1. Wasserman Schultz: ‘We’ve really concentrated’ on oil production

2. Obama Winds Down the War on Terror

3. It’s Not Just Amateur Hour at the White House

4. Craig Becker is a Natural Fit in a Socialist Administration

5. An Interesting Coincidence?

6. ThinkProgress pig-ignorant about military.

7. Permit me to correct the New York Times.

8. Obama has Green Dreams of Car Taxes

1. Wasserman Schultz: ‘We’ve really concentrated’ on oil production

There was an undeniable uptick in U.S. oil production in 2009 and 2010.

But new DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) tried to take credit for it:

“Like I said, domestic oil production is at its highest point in recent years. So we’ve actually really concentrated on that.”

Democrats patting themselves on the back for oil production increases?

Ba. Lo. Ney.

With all due respect.

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2. Obama Winds Down the War on Terror

The killing of Osama bin Laden has created a series of dilemmas for the left. My colleagues have detailed the debt owed the Bush Administration which the current administration juvenilely and churlishly refuses to acknowledge ( here | here). And many on my side are willing “to give the president credit” for doing his duty. According to reports bin Laden’s location has been known to the administration since March with the same degree of certainty that existed on May 1, so I fail to see what credit is really due unless we are saying that indecisiveness is a virtue.

Bin Laden’s death will eventually be seen as the unofficial end of the US assault on al Qaeda. We will leave a war not won and forsake a victory that would make the world a safer place simply because Barack Obama doesn’t have the guts to prevail. What is worse, he wants to give the impression of being serious.

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3. It’s Not Just Amateur Hour at the White House

There are two stories out today that suggest it is not just amateur hour at the White House where five days after Osama Bin Laden went to sleep with Davy Jones there are still more questions than answers.

No, it is also amateur hour in the House of Representatives. Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) is declaring the fight to repeal Obamacare over. That’s right. He’s giving up. They won’t pick a fight.

If that were not stupid enough, Camp said that “Instead … the GOP would turn its focus to overturning the most controversial portion of that legislation: the mandate requiring individuals to buy insurance.”

If the House GOP is successful in repealing the individual mandate, the case from Florida that threw out the entire legislation would die before getting to the Supreme Court. The GOP would yet again have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

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4. Craig Becker is a Natural Fit in a Socialist Administration

The other night in the Luntz panel after the Fox debate, Luntz seemed taken aback that his panel of voters largely viewed the Obama Administration as socialist.

Only effete intellectuals keen on nuancing socialism could disagree at this point. As socialism is commonly understood, i.e. spreading the wealth around through government intervention, Barack Obama is a socialist and his administration is a socialist administration.

So it is no surprise that we are learning Craig Becker, a Presidential appointee to the National Labor Relations Board and a key player in screwing Boeing for moving the 787 assembly line to South Carolina, has a paper trail of socialist views going all the way back to college.

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5. An Interesting Coincidence?

A week ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a big story about major hedge fund managers jumping to the GOP from Barack Obama. One of the big jumpers is Steve Cohen.

The Wall Street Journal is now reporting federal prosecutors have suddenly decided to examine “trades made in an account overseen by hedge-fund titan Steven Cohen that were suggested by two of his former fund managers who have pleaded guilty to insider trading.”

I’m sure it is just a coincidence in timing.

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6. ThinkProgress pig-ignorant about military.

Legal Insurrection tipped me to this one: apparently, ThinkProgress (link available via Legal Insurrection) got itself in a bit of a tizzy over a story in the Mexican press that one of the Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden was the son of Mexican immigrants, which apparently means (according to TP) that we need to pass the DREAM Act* and that the military is by the way keeping Latinos down. Now, let’s establish something right off of the bat; I don’t know who was on that SEAL team, and it would not surprise me in the slightest to hear that one or more of them were of Latino ancestry. Or any other ancestry, frankly. That’s not the point: the point is that when you’re a hardcore partisan ideologue using a story for agitprop, you should probably check the story first to make sure that you don’t get burned.

ThinkProgress did not check the story first.

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7. Permit me to correct the New York Times.

A few days ago, the New York Times made the following (somewhat bitter) comment, in the process of trying to pretend that we’re all racists over here on the Right:

“[Obama’s] administration took too long to find its footing on Egypt’s transition and in Libya, but it was not because, as the popular conservative blog RedState said, he is a ‘trainee president.'”

A point of order, here: if you were to click on the link (post written by reader cmndr45*) then you will find that this was a diary, not a front page piece. This is a common error made by Old Media types, particularly ones who have difficulty adapting to New Media paradigms; the concept that there can be controllable tiers of of information dissemination privileges can be surprisingly hard to understand by those with insufficient mental flexibility. I note all of this because Old Media entities already are notoriously bad at telling writers on group websites and blogs apart: it’s best that we not allow them to start failing to distinguish between various levels of permitted access.

Still, perish the thought that we should have to wait several decades for the Old Grey Lady to get around to a correction, so here goes: President Barack Obama is in point of fact a trainee President with virtually no practical life skills, woefully inadequate inexperience, precious little in the way of a proper aptitude for governance, and – most annoying – an inherent unwillingness to change any of the above, or in fact partake in any sort of internal program of either self-discovery, or self-improvement.

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8. Obama has Green Dreams of Car Taxes

There seems to be no shortage of ways that this administration and the Democrat party can think of to tax away every bit of our nation’s prosperity. But the “car tax” simply defies logic and begs the question, “What are they thinking?”

Aside from their apparent love of taxation, what is the underlying reason this administration would want to levy more taxes on America’s driving? Environmentalism? Money for infrastructure investment? Justify more hires at the IRS?

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