(via Instapundit)
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “I am not a big fan of saying that officials should resign for stupid remarks. But interim White House communications director Anita Dunn’s praise of Mao Zedong as a ‘political philosopher’ is so unhinged and morally repugnant, that she should hang it up, pronto.
"Mao killed anywhere from 50 million to 70 million innocents in the initial cleansing of Nationalists, the scouring of the countryside, the failed Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Tibet, and the internal Chinese gulag. Dunn’s praise of a genocidal monster was no inadvertent slip: She was reading from a written text and went into great detail to give the full context of the remark. . . . So where do all these people, so intimate with our president (Dunn is the wife of his personal lawyer), come from? A right-wing attack machine could not make up such statements as those tossed off by a Dunn or a Van Jones.”
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGQ3ZmE0Njk2YmFkMjc2YTgwYzAzYTBhYmQ0YjI3ZWM=
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Unlike past recessions, recovery not certain
From Reuters, we have business guys, not rightwing talkers, stating the obvious about Obmanomics:
CARY, North Carolina (Reuters) - "Chief executives from the biggest U.S. corporations worry that the slumping dollar could sap U.S. credibility around the globe, spur inflation and ultimately undermine the economy.
"The dollar has fallen to a 14-month low; and while a weaker dollar makes U.S. products cheaper overseas, chief executives gathered for the Business Council meeting in Cary, North Carolina, expressed deep concern that the anemic dollar signals serious jitters.
"The issue is currency devaluation, and the worry is that it essentially lowers our credibility in the world," said Office Depot Inc (ODP.N) CEO Steve Odland in an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.
"CEOs say that a slew of government spending programs on health care and other priorities could undercut economic recovery..."
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59F45020091016?virtualBrandChannel=11617
CARY, North Carolina (Reuters) - "Chief executives from the biggest U.S. corporations worry that the slumping dollar could sap U.S. credibility around the globe, spur inflation and ultimately undermine the economy.
"The dollar has fallen to a 14-month low; and while a weaker dollar makes U.S. products cheaper overseas, chief executives gathered for the Business Council meeting in Cary, North Carolina, expressed deep concern that the anemic dollar signals serious jitters.
"The issue is currency devaluation, and the worry is that it essentially lowers our credibility in the world," said Office Depot Inc (ODP.N) CEO Steve Odland in an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.
"CEOs say that a slew of government spending programs on health care and other priorities could undercut economic recovery..."
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59F45020091016?virtualBrandChannel=11617
Monday, October 19, 2009
Closest thing to American jihad: anti-Prop 8 &
anti-Mormanism, by extension: (via NRO): Salt Lake Tribune: 'Gay rights groups join in blasting LDS apostle's Prop 8 comments' [William C. Duncan]
"After Proposition 8 was approved in California, supporters were subjected to recrimination and intimidation with particular ugliness directed towards religious groups and individuals, prominently the LDS Church. Last week, one of the church’s leaders, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, gave a speech at BYU-Idaho in which he cited the attacks on believers in the wake of Proposition 8 as one of a number (including current interpretations of the First Amendment by the U.S. Supreme Court) of examples of threats to religious liberty. The Church has a lay leadership and Elder Oaks was a member of the Utah Supreme Court, university president, and law professor at the University of Chicago before assuming full-time Church service.
"As if to corroborate his concern, gay-rights groups made up of disaffected church members issued a statement criticizing the talk and saying that they had no concerns with the church having religious freedom as long as it doesn’t use that freedom to speak in opposition to same-sex marriage. In other words: Shut up, they explained.
"As Maggie Gallagher has consistently noted, the shrilly intolerant nature of much same-sex marriage advocacy is becoming increasingly apparent."
"After Proposition 8 was approved in California, supporters were subjected to recrimination and intimidation with particular ugliness directed towards religious groups and individuals, prominently the LDS Church. Last week, one of the church’s leaders, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, gave a speech at BYU-Idaho in which he cited the attacks on believers in the wake of Proposition 8 as one of a number (including current interpretations of the First Amendment by the U.S. Supreme Court) of examples of threats to religious liberty. The Church has a lay leadership and Elder Oaks was a member of the Utah Supreme Court, university president, and law professor at the University of Chicago before assuming full-time Church service.
"As if to corroborate his concern, gay-rights groups made up of disaffected church members issued a statement criticizing the talk and saying that they had no concerns with the church having religious freedom as long as it doesn’t use that freedom to speak in opposition to same-sex marriage. In other words: Shut up, they explained.
"As Maggie Gallagher has consistently noted, the shrilly intolerant nature of much same-sex marriage advocacy is becoming increasingly apparent."
Dr K captures, distills the fraud that is Obama
(via NRO): Krauthammer's Take [NRO Staff]
From Friday's Fox News All-Stars.
"On Obama’s San Francisco speech complaining that he and Nancy Pelosi are mopping up “someone else’s mess”:
"It is defensive with a touch of desperation. It is almost ridiculous to be running against George Bush — that's what the mess that he refers to is — you know, nine months in….He was elected almost a year ago now. So he pretends that he is the guy that is mopping up.
"Look, he has got all kinds of troubles.
"He is dithering on Afghanistan, a war he said had to be won, essential war, et cetera.
"He is the guy who has lost his popularity at an alarming rate — and support of independents — over health care — [which is] his initiative, on which he has given, what, 28 speeches — and still has the majority of Americans opposing it.
"He is the one who caved in to the Russians on missile defense. He sold out our friends the Poles and the Czechs supposedly as a way to get Russian support on Iran. He sends the secretary of state, [and] this week she gets humiliated in Moscow and the Russians indicate they won't help or budge on Iran at all.
"This is all his doing. It is not the Bush doing.
"So what does he have on his account? A stimulus package which hasn't done anything to the economy except create an undeniable $1 trillion dollar debt that is going to be added on to our debt at a time when the dollar is under attack.
"Look, this is his doing and you can't complain until the end of time over what his predecessor has done. I think it's a little bit unseemly to walk around as president once you are in office this length and to pretend it is all the fault of your predecessor."
From Friday's Fox News All-Stars.
"On Obama’s San Francisco speech complaining that he and Nancy Pelosi are mopping up “someone else’s mess”:
"It is defensive with a touch of desperation. It is almost ridiculous to be running against George Bush — that's what the mess that he refers to is — you know, nine months in….He was elected almost a year ago now. So he pretends that he is the guy that is mopping up.
"Look, he has got all kinds of troubles.
"He is dithering on Afghanistan, a war he said had to be won, essential war, et cetera.
"He is the guy who has lost his popularity at an alarming rate — and support of independents — over health care — [which is] his initiative, on which he has given, what, 28 speeches — and still has the majority of Americans opposing it.
"He is the one who caved in to the Russians on missile defense. He sold out our friends the Poles and the Czechs supposedly as a way to get Russian support on Iran. He sends the secretary of state, [and] this week she gets humiliated in Moscow and the Russians indicate they won't help or budge on Iran at all.
"This is all his doing. It is not the Bush doing.
"So what does he have on his account? A stimulus package which hasn't done anything to the economy except create an undeniable $1 trillion dollar debt that is going to be added on to our debt at a time when the dollar is under attack.
"Look, this is his doing and you can't complain until the end of time over what his predecessor has done. I think it's a little bit unseemly to walk around as president once you are in office this length and to pretend it is all the fault of your predecessor."
From "tea bagger" epithet to war on Fox News
Read the whole piece to see the revealed mentality of the media/left (lifted from NRO):
"A Dirty Mainstream " [Jay Nordlinger]
"Yesterday, I had a note on Anita Dunn, Fox News, CNN, and all that jazz. I said that a CNN anchorman, Anderson Cooper, had coined this “teabagger” epithet against anti-Obama protesters. “Teabagging” is a sexual practice defined in that earlier note of mine: and Cooper used it in a very specific context. Almost immediately, Democratic pundits and politicians picked up the epithet, “mainstreaming” it. (Of course, when something begins with a CNN anchorman, it pretty much starts life mainstream.)
