So one year after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, where do we stand on his promise to pacify the world after eight years of alleged Bush mismanagement?
Well, North Korea just flipped him the bird, providing one resounding answer to that question. Yesterday, Pyongyang announced that it has disregarded disarmament promises that it made in 2007 and 2008 by processing enough nuclear fuel to produce additional atomic bombs. By continuing this “one step forward, two steps back” routine, North Korea appears ready to demand even more concessions and dollars from the Obama Administration. Apparently, Pyongyang resumed nuclear processing in April of this year, after the United Nations Security Council scolded it for testing new long-range missiles.
So there you have it. The only thing that Obama has offered in terms of defending America’s security interests was a wagging finger and warnings of “stop, or I’ll issue more warnings.” Now, even that is apparently unacceptable to Kim Jong Il. Some “Hope and Change.”
Last week, we noted that American consumers rewarded Ford for refraining from bankruptcy and accepting federal bailout dollars by significantly boosting its share of domestic auto sales.
So leave it to unionized workers to react to Ford’s admirable success story in a very different way. As we noted in our commentary last week, many market observers worried that Ford would face a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis General Motors and Chrysler, which did accept bankruptcy and government largess. All three Detroit automakers had been on a decades-long course of suicidal labor and business practices, but Ford chose to right its course the old-fashioned way, in contrast to GM and Chrysler. For this, Ford was rewarded by American car buyers.
But not by union voters, who rejected a contract that would have brought Ford’s unsustainable labor costs in line with those maintained by GM and Chrysler after their bailouts. As noted by the Associated Press, “workers weren’t convinced they should make more concessions, since Ford avoided bankruptcy and is considered healthier than its rivals.”
So there you have it. Behave responsibly by reviving your business without taxpayer dollars, and unionized workers will punish you for doing the right thing. We’ll check back in with these same union voters when they exclaim shock that their jobs disappear overseas or other non-union locales.
Democrat Congressman Charlie Rangel, in conjunction with Senator Max Baucus (D – Montana) has introduced a bill targeting tax evasion by Americans, of all things. And even more ironically, Rangel’s bill targets offshore tax evasion.
This is the same Charlie Rangel who shamelessly failed to report up to $780,000 of his own overseas income, and is currently attempting to dodge a thorough investigation into the matter. Under his legislation, overseas bank customers would suffer a punitive 30% tax on income from domestic assets unless their banks agreed to disclose the identities of American customers and report their annual balances and account activities. Proponents claim that it would raise some $8.5 billion more for spendthrifts like Rangel and his Congressional cohorts to waste away.
Here’s an alternative: why not simply itemize the outstanding tax liabilities of Charlie Rangel, Tim Geithner and the rest of Congress and the Obama Administration? Perhaps that would make $8.5 billion seem like peanuts by comparison.
When Ford abstained from accepting federal bailout dollars, observers rightfully worried that it would suffer a competitive disadvantage compared to its new Obama-favored counterparts General Motors (GM) and Chrysler.
But so far, a funny thing has happened thanks to American consumers. Ford has actually gained in its share of American market sales, whereas GM and Chrysler have declined. According to CNW Marketing Research, Ford jumped from approximately 12% of domestic auto sales in the third quarter of 2008 to approximately 17% in the third quarter of 2009. In contrast, GM fell from approximately 27% to 22%, and Chrysler fell from approximately 8% to 6% during that span. The only other major automaker to gain in market share over the past year was Toyota, but its increase isn’t nearly as dramatic as Ford’s.
Several factors may have contributed to Ford’s improvement, but Americans have sent a clear signal in rewarding it for righting its course the old-fashioned way, while rebuking GM and Chrysler for jumping onto the Obama bailout bandwagon.
Here’s a contradiction to chew on for a while: Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt tells The Washington Post that he’s wary about destructive overregulation of the Internet… Yet he simultaneously favors so-called Net “Neutrality?”
According to Mr. Schmidt, “it is possible for the government to screw up the Internet, bigtime.” The article reports that he went so far as to say that “it would be a terrible idea for the government to involve itself as a regulator of the broader Internet.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
But how can Mr. Schmidt square his accurate concern about destructive Internet regulation with his advocacy of Net “Neutrality,” which would needlessly introduce federal rules into Internet service for the first time? Stated simply, he can’t. Nevertheless, he and Google foolishly advocate Net “Neutrality” because they believe it serves their short-term corporate interest. Of course, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries initially believed the same thing about ObamaCare, before belatedly recognizing the toxic longer-term reality…
Apparently, the White House’s “Enemies List” has exhausted its reservoir of Republicans, so it’s now targeting Democrats.
