Domestic Policy: March 2009 Archives

Even a police state can't suppress them forever (via Newsmax Insider):

Amid reports that President Barack Obama's climate plan could cost industry close to $2 trillion, fifty-nine additional scientists skeptical of the threat of manmade global warming have been added to the U.S. Senate Minority Report on climate change.

They bring the total to more than seven hundred scientists from around the world who have spoken out against the hysteria created by Al Gore and other global warming alarmists, according to a statement issued by the office of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

The latest Minority Report includes three hundred scientists and climate researchers who have been added to the list since the initial report’s release in December 2007.

Many of the fifty-nine additional scientists are affiliated with prestigious institutions including NASA, the U.S. Navy and Air Force, the Defense Department, Energy Department, Princeton University, Tulane University, the U.S. Naval Academy and the EPA.

“Unfortunately, climate science has become political science,” said award-winning Princeton physicist Dr. Robert Austin, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

He told the minority staff on the Committee on March 2: “It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomenon which is statistically questionable at best.”

Dr. Anastasios Tsonis of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said the global temperature “has flattened and is actually going down. We are seeing a new shift toward cooler temperatures that will last for probably about three decades.”

As Newsmax.com reported, Obama's climate plan could cost industry nearly three times the $646 billion over eight years that the White House initially estimated for the so-called "cap-and-trade" legislation.

The plan seeks to reduce pollution by setting a limit on carbon emissions and allowing businesses and groups to buy allowances, although exact details have not been released.

But Dr. Diane Douglas, a climatologist who has worked for the Department of Energy, declared: “The recent ‘panic’ to control GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions and billions of dollars being dedicated for the task has me deeply concerned that the U.S. and other countries are spending precious global funds to stop global warming, when it is primarily being driven by natural forcing mechanisms.”

Among other comments from scientists included in the report:

“I am appalled at the state of discord in the field of climate science . . . There is no observational evidence that the addition of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have caused any temperature perturbations in the atmosphere.”

— Award-winning atmospheric scientist Dr. George T. Wolff, a former member of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board who served on a committee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The sky is not burning, and to claim that it is amounts to journalistic malpractice . . . The press only promotes the global warming alarmists and ignores or minimizes those of us who are skeptical.”

— Dr. Mark L. Campbell, a professor of chemistry at the U.S. Naval Academy.

“The cause of these global changes is fundamentally due to the sun and its effect on Earth as it moves about in its orbit, not from man-made activities.”

— Retired NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. William W. Vaughan, recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.

All of the above illustrates, I think, that the energy police state that animates Red Barry's fondest dreams will not be born without some stiff efforts to abort it.

UPDATE: Just this morning I read (sorry, can't remember where I saw this, so no link) that cap & trade has been dropped from Congress' version of the FY'10 budget.  Looks like Lucifer's frantic lobbying was less than entirely successful.  If he can't get everything he wants from a Congress THIS "blue," the bloom is definitely off the rose.

And just think: This is only day #66 of the Obama Ascendancy.  Can his callow, brittle ego survive the ever-rougher road his extremism, dishonesty, and imperiousness are guaranteeing him?  Or is he capable of the humility that is prerequisite to learning how to be a Chief Executive on the fly?

Stop the presses!  Venezuelan Obamunist dictator Hugo Chavez and I are actually in agreement about something!

In the most general sense, you understand:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday called President Barack Obama "ignorant," saying he has a lot to learn about Latin America.

That concludes the concurring portion of this bullet point.

"We ask only for respect for Venezuela, nothing else," Chavez said. "If Obama respects us, we'll respect him. If Obama tries to keep disrespecting Venezuela, we will confront the U.S. empire."

Uncle Hugo speaks of "respect" while repeatedly calling us an "empire".  But then he knows he doesn't have to respect us with a sap like Red Barry in charge.  To the contrary, the more he craps on us, the more eager B.O. will be to grovel at his feet to try and "make amends" for George Bush's "hostility" and "aggression" in mounting little more than token rhetorical opposition to spreading Castroism throughout northern South America, undermining the neighboring U.S.-allied regime of Alvaro Uribe in Colombia, and pretty much offering up his country as a staging area for Putinical Russia, North Korea, Red China, Iran, and any other American enemy that wants to open up shop near our "soft underbelly".

This is what the Little President refers to as "restoring America's image in the world".  It's what I, nearly two years ago, called the World Prostration Tour 2009.

That's probably the second thing on which Uncle Hugo and I agree.

~  ~  ~

Retiring GOP Senator Judd Gregg on the Obamunist Manifesto:

Hard to believe this is the same man that was considering becoming Red Barry's other token RINO.

Here's more on the Social Security/Medicare actuarial facts of doom of which I (among a host of others) have been warning for years (h/t: Viking Pundit). 

If only Al Gore had devoted his hysterical crusading to a civilization-destroying cataclysm that is actually going to happen....

~  ~  ~

Those who believe last week's manufactured furor over the AIG executive bonuses that were inserted into the Hogzilla jamdown at Red Barry's specific insistence was an Obamunist work to create the momentary public support for nationalizing the determination of every American worker's salary, go to the head of the class:

The administration of President Barack Obama will move to increase oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, the New York Times reported.

