When soon-to-be-Prez Obama placed his hand on the Bible, the third word out of his mouth was “Hussein,” in the hopes that the Name We Could Not Say would seal the deal with the Muslims.  It turns out that was more an idea for the days, not the ages …

Unknown gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint outside the U.S. embassy in Yemen on Monday, hours after the mission said it received a threat, but a Yemeni official said no one was hurt.

“Police are chasing the car that opened fire. No one seems to have been hurt. It was a checkpoint leading to the embassy, and not close to the building,” the official told Reuters.

The embassy had earlier urged Americans to be cautious in the Arab country that has been the scene of al Qaeda attacks on Western interests. (source)

Welcome to the real world, Mr. Prez, where magic words and oratory skills just don’t work on crazed jihadists steeped in ignorance, trained in hatred, comfortable with death and unimpressed by first black presidents.

I’ve been criticized for being too tough too soon in “Obama Drama,” but hey, I didn’t post this picture, Michelle Malkin did, and we’re not doing this, the jihadists are:

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s I mentioned yesterday, liberal blogger Dan Chmielewski and I have been in a “wall war” on facebook over Gitmo and, with his last post, the whole raison d’etra of the Iran war.  Chmielewski posed a two-parter:

You didn’t answer the question Laer; what did we win? Seton Hall researchers put out an announcement that the ARMY got the numbers wrong with the 61/now 63 former detainees having rejoined the fray.

Al Qaeda was never in Iraq during Saddam’s reign and where there only on a token level after we invaded. Disagreements between the Sunni and the Sh’ia will more likely turn Iraq into a theocracy than a Democracy.

Let’s start with the numbers, then turn to what we’ve won in Iraq.

UPDATE: I’ve now added the discussion on what we won in Iraq.

Why would Chmielewski expect the number of detainees returning to battle to be low? Why would released detainees not go back to fighting us?  Did they learn the beauty of the American system in Guantanamo?  Did they renounce jihad as war against the infidel and accept it as war against inner demons?  Some, maybe, but more likely the detainees would respond the same way our servicemen and women would respond if the shoe were on the other foot.

If the Islamists were enlightened enough to even have prisoners instead of considering our captured soldiers to be nothing more than beheading and mutilation targets, and if they bent to the shrieks of the libs and released them, the released soldiers and Marines would be aching to get back into the fight.  Chmielewski is either not thinking this through, or he’s ascribing to the Islamists character traits I see no evidence of them having: pacifism, doubts about Islam, flexibility, complacency, love of America.  Is he giving the detainees some sort of hero status like Sacco, Vanzetti and the Rosenbergs, and thereby misreading what they’ll do upon release? Quite possibly.

So there’s clearly a basis justifying the acceptance of the numbers – but are they accurate?  Here’s the base report, as reported on Voice of America:

The United States Department of Defense says the number of former Guantanamo Bay detainees returning to terrorist activities is on the rise.

Pentagon Spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters on Tuesday that 61 former detainees from the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have returned to the fight against the United States and its allies.

Morrell said that a Defense Department report compiled in December found a substantial increase in the number of detainees returning to terrorism.

“Prior to this report, the rate had been about seven percent of those who had been held at Guantanamo and released and those that had been confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight. At that point, we suspected that 37 former detainees had returned to the fight,” said Morrell. “We now believe that that number has increased and that the overall known terrorist re-engagement rate has increased to 11 percent.”

Morrell said that of the former detainees who returned to terrorism, 18 are confirmed and 43 are suspected of participating in terrorist activities. He says fingerprints, photographs and intelligence materials were used to tie some of the former detainees to terrorist activities.

Chmielewski may be going with the confirmed number and I – and most other non-libs – are going with the confirmed and suspected total.  Before he chimes in that one can hardly trust a Voice of America report (as if VOA hasn’t been swallowed up whole by libs), let me add this from the VOA story:

But Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall University Law School has represented some of the detainees and says the Pentagon has failed to produce evidence of early claims that former detainees have returned to the battlefield.

