Benecio Del Toro, Jessica Alba, Ashley Judd !!. During the election it was Matt Damon, Madona, Sean Penn, Pamela Anderson, and a few of the other Hollywood, MTV retreads and some new ones with names like labels on bad packaging, who jumped on the commentary band wagon to knock Bush, John McCain,and Sarah Palin to embrace Barack Hussein Obama, our forty-forth President.

Well apparently they think it must get mileage, because now some of the more colorful but not so odometered out Hollywood and company climbers are coming forward to add their page 11 filler commentary's. Granted Benecio has been around a while but doesn't do that much these days seeing as there are so many other Latino upstarts on the rise and clearly he is still experimenting with drugs kind of like going down the Mickey Rourke road. Ashley Judd looks horrible on the" weight whatever" commercial that she is doing for her own self aggrandizing consciousness.There is that one scene with her and her kids walking down a country road; she lumbers along like Schrek for a merciless tenth of a second. But now outrageously stunning Jessica Alba!!.

I'm sorry folks but I can't help myself. I have been a fan of hers since I began to leave middle age. Her most recognizable roll even though she had acted parts in previous celluloid productions was the star of "Dark Angel" which aired for a short existence in the late 90's.

The show continued for two or three seasons, and the episodes got progressively worse ending up as an extremely lame attempt to be a futuristic never ending story of "The wizard of Oz" with Alba as a very sexy future super shero. I don't recall if there was a writers strike during that period but it was obvious the original script makers had long since moved on and "hire the handicap" had found new ones. Innocent and virgin like untouchable Alba grew more mature during those episodes and feel in love, yet never lost her teenage beauty or appeal. She continued to endure through the plots as well as the writers. Had there been a shift change of her role I am sure myself plus many others would have found another channel of anything to watch other than this Friday night fiction. To her credit Alba is a good actor (actress) and deserves credit for making such a run of the mill character and show remain alive. I understand that her father was managing her during the show and to his credit he appears to have instilled the proverbial "good work ethic" in Jessica which is reflected in her devoted role playing.

Now however Jessica has thrown her hat in the ring attacking the right via O'Reilly. My only concern amongst these other aforementioned"blouters" as the Rant of Fox puts it is really Jessica. Somehow I believe for her it is a matter of first time self expression and maybe not all the press has played it up to be. If as supposed O'Reilly started the fight which doesn't seem so, charming and witty Jessica has a profound duty to defend herself and her political position, if she has a conviction But it is my impression that it all began when someone at a Red Carpet affair caught her off guard and asked her opinion of the other "O".

I believe that Jessica may have been feeling a bit euphoric during the moment perhaps by reason of a pre happy hour, and not being a seasoned hardcore Hollywoodite may have been a bit loose lipped and blurted out her first impression feelings, and yes she was almost right. O'Reilly can be an A--h---. That's his job.
I think because of her condition she merely forgot to insert the word "sometimes".

I would be surprised if Alba was not a Democrat at her youthful age and not so tempered experience.(Please do not think I am insinuating she is naive), but as Winston Churchill once said. "Any man (woman my insert) who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains".

Jessica Alba is not "stupid" if that is in fact what Bill O'Reilly really meant. He stated that she was "misguided", a polite parental criticism, I believe he likes her. I also believe she is just youthful and beautiful and breaking out of her "conch shell of family protectionism". Notice how polite she was when referring to him.Notice in her defense she goes after a journalist and earns the O'Reilly "Pinhead Award" . But again O'Reilly treats her with kid gloves by saying "Pinhead" possibly. You can't help but notice her fighting spirit, in her own defense, even if she did get her geography wrong. What can you expect? After all she has been out of high school for eleven years already. Compared to many in Hollywood of similar age and exposure, . Jessica is in my opinion, bright, energetic, honest, feisty, growing more mature exponentially, fun to watch and will one day be a conservative. So Bill, get a little mileage out of your "ta te ta" with Jess, but don't burn your bridge with her. After all when and if your ratings ever go down, you can pull a David Letterman and invite a little controversy of youthful agitation onto your show when she converts, as if you need anymore controversy

And as for Jessica. If you ever ever want to fulfill your dream of ending up with an older man......Well I know one that is available.I should be so lucky. Not to sound ludicrous but Jessica is a welcome refresher when one looks at what youth today is evolving into with its continuing embrace of ghetto class degenerative roll modeling.

Best wishes Jessica you make a wonderful mom as well.

It's Winter, So That Must Be Gore Talking about 'Warming'

The left's own Punxsutawney Phil brings more hot air to a chilly Washington.

It’s almost Groundhog Day. Americans wait anxiously for Al Gore to pop up out of his hole, mumble “global warming” to the shivering masses and then scurry away again while we suffer through weeks more of winter.



We won’t be disappointed. Gore is scheduled to nuzzle his way into a hearing for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday to warn of a warming planet. Temperatures are near freezing. It may even snow.



Gore’s appearance in the dead of bone-chilling winter is almost five years to the day since he came out of hibernation in New York and called President Bush a "moral coward" for his climate change policies. That day was the coldest the Big Apple had seen in 47 years.



Not much has changed – in the weather or Gore’s message. This time around, it might not be so bone-shatteringly cold, but it certainly has been this winter. ABC’s weather man Sam Champion told viewers this season’s weather “feels like the coldest winter in years.” He added, “and a report from NASA climate scientists says 2008 was the coolest year since 2000.”



Gore’s message is also predictably similar – more like a clip from the movie “Groundhog Day,” than from the annual Punxsutawney Phil event. Al Gore, in the role of a dumpier Bill Murray, seems doomed to repeat his dire warnings of a toasty apocalypse forever. Only real life isn’t as funny as the movie version and more Americans are turning their backs to his complaints.



According to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, that’s precisely what’s happening. Pew conducted a survey of American priorities from Jan. 7-11 and “global warming” finished dead last out of 20 choices. According to the survey, concern for the environment declined and warming dropped for the second year in a row. A recent Rasmussen poll says 59 percent of those surveyed don’t believe mankind is warming the planet.



So ordinary Americans are less receptive to global groundhoggery and more worried about the economy. Not so the new administration. President Barack Obama promises a government that cares less about the economy and is more focused on eco-orthodoxy.



For all of his talk about the stimulus plan and getting the economy back on track, Obama vowed the United States will “roll back the specter of a warming planet” during his inaugural address – no matter what it does to the economy.



Obama wants “an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050,” according to the White House Web site. That plan would cost at least another $56 billion per year added to an already overwhelmed budget.



That doesn’t seem to matter. “Global warming is not a someday problem; it is now,” he said during a speech in 2007 New Hampshire. The new president has abandoned bipartisanship and sided with the eco-left. He picked Carol Browner, a Gore loyalist who worked for the former vice president and served on the board of the Alliance for Climate Protection, founded by Gore.



Browner is already making headlines for her extreme views and as “one of 14 leaders of a socialist group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for ‘global governance’ and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change,” according to The Washington Times.

On Wednesday, we’ll see much the same – hypocritical finger-wagging about living small from a man who owns three homes and flies around the globe more than Superman. Gore is expected to tell Congress “the role he believes the United States should take as a leader on the environment and global warming,” wrote The New York Times.

The last time he appeared on the Hill, Gore tried to burrow into our lives in the form of new regulations, new taxes and even control of our light bulbs. That time we got Gore the “prophet,” as CBS called him.



This time, it’s likely he’ll follow the lead of his mentor James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Hansen recently declared: “We have only four years left to act on climate change – America has to lead.”



What Hansen means and Gore will probably repeat, is America has to pay. Hansen proposes a global carbon tax and eliminating using coal – an energy resource the U.S. has in abundance. It’s impossible to reconcile Hansen’s prescription for more U.S. giving with a major downturn in the economy. But for the liberal elite, such inconsistencies don’t matter.



What does matter is that we embrace larger taxes and more regulation so that we live our lives the way Gore and others think we should.



Perhaps, if we’re lucky, Gore will see his shadow – dooming us to a longer chill, but saving us from more discussion of global warming until spring.



Dan Gainor is The Boone Pickens Fellow and Vice President of the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute. His column appears each week on Foxforum and he can be seen each Thursday from 9-10:30 on Foxnews.com’s “Strategy Room.”

By Dan Gainor
The Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow
Business & Media Institute
1/27/200

Hot Potato Hot Potato Look Out Before you bite !

DeMint: Obama nominee got Constitutional issue wrong in testimony
posted at 3:40 pm on January 27, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

Senator Jim DeMint tangled with Barack Obama’s choice for Deputy Secretary of State yesterday over the revocation of the Mexico City policy, and left the new administration with a bruise on its constitutional competency. When DeMint challenged James Steinberg on Obama’s decision to fund international organizations that provide or advise for abortions, Steinberg said that it was a matter of freedom of speech:

Question from Senator DeMint: For more than 30 years the Hyde amendments, which prohibit federal funding for abortion services, have been supported by Republican and Democrat administrations and Congresses. Unfortunately, while this is the domestic policy of the United States, President Obama has vowed to reverse our foreign policy by repealing the Mexico City policy and use the federal taxpayer dollars to fund abortion services overseas. Do you support President Obama’s efforts to lift the Mexico City restrictions? Do you believe our foreign policy should contradict long held domestic policies?

Answer from James Steinberg: President Obama has supported repeal of the Mexico City policy, as has Secretary Clinton. Longstanding law, authored by Senator Jesse Helms, expressly prohibits the use of U.S. funds of abortion. The Mexico City policy is an unnecessary restriction that, if applied to organizations based in this country, would be an unconstitutional limitation on free speech.

Steinberg engages in some lazy thinking in this response. The Constitution also guarantees the right to gun ownership. Does that mean that a failure to subsidize gun purchases amounts to an infringement on our constitutional rights? Of course not — and that’s an actual, enumerated right, not an emanation from a penumbra.

Besides, as DeMint points out, the Supreme Court has already settled this specific issue on free-speech grounds:

Steinberg’s opinion is in direct contradiction to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has already definitively decided the matter in Rust v. Sullivan in 1991. The court’s majority opinion concluded: “The Government has no constitutional duty to subsidize an activity merely because it is constitutionally protected, and may validly choose to allocate public funds for medical services relating to childbirth but not to abortion.”

