Leno: “Stimulus Package” is our way of saying “Communism”

A no joke joke.  

 

 

I gather Jay wasn’t too impressed with Obama’s trashing of  investment bankers, and so forth.

 

 

(H/T: Gateway Pundit)

Quick! Guess the Answer! What’s the most dangerous city in the world?

Alexandria, VA could end up holding second place, but first place…?

Not to brag or anything, but I knew what the answer was going to be.  If you’d like a hint, it’s a place known for its toxic assets.  Click here for your answer.

 

(Hat tip: Hot Air headlines)

You don’t say! Suburban Alexandria, VA not keen to host GITMO terrorists for trial

From WaPo:

An outcry is growing in Alexandria over a prospect no one seems to like: terrorist suspects in the suburbs.

No one seems to like?  Are there some people kinda sorta on the fence over this?

The historic, vibrant community less than 10 miles from the White House markets itself as a "federal friendly zone." But it has turned decidedly unfriendly to news that the Obama administration might move some detainees from their highly controlled military fortress at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Alexandria to stand trial at the federal courthouse….

…The 2006 death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was convicted of conspiring in the terrorist attacks of Sept, 11, 2001, turned the neighborhood into a virtual encampment, with heavily armed agents, rooftop snipers, bomb-sniffing dogs, blocked streets, identification checks and a fleet of television satellite trucks.

Hey, it sounds like fun. We can all pretend that we’re living in an episode of 24, and take turns being Jack Bauer.

President Obama has vowed to close Guantanamo by January, and the government is reviewing files on the roughly 240 detainees. The administration has strongly indicated that some will be transferred to federal courts, and a senior Justice Department official recently named Alexandria, along with Manhattan, as possible destinations.

Don’t blame me…I didn’t vote for Barack, but how did Alexandria, VA vote?  Why 71% went for Obama/Biden! Better luck next time, suckers.

Alexandria Sheriff Dana A. Lawhorne, who operates the city jail, said federal security requirements for housing suspects could "overwhelm the system" if multiple detainees are brought there.

No problem. Just ask Barack for some extra Stimulus funding. You’ll be fine.

City officials and some legislators are concerned that terror trials would take years, shut down roads and cost millions and could invite attacks from terrorist sympathizers. Business owners in the dense area around the courthouse — newly filled with hotels, restaurants and luxury apartments — fear disruptions amid a declining economy.

Okay, make that a whole lot of stimulus bucks.

Local officials acknowledged that they cannot control the docket at the federal courthouse and said they would work with the Justice Department to minimize problems. But the resistance in Alexandria, one of the few places known for handling high-level terrorism and national security cases, illustrates some of the practical complexities facing the president’s plan to shutter the controversial detention facility.

I’m shocked!  Who could have known this would happen?

The Guantanamo detainees include the five accused planners of Sept. 11, among them former al-Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Putting detainees on trial in Alexandria would mean moving them from an isolated island prison 90 miles from Florida to a neighborhood brimming with residents, thousands of federal employees and the new Westin Alexandria Hotel 190 feet from the courthouse door.

It’s too darn bad they haven’t found Bin Laden, so he could spend some quality time in Alexandria too.

"It would be a disaster," said Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who co-sponsored legislation to ban the use of federal funds to transfer detainees to Virginia detention facilities, one of at least 10 similar bills filed by Republicans nationwide. In a March 13 letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Wolf questioned how officials would protect the community.

There go those torture-loving Republicans again, just champing at the bit to force the poor terrorists to live in inhumane conditions at GITMO.

…Matt Branigan, president of Fairfax-based Watermark Risk Management International, said that the security could cost millions and that a courthouse in a less-populated area would be safer than Alexandria.

There ya go, solution found. Sic them on people who live in a less-populated area  (preferably a Red State). We can get back to focusing like a laser beam on the economy now.

"The concern is that someone from the terrorist side of things would want to make some statement in conjunction with the trials," said Branigan, a former senior Air Force anti-terrorism officer. He said the new development in the area "makes the security plan much more complicated. You have more locations to cover, more roofs to lock down with snipers."

No mention of whether there are schools in the vicinity.  

UDPATE:

We know that thanks to Amazing Magic Word Tricks performed by Barack the Magician, terrorism is now called a “man-caused Disaster”, and the “War on Terror” is now called an “Overseas Contingency Operation”. Anyone know what we call terrorists now?  And do you know, are terrorist attacks on our own soil to be referred to as “Local Contingency Operations” or something?

