Here are some questions every American should ask their elected officials – especially those supporting “climate change” legislation: If it is proven that climate change is not man-made, but natural, will you be relieved and excited to know that man is off the hook? Will you now help to remove all of the draconian regulations passed during the global warming hysteria, since it was all wrong headed and harmful to the economy and our way of life?
Their answers to these questions should be very illuminating as to the true agenda they seek to impose. Is their agenda really about helping to protect the environment, or is it about creating a new social and economic order, using the environment as the excuse?
If they are supporting climate change legislation because of a genuine concern for the environment, then they should now be greatly relieved to know that true science is showing more and more evidence that there is no man-made global warming, and in fact, a natural cooling period has begun.
Last year, 52 scientists authored a much hyped report issued by the UN’s IPCC which said global warming was man-made and getting worse. But in the past year, more than 650 scientists from around the world have now expressed their doubts about the reports findings – 12 times the number of IPCC global warming alarmists now agree it’s bunk.
“I am a skeptic…Global Warming has become a new religion,” says Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever. “Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly…as a scientist I remain skeptical,” says Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, formally with NASA and called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.” Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in history… When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists,” said UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh. “It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming,” said U.S. Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B, Glodenberg. Top these very few quotes with the fact that 34,000 scientists have now signed a petition saying global warming is probably natural and is not man-made.
Instead, they say the science shows warming actually stopped in 1999. That the brief warming period we experienced in the past decade was completely natural, caused, in part, by storms on the sun, not CO2 emissions from SUVs. The Sun storms have ended and now, a cooling period has begun. That’s it. Done. Crisis over. Man is not to blame.
Hurray! The nation should be rejoicing. No need for expensive green cars, mercury-filled light bulbs, special house building materials, alternative energy, no bird- killing windmills, no special energy taxes, no extra government oversight committees, no more global climate change conferences – and no need for a Climate Czar. Carol Browner can go back into mothballs. We can finally clean out the ten feet of fuel on the bottom of the forests and prevent the massive forest fires. And that will help us reestablish the timber industry and all the jobs that were killed. We can drill American oil and end our dependency on foreigners who hate us. In fact, that stable source of energy and its prices will help restore the Detroit auto industry and all of those jobs. Why, we don’t need a stimulus package – the economy will rebound on its own. We are free. The environment is not in crisis. Rejoice! Rejoice!
Because global warming never was about protecting the environment. It was the excuse to enforce global governance on the planet.
That silence you hear is the news media, which refuses to report what any skeptic has to say. That silence you hear is the lack of effort on Capitol Hill to start to pull back from the climate change hysteria. That silence you hear is from the White House where President of Change, Barack Obama now has an EPA director, a Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) director and a full blown Climate Change Czar, all working to impose huge cut backs in energy use, taxes, rules and regulations that will bring an already damaged economy to its knees – all in the name of man-made Global Warming – which doesn’t exist. That silence you hear is from global corporations which have bought into Al Gores lie and invested heavily in the promised green economy. In fact, their dollars are the only thing green about any of it. Their commercials are promoting the lie and changing our way of life. None of them are about to change any of these policies, simply to accommodate a few scientific facts.
In spite of all the facts to the contrary, in spite of literally thousands of real scientists joining the ranks of the skeptics, Gore just told Congress that the Global Warming crisis is even worse than predicted. Obama said “the science is settled.”
Why? Because global warming never was about protecting the environment. It was the excuse to enforce global governance on the planet, by creating a new global economy based on the environment rather than on goods and services. In short, it’s all about wealth redistribution. Your wealth into a green rat hole. We used to call it communism. Now we call it environmentalism. It sounds so friendly. So meaningful. So urgent. The devastation is the same.
So, go ahead. Ask your elected representatives how they would react to the fact that global warming is not real. Are they happy and relieved, or do they continue to promote the same insanity called Climate Change? Their answers will tell you their true agenda.
If you're an investor (or soon-to-be-retiree) with a 401k or IRA, here's what the market thinks about the Obama Administrations' latest missives on banks and how they intend to deal with the banking system mess:
The market calls all bluffs. In this case it took less than 24 hours.
How many times do we need to see this - Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie, AIG, Lehman and now every publicly-traded bank in America - before the government stops this crap, formulates a plan and comes out with a clear statement on exactly what they intend to do, then shuts up and does it?
Will it be before or after the banks all crash to fifty cents a share, triggering international bank runs and forcing immediate FDIC intervention, which by the way the FDIC cannot support without explicit Congressional backstop as the FDIC has some $35 billion in cash but there are several trillionresiding in insured deposits!
(How's that for leverage - some 100:1?)
Consolidating the banking system's debt on the government's balance sheet, which this would cause de-facto if not in name, would more than double the national debt overnight.
This in turn would cause an instantaneous sovereign debt downgrade and spike interest rates.
Into a $1.5 trillion deficit and over $100 billion of supply being pushed out on a monthly basis by the government this in turn would result in the inability to cover the coupon and threaten a sovereign default.
Wake up Washington DC - your usual game-playing routine has run out of time and ability to cover. You have lied too oftentrillionsin losses as a direct and proximate consequence of the lies for which they cannot recover. and sat back while the "capitains of Wall Street" have done so as well, costing investors
Either stop it - right now - or America as a nation is threatened with the imminent failure of both its banking system and political structure.
We didn't need terrorists to destroy our nation.
We're doing it to ourselves, and the guilty parties are found within the boundaries of Washington DC.
Wouldn't it be something if Barack Obama is the first black President - and the last President.
Impossible?
No. Quite possible, and the probability is rising literally by the hour.
GROWING numbers of Muslim men are “marrying” up to four wives in Britain, a leading Muslim peer warned last night.
Tory Baroness Sayeeda Warsi fears a sharp increase in polygamy in the UK is becoming a threat to community cohesion.
And she accused Labour ministers of turning a blind eye to the practice, which is common in some Islamic countries.
The Government must make it clear to Muslims that “in this country, one married man is allowed to marry one woman,” she said.
Most Muslim polygamous arrangements are not illegal because the “weddings” are private religious ceremonies that are not recognised by British law.
But Baroness Warsi, Tory spokesman on community cohesion, feared that multi-wife marriages could increase tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain.
