Must-Read of the Week

Obama's conservative champion-- T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII, as envisioned by Iowahawk--returns to "deal with the mutineers aboard the S.S. Conservatism" still resisting the leader:

Much has been written about the fate of the conservative movement in the months since last I corresponded with you. I won't belabor the barrels of ink expended in the printing of its obituary, nor will I bore you with further reading of its entrails. Suffice it to say the grand old ship is in the doldrums, adrift in the electoral currents, with nary a harbor on the horizon. But it is time we leave such map room mopery aside and navigate a bold new course for the conservative armada.. . .

But there remains a daunting obstacle -- namely, the benighted rubes who constitute so much of our so-called "base," and whose existence make it nigh on impossible to recruit their social betters.

That conundrum of electoral calculus was the topic of much discussion two weeks ago, when my Nassau confreres and I were summoned to the White House for an intimate repast with the new President and his inner circle. Mr. Obama was radiant as ever, still basking in the afterglow of his historic victory. I admit to a recent wobble or two in my faith in him, as the severe beatings suffered by my various family trusts have necessitated some unanticipated cutbacks in my household staff. But that easy, commanding elegance was a bracing reminder of why I endorsed Mr. Obama as the true conservative presidential choice. After dessert (black walnut dacquoise with sections of quince) we retired to the Blue Room where chief of staff Rahm Emanuel entertained us with some droll tales of his days as terpsichorean with the Mossad ballet auxiliary, even treating us to a few thrilling, if f-bomb laced, arabesques. He was followed by Vice President Joe Biden, who put on a fine display of his famed wit and penchant for unpredictable cerebral infarctions. Amid the sparkling bonhomie the President solicited our views on the causes of -- and solutions to -- conservatism's sad state. Seizing the opportunity for a tete-a-tete with the world's most powerful, popular, and beautiful man, I explained the tragic plague of rubes who stand athwart our modernization program.

"Why not just drive them out?" asked the President, elegantly French inhaling his Marlboro Light 100. "Under the old bus, so to speak." . . .

"We've tried, Mr. President," I explained. "But there are unsavory elements within the party who keep bringing them back in."

My reference, obviously, was to the self-styled luminaries of "populism" who hang like a millstone around the Republican neck -- the Sarah Palins, the Plumbing Joes, the Bobby Jindals, the Rush Limbaughs, the motley middlebrow state college pretenders to the conservative throne. A shared contempt for these arriviste oafs unites the Nassau summitteers perhaps even more than our shared fondness for a snifter of well-behaved armagnac VSOP. I have made no secret of my feelings about la Palin and her grim brood of ill-mannered snowbillies, as well that horrid toilet tinkerer from Toledo whose fifteen minutes have somehow refused to expire. . .

Yes, I know there remain some conservatives of the better sort who have been shaken by the recent distressing market turns as our gallant young admiral struggles to find his sea legs and a coherent bank nationalization strategy. I confess to such quiet misgivings myself, which I brought up in our conversation. In response the President assured me that he would keep my portfolio in mind in the next round of corporate bailouts. Let us conservatives take comfort in that assurance, and in the fact that no matter what new taxes he proposes, Mr. Obama has at least assembled a cabinet with no personal enthusiasm for paying them. We must maintain our faith that the President's inner conservative will eventually emerge, and remain firm in the conviction that He works in mysterious ways.

Read the whole thing.

Nerd of the Day

Dapperstache lays out what's good in the world:

Modern day awesominers know there are actually 118 fundamental "awesoments" that compose all good things. The Periodic table of Awesoments can be a very useful tool. It's designed to show the relationships between awesoments, and often one can even predict how awesoments interact simply by their positions on the table.

The link is work-safe and worth it. Unfortunately, it's so nerd-centric that it omits Dick Vitale.

(via Conservative Grapevine)

QOTD

Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek:

It's become an article of faith among lots of people that recent events prove (or at least suggest) that markets don't work very well.

Let's assume -- contrary to what my assessment of the evidence tells me -- that the housing bubble and its crash, along with the current ills suffered by Detroit and other sectors, are exclusively the fault of the market. . .

But despite the current downturn, the market continues to work well in its typical silence. Do you have trouble today finding gasoline to buy? Are your local supermarket's shelves not stocked with food, wine, and (watch for it soon!) Easter candy? If your cat eats your socks, will you have trouble buying several new pair? If your car's battery dies this afternoon, must you resort to bicycling or public transportation because you can't replace your dead battery? If you're bored this evening with nothing to do, is there no movie you can go to or no DVD you can rent? If you miss your mom in Minneapolis or your boyfriend in Boston, can you not call them on your cell-phone -- or even buy a plane ticket and go visit them?

See also Robert Higgs at The Beacon:

[H]ow often do we pause to reflect on the near-miraculousness of this manner of living? Fresh fruits delivered in the middle of winter even to remote places all over this country! Who arranges this vast and complex distribution so successfully? How is it even possible to organize all the people who had to cooperate peacefully in order to make my splendid dessert possible. I have no idea who planted the fruit trees, tended them for years until they matured, picked the fruit, packaged and transported it through successive stages until it was ultimately placed on display in the grocery store I patronize. Of course, every one of these unknown people had to have the cooperation, directly or indirectly, of thousands of others, who manufactured the equipment and materials they used, produced the necessary fuels and lubricants, kept the accounts, insured the properties, arranged the payments, and so on and on and on.

(via Carpe Diem)

Richard Russell on Obama

Once in a while I am fortunate enough to have someone send me Richard Russell's enlightened missives. This was one of those days, and I will share with you his wisdom. Keep in mind he was an Obama supporter before the election, and he is saying we are in a primary bear market. His best guess when the bear market will end? With a share of the Dow Jones buying one ounce of Gold (i.e., the Dow at 3500, gold at $3,500).

The US is now in the business of doing everything vs. not doing anything. I don't know whether the current policy of shoveling out money to everyone -- dying corporations, slumping industries, collapsed banks, inefficient businesses, will work. Personally, I doubt it. But the Obama people want to look "busy," they want to look as though they are addressing the nation's severe problems as opposed to sitting on their dead asses.

