Internet Scofflaw

Democrats set the Senate’s rules aside in order to speed the health care bill along.

A chart of public opinion on health care “reform” over time:

(Via Instapundit.)

With numbers like that, I’m starting to be hopeful that this atrocity can be stopped.

In related news, Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) have come out against the Reid compromise:

Two key senators criticized the most recent healthcare compromise Sunday, saying the policies replacing the public option are still unacceptable.

Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) both said a Medicare “buy-in” option for those aged 55-64 was a deal breaker.

“I’m concerned that it’s the forerunner of single payer, the ultimate single-payer plan, maybe even more directly than the public option,” Nelson said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Lieberman said Democrats should stop looking for a public option “compromise” and simply scrap the idea altogether.

“You’ve got to take out the Medicare buy-in. You’ve got to forget about the public option,” he said.

And Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is indicating she has reservations as well:

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said she would not vote for any bill that doesn’t reduce the deficit and bring down healthcare costs.

If those two criteria aren’t met, “we’ll have to go back to the drawing board,” she said.

(Via Instapundit.)

If she means it, then they’ve lost her vote as well, because there’s no way on God’s green earth that the bill will bring down healthcare costs. Consider this statement today from Christina Romer, chairwoman of the president’s council of economic advisers:

“Absolutely, we are going to be expanding coverage to some 30 million Americans. Of course, that is going to up the level of health-care spending,” Romer said.’

(Via Commentary.)

What? Covering more people costs more money? Who knew?!

Going back to the chart at the top, it’s clear that most Americans have now figured out that the idea that we can save money by extending coverage is merely a fairy tale.

President Obama, in his Nobel acceptance speech, said:

Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait — a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.

Ah yes, the consensus. I remember it well.

The 1991 resolution to authorize military action in Iraq passed 52-47 in the Senate, and 250-183 in the House. Senate Democrats voted 45-10 against the resolution, including Joe Biden, John Kerry, Tom Daschle (then majority leader), Robert Byrd (then and now president pro-tem of the Senate), and Edward Kennedy. Alan Cranston (then majority whip) did not vote. House Democrats voted 179-86 against the resolution, including Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer (now majority leader), Dick Durbin (now Senate majority whip), Tom Foley (then speaker), Dick Gephardt (then majority leader), and David Bonior (then majority whip).

But that war went well, so everyone is for it in retrospect. Just like the Cold War. Some day soon there will have been a consensus over the second Gulf War as well.

(Via Power Line.)

Fox News reports:

The last person to know that Sen. Max Baucus wanted a divorce may have been his wife of 25 years.

It appears that Wanda Baucus was in the dark even as a member of Baucus’ staff — Melodee Hanes, the woman who is now his live-in girlfriend — was plotting out the senator’s life without a wife.

Hanes, Baucus’ former state director, reportedly met at least twice with the Montana Democrat’s divorce attorney eight months before the senator and his wife separated.

This demolishes the idea that Baucus was separated before he started seeing Hanes. True, this doesn’t have any real bearing on the main story, that Baucus nominated a mistress with flimsy qualifications to be US Attorney. But I do think the fact that Baucus’s relationship with the mistress was already sleazy does cast the scandal in an even worse light.

(Previous post.)

The British government wants to mark goods from Jewish settlements in the West Bank:

The British government has issued an official recommendation urging business owners to mark Israeli products produced in West Bank settlements so that consumers who want to boycott such items will find it easy to identify them. . .

According to European Union law, many types of products, especially food products, that are imported from outside the Union, by law must be labeled with the country of their origin. The British government issued its recommendation after several NGOs and marketing chains asked for guidelines regarding the differentiation between settler products and Palestinian products from the West Bank. According to the new guidelines, the British government recommends indicating whether the product was made by Palestinians or Israeli settlers on the label of every product originating from the West Bank.

The government recommendation goes further to say that labeling a product from a settlement as having been manufactured in Israel would be considered a criminal offense as it is misleading to the consumer public. . .

The British embassy in Israel issued a statement clarifying that this move was not a boycott. “This is a recommendation, not a binding order,” the embassy stressed. “The British government is opposed to any kind of boycott of Israel.”

First things first: the claim that the British government is opposed to a boycott is bullshit. If they were opposed to a boycott, they wouldn’t be taking steps to enable one.

Once again, Israel is being held to an entirely different standard than every other country in the world. As one Israeli official remarks:

Another government official said that . . . the British were “singling Israel out for this type of treatment, something that is very, very problematic.”

Why was it less important, he asked, for the British consumer to know that products they were buying were coming from other areas of dispute, such as Tibet, Kashmir, northern Cyprus, Chechnya, Kosovo, parts of Bosnia or even places like Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands and Northern Ireland?

Why is it less important? That’s what we call a rhetorical question; we all know what’s special about Israel. Since 1948, anti-Semites have tried — in the shadow of the holocaust — to give themselves a thin veneer of respectability by arguing that they are only against Israel, not Jews in general.

Also note that there will be criminal sanctions on anyone who labels goods from the West Bank as Israeli. Note that the West Bank includes East Jerusalem (which incidentally contains the entire Old City), which has been part of the Israeli capital since 1980. So any British subject who takes the position that Israel’s capital is part of Israel, and marks his goods accordingly, can go to jail.

But worst is the appalling lack of any sense of history this displays. The British government, facing a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, is directing shops to mark (some) Jewish goods. Do they really have no idea what this looks like?

