At Least 12.5%

clipped from www.qando.net The most recent release of unemployment data has raised some questions, namely, how can we lose 20,000 jobs in the same month that the unemployment rate declined to 9.7%.  The answer is simple: The unemployment rate is essentially a made-up figure.  And I can give you a much more accurate way to measure the unemployment rate. Fortunately, there is a better way to calculate the rate of real unemployment, and the BLS web site conveniently provides you with all the data you need to do it.  From here, we only need three items: The Civilian Noninstitutional Population, the Participation Rate, and the number of Employed. OCT 08: Civilian Noninstitutinal Population: 234,612,000 Participation Rate: 66% Labor Force: 154,843,920 Employed: 145,543,000 Unemployment Rate: 6.0% Jan 10: Civilian Noninstitutinal Population: 236,832,000 Participation Rate: 66% Labor Force: 156,309,120 Employed: 136,809,000 Unemployment Rate: 12.5%

Curiously Contra

clipped from www.cashill.com It seems altogether possible that the progressive and adventurous 17 year-old Dunham was impregnated by a black man while the family was still living in the Seattle area. If so, this pregnancy could have prompted the family to uproot to Hawaii where no one knew them and where mixed-race babies were more accepted.  According to the Andersen account, whose source was Maxine Box, "There were loud arguments between father and daughter -- fights that sometimes turned violent."  Ann did not want to go. Both the "Dunham as father" and the "anonymous black father" scenarios would make the Obama camp wary of sharing Obama's actual birth certificate, either because Dunham was not Obama's mother or, if she were, because Obama was born much earlier than August 4, 1961.

Projections Of The Mad

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Khamenei, whose public statements should be taken seriously, is promising some sort of devastating “punch” against the West on Thursday the 11th, the same day as the Green Movement is calling for a monster protest against his regime. What might he have in mind?  I don’t know;  they say a lot of things just for effect, but threats/promises from the supreme leader have a certain standing.  If I were an Israeli official, I’d recheck my information on Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. Some think he’s preparing some kind of attack against Israel.  Surely there has been no shortage in recent weeks of nasty language against the Jewish state.  Here’s Foreign Minister Mottaki a day ago: “Iran is facing a mad nation led by insane people. This is the reason why all of us in the region – in Syria, in Lebanon, and the Palestinians – must be prepared constantly for any crazy operation against us.”

Countdown

clipped from www.breitbart.com Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that Iran is set to deliver a "punch" that will stun world powers during this week's 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution. "The Iranian nation, with its unity and God's grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman (February 11) in a way that will leave them stunned," Khamenei, who is also Iran's commander-in-chief, told a gathering of air force personnel. The country's top cleric was marking the occasion when Iran's air force gave its support to revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a key event which led to the toppling of the US-backed shah on February 11, 1979. His comments came as Iran said it would begin to produce higher enriched uranium from Tuesday, in defiance of Western powers trying to ensure the country's nuclear drive is peaceful.

Divide

clipped from www.qando.net The divide between the Political Class and Mainstream voters, however, is remarkable. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Mainstream voters are angry, but 84% of the Political Class are not. Those numbers include 57% of Mainstream voters who are Very Angry and 51% of the Political Class who are not angry at all. But then 68% of Mainstream voters don’t think the leaders of either major political party have a good understanding of what the country needs today. Sixty-one percent (61%) of the Political Class disagree. By comparison, the majority of Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliateds don’t believe the current political leaders have a good handle on what is needed today. Older voters and higher-income voters share that belief most strongly. Thus the Tea Parties and the very negative reaction by the PC to them. They simply don’t get it. We’re seeing laments about how the good old day before the damned internet, talk radio and 24 hour cable let the enlightened elite do as they wish.

Hand

clipped from www.moonbattery.com In the future, moonbats won't be so quick to denounce crib notes, in light of these revealing pictures:

Until The Next Time

clipped from pajamasmedia.com “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.” Saghal was suspended from Amnesty International within a few hours after publicly expressing her dissent. Saghal closed the letter describing her suspension with a recitation of her revolutionary credentials. It is an eerie passage which echoes structure for structure many of the protestations of innocence by the Old Bolsheviks when they found themselves in the cellars of the Cheka, stuffed there by a leadership that found they had outlived their usefulness. She wrote: I have been a human rights campaigner for over three decades, defending the rights of women and ethnic minorities Why does she think any of this matters?  The Left is not about principles. It is about itself. It is about power. Now that President Obama has been politically weakened look for the mask to come back on. Until the next time.

Just What I Choose It To Mean

clipped from www.firstthings.com How about that? They quickly “remedied” the situation, and corrected the record, and they didn’t even mock the president and his team for complaining about erroneous stories, as they did to the last administration. But what struck me was this line: Our budget explicitly calls for permanently extending the Bush tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. What? People who were not rich got Tax Cuts under Bush? I thought the Bush Tax Cuts were evil, and immoral, and they were only for the “top 1%” of earners in the country – his gift to his rich pals? You mean there were Bush Tax Cuts that were not evil or immoral and that deserve to be extended? That they were, in fact, so respectable that the Obama administration even acknowledges them as “Bush” tax cuts and retains them? This is the same White House that is also retaining most of Bush’s policies on terrorism and stuff, right? The same predecessor Obama keeps blaming for everything?

$123T

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com The 20th century radically reduced deaths due to acute infectious diseases, which were concentrated in infancy and early childhood. In 1900, more than 33 percent of all deaths were of children under 5; today they are less than 2 percent. In 1900, deaths of persons 65 and older were only 18 percent of all deaths; today they are 75 percent. This demographic destiny might entail starving every other sector of society -- including national defense, at great cost to America's international standing. It had better not, given what Fogel argues in another essay, this one in the current issue of Foreign Policy. It is titled "$123,000,000,000,000." Fogel's subtitle is: "China's estimated economy by the year 2040. Be warned."

Curtain Call

clipped from online.wsj.com The curtain has come down on what can best be described as a brief un-American moment in our history. That moment began in the fall of 2008, with the great financial panic, and gave rise to the Barack Obama phenomenon. The nation's faith in institutions and time-honored ways had cracked. In a little-known senator from Illinois millions of Americans came to see a savior who would deliver the nation out of its troubles. Gone was the empiricism in political life that had marked the American temper in politics. A charismatic leader had risen in a manner akin to the way politics plays out in distressed and Third World societies.

QOTD: That's Right Kids

clipped from online.wsj.com That's right kids, stay in school, work hard, stay out of trouble and when you grow up, you can pay for those who didn't. —David Thompson

The Curvature O Nonsense

clipped from pajamasmedia.com According to the Washington Post, David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s senior advisor, said that the president worked with “[Harvard professor] Laurence Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein’s theory of relativity.” I’ve read that paper, “The Curvature of Constitutional Space.” It’s complete nonsense. The key thesis of the Obama-Tribe paper is contained in the opening sentences of its abstract: “Twentieth-century physics revolutionized our understanding of the physical world. Relativity theory replaced a view of the universe as made up of isolated objects acting upon one another at a distance with a model in which space itself was curved and changed by the presence and movement of objects. Quantum physics undermined the confidence of scientists in their ability to observe and understand a phenomenon without fundamentally altering it in the process.” All of these sentences are completely wrong.

P.J. On The Biggest Health Hazard

clipped from theology.meetup.com The Clinton administration is putting together a program so that college graduates can work to pay off their school tuition. As if this were some genius idea. It's called getting a job. Most folks do that when they get out of college, unless, of course, they happen to become governor of Arkansas. And the Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps volunteers? Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse. But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen? You know. if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

Not Getting It III: The Audacity Of Hopelessness

clipped from article.nationalreview.com In the last 60 years, the size of America’s state and local workforce has increased five times faster than the general population. But the president says it’s still not enough: We have to incentivize even further the diversion of our human capital into the government machine. Like most lifelong politicians, Barack Obama has never created, manufactured, or marketed any product other than himself. So quite reasonably he sees government dependency as the natural order of things. And in his college-loan plan he’s explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you’re a schmuck and a loser. In the America he’s building, you’ll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swollen bureaucracy that takes six weeks off a year and retires at 53 on a pension you could never dream of. It’s the audacity of hopelessness.

