McChrystal out; Petraeus picked for Afghanistan

McChrystal out; Petraeus picked for Afghanistan - Yahoo! News

More on this later, there is actually less. Much less than all that was reported said and if you you read the lame article for yourself you will see that this was just a fill in the blanks hit-piece with a point of view. It's right out of the Columbia School of Journalism and Broadcasting 101.

Even with the poor counterinsurgency strategy, lame rules of engagement and ridiculous time table, McChrystal must have read some history of Gen, Sherman, who began 'modern war'. Gen. Sherman hated the press. He considered them as his second enemy. Too bad McChrystal didn't remember his history and in turn, it's too bad the Commander-in-Chief doesn't know any, especially when in a war, it is to be won!

- Mooserider

From Laura Ingraham-

McChrystal met with Obama today after his rogue interview with Rolling Stone came to light. He offered his resignation and Obama accepted. General David Petraeus will take charge in Afghanistan. It's nice to see Obama affirming all of the decisions George W. Bush made, isn't it?

Here's a thought: Did Obama just tie up Petraeus through the 2012 election cycle?

Obama's energy pipe dreams and other "opiates of the masses"

Robert J. Samuelson - Obama's energy pipe dreams

The best summary is here:

Clouding the Debate

posted in News commentary | The Antiplanner

Amid the conservatives blaming the oil spill on Obama and liberals blaming it on America’s auto addiction, journalist Robert Samuelson gets it right, noting that one of the most worrisome consequences of the Gulf oil spill is a “more muddled energy debate.” All the proposals to end oil consumption, such as one to convert the U.S. to 95 percent renewables by 2050, are mere “pipe dreams,” says Samuelson in a possibly unintentional pun.

Of course, some people think we should build huge wind farms. But winds are so unreliable that Britain is paying wind farms to stop generating electricity when the wind is blowing because the electrical grid can’t handle it. (Winds in many places blow harder at night when demand for electricity is lowest.)

Meanwhile, someone from the Associated Press actually wrote a non-hysterical article about the oil spill. “The Mississippi River pours as much water into the Gulf of Mexico in 38 seconds as the BP oil leak has done in two months,” says the reporter. “The amount of oil spilled so far could only fill the cavernous New Orleans Superdome about one-seventh of the way up.”

Moreover, notes the Straight Dope, oil is biodegradable and nature will take care of most of the spilled oil. I don’t want to minimize the environmental problems with the spill, which are real, but we shouldn’t exaggerate them either. Nor should be base energy policy on a single event.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under News commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Inmates Get Homebuyer Tax Credits: Gov't Report

Inmates Get Homebuyer Tax Credits: Gov't Report - CNBC

Nearly 1,300 prison inmates wrongly received more than $9 million in tax credits for homebuyers despite being locked up when they claimed they bought a home, a government investigator reported Wednesday.

The investigator said 241 of the inmates were serving life sentences.

In all, more than 14,100 taxpayers wrongly received at least $26.7 million in tax credits that were meant to boost the nation's slumping housing markets, said the report by J. Russell George, the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration.

Some taxpayers received the credit for homes purchased before the tax break was started. In other cases, multiple taxpayers improperly used the same home to claim multiple credits. Investigators found one home that was used by 67 taxpayers to claim credits.

"This is very troubling," George said. "Congress created and modified the homebuyer credit to stimulate the economy and help taxpayers achieve the American dream, not to line the pockets of wrongdoers."

(continues go to link above)

Rod Blagojevich on Obama: "Do they think I would just appoint Valerie Jarrett for nothing?"

Rod Blagojevich on Obama: "Do they think I would just appoint Valerie Jarrett for nothing?" - The Blago Blog

By

Sarah Ostman

on June 22, 2010 12:21 PM |

Reporting with Nataska Korecki

On another tape just played by prosecutors, Rod Blagojevich is heard talking to John Harris over the phone on Nov. 3, 2008 -- the day before the election.

They are discussing how Barack Obama is sending two representatives -- union leaders Tom Balanoff and Andy Stern -- to visit to talk about Valerie Jarrett.

"Do they think I would just appoint Valerie Jarrett for nothing?" Blagojevich is heard saying of the Obama camp. "Just to make it happen?"

