Freedom Line Blog

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer got herself into hot water with conservatives last year by proposing tax increases to address state budget shortfalls soon after replacing Democrat Janet Napolitano.  Thankfully for Arizona residents hit particularly hard by the real estate downturn, however, Governor Brewer has corrected course by withdrawing from the regional Western Climate Initiative’s (WCI) plan to impose a carbon cap-and-tax scheme in 2012. The WCI’s misguided system would place arbitrary limits on the amount of carbon that businesses could produce in seven western states and four Canadian provinces, and allow sale and purchase of emission credits among businesses.

Former Governor Napolitano agreed to the plan in 2007 before joining the Obama Administration as Secretary of Homeland Security, where she embarrassed herself by claiming that the “system worked” after an al Qaeda terrorist nearly destroyed an airliner in the skies above Detroit.

Noting the economic basket case that next-door California has become by implementing precisely these sorts of regulations, Governor Brewer wisely said, “no, thanks.”  She stated in her executive order that Arizona simply would not participate in a plan that would raise costs for employers and consumers in this period of economic difficulty.  Among other things, the scheme would have increased costs for automobiles and other struggling industries.

The Sierra Club was predictably dismayed, but what’s bad for the environmental activist agenda tends to be good for everyday citizens.

The Founding Fathers deliberately included in the Bill of Rights the Tenth Amendment, which states:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

This notion of federalism, or “states’ rights,” was obviously a core tenet of our Constitution and one that provided the reassurance necessary for ratification.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, however, suggests that this vital, fundamental aspect of the Constitution is merely code for slavery, segregation or racism amongst those inconvenient Tea Partiers.  During his February 9 “Hardball” broadcast, Matthews reacted to those such as Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry and fellow Republican candidate Debra Medina who seek to reclaim greater federalist balance by angrily asking, “who is this, John Calhoun?!?!”

You recall John Calhoun, that early-18th century Vice President from South Carolina who supported slavery.  According to Matthews, advocating simple Tenth Amendment concepts is tantamount to advocating slavery, apparently.  Matthews proceeded to quote Martin Luther King, Jr. for any of his loyal viewers who failed to comprehend his oh-so-subtle Calhoun reference.

This is the same Chris Matthews, of course, who fawns over Barack Obama by describing the thrill that runs through his leg when listening to another teleprompted speech, and who childishly attempts to slur Tea Party activists by referring to them as “tea baggers.”

We’ve come a long way from states’ rights proponents James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann.  Still believe in Darwinism?

The fraudulently-labeled Employee “Free Choice” Act (EFCA) is one of the most dangerous legislative proposals since Barack Obama assumed office.

EFCA would literally eliminate the sacred democratic secret ballot during union elections, which has caused overwhelming majorities of Americans to oppose this scheme.  It would also do such things as allow federal arbitrators to dictate wages and work rules upon employers and organized employees for the first time.  During this period of economic difficulty, with Big Labor already causing American jobs to disappear or move overseas, now is hardly the time to make employment even more difficult in this country.

Fortunately, EFCA appears temporarily stalled in Congress.  But that isn’t preventing the Obama Administration, Harry Reid, Big Labor and liberal activists from seeking alternative ways of imposing EFCA and its toxic job-killing provisions upon the American economy.

Namely, Obama has nominated radical union activist Craig Becker to serve on the five-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to achieve their goal.  As Stewart Acuff of the Utility Workers Union of America has baldly stated, “if we aren’t able to to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, we will work with President Obama and Vice-President Biden and their appointees to the National Labor Relations Board to change the rules governing formation of a union through administrative action.”

And you thought ObamaCare was the only thing liberals were going to try to force down America’s throat against our will?

Please contact your Senators immediately (locate your Senators’ contact information here) and demand that they support the Senate filibuster against Craig Becker.  Otherwise, EFCA may soon become a reality despite our successful efforts so far to stop it in Congress.   The American economy and everyday workers will otherwise pay the price.

Do a quick Google search of the terms “Obama,” “corpsman” and “Washington Post.”

