New Year - New Threat?

h/t Galran at Information Dissemination

The Osen-Hunter Group is a global, private security company that issues daily intelligence assessments, similar to the intelligence services of the popular STRATFOR service. Today's analysis concluded with an assessment worth consideration:

Assessment: Just as a strike against an American ship in the Suez would double the value for AL QAEDA, we would warn that Mombasa is a port of concern, given its proximity to southern Somalia where AL SHABAAB is strongest and where piracy contacts in the Kenyan port authority are ample. Inasmuch as this represents a second reference to ships at sea – unprecedented in a single AL QAEDA statement – we make the following, unequivocal judgment:

We assess a direct, grave threat, by AL QAEDA, against U.S. Navy warships and U.S.-flagged vessels. Moreover, if U.S.-flagged merchantmen are still steaming anywhere in the U.S. FIFTH FLEET Area of Responsibility without armed security, they do so now at a considerably elevated risk.

In this connection, we should also note a reference to the Fort Hood massacre and a call to Muslims “in the Crusader armies” and “agent governments” to replicate the 5 November killings at Fort Hood. We would interpret this as a call on sufficiently radicalized sailors to sabotage warships. They come to this conclusion based on an observation that I do think is certainly noteworthy. On December 27th, Al Qaeda in Yemen (AQIY) responded to airstrikes in the eastern province of Shabwa conducted by Yemen air force with new threats. 

“And lastly, we call upon the proud tribes of Yemen—people of support and victory—and the people of the Arabian Peninsula, to face the crusader campaign and their cooperatives on the peninsula of Muhammad, prayer and peace upon him, and that’s through attacking their military bases, intelligence embassies, and their fleets that exist on the water and land of the Arabian Peninsula; until we stop the continuous massacres on the Muslim countries."

While not unheard of, it is uncommon for any Al Qaeda statement to mention attacking western fleets or attacks on water in general. Plenty of threats discuss planes, bases, and embassies... but rarely targets at sea. That is why the Al Qaeda in Yemen AQIY claim of responsibility for the Christmas airline attack was also interesting. 

“We call upon every Muslim protective of his religion and doctrine to remove the polytheists from the Arabian Peninsula and that’s through killing every crusader working in the embassies or other places, and you ought to declare it a full-scale war against every crusader in the [Arabian] Peninsula of Muhammad, Allah’s prayer and peace upon him, on land, on water, and in the air.”

The Osen-Hunter Group's assessment is in direct response to threats made by Al Qaeda against sea targets twice in one week, because as it turns out, Al Qaeda has never made threats against targets at sea twice in one week, ever.

If you have followed the fallout from the underwear bomber, the only clear conclusion is that the Department of Homeland Security, and in particular Secretary Janet Napolitano, got caught with their pants down. They had no plan of action in place to respond to the attempted bombing of the airline, and when the event took place on a slow news day like Christmas, it became the only thing to talk about and a major issue to the American people.

So now everyone is talking about the event, and to make things worse, now we have instant experts on everything from underwear bombs to Al Qaeda in Yemen, and in many cases those "experts" couldn't name the Capitol city of Yemen if they had a gun to their head. In politics, actual expertise is completely irrelevant though, and that is the problem. The STRATCOM fallout from the bomber got out of control quickly, and with no coherent response ready to either a successful terrorist attack or even a failed attack, DHS looks like an agency of fools.

Consider some of the questions. It will be noted that piracy in 2009 peaked in that region, highest level in decades. It will be noted that Al Qaeda is operating not just in Yemen, but Somalia, and Iran will be a constant point of discussion. It will be noted how important oil transport at sea is. The multi-national effort in the Gulf of Aden will be discussed, which will lead to topics such as the Chinese and Russian naval vessels in the region. They may bring up the UN statistics for the human trafficking in the region, stunning numbers of human suffering. Most importantly though, they are going to ask what the Navy is doing there and if the Navy is lucky, they won't ask for some form of tangible results of naval operations...

but what if they do?

No Sunshine?

December musings...

Take a break from the blogging and browsing.

A cold, cold Christmas!

The Global Warming Farce has ended - everywhere but in Copenhagen and in the hearts of dictators like Hugo Chavez.

