Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Buck Always Stops with Taxpayers
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Obama administration officials have their talking point down pat – “everything is still George Bush’s fault.” They only have one, because it has worked so well for them to date.
When Obama took office less than a month ago, the federal deficit was at a staggering $10 trillion after almost eighty years of constant deficit spending by congress, including the $1 trillion bank bailout passed by Bush and the Democrat congress in the final weeks of the Bush administration.
Since Obama took office a short three weeks ago, he has proposed a second $1 trillion “stimulus package,” which reads like the greatest pork orgy in human history, and makes FDR’s New Deal look like a Raw Deal for Americans permanently affixed to the public teat.
Now his new financial genius Tim Geithner, who can’t even figure out his own personal taxes and was directly part of the massive banking and market crisis that led us where we are today, is proposing another $3 trillion in so-called “bank stabilization” funds, and they are just getting warmed up.
That’s $4 TRILLION in NEW taxpayer debt in just three weeks in office. A 40% increase in the overall national debt in less than a month… and still counting.
Of course, this is in addition to the more than $3 trillion annual federal budget consumed by past spending decisions.
23% to pay for Medicare and Medicaid (FDR New Deal)
21% to pay Social Security benefits (FDR New Deal)
17% in so-called “discretionary spending” (earmarks and pet pork)
10% in “other mandatory spending” (mostly administrative costs)
8% just in interest on our outstanding national debt (and growing)
What’s the Rush?
The American people are being told that the rush to pass this socialist spending spree is an effort to look after them, and avoid total imminent collapse of the free market. But more than 65% of the current spending is not to be spent for more than 18 months. Over 60% of the spending in the bill is completely unrelated to economic stimulus…
They are certainly in a rush to do something, but clearly, it isn’t to stimulate the free market economy. So what is it?
[in a word? power]
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Our Clever President
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President Barack Obama's first presidential news conference was performed feebly by the once-ferocious White House press corps and shrewdly -- if deceptively -- by the president. In the six years I did communications on former President Ronald Reagan's White House staff, I don't recall a single news conference in which there were no follow-up questions, no challenges to anything the president had said recently, no assertions of fact that the president was challenged to deal with. In fact, I don't remember former President Bill Clinton, either, ever getting a full 45-minute prime-time news conference pass. [snip]
One has to listen closely to spot the straw men that are carefully laced into his answers. While he repeatedly said he was willing to negotiate with Republicans on the stimulus bill, he pointed out that some of them wanted to do nothing. Well, perhaps there may be a few who want to do nothing. But Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate are proposing their own very large stimulus packages that, using President Obama's economists' own methods, would create more jobs faster than Obama's version would. In fact, according to the study, it would create 6.2 million jobs, compared with the president's plan's 3-4 million. [snip]
Our president has let it be known that he is an admirer of Abraham Lincoln's -- as well he should be, as are we all. He should take the time to read Old Abe's speeches and public letters. Honest Abe was exactly that. He would make his cases with meticulous and honest presentations of facts. He would describe his opponents' arguments honestly and fairly and then knock them down by genuine reason harnessed to a profound sense of morality. Lincoln wasn't fast and clever; he was slow and honest, and he carved out a place in the pantheon for the ages. He also noted that
"you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."
He thus left his newest admirer at least two lessons for a successful presidency.
[I don't know anymore. I think the election taught them that, with the help of the MSM, they can get away with anything. Consider; despite their behavior last year many folks are still watching TV for their news. Recommended > ]
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Obama's Press List
About half-way through President Obama's press conference Monday night, he had an unscripted question of his own. "All, Chuck Todd," the President said, referring to NBC's White House correspondent. "Where's Chuck?"(Snip)
The White House had decided in advance who would be allowed to question the President.(Snip)
Few accounts of Monday night's event even mentioned the curious fact that the White House had picked its speakers in advance.
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Knitting the Defeat of Capitalism
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In these recessional times, we find it often uncomfortable to watch TV or read the newspapers; especially when we recognize that our fellow citizens are too often influenced by the propaganda that daily issues forth from them. Given their almost unanimous support of all things liberal, our media have furnished the socialists in Washington the ability to hide their agenda in plain sight; a heretofore unheard of development in the U.S.A.
From inanities like our president predicting a "catastrophe" if his stimulus bill fails, to insanities like Nancy Pelosi calling abortion and birth control good for the economy, the feeling that we are no longer living in the America we knew grows day by day.
So where then are we? Many have opined that we are sliding into the realm of socialist Europe, but my sense of alienation is more specific: I feel as if in the middle of the French Revolution, or at least the Dicksonian rendition of it. We have now reached critical mass on the battlefield of class warfare; we have become a nation of Madame Defarges, with Nancy Pelosi wielding the big knitting needles, weaving together the names of the enemies of the State... [snip]
It is a regrettable paradox that in today's America, its citizens are being urged to bite the hand that feeds them. After all, as bloodthirsty as were Mme. Defarge's acts of vengeance, she at least had a legitimate beef with those she sent to an early grave. But today's blade is sharpened for the only ones who can supply the jobs that will rescue our nation from the shadow of a domestic reign of terror.
