2nd Quarter of 2009: Economy Shrank Faster Than Estimated

The economy shrank faster in the second quarter of 2009 (April, May and June) that originally estimated. The Bureau of Economic Affairs originally estimated that the US economy contracted by 0.7% in the second quarter. You might recall the Obama administration crowing about the smaller contraction (compared to the 6.4% contraction in the first quarter of 2009). Most likely a Republican administration would have crowed too, but a smaller contraction, while not as bad as a larger contraction obviously, means we're still in a recession.

As it turns out, the BEA now estimates that the economy actually contracted slightly more in the second quarter than initially estimated--by a full percentage point. Many economists predicted that the third quarter, which ended on September 30, will bring a 3% growth rate in the economy, which would be nice indeed after an already-severe recession. I suspect, however, that if we see any growth in the third quarter it will fall short of the 3% prediction. I wouldn't feel surprised to see continued contraction either. Keep your fingers crossed.

It will be interesting too, to see if one quarter of growth will lead the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private organization started by anti-market economist Wesley C. Mitchell, which declares the beginning and end of recessions, to declare the end of this one. In the past the NBER has always defined a recession as two consecutive quarters of contraction in the economy. By that measure the recession didn't start until late in 2008, a year after the Fed started its vain Keynesian attempt to prevent a recession by inflating the money supply. Suddenly, however the NBER changed it definition of a recession to something rather vague so that it could claim the recession actually started in 2007! I suspect that they made the change to make the Bush administration look worse. Will the NBER revert to the economic growth definition again to say it's over despite growing unemployment, in order to make the Obama administration look better, or will they stick to their new definition (whatever that might be) and wait until the employment picture improves? Stay tuned... :-)

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm

Unemployment Rose in September

This report came out a while ago and I've been meaning to share it. Despite the claims by the Federal Reserve Board that the recession has ended, the official unemployment rate rose in September, and not because the number of people who reentered the workforce exceeded the number of new jobs the economy created. The economy actually lost 263,000 jobs in September, worse than the 201,000 loss of August.

I've been saying for more than a year now that the Fed's inflationary policies, a vain Keynesian attempt to trick the economy into real growth by inflating the money supply, were only making things worse, as are the trillion-dollar Bush-Obama big business corporate bailouts, which crowd out real investment in efficient businesses. I've predicted for months now that things would get worse before they get better, and the prediction certainly proved true in September. Notice that the real unemployment rate reached 17%, the highest ever since the BLS started measuring the rate.

If the government stops trying to "help" the economy with more bailouts, borrowing and inflation, it will eventually recover on its own, but government could speed the recovery by spending less and cutting marginal tax rates. Presidents Kennedy and Reagan both got impressive rates of growth after making large cuts in marginal income tax rates. I don't see the current president and Congress cutting marginal tax rates or reducing the growth rate of federal spending (much less actually cutting spending, which hasn't happened since the 1930s) so I think we're still in for a long, bitter recession.


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/02/jobless-rate-climbs-percent-september/

Liberal Baucus Proposes Fine for No Health Insurance

One definition of totalitarianism is a society where everything not forbidden is mandatory. Despite their penchant for using government to threaten the use of force (and sometimes actually use force) to achieve their social goals, liberals, however, tended to prefer a society where everything not forbidden is simply subsidized. As the following article demonstrates, however, liberals have been moving increasingly toward imposing a society where everything not forbidden is not merely subsidized but mandatory.

When I couldn't afford to pay my own rent even one month out of the year, I tended not to be able to afford health insurance either. The liberal "solution" that liberal leader Max Baucus proposes would have fined me about three months' rent when I couldn't even pay one month rent. Making someone who cannot even pay his own rent pay months' worth of rent for not buying health insurance would be funny, if it weren't an actual proposal from liberal Democrats. Welcome to liberal Democrat "compassion," better known as totalitarianism.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090908/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_health_care_overhaul

Rambo Rabbi Arms to Defend Congregation Against Terrorists

It's about time that American Jews started arming themselves against mass-murdering Muslim terrorists (and the occasional homegrown antisemitic terrorist). I wish more of us would arm instead of believing the fairy story that government can protect us at all times everywhere by banning guns. If someone will break a law prohibiting MURDER, he's not going to think twice about breaking a law prohibiting gun possession.

http://www.breitbart.tv/chosen-guns-rambo-rabbis-grab-revolvers-for-synagogue-defense

But Liberals HATED The Taliban!!

Some liberals, apparently, don't feel too happy with Obama right now, even though he had the lowest (most liberal) rating from the National Taxpayer's Union of any member of the US Senate. Liberal Democrats, it turns out, now want ONLY the "public option" or communist health care, and don't want something with even a little less government, like the fascist health care plan proposed by Hillary a scant 16 years ago that they all supported.

If that's not bad enough, some liberal Democrats don't feel too happy about Obama actually trying to destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan. You might recall that it was Hollywood liberals who, in the 1990s, make such a big fuss over the Taliban and how they treat women as property. Well liberals, what did you THINK was going to get rid of the Taliban--singing "Kumbaya" and holding candlelight vigils? What do a bunch of mass-murdering Muslim monsters care about your songs and candles? They're MURDERERS. Really liberals, if you'd try to think rationally a little more and emote a little less we'd all be better off. So Obama is doing what you WANTED him to do--getting rid of the Taliban--and you want to dump him for someone even further left. Good luck with that.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/afghanistan/20_say_pull_all_troops_out_of_afghanistan_immediately


http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/september_2009/does_obama_face_a_2012_challenge_in_his_own_party

Obama Reaches New Low in Daily Tracking Poll (-13)

Apparently accusing all the elderly, Medicare-receiving protesters of ObamaCare as unpatriotic, anti-religious right-wing radicals did not actually work for Obama and his liberal media proxies, and so his poll numbers continue to worsen, as Republicans widen their lead in the Generic Congressional Ballot. Members of the liberal media, who loved Scott Rasmussen when his polls showed Obama leading before the election and popular after it, have begun attacking Rasmussen for continuing to publish his polls now that they show Obama's growing unpopularity. I can't say I feel surprise, since liberalism, which simultaneously holds that all moral systems are equally valid and that a moral system that rejects homosexual marriage and abortion isn't valid, doesn't bother much with consistency anyway.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/generic_congressional_ballot

Official Unemployment Rate Always Understates Real Unemployment

Some of my friends on the right have made a great deal of hay over the fact that real unemployment exceeds the official unemployment rate calculated by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). I can't say I blame them, as people on the left made hay about the same thing during, for instance, the Reagan recession in the early 1980s. I want to stress, however, that because the official unemployment rate always includes only those actively seeking jobs, it always understates the real rate of unemployment (as students in my macro class will learn later this semester). So what's true now was true last year under Bush, during the early 1980s under Reagan, and for that matter during the Great Depression under FDR. Whatever its other faults, there's no plot by the Obama administration to use the BLS to hide the real rate of unemployment.

The official BLS figures understate the rate of unemployment not just during recession but even during economic expansion. Since people have a harder time finding a job during a recession, however, a recession produces more discouraged workers, and thus a larger share of unemployed who don't get counted in the official BLS unemployment rate. So the official unemployment rate clearly understates unemployment more during a recession, and the deeper the recession, the more the BLS rate understates the real rate of unemployment. Depending on which other measure you use, the real rate of unemployment now ranges anywhere from about 11% to about 16%. So there's not doubt that many Americans are feeling the pain of the recession. Just remember that you can't compare the 11% or 16% today to the official BLS unemployment rate in some previous recession; you need to compare the 11% or 16% to the real rate of unemployment in a previous recession. Even by comparison with the real unemployment rates of previous recessions, the current one looks bad--but again, not remotely as bad as during the Great Depression.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/us/07worker.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1252317646-vapUsPyebG26pCq7UAoEnw

Unemployment rate surged to 9.7 percent in August

Toward the end of the Bush administration, President Bush and Congress started spending billions to bail out financial institutions and auto companies in a vain Keynesian attempt to "stimulate" the economy by taxing away more of your income and then giving some of it back to you. President Obama and Congress have continued the vain Keynesian stimulus efforts. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, has cooperated in the Bush-Obama Keynesian efforts by printing new money like it's going out of style (which it often does, in the form of inflation, when the Fed creates too much of it). Yet we see that despite all of these Keynesian efforts to trick the economy into real growth--or perhaps because of these Keynesian efforts--the economy remains mired in the worst recession since the early 1980s, and, by some measures, since the Great Depression. While the economy isn't suffering anywhere near the contraction in the number of jobs or real incomes per person as it did during the Great Depression--and people shouldn't get hysterical that it will, either--we do have plenty of economic pain to go around.

