The day’s top political news:
Joe Biden update: No 'private meetings,' just meetings closed to the press
Possibly a very important policy change has quietly emerged in the daily schedule of Vice President Joe Biden.
Biden's innumerable "private meetings" are closed to the press.
On one recent long weekend the man who became a Delaware senator when his future boss, Barack Obama, was an inexperienced fundraiser of only 11, devoted an entire Monday to "private meetings" press in his Delaware home -- meetings that are closed.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/07/joe-biden-update-1.html
US State Department under cyberattack for fourth day
The US State Department said Thursday its website came under cyberattack for a fourth day running as it tried to prevent further attacks.
According to computer security experts, a dozen US government websites, including those of the White House, Pentagon and State Department, were targeted in a coordinated cyberattack which also struck sites in South Korea.
South Korean lawmakers were quoted as saying Wednesday that South Korea's intelligence service believes North Korea or its sympathizers may have staged the attack.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.a6c27e3843e8f645f9e395649a3a85e5.c51&show_article=1
Rupert Murdoch: Mainstream Media still supports Obama
News Corp. honcho predicts opinion swing by year's end
The world's most powerful media moguls are "very bearish" on the economy, but they don't seem to be blaming President Obama for the tough times, Rupert Murdoch says. Apart from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, both owned by News Corp., the media "remains very supportive of him, perhaps not of all of his policies," Murdoch told Stuart Varney of Fox Business Network.
Murdoch said he was "shocked" at the sour mood media executives are in regarding their own businesses and the economy in general. Some, he said, are predicting "five years at least" before seeing real economic growth return.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i3c6dccc0e0549069a2c7f244259ae82a
Opinion:
For Americans 49 and older, voting Democrat is opting for seriously rationed healthcare
A decade or two back, liberal Democrat Dick Lamm – a former governor of Colorado – shocked us with a call for senior citizens “to die and get out of the way” – in fact Lamm said dying off is an obligation of the elderly.
Now, we see Lamm’s extremist ideas becoming official government policy if Obama’s “healthcare” program gets accepted. In Great Britain, elderly citizens are being denied stents and by passes for heart conditions. The irresponsible insanity of such a healthcare system is coming to a hospital near you in the form of “Obama-care”.
Understand – the debate over healthcare is one presenting choices between quality healthcare and Obama’s healthcare on the cheap. All Americans will get cheated and forced to accept healthcare of inferior quality.
Government cannot produce anything of quality. Socialized medicine is medicine that is inferior by definition. Even poor quality care can be rationed and made worse.
As Dick Morris notes in a recent blog:
“Obama's health care proposal is, in effect, the repeal of the Medicare program as we know it. The elderly will go from being the group with the most access to free medical care to the one with the least access. Indeed, the principal impact of the Obama health care program will be to reduce sharply the medical services the elderly can use. No longer will their every medical need be met, their every medication prescribed, their every need to improve their quality of life answered.”
A vote for any Democrat is a vote that empowers Obama’s healthcare scam and conspiracy. Those voters who are elderly or who are on the cusp of being elderly, should understand what is really at stake for themselves. It boils down to a simple but absolute fact: voting Democrat supports Obama’s “healthcare on the cheap” and threatens quality care – or the availability of care at all.
I’m sure liberals in some ivied environment developed this concept of age discrimination. The debated, reasoned, and came forth with a plan that condemns senior citizens. The idea was not formed by pragmatic people with common sense approaches to life – especially to politics.
If Obama’s conspiracy against the elderly becomes fully understood and intellectually grasped -- there will be (or should be) a massive uprising. One even larger than the current tea party protest movement. After all, it’s hard to get people being condemned to poor healthcare to vote for their own condemnation – but that is exactly what liberal Democrats are attempting to pull off.
The objective, therefore, is doing all that is possible to communicate what this Obama effort actually means. It’s a challenge similar in nature to the current one of making sure as many as possible understand the “Cap and Trade” debate is one of whether Americans are willing to vote themselves higher costs and taxation.
When intellectual snobs discuss concepts such as healthcare – they do so in a manner divorced from reality or personal concern. It’s all theoretical. For those of us who have scaled the walls of endeavor and who now find themselves in advanced ages, the healthcare debate become very personal.
I’m not fearful of dying as a result of actual aging – that’s part of life itself. But I am resentful of political efforts of liberals to make whatever time may remain less comfortable than it can be, and shortened – not by fate or fortune, but as a result of another liberal conspiracy.
Only a fool would think otherwise. Dick Lamm and other liberal extremists make the healthcare debate very personal for a multitude of Americans…not only the elderly who would suffer directly, but even younger Americans concerned about their elderly friends, relatives, and parents.
