Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Tanks for Hugo, bankrupt states, the Supremes, and the roundup

J. E. Dyer looks at the topography affecting those tanks Hugo Chavez is receiving from Russia:
Bridges to Bogotá.

Mary O’Grady reports that The U.S. Defends Democracy in Haiti
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice backs the OAS’s report of fraud in Haiti’s presidential election.

James Pethokoukis asks, Did Wall Street nix GOP push to let states go bankrupt?

Bipartisan seating for the SOTU address tonight? Not for Nancy Pelosi: Pelosi not sitting with Cantor, despite his invitation. Tweet Of The Day: Don’t Wait To Ask The Girl To The Prom Edition. Since she won’t be sitting behind the President, we shall be spared the sight of Nancy as cheeleader-in-chief to Obama’s every word:

Thank goodness for small favors.

Justice Scalia says he hasn’t “gone to the State of the Union in at least 10 years, and I’m not starting tomorrow night either.” Roger Kimball also has the State of the Union Blues. I think I’ll head out to meditation class.

Over at MSNBC, [Chris] Matthews Ties Tea Partiers to ‘Nazi Stuff’ Moments After Bashing [Glenn] Beck for ‘Violent Rhetoric’. Beck is in hot water with Liberals and the New York Times for pointing out Frances Fox Piven’s calls for violence. At the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto uncovers the real Advocate of Violence
Frances Fox Piven and the New York Times’s dishonest campaign for “civility.” American Power has video of Beck’s follow-up,

Matt Keller ponders The Most Useful College Class I Ever Took, or: “Everyone Loves Raymond, unless Raymond owns more land than you and his Livestock eats your feed” Via Pundette, Mark Steyn writes about the Danish show trials,

The Danish Member of Parliament Jesper Langballe commented on the Hedegaard case and was himself charged with “racism”. While preparing his defense, he was also told by the court that “defendants in cases brought under Article 266b are denied the right to prove their case”.

Oh.

That’s why these are heresy trials, and only the first of many. The prosecutors think Hedegaard, Langballe, Wilders, Mrs Sabbaditsch-Wolff et al are apostates from the new state religion of multiculturalism. Thuggish Muslim lobby groups, on the other hand, consider them heretics against Islam. In practice, it makes little difference, and multiculturalism is merely an interim phase, a once useful cover for an Islamic imperialism so confident it now barely needs one. The good news is that European prosecutors are doing such a grand job with their pilot program of show trials you’ll hardly notice the difference when sharia is formally instituted.

Back in the USA, just because you’re a Cabinet member doesn’t mean the POTUS can spare any time with you, and just because you are First Lady doesn’t mean you can get good tailoring.

Last but not least, Artsy And They Spared Us the Speedos

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A brief roundup on a busy evening, with tango VIDEO

Been busy all day, but found time for a roundup,

Bookworm lost her patience and now explains Attitude is everything . . . or why I yelled at my 88 year old mother

Play me the world’s smallest violin for Barack Obama and Robert Gibbs, but James Warren shows No Pity for Robert Gibbs and His ‘Modest’ Salary, and neither do I.

NPR exec who fired Juan Williams follows him out the door. Juan Williams rips NPR, for good reason. Tammy Bruce has video and transcript.

Doug Ross has the Great News: U.S. Department of Education helping to teach educators about Alinsky, Cloward-Piven and the Need for State-Run Media. Just what we needed.

Ace has the skinny on Liberals Reacting To Reading The Constitution In House Pretty Much Exactly As You Expected They Would.

Could somebody please tell John Boehner to stop crying? It’s unmanly, and annoying. Heck, the girl in True Grit would have smacked him on the side of the head for doing this,

Happy 80th Birthday to The Mighty Robert Duvall, and may he tango on for many more years,

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Dems and their tax fallacies UPDATED

The first fallacy the Democrats repeat over and over is to call the proposed Obama tax increases as repealing the Bush tax cuts. The so-called “cuts” were cuts back in the year when GWB was president and Congress passed the tax reductions. At this point, there are no tax cuts, there are proposed tax increases. The Dems assume you are willing to suspend reason in order to push through the largest tax increase in US history, during a recession.