We could, as both President Kennedy and President Reagan did, get Congress to slash marginal federal income tax rates, increasing the incentive to work, save and invest, thereby stimulating real economic growth as we saw in both the 1960s and 1980s. Obama and Congress, however, seem determined to hold on to as much of your hard earned income as possible, so it seems unlikely we will see cuts in marginal tax rates, much less large cuts. So the near-term prospect for the economy remains bleak.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/business/economy/05jobs.html?th&emc=th

Bare Majority Says Congress Too Liberal

You really have to wonder who thinks that at filibuster-proof Democrat majority in the Senate and a similarly-large Democrat majority in the House is "too conservative?" Are these 22% radical leftists, or just largely ignorant? It would be interesting if we could visit a parallel world where the major news and entertainment media hadn't been dominated by liberals for more than a century and see what people there think--but then, holding all other variable constant, people there wouldn't have put the Democrat in the majority. :-D Even with the liberal domination of the news and entertainment media, and of government workers and the government-monopoly education establishment, a majority of Americans recognizes that the current Congress is too liberal, so we can feel thankful at least for that. Certainly the Democrats have no mandate from the people to socialize everything--or anything--in sight.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2009/51_say_congress_is_too_liberal_22_say_it_s_too_conservative

Dems Don't Realize How Leftist Their Leaders Are

This supports what said recently when I discovered that Democrats are evenly split over whether to cut taxes or increase spending to help the economy, even though Obama, Senate Majority Leader Reid and Speaker of the House Pelsoi have imposed literally trillions of dollars of additional spending but haven't passed a single tax cut. Democrats, although somewhat out of touch even on taxes and spending with the rest of America, are closer on spending and taxes to other Americans than they are to their own leadership. Democrats really need to start getting some information from other sources than the standard liberal media--it won't make them conservatives, but it might open their eyes to the extreme leftism of their party leaders.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2009/democrats_see_their_congressmen_holding_similar_views_to_democratic_voters

American Leftists Have Long History of Antisemitism

You might think that American leftist antisemitism began with the embrace by so many on the left of mass-murdering Muslim monsters after 9/11. Leftist antisemitism in America, however, has much longer roots. It turns out, for example, that the pro-Soviet Ivy Leaguers who dominated the US State Department at least through the 1960s, actively tried to prevent attempts by Americans to rescue Jews from the Nazi Holocaust. That's right--the very same smug, rich, elitist State Department leftists who admired Stalin's Soviet Union and fancied themselves the apparatchik rulers of a Soviet America aided and abetted Hitler's genocide of the Jews. You can read a bit about one non-Jewish American's efforts to rescue Jews and expose the antisemitic leftist State Department cover-up at the link below.

I should add that leftist antisemitism goes back even further in America than World War II. The leftist Populist movement of the late 19th century included a heavy dose of antisemitism. Many WASP farmers in the 19th century borrowed money to speculate in farm land much larger than they could farm, and when the Treasury's contractionary monetary policy caused deflation, the speculating farmer saw their real (deflation-adjusted) interest rates skyrocket. Borrowing cheap money and having to pay back in more expensive money made these speculators pretty cranky--and many of them blamed "Jewish bankers" or just "the Jews." The first generation of professional historians in America, the leftist Progressives, saw the Populists as representative of "the People" in their Marxist-inspired view of history as conflict between "the People" and "the Interests." So the leftist Progressives admired the leftist and antisemitic Populists, demonstrating a long history of antisemitism, both passive and active, on the American left.

http://www.wymaninstitute.org/duboiscont.php

Antisemitism, Not Israel, Motivates Muslim Murderers

It's become trendy for anti-American leftists to blame 9/11 and other atrocities committed by mass-murdering Muslim monsters on Israel. "Blame the Jews" is an old game for the liars and the lazy, but now as always it's false. Muslim Arabs were murdering innocent Jewish men, women and children in the name of Allah long before the State of Israel existed.

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/7979/wknd-read-80-years-ago-there-was-no-israel-but-muslims-massacred-jews-anyway/

Obama and Holder 'At War' with CIA

As I've been saying all along, members of the CIA are unsung heroes valiantly defending America from the mass-murdering Muslim monsters of radical Islam--the same monsters who, by the way, deliberately target the mosques of other Muslims--and we should be praising them (or at least letting them be) rather than attacking them, as Obama and Holder are doing. Now you can hear a little of the hidden story of how the CIA defends us silently from terrorists, like antibiotics fighting the latest lethal bacteria. Remember too that although the liberal media have been demonizing the CIA--excluding yesterday's remarkable article in the Post--the liberal career lawyers at the Justice Department signed off on the CIA's interrogation techniques, and Holder himself said he wouldn't do exactly what he's doing now. Do Obama and Holder really hate America SO much that they want to destroy our first line of defense again mass-murdering Muslim terrorists?

I fully expect Obama, Holder and their leftist pro-terrorist proxies to persecute Mr. Clizbe with all the powers at their disposal. To come forward like this Mr. Clizbe must have an extraordinary level of courage, but then we knew that from his CIA activities defending America.

I should add too that while the Obama-Holder prosecution represents in part an attack on the achievements of the Bush presidency, like no repeat of 9/11, it even more represents the culmination of decades of leftist hatred for the CIA, stemming from the CIA's dogged opposition to communism. The leftist hatred of the CIA goes back at least as far as 1953, when the CIA backed the Shah of Iran in a coup against a democratically-elected socialist prime minister, in order to prevent the possibility of the Soviets from having another puppet government in Iran, as they had when they'd left Iran after World War II. During the 1990s, with the Cold War over, the Clinton administration tied the CIA's hands by creating a "wall" between the CIA and the FBI, preventing the CIA from learning facts that might have allowed them to foil 9/11 as they have foiled ever terrorist attempt in America since. The Bush administration, whatever its other weaknesses (and it had many) made the wise move of dismantling the Clinton "wall" and untying the CIA's hands. For its success in stopping every single terrorist plot since 9/11, the CIA now faces the wrath of the left in the form of the Obama-Holder persecution.

It's ironic that the left so hates the CIA today. Harry Truman, who founded the CIA, actually leaned heavily to the left himself, as his unconstitutional efforts to seize control of the entire steel industry without even a law from Congress demonstrate. Back in Truman's day, however, it was possible to a leftist in America without hating America. Since Vietnam, however, the left in America has turned heavily anti-American. So as left as he was, I'd gladly take a Truman in exchange for an Obama and a Holder. Heck, I'd even give you an American-hating Michelle in the bargain!

I suspect that the CIA will survive the Obama-Holder war on it, but will it remain able to stave off constant terrorist threats with while defending itself from a pro-terrorist president and attorney general? Or will Obama and Holder, like Clinton and, well, Holder, so tie up the CIA that the terrorists succeed at another 9/11? We need a public outcry against the Obama war on the CIA to make sure it can continue to defend us from mass-murdering Muslim monsters who want to repeat 9/11.

http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_holder_war_with_cia/2009/08/31/254698.html?s=al&promo_code=87B8-1

Liberal Washington Post Admits CIA Saves American Lives

Even the liberal Washington Post admits that CIA interrogation of mass-murdering Muslim terrorists saves American lives. Sure, the Post has to make at least a token questioning of the methods, but the evidence is so overwhelming that the CIA has saved American lives with enhanced interrogation that even the Post has to admit the truth for the change. Could this be a new trend of the liberal media at least grudgingly admitting the truth?! Nah, I doubt it. :-D

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/28/AR2009082803874.html

GOP Maintains Slim Lead in Generic Congressional Ballot

In a noticeable shift from last summer, Republicans now hold as small edge over Democrats, an edge they've maintained since the end of June. With the Democrats, and especially their leftist leadership, so out of touch with the rest of America, you have won wonder who are the people so ignorant of the Democrat desire for progressively more government control that they support Democrats who are completely out of touch with them? If you're not a diehard leftist, I recommend that you dial down your watching of PMS NBC and the Commie News Network, and dial up Fox News for a bit. There's a whole different world out here from the one portrayed by the liberal media.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/generic_congressional_ballot

62% Prefer Tax Cuts to Government Spending

While a 62% majority of Americans support tax cuts over more government spending, Democrats divide equally over the issue, showing that they're not nearly as out of touch with America on taxes and spending as they are on health care. The even split among Democrats over taxes versus spending does show, moreover, that the leftist Democrat leadership remains out of touch not just with Americans generally, but even with rank-and-file Democrats. Democrats, it's time to wake up and stop voting for leftists like Obama, Reid and Pelosi!

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/taxes/august_2009/62_like_tax_cuts_over_more_government_spending

Support for ObamaCare Falls to New Low

After all the demonization of protesters by Obama and his liberal proxies, opposition to his socialist seizure of our health care has risen to from a plurality to a majority. While predictably 69% of Democrats favor the plan and 79% of Republicans oppose it, a stunning 62% of unaffiliated voters oppose it too, demonstrating that on health care socialization, Democrats remain radically at odds with the rest of America.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/august_2009/support_for_congressional_health_care_reform_falls_to_new_low

By 40% to 35% Americans Oppose "Climate Change" Bill

From the late 19th century through the mid-20th, the Earth warmed a bit, coming completely out of the Little Ice Age of the Late Middle Ages. From about 1940 through the 1960s, the Earth cooled again ever so slightly, causing environmentalists to start screaming "global cooling!" and demand that the government control us more. Three warm summers in the 1980s, however, led the same environmentalists to start screaming "global warming!" and demand that the government control us more. With 3 cold years in a row now, environmentalists have started to talk about "global climate change" instead of "global warming"--but still demand that government control us more. As the liberal Democrats in Congress try to impose their control on us, Americans have grown skeptical of environmentalist demands for more government control. Note that those who strongly oppose the latest bill outnumber those who strongly favor it nearly 3 to 1.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/climate_change_bill_gets_mixed_reviews

Obama vs. Honduran Democracy

Apparently it's not just the Israel democracy Obama wants to destroy--he's out to destroy Honduran democracy as well. It's ironic that when Reagan brought democracy to most of Latin America, liberals attached him for "imperialism," but now that a liberal is trying to overthrow democracy in Latin America, liberals say nothing.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574382872711784150.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Obama Fiddles While Iran Prepares to Burn--Israel

Obama fiddles while Iran's Jew-Butcher-in-Chief prepares to burn--Israel. Obama's favoring of mass-murdering Muslim monsters over Israel's democracy shows how far liberals have sunk since the days of Harry Truman, who rushed to recognize the new State of Israel in 1948 against a sea of hostile Arab Ba'athist (fascist foes). Even as recently as the 1990s, it was liberals who shouted loudest against the radical Muslim extremist like the Taliban.

