Good News: House Votes To Defund ACORN Successor Groups

Good News: House Votes To Defund ACORN Successor Groups

Bad news: It remains to be seen whether the measure will be taken up by the Senate.

Still, good news is good news, and Matthew Vadum brings the glad tidings at the American Spectator:

Last week the U.S. House of Representatives voted to block funding to any remaining ACORN affiliates and to “new” ACORN groups that have sprung up over the last year.

The ACORN network of 370-plus organizations is not actually dead, as I’ve written. It is merely restructuring itself. The lead corporate entity, ACORN, filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy, but the state chapters and other branches of the infamous activist network continue to operate. Other affiliates including vote manufacturers Project Vote and housing bubble generator ACORN Housing continue in business. ACORN Housing changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America.

ACORN insiders acknowledge a reconstituted ACORN will emerge in time to help the reelection campaign of President Obama, who used to work for ACORN.

Three Republicans voted against the measure; Robert Aderholt (R-Alabama), Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), and Paul Gosar (R-Arizona).

Vadum is the author of the new book Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

Hat tip: Weasel Zippers

Linked by Michelle Malkin in Buzzworthy, thanks!

Obamacare waivers weren't in original law, appearance of political favors persists

Obamacare waivers weren't in original law, appearance of political favors persists

The Daily Caller has learned the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) never had the authority to issue waivers from Obamacare’s annual limit requirements.

Language granting HHS that power was never in the original law. Instead, through new rules and regulations, HHS gave itself the power last summer using a broad interpretation of certain parts of the law.

The annual limit requirement waivers exempt recipients for one year from having to increase the amount of health care coverage they provide their workers. Each year between now and 2014, the minimum annual limit rises to a new, higher amount. Though the waivers are only for one year, recipients can reapply and be re-approved every year through 2014.

Heritage Foundation health policy expert Edmund Haislmaier said HHS “exceeded its statutory authority” by issuing such waivers.

“The first problem is that it appears HHS has exceeded its statutory authority in creating this waiver process,” Haislmaier said in testimony before the House Oversight Committee’s subcommittee on Health Care. “The statute does not explicitly grant HHS authority to waive the application of this provision. In contrast, I count twenty-one other sections of PPACA [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] in which Congress did grant HHS explicit, new waiver authority with respect to specific provisions. Thus, it is reasonable to presume that if Congress had intended the department to institute a waiver process as part of its implementation of this particular provision, Congress would have said so in the statute.”

The Obama administration, which touts itself as the most transparent in American history, hasn’t answered many questions about who’s been getting waivers and why, who’s been denied and why or who’s still in line. Seeing as the administration hasn’t complied with many Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for information surrounding Obamacare, former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS announced Monday it will seek summary judgment in federal court against HHS over “the agency’s failure to disclose materials concerning Obamacare waivers.” Crossroads GPS filed a FOIA request back in January for information regarding Obamacare waivers. After two months of inactivity on the request, Crossroads filed a lawsuit alleging HHS isn’t following FOIA standards.

In what’s become a bit of a pattern for the Obama administration, there’s at least an appearance of political favoritism in favor of those who lobbied for HHS to grant itself waiver power. Many of the administration’s nearly 1,400 waivers, including the waivers that went to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district in April, went to companies and entities that lobbied their support behind HHS’s drive to grant itself that power.

Flex-Plan Services co-owner Hilarie Aitken, who admitted openly she applied for all those Pelosi-district waivers in addition to a few others nationwide, sits on the board of the Employers Council on Flexible Compensation (ECFC). ECFC is a Washington trade group that lobbies to “represent and promote flexible compensation programs.” The group lobbied the HHS give itself annual limit waiver power through a rule making process.

True Cost of Fannie, Freddie Bailouts: $317 Billion

True Cost of Fannie, Freddie Bailouts: $317 Billion, CBO Says
By Matt Cover

(CNSNews.com) – The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the real cost of the federal government guaranteeing the business of failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is $317 billion -- not the $130 billion normally claimed by the Obama administration.

In a report delivered to the House Budget Committee on June 2, the CBO said a “fair value” accounting of guaranteeing the two defunct mortgage companies – known as Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) – was more than twice as high as the Office of Management and Budget had accounted for.

“Specifically, CBO treats the mortgages guaranteed each year by the two GSEs as new guarantee obligations of the federal government,” the CBO report said. “For those guarantees, CBO’s projections of budget outlays equal the estimated federal subsidies inherent in the commitments at the time they are made.”

“In contrast, the Administration’s Office of Management and Budget continues to treat Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as nongovernmental entities for budgetary purposes, and thus outside the budget,” the report stated. “It records as outlays the amount of the net cash payments provided by the Treasury to the GSEs.”

The total of those cash payments is $130 billion, and is normally reported as the cost of the bailout of the GSEs to date. However, the CBO said that merely counting the cash payments, and not the cost of federal subsidies granted to the GSEs, obscures their real costs.

Essentially, the CBO is accounting for the cost of the federal government guaranteeing the loans bought and securitized by the GSEs.

Currently, Fannie and Freddie rely on explicit federal guarantees to continue to secure below-market financing rates. Because Fannie and Freddie are insolvent, the federal government must make up their losses when the loans they have guaranteed lose money in default.

However, the CBO counts not only the amount of federal funds spent to keep the GSEs operating but the cost to the federal government to subsidize the mortgage guarantees issued by Fannie and Freddie. In other words, the CBO counts as a federal spending commitment the subsidy given by the government to the GSEs.

The CBO calls this approach “fair-value” accounting because it treats the federal government’s actions just like the actions of any other market participant, taking into account the market risk of guaranteeing a mortgage.

Typically, federal accounting does not do this because it is argued that because the government can print its own money, its risk is zero.

The CBO says that even though the government can print money – technically by issuing Treasury bonds – this merely transfers the risk to the taxpayer, who will eventually have to pay off the bonds issued by the government.

As of March 31, the CBO calculated that the GSEs held a fair-value deficit of $187 billion, meaning that on a fair-value basis Fannie and Freddie held a combined $187 billion more in liabilities than they did in assets.

Added to the $130 billion in bailout payments the government has already made, the total cost of a bailout of Fannie and Freddie rises to $317 billion, which is far above the $130 billion usually cited by the OMB.

“As of March 31, 2011, the GSEs reported a fair-value deficit of approximately $187 billion,” the CBO report stated. “Adding to that the $130 billion in net payments already received from the Treasury implies a fair-value cost to the government of about $317 billion in obligations incurred through March 2011.”

That figure has grown since August 2009 when the CBO calculated that the cost of bailing out the GSEs was $291 billion, due mainly to further weakening in the housing market.

Further, the CBO expects these costs to rise by an additional $42 billion between 2011 and 2021, an average of $4 billion per year.

“CBO estimated that the subsidy costs of the GSEs’ new business would total about $42 billion over the 2012–2021 period, an average of about $4 billion a year,” the CBO said.

However, this subsidy cost could grow if the housing market continues to be weak. While the CBO expects it to recover, the difference between the agency’s own 2009 and 2011 estimates show that this may not be the case.

Valerie Jarrett’s Father-in-Law Was a Communist – Worked With Obama Mentor Frank Marshall Davis

Valerie Jarrett’s Father-in-Law Was a Communist – Worked With Obama Mentor Frank Marshall Davis

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

Senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett’s late father-in-law and Chicago Sun-Times columnist Vernon Jarrett, was a key member of the South Chicago communist left of the late 1940s.

After graduating from Knoxville College in Tennessee, Jarrett moved to Chicago in 1946 to work as a journalist. On his first day on the job at the radical Chicago Defender, he was sent to cover a race riot.

The Defender was heavily influenced by the Communist Party USA and included on its roster well known Chicago Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis.

Jarrett and Davis worked on the Defender around the same time. They certainly knew each other through the Communist Party and its fronts.

In June 1946, Vernon Jarrett was elected to the Illinois Council of the Communist Party’s youth wing, then known as American Youth for Democracy. This is according to Testimony of Walter S. Steele regarding Communist activities in the United States. Hearings before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, first session, on H. R. 1884 and H. R. 2122, pages 75,76. It is the first hard evidence tying Vernon Jarrett directly to the Communist Party. Frank Marshall Davis, incidentally was an official sponsor of American Youth for Democracy, along with confirmed communists Howard Fast, Langston Hughes, John Howard Lawson and Dirk Struik.

In April 1948, Frank Marshall Davis and Vernon Jarrett were working together as members of the publicity committee of the communist controlled Citizens’ Committee to Aid Packing-House Workers.

Besides Davis and Jarrett, communist officials of the strike committee included Oscar Brown (Treasurer), Louise Patterson (Assistant Treasurer) and Ishmael Flory (food & groceries committee).

Later that year, Frank Marshall Davis left Chicago for Hawaii to work on the Honolulu Record, then edited and run by Communist Party member Koji Ariyoshi.

