Biden Invokes Ghost of GWB

The vice president sought to explicitly link the recession plaguing many Americans to President George W. Bush as Democrats ramp up their attacks on the previous administration.
"There's never enough until we've restored the 8 million jobs lost in the Bush recession," Biden said on NBC's "Today" show when asked if the administration had done enough to address unemployment. "Until that happens it doesn't matter — it matters, but it's not enough."

Democrats have increasingly invoked Bush in their campaign messaging, sensing that blaming the former Republican president helps explain why so many problems haven't been resolved despite over a year and a half of Democratic control of the presidency. They also use Bush as a shorthand for the kind of policies that, Democrats warn, GOP lawmakers and candidates would revive if they were given power in November's elections.

Ehem...unfortunately for you Mr. vice president, the electorate is smart enough to realize that after nearly $1 trillion in stimulus related spending, cash for clunkers, cash for caulkers, first time home buyer credit, bail outs of GM and Chrysler (read the unions), etc., you and your party own this recession lock, stock, and barrel!


And to be exact, 19 months is just since Obama occupied the White House.  The length of time the village idiot and his minions in the congress need to make excuses for is really 43 months (a little over 3.5 years).  That is how long they have controlled the congress - especially since the last two budgets GWB sent to the congress were declared dead on arrival.

Lets face it, Bush was a betrayal to conservatism and made his share of mistakes like the Medicare prescription drug fiasco, but it is the liberal Democrats who put the spending in overdrive with deficits averaging a trillion dollars a year for the next decade as compared to an average of just over $200 billion per year under 8 years of Bush. 

The blame game will get Biden and company nowhere.

Update: Feigned Outrage Over Release Of Lockerbie Bomber

As an update to my post "Something Else You Won't Hear In The Main Stream Media", the Australian has since reported that the Sunday Times of London has obtained correspondence showing the administration was not in fact surprised and raised no strong objections. Rather, through the U.S. Embassy in London, it expressed to Scottish officials a preference for compassionate release over jail time in Libya:

Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the U.S. Embassy in London, sent a letter on Aug. 12, a week before al-Megrahi's release, to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond saying that "if Scottish authorities come to the conclusion that Megrahi must be released from Scottish custody, the U.S. position is that conditional release on compassionate grounds would be a far preferable alternative to prisoner transfer, which we strongly oppose."

I repeat, this is as much of an outrage as B.P. who seems to have lobbied the government for Megrahi's release in order to win oil contracts from the Libyan government.

Something Else You Won't Hear In The Main Stream Media

Remember the [supposed] outrage of the Obama Administration at the news of release of Al Megrahi from the Scottish prison where he was serving his sentence for killing 270 people, also known as Lockerbie bombing? 

Well, it seems 10 Downing Street has just struck back for those useless DVDs Obama gave the PM as well as the Queen.  According to press reports, both Obama and Clinton were kept abreast of the situation all along.  Their public reaction was apparently for domestic consumption only.  A senior Whitehall aide characterized their reaction as ‘disingenuous’ since neither vociferously objected to the impending release through diplomatic channels.
Duplicitous behaviour is nothing new to this bunch.  Since the story does not reflect well on Obama, who is willing to prosecute CIA agents doing their jobs while coddling America's enemies, you may as well not look for it on the evening news.

The Injustice Department

The New Black Panther voter intimidation case is seemingly going nowhere but don't expect it to wither on the vine either in an election year.  It's implications on the integrity of our democracy are just too overwhelming and the public is well aware of it despite the media's best efforts to bury the story. 

First, there is the sworn testimony by a DOJ attorney corroborated by other evidence that an Obama political appointee actually told the career staff that (1) no voting cases would be filed against black or other minority defendants no matter how egregious their violations of the law and (2) Justice Department would not enforce Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to maintain the accuracy of their voter registration lists by cleaning off ineligible voters (3 months before a national election!!!).

Also, criticism has come not only from the right but the Civil Rights Commission over the stonewalling of the Administration. 

They have watched incredulously as the Justice Department, our chief law enforcement agency, has refused to comply with subpoenas from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. They have watched Republican members of Congress demand information about this inexcusable conduct, while Democrats have blocked any action to investigate it. This in stark contrast to Democrats’ manufactured anger over the firing of a handful of U.S. Attorneys during the Bush administration, a non-scandal the Justice Department just dismissed after it concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing in political appointees who serve at the discretion of the president being let go at the discretion of the president.

There can be no worse and more dangerous abuse of power than having a Justice Department where politics and ideology drive law enforcement decisions.

American voters have noticed this, and in contrast to the pseudo-scandals about the Justice Department that were manufactured by Democrats and their JournoList allies during the prior administration, this is a real one that damages the integrity and reputation of the administration and it’s Justice Department.

Open Conspiracy Is No Longer Merely Ajar

By Jonah Goldberg

The Journolist has started to leak like an overripe diaper.

Just in case you've been living in a cave, or if you only get your news from MSNBC, here's the story. A young blogger, Ezra Klein, formerly of the avowedly left-wing American Prospect and now with the avowedly mainstream Washington Post, founded the e-mail listserv "Journolist" for like-minded liberals to hash out and develop ideas. Some 400 people joined the by-invitation-only group. Most, it seems, were in the media, but many hailed from academia, think tanks and the world of forthright liberal activism generally. They spoke freely about their political and personal biases, including their hatred of Fox and Rush Limbaugh, and their utter loyalty to the progressive cause and Democratic success.

