Up in arms?

Apparently we have a dust-up in the the fashion arena. Michelle Obama's decision to go sleeveless again is stirring up a debate. For the second time in as many days the first lady bared her arms: She wore a plum Narciso Rodriguez dress when her husband addressed Congress on Tuesday night. She appears on the latest issue of People magazine in a sleeveless magenta Tracy Reese frock and also went sans sleeves on her recent Vogue cover.

BestView finds it refreshing that there are no bigger problems in Washington for some folks.

Recession not all bad

In a vivid illustration of how the global recession is battering the legal profession, Latham & Watkins, one of the largest law firms in the nation, announced yesterday that it will let go 190 lawyers and 250 paralegal and support staff.

Quote of the Day

"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of people to tax".

Margret Thatcher

Do the math

O.K., as BestView understands it, Obama wants to cut the deficit by raising taxes on all of us who earn more than $250,000. He ran on that and he won, so passing such a tax increase seems fair--assuming the voters are smart enough to understand what is going on. That assumption is not warranted, but we can save that for later. For now, lets do the math as the Wall Street Journal did today. In 2006 if we had confiscated all of the income from everyone over $500,000 Congress would have an extra $1.3 trillion dollars which would smaller in the coming years if the recession continues, but it would pale severely to the $4 trillion Congress expects to spend in 2010 when Obama says he will have cut the budget deficit in half.
So, even if we take it all, the deficit will be gigantic and the government will come after your money if you make a lot less than $250,000. Count on it.

Economic Darkness

Most of the average adults in the U.S. are only aware that the economy is not good and assume the government is focused on trying to fix the problems which are not being well described or even understood. The thing most of us who do not follow these things all day should know is the Bush and now the Obama administration's is using the same people who were involved in causing our problems (and did not see the consequences of their action) have been given the job of fixing the situation. That is not smart and will not get us where we need to be any time soon.

As Moms Mabley once said, "If you keep on doing what you did, you will keep on gittin' what you got".

Obama's View from the Podium last night

Is everybody happy?

Don't Fall For It

In a recent speech marking Black History Month, Eric Holder, the new Attorney General, said, "Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial."

Here is some good advice for whites: Don't fall for it. If you think you can all of a sudden express your views about blacks when that view is not sufficiently "correct", you are sadly mistaken. Try sitting down with a room full of blacks and express the opinion that too many of them have babies that they can't afford without husbands. After that, come out with the suggestion that the reason blacks represent so much of our prison population is because they commit so much of our crime. If you still have any hide on your bones, hint that affirmative action in college admissions is detrimental to the black student since it places him or her in an inferior, dependent position academically.

Don't fall for it.

WSJ solution to Illinois "problem"

In the previous post BestView wondered if Obama was the only honest politician in Illinois and today the Wall Street Journal seems to have found a solution to the problem:

By now it's clear enough that the problem is less Mr. Burris or Mr. Blagojevich than the entire rotten Illinois political culture. So here's a modest proposal: Every elected state official should resign at once, giving voters a chance to start over with special elections for everyone. State government couldn't get any more dysfunctional than it is now, and maybe Diogenes could find an honest man.

Just wondering

The calls--even from dems--for newly appointed Senator Burris to resign has BestView wondering whether or not we should believe Obama is the only clean and honest politician from Illinois?

Right Wing Criticism

We simply must shut down those right wing radio and television programs which are critical of the Obama administration. Control the internet sites as well. We simply can't tolerate these contrary opinions threatening the liberal, socialist government we hope to create via the massive spending and control of all economic activity. The strategy for this must be concealed. Let's call it the "Fairness Doctrine" and package it with a change in the secret ballot for organizing labor unions by calling the change "Card Check". Surely the American voter who elected Obama is too stupid to oppose something as sensible as a "Fairness Doctrine".

Comparison of lies

This story in the Chicago Tribune details the various versions of Senator Burris's memory of the events just last year about the contacts with Governor Blagojevich prior to his appointment to the U.S. Senate. Keeping in mind that much of this was given while under oath, contrast the legal outcome of his truth-telling with that of Scooter Libby who did not give an accurate account of a non-crime some 3 years previous to his conviction by a renegade special prosecutor.

More liberal nonsense revealed

Farmers across the tropics might raze forests to plant biofuel crops, according to new research by Holly Gibbs, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment.

"If we run our cars on biofuels produced in the tropics, chances will be good that we are effectively burning rainforests in our gas tanks," she warned.

Policies favoring biofuel crop production may inadvertently contribute to, not slow, the process of climate change, Gibbs said. Such an environmental disaster could be "just around the corner without more thoughtful energy policies that consider potential ripple effects on tropical forests," she added.

Gibbs' predictions are based on her new study, in which she analyzed detailed satellite images collected between 1980 and 2000. The study is the first to do such a detailed characterization of the pathways of agricultural expansion throughout the entire tropical region. Gibbs hopes that this new knowledge will contribute to making prudent decisions about future biofuel policies and subsidies.