A member of the “Dixie Mission” to Yenan, the HQ of the Chinese communist forces in the 1940s, Ariyoshi spent nearly two years in China as an officer of an all-Nisei psychological warfare unit. The unit’s job was to direct propaganda against the Japanese civilians and troops in China at the time.

Immediately after the war, Ariyoshi worked New York City with accused “Amerasia” spy John S. Service and Ed Rohrbough – who would become business manager of the Honolulu Record, in an effort to steer U.S. policy towards the Chinese Communists and against the Nationalists.

Ariyoshi also worked the Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy, whose board included two people later arrested during the famous “Amerasia” spy case, “Amerasia editors Philip J. Jaffe and Kate L. Mitchell.

Frank Marshall Davis was an active member of the Communist Party in Hawaii even after it went formally underground in 1950, when he assumed chairmanship of a tiny cell known as Group #10. Later Davis joined in the infiltration of the Hawaii Democratic Party, serving in 1950 as Assistant Secretary and Delegate to the Territorial Democratic Convention in his Precinct Club – Third Precinct of the Fifth District.

Davis was also later observed by the FBI on several occasions photographing remote shorelines and beachfronts, possibly for intelligence purposes. The FBI continued to monitor Davis into the 1960s and he was placed on the “Security Index.” This meant Davis was marked for immediate arrest should war break out between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

While the Communist Party in Hawaii faded into the Democratic party and the International Longshore Workers Union, there is no evidence that Frank Marshall Davis ever stopped being a communist. As late as 1973, three years after Davis met and began mentoring the 10 year old Barack Obama, he was still listed as an endorser of one of the party’s oldest fronts, the Committee for Protection of Foreign Born.

Also in 1948, Vernon Jarrett left his job as a journalist at the Chicago Defender to start a black oriented radio show: “Negro Newsfront” with comrade Oscar Brown. He also went on to become the Chicago Tribune’s first black syndicated columnist and was a founder of the leftist National Association of Black Journalists.

Jarrett became the first black syndicated op-ed columnist for the Chicago Tribune in 1970. Then in 1983, he moved to the Chicago Sun-Times as an op-ed columnist, later becoming a member of the paper’s editorial board, from which he retired in 1995.

While Jarrett worked his way to respectability, he still used his pen to support ”progressive” causes and politicians, including Chicago’s first black mayor Harold Washington, communist aligned US Senator Carol Moseley Braun and Barack Obama.

According to Vernon Jarrett’s Washington Post obituary of May 25th 2004:

Mr. Jarrett continually shone a light on African American history and pertinent issues in Chicago and throughout the country. He stoked the political embers in Chicago that led to the 1983 election of the city’s first African American mayor, Harold Washington.

Vernon Jarrett was aware of Barack Obama’s career from its early stages and became an influential supporter.

Commenting on the 1992 Moseley Braun Senate race, which Obama played a key role, Vernon Jarrett wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times of August 11th 1992:

Good news! Good news! Project Vote, a collectivity of 10 church-based community organizations dedicated to black voter registration, is off and running. Project Vote is increasing its rolls at a 7,000-per-week clip… If Project Vote is to reach its goal of registering 150,000 out of an estimated 400,000 unregistered blacks statewide, “it must average 10,000 rather than 7,000 every week,” says Barack Obama, the program’s executive director…

On Jarrett’s death, Dee Myles, the Chicago based chair of the Education Commission of the Communist Party USA, penned a tribute to Vernon Jarrett, for the Peoples Weekly World of June 5th, 2004, in which she invoked the names of Communist Party legend Paul Robeson – who reportedly advised Frank Marshall Davis to leave Chicago for Hawaii.

Readers like me can be extremely selective of the journalists we read habitually… We are selective about the journalists to whom we become insatiably addicted, and once hooked we develop a constructive love affair without the romance…

Such was my experience with Vernon Jarrett, an African American journalist in Chicago who died at the age of 86 on May 23. I became a Vernon Jarrett addict, and I am proud of it!

Jarrett’s claim to fame is that he was a partisan of the cause of African Americans in the broad democratic tradition of Paul Robeson…

On April 9th, 1998, at Chicago’s South Shore Cultural Center, Vernon Jarrett hosted a Paul Robeson Citywide Centennial Celebration event, with his old comrade and Party sympathizer Margaret Burroughs and former Party members Studs Terkel and old friend Oscar Brown.

Dee Myles went on to say:

Jarrett was fanatical about African Americans registering and voting in mass for socially conscious candidates. He championed Harold Washington like a great warrior, and this March, from his hospital bed, wrote an article appealing to Black Chicago to turn out to vote for Barack Obama in the Illinois primaries. Obama astounded everyone with an incredible landslide victory as the progressive, Black candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. From his sickbed, Vernon Jarrett issued a clarion call, and the people responded.

There is no doubt that the Illinois Communist Party saw the connections between the movement that elected Harold Washington and that which put Barack Obama in the US Senate.

Illinois Communist Party organizer John Bachtell covered a “Special District Meeting on African American Equality and Building the Communist Party and Young Communist League,” Chicago, IL September 30, 2007.

The legacy of Harold Washington’s election and his administration is in the collective consciousness not only of the African American community, but the entire city. Many of his democratizing achievements endure 20 years later.

The historic election of Washington was the culmination of many years of struggle. It reflected a high degree of unity of the African American community and the alliance with a section of labor, the Latino community and progressive minded whites. This legacy of political independence also endures…

This was also reflected in the historic election of Barack Obama. Our Party actively supported Obama during the primary election. Once again Obama’s campaign reflected the electoral voting unity of the African American community, but also the alliances built with several key trade unions, and forces in the Latino and white communities.

Communist Frank Marshall Davis worked closely with comrade Vernon Jarrett in 1940′s Chicago. Davis moved to Hawaii where he eventually met and mentored a young Barack Obama. Meanwhile Vernon Jarrett helped elect communist/socialist backed Harold Washington to the Chicago mayoralty. Washington’s victory inspired Barack Obama to move to Chicago, where his career was promoted by both Vernon Jarrett and the Communist Party.

Vernon Jarrett’s daughter-in-law Valerie Jarrett, worked for Harold Washington. Later she employed Barack Obama’s fiancee, Michelle Robinson, befriended the family and became one of President Obama’s most trusted advisers.

In Chicago and nationally, the Communist Party threw its entire weight behind Obama’s Senate and Presidential campaigns.

Is this is all mere coincidence?

More importantly, given the connections of Frank Marshall Davis and the Communist Party USA to Soviet networks of the time, are there serious security implications here?

A dumping ground for pork projects

A dumping ground for pork projects

The Senate is going to take up a bill tomorrow that fiscal conservatives need to be aware of.

It’s S. 782, the “Economic Development Revitalization Act of 2011″ We’ve issued a Key Vote Alert calling for a “NO” vote on S. 782.


This bill reauthorizes the US Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA), which costs $500 million a year, and has proven to be nothing more than a dumping ground for pork projects. Here’s just some of the wasteful projects that the EDA has spent our tax dollars on:

$120,000 to the Staten Island Economic Development Corporation, Inc., Staten Island, Richmond County, New York, to fund a feasibility study to determine best practices for establishing a “”green zone”" on an underutilized portion of industrial land on Staten Island’s western shore.
$600,000 to Operation HOPE, Inc. of Los Angeles, California, to fund the HOPE Financial Literacy Empowerment Center in Atlanta.
$500,000 to the Mexic-Arte Museum, Austin, Texas, to fund a feasibility study, design, and final plans and specifications of a LEED-certified museum building and headquarters for the Mexic-Arte Museum.
$1,638,799 to the New England Trade Adjustment Assistance Center, Inc., Lowell, Massachusetts, to fund the activities of the New England Trade Adjustment Assistance Center (TAAC) in Lowell, which serves firms located in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, to strengthen their competitiveness in the worldwide marketplace.
$2 million to the Water Works and Sewer Board of the City of Thomasville, Alabama, to fund the construction of core infrastructure improvements to the City of Thomasville’s water system.

If conservatives want to cut spending, then this dumping ground for pork projects sure seems like a good place to start.

Please join me in opposing S. 782.


Best,
Chris Chocola
President, Club for Growth

Abortion Biz Offers Free Pap Smear With Abortion Purchase

Abortion Biz Offers Free Pap Smear With Abortion Purchase
by Steven Ertelt | Orlando, FL | LifeNews.com | 6/6/11 3:42 PM

State

The All Women’s Health Center of Orlando, an abortion business, is taking couponing to a new, sick level by offering two coupons related to purchasing abortions.

One coupon has the Orlando clinic, one of a chain of abortion centers All Women’s operates throughout Florida, giving women a “Free Pap Smear” with the purchase of an abortion at both the Orlando and Tampa, Florida locations.

The offer is “not valid without web coupon being presented to receptionist at time of abortion” and each abortion patient may only use one coupon — meaning the approximately 40 percent of women obtaining repeat abortions may not receive a second free pap smear.