That off-the-record intellectual bacchanalia has started to haunt the participants like an inexplicable rash after a wild party during fleet week.

Last month, David Weigel, a young Washington Post blogger hired to report on conservative politics, ostensibly from a sympathetic perspective, left the Post thanks to his damning statements on Journolist (conservatives are racists, Rush Limbaugh should die, etc.).

Now the diaper is coming off entirely. Perhaps stretching the diaper metaphor too far, what's inside Journolist may stink, but it's no surprise that it does. Journolist e-mails obtained by The Daily Caller reveal what anybody with two neurons to rub together already knew: Professional liberals don't like Republicans and do like Democrats. They can be awfully smug and condescending in their sense of intellectual and moral superiority. They tend to ascribe evil motives to their political opponents -- sometimes even when they know it's unfair. One obscure blogger insisted that liberals should arbitrarily demonize a conservative journalist as a racist to scare conservatives away from covering stories that might hurt Obama.

Oh, and -- surprise! -- it turns out that the "O" in Journolist stands for "Obama."

In 2008, participants shared talking points about how to shape coverage to help Obama. They tried to paint any negative coverage of Obama's racist and hateful pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as out of bounds. Journalists at such "objective" news organizations as Newsweek, Bloomberg, Time and The Economist joined conversations with open partisans about the best way to criticize Sarah Palin.

Like an Amish community raising a barn, members of the progressive community got together to hammer out talking points. Amidst a discussion of Palin, Chris Hayes, a writer for the Nation, wrote: "Keep the ideas coming! Have to go on TV to talk about this in a few min and need all the help I can get." Time's Joe Klein admitted to his fellow Journolisters that he'd collected the listserv's bric-a-brac and fashioned it into a brickbat aimed at Palin.

Many conservatives think Journolist is the smoking gun that proves not just liberal media bias (already well-established) but something far more elusive as well: the Sasquatch known as the Liberal Media Conspiracy.
I'm not so sure. In the 1930s, The New York Times deliberately whitewashed Stalin's murders. In 1964, CBS reported that Barry Goldwater was tied up with German Nazis. In 1985, the Los Angeles Times polled 2,700 journalists at 621 newspapers and found that journalists identified themselves as liberal by a factor of 3 to 1. Their actual views on issues were far more liberal than even that would suggest. Just for the record, Ezra Klein was born in 1984.

In other words, Journolist is a symptom, not the disease. And the disease is not a secret conspiracy but something more like the "Open Conspiracy" H.G. Wells fantasized about, where the smartest, best people at every institution make their progressive vision for the world their top priority.

As James DeLong, a fellow at the Digital Society, correctly noted on the Enterprise Blog, "The real problem with JournoList is that much of it consisted of exchanges among people who worked for institutions about how to best hijack their employers for the cause of Progressivism."

For a liberal activist that's forgivable, I guess. But academics? Reporters? Editors? Even liberal opinion writers aren't supposed to "coordinate" their messages with the mothership.

The conservative movement at least admits it is a movement (even though conservatives outnumber liberals 2-1 in this country). Establishment liberalism, not just in the press but also in the White House, academia and Hollywood, holds power by refusing to make the same concession. "This isn't about ideology. ... We just call them like we see them. ... We don't have an agenda."

The open conspiracy that perpetuates that lie is far more pernicious than any chat room.

Goldman Sachs and Democrats: Cronyism Triumphs At The Expense Of Free Markets

About three months ago, I had written a couple of  articles chronicling the incestuous relationship between Goldman Sachs (GS) and the Democrat party.  The events of the past week solidified my arguments even more.  

For those who have not been following the aftermath of the crisis of 2008, the government had been litigating GS for allegations of mortgage securities fraud.  Thursday's settlement—in which Goldman agreed to pay a $550 million fine, but didn't have to admit it committed fraud—capped one of the most closely watched cases in the SEC's 76-year history. The agency had charged Goldman with intentionally duping clients by selling a mortgage-security product that secretly was designed by another Goldman client betting that the housing market would crash.

Now, $550 million fine seems a tad high to many, but remember that GS has $162 billion in liquid assets.  In other words, at less than one third of one percent of its assets, this was a drop in the bucket for GS whose stock rallied on Thursday with the news of this historic settlement.  They got off cheap; but this story isn't entirely about that. 

The current controversy erupted when it became apparent that the two Republican members of the Securities and Exchange Commission who did not want to settle (because it would mean dilution of the more serious fraud charges) were overridden by the three Democrat members.  I will not bore you with the details of the alleged violations which you can read on the SEC site.

According to Wall Street Journal, Republican Commissioner Kathleen Casey questioned the SEC staff last Thursday on their decision to abandon the strongest fraud charge and strike a settlement involving a lesser allegation. 

The political split over the case comes at a time when the agency remains under fire for its policing of the financial markets during the financial crisis.  The division in the settlement vote casts a cloud over what the SEC had claimed on Thursday was a major victory. Investors had expected any SEC fine in the case to be $1 billion or more.  Why did the Democrat members of SEC jump the gun, just before the Wall Street bill passed the Senate?

