The Clock is Ticking for Humberto Leal

All eyes are on Texas today as the clock is ticking for Humberto Leal.  I posted on his case here, prompted by this post at Pecan Corner.

As it sits right now, Leal could be executed any time after 6 p.m. unless Gov. Rick Perry issues a stay.  That looks unlikely, but you never know:

“Texas is not bound by a foreign court’s ruling,” Katherine Cesinger, press secretary for Gov. Perry’s office, said in a statement. “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the treaty was not binding on the states and that the president does not have the authority to order states to review cases of the then 51 foreign nationals on death row in the U.S.”

“The treaty” to which she refers is the 1963 United Nations enforced Viennea Convention on Consular Relations.

Via the WSJ:

“Leal’s argument is nothing but a transparent attempt to evade his impending punishment,” Stephen Hoffman, an assistant attorney general for the state of Texas, said in a brief to Supreme Court, according to AP.

I could be wrong, but I don’t see Rick Perry caving on this.

 

Cross posted at And So it Goes in Shreveport

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The White House “Punks” Your Doctor

Did I fall asleep and wake up in Cuba or the Soviet Union?

Not having enough on their plates already with the tanking economy, rising unemployment, rising energy prices, a bottomed out housing market and skyrocketing national debt, the Obama administration is assembling a team of prank callers to harass the few remaining doctors we still have willing to practice medicine in this looming quagmire that is Obamacare.

Straight from the New York Times:

Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.

That’s right.  You’ve been Punk’d!   Imagine the poor receptionists in doctors offices all over America.   “What?  You don’t really want that appointment after all?  Well thanks for wasting my time and keeping me from attending to someone who actually does need medical care.  Have a nice day.”

It seems the Obama administration is suddenly alarmed by the shortage of doctors.  Now, I wonder why there’s a shortage?

Last year the Wall Street Journal wrote about the looming shortage of primary care physicians:

The U.S. has 352,908 primary-care doctors now, and the college association estimates that 45,000 more will be needed by 2020. But the number of medical-school students entering family medicine fell more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007.

The numbers tell the story, yet Team Obama wants to call and harass your doctor’s receptionist just to be sure.  This snoopy survey is redundant; the WSJ article has the numbers:

Back to the NYT (emphasis mine):

The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem”: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.

What is this “will address” part of the equation?  What are the consequences if you’re busted not accepting new patients?

It will also “try to discover” if your doctor isn’t accepting Medicaid patients.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but is there some law that says a doctor MUST accept Medicaid patients?  Aren’t we still in a free market economy where a doctor can treat whomever he wishes?  Doesn’t the Hippocratic Oath bind the doctor to ethical practices?

Needless to say, doctors aren’t thrilled by this new snoop scheme.  The government snoops won’t be identifying themselves as snoops, of course; if you’re attempting to entrap someone, you don’t blow your cover right off the bat.

Here’s one of the scripts they’ll be using:

Mystery shopper: “Hi, my name is Alexis Jackson, and I’m calling to schedule the next available appointment with Dr. Michael Krane. I am a new patient with a P.P.O. from Aetna. I just moved to the area and don’t yet have a primary doctor, but I need to be seen as soon as possible.”

Doctor’s office: “What type of problem are you experiencing?”

Mystery shopper: “I’ve had a cough for the last two weeks, and now I’m running a fever. I’ve been coughing up thick greenish mucus that has some blood in it, and I’m a little short of breath.”

Seriously.   And they’ll be blocking their phone number so they won’t be detected through caller ID.  The offices of over 4,000 doctors in nine states will be called at least twice.  Eleven percent of those will be called a third time; this time the caller will identify himself as part of the HHS, ask if the doctor accepts new, Medicare or Medicaid patients and check for discrepancies in the story.

And guess who has been contracted to do the survey?  National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.  Shocker.