Meanwhile, All Women’s has a second coupon with a “Limited Time Offering” of $125.00 off or purchase of the abortion drug RU 486 (mifepristone). All Women’s advertises a typical fee of $350 for an abortion, meaning customers will receive approximately 35% off of the typical abortion cost.

Katie Pavlich of the conservative website TownHall noticed the coupon and responded, “This clinic is treating the abortion of a child as a sales pitch opportunity. Disgusting.”

The coupons and verbiage from All Women’s appears below. Pregnant women who need legitimate pregnancy support can find numerous Florida locations of pregnancy centers at http://www.PregnancyCenters.org

Free Pap Smear
with Abortion Procedure at All Women’s Health Center of Orlando, Inc. and All Women’s Health Center of Tampa, Inc.


One Coupon Per Patient

Offer not valid without web coupon being presented to receptionist at time of abortion.

Limited Time Offering $125.00 Off Abortion Pill (RU-486, Mifeprex, Mifepristone, medical abortion, chemical abortion or non-surgical abortion.


Abortion Fee – $ 350.00

Offer not valid without web coupon being presented to receptionist at time of abortion.

Government Won't Let Failure Stand In Way Of Its Expansion

Government Won't Let Failure Stand In Way Of Its Expansion
By THOMAS SOWELL

Two unrelated news stories on the same day show the contrast between government decisions and private decisions.

Under the headline "Foreclosed Homes Sell at Big Discounts," USA Today reported that banks were selling the homes they foreclosed on, at discounts of 38% in Tennessee to 41% in Illinois and Ohio.

Banks in general try to get rid of the homes they acquire by foreclosure, by selling them quickly for whatever they can get. Why? Because banks are forced by economic realities to realize that they are not real estate companies.

No matter how much expertise bank officials may have in financial transactions, that is very different from knowing the best ways to maintain and market empty houses.

Meanwhile, there was a story on the Fox News Channel about schools that are using their time to indoctrinate kindergartners and fourth graders with politically correct attitudes about sex.

Anyone familiar with the low standards and mushy notions in the schools and departments of education that turn out our public school teachers might think that these teachers would have all they can do to make American children competent in reading, writing and math.

Can't Ignore Basics

Anyone familiar with how our children stack up with children from other countries in basic education would be painfully aware that American children lag behind children in countries that spend far less per pupil than we do.

In other words, teachers and schools that are failing to provide the basics of education are branching out into all sorts of other areas, where they have even less competence.

Why are teachers so bold when banks are so cautious? The banks pay a price for being wrong. Teachers don't.

If banks try to act like they are real estate companies and hold on to a huge inventory of foreclosed homes, they are likely to lose money big time, as those homes deteriorate and cannot compete with homes marketed by real estate companies with far more experience and expertise in this field.

But if teachers fail to educate children, they don't lose one dime, no matter how much those children and the country lose by their failure. If the schools waste precious time indoctrinating children, instead of educating them, that's the children's problem and the country's problem, but not the teachers' problem.

Sex indoctrination is just one of innumerable "exciting" and "innovative" self-indulgences of the schools. There is no bottom-line test of what these boondoggles cost the children or the country.

Ruining Markets

Incidentally, conservatives who think that schools should be teaching "abstinence" miss the point completely. The schools have no expertise to be teaching sex at all. We should be happy if they ever develop the competence to teach math and English, so that our children can hold their own in international tests given to children in other countries.

Schools are just one of the government institutions that take on tasks for which they have no expertise or even competence.

Congress is the most egregious example. In the course of any given year, Congress votes on taxes, medical care, military spending, foreign aid, agriculture, labor, international trade, airlines, housing, insurance, courts, natural resources and much more.

There are professionals who have spent their entire adult lives specializing in just one of these fields. The idea that Congress can be competent in all these areas simultaneously is staggering.

Yet, far from pulling back — as banks or other private enterprises must, if they don't want to be ruined financially by operating beyond the range of their competence — Congress is constantly expanding further into more fields.

Having spent years ruining the housing markets with their interference, leading to a housing meltdown that has taken the whole economy down with it, politicians have now moved on into micro-managing automobile companies and medical care.

They are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And that is not going to happen until the voters recognize the fact that political rhetoric is no substitute for competence.

Obama Threatens to Cut Off Healthcare Funds to Indiana to Keep Taxpayer Cash Flowing Into Abortion Mill

Obama Threatens to Cut Off Healthcare Funds to Indiana to Keep Taxpayer Cash Flowing Into Abortion Mill
Written By : Dave Blount

Under gangster government, those states that do not advance the leftist agenda are not friends of Comrade Obama, and therefore must be punished. Arizona attempts to enforce federal law to slow down the demographic transformation of the Southwest into a Mexican slum; punished. South Carolina lets companies manufacture goods without excessive interference from unions; punished. Texas demonstrates how the economy would thrive if the government got out of the way; punished. Indiana votes to defund the highly lucrative yet taxpayer-subsidized abortion mill Planned Parenthood; punished:

The AP is reporting that the Obama administration may withhold up to $4.3 billion in Medicaid funding for low income healthcare from Indiana if they do not change their mind about defunding Planned Parenthood.

Mike Fichter, director Indiana Right to Life, remarks:

The Obama administration appears to be intent on trying to force Indiana to subsidize the business of abortion in direct contrast to the desires of the state legislature and the people of Indiana. Indiana must refuse to be bullied by the federal government and must challenge this politically-charged determination with full vigor. The state of Indiana has a right to determine how it will manage its Medicaid program and to select the providers it will partner with. Planned Parenthood is not entitled to public funding.

But by taking so much as a penny of their own money back from Washington, states sign a pact with the Devil. Every cent the federal leviathan spends buys more leverage to impose a depraved dystopia in which good people are forced to finance the brutal extermination of innocent life.

Obamunism means you pay for others to kill.

Pelosi, who failed to pass a budget, slams GOP for not passing a 'jobs' bill

Pelosi, who failed to pass a budget, slams GOP for not passing a ‘jobs’ bill

No wonder Nancy Pelosi remains so unpopular. She’s a truly dreadful woman. She blasted House Republicans for not passing a “jobs bill,” also known as another massive spending bill. She didn’t mention how she failed to pass a budget last year when she was speaker of the House.

The latest unemployment figures are “very disturbing,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said in an interview that aired today on “Face the Nation.” Yet while she defended President Obama’s attempts to move the economy forward, the former Speaker charged that House Republican leadership has yet to tackle job creation.

Republicans “set the agenda,” Pelosi said. “We have said every day that they’re there, another day goes by and there isn’t a jobs agenda or a jobs bill that has come to the floor.”

Surprisingly, Bob Schieffer asked her a tough question, and her answer was the typical spin.

“Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer questioned Pelosi about her complaints about the economy in 2008, under the Bush administration. At that time, when gas cost $3 a gallon and unemployment stood at 5 percent, Pelosi said President Bush’s economic policies had “failed our country’s middle class.”

The latest jobs report, however, shows that unemployment rose to 9.1 percent in May, and just 54,000 jobs were created last month – far fewer than expected.

“What the president has done has improved the situation from where it may have been,” Pelosi said. “If he hadn’t taken the actions he did, the situation would be worse. He pulled us from the brink of the financial crisis, from an economic crisis, and now we have to dig out of a deep debt. And we have to also make it clear that we’re not getting into this situation again.” …

How is 9.1% unemployment, plummeting housing values, and the skyrocketing cost of food and energy an improvement to the situation? Obama, with a lot of help from Pelosi, has made everything worse. And she wants more of the same. Insanity!

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) hit back today.

“We passed a budget that balances and pays off the debt,” Chaffetz said. “Until President Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi can produce a plan that they want to see, that will actually balance, then it’s very difficult to get through these discussions.”

Pelosi said Sunday on CBS that Democrats have been unable to bring employment legislation to the floor.

“We’re not in the majority in the House,” she said. “Why haven’t we brought something to the floor to create jobs? I think that’s a better question asked to the Republicans, because they control the agenda.”

“To hear her say she’s no longer speaker – that’s one of my favorite things in the world,” Chaffetz responded, before turning the blame game around and calling out Democrats for what he says is a failure of leadership.

“Let’s remember that the Democrats control the Senate – Harry Reid has refused to actually bring this up and deal with it,” he said. “We need the president to come to the table and say, this is what we would like to see, too, and thus far he hasn’t done it.”

Chaffetz also hinted that he may launch a primary run against Senator Orrin Hatch.

Update: Linked by the POH Diaries – thanks!

Twitter Predicts How Stocks Move 87.6% Of The Time

When a "Twitter hedge fund" was launched, we saw it as a bubble sign. But there seems to be something there.

A Cornell University study in the Journal of Computational Sciences used algorithms to track the "mood" of messages on Twitter and found that certain moods on Twitter correlate very nicely with the closing of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

"We find an accuracy of 87.6% in predicting the daily up and down changes in the closing values of the DJIA and a reduction of the Mean Average Percentage Error by more than 6%," the study says.

