…at blaming ‘radical Islam’ for terror attempts

Of course he does!

Despite crediting the Pakistani Taliban with fostering the recent failed car bombing in Times Square, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was reluctant Thursday to say radical Islam was part of the cause of that and other recent attacks.

Mr. Holder, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly balked at a half-dozen questions from Rep. Lamar Smith, the ranking Republican on the committee, about whether “radical Islam” was behind the attempted car bombing, last year’s so-called “underpants bomber” or the killings at Fort Hood in Texas.

“There are a variety of reasons why people do these things. Some of them are potentially religious,” Mr. Holder told the committee Thursday, though he would not go further than saying people who hold radical views may have “had an ability to have an impact” on Faisal Shahzad, the man the Justice Department says tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square.

There are a variety of reasons why people do these things

may have “had an ability to have an impact”…

Oh, yeah, this is the guy who declared that the Arizona illegal immigration law is so dastardly that he needs to take action against it, then admitted he hadn’t read the law.

What a friggin’ clown! I take pride in high ranking U.S. officials who address their respective offices in a mature, honest and informed manner. This jamoke is comic relief.

Of course, some of that is just his way of towing the Obama line.

The exchange comes as President Obama and Republicans spar over whether the administration is taking a tough-enough approach to the war on terrorism. Critics want the president to hone his criticism, while he and his advisers have sought to avoid painting the conflict as a battle against a religious belief or its adherents.

The long and the short of it seems to be that everybody except the administration of B.Hussein Obama knows we are presently at war, as defenders, with Islamofacism, under constant threat of attack by Muslims, who started it and continue to strive to demoralize the citizens and governments of western nations in order to bring about change — change to the slavery of Islam and Sharia Law, but the Obamanation POV is that there is no danger to us from anyone even remotely connected with the Religion of Peace ©.

No, in all the terrorist attacks from the bombing of the Khobar Towers to 9/11 to the most recent Times Square mutt it was mere coincidence that everyone involved was Islamic and claimed their motives were related to their being Muslims.

The exchange comes as President Obama and Republicans spar over whether the administration is taking a tough-enough approach to the war on terrorism. Critics want the president to hone his criticism, while he and his advisers have sought to avoid painting the conflict as a battle against a religious belief or its adherents.

So let me understand this, now… we are not fighting radical Islam, we are at war with “the nameless enemy”.

Sure.

…rather well, good for politicians (except RINOs, as we learned recently from developments in Utah) on the right side of the aisle, not so good for those on the left.

A better title might have been Europhiles Beware.

From The Wall Street Journal and a link from Best of the Web Today:

One of the constant criticisms of Barack Obama’s first year is that he’s making us “more like Europe.” But that’s hard to define and lacks broad political appeal.

Until now.

Any U.S. politician purporting to run the presidency of the United States should be asked why the economic policies he or she is proposing won’t take us where Europe arrived this week.

In an astounding moment, to avoid the failure of little, indulgent, profligate Greece, the European Union this week pledged nearly $1 trillion to inject green blood into Europe’s economic vampires.

For Americans, this has been a two-week cram course in what not to be if you hope to have a vibrant future. What was once an unfocused criticism of Mr. Obama and the Democrats, that they are nudging America toward a European-style social-market economy, came to awful life in the panicked, stricken faces of Europe’s leadership: Merkel, Sarkozy, Brown, Papandreou. They look like that because Europe has just seen the bond-market devil.

Hmmmm, looks sorta’ like this “let’s be just like Europe” trip the lefties among us have been on for the last several years is coming back to bite them where the moon don’t shine, what with them trying to push us into the same barrel of socialism, in full view of the voting public, that’s dragging Old Europe’s collective economy down a deep, deep drain.

Good, let it bite ‘em hard and deep this November.

Barack Obama would never say it is his intention to make the U.S. go stagnant by suppressing wealth creation in return for a Faustian deal on social equity. But his health system required an astonishing array of new taxes on growth industries. He is raising taxes on incomes, dividends, capital gains and interest. His energy reform requires massive taxes. His government revels in “keeping a boot on the neck” of a struggling private firm. Wall Street’s business is being criminalized.