There are also concerns that some Muslim men are claiming benefits for several wives.
“There has been a failure on the part of policymakers to respond to this situation,” she said.
“Some of it has been done in the name of cultural sensitivity and we’ve just avoided either discussing or dealing with this matter head on.
“There has to be a culture change and that has to brought about by policymakers taking a very clear stance on this issue.”
She urged ministers to consider introducing a system of registration for religious “weddings” to curb the growth in polygamy.
But her remarks provoked an angry backlash from some Islamic experts last night.
Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Muslim Forum, said the Government should not interfere.
He said: “Why would you not allow Muslims to conduct their affairs in their cultural, religious framework, without interference from the state? Why should we take them to task for having a second, third and a fourth nikah [marriage] which is compatible with their religion?”
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.
The error, due to a problem called “sensor drift,” began in early January and caused a slowly growing underestimation of sea ice extent until mid-February. That’s when “puzzled readers” alerted the NSIDC about data showing ice-covered areas as stretches of open ocean, the Boulder, Colorado-based group said on its Web site.
“Sensor drift, although infrequent, does occasionally occur and it is one of the things that we account for during quality- control measures prior to archiving the data,” the center said. “Although we believe that data prior to early January are reliable, we will conduct a full quality check.’’
The extent of Arctic sea ice is seen as a key measure of how rising temperatures are affecting the Earth. The cap retreated in 2007 to its lowest extent ever and last year posted its second- lowest annual minimum at the end of the yearly melt season. The recent error doesn’t change findings that Arctic ice is retreating, the NSIDC said. [Possibly, but what of the large volcanic vent they've found under it recently? --ed.]
The center said real-time data on sea ice is always less reliable than archived numbers because full checks haven’t yet been carried out. Historical data is checked across other sources, it said.
The NSIDC uses Department of Defense satellites to obtain its Arctic sea ice data rather than more accurate National Aeronautics and Space Administration equipment. That’s because the defense satellites have a longer period of historical data, enabling scientists to draw conclusions about long-term ice melt, the center said.
“There is a balance between being as accurate as possible at any given moment and being as consistent as possible through long time-periods,” NSIDC said. “Our main scientific focus is on the long-term changes in Arctic sea ice.”
The similarities between 1939 and 2009 continue apace as Western democracies continue to toe the line with Islamist supremacism.
The speaker demanded that their supremacist ideology needed to be accommodated by the government, and called for a "new era." The speaker said that his people must be allowed to have laws in place to support this supremacist ideology.
Perhaps you think I am referencing the grim situation for human rights in Pakistan, where the Taliban's push for implementing Islamic supremacist Sharia law in northwest Pakistan has succeeded in obtaining surrender by the Pakistan government on this. The result is that the people in that part of Pakistan will soon be ruled by an Islamic supremacist ideology with its own outlook, its own Sharia laws, and its own Islamic supremacist version of "justice."
Perhaps you think I am remarking on the statements reported on February 18, 2009 in Pakistan by Islamic supremacist Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) chief Maulana Sufi Mohammad who attacked democracy stating, "From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by the infidels. Islam does not allow democracy or elections... I believe the Taliban government formed a complete Islamic state, which was an ideal example for other Muslim countries. Had this government remained intact, it could have led to the establishment of similar Islamic governments in many other countries." This is the same Sufi Mohammad who told news reporters that "democracy is against the teachings of the Holy Quran and Sunnah" and that he "regarded democracy a system of Kufr (unbelief)."
In fact, I am referring to both of these. But I am also referring to another man, at another time, and in another place – who echoed very similar sentiments.
It was February 18, 1939 – 70 years ago – with another supremacist group. Then, it was in Czechoslovakia with a Dr. Kundt stating that he represented Germans with his National Socialist party beliefs of Aryan supremacism. You may remember them as the "Nazis."
Seventy years ago, Dr. Kundt also demanded separate laws defying equality and liberty for his Nazi supremacist group, stating: "Germans must be allowed their own Nazi outlook, their own Nazi laws, their own Nazi habits, and their own Nazi justice. It is high time that these things were done. History does not wait. We, however, march on with the history of the new era, for our leader is Adolf Hitler. His will and his 'Weltanschauung' (philosophy) will from today dictate all the plans and arrangements of this house in Prague and will dictate every activity of the Urania." History would later show the atrocities and evil wrought by allowing such supremacism to grow unchecked. Nazism was a supremacist ideology that sought the destruction of all those who would defy it, sought a "final solution" for Jews, posed a transnational threat, and sought to conquer the world. Sound familiar?
The similarities between 1939 and 2009 continue to grow daily.
The muted reaction by many of our government leaders to the latest growth of Islamic supremacism in the nuclear weapon-armed nation of Pakistan mirrors such tenacious denial by these leaders on Islamic supremacism in America and around the world.
Their sickening silence is only exacerbated by their few public statements that demonstrate a shocking ignorance towards human rights and an outrageous contempt for the inalienable human rights of equality and liberty.
In response to the Pakistan surrender to the Islamic supremacist Taliban's demands for implementation of Sharia law in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has merely stated that she wants to see the Pakistan government's "intention and the actual agreed-upon language."
Mrs. Clinton wants us to believe that she is unaware of the Islamic supremacist Sharia law's intention to suppress the equality and liberty of women, men, and children in Pakistan and around the world. She wants us to believe she doesn't know about the UN report on growing global Muslim violence against women. She wants us to believe she doesn't know about how the Taliban has used Islamic supremacist Sharia law to justify threatening, murdering, and dumping the bodies of women in Pakistan. She wants us to believe she doesn't know about the million pregnant women abused in Pakistan every year, or the news media reports of nearly 8,000 cases of abuses against women, including Islamic supremacist "honor killings," in Pakistan in 2008.
Just like we are supposed to believe that she is unaware of the Muslim women beaten and murdered in her state of New York – one last week who was beheaded by her husband, the CEO of Bridges TV, whose mission was to "promote moderate Islam."
The crunch is coming, folks. Go read the rest if you have the courage...
While President Obama was eagerly signing new legislation to keep unqualified borrowers in their homes by doling out billions of our dollars, over at the Environmental Protection Agency they were leaking plans to use the Clean Air Act as a subterfuge to regulate the second most essential gas, other than oxygen, for all life on planet Earth, carbon dioxide (C02).
