Wednesday, May 6, 2009
‘Threatened by the White House’
The Obama administration’s War on Capital — as National Review’s editors have aptly named it — claimed its first victim last week, as the lawyer for the investment firm Perella Weinberg Partners says it was threatened by the White House into accepting a deal for a measly 29 cents on their investment dollar.“One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight”
lawyer Tom Lauria told Detroit radio host Frank Beckmann Friday. Lauria later said the brass knuckles belonged to White House Auto Task Force leader Steve Rattner.
Lauria’s account t raises more than a few troubling questions. The White House naturally denied the threat, but the extraordinary intervention of the President of the United States in bankruptcy negotiations is intimidation enough. Obama unloaded on these creditors last week, accusing them of being “speculators” out to destroy an American industrial icon. Those bullying words come from a man who has the power of the IRS and the SEC at his disposal, not to mention the bully pulpit.
The Chrysler episode is a disturbing sign of how far this president is willing the bend the law — and the truth — to satiate the demands of a major Democratic special interest, the UAW, which makes out like a bandit in the Chrysler deal, winning 55 percent of the company (the expected investment return, apparently, of committing $25 million to Democratic candidates over the last 20 years).
When asked by Beckmann to counter Obama’s claim that the bondholders refused to make “sacrifices and worked constructively,” Lauria responded that “contrary to what the president said in his news conference,” the bondholders agreed to take a haircut of 50 cents of their investment dollar.
In other words, the president lied.
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New Allegations Of White House Threats Over Chrysler
Creditors to Chrysler describe negotiations with the company and the Obama administration as "a farce," saying the administration was bent on forcing their hands using hardball tactics and threats.
Conversations with administration officials left them expecting that they would be politically targeted, two participants in the negotiations said.
The sources, who represent creditors to Chrysler, say they were taken aback by the hardball tactics that the Obama administration employed to cajole them into acquiescing to plans to restructure Chrysler. One person described the administration as the most shocking "end justifies the means" group they have ever encountered.
One participant in negotiations said that the administration's tactic was to present what one described as a "madman theory of the presidency" in which the President is someone to be feared because he was willing to do anything to get his way. The person said this threat was taken very seriously by his firm.
Can Obama Be Called an Economic Fascist?
It is dangerous in this day and age to use the word “fascism” lightly. Liberals sling around the term “fascism” without regard to its meeting -- for the left, “fascism” applies to everything from religious social perspectives to conservative tax cut prescriptions. But economic fascism has a precise, defined meaning. And Barack Obama’s economic policy fulfills that meaning in every conceivable way.
Economic fascism can be defined as government control over the four P’s: Product, Price, Profit Margin, and People. When the government controls the product created by the market, when it controls the price structure for product and company securities, when it controls how much profit particular companies can make, and when it controls the people who are hired and fired, economic freedom has been banished, and economic fascism reigns supreme.
And economic fascism reigns supreme in Barack Obama’s America. Just look at the recent government handling of Chrysler. In a series of press conferences this week announcing Chrysler’s bankruptcy, Obama hit on all of the four P’s...
[Highly Recommended > ]
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NBC Uses Kemp Obit to Tout Obama's Election as Proof U.S. a 'Great' Nation
In a brief item Monday evening about Jack Kemp's passing, the NBC Nightly News delivered an obit on Kemp's life, but while Brian Williams didn't find room in his 37-second update to mention how Kemp was behind the successful, supply-side Regan tax cuts, he decided it was newsworthy to point out how
“Kemp was a conservative purist who, in a letter to his grandchildren months before his death, said the election of Barack Obama was proof that we live in a great country.”
[The more important point is the inadvertent slip, contrary to the 'centrist/moderate' label being applied to Kemp throughout the MSM, that he was indeed a conservative purist.
It was he who largely supplied Reagan his 'trickle-down' supply-side economics plan and sold it not by watering it down by moving left, but by countering its detractors (many in the Republican party, ex. Bush 1's 'voodoo economics') with vociferous+passionate counter arguments that carried the day (and literally saved an economy - to say nothing of liberties).