Not a whole lot jumps to the forefront, at least from The Washington Post itself.  Notably, it provides a transcript of the very speech in which Obama’s teleprompter failed to phonetically spell out the military term “corpsman,” leading the supposed intellectual Obama to mispronounce it “corpse-man.”

The same Google search results in an avalanche of separate commentaries on the matter, of course, as well as readers’ follow-up comments to the Post transcript pointing out Obama’s embarrassing (and revealing) error.  But the Post itself apparently considers it unworthy of substantive note.  Evidence undermining the Obama Myth is unwelcome there, apparently.

But Sarah Palin?  Toward her, the Post can’t seem to relent in its obsession over her use of hand notes during a speech.  Who knows, perhaps Palin just didn’t want to waste the untold thousands of dollars necessary to secure a teleprompter and an entire staff of speechwriters as Obama does.  But even with all the King’s horses, all the King’s men and all the King’s teleprompters, Obama still couldn’t manage to pronounce “corpsman” correctly.

Imagine for a moment the Post’s hysterics if George W. Bush had committed an error that revealing.  Or if Sarah Palin had.

Saturday marked the 99th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth.  It was also the day on which “Snowmageddon” dumped two feet of snow on Washington, D.C., closing government agencies into this week.

Coincidence?  Or yet another win for the Gipper?

After all, Reagan once lamented the federal government’s counterproductive overactivity:

“We have all heard that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.  Today, if you build a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.”

Well, let’s consider this a symbolic reverse birthday gift from President Reagan, since every day on which the federal government is shut down is a day on which it isn’t devising a better mouse to unleash on us all.

Is Al Gore in Washington, D.C. this weekend?

That would only be fitting, given Mother Nature’s gesture of laughter toward the global warming hysteria industry in the form of potentially record snowfall for the DC/Baltimore area.  Meteorologists are predicting between 20 and 30 inches of snowfall in Washington, which could surpass the record 28 inches the nation’s capital received in the 1928 “Knickerbocker Storm.”

Notably, this forecast doesn’t come in isolation.  Rather, it follows by approximately one month a similarly paralyzing December snowstorm whose rock-solid remnants hadn’t yet disappeared from DC landscapes.

All of this begs the question:  Where in the world is Al Gore this weekend?

It’s not merely the delicious thought of Gore snowed inside his house, either.  There he’d sit, pathetically gazing out his window at the frigid snowfall, unable to expand his already-gigantic carbon footprint by galavanting in his private jet or SUV convoy to his latest Chicken Little global warming speech.  It goes beyond that wonderful irony.

Believe it or not, this storm actually presents a novel fundraising opportunity for him and his increasingly-discredited movement.

Think about it…  Imagine the enormous number of dollars Gore could collect by agreeing to publicly shovel snow for amused “climate criminals” who dared question his ludicrous warming admonitions or fail to drive automobiles powered by vegetable oil.  Perhaps he could even drive a snowplow, sprinkle some salt on roads and walkways or build snowmen in the yards of climate realists.  All on camera for posterity, of course.

As a charitable gesture, we could even allow him and fellow liberals to claim the thousands of neighborhood kids shoveling snow for $20 per driveway as jobs “saved or created.”

Don’t think of it as a rebuke, Mr. Gore.  Think of it as a fun little opportunity that could erase memories of your “no controlling legal authority” fundraising embarrassment from the 1990s.

Fresh off his famous catastrophes on the healthcare and deficit reduction fronts, Barack Obama momentarily shifted his bumbling gaze yesterday to Net Neutrality.

What exactly is Net Neutrality, you ask?

Well, think of it as ObamaCare for the Internet, and you get the essential idea.  Net Neutrality would federally bureaucratize Internet service by dictating rigid price controls and traffic surge management to providers, among other toxic provisions.  The Internet seemed to be doing just fine so far, what with the ongoing explosion of content delivery and devices like the iPhone.  But why should that stop Obama from “fixing” something that isn’t broken?