I disagree with the Obama policy. Bear markets exist for the purpose of correcting the faults and scams and greed and inefficiencies that grew out of the preceding bull market. That's not what's happening in the US now. The losers and inept are being saved with massive infusions of cash. Bank presidents who allowed their banks to load up with fraudulent mortgages are given bonuses, corporations who couldn't learn to compete are being saved from bankruptcy, executives whose stocks are in the single digits are being rewarded and given outrageous golden parachutes or monster bonuses. Where's the accountability?

And what about the inept SEC which ignored report after report on Bernie Madoff's massive fraud? Was anyone at the SEC fired? Was anyone responsible at all? Where's the damn accountability? I say "Let the bear market have its way." A bear market has a way of cleansing the economy. It's called "firing" or "bankruptcy."

I have a sinking feeling that the current policy of "holding everything up," not allowing the bear to do its work, is going to backfire. The Law of Unintended Consequences is going to come to the fore. I'm not going to guess at what the unintended consequences might be. But I will venture a guess -- the unintended consequences will not be good. They'll be a bloody disaster.

We inhale and we exhale. The market turns bullish and the market turns bearish. Night follows day follows night. It's nature. The market is made by men and women, and normally the market inhales and exhales (rallies and declines). To try to interfere with the primary trend is to go against nature. The end result will not be good.

The market is severely oversold. Recently, every rally in the market has been met by insistent sellers. The people want OUT, and every rally affords them another chance to get OUT.

Richard lived through the Great Depression and WW-2. He sometimes shares a story from those times, and here is one of them, definitely worth a read:

Amid all the current chaos and anxiety, my tired mind travels back to my life 62 years ago in romantic Europe.

A day in the sun -- It's a bright sunny day in Italy. It's February, 1945. The Colonel pulls back the flap, and steps into our tent. We're in our thick blanket-rolls snoozing and having happy dreams of home -- me, my pilot and my co-pilot. Our enlisted men -- our engineer gunner, our radio gunner and our tail gunner are sleeping inside a battered, bullet-riddled building near by. The Colonel snaps, "Rest, stay where you are." My pilot, Art Herron, rolls over, reaches for a beer (hidden under his cot) and lights a cigarette. He's a beer and butt addict, he can't function without them. I'm already standing and worrying, I'm the chief worrier on our crew. The Colonel starts, "I don't have any formal missions for you gentlemen today. But I want you to head north over the water, and see what you run into. You'll see a lot of those little sailboats with those bright-colored sails. Any large boats that could be Italian or German, take them out. Stay low, and be damn careful over the water, you know how deceptive water can be. You hit it, your props bend, and you're down -- it's like hitting cement."

We're all out of bed and starting to put on our gear. Art salutes and says, "Yes Sir." And the day has started. An hour later the ground crew is gassing up our B-25, and ten minutes later our crew is in the bomber and in position. Senigalia Air Field, where we are stationed, is five minutes from the Adriatic Sea. Our two engines turn over with the usual deafening roar (the B-25 is the loudest plane in the air force with its two huge Wright r-2600 radial engines). On the ground when warning up, the two engines are deafening -- the ground crew wears air muffs for protection from the cold and the noise. At 5:30 AM we're in the air flying low over the Adriatic Sea and heading north.

The little brightly-colored sailboats are scattered over the sea. We're flying at about 225 MPH maybe 150 feet over the water. Our props are making mini-waves in the sea. We're cruising so low that I can see the frightened faces of the crews on the boats as we roar past them. Many of them have never been this close to a large plane. A few of the little sail-boats tip over, their sails flat in the water.

Suddenly we can see what looks like a large tug boat about a mile ahead. "Do we sink it?" Art asks me over the intercom. "Let's look it over," I answer. We swing left and head for the boat, we're roaring just over the water. I'm sitting in the nose of the medium bomber. We carry a full load of 2000 pounds of bombs, which I don't expect to use. As we near the boat, I can see about a dozen men on the deck looking anxiously at us as we close in. I have my hands on the single flexible 50-caliber machine gun in the nose of the plane. Two other 50s are attached to the side of the bomber. I can easily split the boat in half and kill all aboard. Something tells me to hold my fire.

As we close within a hundred yards of the boat, I wave my machine gun back and forth almost as a silent warning. When, to my surprise, all the men on the boat dive overboard into the water. I never pull the trigger. We are too close, and those on the boat are totally vulnerable. With a roaring swish, Art sends the bomber over the boat, and within a few minutes we are miles past the boat. "What was that?" asks Art over the phone. "Damned if I know, probably just a fishing expedition," I answer. "They didn't look dangerous and I didn't see any guns aboard, let the poor guys swim back. And they can thank the Army Air Force that they're still alive." I feel strangely happy that I hadn't fired a shot. Maybe it was the thrill of roaring over the blue water of the Adriatic on that gorgeous sunny day.

I get on the intercom. "Art," I start, "Venice is north maybe 50 miles. Let's buzz the city and give the eye-ties a thrill." Art answers, "You got it." And he banks the plane deeply as we head due north.

In half an hour we can see the outline of the buildings of the fabled city -- Venezia, the city of canals. We come in barely clearing the highest buildings in Venice. The roar of the B-25 must have awakened every citizen of Venice. I could see the faces of frightened people below as our bomber roars over the city. I'm tempted to open our bomb-bay doors and give the Venetians a real scare, but I'm afraid of a bomb accidentally breaking loose. We make three passes over Venice and then head back to Senigalia. The Adriatic Sea is shimmering in the mid-day sun, as I mumble to myself, "Well, at least I saw Venice even though it was only from the sky."

In another half hour Art lands the B-25 at Senigalia Air Field, another bloodless day in World War II, courtesy of the Twelfth Air Force.

Richard is in his eighties and still going strong. Do yourself a favor and get a subscription. At the very least, read some of his essays from the links on his front page:

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Consequences of Naivete

This is telling:

Iran's leader said on Wednesday that President Barack Obama is pursuing the same "wrong path" as his predecessor George W. Bush in supporting Israel and described the Jewish state as a "cancerous tumor."

The comments by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are likely to frustrate the new U.S. administration which has been seeking to engage Iran but has called on Tehran to "unclench its fist."

