By KARL ROVE
After engineering an unprecedented spending surge for nearly a year, President Barack Obama now wants to signal that he takes deficits seriously. So this week the White House announced that it is considering creating a commission to figure how to fix the budget mess.
Eureka!
Well, almost. What seems to concern the president is not the problem runaway spending poses for taxpayers and the economy. Rather, what bothers him is the political problem it poses for Democrats.
Last year, Mr. Obama made fiscal restraint a constant theme of his presidential campaign. "Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending," he said back then, while pledging to "go through the federal budget, line by line, ending programs that we don't need." Voters found this fiscal conservatism reassuring.
However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill.
An honest appraisal of the nation's finances would recommend dropping both of these last two priorities. But the administration has long planned to run up the federal credit card. In February, Mr. Obama's budget plan for the next decade projected that revenues would equal about 18% of GDP while spending would jump to 24% of GDP, up from its post World War II average of 21%. Annual deficits of about 6% of GDP were projected for years to come.
When Mr. Obama was sworn into office the federal deficit for this year stood at $422 billion. At the end of October, it stood at $1.42 trillion. The total national debt also soared to $7.5 trillion at the end of last month, up from $6.3 trillion shortly after Inauguration Day.
This spending has been matched by a decline in the president's poll numbers. This week, Gallup found that his job approval rating slipped below 50%. Last March, Americans approved of Mr. Obama's handling of the deficit by a 52% to 43% margin in the ABC News/Washington Post poll. By October, his standing had flipped in the same poll, with 45% approving and 51% disapproving.
Anger over deficits was picked up in a late October NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which asked voters if they'd rather boost "the economy even though it may mean larger budget deficits" or keep the "budget deficit down, even though it may mean it will take longer for the economy to recover." Only 31% chose boosting the economy; 62% wanted to keep the deficit down.
These numbers suggest trouble for Democrats. In 1994, a wave of budget concerns (among other factors) handed Republicans control of Congress. Just before Election Day that year, 33% of voters approved and 59% disapproved of President Bill Clinton's handling of the deficit.
Today the latest Quinnipiac Poll tells us that only 19% of voters believe that Mr. Obama's health-care reform won't add to the deficit. The rest of us have reason to be skeptical. The bill includes all sorts of budget gimmicks, two of which illustrate that there is no fiscal restraint in it. One calls for steep cuts in Medicare and the other imposes a 40% excise tax on private, gold-plated health plans. It's just not plausible that this Congress will actually cut Medicare or tax health plans the unions have spent decades creating.
The administration says it is now instructing agencies to either freeze spending or propose 5% cuts in their budgets for next year. This won't add up to much unless agencies use the budgets they had before the stimulus inflated their spending as their baseline in calculating their cuts.
For example, if the Education Department uses its current stimulus-inflated budget of $141 billion instead of the $60 billion budget it had before Mr. Obama moved into the White House, freezing its budget will do nothing to fix the fiscal mess the president has created.
Ominously for Democrats, concerns over spending have recently helped to flip the Gallup generic ballot to now favor Republicans by four points (48% to 44%). Last year, Democrats held a 12-point generic ballot advantage. The change has been driven by independents, who now favor Republicans by 22 points. By comparison, in the run-up to the 1994 congressional elections, Republicans first eclipsed Democrats in March of that year, when they gained a one-point advantage, before falling behind Democrats until the fall.
Mr. Obama's spending choices are dragging congressional Democrats into ugly electoral territory where many are likely to meet a brutal fate next fall.
—Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions).
Monday, November 30, 2009
Obama weakens anti-terrorism efforts
Major Hasan and Holy War
A domestic Islamic threat is real, and the FBI is unprepared to fight it.
By REUEL MARC GERECHT WSJ Nov 23
For those of us who have tracked Islamic militancy in Europe, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's actions are not extraordinary. Since Muslim militants first tried to blow a French high-speed train off its rails in 1995, European intelligence and internal-security services have increasingly monitored European Muslim radicals. Whether it's anti-Muslim bigotry, the large numbers of immigrant and native-born Muslims in Europe, an appreciation of how hard it is to become European, or just an understanding of how dangerous Islamic radicalism is, most Europeans are far less circumspect and politically correct when discussing their Muslim compatriots than are Americans.
A concern for not giving offense to Muslims would never prevent the French internal-security service, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), which deploys a large number of Muslim officers, from aggressively trying to pre-empt terrorism. As Maj. Hasan's case shows, this is not true in the United States. The American military and especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation were in great part inattentive because they were too sensitive.
Moreover, President Barack Obama's determined effort not to mention Islam in terrorist discussions—which means that we must not suggest that Maj. Hasan's murderous actions flowed from his faith—will weaken American counterterrorism. Worse, the president's position is an enormous wasted opportunity to advance an all-critical Muslim debate about the nature and legitimacy of jihad.
European counterterrorist officers know well that jihadists can appear, self-generated or tutored by extremist groups, inside Muslim families where parents and siblings lead peaceful lives. Security officials live in fear of the quiet believer who quickly radicalizes, or the secular down-and-out European who enthusiastically converts to a militant creed. Both cases allow little time and often few leads to neutralize a possible lethal explosion of the faith.
It shouldn't require the U.S. to have a French-style, internal-security service to neutralize the likes of Maj. Hasan. He combines all of the factors—especially his public ruminations about American villainy in the Middle East and his overriding sense of Muslim fraternity—that should have had him under surveillance by counterintelligence units. Add the outrageous fact that he was in email correspondence with Anwar al-Awlaqi, a pro-al Qaeda imam well-known to American intelligence, and it is hard not to conclude that the FBI is still incapable of counterterrorism against an Islamic target.
For the FBI, religion remains a much too sensitive subject, much more so than the threatening ideologies of yesteryear. Imagine if Maj. Hasan had been an officer during the Cold War, regularly expressing his sympathy for the Soviet Union and American criminality against the working man. Imagine him writing to a KGB front organization espousing socialist solidarity. The major would have been surrounded by counterintelligence officers.
Powerfully intertwined in all of this is liberal America's reluctance to discuss Islam, Islamic militancy, jihadism, or anything that might be construed as invidious to Muslims. The Obama administration obviously doesn't want to get tagged with an Islamist terrorist strike in the U.S.—the first since 9/11. The Muslim-sensitive 9/11 Commission Report, which unambiguously named the enemy as "Islamist terrorism," now seems distinctly passé.
Thoughtful men should certainly not want to see a U.S. president propel a "clash of civilizations" with devout Muslims. However, clash-avoidance shouldn't lead us into a philosophical cul-de-sac. The stakes are so enormous—jihadists would if they could let loose a weapon of mass destruction in a Western city—that we should not prevaricate out of politeness, or deceive ourselves into believing that a debate between Muslims and non-Muslims can only be counterproductive.
The brilliant Iranian revolutionary-turned dissident, Abd al-Karim Soroush, whose ideas contributed to the pro-democracy tumult we've witnessed in Iran since the June 12 election, has forcefully argued for Muslims to critique themselves unsparingly, to happily import and use the West's rational relentlessness to strengthen the faith. An elemental part of Mr. Soroush's critique is that Muslims are capable of thinking on their own. They can take the heat.
But Westerners could certainly benefit from Mr. Obama underscoring something else he touched on in his Cairo speech: Muslims should stop blaming non-Muslims for their crippling problems. He could ask, as some Muslims have, why is it that Islam has produced so many jihadists? Why is it that Maj. Hasan's rampage has produced so little questioning among Muslim clerics about why a man, one in a long line of Muslim militants, so easily takes God's name to slaughter his fellow citizens?
As it stands now, however, Iranian youth who once so eagerly welcomed Mr. Obama's election by shouting his name in Persian—U ba ma! ("He is with us!")—are now writing the president's likely legacy among Muslims who yearn for a better modernity. Disappointed to see how determined Mr. Obama has remained to engage the regime they despise, they now forlornly chant U ba unhast ("He is with them.").
For Muslims who are on the front lines of Islam's bloody reformation, as well as for American counterterrorist officers who must find holy warriors in our midst, Mr. Obama has come down on the wrong side of history.
Mr. Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
A domestic Islamic threat is real, and the FBI is unprepared to fight it.
By REUEL MARC GERECHT WSJ Nov 23
For those of us who have tracked Islamic militancy in Europe, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's actions are not extraordinary. Since Muslim militants first tried to blow a French high-speed train off its rails in 1995, European intelligence and internal-security services have increasingly monitored European Muslim radicals. Whether it's anti-Muslim bigotry, the large numbers of immigrant and native-born Muslims in Europe, an appreciation of how hard it is to become European, or just an understanding of how dangerous Islamic radicalism is, most Europeans are far less circumspect and politically correct when discussing their Muslim compatriots than are Americans.
A concern for not giving offense to Muslims would never prevent the French internal-security service, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), which deploys a large number of Muslim officers, from aggressively trying to pre-empt terrorism. As Maj. Hasan's case shows, this is not true in the United States. The American military and especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation were in great part inattentive because they were too sensitive.
Moreover, President Barack Obama's determined effort not to mention Islam in terrorist discussions—which means that we must not suggest that Maj. Hasan's murderous actions flowed from his faith—will weaken American counterterrorism. Worse, the president's position is an enormous wasted opportunity to advance an all-critical Muslim debate about the nature and legitimacy of jihad.
European counterterrorist officers know well that jihadists can appear, self-generated or tutored by extremist groups, inside Muslim families where parents and siblings lead peaceful lives. Security officials live in fear of the quiet believer who quickly radicalizes, or the secular down-and-out European who enthusiastically converts to a militant creed. Both cases allow little time and often few leads to neutralize a possible lethal explosion of the faith.
It shouldn't require the U.S. to have a French-style, internal-security service to neutralize the likes of Maj. Hasan. He combines all of the factors—especially his public ruminations about American villainy in the Middle East and his overriding sense of Muslim fraternity—that should have had him under surveillance by counterintelligence units. Add the outrageous fact that he was in email correspondence with Anwar al-Awlaqi, a pro-al Qaeda imam well-known to American intelligence, and it is hard not to conclude that the FBI is still incapable of counterterrorism against an Islamic target.
For the FBI, religion remains a much too sensitive subject, much more so than the threatening ideologies of yesteryear. Imagine if Maj. Hasan had been an officer during the Cold War, regularly expressing his sympathy for the Soviet Union and American criminality against the working man. Imagine him writing to a KGB front organization espousing socialist solidarity. The major would have been surrounded by counterintelligence officers.
Powerfully intertwined in all of this is liberal America's reluctance to discuss Islam, Islamic militancy, jihadism, or anything that might be construed as invidious to Muslims. The Obama administration obviously doesn't want to get tagged with an Islamist terrorist strike in the U.S.—the first since 9/11. The Muslim-sensitive 9/11 Commission Report, which unambiguously named the enemy as "Islamist terrorism," now seems distinctly passé.
Thoughtful men should certainly not want to see a U.S. president propel a "clash of civilizations" with devout Muslims. However, clash-avoidance shouldn't lead us into a philosophical cul-de-sac. The stakes are so enormous—jihadists would if they could let loose a weapon of mass destruction in a Western city—that we should not prevaricate out of politeness, or deceive ourselves into believing that a debate between Muslims and non-Muslims can only be counterproductive.
The brilliant Iranian revolutionary-turned dissident, Abd al-Karim Soroush, whose ideas contributed to the pro-democracy tumult we've witnessed in Iran since the June 12 election, has forcefully argued for Muslims to critique themselves unsparingly, to happily import and use the West's rational relentlessness to strengthen the faith. An elemental part of Mr. Soroush's critique is that Muslims are capable of thinking on their own. They can take the heat.
But Westerners could certainly benefit from Mr. Obama underscoring something else he touched on in his Cairo speech: Muslims should stop blaming non-Muslims for their crippling problems. He could ask, as some Muslims have, why is it that Islam has produced so many jihadists? Why is it that Maj. Hasan's rampage has produced so little questioning among Muslim clerics about why a man, one in a long line of Muslim militants, so easily takes God's name to slaughter his fellow citizens?
As it stands now, however, Iranian youth who once so eagerly welcomed Mr. Obama's election by shouting his name in Persian—U ba ma! ("He is with us!")—are now writing the president's likely legacy among Muslims who yearn for a better modernity. Disappointed to see how determined Mr. Obama has remained to engage the regime they despise, they now forlornly chant U ba unhast ("He is with them.").
For Muslims who are on the front lines of Islam's bloody reformation, as well as for American counterterrorist officers who must find holy warriors in our midst, Mr. Obama has come down on the wrong side of history.
Mr. Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
His making Washington worse
By FRED BARNES WSJ Nov 26
Mr. Obama also decried the prominent role played by lobbyists. "Lobbyists aren't just a part of the system in Washington, they're part of the problem," Mr. Obama said in a May 2008 campaign speech.
I was reminded of this last statement by a recent headline on the front page of USA Today. It read: "Health care fight swells lobbying. Number of organizations hiring firms doubles in '09." The article suggested that what Mr. Obama had promised to fix had only gotten worse.
Indeed that's the case. Washington is more partisan than ever, and more polarized. Even on a purely procedural vote to begin Senate debate on health-care reform this past Saturday, every Democrat voted one way (yes), every Republican the other (no)...
First, Mr. Obama misread the meaning of the 2008 election. It wasn't a mandate for a liberal revolution. His victory was a personal one, not an ideological triumph of liberalism. Yet Mr. Obama, his aides and Democratic leaders in Congress have treated it as a mandate to radically change policy directions in this country. They are pushing forward one liberal initiative after another. As a result, Mr. Obama's approval rating has dropped along with the popularity of his agenda.
Mr. Obama should have known better. The evidence that America remains a center-right country was right there in the national exit poll on Election Day. When asked about their political beliefs, 34% identified themselves as conservative, 22% as liberal, and a whopping 44% as moderate.
As Mr. Obama has unveiled his policies, the country has tilted more to the right. A Gallup Poll on Oct. 21 found the country to be 40% conservative, 36% moderate, and 20% liberal.
Nearly every Obama policy has thrilled either the president's base in the Democratic Party or a liberal interest group but practically no one else. Nearly every policy is unpopular with a majority or large plurality of Americans. The $787 billion economic stimulus was enacted in February with strong public support. But it has long since lost favor.
It should have been no surprise the public gave a thumbs down to Mr. Obama policies. The decision to close the prison in Guantanamo, the takeover of General Motors and Chrysler, the bailout of banks and financial institutions (begun under President George W. Bush), the trillion-dollar deficits, cap and trade, the surge in the size and scope of the federal government—these were out of sync with the country's right-of-center majority.
Mr. Obama argued in his Feb. 24 address to Congress that health-care reform, billions in new education spending, and cap and trade to reduce carbon emissions were necessary to revive the economy. This was a clever attempt to exploit the recession to pass unrelated liberal policies. It was too clever. It didn't work.
Second, Mr. Obama misread his own ability to sway the public. He is a glib, cool, likeable speaker whose sentences have subjects and verbs. During the campaign, he gave dazzling speeches about hope and change that excited voters.
But campaign speeches don't have to be specific, and candidates aren't accountable. Presidential speeches are different. The object is to persuade voters to back a certain policy, and it turns out Mr. Obama is not good at this. He failed to stop the steady decline in support for any of his policies, most notably health care.
The president spent much of the summer and early fall touting his health-care initiative. He spoke at town halls, appeared on five Sunday talk shows the same day (Sept. 20), turned up on "The Late Show with David Letterman" and on "60 Minutes." All the while, support for ObamaCare fell. His address to Congress on health care on Sept. 9 is now remembered only for Republican Rep. Joe Wilson's shouted accusation, "You lie!"
Third, Mr. Obama misread Republicans. They felt weak and vulnerable after losing two straight congressional elections and watching John McCain's presidential bid fall flat. They were afraid to criticize the newly elected president. If he had offered them minimal concessions, many of them would have jumped aboard his policies. If that had happened, the president could have boasted of achieving bipartisan compromise on the stimulus and other policies. He let the chance slip away.
By March, tea parties had begun cropping up across the country to protest spending in Washington. Over the summer, independents moved away from Mr. Obama when they learned of the soaring cost of his policies. By late summer, Republicans emerged as a full-blown opposition with growing public backing.
The point in all this is Mr. Obama could have given a little and gained a lot. To change Washington, he would have had to corral congressional Democrats, who weren't interested in bipartisanship or compromise. He would have had to disappoint his base and, at times, anger liberal interest groups. Mr. Obama wasn't willing to go that route.
In Washington it's business as usual, except for one thing. The bigger the role of government, the more lobbyists flock to town. By pushing for his policies, the president effectively put up a welcome sign to lobbyists. Despite promising to keep them out of his administration, he has even hired a few. So nothing has changed, except maybe that Washington is now more acrimonious than it has been.
Mr. Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a commentator on Fox News Channel.
Mr. Obama also decried the prominent role played by lobbyists. "Lobbyists aren't just a part of the system in Washington, they're part of the problem," Mr. Obama said in a May 2008 campaign speech.
I was reminded of this last statement by a recent headline on the front page of USA Today. It read: "Health care fight swells lobbying. Number of organizations hiring firms doubles in '09." The article suggested that what Mr. Obama had promised to fix had only gotten worse.
Indeed that's the case. Washington is more partisan than ever, and more polarized. Even on a purely procedural vote to begin Senate debate on health-care reform this past Saturday, every Democrat voted one way (yes), every Republican the other (no)...
First, Mr. Obama misread the meaning of the 2008 election. It wasn't a mandate for a liberal revolution. His victory was a personal one, not an ideological triumph of liberalism. Yet Mr. Obama, his aides and Democratic leaders in Congress have treated it as a mandate to radically change policy directions in this country. They are pushing forward one liberal initiative after another. As a result, Mr. Obama's approval rating has dropped along with the popularity of his agenda.
