The Day’s top Political News:
CBO: Obama’s Healthcare bill exceeds $1 trillion
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report late Monday estimating the cost of a leading healthcare reform proposal at more than $1 trillion, but that figure looked only at a portion of the bill.
The analysis falls just within the most expensive cost scenario sketched out by Democratic leaders in recent days, but does not include an estimate for a highly contentious government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers.
Senate Republicans are sure to use the data as ammunition to oppose expensive Democratic plans to subsidize healthcare for low-income families, as well as what is not included in the estimate.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/cbo-healthcare-bill-exceeds-1-trillion-2009-06-15.html
Senator says billions wasted on stimulus
Self-appointed waste-watcher Sen. Tom Coburn says he's already identified as much as $5.5 billion in wasteful or bad projects among the economic-stimulus expenditures on tap.
The Oklahoma Republican, in a report being released Tuesday, argues that while there have been successes, he's found 100 questionable decisions. Among them is the case of an Oklahoma town that is getting $1.4 million for a water project: Federal restrictions that come with the money have raised the project's cost by nearly $2 million. The town is planning to raise utility taxes to cover increased costs.
The $787 billion stimulus bill passed in February, with President Obama saying it would provide jobs and critics fearing it would boost U.S. debt without doing much to help the economy. While saying the bill has helped, Mr. Obama last week acknowledged that his administration needs to get the money out faster.
The White House Fires a Watchdog
The curious case of the inspector general and a Presidential ally. Chicago strong arm politics hits the Nation’s Capitol.
Gerald Walpin, Inspector General of the Corporation For National and Community Service, was fired by President Barack Obama.
Mr. Walpin's investigators discovered that the money had been used instead to pad staff salaries, meddle politically in a school-board election, and have AmeriCorps members perform personal services for Mr. Johnson, including washing his car.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124511811033017539.html
Opinion:
The Looking Glass effect
News just in:
GALLUP: Conservatives Are Single-Largest Ideological Group at 40%; Numbers Increasing
PRINCETON, NJ -- Thus far in 2009, 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004. The 21% calling themselves liberal is in line with findings throughout this decade, but is up from the 1990s.
Many years ago, I taught for several years in the Campaign Communications in the Republican National Committees Campaign Management College. My erstwhile partner in this matter was Jay Bryant, who became Communications Director of the Congressional Campaign Committee while we were doing the College.
The assignment required Jay and myself to develop academic approaches to strategies and tactics used in political campaign media. We had to be able to teach basic truths and rules for what for generations had been a “seat of the pants” sort of thing. The Republican Party followed our approach (and even used our lectures word for word) for years.
Among the truths I uncovered later in the process, is a predictable ebb and flow of political thoughts, trends, and, ultimately, voting patterns. I labeled it “The Looking Glass effect”. The title is intended to describe the reflected effect often seen in politics – maybe always seen.
The theory holds: “when everything in politics is going your way, watch out! Some where, some how, from some direction, a danger exists and that danger is proportionately equal to that of “the good times” being enjoyed.
On the other hand, the reverse is also true: “when everything in politics is going against you and you suffer the depths, be aware – opportunity exists to win and turn fortunes around”. Again, the opportunity is usually proportionately equal to the depths of despair being suffered.
Understand, none of this has been verified or accepted by any higher institution –still, it works for me and has provided a degree of consistency. I recall having similar thoughts after the Clinton and Democrat victories in 1992. We were devastated to such an extent Clinton was even able to pass the largest tax increase in history. Things were going great for Democrat liberals.
Along came Newt. Newt brought intelligent discussion and, along with Congressman Robert Walker of Pennsylvania, harvested the unrest of voters, and turned that unrest into what is now known as the “Gingrich Revolution”.
We may well be on the cusp of a similar uprising today. We don’t have a Newt-type leading us in Congress, but we do have the tea party protests which may give us a similar result.
(This is precisely why we will momentarily be launching a new program “Tell Washington No” and providing a second, different web site)
Gallup’s figures suggest the “Looking Glass effect” may be in progress. Obama and his liberal lackies on the Hill have pushed things quite hard – too hard for many in Normal America.
After all, Obama’s mentors are all products of the Chicago Democrat Machine, a corrupt political force accustomed throughout its history by achieving through manipulation, intimidation, or raw power. We see raw power today as the Senate faces confirmation of Sotomayor. Despite her obvious drawbacks, she will be confirmed…if not, the next Obama appointment will not be one to make normal Americans happy.
Meanwhile, Obama shoved through his massive “stimulus” bill – pushed by Obama in a manner that prevented any reading or analysis. His “GIVE” act which many see as a conspiracy to draft young people into a “volunteer” force of some sort, was passed with an hour’s discussion.
