Barack "Bart Simpson" Obama on the Deficit: I Didn't Do It
— Ace

Even the AP thinks he's, how do I put this delicately, shitting all over us and telling us it's Belgian chocolate:

"That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One.

It actually was him - and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years - who shaped a budget so out of balance.

And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.

Obama met citizens at an Arnold, Mo., high school Wednesday in advance of his prime-time news conference. Both forums were a platform to review his progress at the 100-day mark and look ahead.

At various times, he brought an air of certainty to ambitions that are far from cast in stone.

His assertion that his proposed budget "will cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term" is an eyeball-roller among many economists, given the uncharted terrain of trillion-dollar deficits and economic calamity that the government is negotiating.

Note that wasn't from the news conference that just ended -- as far as I know, the lapdog media didn't ask him about it.

I did hear questions about how hard it is to be president, though.

Oh: This is interesting. OJ Simpson just emailed me to forward his offer to Obama to help him find "the real deficit-quadruplers."

Thanks to JackStraw.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:15 PM | Comments (135)
Post contains 281 words, total size 2 kb.

What on Earth is JPod Talking About?
— Ace

I like John Podhoertz. He's a Guiliani type of blue state conservative, by which I mean he often disagrees with social-cons but is usually not insulting or disrespectful about it, and, when he is on the orthodox conservative side of things, he's tenacious and with us all the way. (For disclosure: He's also friendly to me in our very sporadic email exchanges, though I've never met him.)

But I don't know what the hell he's talking about here. Or, to be more precise: I know exactly what he's talking about. I just have no idea how this applies to the Specter situation.

The Purity Brigade Strikes Again, and Strikes Out

JOHN PODHORETZ - 04.28.2009 - 6:00 PM

There has been, on the Right, a terrible confusion these past two decades–a confusion between the precepts of conservatism and the role of the Republican party. In all its iterations, American conservatism is about matters of conviction on all manner of subjects from the role of the United States in the world to the role of government in our lives to the role of moral questions in political life. The Republican party is not about these things. It is a political vehicle, and as such it represents not a worldview but a tendency. That tendency can be summed up very simply–smaller rather than larger government; a stronger rather than a weaker America; and traditional rather than evolutionary values.

The Republican party fared well from, say, 1968 to 2008 because, for the most part, Americans tended to side with the general sense that smaller rather than larger government was best; that it was better to project strength; and that it was better to hue to established ways. It is not clear that the American people still have this general sense, or they are more willing to try on a different outfit right now. What they did not sign up for, what they never signed up for, was specific ideological combat in these categories....

The defection of Arlen Specter from the GOP, following the effort by the Club of Growth to target him for defeat in the Republican primary, is an example of how confused conservative ideologues can get about the nature of the Republican party....

Politics is not about casting the easy vote for the person you admire. ItÂ’s really about choosing the least bad alternative. The foes of Specter in Pennsylvania thought their least bad alternative was challenging him in a primary he would lose. Now they will really discover what the least bad alternative might have been. And so will we all.

Podhoretz is making the basic point -- which I not only endorse, but enthusiastically so -- that conservatives need to be savvy about picking their fights and also picking their champions. It is far better to have an ideologically squishy Senator who votes with us 75% of the time, and more often on the big stuff, than an ideologically pure Senate candidate who nobly loses, while keeping all his conservative principles intact -- and entirely unused and therefore useless.

I agree.

But how on earth does that apply to Arlen Specter? We are not talking, Mr. Podhoretz, about a man who votes with us 75% of the time. I am guessing that number is sub-60, and I know, for a fact, that on the biggest issues, he votes against us.

The Spendulous was the final insult. Incidentally, for all of those who claim it's the crazy social-con monsters in the party who drive us towards these insanely self-destructive impulses of ideologically rigidity, note the social con monsters were very dissatisfied with Specter for years and years, and it's only when Specter crossed the fiscal conservatives -- the "good" conservatives, in the eyes of blue-state social moderates -- that he finally got booted by the party. (Well, the booting didn't happen yet, but all polls said it would.)