"Many, many readers wrote me yesterday saying that George Stephanopoulos, host of This Week, had used “teabagger” or “teabagging” that very morning. So had one of his guests, E. J. Dionne — but Dionne is a pundit, an opinionist, and Stephanopoulos is a host, right? Isn’t he supposed to be David Brinkley now? When last I was a real TV-watcher, he was saying that Gennifer Flowers had doctored the tapes and so on.
"My readers complain that Republicans and conservatives let Stephanopoulos et al. get away with “teabagger.” For example, why doesn’t George Will say something? Shame them, rebuke them? I myself am afraid that “teabagger” is here to say. And perhaps conservatives will “own” the insult, as they say? Or maybe they have owned it already? Alternatively, is “teabagger” to be a conservative N-word, acceptable — even joyously employed — among conservatives, but nasty and impermissible from liberals?
"The White House war on Fox News is quite interesting. My impression is that the Obama people are very, very unused to criticism or “pushback” — especially from the media. They are used to support. (Remember when Obama reminded a ballroom of journalists that they had all voted for him?) So Fox looks very exotic and alien to them. George W. Bush’s people would never have singled out, say, MSNBC. Why? Because pretty much all the media are like that — all the “mainstreamers,” to one degree or another. Oh, Keith and Chris may be a little hotter than whoever the CNN or ABC people are — but still, the sentiment and substance are the same.
"(Though I am not a real TV-watcher, I absorb enough, I hope you will agree. Plus, funny thing about this new age: The Internet is full of TV clips.)
"Fox is different — and, again, must come across as terribly strange and menacing to the Obama people. Obama-supporting networks are normal and legitimate; the one non-Obama-supporting one is weird, freakish — probably un-American. John Podhoretz once remarked that all conservatives are bilingual: We speak both conservative and liberal. Liberals are monolingual, because they can afford to be. To the Obama crowd, Fox News is a foreign tongue. The “mainstream” tongue? Well, we all grew up with it, were taught in it.
"When conservatives hear liberal bias, they say, “Yeah, so? The sun rises in the east.” When liberals hear conservative bias, or even a point or bit of news uncongenial to liberals, they’re apt to say, “Eek, a mouse!”
"Anita Dunn was boasting the other day about how the White House “controlled” (her word) the media’s coverage of Obama’s presidential campaign. Fox News is a network the White House surely can’t control. You can understand the Obama people’s instinct: “Get ’em” — and you will have the other networks’ support as you do.
"My main question: Why aren’t other journalists — the ones who work for the other networks — embarrassed? Shouldn’t they feel annoyed at being Obama’s pets, even when they are? You know? Where is their pride or manhood? And why should I have to learn about Van Jones, ACORN, and other significant matters from Fox News opinionists? Shouldn’t the news business take care of the news, while the opinionists take care of the opinions? Weird, weird times. (Weird, weird Times?)
"One more thing: I love something Charles Krauthammer says about Fox News. You will hear more from Dr. K. in an interview piece I will have in the next National Review. He says, “Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes are geniuses: They found a niche market — half of America.”
"A Dirty Mainstream " [Jay Nordlinger]
"Yesterday, I had a note on Anita Dunn, Fox News, CNN, and all that jazz. I said that a CNN anchorman, Anderson Cooper, had coined this “teabagger” epithet against anti-Obama protesters. “Teabagging” is a sexual practice defined in that earlier note of mine: and Cooper used it in a very specific context. Almost immediately, Democratic pundits and politicians picked up the epithet, “mainstreaming” it. (Of course, when something begins with a CNN anchorman, it pretty much starts life mainstream.)
"Many, many readers wrote me yesterday saying that George Stephanopoulos, host of This Week, had used “teabagger” or “teabagging” that very morning. So had one of his guests, E. J. Dionne — but Dionne is a pundit, an opinionist, and Stephanopoulos is a host, right? Isn’t he supposed to be David Brinkley now? When last I was a real TV-watcher, he was saying that Gennifer Flowers had doctored the tapes and so on.
"My readers complain that Republicans and conservatives let Stephanopoulos et al. get away with “teabagger.” For example, why doesn’t George Will say something? Shame them, rebuke them? I myself am afraid that “teabagger” is here to say. And perhaps conservatives will “own” the insult, as they say? Or maybe they have owned it already? Alternatively, is “teabagger” to be a conservative N-word, acceptable — even joyously employed — among conservatives, but nasty and impermissible from liberals?
"The White House war on Fox News is quite interesting. My impression is that the Obama people are very, very unused to criticism or “pushback” — especially from the media. They are used to support. (Remember when Obama reminded a ballroom of journalists that they had all voted for him?) So Fox looks very exotic and alien to them. George W. Bush’s people would never have singled out, say, MSNBC. Why? Because pretty much all the media are like that — all the “mainstreamers,” to one degree or another. Oh, Keith and Chris may be a little hotter than whoever the CNN or ABC people are — but still, the sentiment and substance are the same.
"(Though I am not a real TV-watcher, I absorb enough, I hope you will agree. Plus, funny thing about this new age: The Internet is full of TV clips.)
"Fox is different — and, again, must come across as terribly strange and menacing to the Obama people. Obama-supporting networks are normal and legitimate; the one non-Obama-supporting one is weird, freakish — probably un-American. John Podhoretz once remarked that all conservatives are bilingual: We speak both conservative and liberal. Liberals are monolingual, because they can afford to be. To the Obama crowd, Fox News is a foreign tongue. The “mainstream” tongue? Well, we all grew up with it, were taught in it.
"When conservatives hear liberal bias, they say, “Yeah, so? The sun rises in the east.” When liberals hear conservative bias, or even a point or bit of news uncongenial to liberals, they’re apt to say, “Eek, a mouse!”
"Anita Dunn was boasting the other day about how the White House “controlled” (her word) the media’s coverage of Obama’s presidential campaign. Fox News is a network the White House surely can’t control. You can understand the Obama people’s instinct: “Get ’em” — and you will have the other networks’ support as you do.
"My main question: Why aren’t other journalists — the ones who work for the other networks — embarrassed? Shouldn’t they feel annoyed at being Obama’s pets, even when they are? You know? Where is their pride or manhood? And why should I have to learn about Van Jones, ACORN, and other significant matters from Fox News opinionists? Shouldn’t the news business take care of the news, while the opinionists take care of the opinions? Weird, weird times. (Weird, weird Times?)
"One more thing: I love something Charles Krauthammer says about Fox News. You will hear more from Dr. K. in an interview piece I will have in the next National Review. He says, “Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes are geniuses: They found a niche market — half of America.”
Obstruct deportation same effect as no fence
Short of amnesty, the Obama admin'n is pursuing strategy of softening enforcement which sends the message that being simply unruly, minor criminal-ish, is not to be grounds for deportation. Read the whole post to see how it works, and why they (O's folks) are coming down on Sherriff Joe in Arizona:
"Illegals: Welcome! [Heather Mac Donald]
The United States is apparently facing a critical shortage of illegal aliens. If you’ve spent any time in Tucson or Los Angeles, you might not recognize this emergency situation. But the illegal-alien deficit is so dire that special accommodations must be given to petty criminals, to make sure that they don’t depart our shores. Acceding to pressure from illegal-alien advocates, the Obama administration has clarified that local law-enforcement agencies that have been deputized to enforce immigration law (this enforcement power is known as 287(g) authority) should focus on so-called “dangerous” illegals “who are a threat to local communities” — and not, by implication, on illegals who disobey misdemeanor and public-order laws.
"Who are these precious assets who must be reassured of their secure place in American communities? The Los Angeles Times has dug up some victims of local immigration enforcement that it considers particularly sympathetic. They are people like Diana and Yolanda Diaz, arrested for assault and disorderly conduct during a high-school fight in Raleigh, N.C. When officials at the Wake County jail learned that the Diaz sisters were illegal, they handed the brawlers over to federal immigration authorities. The Diaz sisters are incensed that their right to live illegally in the United States has been disrupted. “It's not fair,” the 16-year-old Diana told the Times. And indeed, American high schools are far too quiet and disciplined. We need girls like the Diaz sisters to liven things up.
