Sorry, my New York liberal friends. He did. Here’s an appropriate quote:

If the president had been more candid, he would have said “I made your jobs more difficult in the last few days.” After all, it is not the discontinuation of the enhanced interrogation techniques that provoked the visit; that was done weeks ago. It was the president’s decision to disclose the particulars of those techniques and the threat of future litigation now hanging over Langely that required the visit. It is the disclosure to our enemies of the precise contours of our interrogation techniques that sent the president scurrying to Langely.

And most of all, what those who work in Langely are now coming to terms with is the realization that this administration has reneged on the heretofore unbroken promise kept by every administration since CIA’s inception – that one administration would not, for political expediency, reveal the national security secrets of its predecessor or reveal operational details of our agents’ work. For every employee in that building and everyone who will work there in the future this is the new reality. Their government’s ironclad promises of secrecy and support are not so ironclad.

I lost most of you a few years ago when I supported Goerge Bush, and you somehow could never resolve the 2000 election that Bush won – even though your guy Al Gore won the popular vote. Still you were never able to accept the truth that Bush still won Forida after your own newspaper reporters recounted the votes themselves. You allowed a temporary truce on 9-11 but it was short lived when the President sought to hit back at the people whom killed your friends in lower Manhattan. President Bush opted to hit back. Your hysterical and irrational hate blinded truth or reason and you demonized him in ways that will be hard for history to understand even if its told through the words of our greatest writers. Now you helped elect a man who not only shared your hate but held a contempt for the great nation of your family. You voted for him just because he expressed your own hate. Now you’ve enabled this agent of things not of our founding fathers to embolden our enemies who would kill all you love and all they love. You, so blinded by irrational hate made it manifest.

You had better be hopeful that Navy Seals are available with orders of engagement and are always there to save the ones you love. Let your myna birds of George Soros’ media mouths protect you and your loved one’s futures now. Let your Alinsky trained leaders in Czarist and Cabinet level positions lead us all to suit their collectavists agendas.

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I going to get hate notes from my New York readers on this one. But weren’t we all lectured to about how unintelligent President Bush sounded when he spoke? And that he took his eye off the ball? And that Dick Cheney was really president?

One only needs to listen to the halting interview with the NY Times that Obama himself sought out yesterday. More from Andy McCarthy at the Corner:

It’s cringe-making stuff — the poor delivery, the claim that Bush is the real socialist and Obama the free-marketeer (does anyone actually believe Obama opposed, or would have opposed, the prescription-drug entitlement or nationalizing the banks? that he’d ever in a million years do anything but build on these statist policies, as he has been doing since day one?), the craven refusal to utter Bush’s name when the Times reporter asks the obvious follow-up question, the whopper about how he’s got so much to do the last thing he wanted to be concerned about was the market (from the guy who spent his career carping about “economic justice” and criticized the Warren Court for not being radical enough in economic matters), etc.

If Obama had haltingly spouted this nonsense off-the-cuff at a press conference, that would have been bad enough. But he (or someone) actually decided this would be a good call to make — and they had 90 minutes to think about what he was going to say. That’s not just bad, it’s scary bad.

Little has gone right at the WH under Obama, unless you refer to the propoganda attack on Rush Limbaugh constructive for the nation. But it continues to beg the question about the competance of the President and his fitness for office.

His administration is good at spin. In fact its the only thing they’ve proved to be good at. Witness his press secretary Robert Gibbs insulting those whom disagree or his political advisor David Axelrod at work. Their focus is on attacking those that oppose, but not at actually telling the country why their boss is right.

Maybe being a community organizer and agitator isn’t really good on a resume afterall.

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James Glassman, one of the nation’s most important writers on economic issues, corrects the record on economist John Maynard Keyens and also makes the effort not to allow Obama false use of the Great Depression as a tool to influence the nation.

First of Kenyens:

Keynes argued that, when businesses and people cannot or will not invest, then the government must take on the role of filling the gap. The key is speed. The means, Keynes wrote in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, really did not matter so much:

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with bank notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled to the surface with town rubbish and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again, . . . there need be no more unemployment and with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community would probably become a good deal larger than it is.
Of course, Keynes favored large public-works projects over the burying of bottles. Building roads in the right places, for example, would both put people to work and provide the basis for more commerce. At first, Keynes emphasized government spending as stimulus, but, when pressed in 1933, he advocated tax cuts as well—specifically in response to criticism that public-works projects do not put cash into the system quickly enough.

So, it is improper to mention Kenyes without mentioniong tax cuts, which Obama used last night to indicate it was the sole philosophy of President Bush. Indeed Obama mentioned “the last eight years” several times in his press conference last night. By the Obama standard, his stimulus efforts have little that is dissimilar to pork spending that Bush signed, except that he refers them to “shovel ready” or “puts people to work.”

To be fair, Obama did say last night that there were some things in the package that do not offer the sort of stimuklus he had in mind. It remains to be seen, however, whether or not he match his clout with his words. Thus far, Obama has talked the talk of moderation and thoughtfulness yet has delivered nothing besides that which placates his leftist allies.

Now about the Great Depression of which its clear that no one seems to agree on, Glassman says this:

Not only was the stimulative effect of Great Depression fiscal policy non-existent, but follow-on efforts during the ten subsequent recessions proved equally ineffective. As a result of that hard-won experience, the consensus until recently among economists was that attempts at stimulus through emergency fiscal policies—as opposed to monetary policies and the automatic effects of increases in unemployment assistance and decreases in tax payments—were useless at best. Typical was the statement of Martin Eichenbaum of Northwestern University in the American Economic Review in 1997: “There is now widespread agreement that countercyclical discretionary fiscal policy is neither desirable nor politically feasible.” Martin Feldstein, then president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, agreed. Fiscal stimulus, he said in 2002, “has not contributed to economic stability and may have actually been destabilizing.”