So the social cons complained, but it was the fiscal cons who finally decided to throw Specter to sharks.

At any rate.

Because I respect John Podhoretz, I'd like to ask him, genuinely and not rhetorically, to explain precisely how far a heretic may hereticize before the Church may honorably excommunicate him. And I hope Podhoretz addresses the full measure of Specter's betrayal -- had Specter not wished to arrogate personal, idiosyncratic power to himself to decide the Spendulus' side, he could have voted to sustain the filibuster, and thereby forced a compromise. Specter would have been a critical party to that negotiation -- he still would have had lots of power to shape it.

And yet he instead chose to vote for a bill which he himself admitted was bad. Why? I suspect he thought it would increase his political stature, and make him The Man -- instead of merely A Very Important Man -- in negotiations over it.

He didn't want to share power with six or seven other Republican Senators in negotiations, even though he'd have been first among equals in that process. Instead, he choose to strike his own deal -- and cut out very savvy and smart Republicans out of the process, just so he could play Siegfried at Ragnarok, with Snowe and Collins as his Valkyries of the Tax and Spend Liberal Valhalla.

He cut Thune out of the process, for example. A very capable and savvy guy, and one who could have gotten us a much better deal. Not to mention Coburn or Sessions.

This is not a small breach, John. This is a rather large one. Specter's defense of his decision was that it was "the best deal we could get," but he didn't exactly afford us the opportunity to test that claim and see if we could get a better deal, now did he?

And note that senators you would normally consider sensible, flexible, and moderate -- McCain and Graham, to name two -- were horrified by Specter's deal. Angered, even.

When a Republican is so bipartisan liberal he manages to provoke Graham and McCain into physical anger, well, that's not small-beer, now is it?

The impulse is to blame the Club for Growth and Pat Toomey. And yet, they are not the drivers of Republican anger at Specter. They are merely tapping into it.

Specter knew damn well that this was the Rubicon. For weeks the phone banks and internet melted down over this vote. He crossed the Rubicon anyway, defiantly.

And we were to... what? Reward him further for this? After the party squashed Toomey and poured money into Specter's coffers in 2004?

I am also perplexed by Podhoretz's suggestion that the party has gone too far to the right. Has it? Let's review. Podhoretz mentions the Terri Schiavo case and Iraq War as being conservative over-steps. But he fails to note how the party, as a whole, has been every bit as ideologically flexible on a host of other critical issues as he seems to urge:

First, let’s deal with the canard that the GOP has moved “far to the right”. When exactly did that happen? When a Republican-controlled Congress, yoked to a Republican White House, grew federal spending by 50% in six years? Would that be the GOP that created a new entitlement program for prescription medication? The same Republicans that expanded spending above inflation on discretionary areas like education (58%), health research and regulation (55%), community and regional development (94%) and on entitlement programs like Medicare (51%)?

That's quite a bit of "moderate" flexibility, Mr. Podhoretz. Too much, if you ask me -- and despite my firebreathing tone, on actual issues, I'm often kind of a squish.

I'm really not sure at what Podhoretz means here. Does he actually urge the party to tack even further in the direction of a socialistic European welfare state? Haven't we done quite a bit of that already over the past eight years? How much more is necessary?

And does he really imagine that going further to the left economically will turn out to be successful, in the middle- to long- term, for Obama? If he really believes this, he doesn't seem to be much of a fiscal conservative, as he's implicitly predicting that more-socialistic policies will lead to success. If that's the case, why fight such policies at all? Why not wholeheartedly embrace them?

I don't think Podhoretz believes that -- but perhaps I'm wrong.

I think maybe this is just a lazy sort of piece (no offense intended -- I write lots of lazy pieces myself; lazy pieces are the stock in trade of those who write every single day) in which he found himself expressing general bromides which don't quite apply to a specific situation.

For those who call upon the party to "be more moderate," as a general impulse, I really wish they'd be more specific about what they mean. Are they speaking of cap-and-tax? EFCA? Raising taxes? Further raising ruinous spending levels? What, exactly?

