Monday, March 9, 2009
Obama's Left Turn
Having praised President Obama's job performance in two recent columns, it is with regret that I now worry that he may be deepening what looks more and more like a depression and may engineer so much spending, debt, and government control of the economy as to leave most Americans permanently less prosperous and less free.
Other Obama-admiring centrists have expressed similar concerns. Like them, I would like to be proved wrong. After all, if this president fails, who will revive our economy? And when? And what kind of America will our children inherit?
But with the nation already plunging deep into probably necessary debt to rescue the crippled financial system and stimulate the economy, Obama's proposals for many hundreds of billions in additional spending on universal health care, universal postsecondary education, a massive overhaul of the energy economy, and other liberal programs seem grandiose and unaffordable.
The house is burning down. It's no time to be watering the grass.
With little in the way of offsetting savings likely to materialize, the Obama agenda will generate trillion-dollar deficits with no end in sight, or send middle-class taxes soaring to record levels, or both.
All this from a man who told the nation last week that he doesn't "believe in bigger government" and who promised tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans...
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Newsweek Cover Story: Conservative Frum's 'Why Rush is Wrong'
The media attack on Rush Limbaugh will take an interesting turn Monday when the March 16 issue of Newsweek hits newstands around the country for the cover story is an astoundingly negative article about the conservative talk radio host written by former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum.
With "Why Rush is Wrong" getting published at Newsweek's website Saturday evening, it is also sure to be fodder for discussion on all of the Sunday political talk shows, as well as Monday's morning programs thereby guaranteeing the article's contents maximum exposure.
To give you an idea of just how much the liberal media are going to devour Frum's words as if the finest champagne and caviar, here's a taste: [snip]
See what I mean?
We've entered the predictable phase of the media attack on Limbaugh: mainstream news outlets paying well-known conservatives to bash the talk show host.
Who's next? [snip]
That they gave Frum's article cover status suggests that this is them hoping to create a self-fulfilling prophecy for they want him to BE right, and are willing to risk giving Rush more publicity if it ends up hurting Republicans.
In fact, that's what this whole Emanuel-Carville-Begala-Stephanopoulos cabal is all about. These folks are scared to death that Limbaugh is going to revive conservatives within the GOP, and they want to do everything and anything to stop it before the midterms in 2010 so as not to allow a repeat of their disappointment in 1994.
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A Reason for Concern
As I've said repeatedly, not a Rush fan. But we should all be concerned over the orchestrated witch hunt being perpetrated against Rush Limbaugh - he's a private citizen being targeted by the White House - with the help of the MSM, of course....
Obama WH Secret Phone Conferences Bear Fruit With TV Media's Limbaugh Attack
CNN's Bill Schneider: Limbaugh Speech Was 'Angry, Mocking, Bullying, Harsh, and Full of Contempt'
Tina Brown: Liberal Ad Elevates 'Blow-hard Bullfrog' Rush Limbaugh
Matthews Calls Limbaugh and Republicans 'Trolls Under the Bridge'
MSNBC Graphic Frets, 'Who Elected Rush Limbaugh?'
LATimes Claims GOP 'Uneasy' About Rush, Yet Offers no Proof
Rush Limbaugh = Political Peril? So Says PBS
ABC's Diane Sawyer to McCain: 'Are You Offended' by Rush Limbaugh?
MSNBC Brings on Nation Writer to Bash Rush, Tout Limbaugh Error
WaPo Reporter on MSNBC: Next GOP Nominee Must ‘Stand Up To Rush’
'Today' Blames Limbaugh for GOP 'All-Time Low'
MSNBC's David Shuster Badgers Ron Paul: 'Even You' Won't Slam Rush
Politico Exposes White House and Media's Anti-Limbaugh Strategy
Envious Ed Schultz Likens Limbaugh to Hitler
'Maybe Limbaugh Should Be Executed For Treason'
David Shuster: GOP Members Who Don't Slam Rush 'Appear Unpatriotic'
Reporter Calls 'Clown' Limbaugh a 'Sweaty, Swollen Man'
MSNBC: GOP ‘Sinking Fast’ Because of Rush Limbaugh
Newsweek’s Alter on MSNBC: GOP ‘Party of Jell-O’ For Not Standing Up to Limbaugh
Globe Column: A Perfect Example of Lies About Rush
CNN: Rush is the 'Anti-Obama' Since He 'Isn't Black, Slim...or Well Schooled'
Newsweek’s Wolffe: Limbaugh Is GOP’s ‘Jeremiah Wright’ Cornering ‘Hate Obama’ Market
Is this the kind of behavior we want to see from the White House?
