"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
Al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader lashed out at President-elect Barack Obama in a new audio message Tuesday, accusing him of not doing anything to stop Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, according to an intelligence monitoring center.
The recording purportedly by Ayman al-Zawahiri was al-Qaida’s first comments on the Gaza crisis since Israel launched its offensive against the Islamic militants of Hamas on Dec. 27.
In the comments, which were posted on a militant Web site and obtained by the SITE Monitoring Service, al-Zawahiri described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “crusade against Islam and Muslims” and called it “Obama’s gift to Israel” before he takes office later this month.
“This is Obama whom the American machine of lies tried to portray as the rescuer who will change the policy of America,” al-Zawahiri said, according to SITE. “He kills your brothers and sisters in Gaza mercilessly and without affection.”
I guess this means Obama will have to give back his secret Muslim membership card…
You could say this guy died with his Hush Puppies on.
A soldier from Fort Bragg died this morning in Denver from injuries suffered from a bar fight in Steamboat Springs on Friday night over a Jimmy Buffett song.
Richard Lopez, 37, of Fayetteville, N.C., was pronounced dead at 4:16 a.m. today at Denver Health Medical Center. An autopsy by the Arapahoe County Coroner’s office is scheduled for Tuesday.
“This is a very sad and serious case,” said Capt. Joel Rae with Steamboat Springs police.
So far, no suspects have been arrested, although police have talked to two individuals involved in the fight.
“We know where they are and they have been interviewed,” said Rae.
The case is being investigated as a homicide.
The incident occurred before 12:15 a.m. Friday when police were called to a fight between five people outside the Tap House.
“The initial disagreement was about music being played on the jukebox,” said Rae, adding that it was a Jimmy Buffet song.
“Richard Lopez and two other individuals put on the song, but two other individuals did not agree with it.”
It was not known which Jimmy Buffett song was being played at the time, but the fight was taken outside the bar.
At least he’ll get a cheeseburger in paradise. You really have to press somebody’s fool button to be willing to fight to the death over Jimmy Buffett.
So much for Obama’s betrayal of the gay community:
Obama tapped Bradley J. Kiley to become director of the office of management and administration, where he will oversee White House operations, including travel. Kiley is operations director for the transition team and served a similar role during the Clinton administration as deputy assistant to the president for management and administration.
If nothing else, Obama seems to be interested in creating a truly diverse administration. The way his party seems intent on being the Keystone Congress, he’s going to need all the competence he can get.
It was only a matter of time until the Leftist blog of record—HuffPo—gave a platform to failed terrorist, Obama anchor and Chavez hugger Bill Ayers. It’s been a while since I fisked an overeducated moron. Time to stretch the muscles. Ayers it a turd but his little essay represents everything wrong with Departments of Education nationwide.
He starts in on Obama’s choices for Education Secretary:
These four, like George W. Bush’s Secretary of Education, Rod Paige of the fraudulent Texas-miracle, have little to show in terms of school improvement beyond a deeply dishonest public relations narrative. Teacher accountability, relentless standardized testing, school closings, and privatization—this is what the dogmatists and true-believers of the right call “reform.” Michelle Rhee of Washington D.C., the most ideologically-driven of the bunch, warranted a cover story in Time in early December called “How to Fix America’s Schools” in which she was praised for making more changes in a year and a half on the job than other school leaders, “even reform-minded ones,” make in five: closing 21 schools (15% of the total), firing 100 central office personnel, 270 teachers, and 36 principals. These are all policy moves that are held on faith to stand for improvement; not a word on kids’ learning or engagement with schools, not even a nod at evidence that might connect these moves with student progress. But of course evidence is always the enemy of dogma, and this is faith-based, fact-free school policy at its purest.
Yes. God fordbid that Michelle Rhee should come into the most under-performing school district this side of Alpha Centauri and shake things up, fire the incompetents and shut down the worst of the worst. I suppose Ayers would have rather had her do something not “held on faith”, like throw more money at the problem. Or maybe everyone hold hands and sing, “I may be a tiny chimney sweep but I’ve got an enormous brush.”