"Other victims include people like Luis Cruz Millan, who blasted his car stereo at high decibels in the middle of the night while parked on a residential street in Raleigh, prompting a neighbor to call the police. Millan’s illegal status having thus come to the attention of the authorities, he is now facing deportation, to the undoubted consternation of his neighbors, who won’t want to lose such a pillar of respectability. Further potential victims include the tens of thousands of illegals who drive drunk, drink in public, drive without licenses, and shoplift, and who, the illegal-alien advocates tell us, must be shielded from the immigration laws.
"Illegals, of course, have no valid argument against deportation in any circumstance — they chose to enter the country illegally and assumed the risk that their law-breaking would be punished. But illegals who continue to break the law once here should be doubly inhibited from protesting against deportation. Moreover, it is precisely such “petty” crimes and quality-of-life offenses — school violence, litter, public urination, drunk driving — that most upset neighborhood stability and trigger resentment against illegals, as Peter Skerry has observed. The breakthrough insight of 1990s policing was that lower-level offenses against public order create a sense of fear and civic disengagement that breeds further crime. The perpetrators of such lower-level crimes often are engaged in more serious offenses as well.
"The illegal-alien advocates could take a different tack in their campaign to guarantee that no illegal ever get deported: Instruct illegals to scrupulously obey the domestic laws so as not to come to the attention of the police. But such advice never issues from La Raza or the phalanx of immigration attorneys who howl at every deportation of an illegal criminal.
"Though this tightening of 287(g) authority comes under the Obama administration, the Bush administration was no fan of the statute, either, and resisted allowing sheriff’s deputies to enforce immigration law on the streets against gangbangers. The trend is clear. When amnesty finally rolls around, among those millions of illegals allowed to jump the queue ahead of people who intend to be legal immigrants will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of criminals whose residency in the U.S. has been carefully protected to guarantee their ability to take advantage of the inevitable amnesty."
— Heather Mac Donald is the John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute and co-author of The Immigration Solution.
"Illegals: Welcome! [Heather Mac Donald]
The United States is apparently facing a critical shortage of illegal aliens. If you’ve spent any time in Tucson or Los Angeles, you might not recognize this emergency situation. But the illegal-alien deficit is so dire that special accommodations must be given to petty criminals, to make sure that they don’t depart our shores. Acceding to pressure from illegal-alien advocates, the Obama administration has clarified that local law-enforcement agencies that have been deputized to enforce immigration law (this enforcement power is known as 287(g) authority) should focus on so-called “dangerous” illegals “who are a threat to local communities” — and not, by implication, on illegals who disobey misdemeanor and public-order laws.
"Who are these precious assets who must be reassured of their secure place in American communities? The Los Angeles Times has dug up some victims of local immigration enforcement that it considers particularly sympathetic. They are people like Diana and Yolanda Diaz, arrested for assault and disorderly conduct during a high-school fight in Raleigh, N.C. When officials at the Wake County jail learned that the Diaz sisters were illegal, they handed the brawlers over to federal immigration authorities. The Diaz sisters are incensed that their right to live illegally in the United States has been disrupted. “It's not fair,” the 16-year-old Diana told the Times. And indeed, American high schools are far too quiet and disciplined. We need girls like the Diaz sisters to liven things up.
"Other victims include people like Luis Cruz Millan, who blasted his car stereo at high decibels in the middle of the night while parked on a residential street in Raleigh, prompting a neighbor to call the police. Millan’s illegal status having thus come to the attention of the authorities, he is now facing deportation, to the undoubted consternation of his neighbors, who won’t want to lose such a pillar of respectability. Further potential victims include the tens of thousands of illegals who drive drunk, drink in public, drive without licenses, and shoplift, and who, the illegal-alien advocates tell us, must be shielded from the immigration laws.
"Illegals, of course, have no valid argument against deportation in any circumstance — they chose to enter the country illegally and assumed the risk that their law-breaking would be punished. But illegals who continue to break the law once here should be doubly inhibited from protesting against deportation. Moreover, it is precisely such “petty” crimes and quality-of-life offenses — school violence, litter, public urination, drunk driving — that most upset neighborhood stability and trigger resentment against illegals, as Peter Skerry has observed. The breakthrough insight of 1990s policing was that lower-level offenses against public order create a sense of fear and civic disengagement that breeds further crime. The perpetrators of such lower-level crimes often are engaged in more serious offenses as well.
"The illegal-alien advocates could take a different tack in their campaign to guarantee that no illegal ever get deported: Instruct illegals to scrupulously obey the domestic laws so as not to come to the attention of the police. But such advice never issues from La Raza or the phalanx of immigration attorneys who howl at every deportation of an illegal criminal.
"Though this tightening of 287(g) authority comes under the Obama administration, the Bush administration was no fan of the statute, either, and resisted allowing sheriff’s deputies to enforce immigration law on the streets against gangbangers. The trend is clear. When amnesty finally rolls around, among those millions of illegals allowed to jump the queue ahead of people who intend to be legal immigrants will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of criminals whose residency in the U.S. has been carefully protected to guarantee their ability to take advantage of the inevitable amnesty."
— Heather Mac Donald is the John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute and co-author of The Immigration Solution.
Obama to 1st amend't: You rule, I guess, for now
"Obama Administration Drops 'Gag Order' on Private Health Insurer"
"U.S. health officials announced Friday that private insurers can send seniors information on health-related issues as long as they allow their members to opt out of receiving the communications, effectively ending its probe of Humana."
"The federal government, in the face of allegations it was trampling on free speech, has closed its investigation of a major insurance company for allegedly trying to scare seniors with a mailer warning they could lose important benefits under President Obama's health reform plan...."
Read the whole article:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/17/obama-administration-drops-gag-order-private-health-insurer/
"U.S. health officials announced Friday that private insurers can send seniors information on health-related issues as long as they allow their members to opt out of receiving the communications, effectively ending its probe of Humana."
"The federal government, in the face of allegations it was trampling on free speech, has closed its investigation of a major insurance company for allegedly trying to scare seniors with a mailer warning they could lose important benefits under President Obama's health reform plan...."
Read the whole article:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/17/obama-administration-drops-gag-order-private-health-insurer/
ACORN will claw back--read whole post
Nolan Finley
"Bet on it: ACORN will be back ; ACORN may be down, but don't count it out."
"The elaborate propaganda apparatus erected to support the Obama agenda is already at work spinning the downfall of the community organization into a vicious right-wing plot to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama, who sprouted from ACORN.
"The group was cut off from some of its taxpayer dollars after conservative bloggers duped ACORN staffers into offering advice on setting up a child prostitution ring. ACORN had no defense -- it was caught on tape and posted on the Web.
"But ACORN is too important to Democrats and Obama in particular to allow it to wither away. Much of the taxpayer money that funds ACORN's activism ends up benefiting Democratic interests.
"Stories are showing up about ACORN's diligent efforts to purge itself of bad apples. News reports document how ACORN's ability to help foreclosure victims has been hamstrung by the misdeeds of a few gullible staffers.
"University of Northern Iowa professors substantiate the right-wing conspiracy by noting a flurry of negative stories about the group prior to the 2008 election. (It doesn't occur to the profs that this was when ACORN was caught registering cartoon characters and dead people to vote, which tends to make news.)
"Expect soon a major national publication to go in-depth on ACORN's rehab. It's the pattern the Obama machine follows to push his major issues and marginalize his critics.
It starts with a barrage of e-mails from local residents who coincidentally get worked up about the same thing on the same day -- Rush Limbaugh is a racist, for example. Next comes op-ed pieces from left-wing opiners decrying Limbaugh's divisiveness. Then Limbaugh's face hits the cover of Newsweek as the personification of the right's evil intent.
"Obama's conversion of his election team to a permanent network of campaign offices to advocate for his policies -- the latest opened in Detroit on Saturday -- is unprecedented.
The administration gets away with such ruthless manipulation of public opinion because the media are derelict in watch-dogging this White House and its backers.