What are the consequences for these doctors who refuse to accept Medicare, Medicaid, or don’t feel they can take on additional patients?  Is there something in Obamacare that says they must?  Remember, you’ve got to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.  Where does all this lead?

This all reminds me of the White House Fishy campaign of 2009 which turned out to be full of legal problems.

Call me paranoid, but it seems like a huge waste of government dollars and a whole lot like Big Brother.

It’s Another WikiLeaks Drop Day

It’s another WikiLeaks day and this time it concerns GITMO.  How much concern should this generate?  It depends on your perspective.  From Hot Air:

Mainly, these revelations don’t reveal much at all about AQ plots in the past, nor their operations today.  The most recent data in either report is years old.  They are both interesting for purposes of background information, but neither tells much of a story on its own or together that we didn’t already know.

And over at The New Yorker where bleeding heart Amy Davidson laments the use of “torture”:

One sees how Guantánamo became a whisper factory: after years of interrogation, the subject many prisoners had left to talk about was other prisoners. Some were doing so after being tortured. The Times notes that Mohammed al-Qahtani was “was leashed like a dog, sexually humiliated and forced to urinate on himself” before implicating himself and sixteen other prisoners, and that those claims appear in the others’ files “without any caveat.”

If this is “torture” then I’d suggest Davidson expand her reading list to include Surviving Hell by Leo Thorsness, or Devil at My Heels by Louis Zamperini.

Michael Tomasky at the UK Guardian:

An honest inquiry into these errors that tried to assess what actually happened without pinning blame would be instructive. But what we’re actually likely to get in the US, if we get anything at all, is a set of hearings in the House of Representatives under Republicans that’s going to ignore Bush-era problems and focus completely on Obama-era ones.

The “errors” he refers to are repatriation and recidivism, specifically the Saudi and Yemini programs.

Michelle Malkin is not impressed with the release and points to the coordinated suicide attempts as discussed in the New York Times piece:

Gitmo sympathizers continue to characterize the suicides/suicide attempts as acts of desperation by poor, innocent potato farmers and bystanders. But these were clear acts of asymmetric warfare by cunning, cold-blooded jihadists versed in exploitation of Western sensibilities.

Lawyers, Guns and Money thinks this leak might not be all bad:

My only other reaction for now is that while the past four major WL releases were carefully framed to make US foreign policy decisions in the war on terror look bad, this new release may well have – or have been calculated to have – the opposite effect. While some news sources are stressing that “children and senile old men are among the detainees” other are almost making Obama look too soft on Guantanamo detainees (breaking news from the leak includes detainees’ threats against interrogators and claims of a nuclear holocaust if bin Laden is captured).

The Memeorandum aggregation is growing and is worth surfing through.  The value of the dump depends on your perspective.

Meanwhile, Private Bradley Manning has been moved to a more “humane” prison than his former digs at the Quantico brig.

(Cross Posted at And So it Goes in Shreveport)

Obama Around The Web

A quick check of how The Won is faring in the press this week:

On the Middle East peace process:

Instead of becoming a heady triumph of his diplomatic skill and special insight, Obama’s peace process is viewed almost universally in Israel as a mistake-riddled fantasy.

On the nukes issue:

So has nothing changed in the past quarter-century? In fact, almost everything has – especially when it comes to nuclear arms control and Israel’s national objectives. What hasn’t changed, it seems, is Barack Obama – who has led his administration into a foreign policy time warp that is sapping its strength abroad and at home.

On the TSA gropings:

“I think the American people are worried when they see an administration worried about reading Miranda rights to the underwear bomber,” Jindal said. “[They’re] so worried about rights of the terrorists, what about the rights of innocent American travelers?”

On the psyche of the American people:

It appears that Obama is literally driving us crazy. According to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 20% of Americans had some form of mental illness in 2009. Which they attribute to unemployment, not the accumulated effect of listening to Barry’s teleprompter speak almost daily.

