Internet Scofflaw

President Obama says that supporting would-be socialist dictators against the constitutional order they seek to overthrow is “emblematic” of his foreign policy:

In Moscow, President Barack Obama said his administration’s support for Zelaya, the deposed left-leaning politician who often criticized Washington, was emblematic of his administration’s foreign policy.

“America cannot and should not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country,” Obama said in a speech in the Russian capital.

Which is precisely what the Obama Administration is trying to do. Honduras deposed its president legally and in full accord with its constitution, and President Obama is trying to force them to take him back.

Great Britain institutes environmental police. If the president has his way, they won’t be far behind in America.

(Via the Corner.)

Should the government stop dumping money into a giant hole? “You can’t depend on private money holes to destroy that money.”

(Via Instapundit.)

Let’s look the record of President Obama’s policies in international crises:

• July 2007: Senator Obama says that the United States should not act to prevent genocide in Iraq.
• July 2008: Senator Obama says that he continues to oppose the surge, which was clearly working at that point, even in hindsight.
• August 2008: Senator Obama initially refuses to condemn the Russian invasion of Georgia. He also criticizes Senator McCain’s strong words on the conflict. (BONUS: After Obama belatedly issues his own strong words, his campaign claims credit for the cease-fire, more than a week before any cease-fire exists.)
• June 2009: President Obama refuses to condemn Iran’s stolen election and violence against protesters. This creates a rift with his Secretary of State, who urges a stronger position.
• June 2009: When Honduras acts entirely within its constitution to depose its president, President Obama sides with the would-be dictator.

A pattern is clearly emerging at this point. In any international crisis, President Obama takes the position that is pro-tyranny, or at least anti-anti-tyranny. (And that’s without even discussing his position on domestic crises.)

During the Carter administration, the world discovered it was better to be America’s enemy than its friend. As a friend, you could count on the administration’s condemnation of any internal or external action at odds with President Carter’s liberal ideology. However, as an enemy, the administration would bend over backwards to engage you and forgive your actions. Naturally, this policy created enemies.

President Reagan, obviously, discontinued the policy, and President Clinton did not reinstate it. I didn’t give Clinton much credit for that at the time; I viewed Carter’s insane foreign policy as unique to himself. It turns out I should have, because with President Obama, insanity is back with a vengeance.

Paul Begala, the architect of several Democratic election campaigns including Bill Clinton’s, and now a CNN commentator, likens Sarah Palin to a prostitute. In the literal, sexual sense.

Via Instapundit, who adds:

Half the fun of being a “Supposedly Liberal Dood” is the license to do that sort of thing while still being “progressive.”

Escaped convicts in Britain cannot be identified, out of concern for the criminals’ privacy.

Story here. The big question is why. There’s no way that resigning during your first term as governor is a bid for higher office, so it seems like the only possibilities are scandal or some sort of family problem. The left, of course, is assuming it’s scandal. I don’t think so, but there’s no need to speculate. If it’s scandal, we’ll find out soon. Either way, Palin’s political career is done.

UPDATE: It seems that a lot of people see this as a career move. If so, it’s a crazy one. Occasionally, crazy turns out to be crazy-like-a-fox, but usually it’s just plain crazy.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands.

The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That’s a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago. . .

The Journal analysis, based on information published in the Congressional Record, also shows that taxpayer-funded travel is a big and growing perk for lawmakers and their families. Some members of Congress have complained in recent months about chief executives of bailed-out banks, insurance companies and car makers who sponsored corporate trips to resorts or used corporate jets for their own travel.

Although complete travel records aren’t yet available for 2009, it appears that such costs continue to rise. The Journal analysis shows that the government has picked up the tab for travel to destinations such as Jamaica, the Virgin Islands and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. . .

Often, lawmakers combine trips to war zones with visits to more tranquil spots. In February, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a delegation of Democratic lawmakers to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan for a day. Before landing in Kabul, the eight lawmakers and their entourage of spouses and aides spent eight days in Italy, spending $57,697 on hotels and meals.

(Emphasis mine.)

Unpacking the numbers, congressional junketing increased 12% per year from 2001 to 2007. In 2007 it jumped to 22% per year.

And speaking of government waste, there’s this item:

Members of Congress said Thursday that details of their expense claims wouldn’t be posted online before mid-November at the earliest — two and a half months later than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said they would be published in an electronic format for the first time.

Ms. Pelosi set an August 31 deadline for putting information about expenses claimed by members of the House of Representatives on the Internet, in an announcement reversing a longstanding policy of providing the information only in books totaling about 12,000 pages a year. The Senate has not announced any plans to put its expenses claims online.

The speaker’s announcement last month followed a series of Wall Street Journal articles on bonus payments and expense claims for luxury cars and high-end technology made by congressional offices.

On the occasion of the latest unemployment jump, it seems appropriate to re-run the charts of our economy:

We’re in trouble, and our government is making things worse.

