Biden creating or saving lots of auto body repair jobs

A brief exchange on Twitter today with @VRWCTexan revealed that it may have been dangerous to hunt with Dick Cheney, but if Joe Biden ever invites you on a road trip, you might consider politely declining.

November 11:
Two Secret Service vehicles used by Vice President Joe Biden allegedly struck and killed a pedestrian at an intersection on Washington, DC's Suitland Parkway in the early morning hours of Wednesday, news reports say.

November 16:
A sheriff's deputy was taken to an Albuquerque hospital after being involved in an accident while working the motorcade for Vice President Joe Biden, who spoke at a campaign fundraiser to benefit two New Mexico Democrats.

November 17:
A car responsible for clearing a path for Vice President Biden’s motorcade was involved in a West Side collision that sent three people to the hospital today, sources said.

How many more, Joe? How many more?

Government not waiting for health care bill to pass to start messin' with you

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government panel that makes influential recommendations on medical care practices, is now recommending that women not get mammogram breast cancer screening until age 50, and then only every two years. The current practice is to start at age 40 and then test annually thereafter.

"We're not saying women shouldn't get screened. Screening does saves lives," said Diana B. Petitti, vice chairman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which released the recommendations Monday in a paper being published in Tuesday's Annals of Internal Medicine. "But we are recommending against routine screening. There are important and serious negatives or harms that need to be considered carefully."

Several patient advocacy groups and many breast cancer experts welcomed the new guidelines, saying they represent a growing recognition that more testing, exams and treatment are not always beneficial and, in fact, can harm patients. Mammograms produce false-positive results in about 10 percent of cases, causing anxiety and often prompting women to undergo unnecessary follow-up tests, sometimes-disfiguring biopsies and unneeded treatment, including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

Not everybody is so excited about the new guidelines. Such as people who actually know what the fuck they're talking about:

But the American Cancer Society, the American College of Radiology and other experts condemned the change, saying the benefits of routine mammography have been clearly demonstrated and play a key role in reducing the number of mastectomies and the death toll from one of the most common cancers.

"Tens of thousands of lives are being saved by mammography screening, and these idiots want to do away with it," said Daniel B. Kopans, a radiology professor at Harvard Medical School. "It's crazy -- unethical, really."

And just in case you don't think that this is the Democrats' idea of the future of health care:

The new recommendations took on added significance because under health-care reform legislation pending in Congress, the conclusions of the 16-member task force would set standards for what preventive services insurance plans would be required to cover at little or no cost.

A favorite cry of the Left in the abortion debate is "Hands off my body!", but I guess that doesn't apply here.

9/11 mastermind to be tried in NYC

As insane as this sounds, you can't say Candidate Barack Obama didn't say he wouldn't do this. In fact, it was a central issue in his campaign.

Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said Friday.

The official said Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce the decision later in the morning.

The official is not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement, so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bringing such notorious suspects to U.S. soil to face trial is a key step in President Barack Obama's plan to close the terror suspect detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama initially planned to close the detention center by Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

It is also a major legal and political test of Obama's overall approach to terrorism. If the case suffers legal setbacks, the administration will face second-guessing from those who never wanted it in a civilian courtroom. And if lawmakers get upset about notorious terrorists being brought to their home regions, they may fight back against other parts of Obama's agenda.

It's been pointed out elsewhere by legal experts all around the blogosphere that this is a manifestly bad idea.

Once introduced into the US criminal justice system, these jokers will receive full protection under the Constitution, and at trial, anything can happen.

I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect that for the purposes of a criminal trial in a civilian court, little to no evidence already collected by the military will be admissible. Certainly, no information obtained from KSM while being waterboarded will be admissible. Once he's in New York, prosecutors will effectively have to build a case from scratch.

I'm eager to see what legal experts have to say about this today. There must be scores of scenarios in which a judge might be forced to dismiss the charges and kick him loose.

Consequences. Elections have consequences.

Update: A few hours ago on Twitter I said, "If ANY of these trials go sideways for the prosecution, Obama's done in 2012.", and it occurred to me that Obama clearly knows this. So why, exactly, is he taking such a political gamble by shipping five terrorists from Gitmo to New York for trial? One thing it suggests is that the evidence the prosecution will submit makes it a slam dunk in all five of the cases. That seems unlikely, but not beyond the realm of possibility. Another way Obama can avoid catastrophic political blowback is if the trials are delayed until after the 2012 elections, but that's three whole years away, and the Obama administration would come under fire from all sides if it appeared the trials were being delayed for political convenience. If all five are brought to trial very swiftly and something goes bad for the prosecution in just one and one of these guys walks, then those three years aren't going to be long enough for Obama to get over the backlash. In fact, under those circumstances, the only thing that would prevent impeachment proceedings before 2012 is the Democrats' majority in Congress.

