Thursday, May 14, 2009
Pressure mounts for Pelosi waterboarding probe
[HT:MW]
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is sticking to her story that she did not know the CIA was using waterboarding on terror suspects even as key Republicans cast doubt on her claims and members of her own Democratic leadership are calling for a full airing of the intelligence briefings she received.
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THE PELOSI RECORD
A new poll has found that most young Americans who went to the polls on November 4th, and presumably voted for Barack Obama, had no idea that the Democrats have run Congress the last two years. That's a good thing for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, because her record is as bad as any new Speaker's in history, says Stephen Moore, an economics writer for the Wall Street Journal.
Two years ago Speaker Pelosi solemnly pledged a new ethic of fiscal responsibility if voters would empower her with the Speaker's gavel:
- Instead the federal budget deficit has soared from $165 billion in fiscal year 2007 to $486 billion in 2008 and could reach $1 trillion in 2009.
- Meanwhile, routine federal spending has risen by $400 billion in two years -- a figure that does not include the cost of the three federal banking bailouts, and counting.
[who could have seen that coming?]
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Reaction to the President
Republicans, unlike the Left, are reacting to the president’s flip-flop on the photos with restraint. Sen. Mitch McConnell put out a brief statement,
“I agree with the President that the release of these photos would serve no purpose other than to put our troops in greater danger. The President made the right decision and I applaud him for it."
Of course the meltdown on the Left is well underway. The cognitive dissonance is reaching new heights. An example: a devoted reader of the maternity expert of the Atlantic passes on this curious post in which the final italicized sentence was later deleted without explanation:
"From extending and deepening the war in Afghanistan, to suppressing evidence of rampant and widespread abuse and torture of prisoners under Bush, to thuggishly threatening the British with intelligence cut-off if they reveal the brutal torture inflicted on Binyam Mohamed, Obama now has new cheer-leaders: Bill Kristol, Michael Goldfarb and Max Boot. Yep: that’s why he was elected — to continue, deepen and protect the legacy of George W. Bush."
Tomorrow is always another day, and perhaps Obama will throw some bones to the frothing Left once again. But maybe, just maybe, the president has figured out that wrecking our defenses to score points with the netroot base is a poor modus operandi for the commander-in-chief...
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Partisan Pentagon
Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ sweeping gag order prohibiting senior military officers from discussing the 2010 defense budget is raising fears of politicizing the Pentagon.
Six Republican House members wrote to Gates on May 5, saying his requirement that generals, admirals and senior civilians sign a non-disclosure agreement seems so broad the signers may withhold candid testimony on Capitol Hill.
The letter comes amid a disclosure of another apparent politicization of the Pentagon. Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, (D-Mi), sent a letter to Gates on February 2 asking that the Defense Department Inspector General 're-do' a January report that cleared the Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon of any wrongdoing in providing briefings some 70 retired military TV analysts.
Gates relayed the letter to the acting inspector general, and subsequently the IG report was withdrawn... [snip]
Taken separately, the gag order and the IG report do-over are troubling at least. Together, they may signal an unprecedented politicization of the Pentagon including the professional military leadership and the independent-by-law inspector general.
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One-fourth of overseas votes go uncounted
One out of every four ballots requested by military personnel and other Americans living overseas for the 2008 election may have gone uncounted, according to findings being released at a Senate hearing Wednesday.
Sen. Charles Schumer, chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, said the study, while providing only a snapshot of voting patterns, "is enough to show that the balloting process for service members is clearly in need of an overhaul."
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[The obvious answer is internet voting - but we've a political party determined to block any & all voting reform.]
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Understanding Iran's Deterrence Game
As it keeps making its case for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel isn't being very subtle: Iran will have a nuclear bomb, possibly as early as this year, its leaders suggest; Iran's leadership is suicidal — it will drop a nuclear bomb on Israel given the opportunity.
So how, the Israelis then ask, can we not afford to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, as we did Iraq's in 1981?
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IAF practicing MIG-29/F-16 dogfights
Israel Air Force test pilots are flying MIG 29 jets and conducting dogfights against the IAF's F-16 fighters, Channel 2 revealed Wednesday evening.
