Gibbs: We Have Ways of Making You Talk

Via Ace, we have Obama spokesdroid Robert Gibbs admitting that waterboarding worked, but who knows what else would have worked?

In the category of things that work, there are two obvious categories: mean and nice. There is no logical room between them.

The mean things are being roundly criticized as Stuff We Wouldn't Do To Save LA. If there are mean things that are not as mean as those we used, how do we know that they would have been effective? And being effective, would that not signify that they were too mean?

The "nice" category is also properly bisected by "costs something" and "costs nothing".

The things that are nice and cost nothing, I trust we've already tried. Oh, we haven't? You've had 100 days. Put up or shut up. The only possible explanation, then, is that this category of things that cost nothing and are nice takes longer than 100 days to produce results. I posit that there are terrorists targeting the United States with action plans taking less than 100 days to implement.

The things that cost us something can be summarized as bargaining with terrorists.

So the official position of the Obama Adminstruation is that it's better to bargain with terrorists than to waterboard them.

Just so we're clear.


P.S.: Gibbs is now tacitly admitting that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to these prisoners. Otherwise, we would not be able to question them at all.

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Obama Facts, Post-Inauguration Edition

Barack Obama took the oath of office for the first time since Abraham Lincoln.

Barack Hussein Obama can spell his own name.

Jesus walked on water; Barack Obama can emerge from the cesspool of Chicago politics and not smell like sewage -- (Rush Limbaugh).

Barack Obama has arms so long he can put one around Michelle and walk alongside.

George Bush liberated Iraq; Barack Obama fixed that by liberating Gitmo.

Barack Obama was elected, and now Global Warming is not a problem.

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Obama To Save Millions of Jobs; Hamas to Save Millions of Israelis

Over at The Minority Report, Mike DeVine says:

Obama first promised to create 2 million jobs in two years, then said he would create or “save” three million. Currently, over 154 million Americans are employed. We do not believe that even the disastrous policies of Obama and the Democrats will force more than 151 million out of work. At the end of 2009 and even 2010, more than three million jobs will have been “saved”.

Similarly, by having such keen grasp of the military arts, the geniuses at Hamas have cleverly avoided hitting very many Israelis with the hundreds of rockets they have fired at Israel. Thus, in a display of unprecedented liberality, they have spared millions of Israelis.

And yet, still I side with Israel.

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Stupid, Treasonous Puns

In Captain Ed's Redefining Hard Intelligence post, he points to a WaPo article in which an Afghan tribal chief is convinced to help our side when a CIA officer gives him Viagra.

Great, WaPo. Now every tribal leader with whom we meet will be the butt of Viagra jokes, followed soon after by Al Qaeda trafficking in pallets of the stuff, probably on trucks emblazend with a Red Crescent banner. Humanitarian medical aid, it is.

And for a CIA officer to give up this tool of the trade? What a treasonous, or at the very least unethical, moron. While it may be immoral, I don't suppose it's unethical for a CIA man to give Viagra to a tired old polygamist. But it's certainly unethical for him to divulge tactics to a reporter.

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Bill Ayers is No Timothy McVeigh

Bob Owens at Pajamas Media publishes an Op Ed from Larry Grathwohl, the FBI agent who penetrated the Weather Underground domestic terrorist group in the 1970s. Grathwohl submitted the piece to the New York Times, which declined to print it.

Ahead of that comes the quote of the day, from Owens:

Bill Ayers would like to use the fog of time to plead his case that he was just another protester against the Vietnam war, a point that the Times is perhaps willing to let him make considering his longtime association with the president-elect they so nakedly support. No amount of inspired fantasy, however, can omit the simple truth that there is only one significant difference between Bill Ayers and Timothy McVeigh.

Competence.

