There is an old expression, I have no idea where it came from, that, “When America has a strong President, the world is a safer place.”  Right now, America has a popular President, but a President who is not seen as a strong President by the world.   There are dangers to having a president who is considered weak by our enemies.  Russians in the 1960’s perceived John Kennedy as being weak and gave us the Cuban missle crisis as a result of that belief,  Al Qaeda perceived Bill Clinton as a weak President in the 1990’s and bombed embassies, the World Trade Center, and the USS Cole without fearing serious payback.  Now we are seeing some of the result of the world’s evaluation of the Obama Presidency.

It was not widely reported in the American news, but according to the American Thinker:

It is somewhat alarming that President Barack Obama sent heavily armed destroyers to the scene of the naval standoff between the US and China at the weekend and very few of our news outlets covered it.  It was mentioned on Fox News and in the Washington Post, but the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times did not bother to report it.  If you are looking for details of the confrontation, I suggest the foreign press links cited in the American Thinker article.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Russia is talking about putting bomber bases in Venezuela and Cuba.  This is being reported at Breitbart.com.  I believe this is contrary to the principle of American foreign policy laid out in President James Monroe’s message to Congress on December 2, 1823, (the Monroe Doctrine) calling for an end to European intervention in the Americas.  The Monroe Doctrine was cited during the Cuban Missle Crisis as one of the reasons Russia had to remove its missles from Cuba.  It will be interesting to see if President Obama is willing to uphold this doctrine. 

Just for the record, on October 28, 1962, Khrushchev agreed to Kennedy’s demands to withdraw the missiles, after Kennedy promised not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly undertook to dismantle US missile bases in Turkey (a US ally that bordered the USSR). However, this was not made public, so most Americans believed that the USSR was forced to back down solely because of US military pressure. On November 2, 1962, Kennedy announced that Soviet missile bases in Cuba were being dismantled.  Because Khrushchev considered Kennedy a weak President, Russia could not be forced to withdraw its missles unless we dismantled our US missle bases in Turkey.  This is what happens when the world perceives the American President as weak.  Some of Europe may not have liked George Bush, but at least his strength kept us all safe.

There are more pictures at Pajamas Media (Instapundit)

This may be the start of something big!

According to theWall Street Journal, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and  Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank are discussing how to link Wall Street pay to the long-term performance of the firms.  Wait a minute!  Why in the world would anyone in government have any control over what a private citizen receives in pay or bonuses?  This sort of discussion is the reason many of the banks that took TARP money are planning to give it back very quickly and refusing to take any more!  The government has no business setting salary or bonus rules–that’s why banks and corporations have stockholders.  They are set in place to scream if they see things getting out of hand.  Just a note here, the ‘greedy’ people on Wall Street did not cause the financial collapse.

The economic meltdown actually began in 1977 with the Community Reinvestment Act signed by Jimmy Carter.  The intentions were honorable, but the CRA required banks to invest in poor urban areas, regardless of whether or not the investments would be paid back.  In 1995, Bill Clinton strengthened the CRA requiring banks to provide loans to poorer communities, also allowing community action groups (e.g. ACORN) to intervene at annual bank reviews.  Attorney General Janet Reno made it clear that she would file lawsuits if the ‘fair lending initiative’ was not followed.  This is the root of the problem.  The banks were forced into making loans they knew were no good.  The banks had to find a way to get rid of ‘questionable’ paper, so they mixed it in with ‘good’ paper and sold it.  The investments into this paper were speculative but gave good returns for a while (ask Iceland).  When this house of cards finally fell, it fell hard.  The alarms put out by the Bush administration about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were ignored because the Congressmen on the committees handling these matters were up to their necks in sweetheart mortgages and other entanglements, so nothing was done.  Meanwhile, there is a bumper sticker out that says, “Honk if I’m paying your mortgage!”.  This is not a funny situation–it’s serious, but propping up people who made irresponsible choices will not solve the problem.  We have forgotten the free market and we need to get back to it.  We also need to remember the concept of charity–if there is anyone around us who needs a small helping hand at this moment–not a government hand–a personal hand, we need to be there with a bag of groceries or a word of encouragement.

As we approach April 15th, all of us groan a little bit as we pay our taxes.  There is, however, some small comfort in the fact that we are all in the same boat and we all have to pay them.  Or so we thought until recently.  I’m not going to go through the list of President Obama’s appointments with tax problems (other than to say that it seems as if the way to collect delinquent taxes is just to nominate everyone you know for a cabinet position–although some of us have a majority of friends who actually pay their taxes), but it does seem like paying taxes is optional to some people (or so they think).  Anyway, here comes another one.

