Last month, I alluded to the notion that Sarah Palin would be better off running for president in 2016, as opposed to running in 2012 as the media and political pundits had already ordained. My rationale was that the Palin team was obviously so disoriented and confused about decisions being made on her behalf—the lack of any semblance of organizational structure or direction was blatantly obvious, and was beginning to hurt the Palin brand.
Fast forward to this past Friday, as Palin announced she is resigning from the governor’s seat as of the end of July. The pundits and blogosphere went berserk. And not only the liberals, but the right went bonkers as well.
The mainstream media narrative runs as follows: Palin was always dumb, she is still dumb for resigning, and resigning (due to her dumbness) has resulted in her not being able to win a national election. Ever.
My train of thought on Sarah Palin has always been that she had the right ideas, but she needed to hunker down in Alaska, get at least one term (preferably two) under her belt, and focus on engaging in issues of domestic and international politics some more. That, and putting together a solid organization around her, which is critical if she wants to exhibit a consistent message, and quite frankly, some confidence in what she was doing. These were things which have been severely lacking, and apart from the die-hard Palin supporters, will fail to garner any support.
I have no idea why Palin decided to resign now (the guessing has begun: impending scandal, a medical issue, family issues, etc.) and I’m sure the world will find out soon enough. My gut reaction was that this wasn’t such a good idea, because of the reasons I listed above. That’s essentially why I made the observation that maybe 2016 was a better target for Palin, rather than 2012. A self-imposed banishment to a political wilderness is not such a horrible thing in this case. And as updates come in on this story, it’s becoming more and more likely that this is where it’s going: a run in 2016. If not, then it’s more or less over for Palin politically, in my opinion.
As for the media and the blogosphere, their treatment of the Palins has been despicable and shameful, a national disgrace, to be kind. They have been doing this to the Palin family since last August. But it’s important to note, that they will always be trashing Sarah Palin and her family, no matter what she does, whether it’s out of pure idiocy or resentment. So they are best to be ignored. Let’s hope the Palin camp realizes this.
From the state that elected Jesse Ventura for governor, the citizens of Minnesota outdo themselves by electing another clown. This time to the US Senate. As of this afternoon, it’s official:
The Minnesota Supreme Court this afternoon ruled unanimously that Al Franken is “entitled to receive the certificate of election as United States Senator from the State of Minnesota.” Barring an appeal by G.O.P. incumbent Norm Coleman to the U.S. Supreme Court — an appeal that court would be unlikely to be heard until the next session beginning in February if it accepted that case at all — the decision clears the way for Franken to be seated.
Not to get all saccharine here, but one of the great things about our country is that really anyone has a shot at making it to the higher levels of our federal government to try and institute change to make a difference.
That being said, the sad thing is that the left wing of the Democratic party, liberals and progressives alike, will cheer Franken’s election as a significant victory. Only liberals would be proud to welcome a buffoon and degenerate like Franken into their midst. They need the sixty votes in the Senate, and I guess they really would’ve been happy with a monkey in that seat, as long as it voted along the lines of the progressive agenda that the left-wing of the Democratic party sorely wants right now. Franken is just the clown to do it, I’m sure.
This says a lot about Republicans too. When Senate Republicans feel the urge to stray from fiscal conservatism again (which I know they will do) and legislate more like Democrats than the GOP, they should be forced to look across the aisle to Franken’s mug in the chamber. Because actions, like elections, have consequences.
I kept waiting for this to turn into a skit, with Dana Carvey walking out as George Will to challenge him to a debate or something, but there shall be no punchline today, alas. We’ve elected B-movie actors president and monosyllabic action stars governor; why should electing a bit player from SNL feel so much more depressing?
As I alluded to in the original post, the sight of Al Franken as the official junior senator from Minnesota is just a confirmation of the ineptitude of Beltway Republicans over the last eight years. That, and the notion that he is virtually a rubber stamp for a left-wing agenda in the Senate is enough to make any responsible American depressed out of their mind.
I wonder how many people will actually be indoctrinated into the Obamacare myth tonight?
The illusion that a goverment-run healthcare plan will be an efficient and politically neutral plan is insanity.
It is an illusion bought into by those who believe in the altruistic virtues of a political class in Washington that has shafted taxpayers for years. Specifically, the dream belongs to the adherents of a failed liberal philosophy in Congress, in the blogosphere and in the media.
The true story here is that ABC has taken upon themselves the task of breaching a divide between objective media and government propaganda—a step more towards Banana Republicanism than anything inherently American.
The only question I have is this: what flavor of pudding will the President be spoon-feeding to Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson? And will they be wearing bibs?
The last nine months have been pretty trying for conservatives. The Republican party has shown itself completely inept and incompetent at promoting the conservative agenda, let alone translating that into electoral victories. Obviously, having control of the White House and majorities in both chambers of congress doesn’t automatically mean advancing the cause.
But just when I thought I had seen it all with the Republicans, the Democrats appear to be heading in the same direction.
It’s apparent by now that the political fight over reforming the nation’s healthcare system has reached some sort of crossroads.
The CBO scored the draft of the Kennedy/Dodd reform bill, and concluded that not only would the reform add $1 trillion to the budget deficit over ten years, but 15 million people would losecoverage. The CBO report caused the Obama administration to distance itself from the Senate reform package.
The reform train is pretty much at a halt right now, and for various reasons—-the structure of reform (public option, no public option, etc.) and more importantly, the source of financing for the plan.
For the liberal wing of the Democratic party, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. They saw the 2008 elections a mandate of sorts for progressive change.
But alas, the Democratic party, like the GOP, is made up of moderates and partisans. Naturally, the progressives want the moderates expunged from the party. (Funny how the left condemns conservative Republicans as “extremists” , warning the GOP to moderate, while for them, extreme liberalism is the way to go for Democrats).
As such, there is much hand-wringing on the left. Chris Bowers at Open Left pounds the table:
When Democrats were in the minority in the Senate, they argued to progressive activists that, in order to pass the type of legislation we wanted, we needed to take back the majority in the Senate. So, in 2006, progressive activists worked their butts off and helped deliver Democrats a Senate majority.
After Senate Democrats had the majority, they argued to progressive activists that, in order to pass the type of legislation we wanted, they told they needed not just the majority, but also 60 votes in the Senate and control of the White House. So, in 2008, progressive activists worked their butts off and helped deliver not only the White House, but also sixty votes in the Senate (once al Franken is seated, of course).
Now that Democrats have wide majorities in both branches of Congress, not to mention control of the White House, we are still being told that our agenda is not politically possible.
The disappointment at failure will be immense, and not just among grassroots activists, but among the public at large if Obama doesn’t fulfill this promise. There is no good political reason not to do this right and every reason to avoid doing it wrong. It’s incomprehensible to me that they would put this on the table and then fail to follow through. It’s the worst of all possible worlds.
Not that I agree with any of them politically, but after seeing the Republican party essentially stab conservatism in the back for the better part of ten years, I can understand the frustration of the left at this point. For them, there seems to be nothing but garbage coming out of the Senate right now with regards to reforming healthcare.
Health-care reform is the crown jewel of the liberal agenda. To be more specific, it has to be nothing short of a public option from the current legislation and a single-payer plan at the most.
If meaningful (or perceived) reform happens under his watch, and barring any catastrophic event, then re-election is all but assured for Obama, though not necessarily for some congressional Democrats.
Nevertheless, it could cement liberalism as a dominant political force for generations. And heading into the 2010 midterms, the stakes are high and a lot is riding on getting a bill to the president’s desk by this fall. They’re not even hiding it anymore:
[White House Chief of Staff, Rahm] Emanuel is anxious for the president to sign the new law by October so that Democrats have a year to campaign on it ahead of congressional midterms, aides say. Administration officials concede the new kinks in the schedule make that harder
With solid majorities in both chambers of Congress, and an extremely popular president, real change would seem more like a reality than a hope. But in fact, the reality lies in the political realities of the legislative branch. Progressives will demonize the industry, demonize Republicans, and not the least of all, moderate Blue Dog Democrats. The political realities could be that the American public is not ready for, or maybe, does not want the change that progressives want for movement.
I’ve seen the reports and polls that say most people are satisfied with their healthcare insurance. But to be honest, everyone is happy with their medical plans—-until they have to use it. Then it just becomes a maze of bureaucratic red tape, unforeseen expenses and aggravation.
That being said, ask the people if they would like healthcare “reform” (whatever that may be) and most likely the answer is yes. But ask them if they’re willing to pay for it? I would wager that the answer is no.
I think moderate Democrats realize this. That, and the industry’s stranglehold on our politicians, will prevent any real reform.
UPDATE. Marc Ambinder makes the point I was trying to get at:
If and when we look back to this debate from the hindsight of a bill that does pass, I think what we’ll find faulty is the idea that Democrats thought they could sell health care reform without sacrifice. That magical notion simply has no bearing on reality. Health reform was — is — always going to be an expensive, complex endeavor requiring political capital expenditures and greenback expenditures.
In an economy that has millions of Americans making unexpected sacrifices, it’s hard to imagine them readily willing to make more, especially when mandates and higher taxes are concerned.
Just don’t ask how much it will cost, because they won’t tell us, although I’m sure we’ll be paying for it:
House Democrats on Friday answered President Obama’s call for a sweeping overhaul of the health care system, unveiling a bill that they said would cover 95 percent of Americans. But they said they did not know how much it would cost and had not decided how to pay for it.
As with most proposals to come from the Democratic party, it also involves a massive expansion of federal bureaucracy and a all-powerful health czar to oversee it all:
Under the House bill, health insurance would be regulated by a powerful new federal agency, headed by a presidential appointee known as the health choices commissioner.
Plus, we get to experience a federal mandate regarding health-care:
The draft bill would require all Americans to carry health insurance. Most employers would have to provide coverage to employees or pay a fee equivalent to 8 percent of their payroll.
Doctors won’t be too happy:
The plan would initially use Medicare fee schedules, paying most doctors and hospitals at Medicare rates, plus about 5 percent. After three years, the health secretary could negotiate with doctors and hospitals.
But it doesn’t really matter if we like it or not, as long as it makes the right people happy:
But John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., praised the House bill, saying it provided “a road map for what health care reform should look like.”
So the House Democrats’ plan for reforming health care involves creating a new federal agency, overseen by what is sure to be a well-heeled bureaucrat, friendly to Obama and his ideology of government as caretaker-of-all.
Not to mention that the new bureaucracy will enforce the requirement that 95% of the country purchase health insurance—-lest they get penalized for not doing so. Then there’s the nasty business of making sure that the evil doctors get paid what said health czar and his underlings deem correct.
They say that they aren’t sure how this will be paid for. Don’t fall for it. They know exactly how this will be financed—by raising taxes or creating new ones. And limiting those higher taxes on earners who make more $250,000—in accordance with the president’s campaign promises—-will be close to impossible.
Supposedly, 2008 was the year of the Democrat. We were told the country was entering a new age of political discourse and new ideas–the old Washington was out the window. No more politics as usual.
Given how government has always been an inefficient and bloated money pit—-do Decmocrats honestly believe that this go around will be different? Enough to put nearly 18% of our nation’s economy under the oversight of a bureaucrat?
Have the Democrats ever offered anything to political discourse that doesn’t include raising taxes to fund expansion of federal power and bureaucracy to address the issues of the day? Their answers to every domestic issue was always to tax and spend, tax and spend…..then tax and spend some more.
That was the old Democrat ideology, and it appears to be the “new” one as well.
“I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration…That’s a pretty big megaphone. You’d be hard pressed if you watched the entire day to find a positive story about me on that front,”
That’s right. Fox News doesn’t get it.
Obama shouldn’t be groveling to the media. It’s the media that should be grovelling to him!Fox needs to just pipe down and accept the spoon-fed pudding from the White House, lest it face further isolation.
So says Patrick Ruffini in an insightful post regarding last week’s Democratic primary for governor.
Party hack and Clintonite Terry McAullife spent tons of cash on the race, and ended up losing—no, he got trounced. Here was a former DNC chairman running for governor, and he almost finished third in a three-way race.
Cash should have been is king, right? Wrong:
In the modern campaign, early money and establishment support matters far, far less than it used to, and could actually turn out to be a handicap — particularly when money becomes the story.
[...]
As a campaign manager, I’d much, much rather be running the guy with a message and no money versus the guy with money and no message. Why? Because the guy with a message will eventually find momentum, which will deliver all the money he needs when he needs it.
[...]
This is not 1988 or 1992, when a Paul Simon or Paul Tsongas could have a surplus of political success combined a deficit of money, strangling their upstart campaigns in the crib. Today, the money comes in virtually instantaneously online at the first hint of success.
The McAuliffe model of banking money early to generate momentum later through ads is broken. The new model is to generate organic opportunities for momentum first then monetize them, punching through the finish line in a final blitzkrieg at the end.
The GOP campaign committees should take notice. McAuliffe epitomizes Beltway hubris and elitism—-he has the credentials and the establishment pedigree….and the money. Republicans experienced this in last fall’s general election. John McCain was nominated based on his rank and privilege, but hardly on merit. It was “his turn”.
The establishment class system elevated him to the nomination. And just like McAuliffe, he was on the wrong end of a well-deserved electoral thrashing.
Unfortunately for conservatives, it seems like the GOP hasn’t learned their lesson, and is more than happy to continue its long and winding road of supporting moderate, Democrat-like Republicans.
Ruffini’s advice is sound and should be a model for future political victories for conservatism, and eventually for Republicans. Message first, and the money will follow. What better place to start than with next year’s Republican primary for US Senate.
The latest NYT Magazine ran a great pieceon the enormity of data traveling through the internets and the physical space needed to accommodate it all. This excerpt on Facebook really stuck out:
Facebook’s numbers are staggering. More than 200 million users have uploaded more than 15 billion photos, making Facebook the world’s largest photo-sharing service. This expansion has required a corresponding infrastructure push, with an energetic search for financing.
“We literally spend all our time figuring how to keep up with the growth,” Jonathan Heiliger, Facebook’s vice president of technical operations, told me in a company conference room in Palo Alto, Calif.
“We basically buy space and power.” Facebook, he says, is too large to rent space in a managed “co-location facility,” yet not large enough to build its own data centers. “Five years ago, Facebook was a couple of servers under Mark’s desk in his dorm room,” Heiliger explained, referring to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder.
“Then it moved to two sorts of hosting facilities; then it graduated to this next category, taking a data center from an R.E.I.T.” — real estate investment trust — “in the Bay Area and then basically continued to expand that. We now have a fleet of data centers.”
Think about that next time you need to post to your assorted “friends” the tedious minutiae of your daily lives.
In the opening game of their interleague series with the Evil Empire, the Mets actually gutted this one out pretty good for nine innings. The two teams exchanged leads throughout the game, and the Mets even put together a four run fifth inning to make it a 6-3 lead over the Yankees.
David Wright hit what was supposed to be the go ahead run in the eight inning, with a double off of Mariano Rivera, of all people.
But, of course, this is the Mets and the baseball gods do not take the Mets (or their fans) too seriously.
With one out in the bottom of the 9th, Jeter singles and K-Rod gives Teixeira the intentional walk to bring up A-Rod. Of course, the choke-meister characteristically pops out to Castillo, with what seemed liked the softest pop-up I had ever seen—it seemed like the ball was in the air for 10 minutes.
So, of course the ball pops out of Castillo’s glove. Game over. Yankees win.
What a crushing loss. I mean, seriously. How many times do Mets fans need to be punched in the groin to actually get a team that can, at the least, play some fundamentally sound baseball?
I don’t think I’m overreacting when I say that if the Mets had a real manager, Castillo will be on the bench for the second game of this series (we’re going to lose the game anyway).
I”ve read comments on blogs to the effect that is was “just an error” and that all players make them. This is true, all players make errors.
But this was an intolerable error. An error which essentially will make the difference in this series, let alone just costing the Mets a single game.
The Yankees are reeling. They just lost three straight to the Red Sox. If you were watching the game, as I was, Jeter and Texeira ran home on that error like it was game 7 of the World Series and electrified the stadium. Castillo’s error just gave ALL the momentum back to the Yankees.
Thanks Luis—–How about using two hands next time, eh? Novel idea?
But of course, we don’t have a real manager—we have Jerry Manuel.
Maybe it was a coincidence, but ESPN classic was showing Game 5 of the 1999 NLCS tonight, and I watched from the 13th inning on.
Talk about a REAL TEAM. Bobby Valentine’s 1999 Mets had half the talent of the current 2009 suckfest we have now, but they had three times the guts!
And what did Omar do, when Bobby V asked to manage this team again after the Mets’ annual meltdown at the end of last season? Told him to take a hike.
Too many American liberals cannot handle a strong, good-looking, intelligent, independent woman who disagrees with them — and so they make the crude, cruel and sexist remarks — including those about raping them or their 14-year-old daughters.
[...]
So-called feminists stand on the sidelines like so many Silda Spitzers or Elizabeth Edwardses or Hillary Clintons, standing by their menfolk while the boys treat women like dirt. Heck, Mrs. Edwards even served as her husband’s attack dog against any critic — even as she knew he was sleeping with his mistress of many years.
“We pledge to make this the most honest, ethical, and open Congress in history.”
- Nancy Pelosi, November 2006
After returning from a paid, 5-week vacation, Congressional leaders returned to Washington hoping to push through a new energy bill by the suddenly pro-drilling House Leader Nancy Pelosi (the bill does nothing to expand America’s oil resources and supports more tax increases) and quickly adjourn Congress for the election season.
What they found was a financial system in crisis and a buckling stock market, as Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Merril Lynch swallowed by Bank of America and AIG getting taken over by the Feds. While the McCain and Obama campaigns exchanged blame for the crisis, Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid also chimed in, blaming McCain and the Bush administration for the crisis.
Realizing the severity of the situation, the Democrat “leaders” of the Congress did what is expected of the “most ethical” Congress in history; they decided to leave town. In an act of shameless cowardice, the always intimidated Reid said “no one knows what to do” and Ms. Pelosi decided it was time to get out of Washington, and leave the heavy lifting to the Fed, the Treasury and the Administration. Reid continued “This is a different game. We are not playing soccer, basketball or football. This is new game……” despite that the government bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a little over a week ago, or that the Federal Reserve helped with the eventual takeover of Bear Stearns just six months ago.
The real motive here? Pelosi and company would rather not have to get their hands dirty by actually helping the taxpayers (their constituents), in at least helping to find a solution, as this is a tense political season, with the Democrats in striking distance of obtaining the White House. This is their priority. It would be extremely convenient for them that the economy squirm as it has, for another month and a half or so, until election day. This is not the politics of change that the Democrat party consistently cries about, its politics of the same. No leadership here, just constantly passing the buck, blaming Republicans and conservatives for any and all problems that may arise. We saw this in the Clinton Administration, we continue to see it here in a Congress where the Democrats have the majority, and yet, have accomplished nothing. Hypocrisy at its finest, at a time when, you would assume, their constituents needed them the most. Instead, they were basically told that they literally knew nothing about how to handle the situation, and tried to wash their hands of the whole mess. Is this considered ethical of elected politicians and leaders?
Last night, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, challenged the Democrat leaders in Congress to actually contribute to helping with the solution rather than continually blaming the Bush Administration and John McCain for the market’s troubles. Apparently, they got the hint, and realizing the political fallout from doing nothing might be worse than attempting to do something, apparently have decided to stick around for a few weeks. The election can wait. After meeting with Sec. Paulson last night, there are renewed calls by Pelosi to “hold hearings” in September and October, saying “I don’t think the American people want us to wait until next year…”
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson talks with reporters after meeting with Congressional leaders on the current economic crisis Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008 on Capitol Hill in Washington
“I am not persuaded that (the surge) is going to solve the sectarian violence there….in fact, I think it will do the reverse..” – Senator Barack Hussein Obama, January 2007
“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated.” - Sen. Obama, September 2008
Finally, some progress in rooting out the real cause of America’s financial crisis. According to Reuters, the FBI is probing “potential corporate fraud” as the cause of the collapse in the mortgage industry.
Its about time. The American people deserve real answers to the questions in this debacle. The political ramifications could (should) be huge, as this crisis has liberal Democrat fingerprints all over it. The American people need to hear, that senior management at Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae, had “economic” roles in the Carter and Clinton Administrations (Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson). That Raines and Johnson falsified profits for personal gain, to the tune of millions of dollars, while greasing the political coffers of those in charge of “oversight” (read Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, etc.)
The American people need to know that Barack Obama is the recipient of the 2nd largest total of lobbyist money from Fannie and Freddy, in ALL OF CONGRESS. And that Franklin Raines currently serves as his campaign’s “economic adviser.”
The American people need to know that $200 billion of taxpayer money was used to bailout the corporate crimes of Fannie and Freddy, committed by those entrenched in the political party that prides itself on “helping the poor and middle class.” The monetary fallout from these crimes dwarfs that committed by the guys at Enron and Worldcom, whom the liberals assailed so much in the early part of this decade. Liberals are to blame for the fleecing of America the past 10 years.
Startling new evidence that Joe Biden, is NOT just a gaffe machine, but could actually be as dumb as a doornail. As the media and Charlie Gibson wait to pounce all over John McCain and Sarah Palin for ANY misstep, they’ve conveniently ignored the latest idiocy by Joe Biden. The latest buffoonery from Biden came in an interview with CBS mouthpiece Katie Couric. Talking about what leaders should do in a time of financial crisis, he quickly pointed out that:
“When the stock market crashed Franklin Roosvelt got on television and….”
The rest of the quote is irrelevant, you get the idea. Imagine if Sarah Palin made such a comment in Charlie Bibson’s interview. Or at the convention. Or at a press conference. Or on the campaign trail. The media would have a field day. Looking at the left wing bloggers, they’ve apparently ignored the idiocy coming from Biden as well.
And that’s not all. He also acknowledged the Obama campaign ad ridiculing McCain’s not using a computer (his war injuries limit his ability to type) as “terrible…..I would not have approved it…”
But Joe, its YOUR campaign too….or maybe its just Obama’s. Oh well…
According to the WSJ, the troubled mortgage lender Countrywide Financial made “VIP” loans to Jamie Gorelickand Daniel Mudd, loans that were charged “preferential rates”. In case you didn’t know Ms. Gorelick and Mr. Mudd were both executives at Fannie Mae. Also notable in the above chart (courtesy of the WSJ), is the presence of Chris Dodd, Democrat Senator from Connecticut.
Some key excerpts are listed below and you can read the whole article here. But let’s point out a few things first. The media are conveniently ignoring/avoiding, the central cause for the current financial crisis. That is, the housing market recession, and as it pertains to Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac (GSEs) and their political connections.