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Transcript From U.N. Chat Room

NDA: UR terist!1!!
Pak: UR infidL!!1!
NDA: UR unclen etr of ded things
Pak: mmm - tasT cows! LOL!!1!
NDA: unclen h8tr
Pak: U wash w/ p00
NDA: UR 3d world country liv in hut
Pak: will pwn U w/ nuke
NDA: from fish boat, terist?
Pak: from sutcas, infidL!!1!
NDA: 3d world country: no sutcas!1!! use fish boat!1!!
Pak: 1st world country w/ nuk 4 U!!1!
Pak: U ansr fon 4 joos & wash w/ p00
NDA: have job, not liv n hut lyk U
Pak: liv n city & eat tasT cows LOL!!1!
NDA: not aftr nuk on grass roof LOL!1!!
Pak: ur bom ki11 r cows 2 LOL!!1!
NDA: betr ded than smel ur stink
Pak: U stink !
NDA: O good 1 dum455!1!!
Pak: Dingaling oo! git fon iz joos!
NDA: LOL hear dat? iz osama? nope fon not ring cuz no fon in hut LOL!1!!
Pak: 3G ifon w/apps & not smel lyk p00
NDA: tru dat lyk on fish boat!1!! nuke on way kwik hide LOL put on burka!1!!

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For Want of a Nail..

Some things never change. The tiniest of errors often do, under the fog of war, lead to the greatest disasters.

And so it is with Mumbai. Who knew that, for lack of a simple memo, hundreds of people had to die?

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Keeping the Tigers Away

Man: Hey, little fella, why are you banging those sticks together?
Boy: To keep the tigers away.
Man: There are no tigers around here!
Boy: Works, don't it.

Writing at Cato, Jim Harper notes that the airport security behavioral profiling program is a failure on multiple levels:

According to this story in USA Today, interviewing or patting down 160,000 people with (unreported) indicia of suspicion at airports has resulted in 1,266 arrests. It has failed to find wrongdoing 99.3% of the time. Occassionally, investigations based on behavioral profiling have turned up such things as drug possession and the use of fake identification.

Behavioral profiling has never turned up someone planning harm to aviation security. It has never turned up a person with weapons, guns, bombs, or any other implement that would cause a flight to be delayed, much less brought down.

A 0.7% success rate in finding crime is not relevant. Behavioral profiling has a 0% success rate in finding threats to aviation. Behavioral profiling does not have a proximate relationship to securing against harm coming to commercial aviation.

Works, don't it.

Behavioral profiling, as used by the the Department of Homeland Security, violates the principles of good criminal profiling: DHS is not validating a suspect against a list of known qualifiers in a particular case; they are searching with a broad net, and advertising that they're doing so. It's an improper use of profiling.

The purpose is not to find anyone; the purpose is to keep the bad guys from trying to fly.

Works, don't it.

It may work, but at a tremendous cost. We passengers lose our liberty and personal dignity, while the bad guys are forced merely to choose another vector of attack. And the point of the joke about keeping the tigers away is of course that we don't know if the terrorists would ever again plan to use the air system to carry out an attack.

What DHS has done is to assert governmental authority to inspect our persons, papers, and effects without probable cause, while ensuring that fewer people can effectively use the airways for legitimate purposes.

Works, don't it.

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Has Bill Ayers Grant Money Dried Up?

Looking at the list of grants received by Bill Ayers in his published Curriclum Vitae, it looks like Ayers' funding took a steep drop on or about September 11, 2001.

Go figure.

Or maybe he just quit writing grants, retired, or quit bragging about it in his vitae.

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Ayers: Terrorism Doesn't Exist

Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn continue to say that it's not terrorism unless you are the U.S. Government.

Part of me really hopes Ayers stays in the news for four years. He's a walking, partially sentient trooth machine. Here he describes the Obama victory celebration in Chicago's Grant Park:

But they were also celebrating—there was—you could kind of cut the relief in people’s feelings with a knife. I mean, it was the sense that we were going to leave behind the era of 9/11 and the era of fear and war without end and repression and constitutional shredding and scapegoating of gay and lesbian people, on and on. And there we were, millions, in the park, representing everybody, hugging, dancing, carrying on right in the spot, forty years ago, where many of us were beaten and dragged to jail.

