let’s start with Flopping Aces

Attorney General Eric Holder is going to take 5 of the most dangerous terrorists from Guantanamo Bay Prison and try them in a criminal court in New York City. If memory serves, he claims that he talked over this decision with his wife and brother. Governor Paterson indicated, in his own protest, that he was aware of this possibly happening 6 months ago.

We are given 3 basic reasons for this: (1) to show off our justice system to the world; (2) to bring these evil men to justice (although, I doubt that the Obama administration would ever use the word evil); and (3) to try these men in the shadow of the fallen towers, bringing them back to the scene of the crime.

Reasons 2 and 3 are hokey. A military trial would bring these men to justice more quickly and surely that would an open criminal trial. And, does anyone in their right mind think that these terrorists will see the faces in the courtroom, and know that they are down the street from the scene of the crime, and that this will somehow make them feel badly? How preposterous. This will be a victory for terrorists all over the world, regardless of the outcome.

The first reason is what Holder actually believes, but in a far different way than we think of it. First of all, this trial cannot match up with a normal, criminal trial for several reasons: (1) the defendants were not mirandized; (2) Evidence was not collected and preserved according to legal standards; and (3) criminals in this country have a right to a speedy trial. (4) Defendants are promised a jury of their unbiased peers. (5) Quite obviously, confessions cannot be obtained through torture, and the President of the United States has proclaimed waterboarding to be torture. (6) Eric Holder’s own law firm has defended terrorists, so that suggests a lack of objectivity as well.

In other words, in order to try this case, certain common aspects of our criminal justice system must be thrown out the window. How this is done legally perplexes me, but then, as Lindsay Graham pointed out painfully to Holder that this approach to terrorists is unprecedented. We have never once before taken an enemy of the United States man from a foreign country and given him a common criminal trial, affording him all of the rights of an American citizen. We have, on some occasions, done this for terrorists arrested on American soil.

Our own president has (1) said that these men were subject to torture and (2) both he and his attorney general have pronounced these men guilty.

So what is Holder’s real motivation?

I need to first paint a picture of the Obama administration to explain. This is an administration of amateur ideologues who are always in campaign mode. The one thing which they have done well is, they got Obama elected. We also know that these are ideologues, given people who have been in the administration. One who views Mao as a man she admires; another who is both an avowed Communist and a 9-11 truther, another who wants to solve global warming by painting everyone’s h roof white, etc. So, this is not an administration of moderates.

Since New York Governor Paterson first heard about this 6 months ago, that means this was an executive decision that came frpm higher up than Holder. However, since this administration is in campaign mode, they use a member of the cabinet as their attack dog, who does the dirty work. The president does not do any of the dirty work. So, this has to appear as if Holder woke up this morning, said to his wife, “I think I am going to try KSM in a New York criminal trial setting,” and she said, “That’s nice dear.” In other words, they do not want Obama fingerprints on this action (which may account for why they waited for some time to pass since the decision was made and timed the decision for when the president was outside of the country).

Ideologues hate the CIA. From the very beginning, Obama has done everything possible to neuter the CIA. All of their methods and all of their concern not to go too far was brought out in the public. This is an administration which will not even reveal the details of their contract for the website Recovery.gov; so transparency is not what they are going for. Neutering the CIA is what they wanted. The CIA is no longer dealing with terrorists who have been picked up, and all of their methods are made public, so terrorists can train to resist these methods if they are ever brought back.

This trial is not about the CIA, however; as they have already destroyed their effectiveness. This trial is all about the Bush administration. Here is where we can recognize that Holder (and Obama) want to hold up our legal system to the world to admire. They want to use this trial to pivot to the Bush administration and the tactics used to gain information (which Obama has proclaimed to be torture), and in a very big, and very public trial, the Obama administration will be forced to indict the Bush administration. It is going to look as though this is the natural outgrowth of a criminal trial. And Obama wants the world to see that, we are willing to indict members of government for such evils as torture and improper treatment of prisoners. Just like any 3rd world dictator does.

That is the end game and the purpose of all of this.

The secondary purpose is, this is going to grab a lot of newspaper space and take over cable television news. This means, less time will be available to closely watch what the executive and legislative branches are doing. Behind this barrage, the Obama administration is going to be able to draft its most radical legislation (which I believe will be comprehensive immigrant legislation, which will fast-track many of them to being voters before 2012). Maybe that is a bit too paranoid. Whatever it is, the Obama administration will be able to more effectively put through various bills and riders and amendments without the same close scrutiny that they are receiving now (from FoxNews, anyway).

So, as in a campaign mode, this seems to all come out naturally, without Obama’s fingerprints on it; they get to go after the real criminals of the people—namely, the Bush administration (and, to a much lesser degree, the CIA); and they get to sneak through radical legislation because we are not looking at what the other hand is doing.

Just as many of us have been struck dumb by the action of this administration in such a short time, this will be absolutely amazing, and an incredible thrill to the far, far left.

Powerline adds:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confederates are gearing up for a media spectacle:

A lawyer for one of five men facing trial for the Sept. 11 attacks says the men plan to plead not guilty and use the trial to express their political views. Attorney Scott Fenstermaker says his client Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and the others will not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but will tell the jury “why they did it.”

He says the men will explain “their assessment of American foreign policy.”

Fenstermaker met with Ali last week at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. He says the men, including professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, have discussed the trial among themselves.

Yes, I’ll bet they have. Eric Holder’s decision to give them a jury trial must have seemed like a gift from Allah.