The MIG 29, developed by the soviets in the 1970s, is one of the best fighter jets used by eastern and Arab countries, as well as by Syria and Iran. It was developed to counter American-made jets such the F-16 or F/A-18.
The jets were loaned to Israel by an unnamed foreign country. The experiment is meant to prepare IAF pilots for missions where they might have to fight a foreign air-force.An additional experiment conducted recently by the air force involved loading an F-16 with weapons to its utmost capacity, or "flight in a heavy formation," as the test pilot labeled it. The experiment was meant to measure the pilot's safety and the fighter's capability when it was carrying the maximum amount of armaments.
A jet so armed might be used in a long-distance sortie. The pilots interviewed would not name which foreign countries might be the targets of such sorties, but it was clear the main target of such an ambitious mission would be Iran's nuclear installations.
[Israel will not allow Iran to go nuclear. Any planning based on such a possibility is dangerous fantasy.]
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Unrequited Love: Evangelicals and Jews
Who would have thought that the key to battling the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Obama's United States lies in these words: "Jesus loves me! This I know, For the Bible tells me so."
The children of Evangelical Christians sing this hymn in bible schools across the country, reflecting belief in a life lived according to the will of God as revealed in the bible. No moral relativism here: on the one hand, God-honoring living, and the other, sin and defiance. Right and wrong -- it is that simple. And it is this biblical view of the world that underlies the unwavering Evangelical Christian support of Israel and Judaism. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has noted, Israel and the Jews "have no greater friends and allies" than the 70-million strong Evangelical Christian community in the United States -- better friends, in fact, than much of the American Jewish Community.
Worldview -- influenced by the Judeo-Christian values underlying scripture -- has relentlessly led Evangelicals to the conclusion that the work-in-progress known as Israel deserves support in a region where thuggery, terror, and misogyny are status quo. Emphasizing individual value and righteous living, the Israelis possess a moral clarity that has allowed them to build a democracy that ranks sixth out of 35 democratic countries in fairness, similar to the United States. American Evangelicals recognize this, partly counterbalancing the suicidal support a significant portion of the Jewish community provides to a Democratic Party that allies itself with those who wish to eliminate Jews, both foreign and domestic.
One measure of the power of this support is the lengths to which leftists have gone to create a chasm between Evangelicals and Israel...
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GOING NOWHERE FAST
President Obama has promised an $8-billion federal investment in high-speed rail, plus $5 billion more over the next five years. That's just $13 billion in all, and for that, Obama promises to start building ten different rail corridors, each between 100 and 600 miles long.
It sounds lovely, but before you go to sleep with visions of bullet trains dancing in your head, it's worth examining the numbers more closely:
- Any real-life high-speed rail system on the scale Obama is promising would be vastly more expensive than the $13 billion he has committed.
- In fact, it would require close to half of the $787 billion contained in his recently passed stimulus package.
- In the past decade, Taiwan built a single 215-mile high-speed passenger route for $15 billion.
- Germany, France, and Italy, often cited as advanced railroad nations, subsidize their rail systems heavily: Between 1995 and 2003, Germany spent $104 billion on subsidies, France spent $75 billion, and Italy spent $64 billion, according to a 2008 study by Amtrak's inspector general.
- Rail ridership in Europe far outpaces that in the United States, but in spite of these huge subsidies, trains have lost a significant portion of their market share to automobiles since 1980.
[People prefer cars - they're just an affection of the affluent. Oops, forgot: Americans are supposed to restrict our life style so other nations will like us more. {Me, I'll keep my cars.}]
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Socialism and Secularism Suck Vitality Out of Society
Outside of politics, sports, and popular entertainment, how many living Germans, or French, or Austrians, or even Brits can you name?
Even well-informed people who love art and literature and who follow developments in science and medicine would be hard pressed to come up with many, more often any, names. In terms of greatness in literature, art, music, the sciences, philosophy, and medical breakthroughs, Europe has virtually fallen off the radar screen.
What has happened?
What has happened is that Europe, with a few exceptions, has lost its creativity, intellectual excitement, industrial innovation, and risk taking. Europe’s creative energy has been sapped. There are many lovely Europeans; but there aren’t many creative, dynamic, or entrepreneurial ones.
