Interest rates will stay in current range through 2015 and the Fed will be buying $40 Billion worth of mortgage backed bonds per month...until morale improves.

This is what makesthe biggest difference: the Fed isn't announcing a limited amount of purchases. It's an open-ended program to buy bonds until the economy improves. From the statement: "If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability."

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke used to be jokingly called "Helicopter Ben". He's certainly living up to that name, though it should be updated to "Drone Ben".

As always my question is, if running up tremendous public debt and inflating the currency is the key to prosperity, why isn't Zimbabwe considered the most prosperous nation on Earth?

James Pethokoukis reacts.

What Romney should say: Is this Obama's "New Foundation" economy? Built on trillion dollar deficits and cheap money?

We are so screwed.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:46 AM | Comments (212)
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I just copied the WFB's headline because I don't really have words of my own right now, except for WHAT THE F*CK!!?

U.S. Marines defending the American embassy in Egypt were not permitted by the State Department to carry live ammunition, limiting their ability to respond to attacks like those this week on the U.S. consulate in Cairo.

Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson “did not permit US Marine guards to carry live ammunition,” according to multiple reports on U.S. Marine Corps blog spotted by Nightwatch. “She neutralized any US military capability that was dedicated to preserve her life and protect the US Embassy.”

Can this possibly be true? All the articles I could find on it with a quick web search point back to the same source as the WFB piece, so the accuracy level is at least equal to or greater than Brian Ross's.

It also fits with the shameful reaction of the embassy on Tuesday and with the excuses made for not fortifying the "interim" consulate in Benghazi.

You'd think a president who was so super awesome that he doesn't need intelligence briefings would be all over this kind of thing, but you'd be wrong.

And as a reminder, this administration loves them some unarmed Marines:

Before Panetta came into the hall, Sgt. Maj. Brandon Hall told the more than 200 Marines in the room to take their weapons outside and leave them there. Afghan troops had already been told not to bring their guns in.

"Something has come to light," Hall told the troops. It was a highly unusual order, and some in the audience said they had never seen that happen before.

Maddening.

Posted by: andy at 08:21 AM | Comments (306)
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Clearly, the timing of Mitt Romney's statement on the Mideast is to blame.

The Office of the Special Counsel on Wednesday announced it was citing Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius for illegally making political comments at an official event, which is a violation of the federal Hatch Act.

The counsel found that she made the comments when delivering the keynote speech at the Human Rights Campaign Gala in February.

After the apparent Hatch Act violation emerged, her office reclassified the trip from official to political and she reimbursed the government for associated expenses.

Wait. She retroactively reclassified the event and that makes it ok?

Man, I'm so old I remember when breaking federal law was enough to get you sent to jail. It's almost as if the same rules don't apply if you're a Democrat.

Even if there were no criminal charges brought you'd think a sense of decency would lead an official to resign for this kind of misconduct. Of course first you'd have to find a Democrat with a sense of decency. Good luck with that.

Update: Here's how the process works from this point forward.

The matter now has been referred to President Obama, who has the statutory responsibility to take “appropriate action” in light of the OSC’s finding that Secretary Sebelius violated the Hatch Act. The presumptive penalty for a Hatch Act violation is termination from government employment, which, if challenged, can be reduced to a suspension of no less than 30 days without pay. Notably, a former U.S. attorney was suspended last year for 100 days for a violation that was considerably more nuanced than the violation by Secretary Sebelius.

Oh, I'm sure Obama will be really tough on her.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:04 AM | Comments (248)
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Oldtime Moronblogger Sobek opines on power, and the Arab Spring, over at Splitters.

Really good.

I'm taking a leap, linking this here. It's kind of a long column for the attention span of Morons such as yourselves.

You should probably set yourselves up with a snack, a drool rag, and your binky. Fortunately there's pictures to look at, and a link to a pretty good youtube video too.

Hey, how long has it been since we had a flame thread?

Posted by: LauraW at 06:10 AM | Comments (181)
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Clearly Mitt Romney's statement is to blame for the US losing a critical ally in the middle east.

Pakistan on the Med. What could go wrong?

President Barack Obama says the U.S. would not consider Egypt an ally, "but we don't consider them an enemy."

Obama said in an interview with the Spanish-language network Telemundo that Egypt is a "new government that is trying to find its way." And he warned that if the Egyptian government takes actions showing "they're not taking responsibility," then it would "be a real big problem."

Meanwhile, protesters angered by an anti-Islam film stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in Yemen's capital, Sanaa on Thursday. They were on the embassy's grounds but did not enter the building housing the offices. Demonstrators removed the embassy's sign on the outer wall and set tires ablaze. Once inside the compound, they brought down the U.S. flag and burned it.

What world does Obama live in that he thinks Egypt is some sort of never-never land between ally and enemy? Egypt is too big, too strategically located to be left to drift. I can't think of another major country that would fit this definition. China perhaps but they've gone from being an enemy (the Korean War) to something less than a friend or hot enemy. But that's progress in the right direction. Downgrading Egypt is a major foreign policy hit and one with potentially catastrophic consequences (war with Israel, the Suez Canal, intelligence sharing, etc).

If Egypt is no longer an ally, what possible rationale is there for continuing to send them over a billion dollars a year in foreign and military aid? And why was Obama pushing a billion dollars in debt forgiveness for a country that by his own admission is no longer an ally and by definition trending towards being an enemy?

