Friday, January 30, 2009

Fun & Frivolity: More Real Men Of Genius

***UPDATE***
Super Bowl results:

Pittsburg 27
Arizona 23

My prediction wasn't too bad, considering it was completely uninformed...
******

In honor of the Super Bowl coming up this Sunday, I thought I'd post a few more of Budweiser's Real Men of Genius ads. Enjoy!












Whoever came up with this ad campaign is a real man of genius!

By the way, my completely uninformed Super Bowl prediction is:

Pittsburg Steelers: 28
Arizona Cardinals: 17

Have a great weekend, and enjoy the game!

The Wave Is Building

In the wake of the passage of the Generational Theft Act/Porkapalooza bill in the House earlier this week, it seems that a wave of momentum is beginning to emerge: a return to true conservatism.  Observe some more opposition:

Last night's House vote on the Democratic stimulus package, where not a single Republican voted in favor, was another shot across the bow for this incredibly unmanageable $900 billion behemoth of a program that truly will not stimulate the economy. Team Obama is now regrouping in the face of mounting criticism of this package.

And...

[I]t was written by the House, by Pelosi, and it is one of the ugliest ever produced by an American legislature.

 

It has got pork. It is a 40-year wish list. It has all the stuff that you heard about. It's novel length-a late Norman Mailer novel long. You throw a dart at it and you will have on any page six items which are outrageous.

 

Now, what's ironic about all this is that Obama ran as the man who would redo our politics, who would eliminate the lobbying and the special interests and the earmarks.

 

This is the largest earmark bill - earmark, but without stealth, just out in the open—of special interests, favors, parochial interests, in American history. And it is under his aegis.

 

I think it contradicts his idea of the new politics, but he's stuck with it.

The good news is that the GOP isn't just saying no - they're coming up with legitimate alternative plans.  More on that in a moment...it'll knock your socks off!  Anyway, it seems that there is a group of hardcore conservatives in the Senate who are already leading the charge on this issue in order to begin ramping up support for the upcoming vote:

Sen. Tom Coburn's (R., Okla.) comments were the most direct: "This is about spending money we don't have, for things we don't need. That's 80 percent of this bill . . . This bill is the generational theft bill. It's denying wealth to future generations."
 
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) said: "There's very little likelihood of a significant change in this collossal bill. As such, we will rally and point out the failures in it. We're talking about the largest bill in the history of the Republic."

Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.): "Ladies and gentlemen, a trillion dollars is a terrible thing to waste."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is talking tough, too, saying that Obama won't get many, if any, Republican votes in Senate if the "stimulus" bill looks a lot like the one that just passed the house.  Let's hope he can get all the GOP Senators in line...it'll be very tough to corral that handful of RINOs, but that's McConnell's job.  We'll see if he can do it.  In response to all this conservative muscle-flexing, the Democrats are toying with the idea of a high-priced game of chicken:

Democrats rattled some sabers yesterday by threatening to withdraw the tax cuts after getting no Republican votes.  According to Rasmussen, a plan with only government spending gets the worst response of all.  Overall, voters oppose that idea 70%-15%, and it flops in every demographic Rasmussen tracks.  Even Democratic voters oppose it by a solid majority, 57%-23%, as do self-described liberals, 54%-29%.

The Democrats are on thin ice with this package.  It's not exactly unpopular, but it's starting to get there.  They need Republicans badly in the Senate, but will they start negotiating and begin to trim off the excessive spending to get them on board?  The House Democrats wouldn't do it, and it will be interesting to see whether Harry Reid will want to bargain or to give a demonstration of power.

This is why the Senate battle will be very interesting to watch.  Anyway, conservatives have good reason to start talking a little louder - the American people are on their side.  We as a collective are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of bailouts...

The Obama administration is trying to fix the bank bailout process. But they have their work cut out for them.

Just 40% of those polled in the Financial Trust Index survey said they believe former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acted in the interest of the country last year. The same number said he acted in the interest of his former employer, Goldman Sachs.

"That's just shocking," said [Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business]. "That shows how deeply trust has been undermined."

...but we're also not liking the overall philosophical direction of the people running those bailouts:

Coming off a shellacking at the polls in November, the plurality of GOP voters (43%) say their party has been too moderate over the past eight years, and 55% think it should become more like Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in the future, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just 24% think failed presidential candidate John McCain is the best future model for the party.

Unaffiliated voters are much more closely divided. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say the party has been too conservative over the past eight years, while 34% think it's been too moderate. For 14%, the party's been about right, and 13% are undecided.

Regarding the future of the party, 46% of unaffiliated voters say follow Sarah Palin, while 26% like McCain.

Once again: most Americans live like they're center-right.  The GOP base, in particular, has been increasingly alienated by the moderate leadership of the party over the past few years, and likes the idea of a return to its conservative roots.

Very good news.

Here are a couple more pieces of great analysis regarding the status of the GOP in terms of the Generational Theft Act/Porkapalooza:

First, the loyal opposition was the unanimous loyal opposition. Because Republicans lined up unanimously against the Debt bill and all 244 of the votes for it came from the Democratic side of the aisle, we might as well cut and paste H.R. 1 into the Democratic-party platform. They own it, politically as well as substantively.

