John Edwards

"Should not have run," according to Joe Trippi. Barack Obama owes a big thanks to John Edwards. He very possibly would not be sitting in the oval office today were it not for Edwards.

Another Biden Gaffe

First the VP says to avoids planes and subways, then has to issue a clarification.

Swine Flu: Level 5

They just raised it:

GENEVA – The World Health Organization has raised its pandemic alert for swine flu to the second highest level, meaning that it believes a global outbreak of the disease is imminent.

WHO says the phase 5 alert means there is sustained human to human spread in at least two countries. It also signals that efforts to produce a vaccine will be ramped up.

WHO has confirmed human cases of swine flu in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Britain, Israel, New Zealand and Spain. Mexico and the U.S. have reported deaths.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan made the decision Wednesday to raise the alert level from phase 4 — signifying transmission in only one country — after reviewing the latest scientific evidence on the outbreak.

Obama's First Hundred Days

His polling isn't so shabby, but Dick Morris doesn't think it will last.

NYC Air Force Flyover: Feds Knew Potential for Panic

The feds knew that sending Air Force One and two fighter jets for a flyover near ground zero could very well cause panic, but they proceeded anyway, kept it secret from the public, and (the FAA) "demanded total secrecy from the NYPD, the Secret Service, the FBI and even the mayor's office and threatened federal sanctions if the secret got out."

Oh, and the stunt cost $60,000 an hour, and that doesn't include the cost of the two fighter jets.

Specter Leaves GOP

Arlen Specter joins the Dems, and two Republicans blame the right wing:

Two leading Republicans say Sen. Arlen Specter's decision to become a Democrat highlights the hostility moderates feel from an increasingly conservative GOP.

“You haven't certainly heard warm encouraging words about how [the GOP] views moderates,” said Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, one of the few remaining moderate Republicans in the Senate.

Snowe said the party's message has been, “Either you're with us or you’re against us.”

Her frustration was shared by Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), who slammed right-wing interest groups for pushing moderates out of the party.

WHO Raises Swine Flu Alert Level

Reuters:

MEXICO CITY/GENEVA (Reuters) - A new virus has killed up to 149 people in Mexico and the World Health Organization moved closer on Monday to declaring it the world's first flu pandemic since 1968 as the illness spread further in the United States and Europe.

The WHO raised its pandemic alert level to phase 4 over the deadly swine flu virus, indicating a significant increased risk of a pandemic, a global outbreak of a serious disease.

There were 40 confirmed cases of the flu in the United States, including 20 cases at a New York City school where eight cases were already identified, U.S. health officials said.

Heh: "Swine Flu Over The Cuckoo's Nest"

The Biden Gaffe Machine

On the undisciplined Joe Biden:

The packaging is one of those win-win arrangements management gurus are always extolling: Biden gets to revel in his image as a fearless, forthright man of principle. The rest of the team gets to strategically deploy Biden's big mouth without feeling compelled to address his every stumble. Everyone goes home happy.

There's just one catch: If Biden speaks the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, what happens should he eventually utter a disastrously inconvenient truth--not a run-of-the-mill gaffe but something more grave and substantive?

Then he gets changed out, but 2012 is a long way off.

Porter Goss Stunned

At the "disturbing epidemic of amnesia" that is gripping some of his former House colleagues with regard to their knowledge of enhanced interrogation techniques:

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as "waterboarding" were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Seems that the former CIA chief is most likely aiming his criticism at Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who continues to insist that she had no knowledge of the use of the interrogation techniques.

Humidifier For Fighting Flu?

Perhaps effective, perhaps not.

(via Instapundit)

Pelosi Opposes Ethics Probe

Surprise, surprise:

House Democratic leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have ratcheted up the pressure on their rank-and-file members to oppose a resolution calling for an ethics committee investigation into the ties between key Democrats and a controversial defense-lobbying firm. Democratic leaders have told their members they should let the ethics panel do its work and stop supporting a measure sponsored by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) that calls for an ethics probe into political donations from the now-defunct PMA Group lobbying firm and earmarks its clients received.

Swine Flu Emergency Declared

The U.S. has declared a public health emergency, with 20 cases in five states reported so far. Plus, the country's really in the best of hands:

“U.S. public health officials did not know about a growing outbreak of swine flu in Mexico until nearly a week after that country started invoking protective measures, and didn’t learn that the deaths were caused by a rare strain of the influenza until after Canadian officials did. . . . U.S. public health officials are still largely in the dark about what’s happening in Mexico two weeks after the outbreak was recognized.”

