Vocal Minority

End the Occupation! "Dangerous" NYC Teacher Remains on Books Earning 6-Figures

No wonder New York City (a) is running out of money and (b) has one of the suckiest school systems in the country. Read this from today’s New York Post and weep [h/t Jammie Wearing Fool]:

School creep’s detention haul
By SUSAN EDELMAN and CYNTHIA R. FAGEN
January 31, 2010

A Queens teacher who collects a $100,000 salary for doing nothing spends time in a Department of Education “rubber room” working on his law practice and managing 12 real-estate properties worth an estimated $7.8 million, The Post found.

Alan Rosenfeld hasn’t set foot in a classroom for nearly a decade since he was accused in 2001 of making lewd comments to junior-high girls and “staring at their butts,” yet the department still pays him handsomely for sitting on his own butt seven hours a day.

In 2001, six eighth-graders at IS 347 in Queens accused Rosenfeld, a typing teacher who filled in for an absent dean, of making comments like “You have a sexy body,” asking one whether she had a boyfriend and making others feel uncomfortable with creepy leers.

TEACHERS GONE WILD!: ‘LOVE BOAT’ PROM SCANDAL

Because the Department of Education could not produce all the students as witnesses, he was found guilty in only one case. A girl testified that Rosenfeld stopped at her locker, where she was standing with a friend, and “said I love him because I talk to him so much.”

A DOE hearing officer gave him a slap on the wrist—a week off without pay—for “conduct unbecoming a teacher.” He was cleared to return to teaching.

Instead, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has kept the scruffy 64-year-old in a Brooklyn rubber room, deeming him too dangerous to be near kids, officials said.

The DOE can’t fire him.

“We have to abide by the union contract,” spokeswoman Ann Forte said.

So Rosenfeld simply collects his $100,049 salary—top scale for teachers—plus full health benefits and the promise of a fat pension, about $82,000 a year if he were to retire today.

His pension will grow by $1,700 each year he remains. He could have retired at age 62, but he stays.

He has also accumulated about 435 unused sick days—and will get paid for half of them when he retires.

With city teachers trying to negotiate a 4 percent pay hike, Rosenfeld stands to get the raise.

All this largesse comes as Mayor Bloomberg threatens to cut 2,500 teachers to help close a $4 billion budget gap.

Meanwhile, the multimillionaire Rosenfeld lords over the rubber room, where he is the oldest and most veteran of 100 teachers. …

If this happened in the private sector, this guy would have been fired on the spot. Isn’t it nice that the teacher union allows their members to engage in sexual harrassment of minors without fear of termination or even criminal charges? This slime should thank G0d one of the girls he harrassed wasn’t my daughter.

This guy Alan Rosenfeld is a human parasite. He represents everything that is wrong with this country. He takes advantage of the young and vulnerable, and—because of a fixed system skewed to favor him and not his employer and "customers" (i.e., the students)—his "punishment" is anything but: He makes money off the taxpayer sitting in a taxpayer-funded facility and doing nothing to benefit them. At the same time, he makes money for himself on the side.

End the occupation! Liberals out of the schools now!

Pic of the Day (1/29/10): Bug-Killing Wallpaper!

A Facebook friend posted this 1947 wallpaper ad from Boing Boing: 

 

Ah, the good ol' days. Note the "gay patterns." Golly! Read the comments from the original. There's enough good readin' for the pro- and anti-DDT folks. 

More Jews Blast ADL's Foxman for Limbaugh Anti-Semitism Charge

[Two previous posts here and here]

Two more righty Jewish parties have come to the defense of Rush Limbaugh in response to accusations of anti-Semitism by the ADL’s Abe Foxman.

First and foremost, the Republican Jewish Coalition weighs in. At the RJC blog, Noah Silverman notes that Foxman has turned out to be such a politically correct joke, he’s drawn criticism from other Jewish lefties:

… What’s perplexing is that, though many may not know it, Foxman has been a near-constant target of criticism from those on or around the Jewish hard-left. The “Tikkun Olam” blog ripped him for not joining the attack on Sarah Palin for remarks she made about Israel. He’s been rebuked by the founder of the J Street-linked, pro-Obama Jewish Alliance for Change for challenging the President’s policy of putting “daylight” between America and Israel as a way to win the trust of Arab rulers. He’s even received the ultimate token of low regard from the liberal-left - a critical profile in the New York Times Magazine.

Most of this criticism is so politically correct - and so wrong-headed - that I can’t help feeling the caricature of Foxman as a tool of the liberal establishment is a little unfair. (Morever, some of Mark Steyn’s language defending his friend Rush is obviously over the top.)

Still, Foxman’s conduct here seems outrageous and indefensible on its face.

Next, Sammy at the Yid With Lid blog exposes the ADL as not so much a Jewish organization as a liberal one:

That same Abe Foxman-run ADL never attacked President Obama for appointing Samantha Power to his National Security Team. Power likes to use the anti-Semitic stereotype “Israel Lobby” as a code word for her false impression that Jews control American foreign policy. Nor has Foxman ever complained about the frequent anti-Semitism on the progressive website the Daily Kos. Truth be told, Foxman’s attack on Rush Limbaugh is part of the over-all progressive agenda of Abe’s Anti-Defamation League. To prove the point here is a sample some of the ADL’s position papers supporting the progressive agenda:

Amnesty for illegal immigrants:

• ADL Welcomes Bipartisan Agreement On Immigration Reform
• Senator Kennedy Issues Call For Meaningful Immigration Reform
• L.A. Area Organizations Issue Declaration For Human Rights For Immigrants

Partial Birth Abortion

• ADL Disappointed With Supreme Court Ruling On Partial Birth Abortion Act

Terrorist Fighter Geert Wilders

Use of Holocaust in Health Care Debate. While I agree with the ADL that the use of Holocaust imagery in any political debate is wrong, it’s strange that the ADL bashes it now and was totally silent when the progressives were Calling Bush and Cheney Hitler and/or Nazi’s.

The ADL also trashed the Tea Party Movement. Calling it part of the “New Rage in America”. A quick read of thisWhite Paper show the group has totally abandoned its mission to fight anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, and is using its donated tax-free funds to concentrate on a political agenda, the President’s mission to silence all dissent to his policy.

Tea Parties: At any rally attended by hundreds of thousands of people there are a few wackos. There were some people at the Tea Parties who held signs that were inappropriate and even offensive. These people were few and far between. The overwhelming majority of the people at the rallies were average folks upset at too much government spending and taxation. In the section about Tea Parties, the ADL seeks to minimalize the movement by branding the protesters as people misusing the Holocaust, Nazi imagery or White Supremacists.

Created by Fox News or other conservative outlets? Playing into the “AstroTurf propaganda pushed by the Democrats:

The Tea Party movement is made up of individuals and groups, at the grass-roots level and from established conservative organizations, who plan and attend rallies around the country to express their anger at the government. Some conservative media outlets, such as the FOX News Network, have also played a role in promoting Tea Parties.

The President is a Socialist or even worse. Again the Nazi illusions are wrong. But overall they are refuting the claims with out any facts. The President ran as a socialist in 1996 in Illinois, and his public call for redistributing wealth is a basic tenet of Socialism, he has appointed many self declared Marxists to his administration... what would they call it? When the President abrogated the rights of the primary lenders of Chrysler and GM to give to the Union, the president broke the constitution.

While most people attending Tea Party events claim they harbor no extreme views, many of the ideas they promote fall outside the mainstream, especially the more conspiratorial ones. Angry protesters have frequently made claims ranging from proclaiming Obama’s “socialist” intentions to making explicit Nazi comparisons to suggesting that the President is defying or even subverting the Constitution.

Then they return to the right wing crazy argument. Notice how the describe the “over the top incidents as one lady or one report? That’s because they were few and far between but you wouldn’t know it based on their report.

....During the April 15 protests, signs depicting President Obama as Hitler began to appear as some protesters equated his bailout plan with socialism or Nazism. Some speakers claimed that Obama was intent on taking away civil liberties by destroying the Constitution or the American way of life. According to one report on a rally in Beacon, South Carolina, various speakers talked about “taking back the nation.” A local Republican Party chairwoman at the event described participants as “people standing up for their Constitution…They’re ready to fight for their country. Socialism is being pushed and we don’t want any part of it.” At a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, one womanreportedly even had a sign comparing President Obama to the anti-Christ.

According to the ADL the tea party movement morphed into a conspiracy following, group of crazies.They use the example that a few protesters were “birthers.” They know very well that the “birther” movement is outside the mainstream of the tea party movement and also has been discredited by most conservatives. Maybe they should mention that the POTUS appointed Van Jones, a 9/11 truther. Using the same ADL measuring stick, that would make the entire Obama Administration a bunch of truthers.

At later events, demonization of President Obama became more common and began to morph into more anti-government conspiratorial thinking. On July 4, numerous rallies once more were staged across the country. At one rally in Ventura, California, a common theme again emerged. A man who later posted his video to YouTube said, “We want our America back which is being stolen by Barack Obama.” He later talked about Obama bringing socialism to the country. People also held up signs at the rally asking for Obama’s birth certificate. Obama’s alleged lack of a U.S. birth certificate [See The ‘Birther’ Movement] became another piece of the “proof” that he was a usurper intent on destroying America’s freedom.

Under Abe Foxman, the ADL ignores its noble mission and spends its time and donated funds to support the Progressive Movement in this country. Bashing Rush Limbaugh is just part of that agenda. Perhaps it should spend a little more of its time on its primary mission, stopping REAL anti-Semitism in the world. There are so many of those, but by falsely pinning the label on people who do not deserve it, Abe Foxman and his crew cheapen the effect of the charge when it is made against a real Jew-hater.

The important thing about this is that one reaches the conclusion that the ADL is simply just another left-wing organization that exists to demonize anyone conservative. They’re all about Jews or interests that are liberal.

Just as the NAACP is nothing but an organization that promotes liberalism. Conservatives, even black ones, need not apply. Which is why to this organizations Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice, and other black conservatives are demonized as “Uncle Toms.”

And just as NOW is nothing but an organization that promotes liberalism. Conservatives, even female ones, need not apply. Which is why female consersatives Sarah Palin called “not a real woman.”

Around the Web in 80 Minutes: Obama Post-SOTU Edition (1/28/10)

I can’t believe I actually watched the whole thing. And the Republican rebuttal. The retorts of the rightosphere started almost immediately. Here’s a round-up:

First, to its credit, AP fact checks Obama’s spech and finds ten questionable statements:

FACT CHECK: Obama and a toothless commission
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama told Americans the bipartisan deficit commission he will appoint won’t just be “one of those Washington gimmicks.” Left unspoken in that assurance was the fact that the commission won’t have any teeth.