Not Getting It II: Total Societal Collapse

clipped from article.nationalreview.com Simply as a matter of internal logic, this is somewhat perplexing. After all, when he isn’t blaming Bush, Obama blames “Washington” — a Washington mired in “partisanship” and “pettiness” and “the same tired battles” and “Washington gimmicks” that do nothing but ensure that our “problems have grown worse.” Washington, Obama tells us, is “unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems.” So let’s have more Washington! In our schools, in our hospitals, in our cars, in everything! Which raises the question: Does even Obama listen to Obama’s speeches? The public does — at least to this extent: They understand that, when he’s attacking the tired old Washington games, he’s just playing the tired old Washington games. And everything the president proposes means more debt, which at the level this guy’s spending means, at some point down the road, either higher taxes or total societal collapse.

Not Getting It

clipped from article.nationalreview.com In Indonesia, the principal of a Muslim boarding school in Tangerang who is accused of impregnating a 15-year-old student says the DNA test will prove that a malevolent genie is the real father. But in America Barack Obama is talking. Talking, talking, talking. He talked for 70 minutes at the State of the Union. No matter how many geckos you shoveled down your briefs, you still lost all feeling in your legs. And still he talked. If you had an erogenous zone before he started, by the end it was undetectable even to Frenchmen. But on he talked. As respected poverty advocate Sen. John Edwards commented, “After the first hour, even my malevolent genie was back in the bottle.” As my colleague Rich Lowry put it after the Massachusetts vote, the public thinks Obama doesn’t get it, and Obama thinks the public doesn’t get it. And as he’s got the microphone, he’s gonna keep talking at you until you do get it.

Solvency

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com In 2013, when President Mitch Daniels, former Indiana governor, is counting his blessings, at the top of his list will be the name of his vice president: Paul Ryan. The former congressman from Wisconsin will have come to office with ideas for steering the federal government to solvency. To make the economy -- on which all else hinges -- hum, Ryan proposes tax reform. Masochists would be permitted to continue paying income taxes under the current system. Others could use a radically simplified code, filing a form that fits on a postcard. It would have just two rates: 10 percent on incomes up to $100,000 for joint filers and $50,000 for single filers; 25 percent on higher incomes. There would be no deductions, credits or exclusions, other than the health-care tax credit (see below). Ryan would eliminate taxes on interest, capital gains, dividends and death. The corporate income tax, the world's second-highest, would be replaced by an 8.5 percent business consumption tax.

Oh Boy

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More Grave Rolling IV

clipped from money.cnn.com What would Keynes think of Obama's stimulus plan? It's unbelievable that a man whose main theme was to smooth investment comes to be the proponent of redistributing income away from the people and companies who do the investing. My advice on the stimulus plan was, don't do it. Let's look at the plan. First, a lot of the money was used to reduce the deficits of state and local governments by increasing the federal debt. It was simply money transferred from the federal government. The economic multiplier effect was zero. Second, the temporary tax cuts went to paying off credit cards and other debts, not spending that would have increased economic growth.

More Grave Rolling III

clipped from money.cnn.com Did Keynes champion tax cuts or government spending increases in a recession? Again, he was extremely vague. On spending, he did say that deficits should be temporary and self-liquidating. He clearly did not advocate long-term spending in excess of revenues, since that causes structural deficits. Nor did he specifically recommend tax reductions for individuals or companies. Those types of cuts, however, are an obvious way to achieve his goal of boosting investment in a recession. And it's been used with great success by his Keynesian disciples. For example, the Kennedy Administration tax cuts were championed by Keynesian economists, and proved very successful at raising investment. The temporary reductions under Carter, George W. Bush and Obama were all failures, since people spend more only when they're confident their take home pay will rise permanently. This is standard economic theory that the current administration ignores.

More Grave Rolling II

clipped from money.cnn.com Didn't Keynes advocate temporary deficit spending in a recession? Keynes wanted deficits to be cyclical and temporary. He wouldn't have been in favor of efforts to raise tax rates in a recession to eliminate deficits. He viewed that as suicidal. He was opposed to the idea that governments should balance the budget during a downturn, and advocated running short-term deficits to spur the economy. The type of stimulus he advocated was very specific. He said it should be geared towards increasing private investment. He viewed private investment, as opposed to big government spending, as the source of durable job creation. He also said that the deficits should be self-liquidating, so that the increased economic activity caused by the stimulus inevitably generated a combination of extra tax revenues and lower unemployment payments. With higher revenues and lower outlays, the deficit would disappear.

More Grave Rolling

clipped from money.cnn.com NEW YORK (Fortune) -- The Obama White House likes to say that the theories of John Maynard Keynes form the foundation for its fiscal policies. Most notably, it draws upon the legendary British economist's idea of spending big to pull out of a recession. But one economist says the administration has gotten Keynes only half right. Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon is one of the most influential monetarists of the past 50 years. He has served in the Department of the Treasury under President Kennedy and on the Council of Economic Advisors during the Reagan Administration. He also authored the book, Keynes's Monetary Theory: A Different Interpretation. While the Obama team is laying out huge sums of money, Meltzer says it's neglecting a key part of Keynes' plan: You can't run up a debt without a way to cover it. If Keynes were alive today, what would he think of President Obama's fiscal policies? He would roll over in his grave if he could see the things being done in his name.

No Evidence

clipped from blogs.the-american-interest.com It’s not just the threat of Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035. Now another headline grabbing IPCC scare story is melting away.  A report in Sunday’s London Times highlights new humiliations for the IPCC. The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general. There is however one teensy-weensy little problem.  As Professor Chris Field, the lead author of the IPCC’s climate impact team has now told reporters that he can find “no evidence” to support the claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report. So: the Synthesis Report contains a major scare prediction — 50% shortfall in North African food production just ten years from now — and there is no serious, peer-reviewed evidence that the prediction is true. But there’s more. Much, much more.

#3?

clipped from www.washingtonexaminer.com I attended this past weekend’s National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, and I came away feeling that I had seen something important.  The Tea Party movement is part of something bigger:  America’s Third Great Awakening. This time, it’s different.  It’s not America’s churches and seminaries that are in trouble:  It’s America’s politicians and parties.  They’ve grown corrupt, venal, and out-of-touch with the values, and the people, that they’re supposed to represent.  So the people, once again, are reasserting themselves. But though Palin wowed the crowd with red-meat attacks on overspending, weak national defense, and broken promises, the key phrase in her speech was this one: “All power is inherent in the people.” And the biggest action item that she presented the crowd with wasn’t to support Sarah Palin, as most politicians would have asked, but to challenge incumbents in primary races.

COTD: Climaquiddick Stopped Clock Watch At The Beeb

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com Ian L. McQueen (11:28:08) : Maybe a bit off topic, I want to express my surprise at the sudden change in the BBC radio program “One Planet”. We get it in Canada in the wee-smalls of Sunday morning, 0500 or 0530. By chance I woke up within a couple of minutes of its beginning today and listened to the rest of the program via mini radio and earphone. The programs that I have heard in the past have been the usual promotion of AGW, as we expect from the BBC. The program today, nearly all of it, could have been scripted by any of us sceptics and was an excellent presentation with a sharp interviewer. If your computer has speakers, you can hear the broadcast at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/oneplanet/ It runs close to 30 minutes. I couldn’t believe my ears! IanM

2400 Words, 22 "I"'s

clipped from ace.mu.nu I am remiss in remembering this day. Here's his first inaugural address, as a commemoration. "We are too great a nation, to limit ourselves to small dreams." Goddamn right. The man could deliver a speech, couldn't he?