Economic stagnation arrives like a slow poison. Look at the floundering United Kingdom, whose failed prime minister, Gordon Brown, said on leaving, “I tried to make the country fairer.” Maybe there’s a more important goal.

A We’re-Not-Europe Party would promise the American people to avoid and oppose any policy that makes us more like them and less like us.

I’m all for it! Between a little of this and a little of that, the Democratic Party and B. Hussein Obama are already well into sowing the proverbial seeds of their own political destruction, but it couldn’t hurt to add that extra little push…

The entire OpEd is here.

…brought to us as always by a liberal.

From Michelle Malkin:

Let me summarize first lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity agenda: Shed as I say, not as I gain. While she crusades for organic foods and puts government pressure on corporations to stop marketing fast food and junk food to children, Mrs. Obama herself profited from the very same processed food industry she now demonizes.

It always seems to be the liberals who turn out to be making “the big bucks” off the selfsame businesses or industries they condemn to the rest of us.

(This is where you click on the above link and read the entire excellent column)

She saw no conflict then. And she sees no conflict now in wielding her East Wing clout to restrict the advertising free speech of the food industry that lined her pocketbook with big, fat paychecks. The Obama White House is on an insatiable control binge. No private space has been left behind — not your grocery aisles, not your children’s TV shows, not even your refrigerator.

Give the first lady this: She has an uncanny knack for wrapping her self-interests in the mantle of self-sacrifice and public service. It’s the Obama way.

And that’s a fact!

“America competes“, what a novel idea!

I can recall a time, many years back, when the Democrats were still playing on Team America, when they hadn’t yet sold their souls to far left liberals and begun monkeying around with the marketplace and the education system, that America was Numbah One, Numero Uno, Ichiban, da bee’z kneez. So what changed all that? Certainly not conservatives who maintain a deep respect for the Constitution and abhor big government and big government spending, government interference in private sector business practices, tax-and-spend policies that generate still higher taxes and promote massive foreign debt…

Now, we need to be able to compete, or so says Representative from Tennessee Bart Gordon, a Democrat who is reminiscent of a lean, unctuous version of Tommy Lee Jones playing a bad snake oil salesman.

So we have HR 5116, which would “invest in innovation through research and development, to improve the competitiveness of the United States”.

I watched the debates on C-Span yesterday, and it was plain to see that The Wicked Witch of the West Nancy Pelosi does indeed know how to deploy a Democrat majority, committee by committee, to advantage.

It wasn’t much of a debate, but then, to today’s Democrats, a debate is already over before it starts, so what we C-Span viewers got to see was a series of sales pitches by Democrats with an occasional break for a Republican point of view.

“The gentleman from Texas…”

Rep. Ralph Hall (R): “I reserve the balance of my time.”

“The gentleman from Tennessee…”

Rep. Bart Gordon (D): “I yield one and a half minutes to…”

And then, for ninety seconds, a Democrat representative would wax Utopian on the America Competes Act.

Then Hall yielded five minutes to California Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher, who spoke of the additional massive debt our country would have to accrue in order to support HD 5116, and let on as to how he opposed the bill, in part because it would further put the burden of paying the tab on futuire generations.

Then another ninety second yield by Gordon for another Democrat, and for several rounds, Ralph Hall, gentleman from Texas, reserved his time so that one Democrat after another, on Gordon’s dime, had the floor yielded a minute and a half at a time.

They managed to work in, between them, grants, loans, benefits for disabled veterans, what, exactly, they weren’t clear on, manufacturing jobs, jobs and more jobs, even “green” jobs, education, technology and even, I kid you not, local fire codes.

Somewhere in there, Rep. Hall yielded another five minutes, this time to California Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray, who expressed concern that among other things, the bill didn’t feature any realistic safeguards against monies evidently to come from HR 5116 being used to finance employment of illegal aliens.

