further | newslinks | articles | opinion: 01/2010

:: January 2010 ::

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[nro] Osama vs. Global Warming [Jonah Goldberg]

I love this story about Bin Laden denouncing global warming :

[link] Bin Laden blasts US for climate change

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape released Friday.

In the tape, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring "the wheels of the American economy" to a halt.

He blamed Western industrialized nations for hunger, desertification and floods across the globe, and called for "drastic solutions" to global warming, and "not solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change."

Bin Laden has mentioned climate change and global warning in past messages, but the latest tape was his first dedicated to the topic. The speech, which included almost no religious rhetoric, could be an attempt by the terror leader to give his message an appeal beyond Islamic militants.

Will he come out in favor of beheading carbon emitters? Can I get 72 virgins if I promise to weatherstrip my house? How about if I install solar panels?

Also is Bin Laden now refusing "blood money" from the climate criminals in Saudi Arabia who fund his operation?

Of course, any minute now we're going to hear from someone — any predictions who? — that the real reason "they" hate "us" is climate change. It ain't freedom, it ain't American empire, or licentiousness, or Israel. All of these jihadi nutters are blowing themselves up to save the polar bear.

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Campaign finance: a 'reform' wisely struck down

[w] Last week's Supreme Court decision that substantially deregulates political speech has provoked an edifying torrent of hyperbole. Critics' dismay reveals their conviction: Speech about the elections that determine the government's composition is not a constitutional right but a mere privilege that exists at the sufferance of government.

How regulated did political speech become during the decades when the court was derelict in its duty to actively defend the Constitution? The Federal Election Commission, which administers the law that rations the quantity and regulates the content and timing of political speech, identifies 33 types of political speech and 71 kinds of "speakers." The underlying statute and FEC regulations cover more than 800 pages, and FEC explanations of its decisions have filled more than 1,200 pages. The First Amendment requires 10 words for a sufficient stipulation: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech."

Extending the logic of a 1976 decision, the court has now held that the dissemination of political speech requires money, so restricting money restricts speech. Bringing law into conformity with this 1976 precedent, the court has struck down only federal and state laws that forbid independent expenditures (those not made directly to, or coordinated with, candidates' campaigns) by corporations and labor unions. Under the censorship regime the court has overturned, corporations were even forbidden to send political communications to all of their employees.

The New York Times calls the court's decision, which enables political advocacy by (other) corporations, a "blow to democracy." The Times, a corporate entity, can engage in political advocacy because Congress has granted "media corporations" an exemption from limits.

The Washington Post, also exempt, says the court's decision, which overturned a previous ruling upholding restrictions on spending for political speech, shows insufficient "respect for precedent." Does The Post think the court incorrectly overturned precedents that upheld racial segregation and warrantless wiretaps? Are the only sacrosanct precedents those that abridge (others') right to speak?

Alarmists say the court's ruling will mean torrential spending by large for-profit corporations. Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union -- it has spent $20 million on politics in the past five election cycles -- says a corporation will "funnel their shareholders' money straight to a campaign's coffers." Wrong. Corporate contributions to candidates' campaigns remain proscribed.

Cleta Mitchell, Washington's preeminent campaign finance attorney, rightly says that few for-profit corporations will jeopardize their commercial interests by engaging in partisan politics: Republicans, Democrats and independents buy Microsoft's and Pepsi's products. If for-profit corporations do plunge into politics, disclosure of their spending will enable voters to draw appropriate conclusions. Of course, political speech regulations radiate distrust of voters' abilities to assess unfettered political advocacy.

Mitchell says the court's decision primarily liberates nonprofit advocacy groups, such as the Sierra Club, which the FEC fined $28,000 in 2006. The club's sin was to distribute pamphlets in Florida contrasting the environmental views of the presidential and senatorial candidates, to the intended advantage of Democrats. FEC censors deemed this an illegal corporate contribution.

Barack "Pitchfork" Obama, in his post-Massachusetts populist mode, called the court's ruling a victory for, among others, "big oil" and "Wall Street banks." But OpenSecrets.org reports that in 2008 lawyers gave more money than either of them, and gave 78 percent of the donations to Democrats, who also received 64 percent of contributions from the financial sector.

Even if it were Congress's business to decide that there is "too much" money in politics, that decision would be odd: In the 2007-08 election cycle, spending in all campaigns, for city council members up to the presidency, was $8.6 billion, about what Americans spend annually on potato chips.

Critics say raising such sums requires too much of candidates' time. Well, then, let candidates receive unlimited -- but fully disclosed -- contributions, and trust voters to make appropriate inferences about the candidates.

Undaunted, advocates of government control of political speech want Congress to enact public financing of congressional campaigns, and to ban individuals from participating in politics through contributions. Fortunately, this idea -- "food stamps for politicians" -- is wildly unpopular. Public financing of presidential campaigns has collapsed. Obama disdained it in 2008; the public always has. Voluntary, cost-free participation, using the checkoff on the income tax form, peaked at a paltry 28.7 percent in 1980 and by 2008 had sagged to 8.3 percent.

This is redundant proof that the premise of campaign finance "reform" is false. The premise is that easily befuddled Americans need to be swaddled in regulations of political speech.

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State Of The Union :

second hand telegram lip service legal love
second hand out of town telegram lip service legal love
so you're the lawyer's wife how's life on lakeshore road
furs and boats caviar and moats and your fat kitten
is teasing your aunt in the hall with the liver hors d'oeuvres
she gives her guests when on call...

- PDubois(?)

Claim vs. Fact

[s] [...] ome of his ideas for moving ahead skirted the complex political circumstances standing in his way.

A look at some of Obama's claims and how they compare with the facts:

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State of the Union: Obama's reality problem

[w] [...] Obama has a reality problem.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated this week that unemployment will average more than 10 percent for the first half of this year, before declining at a slower pace than in past recoveries. On this economic path, Obama’s presidency will fail. Many Democrats in the House chamber tonight will lose their jobs. And the nation will enter a Carter-like period of stagnation and self-doubt.

Every element of the president’s speech tonight should be considered in this light.

* Health Care. On this issue, elected Democrats are desperate for leadership. They want to avoid total defeat on last year’s highest legislative priority, while pivoting swiftly to the economy. Obama gave no indication of how this feat will be accomplished. Instead, he called attention to his own virtue, foresight and tenacity in pursuing the issue. His approach was entirely self-centered. Democrats in tough races can only conclude that the president is indifferent to their political needs. On health care, it is every Democrat for himself.

* The Deficit. The president’s trial balloon of a limited, discretionary spending freeze has quickly deflated. Conservatives dismiss it as pathetic symbolism. Liberals attack it as Hooverism. And the policy conflicts with Obama’s campaign criticism of spending freezes. It is a policy disaster.

A spending commission might be a good idea, if it had fast-track authority that forced Congress to vote on a package of serious cuts. But, as the president noted, the Senate defeated a similar measure earlier this week, and his executive order is weak version of this concept.

* Middle Class Relief. These are the type of proposals that work for politicians in normal economic times. In bad economic times, the middle class (and others) do not want symbolism and sympathy. They want economic growth and jobs.

* Economic Growth and Jobs. Tonight the president had one main task: to make a credible case that his policies will help reduce unemployment. For the most part, he failed. His proposal to cut the capital gains tax for small business investment seems positive. His other ideas -- taking money from some bankers and giving it to other bankers and a temporary hiring tax credit -- are a caricature of job-creation policy. For the most part, Obama defended a continuation and expansion of the stimulus package, which promises to bring prosperity on high-speed trains. Compare Obama's speech to John Kennedy’s State of the Union in 1963, which called for permanent tax cuts that would allow America to move toward full employment. Some Democratic presidents have actually understood how the economy works.

After a series of political humiliations, Obama called on Republicans to change their course. Facing a general revolt against Washington, he proudly took credit for posting the names of White House visitors online. Promising to change the tone in Washington, he managed to be petty, backward looking, defiant and self-justifying.

Barack Obama has lost his promise. He has lost his momentum. He has lost his touch. He has lost his filibuster-proof Senate majority. He has lost his first year in office.

Tonight, he lost his grip on reality.

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President Wrong

[nro] [...] The president's statement is false.

The Court held that 2 U.S.C. Section 441a, which prohibits all corporate political spending, is unconstitutional. Foreign nationals, specifically defined to include foreign corporations, are prohibiting from making "a contribution or donation of money or ather thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State or local election" under 2 U.S.C. Section 441e, which was not at issue in the case. Foreign corporations are also prohibited, under 2 U.S.C. 441e, from making any contribution or donation to any committee of any political party, and they prohibited from making any "expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication."

This is either blithering ignorance of the law or demagoguery of the worst kind.

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[p] In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen?

To call upon the Congress to countermand (somehow) by statute a constitutional decision, indeed a decision applying the First Amendment? What can this possibly accomplish besides alienating Justice Kennedy who wrote the opinion being attacked. Contrary to what we heard during the last administration, the Court may certainly be the object of presidential criticism without posing any threat to its independence.

But this was a truly shocking lack of decorum and disrespect towards the Supreme Court for which an apology is in order. A new tone indeed.

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A Study In Contrasts

[tdc] John Boehner rolled his eyes repeatedly and laughed. Michelle Obama glowered at Republicans. A Supreme Court justice shook his head in disagreement with the president.

The House chamber was a study in contrasts and reactions Wednesday night during President Obama’s State of the Union address.

Republicans appeared far more buoyant than Democrats, feeling a sense of renewal after the Democrats defeat in Massachusetts. Almost to a man, the GOP lawmakers were standing in anticipation of Obama’s entrance into the hall. They joked, they laughed. Almost all of the Senate Democrats were seated. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saw a House lawmaker walk past with his suit jacket pocket askew. Reid reached up from his seat and pulled the pocket flap out.

Many of the Democrats looked shell-shocked, still, after Massachusetts, and the near demise of health-care reform.

The most animated of the Republicans was the House leadership: Boehner, Eric Cantor, Thad McCotter and Paul Ryan. Their emotions and opinions were on full display throughout the president’s speech. They looked cocky and eager for a fight, in contrast to the more reserved Senate Republicans.

The House GOP leaders reacted to the president’s words with a mixture of disbelief and barely disguised scorn. Their first applause came several minutes into the speech, when the president mentioned jobs. They rose as a group and roared in quasi-mocking approval, appearing to taunt the president and Democratic lawmakers for spending the last year on health care reform.

Moments earlier, Obama acted surprised that Republicans had not applauded his talk of tax cuts.

“I thought I’d get some applause,” Obama said.

Boehner lifted up his hands palms up, raised his eyebrows, and shrugged, as if to say, “Better luck next time.”

When the president came to health care, he said he was open to ideas other than those that have so far been on the table.

“If anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know,” Obama said.

Boehner raised his right hand above his shoulder. [...]

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Uh,uh, uh...Oh, Yeah : A Solid B+

[tdc] What a difference a year makes.

Tuesday’s historic election of Republican Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley to the represent the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts makes Democrats and President Obama 0-for-3 in statewide contests since his election. Obama carried all of three of those states by more than 50 points combined.

It is accepted wisdom that President Obama’s approval rating has tumbled during his first year in office. What is dramatic, however, is the width and depth of the disenchantment. According to Gallup, the president’s approval rating has dropped among 39 out of 40 demographic and geographic groups studied. Both genders and every age, income, education, region, marital status, ideology and party affiliation measure view him less favorably than they did last January.