 

Second, the House Republican substitute offered a clear, bright line alternative. The Republican alternative was simple to understand because it had only three moving parts — tax relief, tax relief, and tax relief. It's now readily apparent that the Republican approach to the economic crisis is to reduce the tax burden on all American taxpayers and (most) American employers, and that Democrats see more government spending as the solution to our economic ills.

 

This came as a pleasant surprise to those of us who were watching the process unfold. Why? In the weeks leading up to this week's vote, the conventional wisdom was that the Republican substitute would ultimately contain a significant amount of new spending, though not as much as was in the Democrats' bill. Kudos to the House Republican leadership team, which worked constructively with back-bench conservative members to convince their entire caucus to stick together and rally around a principled, vastly superior approach that  won the support of all but nine House Republicans.  

 

Finally, the vote lifted the spirits of conservatives outside the Beltway, who now believe it's possible to influence the outcome in the Senate. Speaking at the Heritage Foundation yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) was optimistic that the vote would inspire frustrated constituents to create a groundswell of opposition to the Senate Debt bill, thereby uniting Republicans in opposition and even convincing some Democrats to reconsider their stands.


Did you catch that reference to the 'conventional wisdom'?  That's precisely what I mean when I talk about how compromise still means we lose.  If the House GOP had caved in for a slightly smaller 'stimulus', they would have undermined their own position, leaving us with the porkapalooza bill and zero leverage for the future; by refusing to compromise, we still got the porkapalooza bill (elections have consequences...!), but we now have tremendous leverage for the future.  Equally important is the fact that the base has been energized in a way that we haven't seen (aside from anything dealing with Gov. Palin) for a very, very long time.  Compromise on core principles = lose.  Stand firm on core principles = win.

Here's more analysis:

When they manage to unify the entire House Republican caucus with David Brooks and Peggy Noonan, you know the Democrats have seriously botched something up. And boy, they really have. The more you look at the stimulus bill the clearer it becomes that it is the Congressional Democrats, not the opponents of this bill, who have failed to see that we are in a genuine and exceptional crisis. They're working to use the moment as an opportunity to advance the same agenda they haven't been able to move (with good reason) for a decade and more, and in the process are showing that agenda to be what we always knew it was: a massively wasteful, reckless, profligate, slovenly, higgledy-piggledy mess of interest group troughs and technocratic fantasies devoid of any economic thinking or sense of proportion.

The challenge for conservatives is not just to oppose this—that's important but it's the easy part—but to offer another way over the coming months and years that is plainly more responsible and sensible. It can only be offered in speech; Republicans have little real power in Washington now. But if it is well conceived and ably offered, it could both help to curb the worst excesses of what the Democrats seem to have in mind, and help to reconnect conservatives with the problems of the day, not just in this crisis but beyond.

Fortunately, it appears that some conservatives are up to the task (emphasis mine):

 

[Sen. Jim] DeMint plans to offer a pro-growth alternative plan, one that generates so many new jobs it practically short-circuited Heritage's econometric model when we analyzed it. It already boasts the support of two key Senate Republicans — Sens. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), the Minority Leader, and Thad Cochran (R., Miss.), the senior Republican appropriator. His plan would drop the top marginal tax rate to 25% on wage earners, mom-and-pop business owners, and other employers, maintain the top rate on investment income at 15%, keep the children's tax credit at $1,000, and impose a modest 15% tax on estates valued over $5 million.  

 

Once our model cooled down, we learned the DeMint plan would lead to the creation of 1.3 million new jobs in 2010, 7.5 million by 2013, and an astounding 18 million within ten years. Residential and commercial real estate activity would also soar, by almost $300 billion over 5 years.


Now that's a stimulus plan!  That's conservatism.  Works every time it's tried.



Sources:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/republicans_like_gop_s_conservative_direction_democrats_don_t
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzQ0YTc0YmNmOGE1ZmE3NjNlZTQyY2RmZDMwZWIxZDE
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_lawrence_kudlow/stimulus_criticism_mounts
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/30/popularity-of-stimulus-package-dropping/
http://minx.cc/?post=282007
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTBhNjgyMmFkMDY3MWZjZDQ1NTc5NTQ3ODExMDIzNjQ=
http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/29/news/bailout.fairness.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009012903
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGY1ZmQ5YjhlODkxNWY5NGIwZWEyNzQ0MjQ2NDdlMTI
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2EzZDU4OTI2NDIyMTAwZDk3YmZlNmEyNzZlMGIxYWI

Here Comes Socialism...!

This article by Dick Morris is a couple weeks old, but it's still well worth considering, especially with the hindsight of seeing the first major legislative effort of the Obamessiah administration.

2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden — a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.

Obama will accomplish his agenda of "reform" under the rubric of "recovery." Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won't do much to shorten the downturn — although they will make it less painful — but they will do a great deal to change our nation.