(Via the Corner.)

A National Review source says there is no deal on health care yet. According to the source, Harry Reid is running a “psych-ops campaign”.

UPDATE: This story (“Senate Dems May Change Health Compromise”) seems to support the source.

A new Public Policy poll finds President Obama barely above water, with 49% approval and 47% disapproval. This is generally consistent with other polls of registered voters. (Rasmussen’s poll of likely voters has Obama underwater at 46/53.)

I also have to note that Public Policy agrees with nearly all other polling in finding that a majority disapproves of Obama health care reform scheme. Of those who disapprove, 90% say there is too much government involvement. Only 6% said too little.

Most interestingly, Public Policy asked another question I haven’t seen polled before: They found that only 50% prefer President Obama to President Bush, against 44% who would prefer Bush to Obama. Considering Bush’s radioactive ratings when he left office, this is a remarkable result.

(Via the Corner.)

The Senate has voted to fund abortion in its health care bill:

By a vote of 54-45, the Senate sidetracked an amendment by Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah that would ban any insurance plan getting taxpayer dollars from offering abortion coverage. The restrictions mirrored provisions in the House-passed health care bill.

The Senate bill currently allows insurance plans to cover abortions, but requires that they can only be paid for with private money. The legislation calls for insurance plans that would receive federal subsidies in a new insurance marketplace to strictly separate public funds from private dollars that would be used to pay for abortion.

“As our bill currently reads, no insurance plan in the new marketplace, whether private or public, would be allowed to use public funds for abortion,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Reid is lying. He is hoping that people are taken in by an accounting trick that pretends that the federal dollars are somehow different from the private ones. He may be right in hoping so; United Way has been playing this same trick successfully for years.

Here’s what is going on: Let’s suppose that WXYZ  is a charity that buys widgets for needy children. Widgets come in various colors, but some people disapprove of red widgets (let’s say they release lots of greenhouse gases). When WXYZ looks for funding, they promise to keep two separate accounts: Account A is unrestricted, and account B can be spent on anything but red-widgets. When fundraising among the anti-red community, WXYZ suggests contributing to account B. That way, WXYZ argues, you know that you’re not funding red widgets.

But it’s not true, because money in the two accounts are fungible. When I contribute money to account B, WXYZ can shift costs, freeing up funds in account A for red widgets. That is, contributing to account B allows WXYZ to spend more on red widgets from account A. All the separation of accounts accomplishes is to cap red-widget spending at the entire balance of account A (which is much higher than would ever be contemplated anyway).

United Way has been doing this for years. They allow you to designate that a contribution is not to be given to Planned Parenthood, but, as explained above, that designation has no effect whatsoever. When you contribute to United Way, you are funding abortion.

Now the Senate wants to employ the same fiction. Private money goes into account A, and government subsidies go into account B. Sure, account B cannot be spent on abortion directly, but every dollar in account B frees up a dollar in account A to be spent on abortion.

So the Senate bill would fund abortion.

In fact, it’s worse than this. A similar argument to the one we make about separate accounts for a single plan could be made about separate plans offered by the same insurer. The insurer could shift costs from one plan to another. (Hospitals already do this, shifting costs from Medicare patients to others.) If the insurer is for-profit, we can probably rely on the profit motive to keep them from doing so; any plan that can’t stand on its own would be cut. But most health insurers are non-profit, and they very well might decide to shift costs from a plan that supports abortion to another government-subsidized plan that does not.

The point is this: the Stupak amendment is already a compromise position. Stupak rules out the utterly transparent accounting fiction described above, but it still allows a company that accepts subsidies to offer other plans that cover abortion, even though the company might shift costs between them. The robust pro-life position would prohibit subsidies to any insurer that covers abortion in any of its plans.

Will people be fooled by Reid’s chicanery? The pro-life movement tends to be pretty savvy to these tricks, so I’m hopeful they won’t. On the other hand, the United Way example suggest that many might well be taken in.

The recent controversy over Max Baucus (D-MT) nominating his mistress as US Attorney is not his first. Baucus was previously charged with sexual harassment by his former chief of staff, Christine Niedermeier, who alleged he fired her for refusing her advances. Baucus was married at the time.

Niedermeier’s case was thrown out because of a special provision in the law that makes it hard to pursue sexual harassment charges against members of Congress. Yep, Congress was thinking ahead.

(Previous post.)

A liberal group is advertising for anyone with information to support criminal charges (of any kind) against Tom Donohue, the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

A network of liberal groups known as Velvet Revolution started an ad campaign offering $200,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the man whose trade organization has become a thorn in the side of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats.

The group is not leveling any specific charges of criminal behavior. Rather, it is casting a wide net, fishing for any whistleblowers from Donohue’s past who might come forward with allegations of wrongdoing. The campaign against the Chamber was launched in response to the group’s opposition to climate change legislation and health care reform, and its plan to spend $100 million lobbying against these and other initiatives.

This is a new low for the politics of personal destruction. If you oppose the progressive agenda effectively, you can now expect a fishing expedition to target you.

This is particularly troubling given the legal climate today, where criminal statutes have proliferated and it can be hard to avoid being guilty of some sort of crime. But I doubt that the goal is actually to put Donohue in jail. Rather, I think that they’re really just looking for any dirt they can find to embarrass the man and his organization.