In an unintentionally amusing commentary entitled “President Obama Hearts Net Neutrality,” Stacey Higginbotham praises Obama, who appears to be shifting his Midas-in-reverse focus to this dangerous campaign.  When asked about Net Neutrality, Obama responded:

I’m a big believer in Net Neutrality.  I campaigned on this.  I continue to be a strong supporter of it.  My FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has indicated that he shares the view that we’ve got to keep the Internet open, that we don’t want to create a bunch of gateways that prevent somebody who doesn’t have a lot of money but has a good idea from being able to start their next YouTube or their next Google on the Internet.  So this is something we’re committed to.

Consider the absurdity of Obama’s comment.  He curiously demands that we “keep the Internet open,” even though it has somehow managed to remain open all this time without the need for crippling Net Neutrality regulations.  And he suggests that Net Neutrality is necessary to allow innovators to “start their next YouTube or their next Google,” leaving one to wonder how anyone ever managed to start YouTube or Google in the first place without Net Neutrality.

Net Neutrality advocates dishonestly concoct the bogeyman of sinister Internet service providers blocking web content, but the reality is that America faces a continuing exponential increase in Internet traffic.  This rapid growth will require innovations and investment by Internet service providers to carry it, just as they have done to date.  Obama wrongly alleges that Net Neutrality is somehow necessary to allow the next YouTube or Google, but the truth is that the next YouTube or Google will be impossible if network providers are prohibited by bureaucratic Net Neutrality regulations from managing the surge in data traffic.

The need for freedom and flexibility of network providers to innovate will become even more critical as Americans increasingly shift to smart phones.

As noted by a report in today’s Wall Street Journal, “carriers are already running at over 80% capacity,” and “are scrambling to build out next-generation networks that promise higher bandwidth and faster speeds.”  If Obama and his FCC succeed in imposing suffocating Net Neutrality regulations that they recently proposed, however, service providers’ difficulties will only increase as Obama bureaucratizes the Internet in the same way that he attempted to bureaucratize healthcare.

Americans concerned about the future of Internet growth and innovation must therefore act quickly to stop Obama’s reverse-Midas Net Neutrality scheme.  Please contact your Senators and Representative immediately and demand a stop to this destructive scheme before it’s too late.

Talk about “inconvenient truths.”

The global warming cacophony has become even more dissonant in recent months, as global temperature data continues to confirm a decade-long temperature decline since 1998.  How could this happen, considering substantial increases in carbon output as China and India have rapidly industrialized, and the United States economy witnessed a decade of unprecedented growth?  On top of that, the “Climategate” scandal in recent months exposed the rotten infrastructure of lies, pettiness and data manipulation that constitutes the global warming community.

Now, along comes an unintentionally amusing report that climatologists are “puzzled” that the planet’s stratospheric cycles may have cooled the globe despite their claims that humans control our climate.

As reported by Gautam Naik of The Wall Street Journal, “climatologists have puzzled” over global cooling over the past decade, and “new research suggests that lower levels of water vapor in the stratosphere may partly explain the anomaly.” The report proceeds to discuss a Science magazine study showing that “concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere has dropped about 10% in the past decade, triggered by unexplained cooler temperatures at certain high altitudes above the tropics.”

Further, “the study concludes that in the last decade the decline in water vapor slowed the rate of rising temperatures by about 25%, thus partly negating the heat-trapping effect of increasing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.”

In other words, natural and unpredictable global cycles and solar activity far beyond human control overwhelm the alleged effects of human activity on the planet.

The only people “puzzled” by this are the global warming zealots who are at long last watching their claims to vanity evaporate in the face of reality.

Last month’s “Climategate” revelations exposed thousands of emails between global-warming activist scientists, who sought to conceal and distort climate data, blackball other climate scientists who rebutted their claims and discredit scientific journals.

Now, UK authorities have concluded that they also broke the law.

According to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the climate researchers at the center of Climategate were requested in 2007 and 2008 to submit data on which they based their global warming contentions.  Those contentions were in turn a basis on which the United Nations and global warming alarmists around the world issued their latest doomsday predictions.  The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also relied upon them in issuing their reckless carbon dioxide regulations.

Under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act, however, those researchers were required to disclose the data on which they claimed to rest their conclusions.  The Act also prohibits deliberate concealment of requested information, which these activist scientists did.  According to a statement issued by the ICO, the information requests were “not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation.”