This naturally includes constituencies that helped deliver victory to Mr. Obama in 2008. Among women, his approvals have dipped 15 percentage points; young people, 17 points; and the big story, his base among Independents—52% of whom voted for him—has evaporated (down 17 points).

What’s more, the public has soured on Mr. Obama’s handling of specific issues, both foreign and domestic. On every economic measure—taxes, budget deficit, creating jobs, general economy, and that bête noir, health care, which is viewed through an economic prism—the president has upside down approval ratings, meaning more people are negative than positive about his performance.

Perhaps the greatest indictment of the president’s challenges is revealed in the “attributes testing” performed routinely by pollsters. According to CNN data, the number of Americans who think Mr. Obama “inspires confidence” is down 12 percentage points since he took office; “has a clear plan for the solving this country’s problem”—down 19 points; “is a strong and decisive leader”—down 18 points; “will united the country and not divide it”—down 26 points since December 2008. Executive orders, 30-plus czars, and one-party, closed-door dealings on health care can have that effect.

Promises of post-partisanship have not materialized, but the president has managed to cobble tri-partisan agreement on one simple thing: his first year has been a disappointment. Even liberal talking head Rachel Maddow has observed, “Change we can believe in, as long as we pay attention to the disappointing asterisk on the word ‘change.’”

In a revealing question that shows the deflation of expectation that the Marist Poll found last month that 42% of Americans surveyed said that President Obama had “fallen below their expectations” in his first year in office. Even among self-identified Democrats, just 17% said Mr. Obama had “exceeded expectations.”

The president, of course, remains personally popular and has time to recover. But that will require an understanding of what his election mandated—and what it did not. He won on a message of “Change you can believe in,” but the first year is more “Revolution you must pay for.” Compelling messengers win elections; compelling messages win public support for governance. Excesses on spending helped the Republicans lose their majority in 2006 and continue to bleed seats in 2008. That same type of overreach and lurch leftward has cost the President precious political capital in 2009 and his party stinging defeats on Capitol Hill and at the ballot box.

Majorities of Americans oppose the bailouts of Detroit, Wall Street, mortgages, and believe the stimulus has not worked. A 10%-plus unemployment figure nationwide confirms their opinions. Eye-popping numbers reject taxpayer-funded abortions at home (71%) (a staple of the health care reform currently being considered) and abroad (89%), (the law of almost a year, when the Mexico City policy was reversed by executive order). [...]

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More BS From Obama : Obama Administration Steers Lucrative No-Bid Contract for Afghan Work to Dem Donor

[f] Despite President Obama's long history of criticizing the Bush administration for "sweetheart deals" with favored contractors, the Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids, Fox News has learned.

The contract, awarded on Jan. 4 to Checchi & Company Consulting, Inc., a Washington-based firm owned by economist and Democratic donor Vincent V. Checchi, will pay the firm $24,673,427 to provide "rule of law stabilization services" in war-torn Afghanistan.

Remember? : Obama promises to limit no-bid contracts

[b] Says $40 billion could be saved every year.

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Too Much of a Bad Thing

[nro] So what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”

But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”

Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He only gave (according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president — and maybe more than all of them put together. But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview — I believe the top-rated Grain & Livestock Prices Report — 4 a.m. Update with Herb Torpormeister on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House.

But what will the president be saying in all these extra interviews? In that interview about how he hadn’t given enough interviews, he also explained to George Stephanopoulos what that wacky Massachusetts election was all about:

“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” said Obama. “People are angry and they’re frustrated, not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they’re voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts. Boy, I can’t wait for that 159th interview.

Presumably, the president isn’t stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it’s dispiriting to discover he’s stupid enough to think we’re stupid enough to believe it. [...]

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Shrieking Hypocrisy From Glass House

[ha] A couple of hilarious points of hypocrisy erupted this week in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down limits on contributions and advertising during political campaigns, especially those applicable to “corporations.” The most hypocritical came from Barack Obama himself, who angrily pledged in a statement and his weekly radio address to counter this decision through legislation : [...]

It’s worth pointing out that Barack Obama had an opportunity to limit that influence in the 2008 election simply by remaining in the public matching fund program that every major Presidential candidate had used since Watergate. In fact, Obama himself pledged to do just that in 2007 and again in early 2008, but changed his mind in June when he discovered that he could raise a lot more money than his opponent — by currying favor with Wall Street and the unions, as well as ethanol companies and a host of corporate-sponsored, lobbyist-run PACs. Obama raised over $600 million in 2008 for his eventual victory.

Now he wants to limit the power of politicians to raise that kind of money, which is mighty convenient for incumbents such as himself — and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill.

Oh, and those lobbyists in Washington were doing quite well before the decision on Citizens United v FEC, certainly better than the country as a whole. The power of lobbyists come from the expansion of government. Campaign contributions from lobbyists exist only because expanded government gives lobbyists more cash to donate.

Meanwhile, the New York Times Corporation complained about being returned to the 19th-century robber baron environment : [...]

As opposed to what — corporations buying newspapers and endorsing political candidates in the final days before an election? Corporations buying newspapers and printing last-minute attacks against their political bêtes noirs? The ban on corporations was always very selectively enforced, because newspapers managed to lobby for and receive an exemption for newspapers and other media outlets. But they’re also corporations, which should have come under the same restrictions — and as the Court pointed out in its questioning during oral arguments, any printed or broadcast message that explicitly said “Vote for Candidate X” or “Don’t vote for Candidate Y” would have run afoul of the law, including books released in the final days of an election.

Besides, we’ve had these laws since Watergate (not since the 19th century, as the Gray Lady shrieks). Has corporate money evaporated from the political process? Absolutely not. It has simply gotten funneled into arcane and confusing legal entities and types: soft money, hard money, 501(c)3s, 527s, PACs, etc. It hasn’t disappeared; it just has become much harder to trace. Obama didn’t skip the matching-fund program because he thought he could raise $600 million from $20 campaign contributions.

And what about influence? Well, those same laws restricted unions, which can also now spend its money in the open. Did that mean that unions had diminished influence before this week? Er, no. The week before this decision, union leaders attended backr0om-deal meetings on ObamaCare, demanding (and getting) a five-year exemption on the “Cadillac tax” on health-plan benefits. That would have saved them $90 billion over ten years, far more than what they’ve spent in the previous decade to buy their way into the halls of power.

The Supreme Court just leveled the playing field, and Democrats don’t like it one bit.

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[fp] Can the government suppress free speech critical of elected politicians? In the home of the First Amendment, that may seem an unusual question to pose. But that was the question before the Supreme Court this week, as it handed down a landmark ruling in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down a ban on corporations and labor unions using money from their general funds to produce and air campaign ads in races for Congressional and presidential races. Also overturned was a ban on corporations and unions airing campaign ads 30 days before primary or 60 days before general election.

The case in question dates back to January 2008, when the conservative non-profit group Citizens United produced a documentary critical of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton titled Hillary: The Movie. When the Federal Election commission used the McCain Feingold campaign finance law to limit Citizen United’s ability to advertise the film during the 2008 presidential primaries, the group sued to protest the restriction on free speech.

This week, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizen United’s favor. In so doing, it won approval from free-speech advocates and strident criticism from many on the political Left. To discuss the case and its political implications, Front Page turned to Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review.

FP: The Supreme Court’s decision has certainly stirred its share of controversy. How do you view the Court’s ruling?

Shapiro: This is a big win for free speech. It is the most significant ruling on campaign finance since [the 1976 case] Buckley vs. Valeo and it continued the trend of this court of allowing greater speech in the political arena. It’s a victory for the marketplace of ideas and it’s a victory for democracy. [...]

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Furthermore...

[vc] One of the standard arguments put forward by critics of the Supreme Court’s decision protecting corporate political speech in Citizens United is that people aren’t entitled to constitutional rights when they use corporate resources because corporations are “state-created entities.” If the state can create an entity, it supposedly also has the power to define its rights any way it pleases. This is slightly different from the argument that people using corporate resources don’t deserve constitutional protection because corporations aren’t “real people.” But it has many of the same weaknesses, and some additional ones as well. [...]

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Asia stocks slide on Obama plan, commodities fall

[y] Asian stock markets tumbled on Friday as commodity prices fell and the dollar weakened after U.S. President Barack Obama proposed tough new restrictions on banks, curbing investors' appetite for riskier assets.

Japanese stocks (Osaka:^N225 - News) fell almost 3 percent as the yen surged against the dollar and the euro and as falling metal and oil prices weighed on shares of resource-related firms.

Other Asian markets were also badly hit by the U.S. proposal, which would squeeze banks' profits. South Korea's KOSPI (KSE:^KS11 - News) was down 1.87 percent while Hong Kong (HKSE:^HSI - News) was down over 2.5 percent. Banks have a heavy weighting in many global benchmark share indexes.

The MSCI Asia-Pacific index excluding Japan was down 2.4 percent and looked set for a loss of 5.2 percent on the week.

"Of course, any sort of market regulation isn't good for the market, and if you start limiting hedge funds that hurts overall market flexibility," said Kenichi Hirano, operating officer at Tachibana Securities in Tokyo.

"I don't think the proposal is very realistic and it's hard to know if it'll ever come to pass, but investors want to wait and see. Today's response is largely just a shock reaction."

Commodity prices fell because the proposed U.S. regulations were seen as diminishing capital flows from banks, which have provided liquidity for investors.

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NYT: Free speech is “a blow to democracy”

[d] The gutting of the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 — which President Bush signed into law — went ape. The writers at the New York Times were the most entertaining.

“The founders of this nation warned about the dangers of corporate influence. The Constitution they wrote mentions many things and assigns them rights and protections — the people, militias, the press, religions. But it does not mention corporations,” the New York Times editorial said.

I am curious. How does one warn “about the dangers of corporate influence” and “not mention corporations”?

“Congress and members of the public who care about fair elections and clean government need to mobilize right away, a cause President Obama has said he would join. Congress should repair the presidential public finance system and create another one for Congressional elections to help ordinary Americans contribute to campaigns. It should also enact a law requiring publicly traded corporations to get the approval of their shareholders before spending on political campaigns,” the New York Times said.

Let us see. Obama took more money from corporate executives and the like — at least $500 million of his booty in 2008 came from the rich — and the New York Times is a corporation.

The contradiction is hilarious.

Regulating free speech in a democracy is impossible. When the founding fathers said no law, they meant it — and they did Congress a favor.

The New York Times, an ironic opponent of free speech, has had its hat handed to it and is whining.

But the only way to fix this is by a constitutional amendment.

Good luck on getting the people to cede their free speech to the likes of Washington.

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Beware of McCain Regression Syndrome

[c] Pay attention: In the afterglow of the Massachusetts Miracle, there are flickers of peril for the right. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but like Paul Revere's midnight message, consider this warning “a cry of defiance, and not of fear.” Conservatives have worked hard to rebuild after Big Government Republican John McCain's defeat. But McCain isn't going gently into that good night.

Red Flag No. One: A reader from Arizona informed me the day after the Bay State Bombshell that he had received a robo-call from Massachusetts GOP Sen.-elect Scott Brown. “He basically wanted me to vote for John McCain in November,” the reader said in his description of the automated campaign call supporting the four-term Sen. McCain's re-election bid. “No wonder [Brown] said he hadn't had any sleep. … He was busy recording phone messages!”