Morris shows how FDR's policies failed to bring America out of the Great Depression, and in fact extended and worsened it.  But, what FDR truly accomplished was a permanent change in America:

But in the name of a largely unsuccessful effort to end the Depression, Roosevelt passed crucial and permanent reforms that have dominated our lives ever since, including Social Security, the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, unionization under the Wagner Act, the federal minimum wage and a host of other fundamental changes.

The problem is that Obama's approach will be less principled:

Obama's record will be similar, although less wise and more destructive. He will begin by passing every program for which liberals have lusted for decades, from alternative-energy sources to school renovations, infrastructure repairs and technology enhancements. These are all good programs, but they normally would be stretched out for years. But freed of any constraint on the deficit — indeed, empowered by a mandate to raise it as high as possible — Obama will do them all rather quickly.

But it is not his spending that will transform our political system, it is his tax and welfare policies. In the name of short-term stimulus, he will give every American family (who makes less than $200,000) a welfare check of $1,000 euphemistically called a refundable tax credit. And he will so sharply cut taxes on the middle class and the poor that the number of Americans who pay no federal income tax will rise from the current one-third of all households to more than half. In the process, he will create a permanent electoral majority that does not pay taxes, but counts on ever-expanding welfare checks from the government. The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, will now grow to a clear majority of the American population.

This is the tipping point I've mentioned numerous times before.  Once there is a majority of American voters who get tax 'rebates' and government handouts without ever paying any taxes, the country is finished.  Here's Morris' guess as to how this will play out:

With a congressional mandate to run the deficit up as high as need be, there is no reason to raise taxes now and risk aggravating the depression. Instead, Obama will follow the opposite of the Reagan strategy. Reagan cut taxes and increased the deficit so that liberals could not increase spending. Obama will raise spending and increase the deficit so that conservatives cannot cut taxes. And, when the economy is restored, he will raise taxes with impunity, since the only people who will have to pay them would be rich Republicans.

In the name of stabilizing the banking system, Obama will nationalize it. Using Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to write generous checks to needy financial institutions, his administration will demand preferred stock in exchange. Preferred stock gets dividends before common stockholders do. With the massive debt these companies will owe to the government, they will only be able to afford dividends for preferred stockholders — the government, not private investors. So who will buy common stock? And the government will demand that its bills be paid before any profits that might materialize are reinvested in the financial institution, so how will the value of the stocks ever grow? Devoid of private investors, these institutions will fall ever more under government control.

And then, as we've also discussed before, once the government controls industries, they will dictate what those industries do according to political pandering rather than good business sense.  As bad as that would be, there are other components that will be attacked, as well:

But it is the healthcare system that will experience the most dramatic and traumatic of changes. The current debate between erecting a Medicare-like governmental single payer or channeling coverage through private insurance misses the essential point. Without a lot more doctors, nurses, clinics, equipment and hospital beds, health resources will be strained to the breaking point. The people and equipment that now serve 250 million Americans and largely neglect all but the emergency needs of the other 50 million will now have to serve everyone. And, as government imposes ever more Draconian price controls and income limits on doctors, the supply of practitioners and equipment will decline as the demand escalates. Price increases will be out of the question, so the government will impose healthcare rationing, denying the older and sicker among us the care they need and even barring them from paying for it themselves. (Rationing based on income and price will be seen as immoral.)

And Obama will move to change permanently the partisan balance in America. He will move quickly to legalize all those who have been in America for five years, albeit illegally, and to smooth their paths to citizenship and voting. He will weaken border controls in an attempt to hike the Latino vote as high as he can in order to make red states like Texas into blue states like California. By the time he is finished, Latinos and African-Americans will cast a combined 30 percent of the vote. If they go by top-heavy margins for the Democrats, as they did in 2008, it will assure Democratic domination (until they move up the economic ladder and become good Republicans).

And he will enact the check-off card system for determining labor union representation, repealing the secret ballot in union elections. The result will be to raise the proportion of the labor force in unions up to the high teens from the current level of about 12 percent.

Finally, he will use the expansive powers of the Federal Communications Commission to impose "local" control and ownership of radio stations and to impose the "fairness doctrine" on talk radio. The effect will be to drive talk radio to the Internet, fundamentally change its economics, and retard its growth for years hence.

Bingo - Obama is shooting to entrench liberal Democrat power for the indefinite future.  Morris predicts that Obama's name and credibility will be trashed in the next 2-4 years, but the damage of re-making America into a socialist state will already be largely done.

This is why each one of these battles is so critical.  The next two years will be a giant forecast for the future of America - will we remain a capitalist society that rewards hard work, good decisions, and wise business practices, or will we embrace a socialism that steals from the rich and gives to the poor on the basis of 'fairness' as dictated by an all-controlling government?

These are the stakes: freedom, or government control.

Gird your loins, the battle is upon us.

There's my two cents.

Sneaky Gun Control

Conservatives warned throughout the campaign cycle of Obama's intention to take aim at firearms, and we now see it starting to move forward:

[G]un owners in individual states are witnessing what's referred to as Ammunition Accountability Acts being pushed through they're state legislatures by impatient lawmakers.

[It would] mandate the engraving of a unique serial number on the base of each handgun and assault weapon bullet, and an identical number on the cartridge's case. The act calls for dealers of this encoded ammunition to record the purchaser's name, birth date, drivers license number, etc.

