Yesterday I went off on the Obama Administration for its handling of the underwear bomber fiasco. This diary entry was met with silence except for one inchoate reply, so I was relieved this morning to awake and find that I am not completely alone in the universe.

This is a big deal. What we have here is multiple levels of failure. If the kernel of story that is being told is accurate (the intended suicide bomber was actually a spy working for the Saudi’s and the U.S.) then all of the other revelations range from inappropriate, to stupid and probably all the way to criminal.

This bombing operation was stopped by one person who risked their life to infiltrate Al Qaeda in Yeman, volunteered for the bombing mission, and then alerted his superiors to the plot.  That you and I now know all of this, is stunningly dangerous and suggests that the Obama Administration is milking this for political gain while betraying absolutely NO CONCERN for national security or the safety of our agents and allies around the world.

This is malfeasance of the most dishonorable sort and it likely leads directly into the West Wing of the White House.

The still unfolding, or rather unraveling, case of the thwarted underwear bomber plot, is beginning to smell. I make no claims of being an expert on intelligence gathering and I certainly have no inside information on this specific case. However the central question that begs to be asked is why this operation became public knowledge. The AP is being blamed for releasing the story but how did the AP find out about it to begin with?

The N.Y. Times has a piece that aside from the rather obvious attempt to score points for the Obama Administration, contains more questions than answers. For instance:

In an extraordinary intelligence coup, the double agent left Yemen last month, traveling by way of the United Arab Emirates, and delivered both the innovative bomb designed for his aviation attack and inside information on the group’s leaders, locations, methods and plans to the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi intelligence and allied foreign intelligence agencies.

Officials said the agent, whose identity they would not disclose, works for the Saudi intelligence service, which has cooperated closely with the C.I.A. for several years against the terrorist group in Yemen. He operated in Yemen with the full knowledge of the C.I.A. but not under its direct supervision, the officials said.

Well I am certainly relieved that they didn’t IDENTIFY the poor bastard. I mean after all Al Qaeda probably has NO IDEA who he is. (/sarcasm)

The story goes on to breathlessly inform the reader that:

…the intelligence agent provided critical information that permitted the C.I.A. to direct the drone strike on Sunday that killed Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso. 

Why are these mission details being blurted out publicly? NONE of this information should ever be made public.

The agent is now safe in Saudi Arabia, officials said. The bombing plot was kept secret for weeks by the C.I.A. and other agencies because they feared retaliation against the agent and his family — not, as some commentators have suggested, because the Obama administration wanted to schedule an announcement of the foiled plot, American officials said.

Officials said Tuesday night that the risk to the agent and his relatives had now been “mitigated,” evidently by moving both him and his family to safe locations.

Really? Mitigated?

Mitigate is a word beloved by governmental bureaucrats and one that I heard regularly during my years in local office. It gets used in sentences like this ” If you will appropriate $1,000,000 it will help mitigate our leaky roof problem”.  You see “mitigate” doesn’t mean “fix” or “end” or “dispose of” or “take care of”. No, “mitigate” means “lessen” or “moderate”. It is a wiggle room word that allows government bureaucrats to proactively cover their behinds. Two years later when the roof is still leaking they can say “Yes, but its not leaking as badly as it used to” !

So when we are told the danger to the spy and his family has been “mitigated” it means, if it means anything, that he’s been hid better than he was a few days ago. He’s now in a “safe” location. In Saudi Arabia.

The Times does admit that all is not rosy:

…American intelligence officials were angry about the disclosure of the Qaeda plot, first reported Monday by The Associated Press

Notice that they are casting the AP as the heavy, its all the nasty old AP’s fault. But how did the AP find out? And who is providing all the the details that continue to dribble out?

Watch any law enforcement movie or TV show and you can see that even Hollywood knows that an undercover agent must be protected. Agents aren’t disposable. You don’t use them once and then expose them.

Its great that this plot was stopped but its inexcusable that we know as much about this event as we do.