In the latest development, the Securities and Exchange Commission inspector general has agreed to a request from Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., to probe the timing and political motivations of the settlement. 
Issa requested that I.G. Kotz examine whether there was any political reason that the SEC’s announcement of the settlement came two hours after the Senate approved legislation overhauling financial regulation.

This is looking messier by the day for Democrats - the darlings of G.S. - in the light of their incestuous relationship with the key players in this whole affair.  Re-read my posts from April and May for a refresher!

IG's Report Sheds Light On "Shared Sacrifice"

The stench coming from Washington keeps on getting stronger by the day.  This past week, president's own Special Inspector General presented his findings regarding the dealership closings to Treasury Secretary Geithner and quite a scathing one it was.  It made clear, once again, the utter incompetency, corruption,  cronyism, and ideological drive of this administartion.

Special Inspector General Neil M. Barofsky notes that the Obama administration rejected initial automaker plans which would have required relatively minimal dealership closings, insisting instead on far more drastic cuts -- as many as two thousand dealerships between the two corporations, costing an estimated 100,000 people their livelihood.

When asked explicitly whether the [Obama] Auto Team could have left the dealerships out of the restructurings, Mr. [Ron] Bloom, the current head of the Auto Team, confirmed that the Auto Team "could have left any one component [of the restructuring plan] alone," but that doing so would have been inconsistent with the President's mandate for "shared sacrifice."

Barofsky's report paints a portrait of cavalier disregard for the people the Obama administration damaged by its actions:

Treasury (a) should have taken every reasonable step to ensure that accelerating the dealership terminations was truly necessary for the long-term viability of the companies and (b) should have at least considered whether the benefits to the companies from the accelerated terminations outweighed the costs to the economy that would result from potentially tens of thousands of accelerated job losses. The record is not at all clear that Treasury did either.

The anticipated benefits to the companies of accelerated terminations were based almost entirely on the not-universally-accepted theory that an immediate decrease in dealerships would make them similar to their foreign competitors and therefore improve the companies' profitability, and the theory arguably did not take into account some of the unique circumstances of the domestic companies' dealership networks. It undertook no market studies to test the counterintuitive theory until after making its Viability Determination.

More importantly, there was no effort even to quantify the number of job losses that the Auto Team's decision would contribute to until after the decision was made, and the effect on the broader economy caused by accelerated dealership terminations similarly was not sufficiently considered.
Barofsky rejects the administration's stated reasons for their draconian actions:

Treasury's [The Obama Treasury Department's] letter seems to imply that Treasury was faced with the decision either to encourage the acceleration of dealership terminations substantially, as it did, or let the companies fail altogether. This is a false dilemma with no factual support: no one from Treasury, the manufacturers or from anywhere else indicated that implementing a smaller or more gradual dealership termination plan would have resulted in the cataclysmic scenario spelled out in Treasury's response.
And Barofsky's report even questions whether the closures would lead to any real savings for GM and Chrysler. "One GM official emphasized this point by telling SIGTARP (Barofsky) that GM would save 'not one damn cent' by closing any particular dealership."

The Inspector General's report also points to ineptitude by the Obama White House:

... the Administration created a Treasury Auto Team (the "Auto Team"), which reports to the Task Force and had the responsibility of evaluating the companies' restructuring plans and negotiating the terms of any further assistance. Leading the Auto Team were two advisors: Ron Bloom, a former investment banker and head of collective bargaining for the United Steelworkers Union, and Steven Rattner, the co-founder of the Quadrangle Group, a private-equity firm ... Although this group was responsible for managing AIFP, none of the Auto Team leaders or personnel had any experience or expertise in the auto industry.

And while the "Auto Team" may not have had much experience with the auto industry, the Task Force it reported to had quite a bit of experience in another field. Among the Task Force members and senior advisors were Carol Browner, the White House climate czar; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson; and Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Task Force senior policy aides included Heather Zichal, deputy director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change; Lisa Heinzerling, senior climate policy counsel to the head of the EPA; and Dan Utech, senior adviser to the Energy Secretary.
All of these people may have had more interest in reducing auto emissions than in saving jobs down at the local Chevy dealership.

Perhaps to make up for the Auto Team's lack of experience, two consulting firms, Boston Consulting Group and Rothschild North America, were hired to help the team with their analysis. Perhaps there was another reason, though. Employees of BCG contributed more than $55,000 to Barack Obama during the 2006-2008 election cycle. Rothschild employees contributed $133,000 to Obama's campaign and tens of thousands more to the Democrat National Committee. BCG stands to make up to $7 million for this contract, Rothschild $7.7 million. Smell the stench yet?
What did the public get for its millions? Among other things, a projection by Rothschild that GM sales would increase by 50% by the year 2014.

This is the picture that emerges from the Inspector General's report: an Obama auto industry team made up of people unfamiliar with the auto industry, using data provided by major Obama campaign contributors, and reporting to a Task Force more interested in promoting global warming than in protecting American jobs.

What could possibly go wrong with that?
Just ask the tens of thousands of people who lost their jobs as a result.  And while we are at it, lets not forget the sweet heart deal the thugs masquerading as the UAW got at the expense of the bond holders.
And all for Obama's "shared sacrifice."  Little do they know that this little "social justice" game they play will be the noose around their necks come election time.
 