The Washington Examiner looks at other ways ‘Pelosi-nomics’ requires willing suspension of reason

For one thing, they assume that a tax cut is a gift from the government to the taxpayer rather than government choosing not to take something away that the taxpayer already possesses. Otherwise, to be logically consistent, the assumption must be that the money in taxpayers’ hands is actually government property, which we are allowed to keep until the tax collector demands that we return it in the form of taxes.

Another way of understanding the fallacious nature of the Pelosi argument that tax cuts must be “paid for” by government is to focus on the $700 billion she says will be added to the deficit if all of the Bush measures are extended. Where does Pelosi think those 700 billion dollar bills currently reside if not in the hands of those who will have to pay higher levies if her position is accepted?

Also at the Washington Examiner, Mark Tapscott writes that Washington is why the economy is not growing

On every front, the federal government is creating more investment-killing tax uncertainty, issuing endless pages of new bureaucratic regulations on the economy, and preventing firms from taking actions that could create hundreds of thousands of new positions and kick-start a muscular recovery with real legs.

Political grandstanding by President Obama and Democratic leaders of the lame-duck Congress like Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York on extending the Bush tax cuts is only the most obvious example of how Washington is why the economy is at a standstill.

The same Obama who now says he doesn’t want to extend the Bush tax cuts for “the rich” said last year that “the last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just suck up, take more demand out of the economy and put businesses further in a hole.”

The recession is officially over, but with unemployment barely below recession levels and virtually no new jobs being created, it should be clear now is not the time to raise taxes and “put businesses further in the hole,” either, whether by letting the Bush tax rates on upper incomes expire, or adopting Schumer’s demagogic idea of raising taxes on “millionaires.”

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday, at least 80 percent of the income received by Schumer’s rich villains is from business investments, so increasing their taxes will, as Obama said, put them into deeper holes.

The Bush tax cuts are only one front in this debate. Obama is also tightening the federal bureaucracy’s regulatory straightjacket on economic growth. As the Heritage Foundation reported a week before the election, the hidden tax of regulation costs at least $1.75 trillion annually. That’s twice as much as the government collects in taxes on individuals.
…
Then there is the Obama Permitorium on energy exploration and production here in the United States, which threatens even greater long-term damage to the economy’s ability to generate new jobs and growth

Creating uncertainty, raising taxes to individuals and the private sector, and creating more regulation is the sure way to cripple an economy.

There’s also this,

Take a look at the no-drill zone:

To please the environmentalist lobby, the administration is walking away from 7.5 billion barrels of oil and almost 60 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Media reports indicate that only a portion of the seas that are now off-limits contain enough crude to fill up more than 2.4 million cars with gasoline and natural gas to heat 8 million homes for 60 years.

Increasing dependency on foreign oil, and adding more government programs will keep the economy in dire straits for decades to come.

UPDATE
At Protein Wisdom, “Unemployment Rises to 9.8% as U.S. Adds Just 39,000 Jobs”

So. Unemployment is increasing. The Fed is printing money. And what is the Pelosi House doing? Passing tax increases on small business owners and the “rich” (families that make over $250k) — and then pledging to spend $4.5 BILLION on another layer of bureaucratic oversight added to school lunches at the behest of the First Lady, who it appears is now the unelected Czar of the country’s food policies.

Couple this with Obama’s recent reversal on offshore drilling — a move that will damage the economies of several states and serves as a boon to foreign competitors — and his backdoor affront on internet freedom, and there no two ways about this: we must conclude at this point that, as the markets brace for a potential crash, the “progressives” are intentionally out to sabotage the economy.

Mere stupidity no longer explains it.

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Welcome back, Nancy

Here you have it, the best clenched-fisted, botoxed-forehead House Minority Leader the Republicans could ask for:

Pelosi Elected House Democratic Leader

Democrats in the House of Representatives voted 150-43 Wednesday to keep House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as their leader in the new Congress, a number of lawmakers said as they emerged from the caucus meeting.