"Even the new president of America, who has come to power with slogans about changing Bush's policies, is defending state terrorism by talking about unconditional commitment to Israel's security," Reuters reported Khamenei said at a conference on the Palestinian issue in Tehran.

"Another big mistake is to say that the only way to save the Palestinian nation is by negotiations," Khamenei said.

"Negotiations with whom? With an occupying and bullying regime, who does not believe in any other principle other than force? ... Or negotiations with America and Britain who committed the biggest sin in creating and supporting this cancerous tumor . . . ?" he added.

"The way to salvation [for Palestinians] is standing firm and resisting," the supreme leader said.

Khamenei also said the Holocaust was used to "usurp" Palestinian land and said the West and Israel showed the weakness of their cause by not allowing anyone to question the Holocaust.

Two questions:

1. Why do Democrats still favor condition-less negotiations with Iran; and



2. Why does the West still believe radical Islam will support a two-state solution in the Middle-East?

(via Wizbang)

Calif. Justices Appear Likely to Uphold Ban on Gay Marriage

by Bob in Los Angeles

More good news from yesterday: Calif. Justices Appear Likely to Uphold Ban on Gay Marriage, (As predicted by Carl.) I suppose. I'm not interested in gay marriage as an issue. I really don't care. I am more of the opinion that it should be illegal for stupid people to wed. How many of you believe that divorce lawyers are surreptitiously behind the push to legalize gay marriage? If gays and lesbians want to enter into the holy bond of matrimony and the unholy hell of divorce, I don't care.

I voted for Prop 8 because I didn't like the California Supremes reversing the will of the people. I had an interesting time at the polls last November. More on that later, as I take some pleasure recalling this piece by Robert Kirby:

As a flaming heterosexual, it's a full-time job for me just to keep my thoughts clean in church. I don't have the energy to fret about somebody else's libido.

The only serious concern I have about gays getting married is that they'll register someplace pricey.

Shouldn't it be against the law for stupid people to get married? What's more harmful to society - two well-dressed men getting married and settling down, or two idiots tying the knot and cranking out any number of additional idiots?

And finally, this gem:

But if you're really serious about putting a stop to gay sex, let them get
married.

The guy is a riot.

============

At the polls last November, a No on Prop 8 electioneer spoke to me. She was kind of hot so I listened. When she finished I told her that despite the ferocity of her argument (and her hotness), I was still going to vote Yes on 8. She said in a quite snotty and loud tone:

"It's WRONG to take away people's rights!"

Wow! I could not believe it -- she was lecturing me on right and wrong!

"Wrong to take away people's rights?" I asked. She said yes... so the debate was on.

I told her that "giving rights to one special protected group means taking them away from someone. You cannot create rights out of thin air. When you give a class of people a 'special right,' that takes away from the rights of someone else, or sometimes everyone else.

"So if it is wrong to take away people's rights, well then, how about the rights of slave-owners to own slaves? Is it also wrong to take away their right to own slaves? Of course not." QED. (She was not as hot when she was losing). As people started to go by to the polls, I realized that not only was I winning this debate easily, I was keeping her from talking to a half-dozen people or more. She was learning the hard way the first principle of electioneering/poll working: do not irritate the voters.

I finished up by telling her that "I don't really care about gay marriage. The CA Supreme Court legislating from the bench is a real danger to society." Well, that, and stupid people like her.

Hope May Be Changing

Remember the fuss last fall when Christopher Buckley resigned from National Review--the conservative magazine founded by his late father--after endorsing Barack Obama? Well Buckley-the-younger appears to be having second thoughts:

Hold on—there’s a typo in that paragraph. "$3.6 trillion budget" can’t be right.The entire national debt is—what—about $11 trillion? He can’t actually be proposing to spend nearly one-third of that in one year, surely. Let me check. Hmm. He did. The Wall Street Journal notes that federal outlays in fiscal 2009 will rise to almost 30 percent of the gross national product. In language that even an innumerate English major such as myself can understand: The US government is now spending annually about one-third of what the entire US economy produces. . .

If this is what the American people want, so be it, but they ought to have no illusions about the perils of this approach. Mr. Obama is proposing among everything else $1 trillion in new entitlements, and entitlement programs never go away, or in the oddly poetic bureaucratic jargon, "sunset." He is proposing $1.4 trillion in new taxes, an appetite for which was largely was whetted by the shameful excesses of American CEO corporate culture. And finally, he has proposed $5 trillion in new debt, one--half the total accumulated national debt in all US history. All in one fell swoop.

He tells us that all this is going to work because the economy is going to be growing by 3.2 percent a year from now. Do you believe that? Would you take out a loan based on that?

And Buckley's not the only one.

(via Conservative Grapevine)

Someone Better Tell The President

From the March 2nd Discovery News:

For those who have endured this winter's frigid temperatures and today's heavy snowstorm in the Northeast, the concept of global warming may seem, well, almost wishful.

But climate is known to be variable -- a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn't mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.

Earth's climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.

"This is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950," Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. "Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn't have one."

Instead, Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate. In 1997 and 1998, the tropical Pacific Ocean warmed rapidly in what Swanson called a "super El Nino event." It sent a shock wave through the oceans and atmosphere, jarring their circulation patterns into unison.

How does this square with temperature records from 2005-2007, by some measurements among the warmest years on record? When added up with the other four years since 2001, Swanson said the overall trend is flat, even though temperatures should have gone up by 0.2 degrees Centigrade (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) during that time.

The discrepancy gets to the heart of one of the toughest problems in climate science -- identifying the difference between natural variability (like the occasional March snowstorm) from human-induced change.

(via Planet Gore)

Obama's Growth Forecast Depends on Reagan Tax Cuts

Dear Readers,

I've been disillusioned lately. Our Dear Leader Obama is a nightmare for our country, but the press will never tell you that. Nor will they hold him accountable.

The economy may be suffering a bit, but government interference can only hurt, not help the process. To understand, simply examine the record. The Great Depression may not have been caused by government interference, but the government (via Smoot-Hawley) made it worse. Nor was the government able to end the depression, despite massive Keynesian injection, it took WW2 to end the depression.

Now, Obama is telling the Big Lies. One of his big lies is that he is going to fix the economy. Why should anyone believe Obama? You shouldn't. There is no evidence that anything but removing barriers to capitalism will improve the economy.