According to this morning’s Washington Post, senior Obama advisors anticipate a resounding defeat in the Virginia governor’s race between Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds. Accordingly, the article reports that the White House fears a Republican victory “would likely be seen as a sign that Obama’s popularity is weakening in critical areas of the country.”
So how does the White House respond? Simple – scapegoat Deeds, and ignore Obama’s plummeting popularity in Virginia, which voted for a Democrat in the presidential race for the first time in over four decades. The White House conveniently claims that Deeds should have targeted the bloc of younger and African-American voters who propelled Obama in 2008, but the fact is that those 2008 surge voters are deflated after nine months of disastrous performance by Obama.
The lesson? Democrats across America can no more count on steadfast loyalty from the Obama White House than foreign allies such as Poland, Afghanistan, Israel, Honduras or Colombia can.
According to a Rasmussen public opinion poll released today, both Republican candidates in the 2010 Florida Senate race lead their likely Democrat counterpart.
Current Republican Governor Charlie Crist leads Democrat Kendrick Meek by a 46% to 34% margin in the contest to replace retired Republican Senator Mel Martinez. Similarly, former Republican Congressman Marco Rubio leads Meek by a 46% to 31% margin. Interestingly, Rubio’s 15-point lead is larger than his 13-point lead from August, whereas Crist’s 12-point lead over Meek is down from his 19-point lead in August and 21-point lead last June. Accordingly, the GOP primary shapes up as an interesting race, with Rubio receiving increasing publicity and praise from such conservative publications as National Review.
In light of the fact that Florida “turned blue” in the 2008 election, the Republicans’ substantial lead appears to suggest that Sunshine State voters do not like President Obama’s policy prescriptions, and are expressing a sort of “buyers’ remorse.” Stay tuned…
The Obama Administration’s highly-publicized campaign to punish and silence Fox News may have broader implications than just the broadcast media. So too might the “Fairness Doctrine” that it favors. Namely, as noted by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R – Tennessee), they portend ominous censorship possibilities if government control over the Internet becomes a reality via so-called Net “Neutrality.”
By targeting Fox News, the Obama Administration has abandoned any pretense of governmental content neutrality. It has thereby commenced an attempt to censor those whom it disfavors, and elevate those whom it favors. The same is true of the “Fairness Doctrine,” which conveniently targets those media sources most likely to engage in criticism of Obama and the liberal agenda more generally. Should Net “Neutrality” become a reality, that censorship could be spread to the Internet as well by introducing regulatory control over Internet delivery options. Does any reasonable person believe that they would stop there? It may sound far-fetched to suggest that the White House would stoop to Internet censorship, but who would have thought that it would so openly and explicitly target a single media outlet, the only one that exposed such things as the ACORN undercover videos?
We’re not just talking about a slippery slope here. With this White House and the Pelosi/Reid Congress, we’re talking about a greased slope.
How’s this for unadulterated, sanctimonious chutzpah: “Top Obama Aides Upbraid Wall Street.”
So announces a Washington Post headline, discussing the harsh criticisms leveled by Obama Administration officials against Wall Street firms. But consider this: if Wall Street executives ran their firms and kept their books the same way that the federal government does, they would be in jail until their dying days. Or consider how Obama and his apologists promised that if his “stimulus” plan was passed, unemployment would top out at 8%. Well, it’s now at 9.8% and rising. If a Wall Street CEO made similarly fatuous promises to unwary consumers, the resulting onslaught of class action lawsuits would descend faster than a Swiss avalanche.
Yet there was David Axelrod on ABC’s This Week, labeling Wall Street behavior “offensive” and admonishing them that “they ought to think through what they are doing.” Perhaps, but nobody should take that advice more than officials of an administration that is taking an already-dangerous fiscal situation and making it positively deadly. Too bad there are no righteous trial lawyers who can do anything about them.
Thank goodness that Senator Judd Gregg (R – NH) called the Obama Administration out on its habit of scapegoating its fiscal irresponsibility on former President Bush.
Whenever confronted with questions about their alarming fiscal trajectory, which will quickly double and then triple America’s cumulative national debt, Obama Administration officials invariably seem to rationalize it as an inheritance from the Bush Administration. Never mind, of course, that then-Senator Obama voted for such things as last fall’s questionable bailout proposal. And granted, the Bush Administration was far from perfect in its frequent fiscal misbehavior. But the simple fact is that Obama’s budgetary agenda is like “Bush on steroids,” as one observer noted.
And appearing on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday, Senator Gregg refreshingly pointed out that Obama’s fiscal insanity is in a category of its own. Addressing Obama’s deficit projections, Sen. Gregg said, “you can’t blame that on George Bush,” because each of the next ten years will witness deficits exceeding $1 trillion. He also noted that the nation’s debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) will skyrocket from 40% to “banana republic” levels of 80%.