1. The CIA and the Saudi’s had a spy inside Al Qaeda

2. The CIA and the Saudi’s had a spy inside Al Qaeda in Yeman.

3. The CIA and the Saudi’s had a spy inside Al Qaeda in Yeman who had access to info that lead to the drone strike.

4. The CIA and the Saudi’s had a spy inside Al Qaeda who has turned over a new type of bomb which we now use to build new detection technology.

5. The CIA and the Saudi’s  had a spy in Yeman who has provided “inside information on the group’s leaders, locations, methods and plans”.

Essentially, unless this is an incredibly subtle misdirection play, the U.S. has spilled its guts and “mitigated” the potential damage done to Al Qaeda.

Heckuva job Barry.

With the defeat of Richard Lugar in Indiana, Republican’s have once again decided to play double or nothing with a senate seat. I am agnostic on whether this is a good idea or not because I am simply not smart enough to know. In poker the odds are implacable. If you can bet 10% into a $300 pot and your cards give you a 15% of winning, then over the course of many hands you will win money.  But politics is not reducible to hard odds and mathematical calculation. Moving a senate seat from “strong Republican” to “leans Republican” has a ripple effect that can’t be assessed with any degree of certainty.

In the battle between Conservative Republicans and Less Conservative Republicans, the fighting will likely continue for several more cycles. For every Christine O’Donnell there is a Mike Lee.  For every Joe Miller there is a Rand Paul. For every Marco Rubio there is a Sharron Angle. Only time, measured in decades, will answer what the net effect is or will be.

Richard Lugar was a moderate Republican but he was no Olympia Snowe and he was not a RINO. My first memory of Lugar was during the 1980 Republican Convention. He was a “young gun” at the time, considered to be a rising conservative star, and a possible VP pick for Ronald Reagan. As I’ve seen Lugar vilified in recent weeks it occurred to me that if the Ronald Reagan of 1980 were here today he almost certainly would have endorsed Lugar for re-election.

But though Lugar was a solid senator, he grew old and out of touch. Holding political office for a long time (or even not so long) often leads to a tin ear and an inability to see yourself as others see you. I think if Lugar had gone back to Indiana last year and assiduously applied himself to winning this nomination, he would have been successful. But 35 years in Washington deafened and blinded him to his own foibles. Assured of the centrality of his importance, Lugar committed political stupidity bred of arrogance and at age 80 now suffers a most embarrassing indignity.

Regardless of whether you supported Lugar or not, it’s imperative that Republicans of all persuasions close ranks behind Richard Mourdock. Next to removing Barack Obama from the Oval Office, winning the Senate should be  Job 1 for all conservatives in 2012. The seat in Indiana must be held.

For some reason now obscured by the passage of time I once signed up with The American Prospect. (Probably so I could comment on a particularly inane article.) Now I get periodical emails from them pushing one issue or another. Today I got a plea from the editor himself Kit Rachlis. It seems The American Prospect has seen its prospects dim of late. Around for over twenty years, this liberal outlet is apparently about to capsize in a perfect storm of debt.

The American Prospect needs your urgent help.

We’ve launched a campaign that is, quite literally, do or die. I hope you will contribute to help Save the Prospect.

……some big gifts we were counting on to support that new investment fell through, and we are now deeply in the red for the fiscal year that ends June 30.

We are immediately putting in place changes that will allow us to continue publishing on a slimmer budget without sacrificing quality. But to get to that point we need to escape a $500,000 hole by May 31st.

This is a lovely example of how many liberals conduct business. First they pile up enormous debt planning to largely pay it off not by being a successful enterprise but based on “some big gifts” they thought some suckers would give them. Second, they wait till just four weeks before the crap hits the fan before they launch an appeal for help from their loyal followers.

Isn’t it adorable how he wants to “escape a $500,000 hole”?  Maybe he should have stopped digging at $250,000? Notice that he promises “immediate changes”. Immediate? Based on what date? It sounds to me like those changes are similar to Edward John Smith promising an immediate course correction just after hitting the iceberg.

