Obama Fundraising Email

Sad but still funny is the Obama Fundraising Email Telling Supporters to Comb Their Hair, Put on a Clean Shirt Before Meeting the President.

The above linked PJMedia article goes on to explain that the Obama campaign has sent out yet another strange fundraising email. This one builds on the presidential raffle that the campaign has ridden to second place in a two-horse fundraising race, by selling the idea that raffle winners could get family photos taken with the president to prove that they actually met him.

"Maybe you’re already thinking about which family photo you’ll use in your next holiday card — or maybe your Facebook photo is due for an update. I’ve got a once-in-a-lifetime solution: President Obama is coming to New York City for an event in a few weeks — and you could get to meet him.

Chip in $25 or whatever you can today and you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to get your family photo taken with the President. Here’s what will happen: You and up to five of your family members will get to your reserved spot at the event, where a photographer will be waiting. You’ll all meet the President of the United States, and we’ll take the picture to prove it.

So comb your hair, put on a clean shirt, and start practicing your camera-ready smile in the mirror. (emphasis added in this line)"

The email comes from deputy campaign manager Juliana Smoot. Why does Smoot assume that Obama’s supporters aren’t already combing their hair and wearing clean clothes? Are they renting their email list from The Smoking Gun or something? I suppose Smoot could have added insult to injury by telling supporters to get a haircut and get a real job, but everyone knows the latter is next to impossible in Obama’s economy.

Random Crap from the News

ABC Exposes their Inner Idiot. In the initial reporting of the horrifying “Dark Knight” shooting in Aurora Colorado, ABC rushed to report that a Jim Holmes, the identified shooter, was a member of a local Tea Party. Brian Ross, one of the lead Idiots on ABC say's: “There’s a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado Tea party site as well, talking about him joining the Tea Party last year,....now, we don’t know if this is the same Jim Holmes, but it is Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado,” as he (Brian Ross) was talking to George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America.

The Tea Party-affiliated Jim Holmes, a retired Law Enforcement Officer, was not pleased. ABC has seemingly lost any last vestiges of credibility whatsoever in his eyes. “What kind of idiot makes that kind of statement?” Holmes told The Daily Caller. “Really, seriously, how do we take a journalist seriously when it’s pretty clear they really haven’t done any sort of check on their facts?” Holmes furhter went on to say that ABC News didn’t call him before going to air nor has he heard from them or received a direct apology.

18% of Americans Still Believe Bush Responsible for Economic Collapse. Okay, this number is fairly consistent as I remember seeing a USA Today Factoid where 15% of the American people believe that WWF wrestling on Television is real. So we have a pretty consistent percentage of 15% of the population shouldn't vote. I still believe they have the right to vote, just not the smarts to make a rational choice. The good news is that 38% of the population believes Obama owns the failed economy, and own it he should!

Postscript: Rasmussen Poll this morning says 72% of the American people believe that business owners are mostly responsible for their succesess,....however 15% think that government is responsible,.....there you go,......that 15% again!!

Barack cries foul! In an unbelievable attempt at spinning, Obama cries that Romney is editing his words. Obama declares words to the effect that "Governor Romney is splicing and dicing my words and leaving whole sentances out. I don't hate small business,...I support small businesses." Oh yeah!?...how so? by wanting to raise their tax burden like you raised their regulation burden? After all Mr President, you said "if you have a small business,...you didn't build it,..someone elese did it." If America re-elects you again, we'll deserve what we are getting.  The good news is that Obama is spending a lot of time trying to spin, re-spin and "clarify" his anti-business comments, taking him away from spreading the manure to a host of different subjects. 

The Brian Terry Exception

Quick turnaround in federal probes absent in shameful murder case
By Robert J. Nieves, Friday, July 6, 2012

Anyone who has spent time in Washington knows government runs on process. There is a procedurefor everything, and this is especially true in federal law enforcement, where lives are at risk every day. I should know, I spent most of my adult life as an agent with Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

As chief of major investigations in the 1990s, I managed DEA's highly sensitive undercover operationstargeting the Medellin and Cali cartels.

