Roasted Chestnuts

One favored tactic of liberal commentators is to start a biased point with "Some will say" ... see: Powerline Blog Entry to see Chuck Todd use this time-worn deflection. This is whether or not "some" had ever said the attack words so attributed. I guess I'll ever wonder why the interrogatee doesn't call out the questioner for this deliberate ruse. Some other favorite chestnuts that are used to lend weight to ...  or offload any blame for weak arguments are:

" I am told ..."
" I have it from a reliable source ..."
" I understand that some of your colleagues believe ..."
"Are you aware that ..."
"An anonymous source told me ..." (Reid on Romney's tax returns)
"The American people believe ..." (often used by Bill Clinton)
"Are you now willing to admit that ..."

I think listeners should be sensitive to such leaden lead-ins and discount what follows. Perhaps we can now roast these cheap chestnuts on an open fire?

Dear Brutus ...

The fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves ... Staying with my recent theme that our fearless leader is clueless about what threats are facing the United States ... we now see that Obama is trying to offload blame for his policy blunders toward Iraq on his intelligence agencies ... see: Breitbart Story. 

However, it is well documented that President Obama attends very few of his morning intelligence briefings and this may be one reason for his fecklessness on this crisis. Team Romney recently pointed out this foible ... but was rebutted by a Washington Post article that claims that Obama now attends 100% of these briefings ... see: AEI Story

.

I am very dubious about the veracity of this WaPo coverup ... and this is because President Obama didn't seem to realize the seriousness of this ISIS threat until he took a limousine ride with his Joint Chief of Staff head, General Dempsey, who apparently then clued him in on how bad things really were ... see: Bloomberg Story. I would think ... no I am certain ... that this same information would have been transmitted if Obama had attended any of the many morning briefings that the WaPo claims he had.

Et tu ...

Afterward: And let us not forget that Susan Rice is Obama's National Security Advisor. She is as out to lunch as he is.