Don't get your hopes too up, however: as we know, correlation is not causation. While we're skeptical that "mood" on a global social network like Twitter can predict the movements of a specific index like the DJIA, it's certainly possible that some signals on Twitter can correlate with some stocks and other events. It's also the fastest way (probably even faster than a Bloomberg terminal) to track breaking news, which can have an impact on the stock market.

Dare we say StockTwits has found its business model?

According to the Washington Post/ABC News, Governor Palin Has More than Tripled Her GOP Primary Support from April

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll of Republican/Republican-leaning independents shows that support for the Governor has more than tripled since its last poll in April:

Romney 21% (16%)
Palin 17% (5%)
Rudy 8%
Paul 6% (2%)
Gingrich 6% (2%)
Cain 4%
Pawlenty 4% (1%)

The percentage of Republican and Republican-leaning independents who would “strongly consider” voting for her in the primary is equal to Romney’s percentage and over 60% of Republican and Republican-leaning independents would either strongly or somewhat consider voting for her, Rudy, and Romney in the primary.

Her qualified/unqualified number has also improved by a net fifteen points since a low in February of 2010. She still has a long way to go but at least we’re seeing progress.

MSNBC.com Accuses Walter Williams of Making Racist Statements on Fox's 'Stossel'

MSNBC.com Accuses Walter Williams of Making Racist Statements on Fox's 'Stossel'
By Noel Sheppard


MSNBC.com on Monday accused economist Dr. Walter Williams of making racist statements during his interview with Fox News's John Stossel last week.

The charge was associated with an "Ed Show" segment in which the host disgracefully cherry-picked one of Williams' comments about welfare and slavery (transcript and commentary):

ED SCHULTZ, HOST: And in Psycho Talk tonight, Rush Limbaugh’s favorite fill-in host Walter Williams. We welcome him to the zone tonight. He’s the perfect substitute for Limbaugh because last year he went on the radio and said he believes in keeping wives under control. But sexism isn’t all that he’s good at. Here’s what happened when Fox’s John Stossel put Walter on the TV this weekend.

JOHN STOSSEL: Government is like a giant drug pusher?

WALTER WILLIAMS, ECONOMIST: That's absolutely right. The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery could not have done, the harshest Jim Crow laws and racism could not have done, namely break up the black family.

SCHULTZ: Walter Williams should know better than to compare slavery and welfare. Slavery is perhaps the biggest stain on American history. It turned human beings into property. It doesn’t get much worse than that, does it? Meanwhile, welfare programs help American families survive when they’re destitute. Welfare helps folks meet their basic needs while they lift themselves up and get back on their feet. So for Walter Williams to say welfare has hurt black families more than slavery, pretty cruel psycho talk, don’t you think?

Actually, Williams didn't say "welfare has hurt black families more than slavery." He said, "The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery could not have done."

Why don't we see what Williams meant by this by looking at his complete answer.

STOSSEL: Government is like a giant drug pusher?

WILLIAMS: That's absolutely right. The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery could not have done, the harshest Jim Crow laws and racism could not have done, namely break up the black family. That is, today, just slightly over 30 percent of black kids live in two parent families.

Historically, from 1870s on up to about 1940s, and depending on the city, 75 to 90 percent of black kids lived in two parent families. Illegitimacy rate is 70 percent among blacks where that is unprecedented in our history.

Now, it's not just a matter of a racial thing, in Sweden is the mother of the welfare state and illegitimacy in Sweden is 54 percent.

STOSSEL: And why does a welfare state create illegitimacy?

WILLIAMS: Well, because, look, if you subsidize anything, you're going to get surpluses of it, and if you tax something you're going to get less of it. If you did not get welfare, then people would decide, I'm going to go out and get a job, I'm going to live more responsibly.

STOSSEL: I'm going to get married before I have children.

WILLIAMS: That's absolutely right.

STOSSEL: But the welfare state actually discouraged some men from marrying the woman, she would lose the check.

WILLIAMS: That's right, the government has said to many young women, I am the father. And so the father, black males, have become dispensable.

STOSSEL: Black illegitimacy was 19 percent in 1940, but it skyrocketed during the Great Society and now it's over 70 percent.

WILLIAMS: Yes, and that's a heck of a start in life, that is, to be born -- you don't know who or where your father is, that's not really great start in life.

Makes a little more sense with all of the actual data, doesn't it?

But the folks at MSNBC weren't done making fools of themselves, for at the website's video page for "The Ed Show," the following advertised the segment in question:

Not only did these geniuses wrongly accuse Williams of racism, they actually misspelled racist.

Sadly, this wasn't the only such baseless accusation at MSNBC Monday, for earlier in the day, Al Sharpton filling in for Cenk Uygur on "MSNBC Live" falsely pointed the finger of racism at just-named Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

It's really a fabulous news organization, isn't it?

Comcast, General Electric, and NBC must be so proud.

Al Sharpton: Rick Santorum is Racist for Saying 'America Was Great Before 1965 '

Al Sharpton: Rick Santorum is Racist for Saying 'America Was Great Before 1965'

By Noel Sheppard


As NewsBusters has been reporting for weeks, one of the goals of the Obama-loving media is to depict every possible Republican presidential candidate as racist.

On Monday's "MSNBC Live," substitute host Al Sharpton implied that newly announced candidate Rick Santorum was making a racist comment when he said at Saturday's Faith and Freedom Conference, "America was a great country before 1965" (transcript and commentary):

AL SHARPTON, SUBSTITUTE HOST: Santorum today said that America was great before 1965 in his announcement. I mean, what is he talking about? Was he talking about the Voting Rights Act?

PAT BUCHANAN: Who are you talking about?

SHARPTON: That’s what I remember happening in ’65 from my studies.

BUCHANAN: Who are you talking about? The Eisenhower and Kennedy, this was a magnificent, Al Sharpton. Did it have problems?

SHARPTON: Why did he use the year ’65? What signal is it sending?

BUCHANAN: Who are you talking about? Who used it?

SHARPTON: Rick Santorum has said America was great before ’65. What is the, what is the significance of '65? Is he sending a signal here?

BUCHANAN: I think in '65 is one of the years we really got ourselves deeply involved in Vietnam, the Democratic Party came apart and lost 47 seats

SHARPTON: Oh, so rick Santorum was attacking our involvement in Vietnam?

BUCHANAN: Well, I don't know what he was attacking, but why would you pick out the Voting Rights Act? You’re hung up on that stuff, Al.

SHARPTON: That's one of the great things that happened in '65 that he may have been referring to. Bill?

BILL PRESS: Al Sharpton, Al Sharpton, you know better than anybody what it was like particularly in the south of this country in 1965. But I think what it shows is what the Republicans mean when they say they want to take back America. Yeah, they want to take America back to 1965, if not to 1950 before Brown v. Board of Education.

You know what else happened of great significance in 1965? Medicare was created, and that's what Santorum was talking about.

As reported by Talking Points Memo Saturday:

Obama, Santorum said, thinks that it's the nation's safety net that helps to define America's greatness. This is an example of Obama missing the point about America's inherent exceptional nature, Santorum said. Social conservatives know that America had it goin' on before there was a social welfare system.

"There's one statement that everyone in this room should remember that the President of the United States says, that sums up how the President looks at America," Santorum said. "He said it about 6 weeks ago."

As TPM noted, this is what Obama said on April 13 in response to Congressman Paul Ryan's (R-Wisc.) budget proposal:

Part of this American belief that we are all connected also expresses itself in a conviction that each one of us deserves some basic measure of security. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff, may strike any one of us. "There but for the grace of God go I," we say to ourselves, and so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. We are a better country because of these commitments. I'll go further - we would not be a great country without those commitments.

Santorum said the following as a result:

He was talking about Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, and it was in response to the Ryan budget. And he said this, talking about these three programs: He said, "America is a better country because of these programs. I will go a one step further: America is a great country because of these programs." Ladies and gentlemen, America was a great country before 1965.

Did this have anything to do with the Voting Rights Act? Or Brown v. Board of Education? Or race?

Not at all, but that's the impression created by Sharpton and Press.

Now in reality, it took me about five seconds on Google to find what Santorum said Saturday as well as what he was referring to.

Do the folks at MSNBC lack the resources to uncover what prominent political officials are saying without so badly misrepresenting them absent any factual basis?

Is this really what qualifies as journalism at this so-called "news network?"

Are there any fact-checking standards at this organization anymore, or is all fair in love of Obama?

Valuing Seniors' Lives

Valuing Seniors' Lives


Posted 06/06/2011 07:03 PM ET

Reform: The administration's regulatory czar tries to disavow his statement that a program that saves young people is better than one that saves their parents and grandparents. It's called rationing, and its name is ObamaCare.

A commercial showing granny being pushed over a cliff by a person resembling Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was recently put out by the Agenda Project, implying that the Ryan budget will kill old people by changing Medicare.