I’ve owned a small business for nearly 25 years. Cash flow is something you never take for granted and always watch nervously. Even a prosperous business must constantly monitor inventory, labor costs, and unpleasant facts like loans coming due. Not to mention knowing your market, anticipating competition, and grappling with new techniques and technology. Except for extreme cases of bad luck, a business sinks beneath a tidal wave of debt only because its ran by people who either don’t offer a product demanded by the consumer, are dirt stupid, or both.

The Washington Examiner has a note on a fundraising letter sent out over James Carville’s name.

After Mitt tried to steal my line, you know I have to call him out.
In Romney’s speech bashing President Obama last night, he said, “It’s still about the economy, and we’re not stupid.”
Yeah, it still is about the economy, stupid. It’s about how hucksters like Mitt crashed it, the middle class paid the price, and the top 1% got more tax cuts.
Let’s call out these Republicans on their downright hypocrisy:
My friends at the DCCC want to raise a million dollars before the FEC deadline to put ads on the air, organizers on the ground, and as many Republicans out of office as they can.
Will you chip in a few bucks?
Thanks for stepping up.
James Carville
P.S. Yeah, it’s about the economy. But it’s also about Republicans going to war on women, trying to cut seniors off their Medicare and all the rest. Let’s beat these guys.

What caught my eye was the vacuous “P.S.”. I realize fundraisers like this consist of red meat intended to stir up the true believers enough to cause them to send in “a few bucks”, but this has to be just about the bottom of the barrel. Using crap “issues” like the “war on women” and cutting off seniors Medicare should make it obvious to the dullest person that today’s Democrat Party has no ideas beyond getting elected and re-elected.

The party that once tried to solve actual problems, albeit with the wrong solutions, no longer exists. In its place is a hollow shell that has spent all its ideas leaving only a soulless rump that serves no purpose beyond perpetuating its own existence.

Jonah Goldberg has a great piece today at NRO about the media’s situational dependent judgement on what constitutes a “distraction”.  But a larger point must be made that these “distractions” are vitally important to election outcomes. Many conservative apparently don’t understand that “the narrative” is what national politics is all about. Every four years each party pushes a storyline and the winner is the one who best encapsulates its message for easy digestion. You can HARUMPH all summer long about what a mess we are in and how bad the BO Administration has been, but unless you frame it in a way that connects with the average non-engaged voter, it won’t matter.

Back in 1980 the narrative that the media and the Democrats were pushing was: Ronald Reagan is dangerous.  This likely would have succeeded but for the fact that Jimmy Carter was such an obvious failure that the “Reagan is a nut” canard never got off the ground.

In 1984 Walter Mondale tried to control the narrative by putting a woman on the ticket. Geraldine Ferraro was unqualified but her candidacy was doomed only after some of her husband’s business dealings came under scrutiny.

In 1988 the Democrats, hungry after eight years out, thought they could portray George H. W. Bush as a “wimp” and Michael Dukakis as “competent” in contrast.  Then in a seemingly routine interview on CBS this happened:

With that unexceptional exchange Bush demolished the “wimp factor” and when Dukakis decided to be filmed riding in a tank looking goofy with a huge helmet on his head, and was never able to effectively manage the Willie Horton Factor, his claim to competence was vanquished. On such trivial events, distractions if you will, do elections shift and turn.

In his NRO column Goldberg makes a critical point:

And let me say a word in defense of distractions. Elections are about what voters want them to be about. Rosen’s comments, for instance, may have been hyped by the Romney campaign, but the hype wouldn’t have mattered if the comments didn’t resonate with the public.

Amen.

John Boehner gets a lot of flack from some quarters but he does an excellent job here in an interview on CBS.

I love the look on Boehner’s face and the tone of his voice about a minute in as he explains life to Charlie like a parent talking to a child.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505271_162-57415624/boehner-obama-checked-out-last-labor-day/

This is what we need to see from Mitt Romney and all the various surrogates for the next seven months.

Don’t let the media get you sidetracked and chasing down rabbit holes.

