Dealing WIth The Democrats

x

Like Gulliver being overwhelmed by the Lilliputians....


Reason and rational thought are being overwhelmed by the relentless obfuscations, misdirections, attacks, non sequitur's, purely partisan legislative initiatives, and non-truths being unleashed by the army of Obamacrats'  and their 5th Column in the 4th Estate, the apparent bull-pen for Obama's communications staff and the Democrat Party.

Let's take a look at the issues Obama and the Democrats have put up that need to be addressed:

• Signing the Omnibus Funding Bill was the most brazen act of hypocrisy committed by President Obama. Despite his oft-stated campaign promises to change the way that Washington worked and to go line-by-line through every budget and eliminate ear-marks, Obama, in a most sinister way, signed this pork-laden affront to the citizens of the United States with the sole comment that it had errors in it, and he'd do better next time.
  
  
• The Employee Free Choice Act (another Orwellian aspect of the Bill) was reintroduce in the Congress by the Democrats . Not only will this dishonestly named act eliminate freedom of choice for the workers by eliminating the secret ballot, but they've slyly included injected the government into collective bargaining. If a union and an employer can't agreee to their first contract in 120 days, the government will appoint a panel of arbitrators who will. An arbitration panel's power to dictate terms is virtually limitless. Such panels could impose uncompetitive wage rates and unworkable work rules. Arbitrators could also impose mandatory union dues and discharge for failure to pay. Neither of these elements are needed, unions currently win well over 50% of certification elections (In the first half of 2008, they won 67% of the time).  This Act is not only a pure political payback to the Unions for their support, but a highly injurious intrusion of the hand of government into private commerce.  If enacted, this will have a chilling and significantly negative impact on job growth in the U.S. There seems to be a direct correlation between states with high unionization and low job growth - Michigan being a prime example.
  
  
• President Obama, in signing the executive order allowing Federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, was not only ungracious in his comments regarding President Bush, but dishonest and cynically sly in his statements. As Charles Krauthammer points out in his column, "Bush had restricted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research [specifically]to cells derived from embryos that had already been destroyed (as of his speech of Aug. 9, 2001). While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, Obama replaced it with no line at all. He pointedly left open the creation of cloned -- and noncloned sperm-and-egg-derived -- human embryos solely for the purpose of dismemberment and use for parts."  Although many dismiss the concept of 'slippery slope', the historical reality shows up that when ethics are tossed aside, man can be an extraordinarily evil being. As Krauthammer points out, Dr. Mengle and Tuskegee are but a few examples. Obama's abdication of the role of an ethical parent by abandoning the decisions on dealing with human embryos, will be a stain on his legacy forever.
  
  
• This week, ostensibly "pro-nuclear" Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced the administration's decision to eliminate nuclear energy as a direction for our energy independence, by killing the nuclear-waste-storage site at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. Chu said the project needed a "fresh look" and that "we can do a better job." That's an interesting perspective from a supposedly astute scientist, but then again, similar to Al Gore, he is a Nobel Laureate.
  
  The Yucca site has been studied for more than 20 years, undergoing $9.5 billion of tests by some 2,500 of the nation's leading scientists who gave it a clear green light to proceed for the following reason; it's in the middle of nowhere and has ideal meteorological conditions.  If after all that analysis we can't stockpile waste there, we won't be able to find another place.  At least not in our lifetimes.  As pointed out by Josh Gilder , "those billions of dollars of studies determined that 10,000 years from now the greatest annual radiation dose near Yucca Mountain as a result of deteriorating storage canisters would be 0.24 millirem. In a million years, it might get up to .9 millirem. Yet normal cosmic radiation delivers a dose of 26 millirems a year at sea level. If you moved from Manhattan to Denver, you'd be about doubling that."
  
