Title: “Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack”

Author: Marc Thiessen

Rank: 5

Blurb: “As chief speechwriter for President Bush, he was given unprecedented access to some of the most sensitive intelligence our government possessed on al Qaeda terrorists… What he reveals is a shocking, thoroughly documented account of just how close we came to suffering follow-on 9/11 attacks, how so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (including waterboarding) were directly responsible for unearthing the actionable intelligence that foiled them, and the extraordinary measures the Bush administration took to stay well within the bounds of what was not only legally but morally right.”

Review: “It is no accident that we haven’t been attacked since 9/11.”

Customers Also Bought: “God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades,” by Rodney Stark

Footnote: “It’s not even the end of inauguration week, and Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office.” –Marc Thiessen, January 23, 2009.

“Best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time.” –Donald Rumsfeld, September 11, 2001. Thiessen was Rumsfeld’s chief speechwriter from 2001-2004.

Courting Disaster [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

We probably should have noticed this a month ago, but we didn’t, so we’re sharing it with you now:

Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holdings owns a 7 per cent stake, or 56m shares, of News Corp and is the largest shareholder outside the Murdoch family.

That would be Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud to you, pal. Of the Saudi Sauds. You know, the ones who own a country.

That’s right: Arabs.

Oh, and Rupert’s News Corp. also owns ten percent of the Prince’s media company.

And what’s in it for us? Only the pleasure of knowing who owns seven percent of anyone bloviating for Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and Sarah Palin’s book publisher. Asalam Alaykum, Glenn!

Alwaleed backs James Murdoch [Financial Times, via ThinkProgress]

Hold on — it’s Leno? We’re sorry, we were reading too fast. Make that Masturbating Bore.

Jay Leno will headline the White House Correspondents Dinner [WaPo]

Whatever the Haitians did in 1804, it sure has conservatives pissed. Today’s entrant in the pro-slavery derby is Mark Krikorian, director of something called the “Center for Immigration Studies,” which appears to study ways to stop immigration:

My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough… But, unlike Jamaicans and Bajans and Guadeloupeans, et al., after experiencing the worst of tropical colonial slavery, the Haitians didn’t stick around long enough to benefit from it… And by benefit I mean develop a local culture significantly shaped by the more-advanced civilization of the colonizers.

Hmmm. Let’s check the Library of Congress on that:

Read more »

We’re late to this party, but for the record — i.e., we may have a need to refer to this later — here’s the 1984 music video for “The Girl With the Curious Hand,” featuring the better half of Senator-elect Happy Trail.

We came blessedly early to the insight that has defined our adult political life.

We can even date it: October 28, 1980. The Reagan-Carter debate. Our first presidential election as a voter.

Jimmy was flat that night — “Reagan-Kemp-Roth”? Really? — but his disappointing performance wasn’t notable. Instead, what caught our attention was Ronnie’s manufactured charm — “There you go again,” and all that — and with growing horror, we had the insight phrased before the debate was over:

Americans want to be lied to.

In that moment, we knew Reagan would win. And we knew why. Reagan wasn’t selling Americans anything they didn’t want to buy. Far from it: Americans wanted the Lie. They craved it. They weren’t being fooled — they were being satisfied.

Read more »

The NRO’s Jonah Goldberg has some Tough Hate for Haiti:

The sad truth about Haiti isn’t simply that it is poor, but that it has a poverty culture. Yes, it has had awful luck. Absolutely, it has been exploited, abused and betrayed ever since its days as a slave colony. So, if it alleviates Western guilt to say that Haiti’s poverty stems entirely from a legacy of racism and colonialism, fine. But Haiti has been independent and the poorest country in the hemisphere for a long time.

Even if blame lies everywhere except among the victims themselves, it doesn’t change the fact that Haiti will never get out of grinding poverty until it abandons much of its culture.

Dude. Six-figure death toll. Bodies buried with bulldozers. No infrastructure left. 1.5 million homeless. “Tens of thousands without access to food, water and medical supplies.”

We don’t care if some of your best in-laws are Haitians. We don’t care what you think about James Cameron. And we really don’t care about how you think that starving, homeless, devastated people should pick themselves up by their bootstraps.

Haiti won’t prosper until it abandons culture of poverty [Jonah Goldberg (syndicated), via Cuthbert]

What is delaying Haiti’s aid? [BBC]