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P.S.  By the way, don't look for extensive coverage of this report in the main stream media.  They are MIA (missing in action) just like they were with the Black Panthers (Justice Department) scandal; Van Jones, Donald Berwick, and assorted other mini scandals from president's life long associates with revolutionary radicals and down right criminals. 
There is no journalism being practiced in the MSM as the Journolist scandal made abundantly clear for those who were still in dreamland. 

Where Is the Plan, GOP?

The good news for those of us who believe in our founding documents as the source of our greatness is that the great progressive onslaught on the american way seems to have its days numbered.  Even numerous intellectually honest liberal pundits and the presidential spokesman, Robert Gibbs, admit what they consider to be a real possibility at the risk of directing the ire of Democrat party leadership in the Congress.

Now the bad news.  I, along with most classic liberals find it disheartening that the Republican party collectively seems to be content riding the self destructive actions of the Democrats to victory this fall.  Leaders - Senator Mitch McConnell and Rep. John Boehner - do not seem to be in any hurry to articulate a clearly spelled out legislative plan for the country to dig itself out of the deep hole it has dug over the past decade.  To me, this indicates politics as usual and will likely become a squandered opportunity for the GOP unlike the Contract With America in 1994 which directly led to four straight years of budget surpluses starting in 1996.

If the GOP does not rediscover its founding principles, or its reason for being if you prefer, it will have given a clear signal that U.S. has no hope left.  America cannot aford another big government promoting political party.  We already have the Democrats for that.

Example of Typical Socialist Disconnect at the U.N.

Earlier this year, an Amnesty International report criticised North Korea for its deplorable healthcare system among other human right abuses.  This is pretty consistent with what we all know about the reality of the most secretive collectivist regime in the world - total disregard for human rights. 

The Amnesty International report provides truly horrific details and testimonials from North Koreans. The introduction to the Amnesty report clearly lays out the vast difference between North Korea’s claims on its provision of health care and the reality:

Interviews with North Koreans (refugees who were fortunate enough to escape with their lives) depict a country that professes to have a universal (free) health care system but in reality struggles to provide even the most basic service to the population. Health facilities are rundown and operate with frequent power cuts and no heat. Medical personnel often do not receive salaries, and many hospitals function without medicines and other essentials. As doctors have begun charging for their services, which is illegal under North Korea’s universal health care system, the poor cannot access full medical care, especially medicines and surgery.

Importantly, the report recognizes that fact that the dismal health care system in North Korea is “in large part due to failed or counterproductive government policies.”  Pretty amazing stuff, coming from a decidedly progressive organization.

Now, contrast this against the assessment of Margaret Chan, Director General of the U.N.’s World Health Organization. Following a visit to the Country in late April 2010, Dr. Chan observed:

"Now based on what I have seen, I can tell you they have [a health care system] that most other developing countries would envy."

"For example, DPRK has no lack of doctors and nurses, as we have seen in other developing countries where most of their doctors have migrated to other places. But DPRK has enough doctors and nurses, they have a very elaborate health infrastructure, starting from the central to the provincial to the district level…."

"People in the country do not have to worry about a lack of financial resources to access care…."

"[W]alking is quite well observed in that country, and I suggest that is why I didn’t see many obese people."

Chen’s comments were heavily criticized when reported and rightly so. The lack of “obese people” is due to chronic food shortages in the country, exacerbated by the government’s opposition to letting farmers sell their crops for profit. A large percentage of the populace falls below international standards of malnutrition and an estimated one million North Koreans died of starvation and starvation-related diseases in the late 1990s. The country needs massive amounts of international food aid every year to avoid a repetition of starvation. 

While many developing countries have very poor health care systems, North Korea seems unlikely to elicit envy from any of them.  The problem is that none of those countries come close to the level of communist rule as N. Korea, thus the explanation for Dr. Chen's defense of the indefensible.  The one world order, globalist marxists of the U.N. suffer from the same disorder as Sean Penn, Danny Glover, and others in the U.S. who glorify the fruits of the regimes in Cuba and Venezuela.

The Gaffe Prone Village Idiot Speaks Again

The claim this time?  Stimulus failed because Republicans kept it small.

Here is a relevant passage from the interview with ABC's Jake Tapper:

TAPPER: Was the stimulus, in retrospect, too small?
BIDEN: Look, there’s a lot of people at the time argued it was too small. Actually, we…
TAPPER: A lot of people in your administration.
BIDEN: — yes. A lot of people in our administration, a lot of — I mean, you know, even some Republican economists (?!) and some Nobel laureates like Paul Krugman, who continues to argue it was too small. But, you know, there was a reality. In order to get what we got passed, we had to find Republican votes (this clown apparently also needs to learn elementary arithmetic - does he not know Republicans do not have the numbers to stop anything in the House?)  And we found three — three. And we finally got it passed. So there is the reality of whether or not the Republicans are willing to play, whether or not the Republicans are just about repeal and repeat the old policies or they’re really wanting to do something. And I — I’m not — I’m not — you know…
TAPPER: So if you didn’t have Republicans that you had — if you didn’t have the legislative reality…
BIDEN: I think what…
TAPPER: — it would have been bigger?
BIDEN: I think it would have been bigger. I think it would have been bigger. In fact, what we offered was slightly bigger than that…
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FACTS: Democrats’ stimulus bill failed on its own merits, not because – at $862 billion or nearly $3,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. – it was “too small.”
During the debate leading up to passage of the stimulus bill, Jared Bernstein (Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser to Vice President Biden) and Christina Romer (Chair, President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors) argued that “A package in the range that the President-Elect has discussed is expected to create between three and four million jobs by the end of 2010…We have assumed a package just slightly over the $775 billion currently under discussion.”