Democrats trying to work out a compromise (among themselves) on health care reform have a new proposal:

They may still call it a “public plan,” but private insurers — not the government — would offer coverage under a compromise Democrats are considering to win Senate passage of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

The latest idea bears little resemblance to the original vision outlined by liberals, and embraced by Obama, during the 2008 presidential campaign. That called for the government to sell insurance to workers and their families in competition with industry giants like UnitedHealthcare.

But instead of Medicare-for-the-masses, it would be Blue Cross Blue Shield or Kaiser Permanente, albeit with a government seal of approval from the department that handles the health plan for federal employees, including members of Congress. . .

Five moderates and five liberals tapped by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., planned to work on the compromise Tuesday as the Senate debated the 10-year, nearly $1 trillion bill.

One is tempted to call this a victory. If the “public option” is limited to placing a stamp of approval on some private plan, it probably can’t do much harm.

But let’s not be hasty. These people cannot be trusted, so we need to wait and see what the proposal actually says. There will likely be some fine print that makes this just as bad as the public option. Here’s a hint what the fine print might be:

Liberals are trying to extract a price for any compromise. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has proposed allowing people 55 and over to buy into Medicare. Others would further expand the Medicaid health program for low-income people. Finally, if private insurers don’t step up to submit bids to OPM, some liberals want to authorize the federal agency itself to set up a plan.

So there are at least two gotchas. First, they want to drastically expand Medicare/Medicaid. Medicare enrollment would expand 69% (according to the 2000 census) and Medicaid by an undetermined amount. This would be a concrete step toward the socialists’ goal of putting everyone on Medicare.

But the second is the kicker. If private insurers want nothing to do with the scheme, the government would go ahead and create a government plan. Thus, the socialists can obtain their government plan simply by setting the standards for government endorsement unacceptably high. Considering the bad faith with which they have acted at every step in this debate, this has to be their plan.

UPDATE: An agreement has been reached:

Officials said Democrats had tentatively settled on a private insurance arrangement to be supervised by the federal agency that oversees the system through which lawmakers purchase coverage, with the possibility of greater government involvement if needed to ensure consumers of sufficient choices in coverage.

Additionally, the emerging agreement calls for Medicare to be opened to uninsured Americans beginning at age 55, a significant expansion of the large government health care program that currently serves the 65-and-over population.

(Emphasis mine.)

They’re trying to bring the public option in the back door. I hope people see through this.

Of course.

The Wall Street Journal observes:

Here’s a poser: Suppose a public official is accused of recommending his girlfriend for a promotion, though he was the one who first flagged the potential conflict of interest and officials had refused to let him recuse himself from decisions about the woman. Should he lose his job?

That’s precisely what happened in 2007 to Paul Wolfowitz, who was run out of the World Bank on the pretext that he had given his girlfriend a raise. In fact, Mr. Wolfowitz had made bank officials aware that his girlfriend already worked at the bank before he accepted the job as president, and bank officials had raised no objection to the job change that removed his girlfriend from any direct reporting to Mr. Wolfowitz. The ethical uproar was a politically convenient excuse, fanned by the media, to oust Mr. Wolfowitz when his real offense was that he was too hard on corruption.

So it’s going to be fascinating to see how the press corps and political class react to the news that Montana Senator Max Baucus recommended a staff member who was his girlfriend for the plum job of U.S. Attorney. Mr. Baucus disclosed the attempted sweetheart deal early Saturday after media inquiries made clear the story was breaking.

(Via Instapundit.)

I wouldn’t expect consistency from these folks. After all, Wolfowitz was fighting corruption, which made him the enemy. Baucus is promoting corruption.

(Previous post.)

UPDATE: Jon Tester (D-MT) denies any knowledge:

Sen. Jon Tester said Sunday he had limited involvement with fellow Montana Democrat Max Baucus’s decision to float his girlfriend as a possible nominee for a top prosecutor position in Montana.

In an interview with POLITICO, Tester said “no” when asked if he was aware that Melodee Hanes and Baucus were engaged in a romantic relationship when he interviewed Hanes for the position of U.S. attorney in Montana earlier this year.

Tester called Hanes “well-qualified” but said “it was Max’s call” to include her name with two others on a list for the White House to consider before choosing a nominee for the position.

(Via Instapundit.)

The North Dakota legislature is looking to punish a company for urging its customers to oppose health care nationalization.

After years of unfounded wailing about the crushing of dissent during the Bush years, we’re seeing quite a lot of it for real now.

(Via Instapundit.)

Is this New York Times op-ed saying what I think it’s saying?

Anti-tax zealots denounce all taxation as theft, as depriving citizens of their right to spend their hard-earned incomes as they see fit. Yet nowhere does the Constitution grant us the right not to be taxed. Nor does it grant us the right to harm others with impunity. No one is permitted to steal our cars or vandalize our homes. Why should opponents of taxation be allowed to harm us in less direct ways?

He seems to be saying that opposing taxes is like theft or vandalism, but surely no one would say something so stupid.

(Via the Corner.)

To be sure, the press corps are due a lot of mockery, but calling a member of the White House press corps a child to her face doesn’t seem like good politics. (Via Instapundit.)

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the Senate finance committee, nominated his mistress to be a US Attorney. (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: The mistress’s vita looks decidedly thin. When nominated, she had been out of the practice of law for six years.