Talk about understatement.

Phil Jones, who directed the unit at the center of the Climategate scandal, stepped down following the revelations.  Yet, bizarrely, he claims that the team’s efforts at distortion and concealment were “taken completely out of context.”

Not exactly the defense one would expect from a man with a clear conscience…

Oregon, whose 11% unemployment rate exceeds the national rate by a full percentage point, sits just to the north of California, whose suicidal economic policies have provided a close-up lesson that reducing economic freedom reduces prosperity. As a result, Oregonians have seen first-hand the mass exodus of jobs and residents stemming from those policies.

So as Oregonians head to the polls tomorrow to consider two tax-raising ballot measures, we’ll see whether they’ve internalized California’s straightforward lessons.

Proposition 66 would increase Oregon’s personal income tax on “the rich” by fully 2%, and Proposition 67 would foolishly increase the corporate income tax. You know…  those corporations that actually create jobs and add to the economy.

Just as California’s reckless tax-and-spend policies have driven residents and jobs to surrounding states, Oregon may astonishingly slit its own wrists in the same manner by passing these measures.  Residents and community leaders in Washington, Idaho, Utah, Montana, Nevada and Arizona may welcome the resulting influx, but it will mean doom for Oregon. Nike, Inc. founder and chairman Phil Knight, hardly a starched-collar conservative, has labeled Propositions 66 and 67 “Oregon’s Assisted Suicide Law II,” and some economists predict 70,000 lost jobs if the measures pass.

So which way, Oregon?  Freedom and prosperity, or suicidal tax increases?  Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey voters have learned the lessons of Obamanomics, and now we’ll see if the news has traveled out to the West Coast…

Yesterday’s United States Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was a welcome victory for free speech and the First Amendment.

By overturning byzantine prohibitions against the very type of fundamental electioneering speech most valued by our Founding Fathers when they drafted the First Amendment itself, the Court reclaimed enormous territory in freedom’s war against incumbent-protecting censorship.

While welcome, however, the decision also carries political implications about which conservatives must remain alert.  Liberals, predictably, hysterically focus upon the sinister prospect of free speech for those big, bad, evil corporations that actually employ people and produce things.  For instance, resident MSNBC village idiot Keith Olbermann rendered himself not only the world’s worst person, but also the most idiotic, when he suggested the decision was even worse than the infamous Dred Scott slavery decision of 1857.

But apart from the Olbermann crowd’s inanity, one negative prospect is Big Labor’s new ability to engage in direct electioneering communications.

Don’t get us wrong – union bosses should be just as free as other groups to exercise their free speech rights, so long as the dollars used to fund that speech aren’t forcibly wrenched from reluctant members’ wages.  As long as Big Labor isn’t afforded particularized protected status, fair is fair.

Nevertheless, expect new union efforts to not only flood the airwaves, but also to increase the amount of members’ dues used to fund those efforts, as well as even more pressure to enact legislative agenda items.  In particular, we can anticipate all new efforts to enact card-check, which would literally eliminate the secret ballot in union elections, and empower federal bureaucrats to dictate wages and working conditions via mandatory arbitration. In 2008 alone, two unions (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the infamous Service Employees International Union) spent $58 million of their hard-working members’ wages on political campaigns.

They’ll only scheme to increase that amount now.

Card-check legislation appeared all but dead, but this device to increase Big Labor’s membership rolls, and consequently the amount of money it can spend electing liberals across the country, will receive even more push now.

We applaud the Supreme Court’s decision, but we conservatives must remain wary of Big Labor’s upcoming campaign.

Late last year, the “Climategate” scandal fell like a meteor from the sky, creating catastrophic damage for the worldwide fraud that is global warming alarmism.  That controversy centered upon the revelation that climate change activists had manipulated data, blacklisted scientists who opposed their agenda and targeted scientific journals.

The repercussions continue, but one fortunate trend is that most Americans have become skeptical toward environmental extremists and their deteriorating claims.

Now, the United Nations was forced this week to make yet another embarrassing admission.

