Obama: Don't Compare Me To Cheney

The real difference between them: Unlike Cheney, Obama can't hit crap with a shotgun. This could be because he holds it very strangely with his left hand on the trigger when he's a right hander. No wonder he can't hit squat.

The Detroit Free Press: Obama on NSA program: Don't compare me to Cheney

President Obama is defending National Security Agency surveillance programs, and disputing the notion that he is following in the footsteps of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

In a PBS interview with Charlie Rose, Obama said efforts to track terrorists through phone and Internet surveillance have safeguards to prevent abusing the civil liberties of innocent Americans. Obama cited both congressional and judicial oversight.

When Rose asked, "should this be transparent in some way?," Obama responded: "It is transparent. That's why we set up the FISA court."

Critics note that this court -- created through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- issues rulings in secret.

Yeah, parse that for a second - he's claiming its transparent although the results and rulings are secret. And you thought Bush mangled the English language?

On civil liberties, surveillance, military adventurism, and all those things the left excoriated Bush and Cheney for - well, Obama is Bush and Cheney's third term and far, far worse.

Obama Vacations Often, Press Yawns

Politico: Burton defends new vacation

After a mid-August trip to America's national parks and a weeklong vacation on Martha's Vineyard, President Obama plans ...

... to take a little more time away from the office next week.

Obama will head to Camp David on Wednesday, Sept. 2, and stay through the weekend, White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters in a Thursday briefing.

Joking that it may have been "wishful thinking" to suggest Obama's current trip out of Washington would coincide with a news-free week, Burton quipped that the president needs a "break from his vacation."

For the second time in just a few days, however, the deputy press secretary emphasized that Obama hasn't disengaged from his responsibilities.

"When you're president, you've always got that job," Burton said.

On Monday, Burton pointed to former President George W. Bush's vacation habits to defend scattered criticism of Obama's August schedule.

"As I recall, the previous president [took] quite a bit of vacation himself, and I don't think anyone bemoaned that," Burton said.

Nope, Nobody, Not a one, no bemoaning whatsoever.

Yeah right.

Detroit News Columnist's Article Sidetracked By BDS

An article that starts out in a promising manner fallsas a victim to its author's suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS is not yet listed in the DSM yet but hopefuly it will make edition V).

Froma Harrop's articleFrustrating federal ID plan invites havoc starts out promisingly, detailing delays in achiueving a ssecure form of identification, presumably for visitors to our Country. it then notes that the CIA seems risk adverse to any form of faiure which might risk their careers, and that such risk aversion is harming its efforts in the war on terror.

They feared the bad things that might have happened had they gotten tough: CIA personnel could have become prisoners of al-Qaida. Congress could have hauled them before committees for helping Northern Alliance leaders involved with the heroin trade in Afghanistan or for abusing al-Qaida prisoners.

But those are risks our protectors are supposed to take. Hurting one's career should be a small price to pay for defending national security. By holding top CIA officials accountable, we add risk to not taking risks, and that's how it should be.

So far so good. But immediately after that she heads off into Cloud Cuckoo land-

Of course, anyone who was gung-ho for destroying al-Qaida had to deal with the crushing laziness of the Bush administration in its first eight months. By the time Bush had arrived in the White House, al-Qaida had already supported the first World Trade Center bombing (1993), a plan to blow up airliners over the Pacific (1995), the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa (1998), the suicide attack on the USS Cole (2000) and the Millennium Plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport (2000). Yet during that time, the administration did next to nothing about al-Qaida.

Is Harrop blaming the Bush administration for doing nothing in the years 1993-2000- you know the years preceedingt he Bush administration taking office in January 2001?

Charitably one can argue that she means that in the 8 months once he took office but to list the terorirst attacks immediately before saying "Yet during that time" certainly paints a false picture and will have all the readers who can't remember the year Bush took office nodding sagely that he didn't try to stop any of those attacks because he was lazy.

Blaming and criticising Bush for a variety of failings since he's taken office, on many issues is fair game. To confabulate and make a false suggestion that he is responsible for events before he even took office or was crushingly lazy in the first eight months of his term is riddiculous. What exactly did harrop want him to do? Start bombing stuff, try to pass the patroit act before the attacks took place. Good luck with that -- the nation was not ready for any of those actions and you can guess the level of criticism Bush would have faced if he tried.

Yet another potentially good article derailled by the BDS train,