Monthly Archives: January, 2010

Networks like ABC have hyperventilated about the "outrage" of "endangering" soldiers with rifle sights with "secret Bible codes" on them. They worried about Christian proselytizing on the campus of the U.S. Air Force Academy. Will these TV reporters notice as the Air Force responds to the liberal-media complaints by opening an outdoor chapel space for Wiccans and Druids?

If Christians in the military were emblematic of George W. Bush, would the media suggest that this great Pagan Opening is symbolic of the Obama era?

From an offical Academy press release:

The Air Force Academy chapel will add a worship area for followers of Earth-centered religions during a dedication ceremony, which is tentatively scheduled to be held at the circle March 10....

Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, NCO in charge of the Academy's Astronautics laboratories, worked with the chapel to create the official worship area for both cadets and other servicemembers in the Colorado Springs area who practice Earth-centered spirituality...

The presence of diverse worship areas reflects a sea change from five years ago, when reports surfaced alleging religious intolerance at the Academy. Sergeant Longcrier became Pagan shortly after arriving at the Academy in 2006 and said he believes the climate has improved dramatically.

"When I first arrived here, Earth-centered cadets didn't have anywhere to call home," he said. "Now, they meet every Monday night, they get to go on retreats, and they have a stone circle. ... We have representation on the Cadet Interfaith Council, and I even meet with the Chaplains at Peterson Air Force Base once a year to discuss religious climate."

Earth-centered spirituality includes traditions such as Wicca, Druidism and several other religious paths that, while relatively new, trace their roots to pre-Christian Europe, Sergeant Longcrier said. Gerald Gardner founded the first Wiccan tradition in England in 1952, with neo-Druidism following in the early 1960s.

Some Earth-centered traditions involve the worship of gods and goddesses, whereas others may involve only one deity or none at all. Reincarnation is a popular concept, as is rebirth and celebrating the cycle of the seasons.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced today that the killer regime will deliver a harsh blow to global community on February 11.
Iran Press TV reported:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the nation will deliver a harsh blow to the “global arrogance” on this year’s anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

“The Islamic Revolution opened a window to liberty for the human race, which was trapped in the dead ends of materialism,” Ahmadinejad said during a cabinet meeting on Sunday.

“If the Islamic Revolution had not occurred, liberalism and Marxism would have crushed all human dignity in their power-seeking and money-grubbing claws. Nothing would have remained of human and spiritual principles,” he added.

Ahmadinejad said that in the three decades of its history, the Islamic Revolution had inspired some great developments in the world.

The Iranian president made the remarks as the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution approaches.

The White House continues to throw out random numbers in their quest to convince the public that their behemoth stimulus bill is saving jobs at a massive rate.  The confusion has even seeped into the President's biggest support group - the media.

CNN recently announced how the stimulus plan funded nearly 600,000 jobs this past quarter.  In their article, which parrots the numbers provided by the administration's Recovery.gov Web site, CNN hints that these figures may actually be low, in that they do not include jobs created 'indirectly' (emphasis mine throughout):

"It does not tally jobs created indirectly through companies buying supplies for stimulus projects, people spending their tax cuts, increased unemployment benefits and the like."

Would adding the number of indirect jobs have provided a boost to the stimulus numbers?

Not quite, according to a source CNN can likely trust - themselves...

Two days prior to the above article, CNN ran a piece about the nation's first stimulus project, in which they similarly define indirect jobs as being created in the following manner:

"...supplying the steel, pouring the concrete and boosting the local community's economy."

However, the article points out that federal officials had estimated that the project would create 220 of these indirect jobs.  This despite a statement from agricultural economist, Michael Sykuta, who surmises "that a single construction job normally spins off two or perhaps three indirect jobs at most."

An expert claims that 3 jobs are created indirectly at most, and the feds somehow estimate 220 - a mere increase of over 7,000%.  Embellish much?

Thus, reporting of the addition of indirect jobs created or saved is nearly as futile an effort as calculating those directly created or saved. 

Case in point, the numbers being touted by that first stimulus project.  In it, the administration provides an educated guess of 30 jobs created.  Now the Recovery.gov site is using a mathematical formula to determine that the project created or saved 24.69 jobs.  But the contractor involved in the project estimates that the number of jobs saved was 10.

Review that last paragraph for a moment.  Not only are the numbers trending downward, but the terminology involved is designed to drive the numbers upward.  Here is the transformation simplified:  30 created → 24.69 created or saved → 10 saved.

All of this is moot really, as the AP has already reported that tracking jobs created or saved via the new White House method would be impossible.  Impossible.  So why would the media report these dishonest job announcements from the White House, touting calculations that have already been proven an impossible mathematical feat?

Making things even more confusing are that the 600,000 jobs cited for this quarter are actually inflated by including jobs from the previous quarter.  As the AP reported:

"Recipients of recovery money no longer have to show that a job would have been lost without the stimulus help, and they no longer are required to keep an ongoing tally of jobs saved or created. The new rules allow stimulus recipients to limit the job tally to quarterly reports, making it impossible to avoid double-counting a job that was created in one quarter and continued into the next."

Furthermore, the quarterly job report mentions nearly 600,000 jobs funded, coinciding with the AP report that the calculations will no longer count jobs saved or created, but only jobs funded.  Yet, the White House Web site continues the dishonest theme by continuing to list them as jobs 'created'.

Created, saved, funded.  Double-counting directly or indirectly created jobs. 

The Obama administration's smoke and mirrors tactics continue.  Change they should be embarrassed by...

Photo Credit:  Cleveland Plain Dealer

I'll be on vacation this week, both from work and from blogging. But before signing off, I want to comment on President Obama's appearance in Baltimore on Friday before the House Republicans.

It was, as just about everyone agrees, an impressive performance by Obama, a performance that I think confirms my view that Obama remains very much a force to be reckoned with. Conservatives who think his extraordinary communications skills vanished with the end of the presidential campaign and that he may now be a spent force are deluding themselves, in my opinion.

Right now, the public may have tuned Obama out to some degree, as they wait for evidence that the economy is improving in ways that directly benefit them. But they have not tuned him out permanently, and when they tune him back in, he will likely be quite formidable.

As for the practical impact of Obama's session with the House Republicans, I think it will be minimal. In other words, I doubt that Obama has any intention of cooperating with Republicans or that Republicans have any intention of cooperating with him.

First, there is a large gap between the substantive views of the two camps. Second, I doubt that either side sees much reason to compromise. Obama expects an economic recovery, and when it happens, he wants to be able to paint Republicans as the party of "no." Republicans, in the absence of a meaningful recovery, and given the unpopularity of much of what Obama is peddling, see no reason to say "yes" to the president. Third, even if Obama wanted to compromise with Republicans, neither the congressional Dems nor the party's base would be amenable to that approach.

But things might change next year. For one thing, Republicans might have a majority in the House or, at least, a large enough contingent to require some accommodation from the Dems. For another, Obama's popularity may improve to the point that Republicans will have an incentive to say "yes" to him from time to time. It was something like these conditions that led to occasional bipartisanship during portions of the Clinton presidency.

But for this year, at least, expect business to proceed as usual.

Michael Moore's schlockumentary "Capitalism: A Love Story" has been approved for a taxpayer-funded subsidy he once criticized.

According to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a nonpartisan Michigan-based think tank, Moore's 2009 film is set to receive an undisclosed amount of money from the Michigan Film Office.

Yet Moore, who ironically advises the state-run Office, told a forum in July 2008 that he was opposed to such subsidies (video of MCPP's findings on this matter embedded below the fold along with highlights from its January 28 press release):

"While we don't blame Mr. Moore and his production team for taking what is offered, it's striking that a movie focused on the inequities of granting taxpayer dollars to private enterprise would apply for and receive taxpayer-funded incentives," said Michael LaFaive, fiscal policy director at the Mackinac Center. "Government should not be bailing out or subsidizing Wall Street banks or main street filmmakers. As Moore knows, this marriage between government and business - in the name of creating and saving jobs - can facilitate every sort of mischief." 

At a forum in July 2008, Moore seemed critical of the program, which provides filmmakers with refundable tax credits worth as much as 42 percent of expenditures for movies made in the state.

"These are large multinational corporations - Viacom, GE, Rupert Murdoch - that own these studios," said Moore at the Traverse City event. "Why do they need our money, from Michigan, from our taxpayers, when we're already broke here? I mean, they play one state against another, and so they get all this free cash when they're making billions already in profits. What's the thinking behind that?"

So, as Moore was making a film about evil capitalists taking money from regular folk, he was actually applying for a taxpayer subsidy from a state with huge fiscal problems and staggeringly high unemployment:

"Given the state's precarious fiscal status, should struggling families and businesses continue subsidizing filmmakers?" asked LaFaive. "How can a state with the nation's worst unemployment rate justify special tax favors to millionaire filmmakers?"

I guess this is just another example of the liberal mantra "Do As I Say, Not As I Do!"  

The White House says they are one vote away from ramming Obamacare through Congress.
The radical democrats didn’t learn a thing from the Virginia gubernatorial election. The radicals didn’t learn a thing from the New Jersey gubernatorial election. The radicals didn’t learn a thing from the Massachusetts election for US senator. They’re going to ram Obamacare through Congress no-matter-what.

And, Robert Gibbs still insists that Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts is a referendum on Barack Obama’s radical policies.
Via Free Republic and Dittos Rush:

If they’re becoming disappointed in Obama, perhaps it’s not the president’s fault. [...] Read the rest »

I was reading your slap-down of the HNN folks when I came across an
article perhaps of some interest to you.  I'll sum it up in case your
Spanish isn't up to the task.  The Peruvian Communist party, which is
pretty much communist, and the Peruvian Nationalist Party, which is
pretty much fascist, (and even includes a racial superiority
component) plan to unite for Peru's next elections.  I thought it a
pretty striking validation of your thesis.

Here's the Google translation.

I was reading your slap-down of the HNN folks when I came across an article perhaps of some interest to you. I'll sum it up in case your Spanish isn't up to the task. The Peruvian Communist party, which is pretty much communist, and the Peruvian Nationalist Party, which is pretty much fascist, (and even includes a racial superiority component) plan to unite for Peru's next elections. I thought it a pretty striking validation of your thesis.

Here's the Google translation.

Rep. Keith Ellison has written a letter to President Obama urging him to use diplomatic pressure to end Israel's blockade of Gaza. 50 members of the House have signed the letter, including Ellison's fellow Minnesotans Betty McCollum and James Oberstar.

The letter pays lip service to the security needs of Southern Israel, which had been subject to repeated attacks from Gaza -- attacks which, to my knowledge, never prompted Ellison or his fellow leftists to write letters.

Ellison and his colleagues state:

We also sympathize deeply with the people of southern Israel who have suffered from abhorrent rocket and mortar attacks. We recognize that the Israeli government has imposed restrictions on Gaza out of a legitimate and keenly felt fear of continued terrorist action by Hamas and other militant groups. This concern must be addressed without resulting in the de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip. Truly, fulfilling the needs of civilians in Israel and Gaza are mutually reinforcing goals.

The first part of this passage is disingenuous and the last sentence is nonsense. The blockade is intended to prevent weapons and advanced electronic equipment from coming into Gaza. Israel permits humanitarian aid and medical supplies to enter. As Leo Rennert of the American Thinker points out:

Israel sends about 100 truckloads daily into Gaza, carrying food, medicines and other basic necessities. Plus it provides sufficient diesel fuel to meet Gaza's needs. Plus it has admitted hundreds of injured and sick Gazans into Israel where they receive the same dedicated, advanced medical care that Haitians receive in Israel's field hospital at Port-au-Prince.

In other words, Israel is striking a balance between its security concerns (which even Ellison says are legitimate) and the basic needs of Gazans. Ellison and the others also purport to strike that balance, but they fail to explain how Israel's security concerns would be met in the absence of the blockade.

The best they can do is to assert that "lifting these restrictions will give civilians in Gaza a tangible sense that diplomacy can be an effective tool for bettering their conditions." But there is no reason to believe that a "tangible sense that diplomacy can help Gazans better their conditions" will protect Southern Israel from attack. If Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza did not dissuade such attacks, Israel has no sound basis to believe that lifting the blockade will do the trick.

Lifting the blockade would, instead, lead to new demands by Israel's enemies and their supporters, including Ellison. This of course is what Ellison has in mind when he speaks of persuading Gazans of the utility of "diplomacy."

Unfortunately, the Gazans who threaten Israel's security believe in the utility of armed struggle, and this belief has nothing to do with the presence or absence of a blockade. That is why Israel should maintain the blockade.

Barack Obama's first year was a disaster for the Democrats. His approval rating has been in free-fall, declining faster, I believe, than that of any first-year President in modern history. Congress, meanwhile, is held in near-universal contempt. If this year's Congressional election were held next week, it would be a wipeout of epic proportions.

Fortunately for the Democrats, they have nine months to go, and conditions will likely become more favorable for them before they have to face the voters. President Obama, of course, doesn't have to stand for re-election for nearly three years, and if he can come out of November's elections with substantial (albeit reduced) majorities in Congress, his term might yet go down as a success--a more limited one, to be sure, than what he had in mind a year ago.

Let's start with Obama's approval rating. The Gallup poll has tracked his steady decline and now has him at a break-even point:

On the other hand, Rasmussen, which samples likely voters and is more of a leading indicator, has Obama showing a modest bounce: he is now up to -7 in the Rasmussen approval index, a poor score, but much better than the -21 he logged not long ago.

There are other reasons why President Obama and his advisers may take heart. Like George W. Bush, Obama is more popular, personally, than his policies. There is still a reservoir of good will toward a President who still strikes many as an attractive figure. If, like Bill Clinton, he can extricate himself from the policy mis-steps that enraged many Americans, he may yet be able to recover as a political force.

Then there is this: Rasmussen also finds a "deficit of trust," as voters disbelieve most of what the Democrats are telling them about the economy. For example, Americans reject Obama's claim that his stimulus measures have "put two million people back to work who would otherwise be unemployed." Only 27% of voters buy that claim, while 51% say it is false. Here, the majority is right. But skepticism only goes so far. The President says that "after two years of recession, the economy is growing again." Just 35% of voters believe that statement is true, while 50% say it is false. Here, the majority is wrong. The economy is indeed growing, despite the Democrats' best efforts to shut it down. When that fact sinks in, a great many voters will look more kindly on Obama and his fellow Dems.

