Nightly Ramble Wednesday

Welcome to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere… the BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• WEST POINT SPEECH: For those of you that want a text version of the Snoozer at West point, The Washington Post can cover that need. Fred Barnes has the right word… disappointing. Yes, that means I expected something better.  Silly me.  I kept hoping against hope that he’d eventually break out of the partisan rhetoric and publicly recognize that what he calls a “responsible end.” to the war in Iraq was only possible because of the Surge he objected so strongly to as Candidate Obama.  Seems an odd thing, given what he’s calling for in Afghanistan, is a half-assed copy of that strategy he dances around crediting.   I must say I have serious questions about Mr. Obama and his support for this action.  After all, what commander in chief takes three months to give his commanders on the ground only 3/4 of the troops he’s asked for, and places a time limit on said commanders despite tying one hand behind their back?  There’s this, also; Obama spent a good deal of time last night talking about the costs of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan.  He used these numbers to argue against larger numbers of troops and longer involvements in solving the conflict .
  

  Fred Barnes

  Yet, looking directly at the numbers that he himself mentions in the speech, they appear minuscule as compared to the billions and billions of dollars poured into propping up auto companies, banks, and whatever government pork project Democrat senators got for their votes on healthcare and card check.
  Barnes says, and rightly, I think:

  I had hoped Obama would declare that nothing will deter him, as commander-in-chief, from prevailing in Afghanistan. But it turns out a lot of things might deter him. He listed a few of them: the cost of the war, its length (if more than 18 months from January 2010), the failure of Afghans to step up to the task sufficiently. He hedged.

  A hedge fund is something that somene gets into that wants to minimize the risk of damage. Obama is a politician, not a leader.

• ENEMY CAMP? One thing that didn’t suprise me last night was Tingles calling West Point “The Enemy Camp”. Not that I don’t already figure a lot of leftwards already consider it so. But Tingles is getting blantant in his anti-American bias these days, don’t you think? Then too, on another topic, Reynolds quips this morning
  

  

  Glenn Reynolds

  Yeah, if he were dealing with a real enemy — like, say, Fox News — he wouldn’t tip his hand so easily . . . .

  So, I suppose the understanding of that bias is widespread enough. But go have a look at KJL’s reposnse.

• SEE ALSO: DEMOCRATS, SINKING SHIP One of the bigges blue dog Democrats out there, John Tanner of Tennessee, is calling it quits, says Hotline on Call. He’ll  be steping aside at the end of this congress.  The exodus has begin, my freinds.
• ONE DEAD COP KILLER: This one ended exactly as it should. Maurice Clemmons, the dirt bag wanted for killing four Lakewood Washington cops, challanged a Seattle cop yesterday morning, and lost the bet. Good.
• THE CBO REPORT WILL BE IGNORED: By the left at least. The congressional budget office has finally got around are releasing its report of the senate health care bill. The it concludes that the individual insurance premiums would increase by around 10% and probably more, if the democrats pass their health care bill.  address, those increases only apply to those evil rich.  It comes out that the remainder of us would probably see a decrease in bills directly related to health care, but what they don’t show is the amount of deficit spending needed to support the plan.  Meaning, that money’s gonna come from someplace, and it’s probably going to come out of the middle class.  As we’ve demonstrated here several times in graphic terms, there aren’t enough rich to support these grandiose schemes.  The tax increase is going to come back down on the middle class that Obama and company claim they are protecting.
• KUDOS TO DAVID and Charles Krauthammer, yesterday. Does anyone doubt, anymore, that Sullivan is pure partisanship?