According to the New York Post, Democratic Representative Eliot Engel, who represents the Bronx, has listed a house in Potomac, Maryland as his primary residence on Maryland property tax forms for at least 10 years, netting nearly $7,000 in credits over the past four years.  According to the rules set forth in the state of Maryland, the Engels do not qualify as residents because they both have New York driver’s licenses and New York voter registration cards.  Most of us who live in high tax states would love to buy a house in East Overshoe somewhere that has no state income tax and claim residence there, but we don’t have the means or the dishonesty to do it.  Obviously this Congressman had no such limitations.

According to the Washington Times, Democrats in Congress put a provision in the stimulus bill that eliminated a law requiring that workers on federal contracts prove they are citizens or legal residents of the United States.  According to the article:

“The eliminated provision includes a program called “E-verify” that allows employers to quickly access federal databases to check the legal status of workers – all but avoiding the risk that forged documents will fool an innocent employer into hiring an illegal.”  

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, some 300,000 construction jobs will likely go to illegal aliens.  This may provide a cheap labor pool, but it is not healthy for the American economy in the long term–it increases unemployment and deflates wages in general. 

According to Reuters, a number of American energy companies are looking into the possibility of relocating to Switzerland to avoid the ‘war on business’ that the Obama administration seems to be waging.  America has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, and the Obama administration has signaled that it plans to raise corporate taxes even higher.  Do they honestly believe that companies who have the resources to relocate to other countries will not do that?  Raising corporate tax rates puts a drag on the economy, it drives jobs overseas, and it increases unemployment.  These do not sound like things we want to do during a recession.  According to the article:

“Over the past six months companies including offshore drilling contractors Noble Corp and Transocean, energy-focused engineering group Foster Wheeler and oilfield services company Weatherfield International have all announced plans to shift domicile to Switzerland.”

This is the true cost of increasing corporate taxes.

As the economy struggles, don’t expect the federal budget to shrink at all.  According to Hot Air, the budget passed this week represents massive increases for a lot of federal agencies who were kept at moderate growth rates during the Bush administration.  For example, the WIC program (a supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children) grows to $1.2 billion, a 21 percent jump from the $5.7 billion appropriated last year.  Had the bill been filibustered, forcing changes, Nancy Pelosi pledged to kill the bill entirely, returning spending to 2008 levels.  What a great idea!  The Republicans who voted against filibuster were:

• Lamar Alexander
• Kit Bond
• Thad Cochran
• Lisa Murkowski
• Richard Shelby
• Olympia Snowe
• Arlen Specter
• Roger Wicker

It’s time these people found new jobs.  Hopefully the Republican National Committee will find primary challengers for them.

According to the Wall Street Journal, President Obama issued a signing statement when he signed the $410 billion spending bill yesterday.  Democrats have recently criticized former President George W. Bush’s for issuing signing statements, now President Obama is doing it.  According to the article:

“The president said the spending measure should “mark an end to the old way of doing business.” His proposals, seconded by the House Democratic leadership, followed days of attacks by Republicans — and some Democrats — over the spending for local projects tucked into the bill.”

This reminds me of the people you hear say things like, “I’ll start my diet tomorrow”.  Keep in mind that the way is already being prepared for the next stimulus bill.  If the money Washington has spent since President Obama took office had been put in the hands of the taxpayers rather than being taken from us, we would be out of the recession by now.  Also, if the offshore drilling (and other areas) had been opened for exploration, we would be seeing unemployment go down and government revenue go up.  What is happening now is not constructive and is creating debt that we will all have to pay off at some point.

Power Line Blog has an article today about the former Gitmo detainee, Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, who has become the head of Taliban operations in southern Afghanistan.  As the mother of a US Marine who will be headed to Afghanistan at the end of this year, I am furious at this.  We need to rethink our policy of releasing prisoners at Gitmo.  We haven’t done a really good job so far.  According to the Pentagon spokesman it is estimated that more than 60 former detainees are suspected or confirmed of having rejoined the terror network after leaving Guantánamo.  Do the people making the release decisions and wanting to close Grantanamo understand that they are putting American soldiers lives at risk?