Then more ninety second yields by Gordon and more pitching by Democrats.

Maybe a dozen of them had their minutes and a half, from Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, New Mexico, New York, Illinois, Ohio and a couple from California.

To listen to them talk, all of America’s ills will be miraculously cured with the passage of HR 5116, there will be a permanent rainbow, birds will sing in the trees and all will be right with every American.

What I actually heard was a typical Democrat cram session — take a basic bill and invite every Democrat on the committee, in this case the Science and Technology Committee, to stick in whatever his or her Lah Dee Dah cause of the moment happens to be, until it’s impossible to figure out what the purpose of the legislation was to begin with.

I will heartily admit that I’d have gotten a lot more information out of watching Lucy reruns on another channel than I did out of the “debate”, as I came away having very little idea what the Democrats were talking about during the entire time; It sounded a lot to me like sales pitches rather than statesmanly/stateswomanly advancement of principled and considered thought.

Rest assured, whatever they finally pass and Obama signs will be yet another left wing blitz in their assault on our Constitution, on America and all our great nation stands for.

…and thank G-d for it!

We read and hear all this doo doo from the left about the so-called “racist” “facistic” “un-American” Arizona anti-illegal immigration law, with politicians in California and other states turning into real bananas over it.

Hey, it’s not Arizona’s fault that the U.S. Government isn’t enforcing its own laws, and that this blatant negligence is hurting the state of Arizona’s economy while also subjecting those nearer the Mexican border to the constant threat of violence by drug gangs comprised of illegal immigrants.

However, other states, those whose voters and to some extent politicians are not of anal-cranial inversions, are beginning to jump on Arizona’s bandwagon.

I applaud these states.

A controversial law passed in Arizona giving state and local police the right to arrest anyone reasonably suspected of being an illegal immigrant is catching on nationwide, with lawmakers and others in several states considering similar legislation.

Concerned about the federal government’s failure to secure the nation’s borders, legislators and political candidates from Georgia to Colorado have introduced bills to beef up local immigration enforcement, have promised to do so or said they would support such legislation if offered.

“With the federal government currently AWOL in fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities to protect American lives, property and jobs against the clear and present dangers of illegal-alien invaders, state lawmakers … are left with no choice but to take individual action to address this critical economic and national security epidemic,” said Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe.

Mr. Metcalfe, a Republican who introduced legislation last week modeled on the Arizona law, said his bill would give “every illegal alien residing in Pennsylvania two options: Leave immediately or go to jail.”

His bill would, among other things, give state and local law enforcement officials full authority to apprehend Pennsylvania’s estimated 140,000 illegal immigrants and require law enforcement officers to attempt to verify the immigration status of suspected illegal immigrants. It also would make it a criminal offense for illegal immigrants to fail to register as foreigners or to have proof that they did.

Other states, such as South Carolina, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Maryland, North Carolina, Texas, Missouri, Nebraska and Idaho are looking into passing similar legislation.

Bravo!

Naturally, simpering, backside gourmands of Obama’s Socialist Circus of the Far Left are hoping to stomp on Arizona’s right as a sovereign state of America, using the usual scuzzy liberal resort of “civil rights”, the same ones the liberal establishment would deny those of us on the right for political expedience in order to preserve the anti-constitutional, propagandized socialist republic into which they’re turning America.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Sunday said the Justice Department is considering a federal lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration law. He told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the lawsuit could challenge whether the law would lead to civil rights violations.

Yeah, like that guy.

…seems to be getting off to a good start, and RINOs are not exempt.

Republican Sen. Bob Bennett was thrown out of office Saturday by delegates at the Utah GOP convention in a stunning defeat for a once-popular three-term incumbent who fell victim to a growing conservative movement nationwide.

Bennett’s failure to make it into Utah’s GOP primary — let alone win his party’s nomination — makes him the first congressional incumbent to be ousted this year and demonstrates the challenges candidates face from the right in 2010.