It's time to reconsider who and what really deserve the ax.
[Highly Recommended > ]
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ABC's Terry Moran to Obama: Why Don't You Just Fire Bank Execs?
"Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran on Tuesday interviewed Barack Obama and pressed him from the left, wondering why he didn't simply fire the executives who the journalist blamed for "wreck[ing] these banks in the first place."
The two were discussing the stimulus bill and the current economic problems on Wall Street. As the MRC's Brent Baker already noted in a previous blog, Moran also seriously wondered, "Why not just nationalize the banks?"
[I.e., the propaganda campaign is working on the simple]
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A Big Lie: Newsweek Claims On Cover 'We Are All Socialists Now'
As the news magazines decline and fall into snarky opinion journals, Newsweek this week has a cover titled "We Are All Socialists Now." They’re recalling Richard Nixon saying "We are all Keynesians now" in 1971. But conservatives uniformly would reply on a rebuttal cover, if there were one: "Speak for Yourself."
The "cover story," if you can call it that, is a brief editorial by Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and former Washington bureau chief Evan Thomas, and it began by attacking Sean Hannity and Mike Pence for being in denial about Socialist America and threatening to foist on America an "fractious and unedifying debate" that refuses the terms of surrender.
This is a remarkable declaration from the liberal media. They disparaged the Republicans as they told the voters that Obama would install socialism, and then when he begins to do that, media elites say well, "we are all socialists now" any way and demand that conservatives get on the bandwagon of "reality" instead of trying to resist...
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The Money Liberal Conspiracy At Work
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As promised, here are the gory mechanics of the liberal plan to expand welfare rolls through an insufficiently publicized provision in the 'stimulus'.
Congressional Democrats want to encourage states to expand their caseloads, offering billions of federal dollars in the "stimulus" package as an incentive to do so. But wait, if states expand their welfare caseloads as the Dems want, they'd lose the "caseload reduction credit," since their caseloads would not, in fact, have been reduced. They might then have to start enforcing the "work activity" requirements on those caseloads.
Answer: Rewrite the law, in the stimulus package, to let states expand their caseloads but pretend, for "caseload reduction credit" purposes, that the caseloads have declined. Specifically, the revision would allow states take the credit they would have gotten based on their caseloads in 2007 or 2008 even if their caseloads soar (as the Dems would like) in 2009 and 2010. [an election year]
In other words, they can expand their caseloads but still use the now-fictitious "reduction credit" to avoid the law's work requirements...
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BEGGING FOR TERROR
Military judge Susan Crawford on Thursday [last] dropped all charges against Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the mastermind of the 2000 suicide-bomb attack against USS Cole - a cowardly act that took the lives of 17 US Navy sailors, and a clear precursor to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. An outrage, you say? True enough.
But don't blame the judge. She was acting in full compliance with President Obama's executive order... [snip]
Unhappily, the president buys into the misguided notion that terrorists present a law-enforcement challenge.
They don't*.
By definition, terrorists operate outside the protections of the Geneva Conventions and international law. To be sure, the Bush administration allowed itself to be hectored into treating terrorists essentially as criminals - hence the trial Obama interrupted.
But as wrongheaded as the Bush policy might have been, dropping charges against Nashiri is even worse.
Terrorists are emboldened by indecision and irresolution - precisely the qualities animating the decision to stand down the Nashiri case and to embrace the Gitmo hand-wringers.
The terrorists know weakness when they see it. Count on it.
[*More to the point, 'law enforcement' relies on retribution - after the fact - to provide its primary deterrence. That's meaningless to suicide bombers. They must be interdicted, which requires intelligence.]
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Would You Turn Your Cheek to a Terrorist?
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During a recent interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, President Obama indicated that his administration is in fact moving away from the of the phrase ''war on terror.'' Recognizing that ''we have a battle or a war against some terrorist organizations,'' he sees those groups as not ''representative of a broader Arab community.'' (Snip)
My question is this: Are we now trying to win over the hearts and minds of terrorists?
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Iraqi FM: No sudden US pullout
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Baghdad - Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said on Wednesday he had been "reassured" by the United States that there would be no sudden pullout of American troops, despite an improving security situation. (Snip) Zebari, however, insisted that there would be no sudden withdrawal. '
'We have been reassured by the new administration that there will not be a major change, or a quick disengagement or quick pullout from Iraq,''he told reporters.
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Pair held for 'offending Islam'
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The editor and publisher of a top English-language Indian daily have been arrested on charges of "hurting the religious feelings" of Muslims.
Muslims said they were upset with the Statesman for reproducing an article from the UK's Independent daily in its 5 February edition.
The article was entitled: "Why should I respect these oppressive religions?"
It concerns the erosion of the right to criticise religions. [snip]
Mr Kumar has said he has already issued a public apology for reproducing the article.