Since 9/11, however, when Muslim terrorists became the most obvious threat to America, all too many liberals have, in their hatred of America, embraced them. Obama, the son of a Muslim north African Arab, went to a predominantly Muslim school as a child, raised funds for the PLO when it remained on the terrorist list where it belonged, accepted illegal campaign contributions from Hamas, and rewarded Hamas with $58 million in the "stimulus" earlier this year. So it's no surprise at all that Obama leans on Israelis to prevent them from preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons with which to obliterate Israel.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574348533106427974.html

Liberals Crow Over Government-Subsidized Profits

It's astounding to see the liberal New York Times crowing about Big Business profits. Why is this bastion of class warfare suddenly giddy with excitement over Big Business profits? Because the profits were subsidized by the federal government. Ah hypocrisy, they name is liberal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/business/economy/31taxpayer.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Things Only a Kennedy Could Get Away With

As the late Mike Royko, a Chicago columnist, wrote some 30 years ago: You might not buy a used car from Nixon, but would you RIDE in one with Kennedy driving?

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/kennedy-ted-chappaquiddick-2545006-mary-senator

NY Times: Kennedy Flawed Only For Helping Elect Reagan

From a statist-liberal perspective, the only bad thing about Kennedy was that by running against Carter Kennedy allegedly helped elect Reagan--and this is just what the New York Times editor wrote. Here is liberal media bias at its best (or worst). "All the news that's fit to distort."

http://www.mrc.org/biasalert/2009/20090828060404.aspx

Plurality Opposes Obama Attacks on CIA

By 49% to 36%, Americans Oppose Obama Attacks on CIA for Defending America Against Terrorists.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2009/49_oppose_justice_department_probe_of_bush_era_cia

Obama Reaches Record Level of Public Disapproval

Even as Obama has been demonizing protesters of his plans to seize control of our health care, Obama keep reaching new levels of disapproval with Americans. I can't imagine why. I might add too that I can't image why, with a Democrat Congress helping him try to seize control of your health care, 57% of Americans want to scrap the entire Congress and start over with new members.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

Dodd Keeps Latest Health Care Bill Secret

Dodd keeping his latest socialist health care bill secret even from other Senators means that it must be REALLY bad. Just when you thought ObamaCare couldn't get any worse...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574301050879872972.html#mod=djemEditorialPage

Even Liberal Panetta Defends CIA Against Obama-Holder

Even a liberal like Leon Panetta defends the CIA against the pro-terrorist "investigation" of Obama and Holder. In case you don't recall, Panetta, a former Democrat Congressman from California, served first as Clinton's budget director and then as Clinton's chief of staff. That even a Clintonite like Panetta would defend the CIA shows the anti-American leftist depths to which Obama and Holder have sunk.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/us/politics/28intel.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&th&emc=th

Obama's Doctor Death

While the liberal media attacked Sarah Palin for referring to ObamaCare's planning board as a death board, there's little doubt that Obama's Doctor Death, Ezekiel Emanuel, advocates "saving money" under socialist health care by removing care from the elderly, letting them die.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574374463280098676.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Obama Targets Medicare Advantage

It might seem like in an unlimited democracy majorities would tax minorities to subsidize benefits for themselves, but in practice it's difficult for a majority to impose large enough taxes on the minority to get very large benefits per person. So in practice majorities usually end up taxing themselves to subsidize themselves and then whining about the taxes while trying to keep increasing the benefits. It's sort of like transfusing blood from your right arm to your left arm and then whining about the needles.

Rural voters, for instance, agitated heavily for a resumption of wartime farm price support subsidies after World War I, but as they represented a majority of the population, they failed miserably in the 1920s. Only after farmers had fallen into the minority could they get benefits, and only when they'd become a tiny minority could they get really GOOD benefits from the rest of us.

Currently the federal government subsidizes health care for two groups of minorities--the poor (with Medicaid), and the elderly (with Medicare). Only by taxing everyone else can the government pay the medical subsidies for the poor and elderly. If government is going to subsidize "universal" care--i.e. subsidize everyone's health care--it's got to get the money from somewhere. Medicare dwarfs Medicaid, so if Obama really were able to seize control of our health care, to pay for it he'd have to cut Medicare subsidies. As the following piece indicates, although he's currently denying he'd cut Medicare, he's admitted it publicly just two weeks ago.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574374584177632694.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Obama Versus the CIA

Even the career (overwhelmingly Democrat) prosecutors at the Justice Department believe that the CIA acted legally in its interrogations of Muslim terrorists, acting quickly to expose and halt the few random abuses that the liberal media have tried to pretend characterized the CIA as a whole. Holder's attack on the CIA is one part political persecution, as many liberals have long hated the CIA and particularly hated W for mentioning Jesus as his favorite political philosopher, and one part assistance to Muslim terrorists, with whom Obama sympathizes and for whom Obama first raised private money and then as president funded with taxpayer dollars. Instead of interfering with the CIA's courageous efforts to protect Americans from mass-murdering Muslim monsters, maybe the Justice Department should look into Holder's pardon of Clinton crony Marc Rich and Obama's fundraising for the PLO and tax subsidies for Hamas.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574372741490792758.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Has Ben Bernanke learned his lesson?

I'd thought that if there were any lesson that Federal Reserve policy makers had learned from the stagflation the Fed caused during the 1970s (weak growth in GDP coupled with high unemployment and high inflation) it's that the Fed can'...t fool people into creating real economic growth over the long term by creating an excessive growth rate in the money supply. As the monetary bubbles caused by Greenspan and Bernnanke this decade show, however, neither one seems to have learned the lesson. I'm not as optimistic as the Wall Street Journal editors that somehow Bernanke has learned his lesson between 2007 and now.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574372384193773524.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

CIA Tactics Save American Lives

Between 9/11 and the end of the Bush presidency, the liberal media reported on at least three attempts by mass-murdering Muslim monsters to murder Americans in America. In all three cases, and in many, many more than the liberal media have not reported, the brave and resourceful men and women at the CIA, in concert with British MI6 and Israeli Mossad stopped the Muslim terrorists cold, without loss of American lives. CIA agents risk their lives in a daily war with Muslim terrorists while arrogant, know-nothing liberals like John Edwards spit on them, and pro-terrorist miscreants like Obama and Holder fund the terrorists ($58 million for Hamas in the "stimulus" bill alone) and now attack the CIA defenders of America themselves. Nobody should be surprised that when Holder said he wouldn't attack the CIA for defending American that he was lying.


http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/cia_interrogations_cheney/2009/08/25/251977.html?s=al&promo_code=8613-1

Embracing Bushonomics, Obama Re-appoints Bernanke

The failed Bush-Obama Keynesian inflationary policies continue. Greenspan actually started the mess by creating too much money which helped by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended up going mostly into real estate, where it gave people the erroneous impression that it represented more wealth. If the new money had pushed up consumer prices instead of real estate prices, everyone would have recognized it for the inflation that it was. Bernanke tried to stop the inevitable bust that came from Greenspan's inflationary bubble--by creating another inflationary bubble. So instead of just suffering a recession we suffered recession AND inflation, with food and especially gasoline prices spiking sharply in 2008. The spike in fuel prices savaged both the auto makers and the airlines, ensuring an even deeper recession. There's no surprise here that Obama wants to continue these failed policies, as the worse he makes things, the more he thinks he can scare Americans into accepting more government control.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/08/25/embracing-bushonomics-obama-re-appoints-bernanke/

Obama Helps Terrorists By Attacking CIA

Eric Holder claimed he wouldn't do exactly what he's doing now. I guess it wasn't enough for Obama to pay off Hamas in the "stimulus" bill; he has to go after the people who have stopped a second 9/11 from happening despite dozens of attempts.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574371090019115348.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Obama Popularity Reaches New Low

Obama's popularity reaches yet another new low; even a majority of Democrats no longer strongly approves of him.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

Obama: Intimidating Whites Is Fine

Can you IMAGINE the hysteria from the liberal media if white men did this to black voters?!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550604574361071968458430.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Zogby: Obama Hits Record Low in Poll

This confirms the recent Rasmussen poll, which also shows Obama at an all-time low, albeit 2 points higher than the in the Zogby poll, but within the margin of error of both polls. According to Zogby, Obama's plans to seize control of their health care has been scaring off independents, crucial swing voters. I wonder though why those independents weren't listening before November when we TOLD them that Obama would try to seize control of their health care?!

