Filed under: News, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, Science/Technology, The Elephant's Child | Tags: Healthcare, Homeland Security, Junk Science
The Swine, Mexican, H1N1 flu, will be relatively mild scientists say, according to genetic data, and won’t be as deadly as even the average winter flu. Scientists are working on a new vaccine, but it won’t be ready until around December. Because of Hillary Clinton’s insistence on removing the profit motive from vaccine manufacture, there is now only one company that makes vaccines in the United States.
The World Health Organization says that only 7 8 people worldwide have died from the H1N1 flu.
Janet Napolitano warned youngsters released from schools closed in fear of the flu, that school closure didn’t mean they should go the the mall, but that they should stay home.
Somebody or other announced that the flu was caused by a virus — as the flu always is — and you cannot get it by eating pork chops or bacon.
According to the media, this flu is closely related to Seattle’s own winter storm watches. All panic, few flakes.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Economy, National Security, Progressivism., The Elephant's Child | Tags: Democrat Demagogues, Homeland Security
In his televised press conference last night, celebrating his first 100 days, President Barack Obama claimed that his $787 billion deficit spending stimulus package “has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs.“ It’s just that nobody can figure out where these saved or created new jobs are, and a lot of policy wonks are trying to figure it out.
“This crisis is neither the result of a normal turn of the business cycle nor an accident of history. We arrived at this point as a result of an era of profound irresponsibility that engulfed both private and public institutions from some of our largest companies’ executive suites to the seats of power in Washington D.C.”
Well, no. This crisis is the result of regulations put in place by Congressional Democrats, and of Democrats refusal to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“While we have inherited record budget deficits and needed to pass a massive recovery and reinvestment plan to try to jump-start our economy out of recession, we cannot lose sight of the long-run challenges that our country faces and that threaten our economic health…”
Well, guess what happened while our attention was diverted by the debate about torture? Congress passed an enormous budget without a single Republican vote. The graph below shows the ” inherited deficits,” and estimates of Obama’s spending.
“We have rejected the false choice between our security and our ideals, by closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and banning torture without exception.”
And where did the detainees go? Obama also acknowledges that the harsh interrogation techniques he has banned might have yielded useful information.
“I don’t think we should micromanage.”
This is what the President says about the automobile companies after describing just how he plans to micromanage the automobile companies.
“We have to lay a new foundation for growth.”
The Treasury Department announced yesterday that it is going to step up the issuing of 30-year bonds to cover the hundreds of billion of dollars the Obama administration is spending on bailouts, budget and stimulus. An advisory committee warned that domestic and foreign investors are going to demand significantly higher interest rates in exchange for buying the vast number of new bonds. Higher interest rates will strangle the economic recovery.
At the Reason Foundation, economist Jeffrey Miron explains the financial crisis, and why we would have been better off to have done nothing at all.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Liberalism, Progressivism., The Elephant's Child | Tags: Democrat Demagogues, Economy, Politics
Here’s another visualization of the enormous budget cuts that President Obama has asked his cabinet for. I suggested nixing the Kobe beef, the flown-in pizzas, and losing the full-time make up artist. A little here, a little there and it all adds up, just not very much.
Filed under: Environment, Global Warming, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, The Elephant's Child | Tags: Al Gore, Environment, Junk Science, Democrat Demagogues
According to an Earth Day survey of schoolchildren, one in three children between the ages of six and eleven think that the earth will have been destroyed by the time they grow up. The telephone survey conducted by Opinion Research polled a national sample of preteens, 250 boys and 250 girls.
Kids worry about the state of the planet, especially about clean air and clean water, regardless of their parents actions to recycle or make other efforts to be green. 50 percent say that hurricanes and tornadoes are the natural disasters that scare them the most. 28 percent say that they fear that animals such as polar bears and penguins will become extinct and disappear from the planet.
Minority kids are even more anxious. 75 percent of black children and 65 percent of Hispanic children believe that the planet will be irrevocably damaged by the time they grow up. Urban children are more anxious than suburban children.
Thank you, Al Gore, the Sierra Club, and all the green propagandists in the education establishment. This is child abuse. Kids write about polar bears for class projects.
I wrote a short post last December about DNA studies that determined that polar bears had been around much longer than estimated. It had been assumed that they evolved from brown bears fairly recently. Genetic studies determined that the polar bear had been around for at least 130,000 years, through warmer periods and cooler periods, and we probably didn’t need to worry about their surviving the slight warming that we have had. We could probably take them off the “might become endangered” list.
