The American Spectator

The Kids Are All Right

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 7.11.09 @ 4:18PM

Despite the deep gloom of The Obama Age, young conservative operatives still manage to have fun in Washington. Friday evening, I attended an event at the Union Pub organized by Tom Qualtere of the Heritage Foundation.

I've known Tom since he was a college activist with Young America's Foundation, and covering YAF events is also how I got to know Sergio Gor of Americans For Limited Government. As a student at George Washington University in 2007, Sergio hosted a YAF-sponsored "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" event that made headlines when leftist students at GWU posted defamatory posters.

I brought a surprise guest to Friday's event -- my Donkey Cons co-author Lynn Vincent, who is now collaborating with Sarah Palin on the Alaska governor's biography. This led to casual conversation in which Sergio recounted how he spent several weeks last year as a campaign aide assigned to assist Palin's family in Alaska. Sergio's conversation was off-the-record, of course, but I suppose I won't be divulging any major secrets to say that Sarah Palin's dad, Chuck Heath, seems to be a favorite character of Republicans who've met the family.

Political gossip, however, is not the point. Sergio is a mild-mannered, easygoing guy, but don't let his unassuming demeanor fool you. The kid is a sharp operator and very resourceful.

This being summer in D.C., the nation's capital is aswarm with interns, one of whom is Hannah Giles, daughter of Townhall.com columnist Doug Giles. Now interning with the National Journalism Center, the lovely Miss Giles was a guest at Friday's event. Fridays being Fridays in D.C., the event at Union Pub was just one of many invitations on Miss Giles' social calendar, so she departed about 9 p.m..

Our group was seated at a table on the patio of the pub, next to the intersection of D Street and Massachusetts Avenue. About five minutes after Miss Giles left, a late-model Chrysler convertible pulled up to the stop sign at the intersection. In the passenger seat was Miss Giles and behind the wheel was none other than Sergio Gor. This provoked comment from the table:

"Hey, look, it's Sergio."

"Dude, that's not even his car."

"Dude, that's not his girl, either."

Doug Giles can relax. Sergio is a fine young Christian gentleman. A sharp operator, but a gentleman, nonetheless.

Give Us $4 Million Or We'll Shoot This Innocent Giraffe

Posted by Joseph Lawler on 7.11.09 @ 12:01PM

A zoo system in Massachusetts is more or less resorting to hostage-taking in response to proposed budget cuts. The Boston Globe reports that after Gov. Deval Patrick decreased funding for Franklin Park Zoo and Stone Zoo from $6.5 to $2.5 million in a line-item veto, the zoo officials wrote the governor saying that the steep budget cuts would render them unable to take care of the animals, and that many of them would have to be euthanized.

In other words, give us our money or we'll start executing defenseless animals, beginning with the cutest ones first (or at least that's where I would start, just to ratchet up the pressure).

This is a bold step. It's uncharted territory, because none of the other services that work with actual humans could make the same aggressive move, but with animals you can take the hard line. Will Gov. Patrick really let them haul out the pandas to be shot with a humane killer, as the public watches?

I hope that it works out for the zoos, because Franklin Park Zoo was my zoo growing up, the first place I ever saw a lion. Either way, though, I feel like we're in for an exciting finish.

Reports Byron York at the Washington Examiner:

More "Change" in Washington

Posted by Doug Bandow on 7.11.09 @ 7:50AM

The Bush administration again denied information to the public. No, wait! The Obama administration is attempting to deny information to the public.

Carol Browner, former Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs "to put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, is demanding a congressional investigation of Browner's conduct in the CAFE talks, saying in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, that Browner "intended to leave little or no documentation of the deliberations that lead to stringent new CAFE standards."

Federal law requires officials to preserve documents concerning significant policy decisions, so instructing participants in a policy negotation concerning a major federal policy change could be viewed as a criminal act.

Whatever happened to that change we were promised? The world just keeps getting more confusing.

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The Sainted James Hansen

Posted by Doug Bandow on 7.11.09 @ 4:22AM

Ain't happy with cap 'n trade.

Explains Hansen:

For all its "green" aura, Waxman-Markey locks in fossil fuel business-as-usual and garlands it with a Ponzi-like "cap-and-trade" scheme. Here are a few of the bill's egregious flaws:

It guts the Clean Air Act, removing EPA's ability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants.

It sets meager targets -- 2020 emissions are to be a paltry 13% less than this year's level -- and sabotages even these by permitting fictitious "offsets," by which other nations are paid to preserve forests - while logging and food production will simply move elsewhere to meet market demand.

Its cap-and-trade system, reports former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Robert Shapiro, "has no provisions to prevent insider trading by utilities and energy companies or a financial meltdown from speculators trading frantically in the permits and their derivatives."

It fails to set predictable prices for carbon, without which, Shapiro notes, "businesses and households won't be able to calculate whether developing and using less carbon-intensive energy and technologies makes economic sense," thus ensuring that millions of carbon-critical decisions fall short.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln,how was the play?

Of course, Hansen is happy to have legislation that would destroy the economy. But at least he actually would like the result to be lower emissions. The Democrats seem to be committed to impoverishing America for the fun of it. As long as taxes go up and there's more money to hand out to the usual interest groups, why worry?

(H/t to Marc Morano.)

Global Governance Gore

Posted by Chris Horner on 7.10.09 @ 6:10PM

I keep asking, to whom do I send flowers when the global warming industry trots out Al Gore to do their bidding? Today's gem only reinforces that. The gift that keeps on giving, this guy.

Now, I must say that someone I know, a high-flying type with whom I do not see eye-to-eye at all on these things, told me of a recent meeting he had with a philanthropic organization bearing the name of a great American entrepreneur (and now tied to all sorts of Moonbat causes, as so often happens by the third generation). He said they complained how really need to find a way to get around, or at least get the public to ignore, Gore as his shtick is killing them.

FWIW I volunteered that it's hard to ignore the guy with $300 million bucks. My colleague shrugged and said that some group that William Reilly is working with has a billion, and some other group half of that again (sorry I'm sketchy on the details, he said this to me 2 months ago at a reception). Not vouching for it. Just passing it along.

But all of this gives me pause to ask again as I've also asked before, who sees such value in pushing for this agenda, global-governance or otherwise, to pony up that sort of cash?

Why Kirk May Have Quit

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 7.10.09 @ 5:42PM

There are two major reasons for Mark Kirk's flip-flopping on the Illinois Senate race: the national energy tax and Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna's decision to run anyway. Kirk apparently hoped the party would clear the field for him. Instead Republicans were steamed by his vote for cap and trade. Kirk supposedly rethought his candidacy after Republican members of the Illinois delegation said they might not support him over McKenna due to the national energy tax. Now we'll see if national GOP bigwigs can muscle McKenna out of the race to bring back Kirk.

ACORN Thug Tries to Intimidate Obama? (Updated)

Posted by Matthew Vadum on 7.10.09 @ 4:57PM

See update at end of post below

Fox News is reporting that ACORN chief organizer (CEO) Bertha Lewis lashed out at President Obama for choosing a finance executive who refused to be bullied by the activist group to be a fund manager in a toxic assets program:

"Given that the administration has invested a lot of political capital and TARP funds into the creation of "Making Home Affordable," we were shocked to see that one of the last holdouts, "Home Wrecker" Wilbur Ross, has been selected by Treasury to manage this effort designed to clean up banks' balance sheets," ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis said in a statement.

"This is disappointing in the extreme, and calls into question Treasury's commitment to preventing foreclosures when it entrusts public funds to a corporate titan who has refused to do the bare minimum in foreclosure prevention by joining the administration's program."

ACORN said if Ross doesn't join the administration's program, the Treasury Department should "yank his sweetheart deal."

"American homeowners and taxpayers demand nothing less than all hands on deck to save the American dream and rescue the economy," Lewis said. "Wilbur Ross has so far refused to do his part. That must change, now."

Bear in mind this could all just be political theater and that the president might secretly welcome the kick in the rear by ACORN's Lewis in order to embarrass Invesco's Ross into getting with the program.

Updated July 12: Ross's company, American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc., now says it joined Obama's mortgage program on July 10.

Beam him out

Posted by Chris Horner on 7.10.09 @ 4:51PM

It's always possible that Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) just bailed on his anticipated Senate run upon hearing that Roland Burris would neither be his opponent in the general election nor drain the actual Democrat nominee's resources and standing in certain quarters of the minority community.

I like to think the truth is closer to Kirk having found little love (but instead much indifference, even revulsion) after his craven vote in favor of the Waxman-Markey global warming tax (passed 219-212), surely made with an eye toward running a race along the lines of other failed, squishy "look at me I'm a non-threatening Republican...media, where are you going, I thought you'd love this...?" predecessors.

It is tough, after all, to raise money when people wonder why bother given that you'll flee on the votes that really count, and otherwise on those votes presenting a clear-cut distinction between philosophies. I also like to think that that word is getting around. 7 more House Rs, a few Senate candidates and 2 aspiring governors to go.

But is there any chance Kirk can change his vote now?

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Is Kirk In or Out?

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.10.09 @ 4:42PM

The other day Jim wrote about Mark Kirk eyeing a Senate run in Illinois, but today there's conflicting reports about his intentions, saying both that he has decided to opt out, but that it's not set in stone and Republicans are still trying to get him to run. Kirk, a moderate to liberal Republican who voted for the national energy tax in the House last month, is seen as having the most realistic shot of taking the seat once held by President Obama and currently held by Roland Burris, who has said he will not run in 2010.

Dems Defend the Fed, America's Big Government Enabler

Posted by Matthew Vadum on 7.10.09 @ 2:50PM

Why are Democratic lawmakers so eager to shield the Federal Reserve Board from public scrutiny?

After Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) used a procedural trick in the U.S. Senate to torpedo a longshot legislative bid that would have had the Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit the Fed, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) expressed his disappointment on the "Glenn Beck Program":

Frankly, a lot of us here in this country and around the world, are concerned that we're going to destroy the American dollar and the worldwide reserve currency.

DeMint told substitute host Judge Andrew Napolitano that

If we could get the Federal Reserve under control, it would make it more difficult for the Obama administration, I think, to carry out the continued spending and growing of debt.

Fed deputy chairman Donald Kohn is opposed to the idea. He told a congressional hearing that auditing the primary institutional enabler of Big Government in America would interfere with Fed processes.

If the GAO, a congressional agency, were authorized to audit the Fed, that "could cast a chill on monetary policy deliberations," Kohn said.

Or Americans could find out where their tax dollars are going from an unaccountable, opaque entity that refuses to identify the recipients of $2 trillion-plus in emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the collateral backing the loans.

Making the Fed more transparent could also put to rest some of the kookier conspiracy theories about it.

Resignations For Lil Ole Blue Me, But Not For Red Thee

Posted by Shawn Macomber on 7.10.09 @ 2:32PM

New Hampshire Democrats have wasted no time pouncing on outgoing Attorney General and all-but-certain U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte with a web ad attempting to link her resignation to Sarah Palin's recent Fourth of July debacle, thrashing Ayotte for apparently going back on a promise to Democratic Governor John Lynch not to run for political office until her term was up. But, as the Union Leader's John DiStaso notes, Ayotte has more company in that particular clubhouse than Palin:

Republicans pointed out that in June 2003, Lynch, who was then the chairman of the state university system board of trustees, told the Union Leader, "I decided that I'd like to continue my commitment to the university system and higher public education. When I think about how I want to invest my time in public service over the next few years, that is what I would like to do." Lynch ran for governor in 2004 and was elected. Former Gov. Craig Benson said at the time that when he had re-appointed Lynch as a trustee, "He promised he wouldn't run for political office."