According to the Washington Times, ‘card check’ or the Employee Free Choice Act was introduced in both houses of Congress today.  The article states:

“Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, and Rep. George Miller, California Democrat, unveiled the legislation by tying union organizing to the recession, saying card check is necessary to ensure that an economic recovery is “fair.” “

Card check takes away the secret ballot in voting to unionize a company and has another provision that also requires arbitration if a newly unionized company cannot reach a new contract with its workers within ninety days. 

The secret ballot is an integral part of elections in this country and should not be done away with.  The required arbitration will put many small companies out of business and allow the government to intervene in the business community to an extent that we have never seen.  Both these aspects of this bill will further increase unemployment and do nothing to help the current recession.

How many times have we heard Democrat legislators at all levels saying that what they are doing is ‘for the children’.  Well, the children are the losers in the spending bill passed by Congress last night.  According to the Washington Times, the measure introduced by  Senator John Ensign, Nevada Republican, to continue funding the voucher program for Washington, D. C., students was voted down by the Democrats.  This is the program that allows two of the Obama children’s classmates from poorer families to attend the Sidwell Friends School.  The funding for that program will now end.  Bill Bennett said it best on his radio show this morning, “Rich people have school choice–they have money.”  It seems to me that in a $410 billion dollar spending bill, Congress could have found enougth money to fund the education for children to avoid what are probably the worst schools in the nation.

My little dictionary that I use to write this blog (I never could spell) defines class as “excellence, as of style or appearance”.  That’s part of what I am attempting to address, but two other parts are basic respect and consideration for those who see things differently than you do and manners (the things your mother taught you while you were growing up).  Class is not a political thing–neither party has a monopoly on it, but recent events in the public arena have caused me to wonder if we have lost ‘class’ somewhere in our civic life.

Our President is a perfect cardboard cut-out of what a President should be.  He’s young, energetic, has a beautiful family…all the trappings, but somewhere along the line, all of the manners he should have learned as a child have not kicked in.  The treatment of Gordon Brown is the most recent example of a simple lack of graciousness, but there have been others.  However, this is not an article on President Obama, the examples of the lack of class that has taken over our politics are many.

After President Obama had been elected, George Bush and his family did everything possible to ease the transition between the administrations and the families.  The Bush daughters went out of their way to help prepare the Obama girls for their new life.  George Bush did everything possible to make for a swift and easy transistion of administrations.  Contrast that with the way the Clintons treated the Bush family.

President Obama spoke to the Marines at Camp Lejeune about beginning to bring the troops home from Iraq.  Nowhere in that speech did he bother to mention that the troop surge (which he opposed and George Bush supported at great political risk) was the reason we are able to bring troops home.  Credit was not given because it would not have gone to a political ally.  There have been other subtle stabs at George Bush at various times that are completely unnecessary.  These remarks are not constructive in bringing the country together, they only further divide us.

Ronald Reagan fought with Congress on a regular basis, but after work hours, he and members of Congress could socialize without being nasty.  I doubt that the current Congress could even do that among themselves.  It’s time to get back to the manners we were supposed to learn growing up.  We need more gentlemanly disagreement (remember Zel Miller?), and less distracting from the main issues by name calling and other childish acts.  If this Congress and Administration refuses to act like grown-ups, let’s elect one that will.

During the past few weeks, we have been subjected to outrage on the part of the media that Rush Limbaugh ‘wanted President Obama to fail.’  I put that in quotes because it is a misquote and is also taken out of context.  What Rush Limbaugh said was that he hoped President Obama’s economic policies would fail because Rush beleived those policies would be bad for the country.  That’s a very different statement.  That is not an ‘unpatriotic’ statement as has been charged–it is a wish for the success of the country.

Power Line points out this morning that during the George Bush Administration, Fox News did a poll on how many people wanted the George Bush Presidency to succeed.  Remember, this was at a time when America was fighting a war, and the question essentially was ‘do you want America to win the war?’.  According to the article:

“An August 2006 poll conducted by FOX News/Opinion Dynamics showed 51 percent of Democrats did not want Bush to succeed. Thirty-four percent of independents also did not want Bush to succeed.

By comparison, 90 percent of Republicans said at the time that they wanted Bush to succeed, and 40 percent of Democrats said the same.”

No one at that time said anything about not supporting the President being unpatriotic–and that was during wartime!  Somewhere in the not-so distant past, the American media has lost its objectivity and has developed a very selective memory.  That is not a good thing for the country, and the information gap they have created will be filled by other sources as people begin to realize that they are not hearing the entire truth.

