In response to the attempted Christmas Day attack, the White House is conducting a furious investigation, according to a source at the American Spectator:
On December 26, two days after Nigerian Omar Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to use underwear packed with plastic explosives to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight he was on, and as it became clear internally that the Administration had suffered perhaps its most embarrassing failure in the area of national security, senior Obama White House aides, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and new White House counsel Robert Bauer, ordered staff to begin researching similar breakdowns — if any — from the Bush Administration.
“The idea was that we’d show that the Bush Administration had had far worse missteps than we ever could,” says a staffer in the counsel’s office. “We were told that classified material involving anything related to al Qaeda operating in Yemen or Nigeria was fair game and that we’d declassify it if necessary.”
Which, wow. If it’s true.
Unsourced allegations reported by an anonymous blogger not being entirely at the “Deep Throat” level of confidence, so I’ll just wait for the Washington Post to put a crack team on this.
Meanwhile, it took until the very last day of 2009, but the White House’s own blog has now given us a contender for most unintentionally ironic headline. Ever. The Same Old Washington Blame Game
Elections have…mmmm a change of people at the top, unless the incumbent wins.
How the new people discharge their responsibilities has consequences.
If true, the conclusion I come to is that
character of the elected officials matters.
Too bad I can’t sell it.
In any form of government the character of the leaders certainly matters. Compare Marcus Aurelius to Nero in an absolute Tyranny to see just how important character can be.
In a democracy specifically, the character of the people matter too, and critically so, since they pick and give their consent (at least periodically through elections) to the leaders. It pains me greatly to say this about America but, just like Shelby Steele’s column that Lex linked to, Obama says a lot about where the character of the population has been heading recently, so infected with the culture destroying “multi-cultural” PC rot.
The Left has been playing Strategy for the past thirty years at least, taking over the media, the schools and the bureaucracy. The Right has been playing Tactics. As a result the Left now has the high ground. They control the language and the terms of the debate. (It’s no coincidence that Noam Chomsky is a linguist and that Saul Alinsky spends so much time on the topic in “Rules for Radicals.”) By controlling the language they load and edit the very manner of how our school children think by defining certain colloquial interpretations of phrases and determining the default accepted subtleties of words that can have plastic meanings. “Justice” is perhaps the best example. Ask anyone what Justice means and you will never find a universally accepted, clear definition. To conservatives it usually means the Biblical sense of getting what you deserve for your actions. But for more and more young people it means something like “social justice” or “race justice” etc. which means equality of results enforced by a government, which, in their Utopian fantasy, maintains freedom as well. But practically it can only be attempted to be forced on the human condition through the yoke of a tyranny or soft despotism that is totalitarian and smothering in its scope. And History does show us decisively that the attempt is bound to fail.
If America wants to save itself the middle and right needs to take back education at the minimum. The West has achieved its triumph through a history of hard wrought governmental improvement based on knowing about itself through at first the works of Herodotus and Thucydides and then many others, and historically based exposition on what could be better through our philosophers. The west invented history ahead of all other civilizations. Our “liberal” education now throws out the story of how the West, and its apotheosis in America, came to be and has thus crippled the ability of so many of our young to know the limits and moral coloring of human nature, which have set the boundaries on our institutions and what they can achieve and guided us through most of our history. As a result most of the Left is a blinkered experiment in Utopian Fantasizing. (This explains Allan Bloom’s tragic concession that only self education in the “great books” can save American civilization since our schools are so corroded beyond repair.) Considered the philosophical cornerstone of modern Liberalism is a book called Justice as Fairness by John Rawls. Although sprawling in length and breadth it is nearly a desert devoid of any historical example or actual human event to serve as a wellspring to draw lessons from. Compare this to Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” to take one of the brighter stars of the constellation of American Conservative/Classical Liberal thought and you will find it is full of actual examples and based on an understanding of human beings as they are and not as the angels most of us wish we were.
Practically what can we do? Sadly I’m not so sure on this front. The only first steps I can think of are to 1.) make federal financial aid for college (excluding the GI bill) available only to engineering, science and medical majors. No more hyphenated-american or soft psychology majors which are fronts for radical indoctrination of our youth at taxpayer expense. If taxpayers are paying for your college education, you will get a degree that is of practical, tangible service to the Republic. 2.) Although likely politically impossible the Obama administration has so far demonstrated to me the desirability of out-lawing government employee unions. Bureaucrats, like elected leaders, are supposed to serve the citizenry. Government has now grown so large they exist to serve themselves, both at our expense since they produce nothing and with the un-natural (to the marketplace) backing of the government’s monopoly on the use of force. I would never dream of outlawing unions in the private sector, but in the public sector I think so.