The post was illustrated with a really cute picture of a polar bear cub. We have had 26,000 hits on that one post — mostly from school children working on class projects. I hope that some of them read it to find out that the bears are probably not endangered, but I imagine that most of them were simply after the picture of the cub. I know it’s kid’s homework, because the hits stop during school vacations.
In England, the High Court ordered schools to give an equal amount of time to the scientific proof that many of Al Gore’s claims in “An Inconvenient Truth” were unsupportable, false, and just plain wrong. We have had no such luck in this country, and his celebrated propaganda powerpoint is constantly shown in the schools. The polar bear was chosen by environmental activists specifically to arouse worries about extinction, and by extension to use their habitat needs to prevent any possible drilling for oil.
Unnecessarily scaring kids seems like a particularly sleazy way to try to accomplish green fantasies.
Filed under: Freedom, History, Law, National Security, Terrorism, The Elephant's Child | Tags: Congress, Democrat Demagogues, Homeland Security, War on Terror
Liz Cheney, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, and Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, is here interviewed on MSNBC, on the interrogation memos and the question of “torture.” Norah McDonald gives a wonderful example of media bias. She can’t quite believe that anyone would have the gall to disagree with President Obama. For an example of disagreeing with a president, see “Afterburner“, a video we posted earlier. Hilarious.
Filed under: Freedom, Law, National Security, Politics, Terrorism, The Elephant's Child | Tags: Culture War, Democrat Demagogues, Homeland Security, Terrorism
(click image to view full size)
“The Obama administration is confused.” writes Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard.
The president says harsh interrogation techniques “do not make us safer,” but his top intelligence adviser says the same techniques produced “high-value information” that gave the U.S. government “a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.
Obama White House officials routinely boast that theirs is “the most transparent administration in history,” but then they release Justice Department memos about the interrogations in which the assessments confirming the value of those techniques are blacked out.
Attorney General Eric Holder tells a congressional committee that he is unaware of memos about the information gleaned in harsh interrogations that have been requested by former Vice President Dick Cheney, but his boss, the president, not only knows about those memos but also describes their contents to members of Congress.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says the administration could support an independent investigation of interrogation techniques based on the 9/11 Commission. Then he says that Obama decided long ago that such an investigation would be too political.
In the National Journal Stuart Taylor Jr. says “The review should start by taking seriously the views of the people with the most-detailed knowledge. They say that the coercive interrogation program was highly effective.
Michael Hayden, Bush’s last CIA director and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently wrote, “As late as 2006, fully half of the government’s knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda came from those interrogations.” Former CIA Director George Tenent has said,”I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots. I know this program is worth more than [what] the FBI, the [CIA], and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us.” Former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has said, “We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened.”
Marc Thiessen notes that: Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques “led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the ‘Second Wave,’
to use East Asian East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into a building in Los Angeles.” KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that “information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the ‘Second Wave’.”In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.
“Admiral Dennis Blair, the top intelligence official in the United States” says Stephen Hayes,
believes that the coercive interrogation methods outlawed by his boss produced “high-value information” and gave the U.S. government “a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.” He included those assessments in a letter distributed inside the intelligence community last Thursday, the same day Obama declassified and released portions of Justice Department memos setting out guidelines for those interrogations.
That letter from Blair served as the basis for a public statement that his office put out that same day. But the DNI’s conclusions about the results of coercive interrogations — in effect, that they worked — were taken out of Blair’s public statement. …
The letter included this language: “From 2002 through 2006 when the use of these techniques ended, the leadership of the CIA repeatedly reported their activities both to Executive Branch policy makers and to members of Congress and received permission granted by “members of Congress” — permission that came from members of Obama’s own party.
Dick Cheney: “This is the first time that I can recall that we’ve had an administration come in, take power, and then suggest using the power of the government against their predecessors, from a legal standpoint. Criminal prosecution of lawyers in the Justice Department whose opinions they disagreed with on an impor”crimitant issue. Criminal prosecutions. When was the last time that happened?”
Porter J. Goss, former CIA director: “Since leaving my post as CIA director almost three years ago, I have remained largely silent on the public stage. I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. We can’t have a secret intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets.”
It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.
The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.
- We understood what the CIA was doing.
- We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.
- We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.
- On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.