I know that many moderate blue-state Republicans want us to abandon the life position and traditional marriage. But surely they know the numbers -- the life position is not terribly unpopular (55-45 against, or thereabouts) and further the life position mints more votes than the choice position. (That would change if general access to abortion were actually restricted, but that's not likely to happen... well, ever, it looks like.) And the conservative position on gay marriage is something like a 55-45 winner. And probably also mints more votes than it loses.

So really, fellas -- what the hell are you talking about, specifically? Are you really suggesting the party spend oodles of money to keep Specter in office, despite the fact that his voting record puts him comfortably in the center-left Democratic mainstream?

I agree that the perfect is the enemy of the good. I say it all the time. But while I will personally argue in favor of the obtainable good over the unobtainable perfect every damn time the question is posed to me, what I won't fight for is the bad over either.

And Specter was bad. The perfect is the enemy of the good, but the bad is the enemy of both, and I, for one, am not going to fight for a bad Senator.

What, exactly, have we lost? A vote we couldn't count on -- and which went against us close to half the time -- and the privilege of spending time and political capital to keep that vote safely ensconced in the Senate.

I'm not looking for a general purge. But this one? Oh yes. Oh very yes.

Posted by: Ace at 12:02 PM | Comments (406)
Post contains 1774 words, total size 11 kb.

Nancy Pelosi on 60 Votes: "Now We Can Get Things Done Without Explaining Process"
— Ace

I think she means "explaining anything to the American people at all," but that's my own personal take-away.

Very exciting, very exciting for the American people, because now we can get things done without explaining process," Pelosi told CNN's Candy Crowley.

Compromisin' and bipartisanship are hard.

What sorts of things will Granny Rictus McBotoxImplants get done without having to explain herself? Well, I fear cap-and-trade is very much back on the table. And worse than ever.

Dick Morris thinks Obama's already planted the seeds of his own demise. But seeds take time to grow.

So if voters differ so fundamentally with the president on the very essence of his program, why do they accord him high ratings? They are like the recently married bride who took her vows 100 days ago. It would be a disaster for her life if she decides that she really doesnÂ’t like her husband. But she keeps noticing things about him that she canÂ’t stand. It will be a while before she walks out the door or even comes to terms with her own doubts, but it is probably inevitable that she will.

For Americans to conclude that they disapprove of their president in the midst of an earth-shaking crisis is very difficult. But as Obama’s daily line moves from “I inherited this mess” to “There are faint signs of light,” the clock starts ticking. If there is no recovery for the next six months — and I don’t think there will be — Obama will inevitably become part of the problem, not part of the solution.

And then will come his heavy lifting. He has yet to raise taxes, regiment healthcare or provide amnesty for illegal immigrants. He hasnÂ’t closed down the car companies he now runs and he has not yet forced a 50 percent hike in utility bills with his cap-and-trade legislation. These are all the goodies he has in store for us all.

ObamaÂ’s very activism these days arrogates to himself the blame for the success or failure of his policies. Their outcome will determine his outcome, and there is no way it will be positive.

...

So Mr. Obama should enjoy his poll numbers while he may.

We are in for a bad two years -- at least. We can hope that the public will finally react badly to these ruinous liberal insanities, but that's about the limits of our political clout at the moment.

And bear in mind: Even if we take back Congress, we can't just overturn these poisonous laws. The Democrats will have the power of filibuster -- and can stop us from overturning laws with only 40 Senate votes.

The Democrats may or may not be in the process of slitting their own throats. If they are, they're like suicide bombers, and will be taking a lot of Americans with them on their way to political heaven.

And in the near-term: Only 23% self-identify as Republicans, a Pew poll says.

In more than 7,000 interviews conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2009, just 23 percent of voters self-identify as members of the Grand Old Party. That's down from 30 percent as recently as 2004, and the trend shows no signs of slowing.

In the first four months of the year, Pew researchers found the number of self-identified Republicans dropping from 25 percent in January to just 22 percent in April.

