Told you guys this would happen:

…On Friday, when most of the basic facts (of Ft. Hood) were available, Mr Obama tried again. It was scarcely any better. He began by offering “an update on the tragedy that took place” – as if it was an earthquake and not a terrorist attack from an enemy within – and ended with a promise for more “updates in the coming days and weeks”.

Completely missing was the eloquence that Mr Obama employs when talking about himself. Absent too was any sense that the President empathised with the families and comrades of those murdered.

…Mr Obama needs to show Americans that he can relate to what they’re going through, and take responsibility.

It could do him good to show he has a bit of fire in his belly. Perhaps he might make a decision or two based on gut instinct and deep conviction. In other words, maybe he should try being a bit more like Mr Bush.

Our ship of State has been adrift on the crucial things (unemployment, War on Terror) and excruciatingly concentrated on relative trivialities (health care)…and about all things, President Obama dithers and passes the buck and allows others to lead the way. We don’t have a proper Commander in Chief – we’ve got a Orator in Chief; a plastic icon incapable of connecting with actual events.

Gonna be a long three years…

James V. DeLong explains why. Highly recommend this article, as well as DeLong’s The Coming of the Fourth American Republic.

I can’t find anything to dispute with either article and both track exceptionally well with my own views.

But will it pass the Senate?

Hours after President Obama exhorted Democratic lawmakers to “answer the call of history,” the House hit an unprecedented milestone on the path to health-care reform, approving a trillion-dollar package late Saturday that seeks to overhaul private insurance practices and guarantee comprehensive and affordable coverage to almost every American.

After months of acrimonious partisanship, Democrats closed ranks on a 220-215 vote that included 39 defections, mostly from the party’s conservative ranks. But the bill attracted a surprise Republican convert: Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao of Louisiana, who represents the Democratic-leaning district of New Orleans and had been the target of a last-minute White House lobbying campaign. GOP House leaders had predicted their members would unanimously oppose the bill.

We’ll have to have a talk with Cao – but my bet is that since the Stupak amendment passed, he felt it was ok to vote for the bill as it didn’t do the morally reprehensible thing if having taxpayer funded abortion. Its still horrible policy, however, and Cao voted the wrong way.

I like how the MSM says Democrats “closed ranks” – 39 of them broke ranks and joined the GOP. That is a fractured party being ruled by ideologues – and we’re going to whack ’em hard next year.

Now – anyone want to guess on whether or not they’ll get 60 votes for cloture in the Senate? I think Harry will try by passing the most watered-down bill possible and then using the trick of the conference committee to ram through Obama-care, Pelosi-style.

Mark Steyn takes note of our bizarre way of dealing with things like the attack at Ft. Hood:

…Major Hasan is not a card-carrying member of the Texas branch of al-Qaeda reporting to a control officer in Yemen or Waziristan. If he were, things would be a lot easier. But the pathologies that drive al-Qaeda beat within Major Hasan too, and in the end his Islamic impulses trumped his expensive Western education, his psychiatric training, his military discipline — his entire American identity. One might say the same about Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale, Ariz., arrested last week after fatally running over his “too Westernized” daughter Noor in the latest American honor killing. Or the two U.S. residents — one American, one Canadian — arrested a few days earlier for plotting to fly to Denmark for the purposes of murdering the editor who commissioned the famous Mohammed cartoons. But Noor Almaleki’s brother shrugs that’s just the way it is. “One thing to one culture doesn’t make sense to another culture,” he says.

Indeed. To infidels, Islam is in a certain sense unknowable, and most of us are content to leave it at that. The vast majority of Muslims don’t conspire to kill cartoonists or murder their daughters or shoot dozens of their fellow soldiers. But Islam inspires enough of this behavior to make it a legitimate topic of analysis. Don’t hold your breath. We’d rather talk about anything else — even in the Army…

What are we to do? How can we protect ourselves from such an attack? I can’t see it as right and just that we should just ignore the implications and simply wait for the next jihadist to reveal himself via a pile of American corpses.

We’re going to have to carefully sift through our Moslem population and identify those strains of thought which lead people to murder in the name of jihad – and then deport them, if foreign, and relieve them of any sensitive duty, if American. I hate to think that some of my fellow Americans and some of our honored guests will have to put up with such an invasive procedure, but we have to know – the lives of innocent people rest upon our ability to ferret out those who would use Islam as a justification for murder.

Certain things – for instance, any Moslem who advocates Sharia – can certainly tip us off to those who are unreliable and then, political correctness notwithstanding, we’ll have to take the necessary steps to protect ourselves. Its going to be hard, but standing on fears of being offensive won’t do anything other than dig some more graves – Moslem and non-Moslem, innocent and guilty.

An excellent take on this “make you feel good though you don’t” phrase we’re getting from the money men:

The term jobless recovery was used mostly as a pejorative when it came into circulation in the 1990s. But in the wake of last year’s meltdown, it has taken on a new sense: If you give it time, economic growth will come. That has been the mantra throughout 2009.

Yet Friday’s headline unemployment number was worse than economists expected, and it wasn’t the only bad news. The average workweek remains short by historical standards — suggesting many employed people are working fewer hours than they’d like. People are staying unemployed longer and losing their benefits, in spite of recent government action to extend them.

A short work week isn’t just a sign of distress for cash-strapped workers. It also says it will be some time before employers start hiring again.

“Particularly with future uncertainty as high as it is, firms are more likely to increase the hours of underemployed workers before hiring unemployed workers,” wrote Janney Montgomery Scott economist Guy LeBas in a note to clients Friday.