That $775 billion assumed cost was actually LESS than what CBO estimated the Democrats’ stimulus plan would cost when it was signed into law ($787 billion), which CBO later revised upwards (to $862 billion).

Thus the failure of stimulus to create jobs cannot be because it spent too little – since actual stimulus spending is MORE than the level Administration economists said would “create between three and four million jobs.”

Maybe, if the Vice-President was so inclined to educate himself, he would know what basic laws of economics dictate - government spending kills jobs, not create them.  Just as government spending (combined with excessive regulations) didn't alleviate the jobs situation and promote growth in the U.S. throughout the 1930's, Japan and Europe more recently as well as the current recession, it will never create jobs in the future.  It may serve him well to read the latest Harvard study if not a myriad of previous studies that all point to the foolishness of his and other progressives'claim.

What a moron!

"I Absolutely Reject That Notion"

That was President Obama's response to George Stephanopoulos a few short months ago when asked if he thought the mandate to buy health insurance constituted a tax.

As NYT reported last Friday, guess whose Justice Department is now arguing in court that the new law is constitutional based on the government's "power to lay and collect taxes"?! 

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Funny, back than you could not get NYT to publish such an article (questioning the notion of the mandate being a tax).  Now that the law has been signed in to existence, they want to fool people in to thinking that they actually do practice journalism at the Gray Lady. 

Remember the Stupak Amendment?

First a refresher for those with short memories.  Stupak amendment is the executive order signed by the President at the last minute to provide cover for pro-life Democrats in passing the healthcare bill.  It is also important to remember the ridicule the opponents of this bill were subjected to for insisting that both abortions and care for illegal immigrants would be covered under the bill.  Remember "You lie"?  Well, as we knew all too well, he did as well as congresiional Democrats. 

Fast forward to present.  The Obama administration has officially approved the first instance of taxpayer funded abortions under the new national government-run health care program. The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new "high-risk" insurance program under a provision of the federal health care legislation enacted in March.

It has quietly approved a plan submitted by an appointee of pro-choice Governor Edward Rendell under which the new program will cover any abortion that is legal in Pennsylvania.
The high-risk pool program is one of the new programs created by the sweeping health care legislation, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Obama signed into law on March 23. The law authorizes $5 billion in federal funds for the program, which will cover as many as 400,000 people when it is implemented nationwide.

"The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million in federal tax funds, which will pay for insurance plans that cover any legal abortion," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee.
Johnson told LifeNews.com: "This is just the first proof of the phoniness of President Obama's assurances that federal funds would not subsidize abortion -- but it will not be the last."

"President Obama successfully opposed including language in the bill to prevent federal subsidies for abortions, and now the Administration is quietly advancing its abortion-expanding agenda through administrative decisions such as this.

The section on abortion (see page 14) asserts that "elective abortions are not covered," though it does not define elective -- which Johnson calls a "red herring."
The proposal specifies coverage "includes only abortions and contraceptives that satisfy the requirements of" several specific statutes, the most pertinent of which is 18 Pa. C.S. § 3204, which says abortion is legal in Pennsylvania. The statute essentially says all abortions except those to determine the sex of the baby are legal.
"Under the Rendell-Sebelius plan, federal funds will subsidize coverage of abortion performed for any reason, except sex selection," said NRLC's Johnson. "The Pennsylvania proposal conspicuously lacks language that would prevent funding of abortions performed as a method of birth control or for any other reason, except sex selection -- and the Obama Administration has now approved this."

Just pointing out the serial lies that unfold on a weekly basis.

Funny.....

From a May 3, 2010 FOX article:

Talk about bad timing . . .
The Interior Department’s Mineral Management Service has postponed a Monday safety awards luncheon at which a nominee for two awards was BP -- which operated the oil rig that sank in the Gulf of Mexico, threatening an unprecedented environmental disaster along much of the nation's Gulf Coast.
The awards ceremony recognizes "outstanding safety and pollution prevention performance by the offshore oil and gas industry." BP was nominated for its work on the outer continental shelf.
The big winner of last year's SAFE award was Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded last month under BP's management. BP was also a finalist at the 2009 conference.

WH Claims More Jobs From Stimulus

The "saved or created" job figure is now apparently up to between 2.5 and 3.6 million (notice the range wide enough to drive an eigteen wheeler truck through). 

At today's planned congressional testimony, Christina Romer, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, is claiming that the stimulus bill "appears to be stimulating private investment and job creation at a time when the economy needs it most."  The claim also contends that every $1 from the stimulus bill is matched by $3 in private money.

On the other hand, the Federal Reserve reported last Thursday that nonfinancial companies had socked away $1.84 trillion in cash and other liquid assets as of the end of March, up 26% from a year earlier and the largest-ever increase in records going back to 1952. Cash made up about 7% of all company assets, including factories and financial investments, the highest level since 1963.