Obama confronted some tough realities in his State of the Union speech Wednesday night, chief among them that Americans are continuing to lose their health insurance as Congress struggles to pass an overhaul.

Yet some of his ideas for moving ahead skirted the complex political circumstances standing in his way.

A look at some of Obama’s claims and how they compare with the facts:

___

OBAMA: “Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t.”

THE FACTS: The anticipated savings from this proposal would amount to less than 1 percent of the deficit — and that’s if the president can persuade Congress to go along.

Obama is a convert to the cause of broad spending freezes. In the presidential campaign, he criticized Republican opponent John McCain for suggesting one. “The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel,” he said a month before the election. Now, Obama wants domestic spending held steady in most areas where the government can control year-to-year costs. The proposal is similar to McCain’s.

___

OBAMA: “I’ve called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can’t be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline. Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans.”

THE FACTS: Any commission that Obama creates would be a weak substitute for what he really wanted — a commission created by Congress that could force lawmakers to consider unpopular remedies to reduce the debt, including curbing politically sensitive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. That idea crashed in the Senate this week, defeated by equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. Any commission set up by Obama alone would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would stand almost no chance of success.

___

OBAMA: Discussing his health care initiative, he said, “Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan.”

THE FACTS: The Democratic legislation now hanging in limbo on Capitol Hill aims to keep people with employer-sponsored coverage — the majority of Americans under age 65 — in the plans they already have. But Obama can’t guarantee people won’t see higher rates or fewer benefits in their existing plans. Because of elements such as new taxes on insurance companies, insurers could change what they offer or how much it costs. Moreover, Democrats have proposed a series of changes to the Medicare program for people 65 and older that would certainly pinch benefits enjoyed by some seniors. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted cuts for those enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans.

___

OBAMA: The president issued a populist broadside against lobbyists, saying they have “outsized influence” over the government. He said his administration has “excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.” He also said it’s time to “require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress” and “to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office.”

THE FACTS: Obama has limited the hiring of lobbyists for administration jobs, but the ban isn’t absolute; seven waivers from the ban have been granted to White House officials alone. Getting lobbyists to report every contact they make with the federal government would be difficult at best; Congress would have to change the law, and that’s unlikely to happen. And lobbyists already are subject to strict limits on political giving. Just like every other American, they’re limited to giving $2,400 per election to federal candidates, with an overall ceiling of $115,500 every two years.

___

OBAMA: “Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. ... And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.”

THE FACTS: The success of the Obama-pushed economic stimulus that Congress approved early last year has been an ongoing point of contention. In December, the administration reported that recipients of direct assistance from the government created or saved about 650,000 jobs. The number was based on self-reporting by recipients and some of the calculations were shown to be in error.

The Congressional Budget Office has been much more guarded than Obama in characterizing the success of the stimulus plan. In November, it reported that the stimulus increased the number of people employed by between 600,000 and 1.6 million “compared with what those values would have been otherwise.” It said the ranges “reflect the uncertainty of such estimates.” And it added, “It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.”

___

OBAMA: He called for action by the White House and Congress “to do our work openly, and to give our people the government they deserve.”

THE FACTS: Obama skipped past a broken promise from his campaign — to have the negotiations for health care legislation broadcast on C-SPAN “so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.” Instead, Democrats in the White House and Congress have conducted the usual private negotiations, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders behind closed doors. Nor has Obama lived up consistently to his pledge to ensure that legislation is posted online for five days before it’s acted upon.

___

OBAMA: “The United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades.”

THE FACTS: Despite insisting early last year that they would complete the negotiations in time to avoid expiration of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in early December, the U.S. and Russia failed to do so. And while officials say they think a deal on a new treaty is within reach, there has been no breakthrough. A new round of talks is set to start Monday. One important sticking point: disagreement over including missile defense issues in a new accord. If completed, the new deal may arguably be the farthest-reaching arms control treaty since the original 1991 agreement. An interim deal reached in 2002 did not include its own rules on verifying nuclear reductions.

___

OBAMA: Drawing on classified information, he claimed more success than his predecessor at killing terrorists: “And in the last year, hundreds of al-Qaida’s fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed — far more than in 2008.”

THE FACTS: It is an impossible claim to verify. Neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has published enemy body counts, particularly those targeted by armed drones in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The pace of drone attacks has increased dramatically in the last 18 months, according to congressional officials briefed on the secret program.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air takes considers the AP article woefully inexhaustive and adds several of his own fact checks:

AP’s ten whoppers from the SOTU speech

Only ten? Maybe the Associated Press got as tired as everyone else listening to Barack Obama’s lengthy State of the Union speech last night and stopped paying attention after an hour. …

The other whoppers:

• Spending freeze – The AP points out that it will save less than 1% of predicted deficits over the next ten years — and that Obama scoffed at such a plan when John McCain proposed it in 2008.
• Health care – Obama said the Democratic plan would allow people to keep their insurance and their doctors, but the bill doesn’t guarantee either. Their plan has massive cuts to Medicare Advantage, which would definitely affect coverage of a large portion of America’s seniors and disabled.
• Lobbyists – Obama has not “excluded” lobbyists from his administration; he’s hired over a dozen for key posts, and the AP notes seven of those waivers were for White House posts. Obama called for restrictions on lobbyist contributions, but those already exist.
• Two million jobs saved through Porkulus – The CBO puts the theoretical range between 600K and 1.6 million, but also cautions that the methodology of estimating jobs “saved or created” is “uncertain.” The last detailed numbers the White House produced totaled 650,000 — and were found to be highly inaccurate.
• Openness: “Obama skipped past a broken promise from his campaign — to have the negotiations for health care legislation broadcast on C-SPAN “so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.” Instead, Democrats in the White House and Congress have conducted the usual private negotiations, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders behind closed doors. Nor has Obama lived up consistently to his pledge to ensure that legislation is posted online for five days before it’s acted upon.”

The last two are on the rate of killing al-Qaeda leadership and the status on START talks with Russia. In both cases, the AP suspects that Obama overstates his case, but also reports that it’s difficult to measure either. The US has never given body counts on fighting AQ in the Af-Pak theater, mainly because many of the operations are covert, and because enemy body counts fell out of favor with the Vietnam War and have been only reluctantly shared in other conflicts.

Let me add at least one other whopper that the AP doesn’t mention. Obama repeatedly insisted that he inherited massive budgetary problems from George Bush, but the Con Law professor may want to retake his high-school civics class. Congress passes budgets, not the President, and the last three budgets came from Democrats. In three years, they increased annual federal spending by $900 billion, while the admittedly profligate and irresponsible Republican Congresses under George Bush increased annual federal spending by $800 billion — in six years. And during the last three years before taking office as President, Obama served in the Senate that passed those bills, and he voted for every Democratic budget put in front of him.

*     *     *     *     *

January 28, 2010 | Pajamas Media
State of the Union: More Lies, Fewer Facts
By AWR Hawkins

… Early in the speech, Obama broached the subject of his pending “fee on … [big] banks.” While this “fee” is nothing less than a bank tax, Obama disguised it as a way “to pay back the taxpayers who rescued [banks] in their time of need.”

Does this mean that those of us who pay taxes in this country will be getting a refund check in the mail? No. Rather, it means Obama plans to take “$30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid,” as well as the money he’ll get from his new “fee,” and give that money to “community banks” so “small businesses [can get] the credit they need to stay afloat.”

In other words, Obama is going to spread the wealth by taking money from successful banks with whom the wealthy invest, and giving it to small banks and credit unions where the poorer people who bought his “hope and change” mantra hook, line, and sinker, can get a loan, or at least feel like they’re sticking it to the rich folks.

Besides going after banks that are solvent, Obama also pledged to raise taxes on oil companies, the money managers who handle investment accounts, and individuals who make more than $250,000 a year. (To be fair, he didn’t come right out and say he was going to raise taxes; he said he would “not continue tax cuts for oil companies, investment fund managers, and those making over $250,000 a year.”)

Regardless of how it’s worded, these pledges mean higher fuel costs and less return on our investments, as oil companies and fund managers charge more to cover their taxes. This also means taking money from productive Americans so it can be redistributed to the frequently nonproductive Americans who voted for Obama.

And in blatant opposition to the will of the American people, the president again asked the House to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare. He tried to overcome the fact that his plan is unpopular by promising those who elected him that the passage of ObamaCare “would protect every American from the worst practices of the insurance industry.”

Does anybody but me wonder who’s going to protect the insurance industry, and the thousands of people employed in it, from our government?

Of course, Obama had to bring up the insurance industry because he’s always in need of a scapegoat. This is why he continued to point the finger at George W. Bush throughout the speech, accusing him of causing our current economic malaise by “not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and [the] expensive prescription drug program” he signed into law on December 8, 2003.

While only a fool would argue that Bush doesn’t deserve some criticism for spending money like a Democrat while in office, there’s absolutely no way to blame him for the approximately $12 trillion deficit Obama has racked up in just one year’s time. …

*     *     *     *     *

January 28, 2010 | Front Page Mag’s “Newsreal” blog
State of the Union: “Woe to the People Whose Leader Has No Teacher”
by David Horowitz

… Over and over again the President demonstrated a troubling disconnect from reality, striking in the leader of a political democracy, and indicative of a narcissism that appears to be greater than President Clinton’s. “I have never been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight,” he said at the outset of his speech. This in a country with 17 million unemployed, a political majority that is unable to govern, and a national security apparatus that couldn’t identify a terrorist whose own father had turned him in.

In the course of his speech, as Charles Krauthammer observed, the President attacked “Washington” seven times in the name of the people, as though he and his party were not Washington, as though the course he had set for his party and his country was not the source of the people’s rage. Taken as a whole it was an hour-long campaign speech, in which he broke precedent to attack not only the previous Republican Administration and all the Republicans in the chamber but even the Supreme Court justices present as well. And then – as though he had not done that – he scolded the entire assemblage for being politicians instead of non-partisan statesmen, and for running “permanent campaigns.”

But the most disturbing passage of his speech was also the most eloquent, the peroration at the end. In this flourish as throughout his speech there was the world and then there was Obama. In the world “Each time a CEO rewards himself for failure … people’s doubts grow.” But in the mind of Obama, no failure is his. If voters have rejected his plans for the future that is their deficiency not his. “I campaigned on the promise of change … But remember this … I never suggested that change would be easy.” The cowardice and weakness of his own party and the voters who have deserted him are to blame. And they have betrayed not only him but through him the Republic itself. “If people had made that decision 50 years ago, or 100 years ago or 200 years ago we wouldn’t be here tonight. The only reason we are here is because generations of Americans were unafraid to do what was hard; to do what was needed even when success was uncertain.” L’etat c’est moi. …

*     *     *     *     *

January 28, 2010 | New York Post
Obama’s answer for America: more of me
By JONAH GOLDBERG

… There was no “pivot to the center,” no serious accounting for the Massachusetts miracle or his misfortunes. Instead, there was an innumerate, inaccurate and distinctly unpresidential whine -- blaming George W. Bush for nearly all of his problems (leaving out, among other things, that the Democrats have been controlling Congress and crafting budgets since 2006).