On the outcome of the Ghailani trial:

Obama & Company have been called the Keystone Cops too many times to count. But they are far, far worse than mere incompetents.  They are blowhards who believe in their own mental and moral superiority to the point where they put all Americans at gratuitous risk.

On Obama’s failure at the G20:

Has there ever been a major economic summit where a U.S. President and his Treasury Secretary were as thoroughly rebuffed as they were at this week’s G-20 meeting in Seoul? We can’t think of one. President Obama failed to achieve any of his main goals while getting pounded by other world leaders for failing U.S. policies and lagging growth.

The bloom is off the rose.

 

Cross posted at And So it Goes in Shreveport.

Obama Finally Appoints…an Asian Carp Czar

Who said Obama’s jobs initiative isn’t working?  Why, he created one today.  One new job.

The Asian Carp Czar.

Yessir, John Goss is the man charged with keeping the offending Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes, and Obama is giving him a budget of nearly $80 million, to lead this “multi-pronged federal attack against Asian carp.”

What could an Illegal Immigration Czar do with $80 million?  Suggestions?

Cross posted at And so it Goes in Shreveport

EPA Continues Plan to Regulate Farm Dust

In one of its more idiotic moves, the EPA is continuing its move to regulate …farm dust.  Farm dust!

This issue has come up before; in 2009 a federal court upheld the EPA’s right to regulate farm dust when the Bush administration tried to regulate airborne soot and dust:

The American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Pork Producers Council challenged EPA in 2006 over its decision to regulate coarse particulate matter — or dust — in rural areas, arguing that the agency had failed to show any negative health effects associated with the dust (Greenwire, Dec. 15, 2006).  EPA had considered exempting farming and mining operations, but the agency ultimately decided it could not exclude particular industries.

Farmers then, and now, naturally decry the move as stifling and ridiculous.   Anyone who has ever been on a farm, or on a rural gravel road, knows there’s dust on a farm:

Farming and agriculture groups said the regulations would hurt their industries, affecting everything from combine dust to feedlot dust and even the dust from gravel roads.

In February 2009, the Iowa Defense Alliance wrote:

What the regulations do not do is taking into account the fact that most often farmers do not have control over the creation of this dust. For instance, when you are traveling down the highway and see a farmer planting his field in dry years you see a cloud of dust shadowing the machinery. This dust is created when the machinery stirs up the dirt during the planting process. Or perhaps it is sometime in fall, you see a combine harvesting the beans or corn. As the combine harvests the crop dust is created from the dry plant material in combination with the dirt being stirred up by the combine’s wheels. Another situation when dust is created is not necessarily related to farm work. When a vehicle travels over a dry gravel road dust is created. There really is not much that can be done to quell the production of this dust, but the EPA is insistent on regulating it nonetheless.

The latest maneuver in the debate is a letter to the EPA signed by 21 senators protesting the move to regulate farm dust as explained in a July 8, 2010, Policy Assessment related to the Clean Air Act.  The new guidelines “would establish the most stringent and unparalleled regulation of dust in our nation’s history.”

You can read the letter here (pdf – 3 pgs).

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air wrote about this in March 2009:

Now, farmers will be held accountable when their dust moves outside of their property lines and towards towns and villages.  That will impose extra cost on them depending on which way the wind blows, an excellent metaphor for Congress but a deadly imposition on a farm sector already struggling with an economic turndown and falling land prices.  The compliance costs to keep dust tamped down will be enormous, and will force out the smaller farmers who can least afford the mitigation costs.  It pushes the productive family farm even further into the anachronism category.

And he closes:

We need a strong agricultural sector to produce food as inexpensively as possible with maximum efficiency to keep us fed and healthy.  Dust may provide some health risks, but nothing as acute as poverty and starvation, which existed in much more significant scale in the US before the Green Revolution of the 20th century.