"Googling ACORN comes up with a lot of hits about how Republicans are trying to use the scandal to derail housing aid programs, and almost none about the inner workings of the group. ACORN's foibles didn't trigger anywhere near the frenzy of investigative reporting that Joe the Plumber did.
"Similarly, you'll find a ton of stories debunking claims that health care reform will lead to death panels and rationing. But there's little critical analysis of Obama's assertion that the bill will save money.
"This is more than a honeymoon with a new president. It's a torrid love affair that is eroding the media's credibility. So of course ACORN can come back. With the press cozily tucked into bed at the White House, what's to stop it?"
Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The News. Reach him at nfinley@detnews.com.
"Bet on it: ACORN will be back ; ACORN may be down, but don't count it out."
"The elaborate propaganda apparatus erected to support the Obama agenda is already at work spinning the downfall of the community organization into a vicious right-wing plot to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama, who sprouted from ACORN.
"The group was cut off from some of its taxpayer dollars after conservative bloggers duped ACORN staffers into offering advice on setting up a child prostitution ring. ACORN had no defense -- it was caught on tape and posted on the Web.
"But ACORN is too important to Democrats and Obama in particular to allow it to wither away. Much of the taxpayer money that funds ACORN's activism ends up benefiting Democratic interests.
"Stories are showing up about ACORN's diligent efforts to purge itself of bad apples. News reports document how ACORN's ability to help foreclosure victims has been hamstrung by the misdeeds of a few gullible staffers.
"University of Northern Iowa professors substantiate the right-wing conspiracy by noting a flurry of negative stories about the group prior to the 2008 election. (It doesn't occur to the profs that this was when ACORN was caught registering cartoon characters and dead people to vote, which tends to make news.)
"Expect soon a major national publication to go in-depth on ACORN's rehab. It's the pattern the Obama machine follows to push his major issues and marginalize his critics.
It starts with a barrage of e-mails from local residents who coincidentally get worked up about the same thing on the same day -- Rush Limbaugh is a racist, for example. Next comes op-ed pieces from left-wing opiners decrying Limbaugh's divisiveness. Then Limbaugh's face hits the cover of Newsweek as the personification of the right's evil intent.
"Obama's conversion of his election team to a permanent network of campaign offices to advocate for his policies -- the latest opened in Detroit on Saturday -- is unprecedented.
The administration gets away with such ruthless manipulation of public opinion because the media are derelict in watch-dogging this White House and its backers.
"Googling ACORN comes up with a lot of hits about how Republicans are trying to use the scandal to derail housing aid programs, and almost none about the inner workings of the group. ACORN's foibles didn't trigger anywhere near the frenzy of investigative reporting that Joe the Plumber did.
"Similarly, you'll find a ton of stories debunking claims that health care reform will lead to death panels and rationing. But there's little critical analysis of Obama's assertion that the bill will save money.
"This is more than a honeymoon with a new president. It's a torrid love affair that is eroding the media's credibility. So of course ACORN can come back. With the press cozily tucked into bed at the White House, what's to stop it?"
Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The News. Reach him at nfinley@detnews.com.
Obama, like Chavez, seeks to punish media..
But only, of course, the news media not sufficiently obsequious and supportive of the Obama agenda and propaganda. Unlike socialist Chavez, however, all Obama's hacks and mouthpieces have is the ability to attempt to browbeat other media to side with Obama, and trash-talk in political smash-mouth style directed at the occupants of the administration's "enemies list (ala Nixon)" namely Fox News. Read below how serious voices in MSM are not going along with the "jihad."
"White House Escalates War on Fox News; Senior Obama administration officials took to the airwaves Sunday to accuse Fox News of pushing a particular point of view and not being a real news network."
FOXNews.com
Monday, October 19, 2009
"The White House escalated its offensive against Fox News on Sunday by urging other news organizations to stop "following Fox" and instead join the administration's attempt to marginalize the channel.
"White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN that President Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox." Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is "not a news organization." "Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "We're not going to treat them that way."
"By urging other news outlets to side with the administration, Obama aides officials dramatically upped the ante in the war of words that began earlier this month, when White House communications director Anita Dunn branded Fox "opinion journalism masquerading as news."
On Sunday, Fox's Chris Wallace retorted: "We wanted to ask Dunn about her criticism, but, as they've done every week since August, the White House refused to make any administration officials available to 'FOX News Sunday' to talk about this or anything else."
"The White House stopped providing guests to 'Fox News Sunday' after Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August. Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was "something I've never seen a Sunday show do."
"She criticized 'FOX News Sunday' last week for fact-checking -- fact-checking -- an administration official," Wallace said Sunday. "They didn't say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check."
"Let's fact-check Anita Dunn, because last Sunday she said that Fox ignores Republican scandals, and she specifically mentioned the scandal involving Nevada senator John Ensign," Wallace added. "A number of Fox News shows have run stories about Senator Ensign. Anita Dunn's facts were just plain wrong."
Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente said: "Surprisingly, the White House continues to declare war on a news organization instead of focusing on the critical issues that Americans are concerned about like jobs, health care and two wars. The door remains open and we welcome a discussion about the facts behind the issues."
Observers on both sides of the political aisle questioned the White House's decision to continue waging war on a news organization, saying the move carried significant political risks.
Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said on CNN: "I don't always agree with the White House. And on this one here I would disagree."
"David Gergen, who has worked for Democratic and Republican presidents, said: "I totally agree with Donna Brazile." ...
"Having the spokesman do this, attack Fox, who says that Mao Zedong is one of the most influential figures in her life, was not…a small thing; it's a big thing," Bennett said on CNN. "When she stands up, in a speech to high school kids, says she's deeply influenced by Mao Zedong, that -- I mean, that is crazy."
"Fox News contributor Karl Rove, who was the top political strategist to former President George W. Bush, said: "This is an administration that's getting very arrogant and slippery in its dealings with people. And if you dare to oppose them, they're going to come hard at you and they're going to cut your legs off."
"This is a White House engaging in its own version of the media enemies list. And it's unhelpful for the country and undignified for the president of the United States to so do," Rove added. "That is over- the-top language. We heard that before from Richard Nixon."
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/18/white-house-escalates-war-fox-news-1925819282/
"White House Escalates War on Fox News; Senior Obama administration officials took to the airwaves Sunday to accuse Fox News of pushing a particular point of view and not being a real news network."
FOXNews.com
Monday, October 19, 2009
"The White House escalated its offensive against Fox News on Sunday by urging other news organizations to stop "following Fox" and instead join the administration's attempt to marginalize the channel.
"White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN that President Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox." Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is "not a news organization." "Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "We're not going to treat them that way."
"By urging other news outlets to side with the administration, Obama aides officials dramatically upped the ante in the war of words that began earlier this month, when White House communications director Anita Dunn branded Fox "opinion journalism masquerading as news."
On Sunday, Fox's Chris Wallace retorted: "We wanted to ask Dunn about her criticism, but, as they've done every week since August, the White House refused to make any administration officials available to 'FOX News Sunday' to talk about this or anything else."
"The White House stopped providing guests to 'Fox News Sunday' after Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August. Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was "something I've never seen a Sunday show do."
"She criticized 'FOX News Sunday' last week for fact-checking -- fact-checking -- an administration official," Wallace said Sunday. "They didn't say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check."
"Let's fact-check Anita Dunn, because last Sunday she said that Fox ignores Republican scandals, and she specifically mentioned the scandal involving Nevada senator John Ensign," Wallace added. "A number of Fox News shows have run stories about Senator Ensign. Anita Dunn's facts were just plain wrong."
Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente said: "Surprisingly, the White House continues to declare war on a news organization instead of focusing on the critical issues that Americans are concerned about like jobs, health care and two wars. The door remains open and we welcome a discussion about the facts behind the issues."
Observers on both sides of the political aisle questioned the White House's decision to continue waging war on a news organization, saying the move carried significant political risks.
Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said on CNN: "I don't always agree with the White House. And on this one here I would disagree."
"David Gergen, who has worked for Democratic and Republican presidents, said: "I totally agree with Donna Brazile." ...