But, the press will never tell you that, because the press is the democratic mouthpiece, and they are in love with Obama. The press is riddled with Obama propaganda. Anyone that disagrees with Obama risks "alienating a popular president" or being labeled a racist. If you want to know what is going on, well, you have to figure it out for yourself.

So, when the an Obamahead, in his genuinely enthusiastic lying (but still lying) makes your point for you, well you just have to say -- today is a good day. Take for example, the the Krugman op-ed piece that ran in the NY Times. OBloodyHell beat Krugman up yesterday, righteously. Now there is something of a blog fest going.

First, Greg Mankiw tells Krugman his growth rates are too high -- that he is dead wrong, and he offers to wager him on it.

Then, Krugman teams up with Brad DeLong and points to this graph to support his point.

The DeLong-Krugman point is that this data supports the government growth forecast. However, Tom McGuire over at JustOneMinute has the scoop on this. "I dredged up quarterly unemployment and GDP growth from 1960 to the present and attempted to mimic the DeLong chart with and without the Reagan years. The Reagan recovery following 1981-1982 is highlighted and does seem to drive the result:"


The growth rates that Obama is forecasting rely on the Reagan-era tax cut fueled boom to justify the Obama-era recovery plan.

QED Krugman. Thank YOU. The press won't pick up on this... they would never tell you that Reaganomics is the best thing the government could do. Anything else just does harm.

You and I know that Obama's plan is doomed. The problem is that the press will not let you know of his failure. Instead Obama and the press will lead us down the socialism path. Isn't socialism and communism what we fought a cold war over? Terrorism is nonexistent in the United States. Socialism is our real enemy. And you know, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Righton Ms. Thatcher.

Permanent Minority?

UPDATE: below

The 19th Annual Legislative Conference of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce will meet next week in D.C. The party that took only 173 electoral votes (as opposed to 365) last November seems relatively unconcerned, according to John Hawkins of Right Wing News:

[S]upposedly, the Democrats have 20 senators scheduled to attend various events and receptions. The Republicans? Are you ready for this? They have no senators currently scheduled to attend. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

I called Dale Crowell, who handles press inquiries for the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce's 19th Annual Legislative Conference. He confirmed for me that there are currently no Republican senators scheduled to attend the event and that Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart are the only two Republican Congressmen he had scheduled. He told me that they'd really love to have more Republicans attending and he also noted that there are a "considerable number" of Democrats scheduled to attend.

Now, how much sense does this make, folks? . . . This is a big part of the GOP's problem with minority outreach: the Democrats show up at events like this with bells on while the Republicans can't even be bothered to drop in and say "hello" to a friendly crowd.

That's the second strike against new GOP chair Michael Steele (who won the job thanks to the support of Puerto Rico). RWN commenter martinhale quips, "can we stick a fork in the GOP? They're done."

MORE:

The negative publicity helped: according to Right Wing News, at least five GOP Senators and three GOP House members now are attending.

Liberal Idiocy of the Day

The West Virgina legislature is considering banning Barbie:

House Bill 2918, introduced Tuesday, would make it unlawful to sell Barbie and similar dolls "that promote or influence girls to place an undue importance on physical beauty to the detriment of their intellectual and emotional development."

"That's the image out there that's the most impressionable on our younger children, especially our little girls -- 'I want to be like Barbie,'" said the bill's sponsor, Delegate Jeff Eldridge, D-Lincoln. "If we had that other image of Barbie being smart, and beautiful as well, I think that would be a great image to send to our young kids. "

No immediate comment was available Tuesday from toy company Mattel, which manufactures Barbie dolls. The bill's introduction comes just days before Barbie celebrates her 50th anniversary on March 9.

Even if the bill fails, Eldridge believes it will send a message to retailers to "step it up to another level."

(via Don Surber)

QOTD

Clive Crook says "the budget reveals the liberal Obama," in the March 1st Financial Times:

Take this budget at face value, and when Mr Obama talks about "a new era of responsibility" he does not mean: "We are all in this together." He means: "The rich are responsible for this mess and it is payback time." Leftist Democrats are thrilled, and rightly so. The budget has three themes: healthcare reform, public investment and unflinching redistribution. This is indeed a new social contract: we get, they pay. Liberals never had it so good.

Tactically speaking, Mr Obama may have overdone it. If I were advising him, I would say that the elation of his party’s progressive wing is a red flag. It mocks the president’s claim to be a consensus-builder, and tells the centre to watch out. Keep the left unhappy, would be my counsel.

The administration will have many chances to row back, of course, and to succeed it will have to. Despite optimistic assumptions, the budget leaves a full-employment budget deficit of 3 per cent of gross domestic product -- not counting the full costs of healthcare reform, which the budget mentions but fails to provide for, and longer-term demographic and other pressures. Spending cuts and new taxes on the broad middle class are going to be needed; and to get those passed, the president will need support from the political centre.

For the moment, though, this budget reveals Mr Obama with new clarity. He is no Tony Blair, ideologically rootless, as I had previously suspected. He is a conviction politician: a bold progressive liberal. Yet his outreach to Republicans is no sham; his civility, I think, is not a front. He respects people who disagree with him, is capable of liking them, and is always willing to listen -- but then stays true to his beliefs. This is a rare and devastating combination.

For years in the US, the Democratic left, despite a surfeit of brilliant minds, has neutered itself with its own rage. The fixed expression of progressive liberalism has been anger and contempt -- with perplexity at its lack of political success mixed in for comic effect. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Amid an economic crisis, with capitalism under fire and the country looking to government for answers, the liberal left finally has a leader with brains, who shares its convictions, yet is as friendly and as likeable to the politically uncommitted as anyone could wish -- so appealing, in fact, that the party almost chose somebody else to lead it.

Whether Mr Obama will be good for the country remains to be seen. We can already be sure that he is conservatism’s worst nightmare.