In other words, not all that is allowed becomes compulsory for the government to provide. I have a right to free speech, but not the right to have the government confiscate air time on CBS for my use. That’s an important point when discussing abortion and policies of government subsidies to its practitioners. The government can choose to fund it, but they’re not required to do so. Steinberg’s explanation attempts to evade responsibility by the Obama administration for their choice to fund abortions abroad, and we can expect the same kind of evasion when they try to void the Hyde Amendment, either through the Freedom of Choice Act or some intermediary step, in order to fund abortions within the US.

Either Steinberg has some competence issues or honesty issues. There isn’t a third option.

LEARNING THINGS THE HARD WAY

President Barack Obama on Monday ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to review a proposed California rule to set tougher auto tailpipe emission limits, while also ordering the Department of Transportation to develop higher fuel efficiency standards for cars. “Car efficiency standards are sinking the auto industry at the same time they’re getting a government bailout,” said Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Now the president’s policy will make that burden heavier.” (Sounds like a well thought out plan ya got there Mr. President. Who found Jimmy Carters old notes laying around the Oval Office??? )

President Barack Obama’s plan to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will include the trial or release of the 250 detainees still held there, but the Yemen government has said 101 of those prisoners should be sent home. “We want our detainees back,” Mohammed Albasha, spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, D.C., told CNSNews.com, adding that “a plot of land” has already been set aside for a center to rehabilitate the men once they are repatriated. (What he meant was to retrain these guys with the latest weapons they have gotten from Russian and Iran, and once again let them volunteer to give there life for Allah, by using them as a propaganda tool against the west)

A proposed change to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, currently under reauthorization by Congress, could make it possible for people to get health coverage who have only a Social Security number and not a photo ID or proof of legal residency or citizenship, such as a birth certificate, driver’s license or passport. When asked about this proposed revision in the SCHIP enrollment rules, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the legislation “is enforceable and fair, and I don’t think we need to do any better than what we’ve done.” (To do this means that parts of the Homeland Security Act would either be violated or they would have to be recinded or repealed. It will be interesting to see which comes first the Ass or the Cart)

(CNSNews.com) - The Obama White House on Monday backed away from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s support for increased federal funding of contraception in the $825-billion stimulus bill now under consideration by Congress. That was not President Obama’s idea, a White House spokesman told CNSNews.com.(The honeymoon begins to crumble. Let's see who is really in charge)

It Isn’t Easy Being a Saint

Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On January 25, 2009
All of you readers have had this odd experience. Just remember a bit. Someone you know, even know well, whom you thought was reasonably conservative, if perhaps at least a centrist, who would have welcomed a McCain “moderate” campaign, rather than a hard-core conservative candidacy, suddenly, without warning in a conversation, perhaps over the phone, confesses that he was voting for Obama!

And he was not just voting for Obama, but doing so in almost teen-aged hysterical fashion. I’m not talking of a Colin Powell phenomenon, but someone who had no political interests or career concerns, or need for psychological remissions of sins, someone whose entire political philosophy was seemingly antithetical to Obamism.

It made no sense, you thought, given that the apostate’s previous protestations about being conservative, but not a Bush conservative, would have led naturally to an affinity for McCain. After that you had the weird feeling, perhaps as you remember in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, that anyone at anytime could wake up and almost zombie like not seem like he was before, but apparently docile, happy, and eager to join an entirely new centrally-guided paradigm that would prove for us new automatons to be in our best interests.

This occurred to me on at least ten occasions, with long-time friends, some familiar pundits, and a few in government no less. So I came to appreciate the power of the Obama rhetoric. And there was power too in the desire for change after eight years, and an understandable yearning for our first African-American President.

I was writing a TMS column today on Obama’s soaring rhetoric and the impossible expectations that he imprisoned himself in, and began thinking back on the last two years. What explains his near miraculous rise, when pros had almost coronated Hillary and assured us she would trounce Giuliani?

I suppose Barack Obama made the nation giddy when he proclaimed there were no red and blue states, just Americans. He promised to unite us across political, racial, and religious lines. And for the age of cynicism there was something admirable to returning to the age of belief. For some in one fell swoop they were given exemption for all racial sins and now could continue to live as before-but relieved of white guilt. So we overlooked the racialist sermonizing from Michelle Obama, Barack’s occasional promises for reparations in deed not mere word, and the odd things that a Joseph Lowery said on Inauguration Day that were acceptable for a Civil Rights veteran but would have sent a white professor, journalist, or politician into the Don Imus stocks for a week or two.

Of course, during the campaign, some of us—dismissed as old and in the way, hoped and changed away white guys—suspected Obamania in part was a result of mere political rhetoric of the Huey Long or JFK sort. We remembered instead that his pastor Rev. Wright’s venom was not evidence of indiscretion but proof of clear serial hatred. We read carefully his platform and saw at best Carterism and at worse some half-baked European socialism that we now see imploding in Greece, Italy, or Spain.

Obama’s career in Chicago politics was all too familiar in such a landscape—friends acquired like convicted felon Tony Rezko and rival election candidates dropping out through law suits, or mysteriously being forced off the ballot due to leaks about their divorces. Only the genius of David Mamet could write its Chicago script.

And for all the talk of bipartisanship, candidate Obama had the most partisan record in the US Senate, and serially trashed right-wingers like Sean Hannety (and by extension his audience of 10 million) during the campaign. In fairness, I think he proved the nastier gutter fight than ambivalent Hamlet-like John McCain, who seemed at times he wished to lose nobly than sandbag the nation’s historic chance for a gifted African-American healer.

But then Obama was elected and as President promised, as most Presidents do, to bring us together. He met with conservative pundits, reappointed Bush’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and brought in scores of Clinton centrists to manage his administration. Bravo to all that.

Yet the old Obama is starting to appear as most of you astute readers knew he would. Not a word from him about what can, without hyperbole, be called a dishonest Charlie Rangel, a reprehensible Chris Dodd, and the inexplicable Barney Frank who goes barking from one mortgage/banking ethical lapse to another, confident that no Democrat will dare take him on (he enjoys the exemption accorded to the proverbial raving but glib street-corner prophet who accosts you, flips you off on the street, and shouts in your ear and in public all the way to the car before trying to mount the hood and grab the windshield wipers).

Obama loftily talked about a new ethics law outlawing lobbyists, even as he tried to get an exemption for Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn. The problems that surrounded Treasury-Secretary designate Timothy Geithner, or the “troubles” with Attorney General Eric Holder, and Gov. Bill Richardson border on old-style greed, careerism and conflict of interest—in other words, the normal sort of controversies that a politician routinely overcomes if he’s not a saint.

For all the talk of bipartisanship, Obama like Lord Xerxes on his throne nevertheless has got down and dirty and trashed Rush Limbaugh (and by extension his 20 million listeners) and boasted to the Republican opposition. “I won. I am the President”—in braggadocio that exceeded the “decider” George Bush’s. I suspect if the Blago tapes are ever released in their entirety Rahm Emanuel will sound more like Nixon to Halderman than earnestly discussing the rising oceans with St. Obama.

The problem with all this is not that Obama’s trying to wheel and deal and talk out of both sides of his mouth like Bill Clinton and others, but, far worse, is staring to appear ridiculous like Jimmy Carter, divinely talking down to us as mere mortals as he acts like a mere mortal.

So what for others might be written off as the usual hypocrisy and small-mildness—No More Lobbyists in Government—Just One More in Mine! / I’m Zeus on Olympos above mortal cares—but Sean and Rush really piss me off and I want to get even with both! /I’m a radical egalitarian, but please appoint Caroline Kennedy who endorsed me but otherwise seems dyslexic—proves toxic even if it comes out as hexameter verse from St. Obama. The wages of prophethood are heavy, and those who walk on water, and proclaim Vero Possumus! can endure no mortal sin. Will the media that was made to look foolish with tingling legs and tearing cheeks get fooled twice, as Obama the Saint and Obama the Chicago Politician begin to bifurcate?

You readers remember that sometime around mid 2007, Obama made a Faustian bargain. Without much national name, without a legislative record in Illinois or the US Senate, but with quite a lot of Chicago baggage, Obama gambled on the hope and change new persona (soon to be followed with the soaring FDR/MLK/JFK prose, Latinate seal, Greek architraves, Victory Column /Sermon on the Mount speeches, Father Abraham’s arrival to DC by slow-moving rail car (after flying back to Illinois by jet)). For much of the campaign, he either hoped that Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, Father Pfleger and the other assorted Dailey/Blago baggage would not surface, or, if it did, he could hope and change them all away. And he did—brilliantly . And now they are history and those who dredge them up little more cranky sore-losing has-beens.

But as President, no matter how historic a candidacy (more astounding than any in American history), no matter how calm in the face of continuous pressure, no matter how brilliant in prepared and set oratory, one can’t get away with that disconnect forever. There is a reason why a plodding Ike and blunt Harry Truman were greater Presidents than even JFK—and why in 2-3 years even George Bush will begin to seem in retropect honest, sober, and straight-talking rather than word-mangling.

As a novice politician without an Arkansas, or Plains, or Crawford mafia, even, or rather especially, Obama, had to import the hardest of the hard core Clintonistas—Emanuel, Podesta, Panetta, Hillary herself—and he had to pay off some overdue IOU’s to the left with symbolic gestures and appointments (more rhetoric and symbolism and task forces to come on Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, Gay Marriage, Cap and Trade, Kyoto redux, etc.).

Again, the backtracking on the issues, the tough centrist appointments, and the seeming continuance of a Bush (III?) foreign policy, once demonized now quietly embraced, are fine for Bill Clinton, Al Gore or Harry Reid, but in aggregate ever so insidiously they become finally problematic for the redeemer. As stated, even the Left-wing media won’t like looking foolish twice. And even the smug Europeans will turn on those who prod them to be reasonable and honest after serenading them with prose set to Mozart. Yes, he can halt the messiah act and we will forgive him for not being a messiah—or continue it in lieu of honest governance and I assure you in time even Newsweek and NPR will turn on him, in fear that they are not merely gullible, but looking ridiculous.

