Keep Looking For The Data Velma- People Still Don't Get It

Velma Hart, who famously told President Obama in a September town hall meeting that she was “exhausted of defending” him, was laid off this Friday from her job as a corporate financial officer at AmVets, a veterans organization.

In September, Hart told Obama that she was “deeply disappointed” in him. “I have been told that I voted for a man who said he was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class,” she said. “I’m one of those people. And I’m waiting, sir. I’m waiting.”

In an interview with CNBC, Hart said she remained an Obama supporter. “I’m a data-driven person. The data says the economy’s getting better.”

But she also expressed anxiety about her current situation. “I don’t take lightly the fact that I know friends who’ve been looking for jobs for two years,” Hart said. “Could it take me two years to find a job? Wow, that’s a scary proposition for me and my family.”

Ultimately, Hart hopes to remain upbeat and “assume that somehow things will work out, that there’s an opportunity out there with Velma’s name on it that’s right around the corner.”

Obama: The Environmental President

The President is certainly known to be all things to all people- just ask him. As the Gulf Oil spill disaster continues becoming the world's greatest environmental disaster in history, Obama stands around as clueless as he was the day he entered office.

Where's George Bush to pound when you need him? While Bush owned the natural disaster that was Hurricane Katrina, Obama has yet to own this event. The media, too, has been far more forgiving for Obama's indecision and inability to act here than they were for Bush's inaction following Katrina.

In the end, this is on Obama's watch. You own it Barack. Besides being responsibile for doing nothing, you are responsible, along with BP, for allowing damage to pummel the coast unabated. Nice work, but I wouldn't expect anything more from you. We know you aren't a superman. I had my reservations you were even a good man before you took on the highest office in the land. I just wonder when the rest of the electorate will come to realize exactly who you are.

Obama: The President Of The United States Of ... MEXICO!?

President Felipe Calderon is against "criminalizing migration."

*

Thanks for clearing that up Felipe. I thought it was illegal immigration we were trying to stop. That's okay, Obama understands our "frustrations" despite taking the side of a foreign nation and standing with him against the governor of Arizona. It's all quite clear now.

*

President Obama calls it a "failure" of the Federal government. He's right on that point and as long as it gives him a chance next November he'll stick to his guns on this one an continue playing the "racial profiling" card. Thanks for standing with America Barack. You never hesitate to let me down and at least your consistent. Is anyone going to start impeachment proceedings soon against the President Of The United States before he start working for someone else?

*

Democrites

It's astounding how often the hypocritical modern Democrat, hijacked by the radical left, can talk outside both sides of their.... mouth.

Obama, the "post-racial" man behind class warfare [see here], doesn't seem to have a problem making as much money as he can. He doesn't seem to have a problem hanging out with his disingenuous political buddies like Al Gore, who just purchased another house at 9 million dollars. He doesn't seem to have a problem spending your money for his programs, money you wouldn't have if you subscribed to his philosophy. There's certainly nothing wrong with that unless you're Obama infusing Obamunism into your arguments to stir Americans into class turmoil against one another.

The same holds true with race relations. Obama, possibly the smallest political leader in recent memory, wouldn't think twice to whip up racial strife for an ideological goal. These efforts are dangerous and the leader of this country is causing great damage with each tired, passing day of his office.

Jan Brewer: Arizona Governor

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer could potentially be one of the greatest leaders in American history. It's far too early to tell, but she is one of the first political leaders to take charge and make tough decisions. Her tough leadership is controversial, because she isn't laying down for all of the people on the left who want to see the status quo rule and continue to degrade the country's standard and constitutional principles.

We need more people like her. Obama will fight her tooth and nail because she represents everything he stands against and that is a strong, secure America.

We're behind you Jan Brewer.

Mr. Hip Blackberry Man Twitter Guy Isn't So Hot About All Of That Access All Of A Sudden

We can't have everyone getting the truth so quickly now.

Once again, these are the words of President Barack Hussein Obama. When the clips and quotes are from the man's lips what more can you say?

"And meanwhile, you're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it's putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy."

The Will, Courage & Leadership. Do We Have It?

True Colors

Obama Quote Of The Week Slipping Off Topic:

“I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

What The Hell Is Wrong With You?

'You're out there living the American dream, trying to make money the "American Way." That whole thing is tired. You're making too much damn money you horrible American you! I'll fix that soon enough. We can't have that now.' Wake up America! I'm not rich, but I won't begrudge Americans the greatest freedom on the planet- the pursuit of weath and happiness. This is what Obama believes. It's un-American and he's our President. What's wrong with this picture people?