We're going to leave behind the era of 9/11 because we voted it away.

"Scapegoating" of gay and lesbian people? When have gays and lesbians been blamed for anything, falsely or not?

Al Qaeda gets a vote, too. And they really don't like gays and lesbians, pal.

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Obama: Let the Terrorists Win One For a Change

Apparently the only way that Barack Obama can figure out to keep Palestinian terrorists from launching bombs on Israel is to give it to them.

Advised by every realist foreign policy adviser who has been on Meet the Press in the last 50 years to let the Palestinians have East Jerusalem, Obama has drawn on his vast experience as an executive to give it away while the giving's good.

Why does anyone think this is a good plan? Because it was drawn up by the King of Saudi Arbia? He's not in control of Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbullah ... is he? If he's in control of Al Qaeda Hamas, and Hezbullah, then we have no business talking to him until he's in Gitmo. If he's not in total control of Al Qaeda Hamas, and Hezbullah, then he can't be sure that the terrorists won't use East Jerusalem as a close-in base from which to attack Israel.

The radical Islamists have sworn to the destruction of Israel. This looks like it brings them a step closer, and all they have to do is stop shooting rockets long enough to move the launchers to the Palestinian side of Jerusalem.

w/t the amazing Gateway Pundit.

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Just Because You Say It, Mr. Ayers, Doesn't Make It So.

In an interview on ABC's Good Morning America, William Ayers says:

“Let’s remember that what you call a violent past, that was at a time when thousands of people were being murdered by our government every month,” he argued. “And those of us who fought to end that war were actually on the right side.”

Ayers denied that the bombings carried out by the group amounted to terrorism.

“We tried to end that war. And in trying to end it, we did cross lines of propriety, of legality, maybe even of common sense. But we never committed terror,” he stated.

Ayers claimed that the actions taken by his group were not terrorism because they did not “target people.”

Terrorism is violence against civilian targets to effect political change. That distinguishes it from free speech (non-violent acts such as sit-ins and marches against civilian targets), war crimes (acts by military personnel against civilians, or vice versa), and mere criminal behavior (the same act minus the call for political change).

Whether the action was intended to target people, or merely ended up killing policemen by accident, is irrelevant. Targeting civilian private property to make a political point is terrorism.

Ayers is a self-righteous liar.

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Talking Points Memo Thinks LA Times Khalidi Tape Issue is About Race

Josh Marshall claims the LA Times Khalidi-Obama-Ayers Tape issue is about race, apparently because the people involved are not all white, and claims Khalidi is just a harmless professor.

But Khalidi was a spokesman for a terrorist organization.

And the LA Times Khalidi-Obama-Ayers Tape issue is not about race; it's about what Khalidi and Obama say and do on the tape, who else is on the tape, and why it isn't being shown.

Is the LA Times suppressing anti-Obama information?

Does Obama express or approve anti-Israel sentiment?

Were Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn at the Khalidi going away party, and does the tape contradict Obama's claims of casual acquaintance and knowledge of Ayers' attitudes?

In short, it's all about Barack Obama's actions and Barack Obama's beliefs, not about Rashid Khalidi.

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No, Josh, Khalidi Is Not About Race

Josh Marshall writes at Talking Points Memo about John McCain's link of Barack Obama to Rashid Khalidi, and without irony charges that it's all about race:

This is an entirely respectable, highly respected scholar. To go further into making a case for him would only be to enable and indulge McCain's sordid appeal to racism.

Khalidi is anti-Israel. Depiction of him as an unsavory character has nothing to do with him personally or his ethnicity, and everything to do with his own views of the Other.

The Khalidi controversy would disappear if the LA Times were to release the video of this harmless going away party. Who could be alarmed at the reading of poetry?

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Why Did Obama Move to Chicago?

I think he followed William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn there.

Why would a guy from Hawaii, with a [*] degree from Columbia (in New York City), with no family in Illinois, move to Chicago?

