Mike Williams' Obama Watch - Apr. 24, 2009

Chrysler may be going bankrupt, but the U.A.W. won’t be feeling the pain. Joseph AshbyAmerican Thinker: at

That fact that Obama is seeking to completely isolate the union from its share of the blame shows just how much a money-laden political alliance can buy in the “New Era of Responsibility.”

Next thing you know Obama will be taking over the banks.

Speaking of Obama, is he or is he not going to charge Bush administration officials with torture?

Barack Obama on Tuesday:

President Obama suggested today that it remained a possibility that the Justice Department might bring charges against officials of the Bush administration who devised harsh interrogation policies that some see as torture….

Barack Obama on Thursday:

At a White House meeting Thursday, President Obama told Congressional leaders that he thinks it would be a mistake to set up a commission to investigate excesses of the Bush administration’s war on terror....

Ed Morrissey:

Until Tuesday, Obama had consistently downplayed any idea of investigations into allegations of torture involving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah. He reversed himself from a similar statement from his press secretary just the day before — and then when it became apparent that any investigation would not only include Congressional Democrats [my link] who signed off on the interrogations but the revelation of what got gained [my link] through the interrogations, Obama had to reverse himself again within less than 72 hours.

Maybe Obama should have considered the ramifications of his statement before he made it?

Ya think? Then there’s this:

A new Rasmussen survey suggests that the Democrats are barking up the wrong tree with their obsessive interest in the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. At this point, at least, common sense reigns:

· 58 percent of voters say the Obama administration's recent release of DOJ memos "endangers the national security of the United States." Fewer than half as many 28 percent, think it "helps America's image abroad." (This suggests that Obama's apology tour hasn't been especially well-received, either.)

· 70 percent also say America's legal system either does a good job of weighing security against individual rights, or puts too much emphasis on individual rights at the expense of security. Only 21 percent say the legal system is "too concerned about protecting national security."

· Only 28 percent want the Obama administration to investigate how the Bush administration treated terrorists. 58 percent want no such investigations.

· Obama's decision to close Guantanamo Bay is now disapproved of by a 46-36 margin, with support for Obama's action declining.

So what’s Obama going to do if he can’t put the Bushies in the dock for torture?

From the Los Angeles Times, via the Seattle Times:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration agreed late Thursday to release dozens of photographs depicting alleged abuses at U.S. prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years.

The decision will make public for the first time photos obtained in military investigations at facilities other than the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Forty four pictures that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was seeking in a court case, plus a "substantial number" of other images, will be released by May 28.

The photos, examined by Air Force and Army criminal investigators, are apparently not as shocking as those taken at Abu Ghraib, which became a symbol of U.S. mistakes in Iraq. But Pentagon officials nevertheless are concerned that the release could incite another backlash in the Middle East….

Does the man have a clue? Apparently not:

A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported how President Obama's global-warming agenda was losing support among Democrats in the Senate, as 26 of them joined Republicans in a vote insisting that any new cap-and-trade tax on carbon energy would require at least 60 votes. However, the Journal predicted that the administration's next step would be to impose cap-and-trade the non-democratic way, via regulation. Bingo:

So last Friday the Environmental Protection Agency decided to put a gun to the head of Congress and play cap-and-trade roulette with the U.S. economy.

The pistol comes in the form of a ruling that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant that threatens the public and therefore must be regulated under the 1970 Clean Air Act….

However:

UK's Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington.

Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.

“The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,” Monckton told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview. “They are cowards.”

[…]

“The Democrats have a lot to learn about the right of free speech under the US Constitution. Congress Henry Waxman's (D-CA) refusal to expose Al Gore's sci-fi comedy-horror testimony to proper, independent scrutiny by the House minority reeks of naked fear,” Monckton said from the airport Thursday evening.

“Waxman knows there has been no 'global warming' for at least a decade. Waxman knows there has been seven and a half years' global cooling. Waxman knows that, in the words of the UK High Court judge who condemned Gore's mawkish movie as materially, seriously, serially inaccurate, 'the Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view,'” Monckton explained….

Thomas Lifson at American Thinker: “Sooner or later, it will become obvious to most Americans that a case so weak it cannot be debated with an informed skeptic is not worth wrecking the economy for."

Amen! Let’s give D.G. Gearino the last word for today:

McClatchy Newspapers, owner and gutter (as in that which guts) of the News & Observer, filed its first quarter financial results Thursday, and the news was even worse than expected. But here are a few nuggets of information you had to dig for, and because most people don’t — what with lives and real jobs and all — I did the digging for them….

A good read for those of you in N&O-land.

Mike