"If biofuels are grown in place of forests, we're actually going to end up emitting a huge amount of carbon. When trees are cut down to make room for new farmland, they are usually burned, sending their stored carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. That creates what's called a carbon debt," Gibbs said. "This is because the carbon lost from deforestation is much greater than the carbon saved from using the current-generation biofuels."

Indeed, tropical forests are the world's most efficient storehouses for carbon, harboring more than 340 billion tons, according to Gibbs' research. This is equivalent to more than 40 years worth of global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Gibbs' previous findings asserted that the carbon debt incurred from cutting down a tropical forest could take several centuries or even millennia to repay through carbon savings produced from the resultant biofuels.

The Obama housing solution

Today Obama will tell us that if you took out a loan you could not afford and are now facing foreclosure on a house, the Obama administration will bail you out using tax money to be extracted from those who were responsible and did not try to get something for nothing in the past few years. It looks like this reaffirmation of the formerly discredited welfare state is a reality. This will not end well.

Obama Fearmongering

From IBD:
In his first month, President Obama has talked down the economy and engineered a huge surge in federal spending. Now the bills will come due. The pain may be just beginning.

Long ago, there was a president who said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Now the message from the White House can be boiled down to something like, "Be afraid. Be very afraid. And give this president what he wants."

Do we overstate the case? We'll just say this: Franklin D. Roosevelt made his share of missteps but understood the need to calm a frightened nation and restore confidence. If that meant closing the banks, so be it. Anything to stop the panic.

Barack Obama, inheriting a situation not even close to what FDR beheld, talks as if the nation isn't scared enough. He pushed a vast peacetime spending bill through Congress by warning of "catastrophe" if it failed to pass. But where boldness had been needed — with the banks — only vague work-in-progress is on offer.

With a performance like this, and Obama only a month in office, the markets are noticing. We see the Dow industrials down about 8% from the pre-inaugural close and off more than 20% from Election Day. Wall Street — and Main Street — had hoped for strong, reassuring leadership. Instead, we have a presidency "spinning the bad news story," as Cato Institute economist Steve Hanke puts it.

As details of the "stimulus" bill signed Tuesday emerge, it's also become clear that little is there to jump-start the economy. It's more like a herd of Trojan horses designed to re-institute the costly welfare state that Ronald Reagan and even Bill Clinton dismantled.

Meanwhile, the nation waits to see what the administration has in mind for ending the balance-sheet crisis at the root of the pain.

This brief track record shows the power of the politics of fear. It's the same term the Left threw at George W. Bush, as it accused him of exploiting terrorism fears to expand the security state.

Obama is now doing on the economic front what his allies have accused Bush of doing on the war front: Stoking fear to amass power. In his case, he's not trying to listen in on more phone calls. What he's seeking, and so far achieving, is bigger government with greater influence over Americans' lives and livelihoods. Fear is working.

The problem is, if you talk down the economy you get a down economy, and stocks down, too. It's worse yet when your talk is not countered by credible action to ward off the threats you claim.

The actual dollar cost of the legislation is trouble, too. Bills won't come due all at once, but new taxes and government debt that could hobble the economy for decades is looming.

People look ahead at this and don't like what they see. Their gloomy view of the future further saps their confidence in the present. More than ever, they need what candidate Obama promised: hope. It's not what they're hearing from Obama as president.

The Obama Market

The Dow is now down over 2,000 since the messiah was elected. Is this Bush's fault, too?

Another Obama Lie

During the campaign where most Americans became convinced that the Messiah had re- joined us, Obama pledged to post any new legislation on the internet and let everyone read it over a 5 day period before he would sign it. Reality? Hasn't happened. Now with the biggest spending bill in the nation's history, the dems in the House at 7 P.M. last night still had not printed and distributed the 1,400 plus pages to the Republicans in the House, but Steny Hoyer says the debate on the measure will begin today at 9:00 A.M and the President will sign it on Monday.

Imagine the cries about another Bush lie if this had occurred under his administration.

Employment

Everyday we read of job cuts at companies in every corner of the U.S. economy. This is even occurring in some states as the recession impacts budgets. BestView has an assignment for you. Watch carefully and see if you can spot a reduction of workers in any federal government program or department. Evidently every single one of our government workers is absolutely essential to our very existence.

Senator Specter Nonsense

Jonah Goldberg has a great essay on the nonsensical position of Senator Specter on the so-called stimulus boondoggle being passed with his concurrence this week. Here is a sample, but the whole thing should be read here.

“I am supporting the economic stimulus package for one simple reason,” Specter wrote in the Post. “The country cannot afford not to take action.” Such thinking is the purest nonsense. Sure, if your house is burning down, you can’t afford not to take action. That doesn’t mean any action is better than no action. Grabbing a fire hose is good. Grabbing a jerrycan of gasoline and dancing the “Macarena,” not so much.