“The numbers are wrong about who has returned to the fight; their numbers and names are wrong about who has been in Guantanamo. And, of course, the characterization of ‘returned to the fight’ is far broader than they would like to admit,” said Denbeaux. “What they would like is to be understood to mean as ‘return to the battlefield,’ but, of course, that hasn’t happened. So what they mean by ‘return to the fight’ is engaging in propaganda battles and criticisms of the United States at home and abroad.”

Weasels. If someone comes out of Gitmo and becomes, instead of a footsoldier, a general, a recruiter, a fundraiser, or a weapons procurer, then Prof. Denbeaux of Seton Hall won’t count them as “returned to the fight.”  That’s like saying David Petraeus is no longer a military asset to the U.S. because he’s now in Tampa, not Baghdad.  Denbeaux is proving my point by this argument.  If the detainees released from Guantanamo aren’t returning to the battlefield, then those that still are engaged in jihad against us are fighting at a higher level in the command structure – increasing the likelihood that they were significant enough assets to begin with to require continued detention.

It’s not the least bit surprising that Denbeaux would question the numbers, or that libs would flock to him as a more believable source than the Pentagon.  He doesn’t hide his contempt for Guantanamo and the U.S. military. Here’s the lead of his bio:

Professor Mark Denbeaux, one of Seton Hall’s most senior faculty members, is also the Director of the Seton Hall Law School Center for Policy and Research, which is best known for its disseminatino of the internationally recognized series of reports on the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. Denbeaux’s interest in the conditions of detainment arose from his representation of two detainees there.

Following his visits to GITMO, and his participation in amicus briefs arising from the rules governing the hearings for “enemy combatants,” Denbeaux realized the need for an analysis of the government’s assumptions and the principles governing the detention process. The Guantánamo report series are primarily produced by Seton Hall Law students of all levels. Several graduates have remained research fellows, as well.

So Denbeaux is on the side of the detainees, not the military (note the all-telling quotes around “enemy combatants”). It’s not the least bit surprising hat since he’s dedicating his life to freeing these scum, he does not want to admit that they are, in fact, scum.  He’s espoused his theories on Rachel Maddow’s show and at teach-ins, so he’s got to be more believable than the U.S. government.  No word on who, exactly, his observers in the field are and why they’re more accurate than the U.S. military.

So you have the U.S. military, which obviously has an agenda but is also an open society with internal checks and balances, and which also has extensive resources in the field, up against a guy who’s sided with (“alleged”) terrorists, is prejudiced against Guantanamo and the war, and has no resources to draw information from than the detainees themselves.

Yet Chmielewski sides with Denbeaux and supports his position on the war in part by believing what Denbeaux believes – that the detainees aren’t such a bad bunch of fellows, really.  And with that in mind, we turn next to Chmielewski’s next question: What did we win in Iraq?

[The following is being added over my lunch break]

Perhaps the best place to start seeking what we have won in Iraq is to consider what we lost in Vietnam, when we followed the Lib’s lead and left the country when victory was in hand.

Obviously, the most important point is not about what we lost, but what the people of Southeast Asia lost.  They lost millions of lives in South Vietnam and Cambodia as the Communists imposed first their brutal and illegal retaliation against those who fought them (a war crime the Left did not protest), and then, in Cambodia particularly, their bizarre visions of utopia.  For those who survived, most lost wealth, health and opportunity.  Their lives would have been better under a capitalistic society.

For us, we lost the opportunity to have another strong partner in Southeast Asia, creating a vacuum filled first by the Chinese communists, and subsequently by totalitarians (Burma) and, more recently, Islamists (Indonesia). If Vietnam had become a free capitalist democracy on the southern flank of China, would the development of repressed-market capitalism there had grown so quickly?  Might not all of Southeast Asia, including Hell-holes like Burma, flourished because there was a local model to emulate?

I won’t speculate on the regional changes that could have occurred with our victory because we’ll never know, but if you want a model, look at how the quality of life in Eastern Europe has improved since we defeated communism there. It’s s easy to see that there was a lot of lost potential in Southeast Asia.

The obvious next step is to consider what we won in World War II.  The answer of course is that winning sometimes isn’t all it’s cut out to be, but it’s still pretty good.  On the up side, we eliminated the threat  Germany, Japan and Italy posed to our democracy, and freed their people from regimes that were condemning them to starvation at best and death at worst.  We saw Democracy spread, and with it trade opportunities for us and a better quality of life for them.  We kicked off a period of fantastic growth in our economy and global influence.

