GOP Freshmen Will Hold Boehner to His Big Promises

Just what we've been wanting to hear! This will be a very conservative congress!...T

For political junkies of a certain age, it was a given that the House of Representatives would always be controlled by Democrats. They won the chamber in 1954 and held on for 40 years -- more than twice as long as any party in American history had before.

When Sam Rayburn died at 79, more than 20 years after first becoming speaker, he was succeeded by John McCormack, 70, who was followed by Carl Albert, 68, and Tip O'Neill, an energetic 64. Every House elected from 1958 to 1992 had at least 242 Democrats, well above the 218 votes needed for a majority.

Now things are different. The Republicans won a majority in the House in 1994 and held on until 2006, the third longest period of Republican control in history; Democrats won two thumping victories in 2006 and 2008, but lost all their gains and more in the election last week. Alternation in power seems to be the new norm.

When John Boehner is elected speaker early in January, there will be more Republicans -- the exact number is not yet known, so let's say 240-plus -- than in any House since the one elected in 1946, before Boehner and most other members were born.

For a speaker, having a majority in the 240s or (as Nancy Pelosi has in the outgoing Congress) 250s is a sweet spot.

If you have 235 or fewer, as Republican Speakers Newt Gingrich and Denny Hastert did, it's hard to hold everyone in line on partisan roll calls -- some members will have districts or convictions that require them to dissent. And if you have more than 260, then just about everyone assumes he or she can go off the reservation, and without even letting the leadership know.

As Sam Rayburn said to Lyndon Johnson on election night 1958, when his party gained 50 seats: "Too many Democrats. Too many Democrats."

After the initial glow of the Gingrich revolution dimmed, the glue that Gingrich and Hastert used to hold their members together was money. They let Appropriations Committee members channel money to favored projects and members of Transportation and Infrastructure (the largest committee in Congress) earmark projects for their districts.

The bill came due in 2006. Disillusioned conservatives stayed home or voted Democratic. Most of the freshmen this year ran decrying the spending of Republican as well as Democratic Congresses and promising to do better. Boehner, who has never had an earmark, says the same thing.

Boehner has promised to do things differently, and the freshmen -- who make up one-third of Republican members -- will surely hold him to it. The size of his majority will strengthen his hand against the appropriators.

Boehner and incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor also sound grimly determined to cut government spending, and they have an able ally in incoming Budget Chairman Paul Ryan. And they don't seem to be backing off their promise to do whatever they can to repeal and hobble Obamacare.

That won't be easy, with Barack Obama's veto pen poised to strike. But Obamacare is not a self-propelling vehicle. It needs fuel and funding and fiddling from Congress. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Medicare agency head Donald Berwick had better plan on spending a lot of time on the south side of Capitol Hill over the next two years.

Boehner seems likely to prevail, in the lame duck session or as speaker next year, on extension of all the George W. Bush tax cuts, including those for high earners. Pelosi lacked the votes to let the latter expire before the election, and Obama seemed to be conceding the issue in his post-election press conference.

But Boehner will have his headaches when he has to rally votes to raise the national debt ceiling early next year. Freshmen don't want to vote for that, but it's irresponsible to let the government go without funding.

There's a tension as well between Boehner's hard line on issues and his pledge, in a pre-election speech at the American Enterprise Institute, to allow more open votes on amendments and to encourage committees to operate bipartisanly (as Boehner did on the 2001 education bill). We'll see how that goes.

Boehner is not likely to become as prominent a figure as Gingrich or Pelosi. But he'll start off with a larger majority than either of them did.
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Republicans put 99 Democrat-held House seats in danger

“It’s thermonuclear,” ...this is from a democrat congressman in New York...New York! Where republicans may gain up to 9 seats. Dick Morris may be correct after all that republicans could conceivably gain as many as 100 house seats and with them, an veto proof majority. Believe me, everyone, if we gain over 50 seats the Senate WILL fall as well. It always has, when a wave election of such magnitude has occurred historically. HEIL OSAMA!


With two weeks remaining until Election Day, the political map has expanded to put Democrats on the run across the country — with 99 Democratic-held House seats now in play, according to a POLITICO analysis, and Republicans well in reach of retaking the House.

It’s a dramatic departure from the outlook one year ago — and a broader landscape than even just prior to the summer congressional recess. As recently as early September, many Republicans were hesitant to talk about winning a majority for fear of overreaching.

Today, however, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report predicts a GOP net gain of at least 40 House seats, with 90 Democratic seats in total rated as competitive or likely Republican.

"When Chairman [Pete] Sessions and Leader [John] Boehner said that 100 House seats were in play, Democrats scoffed,” said Ken Spain, the National Republican Congressional Committee’s communications director. “Today, they aren't laughing anymore."

The number of Democrats in danger is more than double the 39 seats Republicans need to seize control of the House. It reflects an elastic electoral environment that favors the GOP by every measure: money, momentum and mood of the country — in this case, sour on Democratic incumbents.

For Democrats, a deteriorating political environment — unemployment high, President Barack Obama’s approval ratings low — has been exacerbated by the presence of cash-flush, independent conservative groups that have poured huge sums of money into races.

The groups, including American Crossroads, have combined with the National Republican Congressional Committee to stretch the boundaries of the 2010 map into races where there’s even a scent of Democratic vulnerability.