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Obama_plummets_Zogby/2009/08/20/250566.html?s=al&promo_code=85C8-1

2 Blasts Expose Security Flaws in Heart of Iraq

Another reminder that the number one murderers of innocent Muslims are Muslim terrorists. It's also what I predicted would happen if we pulled out of Iraq too fast. All the liberals would screamed "American imperialism" in Iraq doubtless are happy now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/world/middleeast/20iraq.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

ObamaCare's Contradictions

Apparently Obama just can't keep himself from talking out of both sides of his mouth. It seems to be a compulsion, and perhaps he should resigned and go spend the next four years getting treated for compulsive lying.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550604574360541357223298.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

54% Fear Government Will Do Too Much To Fix Economy

There's nothing like listening to the most liberal former Senator (NTU rating 9%, more liberal than Hillary, Boxer or Kennedy) to persuade millions of Americans of the dangers of more government intervention.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2009/54_fear_government_will_do_too_much_to_fix_economy

How Limited Socialism Spreads

After reading my blog about how many non-liberals support limited, targeted socialism, one of my conservative friends admitted that he supports targeted socialism too, and asked me how it might be possible to limit the limited or targeted socialism to the specified target, without allowing it to grow into the massive socialist boondoggle we call government today in America. (He blamed Obama for the massive boondoggle, which by the way is my term, not his, but in truth the cancer of socialism has been growing in American government since at least the "Progressive Era" in the first decade and a half or so of the 20th century, and arguably since even earlier.)

I suggested that he read Milton Friedman's Free to Choose to find examples of well-crafted, limited socialist policies proposed by someone who understands full well why markets work better than government. Free to Choose ironically, while advocating limited socialism (written at a time when almost no politician in American supported merely limited socialism), has done more to persuade people of the benefits of free markets than any other single book. Some libertarians simply loathe Friedman for not being sufficiently pure, and yet Friedman has done more to persuade people of the benefits of free markets and limited government than any single other libertarian writer. (I also suggested that my conservative friend read David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom, Bastiat's Economic Sophisms and indeed anything by Benjamin Constant to learn why even limited government interventions, targeted socialist policies, produce bad results; Friedman should serve as a start, not an end, to one's education about the blessings of free markets and the curse of government intervention.)

Having read Free to Choose some months back, my conservative friend asked if Milton Friedman's negative income tax served as the inspiration for the earned income tax credit we currently have in the Internal Revenue Code.

In case you're not familiar, here's how a negative income tax works. Let's say that currently the Internal Revenue Code provides for a standard deduction of $5700 for a single individual, and a personal exemption of $3650, for a total of $9350. Under the negative income tax, the government would subsidize the $9350 for an individual who earned less than $9350. Friedman himself proposed a rate of 50% for the negative income tax. If you earned zero income, for instance, the federal government would pay you, right through the income tax system, 50% of $9350, or $4,675, instead of giving you a host of welfare benefits which you could get under the current system of federal social programs. For every dollar you earned, the federal government would reduce your subsidy by only 50 cents, so your after-tax (or after-subsidy) income would rise. At no point would you be worse off by earning more, as you'd gain 50 cents extra for every dollar that you earn.

The whole point of the negative income tax is that it reduces the disincentives to work provided by standard welfare programs. Under standard welfare programs you simply lose all benefits when you earn too much income, creating an extremely high marginal income tax rate at low levels of income. (Say, for example, that under the current welfare system, if you earn $5,000 in income you lose $10,000 of food stamps and $5,000 of AFDC, or a total of $15,000 in benefits. Losing $15,000 of benefits for earning $5000 of income produces a tax rate of 300%!!! Technically too that's just the average tax rate, not the marginal rate. If you get $15,000 of benefits at $4,999 of earned income and $0 benefits when you earn $5,000 income, you have a marginal tax rate--a rate of tax on your one extra dollar, of 1,500,000%!!)

The negative income tax works so that for every dollar you make, you lose less than a dollar, so your marginal income tax rate is always less than 100% and you always have more income after the income tax by earning more. Friedman also said that the negative income tax rate itself must be low, or the marginal tax rate of phasing it out becomes high (even though it's below 100%). Many people would rather stay on the negative income tax than to earn only 10 cents on the extra dollar. So if your negative income tax rate is only 25% (low subsidy) then your marginal tax rate for phasing out the negative income tax as your income rises will be only 25%. If the government is "generous" and subsidizes your personal and standard deductions 75% instead of 25%, then your suffer a 75% marginal tax rate getting off of the negative income tax, keeping only an extra 25 cents per extra dollar you earn.

So what happened to Friedman's negative income tax idea? Back in 1973, Democrats in Congress said, "Another welfare program! Hot damn!" and then voted to turn it into one of dozens of tax credits and welfare programs. President Nixon said, "Well, Friedman suggested it, so it must be a good idea," and he supported it too, as did Republicans in Congress, not bothering to read Friedman's caution that a negative income tax would reduce the disincentive to work inherent in our current welfare system only if we abolished all other welfare programs and relied solely on the negative income tax. Friedman also warns in Free to Choose that the current welfare system has too many vested interests for Congress to allow the negative income tax to become the only socialist program for the poor, and that Congress and such interests would always have an incentive to increase the subsidy rate above the 50% he suggested. The higher the rate, as I showed above, the more the disincentive to get off of the subsidy. Henry Hazlett has a decent article at http://mises.org/story/2406 about how the earned income credit did just what Friedman predicted--although for some odd reason Hazlett refused to admit that Friedman predicted it--grew out of control, until it has become the largest cash benefit for low-income Americans (and aliens) of any social program for the poor. (Of course the Social Security system, the massive socialist program for the retired elderly, the wealthiest age cohort in America, dwarfs even the earned income credit.)

The mutation of the negative income tax as the only welfare program into the earned income credit as merely the largest of dozens of welfare programs for the poor demonstrates how even the most well-crafted of limited socialism turns into just another tumor as targeted socialism metastasizes across the American body politic.

The one saving grace of the negative income tax comes from the fact that for the working poor it helps offset the most evil of all taxes, the Social Security tax, which starts at the very first dollar of income. Poor, uneducated people, disproportionately members of minority groups, have to start working earliest and paying the tax first, even though they're lucky if they can make ends meet once they lose their welfare benefits. What's surprising is not that so many of them remain on welfare indefinitely (or as long the law allows) but rather that anyone in their position bothers to work at all, given the imposing marginal income tax rates for the working poor. Yet poor people, especially poor minorities, have the shortest life expectancies, and so collect the least in SS benefits. And who collects the most in SS benefits--wealthy white women, who live the longest of any large demographic in America. So the SS tax is a massive redistribution of income from poor, minority workers to retired, wealthy white woman. Liberals should be ashamed that the system their hero FDR engineered punishes the people they claim to care about and rewards people that liberals often sound like they hate. Most liberals of course have no shame anymore, as whatever feels good to them goes in their postmodern world of "judge me not because only I get to judge."

Republicans too should be ashamed that the most massive socialist welfare program of all is the one in which they're most complicit by their refusal to do anything to fix it or stop it from redistributing income from the poor to the rich. If ever there were a policy that supports the liberal claim that Republicans want to make "the poor get poorer and the rich get richer" it's Republican complicity in maintaining the liberals' SS system.

The very fact that the working poor need the earned income tax credit to (partially) offset the regressive SS tax demonstrates how one government intervention leads to another--how one socialist tumor inevitably metastasizes across the American body politic. So if you want to get rid of the socialist cancer, you need to agree to cut out not only the tumors you don't like, but the one you do like. Otherwise we're in for a long, slow, painful death--and you helped kill us.

Tea Party, Anyone?

It started in 1773, when a group of 200 American colonists, disguised as American Indians, tossed the cargo of tea from each of three British ships in the Boston Harbor to protest Parliament's imposition of direct taxes on the colonists, including on tea, to repay debt borrowed to fund the French and Indian Wars.

Fast forward to February 27, 2009, when 15,000 American attended the Chicago Tea Party and similar events in other American cities to protest the Obama-Bush-Democrat massive spending policies under which we're now suffering, which, if not stopped, will double the federal debt to about $20 trillion in the next few years. The success of the Chicago Tea Party inspired grass roots organizers to organize a bigger protest with more people in more cities on April 15, 2009, a mere 9 days from now as I write. You can learn more about the coming Tea Party at http://www.surgeusa.org/actions/taxday.htm. Michelle Malkin, the beautiful, conservative, oriental columnist and pundit (i.e., talking head) has signed on as a sponsor (http://www.michellemalkin.com/), has Newt Gingrich's American Solutions (http://americansolutions.com/teaparty). Sean Hannity of Fox News plans to do his April 15 show from the Atlanta Tea Party. People in the DC metro area plan a large Tea Party across the street from the White House. Facebook has a Tax Tea Party group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=55223597239&ref=ts), and between it and the Surgeusa.com website, it looks like we could have at least one Tax Day Tea Party in every one of the 50 states, and several in some states. (For an enthusiastic endorsement of the Tax Day Tea Party, please see my buddy Don's blog at http://donliberty1787.blogspot.com/2009/04/join-tea-party-movement.html.)