The White House insists that the new wave of populism created by Democratic governance is, in fact, the same populist wave that carried Obama to victory in 2008. In other words, Obama was elected president by the backlash against his own presidency.

This novel theory allows Obama to stick to his view that there’s nothing wrong with his health-care plan, and anyone who feels differently hasn’t heard or understood the president’s explanations.

So, he not only implored Democrats not to “run for the hills” on the health-reform bill, but insisted that as “temperatures cool,” hot-tempered opponents will, of course, realize they were wrong about the bill.

Obama began his presidency insisting that government is the answer to our problems. A year later, he still believes that the era of big government is upon us.

In the same speech in which he preened over a gallingly gimmicky “spending freeze,” the president promised more jobs bills, more “investments” in schools, roads, trains and factories. He even reaffirmed his support for his carbon-tax legislation -- which would send far more jobs overseas than it would create here at home.

But Obama has a bigger problem: Aside from a few throwaway lines of self-deprecation, whenever he grew passionate, it was to blame others.

His predecessor topped his list, of course. But also everyone else who disagrees with him.

Obama insists that Americans need to muster the courage to agree with him, to sign on to his agenda. Just as at Omaha Beach and Bull Run, Americans need to show their mettle. “Again, we are tested. And again, we must answer history’s call.” That “call” is the call of Obama.

“I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I can do it alone.” So come on, you slackers, fall into line.

He decried the politicians who are in “permanent campaign” mode -- the same week he brought into the White House his campaign manager. …

And finally, a piece with a more liberal point of view:

January 28, 2010 | Creators
The Sorry State of the Union
Robert Scheer

… There is no doubt that Obama and his party represent the lesser evil, but it is deeply disturbing to have to defend the leaders of our nation in those terms. They were supposed to lead us to peace, but as the cables from the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, printed in The New York Times on Monday, make absolutely clear, the escalation in Afghanistan is tantamount to a disaster without end.

Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general who was previously the top American commander in Afghanistan, warned, “Sending additional forces will delay the day when Afghans will take over, and make it difficult, if not impossible, to bring our people home on a reasonable timetable.”

Obama distracted progressives with a grand crusade for health care reform that reasserted the fundamental fallacy of the previous health reform effort of the Bill Clinton years: Give the insurance companies a captive universal market under the absurd illusion that we can control costs without undermining their greed with a competitive government-run option.

The same is the case with the collapse of the economy, as Obama shamefully continued the George W. Bush administration’s mugging of U.S. taxpayers by throwing trillions of dollars at the Wall Street bandits who caused the financial meltdown. Meanwhile, 7 million Americans have lost their jobs and 15 million families owe more on their homes than they are worth.

Someday our president, whom I still regard as a decent and well-intentioned politician, will have to confront the demons of that fatal opportunism that led him to turn over the economy to the likes of Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, who can most charitably be described as hugely successful Wall Street pimps.

Obama knows of Summers’ devilish role, during his time in the Clinton administration, in pushing the radical deregulation of the markets that the president blamed last week for our economic debacle. And he is aware that the TARP inspector general is hot on Geithner’s heels for his role, as head of the New York Fed, in the funneling of $62 billion dollars through AIG to Goldman Sachs and the other bonus payout alchemists.

But there is no indication from the carefully orchestrated leaks of his State of the Union speech that Obama is truly set to reverse course. Rhetoric about the “fat cat” bankers aside, his policies represent more of the same. There will be some hokey gestures of support for the disappearing middle class, but at the heart of his new budget proposal are cuts in needed domestic spending for education, nutrition, air traffic control and just about every other worthwhile domestic program. But there are no cuts for the military budget that already makes up 60 percent of the federal government’s discretionary spending and is comparable to the total military budget for the rest of the world’s nations combined. …

Have a hopey-changey kind of a day!

Robert Reich Blames 90's Righty Rise on Fox News ... 2 Years Before It Existed

I already thought Robert Reich was a small and despicable man. I had the displeasure of being in the same building with him in 2005. The Union for Reform Judaism (of which I am formerly a member) invited him and Madeline Albright as speakers at their Biennial convention in Houston. (Yes, two liberal former Clinton staffers at one convention; no conservatives/Republicans. Isn’t the Reform movement so open-minded and diverse!)

Yesterday, the good Berkeley professor was caught in a lil’ lie. Frank Ross at Big Journalism has the scoop:

Fact Check: Reich Claims Non-Existent Fox News Led Conservative Charge in 1994

Former Obama economic advisor, Clinton Secretary of Labor, and Berkely Prof. Robert Reich claimed yesterday in his column at Salon.com that Fox News played a role in the conservative resurgence of 1994:

In December 1994, Bill Clinton proposed a so-called middle-class bill of rights including more tax credits for families with children, expanded retirement accounts, and tax-deductible college tuition. Clinton had lost his battle for healthcare reform. Even worse, by that time the Dems had lost the House and Senate. Washington was riding a huge anti-incumbent wave. Right-wing populists were the ascendancy, with Newt Gingrich and Fox News leading the charge. Bill Clinton thought it desperately important to assure Americans he was on their side.

But Prof. Reich overlooked one minor detail: Fox News Channel’s first broadcast wasn’t until October 7, 1996.

Whoops! That’s almost as good as this doozy by Joe Biden during the 2008 presidential campaign:

Declared Biden: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'”

Even the L.A. Times wouldn’t let Biden get away with those anachronistic acrobatics:

What’s wrong with that, some might ask?

Well, for starters Republican Herbert Hoover was president when the stock market crashed in October 1929. Second, Roosevelt didn’t take office until four years later. And, not to be picky, but there were also no televisions in use at the time. Radio was Roosevelt’s favored medium.

(But remember: It’s Sarah Palin who’s the moron.)

Or how about this one from then-candidate Obama:

There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So [my parents] got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born.

Except for one problem, as Michelle Malkin points out:

Obama was born in 1961. The Selma march took place in 1965. His spokesman, Bill Burton, later explained that Obama was “speaking metaphorically about the civil-rights movement as a whole.”

Suuuure he was.

(But remember: It’s George W. Bush who’s the moron/liar/whatever.)

Back to the Reich gaffe:

The plan for FNC wasn’t even outlined until January of 1996, so what could explain such a patently false claim? Is the professor suggesting that even in 1994, Fox News’ imminence did in fact play a role in the political upheaval of that year? Or is this a moment where Fox Derangement Syndrome enters the realm of full-blown paranoia?

Either way, where was Salon on this one to save Reich from himself? And would Prof. Reich tolerate fact-checking this poor from his college students?

That’s OK. I don’t think they believe in fact-checking at Berkeley. (Not big fans of free speech either. Just ask anyone to the right of Hugo Chavez who’s ever been invited to speak there.)

Remember these are the smaaaaaaartest people in the country.

Another Jew Blasts ADL's Foxman for Limbaugh Anti-Semitism Charge

[Click here for earlier post on this topic.]

This morning another Jew blasts ADL director Abe Foxman accusing Rush Limbaugh of anti-Semitism. Rabbi Aryeh Spero, whom I’ve met, argues that Foxman’s for his irresponsible and baseless charge is based in that liberal Jews (of which Foxman is one) are hard-wired simply to despise anything that’s conservative.

ADL Attacks Limbaugh Because Rush Is A Conservative
by Rabbi Aryeh Spero
Posted 01/27/2010

… Those who have listened to Limbaugh know that for over 20 years he has spoken of his highest admiration for the achievements of the Jewish people and has supported Israel and her policies even as many liberal Jews were running away from Israel when her policies did not conform to political correctness. Indeed, Limbaugh has done more to advance support for Israel and make friends for Jewish Americans within the broader American community than has Foxman himself. But Foxman doesn’t care, for, in his mind, what makes someone a friend of the Jewish people is not how well they treat Jews nor their friendship to the Jewish community, rather, and only, if they espouse political liberalism.

For Foxman, as with so many in the Jewish community, what counts is not what you do and how you act but how liberal you are. For them, liberalism equals Jewishness, and if you are against liberalism ipso facto you must be a closet anti-Semite. The pre-dispositional belief that conservatives must be anti-Jewish results in concocting anti-Semitism in the weather report if anchored by a political conservative. Limbaugh is simply the latest in a long line of conservatives friendly to the Jewish people that Foxman has attacked.

Bingo. I’m reminded of the outrage that ensued when in 2007 Ann Coulter was blasted as an anti-Semite for telling host Donny Deutsch that Jews weren’t “perfected” until they converted to Christianity. Jewish conservative Dennis Prager defended her whole-heartedly. [go here for audio and here for an article]

Foxman fears that philo-Jewish, pro-Israel conservatives may end up influencing Jews into re-thinking their position on some of the social issues, and as Mr. Foxman has often warned: “We should not let Christians who support Israel think that in exchange for their support we will support them in their domestic social and cultural agenda.” Thus the need to demonize, as if to say: “How could you possibly share the political and social views of someone who is “borderline anti-Semitic”? In otherwords, those are the views of the “bad” people, not the “good” people.

Compounding the ADL’s hypocrisy is how they proclaim and pride themselves on their political liberalism and, then, go after Limbaugh for agreeing with a caller who said that Jews seem to vote liberal, 78% for Obama. Limbaugh wondered why so many Jews voted for Obama when so many of Obama’s mentors and friends spew anti-Jewishness. Instead of the ADL being concerned about that very question, the organization that is supposed to defend Jews indicts “the extremists who are criticizing the Obama policies.”

Less than two months ago, Foxman and the ADL even attacked the Tea Party movement. One fears that the ADL has detoured from its original mission of protecting Jews into a new calling to advance liberal policies and politicians who are liberal.