The issues that preoccupy most Europeans are overwhelmingly material ones: How many hours per week will I have to work? How much annual vacation time will I have? How many social benefits can I preserve (or increase)? How can my country avoid fighting against anyone or for anyone?
Why has this happened?
There are two reasons: secularism and socialism (aka the welfare state). Either one alone sucks much of the life out of society. Together they are likely to be lethal...
[VERY Highly Recommended > ]
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AIG CEO: Insurance Giant Remains Toxic After $180B Bailout
More than $180 billion later, AIG is still a toxic economic site. That's what American International Group Inc. Chief Executive Edward Liddy told a House panel Wednesday, saying the insurance giant has reduced but not eliminated the risk its failure poses to the global economy despite getting more than $180 billion in federal bailout aid...
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Feds are broke but keep right on spending
There is a cleverly constructed sentence in the AP report about the 2009 budget deficit being $89 billion higher than expected, which will raise the projected annual deficit to $1.8 trillion, or nearly four times as much as the previous record. Here’s how AP explained it:“The unprecedented red ink flows from the deep recession, the Wall Street bailout, the cost of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus bill, as well as a structural imbalance between what the government spends and what it takes in (emphasis added).”
In sports journalism, such a sentence is called covering for the home team, which in this case includes the present and previous White House occupants and the present majority in Congress.
The two key words in that sentence are “structural imbalance.” Sounds like something beyond the ability of mere mortals to change, doesn’t it? Part of the natural order, kind of like the swine flu. It just happens. Out in the real world beyond Washington, “structural imbalance” means:
Washington politicians are on a spending rampage the likes of which has never before been seen anywhere in human history.
The spenders include President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, plus a supporting cast of bureaucrats like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his predecessor, Henry Paulson, and the Democratic majorities in the Senate and House.
These officials are terminally afflicted with what Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, calls “federal spending disease” (FSD) an incurable addiction in which the sufferer is utterly unable to stop spending other people’s money.
An intervention by voters is the only effective treatment...
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Business Leaders Worry Obama Has it in for Them
Another week, another assault on business-as-usual by President Obama. Or is it, as some critics are starting to wonder, an assault on business, as usual?
This time, Obama took aim at offshore tax havens, announcing a drive against corporations and wealthy Americans who avoid U.S. taxes by putting their money overseas.
He is seeking new tax laws, more-stringent reporting requirements, and the hiring of 800 new agents for the Internal Revenue Service...
[But never ask what our businesses need a haven from...
I.e., it's our tax rates, stupid.]
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The Coming Ice Age
For ninety percent of the last million years, the normal state of the Earth's climate has been an ice age. Ice ages last about 100,000 years, and are punctuated by short periods of warm climate, or interglacials. The last ice age started about 114,000 years ago. It began instantaneously. For a hundred-thousand years, temperatures fell and sheets of ice a mile thick grew to envelop much of North America, Europe and Asia. The ice age ended nearly as abruptly as it began. Between about 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, the temperature in Greenland rose more than 50 °F.
The climate of the ice ages is documented in the ice layers of Greenland and Antarctica. We have cored these layers, extracted them, and studied them in the laboratory. Not only were ice ages colder than today, but the climates were considerably more variable. Compared to the norm of the last million years, our climate is remarkably warm, stable and benign. During the last ice age in Greenland abrupt climatic swings of 30 °F were common. Since the ice age ended, variations of 3 °F are uncommon.
For thousands of years, people have learned from experience that cold temperatures are detrimental for human welfare and warm temperatures are beneficial. From about 1300 to 1800 AD, the climate cooled slightly during a period known as the Little Ice Age. In Greenland, the temperature fell by about 4 °F. Although trivial, compared to an ice age cooling of 50 °F, this was nevertheless sufficient to wipe out the Viking colony there and kicked off with the Great European Famine of 1315.
