TURKEY TIME

Climate-Gate
One would think that the revelation that scientist-advocates have been faking data would give pause to the global warming movement. Apparently not as President Obama heads to a UN conference in Copenhagen on December 9th:

Mr. Obama will tell the delegates to the climate conference that the United States intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions “in the range of” 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, officials said. The administration has resisted until now delivering a firm pledge on emissions reductions because Congress has not yet acted on global warming legislation and because several large developing nations, including China and India, have not detailed their own plans. (NYT, 11/25/2009)

It is disturbing enough that Obama's advisors would not counsel him to sit this one out. But he then takes it a step further and unilaterally surrenders by showing his cards to China and India. RedStateVT has said it before, but Obama may just be the worst negotiator-in-chief this country has ever seen.

Exactly Wrong
Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, said during a conference call of economists and bloggers that there was "serious unrest in our caucus about can we afford this war.” Ms. Pelosi said she did not want to sacrifice the party’s domestic agenda to the cost of the troop buildup. “The American people believe that if something is in our national security interest, we have to be able to afford it,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that we hold everything else” hostage to that. (NYT, 11/24/2009)

One of the earliest lessons that RedStateVT learned as a young conservative is that national security comes first. A country must be able and willing to defend itself from its enemies. If there is no country, then all other domestic priorities are meaningless. Pelosi apparently would rather have a health care bill than defend the country from terrorists.

Exactly Right
RedStateVT offers a preliminary "thumbs-up" to President Obama for his statement that he intends to "finish the job" in Afghanistan. This is exactly the type of resolve that the world needs to hear and we hope he follows through.