“This year is shaping up to be something of a repeat of the 52-seat House and eight-seat Senate rout of Democrats in 1994,” handicapper Charlie Cook wrote last week. “Sure, the circumstances and dynamics are different from then, but the outcome seems to be shaping up along the same lines.”

At one time, there was serious doubt the GOP would have the financial resources to compete effectively for the House majority. The thinking was that scores of potential opportunities could go unexplored due to the cash disparity between the NRCC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

While the NRCC still trails in cash on hand, its fundraising has picked up — the September total was the committee’s largest one-month take since 2006 — and independent groups have helped fill the void. And with anti-incumbent, anti-Obama and anti-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sentiment running so high in many districts, even a relative pittance has been enough to push a few Democrats onto thin ice.

The assessment by POLITICO is based on a review of TV media-buy information from those independent groups and the party committees in more than 80 districts; internal and public polling in individual races; Federal Election Commission fundraising data for incumbents and challengers; and reporting on the districts. ( See: More photos from the campaign trail)

While the level of competitiveness among the 99 seats varies widely, they share a common denominator: all of them show some serious sign of vulnerability to takeover by the GOP. Factors included a Democratic incumbent’s unpopular legislative votes, the quality of opposition, the partisan breakdown of the districts or the huge sums of money dedicated to Democratic defeat — or some combination of all those factors — to place them “in play” ahead of Nov. 2. (See: Candidates take the debate stage)

The subjectivity of those factors have led to varying interpretations of just how many seats are actually at risk for Democrats. The Rothenberg Report, another political handicapper, lists 91 Democratic-held seats as in play, and predicts the “extremely large field of competitive races” will produce a “likely Republican gain of 40-50 seats, with 60 seats possible.”

POLITICO’s list of 99 seats — some of which have only recently emerged — places GOP pickup opportunities across the political map, stretching from regions of Republican strength such as the South to Democratic states such as California, where three incumbent Democrats face competitive challengers.

In deep-blue New York, Republicans have a shot at as many as nine Democrats. “It’s thermonuclear,” said two-term Rep. Michael Arcuri, in describing the campaign against him to The New York Times.


The list doesn’t include several Republican-oriented seats that Democrats have all but ceded to Republicans, including districts in southeastern Louisiana, Upstate New York and Middle Tennessee.
Some Democrats are clearly facing more difficult challenges than others. The DCCC, which is charged with protecting the party’s 39-seat majority, has already pulled TV ad reservations in at least six contests — a sign that Democratic hopes of retaining those seats are diminishing.

There are dramatic differences in the competitiveness of races even within states. In California, Reps. Jim Costa and Loretta Sanchez appear to have easier paths to reelection than fellow Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney. In New York, Upstate Rep. Bill Owens has a higher degree of reelection difficulty than Long Island-based Rep. Carolyn McCarthy. In Texas, Rep. Solomon Ortiz — who typically wins by wide margins —- is far likelier to win than Rep. Chet Edwards, who is regularly faces stiff opposition in his solidly Republican district.

What does an endangered Democrat look like? Take your pick.

Freshman Democrats make up a large share — more than a quarter — of those facing competitive races. Of the 38 Democrats serving their first full terms in the House, POLITICO rates 29 as at-risk. Some — such as Reps. Bobby Bright of Alabama, Betsy Markey of Colorado, Alan Grayson of Florida and Frank Kratovil Jr. of Maryland — hail from GOP-friendly districts, where they have been in the cross hairs almost since the moment they were elected.

But legislative vets are under fire too. Nine-term New York Rep. Maurice Hinchey and four-term Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva until recently were considered near-locks to win, before their campaigns hit unexpected turbulence. Hinchey attracted unflattering attention this weekend after a videotaped confrontation with a reporter at the same time American Crossroads and other GOP groups are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into ads in his district.

Grijalva, who called for an economic boycott of his own state amid a housing crisis and record unemployment, has also been hit by outside spending right after an automated poll unexpectedly showed him in a dead heat with his GOP opponent.

The list also includes a handful of veteran Democrats who typically enjoy the benefits of seniority on Capitol Hill and cruise to reelection but this year find themselves locked in competitive races. Among those Democrats are Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri and Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt of South Carolina. (Join Arena debate: Which candidates should Dems try to save using limited resources?)

Getting outhustled in fundraising is another way for candidates to find themselves on the bubble.

In a sign of GOP momentum — and of the breadth of the competitive landscape — at least 40 Democratic incumbents were outraised by their GOP challengers in the most recent quarter, according to FEC filings. Reps. Ron Klein of Florida and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, both stellar fundraisers, were among those outraised in the latest reporting period.

Not all Democratic districts in play are held by incumbents: The party is trying to retain open seats in states including Pennsylvania, Indiana and Washington.

If there is a particular trouble spot for Democrats, it is the Midwest, where 31 seats are at risk. Democrats are trying to defend incumbents including Reps. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, Bill Foster of Illinois and Leonard Boswell of Iowa, as well as several open seats.

In the South, where many Democrats occupy conservative-oriented districts, Republicans are making a play for 24 seats.
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Down With Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor

You see, they couldn't get away with it this time, in this age, in these days of constant information. Of the Internet, of Rush Limbaugh, FOX News, and REAL history being written and sold at Barnes & Noble: not the pap we were fed in school in the 70's. It's all over for Osama and the socialists/progressives, and this article, in keeping with my theme this week, lays out exactly WHY it is over for them, by telling the truth about what happened in the New Deal and the LBJ fiasco's...T

Some of the most important things in history are things that didn't happen -- even though just about everyone thought they would.