For the sake of accuracy, granny should have been dispatched by a character resembling Cass Sunstein, President Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

The Ryan budget attempts to curb the explosive growth of entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security so they are there for granny without burdening the grandchildren with unconscionable debt. Sunstein, as was pointed out during congressional testimony last Friday, literally believes granny should be sacrificed in favor of the kids.

In testimony before the House energy and commerce subcommittees on oversight and investigations, the 56-year-old Sunstein tried to walk back comments he made in a 2003 paper, "Lives, Life-years, and Willingness to Pay," written while he was a professor at Obama's one-time home, the University of Chicago.

Rather than ensuring that everyone get the best care possible, Sunstein wrote that government should rely instead on the "value of a statistical life year" (VSLY), which would likely result in significantly lower benefit calculations for elderly people and significantly higher benefits for children.

Government would assign a dollar value to your life in terms of what it's worth, and if you exceeded that limit, well, too bad. Britain's National Health Service has a similar measure of cost-effectiveness called the "quality adjusted life year" to see if your life is worth saving.

In the paper, Sunstein said, "I urge that the government should indeed focus on statistical life years rather than statistical lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people." He added that under the VSLY approach, "Older people are treated worse for one reason, they are older. This is not an injustice."

It isn't? When the man who would provide input into the establishment of the Independent Payment Advisory Board that would supervise cost reductions for Medicare got caught for suggesting seniors are expendable, Sunstein said he was "not sure what I think about what that young man wrote." Sunstein was 48 at the time. As for being "not sure," we are talking about people's lives here, Mr. Sunstein.

Obama Economy Hits Young People the Hardest

Obama Economy Hits Young People the Hardest
Obama's economy is decimating the young generation's job market and robbing their futures.

The days of wearing an Obama t-shirt to a frat party might be over. According to The Atlantic, people age 19-29 are supporting Obama less than they were in 2008. Now only 56-percent of this voter group says they support President Obama, a drop of 10-percent. Informal surveys point the same direction, even more dramatically. The Daily Caller reports that only 27-percent of likely voters ages 18-28 say they are committed to vote for Obama again, down from the 83-percent that say they did vote for him.

Why the shift? Obama wants to tax and spend, leaving this young generation to pick up the slack. This is certainly a plausible answer. Let’s take a look at some of the ways in which Obama is hurting these young people.

DEBT: Obama has asked for a clean debt increase, meaning that the U.S. would continue to spend by borrowing the money. He doesn’t want to cut spending and doesn’t even seem willing to compromise. Borrowing these large amounts of money will only place harder and more severe debts on these people under 30. It is them, not the current maturing generation that make up most of the legislature and Obama’s administration, who will foot the bill.

TAXES: Obama, through an increase in government spending and because of a belief in redistribution of wealth has sought to raise taxes. He swears that he will not raise any form of taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year. Even if we assume that this statement is true (though it definitely isn’t), we must conclude that he is willing to raise taxes on the “wealthy.” But these are the people hiring. If business and personal taxes go up for the biggest earners, they will have less money to hire employees. This will decimate the job market for the younger generation even more than it will hurt the wealthy and middle class. These are the people seeking the minimum wage and starter jobs which will be most likely to be cut first. Already, the job market for under 30 year olds looks bleak, how much more can they take?

MEDISCARE: The recent strategy for Democrats, including many in Obama’s administration, is to paint Republicans as trying to destroy Medicare. They argue that because Paul Ryan’s plan would put some of the funds into private accounts, that it will rob seniors of their money and needed support (of course this is also false). But most people in this younger age bracket would love reform. Most of them do not believe that the benefits of Social Security or Medicare will be viable for them anyway. They are willing to try anything to put the authority and responsibility for their futures back into their own hands. Michele Bachmann is even advocating that the Ryan Plan be renamed the ‘Under 55 Plan.’ They are willing and ready for real change.

These are just a few of the reasons why this younger generation may be turning on Obama. They were promised hope and change and received dreary and worse. Obama is losing support and some of this is because he has taxed and spent through his young voter political capital.

Anti-Israel Protesters Reportedly Paid $1000 to Storm Across Israel Border

Posted by Jim Hoft

The Syrian opposition claims that the hundreds of protesters who tried to storm across the Israel border were paid $1,000 each by Assad’s regime.

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20 Syrians were killed during the border protests.
YNet News reported:

Protestors at northern border promised $1,000 reward by Assad’s regime, Reform Party of Syria claims; Israeli officials: Damascus encouraged rioters. Syria says IDF killed 23 people, wounded 350; army says figures inflated.

Protestors for hire? Demonstrators along the Syria-Israel border were paid thousands of dollars by President Bashar Assad’s regime to take part in Sunday’s riots, Syrian opposition activists charge.

Israeli officials later reinforced the claims, accusing the Syrian regime of encouraging protests along the northern border.

Sunday’s riots were an attempt “to divert attention away from the massacre in Syria,” one official charged. “The Syrians will be held accountable for these events.”

Late Sunday, Syrian officials claimed that 23 people were killed and 350 were wounded after the IDF fired at protestors aiming to rush the border fence earlier in the day. However, the army dismissed the figures, claiming that they were inflated.

Washington-based members of the Reform Party of Syria said intelligence sources close to the Syrian government in Lebanon informed them that the protesters on the Syrian side of the Druze community of Majdal Shams were in fact poverty-stricken farmers paid by the Assad regime.

CBSNEWS: Chronic unemployment worse than Great Depression

Chronic unemployment worse than Great Depression
The unemployed have, on average, remained unemployed longer than in the 1930s; Employers wary of job gaps in resumes
By Ben Tracy

(CBS News) There is an unfortunate adage for the unemployed: The longer folks are out of a job, the longer it takes them to find a new one.


CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy reports that the chronically unemployed face the hardest road back to recovery, and that while the jobs picture may be improving statistically on a national level, it is not for them.


Tinong Nwachan, for example, has far too much time on his hands. When CBS News met the former truck driver he had been out of work for two years.


"I don't really tell too many people this but I'm not ashamed or nothing, I'm homeless," Nwachan said.

Summer job bummer: Teen unemployment 24 percent
Nearly 14 million Americans are looking for work


His day job is looking for work at a jobs center in Hollywood. He has plenty of company, including Fabian Lambrecht, who wonders when the economy's improvement will affect them.


"They're saying there are more jobs. I'm just wondering where those jobs are," Lambrecht said.


About 6.2 million Americans, 45.1 percent of all unemployed workers in this country, have been jobless for more than six months - a higher percentage than during the Great Depression.


The bigger the gap on someone's resume, the more questions employers have.


"(Employers) think: 'Oh, well, there must be something really wrong with them because they haven't gotten a job in 6 months, a year, 2 years.' But that's not necessarily the case," said Marjorie Gardner-Cruse with the Hollywood Worksource Center.


The problem of course is the economy, but some industries, especially certain manufacturing jobs, are not ever expected to come back. Experts say unemployed workers need to be prepared to change careers.


"That person has to realize that, discover what field they want to work in, become trained and find a job in that field," said Jerry Nickelsburg, Sr., an economist at UCLA.


Here's another problem: more than 1 million of the long-term unemployed have run out of unemployment benefits, leaving them without the money to get new training, buy new clothes, or even get to job interviews.


"If you have been unemployed for 6 months or more, it takes a much deeper toll - not just on your personal finances and your career prospects - but on your emotional well-being," said Paul Taylor, an executive vice president with the Pew Research Center.


Tinong Nwachan said no matter how hard it's been, he isn't giving up on his search.


"I'm taking everything one day at a time. Eventually I know I'm gonna find something," Nwachan said.


All he says he's hoping for is a job that will take more of his time, and take him off the streets.

Six-Day-War Revisionist History

"The Jewish people has had to fight unceasingly to keep itself alive," says Israel's Premier Levi Eshkol. "Hopeful ever of redemption, we labored to return to the land of our fathers and to set foundations for the resurgence of an exiled folk. We made our arduous way to the shores of that land. We fought to open its gates to our brethren. We acted from an instinct to save the soul of a people."

Both the land and the soul of Israel are sorely tried. Last week, 19 years after the Diaspora dream of return to Zion became a reality in the first Jewish state in almost 2,000 years, Levi Eshkol and his people found themselves besieged and threatened as few nations have ever been in their history. Tiny, dagger-shaped Israel, whose 2,700,000 people cling to 7,993 sq. mi. on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, faced the implacable hostility and cocked guns of 14 Arab nations and their 110 million people. Its borders were ringed with Arab troops on all sides; its important sea access through the Gulf of Aqaba remained blocked by Egyptian mines and patrol boats.
Time Magazine June 9th 1967

Reading reports about the Six-Day-War from 44-years ago and comparing them to today reminds me of one of those Star Trek episodes where Kirk and the crew goes back in history and change the past---it seems like two different wars.