More basic info about swine flu here and here.

Roche says it is ready to deliver 3 million doses of tamiflu to the World Health Organization.

Swine Flu: Concern Rising

Breitbart:

US medical authorities expressed strong concern Friday about an unprecedented multi-strain swine flu outbreak that has killed at least 60 people in Mexico and infected seven people in the United States.

"It's very obvious that we are very concerned. We've stood up emergency operation centers," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spokesman Dave Daigle told AFP.

One major source of concern was that the virus included strains from different types of flu.

"This is the first time that we've seen an avian strain, two swine strains and a human strain," said Daigle, adding that the virus had influenza strains from European and Asian swine, but not from North American swine.

Nancy Pelosi

Can't decide whether she did or did not know about the use of waterboarding. Perhaps if there is a serious probe into waterboarding then she should be the first to be called to testify.

End of A Potential New Political Era

By signaling that he is open to the prosecution of former Bush officials for their advice on enhanced interrogation techniques, President Obama has "injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret."

Obama's Popularity

Marc Ambinder:

The vast array of 100-days literature all aims to answer one question: what is Obama doing so well? Here's a guy who Republicans can't get the media to hold to the same standards; here's a guy who is almost single-handedly pulling the nation's confidence up by its tattered bootstraps. For the first time in memory, even amid a recession that shows no real signs of slowing or abating, Americans are confident about their future. The Old Guard has a few explanations; they are usually historical-at-the-expense of contextual -- that Obama is basically as popular as activist presidents tend to be in their first 100 days -- or contextual at the expense of historical -- That the media and the political culture are treating the new president with too much respect and that Americans aren't smart enough to figure out that he's an avatar for neo-socialism.

Read the rest for his five part answer.

The F-22

Ed Morrissey says goodbye.

Trouble At GE Shareholders Meeting As MSNBC Bias Stirs Questions

When your network goes off the deep end of left wing bias, as GE's MSNBC cable network has, there is bound to be trouble - and a few questions raised at the annual meeting of shareholders. Notwithstanding the Fox News ambush, there were some legitimately concerned shareholders asking some legitimate questions of General Electric, which has seen MSNBC's ratings go into the tank since its darling, Barack Obama, was inaugurated. But MSNBC continues its over the top bias, and shareholders are now obviously and justifiably very concerned as to what the future holds.

And not surprisingly, the GE brass is a bit sensitive to questions from shareholders about a supposed meeting in which CNBC personnel were told to tamp down the criticism of the Obama administration:

First up was a woman asking about a reported meeting in which Immelt and NBC Uni CEO Jeff Zucker supposedly told top CNBC executives and talent to be less critical of President Obama and his policies.

Immelt acknowledged a meeting took place but said no one at CNBC was told what to say or not to say about politics.

During the woman's follow-up question, her microphone was apparently cut off. A short time later, Waters asked a question and his mic was cut, too.

"The crowd was very upset with MSNBC because of its leftward tilt," one attendee said. "Some former employees said they were embarrassed by it."

RFK, Jr.

Calls Barack Obama an "indentured servant." Ouch.

About those interrogation techniques

The harsh ones that have been so much in the news the last few days.

Turns out that President Obama's national intelligence director believes they yielded some very good information:

President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.

But this information was not made public last week:

Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past,” he wrote, “but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.”

The administration is going to have to explain this discrepancy between its argument that the enhanced techniques did not yield useful information and the view of its national intelligence director that significantly useful intelligence was indeed obtained with these methods. If it fails to do so a further loss of credibility and confidence in its ability to protect Americans from terrorist attack is inevitable.

What are the charges? What is the evidence?

Patterico asks, with regard to President Obama's about face decision to possibly criminally charge members of the Bush administration involved with drafting the "torture" memos.

Democrats and The Tea Parties

The behavior of the Democrats and their accomplices in the media betray far more worry about the tea party protests of last week than they had originally let on.

A New Kind of Long Distance Relationship

"While lying on their beds miles away from each other, the couples wear touch-activated rings visible to a camera mounted above them. A computer vision system tracks the movement of the ring as one of the device's users passes it across their own body, or bed. At the same time these strokes are transmitted to and projected in beams of light on the body of their partner. The lines change colour if they cross."