Where is the evidence that “engagement” improves performance? How do we measure sucess without school testing? Hold on. You’re about to find out that Bill Ayers’ definition of school performance does not match anything you or I would consider reasonable.
So I would have picked Darling-Hammond, but then again I would have picked Noam Chomsky for state, Naomi Klein for defense, Bernardine Dohrn for Attorney General, Bill Fletcher for commerce, James Thindwa for labor, Barbara Ransby for human services, Paul Krugman for treasury, and Amy Goodman for press secretary. So what do I know?
Not much. I’ve read this paragraph several times and I can only conclude that Ayers is trying to be funny. So ... ha.
Ha.
Back to work.
But there’s a deeper point: since the Obama victory, many people seem to be suffering a kind of post-partum depression: unable to find any polls to obsess over, we read the tea-leaves and try to penetrate the president-elect’s mind. What do his moves portend? What magic or disaster awaits us? With due respect, this is a matter of looking entirely in the wrong direction.
Obama is not a monarch—Arne Duncan is not education czar—and we are not his subjects. If we want a foreign policy based on justice, for example, we ought to get busy organizing a robust anti-imperialist peace movement; if we want to end the death penalty we better get smart about changing the dominant narrative concerning crime and punishment. We are not allowed to sit quietly in a democracy awaiting salvation from above. We are all equal, and we all need to speak up and speak out right now.
I actually agree with some of what he says here. The President is not some great golden god who can solve all the nation’s problems with a wave of a magic wand. However, this leaves open the question of why Ayers, later in the essay, argues that our schools should become the Universal Parent and teach children virtue and self-realization. Is Obama a monarch or not? Do we need grassroots efforts or do we entrust our children to the power of the State?
Of course, the paragraph needs some translation from educatorese. “Anti-imperialist peace movement” is correctly translated into “surrender” and “narrative concerning crime and punishment”, as Ayers himself has argued, means abolishing prison. Just so we’re clear.
During Arne Duncan’s tenure in Chicago, a group of hunger-striking mothers organized city-wide support and won the construction of a new high school in a community that had been underserved and denied for years. Another group of parents, teachers, and students mobilized to push military recruiters out of their high school; Duncan didn’t support them and he certainly didn’t lead the charge, but they won anyway. If they’d waited for Duncan to act they’d likely be waiting still. Teachers at another school refused to give one of the endless standardized tests, arguing that this was one test too many, and they organized deep support for their protest; Duncan didn’t support them either, but they won anyway. If they’d waited for Duncan, they’d be waiting still. Why would anyone sit around waiting for Arne now? Stop whining; get busy.
I wonder if Ayers would have similar admiration for those who organize to teach intelligent design. Or abstinence-only education. And, of course, he says not a word about the largest group of people engaged in grassroots efforts to improve our nation’s education; people making enormous personal sacrifices for a better future; people routinely beating the shit out of the public schools in performance—home schoolers.
What follow is a very long educatorese screed about democracy and education which I defy anyone to read and comprehend. My translation is that he believes that individual success only comes through surrender to the State or the community; that the purpose of our education system is not to impart hard knowledge but to indoctrinate children into correct views. Here’s a representative quote with my response.
We want our students to be able to think for themselves, to make judgments based on evidence and argument, to develop minds of their own. We want them to ask fundamental questions---Who in the world am I? How did I get here and where am I going? What in the world are my choices? How in the world shall I proceed? --- and to pursue answers wherever they might take them. Democratic educators focus their efforts, not on the production of things so much as on the production of fully developed human beings who are capable of controlling and transforming their own lives, citizens who can participate fully in civic life.
Unfortunately, Bill, the purpose of our schools is to impart knowledge, not to turn children into fully developed human beings (hereafter FDHBs). We want them to ask questions and think for themselves. But we also want them to learn the Constitution, having a passing familiarity with history, speak the language correctly and differentiate an equation (and get their fucking homework in on time without any excuses).
And the latter takes precedent over the former by a long shot. Bridges need to be built by people who’ve learned calculus. Vaccines need to be developed by people who know biochemistry. Surgery needs to be performed by people who know physiology. And future generations need to be taught be people who can spell.