Politicians who conspire against the lives and well being of people, sooner or later fail and fail big time – the planners and plotters of Nazi Germany saw that for themselves.
I’ll go when my time is up – but not when a liberal politician decrees it.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
Regulating the Federal Reserve – a controversy over who is watching one of the most important agencies of our financial system
Cong Spencer Bachus – the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee – issued his statement on the issue during Subcommittee Hearings on The Fed and on Systemic Risk
WASHINGTON – Congressman Spencer Bachus, the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee, made the following statement today during the Capital Markets Subcommittee hearing entitled “Regulatory Restructuring: Balancing the Independence of the Federal Reserve in Monetary Policy with Systemic Risk Regulation”
“Mr. Chairman, thank you for convening this hearing on one of the central questions that this Committee will need to answer as it considers reforms to our financial regulatory system: whether regulatory power should be centralized in the Federal Reserve at a time when our country is facing unprecedented fiscal and monetary policy challenges. We have as witnesses some of the foremost experts on the subject of the Federal Reserve and I am certain we will all benefit from hearing their views.
“During the past two years, we have watched as the Federal Reserve responded to dislocations in financial markets with far-reaching interventions in virtually every corner of our economy. To confront the crisis, the Fed used its emergency authority to bail out failing institutions, provided loans and loan guarantees to revive credit markets, lowered the target federal funds rate almost to zero, and more than doubled its balance sheet. Regardless of how one views these extraordinary Fed actions, I think we can all agree that, as we go forward, we need a more transparent institution with a more clearly defined role.”
(NOTE: When bailouts and take overs become government policy through which a crisis is met, the stability, honesty, and operational competence become issues all Americans should follow closely. Unfortunately, doing so adequately is beyond the capabilities or potential for most Americans. We must, therefore, depend on experts – or people who profess to be experts.)
“Republicans believe that the Fed’s core mission -- the conduct of monetary policy -- may be seriously undermined if its supervisory responsibilities are dramatically expanded, as proposed in the Obama administration’s regulatory reform ‘white paper.’ Indeed, the proper role of the Fed represents a critical difference between the administration’s proposal and the regulatory reform plan that House Republicans have put forward. The Administration would reward past regulatory and monetary policy mistakes by giving the Fed the preeminent role in regulating the financial system and determining which U.S. financial institutions are ‘too big to fail.’ This both stretches Fed resources and complicates its ability to carry out its monetary policy function.
“Mr. Chairman, according to the minority staff on the Senate Committee on Budget, the federal government has pledged more than $9.7 trillion to address our economic credit crisis. The existing national debt is $10.9 trillion and an it is estimated the 2009 budget deficit of $1.8 trillion. Today, soaring deficits are the biggest threat to financial stability, economic recovery and job growth. The Republican plan would therefore relieve the Federal Reserve of its current regulatory responsibilities and allow it to focus on its core monetary policy mission. This will ensure that the central bank, which sets the interest rates that greatly affect both individuals and businesses of all sizes, sets those rates with a single goal in mind: sound monetary policy.
“Most importantly, we need to end the bailouts that the Fed has been instrumental in carrying out over the past 18 months. The most effective way to minimize systemic risk is not by empowering Federal bureaucracies that failed the American people during the recent crisis, but by ensuring that those institutions best able to measure, monitor and assess risk have the right incentives to do so. This means strengthening market discipline so that the costs of failure will be borne by a failing institution’s creditors and counterparties, not the American public.”
2.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124709502661214861.html
Obama Can't Be Trusted With Numbers
So why should we trust him with health care?
KARL ROVE
In February, President Barack Obama signed a $787 billion stimulus bill while making lavish promises about the results. He pledged that "a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be unleashed all across America." He also said the stimulus would "save or create up to four million jobs." Vice President Joe Biden said the massive federal spending plan would "drop-kick" the economy out of the recession.
But the unemployment rate today is 9.5% -- nearly 20% higher than the Obama White House said it would be with the stimulus in place. Keith Hennessey, who worked at the Bush White House on economic policy, has noted that unemployment is now higher than the administration said it would be if nothing was done to revive the economy. There are 2.6 million fewer Americans working than Mr. Obama promised.
The economy takes unexpected turns on every president. But what is striking about this president is how quickly he turns away from his promises. He rushed the stimulus through Congress saying we couldn't afford to wait. Now his administration is waiting to spend the money. Of the $279 billion allocated to federal agencies, only $56 billion has been paid out.
