11 August 2010

Cut deficit without cutting services? Start here | Washington Examiner

Cut deficit without cutting services? Start here

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
August 10, 2010

Whenever a conservative suggests reducing the federal deficit by cutting spending rather than raising taxes, there's always someone to ask: Well, what would you cut? Americans may say they want less government spending, the argument goes, but they don't want anyone to touch their services and subsidies and monthly checks.

Fair enough. But there's a persuasive counter-argument going around in conservative circles these days: You can start cutting government spending without cutting anyone's services or subsidies or monthly checks. Just bring the pay of federal workers into line with pay in the private sector.

A recent Heritage Foundation study found the average federal worker (excluding the uniformed military) makes $78,901 a year in wages and salary versus $50,111 for the average private sector worker. When you count generous health and pension benefits, the average total compensation of federal workers comes to $111,015 a year versus $60,078 in the private sector.

In recent years, that disparity has been fueled by an explosion of federal generosity on the high end of the pay scale. For example, USA Today recently reported that in December 2007, a total of 1,868 civilian workers in the Defense Department earned $150,000 or more; by June 2009, the number was 10,100. In late '07, the paper says, just one employee at the Transportation Department earned more than $170,000. Less than two years later, 1,690 workers earned that much.

Other studies have come up with slightly different numbers. But there's no doubt that federal pay is higher than private pay across the board, not just in the upper brackets. If Congress were to freeze federal pay raises until the private sector begins to catch up, the savings to taxpayers would be considerable. Heritage scholar James Sherk estimates that ending the disparity could save the taxpayers $47 billion a year. (A study by the American Enterprise Institute put the figure at $40 billion.) That won't get close to balancing the budget, but add up 10 years of that and the government will save significant money.

And it's done without cutting government services or subsidies. "In the past, the implication was that if you are spending less, then you are doing less," says Grover Norquist, the conservative head of Americans for Tax Reform. "But you could save money by paying public workers what you pay private workers and still do the same things."

Getting to public-private pay equity need not involve a sledgehammer approach. There are differences between the federal workforce and the private-sector workforce that pay reformers will have to take into account.

For example, government workers are more educated, older and more likely to be in managerial and administrative positions than the overall work force. That means they make more money, just as comparable workers in the private sector make more than less-skilled workers.

Reforming federal pay would take those differences into account. Highly paid federal workers who have the skills and experience to command high pay in the private sector would stay at the high end of the pay scale and might even see their pay go up. But others who make far more working for the government than they would for the private sector would likely have their pay frozen until it was closer to private standards. Nobody's pay would be cut.

In the Senate, Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn has introduced amendments to the war supplemental spending bill that would freeze federal pay for a year. In the House, Republicans found a pay-freeze proposal was extremely popular with participants in the YouCut program, which asks the public for input on how to cut spending. When GOP leaders asked for a recorded vote on the measure, majority Democrats promptly shot it down. Still, the GOP sees pay equity as a winning issue. "If Republicans had thought that this was political death," Norquist says, "they would not have had that vote."

In the meantime, the problem is getting worse, not better. While the private sector has shed millions of jobs in the recession, the federal government has added nearly 200,000 employees to its rolls. That's more salaries, more benefits and more pensions. And the pay problem is replicated in states across the country; most of them have similar public-private disparities, and many of them are facing calamitous budget deficits.

Pay equity between government and private workers would help solve those problems. The next time someone asks, Well, what would you cut? -- conservatives have an answer.

Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blog posts appears on ExaminerPolitics.com

Black Conservatives on 14th Amendment and Anchor Babies

Black Conservatives on the 14th Amendment

09 August 2010

Tea at Trianon: Michelle Obama is Marie-Antoinette?

Michelle Obama is Marie-Antoinette?

When I first saw the frail comparison of Mrs. Obama to Queen Marie-Antoinette, I thought it too silly to take seriously. However, the silliness seems to have taken over the internet, even sites that I used to respect. Anyone who has ever studied Marie-Antoinette or read even one of the reputable biographies about her will see that there are no similarities between the two women at all, other than being wives of heads of state. Since the comparison is meant to insult the Queen as well as the First Lady, it might be helpful to look at some basic facts.

Marie-Antoinette is once again being portrayed as the Queen who was indifferent to the suffering of the people. However, Marie-Antoinette never said "Let them eat cake." It is not a mere allegation, it is not a matter of speculation. She said nothing of the kind. It was not even a rumor spread about her in her lifetime, but did not start circulating until the nineteenth century. What the Queen did say was: "It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness."

As a practicing Catholic who assisted at daily Mass, Marie-Antoinette's charities were extensive. In pre-revolutionary France it was for the King and the Queen to give an example of almsgiving. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette took this duty seriously and throughout their reign did what they could to help the needy. During the fireworks celebrating the marriage of the young prince and princess in May 1770, there was a stampede in which many people were killed. Louis and Marie-Antoinette gave all of their private spending money for a year to relieve the suffering of the victims and their families. They became very popular with the common people as a result, which was reflected in the adulation with which they were received when the Dauphin took his wife to Paris on her first "official" visit in June 1773. Marie-Antoinette's reputation for sweetness and mercy became even more entrenched in 1774, when as the new Queen she asked that the people be relieved of a tax called "The Queen's belt," customary at the beginning of each reign. "Belts are no longer worn," she quipped. It was the onslaught of revolutionary propaganda that would eventually destroy her reputation.

