Thursday, May 28, 2009
The case against Sotomayor's confirmation
[HT:NE]
As she accepted President Obama's offer to ascend to the United States Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor's compelling life story was on proper display.
President Obama has, unfortunately, given us exactly what he promised, a nominee who allows feelings and personal agendas to color her judicial temperament...
[We know this because she's {repeatedly} told us so.]
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Sotomayor Prompts More 'Conservative' Than 'Liberal' Labels
Amazingly, after showing no reluctance in 2005 to describe John Roberts and Sam Alito as “conservative” or worse, the Tuesday network evening newscasts, particularly ABC and NBC, applied more “conservative” tags to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's critics than “liberal” labels to her, as the coverage suggested calling her a liberal was a hasty judgment from accusatory partisans.
In total, ABC's World News and the NBC Nightly News combined for a piddling two uses of the “liberal” term while issuing a “conservative” tag eight times.
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Defeating a Hitler with nukes: Nothing else matters
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May 25, 2009: Kim Jong-Il explodes his first full-sized nuclear bomb . This day shall live in infamy.
North Korea helped build a secret nuclear power plant in Syria, which was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 2007 while the CIA was still asleep. North Korea sells nuclear and missile technology to Iran and Pakistan. Kim can easily sell his nuclear Bomb in the Middle East; today his bomb also threatens Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China.
Four days ago, Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee:"I'm one who believes that Iran getting a nuclear weapon is calamitous for the region and for the world ... neighbors ... (who) feel exposed, deficient (will) then develop or buy the capability themselves ... (it) is absolutely disastrous."
Like it or not, we are being dragged into the Second Age of Nuclear Terror.
Nothing else matters now.
All of Obama's foreign policy advisers believe in cringing to tyrants. They think we just haven't been nice enough to malignant regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang. That isn't even for grown-ups; it should have been left behind long ago in summer camp. But Bill Clinton's SecState Madeleine Albright 
was photographed toasting Kim Jong Il, the pudgy tyrant of North Korea, who starved a million of his own people to death to divert resources to a gigantic army and nuclear program. For his part, Obama has already bowed down abjectly, in public, to the medieval King of Saudi Arabia. The symbolism is unmistakable.
Those two iconic photos capture the Left's understanding of international danger. Nobody who is so completely ignorant can ever be charged with protecting our national welfare. But here they are again.
The current administration has pretty much ruled out preemption: The Iraq War was too costly. What else can we do?
The second rational strategy is anti-missile defense.
But the SecDef just announced 1.4 billion dollars in cutbacks to our missile defense program...
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North Korea Issues Heated Warning to South
North Korea announced Wednesday that it is no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War, the latest and most profound diplomatic aftershock from the country's latest nuclear test two days earlier.
North Korea also warned that it would respond "with a powerful military strike" should its ships be stopped by international forces trying to stop the export of missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
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Obama N. Korea Options May Be Limited by Regime Shift
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[Really. Idea; aggressively fund and deploy our BMD technology in the region, and assist Japan in developing counter nuclear capability.
The former will get NKorea's attention, and the latter China's {which is how NKorea's controlled}]
OR we can work toward another strongly worded UN resolution. How have they been working?]
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Calling World Police
I know Iraq was supposed to have compromised America’s standing as a formidable global power, but it sure doesn’t look that way:“If North Korea stages a provocation, we will respond resolutely,” the South Korean military said in a statement, reacting to the North’s threats. Citing a “strong” military alliance with the United States, it said, “We advise our people to trust our military’s solid readiness and feel safe.”
Does citing a strong military alliance with the Unites States still put one’s enemies on notice or is it a nostalgic reference (Mikheil Saakashvili is ready with an answer right about now)? That’s up to Barack Obama. South Korea just grabbed a number and got in line behind all of Eastern Europe, India, Israel, and Japan."It’s been a fun four months, but it sure is starting to look like the planet needs the U.S. to police the world.”
[Actually, it's not as if no one would fill the void - it's who: Russia and China.]
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What's Wrong With These Pictures?
President Obama met the Saudi King, the President of Venezuela and the Prime Minister of Israel, with pictures provided below. The three countries represented in the pictures agreed with the US in UN votes 86.4% of the time, 9.0% and 6.3%. Can you match these percentages to the countries represented?
- Obama meets Saudi King.