The latest Rasmussen poll shows President Obama falling to earth:

• A slim majority still approve of the president’s job performance, but by a narrower margin (53-46) than President Bush (52-34) on July 3, 2001.
• More strongly disapprove of the president (35) than strongly approve (33).
• Only 42% rate the president excellent or good on economic issues, against 39% poor.
• A strong majority say that the stimulus has not helped; 31% say it helped, 30% say it hurt, and 31% say it had no impact.
• A majority disapprove of the president on national security (44-55) (not in the free article, related by Ed Morrissey).
• Independents oppose the president by a wide margin (either 75-23 or 68-31) (also related by Morrissey).

Byron York reports that Republicans are still demanding answers, and the White House is hinting that it may invoke executive privilege.

(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

The cap-and-trade bill will require private residences to satisfy energy efficiency standards set by the EPA. Existing residences will not be grandfathered, and must be retrofitted before a house can be sold or remodelled.

The unemployment rate increased just 0.1% in in June.

Hooray, I guess.

Comedians who can’t find anything to make fun of in President Obama should check out the latest from the Onion. (Via Instapundit.)

Last year’s financial bailout package was, strictly speaking, an investment. The federal government was going to buy up toxic assets, and some day sell them. That never happened, and instead the money was spend to buy equity in banks and bankrupt automobile companies. Still, TARP was an investment. To be sure, it was mostly a bad investment, but we will see some proceeds eventually. In the long run, it might even break even. If not, the cost will certainly be defrayed significantly from the original $700 billion. And all the proceeds go directly to reduce the national debt.

For Barney Frank (who happens to be one of the people most responsible for the financial crisis in the first place), repaying that money is unacceptable. Frank wants to take any TARP proceeds and spend it on his own priorities. In fact, he actually wants to use TARP proceeds to muck with the housing market some more. (No joke!)

Not paying off debts you were scheduled to pay off is the same thing as borrowing. So, what this is, is a stealthy liberal spending plan in the neighborhood of $700 billion (an amount that was considered enormous just one year ago). It should get public scrutiny commensurate with that.

(Via Power Line.)

From this article, it sounds as though there is a very good chance of defeating the so-called health care “public option.” Without the federal government “competing” with private insurers, and inevitably driving most of them out of business, the prospect of “reform” is merely terrible.

(Via the Corner.)

POSTSCRIPT: You know you’re dealing with Orwellian terminology when you need three sets of scare quotes in two sentences.

The Washington Post reports:

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye’s [D-HI] staff contacted federal regulators last fall to ask about the bailout application of an ailing Hawaii bank that he had helped to establish and where he has invested the bulk of his personal wealth.

The bank, Central Pacific Financial, was an unlikely candidate for a program designed by the Treasury Department to bolster healthy banks. The firm’s losses were depleting its capital reserves. Its primary regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., already had decided that it didn’t meet the criteria for receiving a favorable recommendation and had forwarded the application to a council that reviewed marginal cases, according to agency documents.

Two weeks after the inquiry from Inouye’s office, Central Pacific announced that the Treasury would inject $135 million. . .

Inouye said he was not attempting to influence the outcome. . . Inouye reported ownership of Central Pacific shares worth $350,000 to $700,000, some held by his wife, at the end of 2007. The shares represented at least two-thirds of Inouye’s total reported assets.

(Via Hot Air.)

The FDIC won’t say why they changed their minds, but the timing is striking:

Internal FDIC e-mails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that Luong’s question was referred from San Francisco to FDIC headquarters in Washington. . . The internal e-mails show that the application had been forwarded to an inter-agency council headed by the Treasury Department that reviews cases in which a bank did not meet the criteria for a federal investment. . .

Shortly after the Inouye staffer’s phone call, the council approved Central Pacific’s application.

Despite smelling really bad, Inouye’s action does not violate the rules that Congress set for itself:

Such contacts by members and their staff do not violate the rules Congress has established to govern itself. “Congress has never been willing to adopt strong conflict-of-interest rules for its members, but for the most part, has left it up to each member to decide for themselves whether they have a potential conflict of interest,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a watchdog group.

The most similar known case comes from the House. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) arranged a meeting between regulators and OneUnited of Massachusetts, a bank in which her husband held shares. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who did not own shares in the company, subsequently inserted language into the bailout bill that effectively directed the Treasury to give special consideration to that bank.

There’s also this:

The crush of calls from Capitol Hill on behalf of specific applicants led the Treasury to announce earlier [this] year that it would start releasing a weekly list of congressional inquiries. It has yet to do so.

I understand. I’m sure it takes a long time to set that sort of thing up.

This is a good example of why I voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged President Obama for two days to toughen his language on Iran before he did so, and then was surprised when he condemned Iran’s crackdown on demonstrators last week, administration officials say.

At his June 23 news conference, Mr. Obama said he was “appalled and outraged” by Iranian behavior and “strongly condemned” the violence against anti-government demonstrators. Up until then, Mr. Obama and other administration officials had taken a softer line, expressing “deep concern” about the situation and calling on Iran to “respect the dignity of its own people.”