The King and Queen were patrons of the Maison Philanthropique, a society founded by Louis XVI which helped the aged, blind and widows. The queen taught her daughter Madame Royale to wait upon peasant children, to sacrifice her Christmas gifts so as to buy fuel and blankets for the destitute, and to bring baskets of food to the sick. Marie-Antoinette started a home for unwed mothers at the royal palace. She adopted three poor children to be raised with her own, as well overseeing the upbringing of several needy children, whose education she paid for, while caring for their families. She brought several peasant families to live on her farm at Trianon, building cottages for them. There was food for the hungry distributed every day at Versailles, at the King's command. During the famine of 1787-88, the royal family sold much of their flatware to buy grain for the people, and themselves ate the cheap barley bread in order to be able to give more to the hungry.

I fail to see the connection between the First Lady's trip to Spain with anything that Marie-Antoinette ever did. For one thing, after traveling to France from Austria at age fourteen to marry the heir to the throne, Marie-Antoinette never traveled anywhere again, except for the futile escape attempt during the Revolution. Otherwise, she never left the environs of Paris and Versailles; she never in her life saw an ocean. It was considered too expensive for the royal family to travel.

As for Mrs. Obama having a European holiday while America is struggling financially, it might not be the most prudent of choices. Nevertheless, the pictures I saw of Michelle and Sasha relaxing on the beach and lunching with the King and Queen of Spain do not seem to me to be examples of extreme decadence. There are plenty of serious issues for which one might critique the Obamas but comparing Michelle to Marie-Antoinette is foolish to say the least.

McCain, "I chose lying"

07 August 2010

Exclusive: Robert Duval on 'Huckabee'

06 August 2010

» Ridicule and Disdain: The Reagan-Palin Connection - Big Government

Ridicule and Disdain: The Reagan-Palin Connection

by Alan Snyder

You had to live through it to recognize the metamorphosis. During those early days of June 2004, as the nation mourned the passing of Ronald Reagan, you would have never known he had been ridiculed and treated with disdain for most of his political career—not only by Democrats but by establishment Republicans. Frankly, I was stunned by the display of love and gratitude in 2004.

Reagan Funeral Procession

As the Reagan motorcade drove toward the Reagan Library for the final tribute, ordinary citizens along the route were paying their final tributes as well. It was an amazing moment.

But it was not always so.

When Reagan first ran for California governor in 1966, a lot of people, both Democrat and Republican, treated his candidacy as a joke. First, he had to get the nomination. Establishment Republican George Christopher, a former mayor of San Francisco, painted Reagan as a right-wing extremist and racial bigot. Having overcome that hurdle, he had to face governor Edmund “Pat” Brown, who was running for reelection and expected an easy triumph over the “B” actor.

One of Brown’s ploys was an infamous commercial he ran during the campaign in which he told a group of small children, “I’m running against an actor, and you know who killed Abe Lincoln, don’t you?” It didn’t work.

After two terms as California governor, Reagan took on Gerald Ford for the presidency in 1976. The entire Republican establishment opposed him. Ford was the sitting president, having achieved that position only by Senate appointment as vice president after Spiro Agnew resigned and then after Nixon was forced out of office by Watergate. He was not exactly the people’s choice. Again, the big guns came out to declare the challenger an extremist. It was an uphill battle, one that Reagan lost that year, only to claim the nomination four years later, this time defeating the establishment candidate George Bush.

Democrats in the 1980 campaign depicted Reagan as an idiot, a grade “B” movie actor who had starred with a chimpanzee, of all things.

Bedtime for Bonzo Scene

Bedtime for Bonzo, a 1951 film, was supposed to signify that Reagan was a lightweight who had no business in an office reserved for “real” public servants like Jimmy Carter. Well, it’s easy to make fun of someone who acted alongside a chimp, I guess, but in 1952, there was another movie called Monkey Business, in which three actors undertook chimp-companion roles:

Monkey Business

Two of those actors, pictured here, were not exactly “B” status: Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers. The third one, not pictured, was Marilyn Monroe. Grant and Rogers even had to pretend to revert to childhood in this film and act rather foolish. Can you imagine what the Democratic campaign people in 1980 could have done with Reagan if he had acted like a child in a movie? With a chimpanzee?

They also used the extremist label on him, predicting he would lead America into World War III. Instead, his policies led the world out of the Cold War.

The identical tactics used against Reagan are now being used against Sarah Palin. Even though she was McCain’s vice-presidential pick, and you could say that makes her “establishment” in one sense, she never was at home in that role. Neither did Republican insiders consider her to be one of them. The political professionals in the McCain campaign had little more than disdain for her; that became publicly obvious after the election.

Palin-Flag

In Alaska, she truly had been a disturber of the status quo within the Republican Party. She was guided more by principle than party loyalty. Even today, as her Facebook numbers rise and her influence is felt via endorsements for candidates running for both state offices and Congress, she is shunned by the establishment. The same type of people who considered Reagan a simpleton and a neanderthal have dubbed her “Caribou Barbie.”

Her faults? Well, she didn’t graduate from one of the approved universities. How can you be president if you didn’t graduate from either Harvard or Yale?

Her speech is too common and ordinary. She makes up words like “refudiate.” At least she knows how to pronounce “corps.”

She gives her children weird names. She actually decided to give a Down Syndrome child the opportunity to live rather than take the sophisticated and more seemly route of abortion. She’s adamantly pro-life, which immediately brands her as one of those extremists.

Personally, I don’t know for sure that Palin is the best choice for president on the Republican ticket in 2012. Yet I respect her for standing firm on her principles and for allowing her Christian faith to be seen in practice.

What I do know for sure is that she is undergoing the same ridicule and disdain that Ronald Reagan once endured. If she handles it with as much grace and good humor as Reagan did, there may be no limit to what she can accomplish. I wish her well.

