Mr. President, Keep the Airwaves Free

As a former law professor, surely you understand the Bill of Rights.

By: RUSH LIMBAUGH

Wall Street Journal – 20 Feb. 09

Dear President Obama:

I have a straightforward question, which I hope you will answer in a straightforward way: Is it your intention to censor talk radio through a variety of contrivances, such as “local content,” “diversity of ownership,” and “public interest” rules — all of which are designed to appeal to populist sentiments but, as you know, are the death knell of talk radio and the AM band?

You have singled me out directly, admonishing members of Congress not to listen to my show. Bill Clinton has since chimed in, complaining about the lack of balance on radio. And a number of members of your party, in and out of Congress, are forming a chorus of advocates for government control over radio content. This is both chilling and ominous.

As a former president of the Harvard Law Review and a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, you are more familiar than most with the purpose of the Bill of Rights: to protect the citizen from the possible excesses of the federal government. The First Amendment says, in part, that “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The government is explicitly prohibited from playing a role in refereeing among those who speak or seek to speak. We are, after all, dealing with political speech — which, as the Framers understood, cannot be left to the government to police.

When I began my national talk show in 1988, no one, including radio industry professionals, thought my syndication would work. There were only about 125 radio stations programming talk. And there were numerous news articles and opinion pieces predicting the fast death of the AM band, which was hemorrhaging audience and revenue to the FM band. Some blamed the lower-fidelity AM signals. But the big issue was broadcast content. It is no accident that the AM band was dying under the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which choked robust debate about important issues because of its onerous attempts at rationing the content of speech.

After the Federal Communications Commission abandoned the Fairness Doctrine in the mid-1980s, Congress passed legislation to reinstitute it. When President Reagan vetoed it, he declared that “This doctrine . . . requires Federal officials to supervise the editorial practices of broadcasters in an effort to ensure that they provide coverage of controversial issues and a reasonable opportunity for the airing of contrasting viewpoints of those issues. This type of content-based regulation by the Federal Government is . . . antagonistic to the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment. . . . History has shown that the dangers of an overly timid or biased press cannot be averted through bureaucratic regulation, but only through the freedom and competition that the First Amendment sought to guarantee.”

Today the number of radio stations programming talk is well over 2,000. In fact, there are thousands of stations that air tens of thousands of programs covering virtually every conceivable topic and in various languages. The explosion of talk radio has created legions of jobs and billions in economic value. Not bad for an industry that only 20 years ago was moribund. Content, content, content, Mr. President, is the reason for the huge turnaround of the past 20 years, not “funding” or “big money,” as Mr. Clinton stated. And not only has the AM band been revitalized, but there is competition from other venues, such as Internet and satellite broadcasting. It is not an exaggeration to say that today, more than ever, anyone with a microphone and a computer can broadcast their views. And thousands do.

Mr. President, we both know that this new effort at regulating speech is not about diversity but conformity. It should be rejected. You’ve said you’re against reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, but you’ve not made it clear where you stand on possible regulatory efforts to impose so-called local content, diversity-of-ownership, and public-interest rules that your FCC could issue.

I do not favor content-based regulation of National Public Radio, newspapers, or broadcast or cable TV networks. I would encourage you not to allow your office to be misused to advance a political vendetta against certain broadcasters whose opinions are not shared by many in your party and ideologically liberal groups such as Acorn, the Center for American Progress, and MoveOn.org. There is no groundswell of support behind this movement. Indeed, there is a groundswell against it.

The fact that the federal government issues broadcast licenses, the original purpose of which was to regulate radio signals, ought not become an excuse to destroy one of the most accessible and popular marketplaces of expression. The AM broadcast spectrum cannot honestly be considered a “scarce” resource. So as the temporary custodian of your office, you should agree that the Constitution is more important than scoring transient political victories, even when couched in the language of public interest.

We in talk radio await your answer. What will it be? Government-imposed censorship disguised as “fairness” and “balance”? Or will the arena of ideas remain a free market?

Mr. Limbaugh is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host.

In Order To Be Loyal, Opposition Must Disappear In Age Of Obama

By L. BRENT BOZELL | IBD – 20 Feb. 09

As the Democrat-dominated House and Senate thoughtfully passed judgment on a 1,100-page “stimulus” bill that Sen. Frank Lautenberg admitted no one would read before the vote, the media elite were positively giddy.

On the “NewsHour” on PBS, liberal analyst Mark Shields proclaimed, “I think it’s a monstrous success” for President Obama. That’s correct, with an emphasis on “monstrous.”

Our news media have insisted on playing the White House soundtrack on this battle, to wit: The “stimulus” is vitally necessary, and by opposing it, Republicans are risking being flattened by the Great Obama Steamroller. A partisan victory is OK, but they’d much rather the vote for Obama’s plans be unanimous.

Why, as Newsweek’s cover proclaimed, “We’re All Socialists Now.” Inside, Newsweek’s uber-elitist editor Jon Meacham scolded Sean Hannity and Rep. Mike Pence for stooping to call this Congressional pork-wagon “the European Socialist Act of 2009.” Using the S-word in a negative context threatens to doom America to a “fractious and unedifying debate.”

Meacham wasn’t claiming Hannity and Pence were incorrect. It’s that they use this word as a bad thing when they should be celebrating. He insists America’s skiing down the socialist slope “toward a modern European state.” Moreover, Newsweek asserted that the socialism started last fall under President Bush, therefore the GOP should accept it.

The loyal opposition is not supposed to oppose as state power grows out of control. To be truly loyal, the opposition is expected to disappear.

Another sign came on “The Early Show” on CBS. Co-host Maggie Rodriguez was interrogating Republican House leader Eric Cantor about the failure to line up with the socialist Obama Corps: “But, Congressman, it’s clear that Americans are begging for help with foreclosures,” she pleaded. “Corporations are begging for bailouts. Can the Republican Party accept that there are situations when large-scale government intervention is necessary?”

Cantor was attempting to explain that this monstrous “stimulus” was being pushed through without any Republican input, with virtually no public comment, in a humongous bill no one had even read. But all Rodriguez could do was protest these points as divisive: “But everyone (in the House GOP) opposed it. Why? Where’s the bipartisanship?”

The media’s drive for full-fledged socialism took a really wild turn on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.” The former Clinton spokesman actually pressed ultraliberal Maxine Waters from the left, waving around an article by an economist named Nouriel Roubini insisting that we need to nationalize the banks: “Mr. Roubini and others say we’re all Swedes now, that we should just do what they did when they faced their crisis. They nationalized the banks and they came out of it OK.” We’re now not only socialists, we’re Swedish socialists.

A few days earlier, Obama head-faked on the we’re-all-Europeans line, insisting that America is not yet Sweden, when ABC’s Terry Moran urged, “Why not just nationalize the banks?” For her part, Rep. Waters insisted that the drive toward socialism is being slowed by people who are behind the curve: “George, as you know, the word ‘nationalization’ scares the hell out of people. And so the debate has been opened up now, and that’s good.”

Once the “stimulus” bill passed, ABC helpfully aired pictures from a photo album the White House issued to mark Obama’s skillful leadership moves. Subbing as anchor of ABC’s evening newscast, Diane Sawyer praised Obama for serving cookies to Republicans: “I want to show everybody at home, because there is the president, it’s Super Bowl night, and he’s serving cookies to congressional leadership in the White House screening room.” On cue, George Stephanopoulos picked up the syrupy narration: “These are just remarkable, Diane. We’ve never really seen anything like this before in real time.”

If ABC and George Stephanopoulos were interested in dispelling the notion that George is taking dictation from his daily buddy-buddy phone calls with Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, it’s not showing up on the air. When you can glorify Obama for offering Republicans a cookie, and suggest it’s unprecedented, as if no previous president, Republican or Democrat, had ever tried to entertain the opposing party, viewers cannot trust you as a careful keeper of the historical record. They can only suspect that you’re going to offer them a poorly disguised campaign commercial.