Recent example: Scads of liberals gleefully predicted that the financial crisis and deep recession would destroy Americans' faith in markets and increase their confidence in big government. Many conservatives gloomily feared they were right.

Hasn't happened. If anything, public opinion has moved in the other direction, with most Americans rejecting the stimulus package and the health care bill, denying that government action is needed to address global warming, expressing negative feelings about labor unions.

How to explain this? One way is to see the public's reaction as opposition to governance by an alliance of Big Units -- Big Government, Big Business and Big Labor.

In the 1930s, Americans supposedly lost faith in markets and rallied to government. But if you go back and look at public opinion polling then, you find something rather different. You find majorities grumbling about Big Government, scorning Big Business and opposing Big Labor.

The 1940s were different. Facing the threat of total war, Franklin Roosevelt transformed himself from "Dr. New Deal" to "Dr. Win the War." He fostered cooperation between Big Government, Big Business and Big Labor. Roosevelt was brilliant at selecting, from all these sources, the best men (and women) for jobs he considered important.

The result was a war effort that was brilliantly successful. America was the arsenal of democracy, vanquishing its enemies and inventing the atomic bomb. Big Unit governance gained enormous prestige and held onto it for a generation after the war.

The result was prosperity but also stasis. The Big Government of 1970 looked a lot like the Big Government of the 1940s. The same Big Businesses that dominated the Fortune 500 list in 1940 did so in 1970. The list of Big Labor unions remained pretty much the same.

Around 1970, these Big Units lost their edge. Big Government got mired in wars on poverty and in Vietnam. Big Business got hidebound and bureaucratic. Big Labor started to shrink.

Starting around 1980, the country began to revive. Big Government lowered taxes and deregulated transportation and communications. Entrepreneurs and investors replaced stodgy corporate managements with new companies and new products.

The conformist "organization man" Americans of the 1950s were replaced by non-conformist innovators, risk-takers and creators who made a new economy that central planners could never have envisioned. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn't wait for those at the top of Big Units to tell them what to do.

Big Business changed: The Fortune 500 list of 2010 doesn't look anything like that of 1970. Big Labor almost vanished: Most union members today are public employees.

The Obama Democrats, faced with a grave economic crisis, responded with policies appropriate to the Big Unit America that was disappearing during the president's childhood.

Their financial policy has been to freeze the big banks into place. Their industrial policy was to preserve as much as they could of General Motors and Chrysler for the benefit of the United Auto Workers. Their health care policy was designed to benefit Big Pharma and other big players. Their housing policy has been to try to maintain existing prices. Their macroeconomic policy was to increase the size and scope of existing government agencies to what looks to be the bursting point.

What we see is Big Government colluding with Big Business and trying to breathe life into Big Labor.

Some of this can be defended. The Obama Democrats are right in pointing out that the TARP financial bailout was the product of the George W. Bush administration, and they may well be right that it would have been disastrous to allow Citibank to fail.

But Big Unit policies are not a good fit for a country that has grown out of the wreckage the Big Units made of things in the 1970s. They freeze poorly performing incumbents in place, and they don't provide the breathing room for small units to start up and grow.

In the meantime, the Big Units are not performing as well as they did for Dr. Win the War. The visibly flagging economy and the slapdash stimulus and health care bills have left most voters ready to take a chance on the still reviled Republicans. The unanswered question is, will the Republicans have an effective alternative to Big Unit governance?
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Obama has ruined his presidency and his party

The worst president in US history with the possible exception of Woodrow Wilson. Osama has made Jimmy Carter look moderate and competent by comparison, and Bill Clinton look ethical...T

One of my favorite quotes about politics comes from Henry Kissinger in his book Years of Upheaval, his memoir of the Ford presidency: “A statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his vision and his nation’s experience. If his vision gets too far out ahead of his nation’s experience, he will lose his mandate. But if he hews too close to the conventional, he will lose control over events.”

Now, at once, we see both happening to President Barack Obama.

His healthcare proposals obviously ran afoul of the first of Kissinger’s warnings. By pushing for changes that conflicted with America’s values, common sense and experience, he lost his mandate. In that disastrous push for an elusive goal, he ruined his own presidency and his party. It may take decades for the Democratic Party to recover from his folly. Indeed, his push for health legislation, in the face of rapidly eroding public support, ranks with the Vietnam War, Watergate and, of course, Bill Clinton’s healthcare initiatives as the most costly to their respective political parties.

But now, as he faces threats from Iran, domestic terrorism, continually high unemployment and the swollen deficit, he is also violating the second half of the Kissinger warning — his politics are too passive and too conventional and, as a result, he is losing control over events.

In the phase of presidential dithering in the aftermath of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts, there is no clear presidential message, no coherent strategy — not even an identifiable program. His budget cuts are far too tepid. His tax program is nothing new. Obama’s Stimulus 2 package seems like the same-old, same-old.

His short-lived bounce from the State of the Union speech is indicative of how limited a vision he has these days. It lasted a week and was never more than three points at its apogee.

And, as Kissinger would have predicted, he is losing control over events. Sen. Evan Bayh’s (D-Ind.) retirement, with its implied blast at Obama’s policies; the increasing recklessness of Iran; and the seemingly intractable unemployment all provide evidence that President Obama is no longer dictating the national agenda.