Mr. Obama should have known better. The evidence that America remains a center-right country was right there in the national exit poll on Election Day. When asked about their political beliefs, 34% identified themselves as conservative, 22% as liberal, and a whopping 44% as moderate.
As Mr. Obama has unveiled his policies, the country has tilted more to the right. A Gallup Poll on Oct. 21 found the country to be 40% conservative, 36% moderate, and 20% liberal.
Nearly every Obama policy has thrilled either the president's base in the Democratic Party or a liberal interest group but practically no one else. Nearly every policy is unpopular with a majority or large plurality of Americans. The $787 billion economic stimulus was enacted in February with strong public support. But it has long since lost favor.
It should have been no surprise the public gave a thumbs down to Mr. Obama policies. The decision to close the prison in Guantanamo, the takeover of General Motors and Chrysler, the bailout of banks and financial institutions (begun under President George W. Bush), the trillion-dollar deficits, cap and trade, the surge in the size and scope of the federal government—these were out of sync with the country's right-of-center majority.
Mr. Obama argued in his Feb. 24 address to Congress that health-care reform, billions in new education spending, and cap and trade to reduce carbon emissions were necessary to revive the economy. This was a clever attempt to exploit the recession to pass unrelated liberal policies. It was too clever. It didn't work.
Second, Mr. Obama misread his own ability to sway the public. He is a glib, cool, likeable speaker whose sentences have subjects and verbs. During the campaign, he gave dazzling speeches about hope and change that excited voters.
But campaign speeches don't have to be specific, and candidates aren't accountable. Presidential speeches are different. The object is to persuade voters to back a certain policy, and it turns out Mr. Obama is not good at this. He failed to stop the steady decline in support for any of his policies, most notably health care.
The president spent much of the summer and early fall touting his health-care initiative. He spoke at town halls, appeared on five Sunday talk shows the same day (Sept. 20), turned up on "The Late Show with David Letterman" and on "60 Minutes." All the while, support for ObamaCare fell. His address to Congress on health care on Sept. 9 is now remembered only for Republican Rep. Joe Wilson's shouted accusation, "You lie!"
Third, Mr. Obama misread Republicans. They felt weak and vulnerable after losing two straight congressional elections and watching John McCain's presidential bid fall flat. They were afraid to criticize the newly elected president. If he had offered them minimal concessions, many of them would have jumped aboard his policies. If that had happened, the president could have boasted of achieving bipartisan compromise on the stimulus and other policies. He let the chance slip away.
By March, tea parties had begun cropping up across the country to protest spending in Washington. Over the summer, independents moved away from Mr. Obama when they learned of the soaring cost of his policies. By late summer, Republicans emerged as a full-blown opposition with growing public backing.
The point in all this is Mr. Obama could have given a little and gained a lot. To change Washington, he would have had to corral congressional Democrats, who weren't interested in bipartisanship or compromise. He would have had to disappoint his base and, at times, anger liberal interest groups. Mr. Obama wasn't willing to go that route.
In Washington it's business as usual, except for one thing. The bigger the role of government, the more lobbyists flock to town. By pushing for his policies, the president effectively put up a welcome sign to lobbyists. Despite promising to keep them out of his administration, he has even hired a few. So nothing has changed, except maybe that Washington is now more acrimonious than it has been.
Mr. Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a commentator on Fox News Channel.
Continues to drop in polls
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: November 23, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama returned from his trip to Asia facing some unsettling news: two new public-opinion polls showing that his approval rating has dipped below 50 percent for the first time. To many of his critics, who chafed as Mr. Obama enjoyed broad support among Americans even though many were critical of his handling of specific issues like the economy, this erosion is a tipping-point, the end of Mr. Obama’s perceived near-invulnerability.
The latest on President Obama, his administration and other news from Washington and around the nation.
For a number of reasons, the slide is not a surprise. Coming less than a year into his presidency, not to mention almost a full year before the 2010 Congressional elections, though, the long-term political significance of the slide is anything but clear.
Still, there is cause for the White House to be concerned, and for Republicans to sense an opportunity. The poll numbers worry Democratic strategists who are preparing for the already tough mid-term elections. They are well aware of the significance of presidential approval ratings in predicting the outcome — and particularly of what happens when a president’s approval rating is below 50 percent in the two months before a mid-term election.
Mr. Obama’s decline a year into his term comes as he struggles through a decidedly sour climate. The unemployment rate has jumped above 10 percent and shows no sign of abating. At this point, even if Mr. Obama cannot be blamed for causing the economic decline, Americans are growing impatient with him to fix it.
His main legislative initiative — the health care bill — is the subject of a messy fight in Congress, displaying Washington in the very bitter partisan light that Mr. Obama promised to end. It has provided Republicans with a platform to stir concerns that Mr. Obama is using the health care overhaul to expand the role of government beyond the comfort level of many Americans; polls suggest that these arguments have helped sow significant doubts.
Published: November 23, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama returned from his trip to Asia facing some unsettling news: two new public-opinion polls showing that his approval rating has dipped below 50 percent for the first time. To many of his critics, who chafed as Mr. Obama enjoyed broad support among Americans even though many were critical of his handling of specific issues like the economy, this erosion is a tipping-point, the end of Mr. Obama’s perceived near-invulnerability.
The latest on President Obama, his administration and other news from Washington and around the nation.
For a number of reasons, the slide is not a surprise. Coming less than a year into his presidency, not to mention almost a full year before the 2010 Congressional elections, though, the long-term political significance of the slide is anything but clear.
Still, there is cause for the White House to be concerned, and for Republicans to sense an opportunity. The poll numbers worry Democratic strategists who are preparing for the already tough mid-term elections. They are well aware of the significance of presidential approval ratings in predicting the outcome — and particularly of what happens when a president’s approval rating is below 50 percent in the two months before a mid-term election.
Mr. Obama’s decline a year into his term comes as he struggles through a decidedly sour climate. The unemployment rate has jumped above 10 percent and shows no sign of abating. At this point, even if Mr. Obama cannot be blamed for causing the economic decline, Americans are growing impatient with him to fix it.
His main legislative initiative — the health care bill — is the subject of a messy fight in Congress, displaying Washington in the very bitter partisan light that Mr. Obama promised to end. It has provided Republicans with a platform to stir concerns that Mr. Obama is using the health care overhaul to expand the role of government beyond the comfort level of many Americans; polls suggest that these arguments have helped sow significant doubts.
Joe Klein of Time explains
Over the past few weeks, Barack Obama has been criticized for the following: He didn't go to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the Wall's coming down. He didn't make a forceful enough statement on the 30th anniversary of the U.S. diplomats' being taken hostage in Iran. He didn't show sufficient mournfulness, at first, when the Fort Hood shootings took place, and he was namby-pamby about the possibility that the shootings were an act of jihad. He has spent too little time focusing on unemployment. He bowed too deeply before the Japanese Emperor. He allowed the Chinese to block the broadcast of his Shanghai town-hall meeting. He allowed the Chinese President to bar questions at their joint press conference (a moment memorably satirized by Saturday Night Live). He didn't come back with any diplomatic victories from Asia. He allowed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters to be tried in the U.S. criminal-justice system rather than by the military. He has dithered too long on Afghanistan. He has devoted too much attention to — and given congressional Democrats too much control over — health care reform, an issue that is peripheral to a majority of Americans.
And all this has led to a dangerous slippage in the polls, it is said, a sense that his presidential authority is ebbing.
And all this has led to a dangerous slippage in the polls, it is said, a sense that his presidential authority is ebbing.
Dangerous incompentence in Foreign Policy
But his popularity overseas was going to remake the world…and was going to lead to the defanging of Iran, etc. The only time that Iran looked hesitant and paused its nuclear program was when America showed some resoluteness and adherence to a principled approach towards supporting our allies and opposing our foes. Not happenin’ these days.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/182091#more-182091
The Unmasking of Barack Obama
Peter Wehner - 11.30.2009 - 11:17 AM
The overseas reviews for President Obama’s foreign policy are starting to pour in — and they’re not favorable. Bob Ainsworth, the British defense secretary, has blamed Obama for the decline in British public support for the war in Afghanistan. According to the Telegraph:
Mr. Ainsworth took the unprecedented step of publicly criticizing the U.S. President and his delays in sending more troops to bolster the mission against the Taliban. A “period of hiatus” in Washington — and a lack of clear direction — had made it harder for ministers to persuade the British public to go on backing the Afghan mission in the face of a rising death toll, he said. Senior British Government sources have become increasingly frustrated with Mr. Obama’s “dithering” on Afghanistan, the Daily Telegraph disclosed earlier this month, with several former British defense chiefs echoing the concerns.
The President is “Obama the Impotent,” according to Steven Hill of the Guardian. The Economist calls Obama the “Pacific (and pussyfooting) president.” The Financial Times refers to “relations between the U.S. and Europe, which started the year of talks as allies, near breakdown.” The German magazine Der Spiegel accuses the president of being “dishonest with Europe” on the subject of climate change. Another withering piece in Der Spiegel, titled “Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage,” lists the instances in which Obama is being rolled. The Jerusalem Post puts it this way: “Everybody is saying no to the American president these days. And it’s not just that they’re saying no, it’s also the way they’re saying no.” “He talks too much,” a Saudi academic who had once been smitten with Barack Obama tells the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami. The Saudi “has wearied of Mr. Obama and now does not bother with the Obama oratory,” according to Ajami. But “he is hardly alone, this academic. In the endless chatter of this region, and in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment. In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth.”
Indeed he has — and only Obama and his increasingly clueless administration seem unaware of this.
On almost every front, progress is nonexistent. In many instances, things are getting worse rather than better. The enormous goodwill that Obama’s election was met with hasn’t been leveraged into anything useful and tangible. Rather, our allies are now questioning America’s will, while our adversaries are becoming increasingly emboldened. The United States looks weak and uncertain. It’s “amateur hour at the White House,” according to Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former official in the Carter administration. “Not only are things not getting fixed, they may be getting more broken,” according to Michael Hirsh at Newsweek. When even such strong Obama supporters as Gelb and Hirsh reach these conclusions, you know things must be unraveling.
It’s no mystery as to why. President Obama’s approach to international relations is simplistic and misguided. It is premised on the belief that American concessions to our adversaries will beget goodwill and concessions in return; that American self-abasement is justified; that the American decline is inevitable (and in some respects welcome); and that diplomacy and multilateralism are ends rather than means to an end.
Right now the overwhelming issue on the public’s mind is the economy, where Obama is also having serious problems. But national-security issues matter a great deal, and they remain the unique responsibility of the president. With every passing month, Barack Obama looks more and more like his Democratic predecessor Jimmy Carter: irresolute, unsteady, and overmatched. The president and members of his own party will find out soon enough, though, that Obama the Impotent isn’t what they had in mind when they elected him. We are witnessing the unmasking, and perhaps the unmaking, of Barack Obama.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/182091#more-182091
The Unmasking of Barack Obama
Peter Wehner - 11.30.2009 - 11:17 AM
The overseas reviews for President Obama’s foreign policy are starting to pour in — and they’re not favorable. Bob Ainsworth, the British defense secretary, has blamed Obama for the decline in British public support for the war in Afghanistan. According to the Telegraph:
Mr. Ainsworth took the unprecedented step of publicly criticizing the U.S. President and his delays in sending more troops to bolster the mission against the Taliban. A “period of hiatus” in Washington — and a lack of clear direction — had made it harder for ministers to persuade the British public to go on backing the Afghan mission in the face of a rising death toll, he said. Senior British Government sources have become increasingly frustrated with Mr. Obama’s “dithering” on Afghanistan, the Daily Telegraph disclosed earlier this month, with several former British defense chiefs echoing the concerns.
The President is “Obama the Impotent,” according to Steven Hill of the Guardian. The Economist calls Obama the “Pacific (and pussyfooting) president.” The Financial Times refers to “relations between the U.S. and Europe, which started the year of talks as allies, near breakdown.” The German magazine Der Spiegel accuses the president of being “dishonest with Europe” on the subject of climate change. Another withering piece in Der Spiegel, titled “Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage,” lists the instances in which Obama is being rolled. The Jerusalem Post puts it this way: “Everybody is saying no to the American president these days. And it’s not just that they’re saying no, it’s also the way they’re saying no.” “He talks too much,” a Saudi academic who had once been smitten with Barack Obama tells the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami. The Saudi “has wearied of Mr. Obama and now does not bother with the Obama oratory,” according to Ajami. But “he is hardly alone, this academic. In the endless chatter of this region, and in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment. In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth.”
Indeed he has — and only Obama and his increasingly clueless administration seem unaware of this.
On almost every front, progress is nonexistent. In many instances, things are getting worse rather than better. The enormous goodwill that Obama’s election was met with hasn’t been leveraged into anything useful and tangible. Rather, our allies are now questioning America’s will, while our adversaries are becoming increasingly emboldened. The United States looks weak and uncertain. It’s “amateur hour at the White House,” according to Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former official in the Carter administration. “Not only are things not getting fixed, they may be getting more broken,” according to Michael Hirsh at Newsweek. When even such strong Obama supporters as Gelb and Hirsh reach these conclusions, you know things must be unraveling.
It’s no mystery as to why. President Obama’s approach to international relations is simplistic and misguided. It is premised on the belief that American concessions to our adversaries will beget goodwill and concessions in return; that American self-abasement is justified; that the American decline is inevitable (and in some respects welcome); and that diplomacy and multilateralism are ends rather than means to an end.
Right now the overwhelming issue on the public’s mind is the economy, where Obama is also having serious problems. But national-security issues matter a great deal, and they remain the unique responsibility of the president. With every passing month, Barack Obama looks more and more like his Democratic predecessor Jimmy Carter: irresolute, unsteady, and overmatched. The president and members of his own party will find out soon enough, though, that Obama the Impotent isn’t what they had in mind when they elected him. We are witnessing the unmasking, and perhaps the unmaking, of Barack Obama.
Evan the ARABS HAVE GIVEN UP ON HIM
The Arabs Have Stopped Applauding Obama (my note-do they just hold him in contempt?)
A foreign policy of penance has won America no friends.
By FOUAD AJAMI
'He talks too much," a Saudi academic in Jeddah, who had once been smitten with Barack Obama, recently observed to me of America's 44th president. He has wearied of Mr. Obama and now does not bother with the Obama oratory.
He is hardly alone, this academic. In the endless chatter of this region, and in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment. In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth.
He has not made the world anew, history did not bend to his will, the Indians and Pakistanis have been told that the matter of Kashmir is theirs to resolve, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the same intractable clash of two irreconcilable nationalisms, and the theocrats in Iran have not "unclenched their fist," nor have they abandoned their nuclear quest.
There is little Mr. Obama can do about this disenchantment. He can't journey to Turkey to tell its Islamist leaders and political class that a decade of anti-American scapegoating is all forgiven and was the product of American policies—he has already done that. He can't journey to Cairo to tell the fabled "Arab street" that the Iraq war was a wasted war of choice, and that America earned the malice that came its way from Arab lands—he has already done that as well. He can't tell Muslims that America is not at war with Islam—he, like his predecessor, has said that time and again.
It was the norm for American liberalism during the Bush years to brandish the Pew Global Attitudes survey that told of America's decline in the eyes of foreign nations. Foreigners were saying what the liberals wanted said.
Now those surveys of 2009 bring findings from the world of Islam that confirm that the animus toward America has not been radically changed by the ascendancy of Mr. Obama. In the Palestinian territories, 15% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 82% have an unfavorable view. The Obama speech in Ankara didn't seem to help in Turkey, where the favorables are 14% and those unreconciled, 69%. In Egypt, a country that's reaped nearly 40 years of American aid, things stayed roughly the same: 27% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 70% do not. In Pakistan, a place of great consequence for American power, our standing has deteriorated: The unfavorables rose from 63% in 2008 to 68% this year.
Mr. Obama's election has not drained the swamps of anti-Americanism. That anti-Americanism is endemic to this region, an alibi and a scapegoat for nations, and their rulers, unwilling to break out of the grip of political autocracy and economic failure. It predated the presidency of George W. Bush and rages on during the Obama presidency.
We had once taken to the foreign world that quintessential American difference—the belief in liberty, a needed innocence to play off against the settled and complacent ways of older nations. The Obama approach is different.
Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Mr. Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine, and a policy, of American penance. No one told Mr. Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and so dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, nay a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one's own tribe when in the midst, and in the lands, of others.
The crowd may have applauded the cavalier way the new steward of American power referred to his predecessor, but in the privacy of their own language they doubtless wondered about his character and his fidelity. "My brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger," goes one of the Arab world's most honored maxims. The stranger who came into their midst and spoke badly of his own was destined to become an object of suspicion.
Mr. Obama could not make up his mind: He was at one with "the people" and with the rulers who held them in subjugation. The people of Iran who took to the streets this past summer were betrayed by this hapless diplomacy—Mr. Obama was out to "engage" the terrible rulers that millions of Iranians were determined to be rid of.
On Nov. 4, on the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran, the embattled reformers, again in the streets, posed an embarrassing dilemma for American diplomacy: "Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them," they chanted. By not responding to these cries and continuing to "engage" Tehran's murderous regime, his choice was made clear. It wasn't one of American diplomacy's finest moments.
Mr. Obama has himself to blame for the disarray of his foreign policy. American arms had won a decent outcome in Iraq, but Mr. Obama would not claim it—it was his predecessor's war. Vigilance had kept the American homeland safe from terrorist attacks for seven long years under his predecessors, but he could never grant Bush policies the honor and credit they deserved. He had declared Afghanistan a war of necessity, but he seems to have his eye on the road out even as he is set to announce a troop increase in an address to be delivered tomorrow.