This is a Democrat scandal, first and foremost. Beginning with Jimmy Carter, whose admistration signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The law essenitally mandated that lending institutions make loans in communities designated as low to moderate income areas; in other words, areas that are high credit risks and where said institutions probably would not lend to, if not for that law. The initial political pressure for the CRA came from various political/social groups advocating the practices, such as ACORN (read Barack Obama’s “community organizing”). As the liberal doctrine goes, banks are run by “greedy, white men” and therefore the rules must be changed to accommodate the ideology that there needs to be “fairness”. The law was further made less restrictive by the Clinton Administration, with the blessing of Robert Rubin, and was championed as true reform to the process, when it in fact lessened capital requirements for the GSEs, allowing them to bulk up on the toxic securities that we are now, as taxpayers being “asked” to purchase as part of a $700 billion bailout plan.
Despite attempts by the Bush Administration to truly reform the oversight of the GSEs, liberal ideology in the Congress trumped any sense of sanity. Let’s not forget, Ms. Gorelick and Franklin Raines both held prominent posts in the Clinton Administration (another fact overlooked and ignored by the liberal media). Barney Frank in 2003, after the White House proposed the reforms:
”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing…”
“Exaggerate” the problem? Of course. Why let sound financial practice get in the way of liberal special interests? And true to form, the liberals played the class-warfare card, “the poor need houses, and the rich, white republicans wont give it to them…” And the game continued. Which has led us down this road of turmoil in the financial markets and the buckling of our banking system.
The point is, the American people need answers here. What got us to this point, what is the root cause, who was at the wheel when everything went spiraling out of control? Again, this is a Democrat scandal with plenty of blame to be passed around. The media is more than happy to ignore the GSE debacle (despite a massive government bailout earlier this month), and divert attention to other, more Republican fall guys. It is their best interest to do so as, less connection between Democrats (and Obama’s presidential aspirations) and the true cause of this crisis would only help them in November.
Some excerpts:
“Countrywide was the nation’s biggest mortgage firm and was the biggest supplier of mortgage securities to Fannie Mae under an exclusive “strategic agreement” reached by the two firms in July 1999. Under the deal, Countywide agreed to deliver a large portion of Fannie’s annual loan volume in exchange for special financing terms.”
“I do not believe there was any special treatment given,” said Ms. Gorelick. A former Countrywide employee, Robert Feinberg, said that Ms. Gorelick’s business was handled through the firm’s VIP lending department in California, and the staff there was aware of her position as a senior Fannie executive.
“I know 100% she went through the VIP department,” Mr Feinberg said, adding that VIP clients such as Ms. Gorelick typically received a one percentage point reduction in their interest rate.”
Real estate records show that Ms. Gorelick received nearly the same interest rate that Countrywide provided to then-Fannie chief Franklin Raines, who received a similar loan about 40 days before Ms. Gorelick in the spring of 2003.
Mr. Raines received a rate of 5.125% for the first 10 years on a $982,253 refinancing, Washington, D.C., real-estate records show.
A little over a month later, Ms. Gorelick received a rate of 5% for the first 10 years on a $960,149 refinancing.
The average market rate for loans of the type obtained by Ms. Gorelick and Mr. Raines fluctuated around 6% at that time, according to data from HSH Associates Inc”
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania) and Congressional American Apologist, is being sued for libel by Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt. Sharratt was part of the Marine unit which was involved in what became known as the “Haditha massacre”, so dubbed by a Time magazine “exclusive” in 2006, after two dozen civilians were found dead. The incident is primarily remembered for Rep. Murtha’s comments, referencing the marines as ”cold blood” killers. The quote:
There was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.
Most of the officers in the case have been acquitted since the case went to trial, including Mr. Sharratt.
The Forum supports America’s Armed Forces and we support Justin Sharratt.
Also, Murtha is being challenged for his seat by Republican William Russell, a decorated Army veteran who was encouraged to enter politics because of Murtha’s insanity.
Quote from Mr. Russell:
I believe in the sovereignty and security of this one nation, under God. I believe the primary role of government is to provide for the common defense and a legal framework to protect families and individual liberty. … I believe that no one owes me anything just because I live and breathe..”
It is contemptible that any member of Congress abuse the power of his office to advance a political agenda by unjustly attacking our brave men and women in uniform.
Mr. Russell needs our support to oust Pelosi-stooge Congressman Murtha from his perch.
According to Reuters, the US Attorney’s office has issued subpoenas as part of federal grand jury investigation into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
As indicated in an earlier post the FBI is already probing allegations of corporate fraud at the GSEs.
With all eyes focused on the ineptitude of Congress this week, this development is not getting alot of press but it should be on our minds. We are glad someone is actually looking toward the root cause of the crisis in our financial system; the corrupt political machine that was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And specifically, the Democrat party stooges behind the whole mess.
Definitely one of the more disturbing images fo the 2008 presidential campaign is this video of children singing what in essence, is a song praising Barack Obama. Eerily reminiscent of the indoctrination of children seen in Nazi Germany, Communist China and North Korea, the video shows children singing a song that opens with the following lyrics:
We’re gonna spread happiness
We’re gonna spread freedom
Obama’s gonna change it
Obama’s gonna lead ‘em “
Watch the video, if you can, and listen for yourself. Its disturbing if only for its (ab)use of children. Disturbing also because of their being coerced into singing praises for a politician. Freedom and happiness. Courtesy only of Dear Leader Obama. Courtesy only of the government. And what happens if Obama is not elected? The implication is that America plunges into an era of slavery and depression. Liberals have no shame. They are reckless in their actions to promote their cause.
The authors of this liberal tripe describe it as part of a “grassroots” effort. But keep reading, you will discover that this is nothing but a farce. The narrative goes:
“As Sunday approached, a neighbor volunteered a home…”
Keep reading and you find out that none other than Jeff Zucker, helped produce the clip. For those of you not in the know, Zucker is CEO of NBC Universal. You know, the TV network.
The narrative continues, with all the socialist buzzwords: “grassroots inspiration”, “inclusiveness”, and of course “community building”.
So this is what the liberals consider “grassroots.” Sipping your Starbucks lattes at an Obama rally, with your Hollywood friends, indoctrinating your kids into a cult of personality, at your neighbors house, who just happens to know Jeff Zucker. Because we ALL have the CEO of a major television network as neighbors.
The Defense Department issued its quarterly report on the progress being made in Iraq, citing that “…the overall security situation in Iraq has greatly improved,” although the gains there remain “fragile”.
Fragile yes, but it is progress nonetheless. The report goes on to say that factors which could upset the progress being made include provincial elections and “Al Qaeda and (Iranian militants) attempts to reignite violence.” Essentially, the DOD is reaffirming what liberals and Democrats in Congress refuses to acknowledge: the continued threat of Al-Qaeda to Iraq’s progress towards a sovereign nation, and that the surge crafted by General Petraeus and ordered into action by President Bush (supported by John McCain) is working.
Some excerpts:
The surge in Coalition forces, the growth of more capable Iraqi Security Forces, operations against Al Qaeda in Iraq…and the increased willingness of the people and Government of Iraq to confront extremists…have contributed to the improved security environment.”
“There have been a number of encouraging developments in Iraqi capabilities and popular attitudes in recent months that the Government of Iraq and the Coalition are focused on maintaining. First is the improved capacity of the Iraqi Security Force, which is increasingly leading major security operations and demonstrating an ability to achieve security gains. Second is the Iraqi people are increasing choosing to address their differences in the political arena rather than through violent means. Third, government’s and Coalition’s success over the last several months against militias in Basrah, Sadr City, Mosul, Amarah and Diyala…and the Iranian-supported Special Groups (SG)…has reinforced a widespread shift in the population’s attitude toward greater rejection of the militias.”
“Iranian influence continues to pose the most significant threat to long-term stability in Iraq…it appears clear that Iran continues to fund, train, arm and direct SG intent on destabilizing the situation in Iraq.”
There are plenty of reasons why Sarah Palin has energized both the McCain campaign and the Republican Party overall. Much has been said and written about her personal charm, her ability to connect with the average American citizen not living in New York, Los Angeles or on the Beltway. Her down to earth persona is a refreshing improvement to the standard Washington crowd; more significantly, her unabashed love for our country should make all of us proud as conservatives.
Sarah Palin is the real deal. Sometimes, we can judge how real and effective she is as a conservative, by how angry and vitriolic the media becomes. The angrier they get, the more powerful she becomes. Here is a woman who doesn’t fit the liberal mold of playing the victim, of being short-changed by a chauvinistic society. She’s actually happy with her life as a mother of five and having a successful career, with no axe to grind.
What stands out most of all is her steadfast belief in the basics of conservative ideals: lower taxes, smaller government, pro-family, pro-life, personal responsibility and the overall notion that government is not the solution to our everyday problems. For someone whose name has been dragged through the cess-pool of malicious mainstream media pundits and talking heads, regarding her lack of foreign policy experience, she has the right ideas: no appeasement of our enemies, standing up and not apologizing for America, realizing that terrorism is our enemy.
She couldn’t have made her beliefs more clear to us than she did in last night’s vice-presidential debate
On the issue of taxes, we believe that lower tax rates spur economic growth, allows for increased consumer spending; the concept of easing the tax burden on those that create jobs, those that risk capital. Higher tax rates on businesses and individuals impedes capital investment. Governor Palin drove that point home in the debate with one sentence:
“We do need the private sector to be able to keep more of what we earn and produce….”
While we’re on the subject of taxes, she cleverly rebuked Biden’s comments from last week that paying higher taxes was “patriotic”:
“…that’s not patriotic. Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you’re not always the solution. In fact, too often you’re the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper.”
And when it comes to our own personal checkbooks, no government bailouts, no self-deprecating sense of being victimized by whomever:
“Don’t live outside of our means. We need to make sure that as individuals we’re taking personal responsibility through all of this”
On gay marriage:
“I don’t support defining marriage as anything but between one man and one woman”
In regards to foreign policy, where Joe Biden easily has more expertise (although not necessarily so much success), Sarah Palin stood out with the most succint point on meeting with enemy leaders:
“But again, with some of these dictators who hate America and hate what we stand for, with our freedoms, our democracy, our tolerance, our respect for women’s rights, those who would try to destroy what we stand for cannot be met with just sitting down on a presidential level as Barack Obama had said he would be willing to do. That is beyond bad judgment. That is dangerous.”
Liberals and the mainstream media constantly ask the question of what consitutes victory in Iraq; what is the end game? On the war in Iraq, Palin noted simply:
“We’re fighting terrorists, and we’re securing democracy…”
Like I said, Sarah Palin is the real deal. As conservatives, we should be proud.
(UPDATE)
Along the same lines, see this column in National Review
In an attempt to weaken the McCain campaign’s new offensive on Barrack Obama’s questionable judgment and personal associations, Saturday’s New York Times ran with a front page, above-the-fold story on his political relationship with admitted American terrorist, Bill Ayers.
The article is liberal fluff, of course.
An agitator in the true sense of the word, Ayers was a founding member of the Weather Underground in the 1960’s; the radical leftist group “protested” the violence of the Vietnam War with violence of their own, bombing various public locations including the Pentagon, the Capitol, police stations and courthouses, killing innocent citizens in the process. As recently as 2001, Ayers has admitted “I don’t regret setting bombs, I feel we didn’t do enough.”
As most liberal extremists of the 1960s did, he followed the path to the halls of academia, where violence is replaced by indoctrination; Ayers is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois, endorsing education “reform.” Ayers even cozies up to Socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez. In a speech at the World Education Forum in Venezuela, after applauding the “profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez….we share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution..”
The Obama campaign has fervently tried to defuse any hint of a connection between the two; even Mr. Obama refers to Ayers as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood”. But even the NYT piece hints of a significant relationship between the two. It has been well documented that Obama’s political career began with a fundraiser at Ayer’s home in Chicago in 1995. The two even worked together in 1998 to defeat an Illinois juvenile crime bill. They have served together on the boards of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund Institute, throughout the 1990s and earlier this decade. Both institutions receive grant funding to promote liberal education and social agendas.
On the state level, Obama’s working association with Ayers in Chicago’s political underworld could fly under the radar, not attracting much national attention. However, as Obama’s national ambitions became clearer, separating himself from Ayers was imperative. In fact, distancing himself from the extremist workings of his political foramtive years, became the campaign’s primary goal. In a debate with Hillary Clinton, during the Democrat primaries, Obama reacted to Clinton’s accusation of a significant relationship between the two:
This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.
As the title of the Times piece suggests, the two merely “crossed paths” and their interactions were “sporadic.” The facts, once again, get in the way of an attempt by the NYT to be credible on the issue of Obama’s character and professional affiliations, past or present. Ayers kick-started Obama’s political career and the two of them have worked together several times to promote their liberal extremist agendas. That Obama is looking to be President (a goal the NYT obviously supports) and wishes that the mainstream media conveniently ignore these specifics, does not take away from that fact and neither can the New York Times.
By all measures, this is an important election. Probably the most important Presidential election of our time. Is it too much to ask then, that the American people know not just where the candidates stand on the political issues, but also about their character?
Barack Obama would rather the media ignore the issue of character. To liberals, character doesn’t matter. Unless, of course, you are a conservative running for office. Just look at what happened after Governor Palin was announced as the vice-presidential nominee for the GOP. The media had a field day, determined to find out everything about her past: who she associated with, what church she attended, what they believed in, criticizing her religious beliefs, and so on. Not to mention an unrelenting smear campagin on her and members of her family. Only then, apparently, does the media feel obliged to dig into someone’s past in order to judge their character.
As for Obama’s association with an admitted and unrepentant terroirst? Irrelevant. Or a poison-filled, America-hating “pastor” who baptized the Senator’s two children and whose congregation the Obama family had been a member of for 20 years? Not an issue. And what about Obama’s origins in politics as a member of ACORN, a leftist, non-profit group of “community organizers”? Who cares?
William Kristol writes in an op-ed piece for the NYT today; he describes a phone conversation he had with Sarah Palin yesterday:
Palin also made clear that she was eager for the McCain-Palin campaign to be more aggressive in helping the American people understand “who the real Barack Obama is.” Part of who Obama is, she said, has to do with his past associations, such as with the former bomber Bill Ayers. Palin had raised the topic of Ayers Saturday on the campaign trail, and she maintained to me that Obama, who’s minimized his relationship with Ayers, “hasn’t been wholly truthful” about this.
I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers — and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright?
She didn’t hesitate: “To tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.”
Her advice to Senator McCain in tomorrow’s presidential debate: ”Take the gloves off…”
We’re glad Governor Palin brought that up and we’re thankful to see that she’s the importance of bringing it to the campaign trail. We know that she has the right idea when it comes to policy issues. We know she’s proud of our country and doesn’t apologize for us to foreign leaders. Apparently, she’s right on what needs to be done for the remainder of this campaign. Bring the issue of character to the American people. Because in the end, character does matter.
Bet you won’t be seeing the mainstream media report this bit of news. A statement issued by no less than 100 economists, including several Nobel Prize winners, basically says that Obama’s economic policies are a recipe for disaster; that is, if you consider the Great Depression a disaster.
Some excerpts of note:
Barack Obama argues that his proposals to raise tax rates and halt international trade agreements would benefit the American economy. They would do nothing of the sort. Economic analysis and historical experience show that they would do the opposite. It was exactly such misguided tax hikes and protectionism, enacted when the U.S. economy was weak in the early 1930s, that greatly increased the severity of the Great Depression.
We are equally concerned with his proposals to increase tax rates on labor income and investment. His dividend and capital gains tax increases would reduce investment and cut into the savings of millions of Americans. His proposals to increase income and payroll tax rates would discourage the formation and expansion of small businesses and reduce employment and take-home pay, as would his mandates on firms to provide expensive health insurance.
In sum, Barack Obama’s economic proposals are wrong for the American economy. They defy both economic reason and economic experience.
Like I said, don’t expect to see this story reported by angry Keith Olbermann anytime soon. We all know that it’s in the media’s best interest to keep these things under the radar and and have them just go away, being in the tank for Obama as they are.
It is no secret that the McCain campaign is changing tactics by bringing up questions about Barack Obama’s character. But despite media implications that the Democrats are taking the high road in the last few weeks of the campaign, the truth is that the Democrats are up to their old tricks; namely, playing the race card.
They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia. Senator Barack Obama has taken some cheap shots at Mr. McCain, but there is no comparison.
It is also no secret that liberals love to use claims of racism not only to smear political opponents, but to distract from real issues. As Sarah Palin attracts larger crowds on the campaign trail, the GOP message reaches a greater number of people. The Democrats just won’t have any of it. Smear away:
He’s ‘not one of us?’” Mr. Meeks said, referring to a comment Sarah Palin made at a campaign rally on Oct. 6 in Florida. “That’s racial. That’s fear. They know they can’t win on the issues, so the last resort they have is race and fear.
Racism is alive and well in this country, and McCain and Palin are trying to appeal to that and it’s unfortunate,” said Representative Ed Towns, also from New York.
This is why Obama is always calling for a “clean” campaign. He doesn’t have to smear; in typical, south-side of Chicago-style politics, he has his surrogates do it for him.
So we have Democrats smearing and race-baiting the Republican ticket, contrary to what the left-wing media is saying. And as if there needs to be any more proof of the obvious bias in “mainstream” media, here’s how the AP reported the “story”.
By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is “palling around with terrorists” and doesn’t see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.
But let’s look at Governor Palin’s quote more closely. Here’s the transcript of the speech in question, and the quote in context:
So I’m reading the New York Times, though, and I was really interested to read about Barack’s friends from Chicago, as the New York Times (put it ?). Now it turns out one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers. And according to the New York Times he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that quote, “launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol.”
And then there’s even more to the story. Barack Obama says that Ayers was just someone in the neighborhood, but that’s less than truthful. His own top adviser said that they were quote, “certainly friendly.” In fact, Obama held one of his first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers living room.
And they worked together on various projects in Chicago. And, you know, these are the same guys who think that patriotism is paying higher taxes. Remember, that’s what Joe Biden had said. And I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America, as the greatest source for good in this world.
I’m afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country.
This, ladies and gentlemen, has nothing to do with the kind of change that anyone can believe in, not my kids, not for your kids. What we believe in is what Ronald Reagan believed in, and that is America is an exceptional nation.
It’s well known that one of the prominent characteristics of liberals is that they have no shame. Recently, we’ve been particularly aware of this fact in how liberals supporting Obama have taken advantage of children for their political obsession; in that case it was children singing the praises of Dear Leader Obama.
Along the same line, and true to Obama’s marxist inclinations, the Obama campaign has scheduled a “Kids for Obama Parade” for this Sunday. Kids will be able to march in their Sunday best, praising the leader of their movement, complete with balloons and “wish flags”:
Grassroots “Kids for Obama Parade” (Organizing)
On Sunday, October 12, Washington State kids and families will parade around Seattle’s Green Lake. “Kids for Obama Parade” will illustrate one of Barack Obama’s core beliefs: Everyone’s voice counts. Join us as Obama’s youngest supporters rally their families and call for change, for a better America. At 2 pm, rain or shine, children and teens will express with words and drawings their hopes for the future of America on “wish flags” that will be mailed to Obama.
The first 300 kids will be given a helium balloon, an expression of solidarity. At 3 pm, the “Kids for Obama Parade” will skip, toddle, stroller, rollerblade, pedal, and red-wagon clockwise around Green Lake in a cloud of red, white, and blue balloons and a garland of kid-made wish flags. How to prepare? If possible, bring home-made signs and wear red, white, and/or blue clothing. That goes for moms, dads, big brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents too. Please spread the word.
A outfit called Asian-Americans for Obama listed the event on their website, and explains why their kids are “rooting for Obama”:
Obama speaks for everyone, he cares about everybody- Dalton, 11
All kinds of people, all over the world, like Obama. He’s a peacemaker- Seki Thu, 7
Obama made me want to get involved, and get my friends involved- Tim, 17
He taught me that this is more than an election. It’s my future- Blake, 7
Again, the use of children and their obvious indoctrination into the cult of personality put forth by Obama throughout his campaign is tough to comprehend. Maybe because it’s radically out of touch with most American families and how they raise their children.
These two instances of pseudo-marxist nonsense are notable for other reasons as well; nowhere is the notion of country or patriotism mentioned. It’s all about espousing your faith in “Obama” and how he can bring happiness and how he can bring freedom. For a candidate who criticizes others for not actually saying the words “middle class” lest they not be genuinely concerned about them, the lack of any sort of mention of “America” or “the United States”, is striking. Country definitely doesn’t come first in this campaign.
The fraud allegations from everyone’s favorite left-wing non-profit group, ACORN, have been coming in fast and furious this week. The NY Post sums it up for us:
Voter fraud allegations have been made in at least eleven states so far.
About half of those states are considered swing states, and nine of them have investigations currently under way.
The details are interesting: the 19 year old who registered 72 times; voters like Dick Tracy, Jive Turkey and Mary Poppins have registered in Ohio, courtesy of ACORN.
Take it up a notch; which presidential candidate has cozy ties to ACORN?
Consider:
ACORN’s political-action committee has endorsed Barack Obama.
Obama’s presidential campaign has paid an ACORN front $832,000 for get-out-the-vote activities.
Before launching his electoral career, Obama was the Illinois coordinator for ACORN’s voter-registration group, Project Vote.
As a lawyer, Obama represented ACORN in a voter-registration suit against the state of Illinois.
Michelle Obama’s old law firm represents ACORN in an embezzlement cover-up case involving the brother of the group’s founder.
Now, they are trying to distance themselves from ACORN. But we know that’s definitely not the case.
Another strong supporter of Obama’s work–as an organizer, as a lawyer, and now as a candidate–is Madeline Talbott, lead organizer of the feisty ACORN community organization, a group that’s a thorn in the side of most elected officials. “I can’t repeat what most ACORN members think and say about politicians. But Barack has proven himself among our members.
Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side.
And we know the Democrat-leaning SOS in Ohio broke the law, favoring Democrat voters.
We know liberals have no shame. This time is no exception.
Talking about the issues. Kim Strassel at the WSJ sums up Obama’s plans for the economy, healthcare, etc.
And now, America, we introduce the Great Obama! The world’s most gifted political magician! A thing of wonder. A thing of awe. Just watch him defy politics, economics, even gravity! (And hold your applause until the end, please.)
To kick off our show tonight, Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don’t pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he “cut” zero? Abracadabra! It’s called a “refundable tax credit.” It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don’t. Yes, yes, in the real world this is known as “welfare,” but please try not to ruin the show.
For his next trick, the Great Obama will jumpstart the economy, and he’ll do it by raising taxes on the very businesses that are today adrift in a financial tsunami! That will include all those among the top 1% of taxpayers who are in fact small-business owners, and the nation’s biggest employers who currently pay some of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Mr. Obama will, with a flick of his fingers, show them how to create more jobs with less money. It’s simple, really. He has a wand.
Next up, Mr. Obama will re-regulate the economy, with no ill effects whatsoever! You may have heard that for the past 40 years most politicians believed deregulation was good for the U.S. economy. You might have even heard that much of today’s financial mess tracks to loose money policy, or Fannie and Freddie excesses. Our magician will show the fault was instead with our failure to clamp down on innovation and risk-taking, and will fix this with new, all-encompassing rules. Presto!