So aside from appeasing the lunatic fringe of the loony left, is there any upside in doing this?

Afghanistan: No policy, no strategy, no decision

Barack Obama has left Gen. McChrystal and his troops in Afghanistan hanging for better than 70 days without a decision on the strategic direction in Afghanistan. Strategic decisions, though, can only be made once a coherent policy has been articulated, and while Candidate Obama was pretty unambiguous in his campaign rhetoric that victory in Afghanistan was essential, President Obama won't even use the word "victory" in the context of Afghanistan. He's failed thus far to even articulate a policy on Afghanistan, and without a policy, formulation of a strategy isn't possible.

The reason this is moving so slow is because he can't foist the policy and strategy decisions on Congress; they're his decisions to make, and his alone. So while Obama scurries about trying to rush Congress into passing health care reform, cap & trade and card check legislation, he agonizes over the political ramifications of his Afghanistan policy.

Happy Veteran's Day.

Update: In the immortal words of John McEnroe, "You can not be serious!"...Obama votes "present".

Update 2: Uncle Jimbo rang the bell on this back in February.

Beltway sniper lessons learned: None

It's hard to believe that it's been seven years since John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo cruised the Washington, DC area picking off people at random from their car. Muhammad was put to death by lethal injection last night here in Virginia.

Their three-week murder binge during October of 2002 claimed 10 lives, and struck close to home for me personally when two of them occurred just a short drive from my house. The second of those shootings occurred on Route 1 here in Spotsylvania County as Mrs. Pool Bar and I were on our way from out having breakfast. We were passed by a county Sheriff's car at high speed which pulled into an Exxon station ahead of us where a couple of other Sheriff's cars had just arrived. We got the news when we returned home that 53-year-old Kenneth Bridges had been shot dead while pumping gas at the station.

The shootings took place just a year after the 9/11 terror attacks, and law enforcement authorities moved swiftly to disassociate Muhammad's acts of terrorism from his Muslim religion in exactly the same way authorities today are disassociating Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's shooting spree from his Muslim religion. Law enforcement authorities have become conditioned by our excessively politically correct culture to not consider Islamist fundamentalism as a possible motivator in violent acts.

This kind of political correctness amounts to malpractice on a grand scale and it must be stopped.

Obama, the political science project

Whether Barack Obama's occupation of the White House ends in 2012 or 2016 remains to be seen, but one thing's certain...he'll be studied in political science classes for generations to come. How a man viewed by supporters and detractors alike as an extraordinarily adept political figure could turn out to be so inept defies logical explanation.

Unless one's been obsessively keeping a daily diary since his inauguration in January, it's become impossible to catalog all the major and minor blunders of the charlatan Obama. When he's not giving the Queen of England an iPod (a fucking iPod!) as a state gift, holding beer summits on the White House lawn, or bantering aimlessly for two or three minutes before getting around to addressing the murder of 13 Americans by an Islamist extremist US soldier, he's bungling one foreign policy issue after another...Russia (scrapping Eastern Europe missile defense with nothing in return), Iran (nuclear program and fraudulent elections), Honduras (backing Marxist thug legally removed from office), Afghanistan (can't formulate policy, never mind strategy)...the list is already endless after just 10 months in office.

Most recently, he's decided that Berlin, Germany is a fine city in which to deliver a presidential campaign speech, but can't be bothered to visit to observe the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He resorts to making lurid sexual references to the millions of Americans who oppose the current health care reform proposals.

And the son of a bitch hovers around 50% approval rating. How did America get so fucking stupid? Maybe political science majors fifty years from now will figure it out.

One man's terrorist...

We may assume that Christopher Monfort, the accused Seattle cop-killer, isn't a Muslim. Why? Because law enforcement authorities have branded him a "lone domestic terrorist", unlike Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan who gunned down 13 people while reportedly yelling "Allahu Akhbar".

A man shot by police as he was sought in connection with the Halloween killing of a Seattle police officer has been identified as 41-year-old Christopher Monfort.

At a news conference Saturday, Seattle assistant police chief Jim Pugel called Monfort "a lone domestic terrorist."

So while everyone responsible for protecting US citizens from terrorist attack, from the President on down, ties themselves into knots not to call Hasan a terrorist, Monfort gets the label pretty easily.*

One man's terrorist is the same man's poor, suffering stress puppy.

* I should note that I don't have a real problem categorizing Monfort as a domestic terrorist, given the information in the article. But it seems there's an irrational fear of doing so when the perpetrator may have been motivated by Islamist ideology.