Yesterday, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted that its 2007 claim that Himalayan glaciers would completely disappear by 2035 was based on speculative assertions.

The UN’s erroneous 2007 claim was based upon a 2005 World Wildlife Fund study, which was itself based upon a 1999 study in New Scientist magazine, in which Indian glacial scientist Syed Hasnain was quoted as saying the glaciers would disappear “within forty years.”  Now, however, Dr. Hasnain admitted that his 1999 assertions were based upon “speculation” instead of sound science.

Along with the fact that global temperatures have fallen below their 1998 levels despite eleven years of rapid growth in China, India and the United States, these successive scandals within the global warming grievance industry have the movement well on its way to the same fate as the ultimately discredited 1970s “global cooling” movement.

The demise of this politically-based speculative movement can’t come soon enough.

For a man of such supposed intellectual prowess, Barack Obama certainly seems oblivious to any sense of irony.

Attempting to stanch his hemhorraging public aproval numbers, Obama yesterday retreated to phony populism by proposing $90 billion in new taxes upon American banks. It must be noted that many of these banks have already repaid the questionable bailout funds that they received, and are now staring at a form of double jeopardy.

Obama’s misguided proposal contradicts his own stated goal of encouraging bank lending in this choppy economy, because the new tax will undercut banks’ ability to create new loans.  Further, the tax will merely be passed on to strapped American consumers, as all corporate taxes ultimately are.  It’s such a terrible idea that even Democrat Senator Kristen Gillibrand voiced opposition, saying it “could disproportionately affect New York City’s economic recovery, which relies on a growing financial services industry.”

Disregarding this reality, Obama was undeterred, sanctimoniously thundering, “we want our money back, and we’re going to get it.”

We feel the same way, Mr. President.  In just the first year of your administration, we have seen you squander our hard-earned dollars on failed “stimulus” behemoths and bureaucratic boondoggles on behalf of labor unions and other favored special interests.  We have seen you triple the budget deficit after telling us duirng your campaign that you were going to reduce it by scouring the budget “line by line.”

Yes, Mr. President, we also want our money back.

In 1994, North Korea placated the Clinton Administration by agreeing to discontinue its nuclear program.

Jimmy Carter trumpeted this supposed achievement of peaceful negotiation.  Bill Clinton sang its praises.

Since that date, of course, we have endured the “Groundhog Day” style cycle of North Korean troublemaking, hollow admonitions from the “community of nations,” more “peaceful negotiations,” and ultimately successful North Korean nuclear blasts.

In other words, as conservatives and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton have often pointed out to an unwelcoming mainstream media, the popular process of toothless negotiations with incorrigible rogues was again proven pointless.

But chilling news from the Korean peninsula suggests that it was even more dangerously naive than we realized.  According to South Korea’s foreign minister, North Korea resumed its nuclear program almost as soon as it agreed to the 1994 accord.  In other words, Kim Jong Il never intended to respect his obligations, and made dupes out of Carter, Clinton and liberal non-confrontationalists.  Instead, it was all merely another maneuver in his endless game of squeezing largess out of all-too-willing negotiators, a process that continues today with both North Korea and Iran.

It all puts Carter’s Nobel Peace Prize in a different light, doesn’t it?

When asked to identify a leftist counterpart to the wit and wisdom of conservative commentator George Will, liberals commonly cite The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, Jr.

Frankly, that’s a bit like a D.C.-area baseball fan offering the Washington Nationals as a counterpart to the New York Yankees, as confirmed again by today’s commentary from Dionne.

In it, Dionne counsels a veritable suicide strategy for Democrats hoping to avoid a landslide defeat in November’s 2010 Congressional elections.  In the face of poll after poll demonstrating widespread public opposition to ObamaCare, Dionne advises Democrats to trumpet its virtues.  He apparently remains blissfully oblivious to the fact that the more people learn about ObamaCare, the less they like it.  Since Obama demanded legislation before the August Congressional recess, the public has swung from narrow approval to wide disapproval, yet he advises that Democrats tell them more?  Dionne subsequently argues, presumably with a straight face, that Democrats should utilize proposed carbon cap-and-tax legislation in their effort to gain electoral momentum.  As is the case with ObamaCare, however, Dionne’s recommendation flies in the face of public skepticism and opposition toward this costly bill that will raise utility costs for everyday consumers, cripple businesses struggling in a weak economy and surrender additional American sovereignty to United Nations-style climate regulation.

