Thursday, February 26, 2009
Confidence in Stimulus Plan Drops Over Past Week
Confidence in the $787-billion economic stimulus plan has fallen four points in the week since President Obama signed it into law, and more voters are prepared to punish their representatives for supporting it.
Thirty-four percent (34%) of U.S. voters now say the plan will help the economy, while 32% believe it will hurt, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twenty-six percent (26%) say the plan will have little impact on the economy. Eight percent (8%) are undecided.
A week ago, 38% of voters said the plan will help the economy, while 29% said it will hurt.
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Yet, Yesterday...
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House Approves $410 Billion Spending Bill
Washington - The Democratic-controlled House approved $410 billion legislation Wednesday that boosted domestic programs, bristled with earmarks and chipped away at policies left behind by the Bush administration. The vote was 245-178, largely along party lines. Republicans assailed the measure as too costly -- particularly on the heels of a $787 billion stimulus bill...
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The Truth-O-Meter Re:
The omnibus spending bill has "9,427 pork barrel items."
John McCain on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 in an interview on CNN's American Morning.
True: Omnibus bill packed with earmarks and pork
Despite all the talk during the campaign about cutting earmarks, Congress is still packing them into appropriations bills.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington group that tracks federal spending, has a slightly lower number -- 8,570 (down from 8,811 last year). That number includes anything defined by Congress as an earmark that doesn't mention the president as the person making the request. If you also include items requested by the president's budget that have been jointly requested by a member of Congress, the number comes to 9,287, according to TCS.
A McClatchy News Service story put the total earmarks at 9,000, attributing it to "congressional officials."
So McCain's number is in the same range as other counts and given slightly different definitions, it's possible to get different tallies. We find his claim to be True.
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Two Obama Cabinet Members Added Earmarks to Omnibus Spending Bill
Two of President Obama's Cabinet members authored a variety of earmarks in the $410 billion omnibus spending bill the House is poised to pass Wednesday to keep the government running through Oct. 1. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis
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[That's 1.2 TRILLION, not including interest - it's all borrowed money, in two weeks. And the promise against earmarks? They'll start that in the next spending bill - only 5 months away. Between now and then? 'Universal' health care; >600 Billion now, with at least as much later... all with no serious debate of alternatives - just ram 'em through; 'crisis-emergency-hurry' - we can read the bills later...
And the 'explanation' for how all these earmarks are still sailing through? Well, this bill is "unfinished business" from the previous administration. That's right, it's Bush's fault - even though he's out of office, and it will be Obama's hand that signs it into law when it reaches his desk.
To which our 'professional' media says ... ... .. ... . ...{sigh}]
Around the world...
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Diplomats: Syria has put missile facility on bombed nuke site
Vienna - Syria has indicated that it has built a missile facility on the site of an alleged nuclear reactor that IAF warplanes reportedly bombed, diplomats said Tuesday. (Snip) The diplomats said that the facility appeared to be either a missile control center or an actual launching pad. They demanded anonymity for reporting on the closed meeting. The site was bombed in 2007.
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Obama Yawns as Iran Fires Up First Nuke Plant
Iran might not have rated a single mention in the president’s address to Congress last night, but that doesn’t mean nothing interesting is happening there. Today, the New York Times reports that Iran has started tests on its first nuclear power plant in Bushehr. The Russian-built plant will begin loading its nuclear fuel later this year but we are assured the Russians will not let any of that fuel be used for illicit purposes.
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Vladimir Putin faces rising anger from within Russian army
Vladimir Putin is facing an unprecedented military challenge to his authority as discontent over medieval conditions and personnel cuts mounts within the Russian armed forces. A growing number of disgruntled servicemen, including senior officers, are making contact with Russian opposition groups for the first time since he came to power in 2000.
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[And when leaders are in trouble at home, they look for trouble abroad for distraction...]
Russian missiles seized
Moscow - Russia's chief military prosecutor said on Wednesday he suspects navy officials tried to smuggle 30 anti-submarine missiles through Tajikistan to sell them in China.