Republicans also noted that Obama, the day after being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, told the Chicago Sun-Times, "I was elected yesterday. I have never set foot in the U.S. Senate. I've never worked in Washington. And the notion that somehow I'm immediately going to start running for higher office just doesn't make sense." Obama continued, "So look, I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years, and my entire focus is making sure that I'm the best possible senator on behalf of the people of Illinois."

See New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley lamely work to explain why what's good for the Democratic goose is shameful for the Republican gander in the comments section of this Drew Cline post.

I know, I know. Obama and Lynch were forced to change their minds to ensure the oceans stop rising, the celestial choruses can finally get NEA grants to sing, give sight to the blind, allow Hugo Chavez to rant about something other than the American devils on Alo Presidente and usher in the thousand year utopian reign, while Ayotte is clearly leaving her post to snuff out all remaining embers of goodness and hope Father Obama alone is keeping alight with his blessed breath. But It still seems a wee bit hypocritical.

Re: Who Said This?

Posted by Joseph Lawler on 7.10.09 @ 1:45PM

Wlady -- good quiz. I aced it.

Only I have a problem with the second question. You present the quote out of context. Yes, it's an over-the-top, unwarranted pean to Obama. But it can't be really understood without noting that it was an article arguing that none of our public figures could live up to George Washington's level of dignity, except for Barack Obama. So in the passage you excerpted, he is arguing that Obama's personal comportment measures up to Washington's!

What a monumental failure of perspective. George Washington is the American example of dignity, whose self-mastery is literally the stuff of legends -- "I cannot tell a lie." He was at worst estimable and at best legendary as a businessman, farmer, soldier, and president. Barack Obama was a failed community organizer and then an undistinguished lawyer. At age 20 George Washington was a major in the Virginia militia; at age 20 Barack Obama was just figuring out that weed and cocaine weren't doing him any favors.

When it comes to dignity, there's just no comparison between Barack Obama and George Washington. I don't know what Brooks is thinking.

topics: Barack Obama

Who Said This?

Posted by Wlady Pleszczynski on 7.10.09 @ 12:39PM

"To get our overall fiscal house in order, we're going to need to raise taxes on the rich."

1. Paul Krugman
2. Bob Herbert
3. David Brooks

"But it's not right to end on a note of cultural pessimism because there is the fact of President Obama. Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity.… He may revitalize the concept of dignity for a new generation and embody a new set of rules for self-mastery."

1. Thomas Friedman
2. Gail Collins
3. David Brooks

"But these days it’s impossible to think about America and its future role in the world without also thinking about China. This was the subject of a combative discussion this week at the Aspen Ideas Festival."

1. Sally Quinn
2. Sarah Palin
3. David Brooks

(Answers)

Protectionist Alert -- Sorta

Posted by Paul Chesser on 7.10.09 @ 12:36PM

Guv'mint Motors (as they pronounce it here in the South), which today is pretending along with the Feds that it is emerging from bankruptcy (if it really was, why does the government need to own 60 percent of it?), is now seeking permission from the court to break its contract with a U.S.-based precious metals mining company so it can instead purchase from foreign ones. The Billings Gazette sez:

After nine months of negotiations with General Motors Corp., Stillwater Mining Co. officials learned Wednesday the automaker had petitioned bankruptcy court to reject the existing contract between the two companies.

Should the court accept GM’s petition, Stillwater would be hit with a financial impact estimated between $5 million and $10 million.

Stillwater intends to file an objection to GM’s petition with the bankruptcy court but does not know when to expect a response....

“We certainly recognize that the current economic downturn has decimated the automotive industry, forcing GM and others to make some difficult choices,” (Stillwater Chairman Francis) McAllister said. “At the same time, it seems disingenuous to me, during a period when preserving American jobs is such a high domestic priority, that GM, while receiving immense financial support from the U.S. government, would elect, as I understand it, to continue its supply agreements with foreign palladium suppliers while seeking to terminate an agreement with the sole U.S. miner of palladium.”

McAllister said they have contacted Montana’s congressional delegation and will soon meet with employees and union representatives to discuss the urgency of the situation.

So many questions, so many conflicts, so many grey areas...Whose union jobs do you protect -- the mining company's or the autoworkers'? Do you find the best metals price to protect U.S. taxpayers/investors, or do you preserve the integrity of the existing contract? Free trade or protectionism?

I thought this takeover was supposed to make things easier.

topics: Trade, General Motors

Weekly Standard Interview with Sarah Palin

Posted by Joseph Lawler on 7.10.09 @ 12:23PM

The Weekly Standard website has up a piece by Matthew Continetti that includes parts of an interview with Sarah Palin. She discusses some of the issues that prompted her to resign and her plans for the future. The explanations she gives are the same ones that she cited in her now-famous resignation speech. It's an interesting interview, but it seems a bit too much like PR -- Continetti doesn't ask tough questions, and includes a lengthy survey of Palin's meteoric career that's mostly apologetics. The takeway from the article is that there are no other factors that led Palin's resignation that are not already on the record.

We'll see. Somehow I don't feel fully reassured.

topics: Sarah Palin

Health Care Hits Major Snag in House

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.10.09 @ 11:46AM

Up until this point, health care has faced the most difficulty in the Senate, while things have gone relatively smoothly in the House. Not anymore. The House Democrats were set to release their health care bill today, and begin the process of marking it up, or rewriting it, on Monday. But Roll Call reports that the legislation has now been "delayed indefinitely" because of a letter sent by moderate Blue Dog Democrats demanding major changes. According to CNN, 40 of 52 members of the Blue Dog coalition signed the letter, a big enough chunk to endanger the legislation if Republicans stick together. The major concern of the Blue Dogs is the design of the government-run plan. While not being dead against it, they are opposed to setting the reimbursement rates at the very low Medicare levels. But what makes things really tricky is that the House Progressive Caucus, which boasts 80 members, has said it wouldn't support a plan unless it included a "robust" government plan -- which means one modeled after Medicare. Last month, I wrote at length about how this dynamic could rip apart President Obama's health care push.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

Posted by Chris Horner on 7.10.09 @ 11:15AM

Yesterday, the lead front page story in the Washington Times addressed the G-8's "climate", or Kyoto II, discussions, with a couple of quotes from me, including:

"Europeans and Democrats suddenly find themselves rushing to lecture one another and the press that an administration is limited by what Congress is willing to do. Quite refreshing awareness, on the heels of a decade of ignoring unanimous Senate instruction to Clinton to not agree to Kyoto, because they needed a totem -- Kyoto -- in their anti-Bush struggle."

As if in response and to defiantly reaffirm its in-the-tankedness, the New York Times dutifully struts forth today with an editorial, "A lesson on warming", which opens:

President Obama had hoped to emerge from this week's Group of 8 summit meeting in Italy with a tentative agreement uniting rich and developing nations in a common fight against global warming. Instead he got a lesson on how divided the world remains on the issue - and how hard he will have to work to pull off an agreement. [Emphasis added;]

Ah, yes. You may recall how for years the NYT narrative was full-blown George W. Bush standing in the world's way, particularly that of the American Left who promoted this meme above all, gleefully followed by the continent's sizable anti-American contingent and others seeking a distraction from their own woes, foibles and ineptitudes. 'Twas Bush dat done it!

Today, no longer with Bush to blame, well, let's just quietly say that the earnest Obama is finding the world in his way.

Sooo...in addition to "no time to debate!" because of your computer model projections just being so right and all of those observations and the skeptics who cite them so wrong and conspiring against you on instruction from Big Oil and, and...(pant)...you fellas also have the world against you. Maybe some of those Team McCain sources busy diagnosing Sarah Palin could spare their well-thumbed DSM so we could diagnose this.

Daily Must-Reads

Posted by Joseph Lawler on 7.10.09 @ 11:05AM

Poor Obama. Nobody wants to be his friend, polls show (Politico)

Honduras not a military coup (Los Angeles Times)

In a move reminiscent of the glory days of the WWF, the Ricci New Haven firefighter will testify in the Sotomayor case (CBS News)

The Roland Burris bandwagon may have ridden for the last time (Chicago Tribune)

$16.1 million of stimulus package being used to protect endangered mouse near Pelosi’s district (Washington Times)

Absolutely nothing is better than Obama-style stimulus (Real Clear Politics)

Tyler Cowen on the encyclical and world government (Wall Street Journal)

Finally, defensive statistics in baseball: more ways to show that Jeter sucks (NY Times)

Reihan Salam thinks that Barack Obama is a race agitator (Daily Beast)

Obama's economy weighs heavy on NASCAR.

The Grandstands at Daytona Were a Sad Sight

Posted by Yogi Love on 7.10.09 @ 9:41AM

Hank Greenberg's Home Run Against AIG and Its Big Government

Posted by John Berlau on 7.10.09 @ 8:39AM

Once again, the team of politicians and corporate bureaucrats pursuing the witchhunt against former American International Group CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg have struck out. Or maybe the better baseball analogy would be that they hit another ball into foul territory.

Greenberg, who built AIG into a financial services powerhouse during the 35-plus years he served as its head, won another legal round Tuesday as a federal jury in New York City ruled that he did not have to reimburse AIG for shares taken by an investment firm Greenberg owned when he was forced out as CEO. The jury found that the shares belonged to Greenberg's company, Starr International, under terms of the original contract.

Yet outrageously, it appears that AIG will continue to use the billions in taxpayer dollars it has receive to pursue this frivoulous litigation against Greenberg. The jury's verdict today is the latest piece of evidence that much of AIG's problems -- and the systemic disruptions they have caused -- can be traced to political meddling.

Greenberg, a distinguished philanthropist and Bronze Star recipient for his service in World War II and the Korean War, was forced out in 2005 because of baseless charges of accounting fraud by then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. All of Spitzer's criminal charges against Greenberg and nearly all of his civil charges have been dismissed, but the mere allegations were enough to cause AIG's board to force Greenberg out and to be replaced with a succession of caretaker CEOs more pleasing to politicians like Spitzer.

The sudden forced exit of Grenberg took its toll. Greenberg has testified that as many mortgage-related credit default swaps were written in the nine months following his departure as AIG had issued in the entire previous 7 years combined. No one has refuted him on these specifics. We will never know what would have happened had Greenberg stayed on as CEO, but given his track record, it is doubtful the implosion would have been so sudden and so severe.

In sum the lesson of AIG is not that there should be more government meddling, but less arbitrary intervention by subprime politicians.

(Greenberg is not to be confused with the late baseball legend Hank Greenberg, from whom he probably took his nickname. But this did allow me to use many baseball analogies in this blog, so I'm grateful.)

Brookhiser's Book Bash

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 7.9.09 @ 9:33PM

Wednesday evening, I attended a book-signing party for Richard Brookhiser's Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age With William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement, hosted at the Foxhall Road home of David Frum and Danielle Crittenden. (Tell Jeffrey Lord not to worry -- I've already been deprogrammed, although I can't speak for Quin Hillyer and James Bowman, who also attended.) I've posted an account of the soiree, with photos, at the Hot Air Green Room.