Did someone in the audience just shout “Sarbanes Oxley?” Usher, can you remove that man? Thank you. Mr. Obama will now demonstrate how he gives Americans the “choice” of a “voluntary” government health plan, designed in such a way as to crowd out the private market and eliminate all other choice! Don’t worry people: You won’t have to join, until you do. Mr. Obama will follow this with a demonstration of how his plan will differ from our failing Medicare program. Oops, sorry, folks. The Great Obama just reminded me it is time for an intermission. Maybe we’ll get to that marvel later.
We’re back now. And just watch the Great Obama perform a feat never yet managed in all history. He will create that enormous new government health program, spend billions to transform our energy economy, provide financial assistance to former Soviet satellites, invest in infrastructure, increase education spending, provide job training assistance, and give 95% of Americans a tax (ahem) cut — all without raising the deficit a single penny! And he’ll do it in the middle of a financial crisis. And with falling tax revenues! Voila!
Moving along to a little ventriloquism. Study his mouth carefully, folks: It looks like he’s saying “I’ll stop the special interests,” when in fact the words coming out are “Welcome to Washington, friends!” Wind and solar companies, ethanol makers, tort lawyers, unions, community organizers — all are welcome to feed at the public trough and to request special favors. From now on “special interests” will only refer to universally despised, if utterly crucial, economic players. Say, oil companies. Hocus Pocus!
And for tonight’s finale, the Great Obama will uphold America’s “moral” obligation to “stop genocide” by abandoning Iraq! While teleported to the region, he will simultaneously convince Iranian leaders to peacefully abandon their nuclear pursuits (even as he does not sit down with them), fix Afghanistan with a strategy that does not resemble the Iraqi surge, and (drumroll!) pull Osama bin Laden out of his hat!
Tada!
You can clap now. (Applause. Cheers.) We’d like to thank a few people in the audience. Namely, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who has so admirably restrained himself from running up on stage to debunk any of these illusions and spoil everyone’s fun.
We know he’s in a bit of a box, having initially blamed today’s financial crisis on corporate “greed,” and thus made it that much harder to call for a corporate tax cut, or warn against excessive regulation. Still, there were some pretty big openings up here this evening, and he let them alone! We’d also like to thank Mr. McCain for keeping all the focus on himself these past weeks. It has helped the Great Obama to just get on with the show.
As for that show, we’d love to invite you all back for next week’s performance, when the Great Obama will thrill with new, amazing exploits. He will respect your Second Amendment rights even as he regulates firearms! He will renegotiate Nafta, even as he supports free trade! He will . . .
In recent days, the less-than-mainstream media, the liberal blogosphere and leftist politicians, are having an aneurysm about the allegedly “hate-filled” and “frenzied” crowds that have shown up at McCain/Palin campaign stops. One blog in particular criticized the “nationalistic tone” at one rally, exemplified by the chanting of “USA! USA!.” How horrific! In the United States?? Apparently, liberals still adhere to their innate belief that ordinary citizens should not make their opinions heard in such forums and that such emotions should be suppressed; otherwise, what’s the fuss?
Of course, liberals have never been known for their patriotism. The liberal ideology is structured on pandering to their vast array of special interests. Their primary objective is to coddle them and not the vast majority of Americans.
But their lack of patriotism is merely the tip of this iceberg. We’ve already seen what happens when criticism of their ideology gets too close to home; they project their opponents as purveyors of hate. Their primary and most effective (they assume) tool, is playing the race card.
Recently, everyone from Reps. Greg Meeks and Barney Frank, to Senator Harry Reid, even the “objective” Associated Press, put their chips on the racist square. But that’s just the beginning. When that doesn’t stick, they start conjuring images of hatred, using words like we’re seeing now to describe Republicans….”hate-filled…destructive…..vicious…” Yes, throw in a little fear-mongering, which is always good for effect.
On Saturday, one of their own, Representative John Lewis (D), member of the Congressional Black Caucus, jumped into the pool:
John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and veteran of the civil rights movement, says the negative tone of the Republican presidential campaign reminds him of the hateful atmosphere that segregationist Gov. George Wallace fostered in Alabama in the 1960s.
Said Lewis:
“George Wallace never threw a bomb…He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights.”
Liberals have built a movement on race-baiting and scare-mongering; class-warfare is a specialty. But unlike what we’re seeing at the McCain rallies, liberal vitriol is intentionally malicious and vile. The venom runs deep, stemming from a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is trying to live a life without accountability, without repercussions. Their candidate has had an extensive and significant political relationship with an unrepentant American terrorist? Irrelevant they say….but don’t you dare bring it up on the campaign trail, a la Sarah Palin.
Apparently, someone (namely Governor Palin) has touched a liberal nerve, because leftist angst is growing even more intense. And, probably not coincidentally, it has increased in tandem with the McCain campaign trying to shed light on Sen. Obama’s questionable character and judgment, specifically as it relates to William Ayers and to ACORN.
For the nitwits who vote for the man or woman they’d most like to have over for dinner, or hang out at a barbecue with, I suggest you take a look at how well your 401(k) is doing, or how easy it will be to meet the mortgage this month, or whether the college fund you’ve been trying to build for your kids is as robust as you’d like it to be.
He continues to drivel on about Ronald Reagan, William Buckley and conservative policies in general.
Here we see the worst kind of liberal fear-mongering: Vote for Obama or your portfolio and your children’s future are doomed. Or something like that. Never mind that the liberal wing of the Democrat party has dominated the 110th Congress for the better part of two years. But whatever, the facts are trivial to liberals. What’s important is that you are scared (and if you’re not, you should be) and remain scared, and ignorant. Its rants like these that epitomizes the radical and dangerous liberal psyche.
These comments should come as no surprise to anyone; if it does, you’re just not paying attention. We already know that inherently, Barack Obama is a Marxist ideologue. The real question here is this:
With the McCain campaign at the plate, Barack Obama throws a meatball right down the middle, matter-of-factly revealing his Marxist tendencies to a prospective voter, for all the world to see. We don’t think Gov. Palin will have a problem knocking this one out of the park; our question is, whether John McCain has the fortitude to even take a swing.
Plumber to Obama: “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more. Isn’t it?”
Obama: “It’s not that I want to punish your success, I just want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a chance for success too. I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
Note he doesn’t even answer the question directly; “Yes, I will be taxing you a lot more…”, probably wouldn’t have gone over too well.
Thanks to Michelle Malkin for picking up on this. As if we need to further prove the fact that liberals have no shame: First graders go on a class trip to see their gay teacher’s wedding.
SAN FRANCISCO, October 11 – In the same week that the No on 8 campaign launched an ad that labeled as “lies” claims that same-sex marriage would be taught in schools to young children, a first grade class took a school-sponsored trip to a gay wedding. Eighteen first graders traveled to San Francisco City Hall Friday for the wedding of their teacher and her lesbian partner, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. The school sponsored the trip for the students, ages 5 and 6, taking them away from their studies for the same-sex wedding. According to the Yes on 8 campaign, the public school field trip demonstrates that the California Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage has real consequences.
“Taking children out of school for a same-sex wedding is not customary education. This is promoting same-sex marriage and indoctrinating young kids,” said Yes on 8-ProtectMarriage.com Campaign Co-Manager Frank Schubert. “I doubt the school has ever taken kids on a field trip to a traditional wedding,” Schubert said.
The school’s principal approved of the trip, saying it was “a teachable moment.”
A teachable moment? Since when is witnessing a gay wedding part of a 1st grade curriculum? And they wonder why opposition to Prop. 8 is wilting.
Tell these extremist headcases to stop shoving their way of life down the throats of mainstream America. Support Prop. 8
If Sen. Obama were truly looking for a kind of deregulation that might be responsible for the current financial crisis, he need only look back to 1998, when the Clinton administration ruled that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could satisfy their affordable housing obligations by purchasing subprime mortgages. This ultimately made it possible for Fannie and Freddie to add a trillion dollars in junk loans to their balance sheets. This led to their own collapse, and to the development of a market in these mortgages that is the source of the financial crisis we are wrestling with today.
Finally, on the matter of deregulation and the financial crisis, Sen. Obama should consider his own complicity in the failure of Congress to adopt legislation that might have prevented the subprime meltdown.
In the summer of 2005, a bill emerged from the Senate Banking Committee that considerably tightened regulations on Fannie and Freddie, including controls over their capital and their ability to hold portfolios of mortgages or mortgage-backed securities. All the Republicans voted for the bill in committee; all the Democrats voted against it. To get the bill to a vote in the Senate, a few Democratic votes were necessary to limit debate. This was a time for the leadership Sen. Obama says he can offer, but neither he nor any other Democrat stepped forward.
Instead, by his own account, Mr. Obama wrote a letter to the Treasury Secretary, allegedly putting himself on record that subprime loans were dangerous and had to be dealt with. This is revealing; if true, it indicates Sen. Obama knew there was a problem with subprime lending — but was unwilling to confront his own party by pressing for legislation to control it. As a demonstration of character and leadership capacity, it bears a strong resemblance to something else in Sen. Obama’s past: voting present.
If the Senator from Illinois really did forsee the current subprime disaster and the devastating effect it would have on our financial system, he did absolutely nothing about it. We know that John McCain co-sponsored the Chuck Hagel bill to propose and enforce tighter regulations of the GSE’s, as noted by Hot Air:
It demonstrates a key difference between Obama and John McCain. When McCain saw the potential for crisis, he took action by co-sponsoring Chuck Hagel’s Fannie/Freddie reform bill that would have increased regulation on the two GSEs. He spoke in the Senate for its passage.
What did Barack Obama do? He wrote a letter. He didn’t bother to co-sponsor the bill that could have prevented this year’s financial collapse, or to even allow it to come to a vote. Obama talked (allegedly — we have yet to see this letter) while McCain took action.
Despite his tenure as the junior US Senator from Illinois, no legislation was proposed, no hearings called. Just a bad case of writer’s cramp:
Last year, I wrote to the secretary of the Treasury to make sure that he understood the magnitude of this problem and to call on him to bring all the stakeholders together to try to deal with it.
I wrote to Secretary Paulson, I wrote to Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, and told them this is something we have to deal with, and nobody did anything about it.
This is what liberals consider “leadership”. Pathetic…
We knew this was coming. While they and their surrogates in the media accuse the GOP of “inciting hatred”, the extremist fringe of the Democrat party is screaming racism again. This time its oozing from House apologist John Murtha of Pennsylvania’s 12th District. In explaining why Pennsylvania may not overwhelmingly vote for Obama, Murtha bloviates:
“There’s no question Western Pennsylvania is a racist area,” said Mr. Murtha, whose district stretches from Johnstown to Washington County. “The older population is more hesitant.”
Let’s not for one second think that this dramatic support for Obama is somehow emboldening the Democrat party with some sort of new vision for their party. The congressman is goose-stepping in line with the same liberal mantra: if they don’t vote for us, they must be racist. This is the type of politics that Obama loves to play and the cowardice rolls downhill. Nothing new here, just typical spineless fare from the left. And Murtha has other problems to worry about.
Murtha is being challenged by an upstanding American, Lt. Colonel William Russell, for his House seat. The best thing for our country right now would be for Murtha to lose his job.
The legend of Joe Wurzelbacher continues to grow. We bet the media and the Obama campaign wishes this story would just go away. We said it was a softball for the McCain campaign, ready-made to launch out of the ballpark. The plumber from Ohio has attracted a lot of media attention since his encounter with Obama earlier this week, but this interview speaks volumes. The interview was conducted by Pam Meister over at familysecuritymatters.org. Joe’s comments are in bold
Some highlights:
Initially, I started off asking him if he believed in the American Dream and he said yes, he does – and then I proceeded to ask him then why he’s penalizing me for trying to fulfill it. He asked, “what do you mean,” and I explained to him that I’m planning on purchasing this company – it’s not something I’m gonna purchase outright, it’s something I’m going to have to make payments on for years – but essentially I’m going to buy this company, and the profits generated by that could possibly put me in that tax bracket he’s talking about and that bothers me.It’s not like I would be rich; I would still just be a working plumber. I work hard for my money, and the fact that he thinks I make a little too much that he just wants to redistribute it to other people. Some of them might need it, but at the same time, it’s not their discretion to do it – it’s mine.
PM: Okay, and then he talked about 10, 15 years ago maybe you weren’t making that sort of money, how would you feel – if you were just starting out, or maybe looking back – the kind of tax cut that he’s promising for other people, does that still make you think that that’s a great idea?
See, I believe in working for what I get. I don’t want to say it’s a handout, but essentially that’s what it comes down to. You’re going to tax someone else more that’s been working hard to fulfill the American Dream and you’re gonna give it to other people who – I’m not saying they don’t work as hard, but I’m sure some of them don’t – and I don’t think it’s right just to give it to them or reduce taxes on their part and hike it up on my part like a teeter totter to bring it back even.
PM: …taxing small businesses making $250,000 and above is going to help the people “behind you.” And yes, “spreading the wealth around.” How did you feel about that?
As soon as he said it, he contradicted himself. He doesn’t want to “punish” me, but – when you use the word “but,” you pretty much negate everything you just said prior to that. So he does want to punish me, he does want to punish me for working harder to – you know, my big thing is the American Dream.
It was just a contradiction of terms, what he said: he doesn’t want to punish me but he wants to redistribute my wealth. And what I mean when I say my wealth, I mean the collective. Eventually – I mean, just to sound a little silly here, but you need rich people. I mean, who are you going to work for?
PM: Do you fear this is the possibility of America turning more down the socialist road if Obama does become elected and if he is able to implement these policies?
JW: Very much so.You start giving people stuff, and then they start expecting it – and that scares me. A lot of people expect it now. They get upset when their check’s late, they get upset when they don’t get as many benefits as they used to, or when different government agencies are cut or spending is cut here and there for whatever reason – people get upset at that. And that’s because they’re used to getting it and they want more. I mean, everyone’s always gonna want more. People work the system left and right to get more out of welfare, to get more out of state assistance, federal assistance. And if government’s there for them, they’re gonna keep on trying to manipulate it to get more out of it. You got people that come along and say, “Hey, I wanna help you people,” I mean, they’re all ears! They’re like, “Hey, you can help me more, I don’t have to work as hard, I don’t have to do as much, and you’re gonna give me this? Man, that’s great, you’re a good guy.”
So yeah, it goes down the socialist – His healthcare plan scares me. You know, I don’t like people going without healthcare, but it’s not my job to pay for everyone else’s healthcare. It’s hard enough paying for my own. I like the idea of deregulation as far as – nationally, you know, you only get insurance companies that can work in this state – if you deregulate that then you have more people competing and then the prices would go lower. It seems pretty simple to me. It probably isn’t that simple – but you flood the market with more products, usually they go down cheaper.
What he expects McCain will talk about during the last debate:
There’s a lot of things I wish McCain would say. As far as (taxes for small businesses) yes, I would like him to speak. Not so much about small businesses, but just people in general that make this money. It’s not up to them to help America, I mean – let me rephrase that. It’s not – they shouldn’t be taxed more because they’ve succeeded. That’s envy and jealousy. Get off your butt and go work. Don’t sit there and expect the government to give it to you. So I wouldn’t mind him speaking on it like that. I know he couldn’t say it probably like that because that’d turn a lot of people off. But it just – yeah, I guess I would like him to speak about that and a bunch of other things.
Michelle Malkin agrees that a joint appearance with Joe and McCain is in order, at the least. We agree. Hopefully, we haven’t heard the last from Mr. Wurzelbacher.
The Obama campaign insists that the subject of William Ayers and his relationship with their candidate is irrelevant. The reasons, they say, is that Obama was too young when the Weather Underground committed most of their terrorist activities, which consisted of bombing various symbolic institutions: the Pentagon, the Capitol, various police stations and banks. The other reason is that Obama, who cut his teeth in Chicago’s entrenched political system, was simply unaware of Ayers’ (who by then was a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago) despicable past. The former is obviously true, but misses the point. As to the latter, it is most likely false; there’s really no way that someone as intelligent as Obama makes himself out to be could not have known. We think the Obama apologists know this also. The whole point is that it raises the question of Obama’s judgment, and his moral ineptitude and qualifications (or lack thereof) to be President.
Joseph M. Skelly, at National Review gets it. He does a great job connecting the dots between the violent depravity of Ayers and the Weather Underground with Barack Obama, and why it’s relevant. An excerpt:
Ultimately, Dan Berger is an apologist for terror. In the conclusion of his book he asks, “Was the [Weather Underground] a terrorist Organization?” His reply: “Terrorists? Apocalyptic nihilists? Hardly. The Weather Underground was, on the contrary, a militant continuation of the hopeful spirit of the early to mid-1960s, inspired by the success of national liberation movements the world over.” Bill Ayers parrots this same distorted line of reasoning in his memoir, Fugitive Days. “Terrorists terrorize, they kill innocent civilians, while the [Weather Underground] organized and agitated,” he claims. “Terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate.”
This moral relativism eerily echoes Barack Obama’s blasé reaction to questions about his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn. The former is just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” we are told. With a rationale like this Obama insults our intelligence. It is inconceivable that someone with his education – including at Columbia University, where the SDS’s occupation of the campus in 1968 is the stuff of legend – and his exposure to politics in Chicago, the sight of the 1968 Democratic Convention and the Days of Rage in 1969, knew nothing of the history of the Weather Underground when he first met Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. “I was just 8 years old” in 1969, Obama says. How old was he when Ayers and Dohrn emerged from hiding in 1980 to headlines across the country? How old was he when the Weathermen murdered two policemen and a Brinks security guard in Nyack, New York in 1981? He was twenty, well past the age of reason. What is more, he was in his junior year at Columbia University in New YorkCity, less than forty miles from where the crime occurred. “Despicable acts” is his strongest description of what Ayers and Dohrn did. Wrong again. These were not simply “despicable,” they were evil, terrorist atrocities – and capital murders in the case of the Brinks robbery. Why can’t Obama, lauded for his oratory, speak plainly and truthfully about such actions, about a campaign that aimed to rip our country apart?
In recent days Deroy Murdock and radio talk show host Laura Ingraham have asked the right rhetorical question: what did Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn see in Barack Obama when they met him in Chicago? After reading Berger’s book the answer is clear: they saw in him a kindred spirit, a fellow traveler, an acceptable face of the radical agenda they were pushing. What is more, Obama saw kindred souls in Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. This cuts to the heart of the matter. A person with a sound moral compass would have never developed a relationship with the two former terrorists in the first place, but would have immediately distanced himself from them. A person with a strong moral foundation, never mind a candidate for president of the United States, would have never sought to ingratiate himself with the likes of Ayers and Dohrn, a man and woman who have committed evil acts, who have admitted as such, and who have never repented for their transgressions.
This entire episode represents a profound failure of judgment on Obama’s part. It also has the most serious of implications regarding his presidency if he is elected. Remember, on Inauguration Day Obama will take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. He will be the highest law enforcement official in the nation. He will recommend judges to sit on the Supreme Court, appoint the Attorney General of the United States, and name the Director of the FBI. Bernardine Dohrn refused to cooperate with the latter agency and refused to testify before a grand jury. What does Obama think about this? What does his association with someone who has nothing but utter contempt for our legal system portend? Will he go soft on domestic terrorism? Can we expect him to take a page out of Bill Clinton’s book and pardon Judy Clark and Dave Gilbert? Will he sound off about moral equivalence, which we have already heard in some his statements? Can we trust him to enforce the rule of law? We do not ask these questions about John McCain because we know his track record. We ask them of Barack Obama because, for whatever reason, he is covering his tracks.
John Murtha is pathetic. Being one of the most corrupt and inept representatives in all of Congress is actually his strongest characteristic. But is it possible to sink below the appeal of pond-scum? Murtha has it in the bag. Earlier this week, he referred to citizens of Pennsylvania as racist, lest they not vote for Obama in the general election. But then again, he’s not the first liberal to smear and race-bait the citizens of Pennsylvania this year.
We don’t think Murtha is smart enough to realize his own idiocy, so his enablers issued a feeble attempt at an “apology” :
While we cannot deny that race is a factor in this election, I believe we’ve been able to look beyond race these past few months, and that voters today are concerned with the policy differences of our two candidates and their vision for the future of our great country
Murtha is a disgrace to his constituents; just to drive the point home, he cancels his debate with Bill Russell, his Republican opponent for Pennsylvania’s 12th District, who we strongly support. As per Russell’s campaign:
Once again Mr. Murtha is using the prestige and platform of public office to make wild, reckless statements about the people he represents in Congress.
Because the people of Western Pennsylvania aren’t wholeheartedly embracing Barack Obama’s values and positions on issues like the right-to-life, taxes and the 2nd Amendment doesn’t makes us racist. That’s the cheapest of cheap shots
Here’s the ad:
According to PA WaterCooler, Russell is PA’s biggest fundraiser in the 3rd quarter.
It should be clear that the only thing John Murtha deserves is retirement.
Funny how these things get noticed so close to election day. Now we know what Henry Cisneros, President Clinton’s first HUD Secretary, has been doing all these years:
As the Clinton administration’s top housing official in the mid-1990s, Mr. Cisneros loosened mortgage restrictions so first-time buyers could qualify for loans they could never get before.
Then, capitalizing on a housing expansion he helped unleash, he joined the boards of a major builder, KB Home, and the largest mortgage lender in the nation, Countrywide Financial — two companies that rode the housing boom, drawing criticism along the way for abusive business practices.
Of course, we always knew this. After helping create the environment from which our current mortgage crisis originated, he profited (and continues to profit) not only from those who provided financing for the industry, but also those who built the houses themselves. What a guy:
For the three years he was a director at KB Home, Mr. Cisneros received at least $70,000 in pay and more than $100,000 worth of stock. He also received $1.14 million in directors’ fees and stock grants during the six years he was a director at Countrywide. He made more than $5 million from Countrywide stock options, money he says he plowed into his company.
And that’s not all:
KB’s board also included James A. Johnson, a prominent Democrat and the former chief executive of Fannie Mae, the mortgage giant now being run by the government. Mr. Johnson did not return a phone call seeking comment.
What a surprise: Democrats, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, corrupt mortgage brokers and a massive government bailout, all at taxpayers’ expense.
Barack Obama is constantly telling us that as President, he will “restore” the image of the United States in the world and that he and Joe Biden have enough experience to see us through any potential crisis.
Don’t say we weren’t warned. In a stump speech on Sunday, Joe Biden more or less acknowledges what we’ve always known about foreign policy: weakness incites aggression. And the United States will appear weak indeed, if Barack Obama is elected President:
“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”
Wouldn’t it be prudent to elect a candidate who already has the foreign policy experience in order to avoid any sort of international incident in the first place? What’s more disturbing from is that Biden sounds more concerned about falling poll numbers than anything having to do with foreign policy issues:
“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”
Here we have Joe Biden telling us to ignore potentially unfavorable polling numbers, because it will not be “apparent that we’re right”.