The ADL does not speak for all Jews, certainly not the near 30% of the community that harbors conservative beliefs. Indeed, some of our country’s leading conservative thinkers, writers, activists, and policy makers are Jewish, far more than the public realizes. But, they do their conservatism outside of the establishment Jewish organizations. The “Jewish” view the public hears is that which comes out of the Jewish organizations, and, by and large, the establishment Jewish organizations, including the ADL, are liberal and staffed by liberals: conservatives need not apply. Such is, also, the case for the Temples and Synagogues, and the clergy, except for the Orthodox. …

Many Jews in America are secular. To them, the old religion is passé and has been replaced by a new religion: left liberalism. Ironically, the political liberalism that has become their Jewishness is more important than Judaism itself, and Jewish need and survival is pushed aside when it collides with whatever liberalism considers more important. Thus, left wing Jews have become the harshest and quickest critics of Israel , just as left wing Americans blame all of the world’s ills on America first. Liberalism is an ideological illness whose grip and spell negate country, religion, family, and common sense. It is the fiercest of all “faiths”—it carries within it the seeds of national suicide. Feminists, for example, remain silent about the horrific treatment of women in the Moslem world because their liberalism dictates that they do nothing that would concede the notion of an exceptional Judeo-Christian American ethos.

There was nothing shameful about liberalism eighty years ago when Jews in America first identified with political liberalism. Louis Brandeis, Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson were liberals. But liberalism morphed into leftism and Obamaism, and like so many liberals, Jews clung to their Democrat identity and failed to jump off the train leading to their own crash and burn. The Democrat Party is their team, their panache, their side!

Many Jews still feel that their safety lies with being members of a coalition of minorities, even though most of the minority groups that constitute the Democrat coalition are hostile to Jewish interests, and success. Having never been the majority, many look at it as something hostile to them and remain uncomfortable with the sentiments of nationalism and patriotism—conservatism—that worked against them in Europe . Most remain liberal because they don’t yet understand the miracle and sweetness of American nationalism and patriotism and the unique good-will of its people. …

If you have time, read the rest, and by all means submit a comment if you have any thoughts on this issue.

Around the Web in 80 Minutes: Obama Pre-SOTU Edition (1/27/10)

 

January 27, 2010 | American Spectator
Coming Tonight: The Mythic Tale of How Barack Obama Averted the Next Great Depression
By Andrew B. Wilson

If the Obama administration has its way, the “Great Recession” of our own time, like the Great Depression of three quarters of century ago, will be fondly and forever enshrouded in the clouds of politically inspired myth. The administration wants everyone to believe the myth of the averted depression, which is like the jobs saved part of its risible “jobs created or saved” metric, only larger and more breathtaking.

Even though things are bad today, President Obama and key members of his economic team repeatedly suggest that we should be thankful they are not a hundred times worse. No doubt we will hear this again tonight, when the president gives his state-of-the-union address. We will hear how the administration has performed a Herculean feat in pulling the country out of the downward spiral into another great depression.

In one of his 12 labors, Hercules diverted an entire river to cleanse the Augean stables. In the updated version of this ancient myth, Mr. Obama talks about the huge “mess” that he confronted upon coming to office. In his telling, this “mess” was years in the making—the result of a long period of unrestrained “greed and irresponsibility,” caused by excessive deregulation and a mean and uncaring reliance on “trickle-down economics.” …

It is difficult to disprove a negative supposition (e.g. things are bad today, but think how more terrible they might be if the president hadn’t done this or that). There are, however, good reasons for doubting the notion that the Obama administration deserves credit for averting a second great depression.

First, it is simply a fact that most of the critical steps that were taken to stabilize the financial system predated the Obama presidency. That includes the passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and government-encouraged consolidation within the financial sector that eliminated free-standing investment banks. These events happened during Mr. Bush’s term of office. For better or worse, Mr. Obama thought well enough of the Bush administration’s handling of the crisis to retain Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve and to move Tim Geithner, who had been in the thick of Bush’s crisis management team as head of the New York Fed, to the position of Treasury Secretary.

Second, no one—not even such left-leaning economists as Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz—is hailing the administration’s $787 billion stimulus package as a landmark success. It was sold on the basis of being a desperately needed emergency measure that would keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent. That was a line in the sand that did not hold. Instead, unemployment moved to 10 percent, where it remains today.

Third, and finally, it is difficult to believe that this administration could have stumbled across a cure to the dread disease of another great depression when its diagnosis of various elements leading to the financial meltdown of 2008 is so clearly faulty. It critically overlooks government’s role in causing the crisis. As Roger Parloff wrote in Fortune magazine last January, “The fact that lenders were hawking outlandishly risky mortgages to people who were terrible credit risks was, in fact, no secret: It was bipartisan national policy.” …

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January 27, 2010 | American Thinker
Guessing What President Obama Might Say in His State of the Union
By Harold Witkov

… When the president gives his speech, I am going to play “secret word”—or in this case, “secret phrase.” The secret phrase is “back from the brink.” If the president says my secret phrase in his speech, I am going to have myself a laugh and imagine a papier-mâché duck dropping on a string from above and dangling in front of the president’s startled face before the joint session of Congress.

Why “back from the brink”? Truth is, President Obama has already used this phrase on a few occasions, and it irked me every time I heard it. In each instance, he has used the phrase to imply that if it were not for him and the Democrat Congress passing the Recovery Act, we would all be goners—that they personally “pulled this economy back from the brink.” …

If our President chooses to play his clever “we owe the president big time” card, recognize it for exactly what it is: pure fiction. The president never pulled us “back from the brink.” It was by claiming that we were in dire peril that he was able get his failed legislation through. If we were truly on the brink, why were so many earmarks loaded onto the Recovery Act, and why has so much of the money yet to be spent?

If the president says “back from the brink” during his State of the Union, I will be on to his little trick. Besides picturing a descending papier-mâché duck, I will be reminding myself how he and the Democrats have been Pied-Pipering America “to the brink,” and not from it. Then I will thank the voters of Massachusetts for moving us one step safer away from Obama’s bankruptcy death wish for America. …

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January 27, 2010 | Big Government
The Marxist Roots of Obama’s Economic ‘Pivot’
by Joel B. Pollak

President Obama’s advisers assure us that he will use his State of the Union address tonight to deal with our nation’s ailing economy. Americans have already begun to hear talk of a “hard pivot” at the White House, away from health care and towards jobs.

Yet in economic terms, the president’s shift thus far has been more of the same: more government control and less individual freedom.

His attacks on banks—including a new tax that will invariably be passed on to consumers—caused stocks to plummet last week. He has targeted some banks for being “too big,” but without ending the costly policy of “too big to fail,” which removes the discipline of risk and reward. He crowed, “We want our money back,” but wants to use “our” money for his own spending programs, not for tax relief.

The central idea of the President’s new plan appears to be shaping up as a jobs program, in imitation of FDR’s public employment programs during the Great Depression, and funded by

new taxes on Wall Street.

The plan is not about job creation—more jobs could be created by the private sector—nor is it about recouping the bailout. It is primarily about redistribution—and is based on old, bad ideas. Look for two key words likely to appear in the President’s speech: “productive” and “unproductive.” These come from Democrat strategist Robert Creamer, who recently wrote a blog at the Huffington Post entitled: “Tax Bank Bonuses and Capital Gains of Wealthy to Pay for Jobs Program.” Creamer argued that the government should tax the “unproductive financial sector” and “incentivize productive work” instead. ...

The false distinction between so-called “unproductive” and “productive” work has a long and sordid history. It was a cornerstone of Marxist economic theory, and was also a staple of antisemitic rhetoric in Europe. Jews, barred by law from owning land and practicing certain trades, became prominent in finance—“unproductive” work, to their detractors—and were scapegoated during times of economic turmoil. …

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January 27, 2010 | Front Page Mag
The State Of The Union Address Obama Should Give

In a culmination of his controversial first year in office, President Obama will deliver the State of the Union address this evening. Front Page magazine turned to a panel of experts for their advice on the speech that the president should give and the political priorities that he must address in 2010. — The Editors …

David Horowitz: Nowhere Left to Turn …

Peter Collier: A Teachable Moment …

Alan Dowd: The Pride Before the Fall …

James Carafano: Time for Return of the Straight Talk Express …

Ariel Cohen: A Reset on Russia …

Andrew Klavan: Here is my suggested text for the State of the Union in its entirety:

“My fellow citizens of the world. I come before you today to gaze into the middle distance and speak in ringing phrases. For make no mistake: the time for phrases that do not ring is past. Already, in only the first year since I have fulfilled my awesome destiny, I have created millions of jobs—not just ordinary jobs that you have to work at for pay, but jobs beyond your wildest imagination, over the mountain of your deepest desires, and down the hallway of your fondest dreams. I have sent many troops to Afghanistan—many, many troops who are running here and there with serious faces, shouting “Let’s go,” and firing their rifles so that the isolated extremists who have gathered together in great numbers to attack us will know that I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds.

“But there is much still to do. Even as we speak, a child is crying—a little, sad, pitiful child with big eyes, crying enormous tears that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to dry. So let me be very clear: the bridge from yesteryear leads to the cloudbanks of a golden perfection where the prospect of a horizon awaits a mighty century. At this, we must not fail. Thank you—and God bless us, every one.”

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January 26, 2010 | Pajamas Media
The Real State of the Union: Fear
Michael Ledeen

… I do believe that passion [in the Massachusetts special election] played a big role, but a somewhat different one: not anger, but fear. They’re afraid of Obama. Afraid of what he’s doing to them, and therefore prepared to change sides.

This fear is extremely broad-based. It is not limited to social class nor to domestic or foreign policies. Banks are not lending, companies are not hiring, because they are afraid of what Obama will do next. Both are afraid of onerous taxes, including new health care burdens, and the banks fear new regulations and the consequences of the recently declared war on evil bankers by the president. Seniors are afraid they will be deprived of medical treatment. Juniors are afraid they are going to be forced to buy health insurance they don’t think they need. Across the board, Americans are afraid they’re not going to find work, and won’t be able to afford a house. And, as the Massachusetts vote showed, Americans are worried about threats from abroad, worried about Iran, afraid of terrorist attacks, and afraid the Obama Administration doesn’t take all this seriously enough. As Scott Brown put it, most Americans think our tax dollars should go to fighting terrorists, not to pay lawyers to defend terrorists.

Machiavelli once asked whether it was better for a ruler to be loved or feared. He said that it would be best to be both, and that either one could work all by itself. But if you must choose, he said, fear is better, since love is fragile, while “fear of punishment works every time.” …

He doesn’t instill fear of punishment. It’s his policies and his weakness that frighten us. The man himself risks inspiring contempt. Which, as Machiavelli says, is the most dangerous thing that can befall any leader.

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January 27, 2010 | Pajamas Media
Obama’s State of ‘The One’ Speech Preview
Rich Baehr

No president has ever been more desirous of a large prime-time audience than Barack Obama, and the president will get his biggest audience since his inauguration with his first State of the Union address tonight. These speeches are almost always too long and boring, not even counting the dozens of standing ovation interruptions that will be led by Speaker Nancy Pelsoi and Vice President Joe Biden.