Citing unnamed government officials, the newspaper said on its website that the plan was expected to be unveiled this week in preparation for Obama's first foreign summit next month.

The proposal would seek a broad new role for the Federal Reserve to oversee large companies, including major hedge funds, the report said.

It will also propose that many kinds of derivatives and other exotic financial instruments that contributed to the crisis be traded on exchanges or through clearinghouses so they are more transparent and can be more tightly regulated, according to the paper.

And it will call for federal standards for mortgage lenders beyond what the Federal Reserve adopted last year, as well as more aggressive enforcement of the mortgage rules, the Times said. [emphases added] 

If this power grab makes it into law, say goodbye to innovation, productivity, creativity, entreprenuership, dynamism, growth, prosperity, freedom, liberty, and America as we and our ancestors have known it for 232 years.  This crackdown won't be limited to banks that took TARP funds, or banks period, or Wall Street; this is the grand bull moose gold medal winner of camel noses in the proverbial tent.  It will be applied to every business regardless of size.  Nobody will have any incentive to pursue pretty much any career or excellence therein.  Neither will anybody have any incentive to start their own small business.  This crackdown will all but make "incentive" a dirty word.  The most basic economic right - to sell one's labor at a mutually agreed-upon price - will cease to exist.  And the American workforce will cease to be the most innovative and productive in the world (one of those economic "fundamentals" that Christina Romer was claiming is "sound") and degenerate into a nine-figure-strong DMV staff, and the rest will be selling apples on the street corners they're sleeping on.

And there will be Barack Obama, like Ebenezer Scrooge of old, hiding behind his teleprompter from the endless line of Bob Cratchets asking for their raises, or begging him not to cut their wage pittances further before he taxes away even more of them, or God help us, a small Christmas Winter Holiday bonus to perhaps purchase an extra government ration card or food stamp or make a campaign contribution with which to obtain a turkey drumstick from Lucifer's White House party tray after Scheherezade and the girls are finished with it.

Am I laying it on a little thick?  Brother Trunk doesn't think so.  Neither does Double-H.

The mission is clear: stop it now, because there won't be a later.

Mission Impossible?  No wonder SJ is depressed.  But we stopped HillaryCare in similar circumstances fifteen years ago; we can stop "My Pay Or The Highway" now.

Can't we?

Less than you might imagine - and shrinking all the time:

The Obama administration is taking steps quietly to shut down the program that qualifies commercial airline pilots to carry firearms in jetliner cockpits in order to ward off another 9/11-type attack.

The administration recently diverted $2 million from a program to train and certify pilots to carry firearms safely while on duty. Instead, it is using the money to hire additional field inspectors to help discipline pilots who step out of line, according to a report in Tuesday’s Washington Times.

A Times editorial condemned the Obama administration's action, calling it “completely unnecessary harassment of the pilots.”

Since Obama took office, the approval process for certifying pilots to carry firearms has ground to a halt, the newspaper reports. Pilots are afraid to speak out about the behind-the-scenes maneuverings, for fear of retaliation, according to the newspaper. No cases have been reported in which pilots have brandished a weapon inappropriately or otherwise abused their eligibility to carry firearms.

Well, now, THAT little bit 'o change will certainly make it easier for al Qaeda to reprise the 9/11 attacks, won't it?  You could almost imagine that Red Barry made a secret campaign promise to bin Laden himself, and is now delivering on it.

But who would bin Laden have in the United States to carry out fresh Islamikaze hijackings and other manner of mass-casualty attacks?  Funny you should ask:

Attorney General Eric Holder said some detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may end up being released in the U.S. as the Obama administration works with foreign allies to resettle some of the prisoners...For "people who can be released there are a variety of options that we have and among them is the possibility is that we would release them into this country," Mr. Holder said. "That process is ongoing and we've not made any determinations or made any requests of anybody at this point." [emphases added]

That's not "transferred to the U.S. civilian criminal justice system"; that's, "turned loose altogether inside the United States to do as they please."  AKA Willie Horton goosed logarithmically.  Anybody outside Obamatopia think these animals, five of whom (including Khalid Sheihk Muhammed) just recently renewed their "vows" to bring America to its knees, would be so grateful to False Messiah for their "liberation" from President Bush's "mistreatment" that they'd transmogrify overnight into model, high-tax-paying citizens?

These two criminal derelictions are just the latest in a series of them:

Since coming to power, the Obama administration has undertaken a series of moves that signal a major de-emphasis of programs enacted to keep America’s homeland safe from terrorist attack:

Obama’s choice for U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, labeled enhanced interrogation techniques as outright “torture” during his Senate confirmation hearings.

Obama banned waterboarding and ordered CIA interrogators to abide by U.S. Army Field Manual regulations.

He selected Clinton-era political operative Leon Panetta to serve as his CIA director. Panetta’s qualifications to run the agency have been questioned widely.