Our schools are not some social experiment; they are the lifeblood of human progress. It takes an enormous effort simply to maintain the progress we’ve made so far and keep us from slipping back into a Dark Age. I don’t see any point in being FDHBs if we’re dying of cholera because no one knows how to clean the water supply. What point is self-actualization if we’re unable to feed all six billion of us? Asking questions won’t do us any good if we don’t know the answers.
When our students have mastered basic skills and knowledge, when their performance in science and math matches those of their international peers, then maybe we can turn the state into the Universal Parent and teach them to be FDHBs. Until then, we will have to rely on communities, religions and parents for that. That, after all, is what they are for.
President-elect Barack Obama has offered the job of surgeon general to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the neurosurgeon and correspondent for CNN and CBS, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.
...
Gupta, who hosts “House Call” on CNN, has discussed the job offer with his bosses at CBS and CNN to make sure he could be released from his contractual obligations, the sources said.
His role as journalist and physician have sometimes overlapped. During the 2003 Iraq invasion, Gupta was embedded with a Navy unit called Devil Docs and, while covering its mission, performed brain surgery five times, the first of which was on a 2-year-old Iraqi boy.
Gupta’s only hesitation in taking the post is said to involve the financial impact on his pregnant wife and two children if he gives up his lucrative medical and journalistic careers. But he is expected to accept the position within days.
Personally, I would be fine if the office of Surgeon General disappeared. But if there has to be someone in it, Gupta’s not a bad choice at all. Aside from his heroism in Iraq, he became a hero to us over at Moorewatch for directly challenging Michael Moore on his bullshit (see here, here and here). The man has a nose for science and accuracy, something keenly missing in our last Administration.
The office may be somewhat meaningless but the choice is dynamite. I like.
More are coming out in defense of Leon Panetta as CIA chief. First, Robert Baer.
Leading Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee Jay Rockefeller and Dianne Feinstein have already criticized the choice of Panetta, claiming the CIA needs to be led by an experienced intelligence professional. But right now political clout, and the ability to be a strong advocate for the CIA, far outweighs the virtues of being a professional spy, someone who knows the difference between a “live drop” and a “dead drop.” A professional from the ranks would be eaten up by Hillary Clinton at State or Bob Gates at Defense. Or end up like Bill Clinton’s CIA Director Jim Woolsey, shut out of the White House, ignored and irrelevant.
It may indeed be pandering-but then again, it might be the kind of out-of-the box pick that could bring real reform to the CIA.
Q: Would Leon Panetta have been your CIA chief choice?
A: He’s an excellent choice because he will be loyal to the president first, not to the CIA. Mr. Obama needs someone who can be trusted, a person who will support him when the going gets tough.
A “safe” choice, viewed as inoffensive by the CIA’s top bureaucrats, would have been dangerous. Directors Tenet and Hayden were placid Washington civil servants of neutral loyalties, quickly coopted by the CIA’s bureaucracy. A military officer might have had good leadership experience but would have lacked sound partisan political connections.
The choice is a brave one because it can open Mr. Obama to charges of appointing a loyalist to a crucial post. But that is exactly what is needed at this time.
Q: What can he bring to the job?
A: Panetta has no espionage experience, but he has the only qualification he needs: the ability to bring the power of the presidency to bear.
Americans want President Obama to succeed, and for that he’ll need a CIA that can provide the intelligence necessary to protect Americans and our allies. If Mr. Obama relies less upon military strength, he will necessarily rely more upon intelligence.
Now that the Democrats are in charge, their focus shifts from winning power to holding it. A nuclear attack on America or an ally that could have been prevented through intelligence reform will severely harm the new president and his party.
Q: More generally speaking: Whomever the nominee, what’s the opportunity Obama has to seize when it comes to the CIA?