Joining the Tax Day Tea Party is fun, and I signed up too, but will it have an actual political impact? Of that I'm not sure. Even the large conservative resurgences during my lifetime have had relatively minor impacts, mostly serving just to slow the growth of Big Government. The Reagan resurgence did win the Cold War, so that had a lasting impact, but is the world safer now than during the days when the Soviets held the leashes of most of the world's terrorists? I warned people back when the USSR collapsed that the collapse of the Soviet Union wasn't 1) the "end of history" as the liberal media was proclaiming, 2) the "end of socialism" as the liberal media were also proclaiming, or 3) the beginning of a safer world.

I will also give the Reagan conservative resurgence credit for deregulating the price of domestic oil and gas, so that we never had a repeat of the gas station lines of the 1970s, and for indexing the federal income tax system, especially using the CPI, which overstates inflation, giving us each a tiny little tax cut each year. (The same political forces that led Congress to start deregulating oil and gas prices under Jimmy Carter led to the election of Ronald Reagan, who completed the deregulation of oil and gas prices.)

How about the Newt resurgence? He did manage to de-entitle some of the smaller entitlement programs, and at least start a phase-out of grain price subsidies. On the whole though I'd have to say that the Newt resurgence had even less long-term consequence even domestically than did the Reagan resurgence. So what will the Tax Day Tea Party achieve? If I had to bet real money--if I had any after the federal and state governments steal 28% of my income this year (not the marginal rate but the average rate for the year)--I'd bet that it will have no lasting impact. Alas I'm not even sure it will even have any short-term impact on taxes or spending.

In a recent email a friend of mine said that 98% of Americans support socialism. I don't know that it's 98%, and keep in mind that a large minority of eligible adults don't even vote, but I do suspect that a majority of adult Americans support some socialism or other. They do not all support systematic socialism (although pretty much everyone on the left does) but rather targeted socialism.

Some support socialism targeted to line their own pockets, such as the "conservative" Iowa farmers who think they have a divine right to grain price supports, or the mushy moderate chamber of commerce types who whine about paying taxes for welfare but have no trouble imposing local taxes to pay for bike trails for their kids or libraries that have their names up in neon lights.

Others support socialism targeted to benefit someone else whom they think has gotten or still has a raw deal, like many Jewish liberals who don't want social programs for themselves, but rather for poor blacks or other minorities whom the Jewish liberals believe have gotten a raw deal and therefore cannot succeed on their own (unlike Jews who got a raw deal but somehow managed to succeed on their own!).

Keep in mind too that people get addicted to the status quo, so if they're getting social welfare benefits, they don't want to lose them. That means that virtually every elderly person in the country supports the Social Security system, which is why even Reagan could make no headway with de-socializing the SS system. (W. Bush campaigned on a partial-privatization of SS, but then let it die on the vine in Congress without giving it any support. Liberals then used the collapse of the stock market bubble caused by liberal inflationary policy at the Federal Reserve System as "proof" that SS privatization would have been a bad idea, even though if you had been investing your SS tax in stocks for the last half century, you'd still be vastly better off than you are with your meager SS payments.)

With people who don't support systematic socialism, it's possible to persuade them to abandon at least pieces of the socialism they do like in favor of freer markets and better protection for their property rights. It's certainly possible to make reduce socialistic policy at the margin. That's a big part of why I wrote columns in Iowa and blog now.

And if the Tax Day Tea Party isn't just going to be a fun event where people vent their frustrations with Big Government, a lot of people are going to have to be willing to give up some of their targeted socialist policies.

US Loses 663k Jobs in March; Unemployment 8.5%

I'm afraid that the month of March brought more bad economic news: the US economy suffered a net loss of 663,000 jobs. The 663,000-job loss is a net loss, meaning that employers cut 663,000 more jobs than they created, and that actually more than 663,000 people lost their jobs. The new net job loss brought the US unemployment rate up to 8.5%, the highest since 1983, during the last great recession.

While 8.5% unemployed means 91.5% still or newly employed, the increased rate and the net job losses--5.1 million since December of 2007--gives the 91.5% reason to fear, even though most of them will never lose their jobs. Militating against the fear I see only three small pieces of good news at the moment. Consumer spending has risen now for two months in a row; US factory orders rose for the first time after six months of steady declines; construction and housing sales beat the forecasts of most economists, as housing prices have finally started to fall substantially (encouraging more sales and thus more construction), as they need to after the bursting of the Fed's horrible real estate bubble. I can't say though that the economy won't shed more jobs on net and that the unemployment rate won't rise further before the economy hits bottom and starts to improve again.

I can say what caused the recession--at least primarily what caused it. Earlier in the decade, Alan Greenspan, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, caused the Fed to inflate the money supply at a rate well in excess of the growth rate of the real economy. Thanks to the massive and political loan guarantees by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy votes from poor people who couldn't afford to pay back the loans, much of the money went into the real estate market, driving up home prices, and making homeowners feel wealthier.

Since most of the money went in to real estate purchases, most of it did not go into buying consumer goods, and thus the inflation caused by the Fed's excessive expansion of the money supply did not show up in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), so most people did not realize at first that we were experiencing covert inflation. Since most of the money went into purchasing existing homes, the sales of which do not go into computing Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the most common measure of goods and services produced by the economy, the covert inflation did not show up even in a broader measure of inflation like the GDP Implicit Price Deflator.

A few people tried to warn about the inflation, but most of us did not listen. I freely confess that I fall into the category of those who looked at the CPI and the GDP Deflator and saw no inflation. The major news media publish the CPI regularly, and I didn't take the time to look at the growth rate of M1 or M2, the most common measures of the money supply. The people yelling about inflation were right, and I was wrong back in 2006. I will say that I did tell my economics students about the warnings I heard, and that by 2007 I had started to heed the warnings. The real estate bubble had clearly started to burst by 2007, which in turn started to drag down or at least slow down other parts of the economy, especially home construction and related industries.

By 2007 Greenspan had finished his second term as Fed Chairman, and President W. Bush had appointed Bernanke to replace Greenspan. People were saying of Bernanke--like they had of Greenspan--that he was a monetarist (meaning that supposedly he understood that growth of the money supply at a rate in excess of the rate of growth of the real economy produces inflation). I looked at Bernanke's textbook, which you can read free online, and found out that it has an even stronger Keynesian bias than the textbook I'm required to use for the economics classes I teach. I don't know where anyone ever got the idea that Bernanke is a monetarist, but as the real estate bubble continued imploding before our very eyes in 2007, Bernanke began to run the worst sort of Keynesian inflationary policy, buying tens and even hundreds of billions of new dollars worth of US Treasury bills (short term debt) and US treasury bonds (long term debt) to try to drive down nominal interest rates, injecting tens and eventually hundreds of billions of dollars of excess money into the economy. (I also started to read Greenspan's autobiography at the time, and discovered within the first two chapters that contrary to common belief, Greenspan is a Keynesian expansionist too, despite once having been in the anti-Keynesian inner circle of Ayn Rand many decades ago.)

In case you're not familiar, Keynesian economic theory believes that government can cure a recession through inflating the money supply with deficit spending--that is, by government spending more than it collects in taxes. Government, according to Keynesian theory, can wave a magic wand and create out of thin air new "aggregate demand" to push up GDP. Keynesians do not understand that everything government spends, it must take from someone else, either through taxation or borrowing. Borrowing from the Fed (meaning that the Fed buys Treasury debt) just means more dollars chasing the same volume of goods and services, driving up the average level of prices--in other words, causing inflation. Inflation, which drives down the value of your dollar, is just a covert tax on every dollar you own.

I warned my economics students in 2007 that if Bernanke tried a Keynesian inflation of the money supply, he would just cause inflation, and not stop the bursting of the real estate bubble--and that's just what happened. While the news media were quick to blame cartels and "oligopolies" for the surge in food and gasoline prices that followed the Fed's inflation of the money supply, the growth in money supply caused the surge in prices as predicted. For a long while the Bernanke inflation also pushed up stock prices, which do not go into either the CPI or the GDP Deflator, so while both indexes rose, they still understated the true amount of inflation Bernanke was causing. You might recall, however, that the rising food and gas prices caused a great deal of pain to consumers and producers alike. Airlines and auto manufacturers suffered greatly, as people cut back drastically on both traveling by air and buying gas-guzzling SUVs.

Just as Greenspan's inflationary real estate bubble eventually had to burst, so too did Bernanke's inflationary food, gas and stock bubbles. The food and gas bubbles burst first, and gas prices fell by half in a very short period--in a shorter time than it had taken them to rise that amount in the first place. By the time the gas bubble burst though it was too late for the airlines and auto companies to avoid severe contraction, as they'd already had a recessionary year. When the stock market finally caught on, it too collapsed virtually overnight. By "collapsed" I mean that the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell back at first to 2003 levels. Not until 2009 did it fall all the way back to 1997 levels. In 2008 the stock market reached artificially inflated levels, but most people didn't realize it, and felt wealthier, so that when the bubble burst, they felt poorer, even though the value of their stocks, on average, still equaled what it had reached been back in 2003, when people felt wealthy because their stocks had climbed so much since, say, 1997.