“The political atmosphere obviously has been toxic, and it’s very clear that some of the votes that I have cast have added to the toxic environment,” Bennett told reporters, choking back tears.

“Added to the toxic environment”, indeed.

The S.O.B. sold out every conservative — hell, every American — by voting for what amounts to the imposition of socialism at the cost of the erosion of the liberty secured for us at great cost by our founding fathers.

Bennett was under fire for voting to bail out Wall Street, co-sponsoring a bipartisan bill mandating health insurance coverage and for aggressively pursuing earmarks. He tried to reassure delegates Saturday, before any voting, that he is a fiscal conservative.

He tried to reassure delegates Saturday, before any voting, that he is a fiscal conservative

Sure, by, say, Angela Davis’ standards…

He should beware not to allow the door to hit him on the hindquarters on the way out.

Bennett’s much needed downfall also receives honorable mention over at GM’s Place.

…actually got the justice they deserved after all?

Heretofore, I was laboring under the impression, based on what I’d read, that these scalliwags (ARGH!) were going to end up being bound over to some mares-eat-oats liberal international court out of Kenya.

However, that was not to be.

The pirates seized by a Russian warship off the coast of Somalia have been released because of “imperfections” in international law, the Defense Ministry said Friday, a claim that sparked skepticism — and even suspicion the pirates might have been killed.

One can only hope.

Authorities initially said the pirates would be brought to Russia to face criminal charges for hijacking a Russian oil tanker. But Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Alexei Kuznetsov told The Associated Press on Friday that the pirates had been released.

Kuznetsov declined to elaborate on the purported legal flaws that prompted the release and it was unclear how the seizure of the tanker might be legally different from last year’s alleged hijacking of the Russian-crewed freighter Arctic Sea.

That vessel allegedly was seized by pirates in the Baltic Sea off Sweden and went missing for several days before a Russian warship tracked it down off West Africa. The eight alleged pirates were flown to Moscow to face eventual trial.

The Law of the Seas Convention, to which Russia is a signatory, says the courts of a country that seizes a pirated vessel on the high seas have the right to decide what penalties will be imposed.

My emphasis added, and that’s what I’m talkin’ about!.

It is the job of each government to protect its citizens and their, or said government’s property, right?

If I may note, through the Cold War years, a lot of entities, governments, terrorist organizations and insurrectionists, had no problem messing around, or worse, with most western nations, citizens and so forth. The Brits, the French, anybody who got in the way got revolution, terrorism, heartbreak of every description… But rarely the Soviets.

Why? Because they were known to retaliate harshly in response to attacks.

So perhaps Russia is continuing in the same “smite us on one cheek, we’ll smash you on the other” policy.

Looking out for their citizens.

When the Soviets captured Mujahedin guerillas during their war in Afghanistan thirty years ago, they didn’t use the GITMO approach, giving the prisoners Korans, religiously agreeable cuisine or an arrow on the cell floor showing, for prayer purposes, the direction of Mecca.

Au contraire, they beat them, tortured them brutally and generally treated them like bloody pieces of inconsequential meat.

I think that, if it is indeed the case that the Russians meted out a bullet in the back of the head and a push over the side to each of the captured pirates, they were using sound startegy and common sense by sending a clear message to the pirates’ colleagues who are still out there: Don’t mess with Russian vessels.

But what to do with pirates has become a murky problem. Some countries are wary of hauling in pirates for trial for fear of being saddled with them after they serve prison terms, and some propose that pirates taken to Kenya for trial.
Kuznetsov appeared to echo those concerns when asked why the pirates who seized the tanker were released.

“Why should we feed some pirates?” he asked. He did not give specifics of the pirates’ release, but the official news agency ITAR-Tass quoted a ministry source as saying they were “sent home,” unarmed and without navigational devices, in the small boats they had used to approach the tanker.

Which might mean: “They’ll possibly succumb to the vagaries of weather and the ocean, dying at sea, never to be seen again.”

Good!

…I have to give credit where credit is due, even if it hurts (ouch!).