Say it ain’t so, Joe. You mean like proposing an unpopular troop surge in Iraq? This is the same Joe Biden who has been wrong on so many foreign policy issues over nearly three decades.
We mention the troop surge as a perfect example. While Biden was bloviating about the benefits of “triangulization” in Iraq, John McCain was practically a lone voice in the Senate pushing for the change in strategy; this depsite polls and pundits criticizing the move. True leadership requires experience and forsaking polling data for convictions and principles. These are qualities in which the Obama/Biden ticket are seriously lacking. We hope the American people realize this as well.
We don’t expect Biden’s remarks to get much attention from the media; they’d rather not raise any questions about Obama’s lack of experience and Joe Biden’s ineptitude in foreign affairs this close to the election. But as others are noting, and we agree - the McCain campaign should make good use of Biden’s comments and put a new ad together.
Webster’s defines the word reckless as “utterly unconcerned about the consequences of some action; without caution“. Liberalism’s approach to fiscal policy has been and still is, more than reckless; it’s irrational and based on ignorance. Case in point, Barney Frank on CNBC:
Says Frank:
“At this point, there needs to be an immediate focus on spending….this is a time when deficit fear has to take a second seat. I do think this is a time for a very important…dose of Keynesianism. Yes, I think later on there should be tax increases. Personally I think there are a lot of rich people out there who we can tax to recover some of this money…”
In less than a minute, Barney Frank encapsulates the failed liberal philosophy of tax and spend, and spend some more. Liberalism’s blatant disregard for fiscal discipline is striking. Spend now and we’ll get the money later. What’s even more disturbing is the smug attitude; the joy he gets from fleecing his fellow citizens. All of this coming from one of the architects of the current financial crisis. What happened to the the Democrats that didn’t want to “mortgage our children’s future?” Apparently they don’t miss President Clinton’s budget surplus that much. That has to take a back seat now, according to Frank. Deficits be damned.
Chiming in on the massive spending orgy is Ben Bernanke; apparently, the Fed Chariman is on board with the Democrats “stimulus” plan, despite the assumption that the Federal Reserve should be politically neutral in these matters. As the WSJ notes, he’s probably looking out for his job more than anything else, seeing a new political landscape that appears inevitable on Capitol Hill and in the White House within the next two weeks.
Apparently, the change we need in Washington is not coming anytime soon.
When it comes to Virginia politics, it doesn’t get much more serious than Larry Sabato. The professor of politics at the University of Virginia, says Obama could win Virginia, which means McCain’s road to the White House just got narrower. The last several elections, going back to 2002, have seen Sabato’s predictions bear fruit. The McCain campaign should take notice.
On the race for President in Ohio; good news for McCain as per National Review:
I continue to hear from my source on the ground in Ohio, who is seeing results for McCain that are surprisingly good. He puts it, “in a key bellweather section of Ohio, McCain continues to show internals that are exceeding the national pollsters’ results. This portends a potentially larger McCain victory in Ohio than Bush had in 2004.”
As for those national pollsters, note that Fox News/Rasmussen puts McCain up 2, NBC/Mason-Dixon puts McCain up 1 and Rasmussen had it a tie last week. My guy on the ground thinks this might mean that the internal polling is a leading indicator, and he’s noting that if McCain does as well among the key demographics in neighboring Pennsylvania as he is in Ohio, then the Democrats ought to be sweating about that state.
That’s far from a given, of course; Pennsylvania is a bluer state than Ohio. I don’t know that McCain will win Pennsylvania, but it isn’t like he hasn’t been given enough material – “spread the wealth around”, “no coal plants”, Murtha alternately calling his constituents “racists” and “rednecks,” the bitter small-town clinger comment, etc.
Despite double digit leads for Obama in several PA polls, Governor Rendell is still a bit uneasy; not only does he want Obama to come back to the Keystone state, but he wants the Clintons there as well:
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell has sent two separate memos to the Obama campaign in the past five days requesting that the Democratic Presidential candidate—as well as Hillary and Bill Clinton—return to campaign in Pennsylvania, Rendell told CNN’s Gloria Borger.
Obama’s support appears to be weakest in the western part of the state, a region Pennsylvania Rep. Jack Murtha recently called ‘racist,’ and one where he badly lost to Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.
Need more proof that the media is in the tank for Obama? Or rather that it just cannot tolerate Sarah Palin? Or that CNN is completely inept? Rich Lowry catches CNN in the act of “creative journalism”.
Could this be the reason Gov Rendell is feeling a little queasy about Obama’s lead in Pennsylvania polls?
An internal Barack Obama campaign poll has the Democrat ahead of John McCain by just two percentage points.
WILK radio host Steve Corbett said Tuesday he obtained an Obama campaign e-mail about the internal poll showing a tight race. Pollster.com’s trend line of public Pennsylvania polls has Obama leading McCain 54 percent to 38 percent.
Allan Povanda, 67, of Greensburg was one of seven campaign volunteers waiting to greet him there. Povanda, a lifelong Democrat, plans to vote Republican for the first time this year in support of McCain, a fellow veteran.
“(Obama) stands against everything I believe,” Povanda said, citing the Illinois Democrat’s support for abortion rights. “We need somebody with integrity. We need somebody with leadership.”
Palin, whom Povanda called “a breath of fresh air,” is scheduled to return Thursday for a rally at Beaver Area High School in Beaver County, the campaign said.
Or maybe it’s just that calling your own constituents “racist” and “rednecks” two weeks before an election is never a good campaign strategy.
It’s hard to believe that the Obama campaign, which is notoriously well organized and efficient, would let its internal data slip out. As others are noting, this could be a motivational exercise. That being said, we don’t think Rendell would be calling in the big guns if there wasn’t some concern there. And some others on the left seem to be concerned as well.
Democratic Rep. John Murtha leads retired Army Lt. Col. William Russell by a little more than 4 percentage points, within the Susquehanna Poll’s 4.9-point margin of error. The poll of 400 likely voters was conducted for the Tribune-Review on Tuesday, amid uproar over Murtha’s statement that some of his constituents are racist.
About 54 percent of voters among those polled say it’s time for someone else to represent them in Congress. About 35 percent say Murtha deserves to be re-elected.
“The most important variable here is that a decisive majority say it’s time for a new person,” said Jim Lee, president of Susquehanna Polling and Research. He attributed some of the unhappiness with Murtha to the congressman’s recent comments.
While I’m not thrilled at the prospect of an Obama administration (especially with a friendly Congress), the Republicans still need to get their clocks cleaned in two weeks, for a couple of reasons.
First, they had their shot at holding power, and they failed. They’ve failed in staying true to their principles of limited government and free markets. They’ve failed in preventing elected leaders of their party from becoming corrupted by the trappings of power, and they’ve failed to hold those leaders accountable after the fact. Congressional Republicans failed to rein in the Bush administration’s naked bid to vastly expand the power of the presidency (a failure they’re going to come to regret should Obama take office in January). They failed to apply due scrutiny and skepticism to the administration’s claims before undertaking Congress’ most solemn task—sending the nation to war. I could go on.
As for the Bush administration, the only consistent principle we’ve seen from the White House over the last eight years is that of elevating the American president (and, I guess, the vice president) to that of an elected dictator. That isn’t hyperbole. This administration believes that on any issue that can remotely be tied to foreign policy or national security (and on quite a few other issues as well), the president has boundless, limitless, unchecked power to do anything he wants. They believe that on these matters, neither Congress nor the courts can restrain him.
That’s the second reason the GOP needs to lose. American voters need to send a clear, convincing repudiation of these dangerous ideas.
If they do lose, the GOP would be wise to regroup and rebuild from scratch, scrap the current leadership, and, most importantly, purge the party of the “national greatness,” neoconservative influence. Big-government conservatism has bloated the federal government, bogged us down in what will ultimately be a trillion-dollar war, and set us down the road to European-style socialism. It’s hard to think of how Obama could be worse. He’ll just be bad in different ways.
Whether McCain wins or loses, the party needs a massive overhaul and there needs to be a push to make Reagan conservatism the focal point of the platform. That is the only forumla for success in elections; this goes not only for general elections, but for elections at the state and local levels. The reason why states such as Virginia and North Carolina could be turning blue is that the Democrats have spent the past few years developing Democrat strongholds in state governments and municipalities. The Republican party needs to focus on organization and efficiency, bound together by a coherent platform and message.
Perhaps the Republicans need a few years in the political wilderness. However, the costs of defeat are high and any policies set in place by a liberal Congress and liberal President will take years to reverse. They’re already ecstatic at the prospect of spending even more taxpayer money. The media and leftist bloggers are full of hatred for Republicans and conservatives, but they will claim that this is a victory for big government and liberalism in general. As Balko notes, this election is not a repudiation of smaller government, just more big government under the GOP banner.
Not all of the turmoil in global financial markets can be blamed on the economic problems of the United States. Argentina made news this week when their government decided to nationalize the country’s private pension funds, in the name of “rescuing pensions from the global market crisis.”
As the WSJ notes, this is just a cash grab from an increasingly leftist Argentine government, one that faces nearly $30 billion in maturing government debt within the next two years, with little resources to pay it. But it also stands as an ominous sign for the recent government bailouts by our own government:
Argentine President Cristina Kirchner announced this week that her government intends to nationalize the country’s private pension system. If Congress approves this property grab, $30 billion in individually held retirement accounts — think 401(k)s — managed by private pension funds will become government property.
That the state could seize retirement savings no doubt seems outrageous to Americans. But it is a predictable development in a country where government intervention in the financial system is the norm. With Washington now expanding its role as guarantor in American banking, that’s something to think about.
The Argentine plan currently requires 11% of employees’ wages and a 16% employer contribution to go into any of 10 private pension funds. Under the nationalization plan, all contributions would go into a state fund. In other words, the Argentine government would control about $30 billion in taxpayer money.
In a society that should be based on free market capitalism, any notions of nationalizing private pensions and massive transfers of wealth and assets, should be considered questionable and dangerous at the very least.
Unfortunately, the Democrat party has plans to bring it right to the mainstream of US domestic policy. Reminiscent of President Kirchner’s desire to “rescue” retirement savings from the financial crisis, the House Education and Labor Committee earlier this month said it was entertaining strikingly similar nationalization proposals:
Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.
House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.
Under one such plan:
All workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government but would be required to invest 5 percent of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration. The money in turn would be invested in special government bonds that would pay 3 percent a year, adjusted for inflation.
On Monday, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska was convicted on seven felony counts for failing to report approximately $250,000 in gifts from VECO, an oil services company. When the verdict came down, we couldn’t put our feelings any more succinctly than with the sentiments of Michelle Malkin: good riddance.
Up for reelection next week, Stevens has decided he will stick it to the GOP some more, by not making the honorable choice, and give up his Senate seat. The hubris and self-importance is not surprising. So much for country first, let alone your own party.
Stevens encapsulates everything that is wrong with the Republican Party in 2008. He represents the corruption, the runaway, pork-laden spending that makes this Republican Party indiscernible from the liberal Democrats and led to the party’s downfall that began in 2006 and most likely will continue next week.
If fiscal conservatism is not dead in the GOP, then it certainly is on life support; Ted Stevens helped it get to this point. It’s becoming clearer, as we inch closer toward next week’s election and the Democrat tsunami that’s about to hit the GOP in both houses of Congress, that the party needs to tear down whatever is left of what Stevens represents and begin a long process of rebuilding, of creating a platform rooted and based in traditional conservative values, which should include a hard lesson in values in governance and fiscally sound policies. Ted Stevens represents none of this. That process for the GOP should begin here; the Senator needs to be jettisoned and fast
Apparently Sen. Obama’s plan to tax the “rich” includes considering everyone “rich”. The threshold for what Obama considers middle class keeps falling. As per the campaign’s website:
Middle class families will see their taxes cut – and no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase.
On Monday, Joe Biden put the income tax-cut threshold at $150,000.
Earlier today, Obama supporter Bill Richardson threw $120,000 to the wall.
Normally, we’d like to assume that candidate’s families (children in particular) are off limits when it comes to political or even social conversation. This political season, as the extremist Left, including we’re sure, those that would consider themselves “progressive” have spent a startling amount of time and money condemning the alleged hatred coming from Republicans, specifically (as usual) conservatives.
The fact of the matter is, that the fringes of left wing extremism is indeed fueled by hatred; hatred of the wealthy, hatred of those who espouse traditional religious beliefs, hatred of patriotism in our country. This can never be overstated, and has never been more apparent than how the media and liberals have had aneurysms over Sarah Palin and her family.
Other blogs have detailed the cesspool of shameful and vile personal attacks (we acknowledge Michelle Malkin here, who has done a great job with keeping tabs on this).
Just when you think liberals can’t sink any lower, they continue to outdo themselves. Wonkette has now sunk to new depths of degeneracy. Referring to photos of Trig Palin wearing an elephant costume for Halloween:
Little baby Trig must be so glad he wasn’t aborted for this, his first Halloween, because his parents dressed him up like a political party symbol to be carried around at snarling political events. Aww. Isn’t life just grand?
Starving for attention, the wingnut gallery chimes in with some comments:
- Ugh. I hate that look people get on their face when they are happy to be holding a baby. It is all domestic and other disturbing things.
- Initially they were going to have trig dress up as an aborted fetus.
- May I please report child endangerment? She may not have aborted, but I assure you she’s spent the last few months trying to kill this poor baby!!!
- I thought an unaborted mongoloid baby was the symbol of the Republican Party.
This is what liberalism and “progressive” discourse has come down to. These are Obama supporters. This is the “new politics”. A classy bunch, them liberals.
In July, the failure of mortgage lender IndyMac Bancorp, one of the country’s biggest originator of subprime mortgage loans, prompted a seizure by banking regulators. The FDIC was assigned the task of sorting through its massive loan portfolio. From a regulatory standpoint, the goal was to determine value of the bank’s existing assets, paying off its liabilities, and protecting depositors. But as the real estate market continued to flounder, another priority was to stem the tide of home foreclosures.
The FDIC Chairman, Sheila Bair noted: “Our goal is to get the greatest recovery possible on loans in default or in danger of default, while helping troubled borrowers remain in their homes”
Its plan was put into effect soon after the feds took over, working with various borrowers to renegotiate the terms of their mortgages. The WSJ writes about some of these borrowers (emphasis added):
Nanci Puerto, a 40-year-old house cleaner in Antioch, ran into such a problem. She refinanced her house for $637,288 from IndyMac in 2006, taking out cash for a down payment on another property. She and her husband, who works in a machine shop, take home a combined $70,000 a year. Each month, she makes the minimum payment on her loan, $2,416. At the same time, she watches the outstanding principal swell since that payment doesn’t fully cover the interest costs. Now she owes IndyMac $707,000, on a house that the county tax assessor says is only worth $410,000.
There’s more:
Bertha and Nicolas Bobadilla, of Brentwood, a town not far from Antioch, are making their payments but don’t think they can hold on for much longer. There’s not much the FDIC can do. Mrs. Bobadilla, 45, is an out-of-work house cleaner, while Mr. Bobadilla earns about $36,000 a year as a tree trimmer. In recent years, the couple borrowed heavily to buy houses for various family members, a bet that depended on ever-rising house prices. One home has already gone back to the bank.
So, the Bobadillas used their primary residence as an ATM to finance homes for “various family members”, and now taxpayers are paying the price. Another:
Rafael Martinez is a 31-year-old stucco worker in Pittsburg, Calif. earning $3,600 per month at his union job. He has two IndyMac loans that ballooned to $420,000. He originally borrowed $400,000. His wife lost her job and he hasn’t made a payment on either loan since March. He figured the house was lost. In hopes of saving his credit rating, he arranged a $150,000 short sale in which the bank would agree to cancel his mortgage in exchange for the proceeds.
A $400,000 mortgage with $3600 in monthly income. Amazing.
One of our primary criticisms of the last month’s massive government bailout package is the bad precedent set forth by the government proposals and lack of personal accountability for most of the “victims” of the crisis. Borrowers who took out loans they knew they couldn’t repay, to purchase homes they knew they couldn’t afford, are deemed to be the victims in this crisis, especially by lawmakers and think tanks from the left.
Certainly there were unsuspecting borrowers who got scammed; and there still are more than enough predatory lenders out there. The fast-talking, mortgage brokers pushing no money down loans, originating loans to borrowers with low credit scores and questionable credit histories, all working on commission are still out there. But at some point, somebody needs to realize that for the most part, most of these borrowers knew exactly what they were doing. During the height of the real estate boom, there was enormous pressure to purchase real estate because, it seemed, “everyone was doing it”; just like “everyone” was making fortunes day-trading stocks in the late nineties. In the end, not everyone was getting scammed; we don’t think we’d be stretching to assume that most of them knew exactly what they were doing.
Let’s finally put the Troopergate non-scandal to bed. A second investigative probe revealed today that Sarah Palin did not violate ethics laws in firing Alaska’s public safety commissioner Walter Monegan, contrary to the findings of the Branchflower report issued in October. The report was released earlier today and noted the following:
1. There is no probable cause to believe that Governor Palin violated the Alaska Executive Ethics Act by making the decision to dismiss Department of Public Safety Commissioner Monegan and offering him instead the position of Director of the Alaska Beverage Control Board.
2. There is no probable cause to believe that Governor Palin violated the Alaska Executive Ethics Act in any other respect in connection with the employment of Alaska State Trooper Michael Wooten.
3. There is no basis upon which to refer the conduct of Governor Palin to any law enforcement agency in connection with this matter because Governor Palin did not commit the offenses of Interference with Official Proceedings or Official Misconduct.
4. There is no probable cause to believe that any other official of state government violated any substantive provision of the Ethics Act.
Now before the liberal bloggers get all agitated, let’s get the facts straight. Although the Branchflower report found that Gov. Palin “abused her power” in showing concern about the fate of the state trooper in question (who happened to be involved in a messy divorce with Palin’s sister) the report’s more relevant finding:
Governor Palin’s firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads
It is of course a great thing that we are (it seems pretty certain) electing a black President. It’s just a crying shame it had to be this shallow, empty man, who has never shown a flicker of interest in wealth creation, whose head is stuffed with all the vapid nostrums of 1980s student leftism, and who seems – putting the most charitable construction on it – not to mind the brazenly thuggish tactics of his supporters.
This disastrous defeat can and will be laid at the feet of the Big Government corporate Republicans, who abandoned the Reagan Coalition, massively expanded government, and ignored the needs and values of regular, grassroots Americans. They protected Wall Street and K Street and forgot about Main Street.
Republicans will make a comeback only after they return to their conservative roots. That process starts with the replacement, with principled conservatives, of all of the Republicans’ elected Congressional leaders, as well as most members of the Republican National Committee and most state party officials. It’s time for new leaders, from top to bottom.
The battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party begins now.
Whether McCain wins or loses, the party needs a massive overhaul and there needs to be a push to make Reagan conservatism the focal point of the platform. That is the only forumla for success in elections; this goes not only for general elections, but for elections at the state and local levels. The reason why states such as Virginia and North Carolina could be turning blue is that the Democrats have spent the past few years developing Democrat strongholds in state governments and municipalities. The Republican party needs to focus on organization and efficiency, bound together by a coherent platform and message.
Perhaps the Republicans need a few years in the political wilderness. However, the costs of defeat are high and any policies set in place by a liberal Congress and liberal President will take years to reverse. They’re already ecstatic at the prospect of spending even more taxpayer money. The media and leftist bloggers are full of hatred for Republicans and conservatives, but they will claim that this is a victory for big government and liberalism in general. As Balko notes, this election is not a repudiation of smaller government, just more big government under the GOP banner.
During the primaries, a lot of the establishment Republican pundits and talking heads were bloviating about what a great choice John McCain would be, as he has experience reaching across the aisle, appealing to bipartisan sensibilities in Congress like Joe Lieberman and the like. Apparently, that strategy did not turn out so well in the general election, and an all too accommodating media were obliged to incessantly point out the opposite; the Obama talking point that McCain was too partisan, a clone of President Bush. No surprise, the very same people who supported McCain for this very reason (read Peggy Noonan, Christopher Buckley) were busy jumping ship at the eleventh hour.
As Malkin puts it, the Republican Party does not need to water down our conservative principles; it needs to refocus on them. Those responsible for letting Republicans in the Senate and House turn into an abyss of bi-partisan spendthrifts, need to be held accountable.
The inclination will be to throw President Bush under the bus as well, but this is not acceptable either. The President is lambasted for reaching over the aisle, while succumbing to liberal inclinations in policy as well (NCLB, immigration, etc) The WSJ:
This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, “Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.”
Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.
The president’s original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.
It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.
In the wake of Tuesday’s election results, Beltway pundits and talking heads in the mainstream media are buzzing about disarray in the Republican party. The Republicans indeed, have a long and tough road ahead. Going back to basic, conservative principles is a start and is obviously the right course of action.
The Democrats, however, may not be without their own ideological struggles.
The liberal blogosophere naturally, yet incorrectly, assumes that the election was a mandate for a progressive America, that the country is now a “center-left” nation versus a more conservative one. Nobel laureate and economist-turned-liberal Bush-hater, Paul Krugman, thinks so; not only that, he demands that President-elect Obama ignore the pleas for moderation and fiscal prudence called for by the electorate and jerk the nation’s collective steering wheel to the left:
Bear in mind…that this year’s presidential election was a clear referendum on political philosophies — and the progressive philosophy won.
What about the argument that the economic crisis will make a progressive agenda unaffordable?
Well, there’s no question that fighting the crisis will cost a lot of money. Rescuing the financial system will probably require large outlays beyond the funds already disbursed. And on top of that, we badly need a program of increased government spending to support output and employment. Could next year’s federal budget deficit reach $1 trillion? Yes.
So a serious progressive agenda — call it a new New Deal — isn’t just economically possible, it’s exactly what the economy needs.
But how does a Nobel laureate explain that most environmental ballot measures were voted down on Tuesday night? Or that all three gay-marriage proposals were rejected (making suporters of traditional marriage a perfect 30 for 30 overall in such measures)? And, as Malkin notes, these were rejected by voters who supported Barack Obama? Certainly all of these issues would be part of the progressive agenda.
In the adrenaline-filled momentum of a political campaign, promises are made and are expected to be kept. This is especially true in the Democrat party, whose base is an extremist, liberal coterie of special interests. National Review’s Jonah Goldberg writes:
As a matter of practical politics, contemporary liberalism amounts to a coalitional ideology, while conservatism remains an ideological coalition. The Democratic Party is the party of various groups promising to scratch each other’s backs. Gay rights activists and longshoreman coexist in the same party because they promise support on each other’s issues.
That being said, the pressure from these groups will be enormous. They’ve worked tirelessly and spent millions of dollars over two years to get Mr. Obama elected. These groups, a veritable who’s who of American liberalism, will not be waiting too long after January 20, 2009 to cash in their chips:
In recent weeks, groups have held conferences, drafted policy papers and lobbied campaign advisers in the hope of influencing what they believe would be the most receptive administration to the political left since Jimmy Carter. The Obama campaign declined to comment about pressure from liberal policy groups.