A record breaking 12-30 inches of snow rest on the Virginia countryside and the Northeast is socked in with a winter blizzard threatening even deeper drift. The moisture is needed but it creates a problem for the annual Christmas Eve ride and package delivery. Hot coco and a cookie always serves to fortify the Old Gentleman.

Al Gore (predicting the imminent end to the white Christmas) may be somewhere SOUTH of the equator this year, celebrating a continually warming climate as he points to the fact that it's warm in Rio in December...

Qing Bin-Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy at Canada's University of Waterloo, is a believer in the value of drawing conclusions from observable data and not from selective data fed into computer models that are based on false assumptions and include "fudge factors." In a peer-reviewed paper published in the prestigious online journal Physics Reports, Lu, who holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Newcastle, reports that CFCs, the compounds once widely used as refrigerants, and cosmic rays, which are energy particles originating in outer space, are mostly to blame for climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Lu puts the start of the cooling trend at 2002 and writes that "the observed data show that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays most likely caused both the Antarctic ozone hole and global warming. These findings are totally unexpected and striking, as I was focused on studying the mechanism for the formation of the ozone hole, rather than global warming."

From 1850 to 1950, Lu notes, the recorded CO2 level increased significantly because of the Industrial Revolution; but the global temperature stayed constant or rose only 0.1 degree Celsius.

"Most remarkably, the total amount of CFCs, ozone-depleting molecules that are well-known greenhouse gases ... decreased around 2000," Lu said. "Correspondingly, the global surface temperature has also dropped. In striking contrast, the CO2 level has kept rising since 1850 and now is at its largest growth rate."

Other reputable scientists have also predicted decades of cooling ahead to, er, varying degrees and for varying reasons. Earth's climate is affected by many things and is more complicated than the CRU computer models.

So maybe it will be a sad Christmas for the environmentalists who won't be seeing their dream of global apocalypse due to a warming trend.

However, for the rest of us, I wish you all a very merry Christmas - even if it's colder and wetter than predicted by the bozos in Copenhagen.

Holiday Rush

Do you have a last minute Christmas shopping need for the person that has everything?

Check this out!

Gold Standard of Government

The banknote (left) is a Gold Certificate, meaning that when the United States was on the Gold Standard, you could trade in your banknote (in this case a denomination of $20.00) for $20.00 in gold coin. Whatever your take on the gold standard, it had the benefit of assuring value to US Currency. This process of valuing currency came into fruition in 1900 with the passage of the Gold Standard Act. It was ended in 1933 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlawed private ownership of gold in America (with the exception of gold jewelry).

Then we went on the 'Silver Standard', and the government issued Silver Certificates, assuring the bearer that they could exchange their currency for silver specie should they want to haul it around. It had the benefit of assuring value to US Currency.

In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon took the US off the precious metal standard. Today whoever can print the most money rules the world (Republicans, Democrats - leaders of other nations). The US is able to compel foreign countries to produce and subsidize the America with military superiority and control over the monetary printing presses.

We get away with it because the issuer of the international currency must always be the country with the military might to guarantee control over the system. And our military is the best on the planet. America makes the very best war machines. (we don't make much else, but we do make those)

I don't think any president or administration is strong enough to bring the US back to a system of integrity. I don't know where it will all end, but one thing is sure - we are NOT on the Gold Standard of Government. Our printed paper says "trust me". You can take it from there.

Hey - Let's make America just like Greece!

I spent time in Greece and have dealt with their moribund bureaucracy, their rampant socialism, runaway spending, massive labor unions that cover everything from taxi drivers to prostitutes.

Last week Greece earned the first of two sovereign downgrades from ratings agency Fitch over its $436 billion budget deficit. Then Standard & Poor's cut Greece to BBB+ from A- and sternly warned that if the government didn't get serious about controlling its spending, the downgrade wouldn't be its last.

Through the week, investors dumped Greek bonds, and word rose that Greece would need a bailout from the European Union. European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel loudly said no to that Wednesday, but it didn't help. By Thursday, Greece's problem became Europe's problem, with the euro tumbling to a three-month low against the dollar while U.S. Treasury prices — a traditional safe haven for sovereign investors — soared.