Red Flag No. Two: Also in the wake of the Massachusetts special election, the nation's most popular conservative political figure Sarah Palin announced she would be campaigning for her former running mate in Arizona in March. Palin told Facebook followers that she's going to “ride the tide with commonsense candidates” and help “heroes and statesmen” like McCain.

Facing mounting conservative opposition in his home state and polls showing him virtually tied with possible GOP challenger and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, McCain welcomed the boost: "Sarah energized our nation and remains a leading voice in the Republican Party."

Savor the irony: After a career spent bashing the right flank of the party, McCain is now clinging to its coattails to save his incumbent hide.

And pay attention to the hidden, more troubling irony: While he runs to the right to protect his seat, McCain's political machine is working across the country to install liberal and establishment Republicans to secure his legacy. [...]

With all due respect to McCain's noble war service, it's time to head to the pasture. As the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, he was wrong on the constitutionality of the free-speech-stifling McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulations. He was wrong to side with the junk-science global warming activists in pushing onerous carbon caps on America. He was on the wrong side of every Chicken Little-driven bailout. He was wrong in opposing enhanced CIA interrogation methods that have saved countless American lives and averted jihadi plots. And he was spectacularly wrong in teaming with the open-borders lobby to push a dangerous illegal alien amnesty.

Tea Party activists are rightly outraged by Palin's decision to campaign for McCain, whose entrenched incumbency and progressive views are anathema to the movement. At least she has an excuse: She's caught between a loyalty rock and a partisan hard place. The conservative base has no such obligations — and it is imperative that they get in the game (as they did in Massachusetts) before it's too late. The movement to restore limited government in Washington has come too far, against all odds, to succumb to McCain Regression Syndrome now.

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Copenhagen Accord on Climate Change Collapsing?

[r] The nonbinding Copenhagen Accord was hastily cobbled together at President Barack Obama's insistence as the United Nations' Copenhagen climate change conference whimpered to its end in December. Under the Accord, countries are supposed to make their commitments to cut greenhouse gases official by January 31. It now appears that most countries will miss that deadline. It now appears that most countries will miss that deadline. As the New York Times reports:

Facing a Jan. 31 deadline, major countries have yet to submit their plans for reducing emissions of climate-altering gases, one of the major provisions of the agreement, according to Yvo de Boer, the Dutch official who is executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which organized the climate meeting.

Fewer than two dozen countries have even submitted letters saying they agree to the terms of the three-page accord. And there has been virtually no progress on spelling out the terms of nearly $30 billion in short-term financial assistance promised to those countries expected to be hardest hit by climate change. Still unresolved are such basic questions as who will donate how much, where the money will go and who will oversee the spending.

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Hugo Chavez: Circling the Drain?

[pjm] President Obama, whom lots of folks are disappointed in and who many now think is no better than his predecessor, has problems beyond Massachusetts. However, “El Presidente” Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has far worse problems, at least for now. And so does Venezuela.

This gets it about right:

Like the emperor in the fairy tale, the Chávez administration now stands naked before the world and is finding it increasingly difficult to cover up the disaster it has created with its ill-named 21st century socialism.

There is a trend in Latin America, and it favors free market capitalism rather than “Bolivarian socialism.” As suggested in previous articles (here, here, here, and here), Chávez’s ship is on the rocks, getting clobbered by twin storms, and may soon be crushed.

On January 8, Chavez announced a substantial devaluation of the Venezuelan currency (the bolivar fuerte). His stated purpose was to reduce Venezuelan reliance on imported goods, and thereby to stimulate the economy. As with so many of his schemes, the effects will be counterproductive and very unpleasant for most of the people living in Venezuela.

Venezuela’s official exchange rate had been 2.15 bolivars to the dollar. Due to the January 11 devaluation, the bolivar trades at 2.6 to the dollar for priority transactions and 4.3 to the dollar for other transactions:

The higher rate doubles the paper value of oil earnings when converted to local currency. Oil accounts for about half the budget, but that income has been squeezed by lower world oil prices and declines in output in the past year.

The president … said the adjusted currency rates aimed to boost the economy by encouraging local manufacturing of items such as clothing and shoes, which Venezuela mostly imports.

“This is going to generate greater productivity in Venezuela!” Chávez said in his televised speech.

Chávez also stated:

Last year we imported 90-million pairs of shoes, for the love of God. … We can make all of that ourselves!

That certainly is a lot of shoes for a poor country with a population of 26,814,843 — roughly 3.4 pair for each man, woman, and child, imported in one year. Imelda Marcos must be living incognito and very happily in Venezuela. [...]

“High economic growth?” Not in Venezuela. [...]

Desiring that his countrymen not be distracted by these domestic problems, El Presidente continues to strengthen Venezuela’s military presence on the border with Colombia:

Chávez secured a $2.2 [billion] loan from Russia during his visit to Moscow last September for the purchase of 92 T-72 main battle tanks, an undisclosed number of Smerch multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), and a variety of air defense systems, including the advanced S-300 complexes.

All of this is said to be necessary because the United States is preparing to attack Venezuela to steal its oil. Still, Chávez recently indicated that he would like to have a dialogue with the United States, which may take him up on it. Chávez accused the U.S. on January 17 of occupying Haiti on the pretext of delivering aid (France made a similar claim). Chavez claims that on January 8, Venezuelan fighter jets drove a U.S. observation aircraft from Venezuelan airspace back to the Netherlands’ Caribbean islands. Now, the Netherlands is in on the scheme along with the United States and Colombia (where, unlike in Venezuela, oil production is now the highest in a decade). “The perceived threat of U.S. intervention has become a central element of Mr. Chávez’s political discourse and a rallying cry for his supporters.”

What does all this mean? Venezuela is spiraling at an accelerating pace down the toilet under el Presidente Chávez, with all the drama of a “capitalist” soap opera. His ties with Iran are unlikely to do Venezuela any real good, the situations in Argentina and in Chile can’t be to his liking, and his reverses in Honduras have probably weakened him as well. His influence in Latin America is fading and he rather clearly needs to do something — just about anything — on the domestic front to avoid even a minor victory by the opposition parties. However, the domestic problems are out of control and despite the disorganized state of the opposition parties it seems unlikely that Chávez will succeed.

As Chávez put it in an article on January 18, “Homeland, Socialism, or Death!”

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It Must Be The Economy : Air America Ceases Live Programming, Will File for Bankruptcy

[bj] It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon, and that the Company will file soon under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business.

The very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America’s business. This past year has seen a “perfect storm” in the media industry generally. National and local advertising revenues have fallen drastically, causing many media companies nationwide to fold or seek bankruptcy protection. From large to small, recent bankruptcies like Citadel Broadcasting and closures like that of the industry’s long-time trade publication Radio and Records have signaled that these are very difficult and rapidly changing times.

Those companies that remain are facing audience fragmentation as a result of new media technologies, are often saddled with crushing debt, and have generally found it difficult to obtain operating or investment capital from traditional sources of funding. In this climate, our painstaking search for new investors has come close several times right up into this week, but ultimately fell short of success.

With radio industry ad revenues down for 10 consecutive quarters, and reportedly off 21% in 2009, signs of improvement have consisted of hoping things will be less bad. And though Internet/new media revenues are projected to grow, our expanding online efforts face the same monetization and profitability challenges in the short term confronting the Web operations of most media companies

When Air America Radio launched in April, 2004 with already-known personalities like Al Franken and then-unknown future stars like Rachel Maddow, it was the only full-time progressive voice in the mainstream broadcast media world. At a critical time in our nation’s history — when dissent on issues such as the Iraq war were often denounced as “un-American” — Air America and its talented team helped millions of Americans remember the importance of compelling discussion about the most pivotal events and decisions of our generation. [...]

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"A year ago President George W. Bush left the White House. Since that time the unemployment has nearly doubled, the national deficit has tripled, government has grown in leaps and bounds, and the current president has blamed his predecessor for every problem he has encountered. President Obama even blamed George Bush for the Coakley loss yesterday in Massachusetts." - [GP]

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Specter tells Bachmann to "act like a lady"

[p] The deeply odd couple of Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) appeared together on a Philly radio station yesterday -- and things got ugly in short order.

The exchange, broadcast on 1210 AM's Dom Giordano Show [but not archived on the station's site], began when Specter challenged Bachmann to articulate what, exactly, she stands for, according to a readout on the clash published by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's lively Early Returns blog.

Bachmann first laid out her agenda -- cutting taxes and killing President Obama's health reform bill -- at considerable length.

When Specter tried to counter, Bachmann, darling of the Tea Party movement, kept on talking, which didn't sit well with the one-time Philadelphia DA, who is a stickler for politeness and protocol.

"I'm going to treat you like a lady," Mr. Specter shot back. "Now act like one."

Ms. Bachmann replied, "I am a lady."

Things went on along this line for a while -- with Specter later asking Bachmann to "act like a lady," according to the PPG's Daniel Malloy.

Count your days Mr. Specter. No one cares. Soon enough you'll be nothing but a bad after taste and then a faded, sour memory until ultimately completely forgotten.

::

Jumping Johnny Edwards comes clean and admits that he is the father of the mystery love child!? Revelation! What a class act. Atta boy Johnson, go hang around in Haiti and spin your bullshit. Take a flying leapinto the dustbin with the rest of the frauds.

::

Loving the results of the Mass. election. The people's seat indeed. Nice try on the spin too talking heads. Uh, yeah, it's a tough one to fathom and understand. For you.

::

So the irrational left-wing lip flappers have begun the search for info on the family of Scott Brown. Surprised? I didn't think so. In what has become termed as "Palinization," they've managed to dig up an '80's music video that his wife was in and horror of horrors, a family picture of the man and his daughters (wearing swimwear!) standing on a beach!

Oh yes, such is the hypocritical nature of the "party of family values" they scream. This from the clowns that contain in their numbers and endless list of offensive types ala Olberman? It's laughable and sad. Edwards? Champion. Wait a minute, this Scott Brown posed in the reviled smut rag Cosmo!

Does the idiocy and petty nonsense ever cease? Not a chance. It's so foolish.

Certainly some leftist policy minded people find this trumpeting of nothing childish, banal and a serious waste of time.

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White House's Gibbs has mastered art of speaking with his hand

[wp] For Democrats, the only good thing to come from Tuesday's loss of the Senate election in Massachusetts is this: It could wipe the grin off Robert Gibbs's face.

The Democrats' failed struggle to hold onto Ted Kennedy's seat in the liberal state showed how badly the party's brand had been damaged over the past year. But as the White House press corps challenged President Obama's press secretary on Tuesday afternoon about the anticipated loss, Gibbs answered with his usual mix of wisecracks and insults.

"Broadly speaking, can you talk about the difference between 59 and 60 votes in the Senate and what that means for the president's agenda this year?"

"Broadly, it's one," Gibbs answered.

Will Obama hold a news conference Wednesday to discuss the results?

"Be here around 10 a.m. If we're not here, start without us." [...]

Gibbs acts as though he's playing himself in the movie version of his job. In this imaginary film, he is the smart-alecky press secretary, offering zippy comebacks and cracking jokes to make his questioners look ridiculous. It's no great feat to make reporters look bad, but this act also sends a televised image of a cocksure White House to ordinary Americans watching at home.