A number of the economic and social prescriptions being pushed on Obama advisers would require greater spending that almost certainly depend on raising taxes — threatening Sen. Obama’s campaign promise to cut taxes.
For example:
The Center for American Progress likewise backs higher taxes based on a “pro-growth” structure steering funds to schools, health care, job training and technology innovations. Mr. Podesta’s organization is one of several interest groups working with Mr. King’s Realizing the Dream Inc. to push the federal government to cut the poverty rate in half over the next 10 years.
John Podesta was just named the head of Obama’s transition team.
More moderate voices in the Democrat Party, could have other plans. An interesting development over Democrat leadership in the House has the liberal pitbull Henry Waxman up against Blue Dog Democrats, a caucus of moderate Democrats. Waxman is eyeing the chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee and is challenging current chairman John Dingell of Michigan, who is being supported by members of the Blue Dog coalition. Waxman has already launched his offensive. Dingel’s office has responded:
Tearing a leadership apart is something the Republicans should be doing after their big loss. It shouldn’t be the first order of business for the Democrats after a historic election
Some of the new Democrats in Congress aren’t prototypical liberals but moderates who won by knocking off Republicans in middle-of-the-road congressional districts. Their presence may aggravate an existing split about how much to worry about the federal budget deficit. The party’s progressive wing sees a mandate for new programs in health care and alternative energy that trumps deficit worries. More conservative Blue Dog Democrats loath the idea that such spending could add to an already-growing tide of red ink.
Browse the headlines of the past few weeks and you’ll see various examples of the dangers of forcing liberalism upon a free society. The implosion of the financial markets can be traced back to the implementation of the CRA, which in essence, is socialism rammed down the throat of the banking industry. The tenuous auto industry, buckling under the weight of the competitive disadvantage bestowed upon it by a suffocating unionized workforce, for the “benefit” of blue-collar workers.
Along the same lines, the Fairness Doctrine is as “fair” as George Orwell’s Ministry of Love was affectionate.
Make no mistake, with a larger majority in Congress and a liberal President, the Democrats will try to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine; the policy determines what the American people listen to on the radio, in the name of “fairness”. Most liberals would favor the policy. Why? Because it would in effect, stifle what is arguably the most powerful medium in the expression of conservative ideals: talk radio. Like the mortgage and auto industry among others, fairness requires regulatory intervention to delineate and rectify the inherent “misconduct” of free and logical enterprise.
The foundation for restoring the policy is being laid out.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated several times her desire to have the policy reinstated. An aide to Pelosi admits to liberals’ fear of free speech:
Conservative radio is a huge threat and political advantage for Republicans and we have had to find a way to limit it. Second, it looks like the Republicans are going to have someone in the presidential race who has access to media in ways our folks don’t want, so we want to make sure the GOP has no advantages going into 2008.
Democrats Henry Waxman and John Dingell are engaged in a battle for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee is a powerful one. Politically, the focus here is which of the two Congressmen gets to stick it to the pharmaceutical industry (both Waxman and Dingell have previously lead the charge in this fight). But the committee’s jurisdiction is widespread, covering energy, the environment and, significantly, radio; this is done through the Subcommittee on Telecomunications and the Internet. We’ve written about this Democratic infighting and it’s been well documented that Dingell is backed by a contingent of moderate Democrats. Waxman is notoriously liberal, arguably more so than Dingell. Waxman would enjoy nothing more than to see the revival of the Fairness Doctrine.
Last month, Senator Jeff Bingaman shared his view of the media industry’s “higher calling” as justification for implementing the policy:
I would want this station and all stations to have to present a balanced perspective and different points of view instead of always hammering away at one side of the political-
Well I guess my thought is that talk radio and media generally should have a higher calling than just reflect a particular point of view. I think they should use their authority to try to – their broadcast power to present an informed discussion of public issues
Senator Chuck Schumer, who can always be counted on to lead the charge in front running and political cowardice on “real” issues, chimed in on election day. His comparison of conservative talk radio to pornography is especially disturbing and quite frankly, idiotic. But it is,after all, Chuck Schumer:
When John Podesta is not leading President-elect Obama’s transition team, he is a leader of another left-wing organization, the Center for American Progress. A progressive think tank, the CAP has adamantly supported the Fairness Doctrine. Last year, it issued a pubclication to this effect. With various numbers and graphs, the document proves one of the basic tenet of capitalism: free markets root out the excesses of inefficient products and services. In other words, liberal talk radio generates significantly lower ratings, and therefore, lower profitability compared to its conservative counterpart. The study recommends some ”remedies”, and in true liberal fashion, plays the race card:
Ownership diversity is perhaps the single most important variable contributing to the structural imbalance based on the data. Quantitative analysis conducted by Free Press of all 10,506 licensed commercial radio stations reveals that stations owned by women, minorities, or local owners are statistically less likely to air conservative hosts or shows
Which brings us to President-elect Obama. True to his form as an eloquent speaker, he knows how to speak from both sides of his mouth. He can do this and still manage to pursuade scores of believers that he means what he “says”. Hence, he can be oppose gay marriage, yet still support Proposition 8, for example. Obama has said he is not in favor of the Fairness Doctrine. But does this mean he will oppose its implementation? Jesse Walker at Reason notes that suppression of free speech and liberalism’s socialist tendencies are not exclusive to the Fairness Docrine alone:
There’s a host of other broadcast regulations that Obama has not foresworn. In the worst-case scenario, they suggest a world where the FCC creates intrusive new rules by fiat, meddles more with the content of stations’ programs, and uses the pending extensions of broadband access as an opportunity to put its paws on the Internet. At a time when cultural production has been exploding, fueled by increasingly diverse and participatory new media, we would be stepping back toward the days when the broadcast media were a centralized and cozy public-private partnership.
An Obama FCC might mean still more steps toward reregulation. Coming on the heels of Martin’s commission, it could also mean a relative reprieve-even, in some areas, a move away from command and control. A lot depends on events, and a lot depends on which interest groups acquire the most influence in his administration
And, tying in to Podesta’s thinking:
Obama has the overwhelming support of the black community. Generally speaking, that includes blacks in the broadcasting business. The Democratic coalition has a history of calling for more minority-owned enterprises, and that’s not likely to change during an Obama presidency.
And who has Obama tapped to head the FCC transition team? One Mr. Henry Rivera, a radical lobbyist to the the broadcast/telecom industry, whose passion of late has been pushing “diversity” among ownership in the industry:
Reports about the man that President-elect Barack Obama is expected to choose to manage the transition at the Federal Communications Commission emphasize his past role as a lobbyist and FCC Commissioner. But the truth is that Henry Rivera has never really left the FCC, having stayed active in its matrix of advisory groups from the 1980s right up to the present. And Rivera’s agenda is no secret: figuring out ways to help minorities get a bigger slice of the telecommunications and broadcast media pie.
In fact, as Chair of the Commission’s Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital Age, Rivera just sent the agency a set of recommendations on how to further this goal. It suggests three ways to enhance “the ability of minorities and women to participate in telecommunications and related industries.
The premise of the Fairness Doctrine goes against one of the basic principles set forth in our Constitution: the right to free speech. The political planets are aligned, the actors are in position and the requisite “change” is in the air for the policy to soon be resurrected. It’s up to the Republicans in Congress and conservatives in general to take a stand here, against what could be the first ideological battle of the new administration.
As Malkin notes, Democrats don’t particulary care for talk radio when it’s helping to call BS on a porkulus bill. Senator Stabenow is doing the honors now, via Politico.
BILL PRESS: Alright, well good for you. You know, we gotta work on that, because they are just shutting down progressive talk from one city after another. All we want is, you know, some balance on the airwaves, that’s all. You know, we’re not going to take any of the conservative voices off the airwaves, but just make sure that there are a few progressives and liberals out there, right?
SENATOR TOM HARKIN (D-IA): Exactly, and that’s why we need the fair — that’s why we need the Fairness Doctrine back.
The interview refers to an op-ed that Press wrote in WaPo earlier this week. The highlights are disturbing in their idiocy:
The commercial use of public airwaves is supposed to reflect the diversity of the local community, but that’s not how it works in Washington.
[...]
Starting tomorrow, our nation’s capital, where Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House, and where Democrats outnumber Republicans 10 to one, will have no progressive voices on the air.
[...]
Nationwide, progressive talkers Randi Rhodes, Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller have proven that, given a level playing field, they can more than hold their own in ratings — and make money for their stations.
Bill Press is obviously delusional. Since when does the political make-up of legislative offices determine what and who gets air time on the radio? And Randi Rhodes, Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller? Give them a “level playing field”? Why? If the public doesn’t care enough to listen–why bother? Absolute insanity.
(UPDATE V)
Hey, whaddya know? Bubba chimes in on the Fairness Doctrine (via Allahpundit)
(UPDATE VI)
If its Friday the 13th, it must be Fairness Doctrine Watch—either that or the fact that people are wising up to the whiff of socialism emanating from Washington these days which is leading more and more lefty politicians to call for the Fairness Doctrine. Seems like every day now there’s more hand-wringing about conservative talk radio.
(UPDATE VII)
Yes-update SEVEN. I’m too lazy to start a new thread right now, so here goes. According to FOX News the White House is saying that President Obama opposes any move to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Take it for what it’s worth. I agree with Philip Klein over at AmSpec, Obama is more politically saavy than to waste political capital on an issue that is so polarized. Barack Obama is a leftist ideologue, and knows how to play politics. As per his Alinskyite political upbringing, he does the opposite of what he says he will do—and the lemmings on the left applaud him for it. As such, the pronouncement from the White House doesn’t necessarily mean much in the sense that the buck stops at the White House on this particular issue. As Ed Morrissey notes, there has been a cavalcade of politicians making noise about the FD in the past few weeks and whose to say the new FCC won’t push it as well? Will Obama stand in the way? I doubt it.
(UPDATE VIII)
Sen. De Mint wants to vote on a bill that would prohibit the FCC from reinstaing the FD. Interesting move, but as Allahpundit points out—the White House moves in stealth-like fashion these days, and nothing is as it seems. Whether its called the “Fairness Doctrine” or some other moniker, liberals will find a way to weasel it in somehow.
The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn’t believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he’d promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.
He needn’t worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America’s Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton’s stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to.
Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidised slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges.
As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.
They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.
These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.
They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?
For the most part, its been really hard to make the case for President Bush as poster-boy for free market capitalism and small-government conservatism. In the last two months or so, he (along with most Democrats) presided over the most obscene and blatant episodes of government intervention and expansion since the New Deal.
Today, in a speech to business leaders at the Manhattan Institute, there was a glimmer of redemption and hope for those who long ago, put their faith in the President as a harbinger of conservatism. Too little, too late, perhaps.
Mr. Bush gave a fantastic speech defending the free markets, warning those who saw this crisis as a repudiation of laissez-faire capitalism and justification for even more regulation and interference, to back off. And correctly so. The DJIA, which at one point during today’s session had traded lower by 400 points, ramped higher as Bush spoke, closing the day up over 550 points. Sure, this probably had more to do with the volatility that has dogged these markets since the crisis began, but the timing is also more than coincidental. The theme of the President’s speech was probably some of the more inspiring words this market has heard in quite some time:
History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, it is too much government involvement in the market. (Applause.) We saw this in the case of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Because these firms were chartered by the United States Congress, many believed they were backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. Investors put huge amounts of money into Fannie and Freddie, which they used to build up irresponsibly large portfolios of mortgage-backed securities. And when the housing market declined, these securities, of course, plummeted in value. It took a taxpayer-funded rescue to keep Fannie and Freddie from collapsing in a way that would have devastated the global financial system. And there is a clear lesson: Our aim should not be more government — it should be smarter government.
All this leads to the most important principle that should guide our work: While reforms in the financial sector are essential, the long-term solution to today’s problems is sustained economic growth. And the surest path to that growth is free markets and free people. (Applause.)
This is a decisive moment for the global economy. In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right are equating the free enterprise system with greed and exploitation and failure. It’s true this crisis included failures — by lenders and borrowers and by financial firms and by governments and independent regulators. But the crisis was not a failure of the free market system. And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems we face, make the reforms we need, and move forward with the free market principles that have delivered prosperity and hope to people all across the globe.
Like any other system designed by man, capitalism is not perfect. It can be subject to excesses and abuse. But it is by far the most efficient and just way of structuring an economy. At its most basic level, capitalism offers people the freedom to choose where they work and what they do, the opportunity to buy or sell products they want, and the dignity that comes with profiting from their talent and hard work. The free market system provides the incentives that lead to prosperity — the incentive to work, to innovate, to save, to invest wisely, and to create jobs for others. And as millions of people pursue these incentives together, whole societies benefit.
Free market capitalism is far more than economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility — the highway to the American Dream. It’s what makes it possible for a husband and wife to start their own business, or a new immigrant to open a restaurant, or a single mom to go back to college and to build a better career. It is what allowed entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to change the way the world sells products and searches for information. It’s what transformed America from a rugged frontier to the greatest economic power in history — a nation that gave the world the steamboat and the airplane, the computer and the CAT scan, the Internet and the iPod.
Ultimately, the best evidence for free market capitalism is its performance compared to other economic systems. Free markets allowed Japan, an island with few natural resources, to recover from war and grow into the world’s second-largest economy. Free markets allowed South Korea to make itself into one of the most technologically advanced societies in the world. Free markets turned small areas like Singapore and Hong Kong and Taiwan into global economic players. Today, the success of the world’s largest economies comes from their embrace of free markets.
Meanwhile, nations that have pursued other models have experienced devastating results. Soviet communism starved millions, bankrupted an empire, and collapsed as decisively as the Berlin Wall. Cuba, once known for its vast fields of cane, is now forced to ration sugar. And while Iran sits atop giant oil reserves, its people cannot put enough gasoline in its — in their cars.
The record is unmistakable: If you seek economic growth, if you seek opportunity, if you seek social justice and human dignity, the free market system is the way to go. (Applause.) And it would be a terrible mistake to allow a few months of crisis to undermine 60 years of success.
Always on cue to hear themselves talk about how government can save private industry and never missing an opportunity to get their mitts on more of our money, the US Senate has convened again to determine how much more taxpayer money can be thrown into a growing bonfire of government intervention and futility.
Malkin notes some of the idiocy we’ve already come to expect (see TARP).
The Democrat party is indeed facing some issues during this transition period. A strong election only two weeks ago solidified their majorities in both houses of Congress, but it seems even they are confused as to what the victory means. Is it a mandate for a more progressive approach towards government? Or was the election merely a repudiation of a failed Republicanism and compassionate conservatism, or a rejection of President Bush and anything or anyone associated with him?
Congressional Democrats have some sorting out to do, but it appears that President-elect Obama and his transition team have no such worries. They continue to work under the delusion that the country is ready, willing and able to embrace a new era of invigorated progressivism. Just askJohn Podesta, head of the Obama transition team and founder of the Center for American Progress:
I think that that progressive vision of providing opportunity for people who work hard, providing for the common good, to helping people succeed in their own lives – I think was what he laid before the American people. It’s in that great tradition of progressive politics in this country. And it’s a tradition of reform. And I think he’ll deliver on all those elements
Evidence is mounting that the President-elect, although he says he would like to embrace bipartisanship in his administration, it sure doesn’t look like that:
Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.
Some of the group’s recommendations already have been adopted by the president-elect.
These include the center’s call for a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and a buildup of forces in Afghanistan, a plan for universal health coverage through employer plans and proposals to create purchasing pools that allow small businesses to spread the cost among a larger group of workers. Obama has endorsed much of a CAP plan to create “green jobs” linked to alleviating global climate change.
CAP also is advocating the creation of a “National Energy Council” headed by an official with the stature of the national security adviser and who would be charged with “transforming the energy base” of the U.S. In addition, CAP urges the creation of a White House “office of social entrepreneurship” to spur new ideas for addressing social problems.
Despite a proliferation of several left-leaning groups and organizations, the CAP stands out (emphasis added):
Yet CAP may be the most influential. In addition to Podesta, at least 10 other CAP experts are advising the incoming administration, including Melody Barnes, the center’s executive vice president for policy who co-chairs the agency-review working group and Cassandra Butts, the senior vice president for domestic policy, who is now a senior transition staffer.
Let us make special mention of George Soros. Yes, the very same multi-billionaire speculator and hedge-fund manager, who single-handedly brought the Bank of England to its knees in 1992 for his own benefit. This is the man funding the progressive agenda, who has made a fortune taking advantage of free markets across the globe. But we guess you can’t blame George Soros for being a greedy capitalist interfering in world markets for personal gain; apparently nobody on the “progressive” side of the table, or in the Democrat party for that matter, told him that only Republicans dabble in that sort of behavior. Hypocrites indeed.
UPDATE: Just to drive home the point about the shameless and hapless left. The lefty blogosphere is crying about greedy Wall Street types:
And yet Wall Street still can’t decide whether they will hand out bonuses or not. It’s incredible to observe this episode of greed and excess
Call us silly, but we don’t think the greedy and excessive Mr. Soros and his hedge fund associates for that matter, will be having trouble sleeping if they were to forgo their bonuses this year. We guess there will be other financial markets to plunder next year.
Kudos are in order for Howard Dean, chairman of the DNC. He envisioned and implemented his “50 state strategy” to great success in the 2008 general election. Not only did the Democrat party win the White House, while bolstering their majority in both houses of Congress, but Barack Obama became only the fourth Democrat candidate in history to win at least 51% of the popular vote.
The Left is understandably giddy over their victory and are heralding it as a new dawn for liberalism, a clarion call for progressivism.
Not so fast.
Matt Bai gives due credit to Dean in Sunday’s NYT. He delivered victory for his party, but it doesn’t necessarily mean progressivism has won, despite the frenzied salivating in the media and leftist blogosphere:
Even before the country voted, as the contours of a Democratic wave began to come into focus, a story line of the election was taking hold among Democrats in Washington: repulsed by the incompetence of the Bush administration, American voters had at last renounced the conservative ethos of the Reagan-Bush era and had moved, en masse, to embrace the Democratic Party and its agenda. Polls showed, after all, that the number of people identifying themselves as Republicans had fallen sharply, while the ranks of those calling themselves Democrats had swelled.
Moreover, and this is not so good news for both progressive liberals and conservatives, voters are not necessarily placing themselves into any one particular ideological box:
The cautionary note here, for jubilant Democrats, is that there is little reason to believe that the electoral trend in their favor actually reflects any widespread ideological shift. If you only look at numerical majorities, it might well seem that the story of the last 20 years in American politics is one in which voters have swerved erratically from one ideological pole to the next, embracing a harsh kind of conservatism in 1994 and then a resurgent liberalism in 2006. In reality, though, the American public doesn’t seem to move very much in its basic attitudes about government, which have remained mostly pragmatic and predictable; simply put, people tend to want a little more government when times are tough and a little less when things are going well. The number of voters who identified themselves in exit polls as conservative, liberal or moderate remained virtually unchanged between 2004 and 2008 — and in fact, those numbers have been more or less steady for decades.
The real trend line in our politics — from Ross Perot and Bill Clinton in 1992 to Obama this year — speaks not to any change in governing philosophy but to a growing frustration with incumbency and dogma, a sense that both parties are more concerned with perpetuating their own power than they are with adapting government to a fast-changing world. Voters aren’t really identifying more closely with one party or another when they periodically revolt; they are simply defining themselves against whoever happens to be in charge at the moment.
This younger Democratic base stands less on loyalty to institutions generally, and that includes the Democratic Party itself. These voters represent a generation of Americans reared in the cynical, detached environment after Watergate rather than in the idealist, more doctrinaire atmosphere of the ’60s. To keep his party unified, Obama will have to embody this modern, less-partisan ethos while at the same time respecting the power and conviction of an older set of Democrats who nurture a less-flexible liberal ideal and who aren’t yet ready to step aside. Obama’s task is to somehow move away from reflexively partisan solutions — no trade deals, no charter schools, no entitlement reform — even as he defers to a generation of leaders for whom ideology and par-tisanship are the guiding paradigms of political thought.
So as conservatives, let’s let the progressives, liberals and their surrogates in the mainstream media have their day. Every victorious President is allowed their honeymoon period. But we know their victory is based on flawed ideologies and false assumptions. Let the house of cards fall where they may…
The mindless adulation of anything and everything Obama-related continues on the extremist fringe of the liberal blogosphere and in the media.
Yesterday, the stock market soared on the news that the President-elect had tapped New York Federal Reserve President Tim Geithner, to be Treasury Secretary. The progressive bloggers and their media surrogates, desperate for any sort of confirmation that Obama is, indeed, their harbinger of “progressive” change, proclaimed as much:
Did you ever think you’d hear Wall Street people adopting the language of “hope” and “change”? The new administration can’t start soon enough
I tried to find similar accolades after President Bush sparked a similar rally in the markets last week as he defended the free markets in a speech to the Manhattan Institute, and the stock market rallied 550 points during that speech, but…no dice.
No doubt, the market rallied yesterday on the Geithner news. But the implication that it was Obama’s magic never-can-do-wrong pixie dust that liberals swear he is gifted with, that his Harvard-pedigree and intellect helped guide him to this choice, which caused the markets to thankfully genuflect in praise. Simply wrong.
But if the Left wants to deal in absolutes, then fine. But why stop there? Why confine the Obama magic to just one trading day? Because that’s all there is.
Let’s take a look at how world financial markets have reacted since November 4th, 2008:
Just to be fair, the S&P 500 closed at 752 on Thursday, down 25% since Election Day. This doesn’t take into the account the Geithner rally.
A popular gauge of volatility in the financial markets is what’s commonly referred to as the VIX, the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index. In financial circles, it’s known as the “Fear Index”. The VIX measures the implied volatility of the S&P 500 and moves inversely to that index; if the market is up, the VIX trades lower, and vice versa. The VIX is a common tool used by technical analysts of financial markets. The higher the VIX, the more implied fear there is in the market and the expectation of volatility is expected to continue. How has the VIX fared since Election Day? Note the ramp-up in “hope” since November 4th, highlighted in red:
U.S. stock investors are going through a record-setting bout of fear that probably won’t end until next year, according to Michael McCarty, a strategist at Meridian Equity Partners.
“We clearly have people who are leaving the market and leaving in a big way,” McCarty said in an interview. At the same time, he added, many investors who ordinarily would buy stocks as prices fall “are sitting on their hands.”
Financial markets hate uncertainty and the $700 billion monstrosity of a bailout calmed that uncertainty for a while. As the VIX chart shows, volatility had leveled off somewhat until early November until it started to spike again, almost to the day of the election. If liberals want to assume that their progressive agenda is confirmed every time the President-elect selects a cabinet appointment, or sneezes, or orders lunch, then fine. The facts show otherwise; in fact, as the aforementioned market stats indicate, it’s somewhat detrimental to their cause. There are other factors to consider. In a time of massive government intervention, a looming recession, and a persistent market fear, the Obama transition team has taken its sweet time in appointing their economic team; they’ve already made nominations for AG, HHS Secretary and the continuing soap opera for Secretary of State took up most of this week’s headlines as markets suffered. There has been no sense of urgency:
Amid the brief market euphoria, it is hard not to notice the leaks and air of disorganization coming from the Obama transition team on these important appointment decisions.
