Of all the statistics pouring into the White House every day, top economic adviser Larry Summers highlighted one Friday to make his case that the economic free-fall has ended.
The number of people searching for the term “economic depression” on Google is down to normal levels, Summers said.
Are you frickin’ kidding me? This is the level of competence we’ve got in the Obama Administration?
This long four years gets longer by the day, it seems….
Did the full 18 holes, shot a 150 – but its not as bad as it sounds as on the last 5 holes I actually figured out how to swing.
Discuss golf or whatever.
Good man:
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell will formally announce his opposition to Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in a floor speech on Monday, July 20. The following are unembargoed excerpts from his prepared remarks:
“From the beginning of this confirmation process, I’ve said that Americans expect one thing when they walk into a court room, whether it’s a traffic court or the Supreme Court — and that’s equal treatment under the law. Over the years, Americans have accepted significant ideological differences in the kinds of men and women that various presidents have nominated to the Supreme Court. But one thing Americans will never tolerate in a nominee is a belief that some groups are more deserving of a fair shake than others. Nothing could be more offensive to the American sensibility than that. Judge Sotomayor is a fine person with an impressive story and a distinguished background. But above all else, a judge must check his or her personal or political agenda at the courtroom door and do justice even-handedly, as the judicial oath requires.”
“Judge Sotomayor’s record of written statements suggest an alarming lack of respect for the notion of equal justice, and therefore, in my view, an insufficient willingness to abide by the judicial oath…”
Sotomayor is manifestly unqualified to be on any court, let alone the Supreme Court (yes, liberals, I know she advanced under GOP Presidents, too…but using that as some sort of “gotcha” against GOP opposition to her appointment just shows you are either (a) liars or (b) entirely ignorant about how judicial nominations are done). Senator McConnell has done the right thing, and I hope he manages to convince the entire Senate GOP to vote against. We can’t stop this unqualified person from sitting on our Supreme Court, but we can register our disdain for the racial pandering Obama is using in this Supreme Court nomination in order to secure a lock-step, leftist vote on the Court.
Did liberals ever like democracy?
…many men are now beginning to say that the democratic ideal is no longer in touch with the modern spirit. I strongly agree; and I naturally prefer the democratic ideal, which is at least an ideal, and therefore, an idea, to the modern spirit, which is simply modern, therefore, already becoming ancient. I notice that the cranks, whom it would be more polite to call the idealists, are already hastening to shed this ideal. A well-known Pacifist, with whom I argued in Radical papers in my Radical days, and who then passed as a pattern Republican of the new Republic, went out of his way the other day to say, ‘The voice of the people is commonly the voice of Satan.’ The truth is that these Liberals never did really believe in popular government, any more than in anything else that was popular, such as pubs or the Dublin Sweepstake. They did not believe in the democracy they invoked against kings and priests. But I did believe in it; and I do believe in it, though I much preferred to invoke it against prigs and faddists. I still believe it would be the most human sort of government, if it could be once more attempted in a more human time. – G K Chesterton
I agree; liberals never really did…because “democracy” means that those working and middle class pinheads will rule the roost, not well-trained liberals who know what’s what.
Perhaps he’s auditioning for Obama’s forthcoming Ministry of Truth?
I would, however, like to propose a couple of rules for commenting on this story. Politicians who are going to use this CBO report against the existing health-care reform proposals must do some combination of the following:
a) Support, as the CBO says you should, the eradication of the tax exclusion that protects employer-based health-care insurance;
b) Support, as Lewin and Commonwealth say you should, a public insurance option that can bargain at Medicare’s rates;
c) Support, as the Office of Management and Budget and every health-care wonk in town says you should, one of the various policies floating around to give MedPAC authority to continually reform and modernize Medicare;
d) Support some form of aggressive cost-sharing that would make people extremely angry because it will save money by reducing their access to health-care services;
e) Support comparative effectiveness review that can judge not only the effectiveness but also the cost-effectiveness of various treatments, and give the federal government authority to use that data when deciding reimbursement rates.
How about, instead, I support ending a system where the sniffles are to be covered right along side lung cancer? You see, Ezra, this isn’t just an exercise in debating which bit of socialized medicine we’ll have, but whether or not socialized medicine is a worthwhile objective. Given that my view is that its unworkable, your rules for objecting are nonsense.
The root cause of our health care insurance crisis (and that is what it is – not a health care crisis, but a crisis in the insurance we use to pay for health care) is Medicare, Medicaid and the rapid spread of health care insurance which was triggered by the massive run-up in health care costs stemming from Medicare and Medicaid. Once upon a time, no one had health insurance – and everyone could go to the doctor; now we’ve got health insurance out the wazoo, and 46 million can only go to the doctor by heading for the ER and burdening everyone with their health care costs.
Now, we can’t end Medicare and Medicaid because the people simply will not see where their problem lies – plus, the left side of the aisle will say we want granny and the grand-kids to die, because we’re mean, old Republicans. Our problem then comes about in how to reform Medicare/Medicaid to prevent it from bankrupting the country while at the same time creating programs which will take away the “everyone will die without socialized medicine” propaganda meme from the left. The solution?
1. Charge $50 for doctor visits for Medicare/Medicaid recipients – that’s all; everything else is free…but by putting a significant charge on going, we’ll get people to stop going for every trivial thing which comes up.
2. Allow people to buy insurance where ever they choose.
3. Allow people to band together in whatever groups they wish to buy insurance in bulk.
4. Provide a government-subsidized catastrophic health care insurance – doesn’t cover basic care, but it does cover you for sudden terrible injuries or illness, as well as care for debilitating, chronic conditions.