Cheering from the sidelines is every demented environmental group in America including the Sierra Club which, if it had its way, would ban the building of a single new coal-fired plant anywhere and shut down the existing ones. This is madness on a scale we have not seen since the mid-point of the last century.
Over at Friends of the Earth, they are breaking out the prayer beads, worried to death that upgrading and improving the nation’s infrastructure means building new roads, bridges and tunnels where they are needed. All the while, the most deceitful President to have ever occupied the Oval Office keeps telling everyone that global warming is real when, in fact, the Earth has been cooling for the past decade. Obama is trying to transform the United States of America into a nation where science means nothing and lies mean everything.
We now have the spectacle of a government employee, Dr. James Hansen, shilling for Capitol Climate Action, saying on a YouTube video that everyone should come to Washington, D.C. on March 2 for what is described as “the largest mass civil disobedience for the climate in U.S. history.” The event is a protest of the Capitol Power Plant that uses - gasp - coal to produce electricity. By the way, that white stuff coming out of the stacks of power plants, including nuclear, is excess steam used to turn the huge turbines that generate electricity. In other words, water vapor.
Dr. Hansen is the Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies who lately has been writing to the leaders of the United Kingdom and Europe saying that coal-fired plants are the moral equivalent of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz during WWII. He’s the fellow who, in 1988, told a congressional committee that global warming was going to destroy the Earth. Al Gore uses him as a footstool.
The immediate question is why someone drawing a government check should also be advocating civil disobedience on behalf of a non-governmental organization or group? The larger question is whether the government is going to make it impossible to provide the growing needs for electricity that all Americans will require by 2030 or sooner? The U.S. has vast deposits of coal with which to generate electricity. To claim that coal is responsible for a global warming that is not occurring and that we must abandon the source of 50% of all the electricity we use every day is insane.
First let’s fire Dr. Hansen. He is making a mockery of NASA and engaging in behavior that is irrational and quite possibly illegal. Then let’s bury the White House in emails, letters and faxes to say “Lay off coal!”
In an astonishing few weeks, the Obama administration has initiated legislation that will further bankrupt the nation, saddle future generations with debt, interfered with the normal action of the housing market, and now wants to leave us without enough electricity to turn on the lights!
What is the world coming to? Pat Dollard links to Peter Goodman's report the Russian leader warned the US against adopting socialism because it doesn't work:
Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”.
“In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute,” Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.”[Snip.]
Sounding more like Barry Goldwater than the former head of the KGB, Putin said, “Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.”
Putin also echoed the words of conservative maverick Ron Paul when he said, “we must assess the real situation and write off all hopeless debts and ‘bad’ assets. True, this will be an extremely painful and unpleasant process. Far from everyone can accept such measures, fearing for their capitalization, bonuses, or reputation. However, we would ‘conserve’ and prolong the crisis, unless we clean up our balance sheets.”
Yes, we're going through tough times, but President Obama has repeatedly invoked the Great Depression and it's scaring the heck out of consumers. Who's going to go buy anything if we're headed for an economic catastrophe? People will horde every penny they get and businesses will suffer and things will only get worse.
In a well-written op-ed piece in Friday's Wall Street Journal, University of Nevada-Reno economics professor Bradley R. Schiller takes Obama to task for spreading fear itself to win votes for his stimulus package.
In his article titled, "Obama's rhetoric is the real 'catastrophe,' " Schiller points out that Obama kept saying that the economy would fall into an abyss and possibly never recover without his stimulus package. Never recover?
"This fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics," the professor writes. "It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate."
While the loss of 3.4 million jobs in 2008 is a grim statistic, it represents the same percentage - 2.2% - of the workforce that was cut in 1981-82.
Neither of those years remotely compares to the Great Depression. In 1930, the economy shed 4.8% of the workforce; followed by another 6.5% in 1931, and still another 7.1% in 1932.
The latest unemployment figures show the U.S. at 7.6%, well below the 10.8% of 1982; and again, not even in the ball park with 1932's mind-boggling 25.2%.
In terms of economic growth, believe it or not, the real gross domestic product, Schiller writes, "rose in 2008, despite a bad fourth quarter. The Congressional Budget Office projects a GDP decline of 2% in 2009. That compares to 1982, when GDP contracted by 1.9%."
The Depression years? The GDP plunged by 9% in 1930, another 8% in 1931, and yet another 1% in 1932.
So no, the situation Obama inherited is not remotely like that which FDR inherited and he ought not to make people think so. Yet his pushing of the notion that the world will end if his package isn't passed resulted in a bill of more than 1,000 pages that no one had even read.
The Muslim founder of BridgesTV, a cable network whose slogan is “connecting people through understanding” and which tried to “improve the image of Muslims in the United States,” was arrested on Thursday, for allegedly killing his estranged wife in a manner normally associated with Islamist terrorists -- chopping off her head.
Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, reported on Friday that Muzzammil Hassan, “a prominent Buffalo area businessman who founded the BridgesTV network to improve the image of Muslims in the U.S.,” had been charged with second-degree murder in the beheading death of his wife Aasiya Z. Hassan. Mitchell quoted from the network’s website, which described Mrs. Hassan’s “instrumental role in the creation of BridgesTV since she came up with the idea for the network.” The picture of the couple is still up on the website.
What are we to make of all the talk about a "New New Deal"--starting with the current stimulus package--when we haven't paid for the old New Deal?
During the 1930s, the old New Deal cost about $50 billion in federal expenditures from 1933 to 1940, excluding functions such as the U.S. Post Office and the State Department.
Today, the future cost of old New Deal programs still in effect is reckoned at more than $50 trillion. These programs include Social Security, Medicare (an amendment to Social Security), Aid to Families with Dependent Children (part of Social Security), Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM - news - people ), the Tennessee Valley Authority (nyse: TVC - news - people ), farm subsidies and large-scale government intervention intended to prop up troubled sectors of the economy.
We aren't paying down these obligations inherited from the old New Deal. On the contrary, the total tab keeps getting bigger every year. While the old New Deal involved unprecedented peacetime spending during the 1930s, its current escalating obligations dwarf that spending.