It’s no wonder the market jumped on the Geithner news, the market was practically beggingfor some indication on what the Obama team was considering on the economic front:
David Kotok, chairman of the money-management firm Cumberland Advisors in Vineland, N.J., welcomed the news about Mr. Geithner in particular, but he attributed the market rally to relief that Mr. Obama seemed to have made a decision. “The most important thing for the market and for the economy is that these decisions are made and uncertainty is removed,” Mr. Kotok said. “It probably would have been the same rally had it been someone else on the short list.”
The market “was screaming for some semblance of leadership from the new administration,” said New York money manager Michael Holland.
As for Tim Geithner, we welcome his appointment, as he definitely would definitely bring a new face to the Treasury department, unlike what Obama has been trotting out for the past two weeks; but he is hardly a voice for progressives:
Economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy adviser for Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid, said that the Republican, had he won, would also have considered Mr. Geithner for the Treasury post. “I don’t want this to sound demeaning, but he’s an excellent mechanic,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin said. “He knows the nuts and bolts.”
By all accounts, Geithner can be considered a moderate on policy issues and has Treasury experience going back to Bush 41. He’s actually a registered independent. Kind of like Joe Lieberman. Hope and change.
The Treasury can’t keep up with the demand for handouts, bailouts, whatever…funded by you and yours truly:
The current Treasury has so far struggled to keep up with the task of hiring enough people to handle the $700 billion financial rescue package passed by Congress in October. The man now in charge of running the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Assistant Secretary Neel Kashkari, said the department’s Office of Financial Stability, with about 40 full-time employees, is operating at half-staff.
Federal banking regulators, who must approve the applications from banks before they go to Treasury, said there is a backlog of unprocessed applications for relief. Outside observers said the difficulty of quickly building a qualified staff may be one reason the Treasury abandoned its original plans to use the TARP to purchase assets from financial institutions, deciding instead to inject capital into the banking system.
Can’t figure out what to get that special lady in your life this Christmas? For the woman who has everything, you can’t go wrong with a Planned Parenthood gift certificate! Just in time for the holidays!
That’s right. Celebrate the meaning of life this Christmas by taking one out:
Chrystal Struben-Hall, Planned Parenthood in Indiana vice president, said the reason for the controversial sales move is due to current economic woes nationwide and how such problems may impact women’s healthcare needs, WISH-TV, Indianapolis, said Wednesday.
“People are making really tough decisions about putting gas in their car and food on their table, so we know that many women especially put healthcare at the bottom of their list to do,” she said.
The gift certificates, which are only available in $25 increments, can be used on a number of Planned Parenthood services, including abortions.
Because we all have to struggle for the essentials in life: food, shelter, infanticide…
Merry Christmas!
Meanwhile over in Spain, abortion is now the leading cause of death. Viva Espana!
As most Americans celebrated Thanksgiving this past week, the world witnessed some abhorrent tragedies; tragedies in the form of Islamic terrorism abroad and consumerism run amok here in the USA.
Time to put things in perspective. Let’s look away from the culture of death. For Catholics, today is the first day of Advent. Rather than my trying to expound its importance, read this and this. The Anchoress puts things in perspective.
Rebuilding the GOP is going to be a long and arduous process. There is a lot of talk right now about rebirth, about how the GOP needs to abandon conservatism and appeal to the wandering “middle”; talk about the party’s hopes in 2012 and who will lead the charge against an incumbent Obama administration. To me, this is unfathomable right now.
To be sure, the Democrats have a lot riding on the next four years. No more excuses for them. Starting January 20, 2009, it’s their economy, it’s their war on terror, etc. But they have the power and the control now. The GOP does not; and quite frankly, they don’t deserve to have any of it right now. Not when the GOP establishment in Washington, including President Bush, have wasted precious political capital, not to mention the time, money and efforts of its supporters blowing it away, spending like liberals and allowing the runaway growth of government to continue unabated for years. What turned the tide in Obama’s favor, was the perception that the GOP was not an alternative to tax and spend liberals, but their equal. The GOP got what they deserved.
President Bush learned that “compassion” in politics means more spending, which leads to more bureaucracy and more waste; characteristics attributable to liberal agendas more than anything else. William Buckley once said of President Bush, that he was conservative but nota conservative. And John McCain was never even close. Nevertheless, the irreparable damage to the GOP was completed long before John McCain became the nominee. The GOP is not seen as conservative; there is no fiscal responsibility, no accountability.
As some have noted, there are bright spots in the GOP, particularly at the state level. This may be true, but there is waste there as well, and waste needs to be discarded. If it isn’t, it will continue to rot and give off a real funky smell.
Now that the federal government has left the door wide, wide open for bailouts of any size, shape and form, it really wasn’t a surprise for states to start whining as well. The governors of New Jersey and New York have already made the trip to DC to plead for help. (Interestingly enough, John Corzine who was co-chairman of Goldman Sachs with Henry Paulson, is just as clueless with public finance as Corzine is apparently).
Today, Gov. Schwarzenegger of California is pushing the panic button, and more than likely, as Malkin notes, is looking for a handout:
Facing a deep budget deficit, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday declared a “fiscal emergency” in California and called a special session of the state legislature to deal with the crisis.
“Without immediate action our state is headed for a fiscal disaster,” said Schwarzenegger in a statement.
The Governator likes to talk tough at GOP conventions and stumping for candidates; his great speech at the 2004 GOP Convention seems like decades in the past. But his record, in his second term at least, stands as one of fiscal irresponsibility and pandering to liberal special interests, drifting towards the political “center”. Of course, Democrats share much if not most of the blame as well. But the point is made. This is not conservatism. Again, this is not conservatism. Fiscal conservatism is all but dead in the Republican party, which is one of the reasons they have lost in the past two election cycles, and will continue to lose in the foreseeable future. They need to get their act together and lose the dead weight.
The media and the Beltway pundits, for the most part, are applauding President-elect Obama’s move to the “center”, cheering his moderation in his cabinet selections and administration posts. But is this the change that Barack Obama promised to legions of self-declared liberal progressives?
It’s no secret that labor unions helped elect Barack Obama . If you don’t think so, then you probably haven’t been paying attention. Some labor unions are starting to get a little antsy, not only about the speed of the alleged “change”, but of the appointments made so far:
Behind the scenes, however, labor officials are grumbling over the appointments to Obama’s economic team, particularly his selection of New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary and former Treasury chief Lawrence Summers to be his White House economic director.
Both are linked to Robert Rubin, who pushed the North America Free Trade Agreement as former President Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary.
“Labor is completely underrepresented here both in terms of people and ideology,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, head of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, the country’s largest nurses union.
“But labor will be hesitant to say that because they have done a lot to elect Obama and a lot of members of Congress and now they are in a double bind,” she said.
I know everyone is obsessed with the “team of rivals” idea right now, but I feel incredibly frustrated. Even after two landslide elections in a row, are our only governing options as a nation either all right-wing Republicans, or a centrist mixture of Democrats and Republicans? Isn’t there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration? Also, why isn’t there a single member of Obama’s cabinet who will be advising him from the left? It seems to me as though there is a team of rivals, except for the left, which is left off the team entirely.
Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one. Remember this is the movement that was right about Iraq, right about wage stagnation and inequality, right about financial deregulation, right about global warming and right about health care.
And yet, no one who comes from the part of American political and intellectual life that has given birth to all of these ideas is anywhere to be found within miles of the Obama cabinet thus far. WTF?
To be sure, there are some voices who haven’t hesitated to take on the president-elect when he’s departed from their line, but those voices have found themselves increasingly marginalized by the press and those in the peace movement willing to give Obama a chance.
“He is violating the people’s mandate,” complained Jodie Evans, a Code Pink co-founder who emailed from Tehran, where she was meeting with government officials and other peace activists. “The people elected him over her precisely because of their different foreign policy stances. Here we are in Iran, working to establish citizen diplomacy, hearing the concerns of the Iranian people and how it feels to have [Clinton] say she wants to obliterate Iran. Those comments are not taken lightly and [are] seen as policy positions here.”
Bob Herbert, who can always be counted on stir up an outbreak of leftist class warfare and ignorant bloviations, over at the NYT laments:
So why do I have this uneasy feeling?
Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Eric Holder, Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers …
What I wonder is whether the members of this team, in addition to their grasp of the issues and success at achieving power, have a real feel for the needs of the people they are supposed to be representing.
I don’t doubt that they have the best of intentions. But the people at the pinnacle of power in Washington are encased in a bubble that makes it extremely hard to hear the voices of those who aren’t already powerful themselves.
I hope Mr. Obama’s “new dawn” portends more than just a few nibbles around the edges of change. We need change that brings about more shared sacrifice in wartime and tough times, and a more equitable distribution of the nation’s resources all the time.
Wasn’t Obama the one who had the ear of the people to begin with? Liberals are funny.
There was a lot of time and money spent on a massively successful netroots campaign to get Obama elected. This Democrat netroots “machine” was fueled almost entirely by the liberal progressive blogosphere and activism.
But progressives shouldn’t be dismayed. Obama has littered his team with liberals and progressives to be sure. We’ve written about John Podesta, head of Obama’s transition team, who is as progressive as they come, and the dangers he represents to free market capitalism. Rahm Emmanuel is a partisan political hack for the Left. And since when is Hillary Clinton a moderate? Maybe she is to the right of Barack Obama when it comes to foreign policy, but that doesn’t say much, and doesn’t exactly make her Alexander Haig by any stretch. There’s also Tom Daschle, he’s a left winger, and he’ll keep the government mandated, federally funded, bureaucracy-laden health care-for-all-dream alive and well in an Obama Administration.
So, Barack Obama decides the immediate solution to our economic morass of fiscal irresponsibility infinite government bailouts, is more fiscal irresponsibility and more bailouts. This time to the tune of $500 billion in pork. How insightful…
The country’s governors were in DC today for the NGA meeting and to meet with the President-elect and, as Governor Rendell says, they aren’t there to panhandle. Nooo…of course not:
“As people lose their jobs, they’re going to look to us for help,” Rendell told reporters. “We didn’t just come here begging for help.”
In other words: We looted our states’ coffers, but its the poor who are hurting, so please fork over some cash. We swear we know what to do with the money this time. Promise.
Class warfare and fear-mongering in its most basic form. Democrats are masters at this game. Read that over again: “…they’re going to look to us for help...” Yeah. Because the governors looking for a handout have done such a great job keeping their own financial house in order:
The state executives want an assistance plan to create jobs through infrastructure projects, such as highways, and to aid with programs such as unemployment benefits, food stamps and health care for the poor, said Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, chairman of the National Governors Association. Rendell said more than $130 billion in infrastructure projects are waiting to go ahead if funding is secured.
Rendell said the meeting was “productive” and that the President-elect was “receptive” to the governors’ pleas:
“If we’re listening to our governors, we’ll not only be doing what’s right for our states, we’ll be doing what’s right for our country,”
Brilliant!!
Yesterday I wrote about how Gov. Schwarzenegger will be looking for his handout soon, so this isn’t an only a issue for Democrats, although pandering for government “assistance” is a tenet of Democratic politics.
Surprisingly enough, there are Republicans who want no part of the bailout or stimulus or welfare or handout, or whatever you want to call Obama’s plan:
…the bailout mentality threatens Americans’ sense of personal responsibility.
In the process, the federal government is not only burying future generations under mountains of debt. It is also taking our country in a very dangerous direction — toward a “bailout mentality” where we look to government rather than ourselves for solutions.
Our Founding Fathers were clear and deliberate in setting up a system whereby the federal government would only step in for that which states cannot do themselves.
We’d humbly suggest that Congress take a page from those playbooks by focusing on targeted tax relief paid for by cutting spending, not by borrowing.
…we’d ask the federal government to stop believing it has all the answers.
As 2008 winds down, and we conservatives sort through this mess called the 2008 general election, of what essentially amounts to a kick in the groin of an election year; as the bailout insanity picks up steam, it’s somewhat refreshing to know that at least two Republicans still get it. Enough with the bailout mentality. Enough with this “government has the power to cure all” mentality. Enough.
Next year is regarded as the biggest legislative opportunity for Democrats since 1993, the last time they controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress.
But not all Democrats are celebrating. Liberals are worried about Pelosi’s vow to govern “from the middle” and centrists are concerned that the make-up of the House leadership team has shifted noticeably to the left.
Contrary to the jubilation of House Democrats after they regained control of the lower chamber after the 2006 elections, there is some unease among members heading into the 111th Congress.
“Everybody I talk to, everybody’s worried about something,” said a Democratic staffer.
Centrists are grumbling that their growing ranks aren’t represented in the leadership team that Pelosi shaped through back-room arm-twisting. The so-called Blue Dogs, while publicly celebrating President-elect Obama’s commitment to “pay-go,” are wondering when the stimulus balloon stops expanding.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes the Democratic leadership, under the delusion that they have a mandate for a liberal or progressive agenda, to shoot their majority position in the foot. They are delusional because the foundation of their regaining the majority in 2006 was built upon dozens of freshman House members running on moderate, even conservative platforms. Liberals would rather just forget about that.
These more moderate members can get antsy wondering when the bailout insanity will end, or exactly how much more money the government expects to throw at “stimulating” the economy, both led by the incompetence of liberal leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. After the 2006 election, both insisted that the electorate had spoken in their favor and that the mandate for liberal ”change” was theirs. That didn’t work out so well, did it?
Republicans certainly have their fair share of issues both in Washington and at the grassroots level, and have a long road to regaining the trust of their supporters, not to mention even thinking about regaining a majority in Congress. It’s a shame. The Democrat Party is was a great institution, before it’s ideology got hijacked by inept lunatics. In the meantime, watching Pelosi and Reid and the rest of the far left liberals cut their party off at the knees will make it almost worth the ride.
I am trying not to read too much into Senator Chambliss’ victory in yesterday’s runoff election. Despite what you may hear from Democrats and liberals trying to play this down, it is killing them that they couldn’t get their 60 seats. Chambliss is a conservative incumbent in a red state, and he beat an ineffective liberal, who pathetically tried to associate himself with Obama and have Ludacris appear at an election-eve rally for support. Yes…THAT Ludacris (Malkin has more on that). Put a conservative up against a liberal when you’re not voting for the first black president on the same ballot, and the conservative will win. No surprise really.
Another positive note is the Palin effect. She campaigned harder for Chambliss than any other Republican and according to him, she made all the difference.
There are no exit polls for the runoff, but all accounts are that Democratic turnout was low, especially among black voters, which ruined any chance of a fight for Jim Martin.
One more thing. I’ve always believed that Obama is an arrogant narcissist; he’s as power hungry and self-centered as politicians come. From the Greek columns to the meaningless “Office of the President-Elect” signs, it’s all about self-importance and hubris. The Democratic Party has staked alot on him and what his campaign machine can deliver, most likely to their detriment. Tantaros explains:
He’s the star, he controls the lists, the money and the power. But when it comes to the Democratic brand, the party is in no better shape than the GOP. There is no Obama effect when he’s not on the ballot. Turnout pales in comparison. And he doesn’t seem to care. Obama didn’t stump for Martin in the Peach State just like Obama didn’t stump for his colleagues in the Presidential election. We heard rumblings throughout the year that there were tensions between the Obama campaign and Capitol Hill Democrats and Obama’s army-of-one mentality was likely the crux of that tension. No man is an island but apparently Obama believes that he is. Maybe he doesn’t need anyone else, but what will that do for the future of the Democratic Party?
So now, because of this, you have a large majority (though not the whole) of his 10 million-person email list overarchingly organized around the celebrity Barack Obama – not really around issues (though certainly people can like Obama and support specific issues). That means he feels no real obligation to appointing “movement progressives” because he has his own movement – one that’s about helping, aiding and defending Barack Obama.
Like I said, I’m trying not to make much of this victory. As conservatives we have a lot of work ahead of us, which goes beyond Chambliss’ victory. But Michael Barone makes a good case for the other side of the argument.
How long do taxpayers in this country have to put with ineffective and inept leaders overseeing matters when it comes to the financial crisis? The ignorance and ineptitude eminating from Washington is alarming. Every week it seems, brings a new boogeyman, a new smoking gun. And each purported “solution” involves more and more taxpayer money being thrown down a cesspool of government hubris. This week, the evil of choice is home foreclosures.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the U.S. government must step up efforts to prevent home foreclosures, with options including buying delinquent mortgages and providing bigger incentives for refinancing loans.
The government could buy “delinquent or at-risk mortgages in bulk,” then refinance them through the federal Hope for Homeowners program, Bernanke said in a speech at a Fed conference in Washington. Congress could also help reduce loan rates and lender insurance premiums, he said.
Each option would require “some commitment of public funds,” Bernanke said, underscoring his position that the central bank alone can’t revive the economy through its interest- rate cuts and emergency lending programs.
The HFH program went into effect in October. Under the program, banks would take on delinquent loans while the borrower switched into loans with lower rates to make payments more affordable. Meanwhile, the lender would have to take a haircut on the bad loan. Sounds like something the government would come up with: socializing losses and rewarding incompetence.
It didn’t take long for the geniuses in charge to realize that forcing banks to take on riskier exposure while forcing them to take losses, wasn’t such a good idea. So what did they do? They relaxed certain requirements of the program to make it palatable for lenders to participate in the program. More idiocy:
The changes include increasing the loan to value ratio (LTV) from 90 to 96.5 percent for some H4H loans; for borrowers whose mortgage payments represent no more than 31 percent of their monthly gross income and household debt no more than 43 percent. Raising the LTV ratio reduces the gap between the existing loan balances and the new H4H loan and decrease losses to the existing primary lienholders, according to a HUD press release regarding the announcement.
So while the Fed determines that it’s the Federal government’s job to bolster a home-buyers market that isn’t there, the Henry Paulson-led Treasury is trying to muscle mortgage rates lower by flooding the financial system with dollars and force banks to price loans at a discount:
Both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post reported that the proposal would have the Treasury buy securities to finance new loans for home purchases.
Mortgage lenders would have to set extremely low interest rates — as low as 4.5 percent for a standard 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.
According to the tentative plan, the Treasury would buy the securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing giants that buy most mortgages from lenders, unnamed sources told the papers.
Treasury officials say the proposal might just stem the plunge in home prices by allowing borrowers to secure larger loans, which would then bolster demand and drive up moribund home prices.
It’s exactly the same type of government interference and chicanery that was the basis of implementing CRA. The same shortsightedness that led to government interfering in the marketplace, by forcing banks to make loans they would otherwise not make. The same threat of fines and harrassment by the government that started us on this road of financial meltdown, is happening all over again. At this point, foreclosures need to happen, the market needs to take care of the excesses. Amazing how government hubris always comes full circle, no matter who’s at the wheel.
In fact, most white people would love to be locked up for their beliefs provided that they could go to a jail with private toilets, plenty of books and no rape.
Congressional Democrats are getting a little tired of being water carriers for implementing the TARP bailout money and are now debating as to when the second half of the $700 billion bailout money will be used. Looks like they want some hope and change of their own:
Democrats are growing impatient with President-elect Barack Obama’s refusal to inject himself in the major economic crises confronting the country. Obama has sidestepped some policy questions by saying there is only one president at a time. But the dodge is wearing thin. “He’s going to have to be more assertive than he’s been,” House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., told consumer advocates Thursday.
An Obama official said the Bush administration reached out to the transition team about tapping into the money. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said Obama’s transition team urged the administration to talk to bipartisan congressional leaders and assemble a meeting between the White House and Congress.
Treasury officials have grown frustrated with the Obama transition team’s unwillingness to engage in specifics. Mr. Paulson has to consult with the Obama team on any big moves, in particular on plans for how the next $350 billion should be used. While Treasury has been in frequent contact with the Obama team, there is uncertainty about what it wants to do with that next batch of money. Many within Treasury believe the next administration is trying to keep its distance in an effort not to be painted as endorsing any of the Bush administration’s plans.
Under other circumstances, I might be able to give the President-elect the benefit of the doubt here; we have one president at a time he says. But not now.
Obama is a master of generalization; he speaks in broad strokes. Put him in front of some styrofoam Greek columns, crank up a teleprompter and he’ll spew specifics from a prepared speech all night if he must. But this isn’t a campaign any longer.
Apparently, a lame duck Bush Administration approaches the Obama team for their outlook on the TARP money, and Obama just punts the ball. Talk to Congress, he says. I’m just the President-elect here.
And now, Democratic leaders are pleading asking for some political cover real-time leadership from Obama on what’s shaping up to be a very unpleasant and unpopular episode in Washington.
Nope, this is not a campaign. Neither is it the friendly, non-confrontational confines of the Senate, where Obama could stay hidden as a junior Senator, writing stern and harsh letters to policy makers, displaying no leadership on anything. This is real-time. Voting “present” doesn’t cut it anymore.
For decades, pro-choice types (particularly the rabid, extremist liberal ones) have used the “back alley abortion” argument to justify their cause. The reasoning behind this is the implication that if Roe vs. Wade were to be overturned, it would result in the proliferation of illegal abortions, and would endanger the lives of the women undergoing said unsafe procedures.
Illegal abortion mills are alive and well in America. So much for the “back alley” argument:
A woman who operated an abortion clinic that catered to low-income Latino women has pleaded guilty to nine felony counts of practicing medicine without a license, the district attorney’s office announced today.
Bertha Pinedo Bugarin, 48, faces as many as nine years in prison when sentenced Feb. 6.
“This criminal preyed on women in the Hispanic community and has now been held accountable,” said Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis.
Bugarin once operated six abortion clinics in Southern California, including Clinica Medica de la Mujer in Chula Vista, which advertised on Spanish-language television in San Diego.
Nine former patients identified Bugarin as the person who performed medical procedures on them. One gave birth to a premature baby after going to the clinic for what she thought was an abortion. Another paid $500 for an abortion but had to return for a second procedure when it was unsuccessful, according to court testimony.
Brings back not-so-fond memoriesof another infaticide factory in New Jersey last year:
A New Jersey abortion clinic was shut down last weekend, nearly a month after a woman who had an abortion there became ill and fell unconscious, the woman and the authorities said yesterday.
The woman, Rasheedah Dinkins, 20, who her lawyer said was forced to undergo a hysterectomy as a result of the abortion, filed a lawsuit yesterday in State Superior Court in Newark against the clinic, Metropolitan Medical Associates in Englewood, and several doctors who work there.
As a result of that complaint, the health department went to inspect the clinic on Feb. 2, and that investigation was still open. The department also moved up a previously scheduled licensing inspection, to last week, and then ordered the clinic to stop seeing new patients, citing violations related to infection control, instruments, and equipment used for sterilization.