President Obama has reversed the ban on federal funding of Embryonic Stem Cell Research.  There are a number of misconceptions about what the law was prior to this change and about what the change means.  According to an article in the Washington Times:

“Extracting embryonic stem cells for research kills the embryo, which is why many pro-life groups oppose both the research and the use of taxpayer dollars to fund it. Mr. Bush had limited federal funding only to those lines that existed when he issued his executive order in 2001, arguing those embryos already had been destroyed and thus the life-or-death decision already had happened.”

Since the 2001 ban put in place by President Bush, a few things have happened.

1. Reported in  an August 22, 2005 article in the Washington Post, scientists can now take skin cells and turned them into what appear to be embryonic stem cells — without having to use human eggs or make new human embryos in the process, as has always been required in the past, a Harvard research team announced yesterday.  This article states that:

“Since the new stem cells in this technique are essentially rejuvenated versions of a person’s own skin cells, the DNA in those new stem cells matches the DNA of the person who provided the skin cells. In theory at least, that means that any tissues grown from those newly minted stem cells could be transplanted into the person to treat a disease without much risk that they would be rejected, because they would constitute an exact genetic match.”

2.  There has been progress in the area of umbilical stem cell research, leading to the formation of such groups as CorCell which saves a baby’s umbilical cord blood when the baby is born.

Again, the ban was never on embryonic stem cell research–it was on the federal funding of that research.  Also, as the Obama Administration has planned a government takeover of health care, why is this research necessary?  Socialized medicine is not fertile ground for medical research because every medical procedure is viewed through a prism of cost effectiveness–ask elderly people in Britain who have been denied treatments because of their age.  Also, if medical research truly felt that there were major breakthroughs to be made in embryonic stem cell research, wouldn’t private corporations be funding it?  Repealing the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research is simply grandstanding to please to liberal base that elected Barack Obama as President. 

Today’s National Review On Line has an article today on the recently passed Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA).  This law was passed as a result of the problems which resulted in the toy recalls of 2007 and 2008.  According to the article:

“This legislation grew out of the hysteria that surrounded the toy recalls of 2007-08, though the fact of the recalls themselves demonstrates that no new law was necessary. “We recalled those products because they violated the existing law,” says Nancy Nord, acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).”

There are three main problems with the law: 

1.  The specifies a lead content for an item and regardless of whether of not that makes the product unsafe, declares the product unsafe.  For example, the article states:

“printer’s ink used to contain trace amounts of lead. Librarians are faced with a choice between cost-prohibitive testing and disposal of their pre-1985 inventory of children’s books. Thus, we get stories like this one in the Nebraska City News-Press: “Librarian quarantines books.””

2.  The law of retroactive–all products manufactured for children twelve and under are included, regardless of when they were manufactured.  Secondhand stores and thrift shops that can’t afford to test every item that comes in are forced to throw out perfectly good items.  For example, something as simple and safe as a zipper on a child’s jacket could contain more than the permitted level of lead.

3.  The law went into effect on February 10,  It did not allow enough time for stores and manufacturers to know what the rules were and how to comply with them.

I have heard stories that stores that sell dirt bikes will be put out of business because of this law because of the lead paint used on the bikes.  We could debate the safety of dirt bikes for a long time, but I suspect that we would not be debating the dangers of a child eating the paint! 

The intentions of this law were good, but it will do some serious damage to our already struggling economy and really wasn’t needed.  The previous law caused to recall and solved the problem.  This law simply confuses people and needlessly hurts thrift shops and second hand shops that are very valuable in a tight economy.

There is a wonderful article in today’s New York Post about the original stage play and movie of “West Side Story”.   On March 19, the fourth revival of “West Side Story” opens at the Palace Theatre.  The article details some of the changes that have been made to the original play and also talks about some of the changes that were made to the original story.  Some of the original play and movie cast members remember what it was like to be part of something that was totally unique in its time.  Sometimes when you are looking at a finished product, you forget the struggles and doubts that were part of making it successful.

There is an article at Hot Air today showing the results of a poll done by Pew Research on how well informed Americans are based on the media outlets they follow.  The people polled were asked three political questions.  Only 18 per cent of the public was able to answer all three questions together.  To read the questions, please see the article, but here are some of the statistics from the article:

Here is the top ten, as an example, with their aggregate scores:

1. New Yorker/Atlantic – 48%
2. NPR – 44%
3. Hardball – 43%
4. Hannity & Colmes – 42%
5. Political magazines – 39%
6. Rush Limbaugh – 36%
7. Business magazines – 36%
8. BBC – 34%
9. Colbert Report – 34%
10. News Hour (PBS) – 33%

Hannity and Rush were the only two outlets where over 80% of the audience could correctly identify the majority party in the House.  Only a handful of others scored in the 70s.  How did we do?  Not too bad.  “Online news” ranked 14th, with an aggregate score of 29%.

