1. The Unspeakable: Why Can't A Billboard Say Obama Is "Pro-Abortion"?
RED STATE
Editing out uncomfortable truths.
You may remember the flap over the Secret Service limitations on where protestors could set up near George W. Bush, and the wailing about "free speech zones" being an unconscionable restriction, etc. I have yet to hear anybody (1) complain about the Secret Service's policy since Obama took over or (2) explain how the policy changed, as I suspect it has not. Like so many routine government activities, it's only objectionable when it's Bush.
Anyway, this is a slightly different story - about a private sign-making company, not a government agency - but it's nonetheless revealing: a billboard company refused to allow signs to call President Obama "pro-abortion," insisting on altering the billboards to "pro abortion choice."
First of all, this is ignorance. Obama has long supported taxpayer funding to subsidize abortions. It is simply not possible to support taking money from taxpayers to pay for a thing, causing more of that thing to happen, and then argue that you are not supporting the thing itself. Taxpayer funding is a far cry from live and let live (it's something Obama opposes for, say, sending black children in failed DC school districts to private schools - he must regard abortion as more desirable than a good education).
Second, the reluctance to allow open discussion of the issue is symptomatic of something Justice Scalia has noted at the Supreme Court level: the systematic bending of all other rules and customs, much as happened in the days of slavery, to protect the practice of abortion, from unique rules for protests around clinics, to laxer regulation of clinics, to distortion of the language itself.
2. House Democrat: We Must Treat Terrorists Like Our Own Troops
Schiff: 'Nothing Less' than Full Due Process for Terrorists
The House Appropriations Committee today debated what to do with terrorists currently detained at Guantanamo. Since President Obama is committed to closing the detention center, they must be sent somewhere. And for Congressman Schiff at least, the obvious answer is to guarantee them 'fair trials' in the United States.
You might think it should be obvious that terrorists should not be given the same rights as the troops who defend us from them. But then again, you might think there'd be no reason to resettle terrorists in the U.S., or to give them welfare benefits. You'd be wrong.
Democrats are committed to closing Guantanamo - a dangerous step in itself - but they have no plan after that.
3. Deval Patrick Takes Welfare Back to the 1970s
If You're on Welfare, Massachusetts May Give You a Car, Insurance, AAA Membership
Democrats often tell us that one critical difference between the two parties is that the Democrats are more giving and compassionate. I'm not sure if that's true in general, but it's true in at least one important respect: Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is giving Republicans a huge political issue.
The State of Massachusetts faces a severe budget shortfall, and Governor Patrick is using nearly $1 billion in porkulus cash and reserve funds to keep the state running a few more months. Yet despite being in dire fiscal straits, Patrick is giving free cars to welfare recipients.
If I didn't check to confirm this is true, I would have thought it was a joke. How can Massachusetts justify such handouts while it's unable to pay its bills? It seems that one answer is the federal 'stimulus' bill, which is allowing the state to overcome the shortfall and continue to provide programs like this one.
4. Democratic Spin on GTMO Stupid Even By Standards of Democratic Spin
Does Anybody Think America's Prison Guards Are Itching To Guard Jihadists?
Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard notes this hilarious attempt to claim that Republicans opposed to moving detainees from Guantanamo into their districts are - wait for it - insulting America's corrections officers:
ON GUANTANAMO, GOP DISPARAGES MEN AND WOMEN WHO KEEP OUR COMMUNITIES SAFE
Why do Republicans think that Americans can't do their jobs?
Today, John Boehner and the Republican House leadership are introducing legislation to keep Guantanamo detainees from being transferred to facilities in the United States. They claim that this serves American security. But the reality is that our criminal justice system has a long history of holding hardened terrorists successfully, including the perpetrator of the first World Trade Center attacks, numerous 9/11 conspirators, the Shoe Bomber and Timothy McVeigh. The men and women who serve their country by working at these facilities are ready and eager to do their jobs – and they have the confidence of the communities that depend economically on prison facilities. But John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and other Republicans in Congress continue to claim that the men and women who run our prisons and help keep America safe can't do their jobs.
