Good Analysis of the Current Administration

Rightwingsparkle does a great job analyzing where the Dems are and perhaps highlights a couple of the more questionable aspects of its policies and relationship with the MSM! A good quick read!

So there is no bias in the MSM?

From POITICO today:


"Wednesday marked President Barack Obama’s 100th day in office, and the national media have become muscle-bound from all the pats on the back they’ve given him in news stories evaluating those first 100 days.

But the back story — the one you won’t read about in The New York Times — is that in just 100 days, the national media have shown they have a clear double standard in how they cover Obama, compared with Republican presidents.

A new study by the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs found that network news programs gave Obama more than three times the coverage that they gave President George W. Bush at the same point in his presidency. And while 58 percent of all network news evaluations of Obama and his policies were favorable, only 33 percent of assessments of Bush were favorable.

That means networks have shown Obama to America far more often — and in a far more favorable light — than they showed Bush early in his presidency. It’s free advertising. And it explains the president’s approval ratings."


And I heard Jim Lehrer say that MSM media coverage has been tough on BHO! How do you put up with the obvious obfuscations from the media elite. Read the whole thing here.

Do You Hate "Torture" or W?

Dennis Prager has a column at Townhall today - "Nine Questions the Left Needs to Answer About Torture" - which gets to the heart of the "torture" question. Read the column and see what you think of his analysis.

His closing sentence:

"If you do not address these questions, it would appear that you care less about morality and torture than about vengeance against the Bush administration."

George Will keeps the first "100 days" in perspective

In the May 4 issue of Newsweek George Will comments on the "100 days". The closing paragraphs:

"The trajectory of Obama's presidency might have been determined by what he did in his first 100 days. His budget calls for doubling the national debt in five years and almost tripling it in 10. If the necessary government borrowing soon causes a surge in long-term interest rates, the result will be the 1970s redux—inflation and stagnation. If so, the 44th president will be remembered not as the second iteration of the 32nd (Franklin Roosevelt) but of the 39th (Jimmy Carter).

There were 43 presidents before the current one and there will be many more than that number after him. The nation that elects the 88th probably will remember little about what the 44th did. This does not mean Obama is unimportant. It does mean that he is in the middle of the broad, deep river of history, where the current is strong and will not be much bent by him."


Actions have consequences and BHO may not realize the unintended consequences of the left's policies. Perhaps he should have his Administration study the economy from 1977-1981, and the results of a failed Democrat Presidency. But whatever he does, we will work our way through it. It will be a shame BHO wastes his popularity with incorrect actions.

Read the entire column here.

Andrew Lloyd Webber understands!

A column in the Daily Mail by Andrew Lloyd Webber explains the problem with Britain's and BHO's view of taxes and the wealthy! We may not be there yet, but that is where BHO is taking us. Why can't he see what is so obvious?

Read Mr. Webber's column here.

"Free Speech"

Our Congress won't even let a proponent of problems with current Global Warming theory speak! The protection of Al Gore continues. What are they afraid of?

http://reversevampyr.blogspot.com/2009/04/democrats-censor-global-warming-debate.html

Comments?

BHO's Fatuousness!

George Will excoriates BHO and the Dems in his current column "Obama's Budget Follies" over budget, pandering budget cuts ($100 million! Not a cut, a tiny, tiny scratch), and abandoning Washington D.C.'s children. So good and accurate, I had to present it all:


"WASHINGTON -- Monday morning the government braced for austerity, as the government understands that. Having sent Congress a $3.5 trillion budget, the president signaled in advance -- perhaps so his Cabinet members could steel themselves for the new asceticism -- that at the first meeting of his Cabinet he would direct the 15 heads of departments to find economies totaling $100 million, which is about 13 minutes of federal spending, and 0.0029 percent -- about a quarter of one-hundredth of 1 percent -- of $3.5 trillion.

If the Department of Agriculture sliced the entire $100 million, that would be equal to 0.1 percent of its fiscal 2008 budget. The president, peering from beneath his green eyeshade at the secretary of agriculture, might remember this from The Washington Post of Jan. 24:


"Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack ... learned that his new workplace contains a post office, fitness centers, cafeterias and 6,900 employees. But he remained uncertain about exactly how many employees he supervises nationwide. 'I asked how many employees work at USDA, and nobody really knows,' he said."

The president's $100 million edict actually suggests an insufficiency in the river of federal assistance flowing out of Washington to the deserving poor, as that category is currently understood: incompetent car companies, reckless insurance companies, mismanaged banks, profligate state governments, etc. But political satirists, too, deserve a bailout from a federal government that has turned their material into public policy.

The president has set an example for his Cabinet. He has ladled a trillion or so dollars ("or so" is today's shorthand for "give or take a few hundreds of billions") hither and yon, but while ladling he has, or thinks he has, saved about $15 million by killing, or trying to kill, a tiny program that this year is enabling about 1,715 District of Columbia children (90 percent black, 9 percent Hispanic) to escape from the District's failing public schools and enroll in private schools.