So even now, Obama need not play any longer the hypocrite and can recover if he mans up to the past hypnosis of the campaign, cools the Lincoln talk, reads about Nemesis, and admits that he is a mere mortal, an inexperienced one at that, matches his deeds with honest words, and seeks to govern in human rather than divine fashion from on high. That way a William Lynn or Timothy Geithner are just political landmines that one steps over rather than proof that the Wizard turns out to be a little man with levers and dials behind the curtain.

Americans can and will forgive almost anything other than hypocrisy.

OOPS Did I say that?? Asked BHO

CAMPBELL BROWN, HOST: But, first, tonight, "Cutting Through The Bull."
Just a couple of nights ago, we heaped praise on the new president for announcing what he called a new era of openness, where in his administration transparency would rule the day and the lobbyists that he was so critical of during the campaign, well, he told us they will now face even tougher new restrictions.
Here is what he said.

BARACK OBAMA,PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The executive order on ethics I will sign shortly represents a clean break from business as usual. As of today, lobbyists will be subject to stricter limits than under any -- under any other administration in history.
If you are a lobbyist entering my administration, you will not be able to work on matters you lobbied on, or in the agencies you lobbied during the previous two years. When you leave government, you will not be able to lobby my administration for as long as I am president.

BROWN: Now, that's what he said two days ago.
But, as we first told you last night -- and, sadly, we are learning more about this today -- President Obama already wants an exception to his own rule. You see, what happened is, there is this former lobbyist for a big defense contractor called Raytheon. His name is William Lynn. And President Obama wants him to be deputy defense secretary.
So, the Obama administration now wants a waiver to its own rule, which basically means it is saying, we will mostly put tough new restrictions on lobbyists, except when we won't.
Really? Is this how it's going to be? Please, please don't make us all any more cynical than we already are, Mr. President. If you have no intention of abiding by your new rules, then don't make new rules. That would be actual transparency.
Nicely done, Campbell. Keep it up.

Is This Good News of Bad News For Obama's Security Team?

Western powers believe that Iran is running short of the raw material required to manufacture nuclear weapons, triggering an international race to prevent it from importing more, The Times has learnt.
Diplomatic sources believe that Iran’s stockpile of yellow cake uranium, produced from uranium ore, is close to running out and could be exhausted within months. Countries including Britain, the US, France and Germany have started intensive diplomatic efforts to dissuade major uranium producers from selling to Iran.
Before Christmas, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office sent out a confidential request for its diplomats in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Brazil, all major uranium producers, to lobby governments not to sell uranium products, specifically yellow cake, to Iran.
Iran’s stock of yellow cake, acquired from South Africa in the 1970s under the Shah’s original civil nuclear power programme, has almost run out. Iran is developing its own uranium mines, but does not have enough ore to support a sustained nuclear programme.
It was shortly before Christmas that diplomats at Britain’s sleek new embassy on Kosmonavtov Street in the Kazakh capital of Astana received a confidential and urgent request. Iran, officials back in Whitehall advised, was believed to be close to running out of its stockpiles of yellow cake — a powdered form of uranium ore.
There were concerns that Tehran could be seeking fresh supplies to support its nuclear programme at a critical juncture — just months before intelligence experts expected it to have accumulated enough enriched material for a bomb. British officials were to urge Kazakhstan, one of the world’s biggest producers, to ignore any possible approaches to obtain imports.
The request, news of which emerged after an international investigation by The Times, was part of a drive by six countries — Britain, the US, France, Germany, Australia and Canada — to choke off supplies of uranium to Iran. It is a move that, while unlikely to cripple any effort to develop a bomb, would blunt its ambitions and help to contain the threat, authoritative sources said.
Kazakhstan, with 15 per cent of the world’s deposits, is an increasingly important player in the global uranium trade and has set a target this year to become the world’s largest producer.
Uzbekistan, where British officials are involved in a similar lobbying exercise, also has large deposits and was a leading supplier for weapons-grade material during Soviet times.
While there is no direct evidence that Iran has actively sought to buy uranium from either country, Western intelligence sources view them as one of a number of potential weak spots in the supply chain.
Others include the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where uranium for the bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 was mined and where there have been persistent rumours of illegal exports to countries including Iran. Getting to the truth about such claims is notoriously difficult. Reports by British Intelligence of an attempt by Saddam Hussein to acquire substantial quantities of yellow cake from Niger in West Africa for a clandestine nuclear bomb project turned out to be fabricated. That did not stop President Bush referring to them, in March 2003, as part of the justification for the invasion of Iraq.
But the very real international effort to choke off supplies of yellow cake to Iran, which also included British lobbying of Brazil, reflect mounting concern that 2009 is likely to be a pivotal year for Iran’s nuclear programme.
It also vividly illustrates the urgency surrounding the biggest foreign policy challenge facing President Obama. The journey from innocent uranium ore to weapons-grade nuclear fuel is complex and requires sophisticated technology, but the Iranians are acquiring the expertise, which is why Western countries, and Israel, are so concerned at the prospect of having to confront a nuclear-armed Iran.
To reach weapons-grade uranium-235, Iran would have to produce a highly enriched fuel, and that requires thousands of centrifuges. It is estimated that 200kg of yellow cake could produce 1kg of weapons-grade (94 per cent enriched) uranium. About 20kg of highly enriched uranium are required for one bomb.
Iran, which has always claimed that its nuclear programme is peaceful, acquired several thousand tonnes of yellow cake from South Africa during the mid-1970s shortly after the Shah initiated the country’s original push for civil nuclear power. Tehran also has two small uranium mines but they are costly to run, yield only small quantities of ore and are suffering from problems with purity.
Last May, a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suggested that around 70 per cent of Iran’s available yellow cake had been converted to uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas at a conversion plant in the city of Esfahan.
David Albright, founder of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said that Iran now had enough of this gasified uranium, stored in canisters weighing 10-14 tonnes each, to produce as many as 35 bombs, but it may run out of yellow cake to keep feeding the plant by the end of the year.
Beside the gas conversion facility, Iran also needs yellow cake to convert into pellets for fuel rods to run its Arak heavy water reactor. It also apparently wants large quantities of yellow cake to turn into low-enriched uranium for its new Russian-built reactor at Bushehr, in case Moscow reneges on a deal to supply nuclear fuel.
However, Tehran’s relative shortage of uranium exposes puzzling questions about its claims to be pursuing a purely peaceful civil nuclear energy programme. It would need far larger quantities of yellow cake than it can produce from its own small mines to have sufficient fuel for a civil nuclear power programme.
“You need 200 tonnes per year just for one 1,000 megawatt power station,” an IAEA source said. Iran has said that it wants to build 20 reactors, but the agency believes that the Iranians managed to process only 21 tonnes of uranium at a production centre at Bandar Abbas in southern Iran in one year, and plan to handle 50 tonnes a year from a new facility at Ardakan in the centre of the country, which is due to open later this year.
Moreover, Russia has an agreement with Iran to supply the prefabricated fuel that it needs for a civil nuclear power station it is building at Bushehr. The international community also offered in 2006 to supply the fuel rods and assemblies needed for a civil nuclear programme. Yet Iran insists on pursuing the development of its own facilities to mine and process uranium on its own — at vastly higher cost than it would pay for the fuel on the international market.
Any move by the Iranians to buy stocks of uranium from other countries could be interpreted two ways: either as an investment for what they claim is a genuine civil nuclear power programme or as an insurance policy for a future successful weapons project.
Iran is subject to a comprehensive safeguards agreement under which IAEA inspectors are meant to make checks to ensure that Tehran is not trying to divert nuclear material for a civil power programme to a military one. The agreement, however, covers only named installations that do not include the mines, and there remain a series of unanswered questions which have raised serious concerns about Iran’s motives. UN Security Council Resolution 1737 prohibits countries from supplying any items “which could contribute to Iran’s enrichment-related . . . activities”. Few, if any, of the big producers would want to take the risk of doing business with Iran.
However, the frantic efforts to make sure that producing countries hold the line highlight the growing challenge of containing the uranium trade at a time when it is expanding briskly. Governments around the world are looking to nuclear energy as an answer to concerns about energy.
Mining operations are already carried out in nearly 20 countries including Canada, Australia, Russia Namibia, Ukraine, China and Pakistan and in the past year alone new mines have been proposed in a string of countries from Zambia to Uruguay and Jordan to Sudan.
Monitoring this trade is a challenge in itself but there are also growing fears over the danger of nuclear smuggling. The US sent experts last year to help Georgia to install radiation detection equipment at border points when the work was interrupted by the war over South Ossetia. The project was given added urgency by a sting operation in Georgia in 2006, when a Russian man was arrested trying to sell 100g of highly enriched uranium. He claimed to have access to another 4kg. Georgia and the US signed an agreement in 2007 to combat nuclear smuggling. Neighbouring Armenia, which has a land border with Iran, signed a similar agreement with the US last year. But it is the possibility that uranium could be smuggled out of Africa, specifically Congo (DRC), that is keeping Western officials awake at night.
In 2005, Iran tried to smuggle some Uranium 238 by ship from Congo to Bandar Abbas, but this was foiled by Tanzanian customs officials.
Peter Rickwood, an IAEA official, said: “Nobody is quite sure how much of that stuff is being exported. There have been persistent rumours about uranium coming out of the DRC and going to North Korea or Iran. Yes, we are concerned about that.”
Additional reporting by James Bone in New York, James Hider in Jerusalem and Jonathan Clayton in Johannesburg