Thanks to Ace for the reminder.

Did CNN’s Ed Henry smackdown Obama? Or vice Versa?

Today Ed Morrissey gives his Obamateurism of the Day award for this exchange with CNN’s Ed Henry:

Henry: But on AIG, why did you wait — why did you wait days to come out and express that outrage? It seems like the action is coming out of New York and the attorney general’s office. It took you days to come public with Secretary Geithner and say, “Look, we’re outraged.” Why did it take so long?

Obama: It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.

In my view, that’s an asinine response at the outset because I have zero confidence in Obama’s knowledge base, and I’m confident he never, ever knows what he’s talking about when it comes to economics.  (Sure, if he was my go-to guy for implementing a 21st Century version of a Socialist Manifesto, I might be pretty impressed with his articulate grasp of Marx’s talking points…)

Morrissey goes on to explain why he gave out the award here:

The problem with this is that it took him a couple of days — and he still got it wrong.  If you’ll recall, Obama and his team first claimed to know nothing about the bonuses, and then modified that claim to knowing nothing about the amendment in the omnibus plan that allowed them to get paid.  Subsequently, we discovered that not only did Tim Geithner and Congress discuss the bonuses on March 3rd (and that Geithner wrote an e-mail about them while with the New York Fed in November), but that it was Geithner and his staff that directed Chris Dodd to make the necessary changes to the amendment that enabled the bonuses. In otherwords, Outraged Obama made the bonuses possible.

Which is all true, but misses a larger point; namely, that Ed Henry’s question is idiotic at the outset.  It’s bad enough that Henry is complaining that a politician was late, late, late in saying “we’re outraged!”,  but by setting Cuomo up as the model to follow indicates a lack of familiarity (or concern?) with Cuomo’s role in the housing crisis, and his subsequent strong-arm, extortionist tactics with A.I.G. employees.

Count me in as unimpressed with either actor in this exchange.  Ultimately you have one foolish questioner (Henry) egging on another foolish respondent (Obama).  Which makes them both a couple of losers (or at best makes the incident a stalemate).

UPDATES:

Ed Henry parses the incident himself here.   Apparently Dems think Obama won the round, while Republicans are congratulating Henry for his skilled questioning.  Whatever, he seems mighty proud of himself.

(Via Newsbusters) Aww, Stephanopoulos thinks they’re all winners!  I wonder if this spin was set up in advance on the morning phone call with the Emanuel-Begala-Carville Mutual Admiration Society:

“I think both the President and the press hit their marks tonight” at the presidential press conference, Stephanopoulos gushed on Tuesday’s Nightline in assigning an “A-minus for the President, A-minus for the press.”

Michelle Malkin reports on an “anti-capitalist vigilante group calling itself Bank Bosses Are Criminals”.  This speaks to my earlier point that Henry is a fool to upbraid Obama for being in slo-mo when it came to getting on the A.I.G. outrage bandwagon.  When politicians (like the hysterical mob in Congress) play to reporters like Ed Henry who demand that politicians feed class warfare-ish “OUTRAGE!”, class warfare is what you’ll get.

O.M.G.  (Via Newsbusters) An infatuated Tom Shales was so taken by Barack’s presser that he calls him "not just President Wonderful but President Feel-Good as well".   Did I mention that he is "an astutely pithy phrasemaker"?  What an O’Reilly-esque turn of phrase. Too bad B.O.R. gave Barack a bad grade with no mention at all of pithyness.

Conservative Thoughts and Profundity provides a fun analysis of Ed Henry’s  ‘wasn’t I great!’ write-up about what went on “behind the scenes”:  It begins:

There is a somewhat amusing article on CNN.com right now. It’s not amusing for it’s witticism but for the fact that Ed Henry and CNN think they need to explain away the “tough exchange” that Henry and Obama engaged in during Tuesday’s press conference. Also amusing is the fact that Henry seems to be apologizing to The One for simply doing his job. Finally, it’s amusing for the fact that CNN and Henry think they are the news along with the president. It’s narcissistic and revealing all at once. On top of all that it is amusing for whom CNN obviously felt the need to explain themselves to because for the last day the left has been outraged over Henry’s gall at asking the president a simple question.

Obama’s very knotty problem

CHIP REID: Thank you, Mr. President. At both of your town hall meetings in California last week, you said, quote, "I didn’t run for president to pass on our problems to the next generation."