Somewhat perversely, the Democrats will benefit from the Republicans' blocking of the worst aspects of their left-wing agenda. The Democrats' two most destructive policy initiatives were government medicine and cap-and-tax. Both now appear to be dead. Thus, Republicans have saved the Democrats from having to face the worst consequences of their folly, and Democrats, sadly, will get the credit if the economy continues to recover over the next nine months.

So what will happen by next November? The American economy is hard to kill. It is now growing rather rapidly as pent-up economic activity is being released. As long as the Democrats don't succeed in enacting their more radical initiatives, the surge will continue. Employment is always a lagging indicator of economic recovery, and voters' awareness of job growth lags even farther behind reality. But there is a long time between now and November, and in contrast with 1992, when the liberal media kept the fact of a resurgent economy a closely guarded secret until after Bill Clinton was safely elected, in this cycle good news will be hyped non-stop.

So the Democrats may be justified in believing that the worst will be over before they have to face the voters again. They will lose seats, no doubt, in November 2010, but most likely they will remain in control of Congress. If they trim their sails, lower their objectives and stop riling the American people with radical initiatives, Obama could well be re-elected in 2012.

That, it seems to me, is the optimistic scenario that can give the Democrats hope. In conclusion, though, it requires this qualification: it's hard to see how the Dems can get through 2010 without tax increases becoming a dominant feature of political discourse. We may or may not have a double-dip recession, but we are likely to have a double-dip in Democrats' popularity if late 2010 is dominated by discussion of whose taxes are being increased, and by how much.

Adam Andrzejewski spoke today in O’Fallon, Illinois. During his stop here in Western Illinois Andrzejewski spoke about the challenges that faced Lech Walesa in defeating the communist government in Poland. He told the standing room only crowd today that, like Lech Walesa and his Solidarity movement, he will help bring principles and values back to Illinois government.
…And Illinois certainly needs it.

“Those values of regular people need to go to Springfield and reform Springfield.”

Lech Walesa endorsed Adam Andrzejewski on Friday for Governor of Illinois.

In the final days of this primary campaign Adam Andrzejewski is surging in the polls. He has closed the gap from 9 points down to 2 points in the last 5 days with two days to go before the primary election.

More: I met with Adam today before his rally in O’Fallon and have to say that he was one of the nicest guys I have ever met in politics. He was a very successful businessman before he decided to run for governor and I believe he would be an incredible leader for Illinois.

Here’s a glimpse into the future under your Pelosi-Obama-Reid health care plan…
500,000 hospital patients sent home too soon every year (and 1,500 a day readmitted for emergency care)
The Daily Mail reported:

More than 500,000 patients every year are readmitted to hospital after apparently being sent home too soon, alarming figures reveal.

Labour’s waiting-time targets have been blamed for the 50 per cent rise in emergency readmissions of patients within days of them being discharged.

Critics said it was a scandal that almost 1,500 a day were apparently being released before they are well enough, harming their recovery.

They say the targets put pressure on hospitals to discharge people early to free up beds and have turned the NHS into a ‘revolving door’.

Elderly patients are particularly vulnerable if they are sent home too soon, charities warned. There are also fears hospitals are trying to cash in from being paid twice to treat the same patient.

And, yet Obama says your “fearmongering” for pointing out these obvious flaws of nationalized health care.

The Guardian says President Obama is attempting to set up a missile defense ring around Iran to 1) protect the Sunni allies from possible attack and 2) to disincentivize Israel from attacking Iran.

The US is dispatching Patriot defensive missiles to four countries – Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait – and keeping two ships in the Gulf capable of shooting down Iranian missiles. Washington is also helping Saudi Arabia develop a force to protect its oil installations.

American officials said the move is aimed at deterring an attack by Iran and reassuring Gulf states fearful that Tehran might react to sanctions by striking at US allies in the region. Washington is also seeking to discourage Israel from a strike against Iran by demonstrating that the US is prepared to contain any threat. …

An unnamed senior administration official told the New York Times: “Our first goal is to deter the Iranians. A second is to reassure the Arab states, so they don’t feel they have to go nuclear themselves. But there is certainly an element of calming the Israelis as well.”

This would be the threat that didn’t exist, according to those who accused the last administration of scaremongering about Iran. The very same New York Times to whom a senior official is now the latest defensive measures wrote in 2007 that:

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb. …

Rather than painting Iran as a rogue, irrational nation determined to join the club of nations with the bomb, the estimate states Iran’s “decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs.”

The immediate reason for Washington’s deployment were Iranian missile tests. The Wall Street Journal describes the shift in the President’s policy towards Iran as “after months of attempting to engage Iran in nuclear diplomacy, the administration has been working in recent weeks to win an international consensus for a new round of sanctions against Iran.” Far from having abandoned the policy of engagement in favor of containment, the Obama administration is actually using the missile deployment as one more tool in its arsenal to entice Iran to the bargaining table. A few more missiles and few more sanctions and Ayatollahs will as it were, have their “come to Jesus” moment.

But not everyone is buying it. One subtle sign of how the region is responding to Washington’s policies is examined by Lee Smith who notes that several Sunni majority countries are refurbishing synagoguges as cultural symbols and as messages that the Jew is no longer the enemy it once was. He writes:

And yet if you listen closely there is a deeper and more important subtext to the Arabs’ strange and sudden fascination with the remains of the vanished Jewish communities of the Middle East. These restorations of Hebraic antiquity are not simply a safe way of acknowledging the longevity, and thus legitimacy, of the Middle East’s oldest surviving religious community. They are also the means by which Arab governments have begun to recognize that community’s influence and power over their fates. For it is Jewish warplanes, not Jewish remains, that have Arab princes and presidents captivated. Nowhere has this been made more explicit than in the recent valentine to Mossad chief Meir Dagan published in Egypt’s semi-official daily newspaper Al-Ahram, calling him “the Superman of the Jewish state.” Dagan is worthy of Cairo’s love insofar as he “has dealt painful blows to the Iranian nuclear program.” Thus the only question Egyptians ask a visitor from Washington: When will the Israelis finally bomb the Iranian nuclear program?

Egypt and its Arab allies believe that Obama’s engagement with the Iranians will fail, that the Russians and Chinese will not join a sanctions regime, and that the Americans will eventually move to a policy of cold war-style containment and nuclear deterrence. The American president and his Middle East adviser, Dennis Ross, intimated that the Israelis might take dramatic action against Iran’s nuclear program, confirmation for many Arab observers that the United States has taken its own military options off the table. This is not the case, these same observers believe, for the Israelis, who have acted against Iran’s eastern Mediterranean allies—Hezbollah and Hamas—and will, with luck, take action against Iran itself.

Israeli strength and Arab weakness are therefore seen as part of a common pattern that will yet bring about the defeat of a common enemy: Iran. Here in Beirut there’s talk that Prime Minister Hariri’s recent trip to Syria, where he was coerced into humbling himself before the regime that allegedly assassinated his father, was merely a maneuver in a holding pattern until the Israelis strike. Sources close to Hariri explained to me that Saudi Arabia, the young prime minister’s patron, believes an attack is imminent and that there is still time to wrest Syria away from the Iranians. Hariri’s visit was seen as a down payment on an expected Syrian realignment.

Of course the touching Sunni belief that the Jewish state will save them from Iran — something that must rank as among the most astounding ironies of history — may prove to be completely unfounded. But it is indicative of the degree to which the administration has abandoned the traditional American role of hegemon that the Arab states are clutching at such straws. The President campaigned on the promise that he would restore America’s stature in the world. What he has actually transformed America’s stature into will presently be shown.

Barack Obama is using our public school system to recruit for his Alinsky-inspired private army. Organizing for America (OFA), formerly Obama For America, is recruiting in our high schools to “build on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda” – that is, his agenda of socialism for the United States of America.

Chuck, a reader of my website AtlasShrugs.com, has a daughter in the eleventh grade in a public high school, Perry Local in Massillon, Ohio. The teacher in her government class passed out a propaganda recruiting paper – headed with Obama’s distinctive “O” logo — asking students to sign up as interns for Organizing for America. You can see the entire intern recruiting form at AtlasShrugs.com.

And what will these “interns” be force-fed? The mother’s milk of the left — anti-war agitation, anti-capitalism, Marx, Lenin, Ayers, LGBT agenda promotion, global warming, pro-jihad, and illegal immigration. For starters. Maybe “Ellie Light,” who has in the last few weeks published the same Letter to the Editor supporting and defending Obama in over a dozen newspapers across the country, can give lessons in astroturfing.

The form carries a recommended reading list, including Rules for Radicals by the notorious hard left community organizer and Obama mentor Saul Alinsky; two Huffington Post articles by Zack Exley, “The New Organizers” and “Obama Field Organizers Plot a Miracle.” The first of those, published in October 2008, enthuses about “an insurgent generation of organizers” inside the Obama campaign that has, “almost without anyone noticing … built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people’s organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level.”

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Exley operated the website www.gwbush.com, which was filled with lies about George W. Bush that were designed to kill his chance to become President. The site’s headline was “Just Say ‘No’ to a Former Cocaine User for President.”

Also included on the OFA internship recommended reading list are Stir It Up: Lessons from Community Organizing and Advocacy by the leftist activist Rinku Sen, and sections of Obama’s book Dreams from My Father dealing with his days as a community organizer in Chicago.

And what is the point of all this propaganda and community organizing? To elect more Democrats, of course. This internship program is geared towards the 2010 elections, using our kids as the Democrats’ goons. The internship form begins with a nakedly partisan and propagandistic appeal: “Organizing for America, the successor organization to Obama for America, is building on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda of change. OFA is launching a national internship program connecting students all over the country with our organization on the ground – working to make the change we fought so hard for in 2008 a reality in 2010 and beyond.”

Can you imagine if the Republicans attempted such a stunt? Obama is using the public school system to help ensure Democratic victories in 2010, 2012, and thereafter.

This is incredible. And evil. And it is no accident. Obama is poisoning our public school system. He acts as if it’s his own private recruiting farm. This isn’t the first time, either. In September 2009, all public school students were forced to listen to his creepy speech about working hard in school. During the campaign the Obama camp had “Kids for Obama Parades.” And public school teachers more than once were caught indoctrinating children into the Obama cult. Remember the uniformed children chanting about how Obama had motivated them to succeed? P.J. Gladnick wrote about that video at Newsbusters in October 2008 that it was “reminiscent of North Korean kids chanting out their praises for the ‘Dear Leader.’” And don’t forget those many videos of public school kids singing brainwashed tunes of Obama praise.

Long before he was President, Obama’s camp had targeted children and started building a cult of adulation around their hero. The children’s book Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope by Nikki Grimes sets Obama up as a demigod: “Ever since Barack Obama was young, Hope has lived inside him. From the beaches of Hawaii to the streets of Chicago, from the jungles of Indonesia to the plains of Kenya, he has held on to Hope. Even as a boy, Barack knew he wasn’t quite like anybody else, but through his journeys he found the ability to listen to Hope and become what he was meant to be: a bridge to bring people together.”

And now once again our perverse public school system abandons academic standards and achievement, replacing them with radical leftist activism from leftwing Alinsky indoctrinators.

Children must be advised to expose this ugly propaganda. Children must tell their parents how they are being used and manipulated. Parents, warn your kids. Better yet, home school. Don’t let Barack Obama recruit his drones from your family.

Salon editor Joan Walsh said Sunday that MSNBC's Chris Matthews roots for Barack Obama.

Appearing on CNN's "Reliable Sources," Walsh was asked by host Howard Kurtz to comment on Matthews' remark that he had forgotten the President was black during Wednesday's State of the Union address.

"There's no such thing as post-racial, and so I disagree with Chris about that," said Walsh.

"But on the other hand, I think his heart really is in the right place in terms of -- you know, he roots for this president" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: There tends to be a one-liner that everybody remembers from these kinds of speeches. In this case, though, it was not spoken by the president. It was Chris Matthews.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS MATTHEWS: He is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Joan Walsh, I've got less than a minute. Your reaction to those words?

JOAN WALSH, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SALON: There's no such thing as post-racial, and so I disagree with Chris about that. But on the other hand, I think his heart really is in the right place in terms of -- you know, he roots for this president. Like that or not, people criticize him for that. But, you know, he was trying to say something positive on...

KURTZ: He definitely was trying to say something positive.

But did he put it rather clumsily, would you say, David Frum?

WALSH: I would say it was clumsy, yes.

KURTZ: David?

DAVID FRUM, FRUMFORUM.COM: I think the meaning of it so leaps out at people, it almost defies comment. You just wonder what happens all the other hours of his life.

KURTZ: All right.

Isn't it nice how liberals always forgive the transgressions of other liberals by saying, "Their  heart was in the right place?"

Of course, it's certainly no surprise Matthews roots for this President. He told us two days after Obama was elected that was his job: 

What's concerning is how obvious he is about it, and how others in the media -- even those on his side of the aisle -- are not only beginning to notice, but also criticize him for it.

Maybe this is part of a growing trend: one liberal in the press says something REALLY over the top, and others quickly respond.

But why?

Is it because leftwing journalists are getting sick of hearing how liberal the media are, and they want to squelch the most blatant examples to promote the appearance of impartiality?

Or is it more selfish than that?

After all, if you are willing to publicly call out one of your own, maybe it makes YOU look less liberal.

Whatever the reason, let's hope it continues for it really is great theatre watching these folks go after each other rather than conservatives for a change. 

CBS White House correspondent Chip Reid took his Friday night cheering routine for Barack Obama’s "command performance" at the GOP meeting in Baltimore and repeated it on Sunday’s Reliable Sources on CNN. "The president realy did wallop them there," he insisted. "The Republicans were fighting them with one hand, maybe both hands, tied behind their back."

HOWARD KURTZ: How is it that the cameras stayed only on the president and we didn't get to actually see the Republican members of Congress that were asking those questions?

REID: Well, I think in many ways, the president really did wallop them there. I think the White House feels that way, and it was because the Republicans were fighting with one hand, maybe both hands, tied behind their back.

First of all, they were not on camera asking the questions. It was just a disembodied voice, at least in the live version, because they didn't have it set up so they could have two live cameras at the same time. It was just a technical thing. Later, we used the questions in my Evening News piece, for example. But if you were watching it live, it was like the president alone was up there.

KURTZ: Up on Mount Olympus.