Brookhiser's book is quite obviously focused on Buckley, who once designated Brookhiser his chosen sucessor at National Review but later, declaring that his young protege lacked "executive flair," shunted him aside. As he tells his story, however, Brookhiser relates many other things, including this from page 30:

Throughout high school and college I kept sending pieces to National Review, one or two a year, and most of them kept being published. National Review suggested I send a humor piece to the Alternative, a monthly in Bloomington, Indiana; its tone was simultaneously meaner, and more fey, and they became the second place to run me.

The Alternative, of course, became The American Spectator, and -- along with such familiar names as R. Emmett Tyrrell, Wlady Pleszczynski and Tom Bethell -- the magazine makes subsequent appearances. Indeed, on page 96, Brookhiser credits Tyrrell for coining "the tersest definition of Reaganism that I ever heard . . . 'Fight Communism; cut taxes; the pieties.'"

All in all, Brookhiser has written a book that will be enjoyed equally by those old enough to remember what Communism was (and that it was once considered very right-wing to want to fight it) and by those too young to know what it was like when offices were redolent with the aroma of cigars and echoed with the clatter of typewriters.

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The Anti-Freak

Posted by Shawn Macomber on 7.9.09 @ 5:08PM

James Poulos explores the "freak-industrial complex" in the wake of Michael Jackson's 24 carat send-off in a typically brilliant bit--written, presumably in the spare moments away from tending his anything-but-freakish brand new baby boy!

Senate Dems Mull VAT, Payroll Tax Hike To Pay for Health Care

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.9.09 @ 4:46PM

Ezra Klein, citing a Senate source, offers "an insider's look" at the options the Senate Finance committee is considering to pay for health care. Among the options he names are "an increase of 0.3 percent on the employer and employee Medicare tax" to raise $275 billion over 10 years and, "a 5 percent value-added tax that exempts food, housing, and medical care," that would represent a $1 trillion tax hike over 10 years.

So, taken together, this means that during the worst economic crisis in decades, Democrats are considering raising taxes on consumption and employment.

Aligned Perfectly With the Partisanship of the Media

Posted by Paul Chesser on 7.9.09 @ 4:37PM

Scientists, that is.

topics: Global Warming

Obama: Working with the Pope to Help the World?

Posted by John Rosenthal on 7.9.09 @ 4:35PM

"Obama: Working with the Pope to Help the World." This is the title of an interview with President Obama that appeared in the Italian Catholic paper Avvenire last week in anticipation of Obama's meeting with Pope Benedict XVI tomorrow. According to the editorial director of Avvenire, Dino Boffo, the invitation came from the White House. As if reacting to recent criticisms of the Obama administration for planting questions during press conferences, the introduction to the interview stresses that the questions were not provided to the President in advance. In an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, editorial director Dino Boffo makes the same observation, while effusively praising the President for his "preparation," "intelligence," and "honesty."

While acknowledging obvious differences on issues such as abortion and stem-cell research, in the Avvenire interview Obama chose to emphasize what he identified as the large areas of political agreement between him and the Pope: "from peace in the Middle East to the fight against poverty, from climate change to immigration." Particular attention was given to the Middle East conflict and the supposed need for Israel to cease settlement construction in the West Bank in the interest of achieving a negotiated "two-state solution" with the Palestinians. Here is the relevant exchange:

Avvenire: During his recent trip to the Holy Land, the Pope spoke of a "just and lasting peace." But the peace negotiations in the Middle East have come to a halt, in part because of the opposition of Israel to stopping the growth of settlements in the West Bank. How do you think you can convince the Jewish state to overcome this opposition and how do you intend to get negotiations restarted on the basis of the principle "two nations, two states" [due popoli, due Stati].

Obama: We have been very clear with the Israelis in insisting that the settlements should be stopped. But we know that this will not be easy for Israel, since the settlements have been going on for many years. Moreover, Prime Minister Netanyahu has to deal with a series of difficult political conditions in his own country. That said, the discussions that we are having with the Israelis are very constructive. On the other hand, it is not only Israel's fault. The Palestinians have the responsibility of stopping the violence and the Arab countries in the region should understand that if Israel is called upon to take very difficult decisions, they should recognize that the Jewish state needs security like any other country. Without imposing a solution, what the United States can do is to hold up a mirror to both parties, in order to show them the consequences of their own actions. This is a subject that I am anxious to discuss with the Holy Father, who I believe shares my approach.

One other exchange will be of particular interest to the American public, since Obama's response suggests that he opposes the death penalty. The question in fact concerned abortion and the "right to life." Here is the exchange:

Avvenire: Some Catholics praise your contribution to promoting the theme of social justice; others criticize you for your positions on subjects related to life: from abortion to stem-cell research. Do you see this as a contradiction?

Obama: This tension in the Catholic world existed well before I got to the White House. When I first started to be interested in social justice, in Chicago, the Catholic bishops spoke of immigration, of atomic weapons [nucleare], of the poor, foreign policy. Then, at some point, the attention of the Catholic Church shifted toward abortion and this had the power to move opinion in both Congress and the country in the same direction. These are questions that I think about a lot, but it is not up to me to resolve such tensions. Nonetheless, I have seen how one could attempt to bring about a sort of reconciliation. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, whom I knew in Chicago, spoke clearly and explicitly of the defense of life. And he included under this head also the fight against poverty, child welfare, and the death penalty. I am continually inspired by this part of the Catholic tradition and it has had a considerable impact on my wife. At times, I think that it has gotten buried beneath the debate on abortion. I would prefer that it remains in the foreground in the national debate.

During the 2008 electoral campaign, Obama said that he supported the use of the death penalty in the case of the "most egregious" crimes.

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What's the Rush(more)?

Posted by Asher Embry on 7.9.09 @ 3:54PM

What’s the Rush(more)?
By Asher Embry

Washington and Jefferson and Roosevelt and Lincoln.
Those who’d put Obama there, whatever are they drinkin’?
Just six months in, his “leadership accomplishments” they’re hailin’.
Not us. The one we’re waitin’ for? You betcha: Sarah Palin!

(You can read more of Asher Embry's Political Verse at www.politicalverse.com.)

Window Dressing or: Joke of the Day

Posted by Shawn Macomber on 7.9.09 @ 2:30PM

Have you heard the one about Obama's unwavering commitment to Due Process?

Snowe Jobs

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 7.9.09 @ 12:44PM

The fact is that many of the Senate Republicans' top recruits are, in varying degrees, moderates: Charlie Crist in Florida, Rob Simmons in Connecticut, Mark Kirk in Illinois, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, and they are still hoping for Michael Castle in Delaware. (Castle is 70 and another member of the cap and trade eight.)

In some cases, like Florida and Connecticut, there are more conservative candidates in the race who poll competitively in general election matchups but not quite as well as the moderate frontrunners. (I discuss this in the July/August issue of the print magazine.) In other cases, like Illinois and Delaware, the moderates are pretty clearly the best -- only? -- chance the Republicans have.

Generally speaking, I don't think electing someone with an "R" next to their name rather than a "D" is that important if they are going to vote in ways I dislike most of the time. This is especially true for someone like me, who is off the reservation on the few issues where moderates tend to vote with the party. But for conservatives to have any leverage in Washington, it is important to get the Democrats below 60 seats in the Senate, which may sometimes require supporting less than ideal candidates. It's the Arlen Specter dilemma all over again. Unless all these moderates become Democrats.

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Has New Hampshire Found Its Olympia Snowe?

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.9.09 @ 12:21PM

The other day I posted that Republicans had landed their top recruit for the 2010 New Hamphsire Senate race, state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte. At the time I cautioned that her positions on issues remain largely unknown. Today, Dan Riehl notes her recent support for stimulus spending.

Not a Fan of Paul

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 7.9.09 @ 11:40AM

Most people who would make such pronouncements probably think that George and Ringo are also apostles.

"Imagine there's no heaven... It's in the Gospel according to John, right?"

Democrats Question AmeriCorps Official's Stonewall on IG Case

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 7.9.09 @ 11:39AM

Democratic congressional staffers investigating the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin asked tough questions of an agency lawyer who refused to discuss White House involvement in the case, a source familiar with the investigation tells the Spectator.

Byron York reported this morning in the Washington Examiner that Frank Trinity, general counsel for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) -- parent agency of the AmeriCorps government volunteer program -- "refused to answer questions from congressional investigators" Monday, when he was asked about the White House's role in last month's firing of Walpin.

Trinity told congressional staffers that he was "not authorized" to discuss White House involvement in the June 10 quit-or-be-fired ultimatum to Walpin, the Spectator's source said. Democratic staffers were clearly annoyed by Trinity's non-response and questioned him about his reasons for not answering.

So far, the source said, interviews with "key board members" at CNCS contradict White House special counsel Norman Eisen's assertion that the June 10 firing followed an "extensive review" at the request of the CNCS board. Board members have told congressional investigators that "they weren't contacted [by the White House] until after the decision was made," the source said.

The 30-day window for congressional review of the IG's dismissal -- required under a law co-sponsored by then-Sen. Barack Obama -- is due to expire Friday. A spokeswoman for Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs, said there has not yet been a decision on whether to hold hearings on the AmeriCorp IG firing.

He's No Russell Kirk, But...

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 7.9.09 @ 11:31AM

Yesterday's reports that Mark Kirk is eyeing a Senate run in Illinois and Attorney General Lisa Madigan is not are a shot in the arm for the GOP. Both developments go a long way toward putting the seat held by Sen. Roland Burris in play, as the Republicans appear to have gotten their strongest candidate while the Democrats have lost theirs. Burris is almost certainly toast, probably in the primary should he be stubborn enough to run. That leaves Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias as the likely Democratic frontrunner. Giannoulias is, shall we say, a Chicago type of pol.

Conservative enthusiasm for Kirk is tempered by the fact that he's not just a moderate, but one of the eight Republicans to vote for the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, making him a tax-hiker. In the early '90s, even the most liberal Republicans -- Jim Jeffords, John Chafee, Mark Hatfield, and Arlen Specter -- voted against the Clinton tax increases. But given a 60-seat Democratic supermajority and a lack of plausible conservative primary challengers, most Illinois conservatives will probably get behind Kirk as a strongest pickup opportunity behind Sen. Chris Dodd's seat in Connecticut.

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Daily Must-Reads

Posted by Brian O'Connell on 7.9.09 @ 10:59AM

Media largely silent on American victory in Iraq (National Review Online)

Don’t do a second stimulus (The Wall Street Journal)

Greenpeace puts Obama on Mount Rushmore (The Washington Post)

Michael Jackson resolution not thrilling all members of Congress (The Washington Times)

Michael Lewis gets the AIG story straight from the people who were at ground zero (Vanity Fair)

The White House's terribly mixed signals and ever-changing tune on the economy (Keith Hennessey)

Quick Conservative Protestant Take on Caritas in Veritate

Posted by Hunter Baker on 7.9.09 @ 10:33AM

I remember once reading an author who began by saying that he wasn't a big fan of Paul. I was offended by that because I thought, "Who are you to pronounce yourself a non-fan of Paul? Furthermore, who cares whether you're a fan of Paul?"

I say this because I have been reading Caritas in Veritate by Pope Benedict. As I read, I find I agree and disagree with different portions of it. I can imagine a Catholic saying, "Who are you to disagree with the Pope? And who cares, Protestant boy?" I am very sensitive to that sentiment.