If such a plan ever moves out of the realm of debate and into practice, it would indeed crush the agriculture industry, especially the family farm.  Large corporate farms might be able to handle the extra costs, but the small farmer doesn’t stand a chance.

Where do they think our food actually comes from?  It just materializes in a Whole Foods on its own?

Idiots.

Cross posted at And So it Goes in Shreveport

Day 69: Thad Allen Needs to Go

The federal response to the Gulf crisis has not improved this week as far as I can tell.  Admiral Thad Allen’s Friday briefing makes that abundantly clear.

This man need to be replaced.

At issue is the question of skimmers in the Gulf.  Karen Nelson of the Biloxi Sun Herald reported on the anger and frustration along the Gulf at the lack of skimmers along the Mississippi Gulf coast.  U.S. Representative Gene Taylor was apoplectic and beginning to sound like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal:

Back on land in Gulfport, Taylor let loose.

“A lot of people are getting paid to say, ‘Look! There’s oil’ and not doing anything about it,” Taylor said. “There shouldn’t be a drop of oil in the Sound. There are enough boats running around.

“Nobody’s in charge,” Taylor said. “Everybody’s in charge, so no one’s in charge.”  “If the president can’t find anyone who can do this job,” he said, “let me do it.”

Admiral Allen was asked about the lack of skimmers by Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald.  His response?

The discussions we are having with the Navy and other folks right now is the availability of skimmers that are on standby because they might be needed for a spill someplace else and how we might go about assessing the availability of those resources. So I would separate out the resources that the Navy had that they’ve already given to us and the discussions we’re having across the entire country where we have equipment that’s out there as a requirement—legal requirement to cover spill response of those areas and how we might free those up, and that’s a work in progress inside the administration right now.

Got that?  We’ve got skimmers on standby but can’t use them because they might be needed somewhere else. Her next question was whether or not the Jones Act has been waived.  Allen’s response:

Oh, there are a lot of foreign vessels operating offshore, Carol. The Jones Act—we have had no request for Jones Act waivers. If the vessels are operating outside state waters, which is three miles and beyond, they don’t require a waiver. All that we require is an Affirmation of Reciprocity, so if there ever was a spill in those countries and we want to send skimming equipment, that we would be allowed to do that, as well, and that hasn’t become an issue yet, either.

Allen should check his mail more often.  One request was made on June 17.  John Cornyn sent a request on June 22.  On June 18, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison filed a bill requesting waiver of the Jones Act.  Florida Senator LeMieux and Rep. Jeff Miller requested a waiver two weeks ago.

Allen’s excuse that foreign vessels are working the spill three miles and more offshore is lame.  A waiver of the Jones Act would get foreign skimmers near the shore where they could protect the fragile coast.

Overall there are just too many cooks in the kitchen.  What is needed is take-charge leadership to make the tough calls and get the job done.  There’s just no excuse for the lack of skimmers in the Gulf.  Every available asset should be utilized.

When does incompetence cross the line and become criminal?

Cross posted at And So it Goes in Shreveport

(More at Memeorandum)

17 Afghan Pilots MISSING from Texas AFB?!

Holy smokes – Doug Ross says this should send shivers down your spine, but, man – that doesn’t even get it.  This is just nuts – from FOX:

A nationwide alert has been issued for 17 members of the Afghan military who have gone AWOL from a Texas Air Force base where foreign military officers who are training to become pilots are taught English, FoxNews.com has learned.

The Afghan officers and enlisted men have security badges that give them access to secure U.S. defense installations, according to the lookout bulletin, “Afghan Military Deserters in CONUS [Continental U.S.],” issued by Naval Criminal Investigative Service in Dallas, and obtained by FoxNews.com.

You just can’t make this stuff up.  How in the world did this happen?

And we’ve got to trust Eric Holder and Team Obama to find them?  OMG.

Not Resting, Again

Thank goodness Obama has his boot on the neck of BP and isn’t resting until this crisis is solved and people are back to work in south Louisiana.