Part of our problem with being informed is that the people who are supposed to be informing us are not doing their job, but we have to take responsibility for finding other sources to get reliable information.

According to Michelle Bachmann, Congresswoman from Minnesota, blogging at Townhall.com, a growing number of the banks that accepted the original TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) bailout money are now having second thoughts and planning to give it back.  The banks are realizing that the federal government is using the fact that they gave the banks the money as a rationale for further federal control of the banks.  We need to remember the role the government played in forcing banks to make unwise loans to people who couldn’t afford to pay them back.  There were ACORN lawsuits threatened against banks if they did not make these loans.

Congresswoman Bachmann’s closing statement sums it up:

“If we continue to let the government grow in its power and influence, the end result will be the decline of our tradition of entrepreneurial spirit. We must always remember that government is not the end-all-be-all of our nation’s prosperity; the people are.”

A website called Topix.com put up a forum for people to comment on why they felt they should not have voted for President Obama.  I am not familiar with this website, the language is not always to my liking, nor do I agree with everything said, but it does make interesting reading.  Proceed at your own risk.

According to the American Thinker, we have just deported Khalid Al-Jawary to Sudan.  Al-Jawary is a  Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorist convicted of a 1973 New York City bomb plot and implicated in multiple terrorist attacks spanning 20 years.  According to the article:

According to Power Line Blog and the Washington Times, the omnibus appropriations bill for the remainder of the fiscal year is stalled in the Senate.  According to the Washington TImes, Congress today passed a

“temporary spending measure to keep the government open through Wednesday as lawmakers struggled over an omnibus appropriations bill for the remainder of the fiscal year.”

Power Line stated that the bill was pulled when Harry Reid realized that both Russ Feingold (D) and Evan Bayh (D) planned to vote against it.  According to the Washington Times:

“The Senate vote is so close that Mr. Reid said he was setting up next week’s schedule to give ailing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, “ample time” to come to the Capitol. After a long absence, Mr. Kennedy returned to Washington this week but is still receiving treatment for brain cancer.”

Senators run for reelection every six years.  This spending bill is popular with government employees and unpopular with people in private business.  Some Senators are realizing that if the economy does not quickly improve, the voters may not forget who passed all of this massive spending.  Hopefully, this realization will change a few more votes to ‘no’.

Today’s Real Clear Politics has an article on Barack Obama’s economic policies.  As usual, Mr. Krauthammer is right on the money on his analysis.  According to the article:

“”Our economy did not fall into decline overnight,” he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education — importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The “day of reckoning” has now arrived. And because “it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we’ll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament,” Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.”

If you still do not understand how we got into this mess, I strongly recommend the video at You Tube called “Burning Down The House”.  It is one of the most lucid explanations of the current economic crisis I have seen.

Mr. Krauthammer goes on the explain how the crisis is being used as an excuse to implement a radical increase in government spending, power, and control.  The use of the current crisis as an excuse for socializing health care in dishonest to the core.

Yesterday’s The Hill featured an article on Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and his battles with Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli, and Jim Cramer.  Mr. Gibbs describes the battles as ‘fun’.  The economy is melting down, and he is having ‘fun’ attacking individual citizens!!!!  He says in the article that these attacks on individuals actually have the purpose of further explaining President Obama’s fiscal policies, but I really think the kindergartners are running the show here.  I’m really sorry that instead of using the Press Secretary to build bridges, the Obama Administration is using him to attack individuals.  This is oddly reminiscant of the kind of thing that went on during the Nixon Administration.  This neither brings people together nor solves problems.  The challenges we face are serious, we don’t need people playing ego games and power trips instead of facing our economic problems.

According to The Hill, the Obama administration has ended its attempt to have the Census Bureau director report directly to the White House.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke met with the Commerce Committee Chairman and ranking member to assure them that the census would not be under White House control and that ‘sampling’ would be used only as an accuracy check.

The article states that:

“It appears that now that a Democrat will lead the Commerce Department, concern over the census has dissipated.”

Somehow, I suspect there is a whole lot more to the story.  I would love to know what went on behind the scenes on this policy change.

This chart comes from The Heritage Foundation.

I think the chart says it all.  An 80% increase in domestic spending during a recession and in a time of war is not the way to go.