Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said Tuesday that President Obama's budget plan doesn't have enough support from lawmakers right now to win approval. Conrad said that he has spoken to enough colleagues with reservations about several different provisions in the budget that he thinks Congress won't pass it, at least in its present form.
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What policies have Obama and his team presented to reassure the markets and offer the promise of stabilization and renewed growth?
The short answer: None.
Rather, the Obama team has inadvertently (one hopes) followed a course that has succeeded only in depressing the market by spooking Wall Street and heightening the climate of fear. Industry by industry, the Administration has sown the seeds of uncertainty through its policy pronouncements... [snip]
How can energy stocks prosper, given Obama’s embrace of cap and trade legislation – which, studies show, would result in electricity prices jumping by 5-15%, natural gas prices up by 12-50%, and gasoline prices up by 9-145%? How can bank stocks stabilize and rise when the administration allows talk of nationalization? And when the President suggests that health care reform might be outsourced to a Congress led by Nancy Pelosi, what does anyone expect that to do to health care and insurance industry stocks?
President Obama’s budget continues the assault on the market. The significant cuts he’s ordered in national defense are bound to drive defense industry stocks lower. And by proposing limits on deductions for mortgage interest, local property taxes and capital gains exclusions on up to $500,000 in sale profits, he’s aiming squarely at the housing and banking industries – areas that must be helped, not hurt, before the economy will recover...
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[HT:JW]
KABUL, - U.S. President Barack Obama's proposal to reach out to moderate Taliban will fail to end the Afghan insurgency as it is the inflexible Taliban leaders who are orchestrating the war, not moderates, analysts said.
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Obama overture to Taliban seen as weakness
Kabul - Barack Obama's call for ''moderate'' Taliban members to be brought in from the cold has met with scepticism from leading Afghan opposition figures. Ashraf Ghani, a former Afghan finance minister said''I don't know of a single peace process that has been successfully negotiated from a position of weakness or stalemate.''
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A 75-year-old widow in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 40 lashes and four months in jail for mingling with two young men who are not close relatives, drawing new criticism for the kingdom's ultraconservative religious police and judiciary.
The woman's lawyer told The Associated Press on Monday that he would appeal the verdict against Khamisa Sawadi, who is Syrian but was married to a Saudi.
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Islam Needs to Prove It's a Religion of Peace
Muslims can start with a new Quranic scholarship that rejects radicalism.
Scholars in the most prestigious Islamic institutes and universities continue to teach things like Jews are "pigs and monkeys," that women and men must be stoned to death for adultery, or that Muslims must fight the world to spread their religion. Isn't, then, Mr. Wilders's criticism appropriate?
Instead of blaming him, we must blame the leading Islamic scholars for having failed to produce an authoritative book on Islamic jurisprudence that is accepted in the Islamic world and unambiguously rejects these violent teachings.
So, Islamic scholars and clerics, it is up to you to produce a Shariah book that will be accepted in the Islamic world and that teaches that Jews are not pigs and monkeys, and that declaring war to spread Islam is unacceptable, and killing apostates is a crime. Such a book would prove that Islam is a religion of peace.
Mr. Hamid, a former member of an Islamist terrorist group, is an Islamic reformer and senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies
[Recommended > ]
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Campaigners will seek arrest of Islamic radical
Campaigners from the Centre for Social Cohesion have pledged to seek an arrest warrant for Dr Ibrahim Moussawi, an Islamic extremist, who is due to visit Britain this March.
The think-tank said the Home Office would be "beyond hypocrisy" if it allowed Dr Ibrahim Moussawi into Britain just weeks after barring Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician, because of his alleged anti-Muslim views.
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Beijing - The head of China's rubber-stamp parliament cited Western democracy no less than nine times in a speech Monday - to illustrate what the country would not become. China will never be a multiparty state with separation of powers, he said. It will not have an independent judiciary. Elections will still have mostly government-approved candidates on the ballot.
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Blair: China Adopting a More Aggressive Military Stance
National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told Congress Tuesday that China has adopted a more aggressive military posture, according to Reuters, after the Pentagon accused five Chinese ships of harassing an unarmed U.S. Navy craft in international waters. The top intelligence official said the incident is the worst since a U.S. spy plane and crew were detained in 2001.
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China Readies Military Space Station for 2010 Launch
China is aggressively accelerating the pace of its manned space program by developing a 17,000 lb. man-tended military space laboratory planned for launch by late 2010. The mission will coincide with a halt in U.S. manned flight with phase-out of the shuttle.
The project is being led by the General Armaments Department of the People's Liberation Army, and gives the Chinese two separate station development programs.
Importantly, China is openly acknowledging that the new Tiangong outpost will involve military space operations and technology development. Along with the Tiangong announcement comes another major revelation — that China now has two manned space station programs under development.
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The $410 billion Omnibus spending bill, now working its way through the Senate for a second time, contains a buried provision to ease U.S. economic sanctions on the island.