A: The superbly run Obama campaign showed that the Obama people know how to manage an effective organization. Reform of the CIA can begin simply by requiring the CIA to obey existing laws and directives: 1) The CIA must get its clandestine-service officers out of the United States and spying in and on foreign countries. The great majority of CIA employees now live and work within the U.S. 2) Its clandestine operations should move away from embassies because, unlike the old Soviet targets, terrorists and nuclear proliferators do not attend diplomatic cocktail parties. Congress has already funded this move, but the CIA has not complied. 3) Ruthlessly streamline the bloat. Terrorists have flat chains of command and no bureaucratic turfs. The CIA has dozens of byzantine management layers which, octopus-like, loop back upon themselves. Human-source intelligence collection has been effectively strangled. 4) The CIA must strictly account for the handling of taxpayers’ money, as the law already requires. Post-9/11, the CIA has become a place to get rich for contractors and former managers.
Q: What has been holding Bush back?
A: Bush felt a misplaced sense of loyalty to the CIA, a loyalty the CIA never returned.
Partisan political conflict during the Bush years allowed CIA dysfunction to thrive and grow. The CIA may have difficulty running basic espionage operations, but when its way of life is at stake, it fights like a retrovirus regardless of the commander-in-chief’s political party. The CIA’s sophisticated system of press leaks has been a textbook covert-action operation, in which journalists are given leaked information in exchange for articles which support the CIA’s agenda. CIA-stoked controversies over terrorist interrogations, wiretapping, the Libby case, and Iraqi WMD kept President Bush off balance, and at times even threatened to put his people in jail.
Former CIA director Porter Goss attempted some minor reform, but without White House support he was quickly expelled by CIA bureaucrats. Obama’s choice of a loyalist shows he understands the threat he faces from a dysfunctional CIA. That the CIA served President Bush poorly doesn’t make it the Democrats’ ally.
Q: Shouldn’t 9/11 have been a wake-up call? Was it on some level, intel-wise?
A: 9/11 gave us an opportunity to fix the CIA, but we blew it. The CIA’s failure as an early warning system and lack of accountability led to America’s vulnerability to those terrorist attacks. For six months after 9/11, CIA mandarins reeled, expecting heads to roll. When this didn’t happen, the window closed, and the bureaucracy roared back with full-throated confidence, strengthened with billions of dollars in additional funding.
We need to re-open that window of opportunity for intelligence reform and not wait for the next attack upon Americans.
There’s more, including his suggestion that the agency be disbanded, which in the long run might not be a bad idea. It has become more of a bureaucracy for entrenched appointees based on an outdated Cold War model than an effective intelligence gathering organization. Panetta could at least remind them of who they work for. With all due respect to Lee, he’s not the same as Sarah Palin, who was clearly not ready on day one. Panetta’s role is different and for an agency that got carte blanc from Bush this could be what they need.
You know those Democrats who are interested in open debate and fairness? Um, no:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to re-write House rules today to ensure that the Republican minority is unable to have any influence on legislation. Pelosi’s proposals are so draconian, and will so polarize the Capitol, that any thought President-elect Obama has of bipartisan cooperation will be rendered impossible before he even takes office.
Pelosi’s rule changes—which may be voted on today—will reverse the fairness rules that were written around Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.”
...
After decades of Democrat control of the House of Representatives, gross abuses to the legislative process and several high-profile scandals contributed to an overwhelming Republican House Congressional landslide victory in 1994. Reforms to the House Rules as part of the Contract with America were designed to open up to public scrutiny what had become under this decades-long Democrat majority a dangerously secretive House legislative process. The Republican reform of the way the House did business included opening committee meetings to the public and media, making Congress actually subject to federal law, term limits for committee chairmen ending decades-long committee fiefdoms, truth in budgeting, elimination of the committee proxy vote, authorization of a House audit, specific requirements for blanket rules waivers, and guarantees to the then-Democrat minority party to offer amendments to pieces of legislation.
Pelosi’s proposed repeal of decades-long House accountability reforms exposes a tyrannical Democrat leadership poised to assemble legislation in secret, then goose-step it through Congress by the elimination of debate and amendment procedures as part of America’s governing legislative process.
Human Events’ reaction is a bit hysterical here. According to this website, the Democrats are merely trying to remove the term limits for committee chairs (caveat: they’re being a bit secretive about it). But that itself was a critical reform whose impact is often underestimated. It’s been 14 years since the Contract and few of us really remember how truly vile the ensconced committee chairs used to be.