REID: Exactly. And they would ask the question. And they're in no more "you lie" moment mode right now. The Republicans are back off from that. They are not in a position to -- they wanted so badly to say that's nonsense, or you know that's not true, to fight back, but they couldn't because of the format. So, basically what happened, whatever sports metaphor you want to use, mine is that they would ask a question, then the Republican defense would leave the field and Obama would run for a touchdown because they couldn't fight back.

Kurtz also played a clip of Obama in his State of the Union address attacking TV pundits: "The more the TV pundits reduce serious debates to silly arguments, big issues into sound bites, our citizens turn away." That sounds like an attack on the talk-TV titans, but Kurtz suggested to Reid he was being attacked, and Reid said he would accept the criticism, since some of it’s justified:

KURTZ: Look, the president, Chip Reid, went after Republicans, the Supreme Court, sitting right there, but also used your airwaves and CNN's airwaves, everybody's airwaves, to go after the likes of you. Were you offended?

REID: Oh, not at all. That's part of the game. I would expect him to, and some of it's justified.
(Crosstalk)

KURTZ: I can't recall hearing the media be a target in a State of the Union speech before. Maybe sometimes.

REID: That may be true, but he certainly has targeted -- he targeted me personally at a town hall once. He saw me off to the side and he basically made that same attack, and said, "Right, Chip?" And the whole audience turned and looked at me. Unfortunately, I wasn't in a position to defend myself or my profession. At that time, anyway.

The Science & Public Policy Institute has published an important paper on the manipulations to which surface temperature records have been subjected in order to promote the global warming dogma. It's called Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception? You should download and read it all; this is the executive summary:

1. Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and unidirectionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant "global warming" in the 20th century.

2. All terrestrial surface-temperature databases exhibit very serious problems that render them useless for determining accurate long-term temperature trends.

3. All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate observed warming both regionally and globally.

4. Global terrestrial temperature data are gravely compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once existed are no longer reporting.

5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.

6. Contamination by urbanization, changes in land use, improper siting, and inadequately-calibrated instrument upgrades further overstates warming.

7. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in recent years have shown the overstatement of observed longer term warming is 30-50% from heat-island contamination alone.

8. Cherry-picking of observing sites combined with interpolation to vacant data grids may make heat-island bias greater than 50% of 20th-century warming.

9. In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Comprehensive coverage has only been available since 2003, and shows no warming.

10. Satellite temperature monitoring has provided an alternative to terrestrial stations in compiling the global lower-troposphere temperature record. Their findings are increasingly diverging from the station-based constructions in a manner consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the surface temperature record.

11. NOAA and NASA, along with CRU, were the driving forces behind the systematic hyping of 20th-century "global warming".

12. Changes have been made to alter the historical record to mask cyclical changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multidecadal ocean and solar changes.

13. Global terrestrial data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.

14. An inclusive external assessment is essential of the surface temperature record of CRU, GISS and NCDC "chaired and paneled by mutually agreed to climate scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the evaluations."

15. Reliance on the global data by both the UNIPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP also requires a full investigation and audit.

Illinois Gubernatorial Candidate and conservative Adam Andrzejewski rallied supporters in O’Fallon, Illinois this afternoon.
It was a standing room only crowd.

While campaigning in O’Fallon the Andrzejewski team announced that Adam had just received the endorsement of the largest Chicago Polish paper today. And…. It was announced that Adam had surged to within two points in an internal poll conducted by a conservative organization in Washington DC. Andrzejewski was 8 points down earlier in the week in the Illinois race.

It may have been the endorsement by Lech Walesa that helped Andrzejewski surge in the latest polling. And this is despite the fact that the mainstream Chicago news mostly ignored Walesa’s historic endorsement.

I’ll post more video from the rally today later today.

By the way: The mainstream media may not be tuned into Adam Andrzejewski but the internet sure is. And, today I had the great honor of introducing Adam at the rally.

More… The leader in the GOP race right now is Kirk Dillard who endorsed Obama.

UPDATE: Race 4 2008 has a great take on Andrzejewski’s surge.

Keyboard Militia has more on the rally today.

Tom Friedman reporting from Davos says the “elite” gathered at this august forum are worried about “political instability” in the United States.

“Political instability” was a phrase normally reserved for countries like Russia or Iran or Honduras. But now, an American businessman here remarked to me, “people ask me about ‘political instability’ in the U.S. We’ve become unpredictable to the world.”

The source of this worry appears to be the reluctance of the American voter to follow the leader. Friedman writes “You can understand why foreigners are uneasy. They look at America and see a president elected by a solid majority, coming into office riding a wave of optimism, controlling both the House and the Senate. Yet, a year later, he can’t win passage of his top legislative priority: health care.” What they would prefer to see, in Friedman’s words is a ‘Confucian-Communist-Capitalist’ consensus.

under the umbrella of a one-party state, with a lot of government guidance, strictly controlled capital markets and an authoritarian decision-making process that is capable of making tough choices and long-term investments, without having to heed daily public polls.

Not that Friedman is necessarily buying it. But he does get the sense that less than a dozen Republican senators stand between the nation and a negotiated consensus that will allow America to go forward. And he’s not alone in wanting to see Obama lead Washington out of the wilderness to the new promised land of Hope and Change. Frank Rich at the NYT says John McCain is unpatriotic for refusing to hold out his hand to the President. Rich writes: “How satisfying it was to watch him [Obama] provoke Alito into a “You lie!” snit.”

One year into Obama’s term we still don’t know whether he has what it takes to get American governance functioning again. … John McCain epitomizes the unpatriotic opposition … Perhaps McCain was sneering at Obama because of the Beltway’s newest unquestioned cliché: one year after a new president takes office he is required to stop blaming his predecessor for the calamities left behind. Who dreamed up that canard — Alito? F.D.R. never followed it.

Tell ‘em Frank, tell ‘em. And while you’re at it, bring ‘em back alive! Anna Quindlen of Newsweek exhorts her leaders to “Follow the Leader”.

The Democrats are in danger of learning the wrong lessons from their Massachusetts defeat. After all, they seem to have learned the wrong lessons from their electoral triumph just a little more than a year ago. They are the majority, and they should act like it—boldly, decisively. Let the Republicans filibuster, and be confident that the sight would irritate, then enrage, most of the American people. …

A very smart man once said, “Telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won’t do.” That man was Barack Obama, and that attitude is one reason he got elected. He should stick to that position, and the American people should embrace it.

Too bad they all haven’t embraced it. And that’s called ‘political instability’ in Davos.

Barack Obama received no bump in the polls following his angry State of the Union Address where attacked bankers, conservatives, insurance companies, Republicans, lobbyists, and George Bush.
LifeNews reported:

The Gallup daily presidential approval tracking poll shows pro-abortion President Barack Obama received no bump in his approval ratings following his State of the Union speech.

In the three days following the speech, Gallup shows Obama with a 48 percent approval and 46 percent disapproval rating — unchanged from before the address.

Philip Klein, a writer at the conservative magazine American Spectator gives his insight on the poll.

James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal found a liberal who cheered the recent Supreme Court decision on freedom of political speech: Floyd Abrams, an attorney who represented the New York Times successfully in the Pentagon Papers case in the 1970s. (He’s also the father of former MSNBC executive and host Dan Abrams). In the Journal's Weekend Inteview, Abrams told Taranto it’s ironic that so many media entities support freedom of speech for their companies, but not for non-media companies:

The First Amendment is the lifeblood of the press. Yet most newspapers—the one you are reading is a notable exception—take an editorial position similar to that of the Times. Why? "I think that two things are at work," Mr. Abrams says. "One is that there are an awful lot of journalists that do not recognize that they work for corporations....

"A second is an ideological one. I think that there is a way of viewing this decision which...looks not at whether the First Amendment was vindicated but whether what is simply referred to as, quote, democracy, unquote, was vindicated. My view is, we live in a world in which the word 'democracy' is debatable...It is not a word which should determine interpretation of a constitution and a Bill of Rights, which is at its core a legal document as well as an affirming statement of individual freedom," he says. "Justice Potter Stewart . . . warned against giving up the protections of the First Amendment in the name of its values. . . . The values matter, the values are real, but we protect the values by protecting the First Amendment."

A third factor surely is that McCain-Feingold exempted media corporations from its strictures against electioneering. Under this regime, free speech was not a constitutional right but a privilege granted by Congress to companies like those that own the Times and the Journal, but denied to other businesses, labor unions and nonprofit advocacy corporations.

Taranto also brought up the curious case of the ACLU:

Another corporation whose speech was chilled by McCain-Feingold was the American Civil Liberties Union. In his 2005 book, "Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment," Mr. Abrams reports that during the 2004 campaign, the ACLU "broadcast advertisements denouncing the Patriot Act but refrained, as McCain-Feingold required, from criticizing (or even mentioning) President Bush as it did so." Writing for the court in Citizens United, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that if the ACLU "creates a Web site telling the public to vote for a Presidential candidate in light of that candidate's defense of free speech," it would be guilty of a felony under McCain-Feingold.

Yet even though the ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the justices to rule as they did, its Web site has been silent on the decision.

Abrams recently appeared before an ACLU panel trying to talk them out of the notion of reversing their opposition to limits on corporate free speech.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Sunday that CNN's Larry King does a better job interrogating his guests than Justice Department officials did with Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after his capture.

Speaking with John King on CNN's "State of the Union" about whether terrorist trials should be held in civil courts, McConnell said, "What we need to do is deny these people a show trial."

He continued, "We need to proceed to interrogate them, which you couldn't do obviously with the Christmas bomber."

Then came the zinger, "I mean, Larry King would have a more thorough interrogation of one of his witnesses than the Christmas bomber had by the Justice Department" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Politico):

JOHN KING, HOST: If you ask the White House about this, it highlights -- they say it's not just the president, it's not just Attorney General Holder, that General David Petraeus says he believes a public trial at a federal courthouse is the best way to do it so that it's not an al Qaeda recruiting tool.

That Secretary Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration at the Defense Department, also they believes a trial in the federal court system is preferable to a closed trial in the military commission. And that the CIA operatives leading the fight against these guys in Yemen, in Somalia, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, also believe that if you did it in a closed setting in a military commission it would be a powerful recruiting tool.

If General Petraeus, Secretary Gates, and the intelligence leaders say, do it in court, why do you say that's a bad idea?

SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KENTUCKY): I simply disagree and so do the American people.

Look, Guantanamo is -- it was not there before they started attacking us in the '90s, before they attacked us on 9/11. Osama bin Laden did not mention Guantanamo in his last video. What we need to do is deny these people a show trial. We need to proceed to interrogate them, which you couldn't do obviously with the Christmas bomber.

I mean, Larry King would have a more thorough interrogation of one of his witnesses than the Christmas bomber had by the Justice Department. This is really dangerous nonsense. We have a way to do it, John. Interrogate them, detain them, and try them in military commissions offshore at Guantanamo from which no one has ever escaped.

The American people think that's the best way to do it. Most of the legal experts that we talk to think it's the best way to do it.

Indeed. 

More years ago than I’ll admit, I was a student in a class of the man who became my mentor, Tom Willett. [...] Read the rest »

One of the lessons learned from fighting roadside bombs is that that it is often more effective to go after the bomb makers than the bombs. The physics of counteracting IEDS that are already in close proximity work are against the defender. Once the bomb is upon you the scope for action rapidly shrinks. Ten meters standoff and 1 second to go leave very small margins for error. Demanding something that can stop a bomb within those parameters is akin to demanding magic. The same can be said of fighting aerial IEDs, or passenger-carried bombs.

Now it is harder than ever to keep a bomb from getting close.

About 2 months before the Christmas Day bomber struck CBS News produced a video describing the possible use of bombs carried within a body cavity, noting the technique had been used to try and kill “Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, head of Saudi Arabia’s counter terrorism operations … [using] a trick from the narcotics trade – which has long smuggled drugs in body cavities – Asieri [the assassin] had a pound of high explosives, plus a detonator inserted in his rectum.” Before he was allowed to get close to the prince, Asieri was subjected to a much more arduous screening than that given to ordinary airline passengers.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

The problem for the internal bomb, as it is sometimes called, continues to be the detonator.  The al-Qaeda asssassin sent to get Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef needed a wireless triggering device, implying a receiver which in principle can be detected.  However there are now reports that al-Qaeda is working on surgically implanted PETN bombs which can be ignited by injections by persons posing as diabetics. In this case the detonator, as in the case of the Christmas Day bomber, will be a syringe.  This remains a weakness for al-Qaeda but eventually they’ll think of something.

Since actual names of the persons boarding a flight are known only shortly before the airplane takes off, the operational problems of defending against an IED and the airline bomb are similar. The defender has too little time and too little space to react even assuming the dots are all connected correctly. The obvious thing to is to apply the same strategy used in combating terrestrial IEDs, which is to go after the network. That is where the real payoff is. Billions of dollars can be spent on armoring vehicles and installing more and more detection devices in airports but they are of limited use.

Ultimately terrorism has to be defeated by offensive action. The physics of the game mean attacks not likely to be defeated once they have been set in motion. Still less effective are measures taken after the fact a strategy which held a strange appeal for Janet Napolitano, who congratulated herself on everything working like clockwork after the Christmas Day attack.  Nor is prosecution much good in operational terms, especially when the suspects cannot even be interrogated. “Bringing them to justice” is a good sound bite but it operationally it is a pretty meaningless one. The crime is already committed, the victims are already dead and the perp is already lawyered up. In the fight against the terrorist attacker the defensive strategy is probably a losing one.

What we do need is protection against the outliers. There are a limited number of investment banks (or perhaps insurance companies or other firms) the failure of which would be so disturbing as to raise concern about a broader market disruption. In such cases, authority by a relevant supervisory agency to limit their capital and leverage would be important, as the president has proposed.

To meet the possibility that failure of such institutions may nonetheless threaten the system, the reform proposals of the Obama administration and other governments point to the need for a new “resolution authority.” Specifically, the appropriately designated agency should be authorized to intervene in the event that a systemically critical capital market institution is on the brink of failure. The agency would assume control for the sole purpose of arranging an orderly liquidation or merger. Limited funds would be made available to maintain continuity of operations while preparing for the demise of the organization.

To help facilitate that process, the concept of a “living will” has been set forth by a number of governments. Stockholders and management would not be protected. Creditors would be at risk, and would suffer to the extent that the ultimate liquidation value of the firm would fall short of its debts.