Behind the scenes, the officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing internal deliberations, said Mrs. Clinton had been advocating the stronger U.S. response, but the president resisted. When he finally took her advice, the aides said, he did so without informing her first. . .

“It was a happy surprise,” one administration official said. “It was echoing the line the secretary had been pushing for a couple of days.”

Another official said Mr. Obama apparently did not make the final decision to go ahead with the tougher stance until shortly before his remarks.

(Via Hot Air.)

Not only is President Obama not taking advice from Hillary Clinton, it seems they aren’t even talking. This strengthens the appearance that Clinton was nominated for political reasons, not because she holds the president’s confidence.

The FDA is considering pulling cold medicines such as Nyquil off the market. It seems that some people use them incorrectly, taking too much and/or combining them with other acetaminophen products, resulting in an overdose. This kills about 20 people per year.

Cough syrup for toddlers is already banned, due to fears it can be misused. Its misuse killed about 3 children per year. Hundreds of public pools across the country are closing because municipalities cannot afford to retrofit them with drain covers that comply with the Virginia Graeme Baker act. Circulation entrapments kill about 1 person per year. (But one of them was the granddaughter of an important politician.)

Every death is a tragedy, of course. We need to ensure safety, at whatever the cost, right?

Then what about CAFE gas mileage standards, which kill 1300 people every year? If we’re going to curtail everyone’s lives to save a few people per year (or even just one), certainly CAFE standards need to go! Right?

Not at all. We’re tightening CAFE standards. Dramatically. From 27.5 mpg to 39 mpg. We can’t know how many additional people that will kill each year, but the number is surely in the hundreds at least.

Well, I suppose the government must have its priorities. Safety isn’t everything.

UPDATE: By a vote of 24-13, Nyquil and the like will remain on the market, assuming the FDA follows its panel’s recommendation.

Oh, for crying out loud:

Q: How do you think conservative talk radio has affected the Legislature’s work?

A: The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: “You vote for revenue and your career is over.” I don’t know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it’s about free speech, but it’s extremely unfair.

Look, you legislative jackasses. Those seats aren’t yours, they’re ours. We’re allowed to turn you out of office if we don’t like what you’re doing.

David Axelrod is refusing to rule out a middle-class tax hike. Is anyone honestly surprised by this? Of course President Obama will hike taxes on the middle-class (indeed, already has); that’s what Democrats always do.

One of the more tedious parts of election campaigns and early administrations is listening to the media take seriously farcical pledges like this (or sunlight-before-signing). At least that’s over.

UPDATE: The press openly laughed at the White House press secretary’s pathetic efforts to dodge a direct question about this.

UPDATE: Transcript of Gibbs’ efforts here. (Via Instapundit.)

Here’s an interesting and revealing quote from Barack Obama during the presidential campaign last year:

After ABC’s Charlie Gibson noted that the record shows increased taxes on capital gains — which would affect 100 million Americans — would likely lead to a decrease in government revenues: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

(Via Sense of Events.)

The President’s stated position is that favors higher taxes on investors, even when those taxes actually decrease revenues! The government should actually spend money just to hurt investors.

In what world is this a reasonable policy? It’s spite, pure and simple.

CNET reports:

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.

Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty “decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.”

The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message (PDF) to a staff researcher on March 17: “The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward…and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.”

The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be an independent review process inside a federal agency–and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change document. . .

E-mail messages released this week show that [the report’s author] was ordered not to “have any direct communication” with anyone outside his small group at EPA on the topic of climate change, and was informed that his report would not be shared with the agency group working on the topic.

(Via Instapundit.)

The cap-and-trade bill that the House just passed doesn’t even exist. Nowhere is the thing written down in one place. The House of Representatives voted on and passed a phantom bill.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, as the Democrats have already shown in the past their complete disdain for parliamentary procedure.

Fox News reports:

President Obama blamed health care costs for the mounting federal deficit, saying Tuesday the country will spend $1 out of every $5 on health care within the next 10 years if the government does not mandate reform.

Describing the need to control costs as the administration’s “top priority,” the president said health costs as the “primary driver” of the federal deficit.

“The U.S. government is not going to be able to afford Medicare and Medicaid on its current trajectory,” Obama told reporters during his fourth solo news conference Tuesday.

Health care spending is sucking the life out of the federal budget, so clearly the solution is a massive expansion of government health care spending. Good thinking.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, the bailouts and “stimulus” package might have contributed a wee little bit to the deficit as well, mightn’t they?

The White House has officially abandoned its “sunlight before signing” campaign promise, which it never observed anyway.

(Previous post.)

When the government runs an auto company, it decisions will be made for political reasons, not business reasons. Thus, GM’s new small car will be manufactured in Michigan, rather than its more efficient plants in Wisconsin or Tennessee. The more efficient plants will be closed. (Via Kausfiles, via Instapundit.)