The good news is that our losses are largely going to the "independent" category, which I assume means they still lean conservative, but are dissatisfied with the party due to a variety of factors -- too conservative, not conservative enough, incompetent and corrupt. Take your pick.

A total of 35 percent of voters call themselves Democrats, up just two points from 2004. In the past four months, Democratic identification has actually dropped four points, to 33 percent, while those who call themselves independents has risen to 39 percent.

That could explain Rasussen's finding that the GOP actually leads on the congressional generic ballot 41-38, leading for only the second time in five years. More people tend to embrace the Republican/conservative idea of governance than are willing to embrace the actual Republican Party.

Obama's judicial picks are going to be woeful. He won't even have to appoint stealth-liberals who've taken some pains to obscure their strong ideological tendencies. He can just appoint out-and-proud liberals -- even left-liberals -- and the GOP can't say boo about it.

Posted by: Ace at 11:19 AM | Comments (136)
Post contains 768 words, total size 5 kb.

It Gets Better: Scare Force One Photo-Op Had Also Been Planned Next Month... for DC
— Ace

Michelle Malkin mentions this, which I hadn't read, in summing up NOTUS' first 100 days of ruinous spending. (On everything except the military, of course.)

So, is it any wonder he would staff his White House Military Office with a clueless paper-pusher who saw nothing wrong with spending inordinate government resources – and recreating 9/11 havoc — to update Air Force One publicity shots? And who planned, believe it or not, to do the same in Washington, D.C., next month, where 53 passengers and 6 crew members on board American Airlines Flight 77, and 125 military and civilian personnel inside the Pentagon were murdered by the 9/11 jihadists?
All for some damned publicity shots.

Bammy's press conference is tonight, right? I'd like to hear a question about who exactly was riding on Scare Force One -- who got those wonderful near-intercept views of NYC skyscrapers; why waste a $330,000 air adventure without stocking it full of campaign donors? -- but I doubt I will.

"Priceless:" "For everything else, there's government."

Posted by: Ace at 09:50 AM | Comments (153)
Post contains 200 words, total size 1 kb.

Michael Sheuer: Bammy's Narcissism and Naivete Are Going to Get People Killed
— Ace

All worth reading. I'll just quote a few choice paragraphs.

Americans should be clear on what Obama has done. In a breathtaking display of self-righteousness and intellectual arrogance, the president told Americans that his personal beliefs are more important than protecting their country, their homes and their families. The interrogation techniques in question, the president asserted, are a sign that Americans have lost their "moral compass," a compliment similar to Attorney General Eric Holder's identifying them as "moral cowards." Mulling Obama's claim, one can wonder what could be more moral for a president than doing all that is needed to defend America and its citizens? Or, asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?

...

Americans and their country's security will be the losers. The Republicans do not have the votes to stop Obama, and the world will not be safer for America because the president abandons interrogations to please his party's left wing and the European pacifists it so admires. Both are incorrigibly anti-American, oppose the use of force in America's defense and -- like Obama -- naively believe that the West's Islamist foes can be sweet-talked into a future alive with the sound of kumbaya.

So if the above worst-case scenario ever comes to pass, Americans will have at least two things from which to take solace, even after the loss of major cities and tens of thousands of countrymen. First, they will know that their president believes that those losses are a small price to pay for stopping interrogations and making foreign peoples like us more. And second, they will see Osama bin Laden's shy smile turn into a calm and beautiful God-is-Great grin.

A point that never gets mentioned: Liberals try to reassure Americans that in a ticking-time-bomb scenario, of course they'd do the rough stuff required.

Um, how? Given that liberals are branding all of this unconstitutional, unamerican, and wholly illegal, how do they carve a special ticking-time-bomb exception? An illegal act does not become legal just because you really need to do it. A theft is not blessed as legal simply because the thief really needed the money.

So what exactly is the legal theory that makes Ticking Timebomb Torture a special legal version of torture? Where are the legal memos to support this? Would anyone compose such a legal memo now, knowing he risks prosecution and jailtime for the crime of writing an opinion?