But under your budget, the debt will increase $7 trillion over the next 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office says $9.3 trillion. And today on Capitol Hill, some Republicans called your budget, with all the spending on health care, education and environment, the most irresponsible budget in American history.

OBAMA: Yes.

CHIP REID: Isn’t that kind of debt exactly what you were talking about when you said "passing on our problems to the next generation"?

OBAMA: First of all, I suspect that some of those Republican critics have a short memory, because, as I recall, I’m inheriting a $1.3 trillion deficit, annual deficit, from them. That would be point number one.

Refresh my memory.  Weren’t you the Junior Senator from Illinois before you ascended to the White House?  Did you have nothing at all to do with expanding the federal deficit, with mega-spending and tax increases enacted under the Pelosi/Reid Democrat controlled congress (over the objections of then President Bush)?   If you hate deficits so much, why didn’t you vote no to this irresponsible legislation?  Moreover, as President, you had the opportunity to demand that, say, earmarks were removed from the budget. You did no such thing.

Point number two. Both under our estimates and under the CBO estimates, both — the most conservative estimates out there, we drive down the deficit over the first five years of our budget. The deficit is cut in half. And folks aren’t disputing that.

OBAMA: Where the dispute comes in is what happens in a whole bunch of out-years. And the main difference between the budget that we presented and the budget that came out of the Congressional Budget Office is assumptions about growth.

 

The Heritage Foundation provides analysis here.  This image should be plastered everywhere, like a Shepard Fairey poster, only the caption should read FEAR instead of HOPE.

Obama also told us last night that he is “persistent”.  Yes he is!  He persistently whines and moans about the deficit he “inherited”, and refuses to tell the truth, which is that that his wealth redistribution schemes, and idiotic Utopian “solutions”  increase the deficit exponentially.

I think that, when it comes to domestic affairs, if we keep on working at it, if we acknowledge that we make mistakes sometimes, and that we don’t always have the right answer, and we’re inheriting very knotty problems, that we can pass health care, we can find better solutions to our energy challenges, we can teach our children more effectively, we can deal with a very real budget crisis that is not fully dealt with in my — in my budget at this point, but makes progress.

Spending gazillions of the taxpayer’s precious resources on health care, green energy and education does zero, zip, nada to cut deficits.    This would be farcical if it were not so dangerous.

Hat Tip: Ace, who notes:

He’s taxing everything that moves, and that includes the public’s patience. And patience only tends to move in one direction. Down.

 Ed Morrisey weighs in here.

They’re not doing everything they can do to eliminate the deficit.  They’re doing everything they can do to make them exponentially worse.

UPDATE:

Ed Morrissey has a new press conference thread, focusing on Obama’s deficit blame shifting:

And even more, the 2009 budget wasn’t Bush’s at all. The Democrats held up most of it, outside of defense spending, in order to wait for the next President. Instead, they passed continuing resolutions until pushing through the omnibus spending bill for the 2009 budget — which was signed by President Obama this month.

More to the point, Barack Obama was a member of Congress during the last four years. What did Obama do to reduce the deficits as the Senator from Illinois? What legislation did he author? What opposition did he provide to the high-spending policies of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in 2007 and 2008?

As I was saying…:)

Obama’s press conference: U.S. like the Titanic

Barack ended last night’s press conference with these remarks:

"This is a big ocean liner. It’s not a speedboat. It doesn’t turn around immediately. But we’re in a better — better place because of the decisions that we made."

Pay no attention to those icebergs lurking beneath the water. This ship is unsinkable. Enjoy the music, and dance. 

Sheesh.

 

UPDATE:

From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro
The Obama ocean-liner: More than anything else, Obama’s news conference last night resembled a campaign TV ad — one in which the serious candidate talks directly to the camera* (although this one went on for nearly an hour, and it sometimes was interrupted by tough questions from the press). Indeed, how many times did we hear Obama mention his budget’s top priorities: education, energy, health care, reducing the deficit? Perhaps the most striking thing was the president linking his budget to the current economic crisis. (“The budget I submitted to Congress will build our economic recovery on a stronger foundation, so that we do not face another crisis like this 10 or 20 years from now.”)

Okaaaay. Could you expound on that a bit do ya think?  What was “striking” to me was how perfectly idiotic it is to make that link, but I’m not a mind reader, so I have no idea what this trio of NBC contributors think about it.  Are they struck by how stupid it is? Struck by its brilliance? Something? Anything? Bueller?

*Are you sure you don’t mean that he talked to the Giant teleprompter at the back of the room?