In fact, the small car initiative itself is foolishness. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, Detroit ought to be focusing on expensive cars, which could dilute their high labor costs better. But they cannot, because CAFE standards require them to manufacture lots of light (i.e., cheap) cars. Now that the government controls GM, it’s pushing GM further in the wrong direction.

I’m not back to regular blogging yet, but stupidity of this magnitude necessitates some comment. I held out hope that “cap and trade” might somehow be averted, but it seems very unlikely, now that Democrats have come to an accord.

Democrats are trumpeting a new EPA analysis that says that cap and trade will increase average household energy cost “only” about $100 a year. That seems like a lot to me. In 2005, the average household spent $1063.20 on electricity, so we’re talking about roughly a 10% increase in household electric prices.

Politicians care about household electric bills because voters see those directly, but household electricity is just the tip of the iceberg. Everything uses energy: manufacturing, transportation, services. Under cap and trade, the price of everything will increase. Dramatically.

The bottom line is that our lives require energy. We cannot maintain our current standard of living, or anything close to it, without significant carbon emissions. Plus, there are significant sources of carbon emissions outside of energy, such as food.

An MIT study shows the impossibility of what Democrats are trying to achieve. President Obama’s target is to cut per capita emissions to 2.5 tons by 2050. The United States never had a carbon footprint so small, even in colonial times. The only nations to “achieve” that level today are impoverished ones, such as Belize, Mauritius, Jordan, Haiti and Somalia.

In fact, an American homeless person sleeping in shelters and eating in soup kitchens has a carbon footprint of 8.5 tons. The president wants to cut the average carbon footprint to under a third of a homeless person’s. Without multiple unforeseen technological breakthroughs, or reducing Americans to abject poverty, it simply cannot be done.

UPDATE: The EPA analysis is a rosy one too. The CBO analysis is nearly double: $175 per year. That’s a 17% increase. Other estimates are higher still.

This would sure be something.

Monica Conyers, Detroit city councilwoman and wife of the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (!), is facing multiple bribery charges and is looking at prison time. (Via the Corner.)

Canada’s chief censor is complaining that her critics are chilling the free speech of the pro-censorship crowd.

No surprise here.

Glenn Reynolds comments:

Like Pelosi tabled the Murtha inquiry. And we’re not hearing much about Dodd, Moran, or Visclosky, either. And what about Charles Rangel? I’m beginning to think all that “draining the swamp” talk was just a bunch of campaign lies!

The Senate health care bill will cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years. For that, we can cut the proportion of insured by 6%. (Via Instapundit.)

Amazon says they will shut down their Amazon Associates program (in which people can advertise Amazon products and earn commissions) in North Carolina if its legislature goes through with a new tax on “digital click-throughs.” (Via Instapundit.)

If they don’t care about denying income to North Carolina residents during a tough time, they ought to care about hurting the state’s bottom line. Under current law, those commissions are already taxable income; under the new law, those commissions will cease to exist. Brilliant.

The “stimulus” plan is funding a program that the Democrats specifically promised to exclude:

It became a sort of poster child for fiscal responsibility — a clean-coal power plant in Illinois that was one of then-Sen. Barack Obama’s pet projects.

Democrats insisted they were so serious about keeping pork out of the stimulus bill that it was President Obama himself who blocked the FutureGen project from the massive spending package.

“It shows that we’re serious about it,” Brendan Daly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s spokesman, said at the time. “The speaker said it, and the president said it: There will not be earmarks in this bill.”

Earmarks? Perhaps not. But funding for FutureGen? Absolutely, to the tune of $1 billion.

The Department of Energy on Friday announced that the FutureGen project is on track after all, committing federal stimulus money to advance the project to its next stage. One reason: It was the only shovel-ready project that fits the requirements of the stimulus bill.

Administration officials and the project’s other big backer, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), insist that’s not an earmark at all, as promised — because the stimulus bill doesn’t specifically name the FutureGen project as a recipient of the money.

But others say that’s a distinction without a difference — that FutureGen is merely an earmark by another name, a project that had powerful patrons, funding straight out of the stimulus bill and requirements for the money targeted so narrowly that only a few projects would fit the bill.

(Via Instapundit.)

Since the omission of FutureGen was put forward by Democrats as a demonstration that they were serious, but instead FutureGen got the most expensive earmark in history (according to Senator Tom Coburn), it seems fair to say this proves they were not serious.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, how dishonest is Dick Durban? He perfectly well knows that earmarks are often not specified by name, but by very narrow description, just as in this case.

It’s not just expensive and a horrific expansion of government, it won’t even work:

If the government did nothing new, CBO says the uninsured would be 19% of the non-elderly population in 2019. If they implemented the Democrats’ proposal, the uninsured would be 13% of the non-elderly population.