To tell you the truth, I’m somewhat impressed.

While our socialist president and his administration are beyond weak where homeland security is concerned (I wouldn’t hire Janet Napolitano as a security guard in a pet shop), Barack Hussein apparently realizes how important it is that we win in Afghanistan.

As I posted once before, a loss in Afghanistan would mean that the Taliban and their al-Qaeda butt buddies would be in a position to join their Islamofacist allies in Pakistan and help those evil Mohammedans overthrow the government in Islamabad (yes, Islam is bad, but that’s beside the point).

That, in turn, would give the forces of Islamofacism possession of a nuclear armed country from which to employ said nuclear arms in their war against We, The Infidels and as we know, those madmen and madmanettes wouldn’t hesitate, just as Ahmadmanjihad in Iran won’t hesitate once he’s got his nukes on-line and on the business ends of appropriate delivery systems, to commence a nuclear holocaust.

But once again, I digress.

From today’s L.A. Times:

The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s border region, according to current and former counter-terrorism officials.

The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush administration and continued by President Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as “pattern of life” analysis, using evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations.

Yes, B. Hussein Obama, demonstrating something of the will to beat the Taliban, has continued the use of drones to wax terrorists who are badly in need of waxing, in an effort to wage a winning war, despite the fact that this kind of thing would seem to be totally counter to the sort of Queensbury Rules approach most “progressives” would prefer to apply to a war against a profoundly malevolent enemy who is chaffing at the bit to butcher every infidel, man, woman and child, they can lay hands on.

The information then is used to target suspected militants, even when their full identities are not known, the officials said. Previously, the CIA was restricted in most cases to killing only individuals whose names were on an approved list.

The new rules have transformed the program from a narrow effort aimed at killing top Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders into a large-scale campaign of airstrikes in which few militants are off-limits, as long as they are deemed to pose a threat to the U.S., the officials said.

Instead of just a few dozen attacks per year, CIA-operated unmanned aircraft now carry out multiple missile strikes each week against safe houses, training camps and other hiding places used by militants in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.

As a matter of policy, CIA officials refuse to comment on the covert drone program. Those who are willing to discuss it on condition of anonymity refuse to describe in detail the standards of evidence they use for drone strikes, saying only that strict procedures are in place to ensure that militants are being targeted. But officials say their surveillance yields so much detail that they can watch for the routine arrival of particular vehicles or the characteristics of individual people.

“The enemy has lost not just operational leaders and facilitators — people whose names we know — but formations of fighters and other terrorists,” said a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We might not always have their names, but … these are people whose actions over time have made it obvious that they are a threat.”

Great! Kill ‘em all, or as close as you can come…

At any rate, I just thought that a president with whose every other aspiration for America and every other policy I take unmitigated umbrage should get at least two “attaboys” and one “way to go” for not discontinuing this particular Bush-initiated strategy.

President Bush secretly decided in his last year in office to expand the program. Obama has continued and even streamlined the process, so that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta can sign off on many attacks without notifying the White House beforehand, an official said.

Missile attacks have risen steeply since Obama took office. There were an estimated 53 drone strikes in 2009, up from just over 30 in Bush’s last year, according to a website run by the New America Foundation that tracks press reports of attacks in Pakistan. Through early this month, there had been 34 more strikes this year, an average of one every 3 1/2 days, according to the site’s figures.

{Above emphasis mine}

Go get ‘em, B. Hussein. Kill ‘em all, and let Allah sort ‘em out!

…Spetznazty turn of events (for some Somalians).

It elates me to no end when I see waterborne turds such as these get their comeuppance.

A Russian warship hunted down an oil tanker hijacked by Somali pirates and special forces rappelled on board Thursday, surprising the outlaws, who surrendered after a 22-minute gunbattle. Twenty-three Russian sailors were freed.

The dramatic Indian Ocean rescue came a day after pirates seized the tanker, which was heading toward China carrying $50 million worth of crude. One pirate was killed and 10 others were arrested, officials said.