Ammunition Accountability, a liberal gun control organization, has developed sample legislation to achieve its purposes and reports that versions of it have been introduced in the legislatures of Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington.

While the 2nd Amendment is explicitly clear about Americans' right to own a gun, and while the Supreme Court confirmed that right last year, and while the American people overwhelmingly understand that right, liberals have found another, much more sneaky angle: crack down on the bullets.  The Constitution does not explicitly include ammunition in its wording, though it is obvious that the understanding is there:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

The Second Amendment was adopted in an environment permeated by an emergent republican ideology founded upon the view that "To deny arms to some men while allowing them to others was an intolerable denial of freedom...". These ideas were coupled with many suggestions from multiple sources, which came most commonly from each state's bill of rights and the hundreds of amendments suggested by the state conventions that ratified the Constitution.

How much use is a gun if you don't have any bullets for it?  It's a useless chunk of metal, not even very good for throwing since it's so odd-shaped and un-aerodynamic.  So, why have a gun if you don't have any bullets?  This is not a hard concept to grasp.

Those of us on the right have been predicting this would come up soon for the Obama administration, and we were right.  Here's the worst part if this scam goes through:

"No later than January 1, 2011, all non-coded ammunition for the calibers listed in this act, whether owned by private citizens or retail outlets, shall be disposed."

So, even if you have stocked up on bullets before now (as millions have been doing), you can be prosecuted for owning that non-coded ammunition.  Legal battles will ensue on this, but keep in mind that the Founders intended and enshrined this guaranteed right for citizens to own their own weapons as the final and ultimate check and balance against a tyrannical government.

You know, like, a government that would try to nationalize private industries, silence dissent, and establish its own power for the indefinite future.


There's my two cents.

Geithner Screws Up (Already!)

Boy, that didn't take long!

Despite the obvious criminality of Obama's Treasury Secretary pick, Timothy Geithner, the Senate confirmed him.  Do you remember the reasons they gave for accepting him anyway?  It ranged from 'honest mistakes' to 'he's the only one who can help' to 'we just don't have enough time to find someone else'.  While there's simply no addressing the idiots who believe these were 'honest mistakes', here's an example of the last two excuses:

A senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee said he believes Timothy Geithner's failure to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes is "completely unacceptable" and would in any other time disqualify Geithner from heading the Treasury Department. But the senator, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, decided to vote for Geithner because it would take too long to find a replacement candidate for the key cabinet post.

The larger problem for the man whose experience with the financial crisis made him "too big to fail" is that he didn't do a very good job. Geithner favored letting Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. die, which many blame for turning a mess into a catastrophe.

Incredible, isn't it?  The Senate thinks that it's such an important position that they're willing to throw a tax-cheater into it whose primary qualification is that he's screwed up on a small scale what he's now supposed to fix on the biggest scale possible.

Genius!

What kind of alternate universe are they living in??  I mean, it's not as if you or I could go to a job interview, be proven to have failed miserably at that very job in a different company and admit to lying about it, and still get the job...right?

It turns out that the universe of common sense and justice is right yet again (I know, contain your shock).  Just days later, it turns out that Geithner has already made his first major blunder in his new position as the Obamessiah's holy ATM:

Tim Geithner has by now settled into his new job at the Treasury.

What might be ahead is a trade war. At least, that's what many observers believe Geithner had in mind when he brought smiles to the face of New York senator and China-basher Chuck Schumer, by telling the Senate during his confirmation hearings that he believes China is "manipulating" its currency to maintain it at a low value so as to stimulate its exports.

"Manipulate" is the word that upsets the Chinese, and imports are the things that most upset the trade unions and congressional Democrats who see them as destroying jobs in America -- never mind the benefits to consumers as they prowl the aisles of Wal-Mart.

This was no casual blunder by Geithner. The administration rushed out a statement that Geithner was saying no more than President Obama had said on the campaign trail. And Geithner was reading from a prepared statement. Premeditation matters.

Geithner is well aware of Chinese sensibilities. He and his family have a long association with, and knowledge of, the politics of Asia and China. It would have been unusual in past years for any important Chinese official to visit the U.S. and not have a private tête-à-tête with Geithner, who has studied Chinese and Japanese, and lived in India, Thailand and Japan, as well as in China. Tim Geithner knows just what will set the Chinese leaders' teeth on edge.

Which he most certainly did.

The problem here is that China is the one funding a huge chunk of our spiraling-out-of-control debt (thank you, Obamessiah).  If they get sufficiently ticked off, they may decide to stop loaning us money or take even more drastic economic measures against us that could cause massive inflation or other problems.  It's not as if they've been particularly warm and fuzzy toward us over the past couple years, anyway, and this certainly won't help.  A trade war against China is the last thing America needs right now, but that's what Geithner has potentially started.

All economic danger aside, what makes this all even more humiliating is the VP Joe Biden -- the Gaffe Master himself -- had to step in to try to correct the mistake.  I agree with Hot Air's analysis:

People wondered whether Geithner failed to pay his taxes out of a desire to evade them or total incompetence.  I had assumed the former, but I'm beginning to think that it might be the latter.  Gee, I just can't wait to see what the only man qualified for this position will do next … with over a trillion dollars at his disposal.