"Having the spokesman do this, attack Fox, who says that Mao Zedong is one of the most influential figures in her life, was not…a small thing; it's a big thing," Bennett said on CNN. "When she stands up, in a speech to high school kids, says she's deeply influenced by Mao Zedong, that -- I mean, that is crazy."
"Fox News contributor Karl Rove, who was the top political strategist to former President George W. Bush, said: "This is an administration that's getting very arrogant and slippery in its dealings with people. And if you dare to oppose them, they're going to come hard at you and they're going to cut your legs off."
"This is a White House engaging in its own version of the media enemies list. And it's unhelpful for the country and undignified for the president of the United States to so do," Rove added. "That is over- the-top language. We heard that before from Richard Nixon."
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/18/white-house-escalates-war-fox-news-1925819282/
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Soap opera over Dunn's fav philosopher Mao
"The Maoist explains herself: egg, face at the White House" By Roger Kimball
"Damage control time!
–She didn’t mean it.
–She was only quoting a Republican operative.
–Fox News is mean to Democrats.–Glenn Beck is an extremist.
–The President is trying to clean up a big mess left by George Bush.
–Can’t we just change the subject?
"When Glenn Beck aired a video of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn praising Chairman Mao — one of her “two favorite political philosophers” — in front of an audience of high school students, the conservative blogosphere lit up like a non-denominational sustainably harvested Kwanza tree. I wrote about it here. Andrew McCarthy added some historical background here. Peter Wehner had this to say. Et, I need hardly say, cetera.
"There’s one part of the left-wing reaction to the obloquy heaped upon Anita Dunn that should not be allowed to go unchallenged. It might go like this: “George Bush quoted Mao [or Stalin, or Hitler, or some other bad guy]: does that make him a Maoist [or Stalinist, a Nazi, or whatever]?”
As Fausta Wertz points out, Anita Dunn offered a variant of this exculpatory strategy when she claimed, in reaction to the tsunami of criticism her remarks occasioned, that she was only quoting Lee Atwater.
"Let’s say that Mr. Atwater had quoted the bit from Mao that Anita Dunn quoted — you fight your war and I’ll fight mine, etc., etc. So what? Lee Atwater did not identify Mao as one of his two favorite political philosophers. He did not stand before a room full of high school students and praise the revolutionary tactics of the greatest mass murderer in history.
"Bottom line: it is one thing to quote a tyrant. It is another to endorse his view of the world...
"That’s neither here nor there. What the left-wing excuse factory wants is for the American people to overlook the radicalism of the people populating Obama’s inner circle, of which Anita Dunn is a prominent member. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me once again remind readers of what Obama promised in his campaign. I don’t mean the long string of broken promises about helping the middle class, pulling out troops from Iraq, prosecuting the war in Afghanistan with vigor, etc. Those were just campaign promises, i.e., vote-getting expedients that events have led Obama to renege on.
No, I mean the one big promise that he has every intention of fulfilling: the promise to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” That is what Obama and his lieutenants are about. They are egalitarians — not, perhaps, quite so radical as Chairman Mao, but (as the case of Anita Dunn shows) they have plenty of admiration for Mao’s goals. Obama himself has criticized the U.S. Constitution for being merely a “charter of negative liberties” that fails to promote “redistributive change.”
"This is the point: last November, the American people thought they were electing a “post-partisan,” “post-racial” President who would work to restore unity and self-confidence to the country. They woke up on November 5, however, to find that they had elected someone who was deeply ambivalent about America, who distrusted its founding principles of limited government, individual liberty, and local responsibility. Like his radical friends — Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, Anita Dunn — Barack Obama wishes to transform the United States according to a model whose basic shape was supplied by the utopian schemes of the 1960s. That’s why Anita Dunn said that Mao was one of the thinkers she most often turned to for wisdom about big-think political problems. It’s not that she admires his penchant for industrial strength homicide: rather, she admires his success at fomenting an egalitarian revolution. It’s not what we bargained for when we elected Barack Obama. But that’s what we’ve got. The question is how much worse will things have to get before the penny drops, before the scales fall from the collective eyes of the electorate? When will voters begin that long countermarch through the institutions in order to take back the country? If not now, when?
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2009/10/17/the-maoist-explains-herself-egg-face-at-the-white-house/2/
"Damage control time!
–She didn’t mean it.
–She was only quoting a Republican operative.
–Fox News is mean to Democrats.–Glenn Beck is an extremist.
–The President is trying to clean up a big mess left by George Bush.
–Can’t we just change the subject?
"When Glenn Beck aired a video of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn praising Chairman Mao — one of her “two favorite political philosophers” — in front of an audience of high school students, the conservative blogosphere lit up like a non-denominational sustainably harvested Kwanza tree. I wrote about it here. Andrew McCarthy added some historical background here. Peter Wehner had this to say. Et, I need hardly say, cetera.
"There’s one part of the left-wing reaction to the obloquy heaped upon Anita Dunn that should not be allowed to go unchallenged. It might go like this: “George Bush quoted Mao [or Stalin, or Hitler, or some other bad guy]: does that make him a Maoist [or Stalinist, a Nazi, or whatever]?”
As Fausta Wertz points out, Anita Dunn offered a variant of this exculpatory strategy when she claimed, in reaction to the tsunami of criticism her remarks occasioned, that she was only quoting Lee Atwater.
"Let’s say that Mr. Atwater had quoted the bit from Mao that Anita Dunn quoted — you fight your war and I’ll fight mine, etc., etc. So what? Lee Atwater did not identify Mao as one of his two favorite political philosophers. He did not stand before a room full of high school students and praise the revolutionary tactics of the greatest mass murderer in history.
"Bottom line: it is one thing to quote a tyrant. It is another to endorse his view of the world...
"That’s neither here nor there. What the left-wing excuse factory wants is for the American people to overlook the radicalism of the people populating Obama’s inner circle, of which Anita Dunn is a prominent member. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me once again remind readers of what Obama promised in his campaign. I don’t mean the long string of broken promises about helping the middle class, pulling out troops from Iraq, prosecuting the war in Afghanistan with vigor, etc. Those were just campaign promises, i.e., vote-getting expedients that events have led Obama to renege on.
No, I mean the one big promise that he has every intention of fulfilling: the promise to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” That is what Obama and his lieutenants are about. They are egalitarians — not, perhaps, quite so radical as Chairman Mao, but (as the case of Anita Dunn shows) they have plenty of admiration for Mao’s goals. Obama himself has criticized the U.S. Constitution for being merely a “charter of negative liberties” that fails to promote “redistributive change.”
"This is the point: last November, the American people thought they were electing a “post-partisan,” “post-racial” President who would work to restore unity and self-confidence to the country. They woke up on November 5, however, to find that they had elected someone who was deeply ambivalent about America, who distrusted its founding principles of limited government, individual liberty, and local responsibility. Like his radical friends — Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, Anita Dunn — Barack Obama wishes to transform the United States according to a model whose basic shape was supplied by the utopian schemes of the 1960s. That’s why Anita Dunn said that Mao was one of the thinkers she most often turned to for wisdom about big-think political problems. It’s not that she admires his penchant for industrial strength homicide: rather, she admires his success at fomenting an egalitarian revolution. It’s not what we bargained for when we elected Barack Obama. But that’s what we’ve got. The question is how much worse will things have to get before the penny drops, before the scales fall from the collective eyes of the electorate? When will voters begin that long countermarch through the institutions in order to take back the country? If not now, when?
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2009/10/17/the-maoist-explains-herself-egg-face-at-the-white-house/2/
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Only half a million per job is "quite positive"?!
"Stimulus Success: At Only $533,000 per Job" [Rea Hederman & Brian Riedl] (via NRO)
"The Associated Press is touting an estimate posted on the federal government’s Recovery.org website that $16 billion in stimulus contract spending has created or saved 30,000 jobs. So using the White House’s own numbers, this comes to $533,000 per job saved or created. Instead of expressing embarrassment at a policy of spending $533,000 per job — about ten times the median income — the AP quotes White House economic advisor Jared Bernstein, stating that while it is early, “the early indications are quite positive.” Despite these “positive” indications, the unemployment rate has surged to nearly 10%, despite an earlier report by Bernstein predicting that unemployment would peak at 8% with a stimulus bill.