… If there is any mystery in the president’s remarks, it is what he will say about the health care reform effort. It appears that the president and Democratic leaders in Congress are unwilling to throw in the towel and seek a smaller and more bipartisan bill. In short, they have come too far to allow their failure to pass a bill even with complete control of both houses of Congress to be acknowledged. Instead, they will attempt one more time to jam this unpopular bill through by having the Senate version of the bill passed by the House and sent directly to the president, with a second bill containing fixes to the Senate bill passed via the reconciliation process in both houses. This would require only 51 votes in the Senate (no GOP filibuster possible).

Americans by a large majority hate the process that accompanied the health care reform effort: the bribes, the closed sessions, the payoffs to major lobbying groups (the latest a $60 billion deal for the unions), and the complexity (the unread 2,000-page bills). They want the effort killed. The health care reform effort in substance was a major redistribution effort — getting seniors and wealthy Americans to subsidize health care for lower income Americans without insurance. Since the 85% of Americans with insurance would not benefit from this, and some would now be asked to pay for the expansion of coverage of others, the bill could not be successfully sold for what it was — namely, a giant redistribution program.

Instead, the bill was sold as a way to protect Americans against sinister greedy insurance companies. The other selling point was that only with this reform effort would health care costs begin to come down. Most Americans had little trust that spending hundreds of billions more each year would bring their health care costs down ($2.5 trillion would be spent in the first ten years after the program was fully in place). It is hard to see a way for the president to successfully resell to the public the mishmash in the Senate bill with some new special interest fixes. But if the president believes in anything other than himself, it is in redistribution. …

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Wednesday, January 27 |Red State
Things are so bad there is a betting pool on which DEMOCRAT screams ‘You Lie!’ tonight.
Erick Erickson

… Said one well connected Democrat last night, “Things are so bad there is a betting pool on which DEMOCRAT screams ‘You Lie!’ tomorrow night.” Well, tomorrow night is now arrived.

This past week, Americans have been treated to two very awkward scenes — Barack Obama speaking to a group of elementary school students with his teleprompter and Barack Obama speaking to his middle class task force with a teleprompter.

The man is extremely scripted. The visuals subject Obama to appropriate ridicule (school kids + teleprompter. Really?!?), but the script he is using is the true punchline for jokes.

For the past year, Barack Obama has called everything he does “unprecedented” and “historic.” His favorite four letter word is “Bush”. A day does not go by without someone in the administration blaming George Bush for all their ills. Counter-intuitively, the Democrats even blamed George Bush for Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.

Tonight, it will be interesting to see how often he blames George Bush and how often he resorts to stale cliches the public is no longer buying. Obama, his teleprompter, and the rhetoric they deploy have become the butt of late night jokes. When Barack Obama loses Jon Stewart [see below], he is in real trouble. …

Saddam's Cousin "Chemical Ali" Executed. Thank You, George W. Bush

The world became a more just place yesterday, as Saddam Hussein’s cousin “Chemical Ali” was hanged in Iraq. Ali Hassan al-Majid was found guilty of ordering the poison gas attack that killed over 5000 Kurds in 1988.

Saddam’s Notorious Cousin, ‘Chemical Ali,’ Executed
Monday, January 25, 2010

BAGHDAD — A notorious cousin of Saddam Hussein has been executed, about a week after receiving his fourth death sentence for crimes against humanity.

Iraq says the man known as "Chemical Ali" was hanged today for ordering the 1988 poison gas attack that killed more than 5,000 Kurds.

The chemical air raid is thought to be the worst single attack of its kind against civilians.

The general, whose name was Ali Hassan al-Majid, was one of the most brutal members of Saddam’s inner circle. He led sweeping military campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s that claimed tens of thousands of lives.

His attacks against rebellious Kurds wiped out entire villages. He also led bloody crackdowns on Shiites in southern Iraq, including the suppression of a 1991 uprising which also involved the use of poisonous gas.

He also ordered the deaths of several relatives.

He was one of the last high-profile members of the former Sunni-led regime still on trial in Iraq.

Here is a video clip of the background of Chemical Ali, right up to yesterday’s execution [h/t Freedom’s Lighthouse]:

Incidentally, a cursory news search on Chemical Ali’s execution reveals no mention of George W. Bush, without whom his capture, sentencing, and execution wouldn’t have taken place. You think President Hope&Change will bring up the execution? No, for two reasons: (1) It would make George W. Bush look good, and every explanation Obama has for his own destructive incompetence is to blame Bush, (2) According to Obama, there is no war going on, so to mention Chemical Ali’s hanging would be to engage in cognitive dissonance.

Liberal Media Bias: AP News Story Uses Vulgar "Tea Bagger"

It’s bad enough when lefty blowhards like Rachel Maddow or Anderson Cooper refer to the Tea Party movement as “tea baggers.” But it seems that the oh-so-objective Associated Press has been implementing the vulgar epithet as well. Fellow “Rite Jew” Meryl Yourish takes them to task (see original for various source links):

AP trying to mainstream “teabagger”

The Associated Press is proud of its reputation. When you go to the AP website, this sentence starts the second paragraph in the “About us” page:

AP’s mission is to be the essential global news network, providing distinctive news services of the highest quality, reliability and objectivity with reports that are accurate, balanced and informed.

And yet, in today’s news analysis about the Democrats bad week, Charles Babington wrote, and his editor let stand, this insult to the Tea Party movement that has swept America:

Also, it’s not clear that Republicans can tame and harness the volatile “tea bagger” activists. The fiercely independent conservatives helped Brown win in Massachusetts, but they triggered a damaging right-wing split in a special House race in New York last year.

The fact that they put the epithet in quotes indicates that they know full well that “teabagger” is a vulgar term.I never knew it existed before the so-called objective media types (we mean you, Anderson Cooper) were calling Tea Party activists “teabaggers.” It is a deliberate insult. It is not the way an objective news organization should describe the millions of Americans from all walks of life who attended rallies and town halls to protest the expansion of government by this administration and congress.

The AP owes the Tea Party movement a retraction and an apology. And I really think that the people who don’t like the Tea Partiers (see, that wasn’t too hard to call them, was it?) should stop mainstreaming “teabagger.” It’s childish and reflects more poorly on those that use the word rather than on those they are insulting.

Act like an objective news organization, AP. Don’t mainstream “teabagger.”

Update: Looks like the editors replaced “tea bagger” with “tea party.” No correction out there that I can see, just an updated story across the wires.

That is a satisfying update. But it was probably a fluke; we’ll keep an eye on future AP stories. Unfortunately, acting childish is what the Left does best—especially the mainstream media.

The ADL Despicably Accuses Rush Limbaugh of Anti-Semitism

L’shon ha-ra (“evil tongue”)—malicious gossip

I would have written about this story sooner, but only learned about it after managing to catch up with my Rush podcasts today.

Late last week Rush Limbaugh was accused of anti-Semitism by the ADL and subsequently defended by two Jewish conservatives. The story begins last Wednesday (Jan. 20), when Rush was talking about Norman Podhoretz’s new book Why Are Jews Liberal? Like Podhoretz, a right-leaning Jew, Rush was wondering why Jews still overwhelmingly vote Democrat when their policies are so contrary to their values (a premise with which I, also a right-leaning Jew, also believe to be valid). Rush also wondered whether Jewish Americans, 78% of whom voted for Obama, were especially experiencing buyer’s remorse, considering demonstrable evidence that the man and his closest connections are virulently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.

Then Rush made this observation about Obama and his administration’s demonization of the banks. (Certain words are highlighted that will have significance later in this post):

Look, folks, there are a lot of people who when you say “banker,” people think “Jewish.” People who have prejudice is the best way to put it. They have a little prejudice about them. So for some people, “banker” is code word for “Jewish,” and guess who Obama’s assaulting? He’s assaulting bankers. He’s assaulting money people, and a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there’s starting to be some buyer’s remorse there. Anyway, if you have often asked that question — if you’ve been puzzled by so many Jewish people voting liberal, voting Democrat — give Norman’s book a shout.

Sounds like the words of a raving Jew-hater, huh? Not quite. On the contrary, when I heard this, I thought Rush made a completely valid point: Obama’s been going after the bankers, and a lot of bankers are Jewish. He’s also been attacking the health care industry, including doctors, and lots of physicians are Jews. You would think if so many Jewish Americans are having their professions attacked and their livelihood threathened by the very man they voted for, you’d expect some buyer’s remorse! That was the point of Rush’s monologue; that’s how I took it and I can’t even imagine how anyone could interpret it otherwise. In fact, if I heard this show live—It was about two days after when I finally listened to the podcast—I would have called into the show to talk about the frustrations of Jewish conservatives such as myself.

But someone did interpret this as something else. Abe Foxman at the Anti-Defamation League accused Rush of anti-Semitism!

ADL: Rush Limbaugh Reaches New Low With 'Borderline Anti-Semitic' Remarks About Jews

New York, NY, January 21, 2010 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said Rush Limbaugh reached a new low with “borderline anti-Semitic comments” on his radio show, in which he raised the possibility that liberal Jews were having “buyer’s remorse” with President Obama in light of the outcome of the Senate election in Massachusetts.

Limbaugh told his listeners: “To some people, banker is a code word for Jewish; and guess who Obama is assaulting? He’s assaulting bankers. He’s assaulting money people. And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there’s – if there’s starting to be some buyer’s remorse there.”

Did you notice what the ADL did here? They omitted the first three sentences of Rush’s full quote (which I provide above) to make it look like he himself was making the bankers=Jews smear.

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:

Rush Limbaugh reached a new low with his borderline anti-Semitic comments about Jews as bankers, their supposed influence on Wall Street, and how they vote.

Limbaugh’s references to Jews and money in a discussion of Massachusetts politics were offensive and inappropriate. While the age-old stereotype about Jews and money has a long and sordid history, it also remains one of the main pillars of anti-Semitism and is widely accepted by many Americans. His notion that Jews vote based on their religion, rather than on their interests as Americans, plays into the hands of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.

When he comes to understand why his words were so offensive and unacceptable, Limbaugh should apologize.

How in G0d’s name could Foxman have interpreted any of Rush’s comments as anti-Semitic? If anything, he was defending Jewish Americans against Obama and against genuine anti-Semites who make hateful smears against Jews by calling them “bankers” or “money-changers.” It is a typical meme among the anti-Semitic that Jews run the country/world by controlling the banks. Anybody who has listened to Rush Limbaugh as regularly as I do will know that he never expressed such views as his own. Yet somehow, Foxman takes words that Rush as distinctly attributing to other people and makes them his own. That is low, and it is slanderous.