He was quick to assert, in the course of his exuberant campaign for president last year, that his diplomacy in South Asia would start with the standoff in Kashmir. In truth India had no interest in an international adjudication of Kashmir. What was settled during the partition in 1947 was there to stay. In recent days, Mr. Obama walked away from earlier ambitions. "Obviously, there are historic conflicts between India and Pakistan," he said. "It's not the place of the United States to try to, from the outside, resolve those conflicts."
Nor was he swayed by the fate of so many "peace plans" that have been floated over so many decades to resolve the fight between Arab and Jew over the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. Where George W. Bush offered the Palestinians the gift of clarity—statehood but only after the renunciation of terror and the break with maximalism—Mr. Obama signaled a return to the dead ways of the past: a peace process where America itself is broker and arbiter.
The Obama diplomacy had made a settlement freeze its starting point, when this was precisely the wrong place to begin. Israel has given up settlements before at the altar of peace—recall the historical accommodation with Egypt a quarter century ago. The right course would have set the question of settlements aside as it took up the broader challenge of radicalism in the region—the menace and swagger of Iran, the arsenal of Hamas and Hezbollah, the refusal of the Arab order of power to embrace in broad daylight the cause of peace with Israel.
The laws of gravity, the weight of history and of precedent, have caught up with the Obama presidency. We are beyond stirring speeches. The novelty of the Obama approach, and the Obama persona, has worn off. There is a whole American diplomatic tradition to draw upon—engagements made, wisdom acquired in the course of decades, and, yes, accounts to be settled with rogues and tyrannies. They might yet help this administration find its way out of a labyrinth of its own making.
Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift" (Free Press, 2007).
A foreign policy of penance has won America no friends.
By FOUAD AJAMI
'He talks too much," a Saudi academic in Jeddah, who had once been smitten with Barack Obama, recently observed to me of America's 44th president. He has wearied of Mr. Obama and now does not bother with the Obama oratory.
He is hardly alone, this academic. In the endless chatter of this region, and in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment. In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth.
He has not made the world anew, history did not bend to his will, the Indians and Pakistanis have been told that the matter of Kashmir is theirs to resolve, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the same intractable clash of two irreconcilable nationalisms, and the theocrats in Iran have not "unclenched their fist," nor have they abandoned their nuclear quest.
There is little Mr. Obama can do about this disenchantment. He can't journey to Turkey to tell its Islamist leaders and political class that a decade of anti-American scapegoating is all forgiven and was the product of American policies—he has already done that. He can't journey to Cairo to tell the fabled "Arab street" that the Iraq war was a wasted war of choice, and that America earned the malice that came its way from Arab lands—he has already done that as well. He can't tell Muslims that America is not at war with Islam—he, like his predecessor, has said that time and again.
It was the norm for American liberalism during the Bush years to brandish the Pew Global Attitudes survey that told of America's decline in the eyes of foreign nations. Foreigners were saying what the liberals wanted said.
Now those surveys of 2009 bring findings from the world of Islam that confirm that the animus toward America has not been radically changed by the ascendancy of Mr. Obama. In the Palestinian territories, 15% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 82% have an unfavorable view. The Obama speech in Ankara didn't seem to help in Turkey, where the favorables are 14% and those unreconciled, 69%. In Egypt, a country that's reaped nearly 40 years of American aid, things stayed roughly the same: 27% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 70% do not. In Pakistan, a place of great consequence for American power, our standing has deteriorated: The unfavorables rose from 63% in 2008 to 68% this year.
Mr. Obama's election has not drained the swamps of anti-Americanism. That anti-Americanism is endemic to this region, an alibi and a scapegoat for nations, and their rulers, unwilling to break out of the grip of political autocracy and economic failure. It predated the presidency of George W. Bush and rages on during the Obama presidency.
We had once taken to the foreign world that quintessential American difference—the belief in liberty, a needed innocence to play off against the settled and complacent ways of older nations. The Obama approach is different.
Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Mr. Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine, and a policy, of American penance. No one told Mr. Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and so dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, nay a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one's own tribe when in the midst, and in the lands, of others.
The crowd may have applauded the cavalier way the new steward of American power referred to his predecessor, but in the privacy of their own language they doubtless wondered about his character and his fidelity. "My brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger," goes one of the Arab world's most honored maxims. The stranger who came into their midst and spoke badly of his own was destined to become an object of suspicion.
Mr. Obama could not make up his mind: He was at one with "the people" and with the rulers who held them in subjugation. The people of Iran who took to the streets this past summer were betrayed by this hapless diplomacy—Mr. Obama was out to "engage" the terrible rulers that millions of Iranians were determined to be rid of.
On Nov. 4, on the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran, the embattled reformers, again in the streets, posed an embarrassing dilemma for American diplomacy: "Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them," they chanted. By not responding to these cries and continuing to "engage" Tehran's murderous regime, his choice was made clear. It wasn't one of American diplomacy's finest moments.
Mr. Obama has himself to blame for the disarray of his foreign policy. American arms had won a decent outcome in Iraq, but Mr. Obama would not claim it—it was his predecessor's war. Vigilance had kept the American homeland safe from terrorist attacks for seven long years under his predecessors, but he could never grant Bush policies the honor and credit they deserved. He had declared Afghanistan a war of necessity, but he seems to have his eye on the road out even as he is set to announce a troop increase in an address to be delivered tomorrow.
He was quick to assert, in the course of his exuberant campaign for president last year, that his diplomacy in South Asia would start with the standoff in Kashmir. In truth India had no interest in an international adjudication of Kashmir. What was settled during the partition in 1947 was there to stay. In recent days, Mr. Obama walked away from earlier ambitions. "Obviously, there are historic conflicts between India and Pakistan," he said. "It's not the place of the United States to try to, from the outside, resolve those conflicts."
Nor was he swayed by the fate of so many "peace plans" that have been floated over so many decades to resolve the fight between Arab and Jew over the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. Where George W. Bush offered the Palestinians the gift of clarity—statehood but only after the renunciation of terror and the break with maximalism—Mr. Obama signaled a return to the dead ways of the past: a peace process where America itself is broker and arbiter.
The Obama diplomacy had made a settlement freeze its starting point, when this was precisely the wrong place to begin. Israel has given up settlements before at the altar of peace—recall the historical accommodation with Egypt a quarter century ago. The right course would have set the question of settlements aside as it took up the broader challenge of radicalism in the region—the menace and swagger of Iran, the arsenal of Hamas and Hezbollah, the refusal of the Arab order of power to embrace in broad daylight the cause of peace with Israel.
The laws of gravity, the weight of history and of precedent, have caught up with the Obama presidency. We are beyond stirring speeches. The novelty of the Obama approach, and the Obama persona, has worn off. There is a whole American diplomatic tradition to draw upon—engagements made, wisdom acquired in the course of decades, and, yes, accounts to be settled with rogues and tyrannies. They might yet help this administration find its way out of a labyrinth of its own making.
Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift" (Free Press, 2007).
Complete failutre on Iran
500,000 Iranian Centrifuges (Gee... a Nobel Peace Prize winner who has enabled Iran-imagine that!)
Tehran ups the ante again as diplomacy goes nowhere.
Mohamed ElBaradei caps his contentious and ultimately failed 12-year stint as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency today, having spent many years enabling Iran's nuclear bids only to condemn them in his final days in office. Mr. ElBaradei combined his rebuke of Iran with his familiar calls for more negotiation, but we'll take his belated realism about Iran as his tacit admission that Dick Cheney and John Bolton have been right all along. Let's hope the education of the Obama Administration doesn't take as long.
As if to underscore the point, yesterday the Iranian government ordered up 10 additional uranium enrichment plants on the scale of its already operational facility in Natanz, which has a planned capacity of 54,000 centrifuges. That could mean an eventual total of more than 500,000 centrifuges, or enough to enrich about 160 bombs worth of uranium each year. Whether it can ever do that is an open question, but it does give a sense of the scale of the regime's ambitions.
The decision is also a reminder of how unchastened Iran has been by President Obama's revelation in September that Iran had been building a secret 3,000 centrifuge facility near the city of Qom. The IAEA's governing board finally got around on Friday to rebuking Iran for that deception, a vote the Administration trumpeted because both Russia and China voted with the United States. But perhaps only within the Obama Administration can a symbolic gesture by the IAEA be considered a diplomatic triumph.
"Time is running out for Iran to address the international community's growing concerns about its nuclear program," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday, but the West has said this many times before. Earlier this year, Mr. Obama said Iran had a deadline of September.
The regime scoffed at Mr. Obama after he delivered a conciliating message for the Persian New Year in March, scoffed again after he mildly criticized its post-election crackdown and killing spree in June (following days of silence), and scoffed a third time by rejecting the West's offer last month to enrich Iran's uranium for it. Yet the Administration insists the enrichment deal is still Iran's for the taking. "A few years ago [the West] said we had to completely stop all our nuclear activities," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last month. "Now look where we are today."
Those are the words of a man who believes he has Mr. Obama's number. And until the President, his advisers and the Europeans realize that only punitive sanctions or military strikes will force it to reconsider its nuclear ambitions, an emboldened Islamic Republic will continue to march confidently toward a bomb over the wreckage of Mohamed ElBaradei's—and Barack Obama's—best intentions.
Tehran ups the ante again as diplomacy goes nowhere.
Mohamed ElBaradei caps his contentious and ultimately failed 12-year stint as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency today, having spent many years enabling Iran's nuclear bids only to condemn them in his final days in office. Mr. ElBaradei combined his rebuke of Iran with his familiar calls for more negotiation, but we'll take his belated realism about Iran as his tacit admission that Dick Cheney and John Bolton have been right all along. Let's hope the education of the Obama Administration doesn't take as long.
As if to underscore the point, yesterday the Iranian government ordered up 10 additional uranium enrichment plants on the scale of its already operational facility in Natanz, which has a planned capacity of 54,000 centrifuges. That could mean an eventual total of more than 500,000 centrifuges, or enough to enrich about 160 bombs worth of uranium each year. Whether it can ever do that is an open question, but it does give a sense of the scale of the regime's ambitions.
The decision is also a reminder of how unchastened Iran has been by President Obama's revelation in September that Iran had been building a secret 3,000 centrifuge facility near the city of Qom. The IAEA's governing board finally got around on Friday to rebuking Iran for that deception, a vote the Administration trumpeted because both Russia and China voted with the United States. But perhaps only within the Obama Administration can a symbolic gesture by the IAEA be considered a diplomatic triumph.
"Time is running out for Iran to address the international community's growing concerns about its nuclear program," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday, but the West has said this many times before. Earlier this year, Mr. Obama said Iran had a deadline of September.
The regime scoffed at Mr. Obama after he delivered a conciliating message for the Persian New Year in March, scoffed again after he mildly criticized its post-election crackdown and killing spree in June (following days of silence), and scoffed a third time by rejecting the West's offer last month to enrich Iran's uranium for it. Yet the Administration insists the enrichment deal is still Iran's for the taking. "A few years ago [the West] said we had to completely stop all our nuclear activities," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last month. "Now look where we are today."
Those are the words of a man who believes he has Mr. Obama's number. And until the President, his advisers and the Europeans realize that only punitive sanctions or military strikes will force it to reconsider its nuclear ambitions, an emboldened Islamic Republic will continue to march confidently toward a bomb over the wreckage of Mohamed ElBaradei's—and Barack Obama's—best intentions.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Tied in with acorn
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: November 27, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress banned the government from providing money to the group.
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The department’s conclusion, laid out in a recently disclosed five-page memorandum from David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, adds a new wrinkle to a sharp political debate over the antipoverty group’s activities and recent efforts to distance the government from it.
Since 1994, Acorn, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has received about $53 million in federal aid, much of it grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for providing various services related to affordable housing.
But the group has become a prime target for conservative critics, and on Oct. 1, President Obama signed into law a spending bill that included a provision that said no taxpayer money — including money authorized by previous legislation — could be “provided to” the group or its affiliates.
A Housing and Urban Development Department lawyer asked the Justice Department whether the new law meant that pre-existing contracts with Acorn should be broken. And in a memorandum signed Oct. 23 and posted online this week, Mr. Barron said the government should continue to make payments to Acorn as required by such contracts.
The new law “should not be read as directing or authorizing HUD to breach a pre-existing binding contractual obligation to make payments to Acorn or its affiliates, subsidiaries or allied organizations where doing so would give rise to contractual liability,” Mr. Barron wrote.
The deputy director of national operations for Acorn, Brian Kettenring, praised Mr. Barron’s decision.
“We are pleased that commitments will be honored relative to Acorn’s work to help keep America’s working families facing foreclosure in their homes,” Mr. Kettenring said.
Mr. Barron said he had based his conclusion on the statute’s phrase “provided to.” This phrase, he said, has no clearly defined meaning in the realm of government spending — unlike words like “obligate” and “expend.”
Citing dictionary and thesaurus entries, he said “provided to” could be interpreted as meaning only instances in which an official was making “discretionary choices” about whether to give the group money, rather than instances in which the transfer of money to Acorn was required to satisfy contractual obligations.
Since there are two possible ways to construe the term “provided to,” Mr. Barron wrote, it makes sense to pick the interpretation that allows the government to avoid breaching contracts.
Moreover, he argued, requiring the government to cancel contracts with a specifically named entity — “including even in cases where performance has already been completed but payment has not been rendered” — would raise constitutional concerns best avoided by interpreting the law differently.
The Constitution prohibits “bills of attainder” — legislation intended to punish specific people or groups. Acorn has filed a lawsuit arguing that the statute banning the government from providing it money amounts to a bill of attainder.
Founded in Arkansas in 1970, Acorn describes itself as the nation’s largest grass-roots community organizing group. It provides financial services to poor and middle-income families, conducts voter registration drives, and advocates for higher minimum wages and more affordable housing.
Conservatives have long complained about Acorn’s voter drives in poor neighborhoods, citing instances in which workers fraudulently registered imaginary voters like Mickey Mouse. Acorn has argued that it is the real victim of such incidents, which its employees have often brought to the attention of the authorities.
Criticism of Acorn escalated in September, when two conservative activists released videos they had recorded using secret cameras of Acorn workers in several cities. The activists had posed as a pimp and a prostitute seeking financial advice. Instead of raising objections, the Acorn employees counseled the couple on how to hide their illicit activities and avoid paying taxes.
Conservatives seized on the videos to criticize the group further, highlighting that the Obama campaign had paid an Acorn affiliate for get-out-the-vote efforts. Congress then enacted the ban on providing money to it.
Acorn has fired several of the employees depicted in the videos.
Published: November 27, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress banned the government from providing money to the group.
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Times Topics: Acorn
Blog
The Caucus
The latest on President Obama, his administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion.
•More Politics News
The department’s conclusion, laid out in a recently disclosed five-page memorandum from David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, adds a new wrinkle to a sharp political debate over the antipoverty group’s activities and recent efforts to distance the government from it.
Since 1994, Acorn, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has received about $53 million in federal aid, much of it grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for providing various services related to affordable housing.
But the group has become a prime target for conservative critics, and on Oct. 1, President Obama signed into law a spending bill that included a provision that said no taxpayer money — including money authorized by previous legislation — could be “provided to” the group or its affiliates.
A Housing and Urban Development Department lawyer asked the Justice Department whether the new law meant that pre-existing contracts with Acorn should be broken. And in a memorandum signed Oct. 23 and posted online this week, Mr. Barron said the government should continue to make payments to Acorn as required by such contracts.
The new law “should not be read as directing or authorizing HUD to breach a pre-existing binding contractual obligation to make payments to Acorn or its affiliates, subsidiaries or allied organizations where doing so would give rise to contractual liability,” Mr. Barron wrote.
The deputy director of national operations for Acorn, Brian Kettenring, praised Mr. Barron’s decision.
“We are pleased that commitments will be honored relative to Acorn’s work to help keep America’s working families facing foreclosure in their homes,” Mr. Kettenring said.
Mr. Barron said he had based his conclusion on the statute’s phrase “provided to.” This phrase, he said, has no clearly defined meaning in the realm of government spending — unlike words like “obligate” and “expend.”
Citing dictionary and thesaurus entries, he said “provided to” could be interpreted as meaning only instances in which an official was making “discretionary choices” about whether to give the group money, rather than instances in which the transfer of money to Acorn was required to satisfy contractual obligations.
Since there are two possible ways to construe the term “provided to,” Mr. Barron wrote, it makes sense to pick the interpretation that allows the government to avoid breaching contracts.
Moreover, he argued, requiring the government to cancel contracts with a specifically named entity — “including even in cases where performance has already been completed but payment has not been rendered” — would raise constitutional concerns best avoided by interpreting the law differently.
The Constitution prohibits “bills of attainder” — legislation intended to punish specific people or groups. Acorn has filed a lawsuit arguing that the statute banning the government from providing it money amounts to a bill of attainder.
Founded in Arkansas in 1970, Acorn describes itself as the nation’s largest grass-roots community organizing group. It provides financial services to poor and middle-income families, conducts voter registration drives, and advocates for higher minimum wages and more affordable housing.
Conservatives have long complained about Acorn’s voter drives in poor neighborhoods, citing instances in which workers fraudulently registered imaginary voters like Mickey Mouse. Acorn has argued that it is the real victim of such incidents, which its employees have often brought to the attention of the authorities.
Criticism of Acorn escalated in September, when two conservative activists released videos they had recorded using secret cameras of Acorn workers in several cities. The activists had posed as a pimp and a prostitute seeking financial advice. Instead of raising objections, the Acorn employees counseled the couple on how to hide their illicit activities and avoid paying taxes.
Conservatives seized on the videos to criticize the group further, highlighting that the Obama campaign had paid an Acorn affiliate for get-out-the-vote efforts. Congress then enacted the ban on providing money to it.
