Hillary Clinton Never Looked So Good

Moe offers a statement as Shemp, Larry and Curly look on.

Calling themselves The Elders, Jimmy Carter and a number of his contemporaries have been roaming the world causing a certain amount of mischief, inadvertently undermining whatever official government policy might be.

Quoting from Josh Rogin, it's no secret the Elders' trip to North Korea was viewed as extremely unhelpful by the governments of both Washington and Seoul. Chris Nelson reported on April 29 that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reacted strongly when asked in a morning meeting if she wanted to meet with Carter:

The performance of President Carter and his delegation in N. Korea this week was either shameful or fatuous...or both...and exemplifies why Carter had no...zero...USG support going in, and even less coming out. An alleged witness account of Clinton at her morning meeting the other day reportedly had the following exchange:

"Do you want to meet with Carter?" Clinton is looking at papers, and just says "No." Then she pauses, looks up and adds, "HELL no!!!"

Carter... sheesh! "Hell no!" is right. Count me in with Hillary.

Much Better

Done wasting your time on Tom Friedman? Good! Now you can read the really good stuff!

Check out April Gavaza's piece Shattered.

Tom Friedman Ponders Arab Spring

Jill was having some good fun the other day pointing out some awkward writing attempted by a New York Times Pulitzer prize winning journalist (oh yes, that again!). She and her red marker were on the money of course, but for my part it was the content of Thomas Freidman's piece that proved most troubling.

"As I’ve tried to argue, this uprising, at root, is not political. It’s existential. It is much more Albert Camus than Che Guevara. All these Arab regimes to one degree or another stripped their people of their basic dignity. They deprived them of freedom and never allowed them to develop anywhere near their full potential."

The guy is clueless. Albert Camus? Does he have any idea of where this is going? Look, leaving his arrogance aside, the man has remarkably little feel for the Arab Spring. Even the Arabs aren't sure what road they're headed down, and that should be the first thing out of the triple Pulitzer prize winner's mouth. Instead we have this little bit of dribble, best wiped away with a burp towel.

The problem is he has very little sense for what it is he doesn't know. He should have paid better attention when Mr. Rumsfeld was pointing out limitations we all face in life. Now we find Mr. Friedman trapped in his own limited perception of reality, but Friedman's perception of reality is not the reality we have to live in.

As to the Times itself, this is the same news source that reported on the surprising support Saddam Hussein held with his people during the Iraqi elections in 2002:

"One grandmother in a black cloak stormed onto one of the reporter's buses holding aloft a 10 day old baby boy with a Saddam button pinned to his swaddling clothes and shouted "Yes, yes, yes to Saddam!" so forcefully it seemed she might faint."

The Times did grudgingly concede that the 99.9% voting returns in favor of Mr. Hussein could not be taken at face value, but only after dutifully reporting the election results as if it was the first Tuesday in November.

TSA Doubles Down

"Now turn your head and cough"

After the latest TSA embarressment, one would think the brain trust at the TSA would look for a low profile. But no, despite embarrassment after embarrassent, the TSA is telling the Texas legislature to bugger off.

In defending their baby pat downs and genital searches, the TSA apparatchiks are all about blogging a bunch of nonsense, misconstruing the supremacy clause of the US Constitution:

"What's our take on the Texas House of Representatives voting to ban the current TSA pat-down? Well, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article. VI. Clause 2) prevents states from regulating the federal government."

We usually do not think of the Obamiacs running to the Constitution to clarify what their behavior should be. For an administration that routinely flouts the law of the land, it is a strange sight indeed, but if it seems useful, there is no place they would not go. In this case, however, they may be a tad over their heads.

Article VI, Clause 2 states: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

The Texans had had enough, and late Thursday passed a bill that would make it a criminal offense for public servants to inappropriately touch travelers during airport security pat-downs. The TSA pat-down procedures are simply policies created by the TSA. They are not mentioned in the United States Consitution, nor are they a part of a federal statute. Unless the TSA can cite a federal statute codifyng their baby pat-downs and genital gropes, the TSA's search policy is not adequate to override a state law barring them.

The Texans specifically outlawed the TSA or anyone else from conducting a search to touch “the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of another person," also prohibiting searches “that would be offensive to a reasonable person.”

Well, the Texans are in trouble right there, because all this seems reasonable to Big Sis, and she and her security ship of fools are not backing down.

'Dirty Dancing' Open Thread

  What did you think?

TSA Still Befuddled

  This, you don't want to see.

The Transportation and Safety Authority, which Janet Napolitano wants to unionize, is still institutionally befuddled as to what exactly constitutes a threat.

Case in point, Rageh Almurisi, a young Yemeni man on a flight from Chicago to San Francisco, who was allowed to board despite having no keys, no luggage, $47 cash, two curious posted checks totaling $13,000, and a trove of expired and current state IDs from New York and California. It turns out Mr. Almurisi did have relatives in California, but his travel plans were curiously unbeknownst to them.

People on the plane described Almurisi as sweaty and fidgety. Not so the Federal authorities, who were not the least bit embarrassed by not picking him out before he boarded the plane. "The system worked" is the usual way Napolitano describes hijacking attempts that are thwarted by the frantic actions of the targeted passengers and flight crew. Without breaking their stride, government officials offered they had "not as yet" discovered a motive.