Forty-four years ago the reports spoke of the underdog Israel and her need to defend herself against the warlike acts of the big bullies lead by Egypt who was committing many acts that could be interpreted as acts of war including: conspiring with other belligerent countries for a coordinated attack (in this case, Syria and Jordan), closing Israel’s access to international waterways (the straits of Tiran), violating the terms of the 1956 armistice by re-militarizing the Sinai. Expelling the UN and USA peace-keeping troops form the Sinai, perpetrating illegal spy-plane fly-overs to reconnoiter Israeli sensitive areas and massing troops and tanks on Israel’s borders.

The United States tried to prevent the war through negotiations, but the other side did not want peace, The US could not persuade Nasser or the other Arab states to cease their belligerent statements and actions (back then they tried). So just like today, they warned Israel not to attack. Right before the war, President Johnson warned: “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone.” Then, when the war began, the State Department announced: “Our position is neutral in thought, word and deed.”

While the Arabs were falsely accusing the United States of airlifting supplies to Israel, Johnson imposed an arms embargo on the region (France, Israel’s other main arms supplier, also embargoed arms to Israel). By contrast, the Soviets were supplying massive amounts of arms to the Arabs. Simultaneously, the armies of Kuwait, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq were contributing troops and arms to the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian fronts.

Today, retrospectives tell a different story, the tale of the cynical Zionist nation whe saw an opportunity to deal a blow to the Arab nation, expand her territory, and rule over the Palestinian people. Some even say that maybe the Six Day War was not the best thing for Israel, "since it lead her to become the evil rogue nation she is today"

But there is one indisputable fact that today's revisionist historians keeps forgetting, if Israel didn't fight and win the Six Day War---there would be no Israel today. Just as if Israel doesn't protect herself from the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah today--there will be no Israel in 44 years.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Israel offered to give everything except Jerusalem back in exchange for peace. Rather than respond to Israel’s invitation, the Arab states met in Khartoum, Sudan, for a conference in August, 1967. They unanimously decided in favor of the now famous three "NOs," better that Israel hold on to the territories taken in the war. Better that the refugees continue languishing in their squalor and misery. Better that the Arab states re-arm for another war…than to recognize Israel’s right to exist or negotiate toward a peaceful settlement of the conflict. For most of the Middle East, the rule is still the three "NOs": No recognition, No negotiation, No peace.

On 6/5/1967, in a pre-dawn raid, Israeli jets destroyed almost all the fighter planes of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq before their pilots could get them off the ground. With most of their air forces a smoldering wreck, the Arabs had lost the war almost as soon as it had begun. Arab armor without air cover was destroyed by Israeli planes; and Arab infantry without armor was no match for the Israeli land forces. In six days, Israel re-gained the Sinai, drove the Jordan Legion from the West Bank, and took control of the Golan Heights within artillery range of Damascus. Suddenly there was a new order in the Middle East.

Israel had done much more than is generally acknowledged to avoid this war. It struck only after working for weeks under threat of annihilation to exhaust all reasonable diplomatic channels, and after begging the Arab states to honor their cease-fire agreements. But even more compelling, unnoticed by many but thoroughly documented in diplomatic archives is the communication between the Israeli government and King Hussein of Jordan. On Tuesday, June 5, several hours AFTER the Jordan Legion had begun its bombardment of Jerusalem and Petakh Tikvah, Israel sent a message via the Rumanian Embassy to King Hussein. The message was short and clear: stop the bombardment now and we will not invade the West Bank.

But King Hussein had already received a phone call from Nasser. This call was monitored by the Israeli Secret Service. Even though he knew that his air force was in ruins, Nasser told Hussein that Egyptian planes were over Tel Aviv and his armor was advancing on Israeli positions. Hussein believed him, and disregarded Israel’s plea. Had Hussein listened to Israel, the West Bank would still be in Jordanian hands. Instead, he sent his troops into the Israeli section of Jerusalem. Only AFTER its territorial integrity in Jerusalem was violated did Israel mount an assault on the Jordanian West Bank.

A few days after the UN cease fire of 6/11/67, Abba Eban, Israel’s representative at the UN, made his famous speech. He held out the olive branch to the Arab world, inviting Arab states to join Israel at the peace table, and informing them in unequivocal language that everything but Jerusalem was negotiable. Territories taken in the war could be returned in exchange for formal recognition, bi-lateral negotiations, and peace.

Some wonder if peace could ever happen in the holy land. The Arabs have seen Israel prosper on soil from which they barely scratched a living when they had it. If you have ever stood within Israel looking out into the Palestinian territories the border between the two is very obvious. On the Israeli "side of the line" the ground is lined with lush green trees, however the other side is parched land.

To the Arab States, Israel's success is not only a blow to their pride but a constant rebuke to the dismal poverty in which most of the Arab world lives, that's why Israel is so hated.

Unpaid Army of Obama Zombies to Be Unleashed: 'As Summer Organizers, We're the Face of the President'

They might want to get used to not being paid. If this economy gets any worse these schlubs won't be finding any paying jobs.
A legion of 1,600 newly-recruited Democratic campaign volunteers, armed with Tweet-producing smartphones and a contagious spirit of enthusiasm, are fanning out across 40 states today to begin laying the groundwork for the reelection of President Barack Obama.
Armed??? Isn't that dangerous talk in this new age of civility and moderation?
The forces -- college students, recent graduates, teachers, and retirees -- will work unpaid through August, aides say, to grow and re-energize Obama's grassroots volunteer network that had remarkable success in 2008, and gather troves of voter data in the process.

Obama campaign managers hope the effort will give the president something of a head start over his yet-to-be-determined Republican rival, in what is expected to be a tough campaign.

The operation kicked-off Saturday at boot-camp-style training sessions held jointly by the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee in conference rooms and community centers across the country.

ABC News received exclusive access to one of the two-day sessions held at DNC headquarters, where 15 volunteers received a briefing on campaign strategies and ground operations for the summer ahead.

"As summer organizers, we're the face of the president," Jenn Brown, a DNC staffer leading the training, told attendees. "So, whether it's here or in our lives, we represent the president 24 hours a day, and that's a really big responsibility we take on."
If they're going to the the face of Obama, they want want to start working on their putting game.
Over coffee and bagels, sub sandwiches and pizza -- which Brown called "the diet of an organizer" -- the recruits shared personal stories, flipped through glossy official instruction manuals and studied up on the Obama's first term with a game of "POTUS Accomplishments Jeopardy."
I'll take Miserable Failure for $200, Alex!

On the upside, one of these zombies is already used to losing.
Sam Polstein, 20, a junior at the University of Wisconsin, said he was inspired to become an organizer after witnessing the union protests in Madison earlier this year.

"It was kind of a big moment in my life," he said. "It didn't really inspire me to work toward some particular policy goal as much as it inspired me towards a motivation to work harder for families and workers in general."

A Symbol of Obama's Hostility to a United Jerusalem

A Symbol of Obama’s Hostility to a United Jerusalem
Jonathan S. Tobin 06.05.2011 - 10:12 AM

The Obama administration notified Congress late on Friday that, once again, it is not moving the United States Embassy to the state of Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Although Congress mandated that the embassy be moved to the city that is actually
Israel’s capital in 1995, it included a waiver that allows the law to be flouted if the president believed America’s national security interests are at stake. Such waivers have been invoked every six months since the law’s passage and they have usually been sent out on Friday afternoons so as to limit news coverage of the decision.

But while the waivers promulgated by both the Clinton and Bush administrations always noted that the embassy might be moved at some point in the future, Obama has never even sought to sweeten this bitter pill to friends of Israel with even such a vague promise.

The question of moving the embassy is something of a chestnut for both the pro-Israel community and American politicians. Everyone knows that no American president would have the guts to acknowledge reality and, at least, recognize West Jerusalem (the part of the city that was not illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967). The Arab and Muslim world be very mad. But the sheer irrationality of America’s refusal to do so has always infuriated friends of Israel and often gave those who wished to pander to them an opportunity to grandstand.

That was exactly the purpose of the law that Obama just bypassed. It was sponsored by then Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, a politician who had never previously shown much interest in Israel. In 1995 he was preparing for his futile run for the presidency the following year, so it made sense for him to pretend as if he cared about Jerusalem. But the law, which was welcomed by pro-Israel activists at the time, did nothing to move the embassy. And the ritual of the waiver, which presidents of both parties have regularly invoked, has actually dampened support for the idea since advocacy for the move is seen as transparently cynical.

In spite of all that, President Obama has infused some life into the issue. His decision to speak of Jewish neighborhoods in the city as “settlements” that must be frozen and his insistence on using the 1967 lines as the starting point for future negotiations as opposed to Bush’s frank acknowledgment that those neighborhoods and the surrounding settlement blocs will always be part of Israel, has put the status of Jerusalem back on the political front burner. The applause from the Palestinian Authority for Obama’s decision on the embassy illustrates the way his stand has encouraged Arab intransigence on the issue. While both Clinton and Bush gave us the impression that they would like to move the embassy after the signing of a theoretical peace treaty with the Palestinians, Obama’s attitude is far more negative. America’s stubborn refusal to move its embassy has always been an obstacle to peace. But under Barack Obama, it is also a symbol of his administration’s hostility to a united Jerusalem.