Acorn has fired several of the employees depicted in the videos.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Radical judicial appointments
NOVEMBER 19, 2009.The White House Butler
A judge twice rejected by voters is nominated by President Obama..ArticleComments (.As consolation prizes go, Louis Butler can't complain. After being twice rejected by Wisconsin voters for a place on the state Supreme Court, the former judge has instead been nominated by President Obama to a lifetime seat on the federal district court. If he is confirmed, Wisconsin voters will have years to contend with the decisions of a judge they made clear they would rather live without.
But after serving four years, voters had seen enough of his brand of judicial philosophy, making him the first sitting justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in four decades to lose a retention election last year.
In Ferdon v. Wisconsin Partners, he drew the rage of doctors and others when he dismantled the state's limit on noneconomic damages in medical malpractices cases—the kind of tort reform that had been serving the state well. Business groups were likewise floored by his decision in Thomas v. Mallet, which allowed "collective liability" in lead paint cases—making any company a potential target, regardless of whether they made the paint in question. His nickname as a public defender was "Loophole Louis," a name that stuck when, as a judge, he was considered to be soft on crime.
State court judges like Mr. Butler are likely to be an important source of nominees for President Obama. Because Democrats have been out of office since the Clinton Administration, many of the liberal judges on the federal district courts are older, an incentive for the White House to comb state courts for new judges—especially for the federal appeals courts.
Mr. Butler's nomination also shows the return to prominence of judicial ratings by the American Bar Association, which traditionally gives extra weight to "judicial experience." The ABA, which was ousted by the Bush Administration in part because of the ABA's notorious liberal bias, is now back in favor in the Obama White House. Mr. Butler served on the ABA's Standing Committee on Judicial Independence, a group that like Justice at Stake critiques how that independence is supposedly compromised by the need to raise money for judicial elections.
Mr. Butler's nomination shows the dominance of liberal ideology in Mr. Obama's judicial selections, and especially a contempt for Wisconsin voters.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A20
A judge twice rejected by voters is nominated by President Obama..ArticleComments (.As consolation prizes go, Louis Butler can't complain. After being twice rejected by Wisconsin voters for a place on the state Supreme Court, the former judge has instead been nominated by President Obama to a lifetime seat on the federal district court. If he is confirmed, Wisconsin voters will have years to contend with the decisions of a judge they made clear they would rather live without.
But after serving four years, voters had seen enough of his brand of judicial philosophy, making him the first sitting justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in four decades to lose a retention election last year.
In Ferdon v. Wisconsin Partners, he drew the rage of doctors and others when he dismantled the state's limit on noneconomic damages in medical malpractices cases—the kind of tort reform that had been serving the state well. Business groups were likewise floored by his decision in Thomas v. Mallet, which allowed "collective liability" in lead paint cases—making any company a potential target, regardless of whether they made the paint in question. His nickname as a public defender was "Loophole Louis," a name that stuck when, as a judge, he was considered to be soft on crime.
State court judges like Mr. Butler are likely to be an important source of nominees for President Obama. Because Democrats have been out of office since the Clinton Administration, many of the liberal judges on the federal district courts are older, an incentive for the White House to comb state courts for new judges—especially for the federal appeals courts.
Mr. Butler's nomination also shows the return to prominence of judicial ratings by the American Bar Association, which traditionally gives extra weight to "judicial experience." The ABA, which was ousted by the Bush Administration in part because of the ABA's notorious liberal bias, is now back in favor in the Obama White House. Mr. Butler served on the ABA's Standing Committee on Judicial Independence, a group that like Justice at Stake critiques how that independence is supposedly compromised by the need to raise money for judicial elections.
Mr. Butler's nomination shows the dominance of liberal ideology in Mr. Obama's judicial selections, and especially a contempt for Wisconsin voters.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A20
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Obamamnomics borrowing leads to ruin
OPINIONNOVEMBER 19, 2009, 11:26 P.M. ET.Why No One Expects a Strong Recovery
When you repeal sound economic policies you repeal their results..By JEB HENSARLING AND PAUL RYAN
"You can't find a single deep recession that has been followed by a moderate recovery."
That may no longer hold. Since the current recession has lasted a record seven quarters—and has been marked by a near-record average GDP decline of 1.8% per quarter—we should be witnessing the start of a powerful and sustained recovery. Yet forecasts of a 2% recovery in growth are only one-fourth as strong as postwar experience suggests. Meanwhile, unemployment sits at a generational high of 10.2%.
Why all the pessimism? The source appears to be a growing fear that the federal government is retreating from the free-market economic principles of the last half-century, and in particular the strong growth policies that began under Ronald Reagan. A review of the economic policies instituted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress lends credibility to this concern.
Exhibit A is the economic stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama in February. Even among previous stimulus efforts, the 2009 stimulus stands out for its ineffective targeting and sheer size. With interest, it is $1.1 trillion, double the size of Roosevelt's New Deal spending as a percentage of GDP.
Martin Kozlowski
.Virtually none of the stimulus spending was directed towards encouraging broad-based private investment, and thus failed to encourage true economic growth. An analysis by economists John F. Cogan, John B. Taylor and Volker Wieland, published on this page on Sept. 17, suggests that while the stimulus succeeded in temporarily and marginally increasing disposable personal income, it left personal consumption spending virtually unchanged.
Meanwhile, $112 billion of its $300 billion tax relief was in the form of payments to people who paid no income taxes. These payments, akin to a one-time welfare check, do not change the incentives to save and invest, and do not effectively promote broad-based economic growth.
Exhibit B is tax policy going forward. It is a near certainty that Democratic-controlled Congress will allow most of the tax cuts of 2001-2003 to expire on Dec. 31, 2010. Marginal income tax rates, capital gains rates, dividend rates and death-tax rates will increase—significantly. Hardest hit by these increases will be small businesses that file under the individual income tax code as sub-chapter S corporations, partnerships and proprietorships. Yet these are the very people whose investment and hiring decisions either drive or starve recoveries.
Exhibit C is the administration's intervention in the GM and Chrysler reorganizations. Upsetting decades of accepted bankruptcy law, the administration leveraged TARP funds to place unsecured and lower priority creditors like the United Auto Workers union in front of secured and higher priority creditors. This intervention has arguably had the effect of stifling investment as wary investors watched political considerations trump the rule of law.
As Warren Buffett said at the time, "We don't want to say to somebody who lends and gets a secured position that the secured position doesn't mean anything." Gary Parr, deputy chair of the mergers and acquisitions firm Lazard Freres & Co., stated the problem more directly. "I can't imagine the markets will function properly if you are always wondering if the government is going to step in and change the game," he was quoted in The Atlantic Online in September.
Health care, the administration's signature issue, is Exhibit D. Disregarding its impact on quality and access, its plan will surely cost well over $1 trillion over the next decade. The House-passed version includes an 8% "pay or play" payroll tax and a half-trillion dollar surtax on incomes over $500,000, much of which will strike small business. Both taxes will tend to depress investment and the creation of new jobs.
And looming down the road is the proposed cap-and-tax legislation, which will cost taxpayers $800 billion.
Beyond instilling tremendous political uncertainty into economic decision-making, these policies ensure that deficits will shatter all previous records. In the Office of Management and Budget's 2009 Mid-Session Review, the administration projects a decade of deficits averaging 3.3 times the postwar norm of 1.8%. Yet its projections assume that interest rates will be less than half the postwar norm for interest rates, and that economic growth will be almost 10% higher than the high-growth 1980s. Never in the postwar era have such high deficits, low interest rates and high growth rates occurred simultaneously.
If one substitutes the Blue Chip Economic Forecast's interest-rate forecast for that of the administration, deficits will increase by an additional $1.2 trillion over the administration's projected deficits. If the next decade's interest rates climb to match those of the 1980s, then the deficit would increase another $5.3 trillion. If higher interest rates then slow economic growth, the impact on the deficit would be much worse.
Anyone who believes the Democratic Party's recently expressed concern over the deficit should look at the relentless growth of spending on its watch. Total nondefense spending set an all-time record this year—20.2% of GDP—double federal spending as a percentage of GDP during the height of the New Deal in 1934. Even without this year's stimulus bill and last year's bailout of the financial system, nondefense discretionary spending authority still grew by 10.1% in fiscal year 2009 and is projected to rise by another 12% in fiscal year 2010. Forty-three cents of every dollar of this spending is borrowed money.
Given the magnitude of federal borrowing, there is good reason to expect higher interest rates and strong inflationary pressures in the future.
It is hardly surprising that many investors are reaching the conclusion that this administration and Congress favor policies that virtually guarantee the economy will not return to the climate of low interest rates, benign inflation and strong growth that we knew from 1982-2007. These investors understand a simple truth that current Washington policy makers fail to grasp: When you repeal the Reagan economic program, you repeal its results.
Messrs. Hensarling and Ryan are Republican representatives from Texas and Wisconsin, respectively.
When you repeal sound economic policies you repeal their results..By JEB HENSARLING AND PAUL RYAN
"You can't find a single deep recession that has been followed by a moderate recovery."
That may no longer hold. Since the current recession has lasted a record seven quarters—and has been marked by a near-record average GDP decline of 1.8% per quarter—we should be witnessing the start of a powerful and sustained recovery. Yet forecasts of a 2% recovery in growth are only one-fourth as strong as postwar experience suggests. Meanwhile, unemployment sits at a generational high of 10.2%.
Why all the pessimism? The source appears to be a growing fear that the federal government is retreating from the free-market economic principles of the last half-century, and in particular the strong growth policies that began under Ronald Reagan. A review of the economic policies instituted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress lends credibility to this concern.
Exhibit A is the economic stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama in February. Even among previous stimulus efforts, the 2009 stimulus stands out for its ineffective targeting and sheer size. With interest, it is $1.1 trillion, double the size of Roosevelt's New Deal spending as a percentage of GDP.
Martin Kozlowski
.Virtually none of the stimulus spending was directed towards encouraging broad-based private investment, and thus failed to encourage true economic growth. An analysis by economists John F. Cogan, John B. Taylor and Volker Wieland, published on this page on Sept. 17, suggests that while the stimulus succeeded in temporarily and marginally increasing disposable personal income, it left personal consumption spending virtually unchanged.
Meanwhile, $112 billion of its $300 billion tax relief was in the form of payments to people who paid no income taxes. These payments, akin to a one-time welfare check, do not change the incentives to save and invest, and do not effectively promote broad-based economic growth.
Exhibit B is tax policy going forward. It is a near certainty that Democratic-controlled Congress will allow most of the tax cuts of 2001-2003 to expire on Dec. 31, 2010. Marginal income tax rates, capital gains rates, dividend rates and death-tax rates will increase—significantly. Hardest hit by these increases will be small businesses that file under the individual income tax code as sub-chapter S corporations, partnerships and proprietorships. Yet these are the very people whose investment and hiring decisions either drive or starve recoveries.
Exhibit C is the administration's intervention in the GM and Chrysler reorganizations. Upsetting decades of accepted bankruptcy law, the administration leveraged TARP funds to place unsecured and lower priority creditors like the United Auto Workers union in front of secured and higher priority creditors. This intervention has arguably had the effect of stifling investment as wary investors watched political considerations trump the rule of law.
As Warren Buffett said at the time, "We don't want to say to somebody who lends and gets a secured position that the secured position doesn't mean anything." Gary Parr, deputy chair of the mergers and acquisitions firm Lazard Freres & Co., stated the problem more directly. "I can't imagine the markets will function properly if you are always wondering if the government is going to step in and change the game," he was quoted in The Atlantic Online in September.
Health care, the administration's signature issue, is Exhibit D. Disregarding its impact on quality and access, its plan will surely cost well over $1 trillion over the next decade. The House-passed version includes an 8% "pay or play" payroll tax and a half-trillion dollar surtax on incomes over $500,000, much of which will strike small business. Both taxes will tend to depress investment and the creation of new jobs.
And looming down the road is the proposed cap-and-tax legislation, which will cost taxpayers $800 billion.
Beyond instilling tremendous political uncertainty into economic decision-making, these policies ensure that deficits will shatter all previous records. In the Office of Management and Budget's 2009 Mid-Session Review, the administration projects a decade of deficits averaging 3.3 times the postwar norm of 1.8%. Yet its projections assume that interest rates will be less than half the postwar norm for interest rates, and that economic growth will be almost 10% higher than the high-growth 1980s. Never in the postwar era have such high deficits, low interest rates and high growth rates occurred simultaneously.
If one substitutes the Blue Chip Economic Forecast's interest-rate forecast for that of the administration, deficits will increase by an additional $1.2 trillion over the administration's projected deficits. If the next decade's interest rates climb to match those of the 1980s, then the deficit would increase another $5.3 trillion. If higher interest rates then slow economic growth, the impact on the deficit would be much worse.
Anyone who believes the Democratic Party's recently expressed concern over the deficit should look at the relentless growth of spending on its watch. Total nondefense spending set an all-time record this year—20.2% of GDP—double federal spending as a percentage of GDP during the height of the New Deal in 1934. Even without this year's stimulus bill and last year's bailout of the financial system, nondefense discretionary spending authority still grew by 10.1% in fiscal year 2009 and is projected to rise by another 12% in fiscal year 2010. Forty-three cents of every dollar of this spending is borrowed money.
Given the magnitude of federal borrowing, there is good reason to expect higher interest rates and strong inflationary pressures in the future.
It is hardly surprising that many investors are reaching the conclusion that this administration and Congress favor policies that virtually guarantee the economy will not return to the climate of low interest rates, benign inflation and strong growth that we knew from 1982-2007. These investors understand a simple truth that current Washington policy makers fail to grasp: When you repeal the Reagan economic program, you repeal its results.
Messrs. Hensarling and Ryan are Republican representatives from Texas and Wisconsin, respectively.
Obmamanomics will lead to a poorer America WSJ nOV 24
Government Deficits and Private Growth
Future living standards will take a hit as federal borrowing balloons and bank lending to business shrinks .By GEORGE MELLOAN
For anyone who wondered if last winter's federal seizure of the financial services industry would have adverse economic consequences, an answer is now available. The credit market has been tilted to favor a single borrower with a huge appetite for money, Washington. Private borrowers, particularly small businesses, have been sent to the end of the queue.
David Gothard
.Banking has been captured by the nanny state, which means that its potential for contributing to economic growth and job creation has been sharply curtailed, even as its potential contribution to government growth has been expanded.
Washington hasn't been able to milk the taxpayers sufficiently to finance its massive deficit. The Chinese are getting skittish as well. So tapping bank deposits is yet another avenue to a big pot of cash. As for the bankers, they've been awarded an easy life.
... In its August report to Secretary Timothy Geithner, the committee said: "This year's double-digit-as-a-percent-of-GDP budget shortfall [the federal deficit] is unsustainable. Moreover, there is little support for a marked shrinking in the deficit in the year ahead, as revenue trends likely will remain sluggish amid high unemployment and lingering capital losses and public spending will remain elevated as a share of the economy. Various policy efforts under discussion by the Administration and Congress also probably would add to the deficit and public debt on a net basis."
Needless to say, the Obama administration and Congress aren't heeding such warnings. More big spending programs on health care and green energy are getting teed up.
James Hamilton of the University of California at San Diego wrote in his "econbrowser" blog on March 29 that, "the new Fed balance sheet represents a fundamental transformation of the role of the central bank." He noted that for many years the Fed had pumped money into the economy with no attempt to direct which borrowers would receive credit. The whole idea behind the Fed's open market operations is to make the process of creating new money completely separate from the decision of who receives any fiscal transfers.
"The philosophy behind the pullulating new Fed facilities is precisely the opposite of that traditional concept. The whole purpose of these facilities is to redirect capital to specific perceived priorities."
Yes, things have changed in a year. Feeding the government and starving free enterprise looks like a prescription for long-term economic stagnation. It's not unlike what we witnessed in the depression of the 1930s.
Mr. Melloan, a former columnist and deputy editor of the Journal editorial page, is author of "The Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism," published last week by Simon & Schuster.
Future living standards will take a hit as federal borrowing balloons and bank lending to business shrinks .By GEORGE MELLOAN
For anyone who wondered if last winter's federal seizure of the financial services industry would have adverse economic consequences, an answer is now available. The credit market has been tilted to favor a single borrower with a huge appetite for money, Washington. Private borrowers, particularly small businesses, have been sent to the end of the queue.
David Gothard
.Banking has been captured by the nanny state, which means that its potential for contributing to economic growth and job creation has been sharply curtailed, even as its potential contribution to government growth has been expanded.
Washington hasn't been able to milk the taxpayers sufficiently to finance its massive deficit. The Chinese are getting skittish as well. So tapping bank deposits is yet another avenue to a big pot of cash. As for the bankers, they've been awarded an easy life.
... In its August report to Secretary Timothy Geithner, the committee said: "This year's double-digit-as-a-percent-of-GDP budget shortfall [the federal deficit] is unsustainable. Moreover, there is little support for a marked shrinking in the deficit in the year ahead, as revenue trends likely will remain sluggish amid high unemployment and lingering capital losses and public spending will remain elevated as a share of the economy. Various policy efforts under discussion by the Administration and Congress also probably would add to the deficit and public debt on a net basis."
Needless to say, the Obama administration and Congress aren't heeding such warnings. More big spending programs on health care and green energy are getting teed up.
James Hamilton of the University of California at San Diego wrote in his "econbrowser" blog on March 29 that, "the new Fed balance sheet represents a fundamental transformation of the role of the central bank." He noted that for many years the Fed had pumped money into the economy with no attempt to direct which borrowers would receive credit. The whole idea behind the Fed's open market operations is to make the process of creating new money completely separate from the decision of who receives any fiscal transfers.