A Patchwork Orange (con't.)

If Anyone Knows Despicable Behavior, It's Patrick Kennedy.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-OxyContin, deems an insufficient number of reporters are in the House press gallery and reacts as if he's just seen the Hindenburg explode.

Kennedy isn't running for reelection; three Democrats (state representative Jon Brien, Providence Mayor David Cicilline, and William Lynch) seek his seat.

Of course, all of them thought that having this bellowing, tantrum-throwing toddler represent the people of Rhode Island's 1st District was a fine idea until Kennedy announced his retirement.

Long before then, Republican John Loughlin thought that district deserved better. And I understand he even knows when to use his indoor voice.

Feeling Sick?

A government takeover of health care — which is essentially what Obamacare represents — will cripple one of our most productive job-creating sectors. Private health care produced almost 700,000 new jobs in the last two terrible years, all while overall payrolls fell by 7.5 million. Think about that.

Education, Congress &c.

The premise that we should fire an entire educational staff from top to bottom makes no sense when I'm sure the issue of a lack of parent involvement with regard to failing students is probably non-existent.

If we accept this premise so should we be able to accept the premise that we fire everyone that has failed the American people by running agencies into deficit.

Such as:

Social Security
The Post Office
Amtrack
Medicare
Medicaid
FDMC and FNMA (Two entities that were mandated by Janet Reno by pain of prosecution to force banks to loan to people who otherwise did not qualify by industry standards.)
Car companies
Banks

When the government achieves solvency then it may feel free to address most of the educators in this nation who work tirelessly to overcome the battles our kids suffer today with serious home-life problems.

Then discuss my students at Davie; some raped, molested, abandoned, whose parents may be rightly sentenced to prison; whose parents may (and probably do) abuse drugs and alcohol; parents who never come to a conference or can not speak English although they have lived in this country for many years.

Let's work together to replace this Congress and "The One" and the travesty they provide our educational system with the simple sanity of common sense.

[Submitted by Ruthie]

Presidential Hindsight

A year ago, a newly elected President Obama enjoyed a 68 percent public approval rating. There were substantial Democratic majorities in both houses of the Congress. Presidential press conferences were little more than media love-fests. Apparently there was no need to reach out, when a bold, new liberal agenda for the country seemed a sure thing.

But now? Obama consistently polls below 50 percent. The Senate super-majority was lost with the stunning win of Republican Scott Brown in liberal Massachusetts. A grassroots conservative tea-party movement helped put Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey. And polls show that the November 2010 elections might result in the largest Democratic setback in a generation, with possible losses of both houses of Congress.

Pundits of both parties now fault Obama’s style of governance. Public protests express disapproval over out-of-control federal spending and borrowing, and the idea of state-run health care.

So fairly or not, it seems like a panicked President Obama is abruptly scrambling to do what he should have done over a year ago.

Presidential Pretzel Logic

The idea that government spending creates jobs makes sense only if you never ask where the government got the money. It didn’t fall from the sky. The only way Congress can inject spending into the economy is by first taxing or borrowing it out of the economy. No new demand is created; it’s a zero-sum transfer of existing demand.

The One says the $300 billion spent from the stimulus thus far has financed as many as 2 million jobs. Maybe. However, the private sector now has $300 billion less to spend, which, by the same logic, means it must lose the same number of jobs, leaving a net employment impact of zero. But the One’s single-entry bookkeeping simply ignores that side of the equation.

Plumbing Problems

Joe "the plumber" thinks he was used by Obama and McCain? Join the club, my friends.

Change We Can Believe In!

Please join us for an afternoon with

RHODE ISLAND’S NEXT ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIK WALLIN

Saturday, February 27, 2010
3:00pm – 5:00pm

At the home of Garret Roberts
223 Hull Cove Farm Road
Jamestown, RI 02835

Beer, wine & appetizers will be served.

Please RSVP by February 26th to Garret’s assistant Audrey
(401) 884-8701

42

One thing that strikes me about Evan Bayh's decision is that the GOP no longer has 41 votes. They have 42.

Bayh obviously has his eye on something beyond spending time with his family. Be it a presidential run or a gubernatorial run, there is no way he'll vote for the Obamacare measures Reid and Pelosi have been pushing.

In fact, he's very likely to swing more rightward in his votes until the day his seat is open.