Obama announced that he would shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba within one year, raising the prospect of hardened terrorists entering the U.S. criminal justice system, or worse, being released to rejoin al-Qaida.

He indicated the U.S. defense budget would be sharply reduced.

He has sent a letter to Russian leaders, apparently offering to back off on the ballistic missile defense system that would protect Europe from Iran and North Korea.

Nobody wants to believe that the individual charged with "preserving, protecting, and defending" the Constitution and people of the United States is actively trying to expose both to external attacks and mass destruction at the hands of our enemies.  But this harrowing litany of anti-national security insanity and its intracible logic leaves the objective observer few options.

Namely, two: Either Barack Obama is dumber than a box of hair, in which case he is criminally negligent; or he is as "brilliant" as his drooling worshippers insist he is, in which case he is committing multiple acts of treason.  Either way, he is dismantling the nation's defenses in time of war and inviting the renewed maiming and slaughter of thousands of American civilians.

For these "gentlemen"....

....this is truly "change you can believe in".

You probably agree; AIG’s arrogance and greed is only matched by the incompetence of the political “leaders,” who gave them billions in bailout funds with little concern over how it was to be spent. 

As you know, the politicians didn’t even read the bailout legislation before they voted on it.  And our President signed it.

Sure, all Americans should be angry and outraged with AIG, but YOU can do something about it.

In December 2008, the Thomas More Law Center filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve Board to stop the impermissible use of bailout funds by AIG. 

Our lawsuit was filed on behalf of Kevin J. Murray, a former Marine infantryman who served two tours of duty in Iraq.  Co-counsel on the case is David Yerushalmi, an expert on Shariah law and Shariah-compliant financing, who is affiliated with the Law Center and is general counsel to the Center for Security Policy.

We are representing Kevin Murray without charge.

Now, Department of Justice attorneys out of Washington (supported by our tax dollars) have entered the case to defend the AIG bailout.  They recently filed a motion to dismiss the case.  In a nutshell, the basis of their defense is that there is a crisis (an excuse for everything in Washington these days).
 
But despite the merits of our case, we know we can’t match the vast financial resources of the Justice Department.  That’s why I’m asking for your financial help.

Can you chip in $25 so we can stop the AIG bailout?  Click here to donate now.   Your donation is tax-deductible.

According to our lawsuit, the U.S. government, through its ownership of AIG, which promotes Shariah-compliant financing, is not only violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, but it is also financing the destruction of America using American tax dollars.

The basis of our lawsuit is that AIG explicitly promotes Shariah-compliant financing, which subjects certain of their financial activities to the dictates of Islamic law.  In fact, AIG brags about its Shariah-compliant financing on its website and in their press releases.  Thus, our lawsuit challenges that portion of the $40 billion bailout funds that financially supports AIG’s Shariah-compliant financial activities.

Now here is something more to be outraged about.

You should know that Shariah law is the body of Islamic law based on the Koran, which is used to demand the destruction of the United States.  This is the same law championed by Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.  This is the same law that prompted the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks on our soil that killed thousands of innocent American civilians.

Remember this from last fall's campaign?:

As I noted back then:

And now, as Paul Harvey used to intone, the rest of the story:

John McCain wants to drastically overhaul the health insurance system in order to encourage Americans to go out and buy their own health care plans rather than relying on employer-based plans. To achieve this, he plans to tax employer-provided health benefits and provide a $2,500 tax credit ($5,000 for families) toward the cost of health insurance.

By most independent calculations, the McCain plan will leave most taxpayers better off in strictly financial terms, at least until 2013. After 2013, the benefits will begin to diminish. By 2018, taxpayers in the top quintile will be slightly worse off, but middle-income taxpayers will either break even or be slightly ahead. According to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, the McCain proposals will result in a net benefit of $1,241 to the average tax payer in 2009, $895 in 2013, and $386 in 2018.

“It is not fair to pull out just one part of the McCain proposal,” said Eric Toder, a TPC analyst. “It is a package. They are giving back more than they are taking away.” [emphasis added]

It is NOT, in other words, a "trillion dollar tax hike on the middle class."  Rather, it is, in essence, taking a non-cash fringe benefit and liquidating it into cash in order to reduce the third-party-payer nature of our health care/insurance system.  That's why most taxpayers will end up in the black on the deal.  It's even slightly "progressive" to boot.

It's particularly outrageous of any Democrat to attack any Republican for wanting to raise taxes given that that is PRECISELY what Rogaine Messiah plans to do, including to the middle class.  That'd be true even if the charge had any truth to it.

Guess who suddenly has warmed up to that very same idea - only as a genuine "trillion dollar tax hike on the middle class:

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said rival John McCain’s plan for taxing employee health benefits would represent “the largest middle-class tax increase in history.”

But now the Obama administration is signaling to Congress that he could support such a plan to help pay for overhauling the healthcare system, the New York Times reports....

Though there are several plans that have been offered by lawmakers who have toyed with the idea of taxing benefits, the Obama administration is unclear about what form of taxation they would support. If benefits were taxed at prevailing income rates, a family making between $30,000 and $49,000 could be looking at a tax increase of $2,500, based on the average savings per tax return calculated by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. A family or individual earning $75,000 could be looking at an increased tax bill of at least $3,000 while those making above $100,000 could pay about $4,500 if benefits were taxed at the prevailing rate.