Global warming predictions by meteorologists are based on speculative, untested, and poorly constrained computer models. In this case, it would be perspicacious to listen to the geologists, not the meteorologists. By reducing our production of carbon dioxide, we risk hastening the advent of the next ice age. Even more foolhardy and dangerous is the Obama administration's announcement that they may try to cool the planet through geoengineering. Such a move in the middle of a cooling trend could provoke the irreversible onset of an ice age. It is not hyperbole to state that such a climatic change would mean the end of human civilization as we know it.
Earth's climate is controlled by the Sun. In comparison, every other factor is trivial. The coldest part of the Little Ice Age during the latter half of the seventeenth century was marked by the nearly complete absence of sunspots. And the Sun now appears to be entering a new period of quiescence. August of 2008 was the first month since the year 1913 that no sunspots were observed. As I write, the sun remains quiet. We are in a cooling trend. The areal extent of global sea ice is above the twenty-year mean.
We have heard much of the dangers of global warming due to carbon dioxide. But the potential danger of any potential anthropogenic warming is trivial compared to the risk of entering a new ice age. Public policy decisions should be based on a realistic appraisal that takes both climate scenarios into consideration.
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EPA's greenhouse gas ruling criticized within the government
In ruling last month that greenhouse gases posed health and safety risks, the Environmental Protection Agency brushed aside warnings from Bush administration holdovers who said the move was "likely to have serious economic consequences" for small businesses and the economy overall, according to documents obtained Tuesday.
Questioning EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in a committee hearing Tuesday, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) called the memos"a smoking gun, saying that your findings were political and not scientific."
Obama administration officials said the warnings, contained in memos from the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, didn't reflect current White House policy, and dismissed the dissent as reflecting the Bush administration's long-standing position on climate change and"the work of someone who didn't get the memo that the old administration has come to an end"
[Now there's an argument based on science and not politics.]
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Stress Testing Biofuels: How the Game Was Rigged
The draft conclusions announced by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lisa Jackson were that cellulosic ethanol and other next-generation renewables will dramatically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions over their entire life cycle, but that in some scenarios, corn ethanol (as well as lesser-used soy biodiesel) can produce even more emissions than gasoline. At a hearing after the announcement, House Agriculture Committee chairman Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat, accused the EPA of attacking corn and soybean farmers."You're going to kill off the biofuels industry before it even gets started," ... "You are in bed with the oil industry!"
It's hard to see how. Earlier studies exposed corn ethanol as a carbon catastrophe; the EPA had to use extremely generous assumptions to produce scenarios in which it's even remotely attractive as a fuel alternative. In any case, the heavily subsidized corn-ethanol industries won't really be penalized for promoting deforestation; Congress exempted its existing plants from any consequences in the 2007.
At her May 5 news conference with Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsac announced that the Obama administration plans to push the auto industry to make flex-fuel vehicles that run on 85% ethanol blends — and since ethanol plants have been slammed by a combination of high corn prices, the rise of cleaner technologies and the lousy economy, Washington will increase its subsidies.
In other words: O.K., O.K., it might imperil the planet, but fortunately we can't do anything to stop it, and we actually plan to encourage it.
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HOW OBAMACARE WILL AFFECT YOUR DOCTOR
At the heart of President Barack Obama's health-care plan is an insurance program funded by taxpayers, administered by Washington, and open to everyone. Modeled on Medicare, this "public option" will soon become the single dominant health plan, which is its political purpose.
Republicans and Democrats agree that the government's Medicare scheme for compensating doctors is deeply flawed. Yet Obama's plan for a centrally managed government insurance program exacerbates Medicare's problems by redistributing even more income away from lower-paid primary care providers and misaligning doctors' financial incentives:
- Like Medicare, the "public option" will control spending by using its purchasing clout and political leverage to dictate low prices to doctors (Medicare pays doctors 20 percent to 30 percent less than private plans, on average).
- While the public option is meant for the uninsured, employers will realize it's easier -- and cheaper -- to move employees into the government plan than continue workplace coverage.
- Enrollment in the public option will reach 131 million people if it's open to everyone and pays Medicare rates, as many expect.
- Fully two-thirds of the privately insured will move out of or lose coverage.
For example, doctors will face expenses to deploy pricey electronic prescribing tools and computerized health records that are mandated under the Obama plan...