This is the most visible manifestation of a larger problem the Obama White House has. Many Obama loyalists from the 2008 race still seem, after a year on the job, to be having trouble exiting campaign mode. They sometimes appear to be running a taxpayer-funded rapid-response operation.

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Oh, Nevermind

[] [...] On Jan. 8, just 11 days before the election, The New York Times reported: "A Brown win remains improbable, given that Democrats outnumber Republicans by 3 to 1 in the state and that Ms. Coakley, the state's attorney general, has far more name recognition, money and organizational support."

It was in that article that the Times said a narrow Coakley win would be an augury for the entire Democratic Party. But now she's being hung out to dry so that Democrats don't have to face the possibility that Obama's left-wing policies are to blame.

Alternatively, Democrats are trying to write off Brown's colossal victory as the standard seesawing of public sentiment that hits both Republicans and Democrats from time to time. As MSNBC's Chris Matthews explained, it was just the voters saying "no" generally, but not to anything in particular.

Except when Republicans win political power, they hold onto it long enough to govern. The Democrats keep being smacked down by the voters immediately after being elected and revealing their heinous agenda.

As a result, for the past four decades, American politics has consisted of Republicans controlling Washington for eight to 14 years -- either from the White House or Capitol Hill -- thus allowing Americans to forget what it was they didn't like about Democrats, whom they then carelessly vote back in. The Democrats immediately remind Americans what they didn't like about Democrats, and their power is revoked at the voters' first possible opportunity.

Obama has cut the remembering-what-we-don't-like-about-Democrats stage of this process down from two to four years to about 10 months. Folks, I'm convinced that if we all work really hard, we can get it down to three months.

Four years of Jimmy Carter gave us two titanic Reagan landslides, peace and prosperity for eight blessed years -- and even a third term for his feckless vice president, George H.W. Bush.

Two years of Bill Clinton gave us a historic Republican sweep of Congress, which killed the entire Clinton agenda (with the exception of partial-birth abortion and felony obstruction of justice) -- and also gave us two terms for George W. Bush.

And now, merely one year of Obama and a Democratic Congress has given us the first Republican senator from Massachusetts in 31 years.

In other recent news, last November, New Jersey voters, who haven't voted for a Republican for president since 1988, threw out their incumbent Democratic governor, Jon Corzine. In Virginia, which Obama carried by 6 points a year earlier, a religious-right Republican won the governor's office by 17 points.

Sen. Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, won his last election in 2006 by 28 points -- the largest margin for a Democratic Senate candidate in that state in a quarter-century.

Since voting for the Senate health care bill last Christmas, the once-bulletproof Sen. Nelson not only gets booed out of Omaha pizzerias, but he has also seen his job approval rating fall to 42 percent and his disapproval rating soar to 48 percent. (Meanwhile, the junior senator from Nebraska, Mike Johanns, who voted against the bill, has a job approval rating of 63 percent.)

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COMMENTS FROM THE INTERNET

"I heard Obama is going out 1st thing in the AM and get him a truck too." -MARCUS

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Boston Globe calls election for Martha Coakley : 6 Hours Before Poll Closing

[tdc] Boston.com briefly put up this map of the final results of today’s election — some 8 hours before polls closed!

As you can see, over 2 million people voted, with Coakley eking out a 50-49 victory.

The map was fully interactive, so you could roll over and get town-by-town results [...]

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“Let Me Be Perfectly Not Clear” and “Make Lots of Mistakes About It”

[pjm] “Lie” is a rather harsh word; the noun and its verb form leave little to context or extenuating circumstances. So I use it sparingly.

But I know no other word for President Obama’s long string of “misstatements,” especially the blatant ones about closing Guantanamo within a year of his inauguration or serially declaring that he would insist on health care debate airing live on C-SPAN.

How odd that the liberal block is quiet that once coined “Bush lied, thousands died” (even when the CIA and Defense intelligence was accepted by both parties and in sync with what the Arab world and Europe were insisting upon [recall the charge of a supposed naïve Bush taking us to war against a nut who would gas our troops marshalling in Kuwait.]). In any case, not telling the truth has a lot to do with sinking polls

So I don’t quite buy the liberal lament that the people will support Obama when the economy improves. [...]

Let us count the ways

But almost immediately, Obama, again, in Platonic fashion, began to say things that could not be possibly true. Remember the categories.... [...]

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The hidden agenda of unionized media

[tdc] One cardinal rule of journalism is that reporters shouldn’t give or receive money, favors or services from anyone or any organization connected to stories they report on. In fact, many news organizations require their reporters to sign “pay for play” agreements that expressly prohibit such arrangements. Crossing that line is a firing offense in many news organizations.

So, can someone please explain this? The e-mail below was sent recently by the performers’ union–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)–to its membership. Its membership includes most network correspondents and anchors, as well as almost all reporters and anchors in the nation’s top markets–the very people who are trying to “objectively” report on the evening news, the health care debate in Congress.

The e-mail in its entirety reads:

As the two health care reform bills merge, it’s important to join the labor movement in letting your Representatives know a final bill must include the best pieces of the House bill, which includes a public option to keep insurance companies accountable and does more to make health insurance affordable.

The Senate bill includes a 40% tax on many middle class families’ insurance benefits instead, which would result in higher premiums for some workers and higher out-of-pocket costs. Join millions of your fellow union members in letting your Representatives know that taxing middle-class Americans’ health benefits is not the way to pay for reform.

The AFL-CIO is mobilizing working Americans to let our voices be heard today by joining in the National Call-In Blitz for Health Care Reform.

Call 1-877-3-AFLCIO (1-877-323-5246) toll-free and urge your Representatives to support working families by voting for health care reform that:

. Does NOT tax our health care benefits;

. Requires employers to pay their fair share; and

. Reduces health care costs -the best way to do this is with a public health insurance option.

Thank you!

Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.

If that bothers you, you should also know that your “objective” network correspondent, roaming the halls of Congress right now trying to ferret out the “truth,” probably pays hundreds, or even thousands of dollars in union dues to AFTRA every year. He or she, in all likelihood, depends on AFTRA for one of those “Cadillac” health insurance plans that is the subject of so much debate. He or she also will receive a nice little AFTRA pension come retirement time, and perhaps most importantly, will depend on AFTRA to help defend, protect or advise them in any serious conflicts, demotions, firings or legal issues with management at their TV station or network.

Now, do you really think your friendly network correspondent is gonna criticize the Senate Democrats’ bill? I got an offer you can’t refuse…

::

COMMENTS FROM THE INTERNET

I choose not to be anonymous but would like my voice heard loud and clear. I’ve been a ‘working journalist’ for over 50 years and have always been amazed, dismayed and terrified of ‘journalists’ or others in media that effect what is in print or on radio or TV that are members of unions.

How can they be true to the basic tenets of responsible journalism while paying dues and supporting a union? I suggest they cannot and any reporting they do on unions should have them publish or air a disclaimer indicated their prejudice, whoops, preference.

Own a media property, newspaper, radio, TV station or even now cable news operation and explain to me how you can pay allegiance to a union, or even support a union with your dues. [...] -stogtv

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Poll shows growing disappointment, polarization over Obama's performance

[wapo] A year into his presidency, President Obama faces a polarized nation and souring public assessments of his efforts to change Washington, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Nearly half of all Americans say Obama is not delivering on his major campaign promises, and a narrow majority have just some or no confidence that he will make the right decisions for the country's future.

More than a third see the president as falling short of their expectations, about double the proportion saying so at the 100-day mark of Obama's presidency in April. At the time, 63 percent said the president had accomplished a "great deal" or a "good amount." Now, the portion saying so has dropped to 47 percent.

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Majority Would Vote Against Obama

[h] A year into his tenure, a majority of Americans would already vote against Pres. Obama if the '12 elections were held today, according to a new survey.

The Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll shows 50% say they would probably or definitely vote for someone else. Fully 37% say they would definitely cast a ballot against Obama. Meanwhile, just 39% would vote to re-elect the pres. to a 2nd term, and only 23% say they definitely would do so.

Obama's first year in office has been marked by an unemployment rate that surged to 10%, an increased commitment of troops to Afghanistan and a health care battle that has taken a serious political toll on the WH.

Obama's approval rating is down to 47%, the poll showed, a 14-point drop since the April survey. 45% disapprove, up 17 points from April. Only 41% say they trust Obama more than Congressional GOPers, while 33% pick the GOP over the WH. That 8-point gap is down from a 21-point edge Obama sported as recently as Sept.

Just 34% say the country is moving in the right direction, down 13 points since April, and 55% say it is off on the wrong track, up 13 points over the same period.

But as GOPers focus on taxes and spending, that message seems to be causing Obama the most harm. Among those who believe Obama's policies have moved the country in the wrong direction, 45% cite spending and government regulation as a top cause for their opposition.

Meanwhile, those who think Obama's policies are moving the country down the right track largely cite long-term benefits of his initiatives.

In the meantime, health care legislation is by no means popular, but a majority of Americans don't oppose the legislation yet. 44% said they support the legislation under consideration, down 5 points from the last poll in Sept., while 46% oppose it.

The poll, conducted by Financial Dynamics, surveyed 1,200 adults between Jan. 3-7 for a margin of error of +/- 2.8%.

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Palin adds 1 million viewers for O’Reilly

[dm] [...] Her first appearance on Fox News pushed Bill O’Reilly’s ratings by 22% or so.

The night before, The O’Reilly Factor drew 3,499,000 viewers — including 932,000 in the 25-54 demo. His repeat at 11 PM drew 1,371,000 viewers — more than any non-Fox News show on cable news.

On Tuesday, with Palin, The O’Reilly Factor drew 3,954,000 viewers — including 993,000 in the 25-54 demo. His repeat at 11 PM was interrupted by Haitian news, but it drew 1,986,000 viewers at 11:30 PM.

UPDATE: Let’s see, Monday, 4,870,000 viewers (combining times). Tuesday, 5,940,000. So he was up 450,000 in the first hour but up 1,070,000 altogether — a 22% gain. Word of mouth likely goosed that 11 PM (well, 11:30 PM) showing.

Originally I wrote a gain of 450,000 viewers based only on the 8 O’Clock airing.

Part of that may be the usual Monday-to-Tuesday bump but the 11 PM goose tells me that it was more than that.

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Media does matter for America

[tdc] [...] Over the last fifteen years, the Internet has become the battlefield, where the mostly false notion of “objective” and “bias-neutral” journalism clashes with those of us on the right who believe that media bias is the central issue facing our nation, and even the world.

The fact that the mainstream media’s existence is built on this false premise of objectivity serves as a suicide pact, as their ever-dwindling audience – one viewer, one reader at a time – perceives the obviously subjective “news” they are being served. Our competition in the so-called mainstream media claims that our admitted biases render it impossible for us to report stories truthfully. I couldn’t disagree more.

Those in the media who proclaim neutrality while reporting slanted, one-sided information represent the core reason why subscribership is down in most newspapers (The Wall Street Journal notwithstanding) and why ratings are down for news networks (Fox News notwithstanding.)