Only now that Red Barry has glommed McCain's idea and communized it, it's not "the biggest middle class tax increase in American history" - heavens no! - it's a way to "control health care costs".

Ah, but surely not even today's Donk congressional supermajorities would be jack-bootedly brazen enough to try to jam this down our throats so on the heels of the Hogzilla and 9,000-earmark '09 omnibus sow stuffings, right?

Wrong:

Democratic leaders in the U.S. Congress face big decisions in coming weeks on how to move forward on two priorities for President Barack Obama - energy and healthcare reform.

Work has begun on legislation at committee level but some Republicans oppose Democratic ideas about expanding healthcare coverage to millions of uninsured Americans and developing a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions....

A rarely used budget tool called "reconciliation" might help Democrats maneuver around Republicans in the Senate, where a united minority can easily block legislation.

But such a move would ignite a fresh round of partisan warfare and further undercut Obama's promise of a new era of cooperation between the parties....

Senator Judd Gregg, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, told a top White House official this week that using the reconciliation process on healthcare or energy would be an "act of violence" against Republican interests.

It would also violate the conditions under which the "reconciliation" tool can be used:

Reconciliation is supposed to be used to reduce the deficit, meaning anything in the bill not directly related to that goal could be challenged in the Senate.

"I think there are many problems with trying to use reconciliation for large substantive legislation," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a Democrat, told reporters.

All of which means that the Dems will simply use it anyway (assuming for whatever unfathomable reason they don't get the usual RINO defections to break a Republican filibuster) and damn the electoral consequences - which will be substantial.

This is the "[BLEEP] you!" Congerss, gentlebeings.  A majority of voters did not vote for the outrageous extremism that has vomited forth from the Beltway over the past two months.  And don't think the Democrats don't know this; they're simply exploiting this biennial window of opportunity to drag and entrench the nation's institutions as far to the Left as they possibly can before the electorate can fumigate Capitol Hill and put it back in sane, responsible, conservative hands, banking on their legendary prowess at playing "prevent defense" to prevent its subsequent rollback.  The GOP may get one or both houses back next year, and get rid of Lucifer in 2012, but the United Soviet Socialist States of America would be a fait accompli.

Call that "change that makes you sick".  And "violence" that richly deserves "massive retaliation".

No, Tavis Smiley, the economy did NOT fall into a dead faint because of "greed" (outside of scheming Democrats' greed for power, anyway).  But that motivation (and its object) is propelling the global warming hoax (via Newsmax Insider):

Czech President Vaclav Klaus says many global warming advocates are more interested in money than they are in climate change.

Speaking at the opening session of the Second International Conference on Climate Change last week in New York, Klaus — who is also President pro-tem of the European Union — warned that politicians have “succeeded in creating incentives which led to the rise of a very powerful [profit]-seeking group.

“These people are interested neither in temperature, CO2, competing scientific hypotheses and their testing, nor in freedom or markets. They are interested in their businesses and their profits — made with the help of politicians.”

They will profit, he said, from trading the licenses to emit carbon dioxide, and from constructing unproductive wind, solar and similar equipment able to generate electricity only with high levels of subsidies.

They will also make money from doing research, writing and speaking about global warming.

At the New York conference, sponsored by the Heartland Institute and attended by more than seven hundred scientists, Klaus declared that “there is no fixed and stable relationship between measured temperature and CO2 emissions.

“The believers in this hypothesis are not able to explain why the global temperature increased from 1918 to 1940, decreased from 1940 to 1976, increased from 1976 to 1998 and decreased from 1998 to the present, irrespective of the fact that people have been adding increasing amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere.”

He said global warming alarmists “want to change us and our behavior. Their ambition is to control and manipulate us.”

The global warming debate “has not made any detectable progress and the much needed, long overdue exchange of views has not yet started. All we see and hear are uninspiring monologues.

“It reminds me of the frustration people like me felt in the Communist era. Whatever you said, any convincing and well prepared arguments you used, any relevant data you assembled — no reaction. It all fell into emptiness. Nobody listened.

“They didn't even try to argue back. They considered you a naive, uninformed and confused person, an eccentric, a complainer, someone not able to accept their only truth. It is very similar now.”

Recalling his experience at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he said he spent three hours at a closed session with about sixty people - heads of state and “experts” like Al Gore, Tony Blair and Kofi Annan.

“It was a discouraging experience. You looked around in vain to find at least one person who would share your views. There was no one.

“All the participants of the meeting took man-made global warming for granted, were convinced of its dangerous consequences, and more or less competed in one special discipline — whether to suggest a 20%, 30%, 50% or 80% CO2 emissions cut as an agreed-upon, world-wide project. It was difficult to say anything meaningful and constructive.”

Newsmax reported earlier that during the Davos conference in January, Klaus said: "I'm very sorry that some people like Al Gore are not ready to listen to the competing theories. I do listen to them.