None of FDR's experts who promoted the old New Deal anticipated how costly these programs would become--despite experience with previous government programs that spun out of control. For instance, the Civil Service Retirement System was established in 1920 to provide retirement benefits for federal employees. It soon cost more than the experts predicted. Federal employees were supposed to pay for their future benefits, but their payments lagged behind benefits over the years. Political pressures eventually prevailed, resulting in taxpayers covering the deficits.
After Lyndon Johnson became president, he launched a succession of crusades, one of which was to amend Social Security with Medicare. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin explains LBJ's approach, "The subjects might change, but the essentials remained the same: in the opening, an expression of dire need; in the middle, a vague proposal; in the end, a buoyant description of the anticipated benefits--all contained in an analysis presented in a manner that often failed to distinguish between expectations and established realities ... Pass the bill now, worry about its effects and implementation later--this was the White House strategy."
The 1965 debate about Medicare involved a great deal of discussion about future costs. Opponents warned that Medicare could become a huge burden on taxpayers, but LBJ persuaded most members of Congress that financing Medicare would be easy because of all the baby boomers entering the workforce. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills estimated that the annual cost of Medicare would be $500 million. Today, Medicare's annual outlays exceed $330 billion.
Never heard of it? That's not surprising - it didn't last long. The 20's were roaring, not greatly depressing. Yet virtually none of the American population knows that the nation's economy actually took a worse hit in 1920 than it did at any point during the Great Depression. Consider these wiki-nuggets of wiki-knowledge:
The recession in the United States was brief relative to the Great Depression later that decade, but it included a very sharp price deflation. The decline in the GNP price deflator from 1920 to 1921 is the largest one-year percentage decline in the series in the more than 120 years covered....
Various estimates show that one-year deflation figures were 18 percent, 13.0 percent, and 14.8 percent, respectively. The closest comparator is the 11.5 percent deflation recorded for 1931-32, the third year of the Great Depression. Wholesale prices declined by 36.8 percent for 1920-21, the largest one-year decline on record, going back at least to the American Revolutionary War period. The 1921 deflation contains another striking feature. Not only was it sharp, it was large relative to the accompanying decline in real product. The ratio of the percentage decline in the GNP deflator for 1920-21 to the percentage decline in real GNP is 2.6 using the Department of Commerce figures. By contrast, during 1929-30, the first year of the Great Depression, the GNP deflator declined by 2.7 percent and real GNP by 9.4 percent, for a ratio of 0.3. The ratios of the percentage decline in GNP prices to the percentage decline in real GNP for 1930-31, 1931-32, 1932-33, and 1937-38, the other Great Depression years in which real GNP declined, were 1.0, 0.9, 1.2, and 0.3, respectively, all well below the 1920-21 figures.
In other words, if Jim Cramer were alive in 1920, he would have actually committed suicide on air. So why did Al Capone spend the next decade walking around in pinstripe suits instead of rags stolen from orphans and the recently deceased? Because rather than the massive government intervention that took place in the 30's, in 1920 and 1921, the feds hardly did anything at all:
Federal spending was cut from $6.3 billion in 1920 to $5 billion in 1921 and $3.2 billion in 1922. Federal taxes fell from $6.6 billion in 1920 to $5.5 billion in 1921 and $4 billion in 1922. Harding's policies started a trend. The low point for federal taxes was reached in 1924; for federal spending, in1925. The federal government paid off debt, which had been $24.2 billion in 1920, and it continued to decline until 1930.
With Harding's tax and spending cuts and relatively non-interventionist economic policy, GNP rebounded to $74.1 billion in 1922. The number of unemployed fell to 2.8 million— a reported 6.7 percent of the labor force— in 1922. So, just a year and a half after Harding became president, the Roaring Twenties were underway. The unemployment rate continued to decline, reaching an extraordinary low of 1.8 percent in 1926. Since then, the unemployment rate has been lower only once in wartime (1944), and never in peacetime.
The worst economic crash since we started keeping most relevant records didn't happen during the Great Depression. It happened in 1920. Yet America was back on its feet in less than two years, while the next crunch was dragged out for a decade. The free markets have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they grow faster than planned economies - why on earth wouldn't they fix themselves faster, too?
Washington bureaucrats hoped something wouldn't see the light of day until it was too late. Buried in the stimulus bill is the framework for rationing medical care to the elderly. The part Obama and his cohorts are talking about publicly -- electronic medical records -- sounds great: no more having to fill out annoying paperwork at the doctor's office or hospital when you are ailing.
But according to the provision's author, former Health and Human Services director nominee (and tax cheat) Tom Daschle, there's much more, including the newly-created bureaucracy of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. What will the NCHIT be doing? Making sure your doctor gives you the treatment it deems to be efficient and cost-effective. And if your doctor doesn't comply? Well, that part is still a bit fuzzy.
What is clear is that the elderly will be the ones to bear the brunt of this brave new world. Older citizens shouldn't bother treating those ailments that come with age. After all, being retired and collecting Social Security and Medicare, they're not as productive as younger members of society. And Social Security and Medicare, despite Democrats' protestations to the contrary when George Bush tried to do something about it, are on thin ice as it is. So if the proposed Federal Council does not think a treatment is cost-effective due to the patient's age, then the patient will have to do without for the good of the collective. You will assimilate.
This already happens in the UK. But according to one medical ethics expert there, that's not enough. Those who suffer from dementia, for example, are not only wasting their own lives and the lives of their families, but they are wasting precious resources from the National Health Service, and so they should just get on with dying. Sooner rather than later, thank you very much.
Joe Biden told us it's our patriotic duty to pay higher taxes. Will dying off so we don't use up precious resources be our next patriotic duty? Perhaps we can consider a set "expiration date," like in the movie Logan's Run: when the crystal on your hand turns black, it's off to Carousel.
This needs to get out, folks. Read the rest, and spread the word...
For Immediate Release: Thursday, February 12, 2009
Senator Gregg Statement on His Withdrawal for Consideration of U.S. Commerce Secretary
Sen. Gregg stated, “I want to thank the President for nominating me to serve in his Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce. This was a great honor, and I had felt that I could bring some views and ideas that would assist him in governing during this difficult time. I especially admire his willingness to reach across the aisle.