We last heard of Kevin Jennings, the president’s “safe schools czar” when it was revealed that, years before as a teacher, he was informed by a student of an incident of statutory rape and he failed to report it. This was not only unconscionable, but apparently illegal under Massachusetts law. Yet Jennings did not lose his job as safe schools czar.

Now Jennings is in the news again. It seems that the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, the organization that Jennings founded and led for many years until last year, has a recommended reading list for students K-12. That list is full of obscene material, including explicit depictions of sex acts performed on children.

Will Jennings repudiate his own organization? If, as seems likely, he does not, this is material that the safe schools czar would recommend that students read.

The stimulus package didn’t work, so let’s do another one! The administration is prepared to use $265 billion in unspent and repaid TARP money to fund a new stimulus package. Even the president’s treasury secretary is against it, but Nancy Pelosi is for it, so I guess that settles it.

Apart from the main point (wasting more money), another thing that is frustrating about this is the way it is being discussed. Secretary Geithner and the GOP favor “[dedicating] much of the unspent TARP money to reduce the national debt”. Yes, in other words, they favor not spending it! But the media seems to talk about it as though “debt reduction” is just another way to spend the money.

An interesting comment on the White House’s decision to invoke executive privilege for the White House social secretary:

I love this story.

Of course, every time you are in power, you invoke executive power if you don’t want to be embarrassed. And the opposition declares itself shocked and outraged at the hiding of information and obstruction of justice.

What is comical about this is it’s being invoked for a social secretary in a circumstance where, in the original Supreme Court rulings, it was intended for high officials with important state secrets. What was the state secret here — the nature of the flower arrangements at the head table? You know, it is as if somebody is invoking the Fifth Amendment in a dispute over a parking ticket.

But there was one real piece of news in this hearing, and that was that the head of the Secret Service was asked if there has been an increased level of threats against President Obama – [important] because, you know, there was a rumor in the summer that [with Obama, the threats] had increased by a large percent, perhaps doubled or even worse. Mark Sullivan said that the level of threat against President Obama is the same as against Bush and Clinton, which I think is heartening. It refutes a lot of the rumors and the insinuations that we heard this summer when there was a lot of opposition to Obama policies.

UPDATE: More on the non-increased threat level here.

It’s not just Rasmussen any more. The latest CNN poll finds that 48% approve of the president’s job performance, against 50% disapproving. Unlike Rasmussen, who polls likely voters, CNN’s poll is of registered voters.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) is a little confused about Afghanistan:

We took our eye off the ball. Instead of moving in on [Bin Laden] at Tora Bora, the previous administration decided to move its forces to Iraq.

I know “we took our eye off the ball” has been the favorite Democratic talking point since John Kerry’s presidential campaign, but this doesn’t even make sense. The invasion of Iraq was in March 2003. The battle of Tora Bora was in December 2001. In December 2001 we were moving forces into Afghanistan, not out. (Remember that we defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan largely with special forces and air power.)

Is it too much to expect the chairman of the armed services committee to know something of the war we’re currently fighting? Tora Bora was just eight years ago; it’s not like we’re talking about the Punic Wars here.

(Via PJTV.)

Wasn’t health care reform supposed to make health insurance more accessible to those who don’t get it from their employer? The CBO’s analysis of the Reid bill finds that it would increase the pre-subsidy premiums of such people 10 to 13 percent. It’s only the government subsidy that would do them any good.

So here’s a thought. If the subsidy is the only aspect of the bill with a positive effect (if you want to call it that), why not just scrap the rest of the bill? You’ll still be blowing an enormous hole in the budget, but at least you won’t be screwing up the health care system in the bargain.

(Via the Corner.)

A stunning result from Rasmussen:

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry. . .

The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September. Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September.

Wow. I hope Washington is trembling.

(Via Power Line.)

At Commentary:

The overseas reviews for President Obama’s foreign policy are starting to pour in — and they’re not favorable.

With many examples. (Via Instapundit.)

A new Rasmussen poll shows that the health care debate has shifted public opinion dramatically over the last year-and-a-half:

Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters nationwide now rate the U.S. health care system as good or excellent. That marks a steady increase from 44% at the beginning of October, 35% in May and 29% a year-and-a-half ago.

They say you don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone, but in this case it appears that the American public is coming to appreciate what it has just before it’s gone. It may be too late to save it, though. We’ll see.

(Via the Corner.)

According to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, over half of New York’s soup kitchens were not able to distribute enough food to meet demand. At the same time, New York’s soup kitchens have been required by law to throw out perfectly good food because it contains trans fat.

I’m sure everyone who remained hungry is thankful that Mike Bloomberg is looking out for them.

(Via Instapundit.)

This chart examines the percentage of cabinet secretaries with private sector experience over the years:

One data point does seem to stand out.

(Via Instapundit.)

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, independents now favor the GOP over the Democratic party by 24 points (44-20).

Also, a majority (53%) fears that the government will do too much to the economy (gee, where could they get that idea?), only 37% fear it won’t do enough.

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, support for the Democratic plan has fallen to just 38%. Opposition is at 56%, which matches the old high. Other indicators are strongly against the plan as well:

• Those who feel strongly oppose the plan by a two-to-one margin (43-21).
• The vast majority of both Republicans (83%) and independents (70%) oppose the plan.
• Seniors oppose the plan by a near two-to-one margin (60-34).
• A majority of every age group except the young-and-stupid (under 30) opposes the plan.
• By a four-to-one margin (60-16), the public believes that the plan will increase costs rather than reduce them.
• A majority (54%) believe the plan will hurt health care.
• Two-thirds (66%) recognize that free-market competition will do more than government regulation to reduce costs.
• Less than a third (31%) believe that Congress understands the reform it is considering.