"The philosophy behind the pullulating new Fed facilities is precisely the opposite of that traditional concept. The whole purpose of these facilities is to redirect capital to specific perceived priorities."
Yes, things have changed in a year. Feeding the government and starving free enterprise looks like a prescription for long-term economic stagnation. It's not unlike what we witnessed in the depression of the 1930s.
Mr. Melloan, a former columnist and deputy editor of the Journal editorial page, is author of "The Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism," published last week by Simon & Schuster.
Obama making same tragic mistakes as Carter in Foreign Policy
The Carter Ricochet Effect Jimmy Carter's presidency offers a lesson in how the purest intentions can lead to the most disastrous results.By BRET STEPHENS .An idealistic president takes office promising an era of American moral renewal at home and abroad. The effort includes a focus on diplomacy and peace-making, an aversion to the use of force, the selling out of old allies. The result is that within a couple of years the U.S. is more suspected, detested and enfeebled than ever.
No, we're not talking about Barack Obama. But since the current administration took office offering roughly the same prescriptions as Jimmy Carter did, it's worth recalling how that worked out.
How it worked out became inescapably apparent 30 years ago this month. On Nov. 20, 1979, Sunni religious fanatics led by a dark-eyed charismatic Saudi named Juhayman bin Seif al Uteybi seized Mecca's Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site. After a two week siege distinguished mainly by its incompetence, Saudi forces were able to recapture the mosque at a cost of several hundred lives.
By any objective account—the very best of which was offered by Wall Street Journal reporter Yaroslav Trofimov in his 2007 book "The Siege of Mecca"—the battle at the Grand Mosque was a purely Sunni affair pitting a fundamentalist Islamic regime against ultra-fundamentalist renegades. Yet throughout the Muslim world, the Carter administration was viewed as the main culprit. U.S. diplomatic missions in Bangladesh, India, Turkey and Libya were assaulted; in Pakistan, the embassy was burned to the ground. How could that happen to a country whose president was so intent on making his policies as inoffensive as possible?
.
.The answer was, precisely, that Mr. Carter had set out to make America as inoffensive as possible. Two weeks before Juhayman seized the Grand Mosque, Iranian radicals seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage. They did so after Mr. Carter had refused to bail out the Shah, as the Eisenhower administration had in 1953, and after Andrew Young, Mr. Carter's U.N. ambassador, had described the Ayatollah Khomeini as "somewhat of a saint."
They also did so after Mr. Carter had scored his one diplomatic coup by brokering a peace deal between Egypt and Israel. Today, the consensus view of the Obama administration is that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would ease tensions throughout the region. But worthy though it was in its own right, peace between Egypt and Israel was also a fillip for Sunni and Shiite radicals alike from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut to Gaza. Whatever else the Middle East has been since the signing of the Camp David Accords, it has not been a more peaceful place.
Nor has it been any less inclined to hate the U.S., no matter whether the president is a peace-loving Democrat or a war-mongering Republican. "Everywhere, there was the same explanation," Mr. Trofimov writes in his account of the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. "American institutions, declared a student leader in Lahore, had to be burned down because 'the Holy Kaaba had been occupied by Americans and the Jews.'"
On the other hand, among Muslims inclined to favor the U.S., the Carter administration's instincts for knee-jerk conciliation and panicky withdrawals only had the effect of alienating them from their ostensible protector. Coming as it did so soon after Khomeini's rise to power and the revolutionary fervors which it unleashed, the siege of Mecca carried the real risk of undermining pro-American regimes throughout the region. Yet American embassies were repeatedly instructed not to use their Marines to defend against intruders, as well as to pull their personnel from the country.
"The move didn't go unnoticed among Muslim radicals," notes Mr. Trofimov. "A chain of events unleashed by the takeover in Mecca had put America on the run from the lands of Islam. America's foes drew a conclusion that Osama bin Laden would often repeat: when hit hard, America flees, 'dragging its tail in failure, defeat, and ruin, caring for nothing.'" It is no accident, too, that the Soviet Union chose to invade Afghanistan the following month, as it observed a vacillating president who would not defend what previously were thought to be inviolable U.S. strategic interests.
Today, President Obama likes to bemoan the "mess" he inherited overseas, the finger pointed squarely at President Bush. But the real mess he inherited comes straight out of 1979, the serial debacles of which define American challenges in the Middle East just as surely as the triumphs of 1989 define our opportunities in Europe. True, the furies that were unleashed that year in Mecca, Tehran and elsewhere in the Muslim world were not of America's making. But absence of guilt is no excuse for innocence of policy.
Pretty soon, Mr. Obama will have his own Meccas and Tehrans to deal with, perhaps in Jerusalem and Cairo. He would do well to cast a backward glance at the tenure of his fellow Nobel peace laureate, as an object lesson in how even the purest of motives can lead to the most disastrous results.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
No, we're not talking about Barack Obama. But since the current administration took office offering roughly the same prescriptions as Jimmy Carter did, it's worth recalling how that worked out.
How it worked out became inescapably apparent 30 years ago this month. On Nov. 20, 1979, Sunni religious fanatics led by a dark-eyed charismatic Saudi named Juhayman bin Seif al Uteybi seized Mecca's Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site. After a two week siege distinguished mainly by its incompetence, Saudi forces were able to recapture the mosque at a cost of several hundred lives.
By any objective account—the very best of which was offered by Wall Street Journal reporter Yaroslav Trofimov in his 2007 book "The Siege of Mecca"—the battle at the Grand Mosque was a purely Sunni affair pitting a fundamentalist Islamic regime against ultra-fundamentalist renegades. Yet throughout the Muslim world, the Carter administration was viewed as the main culprit. U.S. diplomatic missions in Bangladesh, India, Turkey and Libya were assaulted; in Pakistan, the embassy was burned to the ground. How could that happen to a country whose president was so intent on making his policies as inoffensive as possible?
.
.The answer was, precisely, that Mr. Carter had set out to make America as inoffensive as possible. Two weeks before Juhayman seized the Grand Mosque, Iranian radicals seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage. They did so after Mr. Carter had refused to bail out the Shah, as the Eisenhower administration had in 1953, and after Andrew Young, Mr. Carter's U.N. ambassador, had described the Ayatollah Khomeini as "somewhat of a saint."
They also did so after Mr. Carter had scored his one diplomatic coup by brokering a peace deal between Egypt and Israel. Today, the consensus view of the Obama administration is that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would ease tensions throughout the region. But worthy though it was in its own right, peace between Egypt and Israel was also a fillip for Sunni and Shiite radicals alike from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut to Gaza. Whatever else the Middle East has been since the signing of the Camp David Accords, it has not been a more peaceful place.
Nor has it been any less inclined to hate the U.S., no matter whether the president is a peace-loving Democrat or a war-mongering Republican. "Everywhere, there was the same explanation," Mr. Trofimov writes in his account of the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. "American institutions, declared a student leader in Lahore, had to be burned down because 'the Holy Kaaba had been occupied by Americans and the Jews.'"
On the other hand, among Muslims inclined to favor the U.S., the Carter administration's instincts for knee-jerk conciliation and panicky withdrawals only had the effect of alienating them from their ostensible protector. Coming as it did so soon after Khomeini's rise to power and the revolutionary fervors which it unleashed, the siege of Mecca carried the real risk of undermining pro-American regimes throughout the region. Yet American embassies were repeatedly instructed not to use their Marines to defend against intruders, as well as to pull their personnel from the country.
"The move didn't go unnoticed among Muslim radicals," notes Mr. Trofimov. "A chain of events unleashed by the takeover in Mecca had put America on the run from the lands of Islam. America's foes drew a conclusion that Osama bin Laden would often repeat: when hit hard, America flees, 'dragging its tail in failure, defeat, and ruin, caring for nothing.'" It is no accident, too, that the Soviet Union chose to invade Afghanistan the following month, as it observed a vacillating president who would not defend what previously were thought to be inviolable U.S. strategic interests.
Today, President Obama likes to bemoan the "mess" he inherited overseas, the finger pointed squarely at President Bush. But the real mess he inherited comes straight out of 1979, the serial debacles of which define American challenges in the Middle East just as surely as the triumphs of 1989 define our opportunities in Europe. True, the furies that were unleashed that year in Mecca, Tehran and elsewhere in the Muslim world were not of America's making. But absence of guilt is no excuse for innocence of policy.
Pretty soon, Mr. Obama will have his own Meccas and Tehrans to deal with, perhaps in Jerusalem and Cairo. He would do well to cast a backward glance at the tenure of his fellow Nobel peace laureate, as an object lesson in how even the purest of motives can lead to the most disastrous results.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
Lying about OBamacare rationing nov 24
Liberals and Mammography
Rationing? What rationing?.ArticleComments (132)more in Opinion ».EmailPrinter
Text .The flap over breast cancer screening has provided a fascinating insight into the political future of ObamaCare. Specifically, the political left supports such medical rationing even as it disavows that any such thing is happening.
No sooner had the Health and Human Services Department's U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommended against mammography for women under 50 than Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rushed to say don't worry. The decision had "caused a great deal of confusion and worry among women," she said, promising that no policies would change. New Jersey's Frank Pallone vowed to hold hearings, and Senator Dick Durbin leveled the gravest charge Democrats can make: The task force was "appointed by President Bush."
The political duck-and-cover was also on display in that vanguard of ObamaCare known as the New York Times, which ran at least four much-ado-about-nothing items even as it endorsed the reduced screening. On the same day as an editorial and op-ed, a front-page "news analysis" lectured that what the public really needs is "a transformational shift in thinking" about the "evidence-based" medical future that the mammogram decision portends. Yes, and no doubt the Times will tell us what "evidence" to follow.
Even more revealing was Princeton's Uwe Reinhardt, a leading liberal health-care economist, writing on the New York Times Economix blog. Mr. Reinhardt sees the task force's handiwork as an exemplar of "rational decision-making" that had nothing to do with cost analysis, even as he claimed that rationing based on cost is inevitable.
You have to admire Mr. Reinhardt's partisan dexterity. He knows that no government task force is ever going to justify a treatment denial with an overt claim to costs. Instead, the task force found a sneaky way to use clinical data to take costs into account without admitting it. It cites all sorts of harm associated with the problem of "overdiagnosis"—i.e., too many costly procedures. This is a reference to mammograms that lead to further tests and treatments that in hindsight are unnecessary.
The HHS task force concludes that this harm outweighs the benefits of saving lives through early detection, yet this makes little sense unless financial costs are a priority. For instance, the panel cites patient anxiety from false positives, yet the literature also shows overwhelmingly that women would rather risk a scare than allow a cancer to progress—especially considering that about 75% of all breast cancers develop in women who do not have special risk factors.
In any event, the distinction between cost effectiveness and clinical effectiveness will be moot if ObamaCare passes. The House bill gives the HHS task force the mandate to review "the benefits, effectiveness, appropriateness, and costs of clinical preventive services" in making its de facto insurance coverage rulings. As Mr. Reinhardt notes, "at some point soon the rising cost of American health care actually will force Americans to bring monetary costs into the analysis as well."
What's really going on here is that the left knows its designs will require political rationing of care, but it doesn't want the public to figure this out until ObamaCare passes. Then it will begin the campaign to instruct the rest of us that we must follow the guidance of Princeton professors about what medical care we can receive. Americans will simply have to accept that the price of government-run health care in the name of redistributive justice is that patients and their doctors must bow to the superior wisdom of HHS task forces.
Just don't admit it until after the White House signing ceremony.
Rationing? What rationing?.ArticleComments (132)more in Opinion ».EmailPrinter
Text .The flap over breast cancer screening has provided a fascinating insight into the political future of ObamaCare. Specifically, the political left supports such medical rationing even as it disavows that any such thing is happening.
No sooner had the Health and Human Services Department's U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommended against mammography for women under 50 than Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rushed to say don't worry. The decision had "caused a great deal of confusion and worry among women," she said, promising that no policies would change. New Jersey's Frank Pallone vowed to hold hearings, and Senator Dick Durbin leveled the gravest charge Democrats can make: The task force was "appointed by President Bush."
The political duck-and-cover was also on display in that vanguard of ObamaCare known as the New York Times, which ran at least four much-ado-about-nothing items even as it endorsed the reduced screening. On the same day as an editorial and op-ed, a front-page "news analysis" lectured that what the public really needs is "a transformational shift in thinking" about the "evidence-based" medical future that the mammogram decision portends. Yes, and no doubt the Times will tell us what "evidence" to follow.
Even more revealing was Princeton's Uwe Reinhardt, a leading liberal health-care economist, writing on the New York Times Economix blog. Mr. Reinhardt sees the task force's handiwork as an exemplar of "rational decision-making" that had nothing to do with cost analysis, even as he claimed that rationing based on cost is inevitable.
You have to admire Mr. Reinhardt's partisan dexterity. He knows that no government task force is ever going to justify a treatment denial with an overt claim to costs. Instead, the task force found a sneaky way to use clinical data to take costs into account without admitting it. It cites all sorts of harm associated with the problem of "overdiagnosis"—i.e., too many costly procedures. This is a reference to mammograms that lead to further tests and treatments that in hindsight are unnecessary.
The HHS task force concludes that this harm outweighs the benefits of saving lives through early detection, yet this makes little sense unless financial costs are a priority. For instance, the panel cites patient anxiety from false positives, yet the literature also shows overwhelmingly that women would rather risk a scare than allow a cancer to progress—especially considering that about 75% of all breast cancers develop in women who do not have special risk factors.
In any event, the distinction between cost effectiveness and clinical effectiveness will be moot if ObamaCare passes. The House bill gives the HHS task force the mandate to review "the benefits, effectiveness, appropriateness, and costs of clinical preventive services" in making its de facto insurance coverage rulings. As Mr. Reinhardt notes, "at some point soon the rising cost of American health care actually will force Americans to bring monetary costs into the analysis as well."
What's really going on here is that the left knows its designs will require political rationing of care, but it doesn't want the public to figure this out until ObamaCare passes. Then it will begin the campaign to instruct the rest of us that we must follow the guidance of Princeton professors about what medical care we can receive. Americans will simply have to accept that the price of government-run health care in the name of redistributive justice is that patients and their doctors must bow to the superior wisdom of HHS task forces.
Just don't admit it until after the White House signing ceremony.
Obama ruining economy WSJ Nov 24
But the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee on Long-term Finance was less than thrilled. In its August report to Secretary Timothy Geithner, the committee said: "This year's double-digit-as-a-percent-of-GDP budget shortfall [the federal deficit] is unsustainable. Moreover, there is little support for a marked shrinking in the deficit in the year ahead, as revenue trends likely will remain sluggish amid high unemployment and lingering capital losses and public spending will remain elevated as a share of the economy. Various policy efforts under discussion by the Administration and Congress also probably would add to the deficit and public debt on a net basis."
Needless to say, the Obama administration and Congress aren't heeding such warnings. More big spending programs on health care and green energy are getting teed up.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said at a Richmond Fed market symposium last April that the Fed was attempting to "avoid both credit risk and credit allocation in our lending and securities purchase programs." The "attempt" has hardly been obvious and clearly is not succeeding, particularly with regard to credit allocation. Aside from the not-so-subtle efforts to enlist the banks in a government bond drive, there are the direct allocations of credit that have been practiced by the Fed and Treasury since the banking crisis a year ago. Infusions to Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase for the takeover of Bear Stearns, Fannie, Freddie, AIG, GM, Chrysler, the commercial paper industry, money market funds, etc., have clearly been credit allocation, big time
Needless to say, the Obama administration and Congress aren't heeding such warnings. More big spending programs on health care and green energy are getting teed up.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said at a Richmond Fed market symposium last April that the Fed was attempting to "avoid both credit risk and credit allocation in our lending and securities purchase programs." The "attempt" has hardly been obvious and clearly is not succeeding, particularly with regard to credit allocation. Aside from the not-so-subtle efforts to enlist the banks in a government bond drive, there are the direct allocations of credit that have been practiced by the Fed and Treasury since the banking crisis a year ago. Infusions to Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase for the takeover of Bear Stearns, Fannie, Freddie, AIG, GM, Chrysler, the commercial paper industry, money market funds, etc., have clearly been credit allocation, big time
Monday, November 23, 2009
Inverting the Myth
The Left pretends they care about the needy. it is the opposite.
Example; mammograms-waiting till 50 will kill omen
denying vouchers denies the poor educational choice
etc many many examples
Example; mammograms-waiting till 50 will kill omen
denying vouchers denies the poor educational choice
etc many many examples
Even Saturday night Live realizes what a tragic presidency this is
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/025002.php
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Obma deficit disaster wsj nov 21
The Coming Deficit Disaster
The president says he understands the urgency of our fiscal crisis, but his policies are the equivalent of steering the economy toward an iceberg.
By DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN
President Barack Obama took office promising to lead from the center and solve big problems. He has exerted enormous political energy attempting to reform the nation's health-care system. But the biggest economic problem facing the nation is not health care. It's the deficit. Recently, the White House signaled that it will get serious about reducing the deficit next year—after it locks into place massive new health-care entitlements. This is a recipe for disaster, as it will create a new appetite for increased spending and yet another powerful interest group to oppose deficit-reduction measures.
Our fiscal situation has deteriorated rapidly in just the past few years. The federal government ran a 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion—the highest since World War II—as spending reached nearly 25% of GDP and total revenues fell below 15% of GDP. Shortfalls like these have not been seen in more than 50 years.
Going forward, there is no relief in sight, as spending far outpaces revenues and the federal budget is projected to be in enormous deficit every year. Our national debt is projected to stand at $17.1 trillion 10 years from now, or over $50,000 per American. By 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of the president's budget, the budget deficit will still be roughly $1 trillion, even though the economic situation will have improved and revenues will be above historical norms.