It wasn’t all paved with rose petals for Nancy, though:

The vote still amounts to a rebuke of Ms. Pelosi because she was running against Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina, who never campaigned for votes among his colleagues.

All the same, it’s the best thing the Republicans could hope for.

More at The Hill.

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$4.4 Trillion in 31 months

Insane:

$4.4 Trillion
That’s how much the spending baseline has increased in 31 months. (emphasis added)

CBO’s mid-year review largely reinforces the bad news we already knew—to wit, that spending has exploded since Democrats took over Congress in 2007, first with the acquiescence of George W. Bush and then into hyperdrive after Mr. Obama entered the White House.

To appreciate the magnitude of this spending blowout, compare CBO’s budget “baseline” estimate in January 2008 with the baseline it released Thursday. The baseline predicts future spending based on the law at the time. As the nearby chart shows, in a mere 31 months Congress has added more than $4.4 trillion to the 10-year spending baseline. The 2008 and 2009 numbers are actual spending, the others are estimates. As recently as 2005, total federal spending was only $2.47 trillion.

Keep that $4.4 trillion in mind the next time you hear Mr. Obama or Speaker Nancy Pelosi say they “inherited” this budget mess. Let’s assume the recession that Mr. Obama inherited—Mrs. Pelosi was already in power—was responsible for causing $1 trillion or so in deficit spending. That still doesn’t explain why the annual deficit of roughly $1.4 trillion will be nearly as high in fiscal 2010, after a year of economic growth, as it was in 2009. Or why CBO says the deficit will still be nearly $1.1 trillion in 2011 even if all of the Bush-era tax cuts are repealed.

The deficit is barely declining because of the lackluster economic recovery, which continues to yield too little revenue, and especially because of the record levels of spending passed by the Democratic Congress and eagerly signed by Mr. Obama.

Soaring Spending—Not Falling Revenues—Risks Drowning America in Debt

With more realistic assumptions, the budget baseline shows that:

  • Even as war spending phases out and the economy recovers, the projected budget deficit never drops below $1 trillion, and reaches nearly $2 trillion by 2020;
  • The national debt held by the public is set to surpass 100 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020;[1]
  • By 2020, half of all income tax revenues will go toward paying interest on a $23 trillion national debt;
  • Federal spending per household, which has risen from $25,000 to nearly $30,000 over the past three years, would top $38,000 by 2020. The national debt per household, which was $52,000 before the recession, would approach $150,000 by 2020;[2] and
  • Even if all tax cuts are extended, revenues will still surpass the historical average—18 percent of GDP—by 2020. The reason the deficit will surge 6 percent of GDP above its average is because spending will surge to 6 percent of GDP above its average.

These spending and deficit trends are completely unsustainable [emphasis added]. Yet President Obama and Congress continue to push spending and budget deficits even higher with endless failed “stimulus” spending that is now expected to continue into the middle of this decade. They have also enacted a massive new health care law that—far from reining in spiraling health care costs—increases spending (and likely deficits) even further. In short, Washington is digging this budget hole deeper.

Take a look at the graph (click & scroll down for larger view):

What to do? The Heritage Foundation recommends,

Genuine spending reforms are the only way to bring the budget under control. Lawmakers should rescind the remaining funds from TARP and the failed stimulus bill, as well as repeal the unaffordable health care law. Next, they should enact tough spending caps to help lawmakers set priorities and make trade-offs. Congress should then disclose the massive unfunded obligations of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; put those programs on long-term budgets; and create an entitlement reform commission.[10] Finally, lawmakers should enact the necessary entitlement and programmatic reforms that can keep government within those limits.[11]

The likelihood the Dems in control of Congress will do that?

Close to zero.

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Pelosi wants to investigate the Ground Zero mosque opposition UPDATED

Not the funding sources (one doesn’t just come up with $100,000,000 out of the blue, outside of Nancy’s world), not the whereabouts of the traveling Imam, not even the destinations to which his taxpayer-bankrolled tickets will take him (to use Claudia Rosett’s phrase) or who approved his trip at the State Department. No.
Rep. Pelosi calls for investigation of WTC mosque opposition (emphasis added)

“There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she said

Nice Deb has the audio,

Dan Blatt wonders Has Nancy Pelosi Read the First Amendment?