By the way, Robert Reich is quoted in the Wall Street Journal confirming:

It is the boldest budget we have seen since the Reagan administration, and drives a nail in the coffin of Reaganomics. We can basically say goodbye to the philosophy espoused by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

See also Jonathan Chait in the New Republic:

Obama is trying to put his imprint on federal policy. I think he's right to do so. Ronald Reagan governed the country with little worry about its fiscal health. His goal was tilt the structure of the tax code and federal outlays so that conservatives would have an advantage when the bill came due. It worked: when the Democrats recaptured the White House, they mostly played janitor, cleaning up the Republican mess. Not only did Democrats mosty fail to impose their priorities to anything like the degree Republicans had, voters penalized them in 1994 for imposing fiscal pain. And then, when Republicans regained the presidency, they returned to the Reagan strategy.

Given all this, for Obama to govern like Clinton did would be insane. Clinton's policies were a good way to govern if you assumed that Democrats would hold power forever. But if you assume that Republicans will gain power again, reducing the deficit will do anything but clear up more room for upper-income tax cuts. Given that the GOP is committed to upper-income tax cut maximalism, Democrats can't win by taking the job of fiscal responsibility entirely on their own shoulders. What's more, they can't even effectively control the federal deficit in the long run, since their self-appointed role as janitor only encourages Republians to go hog wild when they have power. What Democrats can do is take some steps in the right direction, and implicitly invite Republicans to drop their supply-side fanaticism and come to the bargaining table when they're serious about governing.

(via reader Doug J.)

News I Don't Care About of the Day

As reported by the Associated Press:

An adviser to Iran's president on Sunday demanded an apology from a team of visiting Hollywood actors and movie industry officials, including Annette Bening, saying films such as "300" and "The Wrestler" were "insulting" to Iranians.

Without an apology, members of Iran's film industry should refuse to meet with representatives from the nine-member team, said Javad Shamaqdari, the art and cinema adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"In my viewpoint, it is a failure to have an official meeting with one who is insulting," Shamaqdari told The Associated Press.

The film "300," portrays the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., in which a force of 300 Spartans held off a massive Persian army at a mountain pass in Greece for three days. It angered many Iranians for the way Persians are depicted as decadent, sexually flamboyant and evil in contrast to the noble Greeks.

Iranians also criticized "The Wrestler" starring Mickey Rourke as a rundown professional wrestler who is preparing for a rematch with his old nemesis, "The Ayatollah." During a fight scene, "The Ayatollah" tries to choke Rourke with an Iranian flag before Rourke pulls the flagpole away, breaks it and throws it into the cheering crowd.

Neither movie was shown in Iran.

You'd think Hollywood could do better than the Bush Administration that they despised at sucking up to Iran.

(via Best of the Web)

Let Me Entertain You, Part 3

The Constitutionality of California's Prop. 8 will be argued before the California supreme court starting at noon Eastern today. The webcast will be available here.

MORE:

Some post-argument assessments.

(via Bench Memos, How Appealing)

Paul Krugman: Drugged Cheerleader or Blackmail Victim?

This is a guest post from reader OBloody Hell:

Krugman, a liberal cheerleader when preaching from his perch at the New York Times, has truly outdone himself with a recent column.

The man could not be more of a drooling, sycophantic shill for Obama if this was Obama's run for 8th Grade Class President and he sought to be in charge of the campaign.

Climate of Change Idiocy*

by Paul Krugman

(* Ed. Note -- apparently there was a typo in the NYT headline. I've fixed it.)

Quotes, with observations in the footnotes:

• President Obama’s new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years.¹



• The stimulus bill that Congress passed may have been too weak and too focused on tax cuts.²



• The administration’s refusal to get tough on the banks may be deeply disappointing.³



• For this budget allocates $634 billion over the next decade for health reform.⁴



• On another front, it’s also heartening to see that the budget projects $645 billion in revenues⁵ from the sale of emission allowances.⁶



• the Obama administration is signaling that it’s ready to take on climate change.⁷



• Many will ask whether Mr. Obama can actually pull off the deficit reduction he promises. Can he actually reduce the red ink from $1.75 trillion this year to less than a third as much in 2013? Yes, he can.⁸



• Bear in mind that from 2005 to 2007, that is, in the three years before the crisis, the federal deficit averaged only $243 billion a year.⁹



• getting the deficit down to around $500 billion by 2013 shouldn’t be at all difficult.¹⁰



• According to the Obama administration’s budget projections, the ratio of federal debt to G.D.P., a widely used measure of the government’s financial position, will soar over the next few years, then more or less stabilize. But this stability will be achieved at a debt-to-G.D.P. ratio of around 60 percent.¹¹



• Furthermore, the Obama budget only tells us about the next 10 years. That’s an improvement on Bush-era budgets, which looked only 5 years ahead.¹²



• I at least find it hard to see how the federal government can meet its long-term obligations without some tax increases on the middle class.¹³



• But I don’t blame Mr. Obama for leaving some big questions unanswered in this budget. There’s only so much long-run thinking the political system can handle in the midst of a severe crisis.¹⁴

Conclusion: Krugman is either in a drug-induced stupor or fancies himself part of the ruling elite. This is nothing less than patenly absurd propaganda. We can only hope that the NYT goes the way of AirAmerica.
____________________________

¹ You know, with, like, things that have historically, and repeatedly, worked. Such as the fact that tax cuts stimulate the economy and within a few years increase receipts. No other government action has proven itself so remarkably, consistently, effective.

But few things hack off the Dems and the Left more than the fact that Reagan was correct about that. Except, perhaps, for the fact that JFK held the same view. So Obama is breaking with that tradition of success, and instead is trying lots of new things that are slight shifts on things which have been tried many times in the past, and not worked. Compare, e.g., Jimmy Carter.

² No competent economist has claimed that there are too many tax cuts in this porkfest of a bill. This, of course, automatically excludes Paul Krugman, at least when he's wearing his New York Times hat--where he's often careless about facts.

³ Because, after all, taking over 35% of Citigroup, and most of AIG, well, that's just not going far enough. Nationalization and all being such a reliable solution to "the real problems" of failing institutions in the past. Just look at how the UK did with nationalizing its industries in the 1960s, and how it led to the UK's (cough) massive economic expansion during the 1970s. And look how well Amtrak has done in making passenger rail so profitable for the USA.