I think it was because Bill Ayers moved there.

w/t LGF via AoSHQ.
(* updated to remove typo)

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LA Times Suppresses Obama-Ayers-Khaliki Tape - Cites Journalistic integrity, and all of that.

It has been known since April that the LA Times had a videotape (or recording) of Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, and Bernadine Dohrn at a party for Jew-hater Rashid Khalidi. The Times story said

At Khalidi’s going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. “You will not have a better senator under any circumstances,” Khalidi said.

The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.

First the Times refused to release the tape because they said they didn't want to unduly influence the election.

They said they would not reveal their sources. Journalistic integrity, and all of that.

Then they told readers who inquired about the tape that they'd already written a whole story about it -- wasn't that enough? Journalistic integrity, and all of that.


But the story is changing.

Now the Times reports that it received the tape from a source on condition that it not be released. Journalistic integrity, and all of that.

If they release it, why, their sources for tapes of messiahs heaping praise on anti-semites would just dry right up.

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The Ultimate Primer on Barack Obama

Courtesy Ace and some heavyweights.

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Crying Wolf About Racism a Good Thing?

It seems that every time a criticism of the Obama campaign sneaks its way through the media blockade, the final defense it must meet is a cry of racism.

Did Obama spend 20 years attending a church with an anti-semitic, racist message? Racist.

Obama friendly with terrorists? Racist (even though the terrorist in question is white).

Using his middle name? Racist.

I won't bore you by listing more examples, of which there is a seemingly endless supply.

Because what I really think is that all of these knee-jerk charges of racism may be positive in the long run, if they so diminish the charge itself that it becomes meaningless. If everything is racist, then nothing is.

However, the labeling of every criticism as racist is only part of the Obama race strategy. The other, or perhaps an other, tine of the strategy is to announce that racist attacks, even assassination attempts, are coming.

But it's all balderdash. The people who don't like Obama don't like him because his ideas suck, not because of his melanin level.

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Obama Sends Up Another Version of How He Met Bill Ayers

From Politico(via Gateway Pundit who has much more) Saith The One:

"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois," he said. "That's how i met him -- working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and very close friend of Ronald Reagan's" along with "a bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders."[Academy emphasis added]

But Obama campaign manager David Axelrod said (and the received history has it) that Obama, fresh from suing Citibank into making a bunch of bad loans, met Ayers at the fashionable Hyde Park residence Ayers occupies with wife the former terrorist Bernadine Dohrn.

So which is it? And why the obfuscation?

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Why Ayers Matters

Now that I no longer care who wins the upcoming presidential election between John McCain and Barack Obama, there are only a few reasons for me to blog on it.

One of those reasons is bad logic.

There are many who will see the McCain campaign highlighting the Obama-Ayers connection as mere guilt-by-association. We know that, logically speaking, associating with evil doesn't make one evil. Even if Ayers were evil, merely associating with him doesn't in and of itself make Barack Obama evil.

However, there is much more to the relationship than that. The two have known each other for years, perhaps since Obama was an undergraduate student. Ayers hired Obama to distribute between $50 and $150 million for selling anti-capitalism in the Chicago public schools. You don't hire someone to give away that kind of money unless the two of you are in sync and believe in the same goals. There is clear evidence that Obama and Ayers are cut of the same political cloth.

But when Hillary Clinton brought the subject up at a debate during the Democratic primaries, Obama said that Ayers was "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood." He lied about the relationship.

But here's the thing: Ayers was a terrorist as a young man, setting bombs in the Pentagon, at police stations, and in the home of a judge in the attempt to influence a trial. He has never repented of these actions, saying he wishes he'd done more. Obama should not have worked for him, but he did. And now he wants out of that decision.

So he says that Ayers was fire-bombing judges' homes with their children asleep in bed while he, Obama, was only eight years old, so it doesn't matter.

It's an exercise in non sequitur. The issue is not how old Obama was when Ayers did his evil; the issue is that Obama shares this guy's views and helped him spend money to promote those views. And then he lied about it.

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