Following is the Americans for Prosperity – New Jersey Chapter update on the proposed Morgan Stanley / Revel bailout:

____________________________________________________________

Once again, New Jersey taxpayers are being thrown under the bus by Trenton lawmakers in favor of their corporate and big union special interests.

This time, the Trenton politicians are primed to use your money to bail out Morgan Stanley’s failing Revel Casino project in Atlantic City.

Last year, thanks to the federal bailout of the major financial institutions through TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program), Morgan Stanley received a hefty $10 BILLION. On top of that, the firm received $52 MILLION from local taxpayers. Now, they are demanding another $350 MILLION in tax breaks to fund the completion of their failing Revel Casino project.

Morgan Stanley is predicting that their casino will rake in $1.5 BILLION in profits in just the first five years. Yet now they are seeking even more from New Jersey taxpayers – who have had enough of bailouts and sky high taxes in this state – when they should be funding this project themselves.

For more information, visit www.NoMorganStanleyBailout.org.

This is by no means the first time Trenton has sunk tax dollars into AC in misguided attempts to improve the city’s poor financial condition. Seth Grossman of www.LibertyandProsperity.org, in a piece in Shore News Today, highlights past failures that have doomed AC and wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

In 1993, big corporations and big unions got big government to borrow $268 million for a new Atlantic City Convention Center far from the Boardwalk. In 1998, big government borrowed $90 million to fix the old Boardwalk Hall for Miss America and a new pro hockey team ? both long gone.

Then there was $170 million for an eminent-domain-based “corridor” to connect the two projects, followed by millions more in tax breaks, free parking garages, etc. to a private shopping mall developer.

The government borrowed $100 million to improve privately owned stores on the Boardwalk and $14.5 million for a baseball stadium. It “persuaded” three casinos to add $19 million to $11.8 million of taxpayer money for the ACES train fiasco that lost $6 million in just five months.

The baseball stadium is like an old Roman ruin, while the two new convention halls lose millions each year, and together have fewer events than the old one.

Only the corridor stores at The Walk are a “success” ? until you realize that all their business came from all the now-dead shopping malls in the rest of the county.

These projects not only failed, but they caused Atlantic City to fail. The 1.25 percent CRDA “skim” on all casino winnings that paid for these failures could have cut taxes for everyone in the county. But even this money wasn’t enough. Republicans and Democrats hit Atlantic City tourists with a bunch of new “casino redevelopment” taxes that even I can’t follow.

They include a 13 percent tax on hotel rooms, an extra 3 percent liquor tax, a $3 casino garage parking tax, a 9 percent luxury tax on other stuff, another $3 casino hotel tax, etc.

Many travel websites now warn tourists of these Atlantic City “rip-offs” ? another unintended consequence when politicians borrow and tax to “create jobs.”

Atlantic City is in big trouble. Nobody can afford to build anything new. But this is because construction worker unions are too greedy, government permits are too expensive and hard to get, and state and local taxes are too high.

Now, Trenton is poised to repeat the same mistakes yet again. Atlantic City is in such dire straits directly as a result of this kind of government interference and special interest sellouts. Subsidizing the Revel project with our tax dollars will only push other struggling casinos out of business.

Worse yet, the Revel Casino bailout is already being pushed through the Legislature (bill S-920/A-1897). Republicans and Democrats have locked arms on this bill, with a Senate panel unanimously approving the measure 7-0 earlier this week. Members of this panel include Republic Senators Joe Kyrillos (R-13), Robert Singer (R-30), Steven Oroho (R-24) and Democrat Senators Ray Lesniak (D-20), Sandra Cunningham (D-31), Richard Codey (D-27) and Joseph Vitale (D-19).

Other lawmakers are also supporting this bailout, among them are Republican Congressman Frank LoBiondo, Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson, and D-rated Assemblymen Vincent Polistina (R-02) and John Amodeo (R-02).

This is not the kind of change the people of New Jersey were expecting with the new Christie Administration now in place. We need to stand up and tell these legislators to stop with this nonsense. We need to tell them we’ve had enough with their spending, borrowing and fiscal mismanagement of our state’s resources and that we expect them to OPPOSE this bill.