“However, it has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census there are irresolvable conflicts for me. Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.
“Obviously the President requires a team that is fully supportive of all his initiatives.
“I greatly admire President Obama and know our country will benefit from his leadership, but at this time I must withdraw my name from consideration for this position.
“As we move forward, I expect there will be many issues and initiatives where I can and will work to assure the success of the President’s proposals. This will certainly be a goal of mine.
“Kathy and I also want to specifically thank Governor Lynch and Bonnie Newman for their friendship and assistance during this period. In addition we wish to thank all the people, especially in New Hampshire, who have been so kind and generous in their supportive comments.
“As a further matter of clarification, nothing about the vetting process played any role in this decision. I will continue to represent the people of New Hampshire in the United States Senate.”
"The sparkle has gone from his eyes already," an American acquaintance said to me yesterday, referring to Barack Obama. "He doesn't know what to do." Obama's performance at his press conference confirmed that impression, with the rhetoric of the campaign trail, fluent and banal as piped musak, replaced with long hesitations not just between sentences, but between clauses. This was an auto-cue junkie suffering cold turkey.
Barack Obama's stimulus plan is pure madness
When a political lightweight is out of his depth, he seeks to compensate by counterfeiting the certainty he is far from feeling. Obama's rantings in defence of his stimulus plan have assumed an apocalyptic intensity. Unless Congress agrees to flush almost $1 trillion of Joe Citizen's hard-earned bucks down the sanitation, "Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."
So, America had better listen to the man who "screwed up" over Tom Daschle because he alone has the wisdom to extricate the US of A from financial disaster. The instrument of salvation is the biggest barrel of pork that the undeserving needy have ever seen in American history, from sea to shining sea. The financial crisis may seem complex, but the solution - the real solution - depends on one simple premise: tax cuts revive economies, handouts do not.
Trillion-dollar giveaways are like buses: there will be another one along in a moment. Driving the next vehicle is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who thinks it would be a nice gesture to hand another $2 trillion to Gordon Gekko and his pals on Wall Street. Apparently the last handout made no appreciable difference, so better throw some more moolah into the piranha pool - some of those poor SOBs are down to their last executive jet.
Where will the money come from? No problem - we just divert it from Main Street to Wall Street, an increasingly familiar route to those in the White House and on Capitol Hill who specialise in redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. This seems to be in addition to Geithner's $0.5 trillion scheme to stimulate spending in real estate, drawing cash largely from the US Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
So, overall, Barack and Tim are currently disposing of more than $3 trillion of taxpayers' money. The only remotely comparable stimulus scheme proposed for America was a fictitious one: when the James Bond villain Auric Goldfinger planned to detonate a nuclear device in Fort Knox and irradiate the nation's gold reserves. Incinerating $3 trillion in dollar bills could not be more wasteful than the Obama stimulus plan.
It is madness. These lunatics are mugging Main Street of $3 trillion and squandering it on a liberal fantasy. It could be a generation before America recovers - not simply from the loss of these funds, but from the economic mismanagement of which it is a symptom. The fall-out will be very serious for the rest of the world. Hope? Change we need? Vote in haste, repent at leisure.
It's sad when we have to get the actual unvarnished truth from the Brits about our own President...
I would like "to come as close as you can in the political reality to a bipartisan management of the House," said Nancy Pelosi in 2006. "I'm a big believer in bipartisanship on so many issues. You can't address [most issues] and do it in a partisan way. They are too big, they involve too many people, and they involve too much money, private and public money. You've got to do it in a way that has legitimacy."
This morning, a very senior contact within the House GOP informed me that Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Harry Reid (D-NV) met at length last night to put together the House/Senate conference report on the “stimulus” package. Only Democratic conference committee members were informed of the meeting and permitted to attend.
The purpose behind the meeting was apparently to produce a conference report on the over $800 billion borrow-and-spend bill that was entirely free of Republican input, and that could be presented no later than this afternoon in preparation for House and Senate floor action tomorrow.
Ironically, the Democrat-heavy House yesterday voted unanimously in favor of a GOP-sponsored resolution stating that the bill should be made subject to a 48 hour review period by the public before it was finally passed by Congress — something that seems very unlikely to happen, given Democrats’ actions over the last twelve hours.
In a post here on RedState, Congressman Tom Price (R-GA), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, confirmed reports of the Democrats’ midnight meeting. “Negotiations have already begun under the dark of night,” wrote Price this morning. “In closed room somewhere in the Capitol Building last night, Congressional Democrats and Obama administration officials met with no Republicans present.”
Reaching across the aisle must have been too uncomfortable for a man who is used to standing around and watching admirers crawl up that same aisle to offer obeisance. In his first televised press conference since being elected to become All Things to All People, Barack Obama dropped the pretense of giving a crap about what anybody else thought.
Those of us who have been paying attention to the man rather than the media-spun myth were less than surprised by the development.
Three weeks into his tenure, Mr. Obama acknowledged that his effort to change the political climate in Washington had yielded little.
“Hey, he tried.”
Like hell he did. With each passing day, I have to wonder just what planet the New York Times is written and published on. Our new president began his reign with a petty, knee-capping acceptance speech and went down hill from there. He then informed the opposition that they were a bunch of cretins who got all their ideas from one talk radio host and that it didn’t really matter because he won the election.
Three weeks into all of this hopefulness, he’s lying to make his point (previous post).
“It’s a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they presided over a doubling of the national debt,” he said at the news conference. “I’m not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility.”
It Obama had stopped after “It’s a little hard for me to take criticism,” it would have been the first honest thing to come out of his mouth all day. But he kept babbling, acting as if there have been nothing but Republicans in power for the last eight years.
Upon closer inspection, the Smartest President Ever might find that both the House and the Senate are have been run by Democrats for the last two years. Prior to that, the GOP didn’t enjoy any kind of majority in either chamber that would enable them to ramrod whatever legislation they wanted through.
This is happening even quicker than a partisan egomaniac like myself could have anticipated. Even with the crisis, I didn’t think the whole place would smell like Chicago politics after only three weeks. But here we are.
“I won, you’re irresponsible, shut up.”