So yeah; really good guy - but not for the reasons the MSM will try to convince you of today.]
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Dems don't fund bid to close Gitmo
House Democratic leaders Monday dropped President Obama's request for $81 million to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, bowing to strong criticism that the administration lacks a plan to relocate terror suspects detained there.
Mr. Obama requested the money as part a spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Democratic appropriators left it out of the bill circulated Monday among House Appropriations Committee staffers...
[Anyone believe this wasn't the 50/50 plan from the beginning?]
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HOW CHURCHILL DEALT WITH THUGS
Churchill recognized that torture -- the cruel, needless infliction of pain as a means of domination and control of others -- was emblematic of man's barbarism, as opposed to the values of what he called "Christian civilization." It was precisely this barbarism that he saw in the Nazi death camps and the Soviet gulag -- and that we see among the Muslim fanatics who will stone women to death for refusing to wear the veil or behead reporters.
But Churchill also understood that, if barbarism was one enemy of civilization, another was a moral cowardice disguised as moral qualms -- an instinctive flinching in the face of danger, dressed up as "upholding our values.""There is no place for compromise in war,"
Churchill wrote. In choosing between civilized restraint and the British people's survival, he never hesitated. He contemplated using mustard gas if the Nazis invaded England. He authorized the fire bombing of German cities, the so-called terror bombings, in order to cripple the German war effort and morale. He was prepared to let Mahatma Gandhi die during his hunger strike in 1943 rather than be blackmailed into abandoning India, the last bastion against Japanese domination of Asia.
As for German POWs and spies, Churchill left matters in the hands of his interrogation master, Col. Robin Stephens. It's true that Stephens told his interrogators that "violence is taboo", but he felt perfectly free to use every degree of psychological pressure on his detainees, including sleep deprivation and hooding prisoners in solitary confinement for long stretches.
He'd have tried women's bras and caterpillars, like our own interrogators, if he'd thought of it...
[Again, water boarding {used on all of three top-tier prisoners of war} is an ingenious way to use a body's survival instinct to scare them witless - while doing no harm, physically or mentally {many studies have proved}.
I.e., It is not torture. That's just word games {First; control the language}. It's an advanced enhanced interrogation technique to get answers we must have, used under extraordinary oversight {every pour recorded?!}.
We'd be absolute imbeciles to deny ourselves its use.]
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They Got Their Wish
All those who complain that America needs to stop policing the world should take a look at what happens when other countries try on the badge.
Last summer, after Russia rolled into and occupied Georgia, French
President Nicolas Sarkozy took the lead in drafting a six-point ceasefire between the neighboring countries. With the best of intentions, Sarkozy ended up composing a sort of lease extension for occupying forces. The agreement barely addressed the future of Georgia’s territorial integrity. Now, eight months later, Russia digs in solidly... [snip]
It’s been a slow and silent annexation. And it is sure to last. U.S.-Russia relations have been “reset,” remember? Barack Obama is Dmitry Medvedev’s “comrade,” and it’s bad form to criticize annexation between comrades. Besides, the American president has already begged Moscow for help in a couple of areas and Medvedev has turned the requests into very public American humiliations.
Obama is in the habit of apologizing to the rest of the world, so maybe he can add this little P.S. next time he’s doing global penance: “Sorry, Georgia. We’re too busy with toy buttons and smart power to worry about your little Russia problem. We’ve stopped policing.”
[Geopolitics also abhors a vacuum: always filled by despots.]
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Face of Defense: Marine Serves as Gunner, ‘Lioness’ in Iraq
CAMP AL TAQADDUM, Iraq, – Cpl. Susy H. Aguilar was a city girl from coastal California when she shocked her family and friends in 2005 to become the first in her family to join the Marine But joining the Marines was only the first step in many that would surprise and impress those around her... [snip]
“There was a little [Iraqi] boy who I had been interacting with,” ... “He was really scared, and wouldn’t leave my side. One of the grunts came back, gave me his flak jacket and told me to put it on the boy. He had no problem giving up his flak and risking his own safety. That is when I decided I wanted to do a more combat-related [job]. I wanted to be more like them.”