FLASHBACK >
WH Secret Phone Conferences Bear Fruit With TV Media's Limbaugh Attack
Back on January 29, we discussed the daily strategy phone call engineered by Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for friendly TV commentators and "reporters." Politico reported that Emanuel has a daily phone conference call with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, and CNN's James Carville and Paul Begala. With Rush Limbaugh's raucous CPAC address, as he termed it
his "first address to the nation," we can see at least one example of what is likely an attack strategyresulting from the Emanuel phone session with a rush to bash Rush the day after the appearance.As soon as the sun rose on the day after Limbaugh's CPAC appearance, three of the four of the phone call participants attacked Limbaugh with the same talking points. It seems obvious that they coordinated their attack together in the Obama secret strategy session. It is amazing that a president's staff can have such power over major media figures without a peep being heard from those that only months ago bashed former presidents over a perceived undue, even "dangerous," control of the media.
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Pope invited to Iraq
[HT:SC]
Amman - Iraqi leaders have invited Pope Benedict XVI to visit Baghdad, his envoy to Jordan said today, as the Pontiff confirmed he will visit the Middle East in May. ''One thing I can tell you about the visit to Baghdad is that both President (Jalal) Talabani and the Prime Minister (Nuri) al-Maliki have personally invited the Holy Father to visit Iraq,'' the apostolic nuncio to Jordan, Archbishop Francis Assisi Chullikat, said.
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As war ebbs, Europe returns to Iraq
President Bush was hardly out of the White House before his European opponents to the invasion of Iraq began lining up for what are expected to be lucrative contracts to rebuild the oil-rich country.
In recent weeks, France and Germany, which Donald Rumsfeld, former secretary of Defense, once chided as "Old Europe" for their opposition to the war, spearheaded Europe's forceful return to Baghdad. On separate visits with similar goals, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier swung through Baghdad. Their message was clear: As the danger subsides and the US scales back, Europe should move in quickly:
"German companies should study the possibility of increasing their presence in Iraq, given the improvement in the security situation,"
Steinmeier is the second German government official to visit Iraq in recent months. His visit was preceded by Germany's former economics minister Michael Glos. But Steinmeier's visit, coupled with political meetings, was the first solid evidence of a shift in German foreign policy.
And it is an indication that Germany is now intent on reestablishing* its once strong political and economic ties with Baghdad...
[*get it?]
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Iran's Ahmadinejad Gets Shoe Thrown At Him, Will Media Care?
Consider what was published by Israel's Haaretz Saturday:
A shoe was recently hurled at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while he was in the city of Urmia, an Iranian Web site has reported.Will American media care about this? After all, according to LexisNexis, there were almost 1,000 reports in December when it happened to President Bush.
The incident in the Iranian city was an apparent imitation of a similar attack on former U.S. president George Bush in Iraq last year.
Urmia News, the Iranian site, reported that Ahmadinejad was in a car en route to an election rally when the shoe was thrown.
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Obama switches line on Mid-East
[HT:SC]
BARACK Obama has embarked on a radical reversal of Washington's approach to the Middle East in a series of developments over the weekend that add to the ambitious reach of policy changes for the US President.
But it worries Arab and Israeli leaders, who already question whether Mr Obama is making too many concessions to Iran, while eastern Europeans feel the same about the dramatic reversal in tone of the relations between Washington and Moscow...
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Gym club banned from holding classes at girls school after Muslim parents complain about boy members
A gymnastics club was forced to stop holding classes at an independent girls school after Muslim parents complained about boy members of the group. Colin Perry, who runs the Shirley Gymnastics Club, said he was saddened by the decision which he said compromised the school's commitment to multiculturalism because of fears of offending a minority. He is now desperately searching for a new home for the club's 250 members - including 36 boys .
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EU membership costs each Briton £2,000 a year
The Taxpayers' Alliance figures for the cost of belonging to the EU are much higher than the narrow budget contributions reported by the Treasury.
The UK pays more than £6 billion a year in direct support for the European Commission and other EU projects."The EU's waste, mismanagement and incompetence costs all of us a fortune. It's wrong that these unaccountable bureaucrats are allowed to run up such a huge bill for ordinary people, particularly with everyone struggling in a recession."