Judge Zagel has called a one-hour break for lunch. Court will reconvene at 1:30 p.m.

Judge halts Obama's oil-drilling ban - administration misled public.

Judge halts Obama's oil-drilling ban - Washington Times

"Much to the government's discomfort and this Court's uneasiness, the summary also states that 'the recommendations contained in this report have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.' As the plaintiffs, and the experts themselves, pointedly observe, this statement was misleading," Judge Feldman said in his 22-page ruling.

The Runaway General

The Runaway General | Rolling Stone Politics

Here is the link to the Gen. McChrystal Article in Rolling Stone Magazine!

Furious Obama summons Gen. McCrystal to explain comments - (How about they're true!)

Furious President Obama summons Gen. Stanley McCrystal to explain comments - Gordon Lubold - POLITICO.com

It contains a number of jabs by McChrystal and his staff aimed not only at the President but at Vice President Biden, special envoy Richard Holbrooke, Karl Eikenberry, the ambassador to Afghanistan, and others.

I've met Richard Holbrooke. I found him duplicitous and only interested in his own political advancement. Truth was alien to him.

The unfortunate thing is that Gen. McChrystal opened his big mouth around a doofus 'journalist' from Rolling Stone Magazine. Rolling Stone has not supported much about the American Military, even when P. J. O'Rourke wrote a column there. Gen. McChrystal should have known better, even if he didn't know any better (as reported) than to have voted for Obama. He should have resigned if he needed to go public or gone to his superiors, as all complaints flow uphill in the Army (see Military Dissent Should Be Private by Victor Davis Hanson).

Gen. Billy Mitchell was a rare exception, but he forced his own Court Martial. That was due to rapid changes in airplane technology that was totally ignored by the Chiefs of Staff after WWI.

McChrystal’s real offense

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
06/22/10 8:40 AM EDT

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta/file)

There is a lot of uproar about Gen. Stanley’s McChrystal’s disrespectful comments about his civilian bosses in the Obama administration, and President Obama would be entirely justified in firing McChrystal for statements McChrystal and his subordinates made to Rolling Stone. Obama is a deeply flawed commander-in-chief who doesn’t want to be fighting a war on terror, but he is the commander-in-chief. He should have a general who will carry out his policies without public complaint until the voters can decide to change those policies.
But the bigger problem with McChrystal’s leadership has always been the general’s devotion to unreasonably restrictive rules of engagement that are resulting in the unnecessary deaths of American and coalition forces. We have had many, many accounts of the rules endangering Americans, and the Rolling Stone article provides more evidence. In the story, a soldier at Combat Outpost JFM who had earlier met with McChrystal was killed in a house that American officers had asked permission to destroy. From the article:

The night before the general is scheduled to visit Sgt. Arroyo’s platoon for the memorial, I arrive at Combat Outpost JFM to speak with the soldiers he had gone on patrol with. JFM is a small encampment, ringed by high blast walls and guard towers. Almost all of the soldiers here have been on repeated combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and have seen some of the worst fighting of both wars. But they are especially angered by Ingram’s death. His commanders had repeatedly requested permission to tear down the house where Ingram was killed, noting that it was often used as a combat position by the Taliban. But due to McChrystal’s new restrictions to avoid upsetting civilians, the request had been denied. “These were abandoned houses,” fumes Staff Sgt. Kennith Hicks. “Nobody was coming back to live in them.”
One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. “Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,” the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. “Does that make any f–king sense?” Pfc. Jared Pautsch. “We should just drop a f–king bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?”

Obama's sprinkle of fairy dust-The Trouble with World Opinion

The Trouble with World Opinion - Mona Charen on National Review Online

Obama’s most concerted effort since taking office has been to improve America’s image in the Muslim world. The president’s first interview was granted to al-Arabiya. He traveled to Cairo to sprinkle the fairy dust and filmed a fawning New Year’s message to the gangsters who rule in Tehran. He has sent multiple envoys, most notably Sen. John Kerry, to woo Syria’s brutal Bashar al-Assad. With what result?

-go to the linked article-

Obama’s Thuggery Is Useless in Fighting Spill

Obama’s Thuggery Is Useless in Fighting Spill - Michael Barone - National Review Online

The South-side of the Nation isn't the South-side of Chicago!