While I am not clever enough to understand whether true objective neutrality in journalism can be reached, I know that there are some in the profession who strive for that ideal, but those newsroom anomalies are becoming an ever-rarer breed, as new media makes its mark on old media. Except for a few network and newspaper closet cases, who we all know suffer grave consequences for voicing their dissent, the original content news drivers, those that craft the daily narratives from their sheltered offices on 6th Avenue and near Times Square remain protected by this grand inside joke of objectivity. “Our reporting doesn’t show any ideological slant” they will say, with a knowing wink to each other. But remember, they also say they are thrilled with Anderson Cooper’s ratings in the same breath. You decide.

From its inception, the Internet has stood for the free-flow of information, unfiltered by a small handful of influential “deciders,” dolling out news like the miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, with a stack of gold coins. As more news and more information found its way to consumers, an amazing thing happened: The market for this information grew.

The consumer of news and information now has a clear and distinct choice between two approaches in delivering this valuable commodity:

On one side you have the New York-based intelligentsia, driving the narratives of our times with the guidance of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Anyone who knows this crowd knows them to be neither “objective” or “bias-neutral,” yet that line is propagated on television news and in print media and we are supposed to accept it. They have built walls between themselves and their customers, disdainfully and grudgingly accepting their criticisms only when forced to acknowledge their egregious errors (are you still out there, Mr. Rather?).

On the other side you have writers, researchers and pundits from every corner of our land, proudly disclosing their true core principles for all to see. They present the stories that move them and respond in real time to the interactive feedback of their consumers. They lose credibility (and audience) not for their opinions, but for journalistic errors and, more importantly, how they handle those errors. The fact is this: they are actually held to a higher journalistic standard because of the frank and honest disclosure of their point of view. When they mess up, they make their own side look bad. This ends up being a much tougher code of ethics than something dreamed up by a J-School panel of advisors.

When you look at the two sides it becomes pretty clear that it isn’t really a choice at all, is it? One side represents an outdated mode of operation borne of necessity due to the limited technology of a by-gone age, perpetuated by a self-congratulatory graduate-school culture that rewards and protects its own while simultaneously denying the legitimacy of the opposition. The other side is based on freedom, liberty and market forces, using reason, logic and a reliance upon the reader’s own wisdom and common sense to form his or her own conclusions after receiving all of the unfiltered information available. Which would any normal person instinctively choose? [...]

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Ruled by Legalistic Minds

[rcp] First, let's kill all the lawyers. I hasten to specify, this is a quote. And to add that some of my best friends are lawyers. And moreover, even after exempting them individually, and despite my very personal experiences with such monstrous stuff as Ontario family law, I do not recommend killing all the lawyers. Such are my religious convictions that I will insist: not even one lawyer should be harmed. In any physical way.

The quote is from Shakespeare. Take him to the hate crimes tribunal! [...]

His plays are crawling with remarks, the political incorrectitude of which would be the more apparent to Canada's "human rights" commissioners, were they not, as a class, such drooling, humourless, subliterate twits.

But fortunately for old Will, he never entered a Canadian jurisdiction. [...]

an amusing item a friend forwarded this week, comparing Democrat to Republican party in the United States. The Democrat leadership is all lawyers, and has been for some time. Barack Obama, lawyer; Michelle Obama, lawyer; Hillary Clinton, lawyer; Bill Clinton, lawyer; Bill Reid, lawyer; Nancy Pelosi, lawyer; and so forth. All Democrat presidential candidates since 1984, lawyers -- except Al Gore, who somehow failed to graduate from law school.

Compare, if you will, the Republican leadership over the last while, in White House and Congress. The last Republican lawyer to make president was Gerald Ford. Instead: movie actor, spy chief, businessman, successively. Last election: an old soldier, and a PTA lady. Look back at the leaders of the so-called "Republican revolution" in Congress: Newt Gingrich, history professor; Tom Delay, pest exterminator; Dick Armey, economist; Bill Frist, heart surgeon. (And note what the Democrat lawyers did to get rid of them.)

Alas, when I turn to Canada, I see all-party government by lawyers; and the interminable legacy of the extremely lawyerly Liberal Party under that lawyer Pierre Trudeau. Moreover, beyond legislative politics (both here and in the U.S.), I review a continuous social revolution achieved by such lawyerly "reforms" as the Omnibus Bill of 1970; or Santa's 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Our lawyers never nationalized banks. In every case, it seems to me, they changed the laws in order to change the people. (The precise opposite of democracy.)

People foolishly voted in Trudeau the same way they voted in Obama: "Hope and Change." From lawyers.

And this is the wisdom of all the policy czars that President Obama has appointed -- his commando team of lawyers, many with highly controversial, radical left pasts. Superficially, they could be removed from office tomorrow. But if they can rewrite enough laws and regulations, in the smoke and confusion of brief moments in power, they will, in a deeper sense, remain in office for generations to come.

I was writing last Sunday in general opposition to the concept of "reform." It is a lawyerly concept, which has narrowed in our time to the tactics of "legislation by litigation," and should be profoundly anathematic to a free society. By increments, the need for lawyers has been extended to every aspect of human life, and the law schools themselves have metastatically expanded.

In a sense, our entire society has been criminalized, by lawyers adding to myriad laws that impinge not only on criminals, but on everybody. And by increments, we must find some way to reverse that parasitical growth, which threatens to choke even our humanity.

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The mini ice age starts here

[dm] The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in
summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise.

They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’.

This challenge to the widespread view that the planet is on the brink of an irreversible catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists could never be described as global warming ‘deniers’ or sceptics.

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Fiscal liberalism has tarnished California gold

[wp] [...] California, a laboratory of liberalism, is spiraling downward, driven by a huge budget deficit. So the University of California system's budget was cut 20 percent. Then the system increased in-state student fees 32 percent to . . . $10,302. But that is still 70 percent below student costs at Stanford and other private institutions in California that Berkeley considers no better than it is. [...]

It took years for liberalism's redistributive itch to create an income tax so steeply progressive that it prompts the flight from the state of wealth-creators: "Between 1990 and 2007," Voegeli writes, "some 3.4 million more Americans moved from California to one of the other 49 states than moved to California from another state."

And the state's income tax -- liberalism codified -- intensifies the effects of business cycles on the state's revenue stream: During booms, the stream surges and stimulates government spending; during contractions, revenue dwindles, but the new government spending continues. Voegeli says that if California's spending had grown no faster than population growth and inflation from 1992 to 2006, it would have been $65 billion less in 2006, and per capita government outlays then would have equaled not those of Somalia or Mississippi but of Oregon, which is hardly "a hellish paradigm of Social Darwinism."

It took years for liberalism's mania for micromanaging life with entangling regulations to make California's once-creative economy resemble Gulliver immobilized by the Lilliputians' many threads. The state, which between 1990 and 2007 lost 26 percent of its factory jobs and 35 percent of its high-tech manufacturing jobs, ranks behind only New York, another of liberalism's laboratories, in the number of outward-bound moving vans.

It took years for compassionate liberalism to make California's welfare menu contribute to the state becoming an importer of Mexico's poverty. It took years for servile liberalism to turn the state into what Voegeli calls a "unionocracy," run by and for unionized public employees, such as public safety employees who can retire at 50 and receive 90 percent of the final year's pay for life.

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Economy loses 85K jobs

[y] Lack of confidence in the economic recovery led employers to shed a more-than-expected 85,000 net jobs in December even as the unemployment rate held at 10 percent. The rate would have been higher if more people had been looking for work instead of leaving the labor force because they can't find jobs.

The sharp drop in the work force — 661,000 fewer people — showed that more of the jobless are giving up. Once people stop looking for jobs, they're no longer counted among the unemployed.

When discouraged workers and part-time workers who would prefer full-time jobs are included, the so-called "underemployment" rate in December rose to 17.3 percent, from 17.2 percent in November. That's just below a revised figure of 17.4 percent in October, the highest on records dating from 1994.

Many analysts had hoped Friday's report would show the economy gained jobs for the first time in two years. While the revised figures found an increase in November, it was tiny.

"One word sums it up: Disappointment," said Jonathan Basile, an economist at Credit Suisse.

The drop in the labor force, Basile said, "tells me that Main Street doesn't believe there's a recovery yet, because they're not out looking for jobs yet."

Revisions to the previous two months' data showed the economy actually generated 4,000 jobs in November, the first gain in nearly two years. But the revisions showed it also lost 16,000 more jobs than previously estimated in October. [...]

Friday's report caps a disastrous year for U.S. workers. Employers cut 4.2 million jobs in 2009. And the unemployment rate averaged 9.3 percent. That compares with an average of 5.8 percent in 2008 and 4.6 percent in 2007. Nearly 15.3 million people are unemployed, an increase of 3.9 million during 2009.

The Democrats’ Job Standard

After Attacking Bush During Periods Of Job Growth, And Pledging Their Stimulus Would Create Millions Of Jobs, Where’s The Dems’ Outrage?

[gopf] [...] In 2003, Over 87,000 Jobs Were Created. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/6/10)

* But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Criticized 2003 Job Creation As “Far From Enough.” “The slight increase in jobs last month is wonderful news for 57,000 Americans. But the 2.1 million Americans who have been actively looking for work for more than two years … know that it is far from enough …” (Rep. Nancy Pelosi, “Pelosi: ‘Slight Jobs Increase Far From Enough -- We Must Do More to Create Jobs and Growth,’” Press Release, 10/3/03)

In 2004, Over 2 Million Jobs Were Created. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/6/10)

* But In 2004, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) Claimed Bush “Created A Climate … Where The Number of Jobs Is Not Growing.” “This President has created a climate in this country where the number of jobs is not growing. It did not have to be that way.” (Sen. Dick Durbin, Congressional Record, 10/08/04, p. S10764)

In 2005, Over 2.5 Million Jobs Were Created. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/6/10)

* But Pelosi Called 2005 Job Creation Numbers “Anemic.” “Today’s anemic jobs numbers confirm that President Bush has still failed to create a single new private-sector job since he became President.” (Rep. Nancy Pelosi, “Pelosi: ‘Today’s Anemic Jobs Numbers Confirm the Administration Has Failed to Create a Single New Private-Sector Job,’” Press Release, 6/3/05)

In 2006, Over 2.1 Million Jobs Were Created. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/6/10)

* But Pelosi Claimed Bush Policies “Favored The Privileged Few At The Expense Of America’s Working Families.” (Rep. Nancy Pelosi, “Democrats Will Restore the Economic Security of America’s Working Families,” Press Release, 9/22/06)

By 2007, 5.7 Million Jobs Had Been Created Under Bush. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/6/10)

* But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) Claimed Bush Had “Shameful History Of Losing American Jobs.” (Sen. Harry Reid, “Reid: As Unemployment Reaches Two-year High, American Jobs Are The Latest Casualty Of Bush’s Failed Economic Policies,” Press Release, 1/4/08)

THEN PROMISED THEIR $787 BILLION STIMULUS WOULD CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS

In February, Obama Signed $787 Billion Stimulus Bill, Claiming It Would “Fix The Economy.” “President Obama on Tuesday signed the $787 billion stimulus package ... ‘We have begun the essential work of keeping the American dream alive in our time,’ Obama said, calling the legislation ‘the beginning of the end’ of what needed to be done to fix the economy.” (Michael A. Fletcher, “Obama Leaves D.C. To Sign Stimulus Bill,” The Washington Post, 2/18/09)

And Obama Pledged That Stimulus Would Create 3.5 Million Jobs By End Of 2010. “[W]hat makes this recovery plan so important is not just that it will create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years ...” (President Barack Obama, Remarks At The Signing Of The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act, Denver, CO, 2/17/09)

SO DEMS NEED TO CREATE 6.3 MILLION JOBS IN 2010 TO MEET THEIR OWN STANDARD, A LEVEL OF JOB GROWTH THAT HAS NEVER BEEN ACHIEVED

2.8 MILLION Jobs Lost Since Obama’s Signed His $787 Billion Stimulus In February 2009. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 12/10/09)

* Including 85,000 More Jobs Lost Last Month. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 1/8/09)

[...]