"Even this data should be taken with a grain of salt. The administration figures make sense only until one asks where the government got the money to spend. Before Washington could spend $16 billion employing contractors, they had to borrow that $16 billion out of the private economy, which now has that much less to spend supporting jobs. The White House merely shifted this spending power from the private sector to the government. And its safe to assume that had the private sector kept and spent this $16 billion rather than lent it to Washington, it could have done better than $533,000 per job."
— Rea Hederman and Brian Riedl are senior policy analysts at the Heritage Foundation.
"The Associated Press is touting an estimate posted on the federal government’s Recovery.org website that $16 billion in stimulus contract spending has created or saved 30,000 jobs. So using the White House’s own numbers, this comes to $533,000 per job saved or created. Instead of expressing embarrassment at a policy of spending $533,000 per job — about ten times the median income — the AP quotes White House economic advisor Jared Bernstein, stating that while it is early, “the early indications are quite positive.” Despite these “positive” indications, the unemployment rate has surged to nearly 10%, despite an earlier report by Bernstein predicting that unemployment would peak at 8% with a stimulus bill.
"Even this data should be taken with a grain of salt. The administration figures make sense only until one asks where the government got the money to spend. Before Washington could spend $16 billion employing contractors, they had to borrow that $16 billion out of the private economy, which now has that much less to spend supporting jobs. The White House merely shifted this spending power from the private sector to the government. And its safe to assume that had the private sector kept and spent this $16 billion rather than lent it to Washington, it could have done better than $533,000 per job."
— Rea Hederman and Brian Riedl are senior policy analysts at the Heritage Foundation.
Dr K on the newly revealed Biden brilliance...
"On Joe Biden’s role in the debate over Afghanistan:
"I think it's hard to believe this sudden media inflation of the wisdom of Joe Biden is accidental.
"It's clear that there is a debate inside the White House.You got McChrystal, a man of incredible authority and stature, who says you’ve got to go this way with a heavy troop involvement, and you've got Petraeus, the man who saved Iraq, saying the same, saying otherwise we're going to lose.
"And the administration obviously is resisting, and it has to have a champion of the other side, and it's the hapless vice president. So some way you have to inflate his status and to make it at least somebody that will be [seen as] a credible alternative.
"I'm not sure that the Biden plan is a plan. It's an idea, and the administration obviously, in its leaks, is tending towards the Biden idea. But it needs to have some stature on that side, and that's why I'm little bit skeptical about the [sudden] discovery of the vast storage of military wisdom in a guy [who], if you remember, opposed the Gulf War and opposed the surge and supported the Iraq war, which he now says was one of the great mistakes of American history — 0 for 3."
"I think it's hard to believe this sudden media inflation of the wisdom of Joe Biden is accidental.
"It's clear that there is a debate inside the White House.You got McChrystal, a man of incredible authority and stature, who says you’ve got to go this way with a heavy troop involvement, and you've got Petraeus, the man who saved Iraq, saying the same, saying otherwise we're going to lose.
"And the administration obviously is resisting, and it has to have a champion of the other side, and it's the hapless vice president. So some way you have to inflate his status and to make it at least somebody that will be [seen as] a credible alternative.
"I'm not sure that the Biden plan is a plan. It's an idea, and the administration obviously, in its leaks, is tending towards the Biden idea. But it needs to have some stature on that side, and that's why I'm little bit skeptical about the [sudden] discovery of the vast storage of military wisdom in a guy [who], if you remember, opposed the Gulf War and opposed the surge and supported the Iraq war, which he now says was one of the great mistakes of American history — 0 for 3."
Rush/NFL flap is total window to lib paradigm
"Rush & the Civic Duty to Marginalize Conservatives" [Andy McCarthy] (via NRO)
"My friend Diana West has a terrific column on the lesson of the NFL's hypocrisy and shabby treatment of Rush. She starts by pointing that bastion of the league's upright, inclusive image — Keith Olbermann:
"This job [i.e., Olbermann's NBC Sunday Night Football gig], now into its third season, makes Olbermann not a team owner, of course, but certainly a public face of the NFL. And a public face of the NFL with many filthy things coming out of it. These include, just sampling from recent days, his pronouncement that Limbaugh claiming his own success paved the way for Glenn Beck is "is like congratulating yourself for spreading syphilis." We could slap a headline on that — "NFL talker compares star radio and TV conservatives with venereal disease" — except that trash talk against conservatives doesn't generate mainstream outrage.
"Take Olbermann's noxious attack this week on Michelle Malkin for what he characterized as her "total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred without which Michelle Malkin would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it."
"Get that? Olbermann calls an accomplished and best-selling conservative author, commentator, blogger, wife and mother (who also happens to be beautiful) a "big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick," but such dehumanizing venom doesn't count as controversial, or even lightly strain his NBC-NFL connection. Why, at this rate, he could end up on a box of Wheaties. His comments certainly don't rate as "divisive" or "inappropriate" - two of the coded charges leveled at Rush Limbaugh's "public remarks" by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay that got Limbaugh's blackball rolling in the first place.
It was all over so fast. Barely a day passed between the news that Limbaugh was bidding with Dave Checketts for the St Louis Rams and the news that Checketts was dropping Limbaugh as a partner.
"But what a day. It goes down in the annals as the day the demonization of conservatism achieved not consensus, but normalcy, and the day the marginalization of conservatives became not a public sport but a civic duty."
Read it all, here.
"My friend Diana West has a terrific column on the lesson of the NFL's hypocrisy and shabby treatment of Rush. She starts by pointing that bastion of the league's upright, inclusive image — Keith Olbermann:
"This job [i.e., Olbermann's NBC Sunday Night Football gig], now into its third season, makes Olbermann not a team owner, of course, but certainly a public face of the NFL. And a public face of the NFL with many filthy things coming out of it. These include, just sampling from recent days, his pronouncement that Limbaugh claiming his own success paved the way for Glenn Beck is "is like congratulating yourself for spreading syphilis." We could slap a headline on that — "NFL talker compares star radio and TV conservatives with venereal disease" — except that trash talk against conservatives doesn't generate mainstream outrage.
"Take Olbermann's noxious attack this week on Michelle Malkin for what he characterized as her "total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred without which Michelle Malkin would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it."
"Get that? Olbermann calls an accomplished and best-selling conservative author, commentator, blogger, wife and mother (who also happens to be beautiful) a "big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick," but such dehumanizing venom doesn't count as controversial, or even lightly strain his NBC-NFL connection. Why, at this rate, he could end up on a box of Wheaties. His comments certainly don't rate as "divisive" or "inappropriate" - two of the coded charges leveled at Rush Limbaugh's "public remarks" by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay that got Limbaugh's blackball rolling in the first place.
It was all over so fast. Barely a day passed between the news that Limbaugh was bidding with Dave Checketts for the St Louis Rams and the news that Checketts was dropping Limbaugh as a partner.
"But what a day. It goes down in the annals as the day the demonization of conservatism achieved not consensus, but normalcy, and the day the marginalization of conservatives became not a public sport but a civic duty."
Read it all, here.
Lib admits, nearly revels in, the shell game...
Understand that Mr. Kaus is a center leftie blogger, in favor of O-care, here admitting what is going on: an utter fraud and shell game.
"Mickey's Assignment Desk: Explain Away the Health Care Shell Game, Please!"
Mickey's Assignment Desk: Senate Dems quietly move a bill to countermand a 21% cut in Medicare fees for doctors, which will add $247 billion to the deficit over ten years. Of course, the Baucus health care reform bill achieves its famed deficit neutrality through cuts in Medicare fees, mainly to non-physicians--saving (by my reading of the CBO analysis) at least $184 billion from Medicare over the same period. Plus there is a special panel set up to recommend further cuts.