Methinks the Democrats are heading for another Rostenkowski-esque scandal. It took Republicans six years to be corrupted by power. Looks like it won’t take the Democrats much more than six days.
It seems Diane Feinstein is peeved that Obama dared to ignore her:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who this week begins her tenure as the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said today that she was not consulted on the choice and indicated she might oppose it.
“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director,” Feinstein said. “My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”
The choice of Panetta was seen as a sign that Obama considered it more important to have a steady political hand and astute manager at the helm of the agency, rather than someone with deep operational experience.
In picking Panetta, Obama risks raising anew questions about the politicization of the CIA, a concern cited by leading congressional officials.
I always liked Panetta. He served in the Army and is openly proud of it. He seems to be a good lawyer (oxymoronic though it may seem). He’s a good manager. And he’s going to watch Obama’s back at a place that’s full of stilettos and a track record for attempted presidential assassination second to none. But Italians know all about political assassination; you may remember Julius Caesar. Or Aldo Moro. The self-proclaimed cognoscenti will deride his lack of “spycraft,” and he’s never worked in the intel bureaucracy or, for that matter, in foreign policy or national security. But he’s been chief of staff, which involved all that stuff. I think it’s a smart move...
So he sounds competent, if not from the agency’s ranks. It might do some good to have a guy who’s not an entrenched insider running the agency. It also signals a move away from the abuses of the Bush years, which is quite frankly something the CIA needs to do. As far as Feinstein is concerned, she is just another example of how the rest of the party has turned shooting itself in the foot into an art form.
A BART police officer struggling to handcuff a 22-year-old man, stood up over the facedown Hayward resident and fired a single shot into his back while a handful of officers watched, a video taken by a train passenger apparently shows.
The attorney for the family of Oscar Grant III, fatally shot by an unidentified BART officer early New Year’s Day, said Sunday he plans to file a $25 million lawsuit against the department and asked prosecutors to consider filing murder charges against the officer.
The shooting occurred shortly before 2 a.m. Thursday after five officers responded to the Fruitvale station to reports of a fight on a train, officials said, though they have not confirmed whether Grant was involved in the fight.
The new video, obtained by television station KTVU, shows two officers restraining a struggling suspect. While the man is lying face down on the ground, one officer appears to be seen pulling out a gun and firing a single shot into his back.
Civil rights attorney John Burris, known for his work in several high-profile cases involving police abuse and corruption, said at a Sunday news conference that the shooting was “the most unconscionable shooting” he has ever seen. He said that the Alameda County district attorney should consider filing charges of second degree murder or manslaughter against the officer.
“I’ve drafted a notice of claim against BART for $25 million I plan to submit officially,” Burris said, adding that the officer had violated Grant’s civil rights and caused his wrongful death.
The video can be seen here. Obviously we don’t know the whole story about the struggle, but it does look pretty damning. The suspect’s family-not to mention the community-deserve answers.
Update by Lee:Here’s the meat and potatoes.
To me this looks like, at a minimum, manslaughter. The subject looks subdued, at least from this snippet of video. At the very least this officer should have to defend his actions in court.
A former Forest City man and decorated Iraq war veteran was arrested last week in Oklahoma City on complaints of manufacturing explosives with the intent to sell them.
The Oklahoma City Oklahoman reported that Steven A. Jordal, 24, was taken into custody on Dec. 22.
… An infantry tank specialist who served two tours in Iraq, Jordal received the Army’s Good Conduct medal, along with several other medals, badges and ribbons.
According to the Oklahoman, Oklahoma City police began investigating Jordal when they received a tip he was selling improvised explosive devices to gang members.
In the probable cause affidavit filed by police, police said Jordal was making the same kinds of weapons he saw used against his fellow soldiers in Iraq.
A police informant told investigators that he had seen Jordal testing explosives and that Jordal had custom made a device for someone who wanted to damage the vehicle of someone who owed money in a drug deal.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Or is this kid just an asshole who figured out how to make a quick buck? You be the judge.
Trucks and sport utility vehicles will outsell cars for the first time since February, according to a December report by Edmunds.com, which tracks industry statistics.