On the downside, Russia got its cut and with it decades of grief for Eastern Europe and Cuba; China wasn’t dealt with at all, leading to decades of poverty for the Chinese under communism and the Korean war; and in the Middle East, the whole multifaceted, bloody conundrum got established anew.  Like I said, winning isn’t always what it’s cut out to be.

There certainly could be similar downsides to a victory in Iraq, but Chmielewski’s Sunni/Shia bloodshed isn’t as likely a one of them as it was a few years back.  With each passing day, there is more reason for Iraqis to stick together and fewer reasons for it to descend into violence, and there’s more power and capability in the central government to hold the country together.

Iran, Syria and the states on the Saudi peninsula could respond in all sorts of bizarre and negative ways to having a free Iraq – but how is that different from how they act today?  The chances are more likely there would be profound cross-Gulf business alliances that could lead to more pressure for the repressive Iranian and Syrian regimes to change.

That’s all speculation about the future and any lefty can speculate right back at me with all sorts of black and depressing scenarios, so let’s look instead at what’s already in the “won” column.

The first big win is for the Iraqis, who no longer must live under Saddam Hussein, who fomented Sunni attacks on Shi’a and Kurd populations, starved his people so he could build palaces, let millions die in his madcap wars, and conducted a reign of terror in which no one felt safe.  Now they have a democracy and their economy is picking up.  Violence is way down.  Women can run for office. And just about everybody can hate al Qaeda and their senseless violence.

There’s another win in there for dozens of other countries and the U.N.  By stabilizing the Gulf (and we did – there’s only been one, contained war there, unlike how things were while Hussein was in power), we ensured continuous oil deliveries to the benefit of the world’s economies.  And we stood up for the UN’s resolutions.  And (with a wink here) we taught the intelligence services of Russia, France, Britain and a host of other countries that they had to sharpen their skills, since they, like we, missed it when Hussein shipped off his WMDs to Syria, buried them in the sand … or just made the whole thing up, fooling us all.

For us, for a start, other countries have seen this.  That has its downsides, but they’re overrated.  Liberals around the world don’t like Bush or us much, but the world is made up of more than mere liberals.  Even though a neocon-dream of rapidly spreading democracy hasn’t happened, when we leave Iraq and people see it continuing to function as a democracy, they will notice, they will scratch their heads and wonder why if we’re imperialists we’re leaving, and most will appreciate what the Iraqis have … what we gave them.

We also have a stable source of oil.  We didn’t take it; we’re buying it (as are others) and the iraqis are producing it.

Iraq will restore oil exports to 2.0 million barrels per day in 2009 and increase its refining capacity to become self sufficient in oil products by the end of the year, Oil Minister Hussain al-Sahristani said on Monday.

“We have pledged in the 2009 budget to raise daily crude production and export an average of 2 million barrels per day, which means a 150,000 bpd increase compared to 2008,” Shahristani told a small group of reporters. (Reuters)

After the first Gulf war, Iraq’s production was 500,000 million barrels per day; it grew to a very sporadic 2.5 MBD just before the start of the current war – but with considerable deferred maintenance that has been slowing Iraq’s recovery in the area of oil.  With a free democracy, Iraq is now investing in its major source of revenue instead of presidential palaces, and production will continue to increase, especially when demand starts to grow again.

We have tested and proven new alliances.  The war on terror – both in Afghanistan and Iraq – has tested our relations with Muslim countries from Turkey to Turkmenistan.  There has been some fall-out for sure, especially in Turkey early in the war, but we have seen that when we need to form an alliance with an Islamic country to fight another Islamic country, we can.  The war has also helped us build alliances in Eastern Europe, which will prove very helpful as Putin stirs.

As for Putin, he may not stir so quickly because of the war.  Our success in overthrowing the Taliban regime in about two minutes was a huge embarassment to the Russians, and our ability to work with Uzbekistan has got to be a nightmare for the Kremlin.  And as we fight to free a large Muslm population, he must look at his Muslim population (10 to 15 percent of Russians are classified as active Muslims by the CIA) and grit his teeth.