Democrats have lost the debate, but seem ready to press on with a “reform” plan that the public does not want.

I refer, of course to the media.

Chris Matthews (of the legendary leg thrill):

In the Carter presidency, the optics were not exactly robust, and Ronald Reagan rode that to a big victory in 1980. Is the Obama White House sending some Carteresque signals these days?

Maureen Dowd:

Barack Obama, who once had his own electric book tour testing the waters for a campaign, could learn a thing or three from Palin. On Friday, for the first time, his Gallup poll approval rating dropped below 50 percent, and he’s losing the independents who helped get him elected. . .

The animating spirit that electrified his political movement has sputtered out. . .

Obama showed a flair for the theatrical during his campaign, and a talent for narrative in his memoir, but he has yet to translate those skills to governing.

Of course, neither of them actually admits there is anything wrong with the president’s principles. But they do see that he is failing to convey to the people why his disastrous policies aren’t as disastrous as they seem.

Also, Saturday Night Live cuts loose on Obama in a funny skit that is actually only slightly too long.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds adds:

I think Obama’s “charisma” was based on voter narcissism — people excited not just about electing a black President, but about themselves, voting for a black President. Now that’s over, and they’re stuck just with him, and emptied of their own narcissism there’s not much there to fill out the suit. As Ann Althouse says, “I think what Obama seems to have become, he always was.”

UPDATE: Also the London Times:

The real problem may be Obama’s friends — or rather, those among his formerly most enthusiastic supporters who are now having second thoughts.

The doubters are suddenly stretching across a broad section of the Democratic party’s natural constituency. They include black congressional leaders upset by the sluggish economy; women and Hispanics appalled by concessions made to Republicans on healthcare; anti-war liberals depressed by the debate over troops for Afghanistan; and growing numbers of blue-collar workers who are continuing to lose their jobs and homes.

Obama’s Asian adventure perceptibly increased the murmurings of dissent when he returned to Washington last week, having failed to wring any public concessions from China on any major issue.

And Germany’s Der Spiegel:

Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage

When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it’s not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming.

ASIDE: If only he conducted all our foreign policy with the “nice guy act” we would be a little better off. The hallmark of the Carter/Obama foreign policy is softness with hostile regimes but toughness with friends. Softness with everyone would be stupid, and so would toughness with everyone, but either would still be better than what we have now.

Even the New York Times can manage only a lukewarm defense:

President Obama has faced a fair amount of criticism for his China trip. He was too deferential; he didn’t speak out enough on human rights; he failed to press Beijing firmly on revaluing its currency; he achieved no concrete results. The trip wasn’t all that we had hoped it would be, but some of the complaints are premature.

(Via Hot Air.)

Keith Hennessey explains. (Via Instapundit.)

This is appalling:

[Allentown’s] top union boss decided to attack a young man for organizing an effort to improve a city park pathway as a way of becoming an Eagle Scout. . .

”We’ll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails,” council was warned by Nick Balzano, head of the local Service Employees International Union.

”There’s to be no volunteers,” Balzano thundered, because such work must be done by union types, even if they normally were disinclined to do it before some of them got laid off by the city in July.

When the SEIU members were still on the job, they let a 1,000-foot section of a walking and biking path in Kimmets Lock Park along the Lehigh River become choked with vegetation and trash. . . With city Parks Department permission, Eagle Scout candidate Kevin Anderson, 17, a member of Center Valley’s Boy Scout Troop 301, organized work details to clear brush and trees, poison ivy, old tires and other debris from the path.

The Boy-Scout-bashing angle is so outrageous, it’s easy to miss the broader picture of what was happening here. As leverage against the city, union workers were refusing to do their job, and they were trying to keep anyone else (such as the Scouts) from doing it either. They wanted the path to stay impassable.

They were sending a message: give us what we want or we will screw up the city. Although the SEIU hung Barzano out to dry for sending the message stupidly, I don’t see any indication that they’ve repented their broader extortion.

(Via Instapundit.)

The National Union of Healthcare Workers is alleging that the SEIU engaged in illegal tactics — including intimidation and ballot tampering — in an election in which workers were choosing which of the two unions would represent them. If true, and the allegations seem solid, this shows that the SEIU will not only use illegal tactics against (evil capitalist) businesses, but also against other labor unions.

More here.

The Senate Ethics Committee has “admonished” Roland Burris (D-IL) for the lies he told (under oath) about the circumstances of his Senate appointment, but did not recommend any penalty. Well, I guess we already knew that perjury is no big deal any more.

Andrew Breitbart issues Eric Holder a warning:

Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have.

Do you think Breitbart is bluffing? He’s had the goods every single time so far.

(Previous post.)

It was just misappropriation of funds, now it’s also sexual misconduct and hush money. And President Obama has placed himself at the middle of the scandal by firing the government’s investigator.

(Via Instapundit.)

According to the latest Fox poll, President Obama’s approval rating has dropped from 50-41 (favorable-unfavorable) at the end of last month to 46-46 today. The average approval rating of a president at this point in his term is 56, so Obama is underperforming by 10 points.