The quick version is this. The pope is very impressive as he writes about the nature of knowledge. He has very clearly grasped that the way we view knowledge is unnecessarily stunted and frankly, unworkable.

The part that brings me up a little short is the way he writes about economics. There are some very substantial insights there about how capitalism has a tendency to undermine its own foundations. At the same time, however, he seems to be hinting at the kind of social programs and employment guarantees that have often proved harmful to the development of productive lives by whole groups of human beings.

I continue to work my way through the document which is fairly heavy lifting.

The Liberal Pontiff

Posted by Joseph Lawler on 7.9.09 @ 10:14AM

In advance of Pres. Obama's meeting with the pope tomorrow, E.J. Dionne Jr., the Washington Post's resident Catholicism obfuscator, chimes in with a look at the encyclical released earlier this week, Caritas in Veritate. The column features too many half-truths, cherry-picked anecdotes, and misrepresentations to bother addressing them all, but there is one worthwhile takeaway. Dionne crows that "right-wing" Catholics will be surprised to find that the Vatican views Obama through a "broader prism" than just the abortion issue, and that in fact their meeting comes "just three days after the release of a papal encyclical on social justice that places the pope well to Obama's left on economics."

OK, it is good to know, straight from one of the most vocal liberal U.S. Catholics, that Benedict is more liberal than our president. I assume this means that in the future we won't hear complainst about Benedict's reactionary or unbending conservative extremism.

Back to the Drawing Board

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.9.09 @ 9:44AM

After Harry Reid told Max Baucus that taxing employer-provided health benefits was off the table because of a lack of votes, the Senate Finance committee is now scrambling to figure out new ways to pay for the $1 trillion-plus cost of health care legislation. President Obama's idea -- to limit the charity tax deduction for high-income individiuals -- has also been unpopular on the Hill. This is another indication that Democrats' timeline to get health care bills passed in the House and Senate before the August recess is looking increasingly unrealistic. Keep in mind that under the original schedule, the Finance committee was supposed to begin marking up, or rewriting, legislation the week of June 22. That date got pushed back to this week after the CBO put the price tag of a draft of the Finance committee bill at $1.6 trillion and Baucus sought to chop it down. Yet here we are, and Democrats are still looking for ways to pay for the legislation.

Obviously, this setback on the financing front will push the timeline back even further. And remember, even when the Finance committee comes up with a draft of the bill, it still has to go through the markup process, and then be reconciled with the much more liberal bill coming out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committtee. Budget committee chairman Kent Conrad sounds like a Republican when he says, as quoted by the Politico: "The important thing is to get it right, not to get stuck on some specific day or some specific week." And as I've noting, time is the Democrats' enemy. It's no wonder that liberal health care journalist Jonathan Cohn is concerned.

I warned you again May 4:

The Existential Threat of Bushism

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 7.8.09 @ 10:52PM

Tucker Carlson pronounces Jeb Bush "the Future of the Republican Party," which is rather like saying that hamburgers are the future of cows.

I've been warning about The Jeb Menace since before the last election. Nov. 1, 2008:

Palin is being sabotaged by Republicans who are trying to scramble aboard the Jeb Bush 2012 bandwagon.

[T]he lesson that the Republican Party should have learned over the past 20 years is simple: Lie down with Bushes, wake up with Democrats.
The first President Bush betrayed the Reagan legacy and handed America to Bill Clinton.
The second President Bush betrayed the Reagan legacy and handed America to Barack Obama.

And I sounded the warning again May 20. The Jeb Bandwagon must be stopped. Nothing is more important to the future of the Republican Party, the conservative cause and the United States. Indeed, the fate of life on earth as we know it depends upon stopping Jeb.

READ MY LIPS: NO MORE BUSHES!

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Obama Reaches Low Point in Daily Gallup Poll

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.8.09 @ 5:18PM

Is President Obama's long honeymoon finally coming to an end? It's a question I've been hesitant to ask so far in his presidency, and I only do so now with caution. It's important to keep in mind that approval ratings fluctuate week to week and Obama still remains generally popular. That said, we now have a flurry of recent data suggesting that his support is starting to wane.

Yesterday, I noted a Quinnipiac poll in the political bellwether state of Ohio showing Obama's approval rating dropping to 49 percent, and today Rasmussen finds that he received his lowest rating ever in the firm's "Presidential Approval Index." While Rasmussen has been criticized by some for releasing polls that tend to skew Republican, Obama's approval rating has dropped to 56 percent in the latest Gallup daily tracking poll, also a new low. At the same time, his Gallup disapproval rating has climbed to 36 percent, its highest ever. While, taken individually, each of these polling results could be seen as a blip, taken together, they indicate public perception of Obama is slipping -- something that can be seen in the Gallup chart below.

It's quite possible that what we're seeing now is just a hiccup, and that Obama will bounce back in a week or so, just as he did on many occasions during the campaign when it seemed his appeal was fading. However, it should be noted that the recent downtick in his approval ratings has coincided with the release of unemployment data and amid criticism that his economic stimulus bill is not working. And given that even the White House now expects unemployment to keep creeping up into the double-digits, it likely means that we can anticipate serveral more months of bad job reports, each one putting pressure on Obama. It's important to remember that the next few months will be cruical for the health care fight, and the best thing Democrats have going for them on that front is that Obama remains popular. If he begins to lose credibility, people will become more skeptical when he claims that health care legislation will save money, not add to the debt, not lead to tax increase, not mean a government takeover, not mean that people lose their current insurance, etc.

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Back in the U.S.S.R.

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.8.09 @ 3:28PM

Matt Yglesias, a blogger for the liberal Center for American Progress, cites Soviet-era life expectancy data to argue that, "the dread U.S.S.R. actually did a perfectly decent job of providing the sort of goods—health care, basic education, subways, nuclear missiles, vast prison camps, satellite launch vehicles—that in most democracies are provided by the state."

And yet it would be a "scare tactic" for me to argue that liberals favor government-run health care.

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)

You're Lying; We Killed Everybody

Posted by Paul Chesser on 7.8.09 @ 2:41PM

I don't know if I've ever heard of a court case in which the defendant challenged the truthfulness of a witness against him by admitting to even more heinous crimes, but that's what happened this week in the trial of Khmer Rouge jailer Kaing Guek Eav, or Comrade Duch. The Cambodian Nuremburg-type hearings continued this week with testimony from a few who claimed they were held at the S-21 prison in the late 1970s under Duch's control, but he doubted them:

More than 14,000 people died at the S-21 prison. Eight people have now provided testimony of their detainment, although Duch has questioned whether all of them really spent time there, and one of the judges has raised some doubts....

Tuesday, another survivor, Lay Chan, said he had been detained at S-21 for two months in 1976 and interrogated twice before his release. Duch responded that nobody was released from S-21 and Lay could therefore not have been held there....

Wednesday the court heard from a female survivor, Chin Meth, 51, who described a routine of forced labor followed by beatings during a 15-day stay at S-21 in 1977.

However, Duch queried her recollection, too, although he said she could have been detained and interrogated elsewhere.

"The fact is that if she was transferred to S-21, she would be dead. She could not be let out," Duch told the judges. "If people were transferred to S-21, they would be smashed."

topics: genocide

P on Virginia

Posted by Reid Collins on 7.8.09 @ 1:23PM

Two weeks from now, Virginia plans to close 18 "rest stops" along its highways -- a measure somebody figures will save the cash-shy state some $9 million a year. A lot of toilet paper, and a lot of torture for travelers unfortunate to be traveling Virginia highways.

Notably, the closings will leave northbound motorists without public toilets on the l06-mile stretch of I-95 from Richmond to Washington, D.C. There seems no standard for spacing between stops, but the Jersey Turnpike has one every 20 miles and the stretch of I-95 between Richmond and the District is more often than not so congested it is a crawl.

It is now left for some enterprising bumper sticker maker to create the obvious, a sticker that proclaims, with literal intent:

"P ON VIRGINIA!"

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More on Palin's Resignation

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 7.8.09 @ 12:24PM

John Fund's column today explains how Sarah Palin's enemies used Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests to bog down her administration.

To clarify some points in Fund's column, one source explained to me that, of 230 FOIA requests received by Palin's office since she became governor, 190 were filed since Sept. 1, 2008 -- that is, 83 percent of the requests were filed in the 10 months since Palin was chosen as the Republican vice-presidential candidate. Many of these FOIA requests were massive -- one request was 24,000 pages -- and some were obviously fishing expeditions requiring that the governor's office produce thousands of e-mails and other records.

"Instead of governing, her staff was spending all their time responding to FOIA requests, not to mention all these ridiculous ethics complaints," the source said.

Assessing the situation, Fund concludes in his column "that Ms. Palin most likely will not run for president -- in 2012, at least." However, both the arc of Palin's career and the current political landscape are so unprecedented that any prediction of the future is at best an educated guess.

A 2012 presidential campaign would not be formally organized until after the November 2010 mid-term elections. That gives Palin a full 16 months to re-invent her public image, assemble the core of a campaign staff and establish a nationwide political support structure. A difficult task in such a constricted time-frame, with nearly the entire GOP establishment lined up against her, but difficult is not the same thing as impossible.

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Inherent Physiological Differences

Posted by Quin Hillyer on 7.8.09 @ 11:41AM

The worst thing Sonia Sotomayor said was not the bit about a wise Latina would make better decisions than a white male, but WHY she says wise Latinas have better judgment. See today's Washington Times editorial. And what was that about the "facts" she might "choose to see?"

CBO Says Medicaid Expansion Would Cost $500 Billion

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.8.09 @ 11:20AM

Remember last week when the media touted a new cost estimate by the Congressional Budget Office suggesting that Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee had found a magic want enabling them to cover 97 percent of the uninsured for $600 billion? Well, we now know that the cost is more like $1.1 trillion, and likely higher.

As I cautioned when the CBO numbers came out last week, the $600 billion estimate did not include the price of massively expanding Medicaid, a costly provision of all of the various Democratic health care proposals. But now the CBO released an additional estimate anticipating that legislation would add 15 million to 20 million more people to the Medicaid rolls. It found that the cost of such an expansion "could vary in a broad range around $500 billion over 10 years." But the catch is that such an estimate is of the anticipated federal cost of the Medicaid expansion. In actuality, the federal government typically pays around 57 percent of the cost of Medicaid, while the remaining 43 percent is picked up by the states. So what's the full cost of a Medicaid expansion at both the federal and state level?

Sen. Lamar Alexander, a former governor of Tennessee who has been concerned with the burden that a Medicaid expansion could put on cash-strapped state governments, posed this question to CBO director Douglas Emendorf at a Senate hearing this morning. Elmendorf explained that part of the price tag depends on how broad the expansion of Medicaid will be. Additionally, some proposals anticipate the federal government covering the full cost of the Medicaid expansion, while others anticipate turning the increased cost over to the states after five or so years. Elmendorf said that the $500 billion figure was a back of the envelope calculation based more or less on the midpoint of a number of possible scenarios (i.e., if more cost is shifted to the states, the lower the federal number, and the more cost that is covered by the federal government, the higher the number). But while the CBO is only tasked with determining how much a piece of legislation will cost the federal government, to taxpayers, it's arbitrary as to whether the burden is being carried by Washington or their state governments. This is a longer way of stating that we don't yet know the combined state and federal cost of expanding Medicaid, we can assume that it will likely be higher than $500 billion. And this is only one provision of health care legislation, the full cost of which will easily exceed $1 trillion as currently envisioned.