A crucial part of Obama’s “monstrous” success in ramming this partisan gravy train through Congress is a committed throng of Kool-Aid drinkers in the press who will greet every new socialist legislative ploy as a work of genius worthy of a Nobel Prize in economics.

The only ones Obama couldn’t count on here were the obstreperous people who dared to insist they were not socialists and those cantankerous trouble-makers who insisted that maybe Congress should read a bill before it passes — especially when it’s the single largest expansion of government control in the history of the republic.

Bozell is president of the Media Research Center.

Obama Flunks First Tests On Foreign Policy

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER | Posted Thursday, February 19, 2009 4:20 PM PT

The Biden prophecy has come to pass. Our wacky veep, momentarily inspired, had predicted last October that “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama.”

Biden probably had in mind an eve-of-the-apocalypse drama like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Instead, Obama’s challenges have come in smaller bites. Some are deliberate threats to U.S. interests, others mere probes to ascertain whether the new president has any spine.

Preliminary X-rays aren’t encouraging.

Consider the long list of brazen Russian provocations:

(a) Pressuring Kyrgyzstan to shut down the U.S. air base in Manas, an absolutely crucial NATO conduit into Afghanistan.

(b) Announcing the formation of a “rapid reaction force” with six former Soviet republics, a regional Russian-led strike force meant to reassert Russian hegemony in the Muslim belt north of Afghanistan.

(c) Planning to establish a Black Sea naval base in Georgia’s breakaway province of Abkhazia, conquered by Moscow last summer.

(d) Declaring Russia’s intention to deploy offensive Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad if Poland and the Czech Republic go ahead with plans to station an American (anti-Iranian) missile defense system.

President Bush’s response to the Kaliningrad deployment—the threat was issued the day after Obama’s election — was firm.

He refused to back down because giving in to Russian threats would leave Poles and Czechs exposed and show the world that, contrary to post-Cold War assumptions, the U.S. could not be trusted to protect Eastern Europe from Russian bullying.

The Obama response? “Biden Signals U.S. Is Open to Russia Missile Deal,” as the New York Times headlined Biden’s Feb. 7 Munich speech to a major international gathering. This followed strong messages from Obama’s team even before the inauguration that Obama wasn’t committed to the missile shield. And just to make sure everyone understood that Bush’s policy no longer held, Biden said the U.S. wanted to “press the reset button” on NATO-Russian relations.

Not surprisingly, the Obama wobble elicited a favorable reaction from Russia. (There are conflicting reports that Russia might suspend the Kaliningrad blackmail deployment.) The Kremlin must have been equally impressed the other provocations — Abkhazia, Kyrgyzstan, the rapid reaction force — elicited barely a peep from Washington.

Iran has been similarly charmed by Obama’s overtures. A week after the new president went about sending sweet peace signals via al-Arabiya, Iran launched its first homemade Earth satellite. The message is clear. If you can put a satellite into orbit, you can hit any continent with a missile, North America included.

And for emphasis, after the roundhouse hook, came the poke in the eye.

A U.S. women’s badminton team had been invited to Iran. Here was a chance for “ping-pong diplomacy” with the accommodating new president, a sporting venture meant to suggest the possibility of warmer relations.

On Feb. 4, Tehran denied the team entry into Iran.

Then, in case Obama failed to get the message, Iran’s parliament speaker in Munich responded to Obama’s olive branch.

Executive summary: Thanks very much. After you acknowledge 60 years of crimes against us, change not just your tone but your policies, and abandon the Zionist criminal entity, we might deign to talk to you.

With a grinning Goliath staggering about sporting a “kick me” sign on his back, even reputed allies joined the fun. Pakistan freed from house arrest A.Q. Khan, the notorious proliferator who sold nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

Ten days later, Islamabad capitulated to the Taliban, turning over to its tender mercies the Swat Valley, 100 miles from the capital. Not only will Shariah law now reign there, but the democratically elected secular party will be hunted down as the Pakistani army stands down.

These Pakistani capitulations may account for Obama’s hastily announced 17,000-troop increase in Afghanistan even before his various heralded reviews of the mission have been completed.

Hasty, unexplained, but at least something. Other than that, a month of pummeling has been met with utter passivity.

I would like to think the supine posture is attributable to a rookie leader otherwise preoccupied (i.e. domestically), leading a foreign policy team as yet unorganized if not disoriented.

But when the State Department says that Hugo Chavez’s president-for-life referendum, which was preceded by a sham government-controlled campaign featuring the tear-gassing of the opposition, was “for the most part . . . fully consistent with democratic process,” you have to wonder if Month One is not a harbinger of things to come.

Obama: Reality Sets In

Reality Sets In

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 20 Feb. 09

War On Terror: The Obama administration says it will employ some of the same harsh tactics George W. Bush used to fight terrorism. Has the president seen the light, or is this just window dressing?

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During his confirmation hearings this month, Leon Panetta — the former Democratic California congressman who is President Obama’s nominee for CIA director — made a statement that would have outraged the most devoted Obama supporters last year had it been expressed as a campaign position.

If he found that interrogation techniques weren’t working at getting terrorist detainees to give up vital details of a plot to hit the U.S., Panetta as CIA head would ask for “additional authority,” he said. Panetta added that the CIA’s rendition program, in which captured suspects are taken to third countries for jailing and interrogation, might continue.

In the same vein, Solicitor General nominee Elena Kagan in her confirmation hearing last week echoed new Attorney General Eric Holder — and the Bush administration — in asserting that terrorists captured outside official combat zones should be treated under “battlefield law” and thus held without trial, as POWs traditionally have been during wartime.

Panetta was quick to characterize the controversial practice of waterboarding as illegal torture, and said he would accept diplomatic promises that detainees be treated well in third countries.

We seem to have something of a charade being conducted here by the president’s legal and national security team.

Consider the fact that “Imperial Hubris” author Michael Scheuer, who served as the CIA’s chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station from 1996 to 1999 and who rejoined the unit as a special adviser after the 9/11 attacks, calls the CIA’s rendition program “the single most effective counterterrorism operation ever conducted by the United States government.”

Scheuer, who retired in 2004, told Congress nearly two years ago, “Americans are safer today because of the program.”

That program, which has generated such bile against ex-President Bush, was in fact begun under Bill Clinton, for whom Panetta served as White House chief of staff.

According to Scheuer, the Clinton administration’s rule that the CIA “take each captured al-Qaida leader to the country which had an outstanding legal process for him . . . greatly restricted (the) CIA’s ability to confront al-Qaida because we could only focus on al-Qaida leaders who were wanted somewhere for a legal process.”

Scheuer added: “As a result, many al-Qaida fighters we knew of and who were dangerous to America could not be captured.”

He lauded the Bush administration for dropping that rule.

As to what would happen to terrorist detainees under the care of brutal foreign regimes, the Clinton administration “asked if (the) CIA could get each receiving country to guarantee that it would treat a person according to its own laws,” Scheuer noted.

But former President Clinton; his national security adviser, Sandy Berger; and his NSC counterterrorism adviser, Richard Clarke, have since 9/11 claimed they told the CIA that it had to get assurances from each receiving country that the prisoners would be treated under U.S. legal standards.

“To the best of my memory, that is a lie,” Scheuer testified.

Scheuer in a 2006 Washington Times article charged that because of their reluctance to close the deal in catching Osama bin Laden, “That trio, in my view, abetted al-Qaida. . . . Bill, Dick and Sandy helped to push Americans out of the windows of the World Trade Center on that September morning.”

Harsh words. Still, based on this congressional testimony from someone in a good position to know, the previous Democratic president was sending captured terrorist operatives to foreign lands, knowing they might be tortured, or close to it.

In altering the extraordinary rendition program so that U.S. personnel kept control of the suspects, the Bush administration in all likelihood made torture less of a possibility.

The ACLU is already upset at the Obama administration for continuing what it calls “some of the most problematic policies of the Bush presidency.”

