Here's a link to Hot Air, quoting the operative language of the petition.

Really? You want to do that? For me?

Why I'm sorry -- I didn't get you anything! I didn't know we were exchanging Christmas-in-August gifts this year!

Hey, you know what else would be a good idea? Petitioning the President to vow to never veto a bill passed to him by Congress. It's about time Obama started respecting the will of the Democratic Congress, right!

Come on, Kossies! Get Obama to swear off the veto pen!

Posted by: Ace at 09:16 AM | Comments (114)
Post contains 121 words, total size 1 kb.

Commenters will say, "Hey! We told you that, Dummy! We told you that three days ago! It was all over your own stupid blog!"

Yeah, I know. I just was too tired (and lazy, don't forget lazy) to put the pieces together in a post.* I also knew someone else would do a linkable post on it. I figured Gateway Pundit.

But Tom Maguire at Just One Minute sent this.

Here is a link to the bio of her boss, John Lumpkin. And if 1991 is ringing a bell, it might be because that is the year that White House consigliere Valerie Jarret hired a young Michelle into Mayor Daley's office.

Let a few years go by and we can find Mr. Lumpkin and Ms. Obama on the same page, literally if not metaphorically - on p. 36 of the annual report for the University of Chicago Hospitals, we see that Mr. Lumpkin is on the Board of Trustees and when Ms. Obama was Vice President for Community and External Affairs.

Add in she was active in the Urban League and her husband ran (unsuccessfully) to capture the Democratic nomination for Congressman, and you have a woman here who's pretty darn plugged in to the same switchboard ferrying messages about selling Senate seats from Blago to Rahm Emmanuel.

* Actually a bigger part was worry. I don't break news that often and when I do I'm always very worried I've gone too far and haven't dotted every i and crossed every t, and that I'm letting my personal and partisan interest outrace my judgment. So in a case like this I wind up deciding to just post what I definitely know, and leave it to someone else to carry it forward a little. Because I don't want to be the only guy out there.

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (106)
Post contains 330 words, total size 2 kb.

What could go wrong?

Mrs Clinton said the talks are due to begin on September 2 and will be hosted by President Barack Obama. She said she hoped a comprehensive peace agreement can be reached within one year.

"There have been difficulties in the past, there will be difficulties ahead. .. I ask the parties to persevere, to keep moving forward even through difficult times and to continue working to achieve a just and lasting peace in the region," Mrs Clinton said.

The leaders of Egypt and Jordan also have been invited to attend the first session.

In a statement, the Quartet - the EU, the UN, the US and Russia - said its members reaffirmed direct negotiations between the parties, "which can be completed within one year."

Well, Obama needed a "win" and I guess this will do in a pinch. As far as headlines go, it's better than "Obama Doesn't Care About 9/11 Families On Ground Zero Mosque" or "Obama Is A Muslim!".

For a guy who was supposed to be all about 'new politics' this is pretty much the same old, same old. When a President is in the dumps at home, they usually turn to a foreign affairs problem to change the subject. Given the intractable nature of the problem, I'd say like the guy in the Last Crusade, Obama has chosen poorly. Even more problematic for Team Obama is the fact that a high profile foreign affairs summit isn't exactly going to convince people he's all about "jobs, jobs, jobs", which happens to be one of the most important issues this fall.

As for the summit itself, call me a pessimist but my prediction is that in a year, this latest version of the "Peace Process" will amount to very little. The first stumbling block will hit pretty soon...Israel's settlement freeze is due to expire on September 26th. Obama and the Palestinians aren't fond of new settlements while those pesky Jews outrageously insist on doing whatever they want in their own country. What magic does Obama have for that relatively minor problem?

Despite the bleating of editorial pages here and in Europe, the real issue in the Mideast isn't this, it's Iran and it's nuclear program. There maybe some connections though....

The Obama administration, citing evidence of continued troubles inside Iran’s nuclear program, has persuaded Israel that it would take roughly a year — and perhaps longer — for Iran to complete what one senior official called a “dash” for a nuclear weapon, according to American officials.

...“We think that they have roughly a year dash time,” said Gary Samore, President Obama’s top adviser on nuclear issues, referring to how long it would take the Iranians to convert nuclear material into a working weapon. “A year is a very long period of time.”