The sharp slide in Obama’s popularity is due to independents. Opinions of Democrats and Republicans shifted no more than a point during the period. Independents, however, went from 49-34 (i.e., +15) to 34-51 (i.e., -17). That’s a staggering 32-point shift in just three weeks.

I think we’re seeing the electorate finally getting wise to whom they’ve elected. In just the last few weeks they’ve watched the president lose the health care debate, dither on Afghanistan, wage war against Fox News, and move the 9/11 mastermind to civilian court. They’ve watched him tour the world, accomplishing absolutely nothing but making an ass of himself in the process. And they’ve seen the reports of jobs created or saved by his stimulus package unmasked as a complete fraud. The bloom is off the rose and it’s not coming back.

POSTSCRIPT: Lest the Fox poll be considered an outlier, the president is actually doing better in the Fox poll than the Rasmussen poll, which has him at 46-53 overall.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Gallup has him at 49 so Fox’s result seems well within the mainstream.

In O’Keefe and Giles’s last ACORN video (#7 if you’re counting) on the Los Angeles office, they encountered an ACORN staffer who actually refused to assist them with their feigned scheme of child prostitution and human trafficking. He did not, however, throw them out of the office. (Recall that Los Angeles is one of the five cities in which ACORN claimed — falsely in at least three cases — that it threw out O’Keefe and Giles.)

ACORN claimed in a message to the LA Times that O’Keefe and Giles were thrown out of a different office:

In an email, ACORN disputed O’Keefe’s claim, saying that the filmmaker earlier had gone to an ACORN office on South Grand Avenue in L.A. with the scenario and was turned away.

Anyone who has followed the ACORN scandal has to be skeptical about this claim, as ACORN has repeatedly lied at every turn. I commented, “Why anyone would still put any credence in ACORN’s stories at this point is beyond me.” And I was right.

The latest ACORN video is out, and it’s from — you guessed it — the ACORN office on South Grand Avenue in Los Angeles. Not only does it show O’Keefe and Giles not being thrown out of the office, it shows an ACORN staffer engaging in the most inexcusable behavior yet.

The staffer advises them to “hook up with somebody who is on that international sex business level” and offers to do research for them. She also makes additional remarks that, if their context is fairly represented (and O’Keefe and Giles have given us no reason to doubt them), seem to condone trafficking in minors.

This latest video is amazing because it shows ACORN engaging in its worst behavior yet in the very office that ACORN cited in its defense. Clearly ACORN is irredeemably corrupt, but it’s becoming hard to escape the conclusion that it is also stupid.

At every stage of the scandal, O’Keefe, Giles, and Andrew Breitbart have had the goods to disprove ACORN’s repeated lies. And yet ACORN keeps lying. And keeps getting busted. It is unfathomable to me that they haven’t figured this out yet. How is it possible that an organization of corrupt, immoral idiots can be so influential?

(Previous post.)

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:

The state-picked Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority today unanimously rejected Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s budget, saying that the inclusion of $16.2 million he hopes to get from a tuition tax doesn’t comply with state law.

“Existing tax legislation does not yet exist” to support what would be a first-in-the-nation tuition levy, said ICA Chair Barbara McNees.

The rejection puts the process of passing a 2010 budget into uncharted waters. Mr. Ravenstahl said he may ask city council to pass the 1 percent tuition tax despite the ICA’s vote.

Ah yes, why let the law gets in the way of a good tax increase?

POSTSCRIPT: Ravenstahl’s proposal is not only illegal, it is also impressively cynical, even from him. He proposed it just days after he was re-elected, knowing that most current students will have graduated when he next faces re-election in four years.

The British health-care rationing board bans a drug that extends the life of liver-cancer sufferers.

You can’t put the Democrats’ flawed thinking on terrorism any more crisply than this:

If the U.S. captures Osama bin Laden, there’s no need to interrogate him, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of that committee, said that arguments raised by Republican senators about whether bin Laden would be afforded Miranda rights if he were captured amount to a “red herring.” . . .

“For one thing, capturing Osama bin Laden — we’ve had enough on him, we don’t need to interrogate him,” Leahy added.

Leahy seems to think that the reason we interrogate terrorists is to get information on them for prosecution. We don’t. A captured terrorist is already out of the picture. We interrogate terrorists so that we can get better information on other terrorists: who and where they are, what they are doing, and how we can stop them. It’s about preventing future atrocities, not prosecuting past ones.

(Via the Corner.)

It’s now clear why the Recovery.gov information on created/saved jobs is so comically, awesomely bad. It turns out that the data is collated from whatever the recipients of stimulus funding happened to type into a web form:

According to Ed Pound, director of communications for recovery.gov, the Web site relies on self-reporting by recipients of the stimulus money. They are required to fill out an online form with federalreporting.gov, identifying how much money they have received and how many jobs they have created or saved in the process. A drop-down menu requires them to fill in the number of their congressional district, and apparently some recipients of Recovery Act funds entered incorrect congressional district numbers in their reports.

Pound said the information from federalreporting.gov is then simply transferred to recovery.gov. . .

“We’re not certifying the accuracy of the information,” said Pound. Federal agencies can and do sometimes notice mistakes, he said, and call it to the attention of recipients, but only recipients can correct the information. . .

Asked why recipients would pluck random numbers – 26, 45, 14 – to fill in for their congressional district, Pound replied, “who knows, man, who really knows. There are 130,000 reports out there.”