To put it simply, in no sense would these capital market institutions be deemed “too big to fail.” What they would be free to do is to innovate, to trade, to speculate, to manage private pools of capital — and as ordinary businesses in a capitalist economy, to fail.

The strongest argument against this proposal is that the government would break the rules; that regulators would save the firm from liquidation or merger; that they would indefinitely put the firm on life support and slowly twist it to serve political ends, as they are now doing with regard to Fannie and Freddie.

But the bailouts set the unfortunate precedent that the government can do pretty much whatever it wants when faced with a financial catastrophe, and there isn't much we can do about it. Binding it more tightly is a worthy long-term project. But in the immediate term, what Volcker proposes makes sense. No more bailouts. Give policymakers a credible alternative -- by credible I mean nobody believes the government will let these monsters declare bankruptcy post-Lehman Brothers -- which actually lets failed firms fail, no matter how big and interconnected there are.

What we do need is protection against the outliers. There are a limited number of investment banks (or perhaps insurance companies or other firms) the failure of which would be so disturbing as to raise concern about a broader market disruption. In such cases, authority by a relevant supervisory agency to limit their capital and leverage would be important, as the president has proposed.

To meet the possibility that failure of such institutions may nonetheless threaten the system, the reform proposals of the Obama administration and other governments point to the need for a new “resolution authority.” Specifically, the appropriately designated agency should be authorized to intervene in the event that a systemically critical capital market institution is on the brink of failure. The agency would assume control for the sole purpose of arranging an orderly liquidation or merger. Limited funds would be made available to maintain continuity of operations while preparing for the demise of the organization.

To help facilitate that process, the concept of a “living will” has been set forth by a number of governments. Stockholders and management would not be protected. Creditors would be at risk, and would suffer to the extent that the ultimate liquidation value of the firm would fall short of its debts.

To put it simply, in no sense would these capital market institutions be deemed “too big to fail.” What they would be free to do is to innovate, to trade, to speculate, to manage private pools of capital — and as ordinary businesses in a capitalist economy, to fail.

The strongest argument against this proposal is that the government would break the rules; that regulators would save the firm from liquidation or merger; that they would indefinitely put the firm on life support and slowly twist it to serve political ends, as they are doing now with regard to Fannie and Freddie.

But the bailouts set the unfortunate precedent that the government can do pretty much whatever it wants when faced with a financial catastrophe, and there isn't much we can do about it. Binding it more tightly is a worthy long-term project. But in the immediate term, what Volcker proposes makes sense. No more bailouts. Give policymakers a credible alternative -- by credible I mean nobody believes the government will let these monsters declare bankruptcy post-Lehman Brothers -- which actually lets failed firms fail, no matter how big and interconnected there are.

More, Glenn Reynolds writes in The Examiner. More power; more influence; more respect:

So far the Tea Party's record is looking pretty good. But what happens next? Many people -- er, well, many pundits, anyway -- complain that the Tea Party movement is entirely oppositional: For a brief moment, the key buzzword was "nihilistic," though the connection between Turgenev and Tea Parties seems rather tenuous.

In fact, Tea Partiers seem quite clear on what they're for: A limited government, one that keeps its nose out of their business and focuses on things like protecting the country in preference to redistributing income.

As blogger Freeman Hunt wrote recently:"You want a big tent? It's fiscal conservatism. The people are overwhelmingly in favor of it."

To me, that's the most striking thing about the current political climate: a preference for smaller government, traditionally regarded as the essence of conservatism, no longer seems to be controversial. Even some liberals claim to be in favor of it. On the other hand, the most striking fact about the political climate, not of the moment but of the last 50 years, is that no matter how often voters choose smaller government at the polls, the government never shrinks. It only grows--through Republican and Democratic Congresses and Democratic and Republican administrations.

Is it possible the Tea Party movement could be different, or is it undertaking a task that modern American history has proven hopeless? Time will tell. For what it's worth, as Reynolds notes, we live in an era in which disintermediation is all the rage, and the Army of Davids, a category into which the tea partiers surely fall, sometimes wins.

To participate in formulating the tea partiers' Contract From America, go here.

Read this post »

There was a marvelous fireworks display on Sunday's "This Week" when Fox News chairman Roger Ailes squared off against liberal media powerhouses Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman, and substitute host Barbara Walters.

The one standing at the end likely didn't vote for Barack Obama.

In the second half of the Roundtable segment, Walters began by asking her conservative guest about the White House's much-publicized battle with his network.

Almost as if scripted, this teed up Huffington and Krugman to voice their displeasure with Fox.

Fortunately, Ailes was up to the challenge making for a very entertaining segment (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript and commentary): 

BARBARA WALTERS, HOST: That was President Obama appearing before House Republicans at their annual retreat on Friday, an unusually open and honest back-and-forth, and we'll talk more about that with our roundtable. George Will, Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman, and Roger Ailes, who is chairman and CEO of Fox News.

Roger, just let me begin with you. You have had your own back-and-forth with the White House. They were not very happy with you, banned you for a while. Have you kissed and made up? Is it hunky-dory?

ROGER AILES. CHAIRMAN FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Well, they tried to ban us. They tried to break the pool, but the other networks stepped up and protected Fox on it, because it was tortuous (ph) interference with a contractual relationship and sort of tramping around on the Constitution...

WALTERS: But now you're OK.

AILES: We're fine. I mean, we were -- it was not as bad as it was played, and things are not as great (ph) as they should be, but we have a good dialogue. And I saw the president and his wife at the media Christmas party. They were very gracious, very nice, both of them. And we have a dialogue every day with them.

WALTERS: Aw, shucks. It was more fun the other way.

AILES: Well, I'll pick a fight if you want. I mean, I'll be happy to get into one.

(LAUGHTER)

AILES: But I think there will be others. We have differences, but...

Round one to Ailes. Next up was the uber-liberal Huffington:

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, Roger, it's not a question of picking a fight. And aren't you concerned about the language that Glenn Beck is using, which is, after all, inciting the American people? There is a lot of suffering out there, as you know, and when he talks about people being slaughtered, about who is going to be the next in the killing spree...

(CROSSTALK)

AILES: Well, he was talking about Hitler and Stalin slaughtering people. So I think he was probably accurate. Also, I'm a little....

HUFFINGTON: No, no, he was talking about this administration.

AILES: I don't -- I think he speaks English. I don't know, but I mean, I don't misinterpret any of his words. He did say one unfortunate thing, which he apologized for, but that happens in live television. So I don't think it's -- I think if we start going around as the word police in this business, it will be...

HUFFINGTON: It's not about the word police. It's about something deeper. It's about the fact that there is a tradition as the historian Richard Hofstetter said, in American politics, of the paranoid style. And the paranoid style is dangerous when there is real pain out there. I mean, with...

AILES: I agree with you. I read something on your blog that said I looked like J. Edgar Hoover, I had a face like a fist, and I was essentially a malignant tumor...

HUFFINGTON: Well, that's...

AILES: And I thought -- and then it got nasty after that...

HUFFINGTON: ... that was never by anybody that we had...

(CROSSTALK)

AILES: Then it really went nasty, and I thought, gee, maybe Arianna ought to cut this out, but...

Round two for Ailes. Enter Paul Krugman stage FAR left:

PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: If I can just -- you know, what bothers me is not the nasty language. Glenn Beck doesn't, you know, it's not -- what bothers me is the fact that people are not getting informed, that we are going through major debates on crucial policy issues; the public is not learning about them. And you know, you can say, well, they can read the New York Times, which will tell them what they need to know, but you know, most people don't. They don't read it thoroughly. They get -- on this health care thing, I'm a little obsessed with it, because it's a key issue for me. People did not know what was in the plan, and some of that was just poor reporting, some of it was deliberate misinformation. I have here in front of me when President Obama said, you know, why -- he said rhetorically, why aren't we going to do a health care plan like the Europeans have, with a government-run program, and then proceeds to explain whey he's different. On Fox News, what appeared was a clipped quote, "why don't we have a European-style health care plan?" Right, deliberate misinformation.

All of that has contributed to a situation where the public...

AILES: Wait a minute, wait a minute...

KRUGMAN: I can show you the clip, and you can...

(CROSSTALK)

AILES: The American people are not stupid...

KRUGMAN: No, they're not stupid. They are uninformed.

AILES: If you say -- if (inaudible) words are in the Constitution, if the founding fathers managed -- they didn't need 2,000 pages of lawyers to hide things, then tell, then tell...

KRUGMAN: Oh, come on. Legislation always is long.

AILES: ... then tell people it's an emergency that we get it, but it won't go into effect for three years. So you don't have time to read it, you...

(CROSSTALK)

Round three for Ailes.

Clearly sensing they were losing, Huffington and Krugman decided to try a tag-team:

KRUGMAN: People, again, this was a plan that is -- it's actually a Republican plan. It's Mitt Romney's health care plan. People were led to believe that it was socialism. That's -- and that was deliberate. That wasn't just poor reporting.

(CROSSTALK)

HUFFINGTON: There are two separate problems...

AILES: Let me ask you a question, just as an example...

(CROSSTALK)

HUFFINGTON: ... let me just answer that, because there is a problem in the fact that there wasn't a plan. There wasn't a plan that people could understand. There were (inaudible) plans with a lot of differences. But there is also a problem when it comes to the words being used. Words matter. And words that are actually being used by people we hire are different than the words that are being used by commenters on our sites, like you mentioned.

(CROSSTALK)

AILES: But there are 300 million people who have a health care plan that they are happy with. There are about 30 million people who don't have a health care plan. So as an executive, what do you do? You go fix the 30 million. You don't go over here and upset the apple cart for 300 million...

KRUGMAN: Which is exactly what the plan was.

AILES: No, no, no...

KRUGMAN: It was trying (ph) to leave the employer-based health care...

(CROSSTALK)

AILES: ... $500 billion away from old people.

The Huffington-Krugman tag-team didn't work. So, Walters moments later jumped into the ring and tried to weaken their opponent by bringing up the former governor of Alaska:

WALTERS: I just want to ask, in the few seconds we have left, Sarah Palin is now on your payroll. OK? 2012, presidential candidate?

AILES: I have no -- no idea, no idea whether she even wants to. I don't think she -- she knows. I mean, everybody hates her who's ever written a book because they didn't sell many. She wrote a book and it sold two million in two weeks, and so now they hate her, they have a new reason to hate her. I don't know...

WALTERS: But you hired her to be a commentator. Do you think -- so you must think she has some qualifications? She seems to be very popular with certain groups. Do you think she has the qualifications to be president?

AILES: FOX News is fair and balanced. We had Geraldine Ferraro on for 10 years as the only woman the Democrats ever nominated. Now we have the only woman that the Republicans nominated. I'm not in politics, I'm in ratings. We're willing.

HUFFINGTON: Roger, you clearly are in ratings, but if you are in ratings, can you explain to me why FOX went away from the meeting the president was having in -- why did you go away, 20 minutes before the end?

AILES: Because we're the most trusted name in news.

HUFFINGTON: OK and on that note...

WALTERS: I thought we were the most trusted name in news.

AILES: And we believe two liberal polls have now proven it.

Ouch. Say good night!

Add it all up, and Ailes took on three of the left's media darlings without getting a scratch.

The next time he's invited on the producers should substitute another liberal for George Will to see if four leftists can fare better against the Fox News chairman than three.

I don't know about you, but I can't wait.

In earlier posts – here, here, and here – I drew attention to the pre-eminence of Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu in and for a time after the eighteenth century, and I suggested that at least two of the reasons for his pre-eminence are still pertinent today. There is at least one other such reason, and it, too, deserves careful consideration.

In The Spirit of Laws, Montesquieu pays exceedingly close attention to the political psychology regnant within the various forms of government that he examines. Republics have as their psychological principle, he tells us, virtue or love of the fatherland and its laws; and, when this fails, they collapse. As we have just seen, monarchies have as their principle the love of honor; and, when monarchs make holding public office degrading and demeaning, they subvert their own authority. And by the same token, despotisms have as their principle fear, and they are corrupt through and through. In The Spirit of Laws, all of this is made crystal clear.

But when it comes time for Montesquieu to specify the principle or passion that sets in motion “the republic concealed as a monarchy” that he discovered when he visited England, he is ostentatiously silent. Eventually, however, in oblique fashion, he will tiptoe around the question.

In writing of England, he observes that “this nation” is “always inflamed” and that “it is more easily conducted by its passions than by reason, which never produces any great effects on the minds of men.” And in speaking of the separation of powers and of the distinct functions assigned the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, he argues that when, “by the necessary motion of things, they are constrained to move, they are forced to move in concert.” One cannot say of the English constitution what Montesquieu says of despotism: that it “jumps up, so to speak, before our eyes”; that “it is uniform throughout”; that “the passions alone” – above all, the human inclination to give way to fear – “are necessary for its establishment.” The modern republic is, after all, “a masterpiece of legislation,” a product of chance and prudent artifice. One can say of it, instead, what he says of monarchy: that, in it, “policy makes great things happen with as little of virtue as it can” and that, “just as in the most beautiful machines, art also employs as little of movement, of forces, of wheels as is possible. The state subsists independently of love of the fatherland, of desire for true glory, of self-renunciation, of the sacrifice of one’s dearest interests, & of all those heroic virtues which we find in the ancients & know only from hearing them spoken of.” Moreover, one can say that, once a modern republic is instituted, “the human passions that set it in motion” are “alone” necessary to sustain it – and that the ruling passion that does so is closely akin to the very passion that is responsible for the “establishment” of despotism. This helps explain, among other things, the tenor of Montesquieu’s description of the contribution made by England’s “laws” in forming “the mores, the manners, & the character” of the English “nation,” as we shall soon see.

One consequence of the English form of government’s open pursuit of liberty is that “all the passions there are free: hatred, envy, jealousy, the ardor to enrich & distinguish oneself appear to their full extent; & if things were otherwise, the state would be like a man struck down by a malady who has no passions because he has no strength (forces).” In a sense, the English citizen is unaccommodated man: like the individual trapped within the state of nature, he is “always independent.” He therefore follows “his caprices & his fantasies”; he and his countrymen are inclined “not to care to please anyone,” and so “they abandon themselves to their own humors.” Frequently, they even switch parties and drop one set of friends to take up another, having forgotten “the laws of love & those of hatred.”