CLICK HERE to find the contact information for your legislator.
CLICK HERE to contact Governor Christie.

AFP will be key voting this bill and will let you know when it is coming up before the full Senate and Assembly.

Thank you Nate from Northfield, for bringing this video to our attention.

                              453 Shore Road, Somers Point, NJ  08244

609-927-7333 – 609-927-7755(fax) – www.libertyandprosperity.org

Dennis Mahon – President    Seth Grossman – Executive Director

Agenda January 30, 2010

1) The Pledge of Allegiance

2) The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

3) Introductions

4) Radio shows:

Seth Grossman Show Saturday 8 -9 Am WVLT 92.1 FM on-air number is 856-696-0092                                  

Jesse Kurtz Show Saturday 2 – 4 PM WIBG 1020 AM, on-air number is: 609-398-1020

5) Request by Jesse Kurtz for all board members to turn in your profiles for the website

6) 8 principles of Liberty:

    1) Do you believe we should enforce immigration laws?

    2) Do you believe government spending should be cut to cut taxes?

    3) Do you believe part-time politicians shouldn’t receive a full-time pension?

    4) Do you believe Eminent Domain should be used only for public use?   (At no time should it be used for private gain)

    5) Do you believe that all public salary and contract information should be posted on the Internet?

  6) Do you believe that all tax and zoning laws should be simple and applied equally to all?

    7) Do you believe that our public highways are ours and they shouldn’t be sold or leased?

    Do you believe that there should be frequent referendum (public votes) on issues of public importance? 

7) Events:

       a) Street Fight will be our movie for February 10^th   from 6 pm to 9 pm at the May Landing Library. This is a documentary movie concerning the nasty mayoral in Newark.   http://www.marshallcurry.com/video.htm

        b)  Liberty and Prosperity will be sponsoring our annual fund raiser on February 21^st at the Carisbrooke Inn from 2:30 to 4:30. Tickets cost 75.00 for single or 100.00 for a couple.

Remember Washington and Lincoln

LIBERTY & PROSPERITY

presents:

Paul Mulshine, Conservative Pundit, Newark Star Ledger

At

The Carisbrooke Inn, 105 S Little Rock Ave, Ventnor

Sunday, February 21, 2010 

2:30 to 4:30 pm – Wine and Cheese

Admit One – $75 Couple – $100

      c) We are in the planning stages for our candidate’s straw poll to be held at the Walter Edge Theater at Atlantic Cape  Community College Building C, March 4.  5100 Black Horse Pike Mays Landing, NJ 08330. If you are planning on running for any political office, test your strength with a straw poll similar to Ohio’s straw polls. 

       d) April 15, 2010 Tea Party Washington DC. We need to double the amount of people that showed up on Sept. 12. We had 1.8 million people. It is not too early to start planning. You can sign up with

           www.teapartypatriotsofsouthernnj.com

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION: 

   A) Candidate “basic training” big success.   Roughly 40 people attended.   Daryn Iwicki and Kent Strang of  www.leadershipinstitute.org gave useful advice to  everyone who wants to win an election. Our local daily newspaper  gave excellent coverage on the front page of the region section. Read it at

        http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/press/atlantic/article_2c3bb014-5de0-  5fa4-86a6-bcbb2d01ecdc.html. 

       If you missed it, and want to attend a similar seminar, contact the Leadership Institute directly through their website or at (703) 247-2000. Candidate training is given often at their headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, and to other groups like ours around the country.   If you can put together a group of more than 20 people, why not invite the Leadership Institute to do the same for you? 

B) Revel Casino bail out:  Republican Congressman Frank LoBiondo, Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson, Assemblyman Vince Polistina and John Amodeo have joined with Democrats like Jim Whelan and Ray Lesniak (booster of the Corzine toll hike scheme) to bail out the Revel Casino project of Wall Street’s Morgan Stanley. Last summer, city government in Atlantic City agreed to give $50 million to the project.   Last month, it agreed to a scheme that will let the Revel avoid paying $50 million in local and COUNTY taxes. Now state politicians want to let the Revel avoid paying $300 million of STATE taxes. And they want to void the petitions of thousands of  Atlantic City voters demanding voter approval of this deal according to the city’s Faulkner Act charter.  