Obama's Commerce Nominee Wants to Limit Energy Consumption and Redistribute Wealth

June 6, 2011
Obama's Commerce Nominee Wants to Limit Energy Consumption and Redistribute Wealth
Chuck Roger



The wise man smiled and proclaimed that government should use "regulatory steps" as well as market forces to intervene in the power generation sector. The man also told his UC Berkeley audience that government should set higher targets for non-fossil-fuel-based energy production and penalize producers that don't comply. The issuer of these decrees was John Bryson, who at the time just happened to be CEO of Edison International, a company whose fortunes would increase under alternative energy mandates. Bryson now happens to be President Obama's nominee to head the Commerce Department. Just another day in Barack Obama's crony capitalist paradise.

Mr. Bryson is a progressive, a member of that species of critter that favors government intervention to force "society" to adhere to policies that know-it-alls deem best. In textbook progressive style, as a prescription for stopping people in undeveloped countries from clearing forests, Bryson proclaimed to a 2009 UN energy conference that "we've got to... find ways to map out the affected lands, to develop plans for addressing them, find economic models in which the people who are driven to do these things to try to raise the livelihoods of their families, find alternative means." [Awkward wording reproduced as is.]

Global wealth redistribution, pure and simple.

Who are the "we" in "we've got to" stop people from cutting down trees? Who will take on the omniscient central planning role, the duty to "find economic models" for lifting the world's poor out of poverty? Asking such questions is no longer even necessary. The answers are always the same. Bryson sees himself as a member of a higher echelon of humans, the world's elite thinkers, people whom economist-philosopher Thomas Sowell calls "the anointed."[i]

Bryson is a perfectly natural pick to run Commerce for a Barack Obama whose worldview epitomizes the vision of the anointed. No one in human history has made the socialistic central planning model work. Every time the socioeconomic visions of anointed ones have been tried, misery has been the result. But Barrack will change all that.

The UN, "renewable energy" companies like Edison, people like Bryson, and Bryson's champion, Barack Obama, lay claim to the all-knowingness required to buck the trend, beat the odds, and make the impossible possible. Using methods that have repeatedly built living hells, the Obamas, Brysons, and other elitist-corporatist-clueless visionaries of the new reality will fashion a wind-powered, emerald-forested, chicken-in-every-pot utopian paradise.

US Economic "Surprise" Factor Plunges By Most Since 2009

US Economic "Surprise" Factor Plunges By Most Since 2009

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/06/2011 08:57 -0400


The below chart from SocGen demonstrates why the stock market, unlike bonds, is currently massively overpriced. The current economic surprise factor swing, from an all time record at +100 recently, down to about -100 (the third lowest in the past 5 years, and likely longer), a 200 point swing which only compares to the 2008-2009 Lehman collapse, was accompanied by just a 15% drop in stocks over the past 8 months, indicates two things: either the current "soft patch" is indeed "transitory" as the Fed would like us to believe, or that the market is pricing in QE 3. And while SocGen, which is the source of this chart, believes that the collapse is indeed "transitory" we completely fail to see what the factor will be that will push the global economy higher in Q3 and onward: Japan? Europe? Fiscal generosity in the US? China? No, no, no and no. Sorry, there is no catalyst that will provide an impetus for a hockey stick effect this time around. Except, of course, for more monetary easing, perhaps in Japan, but mostly in the US. Yet for that to happen, as we have been claiming for nearly half a year, stocks will need to plunge to their pre-QE2 levels, or about 900. Alas, the mutual funds which currently hold the lowest amount of cash in history, and are levered more than ever, are simply unable to sell without blowing themselves up. We are confident, more than ever, that an unstoppable desire for extend and pretend is about to hit an immovable force...

From SocGen:

Slowdown driving yields lower, but double dip clearly not priced in. 10-year Treasury yields are back below 3.0%, as those – like us – who had a small bearish bias into the end of QE2 continue to be frustrated. There is little doubt that increased EMU have supported some flight-to-quality flows into Treasuries. The Greek 5-year CDS has widened by some 500bp over the past 2.5 months (a 50% increase). However, the prominent driver remains the economy, which has delivered sharp negative surprises over the past three months. The consistent and large positive US economic surprises at the turn of the year have reversed sharply. If anything, despite the help from EMU jitters and other signs of reversed exuberance (e.g. Chinese equity market at a 4-month low) 10-year Treasuries have struggled to keep pace with the poor data (Graph 1).


The Fed told us at the 27 April FOMC that the Q1 slowdown was transitory. Well, the transition has grown a bit long, with Q2 showing little bounce so far from the soft 1.8% growth seen in H1. Admittedly, we have seen more transitory negative forces at play; in particular the Japanese disaster has disrupted the global supply chain. Let’s make no mistake, however, the market has priced the slowdown as being a temporary phenomenon. Graph 1 suggests that yields might have fallen much more otherwise. Equally, the S&P has erased just 15% of the gains made in the eight months to late April. Global markets are clearly not pricing a double dip just yet. In a double-dip scenario, QE3 would be on the table, which would feed the Treasury rally.

Our economists certainly are in the ‘transitory slowdown’ camp and are looking for a bounce in Q3. Sentiment should start to improve by mid-June, when the first manufacturing reports for this month are due. This improvement in sentiment would coincide with the end of QE2 by late June, adding pressure on Treasuries.

In the meantime the pain trade is for Treasury prices to crawl higher as the TYU1 closes the gap to 124-02 (see technical analysis section). There is little data to turn sentiment in the coming week, once the NFP report is out of the way. The 3-, 10- and 30-year Notes need to be digested though. Note that the PBoC may deliver another rate hike ahead of the June 6 holiday as it fights inflation (our economists predict a hike this month), and this could add to global growth concerns.

Obama Fed Board Nominee Peter Diamond Discovers His Nobel Prize In Economics Is Worthless, Pulls Nomination In Disgust

In a move that is sure to send the infamous Fed "economist" (Ph.D., never forget) Kartik Athreya over the edge, Obama's nominee for the Fed Board, after unsuccessfully trying to enter the one circle that is just less exclusive than the Goldman partnership ranks for over a year, has decided to pen an Op-Ed in the NYT titled "When a Nobel Prize Isn't Enough", and disgusted with the fact that his utterly worthless Nobel prize in something or another can't even buy him one seat with those who decide the price of money, has pulled his nomination in utter disgust. "Last October, I won the Nobel Prize in economics for my work on unemployment and the labor market. But I am unqualified to serve on the board of the Federal Reserve — at least according to the Republican senators who have blocked my nomination. How can this be? " How indeed: could it be that, gasp, Nobel awards are merely a honorary award in groupthink, presented to anyone who perpetuates the status quo with little regard for actual merit-based contribution (one needs only recall Obama's Peace prize just as the President is contemplating opening up a 4th, or is that 5th, war front?). Most importantly: nobody tell Krugman his one validation of his life's work, has just been downgraded to junk.

When a Nobel Prize Isn’t Enough

By PETER A. DIAMOND

Lexington, Mass.

LAST October, I won the Nobel Prize in economics for my work on unemployment and the labor market. But I am unqualified to serve on the board of the Federal Reserve — at least according to the Republican senators who have blocked my nomination. How can this be?

The easy answer is to point to shortcomings in our confirmation process and to partisan polarization in Washington. The more troubling answer, though, points to a fundamental misunderstanding: a failure to recognize that analysis of unemployment is crucial to conducting monetary policy.

In April 2010, President Obama nominated me to be one of the seven governors of the Fed. He renominated me in September, and again in January, after Senate Republicans blocked a floor vote on my confirmation. When the Senate Banking Committee took up my nomination in July and again in November, three Republican senators voted for me each time. But the third time around, the Republicans on the committee voted in lockstep against my appointment, making it extremely unlikely that the opposition to a full Senate vote can be overcome. It is time for me to withdraw, as I plan to inform the White House.

The leading opponent to my appointment, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the committee, has questioned the relevance of my expertise. “Does Dr. Diamond have any experience in conducting monetary policy? No,” he said in March. “His academic work has been on pensions and labor market theory.”

But understanding the labor market — and the process by which workers and jobs come together and separate — is critical to devising an effective monetary policy. The financial crisis has led to continuing high unemployment. The Fed has to properly assess the nature of that unemployment to be able to lower it as much as possible while avoiding inflation. If much of the unemployment is related to the business cycle — caused by a lack of adequate demand — the Fed can act to reduce it without touching off inflation. If instead the unemployment is primarily structural — caused by mismatches between the skills that companies need and the skills that workers have — aggressive Fed action to reduce it could be misguided.

In my Nobel acceptance speech in December, I discussed in detail the patterns of hiring in the American economy, and concluded that structural unemployment and issues of mismatch were not important in the slow recovery we have been experiencing, and thus not a reason to stop an accommodative monetary policy — a policy of keeping short-term interest rates exceptionally low and buying Treasury securities to keep long-term rates down. Analysis of the labor market is in fact central to monetary policy.