We live in interesting times. More often than not, that's a curse. Right now it is a blessing.

A Patchwork Orange (con't.)

The retirement of Patrick Kennedy has struck a chord with many. While conservatives are happy to see a liberal pack his bags, pangs of melancholy for the man persist.

There is a sense that the young congressman never really “fit in” in Washington.

That’s no excuse for his mistakes and vitriol learned all too well from his father (see: Thomas, Clarence; Bork, Robert etal.)

Fifty years after JFK was elected president, we may, finally, be seeing an end to a strange political malady that afflicted not only Patrick, but his father, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Garry Wills wrote an excellent book about it, and its title says it all: The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power (1981). Ted, Wills writes, was fine with keeping “alive some memories,” but seemed to “dwindle beside the shadowy evocations.”

Ted, Wills concludes — and, we argue, Patrick — ultimately was “at his best when he is not running.” A “sense of freedom” grew “on him as his chances faded.”

Wills, of course, was writing about Kennedy’s 1980 presidential campaign, but he could have been describing the son circa 2010.

Kennedy, Wills continues, “performed his best when he was showing his mettle as a survivor, not bidding to take over.

Forced by fame, by his name, toward power, he tightens up.

Allowed to back off, he relaxes.

This is not surrender. . ."He seems to be acquiring a sense of power’s last paradox — that it is most a prison when one thinks of it as a passepartout. When one thinks of it as a prison, one is already partway free.”

Today, in his own way, Patrick Kennedy is “partway free."

Gorbasm

NOAA: Blizzard Rearranges Climate Change Announcement


As D.C. continued to dig out from Snowmageddon and is keeping an eye on another storm system, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was busy making a climate change announcement.

NOAA, part of the Department of Commerce, is going to be providing information to individuals and decision-makers through a new NOAA Climate Service office. “More and more, Americans are witnessing the impacts of climate change in their own backyards, including sea-level rise, longer growing seasons, changes in river flows, increases in heavy downpours, earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons in our waters. People are searching for relevant and timely information about these changes to inform decision-making about virtually all aspects of their lives,” the release says.

Earlier snowmelt? That would be nice.

Turns out the release was planned prepared ahead of the snowstorm, which shut federal agencies today and forced its senders to hold a press conference by telephone instead of at the National Press Club.

Breaking. . .

EPW HEARINGS POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER

UPDATE: The following Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearings have been postponed due to inclement weather this week:

- The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife, will hold a hearing entitled, "Collaborative Solutions to Wildlife and Habitat Management."

- The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will hold a hearing entitled, "Global Warming Impacts, Including Public Health, in the United States." Once the hearings are rescheduled, information will be posted at www.epw.senate.gov

Thanks Al!

In Rhode Island we are looking forward to as much as 18" of Global Warming.

What Goes Around. . .

Tips of the hat to RCP and Megan McArdle for unearthing these two gems.

Here is Barack Obama in a speech in 2005, calling for then-president George W. Bush to give it up on social security privatization:

"I mean, the fact of the matter is, is the president has been on his 60-day tour, and everywhere he goes the numbers just get worse. The American people have essentially voted on this proposal and really what you have is a situation now where I think that the president and the Republican Congress are going to need to figure out a way to save face and — and step back a little bit. And if — if they let go of their egos — listen, I've been on the other side of this where — particularly with my wife. (laughter) Where I've gotten in an argument and then at some point in the argument it dawns on me, you know what, I'm wrong on this one and it's — it's — it's irritating, it's frustrating. You don't want to admit it, and so to the extent that we can provide the president with a graceful mechanism to — to say we're sorry, Dear, then I think that would be — that would be helpful."

Second, a June 2005 New York Times editorial urging Bush to admit defeat in Congress and stop blaming Democratic "obstruction":

"Congressional Republicans have begun talking with top White House aides about an exit strategy — not from Iraq, but from the winless quagmire of President Bush's campaign to privatize Social Security. Mr. Bush has responded to this new political reality by, first, insisting that the American people do not yet understand the virtues of privatization, and second, blaming the failure of his deservedly unpopular plan on Congressional Democrats.

That's absurd.

After listening to Mr. Bush talk of little else during his second term, the American people understand quite well what he is proposing for Social Security, and by wide margins reject it. In fact, the polls show that the more they learn about privatization, the less they like it. . . .

Mr. Bush has reacted by railing against Democrats for obstruction — as if Democrats are duty-bound to breathe life into his agenda and, even sillier, as if opposing a plan that the people do not want is an illegitimate tactic for an opposition party."