Should we expect a response from Planned Parenthood, purveyors of legal infanticide anytime soon? Don’t hold your breath. They’re busy breaking laws on their own (via Malkin).
Its a sad day when the US government is taking a page from the Russian playbook on governance:
Now, the Kremlin seems to be capitalizing on the economic crisis, exploiting the opportunity to establish more control over financially weakened industries that it has long coveted, particularly those in natural resources.
With the financial crisis jolting economies around the world, Russia is hardly alone in taking ownership stakes in corporations these days. But many governments seem to view this as an uncomfortable role that has been thrust upon them. Russia’s rulers, however, appear to perceive the crisis as a chance to further expand their control over the economy, concentrating ever more power and wealth in the Kremlin.
The vote on the auto industry bailout is coming soon and what’s at stake is whether the Federal government can further muscle its way into yet another vestige of private industry. The government is demanding strict “oversight” in exchange for yet another taxpayer-funded bailout. This time, in the guise of a $15 billion bridge “loan”. Amusing:
Congressional Democrats were drafting legislation Sunday for tight government control of the crippled American auto industry, including the possible creation of an oversight board made up of five cabinet secretaries and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and led by an independent chairman or “car czar.”
While the form of oversight was still to be negotiated by Congressional Democrats and the White House, the talks made clear the extent to which the auto companies would have to submit to substantial government supervision in order to receive a taxpayer-financed bailout.
Whatever oversight entity is created, it would direct the drastic reorganization plans that the auto companies have said they were willing to undertake in exchange for billions of dollars in short-term government loans to keep them in business, a senior Congressional aide said. A main factor complicating the deliberations was the imminent transition between the Bush and Obama administrations.
Details of the bailout package are emerging, which includes the creation of a “car czar”, who will determine by April 2009, if the automakers recovery is going as scheduled. Amazing. So, for thirty years the auto industry couldn’t get anything right. But now, with billions in taxpayer money, they’ve suddenly learned how to run their business? And our government will provide “oversight”? All I see is more bureaucracy, more waste and misguided priorites.
It’s encouraging to see Richard Shelby and Bob Corker stand up to the bailout nonsense going on in Washington right now. But I won’t hold my breath waiting for a filibuster of this loanbailout package to the automakers, which most likely goes to a vote in the Senate and House sometime next week. I’m not going to pretend that the Republicans in the Senate were the ones voting against billions upon billions of pork spending over the last six years, feeding at the public trough along with the Democrats, at the behest of President Bush. If there’s one thing this group of Senators has shown us, it’s that fiscal conservatism is dead and with a few exceptions (Shelby, Corker, et al) they will have to prove that they have the fortitude to fight this down. The Republican party needs to rebuild on conservative ideals; fiscal irresponsibility is not an exception to this plan. As Malkinnotes, if it means no bipartisanship, so be it. This is the perfect time for ideological purity.
The Democrats on the other hand, continue to play hot potato with the auto bailout. Obama is all talk , and the Dems want some action from their President-elect. Whereas in September they were willing to hand over $700 billion in bailout money to the Treasury, no questions asked, now they are being a little more demanding. Make no mistake, this is political showmanship on the part of the Democrats. They are a conniving bunch. The American public is becoming very uneasy about how brazenly our government is handing out what amounts to corporate welfare; government money rewarding failure and ineptitude. They’d rather not want to feel any of the reprecussions of a failed and shortsighted bailout policy, if once their plans fail.
Gay marriage supporters are planning to skip work on Wednesday, protesting the passage of several gay marriage bans in last month’s general election.
Their ’sacrifice’ is yours too, if you have children in school that is:
Scott Craig, a fifth-grade teacher at Independence Charter School in Philadelphia, had no problem requesting and being granted the day off. So many of the school’s 60 teachers were eager to show support for gay rights they had to make sure enough stayed behind to staff classrooms.
About 25 teachers plan to take Wednesday off and to have their work covered by substitutes while they discuss ways to introduce gay issues to their students and volunteer at the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, Craig said. A letter telling parents why so many teachers would be out went home Monday.
“We want to get the conversation going in the community that gay is not bad,” Craig said. “For kids to hear that in a positive light can be life-changing.”
Yes, get the ‘conversation’ going. If your child asks why their teacher wasn’t in school, just explain to them that their education was less important than their bitter and angry gay teacher’s sense of self. Fantastic! So much for priorities in education.
And just in case you’re wondering, the organizers of this ‘protest’ hail from West Hollywood. That’s right, the same West Hollywood crowd that brought us the Sarah Palin effigy for Halloween. Tons of fun and inclusion. Ah, tolerance…
Senator Mitch McConnell’s statement on the Senate floor this morning (emphasis added):
The auto industry is vitally important to our nation’s economy and it is vitally important to my home state of Kentucky. This is not in dispute. The question before us is how to reverse the decline of some of these auto manufacturers after decades of complicity between management and labor.
I understand congressional Democrats sent a revised proposal to the White House late last night. We will reserve our judgment until we see the latest text. But the proposal we saw yesterday afternoon fails to achieve our goal of securing the long-term viability of ailing auto companies.
I want to support a bill that revives this industry. But I will not support a bill that revives the patient with taxpayer dollars yet doesn’t secure a commitment that the patient will change its ways so future help isn’t needed.
To do so would be a betrayal of the millions of hardworking taxpayers who are not at fault for the troubles in the auto industry. And it would be unfair to the millions of Americans who depend on these companies.
On the management side, the draft plan released yesterday fails to require the kind of serious reform that will ensure long-term viability for struggling auto companies. By giving the government the option of cancelling government assistance in the event that reforms are not being achieved – rather than requiring it – we open the door to unlimited federal subsidies in the future.
Instead, we should demand that management make the tough choices that are required for long-term viability. This is the only fair approach from the standpoint of the taxpayer, who’s footing the bill.
On the labor side, this bill proposal fails to require any serious reform of legacy costs. Indeed, it states explicitly that one of its purposes is to preserve the same retirement and health care benefits that have made these companies so uncompetitive. It’s delusional to expect a company that spends $71 per labor hour to compete with a company in a neighboring state that spends $49 per labor hour.
In short, this proposal is deeply flawed because it fails to assure taxpayers – who rightly expect us to be good stewards of their hard-earned money – that they will not be asked to shell out billions more a few years or even a few months from now.
There are times when help is needed. But one thing most people expect when they’re asked for help is that the one asking makes a commitment to change. This proposal does not go nearly far enough. It holds neither management nor labor truly accountable. And in areas where one side is held accountable, the other side isn’t. One example is a provision that requires automakers to drop all legal challenges to state fuel economy standards that are inconsistent with the federal standard.
Where is the offer from our friends on the other side to call on environmental groups to drop their lawsuits? Democrats say they want to solve this problem as much as we do. Yet they seem all too eager to tip the scales to the detriment of the manufacturers. There is plenty of blame to go around for the problems that ail the auto industry. But fixing half of a problem is not a real solution.
Any successful proposal would force companies to reform, either inside of bankruptcy or outside of bankruptcy. Without that mandate, there can be no real expectation of reform.
A good proposal would force automakers to get control of their benefit costs.
A good proposal would make wages at struggling companies competitive with other automakers – not tomorrow, but today.
A good proposal would end the practice of paying workers who don’t work.
And a good proposal would rationalize dealer networks. Just as struggling airlines adjust their capacity to respond to market conditions, automakers must respond to market demands as well.
I regret to conclude that this proposal Republicans saw yesterday afternoon does not do enough to fix the whole problem. It subsidizes it. A real solution must protect the taxpayers by forcing the changes needed to put these companies on a path to long term success.
Some of these highlighted points should be the groundwork for how the Republicans should must oppose the $15 billion automaker bailout. The “car czar” will be in charge of providing the oversight that politicians have been crying about recently. But the legislation gives the authority for the czar to cancel what obligations are outstanding, if they feel the automakers are not playing by the rules. What the rules are, we don’t know. Is there a benchmark for profitability? The authority is there, but the czar is not required to use it, which is where McConnell makes his point. The door is wide open for more money to be flowing before this is all said and done.
The key to this mess is here:
Where is the offer from our friends on the other side to call on environmental groups to drop their lawsuits? Democrats say they want to solve this problem as much as we do. Yet they seem all too eager to tip the scales to the detriment of the manufacturers.
The biggest “detriment” comes down to the stifling effect that the UAW has on the industry, by artificially inflating costs of operations and making the automakers inefficient and uncompetitive with lower cost manufacturers:
Even as the UAW appears ready to make concessions as part of the bailout package, they are adamant that they stick aroundand make life even more miserable for the automakers and the workers. The burdensome regulations and never-ending threat of environmental lawsuits add even more pressure to the industry. Make no mistake, management is a big problem as we’ve noted. But the unions, environmentalists, protectionists, etc., have dragged the auto industry down this road. And the caretaker of these special interests is the Democrat Party.
The Democrats are forging aheadwith their plans to force yet another taxpayer-funded, government mandated bailout down the throats of the American taxpayer. This is a political football for Democrats. Their hubris will most definitely get in the way of fiscal and economic sanity. For Democrats, it usually does. As recent polls show most voters are growing weary of government bailouts, Democrats are growing more cautious. In the next few days, Pelosi and Reid will start their fear-mongering again, inciting class-warfare against the Republicans; they don’t want to jump off this cliff alone. It’s a replay of the financial bailout fight in September. The difference here: in about six weeks, this mess belongs entirely to the Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Nothing will hurt voterstaxpayers more than hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed auto and auto-related workers, which is what the chicken-littles are saying will happen. But then again, we were warned of impending financial disaster if we didn’t pass the financial bailout; the bailout passed and the economy appears to get worse. Go figure.
If the Democrats want to run with this, which they will, then fine. If they want to believe that $15 billion for three months will even begin to correct a bloated and inefficient auto industry, let them believe as much. If they feel that more government bureaucracy, more bureaucrats in the form of a “car czar” overseeing the auto industry is the answer, let them think so. The Democrats need to pander to the UAW and environmentalists, not Republicans.
The GOP needs to take a big stand here and stop this bailout madness, this idiotic notion that government has the solutions to the self-made inefficiencies and ineptidude of private industry. These bailouts represent everything that the GOP is supposed to be against: government intervention in the private sector, more useless bureaucracy and waste and inflating budget deficits.
A filibuster sounds greatright about now, but we’ve seen this group of Republicans fold before. Hell, if they had any sort of spine before, last month’s election results might have turned out differently. We probably wouldn’t have a $700 billion monstrosity on our hands. The current batch of Republican whiners and RINOs needs to be weeded out in order to rebuild the party. But it is encouraging to see a filibuster threat, maybe it’s just bailout fatigue. And another encouraging sign: John Ensign is looking to join Richard Shelby and his filibuster plans.
The Nevada Republican said the assistance to the automakers amounts to “the government picking the winners and losers instead of the market.”
“We’re just going down further and further and further towards socializing our economy,” he said.
That’s exactly what this is. Strong words to be sure. Given that Republicans are talking the talk, let’s hope they can get it together and stand up to this nonsense now. With one filibuster, the Republicans can kill several birds: begin rebuilding the GOP, watch the Democrats squirm come January and most importantly, save the country from the bailout insanity.
Since the media is being forced to cover focusing on corrupt Democrats today, what are the odds that some of the spotlight be shared on the tax-dodging, tax-code writing Charlie Rangel?
The House ethics committee is expanding an investigation of Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. The ethics panel issued a statement Tuesday saying it had voted to expand an already far-ranging probe into the New York Democrat to examine whether he protected an oil drilling company from a big tax bill when the head of that company pledged a $1 million donation to a college center named after the congressman.
The charges against Governor Blagojevich are appalling and represent as serious a breach of the public trust as I have ever heard. It is clear that anyone Governor Blagojevich appoints to the Senate will fairly or unfairly be tainted by questions of impropriety. A different process to select a new senator must be put in place – and that process should not involve Governor Blagojevich.
Strong words, coming from an inept and useless Senate majority leader. And speaking of the public trust, those same words should apply to one of their own, no? Nancy “the swamp drainer” Pelosi prefers to take a “wait and see” approach when it comes to questionable ethics and corruption in her own party. These Democrats are a classy bunch…
Congressional Democrats and President Bush are about to move forward with another government bailout for the auto industry. It’s a slippery slope indeed:
If, as seems likely, this restructuring doesn’t work, consider the $15 billion a down payment: It is the nature of federal czars to attribute mission failure to inadequate resources, and it is the nature of Congress to throw good money after bad. No one wants to call this a nationalization, but that is what it is bound to become unless Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell can rally enough Republicans to block the bill. McConnell got to the heart of the matter in a statement yesterday: This bailout doesn’t fix Detroit’s problem, he wrote, “It subsidizes it.”
This bailout is doomed to fail. Conservatives know this. Republicans can be heroes. Let’s hope they make the right choice.
Does this actually surprise anyone? The government’s idiotic attempt to “halt” mortgage foreclosures by modifying existing mortgage contracts for borrowers who couldn’t afford them in the first place, is backfiring, just as expected:
Recent data suggests that many borrowers who received help with mortgage modifications earlier this year tended to re-default on their payments, a top U.S. banking regulator said on Monday.
“The results, I confess, were somewhat surprising, and not in a good way,” said John Dugan, head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, in prepared remarks for a U.S. housing forum.
Dugan said recent data showed that after three months, nearly 36 percent of borrowers who received restructured mortgages in the first quarter re-defaulted. The rate of re-default jumped to about 53 percent after six months and 58 percent after eight months, Dugan said, without providing an explanation for the trend.
“We don’t know the answers yet, but these are the types of questions that we have begun asking our servicers in detail,” Dugan said.
Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, who has been pushing for fast and systematic loan modifications, said regulators need to examine re-default data more closely.
“I think it’s very important to look at this data carefully and know what it says and what it doesn’t say,” Bair said.
Sheila Bair needs to get a clue. We wrote about the FDIC’s plans to push the limits of leniencywhen it came to stopping home foreclosures. Here’s what Ms. Bair had to say:
“Our goal is to get the greatest recovery possible on loans in default or in danger of default, while helping troubled borrowers remain in their homes”
How’s that working out? This concept of government “leniency”, and “compassionate” politics has to stop. Not everyone has a right to a home, but they should have the right to fail. I’d say start at looking at the garbage quality of the borrowers that the Feds are trying to help: irresponsible and obviously ignorant about home-ownership, who don’t belong anywhere near a new home. How do you expect these people to pay back anything? These people need to lose their homes, if honest and diligent homeowners taxpayers are being asked to pay for their blatant disregard of personal accountability.
So, now we know that the government stepping into the private sector to bailout deadbeat homeowners defaulting on mortgages is not working according to plan, that they are having the opposite effect and that the banking regulators are admitting this, basically saying that they have no clue whats going on. But, alas, the facts will never, ever get in the way of idiocy. And liberals are indeed, idiots:
A top House Democrat threatened Monday to tie up the remaining half of the $700 billion financial industry rescue money unless the Bush administration provides some of it for borrowers facing foreclosure.
“They’re not going to get the [money] unless they get very serious about the foreclosure modifications and showing us how we’re going to get some lending out of the banks,” Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, told reporters after speaking at a housing industry conference in Washington. “At this point I don’t see that happening.”
Next year, after President-elect Barack Obama takes office, lawmakers plan to subsidize rental housing, reform lending practices and overhaul the regulations for companies that collect mortgage payments and distribute them to investors, Mr. Frank said. Lawmakers also should regulate the amount of debt that can be issued by hedge funds and other Wall Street firms, he added
Not only does Barney Frank want more bailout money to go towards modifying existing deadbeat mortgages, despite the fact that it doesn’t work, he and his fellow liberals want even more government bureaucracy and interference. Because it’s all worked so well so far. Pathetic.
Credit-default swaps on U.S. government debt in euros for five years are trading at 67 basis points, according to CMA Datavision, meaning it costs 67,000 euros ($87,100) to protect 10 million euros of debt. Contracts on Campbell of Camden, New Jersey, were quoted at 51 basis points today, and Deerfield, Illinois-based Baxter contracts were at 55 basis points, CMA data show.
The Federal Reserve’s assets have more than doubled from a year ago to $2.14 trillion as the central bank seeks to revive credit markets. The Fed’s balance sheet may reach $4 trillion, according to strategists including Ira Jersey at Credit Suisse Group AG in New York
That doesn’t mean the Federal Reserve won’t stop looking for more creative ways of leveraging itself, of course. Nah, that would be too prudent:
The U.S. Federal Reserve is considering issuing its own debt for the first time, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Fed officials have approached Congress about the move, which could include issuing bills or some other form of debt and would provide the central bank with more flexibility to tackle the financial crisis, the Journal said
It’s not so much that 32 Republicans voted for this bill, it’s that 20 Democrats voted against it! That’s not much of a swing. And it just makes an opportunity to make any attempt at righting this sinking ship called the Republican Party, seem like a complete waste.
Of the 32 Republicans who voted for this bill, eight of them came from Michigan, joining the remaining Democratic representatives from that state. Congressmen from nearby auto states voted for the bill as well, including Paul Ryan.
Can we now stop considering Paul Ryan as one of the “bright, young talents” that is expected to lead conservatives and the GOP to future electoral success?
He folded on his principles and voted for the $700 billion bailout package in September. After yesterday’s aggravating and disappointing House vote, I think it’s time to pull the plug on Ryan’s “potential” as a conservative voice in the Republican party for the time being. Here’s Ryan justifying his vote against the original bailout bill back in September (emphasis added):
I personally fought to make sure that taxpayers were protected. I fought to make sure that once these troubled institutions start making profits, the taxpayers benefit first and foremost. I fought to make sure Wall Street executives don’t profit personally as a result of their irresponsible decisions
The American automotive industry is under considerable distress, and various proposals have been put forth to provide aid to those in need. I’ve maintained that any assistance to the domestic auto industry should be drawn from previously approved funds from a U.S. Department of Energy loan package, rather than divert resources from the financial rescue package or rely on additional taxpayer dollars. H.R. 7321 cuts through the bureaucratic red tape and expedites these previously appropriated funds. Because no additional taxpayer dollars were appropriated, I was able to support this legislation.
“At the forefront of my mind are jobs in Southern Wisconsin and the retiree commitments to workers that could be placed in jeopardy under certain bankruptcy scenarios. To be clear, this bill is not intended to save the American auto industry and makes no guarantees that layoffs in this industry will end. Congress must stop overselling what it can do. At the very least, I am hopeful that by extending these loans to the American auto manufacturers, bankruptcy will be avoided in the near term and protections for retirees will remain intact.”
In other words, shoveling billions of taxpayer money to be dispersed under the blind authority of the Secretary of the Treasury, bailing out corporate and personal failure, is a bad thing as long as it doesn’t affect him politically. And the auto bailout is justified, because the $15 billion didn’t come from new taxpayer dollars, just taxpayer dollars allocated months ago. Great, so Congress didn’t have to go loot the public till yet again to get new money. That really wouldn’t be considered “protecting” the taxpayer.
And oh, by the way, the bailout money to the auto-industry doesn’t guaranty anything, just “near-term protection” for retirees. In other words, it was just political grandstanding and the $15 billion is just the beginning. Spring will come and along with it, another multi-billion dollar request for taxpayer money.
This is NOThow the GOP is going to differentiate themselves from Democrats in the eyes of the American electorate. The government choosing who wins and who loses in our economy is not was never a tenet of conservatism. It’s a bad precedent.
And a word on the House GOP leadership. John Boehner decided to cower on the financial bailout package in September, as well, weeks before the general election. His message to Republicans: leave your fiscal conservatism at the door. When the specter of an upcoming election is not around however, Boehner makes the “tough” call and votes no on the auto bill. He might as well have voted in the affirmative.
Finally, Mitch McConnell gave a great speech on the Senate floor the other day, denouncing the auto bailout, saying all the right things. But these are the moments when action trumps rhetoric. As conservatives, let’s not forget that McConnell voted for the $700 billion bailout. And now, he has a chance to regain some trust. But only some. Keep in mind how different the situation would be if Toyota didn’t have one of its biggest manufacturing plants outside of Japan, in Kentucky.
(UPDATES)
Malkin is reporting some last minute dealings going on with the auto bailout, involving Harry Reid. And if Harry Reid is involved, guess which Senate minority leader from Kentucky is probably also involved? Like I’ve been writing, let’s not hold our breath on a filibuster. More GOP rhetoric on limited government and accountability, anyone? What a joke…
This post was linked at The Other McCain, who thinks Paul Ryan should be contested for his House seat in the next primary. Not a bad idea.
“What is outrageous economically and is outrageous morally is that normally in times like this, people who are competent and who saw it coming and who kept their powder dry go and take over the assets from the incompetent,” he said. “What’s happening this time is that the government is taking the assets from the competent people and giving them to the incompetent people and saying, now you can compete with the competent people. It is horrible economics.”
He’s referring to the $700 billion TARP disaster, but make no mistake about it. The same can be said for bailing out the auto industry. Same concept, different players.
Cranberry growers in New Jersey face stifling environmental regulations and are considering leaving the state for friendlier and more cost-effective business environments, namely Canada. Where’s their bailout?
Since the Federal government and certain states are eager to flush taxpayer money down the toilet, how long before ex-Goldman Sachs co-CEO-with bailout-loving Henry Paulson/Governor of New Jersey Jon Corzine start showing some compassion for cranberry growers in the great state of New Jersey and demand a bailout for them? Looks like they may need one:
The Joseph J. White Cranberry Farm has grown cranberries in Burlington County for more than 150 years and is recognized as a historic landmark at both the state and national levels. But the farm’s owner, Joe Darlington, like many of his fellow cranberry growers, might relocate some of his operations out of state due to strict environmental regulations.
Darlington said he has repeatedly tried to expand his bogs, most of which were built in the 1800s, only to have those efforts blocked by the state Department of Environmental Protection. “We’re plenty frustrated,” said Darlington, a fifth-generation cranberry farmer who also had attempts to operate a fresh-produce stand and bus tours of his farm thwarted by the state. “We started here in 1857 and we’d like to keep it here, but New Jersey’s regulations have really made it difficult for us.”
Ned Lipman, who owns three cranberry farms in Ocean County, said these restrictions also often present problems in gaining access to water for farming and permission to plant in areas that are defined as wetlands. “It is challenging to be the grower of a plant that grows in the wetlands ecosystem in New Jersey today,” said Lipman, who is also director of continuing professional education at Rutgers University’s New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. “There is really just a philosophic difference on land use that exists.”
You mean to say bureaucratic red-tape in the form of environmental regulations designed to protect the environment prevent businesses from expanding their operations? Shocker.
Cranberry growers, however, appear to already have their bags packed. Darlington has scouted properties in Canada and is investigating possible locations in Delaware. “Delaware’s not a traditional cranberry-farming area,” Darlington said. “But its close proximity to New Jersey and comparable weather could make it a good fit. And, from what I understand, it’s a lot business-friendlier there.”