“Despite all the public discussion of fuel efficiency, SUVs and trucks are the industry’s biggest sellers right now as a remarkable number of buyers seem to be compelled by three factors: great deals, low gas prices and winter weather,” said Michelle Krebs of AutoObserver.com, a division of Edmunds.com, in a prepared statement.
“It was this summer that customers were concerned about the gas mileage. It hasn’t been a topic of conversation lately,” said Dave Lawson, the general sales manager at Pomoco Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Newport News. The majority of Pomoco’s inventory is SUVs, and its best-selling models are minivans.
The slash of SUV prices is a factor here. I’m not sure why the winter weather plays a roll since SUVs are notoriously poor-handling in snowy conditions. My experience in traction-control sedans has been far better. But whatever. The big factor here is gas prices.
Are people mental? Do they really think the gas price surge is over? Did I miss the sudden discovery of hundreds of billions of barrels? This is a respite, nothing more. It’s crap like this that makes me think that a carbon tax to prop up gas prices wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
For much of the 2008 campaign, Texas lawmaker and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and his supporters served as a thorn in the side—or a punching bag—for the mainstream GOP establishment.
Yet today, the six men vying to run the Republican National Committee praised the grassroots enthusiasm Paul tapped into during his campaign—and discussed how they would like to capture that enthusiasm to expand the party’s appeal.
“Ron Paul certainly brought a whole new generation of voters and I think it’s important going forward that we recognize the strengths and the attributes of these individuals who are out there actively building the party and building a movement, a consensus if you will, on certain issues. We can’t look that in the eye and say ‘No, we don’t want that,’” said former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, adding that the RNC needs to find “creative ways” to work with candidates supported by Paul and his followers, and to work with Paul directly to that end.
“I think, at this stage at this party, everyone who can help us should be brought into the room to help us,” Steele said.
Isn’t this the same party that practically called Ron Paul a traitor for being against the war in Iraq? This is on a par with them suddenly discovering that Bush wasn’t the Second Coming. I didn’t agree with everything Paul said, and in many ways he was a de facto third party candidate. But I hope he tells these guys to go screw themselves.
It’s funny how an election can reverse people’s opinions on the issues. Here we have John Yoo and John Bolton arguing for restraint on treaty power:
THE Constitution’s Treaty Clause has long been seen, rightly, as a bulwark against presidential inclinations to lock the United States into unwise foreign commitments. The clause will likely be tested by Barack Obama’s administration, as the new president and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, led by the legal academics in whose circles they have long traveled, contemplate binding down American power and interests in a dense web of treaties and international bureaucracies.
Like past presidents, Mr. Obama will likely be tempted to avoid the requirement that treaties must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate. The usual methods around this constitutional constraint are executive agreements or a majority vote in the House and Senate to pass a treaty as a simple law (known as a Congressional-executive agreement).
Executive agreements have an acknowledged but limited place in our foreign affairs. Congressional-executive agreements are far more troubling. They have evoked scathing attacks by constitutional experts and have been strongly resisted in the Senate, at least so far.
Of course, “scathing attacks by constitutional experts” are perfectly acceptable if you are, for example, abrogating agreements against torture. But now that they fear Obama will sign Kyoto or Rome, they want the Senate to be a bulwark against the President.
Not that Democrats are any more consistent. Harry Reid is pronouncing David Petraeus a genius. Take it away, Allahpundit:
The bit that’s getting attention is his squirming over having merrily pronounced the surge a failure and the war lost in two years ago. When asked if he still feels that way, his defense is to hide behind Petraeus: All he meant is that the war wasn’t winnable with military power alone, which is no different really from anything Petraeus has said, and Petraeus of course is a “genius” so how about getting off Reid’s back already? The follow-ups Gregory didn’t ask: If Petraeus is such a genius, why did Reid vow not to believe him if he reported progress at his 2007 Senate hearing? Why did he allegedly call Petraeus incompetent a few months later? Why was he one of only 25 Senators to vote against the resolution condemning MoveOn for the “Betray Us” ad? Why was he still declaring the surge a failure as late as December 2007, and even to this day insists that Iraq is in a state of civil war? The answer to all these questions is that, for Reid, the facts on the ground are always determined by political expedience. That’s why he was able to insist four months ago, with Obama pushing hard on the stump for a renewed commitment to Afghanistan, that the country is in “pretty good shape” when everyone but everyone on both sides knows better.
