HALF-FULL REPORT 09/20/13

President Barack Hussein Obama did not let the fact that a mass murder was taking place a few blocks away distract him from making a cheesy, dishonest attack on Republicans over raising the debt ceiling, as Ramirez notes here:

That the prez is a crass hyper-partisan with no respect for the dignity of his office is not news to conservatives.  What is news is that this time, some liberals noticed:

"The man who connected so electrically and facilely in 2008, causing Americans to overlook his thin résumé, cannot seem to connect anymore," said New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. "Top Democrats who used to consider Obama one cool cat now muse that he’s "one weird cat," as one big shot put it."

If President George W. Bush had given such a "harsh, partisan" speech at such a time, the media would be "killing" W for his "insensitivity and poor judgment," said Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" program.  His panel agreed (with some reluctance).  Except, of course, for Mika.

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post said about his Syria policy: "I have encountered not a single person outside the White House, Republican or Democrat, who has kind words for Obama’s performance."

A president hardly ever is criticized by former aides while he is still in office.  But both of Zero’s first term secretaries of defense have slammed his Syria policy.

This is evidence the Ulsterman’s "Republican Insider" was on the mark when he said last week:  "Obama officially neutered."  Here’s more.  Michael Barone agrees.

* * * *

House Speaker John Boehner, R-OH, wondered why President Obama was unwilling to negotiate with Republicans on the debt ceiling when he is so eager to negotiate with Vladimir Putin about Syria.

While Zero was verbally carpet-bombing the GOP, his administration was quietly surrendering more ground to Putin.  If Zero treated America’s enemies the way he treats Republicans, he’d have nuked Iran by now.

In Syria, Islamists are turning their guns on other rebels.

* * * *

The extent to which the wimp in the White House has been overwhelmed was summarized neatly by

 Sarah Palin: "I can see Putin’s shoeprint on Obama’s behind from my house."

And by this photoshop:

Putin, who is often photographed bare chested, likes to think of himself as a he man macho stud, a reputation that was burnished by the admission of our friend Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Cal, that he’d once lost at arm wrestling to the ex-KGB thug.

Now, as Paul Harvey would say, for the rest of the story.

After Dana had lost the arm wrestling match to Putin at the Irish Times, a pub on Capitol Hill, he called upon Jack Wheeler to uphold the honor of his country.  Jack knew something Dana didn’t:

"If only I could have told Dana about the Russian trick of putting all they had into the first microsecond. It’s the way they fight wars, so I figured it’s how they arm wrestle. What you have to do, then, is not try to win fast but just hold the initial hit off, for there’s usually not much behind it."

When Jack arm wrestled Putin, there was a different outcome. "Sure enough, once I took the hit I knew I had him, and down he went."

There’s still more to the story.  You can read it here.

* * * *

To demonstrate how angry she is about the National Security Agency’s spying on her and her country, Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, cancelled a state visit.  That’s the first time a foreign leader has ever cancelled a planned state visit to the U.S, noted Carl Meacham of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  Could this be a sign that proves President Obama’s decline, wondered the BBC’s North American editor.

Brazilian hackers wanted to get even for NSA spying, too, but they broke into NASA’s Web site by mistake. 

* * * *

The Justice Department’s ethics watchdog never investigated repeated complaints by federal judges that the NSA had misled them about the scope of its surveillance of American citizens.

* * * *

Perhaps the strongest evidence that Democrats in Congress are off the reservation and headed for the lifeboats (how’s that for mixing metaphors!) is that the prez couldn’t get liberals in the Senate to back his choice for Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

This means the Fed will keep printing great gobs of money.  Seth Lipsky explains why this cannot end well. Even the editors of the Washington Post are worried. 

Because of what the Fed has done and how it’s done it, economic growth for the rest of this year will be no more than 1 percent, says AEI economist John Makin.  Makin’s an optimist, says Karl Denninger of Zerohedge.

* * * *

Zero might also lose his nominee for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

* * * *

It’s the new math!  In that speech Monday, the president said raising the debt ceiling doesn’t increase the national debt.  He also claimed non-budget items have "never" been attached to the debt.  Washington Post fact check Glenn Kessler gave him 4 Pinocchios for that.

Mark Knoller of CBS recalled when Sen. Barack Obama had very different things to say about raising the debt ceiling.

* * * *

The usual suspects said the usual things about gun control after the Navy Yard shootings.  But the Colorado recall elections drained what little enthusiasm Dem politicians have for gun control.

Some mass shootings could be prevented if once again we put homicidal maniacs in mental institutions before they kill, instead of in prisons afterwards, I noted in this column.  Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist, agrees: It’s time we recalibrated the pendulum that today allows the mentally ill to die with their rights on – and, rarely but unforgivably, take a dozen innocents with them.

How did a whack job like Aaron Alexis get – and keep – a security clearance?  You won’t be comforted by the explanation. The private contractor that gave Alexis a clean bill of health also vetted NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for his security clearance.  Alexis isn’t the only one to slip through the cracks.  Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-NH, wants hearings.

Recalled Colorado State Sen. Angela Giron, D-Pueblo, embarrassed herself again this week by claiming Alexis "would probably not have passed a background check" (he did, to buy his shotgun, which he modified illegally), and that personnel at the Navy Yard were "heavily armed."

Zero only objects to Americans having guns, this cartoon spotted by TTPer Bill Gregory reminds us:

* * * *

Shades of Benghazi!  The BBC reported Wednesday one of the first SWAT teams on the scene at the Navy Yard was told to "stand down."  More detail here.