Those in the legal profession often advise against interrupting opposing attorneys who are dooming their own cases.  One suspects that Republicans are similarly in no hurry to interrupt Dionne’s advice to Democrats.

If the Senate’s hyperpartisan Christmas Eve healthcare vote and the Copenhagen climate summit “agreement” constitute “victories” for Barack Obama, one would fear to see anything he’d acknowledge a “failure.” 

At every opportunity, the White House, liberal pundits and media apologists herald both as victories for a foundering presidency.  But just as Obama’s performance has failed to remotely match his lofty campaign rhetoric, neither one comes anywhere close to his professed goals. 

After all, remember the government-run, single-payer system that Obama said was his goal prior to his presidency?  No sign of it in the Senate healthcare bill.  In fact, the bill doesn’t even contain the “robust public option” that Obama sought after he realized single-payer was a bridge too far.  And remember how he demanded them before the August Congressional recess?  Some “victory.” 

And the same goes for the silly Copenhagen climate summit.  Obama arrogantly trumpeted a historic “agreement,” but the only agreement was an agreement-to-agree-to-something-to-be-agreed-upon-at-some-future-climate-summit.  There were none of the economically-crippling carbon limits demanded by environmental extremists, and none of the billions (trillions?) of largess demanded by developing nations. 

The reality is that Obama needes something – anything – to create the mirage of accomplishment for a White House that has failed so miserably that his approval is lower than any President in history at this stage.   His minions and media chorus may label these things “victories,” but that doesn’t make it so.

Less than one year into the Obama Administration, unequivocal public opinion polls are saying a lot about his leadership ability, and may be providing an early clue into what might come to be his legacy.

Namely, unlike leaders such as Ronald Reagan or Franklin Roosevelt, he is turning the public away from his worldview, rather than persuading it to join him.

By now we’re well-familiar with Obama’s steady decline in public opinion polls.  In fact, he stands lower than any President at this point in his tenure.  But the latest Rasmussen poll shows something broader, which is good news for those of us who advocate individual freedom, but bad news for Obama.

By an enormous 66% to 22% margin, Americans state that they prefer less government and lower taxes to stronger government with higher taxes.  Amazingly, the tone-deaf White House and the Pelosi/Reid Congress continue to advance bigger government (ObamaCare, carbon cap-and-tax, new regulations over the struggling economy,etc.) and higher taxes (increase of the death tax, higher income taxes, healthcare penalties, etc.) despite these unequivocal results.

By a 62% to 21% margin, respondents also say that lowering taxes is a better way to create jobs than more federal “stimulus” is.  This is remarkable, considering the degree to which Obama, Pelosi, Reid and liberal pundits scapegoat lower taxes and less regulation as the alleged cause of our economic difficulties.  They’re obviously not making the case, and are losing the battle of ideas.

Furthermore, 62% believe that it would be better for the rest of the world and our allies to follow America’s lead, an all-time high.  In contrast, a tiny 8% report that America should increasingly follow our allies’ lead.  This again contrasts with Obama’s apologetic international demeanor and submission to new global constraints upon the U.S., especially on the heels of his Nobel Prize and Copenhagen boondoggle.

But more broadly, these striking results show that Obama is failing miserably at the task of persuading and leading Americans toward his point of view and policy agenda.  He presumably has several years to reverse this reality, but we may already be witnessing the early elements of the eventual Obama legacy.

barbaric:   (1) Of, relating to, or characteristic of barbarians.   (2) Crude or unrestrained in taste, style, or behavior.

Perhaps California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is simply desperate to retain some element of his fading spotlight as he drifts toward political retirement?  After all, we live in the age of reality TV, in which even self-embarrassment such as White House party-crashing is an acceptable price for publicity.

