The WHO, the Malawi soccer balls, Paygo, and the roundup
Michael Fumento reports that The WHO finally gets its pandemic!
Not this Who,
but the World Health Organization.
Jules explains How To Make A Malawian Soccer Ball
Jane, who has An example of what excellent parenting really is, sent Worst Side Story
Maria sent Bam’s Euro Freeze, and the unexpected chill.
My friend Erik was at the 65th Anniversary Commemoration of D-Day and reports on the event: Obama’s stirring words to D-Day veterans (”You could have hid in the hedgerows or waited behind the seawall”) come with… (faint) apology for WWII!
Via Casuist, Washington Wants German Help with Two More Prisoners. There’s lots of money involved in Uighur relocation, isn’t there?
In further foreign relations news, the Obama administration announced the release of four Uighurs to the Bermuda, but imposed travel restrictions that blocks them from entering the US… and neglected to notify the British government.
Glenn Reynolds, in a rare long post, asks HOW DO WE KNOW THAT THE OUTRAGEOUS SPENDING IS BECOMING A PROBLEM FOR OBAMA?
IBD explains The President’s Paygo Schitck. More at the WSJ, The ‘Paygo’ Coverup
The Obama pattern: Spend, repent, spend again, repent.
The real game here is that the President is trying to give Democrats in Congress political cover for the health-care blowout and tax-increase votes that he knows are coming. The polls are showing that Mr. Obama’s spending plans are far less popular than the President himself, and Democrats in swing districts are getting nervous. The paygo ruse gives Blue Dog Democrats cover to say they voted for “fiscal discipline,” even as they vote to pass the greatest entitlement expansion in modern history. The Blue Dogs always play this double game.The other goal of this new paygo campaign is to make it easier to raise taxes in 2011, and impossible to cut taxes for years after that. In the near term, paygo gives Mr. Obama another excuse to let the Bush tax cuts he dislikes expire after 2010, while exempting those (for lower-income voters) that he likes. In the longer term, if a GOP Congress or President ever want to cut taxes, paygo applies a straitjacket that pits those tax cuts against, say, spending cuts in Medicare. The Reagan tax reductions would never have happened under paygo.
Are we worrying yet? Via Maggie, Brazil, Russia Trade T-Bills for IMF Clout
Brazil and Russia are set to unload U.S. Treasury bonds as they acquire $10 billion each of new International Monetary Fund securities designed to bolster the institution’s aid programs, officials in the countries said Wednesday.The moves are part of a bid by the so-called BRIC nations — Brazil, Russia, India and China — to play a bigger role at the IMF and other international institutions. The announcements helped push Treasury yields to their highest level this year on concern that rising U.S. debt has hurt T-bill demand among big holders of U.S. dollar reserves.
Expect a lot more of that in the future.
Back when he was campaigning Before he was elected, Obama said that terrorists should not get Miranda rights:
Well, now they will.
I wonder how the news that the Weekly Standard may have been a target of the Holocaust Museum shooter will be spun by those who think Napolitano is a visionary.
The AMA opposes government single-payor medical coverage. I worked in different positions in the group medical benefits insurance business for nearly 10 years and Medicare was a disaster. I advised my parents to have supplemental coverage, which they did, and which was invaluable during my father’s last illness. The proposed Obamacare is Medicare, only in bigger scale.
On a single-payor system, there won’t be a supplemental plan.
And it will lead to rationing. Medical rationing is never called that; it takes the form of absurdly long waits for all sorts of treatments.
The Dems are split on the issue.
Last but not least, what’s for dinner? The world of MREs, that’s what!
Tags: budget, Fausta's blog, H1N1, parenting
June 11th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
So what’s the problem with Miranda rights?
If bad guys are humans, then they deserve human rights, no? We are judged by the way we treat the least of people (and the worst of people). If we can’t catch the bad guys fair and square, using things like public witnesses and actual evidence without resorting to coerced self-incrimination, what does that say about our status as a free society. If we aspire to be a City on the Hill, then we should act like it.
June 11th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Addendum: If they’re crooks, treat them like crooks. If they’re soldiers, treat them like soldiers. The idea that there’s a middle-ground where we can drop people in the oubliette if we don’t like ‘em is disingenuous, and anti-democratic.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
How can you not love The Who! For a real treat, check out this clip of John Entwistle’s isolated bass during their classic performance of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” from the Kids Are Alright: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PZkYxVkFVA. Warning: it’s addictive!
As for that deranged nut targeting the Standard, methinks it should give pause to all those on the right who continue to talk in conspiratorial terms about “the neocons.”
June 12th, 2009 at 1:48 am
You probably heard by now that one of the places he had on his list of “places to pay a visit to” in DC was the Fox News office there.
Brrrrrr! The water from that bucket sure is cold!
June 12th, 2009 at 2:05 am
Relative to the first two comments even the Geneva Conventions recognize that there are some combatants that are not eligible to be treated as POWs. Plus the constituted governments of both Iraq and Afghanistan do not recognize those prisoners held at Guantanamo as soldiers or as POWs. The only right these combatants have is to be treated humanely and when hostilities end to be judged by a competent tribunal.
I can only wonder if the crime scene tape that will be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan comes from some well-connected Democratic donor?
June 12th, 2009 at 9:02 am
[...] I posted yesterday, the Brits are going through the roof over the Bermuda relocation since they were not consulted. [...]