Wounded Animals

One of the stranger behaviors of the ever-stranger Obama administration is its sudden adoption of the "wounded fawn" posture.

No opposition was more stridently critical of a sitting president than was the anti-Bush Left.

Barack Obama, as candidate and president, could not start a speech without saying "Bush did it."

Have we forgotten the 2006–08 canonization of Michael Moore, the silence about the Nazi slurs, the award-winning assassination docudramas, the Knopf novel about killing George Bush, the "General Betray Us" ad, Al Gore's vein-bulging "brownshirts" outburst, and on and on?

But suddenly pundits and politicians have embraced a new gospel about conciliation and the need to restrain harsh discourse — which is fine, but many of these advocates for a gentler, kinder dialogue were bomb-throwers just a few years ago.

And now we hear from none other than John Brennan, the Obama-administration counter-terrorism expert, who soberly sermonizes on the lamentable politicization of the war on terror, and particularly the popular derision of the decision to treat the Christmas-day airliner plot as a normal criminal-justice matter.

But isn't Brennan the same official who used to give loud political speeches, heralding not only the superior new Obama anti-terrorism methodology but also the failings of the Bush approach (which kept us safe for seven consecutive years)?

We seem to recall that Brennan recently characterized the former vice president as "ignorant."

And in August 2009, Brennan's first official speech lambasted the Bush administation ad nauseam (e.g., "The fight against terrorists and violent extremists has been returned to its right and proper place: no longer defining — indeed, distorting — our entire national security and foreign policy"; "President Obama has made it clear that the United States will not be defined simply by what we are against, but by what we are for — the opportunity, liberties, prosperity, and common aspirations we share with the world"; "Rather than looking at allies and other nations through the narrow prism of terrorism — whether they are with us or against us — the administration is now engaging other countries and peoples across a broader range of areas. Rather than treating so many of our foreign affairs programs — foreign assistance, development, democracy promotion — as simply extensions of the fight against terrorists"; "We see this new approach most vividly in the president's personal engagement with the world — his trips, his speeches, his town halls with foreign audiences"; "As many have noted, the president does not describe this as a 'war on terrorism'"; "Likewise, the president does not describe this as a 'global war'"; "Nor does President Obama see this challenge as a fight against 'jihadists.' Describing terrorists in this way — using a legitimate term, 'jihad,' meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal — risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve"; and so on).

In other words, Brennan himself was not content simply to continue America's anti-terrorism protocols, or to modify them in relative silence; instead, he chose to grandstand about the superiority of Obama's revisionist approach.

And when Obama's approach proved "problematic" — with the KSM trial, the Abdulmutallab mess, the Fort Hood massacre, the continuation of tribunals and renditions, and failed promises on Guantanamo — Brennan suddenly went from hyper-partisan to nonpartisan.

Then there is the strange case of Richard Clarke.

He too has deplored "the partisan rhetoric" about the Obama administration's anti-terrorism policies: "Recent months have seen the party out of power picking fights over the conduct of our efforts against al-Qaeda, often with total disregard to the facts and frequently blowing issues totally out of proportion, while ignoring the more important challenges we face in defeating terrorists."

This surely cannot be the same Richard Clarke who in the election year 2004 came out with his partisan exposé Against All Odds, which damned the Bush administration, after earlier delighting the D.C. press corps with wild charges that George Bush had "undermined the war on terrorism."

There is a rule of thumb with the Obama administration and its most vocal supporters: Those who loudly deplore the new partisanship and acrimony are typically those who in the past were the most partisan and acrimonious.

Care For A Cup Of Tea?

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems
and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the
Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against
inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on
appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve
Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine
Supreme Court Justices equates to 545 apparently inept selfish human
beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally and
individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this
country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that
problem was created by Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its
Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally
chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound
reason: they have no legal authority. They have no ability to
coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one
thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that
what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con
regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human
being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would
have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President
for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget.
He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole
responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and
approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House?
Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and
fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they
want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if
they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot
replace 545 people who stand convicted by present facts of
incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single
domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the
power of the federal government, it must follow that what exists
is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the
red.

If the military is deployed, it's because they want it deployed.

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite
retirement plan not available to "the people," it's because they want
it that way.

There are no unsolvable government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they
hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and
advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to
regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not
let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied
mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that
prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they
alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who
are their bosses.
Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel
Newspaper.