American officials said the United States believed international inspectors would detect an Iranian move toward breakout within weeks, leaving a considerable amount of time for the United States and Israel to consider military strikes.

Considering the history of failure within the US intelligence community on this issue I don't take a great deal of comfort in their ability to forecast the state of Iran's program. I have even less confidence in the idea that this administration will act in a decisive way should they have credible evidence of Iran approaching the nuclear threshold.

Bottom line, brace yourself for fawning headlines.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:26 AM | Comments (97)
Post contains 578 words, total size 4 kb.

Presented without comment because really, there's nothing that can be said.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:06 AM | Comments (96)
Post contains 15 words, total size 1 kb.

And here I was worrying that voters would eventually wrap their minds around ObamaCare, not supporting it exactly, but getting used to it. Not opposing it outright or calling for repeal.

No fear of that now.

Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. Instead, the presentation is designed to win over a skeptical public, and to defend the legislation — and in particular the individual mandate — from a push for repeal.

[...]

The presentation concedes that groups typically supportive of Democratic causes — people under 40, non-college educated women, and Hispanic voters — have not been won over by the plan. Indeed, it stresses repeatedly, many are unaware that the legislation has passed, an astonishing shortcoming in the White House's all-out communications effort.

"Straightforward ‘policy’ defenses fail to [move] voters’ opinions about the law," says one slide. "Women in particular are concerned that health care law will mean less provider availbality – scarcity an issue."

The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House's first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed.

"Many donÂ’t believe health care reform will help the economy," says one slide.

The presentation's final page of "Don'ts" counsels against claiming "the law will reduce costs and deficit."

The strategists also told Democrats that they should start talking about "improving" ObamaCare. And that's really why this new strategy is good for us. Because you don't fix anything that ain't broke.

Voters already suspected that ObamaCare -- solely a Democratic creature -- was an abomination from the start. Why else hold special Christmas Eve sessions, pass portions of it at night, and bribe members to support it? But with this strategy, Democrats will have confirmed voters' savvy suspicions: ObamaCare is bad.

Why would voters who already dislike ObamaCare be receptive to arguments from its creators that they will fix their own monstrous creation...so long as they get reelected? (Answer: they won't.)

What fortuitous timing: Results from the latest CNN/Opinion Research poll on Obamacare:

Just 44 percent favor the health care mandate, which has yet to take effect. Nearly the same number – 45 percent – favored the bill when it passed. Forty-nine percent favored the mandate in November 2009.

Fifty-six percent oppose the mandate, up 3 percentage points from when the bill passed.

Unreported in Politico, but available in the full results (PDF), 56 percent oppose ObamaCare in its entirety (not just the individual mandate).

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:49 AM | Comments (124)
Post contains 446 words, total size 3 kb.

Brand Democrat™ from Slublog.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:34 AM | Comments (139)
Post contains 12 words, total size 1 kb.

Admiral Nelson had a brilliant strategy for the Trafalgar battle(1), one which he'd executed successfully in several prior battles - that being crash through the nicely ordered enemy ships of the line and rampage like a dervish on crack trusting his well trained and equipped captains and crews to seize and maintain initiative and brutally annihilate the enemy with better aim, greater rates of fire, and superior in close maneuver.

The Nelsonian strategy was simplicity itself, unlike a Montgomery during WWII who loved the set piece battle format; Nelson sought and thrived on the chaos of the conflict itself relying on that chaos to give his ships advantage. The French and Spanish enemies were, due to cultural and command structure differences more rigid and inflexible.

Seek and create chaos and confusion, and profit from it because you're better prepared for fighting in that situation than the opposition.

The Democrats are much like the French and Spanish, their tactics are predictable as the tides, and old as Methuselah. Their responses to attacks are scripted and rote, its the same responses you would have heard 30 years ago.

The difference this time, is the public is less inclined to buy their bullshit anymore. With 20+% of the public willing to believe Ogabe is a muslim, it seems clear that a whole suite of attacks that might have been considered marginal in the past, might just fly this year. Dive in, fling the poo, create the chaos, get the enemy rocked back on their heals wondering what truck just ran them over.