Bailouts have raised general dislike and distrust of Washington. Much of this negative feeling is non partisan and comes in “a plague on both your houses” sort of thinking. Republicans must coalesce this sentiment and find a means of focusing it on targets and goals that can achieve positive change.
Gallup’s findings are encouraging. They show Conservative strength has returned to its 2004 level. The data provide a real slap down of those who have been puling and keening with demands for the GOP to cast off its conservative way of thinking and become more like Democrats – a party once more being rejected…IF the opportunity is seized and the sentiment harvested.
The good news is obvious: votes to achieve Conservative success are there. Obama, Pelosi, Frank, Murtha, and others are providing tons of ammunition. We need to make sure we don’t waste the opportunity they are giving us.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=101158
Guess who's supporting Sotomayor?
Communist Party backs confirmation for Supreme Court
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
WASHINGTON – The way to end "right-wing" terrorism in the U.S. is to confirm Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court justice, boycott Fox News and support Barack Obama's plan for nationalizing health care, the Communist Party USA said in an editorial in its newspaper, the People's Weekly World today.
The organization blamed the murders of late-term abortionist George Tiller in Kansas and Holocaust Museum security guard Stephen T. Johns on the "extreme right," explaining that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's much-criticized report warning about the threat of violence by "right-wing extremists" was in fact prophetic.
(NOTE: Liberals have worked hard to sell this absurd concept. Napolitano’s infamous and slanderous memo was an intentional hit piece on Americans who differ with Obama on key issues. The memo was more than outrageous – anyone who embraces it, should be appropriately labeled. Meanwhile, it is important to note the Holocaust attacker was NOT a conservative – indeed, his anti Jewish hate speech mirrors that of none other than the Reverand Jeremiah Wright, the spiritual mentor of Obama himself. Obama embraced and supported the racism that fueled the Museum attack.)
"Republican right denounced her timely report as an 'attack' on veterans, anti-abortionists, and anti-immigrant crusaders," the editorial said. "Some even called for her resignation."
The party also accused actor Jon Voight of threatening violence against Obama.
"The latest venom comes from actor Jon Voight who denounced President Obama at a GOP fundraiser as a 'softspoken Julius Caesar' that America must be 'freed' from," said the party. "'Bring an end to this false prophet, Obama,' Voight ranted, sounding like Brutus. It is a federal crime to threaten violence against the president."
The solution? The party said: "[T]he best answer is to defeat the hatemongers politically. Boycott Fox News. Demand Senate confirmation of Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, latest target of hate. Build maximum unity to win healthcare for all, employee free choice, 'green' jobs, immigrant reform, an end to wars, and a more inclusive, tolerant democracy in our country."
2.
http://townhall.com/Columnists/JohnHawkins/2009/06/16/5_myths_the_left_has_created_about_itself
5 Myths the Left Has Created About Itself
John Hawkins
Via Hollywood, the mainstream media, and the school systems, the Left has created a number of positive myths about their ideology, none of which stand up to the slightest amount of informed scrutiny.
Liberals are pro-women: No, no: liberals are pro-liberal women -- as long as they know their place. When Hillary Clinton did the most admirable thing in her entire political career, trying to pull out a come-from-behind win against Barack Obama, the long knives on the Left even came out for her.
.....But what Hillary faced was nothing compared to the vile smears liberals level at strong, conservative women. Whether it's photoshopping them into pornography, going after their families, or degrading them with "hate f***" lists, the Left does everything it can to destroy women who are courageous enough to stand up to them.
Just ask Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and Carrie Prejean about it. If liberals hated Al-Qaeda the same way they hate conservative feminist icons, we'd have already won the war on terror by now.
(NOTE: The claim liberals are more pro woman – better phrased as -- less gender obsessed – has long been a big time lie. Republicans have always been far more pro-woman, than Democrat liberals. The first woman Senator, Margret Chase Smith, was a Republican. Likewise, Mary Louis Smith (no relation) is the ONLY woman to ever serve as national chairman of a major political party. More importantly, women have long provided and been accorded, meaningful roles in GOP campaign operations. Women have run and won many GOP campaigns. Liberals have been hypocrites on the gender issue, but much the same can be said about liberals and Black America.)
Liberals look out for black Americans: Really? How? By destroying black families with welfare? By championing releasing black criminals back into their communities? By standing up for rioters? By getting promising black college students into schools they're likely to flunk out of via Affirmative Action? By making parasitic buffoons like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton into representatives of black Americans in the eyes of most of the country? The biggest obstacle black Americans face today is not racism; it's the paternalistic, "You poor thing! You need our help to make it day-to-day" attitude of liberals that has shattered the black family in a way that even slavery and Jim Crow laws couldn't.