05 August 2010

'A Time For Choosing': Sessions' Closing Argument Against Kagan's Nomina...

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Yeah, They Lied (x 10)

Mary Katherine Ham and Guy Benson have a guest post at HotAir setting forth 10 key false promises by Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats about Obamacare, ObamaCare: The sum of all fears. The post is long, but worth the read.

Here are the 10 false promises:

Promise #1: If you are satisfied with your existing health care arrangement, you can keep it.
Promise #2: Reform will lower America’s health care spending.
Promise #3: Reform will lower Americans’ health care premiums.
Promise #4: Obamacare will not lead to a doctor shortage, or escalate the primary-care physician shortfall.
Promise #5: There will be no government rationing of medical care.
Promise #6: “The firm pledge” – Ninety-five percent of Americans will not see any form of tax increase because of Obamacare (or anything else).
Promise #7: Health care reform won’t add “a single dime” to the deficit—and will actually cut it.
Promise #8: Health care reform will help businesses—employers and employees, alike.
Promise #9: Obamacare will not allow for funding of abortions with taxpayer money.
Promise #10: Obamacare will not only satisfy each of the promises above, but satisfy all of them at the same time with virtually no downsides.

In case you have any doubts about the need to vote in November, and to get your friends and neighbors to to the same, carry this list around as a reminder.

happy birthay

04 August 2010

Change the name of New York City to Bloombergistan

Change the name of New York City to Bloombergistan
Tuesday, 03 August 2010

Change the name of New York City to Bloombergistan

[Islamic tolerance] Dhimmi Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his rubber-stamp Privy Council have approved the construction of the Islamist Cordoba House "Death to America" Victory Mosque at Ground Zero. This 13 story abomination will loom over the open pit where the twin towers once stood. Every week Muslims from around the world will flock to there to join its terrorist-sympathizier Imam in cheering the victory achieved by the 19 shahids of Allah against the Great Satan.

And our "America Last" intellectual establishment is giddy with glee at the prospect. We're told it's for our own good, "tolerance" is the name of the game.

Yeah, "tolerance" like the treatment Christians get in Dearborn, Michigan, right? Will Dhimmi Mike arrest any non-Muslim who walks by the mosque? That's how Christians are treated in Dearbornistan; it's offensive to Muslims if they have to mingle with us infidels.

Remember, we can't even set foot in their precious holy city of Mecca. Do it, and you die. Did you know that it is against the law in Saudi Arabia to utter the words "Merry Christmas". Do it, and you die.

Somebody ask Rifqa Bary about Islamic "tolerance". I'll bet she knows way more about it than Dhimmi Mike does.

The same liberals who'll stop a multi-billion dollar development project in its tracks at the merest hint that an ancient Indian burial ground or early African-American cemetary might be nearby see nothing wrong with bulldozing the building where the landing gear from one of Islam's human missiles came to rest.

Via iOwnTheWorld.com I read Hugh Hewitt's take, which is spot-on. To him Ground Zero is "the sacred space of America's great civic religion".

I would oppose the construction of any sectarian project there that wasn't a rebuild of an existing sectarian use for the same reason.

There is no formal designation for the sacred spaces of America's civic religion though they extend from the Mall to the Arizona Memorial. The land around Ground Zero is very much part of that space, and any project that politicizes it or brings a religious purpose to those sites should be refused.

Indeed. The fallacy behind allowing this mosque to proceed is that it will promote peaceful dialog between religions. Islam isn't interested in dialog, peaceful or otherwise. The Imam behind Cordoba House is on record calling for America to be transformed into an Islamic Republic, with Sharia replacing our Constitution as the highest law in the land.

Even the name "Cordoba House" (since changed to fool Dhimmis like Mike Bloomberg) evokes the Muslim conquest of Spain. Cordoba was the capital of the occupying Moors' Muslim kingdom.

If built Cordoba House will become New York's version of the Al Aqsa mosque atop the Temple Mount or Constantinople's St. Sophia Basilica — a triumphant tribute to Islam thumbing its nose at the infidels beneath it.

We cannot permit the enemy to achieve such an easy and decisive victory. Yet thanks to the muddle-headed thinking of our politically correct "leaders" that is precisely what we are poised to do.

Mister we could use a man like Rudy Guiliani again.

UPDATE 03 Aug 2010 20:20:
Linked at The Daley Gator.

Another point is that surely this mosque is being built in the place to PROVOKE attacks and vandalism against it. And, surely those attacks, even if they are staged, will be used to further paint American Muslims as "victims and will be used as propoganda by radical Muslims, like the Imam behind this mosque.

Yup. Christians and Jews who dare to protest will be labeled "haters" while the real hatred is being preached by Imam Rauf inside.

03 August 2010

The alleged "crime" of "disorderly conduct" in Chicago

No Sheeples Here: Photoshop™ Of The Day

02 August 2010

No Sheeples Here: Fifty-Six Men

On this day in 1776, members of Congress affix their signatures to an enlarged copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Fifty-six congressional delegates in total signed the document, including some who were not present at the vote approving the declaration. The delegates signed by state from North to South, beginning with Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire and ending with George Walton of Georgia. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and James Duane, Robert Livingston and John Jay of New York refused to sign. Carter Braxton of Virginia; Robert Morris of Pennsylvania; George Reed of Delaware; and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina opposed the document but signed in order to give the impression of a unanimous Congress. Five delegates were absent: Generals George Washington, John Sullivan, James Clinton and Christopher Gadsden and Virginia Governor Patrick Henry.