The District's mayor and school superintendent support the program. But the president has vowed to kill programs that "don't work." He has looked high and low and -- lo and behold -- has found one. By uncanny coincidence, it is detested by the teachers unions that gave approximately four times $15 million to Democratic candidates and liberal causes last year.

Not content with seeing the program set to die after the 2009-10 school year, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (former head of Chicago's school system, which never enrolled an Obama child) gratuitously dashed even the limited hopes of another 200 children and their parents. Duncan, who has sensibly chosen to live with his wife and two children in Virginia rather than the District, rescinded the scholarships already awarded to those children for the final year of the program, beginning in September. He was, you understand, thinking only of the children and their parents: He would spare them the turmoil of being forced by, well, Duncan and other Democrats to return to terrible public schools after a tantalizing one-year taste of something better. Call that compassionate liberalism.

After Congress debated the program, the Department of Education released -- on a Friday afternoon, a news cemetery -- a congressionally mandated study showing that, measured by student improvement and parental satisfaction, the District's program works. The department could not suppress the Heritage Foundation's report that 38 percent of members of Congress sent or are sending their children to private schools.

The Senate voted 58-39 to kill the program. Heritage reports that if the senators who have exercised their ability to choose private schools had voted to continue the program that allows less-privileged parents to make that choice for their children, the program would have been preserved.

As the president and his party's legislators are forcing minority children back into public schools, the doors of which would never be darkened by the president's or legislators' children, remember this: We have seen a version of this shabby act before. One reason conservatism came to power in the 1980s was that in the 1970s liberals advertised their hypocrisy by supporting forced busing of other people's children to schools the liberals' children did not attend.

This issue will be back. In a few months, the appropriation bill for the District will come to the floor of the House of Representatives, at which point there will be a furious fight for the children's interests. Then we will learn whether the president and his congressional allies are capable of embarrassment. On the evidence so far, they are not."


My emphasis. I would like a response on all or part from BHO supporters! You have all become so silent over the past two or three months.

SOCIAL IN-SECURITY

Imprimis, the monthly publication of Hillsdale College, prints an adaptation of a speech given by John C. Goodman, a well known Economist and writer, in February titled "A Prescription for American Health Care" which opens with the following paragraph. It is such a good summary of a problem which our politicians all hide from.

• "I'll start with the bad news: When we get through the economic time that we're in right now, we're going to be confronted with an even bigger problem. The first of the Baby Boomers started signing up for early retirement under Social Security last year. Two years from now they will start signing up for Medicare. All told, 78 million people are going to stop working, stop paying taxes, stop paying into retirement programs, and start drawing benefits. The problem is, neither Social Security nor Medicare is ready for them. The federal government has made explicit and implicit promises to millions of people, but has put no money aside in order to keep those promises. Some of you may wonder where Bernie Madoff got the idea for his Ponzi scheme. Clearly he was studying federal entitlement policy." (my emphasis)

Now I am not sure where Bernie Madoff got his ideas, but Mr. Goodman's theory is plausible If you want to concern yourself with the biggest problem our Country is facing, this is it. Start talking to your representatives, or we will all go down together!

More on his healthcare comments later.

An Important Article for my "Green" and "Sustainability" Friends

In "Bound to Burn", a column in City Journal, Peter Huber summarizes the problems with the current approach to control of carbon emmissions. It is the best analysis I have seen.

Mr. Huber's final paragraph summarizes our quandry:

"If we do need to do something serious about carbon, the sequestration of carbon after it’s burned is the one approach that accepts the growth of carbon emissions as an inescapable fact of the twenty-first century. And it’s the one approach that the rest of the world can embrace, too, here and now, because it begins with improving land use, which can lead directly and quickly to greater prosperity. If, on the other hand, we persist in building green bridges to nowhere, we will make things worse, not better. Good intentions aren’t enough. Turned into ineffectual action, they can cost the earth and accelerate its ruin at the same time."

In case human activity is contributing significantly to global warming - see post below - we should at least take an action with positive potential.

Any comments? It is a very important article to read.

Global Warming?

An interesting article from The Australian posted by Fox News on the growing ice shelf in Antarctica. Now I know this doesn't mean anything to the typical global warming enthusiast, but do read it and attempt to absorb some FACTS!

This does not mean that humans are not effecting the climate, but logic says we probably lose a little ice once in a while and probably gain a little ice once in a while - not that we should panic with every input.

Yes, I know, it is from that terribly biased Fox, but they didn't write it. They are just reporting, which is what some of the global warming supporting networks should try!

SCOTUS Ignorance - REDUX

I was glad to see this morning that I am not the only person disturbed by what I consider the ignorance of Justice Ginsburg (see post below). Christine Flowers, a lawyer writing a column for the Philadelphia Daily News, does a much better job of explaining the problem.

Key 'graphs:

"And they've criticized those who think U.S. courts should stick to U.S. laws and our U.S. Constitution (which Madame Justice Ginsburg swore to uphold and defend as part of her oath of office) as jingoistic and narrow-minded. Listen, they say, it's a big world out there, and I guess we can learn a lot from our brothers and sisters in, say, Canada, where they sneer at the First Amendment, or in Saudi Arabia, which sanctions marriage between 8-year-old girls and middle-aged men.