  
• President Obama's Education agenda sounds great initially. I can't argue against calling for higher standards, more charter schools, merit pay, increased accountability and eliminating bad teachers.  However, as they say, the proof will be in the pudding.  The initial information that I've been able to get (and given it was from NPR...who could argue with it - smirk on my part) suggests that he's not being forthcoming.  It appears that his idea of evaluating teacher quality will be based on teachers completing some type of certification process managed by the NEA, as opposed to objective and credible and tested knowledge of the students. It appears that we have another credibility issue with this President.  The NEA, just like it's brethren in other unions, will be able to increase it's ability to shut out competition from non-union teachers and non-public schools.  This is not a surprise, given that by signing the Omnibus funding bill, he eliminated the Federally funded voucher program that allowed disadvantaged black children to continue their attendance at the Sidwell school where his own daughters are students.  As the Wall Street Journal reports , "The stimulus bill throws an unprecedented $100 billion at the nation's 14,000 school districts, but it subsidizes the status quo and demands little from recipients in return. The Milwaukee school system is receiving millions of dollars for additional school construction though it has excess capacity and stagnant enrollment. Detroit Public Schools, according to a recent Detroit Free Press story, "stands to reap $530 million -- $355 million with no strings attached -- from the federal stimulus package that will hand Michigan nearly $7 billion over two or three years. . . . In all, the state and local school districts could have at least $2.5 billion to spend as they see fit." (Our emphasis.)
  
  Detroit graduates a mere 24% of its students and has a history of corruption. Audits in 2001 and 2004 found $2.5 million missing or misspent, and the city's schools superintendent was fired in December for incompetence. How does shoveling hundreds of millions of dollars more into such a system advance Mr. Obama's reform agenda?"
  
  
• It always depends on whose ox is being gored.......It seems that the celebrities in Hollywood and New York believe in Supply-Side Economics, and they also give proof to the adage that when you tax things, you get less of them, and less tax revenue.   The Wall Street Journal  reports that "the actor Alec Baldwin recently rebuked New York Governor David Paterson for threatening to try to help close the state's $7 billion budget deficit by canceling a 35% tax credit for films shot in the Big Apple.
  
  "I'm telling you right now," Mr. Baldwin declared, "if these tax breaks are not reinstated into the budget, film production in this town is going to collapse, and television is going to collapse and it's all going to go to California." Well, well. Apparently taxes do matter, at least when it comes to filming "30 Rock" in Manhattan.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the Motion Picture Association of America states that "nearly 40 states have corporate tax carve outs, or generous cash rebates, to lure movie studios to their states.
  
  Of course, this is the same Hollywood film industry whose members fund causes and candidates that favor raising taxes on everyone else. The Motion Picture Production and Distribution industry last year gave $14 million in political contributions: 89% went to pro-tax Democrats. A few years ago, director Rob Reiner funded a successful California initiative to raise the state income tax rate to more than 10%. Unlike a film shoot, which can relocate on a moment's notice, your average small businessman in Encino is stuck paying the highest tax rate in the country -- at least until he gives up and moves to Reno."
  
  
• Joe Biden was correct,  President Obama is being tested, and it didn't take six months. He's been "flicked " by the Chinese, the Iranians, NATO, and the Russians already, but now the Cuban's and Chavez 'flicked' him too. They both announced that they would provide landing and support capabilities for Russian long-range Tu-160 Blackjack bombers, a supersonic, heavy bomber, designed to strike strategic targets with nuclear and conventional weapons deep in continental theaters of operation. Now the question is, how will he respond to these threats? And how will the rest of the world assess his reaction? Oh, yes, lest we forget, the Chinese upped their 'flicking' by Chinese Premier Wen Jaibao asking whether or not US Treasury Bills were safe. "There’s no safer investment in the world than in the United States,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today. Wen earlier said he is “worried” about his country’s holdings of U.S. government debt. China held $696 billion of U.S. government securities at the end of last year, 46 percent more than 12 months earlier.  Expect this subject to be raised often and loud by the Chinese if Obama doesn't respond effectively, and that doesn't mean just saying "our IOU's are good".
  
  
• Maxine Waters has once again displayed tremendous insensitivity, if not actual ethical violations as a result of her actions associated with OneUnited, a Black-owned bank.  If one were to follow the Attorney General,  Eric Holder's advice to not be a coward and discuss race issues, this would be one of those 'magic moments".  Representative Waters actions, if done by a white person, would have that person subjest to a Judicial investigation, and rightly so.  The question is, will the Democrats have the fortitude to do the right thing.  My guess is that they won't, and she will continue in her corrupt ways.
  