Like thieves in the night

Late on a Saturday night, while most of America slept or was out for a night on the town, the most ethical Congress ever, under the most transparent administration ever, passed a health care reform bill that was devised in secret closed-door meetings and was opposed by a majority of their constituents. If it's any consolation, the final vote was 220-215, which doesn't bode well for passage by the Senate in its current form.

For me the most disturbing thing about this bill from a civil liberties point of view is the individual mandates provision, which mandates that all citizens carry medical insurance. Failure to do so results in heavy fines or imprisonment for up to five years (if I understand the current version correctly). I'm hoping there are libertarian legal groups with court filings already drafted ready to challenge this provision if and when it becomes law. It'll be fun to see the Supreme Court take up the question of limits to Congressional power over individual rights, especially in an election year with many House and Senate seats up for grabs.

The death of statesmanship

Un-fucking-believable. Barney Frank demonstrates his class and statesmanship in the health care debate by mocking and insulting the intelligence of Americans protesting the health care bill.

Frank, a Massachusetts liberal, told an audience: "Some of the people (at the rally) that wanted to engage me in conversation appeared to have been the losers in the 'Are you smarter than Michele Bachmann contest?'."

Rep. Bachmann, R-Minn., had organized Thursday's rally attended by thousands of conservatives critical of the Democrats' health care plan. Her spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment. Frank, who recently compared arguing with an angry voter to conversing with a dining room table, said this week's protest was like being trapped inside a furniture warehouse.

One thing I've learned about liberals is that they invariably believe themselves the intellectual superior of everybody else. That's fine if you're a coffee house poet or even a lefty columnist, but for a senior member of Congress to be smearing the intelligence of the 50% or so of Americans who disagree with him politically is outrageous. C'mon, Massachusetts...it's time to vote this cretin out of office.

Were elections a referendum on Obama? Kinda

A day after Virginia and (gasp!) New Jersey elected Republican governors, the Obama-loving media is eager to spin the results as being anything but a referendum on Barack Obama. Actually, they were so eager, the spin started the day before the election. CNN.com this morning has an analysis piece by Mark Preston titled "Elections not a referendum on Obama". Well, I guess that settles it. Preston does provide some polling data to support his assertion:

While the economy and jobs were the chief concern for voters in both states, 26 percent of New Jersey residents said property taxes was also a major issue, while another 20 percent mentioned corruption, according to CNN exit polling. In a similar CNN survey taken in Virginia, health care was the most important issue for 24 percent of the voters, while 15 percent named taxes and transportation was mentioned by 7 percent.

Further proof that this election was not solely focused on Obama, 56 percent of Virginians said that the president was not a factor when it came down to their vote. In New Jersey, that number increased to 60 percent of the people who went to the polls on Tuesday.

But who does Preston quote when it comes time to lay out a winning 2010 strategy for Democrats? Veteran political mastermind Former movie producer and far-left blogger Jane Hamsher.

"I would suggest that appealing to Republican interests is not the best way to turn out Democrats," Hamsher said. "It is just a fact of life. They have to turn out Democrats."

Wow, thanks for the keen insight, Jane.

I'm in no way a political strategist, but I know a thing or two about human nature. The average voter - that is to say the non-partisan who doesn't spend every waking hour consuming political news and tends to vote from the gut - isn't happy. At an emotional, adolescent level he still might be infatuated with Barack Obama, but on a less conscious (and perhaps more intellectual level) he knows Democratic policies are not improving things and may in fact be making things worse.

Young voters turned out overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008. But as Preston notes:

On Tuesday, the Obama magic did not rub off on Corzine or Deeds.

In New Jersey, while Corzine overwhelmingly won among African-Americans, only 14 percent of the vote was black; young people, age 18 to 29, made up 9 percent of the vote and 36 percent of them backed Republican Chris Christie. Meanwhile, 60 percent of independents supported Christie as well.

The numbers were worse for Deeds in Virginia. Ten percent of the electorate was age 18 to 29 and Republican Bob McDonnell captured 54 percent of this voting bloc. Deeds overwhelmingly carried the African-American vote that made up16 percent of people who turned out on Tuesday, while 66 percent of voters who identified themselves as independents backed McDonnell.

The black vote might be lost in perpetuity to the GOP, but young voters can often swing either way. In New Jersey, they simply failed to show up in enough numbers to change the outcome. In Virginia, they also failed to show up in significant numbers, but those that did voted heavily for McDonnell. That does not bode well for Virginia Democrats in 2010.

So while Obama may not have been a specific target for voter backlash, he's losing his influence over a key voting bloc...he's losing his mojo. And even if last night's elections weren't specifically a referendum on Obama, they might have been more generally a referendum on Democratic policies.