Immediately following Foxman’s statement, two Jewish conservatives leapt to Rush’s defense: Norman Podhoretz himself and columnist Michael Ledeen:

Statement by Norman Podhoretz about the ADL and Rush Limbaugh

In my new book, “Why Are Jews Liberals?”, I argue that it no longer makes any sense for so many of my fellow Jews to go on aligning themselves with the forces of the Left. I also try to show that our interests and our ideals, both as Americans and as Jews, have come in recent decades to be better served by the forces of the Right. In the course of describing and agreeing with the book the other day, Rush Limbaugh cited a few of the numerous reasons for the widespread puzzlement over the persistence of liberalism within the American Jewish community. And while discussing those reasons, he pointed to the undeniable fact that for “a lot of people”—prejudiced people, as he called them twice—the words “banker” and “Wall Street” are code words for “Jewish.” Was it possible, he wondered, that Obama’s attacks on bankers and Wall Street were triggering a certain amount of buyer’s remorse within the American Jewish community, which gave him 78% of its vote? Finally, taking off from my observation that many Jewish liberals like to call themselves independents, he wondered whether a fair number of the self-described independents who deserted Obama and voted for Scott Brown might actually have been Jewish liberals. If so, he concluded, Brown’s “victory could be even more indicative of an even bigger change in the political temper of the country than has so far been recognized.” For this, Rush Limbaugh has been subjected to a vile attack by Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Of course, Mr. Foxman has a long history of seeing an anti-Semite under every conservative bed while blinding himself to the blatant fact that anti-Semitism has largely been banished from the Right in the past forty years, and that it has found a hospitable new home on the Left, especially where Israel is concerned. This makes Foxman a perfect embodiment of the phenomenon I analyze in “Why Are Jews Liberals?” Now Foxman has the chutzpah to denounce Rush Limbaugh as an anti-Semite and to demand an apology from him to boot. Well, if an apology is owed here, it is the national director of the Anti-Defamation League who should apologize for the defamatory accusation of anti-Semitism that he himself has hurled against so loyal a friend of Israel as Rush Limbaugh.

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Friday, January 22, 2010 | The Corner, NRO
Rush and the ADL
Michael Ledeen

Norman Podhoretz quite properly takes Anti-Defamation League czar Abe Foxman to task for insinuating that Rush is somehow a Jew-hater for wondering if Jewish voters are having buyer’s remorse regarding Obama. They certainly should, both because of Obama’s striking nastiness to Israel and of his attacks on “greedy bankers” (which Rush mentioned), free broadcasting, and of course the crusade against American medicine, all enterprises in which Jews have long flourished. Rush should be a hero to Foxman and American Jews, but they are so blindly partisan that they can no longer distinguish between their friends and their enemies. Foxman has relentlessly attacked American Evangelicals — arguably the most pro-Jewish and pro-Israel people in America — but conveniently disappears when the government goes after real Jews for presumed “dual loyalty.” Which, one might say, is the core principle of the ADL. Foxman wants Rush to apologize. Nuts. I want Foxman retired and replaced by somebody who fights for Jews and our friends.

On Friday’s show, Rush mentioned Foxman’s statement and Podhoretz’s and Ledeen’s responses. He first requested that if any listener knew how to contact Foxman, that they should tell him to put on Rush’s show in the next few minutes. Then, after a commercial break, he said:

Now, anybody who listens to this program even marginally knows that this program is and has consistently been one of the most outspoken supporters of the Jewish people and of Israel in particular. And Mr. Foxman knows this as well. What I suspect is the usual thing that happened. Somebody took a few words that I said in a pretty long monologue, cut them up, and published them in a way to make it appear I said something that I didn’t say, and rather than check it out... And by now I would think anybody in the mainstream media or in any mainstream American endeavor, after 20 years of these types of attacks — me being taken out of context and every one of them being shown to be wrong, every one of these attacks being shown to be fallacious — I would think that by now some people would realize what’s going on. But I don’t think that they do. I think they want these attacks to be real. I think they want the out-of-context quotes to be real. It’s just like during this NFL controversy, when there were purely fabricated quotes of me that were plastered all over the American media: newspapers, websites, television. …

Mr. Foxman, if you really want to go after anti-Semitism you should first start looking at it on the left and within the Obama administration and within his circle of friends, because that’s why you’re going to find it. You’re not going to find anti-Semitism on this radio show. You’re going to find nothing but love and respect and admiration for the Jewish people and an unwavering support for Israel that has not ever shaken. I was referring to the Jew haters, the bigots. Twice I referred to “prejudiced people.” …

That’s what the Democrat Party has become: A coalition of all these disparate groups — the civil rights coalitions, the animal rights groups, feminism, the Hollywood left, all this stuff — and they all have one mission, and that is they hate conservatives and Republicans and they love government, and they have big problems with capitalism. So they’re all united in trying to destroy capitalism — or limit it, or blame it — and make America more like a Western European, socialist democracy. Anyway, thanks to Mr. Podhoretz for his reply, also to Michael Ledeen. But Mr. Foxman, not only am I not going to apologize, I’m going to say you should be embarrassed and next time call me if you think I’ve said something anti-Semitic or call somebody that knows me and find out what I actually said rather than trusting your friends on the left to accurately report what I said. I was in the midst of promoting, because I think it was worthwhile, the work of a celebrated and brilliant American Jew: Norman Podhoretz, and you refer to me as “borderline anti-Semitic.” That doesn’t compute, Mr. Foxman.

What a crying shame it is that Rush even has to waste time on his show rehashing these events and defend/clarify himself. 

Now, all this transpired between last Wednesday and Friday, but I didn’t even hear about it until today (Monday) while catching up with Rush’s podcasts. The weekend turned out to be so busy I didn’t even catch wind of the story on-line. Had I been listening to either Wednesday’s or Friday’s show live, I would have definitely called in to agree with Rush’s original point, and to lend my voice to his defense against this disingenuous accusation of anti-Semitism.

So far, Foxman has not responded to Rush’s counterargument, and he probably won’t. Like Ledeen says, he looks for anti-Semitism underneath every rock and therefore waters down the notion anti-Semitism so much that one no longer is able to distinguish imagined instances of bigotry with authentic ones. And who suffers mostly from that grave mistake? Jews.

To add insult to injury, left-wing sites are siding with Abe Foxman, apparently not even concerned with Rush’s actual statements and intentions. This is what the Left does: Jump on every tiny phrase and take it out of context to fit their preconceived notion that Rush Limbaugh is a racist, sexist, anti-Semitic homophobe. At the lefty Talking Points Memo blog, a very uninformed contributor named M.J. Rosenberg writes:

Podhoretz: Limbaugh Can't Be An Anti-Semite, He's Pro-Israel
By M.J. Rosenberg - January 22, 2010, 8:18PM

Well, at least there is some good news this week.

Rush Limbaugh is clearly stung by the accusations that he is an anti-semite. This is after he employed the old National Socialist canard that Jews and bankers are one and the same.

I have no doubt that racist Rush is a Jew hater. Racists of the Limbaugh stripe invariably despise Jews. But Rush surely could care less what liberals like me think.

He does care what Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League thinks and when he calls Rush an anti-semite, Rush gets worried.

He is so worried that he apparently called on the founder of neoconservativism, the father of John Podhoretz and father-in-law of Elliot Abrams to defend him against the liberal Jews. …

And this is what my liberal friends consider a reliable and intelligent news analysis site. Is there anything in this excerpt that has a morsel of truth in it? Hardly. First, Rush did not employ “the old National Socialist canard that Jews and bankers are one and the same.”; he was criticizing other, bigoted people who use it.

Second, of course Rosenberg has “no doubt that racist Rush is a Jew hater.” Rosenberg has presumably never listened to Rush before; like so many others who dislike him or have slandered him in the public arena get their offensive “sound bites” after they have been filtered through unreliable sources who have doctored, cherry-picked, or completely fabricated them. It’s called l’shon ha-ra (“evil tongue”)—malicious gossip.

Third, how the heck does this Rosenberg know that Rush called Norman Podhoretz and asked him to defend him? He doesn’t, nor is there any indication of it. So not only does Rosenberg slander Rush in this diatribe, but Podhoretz as well.

Finally, Rosenberg rejects Podhoretz’s defense as legitimate by focusing on only one of his arguments, namely that Rush is a staunch friend of Israel. That, of course, was not the sole argument made by Podhoretz, but by manipulating it to appear that way, Rosenberg artificially turns Podhoretz’s defense into a house of cards. Shameful.

At a Jewish e-zine called Tablet, some genius named Marc Tracy (presumably also Jewish?) presents this shallow analysis:

Podhoretz Defends Limbaugh from ADL Accusation
It’s an anti-Semitism round robin!

... So, to recap:

Limbaugh to Obama: You’re an anti-Semite!

Foxman to Limbaugh: No, you’re the anti-Semite!

Podhoretz to Foxman: No, the anti-Semites are on the left! Besides, Limbaugh likes Israel, which means he cannot possibly be an anti-Semite!

This has been productive!

One thing that has not been productive is the time spent reading Tracy’s unenlightened “analysis” of the issue.

This is yet another disgusting and fallacious smear of one of the Left’s most threatening enemies. And, from my standpoint, I find it even more disgusting when it’s carried out by fellow Jews. There is real anti-Semitism out there, and a lot of it—nay, most of it—occurs on the Left, including some of Barack Obama’s closest connections. 

Where is Abe Foxman and the ADL with them?

Things Do Happen in Three's!

On Wednesday, a Facebook friend wrote me:

First the NY Jets got into the AFC Championships and then Scott Brown won “Ted Kennedy’s” seat. What could possibly happen next?

His question was answered the very next day:

Air America Goes Off the Air
Air America Radio is shutting down its operations after company files for bankruptcy.

Awwwwwwww.

Actually, a fourth thing happened Thursday and that was the SCOTUS decision to roll back major sections of McCain-Feingold, primarily the First-Amendment-violating limits on campaign spending.

Pic of the Day (1/24/10): Have You Met Scott Brown's Daughters? (They're Available)

The Huffington Post is all breathless from this photo of newly-elected Scott Brown with his college-aged daughters. The girls are wearing bikinis that are, well ... I'd probably prefer my own daughter not wear, but ...

 

Aha! So that's how it is in their family!

To the Huffing-Puffs and other lefties, this is supposed to be career-busting. Since when did they become so prudish? If Brown were a Democrat, they'd cheer him and his girls on for this picture. Might even have made the cover of Newsweek.

Related reading:
Malkin "The Palinization of the Brown Family"
Sister Toldja "Desparate Smear Attacks on Brown Family Continue"

Pic of the Day (1/22/10): Happy 37th Anniversary, Roe v. Wade

From Freedom Eden:

  

 (Feet of a 10-week-old fetus choice constitutionally protected medical procedure)

A Tearful Farewell to Jon Corzine ...