While the alleged growth (which I bet will be revised significantly downwards in the coming months) of the third quarter has officially put us out of recession (and, liberals, made this Obamanomics from now own), the real facts are that the economy isn’t growing at all – in fact, stats to the contrary, its still a shirking, de-leveraging, de-inflating economy. All we’ve got right now is a bit of government-funded smoke and mirrors (and the funding is borrowed, in to the bargain). We’ve lost a lot of wealth, good people, and we won’t get back to low unemployment until we replace the lost wealth – and we won’t do that until we start making, mining and growing more of our own stuff.

Do keep in mind that tax breaks for home and car purchases, while nice for those who can use them, don’t do the trick – all you do with that is move up purchases a little bit for those who are not in financial dire straights. Everyone who is in such straights are helped, at best, only a tiny bit by such money moving. Wealth creation, that is what we need.

So, how do we create wealth? We clear away regulations which inhibit the start up or expansion of new factories, farms and mines. We ease the tax burden on small and medium sized business. We go through de-facto bankruptcy reorganization of our housing industry – from builder to owner to lender, everything has to be re-adjusted to fit current reality, and thus relieve a terrible burden on banks and the people. We need to encourage and nurture wealth-creation – and then get the heck out of the way.

Until we do this, we’ll remain mired in this economic depression – and likely make it deeper and more prolonged by current policies.

Can’t have any of that nasty, old dissent:

The pro-abortion grassroots activist group MoveOn says it has raised millions of dollars to take on any pro-life or moderate Democrat who would vote against or hold up the health care reform bill. Pro-life groups oppose the bills because they currently contain massive government funding of abortions.

MoveOn informed its members in a Thursday email that it has raised well over $3 million to fund pro-abortion challenges to any Democrat who votes against the bills.

It says it has raised $3,578,117 to challenge “any Democratic senator who blocks an up-or-down vote on health care reform with a public option.”

I believe that all GOPers should donate to that fund…except that it might result in a pro-abortion politician getting elected, and thus would be a morally reprehensible act…

But, hey, have at it, liberals.

Mish has a long, interesting article on the subject. I recommend reading the whole thing, but to nutshell it:

Canada, faced with the global recession, has gone on a spending binge and has massively inflated its housing market. While Canada’s banks are technically in good shape, this is only because the toxic assets have all been shoved off to the government…which will have to either massively increase taxes or cut spending to make ends meet. Guess which way liberal Canada is heading? Towards higher taxes, of course.

But the fundamental problem is that the government has created a housing bubble in Canada and not only will it collapse, it must collapse. The only question is, when? And the problem for us is that Canada is a major purchaser of American goods and services – our best customer might be heading for the poor house for a while, and that means our already battered economy will take another big hit.

Exit question: which will cause the “double dip” recession to hit – the collapse of China’s real estate bubble, or Canada’s?

If this were a GOPer…

FOX25 has learned that Congressman Barney Frank was present during a marijuana arrest at James Ready’s home in Ogunquit, Maine. Ready is well-known for his relationship with Congressman Frank.

According to a police report, police charged Ready with marijuana possession, cultivation and use of drug paraphernalia in August of 2007. Ready admitted to civil possession and paid a fine. The remaining charges were dismissed in 2008.

Sources tell FOX25 that when Frank was questioned he told police that he did not live in the house and that he only smoked cigars.

I ain’t buying that – it just explains too much of what we get out of Barney these days. And it makes me feel better – I hate to think that Barney’s absurdities go un-noticed, but having the explanation being that everyone’s stoned over there is comforting…

As Instapundit put it, had this been Sarah Palin’s third cousin, it would not have been more than 2 years before it got in to the public square and, of course, it would have been a massive political firestorm. But, as Matt and I discovered in writing Caucus of Corruption, when Democrats do bad things, its ok…because they have compassion…you know, like Hollywood’s compassion…

Liberals seemed determined on suicide:

Thus the stimulus bill fell far short of what many economists — including some in the administration itself — considered appropriate. According to The New Yorker, Christina Romer, the chairwoman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, estimated that a package of more than $1.2 trillion was justified.

Meanwhile, the administration balked at proposals to put large amounts of additional capital into banks, which would probably have required temporary nationalization of the weakest institutions…

We didn’t give enough money to the UAW, banks and State governments to cover their budget shortfalls – so goes liberal “thinking”. Two things about this:

1. If the Donks lose next year and Obama in 2012, the left will say the same thing they say about Carter in 1981: He lost because he wasn’t liberal enough.

2. Liberals are impervious to facts.

The first such case I’ve heard:

The New Hampshire Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit that calls into question the legal protections available to independent Web sites that cover news.

The case involves mortgage lender Implode-Explode, a Las Vegas-based site launched in 2007 that publishes stories about the meltdown of the mortgage industry. The court did not make a final decision on the case Wednesday, but one of its options could be to send the case back to the lower court for further review and litigation on specific points of law.

The dispute began in November 2008 when The Mortgage Specialists Inc (MSI) won a temporary injunction requesting that a confidential document, “2007 Loan Chart,” be removed from Implode-Explode’s site, ml-implode.com. MSI also requested the identity of the source and of a commenter, “Brianbattersby,” who they allege made defamatory comments about the company and its president.

Implode-Explode removed both the loan chart and the comments, but refused to either provide the identity of their anonymous sources or promise to refrain from posting the document again in the future.

At issue: is a blogger a journalist? If you read the rest of the article, it does appear that the blog obtained valid information indicating illegal practices at the lender which were then confirmed upon regulatory investigation. This is what journalism is supposed to be about – finding out what is going on, and then reporting it to the public. The tip off to the blogger does seem to have been a leaked document the blogger did not have a right to see – but journalists are always getting documents they don’t have a right see, so no great problem provided the courts recognize the blogger as a journalist.

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