Before her next deployment to Iraq, Aguilar volunteered to go through the machine gunner’s course. She already had extended her enlistment contract in hopes of experiencing the deployment from the turret of an armored vehicle...
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Israel suffers another blow from the Obama administration
The key to Israel's strategy to avoid another Holocaust has been a policy of ambiguity over the question of whether it has nuclear weapons. Like many high-tech and potent weapons, a nuclear arsenal is best left sheathed. The reluctance of Israel to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NNPT) has allowed it to avoid a raft of intrusive inspections that might blow this policy of ambiguity to smithereens.
Every US administration has acquiesced in this policy, seeing it as a sensible of a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust and one that was surrounded by neighbors promising to commit another. There have been winks and nods, even going back to the Kennedy years, about Israel's stance.
India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel should join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the global pact meant to limit the spread of atomic weapons, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.
"Universal adherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea ... remains a fundamental objective of the United States," Gottemoeller told the meeting, which hopes to agree on an agenda and plan to overhaul the treaty at a review conference next year.
The administration of President Barack Obama was encouraging all holdouts to join the treaty, she said.
Until now generations of American presidents have recognized and appreciated Israel's unique history and were empathetic about its need to keep such a program under wraps and away from the prying eyes of an international group dominated by its enemies. This has prevented boycotts, sanctions, and a host of other problems for Israel -- including wars.
More Change under the leadership of Barack Obama.
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Socialism, College Style
If you’re baffled by college students’ enthusiastic support for Soviet-lite economic policies, you need to watch several short videos created by members of Young America’s Foundation (YAF).
In the videos, YAF members approach their classmates with a petition calling for the redistribution of student GPAs. “It would make it so that all students have an equal opportunity to go to grad school,” University of Oregon YAFer Kenny Crabtree explains. Students with bad grades would therefore be entitled to points earned by straight-A students.
Their classmates are flabbergasted. “Is that, like, a joke or something?” one guy responds.
“Why would you take points from people who are higher up and give them to people who didn’t meet the requirements?” another asks George Mason University YAFers. But when asked if he supports Obama’s wealth redistribution schemes, he says “yes.”
Shocking? Not really. As I pointed out in my March 30 column, most college students are economically illiterate. When quizzed by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute about basic concepts, such as supply and demand, the average student’s score was 53 percent. And since most don’t work or pay taxes (only 46 percent of full-time students have jobs), they simply have no idea how capitalism works... [snip]
Day in and day out, professors indoctrinate students with hatred for the greedy “rich”—which, under our tax code, includes a lot of middle-class families just like theirs, who struggle to pay the mortgage and college tuition. They’re taught to believe that people who don’t work are entitled to endless welfare benefits financed by the productive class.
“It’s amazing how students only care about the immorality of socialism when it hurts them,”
said George Mason University student Alyssa Cordova. Her classmates were universally opposed to a GPA redistribution plan...
[Not that surprising, they're still kids after all - and under the influence of some truly unscrupulous people...]
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A Change In The Wind?
Center-right votes and a large swath of the independent vote is shaking its collective head at the furious rush to the far left, and the initial thought that the new president would govern from the center is gone... [snip]
But they are shocked at the unbelievable, massive levels spending; shocked at the president's rhetoric on the European tour and his willingness to endure Daniel Ortega's rant without objection, and to grip and grin with Chavez, the Mugabe of South America; and alarmed by the plans to jam health care rationing down the Congressional throat. Supporters of Israel are deeply troubled by the apparent hostility toward the new Netanyahu government. Those concerned with national security are troubled by the cancellation of the F-22 and by other moves that signal a return to the disastrous "hollowing out" policies of the '90s... [snip]
President Obama will use moderate rhetoric [and the cover of a fawning press] to cloak radical actions on the domestic front, and a return to Carterism abroad.
