RedState Morning Briefing

By Erick Erickson
12/03/2009

1. As Predicted, the Senate Republicans Are Improving the Health Care Bill so it Passes

2. Rumsfeld to Obama: What Requests For Troops in Afghanistan Are You Talking About?

3. Strikingly, Obama’s Afghan Strategy Manages to Repeat Almost Every Single Mistake Made in Iraq

4. Barack Obama Trots Out Joe Biden to Attack George Bush

5. The hypocrisy of Google

6. Put more lipstick on that Public Option pig!

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1. As Predicted, the Senate Republicans Are Improving the Health Care Bill so it Passes

Friends, it is as bad as I feared. The Republicans are playing so nice with the Democrats in the Senate that they are improving the health care bill so it can pass. Here is an email from Don Stewart in Senator Mitch McConnell’s office. (Yeah, you want to click through to see what’s going on, but it might just ruin your day) Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Rumsfeld to Obama: What Requests For Troops in Afghanistan Are You Talking About?

One line in President Obama’s orgy of blame-Bush-for-everything speech last night has prompted former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld, who managed the Afghan war for five years, to call for the President to back up his assertions. Secretary Rumsfeld’s statement, issued in a press release this morning. “I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006. If any such requests occurred, ‘repeated’ or not, the White House should promptly make them public. The President’s assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan.” “In the interest of better understanding the President’s announcement last night, I suggest that the Congress review the President’s assertion in the forthcoming debate and determine exactly what requests were made, who made them, and where and why in the chain of command they were denied.” Robert Gibbs cheerfully responded to Donald Rumsfeld’s denial that he’d denied troops to Afghanistan with, first, a clarification that Obama had been talking about the post-Rumsfeld era of 2008. Robert Gates, the man who held the job in 2008 – just got thrown under the Obamabus. Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Strikingly, Obama’s Afghan Strategy Manages to Repeat Almost Every Single Mistake Made in Iraq

Handed a top-to-bottom review of, and a revised strategy for, this long-ignored front in the Global War on Terror by the outgoing Bush administration, President Barack Obama stepped to the microphone in February and gave a platitudinous speech that echoed precisely what his predecessor had said in the last months of his own presidency. When that speech alone failed to miraculously make the war in Afghanistan simply go away, Obama spent months dithering over whether or not he should give another Afghan strategy speech (as American troops and Afghan civilians were dying at a rate higher than they had been at any point in the conflict). Finally, when the problem again refused to just go away on its own, Obama succumbed to public demand that he actually say something about the troops, and the war, he has responsibility for in Afghanistan as America’s commander in chief. Fortunately, he had amazing resources (besides brilliant military brass like David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal) to rely on in his decision-making process in the form of a host of lessons learned over the last six years in Iraq. With so recent an example of so much not to do in a war, Obama couldn’t help but learn from previous mistakes and make a sound decision on Afghanistan….right? Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Barack Obama Trots Out Joe Biden to Attack George Bush

Though filled with assertions and outright lies that Bush dropped the ball in Afghanistan, Obama was rather respectful in his Tuesday night speech. That was Tuesday. My, my how 24 hours makes a difference. Sent from Barack Obama’s campaign team at barackobama.com, I got this note from Joe Biden tonight about the Obama policy in Afghanistan . . . Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. The hypocrisy of Google

I’ve said before that Google was treading dangerously near to hypocrisy in the contrast between its promoted public policy and its own internal policy, but now the large, wealthy firm has gone well over the line. Google is a widely outspoken proponent of the Obama administration’s Net Neutrality plan. At the core of this plan are two “principles” outlined by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. First is the principle of neutrality that “would prevent Internet access providers from discriminating against particular Internet content or applications, while allowing for reasonable network management,” as Genachowski has said. The second is the principle of transparency that “would ensure that Internet access providers are transparent about the network management practices they implement.” Conveniently, the same two principles Google wants private ISPs to meet, Google itself flagrantly ignores . . . Please click here for the rest of the post.

6. Put more lipstick on that Public Option pig!

What are we up to now, six different names for the public option? Let us count the ways desperate Democrats have tried to re-brand, re-tool, re-name or re-invent what is, by all accounts, a plot that will ultimately force millions of Americans into the waiting arms of government health care bureaucrats. During the 2008 campaign, the public option was described as “government-run plan similar to Medicare.” Whoa…really? The same Medicare plan that cannot now meet its own financial obligations and is projected to be come up short by $38 trillion by the time the youngest Americans will need it? No wonder we haven’t heard that description much lately. After the presidential inauguration, talk of the public option steadily picked up steam, reaching a fever pitch in August when senior citizens were shouting down their elected officials and canceling their AARP memberships in droves, and while Tea Party activists were getting their fingers bitten off at town hall meetings – all due to strong opposition against any form of government-run health care. By late October, Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew it was a tough sell. Please click here for the rest of the post.