Sadly, that possibility would be preferable to the possibility that he’s simply lost what remained of his intellectual bearing.

Appearing today on ABC’s Good Morning, America, Schwarzenegger attempted to outdo even the Obama White House on the topic of climate change absurdity.  Even though he has presided over California as it has hemorrhaged jobs and descended to economic basket-case status, partly due to costly state environmental policies, he denied any contradiction between the global warming agenda and economic prosperity, saying, “we in California have proven it over and over that you can protect the economy, and you can protect the environment.  I don’t think you have to choose.  I think it is nonsense talk to say ‘let’s talk first about the economy.'”

Apparently oblivious to the Climategate scandal surrounding the global warming activists at Britain’s University of East Anglia, he went so far as to say that on the issue of global warming, we should “pay more attention to the universities.”  And ignoring California’s catastrophic loss of jobs to surrounding business-friendly states, Schwarzenegger continued, “in California, the biggest job creation is in green technology, we have seen an increase there of over 36%, we have been increasing the amount of jobs in all those different areas.”

Perhaps most preposterously, the man who played Conan the Barbarian had the audacity to label anyone who rightfully questions man-made global warming hysteria as “still living in the Stone Age.”

No, Governor Schwarzenegger, you’re the one who has continuously regressed back to the Stone Age with such profoundly mindless comments as these during your tenure.  What a sad, sad spectacle for a once-promising political newcomer and purported reformer.

The Obma White House has long followed the idea that there’s no problem that the federal government shouldn’t fix.

Now, it’s telling us that there’s no improvement that the federal government shouldn’t fix, either.

That appeared to be the message from White House Council of Economic Advisors Chairman Christina Romer and National Economic Council Chairman Lawrence Summers, both of whom made the rounds on yesterday’s Sunday talk shows.  In his comments to George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, Mr. Summers said that, “most professional forecasters are now looking for a return to job growth by spring.”  And appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Ms. Romer predicted “positive job growth sometime in the first quarter.”

But as noted by The Wall Street Journal today, we must ignore federal deficits in favor of more “stimulus” spending.  According to both Summers and Romer, shifting focus to the deficit instead of spending even more during a period of record deficits would be “suicide.”

So let’s get this straight:  Obama’s first “stimulus” was supposed to cap unemployment at 8%.  It’s now at 10%.  But despite the fact that the White House expects job growth to return in the next quarter, it wants to spend even more to “stimulate?”

One is left to wonder whether the Obama Era more closely resembles a work of Orwell or merely an issue of The Onion.

Barack Obama has done little, if anything, right during his year in office, but he’s obviously perfecting the art of shameless hypocrisy.

Appearing on CBS’s 60 Minutes yesterday, Barack Obama said with a straight face that “the people on Wall Street still don’t get it.  They don’t get it.” For good measure, he also broadly labeled bankers “fat cats” who have behaved in an “irresponsible” manner and not shown “a lot of shame.”

Let’s see.  This is the same Barack Obama who promised to address the $0.4 trillion deficit, only to add a trillion to make it $1.4 trillion in just his first year.  In other words, he is addressing the deficit by…  tripling it.  Lest one reflexively attribute that to his inheritance, this year’s deficit is on an even worse trajectory.  He is also the man who proposes adding an endless array of new entitlements and highly-paid new federal employees to an already-unsustainable budget trajectory.  He is also the man who seeks to reward the same federal bureaucracies that failed to recognize the financial bubble, and even abetted it, by granting them nearly plenary powers over the entire struggling economy.  He is also the man who aims to compound the nation’s economic woes by imposing catastrophic healthcare costs and carbon taxes upon it.  He is also the man who seeks to increase taxes on broad swaths of struggling individuals and small businesses by allowing rates to increase next year. He is also the man who promised to usher in a new era of international diplomacy and peace, only to see rogue regimes such as Iran increase their menace since his inauguration.

Yet he says that others “don’t get it?”

Laughably, he mocked bankers for being “puzzled” why the public is “mad” at them.  Perhaps he was merely projecting his own puzzlement at his record-low poll numbers, which similarly reveal a public “mad” at him?