The unaligned voters of America thought they might be electing a post-partisan, post-ideological president but already know --and will learn again and again-- that what they actually got was a hard left ideologue with a wonderful reading voice.
Bait-and-switch has never gone over very well with Americans...
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TAXING ERRORS
The White House said Monday it wants to "detect and pursue" tax 'evaders', while closing tax 'loopholes' and 'shutting off' overseas tax shelters. And to police it all, it wants to hire another 800 new IRS agents. Under the plan:
- Companies would no longer be able to write off some expenses in the United States on profits they make overseas.
- Nor would they be able to reinvest offshore earnings overseas -- a practice which, some claim, totals $700 billion or more in earnings kept abroad.
- Most of the jobs U.S. companies create overseas are not highly skilled jobs.
- Yet, the profits our firms make overseas help us to maintain the managerial and skilled positions here in the United States.
The plan will no doubt have mass appeal, but it will backfire, and badly.
It's a recipe for low wages and bad jobs here in the United States.
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GLOBAL WARMING ON THE ROCKS
It turns out the world has acted very quickly indeed, as Germany's Radio Bremen reports:
- The research aircraft "Polar 5" concluded its Arctic expedition in Canada.
- During the flight, researchers measured the current ice thickness at the North Pole and in areas that have never before been surveyed.
- The sea-ice in the surveyed areas is apparently thicker than scientists had suspected.
- Normally, newly formed ice measures some two meters in thickness after two years.
- In the surveyed area, scientists measured ice thickness up to four meters.
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Examiner Editorial: Politicians shun facts, blow hot air on climate change
[Yes, that Examiner...]
Former Vice President Al Gore’s appearance on Capitol Hill on Friday capped four days of testimony that elevated climate alarmism over sound science. Unfortunately, compliant news media allow Gore’s bloviating to obscure the “inconvenient truths” that would greatly unsettle his eco-political agenda.
Federal legislators are now poised to move forward with punitive anti-emissions schemes such as cap-and-trade that ignore important and highly relevant new studies. These studies indicate that astronomical influences, not man-made emissions, may be largely to blame for any warming or cooling trends on Earth.
Moreover, the whole idea of “global warming” is now in serious doubt.
Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., is among the many scientists who now think the planet has entered into a cooling cycle that could persist for decades...
[But it was never about climate.]
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GETTING REAL ON WIND AND SOLAR
[HT:RT]
Both are intermittent electric power generators; they cannot produce electricity "on demand." Nevertheless, solar and wind energy seem to have captured Washington's support as potentially being the primary or total answer to our electric power needs.
Solar and wind electricity systems must be backed up 100 percent by other forms of generation to ensure against blackouts; that power comes only from fossil fuels.
Because of this need for full fossil fuel backup, the public will pay a large premium for solar and wind and again for fossil fuel; thus, the total cost of such a system includes the cost of the solar and wind machines, their subsidies, AND the cost of the full backup power system running in "spinning reserve."
Moreover, since solar and wind conditions are most favorable in the Southwest and the center of the country, costly transmission lines will be needed to move that lower-cost solar and wind energy to population centers on the coasts. Consequently, solar and wind will probably only provide a modest percentage of future U.S. power.
Meaning that some serious realism in energy planning is needed, preferably from analysts who are not backing one horse or another...
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'60 Minutes' Promotes $27-Billion Leftist 'Fraud' Efforts Against Chevron
[Meanwhile, in our 'professional' media...]
When $27 billion is at stake, some companies would pay big bucks to win a PR battle, but one side of an environmental lawsuit doesn't have to, since CBS is pushing its position for free.
On CBS's May 3 "60 Minutes," correspondent Scott Pelley, who once compared global-warming skepticism to Holocaust denial, gave the plaintiff of a $27-billion frivolous lawsuit against Chevron a public relations victory with his report.