Climate Change and Nazism: Sarko Said It First

Posted by John Rosenthal on 7.8.09 @ 10:38AM

Much of the blogosphere is presently up in arms about Al Gore comparing the "battle against climate change" to that against Hitler and Nazi Germany. But in fact Gore's remarks are not particularly novel. Only one month ago, none other than French President Nicolas Sarkozy made precisely the same comparison during the ceremonies marking the 65th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. Indeed, Sarkozy even added that the battle against "a capitalism of speculators and rentiers" was yet another similar struggle. Here is the relevant passage from Sarkozy's speech as translated from the official French transcript:

All those who fought against Nazism and Fascism dreamt of building a better world in which right would replace force.

We know that there is still a long way to go.

But we also know what a united Europe and an America that is faithful to its values can accomplish together. The great totalitarianisms of the 20th Century have been defeated. The threats that today weigh upon the future of humanity are of a different nature. But they are no less serious.

What will become of the world if global warming deprives hundreds of millions of men, women, and children of water and food? If a capitalism of speculators and rentiers destroys the jobs of millions of people? If extreme poverty drives a part of humanity to desperation? What would become of the world if, as a result of a cowardly withdrawal [from the fight], the world's democracies would give free rein to terrorism and fanaticism? If they refused to defend human rights and the rights of nations?

It must be said that Sarkozy's list is highly inclusive and it is notable that the war on terror and (if only implicitly) Islamic extremism at least made the grade. It is also notable, however, that the latter only figures in fourth place -- behind the ostensible struggles against global warming and capitalism!

Moreover, Sarkozy's choice of comparisons is not the only historically dubious aspect of his speech. His suggestion that a "united Europe" somehow contributed to the defeat of "the great totalitarianisms of the 20th Century" -- hence, presumably including National Socialism -- is an even more obvious howler.

Daily Must-Reads

Posted by Joseph Lawler on 7.8.09 @ 8:59AM

A little too much meddling with the airlines for comfort (Wall Street Journal)

No one is man enough for serious geo-engineering, which is why we're getting Waxman-Markey. Bruce Willis would do it (Atlantic)

Oh, so good to know: Sarah Palin, believe it or not, doesn't suffer from narcissistic personality disorder. Thanks, XX! (doubleX)

Cracking down on prison rape gets bipartisan (Washington Times)

George Weigel on the pope's socialist/lassez faire new encyclical (National Review Online)

Now That You Mention It…

Posted by Chris Horner on 7.7.09 @ 9:55PM

It strikes me -- as I watch at least a few among the media prompted into navel-gazing by a letter in the WaPo by an aunt of a deceased Army Lieutenant, killed in Afghanistan on the same day that Michael Jackson passed in slightly less heroic circumstances -- that outrage over the, ahem, "news" media's obsessively distracted and perverse publication and production decisions should continue until they get their act together.

Our soliders are ignored because the media simply cannot bring themselves to tell us these warriors' and patriots' stories (except in ways that fit the media narrative), the media having decided that they cannot reconcile that and our nation's current struggles with their own politics, agendas and sensationalist impulses.

Think about this lieutenant and his comrades, deceased, wounded, returned intact and still battling, with each pile-on of global warming porn and ask yourself what's wrong with these people.

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Guess What? It's Not Working

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 7.7.09 @ 9:34PM

Despite everything Obama and Democrats have done -- or, perhaps, because of everything they've done -- the bad economy appears to be getting worse. Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 both hit two-month lows, and financial analysts are starting to speak bluntly about the grim prospects ahead:

"Investors are grasping the fact that the recovery, when it does come, may not be as robust as what many hope for."
-- Robert Siewert, portfolio manager at Glenmede

"It's an overall reality check. People are starting to worry there may have been a disconnect between the market and reality. I kept thinking we were way due for a correction a month ago or more, and it wasn't coming."
-- Doreen Mogavero, president of Mogavero, Lee & Company

"We are maybe past the very worst of it, but that doesn't mean we are ready to zoom up. I think the recovery is likely to be shallow and uneven."
-- Janna Sampson, co-chief investment officer of OakBrook Investments

Meanwhile, however, the firm of Obama, Pelosi & Reid is discussing the need for yet more "stimulus":

"I think it's insane, the first stimulus package has not even been spent yet," said Andre Weisbrod, president & chief executive of Staar Financial Advisors in Pittsburgh. "They are creating what I would call the government bubble . . . When that bursts we are in huge trouble."

Ideas have consequences, and the prevailing idea in Washington now -- that government is better than the free market in terms of generatiing economic growth -- is having consequences that are utterly predictable, and were predicted, seven months ago.

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Sympathy for Sarah

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 7.7.09 @ 5:38PM

A new Gallup poll finds that 53 percent of the American people believe media coverage of Sarah Palin has been "unfairly negative" while just 28 percent think has been fair and 9 percent find it unfairly positive. That's something of a rebuke to her critics, though she is still a long way from solving her political problems -- just 34 percent of independents, for example, want her to take on a new national leadership role.

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Gallup: 70 Percent Say Palin's Decision to Resign Has No Effect on Their Opinion

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.7.09 @ 5:31PM

A new Gallup poll finds that 70 percent of Americans say that Sarah Palin's decision to resign as governor of Alaska has no effect on their opinion of her. At the same time, 17 percent view her less favorably as a result of the move, and 9 percent view her more favorably. Meanwhile, Palin continues to be polarizing, with 43 percent saying they would be very or somewhat likely to vote for her as president and 54 percent saying they would be "not too likely" or "not at all likely" to vote for her. But the media gets overwhelmingly bad reviews, with 53 percent of Americans saying that coverage of Palin has been "unfairly negative" while only 9 percent say it's "unfairly positive" and 28 percent say it's "about right."

Gallup notes:

Palin's abrupt resignation with 18 months left in her first term as governor has probably raised more questions than answers about her political future. But the move has apparently not affected Americans' basic opinions of her to a large degree. As political observers eagerly await her next career move, roughly 19% of U.S. voters say they would be very likely to vote for her should she run for president in 2012, and another 24% say they would be somewhat likely to do so. While still the minority of all voters, it is perhaps not a bad start for an election still three years away, and arguably could put Palin in a better starting position than some of the lesser-known GOP candidates who may also seek the party's presidential nomination.

What the poll does not measure, however, is the opportunity cost of Palin's decision. While most Americans' opinions of Palin were largely unmoved by the act of quitting itself, the fact that she is leaving office after two and a half years makes will make it harder to convince skeptics who believe she does not have the necessary experience to be president.

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Burying Taxpayers in a TARP

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 7.7.09 @ 4:53PM

Bailout nation continues. Over at the Washington Examiner, Byron York writes up Barney Frank's plan to spend dividends from TARP before the taxpayers can get their grubby hands on them. The idea was that bailed-out financial institutions would hand over shares of preferred stock that paid a dividend for the government in exchange for the TARP money. If the dividends were paid promptly and the institutions repaid the TARP funds, it would theoretically be possible for the federal government to turn a profit.

According to the GAO, the federal government has received over $6 billion dividends payments through June 12. Under the original TARP legislation, such money was supposed to be used to pay down the debt. Under Barney Frank's "TARP for Main Street Act of 2009," it will instead go to Democratic housing programs and community activists, potentially including ACORN -- bad ideas that will get worse if bailout recipients increasingly don't pay dividends or repay the TARP funds themselves.

She's Come Undone

Posted by Chris Horner on 7.7.09 @ 3:37PM

As we tragically learned with the space shuttle Columbia, materials bound with environmentally conscious adhesive can come unglued under stress, which may not be fit for purpose.

I do believe that is also what we are witnessing here (h/t Marc Morano at ClimateDepot).

'If I Die, I Die'

Posted by Paul Chesser on 7.7.09 @ 3:35PM

Sarah Palin certainly has her flaws, but it has been interesting the last few days to watch her swat away one criticism after another of her decision to resign the Alaska governorship. What's most refreshing is that, unlike most others whose lives are a campaign or who place their value on whether they hold elected office, Palin does not appear to make every life decision a calculation to maximize personal political benefit. She admits her inability to hide "Mama Grizzly" when her children are ridiculed or attacked; she clearly places a higher importance on God and her family than on government office; she understands that the moment she accepted the vice presidential nomination changed everything about her profile and her ability to help Alaska; and she recognizes that the state she governs can continue just fine -- maybe better -- without her in office.

AP reports:

Palin wouldn't rule out a 2012 presidential run, and told CNN that "all options are on the table" for her future.

"I don't know what doors will be open or closed by then," the Republican told Time magazine. "I was telling Todd today, I was saying, 'Man, I wish we could predict the next fish run so that we know when to be out on the water.' We can't predict the next fish run, much less what's going to happen in 2012."

But she told ABC's "Good Morning America" that she recognizes she might not have political staying power after her surprise resignation Friday, which came just as she had been expected to elevate her national profile ahead of a possible 2012 GOP presidential run.

"I said before ... 'You know, politically speaking, if I die, I die. So be it,'" she said.

That's not to say she has never made a political calculation in her life in her decisionmaking -- we all do to some degree or another -- but at least she's courageous enough to recognize reality, make a bold decision, and suffer the negative consequences if there are any. Whether it's to free her up for national speaking, or to concentrate on a 2012 presidential run, or just to make money -- well, so what? Better that than to burden your family with hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal debts, when a state can run just fine without you.

It's foolish for pundits to say her political career is over. It may have only just begun. If the mocked, ridiculed, and washed-up Michael Jackson can draw adoration in death, then anything can happen.

topics: Sarah Palin

Republicans Get Their Top Recruit for NH Senate Race

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.7.09 @ 1:45PM

The Politico reports:

New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte announced today she will be resigning her post to pursue a campaign for the Senate, landing Republicans a top-tier recruit to run against Democrat Paul Hodes.

According to a recent poll, she leads Hodes by 4 percent in the race to replace retiring Judd Gregg, but the catch is that she has not sought elective office before and her positions on major issues remain unknown.

Trusting Medvedev

Posted by Asher Embry on 7.7.09 @ 1:11PM

It is easy to reach agreement if you only discuss things on which you agree.

Trusting Medvedev
By Asher Embry

“I trust President Medvedev,” Barack firmly states.
And we’ve seen O’s a great judge of character traits.
As with Bill Ayers and Rezko and Reverend Wright, too,
Can we doubt O’s assessment of Dmitri rings true?

It’s scary indeed what they haven’t discussed
In the midst of this orgy of friendship and trust.
While he lectures at Putin, O’s fans must acknowledge,
He’s as green and naïve as he was when in college.

As he’s boosting the Russians to leadership roles
He abandons our allies, the Czechs and the Poles.
Our nukes, and the Russians’, reduced just on whims,
But there’s barely a peep ‘bout Iranians’ or Kim’s.
And, perchance, might he harness his awesome persuasion
To shift the talks back to the Georgia invasion?

“Reset” our relations? There’s a rule O must heed:
Address only things to which Putin’s agreed.

(You can read more of Asher Embry's Political Verse at www.politicalverse.com.)

Is Obama's Fade in Ohio a Sign of Things to Come?

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.7.09 @ 12:42PM

For those wondering when the American people are going to start holding President Obama accountable for the weak economy, the answer could be: very soon. Via Ben Smith, I see this new Quinnipiac poll, which found that Obama's favorability rating has dropped to 49 percent in what is considered one of the most reliable political bellwether states in the nation. More telling, voters there now disapprove of the way Obama is handling the economy by a 48 percent to 46 percent margin.