The TPA says the real cost of EU membership is actually many times higher than the EU claims due to complying with European regulations, the cost of Government bureaucracy to administer those rules, and other consequences of membership like food prices inflated by farm subsidies...
[Pop quiz: everyone who's surprised, raise your hand. Just as I thought, smart bunch.
Quiz 2: What's the difference between Brussels managing its 27 member states and Washington managing 50? {Hint: we've twice the states...}]
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Obama stimulates the wrong jobs
The jobs report (or jobless report ) is out for February. There was a loss of 651,000 jobs in the month, but of that total , there was a loss of 660,000 private sector jobs.
Which means government jobs grew by 9,000.
And this was in February, before any stimulus money arrived, and when supposedly state and local governments were under tremendous pressure, and cutting jobs...
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GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY
The recently enacted $787 billion "stimulus" program appears to be the down payment on a sweeping "new New Deal" that will include many other ambitious government programs.
Given the size and scope of such interventions into the economy, it's important to remember that big government programs often have results that are very different than what was intended.
Take for example, the experience of FDR's most ambitious infrastructure program, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA):
- Heralded as a program to build dams that would control floods, facilitate navigation, lift people out of poverty and help American recover from the Great Depression, it actually flooded more land than it protected.
- The TVA morphed into America's biggest monopoly, dominating an 80,000 square mile region with 8.8 million people.
- It pays none of the federal, state, and local taxes that private businesses pay; it's estimated that annual cost-of-capital subsidies exceeded $1.2 billion and currently, the TVA has about $26 billion of debt.
- Moreover, it doesn't have to incur the costs of complying with myriad federal, state, and local laws, and when it wants to acquire more assets, it has the power of eminent domain.
Too bad today's advocates of a new New Deal seem determined not to learn from their predecessors' mistakes.
[Lessons are repeated until learned.]
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You Can’t Earn Living in U.S. Without Government Help
George Lakoff, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, recently stated that“the moral mission of government is simple: no one can earn a living in America or live an American life without protection and empowerment by the government.”
Thirty-four percent (34%) of voters nationwide agree with Lakoff’s assertion while 46% disagree in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twenty percent (20%) are not sure.
Half (51%) of Democrats agree with the professor while Republicans and unaffiliated voters strongly disagree. Republicans reject Lakoff’s statement by a 3-to-1 margin, unaffiliateds by a 2-to-1 margin.
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[but we elected Democrats, so...]
Obama's Budget Seeks to Shrink Tax Benefits of Owning
The cluster of special federal tax benefits and subsidies for homeowners has long seemed politically untouchable. Those include deductions for mortgage interest, local property taxes and capital gains exclusions on up to $500,000 in sale profits. Is the Obama administration serious about beginning to limit at least some of these subsidies?
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Tea Parties? What Tea Parties?
Coverage of "tea party" protests in various cities around the country (this March 4 Pajamas Media press release, HT to FreeRepublic, cited 22 locations on February 27 and seven this weekend) has been sparse to non-existent, especially at major establishment media outlets.
Most notably, based on a search on "tea party" (not in quotes) at its ap.org home page at about 10:00 a.m., there has been no coverage of this weekend's or last weekend's protests by the Associated Press, the self-described "essential global news network":
What's more, even though over 20 of the protests had already taken place, the AP's David Bauder, in his coverage of a dispute over the prominent use of CNBC's Rick ("Rant Hear 'Round the world") Santelli's name at a protest web site (the March 2, 8:06 p.m. item above), either did not know that the protests had occurred, or didn't care to inform his readers that they had.
Looking at this weekend's coverage thus far, a 10:15 a.m., with the exception of a one-paragraph blog post at the New York Times, searches at the Washington Post and the Times on "tea party" (not in quotes) indicate that there was no coverage of the protest events.
Maybe the tea partiers should have told the press that they were holding Iraq War protests.
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Swedish Nukes Revival Has German Right Asking for More
After Sweden decided to scrap its ban against building new nuclear power plants, several politicians from Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) said Germany should do the same.
"When European countries are planning to build nuclear plants again, Germany can't be the odd one out," CDU parliamentarian Katherina Reiche, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
Sweden announced last week that it was revoking a 1980 referendum decision to phase out nuclear power. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and the leaders of the three other parties in the coalition described the deal as "historic."
[everyone but US]
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Has Obama Killed Nuclear Power?