Last night he was not resting at the Kennedy Center, taking in a performance of “Thurgood.”

The New York Times says of the play,

At the end of the play Marshall recites from a Langston Hughes poem opening with the following line: “Oh, let America be America again.”

Amen to that.

Meanwhile, NOLA reports:

Coast Guard Rear Adm. James Watson has written a letter to BP, giving the company 48 hours to come up with additional “leak containment capacity” to deal with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

At least somebody is on the job. 

Cross posted at And So it Goes in Shreveport

No Worries; Obama is “Not Resting”

Via Mark Knoller, the Congressional picnic is underway on the White House lawn.  The salmon is cooking, Pelosi is schmoozing and Obama and Michelle hold court.

All is well.

Not resting.

Cross posted at And So it Goes in Shreveport

Silly Democrats

Do Democrats really think this will help them in the fall?

If the time-honored tradition of the political meeting is not quite dead, it seems to be teetering closer to extinction. Of the 255 Democrats who make up the majority in the House, only a handful held town-hall-style forums as legislators spent last week at home in their districts.

It was no scheduling accident.

With images of overheated, finger-waving crowds still seared into their minds from the discontent of last August, many Democrats heeded the advice of party leaders and tried to avoid unscripted question-and-answer sessions. The recommendations were clear: hold events in controlled settings — a bank or credit union, for example — or tour local businesses or participate in community service projects.

Bwahahahahaha!

(Laughing all the way to the polls)

(H/T) Memeorandum

Peter Ferrera at American Spectator is n…

Peter Ferrera at American Spectator is no longer predicting Obama’s absence on the ballot in 2012; now he’s going a step further and predicting an Obama resignation.

Over at And So it Goes in Shreveport I’ve looked at what Obama is facing and I come to a different conclusion from Mr. Ferrera.

I think he sees it as his destiny to reshape America into his vision of what it should be.  He has no abiding love for the country as it is which is what would be necessary in his heart for him to resign.

Besides, he’s too narcissistic to admit failure.

What do you think?

OilBama is Outraged!

Fearless leader is unhappy.  With the news that the BP “top kill” procedure has failed, Obama is now “enraged.”  On top of that, the AP reports, this comes after “Obama interrupted a long holiday weekend at his home in Chicago to visit the Louisiana coast on Friday and show its angry residents that he is in command of the situation.”

In command?  Not so much, I think.

You may have seen pictures of Obama’s visit to the coast Friday.  There’s one where he is stooping down in his slacks and dress shirt inspecting a tiny tar ball on the beach.  Apparently the hundreds of BP workers bused in to clean up the beach before his visit left a few tar balls for just such a photo op.  The residents on the coast would have loved for those workers to stay and keep on cleaning their beaches, but as soon as Obama left, they were out of there.

“The level of cleanup and cooperation we’ve gotten from BP in the past is in no way consistent to the effort shown on the island today,” [Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris] Roberts said by telephone. “As soon as the president left, they were immediately put back on the buses and sent home.”

I don’t think for one moment that Obama gives a damn about the coast or the people in south Louisiana who are losing their livelihood because of this spill. Such a narcissist can not be concerned about others to the level he would have us believe he is.

The responsibility belongs to BP.  To be fair, I don’t think we can hold the government responsible for what happened anymore than we could hold George W. Bush responsible for Hurricane Katrina.  But it is imperative on Obama’s administration to provide everything necessary for the protection of the Louisiana marshlands and coastline.

Appearances count for something.  Obama batting off to Chicago for the weekend, his second vacation since this spill occurred, sends a message opposite of the one intended by his handlers with the staged photo of him inspecting a tar ball.  One says, “I don’t care!  Solve it yourself!  I’m outta here!”  and the other says, “I care.  Look at this foul tar ball on American shores.  I’m enraged.”