Where is the private sector enthusiasm that the Administration is eluding to? 
If they were paying any attention to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers, they too would know that unless they are focusing on corporations that are in bed with the government (i.e. G.E., various alternative energy manufacturers, etc.), there is nothing in the way of government policy to give private sector any confidence to expand or undertake new ventures. 

Yes, the American public is generally detached from policy issues, but not when unemployment, despite the ongoing census keeping the rate artificially low, is still near 10% and under employment at 17%.  This is the type of detachment from reality that will make 1994 rout of Democrats look like a walk in the park in comparison to what is about to happen to them in November 2010.

Update on HUD's Homelessness Prevention Initiative

As I wrote earlier, HUD recently announced Obama Administration's national strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness.  According to their latest announcement, HUD will be giving local governments and non-profit agencies participating in the department’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) preference to acquire homes from its inventory of foreclosed properties at discounted rates. 

The initial cost of this ingenious program is only a paltry $190 million (but not to worry, with the near perfect track record of federal government, the actual costs will surely be in the billions, plus we all know historically how wonderful government housing initiatives have turned out!). 

Hmmm, lets see....government buying their own foreclosures to get foreclosures off the books and creating tons of public housing in the process in the name of ending homelessness.  What could ever go wrong with that!?!

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P.S.  Has anyone given a thought to why the chronically homeless (as of 2005 estimated at 740,000 - including the temporarily homeless - or 0.002% of the population) are homeless, and whether they are suitable for home ownership (like the majority of the chronically homeless who are suffering from mental illness)?

Uh, Oh, Watch Out...

The White House is contradicting the NASA administrator’s claim that President Barack Obama assigned him to reach out to Muslims on science matters.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden recently told Al-Jazeera network that one of the charges Obama gave him was “to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and engineering.”
Some conservative activists criticized the remarks.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that such activities are not among Bolden’s assigned tasks. He said administration officials have spoken with NASA about the matter.

Someone has got to be lying: Bolden or Gibbs/Obama.  My money is on the latter.

Why is it that I feel someone is about to be run over by the Hope-N-Change bus?

Krugman’s Posthumous Nobel

The following article, by Donald Luskin, chief investment officer of Trend Macrolytics LLC, an independent economics and investment-research firm, was written in October 2008.  He is not a political hack but a long time critic of the left's favorite economist (yes, the same one who claimed in the early 1980s that tax cuts are inflationary, and despite being proven wrong, has never admitted it).  I am posting it (with a few of my comments in parentheses) simply because my progressive friends should not be deprived of this great article.  Enjoy!

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Prior to 2008 the Nobel Prize had never been awarded posthumously. So great minds such as John Maynard Keynes and Fischer Black never received the coveted award. But all that has changed. This year, the prize for economics is going to Paul Krugman, an economist who died a decade ago.
To clarify, the person named Paul Krugman, the living and breathing man who will accept the Nobel in Stockholm this December, is merely a public intellectual — a person operating in the same domain as, say, Oprah Winfrey.

The living Krugman’s rabidly liberal New York Times column has, for nine years now, traded on the dead Krugman’s reputation as an economist, a reputation that only will be burnished by the award of the Nobel Prize. Yet his column is pure politics, not economics. It is the equivalent of astronomers Mather and Smoot — the 2006 Nobelists in physics — writing on astrology.

This living Paul Krugman can’t be the same person as the dead economist. The dead economist wrote eloquently of the supreme importance of globalization and international trade as engines of prosperity. But the living public intellectual remains silent on these subjects when the Democratic party’s nominee for president threatens to abrogate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

These days Krugman’s liberal agenda always takes precedence over economic principle. He has described himself as “an unabashed defender of the welfare state.” He has declared, “For me, Sweden of 1980 would be ideal.” He has called Barack Obama’s sweeping plan for socialized medicine “naïve” because it doesn’t contain enough mandates. He has said that “We should be getting 28% of GDP in [tax] revenue,” when the highest level ever collected, even in wartime, is less than 21 percent.

Krugman is entitled to such opinions, whether as a public intellectual or an economist. But there have been serious questions about his journalistic integrity — suggestions that the living Krugman has debased and corrupted the very science the dead Krugman did so much to advance.

In 1999 Paul Krugman was paid $50,000 by Enron as a consultant on its “advisory board,” and that same year he wrote a glowing article about Enron for Fortune magazine. But he would change his tune. After Enron collapsed in 2001, Krugman wrote several columns excoriating the company. (One featured what may be the most absurd howler in the history of op-ed journalism: “I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.”) In most of these columns Krugman worked hard to link Enron to the Bush administration, and in one he actually blamed Enron’s consultants for the company’s collapse — while neglecting to mention that he, too, had been an Enron consultant. (To my disappointment, author does not even mention Enron for what it really was: a G.E. like green company in bed with Al Gore and the global carbon scheme - some connection to Republicans, eh?!)

Daniel Okrent, while ombudsman for the New York Times, wrote that “Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers.” Indeed. But Krugman’s distortions were so rampant, and his unwillingness to correct them so intransigent, that Okrent — no doubt pressured into service by my Krugman Truth Squad column for NRO — did something about it. Okrent forced the Times op-ed page to adopt for the first time a corrections policy for op-ed columnists. That was in 2004. Later, when Krugman flouted that policy, the Krugman Truth Squad went to work on Okrent’s successor, Byron Calame, who pressed for the adoption of a new, more stringent policy in 2005.