Yemen, a nation at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, has been a focus of U.S. officials because one of the most active branches of al-Qaida operates in the remote part of the country.

A cousin of the suspect described him as an educated, easygoing person who had arrived in Northern California a year-and-a-half ago from Yemen in search of better opportunities.

In search of better opportunities... to do what?

Almoraissi said he could not imagine what may have caused his cousin to act as authorities allege he did on the plane, but said he was certain Almurisi was not a terrorist.

Well, there you go.

He said his cousin did not show an interest in politics and was not intensely religious. "He might have seriously mistaken the cockpit for the bathroom," Almoraissi said. "He's only been on three planes in his whole life."

The AP, they'll believe anything and just write it down... the goofs. Mistaking the cockpit where the pilots sit in the very front of the airplane for the bathrooms that are always off the hall. Simple mistake any happy go lucky Yemeni might make.

Almurisi went toward the cockpit door 30 minutes before the flight from Chicago was supposed to land on Sunday night, San Francisco airport police Sgt. Michael Rodriguez said. Almurisi was yelling unintelligibly as he brushed past a flight attendant.

After interviewing the passengers and gathering their facts, our government authorities characterize what he said as unintelligible? What, do you suppose, was Mr. Almurisi muttering "unintelligibly"?

  You don't want to see this either.

She said a woman in a row across from her who speaks Arabic translated that Almurisi said "God is Great!" in Arabic.

Wai, 27, also remembered on Monday that the wife of one of the men who took Almurisi down later said Almurisi was yelling "Allahu Akbar."

Well, maybe he really had to go? I mean, come on, people!

Meanwhile, TSA agents can be found frisking those they get a dander up over, as likely as not to be your grandmother, who anyone with any sense at all would know does not need excess scrutiny.

Recently TSA employees were seen happily frisking a baby while the child's mother held her in her arms. What the hell is wrong with these people?

All in a days work.

Incredible.

National Labor Relations Board Puts Blade to the Throat of Freedom

One of the many freedoms we enjoy as American citizens is freedom of movement. Unlike the Soviet nemesis that threatened us for so many years, our government does not build fences to keep our people from moving one place to another, or at least we didn't until the Obama Administration apparatchiks came along. The Obamacons have placed former Union lawyer Craig Becker onto the board of the National Labor Relations Board. Unable to get him confirmed through the normal mechanisms which would have challenged his impartiality to sit on such a board, he was made a recess appointment. Well, we didn't have long to wait to see how bad this appointment was going to be, as Mr. Becker has saw fit in these difficult economic times to strangle one of the nations major manufacturing firms.

Boeing is building a new jet aircraft, the Dreamliner, which is a mid-sized jet with the fuel efficiency and range of heavy transporters. The airplane will use 20 percent less fuel for comparable missions than today’s similarly sized airplanes. It will also travel at speeds that match today’s fastest wide bodies, Mach 0.85. The Dreamliner takes advantage of a number of design advances, using a unibody main frame that greatly reduces the number of parts to be fastened together and opens up more room in its interior. The plane will have more cargo revenue capacity and will also feature improvements in passenger comforts, such as maintaining higher humidity in its interior. The plane is currently being produced at maximum capacity in Washington. To increase production Boeing chose to expand their facility in South Carolina.

Over a year and half after Boeing announced plans to build a plant in the state of South Carolina, and with the $2 billion plant nearing completion, the NLRB has charged that Boeing’s decision violated the rights of its unionized workers in Washington state. The charge goes straight to the heart of the struggle for freedom against an over-reaching Federal bureacracy.

George Will writes:

"The NLRB has read a 76-year-old statute (the 1935 Wagner Act) perversely, disregarded almost half a century of NLRB and Supreme Court rulings, and patently misrepresented statements by Boeing officials.

South Carolina is one of 22 — so far — right-to-work states, where workers cannot be compelled to join a union. When in September 2009, Boeing’s South Carolina workers — fuselage sections of 787s already are built here — voted to end their representation by IAM, the union did not accuse Boeing of pre-vote misbehavior. Now, however, the NLRB seeks to establish the principle that moving businesses to such states from non-right-to-work states constitutes prima facie evidence of “unfair labor practices,” including intimidation and coercion of labor. This principle would be a powerful incentive for new companies to locate only in right-to-work states.

In the past sixteen years, the International Association of Machinists have brought production at Boeing's Washington plant to a halt three times, once for 58 days that cost the company to miss promised delivery schedules and nearly two billion dollars in actual costs. The IMA were offered an agreement where Boeing would build the new plant in Washington if they would make a commitment not to close the plant down. The union leaders for the machinists refused to accept those conditions.

Locating the new plant in South Carolina does not violate anyone's rights. It is merely good business. That is something this administration should be considering. Either companies like Boeing will succeed here, will ship their production overseas, or they will fail against their international competitors. I, for one, want to see US companies succeed.

Update:
Roxeanna de Luca got a bit of a chuckle out of this comment:

"The south is not stealing business. This is how breakups work. By the time your wife or girlfriend leaves you, she reached her decision a year ago and she’s not changing her mind now. Face it, you beat the snot out of Boeing one too many times and now she’s leaving your sorry A$$ behind."

Nicely put.