Exactly one month before the signing of the document, Congress had accepted a resolution put forward by Richard Henry Lee that stated "Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."

Congress adopted the more poetic Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, two days later, on July 4. The president of Congress, John Hancock, and its secretary, Charles Thompson, immediately signed the handwritten draft, which was dispatched to nearby printers. On July 19, Congress decided to produce a handwritten copy to bear all the delegates’ signatures. Secretary Thompson’s assistant, Philadelphia Quaker and merchant Timothy Matlack, penned the draft.

News of the Declaration of Independence arrived in London eight days later, on August 10. The draft bearing the delegates’ signatures was first printed on January 18 of the following year by Baltimore printer Mary Katharine Goddard.

31 July 2010

Farewell to a Swiss Guard who served three popes: his last interview

25 July 2010

The Warrior Song - Hard Corps

White House backed release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi | The Australian

White House backed release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi | The Australian
THE US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be "far preferable" to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.

Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.

The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.

The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama's claim last week that all Americans were "surprised, disappointed and angry" to learn of Megrahi's release.

Scottish ministers viewed the level of US resistance to compassionate release as "half-hearted" and a sign it would be accepted.

The US has tried to keep the letter secret, refusing to give permission to the Scottish authorities to publish it on the grounds it would prevent future "frank and open communications" with other governments.

In the letter, sent on August 12 last year to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and justice officials, Mr LeBaron wrote that the US wanted Megrahi to remain imprisoned in view of the nature of the crime.

The note added: "Nevertheless, if Scottish authorities come to the conclusion that Megrahi must be released from Scottish custody, the US position is that conditional release on compassionate grounds would be a far preferable alternative to prisoner transfer, which we strongly oppose."

Mr LeBaron added that freeing the bomber and making him live in Scotland "would mitigate a number of the strong concerns we have expressed with regard to Megrahi's release".

The US administration lobbied the Scottish government more strongly against sending Megrahi home, under a prisoner transfer agreement signed by the British and Libyan governments, in a deal now known to have been linked to a pound stg. 550 million oil contract for BP.

It claimed this would flout a decade-old agreement between Britain and the US that anyone convicted of the bombing would serve their sentence in a Scottish prison. Megrahi was released by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill on the grounds that he had three months to live, making his sentence effectively spent.

The US Senate foreign relations committee launched a probe after The Sunday Times revealed this month that Megrahi's doctors thought he could live for another decade.

A source close to the Senate inquiry said: "The (LeBaron) letter is embarrassing for the US because it shows they were much less opposed to compassionate release than prisoner transfer."

Last week, a succession of British politicians - including Mr MacAskill, Mr Salmond and former justice secretary Jack Straw - delivered a diplomatic snub to the senators by refusing to fly across the Atlantic to answer questions at the Senate's hearing on Thursday (US time) about their role in Megrahi's release.

Despite the controversy over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and Megrahi's release, it emerged over the weekend that BP is planning deep-water drilling off Libya.

And BP boss Tony Hayward is poised to quit this week when the company announces its half-year results, London's Sunday Telegraph reported.

The Sunday Times, AFP

24 July 2010

The Tax Tsunami On The Horizon - IBD - Investors.com

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Fiscal Policy: Many voters are looking forward to 2011, hoping a new Congress will put the country back on the right track. But unless something's done soon, the new year will also come with a raft of tax hikes — including a return of the death tax — that will be real killers.

Through the end of this year, the federal estate tax rate is zero — thanks to the package of broad-based tax cuts that President Bush pushed through to get the economy going earlier in the decade.

But as of midnight Dec. 31, the death tax returns — at a rate of 55% on estates of $1 million or more. The effect this will have on hospital life-support systems is already a matter of conjecture.

Resurrection of the death tax, however, isn't the only tax problem that will be ushered in Jan. 1. Many other cuts from the Bush administration are set to disappear and a new set of taxes will materialize. And it's not just the rich who will pay.

The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% — to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket — 25% — will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%.

But the damage doesn't stop there.

The marriage penalty also makes a comeback, and the capital gains tax will jump 33% — to 20% from 15%. The tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6% — a 164% increase.

Both the cap-gains and dividend taxes will go up further in 2013 as the health care reform adds a 3.8% Medicare levy for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and joint filers making more than $250,000. Other tax hikes include: halving the child tax credit to $500 from $1,000 and fixing the standard deduction for couples at the same level as it is for single filers.

Letting the Bush cuts expire will cost taxpayers $115 billion next year alone, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and $2.6 trillion through 2020.

But even more tax headaches lie ahead. This "second wave" of hikes, as Americans for Tax Reform puts it, are designed to pay for ObamaCare and include:

The Medicine Cabinet Tax. Americans, says ATR, "will no longer be able to use health savings account, flexible spending account, or health reimbursement pretax dollars to purchase nonprescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin)."

The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. "This provision of ObamaCare," according to ATR, "increases the additional tax on nonmedical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10% to 20%, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10%."

Brand Name Drug Tax. Makers and importers of brand-name drugs will be liable for a tax of $2.5 billion in 2011. The tax goes to $3 billion a year from 2012 to 2016, then $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018. Beginning in 2019 it falls to $2.8 billion and stays there. And who pays the new drug tax? Patients, in the form of higher prices.

Economic Substance Doctrine. ATR reports that "The IRS is now empowered to disallow perfectly legal tax deductions and maneuvers merely because it judges that the deduction or action lacks 'economic substance.'"