⁴ What does "health care" five and more years from now have to do with an "emergency stimulus bill"? This budget "is not just about economic recovery, it's about pursuing left-wing social policy through the confiscation and redistribution of wealth." And I'm not even going to make a detailed listing of the kind of failures becoming more and more associated with Canadian and British "Universal Coverage." But Krugman loves it, so spending a fortune must be good.

⁵ "Revenues"? A/k/a taxes. Taxes that get passed on to the average citizen in the form of higher producer prices, utility bills, reduced output, etc.

⁶ As for "emission allowances", see note 4. How are we going to pay for that? Further, when your electric bills jump, will you blame Obama or your power provider? If you complained to the President, how would he respond?:

a) "Wait, now, think about this. . . This is a direct consequence of those emission controls we set up with your support" or b) "We need to go after those greedy Power Companies!"

⁷ Europe isn't. Neither is China or India. And don't be too sure about support from Democrats. In any event, it's telling that Krugman, and Obama, talk about "taking on" weather rather than terrorism.

⁸ No, he can't. The money he's counting as revenue simply isn't there, as the Wall Street Journal detailed. Indeed, that article used 2006 income, not post-downturn income, which obviously will be substantially lower for all quinitiles. And this year's deficit will be larger than Krugman assumes.

⁹ Krugman's "average" hides the fact that for the past few years, the Federal budget deficit had been declining until the credit crunch first surfaced in 2007. The increased deficit, and decline in incomes, in the first years of the Bush Administration, was a product of 2000-2003 recession and the 9/11 attacks, as even Krugman's employer the New York Times conceded.

¹⁰ Yes it will. There's something absurdly hypocritical about labeling a plan that doubles the annual deficit "very, very good" and "an improvement on Bush-era budgets." As a side point, the total debt (not deficit, the entire debt) went over 500 billion for the first time in 1975. I don't have to approve of the fiscal discipline of the Bush Administration--and much more so its Democratic and GOP-lead Congresses--but surely a deficit twice as large as Bush's isn't obviously an improvement.

¹¹ Krugman doesn't say where this number comes from. The total US Debt is (as I write) $10.9 Trillion. The US GDP in 2008 was $14.3 Trillion. So the current figure is 10.9/14.3 or 76 percent Got that? It's already over 60%, and would have to drop significantly to reach that level. Plus the economy is certainly going to continue its severe downturn in 2009, which means that percentage is going to go up, not down. So the deficit will rise in 2010, 2011, and so on. We'll be lucky to see 60% inside of 15 years (or 30 years if we truly tackle Social Security)--because, among other things, an effort to pay down that much debt quickly would further damage the economy. Krugman appears to rely on made up numbers.

¹² Oh, yeah, because 10-year plans are so practical and reliable in this day and age. A 10-year plan at the start of Bush's admin would have been ignorant of 9/11, the succeeding Iraq War, and the 2007 downturn. Obviously, all three events would have totally invalidated the successive years' projections. Five years is about as far forward as one can make a useful projection, and even there, it's almost certainly rendered obsolete within 2-3 years. That doesn't mean it's a complete waste of time to make 5 year projections, because some advance thinking does pay off. But nothing projected 7-10 years from now is going to be worth jack. Vague plans rather than detailed budgets, are all that's worth doing for that second five years. The probability of at least one substantial course-altering event occurring in any five-year period approaches 100%.

¹³ Oh, by all means, then, agree with Obama and increase long-term obligations by at least 5%, which is the effect of heath care "reform"--i.e., socialized medicine--alone. That's a great idea!!

¹⁴ Uh, pardon me, but doesn't it make far, far more sense that the "long term thinking" regarding this crisis should focus more on the crisis, rather than upon attaching thousands of earmarks to a pork-laden "stimulus package", one third of which won't even get paid out within the next 2 years? How is that going to "stimulate" anyone but the cronies that got Obama elected? Is "hope" and "change" just classic Chicago Machine-style politics?: "Hey, Lou! I got this phat job fer ya. I just wanted to say thanks for gettin' me that key district!"

(NOfP contributed some of the post's links)

QOTD

S.A. Miller in Monday's Washington Times:

Senate Democrats are breaking with President Obama over his plan for sweeping new climate-change laws that he says will rake in billions of dollars to help offset massive budget deficits.

The dissenters, mostly Democrats from Rust Belt states likely to be hit hardest by the proposed environmental rules, question the economic impact of the program that would cap carbon-dioxide emissions and then sell to businesses the right to emit that carbon dioxide.

The senators also want their states to get a chunk of the windfall from selling the credits - $646 billion over 10 years by Mr. Obama's estimate.

"We should ensure that revenue generated by a cap-and-trade system goes back to the consumers, states and industries that are most affected by the changes," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, Ohio Democrat.

But Mr. Obama wants to spend about two-thirds of the money on tax cuts for low- and middle-income families to soften the bite of higher energy prices expected to result from the cap-and-trade law.

He also wants to move fast, passing the legislation within the next year in order to start collecting by 2012 what the administration calls "climate revenue."

Mr. Brown and other Democrats with misgivings about the proposal said they share the president's commitment to addressing climate change and decreasing U.S. dependence on foreign oil. But they wondered at what cost.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia Democrat, said the administration and Congress must not ignore other climate-change solutions, such as scientific research into capturing carbon dioxide and sequestering it in the ground.

"The president's plan for a cap-and-trade system is ambitious, but the senator is not completely convinced that it is the best or only solution to curbing carbon emissions," Rockefeller spokesman Steven Broderick said. "We need to be sure we don't negatively impact the economy."

Health Care Mess to Come

Sally Pipes has a good analysis in Monday's New York Post:

President Obama's new budget dedicates $634 billion over the next 10 years to what he calls health reform. He promises - or perhaps threatens - that this vast sum will be a down payment for universal coverage, which could require more than $1 trillion.

Unfortunately, the president intends to spend all this money on the basis of several pernicious myths common in the health-care debate. As a result, his reforms would ultimately hand the health-care system over to the government and lead to rationing.

The president's budget repeats the popular claim that 45.7 million Americans are uninsured. The figure is taken as proof positive that the current system is failing - and that the government must step in to provide a remedy.