There will be more scoring documents to come, as there are a large numbers of provisions to take account of that haven’t been counted here, but this is a pretty rough start for the Democrats. They expected the CBO score to produce some painful cost numbers that would complicate their efforts, and it has. But I don’t think they expected the upside to be quite so unimpressive. It makes it difficult to argue for the value of all that spending, taxing, and growth of government.

A bankruptcy judge has aborted the government’s Delphi deal. Megan McArdle comments on the deal:

If true, this is an even more heavy-handed intervention than Chrysler, and considerably more disturbing. Debtor-in-Possession financing, or DIP, is the financing that allows companies to reorganize in bankruptcy. It’s senior to everything else because if it weren’t, no one would be willing to lend money to companies that definitionally have a high probability of failure. Stiffing those creditors in order to make GM, or even Delphi, better off, is incredibly short-sighted.

It also has some potentially scary implications for our political economy. The quasi-legitimate argument in favor of the government’s interventions in favor of the UAW was that Uncle Sam was the only available debtor-in-possession financier, and therefore had a right to call the tune. Screwing over the DIP providers would, of course, make it harder for other companies to get DIP. What new rights could the government discover in those bankruptcies?

In this case, however, the bankruptcy judge wasn’t buying. He ordered Delphi to put its assets up for auction. Now we get to test the theory that the government is acting in ways that actually make all the creditors getting cramdowns better off. If the government has indeed been acting in everyone’s best interest, the auction will be a dismal failure.

(Via Instapundit.)

Byron York has been investigating the firing of the Americorps Inspector General. It’s now clear that it was because he refused to go easy on well-connected corruption.

(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

I guess questioning your opponents’ patriotism is okay now?

CIA Director Leon Panetta says former Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticism of the Obama administration’s approach to terrorism almost suggests “he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point.”

UPDATE: A CIA spokeman is walking back the claim now.

When they talk about Congress breeding rats, they usually don’t mean it literally:

John Bailey thought it was great when his neighbor was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2007.

“Not everyone lives next door to a congresswoman,” he said.

But two years later, he doesn’t feel so lucky. The congresswoman’s house is abandoned and in disrepair, “a blight on the neighborhood,” Bailey said.

He said he thinks the way Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., has treated her home tells far more about her than her voting record. . .

Things got so bad that in the fall of 2008 rats began breeding in Richardson’s backyard and soon moved into a house next door.

The congresswoman has gained a degree of infamy in the Sacramento neighborhood. The two-story house, gray with red trim, is badly in need of paint. The front lawn is a patchwork of grass and weeds with brown splotches of dirt. Much of the once lush ivy covering the chain-link fence has died. The red wooden gate sprawls on the lawn, unless someone props it up. A toilet sits on the back patio.

The backyard weeds, which neighbors said had grown three or four feet high, were cut a day after the Los Angeles Times wrote about them a few months ago. Dead leaves have gathered behind the hot tub. Rosebushes are struggling from lack of water, since the sprinklers are never turned on. Brown paper covers many windows. There is no furniture inside. Two beer cans are in the kitchen sink surrounded by dirt. The countertop and cabinets have been pulled out. . .

Richardson bought the house in early 2007 for $535,000. She already owned two other houses that she had defaulted on six times. . .

In April 2008, Bailey sent a letter complaining about the condition of Richardson’s house to Pelosi, then-state Democratic Party chief Art Torres and his congresswoman, Doris Matsui, a Democrat from Sacramento. Pelosi’s was the only response he received. She said she couldn’t comment.

More recently, Peter Thomsen sent Richardson an e-mail telling her that she should be responsible and fix the house for the sake of the neighborhood.  He received a response saying that he didn’t reside in her district.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Canadian “Human Rights” Commission’s latest attempt to censor Ezra Levant backfires in a big way. Watch here (nearly 15 minutes long).

(Via Instapundit.)

The indispensable Megan McArdle takes a look at the latest effort to blame President Bush for the appalling deficits that President Obama is racking up. (Via Instapundit.) The latest is a piece at the New York Times that takes a look at projected federal deficit over 2009-2012 and examines how that projection has changed from 2000 to today. Not surprisingly, the NYT piece finds the President Bush is to blame for most of the change.

McArdle makes a number of good points. An “under current law” comparison is bogus because it ignores changes that everyone knows are going to be made. For example, the annual AMT fix is going to happen, and the government is always going to spend whatever surplus it acquires. She also points out that it’s nonsensical to blame Bush (from the left anyway) for spending increases that Democrats attacked as insufficient.

But I think McArdle didn’t clearly make the central point (although her “under current law” critique gets at it). All the NYT piece does is compare fantasies. It takes a four-year period (2009-2012), three years of which have not been budgeted yet, and examines how projections of that period changed from 2000 to today.

We make a big show of making multi-year budget projections, but we budget just one year at a time. A spending plan for 2009 written in 2000 had nothing to do with reality. Likewise a spending plan for 2012 written in 2009 has nothing to do with reality.