"Environmentalism and the global warming alarmism is challenging our freedom. Al Gore is an important person in this movement."

Klaus concluded in New York: “The environmentalists speak about ‘saving the planet.’ From what? And from whom? One thing I know for sure: We have to save it - and us — from them.” [emphasis added] 

I take it back - THIS is the quote that requires no additional commentary....

President Franklin Roosevelt famously said in his first Inaugural address, "The only thing we have to fear is...fear itself."  Barack Obama's twenty-first century corrallary is, "The only thing I have to fear is when the American people can no longer be fearmongered."

That time may finally be arriving on the fictional hysterics of "climate change":

Skepticism about global warming among the American public is growing, with 41% of those polled now saying the danger over climate change is exaggerated, according to a Gallup poll. That figure represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.

As recently as 2006, more Americans thought that newspaper and TV reporters underestimated the seriousness of global warming than said it was exaggerated: 38% vs. 30%. Now, more Americans say the problem is exaggerated rather than underestimated, 41% vs. 28%.

What a difference three years and the horrific electoral mistake of putting the neoCommunist party in charge of the country.  It's like voters went on a drunken bender and are finally coming out of the hangover to behold what they've done to all of us, and realizing the implications of democratically indulging the global warming hoax.  Even asking themselves the question, "What if the skeptics are right?"  A question that comes much more readily to mind when the economy is in the toilet as it is versus in times of prosperity when the statist assaults on economic freedom and growth that are the raison d' etere of greenstremism are mere hypothetical abstractions.

It may be the inevitable resurfacing of traditional American skepticism about Chicken Little-ism.  Perhaps the growing scientific consensus that "man-made climate change" is a bunch of crap is finally penetrating the collective consciousness of the public at large.  And maybe, just maybe, people are figuring out that Red Barry is every bit the left-wing extremist those of us on the right warned during last year's campaign, that electing him president was a risk we couldn't afford to take, and are coming to see him as a source, not of hope, but of fear itself.

If an Obamunist propaganda shillery like Gallup is reporting results like this, the ranks of the American Resistance must be swelling more than even I imagined.

As Bruce Willis once said, "Welcome to the party, pals!"

With Mexico dissolving into chaos and failed-statehood, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security - doubtless while still under President George W. Bush's direction - made preparations for dealing the threat this trend poses to the national security of the United States:

A top Homeland Security official told a House panel Thursday that Mexican drug cartels are the biggest organized crime threat to the United States.

Homeland Security official Roger Rufe said a department plan to respond to escalating violence on the southwest border includes — as a last resort — deploying military personnel and equipment to the region if homeland security agencies become overwhelmed.

However, that plan has been amended to functionally rule out that last resort contingency:

Rufe, echoing comments a day earlier from President Barack Obama, said now is not the time to militarize the southwest border.

"We would take all resources short of DoD and National Guard troops before we reach that tipping point," Rufe told lawmakers. "We very much do not want to militarize our border."

Rufe said military forces would be called in only when homeland security and other government agencies are overwhelmed. He did not specify what circumstances would trigger a call for troops. [emphasis added]

Of course he didn't, and of course no House Donks asked him for said specification.  That would have been to go directly against their boss's pacifistic impulses:

President Barack Obama is keeping close watch on the violence from Mexico's drug war, but he said Wednesday so far it hasn't spilled into this country enough to justify sending troops to the border.

"We've got a very big border with Mexico," he said. "I'm not interested in militarizing the border."

This despite a very different (and vastly more informed) recommendation from American officials who actually live on that border:

Last month, Texas Governor Rick Perry visited El Paso, Texas - whose neighbor, Ciudad Juarez, has taken the brunt of drug violence that has claimed more than 7,000 lives in Mexico in fourteen months - and called on Washington to send a thousand troops or border agents.

Sure sounds like a "tipping point" to me.  And Red Barry's preferred alternative?:

Obama emphasized he will continue working closely with Mexico and said within "a few months" he will offer a comprehensive policy to curtail U.S. demand for drugs and curb the southbound flow of cash and guns that give the cartels "extraordinary power." [emphasis added]

"Comprehensive", eh?  Why does that sound like a code word for shamnesty?  Perhaps because that's what it is.

But even in the drug war context, how seriously can the most drug-addled president in American history be taken on this matter when he went out of his way during the campaign to embrace marijuana legalization and just recently stripped the Drug Czar post of Cabinet rank?  You can tell he's going to run up the white flag to the cartels by his emblematic claim to not be doing so while pursuing long-discredited and failed  "treatment and prevention" policies that can amount to nothing else.

Besides, his bottom line strategic objective is to passively conquer Mexico and complete the importation of its population to facilitate the transformation of the United States into a one-party Marxist state.  Mexico's collapse into internecene drug-fueled chaos would be a godsend for those ambitions.  He's not going to do anything to truly impede that collapse - like "militarizing" the border - and will apply as many PR fig leaves as necessary to keep the master plan under wraps until it passes the point of no return.

