Seriously, blood started to spurt out of my eyes as I read this article.
My favorite part:
Good government groups have long criticized Murtha’s cozy relationship with a handful of lobbyists and defense firms, ties that see millions of dollars in government spending go out from Murtha’s office, and hundreds of thousands in campaign donations come in. Murtha has said his earmarking has helped revive his economically depressed district.
He does the Democrats proud.
From today’s Wall Street Journal:
FROM THE MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER’S CYBERALERT.
File this one under “Deluded Expectations.” During MSNBC’s coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, on Nov. 27, daytime anchor Alex Witt seemed frustrated that the election of Barack Obama 23 days earlier — and the accompanying “global outpouring of affection, respect, hope” — had not caused an end to terrorist violence.Talking with correspondent John Yang, who was covering the Obama side of the story, Witt conceded that while “you certainly can’t expect things to change on a dime overnight….There had been such a global outpouring of affection, respect, hope, with the new administration coming in, that precisely these kinds of attacks, it was thought — at least hoped — would be dampered down. But in this case it looks like Barack Obama is getting a preview of things to come.”
[This item, by the MRC’s Rich Noyes, was posted Monday morning on the MRC’s blog, Newsbusters.org]
It almost seems like a parody of liberals’ blind worship of Obama to actually expect that The One’s election would mean terrorists hanging up their bomb belts, peace around the world, lions lying down with lambs, and so forth. For his part, Yang delicately pointed out the more valid concern that “the enemies of the United States, those who don’t care for the United States no matter who’s leading it, would try and test the United States” during the transition from Bush to Obama.
Here’s the full exchange, that took place at about 2:55pm EST on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, after Yang reported on how Obama was being fully briefed by the Bush administration on the terrorist attacks:
ALEX WITT: You know, John, and it’s interesting because there are many who had such an optimstic and hopeful opinion of things, and you certainly can’t expect things to change [snaps fingers] on a dime overnight, but there are many who suggested that with the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration there would be something of a lull in terrorism attacks. There had been such a global outpouring of affection, respect, hope, with the new administration coming in, that precisely these kinds of attacks, it was thought — at least hoped — would be dampered down. But in this case it looks like Barack Obama is getting a preview of things to come.
JOHN YANG: He’s — it’s a rude awakening, a very, sort of, sober reminder of what he’s going to be facing in just a few weeks. And there is some concern also, there had been some concern, that during this period, during this, the transition period, between Election Day and Inauguration Day, that the enemies of the United States, those who don’t care for the United States no matter who’s leading it, would try and test the United States, would try to take advantage of this period, and I think that may be one thing that we’re seeing right now.
WITT: Okay, John Yang there in Chicago, following President-elect Barack Obama’s Thanksgiving Day dinner having been interrupted by all of this news from Mumbai. John, thank you very much.
Find the article on the Wall Street Journal’s website here.
Another must read from the WSJ today…
The only organization with a worse rating than the Republican president is the Democratic Congress—14% approval, 75% disapproval. But there, too, the Democrats will gain strength. They are expected to increase their majority in the House, and current polling shows that in Senate races Democrats will increase their members from the current 51 (including two independents who caucus with the Democrats) to at least 57. They may even achieve the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
So where is the new Obama administration likely to take us? Seven things seem certain:
- The U.S. military will withdraw from Iraq quickly and substantially, regardless of conditions on the ground or the obvious consequence of emboldening terrorists there and around the globe.
- Protectionism will become our national trade policy; free trade agreements with other nations will be reduced and limited.
- Income taxes will rise on middle- and upper-income people and businesses, and individuals will pay much higher Social Security taxes, all to carry out the new president’s goals of “spreading the wealth around.”
- Federal government spending will substantially increase. The new Obama proposals come to more than $300 billion annually, for education, health care, energy, environmental and many other programs, in addition to whatever is needed to meet our economic challenges. Mr. Obama proposes more than a 10% annual spending growth increase, considerably higher than under the first President Bush (6.7%), Bill Clinton (3.3%) or George W. Bush (6.4%).
- Federal regulation of the economy will expand, on everything from financial management companies to electricity generation and personal energy use.
