi then endorsed Murtha to be the Democratic Majority Leader in November 2006, well after Murtha made his inflammatory and false remarks the previous May about the Haditha Marines:

It [Haditha] is as bad as Abu Ghraib, if not worse. (May 2006)

They [the Marines/Military] knew the day after this happened that it was not as they portrayed it. They knew that they (Marines) went into the rooms, they killed the people in the taxi. There was no firing at all. And this comes from the highest authority in the Marine Corps, so there's no question in my mind… (May 2006)

There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood… (May 19, 2006)

They actually went into the houses and killed women and children. And there was about twice as many as originally reported by Time… (May 19, 2006)

Of the four Marines that faced charges for the actual deaths in Haditha, three have been exonerated or had the charges dropped. The last one, who might still face court martial, SSgt. Wuterich, is charged with nine counts of voluntary manslaughter. Even if eventually found guilty, voluntary manslaughter is a far cry from cold blooded murder! Within two months of Murtha publicly judging and condemning the Marines before they had a chance to defend themselves or the facts were fully established, Al Qaeda released a video with Adam Gadahn, aka Azzam the American, claiming:

You [American soldiers] know you've already killed enough innocents to make Ghengis Khan recoil in horror and revulsion and that the atrocities you committed at Haditha...represent only a small part of the larger bloodier picture…

That a Democrat Congressman of many years who was routinely described in our media as an expert on the military would make such inflammatory charges of course gave them credence, in the Al Qaeda recruiting ground of the Middle East and even in the Democratic political environs of Illinois.

Lest anyone think that the Gates/Crowley affair was the only time our President took a left ‘politically correct’ position before learning the facts, Senator Barack Obama from a June 28, 2006, interview on Hannity and Colmes being specifically asked about Murtha’s rhetoric:

Alan Colmes: When Jack Murtha talks about civilians being killed in cold blood by troops, is that hurtful to the Democratic Party (Ed note: not harmful to the troops? Is that rhetoric difficult for you to embrace...?...Did Murtha say that in the right way?

Senator Obama: You know, I don't have the exact quotes in front of me. What I know is here is a guy who served our country. I would never second guess John Murtha... I think he's somebody who knows of which he speaks.

If the charge by a Democratic Congressman was good enough for a brilliant Democratic Senator and future President, it must certainly have been good enough to enrage recruits for the purpose of killing our sons and daughters.

Congressman Joe Wilson was rebuked by a resolution of the Democratic Congress for not apologizing to the Congress for shouting “You lie!” at President Obama. Congressman Murtha has resisted years of requests for an apology to the Haditha Marines. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the other Democrats in Congress to be concerned with a Murtha apology for a slanderous accusation made by one of theirs that was a propaganda boon for those who recruited the killers of our young!

Obama-Paterson: Really All About Hillary?

The Obama-Paterson contretemps will very likely turn out to be a blunder, but it was not necessarilly stupidity. This could be cold political deal making between Obama and likely not just Hillary, but the Clinton team of Hill and Bill. Both sides have an interest in Paterson declining to run and for Obama that has little or nothing to do with the Congressional races.

When the NYTimes reported that the discussions between Obama’s people and the Governor’s office ‘were intended to be confidential’, Ed Morrissey at HotAir erupted with:

The White House idea of “confidential” must be “leaking to everyone who has a
pen and a piece of paper…”

The leaking could be intentional and meant to frame the story by making it about concern for Congressional seats in the next election, and if so, so far that has worked. That’s the subterfuge! RNC Chair Michael Steele, in his snort worthy playing of the race card against Obama comes very close to the nub when he points out the NJ Governor Corzine, also up for reelection is just about as low in the polls as Paterson but is not being asked to step aside.

Here is, quite possibly, ‘The Deal’:

Hillary is getting out of the Obama administration. She has been treated badly as Secretary of State and is wise enough to recognize Obama’s foreign policy as a slow motion train wreck in process. She also realizes that she will be blamed by Obama’s allies and much of the media for anything that threatens the Obama image.

She is not going to retire from politics and therefore needs a career move and the best bet is Governor of NY. However, that may be a tough race even if nominated by her party if she faces Rudy Giuliani in the general election. She could need every bit of the NY Democrat coalition to win – including African-Americans. That coalition might be fractured if her second electoral contest in two years is once again Hillary against, well, the Black guy! She may beat Paterson for the nomination only to lose the election. Hence, get Obama to move Paterson aside without a primary fight.