      The Optional Municipal Charter Law or Faulkner Act (N.J.S.A. § 40:69A-1, Et seq.) provides New Jersey municipalities with a variety of models of local government. This legislation is called the Faulkner Act in honor of the late Bayard H. Faulkner, former mayor of Montclair and chairman of the  Commission on Municipal Government.

      The Faulkner Act offers four basic plans (Mayor-Council, Council-Manager, Small Municipality and Mayor-Council-Administrator) and two procedures by which the voters of a municipality can adopt one of these plans. The Act provides many choices for communities with a preference for a strong executive and professional management of municipal affairs. Twenty-one percent of the municipalities in New Jersey, including the six most populous cities — Newark, Jersey City, Camden, Trenton, Paterson and Elizabeth — all govern under the provisions of the Faulkner Act. More than half of all New Jersey residents reside in municipalities with Faulkner Act charters.

 In all Faulkner Act municipalities, regardless of the particular form, citizens  enjoy the right of Initiative and referendum, meaning that proposed ordinances can be introduced directly by the people without action by the local governing body. This right is exercised by preparing a conforming petition signed by 10% of the registered voters who turned out in the last general election in an odd- numbered year (i.e., the most recent General Assembly election). Once the petition is submitted, the local governing body can vote to pass the requested ordinance, and if they refuse, it is then submitted directly to the voters.

C) Liberty and Prosperity believes that all zoning and tax laws should be fair, simple, and applied equally to everyone. We believe in liberty and justice for all, not special deals for a favored few.  

     Four casinos are already struggling to stay alive.  Why should they pay full taxes, to give their competitor an advantage?   If taxes are too high for the Revel, they are too high for everyone else. 

    Why not cut government spending so every can afford their taxes?   If the most powerful and influential people keep getting tax breaks, they will  never work with us to cut spending.  What about  economic development?   When the government gave special tax breaks to build new shopping centers, all we got was too many shopping centers with no customers and empty stores.  Special deals also cause corrupt politics.  Revel attorney Lloyd Levinson,  gave big campaign money to politicians all over the state to get this big favor for his client.  If this kind of pay-to-play politics bothers you, make  your opinion known with a 200 to 350 word letter to the editor or a call to talk radio!

 E) Two weeks ago, I said the high yield bondholders, not taxpayers should pay- off the $54 million borrowed by the Atlantic County Utilities Authority  (ACUA) for projects it never built as planned.   Last week, Republican Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson attacked me for not opposing that debt when I was a county freeholder.   But I did oppose that debt, and the old newspaper articles prove it.   Read the whole truth at http://www.shoreenewstoday.com/news.php?id=6951 and www.libertyandprosperity.org.

 F) News items:   Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that for the first time, most union members in the United States are employed by the government.  Today, only 7% of people who work for private companies are in unions.  The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that new hires for the second shift at the Ford Motor Company assembly line in Chicago are paid  a “second tier wage” of $14 per hour under its latest deal with the UAW union.  Local 54 is working in Atlantic City with a three year wage freeze?  If taxpayers who don’t work for the government are earning less or the same,  why are their public “servants” entitled to 4.5% pay hikes, pensions, and benefits that make us pay more for taxes, college tuition, etc?

Thank you Nate Nathanson for sharing this story with us.

Fox News reports that “Thousands From Terror-Sponsoring Nations Entering U.S. on ‘Diversity Visas’.”   They report:

The State Department is planning to welcome thousands of immigrants from terror-watch list countries into the United States this year through a “diversity visa” lottery — a giant legal loophole some lawmakers say is a “serious national security threat” that has gone unchecked for years.