Testimony from Panetta, Holder and Kagan suggest that the CIA and Justice Department may return to the Clinton shuffle.

We think the Bush record of perfectly protecting the homeland is more worthy of emulation.

Cartoon: Stimulus

STIMULUS = CRAP

Congressional Relief Action Program

War Over The Climate Heats Up Even As Climate Itself Cools Down

By S. FRED SINGER | IBD – 19 Feb. 09

President Obama will be hard put to satisfy his several campaign promises: to restore prosperity and jobs, to conduct a foreign policy backed by a strong economy and to satisfy environmental demands to “save the planet.” His job will be much easier if he listens to independent advice on climate science.

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Testing Obama: Scientific and economic realities of Global Warming

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Get ready for a three-ring circus. In one corner you find those concerned with the recovery of the economy, in the second corner those concerned about threats to national security and in the third corner global warmers who agonize about catastrophic climate change.

The battle between these three factions will revolve about the use of energy and will play out in the White House and in Congress, but also in the public arena:

• Obama’s economic advisers at Treasury and the Budget Office will try to delay any major climate policies that could adversely impact economic recovery.

• The National Security Council and Defense Department, and to a lesser extent the State Department, will be concerned with maintaining a strong U.S. economy to be able to act forcefully when foreign problems arise.

• The global warmers will be led by energy-climate czarina Carol Browner, EPA chief during the Clinton years, and by science adviser John Holdren, who testified that a billion people might die by 2020 unless greenhouse-gas emissions are sharply reduced.

Using all the powers of the Clean Air Act, the EPA may try to impose severe regulations on carbon dioxide, which they would like to label as a pollutant. If successful, it would bring economic activity to a halt.

The outcome of such internal battles is never certain. In Germany, the minister for industry has just stepped down because he opposed the drastic climate actions demanded by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

On the other hand, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has walked away from the commitments of his Labor Party to institute a “cap and trade” scheme.

As these disputes continue, keep in mind three facts:

1. Nothing can be achieved by way of controlling atmospheric levels of CO2 without the active participation of China, India and other developing nations. It is a global issue, and the U.S. cannot make a significant impact, even if it were to adopt extreme measures. By now, China has become the largest emitter of CO2.

Obama may still seem committed to his campaign promise to reduce emissions by 20% by 2020 and 60% by 2050 (or was it 80% — and does it matter?). But remember that the U.S. Senate voted unanimously against anything like the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for a reduction of only 5%. And note that European nations and Japan, which signed up for Kyoto, will not come close to achieving even this modest goal by 2012, when Kyoto expires.

Despite this, politicians are making grand promises for the far future as they approach the crucial Copenhagen 2009 negotiations to define the “son of Kyoto.”

2. Remember also that global warming, whether natural or human-induced, may be good for you. Economists tell us that a modest warming would improve agriculture and forestry and increase GNP. And historical evidence backs their studies.

In any case, the climate has been mildly cooling for the past decade and may continue to cool for another decade or more — even while CO2 levels keep rising — causing much suffering around the world.

3. Finally, be aware that carbon dioxide may not have as much of an impact on temperatures as projected by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). While their 2007 Report asserts a better-than-90% certainty that the average temperature increase over the last 50 years is human-caused, they have produced no credible evidence to back this up. None!

On the contrary, an independent assessment of the same published information by the Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) reaches exactly the opposite result: Nature, not human activity, rules the climate.

Apparently, the ongoing scientific debate hasn’t yet made much impact on politicians or the public. I would blame the media, which seem to give more play to the catastrophic scenarios advanced by the global warmers.

But even Al Gore no longer claims that there are only one or two climate skeptics. Their number has been growing steadily.

Last year, 100 prominent climate scientists signed a letter to the U.N. secretary general, warning against accepting the IPCC results. So far, 650 climate scientists have expressed their skepticism about anthropogenic global warming. And 31,000 scientists, about one-third of them with Ph.D degrees, have signed the Oregon Petition against the Kyoto Protocol.

In the U.S., the “cooler heads” seem to be gaining ground. But nothing is ever sure. So stay tuned.

Singer, an atmospheric physicist, is president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project and professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia. He also served as the founding director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. His latest book is “Unstoppable Global Warming — Every 1,500 Years” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). He and other experts discuss major issues facing the Obama administration in IBD’s “Testing Obama” series.

Mortgage Plans Turn Economics Upside-Down

By THOMAS SOWELL | 19 Feb. 09

From television specials to newspaper editorials, the media are pushing the idea that current economic problems were caused by the market and that only the government can rescue us.

What was lacking in the housing market, they say, was government regulation of the market’s “greed.” That makes great moral melodrama, but it turns the facts upside down. It was precisely government intervention that turned a thriving industry into a basket case.

An economist specializing in financial markets gave a glimpse of the history of housing markets when he said: “Lending money to American homebuyers had been one of the least risky and most profitable businesses a bank could engage in for nearly a century.”

That was what the market was like before the government intervened. Like many government interventions, it began small and later grew.

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 directed federal regulatory agencies to “encourage” banks and other lending institutions “to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions.”

That sounds pretty innocent and, in fact, it had little effect for more than a decade. However, its premise was that bureaucrats and politicians know where loans should go, better than people who are in the business of making loans.

The real potential of that premise became apparent in the 1990s, when the Department of Housing and Urban Development imposed a requirement that mortgage lenders demonstrate with hard data that they were meeting their responsibilities under the Community Reinvestment Act.

What HUD wanted were numbers showing that mortgage loans were being made to low-income and moderate-income people on a scale that HUD expected, even if this required “innovative or flexible” mortgage eligibility standards.

In other words, quotas were imposed — and if some people didn’t meet the standards, then the standards needed to be changed.

Both HUD and the Department of Justice began bringing lawsuits against mortgage bankers when a higher percentage of minority applicants than white applicants were turned down for mortgage loans.

A substantial majority of both black and white mortgage loan applicants had their loans approved, but a statistical difference was enough to get a bank sued.

It should also be noted that the same statistical sources from which data on blacks and whites were obtained usually contained data on Asian-Americans as well. But those data on Asian-Americans were almost never mentioned.

Whites were turned down for mortgage loans more often than Asian-Americans. But saying that would undermine the reasoning on which the whole moral melodrama and political crusades were based.

Lawsuits were only part of the pressures put on lenders by government officials. Banks and other lenders are overseen by regulatory agencies and must go to those agencies for approval of many business decisions that other businesses make without needing anyone else’s approval.

Government regulators refused to approve such decisions when a lender was under investigation for not producing satisfactory statistics on loans to low-income people or minorities.

Under growing pressures from both the Clinton administration and later the George W. Bush administration, banks began to lower their lending standards.

Mortgage loans with no down payment, no income verification and other “creative” financial arrangements abounded. Although this was done under pressures begun in the name of the poor and minorities, people who were neither could also get these mortgage loans.

With mortgage loans widely available to people with questionable prospects of being able to keep up the payments, it was an open invitation to financial disaster.

Those who warned of the dangers had their warnings dismissed. Now, apparently, we need more politicians intervening in more industries, if you believe the politicians and the media.

Just A Beginning?

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 19 Feb. 09

Economy: Seven-hundred eighty-seven billion dollars apparently doesn’t go as far as it used to. Even before the ink was dry on the stimulus bill, the president and his deputies were hinting it may not work as promised.

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Last week, when President Obama was in Peoria, Ill., selling the stimulus bill, he heaped praise on the spending plan, calling it a “once-in-a-generation chance to act boldly” that would “be a major step forward on our path to economic prosperity.”

He predicted that “once Congress passes this plan and I sign it into law, a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be unleashed all across America.”

Now with the $787 billion on the books — an amount greater than the entire federal budget in 1982 — the administration is suddenly in full expectation-lowering mode, throwing out strong hints that it may have to go back for second helpings in a matter of months.

“Signing Stimulus, Obama Doesn’t Rule Out More,” is how the New York Times put it. And, indeed, Obama sounded almost dour about the bill he had so aggressively pushed to get passed.

