Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Tuesday's trackings

CIA officials are, privately, off-the-record, pushing back against the Obama administration today:
"Battered by recriminations over waterboarding and other harsh techniques sanctioned by the Bush administration, the CIA is girding itself for more public scrutiny and is questioning whether agency personnel can conduct interrogations effectively under rules set out for the U.S. military, according to senior intelligence officials."
If there's a major terrorist attack upon this nation in the next year or two, the Obama administration better ready itself to answer some tough questions.

GROWTH OF GOVERNMENT UPDATE: the Obama administration announces new fuel-efficiency regulations today on American cars...
"The new requirement is estimated to cost consumers an extra $1,300 per vehicle starting in 2016, but drivers will be saving at the pump. Obama estimated that a typical driver would save $2,800 over the lifetime of a car."
So that will be the justification--that it will mean less oil usage and that you'll save money on gas. Note however that the savings on gas over a car's lifetime is just an estimate, and that the price of gasoline can be powerfully affected by events out of our control--terrorist attacks, events in the Middle East. New regulations like this will cost everyone a lot of money, folks. Government regulation isn't free.

IS THE GOP DEAD? DEPT:
Democratic Senator and Majority Leader Harry Reid is up for re-election soon.
How do polls look for him? So far, not so good:
50% of Nevadans disapprove of him, according to a Mason-Dixon poll.
Right now, 35% of Nevadans would vote to re-elect him...
45% would definitely vote to un-seat him! Wow...
And by the way, also relevant to this subject is this: Democrats don't agree with the Obama administration's plans to close Gitmo:
"Senate Democrats threw cold water on President Obama's plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center Tuesday, pulling money for the closure from a $91 billion war spending request and publicly opposing the transfer of any detainees to U.S. soil. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Democrats not only oppose the release of detainees into the United States but also oppose the transfer of detainees to U.S. prisons. "We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States," he said, adding: "Part of what we don't want is for them to be put in prisons in the United States. We don't want them around in the United States."
Watch 'em fight...

CORRUPTION WATCH:
Big Democratic/Hillary Clinton fundraiser Norman Hsu convicted of violating campaign finance laws.
The key: remember this when your Democrat friends accuse the GOP of being "corrupt."