And if there is some strange theory to support such a "when you really have to break the law" exception, one wonders why it does not apply, say, in the months following September 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda had follow-up attacks planned.

Posted by: Ace at 09:11 AM | Comments (196)
Post contains 495 words, total size 3 kb.

Now It Can Be Told: Tom Friedman Says Bush Did Good
— DrewM

Except he doesn't mention Bush (other than as a possible war crimes defendant) and praises Obama for making the tough and wise calls.

Why wasn't there another attack on the US after 9/11? Because we did what it took to get good intel and wait for it...invaded Iraq (safe link to Commentary)

I believe that the most important reason there has not been another 9/11, besides the improved security and intelligence, is that Al Qaeda is primarily focused on defeating America in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world — particularly in Iraq. Al Qaeda knows that if it can destroy the U.S. effort (still a long shot) to build a decent, modernizing society in Iraq, it will undermine every U.S. ally in the region.

Conversely, if we, with Iraqis, defeat them by building any kind of decent, pluralistic society in the heart of their world, it will be a devastating blow.

Apparently somebody decided to do these things. Friedman doesn't seem to be quite sure who lead the effort to do all of that but he's pretty happy that they were done.

This lack of acknowledgment for what Bush did post 9/11, even after Bush is gone and Obama is safely in the White House is intellectually dishonest and childish. Friedman can't bring himself to say, "Of course we shouldn't prosecute Bush, he did his job for God's sake". No, liberal orthodoxy forces him to tiptoe around it and somehow find a way to praise Obama in the process because His 'contribution' must be equal or greater than He Who Shall Not Be Named.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:30 AM | Comments (182)
Post contains 286 words, total size 2 kb.

Buckley Stays the Course
— Slublog

Last October, Christopher Buckley famously endorsed Barack Obama for president based on his 'centrist' campaign. Given Obama's lurch to the left since taking office, one would think that Buckley and the other conservative Obama-endorsers would reconsider.

One would be wrong.

ItÂ’s funny: When you endorse (to use a too-fancy term in my case) a presidential candidate, as I did Barack Obama in this space last October, he sort of becomes your responsibility. Back to that in a moment.

Well, 'responsibility' is kind of a strong word. I think the previous endorsement provides those moderates who endorsed him with a great opportunity. These are the people who could say 'Hey, this guy is a pure liberal and not the centrist he campaigned as.'

Needless to say, Buckley is not that person.

Meanwhile, I am delighted, overall, with our president’s first 100 days. I think he has struck a fine tone overseas (trans: the U.S. is less detested than it has been in recent years). He has exhibited the “first-class temperament” that persuaded me he was the man for the job. He is, as I called him last October, “one cool cat.” (The only time he seems to have gotten “furious” was yesterday, over that idiotic Air Force One photo-op-from-hell over Manhattan.)

Every guy knows this line: 'What does she look like? Well...she's got a great personality!" Buckley is clearly desperate to find something to justify his endorsement, and fails.

Unless, of course, he truly believes apologizing to everyone for America's 'sins' constitutes a 'fine tone.' Or perhaps Buckley is thinking of this little embarrassment.

Buckley's praise of Obama's 'first class temperament' (translation: Harvard, baby!) is even more absurd. Obama may be one 'cool cat,' but where some see 'cool,' others might see...oh...a raving narcissist who has little regard for the status of his office when he does things that irritate our oldest ally. Twice. The U.S. may be less detested in some parts of the world, but London doesn't seem all that happy at the moment. Personally, I don't find people who say things like "I won" to settle a political debate or threaten bankers to have a 'first-class temperament.' That's not coolness, Buckley, that's indifference.

Let's be fair, though, Buckley does have his disagreements with The One.

On the minus side, I think his waffling over prosecuting Bush Justice Department officials for approving the enhanced interrogation methods (trans: “torture”) is detrimental and even dangerous. I thought Mr. Obama was initially on the right track with his “let’s move forward” approach (I applaud him, for among other things, retreating on renegotiating NAFTA) and hope that Attorney General Eric Holder, who did exactly the right thing in castigating the Ted Stevens prosecutors, will decide in the end against proceeding against the Bush-era officials.