As a result, the negatives he incurred by moving too far out ahead of the nation’s experience are combining with those he is getting for being too conventional. He is experiencing both ends of the Kissinger prediction. Republicans and independents are still in shock from his headlong rush into socialism, while Democrats are increasingly restive and disillusioned by his failure to lead. The entire country is worried at his passivity in the face of domestic terror threats and the rapidly growing Iranian momentum toward the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

While his job rating has remained relatively steady in recent months, hovering just below 50 percent of likely voters, his ratings in specific areas — like holding down spending, cutting the deficit, creating jobs and managing the economy — are all eroding, presaging further drops in his overall ratings.

Seemingly paralyzed by adversity, President Obama and his advisers are showing a lack of resilience in the face of reversals that is perhaps the inevitable outcome of his smooth rise to the top in 2008. Never tried by bad outcomes (as Hillary has doubtless been), he and they seem unable to regain momentum and appear to be flailing without strategic or even tactical direction.

All this might be what happens when you elect a state Senator whose U.S. Senate career was consumed with his presidential campaign as president.
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Dick Morris:You Want a Prediction Now? We'll Win the House By 10 Seats and Win the Senate by 2

This fits nicely with Michael Barone's recent analysis that up to 155 house seats may be in play by November. Republicans take the house, the Senate, and Jimmy Carter becomes no longer the worst president in U.S. History (even including the now-not-taught-in-high-school years prior to 1877!)...T

Morris predicting the GOP picking up the House and the Senate...

Hannity: "Here's the last question, Micheal Barone pointed out that if we used Obama's numbers in 2008 and Scott Brown's numbers in the Senate election and we applied that to every district in the country, 155 Democratic seat would be up for grabs. You even figured out that the Republicans could even take back the Senate. If you had to make a prediction now, where are we in the House and Senate in November?"

Morris: "You want a prediction now? We'll win the House by 10 seats and win the Senate by 2"

From dickmorris.com,
Morris runs the numbers and tells us exactly what Obama inherited when he walked into the WH, (Obama claims a $1.3 Trillion dollar deficit)

Dick Morris:
In 2008, Bush ran a deficit of $485 billion. By the time the fiscal year started on October 1, 2008, it had gone up by another $100 billion due to increased recession-related spending and depressed revenues. So it was $600 billion. That was the real Bush deficit.

But when the fiscal crisis hit, Bush had to pass TARP in the final months of his presidency which cost $700 billion. The $700 billion was a short term loan. $500 billion of it has already been repaid.

So what was the real deficit Obama inherited? The $600 billion deficit Bush was running plus the $200 billion of TARP money that probably won’t be repaid (mainly AIG and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). That totals $800 billion. That was the real deficit Obama inherited.
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Osamalini

Welcome to Fascism, american style. Do a google serch of Woodrow Wilson, or Liberal Fascism, and see that what is going on today has happened before. Happy Halloween indeed! Truth is stranger than fiction: Heil Osama!...T

GOP Should Run Against the Power of the Center

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The argument has been frustrating.

We have the Colin Powell types demanding we draw and quarter the Rush Limbaugh's and abandon conservatism. It's just not fashionable, you see! We should just manage big government better than the democrooks.

Then there are the purists. Preferably start a new party, but at the very least, kick all the RINO's and McCain's to the curb! The republicans are worse than the democrats and must all lose, so that we can then win.

I've always thought both of these schools of thought were self defeating, for yes, we need to stand for limited government and constitutional jurisprudence, but there will never be enough of us to form a lasting majority. We must get better at teaching, explaining, and finding thoughtful, principled candidates, as well as finding some answer to the leftist, statist media monopoly that feeds the cancer of socialism that has befallen us. Reagan is the prototype. Idealistic, educated, dedicated to a purpose, not to a career, and yet appealing to centrists and democrats because he could explain conservatism in simple ways that people are instinctively drawn to and can't ignore.

Mr. Barone has hit on a perfect message to which we can only hope the GOP is listening!...T

"So I think Republicans today should be less interested in moving toward the center and more interested in running against the center. Here I mean a different "center" -- not a midpoint on an opinion spectrum, but rather the centralized government institutions being created and strengthened every day. This is a center that is taking over functions fulfilled in a decentralized way by private individuals, firms and markets.

...To govern is to choose, as John F. Kennedy said, and those in charge of these new centralized institutions are making choices that inevitably favor some and hurt others. Unsurprisingly, the politically well connected tend to get the favors. Banks forced to take government money are now blocked from paying it back and in the meantime must direct funds where the government wants them to go...when government gets this intertwined with the private sector, when it makes decisions not based on neutral economic criteria but by what is at best guesswork about the allocation and valuation of vast amounts of capital, bailout favoritism and crony capitalism are inevitable.

...It's arguably good policy as well as good politics to run against this over-powerful center. Bailout favoritism and crony capitalism not only misallocate economic resources, they also sap faith in the fairness of our institutions. After World War II, Democrats wanted to retain wartime high taxes, pro-union labor laws, and wage and price controls -- all manipulatable for political benefit by political insiders. Republicans ran in 1946 on the theme of "Had enough?" and won big enough majorities to lower taxes, revise labor laws and abolish controls.

The 1946 Republicans didn't move to the center. They ran against the power of the center and permanently redefined where the center of the political spectrum was. That's a path today's Republicans might want to consider.
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Whither Limited Government?