So we’re back at the old “Bush did it too” game again.
That’s what 11 year old kids do. Somebody did not raise these people right.
You are so right Mike Myers. At the risk of becoming a bore—Barack Obama is not an American in his heart. His parental units made sure of that by jerking him around all over the world and destroying any allegiance he might have developed. It is no surprise that he was attracted to Michelle because she does have a strong family.
But Obama never bonded with America. Nothing fills his heart with pride (except himself). He is a man without a country, and we Americans are just chess pieces on his game board.
Every time I think I can’t possibly detest these people – and those who put them in power – any more than I already do, behavior such as this makes me crank the dial even further.
But the hate does keep me warm. So I got that going for me.
GO AHEAD, BUTCH!
Grampa, a lot of people believe that character matters, though not enough IMO at this point in time. We will see next year.
That the country has BHO and his handpicked team of minions at the top of our poitical leadership is, well, to be honest I cannot think of enough perjorative adjectives to describe them. I truly do fear the damage they will ultimately cause our country.
Sometimes I try to do a “gut check” to see if I have BDS in reverse, though objectively I do not think so. Perhaps I do and am unable to recognize it. Maybe. Regardless, the actions that BHO has taken, is taking, and plans to take, do not bode well for us.
At this point in time, there is not much of a check or a balance in our political system. A lot of 1984 in the BHO world.
Ron, I think a lot of us spent the first few weeks of this administration giving free rein to ODS. It was kind of fun to sound off, treating knee-jerk reaction and emotionalism as fact, not bothering to cite sources (cite sites, if you will). Then it got old, and we went back to (mostly) reasoned discussion, citing sources without being beat about the head and shoulders to do so, often giving several sources. And always reasoning from what the Constitution says government should be doing.
And likely we do dabble in ODS from time to time to relax some. It is just that there is so much to work with, so many mis-steps, so many “what are they thinking! or are they thinking at all?” incidents that it feels like we are wallowing in ODS.
Joe, it’s the John Thompson (BB Coach, Georgetown) school of politics. Thompson’s teams were famous for fouling constantly–all five every second on every play. Push, shove , hold, hack, trip ride over the shoulder on rebounds, you name it. It was a foul-a-second the x 5 players the entire game. The genius of this approach was that the refs were simply overwhelmed–they couldn’t call ‘em all, so only called the most flagrant. As one ref said: “Hell, if we called them all it would be nothing but a free-throw contest, the game would last 6 hours and the fans would leave in droves.” This approach made his average teams good, and merely good teams near great as it took the opposition totally out of its normal offense—usually put them totally out of sync.
It is the same with Obama. That is why he is plunging ahead full speed with Immigration “reform” legislation and “cap & Trade” climate legislation as well as increased financial services regulation and centralized control. It’s also the same theory behind massive fish egg spawns of millions of eggs/fish. It’s hard to track them all from a predators standpoint–or in this case opponents of his hyper legislation and executive rule-making–from the EPA to un-confirmed rules promulgated by his various “Czars.” The window of opportunity is brief and
his opponents ability to track the obscure details (made all the more obscure by conscious obfuscation and secret rule-making) constricted. THAT’s why you feel you are “wallowing” Joe, Obama and his minions want it that way by design!
Virg
Something that was successfully hidden with the noise
http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.com/2009/12/look-what-was-slipped-in-before.html
2010 – I pray the this is the year Americans realize what the Left is all about and the center comes back to its senses.
God Bless and Happy New Years!
ProwlerAMDO: There is a good post and long discussion thread about this from a legal pov over at the legal blog: “The Volokh Conspiracy.”
Happy New Year to you guy!
The way I’m reading it is that the Nice Americans who are running the Administration of our Executive Branch are going to hunt not current terrorists, but rather past possible mistakes of the most previous Administration.
I feel completely safe, now.
I stopped feeling safe on January 20, 2009.
You don’t understand Kris. He feels safe because of that stuff he’s smoking in his pipe.
So – this current administration f%$#*& up royally on this one. But it’s OK because Bush probably did too and more times.
Where are we exactly? In a sandbox on a playground? This isn’t some little kid trying to justify his own actions measured against the playground antics of his friends or adversaries.
Sweet jesus.
I loved this from the article:
“This White House doesn’t view the Northwest [Airlines] failure as one of national security, it’s a political issue,” says the White House source.