But the biggest benefits of the war for us all have to do with the global war against the jihadists who declared war on us on 9/11.

The war has allowed us an opportunity to force our enemy into a two-front war, and we have vanquished them in the Western front, Iraq, and if Obama’s worth his salt, will vanquish them in Afghanistan as well.  This may not have been our intent, as Chmielewski points out – “Al Qaeda was never in Iraq during Saddam’s reign [Never say never, Dan] and where there only on a token level after we invaded.” – but the first intent and the final intent of wars are rarely the same. Al Qaeda flocked to Iraq after the war began, intent on a glorious, Afghanistan-like victory over another great Satan, but it was they who were defeated – thoroughly, embarassingly, and at great cost.  We broke their infrastructure, killed them by the thousands, hurt their recruiting capabilities and gained knowledge in how to gather intelligence about them.

Most importantly, the western front in the war on terror kept them busy over there so they weren’t as busy over here, and one of the great unmeasurable benefits of the war is the attacks on America that didn’t happen because al Qaeda’s resources were tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Finally, and the Left will contest this until they’re blue in the face, the war in Iraq brought back our military and our respect for our military.  Sure, the loons protest and try to kick ROTC off campus and recruiting stations out of Berkely, but the rest of America swells with pride over our young warriors and the great work they’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan.  They know a selfless commitment to bettering others and protecting us when they see it, and as a result, our military has gotten stronger, with better recruits and broader support.

And with that, I end with a salute to the biggest losses of all in the War on Terror – those who died on 9/11 and the young American and allied men and women who have lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq since then – and with a prayer that President Obama will not let these deaths to have been in vain.

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Barack Obama says he has an open mind and his decisions will be made based on a robust discussion of the facts available to him. Let’s hope someone tells him about this:

Developers of a coal-to-fuel plant proposed for western North Dakota say the $4 billion project is on hold while they await direction from the Obama administration and Congress.

“A new federal plan is needed to see how coal fits in, in the future,” said David Straley, a North American Coal Corp. spokesman. “We don’t want to put $200 million in the ground and not know where we’re at.”

The project would be the first large commercial coal-to-fuel plant in the U.S., developers say.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said he supports the project but it’s “perfectly reasonable” for it to be put on hold because of uncertainty in the marketplace and changing federal energy policies. (source)

The plant will generate income for North Dakota and create new jobs Obama claims he’s working hard to generate. It will lessen our dependence on imported, Middle Eastern or Venezuelan oil. But it’s on hold because Obama has yet to provide any proof that he intends to back off his threat to relegate coal to, well, the coal bin.

Here’s a solution: If you hold off remaking the energy economy to stop global warming until there’s proof that global warming poses a greater threat than economic meltdown, it will sure help us deal with the economy.

hat-tip: Say Anything via What Bubba Knows

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Lawfare

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‘ve been doing a bit of Facebook “wallfare” over Guantamo with liberal blogger Dan Chmielewski.  He knee-jerks on the subject, seeing Gitmo as a blight on America’s honor, without giving much more thought to the consequences of closing it other than disputing the recent report that 61 detainees released from Gitmo have been identified to be back at work trying to advance jihadism. Dan probably wouldn’t agree with this assessment of Gitmo, from a post on Civilian Irregular:

Our Nation is at war, and JTF-Guantanamo serves as an integral component of OPERATION Enduring Freedom. We are the model organization for safe and humane enemy combatant detention operations, and for the collection and dissemination of strategic intelligence supporting the Global War on Terror. We operate under the watchful gaze of the Nation and the world. We are a strategic asset operated by a highly trained and patriotic team of military and civilian professionals, dedicated to supporting our Nation’s interests in the Global War on Terror.

The post goes on to describe two reasons for keeping detainees at Gitmo. The first is gaining intelligence, which we all can understand and which has been written about ad nauseum from all sides of the political spectrum. The other is lawism, a new term for me.

If it weren’t for lawfare we could execute them when their intelligence value has been exhausted. Lawfare, according to Colonel Charles Dunlap,

describes a method of warfare where law is used as a means of realizing a military objective. There are many dimensions to lawfare, but the one ever more frequently embraced by U.S. opponents is a cynical manipulation of the rule of law and the humanitarian values it represents. Rather than seeking battlefield victories, per se, challengers try to destroy the will to fight by undermining the public support that is indispensable when democracies like the U.S. conduct military interventions.”