Jeff Beach, a spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture, said New Jersey’s cranberry industry had an estimated value of $23 million in 2007, the third-most nationwide. “Certainly $23 million is a significant number, and cranberries – like tomatoes, blueberries and sweet corn – are identified with this state,” Beach said. “It’s definitely an industry that our department would not want to see any loss to.”
But Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. – a cooperative made up of about 650 cranberry growers from Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, Quebec and British Columbia – is on the verge of investing $58 million in new farms in eastern Canada, according to Stephen V. Lee III, a fifth-generation cranberry farmer and member of the Ocean Spray co-op.
“That’s money that could’ve very easily been spent to build new bogs, or expand native ones, in New Jersey,” said Lee, who owns Lee Brothers Farm in Washington Township, Burlington County. “We see the industry that we play in is going to grow somewhere, even if it is unable to do so here. If we don’t collectively take steps like this, someone else will build those bogs and there will be competitors that didn’t exist before.”
The Canadian government is also offering the co-op rent for nearly unlimited acreage at just $1 per year, Lee said. “It’s an entirely different governmental approach,” said Lee, who held off on renovating 10 acres of his 135-acre operation after being told by the DEP that his mitigation expenses would be more than $50,000 per acre. If this migration policy continues, Lee said, it could hurt the state’s already-fractured economy.
“Ocean Spray is a $2 billion business, and 35 (percent) to 40 percent of its product is processed at a plant in Bordentown, which accounts for an untold amount of jobs,” Lee said. “The risk exists where if the center of gravity shifts to Canada, instead of staying in New Jersey, the next processing plant won’t be built in New Jersey. It will be built closer to Canada.”
Just like the auto industry, cranberry growers deal with stifling environmental regulations. And, just like the auto industry, they are looking to move to states and/or countries that provide a business environment that makes it easier to provide jobs, encourage expansion and, in the long run, develop wealth for everyone. What a novel idea.
So, where’s the bailout? Maybe if Ocean Spray’s workers belonged to a massive, corrupt and bureaucratic labor union, that was one of the major contributors to the Democrat party, you’d hear Corzine crying for cash. But they don’t, so they won’t. Democrats have no shame.
The dictionary defines the word leader as: “a person or thing that leads; a guiding or directing head, as of an army, movement, or political group”
Referring to Harry Reid as a “leader” is a misnomer to say the least. Harry Reid is a follower. He follows the polls, follows the consensus. He cuts and runs.
Is there a lawmaker in Washington as inept, as useless, as irrelevant as Harry Reid? As the auto bailout crashed and burned on Thursday night, “leader” Reid said the following:
“I dread looking at Wall Street tomorrow. It’s not going to be a pleasant sight,”
The actual market results for Friday? Not even close:
Pretty much break even for the day. Investors basically yawned at the news, despite Reid’s whining and fear mongering. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Reid has made a career out of being on the wrong side of major political issues during his tenure. Now if only Republicans would take notice, and take advantage.
Not so good news for the GOP and their future Congressional “leaders” (Paul Ryan comes to mind) coming from the Midwest. The RNC and the candidates looking to be chairman come January need to pay attention (emphasis added):
Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan are all top-10 manufacturing states where industrial job losses were a major campaign-year issue. That softened GOP support in all three; the onset of the credit crisis in mid-September was a finishing blow.
Comparing the number of votes cast for George W. Bush in 2004 and for McCain in 2008, Wisconsin saw the biggest decline (14.9%) of any contested state and the biggest in the nation after Hawaii and Vermont. Michigan saw a nearly 12% drop-off in GOP voters, twice as big as the national decline of 6%.
Paul Ryan chimes in:
“If we want to compete to be the majority party in this country again, we have to expand our appeal beyond the angry white male. We’ve got to look at the issues that got us to where we are. The biggest area where we stumbled the most are the economic issues, the fiscal issues. I think it’s a bad cycle for us in particular in the Rust Belt. We need to have an agenda on: How do we survive, not only survive, but how do we thrive in a global economy?”
This from a Republican who voted for both the financial services and auto industry bailouts. Congressman Ryan should take his own advice. Both Senate and House Republicans have stumbled on fiscal and economic matters. And to be more specific, they have floundered on accountability and fiscal conservatism. They haven’t differentiated themselves from tax and spend Democrats. Voting twice to break the financial backs of American citizens, not to mention throw billions upon billions of dollars in taxpayer money into a black hole of government hubris, will not reverse Republicans’ problems. It will only exacerbate them.
Paul Ryan loves to talk the conservative talk, and indeed, the GOP has a lot of mouthpieces. As conservatives, we can benefit from losing both.
U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., of Janesville, says he’s looking for ways to work with President-elect Barack Obama on the country’s most pressing issues.
Conservatives can only hope that Rep. Ryan understands the difference between “work with” and compromising core principles.
Here’s a novel fiscal policy for Republicans in Washington to undertake: eliminate corporate taxes, stop corporate welfare and cut personal income taxes. It’s called fiscal conservatism. At least one Republican gets it:
Gov. Mark Sanford has proposed eliminating the corporate income tax and would pay for it with tax breaks given to spur certain industries and research.
In addition, Sanford said the state should create an alternate, flat income tax rate – 3.65 percent – funded by a 30-cent increase in the state’s lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax. Sanford has also asked for a panel to study the inequities in business property taxes
Sanford is also against the bailout mentality prevailing in Washington these days. Governor Sanford issued a statement today criticizing President Bush on considering using the TARP money to bailout the auto industry, and the dangers that bailout insanity will bring:
“And I believe we are at a tipping point in moving from a market-based economy to a politically-based economy, wherein one’s success can be determined not by good decisions and hard work, but by the size of one’s voice and connection to Washington,”
Cutting taxes across the board and opposing government bailing out failure. Sounds like a great idea.
For many people, Christmas is a hectic time. It seems as if there is never enough time for anything. But as we’re all trying to find that perfect gift for family, friends, acquaintances, etc., take time out to remember our brave men and women in uniform serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and all over the world:
On Tuesday, President-elect Obama selected Chicago Public Schools chief Arne Duncan to be Education Secretary. The zombies in the media genuflected in praise, becaues every decision Obama makes on anything is the correct one. The teachers unions applauded. Obama then praised Duncan as a “reformer”. Red Flag!
When liberals talk about “reform”, it means one of several things: higher taxes, more government bureaucracy, more government intrusion, social engineering , corruption, or all of the above. Pick your poison.
One of Duncan’s “reforms” for the Chicago Public Schools system was advocating the establishment of an exclusively gay public high-school:
“We want to create great new options for communities that have been traditionally underserved,” he told the newspaper. “If you look at national studies, you see gay and lesbian students with high dropout rates … I think there is a niche there we need to fill.”
Only 17% of 8th Graders in Schools Overseen by Obama Education Secretary-Designee Can Read at Grade Level
In 2007, only 17 percent of eighth graders tested at or above grade level in reading in Chicago Public Schools – the school system administered by Arne Duncan since 2001.
President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday tapped Duncan to become secretary of education in the upcoming administration.
Duncan, hailed by Obama as a reformer, said he would like to take the lessons he learned in Chicago with him when he moves to Washington. “I’m also eager to apply some of the lessons we have learned here in Chicago to help school districts all across our country,” Duncan said after Obama formally named him to the job in Chicago.
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report for 2007, Chicago public schools have consistently performed below the national average during Duncan’s tenure.
What are the odds that the mainstream media points out that Obama’s choice for Education Secretary supports segregating gays and has presided over one of the worst education systems in the country? Not very likely.
So Obama is sharing with the nation his vision of where the American public schools systems should be headed. But of course, what’s good enough for us, is not nearly good enough for him and his family. Last I checked, the Sidwell Friends School doesn’t employ union-member teachers.
And yet, it exposes so much about Obama’s tangled web of seedy Chicago-style politics. E.M. Zanotti fills us in on the connection; read her post here. Bill Ayers even makes a cameo (he’s an education “reformer”). So unfortunately, the Chicago-izing of America’s public schools system begins now.
It was only a matter of time before the lines are blurred between “stimulus” and “bailout”. This is a dangerous precedent that our government is setting, where bailing out industries “critical” to our economy is practially interchangeable with massive government spending to justify a “stimulus”.
The Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group for the U.S. ethanol industry, has spoken with staff members from Capitol Hill and President-elect Barack Obama’s team and “provided them with some ideas on how to craft the language of” an economic recovery package, said Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the RFA.
Hartwig said RFA has suggested a number of steps including setting up a $1 billion short-term credit facility so ethanol producers could finance current operations; a $50 billion federal loan guarantee program to finance investment in new renewable fuel production capacity and supporting infrastructure; and a requirement that any auto maker receiving federal aid only produce new vehicles that can run on any blend up to 85% ethanol, beginning with the 2010 model season.
The RFA is one of many business groups looking for help in the financial stimulus legislation expected to move through Congress early next year. It’s not clear how much support RFA has for its proposals; calls to several senior lawmakers close to the industry weren’t immediately returned.
“We’re not asking for a specific bailout, but rather, as a trade association, we’re providing ideas to an incoming Congress and a new administration about ways to bolster the domestic renewable fuel industry,” Hartwig said. “We’re doing what all trade organizations are doing – providing the Obama administration with ideas.”
A bailout? Nah. Just $50 billion or so to tide them over until they blow through that money. Then what? Despite the fact that we know ethanol is not cost effective and is inefficient as a source of energy. This is the epitome of what’s wrong with the liberal mindset: just throw some taxpayer money at any given problem and hope it goes way, just to say that they did something. More liberal tripe.
I keep trying to ignore it, hoping it would just go away, but it keeps coming back. Vodkapundit reminds us that liberals love talking up the Fairness Doctrine (emphasis added):
Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, said Monday she will work to restore the Fairness Doctrine and have it apply to cable and satellite programming as well as radio and TV.
“I’ll work on bringing it back. I still believe in it,” Eshoo told the Daily Post in Palo Alto.
Eshoo said she would recommend the doctrine be applied not only to radio and TV broadcasts, but also to cable and satellite services.
“It should and will affect everyone,” she said.
She called the present system “unfair,” and said “there should be equal time for the spoken word.”
Apparently, the Fairness Doctrine clouds haven’t lifted as there are still liberals out there who think government should mandate what the people need to listen to on the radio and on television, only this time with a 21st century twist: cable and satellite transmissions should be included.
Orwellian issues aside, the Fairness Doctrine is flawed for the simple reason that government micromanaging private enterprise is never a good thing, and this is precisely what it does. As JG Thayer points out, the liberal “spoken word” is not very profitable, because nobody really wants to listen:
For all the high-minded rhetoric behind the return of the Fairness Doctrine, the underlying goal is the same: to rein in talk radio, where conservatism has found its greatest popular success. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Jerry Doyle, Dennis Miller, are monumental success.
Conversely, liberals on the radio have been utter failures. Air America still limps along, but its market share has continually diminished and it has never made a single dime. Indeed, at some points it had to resort to shady (if not downright illegal) practices to stay solvent.
…
The station that airs Limbaugh does so because it is profitable for them to do so. Its advertisers are willing to sponsor Limbaugh’s show: that ’s how it gets on the air.
The good news is that Anna Eshoo is pretty much irrelevant. But in the meantime, let’s just chalk this up to my being paranoid again for no good reason.
This would be hysterically funny, if it wasn’t so annoying. Congressman Paul Ryan, a falling star in the Repulican party as far as I’m concerned, and should be considered as such by any serious conservative, laments the country’s precarious fiscal situation in a letter to his House colleagues (co-authored with Rep. Jim Cooper):
As the Financial Report illustrates, our budgetary situation is dire. Putting the nation on a sustainable course demands bipartisan attention and action. We believe that Democrats and Republicans must put their differences aside and work together to address this problem.
In the short-term, it is essential that the American people understand the full picture of the Federal government’s financial position. The unified deficit does not reflect the full obligations of the Federal government. We must also work together to cut waste from the budget and truly prioritize how the Government spends the taxpayer’s money.
In the long-term, we must find a way to put out entitlement programs on a sustainable basis so that we do not leave future generations with a mountain of debt. Out entitlement problem demands action and every year that we do not act, the situation gets worse.
The nation’s fiscal situation is dire indeed. Our fiscal “situation”, specifically our massive budget deficit, is not only unsustainable but also irresponsible. I also find it pathetic that Ryan is calling for bipartisan solutions to these problems. It was bipartisan efforts that have exacerbated the problems. In a bipartisan effort, he voted on a $700 billion, no-questions-asked government bailout. The results of that bailout have not exactly been stellar. And its added another $700 billion to our fiscal “situation”. In last week’s bipartisan adventure, he voted in favor of a bailout bill for the auto industry which didn’t pass but looks like it’s about to be implemented anyway, along with an even more precarious deficit.
I love these quotes: “…and truly prioritize how the Government spends the taxpayer’s money.” and “we must find a way to put out entitlement programs on a sustainable basis so that we do not leave future generations with a mountain of debt.“
Funny. Because Paul Ryan likes to talk about being a conservative, and that’s where it ends. Is Ryan saying that his priority for spending taxpayer money is to waste in on ludicrous government bailouts? If so, his priorities and priorities for conservatives are not mutual. And is he finding a way to keep future generations out of debt by piling billions upon billions of dollars onto the federal deficit with no end in sight? Will he engage in bipartisan folly with House Democrats when it comes time to vote on a $850 billion pork stimulus package? My guess is he’ll cave. Just like his record says he will.
Being a Kennedy has its benefits, I’m sure. As we’ve seen over the past two weeks, one of them is being able to call up the governor of New York and automatically become the frontrunner for a soon-to-be vacant Senate seat. As if this wasn’t enough of an insult to New York voters, she hasn’t even bothered to participate in the most basic right of the democratic process. Ouch:
Caroline Kennedy, who is seeking to fill Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat, has not voted in a number of elections, including at least one race for the very job she’s seeking.
The Democrat registered at her current address on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 1988. According to city Board of Elections records, she missed several Democratic mayoral primaries – typically important contests in left-leaning New York City – in 1989, 1993, 1997 and 2005. Republicans went on to win three out of four of those races in the general election.
She also missed the 2002 gubernatorial primary and general election, when Democrat H. Carl McCall faced Republican incumbent George Pataki and lost.
And she skipped the 1994 general election, when Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was running for re-election for the same seat she hopes to take over if Clinton is confirmed as secretary of state in President-elect Barack Obama’s administration.
Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit ratings of 11 top global banks Friday including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan, citing increased industry risk and a deepening economic slowdown.
The agency cut its ratings on Citigroup (C.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Goldman Sachs Group (GS.N) each by two notches.
It cut Bank of America (BAC.N), JP Morgan Chase (JPM.N) and Wells Fargo (WFC.N) by one notch. For a complete list of rating actions, click on [ID:nN19448614].
In Europe, S&P shaved one notch off the ratings of Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS. It kept the rating of HSBC Bank, part of HSBC Holdings Plc, at “AA: but downgraded its outlook to negative from stable.
“The downgrades and revised outlooks reflect our view of the significant pressure on large complex financial institutions’ future performance due to increasing bank industry risk and the deepening global economic slowdown,” S&P said in a note.
The same ratings agencies (S&P, Moodys, etc.) that gave AAA ratings to toxic mortgage securities before the financial meltdown are now being used by the Fed to help dole out TARP money. The financial crisis comes full circle.
Say it ain’t so Joe. The VP-elect has been released from the attic for this weekend before Christmas, when virtually nobody pays attention to news.
In an interview with George Stephanapolous, Biden effectively admits that after 35 years in the Senate, he knows absolutely nothing about the country’s economic condition. He’s just finding out now, that the economy has some serious problems:
Vice President-Elect Joe Biden said the U.S. economy is in danger of “absolutely tanking” and will need a second stimulus package in the $600-billion to $700-billion range.
“The economy is in much worse shape than we thought it was in,” Biden told me during an exclusive interview — his first since becoming vice president-elect– to air this Sunday on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
“There is no short run other than keeping the economy from absolutely tanking. That’s the only short run,” Biden told me. Biden said he has canvassed Republican and Democratic members of Congress about a second “big” and “bold” stimulus package . He said the Obama team is focused on creating jobs and spending on energy and information technology infrastructure.
“Every single person I’ve spoken to agrees with every major economist. There is going to be real significant investment, whether it’s $600 billion or more, or $700 billion, the clear notion is, it’s a number no one thought about a year ago,” he said.
The future vice president said the struggling economy will be the number one priority for the Obama Administration next year.
“The single most important thing we have to do as a new administration, to have — to be able to have impact on all of the other things we want to do, from foreign policy to domestic policy, is we’ve got to begin to stem this bleeding here and begin to stop the loss of jobs in the creation of jobs,” he said.
Biden apparently got the Democratic talking points memo that says to exaggerate every problem the country has to “crisis” mode and resolve to fix every domestic and foreign policy we have, because that’s just what Democrats do is fix things. And, according to Biden, passing Obama’s multi-billion-soon-to-be-trillion-dollar package of pork is the way to go. So, let’s roll up our sleeves, it’s time to be patriotic, and suck it up, America. We’re in for a long four years.
Congressman Paul Ryan is principled only it comes to dichotomizing exactly which pool of wasted taxpayer money he’s willing to throw into a black hole:
“I am deeply troubled by the precedent set by expanding the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) into areas beyond its original intent,” Ryan (R-Kenosha) said in a statement. “Allowing the Big Three to access funds from the financial rescue package creates a dangerous precedent for other corporations to lay claim to TARP funds.”
Disagreeing with the Congressman from Wisconsin’s 1st District is becoming what seems like a daily occurrence for me. While in principle, what he’s saying is correct: the TARP funds should not be used for bailing out the auto industry, which is what President Bush enacted yesterday. But as we’ve seen, Paul Ryan seems to be more adrift towards center when it comes to limited government , and less like the vanguard of fiscal conservatism the media, and some in the RNC, made him out to be.
If he wants to talk about “dangerous precedents”, then fine. What’s dangerous is Congress voting for a $700 billion blank check to be used at the whim of the Treasury secretary, who is not an elected official. What’s dangerous is the Federal government nationalizing portions of the financial industry. What’s dangerous is the President of the United States ignoring a Congressional vote (Ryan voted for the House measure for an auto bailout, which was rejected by the Senate) and recklessly handing over a $15 billion corporate welfare check to the auto industry. What’s dangerous is effectively nationalizing a portion of the auto industry. All of these, Mr. Ryan, are dangerous precedents. And all of these, you had voted for.
The decision by President Bush to throw a lifeline to the Big 3 has been expected. The tipped hand probably led to the inability of the Senate Republicans to gain crucial concessions from the automakers and the unions during the failed negotiations of last week.
This seems to me to be a much preferred approach that cedes the long-term issue to the new administration, and the president-elect will be able to factor assistance to the car companies into his legislative program for the new year. Lame duck presidents and lame-duck Congresses should do as little as possible to limit a new president’s agenda, fresh as he is from a solid win and a shift to the left in the Congress. Senate Republicans have got to be prepared to fight for sobriety in January and February, and their principled positions of this month allow them to do that. President Bush’s intervention provides his successor with all the options available.
This is cautious, responsible governance by a responsible president seeking to make his successor’s transition as smooth as possible.
Generally speaking, there are very few times that I disagree with Hugh Hewitt. He’s one of the pillars of conservative talk radio and a strong voice for conservatism over all. And I agree for the most part, with this post. It’s true, George Bush should be getting out of the way and slowly allow the Obama transition to make its mark on what the agenda is going to be in the next administration. Obama’s victory and bolstered majorities in both houses of Congress should only emphasize that fact. And it’s also true that post-Inauguration, Congressional Republicans will need to grow a spine, and stand up for the massive onslaught of pork that’s about to be unleashed in their general direction. Personally, I don’t see it happening. By that time, the memories of this terrible election will have faded and these Republicans have short memories. I hope I’m wrong.
But my main issue with Hewitt’s post lies with this:
This is cautious, responsible governance by a responsible president seeking to make his successor’s transition as smooth as possible.
There is nothing — repeat — NOTHING cautious or responsible from the president of the USA, when he supersedes a Senate vote against a bailout for Detroit, by giving them money anyway; money that was set aside for the financial industry. No matter what the political motivation. There is nothing responsible about government bailouts to begin with. Not to mention the disturbing precedent of our government shelling out trillions of dollars to private industry to begin with. Where does the bailout insanity end? Who will be next in line?
For contrarian market watchers out there, if this isn’t a sign to buy up American stocks, I don’t know what is.
Huffington bloviates on the end of free-market capitalism:
The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking.
…
It’s time to drive the final nail into the coffin of laissez-faire capitalism by treating it like the discredited ideology it inarguably is. If not, the Dr. Frankensteins of the right will surely try to revive the monster and send it marauding through our economy once again.
She goes on to cite this past Sunday’s piece in the NY Times blaming President Bush for the mortgage crisis as justification that “deregulation” in the name of laissez-faire capitalism is a flawed economic system and should be dead and buried.
Deregulated? Does Huffington really believe that our economy operates completely free of regulation? And that George Bush is the epitome of conservative, free-market idealism? Hardly. In fact, the past 8 years have seen a considerable ramp-up in regulatory burdens on our economy:
Despite the claims of critics-and some supporters-of the Bush Administration, net regulatory burdens have increased in the years since George W. Bush assumed the presidency. Since 2001, the federal government has imposed almost $30 billion in new regulatory costs on Americans. About $11 billion was imposed in fiscal year (FY) 2007 alone.
Far from shrinking to dangerously low levels, regulation has actually grown substantially during the Bush years. By almost every measure, regulatory burdens are up.
Critics of Bush Administration regulatory policy have argued that budget cuts are evidence that restrictions are being loosened. Yet according to an analysis by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and Washington University’s Weidenbaum Center, appropriations for federal regulatory agencies have increased during the Bush years from $27 billion in FY 2001 to $44.9 billion in FY 2007-a 44 percent increase in inflation-adjusted dollars. The total staffing of regulatory agencies went up nearly as much, from 172,000 employees to over 244,000- a 41 percent increase
Arianna Huffington has made a career of shifting viewpoints with the political winds, a hypocrite in the purest sense. Her lack of depth and original insight translate throughout her website and to it’s writers and readers. While castigating free markets, she has no problem taking advantage of the system for her own benefit. The solutions to the economic problems we face are not entirely political, and if they were, the winning solutions are definitely not the ones to which she espouses.
Proclaiming that George Bush oversaw an orgy of deregulation which allegedly resulted in the financial crisis, while not once mentioning the names of Barney Frank and/or Chris Dodd is not only hypocritical, but completely denigrates the facts. But the facts never really got in the way of alarmist rhetoric from the Left before, so why should it now.
OK. I get it. The media loves Barack Obama and he can do no wrong in their eyes. But at what point doest the adulation go beyond a mere political bias and move into what Newsweek’s Evan Thomas referred to as a “creepy” cult of personality? The media’s Obama crush has been under way for several months now, and any sense of objectivity and journalistic integrity have long since been jettisoned. But the fawning and mindless sycophantic behavior by the mainstream media is really pathetic. Let them report on h