A third and final (for now) wave, says ATR, consists of the alternative minimum tax's widening net, tax hikes on employers and the loss of deductions for tuition:

• The Tax Policy Center, no right-wing group, says that the failure to index the AMT will subject 28.5 million families to the tax when they file next year, up from 4 million this year.

• "Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly deduct, or 'depreciate') equipment purchases up to $250,000," says ATR. "This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be 'depreciated.'"

• According to ATR, there are "literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place," plus the loss of some tax credits. The research and experimentation tax credit will be the biggest loss, "but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs."

• The deduction for tuition and fees will no longer be available and there will be limits placed on education tax credits. Teachers won't be able to deduct their classroom expenses and employer-provided educational aid will be restricted. Thousands of families will no longer be allowed to deduct student loan interest.

Then there's the tax on Americans who decline to buy health care insurance (the tax the administration initially said wasn't a tax but now argues in court that it is) plus a 3.8% Medicare tax beginning in 2013 on profits made in real estate transactions by wealthier Americans.

Not all Americans may fully realize what's in store come Jan. 1. But they should have a pretty good idea by the mid-term elections, and members of Congress might take note of our latest IBD/TIPP Poll (summarized above).

Fifty-one percent of respondents favored making the Bush cuts permanent vs. 28% who didn't. Republicans were more than 4 to 1 and Independents more than 2 to 1 in favor. Only Democrats were opposed, but only by 40%-38%.

The cuts also proved popular among all income groups — despite the Democrats' oft-heard assertion that Bush merely provided "tax breaks for the wealthy." Fact is, Bush cut taxes for everyone who paid them, and the cuts helped the nation recover from a recession and the worst stock-market crash since 1929.

Maybe, just maybe, Americans remember that — and will not forget come Nov. 2.

No Sheeples Here: Fear The Blogosphere

Saturday, July 24, 2010

According to Newsbusters, on July 23, 2010 two CNN anchors were frothing at the mouth about the Andrew Breitbart/Shirley Sherrod circus.

“Anchors Kyra Phillips and John Roberts discussed the ‘mixed blessing of the Internet,’ and agreed that there should be a crackdown on anonymous bloggers who disparage others on the Internet."

"There are so many great things that the internet does and has to offer, but at the same time, Kyra, as you know, there is this dark side," Roberts said. "Imagine what would have happened if we hadn't taken a look at what happened with Shirley Sherrod and plumbed the depths further and found out that what had been posted on the Internet was not in fact reflective of what she said."

"There's going to have be a point in time where these people have to be held accountable," Phillips said. "How about all these bloggers that blog anonymously? They say rotten things about people and they're actually given credibility, which is crazy. They're a bunch of cowards; they're just people seeking attention."

Uh, no John, we’re not a bunch of cowards. The corporate-controlled media is the coward. You didn’t see any blogs selling out our intelligence community like The Washington Post did in its three-part story Top Secret America.

Bloggers do the work that journalists used to do. Oh, and the pariah of the dead tree media—The National Enquirer—has scooped the lamestream media so many times we’ve lost count.

When you visit a blog you know exactly what you’re getting. Unlike so-called journalists who “claim” not to be biased, bloggers are up front about their biases. Bloggers on the right, for the most part, are rarely paid. I know this blogger isn’t. I don’t advertise here. The one advertisement you see at the top of the sidebar is placed there gratis because I love everything Old Glory stands for.

Speaking of the flag, I remember right after the 9/11 attacks, every television station—broadcast and cable—placed an animated American flag in some corner of the screen. Shortly thereafter, they all came down—all but one—that one was Fox News. Even they eventually abandoned the practice.

If you want to talk about “accountability” and “checks and balances” then I suggest you look in the mirror. Clean up your own act. You, the “legacy media” sold this nation a grocery boy sent by grocery clerks to be the leader of the free world. We are all paying for your naiveté and prostitution of the electoral process.

We bloggers are annoying to politicians and national “journalists” with the attention span of a gnat. Crooked politicians are having an awful time keeping their actions hidden and every exposure reveals the mainstream media’s abject failings.

We know that when you bloviate, as you so often do, that you are mining for ratings. According to TV By The Numbers, your employer, CNN, sucks a big one.

Morning programs (6:00AM-9:00AM)
FOX & Friends—997,000 viewers
American Morning—348,000 viewers
Morning Joe—368,000 viewers

5PM
Glenn Beck— 2,442,000 viewers
Situation Room—680,000 viewers
Hardball—580,000 viewers

6PM
Special Report—1,997,000 viewers
Situation Room—560,000 viewers
Ed Show —692,000 viewers

7PM
The Fox Report—1,515,000 viewers
John King USA—533,000 viewers
Hardball—619,000 viewers

8PM
The O’Reilly Factor—3,082,000 viewers
Campbell Brown—562,000 viewers
Countdown With Keith Olbermann—951,000 viewers

9 PM
Hannity—2,099,000 viewers
Larry King Live —714,000 viewers
Rachel Maddow Show —976,000 viewers

10 PM
On the Record—1,884,000 viewers
Anderson Cooper 360 — 783,000 viewers
Countdown With Keith Olbermann—595,000 viewers

Grandpa John's: Nikita Khrushchev, Prophet

Grandpa John's: Nikita Khrushchev, Prophet

Nikita Khrushchev, Prophet

23 July 2010

Sharron Angle TV Ad: "Please Stop"

Charles Krauthammer - Beware the lame duck

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, July 23, 2010

Barack Obama's considerable political capital, earned on Election Day 2008, is spent. Well spent, mind you, on the enactment of a highly ideological agenda of Obamacare, financial reform and a near-trillion-dollar stimulus that will significantly transform the country. But spent nonetheless. There's nothing left with which to complete his social-democratic ambitions. This would have to await the renewed mandate that would come with a second inaugural.