He vowed to continue trying to build alliances with the other party in the hope that it “will pay some dividends over the long term,” and added: “As I continue to make these overtures, over time, hopefully that will be reciprocated.”
The next time you attempt one of these alleged “overtures”, Mr. President, you might want to take that middle finger out of everyone’s faces first.
Put the kids away - this is not going to be pleasant.
I'm done Mr. President.
You stood in front of the American Public and lied through your damn teeth. You claim that America faces a "catastrophe" if we don't pass your bill - but its not YOUR BILL, its Pelosi's and Reid's bill - a bill full of PORK and BS.
I'm tired of the lies, America is tired of the lies, and we the people are not going to sit still for it any longer.
You promised us change. This is what we got for "change":
Your Treasury Secretary, Geithner, cheated on his taxes. He was caught. He then failed to pay the other two yearscollector. But that's not the worst of it. No, the worst part is that when Bear Stearns got in trouble he, as the head of the NY Fed, knew full well that The Federal Reserve intended to open the discount window to investment banks THE VERY NEXT DAY and yet this fact was NOT disclosed to Bear Stearns, forcing them into a merger they would not have otherwise consummated. THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS LOST THEIR JOBS AS A DIRECT CONSEQUENCE OF TIM GEITHNER'S AND BEN BERNANKE'S INTENTIONAL CONCEALMENT OF THIS MATERIAL FACT. Here is the quote from the NY Times: of tax for the same thing he got caught doing, until you told him you wanted him to be the tax
"But the night that Bear signed the original bid, the Fed opened what's known as the discount window to companies like Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers - oh, yes, and to Bear, too. Except that the Fed didn't tell Bear that it planned to open the window when it was signing its deal with JPMorgan.
Had Bear known it might have access to the discount window - a crucial source of liquidity - it might have been able to hold out for a couple more days or at least had enough leverage to seek a higher bid. But the Fed clearly preferred the original bid."
You WISH The Internet wasn't around to hold your butt over the pot of hot oil and dunk you on this one. Sorry Mr. President, NO DICE.
GEITHNER MUST RESIGN NOW; HE IS UNFIT TO HOLD THE OFFICE TO WHICH YOU APPOINTED HIM. PERIOD.
We dealt with George W. Bush playing "disaster capitalism" with us for more than eighteen months. Now you're doing it. Nice try, no donut. I have been writing for close to two years in The Market Ticker about the fact that The Fed, Treasury and the former administration were directly responsible for this mess through various machinations such as "23A Exemption Letters", Paulson's entreaties to remove leverage limits and the OCC's move (including asserting federal preemption in court!) to preempt state regulation of subprime and ALT-A mortgages. You've put forward plans to address exactly none of these frauds and yet they are the root of the problem.
Further, you can't claim to "not know" because as a Senator your office got copies of my petitions, faxes, and other communications. Your constituents from Illinois asked me to send thousands of petition signatures over those two years, and you did get them. Don't run a grand line of BS on America that this all "came out of nowhere" and "it was all Bush's fault." That's nice political theatre but it is also a grand lie.
America has a confidence problem with the Capital Markets. So does the rest of the world. That problem exists because of the outright fraud and idiocy that has been undertaken and permitted by all levels of our government, including the Executive. These frauds included knowingly using bad model data to "rate" securities, shopping ratings, shorting securities you're selling to your own customers in the next room (without telling them you think they're overvalued, of course) and getting "23A Exemptions" so you can lever up your exposure to failing parts of your business, thereby creating systemic risk where it did not already exist. Go have a look Mr. Obama - there are literally dozens of "23A Exemption" letters now on file with The Fed. Virtually all of these institutions, if not all, have either failed or received public support, yet exemption from safety and soundness banking regulation has made their plight worse and their drain on the taxpayer more onerous. You have done exactly nothing to address this outrage nor is there any reason to believe you will.
These "exotic financing products" were not bought Mr. President - they were sold by so-called "professionals" who knew full well that the borrower could never complete the original term as contracted. Yet the firms who packaged up these securities and sold them knowing this fact remain in business, their executives remain in the corner office and they siphoned off $70 billion in bonuses from the first half of the TARP. You have done exactly nothing to disgorge those funds nor have you directed the FBI to bring indictments or brought pressure to remove these individuals from their positions. You have not revoked one banking charter from any of these firms despite the fact that these practices are the precise reason we are here.
These same firms have literal trillions in off-balance-sheet securitizations that remain undisclosed and opaque. You have taken no step to force their consolidation back onto the balance sheet, nor have you announced any intention to do so. These conduits and SIVs are literal ticking financial nuclear weapons and they will explode as defaults continue to increase.
You continue to pretend that these firms "need some help" and "need a backstop." Increasingly it is becoming clear to market observers such as Nouriel Roubini, FT's Wolf, myself and others that the fact is that these firms are and have been bankrupt and you are conspiring with others to intentionally deceive the public by refusing to demand that regulators and examiners to go in, do their jobs, and report the true capital levels of these companies - an act that would result in their immediate seizure by the FDIC.
You believe you can pull the wool over Americans' eyes with your new "TARP II" and "TALF" programs. The truth is that you intend to use Treasury and Fed credit to allow hedge funds to make obscene profits while essentially all risk of loss is born by the taxpayer, shifting off these bankrupt firm's liabilities TO US while the executives and firms continue to operate!
This is yet another outrage and is nothing more than an attempt to shift the liabilities of BANKRUPT institutions that have become insolvent by their own hand and acts to The American Taxpayer.
Now let me explain what is almost certain to happen if you are foolish enough to let Taxcheat Timmy pull this garbage.
See, these assets really are trash. Yeah, right now they are kicking off cash flow. For now. But they're impaired and while their coupon will pay for a while they will ultimately default on their face value and recovery is pennies (and in the case of synthetics, zero) when they do.
So what happens here is that you provide 95% non-recourse financing. Sir Hedge Fund buys a buttload of this garbage having only 5-10% of the face at risk, and that's all they need to put up as well, since the government is going to provide the financing - as a "no recourse" loan (presumably very cheaply.) They get a 6-7% coupon which means that in one year they're covered, and in two they're making money like a madman, up 200% or more on their original risk capital.