Then there is Obama’s decision to impose a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the gulf. This penalizes companies with better safety records than BP’s and will result in many advanced drilling rigs being sent to offshore oil fields abroad.

The justification offered was an Interior Department report supposedly “peer reviewed” by “experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.” But it turns out the drafts the experts saw didn’t include any recommendation for a moratorium. Eight of the cited experts have said they oppose the moratorium as more economically devastating than the oil spill and counterproductive to safety.

This was blatant dishonesty by the administration, on an Orwellian scale. And it’s dishonesty in defense of a policy that has all the earmarks of mindless panic, that penalizes firms and individuals guilty of no wrongdoing, and that will worsen rather than improve our energy situation. Ineffective thuggery.

go to the link

I Like the BP Guy More than the Clowns Who Grilled Him

I Like the BP Guy More than the Clowns Who Grilled Him | Bernard Goldberg

And He's Not So Hot Either, but look who was conducting the show trial! -Mooserider

June 15, 2010 by Bernard Goldberg

Every time a bunch of congressmen get some capitalist “villains” in their cross-hairs – whether they’re bankers from Wall Street or carmakers from Detroit or most recently Tony Hayward from BP -- and take shots at them for hours on end on national television, I wind up rooting for the "bad guy."

It’s not that I think the money boys from Wall Street are saints, or the guys who run the car companies in Detroit are so wonderful, or that BP should be nominated for a Nobel Prize. It’s just that I have a hard time listening to a bunch of sanctimonious, windbag politicians who couldn’t run a lemonade stand put on their populist tinfoil hats and treat the poor bastards worse than they would treat Osama bin Laden if he showed up at one of their sub-committee hearings.

I watched the BP hearings and am wondering if I’m the only one who feels sorry for Tony Hayward. Look, if it turns out that what happened in the Gulf was more than a terrible accident, if it turns out that BP was cutting corners to increase profits, then it’s fine with me if the government brings criminal charges against anyone and everyone who was responsible. It just irks me to watch a parade of nitwits who live in glass houses throw boulders at the guy.

One of my fantasies is to see the tables turned on those politicians who treat CEOs like war criminals. Imagine if we could grill them they way they grill everyone else.

US: Congressman Waxman, is it true that you voted YES on Bill XYZ, a bill that ultimately cost American taxpayers $20 billion dollars when you told them it would cost $20 MILLION?

WAXMAN: It was George Bush’s fault.

US: Do the honorable thing, Congressman: RESIGN!

US: Is it true, Senator Reid, that you voted for numerous laws that cost us billions of dollars knowing full well we didn’t have that kind of money to spend?

REID: It was George Bush’s fault.

US: The Capitol Police are coming down the aisle to take you to Andrews Air Force Base for a flight to Syria where you will be undergo further – let’s call it – questioning.

US: And is it true, Congressman Rangel, that you – and the other bozos that somehow keep getting elected – have spent this country so far into a hole that we may never get out?

RANGEL: Are you asking me that because I’m black?

US: No, we’re asking you that because you were the head of the powerful Ways and Means committee until you resigned under pressure because of your tax problems.

RANGEL: It’s George Bush’s fault.

US: Senator Boxer, How in the world could you get us $12 trillion dollars in debt and make us so dependent on the Chinese government to buy our bonds in order to finance your reckless spending?

BOXER: It was George Bush’s fault.

US: Two words, Senator: Carly Fiorina.

US: Congressman Frank, would you resign here and now to make amends for your role in the financial meltdown – a meltdown that almost plunged this nation into a second Great Depression?

FRANK: It was Bill O’Reilly’s fault.

I don’t care if Bill O’Reilly grills these pinheads or if Chris Wallace or David Gregory or Candy Crowley subjects them to tough questions. I just can’t take it when the very people who have left us on the brink of financial disaster thanks to their reckless spending, go on national TV and pretend to be holier than everybody else.

Sorry, but I like the guy who runs BP more than I like any of the clowns who knocked him around the ring for six hours -- even though I don’t care if he gets fired for what his company did. I just hope the voters come to their senses this November and fire the mob that is demanding his head.