Obama speaks at Notre Dame. He is"Christ-like", "bipartisan", and non confrontational in the face of protests from "right wing extremists" while simply trying to convey that we should, well "C-C-Can we all get along?"

Horse patoot! This guy is a fanatic. He is destroying, in months, not years, the very remnants of our system of limited government, which the founders bequeathed to us, and which have kept us safe and prosperous for 250 years.

The very concept of limited government is grounded in the principles of
Natural Law, and enshrined in the declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness"

Then there are the words of C. S. Lewis:

" Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of it's victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"

...T

Waterboard MSNBC!

Is it just me? Am I the only one who would do almost anything for one night with Ann Coulter?! Oh well...

I see that the press - MSNBC in particular - and the fanatic leftists in congress are clamoring to put Bush and Cheney in jail for "torture" related war crimes. They use as their latest shallow justification that WWII Japanese war criminals were executed for "waterboarding" American POW's (execution is what the press and the left really want for Bush of course!).

Problem is, as is the case with most of what the MSM states as fact, and almost all of what the left claims, this case is patently false, and provably so.

In fact - the CIA just this very day released the transcript of the EIT congressional briefing, attended by Nancy Pelosi, which now proves not only that she knew and approved of the waterboarding EIT, but that she knew it had already taken place, and upon whom it specifically had been used (Abu Zubaydah). Again, she signalled her approval at this time.

- Hypocrite, thy name is liberal statist!..T

...Given what the Japanese did to prisoners, waterboarding would be a reward for good behavior.

...To claim that the Japanese – architects of the Bataan Death March – were prosecuted for "waterboarding" would be like saying Ted Bundy was executed for engaging in sexual harassment.

What the Japanese did to their POWs made even the Nazis blanch. The Japanese routinely beheaded and bayoneted prisoners; forced prisoners to dig their own graves and then buried them alive; amputated prisoners' healthy arms and legs, one by one, for sport; force-fed prisoners dry rice and then filled their stomachs with water until their bowels exploded; and injected them with chemical weapons in order to observe, time and record their death throes before dumping them in mass graves.

While only 4 percent of British and American troops captured by German or Italian forces died in captivity, 27 percent of British and American POWs captured by the Japanese died in captivity. Japanese war crimes were so atrocious that even rape was treated as only a secondary war crime in the Tokyo trial, similar to what happens during an R. Kelly trial.

The Japanese "water cure" was to "waterboarding" as practiced at Guantanamo what rape at knifepoint is to calling your secretary "honey."

The Japanese version of "waterboarding" was to fill the prisoner's stomach with water until his stomach was distended – and then pound on his stomach, causing the prisoner to vomit...
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Presidential Poison - His invitation to indict Bush officials will haunt Obama's Presidency.

The most dangerous, radical extremist ever to occupy a position of high executive authority in the history of the United States of America. The man is a National Socialist in the arena of economics - we already knew that - Now if these show trials occur he will duplicate the excess's of Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler.

"Oh that's too far!" you say? What will stop the cycle once our 250 year tradition of not criminalizing policy differences ends? What is it, really, that separates us from tinpot Latin dictatorships? They do, after all, all have constitutions, do they not? Indeed it is our tradition of the rule of law which will be inevitably broken in the process of these NAZI show trials.

Pelosi, Reid, Leahy, Obama himself - they were all briefed on these methods - indeed, they all concurred and wished for even more strenuous techniques to be used. They are traitors to America ladies and gentlemen - nothing less.

The WSJ lays it out, excerpted below...T

Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret...

...at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.

If this analogy seems excessive, consider how Mr. Obama has framed the issue. He has absolved CIA operatives of any legal jeopardy, no doubt because his intelligence advisers told him how damaging that would be to CIA morale when Mr. Obama needs the agency to protect the country. But he has pointedly invited investigations against Republican legal advisers who offered their best advice at the request of CIA officials.

"Your intelligence indicates that there is currently a level of 'chatter' equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks," wrote Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, in his August 1, 2002 memo. "In light of the information you believe [detainee Abu] Zubaydah has and the high level of threat you believe now exists, you wish to move the interrogations into what you have described as an 'increased pressure phase.'"

So the CIA requests a legal review at a moment of heightened danger, the Justice Department obliges with an exceedingly detailed analysis of the law and interrogation practices -- and, seven years later, Mr. Obama says only the legal advisers who are no longer in government should be investigated. The political convenience of this distinction for Mr. Obama betrays its basic injustice. And by the way, everyone agrees that senior officials, including President Bush, approved these interrogations. Is this President going to put his predecessor in the dock too?

...(the only thing that has) changed (since Obama's earlier hesitancy) is that Mr. Obama's decision last week to release the interrogation memos unleashed a revenge lust on the political left that he refuses to resist.

...Those officials won't be the only ones who suffer if all of this goes forward. Congress will face questions about what the Members knew and when, especially Nancy Pelosi when she was on the House Intelligence Committee in 2002. The Speaker now says she remembers hearing about waterboarding, though not that it would actually be used. Does anyone believe that? Porter Goss, her GOP counterpart at the time, says he knew exactly what he was hearing and that, if anything, Ms. Pelosi worried the CIA wasn't doing enough to stop another attack. By all means, put her under oath.

Mr. Obama may think he can soar above all of this, but he'll soon learn otherwise. The Beltway's political energy will focus more on the spectacle of revenge, and less on his agenda. The CIA will have its reputation smeared, and its agents second-guessing themselves. And if there is another terror attack against Americans, Mr. Obama will have set himself up for the argument that his campaign against the Bush policies is partly to blame...

...Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, due in part to his personal charm and his seeming goodwill. By indulging his party's desire to criminalize policy advice, he has unleashed furies that will haunt his Presidency.
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Random Thoughts

Two thoughts stuck me full force like a shot of espresso at 7AM while reading this piece - the 1st being the feeling of slowly having the wool pulled collectively over our eyes...and this one:

"Socialists believe in government ownership of the means of production. Fascists believed in government control of privately owned businesses, which is much more the style of this government. That way, politicians can intervene whenever they feel like it and then, when their interventions turn out badly, summon executives from the private sector before Congress and denounce them on nationwide television."

...T - Thanks to James/AKA CornetJim for this one!

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

I am so old that I can remember when music was musical.

Now that the federal government says that it will stand behind the warranties on General Motors' automobiles, does that make you more likely or less likely to buy a car from GM? If you were a rising young executive with a promising future, would you be more likely or less likely to go to work for a company where politicians can fire you?

We have become such suckers for words that politicians can spend our tax money like a drunken sailor, provided they call it "investment." At least the drunken sailor is spending his own money but people look down on him because he doesn't call it "investment."

Barack Obama seems determined to repeat every disastrous mistake of the 1930s, at home and abroad. He has already repeated Herbert Hoover's policy of raising taxes on high income earners, FDR's policy of trying to micro-manage the economy and Neville Chamberlain's policy of seeking dialogues with hostile nations while downplaying the dangers they represent.

We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past.

The famous editorial cartoonist Herblock could write as well as draw. In one of his books, he said something like: "You too can have the soothing feeling of nature's own baby-soft wool being pulled gently over your resting eyes." I think of that every time I see Barack Obama talking.

It has long been said that uncertainty is the hardest thing for a market to adjust to. No one can generate uncertainty as much as the government, which can change the rules in midstream or come out with some new bright idea at any time, as the current administration has already demonstrated.

We have now reached the truly dangerous point where we cannot even be warned about the lethal, fanatical and suicidal hatred of our society by Islamic extremists, because to do so would be politically incorrect and, in some European countries, would be a violation of the law against inciting hostility to groups.

Perhaps the scariest aspect of our times is how many people think in talking points, rather than in terms of real world consequences.

Barack Obama's favorable reception during his tour in Europe may be the most enthusiastic international acclaim for a democratic government leader since Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938, proclaiming "peace in our time."

How a man who holds the entire population of a country as his prisoners, and punishes the families of those who escape, can be admired by people who call themselves liberals is one of the many wonders of the human mind's ability to rationalize. Yet such is the case with Fidel Castro.
What does "economic justice" mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?

Perhaps the way President Obama will reduce the deficit is by making more presidential appointments of people who will pay the back taxes they owe, in order to get confirmed by the Senate.

Liberals seem to think that they are doing lagging groups a favor by making excuses for counterproductive and self-destructive behavior. The poor do not need press agents. They need the truth. No one ever said, "Press agents will make you free."

If I were Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, I would not sign any long-term lease on a home in Washington.

Socialists believe in government ownership of the means of production. Fascists believed in government control of privately owned businesses, which is much more the style of this government. That way, politicians can intervene whenever they feel like it and then, when their interventions turn out badly, summon executives from the private sector before Congress and denounce them on nationwide television.

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Cartoon Nazi Strikes Again...

Oh that Cartoon Nazi!...T

- It was foretold -

"America will be destroyed from within!" This was filmed in 1941. How did Hitler know?

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Paul Harvey, Good Night

God bless Paul Harvey! He was the one who paved the way for all that followed on radio - the 1st influence in my life to speak loudly to me reinforcing what I always thought since the age of 5, namely that "these guys sound like idiots" when watching or reading the main stream press. Good night and God bless you Paul!...T

I don't know about the rest of the nation, but here in Central time we could get Paul Harvey's News and Comment in the morning and again at noon, most likely on some crackly AM country music station. If I were out of town or on the road, I would surf the AM dial hoping to find a hint of that unmistakable voice: The Voice. Like a true news junkie, I needed my Paul Harvey fix.

Paul Harvey, born Paul Harvey Aurandt in Tulsa on Sept. 4, 1918, had a voice like a cannon at Gettysburg, like Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill or General Anthony Clement McAuliffe answering the German surrender ultimatum with the expletive "Nuts!" His distinctive baritone was soothing and comforting, the optimistic, can-do voice of Middle America, the voice of hope decades before Barack Obama knew the meaning of the word.

Listening to Paul Harvey, who died Saturday at age 90, was like eavesdropping on radio in its golden age, which wasn't just radio's golden age, of course, but America's. Like many of his listeners, Paul Harvey did it all: wrote his own copy, read his own commercials, even invented his own vocabulary (Reaganomics, skyjacker, guesstimate, to name a few of his neologisms). When it came to selecting news copy Paul Harvey applied what he called his "Aunt Betty" test. Aunt Betty was an old fashioned Missouri housewife (his sister-in-law, actually), and no story too complicated or dull for Aunt Betty made it onto the newscast.

