† Obama Creating Green Jobs That Americans Won’t Do: President Barack Hussein Obama is taking all that hype about being “president of the world” too literally. In addition to creating U.S. taxpayer-subsidized jobs at overseas companies making parts for wind turbines and solar panels, Obama is now creating jobs for foreign steelworkers, according to the United Steelworkers union, which “complained that a government-backed plan to build two nuclear reactors in Georgia will create jobs overseas that should go to American workers,” reports The New York Times:

President Obama announced the government’s approval of an $8.3 billion loan guarantee for the construction of the reactors on Tuesday, saying that one benefit of the project would be to create jobs.

But in a letter sent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the international president of the union, Leo W. Gerard, said that he was concerned about “the potential foreign sourcing of components for these reactors,” which he said “limits our nation’s ability to address our unacceptably high unemployment rate.” …

But according to Westinghouse, the company that designed the reactors’ central components - including the reactor vessel and part of the giant heat exchangers called steam generators - can be obtained only from steel mills in Japan and South Korea, which are certified for the work.

The company said design changes it was already considering would, if adopted, allow American steel makers to compete for contracts. Westinghouse is based in Pittsburgh, but is owned by a Japanese company, Toshiba.

Thomas M. Conway, vice president for the steelworkers union, said that American taxpayers should not bear the burden of loan guarantees that would create jobs abroad. The Energy Department now has $18.5 billion to offer in guarantees for the construction of new nuclear plants. Mr. Obama is seeking to triple that number.

“If we’re going to start shoveling a lot of money at nuclear, and nuclear is part of America’s plan to get less oil-dependent, then we need to build it ourselves,” Mr. Conway said. …

Nuclear power is a global industry, and most designs for reactors have been developed by foreign companies or foreign-owned companies, and involve some components that are manufactured only overseas.

† “Person Of Interest” Steven Hatfill To Earn Lots Of Interest Income From Huge DOJ Payout: The Department of Justice has officially closed its eight-year investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks and released “hundreds of pages of documents … offer[ing] substantial support for the FBI's contention that biologist Bruce E. Ivins single-handedly prepared and mailed deadly anthrax spores that killed five people and terrorized a nation still reeling from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, reports The Washington Post:

The spore-laden letters killed five people, sickened 17 others and led to billions of dollars in government and private spending aimed at defending the country against biological attacks. It also spawned an expensive, eight-year FBI probe that spanned six continents and included multiple, highly publicized mishaps, chief among them the public naming of Ivins's colleague Stephen Hatfill as a "person of interest" in the investigation. The FBI later apologized to Hatfill.

In what remains the worst act of bioterrorism in U.S. history, the DOJ concludes that "Dr. Ivins, alone, mailed the anthrax letters." However, The Washington Times reports that “[t]o the FBI's critics, the mountain of new documents could not paper over what they say are glaring holes in the case”:

"The evidence the FBI produced would not, I think, stand up in court," said Rep. Rush Holt, a Democrat whose New Jersey district includes the Princeton mailbox used in the attacks. "But because their prime suspect is dead and they're not going to court, they seem satisfied with barely a circumstantial case."

Ivins' lawyer Paul Kemp said he saw nothing new in the findings. "All they have confirmed is that they suspected him belatedly after finding out he had psychological problems," he said. "Sadly they substitute that for proof." …

Skeptics - including prominent lawmakers - pointed to the bureau's long, misguided pursuit of Hatfill, who had worked in the Ft. Detrick lab from 1997 to 1999, and noted there was no evidence suggesting Ivins was ever in New Jersey when the letters were mailed there.

At the urging of lawmakers, the National Academy of Sciences has begun a review of the FBI's scientific methods in tracing the particular strain of anthrax used in the mailings to samples Ivins had at his Fort Detrick lab.

Case closed? Maybe not.

† I Want To Ride My Bicycle: According to The Washington Post, “Jess Parker hugs trees. In the woods of Anne Arundel County, he throws his arms around tulip poplars, oaks and American beeches, and holds them so tightly that his cheek presses into their bark. … Parker has done it about 50,000 times.”  Um, in some countries that sort of thing could get you arrested.

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Is Hasan A Crazy Terrorist, Or A Terrorist Crazy?): Previously undisclosed details of the review of the “missteps” that permitted (alleged) homegrown terrorist Major Nidal Malik Hasan to move up through the ranks show that at the core of the U.S. Army’s PC problem is that although he was “an obvious ‘problem child’ spouting extremist views … that were … grounds for discharge by violating his military oath” his superiors “valued the rare diversity of having a Muslim psychiatrist,” reports The Boston Globe:

The report concludes that because the Army had attracted only one Muslim psychiatrist in addition to Hasan since 2001, “it is possible some were afraid’’ of losing such diversity “and thus were willing to overlook Hasan’s deficiencies as an officer.’’ …

New details also emerge of Hasan’s pattern of radical behavior, the first signs of which were detected in 2005, according to at least four officers who worked with him at the time and spoke to the FBI and Pentagon investigators. …

 “Other officer students repeatedly raised concerns about Major Hasan’s preoccupation with Islam, including allegations by students that Major Hasan justified suicide bombing and stated Sharia law took precedence over the US Constitution,’’ the report said. “The class instructor did not recall all the statements alleged but acknowledged that a class presentation in August 2007 had to be ‘shut down’ due to the class reaction and that Major Hasan appeared quite distressed.’’