Mankind is Doomed

One last chance to save mankind
23 January 2009 by Gaia Vince
James Lovelock thinks humanity has only one remaining option to halt climate change and save ourselves (Image: Eamonn McCabe / Camera Press)
With his 90th birthday in July, a trip into space scheduled for later in the year and a new book out next month, 2009 promises to be an exciting time for James Lovelock. But the originator of the Gaia theory, which describes Earth as a self-regulating planet, has a stark view of the future of humanity. He tells Gaia Vince we have one last chance to save ourselves - and it has nothing to do with nuclear power
Your work on atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons led eventually to a global CFC ban that saved us from ozone-layer depletion. Do we have time to do a similar thing with carbon emissions to save ourselves from climate change?
Not a hope in hell. Most of the "green" stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It's not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it'll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It's absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt - that's an awful lot of countryside.
What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?
That is a waste of time. It's a crazy idea - and dangerous. It would take so long and use so much energy that it will not be done.
Do you still advocate nuclear power as a solution to climate change?
It is a way for the UK to solve its energy problems, but it is not a global cure for climate change. It is too late for emissions reduction measures.
So are we doomed?
There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast.
Would it make enough of a difference?
Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO2 is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won't do it.
Do you think we will survive?
I'm an optimistic pessimist. I think it's wrong to assume we'll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It's happening again.
I don't think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing's been done except endless talk and meetings.
I don't think we can react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up
It's a depressing outlook.
Not necessarily. I don't think 9 billion is better than 1 billion. I see humans as rather like the first photosynthesisers, which when they first appeared on the planet caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen - a nasty, poisonous gas. It took a long time, but it turned out in the end to be of enormous benefit. I look on humans in much the same light. For the first time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite a way, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary welfare.
How much biodiversity will be left after this climatic apocalypse?
We have the example of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event 55 million years ago. About the same amount of CO2 was put into the atmosphere as we are putting in and temperatures rocketed by about 5 °C over about 20,000 years. The world became largely desert. The polar regions were tropical and most life on the planet had the time to move north and survive. When the planet cooled they moved back again. So there doesn't have to be a massive extinction. It's already moving: if you live in the countryside as I do you can see the changes, even in the UK.
If you were younger, would you be fearful?
No, I have been through this kind of emotional thing before. It reminds me of when I was 19 and the second world war broke out. We were very frightened but almost everyone was so much happier. We're much better equipped to deal with that kind of thing than long periods of peace. It's not all bad when things get rough. I'll be 90 in July, I'm a lot closer to death than you, but I'm not worried. I'm looking forward to being 100.
Are you looking forward to your trip into space this year?
Very much. I've got my camera ready!
Do you have to do any special training?
I have to go in the centrifuge to see if I can stand the g-forces. I don't anticipate a problem because I spent a lot of my scientific life on ships out on rough oceans and I have never been even slightly seasick so I don't think I'm likely to be space sick. They gave me an expensive thorium-201 heart test and then put me on a bicycle. My heart was performing like an average 20 year old, they said.
I bet your wife is nervous.
No, she's cheering me on. And it's not because I'm heavily insured, because I'm not.
Profile
James Lovelock is a British chemist, inventor and environmentalist. He is best known for formulating the controversial Gaia hypothesis in the 1970s, which states that organisms interact with and regulate Earth's surface and atmosphere. Later this year he will travel to space as Richard Branson's guest aboard Virgin's Galactic Space ship two. His latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, is published by Basic Books in February.

Shocking Secrets of the Rich Revealed!!

Hidden Taxes Exposed!
Legal Counsel and Resident Offshore Expert Bob Bauman recently pointed out some of the hidden costs imposed by the IRS, as learned from personal experience...
"A year or so ago, I got one of those computer-generated IRS notices claiming that during the previous year I had missed paying one of my monthly self-employment tax payments," Bob explained.
"While I didn't pay on the same date each month, I had made two payments during one month after I was hospitalized for surgery for several weeks, (for which the IRS charged a late fee, plus interest). It took some time, but I got together my paperwork that showed clearly, with canceled checks, that I indeed had made 12 payments."
"For weeks my accountant fought with the local IRS agent, but to no avail."
"This lady IRS agent/dictator insisted one payment was missing, that if I did not pay what she said I owed, (plus interest and penalty), she would have my business and personal bank accounts seized by the IRS. My accountant told me it would take months, if not years to appeal, so I better pay up -- which I did -- with anger and a feeling of being victimized by an agent of Big Brother government who didn't give a damn about the truth."
Bob went on to list some of the shocking known and unknown facts about income taxes in the US:
* In 1999 individuals and businesses spent 4.3 billion hours complying with the income tax; estimated compliance costs of $125 billion.
* In 1999, 6.3 million taxpayers with incomes in the top 5% paid over 55% of all income taxes.
* The top 1%, those earning $293,415 and up, paid 1/3 of all taxes while their share of the national income was 19%.
* The richest pay an average top rate of 38.6%. Most low earning taxpayers pay an average top rate of 15% and millions pay no taxes at all.
* Taxpayers in the bottom 50% paid only 4% of income taxes in 1999. These 63 million taxpayers average income less than $26,415 a year.
* By 2006, taxpayers earning over $100,000 a year will pay almost 59% of all income taxes.
* In 2000 individual income taxes consumed 10.2% of the U.S. GDP.

Obama Following Bush Pakistan Policy

Jan 23 09:35 AM US/Eastern
By MUNIR AHMAD
Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Missiles fired from a suspected U.S. spy plane killed seven people Friday on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, a lawless region where al-Qaida militants are known to hide out, officials said.
The strike was the first on Pakistani territory since the inauguration of President Barrack Obama.

Pakistani leaders had expressed hope Obama would halt the attacks, more than 30 of which have been launched since the middle of last year, reportedly killing several senior militants.

The pro-U.S. government routinely protests them as a violation of the country's sovereignty, but most observers speculate it has an unwritten agreement allowing them to take place.

One drone fired three missiles into the village of Zharki in North Waziristan, hitting two buildings, the intelligence officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

At least seven people were killed, but there identities were not immediately known.

The United States rarely acknowledges firing the missiles, which are mostly fired from drones believed launched from neighboring Afghanistan.

Pakistan's air force is not known to possess drones. NATO officers in Afghanistan say they respect Pakistani sovereignty.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Editorial Comment: President Obama's new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered no comment.

Worst. President. Ever... Markets Slide After Obama's Dirge ..

Update: Worst Inaugural Performance Since 1963
Nice job, Barack.
The president's socialist rant sunk the stock market today:
At this rate we'll be into 7,000 point territory by closing.
Super.
It's been nothing but a disaster since he took over.

UPDATE: Yep. Market drops below 8,000.
Worst. Prez. Ever.

UPDATE 2: Worst stock market performance since 1963:
US stocks were on course on Tuesday for their worst inauguration day performance since the assassination of John F Kennedy, led by more heavy losses among banks.
Actually it was the worst inaugural day since 1933.

WELL REGRETFULLY ANOTHER PREDICTION COMES TRUE RIGHT ON SCHEDULE. ACTUALLY THIS IS SCARY

ANTI-TERROR bosses last night hailed their latest ally in the war on terror — the BLACK DEATH.

At least 40 al-Qaeda fanatics died horribly after being struck down with the disease that devastated Europe in the Middle Ages.
Epidemic ... in Britain in 1665

The killer bug, also known as the plague, swept through insurgents training at a forest camp in Algeria, North Africa. It came to light when security forces found a body by a roadside.
The victim was a terrorist in AQLIM (al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb), the largest and most powerful al-Qaeda group outside the Middle East.
It trains Muslim fighters to kill British and US troops.
Now al-Qaeda chiefs fear the plague has been passed to other terror cells — or Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
One security source said: “This is the deadliest weapon yet in the war against terror. Most of the terrorists do not have the basic medical supplies needed to treat the disease.
“It spreads quickly and kills within hours. This will be really worrying al-Qaeda.”
Black Death comes in various forms.
Bubonic Plague is spread by bites from infected rat fleas. Symptoms include boils in the groin, neck and armpits. In Pneumonic Plague, airborn bacteria spread like flu.
It can be in the body for more than a week — highly contagious but not revealing tell-tale symptoms.

Deadly ... the plague bacteria causes horrific symptoms

The al-Qaeda epidemic began in the cave hideouts of AQLIM in Tizi Ouzou province, 150km east of the capital Algiers. The group, led by wanted terror boss Abdelmalek Droudkal, was forced to turn its shelters in the Yakouren forest into mass graves and flee. The extremists supporting madman Osama bin Laden went to Bejaia and Jijel provinces — hoping the plague did not go with them.
A source said: “The emirs (leaders) fear surviving terrorists will surrender to escape a horrible death.”
AQLIM boss Droudkal claims to command around 1,000 insurgents. Training camps are also based in Morocco, Tunisia and Nigeria.

AQLIM bombed the UN headquarters in Algiers in 2007, killing 41. Attacks across Algeria last year killed at least 70 people.
In an interview last July, Droudkal boasted his cell was in constant contact with other al-Qaeda “brothers”.

Under the Geneva Convention and some other international agreements the U.S. has agreed to not initiate the use of biological warfare. Soooo of course this could not possibly be the work of our very own spooks, right!

How to Reform Entitlement Spending

We've got 78 million baby boomers who are going to be retiring over the next couple of decades. That means more retirees, fewer workers to support those retirees. It is common sense that we are going to have to do something about it. That is not a Republican talking point. And if we don't deal with it now, it will get harder to deal with later.... [W]e are still going to have an actuarial gap that has to be dealt with. It is not going to vanish and if we have a moral responsibility to the next generation to make sure that Social Security is there, the most successful program to lift seniors out of poverty that we've ever devised, then we need to start acting now and having a serious conversation about it.

--Barack Obama, Democratic presidential debate, October 30, 2007[1]

Well, Tom, we're going to have to take on entitlements, and I think we've got to do it quickly. We're going to have a lot of work to do, so I can't guarantee that we're going to do it in the next two years, but I'd like to do it in my first term as president.

--Barack Obama, Townhall Presidential Candidates Debate, October 7, 2008[2]

President-elect Obama, you based much of your presidential campaign on the promise of a better future for all Americans. A better future must be one in which Americans have the financial freedom to provide for themselves and their families. Yet this future is currently endangered by a Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid system that is set to drown future generations in taxes and debt. Reforming these programs will be one of the greatest economic chal­lenges of the 21st century.

In the coming decades, the cost of these three programs will leap from 8.4 percent to 18.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)--an increase of 10.2 percent. Without reform, this increased cost would require either raising
taxes by the current equiva­lent of $12,072 per household
or eliminating every other government program. Funding all of the prom­ised benefits with income taxes would require rais­ing the 35 percent income tax bracket to at least 77 percent and raising the 25 percent tax bracket to at least
55 percent.[3]

You know that the current system is unsustainable. With the cost of reform growing $1 trillion more expensive annually, there is no time for delay. Furthermore, many believe that Americans ages 55 and over should be exempt from any reforms. One-third of all baby boomers have already crossed that threshold, and at 4 million per year, all of them will have crossed it by 2019.