But that misleading number includes millions we can hardly call uninsured. About 18 million of the uninsured make more $50,000 a year - and almost 10 million have yearly incomes over $75,000. More than 10 million aren't US citizens. And as many as 14 million are already eligible for government programs like Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP - but haven't signed up.

For most folks, health insurance is simply too expensive. And ramping up funding for government health programs, as Obama proposes, won't make insurance cheaper. In fact, it could cause private insurance to become more expensive.

After all, the feds reimburse hospitals and doctors at below-market rates for Medicare and Medicaid patients. So those of us with private health plans have to pay more to fill the gap - and that hidden tax is about 10 percent. In California, for example, private payers paid an extra $45 billion to compensate for unpaid Medicare costs in 2004.

Obama's budget also takes aim at prescription-drug costs by forcing manufacturers to give Medicaid a bigger discount, probably 20 percent, on brand-name drug purchases (it already gets a 15 percent break). That might help curb Medicaid's expenses, but it will raise drug prices for everyone else, who will have to make up the difference.

Taken as a whole, Obama's health plan is predicated upon the misguided notion that government can deliver care more efficiently than the private sector. There's ample evidence to the contrary.

Agreed.

Liberal Academia Course of the Day

Taught last summer at the University of Texas:

HIS 363k - Che Guevara's Latin America

Course Description

This course will cover Latin America during the era of the Cuban Revolution through the travels, observations, and revolutionary activities of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. The course builds on the sudden revival of Che's image in pop culture throughout the world, the movie Motorcycle Diaries, and the three additional movies on his life that are now in production. We intend to convert this popularity into a serious investigation of the social unrest into which Latin American countries had entered in the post-World War II period. It was a time in which dominant economic policy of import-substitution-industrialization reached the end of its possibilities, inflation upset the alliance between labor and the middle class, the landholding elites strengthened their control of land while the growing population of landless peasants slid silently into poverty, US companies dominated the most important industries, and dictators reigned.

Che Guevara grew up in Córdoba. He took the first of two trips through Latin America in 1951 while studying medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. After graduating as an M.D., he began a second trip in 1953, visiting two revolutions in progress before reaching Mexico in 1955, where he met the Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro. Students will survey class relations in those countries mentioned in Che's memoirs - Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico. Then they will examine the Cuban Revolution in which Che rose from combat doctor to comandante, to economics minister, to international statesman, and to revolutionary provocateur. We conclude with a discussion of Che's attempt to export the revolution to Bolivia, where he met his death by execution in 1967.

Course Requirements

In this course, students will read two of Che's travel diaries and his memoir of the Cuban revolutionary war. There will be two examinations--the midterm and the final. In the interim, students will receive grades for their participation in discussion and for their reports on countries in which Che traveled and the events in which he participated. . .

Texts

Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries
Guevara, Back on the Road
Guevara, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War

Chart of the Day

Many lefties argue that the flaw in American healthcare is the instance on private, not government, funding. Yet, as I've written:

America does not have purely private healthcare: in 2004, government paid about 70 percent of medical costs for households earning below the poverty line, and about half of all healthcare expenditures.

Last week, WILLisms cited a late-2007 chart confirming the point:


source: Heritage Foundation


Expect the trend to accelarate. As Will Franklin says:

Sure, patient-centered and market-driven reforms would save consumers and taxpayers money while delivering higher quality care and generating more innovation, but it will take a conservative President, a strong conservative majority in the House, and 60 conservative Senators to accomplish that kind of reform.

(via Maggie's Farm)

QOTD

From William Happer, Princeton Physics prof, testifying Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works:

I believe that the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind. I predict that future historians will look back on this period much as we now view the period just before the passage of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution to prohibit "the manufacturing, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors." At the time, the 18th amendment seemed to be exactly the right thing to do -- who wanted to be in league with demon rum? It was the 1917 version of saving the planet. More than half the states enacted prohibition laws before the 18th amendment was ratified. Only one state, Rhode Island, voted against the 18th amendment. Two states, Illinois and Indiana, never got around to voting and all the rest voted for it. There were many thoughtful people, including a majority of Rhode Islanders, who thought that prohibition might do more harm than good. But they were completely outmatched by the temperance movement, whose motives and methods had much in common with the movement to stop climate change. Deeply sincere people thought they were saving humanity from the evils of alcohol, just as many people now sincerely think they are saving humanity from the evils of CO2. Prohibition was a mistake, and our country has probably still not fully recovered from the damage it did. Institutions like organized crime got their start in that era. Drastic limitations on CO2 are likely to damage our country in analogous ways.

But what about the frightening consequences of increasing levels of CO2 that we keep hearing about? In a word, they are wildly exaggerated, just as the purported benefits of prohibition were wildly exaggerated. Let me turn now to the science and try to explain why I and many scientists like me are not alarmed by increasing levels of CO2.

(via The Weekly Standard)

No, You Are

In the Spectator (U.K.), Melanie Phillips explains how revulsion of the Holocaust is turned into a weapon against Israel:

[S]o many British Jews now feel under siege in a country that to their horror and astonishment has now turned against them -- which they feel every time they switch on the BBC or read the newspapers or go to the office or stand around over drinks with people they once thought were friends but who now force them to make a choice: renounce Israel and be accepted, or support Israel and be a pariah.

I would also make a further point that Rich does not make. Calling Israel a Nazi state retrospectively sanitises the Holocaust and lets complicit Europe off the hook – Britain too. After all, Britain was partly responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews to whom it refused entry to Palestine -- in order to appease the Arabs of Palestine who were in league with the Nazis – and who perished in the Holocaust as a result. If the Jews have become Nazis, then their victimisation at the hands of the Nazis stops being the crime of crimes.

It also allows people safely to hate the Jews once again. As I was told to my face by a prominent man of impeccable liberal views, the enormity of the Holocaust had meant that it was no longer possible to disdain or loathe the Jews as before, at least not in public. But with Israel painted as a Nazi state, it can be open season on the Jews once again.

See also Gates of Vienna.

(via Dan Collins on Protein Wisdom)

Chart of the Day

UPDATE: below

I previously have shown that increased Federal spending is driven not by the war on terror but by ever-increasing entitlements, such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Is there any hope President Obama's recently proposed 2010 budget would bring change?