It's George W. Bush's Fault Again

clipped from www.washingtonexaminer.com Top Obama counterterrorism official John Brennan is blasting Republican lawmakers, accusing them of hypocrisy and of making a "political football" of the administration's decision to grant full American constitutional rights to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. UPDATE: Sen. Bond responds, saying Brennan "never told" him of the plan to Mirandize Abdulmutallab. Bond's entire statement: Brennan never told me any of plans to Mirandize the Christmas Day bomber -- if he had I would have told him the administration was making a mistake. The truth is that the administration did not even consult our intelligence chiefs, as DNI Blair testified, so it's absurd to try to blame Congressional leaders for this dangerous decision that gave terrorists a five week head start to cover their tracks.

That Is What This Movement Is About

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Global Warming Now So Intense That H*ll Has Finally Frozen Over

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com Snow covers a decorative iron fence at the White House in Washington, on Saturday, during a snow storm in the Washington area. Photo: AP via The Hindu

The soundtrack is here.

MRI Madness

clipped from www.tomsguide.com A man previously thought to be in a vegetative state has successfully communicated with doctors using an MRI machine. However, one of the patients managed to answer a series of yes or no questions using the MRI machine. Asked a series of six questions (such as, "Is your father's name Thomas?"), the patient was asked to think of one type of imagery for 'yes' and another for 'no.' brain activity on the MRI matched that of a control patient.

hOpe n Chains

clipped from www.tomsguide.com The FBI is calling for Internet service providers to keep a record of what sites customers visit and retain said log for two years. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is reportedly pressing ISPs keep a record of all sites visited by customers for a period of two years. According to CNet, the FBI believes that taking this measure could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes. Citing a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday, CNet's Declan McCullagh reports that FBI Director Robert Mueller (pictured) supports storing Internet users' "origin and destination information." McCullagh goes on to say that Mueller has backed this kind of data retention at the hands of ISPs for as long as four years and in 2008, he asked Congress to enact a law making it mandatory.

A Public Service Announcement For District Of Corruption Residents

clipped from cbullitt.wordpress.com

... if you still have power that is...

Shrinkage

clipped from pajamasmedia.com There’s a reason why Americans who don’t happen to work for the government or directly benefit from its largesse are not sensing an economic recovery. For them, it’s mostly not happening. ADP’s January employment report showing 22,000 private-sector jobs lost, the last available jobs-related information available when this column was written, only confirms that feeling.

The Back Story

clipped from www.futureofcapitalism.com When Russell Roberts, an economics professor at George Mason University and a fellow at its Mercatus Center and at the Hoover Institution, was approached last April out of the blue by a total stranger, filmmaker John Papola, and asked if he wanted to make a movie, he replied, "Well, that'd be fun." But, Mr. Roberts told FutureOfCapitalism.com in a phone interview, he wasn't sure the movie would actually happen – he'd been approached before by other people for similar ventures only to see them sputter out. And indeed, the project that became the Hayek vs. Keynes rap "Fear the Boom and Bust" had some false starts. The economist and the filmmaker started out with the idea of a situation comedy So even though Mr. Roberts, who has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago, describes himself as "not a rap fan, particularly," they settled instead on a rap video "Video is cheap, but high-quality, high-end video like this is expensive,"

O Jupiter

clipped from neoneocon.com Two links for your perusal: this and this. Perhaps you will agree with me that they are very, very disturbing. It has always been clear that Obama has an unusual amount of egotism, even for a politician. But these incidents are evidence that his narcissism may be growing, if such a thing be possible. After reading both articles, I recalled the imperial stage set Obama had designed for his nomination acceptance speech at Denver’s Invesco Stadium. The fact that things haven’t been going that well for Obama lately has done nothing to reduce his narcissism. That’s the way it usually is with narcissists. When they meet with obstacles, they tend to look not inward but outward at others to blame. And being surrounded by sycophants does nothing to stop this tendency. In AD 40…Caligula began appearing in public dressed as various gods Reportedly, he began referring to himself as a god when meeting with politicians and he was referred to as Jupiter on occasion in public documents…

Frozen Watermelons

clipped from www.qando.net The population of Britain is apparently finally catching on to the scam that’s been perpetrated by the man-made global warming crowd, and skepticism is thankfully on the rise: “It is very unusual indeed to see such a dramatic shift in opinion in such a short period,” Populus managing director Michael Simmonds told BBC News. “The British public are sceptical about man’s contribution to climate change – and becoming more so,” he added. “More people are now doubters than firm believers.” And in more “deficit of trust” news, India has declared it will form it’s own scientific panel to study climate since it finds the IPCC unreliable: The Indian government has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own leading scientist Dr R.K Pachauri. [...] “There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science.

Pedal To The Metal?

clipped from www.thetruthaboutcars.com Toyota uses two different electronic gas pedal designs in its cars. The version built by CTS (lower) is the subject of a massive recall, and the 2.3 million units in affected Toyota cars are to be “fixed” by the insertion of a steel shim. This CTS design is also being modified for new Toyota production, currently suspended. To our knowledge, Toyotas built with the other design (by Denso, upper) are not subject to any recalls or NHTSA investigations,. We have spent the last two days tearing down both units, and familiarized ourselves with their designs, reviewed Toyota’s “shim fix”, and replicated the fix ourselves. Toyota’s planned fix will undoubtedly reduce the likelihood of sticky pedals in the short term, but after examining both units, we are convinced that the CTS unit is intrinsically a flawed design, and poses safety risks in the long term, even with the fix.

The Crematorium Of Cost Cutters

clipped from www.thetruthaboutcars.com A quarter century ago, give or take a year, my brother Paul became the first in the family to drive a Toyota. A 1984 Toyota Celica-Supra. It was a true shifting of gears for the Lang Gang. Everyone up to that time had bought a GM. Mom and Dad drove Cadillacs (only one saw 100k). The eldest one had a Monte Carlo (a.k.a. Crapo) that didn’t see the road half the time. Second in line had a Regal (a.k.a. the dying diesel) that ended up stolen and trashed in the Grand Canyon. He actually felt sorry for the Canyon.  Within three years both these Roger Smith specials were replaced with 1988 Celica GT’s. Great cars with no nicknames necessary. But then things changed… Toyota’s quality took a sharp U-Turn and unintentionally accelerated towards the ‘decontenting’ highway starting in the late-90’s. pretty much every other Toyota that wasn’t a luxury car or first generation (RAV-4 and Sienna) went straight to the crematorium of cost cutters.

The Wasting Disease

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com I lived in Greece for more than two years, and one of my best memories is of a small hotelier at a seaside resort. He checked you in; he cooked; he did the landscaping at night; he did all the maintenance during the day. I asked him why he didn't hire more help, since his hotel wasn't all that small and he seemed to be going 24/7. What followed was a harangue about the cost of hiring a permanent worker in Greece, the difficulty of ever firing him if he proved worthless, and why he preferred to do everything himself rather than fill out all sorts of forms and hire unmotivated but tenured employees. Besides, he said, almost everyone was on some sort of pension, disability, or government benefit, and was unwilling to work, so his choices were either illegal immigrants or broke foreign students. Then he launched into a blast against socialism I think the medicine for Greece's current crisis will prove more unpalatable than the wasting disease.

Why Is This Coming To A Head Now?

clipped from pajamasmedia.com It looks like February 11th will be the most violent confrontation to date.  The regime is taking unusual measures to put down the promised demonstrations.  In many ways it resembles the “Chinese solution.”  The regime is aiming at 300,000 thugs in the streets.  The Greens don’t think the numbers will be that high, and in any event they expect ten times that number of protesters, upwards of three million increasingly angry people, demanding freedom and justice. Their resolve has undoubtedly been hardened by the very tough interview released earlier this week by Green leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. It’s quite a challenge: Today, the prison cells are occupied with the most sincere and devoted sons of this nation: students, professors and others. [Security forces] are trying to prosecute them with espionage or charges related to financial or sexual misconduct – charges based on expired formulas – while the real criminals and thieves who steal public money are free.

See here.

Get ready for Thursday.

Spendaholic

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Her Name Is...

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com With his all-seeing eye, Glenn Reynolds has directed readers to an intriguing story out of Pakistan and/or Saudi Arabia: A high-ranking Pakistani diplomat reportedly cannot be appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia because in Arabic his name translates into a phrase more appropriate for a porn star, referring to the size of male genitals, Foreign Policy reported. The Arabic translation of Akbar Zeb to "biggest d**k" has overwhelmed Saudi officials who have refused to allow his post there. In place of any straightforward cue to the story, Glenn substituted a quote from a very funny scene in "Monty Python's Life of Brian" (the scene is below). Glenn linked to the Fox News story with a quote from the scene that leads to its funniest bit: "Biggus Dickus happens to be a personal friend of mind. He comes from one of the noblest families in Wome. He has a wife, you know. Her name is . . . ."

Welcome To The "Mainstream"

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com The Gallup Poll finds that 53% of Democrats and 61% of liberals have a "positive image of socialism." That could explain a lot about the Obama administration. Meanwhile, the Tea Party is meeting in Nashville. CNN provides a primer on the Tea Partiers, and twice describes them as "far right." So: socialism is mainstream, but fiscal sanity and constitutionalism are "far right."

Bailout Tsunami

clipped from hotair.com Last month, we noted that Social Security had delivered its worst performance in decades.  Now, Allen Sloan warns investors at Yahoo Finance that the entire program has gone into the red — and will stay there.  Get ready, Sloan says, for the mother of all bailouts: Don’t look now. But even as the bank bailout is winding down, another huge bailout is starting, this time for the Social Security system. A report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that for the first time in 25 years, Social Security is taking in less in taxes than it is spending on benefits. This means that the federal government not only can’t rely on SocSec surpluses, which have been used to paper over budget deficits, it will have to increase the federal deficit to make benefit payments from now on. Even if we had a federal government living within its means, this would be a crisis — but with the debt that Obama is accumulating, it’s a fiscal tsunami waiting to crest.

New Ground

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Nice. Very.

O Jack-sses And A Dumbo

clipped from www.judicialwatch.org Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians." The list, in alphabetical order, includes: Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT): This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 "Ten Most Corrupt" list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him. In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat. Senator John Ensign (R-NV): A number of scandals popped up in 2009 involving public officials who conducted illicit affairs, and then attempted to cover them up with hush payments and favors, an obvious abuse of power. President Barack Obama: During his presidential campaign, President Obama promised to run an ethical and transparent administration. However

End Of Story

clipped from www.moonbattery.com An NRO reader points out why Chairman Zero's tinkering with the deck chairs when he's not busy drilling holes in the hull will not reduce unemployment: As the owner of a 16 year old wholesale computer parts company with about 50 total employees here and in England, I can tell you it's not about easy loans and tax credits for hiring. As you say, it is risk aversion. It is the knowledge that my taxes are going to go up and also we just don't see other businesses willing to take inventory positions right now. $5000 tax credit to hire someone? That really sounds like a proposal from someone who has never hired a single person in the private sector. Small business will start to hire when one big thing happens. Sales Growth. End of story. It is amazing to me that they don't get that if they did one thing, cut the corporate tax rate, business growth would happen almost immediately. In case you missed this yesterday:

The Demon Sheep

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As was said on NRO, the sheep shots are just beginning...

How Low Can We gO?

clipped from blog.american.com President Obama would permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for households with incomes below $200,000 ($250,000 for couples); statements that the president would allow the Bush tax cuts to expire are true only for households above those income levels. The president has also proposed some additional middle-class tax cuts. Should this make us happy about President Obama’s budget? Quite the opposite. As Arthur Brooks, Alex Brill, and I have pointed out, the middle-class tax cuts that the president would extend have large revenue losses and do relatively little to promote economic growth. The tax cuts at the top that the president would allow to expire would significantly lower marginal tax rates on saving and investment and promote long-run growth. Letting those tax cuts expire would ultimately harm the middle class by lowering their wages.

Distortions

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Allow me to make an analogy. As the Federal govt has the power to intervene in the market and cause massive harmful distortions it can also distort and damage our cultures. The grandparents of the 70-80% of Detroiters that are from single parent households came to Detroit to work in the industrial capitol of the world. Many did, and were gainfully employed without a problem. Then the federal govt started paying for single mothers causing an ever increasing number of them. With no father figure in the home the kids grew up feral, impregnated and abandoned teenage girls. These kids naturally did poorly in school. Eventually the school system became a kleptocratic patronage machine. While all this was happening state and federal money kept rolling in and anybody who pointed out that a)this was a waste of money and b)this was actually harmful to the communities causing a cycle a dependency was called a racist.

The Second Number

clipped from pajamasmedia.com David Sanger at the NYT stops just short of saying that President’s Obama’s policies are an admission that America’s pre-eminence on the world stage is over. It is broke and has no prospect of ever getting level again. The question is whether the budget simply recognizes this possibility or actually constitutes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sanger notes that the President’s budget contains two numbers. The first is a deficit percentage unseen since the Civil War, World War 1 and World War 2. It is a World War budget without a world war. But it is the second number that scares Sanger. But the second number, buried deeper in the budget’s projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. Yet it is, as Sanger says, Obama’s deficit that we are talking about now.

Glitch

clipped from www.zerohedge.com Last October the BLS announced it would revise historical payrolls lower by 824,000 on February 5 (this Friday's NFP release). First, here is what we know will be the BLS adjustment on Friday. Second, the reason for the adjustment has to do with the great recession, which having run for over 2 years now is still in no way abating (contrary to what you may be hearing in other still GE-contolled media outlets). Lastly, and most notably, the number that will have to be whacked from the payroll report in 2011 retroactively is even larger: according to Bloomberg it will be at least 990,000. And this is only for 9 months in the current period. a Moody's-like glitch has misrepresented the true payroll picture due to modelling error to the tune of over 1.8 million jobs. How that will impact the president's "jobs saved or created" calculation has yet to be determined. Unless of course all those jobs appear merely on the same excel file that the BLS uses for all it other erroneous calculations.

Panama II

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Jimmy Carter's signature achievement was throwing away strategically vital control of the Panama Canal, which America built. Chairman Zero can match that easily — by throwing away the Internet: Without the ingenuity of America's brightest minds and the investment of U.S. taxpayer dollars, there would be no Internet, as we now know it today. Now, the Obama administration has moved quietly to cede control of the Web from the United States to foreign powers. … In an effort to show the world how inclusive, sharing, cooperative, and international America can be, the Obama administration set off on a plan to surrender control and key management of the Internet by the U.S. Department of Commerce and its agents. The key to the control America has over the Internet is through the management of the Domain Name System (DNS) and the giant servers that service the Internet.

What Reality Looks Like

clipped from www.moonbattery.com It looks like Chairman Zero will be forced to back down from his plans to grant Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other prominent Al Qaeda terrorists a giant soapbox a few blocks away from Ground Zero. While the NPR/PBS crowd pouts at this setback for social justice, the rest of us are heaving a sigh of relief — especially Louis Pepe. Here's why: I was a federal prison guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. In 2000, I was with a prisoner, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, taking him back to his cell. His cellmate was Khalfan Khamis Mohamed. They were accused of bombing two embassies in Africa in 1998. Later they said that they worked with Osama bin Laden and that they helped set up al Qaeda. They sprayed me with some kind of hot sauce. I couldn't see. They pulled me into the cell and hit me — boom, boom. They hit me so much, I swear to God, like a hundred times. They put it in my left eye. It went three inches into my brain.

unsustainOble

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Last week, Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf testified before the House Budget Committee. That prompted this exchange: Q. In the report you use the term "unsustainable," a term which a number of people use in terms of the current budget deficit track and a term I've used myself. ... I'm not sure that there is a complete understanding of the consequences of inaction here in this town. We use the term "unsustainable." Can you be a little more specific and describe to us what that -- what happens? We do nothing; we now look at deficits of $500 billion to $1.5 trillion as far as the eye can see; what happens? ELMENDORF: I think a particular thing that's unsustainable is to have federal debt constantly rising as a share of GDP because that requires a larger -- ever-larger share of investors' portfolios to be occupied by treasury securities. And at some point they will refuse to hold them, or will insist on much higher interest rates to do so.

Helpless To follOw

clipped from www.popularmechanics.com The new budget, announced Monday, seems merely an attempt to disguise the demise of U.S. leadership in space. The president does away with Constellation, its Orion spacecraft, and its Ares I and Ares V boosters. The abrupt cancellation means the U.S. no longer wishes to send its explorers to the frontiers of knowledge and spacefaring skill. We are deliberately choosing to have no better space capability than do Russia, China, or India. During the height of the shuttle program in the 1990s, we launched six or seven shuttles and about 40 astronauts per year into orbit for science and defense purposes. Starting next year, and for the foreseeable future, just four Americans will make it into space annually—as passengers on foreign rockets. Is this a bold new course for the nation? With no ability to launch humans past the ISS, we will watch, helpless to follow, as China pursues its determination to be the next nation to send its explorers into deep space.

Competition

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Still, it's hard not to be a little shocked. The budget says, at page 40: Reduce the Itemized Deduction Write-off for Families with Incomes over $250,000. It's easy to understand the Obama administration's purpose with regard to churches and private charities, which it regards as competitors of the government. It wants to damage or destroy them by making contributions more expensive. But what about the mortgage interest deduction? The administration purports to be concerned about the decline in home prices that triggered the economic crisis of 2008-2009. But severely reducing the mortgage interest deduction will inevitably depress home prices. And not just the prices of expensive homes, either; as those prices fall, the values of less-expensive houses will decline as well. Is this really what the administration wants? It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Obama administration simply doesn't care about America's economy.

Brit Beeb Bunscombe Buncombe

clipped from bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com Has anyone else noticed a massive "push" this week by Pravda to tell us we are all wrong when we look out at the frozen snowy British landscape in the middle of winter and say "fuck me, it's 'taters!"? Guess why.... The man responsible for looking after the fat pensions of the boys and girls at the BBC is a climate change fanatic, and he is part of an international group of investment managers who bust a gut to invest in 'climate change' schemes. He's called Peter Dunscombe, and he runs the £8.2bn corporation pension fund, advising trustees on a day-to-day basis about their investments. Update: I've been going through the latest BBC Pensions Trust report, and it reveals that Helen Boaden, who is the overall boss of the BBC's news and current affairs operation, was appointed to the trust in 2008. So the woman who tells environment reporters such as Roger Harrabin and Richard Black that the science is settled also works to maximise the returns of the pension fund with Peter Dunscombe.

Follow the money...

Trust: Laundry Edition

clipped from www.securefreedomradio.org YERUSHALMI: Well that’s exactly right.  You would think that if they couldn’t own it maybe they could’ve got the Treasury Department.  But the Treasury Department had no legislative authority to take equity from AIG either.  So what did they do?  They came and opened up a discount window but created a so-called “independent trust” and they hired three trustees, and they insisted that these people were independent non-governmental actors, no conflicts of interests.  But in crafting the trust agreement they slipped in a barely noticed provision of the trust agreement which said “Oh by the way, the Fed controls the trust completely, its terms and effectively the trustees.”  Under anybody’s rendition of trust law this is not a valid trust, this is simply a ruse or an artifice for the Federal Reserve Bank.  The second– GAFFNEY: Which makes the proposition- David we’re just about out of time.  Which makes what they did as I understand it from a technical, legal sense, money laundering.

Trust

clipped from www.securefreedomradio.org YERUSHALMI: So here’s what we find out in the midst of discovery when we depose the Treasury Department’s deponent and the Fed and get documents, here’s what we’ve learned: The Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the time that it structured the debt that it was going to give AIG insisted that not only did it get the debt, not only would it get principal and interest payments and collateral for that, it wanted 80% of AIG, precisely 77.9% of the shares and the voting rights.  But the Federal Reserve Bank and Geithner knew that it was illegal for the Fed system whether there’s a Fed or the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to own that, so what did they do?  They created this independent trust.

Red Hot Bugs

clipped from chiefio.wordpress.com see his website “Musings from the Chiefio“ The empty ocean goes infinite hot on a null anomaly What to make of THIS bizarre anomaly map? Well, you always need a baseline benchmark, even if you are ‘benchmarking the baseline’, so why not start with the “NULL” case of baseline equal to report period? It ought to be a simple all white land area with grey oceans for missing data. Well, I was “A bit surprised” when I got a blood red ocean everywhere on the planet. You can try it yourself at the NASA / GISS web site map making page. “Houston, I think you have a problem”… Well, the code NASA GISS publishes and says is what they run, is not this code that they are running. Yes, they are not publishing the real code. So I simply can not do any debugging on this issue, because the code that produces these maps is not available. But what I can say is pretty simple: If a map with no areas of unusual warmth (by definition with the baseline = report period) has this happen; something is wrong.

Doublethink Doubletalk

clipped from pajamasmedia.com

COTD: Cancelled

clipped from www.zerohedge.com by Anonymous on Mon, 02/01/2010 - 21:13 #214234 Im a realtor in nw indiana suburb of chicago. Banks are canceling the sherif auction homes the day before the sale every single month for over a year even the ones that have been vacant for over a year. I dont think they can afford the write off's is what i been told. out of the 400 that go every month only 4 or 5 are sold every single month reply

Alas

clipped from www.zerohedge.com Everything that the government has done so far, with a few minor detours, has been almost exclusively focused on maintaining home prices high, by tweaking either the supply or the demand side of the housing equation. As the bulk of consumer net wealth is concentrated in the housing sector, and a wealthy and confident consumer, much more so than the banking system, is critical to the recovery of America's economy, the Administration will do everything in its power to achieve its goal of artificially manipulating the housing market Short-lived remedies Shadow Inventory Strategic Defaults Quantitative Easing Price Double Dip And there you have it: the best that the government can hope for is to extend and pretend, and to avoid presenting the sad but very simple reality to the American public. Alas, as long as the reset button is not pushed, the only beneficiaries are the very same Wall Street kleptocrats who want nothing more than further perpetuating the status quo.

Ridiculous Delusion

clipped from www.zerohedge.com Today, to much fanfare, the administration released its ridiculous $3+ trillion budget (we say + because at that size the one thing certain is that the budget will certainly never hit the target concerned with what is not included, namely $2.8 Trillion and $1.9 Trillion of MBS guaranteed portfolios at Fannie and Freddie, and an additional $782 billion and $809 billion in company debt outstanding for the two GSEs, respectively. This amounts to a total of $6.3 trillion in liabilities which should be counted toward the budget. And yet, oddly, the error-checker somehow made this rather justifiable omission: after all if we were to look at a number which written out looks as follows $6,264,000,000,000.00, we would also probably just avoid it What we definitely know is that we now live in a system where delusion is the norm: we have an administration that willfully and consistently deludes its population from representing just how bad our economic debacle really is

nO

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Slowly, relentlessly, the regime is dying.  But it is taking a lot of good people with it.  The recent rise in violence in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan can be tracked back to Tehran.  Western intelligence services are aware that Khamenei has given the Revolutionary Guards carte blanche to kill as many infidels as possible, wherever they have the opportunity.  And within Iran, they are hanging their children.  Listen to my brave friend, Potkin Azarmehr, tell the awful story of a boy executed for a crime he could not have committed (he was actually in prison when the event occurred). The State Department condemned the recent executions, which is to its credit.  But there will be many more hangings and stonings, of Kurds, of Baha’i, of random dissidents.  It’s time to put this evil regime out of its misery.  Help the Iranian people win their freedom, and thereby change the world.  Is there no leader in the West who will do it?

catOclysm

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com In the real world, as opposed to what French President Nicolas Sarkozy calls President Barack Obama's "virtual world," America faces the reality of Iran's intransigence and aggressiveness; China's headlong pursuit of its own national, regional, and global interests; Russia's determination to regain its Near Abroad; the Arab states' refusal to accept any kind of a reasonable settlement of the kind that Israel has already offered under several governments President Obama's foreign policy agenda of gradual American retreat will have inexorable consequences: When erstwhile allies see the American umbrella being withdrawn, they will have to accommodate themselves to those from whom we were protecting them. If Obama proves impervious to empirical evidence and experience, all these accommodations, the weakening of alliances, the strengthening of centers of adversarial power in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Caracas, and elsewhere will continue until we are awakened by some cataclysm.

