Chicago Republicans

This past month the President showed us another talent of his, something he's really quite good at - distraction.  Magicians refer to distraction as, "misdirecting the audience's attention to perform your secret moves without notice."  While sitting down with Sgt. Crowley, Professor Gates and VP Biden, BO tried his best to focus our attention off the major issues of the day.  Whether it be ObamaCare, a 2nd Stimulus Bill, canceling missile defense development while North Korea launches missiles, offering for the umpteenth time negotiate with Al-Qaeda or anything else on his far-left agenda, he's done his best to have us look this way while he's doing something else that way.

Fortunately, some news outlets are calling him out on the above issues - primarily Fox News and, in fairness, to some extent, CNN and the Washington Post.  While all of the above noted issues are important, I haven't seen much coverage, anywhere, of another issue that seems to have fallen off the radar - the closing of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.  On January 22, 2009 BO signed an Executive Order to close Guantanamo within one year.

On May 22, 2009, the US Senate effectively halted the President's plan by voting to keep the facility open, indefinitely, and refusing to fund the transfer of any prisoners to the US mainland until the Administration produced a "coherent plan for closing the prison."  Be honest - do you remember hearing about this on any major news outlet?  This was a MAJOR defeat for the President.  Of course, at the time of the vote, the Senate expected the so called Terror Policy Report within a month.

Last week the Administration quietly announced it had not yet completed the plan even though a six-month self-imposed deadline had come and passed.  Administration officials have stated the President granted a six-month extension.  This means the report on how to detain, interrogate and transfer to American or foreign soil suspected terrorists isn't even due, let alone to be implemented, AFTER the deadline BO set Guantanamo's closure.

This should be major news, but it's not "sexy" compared to the outrage over ObamaCare or the ridiculousness of the staged beer event.  A cornerstone of The Apologizer's campaign was the closing of Guantanamo Bay, now, even as President with a Democratic majority in Congress, he can't accomplish it.  We should all be grateful, Obama has stumbled yet again and we may be a lot safer for it.

Sources:

AP sources: Gov't delays terror policy reports

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090721/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_guantanamo

"Senate Nixes Obama's Guantanamo Plan" http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/05/20/obama-guantanamo.html

http://www.magicwhiz.com

Unless you live under a rock, you've probably heard all this fuss about Harvard professor Skip Gates and Cambridge Police Sargeant James Crowley. In a nutshell, Prof. Gates, who just returned from China, could not get his front door open, so his driver helped him dislodge the locked door. A neighbor saw the two men, who are both black, and reported the incident as a burglary. Sgt. Crowley arrived shortley and accused Gates of breaking and entering. The two argued as Gates sought to prove that it was his house. In the end, Sgt. Crowley arrested Gates in the manner that so many police officers do when suspects act rudely or without regard for authority.

Sgt. Crowley was wrong to arrest Gates, but the racial firestorm that has resulted, is preposterous. Crowley profiled Prof. Gates only to the extent that he did, in fact, meet the profile. If Gates were white, the neighboor would have reported a pair of white men, and Crowley would have profiled Gates in the exact same manner.

Sine the incident, Prof. Gates has said that he is certain that Sgt. Crowley had a mental narrative in which two black thugs had burgled the house of an old, rich, white man, and when reality deviated from this narrative, Crowley panicked and acted in accordance to his inherently racist beliefs. But the only thing this tells us is that Prof. Gates had a mental narrative about a racist white cop, and when reality seemed to confirm this, he had no reason to consider an alternate explanation.

It remains unclear to me why the hell any of us should care about a local police matter in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but the President does, so I guess that's enough. In fact, the President has invited the two men to "have a beer" at the White House, and Prof. Gates is apparently looking forward to this "teaching moment" with Sgt. Crowley. Surely this means that Crowley will receive a good talkin' to about how racist he is, but more to the point; President Obama has ended racism, and he did with beer because he's just a regular guy like you and me. Crisis averted.

Incidentally, if you like free beer, have never been to the White House, and don't mind being lectured about how racist you are, here's the link to Harvard's Arab and Muslim Studies faculty page . I'm not suggesting or condoning that you accost one of these individuals, only that it could score you a free beer.