Daschle gone and good riddance

Tom Daschle is the biggest, phoniest hypocrit in politics who has now withdrawn from consideration as Secretary of Health and Human Services even though Obama supported him as of yesterday. Now if the equally crooked Charlie Rangle will do the right thing.....

This is getting funny

Nancy Killefer says she is withdrawing her candidacy for chief performance officer because she doesn't want her tax issue to become a "distraction."

In a letter to President Barack Obama, Killefer said she understands that the duties of chief performance officer are urgent and any delays must be avoided.

She said she was reluctantly withdrawing her name from consideration.

Killefer failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help. She was the second major Obama administration nominee to withdraw and the third to have tax problems complicate their nomination after Obama announced their selection.

An example of when the same can be "change"

During the Bush administration liberals argued that rendition - whether for the purpose of torture or otherwise - violated human rights and constitutional norms. Accordingly, they demanded that the U.S. abandon the rendition program altogether and that other countries refrain from helping enforce it (e.g., by allowing CIA flights over their airspace).

Obama has announced he will continue the renditions policy and many liberals have come forward to defend the new boss. The typical liberal defense of Obama argues that rendition is not wrong in and of itself, but that removal of persons for the purpose of torturing or indefinitely detaining them violates human rights norms. Because Obama has banned the use of torture (which pre-existing statutes and treaties already prohibited) and ordered the CIA to close its long-term detention centers, all is now just swell with rendition of terrorists.

BestView is running non-stop keeping up with liberal phonies.

Reasonable Exceptions

On Jan. 21, the day after his inauguration, Obama issued an executive order barring any former lobbyists who join his administration from dealing with matters or agencies related to their lobbying work. Nor could they join agencies they had lobbied in the previous two years.

However, William J. Lynn III, his choice to become the No. 2 official at the Defense Department, recently lobbied for military contractor Raytheon. And William Corr, tapped as deputy secretary at Health and Human Services, lobbied through most of last year as an anti-tobacco advocate. Corr says he will take no part in tobacco matters in the new administration.

Daschle, a former senator tapped to head Health and Human Services, is not technically a lobbyist. But he was paid more than $5.2 million over the past two years as he advised health insurers and hospitals and worked in other industries such as energy and telecommunications.

"Even the toughest rules require reasonable exceptions," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Smart Republicans

This title might sound like the worst oxymoron, but the Republicans in congress may be temporarily brilliant in their proposal to lower the tax rates for the lowest earning workers from 10 to 5% and for those in the next highest bracket from 15 to 10%. The dems hate the idea and can be expected to avoid this because they know that at some time in the next couple of years they will still be in the majority and in order for them to continue spending madly on their interest groups, it will be necessary to raise these rates and there is no way they can portray such a move as taxing the rich as is their usual mantra. Will be fun to watch them squirm as they shoot this idea down.

Quote of the Day

Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter. ” Sen. Tom Daschle, Congressional Record, May 7, 1998, p. S4507.

Senator Dodd Update

While Dodd has demanded that regulators get to the bottom of any crimes by Bernard Madoff, he has played a cat and mouse game in keeping the documents about his dealing with Countrywide Financial under wraps. What is known is that he got favored treatment from the subprime mortgage company in 2003 while at the head of the Banking Committee that regulates the industry.

Dodd had promised a number of times that he would provide the necessary documents and details of the loans. As of February 1, 2009, the documents are still not forthcoming. What is known is that Dodd and his wife financed two properties through Countrywide and got preferential rates and had fees waived on the loans. It was part of a VIP program that the company had for "friends of the company."
Read it all here

Good Question

Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, says that he would be willing to consider an improvement in relations with the U.S. if Obama will apologize for America's many offenses against Iran. Actually, this demand is quite reasonable: how can Obama refuse after his own public condemnation of his country's past policies?

Change at last

Obama promised change if we elected him and by golly we are getting it. First we got the nomination of Gov. Bill Richardson for Commerce secretary but he is facing indictment for doing favors for a contributor so he withdrew his name. Next we have the new Treasury secretary who will be in charge of the IRS even though he couldn't find a way to pay his own taxes. Now we have the biggest, phoniest crook of them all nominated to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. Senator Tom Daschle just discovered he did not pay his taxes either, but once he was nominated, he corrected that small matter to the tune of some $130,000. All of this is terribly embarassing to the dems, of course, but they are responding as one might predict. The following is from the New York Times which has yet to become upset by Obama's nominees.

On Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats rallied around Mr. Daschle, a former senator from South Dakota who lost his seat in 2004 while serving as the minority leader. Mr. Daschle is a close ally of the president’s — he marshaled his staff on behalf of the Obama campaign, and at least five former Daschle aides now have top White House jobs — and Democrats vowed to go to bat for him.