That's what Steve Sailer asks, and he's got good reason for asking because buried in the budget is a clue that under the radar that's exactly what Obama has done: It looks like Obama's budget intends to give up on implementing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
So, nuclear waste would continue to sit around nuclear power plants. Which means nobody is going to build anymore nuclear power plants in the U.S. - ever.
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SWEDEN'S GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE
Sven R. Larson tells about some of Sweden's problems in "Lesson from Sweden's Universal Health System: Tales from the Health-care Crypt,"
For example:
- One Gothenburg multiple sclerosis patient was prescribed a new drug but his doctor's request was denied because the drug was 33 percent more expensive than the older medicine; he then offered to pay for the medicine himself but was prevented from doing so because the bureaucrats said it would set a bad precedent and lead to unequal access to medicine.
- Malmo, with its 280,000 residents, is Sweden's third-largest city to see a physician, a patient must go to one of two local clinics before they can see a specialist; the clinics have security guards to keep patients from getting unruly as they wait hours to see a doctor and the guards also prevent new patients from entering the clinic when the waiting room is considered full.
- Uppsala, a city with 200,000 people, has only one specialist in mammography; Sweden's National Cancer Foundation reports that in a few years most Swedish women will not have access to mammography.
"In our budget-government health care there is no room for curious, young physicians and other professionals to challenge established views. New knowledge is not attractive but typically considered a problem (that brings) increased costs and disturbances in today's slimmed-down health care."
These are just a few of the problems of Sweden's single-payer government-run health care system, says columnist Walter E. Williams. We have problems in our health care system but most of them are a result of too much government.
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Media Routinely Ignores Govt.-Controlled Health Care Problems in Other Countries
Mark Levin bought this matter up on his show Thursday. His web site's home page (near the bottom left) points to a post at Liberty-Page.com, where there are compilations of dozens of articles on how socialized medicine is not working out well in Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.
Looking at just one country, here are just six relevant results from the past three weeks obtained from a Google News search on "NHS BBC" (not in quotes):
- March 5 -- "Disgust" over Wheelchair Delays"; "One child has been waiting for 20 months and the North Wales NHS Trust says it has cut times and is aiming to ensure no child waits more than a year." That would be an accomplishment?
- March 5 -- "NHS charges to rise in England"; "The British Medical Association (BMA) said the current system was not working and was 'iniquitous' for many patients." It wants every single solitary prescription to be free.
- March 2 -- "Prime Minister's health records breached in database attack; Scottish rich and powerful victimized"; so much for mediard records security.
- February 25 -- "Hospital lost patient data disks." Ten years' worth.
- February 17 -- "Stroke services are 'UK's worst'" -- "Dr Tony Rudd, who assessed services in Wales, England and Northern Ireland two years ago, said services in Wales were 'scandalously bad.'"
- February 17 -- ''New computer delay costs NHS Trust £500,000" -- "THE next London hospital in line to install the problem-hit NHS computer system has had its start date postponed for a second time."
But apparently there's no time for that. Michelle Obama's right to bare arms is apparently more important.
[The 'service' provided by our professional media]
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Allowing concealed weapons in national parks to get review
The nation's Interior secretary plans to review a decision to allow concealed weapons in Rocky Mountain National Park. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar directed the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct a 90-day review of environmental issues [?] that are a product of the rule, which as of Jan. 9 allowed loaded, concealed guns at the country's national parks and wildlife refuges.
[Anything to disarm the people.]
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75% Believe Constitution Guarantees Right To Own A Gun
Seventy-five percent (75%) of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Just 14% say gun ownership is not a constitutional right. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure.
[But we elected Democrats...]
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PHILANTHROPY AND ITS ENEMIES
The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's (NCRP) recommendation that philanthropic organizations should ignore donor intent and give grants based on political considerations, nonprofits have taken a big hit, says Naomi Schaefer Riley of the Wall Street Journal.
The NCRP is following in the footsteps of other philanthropy groups that have released similar mandates:
- In 2007, San Francisco's Greenlining began pushing for legislation mandating that foundations report to the public the percentage of their dollars given to "minority-led" organizations and the percentage of their boards and staffs made up by racial and ethnic minorities.
- The legislation was dropped when several foundations promised to donate money to causes Greenlining favored.
- Now Greenlining has put out reports in Florida, Pennsylvania and New York trying to shame foundations into distributing grants differently, as well as pressure them into recruiting more "diverse" board and staff members.