- The power of labor unions will substantially increase, beginning with repeal of secret ballot voting to decide on union representation.
- Free speech will be curtailed through the reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine to limit the conservative talk radio that so irritates the liberal establishment.
These policy changes will be the beginning of the Europeanization of America. There will be many more public policy changes with similar goals—nationalized health care, Kyoto-like global-warming policies, and increased education regulation and spending.
Additional tax advantages for lower and middle income people will be enacted: a 10% mortgage tax credit that would average about $500 per household per year, a $4,000 tax credit for college tuition, a tax credit covering half of child-care expenses up to $6,000 per year, and even a $7,000 credit for purchase of a clean car.
More important, all but the clean car credit would be “refundable,” meaning people will get a check for them if they owe no taxes, which is simply a transfer of income from the government to individuals. In reality this is the beginning of a new series of entitlements for middle-class families, the longer-term effect of which will be to make those families more dependant on (and so more supportive of) larger government. The Tax Policy Center estimates that these refundable tax credits would cost the government $648 billion over 10 years.
These are Mr. Obama’s plans. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats would increase spending for their own interests and favorite programs. More important, the Congress will consider itself more important than a freshman president who has never held an executive position, so they will do what they want and he will have to go along with most of it.
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 24, 2008
Contrarian that I am, I’m voting for John McCain. I’m not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it’s over before it’s over. I’m talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they’re left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.
I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe — neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) — yelling “Stop!” I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I’d rather lose an election than lose my bearings.
First, I’ll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The “erratic” temperament issue, for example. As if McCain’s risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.
McCain the “erratic” is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.
Nor will I countenance the “dirty campaign” pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports “cutting Social Security benefits in half.” And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.
McCain’s critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What’s astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.
Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama’s most egregious association — with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.
The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.
Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the past year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?
Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?
There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?
And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he’s been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.
The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.
Today’s economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
When President Bush ordered the surge in January 2007, Obama said:
“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”
This is a position he maintained throughout 2007. This year, long after proof and attacks forced him to comment, he acknowledged progress.
Joe Biden, always reliable for betraying his shallow pool of savvy and power motives through a loose tongue, told his real feelings again, painting a second coat on his ticket-mate for being weak with world and terror leaders. As if it weren’t enough for him to claim Obama needs a second desk in the oval office where Biden will preside as co-president, now he puts another nail it Obama along the very same lines.
Biden’s quote froma speech last week…
“Within the first six months of this administration, if we win… we’re going to face a major international challenge. Because they’re going to want to test him, just like they did young John Kennedy [who by the way largely failed]. They’re going to want to test him. And they’re going to find out this guy’s got steel in his spine.”
Not so much on the steel spine thing Joe.
But he was right on the fact that the rest of the world sees Obama as a media darling and a great motivational speaker (corporate training sessions and kid’s parties can be booked through the campaign), not as a strong leader or leaving certainly alone a strong defender. They know as well as we do that he’s naive and weak, despite his fightin’ words regarding Pakistan. Keep in mind, this is a pacifist at heart, as are all of the left of the left, and he’s saying what you want to hear to sucker your vote. He has no intention of doing anything but talking to our enemies, which has worked so well in the past, ask Carter.
The always candid and often wise John Bolton was on Fox, expanding on the issues that face us if Zero becomes president with this opening salvo “I think [Obama’s] very naive, I don’t think he understands how to represent or defend American interests. And I think we’re going to learn… to great pain if he’s elected how much at risk we really are.”
BOLTON: Well, I think [Obama and Biden are] obviously eager to win, and that’s why Obama has changed his position so many times on key questions like how exactly is he going to get out of Iraq.
I must say my favorite Joe Biden line in that whole speech was when he said, I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than my colleague — most of my colleagues know, so he better win the vice presidency. I don’t think he can go back to the Senate after that.
HANNITY: Yes. Do you think, for example, that when you — when he said these things about Iran being a tiny country, not a serious threat, how do you think that is perceived?
I mean is that almost like when he talks about waiving — he would have left Iraq, we would have basically waved the white flag of surrender.
Is he an appeaser? Is that a fair word? I used that adjective about him?