So this highly-touted exercise in government transparency and accountability is basically an on-line poll. Good grief.

(Via the Corner.)

Senate Democrats are prepared to move forward on Lael Brainard’s nomination, despite her history as a tax cheat. She’ll have plenty of company in this administration.

While you ponder this, remember that the Democrats think the IRS should be tougher on honest mistakes.

(Via Instapundit.)

Everything is political with these guys (especially Eric Holder), so I think Ann Althouse’s theory linking Guantanamo and the Khalid Sheikh Muhammed trial is very plausible:

Maybe what came first was the realization that Guantanamo would need to remain open, and then something was needed to placate those who put their hope in Obama that he would close the place. Oh, what will we do? I’ve got an idea! Let’s put on a show! Let’s try KSM in NYC!

(Via Instapundit.)

The Washington Post reports:

President Obama directly acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay will not close by the January deadline he set, but he said he hoped to still achieve that goal sometime next year.

Obama refused, however, to set a new deadline.

In an interview in the Chinese capital with Major Garrett of Fox News, Obama said he was “not disappointed” that the Guantanamo deadline had slipped, saying he “knew this was going to be hard.”

Why I found most hilarious is how the credulous press reported the closure of the Guantanamo prison as a done deal the very day it was announced. Never mind that they had no idea whatsoever how to accomplish it. The president had announced that we would figure out a way so it was as good as done. It was as if the press had reported moon landings the day after President Kennedy’s speech in May 1961.

(Via Instapundit.)

In 2006, during Barack Obama’s brief tenure in the Senate, he gave a speech in which he indicated his approval of a military trial for Khalid Sheikh Muhammed. The C-SPAN video is here.

The context is interesting. Obama was arguing that we did not need to worry about giving detained terrorists access to US courts, and that it is “not true” that to do so would “give all kinds of rights to terrorist masterminds like Khalid Sheikh Muhammed.” It seems that such worries were well-justified after all.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Democrats want to take the $200 billion unused TARP allocation and blow it on more stimulus. Amazingly, they claim that to do so would create 6 million jobs, even though the $789 billion stimulus was promised to create only 3.5 million jobs, and failed to do so.

(Via the Corner.)

A report from the inspector general of the TARP program holds Timothy Geithner, then head of the New York Federal Reserve and now Treasury Secretary, responsible for the disaster of the AIG bailout:

A brutal report issued Monday by a government watchdog holds Timothy Geithner — then the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now the nation’s Treasury Secretary — responsible for overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs. . .

Instead of bargaining with AIG’s numerous counterparties to resolve its billions of dollars in souring derivatives contracts, Geithner’s team ended up paying top dollar for toxic assets — “an amount far above their market value at the time,” the report notes.

“There is no question that the effect of FRBNY’s decisions — indeed, the very design of the federal assistance to AIG — was that tens of billions of dollars of Government money was funneled inexorably and directly to AIG’s counterparties,” the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said.

Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia got full value for their derivatives contracts with AIG, and taxpayers got the bill. In total, $27.1 billion of public money was transferred to companies that did business with AIG.

Throughout the bailout of AIG, the report says, the New York Fed failed to develop appropriate contingency plans; failed to properly assess the impact of its decisions; and generally engaged in negotiation strategies that were doomed to fail.

Then, after Geithner’s team paid off AIG’s counterparties on Wall Street, it imposed “onerous” terms on the troubled insurer, the report says.

(ASIDE: That’s a Huffington Post summary, but it all seems to be backed up by the report.)

The report also blasts the New York Fed’s deliberate lack of transparency:

The now familiar argument from Government officials about the dire consequences of basic transparency, as advocated by the Federal Reserve . . once again simply does not withstand scrutiny. Federal Reserve officials initially refused to disclose the identities of the counterparties or the details of the payments, warning that disclosure of the names would undermine AIG’s stability, the privacy and business interests of the counterparties, and the stability of the markets.

After public and Congressional pressure, AIG disclosed the identities. Notwithstanding the Federal Reserve’s warnings, the sky did not fall; there is no indication that AIG’s disclosure undermined the stability of AIG or the market or damaged legitimate interests of the counterparties. The lesson that should be learned — one that has been made apparent time after time in the Government’s response to the financial crisis — is that the default position, whenever Government funds are deployed in a crisis to support markets or institutions, should be that the public is entitled to know what is being done with Government funds.

The House Democrats’ health care bill does not do anything to constrain health care costs, and in fact makes them worse, according to a new non-partisan government analysis:

Democrats have promised that health reform would reduce health care costs, but legislation the House passed last week would increase costs over the next decade by $289 billion. By 2019, health costs would rise to 21.1 percent of GDP compared to 20.8 under current law, according to an actuarial report prepared by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“With the exception of the proposed reductions in Medicare payment updates for institutional providers, the provisions of H.R. 3962 would not have a significant impact on future health care cost growth rates. In addition, the longer-term viability of the Medicare update reductions is doubtful,” the report said.

In other words, outside of Medicare payment cuts to hospitals, the bill doesn’t curb increasing health care costs. And even the Medicare payment cuts will be difficult to sustain.

The study also finds that the bill will seriously hurt senior citizens:

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending — one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s health-care system — would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether. . .

More generally, the report questions whether the country’s network of doctors and hospitals would be able to cope with the effects of a reform package expected to add more than 30 million people to the ranks of the insured, many of them through Medicaid, the public health program for the poor.