President Obama tells us that we’re going to spend an insane amount of money this year and next, but then we’re going to start paring it back. (Diet starts tomorrow!) When you average out all four years, it doesn’t look as bad (particularly if you use OMB numbers). That’s what the NYT piece does to minimize Obama’s deficit impact.

Who actually believes that the President and the Democratic Congress, after spending trillions on ever liberal hobby horse and pork barrel, are really going to start dramatically cutting spending next year? I sure don’t.

The only reality is years that are already budgeted. Everything else is fantasy. As it happens, both Bush and Obama submitted budgets for 2009 and we can compare them. Bush’s 2009 budget was based on revenue predictions before the financial crisis, so we have to discard its bottom line, but we can still look at what would have happened under his spending plan, and compare it to Obama’s spending plan.

As I calculated here in March, Bush’s austerity budget cut spending (from the baseline) and would have ended with a $1 trillion deficit. Obama’s “stimulus” budget increased spending and would have ended with a $1.75 trillion deficit. (We’ll accept the OMB numbers for present purposes.) Something close to Obama’s budget was enacted by Congress.

President Obama has nearly doubled the deficit in one year. That’s the reality. He says that he’ll start cutting it soon. That’s fantasy.

The horrifying shooting at the Holocaust Museum earlier this week has evinced a familiar pattern. While the right responds to terror by attacking terrorists, the left often responds to terror by attacking the right. (Via Instapundit.) The news that the Museum shooter was a white supremacist indicated to the left that this incident belonged to them. They quickly settled on a narrative, suggesting that the outrageous DHS report from April, which tarred conservatives, libertarians, and veterans as potential terrorists, wasn’t so outrageous after all.

That argument is crap anyway, but it turns out that the facts in this case don’t even harmonize with their argument. As Politico put it, the shooter is “too far on the fringe to fit into conventional political classification.” He is a white supremacist, but he also hates “neocons” and believes that 9/11 was an inside job. In fact, the FBI uncovered evidence that the conservative Weekly Standard may have been on his list of targets.

This doesn’t mean that the right should now turn around and pin this atrocity on the left. Instead of turning on each other, we really should just fight the terrorists.

This sounds shady:

Some strange and potentially suspicious events tonight concerning the Obama White House and the AmeriCorps program. I’ve been told that on Wednesday night the AmeriCorps inspector general, Gerald Walpin, received a call from the White House counsel’s office telling him that he had one hour to either resign or be fired. The White House did not cite a reason. “The answer that was given was that it’s just time to move on,” one Senate source told me tonight. “The president would like to have someone else in that position.”

Inspectors General are part of every federal department. They are given the responsibility of independently investigating allegations of waste, fraud, and corruption in the government, without fear of interference by political appointees or the White House. Last year Congress passed the Inspectors General Reform Act, which added new protections for IGs, including a measure requiring the president to give Congress 30 days prior notice before dismissing an IG. The president must also give Congress an explanation of why the action is needed. Then-Sen. Barack Obama was one of the co-sponsors of the Act. . .

The White House is going ahead with firing Walpin. The firing apparently stems from Walpin’s investigation of a non-profit group, St. HOPE Academy, run by Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star who is now mayor of Sacramento, California (and a big Obama supporter). “[Walpin] found that Johnson, a former all-star point guard for the Phoenix Suns, had used AmeriCorps grants to pay volunteers to engage in school-board political activities, run personal errands for Johnson and even wash his car,” the AP reports. In April, the U.S. attorney declined to file any criminal charges in the matter and criticized Walpin’s investigation. But at the same time Johnson and St. HOPE agreed to repay about half of the $850,000 it had received from AmeriCorps.

Bottom line: The AmeriCorps IG accuses prominent Obama supporter of misusing AmeriCorps grant money. Prominent Obama supporter has to pay back more than $400,000 of that grant money. Obama fires AmeriCorps IG.

(Via Hot Air.)

The market is losing confidence in US Treasury debt. (Via Instapundit.) Hmm, I wonder why. Well, there’s this telling chart from Arthur Laffer:

(Via Hot Air.) And of course, there’s always this:

The bond market has good reason to begin worrying that US Treasury debt won’t be paid off, at least not in real money.

An important part of liberalism is respect for women and their right to play an equal role in business, media, and government.

Ha ha! Just kidding. An important part of liberalism is respect for liberal women and their right to play an equal role in business, media, and government. Conservative or libertarian women, on the other hand, can be attacked in the crudest possible terms, and the left will remain silent. Even the feminist left will not make a peep. Don Surber reviews several recent examples. (Via Instapundit.)

Leftist feminism isn’t about women making their own choices; it’s about women making liberal choices.

(Previous post.)

UPDATE: The National Organization for Women actually did come out and condemn Letterman for his Willow/Bristol Palin joke. Good for them.

Removing that example certainly undercuts my point a bit.  That said, searching NOW’s Hall of Shame doesn’t turn up any hits for any of Surber’s other examples, even the Playboy article on raping conservative women. And, they felt the need to go back 15 years to find a somewhat (but not really) similar example to Letterman on the right. (Why they feel the need to credentialize is beyond me.) So just one cheer for NOW.