Says one of the pollsters:

"The economy in Ohio is as bad as anywhere in America. These numbers indicate that for the first time voters have decided that President Barack Obama bears some responsibility for their problems," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

"Until now voters have given President Obama high ratings on the economy, blaming former President George W. Bush for their problems. They might be taking out their frustration on President Obama, possibly deciding that the change he promised has not come as quickly as they expected."

"Ohio historically has been the prototypical swing state. One of the reasons Barack Obama won the presidency by such a wide margin is that he carried Ohio with 52 percent of the vote and captured the lion's share of independent votes," Brown added.

"Now, by a 48 - 46 percent margin, Ohio independent voters give the President a failing grade on the economy. These numbers indicate that he may be losing, at least for now, some of those who voted for him in November and should be an indication to the White House that his honeymoon with the voters may be ending."

In the race to replace retiring Ohio Republican Senator Voinovich, the poll also found both Democratic candidates beating all of the Republicans in a hypothetical general election matchup, but the margins were too small to matter 16 months before the 2010 election.

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NY Republicans Outflanking Dems on Gay Marriage?

Posted by Helen Rittelmeyer on 7.7.09 @ 12:27PM

The following things are not news: Craven horse-trading in the New York state legislature, that State Sen. Pedro Espada plays politics with his elbows high, and that Democratic Gov. David Paterson is too politically weak to do anything about his party’s bumbling, even after that bumbling cost them control of the New York state Senate.

What is news: The GOP using gay marriage as a political football against the Democrats – by coming out in favor it.

One month ago, Democrats had a slim 32-30 majority in the New York state Senate. Now, thanks to the defection of Democratic Sen. Pedro Espada, the Senate is split down the middle, 31-31, with no lieutenant governor to break the tie. Neither side can agree on who's in charge, so the Senate has been deadlocked for almost a month.

Because the Republicans are the more disciplined caucus, the solution is likely to involve one or two Democrats breaking ranks and supporting the Republican slate for majority leader and Senate president pro tem.

The issue most likely to push Democratic senators into the GOP bloc is gay marriage.

One prime candidate is Ruben Diaz Sr. of the Bronx, who threatened to follow Espada onto the Republican side if the Democrats put gay marriage on the table but then chickened out when Paterson did put it at the top of his legislative agenda on June 24. There's still a chance he might defect: Diaz, a Pentecostal minister who, like Espada, represents the Bronx, vowed back in November that "my position as an ordained minister and a pastor will not allow me to support any would-be leader that will bring gay marriage to the Senate floor." According to a New York Magazine cover story, Espada "nudged Paterson" to include gay marriage on the agenda in order to win Diaz over to the Republicans. (According to the article, after Paterson announced that his agenda would include gay marriage, Espada asked for Diaz: "Write him a note that says, 'Call Pedro!'")

But Espada, who supports gay marriage, has cast his net among gay rights advocates, too – like Sen. Tom Duane of Manhattan. Shortly after the June 8 coup that put the Republicans in charge, Duane gave this quote to the New York Times: "Today, I’m in the Democratic conference, and I’m a Democrat. There’s no way to predict what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone what’s going to happen when everyone comes back on Monday." He later clarified that "There is zero chance of me becoming part of a Republican-led majority or a Republican, ever" – a clarification that has put the brakes on speculation that Duane will "go G.O.P." in order to get gay marriage passed this year. Still, Espada has made no secret of the fact that, if Duane reconsidered, the Republican side would be listening. (By contrast, Democratic leader Malcolm Smith is less than fully committed to holding a vote so soon.)

In New York, even conservative Republicans like former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno support gay marriage these days.

It's unlikely that the national Republican Party will outflank the Democrats on gay marriage, and, certainly, using gay marriage to court a traditionalist like Ruben Diaz won't win Espada any friends on Christopher Street, but it's still remarkable that Albany Republicans would be willing to see gay marriage passed in New York in exchange for control of the Senate. A man in Albany gave us the old moderate Republicanism; is this the new?

House Dems Consider New "Surtax"

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.7.09 @ 11:43AM

Struggling to find ways to pay for health care legislation, Democrats are now considering creating a new surtax on Americans earning over $250,000, Bloomberg reports. The surtax would be on top of the tax hike that is already anticipated at this income level in 2011 when the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, and would hit small business owners who declare business income on their personal tax returns. Sounds like a great policy to pursue as the unemployment rate races toward the double digits.

They have issues

Posted by Chris Horner on 7.7.09 @ 11:41AM

Keith Hennessy notes, in his post The New York Times (implicitly) calls for no climate change law, that "the New York Times editorial board is leaning toward having ‘an issue rather than a law.'"

In doing so he importantly reminds us of key Senate votes, which are somehow as easy to forget in the maelstrom as then-candidate Obama's vow that he seeks cap-and-trade to "cause electricity prices [to] necessarily skyrocket" and "bankrupt" coal and those who would burn it.

These votes that, at minimum, must be brought to the fore of the Senate debate early and often were "in April on the Senate budget resolution:

67 Senators, including 27 Democrats, voted against creating fast-track reconciliation protections for a cap-and-trade bill, meaning that supporters need 60 votes to pass a bill, rather than 51.
54 Senators, including 13 Democrats, voted for an amendment that would allow any Senator to initiate a vote to block any climate change provision which ‘cause[s] significant job loss in manufacturing or coal-dependent U.S. regions such as the Midwest, Great Plains, or South.'"

Now, this post also prompts me to remember a telephone call I received from a White House aide the night in December 2006 that incoming chair of the Senate Environment Committee Barbara Boxer supposedly broke it to Duke Energy's Jim Rogers that no, he shouldn't now expect a cap-n-tax bill to reward his loyal support with billions in rents. It seemed that the issue was too important to have against Bush, and for '08, according to San Francisco's own Ms. Boxer, who lives in a world where this issue is not a punch line.

She, apparently like the New York Times now, saw it as more important to have the issue than the law. The greens got wind of this, however - Rogers, so my caller said, was beside himself and ringing everyone in town he could in outrage, so it was hard not to get wind of it - and demanded what proved to be the Boxer-led disastrous vote last summer in which the bill had to be pulled from the floor in a matter of hours.

'08 of course saw two candidates about equally Moonbattish on the issue, so no subsequent, real debate or opportunity for the people to weigh in was had, sadly.

My response at the time was to ask as many in the lobbying community as I could muster to meet, urging them to press the advantage, demanding votes, even on Kyoto. They blanched (Washington representatives are a special lot, living in mortal fear not of something bad being passed that harms their company's interests, but of getting that phone call from the home office asking "so...what do you think of the deal?", and having no earthly idea what the deal is. So, the notions of fighting and winning aren't as innate as they might be for some of us with the luxury of ideological purity).

So it may be that the Congressional Democrats, White House and their handmaidens at the NYT really believe that, outside their world, global warming tax just knocks ‘em dead (as the Times' Pauline Kael, possibly apocryphally, couldn't believe that Nixon won given that no one she knew voted for him). The evidence that I see tells me something different. Let's find out.

Watching the Fed-etectives

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 7.7.09 @ 11:39AM

Congressman Ron Paul's bill to audit the Federal Reserve -- which has gone from a fringe concern to a piece of legislation with majority support in the House -- has found a champion in the Senate. Last night, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) inserted the full text of the Senate version of Paul's audit the Fed bill as an amendment to the the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act. This $3 billion bill contains certain provisions for GAO audits of other federal agencies.

Senate Democrats shot the amendment down after Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) raised a point of order, objecting that DeMint's measure violated Senate rules by trying to legislate through an appropriations bill. According to Campaign for Liberty's John Tate, DeMint protested and got the Senate's presiding officer to admit that other provisions were tantamount to legislating through an appropriations bill. That didn't help move DeMint's "audit the Fed" language, but it will help galvanize supporters of an unlikely grassroots monetary issue.

The "Trigger" Option

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.7.09 @ 11:20AM

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that the administration would be open to a compromise on health care that would include a provision for a government-run plan, but one that would only be "triggered" if private companies didn't meet certain government targets within a given time frame. This idea had been floated by Maine's Olympia Snowe, one of only a few Republican Senators that Democrats hope to get onboard with health care legislation. The problem is that to potentially gain the support of moderates, such a move would alienate liberal Senators and activists who want a government plan to be implemented immediately. President Obama later reiterated his support for a government plan in a statement, but I think this is another indication that the White House wants to get something done this year, and will settle for less if that's the only way to get legislation through Congress -- but it remains unclear as to whether liberal lawmakers would be as politically pragmatic.

Obama Digs In

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.7.09 @ 11:00AM

Despite the fact that unemployment is approaching double digits and even Democrats have said the stimulus bill has not been working properly, President Obama has declared, "There is nothing that we would have done differently."

Michael Jackson Fans to Rep. Peter King: BEAT IT!

Posted by Matthew Vadum on 7.7.09 @ 10:34AM

Fans of the late Michael Jackson wanna be startin' somethin'.

They consider the critical remarks of Rep. Peter King (R-New York) about Jackson to be really, really bad.

King's tongue became a razor, in their eyes, and the congressman has to answer right now.

An anonymous fan created an ad hoc group, Michael Jackson Fans AGAINST Peter King, at the liberal fundraising website, ActBlue.com, which describes itself as "the online clearinghouse for Democratic action." Here's the pitch from the site:

Congressman Peter King is at again, this time defaming the late Michael Jackson, calling MJ a "pervert', 'low-life", and a "pedophile". As Rick Sanchez noted on CNN, Michael Jackson was acquitted of the charges against him. Peter King ought to let Jackson rest in peace, and focus on the needs of his constituents. As we mourn the loss of an American legend, political grandstanding is not what we need right now!

It's a black and white issue.

Here's the clip from Congressman King:

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Revolutionary Fervor for July 4th

Posted by Molly O'Connor on 7.7.09 @ 10:09AM

“Action is the soul of revolution.” The declaration rang out as new protesters approached the Upper Senatorial Park for the D.C. Independence Day tea party. This sentiment echoed throughout the crowd as various attendees sported t-shirts and signs to incite action in congress and the presidency and to protest from the cap-and-trade tax to nationalized health care.

One particular camo-clad and Bible-brandishing participant, who wanted to be referred to as simply Mark, willingly discussed with anybody who would listen about “what’s happening to this land. Times are changing and not necessarily for the better.” Mark’s reason for protesting, he said, in part was his sacred mission from God. Mark was just one example of the vocal protesters in the crowd composed of moms and dads with children in tow, groups of friends, patriotic veterans, and college-age students.

Tea party organizer, Patrick Beck of march4liberty.org, wanted to bring people together in support of “Constitutional government and fiscal responsibility, pure and simple.” Beck explained further, “The ignoring of these two basic principles has caused the disintegration of our nation at the federal, state, county, local and even personal level.”

The group of protesters “is not a top-down, centrally controlled, organization but a bottom-up groundswell of engaged citizens dedicated to finding candidates who will uphold the Constitution and be proper stewards of our tax dollars,” Beck emphasized. Protests like these encourage people to support candidates that uphold these values and to hold current-officeholders accountable for their actions.