For Obama, the resignation of his Secretary of State eight or nine months into his administration would not be advantageous and might cause some unwanted scrutiny and serious criticism of his, not her, foreign policy. There may be pieces written in even otherwise Obama-friendly journals that contain some combination of ‘foreign policy’, ‘smart diplomacy’, ‘naïve’ and ‘shambles’ in the same paragraph. But if Hillary is not seen as jumping into the life boat because of the increasingly steep slant of the Titanic’s deck but because, say, in these trying economic times she believes she has to help her beloved fellow New Yorkers, Obama can possibly escape or largely mitigate the embarrassment. Further, if Hillary left and the speculation was focused on her treatment in the Obama administration, whither those Hillary voters when Obama runs for reelection?

This may well be a behinds the scenes deal, and I believe Paterson might know that and resents it.

President Obama and Gosh, More Talking!

The President’s whirlwind tour of the Sunday talks is going kind of as expected.

On “The Week” with George Stephanopoulos there was this exchange:

STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN?

OBAMA: You know, if -- frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely. I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Both the Senate and the House have voted to cut it off.

OBAMA: You know, what I know is, is that what I saw on that video was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're not committing to -- to cut off the federal funding?

OBAMA: George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to.

It would have been nice if George followed up with 'investigated by your Justice Department?'.

President-elect Obama promised:

We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way.

Yet he didn't know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of what he called 'federal money' but many of us prefer to call 'our money'! Hasn’t the President been promising that he can pay for his health care reform in large part by rooting out corruption and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid? Wouldn’t rooting out fraud and corruption that negatively impacts the federal budget in any respect be a priority, even if it is fraud and corruption perpetrated a political ally like ACORN? Might it help demonstrate that he actually can and will root out such?

During the campaign, candidate Obama said that a President should be able to multitask. Of course, President Obama can do so. Even as he was working tirelessly to pass health care reform he still found the time to pay attention to Poland! The President has used this ‘not the biggest issue facing the country’ dodge before when he has wanted to avoid an issue, yet he can discuss the serious issue of World Series prospects on “Meet the Press” on the same day!

Oh, and he is African-American! Must observe the proprieties and not disappoint Maureen Dowd!!

Obama’s Real Van Jones Problem

As late Friday’s have historically served as document dumps for the White House, we now have late Saturday serving as a czar dump. Van Jones is out, and with his resignation the Obama White House hopes to move past the matter. Byron York noted the recent past, giving the Obama administration justification for the hope that the path forward will be made smooth by many in media.

Of all that has come to light in just a few days about Van Jones, I believe the most damaging to President Obama would have been Jones’ association with and support of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia has spent years on death row, convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

Jones is not only a Mumia supporter but produced and appeared on a music CD with Mumia. For a taste of what that contained (courtesy of Verum Serum), at 4:40 we hear Jones say:

“We have this now global struggle against the U.S. led security apparatus and military agenda that impacts people here and impacts people around the world and we have to see our problems as linked.”

I have thought for a while that a considerable catalyst to President Obama’s precipitous slide even presaging the health care imbroglio was the Henry Louis Gates - Sgt. Crowley affair, wherein before knowing the facts of the matter, President Obama sided publicly with the arrogant and class conscious Gates against the decent and professional cop, Crowley. The blush was off the rose on Obama’s post racialism with that, leading, I believe, to many who had had “hope” being, well, disappointed and feeling tricked.

At the time of the Gates-Crowley affair it was missed by the media (of course) and the Senate (which doesn’t have to advise and consent on czars) that a high level administration appointee was a supporter and collaborator with a convicted cop killer! Had that been known at the time, it might have indicated a certain pattern of thought.

The Obama administration is hoping that the Van Jones story dies out totally before the Mumia connection becomes generally known, and well they should. The media is already obliging, as a search on Google News shows not one single major media outlet connecting Van Jones to Mumia.

Van Jones and the Annenberg Challenge

"If one asks what does President Obama’s Green Jobs czar Van Jones (assuming he still holds the position as of this being read) and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) have to do with each other, the answer is both nothing and everything. Jones was not a part of CAC, but in the history of Barack Obama’s association with and leadership of CAC we see exactly why Van Jones was made an unconfirmed czar overseeing the expenditure of $30 billion dollars of the people’s money as we also see the active hand of President Obama."

Read the rest at The American Thinker.