Why Are You Still Talking, Dick?

From his trusty outlet Politico:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Barack Obama on Tuesday of “trying to pretend we are not at war” with terrorists, pointing to the White House response to the attempted sky bombing as reflecting a pattern that includes banishing the term “war on terror” and attempting to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

Finally, this garbage gets solid pushback from our side:

A senior Democrat said in response: “It’s telling that in attacking the president and the administration, that Vice President Cheney did not condemn the attack against our nation on Christmas Day.”

I'm pretty surprised to see this from Dick:

“He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war."

Are there any "hard core terrorists" left at Gitmo, or did Dick and his little buddy let them all go in 2007?

Change is (still) Good

My first reaction to the "underwear bomber" story was that my trip tp India next month is going to be a huge pain in the ass, with all kinds of inconveniences that do zero to actually stop attacks.

My second reaction was to notice that, despite Republican politicians trying to get that ol' fear fest going again, the national response is much different. The President didn't give some stupid macho speech. Instead, he gathered information and then announced that there had been failures in the intelligence community and that they will be addressed. I have no doubt. Gone are the Bush days of seeming to think that admitting any kind of mistake at any level of the federal government was an admission of weakness. Gone are the days of "heck of a job Brownie!" and giving medals for failure.

Business as usual is no longer acceptable. I have no doubt from the President's speech today that there will be something that hasn't been seen in the last near decade. Accountability. Speaking of accountability, why am I not seeing either of these stories on TV?

Chris Good at The Atlantic has a statement from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House homeland security committee, calling for the administration’s nominee to run TSA, Erroll Southers, to receive an up-or-down vote in the Senate:

Erroll Southers, an experienced, highly-qualified nominee, continues to be held up in the Senate by someone who obviously puts process ahead of progress. If TSA is to become the kind of nimble, responsive organization the American people deserve in times like this, it will need a Senate-confirmed administrator. If nothing else, the events of last week highlighted this lack of leadership.

Remember: DeMint is holding up the new TSA chief not because of any concerns over Southers’ qualifications. He’s holding Southers up because Southers is too pro-labor. Because the last thing you want for the safety of the nation’s airports is for the individuals responsible for their security to earn a fair wage.

ABC breathlessly reported that the bomber was trained by someone that WAS RELEASED FROM GITMO!!!!!!!!11!!1! AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!! (by the Bush admin. in 2007. Oh wait, that didn't actually make it onto the news broadcast - just the online article.)

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Northwest bombing in a Monday statement that vowed more attacks on Americans.

Good riddance to the (failure at every business venture daddy bankrolled) "CEO President." Welcome to the "I expect results" President.

These Guys Must Be In On It!!

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is clearly a socialist muslim kenyan weatherman front:

Some critics charge that the new policies pursued by President Obama and the 111th Congress generated the huge federal budget deficits that the nation now faces. In fact, the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the economic downturn together explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.

Ethics, what a concept!!

Nice article from The Hill, complete with "this doesn't comply with my programmed worldview, therefore it is a conspiracy!!1!!1!" comments section.

President Barack Obama scores well among ethics watchdog groups in his first year in office, though they’d still like to see more from the president.
...
“What I find most encouraging is that there is a core group of people at the White House who genuinely care about these issues,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at Federation of American Scientists. “There is now ‘someone to talk to’ at the White House in a way that there wasn’t before. And we are already starting to see some results from those conversations, such as the Open Government Directive, and other emerging policies.”
...
“The greatest surprise is just how extensively these revolving door restrictions apply,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen.

In case you didn't see this on Facebook or Youtube

Who is that masked kid??

Economic Blogs

Quick note to mention that I added Bonddad's blog and Eschaton to the blogroll. Bonddad does detailed anaysis of economic data. Eschaton is a liberal blog with a economic focus.

Eschaton was the blog that was calling out the pending financial crisis as early as late 2005. When I started seeing news stories about events that Atrios (the editor of Eschaton) had been predicting, I moved my 401(k) into the lowest risk options available and was lucky enough to avoid the losses that my colleagues suffered. Atrios is pretty concerned about the commercial real estate market right now.

For some reason blogspot isn't recognizing updates to Eschaton, so it won't rise up the blogroll list based on latest update. It's updated several times daily.