''A few days ago we sent material to start criminal proceedings against navy officials and some businessmen who brought 30 contraband anti-submarine missiles and 200 aviation bombs into Tajikistan for onward sale to China for $18m..."
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So in Washington...
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No terror talk: Homeland Security head's 'new tone'
WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano avoids mentioning terrorism or 9/11 in remarks prepared for her first congressional testimony since taking office, signaling a sharp change in tone from her predecessors. Napolitano is the first homeland security secretary to drop the term "terror" and "vulnerability" from remarks prepared for delivery to the House Homeland Security Committee, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.
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Intel pick peddled Saudi-funded textbook accused of bias
Washington - The Obama administration’s reported pick for a top intelligence post helped peddle a Saudi-funded school study guide decried by Jewish groups and educators for having anti-Jewish biases. Charles ''Chas'' Freeman, the U.S. envoy to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, is slated to chair the National Intelligence Council, according to The Cable, a blog at Foreign Policy magazine that has been unerring in reporting Obama administration national security appointments.
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White House: DoD Officials Must Vow Secrecy on Budget
The Obama administration has directed defense officials to sign a pledge stating they will not share 2010 budget data with individuals outside the federal government. In an undated non-disclosure agreement obtained by Defense News, the administration tells defense officials that "strict confidentiality" must be practiced to ensure a "successful" and "proper" 2010 defense budget process.
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[And this adds to 'transparency' how?]
Congress Should Cut Military Spending, Says Democrat Barney Frank
Congress should cut U.S. military spending by $160 billion, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, proposed at a press conference Tuesday.
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So on Main Street...
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Confidence in War on Terror Drops
Just over two weeks ago, 62% said the United States and its allies were winning the war, a new record high. Only 14% said the terrorists were winning at that time.
Confidence in how America is doing in the War on Terror has dropped dramatically in the past two weeks. Just 47% of voters now believe the United States and its allies are winning.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 23% believe the terrorists are winning, while 25% say it's a draw. Six percent (6%) are undecided.
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Bad Times Visit Our Betters in Europe
[HT:PS]
LONDON -- Think that credit collapse that triggered the Bush administration's $700 billion bank bailout was necessary because of Republican hostility to regulation and the ineptness of President George W. Bush? If it were that simple, then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Labor Party would not be squirming, and the United Kingdom would not be swimming in staggering sums of debt.
It was not that long ago that market watchers hailed Brown as the savvy Euro-technocrat who, as the United Kingdom's former chancellor of the exchequer, understood capital markets and calmly navigated British finance through the storms that swamped Bushdom last year. When the Halifax Bank of Scotland was on the verge of collapse in September, Brown began working on a takeover of the bank by Lloyds TSB -- for which the prime minister was hailed as a hero who averted a crisis.
But the deal did not save the empire. Instead, it helped sink Lloyds, requiring government intervention. British taxpayers now own a 43 percent stake in Lloyds -- which may grow. Some wonder if Brown will have to nationalize Lloyds.
Oh, yes, and last week, the Sunday Telegraph reported that Lloyds was planning to pay 120 million pounds ($171.72 million) in bonuses to top execs.
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Durban II draft document 'getting worse'
Besides issues relating to Israel, the draft has problematic paragraphs regarding free speech, defamation of religion and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, he said."At this stage it is not possible to say what in the text would improve, if at all. In fact I expect the text to get only worse on all issues which are important for western democracy,"
He spoke as representatives from 190 nations have been meeting in Geneva to debate the language for a document in which Israel is alluded to as a "racist" and "apartheid" power.
Israel and the United States walked out of the 2001 conference to protest its disintegration into an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate-fest. Israel and Canada have already announced they do not intend to participate in this April's conference in Geneva.
The United States has yet to announce whether it will participate, but it has been present in Geneva this week...
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HOPE'S EXPIRATION
In confirming that he will let the Bush tax cuts expire, President Obama is discarding proven economic medicine. He is also bringing the discredited welfare state back to life, bigger than ever.
Heritage Foundation senior domestic policy analyst Robert Rector recently noted that the stimulus will overturn the fiscal foundation of welfare reform and for the first time since 1996, the federal government would begin paying states bonuses to increase their welfare caseloads.
