Once again, we are reminded of what an inexperienced, inept and arrogant bunch we have running things. The Country is in the best of hands!

Add another failure to the list that the Obama national-security team is racking up: its Guantanamo policy. The Washington Post reports that the Obama team really didn’t know what they were doing:

With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress.

Even before the inauguration, President Obama’s top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.

The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge not devising a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and mishandling Congress.

Greg Craig is taking the blame and getting the boot. (”I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives.”) Craig, who some had fingered as the mastermind behind the since-reversed decision to release the detainee-abuse photos, may deserve to get canned. But the blame rests with the president.

It was Obama who made closing Guantanamo the cornerstone of his national-security agenda. It was he who, with great fanfare, announced the decision to close the facility before all the data had been gathered. It was he who again and again derided his predecessor’s administration and the arguments against shuttering Guantanamo (it was only a “false” choice between our values and security, he lectured us). It was Obama who couldn’t resist the urge to debate the former vice president–and then lost the confidence of the American people. And indeed, just this week, he was preening at the UN:

On my first day in office, I prohibited — without exception or equivocation — the use of torture by the United States of America. I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed, and we are doing the hard work of forging a framework to combat extremism within the rule of law. Every nation must know: America will live its values, and we will lead by example.

Well now we’re back to square one. It seems that, yes, it isn’t so easy to close Guantanamo. Just like the Bush team said.

What next? Well maybe we should learn something from this about-face and apply the lessons elsewhere. After all, if they got Guantanamo wrong, very wrong, and embarrassingly wrong, what’s to say that these other calls (e.g., limiting interrogations to the Army Field Manual, reinvestigating CIA operatives whom career prosecutors already declined to prosecute) weren’t similarly flawed? Maybe what’s in order is a top-to-bottom review of the administration’s national-security decision-making process. After all, former Vice President Cheney graciously offered to come anytime to share his wisdom as to how the Bush team kept America safe for seven-plus years. Given that he was right on Guantanamo, he has more credibility than any other figure in the administration. Maybe it’s time to start tapping into that expertise.

And in the meantime, Obama should cut the Guantanamo spiel from his speeches. It might only serve to remind everyone just how inexperienced, inept, and arrogant this administration has been.

Do you know what this is shooting across the night sky?

That is the view from Hungary.

Here is another view from Canada.

Hint: It'll make you cringe the next time you see a falling star overhead.

The increasingly hysterical use of the the race card by liberal columnists, bloggers and politicians reflects the last gasps of people who, being unable to win an argument on the merits, seek to end the argument.

While the false accusation of racism is not a new tactic, it has been refined by Obama supporters into a toxic powder which is causing damage to the social fabric of the country by artificially injecting race into every political issue.

During the campaign, Obama supporters successfully ended scrutiny of Obama's overstated opposition to the Iraq war by accusing Bill Clinton of racism for calling Obama's narrative a "fairy tale." False accusations of racism also were used against Hillary supporter Geraldine Ferraro and against John McCain in order to frame the political debate.

In the 2008 campaign cycle, the race card worked well because it could. The legitimate enthusiasm for an historic black presidential candidacy combined with media bias created an acceptance that there was no way to fight back against the tactic without making matters worse.

Over time, as Obama assumed the presidency and began implementing sweeping plans to restructure society and to run up the national debt to unthinkable levels, opposition to Obama's plans has grown. This opposition has little to do with race, and includes vast numbers of independents who voted for Obama.

The American people, while they still mostly like Obama on a personal level, increasingly oppose his policies and plans. Democrats know that the debate on the merits of initiatives such as health care and cap-and-trade has been won on the merits by the opposition.

Not surprisingly, the pace of racial accusations has picked up as opposition has grown. Just in the past few days the usual and not-so-usual suspects have been seeking to out-do each other in making accusations of racism including Eugene Robinson, Maureen Dowd, Jimmy Carter, Rep. Hank Johnson, Chris Matthews, a wide range of Democratic politicians, and of course, almost all of the mainstream media.

The effect of these accusations is poisonous. Race is the most sensitive and inflammatory subject in this country. By turning every issue, even a discussion of health care policy, into an argument about race, liberals have created a politically explosive mixture in which the harder they seek to suppress opposing voices, the harder those voices seek to be heard.

The stresses this situation has created were exposed at the town hall hearings this summer. The voices of ordinary Americans who never protested anything before in their lives resembled steam forcing its way through the lid of a tightly closed political lid.

But it will not work this time for the effete intellectual bullies for whom the race card traditionally has been the trump card.

Everyone understands that Obama was not subject to the same scrutiny as other candidates because of the fear of being called a racist. That lack of scrutiny gave us a president whose moderate campaign rhetoric belied an underlying agenda which, if revealed during the campaign, would have resulted in an electoral landslide for McCain-Palin. The vocal opposition we are witnessing has everything to do with a sense of being betrayed not just by a candidate, but by a process which was rigged by the use of the race card.

We are seeing for the first time a strong push-back against the race card players. And that reaction is visceral, much like an allergic reaction, from people who have been stung before.

http://legalinsurrection.bl...

During his address to Congress last week, President Obama made a couple of statements that I would have thought would anger a couple of people on the left.  He made the statement that under his plan the federal government would not fund abortions.  Now, it has been a few days since he said that and I have not heard or read of any protestations from the "pro-choice" crowd.  I did a google search and have paid attention to the news on the tube.  Nothing.

And everyone is aware of the statement he made concerning healthcare for illegals.  That his plan would not pay for it.  Representative Joe Wilson called him a liar over that one and everyone on the left came to Obama's defense and claimed that he was not lying.   But now I'm looking for some reaction from La Raza and other hispanic/illegal alien rights groups that should be outraged at Obama's statement.  Again, nothing.

I can come up with only one reason that none of these left leaning groups are  complaining, issuing press releases of condemnation, or anything else.

They all know that Obama is lying.

The red dots are the actual numbers.  The blue lines are the Obama administration's projections with and without his 787 billion dollar stimulus. 

So what are these guy's projections for health care costs?