It was during this period, one of his instructors told investigators, that he thought Hasan’s internal conflicts placed him at risk of developing psychosis.

So how can the Pentagon protect American soldiers and civilians from radicalized Muslim enemies within and without if it has confused “diversity” with “defense?”

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II): As of today, those who can legally carry concealed firearms in the state where they live can also bring their firearms to U.S. national parks in that state, reports The Washington Times:

[A]bout 370 of the country's 392 National Park Service properties will permit visitors to carry firearms.

But the Park Service says exceptions are in place and that another federal law requires guns to be kept out of federal facilities. That means firearms are still prohibited at any building where park employees regularly work, including office buildings, maintenance sheds and, most contentious of all, visitor centers.

"I think you're going to have people on both sides of the issue test this in what is or is not a federal facility," said David Barna, a spokesman for the National Park Service. …

"That's ludicrous. You're going to tell someone if they have a concealed weapon permit they can't go into the visitor center to use the restroom?" said Rep. Rob Bishop, Utah Republican. "If they come up with restrictive exemptions, what they're asking for is a lawsuit to try and stop implementation of what Congress clearly told them to do." …

The Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service have allowed state laws to govern firearms on their property. Mr. Bishop said that policy is less complex than what the Park Service is imposing.

"The Park Service could treat Americans as Americans and respect the Constitution if they wanted to. I wish they wanted to," he said.

† Updates To Previous Posts (Romney: The Sequel): Mitt Romney is so deeply weird (last item) on so many levels that The Stiletto paid scant attention to an article in The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario) that reported “[t]he man sitting in front of Mr. Romney’s wife [on an Air Canada flight] dropped his seat back and when Mr. Romney asked him to move it upright for takeoff, the man became ‘physically violent’ ” or a follow-up article in The Boston Globe quoting a statement by his spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom said he had been “attacked” and that "Gov. Romney did not retaliate, but instead allowed the airline crew to respond to the incident."

The only detail in The Globe and Mail’s article that caught The Stiletto’s eye, which just happened to be mentioned in several other articles about the incident: “Mr. Romney, 62, and his wife, Ann, were sitting in Row 15 of the economy section of the Embrarer 190 airplane …” Of course, he was sitting in coach – how else can a man who made his considerable fortune (second item) buying up troubled companies, firing the workers and selling off the physical assets demonstrate his populist bona fides?

Otherwise, Wonkette’s obscenity-laden post pretty much captured The Stiletto’s own reaction [slight redacting of the crude bits, The Stiletto]:

World-class a**hole Mitt Romney was flying back from the Winter Olympics - he must always remind everyone that he worked at the Winter Olympics once - when a fellow passenger tried to punch him out. …

Ha ha, yeah, it surely happened just like that. Or, perhaps, busybody di**head Mitt Romney just started telling strangers what to do, expecting everybody to take orders from the famous businessman Mitt Romney, who after all once worked at the Winter Olympics.

But … the plot thickens. The “physically violent” passenger, LMFAO rapper Sky Blu (AKA Skyler Gordy grandson of Motown founder Berry Gordy), insists that Romney “pre-taliated”:

“I started to sleep and I hear this guy, ‘Sir, sir! Put your seat up! It was pretty hostile. I thought it was a flight attendant at first… and then I see him reaching over and he grabs my shoulder. ‘Sir, put your seat up!’ and I reacted, boom, (swinging my arm). I didn’t take anything further than that. I just wanted the man not to touch me.”

The Grammy-nominee says that he swatted Romney’s arm off his shoulder -Fehrnstrom embellished his account of the incident by using the verb “attack” and the adjective “violent” to create the impression that Gordy had taken a swing at Romney - and that he would have been willing to put his seat back up if Romney had “asked nicely.”  

As the two men “left on good terms,” The Stiletto is inclined to believe the rapper’s version of events. It’s just Fehrnstrom’s bad luck that the “violent passenger” turned out to have enough notoriety that the media paid attention to his side of the story. But then, neither he nor his boss have yet learned the lesson that the truth always comes out.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Sometimes, Nanny Knows Best): The Associated Press reports that at a Henderson, NV town hall last week, a math teacher asked whether President Barack Hussein Obama got math homework every night when he was a high school freshman, and if so, whether he completed it. The answers: "Yes, and sometimes." At least one past speech suggests that Obama did only a fraction of the math homework he was assigned.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, BAM To DOJ: KSM In NYC Is DOA): President Barack Hussein Obama is defending himself against charges that he is clueless about national security by insisting that he is doing nothing differently than the previous administration did, when it comes to trying terrorists in criminal courts. But The Wall Street Journal points out that the "190 folks" that the Bush administration convicted were all small potatoes, compared to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators:

The figure comes from a report by Human Rights First (they actually claim 195), which ransacked the federal files to find any cases even remotely connected with terrorism. Most charges, the report concedes, involve not acts of terrorism but charges of material support. These 190 men and women may be guilty of bad things, but to suggest they are comparable with KSM is highly misleading.  