- Under the stimulus bill, the federal government will pay 80 percent of cost for each new family that a state enrolls in welfare.
- The original goal of helping families move to employment and self-sufficiency and off long-term dependence on government assistance has instead been replaced with the perverse incentive of adding more families to the welfare rolls.
Uncle Sam would actually pay the states many billions of dollars to increase their welfare caseloads, with spending increases nearing $800 billion over a decade, with more than $1.3 trillion added to the national debt by the stimulus.
Yet amidst all this, the president promises to cut the budget deficit in half by the end of his first term -- a promise Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, appearing on CNN, disparaged as "wildly optimistic," especially since the massive, ever-expanding Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs are left unaddressed.
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Obama's deficit strategy 'wildly optimistic,' economist says
Some economists doubt President Obama will be able to meet his goal of cutting the nation's deficit in half by the end of his first term.
Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron said it's a good idea for Obama to focus on the long-term deficit, but he said he suspects the proposal to halve the $1.3 trillion deficit is
"wildly optimistic."
"First, tax increases will probably not produce as much revenue as being forecast, and second, he hasn't really touched the two really important programs that account for a huge fraction of our future liabilities ... Social Security and Medicare," ... "Unless he does something about those, he's just kicking a can down the road,"
said Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
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Obama glosses over complex realities
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's assurance Tuesday that his mortgage-relief plan will only benefit deserving homeowners appears to be a stretch.(Snip)The president glossed over a number of complex realities in delivering his speech to Congress and a nation hungry for economic salvation.(Snip)THE FACTS: If the administration has come up with a way to ensure money does not go to home buyers who used bad judgment, it hasn't announced it.
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Fact Check: Obama’s words on home aid ring hollow
President Barack Obama knows Americans are unhappy that the government could rescue people who bought mansions beyond their means. But his assurance Tuesday night that only the deserving will get help rang hollow. Even officials in his administration, many supporters of the plan in Congress and the Federal Reserve chairman expect some of that money will go to people who used lousy judgment. The president skipped over several complex economic circumstances in his speech to Congress _
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54% Say ‘No’ To All Bailouts
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Given the choice between federal bailouts for the auto companies, the finance industry and financially trouble homeowners or no bailouts for any of them, 54% say no bailouts period.
Just 26% support bailouts for all three, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twenty percent (20%) aren’t sure which course is better to follow.
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Japan: Global warming isn't man-made
Japanese scientists have made a dramatic break with the UN and Western-backed hypothesis of climate change in a new report from its Energy Commission. Remarkably, the subtle and nuanced language typical in such reports has been set aside. [snip]
The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is astonishing rebuke to international pressure, and a vote of confidence in Japan's native marine and astronomical research. ... Only one of the five top Japanese scientists commissioned here concurs with the man-made global warming hypothesis. [snip]
Shunichi Akasofu, head of the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, has expressed criticism of the theory before. Akasofu uses historical data to challenge the claim that very recent temperatures represent an anomaly:
"We should be cautious, IPCC's theory that atmospheric temperature has risen since 2000 in correspondence with CO2 is nothing but a hypothesis. "
Akasofu calls the post-2000 warming trend hypothetical. His harshest words are reserved for advocates who give conjecture the authority of fact.
"Before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for truth... The opinion that great disaster will really happen must be broken."
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Arctic Sea Ice Underestimated for Weeks Due to Faulty Sensor
A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said. The error, due to a problem called “sensor drift,” began in early January and caused a slowly growing underestimation of sea ice extent until mid-February.
[Again and again. When there's a monetary interest involved, all kinds of 'mistakes' can {and do - and do and do} happen - most going unreported.]
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Census offers a look at the foreign face of the U.S.
Indians are the best-educated newcomers from overseas. Somalis are the youngest and poorest. Immigrants from Jordan and Bangladesh are most likely to be working in sales and office jobs.
Those are among the findings of a profile of the nation’s foreign-born residents, legal or illegal, released this week by the Census Bureau.