The planned deficits will have destructive consequences for both fairness and economic growth. They will force upon our children and grandchildren the bill for our overconsumption. Federal deficits will crowd out domestic investment in physical capital, human capital, and technologies that increase potential GDP and the standard of living. Financing deficits could crowd out exports and harm our international competitiveness, as we can already see happening with the large borrowing we are doing from competitors like China.
Mr. Obama and his advisers say they understand these concerns, but the administration's policy choices are the equivalent of steering the economy toward an iceberg. ...
In short, any combination of what is moving through Congress is economically dangerous and invites the rapid acceleration of a debt crisis. It is a dramatic statement to financial markets that the federal government does not understand that it must get its fiscal house in order.
What to do? The best option would be for the president to halt Congress's rush to fiscal suicide, and refocus on slowing the dangerous growth in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He should call on Congress to pass a comprehensive reform of our income and payroll tax systems that would generate revenue sufficient to fund its spending desires in a pro-growth and fair fashion.
Reducing entitlement spending and closing tax loopholes to create a fairer tax system with more balanced revenues is politically difficult and requires sacrifice. But we will avert a potentially devastating credit crisis, increase national savings, drive productivity and wage growth, and enhance our international competitiveness.
The time to worry about the deficit is not next year, but now. There is no time to waste.
Mr. Holtz-Eakin is former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. This is adapted from testimony he gave before the Senate Committee on the Budget on Nov. 10.
The president says he understands the urgency of our fiscal crisis, but his policies are the equivalent of steering the economy toward an iceberg.
By DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN
President Barack Obama took office promising to lead from the center and solve big problems. He has exerted enormous political energy attempting to reform the nation's health-care system. But the biggest economic problem facing the nation is not health care. It's the deficit. Recently, the White House signaled that it will get serious about reducing the deficit next year—after it locks into place massive new health-care entitlements. This is a recipe for disaster, as it will create a new appetite for increased spending and yet another powerful interest group to oppose deficit-reduction measures.
Our fiscal situation has deteriorated rapidly in just the past few years. The federal government ran a 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion—the highest since World War II—as spending reached nearly 25% of GDP and total revenues fell below 15% of GDP. Shortfalls like these have not been seen in more than 50 years.
Going forward, there is no relief in sight, as spending far outpaces revenues and the federal budget is projected to be in enormous deficit every year. Our national debt is projected to stand at $17.1 trillion 10 years from now, or over $50,000 per American. By 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of the president's budget, the budget deficit will still be roughly $1 trillion, even though the economic situation will have improved and revenues will be above historical norms.
The planned deficits will have destructive consequences for both fairness and economic growth. They will force upon our children and grandchildren the bill for our overconsumption. Federal deficits will crowd out domestic investment in physical capital, human capital, and technologies that increase potential GDP and the standard of living. Financing deficits could crowd out exports and harm our international competitiveness, as we can already see happening with the large borrowing we are doing from competitors like China.
Mr. Obama and his advisers say they understand these concerns, but the administration's policy choices are the equivalent of steering the economy toward an iceberg. ...
In short, any combination of what is moving through Congress is economically dangerous and invites the rapid acceleration of a debt crisis. It is a dramatic statement to financial markets that the federal government does not understand that it must get its fiscal house in order.
What to do? The best option would be for the president to halt Congress's rush to fiscal suicide, and refocus on slowing the dangerous growth in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He should call on Congress to pass a comprehensive reform of our income and payroll tax systems that would generate revenue sufficient to fund its spending desires in a pro-growth and fair fashion.
Reducing entitlement spending and closing tax loopholes to create a fairer tax system with more balanced revenues is politically difficult and requires sacrifice. But we will avert a potentially devastating credit crisis, increase national savings, drive productivity and wage growth, and enhance our international competitiveness.
The time to worry about the deficit is not next year, but now. There is no time to waste.
Mr. Holtz-Eakin is former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. This is adapted from testimony he gave before the Senate Committee on the Budget on Nov. 10.
Dems care about party unity, not national security
WSJ Nov 21
By DAVID BEAMER
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee met to question Attorney General Eric Holder about his decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others in criminal courts rather than military tribunals. As the father of Todd Beamer, who died on United Airlines Flight 93, I was able to attend that hearing. What transpired caused me great concern and shook my confidence in our current administration.
T...What I did not anticipate was the level of partisanship showed by the majority party. It seemed clear to me and other family members of victims that party loyalty is trumping concern for America's security interests. ..
Then the Republican members proceeded to ask Mr. Holder thoughtful questions. Some examples:
How can we be assured that these enemies will be found guilty? Given that criminal courts are now the presumed venue for those captured on the battlefield, will soldiers need to read them their rights at the time of capture? Since you wish to make exceptions on a case-by-case basis to the presumed civil venue, don't all those captured need to be read their rights and have the opportunity to remain silent? Won't this venue expose intelligence to our enemies? Can our classified information really be secured? Can we in fact predict how the judge will rule? If these people are brought into the country will they get additional rights under immigration law? What if they claim asylum?
The attorney general seemed bewildered in the face of these inquiries. Recurring themes in his responses included "I think," and "I can't imagine," and "I am not an expert in immigration....A second shocker: Mr. Holder said that he and his boss had not spoken in person about this decision. This matter only involves upholding the constitutional rights of Americans, establishing a precedent with battlefield impact, and the safety and security of our citizens in a time of war. What are the criteria to make something a priority with President Barack Obama? How can it be that this matter didn't make the cut..Our enemies must be thrilled. We are willingly handing them an opportunity to inflict economic harm on New York City, keep their cause in the headlines, gather new intelligence, create new terror strategies, stimulate recruiting, celebrate new-found rights, and foist a fresh round of pain and suffering upon their victims.
By DAVID BEAMER
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee met to question Attorney General Eric Holder about his decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others in criminal courts rather than military tribunals. As the father of Todd Beamer, who died on United Airlines Flight 93, I was able to attend that hearing. What transpired caused me great concern and shook my confidence in our current administration.
T...What I did not anticipate was the level of partisanship showed by the majority party. It seemed clear to me and other family members of victims that party loyalty is trumping concern for America's security interests. ..
Then the Republican members proceeded to ask Mr. Holder thoughtful questions. Some examples:
How can we be assured that these enemies will be found guilty? Given that criminal courts are now the presumed venue for those captured on the battlefield, will soldiers need to read them their rights at the time of capture? Since you wish to make exceptions on a case-by-case basis to the presumed civil venue, don't all those captured need to be read their rights and have the opportunity to remain silent? Won't this venue expose intelligence to our enemies? Can our classified information really be secured? Can we in fact predict how the judge will rule? If these people are brought into the country will they get additional rights under immigration law? What if they claim asylum?
The attorney general seemed bewildered in the face of these inquiries. Recurring themes in his responses included "I think," and "I can't imagine," and "I am not an expert in immigration....A second shocker: Mr. Holder said that he and his boss had not spoken in person about this decision. This matter only involves upholding the constitutional rights of Americans, establishing a precedent with battlefield impact, and the safety and security of our citizens in a time of war. What are the criteria to make something a priority with President Barack Obama? How can it be that this matter didn't make the cut..Our enemies must be thrilled. We are willingly handing them an opportunity to inflict economic harm on New York City, keep their cause in the headlines, gather new intelligence, create new terror strategies, stimulate recruiting, celebrate new-found rights, and foist a fresh round of pain and suffering upon their victims.
Obama manipulates unions WSJ Nov 21
Obama Union Rules
A federal agency rips up 75 years of labor policy.
The National Mediation Board, which oversees labor relations in the air and rail industry, this month moved to overturn 75 years of labor policy.
The board plans to stack the deck for organized labor in union elections. Under a proposed rule, unions would no longer have to get the approval of a majority of airline workers to achieve certification. Not even close. Instead, a union could win just by getting a majority of the employees who vote. Thus, if only 1,000 of 10,000 flight attendants vote in a union election, and 501 vote for certification, the other 9,499 become unionized.
This radical break with precedent is the handiwork of President Obama's appointees to the three-member board: Harry Hoglander, once president of a pilots union, and Linda Puchala, former president of the Association of Flight Attendants.
A federal agency rips up 75 years of labor policy.
The National Mediation Board, which oversees labor relations in the air and rail industry, this month moved to overturn 75 years of labor policy.
The board plans to stack the deck for organized labor in union elections. Under a proposed rule, unions would no longer have to get the approval of a majority of airline workers to achieve certification. Not even close. Instead, a union could win just by getting a majority of the employees who vote. Thus, if only 1,000 of 10,000 flight attendants vote in a union election, and 501 vote for certification, the other 9,499 become unionized.
This radical break with precedent is the handiwork of President Obama's appointees to the three-member board: Harry Hoglander, once president of a pilots union, and Linda Puchala, former president of the Association of Flight Attendants.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Obamacare kills women a second way in 2 days
WASHINGTON — First mammograms. Now — in an apparent coincidence — Pap smears.
New guidelines by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say most women in their 20s can have a Pap smear every two years instead of annually to catch slow-growing cervical cancer.
The change comes amid a separate debate over when regular mammograms to detect breast cancer should begin, in the 40s or the 50s. The timing of the Pap guidelines is coincidence, said ACOG, which began reviewing its recommendations in late 2007 and published the update Friday in the journal Obstetrics&Gynecology.
While the two sets of recommendations are unrelated, they come at a time of intense debate over health-care reform. Mammograms in particular have drawn broad attention in Congress, reflecting a more than decade-long debate in the cancer community about how best to perform mammograms.
Republicans sought to connect the mammogram recommendations to the health-care overhaul, contending that such findings are the way that medical rationing starts.
New guidelines by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say most women in their 20s can have a Pap smear every two years instead of annually to catch slow-growing cervical cancer.
The change comes amid a separate debate over when regular mammograms to detect breast cancer should begin, in the 40s or the 50s. The timing of the Pap guidelines is coincidence, said ACOG, which began reviewing its recommendations in late 2007 and published the update Friday in the journal Obstetrics&Gynecology.
While the two sets of recommendations are unrelated, they come at a time of intense debate over health-care reform. Mammograms in particular have drawn broad attention in Congress, reflecting a more than decade-long debate in the cancer community about how best to perform mammograms.
Republicans sought to connect the mammogram recommendations to the health-care overhaul, contending that such findings are the way that medical rationing starts.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Obama horrible, French good?
Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
* French Foreign Minister: Jerusalem Construction "Not an Obstacle to Negotiations" - Attila Somfalvi
Visiting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Wednesday that Israel's plan to build additional housing in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood "should not be an obstacle to resuming negotiations." Kouchner also said that France would not recognize a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood. (Ynet News)
See also Obama Calls Israeli Building in Jerusalem "Dangerous"
Referring to Israeli plans to add 900 new apartments in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, President Obama told Fox News Wednesday: "I think that additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel's security. I think it makes it harder for them to make peace with their neighbors. I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous." (Fox News)
* French Foreign Minister: Jerusalem Construction "Not an Obstacle to Negotiations" - Attila Somfalvi
Visiting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Wednesday that Israel's plan to build additional housing in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood "should not be an obstacle to resuming negotiations." Kouchner also said that France would not recognize a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood. (Ynet News)
See also Obama Calls Israeli Building in Jerusalem "Dangerous"
Referring to Israeli plans to add 900 new apartments in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, President Obama told Fox News Wednesday: "I think that additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel's security. I think it makes it harder for them to make peace with their neighbors. I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous." (Fox News)
Time for U.S. to Get Tough
See also Iran Nuclear Deal Collapses. Time for U.S. to Get Tough? - Howard LaFranchi (Christian Science Monitor)
it was time months ago. They are playing us for fools
it was time months ago. They are playing us for fools
Stimulus watchdog: Job creation data flawed
Stimulus watchdog: Job creation data flawed
AP
WASHINGTON – The government watchdog overseeing economic stimulus spending says the White House was too quick to take credit for saving or creating 640,000 jobs.
The White House trumpeted job figures released last month, saying they proved the administration is on track to save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.
But Earl Devaney, whose agency collected and released the data, said Thursday there are too many errors to know how many jobs have been created. Under questioning on Capitol Hill, he agreed the White House should have acknowledged the doubt surrounding the numbers.
AP
WASHINGTON – The government watchdog overseeing economic stimulus spending says the White House was too quick to take credit for saving or creating 640,000 jobs.
The White House trumpeted job figures released last month, saying they proved the administration is on track to save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.
But Earl Devaney, whose agency collected and released the data, said Thursday there are too many errors to know how many jobs have been created. Under questioning on Capitol Hill, he agreed the White House should have acknowledged the doubt surrounding the numbers.
Obma, Arab terrorists and Chicago links
The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC) is considered a mainstream organization. Its affiliate mosque, the Bridgeview Mosque, has been under FBI surveillance for over a decade, and Osama bin Laden’s spiritual mentor, Abdullah Azzam, actually visited it as part of a national recruiting tour in the 1980s. Nabil al-Marabh, a suspected planner in 9/11, attended Bridgeview. The mosque’s foundation was linked to the Holy Land Foundation. Mohammed Saleh, another member, was the first American citizen to make the FBI terror list. The mosque itself is owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) — headquartered in Indiana, but funded by Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. Siraj Wahhaj, a former NAIT board member, is listed as an indicted co-conspirator in a 1995 plot to blow up New York landmarks, and he served as a character witness for the “blind sheik.”
In February 2004, the Chicago Tribune investigated the radical anti-Americanism running through CIOGC and its tributaries (”Hard-liners won battle for Bridgeview Mosque“). At the time, then-state Senator Barack Obama was pushing a bill for free and reduced health care for the uninsured. On March 29, 2004, the Chicago Defender announced: “SEIU, ACORN hail Obama’s health bill.” Also at the time, Crucial Inc. — the lucrative concession business at O’Hare International Airport owned by the 77-year-old son of the late Elijah Muhammed — was stripped of its minority business certification.
After grossing $16 million in its first four years at the airport, it was revealed that Syrian-born Arab Tony Rezko was the actual owner and Herbert Muhammed had only served as a front so Crucial Inc. could qualify for Chicago’s minority set-aside program — which directs large contracts to companies owned by women, blacks, or Hispanics.
That year also marked the creation of then-Governor Rod Blagojevich’s new Illinois Finance Authority board, which dissolved five state bonding agencies into one. Ali Ata, former president of the Chicago chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee — and a friend of Rezko — was appointed as director after donating $60,000 to the governor. Ata held no finance experience and left the post in March 2005 following alleged wrongdoings.
This came less than two years after Obama helped pass Public Act 93-0041, which extended the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Association (IFHPA), terminated all existing board members, reduced the board membership from 15 to 9, and gave priority to board members with ties to ethnic and minority communities.
Health Care, Chicago-Style
Behold, the swamp of Chicago health care and Obama's central role in cultivating it.
Advocate Health Care is the largest health system in Illinois. Dr. Imad Almanaseer — head of pathology at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, a friend of Rezko’s, and part of Rezko’s bloc of five installed on the IFHPA board (which controls all development and expansion of hospitals in the state) — testified under immunity at Rezko’s trial. He admitted that he was handed index cards by Thomas Beck, the chairman of IFHPA, with voting instructions from Rezko prior to votes. Almanaseer also testified that he is a business partner and investor of Rezko’s.
In February 2004, William McNary endorsed Obama in the Communist Party (CPUSA) newspaper the Weekly World. “Obama will be a strong voice in Washington on behalf of working families,” wrote McNary. Obama had worked for McNary in the mid-1990s, registering 100,000 votes for Citizen Action/Illinois — the local branch of US Action, both of which William McNary headed. According to McNary, Obama also collaborated with United Power for Action and Justice (UPAJ) to expand children’s health insurance in Illinois. “Barack was not just willing to meet with community-based groups, not only to be a good vote for us, but he also strategized with us to help move our position forward,” McNary told David Moberg in his 2007 piece “Obama’s Third Way.” McNary is also a member of the Radical Black Congress and was the keynote speaker for the CPUSA 2002 annual fundraiser. The left-wing blog Talking Points Memo described McNary as “one of Obama’s personal friends and long-time supporters — someone Obama went to when considering his run for senate and for president.”
Monsignor John Egan lived just long enough to see his lifelong dream, the UPAJ, open its doors. The $2.6 million dollars in seed money for UPAJ came from Catholic organizations. Egan envisioned UPAJ as a reorganized Metro IAF — the Chicago chapter of Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Arts Foundation. Cardinal Bernadin announced the gift at a 1995 press conference.
There was outrage in the Catholic community over the role that both the Bernadine Center for Theology and Ministry and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) played in UPAJ. CCHD’s annual budget of $18 million funded UPAJ activities. UPAJ’s stated top priorities - Health care for all and fostering relationships with Muslim communities. UPAJ affiliates include the Muslim Student Association, the Lutheran School of Theology, Anshe Shalom B’Nai Israel, Trinity United Church of Christ (Mr. Obama’s Chicago church) and Father Pfleger’s St. Sabina church.
Also, active in CCIR is Tony Campolo, active with the Sojourner Red Letter Christian movement. He is probably best known for “finding it a real privilege” to minister to Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky impeachment proceedings and for drawing gasps and boos for having the following exchange with Gary Bauer at Wheaton College: “I know this is hard for you to believe, but the enemy is not John Ashcroft. The enemy is Osama bin Laden,” said Bauer. Campolo replied, “I don’t know about that.”
Chicago’s Muslim-centric health care networks range from the Gilead’s Campaign for the Uninsured and the Gilead Outreach and Referral Center (both funded by UPAJ), the Illinois Department of Human Services, the Illinois Department of Public Aid, Advocate Health Care, and the Michael Reese Healthcare Trust. The Michael Reese Health Care Trust funds the Sargent Shriver Center National Center on Poverty Law — which is funded by George Soros, Bill Ayers brother John, SEIU Healthcare, William Daley, the William Daley Charitable Gift Fund, the Illinois Department of Health Care and Family Services, and the Chicago Bar Fund.