Who knows how much longer the mainstream media will allow Obama’s apologists to repeat this canard, but we owe Senator Gregg our gratitude for eviscerating it in vivid terms.
In the famous Beatles song “Revolution,” which mocked irrational 1960s radicals, John Lennon sang, “but if you go carryin’ pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.” Well, anyone other than the Obama Administration, that is.
In this video from Fox News’s Glenn Beck, leading Obama Administration spokeswoman Anita Dunn explicitly identifies murderous Chinese dictator Mao Tse-Tung as one of her two guiding philosophical beacons during a speech. And she doesn’t stop there – she expounds by quoting him and recounting his campaigns at some length. And to think… One year ago, Obama’s apologists dismissed the Reverend Jeremiah Wright association as an aberration and mere Republican bogeyman. But now, we see the truth is that people like Ms. Dunn, Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers and Van Jones represent Obama’s ideological core, not some fringe set of associations. So when you’re tempted to think to yourself that one of Obama’s agenda items can’t really be as bad as critics portray, the reality is in fact probably even worse.
Sane observers knew instantly that Barack Obama and his substance-free diplomacy were undeserving of this week’s Nobel Peace Prize. But who knew that the award’s absurdity would be confirmed this quickly?
This week, in a double shot to the Obama Administration’s chin, both the Russians and Chinese undermined calls for tough new sanctions against Iran. This is particularly embarrassing for Obama because it comes on the heels of revelations that Iran has been completing additional secret enrichment facilities, as well as the supposed “breakthrough” meeting last week between American and Iranian diplomats on the issue. Dumping icewater on Obama’s unfounded optimism, however, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flatly stated yesterday that it is “premature” to threaten Iran with sanctions. And now, China has announced that it is strengthening, not reducing, its cooperation with Iran.
Russia and China constitute two of the United Nations Security Council’s permanent members, meaning that any substantive penalty against Iran for its continuing mendacity and misbehavior is unlikely. Perhaps another Nobel Peace Prize next year will do the trick, though…
Then watch this video. After foolishly agreeing to participate in a Q&A during a gathering of “environmental journalists,” Gore didn’t expect to find himself exposed by questions pointing out the myth that is man-made global warming alarmism. But exposed he was, by Irish film producer and director Phelim McAleer. Predictably, Mr. McAleer’s microphone was quickly silenced, but not before he made Al Gore sweat and puff. Coming at the end of a week in which even the BBC openly wondered “What Happened to Global Warming?,” it just wasn’t a very good week for poor Al Gore.
It is straightforward logic that taxes discourage production and investment. But judging by their latest bright idea to tax financial transactions, Democrats such as Barney Frank and their Big Labor overlords either don’t understand this or simply don’t care.
Fresh off a worldwide crisis from which it hasn’t even yet recovered, the financial industry is hardly the sector that tax-hungry liberals should attempt to further cripple. This is particularly true in an era when market participants can relocate operations almost anywhere in the world, as the past decade’s out-migration from the United States has shown. Ignoring this, liberals are now proposing a tax of 0.1% to 0.25% on almost every form of financial transaction. So how exactly is this supposed to help America’s financial industry recover?
Worse, the proceeds would be directed toward (you guessed it) ObamaCare or more futile “stimulus” spending, despite warnings from economists about the negative consequences for markets. “I was one of the ones who suggested the idea,” says Congressman Frank.
Which, come to think of it, is almost argument enough for any sane person to oppose this bizarre new proposed tax-grab.
“But those political promises were only good for as long as it took to get the mandate enacted into law.”
That was the observation of “neither politically or socially conservative” author and Massachusetts resident Wendy Williams, commenting this weekend upon her first-hand experience under that state’s mandatory healthcare “reform.” Readers should be forewarned – Mrs. Williams’s commentary generates visceral anger at the sanctimonious bureaucrats who would wrench control over our own health and family budget decisions. She describes how she and her husband rationally chose to purchase insurance through IBM, his former employer, only to be informed three years later that they’d be fined by the state because Massachusetts changed the rules to make their bare-bones catastrophic policy unpalatable. Accordingly, they were told to either purchase a pricier policy that they didn’t want, or pay another $1,000 each year to Massachusetts.
This directly contradicted the explicit promises of then-Governor Mitt Romney and then-Senator Ted Kennedy that middle-class residents would not find themselves taxed or otherwise penalized if state government healthcare reform was imposed.
Now, advocates of a federal healthcare mandate make the same promises to us. As they say about those who fail to learn from history…
This week, the fictional character Don Draper from AMC’s critically-acclaimed series Mad Men was somehow named the Most-Influential Man of 2009 by askmen.com. That’s right – a nonexistent man is somehow the year’s most influential.