On Friday, S&P announced "a more pronounced and faster economic deterioration than we previously anticipated" for Greece, with a "protracted hard landing" next.

The whole crisis has a perfectly logical basis: Greece's budget deficit is more than four times higher than the European Union's 3% ceiling and stands at 12.7% of GDP. Its gross debt, at 112% of GDP, indicates it has more debt than productive output. And its socialist government has no credible plan to quit spending. Years of embedded socialism — in spending, labor and regulatory practices — are responsible. They've enabled the government to consume the very economy that's supposed to sustain it.

Even supposedly right-of-center parties spent state cash the same way. The last party in power was nominally conservative, but failed to stop expansion of government. It kept hiring, kowtowed to union demands for fear of strikes and did little to change the culture's gimme-gimme mentality.

Bureaucrats were hired like there was no tomorrow. These state employees are union members who can never be fired no matter how nasty, lazy or corrupt. Layers of such people go into ministries as payoffs for political favors.

Does this sound like a familiar path?

Who is the Biggest Ass?

The Democratic majority holds sway in the Senate, House of Representatives and Barack Hussein Obama's Administration over the Executive Branch of Government. Will the Healthcare Bill sink them?

Or will it be Cap and Trade - the environmental mandate built on the fiction of Global Warming? For any of you who are following the Copenhagen Conference (where Barack Hussein Obama pledged America would follow lock step with the emerging nations who are more or less exempt from the requirements to halt carbon emissions), the United Nations summit was promoted as a serious effort to mitigate climate change. I was shocked to see the summit co-sponsored by Barack Hussein Obama turn into an attack on capitalism.

America's Response: It pledges taxpayer money!

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe spoke in Copenhagen and their asinine remarks were cheered and applauded by attendees who seemed to think they were in the presence of great men.  Does America get the message too?

Hugo Chavez was celebrated as if he were a popularly elected president who has led his country toward greater freedom and prosperity instead of a socialist who rigged his election to be president for life, crushed civil liberties and wrecked his nation's economy.  "President Chavez brought the house down," according to newspaper The Australian, when he addressed the U.N. Climate Change Conference on Wednesday. "When he said there was a 'silent and terrible ghost in the room' and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening." Socialism, Chavez told the fawning audience, is "the way to save the planet" while "the destructive model of capitalism is the eradication of life." And: "Capitalism is the road to hell. ... Let's fight against capitalism and make it obey us."

Bolivia's President Evo Morales, a pal of Chavez, Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro and the first fully "indigenous" head of state in Bolivia. Morales set the table for Chavez, declaring the real cause of climate change to be "the capitalist system."--"If we want to save the earth," he said, "then we must end that economic model." This man, a socialist who also fixed his election and consolidated his power, proposed an "international climate court of justice to prosecute countries for climate 'crimes.'"

Robert Mugabe, who has beaten, tortured and killed his opponents and has been sanctioned for human-rights abuses, held forth on the anti-capitalist theme. He scolded the "capitalist gods of carbon" who "burp and belch their dangerous emissions," leaving "the lesser mortals of the developing sphere" to "gasp and sink and eventually die."  The gasping, sinking and dying who Mugabe is most familiar with are within his own country. Tens of thousands have been killed by the poverty, cholera, famine and outright murder brought on by his socialist policies that ruined a once-thriving economy. (IBD)

The donkeys/asses who currently run the country are trying to run  it on the rocks in any direction possible and they are an absurd farce, entertaining America's enemies. The Biggest Ass Award has to be presented to Nobel Laureate, Barack Hussein Obama for his efforts to turn prosperous, happy America into a utopian socialist morass.

Two kinds of "Liners"

It speaks for itself.

Hillary Clinton - Long in the Tooth?

Before the women rise up and condemn me for taking a shot at Hillary, I want to say that I have personally decried other "old lizards" such as John Mertha (D-PA), Vice President Joe (Slow Joe) Biden, Robert (Grand Cyclops) Byrd (D-WV), etc. who are men.

Hillary Clinton simply is not an attractive woman, but am I the only one who has seen her drift down hill in both influence, lucidity and appearance since she took up the Secretary of State's mantle? In the photo above, she's putting her foot in her mouth again - this time in Brazil. I wonder if Bill would consider taking over for her? He'd do a better job.