For his part, Andrew McCarthy - lead prosecutor 15 years ago of 10 men led by Omar Abdel Rahman (AKA “The Blind Sheik”) who had conspired to blow up the United Nations, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and other NYC landmarks - is now vehemently opposed to criminal trials for terrorists, reports The New York Times:

“A war is a war,” Mr. McCarthy declared. “A war is not a crime, and you don’t bring your enemies to a courthouse.”

In the debate over how and where to prosecute Mr. Mohammed and other Sept. 11 cases, few critics of the Obama administration have been more fervent in their opposition than Mr. McCarthy, a 50-year-old lawyer from the Bronx who had built a reputation as one of the country’s formidable terrorism prosecutors.

Now he has a different reputation: harsh critic of the system in which he had his greatest legal triumph.

Mr. McCarthy has relentlessly attacked the administration for supporting civilian justice for terrorism suspects. He has criticized the military commissions system and called for creation of a national security court. After the arrest of the suspect in the Christmas bomb plot, he wrote, “Will Americans finally grasp how insane it is to regard counterterrorism as a law-enforcement project rather than a matter of national security?” ...

In a November 1998 essay for The Weekly Standard, he offered one of his earliest public pronouncements of where his thinking was going. “In the main, international terrorism is a military problem, not a criminal-justice issue,” he wrote.

That the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York became “the headquarters for counterterrorism” and successfully prosecuted cases as well as busted up plots in the making is utterly beside the point, as far as  McCarthy is concerned.

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?): These days, tchotchkes bearing the likeness of President Barack Hussein Obama are just about as popular as portraits of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. But Bush 43 is looking better and better every day to many Americans, reports the New York Daily News:

Items featuring a smiling former President George Bush and the question, "Miss Me Yet?" are doing a brisk business as sales of pro-President Obama items lag, reports the Web shopping site CafePress.

 

CafePress spokeswoman Jenna Martin said … 10 of the firm's top-selling 100 designs were "Miss Me Yet?" items, moving to the tune of up to 500 orders a day.

†Updates To Previous Posts ("Persistent Vegetative State" Diagnoses Too Often A Rush To Judgment): Back in November, doctors and lay people alike were elated at the news that brain scans revealed that Rom Houben, who had been in a coma since a car accident in 1983, was conscious but was completely paralyzed and could not blink his eyes or alert his healthcare providers in any way – until neurologist Steven Laureys of Liege University Hospital in Belgium devised a method for him to tap out words on a keyboard with the help of a speech therapist. Further tests with Houben and other coma patients have now cast doubt on the validity of the method, reports BBC News:

By holding Mr Houben's forearm and finger, the therapist was said to feel sufficient pressure to direct her to the correct keys on the keyboard. …

[A] series of tests on a group of coma patients, including Mr Houben, had concluded that the method was after all false. …

Objects and words were shown to the patients in the absence of the facilitator who was then called back into the room. The patient was then asked to say what they had seen or heard. …

"It's like using an Ouija board," Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, told Associated Press on Friday. "It was too good to be true and we shouldn't have believed it."

But Laureys tells the BBC: "The story of Rom is about the diagnosis of consciousness, not communication." He still believes that it is difficult for doctors to discern signs of consciousness in coma patient, who are all-too-often written off as being “vegetables.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on 28-year-old Iraq war veteran and glass installer Robin De Haven, who was “driving the company truck to a job when he saw … a small plane, flying extremely low over a heavily congested area of Austin,” reports The Associated Press:

[H]e then saw black smoke billowing from the glass building and rushed to the scene. There, where the plane had exploded into flames in a suicide attack fueled by anti-government hatred, De Haven found five people trapped on the second floor of the burning office housing Internal Revenue Service employees.

"I wanted to go help," said De Haven, who works for a glass company. "I thought, 'I'm going to go ahead and do it.' I thought my boss would understand."

 

He quickly hurled his 17-foot ladder onto the building, climbed up and went inside to help the workers escape. …

De Haven said after he extended his ladder and climbed to the second floor, he realized his ladder was unsteady and he couldn't help people down. So, he said he climbed inside the building and helped find a better escape route. Once inside, he found four men and a woman trapped. De Haven said he and another man broke open a window with an iron rod and made their way to a lower ledge where the ladder would be more secure.

"I don't feel like a hero," he said. "I was just trying to help."

De Haven’s employer, Binswanger Glass, has been “flooded with phone calls and e-mails” lauding his heroism.