Late in 2008 President Bush and the Democratic majority in Congress responded to the stock market crash by trying yet more Keynesian deficit spending. The Fed under Bernanke, without any legal authority, assisted by bailing out AIG directly itself, and then indirectly (and legally) by buying all the Treasury debt needed to allow the Bush-Democrat trillion-dollar bailout for the financial industry and the smaller auto bailout, both done in 2008. In 2009 President Obama and an even larger Democratic majority in Congress have continued and expanded the Bush-Democrat Keynesian policies with first a $410 billion Keynesian "stimulus" bill passed a few weeks ago, and now with a budget that calls for a $2 trillion dollar federal budget deficit for 2010 alone, and $10 trillion dollars of deficits in the near future.

Obviously the Obama-Bush-Democrat Keynesian policies are not stopping the recession. By taking income out of productive hands and putting it into the hands of politicians and politically-connected executives and labor unions, the fatally-flawed Keynesian inflationary policies actual worsen the recession. So as the Keynesian policies remove the incentives for productive people to save, invest, work and create jobs, I expect the economy to get worse before it gets better. I am just hoping that the Keynesian polices aren't bad enough to prolong this recession for years. Even a deep recession like the one in the early 1980s didn't last for years. Real (inflation-adjusted) GDP fell from 1981 to 1982, but by 1983 had already risen above its 1981 level. Because of large cuts in our marginal income tax rates that President Reagan got Congress to pass starting in 1981, disposable income, perhaps the best measure of economic well-being (and certainly better than GDP), actually rose in 1982 over 1981, so that for those who had jobs, economic conditions actually improved during 1982, deep recession notwithstanding. Unlike Reagan, however, Obama and many congressional Democrats would like to raise tax rates, sadly, so I would expect disposable income to decline along with GDP during the Bush-Obama recession.

Currently the unemployment rate stands at 8.5%, the highest since 1983, when it averaged 9.4% for the year as a whole. In 1982 the unemployment rate averaged 9.7%, and for a time in 1982 even exceeded 10%. In fairness to the earlier recession, however, I have to note that unemployment stood at 7.6% already in 1981 before the 1982-1983 recession even started, but had fallen to nearly 4% prior to the current Bush-Obama recession. So while the unemployment rate hasn't risen as high this time (yet), it has risen much more than it did during the 1982-1983 recession. There is no doubt that we're currently suffering through a bad recession.

Government could really help the economy if government would stop increasing spending and regulations, and cut marginal tax rates, which would increase the incentive to work, save, invest and create new jobs. Restraining the growth of government spending and regulations, combined with large cuts in marginal tax rates, allowed the worst recession since the Great Depression, 1982-1983, to turn into what became the longest peacetime expansion in US history, 1983-1990 (and is still the second-longest peacetime expansion in US history). With the anti-growth policies of Greenspan, Bernanke, Bush, Obama and the Democratic Congress, however, I think we're more likely to see the longest downturn since the Great Depression instead.

You can read more about the bad news at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/03/jobless-rate-jumps-percent-k-jobs-lost/.

Freedom for The Doctors--and Their Employers Too

I once had a small fellowship through The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in DC that, more than any other, influenced the good policies of the Reagan administration. I'd say that I agree with their positions, as a practical matter (i.e., in terms of what's achievable at the margin, versus what I'd like to see ideally) about 90% of the time.

Right now The Heritage Foundation is fighting an Obama administration attempt to eliminate a federal regulation forcing employers of doctors not to require doctors to perform abortions. I'm pro-life and I support a doctor who will not perform abortions. I know it's easier for a pro-life doctor if the government forces his employer not to require him to perform an abortion, but isn't the whole point of conscience doing what's right even when it's not easy? A doctor whose employer requires him to perform abortions should go work elsewhere. That's the American way.

I frankly think it would be great if all doctors who refuse to perform abortions withdrew their medical talent from all employers who force doctors to perform abortions. I think it would be great if pro-life doctors published a list online of all hospitals who force their employees to perform abortions, especially the third-trimester and partial-birth abortions that 60-80% of Americans oppose even being legal. I'd like to see millions of pro-life Americans in small towns and rural areas (and a few even in suburbia and big cities) go out of their way to patronize hospitals who do not force their employees to perform abortions.

Can you imagine the hue and cry from statist-liberals if a state forced its anti-death-penalty employees to perform executions? I'd like to see these statist-liberals, who want to regulate everything except abortion, publicly defending forcing a doctor to perform abortions against his conscience. I think hospitals and medical practices would perform substantially fewer abortions if pro-life medical customers took their medical dollars to places that do not force their employees to perform abortions.

Vote with your dollars in the market place--that's the American way.

Obama Nominee Koh Wants to Impose Foreign Law; Shariah?!

If you've been reading my blog at all in the past few weeks, you know that Obama has already tried to appoint 7 anti-Israel, pro-terrorist politicians to his administration. We managed to defeat one so obviously vile that even elected Jewish liberal Democrats who supported Obama last November opposed him, but that still leaves Obama with 6 anti-Israel, pro-terrorist miscreants in his administration. You might also recall that in his $410 billion socialist pork "stimulus" act, Obama got the Democrat majority in Congress to send hundreds of millions of dollars to Obama's terrorist buddies in Hamas, who contributed illegally to his campaign last fall.

Not content to help mass-murdering Muslim monsters exterminate the Jews in Israel, now Obama wants to appoint Harold Koh as the chief legal advisor for the US State Department. Koh, a leftist in charge of the notoriously left-wing Yale Law School since 2004, advocated subordinating the US Constitution to "international law." Koh has written and spoken widely against US sovereignty, likening the US to terror states like North Korea and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. According to New York attorney Steven J. Stein, Koh, during a speech in 2007 where Koh advocated imposing the laws of various foreign countries on US courts, Koh mentioned Islamic law, or Shariah, as one type of law that he advocated imposing on American courts.

Shariah, as you might know, is the Muslim law that allow a husbands to beat his wives for being disobedient, forces all women to cover themselves from head to toe in order to subjugate them into virtual nonexistence as individuals, and authorizes a husband to kill any wife who sleeps with another man. Liberals, who often get hysterical over even a law preventing third-trimester abortions, claiming that such a law somehow dehumanizes them, should have exploded in outrage over Obama's nomination of a pro-Shariah lawyer to the State Department. Other than Stein, however, not a single liberal has uttered a peep, and the liberal media refuse to even report the story. You can read more at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/31/obamas-appointment-koh-state-department-legal-adviser-stirs-controversy/.

Working together we managed to defeat one pro-terrorist nominee, as you can read at http://david-lifelibertyandproperty.blogspot.com/2009/03/recently-ive-documented-how-obama-has.html. Now's your chance to oppose the nomination by sending a free email to your US Senators (who have to consent to the nominee) at http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=3604 (toward the bottom of the page). If you're one of my liberal Jewish high school friends, or indeed any liberal, and you've read this far, I give you kudos! Now please use any connections you might have to Democrats in Congress, the Obama, administration, or the liberal media to oppose the nomination of Koh and to publicize the issue further.

If we can pressure the liberal media into actually reporting the story, as we did to defeat the nomination of Charles Freeman, if we can just get word of his pro-Shariah comments to Democrats on Capitol Hill, we might just defeat Harold Koh too. Even if your connections consist of just a $50 contribution to Obama, Hillary, or some Democrat in Congress, please write to them opposing Koh. Let them know that you supported them. They're more likely to respond to favorably when their own supporters oppose what they're poised to do. So please don't delay, but contact them in opposition to Koh now. Thank you.

David

Oppose Obama Budget Sham

As you might know, the federal budget means nothing when it comes to spending. Congress actually spends money completely independent of the federal budget, through passing appropriations bill. Typically Congress passes about a dozen major appropriations bills, filled with billions of dollars of earmarks and pork, to make sure that the president cannot veto individual items--not that Obama would veto Democrat pork, no matter how outrageous. Remember that Obama in the Senate voted for Chris Dodd's amendment to guarantee that the AIG bailout money would go to paying AIG executives bonuses. (Dodd and Obama got the first and second largest contributions from AIG in 2008).

The federal budget is just a toothless guideline, when it comes to spending, and not once since the Budget Impoundment Act of 1973 (which took away the president's power to refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress) has Congress spent as little as they said they would in the federal budget. So as insanely huge as Obama's multi-trillion dollar budget is, Congress will actually end up spending even more.

The one area where the budget does have some teeth comes in regard to our taxes: any tax hikes included in the budget actually go into effect, but tax hikes do not need an appropriations bill. That means that if Congress passes the Obama budget sham, Congress will actually impose Obama's $700 billion in new taxes on us right then and there, rich and working poor (like me) alike. No school of economics advocates raising taxes in the middle of a recession. Not the fatally-flawed Keynesian school, nor even the Marxist school, is so wrong as to advocate raising taxes in the middle of a recession.

Even the Democrats' own Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that Obama's budget will push the budget deficit to $1.85 trillion--that's $1,850,000,000,000--for fiscal 2010 alone, and add $9.3 trillion to the existing $11 trillion in federal government debt. Since the CBO always underestimates how much socialist pork programs will cost, and always overestimates how much tax hikes will raise, the CBO estimates mean that Obama's sham budget will lead to a deficit of at least $2 trillion this year, and probably more than double the federal debt.

