Air Force One Photo Op

One image alone was released from the expensive photo op that terrified New Yorkers last month. Out of God only knows how many images taken during the mission, only one was chosen. It speaks powerfully to the American public — in symbolic language.

The ominous and imposing aircraft dominates the scene in such a way that, in gestalt parlance, no one could mistake the figure for the ground. The figure is an aircraft that serves as Air Force One, representing the Messianic omnipotence of the Obama presidency. Below it, part of the background — a small and less relevant thing in comparison to the aircraft — stands the Statue of Liberty, representing the individual freedoms that Americans used to treasure and enjoy.

The message and its purpose could not be clearer: we must reset our priorities. Now that the democracy is at last headed by this magnificent and elegant man, we must put the federal government and its needs ahead of our paltry individual freedoms. Of what value, after all, is the property Americans have spent their lifetimes to acquire, or one’s right to defend oneself with a firearm, or even the privilege of living in an upwardly mobile society that used to be the envy of the rest of the world, in comparison to the Leader’s magnificently powerful icon, glistening like a phoenix in the sun?

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Roads Plan Was Oversold In Stimulus Package

A top congressional Democrat now says that the White House oversold the "roads-and-bridges" component of the historic Porkulus/Spendulus/Stimulus package earlier this year. 

That's the way the news media are spinning the story, anyway (minus my litte dig using "porkulus" and "spendulus.") To phrase it the way some of us outside of the DC belt might say it ... "Obama lied about the stimulus package."

Surprised?  I hope not.

An Associated Press analysis of the first $19 billion in transportation spending showed that communities most in need of jobs are least likely to benefit from the program. (The report said nothing regarding communities most in need of roads and bridges, which is what it should have addressed.) 

A spokesman for Minnesota Representative James Oberstar (Democrat), who leads the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee, said that the White House shouldn't have advertised the money designated for roads, bridges and infrastructure as the signature component of the bill, or as a surefire way to boost needy communities.

Do you suppose Mr. Oberstar will remember this when it comes time to vote for another big bill ... say the big government takeover of the nations' health care system that appears to be coming down the pike? I wouldn't count on it.

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So then, it's a choice?

CNN and Oprah.com are both reporting an interesting phenomenon in an interesting way.

Both sources are making the claim that an increasing number of women are leaving their men for other women. As if that claim wasn't interesting enough, the way they are reporting it should raise some eyebrows. 

"It's clear that a change in sexual orientation is imaginable to more people than ever before, and there's more opportunity - and acceptance- to cross over the line," said Binnie Klein, a psychotherapist and lecturer at Yale. She noted that a number of her married female patients in the past few years have fallen in love with women, and "are afraid that if they don't go for it, they'll end up with regrets."

Another feminist quoted in the article said that "When a taboo is lifted or diminished, it's going to leave people freer to pursue things."

Reading the article carefully, leads one to believe that these psychologists and researchers are reaching the conclusion that many of these women (who have never considered themselves to be homosexual), can make a choice to live a homosexual lifestyle.

This ought to leave many liberals in a quandary.  For years, they've been telling us that sexual orientation isn't something that someone chooses, and therefore, the "I'm created this way" should be a good enough argument to legalize gay marriage. Now, they are telling us that this is an "accepted" lifestyle and you can now choose to go either way, or go back and forth as you choose, an idea that also excites many in the "sexual freedom" camp.

So, which is it?

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Obama Goes After Wasteful Spending

Mr. Obama and his advisers know the public won't accept gigantic governmental expansions without at least some effort to pare the waste in Washington. So they scrubbed "line by line" through this historically huge budget and identified $16.7 billion of budget savings. This is less than a penny, about 0.47 cents, of savings out of every dollar Uncle Sam will spend this year. And these aren't real savings that will reduce debt, because Congress has already fixed the budget totals. Thus, each dollar saved from the African Development Foundation gets reallocated to some other foreign aid program.

To be fair, most of the 121 program "terminations, reductions and savings" that the President recommends make good sense, and we wish Congress godspeed in eliminating them. By all means have done with the Denali Job Training program (savings of $3 million) and USDA Public Broadcasting Grants ($5 million), and payments to high-income farmers ($58 million).

But Mr. Obama's war on government waste looks like a war on paper clips. Three-quarters of the cuts come from the national defense budget, not domestic agencies. Of the 10-year savings of $71 billion in entitlement programs -- now with a mind-numbing $62.9 trillion unfunded liability over the long-term -- one-third of the cutbacks aren't cuts at all. They are tax increases, mostly on the oil and gas industry.

One cut gives the word "savings" new meaning. The Obama budget will "save" taxpayers $290 million a year by increasing the IRS enforcement agency budget by $890 million. "Targeted enforcement resources more than pay for themselves," says the budget, in the first case of dynamic scoring by the Democrats since the Kennedy Administration.