The Chicago Bar Fund supports the Illinois Coalition for Immigration and Refugee Rights, the National Immigrant and Justice Center, and, amazingly, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Gilead’s board of directors includes Anthony Mitchell of Advocate Health Care, Nancy Cross of SEIU Local and Syed Najullah of CIOCG.
Other networks include the Muslim Community Center, the Association of Muslim Health Professionals, the Compassionate Care Network, UMMA Community Clinic, the Islamic Medical Association of North America, and IMAN, which is funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
This excludes the additional $851 million in federal stimulus grants Michele Obama announced on June 29, 2009, to upgrade community health centers because their work “has never been more important.”
Patti Villacorta is an investigative reporter and political research expert
In February 2004, the Chicago Tribune investigated the radical anti-Americanism running through CIOGC and its tributaries (”Hard-liners won battle for Bridgeview Mosque“). At the time, then-state Senator Barack Obama was pushing a bill for free and reduced health care for the uninsured. On March 29, 2004, the Chicago Defender announced: “SEIU, ACORN hail Obama’s health bill.” Also at the time, Crucial Inc. — the lucrative concession business at O’Hare International Airport owned by the 77-year-old son of the late Elijah Muhammed — was stripped of its minority business certification.
After grossing $16 million in its first four years at the airport, it was revealed that Syrian-born Arab Tony Rezko was the actual owner and Herbert Muhammed had only served as a front so Crucial Inc. could qualify for Chicago’s minority set-aside program — which directs large contracts to companies owned by women, blacks, or Hispanics.
That year also marked the creation of then-Governor Rod Blagojevich’s new Illinois Finance Authority board, which dissolved five state bonding agencies into one. Ali Ata, former president of the Chicago chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee — and a friend of Rezko — was appointed as director after donating $60,000 to the governor. Ata held no finance experience and left the post in March 2005 following alleged wrongdoings.
This came less than two years after Obama helped pass Public Act 93-0041, which extended the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Association (IFHPA), terminated all existing board members, reduced the board membership from 15 to 9, and gave priority to board members with ties to ethnic and minority communities.
Health Care, Chicago-Style
Behold, the swamp of Chicago health care and Obama's central role in cultivating it.
Advocate Health Care is the largest health system in Illinois. Dr. Imad Almanaseer — head of pathology at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, a friend of Rezko’s, and part of Rezko’s bloc of five installed on the IFHPA board (which controls all development and expansion of hospitals in the state) — testified under immunity at Rezko’s trial. He admitted that he was handed index cards by Thomas Beck, the chairman of IFHPA, with voting instructions from Rezko prior to votes. Almanaseer also testified that he is a business partner and investor of Rezko’s.
In February 2004, William McNary endorsed Obama in the Communist Party (CPUSA) newspaper the Weekly World. “Obama will be a strong voice in Washington on behalf of working families,” wrote McNary. Obama had worked for McNary in the mid-1990s, registering 100,000 votes for Citizen Action/Illinois — the local branch of US Action, both of which William McNary headed. According to McNary, Obama also collaborated with United Power for Action and Justice (UPAJ) to expand children’s health insurance in Illinois. “Barack was not just willing to meet with community-based groups, not only to be a good vote for us, but he also strategized with us to help move our position forward,” McNary told David Moberg in his 2007 piece “Obama’s Third Way.” McNary is also a member of the Radical Black Congress and was the keynote speaker for the CPUSA 2002 annual fundraiser. The left-wing blog Talking Points Memo described McNary as “one of Obama’s personal friends and long-time supporters — someone Obama went to when considering his run for senate and for president.”
Monsignor John Egan lived just long enough to see his lifelong dream, the UPAJ, open its doors. The $2.6 million dollars in seed money for UPAJ came from Catholic organizations. Egan envisioned UPAJ as a reorganized Metro IAF — the Chicago chapter of Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Arts Foundation. Cardinal Bernadin announced the gift at a 1995 press conference.
There was outrage in the Catholic community over the role that both the Bernadine Center for Theology and Ministry and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) played in UPAJ. CCHD’s annual budget of $18 million funded UPAJ activities. UPAJ’s stated top priorities - Health care for all and fostering relationships with Muslim communities. UPAJ affiliates include the Muslim Student Association, the Lutheran School of Theology, Anshe Shalom B’Nai Israel, Trinity United Church of Christ (Mr. Obama’s Chicago church) and Father Pfleger’s St. Sabina church.
Also, active in CCIR is Tony Campolo, active with the Sojourner Red Letter Christian movement. He is probably best known for “finding it a real privilege” to minister to Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky impeachment proceedings and for drawing gasps and boos for having the following exchange with Gary Bauer at Wheaton College: “I know this is hard for you to believe, but the enemy is not John Ashcroft. The enemy is Osama bin Laden,” said Bauer. Campolo replied, “I don’t know about that.”
Chicago’s Muslim-centric health care networks range from the Gilead’s Campaign for the Uninsured and the Gilead Outreach and Referral Center (both funded by UPAJ), the Illinois Department of Human Services, the Illinois Department of Public Aid, Advocate Health Care, and the Michael Reese Healthcare Trust. The Michael Reese Health Care Trust funds the Sargent Shriver Center National Center on Poverty Law — which is funded by George Soros, Bill Ayers brother John, SEIU Healthcare, William Daley, the William Daley Charitable Gift Fund, the Illinois Department of Health Care and Family Services, and the Chicago Bar Fund.
The Chicago Bar Fund supports the Illinois Coalition for Immigration and Refugee Rights, the National Immigrant and Justice Center, and, amazingly, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Gilead’s board of directors includes Anthony Mitchell of Advocate Health Care, Nancy Cross of SEIU Local and Syed Najullah of CIOCG.
Other networks include the Muslim Community Center, the Association of Muslim Health Professionals, the Compassionate Care Network, UMMA Community Clinic, the Islamic Medical Association of North America, and IMAN, which is funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
This excludes the additional $851 million in federal stimulus grants Michele Obama announced on June 29, 2009, to upgrade community health centers because their work “has never been more important.”
Patti Villacorta is an investigative reporter and political research expert
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Top 10 reasons to Impeach Obama
Impeachable offenses
The Constitution defines impeachment at the federal level and limits impeachment to "The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States" who may only be impeached and removed for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors". [3] Several commentators have suggested that Congress alone may decide for itself what constitutes an impeachable offense.[citation needed] In 1970, then-House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford defined the criteria as he saw it: "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.
We need to elect a Republican congress to impeach Obma in 2010 before he ruins this country.
1. Incompetence on economy: Exploding deficits, Unemployment,Wastes trillions: bailouts, stimulus, cars,
2. Incompetence on foreign policy-Arabs revile him even as he cowtows to them, China scolds him, Iran and North Korea laugh at him
3. Lies about jobs created
4. Subservience to foreign rulers-bows to Saudi king and Japanese Emperor
5. Befriends our enemies Chavez and alienates our friends-Israel, France etc
6. Appoints extremists Maoi0sts all over govt and now judiciary
7. Undermines rule of law by trying unmirandad terrorists in civilian courts
8. Blames Bush when it was Dem controlled congress-both houses 2006-2008 that forced bad housing loans and Barney Frank at the wheel
9. Obamacare will take over 1/6th economy, ration care-already started with mammograms
10. Endangers troops as he dithers about Afghanistan troop increases, even after campaigning on how crucial that war was vs Iraq
The Constitution defines impeachment at the federal level and limits impeachment to "The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States" who may only be impeached and removed for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors". [3] Several commentators have suggested that Congress alone may decide for itself what constitutes an impeachable offense.[citation needed] In 1970, then-House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford defined the criteria as he saw it: "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.
We need to elect a Republican congress to impeach Obma in 2010 before he ruins this country.
1. Incompetence on economy: Exploding deficits, Unemployment,Wastes trillions: bailouts, stimulus, cars,
2. Incompetence on foreign policy-Arabs revile him even as he cowtows to them, China scolds him, Iran and North Korea laugh at him
3. Lies about jobs created
4. Subservience to foreign rulers-bows to Saudi king and Japanese Emperor
5. Befriends our enemies Chavez and alienates our friends-Israel, France etc
6. Appoints extremists Maoi0sts all over govt and now judiciary
7. Undermines rule of law by trying unmirandad terrorists in civilian courts
8. Blames Bush when it was Dem controlled congress-both houses 2006-2008 that forced bad housing loans and Barney Frank at the wheel
9. Obamacare will take over 1/6th economy, ration care-already started with mammograms
10. Endangers troops as he dithers about Afghanistan troop increases, even after campaigning on how crucial that war was vs Iraq
destroying the judicial sytem
The insane decision to try these terrorists in civilian courts:
they had no miranda, were tortured
if not convicted, can you imagine?
If convicted without miranda and with torture, can they then do it do us.
Won't make us look good, will make us look loike fools, as Obama is.
they had no miranda, were tortured
if not convicted, can you imagine?
If convicted without miranda and with torture, can they then do it do us.
Won't make us look good, will make us look loike fools, as Obama is.
He grovels to the Japenese emperor?
First bows to the Saudi king. It is disgusting. Where is the dignity? He is trying to make us impotent. Then goes to China and totally strikes out
"In this week's choreographed show of U.S.-Chinese good will, Obama's pledge to treat China as a trusted global partner won a return promise of shared effort on world troubles — but not much else.
Standing stiffly together in the Great Hall of the People after a morning of talks, Obama and President Hu Jintao talked expansively Tuesday of common burdens and joint efforts on global warming, nuclear disarmament, the anemic economy and other big issues. They dealt coolly with differences over human rights and trade, leaving them out of public view or reserved for coded language.
Their first formal summit featured none of the rancor that spoiled many previous summits between the nations. If there was any pressure on Beijing to make immediate concessions, neither leader let on.
But Obama went into the meetings with a weaker hand than most past presidents. The battering that economic recession and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have given U.S. prestige is felt nowhere more keenly than in a China that is busily growing and accruing global clout.
"The U.S. has a lot to ask from China," said Xue Chen, a researcher on strategic affairs at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies. "On the other hand, the U.S. has little to offer China."
NYT Version
BEIJING — In six hours of meetings, at two dinners and during a stilted 30-minute news conference in which President Hu Jintao did not allow questions, President Obama was confronted, on his first visit, with a fast-rising China more willing to say no to the United States.
President Obama signed a guest book during his tour of the Forbidden City in Beijing on Tuesday. He has taken a conciliatory tone on his first visit to China.
On topics like Iran (Mr. Hu did not publicly discuss the possibility of sanctions), China’s currency (he made no nod toward changing its value) and human rights (a joint statement bluntly acknowledged that the two countries “have differences”), China held firm against most American demands.
With China’s micro-management of Mr. Obama’s appearances in the country, the trip did more to showcase China’s ability to push back against outside pressure than it did to advance the main issues on Mr. Obama’s agenda, analysts said.
“China effectively stage-managed President Obama’s public appearances, got him to make statements endorsing Chinese positions of political importance to them and effectively squelched discussions of contentious issues such as human rights and China’s currency policy,” said Eswar S. Prasad, a China specialist at Cornell University. “In a masterstroke, they shifted the public discussion from the global risks posed by Chinese currency policy to the dangers of loose monetary policy and protectionist tendencies in the U.S.”
"In this week's choreographed show of U.S.-Chinese good will, Obama's pledge to treat China as a trusted global partner won a return promise of shared effort on world troubles — but not much else.
Standing stiffly together in the Great Hall of the People after a morning of talks, Obama and President Hu Jintao talked expansively Tuesday of common burdens and joint efforts on global warming, nuclear disarmament, the anemic economy and other big issues. They dealt coolly with differences over human rights and trade, leaving them out of public view or reserved for coded language.
Their first formal summit featured none of the rancor that spoiled many previous summits between the nations. If there was any pressure on Beijing to make immediate concessions, neither leader let on.
But Obama went into the meetings with a weaker hand than most past presidents. The battering that economic recession and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have given U.S. prestige is felt nowhere more keenly than in a China that is busily growing and accruing global clout.
"The U.S. has a lot to ask from China," said Xue Chen, a researcher on strategic affairs at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies. "On the other hand, the U.S. has little to offer China."
NYT Version
BEIJING — In six hours of meetings, at two dinners and during a stilted 30-minute news conference in which President Hu Jintao did not allow questions, President Obama was confronted, on his first visit, with a fast-rising China more willing to say no to the United States.
President Obama signed a guest book during his tour of the Forbidden City in Beijing on Tuesday. He has taken a conciliatory tone on his first visit to China.
On topics like Iran (Mr. Hu did not publicly discuss the possibility of sanctions), China’s currency (he made no nod toward changing its value) and human rights (a joint statement bluntly acknowledged that the two countries “have differences”), China held firm against most American demands.
With China’s micro-management of Mr. Obama’s appearances in the country, the trip did more to showcase China’s ability to push back against outside pressure than it did to advance the main issues on Mr. Obama’s agenda, analysts said.
“China effectively stage-managed President Obama’s public appearances, got him to make statements endorsing Chinese positions of political importance to them and effectively squelched discussions of contentious issues such as human rights and China’s currency policy,” said Eswar S. Prasad, a China specialist at Cornell University. “In a masterstroke, they shifted the public discussion from the global risks posed by Chinese currency policy to the dangers of loose monetary policy and protectionist tendencies in the U.S.”
Obmamacare has started killing Americans
GOVernement panel decides woman need mammograms after 50 not 40.
USA today
A government task force says most women don't need mammograms in their 40s and should get one every two years starting at 50 — a stunning reversal and a break with the American Cancer Society's long-standing position. What's more, the panel says breast self-exams do no good, and women shouldn't be taught to do them."
Isn't it obvious. it has started already. those 10 years of no exams will save money, ration care, kill more women. all part of OBAMACARE
Meanwhile, the American Cancer Society is still recommending mammograms for women over 40 and also recommending regular breast MRIs in addition to mammograms.
USA today
A government task force says most women don't need mammograms in their 40s and should get one every two years starting at 50 — a stunning reversal and a break with the American Cancer Society's long-standing position. What's more, the panel says breast self-exams do no good, and women shouldn't be taught to do them."
Isn't it obvious. it has started already. those 10 years of no exams will save money, ration care, kill more women. all part of OBAMACARE
Meanwhile, the American Cancer Society is still recommending mammograms for women over 40 and also recommending regular breast MRIs in addition to mammograms.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Hurts Mideast peace chances
The Real Problem with U.S. Involvement
Evelyn Gordon - 11.15.2009 - 9:10 AM
Writing in today’s Jerusalem Post, Liat Collins offers a pertinent observation on Thomas Friedman’s proposal that America stop pushing Israeli-Palestinian peace. Friedman argued that American intervention functions as “Novocain” for the parties: “We relieve all the political pain from the Arab and Israeli decision-makers by creating the impression in the minds of their publics that something serious is happening.”
But as Collins noted, “the pain, however, has tended to come with the peace process itself. … No Israeli — Left, Right or Center — can forget the exploding buses and cafes causing the sort of pain that Novocaine can never cure. … And the consequences of pulling out from Gaza and the security zone in Lebanon can, of course, still be felt today: No other country has had to resort to creating a rocket-proof indoor playground a la Sderot or a missile-proof emergency room such as was recently inaugurated at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital.”
And that is the real problem with U.S. involvement in the “peace process”: not only, as Friedman correctly noted, has it wasted time, energy, and diplomatic capital that could have been better employed elsewhere; it has actually made peace less likely.
Clearly, the terror produced by every territorial concession since 1993 has decreased the Israelis’ appetite for such concessions. But even more important, U.S. involvement has reduced Palestinian willingness to make necessary concessions.
Over the past 16 years, “U.S. involvement” has largely become synonymous with pressing Israel for more concessions — both because Israel is seen as “the stronger party,” with more to give, and because it is far more vulnerable than are the Palestinians to U.S. pressure, given America’s status as Israel’s only ally. Palestinians have thus become convinced that they don’t need to make concessions; they can wait for Washington to deliver Israel on a platter.
For instance, Palestinians would be more likely to fight terror if they thought future withdrawals depended on it. But they don’t, and for good reason: the world has never demanded an end to terror as the price of further withdrawals; instead, it has consistently pressed Israel to keep withdrawing despite the terror. Under those circumstances, why bother fighting terror?
Similarly, Israel is routinely pressed to make upfront negotiating concessions: just last week, for instance, Hillary Clinton reportedly demanded that guidelines for renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks promise “a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and in Jerusalem,” meaning that Israel would have to fully concede two of the three core issues before talks can even begin (Jerusalem declined). But Washington has never demanded that Palestinians cede even an obvious deal breaker like the “right of return” upfront; this is always left to future negotiations.
As long as the Palestinians think they can rely on Washington to “deliver” Israel, they will never feel a need to make concessions themselves. And until they do, no deal will be possible.
Barack Obama isn’t likely to heed Friedman’s advice, but perhaps his successor will be wiser. The “peace process” will undoubtedly still be around.
Evelyn Gordon - 11.15.2009 - 9:10 AM
Writing in today’s Jerusalem Post, Liat Collins offers a pertinent observation on Thomas Friedman’s proposal that America stop pushing Israeli-Palestinian peace. Friedman argued that American intervention functions as “Novocain” for the parties: “We relieve all the political pain from the Arab and Israeli decision-makers by creating the impression in the minds of their publics that something serious is happening.”