We routinely coordinated with our colleagues in theDepartment of Justice (DOJ) and enjoyed great success. Agent safety always was paramount in our discussions, and we were successful, in large part, because we followed procedures for the review of sensitive undercover operations.

Before commencing a sensitive operation, the field office had to prepare an operations plan detailing
the activities it intended to pursue and the goals of the operation. Once the op plan was received, it was
vetted in DEA headquarters to include coordination with any foreign office impacted by the proposal,
the U.S. Embassy and host-nation counterparts. After vetting, the plan would be presented to Justice for
approval, which included a meeting attended by the field managers, the U.S. Attorney's Office, DEA
headquarters and a deputy assistant attorney general from the Justice Department's Criminal Division.

This careful and tedious review and approval process was carried out by the Sensitive Activities
Review Committee (SARC). Only after a successful SARC review would the DEA administrator and the
deputy assistant attorney general from the Criminal Division authorize and approve the operation.  If
an operation was particularly sensitive, the approval process would rise to the level of the attorney
general.

I am aware that the FBI has a similar review committee for sensitive undercover operations.
Wouldn't the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a Justice law enforcement
bureau, have similar procedures for obtaining approval for sensitive undercover operations like
Operation Fast and Furious? It defies logic to assume that the Department of Justice would give ATF a
pass on the review-committee process in a matter as serious as allowing automatic weapons to be
delivered to Mexican drug-smuggling cartels.

Equally illogical is the behavior of the  department's "independent" inspector general (IG). He has had
the Fast and Furious case for 14 months but hasn't issued a report of initial findings. At one point in my
career, I was an inspector in DEA's Office of Professional Responsibility. This office is similar in many
relevant respects to that of Justice's inspector general. I have never heard of any case that took 14
months for a report on initial findings to be issued.

Why is the Fast and Furious case taking so long? Is the IG incompetent, or is he being told to delay the
issuance of his report? Either way, the family of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry loses. His parents are
being denied access to the facts surrounding the death of their son, who was killed with one of the Fast
and Furious weapons. To put this in perspective, the FBI issued its first report on the Kennedy
assassination, one of the most complex and controversial cases in U.S. history, just 17 days after the
event.

We recently learned about Secret Service agents consorting with prostitutes in Colombia. During a
nationally televised TV appearance, President Obama called the agents who partied with the
prostitutes "knuckleheads." Mr. Obama told Jimmy Fallon: "What these guys were thinking, I don't
know. That's why they're not there anymore," a reference to the fact that a mere two weeks after the
event, two agents had been fired and several others had been removed from their positions.

What about the Justice and ATF knuckleheads who approved Fast and Furious?  What were they
thinking? Have any of them lost their jobs? More than 18 months have passed, and no one at Justice or
ATF who approved this fiasco has been fired - and this case doesn't involve Colombian prostitutes.
This is a case where one of their own, Terry, a federal agent, was killed by weapons provided by ATF -
a tragic case of "friendly" fire by proxy.

One of my bosses at DEA once told me, "Bad news is not fine wine; it does not get better with age." He
couldn't have been more correct. If there is bad news at Justice or in the IG's reports, better to air it now.
Otherwise, everyone will wonder if the information being hidden is another of Washington's
"inconvenient truths."

Now that the president has placed the mantle of executive privilege over the Justice reports, the Terry
family and the families of countless numbers of murdered Mexican citizens may have to wait decades
to know the truth.

There is something very, very wrong with the way the Terry case is being handled. Take that as gospel
from a former fed who wants nothing but the truth to come out so federal agents everywhere can learn
from mistakes made and know the Department of Justice still has their backs. But even more important,
Justice needs to come clean so the Terrys can know exactly what happened to their son.

A few months ago, Mr. Obama commented on the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, saying, "You know if
I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." Then he added a statement that made me think of my own
children: "You know, I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this
with the seriousness it deserves, and we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened."

It's a shame our president doesn't feel the same way about Brian Terry. I have a daughter and two sons.
One of my sons is a federal agent. He looks a lot like Brian Terry.

Robert J. Nieves is a partner in the firm BERG Associates. He retired from DEA in 1995 as the chief of
international operations.