Of course none of these questions will be asked by the media that openly declared war on Romney and the GOP yesterday. Yes, I know they have been at war all along but yesterday they took it up to eleven and it's only going to get worse.

Related enough: Obama is incompetent and disgusting. From his rally in Vegas held the same day new broke four American diplomats were killed in a terrorist attack.

“And obviously [our] hearts are broken for the families but I wanted to encourage those folks at the State Dept. that they were making a difference,” Obama told volunteer leaders in Las Vegas, according to the pool report. “The sacrifices that our troops and our diplomats make are obviously very different from the challenges that we face here domestically but like them, you guys are Americans who sense that we can do better than we’re doing….I’m just really proud of you.”

But the DMM won't say a word about this or question the propriety of Obama campaigning while the Mideast explodes, our embassies are attacked and our flag is burned.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:48 AM | Comments (263)
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Happy Thursday.

Feck. "Protestors" have stormed our embassy in Yemen and burned our flag. There are additional protests-cum-riots in Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, and Tunisia. I'm sure the D.C. press will be along any minute to explain how this is Romney's fault.

I had more to say at the Rumble yesterday on Obama's Libya policy. A taste:

The truth of the matter is that Obama tried his hand at humanitarian intervention on the cheap. He didn't do it because he thought it was right and hard. He did it because he thought it was right and easy. And you don't get top credit for doing what is easy. Obama thought he could be seen as a humanitarian savior by arming revolutionaries, providing them air and tactical support, and then letting them do the killing part. Perhaps he was trying to live up to that Nobel Peace Prize. Whatever the case, the President had no idea what the Libyan fighters would do after the killing part and no infrastructure in place to channel the violence that he had enabled back into some form of civil society.

Obama wanted to run on foreign policy? Alright, champ, let's talk about foreign policy.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (492)
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Let There Be Light: The Censored Documentary on Traumatized WWII soldiers

Made by a young John Huston for the Army in 1946:

With no political agenda, and anxious to keep scrupulously to the task he had been given, Huston applied to the letter the principle of objectivity he had followed in the two previous documentaries. For more than three months, he filmed the daily life of former combatants hospitalized at Mason General, a military hospital on Long Island. The courage and sense of sacrifice of these men was clearly portrayed, as the Pentagon had clearly requested. But equally apparent was the fact that some of them were utterly destroyed: their fear, their shame, and their tears showed clearly, as did their contempt for military authorities.

But in 1946, and especially in military psychiatry, the most widely accepted view was that soldiers who became mentally ill were psychologically weak or malingering.

The fact that film showed US Soldiers, not as the glorified heroes the public wanted, but as disabled veterans, meant that the film would be a huge propaganda disaster - likely compounded by the fact that most people saw these conditions as character flaws or shameful faking.

Today the military is much savvier regarding the effects of combat and PTSD is treated as a hazard of prolonged combat itself rather than a character flaw. Statistically any soldier - no matter how strong and well put together - will get PTSD if they're in combat long enough without a break.

It's hard to watch some of these interviews as the soldiers speaking are truly suffering - and their pain is further compounded by the shame of suffering from non-physical 'fake' injuries. And the doctors seem rather harsh and unempathetic to the men in front of them.

Some of the commenters have pointed out that this was how Army psychiatrists of the time were trained to deal with patients and that given the sheer volume of patients and short 8-week treatment program it would have been difficult to have been more personal. Luckily we've come a long way and I hope we treat today's returning troops better.

More here.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:22 PM | Comments (685)
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She's angry.

The media, meanwhile, is continuing to "ask questions" about the timing of Romney's statement, rather than the timing of military force to the area.

Yeah, Obama's ordered them in now. To make sure no one steals the dead bodies, I guess.

Would have been more helpful when they were alive. I don't know if dead bodies are really in great danger of being stolen.

But questions like "What should have been done to avert this?" are so Old Media. The New Media is all What Can We Do For Obama Today.

Today, four Americans dead in brutal assault in Al Qaeda stronghold of Benghazi. They were slaughtered while sitting in an unfortified consulate, defenseless.

When we return -- how this will impact Obama's chances in Ohio!

Obama Throws Cairo Embassy Under The Bus: We didn't do it! It was unauthorized!

So it appears that everyone agrees with Romney that the statement was wildly inappropriate.

So, um, what was today's temper tantrum by the media all about?

Posted by: Ace at 06:18 PM | Comments (144)
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On Fox.

Posted by: Ace at 05:03 PM | Comments (410)
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Drudge highlights part of the story that the LA Times, of course, does not.

The president was updated throughout the evening, and notified late Tuesday that Stevens was unaccounted for. Obama learned Wednesday that Stevens was confirmed dead Wednesday morning, the official said.

Man needs his rest. He's in Vegas right now. You can't do Vegas right if you're short of sleep.

By the way, the media is all dutifully reporting the Obama line: That while he is jetting his ass off to Las Vegas, "it's not a day of politics as usual" (via Mark Knoller) and that his Political Fundraiser With The Stars In Sin City will "fit the tone of the last 24 hours" (via @paconner).

So, you know, when he hits a Hard 8 at craps he will not cry out in glee, but will rather collect his earnings in a dignified, respectful way, a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders indicating that while he may be happy to win his bet, he's still thinking, sort of, about the four murders.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:24 PM | Comments (444)
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