Ostensibly designed to increase ethnic diversity among immigrants, the program invites in thousands of poorly educated laborers with few job skills — and that’s only the beginning of its problems, according to lawmakers and government investigations.

“There are a lot of holes in this program in terms of security and in terms of fraud,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., who has written legislation aimed at killing the lottery.

LibertyandProsperity.org advocates that we should be enforcing existing immigration laws and not invite people from terror-sponsoring nations to receive “diversity” visas.

Thank you Meg Vogl for sharing this link with us.

Snopes.com features and verifies a Michael Connelly essay addressing the (un-)constitutionality of the “Health Reform” moving through Congress.   The essay reads, in part:

The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.            This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama administration of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4^th Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3^rd and 4^th Amendments may provide.

            If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed “acceptable” to the “Health Choices Administrator” appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a “tax” instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5^th Amendment. However, that doesn’t work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the “due process of law.

            So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn’t stop there though. The 9^th Amendment that provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;” The 10^th Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.

Read the Constitution and then use it to determine the constitutionality of “Health Reform” in the Congress.

Read the 27 Amendments to the Constitution, as well.

Did you know about the following?   This is yet another reason why all government and school salaries and contracts need to placed online – for every level of government.

From the Canada Free Press :
 First  Lady Requires More Than Twenty Attendants
 July 7, 2009
 
 Written  by Dr. Paul L. Williams
 
 ”In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to
 give back to this country that has given me so much,”
 she said. “See, that’s why I left a job at a big
 law firm for a career in public service, “… Michelle Obama
 
 No, Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First
 Lady and she doesn’t perform any official duties. But
 this hasn’t deterred her from hiring an unprecedented
 number of staffers to cater to her every whim and to satisfy
 her every request in the midst of the Great Recession.
 Just think,  Mary Lincoln was taken to task for purchasing china
 for the White House during the Civil War. And Mamie Eisenhower
 had to shell out the salary for her personal secretary from her husband’s salary.

 
Total Personal Staff members for other first ladies paid by taxpayers:
Mamie Eisenhower : 1 paid for personally out of President’s salary
Jackie Kennedy: 1
Roseline Carter: 1
Barbara Bush: 1
Hilary Clinton: 3
Laura Bush: 1
Michele Obama: 22

 How things have changed! If you’re one of the tens of
 millions of Americans facing certain destitution, earning
 less than subsistence wages stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart
 or serving up McDonald cheeseburgers, prepare to scream and
 then come to realize that the benefit package for these
 servants of Ms Michelle are the same as members of the
 national security and defense departments and the bill for
 these assorted lackeys is paid by YOU, John Q. Public:
Michele Obama’s personal staff:
 1. $172,200 – Sher, Susan (Chief Of Staff)
 2. $140,000 – Frye, Jocelyn C. (Deputy Assistant to the
 President and Director of Policy And Projects For The First Lady)
 3. $113,000 – Rogers, Desiree G. (Special Assistant to the
 President and White House Social Secretary for Mrs. Obama)
 4. $102,000 – Johnston, Camille Y. (Special Assistant to
 the President and Director of Communications for the First Lady)
 5. $100,000 – Winter, Melissa E. (Special Assistant to the
 President and Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)
 6. $90,000 – Medina , David S. (Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)
 7. $84,000 – Lel yveld, Catherine M. (Director and Press Secretary to the First Lady)
 8. $75,000 – Starkey, Frances M. (Director of Scheduling and Advance for the First Lady)
 9. $70,000 – Sanders, Trooper (Deputy Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady)
 10. $65,000 – Burnough, Erinn J. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)
 11. $64,000 – Reinstein, Joseph B. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)
 12. $62,000 – Goodman, Jennifer R. (Deputy Director of Scheduling and Events
 Coordinator For The First Lady)
 13. $60,000 – Fitts, Alan O. (Deputy Director of Advance and Trip Director for the First Lady)
 14. $57,500 – Lewis, Dana M. (Special Assistant and Personal Aide to the First Lady)
 15. $52,500 – Mustaphi, Semonti M. (Associate Director and Deputy Press Secretary To The First Lady)
 16. $50,000 – Jarvis, Kristen E. (Special Assistant for Scheduling and Traveling Aide To The First Lady)
 17. $45,000 – Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (Associate Director of Correspondence For The First Lady)
 18. $43,000 – Tubman, Samanth a (Deputy Associate Director, Social Office)
 19. $40,000 – Boswell, Joseph J. (Executive Assistant to the Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)
 20. $36,000 – Armbruster, Sally M. (Staff Assistant to the Social Secretary)
 21. $35,000 – Bookey, Natalie (Staff Assistant)
 22. $35,000 – Jackson, Deilia A. (Deputy Associate Director of  Correspondence for the First Lady)
 (total = $1,591,200 in annual salaries)