Liberals are compassionate: Liberals love nothing better than to talk about compassion and caring for the poor -- but, only when other people's money is involved. Studies consistently show that conservatives give more money to charity than liberals. What's supposed to be compassionate about robbing Peter to pay Paul to vote for you?
Liberals are intellectuals: Liberals portray themselves as brilliant intellectuals who are so much smarter than the riff-raff out there in flyover country. Meanwhile, back in the real world, they run presidential campaigns based on "hope" and "change" and the intellectual roots of their philosophy could be explained by a caveman. Abortion good! People who want to stop abortions bad, bad, bad! Gay marriage good! People who want to protect marriage bad, bad, bad. It doesn't matter whether it's a college professor, a rocket scientist, or Barack Obama -- they all turn into cousin Cletus, the mountain simpleton who lives out by the hog pen, when you try to get them to explain why they believe what they believe.
Liberals are tolerant: Liberals are extremely tolerant -- of people who agree with them or of foreigners who hate America. Everybody else? Not so much. If you happen to say, try to give a conservative speech on a college campus, say that you believe marriage should be between a man and a woman after you're asked about it in a beauty pageant, or believe science has led you to draw a different conclusion than liberals have in regard to global warming, you're not going to see much tolerance on display. In other words, the liberal idea of tolerance is, "I agree with what you say, I'll defend to the death your right to say it -- and the rest of you need to be quiet."
John Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Conservative Grapevine, Right Wing News, and Right Wing Video.
3.
http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_hoenlein_israel/2009/06/14/225064.html?s=al&promo_code=816D-1
Jews ‘Very Concerned’ About Obama, Leader of Jewish Organizations Says
Ronald Kessler
President Obama’s strongest supporters among Jewish leaders are deeply troubled by his recent Middle East initiatives, and some are questioning what he really believes, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview.
Though Hoenlein says he is only offering his personal views, the conference he represents is a political powerhouse that includes 50 major Jewish groups. Among them are the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), B’nai B’rith International, the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Zionist Organization of America, Hadassah, and the Anti-Defamation League.
Hoenlein has been the professional head of the conference since 1986, overseeing its day-to-day activities as the coordinating body for American Jews on issues of concern in the U.S. and globally.
Jewish leaders “are expressing concern about what was said [in Obama’s Cairo speech],” Hoenlein says. “I’ve heard it from some of his strongest supporters. It’s expected from his detractors. Even people close to him have said to us that there were parts of the speech that bothered them.”
Obama’s speech to a Muslim audience in Cairo in early June was his second effort early in his administration to re-define America’s posture toward the Arab world. In April, Obama traveled to Ankara, Turkey, to offer a similar outreach to the Muslim world.
But many in the Jewish community, including some of Obama’s most ardent supporters, are troubled by his comments in the Middle East, especially his remarks to his Cairo audience. Others are concerned that, facing a multitude of problems on the domestic front, Obama has traveled twice to the Middle East without visiting Israel, America’s stalwart ally in the region for more than a half-century.
“There’s a lot of questioning going on about what he really believes and what does he really stand for,” Hoenlein says of Obama’s outreach.
(NOTE: Obama is supported in his bias toward such Palestinian terror groups as Hamas by other Democrats. News just in today reports Jimmy Carter will lobby Obama to remove Hamas from the list of terror groups. Carter’s views and positions in the Middle East show the general tenor of Democrat bias. Yet Jewish voters vote Democrat overwhelmingly. Go figure.)
Reaction to Obama’s speech has drawn a range of reaction from many Jewish leaders. On the right, some have condemned it as a revision of the long and close relationship between the U.S. and Israel. But many on the left who backed Obama were also surprised and dismayed over Obama’s speech. Such reactions from major Jewish leaders have largely remained beneath the surface, exchanged privately among them.
Hoenlein’s comments to Newsmax are his first detailed appraisal of Obama’s speech and represent the first time a major Jewish leader has spoken openly about the erosion of Jewish support for Obama.
According to the exit poll conducted by major press organizations during the 2008 election, Obama captured overwhelming support from American Jews, winning 78 percent of their vote. Despite the fact that Republicans are stronger on national security and the war on terror, Obama also won support from Jewish leaders who have been champions of Israel’s security, such as the former Democratic mayor of New York, Edward I. Koch. Koch crossed party lines in 2004 to back George W. Bush.
Reacting to Obama’s Cairo speech, Hoenlein tells Newsmax, “I have no problem with addressing the Muslim world. I’m in fact in favor of outreach, and we here at the conference have done it for about 12 or 15 years, visiting Muslim countries in Central Asia and the Middle East. But the question is, what is the message they get? It’s not so much what he says, but how do they perceive what he says?”
On the one hand, Hoenlein says, “His reference to Israel and the special relationship being unbreakable is important, and references to persecution and Holocaust denial were important, and some of his references to some human rights issues also were important.”