Enemies Should Fear America

War is hell. General W. T. Sherman said it, and anyone who has experienced it, understands that the statement fits just as well today as it did during the War of Northern Aggression in the Mid 1800's. There are low intensity conflicts going on in the world today that the mainstream media doesn't cover. Some of them involve America. One that comes to mind is the war with narcotics cartels - that turns bloody - inside and outside of US National Borders.

You can't pick up a turd from the clean end. You can't fight a clean war. General Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson summed it up this way: "War means fighting and fighting means killing."

You can't pretend that a turd is really chocolate soft serve ice cream. It's a turd. If you put flowers on it, it's still a turd. If you cover it with carmel sauce, it's still at turd and when you taste it, it will taste like a turd, not like ice cream.

The military provides each man or woman under arms an explanation for their place in the world. The military philosophy agrees with the service member's predilections and culture, allowing them through subjective belief to consider the rules back home the reliable author of objective reality.

That way of thinking gets warriors killed.

Robert Kaplan wrote a very interesting book titled, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos. In that book, Robert Kaplan argues that the bedrock of sound foreign policy should be "comprehensive pragmatism" rather than "utopian hopes." Kaplan calls for a reestablishment of American realpolitik, one distanced from Judeo-Christian (or private) virtue and closer to a "pagan" (public) one. He aligns himself with America's Founding Fathers, who, he says, believed good government emerged only from a "sly understanding of men's passions."

The reality of war has nothing to do with what people portray on television - not even the best television shows or films capture war. War requires pragmatic solutions to real problems, delivered (often) by a young men barely old enough to shave on the spur of the moment. A thousand Department of Justice Attorneys can take ten years to debate those acts and decide on "the rules". But none of it changes war, or the way we fight. A politically correct war only leads to body bags filled with our own people.

In Kipling's Grave of the Hundred Head, the method of dealing with snipers who take out officers is explained. At the end of the poem, Kipling explains,

Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more,
For the Burmans said,
That a Kullah's head
Must be paid for with heads five score.

The sad tragedy is that nobody in the American administration believes that a dead American serviceman/woman is worth one hundred enemy combatants.

When the change their minds, our enemies will fear America and they quite simply won't wish to fight us. As it is now, we show our weakness daily through the Commander-in-Chief's obsequious apologies and his zeal to distance himself from those who he commands. A weak man like Barack Hussein Obama will never cause the fear in enemies' hearts that averts war with us.

Obama vs US Navy SEALs

It's not easy becoming a Navy SEAL. The screening is intense, the training grueling, the rigor of deployment and re-training for deployment will destroy most family relationships the sailors form. The pay is slim and what is expected and accomplished is done from a sense of patriotism and duty to country, the Navy and fellow operators.

A platoon from Navy SEAL Team 10 were dropped into harm's way to capture Ahmed Hashim Abed, mastermind behind the killing, burning and mutilation of four American contractors working for Blackwater USA in Fallujah, Iraq, in March 2004. Their bodies were then hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

Fortunately for Ahmed Hashim, he seems to share the same faith as the US Commander-in-Chief, Barack Hussein Obama - who may not be Muslim by his profession, but seems to be through his actions, by his obvious lack of concern over the Ft. Hood murders by Army Officer and Jihadist Nidal Hasan.

Petty Officer 2nd Class McCabe, 24, of Perrysburg, Ohio, and Petty Officer 1st Class Huertas, 28, of Blue Island , Ill., were arraigned. The third SEAL, Petty Officer 2nd Class Keefe, 25, of Yorktown, Va., will be arraigned at a later date. All are charged with dereliction of duty and making false official statements. McCabe is also officially charged with punching Abed "in the midsection with his fist" while in custody.

I know we live in a politically correct age where it's glossed over by the Chief Executive of the United States when a (brother) Muslim murders over a dozen and wounds a dozen more in an unprovoked killing spree. I understand (not really) the overarching need for Barack Hussein Obama to bow deeply to his Islamic masters. I hear the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Military bow, scrape and whine apologies for America. I see the US administration, consumed with apologetic fervor, officially pronouncing that the architect of 9/11's massacre, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, must be given all the constitutional rights and privileges of the Americans he murdered. Our justice system, we are told, must be an example to the world, as if that will impress jihadists making IEDs in some faraway hideout.

