A video interview with Mark Levin. By a libertarian.

The book has hit its millionth sale. Good.

…and what he does:

1. “As President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.”

2. “I will make sure that we renegotiate [NAFTA].”

3. Opposed a Colombian Free Trade Agreement because advocates ignore that “labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis.”

4. “Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.”

There are a lot more broken campaign promises (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, and not call them lies) where those came from, and probably a lot more to come.

I just don’t understand why anyone believes anything he says. Must be something in the water.

[Update early evening]

Note, unlike many of His flock, I’m not complaining about him breaking campaign promises per se — many of them were awful, and I’m glad he didn’t follow through. I’m just sayin.’

Celebrating the first hundred days. I think that most of us will be under that bus before this is over.

[Update a few minutes later]

The audacity of audacity:

“Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I’m not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, Obama said, “let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security.”

“But,” Obama continued, “let’s not play games and pretend that the reason [for the deficit] is because of the Recovery Act.”

Talk about “playing games.” Yes, how could 800 billion dollars of unnecessary spending possibly have anything to do with the deficit? Why, that’s just crazy talk.

Flopping Aces has been digging into the SEAL team delay.

The president says that he’s not a miracle worker. I guess Mark Morford didn’t get the memo.

From Tom Friedman:

So to recap: the Bush team kept us safe from an implacable foe by using interrogation methods which the American public approved of and by fighting (often against the admonitions of Friedman and his colleagues) and largely prevailing in Iraq. The latter effort may deal a death blow to Al Qaeda which one supposes made it a very worthwhile endeavor. Well, yes, Friedman awards Obama the prize for “doing [his] best” in a war largely waged by his reviled predecessor – who is rarely praised for doing his best, but we get the point.

It must be some other George W. Bush who was the worst foreign policy president in history – because the 43rd president, by Friedman’s accounting, got some very big things right, despite ferocious odds. (One of President Bush’s librarians might want to clip this one out for the “Bush Legacy Inadvertently Revived By Obama” file.)

As time goes on, and particularly now that the Dems own the Senate, it’s going to get harder and harder for them to continue to blame everything on Bush.

National Review on Benedict Arlen:

Arlen Specter belongs to a type familiar to Congress: the time-serving hack devoid of any principle save arrogance. He has spent three decades in the Senate but is associated with no great cause, no prescient warning, no landmark legislation. Yet he imagines that the Senate needs his wisdom and judgment for a sixth term. He joined the Republican party out of expediency in the 1960s, and leaves it out of expediency this week.

Those who attribute his defection to the rise of social conservatism are deluding themselves. It is not as though he has been a reliable vote for any other type of conservatism. He has stood apart from the mainstream of his party on welfare reform, trade, taxes, affirmative action, judicial appointments, tort reform, and national-security law. The issue that finally caused an irreparable breach with Republicans was the stimulus bill. Some Republicans are blaming Pat Toomey for pushing Specter out of the party by challenging him from the Right. But it is not Toomey’s fault that Specter is out of step with Pennsylvania Republicans. Whatever they think of the prudence of his challenge at the time he announced it, conservatives should be rooting for Toomey now.

It’s worth noting that the notion that the Republican Party has become more socially conservative is a myth. It was actually much more so in the early eighties (one of the reasons that I wasn’t then, and have never been, a Republican). As a commenter at Instapundit points out, it just seems that it’s more socially conservative today because, with its utter abandonment of fiscal conservativism in the Bush years, the social conservatism is the main distinguishing feature from the Democrats.

[Update early afternoon]

Dan Riehl has some more thoughts:

Big picture, Specter leaving is a significant opportunity, but only if the GOP seizes upon it as a pivot point to genuinely become the party of limited government, reduced spending and low taxes. As for social conservatism, which started this discussion here, morphing into a more democratic-based discussion of a civil society based upon values without Federal legislation is a sound approach that, hopefully, social cons can still embrace. It really is more about values, than just God, in the public square, any way. As for Specter (D) – is being the Party of a 3-plus trillion dollar Federal budget really a good thing? I’m unconvinced.

If the Republicans could rebrand themselves as a federalist party, and a true one, not just fair-weather federalists, I might become one.

As Moneyrunner notes, there’s a very good question behind the latest Charlie Foxtrot by the administration.

Why in the world were they willing to create a huge carbon footprint for an ad campaign that consisted (apparently) of having Air Force One flying past the Statue of Liberty? Particularly when it could have been photoshopped for a tiny fraction of the cost? At least there was a hypocritical political excuse for that last carbon indulgence. It reminds one of the notion of saving a “Hundred Million Dollars” from a multi-trillion deficit.

But the bigger question, at least to me, is: why did whoever came up with this idiocy decide that the public shouldn’t be informed about it ahead of time, and why were instructions given to that effect to local officials? Why was it to be kept secret, particularly given that it’s hard to keep secret a 747 dressed as Air Force One flying down the Hudson, particularly being tailed by a military fighter?

If they had informed the public, some who hadn’t been informed would have still panicked, but it would have at least reduced the numbers of people running though the streets terrified and abandoning high rises in lower Manhattan. Why make it a secret? What was the rationale?

Most of the Obama administration screwups have an explanation, usually attributable to a grab for increased government power, but this one is a complete mystery. And it’s possible that it can simply be attributed to abject stupidity, but it’s hard to do so without at least an attempt of an explanation, in this case.

This is not the end of this story. Or at least I hope not.

[Update, late evening]

They knew it would cause panic, but did it anyway?

Is there an explanation for this insanity? I start to wonder…

[Evening update]

Commenter Stephen den Beste (who I would like to thank for his early contributions to the blogosphere, and apologize for any contributions of mine that may have helped drive him from it) has the only plausible explanation so far:

If people had been told, they might have objected and prevented it.

That fits with the overall theme of Obama wanting what he wants, and not accepting anything that gets in the way of his getting what he wants.

I’d sure like to think that there’s another and better explanation, but I’m still awaiting one.