Mr. ObamaÂ’s spending worries me greatly. If every president who comes into office doubles the national debt, then we are finished. We are burying future generations (trans: our children) under crushing debt.

So basically, Buckley disagrees with many of Obama's actual policies, but can't quite bring himself to admit he was wrong about the endorsement so he clings to his misguided praise of the president's personality.

Well, can we really blame the guy? I suppose intellectual honesty is a small price to pay when you're looking for praise from all of the 'right people.'

(h/t: Hot Air)

Posted by: Slublog at 04:54 AM | Comments (117)
Post contains 560 words, total size 4 kb.

Lawfare Fails Again
— Gabriel Malor

The folly of pretending the War on Terror is a law enforcement problem was illustrated again yesterday, first in the UK and then here in California.

First, The three 7/7 conspirators, on retrial for aiding in the bombing attacks on London's metro and bus system, were acquitted of the terrorism charges. Their first jury last year couldn't come to a verdict. Neither jury was allowed to see much of the evidence that connected the men to the 7/7 bombers because wiretaps conducted by intelligence agencies are not admissible in UK courts.

I've said it before: evidence collection and intelligence gathering are not the same thing. They have different purposes and different legal consequences.

Second, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the state secrets privilege, which had been asserted by both Presidents Bush and Obama, could not shield a Boeing subsidiary from litigation. The subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., was sued by five men who allege that they were kidnapped and tortured as part of the extraordinary rendition program. The U.S. government intervened in the suit and asked that it be dismissed since details of Jeppesen's participation--mainly filing flight plans--would compromise national security.

The Ninth Circuit refused to allow the dismissal, holding that state secrets privilege must be asserted on an "item-by-item basis" to discovery requests by the parties.

This is, as usual for the Ninth, a seriously retarded ruling. Consider: so the case is back in district court and the five guys make discovery requests. The U.S. government now has to intervene each time it finds a request objectionable. Then, it will have to file an interlocutory appeal each and every time the district court rules against it (assuming it really wants to assert the privilege). The government cannot wait for the end of the trial to appeal adverse state secrets decisions. By then the secret won't be.

So the Ninth has created a situation where this litigation can conceivably bounce back and forth to the appellate courts indefinitely as the parties seek discovery and the U.S. government continues to assert state secrets privilege. This assumes that Obama stays the course on state secrets (maybe not a great assumption).

In the Ninth Circuit's defense, this area of law isn't very well developed. On the other hand, that should have given them plenty of room to fashion a workable solution. Instead, they ignored the practical result of their decision. A copy of the opinion is available here (PDF).

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:35 AM | Comments (27)
Post contains 411 words, total size 3 kb.

Top Headline Comments 04-29-09
— Gabriel Malor

Go here, then laugh your way to work.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:08 AM | Comments (42)
Post contains 16 words, total size 1 kb.

"Patient Zero" in the Swine Flu Epidemic Identified" (genghis)
— Open Blog

The really sad part is that it's a 5-year old kid.

"LA GLORIA, Mexico (CNN) -- Tucked away in this small mountain village, off a dusty road flanked by pig farms, is where the earliest case of swine flu -- a virus spreading globally -- was confirmed."

"Meet the child known as "patient zero" by his doctors -- 5-year-old Edgar Hernandez, who survived the earliest documented case of swine flu in an outbreak that, officials say, has now spread across four continents."

"His family lives in the 3,000-population village of La Gloria in the state of Veracruz, where a flu outbreak was reported on April 2. State officials arrived and took samples from dozens of people."

The poor kid is going to have to undeservedly carry around this burden for years, and perhaps the rest of his life as people blame him for the deaths of their family members or friends. Many will lash out at him irrationally (though I hope I'm wrong) when they should instead be asking their so-called leaders why Mexico seems to be such a fucked-up basket case of graft, corruption and drug warlords among other things.

Posted by: Open Blog at 03:00 AM | Comments (139)
Post contains 209 words, total size 1 kb.