When they shout “Oh look a purple zebra!” just ignore them and keep pounding Barack Obama where it hurts.

When they try to get you bogged down talking about what some rocker said or what some preacher who endorsed a Republican one time said, push back push back and push back.

Keep the focus squarely on the inept, in over his head, leading from behind incumbent.

Plenty of attention needs to be aimed at this developing Secret Service mess. The SS through history has been one of the tightest ran and most reliable agencies. Its of rather great importance that they be punctiliously professional given that they are the guys protecting the POTUS and maintaining the credibility of our money by staying on top of counterfeiting world wide.  This is not some minor office in charge of corn crop estimates. This is the bloody Secret Service!

Its too early to say whether the blame for this failure can be attributed in whole or in part to the policies of our puerile leader, but its certainly interesting that “the biggest scandal in Secret Service history” happens on the watch of this president who seems so uncomfortable fulfilling the traditional responsibilities of American power and influence.

Coming on the heels of the revelations on multiple GSA scandals this is another bit of evidence that our federal government is coming apart at the seams. If the Secret Service is now treating presidential trips abroad like some sort of taxpayer funded spring break, then we are in worse shape than I realized.

House Republicans need to jump on this issue ASAP and demand full answers and a plan of remediation from those responsible.

I have an inordinate fondness for analogies and my family could tell you I come up with some strange ones. But I do so because analogies are ever so helpful in communicating ideas to other people (dogs and cats not so much).

It occurred to me recently that life in these United States is much like a long drive along a major interstate. Meal breaks when traveling are very similar to elections. Most of them are rather forgettable.  Many elections present a choice not much different than “Dennys” or “Shoneys”. Other elections are more akin to “McDonalds” or “Bonefish Grill”. And then a few elections present a choice similar to “Ptomaine Poisoning” or “Montezuma’s Revenge”.

My point is that even when the wrong choice is made this nation keeps on chugging down the highway. There may be some extra pit stops required to take care of business but so far nothing has proven fatal. We survived Jimmy Carter and God willing we’ll survive Barack Obama.

There are only two places to eat at Exit 2012: Barack’s Arugula Bar and Mitt’s  Shrimp & Steakhouse. Here’s hoping Americans are ready for some surf and turf.  If Obama gets another four years we may all be looking desperately for an exit with a big blue “H” sign.

Now that virtually everyone including Newt Gingrich believes that Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee it is time to pivot toward the general election and cast an eye on how Romney matches up with Barack Obama.

While many conservatives are quite glum about our prospects, in recent weeks I have become more hopeful as it appears the macro factors are increasingly in Romney’s favor. Political contests are a mysterious mixture of design, luck, and perception. I think the latter two factors are starting to favor Romney. It remains to be seen whether his team is up to the task of out working and out thinking the Obama campaign.

The economy continues to splutter and some economists are even starting to talk about recession again. Foreign policy is as much a mess as ever but its hard to see how Obama gets much credit beyond the killing of Bin Laden and exiting Iraq. Afghanistan is a disaster that is directly attributable to Obama. He ran in 2008 on the platform that Afghanistan was the “good war” that he would reemphasize as the Iraq War wound down. That hasn’t worked out very well and the American public is increasingly war weary after eleven years of body bags and little to show for it.

The perception of Obama has changed over the last year or so. More people are speaking up about his short-comings and at times he has come dangerously close to becoming an object of ridicule.  Events such as the “flexible” gaffe show him to be at best a typical double-talking politician and at worst a dangerous poseur.

Mitt Romney can win this by hammering at Obama’s failings and keeping the campaign focused clearly on the economy, repealing Obamacare, and returning our foreign policy to a more familiar “American” approach. Obama’s competence should be hammered incessantly. I suspect that while centrist American’s have growing doubts about Obama’s ability they also don’t want to see him vilified as a socialist or “the other” etc.

To the extent Romney gets caught up in junk like contraception or trying to explain “self-deportation”  he will lose. To the extent he keeps the conversation focused on Obama’s lack of answers that don’t involve a few trillion more in debt, he will win.