Mr. Biden has admitted that the administration "misread" the economy. But he explained that away on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" on Sunday by saying the administration had used "the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there" to draw up its stimulus plan.
That's not true.
(NOTE: Vice President Biden often is confronted with claims he has made that are at odds with reality. In fact, Biden has become the butt of a long string of jokes and a subject of extended ridicule. Given the total inexperience of Obama himself, the demonstrated incompetence of his Vice President is particularly troubling. Being unable to read real statistics in dealing with a financial crisis, is far more troubling than whether or not a VP can spell potato correctly. But don’t expect the media to notice.)
The Blue Chip consensus is an average of some four dozen economic forecasts. In January, the consensus estimated that GDP for 2009 would shrink by 1.6% and that unemployment would top out at 8.3%. Team Obama assumed both higher GDP growth (it counted on a contraction of 1.2%) and lower peak unemployment (8.1%) than the consensus.
Instead of relying on the Blue Chip consensus, Mr. Obama outsourced writing the stimulus to House appropriators who stuffed it with every bad spending idea they weren't previously able to push through Congress. Little of it aimed to quickly revive the economy. More stimulus money will be spent in fiscal years 2011 through 2019 than will be spent this fiscal year, which ends in September.
On Sunday, Mr. Biden, backpedaling from his drop-kick comments, said that "no one anticipated, no one expected that the recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of the money."
This fits a pattern. The administration consistently pledges unrealistic results that it later distances itself from. It has gotten away with it because the media haven't asked pointed questions. That may not last as the debate shifts to health care.
The Obama administration wants a government takeover of health care. To get it, it is promising to wring massive savings out of the health-care industry. And it has already started to make cost-savings promises.
For example, the administration strong-armed health-care providers into promising $2 trillion in health savings. It got pharmaceutical companies to promise to lower drug prices for seniors by $80 billion over 10 years. The administration also trotted out hospital executives to say that they would voluntarily save the government $150 billion over 10 years.
None of this comes near to being true. On the promised $2 trillion, everyone admits that the number isn't built on anything specific -- it's an aspirational goal.
On drug prices, a White House spokesman admitted that "These savings have not been identified at the moment." It is speculative that these cuts will actually be made, when they would begin, or whether they would reduce government health-care spending.
None of this will stop the administration from arguing that its "savings" will pay for Mr. Obama's $1.5 trillion health-care plans. By the time the real price tag emerges, it will be too late to do much more than raise taxes and curtail spending on urgent priorities, such as the military.
The stimulus package is a clear example of how Mr. Obama operates. He is attempting to employ the same tactics of bait-and-switch when it comes to health care, only on a much larger scale.
Mr. Obama has already created a river of red ink. His health-care plans will only force that river over its banks.
We are at the cusp of a crucial political debate, and Mr. Obama's words on fiscal matters are untrustworthy. His promised savings are a mirage. His proposals to reshape the economy are alarming. And his unwillingness to be forthright with his numbers reveals that he knows his plans would terrify many Americans.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
3.
www.jewishworldreview.com:80/0709/emerson070909.php3
Top Obama aide invites head of terrorist-linked org to join administration.....
Group's ‘mainstream’ Islamist convention last weekend featured hate speech and Hezbollah Defense
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
A top aide to President Barack Obama provided a keynote address at last weekend's 46th Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) national convention, a gathering that attracted thousands of people and also featured anti-Semitic, homophobic rhetoric and defense of the terrorist group Hezbollah.
In her remarks, Senior Advisor for Public Engagement and International Affairs Valerie Jarrett noted she was the first White House official to address ISNA. She spoke in general terms about interfaith dialogue and cooperation. She praised her hosts for "the diversity of American organizations, and ideas that are represented and will be debated" at the convention.
And she openly invited ISNA President Ingrid Mattson to work on the White House Council on Women and Girls that Jarrett leads.
ISNA is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-support conspiracy and maintains significant leadership ties to its foundation 28 years ago by members of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. A more pointed statement by Jarret would have stood as a powerful retort to extremist sentiments offered in other segments of the conference.
While many panels at the convention featured criticism of U.S. policy and law enforcement, one stood out for its hate-filled rhetoric, and ISNA officials should have seen it coming a mile away. During a "meet the authors" session, Imam Warith Deen Umar, former head of the New York state prison chaplain program managed to:
• Argue that key Obama aides are "Israeli," proving Jews "have control of the world."
• Malign the motives of Jews active in the Civil Rights movement.
• Portray the Holocaust as punishment of Jews for being "serially disobedient to Allah."
• Insinuate that Hurricane Katrina was a result of tolerance for homosexuality.