Gone was all the bold talk of unleashing innovation and activity. Now it’s just “the beginning of what we need to do.”

Obama deputies were even more downbeat. Last weekend, after the bill was safely through Congress, administration press secretary Robert Gibbs predicted that the “economy is going to get worse before it gets better.”

Both he and senior adviser David Axelrod are now saying that the unemployment rate is likely to go as high as 10%, even with the stimulus.

This alone is a stunning admission, since just before the stimulus plan was signed into law, the Congressional Budget Office forecast unemployment would peak at about 9% — without passage of the gargantuan plan.

The shift in tone has been so sudden that even the mainstream press has noticed. On Tuesday, a reporter pointed out to Gibbs that the administration seemed to be taking “a wait-and-see kind of approach” to the stimulus, asking whether that suggests it will seek a second round of stimulus spending.

Gibbs’ response: “There are no particular plans at this point for a second stimulus package at the moment. I wouldn’t foreclose it.”

So what can explain all this cold water? As we see it, there are four possibilities:

1. The administration discovered in the past couple of days that the economy is far worse that it thought. Unlikely, unless the economic team doesn’t know what it’s doing.

2. The administration has seen what it can get by scaring the public, so why not try it again? With much of its long-term spending agenda enacted, a few more months of catastrophe talk and it could even score nationalized health care. Maybe, but we hope that’s far too Machiavellian for this crew.

3. The president and his team have spent so much time and energy talking down the economy that it can’t seem to stop. As Obama might put it, “Old habits are hard to break.” This is within the realm of the conceivable.

4. The most likely explanation: The administration is quietly coming to understand what critics of the bill knew all along. It spends huge sums of money, but does so in ways that will do little to stimulate the economy in the short term.

If true, it would amount to the most expensive learning curve in the history of mankind.

Venezuela’s Elected Dictatorship

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY |19 Feb.09

Tyranny: Sunday’s referendum in Venezuela was hailed as a “victory” for the Chavez regime and extolled as participatory democracy. In reality, it was a farce undermining a multiparty state. So why does the U.S. praise it?

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On the surface, Chavez’s referendum to lift all term limits — which he won 55% to 45% — had the lifelike look of demo-cracy. And if it were only about votes, it might be true.

Chavez: El Presidente for life?

In reality, Sunday’s referendum, Venezuela’s 14th since 1998, wasn’t about voice and choice. It was a manipulative maneuver using voters’ fear, exhaustion and capacity to be bought to make Chavez president for life in an elected dictatorship.

That’s why the Obama administration’s praise for this phony facade of democracy was dispiriting: “We congratulate the civic and participatory spirit of the millions of Venezuelans who exercised their democratic right to vote,” a State Department spokesman said, breaking past policy of not commenting on Venezuela’s referenda.

Although he noted “troubling reports of intimidation” of voters, he called the referendum “fully consistent with the democratic process” and high-mindedly urged Venezuelan officials to “focus on governing democratically.”

The trouble with these courtesies is that the “governing-democratically” horse left the barn long ago, and the current praise gives Chavez legitimacy. After being driven bonkers by the silent treatment of the Bush administration, this was what he wanted. But not if he had to govern democratically to get it.

It’s an important detail. Chavez longs to exercise the power and have the longevity of his mentor, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. But he’s savvy enough to know that losing the designation of democracy would reduce Venezuela to being a pariah state with little global influence, like Cuba.

Castro understands this all too well. He sells Cuba as “revolutionary democracy,” a meaningless term. So long as Chavez can win praise from not just the U.S., but Spain, Bolivia, the European Union and Colombia, he can pretty much do what he wants.

But it’s ridiculous to say Chavez’s democracy is anything like the real ones out there foolishly praising him.

For one thing, the referendum itself wasn’t legal. It followed voters’ rejection of the same questions a year ago. By law, the referendum couldn’t be held again for two years or a single constitutional period. Chavez did so anyway. Meanwhile, 18-year-olds (many of them dissidents) weren’t allowed to register to vote for the referendum, even though legally they were eligible. Why applaud this?

The broader picture is problematic, too. It doesn’t take a genius to know that a decade of political turmoil in Venezuela shows something’s wrong with its democracy. Constantly changing a constitution at the whim of a strongman doesn’t protect the rights of political minorities. Nor does it create the political stability of a real constitution. It only creates a facade.

Meanwhile, Chavez has amassed vast powers no recognizable democracy has. He controls courts, the National Assembly, the central bank, the military, all oil revenues, nearly all of the media, and electoral mechanisms. He used huge amounts of state cash to win support for this referendum, flooding airwaves with ads. Foes didn’t have access to media with national reach for airtime — and couldn’t get protest permits either.

What’s more, besides the phenomenal flood of money, Chavez created a pervasive atmosphere of menace as tiny dissident groups were firebombed, beset by red-shirted mobs, and threatened with tanks if their votes didn’t go the way Chavez wanted.

With Chavez amassing such power, does anyone believe he’ll let himself be voted out of office when his term expires in 2013? In reality, unless he’s physically thrown out, he’ll be in power for a long, long time. It won’t matter if inflation hits 60% in 2009, or the economy collapses, or the country defaults on its debts.

That’s nothing to congratulate.

Although the Obama administration’s desire for friendly relations with Venezuela is understandable, it has the bad side effect of giving Chavez the legitimacy he needs to keep on doing what he’s doing — kicking the legs out from under the country’s democracy.

The Price of Fear

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 18 Feb. 09

Politics: In his first month, President Obama has talked down the economy and engineered a huge surge in federal spending. Now the bills will come due. The pain may be just beginning.

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Long ago, there was a president who said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Now the message from the White House can be boiled down to something like, “Be afraid. Be very afraid. And give this president what he wants.”

Do we overstate the case? We’ll just say this: Franklin D. Roosevelt made his share of missteps but understood the need to calm a frightened nation and restore confidence. If that meant closing the banks, so be it. Anything to stop the panic.

Barack Obama, inheriting a situation not even close to what FDR beheld, talks as if the nation isn’t scared enough. He pushed a vast peacetime spending bill through Congress by warning of “catastrophe” if it failed to pass. But where boldness had been needed — with the banks — only vague work-in-progress is on offer.

With a performance like this, and Obama only a month in office, the markets are noticing. We see the Dow industrials down about 8% from the pre-inaugural close and off more than 20% from Election Day. Wall Street — and Main Street — had hoped for strong, reassuring leadership. Instead, we have a presidency “spinning the bad news story,” as Cato Institute economist Steve Hanke puts it.

As details of the “stimulus” bill signed Tuesday emerge, it’s also become clear that little is there to jump-start the economy. It’s more like a herd of Trojan horses designed to re-institute the costly welfare state that Ronald Reagan and even Bill Clinton dismantled.

Meanwhile, the nation waits to see what the administration has in mind for ending the balance-sheet crisis at the root of the pain.

This brief track record shows the power of the politics of fear. It’s the same term the Left threw at George W. Bush, as it accused him of exploiting terrorism fears to expand the security state.

Obama is now doing on the economic front what his allies have accused Bush of doing on the war front: Stoking fear to amass power. In his case, he’s not trying to listen in on more phone calls. What he’s seeking, and so far achieving, is bigger government with greater influence over Americans’ lives and livelihoods. Fear is working.

The problem is, if you talk down the economy you get a down economy, and stocks down, too. It’s worse yet when your talk is not countered by credible action to ward off the threats you claim.

The actual dollar cost of the legislation is trouble, too. Bills won’t come due all at once, but new taxes and government debt that could hobble the economy for decades is looming.

People look ahead at this and don’t like what they see. Their gloomy view of the future further saps their confidence in the present. More than ever, they need what candidate Obama promised: hope. It’s not what they’re hearing from Obama as president.