~  ~  ~

Is the Man of Steele manufacturing his own rhetorical Kryptonite?:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has sought to distance himself from a controversial statement that he supports “individual choice” on abortion, insisting that he remains pro-life.

In an interview with GQ magazine, Steele — who is Catholic and was adopted — was asked about his views on abortion.

“The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life, or you can choose abortion,” he said. “My mother chose life. So I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other.”

Interviewer Lisa DePaulo asked: “Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?”

Steele replied: “Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.”

DePaulo: “You do?”

Steele: “Yeah. Absolutely.”

DePaulo: “Are you saying you don’t want to overturn Roe v. Wade?”

Steele: “I think Roe v. Wade — as a legal matter, Roe v. Wade was a wrongly decided matter.”

DePaulo: “Okay, but if you overturn Roe v. Wade, how do women have the choice you just said they should have?”

Steele: “The states should make that choice. That’s what the choice is. The individual choice rests in the states. Let them decide.” [emphases added] 

You can see what's coming from light-years away, cantcha?:

His remarks created an immediate furor in the pro-life community after the interview was posted on Wednesday night. Charmaine Yoest, the president and CEO of Americans United for Life Action, was among his critics, Politico reported. She stated:

"I think it is very troubling for a public figure, of either party, particularly one who presents himself as pro-life, to describe the abortion issue as being a matter of 'individual choice.' That is language straight out of Planned Parenthood's messaging playbook."

Annnnd you know what followed on the heels of that mass eruption, dontcha?:

On Thursday morning, Mr. Steele issued a statement that read:

I am pro-life, always have been, always will be.

I tried to present why I am pro-life while recognizing that my mother had a “choice” before deciding to put me up for adoption. I thank her every day for supporting life. The strength of the pro-life movement lies in choosing life and sharing the wisdom of that choice with those who face difficult circumstances. They did that for my mother and I am here today because they did. In my view Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be repealed. I realize that there are good people in our party who disagree with me on this issue.

But the Republican Party is and will continue to be the party of life. I support our platform and its call for a Human Life Amendment. It is important that we stand up for the defenseless and that we continue to work to change the hearts and minds of our fellow countrymen so that we can welcome all children and protect them under the law.

We now have enough data to recognize a pattern.  A pattern that reveals a basic, fundamental truth about Chairman Steele: he's weak.  Or, at the very least, he's verbally incontinent and can't think on his feet to save his life.  I don't think that he outted himself to Lisa DePaulo as an "abortion rights" supporter.  I fully accept and believe his subsequent protestation that he's pro-life.

But just as with his clumsy row with Rush Limbaugh, I think that Steele keeps seeking out the Obamedia in order to...well, I'm not sure what he's trying to do with them - present a "new face" of the Republican Party?  Defensively challenge their vile partisan mischaracterizations of the GOP?  Sell conservatism using "progressive" lingual imagery?  Whatever and whichever it is, it's clear that the former Maryland Lieutenant Governor doesn't have the mental agility, to say nothing of the courage of the convictions he claims, to pull it off, or even avoid not getting so easily tripped up and painted into rhetorical corners.  This is twice now that his eagerness to please, or avoid confrontation, has prompted him to say something stupid that pissed off his own constituency, forced him to "clarify" himself, and left him open to Obamedia attacks of being "beholden" to the "Far Right" and "not his own man."  As though being elected chairman of the RNC wouldn't pretty clearly indicate that Michael Steele is a conservative.

In a word, he's weak.  But he's also black, a not-insignicant factor in his elevation to RNC chair, and thus functionally irremovable for at least this political cycle.

It's a bit late to discover that he can't take the Kryptonite arrows - and that the resulting wounds are largely if not entirely self-inflicted.

~  ~  ~

The definition of insanity is trying the same failed solution to a problem over and over and over again in perpetuity in the hopes that by sheer repetition it will eventually, by random chance, succeed.

And you wonder why I refer to the Speaker of the House of Representatives as "Crazy Nancy"?:

Republican leaders said Wednesday they would oppose another economic stimulus package suggested by economists at a meeting with Democratic lawmakers. ...

The idea of another stimulus package emerged from a meeting Tuesday of Democratic leaders with several economists, who warned that the job-generating punch of the administration's 787 billion dollar stimulus package has been weaker than expected.

"I think another stimulus package is a reasonable probability the way things are going," Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody's Economy.com, told reporters after the meeting. "I think policy makers need to do more. We're not done yet."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also suggested another round of spending might be needed, telling reporters, "We have to keep the door open to see how this goes." [emphasis added]

So Hogzilla - which everybody on the Right said would be an utter failure because spending binges as "economic stimuli" have ALWAYS failed wherever and whenever they've been attempted - is failing.  And the Democrats' answer to this failure?  Hogzilla II!

Is it any wonder that Boehner and McConnell are getting their pre-emptive opposition out on front of a second "stimulus"?  They're just putting their faces on the 2010 campaign themes the Dems are so helpfully writing for them.

Maybe they should call up Time-Warner and the Wachowski Brothers and get permission to use clips from the fight scene in Matrix: Reloaded where Neo fights the army of Agents Smith.  At one point one of the Smiths gets thrown across the courtyard and through a park bench.  As he picks himself up he utters one word: "More".