Krugman wasn’t happy about the pressure coming from the Krugman Truth Squad. After I met him in person at a lecture he gave in connection with one of his books, he smeared me on national television by saying, “that’s a guy who actually stalks me on the web, and once stalked me personally.”
That didn’t stop me from writing many more Krugman Truth Squad columns for NRO. But this one is the first in quite a while. I stopped not because I was afraid of Krugman’s defamations, but because I became aware that Krugman’s influence was waning.

Before the Times began to hold Krugman accountable for what he actually wrote in his columns, Krugman was having a powerful impact on the way public policy was being debated and decided. But no longer. Funny thing — it’s a lot harder to have a political impact when you can’t lie.
In this sense, Krugman is not only a dead economist. He’s also a dead propagandist.
With last year’s Nobel Peace Prize having gone to Al Gore, one has to wonder whether Krugman’s award is a left-leaning political statement, perhaps intended to revive Krugman’s influence. Probably not. In recent years several right-leaning economists have won the prize.

More likely, the Nobel committee decided deliberately to overlook Krugman’s political extremism, just as it chose to overlook John Nash’s schizophrenia in 1994. That’s not to say Krugman is crazy, though he has stated: “my economic theories have no doubt been influenced by my relationship with my cats.”
Whatever the committee was thinking, the only remaining question is what the living Paul Krugman will do with his $1.4 million prize. Will he pay taxes on it at the low rates established in 2003 by George W. Bush, a president and a policy that Krugman has worked so assiduously to discredit? Or will he voluntarily pay at the higher rates he advocates?
(Too bad that the article was written before the Nobel Committee awarded an even less meritorious candidate the prize in January 2009)

Woeful

Yesterday I stumbled upon a May 2010 article in the Econ Journal Watch - a watchdog of academic economics - which, with the help of its extensive advisory council, comments on academic papers.  The article/study was based on a 2008 survey of basic economic knowledge administered to nearly 5,000 participants by Zogby International.

The findings of the study can be summarized as:
1)  Economic enlightenment is not necessarily correlated with going to college
2) Those who describe themselves as progressives or liberals perform much worse than those who are conservative or libertarian.

Is it any wonder that the so-called academic geniuses that run Washington these days seem so clueless?

Perspectives Of A Russian Immigrant

By Svetlana Kunin

In a speech he gave in Wisconsin on June 30, President Obama said: "We already tried the other side's ideas. We already know where their theories led us. And now we have a choice as a nation. We can return to the failed economic policies of the past, or we can keep building a stronger future. We can go backward, or we can keep moving forward."

For the Soviets, moving forward meant that with each consecutive five-year government plan the economy of the USSR would eventually surpass the American economy (the one Obama thinks has failed).

They could have succeeded: Russia has abundant natural resources and a well-educated populace, with a culture that's been in existence for far longer than the United States.

The central government enforced these five-year economic plans with zero interference from members of the U.S. Republican Party or Fox News. Yet, they were about as successful in growing the economy as Obama's stimulus package has been in creating American jobs.

The idea is that government-appointed experts and officials know how to drive innovation, rather than people who make their own choices, and who have real expertise and experience in their chosen field.

In his Oval Office address, President Obama spoke about creating a clean energy future:
"As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs — but only if we accelerate that transition. Only if we seize the moment. Even if we're unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don't yet know precisely how were going to get there. We know we'll get there."

Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev, after returning from a visit to the U.S., decided that the USSR had to increase its production of corn. All Soviet republics, from Belarus to Siberia, replaced the crop most appropriate to their soil and climate with corn, as directed by the ministry of agriculture. The following year, the corn crop was a failure, and there was a shortage of potatoes and grain for the population to eat.

There is a common theme crystallizing from Democratic leaders: Their policies are driven by their ideological vision and, in their own words, they don't have a clue about what to expect.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, speaking about his financial reform bill, said: "After great debate, we have produced a strong Wall Street reform bill that will fundamentally change the way our financial services sector is regulated. No one will know until this is actually in place how it works."

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, talking about health reform in March, said: "(This) is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."

The response of authorities to the catastrophic oil accident in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates how centrally controlled bureaucracy works. It is revealing to see how the federal government obstructs localities trying to save their states from disaster.

America is an advanced and prosperous country. The failed economic policies that Obama talks about somehow produced a dynamic economy, with opportunities available to more people than everywhere else in human history.

But liberal elites do not make the connection: They yell loudly about regulating capitalism and talk quietly about regulating speech, capping salaries, taxing incomes and creating bureaucracies in order to control everything and everyone.

Instead of relying on basic laws of economics and an understanding of human nature, they elevate socialist-style management based on the political economics of class warfare and central planning.

The left believes that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are backward and out of date. Meanwhile, their new ideas for transforming America are based on old, unsuccessful concepts from Marx, Engels and Keynes.

The country I grew up in was filled with statues of the leader, his arm proudly extended, pointing toward a future where the life of all citizens would be framed within the boundaries of his vision.

I prefer the Statue of Liberty.

Updates On The Green Agenda

In his Oval Office address on June 15th, President Obama seized on the Gulf Oil crisis to speak about creating a clean energy future:
"As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs — but only if we accelerate that transition. Only if we seize the moment. Even if we're unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don't yet know precisely how were going to get there. We know we'll get there."