Gimme, gimme, gimme

Gimme, gimme, gimme: More scenes from the anti-Obama entitlement backlash

By Michelle Malkin  •  February 19, 2009 12:15 PM

So, a CNBC host is calling for a new “tea party” to protest Barack Obama’s out-of-control spendulus/entitlement culture? We’ve been doing it all week. Seattle, Denver, Mesa. Kansas this weekend. And more outbreaks to come. I’m posting a second round of photos from KFYI’s anti-porkulus protest in Arizona yesterday in opposition to Barack Obama’s visit to push his massive housing entitlement campaign. Thanks to La Mano at Sticker Patch for the pics. The revolt against the savior-based economy continues…

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Via CBSNews EconWatch, Obama’s massive mortgage entitlement plan gets

Bailout Begins A New Round Of Shakedowns

By MICHELLE MALKIN | IBD 19 Feb. 09

Fresh off the trillion-dollar porkulus bill signing in Denver, President Obama immediately launched into his next New Raw Deal expansion: a massive mortgage entitlement program forcing lenders to refinance at an initial cost of $50 billion to $100 billion.

That’s in addition to the bipartisan-supported $50 billion in the “stimulus” bill to bail out homeowners underwater on their mortgages and the $2 billion in “neighborhood stabilization” funds to alleviate the foreclosure crisis.

In tandem with the White House Bad Borrowers Bailout, Obama’s old friends at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) are launching a new campaign of their own: the “Home Savers” campaign. What a coinky-dinky, huh?

As with most of the bully tactics of the radical left-wing group, it ain’t gonna be pretty. They are the shock troops on the streets doing the dirty work while the Community Organizer-in-Chief keeps his delicate hands clean.

Trumpets ACORN: “On Feb. 19, ACORN members will launch a new tactic in fighting foreclosures: civil disobedience. Participants in the ACORN Home Savers campaign nationwide will simply refuse to move out of foreclosed homes, or in some cases, will move back in. ACORN homesteaders intend to squat in their homes until a comprehensive, federal solution for people facing foreclosure is put in place.”

ACORN’s foot soldiers, funded with your tax dollars, will scream, pound their fists, chain themselves to buildings, padlock the doors and engage in illegal behavior until they get what they want. It’s a recipe for anarchy. Threatens Baltimore ACORN’s Louis Beverly, who calls himself a “Foreclosure Fighter”:

“After you’ve used all your legal options, your last resort is civil disobedience. We’re talking about families who have been in their homes 20 or 30 years. People who are assets in the community, who look out for the elderly, who have community associations, and these are the people being kicked out of the community.”

We can all sympathize with good folks who can’t pay their bills. But as I’ve said repeatedly in my criticism of the mortgage entitlement mentality embraced by both parties in Washington, home ownership is not a civil right — and neither is home retention.

Artificially propping up the housing market will only result in more of the same costly borrow-spend-panic-repeat cycles that got us into this mess in the first place. Failing corporations need to fail. So do failing home borrowers. This is borrowing from frugal renter Peter to pay profligate Paul’s home loan.

Now that’s the kind of theft that should be the subject of civil disobedience.

Instead, ACORN offices, funded with your tax dollars, are training teams of “Home Savers” — described as “people ready and willing to mobilize on short notice to defend the homesteaders against attempts to evict them.”

Ready, willing and able to mobilize on short notice because they are either unemployed or employed full-time as ACORN shakedown artists.

Guess who’s encouraging them to defy the law. Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who told them: “Stay in your homes. If the American people, anybody out there is being foreclosed, don’t leave.”

The housing bullies will be assisted by left-wing propaganda documentarians at the Brave New Foundation, headed up by Hollywood lib Robert Greenwald, who will disseminate sob stories to crank up pressure while Obama pushes his housing entitlement plan.

ACORN is targeting the following areas: Tucson, Ariz.; Oakland, Calif.; Los Angeles; Contra Costa County, Calif.; Orlando, Fla.; Baltimore; New York; Houston; San Mateo County, Calif.; Denver; Bridgeport, Conn.; Wilmington, Del.; Broward County, Fla.; Boston; Flint, Mich.; Detroit; Minneapolis; Raleigh, N.C.; Durham, N.C.; Albany, N.Y.; Cincinnati; Cleveland; Pittsburgh; and Dallas.

ACORN has waited three decades for this moment in the sun. And as Obama promised ACORN members at a forum in December 2007, “We’re going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda. We’re gonna be having meetings all across the country . . . so that you have input into the agenda.” The moment is nigh. Prepare for lawlessness.

Escape From D.C.

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, February 17, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Federal Spending: That President Obama waited until Tuesday to sign the $787 billion stimulus bill during a trip to Denver speaks volumes. He wanted to highlight the bill’s green provisions, not its “stimulus.”

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It’s strange that so few mainstream media outlets have pointed out the obvious: The bill Congress hurried to pass late last week without anyone having read the entire 1,434 pages will in fact not stimulate much of anything.

It is a spending bill, pure and simple. Every dollar the government spends must either be borrowed, taken through taxation or printed. Any way you look at it, every dollar comes from the pockets of the people it will be spent on.

The bill adds $10,000 to each American’s debt. No matter how you view it, that’s a $10,000 hike in future taxes, not counting interest. We’ve been lectured often that Americans have become greedy and overly indebted. So how does adding still more debt help? Unless there’s an explosion of economic activity directly due to this bill, Americans’ standard of living will decline — count on it.

The very word “stimulus” hides a key fact: In essence, we’ve made a collective decision to let government spend our money for us. We’ll see soon whether the 535 wise men and women of Congress do a better job than the rest of us would.

We’re inclined, after looking at the earmarks, pork and outright waste in the bill, to come down on the side of skepticism.

Early on, we supported the idea of a stimulus package, thinking it might actually lift the economy. The bill we got won’t do that. What pains us now is that this has been portrayed as an ideological debate. But, as Obama earlier said, this is an issue of pragmatism — of what works, and what doesn’t.

So what works? History shows repeatedly that big-spending programs that enlarge the size of government do little if anything to boost the economy. But permanent tax cuts do work — spectacularly, at times. Sadly, this bill lacks permanent, stimulative tax cuts.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had this to say: “In the longer run, the legislation would result in a slight decrease in gross domestic product compared with CBO’s baseline economic forecast.” Get that? The economy, under this plan, will be smaller than it would have been, while adding $1.7 trillion to our deficits.

Obama said there was “no disagreement” over the need for stimulus. In response, more than 200 economists, including several Nobel Prize winners, took out a newspaper ad saying: “With all due respect, Mr. President . . . we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance.”

Just as with global warming, it’s a non-consensus consensus.

We’re not saying all this because we don’t want Obama to succeed. Quite the opposite, we say it because we do want him to succeed, as we would any president. But bad policies are bad policies.

And this bill has much that can be called bad — from $300 million for electric carts, a favor to North Dakota Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan, in whose state the carts will be made, to $8 billion for high-speed rail, a tidbit that boosts Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s dream of a Las Vegas-Los Angeles rail link.

That explains why Obama traveled to Denver on Tuesday for what even the Associated Press called “an unusual ceremony” to sign the legislation into law: He wanted to escape the heated discussion about the bill’s bogus stimulus provisions, and focus instead on its more-popular but no-less-bogus green energy elements.

We can’t blame him. Voters are angry and feel they’ve been taken.

In the coming weeks, we hope to look at the some of the bill’s less-stimulating provisions, how much they cost and how they got put in. Who knows? It might come in handy during the 2010 elections.

CRAP Obama

OBAMA’S BAILOUT THE DEMS BILL

Congresional

Relief

Action

Program

Featured by Mike Huckabee

Obama Gives What Doctor Did Not Order

By PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY | Posted Wednesday, February 18, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Barack Obama forced a bitter pill down the throats of Americans that the doctor did not order and patients do not want. Obama snuck into the stimulus bill a new system for rationing medical care, and he got Congress to ram it through the House and Senate without reading it.

Maybe Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi thought no one would notice what they slipped into H.R. 1 since rationing medical care has nothing to do with stimulating the economy. But former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey sounded the alarm in her Bloomberg.com article aptly titled “Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan.”