So the bill increases costs and hurts health care, but aside from that it’s great. (No, not really.)

(Via Instapundit and the Corner.)

The Obama administration once again shows its strong commitment to free speech:

Laurie Williams and husband Alan Zabel worked as lawyers for the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, in its San Francisco office for more than 20 years, and they know more about climate change than most politicians. But when the couple released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use cap-and-trade legislation to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.

Williams and Zabel oppose cap and trade — a controversial government allowance program in which companies are issued emissions limits, or caps, which they can then trade — as a means to fight climate change.

On their own time, Williams and Zabel made a video expressing these opinions. . .

Their bosses in San Francisco approved the effort by Williams and Zabel to release the tape, but after an editorial they wrote appeared in the Washington Post, EPA Director Lisa Jackson ordered the pair to remove the video or face disciplinary action.

Specifically, the administration’s chief environmental official did not want Williams or Zabel mentioning their four decades with the EPA — time spent studying cap and trade.

What you have here is the EPA director, a presidential appointment, silencing career EPA employees who speak publicly in their area of expertise. The administration is insisting that the couple not tell the viewer the one thing that sets their video apart from countless others, the fact that they have relevant expertise in the field.

The video is here. For now anyway.

UPDATE: Williams and Zabel aren’t the only ones. (Via Instapundit.)

This sounds like a straightforward extension of Chicago politics. If nonexistent people can vote, why shouldn’t they contribute to job growth:

The government Web site that promised to show exactly where the $787 billion in stimulus spending was going to “create or save” jobs is allocating billions of tax dollars to hundreds of congressional districts that don’t exist.

Researchers at the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity found 440 “phantom districts” listed on Recovery.gov, consuming $6.4 billion and creating or saving nearly 30,000 jobs. . .

For example, Recovery.gov shows 12 districts, using up more than $2.7 billion, in Washington, D.C, which only has one congressional district.

Recovery.gov also shows 2,893.9 jobs created with $194,537,372 in stimulus funding in New Hampshire’s 00 congressional district. But, there is no such thing.

The site also shows $1,471,518 going to New Hampshire’s 6th congressional district, $1,033,809 to the 4th congressional district and $124,774 to the 27th congressional district. In fact, New Hampshire only has two congressional districts; inviting confusion about where the money listed for the 00, 4th, 6th and 27th districts is going.

(Via Instapundit.)

The latest ACORN video is from Los Angeles, and it’s the first in which ACORN behaved with half a shred of decency. In the video, the ACORN worker has no problem with the prostitution scheme, but he draws the line at underage prostitution. He doesn’t kick O’Keefe and Giles out, but he does refuse to help. According to O’Keefe, he is the only ACORN worker they met during their entire investigation who refused to assist. For this, O’Keefe proclaims him the ACORN Employee of the Year:

Los Angeles is, incidentally, one of the five offices that ACORN claims threw out O’Keefe and Giles. The others were San Diego, Miami, New York and Philadelphia. Three of the five claims (San Diego, New York, and Philadelphia) have already been shown to be lies. It now appears that Los Angeles is a lie as well, although ACORN still claims to have thrown them out of a different Los Angeles office. Why anyone would still put any credence in ACORN’s stories at this point is beyond me.

(Previous post.)

Leftist opinion makers like Thomas Friedman have been promoting the idea that tea party protesters, by vociferously opposing the Democratic agenda, are creating an atmosphere that will lead to violence from the far right. Never mind that whatever violent talk there is on the right comes from random yahoos, whereas on the left violent talk is coming from the media and political establishment.

More importantly, when you look where the actual violence is coming from, it’s coming from the left. I’ve noted here a few cases of union violence in the recent past. The latest incident comes not from the unions but from the communist “anti-racist” left. This time, there’s video:

(Via Power Line.)

Codepink says:

The recent shootings at Ft. Hood and the resignation of top Foreign Service officer Matthew Hoh demonstrate how even our military officers are opposed to US strategy in Afghanistan.

I never thought that Codepink was smart, but I would not have thought that they would be so stupid as to cite Nidal Hasan in support of their case.

(Via the Corner.)

President Obama is offended by the suggestion that his dithering looks like dithering:

President Barack Obama made no effort to conceal his irritation when his press corps used the first question of his maiden Far East trip to ask what was taking him so long on Afghanistan.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: The LA Times: “Obama must rethink rethinking Afghanistan. His strategy deliberations are starting to look like dangerous indecision.” Starting? (Via Instapundit.)

A new Gallup poll finds that a majority feel that providing health care is not the government’s responsibility:

An even stronger majority opposes replacing the current system with a government-run system:

Democrats are on the wrong side of history. Again.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Megan McArdle remarks, the more we talk about health care reform, the less popular it becomes.

I’m stunned by this graph of earned income versus effective income:

A typical family has to get its income over $50k per year before they start seeing any significant return on their labor. If you set out to design a policy to discourage work, could you do any better than this?

Here’s a graph of the implicit tax rate:

The implicit marginal tax rate peaks at nearly 150% for people making a little over $20k per year. That means that earning an additional dollar actually sets you back almost fifty cents. Absolutely appalling.

(Via Instapundit.)

Newly obtained documents show that, despite claims to the contrary, former NEA communications director Yosi Sergant, did not act alone in using the NEA to solicit political propaganda.