So please join me in opposing the Obama sham budget by contacting your US Senators and Representative at
https://secure2.convio.net/cagw/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=573

Urge VA Legislative Override of Gun Vetos

If you live in Virginia, please join me in urging your VA Senator or Delegate to vote to override Governor Kaine's veto of the following good bills at
http://www2.vcdl.org/cgi-bin/wspd_cgi.sh/vcdl/reflector.html?REF=MySenator&PRE=09-SenOverRide

As a constituent, I urge you to override Governor Kaine's gun-bill vetoes:

SB 1035, Senator Hanger, restores the ability for concealed handgun permit holders to carry concealed in restaurants that serve alcohol as long as they don't drink. Prior to 1995, and without incident, permit holders were able to carry in such restaurants. Restaurants will still have to option to post "no guns" signs if they wish to do so.

HB 1851, Delegate Lingamfelter, exempts active duty military from One Handgun a Month.

SB 1528, Senator Cuccinelli, clarifies that on-line training is acceptable for getting a concealed carry permit. This bill was vetoed because the Governor mistakenly thought that concealed carry permits required some kind of written test. They don't and never have!

HB 2528, Delegate Cole, gives localities the option of selling guns in a "buy-up" to licensed dealers. The Governor mistakenly vetoed the bill because he thought it forbade localities from destroying such guns. As it passed both Houses it does NOT!

Help Stop Obama Sham Budget!

The shockingly-high level of spending Obama proposes falls nothing short of simply insane! He's talking about a deficit of $2 TRILLION for fiscal 2010 alone. The deficit, you'll recall, is the amount by which federal spending exceeds federal tax receipts. So just this fiscal year, Obama wants to spend $2 trillion more than the government collects in taxes. As part of those taxes, by the way, Obama proposes increasing tax rates to collect an extra $700 billion. So expect your tax bills to rise even as the recession is lowering your income. Remember too that, because people respond to incentives, when tax rates go up, people shift away from taxable income, and so the government never collects as much in taxes as it projects from a tax increase. You can reasonably expect the Obama deficit to exceed $2 trillion--for 2010 alone!

The Obama budget plan for the next decade projects total budget deficits approaching $10 TRILLION, nearly doubling the unpaid federal accumulated since World War II of $11 trillion. Remember too that Congress hasn't once, since it passed the Budget Impoundment Act of 1973 (which took away the president's power to refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress), actually spent only as much as the president budgeted. Let me repeat that: not once since 1973 has Congress ever spent only as much as the president budgeted. Let me say it another way: every year since 1973, Congress has spent more than the federal budget it passed. The budget is a sham that Congress passes and then freely ignores. So Obama's projected $10 trillion in new federal deficits over 10 years will easily exceed the $10 trillion. Don't be surprised if Obama and the Democrat Congress spend more on deficits alone in the next decade than all the deficit-spending Congress has done since World War II combined!

With Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress, it will be hard to stop the simply insane Obama sham budget. Republicans in the Senate, however, have enough votes, if they all stick together, to filibuster to death (permanently table) Obama's sham budget. With enough pressure from constituents, furthermore, some Democrats might bail out on the sham budget too. I've already used the link below to send my free fax to my US Representative and two US Senators (all Democrats in a swing state) and I hope you will too. Together we can stop, or at least drastically reduce, the Obama sham budget.

https://secure2.convio.net/cagw/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=573

My Fax to Congress: No New Taxes!

Using the "Visible Vote" application on Facebook, I sent the following fax to my members of Congress:

"Dear Senators and Congressman,

Please do not vote for this new 90%. Last year Democrats in both the Senate and the House voted for a provision guaranteeing the bonuses for AIG executives. Senator Dodd put the provision in the bailout bill, and he, Senator Obama and Senator Webb all voted for the bailout with the provision in it (and I voted to put the provision in the bill in the first place). I have little doubt that has Senator Warner and Congressman Connolly been in their current positions at the time, they two would have voted for it along with every other Democrat.

So don't pretend now that you opposed paying those bonuses. AIG made massive contributions to Democrat candidates, largest of all to Dodd and Obama, your feckless leader. I opposed the bailout and contacted Senator Webb at the time by email and fax, but he refused to listen, and went along with the Democrat herd. So now live with what you've done and don't pretend to be "outraged" and impose a 90% tax that will set a precedent for taxing others at a rate not seen since before JFK's big tax cut proposal, passed in the wake of his death in 1963. Instead of raising taxes, try not bailing out anyone anymore!"

For more on Dodd guaranteeing these bonuses, see http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/chris_dodd_bonuses/2009/03/17/192860.html?s=al&promo_code=7C62-1. For more on AIG making massive contributions to Obama and Dodd, see http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/obama_AIG_bonus/2009/03/18/193222.html. For yet more on the hypocrisy of Dodd, Obama and other Democrats, see http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/finance/dodd-cracks-aig---time/.

A Fix For DC Metro Traffic Congestion

I just got back from grocery shopping. I noticed on the way out that even at 6 AM the inbound lanes of I-66 were bumper to bumper. It's just insane! Many of the locals want to spend more tens of billions of your tax money extending the Metro "light rail" out to Dulles International Airport or building new lanes or both--both of which would tie up traffic even worse, if you can imagine that, for the next, oh, 5 to 10 years.

I have an easy solution to the DC metro area traffic congestion problem that will not only not require that the federal government spend tens of billions more of your money, but will actually save your money: cut the federal government.

I don't mean what liberals mean when they scream that Bush, who presided over the biggest spending binge (before Obama's) since LBJ's in the 1960s, "cut the budget." I don't mean reduction in the increases scheduled under the lie of baseline budgeting. I mean to actually CUT spending. We spent about $4 trillion last year (and will end up spending about $9 trillion this year of Obama and the congressional Democrats have their way), so next year let's spend $2 trillion. Cut out the Commerce Department (Department of Big Business Subsidies), the Labor Department (Department of Big Labor Subsidies), the Department of Education (Department of Leftist Indoctrination and Liberal Teacher Subsidies), Department of Energy (Department of Preventing Energy Growth), HUD (Congress' personal slumlord slush fund), and biggest of all HHS (Department of Slowing Medical Progress). Cut federal employment by half, and you'll clear the DC metro traffic congestion right up. :-D

Small Victory Against Obama's Anti-Israel Appointments

Recently I've documented how Obama has tried to appoint seven different anti-Israel and pro-terrorist nominees to his administration. You can read more details at http://david-lifelibertyandproperty.blogspot.com/2009/03/obama-intel-appointment-angers-israel.html.

Thanks to quick action by pro-Israel Republicans and Democrats alike, the most recent anti-Israel nominee, Charles Freeman, has withdrawn his name from nomination after the conservative media revealed that Freeman serves on the payroll of Saudi Arabia, and after the liberal media picked up the story from the conservative media. While the withdraw of Saudi agent Freeman provides us with a small victory against Obama's pro-terrorist, anti-Israel policy, remember that Obama's already appointed 6 other anti-Israel thugs to his administration and gotten Congress to send millions of dollars to the mass-murdering Muslim terrorists in Hamas. Obama wants to make friends with Iran's Terrorist-in-Chief, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has promised to destroy Israel and America, and now has more than a ton of uranium, enough to make his own nuke. Even as I write, Obama is in the process of surrendering Afghanistan to the mass-murdering Muslim terrorists in the Taliban--against whom Hollywood's liberals railed in the 1990s--and handing Afghanistan over to the Taliban so they can return to murdering innocent Muslims there. So we have a long way to go to defeat Obama's anti-Israel and pro-terrorist evil, but at least we've made a start. You--especially my liberal Jewish friends and family who voted for Obama and have contacts inside his administration or with Democrats in Congress--need to keep up the pressure on the Obama administration.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/4975999/Intelligence-candidate-Charles-Freeman-pulls-out-after-objections.html

Obama Supported AFTER-birth Abortions

I have to admit that I missed this one during the campaign. Nobody could win the Democrat nomination for president without supporting abortion right up to the moment of birth, and indeed during birth, as the national Democrat party official supports partial-birth abortion, but this is the first time I've seen a Democrat actually support killing a born baby after a botched abortion. There can be no doubt that our right to life begins no later than birth, and that allowing born babies to die is infanticide. I can say that 100% of the Democrats in the US Senate supported the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 to outlaw killing a baby or letting it die after birth.

Yet Obama twice, in 2001 and again in 2003, refused to vote in favor of a bill in the Illinois General Assembly with identical language. Obama apparently lied during the campaign and claimed that the bills he opposed did not have the same language as the 2002 federal act, but it turns out that, not only did they have the identical language, but that Obama himself voted to put the identical language in the bills he refused to support.

Over the past 20 years or so, poll after poll by large liberal media organizations has shown that consistently 60-70% of Americans oppose third trimester abortion, and 75-80% of Americans oppose partial-birth abortion. I've never seen a poll that asked how many Americans oppose an AFTER-birth abortion, but I'd be willing to bet real money (If I had any) that you'd get close to 100%--with the exception of Obama. I know some pretty ardent pro-choice supporters, even in my own family, and not a single one of them supports partial-birth abortions or even non-birth abortions in the third trimester. I have never before met a Democrat who supported an AFTER-birth abortion. Killing innocent babies who have survived birth is so evil that in the modern world it sounds like something that only, say, mass-murdering Muslim monsters would do. Welcome to the Obamanation.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBkYTYzZDNjNDgyMWJmMzMxYzljYjYxNmEwMTdhYWE
http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/WhitePaperAugust282008.html

Save the Secret Ballot!