Scaaaaaryyyyyy...!

There's my two cents.


Sources:
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/30/geithner-as-good-at-job-as-he-is-at-taxes/
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aO11S7QUmxrM&refer=home
http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/columns/IrwinStelzer/Geithners-China-blunder-could-spark-trade-war38690682.html
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTJjYWYwZDcwM2ZhN2RiMmI2NGM0MDVlOWViYWI4MGI=

Why Do Liberal Democrats Spend Your Money So Freely?

This is a great question.  Michael G. Franc at NRO has at least a partial answer:

[L]awmakers and pundits everywhere would do well to commit these January 17-18th Rasmussen Poll numbers to memory. They explain why liberal Democrats seem so happy to sign on to nearly a trillion dollars ... in new spending without missing a beat. Their constituents want it!

 

Overall, given the choice between more government services and higher taxes, or fewer services and lower taxes, likely voters opt for the limited government/low tax option by the comfortable margin of 61% to 25%. That's pretty much where Americans have been for some time now.

 

But the story is dramatically different when you break down the electorate by ideology and partisan affiliation. We all know these divides exist, but I, for one, was surprised at the extent of the chasm.

 

Ideologically, the breakdown looks like this:

 

 

                                                Conservatives              Moderates      Liberals

 

More gov't/higher taxes                        7%                          28%               53%

 

Less gov't/lower taxes                        83%                          54%               34%

 

And the partisan breakdown is similarly revealing:

 

                                                Republicans                 Democrats     

 

More Gov't/higher taxes                       7%                          42%

 

Less Gov't/lower taxes                       83%                          39%                    

 

These are dramatic differences that go a long way toward explaining why so many policy debates get so heated so quickly—partisanship and ideology are aligned so that your political enemies and your ideological opposites tend to be one and the same. It also explains why so many GOP members report near unanimous opposition among their constituents to the debt bill—and why 177 House Republicans exuded such supreme self-confidence in opposing the bill on final passage.

 

Interestingly, the 3-point edge among Democrats for bigger government and higher taxes is considerably smaller than the 19-point margin among liberals. Why? African-Americans, almost all of whom are Democrats and who presumably comprise a significant portion of the Democratic sample, favor smaller government and lower taxes by a wide margin, 53% to only 22%. White Democrats, in other words, resemble liberals in their fealty to big government while African-Americans take on a more conservative hue.


Liberal Democrats spend your money so freely because their constituents want it.  I'd also love to see some corresponding numbers about how many of those constituents self-identifying as Rep or Dem receive some sort of government assistance.  How much do you want to bet that those who want the spending are the ones who receive the most (and that they are not Republicans)?

There's my two cents.

When Will They Learn?

This is what drives me absolutely crazy about some Republicans!  Eric Holder is one of the worst possible choices for Attorney General, but the GOP apparently isn't going to fight his appointment.  Try to hold your gag reflex down:

At the Washington Times, the excellent Eli Lake says yes—Holder has reportedly assured Sen. Kit Bond that he will not launch prosecutions against intelligence officers and political officials who authorized enhanced interrogation techniques:

Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, Missouri Republican and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview with The Washington Times that he will support Eric H. Holder Jr.'s nomination for attorney general because Mr. Holder assured him privately that Mr. Obama's Justice Department will not prosecute former Bush officials involved in the interrogations program....  Mr. Bond also said that Mr. Holder told him in a private meeting Tuesday that he will not strip the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the National Security Agency after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks of retroactive legal immunity from civil lawsuits — removing another potential sticking point among GOP senators.

The report adds that Holder's assurance to Sen. Bond echoes one he gave in writing last week to Sen. Kyl and Sen. Cornyn:

Mr. Holder made a similar point to senators last week in a little-noticed written response to questions from Republican Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas. Mr. Holder indicated that he would not prosecute any intelligence officers who participated in the interrogation program and who had followed Justice Department guidance.  "Prosecutorial and investigative judgments must depend on the facts and no one is above the law," Mr. Holder wrote. "But where it is clear that a government agent has acted in 'reasonable and good faith reliance on Justice Department legal opinions' authoritatively permitting his conduct, I would find it difficult to justify commencing a full blown criminal investigation, let alone a prosecution."

*sigh*

Okay, are they really so stupid that they're going to take this guy at his word?  First, he never said flat out: I'll never prosecute blah blah blah.  He danced around it, but he never said it.  Second, even if he had said it...he's a liberal!  Since when do their promises bind them to anything?  It sure doesn't make one bit of difference for Obama, so why would it make a difference for his minions?  And you know good and well that the rabid Bush-hating wacko Left is out for blood (there have already been calls for prosecuting Bush for 'war crimes'), so the pressure on Holder to move forward with some of this stuff is only going to get worse.