That's why, as I suggested last week, nothing of major legislative consequence is likely to occur for the next 2 1/2 years. Except, as columnist Irwin Stelzer points out, for one constitutional loophole: a lame-duck Congress called back into session between the elections this November and the swearing-in of the 112th Congress next January.

Leading Democrats are already considering this as a way to achieve even more liberal measures that many of their members dare not even talk about, let alone enact, on the eve of an election in which they face a widespread popular backlash to the already enacted elements of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda.

That backlash will express itself on Election Day and result, as most Democrats and Republicans currently expect, in major Democratic losses. It is still possible for the gaffe-happy Republicans to blow it. When the ranking GOP member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee publicly apologizes to the corporation that unleashed the worst oil spill in American history, you know the Republicans are capable of just about anything.

But assuming the elections go as currently projected, Obama's follow-on reforms are dead. Except for the fact that a lame-duck session, freezing in place the lopsided Democratic majorities of November 2008, would be populated by dozens of Democratic members who had lost reelection (in addition to those retiring). They could then vote for anything -- including measures they today shun as the midterms approach and their seats are threatened -- because they would have nothing to lose. They would be unemployed. And playing along with Obama might even brighten the prospects for, say, an ambassadorship to a sunny Caribbean isle.

As John Fund reports in the Wall Street Journal, Sens. Jay Rockefeller, Kent Conrad and Tom Harkin are already looking forward to what they might get passed in a lame-duck session. Among the major items being considered are card check, budget-balancing through major tax hikes, and climate-change legislation involving heavy carbon taxes and regulation.

Card check, which effectively abolishes the secret ballot in the workplace, is the fondest wish of a union movement to which Obama is highly beholden. Major tax hikes, possibly including a value-added tax, will undoubtedly be included in the recommendations of the president's debt commission, which conveniently reports by Dec. 1. And carbon taxes would be the newest version of the cap-and-trade legislation that has repeatedly failed to pass the current Congress -- but enough dead men walking in a lame-duck session might switch and vote to put it over the top.
It's a target-rich environment. The only thing holding the Democrats back would be shame, a Washington commodity in chronically short supply. To pass in a lame-duck session major legislation so unpopular that Democrats had no chance of passing it in regular session -- after major Democratic losses signifying a withdrawal of the mandate implicitly granted in 2008 -- would be an egregious violation of elementary democratic norms.

Perhaps shame will constrain the Democrats. But that is not to be counted on. It didn't stop them from pushing through a health-care reform the public didn't want by means of "reconciliation" maneuvers and without a single Republican vote in either chamber -- something unprecedented in American history for a reform of such scope and magnitude.

How then to prevent a runaway lame-duck Congress? Bring the issue up now -- applying the check-and-balance of the people's will before it disappears the morning after Election Day. Every current member should be publicly asked: In the event you lose in November -- a remote and deeply deplorable eventuality, but still not inconceivable -- do you pledge to adhere to the will of the electorate and, in any lame-duck session of Congress, refuse to approve anything but the most routine legislation required to keep the government functioning?

The Democrats could, of course, make the pledge today and break it tomorrow. Call me naive, but I can't believe anyone would be that dishonorable.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

John Fund: The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy - WSJ.com

By JOHN FUND

Democratic House members are so worried about the fall elections they're leaving Washington on July 30, a full week earlier than normal—and they won't return until mid-September. Members gulped when National Journal's Charlie Cook, the Beltway's leading political handicapper, predicted last month "the House is gone," meaning a GOP takeover. He thinks Democrats will hold the Senate, but with a significantly reduced majority.

The rush to recess gives Democrats little time to pass any major laws. That's why there have been signs in recent weeks that party leaders are planning an ambitious, lame-duck session to muscle through bills in December they don't want to defend before November. Retiring or defeated members of Congress would then be able to vote for sweeping legislation without any fear of voter retaliation.

John Fund discusses the Democratic agenda for the lame duck Congress, including cap and trade, card-check, and pork.

"I've got lots of things I want to do" in a lame duck, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W. Va.) told reporters in mid June. North Dakota's Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, wants a lame-duck session to act on the recommendations of President Obama's deficit commission, which is due to report on Dec. 1. "It could be a huge deal," he told Roll Call last month. "We could get the country on a sound long-term fiscal path." By which he undoubtedly means new taxes in exchange for extending some, but not all, of the Bush-era tax reductions that will expire at the end of the year.

In the House, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters last month that for bills like "card check"—the measure to curb secret-ballot union elections—"the lame duck would be the last chance, quite honestly, for the foreseeable future."

No Mosque at Ground Zero

» Rush: ‘Breitbart was exactly right’ - Big Government

In case you missed it yesterday, America’s Anchorman weighed in extensively on the NAACP/Obama Admin./Sherrod scandal. A highlight:

Here’s really all you need to know. It turns out that Andrew Breitbart was exactly right. This woman did not have an epiphany when she was at the USDA. When she was speaking to the NAACP she did not have an epiphany about, “You know what? It isn’t about race, it’s about rich versus poor.” If you listen to the whole speech as people have, 43 minutes, she’s racist. The NAACP is racist. And this whole story has been manipulated, wined and dined, formed and flaked in order present the usual template that it’s us, that it’s conservatives who are racist.