But what happens when these instruments default?
Treasury is sitting on several trillion in backstops and financing of loans to cover "assets" that are in fact worth zero. It winds up eating the entire face value, while the Hedge Funds have made off with all of the coupon money in the meantime!
The risk here is that Treasury is backed into a corner due to ramping yields and perhaps even inability to roll over this debt at all and we find ourselves forced into immediate cash accounting as a nation. This in turn causes the instantaneous cessation of Social Security and Medicare payments, as that is the only bucket big enough to cover the shortfall.
Do you really want to go down that road Mr. President, because that is precisely what's at the end of it, and it may be only a year or two out!
If you think nobody beyond your vaunted administration has figured it out YOU ARE WRONG.
If you think Americans will pay taxes to an institution that intends to knowingly allow Hedge Funds to make hundreds of billions of dollars in profit while sticking the taxpayer with upwards of $2 trillion in losses and destroying all entitlements in a few years' time I suggest you have a mental examination and get your lithium dose adjusted.
Your approval rating and in fact American's tolerance of this blatant fraud, theft and chicanery is about to go straight down the toilet.
If you have an interest in having a successful Presidency (not to mention any chance of a second term or even a stable, sound America to be President of) you must immediately do all of the following:
Revoke ALL of the so-called "23A Exemptions." Bernanke issued them, you need to direct him to revoke them. Safety and soundness of the banking system must come before any one firm or group of firms. There are literally hundreds of banks that are perfectly sound. There are also a bunch of big campaign contributing banks that are bankrupt and have been for the last eighteen months. Americans know this - the secret is out and its time to quit LYING.
Send in the examiners. Yeah, I know, you're talking about "stress tests". Uh huh. Let's have those examinations now and forevermore in the future be public information. If a bank wants to operate under our laws and have the privilege of fractional reserve banking, they can open their books and examinations at all times to the public. Period.
No more conduits, no more SIVs, no more games. If your "assets" are worth 20 cents on the dollar today that is their price. If that makes you insolvent then you are - period. We have an FDIC and we have the authority to "cram down" failed institutions for a reason. Use it.
Send in the cops. The actions of major institutions up and down the line since this crisis began in mid 2007 and in the years leading up to it is at best grossly negligent and at worst felonious. We the people are done with being the patsies of a handful of thieves and frauds enabled by the 535 crooks in our Capitol. STOP IT NOW and start jailing the crooks or be judged as one of the felons. Your choice.
We are approaching yet another market implosion just like the one in September and October.
While it may come today or tomorrow, I wouldn't take that bet. In fact I expect that people will "rejoice" that you didn't wipe every common stockholder's equity stake in firms like Citibank, Bank America and Goldman Sachs - even though you should. Because I expected you to do the wrong thing, I actually bought some Citibank stock a short while ago. Were you to do the right thing my position would be worthless. It should be worthless. I'll bet its not - at least not immediately (and that I'll make a profit as a consequence of your idiocy.)
When and if this dislocation comes, however, it will destroy what is left of the American Banking System, it will expose that Bernanke has over one trillion dollars of garbage on The Fed's Balance Sheet, and that in turn will destroy the international market for United States Treasury Debt.
In the best case we wind up like Japan and have a bunch of zombies sucking up capital and doing nothing of value for our economy. In the worst case we get much higher yields in the bond market and the near-immediate bankruptcy of hundreds of midsize and larger firms, including virtually all financial firms in the S&P 500 and DOW, along with all major multinationals that have a captive financing function.
The Government cannot backstop it all. If you try the government fails outright. The market is bigger than you, it is bigger than The Fed, it is bigger than Treasury. You are subservient to The Market, not the other way around. Go ask Bill Clinton about The Bond Market when he tried to ramrod his Hillarycare plan through and what the reaction was. That's 1/100th of what you're about to experience.
If Bernanke tries to "cap" yields into such a dislocation (he has threatened to) he will cause everyone who owns Treasury debt to tender it to him with the consequence that he will be forced to print five trillion dollars in "new money". This will result in an eighty percent devaluation of the dollar almost instantaneously; gasoline will go to $10/gallon, Milk to $15/gallon, a loaf of bread to $10 and a hamburger at McDonalds will likewise be $10. Due to global wage arbitrage wages will not increase; this will as a consequence immediately render 50% or more of Americans homeless, hungry and jobless. What do you think happens next Mr. President?
Go read the rest, kiddies. It's not looking good...
Washington, DC - President Barack Obama and the Democrat controlled Congress are considering sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many Americans.
The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA) is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.
"Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said California Senator Barbara Boxer. "We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability (POI) to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing."
In a Capitol Hill press conference, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pointed to the success of the U.S. Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. Approximately 74 percent of postal employees lack any job skills, making this agency the single largest U.S. employer of Persons of Inability.
Private-sector industries with good records of non-discrimination against the Inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%), and home improvement warehouse stores (65%). At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hiring Persons of Inability (63%).
Under AWNAA, more than 25 million mid-level positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.
Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given so as to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability into middle-management positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.
Finally, the AWNAA contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the non-abled, banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as, "Do you have any skills or experience that relate to this job?"
"As a Non-Abled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them," said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, Michigan, due to her inability to remember rightey tightey, lefty loosey. "This new law should be real good for people like me," Gertz added. With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Said Senator Arlen Specter (Rin0-Penn), "As a Senator with no abilities, I believe the same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her inadequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation and a good salary for doing so."
Utah's congressional delegation is calling President Obama's decision to move the U.S. census into the White House a purely partisan move and potentially dangerous to congressional redistricting around the country.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told FOX News on Monday that he finds it hard to believe the Obama administration felt the need to place re-evaluation of the inner workings of the census so high on his to-do list, just three weeks into his presidency.
"This is nothing more than a political land grab," Chaffetz said.
Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, told the Salt Lake Tribune that the move "shouldn't happen." He and Chaffetz are trying to rally Republicans "before its too late."
"It takes something that is supposedly apolitical like the census, and gives it to a guy who is infamously political," Bishop said of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who would be tasked with overseeing the census at the White House.