Should the winner of a presidential election attempt to use the enormous powers of his office to investigate and prosecute his political adversaries? Will this begin a cycle of retribution in which policy disputes are to be criminalized? And will this tear the country apart?
Filed under: Freedom, Law, National Security, Terrorism, The Elephant's Child | Tags: 9/11, Congress, Democrat Demagogues, Politics
Today’s tremendous, essential, must-read article is from Noemi Emery in the Weekly Standard.
Some Democrats, from the White House on down, are pushing the idea of a “truth commission,” à la South Africa, to deal with the “harsh measures” used by the Bush administration in interrogating al Qaeda detainees. Good. Let’s have lots of truthtelling. Please bring it on. [...]
Also dropped down the memory hole — along with the names of all the Democrats who thought Saddam was a menace who cried out for removal — is what the ambience was like in late 2001 and 2002, when fears of anthrax and suitcase bombs ran rampant, and people on all sides tried to seem tough. Let’s tell the truth about all the liberals who went on record supporting real torture, not to mention the Democrats in Congress, when it was cool to want to seem tough on our enemies, who couldn’t be too warlike. Then war and tough measures stopped being cool, and “world opinion” became more important. Nothing like statements under oath to revive ancient memories! And rewind the tapes.
Let’s get at the truth too about the word “torture,” which to different people, means different things. Some think “torture” means standing on the 98th floor of a burning skyscraper and realizing you have a choice between jumping and being incinerated. Some think torture is being crushed when a building implodes around you. Some think torture is not thinking you might drown for several minutes, but looking at burning buildings on television and knowing that people you love are inside them. They remember that being crushed, incinerated, or killed in a jump from the 98th story happened to almost 3,000 blameless Americans (as well as a number of foreigners), and that 125 Pentagon employees were killed at their desks, while many survivors suffered terrible burns. They think the choice between stopping this from happening again by slapping around or scaring the hell out of a cluster of brigands, or leaving the brigands alone and letting it happen again, is a no-brainer.
I remember the members of Congress standing, quaking, on the steps of the Capitol building and spontaneously singing “God Bless America” in quavering voices, a bipartisan moment not seen since. Nancy Pelosi has conveniently forgotten what she was told about interrogation, and many Democrats also conveniently suffer from selective memory. Lets have a truthtelling session. After all, this was supposed to be the most transparent administration in history.
Do read the whole thing. My excerpts don’t begin to capture the whole article. Noemie Emery is a gem.
Filed under: American Elephant, Media Bias, News | Tags: Ministry of Truth, MSM Deathwatch, Schadenfreude
The New York Times is now $1.26 billion in the hole.
Filed under: National Security, Terrorism, The Elephant's Child | Tags: Culture War, Homeland Security, War on Terror
A new Rasmussen survey suggests that the Democrats have overreached with their obsessive interest in the waterboarding of the terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Voters are just unimpressed with the “torture” theme.
58 percent of voters say that the Obama administration’s release of Department of Justice memos “endangers the national security of the United States.” Less than half as many think that it “helps America’s image abroad.”
70 percent say that America’s legal system either does a good job of weighing security needs against individual rights, or that it puts too much emphasis on individual rights at the expense of national security. Only a bare 21 percent say that the legal system is “too concerned about protecting national security.
58 percent said that the Obama administration should not investigate the Bush administration on interrogations, while only 28 percent wanted investigations. Only 22 percent of independents wanted investigations. Even democrats, by a tiny margin felt that the release damaged national security. Independents by an overwhelming majority believe Obama damaged national security — 65 percent to 23 percent.
Americans in every demographic are more inclined to believe that the legal system worries way too much about individual rights rather than national security.
This may suggest that Obama’s apology tour may not have been especially well-received.
Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo Bay is now disapproved of by a 46 to 36 margin, with declining support for Obama’s actions.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Politics, Progressivism., The Elephant's Child | Tags: BDS, Democrat Demagogues, Homeland Security
After the Inauguration, President Obama was very anxious to appear to “hit the ground running.” He hastened to sign all sorts of Executive Orders to undo whatever George Bush did. Believing that one reason for anti-Americanism in the world, was international disapproval of our detention center at Guantanamo Bay, he ordered Guantanamo to be closed within a year. Unfortunately, he had no idea what to do with the detainees.
