Lucid Links (050109, Morning)

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

Barack Obama, in the celebration of his bad self known as his 100th-day press conference, claimed that the “Recovery Act,” otherwise known as the mislabeled, “stimulus plan,” “has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs” (HT to John Stephenson at NewsBusters). If there is any support for this claim, no one seems to have seen it, and no one in the establishment media is apparently interested in challenging Dear Leader to prove it. Since Dear Leader said it, I guess you take it on faith.

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Revealing — Jon Stewart believes that Harry Truman was a war criminal for dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Stewart’s view is far-out historical revisionism that grew progressively weaker as more long-classified information was revealed throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and outs the alleged “comedian” as the far-lefty he really is. The Weekly Standard’s 2005 article by Richard Frank is the best takedown of Stewart’s dangerous nonsense. The key points and conclusions:

• “the long-held belief that Operation Olympic (an invasion of Japan) loomed as a certainty is mistaken.” Such an invasion, based on the ferocity of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, were virual locks to cost far more American and Japanese lives than the A-bombs killed, and enthusiasm for conducting it was waning inside the Pentagon.
• “right to the very end, the Japanese pursued twin goals: not only the preservation of the imperial system, but also preservation of the old order in Japan that had launched a war of aggression that killed 17 million.”
• “between a quarter million and 400,000 Asians, overwhelmingly noncombatants, were dying each month the war continued.”

I would add the following: “In her entire history, Japan had never been invaded or defeated. Even after the destruction of Hiroshima, she refused to capitulate.” This, sadly, is why the bomb on Nagasaki had to be dropped.

There really is nothing resembling a strong, objective, freedom- or civilization-based argument against the necessity of Truman’s decision. There is only a desperate attempt to rewrite history to make America look bad at all costs — which is why all the evidence in the world won’t force peaceniks like Stewart to let go of their “war criminal” crap. Update: Well, surprise surprise, Stewart apologized. God only knows whether he meant it, or merely felt the need to preserve his career.

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Don Luskin really deserves more frequent visits and reading than I have made and done recently. His column on TARP criminality at National Review last week made a critical point that should knock New York Attorney General Andy Cuomo off his high horse: “Cuomo appears to mislead Congress (in his statement on Bank of America, now-deposed Chairman Ken Lewis, and TARP). If true, this is serious prosecutorial misconduct.” Read the whole thing to get the gist. At his blog, he was the recipient of a reader’s revision to a 1934 cartoon that originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune. See it here. Of course, the Left will call it RAAAAAAAcist, which in 2009 has apparently become an acceptable synonym for “accurate.”

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A DC Examiner editorial says that “(The Ronald) Sims nomination mocks Obama’s transparency claims.” (HT Instapundit). This adminstration’s conduct since Day 1 mocks its transparency claims.

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President Prompter’s Prompter apparently wasn’t prompt enough, which promptly prompted President Prompter to proceed to prompt his Prompter’s principal promulgator: