Jack*ss In Chief

clipped from hotair.com It’s possible that there’s no grander strategic meaning to it at all, and that he really is just this petty. For a head of state to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of… After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on Jewish settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisors and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman who spoke to the Prime Minister said today. “It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House phone line.

The Difference

clipped from powip.com The Boender trial was somewhat convoluted with a “number-of-dots-to-connect” and yet the U.S. Attorney still brought an indictment and the federal jury, in turn, convicted Mr. Boender on all five (5) counts. Given the credibility issues involved with both Ike Carothers and another witness, I was very surprised with the jury’s verdict. It appears Mr. Boender got a raw deal. On this note, I’d be interested to understand the U.S. Attorney’s interpretation of the material difference between Ike Carothers accepting a “bribe/kick-back” worth $37,000 in home improvements in exchange for the alderman’s lobbying of Richard M. Daley related to an uber-super-zoning designation that only the mayor himself could change and Marty Nesbitt accepting a $28,500 Obama Victory Fund campaign contribution after providing developers with a close to $1.3M discount on the sale of the former Chicago Housing Authority headquarters. It appears the only difference is that Marty Nesbitt is BFF with Barack Obama.

Better Legalize The Illegals Soon Barry

clipped from www.rasmussenreports.com Just before the House of Representatives passed sweeping health care legislation last Sunday, 41% of voters nationwide favored the legislation while 54% were opposed. Now that President Obama has signed the legislation into law, most voters want to see it repealed. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, conducted on the first two nights after the president signed the bill, shows that 55% favor repealing the legislation. Forty-two percent (42%) oppose repeal. Those figures include 46% who Strongly Favor repeal and 35% who Strongly Oppose it. In terms of Election 2010, 52% say they’d vote for a candidate who favors repeal over one who does not. Forty-one percent (41%) would cast their vote for someone who opposes repeal.

More Quotes From The Drunk

clipped from ace.mu.nu Yeah, we knew that but now Sen. Max "Hey My Girlfriend Would Be A Great US Attorney" Baucus admits it. ...the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America. But don't you dare call it socialism!

Obamaklatura

clipped from pajamasmedia.com JAMES TARANTO: The Obamaklatura. “If you and Larry Summers both get sick and need a treatment that the Medicare Advisory Commission (dysphemistically known as the Death Panel) deems too expensive, what are the odds that you’ll find a way to get it anyway and he won’t? How about the other way around? In the Soviet Union, those privileged by political connections were called the nomenklatura. Here, we can call it the Obamaklatura.”

Slooooooow Joe

clipped from www.redstate.com Early Wednesday night, roughly sixty Democratic donors paid $2,500/plate (or about $150,000) for the privilege of having Vice President Joe Biden show up and tell them - on the day after their party had just (barely) passed the health care legislation that will supposedly save them at the polls - that their money is going to end up going to unsuccessfully defend doomed incumbents in the November elections.  Think I’m not being fair? Barack generated such an overwhelming turnout and enthusiasm (in 2008), that we had the biggest turnout in history. It was gigantic. And a lot of really good Democrats got washed up on shore and all of a sudden were Congressmen, in districts that Democrats have no business having Congressmen. I’m not here to tell you we’re gaining seats. Mercifully for the above Congressmen, he didn’t name names: that particular parlor trick is reserved for the $5,000/plate fundraisers.

Leveled

clipped from www.victorhanson.com President Obama has crossed the Rubicon with the healthcare vote. The bill was not really about medicine; after all, a moderately priced, relatively small federal program could offer the poorer not now insured, presently not on Medicare or state programs like Medicaid or Medical, a basic medical plan. We have no interest in stopping trial lawyers from milking the system for billions. And we don’t want to address in any meaningful way the individual’s responsibility in some cases (drink, drugs, violence, dangerous sex, bad diet, sloth, etc.) for costly and chronic health procedures. No, instead, the bill was about assuming a massive portion of the private sector, hiring tens of thousands of loyal, compliant new employees, staffing new departments with new technocrats, and feeling wonderful that we “are leveling the playing field” and have achieved another Civil Rights landmark law.

"Fairer"

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com In many ways, the health system, and many other arrangements in the former East Germany, were fairer than those in the former West Germany. Wages were more equal, for instance. And, except for members of the Communist Party, there were no rich people. None of the obscene spectacles, in the capitalist West, that people might glimpse from their rooftops -- the bright lights and vulgar display of the Kurfürstendamm. No, East Germany was the worker's paradise, even a place of leisure -- "we pretend to work and you pretend to pay us." And East Berlin so wonderfully grey. Indeed, it was such a paradise, that the Communist authorities had to erect the Berlin Wall, to keep the victims of capitalism from flooding into their country. That, at least, was the subtle argument they advanced when they began building it. And in those good old days, there were fellow travellers in the West, willing to play subtle variations on that theme.

O Wow

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com A native Minnesotan who is now a small business owner in Florida writes: I own a small business in Florida (under 25 employees). We offered health insurance, but all the younger ones refused (their share was under 30 bucks a week). I am a pretty staunch conservative who has voted Republican only because I have not found a Libertarian I would vote for and they all know it. The youngest ones (under 30) are mostly Puerto Rican, Cuban, Columbian, Mexican and all legal and they are liberal (Democrats), yet without exception they are livid about Obamacare. They understand that they are going to " foot the bill " for the older generation, like me. Nearly all voted for Obama, yet they all are now saying he needs to be impeached. Wow. I have followed politics for decades and have never seen such a reaction before. If the media and the Democrats can not spin this enough by November, there will be no Democrats left in national office. I am afraid that the Republicans will mess it up again

O China Syndrome

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COTD: We Want It All And We Want It Now

clipped from www.qando.net I understand that the next piece of legislation the ‘Democrats’ are going to pass will force car companies to sell Porsche Boxsters (or the equivalent) to all Americans for $2000 (with an exemption for GM and Chrysler). After this, they will take on the profiteers in the citizen-enslaving food industry by requiring Safeway and all other supermarket chains to charge no more than $10 per bag of groceries (hemp bags only, and all food will be organic). Can you imagine how awesome this will be? We’ll stick it to The Man and all drive bitchin’ roadsters, and have cheap, abundant, healthy food! After this, they intend to pass a law making it illegal to age past 35. We shall become a nation of young citizens!! We’ll all live forever, driving roadsters full of cheap groceries!!!

COTD: Crippled

clipped from www.qando.net Progressives have a peculiar and crippling cognitive defect: They’re thankful for all that the free market has created, but incapable of understanding where any of it came from, and incapable of imagining that the same cornucopia might ever toss out anything new in the future. For people who yammer so much about “change”, they’re oddly committed to imposing stasis wherever they can.

Directive 10-289 Update

clipped from www.qando.net Or, as Surber puts it: Government-run health care is about saving money, not lives. Think back and think it through. What government is promising is insurance for all (more cost) and lower cost insurance plans Those seem to conflict, but in reality, they can be accomplished even though you’re very likely not to like the result. How? Severe rationing and imposed cost controls. If it can order individuals to buy insurance on pain of fine, what is to stop it from ordering doctors and other health care providers to take anyone with insurance, regardless of the reimbursement rates? Well, don’t forget, almost every practice out there is a small business. And if they make over $250,000 (and the vast majority do) they’re going to first and foremost be taxed at a higher rate. You know, because they’re “rich”. how long will the better doctors put up with this I’m guessing this will be the first sector in the economy where Atlas will do some shrugging.

Bill's TerraPower

clipped from news.yahoo.com TOKYO (AFP) – A company backed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Toshiba are in early talks to jointly develop a small nuclear reactor, the Japanese electronics giant said Tuesday. The Nikkei business daily earlier reported that the two sides would team up to develop a compact next-generation reactor that can operate for up to 100 years without refueling to provide emission-free energy. The daily said the joint development would focus on the Traveling-Wave Reactor (TWR), which consumes depleted uranium as fuel. Current light-water reactors require refueling every few years. "Toshiba has entered into preliminary talks with TerraPower," said Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Ohmori. "We are looking into the possibility of working together."

Lucifer

clipped from gatewaypundit.firstthings.com Here is Saul Alinsky’s dedication from Rules for radicals: “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer

Saul's Constitution

clipped from gatewaypundit.firstthings.com Here’s a picture posted in February 2008 at PrestoPundit of Barack Obama in Chicago teaching the principles of Saul Alinsky. Notice the flow chart indicating the flow of money and power out of productive businesses (“CORP”) and into the political class (“MAYOR”): The heading at the top reads “POWER ANALYSIS”. The sub-heading reads “RELATIONSHIPS BUILD ON SELF INTEREST”. The symbol on the arrow between “CORP” and “MAYOR” is the “$” sign. Saul Alinsky came up with the idea of power analysis, which looks at relationships built on self-interest between corporations, banks and utilities. Barack Obama was teaching students in Chicago the Alinsky Principles. After watching the bribes, kickbacks, lies and threats this past year as Democrats fought to take over the health care industry, it’s obvious that the only Constitution Obama follows includes Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals… Not the Constitution of the United States.

We The Government

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com

The Good And Welfare Clause

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Are you familiar with the "Good and Welfare" clause of the US Constitution? Here's how it reads: The federal government can do anything it wants whatsoever, no matter how outrageously intrusive and tyrannical. Here John Conyers — the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee — uses the clause to justify ObamaCare: Conyers is evidently referring to the General Welfare clause, which actually reads like this: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States… The Constitution then goes on to explicitly enumerate the federal government's powers, in hopes of preventing it from becoming the bloated monstrosity it is today. If statists and cretins like Conyers are going to use the General Welfare clause to justify every conceivable power grab, what's the point of even having a Constitution? They could replace it with six words: Government will do as it pleases.

And don't forget that this genius is the chair-nitwit of the judiciary committee...

All The Really Professional Con Jobs Work This Way

clipped from pajamasmedia.com REIHAN SALAM: PREPARED FOR FAILURE. “The Democrats already have their excuse ready when their health-care reform falls short. The solution, of course, will involve more spending.” UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “All the really professional con jobs work this way.”

Paul Krugman's Salem Witch Trials

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On Trumping Benedict Arnold

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The Best Judgment Of Experts

clipped from www.cashill.com The academics saw central control along scientific principles as a solution to a free and competitive market. At a Columbia University conference in1907, one Frank Vanderlip argued that a competitive, decentralized banking system caused the panic, “one of the great calamities in history.” “Small banks constitute a danger,” he told those gathered at Columbia in arguing for the benefits of European-style banking. Warburg, in fact, had a problem with the whole idea of a free, self-regulating market. He hoped to replace Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” with the “best judgment of experts,” himself high among them. In 1910, Warburg too took up duck hunting on Jekyll Island. They had just the man in mind. From 1914 until his death in 1928 their own Benjamin Strong would preside over the New York Federal Reserve and set the monetary policy for the nation.

Inmates Running The Assylum (Part 95,393)

clipped from pajamasmedia.com JOHN HINDERAKER offers us some Alcee Hastings history. “We are being ruled by people who should be behind bars.” UPDATE: Reader Kevin Greene emails: “As long as you’re waltzing down memory lane, how about some Robert Byrd history, courtesy of Tony Snow?”

The Deadliest Change

clipped from pajamasmedia.com CHANGE: “Without a location outside the United States for sending prisoners, the administration must resort to turning the suspects over to foreign governments, bringing them to the U.S. or even killing them. In one case last year, U.S. special operations forces killed an Al Qaeda-linked suspect named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a helicopter attack in southern Somalia rather than trying to capture him, a U.S. official said. Officials had debated trying to take him alive but decided against doing so in part because of uncertainty over where to hold him, the official added.”

Matt Smith

clipped from yglesias.thinkprogress.org Matt Yglesias presents "An Influential Idea I Didn’t Get in a Book".  The gist - profit in perfectly competitive markets is zero (after returns for labor, capital, and presumed managerial expertise), so businessmen seek to create market imperfections: This competitive market sure looks like a horrible place! You might make a living there, but you sure as hell aren’t going to get rich. Think of the immigrant family that owns the dry cleaning shop around the corner—long hours, hard work, modest income. That’s your capitalism and it pretty much sucks. Dare I mention Adam Smith, who made that very point back in 1776? “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public Thirdly, we can scarcely wait for the day when Matt discovers (perhaps not by way of a book?) that Big Business is not automatically "conservative", but is often happy to ally itself with Big Government in the course of seeking rents.

For A Measly $700K

clipped from pajamasmedia.com HEALTH CARE GETS 219 VOTES, PASSES HOUSE. Stupak’s switch clearly made the difference. Posted at 10:46 pm by Glenn Reynolds   A STUPAK PAYOFF? “U.S. Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Menominee) announced three airports in northern Michigan have received grants totaling $726,409 for airport maintenance and improvements. The funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Aviation Administration.” Probably just a coincidence. Posted at 10:09 pm by Glenn Reynolds

What Fresh Hell II: It Does Not Work

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Ironically, however, it was the major investment bankers like the House of Morgan that were diversified enough to weather the Depression. Royalism did not cause the great majority of bank failures. Regulation did. Some 90 percent of failures occurred in states whose "unit" banking laws forbade banks from branching out beyond their base. Canada, which had no such laws, had no such problems. In June 1933, Roosevelt signed into law the Glass-Steagall Act. Banks now had to choose between investment and deposit banking. They could not do both. A classic in political scapegoating, the act rewarded those banks that had done the worst and punished the banks that had done the best. It provided deposit insurance for the struggling banks and forced the successful ones to divest their investment banking operations. a bummed Morgenthau. "We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work," he told a congressional hearing in 1939.

What Fresh Hell?

clipped from www.americanthinker.com A year and a half later, Obama has indeed honored Time's bold prediction. The parallels between FDR and BHO are hard to miss: the eagerness to improvise, the impulse to control, the urge to scapegoat, the willingness to let business wonder what fresh hell tomorrow might bring. To understand the long-term effects of this style in the real world, it pays to revisit the past. If there is any one image that evokes the whimsy of the original New Deal, it is this one: FDR sitting in his bedroom with Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., picking the daily price of gold. Just five years earlier, America had sat astride the economic world, the repository of most of its gold and even more of its hope. Businesses, Coolidge felt, could plan more confidently if they could trust their government not to jack with the law of the land.  the White House's hands-off approach to the sharp downturn of 1920 had allowed businesses to cut their losses, trim their payrolls, and get back to work quickly

March 21, 2010 Compendium

Obamacare:
Obamacare is a financial lie according to a former head of the CBO. To the tune of losing over $50B a year. Not to mention also being a lie in every other conceivable dimension of course.

History:
The fall of the Roman Republic: "While Cicero was what Dickinson called an “institutionalist,” Caesar was an “instrumentalist.” For Caesar the ends justified the means, subordinating institutional checks and balances in a quest for “results.”" Welcome to the soon to be feces stained results. (Welcome to your real Cuba.)
Economics of socialistic corruption:
Adventures in nationalization with the central bank of North Dakota. The North Dakota purchase and the nationalization of the student loan industry. Oh, and what group takes out lots of large student loans? Why that would be doctors of course...

Who owns the Federal Reserve? Why that would be O Duce of course.

Hiding in plain sight:
German central bank admits that money is created out of thin air. "Germany’s central bank – the Deutsche Bundesbank (German for German Federal Bank) – has admitted in writing that banks create credit out of thin air." Have you ever wondered why (if the loons are correct that we have a free market which is to blame for the recent collapse) the most important price in the economy -- the (discount) interest rate! -- is set by a central planning board called the Federal Reserve Board of Governors? Can you say "hiding in plain sight"?

Fiat Power

clipped from mises.org The next requirement that must be met for a "variable interest" is either an "obligation to absorb losses" or a "right to receive benefits." The statement that "about 95% of the Reserve Banks' net earnings have been paid into the Treasury since the Federal Reserve System began operations in 1914" says it well enough. It is an irrefutable fact that the federal government possesses the overwhelming "right to receive benefits." There is, however, no denying that the banks have tremendous vested interest in influencing the policies of the Fed, nor that the power being so narrowly vested in the president makes him a special target for influence. Still, the power to control the Fed is not in the hands of its "owners" but firmly in the hands of the federal government and the president of the United States.