  
• Obama has now created a rift between what he said he was going to do, and what he's done.
  First, he said he was going to eliminate earmarks and go through the budget to eliminate pork.
  He did just the opposite.
  Second, he was going to be bi-partisan.
  Aside from offering a few drinks at the White House, he hasn't been.  In fact, he's been exceedingly politically partisan.
  Third, ethics reform was a big deal for him during the campaign.  He couldn't stop bashing lobbyists as the main culprits of our governmental problems.  Well, not only did he nominate lobbyists to key positions, the majority of his nominees have been tax evaders, or cheats.  Nice start, can't wait to see what happens when he gets a real feel for the job.  His Cabinet and Congress will really look like the Star Wars bar scene.
  
  
• I'm convinced that one of the fundamental elements of the financial crises has been the requirement for banks and other financial institutions to mark their assets to market.  In November I called for this FASB regulation to be changed, and recently their have been others  calling for the same action. The reason that our banks need more capital, is that the government has required them to value their assets backed by mortgages to zero, because there isn't any market for them right now.  Those assets are worth a lot more than zero, and you and I would both love to have ownership of them.  Allow the banks to value their assets appropriately, and the financial crises would end tomorrow.  Of course we'd still have to rebuild the economy, but at least Barny Frank, Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters, and Barack Obama wouldn't be as much in the way.
  
  
• Ending on a classic view of this nation at it's journalistic best, here's the Chris Matthews – Ari Fleischer smack down.  Ari wins.....
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
  
  

And that's just one week's worth of issues (if I hadn't run out of time, Iraq, Iran, and the whole global climate change fiasco would have listed too.)

Republicans Are From Venus, Conservatives Are From Mars

The Conservative - Republican Kerfuffle

The following is for those with any interest in the Conservative and Republican scuffling-around while outside the halls of power. Others, can click off now.

There’s been a lot of discussion and commentary on the subject of Republican Party leadership and Conservatism the past few weeks, and Dan Flynn’s following article in the Spectator, illustrates the kerfuffle that’s going on between Conservatives and Republicans (separate entities) to effectively articulate their relative positions. I think that both are seeking an effective way to present themselves to the broader public, with the ultimate goal of winning hearts and minds. My view of the difference between the Conservative and Republican Party entities is more fundamental than usually presented, and not effectively explained by employing the term Far-Right as an element of the commentary, although I do believe that there is a Far-Right, just as there are Communists. A better descriptive may be the term ‘Resolved’… as in a firm position.


It seems to me that a significant element of the quibble is that in general, most Conservatives prefer to see principles determine policies, while many Republicans are comfortable embracing their opposition’s policies in the pursuit of their own more flexible principles..…


Many Conservatives favor a clearer presentation and evangelization of the ‘why’ of Conservative principles, believing that if understood, they would be preferred by a majority, and if implemented, they would enable a much improved and effective society. Preferring to convert, not necessarily rule, and in general, believing that principles are immutable and not subject to compromise.


Many Republicans, although oriented towards Conservative concepts, are more interested in the process of wresting political power for their Party in order to implement their preferred policies, and as a result, are amenable to compromise. To those so oriented, less of a ‘bad’ policy is ok, if that’s what gets them elected. They can work with being ‘Liberal - Light’, as they see society being on a trajectory of inexorable value changes, and their main goal becomes just slowing that train down, while getting themselves holding the throttle. Being optimists, they harbor the fantasy that in time it just might eventually be possible to stop the ‘train’ and turn it around. Resolved Conservatives believe that getting on a track that Liberals have laid out, even for just a short run, is a one way journey they don’t want to start.


For both groups, this period will be an uncomfortable and disjointed period without a lot of focus, or feeling of accomplishment. Someone will ultimately emerge who'll be able to reconcile both sides, once again, into a formidable political movement that will seize that throttle back. Hopefully, it won’t be too late.


Dead Wrong
By Daniel J. Flynn on 3.12.09 @ 6:09AM

Dead Wrong  

By Daniel J. Flynn on 3.12.09 @ 6:09AM

Newsweek's favorite conservatives are either dead or not very conservative. Its obituary of Bill Buckley serves as exhibit A. The current David Frum-penned cover story, featuring a muzzling "Enough!" that covers talk-host Rush Limbaugh's moneymaker, is exhibit B.

"I'm a conservative Republican," writes Frum. "I volunteered for the Reagan campaign in 1980. I've attended every Republican convention since 1988. I was president of the Federalist Society chapter at my law school, worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and wrote speeches for President Bush -- not the 'Read My Lips' Bush, the 'Axis of Evil' Bush. I served on the Giuliani campaign in 2008 and voted for John McCain in November. I supported the Iraq War and (although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect) the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I could go on, but you get the idea."