We are struggling to find a way to combat lawfare without either providing terrorists with information they should not have, or stepping on the rights of American citizens.  We don’t have the solution, and we shouldn’t be forced to close Gitmo because of political deadlines until we have a viable lawfare strategy – and a strategy to keep ourselves safe from the damage these vicious animals can foist on us. Continue Reading »

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his morning I told you the tasty tale of AP’s fawning over Obama and continuing hatred of Bush in a story about Obama’s very public food tastes and Bush’s more private approach to eating. Two blinks later, the once-respectable wire service fawned once again:

Obama breaks from Bush, avoids divisive stands

Barack Obama opened his presidency by breaking sharply from George W. Bush’s unpopular administration, but he mostly avoided divisive partisan and ideological stands. He focused instead on fixing the economy, repairing a battered world image and cleaning up government. …

In the highly scripted first days of his administration, Obama overturned a slew of Bush policies with great fanfare. He largely avoided cultural issues; the exception was reversing one abortion-related policy, a predictable move done in a very low-profile way.

Isn’t. That. Nice.

Only one thing the least big … oh, controversial … just a “predictable” and “low-profile”‘ thing that had something to do with abortion.  That’s it, folks.

Of course the abortion ruling re-established federal funding for abortions in countries receiving U.S. health aid and is one very big cultural issue indeed.  When Bush reversed the Clinton policy eight years ago, the press howled about Bush’s divisive action; but reversing it, now that’s magically not divisive.

Also divisive, to say the least, was Bush’s policy on Guantanamo, interrogation techniques and the CIA’s use of prisons in other countries for nefarious jihadists.  Divisive by definition means there are two sides, but when Obama reversed these policies, it somehow was not divisive.  In other words, the opinion of those of us who question Obama’s actions is not worth counting.

Then, of course, there is the matter of the stimulus plan.  Obama’s proposals must be devisive to some extent or there wouldn’t have been an exchange like this in a meeting between the prez and GOP-ers:

In an exchange with Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) about the [stimulus] proposal, the president shot back: “I won,” according to aides briefed on the meeting.

“I will trump you on that.”

AP excuses that as non-divisive, as it does any divisiveness over the war on terror tactics with this:

Certainly, some Republicans are griping about Obama’s economic stimulus plan and closing Guantanamo. But their protests are somewhat muted, perhaps because little of what Obama has done thus far is a surprise.

Is AP saying the “divisive” actions Bush took at the outset of his term were a surprise and that’s why the press howled?  What a ridiculous argument that is: Obviously Bush did what was expected of him as a conservative Republican.

Or it might be that the lack of divisiveness is really nothing more than lack of coverage.  For example, there was this item that wasn’t exactly rushed to the leads of the mainly marginalized media:

Moving quickly to undo the Bush administration’s regime of secrecy, President Obama on Wednesday repealed a 2001 executive order granting former presidents, and even vice presidents, the ability to keep documents secret long past the 12 years allowed by law.

It was one of Mr. Obama’s first official acts, and was hailed as a rebuke of the past eight years. (WashTimes)

A “rebuke”‘ isn’t divisive?

January 20 may have changed a lot of things, but one thing didn’t change a bit: The media still is living in Obama fantasy land, for sure.

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We all knew he had it … what else could have possessed him to think an ill-qualified junior party hack from Chicago could be president? … and now we’re seeing the massive Obama ego at work.

It is not an ego that cries out for middle ground, that seeks reconciliation and common cause.

Buried in an NY Post article about Obama’s cry for the GOP to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh – code for us to stop believing what we believe and start believing in Obamaism – was this passage:

In an exchange with Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) about the [stimulus] proposal, the president shot back: “I won,” according to aides briefed on the meeting.

“I will trump you on that.”

That’s change you just can’t believe; Bush never would have behaved so badly. It is also a sign that Obama, just a few days into the presidency, is already frustrated that not everyone is falling in line behind him.  He can’t contain his frustration, so it spills out defensively in a strong egotistical statement – I WON!  I Will TRUMP YOU!