You know what this reminds me of?  Bill Cosby once did a hilarious routine describing some historical events as if they had been dictated by a coin toss at the beginning:

"General Cornwallis of the British, this is General Washington of the Continental Army."
"General Washington of the Continental Army, this is General Cornwallis of the British."
"If you'd shake hands, gentlemen."
"O.K., British call the toss."
"British called heads, it is tails."
"General Washington, what are you gonna do?"
"General Washington says his troops will dress however they wish, in any color, in buckskins and coonskin caps, and hide behind the rocks and trees and shoot out at random."
"British, you will all wear bright red, all shoot at the same time, and march forward in a straight line."

The British = the GOP.

Stupid, stupid, stupid...


There's my two cents.

More On Rush's Stimulus Plan

Earlier this week, Rush Limbaugh proposed a common sense plan to stimulate the economy. A shorter version of the proposal came out in the Wall Street Journal a couple days later. His plan, of course, prompted a bundle of controversy, and he went on CNBC to field some questions about it. One of the interviewers tried to give him a hard time, but the other was surprisingly fair:




It won't happen, of course, but at least it brings tax cuts and the conservative vs. liberal argument into more stark contrast. And, as long as Limbaugh stays on the front burner, he takes some of the heat that elected Republicans might otherwise be taking, allowing them some space to maneuver where it counts.

Here's another interview with Fox 'n' Friends, which was much less contentious and therefore much more informative. Good stuff:




Oh, and don't forget - he's shining a giant floodlight on the correct path, if those elected Republicans care to win the next election.

There's my two cents.

Dumb And Dumber Being Really Damned Dumb

You just can't make this stuff up...! Here's dumb and dumber trying to defend the indefensible Generation Theft Act/Porkapalooza:






I can't decide which one is more incompetent. Probably Pelosi, since she's the third in line for President. Wow, if that's not a scary thought, nothing is.

There's my two cents.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Link Roundup

Once again, here are a boatload of good links to check out...

Here at home: Obamessiah news: Economy:
Happy Friday!

Thus Begins The Migration?

In 1993, Bill Clinton and the Democrat majority passed what was, at the time, the largest tax increase in American history.  Not a single Republican voted for it, if I recall correctly.  Two years later, the GOP swept into a solid majority in the House, and the Senate followed soon after.  We've discussed this before, but if the Republicans hold the line against the Generational Theft Act/Porkapalooza bill, we could very well see the same thing happen now.  They already have in the House, but the Senate has yet to take up the issue.

In the light of that context, here is some interesting news from Rasmussen Reports:

Public support for the economic recovery plan crafted by President Obama and congressional Democrats has slipped a bit over the past week. At the same time, expectations that the plan will quickly become law have increased.

Forty-two percent (42%) of the nation's likely voters now support the president's plan, roughly one-third of which is tax cuts with the rest new government spending. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 39% are opposed to it and 19% are undecided. Liberal voters overwhelmingly support the plan while conservatives are strongly opposed.

Last week, support for the President's plan was at 45% and opposition at 34%.

Seventy-four percent (74%) of Democrats support the plan along with just 18% of Republicans. Both those figures are up just a single point from the previous poll.

However, support among unaffiliated voters has fallen. A week ago, unaffiliateds were evenly divided on the plan, with 37% in favor and 36% opposed. Now, 50% of unaffiliated voters oppose the plan while only 27% favor it.

I think it's worth pointing out that once people started learning about the details of the Democrats' plan, support eroded quickly - an 8 point swing in less than a week*.  What's possibly even more important to note, however, is the 'unaffiliated' category, which saw a swing of 22 points!  This underscores the argument that America is a fundamentally center-right nation, especially as it relates to how much government interference we have to deal with, and how much we pay in taxes.

Why is this shift important?  Those 'unaffiliated' voters are swing voters that could vote either Republican or Democrat in any given election.  This is not a demographic that Obama wants to alienate, but it looks like he may be in the process of doing just that.

Obviously, there is a LOT of time left between now and the 2010 election...but, it's something to tuck away for future reference.

There's my two cents.


*This also explains why every major bill (think amnesty, etc.) the Democrats try to pass is hidden from view until the last possible moment, and turns out to be hundreds of pages long - they know that when the public sees what they're doing, it won't go over well, so they have to hide and delay for as long as possible.  Classy.

There's That Judgment Shining Through

Yuval Levin at NRO:

When President Obama went up to Capitol Hill earlier this week to meet with Republicans, I thought to myself that it must mean his legislative affairs team has a respectable number of Republicans in the bag and they want to build on it and attribute whatever Republican votes they get to the president's effective advocacy. That's how the White House legislative staff tends to work, in any White House: when the team has done its job, they send the boss up to "lobby" so he can get the credit. In dealing with Congress, much like in global diplomacy, you generally don't send the president himself on a high visibility mission that could plausibly fail completely.

But then it turned out that not a single Republican actually voted for the bill. After Obama spent a good bit of time with the Republican caucus, and then invited some key members to the White House for drinks, no one at all among the House GOP voted with him, and even a few House Democrats voted against him. That either means something happened during the day yesterday to move the more squishy Republicans to oppose the bill, or (more likely) the White House never had any votes in the bag and sent the president on a futile mission, needlessly wasting and diminishing his personal capital. Very odd.