Ummm...., not apparently Mr. President.  I am surprised that Jeffrey Immelt who sits on your Economic Advisory Board has not informed you about Sunil Sharan's (former Director of G.E. Smart Grid Initiative) Washington Post column four months ago that "green jobs" bonanza is nothing but a myth!

Then again, on second thought, he probably did discuss this fine point with you but you have a radical leftist agenda to keep and Mr. Immelt, as the Chairman of G.E., has billions to make from "clean energy".  A true relationship of mutual benefit.  Sort of like Sir Muir Russell (a known environmentalist) investigating the Climategate scandal and finding nothing "too terrible" happened without even seeing thousands of relevant e-mails (but don't worry our green friends, Professor Jones has just been reinstated at Univ. of East Anglia, so he will be free to continue conducting his "research"). 

In the light of the scandals/controversies/revelations of errors just in the past year that an amateur would not make - such as Africagate, supposed Amazon rain forest draught, disappearing mountain ice caps, Dutch sea level blunder, Himalayan glacier meltdown lie, wrongly linking supposed AGW to natural disasters, contested Bangladesh climate prediction, Stern review scandal, and the Greenpeace connection to the IPCC report - it is little comfort to the rest of us that literally hundreds of billions of dollars of our money hinge upon the devious works of those like Sir Russell and professor Jones, all backed by socialist billionaires (and one world government proponents) Maurice Strong and George Soros.

As far as green jobs are concerned, Global Warming Policy Forum offers a pair of additional countries for you, Mr. President, to trot out, as you search for a country to point to as an exemplar of a centrally planned “green economy” — now that you seem to have dropped (as of your recent Oval Office address) your embarassingly serial call for us to examine the smashing — as in, crashing — successes in Spain (which, as I blogged earlier, acknowledges that "every 'green job' created with government money...came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job."), Germany, and Denmark. 


So the Brits and Kiwis aren’t having any more luck than the Spaniards, Danes, or Germans — but that didn’t stop you, Mr. president, from at least trying to claim green-economy successes in those three countries, so why should it in these two new cases? We’ve also seen Italy’s carbon scheme exposed as a debacle, and a Labor government teeter and then fall in Australia after the mere threat of imposing such a scheme.
It’s possible, then, that you have simply run out of countries to point to. Which means that soon enough we’ll be back to that “we have to be the world leader” bit — which translates into “the plot failed everywhere else.”
No, thank you.  We’d prefer not to lead the world in job-killing energy rationing in the name of discredited, pseudo-science called global warming.

A Thought...

NASA being ordered to make Muslim countries "Feel good" as their new mission ...

Politicians being offered jobs to drop out in favor of others…

Shake-down of one company after another…

Czars and recess appointments of avowed Socialists and worse to key administration positions without the benefit of public confirmation hearings…

Appointing two justices to the SCOTUS that are stealth but certifiable judicial activists…

Net neutrality being pushed as "Free Speech” while squashing free speech with one policy after the other...

Fixing what ain’t broke and hiding what is…

Cash for clunkers, cash for caulkers, and other hair brained ideas with outrageous price tags…

Transferring billions of dollars in wealth to labor unions and trial lawyers...

Surrendering American sovereignty to anyone but Americans while selling out our traditional allies…

Pushing through unpopular socialized medicine scheme under the guise of healthcare reform (without the promised transparency since information is the enemy of the left other than in an Orwellian sense)…

Planning the same for Cap and Trade and Immigration reform both of which enjoy 2:1 opposition…

Justice Department being told not to prosecute cases against blacks (even Mr. Shabaz who wants to kill "crackers") despite indisputable evidence…

Sanctuary cities being left alone while a state trying to enforce federal laws is being sued…

Biden promoting the fact that they don't know what to do about the economy and that the jobs lost will not come back...

Obama "Kicking" some ass while the Gulf is being destroyed by oil gushing from a company they gave a safety waiver to...

Playing more than a dozen rounds of golf, four vacations, and throwing a party every three days while claiming to be on top of the Gulf spill (yet 76 days in to the disaster the Jones Act is still not waived and over 60% of the skimmers sit idle elsewhere "just incase there is another spill")...

Gore getting sexed up in high priced hotels by unwilling leftist sympathizers ...

Partying it up at the White House like it is 1999 while Rome burns…

Voters preferring the Republicans to the Democrats by a 10% margin (just about for the first time since Noah was gathering a pair of each animal)...

On and on the lies, scandals, and incompetencies go with no apparent end......

If the conservative movement cannot win this one in November then we deserve to be serfs!

Wrong Priorities

Shouldn't the federal government be suing the sanctuary cities like San Francisco that are clearly breaking federal immigration laws rather than the state of Arizona for wanting to enforce those laws?  By the way, whatever happened to the "discrimination" allegations which does not appear anywhere in the 38 page complaint?  Just asking.

If it wasn't for downright incompetence, petty politics, and corruption, this administration wouldn't know what to do with itself.

Poor Nancy, She Can't Help Being Stuck on Stupid

Here is the best and the brightest Democrats have to offer:

...the reason why we can’t recover from these bad economic times because we have complete morons running the show.  Nothing short of a pathetic display of downright ignorance mixed with the same old Keynesian, excuse the term, crap that Keynes himself clearly rejected at the end of his life.