More than his cabinet and czar appointments, this outburst speaks to the true nature of Obama. Anyone inoculated from Obama Magic Syndrome has known this day will come; it’s just shocking that it’s come in the first week of the admin, in the first meeting with the GOP in which different viewpoints were raised.  That’s a sign that it’s going to be much worse than we ever imagined – Obama will force his agenda through over however many dead bodies he must cross.  The partisan is now king; the post-partisan campaigner is now dead.

In Memeorandum, a Radio Equalizer post on The NY Post story with the quote has, as of 11:47 a.m. PST, over thirty links commenting on it: JustOneMinute, The Corner, Washington Monthly, The Moderate Voice, Right Wing News, Hot Air, Althouse, Don Surber, Sire Says, New York Times, American Street, This ain’t Hell …, No More Mister Nice Blog, Commentary, Wizbang, Brilliant at Breakfast, Pam’s House Blend, The Mahablog, Political Punch, NewsBusters.org, Outside The Beltway, Fausta’s Blog, Think Progress, Open Left, Sweetness & Light, Flopping Aces, Gothamist, Power Line, The Other McCain, RedState, JammieWearingFool, Macsmind, The Caucus and Riehl World View

Most are pegged to the Rush line, which was:

You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.

Like I said, it’s code for do it my way or get out of my way.  Convert to Obamaism or be forever damned.

You have to wonder what week two will bring …

Photo hat-tip: Flopping Aces

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he press just can’t seem to keep itself from bashing Bush. It’s not enough that he started an illegal war, shredded the Constitution, drawled unrepentently and let the most dangerous man in America be his vice president for eight years. No, not hardly. Now they’ve gone and made him responsible for processed food and lousy restaurants.

But fear not!  AP tells us that Obama will lead us out of the food wasteland and into the food promised land.

WASHINGTON – Visiting one of his favorite Chicago restaurants in November, Barack Obama was asked by an excited waitress if he wanted the restaurant’s special margarita made with the finest ingredients, straight up and shaken at the table.

“You know that’s the way I roll,” Obama replied jokingly.

Rick Bayless, the chef of that restaurant, Topolobampo, says Obama’s comfortable demeanor at the table — slumped contentedly in his chair, clearly there to enjoy himself — bodes well for the nation’s food policy. While former President George W. Bush rarely visited restaurants and didn’t often talk about what he ate, Obama dines out frequently and enjoys exploring different foods.

That darn Bush. If only he’d been more interested in hunting down a locally grown arugula instead of a Pakistan-trained Abdullah, there would be no more mac-n-cheese and McDonald’s; no, we’d all, rich and poor alike, be shopping for locally grown produce that never got a whiff of insecticide, and chickens that had to be lassoed in from the free range by chickenboys.

It looks like we’re in for a season when everything deemed “wrong” by the media elite will be prefaced by a short attribution of blame to George Bush, followed by the bestowing on Obama of God-like power to create change.

Like this:  One chef, who recently whipped up a $500-a-plate dinner for incoming Obama elitists told AP that just a few small, divine gestures from the prez and Michelle could be enough to turn America into the culinary promised land. This guy cooks with food grown at his farm, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. The dinner for the elitists included “passed hors d’oeuvres [including] carrots, lettuce and cauliflower — untarnished and raw, delicious in their natural form. Sweet beets had been recently chiseled from Stone Barns’ frozen ground, and hog snouts left over from slaughter were used as a garnish on a plate of Maine sea scallops.”

Not exactly what Joe and Jo Sixpack pick up at the local Walmart or drive-thru. But no matter; these chefs have the solution that will fix it so all America can stand united for the cause of organic field greens and cute little button squashes in a saffron-cilantro reduction.

Daniel Boulud, the veteran New York chef of the restaurant Daniel who has cooked for at least five former presidents [which means he's either cooked for W. or is really, really, really old], said he thinks the Department of Agriculture should form an agency that exclusively oversees [his word] small farms. Lidia Bastianich, a New York-based Italian chef who has starred in several cooking shows on public television, says the government needs to encourage regulations and incentives to small farmers to give them the opportunity to compete against the “big giants.”