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What you eat is everybody’s business in the Nanny State
New York City “health czar” Thomas Frieden has committed to removing forcibly almost half of the salt from New Yorkers’ diets. And Gov. David Paterson has announced that his new War on Obesity will begin with the statewide expansion of New York City’s trans-fat ban. If Paterson succeeds, margarine and shortening will become contraband everywhere food is sold in the Empire State.
Show me a study touting the health benefits of a low-sodium diet, and I’ll show you another concluding that it could actually increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and other health problems. It seems that for every Ph.D, there’s an equal and opposite Ph.D.
Rather than banning saturated fats, trans fats, salt, food dyes, corn syrup, canned tuna or some other supposed flavor-of-the-month food demon, health authorities should do everything they can to educate consumers about food-related risks to our health that are scientifically proven. And then leave us alone.
And remember: There’s no such thing as “secondhand fat"...
[Incorrect: when we're on government run health care and everyone is paying for everyone else's 'care', we'll ALL have the 'right' to worry about what everyone else eats.
Won't that be grand.]
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Reid open to fast-tracking health overhaul
Majority Leader Harry Reid indicated Wednesday he's willing to move sweeping health care legislation through the Senate with a procedural maneuver that would block a GOP filibuster.
The prospect of the controversial tactic has already ignited Republicans' ire, and key Senate Democratic chairmen have said they don't want to do it.
Reid, D-Nev., took a different position on a conference call with reporters. "I think it's something we need to consider," Reid said.
[Democracy? We don't need no stinking democracy.]
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[Then ACT >
"Oppose government run healthcare"
Obama transition http://www.change.gov/page/s/contact
Your Congressman https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
Your Senator http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
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Obama, Pelosi Again Push Amnesty for Illegals
Despite surveys showing that 75 percent of U.S. citizens are against providing amnesty, President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled House will push a system to make 12 [20] million illegal aliens residing in the United States legal, a senior official in the Obama administration tells The New York Times.
Obama is making comprehensive immigration legislation, including the plan to make illegal aliens legal, a priority in his first year in office. The plan, which Obama will reveal publicly in May, reportedly will provide off-the-cuff amnesty and a legalization path for illegal aliens.
Legislation on immigration reform is expected as early as this fall...
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WaPo Paints Obama Plan to Kill D.C. Vouchers as 'Middle Way on a Contentious Issue'
President Obama is proposing a measure today to slowly kill the D.C. school voucher program by attrition. Because the liberal National Education Association wants Congress to immediately kill the program, the Washington Post's Bill Turque and Shailagh Murray hailed Obama's plan as "an attempt to navigate a middle way on a contentious issue."
Phasing out the program affords no long-term way to assess the benefits of the voucher program, and killing the program by attrition means Obama might dodge criticism from African-American supporters who are pro-voucher. After all, he's moderate on the issue compared to liberals who want to dump the program straight away.
But "navigat[ing] a middle way" seems like Obama PR, not objective reporting.
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'Old South' frat targeted over Confederate event
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A white fraternity that traces its roots to the Civil War and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is again facing complaints over its antebellum-themed events.
The fraternity has been forced to halt its "Old South" festivities on some campuses because of claims of racial insensitivity, and Alabama members have apologized for pausing in front of Alpha Kappa Alpha's sorority house during this year's parade.
Alpha Kappa Alpha members said there was no confrontation or taunting, but they were shocked to see fraternity members in rebel uniforms and white women from another sorority in hoop skirts."I don't believe these young folks were in any way trying to be racist, but they were being insensitive"
[America? Where some now have the 'right' to never be offended {even if the 'offense' isn't intended but inferred}?]
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Ethics Complaints Against Palin Dismissed; Sun Rises In East
When it comes to having ethics complaints dismissed, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is now batting 1000 — 11 down, 3 to go. (I originally had it batting .785, but she's actually 11 for 11 with three at-bats remaining.)
[Heard of any of these dismissals in the MSM?]
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Matt Lauer is the male version of Oprah
Matt Lauer of NBC’s “Today” show has become the male version of Oprah Winfrey...
[No kidding.]
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