This might be funny if it weren't so darned true.


Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Sales Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharg Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Worker's Compensation Tax

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years
ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had
absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the
world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What in the hell happened? Can you spell 'politicians?' And I still
have to 'press 1' for English?

[H/T Sheila Verdi]

A Patchwork Orange

A Rhode Island television (WPRI) station's poll shows that Kennedy is looking surprisingly vulnerable:

The poll shows 31 percent of those interviewed said they would “consider another” candidate and 28 percent said they would “vote to replace” Kennedy. Those who would re-elect the eight-term Congressman came in at 35 percent. Five percent weren’t sure.

A caveat: "The poll, conducted by Fleming & Associates for WPRI-12, interviewed 250 registered voters in Kennedy’s district and comes with a 6.2 percent margin of error." That's a bit bigger than I prefer. Interestingly, they polled Kennedy’s numbers statewide (Rhode Island has only two districts) and found that across the state, a mere 35 percent give Kennedy a favorable rating, with a 62 percent unfavorable rating; in his own district he has a 42 percent favorable and 56 percent unfavorable.

Kennedy's district has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+13, and Obama carried 65 percent of the vote in this district in 2008. It's tough sledding, but if the Kennedy name isn't carrying the same weight as it used to in Massachusetts, we can only wonder how effective it will be this year for a lawmaker who's a lot tougher on Capitol Hill security barriers than he is on, say, runaway spending.

But John Loughlin has some Scott-Brownian aspects of his background: was in the Army Reserves from January 1978 to November 2004, earning the rank of Lieutenant Colonel; saw duty in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995 and 1996; former public affairs officer at NASA; runs a television production company... and spent a few years doing stand-up comedy. So unlike Kennedy, his remarks on the campaign trail will be intentionally funny.

I suppose there's always a chance that Kennedy could rehabilitate his image, but one wonders if voters will be comfortable with the same representation they have had since 1994, the distilled essence of Kennedy liberalism, at a time when the nation faces so many serious and sobering issues.

Who Dat!

Congratulations to the Saints. Dey ain't Aint's no mo'.

Observation

Anyone suppose it is about time PepsiCo resolved to reconciliation with the post-Obama logo?

Couric & Co. (Con't.)

With all the talk of corporate greed and inequality, did people like Katie Couric think that in tough times they were immune from the laws of populist outrage?

Did Couric believe that, amid significant layoffs at CBS, she could still garner pay worth 200 salaries of $75,000 in the new age of egalitarianism?

What's next?

When movies bomb, will actors' pay be presented in terms of how many cameramen could have been hired with their payouts?

What's interesting is that Obama's egalitarian "accuse" movement was largely supported by those who — logically, at least — were precisely the individuals Obama was railing against: people earning more than $200,000 a year who make x-times more than their lowly coworkers.

So, given the new mood of the country and the new tax codes on the horizon, can we expect law professors, actors, media celebs, and others gladly to pay 65 percent of their ill-gotten gains in state taxes, federal income taxes, new payroll taxes, and health-care taxes?

And can we start asking the tough questions?

For example: Why do endowed professors teach fewer classroom hours than part-timers who make one-fifth their wages?

Somehow, Obamaism convinced many that they were avatars of needed change, unlike the greedy "them," and thus were exempt from the logical consequences of their own rhetoric.

The problem, however, is that Obama's most influential base of support is "them."

This could catch on.

Imagine the possibilities: John Edwards sells his "two Americas" mansion. Al Gore gives his energy-guzzling estate over to poor environmental activists. Warren Buffet forsakes the esoteric deductions that gave him an 18 percent income-tax rate and happily starts paying 60 percent of his income as his "fair share." Bill and Melinda Gates hold back $20 billion or so from the foundation and give it to a broke treasury desperately in need of estate-tax revenue.

And That's The Way It Is. . .

Drudge reports that CBS is cutting from the top to the bottom:

CBSNEWS anchorwoman and 60 MINUTES contributor Katie Couric faces a dramatic pay cut at the network, insiders tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

... "She makes enough to pay 200 news reporters $75,000 a year!" demands a veteran producer. "It's complete insanity."

... Couric's $300,000 a week paycheck has become the obsession of disgruntled CBS staff, just as deep layoffs rock the fishbowl.

Check Your Panties

The Washington Post reports today that “authorities are inching toward an agreement that would secure cooperation from the suspect in the failed Detroit airliner attack.” Inching is the operative word here. It’s been over a month now that this terrorist has been exercising his “right to remain silent.” Each day that goes by when he does not talk is an outrage.