But as Collins noted, “the pain, however, has tended to come with the peace process itself. … No Israeli — Left, Right or Center — can forget the exploding buses and cafes causing the sort of pain that Novocaine can never cure. … And the consequences of pulling out from Gaza and the security zone in Lebanon can, of course, still be felt today: No other country has had to resort to creating a rocket-proof indoor playground a la Sderot or a missile-proof emergency room such as was recently inaugurated at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital.”
And that is the real problem with U.S. involvement in the “peace process”: not only, as Friedman correctly noted, has it wasted time, energy, and diplomatic capital that could have been better employed elsewhere; it has actually made peace less likely.
Clearly, the terror produced by every territorial concession since 1993 has decreased the Israelis’ appetite for such concessions. But even more important, U.S. involvement has reduced Palestinian willingness to make necessary concessions.
Over the past 16 years, “U.S. involvement” has largely become synonymous with pressing Israel for more concessions — both because Israel is seen as “the stronger party,” with more to give, and because it is far more vulnerable than are the Palestinians to U.S. pressure, given America’s status as Israel’s only ally. Palestinians have thus become convinced that they don’t need to make concessions; they can wait for Washington to deliver Israel on a platter.
For instance, Palestinians would be more likely to fight terror if they thought future withdrawals depended on it. But they don’t, and for good reason: the world has never demanded an end to terror as the price of further withdrawals; instead, it has consistently pressed Israel to keep withdrawing despite the terror. Under those circumstances, why bother fighting terror?
Similarly, Israel is routinely pressed to make upfront negotiating concessions: just last week, for instance, Hillary Clinton reportedly demanded that guidelines for renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks promise “a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and in Jerusalem,” meaning that Israel would have to fully concede two of the three core issues before talks can even begin (Jerusalem declined). But Washington has never demanded that Palestinians cede even an obvious deal breaker like the “right of return” upfront; this is always left to future negotiations.
As long as the Palestinians think they can rely on Washington to “deliver” Israel, they will never feel a need to make concessions themselves. And until they do, no deal will be possible.
Barack Obama isn’t likely to heed Friedman’s advice, but perhaps his successor will be wiser. The “peace process” will undoubtedly still be around.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Sinking in the polls
Mr. Obama's approval among likely voters has dropped to the low-50s in most polls, and the most recent Rasmussen Reports poll of likely voters shows him slightly below the 50% mark. This is a relatively low rating for new presidents. Mr. Obama's approval rating began to slide in a serious way in early July, triggered by a bad unemployment report.
A look at more detailed data shows why Mr. Obama's ratings are likely to drop even further.
A CNN poll released Nov. 6 found that 47% of Americans believe the top issue facing the country is the economy, while only 17% say its health care. However, the bulk of the president's efforts over the past six months have been not on the economy but on health care, an issue in which he continues to draw negative ratings.
In a Rasmussen Reports poll taken after the House of Representatives passed health-care reform by the narrowest of margins last Saturday night, 54% of likely voters say they are opposed to the plan with only 45% in favor. Furthermore, in the all-important category of unaffiliated voters, 58% oppose the bill. That's one of the reasons why so many moderate Democratic House members opposed it.
The CNN poll also shows that in addition to health care, a majority of Americans disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling the economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, unemployment, illegal immigration and the federal budget deficit. Put simply, there isn't a critical problem facing the country on which the president has positive ratings.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted from Oct. 22-25 found that the president's personal ratings have suffered a similar decline. His rating for being honest and straightforward has fallen eight points from January to 33% and his rating for being firm and decisive has fallen 10 points to 27%.
Even more fundamentally, a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted from Oct. 15-18 shows that the president has now reached a point where less than a majority of Americans believe he will make the right decisions for the country.
A look at more detailed data shows why Mr. Obama's ratings are likely to drop even further.
A CNN poll released Nov. 6 found that 47% of Americans believe the top issue facing the country is the economy, while only 17% say its health care. However, the bulk of the president's efforts over the past six months have been not on the economy but on health care, an issue in which he continues to draw negative ratings.
In a Rasmussen Reports poll taken after the House of Representatives passed health-care reform by the narrowest of margins last Saturday night, 54% of likely voters say they are opposed to the plan with only 45% in favor. Furthermore, in the all-important category of unaffiliated voters, 58% oppose the bill. That's one of the reasons why so many moderate Democratic House members opposed it.
The CNN poll also shows that in addition to health care, a majority of Americans disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling the economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, unemployment, illegal immigration and the federal budget deficit. Put simply, there isn't a critical problem facing the country on which the president has positive ratings.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted from Oct. 22-25 found that the president's personal ratings have suffered a similar decline. His rating for being honest and straightforward has fallen eight points from January to 33% and his rating for being firm and decisive has fallen 10 points to 27%.
Even more fundamentally, a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted from Oct. 15-18 shows that the president has now reached a point where less than a majority of Americans believe he will make the right decisions for the country.
Idiotic decision to try terrorists in nYC
WSJ Sat Nov 14
"The decision to bring the alleged plotters to a New York City courtroom sparked criticism on a number of fronts, ranging from concerns about security to worries about baring state secrets. It marks only the beginning in a series of logistical, constitutional and political challenges that remain for the government. The accused have been held for years without charge, and some were subjected to harsh interrogations, including the use of waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning. A judge will have to decide whether statements made under those conditions are admissible in court. Messrs. Obama and Holder have called waterboarding torture...
Critics called the move to hold civilian trials an unnecessary and dangerous gamble.
"Classified information can be inadvertently leaked," said Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate. "Our cities will face enormous security problems. And our communities will be potential targets for attack."
Navy Lt. Cdr. Stephen Reyes, the lawyer for Mr. Nashiri, said "The decision today was legally unsound. The real reason why the government chose to go to a commission was to ensure a conviction through otherwise inadmissible evidence."
The decision to try some detainees in criminal court and others in military tribunals raised criticism of the Obama administration from both sides of the political spectrum.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has spent $4 million on the defense of terror detainees, hailed the criminal trials for 9/11 detainees, but said using military commissions for other detainees "does raise the question of whether they are forum-shopping to ensure the desired outcome."
Michael Mukasey, the judge who presided over the 1995 trial that convicted Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called "Blind Sheik" in a terror plot, said criminal courts were a bad choice for trying the alleged 9/11 plotters. He said the decision represented a turn from the Bush administration's war footing to a "Sept. 10, 2001" mentality.
"The plan seems to abandon the view that we are involved in a war," said Mr. Mukasey, who was also the attorney general under President George W. Bush, in a Washington speech.
"The decision to bring the alleged plotters to a New York City courtroom sparked criticism on a number of fronts, ranging from concerns about security to worries about baring state secrets. It marks only the beginning in a series of logistical, constitutional and political challenges that remain for the government. The accused have been held for years without charge, and some were subjected to harsh interrogations, including the use of waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning. A judge will have to decide whether statements made under those conditions are admissible in court. Messrs. Obama and Holder have called waterboarding torture...
Critics called the move to hold civilian trials an unnecessary and dangerous gamble.
"Classified information can be inadvertently leaked," said Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate. "Our cities will face enormous security problems. And our communities will be potential targets for attack."
Navy Lt. Cdr. Stephen Reyes, the lawyer for Mr. Nashiri, said "The decision today was legally unsound. The real reason why the government chose to go to a commission was to ensure a conviction through otherwise inadmissible evidence."
The decision to try some detainees in criminal court and others in military tribunals raised criticism of the Obama administration from both sides of the political spectrum.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has spent $4 million on the defense of terror detainees, hailed the criminal trials for 9/11 detainees, but said using military commissions for other detainees "does raise the question of whether they are forum-shopping to ensure the desired outcome."
Michael Mukasey, the judge who presided over the 1995 trial that convicted Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called "Blind Sheik" in a terror plot, said criminal courts were a bad choice for trying the alleged 9/11 plotters. He said the decision represented a turn from the Bush administration's war footing to a "Sept. 10, 2001" mentality.
"The plan seems to abandon the view that we are involved in a war," said Mr. Mukasey, who was also the attorney general under President George W. Bush, in a Washington speech.
Friday, November 13, 2009
We Noticed
"WE NOTICED"
President Obama:
Today I read of your administrations' plan to re-define September 11 as a National Service Day. Sir, it's time we had a talk.........
During your campaign, Americans watched as you made mockery of our tradition of standing and crossing your heart when the Pledge of Allegiance was spoken. You, out of four people on the stage, were the only one not honoring our tradition.
YES, "We noticed."
During one of your many speeches, Americans heard you say that you intended to visit all 57 states.
We all know that Islam, not America has 57 states.
YES, "We noticed."
When President Bush leaned over at Ground Zero and gently placed a flower on the memorial, while you nonchalantly tossed your flower onto the pile without leaning over.
YES, "We noticed."
Every time you apologized to other countries for America 's position on an issue we have wondered why you don't share our pride in this great country. When you have heard foreign leaders berate our country and our beliefs, you have not defended us. In fact, you insulted the British Crown beyond belief.
YES, "We noticed."
When your pastor of 20 years, "God-damned America " and said that 9/11 was " America 's chickens coming home to roost" and you denied having heard recriminations of that nature, we wondered how that could be. You later disassociated yourself from that church and Pastor Wright because it was politically expedient to do so.
YES, "We noticed."
When you announced that you would transform America , we wondered why. With all her faults, America is the greatest country on earth. Sir, KEEP THIS IN MIND, "if not for America and the people who built her, you wouldn't be sitti ng in the White House now." Prior to your election to the highest office in this Country, you were a senator from Illinois and from what we can glean from the records available, not a very remarkable one.
YES, "We noticed."
All through your campaign and even now, you have surrounded yourself with individuals who are basically unqualified for the positions for which you appointed them. Worse than that, the majority of them are people who, like you, bear no special allegiance, respect, or affection for this country and her traditions.
YES, "We noticed."
You are 9 months into your term and every morning millions of Americans wake up to a new horror heaped on us by you. You seek to saddle working Americans with a health care/insurance reform package that, along with cap and trade, will bankrupt this nation.
YES, "We noticed."
We seek, by protesting, to let our representatives know that we are not in favor of these crippling expenditures and we are labeled "un-American","racist", "mob". We wonder how we are supposed to let you know how frustrated we are. You have attempted to make our protests seem isolated and insignificant. Until your appointment, Americans had the right to speak out.
YES, "We noticed."
On September 11, 2001 there were no Republicans or Democrats, only Americans. And we all grieved together and helped each other in whatever way we could. The attack on 9/11 was carried out because we are Americans.
And YES, "We noticed."
There were many of us who prayed that as a black president you could help unite this nation. In six months you have done more to destroy this nation than the attack on 9/11. You have failed us.
YES, "We noticed."
September 11 is a day of remembrance for all Americans. You propose to make 9/11 a "National Service Day". While we know that you don't share our reverence for 9/11, we pray that history will report your proposal as what it is...a disgrace.
YES, "We noticed."
You have made a mockery of our Constitution and the office that you hold. You have embarrassed and slighted us in foreign visits and policy.
YES, "We noticed.."
We have noticed all these things. We will deal with you. When Americans come together again, it will be to remove you from office.
Take notice.
President Obama:
Today I read of your administrations' plan to re-define September 11 as a National Service Day. Sir, it's time we had a talk.........
During your campaign, Americans watched as you made mockery of our tradition of standing and crossing your heart when the Pledge of Allegiance was spoken. You, out of four people on the stage, were the only one not honoring our tradition.
YES, "We noticed."
During one of your many speeches, Americans heard you say that you intended to visit all 57 states.
We all know that Islam, not America has 57 states.
YES, "We noticed."
When President Bush leaned over at Ground Zero and gently placed a flower on the memorial, while you nonchalantly tossed your flower onto the pile without leaning over.
YES, "We noticed."
Every time you apologized to other countries for America 's position on an issue we have wondered why you don't share our pride in this great country. When you have heard foreign leaders berate our country and our beliefs, you have not defended us. In fact, you insulted the British Crown beyond belief.
YES, "We noticed."
When your pastor of 20 years, "God-damned America " and said that 9/11 was " America 's chickens coming home to roost" and you denied having heard recriminations of that nature, we wondered how that could be. You later disassociated yourself from that church and Pastor Wright because it was politically expedient to do so.
YES, "We noticed."
When you announced that you would transform America , we wondered why. With all her faults, America is the greatest country on earth. Sir, KEEP THIS IN MIND, "if not for America and the people who built her, you wouldn't be sitti ng in the White House now." Prior to your election to the highest office in this Country, you were a senator from Illinois and from what we can glean from the records available, not a very remarkable one.
YES, "We noticed."
All through your campaign and even now, you have surrounded yourself with individuals who are basically unqualified for the positions for which you appointed them. Worse than that, the majority of them are people who, like you, bear no special allegiance, respect, or affection for this country and her traditions.
YES, "We noticed."
You are 9 months into your term and every morning millions of Americans wake up to a new horror heaped on us by you. You seek to saddle working Americans with a health care/insurance reform package that, along with cap and trade, will bankrupt this nation.
YES, "We noticed."
We seek, by protesting, to let our representatives know that we are not in favor of these crippling expenditures and we are labeled "un-American","racist", "mob". We wonder how we are supposed to let you know how frustrated we are. You have attempted to make our protests seem isolated and insignificant. Until your appointment, Americans had the right to speak out.
YES, "We noticed."
On September 11, 2001 there were no Republicans or Democrats, only Americans. And we all grieved together and helped each other in whatever way we could. The attack on 9/11 was carried out because we are Americans.
And YES, "We noticed."
There were many of us who prayed that as a black president you could help unite this nation. In six months you have done more to destroy this nation than the attack on 9/11. You have failed us.
YES, "We noticed."
September 11 is a day of remembrance for all Americans. You propose to make 9/11 a "National Service Day". While we know that you don't share our reverence for 9/11, we pray that history will report your proposal as what it is...a disgrace.
YES, "We noticed."
You have made a mockery of our Constitution and the office that you hold. You have embarrassed and slighted us in foreign visits and policy.
YES, "We noticed.."
We have noticed all these things. We will deal with you. When Americans come together again, it will be to remove you from office.
Take notice.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
bogus job numbers
*
* The Wall Street Journal
* NOVEMBER 2, 2009
Stimulus Created 640,000 Jobs, White House Says
Estimate Highlights Issue That Remains Politically Volatile
*
By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON and LOUISE RADNOFSKY
[Data Show 650,000 Stimulus Jobs] Associated Press
The jobs data reflect stimulus spending on projects such as highway repairs and funding for education.
WASHINGTON -- About 640,000 jobs have been created or saved by the $787 billion stimulus package, the White House said Friday, an estimate that didn't satisfy Republicans or ease worries about rising U.S. unemployment.
The relatively small size of the gain -- fewer than the number of jobs lost just in January -- was pointed out by Vice President Joe Biden, and highlights the politically volatile issue of jobs, despite signs the U.S. economy is growing again.
The larger issue for the Obama administration is that far more people have lost jobs than have become employed through even the most expansive estimates of stimulus job creation. The government estimates that 10 million Americans have been laid off since the start of the recession. Some 15 million are now out of work, despite the third-quarter rebound in gross domestic product reported this week.
Republicans called the job numbers "bogus," and said they failed to address criticism the program was adding too few jobs at too great a cost.
"The trillion dollar 'stimulus' isn't working, and no amount of phony statistics can change that," House Republican Leader John Boehner said in a statement.
Consultant Jim Robins, shown Oct. 8 at a project partially funded with federal stimulus money. A culvert in Corralitos, Calif., will be replaced with a bridge to make a creek more viable for spawning steelhead trout.
Mr. Boehner circulated a memo Friday from Carnegie Mellon University economist Allan Meltzer that said, "One can search economic textbooks forever without finding a concept called 'jobs saved.' It doesn't exist for good reason: how can anyone know that his or her job has been saved?"
Some companies also appear to have included temporary workers who had jobs for only days or weeks.
Write to Elizabeth Williamson at elizabeth.williamson@wsj.com and Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@dowjones.com
* The Wall Street Journal
* NOVEMBER 2, 2009
Stimulus Created 640,000 Jobs, White House Says
Estimate Highlights Issue That Remains Politically Volatile
*
By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON and LOUISE RADNOFSKY
[Data Show 650,000 Stimulus Jobs] Associated Press
The jobs data reflect stimulus spending on projects such as highway repairs and funding for education.
WASHINGTON -- About 640,000 jobs have been created or saved by the $787 billion stimulus package, the White House said Friday, an estimate that didn't satisfy Republicans or ease worries about rising U.S. unemployment.
The relatively small size of the gain -- fewer than the number of jobs lost just in January -- was pointed out by Vice President Joe Biden, and highlights the politically volatile issue of jobs, despite signs the U.S. economy is growing again.
The larger issue for the Obama administration is that far more people have lost jobs than have become employed through even the most expansive estimates of stimulus job creation. The government estimates that 10 million Americans have been laid off since the start of the recession. Some 15 million are now out of work, despite the third-quarter rebound in gross domestic product reported this week.
Republicans called the job numbers "bogus," and said they failed to address criticism the program was adding too few jobs at too great a cost.
"The trillion dollar 'stimulus' isn't working, and no amount of phony statistics can change that," House Republican Leader John Boehner said in a statement.
Consultant Jim Robins, shown Oct. 8 at a project partially funded with federal stimulus money. A culvert in Corralitos, Calif., will be replaced with a bridge to make a creek more viable for spawning steelhead trout.
Mr. Boehner circulated a memo Friday from Carnegie Mellon University economist Allan Meltzer that said, "One can search economic textbooks forever without finding a concept called 'jobs saved.' It doesn't exist for good reason: how can anyone know that his or her job has been saved?"
Some companies also appear to have included temporary workers who had jobs for only days or weeks.
Write to Elizabeth Williamson at elizabeth.williamson@wsj.com and Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@dowjones.com
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