But "more" didn't get the job done against Neo, and "more" not only isn't reviving the economy, but is making the recession worse.

We can't afford "more"; we need "change that works".

Hey, I DID say the other side was writing our campaign ad copy.

~  ~  ~

More signs of the times:

David Ogden was confirmed as deputy attorney general Thursday, overcoming opposition by Republicans who objected to his representation of defendants in pornography cases.

The vote in the Senate was 65-28.

"I felt it was a scurrilous attack on him," said Senator Patrick Leahy, D-VT, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A smut shyster as deputy AG and Leaky Leahy, king of the smears, calling the truth a "scurrilous attack."  Two indellible signs of the Apocalypse if ever they existed.

Is it just me, or does Ogden bear a striking resemblance to the Scarecrow from Batman Begins?  And yes, that's a loaded question.

~  ~  ~

Another outstanding pre-emptive strike by House Republicans:

Citing the devastating terror attacks in Mumbai and London, a dozen House conservatives Thursday introduced legislation to extend the controversial Patriot Act for another decade.

“If there’s one thing we can predict about terrorism it’s that it’s unpredictable,” Representative Lamar Smith, R-Texas, told The Hill.com. “That’s why law enforcement and intelligence officials must remain vigilant.”

The extension is expected to run into stiff opposition from the ACLU and other organizations that charge the Bush Administration used the Patriot Act to conduct domestic surveillance on U.S. citizens.

Why is this a political masterstroke?  Because several Patriot Act provisions are scheduled to expire at year’s end unless it is extended.  Something that the Dems could otherwise have just let quietly happen without having to go to the publicity-attracting attention of actively repealing them.  With this extension legislation, House conservatives are compelling the Democrats to either go along with extending the Patriot Act indefinitely or leave their fingerprints on its expiration as well as the mass-casualty terrorist attacks that will be the consequences of so comprehensive a letting down our our guard against al Qaeda and its fellow travelers.

Either option will look awfully good on already-strong Republican resumes in 2010.

You're getting sleeeeeepy, very sleeeeeepy....:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, says despite last-minute “special amendment” language to regulate talk radio slipping into a D.C. voting rights bill earlier this week, the return of the so-called Fairness Doctrine is an aberration that neither political party would like to see resurrected.

“The Fairness Doctrine – what a ghost that doesn’t exist,” Reid scoffed from the floor of the Senate yesterday.

“None of us want to go back to the way it was before,” he assured Senate colleagues. “It is an issue they [Republicans] brought up to talk about. No one wants to re-establish the Fairness Doctrine – Democrats or Republicans,” CNS News reports.

Translation: No one wants to re-establish the Fairness Doctrine openly and honestly:

The amendment attached to the D.C. Voting Rights Act, introduced by Senator Dick Durbin, D-IL, states, “certain affirmative actions” are “required” of the FCC, including “actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership and to ensure that broadcast station licenses are used in the public interest.”

This, many conservative media experts agree, is a veiled means for Reid and other Democratic leadership to regulate talk radio and purge conservative radio programs and their popular hosts from the airwaves, including Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Last week, Senator James Inhofe, R-OK, told Newsmax that House Democrats had an “end run” planned around the Senate’s version of the bill, which prohibits the FCC from re-instituting the Fairness Doctrine.

In a press release issued by his office, Inhofe said, “encouraging and promoting diversity in communication media ownership,” is “really just a new means of censorship on the airways.”

In other words, the Democrats are going to effectively repeal First Amendment protections from conservatives while hiding their repressive actions behind the race card.  Or pretty much the equivalent gambit that they used to manipulate first the mortgage lending industry and then the entire financial system into comprehensive collapse. 

Limbaugh and Hannity and Hewitt and Prager and Medved and Savage and Beck and Levin and (oh, you get the point) won't be silenced all at once.  But how many of them will still be standing ten years from now?

One thing is certain: Penn & Teller have nothing to fear from Dirty Harry displacing them for a second career in hand-waving illusionism.

~  ~  ~

It's unfair, UNFAIR she tells ya, that there's no airliner designated "Air Force Three":

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been treating the United States Air Force as her personal airline, blocking out multiple flights, issuing last minute cancellations after planes and crew are prepped and ready, and expressing outrage when the military aircraft weren’t available.

Those revelations are based on Air Force documents obtained by Judicial Watch, the nonprofit organization that exposes government waste and corruption.

"Not only does Speaker Pelosi issue unreasonable requests for military travel,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, “but her office seems unconcerned about wasting taxpayer money with last minute cancellations and other demands."

Well golly gee whiz, folks, why SHOULD Crazy Nancy's office be concerned about wasting taxpayer money on her royalist delusions?  Wasting taxpayer money is her JOB, after all, and she and her party think the voters are just fine with that, particularly since she and her party think they've got the electorate by the recessionary short hairs.  Indeed, falsely projecting her corrupt instincts on her political opponents was what got her the Speakership in the first place; and even if the economy doesn't have the public over the proverbial barrel as far as holding the Donks accountable, it's only once every half century or so that enough people pay enough attention to notice the Dems' banana republicanism and punish them for it, right?