The Post adds that “public defenders for the Nigerian student are engaged in negotiations that could result in an agreement to share more information and eventually a guilty plea, the sources said. Negotiations could still collapse before the next scheduled court date, in April, the sources said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.”

April? Negotiations “could still collapse”? Are they kidding?

What Obama officials don’t seem to understand is that the intelligence Abdulmutallab has is perishable. He was supposed to be vaporized with the plane when it exploded. As soon as al-Qaeda learned he had survived, they began shutting down e-mail accounts, bank accounts, moving and hiding operatives, and closing the intelligence trails he could lead us down. Every second, every minute, every day he did not talk resulted in lost counterterrorism opportunities. If he starts talking three months from now, that’s not good enough.

The Post also reports that Abdulmutallab “clammed up even before he was informed of his right to remain silent” and suggests this “complicates” the GOP narrative that reading him his rights cost us valuable intelligence. To the contrary, it complicates the narrative from the White House that they got all the valuable intelligence they needed from him before reading him his rights. And it makes the case stronger that coercive interrogations might have been necessary to get the information we needed from him.

The more we learn about this incident, the more outrageous the story becomes.

— Marc Thiessen’s new book is Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.

Fuzzy Math In The Washington Examiner

By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
01/29/10 6:29 PM EST
A trade publication is reporting this afternoon that President Obama's 2011 federal budget proposal will assume receipt of billions of dollars in revenue generated from the cap-and-trade program even though that proposal appears now to be all but dead in Congress.

"The White House told Sen. John Kerry's office that the president plans to assume revenue from the controversial climate policy approach. Kerry aides said they had assurances the revenue won't be designated for issues unrelated to energy policy and combating climate change.

"Obama last year proposed in his fiscal 2010 budget that a cap-and-trade program would raise some $650 billion over 10 years via a full auction of emission credits, with the money primarily going to pay for middle-class tax cuts and development and deployment of clean energy technologies," Energy and Environment News senior reporter Darren Samuelson wrote in the publication that is subscription-only.

Obama repeated during his State of the Union address Wednesday evening his hope that Congress would pass the energy reform bill that featues as its anti-global warming centerpiece establishment of a cap-and-trade program of government credits for carbon emissions reductions that businesses would buy and sell.

The proposal's main Senate co-sponsors are Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who is chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat. A similar bill co-sponsored by Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts was approved by the House last year.

The House bill projects cap-and-trade revenues of $873 billion.

Whether it's the $650 billion projected by the Senate bill or the $873 billion of the House bill, it appears highly unlikely, to put it charitably, that either measure will make it to Obama's desk with the cap-and-trade program intact. That means Obama will be counting phantom revenue as part of his next federal budget proposal.

But then Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program has produced two million phantom jobs located in phantom zip codes in phantom congressional districts, so perhaps nobody should be surprised to see phantom revenues in a White House budget proposal.

On Third Thought. . .

When Obama gives the usual review of all the programs, stimulus efforts, and new entitlements he's overseeing, almost no one seems to conclude that he is simply detailing how he is going to redistribute nearly $2 trillion a year in annual borrowing. When we cut through all the soaring Great Society rhetoric, we are left with a "Gorge the Beast" strategy in which money is borrowed and given to favored constituencies before being paid back by less popular groups through higher taxes.

Given the aggregate $7-10 trillion in additional debt envisioned over the next four years, Obama may well become the greatest redistributor in U.S. history, at last addressing his 2001 lamentation about the absence of meaningful "redistributive change" in America. The only question at this point is whether Obama's gargantuan deficits are aimed primarily at lavishing constituencies with cash, or rather at making it necessary to raise taxes in a way that serves to reduce income inequality.

Barry? Time To Come In. . .

Obama the tax cutter, Obama the gas-and-oil driller, Obama the budget freezer, Obama the anti-lobbyist reformer, Obama the bipartisan healer?

This half-hearted pivoting was quite transparent: Obama made these about-faces without acknowledging that the Obama of 2010 is now and then rejecting the Obama of 2009, much less that the partisanship and bickering of the past year stemmed largely from the hubris of having both houses of Congress and an obsequious press. Instead, Obama seemed miffed that after Scott Brown’s victory he had to offer half-hearted sops.

After Obama spent 2009 ignoring jobs in order to focus on health care, he tells us that 2010 will be the year of jobs. So after a year of promiscuously talking about higher income, payroll, health-care, and inheritance taxes on “them,” Obama suddenly believes that small business is the engine of growth, and will therefore get new tax cuts and credits.