Indeed, he could go on. Frum supported the banker bailout. He wrote last September, "I say 'aye' to the proposed national debt bailout -- and a big shout out to Rep. Barney Frank, one of its early authors, who has been a prescient early voice on the need for a big solution to a big problem." He is pro abortion-rights: "I am not pro-life. I think abortion ought to be legal for the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy and available to protect the health of the mother during the weeks thereafter. I don't see this as a matter of fundamental human rights, so much as one of accommodating reality." In his latest volume of advice to conservatives, Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, he advises them to get over their fixation of lowering income-tax rates and offers a massive "carbon tax" as a way of promoting "green conservatism."

David Frum, in other words, isn't very conservative these days. One might say he has evolved. Twelve years ago, for instance, Frumbrilliantly schooled Andrew Sullivan in an online debate over gay marriage. Now, despite ballot rejections of homosexual marriage in such deep-blue states as California, Michigan, and Oregon, Frum inexplicably argues that the gay marriage train has left the station and it’s time for conservatives to, if not get on board, at least get out of the way.

Frum's embrace of various liberal positions doesn't make him a dummy, or an unskilled writer, or someone who should be excluded from a necessary conversation among self-identified conservatives about the direction of their wayward movement. It just makes him rather hubristic to envision himself as a general giving marching orders, or as a pope issuing excommunications, to a movement he no longer has much use for.

The piece suffers from the same delusion its writer has: the conflation of the cultural and policy objectives of the conservative movement with the electoral success of the Republican Party. The first six years of the Bush presidency have cured some conservatives of that delusion, but not Frum -- as the article's interchangeable use of "conservative movement" and "Republican Party" demonstrates. This common error does more to explain the conservative movement's sorry state than any "aggressive," "bombastic," "cutting," or "sarcastic" utterance of the talk-radio king.

Frum's premise is one that nobody privately accepts: Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. As Frum notes, this is a useful notion for Barack Obama and Rush Limbaugh. It allows the president to hand-select his opposition, with the hand-selected opponent naturally going along with the flattery. It's good for the president's Gallup poll numbers and the talkmeister's Arbitron ratings. Unstated is that the situation also presents an opportunity for a writer to land space in a mass-circulation liberal magazine by trading on his credibility as a "conservative" voice to mouth ideas soothing to the editors at that mass-circulation liberal magazine.

Frum points out that Limbaugh is a fat, thrice-divorced, cigar smoker who once had a major drug problem. Ad hominem masquerades as argument, as so many talk-radio critics imagine it does on the airwaves, in the pages of Newsweek. The pot calls the kettle black throughout.

The Newsweek article informs, "In the conservative world, we have a tendency to dismiss unwelcome realities. When one of us looks up and murmurs, 'Hey, guys, there seems to be an avalanche heading our way,' the others tend to shrug and say, he's a 'squish' or a RINO -- Republican in Name Only." Or how about an "Unpatriotic Conservative"? It neither occurs to Frum that he once served as the chief enforcer of the very real narrow-mindedness that he now castigates, nor dawns on him that the avalanche "heading our way" has already hit.

For Frum, it's not the failed president he dubbed "the right man," or the far-fetched utopian military crusades he advocated as "an end to evil," but Rush Limbaugh who is to blame for the Republican Party's sorry state. It's worth remembering that Limbaugh is neither a new phenomenon nor at the apex of his influence (Remember the bestsellers? The magazine covers? The late-night television show?), which makes laying the blame for the Republican Party's current woes on a radio host in national syndication since the Reagan years a rather dubious proposition.

Frum's Bush-worshipping book, Torquemada-like intolerance of Iraq war dissent, and big-government conservatism is what got conservatism into the mess. Just as Rush Limbaugh serves as a useful distraction from the president's economic woes, the radio yakker serves as a useful distraction from the destructive role Frum has played within the conservative movement during the Bush presidency.

When liberals adopt you as their token conservative, kiss your credibility among conservatives goodbye and say hello to writing gigs at the Atlantic, appearances on Keith Olbermann's program, and lectures at the Kennedy School of Government. David Brooks, who serves as the house conservative to both PBS's News Hour and theNew York Times op-ed page, could have told David Frum this. To be the liberals' favorite conservative is usually an indication of just how alienated from conservatism one really is.