And in return for this, Castro gives . . . nothing.
Now let's go over what Colombia has done for the U.S.
Last year, Colombia put its own soldiers in harm's way on a daring mission to rescue three American hostages held by terrorists in the jungle. They're free now.
Colombia's now preparing to send its own soldiers into Afghanistan, part of Obama's plan to boost troops there, at a time when our supposedly more major allies in Europe are flatly refusing to go.
It has also provided massive intelligence help on drug traffickers and smugglers, allowed the U.S. embassy in Bogota to almost become a de facto base for military operations on its own territory and it has foiled many terrorist plots.
Colombia's extradited more than 600 narcoterrorist thugs to the U.S., and is now helping Mexico in its monstrous war on drugs at a time when that war is spilling over our borders.
Its reward: Colombia's now in its third year of waiting for passage of a free trade treaty it bent over backwards to get.
[Because we've unions that don't want competition - and we know which party they own. Recommended > ]
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Federal courts have just surrendered in the war against radical Islam.
Last Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dealt a crushing blow to national defense. The three-judge panel’s ruling in al Odah v. United States has gotten scarce media attention. Perhaps that’s understandable: It’s a mind-numbing technical dispute over “discovery” in litigation, vying for attention against the socializing of our economy and the consequent collapse of the stock market. But the discovery in question is the most vital kind, namely, that of classified national-defense information.
The government reserved to itself the power to determine what information in its files was exculpatory. This was consonant with criminal procedure, where the stakes for our security are not remotely as high. A criminal suspect, for example, has no right to force the government to present any exculpatory evidence to a grand jury, and the government is not required to produce all the information in its file at any stage — it must merely produce enough to establish probable cause at the indictment stage, and guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.
For the D.C. Circuit, however, these standards, though good enough for American citizens accused of crime, are somehow not good enough for alien enemy combatants trying to kill American citizens. The panel found the government’s “mere ‘certification’” that information was immaterial, and should not be disclosed, to be insufficient. Allowing such a “naked declaration,” the judges harrumphed, would turn courts into mere “rubber-stamps.” Therefore, they said, “it is the court’s responsibility to make the materiality determination itself.” [snip]
The courts no longer see themselves as part of the U.S. government. The U.S. government, like the American people, is at war — or at least it has been. The courts are not part of that effort. They are spectator turned critic turned detached manager. Their self-perception is that of a shadow outside and above the U.S. government, serving not a Constitution of limited powers but “the law” — an ever-evolving, all-encompassing corpus of cosmic justice. The courts are not a forum to which Americans come to vindicate their rights against government; they are an overlord available to humanity to lodge its grievances against the American people and their government.
[Long and disturbing - but more proof {as if needed} of our out of control Judiciary. It needs be fixed. Recommended > ]
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- Massive government spending and tighter regulation would prolong recession, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Monday, as he urged U.S. President Barack Obama not to endanger the free market economy in his response to the financial crisis.
In a speech at Columbia University in New York, Klaus, a former Czech prime minister who championed the free market after the fall of Communism 20 years ago, said he never expected to see such extensive government intervention again in his lifetime as he now sees around the world."I am therefore convinced that fighting for freedom and free markets, something we always appreciated here in this country (the United States), remains the task of the day,"
He cautioned against trying to solve economic problems by more government intervention."The best thing to do right now would be to temporarily weaken, if not repeal, business regulations on labor, the environment, social issues and health"
[This fellow really loses something in text form; I saw him on the Glenn Beck show some time ago and was impressed. He really leaves one with the sense that he's been there and done that - 'that' being experienced first-hand the inevitable degradation of livelihood and liberties that accompany socialism. Would that all Americans would speak of individual liberties with the same quite passion he does.]
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One sector is immune from the economic downturn: global warming lobbyists. A new report by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) finds that over 2,000 lobbyists have wielded their influence to affect the outcome of the debate over the costly federal regulation of greenhouse gases.
Included in the lobbying ranks were Wall Street firms that were bailed out by the American taxpayer.
According to the CPI study, lobbyists for Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase were involved, and, in total, "the finance industry has as large a lobbying force on climate as the alternative energy industry, with about 130 reps working the issue last year..." [snip]
After taking a financial beating from the explosion of the housing bubble, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan undoubtedly are desperate to find new markets to generate windfall profits. A cap-and-trade regulatory scheme offers them lucrative potential for profits.
A commissioner of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission estimated that,"even with conservative assumptions, this could be a $2 trillion futures market in relatively short order."
That would make the carbon market potentially bigger than futures markets of oil and natural gas...
[The largest scam in the history of the planet - and you (and your children) will pay for it.]
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When is a tax not a tax? When Democrats say so, of course.
Paying more for energy as a result of federal policies is not considered a "tax" because after all, it's not going to be called that. It will be named "Cap and Trade" - but the effect will be exactly the same.