The odd outcome of this is that if the trend continues into the 2010 mid-term elections and Democrats lose the significant majority they now hold in Congress, Democratic policies will either be tabled or seriously diluted going forward. That could set the stage for another Obama win in 2012 if a more sound fiscal policy returns to Washington.

Nooooooooo!

Ms. Beckham, Joan Collins called...she wants her clothes back.

Of the things I hated about the 1980s, shoulder pads on womens' clothes tops the list. I thought that a quarter century on, safely ensconced in the 21st century, we were safe from this assault on the eyes, but we can never drop our guard.

They are regarded as one of the more unfortunate style trends of the Eighties.

But it seems that shoulder pads are not only making a comeback - they are actually selling out.

John Lewis said it has had to reorder its stock of £1.35 pads after fashion-conscious shoppers ransacked its haberdashery shelves.

The complacent will say "But that's Britain. It can't happen here." I hate to break it to you...Yes. It. Can.

If "Flock Of Seagulls" come back, I'm going to go live on an island somewhere for the next five or ten years.

War as a 9-to-5 job

Picture this: You're at the controls of a Predator drone in a trailer somewhere, remotely piloting the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) over a suspected al Qaeda hideout. You watch on the monitor as a few dozen US Marines close on the bad guys. Out of nowhere, a group of al Quaeda jihadis opens fire on the Marines with AK-47s and RPGs. You watch a couple of friendlies go down and you hear the frantic calls for air support on the radio. Your sensor operator has locked his laser on the bad guys' position and you wait for permission to engage. After a few tense minutes of listening to the radio chatter you're cleared in, and you launch a Hellfire missile on the target. The image on your screen is heat-sensitive, and you see a big plume of white blossom and after it clears, you can pick out the body parts - still warm against the relatively cool background - glowing on the screen. With little time to reflect on the carnage, you receive the order to fire on the building al Qaeda is using for a hideout. You release a second Hellfire aimed at the building. After performing battle damage assessment and post-mission debrief, you exit the trailer and drive home, where your wife meets you at the door to discuss little Johnny's disappointing report card.

A lot of people don't know that many of the pilotless drone missions flown in Iraq and the Af-Pak theatres are actually piloted not from a ground station in the theatre itself, but from an Air Force Base in Nevada. Creech AFB is home of the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing which operates many of the Predator and Reaper drones over targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Stars and Stripes has an interesting article about the unforeseen problems this can bring upon families.

Call it combat as shift work, a new paradigm of commuter warfare that is blurring the historical understanding of what it means to go off to battle. And the strain of the daily whiplash transition between bombs and bedtime stories, coupled with the fast-increasing workload to meet relentlessly expanding demand, is leading to fatigue and burnout for the ground-based controllers who drive the drones.

“We have 5,000 years of one type of warfare and only a couple of years of this new kind,” said P.W. Singer, author of “Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.” “These guys are simultaneously at home and at war. It may be that human psychology isn’t designed for that. We don’t know yet.”

The Air Force is working on programs now to help families deal with this odd new kind of combat stress, but this isn't as new as it sounds.

During the Yugoslavian conflicts of the 1990s, combat air missions were flown over the Balkans from Aviano Air Base in Italy. Many of those missions were flown by pilots who weren't deployed, but were "permanent party" - stationed at Aviano and accompanied by their families on their tour of duty there. I recall reading articles back then about the unique type of stress faced by those pilots.

Technology is a wonderful thing, but it's often a double-edged sword.

L'Affaire Scozzafava

The Dede Scozzafava affair in New York's 23rd district is a perfect example of how political parties no longer build political platforms based on ideology and instead serve only to keep loyal party apparatchiks in power. The obvious questions in the aftermath of Scozzafava's political meltdown are (1) why did the local Republican committee pick someone to run for the special election whose every position is diametrically opposed to just about every mainstream Republican, and (2) why did she even identify herself as a Republican in the first place?

I'm not familiar with the area or the recent history there, so I obviously don't know the answers to those questions. But these things generally happen when a party completely loses sight of any foundational beliefs and views its mission as one of simply gaining and maintaining power. The same is true of individuals, and Scozzafava likely enrolled as a Republican as a matter of convenience; it was the easiest path to election. This is what happens when we have a political class whose sole interest is continued employment as elected officials.

But the GOP bit off more than it could chew with Scozzafava. In years past, she'd have encountered little resistance from an under-informed electorate, and the majority of Republican voters in a majority Republican district would have sent her to Capitol Hill just by virtue of having an (R) after her name. Not so any more. In the wake of last year's general elections in which legions of star-struck voters bought a pig in a poke in the form of Barack Obama, voters are taking a harder look at their candidates. They want to know how they've voted in the past and what their positions are now.

There's a new game afoot, and Doug Hoffman - and the citizens of NY-23 - just may be the first winners in the game.