- Obama meets Hugo Chavez
- Obama meets Bibi
Answers: Israel voted with the US 86.4% of the time in the UN in 2007. Saudi Arabia agreed 9% of the time. Venezuela agreed 6.3% of the time.
Israel's agreement percentage is the highest of all countries voting in the UN.
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Barak urges US for Arrow 3 funding
Defense Minister Ehud Barak met Thursday with a US congressional delegation and urged them to help Israel secure funding for the development and production of the Arrow 3 ballistic missile defense system.
Israel is concerned that the US administration will cut the funding for the Arrow 3 in the context of the cuts Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made to the US defense budget...
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Geithner Calls for ‘Very Substantial’ Change in Wall Street Pay
-- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called for an overhaul of compensation practices at [private] financial companies and said the Obama administration’s plan to help realign pay with performance will be rolled out by mid-June.“I don’t think we can go back to the way it was ... We’re going to need to see very, very substantial change.”
He said that Wall Street’s pay practices encouraged taking on short-term risk, and helped precipitate the financial crisis. What’s needed is a set of broad standards that federal regulators can use to make sure that doesn’t happen again...
[Chilling: they're talking about government regulating the pay practices of private business - and later in the piece, rules that will have the government "police risk".
Credit markets are in the business, globally competitive business, of managing risk. Does anyone really think the government will do a better job than private sector professional actuaries?
The only way to get an answer other than 'of course not', is to buy into the first misdirection on which their canard is based that it was the current pay practices that 'helped precipitate' the crisis.
They likely had a minor role, but one which pales in comparison to the government's interference in mortgage lending that was the primary progenitor and what truly caused the first and largest domino to fall.
And once the government successfully sets its 'pay for performance' standards in the financial sector, can any (every) other sector be far behind? {think: health care}.
This is dread, it should be refused.]
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Corporatism comes to America
With each passing day of the Obama administration, the battle of individualism versus collectivism is further engaged. Many of us pushing back against the trend are finding it hard to label where we're headed as a nation. Here's why.
Obama is borrowing the worst elements from the two greatest economic catastrophes of the 20th Century: fascism and socialism. Consequently, we're moving further away, every day, from the most successful economic system in the history of humankind: capitalism.
Meanwhile, a widely economically illiterate population, lulled into complacency by the affluence brought by capitalism, has forgotten the lessons of the past as the fall of the Berlin Wall fades away in our collective rearview mirror. Slow to awakening to the change underway, it will be a fait accompli by the time our alarms go off...
[Recommended > ]
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MILLIONAIRES GO MISSING
In 2008, Maryland was unable to balance its budget, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25 percent. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45 percent. Gov. Martin O'Malley declared that these richest 0.3 percent of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share."
A year later, nobody's grinning, says the Wall Street Journal:
- One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls.
- In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April; this year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline."
- On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25 percent of nothing.
- Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.
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SECRET ASSAULT
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Everyone should closely read today’s Washington Post story on the value-added tax, or VAT.
The cat is now out of the bag.
For months I have argued that Team Obama and the Democratic Congress were going to be forced to consider a VAT in order to pay for their extravagant spending.
Now borrowing almost 50 cents on every new dollar spent, the Democrats will at some point begin to deal with the politics of deficit reduction as a way of countering Republican criticisms about deficit expansion.
And the VAT’s part of their answer.
Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad calls the VAT “fundamental tax reform,” and he argues for a VAT plus high-end income-tax hikes.
Now remember, this VAT tax would come on top of existing income, payroll, and business taxes. This is how the European countries and many others do it. And the VAT is a tax imposed more than once: again and again throughout the economic food chain, at all levels of production.
Most of the cumulative total finally ending up inside the consumer pocketbook, of course.
[A very, very bad idea, not only because of its ruineous costs but because, being a federal tax, all but eliminates tax competition by being a tax you can't move to another state to escape. We really don't want this - but as always, silence will be interpreted as consent - so... ]
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Then >
"OPPOSE ALL 'VAT' TAXES"
Whitehouse: mailto:president@whitehouse.gov
Senate-Reid: http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
House-Pelosi: http://speaker.house.gov/contact/
YOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
YOUR Congressman: https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...
and as always, pass it on...
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THE COMING FINANCIAL STORM
As of 2008:
- Social Security's unfunded liabilities stood at $13.6 trillion.