Sure would be nice if that airy, airheaded arrogance could be proven devastatingly wrong.  Besides, Speakerette Funbags doesn't look at THING like Marie Antoinette.

~  ~  ~

And last but certainly not least, another demiurgical harmonic convergence.

First, Red Barry urging the rest of the world to follow his horrible fiscal example:

President Barack Obama says other nations must sign on to aggressive steps to jump-start their own economies, warning that without global coordination U.S. actions could falter.

Obama told reporters after meeting Wednesday in the Oval Office with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that continued deterioration in the world economy is "going to set us back."

Translation: When Obamanomics fails, he'll be able to blame it on the rest of the world not joining him in spending their economies into collapse.  And if they do, when their economies collapse from the stagflationary pressures, it'll provide False Messiah with the opportunity he's been awaiting his entire life: to use whatever American wealth is left after the communization he's already foisted on his own country to "save the world" by bailing out the entire planet.

Talk about the ultimate wealth redistribution.

Which brings us to this little bit 'o polling:

New survey results show Americans are far more pessimistic about the nation’s economy than most economists, with 53% saying another Great Depression is likely in the next few years.

In a Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,000 adults, 19% said it is “very likely” the nation will slip into another Great Depression. And thirty-four percent characterized the odds of a systemic economic collapse as “somewhat likely.”

Connection?  Collective American instincts recovering after their tragic Obama lapse?  We report, you decide.

As even the pseudoscientific aspects of the global warming hoax get shot down and exposed by those true scientists not in thrall to pagan climatological superstition, the blind guides of that communistic religion grow even less inclined to let facts get in the way of the forcible imposition of their faith (via Newsmax Insider):

Climate change alarmists are quick to point to diminishing Arctic sea ice as an indicator of global warming. But a faulty sensor led scientists to underestimate the extent of the ice — by an area larger than California.

The error began in early January and persisted until mid-February, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado, which releases estimates of Arctic sea ice.

The problem was caused by the malfunction of a satellite sensor used for daily updates on the extent of Arctic sea ice.

The NSIDC explained on its Web site: “On February 16, 2009, as e-mails came in from puzzled readers, it became clear that there was a significant problem — sea-ice-covered regions were showing up as open ocean . . . 

“Upon further investigation, we found that data quality had begun to degrade over the month preceding the catastrophic failure.

“As a result, our processes underestimated total sea ice extent for the affected period. Based on comparisons with sea ice extent derived from the NASA Earth Observing System Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer sensor, this underestimation grew from a negligible amount in early January to about 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) by mid-February.”

The area of California is about 163,700 square miles.

The NSIDC uses Department of Defense satellites to obtain its Arctic sea ice data, rather than more accurate National Aeronautics and Space Administration equipment, Bloomberg.com reported.

The Arctic ice cap retreated to its smallest extent on record in 2007, then posted its second-lowest annual minimum at the end of last year’s melt season, and the NSIDC said the recent error does not change its view that the ice is retreating. [emphases added]

In other words, "We were wrong, but we're still right."  Or "Don't believe your lying eyes, believe us who fill up your gullible ears with destructive, ruinous nonsense."

Speaking of which, how is Red Barry's cap-and-trade “market” approach to curbing carbon emissions working out over in the continent that is the source of his failed, discredited economic nostrums?

Not so well, it seems:

A year ago European governments allocated a limited number of carbon emission permits to their big polluters. Businesses that reduce pollution are allowed to sell spare permits to ones that need more. As demand outstrips this capped supply, and the price of permits rises, an incentive grows to invest in green energy. Why buy costly permits to keep a coal plant running when you can put the cash into clean power instead?

All this only works as the carbon price lifts. As with 1924 Château Lafite or Damian Hirst’s diamond skulls, scarcity and speculation create the value. If permits are cheap, and everyone has lots, the green incentive crashes into reverse. As recession slashes output, companies pile up permits they don’t need and sell them on. The price falls, and anyone who wants to pollute can afford to do so. The result is a system that does nothing at all for climate change but a lot for the bottom lines of mega-polluters such as the steelmaker Corus: industrial assistance in camouflage.

“I don’t know why industrials would miss this opportunity,” said one trader last week. “They are using it to compensate for the tightening of credit and the slowdown, to pay for redundancies." [emphases added]

Put another way, a cap & trade carbon credit system needs strong economic growth as a prerequisite in order to produce the desired "green" energy incentives.  But the effect of a cap & trade carbon credit system is to REDUCE growth because "green" energy are less efficient, more costly, and therefore economically perverse.  The system is currently failing in Europe because of the recession triggered by the Democrat Financial Logic Bomb, but if it's implemented here, it is guaranteed to produce economic reverses that in turn guarantee that the system cannot produce the advertised result.

In other words, if the system fails, it will fail, and if it succeeds, it will fail even worse.  And yet its adherents will insist on even more of the same as the utopianist "solution".

No better articulation of liberalism has ever been coined, IMHO.