Mr. Obama has scoffed at critics who complain these savings are inconsequential. "I guess that's considered trivial," he explained. "Outside of Washington [$17 billion] is still considered a lot of money." Yes, Mr. Obama himself signed a budget bill with 9,000 earmarks costing more than $13 billion and then justified the expenditure by declaring these levels of waste minor in the grand scheme of things.

We now live in a time when tens of billions of dollars has become a blip or rounding error in the federal budget. The Administration has said it's time to take action in reducing America's "$12 trillion American Express bill." We agree, but at this pace, with $16.7 billion of savings a year and even assuming no new debt, it will take centuries to pay off Uncle Sam's credit card.

(From the Wall Street Journal)

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Gas And Oil Prices

Here are two news stories, both published in the last three hours....

According to CNN, oil prices fell sharply today as optimism for an economic recovery was tempered by weak demand and record-high inventories. June futures were down $1.69, falling below $57 dollars a barrel, after last summer's all time high of $147 a barrel.

At the same time, the motorist group, AAA, reports that the national average price for a gallon of gas rose at the pump overnight for the 13th day in a row. The price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline for the average motorist is up 15 cents over two weeks ago, and up an average of 1.3 cents overnight.

When this sort of thing happened under Bush, it was because Bush was "buddy-buddy" with the oil industry. I wonder why it's happening now.

Wait ... I know. It's because of "inherited problems from the previous administration."  Yeah ... that's it.

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John Edward's Staffers Were Prepared to Sabotage His Campaign

Members of former Sen. John Edwards' presidential campaign reportedly devised a "doomsday" strategy over his affair with Rielle Hunter in which they would destroy his bid for office.

Several unnamed former campaign officials said they had prepared a plan in which they would sabotage Edwards' campaign if it appeared he would secure the Democratic nomination, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos reported on Sunday.

"They were Democrats first, and if it looked like Edwards was going to become the nominee, they were going to bring down the campaign -- they were going to blow it up," Stephanopoulos said.

The strategy was apparently put together in secret in December 2007 after months of denying rumors that Edwards was having an affair with a woman and had also fathered a child with her.

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, you have to give props to the people in the campaign who had the moral decency to realize that he shouldn't have become the President if that was going on. On the other hand, you have to wonder why they didn't just leave the campaign and "out" Edwards, instead of continuing to work for the campaign. It seems like a very disloyal and underhanded thing to do. If you don't want to guy to win, work for a different campaign ... or none at all.

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Kudos to Chuck Schumer

One of the goals of this blog is to hold the people in Washington accountable for the crap that goes on there, and to do so from a conservative point of view. One of my secondary goals is to give credit where credit is due. Today, I'm throwing kudos behind a Democratic Senator for doing something that should have been done a long time ago.

There is a scam going on that should have been shut down a long time ago. Telephone calls from companies that offer aftermarket car warranties, that are, in fact, a scam. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer has called for an investigation of these companies.

(From the Associated Press:)

The telephone calls flood people every day around the country: A computerized voice tells them that their car warranties are about to expire and that they should sign up for new service plans.

The calls target people regardless of whether they have warranties or even own cars and have become such a nuisance that officials in 40 states are investigating the companies behind them.

The Better Business Bureau said that last year it received more than 140,000 complaints about the car warranty calls, which come even if a person has signed up for the national Do Not Call registry.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer wants a federal investigation into what he calls "robo-dialer harassment."

"Not only are these calls a nuisance, but they tie up land lines and can eat up a user's cell phone minutes, possibly leading to a higher cell phone bill due to overage charges," said Schumer, D-N.Y.

Michelle Corey, president of the Better Business Bureau in St. Louis, Mo., said the industry is based largely in the St. Louis area. She said a group of companies in Missouri in the mid-1990s began offering extended repair warranties to people whose manufacturer-issued warranties were about to expire. Within a few years, she said, about 35 firms were offering similar services.

"It's a very lucrative industry," Corey said.

The companies offer contracts akin to insurance policies, pledging to pay for car repairs in exchange for fees paid up front. They call numbers randomly and leave messages telling people that their auto warranties are about to expire.

Some companies also send out cards that mislead recipients into thinking that their vehicles have been subject to safety recalls, Corey said.

If people call back and agree to buy policies, Corey said, the companies often don't let them see the contracts until they agree to pay. And some scam victims don't learn until it's too late that the deals don't cover many types of repairs, Corey said.

"Some people are losing thousands and thousands of dollars in purchasing a product that turns out to be useless," she said.

The Federal Trade Commission, which already operates the do-not-call list, should work with state and local authorities "to find the scam artists and shut their operations down," Schumer said.

"This is an annoying scam whose perpetrators have found a way around the do-not-call list," he said at a news conference in his Manhattan office. "The FTC has to track them down and then shut them down to put an end to this nuisance once and for all."

It's a shame that this has gotten so bad that Congress has to take action. The FTC should have stepped in a long time ago. But when agencies don't act, I guess it has to go up the ladder.

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Happy Mother's Day

For today's post, I'm going to take a different route and recall a personal event in my life....