Ginsburg apparently doesn't believe in the supremacy of the Constitution because to do so would apparently be arrogant. She implied that the failure to consider the reasoning of foreign judges diminished the importance of the Supreme Court, although she didn't give details other than to say that the Canadian high court is "cited more widely abroad than the U.S. Supreme Court," and she made the telling observation that "you will not be listened to if you don't listen to others."

Ah, so that's it. We have to play nice in the international legal sandbox so that other people will pay us some respect. Ginsburg and her legal eagles apparently believe that the law is like a popularity contest and the system with the most friends wins.

It's frightening that a sitting justice would actually say that we should be worried about how other countries feel about our administration of justice.

They had no hand in crafting our Constitution. They are neither bound by our laws, nor have they sent men and women to die in defense of our laws." (my emphasis)

You can and should read the whole column here.

If SCOTUS can't believe in our sovereignity, we have real problems!

SCOTUS Ignorance!

Justice Ginsburg sees nothing wrong with using foreign law in making decisions at the Supreme Court. To quote her:

“I frankly don’t understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law,” Ginsburg said Friday in a symposium honoring her at Ohio State University, The New York Times reports.

Ginsburg says she’s fine with the idea that a U.S. court shouldn’t consider itself bound by the precedent established in international law.

But she’s also fine with the idea that a U.S. court can be influenced by strong reasoning from overseas.

“Why shouldn’t we look to the wisdom of a judge from abroad with at least as much ease as we would read a law review article written by a professor?” she says. "

THE REASON YOU SHOULDN'T LOOK AT THE "WISDOM OF A JUDGE ABROAD" IS THAT YOU CAN FIND SUPPORT FOR ANY DECISION YOU WANT TO MAKE - AND LIKEWISE, CAN FIND OBJECTION TO ANY DECISION YOU DO NOT LIKE - IF YOU LOOK AT ENOUGH OPINIONS REFLECTING THE "WISDOM OF A JUDGE ABROAD."

But, of course, you do not "search" for the foreign "wisdom" that goes against your preference!

Control of this phenomena inside our own borders is tough enough. Letting the world in on our decisions is true ignorance!

Comments?

Common Sense

Thomas Sowell shares his common sense with us re our spending, stimulus, "real taxes", rent control and gun control. One key point:

"Some of our biggest political fallacies come from accepting words as evidence of realities. "Rent control" laws do not control rent and "gun control" laws do not control guns.

The big cities with the tightest rent control laws in the nation are New York and San Francisco. The nation's highest rents are in New York and the second-highest are in San Francisco."

If you want to understand why this is the case, read the column here.

Understanding the mis-used "words", particularly from the left, is important grasp if you care what the future holds!

The Injustice of Iowa's ruling on Gay Marriage

Matthew J. Franck wrote a column in the Christian Science Monitor - not one of your more conservative papers - last Friday which is the best summary I have seen of the reason Gay Marriage erodes our moral principles and law.

I would like to hear some comments on his points from gay marriage supporters.

His key summary: "This is not a slippery slope; it is a levee breaking in a spring flood."

Watch out - you may get what you wish for!

CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN #11!

Headline of a politicol.com article today:

"Obama's war request: $83.4 billion"

Is this what all you lefties voted for? Sounds eerily familiar to W, doesn't it?

You can read about the "about face" here.

"No Nukes" Silliness

I often describe the ideology of the left as silly. BHO is not immune, as Anne Applebaum points out in her Slate column today. She not only points out his silliness, but clearly explains why it is silly:

• "Conventional weapons, meanwhile, have not gone out of fashion. The most recent use of military force in Europe—the Russian-Georgian conflict of last August—involved tanks and infantry, not nukes. Even if Russia sold its remaining nuclear weapons for scrap metal, Russia's military would still pose a potential threat to its neighbors, just as a China without nukes could still invade Taiwan.
• 
  Ridding the world of nuclear weapons would be very nice, in other words, but on its own, it won't alter the international balance of power, stop al-Qaida, or prevent large authoritarian states from invading their smaller neighbors. However unsuccessful it has been so far, the promotion of democracy around the world is, ultimately, the only way to achieve these goals. Besides, however much the French loved Michelle's flowery dress, I'm not sure they have much interest in giving up their force de frappe. Ditto the British. And since they don't pose a threat, to us or anyone else, it's not clear to me why we should waste diplomatic capital trying to make them do so."

It is important our foreign policy be realistic! Read the column, it is an improtant subject.

The Proof of MSM Bias

I have to comment on BHO's current trip to Europe and his treatment by the MSM. You have to recall how W was treated when he made small, unimportant errors in his speeches. If not on the front page of the NYT, WaPo, LAT, et al, at least it would be near the lead to any story.

BHO doesn't know the difference between England and Great Britain. BHO doesn't know that Austrians speak German, not "Austrian." But so what, he looks good and has a nice family!!

Would anyone like to defend this stand from the MSM? Or deny the bias which is very dangerous to our society?