We have released many of the detainees, those who were thought to be less dangerous. It has been widely stated that those who are left are the “worst of the worst.” Aside from the fulminations of the human rights crowd, and the not very believable claims of the detainees themselves through their court-assigned lawyers; there have been many visitors to the detention center who describe the place as a model prison run with extreme care for the rights of the detainees.
The Uighurs are Chinese Muslim jihadists, trained in explosives and assassination tactics, and anxious enough to be trained that they traveled from China to Afghanistan to become more effectively lethal. They were trained by Abdul Haq, a member of al Qaeda’s inner circle. They were sent to Guantanamo in 2002 after being captured in Pakistan. Some former U.S. officials have said that government information indicates that the Uighurs may pose a danger if released. Other officials and human rights organizations insist they pose no threat to Americans.
They cannot be returned to China; they oppose the Chinese government, and presumably the Chinese government returns the favor. The position of “detainee” is apparently incomprehensible. (The idea is to keep them from returning to jihadism and killing Americans).
Guantanamo Bay was chosen and developed as the best possible solution to a difficult problem, after a great deal of searching and study. I find the administration’s exquisitely delicate feelings for the opinions of European journalists a little hard to stomach.
The Uighurs are to be released in this country, probably in Virginia suburbs where some Uighur immigrants from China have settled. The thought is that they should be near others who speak their language and understand their customs. I don’t know if anyone has asked the immigrants if they want the detainees.
This is now Obama’s problem, and his risk.
Filed under: Politics, The Elephant's Child | Tags: Culture War, President Bush
Victor Davis Hanson, on “trashing your predecessor,” from The Corner on National Review Online:
From a July 2002 Bush Press Conference, when GWB was asked about the topic of the recklessness and re-regulation of the 1990s:
Q. Sir, you said in your speech tomorrow you’re going to talk about some of the excesses of the 1990s when a lot of money was flying around, people were playing a lot of games…money. You weren’t president then. Bill Clinton was president. Do you think in some way he contributed to that? Set a moral tone in any way?
A. No.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, Progressivism., The Elephant's Child | Tags: Culture War, Democrat Demagogues, Wasteful Spending
About a month ago, I wrote a post called “Obama’s Civilian Mandatory “Volunteer” Brownshirt Corps. ” The title probably indicated pretty clearly that I didn’t think much of the idea. Since Americans lead the world in their altruism, their unpaid volunteer giving of time and money, I thought it was probably not a good idea to try to turn it into another government funded bureaucracy. I was right.
“The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act”, was signed into law on Tuesday by President Obama. I assume that this is the same bill, since it has the same sponsor, and I can find no trace of the original GIVE Act at Thomas, the Library of Congress site. It will triple the number of AmeriCorps members from 75,000 to 250,000. Officially it:
reauthorizes and expands national service programs administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency created in 1993. The Corporation engages four million Americans in result-driven service each year, including 75,000 AmeriCorps members, 492,000 Senior Corps volunteers, 1.1 million Learn and Serve America students, and 2.2 million additional community volunteers mobilized and managed through the agency’s programs.
Nick Gillespie of Reason Magazine says: “The law shovels out $5.7 billion of taxpayer dollars over the next five years to “boost volunteerism at AmeriCorps and elsewhere. In an era of trillions of dollars in wasteful spending, that’s a real bargain.” He also notes that they already got an extra $200 million from the stimulus bill.
At the time, with a little cursory research into AmeriCorps, I found it lived up to my skepticism. But now, I have found more — much more — from Nick Gillespie and from James Bovard who is not only a splendid researcher, but has 8 fine books to his credit. They don’t like AmeriCorps either, and pull no punches in explaining why. Jim Bovard’s piece can be found here. Here are the dirty little secrets that the liberals don’t want you to know.
As far as I am able to tell, no program or policy ever introduced by Democrats is a failure. Programs that take welfare recipients off the streets and send them into classrooms as reading tutors have “taught millions of children to read.” Never mind that many of the tutors have only an eighth-grade education. These programs are all a success, and with a little reorganization and a lot more money, will be an even greater success. That’s why it doesn’t matter what the results are.
Democrats appreciate the goals or intent of legislation. They mean well, and they are quite unconcerned about the consequences. It is enough if the law promises the requisite amount of hope and change. Doesn’t matter if the promises are empty. The intent is all.