Precisely because the laws make no distinctions among men, each Englishman “regards himself as a monarch; & men, in that nation,” are, in a sense, “confederates rather than fellow citizens.” The fact that “no citizen ends up fearing another” gives the Englishman a king-like “independence” that makes the English as a nation “proud.” But, at the same time, “living,” as they do “much among themselves” in a state of “retirement” or “retreat,” they “often find themselves in the midst of those whom they do not know.” This renders them “timid,” like those men in the state of nature truly graced with independence, but the recognition of “reciprocal fright” does not have on them the effect that it has on men in their natural state: it does not cause them to draw near, to take “pleasure” in the approach of “an animal” of their “own sort,” and to become sociable. They are similarly immune to “the charm” of sexual “difference” and to “the natural appeal” which draws women and men to one another even in that aboriginal state. Instead of friendliness and longing, “one sees in” the “eyes” of these Englishmen, “the better part of the time, a strange mixture of ill-mannered shame & pride.” Their “character” as a “nation” most clearly appears in the products of their minds – which reveal them as “people collected within themselves” who are inclined to “think each entirely on his own.” In short, Montesquieu’s Englishman is very much alone.

That so solitary a man should have an “uneasy spirit (esprit inquiet)” stands to reason. Nor is it surprising that, unprompted by genuine peril or even by false alarm, he should nonetheless “fear the escape of a good” that he “feels,” that he “hardly knows,” and that “can be hidden from us,” and that this “fear” should “always magnify objects” and render him “uneasy (inquiet) in his situation” and inclined to “believe” that he is “in danger even in those moments when” he is “most secure.” The liberation of the passions does not give rise to joy. “Political liberty in its relation with the constitution,” what we call the rule of law, may well be “established” for the English “by their laws,” but this does not mean that they “actually enjoy” what Montesquieu calls “political liberty in its relation with the citizen” – for the latter is constituted by “that tranquility of mind which comes from the opinion that each has of his security,” and the English are anything but tranquil of mind.

“Uneasiness (inquiétude)” without “a certain object” would appear to be the Englishman’s normal state of mind. He is rarely given reason to fear another citizen: fear is not deployed to secure his obedience as it is in a despotism. But he is anxious and fearful nonetheless. Moreover, in such a country, “the majority of those who possess intelligence & wit would be tormented by that very esprit: in the disdain or disgust” that they would feel with regard “to all things, they would be unhappy with so many reasons not to be so.”

You will not find a similar analysis of the state of mind of liberal democratic man in The Federalist or elsewhere in the writing of the American Founding Fathers. This is not a question that they raised. As, however, I have suggested in Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty and argued in detail  in Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, one will find it in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose analysis of the travails of life in bourgeois society owes a great deal to Montesquieu; and one will find it as well in Alexis de Tocqueville, who argues that within democracies equality both liberates ambition by removing the obstacles that prevent men of ignoble birth and real ability from rising above their condition and frustrates ambition by submerging the ambitious in a vast crowd from which it is hard, if not impossible, to escape.

One early, Anglo-Irish reader of Montesquieu noticed the critical undertone within the Frenchman’s eulogy of the English constitution and the way of life to which it gave rise, and he wrote to Montesquieu to ask whether he thought English liberty in danger. Montesquieu wrote back that the last breath of freedom in Europe would be breathed by an Englishman. But, in his notebooks, he sketched out a more complex answer, suggesting that English liberty depends upon the predominance within England of what we would now call private enterprise. He acknowledges the presence of corruption in the political sphere, but he was struck by the fact that the English people were not themselves corrupt, and he evidenced confidence in their ability from time to time to throw the rascals out. As long as the government left private entrepreneurs to their own devices, and patronage gave the politicians very little leverage over ordinary citizens, Montesquieu contended, liberty was safe.

In The Spirit of Laws, Montesquieu had sketched an analysis of English politics suggesting that the separation of powers – in particular, the separation between the executive and the legislative power – had the effect of transforming English inquiétude into something less amorphous, something more like a political principle or a passion capable of setting the polity in motion – and this principle was what English Whigs called jealousy, which is to say: an unreasoning but not unreasonable suspicion of politicians, a wariness regarding their intentions, an attentiveness to the tyrannical impulse all too often present in the ambitious under the cover of idealism. Even when this jealousy was excessive, as it often was, Montesquieu thought, it was favorable to liberty because it encouraged officeholders to mind their manners and conduct themselves in office in an honorable fashion.

I know of no passage in the writings of those who founded or lived in the early American republic suggesting reflection regarding Montesquieu’s analysis of the political psychology of liberal democratic man. But there is a great deal of discussion of jealousy in the writings of the Anti-Federalists and the Federalists alike, and it is generally, but not universally, regarded as a posture proper to the citizen in such a polity.

Moreover, in the 1790s, after the American republic was established, some of those quite deeply involved in the Founding came to have misgivings. It was in response to the legislative program proposed by George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton that James Madison began thinking about the prospect we now face – “a consolidation of the States into one government” – and the dire consequences that might be attendant on such an eventuality. First, he argued, the “incompetency of one Legislature to regulate all the various objects belonging to the local governments, would evidently force a transfer of many of” those objects “to the executive department.” Then, he contended that, if the state and local governments were made subject to the federal government, the sheer size of the country “would prevent that [popular] control” on the federal Congress, “which is essential to a faithful discharge of its trust, [since] neither the voice nor the sense of ten or twenty millions of people, spread through so many latitudes as are comprehended within the United States, could ever be combined or called into effect, if deprived of those local organs, through which both can now be conveyed.” In such circumstances, Madison warned, “the impossibility of acting together, might be succeeded by the inefficacy of partial expressions of the public mind, and this at length, by a universal silence and insensibility, leaving the whole government to that self directed course, which, it must be owned, is the natural propensity of every government.”

In short, Madison revisited Montesquieu’s argument concerning republics and the extent of territory suitable to them. And, at a time when the territory of the United States was much smaller than it is now, and the population was barely more than one-fifteenth of what it is now, he began to worry that the extent of territory encompassed by the Union and the size of its population might be too great. He was, moreover, virtually certain that, if the federal government were allowed to encroach on the prerogatives of the states and the localities, as he believed Hamilton intended, despotism of one sort or another would be the result.

Tocqueville shared these concerns, and he worried that, in the absence of vigorous local government as a training ground for civic agency, the inquiétude, the sense of uneasiness natural to liberal democratic man, would turn into an abject, desperate search for security that would transforms citizens into subjects and self-reliant women and men into wards of the administrative state. That, as I argued in detail in Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, is what we see today. To an ever-increasing degree, our compatriots are subject to what Tocqueville described as “an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate” As he predicted, this power is “absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle,” and it “works willingly for their happiness, but it wishes to be the only agent and the sole arbiter of that happiness. It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their testaments, divides their inheritances.” It is entirely proper to ask, as he asked, whether it can “relieve them entirely of the trouble of thinking and of the effort associated with living.” For such is evidently its aim.

Moreover, “after having taken each individual in this fashion by turns into its powerful hands, and after having kneaded him in accord with its desires, the sovereign

extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations – complicated, minute, and uniform – through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way past the crowd and emerge into the light of day. It does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own; it does not destroy; it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way, it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Tocqueville coined a new phrase to describe this form of government. He called it soft despotism. The new and unprecedented “species of servitude” that Tocqueville had in mind was, as he later observed, “regulated, gentle or soft, and favorable to peace,” and he suspected that it could be “combined more easily” than men were inclined to imagine “with some of the external forms of liberty.” He even suggests “that it would be possible for it to be established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.” In this fashion – with the institution of a “unitary, tutelary, all-powerful” government “elected by the citizens” at regular intervals – one might actually satisfy the two contradictory impulses found among his contemporaries: the felt “need for guidance, and the longing to remain free.” What this would involve, Tocqueville explains, is a “species of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people,” a corrupt bargain between the ghost of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and that of his erstwhile admirer Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, in which the political doctrine of the former is deployed rhetorically for the purpose of legitimizing a law-abiding, steady, reliable despotism on the model of pre-modern China – of the very sort that was espoused in full knowledge of what they were embracing by Turgot’s mentors among the Physiocrats. Under such an arrangement, Tocqueville remarked, pointedly paraphrasing what Rousseau had once said of the English, “the citizens emerge for a moment from dependence for the purpose of indicating their masters and then re-enter,” without further ado, “their former state. They console themselves for being in tutelage with the thought that they have chosen the tutors themselves,” and “they think that they have sufficiently guaranteed the liberty of the individual when they have delivered it to the national power.” Look in the mirror, and this is what you will see.

In breathless prose that risks making Dr Pachauri, who will be 70 this year, a laughing stock among the serious, high-minded scientists and world leaders with whom he mixes, he details sexual encounter after sexual encounter.

The book, which makes reference to the Kama Sutra, starts promisingly enough as it tells the story of a climate expert with a lament for the denuded mountain slopes of Nainital, in northern India, where deforestation by the timber mafia and politicians has "endangered the fragile ecosystem".

But talk of "denuding" is a clue of what is to come..

"Sanjay saw a shapely dark-skinned girl lying on Vinay’s bed. He was overcome by a lust that he had never known before . . . He removed his clothes and began to feel Sajni’s body, caressing her voluptuous breasts."

But don't worry. Every sex scene in the book is peer-reviewed. Alas, like the IPCC report, not all of them live up to advance billing:

Sadly for Sanjay, writes Dr Pachauri, "the excitement got the better of him, before he could even get started".

Oh, dear. There are times when even a climate expert can't "hide the decline."

From theory to practice, the Obama Youth Brigades are now up and running in high schools.

Atlas Shrugs reported last night that a reader, Chuck,  has a student in the eleventh grade in an Ohio High School. Her government class passed out this propaganda recruiting paper so students could sign up as interns for Obama’s Organizing for America (OFA is the former mybarackobama.com site.)

Obama is using our public school system to recruit for his Alinsky-inspired private army. Organizing for America is (and I quote) recruiting in our high schools to “build on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda” …………of national socialism.

Atlas posted the recommended reading from the student handout:

Check out the recommended reading list page 4:

• Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky
• The New Organizers, Zack Exley
• Stir It Up: Lessons from Community Organizing and Advocacy, Rinku Sen
  
• Obama Field Organizers Plot a Miracle, Zack Exley, Huffington Post
• Dreams of My Father Chicago Chapters, Barack Hussein Obama

Honestly, and people still question if this guy is a radical socialist?

Mother Teresa was a woman universally beloved across the globe for her humanitarian efforts in India and around the world. [...] Read the rest »

Frank Rich is perhaps the New York Times' worst regular columnist. A homosexual activist and former drama critic, he substitutes a hysterical and abusive style for knowledge of public policy issues, of which he displays little or none. Even more than Paul Krugman, he can fairly be described as Keith Olbermann in print.

In his current column, Rich describes the state of the Union as "comatose." If you keep reading, you'll figure out that this means the hard Left isn't advancing its agenda as successfully as Rich would like.

His take on President Obama's State of the Union speech is characteristically belligerent:

Hands down, the State of the Union's big moment was Barack Obama's direct hit on the delicate sensibilities of the Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. The president was right to blast the 5-to-4 decision giving corporate interests an even greater stranglehold over a government they already regard as a partially owned onshore subsidiary. How satisfying it was to watch him provoke Alito into a "You lie!" snit.

Alito's "snit" consisted of inaudibly mouthing "simply not true" as Obama described--incorrectly--the Court's decision in the Citizens United case. Rich, of course, knows nothing of the constitutional issues at stake or the specifics of the Court's ruling. He's just mean-spirited and, as always, spoiling for a fight. He continues:

[O]ur union is not strong. It is paralyzed. Many Americans were more eagerly anticipating Steve Jobs's address in San Francisco on Wednesday morning than the president's that night because they have far more confidence in Apple than Washington to produce concrete change.

Of course! The federal government is not in the business of "produc[ing] concrete change." That is and always has been the province of the private sector. Positive change is the result of 1) sharp competition that prompts 2) supremely competent and hyper-motivated men and women to achieve beyond normal limits. Government, on the other hand, is mostly devoted to perpetuating the status quo--whatever that might be at the moment--in the form of re-election and steadily increasing budgets.

Rich claims to know, however, what Obama needs to do to revive his moribund vision of "change:"

Only body blows to the legislative branch can move the country forward.

Another charming metaphor, one I don't recall Rich employing during the eight years of the Bush administration when body blows to the executive branch were more to his taste.

For a political columnist, Rich seems sorely lacking in knowledge of politics. This is how he understands Republicans:

In Obama's speech, he kept circling back to a Senate where both parties are dysfunctional. The obstructionist Republicans, he observed, will say no to every single bill "just because they can."

Actually, Republicans say no to Obama's legislative agenda because it embodies far-left principles with which they disagree. And they "can" oppose the Democrats' left wing bills because most Americans are against them, too. Rich's reading of the Democrats is equally myopic:

But no less culpable are the Democrats, who maintain "the largest majority in decades" even after losing Teddy Kennedy's seat -- and yet would rather "run for the hills" than accomplish anything.

But the Democrats are not afflicted by a mysterious compulsion to "run for the hills" despite their overwhelming numbers. Rather, they are painfully aware that their political agenda is unpopular with the voters--as reflected most recently in the stunning Massachusetts Senate race, which Rich glancingly refers to but evidently fails to understand. This is, after all, a democracy. It isn't supposed to be easy to enact far-reaching legislation that is bitterly opposed by most voters.

Rich thinks the Dems just need better leadership; he yearns for the days of Lyndon Johnson when the Majority Leader engaged in "crude and cynical" horse trading and knew how to "punish" disloyal Senators. He is contemptuous of Harry Reid, who doesn't know how to wield the whip like LBJ. But, as always, Rich's greatest scorn is reserved for Republicans. (In his world, the fault to which Democrats are most prone is failing to hate Republicans with sufficient venom.) This is over the top, even by Rich's classless standards:

If Reid can serve as the face of Democratic fecklessness in the Senate, then John McCain epitomizes the unpatriotic opposition.

When did the Democrats become addicted to referring to Republicans as "unpatriotic"? I'm not sure just when it happened, but Rich's application of the epithet to McCain is more evidence that the Times has laid off all of its editors.

Why is McCain unpatriotic? It's unclear, actually, but the most coherent explanation seems to be that McCain "sneered" at Obama's suggestion that the federal government's current and projected deficits are not his fault. I don't know whether McCain sneered or not, but if he didn't, he should have. Maybe Rich is unaware that Obama's budgets promise to send this country into a sea of debt that has never been approached since World War II. The Heritage Foundation supplies the necessary data; click to enlarge:

Rich's prescriptions for Obama are characteristically hyperbolic and partisan:

Obama should turn up the heat on both the G.O.P's record of fiscal recklessness and its mad-dog obstructionism.