But Hoenlein notes the speech included a number of troubling references and comparisons. He cites the fact that Obama claimed America has seven million Muslims. That is a figure “Arab propagandists have put out,” he says. “In fact, they say only six million, when in fact there’s no study that shows even half of that.”
In 2007, the Pew Research Center estimated the Muslim American population at 2.35 million.
Hoenlein is disturbed that Obama did not mention the Jewish people’s ancient connection with the land of Israel.
“There was no reference to the 3,000 years of Jewish connection to this land,” Hoenlein says. “And that is again one of the propaganda lines that the Arabs have used: that the Jews are interlopers, that the two temples never existed, that there was never any Jewish history in the land of Israel. Even Yasser Arafat and others have used that argument because they’re trying to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state. I don’t believe that was the president’s intent, but not making those references I think is troubling.”
Jews have claimed a connection to the land of their forefathers since 1400 B.C. Even after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. and the dispersal of many Jews throughout the Roman Empire, many Jews continued to reside in Jerusalem through the centuries, surviving various invasions. An Ottoman census of Jersualem conducted in 1845 showed Jews outnumbered Muslim Arabs by almost to 2 to 1 and were the dominant ethnic group in the region.
Hoenlein believes that the most troubling aspect of Obama’s comments in his Cairo speech was his effort to equate the Nazi killing of more than six million Jews during the Holocaust with Israel’s struggle with the Palestinians over six decades and the suffering caused by the displacement of the Palestinians.
“There’s no comparison between the Holocaust, even if it was an indirect one, and what happened to Palestinians,” Hoenlein declares.
In his speech, President Obama addressed the issue of the Holocaust head-on, saying “Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today.”
But he quickly changed the subject, comparing Hitler’s genocide of the Jews to the Palestinian struggle.
“On the other hand,” Obama said, as he transitioned from the Holocaust to the modern Middle East, “it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.”
Hoenlein doesn’t buy Obama’s line of reasoning.
“The Palestinian refugee problem, or dislocation as he said, didn’t come about because of the creation of the Jewish state,” Hoenlein says. “It came about because the Arab states declared war on Israel and warned the Arabs that they would suffer the same fate as the Jews if they didn’t get out. And then they kept them as political pawns.”
Obama made no reference to the fact that “the reason the Palestinians don’t have a state is because their leaders rejected every offer for peace,” Hoenlein says. “Whether it was in 1937 or 1947 or 1967, or later on, up until Ehud Olmert’s offer and Ehud Barak’s offer, they rejected everything, even when they were getting virtually everything they had asked for.”
That is because, “The problem really is not what Israel does, it’s that Israel is,” Hoenlein says. “And they’re not ready to accept the existence of the Jewish state.”
In discussing the Palestinian refugee problem, Obama failed to mention the other refugee problem involving nearly a million Jews, Hoenlein says. At the time of the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, Jews populated all of the major Arab cities from Baghdad in the East to Casablanca in the West.
Hoenlein notes that after modern Israel saw its rebirth, Jews “were driven out of Arab countries penniless, and some of their families had lived there for a thousand years, and yet there was no reference to them.” He adds, “This is not a question of tit for tat. It’s a question of the realities that are communicated to a vast audience in the Arab Muslim world.”
As troubling as Obama’s references to Israel and the Palestinians were, Hoenlein found the president’s failure to mention the radical regime now running Tehran equally disturbing.
”What concerned us, concerned many people, was the message to Iran that we didn’t hear,” Hoenlein says.
Iran, controlled by powerful Shia Mullahs, is set to acquire a nuclear device. Many Sunni Muslim states, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and Morocco, are concerned about this prospect.
Hoenlein says these Arab states also wanted to hear “an absolute assurance about the U.S. commitment not to allow Iran to be nuclear, not to allow it to continue to support terrorism, not to allow it to continue being the major state sponsor of terror around the world.”
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who declared himself the winner in the election in Iran this past weekend, has repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction. In 2005, he declared that he is a devout follower of Iran’s late ruler Ayatollah Khomeini. He has vowed to fulfill the Ayatollah’s dream that the “occupying regime [Israel] must be wiped off the map.”
Asked if he sees Obama’s perceived tilt towa rd the Palestinians as reflecting some of the views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., Obama’s former pastor who accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “terrorism,” Hoenlein says American Jews are concerned about Obama’s policies today.
“That issue has been discussed and debated, and I don’t know that it’s a relevant concern for right now,” he says. “I do feel strongly about what the [current] policy will be.”
Hoenlein says flatly, “People [Jews] are genuinely very concerned...about President Obama.”
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. A former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal award-winning reporter, he is the New York Times bestselling author of 18 books. His next book, “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect,”
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