The profile indicates that Latin Americans and Africans account for a greater share of the nation’s immigrant population than they did five years ago. In 1990, 22 percent of the foreign-born residents were from Mexico. By 2007, 31 percent were.
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image toon - othr fnn - Dept of Commerce taken leave of Census
Teaching Schooling children to hate our values
Can you imagine the outrage if school children were encouraged to empathise with Hitler, the better to understand why he murdered six million Jews? Or if they were given lessons on the mindset that made Stalin starve eight million Russians? That's exactly what's been taking place in some of our schools where, as part of 'citizenship' lessons, children as young as 11 were asked to empathise with the motivations of the July 7 terrorists.
[Parents, do you know what your children are being taught.]
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The right not to be offended?
It's a discredit to our national confidence that each time some impolite thought — perceived or otherwise — is uttered, sketched or typed, a faction of professionally offended Americans engage in a collective hyper-sensitivity meltdown. It has been a long-standing custom for opponents to shut down debate by tagging an adversary with some dreadful label.
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Paper At Last Finds Unions Hurt Business, When it's THEIR Business
The Minneapolis Star Tribune is often called the "Red Star" Tribune by residents of Minneapolis for its long-time, virulently left-wing outlook. Many has been the time when the editorial board of the Star Trib has carried water for political candidates shilling for big labor.
The STrib endorsed Obama for president for his supposed fiscal responsibility as well as his focus on the working classes. It is well known that big labor was solidly behind Obama and have been getting payoffs every week since the January inaugural.
But that was then. Now-a-days the STrib is not so keen on unions. In fact, it is so put off by unions that it is going to court to have its contract with its printers union annulled and asks for new terms to be imposed by the courts to save the paper from going bankrupt.
Apparently, unions are fine for politicians as far as the STrib is concerned, but when it is faced with real life union demands, well, the courts are asked to save them from union excess.
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Holder’s Shame
By all means we need a little moral courage when it comes to discussing race — and Eric Holder was in a perfect position to begin that discussion. But instead, he simply trotted out the well-worn shibboleths about intolerance and racial division. He might have taken another course. [snip]
The elephant in the room in discussions of race isn’t white prejudice; it’s the breakdown of the black family and all the attendant social pathologies that emanate from it.
Instead of lecturing us on cowardice, Eric Holder could have talked about the relationship between family breakdown and crime. He could have talked about why it is that young black men aged 14-24 represent only 1 percent of the U.S. population but committed almost 28 percent of the nation’s homicides in 2005, according to his own department’s statistics. He could have talked about what it means to have fatherless teenage boys grow up in neighborhoods where your chances of being killed are greater than they were on the streets of Baghdad at the height of the insurgency.
He could have talked about why it is that schools systems presided over by black superintendents in cities governed by black elected officials produce black high-school graduates who read at the eighth-grade level. He could have talked about why it is that illegal Mexican immigrants with a sixth grade education are more likely to be employed in a steady job than young black men with a high-school education.
Now that would have taken some courage.
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I’m a Racist Coward
I am appalled. I just found out that I am a racist and a coward and I did not know it. (Snip) The things you find out about yourself if you just listen to newly appointed/elected government officials.(Snip)
Apparently, I’m a racist coward because I want to be color blind. This great national offense of racism doesn’t want to die - even though we just elected our first black president.
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[The victim industry: Too big to fail {despite all evidence to the contrary}.]
Iraq’s full story not told
Americans aren’t hearing the whole story about life in Iraq and United States involvement there, according to Dave Schmidt, who has talked to anyone who will listen about positive aspects, since his return to Pratt last July.
During a year in Iraq with an Army Reserves unit based in Pittsburg, Schmidt witnessed, and in some cases, was a part of changes that are making life better for Iraqis.
“We’re doing the right thing. We’re helping but that’s not the type of stories national newswires pick up and send back here.”
For whatever reason, national media focuses on suicide bombings or crowds of people complaining about the U.S. presence in their country, he said. What is not shown is that once the cameras are turned off, those same people are expressing their gratitude for a sustainable source of power and safe schools for their children...
[Lots of facts I bet you don't know... Recommended > ]
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