Of course, it's hard to "turn up the heat" on the other party's "fiscal recklessness" when you tripled the deficit in your first year in office. And defending the people's right not to have a government takeover of the country's health care system jammed down their throats without their consent is not what sane people think of as "mad-dog obstructionism."

Rich concludes by coming full circle, returning to the glorious moment when Obama's unfounded attack on the Supreme Court provoked a mild reaction from Justice Alito:

Just look at how a sharp public slap provoked Justice Alito, threw a spotlight on the court's dubious jurisprudence and sparked an embarrassing over-the-top hissy fit on the right.

To give Frank Rich his due, he is something of an expert on over-the-top hissy fits. This time, though, wishful thinking seems to have gotten the better of him. But that's apparently how the world looks in the parallel universe of the left.

Barbara Walters began her This Week interview with Massachusetts Senator-elect Scott Brown by reciting his “fascinating resume,” including how “at 12 you were arrested for shoplifting” and “at 22 you posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine,” before she proceeded to press Brown from the left to distance himself from, or denounce, the Republican Party positions on abortion, same-sex marriage and “don’t ask, don’t tell.” She pushed him: “Are you out of step with your party, or do you think that the party has to broaden and change its platform?”
 
Given “Massachusetts requires that all residents purchase health insurance” and “you voted for that plan,” a befuddled Walters wondered: “So why doesn't it make sense that all Americans have health insurance? Why isn't what's good for Massachusetts good for the whole country?” When he affirmed opposition to the national Democratic plans, an astonished Walters pleaded: “Goodbye to the whole plan?”

Walters recited President Obama’s contention his administration has captured or killed more al-Qaeda than did the Bush administration in 2008, so: “Do you think that the President has made the country more safe?”

She soon informed Brown that “you replaced a beloved figure,” as she ruminated: “How do you think that Senator Ted Kennedy would feel about your election? Do you think he'd be disappointed?”

Toward the end of the pre-recorded session, Walters returned to the 1982 Cosmopolitan magazine, holding up a copy of the actual magazine (which also featured an article about Walters), prompting Brown to quip: “Do you want me to sign it?” Walters pivoted to whether it makes Brown “a joke,” as she proposed:

At the economic conference in Davos, some of the foreign leaders -- that just took place last week -- were referring to you as that “nude magazine guy.” Were you worried -- or are you worried that this can make you a little bit of a joke?

The questions from fill-in This Week host Walters to Brown from the interview conducted on Saturday in Massachusetts, as aired in an 18-minute segment at the top of Sunday’s This Week on ABC:

> So you have a fascinating resume. Let me -- and just in case some people don't know it. At 12 you were arrested for shoplifting? At 22 you posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine. For the past 30 years you've been in the National Guard, and you have the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. The past six years you've been a state senator, and now as the newly elected Republican Senator from Massachusetts you are the new star. I just saw that when I traveled a little bit with you. What do you most want to accomplish? What's your passion?

> Well you know there was -- when the President had the meeting with the Republicans and that back and forth. And the President talked about the fact that both sides demonized the other. But it seems to be working for the Republicans. Are you -- do you feel pressure that as the 41st you'll have a tough time voting Republican all the way?

> It has been said all over the country that your election was more about disappointment in the President than it was about voting for you in particular.

> You know when I was with you just a little while ago with the crowd, one of the woman said -- behind me -- said, "President 2012." And you said to me -- or under your breath, "that's silly." But do you rule it out?

Let's talk about another rising star in the Republican party -- Sarah Palin. Do you think that Sarah Palin is presidential material?

> Let's talk about some of your specific views. You are pro-choice, yes? And gay marriage is legal in the state of Massachusetts. But the Republican party platform language calls for the overthrow of Roe v. Wade, and they want a federal ban on gay marriage. Are you out of step with your party, or do you think that the party has to broaden and change its platform?

> But you're still pro-choice?

> Well, there is the debate now in the Republican Party as to whether it should be more conservative or more moderate. Which direction do you bend?

> And social issues, a little more moderate?

> OK. Let's talk about the President's State of the Union. Do you see any evidence in his speech that he got a message from your election?

> President Obama has asked for a spending freeze on almost everything except matters like the military, Social Security, and Medicare. He says he's gone line by line through the budget. Now, you have said that's not enough for you; that you want to cut spending and not just freeze it. So what are the first three items that you would cut?

> On Friday, President Obama announced what he called the "best way to promote hiring," talking about jobs especially for the small businessmen. A $5,000 tax credit for each new employee added and tax relief for those companies that add to their payroll. A total cost is $33 billion dollars. If and when this became a bill, would you vote for it? Yes or no?

> Health care. Massachusetts requires that all residents purchase health insurance. You voted for that plan. So why doesn't it make sense that all Americans have health insurance? Why isn't what's good for Massachusetts good for the whole country?

> Do you think the whole plan should be scrapped? The whole plan? [BROWN: Yes.] You don't see that there could be some things that could be -- goodbye to the whole plan?

> Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is on the hot seat. Should Tim Geithner be replaced?

> You have been a member of the National Guard for 30 years. You’ve talked about how important that service is. You're a Lieutenant Colonel. On Wednesday the President announced that he wants to work with Congress to repeal “don't ask, don't tell.” What's your view?

> But Senator, your own view....So you can't say whether you're for or against it?

> President Obama said that in the last year there are more al-Qaeda terrorists including leaders captured or killed than in 2008. Now, obviously there are incidents like the one on Christmas Day. Do you think that the President has made the country more safe?

> You know, as we've been talking, you've expressed several time the idea of working together, Republicans and Democrats working together, and your knowledge helping the President. Do you feel now that there is going to be this kind of cooperation or reconciliation? There's so much -- there's been so much anger and so much conflict. Do you think it's going it change?

> So your election may bring the two parties closer together?

> You know, you replaced a beloved figure. [BROWN: Yeah, he was a great guy.] How do you think that Senator Ted Kennedy would feel about your election? Do you think he'd be disappointed?

> I'd like to talk a little bit about your growing up, your youth. Your parents divorced when you were a year old....Each of your parents were married four times, and you've described them as having a violent marriage. At one point, you talked about when you were five or six years old having to feel you had to save your mom, and your dad wasn't around very much. Difficult childhood. How did this shape you?  

> In an interview to the Boston Globe back in 1982, you said, "Sometimes, I think I'm being tested by a higher being. When things are going great, I think of it as a reward from heaven." Do you still think your winning was a reward from heaven?
    
> The Cosmopolitan magazine. Well it just so happens, I have it....[BROWN: Do you want me to sign it?]...But at the economic conference in Davos, some of the foreign leaders -- that just took place last week -- were referring to you as that "nude magazine guy." Were you worried -- or are you worried that this can make you a little bit of a joke?

> What would you say if one of your daughters came to you and said, "Dad I want to pose nude?"

> You know some women have said to me, "If a woman did a nude centerfold spread" -- even if it was more than 20 years ago -- they're not sure that she would be elected Senator, because there's a double standard. What do you think?

> Your daughter, Ayla, was a contestant on American Idol in 2006, at which time Simon Cowell described her performance as [BROWN: Robotic.] You remember. Robotic, and empty. Here's your chance. What would you like to say to Mr. Cowell?

> Senator, I have one final question. You and this beloved truck. Will you be getting a new truck?

The ABCNews.com transcript, which I’ve corrected above in parts, and which includes portions not aired on This Week.

How can journalists possibly claim to be "objective" (in the Old Media, I-have-no-opinions sense of the term) when they get their news only from hyper-partisan sources on one side of the political spectrum? To do so should make any reporter blush.

But David Shuster, apparently, has no issue with undertaking such objective journalistic endeavors as "fact checking and analyzing", while gathering information from the left's most prominent online talking-point repositories.

Not content with simply relaying those talking points to his viewers, he makes sure to direct them (via Twitter) to websites where they can get their fills of the latest lefty banter. Johnny Dollar took the liberty of compiling a chart of the sites to which Shuster directed his Twitter followers throughout the month of January. The results are striking:

Anyone who has ever seen Shuster's show (or taken a look at his Twitter feed) is probably unsurprised. Who, after all, could get their news from these decidedly liberal sources and manage to refrain from, say, shouting at people who support the airing of a controversial Super Bowl ad featuring Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow?

What sensible person could base their opinions on the rants spewing forth from Daily Kos and Media Matters and still manage to offer James O'Keefe the presumption of innocence--or get the facts of the case correct, for that matter?

This graph would certainly explain why Shuster continues to refer to politically energized grassroots protesters with the crude term "teabaggers." He probably doesn't know they've ever been called anything else!

If Shuster wants to keep "fact checking and analyzing", maybe he should try approaching the facts without his noticeably left-wing slant. Or maybe he should just abandon any presumption of objectivity. Either would be more honest than pretending to present the truth and simply parroting the latest lefty meme.

The Mackinac Center of Michigan exposes crockumentarian Michael Moore’s embrace of government tax subsidies for a deep-pocketed private business. [...] Read the rest »

The Hill is reporting that Senator Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health Committee, stated that negotiators from the White House, Senate and House reached a final deal on healthcare reform days before Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts.

From the article:

Labor leaders had announced an agreement with White House and congressional representatives over an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans on the Thursday before the special election.

Harkin said “we had an agreement, with the House, the White House and the Senate. We sent it to [the Congressional Budget Office] to get scored and then Tuesday happened and we didn’t get it back.” He said negotiators had an agreement in hand on Friday, Jan. 15.

Harkin made clear that negotiators had reached a final deal on the entire bill, not just the excise plans, which had been reported the previous day, Jan. 14.

Harkin said the deal covered the prescription-drug “donut hole,” the level of federal insurance subsidies, national insurance exchanges and federal Medicaid assistance to states.

This cannot be right.

If Harkin is telling the truth, then that would mean President Obama is lying because at the GOP retreat, Obama stated that there were some “stray cats and dogs” in the legislation. This quote from Obama at the retreat:

“The last thing I will say, though — let me say this about health care and the health care debate, because I think it also bears on a whole lot of other issues. If you look at the package that we’ve presented — and there’s some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating. For example, we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your — if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.”

So which is it? Was the health bill done as Harkin states? Or, were Obama and congressional leaders still trying to capture those stray cats and dogs? If the healthcare bill was sent to the CBO as Harkin confirms, then where’s the score? Was it withdrawn from the CBO due to the MA election?

These are just some of the questions that we will follow up.

Someone is clearly lying, stretching the truth, pandering to the GOP, whatever you want to call it. However, it appears that the White House was trying to jam through the healthcare bill before the MA election, but the CBO could not score it fast enough.

Let’s just hope the Republicans in Congress see the same tom-foolery that the American people see.

Read this post »

On Friday, January 29th, 2010, Lech Walesa, former President of Poland, traveled to Chicago to endorse Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate, Adam Andrzejewski. This was the first time that Walesa has backed an American candidate for office.
Andrew Marcus from Founding Bloggers and Big Government interviewed Lech and Adam on Friday in Chicago:

Lech Walesa: “The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations. There was the hope that whenever something was going wrong one could count on the United States. Today we lost that hope.”

Adam Andrzejewski will be in O’Fallon, Illinois today at a pre-election rally from 3-5 PM.

The rally for Adam will be held at the Regency Conference Ctr. Hilton Garden Inn
360 Regency Drive (Hwy. 64 – Exit 16)
O’Fallon, Illinois
See you there!

A wise politician knows when they’re reaching too far. [...] Read the rest »

No wonder Republicans laughed at Obama when he talked about a spending freeze in his State of the Union Address last week:

President Obama will unveil his budget proposal for next year– It includes a 6% increase in spending over last year.
The New York Post reported:

President Obama is to unveil tomorrow a $3.8 trillion budget proposal — a 6 percent increase over last year, according to a published report.

The proposal will include $25 billion for struggling states and provide funding increases for programs at the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Census Bureau.

Obama tripled the US national deficit his first year in office.

It was historic.

Is it really that surprising then that most Americans don’t trust this president’s assertions about the economy?

Busy with family and friends. [...] Read the rest »

Last evening, NBC's "Saturday Night Live" marvelously mocked President Obama's recent State of the Union address.

In the opening sketch, Fred Armisen as Obama began by talking about last Tuesday's surprising victory in the Massachusetts special senatorial election.

"Our nominee Martha Coakley was the single most incompetent candidate ever to seek public office in this nation's history," said Armisen to thunderous applause.

"Martha Coakley, you are a disgrace," he continued. "You couldn't beat Dick Cheney for mayor of Berkeley" (video embedded below the fold):

But there were other great moments, in particular when Armisen read off jobs currently available in America, and the camera cut away to political leaders in the audience that could be at risk.

Potentially the finest moment was when he listed a construction job on a courthouse in New Jersey:

Starting wage is $45 an hour. And, like most jobs on this project, it's a no-show job! You can stay home all day. 

With that, all the Democrats in the chamber rose and applauded, while the Republicans stayed seated.

Ain't it the truth?!? 

On Friday, January 29th, 2010, Lech Walesa, former President of Poland, traveled to Chicago to endorse Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate, Adam Andrzejewski.

We were fortunate enough to have an opportunity to sit down with the President and Mr. Andrzejewski. Our video from that visit is below.

Items that stand out:  1) Lech Walesa tells his American Audience that the United States no longer leads the world politically or morally 2) At least one of your Founding Bloggers asks President Walesa if he thinks America is slipping toward Socialism. His Answer? Yes! 3) Andrzejewski is running on a platform of forensically auditing Illinois’ books and exposing corruption by making the details of the audit available to the public.

Previously: (PICTURES) Lech Walesa Endorses Illinois Republican Gubernatorial Candidate

The Pro Bowl before the Super Bowl?  What genius thought to do that?  None of the players from the two best teams in the league will be there, because they’ll be too busy preparing to play each other in the Super Bowl.  That means that fans will get to see all of the best players from teams that couldn’t advance into or through the playoffs. [...] Read the rest »

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania during the presidential campaign in June 2008, Barack Obama addressed the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision granting Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their confinement through habeas corpus proceedings in federal court. Obama asserted that the "principle of habeas corpus, that a state can't just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process -- that's the essence of who we are." He explained:

I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday.

Obama's comments derive from what I facetiously call "the higher wisdom" that fueled his campaign and that is now operative in his administration. Attorney General Eric Holder perfectly reflects it.

In designating the mastermind of 9/11 and his co-conspirators who are detained in Guantanamo for trial in federal court in Manhattan, cloaking them with the rights of American citizens under the Constitution of the United States, Holder sought to give them their "day in court." He also sought to "t[each] the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law."

The only appropriate response to Obama's campaign comments on Boumediene is: "Not true." The higher wisdom is founded on false precepts. The Nuremberg trial was conducted before a military commission composed of representatives of the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Obama to the contrary notwithstanding, the Nuremberg defendants weren't brought before a federal court or cloaked with the protections of the United States Constitution.

The most prominent surviving Nazi leaders were brought for trial before the Nuremberg tribunal in late 1945. Winston Churchill had proposed, not unreasonably, that they be summarily shot. The victorious allies nevertheless subsequently agreed that they would be brought before a military commission to be convened pursuant to the London Agreement of August 8, 1945.

In Boumediene, the Supreme Court disapproved of the system of military commissions Congress had adopted at the Supreme Court's urging. Obama to the contrary notwithstanding, the Nuremberg defendants' "day in court" occurred before the kind of tribunal the Supreme Court found constitutionally inadequate in Boumediene.

The Nazi war criminals were given no access to American courts. Their rights before the Nuremberg tribunal were governed by the charter annexed to the London Agreement.

The charter's "fair trial" provision was extraordinarily brief. It required only the preparation of an indictment (to be translated into the defendant's language) and accorded defendants an explanation relevant to the charges made against them in the proceedings; the translation of the proceedings into defendants' language; the right to conduct their own defense before the tribunal or to have the assistance of counsel; the right to present evidence at the trial in support of his defense, and to cross-examine any witnesses testifying against him.

The charter provision on the appeal rights of the Nuremberg defendants was even shorter and sweeter. There were no appeal rights. The charter provided: "The judgment of the Tribunal as to the guilt or the innocence of any Defendant shall give the reasons on which it is based, and shall be final and not subject to review."

Following Obama's higher wisdom, Eric Holder established an insane protocol. It is titled "Determination of Guantanamo Cases Referred for Prosecution." The protocol adopts a presumption that explains the cases of KSM et al. and Umar Abdulmutallab.

The second paragraph of the protocol sets forth the "Factors for Determination of Prosecution." It provides: "There is a presumption that, where feasible. referred cases will be prosecuted in an Article III [federal] court, in keeping with traditional principles of federal prosecution."

The Obama administration's determination to give KSM and Umar Abdulmutallab their "day in court" is untenable. It is untenable as a matter of law and it is untenable as a matter of tradition. It is indeed, as Thomas Sowell holds, an obscenity. It is also untenable as a matter of politics.

Congress has adopted a system of military commissions for unlawful enemy combatants that conforms to the Supreme Court's requirements. That is where the trials of KSM and Abdulmutallab belong.

The planned trials of KSM and Abdulmutallab in federal court join related errors committed by the Obama administration. These errors include the announced closure of Guantanamo, the repatriation of Guantanamo detainees to Yemen and Saudi Arabia, the termination of the CIA's program of enhanced interrogation, the release of Justice Department memos that had authorized the CIA interrogation program, and the reopening of previously concluded investigations into CIA officers.

As word comes that the Obama administration has abandoned its plan to try KSM et al. in New York City, it lies upon us to recall the source of the error and the related errors that afflict us. The "presumption" that unlawful enemy combatants are to be treated like American citizens is an offense against law, tradition and reason, but it does not stand alone, and it does not derive in the first instance from Eric Holder.

Author, political analyst, and humorist Andrew Ferguson really lacerated the campaign memoir Game Change in the February 1 Weekly Standard. He pointed out the inside-the-Beltway media chumminess greeting authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann: "The authors are highly regarded political reporters—highly regarded, that is, by other political reporters whom the authors likewise hold in high regard (that’s how admiration works here)." But that doesn’t excuse a bad book. He began by isolating page 279:

"F— you! F—, F—, f—, f—, f—, f—, f—, f—, f—, f—!!!"

McCain let out the stream of sharp epithets, both middle fingers raised and extended, barking in his wife’s face. He was angry.

Amazingly, these authors don’t offer the reader any explanation of this abusive scene that they might expect from reporters -- the when, where, and why:

As a book, of course, Game Change isn’t any good. The haste with which it was thrown together shows itself on every page. The narrative zigs and zags, subplots are left to dangle, anecdotes lead nowhere. The passage above, minus the dashes, opens a section of chapter 15 and then just sits there, completely unexplained. When did this happen? Where were McCain and his wife? Why was he so angry, what did she do in response, who else was there – all the old-fashioned reporter-type questions are unasked and unanswered; the authors merely drop the lines into the text for our enjoyment and then move on to a brief summary of the state of John McCain’s marriage (assuming he still has one).

The writing itself is so careless that readers will sometimes wonder whether their legs are being pulled. Most writers would consider the descriptive phrase "sharp epithets" unnecessary after detonating ten—I counted—f-bombs, one right after the other, in perfect sequence. And I’m sure the authors could have done without that extra pair of exclamation points.

Ferguson sums up the book’s cascade of profanities from politicians of all stripes in the H&H narrative: "And all of them, every single one of them, use the f-word as if they believed it had the power to transform and to heal. Even Valerie Jarrett."

Ferguson also delved into the book’s biggest problem it’s "Trust Me" sourcing from insiders:

For that matter, we don’t know whether Game Change really is offering the real story, as the authors claim. We have to take a lot on faith, if only because the authors are taking a lot on faith. They don’t want to admit this, of course, and they go to great lengths to affirm the definitiveness of their many, many anecdotes.

Consider, as a tiny example, that quotation from McCain above. How do they know he dropped ten f-bombs and not nine? Maybe it only seemed like ten to the snitch who was in the room at the time—and who later counted them out for the authors. But no: It’s got to be ten, according to an authors’ note describing their methods. "Where dialogue is not in quotes, it is paraphrased, reflecting only a lack of certainty on the part of our sources about precise wording," they write.

But McCain’s words—actually the same word, over and over—appear in quotes. "Where dialogue is within quotation marks," they go on, "it comes from the speaker, someone who was present and heard the remark, contemporaneous notes, or transcripts." We can safely assume in this instance that the precise wording didn’t come from the speaker—unless he’s out of his f—in’ mind—or from notes or transcripts. So it must have come from "someone who was present and heard the remark." Maybe she used one of those hand clickers.

Ferguson concluded the book was "an exquisite construction built from betrayal and deceit. It is a precise rendering of the political culture of Washington."

It’s time once again to choose the Obamateurism of the Week, and once again, we have so many good choices that one might get a sense of enthusiasm — perhaps even infectious enthusiasm.  Feel free to do your research, but if you do, be sure you’re looking at the correct documents first.  It also helps to remember where you’re at, and if you have to rely on silly crutches, don’t publish the pictures. [...] Read the rest »

Well if you can't win the propaganda war by twisting the content of something you don't like, you can at least plant a presumptive seed in the heads of those who will only see a story's headline.

That seems to be the logic behind an unbylined Associated Press report this morning. Its headline ("Report: No sanctions for lawyers who OK'd torture") would tend cause anyone not reading further to believe that what was under review is indisputably considered "torture." But that is not the case, and the underlying article itself proves it.

What follows is a graphic capture of the first few paragraphs of the AP report:

Note that the second paragraph refers to "so-called torture memos." The word "torture" does not appear anywhere else in the report.

There is widespread disagreement as to whether waterboarding fits the legal definition of torture. The AP report also fails, as so many other reports relating to the controversy have, to note three important points the linked Newsmax article makes:

Only three terrorists have been subjected to waterboarding, and the technique has not been employed since 2003.

.... In fact, U.S. special forces are subjected to waterboarding as part of their training in case they are captured and experience the procedure.

.... The three terrorists who were subjected too waterboarding are Abu Zubaydah, Osama bin Laden’s chief of operations; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole; and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

In these cases waterboarding and other coercive techniques, such as forcing prisoners to stand for hours, succeeded in extracting intelligence that led to the capture of key al-Qaida operative planning terrorist attack against Americans.

.... “Waterboarding was employed on only three terrorists who were not cooperating, and the information they ultimately provided helped stave off attacks that could have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.”

In a later sentence, the AP writes (hopes?) that "The finding is likely to unsettle interest groups who contended there should be sanctions for Bush administration lawyers who paved the way for tough interrogations, warrantless wiretapping and other coercive tactics."

An honestly headlined report would at least have put quotes around the word "torture." A more accurate headline would have replaced the T-word with "enhanced interrogations," either with or without quotes. But excuse me for questioning whether honesty or accuracy was the headline's goal.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich would have rebelled against the notion that opposing President Bush’s policies was unpatriotic. But he can shamelessly declare that opposing Obama’s agenda is unpatriotic – even if you’re John McCain. Rich wrote on Sunday:

If [Harry] Reid can serve as the face of Democratic fecklessness in the Senate, then John McCain epitomizes the unpatriotic opposition. On Wednesday night he could be seen sneering when Obama pointed out that most of the debt vilified by Republicans happened on the watch of a Republican president and Congress that never paid for "two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program."

Rich wasn’t going to find it ridiculous that Obama was blaming Bush for an "expensive" Medicare entitlement that Democrats voted for and/or felt wasn’t expensive enough – just as Obama blames Bush for the deficit effects of TARP, which he voted for. Rich only found fault that Obama wasn’t tougher – and used Times economics columnist David Leonhardt for backup:

The president’s indictment could have been more lacerating. Crunching Congressional Budget Office numbers, David Leonhardt of The Times calculated that of the projected $2 trillion swing into the red between the Clinton surplus and 2012, some 33 percent could be attributed to Bush legislation and another 20 percent to Bush-initiated spending (Iraq, TARP) continued by Obama. Only 7 percent of the deficit could be credited to the Obama stimulus bill and 3 percent to his other initiatives. (The business cycle accounts for the other 37 percent.)

Leonhardt certainly did write that Obama was "responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying." But Rich left out the other major concept of Leonhardt’s analysis: "The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested."

New York Times columnist Frank Rich would have rebelled against the notion that opposing President Bush’s policies was unpatriotic. But he can shamelessly declare that opposing Obama’s agenda is unpatriotic – even if you’re John McCain. Rich wrote on Sunday:

If [Harry] Reid can serve as the face of Democratic fecklessness in the Senate, then John McCain epitomizes the unpatriotic opposition. On Wednesday night he could be seen sneering when Obama pointed out that most of the debt vilified by Republicans happened on the watch of a Republican president and Congress that never paid for "two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program."

Rich wasn’t going to find it ridiculous that Obama was blaming Bush for an "expensive" Medicare entitlement that Democrats voted for and/or felt wasn’t expensive enough – just as Obama blames Bush for the deficit effects of TARP, which he voted for. Rich only found fault that Obama wasn’t tougher – and used Times economics columnist David Leonhardt for backup:

The president’s indictment could have been more lacerating. Crunching Congressional Budget Office numbers, David Leonhardt of The Times calculated that of the projected $2 trillion swing into the red between the Clinton surplus and 2012, some 33 percent could be attributed to Bush legislation and another 20 percent to Bush-initiated spending (Iraq, TARP) continued by Obama. Only 7 percent of the deficit could be credited to the Obama stimulus bill and 3 percent to his other initiatives. (The business cycle accounts for the other 37 percent.)

Leonhardt certainly did write that Obama was "responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying." But Rich left out the other major concept of Leonhardt’s analysis: "The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested."

Live from New York last night on SNL: Dashing actor Jon Hamm plays Massachusetts Senator-elect Scott Brown driving Democrat leaders to extreme distraction. [...] Read the rest »

Today, in 1968, the Viet Cong launched what came to be known as the Tet Offensive. It was a military disaster for the Viet Cong, but a smashing PR victory.

New Hampshire Watchdog and WNTK interviewed Newt Gingrich while he visited New Hampshire on Saturday. During the interview they asked him about the NY23 race where he backed far left liberal Dede Scozzafava.

(MANCHESTER, NH) Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says that he was wrong to endorse Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava in last November’s special election in New York’s 23rd District. Three days before the nationally-watched election, Scozzafava dropped out to endorse Democrat candidate Bill Owens, who narrowly defeated conservative challenger Gary Hoffman. Gingrich took heat from Tea Party organizers and conservative pundits who charged that he was abandoning conservative principles for a “Republican In Name Only.”

“They were right,” Gingrich declared in an interview with New Hampshire Watchdog and WNTK Radio. This is the first time Gingrich has said his endorsement was a mistake.

Click on Photo for Audio

“In retrospect it was a mistake.”

A rather disturbing document surfaced on the Internet Saturday with grave implications concerning how the Obama administration is recruiting interns from public schools to assist in advancing the President's agenda along with his desire to get Democrats including himself elected.

Even scarier, the internship application recommends participants read Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals."

According to Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs, this document was passed out in an eleventh grade class in Massillon, Ohio:

An Atlas reader, Chuck, has a student in the eleventh grade in an Ohio High School. Her government class passed out this propaganda recruiting paper so students could sign up as interns for Obama's Organizing for America. 

Here's the scary overview:

In week one, this is the recommended reading list:

Nice. Let's get America's youth to read Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals!"

For those thinking this might be a ruse, the OFA website does indeed address this program. This was posted on January 13 in the site's Community Blogs:

Don't Miss Out: OFA's Spring 2010 National Organizing Internship

 Earn credit for school and help change the world!

From his earliest years as an elected official, President Obama has encouraged young Americans to believe that their efforts can change their world for the better.  If you are passionate about reviving the economy, making the United States a global leader in clean energy, and want to be on the frontlines of political change, apply for an OFA internship today. No prior experience is necessary. Spring Semester Internships are currently available with Organizing for America - Nevada.

Apply for a Spring 2010 internship before the January 31st deadline by filling out this application.

Learn how grassroots organizing can win an election, impact policy, or change a neighborhood. Take an active role in advancing key legislation including reform in health insurance, energy, education and more.

The online application reads:

Organizing for America-Nevada is currently accepting applicants for our Spring Internship. Interns will work jointly with our Regional Field Directors to build a strong grassroots network across Nevada, and help us to pass President Obama's legislative agenda. Activities will include recruiting and managing volunteers, organizing service and press events, voter contact activities, voter registration, and administrative support work. You need not be a student to apply. Credit is available at most schools, but it is the sole responsibility of the student to make the arrangements. Applications will be accepted through January 31st, 2010 for Spring term. The internship will last until the end of Spring term, and Interns commit to at least 12 hours per week. 

The following was posted at Environment Link on January 8:

Organizing for America (OFA) has two priorities: (1) organize support for President Obama’s policy agenda, and (2) build and strengthen the grassroots organization we built during the 2008 campaign by training and empowering people to have an impact in their own communities.  The most important thing OFA does is build support for and educate citizens about President Obama’s policies for change.

Our national internship program will connect students all over the country with our organization already on the ground — working to make the change we fought so hard for a reality.

The internship will last from January 11-May 7, but the start and end dates are obviously flexible based on a school’s schedule.

The internship requires a minimum of 12 hours per week, and would be based out of our Seattle office.

Clearly this is a real program recruiting students from coast to coast. Readers are highly encouraged to review all the pages of this application at Atlas Shrugs.

Exit question: Is this something that should be happening at public schools funded with tax dollars, and isn't this a question media members should be asking? 

A rather disturbing document surfaced on the Internet Saturday with grave implications concerning how the Obama administration is recruiting interns from public schools to assist in advancing the President's agenda along with his desire to get Democrats including himself elected.

Even scarier, the internship application recommends participants read Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals."

According to Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs, this document was passed out in an eleventh grade class in Massillon, Ohio:

An Atlas reader, Chuck, has a student in the eleventh grade in an Ohio High School. Her government class passed out this propaganda recruiting paper so students could sign up as interns for Obama's Organizing for America. 

Here's the scary overview:

In week one, this is the recommended reading list:

Nice. Let's get America's youth to read Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals!"

For those thinking this might be a ruse, the OFA website does indeed address this program. This was posted on January 13 in the site's Community Blogs:

Don't Miss Out: OFA's Spring 2010 National Organizing Internship

 Earn credit for school and help change the world!

From his earliest years as an elected official, President Obama has encouraged young Americans to believe that their efforts can change their world for the better.  If you are passionate about reviving the economy, making the United States a global leader in clean energy, and want to be on the frontlines of political change, apply for an OFA internship today. No prior experience is necessary. Spring Semester Internships are currently available with Organizing for America - Nevada.

Apply for a Spring 2010 internship before the January 31st deadline by filling out this application.

Learn how grassroots organizing can win an election, impact policy, or change a neighborhood. Take an active role in advancing key legislation including reform in health insurance, energy, education and more.

The online application reads:

Organizing for America-Nevada is currently accepting applicants for our Spring Internship. Interns will work jointly with our Regional Field Directors to build a strong grassroots network across Nevada, and help us to pass President Obama's legislative agenda. Activities will include recruiting and managing volunteers, organizing service and press events, voter contact activities, voter registration, and administrative support work. You need not be a student to apply. Credit is available at most schools, but it is the sole responsibility of the student to make the arrangements. Applications will be accepted through January 31st, 2010 for Spring term. The internship will last until the end of Spring term, and Interns commit to at least 12 hours per week. 

The following was posted at Environment Link on January 8:

Organizing for America (OFA) has two priorities: (1) organize support for President Obama’s policy agenda, and (2) build and strengthen the grassroots organization we built during the 2008 campaign by training and empowering people to have an impact in their own communities.  The most important thing OFA does is build support for and educate citizens about President Obama’s policies for change.

Our national internship program will connect students all over the country with our organization already on the ground — working to make the change we fought so hard for a reality.

The internship will last from January 11-May 7, but the start and end dates are obviously flexible based on a school’s schedule.

The internship requires a minimum of 12 hours per week, and would be based out of our Seattle office.

Clearly this is a real program recruiting students from coast to coast. Readers are highly encouraged to review all the pages of this application at Atlas Shrugs.

Exit question: Is this something that should be happening at public schools funded with tax dollars, and isn't this a question media members should be asking? 

A rather disturbing document surfaced on the Internet Saturday with grave implications concerning how the Obama administration is recruiting interns from public schools to assist in advancing the President's agenda along with his desire to get Democrats including himself elected.

Even scarier, the internship application recommends participants read Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals."

According to Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs, this document was passed out in an eleventh grade class in Massillon, Ohio:

An Atlas reader, Chuck, has a student in the eleventh grade in an Ohio High School. Her government class passed out this propaganda recruiting paper so students could sign up as interns for Obama's Organizing for America. 

Here's the scary overview:

In week one, this is the recommended reading list:

Nice. Let's get America's youth to read Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals!"

For those thinking this might be a ruse, the OFA website does indeed address this program. This was posted on January 13 in the site's Community Blogs:

Don't Miss Out: OFA's Spring 2010 National Organizing Internship

 Earn credit for school and help change the world!

From his earliest years as an elected official, President Obama has encouraged young Americans to believe that their efforts can change their world for the better.  If you are passionate about reviving the economy, making the United States a global leader in clean energy, and want to be on the frontlines of political change, apply for an OFA internship today. No prior experience is necessary. Spring Semester Internships are currently available with Organizing for America - Nevada.

Apply for a Spring 2010 internship before the January 31st deadline by filling out this application.

Learn how grassroots organizing can win an election, impact policy, or change a neighborhood. Take an active role in advancing key legislation including reform in health insurance, energy, education and more.

The online application reads:

Organizing for America-Nevada is currently accepting applicants for our Spring Internship. Interns will work jointly with our Regional Field Directors to build a strong grassroots network across Nevada, and help us to pass President Obama's legislative agenda. Activities will include recruiting and managing volunteers, organizing service and press events, voter contact activities, voter registration, and administrative support work. You need not be a student to apply. Credit is available at most schools, but it is the sole responsibility of the student to make the arrangements. Applications will be accepted through January 31st, 2010 for Spring term. The internship will last until the end of Spring term, and Interns commit to at least 12 hours per week. 

The following was posted at Environment Link on January 8:

Organizing for America (OFA) has two priorities: (1) organize support for President Obama’s policy agenda, and (2) build and strengthen the grassroots organization we built during the 2008 campaign by training and empowering people to have an impact in their own communities.  The most important thing OFA does is build support for and educate citizens about President Obama’s policies for change.

Our national internship program will connect students all over the country with our organization already on the ground — working to make the change we fought so hard for a reality.

The internship will last from January 11-May 7, but the start and end dates are obviously flexible based on a school’s schedule.

The internship requires a minimum of 12 hours per week, and would be based out of our Seattle office.

Clearly this is a real program recruiting students from coast to coast. Readers are highly encouraged to review all the pages of this application at Atlas Shrugs.

Exit question: Is this something that should be happening at public schools funded with tax dollars, and isn't this a question media members should be asking? 

The GOP isn’t the only flagging franchise that Senator-elect Scott Brown (R., Mass.) is helping to revive. Tonight on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, host Jon Hamm, best known as the dashing Don Draper of AMC’s Mad Men, portrayed Brown in a sketch — as a sexed-up, gyrating, and stripping lawmaker who sends Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Robert Byrd, Barbara Boxer, and Barney Frank into a tizzy. In the sketch, Brown barges into a Democratic leadership meeting and, with a wink, stirs each member (played by SNL comics) to imagine their own private Brown fantasy. Reid, annoyed at the group’s distraction, asks: “Are we going to focus on running this country or are we going to waste our time thinking about Scott Brown?” A pause follows, and then Boxer, Frank, Byrd, and Pelosi respond in chorus: “We’re going to think about Scott Brown.” A Democratic dance party ensues.

Brown smiled as he watched it. “Thank goodness I like a good laugh,” he tells National Review Online. “That was pretty funny. I wish I could host SNL some day. I’ve been watching it since I was young. Jon Hamm is great.” But what about Hamm’s Boston accent? “He did a great job,” says Brown. “He doesn’t really sound like me, but it was very funny.”

Here’s the video (h/t Gawker.tv):

Watching the media's inability to find relevant investigative news during the Obama era is like watching a bald-headed fellow named Fudd hunting for ‘wabbit'. 

Such is the case of the main stream media's complete and utter ignorance involving the administration recently steering a $25 million no-bid contract to a Democratic campaign contributor. 

While Fox News reporter James Rosen did an in-depth investigative report (and follow up) on the deal with Checchi & Company - despite working for what the administration considers a non-news network - the entire media establishment had ignored a significant reneging of campaign promises, right up until that deal was canceled.

Doing his best impersonation of a crystal ball, NewsBuster Tom Blumer correctly foretold the future when he questioned the media response to the story:   

"Will the rest of the establishment press risk the tattered remnants of its credibility, follow the White House's suggestion, and ignore the story because it's coming from Fox?"

The answer...

... has been a resounding yes.

With the initial reporting by Fox nearly a week in the books, the MSM has completely ignored the story.  Despite the Obama promises that "the days of giving government contractors a blank check are over."  Despite, as Judicial Watch analyzed (emphasis mine throughout),

"Across the government, more than $543 million in federal contracts have been awarded so far without competition under Obama's $787 billion stimulus program."

In contrast, the infatuation that the media previously held with another no-bid contract in times past, Halliburton, received epic coverage right out of the gate.  The announcement of Halliburton's ‘sweetheart deal' saw a blitz of media headlines almost immediately:

• Dallas Morning News:  Old Boy Network Behind Contracts?
• Houston Business Journal:  Congressman looking into Halliburton's Army pact
• Agence France Presse:  Halliburton Handed No-Bid Iraqi Oil Firefighting Contract
• Washington Post:  Contracts to Rebuild Iraq Go to Chosen Few
• San Francisco Chronicle:  Questions dog Bush policy on contracts to cap Iraqi well fires
• Seattle Post-Intelligencer:  Contracts doled out to rebuild Iraq are questioned
• New York Daily News:  Cheney's ex-firm scores

Meanwhile, the media response to Obama's ‘sweetheart deal' has been significantly underwhelming.

Since Fox News published the story of Checchi & Company's deal on January 25th, its mention has only graced the pages of Investor's Business Daily, the Daily Caller, and various conservative blogs.  

This is clearly a conscious effort by the media to ignore a newsworthy piece.  As the Fox report surmises, "Figures ... show that no-bid contracts have been common under administrations controlled by both parties."

Undoubtedly true, but that would suggest an equal amount of coverage for both parties, possibly more so for the one who promised to end the practice.  However, to paraphrase the above excerpt, the media obsession with said no-bid contracts is only common under administrations controlled by the Republican party.

Further, the story took an interesting turn yesterday in that the contract has been subsequently canceled, and still Fox remains the only network to cover the situation. 

"Joseph A. Fredericks, director of public information at USAID, told Fox News the Checchi deal was actually a renewal of an existing contract, awarded in 2004 by the Bush administration after a competitive bid process."

Yet, the media remains quite disinterested, despite USAID feeling it necessary to take action based on the inappropriate nature of the deal.

Going back to Tom Blumer's post, he stated, ‘I don't know why I'm relaying this to readers.'

Well Tom, somebody has to...

Let’s see… Just this week we discovered:

– The UN panel based claims about disappearing ice were based on a student’s dissertation!
– The UN climate chief knew about bogus glacier studies before he went to the UN Copenhagen summit.
– Oh… And he has a chauffer take him to work each day from his home that is one mile away.
– The UN also fudged data on the disappearing Amazon rain forests.
– Not to mention this year’s record cold and snow is killing thousands of livestock.

It’s no wonder then that climate change ranks dead last among priorities for American voters.

But, that won’t stop awful RINO Lindsey Graham from pushing Congress to pass some “climate change” legislation this year. Graham told an audience this week that Congress must pass junk science legislation and take further control of the energy sector and raise costs and taxes because “Congress needs a win.”
The National Journal reported:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said today that skeptical Republicans and Democrats should throw their support behind climate change legislation not only because it’s good for the economy and the environment, but because Congress desperately needs a win under its belt.

“We tried immigration. It’s hard. And we failed. We tried Social Security. It’s hard. And we failed. We tried health care. It’s really hard. And it looks like we’re going to have to start over again,” Graham somberly told a luncheon audience of energy and climate advocates on the Hill. “On the energy, climate change front, I don’t want to add that to the list. There is no reason in my mind that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party can’t come together.”

Is it too early to start donating to a real conservative to defeat this RINO clown in his next election?

President Obama tripled the US deficit his first year in office.

Obama didn’t appreciate it when House Republicans pointed that out to him in Baltimore this week.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) corrected President Obama today after his inaccurate and dishonest statements to GOP House members yesterday in Baltimore. Obama even attacked Rep. Hensarling when he pointed out the facts during their session yesterday.
The Hill reported:

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), who got President Barack Obama a bit miffed during the question-and-answer session after his address to the House GOP retreat Friday, fired back Saturday evening after the conclusion of the Baltimore conference.

Hensarling, in criticizing government spending, told Obama that the yearly deficits Democrats complained about under George W. Bush had now become “monthly” deficits in lengthy remarks that clearly frustrated the president. (Watch the video here)

“Jim, I know there’s a question in there somewhere, because you’re making a whole bunch of assertions, half of which I disagree with, and I’m having to sit here listening to them. At some point I know you’re going to let me answer,” said Obama, who called the congressman “Jim” three times even after being initially corrected by Jeb.

“With all due respect, I’ve got take this last question as an example of how it’s very hard to have the kind of bipartisan work that we’re going to do. The whole question was structured as a talking point for running a campaign,” Obama continued, before calling Hensarling’s assertions about deficits “factually just not true.”

In anticipation of Obama rolling out his budget proposal Monday, Hensarling’s Saturday statement cited Congressional Budget Office statistics putting the average deficit during 12 years of GOP House control at $104 billion and the average deficit under three years of Democratic control at $1.1 trillion.

“The President challenged the facts I presented to him about House Republican budget priorities and Democrat budget priorities,” Hensarling said. “I am happy to provide him with the following facts to back-up my statements. I stand by what I said.”

Citing the CBO’s January monthly budget review, the statement said that the deficit run up in the first three months of FY 2010 — $390 billion — was just $22.7 billion short of the worst annual deficit under the GOP.

“I have great respect for President Obama, and I appreciate his willingness to come to our retreat, but he didn’t answer my specific question on whether he would continue us on a path to tripling the national debt and increasing government spending to 24.5% of the economy,” Hensarling concluded. “On Monday, February 1, when the President’s budget is expected to be released, we will have our answer.”