* * * *

Speaking of Benghazi, the House Oversight opened a new round of hearings this week.  The witnesses Wednesday were the heads of the State Department’s Administrative Review Board — retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – which (quelle surprise!) concluded that neither Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nor any other big shot at State had done anything wrong.

Could the ARB’s finding have been influenced by the facts that Hillary hand-picked Pickering and Mullen to lead the inquiry; that Hillary’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, was briefed regularly on their "investigation," which wasn’t very thorough, because they didn’t interview Secretary Clinton, Ms. Mills, or key military officials, or record the few interviews with underlings they did conduct?  Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard reports on the hearing here.

The House Oversight Committee has issued subpoenas for two senior State Department officials the ARB should have interviewed, but didn’t.  Hillary may get a subpoena too.

The committee also heard testimony from family members of Americans killed at the consulate, but all the Democrats on the panel left before they were heard.

* * * *

The IRS targeted the Tea Party and other conservative groups chiefly because of their anti-Obama rhetoric, USA Today reported Wednesday.  The IRS apparatchiks were inspired to do so by the anti-Tea Party stories in the Washington Post. 

At a House Ways & Means Committee hearing Wednesday, Republicans repeatedly asked interim IRS Commissioner why Lois Lerner, who supervised the targeting of conservatives, and who took the 5^th when called to testify, was still drawing a paycheck.  He declined to answer, which really frosted Rep. Tom Reed, R-NY.  Lerner is supposed to be on paid leave, but she was sending letters to groups applying for tax exemptions as recently as August.

Attorney Jay Sekulow describes here "three key revelations from Lois Lerner’s emails."

* * * *

In news this week about a "scandal" that wasn’t, an appeals court in Texas threw out Thursday the conviction of former House GOP Whip Tom Delay, R-Tex, for money laundering.

* * * *

A senior Muslim Brotherhood official, who until very recently was employed by the William J. Clinton Foundation, has been arrested in Cairo and charged with inciting violence.

* * * *

The new lunch standards promoted by First Lady Michelle Obama are "proving popular, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  Evidently, the USDA didn’t talk to these kids.

* * * *

In 11 days, Obamacare officially begins.  Panic is spreading throughout the land.  This chart says it all.

Walgreens will drop its health care coverage for 160.000 employees, we learned this week.  The Cleveland Clinic, praised by President Obama when he was campaigning for Obamacare, announced this week that because of it, the clinic’s budget must be slashed and its staff cut. Home Depot will drop its health care coverage for part-time employees.

"I take 50 calls a day with independent insurance agents/brokers to navigate the hoops to qualify to sell on the FFM (Federal Facilitated Marketplaces)," a reader who works in health information technology emailed Instapundit.  "The Government websites they need to access to register are riddled with random error messages, and simply attempting to log in to complete this process routinely fails. The agents/brokers are, to a person, terrified. If they cannot complete this process by October 1st (the deadline) they are hosed. Nobody knows what to do, and this will only get worse when millions of consumers join the fray of the marketplace."

The administration has delayed implementation of portions of Obamacare 19 times (most of the time illegally) because it is poorly prepared or unprepared. The Wall Street Journal reported today on another big glitch.

Democrats own this train wreck. But Democrats may be spared the drubbing at the polls they’ve earned by their unwitting allies on the BDR.

* * * *

 "Never interfere with an enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself."

That quote’s been attributed to Napoleon. A variant, attributed to Woodrow Wilson, is: "Never murder a man who is committing suicide."

That’s good advice.  Democrats are cutting their own throats with Obamacare. For Republicans to grab for the knife and turn it on themselves is epic, stupendous, mind-blowing, Custer-at-the Little Big Horn stupid. Yet this is what the Brain Dead Right (hereafter, BDR) is attempting to do.

I’m referring to demands the GOP "shut down" the government over Obamacare.  Those in the BDR who assert Republicans can defund it demonstrate they know as little about the health care law and the legislative process as CNN anchors do about "AR-15 shotguns."

Most Obamacare funds are entitlements, which can be changed only if the House and Senate pass a new law, and the president signs it.  There is no way that can happen this year.

Which is just as well.  If you think Obamacare is unpopular now, imagine how much more unpopular it will be after the Insane Clown Posse has tried to implement it for 10 months.

Democrats hope – and the BDR fears – that the frowns will turn to smiles when Obamacare subsidy checks go out.  Noeme Emery explains why this is ridiculous.

The midterms are the ballgame.  Repeal and replace is the only viable strategy for dealing with Obamacare.  But that can’t happen unless Republicans control both the Senate and House, and that can’t happen until after the midterms. 

The BDR would shift the focus to Republicans. Obamacare is not popular, but neither is shutting down the government in what would be a futile effort to block it.

The BDR should stop beating their chests and read some polls.  Their strategy would not only keep the GOP from winning the Senate, it could cost Republicans the House. Zero and his news media allies are counting on the BDR to bail them out of the fix they’re in.

An important matter of principle should not be abandoned just because it polls badly. But conservatives who would like to see their principles become public policy had better pay attention to public opinion. I imagine there was a time at the Little Big Horn when Custer regretted not having counted the indians before charging.  But it was too late.

If Republicans say the right things about Obamacare, but don’t do anything that would change the subject from its shortcomings, the seeds of an historic landslide may have been planted this week. The bill the House passed today is a good start.  If the GOP follows the counsel of the BDR, a great opportunity will be lost, and very likely with it, the American republic.