Now, an investigation of a political protest movement may pass constitutional muster, but it certainly smacks of authoritarianism.  An investigation does not mean she favors abridging freedom or speech or curtailing “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” which is what opponents of the “Ground Zero Mosque” have been doing.  But, she sure doesn’t seem comfortable with it.

Why, may I ask, does she need to know how this is being “ginned up”?  Why can’t she jut take issue with their arguments without casting aspersions at their motives?

Wonder if she also wants to investigate her Senate counterpart, Harry Reid who thinks the mosque should be built elsewhere?  Guess she’ll also be calling for an investigation of Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, director of Al-Arabiya TV who wrote  that the “last thing Muslims want today is to build just a religious center out of defiance to the others, or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery.“

My sense is that an investigation will find that opposition to the mosque hasn’t been ginned up (as Mrs. Pelosi might put it) by some dark and sinister (in Pelosi speak, read conservative) forces, but is merely the grassroots opposition of a good number of Americans who don’t think it appropriate to build such a center so close to Ground Zero site, as Charles Krauthammer so eloquently put it, “of the greatest mass murder in American history — perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.“

It’s not just that, a number of opponents (of the mosque) have raised questions about its funding, the leader of the project, even the rationale behind its name.  Their opposition is not based on animosity against Islam per se, but based on serious questions about the project’s purpose.

Particularly when the project is named Cordoba Initiative.

UPDATE
Whoa! – I almost missed this, but Gates of Vienna has the link,
Ground Zero Mosque’s Hidden Websites: Follow the Shariah

Do the math.  The 15 floors planned for the Ground Zero Mosque just don’t add up.
…
Why don’t the 15 floors add up? How many floors does Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf need for the mosque portion of this triumphal Islamic command center planned for the two building sites at 45-47 Park Place in New York City?  Think about it: maybe 2 floors for the mosque itself and related offices.  A 3rd floor for the swimming pool, a 4th for the 500 seat auditorium, a 5th for the halal restaurant and halal culinary school, a 6th for the art studios, the childcare center and library, a 7th for the gym and basketball court.  Add an 8th floor for miscellaneous storage and offices.  And then add a 9th floor for the September 11 memorial, an after-thought that was recently added to the Imam’s plan, although that may in fact be more of a room off to one side than a whole floor.

That leaves six mystery floors empty – or dedicated to other activities. Six floors – that’s a lot of offices, a lot of employees, maybe more than half of the 150 full-time and 500 part-time jobs the Imam says he’ll bring to Lower Manhattan.   What are Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s plans for those six mystery floors?

Follow the Shariah Index Project to solve the puzzle of the 6 mystery floors: We found two hidden websites with  copiously deleted information, all about the Imam’s Cordoba Institute Shariah Index Project.  For reference, here’s the Imam’s most recent hidden website (also available here as a pdf).  And here’s the Imam’s earlier hidden website (also available here as a pdf).  The information on those websites – information that the Imam tried to hide with a new whitewashed version – suggests that the six mystery floors of the Ground Zero Mosque will be dedicated to the Imam’s long-term goal: the Shariah Index Project, designed to benchmark Shariah compliance, to distribute Shariah propaganda, and to enforce Shariah law in America and worldwide.

Drawing from those hidden webpages and other sites, we’ve constructed a timeline for the Shariah Index Project and a partial list of Rauf’s partners in the Project.  In Part 2, we’ll reveal the disturbing background and views of those partners.  And in Part 3, we’ll present the bottom line – how this all ties together as a historic Islamist effort to market and to enforce Shariah in America, starting from Ground Zero.

Numbered Documents, for everyone’s convenience! Below, from the hidden websites, is the evidence Rauf tried to cover-up.  We’ve even numbered the Shariah Index Project documents he mentioned, to make it easy for the Imam and his staff – for example, Courtney Erwin, attorney and director of the Shariah Index Project and corporate contact for the Cordoba Institute –  to provide copies to the American public.