She described how stealth provisions provide massive new funding of billions of dollars to an Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology to monitor treatments and decide which are cost-effective and which will be permitted or denied. Currently, patients make that decision without government interference as long as the care is safe and effective.

Congress thus legislated a fundamental shift away from the “safe and effective” standard and replaced it with what a bureaucrat thinks is cost-effective or has “clinical effectiveness.” Americans are waking up from their political anesthesia to realize that Obama’s “change” really means government control over access to medical treatments for our illnesses.

Liberals love to control and ration as much as they love to tax and spend. Al Gore has spent nearly a decade spewing the nonsense of “global warming,” which is a device for government to control and ration energy.

Team Obama may have overplayed its hand in bringing control-and-ration to medical care. The news has spread like wildfire on the Internet and talk radio, and nonpolitical patients in doctors’ waiting rooms can be heard talking about it.

CARTOON: Obama Stimulus Package

CARTOON: Home Buyers / Congress

IRRESPONSIBLE HOME BUYERS / IRRESPONSIBLE CONGRESS

We Actually Got Away With It……

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., second from left, shares a laugh with, from left, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., and Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Feb. 13, 2009, during a news conference after the House passed the stimulus legislation.

The Rhetorical President

They are making terrible mistakes – scary – stupid – mistakes. Don

The Rhetorical President

By: Janice Shaw Crouse (CWA)

The use of language to persuade is a skill much admired since ancient times. Few people become leaders without the ability to move others to agree with their arguments. Rightly understood, rhetoric is only one of the tools of persuasion; the other two, logic and dialectic, are required to truly change peoples’ minds. During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama awed the media and voters alike with his rhetorical skills. He continues to awe as he uses rhetorical manipulation to sell the stimulus package to the American public.

Legitimate rhetoric balances the skills of public speaking with sound logic and appeals to commonality with the audience on the issue at hand. It is an understatement to say that Barack Obama is skilled at using the language of his opponents to sell his ideas. During the 2009 campaign, he convinced a significant number of evangelicals that he was one of them. He convinced people of polar opposite points of view that he was on their side. Now, as the nation’s top snake oil salesman, he is working the room to sell his stimulus package — a package that experts agree will stimulate the Democratic constituency groups more than the economy.

The snake oil is especially obvious in his slick salesmanship as well as his shrewd manipulation of rhetoric.

SPECTOR + COLLINS + SNOWE = SPECOLSNOW -

“SPECKLED SNOW”

Starting on Capitol Hill, he brought Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania), the most gullible of the GOP senators, into the Oval Office to overwhelm them with his dialectic; he shrewdly played on his commonality with them on specific ideas and people they mutually admired. One at a time, he worked his charm by stroking each one at their vulnerable points, and all three caved. They undermined their party’s hope for leverage, stomped on the principle of checks and balances, and ended the need for any future attempts for genuine bipartisanship. They also gave Obama the cover he needed during his first major political crisis and gave momentum to a massive trillion dollar plan that could burden the nation for the foreseeable future!

Emboldened by his success with the Three Stooges of Capitol Hill, the president shrewdly staged his first prime-time presidential news conference using all the gravitas of the White House East Room as a backdrop. I say “shrewdly” because the president rearranged seating of the White House Press Corp to give deference to the left. The major network stars were seated behind Ed Schulz, a liberal radio talk show host (Note that this administration plans to push the “Fairness Doctrine”), and reporters from the black media outlets. He shrewdly gave international exposure to media most friendly to his administration. Al Jazeera, Essence, and the Saudi Press Agency were given seats. Sam Stein, a leftist blogger from the Huffington Post, was recognized for a question, thus getting international exposure. No wonder there were no follow-up questions or challenges to the president’s remarks. The mainstream media, whose worshipful coverage assured him the White House, couldn’t have liked the new arrangement, but apparently decided that the slight didn’t warrant legitimate grilling of the president during his first press conference.

Mr. Obama was also shrewd in his use of rhetorical devices that many consider demagogic and are, at a minimum, deceptive and misleading. For instance, he frequently used generalization and polarization:

• The stimulus bill would mean the difference between catastrophe and creating four million jobs
• Liberal Democrats just want to spend more money, but the GOP vetoes all progress
• Everything was the fault of the Bush administration, so Obama’s administration is facing “unprecedented” problems
• Everything the new administration is doing has never been done before
• Republican leaders are doing “nothing,” while his team is producing plans that will perform miracles

He conveyed a distortion of what the ancient rhetoricians called “ethos.” The ancient concept includes the image that is conveyed by the person trying to persuade. Obama almost never smiles, and during the press conference he projected, as usual, the image of self-control, maturity and deliberation. His suits are always impeccable, and his informal wear is “cool.” His demeanor projects a seriousness that is softened by his picture perfect family life. During the press conference, he seemed utterly sincere, honest and candid, while dishing out statements that could be thoroughly discounted by any first-year reporter pounding a beat. He skillfully turned to humor in order to disdain and dismiss the only penetrating question of the whole press conference. When Major Garrett of Fox News asked the president about Vice President Joe Biden’s comment regarding the administration having a 30 percent chance of failing on any given initiative, the president did not hesitate to make Biden the butt of his joke. The end result was to convey the impression that he is the savior of the nation, while everyone else, including his party and his vice president, stands as a barrier to progress.

For a man who promised bipartisanship by “working with the majority for change,” he makes ample use of what he claimed to despise, “the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for too long have strangled our politics.”

Several of President Obama’s appointments have been controversial because of the nominees’ tax problems.  One nominee, however, is grabbing attention for another kind of ethical problem.  Dr. Janice Crouse, Director and Senior Fellow of Concerned Women for America’s (CWA) Beverly LaHaye Institute, wrote about the radical viewpoints of David Ogden, who is the nominee for Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice (DOJ).  Mr. Ogden would be second in command at the DOJ, and his apparent qualification for the position is a troubling 20-year career defending the rights of pornographers over the rights of women and children. He also has a disturbing record of defending abortion and promoting international laws over our own national laws. You can read Dr. Crouse’s article at www.cwfa.org and at www.townhall.com.

· Arie Hoekman, a representative of the United Nations Population Fund, recently declared at a colloquium in Mexico City that family breakdown is a triumph for human rights. Dr. Crouse responded, “How ironic that those who created the crisis are denying that crisis.  The data is in, and the experts agree that single-mother families and father absence have created a family structure that is detrimental to women and dangerous for children’s well-being.”  You can read about Hoekman’s remarks and Dr. Crouse’s response in a press release at www.cwfa.org.

· For the first time ever at a presidential press conference, a president made clear that he had a pre-approved list of questioners, most of them friendly to his administration.  More importantly, for his first prime-time press conference, Mr. Obama shrewdly pushed the proposed “Fairness Doctrine” by seating major network stars behind Ed Schulz, a liberal radio talk show host. He also gave seats to Al Jazeera and the Saudi Press Agency. Dr. Crouse discusses the press conference and analyzes the President’s use of rhetorical skills in trying to persuade the public to support his economic stimulus package in her article, “The Rhetorical President,” at www.AmericanThinker.com.

· We appreciate all you do to help us protect and defend Christian values in today’s society.  Our partnership will bear much fruit.

Iraq elections refutes ‘fiasco’ myth

Preoccupied as it was poring through Tom Daschle’s tax returns, Washington hardly noticed a near-miracle abroad. Iraq held provincial elections. There was no Election Day violence. Security was handled by Iraqi forces with little U.S. involvement. A fabulous bazaar of 14,400 candidates representing 400 parties participated, yielding results highly favorable to both Iraq and the United States.

Iraq moved away from religious sectarianism toward more secular nationalism. “All the parties that had the words ‘Islamic’ or ‘Arab’ in their names lost,” noted Middle East expert Amir Taheri. “By contrast, all those that had the words ‘Iraq’ or ‘Iraqi’ gained.”