Wasn’t this the Administration who, a couple days after the EunuchBomber, got all “wee wee’d up” over the right’s reaction to this, accusing them of politicizing a terrorist act.
They can’t get their own stories straight. Just a few days ago someone in the White House spoke on the record about how they don’t really have SOP for dealing with the president’s response to these kinds of situations.
This White House doesn’t view the Northwest [Airlines] failure as one of national security, it’s a political issue,” says the White House source .
“We” elected people who put ideology and political power above governance. The result: We can’t reasonably secure our air transportation system against even the most unimaginative attacks using a multi-billion dollar security apparatus that a 23-year-old kid from Nigeria was able to defeat. The TSA folks best solution is to have the same frequent travelers take off their shoes and throw out their shampoo. Now they’re harassing small general aviation airports.
Better to get an effective watch list implemented (and use it!) and work on a legal profiling system (El Al can do it, why can’t we?). If terrorists feel they can circumvent an expensive and expansive system like the TSA, what will they think of next in non aviation venues?
Axelrod and Emanuel are fiddling while Rome burns.
With The WON! handling the conductor’s baton.
These are children’s mentalities guiding these people. They think they deserve every and anything they desire…and it is the WASPs who have spent all of history scheming on how to deny them their birth right to rule and being Hope and Change to the people, in their own image(s).
And as the written story of the O will document, after the global historical conspiracy of “them” to put him down, then came GWB…the ultimate spoiler, who spent 8 years putting a time bomb in place for the young and brilliant historical man…and his team of Chicago “friends,” all on purpose…with bad intent to make him fail.
And thus it shall be written by the MSM: HIS failure as President was not his fault.
I’m just waiting for the 2013 edition of every American History textbook for schoolchildren claiming, because he gave hope or because there wasn’t a complete collapse of civilization -which he surely must have forestalled, that he was the best president ever.
Jerry Pournelle and his wife Roberta have started calling him the “Johnson Bomber.” Jerry says Roberta started it.
I get the impression he can no longer be a Johnson Bomber, so Eunuch Bomber might be more appropriate, although he may have simply lost his Johnson, and kept the other part of his equipment. If that’s the case, he isn’t a Eunuch and Johnson Bomber might be more appropriate.
Actually, I could do without such humorous meandering, and could if we only had a FedGov that didn’t act so much like Barney Fife it’s scary.
The only thing that exceeds the current administration’s incompetence is its ineptitude. The rest of us will pay the price.
An executive of my acquaintance was fond of the mantra “fix problems, not blame.” Although this guy wasn’t the brightest bulb in the executive candelabra, intellectually speaking, this an other positive character attributes carried him a long way (eventually CEO of a F500 company)
The attitude of Obama and his friends appears to be precisely the opposite: fix blame, not problems.
Wilco, David Foster/
Priorities, man, PRIORITIES! Remember, AQ are just bad guys; conservatives are THE ENEMY!
If this report is true, and it seems consistent with what we know of the mindset of the Chicago mafia that is this White House staff, one can only hope for public confirmation. Sunlight’s sanitizing effect and all.
The minions of the “Loyal Press” were also in the blame game. Quoting Jennifer Loven of the AP:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091229/D9CT6TE80.html
I guess that Bush will always be held accountable/responsible for the one of the largest natural disasters in recorded history, and this oversight will always trump total lapses in security, breakdowns in communication, dithering policies wrt the military and unimaginable damage to the economy to due to this innept administration.
How long will they continue to blame Bush?
I am unsurprised. At the end of the Obama reign, when we survey the ruins, it will not surprise me if his farewell speech mentions the mess he was left when he took office.
Seems like State Department screwed up big time here, allowing this guy a visa. Not to affix blame, but has ANYONE seen or heard of Madame Secretary Clinton?
As long as we’re digging into the conspiratorial aspects of the story……..:
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/flight_253_passenger_kurt_hask.html
I was wracking my brain to figure out why the White House would be investigating this “breakdown” and not Congress who, correct me if I am wrong, has oversight.
Now I know…..
Two new interesting stories on the underlying issue came out today. First, sounds curiously like the famous brief Bush 43 got just before 9/11, which the disloyal left used for years as evidence of culpability. Second, just points to the colossal malfeasance that permeates our security apparatus.
Kathleen Parker raised a good point yesterday — one I had never considered. Could it be, that we force Americans to endure things at the airport, which have nothing to do with effective security? Are all of the shoe removals, et al, just window dressing to create a false sense of security?
Laaaarge quantities of Barbancourt and tonic on tap today. Maybe I will forget about it.