We ask SEALs to do very dirty, extraordinarily dangerous work in secret, without fanfare or bands. None have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for stopping wars or taking out people who would murder thousands. The media and the Navy, under pressure from the White House attacks the SEALs remorselessly for punching a terrorist. I'm sure they brought him back for interrogation. On hindsight, they should have cut his throat, bled him out and left him where they found him.

The mainstream media pines over the future of Tiger Woods, whose career has absolutely no value to our country's future. What happens to Matthew McCabe, Julio Huertas and Jonathan Keefe will matter to the entire special warfare community who is watching. They are taking note and in the future, will remember not to bring the bastards back for interrogation... People are more likely to recognize the names of Tiger's (alleged) bimbos than the names of these three Navy SEALs we sent into battle. They are not household names in a nation consumed with the sexual antics of billionaire athletes.

McCabe, Huertas and Keefe neither need nor deserve to be made examples to impress anybody. If they are court-martialed, the only thing impressed upon foreign terrorists will be U.S. weakness. And that will invite more terrorism as surely as our shameful withdrawal from Somalia after Americans were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu inspires Osama bin Laden.

I am disgusted with the conduct of the United States Navy in this matter, and shamed by the conduct of the Commander-in-Chief.  I wish God would find it in his heart to resurrect Ronald Reagan.

These matters need to be set right.

Is Truth an endangered species?

On Day 2 of the Copenhagen climate conference, the United Nations announced that the current decade is the warmest on record.

Yes, it's a LIE!

You know, the same thing that happens when Barack Hussein Obama reads from his teleprompter. Lies are not exactly new to the bloggers on the Internet.

On Tuesday, the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization released a preliminary report that claims the 10-year period from 2000 to 2009 is the warmest since records began in 1850.

Really?

How can serious scientists compare data from record keeping in 1850 to modern record-keeping? The report says the data are culled "from networks of land-based weather and climate stations, ships and buoys, as well as satellites." (IBD)

It might be rude to challenge Barack Hussein Obama (famous quasi Imam, defender of the faith, etc.) - BUT -  How many satellites, ships and buoys were used in 1850? How do the land-based weather stations match up? Are they the same set of stations used since 1850, or have stations been added and dropped through the decades? Have there always been enough stations to adequately represent the global temperature? A global map of weather stations shows they are highly concentrated in the U.S. and Europe. Their presence in Asia, Africa and South America is almost nonexistent. How can their readings from only a portion of the globe be indicative of the entire planet? And what about the placement of weather stations? Developed areas create heat islands that register higher temperatures, which aren't relevant to climate or global temperatures. How many stations located in undeveloped areas 150 years ago are now surrounded by growth and are recording distorted temperatures?

A look at temperatures over the last 10,000 years as determined by ice cores, not weather stations, shows that the planet has gone through much warmer eras than it is now experiencing.

Also inconvenient to the U.N.'s report is the scandal at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, one of three climate data analysis centers. E-mails between researchers recently made public reveal: a pattern of manipulation of the data; an effort to crush scientists who dissented from the "consensus" that man is warming the planet; and the possible defrauding of the taxpayers who have funded their research. (IBD)

Sort out the lies from the truth - THEN tell us what is left and allow other scientists to review data so that a realistic debate can be formulated.

I know, I know, Barack Hussein Obama doesn't care about the inconvenient truth. He sincerely wants to drive the America he resents on the rocks. The plain truth is that whatever he signs can be repudiated once he's out of office.

In Praise of Plastic Christmas Trees

I have a high ceiling in my living room. It lofts up to 24 feet above the slate floor. The price for a "real tree" plus the plastic netting for the tree and the tip you are expected to dole out to the guy who brokers your purchase and carts the tree to the truck came out to about $150.00 three years ago. Two years ago my family rebelled and in my absence, bought a fake tree - that is 8 feet tall and weighs about 200 lbs. I suggested they could have purchased a smaller tree, but they thought the King Kong tree (made in China) was a better choice.