 There has NEVER been anyone in the White House at any time
 who has created such an army of staffers whose sole duties
 are the facilitation of the First Lady’s social life.
 One wonders why she needs so much help, at taxpayer expense.

 Note: This does not include makeup artist Ingrid
 Grimes-Miles, 49, and “First Hairstylist” Johnny
 Wright, 31, both of whom traveled aboard Air Force One to  Europe .
 
 Copyright 2009 Canada Free Press
 canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12652

We received the following invitation from Michael Illions:

Conservative Leadership Breakfast:
 
Our next Conservative Leadership Breakfast, and first event of 2010, will be on Saturday,  February 6th  @ 10:00am, at the Omega Diner on Rt. 1 in North Brunswick, NJ.
 
Bill Spadea; Confirmed
 
Additional Speakers T.B.A.
 
The registration remains $10.00 to attend this event, but you must preregister and prepay. 
 
It is simple to register. Please reply back to this email with how many seats  you want reserved.
 
You can pay one of two ways:
 
Make check payable, ($10.00 per person), to GOPUSA-NJ, LLC. and mail to:
 
Michael Illions
2004 Green Hollow Drive
Iselin, NJ 08830
 
OR use PayPal:
 
Click this link and pay your registration through PayPal:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=7657449
 
Thanks…..
 
Michael

The following is Senator Joe Pennacchio’s response to the recently-created New Jersey transparency web-site.

NJ SENATE REPUBLICANS
P.O. Box 099 • Trenton, NJ 08625 • www.senatenj.com • Phone: (609) 292-5199 • Fax: (609) 984-8148
January 15, 2010
Contact: Andy Pratt for
Senator Joe Pennacchio
(973) 227-4012
  
Pennacchio Says Corzine ‘Transparency’ Site Very Weak, Even for a First Effort
           
           Senator Joe Pennacchio (R-Morris/Passaic) said he is “beyond frustrated” that Governor Corzine’s ‘transparency’ Web site isn’t user friendly for taxpayers.
 “The site provides only the vaguest information on how government money is spent, and nothing on who gets the taxes and fees collected from state residents,” Pennacchio said. “It also does nothing to help taxpayers track how billions of dollars of federal aid are spent by state and local governments, who gets billions of dollars in aid to schools and municipalities, or how hundreds of millions of dollars in tolls and fees collected by sports, highway, port and bridge authorities are doled out. 
            “Taxpayers have a right to know where every dime of their money is being spent. This Web site, whether by accident or design, falls far short of meeting that goal,” Pennacchio said.
“Although we appreciate the Governor’s efforts, it is too little and too late for this administration to claim any victory on transparency. I challenge anyone to try using this new site to determine who received government money or to find anything but the sketchiest details of what the money was spent on,” Pennacchio said.
             “Taxpayers are demanding that detailed information on every expenditure of local, state and federal money made in New Jersey is immediately and easily accessible to them. We have the technology. The expense is inconsequential compared to the potential benefits.”
            Pennacchio said the state controller should immediately investigate how much money was spent creating Governor Corzine’s attempt at online transparency, and that the every dime spent in this effort should be itemized and placed on the new “Transparency” site.
            “If New Jersey spent more than $200 on this website, it was $200 too much,” Pennacchio said. “It’s time to pass S-708, sponsored by myself and Senator Codey, so that we can begin the real effort to bring online transparency and accountability to state and local government.” 
 
