White House approves of drone attacks in Libya

Mission creep:

President Barack Obama has approved the use of armed drones in Libya, authorizing U.S. airstrikes on ground forces for the first time since America turned over control of the operation to NATO on April 4.

It also is the first time that drones will be used for airstrikes since the conflict began on March 19, although they have routinely been flying surveillance missions, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters at a Pentagon briefing Thursday.

Do we get to call Obama out on the lies about this Libyan war yet?   Wasn’t NATO taking over the Libyan operation?  Is our national media even paying attention?

Obama’s housing market lies, chart edition

Here is your chart for the day:

Burn this chart into your brain.  Revert back to it whenever you hear the line of BS coming from the Obama administration, Democrats in general, and their propaganda stooges in the media, about how they and their policies “averted disaster” during the mortgage crisis, and how they saved our lives.

[Hat Tip: Zero Hedge]

CIA operatives in Libya

So much for the “humanitarian” kinetic whatchamacallit:

The Obama administration has sent teams of CIA operatives into Libya in a rush to gather intelligence on the identities and capabilities of rebel forces opposed to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, according to U.S. officials.

The information has become more crucial as the administration and its coalition partners move closer to providing direct military aid or guidance to the disorganized and beleaguered rebel army.

Although the administration has pledged that no U.S. ground troops will be deployed to Libya, officials said Wednesday that President Obama has issued a secret finding that would authorize the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and other support to Libyan opposition groups.

In President Obama’s “we are not at war although we are bombing Libya” speech on Monday night, he assured us that our involvement would be extremely limited and short-lived.  With boots on the ground in Libya, I guess that makes Obama somewhat of a liar.

Defense Secretary Gates acknowledges that Libya was not a threat to the US

Everyone knows this, or should know it anyway:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that Libya did not pose a threat to the United States before the U.S. began its military campaign against the North African country.

On “This Week,” ABC News’ Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper asked Gates, “Do you think Libya posed an actual or imminent threat to the United States?”

“No, no,” Gates said in a joint appearance with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “It was not — it was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest and it was an interest for all of the reasons Secretary Clinton talked about.  The engagement of the Arabs, the engagement of the Europeans, the general humanitarian question that was at stake,” he said.

How does the White House reconcile this with the fact that President Obama has authorized the use of US military in the war on Libya?  The War Powers Act allows for the deployment of our military when the country is threatened.  Our Secretary of Defense has acknowledged no such threat exists.  So exactly when did we elect Barack Obama as King?

From the same Jake Tapper interview, this time from Secretary of State Clinton:

Tapper asked Clinton, “Why not got to Congress?”

“Well, we would welcome congressional support,” the Secretary said, “but I don’t think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama was speaking of several years ago.”

And then there’s this from the same interview (via Drew M):

Clinton jumped in to offer an extended justification for going to war.  “Did Libya attack us?” she asked.  “No, they did not attack us.  Do they have a very critical role in this region and do they neighbor two countries — you just mentioned one, Egypt, the other Tunisia — that are going through these extraordinary transformations and cannot afford to be destabilized by conflict on their borders?  Yes.  Do they have a major influence on what goes on in Europe because of everything from oil to immigration?”

At that point, Clinton suggested that the U.S. went to war to repay NATO allies for support in Afghanistan.  “We asked our NATO allies to go into Afghanistan with us ten years ago,” she said.  “They have been there, and a lot of them have been there despite the fact that they were not attacked.  The attack came on us…They stuck with us.  When it comes to Libya, we started hearing from the UK, France, Italy, other of our NATO allies…This was in their vital national interest…”

This is the real Obama Doctrine of American non-exceptionalism in action.  Having no sense of exceptionalism means not having to take action, and not having to take any leadership role in what goes on.  Oh, but we will send our military when other countries interests are at stake.  

Isn’t it amazing how this new brand of non-exceptionalist, leftist Democrats suddenly have the backbone to use our military, the same military they loathe so much, at the drop of a hat?  Or at least, when there’s an election in less than two years? 

Are there protests in the streets yet calling for an end to this imperialist Presidency?

The President’s agenda for today

Transparency and openness:

No public statements on Libya. We’ll presume the senior advisor meeting at 10:30 deals with that.

No public statements on the uprising in Syria. Nothing on hundreds gathering in Amman to protest the Jordanian government. Nothing on President Saleh stepping down in Yemen, a potential loss of a key ally in the war against al-Qaeda. Nothing about new shelling from the Gaza Strip into Israel. Nothing on the continuing worries about radiation in Japan.

No public statements on jobs or the economy. No statements on the deficit, or the $14.2 trillion in public debt, or the budget crises in most states, or the latest problems in Afghanistan (a NATO helicopter gunship accidentally mistook children for insurgents and killed nine of them).

Over two years into this administration, and suffice it to say that the hypocrisy from these people is glaring.  I don’t hear a peep from the left and the administration’s complicit lapdogs in the media about the need to be “open”, about not having press conferences, about not being transparent, about being aloof to the crises of our day.   All of the same issues they had with the previous President.    And it’s especially damning now, with the President having deployed our armed forces to war in Libya.

“Kinetic Military Action”

That’s the Obama administration’s new moniker for starting a war with Libya and hoping nobody notices:

In a briefing on board Air Force One Wednesday, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes took a crack at an answer.  “I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone,” Rhodes said.  “Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end.”

Rhodes’ words echoed a description by national security adviser Tom Donilon in a briefing with reporters two weeks ago as the administration contemplated action in Libya.  “Military steps — and they can be kinetic and non-kinetic, obviously the full range — are not the only method by which we and the international community are pressuring Gadhafi,” Donilon said.