5. Work via the Department of Education to provide grants to ease the cost of medical school and other medical training in order to vastly increase the number of health care providers, thus driving down the cost of using medical services over time.
And that, Mr. Klein, will solve the problem – without trillion dollar increases in spending, massive new taxation, or government control.
UPDATE: As is entirely expected, Obamacare opens up vast, new revenue sources for trial lawyers. What? You thought that with a fair and wonderful government plan that malpractice suits would stop? Geesh! What planet have you been on?
The mullahs haven’t entirely won the day:
A sermon by powerful cleric and opposition supporter Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani reignited Iran’s simmering protest movement Friday, heartening thousands of supporters who braved tear gas and club-wielding militiamen to march and chant slogans across Tehran.
In a highly anticipated speech, Rafsanjani slammed the hard-line camp supporting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, criticized the June 12 election results and promoted several key opposition demands. Analysts said his description of the unrest as an ongoing “crisis” was a signal to keep the pressure on Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Rafsanjani is, of course, his own version of creepy – but he’d not be as creepy as those currently in power, and even an incremental change for the better is to be welcomed. It might, after all, end up being a way-station on the road to Iranian liberty.
We should be doing more to encourage and support Iran’s democratic movement – even if parts of that movement bear no love for us. We don’t want the love of other nations – we just want them to be free.
An Instapundit reader asks:
Notice how there was no “antiwar” movement during the ‘90’s, even though we were at war the entire time in Iraq, Haiti, Kosovo, a dab here and there in Afghanistan and Sudan. Then, after 9/11, it was the “Next Vietnam” with a passionate “antiwar” movement with the NYT’s full treasonous participation, just like the good old days. And now, even though the daily death count has matched the highest daily rate we ever saw in Iraq, there is no “antiwar” movement or daily casualty count in all the newspapers. It’s like the “antiwar” movement can be turned off and on like a switch, depending on which party is in the White House.
Well, where are you guys? Where the “no blood for oil” demonstrations? The attempts to put Obama up on war crimes charges? The “Obama lied, people died” posters? Come now – or is being “anti-war” really just a matter of being “anti-GOP”?
…by grace of Pure, Dumb Luck of the United States and Expensive Purses Beyond the Seas, Queen, Defender of Obamania, Employer of Minions.
“In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to this country that has given me so much,” she said. “See, that’s why I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service, ” Michelle Obama
No, Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First Lady and she doesn’t perform any official duties. But this hasn’t deterred her from hiring an unprecedented number of staffers to cater to her every whim and to satisfy her every request in the midst of the Great Recession. Just think Mary Lincoln was taken to task for purchasing china for the White House during the Civil War. And Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salary for her personal secretary.
How things have changed! If you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans facing certain destitution, earning less than subsistence wages stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart or serving up McDonald cheeseburgers, prepare to scream and then come to realize that the benefit package for these servants of Miz Michele are the same as members of the national security and defense departments and the bill for these assorted lackeys is paid by John Q. Public:
The article then goes on to note the Michelle Obama staffers and what they make – including some one who is a “Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady”; ie, someone who drafts the e mail replies for someone else to swiftly edit and approve. Purses costing thousands of dollars, sneakers costing hundreds of dollars, a “night out” in New York City…this is the most crass lady to be in politics since Imelda Marcos. She’s sure to win the “Let ’em Eat Cake” award for 2009.
Mrs. Obama, we elected your husband President – we elected you nothing. Sit down, shut up and keep your hands out of the taxpayer’s wallet.
As an aside, please note that this story appears to have been broken by Canadian media – and there’s no way in heck that our MSM didn’t know about this. Bunch of cowards who dare not offend their Fearsome Leader.
Michael Yon’s latest:
16 July 2009
Ghor Province, Afghanistan
On a per capita basis, Afghanistan is becoming more dangerous for British and American troops than Iraq ever was. For those who fought in places like Anbar, Basra, Baghdad, Diyala and Nineveh, that’s saying a whole lot. On a per capita basis, there are strong indications that Afghanistan will prove more deadly than Iraq during 2006-2007. One can only imagine how many days and nights Secretary Robert Gates and his advisors must have agonized over troop levels here. On the one hand, we have a fraction of the troops we need, but on the other, increasing troop levels increases hostility toward us. Secretary Gates has made it clear to me that his biggest concern is that we will lose the goodwill of the people and they will turn against us. This happens to be my own biggest concern. The agony is in knowing we need more medicine and the medicine can be highly toxic here. Many people have complained that the new restrictions on air strikes will hurt us, but from my boots, General McChrystal (the new boss here) has fulfilled the intent of his boss, and that the decision, though tough, was wise; if we lose the widespread assent of the Afghan people, it’s all over but for the bleeding.
Today our chances are not good, but there remains a real chance to succeed…
Read the whole thing, then donate to Michael Yon, as he is a reader-supporter war correspondent and the one of the very few we can rely on 100% to tell us the truth, no matter how rough it is.
My view is that we should risk more troops on the ground – but this is Obama’s campaign, and he’s determined to have it done his way, and that means – at least for now – that we’ll go with a smaller force. I hope it works – I pray it works, and President Obama can rely upon my absolute support in the efforts he makes to achieve victory in Afghanistan. Certainly, the our troops and our allies – including, especially, our Afghan allies – seem to have the sheer grit necessary to carry the matter through. As in all American wars, the key is support – if the troops are given proper support from home, they’ll do whatever we ask of them and they won’t quit until they win, even if they have to go through trial-and-error until they find the right talisman for victory.
Do Not Forget These Men and Women – think of them, every day; pray for them, always. Support them, if you can.
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