Sounds like a rookie mistake resulting from inexperience to me.  Oh, wait, that can't be right - we were assured throughout the campaign that experience doesn't matter in the face of the incredibly superior judgment of the Obamessiah...I guess that means Obama's judgment isn't quite as good as he thought.  Shocker.

There's my two cents.

The Goracle Curse Strikes Again

Yesterday, Al Gore testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to continue peddling his money-making cash cow, global warming:

Former vice president Al Gore urged lawmakers today to adopt a binding carbon cap and push for a new international climate pact by the end of this year in order to avert catastrophic global warming.

Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gore delivered a short slide show that amounted to an update of his Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," lecturing some of his former colleagues that even if the world halted greenhouse gas emissions now, it could experience a temperature rise of between 2.5 to 7.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

"This would bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten life everywhere on Earth, and this is by the end of this century," Gore said.

Meanwhile, in related news, Washington was covered in ice:

When it comes to winter weather, President Obama just joked, "folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things."

They need, he added, some "flinty Chicago toughness."

The president, joking with reporters before a meeting he's having right now with business leaders at the White House, said he was amazed this morning to hear that his daughters' school (the private Sidwell Friends) is closed today because of icy streets and sidewalks in the nation's capital.

"My children's school was canceled today, because of what ... some ice?" he said. As one of his girls pointed out, Obama added, "in Chicago, school is never canceled. ... You'd go outside for recess. You wouldn't even stay indoors."

Clearly, the staff of the Obamessiah didn't get the memo from the staff of the Goracle that the planet is just this side of charcoal (neither did the schools).  Remember now, global warming causes freezing temperatures...

Seriously, though, when is the Goracle going to realize that he's a total and complete buffoon?  How can he seriously walk through snow and ice to present the idea that the planet is doomed from global warming?  The science does little to support his claim (unless you cherry pick a handful of studies, like Gore has done), and there are literally tens of thousands of scientists -- real, actual SCIENTISTS rather than lawyers/politicians -- who disagree with Gore.

As is seemingly always the case, our elected 'leaders' in Washington are way behind the curve, because while the rest of America and the world has stopped buying the global warming hysteria, the Senate is just warming to the idea:

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry (D-Mass.), appealed to hear more of the Goracle's premonitions. "Share with us, if you would, sort of the immediate vision that you see in this transformative process as we move to this new economy," he beseeched.

"Geothermal energy," the Goracle prophesied. "This has great potential; it is not very far off."

Another lawmaker asked about the future of nuclear power. "I have grown skeptical about the degree to which it will expand," the Goracle spoke.

A third asked the legislative future -- and here the Goracle spoke in riddle. "The road to Copenhagen has three steps to it," he said.

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) begged the Goracle to look further into the future. "What does your modeling tell you about how long we're going to be around as a species?" he inquired.

The Goracle chuckled. "I don't claim the expertise to answer a question like that, Senator."

It was a jarring reminder that the Goracle is, indeed, mortal. Once Al Gore was a mere vice president, but now he is a Nobel laureate and climate-change prophet. He repeats phrases such as "unified national smart grid" the way he once did "no controlling legal authority" -- and the ridicule has been replaced by worship, even by his political foes.

Watch out for another massive power grab that will do nothing but hamstring an already strained American economy!  Gore's idea is to restrict oil, coal, and nuclear power, and instead focus on 'green' energy sources like wind power.  That's a great idea...let's dismantle the existing infrastructure of safe and abundant resources that power and secure our nation and have the potential to power and secure our nation for centuries to come.  Then, we'll hope and pray (to the Goracle, of course) that one of the alternative energy sources that right now can't even turn a profit without massive government subsidies magically starts working for us.  Then we'll start building a new infrastructure to transmit that magical energy source all over the country.  Never mind the gaps in between those parts of the process, and never mind the fact that global temperatures have been going down for a decade...

Great plan, Goracle.

There's my two cents.


Sources:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/01/28/ST2009012802716.html
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/38574742.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/28/AR2009012803318.html
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2009/01/62036182/1
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090128/ap_on_re_us/winter_storm
http://www.kentucky.com/787/index.html

More Silver Lining Around Porkapalooza

After sleeping on the passing of the Generational Theft Act/Porkapalooza bill, there are a couple other bits of silver lining that should be highlighted.

E-Verify
The House version of the "stimulus," monstrous though it is, at least retains the requirement that recipients of its funds be enrolled in E-Verify, so as to screen out illegals. On the other hand, at the request of the open-borders U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Obama Administration has postponed, for the second time, implementation of the rule that existing federal contractors be enrolled in E-Verify. The explicit goal is to kill the rule; in the words of the Chamber's spokesman, "We are hopeful that the incoming administration will agree that E-Verify is the wrong solution at the wrong time." The curious argument is that businesses shouldn't be asked to check that illegals not be hired because they're already under a lot of stress as it is; in other words, illegal aliens should be permitted to take jobs even though unemployment is at its highest level in a generation.

That's great news, but it could still be amended out in the Senate version, or squeezed out in the House/Senate committee.  Still, we'll take what we can get.