Yeah, that’s the ticket. We’ll create a new bureaucracy because we believe regulation actually helps small business, then we’ll penalize successful large businesses so the small businesses, now crippled by new regulations, have a chance of surviving.

That, folks, is why these people are chefs, not economists. And that’s why this article was written by something  I don’t know what to call, but it certainly isn’t “a journalist.”

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A

s the Obama Admin stands poised and ready to impose their statist regime on America, injecting government into every layer of our life in the grand tradition of FDR, it’s not a bad idea to spend a little time analyzing just how government performs.

Here’s a handy case study:

Facing forecasts of wet weather that could flush tons of urban trash out to sea and onto local beaches, Los Angeles County authorities scrambled Thursday to reinstall a boom across the outlet of the Los Angeles River to keep debris out of Long Beach Harbor.

The boom had been decommissioned Monday because the county Department of Public Works ran out of money to keep it operating.

The problem, according to a spokesman for the department, was that a company which had been paid $450,000 to operate the boom this year [sic? $450,000 in three weeks?!] — and remove the trash it harvested — had completed its contractual obligations ahead of schedule.

As a result, Frey Environmental Inc. of Newport Beach on Monday was ordered to take the boom out of service while public works authorities sought permission from the county Board of Supervisors to renew its contract.

Complicating matters, the board canceled its meeting Tuesday because several members had traveled to Washington to attend the presidential inauguration. (LA Times)

It’s expected that trash will flow unfettered to sea until well into February.  Now, we used to just let that happen because none but the fringes of society cared much whether trash washed out to sea or not, but now at least the enviro-packed regulatory agencies care greatly, so they have imposed regulations (more statism) with fines to boot, in order to force municipalities to pick up after their littering citizens (more statism).

Imagine what would happen to a private sector manager if  his operation had to shut down for several weeks because he let a contract run out.  Expect no such repercussions here.

What you can expect is higher costs, since Frey needlessly had to shut down and now will have to re-start its operations – and because one branch of government, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, will impose a hefty fine on another branch of government, Los Angeles County, for being out of compliance with the trash TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) regulation.

So government incompetency leads to  higher cost government and fines, which government does not have to pay. We do.

And they want us to trust government with our health!

Hat-tip: Jim, whose group Trails 4 All has picked up tons of trash from local watersheds without being forced to by government.

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Note:  This post is interestingly timed.  It’s about animal rights in the Obama admin and comes on a day when the Obamites signalled they couldn’t care less about the rights of unborn human beings.

When the Obama transition team announced the selection of Cass Sunstein to be Obama’s Czar of the Regulatory Realm, I wrote in an Obama Drama post, “Who better to impose draconian new regulations on business?”

I didn’t know the half of it, and I’ve been tracking this guy since 2005.  It turns out regulation is only one of Sunstein’s passions, and perhaps a weak second to what really pickles his pleasure receptors: Fighting for animal rights.  And now that he’s the regulation king, how long do you think it’ll take him to start moving to create human-animal parety in the law? That’s right; here’s the Center for Consumer Freedom:

Sunstein has made no secret of his devotion to the cause of establishing legal “rights” for livestock, wildlife, and pets. “[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, scientific experiments, and agriculture,” Sunstein wrote in a 2002 working paper while at the University of Chicago Law school.

“Extensive regulation of the use of animals.” That’s PETA-speak for using government to get everything PETA and the Humane Society of the United States can’t get through gentle pressure or not-so-gentle coercion. Not exactly the kind of thing American ranchers, restaurateurs, hunters, and biomedical researchers (to say nothing of ordinary consumers) would like to hear from their next “regulatory czar.”

In a 2004 book, Sunstein took the idea even further:

“[A]nimals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law … Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients’ behalf.”

Interesting thought.  That would mean we also could sue animals.  I could sue that yapping little wiener-dog up the street and its representative (my inattentive neighbors), as its guardian, would be responsible.  That bear in Alaska that attacked the young woman competing in a bike race earlier this year could be charged with attempted murder and sued for damages in civil court for her medical bills and emotional injuries.  In fact, we could bring a class action suit against bears for all the trouble they cause us; and seagulls and seals for pooping in our coastal waters where we like to swim; and termites, ants, spiders and centipedes just for public creepiness.