UPDATE: We had a bad link here. It’s fixed now. Sorry.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Freedom, History, Pop Culture, The Elephant's Child | Tags: Anti-Americanism, Europe, South America
It is not clear just what President Obama hopes to gain from his overseas efforts to apologize for America’s supposed misdeeds in the recent and distant past. Apology has been the centerpiece of his strategy. Those of us who differ with Obama’s approach have a different set of assumptions and beliefs. He has spent an amazing portion of his time speaking of the grievances of our allies and adversaries. He explains his approach in this way:
If we are practicing what we preach and if we occasionally confess to having strayed from our values and our ideals, that strengthens our hand; that allows us to speak with greater moral force and clarity around these issues.
Obama seems to believe that anti-Americanism arises entirely from the terrible actions of that cowboy George Bush, and if he just apologizes enough, everyone will like us. Or at least think that he is an improvement over his predecessor. But Obama needs a better understanding of history.
Anti-Americanism has been around since the earliest days of our country. Think of what a threat America has been to the countries of Europe. We founded this country in opposition to a continent of Kings and Princes. We denied the divine right of Kings, and created a democratic republic. No authority of Princes here. Even at the time of the War of Independence, our soldiers volunteered, they were not conscripted; and when it was time for Spring planting, they might just pack up and go home to get the crops in. They were fighting, in part, mercenaries conscripted by one Prince or another and sold to fight for the British.
Our Declaration of Independence was a direct threat to the rule of a nobility. “All men are created equal” was a reproach to their established order. Americans had nearly one hundred and fifty years of personal independence before their freedoms were challenged by their British rulers. George Washington had a time teaching them to be soldiers and obey orders. They were ready to fight, but the obey part came harder. What if that idea of “equality” were to be transported to the old country. What mischief would that cause.
And it did. The French, inspired by our Revolution, not only threw off their King, but they chopped off his head and those of another 20,000 Frenchmen as well. Certainly that must have made the nobility of Europe sit up and take notice.
Bernard Bailyn describes in his splendid book The Peopling of British North America what we seldom recognize:
The westward transatlantic movement of people is one of the greatest events in recorded history. It’s magnitudes and consequences are beyond measure. From 1500 to the present, it has involved the displacement and resettlement of over fifty million people, and it has affected the foundation of American history and is basic, too, in ways we are only now beginning to understand, to the history of Europe, Africa, and even, to a lesser extent, of Asia.
We think proudly of our immigrants, our forbears. But for Britain and Europe that was fifty million people rejecting the old country and all that it stood for. Reproach.
What is it like for other countries when their country is inundated with American goods. Starbucks, McDonalds, Kentucky Fried, jeans and tee shirts. And in the world capital of fine food, people line up at McDonalds. Reproach.
What is it like for the citizens of Indonesia when an American battle group arrives with hospitals (plural) and a capability of not only flying rescue missions, but of producing vast quantities of fresh drinking water from sea water. Competence beyond their reach. They are grateful, of course, but it is still a reproach to them.
The Pakistani people are deeply proud of their nuclear weapon. It says that they are competent in a world that has so modernized that it has left them behind, out of history. Someone, and I forget who, said that they couldn’t even make a bicycle chain. It is not that they are envious or jealous, but that our freedom and independence and invention and competence are a reproach to them. They focus on our mistakes and failures, for it lessens the reproach for their lack of freedom and invention and competence. And when we make mistakes, we not only tell the whole world about it, we noisily turn around and try to fix it. And worst of all, we are happier than they are, and we’re noisy about that too.
Slavery is our great sin. We fought a great war to end it, and we are still struggling to eliminate its traces. The whole world knows of our guilt. Yet South America imported nearly 12 slaves and the West Indies 10 slaves for every one slave that went to North America. Slavery did not end in Brazil until 1888. But we don’t spend any time reproaching Brazil, we just get on with criticizing— ourselves.
So the “apology tour” is essentially pointless. It just makes us seem weak to bow down to petty tyrants and dictators, and to invite their insults. And appearing weak is dangerous.
After passively listening to a 50 minute diatribe against the United States by Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Obama said “I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.” Obama made much of an offer by Raul Castro to talk with the U.S. Government, but Fidel wrote today that Obama not only misunderstood Raul, but he was “conceited, superficial,” and that he had no right to dare suggest that Cuba make even small concessions.
Obama won a campaign with his personal charm and unusual history. Perhaps he believes that he can win over the world the same way. Apologies don’t seem to be working so well. So far he has come home empty-handed.