Boehner
House Minority Leader John Boehner put out this statement that makes a very important point:

"This was a bipartisan rejection of a partisan bill.  Families and small businesses across America are struggling, and they are counting on their leaders in Washington for ways to strengthen our economy.  House Republicans want to work with congressional Democrats on legislation that fulfills the goal set by President Obama: crafting a bipartisan plan focused on job creation.  Unfortunately, the trillion dollar government spending bill before the House today was not that plan, and a bipartisan coalition of Members rightfully rejected it.  It is time for Capitol Hill Democrats to finally work with Republicans on a job creation package that lets families and small businesses keep more of what they earn and that is supported by the bipartisan majority that the American people expect on an issue so important."

NOTE: No House Republicans voted for the legislation, while eleven Democrats crossed party lines to vote against it.  Earlier today on the House floor, Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Ways & Means Committee Ranking Republican Dave Camp (R-MI) offered a House GOP economic recovery plan that will create 6.2 million new American jobs over the next two years, according to a methodology used by President Obama's own nominee as Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, Dr. Christina Romer.  House Democrats rejected the plan.

Good stuff.  You know my thoughts on bipartisanship, but this time it actually worked because there was a principled stance on unchanging conservative core principles.  Amazing how it always works out that way, isn't it?  Standing firm on good core principles is a sign of leadership, and that is what people want.  It's great that a handful of Democrats saw the light.  Too bad the media is ignoring it completely, and framing it as the GOP being a bunch of complainers and obstructionists.  As usual, they've missed (or ignored) not only a majority of the important facts in this situation, but also the biggest point to be understood here: there was a bipartisan effort on this bill, and it was the opposition to it.  The Democrats were the ones who showed the partisan tendency here.

And that partisan attitude permeated the entire process from start to finish:

It's no big victory; passage of anything with the numbers Obama has in Congress should be assured.  In fact, it's something of a defeat for Obama, as he lobbied heavily for Republican votes on this package.  Obama met three times with Republican leadership, received warmly each time and even posing for pictures with some of them.  Not only did he fail to gain a single GOP vote, he lost 11 Democrats in the House.

Republicans had no investment in this bill, and the blame for that falls squarely on Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  While Obama met three times with Republican leadership, she refused to meet with her counterparts at all to negotiate on the stimulus.  Her high-handed approach lost Obama any potential Republican support he might have gained as she attempted to stuff a Democrats-only bill down Republican throats.  That's an odd position to take on something supposedly so important that it required everyone's support.  It also reveals the real partisan in House leadership.

While there will be more damage done by this Democrat majority, it is truly a good sign that the GOP is finally getting their act together.  Let's give them support and keep them on the straight and narrow path.  Good things will come of it if they keep it together.

The Senate battle will heat up soon, so stay tuned and check back regularly.


There's my two cents.

The Tax Code Becomes Optional

Well, isn't this convenient:

All U.S. taxpayers would enjoy the same immunity from IRS penalties and interest as House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Obama Administration Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, if a bill introduced today by Congressman John Carter (R-TX) becomes law.

Carter, a former longtime Texas judge, today introduced the Rangel Rule Act of 2009, HR 735, which would prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from charging penalties and interest on back taxes against U.S. citizens. Under the proposed law, any taxpayer who wrote "Rangel Rule" on their return when paying back taxes would be immune from penalties and interest.

So, is this saying that all you have to do is not get caught for the first year, and then the next year you just write 'Rangel Rule' and you're golden?  I can't imagine that would encourage anyone to skip paying their taxes intentionally, can you?

In case you don't know, Rangel is yet another Democrat member of the
most ethical Congress in history who is currently under investigation for tax fraud.  It seems that he didn't understand the current tax law -- despite writing it himself -- and thus accidentally neglected to pay some of his taxes.

Just like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The fun part is that this bill is clearly a poke in the eye by a Republican.  It'll be interesting to see what the House does with it.  It's nice to see some fight in the GOP for a change.


There's my two cents.

Jedi Mind Tricks

Just to blow off some stress:

Read out loud the text inside the triangle below.


More than likely you said, 'A bird in the bush,'! and........ if this IS what YOU said, then you failed to see that the word THE is repeated twice! Look again.




Now, what do you see...?





You probably read the word ME in brown, but....... when you look through ME you will see YOU!






The word TEACH reflects as LEARN
...




You may not see it at first, but the white spaces read the word optical, the blue landscape reads the word illusion.






In black you can read the word GOOD, in white the word EVIL (inside each black letter is a white letter).


And now, a great test to see if you have a weak mind...
Count every 'F ' in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT
OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY
COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE
OF YEARS.

HOW MANY?
WRONG, THERE ARE 6 -- no joke.
READ IT AGAIN!
Really, go Back and Try to find the 6 F's before you scroll down.
The reasoning behind is further down.
The brain cannot process 'OF'.
Incredible or what? Go back and look again!!
Anyone who counts all 6 'F's' on the first go is a genius.
Three is normal, four is quite rare.
Last but certainly not least...
Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs.
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs psas it on.
Are you a Jedi?