BOLTON: Well, I think he’s a kind of a kumbaya guy. He can’t understand why somebody on the other side of the table may not be as reasonable as he is, and those people are prepared to take advantage of him.
And here on MSNBC for Obama (the stealth campaign arm)…
Perhaps the best speech given during this entire campaign cycle.
The O-Team
More genius by ZO. See more great clips here
Third time’s the charm…
First there was Jimmy Carter… sorry, just got back up from the floor. Jimmy freaking Carter got the Nobel Prize for his bang up job of bringing peace to the middle east. We should give him credit, it lasted thirty seconds longer than the previous cease fire. Not to oversimplify, but this is a former president who has broken with history and openly and repeatedly criticized a sitting president. It would matter if he had a single proud moment in office himself.
As if Carter wasn’t enough, next there came one of this generation’s greatest opportunist hypocrites, Albert Gore, inventor of Al-Gore-Tex, the fabric that allows abject failure in the political arena and a running and disturbingly accurate imitation of everyone’s grandmother (wonder if there’s more to that) to bead up and slide right off his career.
Taking a page from his own rain shedding fabric days, he figured there would be serious money in global warming (or is it global cooling this decade?) The smart thing his advisers came up with (we know he didn’t come up with it because he’s just a card reader like Obama) is the idea that instead of actually doing something about the “crisis” — like creating a green energy company or simply reducing the energy footprint of his mansion in Tennessee, or maybe leaving the private jet at home, or maybe dropping his convoy to a skeletal 10 gas-guzzling SUVs and Towncars burning ozone to and from every possible speaking engagement his handlers can schedule — anyway, instead of doing anything real about the “crisis”, his sage advisors said “hey, you could try your hand in the scary and accountable private sector for the first time since that 5 year stint at The Tennessean newspaper after college, or you could turn this lemon stretch of the natural environmental cycle into hysterically sweet solid gold lemonade in the bank.” And rain gold it has for the sweet talker from Tennessee. But a funny thing happened on the way to selling the Brooklyn Bridge…
Even Gore never imagined the clueless in Norway, adorned with nose rings of popular hysteria, could possibly be taken in by the shameless and insincere opportunism he embodied with the acting talent of, well, Al Gore. But they did. And those of us who thought that the Jimmy Carter prize was the last straw, certainly lost faith entirely in the judgment of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Which bring us to the third of the infamous leftists: Paul (“Bush would be Satan, if there was a God”) Krugman. He’s the nerdy kid who used to cry just being near a fight in school, let alone being in one. He’s a lone beacon to the dwindling pseudo-intellectual self-obsessed New York readership, and the formerly somewhat respectable paper that prints his vile bile. I imagine him at his desk, crying at the violence of his blind fury (because fury is scary) and yet smiling through his tears for the self-congratulatory vengeance he feels his words get him on the conservative that stomped his frailty or stole his girl in some former time. His bully pulpit provides a thick network of flaming and smoldering leftists to insulate his frantic and desperate anger, so he’s safe to blather on, reciting the socialist and leftist talking points like a male version of Surrender Poodle Pelosi but without the stones.
I imagine Alfred Nobel would certainly take his mighty invention and blow all of Scandinavia to the judgment seat of the Almighty if he were alive to be ashamed of the state to which this prize has devolved: prizes awarded to a forgettable president, a transparent money-grubber, and the poster child of desperately shrill.
With these offenses, the Nobel Prize is certainly less fair and reasonable but closely resembling an Oscar these days, as Oscars are won solely on crony or agenda popularity, rather than by merit as awards should be.
I guess that’s why Gore’s won both.
Krugman could win an oscar for crying on cue, but for him it wouldn’t be acting.
I didn’t see this, because I certainly don’t watch network news (surprised anyone does anymore), but just stumbled on it on the internet. It’s actually Katie Couric skewering Obama for a change. Now I don’t feel so bad about her carefully edited and frankly silly gotcha interview with Palin (why hasn’t Palin yet memorized McCain’s favorite cereal in 3rd grade?). I hope the public gets the difference between Palin not memorizing McCain’s votes/bills, and Obama being dead wrong about American lives and success in war.