Entitlement reform is more than just an economic issue. Americans need to decide whether they want a future in which older Americans have an automatic claim on one-fifth of the future income of their grandchildren, who will be raising their own chil­dren and paying off their home mortgages. Under the current system, retirees will spend one-third of their adult lives in taxpayer-funded retirement while national security, education, health research, and antipoverty programs fight for the few remain­ing tax dollars and low taxes are threatened. Modernizing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid can provide a healthy retirement for those in need while also protecting future taxpayers.

The following guidelines can help you fulfill your pledge of entitlement reform.

Disclose the government's long-term obligations. Though Social Security and Medicare currently comprise about one-third of the entire federal budget, Congress is not required to pass an annual budget for either program. Rather, both operate on autopilot under formulas contained in their governing laws. Moreover, the tendency of politicians to make promises to expand or enact new benefits is greatly enhanced by the lack of any measure of long-term costs of these programs in the budget. Two changes should be madein the budget process to ensure better stewardship for the nation's long-term solvency.[4]
You should ensure that the long-term costs of entitlement programs are built into the budget process and considered along with other priorities during the annual budget process so that spending onMedicare would be considered in the same context as defense, education, or tax policy.
Any changesin entitlement programs should also be measured over the long term.
Bringing long-term costs into the legislative debate will mean that, unlike today, Congress must consider whether children and grandchildren can really afford to pay for new benefits for their parents and grandparents.

Put Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on long-term budgets. Discretionary programs are forced to justify themselves annually though the budget process. By contrast, entitlement programs--includ­ing Social Security, Medicare, Medic­aid, most antipoverty programs, farm subsidies, and refundable tax cred­its--
are effectively on autopilot. Their budgets grow auto­matically each year without going through the regular budget process, being examined, or being forced to justify--or even constrain--their growth. Smaller entitlement programs are ex­amined only once or twice per decade when they are reauthorized. Large enti­tle­ment programs are not required to be reauthorized or re-examined and are thus not subject to budgetary trade-offs. This is not a formula for sound budgeting.

You should call on Congress to create a framework for a budget that would be evaluated periodically to ensure that entitlement programs are sustainable over the long term. This could be done by creating a long-term budget window--for example, 30 years. All spending on entitlements would have to be reviewed and reauthorized every five years. This is similar to how other countries manage their long-term commitments. Congress should include "triggers" that would make automatic adjustments should spending grow above budgeted levels. One way to keep spending within budgeted levels would be to raise premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses for Medicare Part B and Part D automatically for middle- and upper-income retirees.[5]


Create a commission to submit recommendations to Congress for a vote. A promising bipartisan approach to entitlement reform already exists. The SAFE Commission Act, authored in the House by Representatives Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Jim Cooper (D-TN), would create a bipartisan commission intended to address the "unsustainable imbalance" between federal commitments and revenues while increasing national savings and making the budget process give greater emphasis to long-term fiscal issues. While the commission could consider a range of approaches, the bill places emphasis on two:
Reforms that would limit the growth of entitlements while strengthening the safety net and
Tax reforms that would make the tax system more economically efficient and improve economic growth.
The commission would hold public hearings around the country to discuss the long-term fiscal problem, and its recommendations would receive "fast-track" consideration by Congress.[6]

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) and ranking Republican Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) have also introduced commission legislation. Such an approach can break the political logjam by requiring that Congress craft entitlement reform proposals and vote on them as well.

Create incentives for savings. Social Security and Medicare were intended originally to supplement the savings that Americans build up over their lifetimes. However, too many retirees have not saved adequately and are wholly dependent on Social Security and Medicare to fund their entire retirement.

You have spoken positively of "automatic IRAs" for American employees not covered by employer-sponsored retirement plans. Such employees could direct payroll deposits to a low-cost, diversified individual retirement account that would continue automatically--an opportunity now limited mostly to 401(k)-eligible workers. To maximize participation, employers would be encouraged to use automatic enrollment, whereby employees automatically participate at a statutorily specified rate of contribution unless they opt out.[7]

Auto-IRAs are a terrific way to increase savings and thus empower Americans to build their own retirement savings. Lowering tax rates on savings would also help Americans to build wealth.


Do not increase taxes. During the presidential campaign, you floated the idea of reforming Social Security by assessing a payroll tax of 2 to 4 percentage points on those who earn over $250,000 annually. President Bill Clinton rejected this idea in the 1990s, and you should as well. In addition to closing only a small percentage of the long-term Social Security shortfall, this policy would reduce economic growth by reducing incentives to work, save, and invest.

America cannot tax its way out of this entitlement challenge. The problem is caused by surging spending levels, not declining revenues--in fact, taxes as a percentage of the economy are already projected to rise to record levels over the next few decades.[8]

Furthermore, it is not clear why drowning future generations in higher taxes is any better than the status-quo approach of drowning them in debt. Any new tax revenues would go into the general pot of revenues, which Congress would likely allocate to business-as-usual government spending rather than shoring up entitlement programs. Better to focus on the real problem of skyrocketing entitlement costs.


Reform Social Security. Social Security spending is
pro­jected to increase from its current 4.3 percent of GDP to 6.1 percent by 2050--an increase of 1.8 percent. Today, a spending increase of 1.8 percent of GDP would equal $246 billion, or $2,130 per household. Of this spending hike, 55 percent would result from demographic changes, and 45 percent would result from higher benefit levels.[9]

Your options for pre­serving Social Security's solvency are relatively straightforward. Rather than dumping large debt or tax increases on the next generation, several feasible options exist to restrain program costs. One option is to raise the retirement age (currently set to rise to 67 by 2030) by two months each year until it reaches 70, which would allow future seniors an average retirement of 17 years.

A second option would income-adjust benefits to target needy seniors more effectively. You can accomplish this through "progressive indexing," which would index initial benefit levels for middle-income and upper-income families partially to price inflation rather than wage growth, eliminating much of the increased Social Security costs driven by higher ben­efits. This would also allow for more benefit growth among lower-income retirees.

Finally, many economists believe that the most used con­sumer price index overstates inflation. Aligning Social Security's inflation adjustment with a more accurate price index would save money while still providing inflation protection.

In the long run, a more generationally equitable system would add a personal savings element to Social Security. While personal accounts by themselves do not reduce the taxpayer liabilities to current seniors, the long-term investment growth of a balanced portfolio would enable workers to do much better than they can under today's system. In addition, workers would be able to own their accounts, which could be passed on to their families in the event of their untimely death.

Millions of Americans with 401(k) plans and IRAs already understand how long-term investments can grow over several decades. Even with the recent market carnage, once investments return to their historical earnings level, workers will be able to recoup their losses in less than two years and again build their investments. Further, new savings instruments greatly reduce the risk that older savers will lose money close to their retirement.


Reform Medicare. Medicare costs are projected to more than triple from today's 2.7 percent of GDP to 9.4 percent by 2050. In current terms, a cost increase of 6.7 percent of GDP would equal $916 billion, or $7,930 per household annually[10]

Medicare reform is very complex. While Social Security transfers income from one group to another and therefore can be fixed with formula changes, fixing Medicare is more difficult because it is a major part of the health care economy. Thus far, reforms have cen­tered on reducing payment rates to doctors and hospitals, but payment rates are already well below market prices. This amounts to rationing health care, which may reduce costs but will not advance better care or encourage more rational decisions.

Some reforms, which could be made quickly, would significantly rein in Medicare costs. One new approach would be to reduce the massive Part B and Part D subsidies for upper-income families. These programs are not social insurance: Enrollees did not earn their benefits with payroll taxes. Rather, they are large subsidies from taxpayers. Part B recently began modest income-relating. President George W. Bush has proposed larger means-testing of Parts B and D.

Your long-term reforms should bring more choice and competition to health care, such as moving Medicare from a defined-benefit system to a defined-contribution system. The Federal Employees Health Benefits Pro­gram (FEHBP) has held down costs by creating a voucher-type system for fed­eral employees to purchase coverage from competing health plans that offer differing coverage and costs.[11] By creating more choice and competi­tion, the FEHBP has held down cost increases and may serve as a model for Medicare reform.


Reform Medicaid. Federal Medicaid spending is pro­jected to jump from 1.4 percent of GDP to 3.1 per­cent by 2050. Today, a 1.7 percent of GDP spending hike would equal $232 billion, or $2,012 per household. Most of this spending growth will come from senior citizens, whose long-term care costs are not covered by Medicare.

Two other factors will also drive up Medicaid costs: inflation of health care costs and the funding structure, which encourages states to overspend on Medicaid. Because Washington reimburses states for 57 percent of all costs, every dollar that a state spends on Medicaid guarantees an additional $1.33 grant from Washington. Consequently, states have a stronger incentive to allocate their budgets to expand Medicaid benefits and eligibility levels rather than to provide tax relief or education, regardless of the state's actual needs.

Converting Medicaid into a block grant to states would eliminate state incentives to overspend on Medicaid. Additionally, giving states more flexibility to craft different Medic­aid packages for different individuals based on their unique personal circumstances could save money while improving service delivery.[12] State incentives to help individuals purchase long-term care insur­ance could also substantially reduce Medicaid's bur­den insofar as these expenses are concerned.
Conclusion

You have asserted a "moral responsibility" to reform entitlements. Unless Social Secu­rity, Medicare, and Medicaid are reformed, America faces a future of soaring taxes and government spending that will cause poor economic performance. Americans will pay onerous taxes, and future generations will have lower living standards than Americans enjoy today.

Delay only makes the necessary reforms more painful. It is vitally important to take up this challenge and make entitlement reform a top priority.

___________________________

Brian M. Riedl is Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in, and Alison Acosta Fraser is Director of, the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Transcript, "The Democratic Debate on MSNBC," October
30, 2007, at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/poli
tics/30debate-transcript.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print (January 12, 2009).

[2] Transcript, "MSNBC ‘Townhall Presidential Candidates Debate,'" at http://www.votesmart.org/speech_detail.php?
sc_id=416929&keyword=&phrase=&contain= (January 12, 2009).

[3] Brian M. Riedl, "A Guide to Fixing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2114, March 11, 2008, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/bg2114.cfm.

[4] This section is largely excerpted from Robert E. Moffit and Alison Acosta Fraser, "Congress Must Pull the Trigger to Contain Medicare Spending," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 1796, February 4, 2008, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm1796.cfm.