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Obama's Fiscal Fantasy World
Spending is up nearly 24% since Bush's last full budget year

[wsj] After President Obama devoted much of 2009 to health care and global warming—two issues far down Americans' list of concerns—the White House says he will pivot to jobs and deficit reduction in his State of the Union speech in a few weeks. The White House is considering dramatic gestures, perhaps announcing a spending freeze or even a 2% or 3% reduction in nondefense spending.

But Americans shouldn't be misled by the election year ploy: Mr. Obama rigged the game by giving himself plenty of room to look tough on spending. He did that by increasing discretionary domestic spending for the last half of fiscal year 2009 by 8% and then increasing it another 12% for fiscal year 2010.

So discretionary domestic spending now stands at $536 billion, up nearly 24% from President George W. Bush's last full year budget in fiscal 2008 of $433.6 billion. That's a huge spending surge, even for a profligate liberal like Mr. Obama. The $102 billion spending increase doesn't even count the $787 billion stimulus package, of which $534 billion remains unspent. [...]

Mr. Obama is thinking of tapping another pocket of cash. Now that the banks are repaying—with interest and dividends—the $240 billion the Bush administration lent them, the Obama administration is considering recycling those dollars into new spending on "green" technology and more stimulus, despite provisions Congress wrote into the law creating the Troubled Asset Relief Program that requires that repaid TARP funds be used exclusively for deficit reduction.

Meanwhile, defense spending is being flattened: Between 2009 and 2010, military outlays will rise 3.6% while nondefense discretionary spending climbs 12%.

All this leaves Mr. Obama in the enviable position of appearing tough on spending while growing the federal government's share of GDP from its historic post-World War II average of roughly 20% to the target Mr. Obama laid out in his budget blueprint last February of 24%.

There are also those pesky entitlements. This mandatory spending has grown to 66% of the budget, up from 29% in 1965. Serious budgeters understand spending cannot be brought under control unless these mandatory outlays are part of the mix. [...]

At the beginning of his term, Americans believed Mr. Obama would follow through on his campaign promises about "cutting wasteful spending" and going "through the federal budget, line-by-line, ending programs that we don't need" and putting "an end to the run-away spending the record deficits."

After a year of living in his fiscal fantasy world, Americans realize they have a record deficit-setting, budget-busting spender on their hands. Voters are now reading the fine print on all that Mr. Obama proposes and as they do, his credibility, already badly damaged, suffers.

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Steele Keeps Digging The Hole

[as] Michael Steele, who has been under fire for his string of idiotic statements, poor fundraising numbers, shameless self promotion, and telling Republican donors who disagree with him to "shut up" and "get with the program" -- now says that he didn't actually seek the chairmanship of the RNC in the first place.

In a fawning radio interview with Dennis Miller, Steele speaks of himself as a modern day George Washington, who reluctantly answered the call to serve.

"I didn’t ask for, I didn’t seek this job, I didn’t ask for it," Steele said. "It wasn’t part of my, you know, charted course in life to wind up as chairman of the RNC. You know, there was a convergence of moments here."

Now, perhaps Steele's right and I'm mistaken. Perhaps I completely imagined covering the RNC chairman's race, going to watch him debate other candidates, or attending the RNC election last January. Maybe I imagined receiving emails on behalf of his candidacy, and maybe this video in which Steele announces his candidacy by saying, "I want the gig. I'm ready, I'm ready to lead this party" is an elaborate fabrication.

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Obama just doesn’t get it

[nro] After watching President Obama’s remarks on national security this afternoon, John Lehman, the secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and a member of the 9/11 Commission, tells National Review Online that, “frankly, I’m pissed off.”

“President Obama just doesn’t get it,” says Lehman. “I don’t think he has a clue. It’s all pure spin. He’s ignoring key issues and taking respectable professionals like John Brennan and turning them into hacks and shills. It’s beyond contempt.”

“The president has ignored the 9/11 Commission’s report,” says Lehman. “This whole idea that we can fix things by jumping higher and faster is ridiculous. The fact is that the system worked just like we said it would work if the president failed to give the Director of National Intelligence the tools he needs: it’s bloated, bureaucratic, layered, and stultified.”

“President Obama continues to totally ignore one of the important thrusts of our 9/11 recommendations, which is that you have to approach counterterrorism as a multiagency intelligence issue, and not as a law-enforcement issue. He’s made a lot of commission’s members angry for dismissing our report and ignoring key recommendations.” Obama, he adds, has taken a “lawyer-like, politically-correct approach” to national security issues like terrorist watchlists and no-fly lists. “You got to blame the president for enforcing the politically-correct and legalistic policies that led to these failures.”

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Jack-asshat Cafferty, CNN hack mouth piece seems to feel suddenly wronged in his love affair with the O's recent manuevering. No kidding, Jack? Just tuning in, are we?

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Geithner’s Fed Told AIG to Limit Swaps Disclosure

[b] The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.

AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008. The e-mails were obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The New York Fed took over negotiations between AIG and the banks in November 2008 as losses on the swaps, which were contracts tied to subprime home loans, threatened to swamp the insurer weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The regulator decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid for $62.1 billion of the swaps, prompting lawmakers to call the AIG rescue a “backdoor bailout” of financial firms.

“It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information,” said Issa, a California Republican. Taxpayers “deserve full and complete disclosure under our nation’s securities laws, not the withholding of politically inconvenient information.” President Barack Obama selected Geithner as Treasury secretary, a post he took last year.

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Security for 9/11 Trials in NYC Will Cost More Than $400M
Cost of Trying 9/11 Terrorists Could Go as High as $600 Million

[abc] New York City projects it will cost more than $400 million to provide security if the pre-trial preparation and trial of the suspects in the Sept. 11 terror attacks takes two years, which insiders say is virtually certain, according to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

It will cost another $206 million annually if the trial runs beyond two years, which some fear is possible, the mayor's office estimates.

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Clown Show Continues : Guantanamo Prisoners May Sue to stay in Guantanamo

[we] Buried in a blog item by Newsweek's ace reporter Michael Isikoff is a bombshell. Appararently lawyers for Guantanamo detainees want to keep their clients in Guantanamo, rather than transfer them to the Obama administration's proposed new prison in Illinois:

But the final irony is that many of the detainees may not even want to be transferred to Thomson and could conceivably even raise their own legal roadblocks to allow them to stay at Gitmo.

Falkoff notes that many of his clients, while they clearly want to go home, are at least being held under Geneva Convention conditions in Guantánamo. At Thomson, he notes, the plans call for them to be thrown into the equivalent of a "supermax" security prison under near-lockdown conditions.

"As far as our clients are concerned, it's probably preferable for them to remain at Guantánamo," he says.

The strident left-wing critiques of the Guantanamo facility have all centered around the fact that detainees there are horribly mistreated and conditions unbearable. But when push comes to shove, it would seem concerns about Guantanamo are overblown, and the prisoners there know that being held under the Geneva conventions outside the U.S. is much preferable to a maximum security prison in the U.S.

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You Lie!

The C-SPAN Lie? See Eight Clips of Obama Promising Televised Healthcare Negotiations

Nothing new here for anyone that pays an iota of attention or that doesn't have their deluded head blindly rammed up some orifice. As I've said before, I didn't expect to feel this way about the guy - the blatant lies, yes, well...he was spouting those even before being elected, so that's not a surprise. The amount of them, perhaps, but I figured the guy would have a shred of dignity. Fool me.

So many terms that I hadn't thought of for some time come to mind - charlatan, carpetbagger, nincompoop, jackass and on and on. Phony outrage, phony consideration, phony speaker. The dullest drone-on, shuck and jive, manufactured actor since John Kerry. Yammers on and on with rhetoric and imaginary, wish-wash nonsense, yet never actually says anything and when it is an important issue, he's can't even feign skill or ability.

All these paid lip flappers that were able to, with straight face, make pronouncements such as "Great speech" "Smouldering," (ya, Gergen, he was 'smouldering' alright...crash and burn in artificial poise) and such, come on. The Bombo came across as almost disinterested in the near occurrence of a "man-made-disaster" and appeared like it was just a little bothersome. Weak tea champ.

This administration has become, in an astonishingly short time, a sad joke. One has to wonder how long the majority of the apology media can continue to play along.

The routine is sad, yet quickly became rote; an issue arises, blurb out some wind up doll, nonsense statement and then on the next day when it's mocked and derided, spin out the "taken out of context" or " what I meant to say was" lines and bumble along with the highest of incompetency as the glaring inadequacy glows ever brighter.

The guy blows serious. Fraud. And I couldn't give a damn about his birth certificate. - The Cynical Bastard

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Nancy Pelosi takes swipe at President Obama's campaign promises

[p] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, piqued with White House pressure to accept the Senate health reform bill, threw a rare rhetorical elbow Tuesday at President Barack Obama, questioning his commitment to his 2008 campaign promises.

A leadership aide said it was no accident.

Pelosi emerged from a meeting with her leadership team and committee chairs in the Capitol to face an aggressive throng of reporters who immediately hit her with C-SPAN’s request that she permit closed-door final talks on the bill to be televised.

A reporter reminded the San Francisco Democrat that in 2008, then-candidate Obama opined that all such negotiations be open to C-SPAN cameras.

“There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail,” quipped Pelosi, who has no intention of making the deliberations public.
People familiar with Pelosi's thinking wasted little time in explaining precisely what she meant by a “number of things” — saying it reflected weeks of simmering tension on health care between two Democratic power players who have functioned largely in lock step during Obama’s first year in office.

Senior House Democratic leadership aides say Pelosi was pointedly referring to Obama’s ’08 pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class, which she interprets to include a tax on so-called Cadillac health care plans that offer lavish benefit packages to many union members.

The House aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Pelosi has been miffed with Obama’s tilt toward the Senate plan and his expectation that the House would simply go along with the Senate bill out of political necessity.

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Good Riddance : Dodd won't seek reelection, will retire at end of term

[wp] Embattled Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday at which he is expected to announce he will not seek reelection, sources familiar with his plans said Tuesday night.

Word of Dodd's retirement plans comes after months of speculation about his political future, his faltering poll numbers and a growing sense among the Democratic establishment that he could not win a sixth term in the Senate. The news also came on the same day Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) announced he would not seek reelection.

Once among the safest of incumbents, Dodd's political star fell over a two-year period, during which he moved his family to Iowa to pursue the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination and was linked to a VIP mortgage loan program overseen by a controversial Wall Street financier. He also drew harsh questions about his oversight of Wall Street, as chair of the Senate Banking Committee, in the years when the nation's financial system was heading toward near collapse.

Dodd's poll numbers plummeted last spring before rebounding somewhat over the summer. But another dive in the polls late last year led to widespread concern that Dodd needed to vacate the seat for Democrats to have a chance at retaining it in the 2010 elections.