So what does this have to do with Barack Obama and his coronation as Global Prom Queen this week by the Nobel committee? Lots.
Just as a fictional character has somehow attained the title of most-influential man, a President who has done absolutely nothing to achieve actual peace in the world has just won the Nobel Peace Prize after just nine months in office. Indeed, last February’s Nobel nomination deadline meant that Obama was nominated no more than 11 days into office.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy captured the essence of this absurdity last month when he mockingly referenced Obama’s “virtual world.” But as Sarkozy also pointed out, we don’t live in that virtual world – we live in the real world. And by repeating mindless platitudes about ridding the world of nuclear weapons, Obama ignores the very real danger of nations like Iran rapidly acquiring them. It’s possible that Obama’s Nobel will prove to be nothing but a bizarre, humorous footnote when we look back, but Sarkozy’s observation reminds us that living as if we’re in a virtual world can have dangerous implicaitons for the real world.
“This is the first time the award is given for wishful thinking.”
Those were the words of Israeli Knesset member Danny Danon upon receiving word that Barack Obama won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Who knew that Saturday Night Live’sparody of Obama admitting that he had done absolutely nothing so far in office would prove so prescient?
This bizarre and absurd decision by the Nobel committee, of course, follows earlier awards to such towering architects of peace as PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in 1994… Six years before he commenced the bloody intifada against Israel in 2000. In contrast, Ronald Reagan led the free world to victory in the Cold War without firing a shot against the Soviet Union, freeing hundreds of millions of human beings and ending the looming threat of a global nuclear holocaust, but never seemed to gain sufficient esteem within the minds of the Nobel committee. One can only speculate about the true basis on which this now-discredited award is given, but it certainly isn’t for tangible results in achieving peace. If that was the basis, they could just as easily rename it the Reagan-Thatcher-Pope John Paul II Peace Prize.
Sales of regular soft drinks have declined by almost 10% during the past decade according to Beverage Digest, but since when are facts an impediment to Barack Obama’s smug foolishness?
In a recent interview with Men’s Health Magazine, Obama conveniently scapegoats soft drinks, saying that a soda tax is “an idea that we should be exploring.” He added, incorrectly, that “there’s no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda. And every study that’s been done about obesity shows that there is as high a correlation between increased soda consumption and obesity as just about anything else.”
Except that there’s not. In a devastating commentary today, Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent notes that sales of regular soda have actually declined, as has consumption of added sugar as a percentage of daily calories, even as obesity rates increased. He shows that America’s increasing obesity is actually attributable to declines in exercise, as well as to increased fat and flour/cereal consumption. Facts, however, are small hurdles for Obama in his campaign to dictate every aspect of our lives and tax us in every conceivable way.
In a new report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says that we must “invest” $10 trillion over the upcoming 20 years to stop global warming. That’s $500 billion per year, and we’ll give you one guess as to which nation will be asked to shoulder that crippling new burden…
Shamelessly, this amount is 37% higher than the IEA said was necessary just one year ago. The IEA also demands that developed nations such as the United States reduce carbon emissions even further than the economically destructive levels already being pushed by left-wing special interests and liberal politicians through such abominations as the Waxman-Markey bill, which will cost American families thousands of dollars each year and punish American business. This IEA report also comes just as global temperatures continue their cooling plateau over the past ten years, meaning that the global warming hysteria may be today’s equivalent of the discredited global cooling craze of the 1970s. But what’s a trifling $10 trillion, right?
The University of East Anglia is a taxpayer-supported university whose Climate Research Unit (CRU) has produced data serving as the basis for international studies alleging a global warming crisis. That includes our own Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has proposed draconian, unnecessary and costly regulation of carbon dioxide. But in August of this year, the CRU admitted that it destroyed the original raw data for its global surface temperature set, claiming a lack of storage space.
In other words, the dog ate its homework?
Unfortunately, but conveniently for global warming alarmists, the EPA stopped accepting public comments on its proposed carbon dioxide regulation back in June. But fortunately, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) filed a petition with the EPA yesterday to re-open debate. As stated by CEI’s General Counsel Sam Kazman, “the EPA is resting its case on international studies that in turn relied on CRU data. But CRU’s suspicious destruction of its original data, disclosed at this late date, makes that information totally unreliable. If the EPA doesn’t reexamine the implications of this, it’s stumbling blindly into the most important regulatory issue we face.”
Dennis the Menace couldn’t get away with this excuse, and neither should the CRU or EPA bureaucrats.
CFIF Freedom Line Blog RSS Feed
CFIF on X
CFIF on YouTube