[5] This section is largely excerpted from Moffit and Fraser, "Congress Must Pull the Trigger to Contain Medicare Spending."

[6] This section is excerpted from Stuart M. Butler, "The Wolf SAFE Commission Act: A Chance to Get the Budget Back on Track," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 1162, July 14, 2006,
at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm1162.cfm.

[7] See J. Mark Iwry and David C. John, "Pursuing Universal Retirement Security Through Automatic IRAs," Heritage Foundation White Paper No. 02122006, February 12, 2008, at http://www.heritage.org/Research
/SocialSecurity/wp20060212.cfm.

[8] Calculated using Congressional Budget Office, "The Long-Term Budget Outlook," December 2007, pp. 44-46, at www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8877/12-13-LTBO.pdf (January 12, 2009).

[9] For additional information on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid reform, see Riedl, "A Guide to Fixing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid."

[10] Even this projection assumes that per capita Medicare costs will grow only about 1 percentage point faster than GDP, even though Medicare costs have grown an annual average of 2.4 percentage points faster than GDP since the 1970s. If this trend continues, actual Medicare costs through 2050 could be double the current projection.

[11] Robert E. Moffit, "Lessons of Success: What Congress Can Learn from the Federal Employees Program," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 565, September 14, 2004, at www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm565.cfm.

[12] See John S. O'Shea, "More Medicaid Means Less Quality Health Care," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 1402,
March 21, 2007, at www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm1402.cfm.

Obama Inauguration To Cost US $160,000,000; 4x Bush 2005 Inauguration

In 2005 the current administration put together an inauguration even for George W. Bush that topped just over $42 million. Democrats slammed Bush for “the most expensive inauguration in history” and called on him to cancel the traditional event due to the recent tsunami. Fast forward to 2009. Obama is poised to charge this country with a massive $160,000,000 party for his inauguration:
Carole Florman, spokeswoman for the joint congressional committee on inaugural ceremonies, told the New York Daily News, which estimated the cost at $160m: “We’re always very budget conscious. But we’re sending a message to the entire world about our peaceful transition of power, and you don’t want it to look like a schlock affair. It needs to be appropriate to the magnitude of events that it is.“
“It needs to be appropriate to the magnitude of events”?! Once again: where’s the leftist outrage over this spending? Obama is about to quadruple the most expensive inauguration ever and not a peep out of the Dems. Not a word.
In 2005 they proposed canceling it over a natural disaster. But in 2009, with our country pouring hundreds of billions into a sagging economy, it seems a perfectly acceptable expenditure all because they don’t want it to “look like a schlock affair.”
Well why not set the theme of “spend, spend, spend” right

Questioning Obama’s Patriotism

John McCain had many failings as the Republican Party’s nominee for the presidency in 2008. Foremost among them was his attempt to play politics in an honorable and chivalrous manner. His grand old approach to competition allowed his opponents to exploit him ruthlessly and dispatch him quickly on election night.

McCain’s decision to keep his word and accept public financing for the campaign — while Barack Obama broke his own promise to do the same — made the senior senator from Arizona’s defeat a likelihood. Yes, there is great truth in the [1] old cliché that “money is the mother’s milk of politics.” Should one candidate concede a $740.6 million to $84.1 million [2] spending advantage to his foe, then such a loss is inevitable.

Another major error on McCain’s part was his refusal to expose the endemic weaknesses of the political left, specifically the cynical attitude they possess towards their countrymen and their florid contempt for diversity of opinion. Over the years, Democrats have become acutely aware that a pervasive lack of patriotism is a major impediment to electoral achievement. Due to their paladins regarding the United States as being a racist, sexist state — one whose history can be summed up with the single word “oppression” — it is not immediately evident why any of their number would make for a suitable commander in chief.

The Democrats are very fearful that the general population will one day fathom the enduring connection between bad leadership and sanctimonious, alienated guiltists running the country. Thus, they have turned the act of making known their dearth of patriotism into the commission of a hate crime. Senator McCain, always keen to impress a mainstream media that once pretended to admire him, readily played their game. [3] He proclaimed: “Let me be very clear. I am not questioning his patriotism; I am questioning his judgment.” In the vernacular of political correctness, this means: “My hands are on the table and I am assuming the position.”

Yet McCain’s protestations made little difference to his enemies. They rightly took his civility for weakness. They [4] resurrected the issue in the fall as often as they could and applied the label “McCarthyist” to those who tell the truth about the Democrats’ take on America’s past. Here we see, once again, that there is no hope and change behind the mantra of hope and change.

These counterattacks were initiated under the auspices of persuading the rest of us to ignore the giant seven-foot rat — which embodies the political left’s feelings for their country — as he salivates and menaces our public square. Character assassination awaits any conservative who dares to illuminate the malignancy of the pseudo-liberal worldview. This strategy proved worthwhile because most of us on the right are too timid to call a rodent a rodent even as it gnaws off our toes.

The case of Minnesota Congresswoman [5] Michele Bachmann was a cautionary tale. Mrs. Bachmann, while speaking to Chris Matthews on his television show [6] Gutterball, [7] stated, “I’m very concerned that he [Obama] may have anti-American views. That’s what the American people are concerned about. That’s why they want to know what his answers are.” Matthews, ever the partisan Democrat and by far the most devout of Barack Obama’s biased media protectors, referred to this banal statement as “an extraordinary claim.”

Well is it? Of course not. Given Obama’s career, his words, the tone of his [8] autobiography, and his associations with ardent America-haters like Father Michael Pfleger, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, [9] Frank Marshall Davis, and William Ayers, Bachmann’s words were intuitive and anything but extraordinary. That Obama deems America — in its current configuration — a spurious venture appears to be about as controversial as believing that water is wet.

In the president-elect’s vision, we only will become a great nation if we alter ourselves into becoming another nation, one that precisely matches Obama’s desires and expectations. Regardless, Bachmann faced a reelection donnybrook and was forced to [10] apologize. Recant aside, her expressed opinion was one a sizable plurality of her peers share.

Granted, the pusillanimous nature of the average Republican politician (excluding Bachmann) appalls, but there is no cause for the rest of us to retreat on this issue. In the hopes of clarification, let me state with absolute certainty that the reason we should question the political left’s patriotism is that they are not patriotic.

On a plethora of policies, from immigration to missile defense, the Democratic stance suggests that they do not have a dog in the fight when it comes to America’s national security. Were they not so embarrassed by our history, along with the unfashionable folks who inhabit our non-urban enclaves, they might well think differently.

Moreover, the president-elect’s recent selection of [11] Leon Panetta to become future director of the Central Intelligence Agency underscores this eventuality. It exposes the Achilles heel of the post-sixties Democratic Party. Mr. Panetta has practically [12] no experience of working with the intelligence community in any capacity and neither does our impending director of national intelligence [13] Dennis Blair. Obama [14] argued that Panetta would be “committed to breaking with some of the past practices.”

Which qualifies him for what? Further, what practices need be terminated? Hopefully, the traditional practice of entrusting those who know how to do their jobs with defending the frontiers is not what he had in mind. In all probability, Panetta’s status as a loyal Democrat and one devoted to the [15] Change.gov religion is what necessitated his nomination, but placing him near the apex of our national security apparatus is about as rational as the Detroit Lions hiring me to play cornerback. If [16] Mr. Ford can overlook my not being able to cover receivers and withstand punishment, then he definitely will profit from my never rooting for the other team or leaking information to the Packers.

The ridiculousness of Obama’s choice was even apparent to Senator Dianne Feinstein, who [17] observed, “I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director. My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.” One would presuppose that the United States would benefit from having a CIA director who was familiar with both the military and the war on terror, but such an assumption fails to take into account the weltanschauung of our president-elect.

To Obama, the CIA job is merely a patronage position. Panetta is a Washington, DC, version of a “[18] soldier for Stroger.” His is a superfluous appointment. As with all leftists, Obama regards America’s principal enemies as being the politicians in the opposition party. The critics of the progressive movement on these shores — as opposed to Islamo-fascists or the dictators of rogue states — are the real threat. After all, what’s a dirty bomb or a hundred thousand [19] Katyusha rockets in comparison to those who correctly deride Obama’s plans for a twenty-first-century economy as “socialism” — which we all know is really a [20] code word for “black.”

[21] Hillary Clinton as secretary of state highlights Obama’s contempt for national security. He probably decided that there was no better place to relegate a venal rival than in a post that matters not. While she won’t charm the diplomatic protocols off of anyone, she may well try to [22] steal them.

Mrs. Clinton’s approaching confirmation summons up the ghost of [23] Joachim von Ribbentrop. My referencing of that historical and dysfunctional boob is no [24] reductio ad Hitlerum, but rather a product of recalling a conversation that Hermann Goering once had with his fuhrer. Goering [25] questioned Ribbentrop’s worth as a prospective foreign minister. Hitler replied that Ribbentrop knew all sorts of lords and ministers, to which the [26] Reichsmarschall responded: “Yes, but the trouble is, they know Ribbentrop.” Indeed.

Promoting(27) coat-and-tie radicals like Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta to the heights of power no doubt will intensify Obama’s prestige among foreign leaders. There’s nothing that foreign intelligence services appreciate more than the placement of total patsies as the overseers of America’s autonomy.

They probably did not think their prospects for aggressive action could improve any more than they had on November 4, but now will be pleased that Christmas — or what may soon become known as “Western Incineration Day” — is coming a second time this year. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the definition of “traitor” to be exchanged with “patriot” in the politically correct dictionaries found on American university campuses.