But seriously, this is Cass Sunstein, the crackpot that Obama selected to dream up new regulatory regimes for Obamadom, a man who is so blitheringly stupid and so completely unbelieving in God and creation that he can discern no difference in the rights that should be provided a Nobel Prize winning physicist or a struggling single mom and those due a sea slug.

Obviously, ranchers, egg producers, fish farm operators and the like have a lot to fear from Sunstein, but really not much more than the rest of us because clearly  Obama has put the inmates in charge of the asylum.

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W

ith this headline, Salon launched its story about Obama’s executive orders yesterday directing that Guantanamo be closed within a year, ending the CIA’s use of secret overseas prisons, and banning “coercive” interrogation methods:

The Power of the Pen

When a nation is involved in fighting an enemy that has promised to destroy that nation, a pen can be powerful. It can sign acts of war and bigger military budgets, and can put into law new bills and executive orders that give the nation what it needs to execute its defense successfully.  It can even sign orders bestowing honors on its citizens who have given their lives in defense of the land they love.

But what power did Pres. Obama’s pen have yesterday as it took away some of the more extreme procedures we’ve  used in fighting the Islamists jihadists?  Perhaps Salon’s subhead can give us an idea:

On Day 2 of his administration, President Obama reverses key Bush “war on terror” policies, signing orders that end torture, close the CIA’s black sites and phase out Guantanamo

When did the war on terror get quotes around it? If they understand the subtleties of our language, jihadists around the globe must be firing off their Kalashnikovs with joy, especially when they realize that it’s not just Salon that’s used quotes to minimize our actions against their war. Here’s WaPo:

Bush’s ‘War’ On Terror Comes to a Sudden End

President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects. With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the “war on terror,” as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless.

Apparently the WaPo editors can’t decide exactly where the quotes should go, as they’ve allowed different styles in the headline and the lead.  The headline, interestingly enough, makes the terror real, but the war against it somehow phony.

And how happy the bad guys of the world must be to learn that under Obama, all the powers of the American superpower will not be used to wipe them out.  But they’d better not let too much happiness seep into their dour, fatalistic selves because Scott Ott at Scrappleface has found some more quote marks:

‘War On Terror’ Ends, Obama Starts ‘Case Against Terror’

With the signing of executive orders to close the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, to prepare to grant full U.S. citizen legal rights to foreign enemy combatants, to end the threat to ‘high value targets’ of ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques, and to shutter so-called ‘black sites’ operated by the CIA in foreign countries, President Barack Obama sent a clear signal yesterday that George Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ is over, and Barack Obama’s ‘Case Against Terror’ has begun.

“America’s enemies should not view these moves as surrender,” said an unnamed White House spokesman, “but rather as an effort to level the playing field and to make sure that our enemies get a fair shake.”

“The battle will now be joined in the Case Against Terror,” he said, “not with lethal weapons, but with subpoenas and motions and detailed arguments. The next time one of these criminals destroys one of our skyscrapers, detonates himself in a shopping mall, poisons our water supply or unleashes a dirty bomb in a crowded subway station, he does so with the knowledge that the full power of the U.S. legal system will be unleashed on him, with no limit to the cash damages that his victims’ families can collect.”

Meanwhile, unless Barry & Michelle take in the Guantanamo detainees as West Wing house guests, signs are Obama’s lefty pen might just lead to some really big problems:

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen. (source)

Wow. This guy got the best we and the Saudis had to offer and he still went back to the dark side, like he really believed in it or something. And:

Terror suspects who have been held but released from Guantanamo Bay are increasingly returning to the fight against the United States and its allies, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

Sixty-one detainees released from the Navy base prison in Cuba are believed to have rejoined the fight, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, citing data from December. That’s up from 37 as of March 2008, he said. (Navy Times)

You know, this isn’t all that shocking.  What do you think our soldiers and Marines would do in similar circumstances?  Freed from enemy prison camps (yeah, that would happen!), do we really think they would docilely say that the jihadists aren’t all that bad and they’ll just sit this one out from now on?  Hardly! So why do we expect something different from jihadist enemy combatants?

Liberals, though, always expect the best from everyone, and always refuse to base their expectations on what history and experience have taught us.

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