[...]it was reported that Dodd had received special treatment in his acquisition of a mortgage loan from Countrywide Financial, through a program that labeled him and others as friends of Countrywide chief executive Angelo Mozilo. Dodd insisted he was unaware of his inclusion in the program, and he was cleared of any wrongdoing by the Senate Ethics Committee, but the political damage was done.

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It’s War, not a Crime Spree

[sp] [...] It simply makes no sense to treat an al Qaeda-trained operative willing to die in the course of massacring hundreds of people as a common criminal. Reports indicate that Abdulmutallab stated there were many more like him in Yemen but that he stopped talking once he was read his Miranda rights. President Obama’s advisers lamely claim Abdulmutallab might be willing to agree to a plea bargain – pretty doubtful you can cut a deal with a suicide bomber. John Brennan, the President’s top counterterrorism adviser, bizarrely claimed “there are no downsides or upsides” to treating terrorists as enemy combatants. That is absurd. There is a very serious downside to treating them as criminals: terrorists invoke their “right” to remain silent and stop talking. Terrorists don’t tell us where they were trained, what they were trained in, who they were trained by, and who they were trained with. Giving foreign-born, foreign-trained terrorists the right to remain silent does nothing to keep Americans safe from terrorist threats. It only gives our enemies access to courtrooms where they can publicly grandstand, and to defense attorneys who can manipulate the legal process to gain access to classified information. [...]

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Hollow Words on Terrorism

[rcp] [...] The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration's response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism "man-caused disasters." Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York -- a trifecta of political correctness and image management.

And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term "war on terror." It's over -- that is, if it ever existed.

Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term "asymmetric warfare."

And produces linguistic -- and logical -- oddities that littered Obama's public pronouncements following the Christmas Day attack. In his first statement, Obama referred to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as "an isolated extremist." This is the same president who, after the Ford Hood shooting, warned us "against jumping to conclusions" -- code for daring to associate Nidal Hasan's mass murder with his Islamist ideology. Yet, with Abdulmutallab, Obama jumped immediately to the conclusion, against all existing evidence, that the bomber acted alone. [...]

Obama reassured the nation that this "suspect" had been charged. Reassurance? The president should be saying: We have captured an enemy combatant -- an illegal combatant under the laws of war: no uniform, direct attack on civilians -- and now to prevent future attacks, he is being interrogated regarding information he may have about al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Instead, Abdulmutallab is dispatched to some Detroit-area jail and immediately lawyered up. At which point -- surprise! -- he stops talking.

This absurdity renders hollow Obama's declaration that "we will not rest until we find all who were involved." Once we've given Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, we have gratuitously forfeited our right to find out from him precisely who else was involved, namely those who trained, instructed, armed and sent him.

This is all quite mad even in Obama's terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.

The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator -- no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.

The president said that this incident highlights "the nature of those who threaten our homeland." But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as "extremist(s)."

A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and are openly pledged to war on America.

Any government can through laxity let someone slip through the cracks. But a government that refuses to admit that we are at war, indeed, refuses even to name the enemy -- jihadist is a word banished from the Obama lexicon -- turns laxity into a governing philosophy.

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The NYT 'Conservative' Finds Something Strange

[nyt] [...] Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply. [...]

The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation. [...]

In the near term, the tea party tendency will dominate the Republican Party. It could be the ruin of the party, pulling it in an angry direction that suburban voters will not tolerate. But don’t underestimate the deep reservoirs of public disgust. If there is a double-dip recession, a long period of stagnation, a fiscal crisis, a terrorist attack or some other major scandal or event, the country could demand total change, creating a vacuum that only the tea party movement and its inheritors would be in a position to fill.

Personally, I’m not a fan of this movement. But I can certainly see its potential to shape the coming decade.

It's hardly unknown or news to suggest that this guy is another of the numerous fraud foisted by some media organ as their 'conservative voice'. It's little wonder why so many tune out the masquerade offered by similar - even if so much of the media continue to churn it out. Just keep to the tact of repeating nonsense and some has to stick.

Of course, the self proclaimed smart person clique suggests that, well, yes, they are the smart ones. They do tell you so. After all, glancing at the various situations can any find reason to disagree? Hmm...

That 0bama - he's just so damn intelligent. How so or why? Uh, well, because someone said so. The evidence is certainly, uhh....Oh. So brilliant that no one is able to see his college transcripts.

Newsflash, Brooks. There's absolutely nothing new about the issues of 'public opinion' you mention, just as there's nothing new about an attitude that considers the seemingly never-ending growth of government a foolish and woeful path. Only, perhaps in your bubble.

Thank goodness that even many of the comments to this article call out and show that some do not buy into this "intellectual" bilge.

David, thank you for being honest in the last paragraph and admitting that you are not fond of what you call the tea party movement. Republican like you and Democrats like Obama are the same to most of us. You really think that your superior credentials grants you social wisdom and intelligfence. It doesn't.

People like you and Obama have been the mainstream since the 1960's. While you pretend to rail and fight against "the man", you really are, and always have been " the man". There is no real difference between Bush and Obama. They have the same credentials. And, though we were promised that Obama was intellectually more curious than Bush, I have yet to see the proof.

We want what the country always stood for before the tripe of the 60's generation decided to be so eurocentric in their view points. We want " Freedom ". We want " Liberty ". Those qwuaint notions are still of the highest importance to most of us in the real America. If your banker friends ( who are the same people as Obama's banker friends) want to pretend they rule the world ferom their roach nest in NYC, we don't care --- as long as you leave us alone, to leave as free as we please. The problem is that all of you want to make a thousand restrictions, rules and regulations, for the rest of us.

Get the federal government back to where it only does what the Constitution demands -- and nothing more. Get the government out of our lives. Keep your bankers, and the politicians they own, in your cities. Leave us alone and the rest of you republicrats and demopublicans can continue to pretend among yourselves that you matter to the rest of us.

If you don't leave us alone, if you do continue to bother us; we will remove you from power and replace you with those who don't have your credentials. I can hardly see where Sarah Palin or Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader can do worse than you have done. And, we don't really care whether they wear the proper school ties. We really don't care.

You restrict our freedoms and regulate our liberties -- about that, we do care. Go to what is simple -- The Constitution. Instead of ridiculing the tea party people, The Sarah Palin people, The Ron Paul People, and the Dennis Kucinich people; look at yourselves. You are in charge. You have been in charge. The mistakes have been made by the credentialed mainstream people like you.

Leave us alone. - d.johnson

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Freed Guantánamo inmates are heading for Yemen to join al-Qaeda fight

[tuk] At least a dozen former Guantánamo Bay inmates have rejoined al-Qaeda to fight in Yemen, The Times has learnt, amid growing concern over the ability of the country’s Government to accept almost 100 more former inmates from the detention centre.

The Obama Administration promised to close the Guantánamo facility by January 22, a deadline that it will be unable to meet. The 91 Yemeni prisoners in Guantánamo make up the largest national contingent among the 198 being held.

Six prisoners were returned to Yemen last month. After the Christmas Day bomb plot in Detroit, US officials are increasingly concerned that the country is becoming a hot-bed of terrorism. Eleven of the former inmates known to have rejoined al-Qaeda in Yemen were born in Saudi Arabia. The organisation merged its Saudi and Yemeni offshoots last year.

The country’s mountainous terrain, poverty and lawless tribal society make it, in the opinion of many analysts, a close match for Afghanistan as a new terrorist haven.

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The States and the Stimulus

How a supposed boon has become a fiscal burden.
[wsj] Remember how $200 billion in federal stimulus cash was supposed to save the states from fiscal calamity? Well, hold on to your paychecks, because a big story of 2010 will be how all that free money has set the states up for an even bigger mess this year and into the future.

The combined deficits of the states for 2010 and 2011 could hit $260 billion, according to a survey by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Ten states have a deficit, relative to the size of their expenditures, as bleak as that of near-bankrupt California. The Golden State starts the year another $6 billion in arrears despite a large income and sales tax hike last year. New York is literally down to its last dollar. Revenues are down, to be sure, but in several ways the stimulus has also made things worse. [...]

These spending requirements come when state revenues are on a downward spiral. State revenues declined by more than 10% in 2009, and tax collections are expected to be flat at best in 2010. In Indiana, nominal revenues in 2011 may be lower than in 2006. Arizona's revenues are expected to be lower this year than they were in 2004. Some states don't expect to regain their 2007 revenue peak until 2012.

So when states should be reducing outlays to match a new normal of lower revenue collections, federal stimulus rules mean many states will have little choice but to raise taxes to meet their constitutional balanced budget requirements. Thank you, Nancy Pelosi.

This is the opposite of what the White House and Congress claimed when they said the stimulus funds would prevent economically harmful state tax increases. In 2009, 10 states raised income or sales taxes, and another 15 introduced new fees on everything from beer to cellphone ringers to hunting and fishing. The states pocketed the federal money and raised taxes anyway.

Now, in an election year, Congress wants to pass another $100 billion aid package for ailing states to sustain the mess the first stimulus helped to create. Governors would be smarter to unite and tell Congress to keep the money and mandates, and let the states adjust to the new reality of lower revenues. Meanwhile, Mr. Perry and other governors who warned that the stimulus would have precisely this effect can consider themselves vindicated.

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Science Daily : No Rise of Airborne Fraction of Carbon Dioxide in Past 150 Years, New Research Finds

[sd] Most of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity does not remain in the atmosphere, but is instead absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. In fact, only about 45 percent of emitted carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere.

However, some studies have suggested that the ability of oceans and plants to absorb carbon dioxide recently may have begun to decline and that the airborne fraction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is therefore beginning to increase.

Many climate models also assume that the airborne fraction will increase. Because understanding of the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide is important for predicting future climate change, it is essential to have accurate knowledge of whether that fraction is changing or will change as emissions increase.

To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.

In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.

The research is published in Geophysical Research Letters.

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The Joke’s on Us

[nro] On Christmas Day, a gentleman from Nigeria succeeded (effortlessly) in boarding a flight to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. Pretty funny, huh?

But the Pantybomber wasn’t the big joke. The real laugh was the United States government. The global hyperpower spent the next week making itself a laughingstock to the entire planet. First, the bureaucrats at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions.

Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you. At Heathrow last week, they were permitting only one item of carry-on on U.S. flights. In Toronto, no large purses.

Um, the Pantybomber didn’t have a purse. He brought the bomb on board under his private parts, and his private parts weren’t part of his carry-on (although, if reports of injuries sustained in his failed mission are correct, they may well have been part of his carry-off). But no matter. If in doubt, blame the victim. The TSA announced that for the last hour of the flight no passenger can use the toilets or have anything on his lap — not a laptop, not a blanket, not a stewardess, not even a paperback book. I can’t wait for the first lawsuit after an infidel flight attendant confiscates a litigious imam’s Koran as they’re coming into LAX.

You’re still free to read a paperback if you’re flying from Paris to Sydney, or Stockholm to Beijing, or Kuala Lumpur to Heathrow. But not to LAX or JFK. The TSA were responding as bonehead bureaucracies do: Don’t just stand there, do something. And every time the TSA does something, you’ll have to stand there, longer and longer, suffering ever more pointless indignities. Last week, guest-hosting The Rush Limbaugh Show, I took a call from a lady who said that, if it helps keep her safe, she’s happy to get to the airport “four, five, whatever hours” before the flight. Try to put a figure on “whatever” and you’ll get a sense of where America’s transportation system is headed. Ten years ago, you got to the airport 45 minutes, an hour before the flight. Now, thanks to the ever more demanding choreographers of the homeland-security kabuki, it’s two, three, four, whatever. Look at O’Hare and imagine the size of airport we’ll need. And by then the Pantybomber won’t even need to get on the plane; he can kill more people blowing up the check-in line.