FOR REASONS OF FAIRNESS I HAVE POSTED EXACTLY WHERE THIS ARTICLES SOURCES WAS DERIVED FROM AS YOU CAN SEE THE SOURCES ARE MOST DEFINITELY FROM ALL CONSERVATIVE WRITERSURLs in this post:
[1] old cliché: http://www.campaignfinancesite.org/structure/terms/m.html
[2] spending advantage: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=anLDS9WWPQW8&refer=home
[3] He proclaimed: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2008/08/20/cbs-rejects-mccains-insistence-hes-not-questioni
ng-obamas-patriotism

[4] resurrected: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/01/mccain-attacks-obamas-pat_n_140006.html
[5] Michele Bachmann: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_Bachmann
[6] Gutterball: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2105/1806787140_fd53251709.jpg?v=0
[7] stated: http://hardblogger.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/20/1572959.aspx
[8] autobiography: http://www.vdare.com/half-blood_prince/
[9] Frank Marshall Davis: http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-frank-marshall-davis-network-in-hawaii/
[10] apologize: http://www.politico.com/blogs/scorecard/1008/Bachmann_tapes_apology_ad.html
[11] Leon Panetta: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/senators-air-concerns-about-panetta/story.aspx?guid=%7B9B57EB5
A-602E-46E9-87C4-D6139C5460B3%7D&dist=msr_1

[12] no experience: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,477451,00.html
[13] Dennis Blair: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090105/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_spy_agencies
[14] argued: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/us/politics/07cia.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
[15] Change.gov: http://change.gov/
[16] Mr. Ford: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Clay_Ford,_Sr.
[17] observed: http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2009/01/the_feinstein-panetta_back_sto.php
[18] soldier for Stroger: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-35017958_ITM
[19] Katyusha rockets: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/katyusha.htm
[20] code word: http://voices.kansascity.com/node/2493
[21] Hillary Clinton: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28543517/
[22] steal them: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200202/ai_n9045376
[23] Joachim von Ribbentrop: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_von_Ribbentrop
[24] reductio ad Hitlerum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum
[25] questioned: http://books.google.com/books?id=wblLo9fFad8C&pg=RA1-PA413&lpg=RA1-PA413&dq=goering+on+r
ibbentrop+%22they+know+ribbentrop%22&source=bl&ots=WqHEzGYv6S&sig=IYAbMrgJSXZE5Vw8o65lw_
wfjns&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result

[26] Reichsmarschall: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsmarschall
[27] coat-and-tie radicals: http://spectator.org/archives/2007/03/20/2008-the-battle-for-a-generati

Ben & Hank Drank the "Kool-Aid"

Or was it the coffee?
After hearing about the possibility of further free money for Bank of America, Currency Analyst and Editor of The Currency Capitalist Chuck Butler is concerned whether our un-elected representatives might be legitimately suffering hallucinations...
"This all makes me wonder: Do you think Big Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson drink more than seven cups of coffee a day?"
"I ask because researchers show that drinking more than seven cups of coffee a day may trigger delusions. And I personally think Big Ben and King Henry must be drinking more than seven cups of coffee a day, if they believe their "stimulus"/TARP will get these two enormous banks back on terra firma!"
"At this point, Paulson and Bernanke are like the King's men, who tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Their stimulus plans, their money supply injections, their guarantees on debt, the fact that they taking over the Commercial Paper biz, the fact they're dipping into banks' cookie jars."
"Nothing has worked... And why? Because, it's not in the nature of the free market to interfere. It's nature's way of telling you something's wrong."
"One of these days, these mental giants will figure out to leave well enough alone, and let markets take their course."
"But that's not happening now, and I'm sure it's not going to happen any time soon, given the news that President-Elect Obama wants control of the remaining US$250 Billion in TARP money, and then wants to push through a stimulus package that will be anywhere between US$800 Billion and US$1 Trillion as soon as he takes office!"
My bet is that he exceeds US $2 Trillion before he figures out from Congresses screams that it is not working.

Protesters label Redford an enemy of the poor

Oil and gas drilling » Clergymen link his environmentalism to racism.
By Patty Henetz

The Salt Lake Tribune


Salt Lake Tribune
Posted:01/14/2009 06:45:04 PM MST

Hollywood's Sundance Kid is hurting poor people.

So say some East Coast ministers and conservative activists, who took to the streets in front of a downtown Salt Lake City theater on the eve of Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival to accuse the actor of holding down low-income Americans with his opposition to oil and gas drilling near national parks in Utah.

The protesters, led by the Congress of Racial Equality's national spokesman Niger Innis, suggested Redford should "relinquish his wealth" and live like a poor person. They complained that the filmmaker's anti-drilling stance could lead to higher energy prices for inner-city residents, forcing them to accept a lower standard of living.

The clergymen prayed for Redford "to see the light" and linked his environmental activism with racism.

"The high energy prices we're going to see this winter are essentially discriminatory," said Bishop Harry Jackson Jr. of the Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., chairman of the High-Impact Leadership Coalition, a petroleum industry advocate.

A month ago, Redford, a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council, voiced support for a federal lawsuit aimed at blocking the Bush administration's "morally criminal" attempt to auction 103,000 acres of scenic redrock desert for oil and gas drilling near Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Dinosaur National Monument.

On Wednesday, Redford said through a spokeswoman that he stands by his opposition to the leasing. "These contested oil leases in Utah really have nothing to do with the cost of home heating," said Los Angeles-based spokeswoman, Joyce Deep. "The fact is, the oil and gas industry already has more leases than it knows what to do with."

Using federal studies and statistics, The Wilderness Society calculated the natural gas recoverable from the 77 contested parcels would be the equivalent of two days of national consumption. The oil recoverable from those parcels would last 1 hour and 40 minutes at today's consumption rate.

Glenn Bailey, executive director of the poverty-advocacy group Crossroads Urban Center in Salt Lake City, called CORE's message a "red herring." The root cause of high energy prices, he said, are "big industry and price manipulation, not conservationists."

But Bishop Bobby Allen, of Ogden's Griffin Memorial Church of God in Christ, said even a tiny amount of Utah gas represents a lifeline to poor inner-city residents. "One life worth saving is worth the effort," he said.

Big Government vs. Good Government

President-elect's push to delay digital TV conversion shows he lacks faith in mandates.

By Dan Gainor
The Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow
Business & Media Institute
1/14/2009 12:52:08 PM


A few years ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission looked at Bernie Madoff’s operation and said it was doing things just fine. Madoff then allegedly went on to scam $50 billion from unknowing investors. Congress instituted the Alternative Minimum Tax to go after a couple millionaires but forgot to adjust it for inflation. It now threatens as many as 24 million taxpayers each year.

Government brought us the Katrina fiasco, a broken immigration process and the Department of Motor Vehicles. So naturally, President-elect Barack Obama wants to expand government. And not by a little, either. We’re talking epic proportions. It’s as if producer Jerry Bruckheimer were doing a film about expanding government–- lots of crises, lots of special effects and lots of cost.

What’s ironic is that, at the very same time Obama is supporting the expansion of government, he’s pointing out what a miserable failure it can be. That’s right, Obama has come out and admitted that the government plan to force the new digital TV system on Americans is a failure and needs to be delayed.

Transition co-chair John D. Podesta asked for the February 17 deadline to be extended. “There is insufficient support for the problems consumers (particularly low income, rural and elderly Americans) will experience as a result of the analog signal cutoff,” he wrote.

He’s right. The program is a fiasco. This planned switch was approved by Congress in 1996. Thirteen years later, it’s still not ready for prime time. Here’s what The Los Angeles Times revealed on January 9:

“The unspecified delay would give the government time to fix a consumer-help program that ran out of money this week.”

According to The Times, the U.S. is making a profit off of inconveniencing millions of households:

“The government took in $19.6 billion last year by auctioning existing analog TV airwaves to telecommunications companies for new wireless services, but Congress allocated less than $2 billion to educate consumers about the transition and issue coupons to buy needed converter boxes” the paper wrote.

NBC’s Carol Costello elaborated on the problems in a Jan. 8 broadcast. “The National Association of Broadcasters estimates that more than 19 million households receive over-the-air signals exclusively in their homes, no cable, no satellite. Another 14.9 million have secondary TV sets that are also over the air.” Costello explained that “more than 24 million households have requested more than 46 million coupons” to buy the converter boxes.

CBS’s Bill Whitaker called it “A huge miscalculation.” It’s what online tech types would refer to as “epic fail.”

It’s not news to conservatives. Traditional conservatives understand what Ronald Reagan said that government isn’t the solution, government is the problem. And Obama will only make the problem bigger.

It’s not that government is all bad. Anyone who believes that is either an idiot or an anarchist –- not that there is much difference. Conservatives believe in a firm military to keep them free and place great trust in our servicemen and women. Conservatives also believe in law and order and don’t advocate outsourcing problems to Judge Judy.
Conservatives do believe in government –- just not the uber-state that controls our every move.

Obama’s problem lies in his mindset of relying on government solutions. Government, he’s said, is the only one to get us out of this (fill in the blank) mess. But often, government is the reason we are there in the first place.

Government decided to switch TV from analog to digital. Now that the switch isn’t going well, government has to react to try and fix a problem it created in the first place. That’s the story you won’t find on the evening news.

Instead, we are told capitalism is dead. On October 10 The Washington Post proclaimed “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is claiming another casualty: American-style capitalism.” In its place are big government solutions to, well, just about everything from childhood obesity to environment to the Mother-of-All-Bombs –- the economy.

The media are looking to Obama to take quick, decisive action even if that ends up making things worse. Tomorrow, he’ll be pushing healthcare or theoretical climate change or mandating that we all get a Labradoodle instead of a pit bull.

It’s the mindset that government must protect us from everything. Sure, some problems are just too big to solve on our own. But there’s an ugly hubris to the notion that people who run an enterprise that makes a profit can’t be trusted and those who lurk in government buildings are beyond reproach.

The truth of the matter is both groups can do good things. And both can make horrible mistakes. It’s a lesson for the media and the public. As the static over the digital TV conversion reminds us that, when it comes to government, sometimes less is more.

Fed Reserve Stops Obama in Tracks, Oops !