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki went from leader of a small Islamic party to leader of the “State of the Law Party,” campaigning on security and secular nationalism. He won a smashing victory. His chief rival, a more sectarian and pro-Iranian Shiite religious party, was devastated. Another major Islamic party, the pro-Iranian Sadr faction, went from 11 percent of the vote to 3 percent, losing badly in its stronghold of Baghdad. The Islamic Fadhila party that had dominated Basra was almost wiped out.

The once-dominant Sunni party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and the erstwhile insurgency was badly set back. New grass-roots tribal (“Awakening”) and secular Sunni leaders emerged.

All this barely pierced the consciousness of official Washington. After all, it fundamentally contradicts the general establishment/media narrative of Iraq as “fiasco.”

One leading conservative thinker had concluded as early as 2004 that democracy in Iraq was “a childish fantasy.” Another sneered that the 2005 election that brought Maliki to power was “not an election but a census” — meaning people voted robotically according to their ethnicity and religious identity. The implication being that these primitives have no conception of democracy, and that trying to build one there is a fool’s errand.

What was lacking in all this condescension is what the critics so pride themselves in having — namely, context. What did they expect in the first elections after 30 years of totalitarian rule that destroyed civil society and systematically annihilated any independent or indigenous leadership? The only communal or social ties remaining after Saddam Hussein were those of ethnicity and sect.

But in the intervening years, while the critics washed their hands of Iraq, it began developing the sinews of civil society: a vibrant free press, a plethora of parties, the habits of negotiation and coalition-building. Reflecting these new realities, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani this time purposely and publicly backed no party, strongly signaling a return — contra Iran — to the Iraqi tradition of secular governance.

The big strategic winner here is the United States. The big loser is Iran. The parties Tehran backed are in retreat. The prime minister who staked his career on a strategic cooperation agreement with the United States emerged victorious. Moreover, this realignment from enemy state to emerging democratic ally, unlike Egypt’s flip from Soviet to U.S. ally in the 1970s, is not the work of a single autocrat (like Anwar Sadat), but a reflection of national opinion expressed in a democratic election.

This is not to say that these astonishing gains are irreversible. There loom three possible threats: (a) a coup from a rising and relatively clean military disgusted with the corruption of civilian politicians — the familiar post-colonial pattern of the past half-century; (b) a strongman emerging from a democratic system (Maliki?) and then subverting it, following the Russian and Venezuelan models; or (c) the collapse of the current system because of a premature U.S. withdrawal that leads to a collapse of security.

Averting the first two is the job of Iraqis. Averting the third is the job of the U.S. Which is why President Obama’s reaction to these remarkable elections, a perfunctory statement noting that they “should continue the process of Iraqis taking responsibility for their future,” was shockingly detached and ungenerous.

When you become president of the United States you inherit its history, even the parts you would have done differently. Obama might argue that American sacrifices in Iraq were not worth what we achieved. But for the purposes of current and future policy, that is entirely moot. Despite Obama’s opposition, America went on to create a small miracle in the heart of the Arab Middle East.

President Obama is now the custodian of that miracle. It is his duty as leader of the nation that gave birth to this fledgling democracy to ensure that he does nothing to undermine it.

Charles Krauthammer writes for the Washington Post. His column is distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th NW, Washington, DC 20071. Reach him at letters@charleskrauthammer.com.

Better with Peanut Butter?

Don

Chinese buns made from cardboard | Ann Arbor News 12 July 2007

BEIJING – Chopped cardboard, softened with an industrial chemical and made tasty with pork flavoring, is a main ingredient in batches of steamed buns sold in one Beijing neighborhood, state television said.

China Central Television’s undercover investigation showed a street vendor making the buns from squares of cardboard picked from the ground.  The report, aired late Wednesday, highlights the country’s problems with food safety despite government efforts to improve the situation.

Watch out for Al Qaeda

It wants to target America’s economy, and it wants to prove it can defeat us.

By Marc A. Thiessen
February 15, 2009

We’re bombarded with bad news — the credit markets could freeze, millions more could lose their jobs, and today’s recession could turn into a depression. But the danger we aren’t hearing about could outweigh them all: the increased risk of a catastrophic terrorist attack.

A careful study of Osama bin Laden’s videos, letters and Internet statements makes clear that Al Qaeda’s goal is more than to terrorize Americans or to drive us out of the Middle East. Bin Laden believes that Al Qaeda can bring about the economic collapse of the United States – and to achieve this goal, he has adopted a strategy of targeting America’s financial centers and economic infrastructure.

Bin Laden cites the 9/11 attacks as proof that this strategy can succeed. In a November 2004 videotape broadcast on Al Jazeera, he boasted that Al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event, while America lost, “according to the lowest estimate, $500 billion … meaning that every dollar of Al Qaeda defeated a million dollars [of America] … besides the loss of a huge number of jobs.”

“America is a superpower, with enormous military strength and vast economic power,” he concluded, “but all this is built on foundations of straw. So it is possible to target those foundations and focus on their weakest points, which, even if you strike only one-tenth of them, then the whole edifice will totter and sway.”

The terrorists’ ambitions are shaped by their experience fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Before the 9/11 attacks, Bin Laden said, “People used to ask us: ‘How will you defeat the Soviet empire?’ And at that time, the Soviet empire was a mighty power that scared the whole world. … Today, there is no more Soviet empire. … So the one God, who … stabilized us to defeat the Soviet empire, is capable of sustaining us again and of allowing us to defeat America.”

After 9/11, Bin Laden issued a letter warning the American people that our fate “will be that of the Soviets, who fled Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall and economic bankruptcy.”

These statements tell us something important about the enemy: Although Bin Laden has many skilled bomb-makers and propagandists working for him, he lacks a single competent economist. Yes, the 9/11 attacks did cost America billions of dollars — but our resilient free-market economy replaced every lost job within a few years. We would similarly recover from any other attack Al Qaeda might pull off.

But the terrorists don’t have to be right to be emboldened. Clearly the daily news reports of our economic turmoil feed into Bin Laden’s deep-seated belief that America is teetering on the economic brink — and that with one big push, we can be forced into collapse. The financial crisis can only be serving to convince Al Qaeda that the time to strike America is now.

We have some factors working in our favor. The enemy has been weakened by our seven-year offensive against them. Our military removed Al Qaeda’s haven in Afghanistan in 2001. With the “surge,” we drove Al Qaeda from the new sanctuaries it had established in Iraq. And over the last year, America has put increasing pressure on Al Qaeda in its Pakistani stronghold. At least five of Al Qaeda’s top operational planners met their end in that country in 2008, culminating on Jan. 1 when Usama al-Kini, Al Qaeda’s chief of operations in Pakistan, and his lieutenant, Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, were killed. This is the highest pace of strikes against senior Al Qaeda operational planners since the war on terrorism began.

Another factor working in our favor is the severity of the 9/11 attacks. In striking the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, Al Qaeda set an extremely high bar for itself. If it launched an attack that did not meet that bar, it would be seen as a sign of weakness. This is likely why we have not seen smaller-scale attacks on shopping malls and other “soft” targets during the last seven years. By contrast, this also means that, whatever the terrorists are now planning, it likely will be on a scale to equal, or even dwarf, the attacks of 9/11.

Al Qaeda’s failure to strike America after seven years creates pressure on the terrorists to act. The lack of another catastrophic attack on the United States, combined with the massive defeat terrorists have suffered in Iraq, sends a message to the Muslim world that Al Qaeda is losing its war with America. The terrorists need to pull off something spectacular to prove that they are still a force and a threat. Al Qaeda’s growing desperation to strike America, and our perceived growing vulnerability, are a dangerous combination.

All this means that now is no time for President Obama to begin dismantling the institutions President Bush put in place to keep America safe. Obama needs to recognize that, at this moment, somewhere in the world, the terrorists are watching the economic turmoil in our country — and planning an attack they believe will bring our economy to its knees. In the face of this danger, America must not let down its guard.