(via Althouse)

OBAMA

Not eager to release the details on the effectiveness (i.e., American lives saved) of Bush era enhanced interrogation techniques?

OBAMA OK WITH PROBE OF INTERROGATIONS

Reversing himself, in an unprecedented move for an American president, Barack Obama has now signaled that he is open to the idea of creating a panel to investigate "Bush administration excesses" during the war on terror.

It is traditional in American political history that a new administration moves on, despite political differences with its predecessor, and does not engage in behavior which could be characterized as a witch hunt. President Obama, with this stunningly surprising move, risks jeopardizing that tradition and demeaning both himself and his administration in an obvious attempt to placate his left base. Let us hope that he and those around him take a step back, think the matter through, and drop the idea very quickly.

Hugh Hewitt writes:

The president's decision to open the door to prosecuting former Bush Administration officials for policies developed and used in the war on terror is not just the threat of the worst sort of unconstitutional ex post facto prosecution, it also greatly endangers the United States by obliging current front-line prosecutors, intelligence operatives and even uniformed members of the military that if it becomes politically useful to classify their conduct as "potentially criminal" this Administration will do so. The impact of that posture will be devastating to the security of the United States.

Indeed. President Obama is going to have to decide whether he is president of Moveon.org, or whether he is President of The United States.

Captain Ed Morrissey writes:

"...it may be because Obama decided that he couldn’t take any more heat from the far Left. They’ve been wanting blood for years and expected to get it with a Democrat in the White House and Democrats controlling Capitol Hill. Obama did a pretty good job of putting them off for three months, but apparently that’s the limit of his endurance."

BOSTON MED STUDENT CHARGED IN CRAIGSLIST KILLINGS

Now this is just too bizarre:

He's the picture of pride in a photo that seems to capture the excitement of a young man on the cusp of a medical career. Grinning broadly, he stands with fellow medical students at a ceremony at Boston University Medical School, as a doctor helps him into the white coat that will mark the beginning of his formal training.

To many of his friends, the photo encapsulates the image they had of Philip H. Markoff: clean-cut, friendly, smart. Yesterday, those friends were broadsided by a shockingly different description of their friend, as the fugitive "predator" police had sought in the fatal shooting of a 26-year-old woman he had allegedly contacted on the "erotic services" section of Craigslist. He was also charged with attacking a second woman in Boston, whom he had also allegedly contacted off Craigslist and is a suspect in the attempted robbery of a prostitute in Rhode Island.

ROMNEY: OBAMA TIMID ADVOCATE FOR FREEDOM

Mitt Romney:

"At last week’s Summit of the Americas, President Obama acquiesced to a 50-minute attack on America as terroristic, expansionist, and interventionist from Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega. His response to Ortega’s denunciation of our effort to free Cuba from Castro’s dictatorship was that he shouldn’t be blamed “for things that happened when I was three months old.” Blamed? Hundreds of men, including Americans, bravely fought and died for Cuba’s freedom, heeding the call from newly elected president John F. Kennedy. But last week, even as American soldiers sacrificed blood in Afghanistan and Iraq to defend liberty, President Obama shrank from defending liberty here in the Americas..."

Read the whole thing.

DEMOCRATS

Losing support among voters under age 35:

"Most of the Democrats' loss of support has come among younger Americans," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "In January, two-thirds of those under the age of 35 said Democratic control of Congress was good for the country. Now that figure is down to 48 percent."

KRUGMAN: OBAMA'S "BOGUS CLAIM"

Paul Krugman takes Obama to task for arguing that "we can close fiscal gaps by eliminating a bit of waste."

HUGH HEWITT ON THE FAIR TAX

It's a "disastrous mirage that far too many Republicans have been drawn too, and for all the wrong reasons."

Hugh's new book on the Fair Tax, co-authored with Hank Adler, can be found here.

THE 30 YEAR ANNIVERSARY: JIMMY CARTER AND THE KILLER RABBIT

And Carter's press secretary certainly didn't help to keep the matter quiet. Heh.

AXELROD CALLS TEA PARTIES "UNHEALTHY"

Does David Axelrod really want to be saying that, with April 15th so fresh on the minds of many?