The U.S. census -- a counting of the U.S. population -- is conducted every 10 years by the Commerce Department. Its results determine the decennial redrawing of congressional districts
As a matter of impact, the census has tremendous political significance. Political parties are always eager to have a hand in redrawing districts so that they can maximize their own party's clout while minimizing the opposition, often through gerrymandering.
The census also determines the composition of the Electoral College, which chooses the president. If one party were to control the census, it could arguably try to perpetuate its hold on political power.
Barack Obama, not content with merely being president, has enhanced his resume with the additional title of “Salary Czar.” His new duties include telling corporate executives how much money they can make.
Next thing you know, he’ll have the White House tailor add golden epaulets on his suits and start wearing one of those military hats with a big gold eagle in front.
This is a slippery slope, President Obama. Once you start adding titles, it won’t be long before you end up like Idi Amin. His full title was “His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.”
Or perhaps you’ll be more modest, like Queen Elizabeth. Her full title is “Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, Queen of this Realm and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.
Just think of it. You could become “Barack the First, by the Grace of Reverend Wright, Leader of the Free World and Territories, Salary Czar, Defender of Bill Ayers.”
There’s another dangerous slippery slope, too, President Obama.
Once you start regulating executive salaries, it won’t be long before you start regulating worker salaries.
President Obama is losing the stimulus battle. Fiscal conservatives are winning the message war on the Generational Theft Act of 2009. Flailing and desperate, he has resorted to the very “politics of fear” he ran againstscare Washington into ramming his massive, ineffective, debt-stimulating plan through Congress. At least he didn’t use Nan Pelosi’s “500 million” jobs line: during the campaign. In a WaPo op-ed this morning, he invokes Chicken Little tactics to
By now, it’s clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.
Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.
The only thing we have to fear is fear-mongering itself.
If Senate Republicans can hold the line, they can avoid the same head-long rush toward repeat failure that led to bailout-mania and stimulus-palooza last year.
A Senate committee today abruptly canceled a session to consider President Obama's nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis to be labor secretary in the wake of a report saying that her husband yesterday paid about $6,400 to settle tax liens against his business -- liens that had been outstanding for as long as 16 years.
The report, by USA Today, came just before the Senate's Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee was slated to meet to consider Solis's nomination, which had been delayed by questions over her role on the board of the pro-labor organization American Rights at Work. A source said that committee members did not learn about the tax issue until today.
"Today's executive session was postponed to allow members additional time to review the documentation submitted in support of Representative Solis's nomination to serve in the important position of Labor Secretary," read a joint statement issued by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the panel's chairman, and Mike Enzi (Wyoming), the committee's ranking Republican. "There are no holds on her nomination and members on both sides of the aisle remain committed to giving her nomination the fair and thorough consideration that she deserves. We will continue to work together to move this nomination forward as soon as possible."
No new date has been set for the hearing. The disclosure about Solis's husband comes after tax problems caused trouble for three of Obama's top appointees, leading two of them -- HHS-nominee Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer, who was to be chief performance officer -- to withdraw.
Some of us have been warning that it was not healthy for the U.S. media to have deified rather than questioned Obama, especially given that they tore apart Bush, ridiculed Palin, and caricatured Hillary. And now we can see the results of their two years of advocacy rather than scrutiny.
We are quite literally after two weeks teetering on an Obama implosion—and with no Dick Morris to bail him out—brought on by messianic delusions of grandeur, hubris, and a strange naivete that soaring rhetoric and a multiracial profile can add requisite cover to good old-fashioned Chicago politicking.
First, there were the sermons on ethics, belied by the appointments of tax dodgers, crass lobbyists, and wheeler-dealers like Richardson—with the relish of the Blago tapes still to come. (And why does Richardson/Daschle go, but not Geithner?).
Second, was the "stimulus" (the euphemism for "borrow/print money") that was simply a way to go into debt for a generation to shower Democratic constinuencies with cash.
Then third, there were the inflated lectures on historic foreign policy to be made by the clumsy political novice who trashed his own country and his predecessor in the most ungracious manner overseas to a censured Saudi-run press organ (e.g., Bush is dictatorial, the Saudi king is courageous; Obama can mend bridges that America broke to aggrieved Muslims (apparently Tehran hostages, Rushdie, serial attacks in the 1990s, 9/11, Madrid, London never apparently occurred, and neither did feeding Somalis, saving Kuwait, protesting Chechnya, Bosnia/Kosovo, billions to Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinians, help in two Afghan wars, and on and on).
Fourth, there was the campaign rhetoric of Bush shredding the Constitution—FISA, Guantanamo, Patriot Act, Iraq, renditions, etc.—followed by "all that for now stays the same" inasmuch as we haven't ben hit in over seven years and can't risk another attack.
Fifth, Gibbs as press secretary is a Scott McClellan nightmare that won't go away, given his long McClellan-like relationship with Obama (McClellan should have been fired on day hour one on the job). Blaming Fox News for Obama's calamities is McClellan to the core and doesn't work. He already reminds me of Rev. Wright's undoing at the National Press Club—and he will get worse.
Six, Biden is being Biden. Already, he's ridiculed the chief justice, trashed the former VP, bragged on himself ad nauseam in Bidenesque weird ways, and it's only been two weeks.
And the result of all this?
At home, Obama is becoming laughable and laying the groundwork for the greatest conservative populist reaction since the Reagan Revolution.
Abroad, some really creepy people are lining up to test Obama's world view of "Bush did it/but I am the world": The North Koreans are readying their missiles; the Iranians are calling us passive, bragging on nukes and satellites; Russia is declaring missile defense is over and the Euros in real need of iffy Russian gas; Pakistanis say no more drone attacks (and then our friends the Indians say "shut up" about Kashmir and the Euros order no more 'buy American").
This is quite serious. I can't recall a similarly disastrous start in a half-century (far worse than Bill Clinton's initial slips). Obama immediately must lower the hope-and-change rhetoric, ignore Reid/Pelosi, drop the therapy, and accept the tragic view that the world abroad is not misunderstood but quite dangerous. And he must listen on foreign policy to his National Security Advisor, Billary, and Sec. of Defense. If he doesn't quit the messianic style and perpetual campaign mode, and begin humbly governing, then he will devolve into Carterism—angry that the once-fawning press betrayed him while we the people, due to our American malaise, are to blame.