A Paul Harvey newscast was in startling contrast to the network or public radio news. From the opening salvo of "Hello Americans! Paul Harvey…Stand by for News!" -- the absence of any theme music or bells and whistles let you know you were in for 15 minutes of honest, man-to-man talk. Paul Harvey gave it to you straight, but without the doom and gloom that hung over other conventional newscasts. In the midst of recession, national tragedy, or malaise, Paul Harvey showed you the silver lining amid the dark clouds and raised America's collective spirit -- not like a preacher (though he was descended from five generations of Baptist preachers), but as America's most trusted news source.

What a contrast to the negative nabobs of negativism further down the dial. If you had to pin down Paul Harvey, he probably leaned more to the right of center than to the left, but only because he believed in core conservative values like self-reliance, religious faith, the free market, and the industry and ingenuity of the American people. But while Paul Harvey loved to preface stories with "There is good news today…" Paul Harvey News and Comment was not a vacuous "Good News" newscast. There was a fine line between locating the good in the news and being willfully naïve. With an audience of 22 million dedicated listeners, Paul Harvey was anything but naïve.

IN THE TWENTY or so years I listened to Paul Harvey I do not ever recall hearing him say a negative word about any celebrity or government official -- which was one reason you came away from a Paul Harvey broadcast feeling better about yourself and your country. And perhaps a hankering to run out and buy a new vacuum cleaner. Certainly being one of the most trusted and respected journalists of your day helps when you are trying to peddle your sponsors' wares.

As popular as his newscasts were, equally beloved was a segment called "The Rest of the Story." I remember crawling in from college football practice at 5:30 p.m. -- this was the early 1980s -- and collapsing on a locker room bench while over the loudspeaker came The Voice halfway through his evening broadcast, which wasn't news at all, but a feature story where some famous person's identity was revealed in a surprise, twist ending. It might be the story how one man single-handedly brought Philadelphia back from the dead following the Great Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (George Washington), or the misanthrope who wished to drown the human race (Mark Twain).

Talk about a surreal scene: fifty exhausted college football players from all across the country lying all over a locker room floor in silence waiting for Paul Harvey to reveal the identity of today's subject. "And now you know…the rest of the story…Paul Harvey…Good Day!" Only then would we hit the showers.

His few Eastern establishment critics -- and I do mean few -- would probably have called Paul Harvey a second-rate newsman, an anti-intellectual populist, and a snakeskin salesman who peddled not only vacuum cleaners, but false hope and optimism while ignoring the real challenges America faced. But it doesn't matter what they say, because they only talk to themselves.

The Voice spoke to all of us.

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Obama Declares War on Investors, Entrepreneurs, Businesses, And More

Let me be very clear on the economics of President Obama’s State of the Union speech and his budget.

He is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds.

That is the meaning of his anti-growth tax-hike proposals, which make absolutely no sense at all — either for this recession or from the standpoint of expanding our economy’s long-run potential to grow.

Raising the marginal tax rate on successful earners, capital, dividends, and all the private funds is a function of Obama’s left-wing social vision, and a repudiation of his economic-recovery statements. Ditto for his sweeping government-planning-and-spending program, which will wind up raising federal outlays as a share of GDP to at least 30 percent, if not more, over the next 10 years.

This is nearly double the government-spending low-point reached during the late 1990s by the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton administration. While not quite as high as spending levels in Western Europe, we regrettably will be gaining on this statist-planning approach.

Study after study over the past several decades has shown how countries that spend more produce less, while nations that tax less produce more. Obama is doing it wrong on both counts.

And as far as middle-class tax cuts are concerned, Obama’s cap-and-trade program will be a huge across-the-board tax increase on blue-collar workers, including unionized workers. Industrial production is plunging, but new carbon taxes will prevent production from ever recovering. While the country wants more fuel and power, cap-and-trade will deliver less.

The tax hikes will generate lower growth and fewer revenues. Yes, the economy will recover. But Obama’s rosy scenario of 4 percent recovery growth in the out years of his budget is not likely to occur. The combination of easy money from the Fed and below-potential economic growth is a prescription for stagflation. That’s one of the messages of the falling stock market.

Essentially, the Obama economic policies represent a major Democratic party relapse into Great Society social spending and taxing. It is a return to the LBJ/Nixon era, and a move away from the Reagan/Clinton period. House Republicans, fortunately, are 90 days sober, as they are putting up a valiant fight to stop the big-government onslaught and move the GOP back to first principles.

Noteworthy up here on Wall Street, a great many Obama supporters — especially hedge-fund types who voted for “change” — are becoming disillusioned with the performances of Obama and Treasury man Geithner.

There is a growing sense of buyer’s remorse.

Well then, do conservatives dare say: We told you so?
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The Conquering Caesar!

After a great victory over his enemies, the victorious Caesar would be given the honor of a "Triumph" - a procession through the streets of the capitol city regaled by his fallen enemies and cheering supporters alike.

As a sop to former republican times, his slave would run behind his chariot, every now and then whispering in his ear... "Remember you are human! Remember you are human...you Communist bastard!!!"...T

An Insufficiency of Fear

- John McCain probably was eager to return to the Senate as an avatar of bipartisanship, a role he has enjoyed. It is, therefore, a measure of the recklessness of House Democrats that they caused the stimulus debate to revolve around a bill that McCain dismisses as "generational theft." -

"My Friends" as our feckless ex-presidential candidate would have prefaced: We are making the exact same mistake that LBJ and his fanatic leftist, Ivory tower dwelling, liberal control freaks made in the 60's, and for exactly the same wrongheaded reasons.