(1) An interesting, albeit quirky, Hari Seldonesque Pshcho Historical look at Trafalgar is Seize The Fire by Adam Nicolson ($1 at Dollar Tree). Nicolson essentially does a pretty complete PsychoHistory on the century prior to Trafalgar up through Trafalgar and concludes (not surprisingly), that the battle was essentially won long before it was ever even envisioned by Nelson even though the Brits were outmanned, outgunned, and further from home port than the opposition. Nicolson's claim, which is not unjustified, is the telling shots belonged to cultural and military organizational differences. Of course unlike Seldon, Nicolson is predicting the past which is pretty much a slam-dunk.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:57 PM | Comments (417)
Post contains 374 words, total size 2 kb.

Swedish Helicopter Heist Caught on CCTV

Here's video of an amazing bank heist that took place in Stockholm, Sweden last year. The robbers used a helicopter to land on the bank's roof then explosives and gas-powered saws to get to the money stored inside. They grabbed more than $5 million dollars in cash and then used the helicopter to make their getaway.

Police were alerted but by the time the SWAT team battered their way inside the thieves had already fled and the helicopter was later found abandoned outside the city. Oh and why didn't the police use their own helicopters to chase them? Well someone had planted a phony bomb in the police hangar so they couldn't do anything until the bomb squad checked it out.

It was a clean getaway but the robbers were still caught due to a tip from Serbian police. Their trial starts next month and they're facing up to 10 years. But so far none of them are telling where the money is.

Someone should really make a movie about this.

Oh and these kind of incredible heists seems to take place fairly frequently in Sweden and Norway. According to a co-worker of mine who worked in Scandiland for years it's because the Scandi authorities are very naive about crime and so criminals from other countries head there due to the easy pickings

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:55 PM | Comments (490)
Post contains 761 words, total size 8 kb.

The new argument? The argument put forth in an column that is a "must-read," CNN editorializes?

What is this new argument, you ask?

Well, here is the new argument. As promised.

Are you ready?

No, I mean, are you really ready?

Because this is quite new.

Okay, enough preamble. CNN's new argument, their new take is...

You're all racist.

Okay, it's not new-new, but certainly it is new enough for CNN to spend an entire day on.

Question: Is it time to return the Stars and Bars to the South Carolina State House?

I ask because I thought the rule was that an understandable revulsion to the memory of an emotionally-wounding time was enough to win out over a noisy, self-promoting group's determination to advertise its views in a prominent, highly-symbolic area... but now I find that's not so true, not so true.

So -- Confederate flag at the SC statehouse again?

Because the people flying the flag there say they too have good, non-objectionable motivations for doing so -- a reminder of heritage, honoring the dead, etc., etc. But previously we have shown skepticism towards their claimed motivations, and also decided their motivations were irrelevant -- it wouldn't even matter, we decided, if their motives were pure; the important thing was the Confederate flag was too hurtful to have near the people's house of government.

Again, so I now find out this isn't the rule anymore.

So if it's not the rule anymore: Why can't we have the Confederate flag at the SC statehouse?

Yes, I know, blacks (and others, including whites) consider it offensive and a nasty reminder of a national tragedy; but the spokesmen from Cordoba House have a response to such concerns, and that response is "Fuck yourself, get over it already."

So why doesn't that work in South Carolina, too?

Why should we not take this "Fuck yourself, get over it already" principle of moderate Muslim outreach wide and apply it to other emotionally-charged scenarios?

Posted by: Ace at 05:21 PM | Comments (224)
Post contains 374 words, total size 2 kb.

According to John Bolton and other experts the Iranians are expected to start putting in the fuel rods into the Bushehr reactor over the weekend at the latest.

Once theyÂ’re in place any attack on the nuclear plant will result in radioactive fallout over populated areas and no doubt severe responses from even relatively friendly countries. The attack in 1981 on IraqÂ’s Osirak reactor took place before the fuel rods were loaded for this very same reason.

Of course the Bushehr reactor is actually the lesser worry since it wouldnÂ’t be able to produce enough plutonium for a weapon for several years. ItÂ’s the labs in the North concentrating highly enriched uranium that are likely to produce the first bomb.

ItÂ’s currently 5am on Friday in Iran. So this is about the last possible moment for Israel to take out IranÂ’s nuclear program cleanly.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 04:38 PM | Comments (139)
Post contains 156 words, total size 1 kb.