"Jonathan Cohn and Ezra Klein might productively explain a) Why this isn't a shell game, with Dems granting Medicare increases in one bill and then taking ostentatious credit for partly-offsetting cuts in a separate bill; b) Why Congress' unwillingness to put up with the scheduled Medicare doctors' cuts this year doesn't indicate that it won't put up with scheduled cuts in future years--that, as Megan McArdle among others argues, the projected Medicare cuts in Baucus' bill simply won't happen. ...
"P.S.: I'm still for health care reform, of course, even if the accounting that scores it as deficit-neutral proves to be a fantasy. We make the mess now. We make it work and pay for it later. Stuff the beast! If it turns out that to get the reform passed Dems have to resort to a shell game--using phony peas--well, just keep it between us, OK?. ... 7:21 P.M.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/10/15/mickey-s-assignment-desk-explain-away-the-health-care-shell-game-please.aspx
"Mickey's Assignment Desk: Explain Away the Health Care Shell Game, Please!"
Mickey's Assignment Desk: Senate Dems quietly move a bill to countermand a 21% cut in Medicare fees for doctors, which will add $247 billion to the deficit over ten years. Of course, the Baucus health care reform bill achieves its famed deficit neutrality through cuts in Medicare fees, mainly to non-physicians--saving (by my reading of the CBO analysis) at least $184 billion from Medicare over the same period. Plus there is a special panel set up to recommend further cuts.
"Jonathan Cohn and Ezra Klein might productively explain a) Why this isn't a shell game, with Dems granting Medicare increases in one bill and then taking ostentatious credit for partly-offsetting cuts in a separate bill; b) Why Congress' unwillingness to put up with the scheduled Medicare doctors' cuts this year doesn't indicate that it won't put up with scheduled cuts in future years--that, as Megan McArdle among others argues, the projected Medicare cuts in Baucus' bill simply won't happen. ...
"P.S.: I'm still for health care reform, of course, even if the accounting that scores it as deficit-neutral proves to be a fantasy. We make the mess now. We make it work and pay for it later. Stuff the beast! If it turns out that to get the reform passed Dems have to resort to a shell game--using phony peas--well, just keep it between us, OK?. ... 7:21 P.M.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/10/15/mickey-s-assignment-desk-explain-away-the-health-care-shell-game-please.aspx
Generals Biden and Kerry--lose the war however
"Why Joe Biden's War Plan Spells the Rebirth of Al Qaeda"
"Because you can chase the pests out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan all you want, but unless Obama really wants to clean up the world's most decrepit apartment, the parasites are just going to come back. A call for continued nation-building."
Read the rest:
By Thomas P.M. Barnett Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/war-room/biden-afghanistan-strategy-101609#ixzz0UFkYd7Is
News flash: The Senator (Kerry) that has more blood on his hands from American dead in Vietnam, due to his participation in undermining our side, and encouraging our enemies that they could, through scumbags like John Kerry, break our will, we have this: Kerry doesn't think any more troops should go to Afghan war until election accusations of fraud are resolved. That just means that he has a convenient excuse for advocating for defeat. How very convenient! And how very consistent for the weasle!
Kerry: Too soon to send more troops to Afghanistan
"WASHINGTON (AP) — With Afghanistan's election crisis deepening, Sen. John Kerry says it would be irresponsible for the U.S. to consider sending additional troops to the region at this time.
"In taped remarks, Kerry said it would be misguided to have a troop buildup to achieve a mission of "good governance" when the election is not yet finished. Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was in Kabul on Saturday..."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-10-17-kerry-afghanistan_N.htm?csp=34
"Because you can chase the pests out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan all you want, but unless Obama really wants to clean up the world's most decrepit apartment, the parasites are just going to come back. A call for continued nation-building."
Read the rest:
By Thomas P.M. Barnett Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/war-room/biden-afghanistan-strategy-101609#ixzz0UFkYd7Is
News flash: The Senator (Kerry) that has more blood on his hands from American dead in Vietnam, due to his participation in undermining our side, and encouraging our enemies that they could, through scumbags like John Kerry, break our will, we have this: Kerry doesn't think any more troops should go to Afghan war until election accusations of fraud are resolved. That just means that he has a convenient excuse for advocating for defeat. How very convenient! And how very consistent for the weasle!
Kerry: Too soon to send more troops to Afghanistan
"WASHINGTON (AP) — With Afghanistan's election crisis deepening, Sen. John Kerry says it would be irresponsible for the U.S. to consider sending additional troops to the region at this time.
"In taped remarks, Kerry said it would be misguided to have a troop buildup to achieve a mission of "good governance" when the election is not yet finished. Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was in Kabul on Saturday..."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-10-17-kerry-afghanistan_N.htm?csp=34
Pot...Kettle...Black: O-libs on "grassroots"
"Astroturfing" Jennifer Rubin - 10.16.2009 - 10:41 AM
"That is what they call a phony grassroots campaign cooked up by special interests or political parties afraid to show their own faces. That’s what liberals claimed the tea parties and then the town-hall events were. Fake. The attendees were flunkies. It turns out that liberals were projecting. Politico tells us:
"At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform. . . .
"The Democratic officials made no overt demands. Rather, they brought together the players and laid the groundwork for the creation of the coalition, and that was followed by more-direct solicitations from an outside Democratic consultant, Nick Baldick, retained by Healthy Economy Now, asking attendees at the meeting to join the coalition and contribute to its ad campaigns.
They concocted two groups — Americans for Stable Quality Care and its predecessor, Healthy Economy Now (I think the term is “front organization”) — to push the White House’s health-care agenda.
"That’s as good an example of astroturfing as you’re going to find. There’s nothing illegal about it (unless campaign-finance laws were broken, for which we have seen no evidence), but it’s fundamentally dishonest. The White House orchestrated support, played to the support, and crowed about the support, used the front groups to fund advertising, and then used all that to convince real voters there was a groundswell of “support” for its proposals. Not surprisingly, an ethics expert interviewed by Politico (we need experts because ethics is a subspecialty, knowledge of which is not commonly found among ordinary politicians) thinks the whole thing raises “questions.” Yeah.
"That is what they call a phony grassroots campaign cooked up by special interests or political parties afraid to show their own faces. That’s what liberals claimed the tea parties and then the town-hall events were. Fake. The attendees were flunkies. It turns out that liberals were projecting. Politico tells us:
"At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform. . . .
"The Democratic officials made no overt demands. Rather, they brought together the players and laid the groundwork for the creation of the coalition, and that was followed by more-direct solicitations from an outside Democratic consultant, Nick Baldick, retained by Healthy Economy Now, asking attendees at the meeting to join the coalition and contribute to its ad campaigns.
They concocted two groups — Americans for Stable Quality Care and its predecessor, Healthy Economy Now (I think the term is “front organization”) — to push the White House’s health-care agenda.
"That’s as good an example of astroturfing as you’re going to find. There’s nothing illegal about it (unless campaign-finance laws were broken, for which we have seen no evidence), but it’s fundamentally dishonest. The White House orchestrated support, played to the support, and crowed about the support, used the front groups to fund advertising, and then used all that to convince real voters there was a groundswell of “support” for its proposals. Not surprisingly, an ethics expert interviewed by Politico (we need experts because ethics is a subspecialty, knowledge of which is not commonly found among ordinary politicians) thinks the whole thing raises “questions.” Yeah.
Stimulus: epic failure beyond imagination
Disaster: Hard Stimulus Data Reveals That Michigan "Saved Or Created" Only 397 Jobs For 620 Million Stimulus Dollars, FAR Short Of 19,500 Claim
"Michigan received $3.7 billion is stimulus money, of which $620 million was to be used to "create and save" jobs, while the remainder will be used by Granholm to backfill the budget deficit that she has created with her overspending so that she doesn't have to make any substantial cuts before she leaves office. When she walks away, she will have lost more than 1,000,000 jobs in a state with a population of only 10 million. A few days ago, Granholm claimed that stimulus money "created or saved" 19,500 jobs (Enron accounting: Stimulus saved or created 19,500 jobs in Michigan). Turns out, the number is an utter fabrication, as I suspected when I wrote that prior post. Fact is, that $620 million "created or saved" 397 jobs.