Image that, when you went to vote, you had to do it in the open, with everyone watching you. If you voted against the people in power locally, you could expect dangerous repercussions. You might even find that "accidents" started to happen to your property, or even to yourself and family members. Can you image the hue and cry that liberals, who don't want you to even have to show an ID to vote, would send up if we wanted to take away their secret ballots and force them to vote in public?! They'd scream "voter intimidation!" at the top of their lungs.

Yet that's exactly what liberals want to do on behalf of Big Labor, which these days basically serves as another arm of the Democrat party. Democrats want to remove the secret ballot from labor union elections, so that labor union thugs and bullies can intimidate workers into voting for their corrupt unions. From a peak of 34.7% in 1954, union membership as a share of the workforce has fallen precipitously over the decades, and now represents (as of 2008) only 12.4% of the workforce. Only union gains among "public employees"--i.e., professional bureaucrats--has stopped union membership from declining into single digits. Even with the rise of the professional bureaucrat unions, union membership as a percentage of the workforce has fallen back to the levels that existed before the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 transformed labor unions into government-backed labor cartels (monopolies). As Big Labor has become increasingly a liberal arm of the Democrat party, fighting for abortion, homosexual marriage, higher taxes, more government spending and other issues of no relevance to workers as workers, the workforce has increasingly left Big Labor.

Desperate to force workers back onto the Big Labor plantation, where the Democrats can siphon workers' wages into political campaign funds, Obama, Pelosi and Reid are trying to take away the secret ballot and allow their union thugs to intimidate honest workers into voting for their corrupt unions.

While hypocrisy and hostility toward honest working people from liberals and Democrats come as no surprise, that doesn't mean we should do nothing about it. You can sign the petition at http://www.americansolutions.com/Actioncenter/Petitions/Default.aspx?guid=87f7f73f-48bc-44c9-965b-e86805571adf opposing the dishonestly-named "Employee Free Choice Act," which would go better under the name "Union Thug Stimulus Act."

Obama Gives "Stimulus" to 300,000 Illegals

If it weren't bad enough that Obama and the Democrats are bailing out rich executives of American Big Business, it turns out now that Obama is bailing out illegal immigrants with your tax dollars too. During the last election ACORN registered as many illegal aliens as possible, and Democrats fought tooth and nail against efforts to require voters to show an actual ID, so thousands if not tens of thousands of illegals came out to vote for Obama. Obama's stimulus "loophole" is his way of paying them back for illegally voting for him.

So under Obamanomics, rich American get your money, and poor anti-Americans who come here in violation of the law get your money. Obamanomics certainly qualifies as class warfare--warfare against the American middle class!

http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/stimulus_illegals_jobs/2009/03/09/190028.html?s=al&promo_code=7BCE-1

AIG Execs Get Millions in Bonuses From Taxpayer Bailout

Late in 2008, Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve Board, without any legal authority, bailed out ailing insurance giant, AIG. Bush and Congress approved of the extralegal bailout so much they started bailing out other failing financial giants, and wrote into the law a provision authorizing Bernanke to do what he'd already done. A majority of Republicans in both houses of Congress, however, opposed the bailouts, urging the government to let financial giants suffer from their own foolish policies.

In some sense you can't blame Bernanke, as it was the Keynesian inflationary polices of his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, that encouraged these financial giants, along with a little help from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which "guaranteed" the loans) to make hundreds of billions of dollars in foolish loans to people who couldn't afford to borrow in the first place. Bernanke, Bush and congressional Democrats bailing out the financial giants that government policies encouraged to lend foolishly demonstrates how one government intervention leads inevitably to another. As Yoda said, once you turn to the Dark Side, forever will it dominate your destiny. Keeping in mind Yoda's advice--and the entire history of federal government regulation, starting with the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which Congress passed allegedly to lower railroad rates but which actually raised the rates, just like the Cable Reregulation Act of 1992 raised rather than lowered cable rates--it comes as no surprise that Fed inflation and Freddie Mae and Fannie Mae "loan guarantees" would lead to multi-trillion dollar federal bailouts.

Obama and the new, more-Democrat Congress have done a great job of continuing the failed policies of Bush, Bernanke, and the slightly-less-Democrat Congress of 2008. So it should come as no big surprise either that the executives at AIG are taking some of the $170 billion that the Fed and Congress spent to bail out AIG and paying $121 million in bonuses to corporate executives (themselves) and other employees. I mean, what's $121 million anyway, when Obama and Congress plan to spend about $8 TRILLION of your money this year? I mean, heck, that $121 million isn't even 10% of the $170 billion bailout. Why not skim 7% right off the top of the bailout to pay themselves for their good job in securing the $170 billion in the first place? I mean, if they hadn't gotten Bernanke, Bush and Democrats to bail them out, why, they would have had to have declared bankruptcy, and gone into receivership. The bankruptcy judge would have appointed a trustee to run the company, and the trustee surely would have fired all of the executives as part of cutting out the deadwood at the company and slimming it down for continued operations as an actual for-profit business. Those executives worked hard to save their jobs at the taxpayers' expense. They actually had to call Bernanke on the phone and ask for a bailout! That's tough work, no doubt, and worth every penny of the $121 million of your money that they stole from the taxpayer bailout of AIG to bail themselves out.

It's funny--or at least ironic, albeit sad--that liberals routinely rail against "the rich" and "Big Business" and then use taxpayer money to bail out both the rich and Big Business. Obama has already said that he thinks Congress should spend another $1 trillion or so on additional bailouts of the financial institutions wrecked by disastrous government policies, so don't be surprised if on Wall Street, the year 2009, while a horrible year for the stock market (which has, since Obama took office, fallen some 25%, from above its 2003 level all the way down to its 1997 level), shapes up to be the Year of the Big Bonus for executives of failed financial institutions. Ain't socialism grand?


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15AIG.html?th&emc=th

Obama: I'll Make Friends With "Moderate" Taliban

Lately I have documented some of Obama's policies favoring the mass-murdering Muslim monsters in Hamas over the democratic Israelis. Obama has appointed no less than 7 pro-Hamas officials to oversee his foreign policy, and his Secretary of State, Hillary, has openly attacked Israel for not allowing illegal Arab settlements right in Israel's own capital, Jerusalem. During the campaign Obama disabled the credit card safeguards on his website so that Hamas terrorists could contribute illegal money to his campaign, and now he's paying them back by funding them in his latest Obama Omnipork $410 billion law. Am I forgetting anything?

Oh yes, during the campaign he promised to negotiate with Iran's Terrorist-in-Chief, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who wants to destroy both Israel and America, and is building nuclear weapons to accomplish our destruction. Even the UN, which American liberals seem to love and which in turn seems to love the world's terrorists and mass murderers, admits that it understated by a full THIRD the amount of uranium that the Muslim theocracy of Iran possesses. Iran's mass-murdering Muslim monsters now have more than a TON of uranium, enough to make their first nuke. (You can read the uranium story in the liberal New York Times at "Iran Has More Enriched Uranium Than Thought ," http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/world/middleeast/20nuke.html.)

Now Obama wants to further the cause of the Afghan mass-murdering Muslim monsters known as the Taliban. As a US Senator Obama voted to cut off funds from US troops fighting in Iraq, but in the end Bush listened to McCain and sent the surge of troops that finally won the war. American troops defeated both Sunni and Shiite militias, who were running around killing not just each other, but innocent Muslims as well. One might observe, indeed, that the mass-murdering Muslim monsters kill more Muslims than non-Muslims, and are in fact the number 1 murderers of Muslims in the world. Obama omitted the obvious on national television, that Bush had won the war in Iraq, and that Obama had been wrong about the surge. Unlike Americans and Israelis, who bend over backward to avoid accidentally hurting civilians, the mass-murdering Muslim monsters go out of their way to kill the innocent, even putting bombs in mosques to blow up as many fellow Muslims as possible.

Based on the success of Bush's surge in Iraq--which Obama curiously doesn't bother to attribute to Bush in the New York Times article below--and the fact that innocent Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq became our friends after we defeated the three groups trying to kill them, Obama now thinks that we've failed in Afghanistan, and that we can make friends with the "moderate" terrorists in the Taliban. The notion of making friends with "moderate" terrorists would be laughable were it not for the fact that many liberals are nodding their heads in agreement with Obama. Saying that we can make friends with the Taliban based on making friends with innocent Muslims in Iraq after defeating Iraqi terrorists is like saying that based on making friends with innocent Italians after defeating Mussolini and the Fascist Party, we could have made friends with Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany.

If Obama truly wants to befriend innocent Muslims in Iraq, he needs to do what Truman did in Italy and Germany, and what Bush did in Iraq: defeat the mass-murdering monsters completely. If, however, Obama truly wants to aid the mass-murdering Muslim monsters in Afghanistan, as he's doing in Israel and Iran, then making friends with the Taliban is the way to go. And who knows? If Obama can get the mass-murdering Muslims in the Taliban back in power by 2012, maybe they too can make illegal contributions to his campaign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/us/politics/08obama.html?_r=2&th&emc=th