The Russian destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov had rushed to the scene following Wednesday’s seizure of the Liberian-flagged tanker, Moscow University.

Truncating…

“The Marshal Shaposhnikov came near the tanker and after establishing contact with the crew, who were taking cover in the machine area of the ship, opened warning fire from large-caliber machine guns and a 30mm artillery complex,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Special forces troops then rappelled down to the tanker from a helicopter, Rear Adm. Jan Thornqvist, the EU Naval Force commander, told an Associated Press reporter aboard the Swedish warship Carlskrona, which was patrolling 500 miles (800 kilometers) west of the rescue site.

The startled pirates opened fire and a gunbattle ensued that killed one pirate and wounded three before the hijackers surrendered, the Russian state news channel Rossiya-24 said. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Alexei Kuznetsov said a large weapons cache was seized.

My only comment here is that rather than have some special court, one that will undoubtedly be shackled by U.N. (Double SPIT!) oversight, try these flotsam, I’d like to see them dealt with by some hardliners from Moscow’s old guard, seeing as the hijacked ship was Russian, and punished according to ruthless old Soviet “justice”.

Or, “Hang ‘em from the highest yardarm in her majesty’s…”

…couldn’t blame George W. Bush enough for the federal response to Katrina, expending so much hot air that one has to wonder if perhaps that’s where they discovered what they thought was evidence of global warming, yet here we learn that Osama Ooops, sorry, Mohammed Damn! Sorry again, wait, I got it…Saddam Whoops, okay, B. Hussein Obama, Janet Napolitano and their Khoir of Kommunism aren’t even bothering to adequately fund and staff what is arguably the most effective (when staffed and funded to the point of operational status) search & rescue/ maritime emergency response organization in this nation.

I’m talking about the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard’s plans to cut 1,100 uniformed personnel in 2011 and reduce some of its missions at a time it must respond to an enormous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico certainly highlight the stark choices Coasties face over the next few years. Meanwhile, the Navy is moving into the littoral and increasing its focus on anti-drug and anti-piracy operations, raising questions about just what the Coastie’s future roles and missions will be. Robbin Laird, a defense consultant who has been working on Coast Guard issues, penned the following commentary about the Coast Guard and its future.

The Coast Guard is being starved of resources just when the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico seems to demonstrate again just how important the service’s expertise is in responding to such events.

The Obama administration is not fully funding for catastrophic spill equipment for the Coast Guard. And with elimination of the Coast Guard’s national strike fleet coordination center at Elizabeth City, North Carolina next year, the nation will lose a vital organization that manages all Coast Guard responses, and is also the key player for inter-agency coordination and leadership of scores of state and local, commercial and NGO responders.

Those groups play vital roles in preventing and responding to spills. Success requires the authorities possessed by the Coast Guard, highly competent people to run it and adequate equipment. The Coast Guard is the only maritime organization that can do these jobs on the vital waterways of our country and it does not have enough assets to do the job in the Gulf of Mexico, where a BP oil rig exploded last week, killing 11 and creating an enormous oil spill that threatens the Gulf Coast.

As a senior Coast Guard official commented in a New Orleans interview 10 days before the explosion that “we have not enough inspectors and inadequate numbers of ships and helos to secure the emerging deep water oil enterprise being built off of the Gulf Coast. This enterprise will be further and deeper than the current offshore oil drilling.

These facilitates will not only drill oil, but will process oil at sea. We must go further than we normally do to regulate and work with the private sector in this area.”

The Coast Guard has worked within its limits to deal with the crisis. The Department of Homeland Security’s leadership has not responded to the crisis by trying to get the USCG more deployed assets. Instead, the Administration has deployed Navy assets and has scurried to find private inspectors they can hire on a temporary basis to deal with the crisis.

The men and women of the Coast Guard are highly capable, brave and dedicated people, but like most services, they need to be properly equipped and their units realistically manned in order to do their job.

At this rate, it’ll be late January, 2013 before our government has its priorities straight!