Umar's radicalism is no secret. He previously hailed the 9/11 hijackers as martyrs who were secretly admired by Muslims. He has called for violent jihad. In a January 2004 speech, he urged people:
"Rise up and fight. And fight them until turmoil is no more and strike terror into their hearts." You think there is no terror in Quran? It's called [word unclear] read it in the 56th Surah of the Quran.
There's no lack of translation, there's no mistranslation There's not one Sheikh says one thing, no, it's very clear. 'When you fight, you strike terror into the heart of the disbeliever.'"
He has a website promoting a past book, Judaiology, which features an excerpt describing "the inordinacy of Jewish power." Jews, he wrote, are "an amazing people who can steal you blind as you watch. If you discover the theft, they can put you to sleep. If you wake up to them, they can put you back to sleep with mind games, tricks of fancy, smoke screens, and magic. Henry Ford almost uncovered them."
(NOTE: All Americans should be troubled by the interaction between the Obama administration and Islamic interests. Bringing Hamas refugees to this country at taxpayer expense is just one example. Gone are the days of Middle East policies that held off Islamic radicalism and its threats. Radical Islam declared war on the US and civilization itself in its 9/11 attacks. Obama’s embrace raises questions and may ultimately intrude on confidence in the Obama Middle East policy and strategy.)
Umar's ISNA appearance Sunday afternoon promoted his latest book, Jews for Salaam: The Straight Path to Global Peace. In discussing it, Umar first thanked ISNA for inviting him to speak.
He then described a distinction between "holy Jews," who are devout, apolitical and poor, and "unholy Jews" who are greedy, conniving and all powerful. He looked to the White House for an example:
"You need to know that Obama, the first man that Obama picked when we were so happy that he was the President, he picked an Israeli - Rahm Emanuel - his number one man. His number two man - [David] Axelrod - another Israeli person. Why do this small number of people have control of the world? You need to go back into your history and find out about France and Germany and England and America got together and offered the Israelites, who became the Israelites, they offered them Ghana, the plains of Ghana. Why don't you take Ghana since we beat you down so badly? That's what the Holocaust was all about. You need to read my chapter on the Holocaust and the anti-Holocaust movement.
There's some people in the world says no Holocaust even happened. Some of their leaders say no Holocaust even happened. Well it did happen. These people were punished. They were punished for a reason because they were serially disobedient to Allah."
ISNA described the author's panel as "an interactive session which provides a wonderful platform to learn, share ideas, and provide literary contributions to society." Remarkably, ISNA included Umar in that platform despite a very public record of anti-Semitism, advocacy for jihad, and praise for the 9/11 hijackers.
Umar shared the microphone with another author who did not spew out bigotry, but who did cast Hezbollah as an innocent player subject to incessant Israeli onslaught. Cathy Sultan described her book, Tragedy in South Lebanon: The Israeli/Hezbollah War of 2006, as a history of "the tragedy of the repeated incursions and wars in South Lebanon, the complexities of the Lebanese politics."
She made no mention of Iranian funding for Hezbollah or Syrian meddling in Lebanese politics or its suspected involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Instead, she lumps Hariri among a list of "docile Arab rulers willing to acquiesce to the West and to Israelis' demands … provided they eliminate or at least contain and disarm Hamas and Hezbollah."
Nor did Sultan describe indiscriminate Hezbollah rocket fire toward Israeli civilian communities, or the cross-border attack on an Israeli army base by Hezbollah that left three soldiers dead and two others kidnapped.
In response to a question, Sultan said "Hezbollah still serves a role. I think that Lebanon is still under constant threat from its southern neighbor. And I see nothing wrong, as long as Hezbollah abides by certain rules and regulations; I see no reason why Hezbollah should not remained armed."
The United States considers Hezbollah to be a terrorist group, and some experts consider it a bigger potential threat to the United States than Al-Qaeda.
The panel did not feature anyone with contrasting viewpoints to challenge Sultan or Umar. The program drew about 50 people, who sat passively during most of the remarks.
Umar's books were available for purchase at the convention. Government agencies were represented with booths of their own, including the departments of Justice, State, Homeland Security, Commerce, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Before the convention started, ISNA posted a statement for vendors which said "Any literature (fundraising or otherwise) is restricted to the assigned booth and must be pre-approved in writing by ISNA, in ISNA's sole and absolute discretion. Book selling vendors must complete enclosed form providing inventory of the literature to be sold at ISNA."