Now, I love my mother. She's the greatest. But I have to say, that she's really not the greatest cook in the world. We ate a lot of cold cereal with milk when I was growing up.

I remember one time when I was little (maybe 7 or 8 years old), and I was going to have a bowl of cereal. For some reason that I don't remember, mom wasn't in the kitchen at the time, and I decided that a bowl of cereal might taste better with cola on it instead of mild. So, out came the Pepsi. Yuk!

The moral of this story ....  Don't mess with mom's recipe's. They are tried and true.

Happy Mother's Day, mom!

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Good News! We Lost Another Half Million Jobs In April

The Labor Department reported today that non-farm payrolls declined by 539,000 in April. Under George W. Bush, this would have been reported as the sky falling. Last summer, in fact, then-candidate Obama quipped "...there is nothing more fundamental than a job."

How is this news being reported today?

"US Jobless Rate Hits 8.9%, but Pace of Losses Eases" -- New York Times

"Layoffs slow to 539k in April; jobless rate rises"  -- Associated Press

"Job Losses ease, but unemployment rate up" -- CNNMoney.com

My guess is that the numbers look good only in comparison to Nancy Pelosi's assertion that we were losing 500 MILLION jobs a month.

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How Republicans Can Be A Big-Tent Party

Jim Demint writing for the Wall Street Journal gets this right...

Sen. Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party this week is no reason for Republicans to cheer. But his reason for leaving -- he faced an unwinnable primary election next year -- is no cause for soul searching. There is a question Republicans do need to ask: What is it that binds our party together?

In the wake of two successive electoral defeats and the likelihood of a 60-vote Democrat majority in the Senate, what does it even mean to be a Republican today? Moderate Republicans are right to remind conservatives that they cannot build a center-right coalition without the center part. And conservatives are right to remind moderates that Republicans only succeed when we rally around clear principles.

The real mistake is that Republicans became more concerned with staying in D.C. than reforming it.

Despite notable successes at both ends of Pennsylvania Ave., it seems to me that Republicans in Congress and in the Bush administration forgot a simple truth. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, if you aim for principled reform, you win elections in the bargain; if you just aim for elections, you get neither.

No Child Left Behind didn't win us "soccer moms," but it did cost us our credibility on locally controlled education. Medicare prescription drugs didn't win us a "permanent majority," but it cost us our credibility on entitlement reform. Every year, another Republican quality was tainted: managerial competence, fiscal discipline and personal ethics.

To win back the trust of the American people, we must be a "big tent" party. But big tents need strong poles, and the strongest pole of our party -- the organizing principle and the crucial alternative to the Democrats -- must be freedom. The federal government is too big, takes too much of our money, and makes too many of our decisions. If Republicans can't agree on that, elections are the least of our problems.

If the American people want a European-style social democracy, the Democratic Party will give it to them. We can't win a bidding war with Democrats.

Freedom will mean different things to different Republicans, but it can tether a diverse coalition to inalienable principles. Republicans can welcome a vigorous debate about legalized abortion or same-sex marriage; but we should be able to agree that social policies should be set through a democratic process, not by unelected judges. Our party benefits from national-security debates; but Republicans can start from the premise that the U.S. is an exceptional nation and force for good in history. We can argue about how to rein in the federal Leviathan; but we should agree that centralized government infringes on individual liberty and that problems are best solved by the people or the government closest to them.

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Obama Tones Down Day of Prayer Observance

For the past eight years, the White House recognized the National Day of Prayer with a service in the East Room, but this year, President Obama decided against holding a public ceremony.

President Bush marked the National Day of Prayer with a service at the White House.

"Prayer is something that the president does everyday," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday, noting that Obama will sign a proclamation to recognize the day, as many administrations in the past have done.

Asked if Obama thought his predecessor's ceremonies were politicized, Gibbs said, "No, I'm not going to get into that again.

"I think the president understands, in his own life and in his family's life, the role that prayer plays."

The National Day of Prayer is an annual observance for people of all faiths.

Under the Bush administration, the White House hosted an interfaith service each year, inviting protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders for an event at the East Room.

President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush also marked the day with a White House observance, while President Clinton observed the day in private prayer with a female White House Intern.  (Okay, i just made that last part up.)

President Harry Truman first established the day as a national event in 1952. Reagan signed a resolution in 1988 to observe the National Day of Prayer each year on the first Thursday in May, and each president since has recognized this day with a proclamation.

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Islam Day in Hawaii

Hawaii's state Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill today to celebrate "Islam Day." The resolution to proclaim September 24, 2009 as Islam Day passed the Senate on a 22-3 vote.  

The bill seeks to recognize the "rich religious, scientific, cultural and artistic contributions" that Islam and the Islamic world have made.

There is no "Christianity Day" designation.  The state did designate Good Friday a government holiday, but that was done to "increase the freqency of legal holidays," not for any recognition of cultural contribution.

Next up: "Please don't cut off my head" Day.

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