The new president speaks and communicates well, but seemed to falter a bit last night when speaking about the economy, his answers often halting and focused on platitudes. He actually handled foreign policy better. At any rate, he will be called upon for his inaccuracies and held accountable for his moderate tones. Sadly, he’s not actually demonstarted the later with anything except words.

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Predictably some member of the dem congressional caucus found a way to get code pink near the front of the ceremony today. They were there to mock and taunt president Bush while his daughters and President Obama’s daughters could witness. Stay classy dems. They’re yours.

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Barack Obama surrogate Bill Richardson shamefully prostituted his foreign policy street cred today by both hitting at John McCain and blamming President Bush for the Russian invasion of Georgia.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson said McCain’s campaign “is run by lobbyists that represent Georgia and other countries.”

“He takes huge amounts of money from oil companies that are profiting in the (former) Soviet Union and many parts of the world,” the Democrat told ABC News, attempting to depict a conflict of interest for McCain.

Richardson, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, said the crisis vindicated Obama’s pledge to rebuild US alliances in Europe that were strained under President George W. Bush.

“This has been one of the failures of the Bush administration, failing to build a strong relationship, a mutually beneficial relationship with Russia, so we’d have the kind of influence to persuade them to stop some of these very, very dangerous efforts within their territory,” he said.

Richardson really ought to be embarassed at this awful display of political posturing such a fuid foreign policy and security issue. Georgia is an ally of the US and our other allies whom Richardson spins to suit his own political objectives. Of little matter to Richardson is the fact that Georgia is both a democracy and who’s troops serve alongside US troops in Iraq.

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The Jerusalem Post piece by the same title is chilling in its realistic applications.

This throwback to the heyday of the Soviet Union is more than symbolic. Historical analogies are never perfect, but our sense of déjà vu was acute as we watched Moscow’s Soviet-style move to reassert its domination of the USSR’s former fief.

Moscow perceives a threat to its strategic interests from a small regional actor. It prods its neighboring clients to commit such provocations that the adversary is drawn into military action that “legitimizes” a massive, direct intervention to “defend the victims of aggression.”

Vladimir Putin has proved to be a master spy and has shrewdly kept his true intentions from the world. President George W. Bush is famous to have said he “looked into Putin’s soul,” believing what has turned out to be the exact opposite. While commanding his own country with the iron fist of a Joseph Stalin, he’s co-opted the global design of Leonid Breznev

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Steve Haragan is just reporting live from Tbilisi, Georgia that Russian jets are still hitting targets in the country’s capital. He confirms that Vladimir Putin is directing operations himself and that it is believed that Russian airborne troops will be deployed into the country. He also said that from the Russian ships will land additional troops into the country.

Putin spoke to President Bush yesterday about the Georgian operations. I wonder if he lied to the president about it. It looks bad that Bush is being pictured as having a good time at the Olympics while what is proving to be a chilling return of one time Soviet expansionism.

UPDATE: Diplomats arriving in Georgia today.

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As what Russian President Dimitry Menvedev told President Bush became public, it may signal that the Russians are looking to get out of the conflict. Menvedev is quoted by a Kremlin spokesman to have told Bush the following:

In a telephone call with Mr Bush, Mr Medvedev “stressed that the only way out of the tragic crisis provoked by the Georgian leadership is a withdrawal by Tbilisi of its armed formations from the conflict zone,” a Kremlin statement said.

Apparently Bush informed Medvedev thats their military actions were disproportional:

“The attacks are occurring in regions of Georgia far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia. They mark a dangerous escalation in the crisis,” said Mr Bush, who is attending the Olympics in Beijing.

Vladimir Putin is reported to have returned from the Olympics to the area. Photographs have gone around the world that show civilian apartments that have been bombed in Gorgi which is outside the disputed territory.

I’m not sure if the Russians were prepared for the world media coverage of their massive aggression that a Fox News correspondant just confimed included Russian naval ships. Clearly this was planned well in advance by the Russians due to the presence of Russian armor and its navy. And it was timed to coincide with the beginning of the Olympics.

Media coverage in the US would be much greater this weekend had it not been for the revelations by John Edwards which confirmed his extramarrital affair.

The US-educated Georgian president has been quite public with his open desire for a cease-fire. The fact that the Russian president responded to the same could be indicating that they might want a way out.

The world will know Russian intentions if their planes continue to be seen over Georgia when the sun comes up there in a few short hours.

UPDATE: Writing in Pajamas Media, Roger Kimball believes that the Russians desire to reclaim all of Georgia.

When Russian tanks and troops poured into the separatist Georgian province of South Ossetia yesterday, it was not, as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, part of a “peacekeeping mission.” It was part of an imperialist mission whose undeclared goal is to reabsorb the whole of Georgia–West-leaning Georgia with its critical oil pipeline supplying energy to an increasingly thirsty Europe–into mother Russia.

Indeed, that pipeline is the unacknowledged key to the drama–unacknowledged, anyway, by the belligerents. As an AP story notes, the “U.S.-backed oil pipeline runs through Georgia, allowing the West to reduce its reliance on Middle Eastern oil while bypassing Russia and Iran.” A good thing for the West; but is such autonomy something Russia (or, for that matter, Iran) wants to encourage? Indeed, as I write, Reuters has issued an unconfirmed report that earlier today Russia attacked not only targets in South Ossetia but also targeted “the major Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline.”

UPDATE: Czech Republic Condemns Russian Federation. Offers to send peacekeeping units

UPDATE: EU to have emergency summit

UPDATE: McClatchy News Update just in.

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