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Despite Ban, Dutch Lawmaker Vows to Visit 'Cowardly' Britain
Dutch politician Geert Wilders says he's flying to Great Britain despite a government order banning him from entering the country, and he's daring the "weak and cowardly" British government to arrest him when he gets there.
"I'll see what happens at the border. Let them put me in handcuffs,"Wilders told Radio Netherlands in an interview Wednesday.
The right-wing lawmaker was invited by a member of Parliament to show his anti-Islam movie "Fitna," which calls the Koran a "fascist" book and accuses Islam of being a violent religion.
He was told by the British Embassy in a letter Tuesday that he could not set foot in the country.
• Click here to see the letter from the British Embassy.
The 45-year-old lawmaker said he was bewildered by the ban.
"Threat to society? I'm an elected member of Parliament; I have done nothing wrong," ... ,"I'm a normal, law-abiding democrat. You might agree or disagree with my political point of view, but I'm no threat to anyone."
Wilders has received numerous death threats, and he lives under constant guard in the Netherlands, where filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in 2004 for making a movie critical of Islam. The state of Jordan has requested his extradition to face charges of blasphemy.
"I was very surprised the British government should have become so weak and useless that it denies a European member of parliament the right to free speech in the mother of parliaments,"
His lawyers say he is the target of an effort to block free speech about radical Islam, and that the only hate speech in the movie comes from the preachers and texts it is documenting.
[See for yourself >
>> VIEW VIDEO HERE
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Saudi judge sentences pregnant gang-rape victim to 100 lashes for committing adultery
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A Saudi judge has ordered a woman should be jailed for a year and receive 100 lashes after she was gang-raped, it was claimed last night.
The 23-year-old woman, who became pregnant after her ordeal, was reportedly assaulted after accepting a lift from a man.
He took her to a house to the east of the city of Jeddah where she was attacked by him and four of his friends throughout the night. [snip]
He ruled she had committed adultery - despite not even being married - and handed down a year's prison sentence, which she will serve in a prison just outside the city.
She is still pregnant and will be flogged once she has had the child.
The Saudi Arabian legal system practices a strict form of medieval [?] law.
[that wouldn't be an islamic 'medieval' law would it?]
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Judges tell couple it's 'too late' to get their children back
Judges refused to return three children to a couple accused of physical abuse today despite ruling that they may have been victims of a miscarriage of justice.
Mark and Nicky Webster were left devastated after being told that it was 'too late' for them to be reunited now that the youngsters were settled with their adoptive families, even though the original decision to take them away could have been wrong.
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Green ideas must take blame for deaths
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It wasn't climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend. It wasn't arsonists. It was the unstoppable intensity of a bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had been allowed to accumulate over years of drought.
It was the power of green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards before a megafire erupts, and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation to protect themselves...
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Angry survivors blame council 'green' policy
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ANGRY residents last night accused local authorities of contributing to the bushfire toll by failing to let residents chop down trees and clear up bushland that posed a fire risk.
During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne's northern fringe, Warwick Spooner — whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze — criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council's help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season."We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down"
he said.
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Democrats undercut aid for U.S. workers
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With all the hoopla over greasy pork being stuffed into President Barack Obama's near trillion-dollar spending bill, it's what is being cut out that's receiving too little attention.
And once [if] Americans realize it, they won't be happy.
What's been quietly stripped is a provision that would have required any businesses receiving federal stimulus cash to use an easy computer program called E-Verify to make sure that the jobs they generate go to American citizens or documented foreign workers, not illegal immigrants.
Democrats in the House voted for the E-Verify component. But when the great porkulus package reached the Senate, Democrats there dropped it.
"It's another example of why people distrust Congress," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who had pushed for an amendment to the stimulus package mandating that E-Verify be used to certify job applicants
"I think the American people will be furious when they find out about this. The Congress tells them one thing, and then in the dead of night, the Senate maneuvers around and does another,"
E-Verify, offered free to all employers since 2004 as a way to combat illegal Immigration, allows employers to determine the legal work status of potential employees by searching their names and Social Security numbers along with other databases.
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Stimulus has $30M to save Pelosi's harvest mouse
House Republicans are challenging Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that the massive stimulus spending bill contains no pet projects after uncovering in the bill more than $30 million for wetlands conservation in her San Francisco Bay area district, including work she previously championed to protect the salt marsh harvest mouse.
"This sounds like spending projects that have been supported by a certain powerful Democrat in the past,"
said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.
"It certainly doesn't sound like it will create or save American jobs," ...
"So can Speaker Pelosi explain exactly how we will improve the American economy by helping the adorable little critter?"
A spokesman for Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, said the claim was "fabricated" by Republicans.
[Ah, the Republicans put it in the bill.]
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Jindal to give Republican, address to the nation
WASHINGTON, DC - House Republican Leader John Boehner (OH) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) announced Wednesday that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal will give the Republican address following the president's first address to Congress on February 24, 2009. The governor will speak to the nation from Baton Rouge.
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