Looking at the recipients of grants doesn't tell you anything about who the real beneficiaries are. Which brings us to another one of NCRP's recommendations -- that at least 25 percent of grant dollars be used for "advocacy, organizing and civic engagement to promote equity, opportunity and justice in our society."
Philanthropists give money to foundations with a particular cause in mind. And promoting "justice in our society" may not have anything to do with it. Indeed, foundations that redirect funding to match the NCRP criteria may have to violate donor intent in order to do so.
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Lotto winners give £3.9 million to company they work for
Andy Whitaker, 44, has managed to keep the family-run motor repair company going despite a dismal year for the car industry. Now he is to be helped after his winning employees asked to pledge much of their £300,000 shares into the firm ASK Rewinds in Accrington, Lancs so they could become investors.
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Who Attacked Our Economy? Why Does No One Care?
I want you to read something. It's a snatch of transcript from a Jan. 27 C-SPAN interview with Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., that has received zero coverage in what we think of as the mainstream media.
To set the C-SPAN scene, Kanjorski is harkening back to the middle of last September, when, as it happens, John McCain was enjoying his brief lead in the presidential polls and the economy as we knew it was imploding. Here's what Kanjorski said:
"I was there when the Secretary (of the Treasury Hank Paulson) and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (Ben Bernanke) came those days and talked to members of Congress about what was going on. It was about Sept. 15. Here's the facts, we don't even talk about these things.
"On Thursday at about 11 o'clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States to the tune of $550 billion, as being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two.
"The Treasury opened up its window to help. It pumped $105 billion into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there, and that's what actually happened."
Kanjorksi continued:
"If they had not done that, their estimation was that by 2 o'clock that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy system of the United States and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.
"Now we talked at that time about what would happen if that happened. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it. And that's why when they made the point we've got to do things quickly, we did."
These are staggering revelations.
Given their sudden appearance out of the blue, you have to wonder, first, could they possibly be true? If so, why weren't we the people told about this $550 billion electronic run on the banks? And why haven't we heard a word of it since? Even since Kanjorski spoke on C-SPAN last month, there has been scant MSM coverage. The story's biggest exposure came when Rush Limbaugh played the audio and analyzed it on the air this week. Otherwise, the story has been little more than blogfodder, appearing at places such as Politico.com and the Economist blog with little comment. Writing at Portfolio.com this week, Felix Salmon quite decisively dismissed the whole story as "fiction."
Is it? If what Kanjorski says is "fiction," Americans, particularly Americans in Kanjorski's 11th district of Pennsylvania, need to know. After all, this isn't a story that just goes away on its own, particularly not when Paul Kanjorski is chairman of the Capital Markets Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee. Of course, incredible as Kanjorski's revelations were, almost equally incredible was the interviewer's failure to ask the next obvious question of national interest: Who or what was responsible for that electronic run on the banks "to the tune of $550 billion"?
That's where Limbaugh went with the story. "Now, let's assume for a second here that elements of this are true," Limbaugh said of Kanjorski's statement. "Let's assume that there was a $550 billion ... electronic run on the banks and money market accounts in one to two hours. The question is who was doing this? Who was withdrawing all this money? And the next question is why? That's where my mind starts exploding, and this is dangerous to have these explosions going this way. Could it have been George Soros? Could it have been a consortium of countries -- Russia, China, Venezuela -- countries that are eager to have Barack Obama elected because they know that will make it easier for them to continue their own foreign policies in the world?"
I've heard serious people float similar theories regarding financial attacks on our economy emanating from the Middle East, but again, who knows?
One thing we do know is that former President Bush made extremely cryptic public statements regarding the stability of our markets at this time in question last September, statements noted by Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid. These began with a Sept. 18 Bush announcement that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was stepping up its enforcement action "against illegal market manipulation." As Kincaid wondered, manipulation "by whom or what? The President didn't say." On Sept. 19, President Bush further announced that the SEC had "launched rigorous enforcement actions to detect fraud and manipulation in the market. Anyone engaging in illegal financial transactions will be caught and persecuted (sic -- good ol' W.)." Again, what was Bush talking about?
On that same day, Kincaid reports, "the SEC announced a `sweeping expansion of its ongoing investigation into possible market manipulation in the securities of certain financial institutions.'" Why? What was going on? If ever there was a vital, compelling reason for congressional hearings, Kanjorski's "electronic run on the banks" story is it.
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