A new Rasmussen poll reveals that a near majority support terminating the stimulus plan immediately:

Forty-five percent (45%) of Americans say the rest of the new government spending authorized in the $787-billion economic stimulus plan should now be canceled. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 36% disagree and 20% are not sure.

According to news reports, only $36 billion of the stimulus plan had been spent as of late May.

(Via Instapundit.)

Decent, but I think his other two videos were better.

(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

Gun control run amok:

Investigators with the Library’s Office of the Inspector General have raised a string of objections after Congress stripped them of their ability to buy and carry firearms.

Though the office has carried firearms in the course of its duties for the past 15 years, and inspector general agents at other federal agencies do the same, lawmakers inserted language into the fiscal year 2009 omnibus spending bill, which was signed into law in March, that prohibited the library’s officers from using federal funds to “purchase, maintain or carry” firearms.

They cited an apparent “separation of powers” concern — the library’s investigators are deputized by the U.S. Marshals, which falls under the executive branch, but they investigate abuses in the Library of Congress, which falls under the legislative branch. . .

The office wrote in its semiannual report to Congress in March that the decision would “impede” investigations. It also received an opinion in April from the Government Accountability Office that there is no legitimate “separation of powers” concern. . .

Crimes against the Library of Congress take many forms. The IG’s office investigated child pornography, embezzlement, identity theft and credit card fraud in the last fiscal year, according to its own accounting. . . While investigating crimes in and against the Library of Congress might not sound like the most dangerous job, another official in the inspector general’s office said most of their investigations take them off site, into some dangerous neighborhoods in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and other states.

I’m sympathetic to separation of powers concerns, but if there’s a problem in the legal status of the Library of Congress, it can hardly be corrected by disarming its investigators.

Once upon a time there was a woman named Alice. Alice was smart, talented, and hard-working, and consequently she had a lot of nice things. Living next door to Alice was a man named Bob. Bob was smart too, but he didn’t have the sort of talents that were appreciated in the market, so he didn’t have a lot of nice things.

Bob looked over at Alice’s house with envy. But Bob knew that the market didn’t appreciate his talents the way it did Alice’s. If he wanted the things Alice had, he would have to work really, really hard, and would probably still come up short.

But Bob had an idea. He thought to himself, “It’s not fair that Alice has so many nice things and I don’t. I should go over there and take some of her things.” So that’s what he did.

Stealing worked so well that Bob decided to steal from Alice’s friends as well. Pretty soon, he had just as many nice things as Alice, but Alice kept working and getting more nice things, so Bob had to keep stealing from Alice and her friends to keep up. Besides, Bob was starting to think he was smarter than Alice (just look at how hard she worked for her nice things!), so why should he have only as much as she did?

Now stealing was dangerous work, so in time Bob decided to hire some of his friends to steal for him. That worked well, but there was still the ever-present danger that he could be arrested. Besides, Bob was getting older and wanted respectability. If only there were a legitimate way that Bob could steal.

One day Bob had his first brainstorm. Instead of hiring his friends to steal for him, he should hire the government to do it. Bob knew a woman named Nancy who was a magistrate in the government. So Bob went to Nancy and paid her to steal for him. Then Nancy used her revenue agents and other bureaucrats to take things from Alice and her friends and give them to Bob.

“Hey!” Alice complained, “This is no different than before. Bob is still taking my things, he’s just using government agents instead of thugs to do it. Bob shouldn’t be allowed to hire the government to steal for him!” A lot of people agreed with Alice, so the government changed the rules to make it much harder to bribe magistrates.

At first Bob was disappointed by this development, but then he had his second brainstorm. He didn’t need to bribe Nancy; just being a magistrate was better than any bribe. She got a nice salary, even better benefits, and when she left the government, she would have good retirement benefits and could get a great job as a lobbyist. The longer she was in the government, the better her retirement benefits and her lobbying job would be. Like many of her colleagues, Nancy didn’t have Alice’s talents, or even Bob’s talents, but she was making a killing as a magistrate.

Bob realized that merely helping Nancy to win elections was better than any bribe, and it was completely legal. So that’s what Bob did; he helped Nancy and her friends to win elections, and they kept stealing Alice’s things for him.

Bob had a lot of ways to help Nancy win elections. He could rig the elections, but that was illegal and slightly risky, so he only did a little of that. He could also contribute money to Nancy’s campaign, and he could run his own advertisements attacking Nancy’s opponent.

But the most effective thing that Bob did was organize a bunch of his friends. They would all vote for Nancy, and in return, the government would give them all some nice things that it took from Alice. Bob’s friends never got nearly as much as Bob did, of course, but it only took a little to buy their votes.