Jihad against Love

Jihad against Love: Valentine’s Day Enflames the Middle East

Dr. Walid Phares

“Al Gharam mamn’uh, al Gharam kufr,” screamed the self-declared cleric in al-Ansar’s chat room this Friday. “Love is forbidden, love is infidel” — said the online fatwa about the “legitimacy of loving and being in love.”

A weekend before Valentine’s Day, jihadist souls were not questioning the “commercialization” of romance, but inquiring about the ban on “being in love.” The “scholars” said human love is evil. The simple feeling of being attracted to or in love with someone is a terrifying sin if it is committed outside of their religious dogma — and it warrants serious punishment.

“Al Hub” (basic love) — said one of the scholars online — “is not permissible outside commitment to Jihad.” The subject of romantic love was new and overwhelming to the al-Qaeda sympathizers, who were busy dodging the “decadent feeling.” But it was too close chronologically, too well publicized, and too difficult to escape on the web.

Suddenly, a marquee rolled an ad for Valentine’s Day in the room. The room shouted its objections, but the ideologue could not ignore reality. “Sometimes we’ll have to absorb our reaction and control ourselves. This Valentine’s Day is a dark day, it is poison, but by the will of Allah when the Caliphate will be established, Valentine’s Day will be smashed.”

But there was a concern: Valentine’s Day is “ravaging” the region, including under the most restrictive regimes. They are right to worry: the battle for love is as wide as the call for jihad.

In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, girls were severely punished for not being escorted by male relatives, or for not wearing burqas. Chatting with someone from the other gender was a crime. Movies, mixed-schools, radios, music, and poetry were banned. Valentine’s Day in Kabul was equated to Satan.

In Saudi Arabia, women still can’t drive or vote, much less date. Valentine’s Day is illegal. In Iran, high school girls cannot hold hands with their boyfriends. Imitations exist in Iraq’s Salafi and Sadrist enclaves and in Beirut’s Hezbollah suburb.

But the revolution is rising. The “love guerrillas” are spreading on the street and on the internet. In liberated Afghanistan, transistor radios air love songs. In Iran, boys and girls have waged the revolt of “kissing in public.” Tracked by the militia, the teenagers perform the kiss-and-run tactic.

In Kuwait, tactics are evolving. In this oil-rich state, young Arabs buy two cell phones, and as they see their beloved driving by, they throw one of the mobiles in her car; then the telephonic romance can begin.

In West Jerusalem, young Palestinians who want to stroll freely with their girlfriends, walk up the Yehuda street speaking Hebrew. In Egypt, soap operas compete with their Mexican counterparts. Love warfare has become the boldest threat that can roll back jihad.

On the internet, Arab, Persian, Kurdish, Aramaic, and other love and music chat rooms attract ten times the al-Ansar-crowded rooms. There, you read and hear discussions of love; they seek not decadence, but the early stages of a romantic revolution.

Lebanon’s TV has taken the freedom for love to sophisticated artistic expressions. With shows seen by millions, the LBCI has been shaking off the fundamentalist quarters of the region. On al Jazeera, clerics are horrified by the scenes. Their deepest nightmare is to see young Saudi men singing the beauty of human love, while their jihadist counterparts are assassinating young Iraqi women for not wearing the hijab.

This region has a massive and underreported potential to become a culture of romantic passion. We must remember that Adonis and Ashtarut, antiquity’s gods of love, were Phoenician legends. Cleopatra was an Egyptian Queen. The lovers of pre-Islamic Arabia, Antar and Ablah, were the precursors of Romeo and Juliet. And that the Sherazade of the one thousand and one nights and Omar the hopeless romantic were Persians.

From the twentieth century, let’s remember that Um Kalthum, the voice from Egypt, Said Akl, the poet from Lebanon, and Khalid, the rock singer from Algeria, have sculpted love in the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of these people.

The B-52s may have been successful in Tora Bora, but Music Channels and the internet are triggering deeper instincts.

The followers of love have no weapon except human nature; it is the only one they need. Valentine’s Day may be infidel in the eyes of the jihadists, but it has many more faithful followers among the peoples of this unlucky region. The terrorists are not intimidated by death, but they are terrorized by love.

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This article was published originally on February 14, 2005 by various outlets. It is still valid today. Since then “al-Hubb revolution” is expanding against the Jihadists.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Walid Phares is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad.

Obama’s Rhetoric Is the Real ‘Catastrophe’

Remember – we were promised an Obamanation.

Obama’s Rhetoric Is the Real ‘Catastrophe’

In 1932, automobile production shriveled by 90%.

By BRADLEY R. SCHILLER

President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.

In his remarks, every gloomy statistic on the economy becomes a harbinger of doom. As he tells it, today’s economy is the worst since the Great Depression. Without his Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he says, the economy will fall back into that abyss and may never recover.

This fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics. It is bad history because our current economic woes don’t come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate.  Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That’s a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost — fewer in number than today, but the labor force was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now.

Job losses in the Great Depression were of an entirely different magnitude. In 1930, the economy shed 4.8% of the labor force. In 1931, 6.5%. And then in 1932, another 7.1%. Jobs were being lost at double or triple the rate of 2008-09 or 1981-82.

This was reflected in unemployment rates. The latest survey pegs U.S. unemployment at 7.6%. That’s more than three percentage points below the 1982 peak (10.8%) and not even a third of the peak in 1932 (25.2%). You simply can’t equate 7.6% unemployment with the Great Depression.

Other economic statistics also dispel any analogy between today’s economic woes and the Great Depression. Real gross domestic product (GDP) rose in 2008, despite a bad fourth quarter. The Congressional Budget Office projects a GDP decline of 2% in 2009. That’s comparable to 1982, when GDP contracted by 1.9%. It is nothing like 1930, when GDP fell by 9%, or 1931, when GDP contracted by another 8%, or 1932, when it fell yet another 13%.

Auto production last year declined by roughly 25%. That looks good compared to 1932, when production shriveled by 90%. The failure of a couple of dozen banks in 2008 just doesn’t compare to over 10,000 bank failures in 1933, or even the 3,000-plus bank (Savings & Loan) failures in 1987-88. Stockholders can take some solace from the fact that the recent stock market debacle doesn’t come close to the 90% devaluation of the early 1930s.

Mr. Obama’s analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they’re also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren’t likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup. Beyond that, fearmongering can trigger a political stampede to embrace a “recovery” package that delivers a lot less than it promises. A more cool-headed assessment of the economy’s woes might produce better policies.

Mr. Schiller, an economics professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, is the author of “The Economy Today” (McGraw-Hill, 2007).

1,073 Pages

1,073 Pages

A stimulus bill that’s anything but transparent.

In his closing remarks on the stimulus bill yesterday, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey called it “the largest change in domestic policy since the 1930s.” We’d say more like the 1960s, which is bad enough, but his point about the bill’s magnitude is right. The 1,073-page monstrosity includes the biggest spending increase since World War II, but more important is the fine print expanding the role of the federal government across the breadth of American business, health care, energy and welfare policy.

Given those stakes, you might think Congress would get more than a few hours to debate it. But, no, yesterday’s roll call votes came less than 24 hours after House-Senate conferees had agreed to their deal. Democrats rushed the bill to the floor before Members could even read it, much less have time to broadcast the details so the public could offer its verdict.

So much for Democratic promises of a new era of transparency. Only this Tuesday the House unanimously approved a resolution promising 48-hour public notice before holding a roll call. Even better, the bill could have been posted on the Internet, as candidate Barack Obama suggested during the campaign. Let voters see what they’re getting for all this money. Not a chance.

This high-handed endgame follows the pattern of this bill from the start, with Republicans all but ignored until Democrats let three GOP Senators nibble around the edges to prevent a filibuster. With their huge majorities, Mr. Obey and Democrats got their epic victory. But far from a new, transparent way of governing, this bill represents the kind of old-fashioned partisan politics that Tom DeLay would have admired.