"Let's just do the math. $620 million divided by say 400 jobs = $1,550,000 per job! That is an outright waste of taxpayer dollars. Worse yet, the rest of the $3.7 billion is going to keep Michigan in perpetual deficit that will be even more painful to deal with since we have had an AWOL governor for 6 1/2 years running. From The Detroit Free Press: So far, stimulus contracts aren't big boost for Michigan jobs.
"Despite Michigan's worst-in-the-nation unemployment rate, not many jobs -- 400 or so -- have been created or saved in the state so far by federal contracts under the stimulus bill, according to new data released Thursday by the Obama administration.Recall back when the stimulus bill was passed that it was done so with such haste that nobody read the bill. Because the economy needed a "quick shot in the arm." Then Obama sat on it for 4 days while he took a vacation before signing it. What did he know back then? I suspect that the stimulus bill was no stimulus at all. Just payback to unions and hacks that helped elect him. The stimulus is an utter disaster and a waste of $1 trillion that we didn't have to start out with...."
Read the rest, especially if you think it hasn't been intentional: http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2009/10/disaster-hard-stimulus-data-reveals.html
"Michigan received $3.7 billion is stimulus money, of which $620 million was to be used to "create and save" jobs, while the remainder will be used by Granholm to backfill the budget deficit that she has created with her overspending so that she doesn't have to make any substantial cuts before she leaves office. When she walks away, she will have lost more than 1,000,000 jobs in a state with a population of only 10 million. A few days ago, Granholm claimed that stimulus money "created or saved" 19,500 jobs (Enron accounting: Stimulus saved or created 19,500 jobs in Michigan). Turns out, the number is an utter fabrication, as I suspected when I wrote that prior post. Fact is, that $620 million "created or saved" 397 jobs.
"Let's just do the math. $620 million divided by say 400 jobs = $1,550,000 per job! That is an outright waste of taxpayer dollars. Worse yet, the rest of the $3.7 billion is going to keep Michigan in perpetual deficit that will be even more painful to deal with since we have had an AWOL governor for 6 1/2 years running. From The Detroit Free Press: So far, stimulus contracts aren't big boost for Michigan jobs.
"Despite Michigan's worst-in-the-nation unemployment rate, not many jobs -- 400 or so -- have been created or saved in the state so far by federal contracts under the stimulus bill, according to new data released Thursday by the Obama administration.Recall back when the stimulus bill was passed that it was done so with such haste that nobody read the bill. Because the economy needed a "quick shot in the arm." Then Obama sat on it for 4 days while he took a vacation before signing it. What did he know back then? I suspect that the stimulus bill was no stimulus at all. Just payback to unions and hacks that helped elect him. The stimulus is an utter disaster and a waste of $1 trillion that we didn't have to start out with...."
Read the rest, especially if you think it hasn't been intentional: http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2009/10/disaster-hard-stimulus-data-reveals.html
Friday, October 16, 2009
Who is really shocked: gov't $ to ?=few jobs...
"First hard stimulus data finds 30,000 jobs saved or created "
By Walter Alarkon - 10/15/09 03:08 PM ET
"The first direct stimulus reports showed that stimulus contracts saved or created just 30,083 jobs, prompting more Republican criticism of the $787 billion package.
"The data posted Thursday was the result of the government's initial attempt at counting actual stimulus jobs. Obama administration officials stressed that data was partial -- it represented just $16 billion out of the $339 billion awarded -- but they said it exceeded their projections...."
Read the whole piece: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/63299-first-hard-stimulus-data-finds-only-30000-jobs-saved-or-created-
By Walter Alarkon - 10/15/09 03:08 PM ET
"The first direct stimulus reports showed that stimulus contracts saved or created just 30,083 jobs, prompting more Republican criticism of the $787 billion package.
"The data posted Thursday was the result of the government's initial attempt at counting actual stimulus jobs. Obama administration officials stressed that data was partial -- it represented just $16 billion out of the $339 billion awarded -- but they said it exceeded their projections...."
Read the whole piece: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/63299-first-hard-stimulus-data-finds-only-30000-jobs-saved-or-created-
No, not the housing scam again...
Mortgage Madness, Again
The trouble with the Federal Housing Authority's easy-money policies
Steve Chapman October 15, 2009
"Watching Washington policymakers in action, I sometimes think they make mistakes because of unrealistic goals, flawed thinking, blind obedience to party, or dubious information. And sometimes I think they make mistakes because they are—how to put this?—clinically insane.
There is no other way to explain what is going on at the Federal Housing Administration, which provides federal guarantees for home mortgages. Given the collapse in real estate prices, the weak economy, and the epidemic of foreclosures, banks are acting with more caution than before. They now commonly require home buyers to make down payments of 20 percent to qualify for a loan. But the FHA often requires only 3.5 percent.
"That's the equivalent of playing pool with a guy named Snake, and it's had two predictable effects. The first is that the agency is insuring about four times as many home loans as it did just three years ago. The other is that the number of FHA-approved borrowers who are not repaying their loans is climbing. Since last year, the default rate has jumped by 76 percent.
"Another likely consequence looms: you and I eating the losses. A former executive of mortgage giant Fannie Mae told a congressional subcommittee that the FHA "appears destined for a taxpayer bailout in the next 24 to 36 months." Commissioner David Stevens had to assure the subcommittee that it would not need help—well, unless there is a "catastrophic home price decline."
"But who says there won't be? It's not as though anyone at the FHA foresaw the housing bubble or the housing bust. Yet now it feels confident betting its $30 billion cash reserve that prices won't fall.
Read the rest: http://reason.com/archives/2009/10/15/mortgage-madness-again
The trouble with the Federal Housing Authority's easy-money policies
Steve Chapman October 15, 2009
"Watching Washington policymakers in action, I sometimes think they make mistakes because of unrealistic goals, flawed thinking, blind obedience to party, or dubious information. And sometimes I think they make mistakes because they are—how to put this?—clinically insane.
There is no other way to explain what is going on at the Federal Housing Administration, which provides federal guarantees for home mortgages. Given the collapse in real estate prices, the weak economy, and the epidemic of foreclosures, banks are acting with more caution than before. They now commonly require home buyers to make down payments of 20 percent to qualify for a loan. But the FHA often requires only 3.5 percent.
"That's the equivalent of playing pool with a guy named Snake, and it's had two predictable effects. The first is that the agency is insuring about four times as many home loans as it did just three years ago. The other is that the number of FHA-approved borrowers who are not repaying their loans is climbing. Since last year, the default rate has jumped by 76 percent.
"Another likely consequence looms: you and I eating the losses. A former executive of mortgage giant Fannie Mae told a congressional subcommittee that the FHA "appears destined for a taxpayer bailout in the next 24 to 36 months." Commissioner David Stevens had to assure the subcommittee that it would not need help—well, unless there is a "catastrophic home price decline."
"But who says there won't be? It's not as though anyone at the FHA foresaw the housing bubble or the housing bust. Yet now it feels confident betting its $30 billion cash reserve that prices won't fall.
Read the rest: http://reason.com/archives/2009/10/15/mortgage-madness-again
Here's what race preferences look like...
Via Instapundit: "RACISM ON CAMPUS:
"According to the data, not all races are considered equal in the college admissions game. Of students applying to private colleges in 1997, African-American applicants with SAT scores of 1150 had the same chances of being accepted as white applicants with 1460s and Asian applicants with perfect 1600s.
"The results of the study come three years after Jian Li, a rejected Princeton applicant, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. He alleged in the complaint that he had been discriminated against based on his race when he was denied admission to the University."
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/10/12/24103/
"According to the data, not all races are considered equal in the college admissions game. Of students applying to private colleges in 1997, African-American applicants with SAT scores of 1150 had the same chances of being accepted as white applicants with 1460s and Asian applicants with perfect 1600s.
"The results of the study come three years after Jian Li, a rejected Princeton applicant, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. He alleged in the complaint that he had been discriminated against based on his race when he was denied admission to the University."
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/10/12/24103/
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