Judaiology devotes a chapter to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," allegedly the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders at the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, in which they plotted to take over the world. Researchers have definitively proved that the Protocols were in fact forged in Paris sometime between 1895 and 1899 by an agent of the Russian secret police. This has not kept anti-Semitic groups from believing the validity of this forgery. For example, the Charter of Hamas states:
"For Zionist scheming has no end, and after Palestine they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates. Only when they have completed digesting the area on which they will have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion, etc. Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there."
To Umar, however, the Protocols "remain a mystery:"
"Jewish leaders have denied [the Protocols] and called them a forgery, a pact [sic] of lies, absurd and counterintuitive. No Jew, they say, would ever resort to writing down such self-defeating words and plans. However their denials appear ineffective because the Protocols actually explain and reveal what others observe about the real activities and results of Jewish diplomatic, industrial, business, and political involvement among the peoples of the world… What is revealed and clarified is so shocking and stunningly in accord with the behavior and results of world events that involve Jews that it gives credence and importance, relevance and standing to what otherwise would simply be a biased and discredited documents."
A woman in the audience reminded Umar that Jews marched with Black people during the Civil Rights movement. But, Umar said, that was not motivated by a genuine desire for justice:
"The Jews in America used the black community to advance the Jewish community. In many instances in history, they gained much of what they gained by putting the African Americans out front to get things that were necessary to get through the politics of this country and of the social setting of this country."
Umar also managed to stray into a reference about same-sex marriage, which he said would prompt G-d's wrath:
"It's against the laws of Allah and against the laws of the Bible for homosexuality. And if you think the Quran talks about harsh punishment from Allah, you should read what the Bible says. I don't have the time to go into it, but it's in my book. The Bible is very hard on, he says, Allah says that the land itself is doomed. You wonder why things are happening in America are going to happen? You think that Katrina was just a blow of wind?"
This is the man responsible for the Muslim chaplain program in New York prisons for 20 years. He was forced out of that job after his praise for the 9/11 hijackers became known. This is who ISNA chose to showcase in a "meet the authors" panel and provide an unchallenged platform.
"My conclusion is that there should be more jihad," he said. "But people don't want to hear that. They're scared."
In Cairo, the President said:
"Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong" and a hindrance to peace.
But somehow, partnering with a group that invites the same thing is okay?
4.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=103457
Ginsburg: I thought Roe was to rid undesirables
Justice discusses 'growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of'
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
In an astonishing admission, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she was under the impression that legalizing abortion with the 1973 Roe. v. Wade case would eliminate undesirable members of the populace, or as she put it "populations that we don't want to have too many of."
Her remarks, set to be published in the New York Times Magazine this Sunday but viewable online now, came in an in-depth interview with Emily Bazelon titled, "The Place of Women on the Court."
(NOTE: Ginsberg is a former official of the ACLU – a group that conspires to impose atheism as a national religion in direct violation of the First Amendments and the rights it provides and protects. Given the extremism of the ACLU, it could be argued that those with serious connections with that organization should be rendered ineligible for judicial positions – especially a position on the nation’s highest court.)
The 16-year veteran of the high court was asked if she were a lawyer again, what would she "want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda."
Ginsburg responded:
Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don't know why this hasn't been said more often.
Question: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?
Ginsburg: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae – in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn't really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.
When pressed to explain what she meant by reproductive rights needing to be straightened out, Ginsburg said, "The basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman."
Asked if that meant getting rid of the test the court imposed, in which it allows states to impose restrictions on abortion such as a waiting period, the justice said she was "not a big fan of these tests."
I think the court uses them as a label that accommodates the result it wants to reach. It will be, it should be, that this is a woman's decision. It's entirely appropriate to say it has to be an informed decision, but that doesn't mean you can keep a woman overnight who has traveled a great distance to get to the clinic, so that she has to go to some motel and think it over for 24 hours or 48 hours.
I still think, although I was much too optimistic in the early days, that the possibility of stopping a pregnancy very early is significant. The morning-after pill will become more accessible and easier to take. So I think the side that wants to take the choice away from women and give it to the state, they're fighting a losing battle. Time is on the side of change. Three years ago, Ginsburg received some embarrassing national attention when she napped on the bench during a court hearing.
"Justices David Souter and Samuel Alito, who flank the 72-year-old, looked at her but did not give her a nudge," reported Gina Holland of the Associated Press.
The incident caught the attention of Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who said:
"At first, she appeared to be reading something in her lap. But after a while, it became clear: Ginsburg was napping on the bench. By Bloomberg News's reckoning – not denied by a court spokeswoman – Ginsburg's snooze lasted a quarter of an hour.
"It's lucky for Ginsburg that the Supreme Court has so far refused to allow television in the courtroom, for her visit to the land of nod would have found its way onto late-night shows."
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