- Medicare's unfunded liabilities are more than $30 trillion.
- Medicaid, another severely underfunded and politically untouchable entitlement program, only adds to the total.
- The federal government's current entitlement bill, including future obligations-based only on promises it has made in the past -- is greater than $57 trillion.
"78 million people are going to stop working, stop paying taxes, stop paying into retirement programs and start drawing benefits. The problem is neither Social Security nor Medicare is ready for them. The federal government has made explicit and implicit promises to millions of people, but has put no money aside in order to keep those promises."
According to a recent forecast by the Congressional Budget Office -- an economic forecasting agency that is controlled by the Democrats in Congress -- shows that Medicare and Medicaid alone are going to crowd out everything else the federal government is doing by mid-century.
And that means everything-national defense, energy, education, the whole works. We'll only have health care, says Kinnaman.
[And this without Obamacare - add that in and everything accelerates. Brilliant.]
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Exploding debt threatens America
Standard and Poor’s decision to downgrade its outlook for British sovereign debt from “stable” to “negative” should be a wake-up call for the US Congress and administration. Let us hope they wake up.
Under President Barack Obama’s budget plan, the federal debt is exploding. To be precise, it is rising – and will continue to rise – much faster than gross domestic product, a measure of America’s ability to service it...
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Taxing Benefits For the First Time Ever
The New York Times reports that the Obama administration is considering taxing health care benefits. To the paper's credit, the lede notes just how thick the hypocrisy is on this:
Obama attacked McCain relentlessly during the campaign for proposing a health care reform that would have done the same thing, only it would have included a $5,000 tax credit to offset the change in policy...
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Obama’s Budget Chief Doesn't Know Total Cost of Obama's
Washington - Even President Obama’s budget chief doesn’t know how much it will eventually cost to enact the president’s vision of health-care reform. (Snip) Orszag described the $634 billion the administration built into the new budget over the next 10 years -- as a ''down payment'' for health reform. The former head of the Congressional Budget Office would only say that ''more'' money will be necessary as the administration works with Congress...
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NOT ENOUGH JOBS AND FAR TOO MANY UNIVERSITY PLACES
EDUCATION policy now amounts to a betrayal of young people.
For years the Governmentfed them the line that Britain needed ever increasing numbers of university graduates to meet the demands of a competitive new global market. In return for piling up massive debts they were promised well- paid, rewarding jobs that would reflect their qualifications.
But economic reality has dash ed such hope. The remorse less expansion in the number of university graduates over the last decade has not been matched by a commen surate growth in the number of graduate jobs - and that before the problem was compounded by storms of recession sweeping through the economy.
It was in 1999 that Tony Blair formally declared that the Government’s aim was for 50 per cent of all young people to go to university, But in many respects it has turned into a typically socialist measure that represents the worst of all worlds: subsidy and exploitation.
To meet the Government’s 50 per cent target, universities and colleges have undergone phenomenal expansion. The system now costs more than £20billion but the growth in quantity has been met by a decline in quality.
As one recent student with debts of £16,000 put it bitterly:
“All the companies I applied for didn’t even look at my degree grade but rather my experience. I despair at the money and time spent on my degree when it has got me absolutely nowhere." [snip]
A recent survey found that 53 per cent of employers have difficulty in finding applicants with the right skills for theirvacancies. That is why we have ended up in the absurd situation of having to import large numbers of skilled migrants, despite the unprecedented fortune lavished on tertiary education.
Only in the madhouse created by government would we have mass immigration combined with mass studentships. Instead of pursuing its fatuous 50 per cent target the Government would have done far better to concentrate on improving training and apprenticeships...
[Anyone familiar with our coming 'trades' situation (with legions of plumbers, elections etc. retiring and very few trained to replace them) knows, we're but a few years behind a parallel 'higher-education' boondoggle. Sure we need sufficient education to let America work - but for a vast majority of our jobs it's not required and we're making a mistake by suggesting it is.
Our continuing push to increase college education is good for the education industry far more than any other sector.]
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80% Say Life Experiences Teach More Than College
Eighty-percent (80%) of Americans believe that individuals learn more practical skills through life experience and work rather than through college. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 9% disagree and say more is learned in college.
Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say college teaches more. Those not affiliated with either major party are more likely to say that life experience matters more.