Anchors Away!

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Howie Awakens

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Deadly Downgrades

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com For years, 999 calls in life-threatening situations like Mrs Masons's were accidentally "downgraded", with call handlers told not to send the most urgent response. ... The danger in the system was created by the country's most senior ambulance officials as they altered the program used by most control centres in an attempt to manage demand for 999 services. Most ambulance services use an international computerised system designed in America. In the US version, a fall of more than 6ft receives the maximum priority response. However, the government committee which governs its use in this country decided that such cases should be deemed less urgent, and excluded from an eight minute category A target response time. ... As a result, Mrs Mason lay unconscious for more than 38 minutes. Why on earth would anyone want health care decisions to be made by a centralized authority, least of all a "government committee"?

Collapse And Fantasy

clipped from ace.mu.nu Thought for the day is from Alexander Tytler : A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. Today the Democrats may achieve their dream of filling in a hole in the goal of Cradle to Grave socialism. From SCHIP to ObamaCare and Medicare, government will control your health care. Of course that will just be a start. Once you start eating or doing things that cost to much, well, that will have to be regulated. Oh btw- The Democrats' budget numbers? Pure fantasy. God help us all.

Things Are Just Fab(ian)ulous

clipped from en.wikipedia.org The Fabian Society is a British intellectual socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World War I. The society laid many of the foundations of the Labour Party and subsequently affected the policies of states emerging from the decolonisation of the British Empire, especially India. Today, the society is a vanguard "think tank" of the New Labour movement. It is one of 15 socialist societies affiliated to the Labour Party. Similar societies exist in Australia (the Australian Fabian Society), Canada (the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation and in past the League for Social Reconstruction) and New Zealand.

The Smaller List

clipped from www.zerohedge.com In our view there is no stronger argument against permitting centralized control of industries, particularly finance, than the dynamic aptly demonstrated by the Bank of North Dakota gambit.  So long as government, state or otherwise, is permitted to translate political desire into market manipulation this sort of cronyism threatens. In the end capturing lending sectors that represent over 40% of the nation's economy accomplishes two things: First, the ability to disregard underwriting in favor of loans to this week's favored political class or pet project. Second, the creation of a significant body of subjects (to be distinguished from Citizens) beholden to the state.  Is it any wonder that health care, insurance and energy are next on the list? We don't really wonder what will be de facto nationalized next.  We wonder what is actually going to be left to nationalize.  The latter seems quickly becoming the smaller list.

Have You No Shame?

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Reality Check

clipped from www.shadowstats.com The SGS-Alternate GDP reflects the inflation-adjusted, or real, year-to-year GDP change, adjusted for distortions in government inflation usage and methodological changes that have resulted in a built-in upside bias to official reporting. Annual Growth (Year-to-Year Percent Change) in GDP is shown in the chart on the right. This is not the annualized quarterly rate of change that serves as the headline number for the series. Note: The GDP headline number refers to the most-recent quarter’s annualized quarter-to-quarter rate of change (what that quarter’s percent quarter-to-quarter change would translate into if compounded for four consecutive quarters). This can mean that the latest quarter can be reported with a positive annualized growth rate, while the actual annual rate of change is negative.  Such was the case for the 3rd quarter of 2009.

Welcome to alternate reality.

The World's Largest Banana Republic

clipped from www.qando.net Huzzah! No, not really – but I’m sure that’s the reaction on much of the “progressive” left.  Most of them figure without a public option the chance of actually swinging a government single payer system is a whole lot harder.   With it, they have a pretty good chance.  Harry Reid promises to oblige: Hoping to assuage progressive Democrats who remain disappointed with the content of the health care reform bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) committed on Friday to holding a separate vote on a public option in the coming months. And don’t expect Mr. Reid to follow the rules of the Senate when he does aides on the Hill are already looking to future reconciliation vehicles to which they can attach the public plan, which would, in turn, allow for it to pass via an up-or-down vote Welcome to the world’s largest Banana Republic.