Let's review the varieties of stupid here.
1. This statement assumes that 100% of the detainees will continue to remain locked up, and of course if you believe that, why not just improve the prison they are in? In fact, the whole point of this exercise is to release some detainees entirely and send others into the criminal justice system, where they may be acquitted or have cases dropped against them, in many cases because of how evidence was gathered against them under wartime or battlefield conditions.
2. The Democrats presume to speak for all prison guards as being thrilled to take these guys on. I am guessing that's not the case. Ask Louis Pepe. Ask why our allies are balking at taking them. Ask the people of Alexandria, Virginia what additional precautions had to be taken just to hold one of them.
3. I love the line about "communities that depend economically on prison facilities" - leave it to the Democrats to look at holding jihadists as a jobs program.
4. Does anybody but Democratic politicians actually believe that jihadists are no more dangerous than your usual criminal? Hmmm, we have prisoners who are willing to engage in suicide attacks, believe they will go to eternal paradise if they die killing infidels, specifically hate the U.S. government, and are connected to international organizations with money and weapons. You don't think they are a greater security risk than your typical prisoner, even in maximum security? Really?
5. Bond Market Epic Fail
Better pay attention to this one as much as you might not want to.
Tim Geithner went to market today to sell 30-year bonds, and he got plastered. The interest rate shot up past 4.28%, and it pulled up the rest of the right side of the yield curve. The auction went unexpectedly bad as there were relatively fewer bids than in the past.
Before you rush to say it, no, the Chinese weren't in there buying. But that part is NOT a surprise, because foreigners and central banks generally stick to buying short-dated securities. China stopped buying our long bonds back in 2007.
One of my colleagues reminded me that Britain and Germany had serious failures to sell debt earlier this year. The US Treasury borrows in its own currency, so they have nothing like the constraints that the Germans or the Brits do. At least in theory, the Treasury could borrow at any interest rate necessary to clear the market, because they can print money to pay the interest.
The problem is that if the risk-free rate is extremely high in any particular stretch of the yield curve, it necessarily raises the corresponding interest rates for actual business borrowing, possibly to the point of choking off actual business investment.
But it's funny, because this whole conversation is the kind you'd have in normal times. These aren't normal times. Bank credit is exceptionally scarce at any price, for more than one reason. Geithner is already using coded language that suggests to me that he finds this ultimately acceptable, so long as government entities can create credit themselves.
And at the end of the day, it truly is frictionless for the government to create credit. But the problem is that there will be very few organic market signals for allocating it, which is a fancy way of saying that the economy won't be producing things people actually want to buy.
6. Napolitano's Secret Apology on Domestic Terrorists
What is She Trying to Hide?
Secretary Janet Napolitano has gotten a heap of well-deserved criticism for the report that her office rushed out, naming veterans, believers in gun rights, low-tax advocates, and other conservatives as possible terrorists. So far she has failed adequately to explain how her Department issued a report that slanders our military, our law enforcement agencies, and millions of average Americans.
Roll Call reports today that Napolitano has now apologized for this obvious screwup - but she has done so secretly, in a letter to a House Committee Chairman. The letter has not been shared with Republicans.
7. James Jones' Death Spiral
National Security Adviser Admits Irrelevance, No One Disagrees
We can now officially begin the death watch for National Security Adviser James Jones. In a front page article in today's Washington Post, Jones admits he is the odd man out.
He also admits that he's just not as motivated as the people who work with him.
Not a single person in the article disagreed with him on either count.
This is really no surprise. Jones' primary qualifications for the job of national security adviser were an impeccable military resume and being on record as calling Iraq a "debacle" back in 2005. These two items gave Obama cover in dealing with his own disinterest in national security. Unfortunately for Jones, his ego allowed him to overlook the fact that the real qualification for the job is a close personal relationship with the president so that the twin bulls in the US national security china shop, Defense and State, can be made to work towards a common goal.- redstate.com |