Pelley's report featured a suit filed by the Amazon Defense Coalition, a group described as "eco-radicals," who are trying to squeeze $27 billion from Chevron for environmental cleanup that the nation's government signed off on more than a decade ago. Pelley described ADC as working on behalf of 30,000 villagers, although there are only 48 named plaintiffs, to win funds for so-called environmental damage in Ecuador's rain forest from then-Texaco Petroleum's (Texpet) operation of oil well sites.
Pelley gave a heavily one-sided report and featured six individuals who had a stake in the outcome against Chevron, versus just one spokeswoman for the defendant - Silvia Garrigo, Chevron's manager of global issues and policy.
Throughout Pelley's account, footage was shown that included at least 13 images of currently polluted pits, none of which were Texaco-remediated sites, but weren't attributed to PetroEcuador either. According to Campbell, the polluted sites Pelley featured were PetroEcuador's Lago Agrio 5 and one of the Shushufindi sites.
Pelley left out everything from huge problems in the Ecuadorian courts to the close ties the lead attorney has with a prominent former U.S. senator - President Barack Obama...
[The show stopped being credible decade's ago]
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Court rules for immigrant in ID theft case
Washington- The Supreme Court has ruled that an undocumented immigrant who uses a phony Social Security number to get work should not be considered an identity thief unless prosecutors can prove he knew the number belonged to a real person.
The court ruled unanimously Monday in favor of Ignacio Carlos Flores-Figueroa, an undocumented worker from Mexico, who was given an additional two years in prison for aggravated identity theft...
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Immigration Confusion
CALIFORNIA
How serious a crime should it take to get an illegal alien deported?
On April 1, officers assigned to the LAPD’s 77th Street Division in South Central L.A. arrested 27 people for illegal street vending. Sixteen of them were determined to be illegal aliens, and they were reported to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The ICE agents placed immigration holds on the 16, initiating the process for deporting them upon disposition of the local charges. The notification to ICE was made with the full knowledge of the officers’ chain of command.
But soon alarm bells were ringing in the mayor’s and city council’s offices, in the local Spanish-language media, and finally in various offices of the LAPD. Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz, who heads the LAPD’s Central Bureau and therefore has no line authority over the South Bureau’s 77th Street Division, circumvented the chain of command and ordered the 16 illegal aliens released on their own recognizance. The other 11 arrestees, all of whom were citizens or legal U.S. residents, received no such consideration and had to make bail or remain in custody until their court appearances.
It may not surprise you to learn it was Diaz who was promoted to deputy chief after the May Day troubles of 2007.
In the wake of all this, some LAPD officers are asking their superiors for clarified guidelines on when illegal-alien arrestees should be reported to ICE. Clearly, Mayor Villaraigosa and his sycophants in the LAPD want to restrict such notifications to only the most serious of offenders. In fact, in an e-mail sent out to some officers in the LAPD’s South Bureau last week, Commander Andrew Smith, the assistant commanding officer for the bureau, said the subject of ICE notification had come up in a recent senior staff meeting.“The direction given by [Chief William Bratton] is that we call ICE only on the following cases: 1) Violent felony arrestees, and 2) Gang members arrested for felony charges.”
Perhaps the mayor and the police chief will find time to inform the law-abiding residents of Los Angeles — even otherwise law-abiding illegal aliens — what benefit might be derived from letting criminal illegal aliens escape deportation and remain among them. Many LAPD officers would be keen to hear their explanation...
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The Decline and Fall of Private Education
There's something the U.S. government doesn't want you to know. And it's come out again in the new Heritage Foundation report on education. It conveys that the general public is increasingly dissatisfied with public schools, with a rising number opting for private education.
The report explains that during the 2007 and 2008 legislative sessions, 44 states introduced school-choice legislation. And in 2008, choices for private school were enacted into law or expanded in Arizona, Utah, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Pennsylvania. Today 14 states and the District of Columbia offer voucher or education tax-credit programs that aid parents with sending their children to private schools.