And remember, this was a bombing mission that “failed.” With failures like this, who needs victories? [...]

The real message was conveyed by Fouad Ajami, discussing the new administration’s foreign policy in the Wall Street Journal: “No despot fears Mr. Obama, and no blogger in Cairo or Damascus or Tehran, no demonstrator in those cruel Iranian streets, expects Mr. Obama to ride to the rescue.” True. Another Iranian deadline passed on New Year’s Eve, but the United States will set a new one for Groundhog Day or whenever.

And, just as the thug states understand they now have the run of the planet, so do the terror cells. A thwarted terror attack at Christmas is bad enough. Spending the following week making yourself a global joke is worse. Every A-list despot and dimestore jihadist got that message loud and clear — and so did American allies already feeling semi-abandoned by this most parochial of presidents. Expect a bumpy twelve months ahead. Happy New Year.

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The Life-Long Challenge of Differentiating Between Truth, Paradigms, Truisms and Plain Lies

Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm. - Donella Meadows

[tdb] Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance can be deceiving; and, matters accepted as factual realities all our life may in fact not stand the test of simple logic when questioned properly by someone with another point of view. This is a reality we all have to live with and do our best to deal with honestly and openly. It´s one of the great challenges in life. It requires a flexible mind and mindset. And at times, it requires your admitting to be wrong.

We are all molded by the information kit we are fed as we grow up and as we grow old. And, unless we actively take the effort and find the energy to question all the commonly shared "truisms", the spoon-fed "facts" of others, the things that "everyone knows" and that all take for granted, we are easy prey for those in possession of the means for mass propaganda.

As George Bernard Shaw once stated, "The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it." We are all guilty of this sort of skewed perception and complacency. It is hard work to keep asking and SECOND-GUESSING. But, it is important to keep at it all the same!

I like the term ‘second-guessing´, because, ultimately, an educated guess is all we will generally be able to achieve. This certainly applies to financial markets and investing, as it applies to life in general.

This past year, we have certainly been fed with A LOT OF PROPAGANDA worth second-guessing:

* Everyone seems to take for granted that money equals wealth...

* Most believe that central banks and governments are working feverishly to protect us all...

* A considerable part of humanity has pretty much accepted the necessity of mass vaccinations against the Swine Flu and other diseases. They appear to think that the pharmaceutical companies and their side-kicks act fully in the interest of our health...

* The media is currently full of demands for more government "protection": "We need more and stricter regulation. And regulators need to be given more power to ensure that another financial crisis is avoided." They really think that is what we need. And, they are convinced it will work...

* Another frequently heard piece of ‘wisdom´: Capitalism has failed...

* Oh yes, it is clear to most that natural, unprocessed milk is unhealthy, if not even life-threatening...

* etc. etc. etc.

As we move toward the surely very interesting year of 2010, I would like to invite all readers to second-guess the common "wisdom" above. If you are fully committed to any of these viewpoints, I challenge you to step back and reconsider. Chances are that you are falling prey to the steady beat of that global propaganda machine.

Of course, it could be me that is on the wrong side of the story. Possibly, your Mountain Guides and Sherpas have it all wrong. Maybe, but at least we can credit ourselves with continuously probing and questioning.

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Mayo Clinic in Arizona to Stop Treating Some Medicare Patients

[b] The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.

More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.

Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.

“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”

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Democrats Officially Kill Successful DC Voucher Program

[bg] This is big government at its finest hour. The Democrats have officially killed a successful private school voucher program banishing more than 3,300 low-income children back to the DC schools they so desperately wanted to escape.

The Democrats have effectively ended the voucher program. Obama only extended it into the 2009-2010 school year. He could have done more. He didn’t. Underpriveleged children–whom the Democrats oppress “protect” from the greed and injustices of the Right had a chance to gain the social justice and fairness Obama continuously touts in his speeches.

The Democrats have spent trillions of our tax dollars so carelessly with failed stimulus pork payouts, cash for clunkers, auto bailouts, bank bailouts, and additional Fannie and Freddie bailouts, you would think they could spare an extra $50 million over five years to continue to educate poor children–especially minority children.

For the record, it was the Republicans in 2004 who started the voucher program and Republican Senator John Ensign (R-NV) who introduced an amendment to the omnibus appropriations bill to extend the voucher program. Democrats voted down the amendment 50-39.

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Media blunders of 2009

[p] Upheaval in the media world continued in 2009, with 15,000 newspaper jobs lost, some glossy magazines killed and Washington bureaus either cut back or shuttered completely. And yet, online outlets sprouted — a few beefing up the ranks in D.C. — while more journalists embraced Twitter, blogs and platforms that don’t require ink on paper. While a number of this year’s more noticeable media blunders occurred through simple carelessness, some could be also considered growing pains in adjusting to changes in the media, such as reporters jumping the gun on Twitter, experimenting in video, cutting-and-pasting text from a blog or getting caught when homemade video surfaces on YouTube.

Top 10 Media Blunders

1) CNN mistakes Coast Guard drill for attack: On Sept. 11, of all days, CNN blasted the following via Twitter: “BREAKING NEWS: Suspicious boat in river near Obama in DC. Police scanner reports of shots fired. Circumstances unclear." As it turns out: very unclear. What the CNN reporter actually heard over the scanner were conversation about a training exercise taking place on the Potomac. But the false alarm spread quickly over Twitter, and the network quickly corrected the report on-air shortly thereafter. Still, the White House wasn’t amused. Press secretary Robert Gibbs slapped CNN on the wrist, saying that “before we report things like this, checking would be good.”

2) The Washington Post’s “Salongate”: It’s understandable that newspapers are seeking new revenue streams, but the Post took things to another level this summer. The newspaper sent a flier to lobbyists and potential corporate backers promising an off-the-record, nonconfrontational sit-down with editors and reporters in the home of publisher Katharine Weymouth. The price per salon: $25,000. Shortly after the news broke of what smelled like a pay-to-play operation, the paper canceled the series. But the Post’s top brass continued dealing with questions on how the salons were organized and promoted for months to come.

3) Fox’s tea party trifecta: Fox News had a banner ratings year, and throughout 2009, it gave extensive coverage of Obama administration opponents, especially the so-called tea party movement’s events on April 15 and Sept. 12. But coverage of that latter event led to a couple of apologies later on. Video surfaced of a Fox News producer rallying protesters for a live shot, while Sean Hannity mistakenly used the 9/12 footage in describing a smaller rally on Capitol Hill later in the fall. (Hannity owned up to the error, apologizing to of all people, Jon Stewart!). Ironically, Fox News had actually criticized other networks in a full page newspaper ad claiming they “miss[ed] the story” of the 9/12 rally.

4) ABC correspondent tweets Obama’s OTR “jackass” swipe: While a tweet is at most 140 characters, one blasted to more than a million followers can ping-pong around the Internet within seconds. That’s what happened when ABC correspondent Terry Moran tweeted some preliminary, off-the-record chatter between President Barack Obama and CNBC’s John Harwood. He wrote: "Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass.’” Moran’s apology for publishing the off-the-record banter didn’t end the matter, as audio, and later video, of the exchange made its way online. Harwood thought that Moran erred in tweeting the comment, but took things in stride, calling the ABC reporter "a class act and a good journalist.”

5) MSM misses Van Jones, ACORN stories: The resignation of an environmental adviser in the White House may not be Watergate, but the Van Jones controversy — propelled by conservative blogs and right-wing talkers like Glenn Beck — showed the potential for partisan media to move the news cycle even as most mainstream outlets ignored the story. Similarly, Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com conducted an undercover investigation of ACORN that prompted follow-up in the press and calls for investigations from public officials. The New York Times, for one, took notice, with top editor Bill Keller even assigning an editor afterward to start monitoring the budding controversies in the opinion media.

6) NY Post’s Obama/chimp cartoon: The New York tabloid thrives off attention-grabbing tabloid covers and some of the best headlines on the planet. But the paper can also go too far when it comes to attracting eyeballs, such as publishing a cartoon showing two police officers shooting a monkey, with the text reading: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” The cartoon immediately struck some as a racially motivated slight against the president and resulted in apologies from the paper and, a few days later, from the man on top: Rupert Murdoch.

[...]

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CNN Falls Behind MSNBC in Annual Prime-Time Ratings

[nyt] CNN will finish 2009 behind MSNBC in prime-time ratings, the first time CNN has ever trailed a competitor other than the Fox News Channel over a full calendar year.

That finish had been expected. In recent months, CNN, which continues to stand behind its policy of steering clear of the opinion-based shows that draw large prime-time audiences for its competitors, has also trailed its own sister network, HLN (formerly Headline News). CNN has frequently finished fourth in the news channel category.

CNN will finish the fourth quarter of 2009 in fourth place — another first — and with two weeks left has been fourth on more than 100 nights this year.

But the end-of-the-year ratings for the news networks — which were being presented this week because nothing is likely to change by Jan. 1 — are bringing some other, less expected, results. One is the ability of Fox News, which had the biggest ratings year in its history, to grow even against the heavily viewed election year of 2008. (Both CNN and MSNBC were down sharply from last year.)

Another surprise has been the steady growth, up 9 percent in prime time, of HLN, where hosts do offer opinions.

Perhaps most surprising is the overall growth in viewing for all the news networks over the last several years. For example, even with its competitive problems in prime time, CNN has had more viewers on average this year than it did in 2006 or 2007. So has MSNBC. But they both have been left in the dust by Fox News.

Fox has averaged 699,000 viewers for the year, up 10 percent, in the weeknight prime-time hours. (All figures cited here are for viewers ages 25 to 54, the audience that determines success among news networks because that is the group sought by news advertisers.) MSNBC was second with 307,000 viewers, while CNN averaged 297,000.

But CNN remained much stronger than MSNBC everywhere but in those prime-time hours. CNN’s morning show, “American Morning,” beat “Morning Joe” on MSNBC for the year, 161,000 viewers to 136,000. (HLN’s “Morning Express” even beat “Joe” with 158,000.) And from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. CNN beat MSNBC, 185,000 viewers to 101,000. (In all cases both networks were again far behind Fox News.)

MSNBC’s daytime problems are also illustrated by the puny totals for daytime hosts like Andrea Mitchell and Dr. Nancy Snyderman, which on Tuesday attracted only 17,000 viewers and 23,000 viewers respectively.

In ratings for the total day, Fox, which was up 16 percent, averaged 320,000 viewers for the year, while CNN was down 24 percent, to 185,000, and MSNBC was down 21 percent, to 149,000 viewers.

CNN also continues to demonstrate the strength of its news brand in terms of digital usage, where it surpassed both Fox and MSNBC.

But CNN staff members are increasingly expressing concern about the competitive trend in prime time, which is by far the biggest center of profits for the news networks. In recent months, CNN, with one of its strongest anchors, Anderson Cooper, has fallen behind even a repeat of MSNBC’s leading show, with host Keith Olbermann, at 10 p.m. weekdays, though Mr. Olbermann’s show is down 13 percent for the year.

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