Kissing Reality Goodbye

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Today the Obama administration unveiled its budget for FY 2011. The budget ostensibly covers the next ten years, but its projections for future years are meaningless. The only year for which it has any significance is 2011, in which it anticipates $3.8 trillion in spending and an astonishing $1.6 trillion deficit. In 2006, the last year in which the Republicans controlled Congress, the deficit was $248 billion--one-seventh what Obama proposes for next year. In his budget announcement today, Obama said: "[O]ur government is deeply in debt after what can only be described as a decade of profligacy." So he proposes to put the country far more deeply in debt through profligacy of a sort that was undreamed of just a few years ago. Either Obama has completely lost touch with reality, or he thinks we have. Obama won in 2008 with what Michael Barone called a "top and bottom coalition." Now, Obama can kiss the top part of that coalition goodbye.

Both Ways Now

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com No one expects consistency from Democratic politicians, but the Institute for Energy Research notes an egregious contradiction in President Obama's FY 2011 budget: [Obama's budget] contained $36.5 billion in new taxes over ten years on the oil and gas industries, while heaping new billions in taxpayer support for politically-favored energies. The White House budget request claims that, "Oil and gas subsidies are costly to the American taxpayer and do little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices." In the first place, it is odd to hear the White House worrying about high energy prices, and also to hear it deny that tax policy gives incentive for production. Both of these points flatly contradict the whole philosophy behind the White House's favored cap-and-trade scheme, which is expressly designed to (a) raise the price of fossil-based energy and (b) reduce the incentives to use such energy sources. The White House can't have it both ways

Put Them In Restraints

clipped from www.moonbattery.com In unveiling his record budget, with its record deficit, Chairman Zero read the following words off his Teleprompter: "We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences, as if waste doesn't matter, as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money, as if we can ignore this challenge for another generation," - B. Hussein Obama, February 1, 2010 Oh, really. "We can't?" Because it sure as heck looks to me like that's what you're doing. His budget plan does not cancel the remaining TARP spending, does not cancel the remaining Spendulus spending, does not cut back discretionary spending to where it was before he and his Congressional majority increased it 24%, and does not cancel his increased health care spending. Tell me, does this graph look like fiscal restraint to you? 'We Are Trying on Every Front to Increase the Role of Government' - Barney Frank, (Dumb-Mass) 26 October 2009

2.29 Lies O Minute

clipped from www.fireandreamitchell.com

Lost?

clipped from www.politico.com Democrats knew they lost reform with the Massachusetts election and some of them like Rep. Barney Frank essentially said so. “The first reaction to the Massachusetts election was the honest reaction,” O’Donnell said. Frank later walked back his comments. But since Election Night, he said, Democrats have moved into “full bluff mode.” “We’re absolutely in full fake cheerleading mode. I think Nancy Pelosi has absolutely no moves left. I think she knows that now. I think Harry Reid knows that. And that’s why they don’t bring it up,” he said. “They had a Senate leadership press conference (Thursday) and it was as if (reporters) were asking about World War I” when they asked about reform. O’Donnell attributes the theatrics to the need to deal with a liberal base that will go bonkers if Democrats quit on reform. “I’ve never heard leadership admit publicly to being so lost,” O’Donnell said. “In ’94, we never admitted we didn’t know how to proceed after we crashed and burned in the Senate.

Lame

clipped from pajamasmedia.com A REALITY CHECK FOR A LAME WASHINGTON ESTABLISHMENT TALKING POINT: From the comments to my Tea Party column in the Washington Examiner: And how many times did you take to the streets to protest the deficit during the Bush presidency? I’m guessing zero. You see this kind of thing pop up in comments a lot, and sometimes even out of the mouth of the less-honest variety of pundit. Which means, of course, that once again it’s time to roll out this graphic: Notice anything? Like maybe how Bush’s deficits are dwarfed by Obama’s? And maybe how the deficit was falling throughout Bush’s second term? Related: The White House will predict a record budget deficit in the current fiscal year and more big shortfalls for the next decade in its upcoming budget proposal, a congressional source told Reuters on Sunday.

Bush: ~$2 Trillion in Deficits. It sucks to be us.

O Duce: Nearly $2 Trillion in 2009 alone and CBO projections of ~$8 Trillion if he does two terms. That's over 4x Bush's deficits. Oh, and the "what about the off balance sheet money" doesn't work because BOTH OF THEM DO THAT.

And if we're lucky enough to get rid of O Duce after just one term then CBO projects ~$5 Trillion. "Only" 2.5x what Bush did in 8 years. But in 4.

There are simply no words to describe this.

And of course if O Duce was a CEO put in this situation he would be given a year, maybe 2 tops to get rid of the red ink. Or be history.

4%

clipped from www.rasmussenreports.com Sixty-five percent (65%) of voters nationwide now hold populist, or Mainstream, views of government. That’s up from 62% last September and 55% last March. Mainstream Americans tend to trust the wisdom of the crowd more than their political leaders and are skeptical of both big government and big business (see crosstabs). While Republicans and unaffiliated voters are more likely to hold Mainstream views than Democrats, a majority of those in the president’s party (51%) hold such views. Only four percent (4%) now support the Political Class. These voters tend to trust political leaders more than the public at large and are far less skeptical about government. When leaners are included, 81% are in the Mainstream category, and 12% support the Political Class.

So Screwed

clipped from pajamasmedia.com “WE ARE SO SCREWED.” “Perhaps more than anything else, failure to recognize the precariousness and fickleness of confidence-especially in cases in which large short-term debts need to be rolled over continuously-is the key factor that gives rise to the this-time-is-different syndrome. Highly indebted governments, banks, or corporations can seem to be merrily rolling along for an extended period, when bang!-confidence collapses, lenders disappear, and a crisis hits.”

Something Big

clipped from pajamasmedia.com PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE ON OBAMA AND THE BCS: One day shortly after the Second World War ended, Winston Churchill and Labour Party Prime Minister Clement Attlee encountered one another at the urinal trough in the House of Common’s men’s washroom. Attlee arrived first. When Churchill arrived, he stood as far away from him as possible. Attlee said, “Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?” Churchill said: “That’s right. Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it.” I’m reminded of that story by news that President Obama plans to regulate the college football playoff system. . . . With the government already running the banks and the auto industry, and trying to take over the health care industry, however, one might have hoped that sports would escape the ravening maw of Leviathan. But I guess Attlee and Obama are kindred spirits. Well, let’s hope that Obama doesn’t do for America what Attlee did for Britain, though that does seem to be the goal . . . .

Responsibilities

clipped from justoneminute.typepad.com But as the president was quick to point out, with a 41st vote in the Senate and the ability to block legislation through filibuster come pressure on Republicans to share in the political risks of making hard choices. “The responsibility to govern is now yours as well,” Mr. Obama said in his State of the Union speech, a message that was certainly heard by party leaders here in Honolulu. Hmm.  The Democrats have had outright majorities of the House and Senate since 2006; they enjoyed a brief Senate majority from the summer of 2000 until January 2003, and have always had more than 41 Senate votes. So when Obama rails against the failed policies of the past eight years, is he running against Pelosi, Reid, Senator Obama, and the rest of the Democrats?  I don't think so. Mr. Nagourney also fails to mention the Republican "Better Solutions" package offered to Obama as inoculation against the "no ideas" charge.