Note too how he tries to take credit for the surge at the beginning by emphasizing the Democrats’ role in forcing a change of direction in Iraq policy. Not the first time we’ve heard that argument advanced. The left demanded that Bush withdraw; Bush responded by doubling down instead and ordering the surge. Voila — a change of direction in policy. Thanks, Harry!
It’s going to be fun to watch all the “Iraq is a disaster!” opinion pieces morph into “Iraq is a success!” opinion pieces (and vice versa) while little changes on the ground.
Probably the most fun will be watching the principled conservatives like Chris Buckley, Bruce Bartlett and Andrew Sullivan (and us, I guess) welcomed back into the fold as we launch the same criticisms of Obama that we launched at Bush. What was once a betrayal of the party will now be bedrock conservative principle.
Governors of five U.S. states urged the federal government to provide $1 trillion in aid to the country’s 50 states to help pay for education, welfare and infrastructure as states struggle with steep budget deficits amid a deepening recession.
The governors of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio and Wisconsin—all Democrats—said the initiative for the two-year aid package was backed by other governors and follows a meeting in December where governors called on President-elect Barack Obama to help them maintain services in the face of slumping revenues.
Gov. David Paterson of New York said 43 states now have budget deficits totaling some $100 billion as tax revenues plunge.
“It’s clear that the federal government needs to step in and jump-start the economy,” said Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts.
The latest package calls for $350 billion to create jobs by building or repairing roads, bridges and other public works; $250 billion to maintain education; and another $250 billion in “counter-cyclical” spending such as extending unemployment benefits and food stamps, which are typically a responsibility of the states.
The remainder would be used to fund middle-class tax cuts, stimulate the embattled housing market, and stem the tide of home foreclosures through a loan-modification program.
For that amount of money, the feds could just buy the state governments, sack their reckless irresponsible governors and legislature and run the whole shebang themselves. It’s funny—the supposed bad economy that’s causing these deficits in the state budgets hasn’t affected states like Texas, that budgeted responsibly.
We have yet to see a stimulus bill emerge but I’m already growing sick of this non-stop Keynsian bullshit. Even the supposed “tax cuts” have a Keynsian lilt to them. We all—well, those who paid attention—saw how well the “we’re all Keynsians now” economic policies of Nixon and Carter worked. Hope will not Change the basic fundamental principle that you don’t stimulate the economy by racking up massive debts.
Look, I don’t like the recession any more than the next guy—I’ve got a house on the market and bills to pay. But an orgy of spending is not going to save us. At best, it will do nothing. At worst, it will plunge us into an even worse situation.
I Want My SUV
(18 total, Last @ 12:24) hist_ed: I’m getting 24 MPG in my 2002 CR-V, my wife gets 30 in her 2007 CR-V. Much better than my Mazda speed6 four door sedan. I get about 17 or 18 and I have to use premium. But I knew that when I bought it. I'm not an idiot or…
The Panetta Pick
(10 total, Last @ 12:09) hist_ed: I don’t understand the NRO’s presidential assassination comment. So their point is that being in charge of the CIA largely entails preventing the President from being assassinated by...the CIA? What? Someone explain. Think metaphor . . .
Ayers On Huffington
(2 total, Last @ 09:28) Section8: Teacher accountability, relentless standardized testing, school closings, and privatization—this is what the dogmatists and true-believers of the right call “reform.” Oh my, having an employee (teacher) being accountable for doing the job right? Oh the horror. We can't have that, and don't get me started about testing. I mean expecting…
The Panetta Pick
(10 total, Last @ 09:00) Delta: No, he's qualified, he was under Clintons watch. That'll qualify him, Hell, just rehire Jimma Cartaaah. Same thing, different puss.
The Panetta Pick
(10 total, Last @ 08:15) Section8: You know that whole “lack of experience” thing that turned me off to Sarah Palin? Same thing here. He’s grossly unqualified for the job. I'm quite glad to see you're not a hypocrite on these things.
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