Shoots First, Aims Later

I didn't think I'd be making a second post tonight, but ... sheesh.  What I just heard almost made my head explode.  From bewilderment, not anger.

Let's replay events of this week.  A bunch of radicals wage a major protest outside the US Embassy in Cairo.  The Embassy makes a statement on its website condemning an amateurish anti-Islam video for the protest.  Mitt Romney makes a statement that we as a country shouldn't be apologizing for what some nutjob does in the name of free speech.  The Left jumps all over him for supposedly making an insensitive statement about our apologizing for the video when four of our citizens, including the US Ambassador to Libya, were later killed in a similar protest.  President Obama even goes so far as to claim that Mitt "shoots first and aims later."

Mr. Obama, I'd like to introduce you to one Joe "Stand Up, Chuck!" Biden.

Yeah, Mitt was way out of line to criticize that video.  That's why the White House flinched, and made the Embassy in Cairo pull the statement condemning it.  Uh-huh.

So today, at the ceremony at Andrews AFB, over the flag-draped coffins of the four dead diplomats, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton again blames the video for the protests.

Why isn't the Left so quick to blame the White House and Congress for the Tea Party protests?

And then comes the icing on the cake: White House Press Secretary Jay Carney - who looks like a high school kid, by the way, and has about as much sense (no, wait, that's an insult to high school kids) - says that "this is not a case of protests directed at the United States."

Funny, I thought those flags that were being burned in the protest footage were red, white and blue, and had stars and stripes on them.  Nice aim, Jay.

While I'm at it, I heard a liberal talking head tonight call Romney a Keynesian because he said that balancing the budget in his first term would have an adverse impact on the economy.  Romney's statement was based on the fact that completely eliminating a budget deficit of a trillion and a half dollars in four years, when the economy will likely already be in recession by the time he would take office, is a pretty tall order, and cuts that draconian could, yes, hurt the economy in the short run.

So the talking head's premise was that, by not calling for extreme budget cuts to eliminate a record deficit in four years during a recession, Romney is a Keynesian.

Wrong, dude.  A Keynesian would call for more spending to get us out of the recession, not spending cuts.  Just because a guy calls for measured cuts instead of the most painful medicine possible doesn't make him a Keynesian.

And people wonder why I have a problem with non-economists trying to argue Keynesianism vs. monetarism.