LBJ took advantage of the assassination of Kennedy to ram everything the left had wanted for a generation through congress. The direct result was 21% interest rates, 10% inflation, 10% unemployment, the "misery index", talk of amending the Constitution to provide for 2 presidents serving concurrently, gas lines as long as the eye could see because "the oil is all gone!", our enemies running rampant over U.S. interests worldwide, the Islamist revolution, surrender to Iran, and...Jimmy Carter...

Osama is using the current environment to foist the exact same socialist pap down our collective throats, and the result will be identical, if we are so lucky that it is not indeed even worse, to the point of a collective Waterloo that the author fears...T

WASHINGTON -- The president, convinced that the only thing America has to fear is an insufficiency of fear, has warned that "disaster" and "catastrophe" are the certain alternatives to swift passage of the stimulus legislation. One marvels at his certitude more than one envies his custody of this adventure.

Certitude of one flavor or another is never entirely out of fashion in Washington. Thirty years ago, some conservatives were certain that their tax cuts would be so stimulative that they would be completely self-financing. Today, some liberals are certain that the spending they favor -- on green jobs, infrastructure and everything else -- will completely pay for itself. For liberals, "stimulus spending" is a classification that no longer classifies: All spending is, they are certain, necessarily stimulative.

At Yale's 1962 commencement, President John Kennedy expressed Washington's recurring confidence in the ability to supplant politics with expertise. As is traditional, Kennedy deplored "traditional labels" and insisted that "differences today" involve not clashes of principles but only "matters of degree." Kennedy argued that "the practical management of a modern economy" is "basically an administrative or executive problem." Congress need not intrude. Because policy issues are "sophisticated and technical questions," demanding "technical answers, not political answers," laypersons could hardly participate in the debate.

In December 1965, John Maynard Keynes, although 19 years dead, was, as today, enjoying one of his recurring resurrections as vindicator of government management of the economy by manipulating "aggregate demand." Keynes' visage was on Time magazine's cover and the accompanying story said that happy days were here again and here to stay.

President Lyndon Johnson was embarked on building the Great Society, assisted by policymakers who, wrote Time, "have used Keynesian principles" to smooth the moderate business cycles and achieve price stability: "Washington's economic managers scaled these heights by their adherence to Keynes' central theme" that a modern economy can operate at "top efficiency" only with government "intervention and influence." So, "economists have descended in force from their ivory towers and now sit confidently at the elbow of almost every important leader in government and business, where they are increasingly called upon to forecast, plan and decide." Ten years later, the "misery index" -- the unemployment rate plus the inflation rate -- was 19.9, heading for 22 percent in 1980.

Today, again, we are told that "politics" has no place in the debate about the tripartite stimulus legislation, which is partly a stimulus, partly liberalism's agenda of social engineering, and partly the beginning of "remaking" the economy. Gary Wolfram of Hillsdale College notes that the size of the stimulus -- the House-Senate compromise bill is $789 billion -- is just slightly less than the amount of all U.S. currency in circulation, and is larger than the entire federal budget was until 1983. Yet it is said that in the debate about this encompassing legislation -- which concerns what government can and should do, and ultimately what kind of regime America shall have -- people should "transcend" (so says Larry Summers, the president's economic adviser) politics. What, then, would be left for political argument to be about?

It is said that the negligible Republican support for the stimulus legislation means that bipartisanship is dead. But what can "bipartisanship" mean concerning legislation that concerns almost everything?

John McCain probably was eager to return to the Senate as an avatar of bipartisanship, a role he has enjoyed. It is, therefore, a measure of the recklessness of House Democrats that they caused the stimulus debate to revolve around a bill that McCain dismisses as "generational theft."

The federal government, with its separation of powers and myriad blocking mechanisms, was not made for speed but for safety. This is particularly pertinent today because if $789 billion is spent ineffectively or destructively, government does not get to say "oops" and take a mulligan. Senate Republicans have slowed and altered the course of the "disaster! catastrophe!" stampede. Still, as Anthony Trollope wrote in one of his parliamentary novels, "The best carriage horses are those which can most steadily hold back against the coach as it trundles down the hill."

Not yet a third of the way through the president's "first 100 days," he and we should remember that it was not FDR's initial burst of activity in 1933 that put the phrase "100 days" into the Western lexicon. It was Napoleon's frenetic trajectory in 1815 that began with his escape from Elba and ended near the Belgian village of Waterloo.
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Terrorism? Solved!

This would work!...T

HOW TO STOP ISLAMIC TERRORISTS...... it worked once in our History...

Just before World War I, there were a number of terrorist attacks against the United States and it's interests by, you guessed it, Muslim extremists.

So General Pershing captured 50 of the terrorists and had them tied to posts execution style. He then had his men bring in two pigs and slaughter them in front of the, now horrified, terrorists.

The soldiers then soaked their bullets in pigs blood, and proceeded to execute 49 of the terrorists by firing squad.

The soldiers then dug a big hole, dumped in the terrorist's bodies and covered them in pig blood, entrails, etc.

They let the 50th man go. And for about the next 42 years, there was not a single attack by a muslim fanatic anywhere in the world.

Redemption!

Well now! He's not looking so bad anymore, is he!...T

New Feature - My Publications

A new feature is included in NAVITOR - DoxTop - My Publications. It's previewed here with my Thesis, published in 2001, and is a permanent feature in the left hand column, near the bottom of the applications.

If you love military history, the study of WWI, and/or Winston Churchill, then this is for you...T