Protesters sported t-shirts ranging from, “Jefferson is my homeboy” to “Big brother is watching you” and “Party like it’s 1773”. Creative signs littered the crowded lawn. “Hope and Chains” sign played on the famous (or infamous) Obama catchphrase, with the Obama logo illustrated in chains. Another, protesting pork-barrel spending, took the shape of a pig diving head first into a barrel.

Protester Michele Johnson from the Philadelphia area traveled to the Capitol’s tea party because “instead of sitting at home and complaining, all of us are acting.” “People are absolutely rallying together to take back our rights and our representative democracy,” Johnson said. “Congress’s actions are the antithesis of the Founding Fathers,” Johnson explained as the reason for her presence.

“I pay taxes. I believe in paying taxes, but I want to be represented fairly in deciding where they go.” Johnson said as she stood with her other female friends, some who were from the area and some who were not, “More people in the crowd are from outside the D.C. area then from inside; I’ve heard people say they were from as far as Texas, Florida, and Illinois.”

One of the main concerns of the protesters, Beck said is that, “We are the first generation of parents to believe that our children will have a lower quality of life than we do and that I cannot allow.” Beck himself is a father of five.

Beck said he hopes Washington’s Fourth of July protest will spread their message and motivate participants “to go back to their respective communities and create those community coalitions, and begin a new era in America where we, the people, are active and engaged in maintaining the type of governance our Founding Fathers intended for us to enjoy.”

Obama's Katrina

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 7.7.09 @ 9:26AM

That's what Jim Pinkerton calls the failure of the stimulus plan to create real jobs and reduce unemployment. One of the reasons Katrina caused a lasting slide in George W. Bush's approval numbers is that it shook the post-9/11 conviction that he was prepared to meet any national crisis head-on, whether terrorism or non-manmade disasters. Continued joblessness could similarly shake the popular belief that Barack Obama is a deliverer of economic Hope and Change for the masses.

There are only two potential problems: There will not be a sustained media drumbeat to make sure that Obama takes all of the blame for the economy in the same way that Bush more or less did for Katrina. (Many Louisiana voters were close enough to the facts on the ground to apportion the blame more widely.) The media reluctance to blame Obama will be compounded by the fact that the economic hurricane first hit land under Bush's watch. Even if the unemployment rate doesn't soon improve, how long will it take for Bush's recession to become Obama's? When will people demand results in exchange for the (borrowed) trillions being spent?

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Just Can't Quit Mitt

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 7.7.09 @ 9:07AM

A number of commenters take issue with my post arguing that Mitt Romney basically cut and run from Massachusetts. As I originally said in that blog post, I don't think declining to run for reelection after completing your term is morally equivalent to Sarah Palin's resigning midway through. Nor do I think Romney's case can be used to justify Palin's or that the political impact on their candidacies will be the same. I'm not defending Palin in any way. But I do believe Romney bailed to run for president and left the Bay State taxpayers holding the bag.

Take a look at the items in Romney's record as governor that he emphasized during his presidential run:

Marriage: After Tom Finneran was out as speaker of the house, Mitt Romney was the only major state elected official who actively opposed the Goodridge decision and same-sex marriage. He twice helped cobble together the votes needed for two separate anti-Goodridge constitutional amendments, mainly by getting a majority of Republicans on the same page as to which amendment to support.

Unfortunately, departure from office before a second vote in the legislature on the second anti-Goodridge amendment virtually guaranteed that there would be no democratic resolution of marriage's definition or reversal of same-sex marriage. When Deval Patrick took office, there was no voice in state government for traditional marriage and the legislature easily strangled a defense-of-marriage initiative in the crib.

Health care: Romney has argued that his Massachusetts record shows him to be a champion of free-market health care reform. The results of the bill he signed into law are very different. Romney generally blames the state legislature for these problems (even though some were evident from the beginning). But the bottom line is that Romney signed the bill into law and then left office, guaranteeing that a Democratic governor and Democratic legislature were going to get their way with how the plan would evolve and be implemented.

Illegal immigration: Romney campaigned on an agreement he reached with the federal government to train certain state police officers to deal with illegal immigrants and help enforce immigration laws. Although the agreement was concluded, it was late in his term and no actual training took place. Deval Patrick rescinded the program. If Romney had continued in office, it surely would have continued.

Life issues: I won't criticize Romney much here, because I don't think doing much more was politically possible. He fought the good fight with very few friends at his side. But it is worth noting that the bulk of his pro-life record since changing his position on abortion -- a change I welcomed at the time -- consists of vetoes that were overridden by the legislature. Romney's sucessor as governor is pro-choice.

The one significant exception to this general pattern is Romney's resolution of Massachusetts' budget crisis early in his term. He saw that through to fruition and, Romney Care aside, can't be blamed for the budget mess under his successor's watch.

An argument can be made -- and several commenters made it -- that Romney had done all he realistically could do in a state where almost all the other elected officials are liberal Democrats. Once the budget crisis was solved, the Democratic leadership on Beacon Hill lost all interest in working with Romney. Maybe it is unfair to assume that Romney only worked at these conservative issues long enough to put them on his resume in preparation for a presidential run given this political reality. Maybe he would have gone down in flames in 2006 just as badly as Kerry Healey and the rest of the state's Republican ticket.

For me, however, the bottom line is this: Romney -- like Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci before him -- left when the next job opportunity beckoned, not when the job was done. Unlike Weld, Cellucci, and Palin, he at least bothered to finish the term to which he was elected. But neither did he do all he could to leave the state in the hands of a Cellucci, a Swift, or a Sean Parnell.

UPDATE: Ahh, this makes me miss the old days when people used to complain I was too soft on Romney.

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Just When You Thought Things Couldn't Get Any Worse for the GOP...

Posted by Shawn Macomber on 7.7.09 @ 8:40AM

Philadelphia Weekly recently ran a story on the "growth of a multicultural, progressive survivalist movement," which generated some interesting mail, like this bit from concerned resident Maria Ortiz:

Your survivalist story was not only interesting but also somewhat true. The Bush administration has put this country on the edge of chaos with its lack of policing; I do not just mean literal policing but also regulatory efforts that create fair exchange. My family is from Mexico, many are members of the Latin Kings, many worship at the altar of Santisima Muerte and help the Mexican cartels with their business. My American friends do not realize what a danger these entities are. The next step is kidnapping. I know from a man who married into the family that University of Pennsylvania students are going to be targets—mainly young Republicans because they will elicit the least public sympathy.

Interesting and somewhat true--high praise! As for the rest, it is reassuring to learn child, gangbanger and Newsweek alike all understand there is enough despair in the world already without us collectively losing any sunshine-spewing, hope-mongering Obama supporters. Know your real enemy, people--and kidnap them!

The tragedy, of course, is the Monopoly Man is in no position now to pay all the ransom demands the Latin Kings will no doubt soon flood his inbox with.

Bear Market

Posted by Chris Horner on 7.6.09 @ 2:50PM

Well, this is disturbing. As if all of the new age and marriage-counseling-style rhetoric trotted out by the administration to frame the President's visit to Moscow were not enough, we see the photo of Mevedev and Obama on Drudge adding to the compendium of snaps -- a la Chavez getting Obama to grin while gripping a bilious anti-American screed -- all assisting our plunge to Carter-esque levels faster than the most pessimistic of us expected (seriously...how do you take, well, seriously, a U.S. president who does this and the following?). Apparently, the image captures nicely what is already a disastrous enterprise.

Read the whole thing for yourself, but the Guardian reports that the Obama administration is - allow me to shorten it for you - asking to pay Russia to help keep the Kyoto process alive. Russia wasn't all that interested post-2012 when this particular five-year-plan expires, having cashed in already and sure the world would be on to them the second time around. But, apparently you won't go broke counting on our president to play down to every relevant stereotype of a post-radical lefty (BTW, the article's sub-head is "After success with China, US targets Russia in strategy to reach separate agreements with world's biggest polluters." Uh..."After success with China". Really? Who knew. Wait'll the details of that one emerge. Good thing we've got all this extra money lying around.)

From the Cap Weinberger, "if this [Detente'] is progress, we can't afford much more progress" school comes the following, also rather alarming for the "in" it reveals that Team Soros has with our erstwhile serious national security apparatus:

In recent weeks, the White House, State Department and National Security Council have also been studying a report from the Centre for American Progress, an influential think tank, that called for looking at climate change as an economic issue, and for demonstrating clear benefits to Russia of action.

Yes! Let's convince the Russians that what they really need to worry about is global warming...Group Hug! And you thought President Bush's hopefulness when it came to the Bear was cute.

Ross Douthat Buries His Lede

Posted by Wlady Pleszczynski on 7.6.09 @ 2:37PM

Finally, at paragraphs 14 and 15 of an 18-paragraph column, he gingerly grows bold:

Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)

Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You’ll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You’ll endure gibes about your “slutty” looks and your “white trash concupiscence,” while a prominent female academic declares that your “greatest hypocrisy” is the “pretense” that you’re a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.

Re: Mitt Quit Too

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.6.09 @ 2:20PM

I agree with what Jim wrote about Romney's exit from the Massachusetts governor's mansion, and during the campaign, I had a problem with the way his supporters conflated his accomplishments as a business executive with his comparably weak record as governor to create an overall impression of managerial competence. It also bothers me to no end when Romney's boosters argue that he isn't really to blame for the failure of the big government health care legislation he championed because it was changed by Democrats -- even though he signed the damn thing knowing that he would be leaving office and allowing liberals to oversee its implementation.

That said, politically speaking, Romney's decision to leave office has not been as damaging as I believe Palin's decision to resign will prove. Serving out a full term is psychologically different to voters than headlines about a politician resigning before his or her term expires, and jumping off what Quin wrote last week, Romney could argue that at least he did his duty by sticking it out for four years. In addition, because Romney was a successful businessman and helped turnaround the Salt Lake City Olympics, he was able to convince most Republican primary voters last year that he was a competent executive. While there are a number of views on why Romney ended up losing the nomination (the flip flops, the inauthenticity, his thin conservative credentials, anti-Mormon bigotry, the MSM wanted McCain, etc.) he did not lose because voters doubted his qualifications as a manager.

By contrast, Palin has a connection to the Republican base that Romney could not manufacture, but her biggest obstacle is convincing skeptics that she is qualified enough to be president and can be an effective executive. Because she doesn't have similar private sector success to fall back on, her decision to leave office early will prove more politically damaging than Romney's decision to quit after just one term.

Mitt Quit Too

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 7.6.09 @ 1:01PM

A number of Palin defenders have argued that Mitt Romney similarly cut and run from Massachusetts. While there is an important distinction between resigning office and declining to run for reelection -- Romney served out the entire term to which he was elected -- I basically agree with this criticism. Romney's abandonment of Massachusetts during a critical juncture in fights over health care, the budget, and the definition of marriage was the single greatest factor that shifted me from a Romney-sympathetic commentator to a critic. (The spin of Romney's flip-flops by some of his overzealous supporters played a role too, as did his health care plan.)

It would have admittedly been difficult for Romney to have run for president after being reelected as governor of Massachusetts. In fact, given the political climate in 2006, particularly in blue states, it would have been exceedingly difficult for Romney to have been reelected at all. And none of this has any bearing on the merits of Sarah Palin's decision.

But watching Romney exit the field while so many of the issues he claimed to care about were in play, leaving the commonwealth to suffer one-party Democratic rule for the first time since the Dukakis years without any serious check or challenge, was too much to take. The man who rode back into the Bay State to save the GOP from a certain disaster at the hands of Jane Swift ended up merely delaying the inevitable for four years. Whatever his ambitions, that in my view represented a form of quitting too.

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Time is Their Enemy

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.6.09 @ 11:38AM

Roll Call reports:

Senate Democratic leaders’ hopes of approving health care reform before adjourning for the August recess appear all but dead, with the prospect of meeting President Barack Obama’s demand for a bill on his desk by Oct. 15 looking increasingly difficult.

There's a reason why President Obama is trying to rush health care legislation through Congress and why he continues to make dire warnings that if it doesn't happen this year, it won't get done. The longer legislation stews in Congress, the more time there is for opponents to pick it apart. While Democrats had hoped to have bills passed in both chambers by the end of July, allowing them to come back from recess after Labor Day and merge the House and Senate bills together in the fall, now critics will have much more time to expose the problems with Democratic health care plans.

And there's a further complicating factor. Several more months of delay means several more bad unemployment reports that call into question the effectiveness of the economic stimulus package. In an interview on local television in Connecticut, Sen. Chris Dodd (who is one of the key players on health care) said that the stimulus legislation wasn't working and suggested there may have to be a second stimulus bill. So, Democrats may find themselves in a box in the fall assuming the economy continues to deteriorate. Take no further action and they'll face criticism from the left that they're not doing enough to help the economy and from the right that their policies have been ineffective. However, if they do push for a second stimulus package it will be a tacit admission that the first one was a failure, make their health care claims less credible, and divert a lot of oxygen from the health care fight.

I rise to recognize the gentleman from Illiteristan

Posted by Chris Horner on 7.6.09 @ 10:31AM

So I'm out running this morning, listening to the radio, specifically to Glenn Beck's show. The guest host mentions how Katie Couric among other media grandees treated Sarah Palin as an illiterate pretender, asking for example with a whiff of disbelief and can-t-wait-to-hear-this what she reads in the morning. The show went to a commercial break, so I flipped to a local talk show (1070-AM, WINA...go there to see if they post the interview from early in the 9-o'clock hour!).

My Congressman, freshman Tom Periello (D-VA), was defending his vote for the Waxman-Markey global warming tax. Woof, would that he were named Palin, or Bush. The young man single-handedly provided the strongest argument I have encountered for adopting a system of parliamentary-style debate, as at least a means of improving the lot of our elected officials. Or, if you are unable to, ah, manage the issues on which you vote, then against such a system.

He stated that people who think this bill and its mandates will kill vs. create jobs aren't living in the real world. In the real world, we are already "hemorrhaging jobs" to (specifically) India and China because -- wait for it -- they've already done these things!

Still recovering from this one I was treated to a pirouette soon thereafter when he responded to a question by the co-host whether he really thinks China, for example, will follow a U.S. lead like this when the Chinese don't seem to believe in global warming. The Right Honorable explained that it wasn't so much a lack of believing, but a lack of caring, behind why they haven't done what they've already done which is stealing our jobs which, he then pivoted and said, were lost because people slammed our economy by buying things on credit (presumably "green" things from China and India after Bush told them to after 9/11... For fun, picture the Moonbats monitoring this site now feverishly nodding, if wondering so, what's the issue here?).

And so on. Defending whatever you do as right? Critical. Facts...not so much. Talk about "better to remain silent and be presumed...", but as I say, see if they post this gem (surely against the congressional office's protestations), you've got to listen to the whole thing. The Dems had better hope Sen.s Webb and Warner do a little better if they try to pull off the same vote against their constituents. The rules of the Senate are at least slightly more accommodating to drawing attention to such deep thought.

Why Obama May Lose in 2012

Posted by Hunter Baker on 7.6.09 @ 10:20AM

A very wise friend suggested to me that Obama's second term is an inevitability. I have to take issue with him because it seems all too clear to me that the president has abandoned the ironclad strategy for victory. What he should have done was to dedicate himself to fixing the banking/financial system, to restore its foundations, to bring about better rules, and to restore public confidence in the lifeblood of the system. Had he done that, eight years would have been a foregone conclusion.

Instead, he has made the financial system an interesting sideline to go along with his attempts to bring about the eschaton through salvific, wishing-makes-it-so public policy. His current path stands a decent chance of returning the nation to stagflation. And no politician can wear that millstone and make it look good.

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Daily Must-Reads

Posted by Joseph Lawler on 7.6.09 @ 9:42AM

Economists need to read history books (Real Clear Markets)

If you cite the Founders, you risk having somebody look up how much they disagree with you (Cato@Liberty)

Angela Merkel, once again swimming against the economic tide (Think Markets)

Ross Douthat gets a little anti-intellectual with Palin (NY Times)

Reports Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal:

Robert McNamara, RIP

Posted by Matthew Vadum on 7.6.09 @ 9:32AM

Robert McNamara, the wunderkind who fascinated President John F. Kennedy with his intellectual gymnastics while serving as his secretary of defense, has died at the age of 93.

McNamara, who also went on to serve President Lyndon Johnson, was a key architect of the Vietnam War.

He was brilliant, the quintessential liberal do-gooder who sincerely believed he was doing the right thing but whose efforts almost invariably led to disaster.

His horrendous "Project 100,000" program was aimed at getting more black Americans serving in the military but was savaged as an attempt to use minorities as cannon fodder. Much like another liberal idealist a decade later, Jimmy Carter, the harder McNamara worked, the more he seemed to fail.

McNamara was a very interesting, tragic historical figure who in later life came to recognize the error of his ways.

We can learn from his mistakes.

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Climate Change Consensus? What Consensus?

Posted by Doug Bandow on 7.6.09 @ 9:24AM

President Barack Obama assures us that the debate is over, but the very fervor with which he speaks suggests his fear that even his own party may not long be willing to vote for legislation wrecking the economy in the name of fighting warming temperatures that aren't warming. For the alarmist case is not closing, but seems to be blowing wide open again.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Poor Al Gore. Just when he thought he had a winning role, the show is in danger of being canceled!

Going Private in Canada

Posted by Doug Bandow on 7.6.09 @ 8:07AM

Government-run health care in Canada is supposed to be wonderful. Tell that to the people who are turning to private clinics and doctors.

Reports Fox News:

Private for-profit clinics are a booming business in Canada -- a country often touted as a successful example of a universal health system.

Facing long waits and substandard care, private clinics are proving that Canadians are willing to pay for treatment.

"Any wait time was an enormous frustration for me and also pain. I just couldn't live my life the way I wanted to," says Canadian patient Christine Crossman, who was told she could wait up to a year for an MRI after injuring her hip during an exercise class. Warned she would have to wait for the scan, and then wait even longer for surgery, Crossman opted for a private clinic.

American medicine has problems. But our task is to address them while keeping the strengths of the present system. The actual experience in Canada shows just how much we have to lose.

I've got to agree with Phil.

Palin's Dismal Political Future

Posted by Doug Bandow on 7.6.09 @ 7:52AM

The Palin presidential campaign slogan that comes to mind: "Vote for me and I might serve three years, four if you're lucky!" Not exactly a winning appeal to the nation.

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Palin Is No Reagan

Posted by Philip Klein on 7.6.09 @ 7:45AM

I have absolutely no problem with those who are arguing that Palin’s story is one of a citizen politician thrust into the national spotlight who left office to protect her family from merciless attacks. But for those still arguing that she can or should have a future as an elected political leader, let alone president, I’m baffled. And I think that Palin’s defenders do her absolutely no favors by consistently making excuses for her no matter the circumstances.

Over at the Corner, Steve Hayward posted a few examples of the media writing off Ronald Reagan at various points in his career, only to be proven wrong. But such comparisons do a disservice to Reagan, who not only served two full terms as governor of California, but also spent decades studying the issues and immersing himself in conservative philosophy. His writings and radio commentaries make this abundantly clear. He proved people wrong because they objectively were wrong. This does not mean that whenever the media writes off or attacks a conservative politician that he or she is the next Reagan. (For more, see: Bush, George W.)

Meanwhile, Victor Davis Hanson wrote that “it doesn't matter that much what critics say, but — should she pursue politics — only what she does with her newfound time, especially if she travels widely, studies foreign policy, and helps galvanize the party base.” He continued, “She's not looking at 2012; but in eight years by 2016 she will be far more savvy, still young, and far more experienced. It matters not all that the Left writes her off as daffy, since they were going to do that whatever she did; the key is whether she convinces conservatives in eight year of travel and reflection that she's a charismatic Margaret Thatcher type heavyweight.”

The problem is that to win and govern effectively you have to do more than "galvanize the party base" and "convince conservatives" -- you also have to convince independents and even some Democrats, as Reagan did. Furthermore, what Hanson is suggesting now is the same sort of thing people were writing after last fall’s election. However, instead of going back to Alaska to gain more governing experience as many advised, Palin resigned after just two and a half years on the job. And there’s nothing to indicate that she has the slightest interest in boning up on policy. Honestly, what’s her incentive to study policy and do the boring task of governing? No matter what she does, her army of apologists will make excuses for her and lash out at those who dare to criticize her by accusing them of being liberal elitists who are threatened by her sheer awesomeness.

And again, none of this really matters if Palin intends to leave elective politics and become some sort of television or radio personality. My comments are only meant as a response to those who are still seriously suggesting her as a potential presidential candidate. Last October, an ABC/Washington Post poll found that only 35 percent of Americans thought Palin was qualified enough to be president, yet now her boosters expect us to believe that an additional nine months in office is all she needed to assauge Americans' concerns, allowing her to resign and prepare for a presidential run.

For an alternate take, you can read Robert Stacy McCain on our main site.

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Time for South Korea to do More for Its Own Defense

Posted by Doug Bandow on 7.6.09 @ 4:10AM

The North Koreans are busy shooting off missiles again. And the South Koreans are worried.

Reports Associated Press:

The ballistic missiles that North Korea test-fired this weekend were likely capable of striking key government and military facilities in South Korea, a defense official said Sunday, amid growing concerns over Pyongyang's firepower.

North Korean state media did not mention the launches but boasted that the country's military could impose "merciless punishment" on those who provoke it.

Guess what? South Korea has upwards of 40 times the North's GDP. Maybe it's time for Seoul to spend a bit more on creating an ability to defend against missiles and to retaliate against any North Korean attack rather than continuing to rely on America to subsidize its defense. The South is a grown-up country now. "Real" countries defend themselves.

Questions to Ask the Democrats on Health Care

Posted by Doug Bandow on 7.6.09 @ 3:23AM

The Republican Study Committee has come up with ten good question to ask the Democrats on health care. For instance:

1)     During the debate on the so-called stimulus package, your estimates on future unemployment and economic recovery proved to be wildly off-base. Why should Americans now believe you that they will not be forced out of the private coverage they enjoy, as basic economics would dictate?

2)     Despite your assertions that health care reform will save money, the reality is that plans proposed by Democrats would cost taxpayers between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. How does this save money and how will you pay for this?

3)     If, as you claim, a government-run option is essential to maintaining honest competition in the health insurance market, why is it not also true that we need a government-run competitor in the fast food industry, neighborhood babysitting, or Major League Baseball?

Good questions all. People across America should ask their congressmen and Senators the same questions.

Poor Marion Barry

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 7.5.09 @ 9:38PM

The b--ches are always setting him up. (Though admittedly, both sides of the story sound exceedingly bizarre.)