GUEST OPINION: This comes from Timothy Swainhart, US Army, Retired

Over the past few months the Obama administration has been trying to figure out what policy change, if any, should be made in Afghanistan. My guess is that they will kick the ball down the road, neither greatly increasing the number nor reducing the number of troops. This is a huge mistake.

Afghanistan is a money pit, a  “tar baby” and a no win conflict for the United States. We spend and have been spending billions of dollars fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thankfully, the Iraq war is winding down and US troops will be brought home from there within the next couple of years. In Afghanistan,  a war that President Obama deemed a “good war” during the presidential campaign in 2008, there is little hope of bringing our troops home. Read more…

WASHINGTON: The AP reviewed a sampling of jobs purportedly created by the $787 billion stimulus package as reported on Recovery.gov. According to the site’s original estimate reported by the NY Times on October 15 the government on claimed some 30,000 jobs have been created. If you do the math that is $26,233,333 per job.* We sense more jobs coming soon due, this time in Hollywood for the new show “Do You Want to Be a Stimulus Multimillionaire?”

AP Reporters Brett Blackledge and Matt Apuzzo report that a sampling of less than 9,000 of these jobs show that half of those examined or nearly 5,000 jobs were simply not created. It appears that ACORN alumni are working in the polling department at the White House: Read more…

All Hail Caesar Obama

Brooklyn, NY: Chris Matthews, move over. We now have an even more devoted follower of The One. We’re speaking of Rocco Landesman, the new Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Speaking at a NEA conference on October 21, 2009 Rocco Landesman brings clarity and focus to the contributions of our new President.

This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar.

We guess pandering to the Chief Executive is what qualifies one to rise to the chairmanship of the NEA. Since Obama has the biggest checkbook, it probably makes sense. But we here at the NIP who operate on an infinitesimal budget compared to the NEA think we do better on a lot less money than the NEA, at least in the critical thinking department. Let’s take a look at it. Read more…

According to CBS News, General Stanley McChrystal originally wanted to request 50,000 more troops, but was “persuaded” to lower the request to 40,000. (McChrystal’s revised assessment here.)

Gen. Stanley McChrystal wanted to ask President Obama for 50,000 more troops for Afghanistan on top of the 68,000 already stationed there, but he was convinced to lower the request to 40,000, reports CBS News White House correspondent Chip Reid.

Sources tell Reid that McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, considers the lower number to be a firm bottom line McChrystal believes anything short of 40,000 increases the risk of failure, Reid reports.  CBS News

Can you imagine George S. Patton being told by Roosevelt’s administration on how to run the desert campaign in North Africa during WWII? Maybe the planning of the invasion of North Africa would have gone something like this: Read more…

MIAMI: Obama headlined a Miami Beach dinner tonight raising money for Democratic congressional candidates. Tickets ranged from $500 to $15,200 for the event.

The chart on the left puts Obama’s campaign fund raising in perspective. Obama has attended 28 fundraisers in his first months of office, compared to Bush’s six and Clinton’s five.

The NIP believes that this adds to the evidence that this administration is all about power, protecting its prospects for reelection. How can a president spend so much time campaigning when he has a country to run? Who is minding the store back home? Biden? Somehow that is not reassuring.

Clinton and Bush spent their first months in office with their noses to the grindstone, working. If Obama is campaigning this hard this early, will he go into full time campaigning when it comes time for the congressional elections? Who will be running the country then? Read more…

We have had many requests from webmasters on where they can get the McChrystal Clock. You can see how it works on this page at the top of the right column.

The McChrystal Clock is a free service of the National Institute of Prevarication. All a web page needs to do is enter this one-liner in its html and then it will be done. Copy and paste. (Make sure you don’t somehow use curly-quotes instead of regular quotes.)

<iframe width=”272″ height=”265″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” src=”http://prevarication.net/McChrystal-counter.html”></iframe>
Read more…

WASHINGTON: Yes, you read that headline right. White House economic advisers admit that the stimulus is a failure in terms of economic growth and creating jobs. Christina Romer, Chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers testified before Congress’ Joint Economic Committee on Thursday. Her testimony (here) rebuts White House and Congressional assertions that the Stimulus package has just started to do its job, and that the best is yet to come. Contrary to party-line propaganda she had this to say about the Stimulus Package:

Most analysts predict that the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2009. and by mid 2010 fiscal stimulus will like be contributing little to further growth.

NIP compliments truth-teller Romer. It takes a chutzpah to admit the truth when you work in this White House. Read more…