Putting skin color above all: Rifts in the Congressional Black Caucus over the investigation of Fast and Furious and the calls for Holder to resign.
A deal has been reached on a Department of Defense authorization bill that had included language allowing the military to hold U.S. citizens indefinitely without charge, both in and outside the U.S.
Not surprisingly for a modern journalist (who routinely miss the lead in their own stories), this article really doesn’t tell us whether that language is still in effect.
They might have cobbled together what they call a deal, but nonetheless (and for good reasons), there are long faces in Durban.
I like this quote best:
The leading alarmist among American scientists, James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been as spectacularly wrong as Mr. Gore. Mr. Hansen said in a 1988 interview the sea level off Manhattan would rise 10 feet within 40 years (if atmospheric CO2 doubled). In the 23 years since, the sea level has risen just 2.5 inches. Sea levels fell over the past year.
But alarmism has been good for his pocketbook. Mr. Hansen failed to report $1.6 million in outside income, much of it in violation of NASA’s rules, according to Power Line’s John Hinderaker.
Pravda reborn! Doug Ross notes the fawning lack of any real questions to President Obama during an interview by a CBS journalist.
Kroft apparently had a brief case of amnesia and forgot about a few mildly important issues:
- The increasing calls for Eric Holder’s resignation and/or impeachment for Operation Fast and Furious, etc.
- The newly revealed Obamacare emails that appear to show Elena Kagan lied under oath
- The catastrophic failure of MF Global, headed by none other than one of Obama’s leading fundraisers, John Corzine
- The billions in “green energy” funds that went to Obama’s fundraisers and political cronies, Solyndra being only the most visible example
- The “historic” $4.2+ trillion budget deficits thanks to Obama’s disastrous stimulus debacle and the Democrats’ failure to pass a budget for 1,000+ days
Ross provides links to each of these scandals, none of which are trivial and all of which are true.
Sadly these kinds of pointless how-can-I-make-a-Democratic-President-look-good interviews are the rule from the mainstream almost-exclusively-Democratic press.
A thoughtful analysis as to why tea party supporters are breaking to Gingrich.
Much of what Bill Quick writes parallels what I have said previously: Gingrich might have said or done some disagreeable things, but he was able to win Congress and force the spendthrifts from both parties to produce a balanced budget. And when it comes time for him to face Obama in the debates, Gingrich alone among these Republican candidates appears capable of handing the situation strongly, with skill. To me, that combination appears to be a winning combination, both for the election and the nation afterward.
Bad news: A deal has been struck at Durban.
The proposed treaty sounds so complicated and obtuse that I can’t see how it can be enforced. More importantly, I don’t see the U.S. Senate ever agreeing to it, even today’s Democratically controlled Congress.
I hope this is good news: The Durban climate negotiations are now in overtime, with several negotiators from some countries having already left the conference.
A college mate of Obama finally gives us a peek into the President’s political beliefs at that time.
Drew: I’m the only person in Obama’s extended circle of friends who is willing to speak out and verify that he was a Marxist-Leninist in his sophomore year of college from 1980 to 1981. I met him because I graduated from Occidental College in 1979, and I was back at Occidental visiting a girlfriend.
Kengor: Was Occidental known for radical-left politics? Would that have been an attraction to Obama?
Drew: It was considered the Moscow of southern California when I was there. There were a lot of Marxist professors, many of whom I got to know pretty well. … What I know absolutely for sure — and this is where I really sought you out and I really wanted to be helpful in terms of the historic record — was to verify that Barack Obama was definitely a Marxist and that it was very unusual for a sophomore at Occidental to be as radical or as ideologically attuned as young Barack Obama was.
The article as well as this one discuss thoughtfully whether Obama still holds to these beliefs.
While I’m not sure if this guy is telling us the truth, it seems to me that everything that Obama has done fits into this mindset quite nicely.
Some of the madness contained in the draft treaty being proposed in Durban, as reported by Lord Christopher Monckton:
- A new International Climate Court will have the power to compel Western nations to pay ever-larger sums to third-world countries in the name of making reparation for supposed “climate debt”. The Court will have no power over third-world countries. Here and throughout the draft, the West is the sole target. “The process” is now irredeemably anti-Western.
- “Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft, which seems to have been written by feeble-minded green activists and environmental extremists, talks of “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between humanity and nature”. Also, “there will be no commodification [whatever that may be: it is not in the dictionary and does not deserve to be] of the functions of nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose”.
- War and the maintenance of defence forces and equipment are to cease – just like that – because they contribute to climate change. There are other reasons why war ought to cease, but the draft does not mention them.
There’s more stupidity detailed by Monckton at the link.
All in all, this treaty draft once again reveals these activists for what they are: power-hungry socialists whose real goal isn’t to save the Earth but to take from some to enrich themselves and others. I pray the Obama administration and Congress refuse to go along.
Jon Corzine: I didn’t tell my company to use customer dollars, and if I did, I didn’t mean it.
What a crock. This man — a former key adviser and fundraiser for President Obama and a major Democratic Party elected official — should be in jail for being an accessory to embezzlement.
Good news: A new poll shows a record high anti-incumbent sentiment toward Congress.
An update on the climate treaty talks in Durban.
I gather from this article that the talks appear to be going nowhere. (The reporter desperately wants a deal, and you need to read between the lines to sense how unlikely the deal is.) Not only is the U.S. reluctant to sign anything, so is India, China, and Brazil. Furthermore, even if the Obama administration agreed to something, it is highly unlikely any treaty could get through the Senate.
Also, it appears that the $100 billion Green Climate Fund is is in trouble as well.
All good news, as far as I am concerned. None of these deals have anything to do with climate or science. Instead, they are designed to redistribute power and wealth, by fiat, from one set of countries to another.
