This report just takes the cake:

Nothing is anyones fault. Nothing is anyones personal responsibility. How much you want to bet she gets a check?

Go Harry!

Senate majority leader Harry Reid tells Max Baucus to quit working with republicans on healthcare reform.

I love open and transparent government. Where's the sunshine you were griping about boys?

And while we are on the subject of open and transparent government, enter Sheriff Joe Biden.

Joe Biden update: No 'private meetings,' just meetings closed to the press < P/>

And while we are on the subject of the party who promised transparency, who could forget Sheriff Joe?

Joe Biden update: No 'private meetings,' just meetings closed to the press

With all the concern expressed about those who are a heartbeat away from the Oval Office I thought you would especially apprecuate the wisdom and logic of our second in command.  Andrew Malcom reports (excerpted),

We've especially noted Biden's innumerable  "private meetings" that are closed to the press because, well, they're private.

And we've wondered aloud how this Democratic VP's private meetings with unnamed people on unnamed subjects differs from the private meetings with unnamed people that his evil predecessor had that got so many Democratic senators and representatives worried about nefarious secrets.

On one recent long weekend, the man who became a Delaware senator when his future boss, Barack Obama, was an inexperienced fundraiser of only 11, devoted an entire Monday to "private meetings" that are closed press in his Delaware home.

If that isn't dedication for the $208,000 salary.

Well, today's schedule, unlike many at the end of Biden's work weeks, contains no "private meetings." Not one.

Having spent Thursday traveling and successfully selling the nation on the so far hard-to-detect effects of the $787-billion Obama administration economic stimulus spending plan that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave them, Biden will show up for work around 11 today.

He'll join Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a roundtable to discuss only the rising costs of healthcare for people who own or work for small businesses. One suspects the absent president's ambitious plan to spend billions more to impose his healthcare reforms might also be mentioned.

According to the White House schedule, Biden will not spend the remainder of the workday in private meetings that are closed press.

Instead: "The Vice President will spend the remainder of the day in meetings that are closed press."

You get the difference, right?

A heartbeat away from the oval office......  Your government in action. Where is quagmire when you need it?

Throughout the last election cycle my one underlying question I posed and underlying reason to not vote for Barack Obama was his judgement and to a lesser extent the worldview which is the basis of the judgement.

For instance, to clarify my position, many were confused with how Barack Obama could openly associate with and be comfortable in the company of Bill Ayers, Frank Davis, Father Pfleger and Dr. Jeremiah Wright. However, in Barack's world these are people in the main stream and there is nothing subversive or dangerous about any of their worldviews or position. They are just other voices worthy of consideration.

I have discussed both here and on many of your blogs the question that has come to mindover and over. Is Barack's mishandling of affairs merely a matter of inexperience, being naive a concerted plan of action or something else?

Today, while reading The Telegraph, I see where  Nile Gardiner is openly asking , "Is Obama the most naïve president in U.S. history? " He recounts Obama's actions in negotiating a nuclear deal with Russia :

"The whole agreement makes no sense, and is little more than a vanity exercise for Barack Obama who has ludicrously pledged to carve out a nuclear-free world. Surely a better strategy would be to further build up America’s defences, including a global missile defence shield, rather than cut defence spending and further gut the superpower’s nuclear capability.

At this rate, even Jimmy Carter looks like General Patton compared to the dove-like current U.S. president. Why cut nuclear weapons at a time when rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran are busy building their own programmes? Does the President seriously believe this move will encourage the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il to renounce their nuclear designs? What evidence is there in history that a unilateral policy of disarmament will prompt tyrannical regimes to change their behaviour?"

Barack's actions reflect one of a intellect who believes his ideas are new and fresh and that people will adopt once he explains how wonderful his vision of how the world could be is. The problem comes when the world has heard it all before and is losing respect for the leader of the free world. Remember this is the same administration that Russia has openly mocked, saying in American capitalism gone with a whimper

"It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people. " 

"First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

"The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe. "

While we must understand that these words do contain some amount of hyperbole, they also contain great truth and contrast the false vision of America the american media is selling.

The New York Times headline reads, "In Russia, Obama’s Star Power Does Not Translate"

"Even many students and alumni of the Western-oriented business school where Mr. Obama gave the graduation address on Tuesday seemed merely respectful, but hardly enthralled.

“We don’t really understand why Obama is such a star,” said Kirill Zagorodnov, 25, one of the graduates. “It’s a question of trust, how he behaves, how he positions himself, that typical charisma, which in Russia is often parodied. Russians really are not accustomed to it. It is like he is trying to manipulate the public."

Gerald Celente yesterday remarked on what he calls Obamageddon below. While his projections may be glim and not what body politic or the happy media wants to project as todays american propoganda, it certainly provides a stark contrast. I would compare his rate of forecasts vs. the governments before you discount his projections and his reasonings. If nothing else, allow him to provoke thought.

 

At the same time we have recycled former Senator Gary Hart to be one of the co-chairs of the bipartisan Commission on US Policy Towards Russia . Hart while discussing Obama's trip to Russia tries to tell Russia Today that many people in Russia don't realize there has been a administation change in America and that is why Russians haven't embraced Obama. Right Gary.

I think Gerald Warner has it right when he states that "Barack Obama holds a fire sale of America's nuclear defences in Moscow "

'The nuclear power balance, as at 2007, was a Russian superiority of 2,146 land-launched nuclear warheads to 1,600 US; this was counterbalanced by a US superiority of 3,168 sea-launched US warheads to 1,392 Russian and 1,098 air-launched US warheads to 624 Russian. What should also be factored in is the leaking, deteriorating, rust-bucket condition of some of Russia’s deterrent ordnance, although it has already decommissioned the most basket-case Soviet weaponry. The bottom line, however, is that it is Russia which is now in the lead in ICBM development, not America.

For America voluntarily to reduce its nuclear superiority is madness. Bien-pensant talk of a nuclear-free world displays total stupidity in a global situation where nuclear weaponry is proliferating, not receding. There is even a nuclear bomb in Pakistan, which is teetering on the brink of failed statehood at the hands of Islamist insurgents. Is this a time for America to disarm, to “sell the store” as one trenchant right-wing commentator has already described Obama’s posturing in Moscow?

For Obama, success is not the delivery of watertight nuclear security for America; it is a feel-good news conference and photo opportunity that will create huge approval ratings on liberal campuses where the delusions of 1968 and the anti-Vietnam war movement still linger on in these isolated Jurassic Parks."

No wonder friend and foe alike are asking what is going on in America. The real question is why average Americans are not demanding satisfactory answers.

I have really enjoyed the much needed break from intense studying and net searching researching issues to go camping and attend a festival with my daughter and then go spending time with family and friends.

I went back and looked and the last substantive blogs I wrote were on 22 June and 20 June, however with the great material available in vlogging there is no real need to vacate your blog either. The amount of educational material available by so many sites is ever increasing perhaps as a  response to the lack of civics education in the country today.

This has also been a time for a gut check. I need to go back and make sure the message I project is the message I intend to project. I need to make sure I am not influenced by any writers to the point of losing objectivity; namely the ability to critique and hold to account people who hold similar views when they are wrong as well as those whom I disagree with.

If I havent responded to a question you asked in the past few weeks, ask it again.

Yeah, I'm back. I guess I never shared I needed to take a break, but I never considered leaving . There are some times you just need to clear the head and check the gut.

John