Governor Bobby Jindal was on ABC This Week and HE is outraged.  Politco quotes him as saying:

Now, we have said for weeks now we’d much rather fight this oil on a sandy barrier island than fight it inside our wetlands. We’ve got miles and miles of these islands… [and w]e proposed a plan, 24 segments, to rebuild or refortify these islands.

“After weeks — and if they had approved this when we first asked, we could have built 10 miles. Ten miles… Yesterday, the Army Corps of Engineers approved six segments out of 24, over 40 miles out of 100. But here’s where our concern was. The federal government only ordered BP to pay for to do one of those six segments. That’s two miles out of 100. Our message to the president today was, make BP pay for this. The federal government shouldn’t be making excuses for BP. This is their spill, their oil. They’re the responsible party. Make them responsible.

Jindal rightly laments the lack of urgency on the part of the federal government to provide what he’s asked for.

Needless to say, this story will continue to play out through the weeks and will only get worse.  The politics aside, people are losing their way of life and their way of making a living.  The wetlands are dying.  No amount of federal dollars can replace what will be lost there.

Obama can keep his outrage.

(Cross-posted at And So it Goes in Shreveport)

White House to Slash NYC Anti-Terror Funds

This via The New York Post.

Because we’re no longer in danger from terrorists…

The Obama administration will announce tomorrow it has slashed anti-terror funds for New York City, despite the attempted Times Square bombing less than two weeks ago that underscored the enormous threat to the city.

The Department of Homeland Security informed New York officials yesterday that grants to the city were cut 27 percent for mass transit security and 25 percent for port security.

The mass transit funds dropped $42 million, from $153 million last year to $111 this year.  Port security funds suffered a $11.2 million cut, from $45 million to $33.8 million, officials said.

Someone please tell The White House that despite the fact that this country elected Barack Obama as President, we are still terrorist targets.

Who is Really Coming Across the Southwest Border?

Over at And So it Goes in Shreveport I’ve posted a video from Justin Farmer at WSB Atlanta in which he looks at the folks “other than Mexicans” coming across the border.  It’s a real eye opener.  Pop on over there and watch it, then come back.  It’s only 3 minutes long.

Mr. Farmer says thousands cross who are from places like Yemen, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq among others.

One Arizona rancher found a Muslim prayer rug on his ranch.  Justin Farmer examined a Congressional report from 2006 entitled “A Line in the Sand:  Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border” (PDF – 39 pages) which confirmed members of Hezbollah have crossed the border.  It also contains photos of military jackets found on the border, one in Jim Hogg County, with Arab insignia praising martyrdom and depicting pictures of planes flying into the Twin Towers.

In 2005, Border Patrol apprehended about 1.2 million illegals and of those about 165,000 were from “countries other than Mexico.”  All of this traffic includes human smuggling, drug smuggling, and “special interest” individuals coming into the country and creating a threat to not just those border communities but to the nation as a whole.

The report also reveals the route taken by the Middle Easterners from Europe to the tri-border region in South America.  Then they learn Spanish, trel to Mexico,  blend in with other illegals and come on in.

Farmer reports on several terrorists seen in the U.S., in the Atlanta area, who likely came in from the southwest border, it is believed.

If the problem was this bad in 2006, I can hardly imagine how much worse it is now.

Meanwhile, we’ve got John McCain tromping around down there saying “Complete the danged fence!” and the U.N. is worrying about the human rights of illegals.  The U.N. issued a statement today criticizing Arizona’s new immigration bill saying  it could lead to racial profiling and also laments, “It also makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.”

The world is truly upside down.

On Puerto Rico and Dr. Donald Berwick. No, not together…

A couple of quick things:  the post on Puerto Rican statehood is continuing to get some interesting comments.  Since it’s dropped off the front page now (because we are so prolific!) you might want to hit the link and check it out.  Feel free to keep the discussion going.