It is often the case that the most important news isn’t what’s happening in the world today, but what’s not happening in the world today. Case in point; President-elect Obama’s constantly growing stimulus is not driving the market upward.
Going back to the Fall of 2007, the Fed’s interest rate cuts served as an immediate boost that pushed the markets higher. As planned, these infusions of credit helped to boost market confidence and morale…even if only for a few days or weeks.
As a result, the marketplace becomes resistant – if not outright immune – to further infusions of credit. Be it through trillions in deficit-spending “stimulus,” or the witchcraft of quantitative easing, the job of stimulating the economy after implementing a zero interest-rate policy becomes much, much more difficult.
And in light of recent news covering the precipitous drop in consumer demand, you’d be hard-pressed to find Obama’s planned stimulus showing any traction in the marketplace. Combined with the rising savings rate, the current freefall in consumer demand means disaster for corporate earnings and – in turn – share prices. This gradual realization will likely continue to offset any boost offered by Obama’s continued pep talks.
In reality, Obama’s pledge to make a new “New Deal” with the American people should be significantly boosting the economy. After all, the prevailing wisdom is that these kinds of policies helped us through the great depression. Those who were crossing their fingers for an “Obama Stimulus Rally” were almost spot-on…except they forgot about one thing.
The onerous burden of Central Bank policy.
No…it appears as though we won’t see a stimulus rally in January after all. And with any rally’s momentum deadened by the liquidity trap, one could reasonably expect that the market has reached
it's short term peak

Fed Reserve Stops Obama in Tracks, Oops !

It is often the case that the most important news isn’t what’s happening in the world today, but what’s not happening in the world today. Case in point; President-elect Obama’s constantly growing stimulus is not driving the market upward.
Going back to the Fall of 2007, the Fed’s interest rate cuts served as an immediate boost that pushed the markets higher. As planned, these infusions of credit helped to boost market confidence and morale…even if only for a few days or weeks.
As a result, the marketplace becomes resistant – if not outright immune – to further infusions of credit. Be it through trillions in deficit-spending “stimulus,” or the witchcraft of quantitative easing, the job of stimulating the economy after implementing a zero interest-rate policy becomes much, much more difficult.
And in light of recent news covering the precipitous drop in consumer demand, you’d be hard-pressed to find Obama’s planned stimulus showing any traction in the marketplace. Combined with the rising savings rate, the current freefall in consumer demand means disaster for corporate earnings and – in turn – share prices. This gradual realization will likely continue to offset any boost offered by Obama’s continued pep talks.
In reality, Obama’s pledge to make a new “New Deal” with the American people should be significantly boosting the economy. After all, the prevailing wisdom is that these kinds of policies helped us through the great depression. Those who were crossing their fingers for an “Obama Stimulus Rally” were almost spot-on…except they forgot about one thing.
The onerous burden of Central Bank policy.
No…it appears as though we won’t see a stimulus rally in January after all. And with any rally’s momentum deadened by the liquidity trap, one could reasonably expect that the market has reached
it's short term peak

The Honeymoon Begins To Unravel Before Inauguration Day

Rocky Seas for Team Obama

Posted By Jennifer Rubin On January 11, 2009 @ 1:50 am In . Column2 04, Politics | 79 Comments

After weeks of smooth sailing and cooing press coverage, the Obama team has been buffeted by a round of troubles, goofs and harsh reaction, much of that coming from Obama’s own party. [1] Politico reviewed the wreckage:

Obama ended his troubled search for CIA director by naming Leon Panetta. The immediate response: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) fired off a statement of disapproval, giving a negative tilt to most coverage of the pick.
Obama floated his plan to name TV star Dr. Sanjay Gupta as surgeon general. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers didn’t even wait for the official announcement before leading a public campaign to kill the nomination. Gupta “lacks the relevant experience,” Conyers wrote to colleagues.
As Obama makes plans to roll out a sweeping economic plan, Majority Leader Harry Reid gave interviews with Politico and The Hill newspaper and made clear he won’t take marching orders from Obama. “I don’t work for” Obama, he told us.
Even before Obama’s plan was formally unveiled, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made plain her displeasure with parts of Obama’s emerging fiscal plan, which she believes does not move fast enough to raise taxes. “I couldn’t be more clear,” she said Thursday at her weekly news conference. “Put me down as one in favor of repeal [of the Bush tax cuts] as soon as possible.”
Finally, once the package was unveiled, Obama’s adviser got a frosty response to some provisions from Senate Democrats, who were kind enough to go public with their concerns. “I just don’t think it works. I don’t think that’s going to give much lift to the economy, as well intended as it is,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, told Politico’s David Rogers.
And that list didn’t include the [2] hasty retreat on Roland Burris or the embarrassing Bill Richardson withdrawal. Beltway media dean [3] David Broder declares that the president-elect has taken a “drubbing” from these incidents. Broder finds that “after a near-perfect month of transition operations, Obama has stumbled twice in two weeks, first being caught unaware by the investigation of Bill Richardson, his choice for commerce secretary, and then being outmaneuvered by Burris and his tawdry sponsor, Gov. Rod Blagojevich.”

It seems that the transition from campaigning to governing may not be as easy as Obama and his media fan club imagined. And things will only get tougher. There are two main challenges on the immediate horizon — either one of which can bring what is left of the honeymoon to an abrupt end.

Hold on


Next week, the Senate will hold the confirmation hearing of attorney general nominee Eric Holder. This is shaping up to be one [4] contentious outing as Sen. Arlen Specter and other Republicans prepare to delve into Holder’s involvement with the Marc Rich and [5] Puerto Rican terrorist pardons and the Elian Gonzales affair. It’s not his legal views which are most at issue, but his character. And if Democrats and Republicans alike get the sense that Holder has played fast and loose with Justice Department guidelines, ethical standard and even with their colleagues (in his testimony during the [6] 2001 Congressional probe of the Rich pardon, for example) Holder may have a sticky time getting out of the Senate Judiciary Committee (which may have a [7] 9-9 split between the parties).

Although the Rich pardon has attracted the most attention recently, a startling story in the [5] Los Angeles Times called new attention to his involvement in the FALN terrorist pardons. Career pardon attorney Roger Adams, who one suspects will pop up at he confirmation hearing, accuses Holder of having pressured Justice Department attorneys to reverse their recommendation to deny the pardons to the terrorists (who never expressed remorse). Holder presumably twisted arms of career attorneys to comply with the wishes of the Clintons (and aid Hillary’s then upcoming Senate race). Senate Republicans will no doubt remind Senate Democrats of their attacks on Alberto Gonzales and other Bush appointees who allegedly “politicized” the department.

In the preparation for the hearings, Holder may not have done himself any favors. Indeed, he’s given fodder to those who claim he places politics about propriety. He will be shepherded through the confirmation process by none other than [8] Ron Weich, chief counsel to Minority Leader Harry Reid, and Sen. Pat Leahy’s Chief of Staff Ed Pagano.

It is extraordinary that current Senate staffers would work for the executive branch nominee — a fundamental violation of the separation between the branches of government. These aides are employed by and paid by the Senate, which is supposed to be performing its institutional obligation to examine and, if appropriate, confirm the executive branch’s nominees. Granted they are of the same party as the incoming administration, but are key aides of the senators — who are supposed to be evaluating the qualifications, character and experience of the nominee – appropriately tasked with double duty to make sure Holder gets through that evaluation unscathed? Do they write and answer the questions for the nominee? And why would they be permitted to do all this on the Senate’s payroll?

A Capitol Hill insider had this to say:

I can’t think of another example of a current Senate staffer facilitating a nominee’s confirmation. If the Senate is really conducting an independent review of the nominee, doesn’t this arrangement undermine it? Would you ever let a judge’s legal clerk act as the lawyer for a defendant? That’s why we have conflict of interest restrictions for lawyers.

It only adds to irony that it is Holder’s own alleged conflicts of interest which will be at issue in his hearing.

As for President-elect Obama this will only add to the sense that the “Chicago Way” — an embrace of questionable characters and an aversion to real reform — remains his Achilles heel. And should Holder fail to get confirmed, or emerge so damaged from the hearing to be of reduced stature and influence, the Obama team will have to explain how yet another nominee with ethical concerns made it through its vetting process. The question looms: Is the Obama team tone deaf when it comes to ethics?

A trillion is a lot of money


Even more than a rocky confirmation hearing, President-elect Obama’s fortunes may flounder on the shores of a stimulus package, so vast and so packed with mines that virtually everyone has reason to dislike some aspect of it. His tax “cuts” have drawn fire from both ends of the spectrum. [9] Democrats don’t like the idea of tax cuts at all, while Republicans are figuring out these don’t amount to much at all. [10] Americans for Tax Reform explains:

Obama wants to create a new business tax credit for firms that make new hires or forego layoffs. During the campaign, this was the “Patriot Employer” concept widely derided as central planning through the tax code. In order to get this tax credit, an employer would have to open themselves up to unionization, pay wages at a rate set by the government, and provide health care the government deemed “acceptable,” among other mandates.

The cornerstone of the “tax cut” part of the Obama $1 trillion plan is to create a new refundable “Making Work Pay” credit of $500 per adult and $1000 per dual-income working couple. This would phase out at $75,000 of income for couples and $40,000 of income for singles. For some people, this new tax credit would be an income tax cut — that is, a direct reduction of income taxes owed.

For most recipients of this new credit (and for all recipients of the expanded “Additional Child Tax Credit” he has discussed with Congressional Democrats), this would not be an income tax cut at all. According to the IRS, 40% of families do not have a tax liability today. You can’t cut income taxes for families that don’t pay income taxes. This is nothing more than welfare through the tax code. When this proposal is scored by Congressional and Administration budget experts, they will properly label this as spending — and they will be correct. Spending money on someone who already has no tax liability is not a tax cut — it’s welfare.

And of course, fiscal conservatives and the public at large are [11] fretting over the enormous spending figures which will sink us further in debt — if it doesn’t first set off a new round of 1970s-style inflation. The Obama team may have banked too heavily on the new president’s popularity, expecting their stimulus plan to sail through within days of his inauguration. Now it seems that mid-February is an ambitious deadline.

Along the way both Democrats and Republicans will seek to add or subtract from the Obama plan. Speaker Nancy Pelosi still wants to raise taxes on the rich, while Republicans are dismayed by the absence of any tax rate cuts. And both sides will fight over the amount and type of spending. At the end of the day it is not clear that Republicans join in what is sure to be a massive spending bill. They may instead force Democrats to walk the plank alone, putting enormous pressure on the so-called Blue Dog Democrats to jettison their usual aversion to fiscal discipline.

So reality is setting in: governing is much harder than campaigning, and President-elect Obama is not the infallible figure the media has made him out to be. In Washington there are dozens of ways to get knocked off course, especially when the captain of the ship lacks prior executive experience but has no shortage of bravado.

How the president-elect navigates through the next couple of weeks will help determine the course for his first year. For now, it seems that it won’t be all smooth sailing.