Twenty-two percent (22%) of government employees see college as providing more skills. That view is shared by just 8% of those who work in the private sector.
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A Bill Of Federalism
[HT:KL]
A detailed proposal to redress the imbalance between state and federal power.
Lately some state legislatures have been considering so-called "sovereignty resolutions." Rather than pass strictly symbolic measures, however, I recommended--in an op-ed last month in The Wall Street Journal--that state legislatures exercise the power given them under Article V of the Constitution to petition Congress to call a convention to propose a "Federalism Amendment."
I decided to draft a Bill of Federalism consisting of 10 amendments devised to restore the balance between state and federal power as well as the original meaning of the Constitution. By identifying 10 separate amendments, a coalition can be formed from people who support different constitutional reform measures that could not be combined into a single amendment. At the same time, opposition to any one provision cannot be used to sink the whole proposal.
It will become the rallying cry of Tea Parties and other citizen groups across the nation and, like the Contract with America, can provide an organizing document for candidates seeking state and federal office. Candidates to state legislatures can campaign on proposing it to Congress, and candidates for Congress can campaign on proposing it for approval by the states.
Randy Barnett teaches constitutional law at the Georgetown Law Center and is author of Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (Princeton 2005).
[And he's serious - MUST READ and pass on to your friends >>> ]
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Obama's strawmen finally noticed by the press
How many times have we heard the president set up a strawman only to knock it down with ease in order to sell one of his policies?
Too often to count. The president has populated a virtual field of scarecrows with his rhetoric and finally, someone is calling him out on it.
Surprisingly, that someone is Helene Cooper of the New York Times:
To listen to President Obama, a veritable army of naysayers has invaded Washington, urging him to sit on his hands at the White House and do nothing to address any of the economic or national security problems facing the country."There are those who say these plans are too ambitious, that we should be trying to do less, not more," Mr. Obama told a town-hall-style meeting in Costa Mesa, Calif., on March 18. "Well, I say our challenges are too large to ignore."
Mr. Obama did not specify who, exactly, was saying America should ignore its challenges.
Similarly, the next day in Los Angeles, Mr. Obama took on Wall Street and Washington, two of his favorite straw men. "I know some folks in Washington and on Wall Street are saying we should just focus on their problems," Mr. Obama said. "It would be nice if I could just pick and choose what problems to face, when to face them. So I could say, well, no, I don't want to deal with the war in Afghanistan right now; I'd prefer not having to deal with climate change right now. And if you could just hold on, even though you don't have health care, just please wait, because I've got other things to do."
Former Nixon speechwriter Bill Safire is familiar with the practice and identifies the rhetorical trick;
"Take your opponent's argument to a ridiculous extreme, and then attack the extremists." He added, "That leaves the opponent to sputter defensively, ‘But I never said that.'
Safire also gave some clues on how to identify when a strawman argument was on the way:
The telltale indicators that a straw man trick is on the way are the introductory words "there are those who say" or "some say."
"In strawmanese, you never specify who ‘those who' are," Mr. Safire said. "They are the hollow scarecrows you set up to knock down."
It is maddening to listen to Obama set these scarecrows up one after another and knock them down, only to be praised by the MSM for his courage for making "the tough choices."
Let's see if some other media outlets pick up the theme of Obama's strawmen and run with it.
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More ironic juxtapositioning from Obama
The latest evidence that Obama's overheated, exaggerated rhetoric about how Bush was fighting the War on Terror revealed a naivete and stupidity about the nature of that war and our enemies comes to us via the New York Times and an article by Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti:
The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan... [snip]
Taken with all the other Bush-era policies that are still in place, this news only serves to highlight the fact that their bluster and hand wringing about Bush destroying our reputation in the world and violating the rule of law was political and designed to defeat the GOP - not do what's best for the country.
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Brokaw Calls for 'Economic Justice,' 'Mother Earth Taken Turn for the Worse'
During his Saturday, May 16, commencement speech at Fordham University, former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw fretted that the "vital signs" of "Mother Earth" have "taken a turn for the worse," as he cited global warming as a problem this year's graduating class would need to help solve.
He also used the term "economic justice," a term commonly invoked by the Left, as he called on graduates to "restore [?] economic justice."
[But none of that bleeds into his 'reporting' - he's a professional, after all.
Sad joke.]
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