Simply put, no. A quick examination reveals that Obama wants to reduce defense spending, but would expand spending on the "big-3" entitlements mentioned above (which doesn't include other entitlement programs such as housing assistance, food stamps, welfare grants, etc., nor domestic spending on, say, education or the environment). Moreover, the President would significantly add to the budget deficit which--as MaxedOutMama has detailed--results in hugely increased costs of interest on the national debt for years to come. Here's a chart based on Table S-3 of Obama's budget submission:



source: NOfP chart from OMB data

The House of Eratosthenes posted a useful Venn diagram.

Power Line remembers when the liberal media opposed deficit spending--it's more acceptable now that they call it "unpaid-for government." But at least the New York Times now admits that "[e]ven if many of the Iraq war’s costs simply vanished, analysts say those savings would be too small." But, as the Wall Street Journal reminds:

The danger is that Mr. Obama may be signaling a return to the defense mistakes of the 1990s. Bill Clinton slashed defense spending to 3% of GDP in 2000, from 4.8% in 1992. We learned on 9/11 that 3% isn't nearly enough to maintain our commitments and fight a war on terror -- and President Bush spent his two terms getting back to more realistic outlays for a global superpower.

MORE:

See the comparison Will Franklin posted April 2nd:


source: WILLisms

QOTD

Tom Donnelly in the March 9th Weekly Standard:

The Obama budget is an especially stark and in-your-face announcement of a new direction for the country. Indeed, budgets are the most concrete expression of a government's prejudices and ambitions. . .

[Obama's projected] government itself looks more like the government of France than what American governments have looked like in the past. We'll be spending $4.5 trillion on social entitlements--Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--debt servicing, and other mandatory programs. That's about 22 percent of GDP. Discretionary domestic programs--the prime source of congressional pork--have grown to nearly $700 billion, another 3.5 percent of GDP. Defense spending will be smaller. The baseline defense budget will be $594 billion, less than 3 percent of GDP. That's half the 50-year Cold War average.

The United States cannot remain the sole superpower, the guarantor of the international system, if it chooses to spend just 3 cents of every dollar on defense. The Obama administration loves to talk about "soft power" and "smart power," but the fact is that "hard power" is still real power. The Obama budget is a plan for steady American decline.

FYI, budget numbers at Table S-3.

Liberal Science, Part 2

Remember at the inauguration when Barack Obama promised to "restore science to its rightful place"? Remember how that thrilled liberals? Well, they're still thrilled--but shouldn't be.

Remember the 2002 decision to store spend nuclear fuel under Yucca Mountain, Nevada? It came after 20 years of scientific analysis, and was followed by further regulatory, and judicial examination?

Well, never mind. Long-time Yucca Mountain opponent Senator Harry Reid of Nevada says he's persuaded the President to end the project. So much for science. So much for the possibility of added nuclear plants moderating consumption of imported oil or contributing to lower-carbon power production.

And so much for economics, says Planet Gore's Drew Thornley:

After two decades of planning and billions invested in a suitable storage site, we're apparently set to abandon our plans. Let's pause to consider the costs of changing course: money we've already spent, money we'll have to spend, the potential economic consequences if waste-storage holdup prevents nuclear power from helping meet our energy needs in the future — but it seems like spending lots of money is in vogue these days.

The science hasn't changed--only the politics.

(via The Corner)

Bad Model

Remind me again why Blue Staters want to emulate Europe?:

When Berlin resident Simone Klostermann returned from vacation and couldn’t find her Mercedes SLK, she thought it had been towed. Police told her the 35,000-euro ($45,000) car had been torched.

"They’d squirted something flammable into the car’s engine block in the gap between the windshield and the hood," said Klostermann. "The engine was completely destroyed."

The 34-year-old’s experience isn’t unique in the German capital. At least 29 vehicles were destroyed in arson attacks this year, most of them luxury cars, according to police. The number is already about 30 percent of the total for 2008. The latest to go up in flames was a Porsche, on Feb. 14, two days after a Mercedes was set alight in a public car park.

While youths in Athens protest by throwing Molotov cocktails, in Paris by toppling barricades, and in Budapest by hurling eggs at politicians, protesters in Berlin rage at their economic plight by targeting the most expensive cars -- symbols of German wealth and power.

(via The Corner)

Obamessiah Suck-Up of the Day

CNN commentator Jack Cafferty grading Obama's speech to Congress on Tuesday:

In his address, Wolf, to Congress last night, President Obama laid out what would be an ambitious agenda even in good times. Never mind that we’re in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. . . Plus, don’t forget, there’s still a war on terror and two real wars going on. But our president seems remarkably unruffled by all of this, serene in an inner confidence that he’s got what it takes to lead this country back into the sunlight.

Expect a blizzard of lollipop and rainbow metaphors to come.

(via NewsBusters)

Obama's 14 Words

UPDATE: below

The assertion: President Obama speaking to Congress last week:

[W]e must also address the crushing cost of healthcare.

This is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds.

The math: A bankruptcy every 30 seconds would be 2 per minute, 120 per hour, 2880 per day and 1,051,200 each year.

The statistics: In 2008, 1,086,130 personal bankruptcy petitions were filed. The rate of filings has increased this year: the American Bankruptcy Institute expects "more than 1.4 million new cases" will be filed in 2009.

The disconnect: Depending on the meaning of "now," the President is claiming that healthcare expenses cause somewhere between 75 and 100 percent of all personal bankruptcies. Even the erroneous and discredited Elizabeth Warren study only argued (incorrectly) for 50 percent. Such reasoning makes no sense: given the current economy, most observers sensibly blame the bankruptcies on "rising consumer debt coupled with the mortgage meltdown." Such costs, not heathcare, normally are the highest household expenses.

I note that various websites repeat the "30 second" statistic, which apparently is based on a further misreading of the Warren study:

Mr. Obama was very much technically incorrect. A bankruptcy isn’t caused every 30 seconds by medical bills, but every 30 seconds an individual person is forced to contend with one.

The conclusion: If President Bush had made such a specious statement, the left would have called him a "liar" (as they did even when he was correct). That's not my style--but Obama's 14 words are unsupported and likely wrong.

MORE:

The Economist magazine agrees the President erred.