Likewise, after ignoring or negating his campaign promises about coal, gas, and nuclear power in his first year, suddenly Obama announces that we’re going to develop them!

Same with federal spending freezes. Same with ethics reform — the first general-election presidential candidate to refuse public campaign financing now deplores the weakening of McCain-Feingold.

We also heard many of Obama’s familiar rhetorical devices:

1) He trotted out the usual straw men: “I was told by some,” “Washington has been telling us,” etc. And once these awful straw men are set up, our hero Obama answers defiantly, “I don’t settle for second place!” The straw-man ploy is now stale.

2) The “I didn’t ask for” trope: Obama acts as if he bravely endures persecution on our behalf, rejects the easy path, and presses ahead on the difficult path.

3) The “they did it” trope: So when Obama talks of “lobbying” and “horse trading” on health care, apparently some right-wing nut in the Senate started buying votes at $300 million a clip? The Washington insider who has the White House and Congress blames . . . Washington!

4) The “Bush did it” trope: So Obama’s deficits are the result of Bush’s spending and weak economy — but is a relatively quiet Iraq due to Bush’s successful surge? No. Obama himself will bring the war in Iraq to a close. He did not offer one word of praise for Bush in a speech calling for unity.

5) The meaningless token: So after piling up the two largest budget deficits in U.S. history, Obama promises fiscal sobriety and spending freezes — but only in 2011, after we pile up yet another year of trillion-dollar-plus red ink.

6) The above-it-all lecturing: After blaming Bush for 30 minutes and castigating the Republicans for “just saying no to everything,” Obama lectures on Washington’s partisan bickering. And after a year of hardball Chicago politicking, a politically weakened Obama calls for bipartisanship and a new tone. That will go over really well.

7) The meaningless deadlines and promises: No speechwriter should invoke Iran and a deadline to comply on nonproliferation; no one believes Obama after the past four failed deadlines, and he should give it all a break.

8) The final hope-and-change flourishes: The emotional end of the speech, which used to set crowds afire in 2008, seemed more rote.

All in all, this was a nonchalant performance that ran for well over an hour. The president’s above-it-all cynicism, mocking, and dry humor didn’t work. The whole thing reminded me of a flat grad-school seminar with a snickering prof talking down to clueless students.

Conservatives, Liberals & Reality

I continue to hear a lot of talk among liberals that the reason their health-care reform effort is in trouble, the reason Obama has mediocre-to-lousy approval ratings (particularly on the economy and health care), the reason Democrats are losing big races, and the reason 2010 is looking like an impending political bloodbath is essentially right-wing "misinformation campaigns."

Look, conservatives spent much of 2007 and 2008 arguing that Obama was a pleasant, charismatic man with few legislative accomplishments, no experience as a manager, few concrete results in any area where he had worked, some naïve beliefs hidden by extraordinary eloquence, and no idea of just how hard the job of the presidency is.

He underestimated the intractability of certain problems (Middle East peace), wildly overestimated the effectiveness and efficiency of government programs (stimulus spending), had a bad eye for talent (Biden, Geithner, Richardson, Daschle, Napolitano), often had bad first instincts ("I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother"), seemed to trust those who didn't deserve it (Iran), and had sailed along in the world of politics because up until now, everyone was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Throughout that time, a large percentage of the American people rejected that argument. "He seems to know what he's doing. His campaign was a well-run ship. Look at that calm temperment. He was editor of Harvard Law Review. He'll be fine, and he'll probably be great," they concluded.

From 2007 to now, the arguments of the Right haven't changed; what has changed is that now the evidence to support the Right's initial perception — collected by watching this president in action — is becoming more and more compelling by the day.

Barack & Buyer's Remorse

Many saw Obama's polls dropping for a variety of reasons, and can anticipate what's next.

People took the candidate at his word of bipartisanship, fiscal seriousness, and centrism, and from day one got instead shady Cabinet nominations of tax cheats and lobbyists, indifference to congressional corruption as symbolized by Rangel and Dodd, a whiny monotony of "Bush did it" for a year, a 1,000-page health-care monstrosity, fiscal insanity, serial appeasement of enemies with conscious neglect of old allies, and on and on.

No hope, less change.