Transcripts:
So Much for That Postracial Presidency We Were Promised
Shirley Sherrod and the NAACP are the Racists Who Seek to Divide

In Defense of Andrew Breitbart - HUMAN EVENTS

In Defense of Andrew Breitbart

by Dan Riehl

07/22/2010

The
media and progressive-left Democrats now appear in a rush to convict
Andrew Breitbart of shoddy journalism, while exonerating Shirley Sherrod
and the NAACP from charges of abiding racism within their ranks. Both
Sherrod and the NAACP have charged the Tea Party movement and the
Republican Party with racism, while offering less proof than Breitbart
did of the racism he correctly alleged. In many cases, the Left has
outright manufactured evidence of racism regarding Tea Party events, yet
no one has raised a voice about that slander at all. If one didn't know
better, this wouldn't be today's news, but an Orwellian script circa
1984.

At
approximately 17 minutes into the now-released full video of the event,
Sherrod can be heard relaying a tale from her past in which she
initially failed to help a white farmer with the full effort she would
reserve for a black farmer.

The
assembled crowd of card-carrying members of the NAACP took great
pleasure in that, their laughter was not nervous at all. That is a
contemporaneous expression of racism by today's politically correct
standards, not racism from some 40 years ago.

Sherrod
later says, "It's not so much about white…" then catches herself and
says, "It IS about white and black." Perhaps Sherrod should explain why,
even today, color is so centrally important in her work, be it at the
Agriculture Department or elsewhere.

Breitbart’s
web-posting of the speech showed more racism at one NAACP event than
those charging Republicans and Tea Parties with racism have yet to
produce after making accusations for months on end. The people making
that charge include both Sherrod and the NAACP, neither of which has
produced any proof. But it is Breitbart who should be convicted for
false charges in the court of public opinion? That is totally absurd
given the actual facts.

Sherrod
twice decried present-day racism, as if it was 400 years ago. That
suggests a person whose views on race have not truly changed at all. But
she doesn't stop there. Sherrod says, "I haven't seen such
mean-spirited people as I have seen lately over this issue, healthcare.
Some of the racism we thought was buried, didn't it surface."

In
Sherrod's world, no one is allowed to object to a significant
Obama-supported policy change impacting the healthcare of all Americans
without being labeled a racist. Clearly Sherrod sees everything through
the lens of color or race. If her view is not racist, it is supremely
ignorant and unfit for a public official. It is meant to marginalize any
and all legitimate opposition to a political act. Sherrod is merely
projecting her own racism into a perfectly rational, legitimate
political debate so as to avoid it. That is not democracy; it is
race-based demagogy commonly employed by racists everywhere. And still
she was not done.

During
the Bush years, says Sherrod, "We didn't do the stuff these Republicans
are doing because you have a black President." Gone is any valid
argument over actual policy, fiscal restraint, government growth, or
control of healthcare—supported or opposed by entire national political
parties. In Sherrod's world, everything is all and only about race. If
that isn't a tenet of racism, then what is? Without ignorant race-based
presumptions, otherwise known as racism, Sherrod's entire scope of
political argument falls apart.

Atty.
Gen. Eric Holder said America is a nation of cowards on matters of
race. He was correct, but in a manner he likely didn't predict. The
racism Breitbart revealed is the racism of the Shirley Sherrods of the
progressive-leftist Democratic Party and the NAACP. Afraid to honestly
look at and address that, the usual leftist suspects are simply turning
the tables as a distraction in a weak effort to instead attack
Breitbart.

Breitbart
did exactly what he set out and claimed to do, put the inherent racism
of the NAACP and the American left on full display.

Additionally
troubling are Sherrod's race-based political views that amount to
Marxism. She sees an America in thirds. Evil capitalists are at the top,
exploiting racist divisions to maintain control. She argues that whites
were deliberately propped up to make them feel superior to blacks,
which they apparently still do in Sherrod's view. Blacks then bring up
the rear, seemingly oppressed by all. The racism in that view is
inherent and severe, no matter how much she would try and dismiss it
with an anecdote or two. Clearly in Sherrod's view, what is needed is
the type of government-dictated economy more like a Marxist state, than
the America we know and live in today.

Sadly,
Sherrod wants to pass on that view to young black Americans. How tragic
that she would saddle a next generation of black Americans with such an
ill considered, ignorant, utterly divisive and ridiculous view.

If
there's anyone who needs to apologize, it is a Shirley Sherrod unfit
for public service and the NAACP—not Andrew Breitbart, who did precisely
what he claimed he set out to do.

Dan Riehl works as a political consultant in Washington, DC and also maintains a popular Internet blog, www.Riehlworldview.com.

22 July 2010

When McCain picked Palin, liberal journalists coordinated the best line of attack | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

When McCain picked Palin, liberal journalists coordinated the best line of attack

By Jonathan Strong - The Daily Caller 3:09 AM 07/22/2010

In the hours after Sen. John McCain announced his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the last presidential race, members of an online forum called Journolist struggled to make sense of the pick. Many of them were liberal reporters, and in some cases their comments reflected a journalist’s instinct to figure out the meaning of a story.

But in many other exchanges, the Journolisters clearly had another, more partisan goal in mind: to formulate the most effective talking points in order to defeat Palin and McCain and help elect Barack Obama president. The tone was more campaign headquarters than newsroom.

The conversation began with a debate over how best to attack Sarah Palin. “Honestly, this pick reeks of desperation,” wrote Michael Cohen of the New America Foundation in the minutes after the news became public. “How can anyone logically argue that Sarah Pallin [sic], a one-term governor of Alaska, is qualified to be President of the United States? Train wreck, thy name is Sarah Pallin.”