Enemies

clipped from justoneminute.typepad.com Former CIA head Michael Hayden blasts Obama's legalistic approach to the war on terror and ends with this zinger: There's a final oddity. In August, the government unveiled the HIG [High Value Detainee Interrogation Group] for questioning al-Qaeda and announced that the FBI would begin questioning CIA officers about the alleged abuses in the 2004 inspector general's report. They are apparently still getting organized for the al-Qaeda interrogations. But the interrogations of CIA personnel are well underway. Eric Holder knows who the enemy is.

The Mansourian Candidate: A Reminder Again

clipped from www.moonbattery.com When Obama dissed the Supreme Court in his State of Obfuscation Preach, he famously and incorrectly stated that their decision on Citizens United v. FEC threatened to allow money from foreign corporations to enter our political system. Funny choice of attack, thought I, as I was reminded of the influence that foreign money had on Dear Leader's own election campaign. A wee reminder of how things stood at the end of 2008: In addition to the $259 million with undisclosed donors, studies of the reports filed with the FEC, by the Obama Campaign, through the 2008 Year End Report, show the following irregularities in their submissions: • $1.8 million -- Contributions over the $4,600 limit (1,608 contributors) • $26 million -- Contributions over the $2,300 per campaign limit, reallocated without contributor affirmation. • $4 million -- Contributors with Foreign Addresses (4,158 contributors)

The Pretender

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Chairman Zero is suddenly pretending he likes nuclear energy. The Obama administration moved vigorously on two fronts Friday to promote nuclear power, proposing a tripling of federal loan guarantees for new projects and appointing a high-level commission to study what to do with nuclear waste. First of all, we had a solution to nuclear waste. It was called Yucca Mountain. Engineers and scientists spent decades developing it as the safest possible repository for nuclear waste. Obama and Harry Reid killed it within weeks of taking power. Second, while he offers loan guarantees to the nuclear industry, he has stacked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with anti-nuclear activists. He has replaced Bush's NRC Chairman (a strong pro-nuclear guy) with a former Harry Reid anti-nuclear Senate staffer. He has also left two (of the five Commission positions) vacant. Basically, this "push" for nuclear power is just a ruse to try and get cap and trade passed.

More Dictionary Good!

clipped from www2.timesdispatch.com Stupid American people have strange mad love for Constitution. Crazy right-wing Tea-Party people always making big fat deal out of it. Want to know where it say Congress can make people buy insurance. Freaky house speaker think that Constitution business nonsense. "Are you serious?" she want to know. Crazy right-wing Tea-Party people dead serious. Say government that can make you buy insurance can make you do anything, anything at all. Some even ask what crazy right-wing president and Congress with that kind of power might do. Me not like to think about that! Whole issue make brain hurt. Good thing man with nice voice in charge. Him have right ideas. Just need to try new angle, that all. Talk slower. Talk louder. Use small words. Treat American people like kid who got held back in elementary school. That bound to work eventually. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right. --Judge Learned Hand.

Dictionary Good!

clipped from www2.timesdispatch.com It mighty big of man with nice voice to take blame like that. Him not need to. Head honchos not often take blame. Most times after big screw-up, head honchos say they have "full confidence" in someone who work for them -- right before pushing someone off edge of cliff, or letting someone twist "slowly, slowly" in wind, like tricky Nixon guy did with man who ran FBI. Man with nice voice not like those other head honchos. Him bring change to Washington already, see? But him right. Him not explain health care good. Use too many big words. Say too many compound-complex sentences. Confuse American people. American people not want that. American people want simple explanation. Simpler the better. Me feel kind of sorry. It must really get on nerves for man with nice voice and people on his side, like lady on TV and cheerleaders in White House press pool. Why can't lamebrain American people get idea through thick skulls? Them not know how to make choices in own best interests!

Malignant

clipped from www.newsrealblog.com When the Cold War was over and freedom had won — thanks to all the political forces and figures (e.g., Reagan and Thatcher) that Zinn opposed – Zinn continued his malignant course. He supported America’s enemies right to the end including the Islamic Nazis whose first agenda is to finish the job that Hitler started and then to impose a totalitarian theocracy on the infidel world. Zinn’s wretched tract, A People’s History of the United States, is worthless as history, and it is a national tragedy that so many Americans have fallen under its spell. It is a political cartoon which even the socialist magazine Dissent described as an intellectual fraud, which it is. All Zinn’s writing was directed to one end: to indict his own country as an evil state and soften his countrymen up for the kill. Like his partner in crime, Noam Chomsky, Zinn was a wicked man and his life’s work was a pernicious influence on the young and ignorant, with destructive consequences for people everywhere.

Not The Case

clipped from pajamasmedia.com The second point, though, is that it’s more than a little irritating to see Obama speak so well of Ryan’s plan and say that it’s the sort of thing that deserves “serious discussion.” Problem is, throughout the health care debate, Obama didn’t want to have that discussion. He didn’t want to talk about any plans to significantly reduce entitlement spending, or severing the links between insurance and employment. Indeed, not only did he make almost no effort to incorporate opposition ideas into his legislation, he wasn’t willing to recognize the existence of legitimate opposing ideas at all. Instead, he chose to caricature his opponents as having “no solutions.” His conversation today with Rep. Ryan, I think, is a tacit admission that that’s just not the case.

And This Year?!

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk 192 laser beams are focused through holes in a target container called a hohlraum Inside the hohlraum is a tiny pellet containing an extremely cold, solid mixture of hydrogen isotopes Lasers strike the hohlraum's walls, which in turn radiate X-rays X-rays strip material from the outer shell of the fuel pellet, heating it up to millions of degrees If the compression of the fuel is high enough and uniform enough, nuclear fusion can result Crucially, the recent experiments provided proof that the plasma did not reduce the hohlraum's ability to absorb the incident laser light; it absorbed about 95%. But more than that, Dr Glenzer's team discovered that the plasma can actually be carefully manipulated to increase the uniformity of the compression. The 130-tonne target chamber is kept under vacuum for the experiments But Dr Glenzer is confident that with everything in place, ignition is on the horizon. He added, quite simply, "It's going to happen this year."

Some Hopeful News

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk A major hurdle to producing fusion energy using lasers has been swept aside, results in a new report show. The controlled fusion of atoms - creating conditions like those in our Sun - has long been touted as a possible revolutionary energy source. However, there have been doubts about the use of powerful lasers for fusion energy because the "plasma" they create could interrupt the fusion. An article in Science showed the plasma is far less of a problem than expected. The report is based on the first experiments from the National Ignition Facility (Nif) in the US that used all 192 of its laser beams.

I wonder what premise the watermelons will use to ban this if it proves out? You can count on them having one.

Revealing

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com the economy's strong resurgence in the fourth quarter--great news, seemingly. Yet the stock market was down on Friday. Why? Investors Business Daily offered this explanation: [R]ight now, the market seems to be saying: "It's the policies, stupid." Specifically, the socialistic policies that the Obama administration keeps pushing at Americans who know that's not the way this great country was built. It isn't just the efforts to socialize medicine or nationalize the car industry or control banks or punish both consumers and industry for climate variations that have little to do with it either. It's every initiative that comes out of this White House. Of course, you can't draw any conclusions from a day's or a week's performance of the market. But IBD offers this comparison, which seems revealing: President Obama's lack of private sector experience is probably his single biggest weakness. The fact that he does not value such experience in his top advisers shows a serious lack of judgment.