But that may be short-lived... [snip]
So its [D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program] cancellation is not a result of costing too much, because it's half the price of public schooling. And it's not because of inferior quality, because the kids enrolled in the program were scoring higher than students in regular schools. There's only one reason Congress canceled it, and it comes down to this: federal control and educational indoctrination...[snip]
The reason that government is cracking down on private instruction has more to do with suppressing alternative education than assuring educational standards. The rationale is quite simple, though rarely if ever stated: control future generations and you control the future. So rather than letting parents be the primary educators of their children -- directly or by education choice -- government wants to deny parental rights, establish an educational monopoly run by the state, and limit private education options.
It is so simple any socialist can understand it. As Joseph Stalin once stated,'Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed'...
Is it merely coincidental that the private choice and home schooling was outlawed by the Soviet state in 1919, by Hitler and Nazi Germany in 1938, and by Communist China in 1949?
Parents deserve educational choices; choice is what this country was founded upon. Anything less is insulting to our republic, whose Founders created a system of freedom, choice and minimal government intervention.
[Defend it or lose it.]
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NY Times Fails to Report on Maersk Alabama Captain's Call to Arm Crews
[Tricks of the trade...]
Yesterday I forecasted that by and large the mainstream media would paper over or outright ignore the testimony of Captain Richard Phillips. The commanding officer of the MV Maersk Alabama told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that arming senior officers on merchant ships should be part of a larger anti-piracy policy that includes beefed up U.S. Navy patrols and escorts. Also testifying, Maersk chairman John Clancey disagreed with his employee about arming the civilian sailors.
"Nevertheless, I do believe that arming the crew, as part of an overall strategy, could provide an effective deterrent under certain circumstances and I believe that a measured capability in this respect should be part of the overall debate about how to defend ourselves against criminals on the sea. " -- Capt. Phillips
Well today, that newspaper which touts itself as bearing "all the news that's fit to print" failed to include a story on the testimony by the former Somali pirate hostage. That's right, the New York Times failed to even carry an Associated Press wire story, according to a search of the New York Times Web site for content published between April 30 and May 1 that mentions "Richard Phillips." A similar scouring of the print edition's A-section confirmed that the paper didn't carry the story.
[The most prevalent bias: spin by omission, and sailors being able to defend themselves is definitely off the Left-message-line...]
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Obama Official: 'At the White House, We Love MSNBC'
Such occurred at the Atlantic Council Awards Dinner hosted by "Morning Joe"'s Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski.
After they introduced special assistant to President Obama for the arts and culture Kareem Dale, he began (video embedded below the fold, relevant section at 1:50, h/t Hot Air):
Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you for that great introduction. At the White House, as we always like to say, we love MSNBC.
What kind of a thrill will this news give Chris Matthews?
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Go Right, GOP
The Republican Party is at its best when its leadership has a bold vision and is rooted to conservative principles: personal responsibility, liberty, limited government, traditional values, providing for the common defense, and optimism about the future. But Republicans seem to have lost the ability to intelligently or ideologically define these principles and convey them to the American people. [snip]
Go on offense, engage and educate: Yes, Virginia, someone in Washington is fighting for you. And when Republicans stay on offense and engage, then it garners attention and provides opportunities to educate every American on conservative solutions that work. Look no further than the Energy Revolt on the floor of the House of Representatives this past August which gave Republicans a needed voice and identity. [snip]
Reclaim the American lexicon: Democrats have been successful in altering the mindset of what made this nation great through language and institutions. Once, Americans valued "responsibility," "self-determination," and "hard work." Now, these ideals have been replaced by fuzzy appeals to "diversity," "fairness," and "social justice." No longer can Republicans cede the language or institutions...
[I.e., fight.]
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Top Dems rebel on Specter
Senior Senate Democrats are objecting to the deal Majority Leader Harry Reid made with Sen. Arlen Specter, saying they will vote against letting the former Republican shoot to the top of powerful committees after he switches parties.
Several Democrats are furious with Sen. Reid (D-Nev.) for agreeing to let Specter (Pa.) keep his seniority, accrued over more than 28 years as a GOP senator. That agreement would allow Specter to leap past senior Democrats on powerful panels — including the Appropriations and Judiciary committees...
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