####

Read more about www.LibertyandProsperity.org ’s fifth principle: Post all government and school salaries and contracts on the Internet.

Michael Zak writes how corruption is turning Capitol Hill into Tammany Hill:

Tammany Hall, now a metaphor for Democrat corruption, began as a real place. It was a building, in fact, the headquarters of the New York Democratic Party. During the 19th century and early 20th centuries, Tammany Hall was the foremost center of power and financing in the Democratic Party nationwide.
The origins of Tammany Hall date back to the 1790s as a fraternal organization, The Society of St. Tammany. No, there was never a real Saint Tammany. Anyway, along came one of the archvillians of American history, Aaron Burr. Senator Burr took over the society and made it a political organization, which evolved over time into a pillar of the Democratic Party.
In the late 19th century, Tammany Hall, aka the New York City Democratic Party, stole staggering amounts of taxpayer funds – billions of dollars in today’s money.
The head honcho of Tammany Hall was William “Boss” Tweed, a former Democrat congressman. In addition to larceny, Boss Tweed’s Democrat gangsters also excelled in vote fraud.
Tammany Hall faded in the 1930s as it lost its reason for existence. With the New Deal, why should the Democrat leadership have a stand-alone organization devoted to shifting money from the government to their own coffers when the federal government could do it for them? It was at this point that the Democratic Party became the Party of Government.
Now, seven decades later, the Democrat leadership, indeed all Democrats in Congress who vote for the stimulus package and socialized medicine and all the payoffs of Obama’s agenda do so knowing full well they are shovelling billions of dollars from taxpayers to their own coffers. They’re all Boss Tweed now.
By the way, Boss Tweed died in prison.

Mr. Zak’s mission is to return the Republican Party to its founding principles.   He has written a book Back to Basics for the Republican Party.

Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic writes:

In his Farenheit 9/11, filmmaker Michael Moore juxtaposes images and words of a terrorist attack in Israel with President Bush’s first words about the incident, spoken to a press pool on a golf course, with him leaning casually against a tree. Today, as the nation’s law enforcement agencies respond to an attempted terrorist attack on U.S. soil, as the cable news channels and news websites pull in reinforcements to cover the incident from all angles, President Obama has been silent.

In fact, he’s been golfing. He received a counterterrorism briefing early this morning, Hawaii time, and moments later, left for the gym.  The president’s vacation activities might have become the subject of a fierce partisan fight — but really, the only carping is coming from the usual suspects on the right.
There is a reason why Obama hasn’t given a public statement. It’s strategy.

So we’re now all in agreement, correct? Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 was a cavalcade of cheap shots, and Bush’s speaking from a golf course in no way indicated a casualness or lack of appropriate focus on the threat of terrorism, correct? Because it might have been nice to hear non-conservatives saying this, oh, five years ago or so.

 Linda Biamonte writes:

The fact that President Obama hasn’t spoken to the citizenry in the 48 hours or so since the incident is . . . unexpected. Strange. If the bombing attempt had not occurred on Christmas Day, his silence would be unthinkable, correct? Somebody tries to blow up a plane, and while his effort fell thankfully fell short, it sounds like it could have turned out terribly and tragically different with a little less luck and a bit more chemical reaction.

 

The president’s silence is not necessarily a serious problem or crisis, and yes, we are getting lots of statements from administration officials about what TSA, FAA, and the rest are doing.

Maybe this guy was a lone wolf, and no follow-on attacks are in the works, and we’ll forget about this in a couple of months, and life will go on without further incident. Or maybe it won’t. In retrospect, it’s rather amazing that President Clinton never visited the Twin Towers after the 1993 bombing, or visited the CIA for almost a year after a January 25, 1993, shooting attack at its entrance; it looks like the new president’s mind was elsewhere and on other matters.

 

At some point, a strategy insisting that unsuccessful attacks are not worth presidential comment starts looking like whistling past the graveyard, or pretending that the incidents aren’t a big deal when they are.