And when the polls showed that almost the entire Obama agenda — more stimuli, more new government programs, statist health care, cap and trade to come, no gas/oil/nuclear promotion, apologetic foreign policy, "comprehensive" immigration reform as envisioned by the La Razistas — was unpopular and polling poorly, congressional Democrats, for much of the summer and fall, sighed something like, "Oh, no matter, the rock-star president's ratings are still untouchable and he can come in here and by osmosis put me over the top."

But not now.

The former celebrity Obama has lost that luster, point-by-point over a year, bleeding by a thousand small cuts until he nears 40 percent approval.

In themselves, the bad jokes like the flippant remark about the Special Olympics, the lunatic appointments like Anita Dunn and Van Jones, the serial untruths about airing the health-care debate on C-SPAN or shunning lobbyists, the phony deadlines on Gitmo and the Iranians, the bribing of senators with hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayers' funds, the bowing, the snubbing of the British, the use of the race card against tea-party critics, the Skip Gates mess, the Orwellian NEA business, constant fluff photos ops, but rare real press conferences — all that in the aggregate brought Obama to his present state.

And now the question is not whether the president's charisma can save his unpopular agenda, but rather whether the president's growing unpopularity makes things even worse. This takes place, of course, in a landscape of 10 percent unemployment, a nearly $2 trillion debt, and rising energy prices. Somehow more deficits and subsidized wind and solar won't be winning issues.

An obvious prediction: The upcoming show trial of KSM, cap and trade, and amnesty are not winning issues — and will have to be Gitmoized or they will threaten to destroy the Democrat party for years.

Finally, how ironic — Obama was elected as a reaction to Bush's mistakes of deficit spending and big-ticket new entitlements that nullified his otherwise effective anti-terrorism war; instead, he took what people liked about Bush and ridiculed them, while trumping Bush's spending that had turned so many off.

Obama Does Club Gitmo

Among President Obama’s quite strange statements about the foiled Christmas Day bombing attempt, the strangest of all were his comments about Guantanamo Bay.

After declaring that he will not release any more detainees back home to Yemen, Obama reiterated his intention to close Guantanamo. Indeed, he claimed that the detention center was a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda (and thus indirectly may have been a prompt for the likes of Mutallab?). This is quite silly and raises a number of embarrassing questions:

Did a nonexistent Guantanamo terrorist detention center encourage al-Qaeda’s attacks all through the 1990s that culminated in 9/11? If Guantanamo serves no useful purpose other than to encourage the enemy’s efforts at recruitment, why has Obama kept it open for a year — and why is he not likely to close it for another year? Why not simply close it now?

If Obama is really looking to identify the conditions that might have created a landscape for renewed attempts to harm the U.S. (there have been more terrorist attempts in 2009 than at any time since 9/11), he might consider his own administration’s rhetoric over the past year.

Describing anti-terrorism efforts as “overseas contingency operations” aimed at “man-made disasters”; making references to a litany of American sins; confessing to underappreciation of pseudo-Islamic accomplishments like the printing press and the foundations of the Renaissance and Enlightenment; constantly trashing a prior American president — all of this has fostered the impression abroad that America no longer sees radical Islamic terrorists as an existential threat.

If I were an Islamic terrorist, I would conclude that the present administration simply has lost interest in fighting, and that the time is ripe for a counterattack. At some point, we need an end to the three-year “Bush did it” whining by candidate and now President Obama, and a redirection of such animus and pique toward our real enemies.

Thank You For Calling, Joan

Over at Salon.com, Joan Walsh kicks off the New Year with a revival of our favorite self-pitying talking points from the soy-'n'-socialism set: Liberals lose out in politics because they are too:

1. nice;

2. honest;

3. pure;

4. loving;

5. decent.

Yeah, tell that to a Charlie Rangel, Barney Frank or a Chris Dodd. Tell it to Bill Clinton. Tell it to the ghost of any of the Kennedys or LBJ. Tell it to Joan Walsh, for that matter, editor of "petrified chimp" hit pieces.

Too pure is not the elected liberals' problem; too squirelly is.

Top 10 Cable Shows Of 2009

TVNewser has the list. Here's the top ten:

1. The O'Reilly Factor - 3.34M

2. Hannity - 2.51M

3. Glenn Beck - 2.32M

4. Special Report - 2.04M

5. On The Record - 1.97M

6. The Fox Report - 1.88M

7. O'Reilly Factor (11pm Rpt) - 1.51M

8. Your World - 1.48M

9. Americas Newsroom - 1.43M

10. Studio B - 1.21M

Do you detect a pattern?