Bad, Bad O Bush

clipped from www.nypost.com The trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed won't be held in lower Manhattan and could take place in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, sources said last night. Administration officials said that no final decision had been made but that officials of the Department of Justice and the White House were working feverishly to find a venue that would be less expensive and less of a security risk than New York City. The back-to-the-future Gitmo option was reported yesterday by Fox News and was not disputed by White House officials. Such a move would likely bring howls of protest from liberals already frustrated that President Obama has failed to meet his deadline for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. It would also indicate that after years of attacking the Bush administration for its handling of the war on terror, Obama officials are embracing one of the most controversial aspects of it.

Snuck In

clipped from realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com There's been a remarkable amount of coverage of President Obama's appearance at the House Republican retreat today, but I haven't seen anyone focus on the President's rather stunning admission about the Democrats' health care legislation (Video): we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your -- if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you're not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge. [emphasis added] If we take this statement at face value, President Obama is admitting the the health care bills passed by either the House or Senate (or both) contained provisions which were "snuck in" - presumably by Democratic members and perhaps on behalf of certain lobbyists - that would have in fact prevented people from keeping their current insurance

Caught Out In Colorado

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com Both WUWT and Climate Audit had posts regarding the ridiculous WaPo story about snowfall being a result of climate change. This is a follow up to those posts done by guest contributor Steven Goddard. One of the  NWF claims about global warming is that snow in the Colorado mountains is diminishing and has become very erratic, as seen in the NWF graphic at left. In this article I will show that the claim is incorrect – Colorado snowfall has been generally increasing for the last hundred years and that year over year variability has always been extremely high. In summary, snowfall is increasing annually and we see upward trends in the months of “snowfall season” in Colorado.  Year over year variability has always been very high and may actually be lower in recent years. And, the Colorado mountains no longer have extremely low snow years like they did 80 years ago. By the data, it seems the NWF claims are unfounded.

Continuous Climaquiddick

clipped from pajamasmedia.com CLIMATEGATE COVERUP? London Times: Climate chief was told of false glacier claims before Copenhagen. “Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists. The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions. . . . Dr Pacharui has also been accused of using the error to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.” The Times coverage of this has been terrific, which is more than you can say for pretty much any mainstream American media outlet, most of which are still trying to pretend there’s no story here. It’s — again — a complete abnegation of journalistic responsibility.

The Answer Is Not

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com In connection with James Hansen’s explanation of why his GISS temperature record diverges from that of HadCRUT, I decided to check on the legitimacy of what GISS was doing. Dr. Hansen’s article is here at RealClimate. This is the specific chart of interest: So it seems that the North American side of the Arctic changed little, or even got cooler between 98 and 05, the Russian side warmed considerably.  Why is that?  I think that this ice cover map gives us the answer.  As is immediately apparent, the coastal ice cleared out far earlier in 2005 in northern Russia than it did in 1998.  This is even though the rest of the globe was slightly warmer in 1998 than in 2005.  When dealing with coastal stations, removing the ice and exposing the water is like taking the hatch off a heating source for the coastal thermometers. we need to ask if the GISS extrapolations of land based stations, particularly coastal stations,  to the poles is appropriate. The answer would seem to be that it is not

Algae Can't Do Math

clipped from www.newscientist.com ALGAE have been touted as a solution to environmental worries over biofuels, but they may be a long way from providing a truly green option. Unlike maize, soya beans and oilseed rape (canola), algal farms don't take up valuable farmland, so algae-based biofuels don't threaten food supplies. However, Andres Clarens at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville has modelled the environmental impacts of algal farms and concludes that they require six times as much energy as growing land plants - and emit significantly more greenhouse gases (Environmental Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es902838n). "You have to add a whole lot more fertilisers, and the environmental cost of producing these is the primary drawback," Clarens says.

Bubba The Rookie

clipped from gatewaypundit.firstthings.com Barack Obama can’t help himself. Today, in front of national cameras, the radical claimed that his hidden health care discussions were actually on CSPAN: Via BreitbartTV “The truth of the matter is that, if you look at the health care process, just over the course of the year, overwhelmingly the majority of it actually was on C-SPAN because it was taking place in Congressional hearings in which you guys were participating. How many committees were that that helped to shape this bill? Countless hearings took place.” Senator Inhofe was right. Obama really does make Bubba look like a rookie. He’s the best liar we’ve ever seen.

COTD: The Treserve Collective

clipped from www.zerohedge.com by strike for retu... on Fri, 01/29/2010 - 16:36 #211380 It's easy to have good numbers when you get to make them up. So long as Treserve buys what they print, the numbers will keep looking good. Didn't the Soviet collectives always report what their 5-year plans said they would? reply

Didn't Try

clipped from ace.mu.nu A former senior intelligence official told me in 2009 that he was shocked by Pelosi's claim because, he said, "Speaker Pelosi herself has stopped covert action programs that she has been briefed on by going to the White House. In that very same time frame [after she learned about waterboarding] Pelosi had gone back to the White House [over] a separate covert action program, expressed strong opposition to it. And the remarkable part to me, the White House backed off the program, changed one aspect of the program . . . she was particularly opposed to. And literally, the finding was pulled back and revised." If Pelosi had truly opposed waterboarding, he said, she had numerous ways to stop it -- but she didn't try. That move -- stopping the funding of moderate parties -- seemed to have no other point than to try to sabotage the entire war effort, by the way.

He Would If He Were A Republican President

clipped from biggovernment.com Emanuel: Look, we were involved in the legislation all the way through. Couric: Were you involved in that? Emanuel: Yeah. I’m not gonna go through all of it… Couric: But in the Ben Nelson deal? Emanuel: We were helpful in getting the bill off the Senate floor. And in retrospect the things – as I said to you just earlier, things you woulda done different. To repeat what Obama told Diane Sawyer about the Cornhusker Kickback: So let’s just clarify. I didn’t make a bunch of deals. There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked. The mainstream media has thus far ignored Obama being exposed as a liar by his own chief of staff. With Emanuel himself confirming the Obama administration’s involvement with the Cornhusker Kickback, Obama has some explaining to do. Well, he would if he were a Republican president.

Hopenchange

For while the people who sent us here have different backgrounds, different stories and different beliefs, the anxieties they face are the same. The aspirations they hold are shared. A job that pays the bills. A chance to get ahead. Most of all, the ability to give their children a better life.”
–Barack Obama, 2010 SOTU

“We’re not the first to come here with a Government divided and uncertainty in the air. Like many before us, we can work through our differences, and we can achieve big things for the American people. Our citizens don’t much care which side of the aisle we sit on, as long as we’re willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done. Our job is to make life better for our fellow Americans and to help them build a future of hope and opportunity, and this is the business before us tonight.”

–George W. Bush, 2007 SOTU

clipped from www.cato-at-liberty.org	Obama’s Quotes	Bush’s Quotes

Let Them Dig Holes

clipped from pajamasmedia.com MEGAN MCARDLE: Dude, Where’s My Job? “I’d argue that the better measure of whether the economy has returned to health is employment–at least, that’s when the improvement starts to translate into improvements in peoples’ real lives. Prolonged unemployment is one of the most crippling things that can afflict people in the modern world. Yet despite a second consecutive quarter of growth, prolonged unemployment is what we’re stuck with. . . . That has particular implications for a skilled economy. In 1930s, when FDR was trying to combat mass long-term unemployment, all he needed to do was create a construction project; most of the men in the country did some sort of hard physical labor. It was relatively easy to create jobs that they could fill. But what kind of public works projects would absorb mortgage brokers or mid-level managers? As jobs have gotten more skilled, more human capital is specific to firms, industry, and job classifications.”

Speaking Of Which...

clipped from pajamasmedia.com FROM CORNELL LAW PROF. WILLIAM JACOBSON, A CHALLENGE TO OBAMA: Request Special Counsel As To Foreign Contributions. “That the Obama campaign received foreign donations as a result of this scheme may be the only thing agreed-upon by both Pamela Geller and Charles Johnson. Indeed, Obama for America has admitted receiving foreign contributions. The fact that the Federal Election Commission is not investigating the allegations necessitates a special counsel.”