December is my least favorite month. My brother, father and step-mother died in December. Memories of Christmas past are barbed and thorned with sweet memories that simply depress me because those people I love are not coming back. Can't I simply dole out cash and have the month end? In addition I'm a year older this month. Nothing to celebrate once you're over about 25 and I'm twice that.

Back to Christmas trees. Yes I love the smell of a real tree, but I don't like the sap, needles and constant need to keep it watered so that it doesn't dry up and burn up before the Big Day.

No matter how you position the tree in the stand and no matter how articulately you spin the tree so that the "good side" faces the public, if you're a guy, and there is a woman in your life, it won't be enough. I wonder if Jews have the same problem with the placement of the Menorah for Hanukkah (חֲנֻכָּה)  Or the black people who celebrate Kwanzaa and have the black version of the Menorah that they use in their celebration of African culture? Do they have placement issues or not. Likely, you simply drop the candle holder on a table and pronounce it "placed". Not so with a real Christmas tree.

The placement issue is solved with the fake tree. It also has lights embedded into it, so it's plug and play. No stringing required.

Of all the holidays, the most placement, perfect is Festivus. There is just a pole. It's easy to store from year to year (my plastic made-in-China tree stores in a box 2.5'x3'x6' and occupies space in the garage that could be occupied by other stuff). Festivus, unlike Christmas, is a holiday where you simply sit in a circle with your loved ones and you tell each other how they have disappointed you in the previous year.  Maybe it's not that much unlike Christmas...  Festivus is also a time for airing of other grievances and for feats of physical strength. The traditional Festivus meal is spaghetti. Unlike Kwanzaa, it takes place before Christmas on December 23.

If you use a Jewish Menorah, a Black person Menorah, a Festivus Pole, you'll never truly appreciate the bother of traveling to where the trees are, selecting a tree to cut, cutting the tree, hauling it home, setting it up, caring for it during the holidays and disposing of it in a proper way after the holidays - so you have no idea what I'm talking about when I praise the plastic tree.

PS - I wonder what the Chinese factory workers think of all those plastic lighted noble fir trees they make for households?

US Obama = Unconditional Surrender Obama

On the left/above, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta. Below them are Mussolini and Hitler, strutting their stuff. If the leaders of the allied nations who stood against Hitler gave him an ultimatum the way Barack Hussein Obama did last week to the Afghan Rebels, what do you think Hitler would have said, and how would he have acted?  I do understand that I am calling for speculation on your part, dear readers.

Take a look at your elected leaders and ask yourself if they are fit to dip and clean an outhouse? You don't have to answer if you don't want to. They (at right) are the "leaders of the free world" - may God have mercy on our souls. I don't know that we deserve mercy because we were stupid enough (as a nation) to elect them. Can you imagine them standing up to Hitler? Can you imagine Barack Hussein Obama in the shoes of Winston Churchill? Can you imagine Joe (Slow Joe) Biden actually making something work?

Think about it...

Leadership! (a thing of the past?)

Some call him a charlatan. I don't. He firmly established himself as an anti-free market collectivist who had no real world experience and absolutely no leadership experience. Still the people voted for the king of the teleprompter - and he does a fair job at reading other people's words.

Barack Hussein Obama chose Afghanistan as "his war". There were no more Al Qaeda training camps when he arrived in the White House - but there were a lot of irritated Pushtun and a relatively small American footprint. Today he managed to split his party and alienate any other nations which still like us enough to participate in the Afghan Adventure. 


In an effort to please everyone, he announced a surge-and-wind-down strategy? (huh?) Does the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives think this will help them get elected in a mid-term election where conservatives are sharpening their claws? The "we're going to try to stop losing while we sneak out the door" plan is tantamount to surrender. We tell our enemies, in effect, "hold on through the surge because when it's over, so are we." In other words, ENCOURAGING THE ENEMY. I don't know whether Barack Hussein Obama is bright enough to understand this - or maybe he thinks the American public is stupid enough to swallow more of his lies.

Obama spoke longingly of ending the "rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse." By that, the President meant, "can't we all just see it my way?"

No, Mr. President. We can't.