Not a wise argument, responded Jonathan Stein, a reporter for Mother Jones. If McCain were asked about Palin’s inexperience, he could simply point to then candidate Barack Obama’s similarly thin resume. “Q: Sen. McCain, given Gov. Palin’s paltry experience, how is she qualified to be commander in chief?,” Stein asked hypothetically. “A: Well, she has much experience as the Democratic nominee.”

“What a joke,” added Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker. “I always thought that some part of McCain doesn’t want to be president, and this choice proves my point. Welcome back, Admiral Stockdale.”

Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation noted that Obama’s “non-official campaign” would need to work hard to discredit Palin. “This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn’t say – very hard-hitting stuff, including some of the things that people have been noting here – scare people about having this woefully inexperienced, no foreign policy/national security/right-wing christia wing-nut a heartbeat away …… bang away at McCain’s age making this unusually significant …. I think people should be replicating some of the not-so-pleasant viral email campaigns that were used against [Obama].”

Ryan Donmoyer, a reporter for Bloomberg News who was covering the campaign, sent a quick thought that Palin’s choice not to have an abortion when she unexpectedly became pregnant at age 44 would likely boost her image because it was a heartwarming story.

“Her decision to keep the Down’s baby is going to be a hugely emotional story that appeals to a vast swath of America, I think,” Donmoyer wrote.

Politico reporter Ben Adler, now an editor at Newsweek, replied, “but doesn’t leaving sad baby without its mother while she campaigns weaken that family values argument? Or will everyone be too afraid to make that point?”

Blogger Matt Yglesias sent out a new post thread with the subject, “The line on Palin.”

“John McCain picked someone to help him politically, Barack Obama picked someone to help him govern,” Yglesias wrote.

Ed Kilgore, managing editor of the Democratic Strategist blog, argued that journalists and others trying to help the Obama campaign should focus on Palin’s beliefs. “The criticism of her really, really needs to be ideological, not just about experience. If we concede she’s a ‘maverick,’ we will have done John McCain an enormous service. And let’s don’t concede the claim that [Hillary Clinton] supporters are likely to be very attracted to her,” Kilgore said.

Amidst this debate over how most effectively to destroy Palin’s reputation, reporter Avi Zenilman, who was then writing about the campaign for Politico, chimed in to note that Palin had “openly backed” parts of Obama’s energy plan. In an interview Wednesday, Zenilman said he sent the information as a means of promoting a story he had written for Politico.

Chris Hayes of the Nation wrote in with words of encouragement, and to ask for more talking points. “Keep the ideas coming! Have to go on TV to talk about this in a few min and need all the help I can get,” Hayes wrote.

Suzanne Nossel, chief of operations for Human Rights Watch, added a novel take: “I think it is and can be spun as a profoundly sexist pick. Women should feel umbrage at the idea that their votes can be attracted just by putting a woman, any woman, on the ticket no matter her qualifications or views.”

Mother Jones’s Stein loved the idea. “That’s excellent! If enough people – people on this list? – write that the pick is sexist, you’ll have the networks debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket,” he wrote.

Another writer from Mother Jones, Nick Baumann, had this idea: “Say it with me: ‘Classic GOP Tokenism’.”

Kilgore wasn’t sold: “I STRONGLY think the immediate task is to challenge the ‘maverick’ bullshit about Palin, which everybody on the tube is echoing. I’ll say it one more time: Palin is a hard-core conservative ideologue in every measurable way.”

Zenilman of Politico, a purportedly nonpartisan journalist, weighed in with tactical advice: “The experience attack is a stupid one. It’s absolutely the wrong tack — the tack that McCain took when he was losing, and that Hillary and Biden took all primaries.” Zenilman said Wednesday he was offering “typical offhand political analysis.”

Joe Klein of Time stopped by with an update on the latest from his magazine: “We’re reporting that she actually supported the bridge to nowhere. First flub?”

Klein, who displayed an independent streak in other circumstances (“anybody who knows me knows I do my own thinking,” he said in a Wednesday interview), seemed to exude more partisanship that day than usual.

As the morning wore on into the afternoon, some on Journolist came to believe the Palin pick had been shrewd. Palin was coming off as appealing and a maverick, they worried.

“Okay, let’s get deadly serious, folks. Grating voice or not, ‘inexperienced’ or not, Sarah Palin’s just been introduced to the country as a brave, above-party, oil-company-bashing, pork-hating maverick ‘outsider’,” Kilgore said, “What we can do is to expose her ideology.”

Ryan Avent, then blogging for the Economist and now an editor there, agreed that criticizing Palin’s experience might not work. “I really don’t think the experience argument needs to be made by the Dems. It’s completely obvious to any reasonable person. Instead, hammer away at the fact that she has terrible positions on things like choice, and on the fact that she has no ideas on the issues important to people,” he wrote.

Journolist’s founder Ezra Klein, now a blogger at the Washington Post, reached an entirely different conclusion: “I see no reason to attack Palin. I think you accurately describe Palin and attack McCain.” Klein linked to an article he had written for the American Prospect that calmly described Palin’s thin resume.

Time’s Joe Klein then linked to his own piece, parts of which he acknowledged came from strategy sessions on Journolist. “Here’s my attempt to incorporate the accumulated wisdom of this august list-serve community,” he wrote. And indeed Klein’s article contained arguments developed by his fellow Journolisters. Klein praised Palin personally, calling her “fresh” and “delightful,” but questioned her “militant” ideology. He noted Palin had endorsed parts of Obama’s energy proposal.

That was all on the day of the announcement.

E-mail Jonathan and follow him on Twitter

Ed. Note: This story has been updated to reflect additional information provided by those quoted.