Senator Shelby also questioned my qualifications, asking: “Does Dr. Diamond have any experience in crisis management? No.” In addition to setting monetary policy in light of a proper understanding of unemployment, the Fed is responsible for avoiding banking crises, not just trying to mop up afterward.

Among the issues being debated now is how much we should increase capital requirements for banks. Selecting the proper size of the increase requires a balance between reducing the risk of a future crisis and ensuring the effective functioning of financial firms in ordinary times. My experience analyzing the properties of capital markets and how economic risks are and should be shared is directly relevant for designing policies to reduce the risk of future banking crises.

Instead of going to the Fed, however, I will go about my congenial professional existence as a professor at M.I.T., where I have taught and researched since 1966, and I will take advantage of some of the many opportunities that come to a Nobel laureate. So don’t worry about me.

But we should all worry about how distorted the confirmation process has become, and how little understanding of monetary policy there is among some of those responsible for its Congressional oversight. We need to preserve the independence of the Fed from efforts to politicize monetary policy and to limit the Fed’s ability to regulate financial firms.

Concern about the (seemingly low) current risk of future inflation should not erase concern about the large costs of continuing high unemployment. Concern about the distant risk of a genuine inability to handle our national debt should not erase concern about the risk to the economy from too much short-run fiscal tightening.

To the public, the Washington debate is often about more versus less — in both spending and regulation. There is too little public awareness of the real consequences of some of these decisions. In reality, we need more spending on some programs and less spending on others, and we need more good regulations and fewer bad ones.

Analytical expertise is needed to accomplish this, to make government more effective and efficient. Skilled analytical thinking should not be drowned out by mistaken, ideologically driven views that more is always better or less is always better. I had hoped to bring some of my own expertise and experience to the Fed. Now I hope someone else can.

Peter A. Diamond is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Film review: The Undefeated

The Undefeated gives audiences a lengthy look at the case for Sarah Palin as a substantive reformer in politics. The film introduces itself as “inspired by” Palin’s memoir Going Rogue, and it clearly follows the narrative of the book to walk audiences from Palin’s working-class roots as a young mother to her rise to the political major leagues. The substantive message of The Undefeated succeeds in demonstrating that Palin is no “Caribou Barbie,” as filmmaker Stephen Bannon told the Daily Caller, but that she is a serious reformer and tough, accomplished politician. Unfortunately, the message gets somewhat buried by Bannon’s chaotic and distracting soundtrack, and a visual style much more suited to campaign ads than longer-form filmmaking.

On substance, the material is both compelling and detailed. Bannon spends the first 90 minutes of the film on Palin’s accomplishments in Alaska, especially focusing on energy policy and government reform — which in Alaska are necessarily linked to each other. For those unfamiliar with the specifics of Palin’s records as Wasilla’s mayor and Alaska’s governor, The Undefeated provides the background context for fights against the political establishment and oil-industry lobbyists that funded it. In some ways, the early part of the film makes a case for Palin the moderate, as a pragmatist less interested in ideology than in results.

The remainder of the film briefly addresses Palin’s 2008 vice-presidential campaign, but mainly focuses on her post-campaign career. The film argues, effectively, that political opponents implemented a strategy against Palin to bankrupt her with legal bills from defending herself from frivolous ethics complaints, and explains her decision to resign. If Palin chooses to run for higher office now or in the future, she has to make the case that resignation was her only option, both personally and politically, and the film takes enough time to demonstrate the trap in which Palin found herself in 2009.

Finally, the film addresses the rise of the Tea Party as an organic movement, inspired by a rant from Rick Santelli, and Palin’s ascendency in it. The film’s first 90 minutes provide the necessary context to understand how natural a fit Palin was for that role. She started her career as an ordinary citizen motivated to reform government and make it work for taxpayers rather than entrenched elites. Her success in inspiring voters to turn out Democrats in Washington proved her power in 2010, and the “coda” to the film — titled “Children of the Revolution” — compares her explicitly to Ronald Reagan as a transformative political figure.

Clearly, the film is not intended as an arms-length documentary, and shouldn’t be evaluated in that sense. Bannon obviously wants to make an impassioned argument in The Undefeated for Palin as a serious candidate, and the substance of the film makes a good case. It doesn’t do so through Michael Moore-like editing traps of interviews, but through a building an argument on the merits of Palin’s record, primarily in the first 90 minutes.

Unfortunately, much about the film distracts from Bannon’s argument. It’s a terribly flawed film, especially in its sound editing. The soundtrack music frequently battles the narration and interviews, much too loud throughout almost all of the film. Most of the music itself is simply unpleasant, a cacophonous blend of bad orchestration in some areas, annoying techno in others, and operatic arias mixing with military music towards the end. It’s almost impossible to get focused on the substance when the music repeatedly intrudes on interviews and narration to the point where the viewer has to consciously try to ignore it. At some points, the person talking in the film can’t be heard.

The visual presentation is almost as bad, although I’ll admit I’m no fan of quick-edit style anyway; those who do like it will not be as bothered as I was by it. The visual style is more suited to one-minute, quick-cut campaign spots than a film that lasts for more than two hours. People who appear in the film as commentators, like Mark Levin, Andrew Breitbart, Tammy Bruce, and Meghan Stapleton, have their images jumping around on screen constantly, changing from straightforward color to overexposed monochrome and back again, against harsh white backgrounds. The clip choices were strange, especially for a documentary, regardless of editing style. Interesting archive footage featuring Palin alternates with stock nature footage, acted vignettes such as sand being shoveled onto someone’s face on a beach, artistic representations of cigar-chomping politicians in back rooms, lions taking down a zebra and munching on it for dinner, and so on. I’d guess the average shot length has to be somewhere around three or four seconds. It reminded me of the cable-TV series Dream On, and not in a good way. Like the soundtrack, the overall effect is decidedly unpleasant.

Much has been made of the film’s length. If the other technical issues didn’t distract from the message, the running time might not be much of a problem, but as it is, only those who already passionately support Palin are likely to stick around for the whole movie — most of whom already know the background from Going Rogue. Those who work past the distractions will get a good sense of Palin’s track record, accomplishments, and political sense, but the very people Bannon might want to reach with The Undefeated will probably not give it a chance to make its case.

Matt Lewis gave The Undefeated a good review yesterday for the Daily Caller and Jim Geraghty did likewise for National Review, while the New York Post’s Kyle Smith ripped it to shreds. Put me in the middle; I’m with Matt and Jim on the substance, and with Smith on the presentation. The message and the argument are well-made, but the film itself is too frustrating to focus on either. In better hands, The Undefeated might have been a powerful force to reconnect Palin skeptics to the gutsy suburban mom turned fearless reformer we met in 2008, and it’s an opportunity missed.

Update: I’ve been asked by a couple of people on e-mail and in the comments whether this was a rough cut or the final edition. This was a rough cut, but it’s also the cut they’ve sent to screeners and critics, so it can’t be far off from what they intend. Maybe they will re-edit this, or at least the soundtrack, before its theatrical release.

Progressive Democrats Of America Endorses New Flotilla Against Israel

Yup, you read that title correctly. The Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) are endorsing the Hamas Flotilla II, which is set to launch June 20th 2011.

The following elected Democrats and radical organizers sit on the board of the Progressive Democrats of America:

John Conyers
Donna Edwards
Raul Grijalva
Barbara Lee
Jim McGovern
Lynn Woolsey
Dennis Kucinich

The following resolution in support of the coming Hamas Flotilla 2 is buried on the website of the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA):

Resolution in Support of U.S. Aid Ship The Audacity of Hope

RESOLVED – We, the membership of Progressive Democrats of America, by democratic and representational vote, hereby affirm our support and endorsement of the U.S. aid ship The Audacity of Hope, due to set sail for Gaza in October of this year, as an expression of our insistence that Israel meet its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and end its occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands. As peace and justice advocates, PDA considers it our obligation not only to criticize immoral and illegal acts, but to back up that criticism with action.

CodePink is organizing the American front of the coming Hamas Flotilla 2.

CodePink sits on the board of the Progressive Democrats of America.

Progressive Democrats of America officially supports the American front of the coming Hamas Flotilla 2.

Would any of the above elected officials like to comment on the record regarding PDA support of the Flotilla movement?

Are there any Jewish elected officials out there who would like to comment on this??

Are there any Israel supporting elected officials of any stripe that would like to comment on this?

Here is a list of Americans who will be on the US boat named “The Audacity of Hope” The list includes at least one board member of the Progressive Democrats of America.

Obama Schedule: Monday, June 6, 2011

Obama Schedule || Monday, June 6, 2011

by Keith Koffler on June 5, 2011, 9:59 pm

10:00 am || Meets with national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan; Situation Room
Noon || Is interviewed by Hearst DC Bureau, WEWS Cleveland and WDIV Detroit about the auto industry turnaround; Eisenhower Executive Office Building

Live Stream of Carney briefing at 1:30
All times Eastern