The Bush administration tried a similar tactic in 2005, with the War on Terror, but was quickly dropped.

Both instances are equally dumb in their own way, and insulting too.  The implication being that the American people won’t consider American jets bombing Libya as what it is–a military action, a war, if we just call it something else.  Will the left step up and renounce this hypocrisy by their beloved Obama administration?

Senator of the people Claire McCaskill owes taxes, decides to sell private plane

Because she can relate to you miserable rubes in Missouri with your hundreds of thousands in back taxes and private aircraft:

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) said Monday she will sell her private plane and pay back $287,273 in four years of back taxes, the latest chapter in a politically embarrassing saga for the moderate Democrat facing a tough reelection battle in 2012.

McCaskill has been answering questions about the plane since POLITICO recently reported that she billed taxpayers for a political trip around Missouri. POLITICO also reported that McCaskill spent $76,000 from her Senate budget on trips on the aircraft over the past four years, prompting the senator to refund the Treasury Department more than $88,000 for the cost of the trips plus pilot fees.

McCaskill’s announcement Monday is the latest twist in a political scandal that has dogged her for the past two weeks. The expensive fiasco clashes with her self-made image as a reformer and good-government advocate during her first term in the Senate. McCaskill has now shelled out more than $375,000 in payments to cover the cost of the plane flights and back taxes, a series of events the senator herself has called “embarrassing.”

On top of this, McCaskill signed on in February as a co-sponsor of Senate legislation that would fire federal employees if they are “seriously delinquent” in paying their own federal taxes.

Yep.  She whipped out her checkbook and wrote a check for $300,000.  Because we all have that kind of money laying around.  This from a member of the party that purports to be on the side of working class Americans. 

[Hat Tip: Memeorandum]

Jonathan Alter prostrates himself before the court of the “Obama Doctrine”

This is the hand he’s been dealt by hisotry.  He’s a reluctant warrior.  So it’s not as if he’s converted to being a cowboy.  So I think people recognize the difference between him and former Pres. Bush.

Therein lies the media meme for Obama’s Libyan War–despite the implied virtuosity of a liberal President, who is seemingly above the fray and the ickiness of constitutional channels for declaring war, reluctantly commits US personnel and treasure to yet another Muslim country, and commences bombing the hell out of them.

But it’s all good because he’s not George Bush.

Average American workers still getting the shaft in the Obama era

It wasn’t supposed to be this way:

A study done for the Wall Street Journal, found that incentive pay for the chief executive officers of 50 major corporations  jumped 30% in 2010. That’s on top of their base pay. And it also doesn’t include a whole bunch of other things, like generous retirement packages, gold-plated healthcare plans and use of the corporate jets. Remember how the financial crisis was supposed to wipe away the bonus culture of pay for short-term performance in corporate America. Yes. Well, not so much.

[...]

Of course, the news of higher pay for top executives comes at a time when pay for the rest of us seems to be stagnating. Yesterday, the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that average hourly compensation for American workers fell 0.5% in February. The average worker now makes $40,672 a year. What we all make is up from a year ago, but by just 2%. Factor in inflation, and the average worker makes just $0.58 more a week, than they did a year ago.

Aren’t Democrats supposed to have the solution to the income gap in America?  Weren’t the President’s policies going to put an end to this disparity? 

Democrats have been in control of our government for the better part of four years and the problem is as bad as ever.  A message to Democrat voters: President Obama will not solve this problem, nor will Democrats.  The only solutions they have involve taking more and more of your money, and I seriously doubt that will alleviate the problem.

Obama not exactly winning the future in Libya

I’m convinced that listening to Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech — not the words, but the man — were more than a few young Arabs who were saying to themselves: “Hmmm, let’s see. He’s young. I’m young. He’s dark-skinned. I’m dark-skinned. His middle name is Hussein. My name is Hussein. His grandfather is a Muslim. My grandfather is a Muslim. He is president of the United States. And I’m an unemployed young Arab with no vote and no voice in my future.” I’d put that in my mix of forces fueling these revolts.

That was Tom Friedman in a recent column.  What he writes must be true, because like, Friedman writes for the Times and is therefore, like, super smart. 

Unfortunately for Friedman, he still thinks his 2009 fantasies are still valid, because 2011 has an alternate reality:

A coalition of six youth groups that emerged from Egypt’s revolution last month has refused to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who arrived in Cairo earlier today, in protest of the United States’ strong support for former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who was ousted by the uprising.

“There was an invitation for members of the coalition to meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton but based on her negative position from the beginning of the revolution and the position of the US administration in the Middle East, we reject this invitation,” the January 25 Revolution Youth Coalition said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.

Apparently, these young Egyptian rebels didn’t listen to Barack Hussein Obama’s speech in Cairo, despite the fact that they only live there.  Unlike Friedman’s fantasies, they did indeed have a voice in their future, and they made change happen on the streets of Cairo.  All of that, in spite of Barack Hussein Obama, not because of him.  Can you blame the Egyptians in giving the administration a big “thanks, but no thanks”?

And this is in Egypt, where the revolution went off relatively smooth, as Mubarak washed his hands of the whole thing and went on his permanent vacation.   Imagine how the young revolutionaries in Libya feel right now?  As Colonel Qaddafi is steam-rolling the rebels, murdering his own people, while President Speechmaker’s administration and the world community dawdle over what’s appropriate.

We were told all along that Obama would take a more “pragmatic” approach to the Muslim world.  No more pissing off Muslims with military interventions that would just tick them off even more than they already were.  No, we were told, they hated us because of George Bush and the neocons.  Well, Obama made his nation building speech.  A lot of good that did.