As Allahpundit notes:

To be scrupulously fair, it’s not the parties themselves that he’s calling “unhealthy” but rather the potential of populist anger in an age of economic panic to boil over into more extreme forms. Even so, his intent is clear — to delegitimize the parties by framing them as a shot across the bow from some sort of inchoate militia. The same could have been said years ago, of course, about anti-war protests amid a climate of grotesque hatred on the left for George Bush. Imagine the screeching from the world’s Garofalos had Karl Rove sensed something “unhealthy” about those on a Sunday morning chat show.

MAJORITY APPROVE OF TEA PARTIES

51 percent polled approve of last week's tea parties, according to Rasmussen.

John over at Powerline notes "Almost equally interesting is that one in four Americans says that he or she personally knows someone who participated in one of the rallies. That probably helps to explain why the Left's over the top attacks--slanders, really--didn't gain more traction."

OBAMA SPOKESMAN CONFRONTED OVER 100 MILLION

Video here.

PIRACY

"Lots of users, but not so many customers."

WHY IS THE LEFT STILL SO ANGRY?

Dana Milbank wonders.

TORTURE?

Maybe not:

The four memos on CIA interrogation released by the White House last week reveal a cautious and conservative Justice Department advising a CIA that cared deeply about staying within the law. Far from "green lighting" torture -- or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees -- the memos detail the actual techniques used and the many measures taken to ensure that interrogations did not cause severe pain or degradation.

Interrogations were to be "continuously monitored" and "the interrogation team will stop the use of particular techniques or the interrogation altogether if the detainee's medical or psychological conditions indicates that the detainee might suffer significant physical or mental harm."

Doesn't sound like the draconian measures that the left would have us believe were continually in use under Bush and Cheney.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

MSM's coverage of the tea parties.

OBAMA AND CHAVEZ SHARE THE LOVE - VIDEO

REP. JANE HARMAN

May have some questions to answer.

MAJORITY OF TEXANS WOULD STAY

75% of Texans believe that the Lone Star state should remain a part of the United States, despite the recent media coverage of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's comments at a tea party on Wednesday that "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that?" 18 percent would opt to secede and 31 percent believe Texas has the right to secede and form an independent country, while 7 percent of Texans were unsure about any option.

DOCTORS SAYING NO TO INSURANCE

Dr. Marc Siegel:

Here's something that has gotten lost in the drive to institute universal health insurance: Health insurance doesn't automatically lead to health care. And with more and more doctors dropping out of one insurance plan or another, especially government plans, there is no guarantee that you will be able to see a physician no matter what coverage you have.

(via Instapundit)

LEFT FEARS TEA PARTIES

As well they should, as the parties represent "the sort of citizen activism the Left would like to inspire, but hasn't for a very long time."

Lots of great pictures at Powerline.

AIG: YES TO BONUSES, NO TO IRAQ WOUNDED

AIG, the recipient of massive government assistance, never met a bonus that it couldn't give out. But it certainly has met an Oklahoma Iraq war veteran - a blind amputee - that it could refuse to assist.

MORE here.

ISRAEL ON THE BRINK

Times Online:

The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.

Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.

Two nationwide civil defence drills will help to prepare the public for the retaliation that Israel could face.

“Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words,” one senior defence official told The Times.

SHARE THE LOVE

Barack Obama shakes hands with Hugo Chavez.

ABOUT THAT CNN REPORTER

You know, the one that was arguing with the tea party protesters in Chicago on Wednesday and blaming the whole thing on that "right wing network...Fox News." Well, it turns out that she was TWICE turned down for a job at Fox.

"Apparently, the hiring folks at Fox know what they’re doing." Indeed!

GLENN BECK VS LGF

And it's getting a bit nasty.

MONTANA'S NEW GUN LAW

It's all about "sovereignty."

NAPOLITANO APOLOGIZES

Heh:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized to veterans after a report issued by her department said troops returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at risk for being recruited by right-wing extremists.

“To the extent veterans read it as an accusation … an apology is owed,” she said during an on-air interview on FOX News Thursday, a day after veterans’ groups and members of Congress blasted her for the report, which they said libeled members of the armed forces.

“This was an assessment, not an accusation,” Napolitano continued. “It was limited to extremists those who seek to commit violence within the United States. And all this was meant to do was to give law enforcement what we call ’situational awareness.’”

“The last thing I want to do is offend or castigate all veterans. To the contrary, let’s meet and clear the air,” she said.

Yeah, right.

MORE: She issued the report despite concerns.