Also, I’ve got a lengthy (for me) post at And So it Goes in Shreveport on Obama’s pick for the CMS – the guy who will be over Medicare and Medicaid decisions, among other things.  He’s in love with the British health care system and has some serious concerns about our own, one of which is reflected in this quote:

“The more I have studied it, the more I believe that less discretion for doctors would improve patient safety.” He then looks down. “Doctors will hate me for saying that.”

Crikey!  That scares me. There’s more.

This man, Dr. Donald Berwick, is no ideologue and no Van Jones or Kevin Jennings.  But his plans to revolutionize the health care system in America are definitely worrisome and bear examination.

Thoughts on Statehood for Puerto Rico

I’ve done a post over at And So it Goes in Shreveport on the issue of statehood for Puerto Rico.  There are both pros and cons and there is an important vote on the issue in the House this week on H.R.  2499.

One piece of legislation that is garnering interest  is H.R. 2499, The Puerto Rico Democracy Act, introduced in May 2009 by Pedro Pierluisi (D.-Puerto Rico) and coming up for a vote before the House of Representatives next week.

The bill basically gives Puerto Ricans the chance to vote between retaining their current status or choosing a new status, to include Statehood.  The text of the bill can be found here.

One issue seems to be the poor economic baggage that the island would bring.   Another problem is that the vote in Puerto Rico will be via plebiscite rather than giving a true choice to voters.  The wording on the ballot is likely to be in such a way that voters will have no choice but to choose statehood when many Puerto Ricans would prefer “enhanced Commonwealth” status.

Thoughts?

Navy SEAL Cleared

Some good news to start the day:

A U.S. military jury cleared a Navy SEAL Thursday of failing to prevent the beating of an Iraqi prisoner suspected of masterminding a 2004 attack that killed four American security contractors.

Although I AM curious why it took two hours to reach the verdict.

No Seething Hatred Here

Mark Steyn at The Corner points to this headline from The Miami Herald:

Unified By Hatred Of Obama, GOP Still Searches For Challenger

Against my better judgment and concern for my blood pressure, I clicked on over.

Can I just address the fact that first of all “hatred of Obama” misstates the point, and I’m not speaking for the GOP because I’m not empowered to do that, but I’m speaking only for myself.  We had this argument way back when Rush Limbaugh said he wanted Obama’s policies to fail.  Oh, I know; he said “I hope he fails,” but anyone with a grain of sense can read the context and know he meant Obama’s radical policies.  We’ve been there and done that.

This headline only takes us back there.  It’s the same argument.

Let me be clear.  I don’t hate Obama.  I hate Obama’s policies.  Period.

Now.  As to the rest of the article which addresses potential GOP challengers to Obama in 2012, let me suggest that Steven Thomma, author of the piece, missed the point or major theme of the SRLC in that the next battle the GOP is anticipating is 2010.  We’re looking at the fall.  As Haley Barbour said, 2012 will take care of itself after that.

I’ll go on record right now and say that I don’t believe any of the current leaders on the Des Moines Register GOP Caucus poll will be the actual nominee in 2012.  But, I’m not worried about that right now.

The Rubio – Crist Debate

I pulled my sick self out of bed to watch the Rubio – Crist debate this morning on Fox News Sunday.  I’d say this one was an easy Rubio victory.  All Crist could seem to do was make personal attacks on Rubio while Rubio tried to stick to the issues. Crist looked like a loser.

Most telling to me is that Crist defended the McCain/Bush immigration plan and he said his favorite Senator is John McCain.  That tells me all I need to know.

Chris Wallace asked Crist if he could end the rumor that he might run as an Independent and Crist’s answer was “I am running as a Republican.”  Well.  Right now you are, yes.  He never said, I won’t switch, but Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO took it to mean that he ruled it out, so maybe he did.  In looking at the literal words, I don’t think he did.

I live-blogged the debate – you can check out the finer points here.

On Twitter, @Rubiopress was debunking Crist’s misinformation as fast as he churned it out.