Go read it all.

If Nancy wants an investigation, she ought to start there.

Bonus link:
Who’s writing the Tweets? (h/t Drudge, as if he needs my traffic)

UPDATE 2
In case you’re wondering what the hey Nancy was talking about when she wondered off to “Treasure Island”, Michelle Malkin has the details:
Pelosi and the Treasure Island land grab

Pelosi has used her power to push the crony-infested project for years. She pushed aggressively for legislative language that would have forced the military to fork over high-value property at no cost to local communities. And as the Washington Times recounted last fall, she presided over a “den of corruption” to secure the coveted property

That’s only the start. Go read the rest.

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Pelosi: Unemployment benefits are creating jobs faster than practically any other program Updated with VIDEO

Has there ever been a Speaker of the House dumber than Nancy Pelosi in all of American history?

Pelosi: Unemployment Checks Fastest Way to Create Jobs

Unemployment benefits are creating jobs faster than practically any other program, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday.

Talking to reporters, the House speaker was defending a jobless benefits extension against those who say it gives recipients little incentive to work. By her reasoning, those checks are helping give somebody a job.

“It injects demand into the economy,” Pelosi said, arguing that when families have money to spend it keeps the economy churning. “It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.”

Pelosi said the aid has the “double benefit” of helping those who lost their jobs and acting as a “job creator” on the side.

If you think she was misquoted, theblogprof has the video:

She actually believes that. Too bad she can’t read The Classless Society,

By her logic, we could achieve full employment by laying everybody off.

Taxation does not create wealth. Taxation only uses wealth.

If you’re unemployed, you’re not adding value to the economy by your labor; you’re just using resources (unemployment benefits) of others who are adding value.

Jobs are created by reducing the cost of production, which enables employers to hire people. To create jobs, government must lower taxes, and lower the other structural barriers to employment, like reducing the minimum wage and reducing disincentives to fire people.

If you don’t understand why, read up on  Frédéric Bastiat.

And then we have the POTUS saying things aren’t so bad because after all, “unemployment’s 9.6, yes, but it’s not 12 or 13… or 15.” (*)

Not so fast, sir. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of May this year, out of 372 metropolitan areas, 133 had unemployment rates of 9.7% or higher, including 13 with unemployment rates of 15% or higher.

Which surely must warm Nancy’s heart. After all, the San Francisco-Oakland-Freemont CA metropolital statistical area boasts a 10.1% unemployment rate, so surely all those unemployment checks must really be doing something for the economy. What that something is, Nancy only knows.

Yes, indeed, we’re in the best of hands.

UPDATE
(*) In Marty Feldman’s immortal line, “Could be worse, it could be raining”

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The church of Nancy

It takes a special kind of moral obtuseness to come up with Nancy’s particular brand of theology. Nancy professes to be a devout Catholic.

First, the statement that she follows Jesus Christ’s public policy (emphasis added):

“And that Word,” Pelosi said, “is, we have to give voice to what that means in terms of public policy that would be in keeping with the values of the Word. The Word. Isn’t it a beautiful word when you think of it? It just covers everything. The Word.

Hey Nancy, ever hear of separation of church and state? As Sister Toldjah put it,

First, I don’t have to tell you how flaming red the OutrageOmeter would be right now if Pelosi’s words were instead uttered by George “Dumbya” Bush during his two terms. There’d be so much fretting, sweating, handwringing, mouth foaming, demands for “clarification” – and that’s just from the MSM.

Let’s listen to Nancy,

Ed asks,

What Would Jesus Abort? That should be the question Nancy Pelosi answers after assuring voters that she must craft her public policies to meet with the approval of Jesus Christ when He returns at the end of time. Pelosi must be hoping that she’ll have enough time to figure out an explanation for voting against a ban on partial-birth abortions

Never mind that the Pope took Nancy to task over the issue of abortion. In the Church of Nancy, it’s all about a good Word.

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