And not only will the poor suffer more from this new tax but, since it is a very regressive idea, the rich will pay much less as a percentage of income.
The Wall Street Journal:Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat
"unless you use energy."Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating. [Recommended, snip]
Being dishonest about the costs to ordinary consumers of energy is one thing. We expect that from climate fanatics who wish to push their "solutions" by not telling the truth because they know if they did, they wouldn't pass in a million years.
But the real problem is the chilling effect on the production of energy this will have - another goal of the fanatics who see no problem with reducing economic activity in the midst of a deep recession.
They are bound and determined to radically alter western industrialized civilization...
[Recommended > ]
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President Obama's plan for health care reform will lead to the deterioration of the private health insurance market, with the federal government -- read: taxpayers -- financing health care for a growing share of the U.S. population, says Grace-Marie Turner, President of the Galen Institute.
ObamaCare would create a new National Health Insurance Exchange (NHIE) that would function as a clearinghouse for people buying insurance:
The vast new left-wing conspiracy sets its tone every morning at 8:45 a.m., when officials from more than 20 labor, environmental and other Democratic-leaning groups dial into a private conference call hosted by two left-leaning Washington organizations.
The “8:45 A.M. call,” as it’s referred to by members, began three weeks ago, and it marks a new level in coordination by the White House’s allies... [snip]“There’s a coordination in terms of exposing the people who are trying to come out against our agenda —they’ve all got backgrounds and histories and pasts, and it’s not taking long to unearth that and to unleash that, because we’re all working together,”
When a new group called Conservative for Patients Rights, for instance, launched an ad campaign featuring former health care executive Rick Scott,“There was a discussion about what do we know about this guy and in a very quick period of time we were able to come up with his background,”
[I.e., don't debate the ideas, personally attack the messenger.]
Though White House officials do not participate in the calls, Palmieri said, the new infrastructure is closely tied to the White House. Podesta directed Obama’s transition, and Americans United for Change exists largely to run ads promoting the White House agenda.
[The ends justify any means.]
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James Madison was not specifically contemplating Barack Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, when he wrote Federalist No. 63. But reading the document — one of the seminal arguments in favor of adopting the U.S. Constitution — it’s clear Madison knew their type. And he knew they would come along again and again in American history, if Americans were lucky enough to have a long history...
[Highly Recommended > ]
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How can you tell when MSNBC cable-show host Rachel Maddow utters falsehoods about Herbert Hoover? If she talks about him. This is becoming enough of a pattern for Maddow, as I've described previously.
Here she goes again, this time during her show Friday night while condemning Republicans calling for a "freeze" on federal spending for the rest of the fiscal year --You know who else had the excellent idea to freeze government spending during a recession? This guy! (holds up photo of Hoover)
When it comes to federal spending during Hoover's single term in office, 1929 to 1933, what actually happened? According to the Office of Budget and Management Web site, Table 1.1, just the opposite of what Maddow repeatedly claims.
Federal spending increased $166 million in 1929, or 5 percent. In 1930, it rose by $193 million over the preceding year, at 6 percent. The pattern continued in 1931, with an increase of $257 million, nearly 8 percent. And for 1932, it rose a whopping 30 percent, by $1.08 billion. All told, federal spending increased 57 percent in this four-year period, according to the OMB.
Maddow also gets it wrong about what current-day Republicans in Congress are proposing -- they want to "freeze" spending, which beyond MSNBC is universally understood to mean maintaining spending at current levels. This is hardly suggesting we "stop" spending.
An actual example of a politician determined to follow Hoover's lead by vastly increasing federal spending in an economic slump? Barack Obama.
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A DECISION to cancel almost half the burn-offs planned for NSW bushfire zones has put thousands of lives and properties in danger. Frustrated volunteer firefighters yesterday lashed out at bureaucrats and greenies for preventing them from protecting communities.
In one outrageous case, a woman was told by the State Government her fire escape route would remain an overgrown mess because it was a corridor for native flora and fauna.
[You'd think there would be some span of sanity following Australia's deadly fires - but evidently humans aren't to ascend the importance ladder of environmentalism under any circumstance.]
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Should we return to the gold standard? With Congress getting ready to pay for 40 percent of 2009 federal budget expenditures with money created from thin air, inflation is imminent. Our money will lose its capacity to serve as an honest measure, a meaningful unit of account or to provide a reliable store of value.
So we must first establish a sound foundation for capitalism by permitting people to use a form of money they trust. Gold and silver have traditionally served as currencies -- and for good reason:
CNN Correspondent Now the Communist Candidate in El Salvador 
The presidential candidate of the Farabundo Martà National Liberation Front (FMLN), the communist revolutionaries in El Salvador the Reagan administration battled in the 1980s, is, a Monday Washington Post story noted, “a former correspondent for CNN en Espanol.”
In the March 9 article, “In El Salvador Vote, Big Opportunity for Leftists,” reporter William Booth relayed from San Salvador that the journalist-turned-politician
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