Alice noticed that despite all the government’s ethics reforms, it still kept taking her things and giving them to Bob. Alice complained that it didn’t matter how the government was elected, it shouldn’t have the power to steal from her. But Alice’s cries fell on deaf ears. A lot of Nancy’s friends were magistrates too now, and none of them were going to risk their livelihoods by cutting back their work for Bob.

So Alice went to the public instead, and argued that it was wrong for the government to steal. They should kick Nancy out of office. More importantly, they should limit the government’s power so it couldn’t steal for Bob any more.

But Alice was too late. Bob had already anticipated her argument. “Alice is greedy!” he proclaimed. “She has so many nice things, and my friends have so few. It’s not fair that she should have so much and they should have so little.” Bob didn’t mention that Alice had earned all of her nice things. Neither did he mention that, by now, he had much more than either Alice or any of his friends.

Bob’s ploy worked. Many people were taken in by his argument, and thought that Alice, rather than Bob, was the greedy one. Some people even thought that Alice was trying to steal from Bob and his friends. Nancy was re-elected, and kept giving Alice’s things to Bob.

Every year, Nancy took a little bit more from Alice than the previous year. Alice and her friends grew angrier every year, but at the same time, Bob and his friends grew increasingly shrill.

How does the story end?

Some say that one day Alice won the debate. People noticed that Nancy’s government was organized for theft, and wasn’t any good at anything else. Eventually, even many of Bob’s friends came to understand that the government’s large-scale robbery was running their society into the ground.

But others say that society was indeed run into the ground. Eventually Alice gave up fighting Bob, but she knew that Bob would take whatever she earned, so she gave up working hard too. Alice’s friends followed suit. In the end, there was nothing left for Bob to steal.

Bob blamed Alice.

What would an utterly failed stimulus plan look like? Something like this, perhaps:

Not only has the stimulus not worked as well as advertised, it’s actually made things quite a bit worse than the predicted baseline. Meanwhile, with a completely straight face:

US President Barack Obama said Wednesday his mammoth 787 billion dollar stimulus plan had saved or created 150,000 jobs in the first 100 days since it cleared Congress.

Of course, the president will claim that things would have been even worse with the stimulus package. That claim has the great virtue (for a politician) of being untestable and therefore unrefutable. But, it does completely contradict the predictions he used to sell the package.

(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

UPDATE: Even Democrats are starting to mock the “save or create” line. (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: The author of the graph above has revised the graph, saying he was off by one month. This doesn’t change much, but makes the stimulus package’s performance look a tiny bit worse. I’ve replaced the graph with the new one.

Most people think that we have a well-meaning but imperfect government. I think it’s more useful to look at government as us versus them. Exhibit A:

He sleeps under a bridge, washes in a public bathroom and was panhandling for booze money 11 months ago, but now Larry Moore is the best-dressed shoeshine man in the city. When he gets up from his cardboard mattress, he puts on a coat and tie. It’s a reminder of how he has turned things around.

In fact, until last week it looked like Moore was going to have saved enough money to rent a room and get off the street for the first time in six years. But then, in a breathtakingly clueless move, an official for the Department of Public Works told Moore that he has to fork over the money he saved for his first month’s rent to purchase a $491 sidewalk vendor permit.

(Via Don Surber, via Instapundit.)

On his own, this man pulls together a business and saves enough to get off the street, and the government of America’s most famously “liberal” city kicks him back out to the curb.

The good news is that, after a firestorm of bad publicity, the city of San Francisco relented in this case. Alas, most of our government’s outrages don’t get aired so broadly.

Sonia Sotomayor’s notorious “wise Latina” statement, arguing that Latina women make better judges than white men, turns out to be far from an isolated misstatement:

Reams of documents . . . reveal [Sonia Sotomayor] has spoken repeatedly about how her gender and Latina heritage affect her judging.

The federal appeals court judge divulged new details about her finances and provided three decades of writings, speeches and rulings that give both supporters and critics fresh fodder for the coming debate on her confirmation. They include more instances in which she said she hopes a “wise Latina” would reach a better decision than a man without that experience.

The comments in 2002 and 2003 echo a much-criticized remark she made in 2001 at the University of California-Berkeley law school that has prompted a furor among conservatives who say they suggest President Barack Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee brings a personal bias to her legal decisions.

Obama has said he is “sure she would have restated it.” In fact, she said it almost precisely the same way in speeches to the Princeton Club in 2002 and one at Seton Hall law school in 2003, according to copies she sent the Senate.

(Previous post.)

BONUS: In her senior thesis at Princeton, Sotomayor refused to refer to the U.S. Congress by its correct name, preferring the term “North American Congress.” K.C. Johnson remarks that that terminology, although (not to put too fine a point on it) incorrect, “was very trendy, and not uncommon, among the Latin Americanist fringe of the academy” at the time. (Via Instapundit.)

The United States has a pay czar now.  That’s just swell.

In light of the new law repealing federal prohibitions on carrying guns in national parks, David Kopel does his part to promote mental health. (Via Volokh.)