Scott Fenstermaker is a criminal defense lawyer from New York who has represented a number of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

also:

CRU Emails - “Scientists Have Been Manipulating the Raw Temperature Figures”

Nigel Lawson from the London Times describes how the CRU emails have damaged, possibly permanently, the theory of man-made global warming:

…the scientific basis for global warming projections is now under scrutiny as never before. The principal source of these projections is produced by a small group of scientists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), affiliated to the University of East Anglia.

Last week an apparent hacker obtained access to their computers and published in the blogosphere part of their internal e-mail traffic. And the CRU has conceded that the at least some of the published e-mails are genuine.

Astonishingly, what appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals.

There may be a perfectly innocent explanation. But what is clear is that the integrity of the scientific evidence on which not merely the British Government, but other countries, too, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, claim to base far-reaching and hugely expensive policy decisions, has been called into question. And the reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished.

Instead of debate those pimping the AGW version of warming have done their best to close the debate, with the help of our liberal MSM.

Finally:

Health Care Bills Violate Obama’s Principles & Campaign Promises

He promised to end the old Washington games yet plays along with health care gimmicks and lies!

It’s little more than a year now since Obama was elected. Plenty of time for the not so well informed public to forget the principles Obama campaigned on and the promises he made. Even as he repeated his “eight principles” in his budget message in February, he is set on a course that will violate nearly every one of them.

By now it should be painfully clear to all but the most diehard Obamaton that the current “reforms” violate every principle and promise Obama made to the American people regarding health care reform. The bills were negotiated in secret among Democrats. They won’t cover all uninsured Americans. Instead of lowering health care premiums the costs will increase. The bills are not “deficit neutral” but are actually the worst form of budget busters filled with the sort of gimmicks and secret deals Obama campaigned against. Millions of Americans will be forced onto the government plan and fined or get jail time if they do not enroll. And despite every promise Obama made during the campaing, taxes on those earning less than $250,000 will go up.

Finally, this message has begun to seep into the consciousness of the greater, often ambivalent, American public:

A budget-buster in the making
By David S. Broder
Washington Post
Sunday, November 22, 2009

It’s simply not true that America is ambivalent about everything when it comes to the Obama health plan.

The day after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) gave its qualified blessing to the version of health reform produced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Quinnipiac University poll of a national cross section of voters reported its latest results.

This poll may not be as famous as some others, but I know the care and professionalism of the people who run it, and one question was particularly interesting to me.

It read: “President Obama has pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our federal budget deficit over the next decade. Do you think that President Obama will be able to keep his promise or do you think that any health care plan that Congress passes and President Obama signs will add to the federal budget deficit?”

The answer: Less than one-fifth of the voters — 19 percent of the sample — think he will keep his word. Nine of 10 Republicans and eight of 10 independents said that whatever passes will add to the torrent of red ink. By a margin of four to three, even Democrats agreed this is likely.

That fear contributed directly to the fact that, by a 16-point margin, the majority in this poll said they oppose the legislation moving through Congress.
…
While the CBO said that both the House-passed bill and the one Reid has drafted meet Obama’s test by being budget-neutral, every expert I have talked to says that the public has it right. These bills, as they stand, are budget-busters.

[F]ormer CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin amplif[ies] the point with specific examples and biting language. Holtz-Eakin cites a long list of Democratic-sponsored “budget gimmicks” that made it possible for the CBO to estimate that Reid’s bill would reduce federal deficits by $130 billion by 2019.

Perhaps the biggest of those maneuvers was Reid’s decision to postpone the start of subsidies to help the uninsured buy policies from mid-2013 to January 2014 — long after taxes and fees levied by the bill would have begun.

Even with that change, there is plenty in the CBO report to suggest that the promised budget savings may not materialize. If you read deep enough, you will find that under the Senate bill, “federal outlays for health care would increase during the 2010-2019 period” — not decline. The gross increase would be almost $1 trillion — $848 billion, to be exact, mainly to subsidize the uninsured. The net increase would be $160 billion.

But this depends on two big gambles. Will future Congresses actually impose the assumed $420 billion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health programs? They never have.

And will this Congress enact the excise tax on high-premium insurance policies (the so-called Cadillac plans) in Reid’s bill? Obama has never endorsed them, and House Democrats — reacting to union pressure — turned them down in favor of a surtax on millionaires’ income.

The challenge to Congress — and to Obama — remains the same: Make the promised savings real, and don’t pass along unfunded programs to our children and grandchildren.

Reforms Make Health Care WORSE, Not Better!

Underneath all the talk of “reform” the bills in both the House and Senate devote thousands of pages to creating new federal agencies and layers of bureaucracy that have little to do with improving Americans health care system and everything to do with political power and controlling the lives of Americans.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey Flier, Dean of Harvard Medical School describes the consequences of the current Democrat legislation:

In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care’s dysfunctional delivery system. The system we have now promotes fragmented care and makes it more difficult than it should be to assess outcomes and patient satisfaction. The true costs of health care are disguised, competition based on price and quality are almost impossible, and patients lose their ability to be the ultimate judges of value.

Worse, currently proposed federal legislation would undermine any potential for real innovation in insurance and the provision of care. It would do so by overregulating the health-care system in the service of special interests such as insurance companies, hospitals, professional organizations and pharmaceutical companies, rather than the patients who should be our primary concern.

In effect, while the legislation would enhance access to insurance, the trade-off would be an accelerated crisis of health-care costs and perpetuation of the current dysfunctional system—now with many more participants. This will make an eventual solution even more difficult. Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.