Thanks IHateTheMedia:

Corzine's name is scraped off of the governors office

Sensible Liberal: Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart is no fan of conservatives/Republicans. But yesterday he had a little to say to Keith Olbermann following his immature rant and ad hominem attacks against Scott Brown [h/t RealClearPolitics]: Click here for the video.

On his impression of him, Olbermann gave Stewart a B-.

Liberal Lie #16: Less Guns, Less Crime! - D.C. Murder Rate Down 25% After Gun Ban Lifted

I don’t write much about guns and gun control. I’m pro-Second Amendment because I believe in the wisdom of the Constitution. I don’t own any myself, nor care to. My cousins once took me along to their local shooting range, and while I appreciated having that experience, it was all I really needed with guns. Just not my cup of tea. 

But, as a conservative (i.e., classical liberal) and not a liberal (i.e. statist/authoritarian), I would never support the government’s suppression of my fellow citizens’ gun rights.

As far as gun control laws go, when I was politically-dormant young skull full of mush, I was for them. Less guns, less crime, right? Until relatively recently, I was of the same mindset as those who had marched in the “Million Mom March” for harsher gun control laws, and those who applauded Britain for its gun ban—which even applied to their law enforcement officers! 

Then, shortly after 9/11, I woke up. The first thing I ever read arguing why gun control actually creates more violent crime was a chapter in Larry Elder’s amazing book, The Ten Things You Can’t Say in America. Why is this so? Because criminals aren’t going to stop using guns if the government bans them. If they’re perfectly willing to break the law by robbing, murdering, etc., why the heck would they obey any other law? Only law-abiding citizens are going to dutifully give up their guns. The result: Only bad guys have guns, and crime goes up because they know their victims are unarmed; the compaaassionate and caaaring government is the one who unarmed them! If a criminal thinks his potential victim might be armed, and that they know perfectly well how to use it, s/he will probably think twice about committing that crime. Such simple common sense that only a liberal/Democrat couldn’t get it.

Now I simply shake my head at these hypocrites who call themselves liberals but proudly support the government’s overt violation of the Second Amendment. 

There are a number of complete books supporting gun rights, including The Seven Myths of Gun Control by Richard Poe and two by John Lott, Jr.: More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns.

Read any of these books and one reaches the conclusion that—to quote a certain inconvenient demagogue—the science is settled and the debate is over: More gun rights do mean less crime. Yet to this day, liberals—who call themselves members of the “reality-based community” cling to their non-realistic ideology-influenced point of faith.

Take Washington D.C. It’s had among the strictest handgun bans in the country since the 1970’s yet had one of the nation’s highest violent crime rates. Then the Supreme Court declared the gun ban law unconstitutional in 2008, to the expected objections of the usual liberal/Democrat suspects:

I am personally deeply disappointed and quite frankly outraged by today's decision. Today's decision flies in the face of laws that have helped decrease gun violence in the District of Columbia. — Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty

On the same day a new report demonstrated a sharp rise in violent crime, a federal court handed down a decision that could pour even more guns onto the streets of our nation's capital. This decision is a major setback in the effort to make communities safer. — One of my two humiliating Senators, Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)

Apparently, Lautenberg never wonders why this rise in violent crime despite strict handgun bans in several major U.S. cities across the country. The belief is that gun bans are supposed to reduce crime, yet they haven’t!

I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of [the SCOTUS decision]. — Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (D-CA)

[The SCOTUS decision is] a very frightening decision. — Chicago Mayor Richard Daley

Ironically, on this very day Daley joined a coalition of mayors, including Newsom of San Francisco and Nutter of Philadelphia, in Washington to urge the Supreme Court to uphold the gun bans currently enforced in their (extremely crime-ridden) cities.

But, like D.C., Chicago has not experienced a drop in gun crime since its 1980’s gun ban; on the contrary, it’s only increased, as an editorial in today’s Washington Times reports:

Immediately after Chicago banned handguns in 1982, the murder rate, which had been falling almost continually for a decade, started to rise. Chicago’s murder rate rose relative to other large cities as well. The phenomenon of higher murder rates after gun bans are passed is not just limited to the United States. Every single time a country has passed a gun ban, its murder rate soared.

So, like Frank Lautenberg, Chicago’s Mayor Daley’s view of gun laws and their effectiveness is 180 degrees out of phase from reality.

 

So, how has the 2008 lifting of the ban worked for Washington, D.C.? Are all the dire predictions of unfettered violent crime by the anti-gun leftocracy borne out? Not according to today’s aforementioned Washington Times article:

January 21, 2010
EDITORIAL: Guns decrease murder rates
In Washington, the best defense is self-defense

More guns in law-abiding hands mean less crime. The District of Columbia proves the point.

Reading most press accounts, one would be forgiven for thinking Armageddon had arrived after the Supreme Court struck down the District’s handgun ban in 2008. Predictions sprung forth from all directions that allowing more citizens to own guns and not forcing them to keep them locked up was going to threaten public safety. According to D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, more guns in homes would cause more violent crime.

Few who lived in Washington during the 1970s can forget the upswing in crime that started right after the ban was originally passed. In the five years before the 1977 ban, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 murders per 100,000. In the five years after the gun ban went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. One fact is particularly hard to ignore: D.C.’s murder rate fluctuated after 1976 but only once fell below what it was in 1976 before the ban. That aberration happened years later, in 1985.

… Between 2008 and 2009, the FBI’s preliminary numbers indicate that murders fell nationally by 10 percent and by about 8 percent in cities that have between 500,000 and 999,999 people. Washington’s population is about 590,000. During that same period of time, murders in the District fell by an astounding 25 percent, dropping from 186 to 140. The city only started allowing its citizens to own handguns for defense again in late 2008.

How could this be!? How could so many intelligent and compaaaaaassionate liberal/Democrats who are always for the “little guy” be so wrong? John Hawkins at Right Wing News explains it straightforwardly:

The results you just read aren’t the least bit shocking to anyone with an iota of common sense. All gun control laws do is take firearms out of the hands of people who obey the law. Criminals, who by definition don’t care about gun control laws, are aware of this and act accordingly. However, when law abiding Americans are allowed to exercise their constitutional right to own a firearm, it reduces crime because most criminals want helpless victims, not people who can put a hole between their eyes. This is evidence so clear that even a liberal should be able to see it.

I highly doubt that even if Daley, Newsom, Nutter, or Feinstein did get this data, it would do nothing to change their mind on the issue. To be a liberal/Democrat is to be a creature of ideology, a practitioner of blind faith. We’ve seen them act this way in their approach to economic issues like taxation, minimum wage laws, etc.; fighting radical Islamic terror; and man-made global warming climate change.

When it comes to applying real solutions to any of these issues, hard facts, unadulterated data, and just plain ol’ common sense are the last things they seem to utilize.

P.S. Wanna see how hypocritical liberals can be? Just look at Hollywood. Outspoken gun control advocate Rosie O'Donnell admitted in 2000 that her child received special permission to be accompanied at school by an armed bodyguard. And in 2003 the agitating and annoying Sean Penn was caught with a loaded 9mm Glock handgun and unloaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson. Ahh, so nice being a liberal (especially a Hollywood liberal). One set of rules for you, one for eeeeeveryone else. Apparently they do think people should have guns, as long as they get to decide which people.

Smackdown: Rove Schools Axelrod on Spending in WSJ

I’m so glad Mr. Rove takes on this issue. From today’s Wall Street Journal:

Obama Versus Bush on Spending
January 21, 2010

… [T]he administration is now busy scrambling to find a way to dodge responsibility for its own reckless fiscal record. That much was on display recently when David Axelrod, a political strategist for the president, penned an opinion piece in the Washington Post that took aim directly at me.

Mr. Axelrod wrote that no one is entitled to his own facts, even as he argued that George W. Bush is responsible for Barack Obama's deficits. He argued that Mr. Bush forced the hand of this administration by leaving office in the midst of a sharp recession.

That argument won't fly for two reasons. First, at some point this administration has to take responsibility for itself. It's also not even close to accurate. Consider that from Jan. 20, 2001, to Jan. 20, 2009, the debt held by the public grew $3 trillion under Mr. Bush—to $6.3 trillion from $3.3 trillion at a time when the national economy grew as well.

By comparison, from the day Mr. Obama took office last year to the end of the current fiscal year, according to the Office of Management and Budget, the debt held by the public will grow by $3.3 trillion. In 20 months, Mr. Obama will add as much debt as Mr. Bush ran up in eight years.

Mr. Obama's spending plan approved by Congress last February calls for doubling the national debt in five years and nearly tripling it in 10.

Mr. Bush's deficits ran an average of 3.2% of GDP, slightly above the post World War II average of 2.7%. Mr. Obama's plan calls for deficits that will average 4.2% over the next decade.

Team Obama has been on history's biggest spending spree, which has included a $787 billion stimulus, a $30 billion expansion of a child health-care program, and a $410 billion federal spending bill that increased nondefense discretionary spending 10% for the last half of fiscal year 2009. Mr. Obama also hiked nondefense discretionary spending another 12% for fiscal year 2010.

Mr. Bush did move to give voters more control over their tax dollars. Both his Social Security reform ideas and the drug program he created offered templates for driving federal spending curves in the right direction, counter to what Democrats wanted to do.

Democrats, for example, proposed creating a prescription drug program as an alternative to the one Mr. Bush proposed that would have cost a projected $800 billion over 10 years. The Bush drug benefit was originally expected to cost half that amount and today costs a third less than what it was initially expected to cost because it uses market forces to drive prices down.

Mr. Axelrod claims the pork-laden stimulus package has been a success. But Mr. Obama told Americans that if it were passed, unemployment wouldn't rise above 8%. It is now 10%. The president also said it would create 3.7 million jobs, 90% of which would be in the private sector. By Mr. Obama's standards, the stimulus failed miserably.

Mr. Bush did sign the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) into law and loaned $240 billion to banks. But those loans are being returned at a profit to the Treasury. Rather than using those funds to pay down the deficit, Mr. Obama wants to use them for new spending. What's more, he has lavished some $320 billion from TARP on car companies, union allies, and pet causes that will never be fully returned.

Mr. Axelrod boasts Mr. Obama's proposed health reforms will "not add to the federal deficit." But if that turns out to be true, it will only be because Massachusetts voters just elected a senator who promises to vote against those reforms.

In going after Mr. Bush's fiscal record, Mr. Axelrod unwittingly revealed why Democrats are losing. Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats have made a mess of the nation's finances and are desperate to pin the blame on someone else. It's not likely to work.

Even in deep blue Massachusetts, voters aren't standing idly by while the administration puts the nation on a dangerous trajectory. When Democrats lose a state they carried by 26 points a little more than a year ago, very little is safe for Mr. Obama's party this fall. ...

Thank you for setting the record straight, Mr. Rove. Some omitted points I would have liked to see is that every economic decision made by Bush was approved of wholeheartedly by then-Senator Obama, especially TARP. Axelrod, and especially Obama himself, are extremely hypocritical to point fingers at deficits left by Bush when Obama supported them as Senator.

I am also reminded of some article from some insignifical rag a few weeks ago that asked, “Hey, where were the ‘teabaggers’ when Bush was expanding Medicare by $x billion, huh? huh? huh?”

Easy there, killer. Medicare is in the red. Obama-apologists should be defending Bush’s attempts to rescue it. Unless … do Democrats hate old people? Also, Bush’s Medicare spending is dwarfed by [thanks, Xian Do] Obama’s spending. It’s as if Obama was being reprimanded for buying some fancy schmancy car we can’t afford and then his defenders rationalize it by saying, “Well look at Bush! He spent an extra nickel on a piece of bubble gum!”

Obama's First Year: So Many Lies, So Little Time [UPDATED 1/22]

After a year in office, Obama has been called many things by his critics, including radical and incompetent. Radical? Yes. Incompetent? Maybe. One thing President Hope&Change is extremely skilled at is lying. 

Now this is impressive:

Jan 21st, 2010 | Front Page Mag
The Lies of Obama
John Ellis

The accumulated weight of Obama’s deceit is overwhelming:

• During his campaign for the presidency and since, Obama repeatedly assured us that he would protect Medicare against cuts; but he now presses for passage of bills that include savage cuts in Medicare.
• To obtain passage of his first stimulus bill, Obama assured us that 90% of the jobs created would be in the private sector; but as he well knew, most of them were to be in the public sector.
• Early in the health care debate, Obama assured us that he had not said that he favored a single payer system; but he was on record as having said exactly that.
• Obama gave primary voters a firm assurance that if he became the nominee of the Democratic party he would (unlike Hillary Clinton) abide by the campaign finance limits of public funding; but as soon as he became the party’s nominee, he reneged on that pledge.
• During the presidential campaign Obama criticized the presence of former lobbyists in the Bush administration and solemnly assured us that he would appoint no lobbyists to his administration; but once elected he proceeded to appoint even more lobbyists than his predecessors.
• Obama criticized the size of George Bush’s deficit and promised to stop deficit spending if elected; but he has already quadrupled the size of the deficit he objected to and recklessly continues new federal spending in the trillions.
• When campaigning Obama criticized bills before the congress that were too long for anyone to be able to read and promised to stop that; but the bills he has been backing throughout his first year are infinitely longer (2000+ pages) than the ones he criticized.
• Candidate Obama promised an end to the corruption of earmarks and pork, but in the bills he has supported this year there have been more and bigger earmarks than ever before.
• Candidate Obama promised us that CIA personnel involved in the interrogation of terrorists would not be prosecuted; but his administration is now doing exactly that.
• Obama assured a joint session of Congress that the health bill he supported (pre-Stupak) would not provide public funding for abortions; but bitter resistance on the part of House Democrats to inclusion of language to that effect soon proved that it did.
• Candidate Obama promised that he would make sure that there was always enough time for the public to read legislation before it was enacted; but he has done exactly the opposite, repeatedly pressing for even faster passage of even longer bills.
• Candidate Obama met fears that he would be a tax and spend liberal by promising, emphatically and repeatedly, that those earning under $200,000 would see no increase in their taxes of any kind; but he now urges passage of a healthcare bill that breaks that pledge in many different ways, and his unrestrained increase in federal spending makes more tax increases inevitable.
• Candidate Obama promised bipartisanship and an end to partisan bickering; but in a display of especially ruthless partisanship his allies have shut Republicans out of all key meetings on his health care initiative, with the unprecedented result that domestic legislation of historic importance garnered not a single Republican vote in the Senate.
• Candidate Obama criticized his opponent’s plan to tax employer paid healthcare benefits, and promised he would not tax them; but the bill he now backs will do just that.
• Obama had promised that he would not sign a healthcare bill that would add one dime to the federal deficit; but the bill he now backs adds trillions in new federal spending, offset only by new sources of revenue that are both uncertain and more properly seen as offsetting the already existing deficit.
• Obama coerced congress into passing his stimulus bill by promising that if it were passed unemployment could go no higher then 8%; but unemployment is now at 10%, and he could not possibly have had good reason to exclude that possibility.
• Obama promised that his cap and trade legislation will create jobs; but its massive tax increases will certainly hobble the economy and destroy jobs, while green jobs in significant numbers can at best be hoped for, but never promised.
• Obama has repeatedly assured the American people that if they like their current health plan they can keep it; but the House bill which he supported created huge incentives for employers to drop their coverage and shift their members to a public option.
• Obama has just as often assured the public that under his health plan everyone will be able to keep their current doctor; but many are certain to lose their doctors when ObamaCare’s large cuts in Medicare funding induce more doctors to withdraw from Medicare coverage, as they also would were employers to transfer patients to a public option to save money.
• Obama assured a joint session of Congress that his health plan would not fund illegal aliens; but his allies had been busy voting down amendments to that effect. (This was the point of Joe Wilson’s outburst.)
• Obama claimed that John Deere’s CEO had told him that Deere would begin hiring again as a result of the stimulus bill; but that individual immediately announced that he had said no such thing, and that Deere would in fact be laying off more workers.
• Candidate Obama promised that Guantanamo would be closed by January 1, 2010; but it is still open.
• Candidate Obama promised that his administration (unlike his predecessor’s) would be so transparent that TV cameras (C-Span) would be there for key deliberations; but an unprecedented level of secrecy prevails as the final stages of Obamacare are negotiated behind closed doors and kept so secret that even the Senate majority whip admitted that he had no idea what was going on. Requests for Obama to honor the promise of C-Span cameras are being ignored.
• To gain traction for his attempt to return a would-be socialist dictator in Honduras to power, Obama claimed that he had been overthrown in an illegal coup; but the congressional research service pointed out correctly that ex-President Zelaya had been removed for constitutionally sufficient cause by legal and constitutional means.
• Obama claims that he wants a public option only to increase choice and competition; but the House bill would clearly reduce choice both by squeezing unsubsidized private health plans out of the market, and by setting rigid conditions on acceptable plans that would narrow available options.
• Candidate Obama claimed that violent radical Bill Ayers was just another guy in his neighborhood; but the record shows that the two had worked closely together.
• Obama assured us that his stimulus bill would create or save a million jobs; but he was claiming as fact what could never have been more than a wild (and highly improbable) guess, and his more recent attempts to justify that guess have been fraudulent.
• Obama assured us that his health plan would never ration care, or “pull the plug” on grandma; but the legislation he backs sets up panels to make crucial decisions on when to withhold care, and it makes such deep cuts in Medicare that rationing is inevitable.
• Obama now assures us that health insurance premiums will not go up if ObamaCare becomes law, insisting indignantly that people who say this have not read the bill; but the legislation forces insurers to cover preexisting conditions, which will compel them to raise premiums substantially.

… How shameful is that for our society when this disgraceful record is never the subject of a reproachful editorial in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or CBS news? Richard Nixon was removed from office, and Bill Clinton impeached for a single lie. Who could look at Obama’s record without concluding that his lying is in a completely different league to theirs? …

One year down, three more to go. How’s that hope n’ change working out for ya?

UPDATE 1/22: Missed this 1/19 Human Events article by Susan Dale on the same subject. It lists fewer broken promises, but elaborates on them more.

Next-Day Analyses on the Massachusetts Election: NY Times

The NY Times has some post-election analysis and color-coded maps of yesterday's special election in Massachusetts. Very interesting is the difference in counties that voted for Brown and those that voted for Obama in 2008:

  

See that big change from blue to red in the middle, northeast and southeast parts of the state? Here's an interesting piece of data that might explain that:

 

In any case, it was a sweet victory, as close at it ended up. Just popped open El Rushbo on the HD dittocam (Hey, it really does feel like you're in the same room with him!) and he just dedicated a clip of "I Feel Good" and "Good Times" to Mary Jo Kopechne and Robert Bork. 

 

Massachusetts Counts the Votes ... [w/ UPDATES]

[Screenshots from NY Times; Live updates at Boston.com]

9:10 PM

 

9:17 PM

Live update: A Brown aide reports Coakley has called to concede. Why? Are they really that sure they lost? Is it already a lock with only 2/3 of the votes counted?

9:25 PM

 

 9:29 PM

 

 

9:35 PM: With nearly 4/5 of the votes in, AP has called it for Brown:

GOP's Brown wins Mass. Senate seat in epic upset
By GLEN JOHNSON and LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writers

BOSTON – In an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in a U.S. Senate election Tuesday that left President Barack Obama's health care overhaul in doubt and marred the end of his first year in office.

The loss by the once-favored Coakley for the seat that the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy held for nearly half a century signaled big political problems for the president's party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide.

9:39 PM

 

Live update: 9:38 p.m. — “I have no interest in sugar coating what happened in Massachusetts. There is a lot of anxiety in the country right now. Americans are understandably impatient" — Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Robert Menendez. “In the days ahead, we will sort through the lessons of Massachusetts: the need to redouble our efforts on the economy, the need to show that our commitment to real change is as powerful as it was in 2008, and the reality that we cannot take a single thing for granted and cannot afford even a second of complacency.”

9:47 PM

 

 9:54 PM: Photos at the Brown campaign from Pam Geller of the Atlas Shrugs blog:

 

Live update: 9:47 p.m.—Chants at the Brown victory party: “Obamacare is dead,” “Shock the world,” and “Yes, we can.”

10:04 PM

 

 

 

All right, everyone's called it for Brown. Now, for you 3½ people reading my humble blog, yours truly is calling it official: Scott Brown wins! With 96% of the votes in, the spread has converged from about 6% an hour ago to 5%. They must be just counting the dead and fake ballots that some ACORN workers mysteriously found in a closet (right next to where Al Franken's extra votes were being kept.)

Ted Kennedy is surely rolling in his grave tonight.

Good!

Live update: 10:11 p.m. — President Obama has called both candidates to congratulate them. [Why congratulate both? One of them lost—the one he came to Massachusetts yesterday to stump for!] “The President congratulated Senator Brown on his victory and a well-run campaign. The President told Senator Brown that he looks forward to working with him on the urgent economic challenges facing Massachusetts families and struggling families across our nation. The President thanked Attorney General Coakley for her hard work and urged her to continue her advocacy on behalf of working people,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement.