Broder On Palin: ‘This Might Work’

Uh-oh.

The dean of Beltway journalists, David Broder of the Washington Compost, has his latest column up. It’s on Sarah Palin, and it’s worth reading.

Broder, who’s forgotten more than most of the two-bit hacks that call themselves Washington journalists know, sees the former Alaska governor as a highly credible force in both the conservative movement and Republican politics.

Blessed with an enthusiastic audience of conservative activists, Palin used the Tea Party gathering and coverage on the cable networks to display the full repertoire she possesses, touching on national security, economics, fiscal and social policy, and every other area where she could draw a contrast with Barack Obama and point up what Republicans see as vulnerabilities in Washington.

Her invocation of “conservative principles and common-sense solutions” was perfectly conventional. What stood out in the eyes of TV-watching pols of both parties was the skill with which she drew a self-portrait that fit not just the wishes of the immediate audience but the mood of a significant slice of the broader electorate.

Freed of the responsibilities she carried as governor of Alaska, devoid of any official title but armed with regular gigs on Fox News Channel and more speaking invitations than she can fulfill, Palin is perhaps the most visible Republican in the land.

More important, she has locked herself firmly in the populist embrace that every skillful outsider candidate from George Wallace to Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton has utilized when running against “the political establishment.”

It doesn’t always win. There are more John Edwardses and Mike Huckabees than I can count. But it wins more often than you’d guess and for a greater variety of people, especially when things are not going well for the country.

When Sarah Palin speaks, images of Ronald Reagan come to mind in many people. She has a way of putting things into words that ordinary Americans can understand and relate to. Reagan connected with the America that is too often dismissed and looked down upon by the elites in the media and the Boston-Washington corridor. And yes, that includes some Beltway conservatives who’ve gone native by not being around real people.

However, I was at a local TEA Party gathering last night and the topic of the 2012 GOP presidential race came up. As much as I like Sarah Palin and would work for her in a nanosecond, I just cannot see her as presidential timber any more.

That does not mean she cannot be a playmaker in the GOP as well as advance conservatism, and perhaps she sees herself in that type of role rather than as the 45th POTUS.

But Sarah Palin has been Quayle-ized, and rather unfairly, I might add. To be Quayle-ized means to have your name become the punch line of jokes. Like Dan Quayle. O.J. Simpson. Eliot Spitzer. John Edwards. Tiger Woods. Keith Olbermann.

And unfortunately, that was what happened to Palin, courtesy of the Old Guard GOP, the blueblood countryclubber crowd who resented her presence on the 2008 ticket, still not realizing that she was the only reason the race was competitive. You had Mitt Romney backers in the McCain camp that allowed her to be made into a punching bag, never defending a potential 2012 rival and making the GOP insiders as misogynic as the Left.

Can Palin recover? Only time will tell, since she’s only 45 years old. Remember: the current occupant of the Oval Orifice has less experience that Sarah Palin does at life, let alone actually governing and accomplishing anything.

But the stakes are far too high in 2012 for the Republicans to nominate anyone who isn’t a lock to oust Our Lord and Savior from power. And thus far, the only potential Republican candidate that Barack Hussein Obama polls ahead of is … Sarah Palin. Which tells me that, even though it’s an inaccurate portrait of her, the bloc of disavowed voters who abandoned the GOP in 2006 and 2008 have bought the Saturday Night Live and state-run media portrayal of her. And if that is the case, they may very well stay with the devil they know.

Over at Pajamas Media, Melissa Clouthier’s column on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement segues with my topic. While I disagree to a certain extent with the contention that Palin’s journey to Nashville was a mistake — the big mistake was Palin’s conscientious decision to skip CPAC — I agree that not only is she not the leader of the Tea Party movement, she couldn’t be the leader even if she wanted to be.

The Tea Party movement has no leader, and arguably it doesn’t need one. There is no Tea Party per se. It is not a political party, no matter how much the state-run media wants to turn it into one. It’s a movement defined by opposition to big government, high taxes, runaway spending and deficits and mounting debt. It consists of Democrats, Republicans and Independents. It cuts across racial, ethnic, income, age and gender lines. It’s the ordinary American vs. the political and cultural elites.

This is insightful:

Sarah Palin garners fanatical support from many of her followers. She has Obama-esque star power. The camera loves her. The media loves to hate her. She always makes headlines.

Her followers do not take too kindly to any criticism of Sarah Palin, thank you very much. In my own case, I’ve followed her career with interest — writing mostly in defense of her. The vicious coverage she’s received makes it nearly impossible to judge her on her merits. The media caricatured her from the beginning as an empty-headed Alaskan redneck. She deserved fair and honest treatment, but the left rightly feared (and loathed) her star power. Thus, they attacked her at every turn.

These attacks made Sarah Palin the de facto symbol of media bias, and she became adored and revered on the right by those who have seen their own beliefs — clinging to God and guns — maligned. But not every tea partier engages in idol worship. In fact, that’s kinda the point. Most don’t — even for Sarah Palin.

I understand the kneejerk reaction of Palinistas is to defend her at every turn, even in the face of missteps. That’s a result of the unfair treatment she’s received from both the political and cultural elites as well as the state-run media. If those entities had treated her even-handedly, it would be different.

But to do so runs the risk of evolving into the Kool-Aid drinking, lobotomized Obamabots. Or even the Bush-bots. I recall vividly being attacked personally by Bush supporters as being the same as the moonbat Left because I refused to support Harriet Miers, the pork-laden spending bills he signed, etc., or any mistakes made in prosecuting the war in Iraq.

This is America. We cannot blindly follow our leaders off a cliff, no matter who they are. They’re human. They are not infallible, Palin included. She’s made mistakes. One clearly was the notes-on-the-hand incident. She had to have known how that was going to be played out. Not to have foreseen that is politically unforgivable. Despite the fact that we have a POTUS who has to take his trusty teleprompter to talk to sixth graders and to conduct a staff meeting with his Vice President and Treasury Secretary. It undercuts her ability to poke fun at the Teleprompter-in-Chief and provides more fodder for the late night comics who’ve helped define her in the public eye.

The other is not engaging in media interviews outside of Fox News, friendly ground because she’s an FNC contributor. To overcome the misperception that she’s not qualified to be president, she needs to take the battle to the enemy. A one on one with, say, ABC’s Jake Tapper would be a good start. Tapper has struck us as fair even to those with whom he may disagree politically. Too bad that Tim Russert is no longer with us. A sit-down with him on Meet the Depressed would have been very good for her.

Tapper, by the way, tweets this ABC News poll which gives bad news for Palin: 55 percent disapproval, 71 percent say she’s unqualified to be POTUS. Numbers can lie to some extent and even be fudged, but there are times that perception is indeed reality.

This may be one of them.

Bottom line is: there are almost two years until the Hawkeye Cauci and the New Hampshire primaries. That’s more than an eternity in politics. We cannot worry about 2012. We have the 2010 midterms coming up and we cannot take our eye of the ball when it comes to November of this year. Let 2012 worry about itself for now.

There are a lot of solid GOP candidates on the horizon for 2012 and probably a few that haven’t even considered a run yet.

Let’s take back Congress and neutralize the Boy King for the last two years of his only term. Gridlock can be a good thing when it stops damage to the country as a whole.

Hitler Reacts To Palin’s Nashville Speech

You knew this was coming … word of Sarah Palin’s speech to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville has reached Obama in the White House, er, Hitler in the bunker (via The Other McCain):

Mr. Tingly Leg And The Tinfoil Hat

Chris Matthews of PMSNBC’s Screwball, he of the tingly leg fame, just entered tinfoil hat country with a rant about how the “the pro militarist party of the far right” is trying to orchestrate a military coup d’etat a la Seven Days In May against Our Lord and Savior.

Never mind that the military has always been good followers of the civilian command.

From David Forsmark at Newsreal:

Chris Matthews blurted out a paranoid fantasy on Monday night–Republicans who fillibuster Obama’s agenda are plotting a military coup of the United States government!

MATTHEWS: I know who it helps. It helps the very far right, the very far right, the pro militarist party of the far right, the Seven Days in May types, who would like to see democracy fail so they can have absolute control over the government and begin the move so far to the right!

Wow. Somebody borrowed Keith Olbermann’s tinfoil hat this week…

If Chris Matthews knows of United States Senators who are plotting to bring down the government with a military coup, he needs to actually make some news on his pathetic little show and name names. Right now. Or shut the hell up.

Once again, with a lineup consisting of Mr. Tingly Leg, The Olbertard and Rachel Madcow, does PMSNBC really have to wonder why its nightly audience can fit into a phone booth?

Even discerning dogs and houseplants want the remote when this stuff comes on the TV.

A Greek Tragedy Unfolds

The present state of Greece may very well be the future of the United States if we are unable to get the proliferate spending under control.

Greece has the modern-day welfare state. With government spending more than half of the national Gross Domestic Product, massive entitlements and a burgeoning government sector with generous pay and benefits, Greece is on the verge of collapse.

The government is trying some austerity measures — well, austere for government. The Greek prime minister wants to reform government pensions and freeze pay of the public sector. Boo-freaking-hoo.

And the public employee unions and entitlement classes are fighting back. As the BBC — British Bullshit Corporation — reports:

Despite heavy rain, there have been rallies across Greece throughout the day, with thousands of striking workers and pensioners gathering in the capital, Athens.

Several thousand people were also reported to have protested in Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki.

The rallies have been mainly peaceful, but in one incident police fired tear gas at rubbish collectors who tried to drive through a police cordon.

Some demonstrators threw stones at the police but the trouble was quickly defused.

The unions regard the austerity program as a declaration of war against the working and middle classes.

“It’s a war against workers and we will answer with war, with constant struggles until this policy is overturned,” said Christos Katsiotis, a union member affiliated to the Communist Party, at the Athens rally.

By the way, all who are shocked, shocked to see a union member affiliated with the Communist Party stand on your head.

The socialist government is also proposing raising the retirement age from 61 to 63 in an effort to save the pension system, the equivalent of the U.S. raising the retirement age from 65 to 67 as has been proposed in the past. Plus, there’s talk of raising taxes.

Hello? Just like we’re saying to our mental midgets in Washington and Madison, it’s not the taxes. It’s the spending, stupid. To quote El Rushbo, no nation has ever taxed its way into prosperity.

Put another way, every dollar that usurped by government cannot be spent in the private sector or used to create a job. And government does not create jobs, although government policy can and does have an effect on job creation. Right now, here in the U.S., government tax and regulatory policies are having a harmful effect on private sector growth. Only the government sector is encouraged, since it’s the one that is growing. Hello, Greece!

Dan Mitchell argues at Big Government why a bailout of Greece by the European Union would be even worse than allowing the Greek government to default.

Bailing out Greece will reward over-spending politicians and make future fiscal crises more likely. In a four-year period between 2005 and 2009, Greek politicians expanded the burden of government spending from an already excessive level of 43.8 percent of GDP to an even more excessive level of 51.3 percent of GDP. Subsidies are rampant, the public sector is bloated, civil service pay is way too high, and entitlements are wildly unsustainable. A fiscal crisis – with no escape options – is probably the only hope of reversing these disastrous policies. So why, then, would it make sense for Germany and other nations to provide an escape option?

Bailing out Greece will reward greedy and short-sighted interest groups, particularly overpaid government workers. Greece is in trouble because the the people riding in society’s wagon assumed that there would always be enough chumps to pull the wagon. In reality, Greece is turning into a real-world version of Atlas Shrugged. Government has become such a burden that the job creators and wealth generators have given up and/or moved their money out of the country. Should taxpayers in other nations reward the greed and narcissism of Greece’s interest groups by being forced to pull the wagon instead?

Bailing out Greece will encourage profligacy in Spain, Italy, and other nations. The hot acronym in public finance circles is PIIGS, which is shorthand for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain. Greece is getting all the attention now, but these other countries have the same problems of excessive spending, bloated and dysfunctional public sectors, and unsustainable finances. What happens in Greece will send a very clear signal to the politicians in these nations, much as a parent who lets the oldest child run rampant is sending signals the younger siblings. Does anybody doubt that a bailout of Greece will discourage the other PIIGS from undertaking needed reforms?

Bailing out Greece is not necessary to save the euro. This is the most puzzling feature of this Greek tragedy (sorry, I couldn’t resist). There is a pervasive assumption that a default somehow would cripple the common currency of most European Union nations. But why would a default in Greece undermine the euro? If California went under, after all, that would not cripple the US dollar. There are unpleasant things that would probably happen following a Greek default, but the stability and strength of a currency is a function of central bank behavior. And so long as the European Central Bank does not crank up the proverbial printing press to monetize Greece’s debt, the euro should be fine.

In my darker moments, I have sometimes warned audiences of what will happen when a majority of voters in a country or a state become dependent on government. In such an environment, it obviously becomes much more difficult to put together an electoral coalition that will lead to fiscal changes that shrink the burden of government and curtail the predatory state. This is what has happened to Greece, and what is soon going to happen in other European nations (and, barring reform, what will eventually happen in the United States). The irony of this situation is that even the folks riding in the wagon should favor reform. After all, a parasite needs a healthy host.

In theory, you’d think the bloodsucking leeches — those who are dependent on the welfare state — would realize that, but also remember: they’re products of gummint-run ejookayshun. That means: (1) they’ve been taught to believe they are entitled to the fruits of others’ labor and (2) they’re too ignorant to realize the obvious anyway.

As a commenter at Big Government observes:

Obama is working real hard at reproducing more parasites, I can only image the host is going to die soon, unless we start to treat the disease, and not the symptoms.

And that disease is spending. The creation of public entitlements to get citizens hooked on gummint money like an addict gets hooked on crack. As Benjamin Franklin once said:

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.

Alexis de Tocqueville put it similarly:

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.

Two things happen should the EU decide to do a TARP-style bailout of Greece. First, the EU will then own Greece. It stops being a functional independent state, much like the federal government bought GM when it bailed out the failing automaker and split ownership with the United Auto Workers, one of the main reasons why GM was failing. Second, it will encourage other European nations to go on the same type of binge that Greece did, figuring that the EU will bail them out, and it will encourage the same type of reckless behavior that got Greece into this predicament.

By the way, here in the U.S., we’re looking at a similar situation with California, which is on the verge of collapse for the same reason. And yes, the Land of Fruits and Nuts is looking for a bailout from Congress.

Memo to Washington: we’re broke. We don’t have any more money. Your policies are killing real jobs and encouraging nothing but dependency on government. We can’t afford any more of your schemes like government-run health care and cap-and-tax or another porkulus jobs bill that doesn’t create any jobs.

Redefining Insanity: Fannie, Freddie: Part Deux

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Welcome to Barack Hussein Obama’s definition of insanity, which pretty much matches that of Einstein.

Part One of the story came late last year, when the Treasury Department under the stewardship of Turbo Tax Cheat Tim Geithner quietly lifted the caps on the money provided to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

New York – — The government has handed its ATM card to beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Treasury Department said Thursday it removed the $400 billion financial cap on the money it will provide to keep the companies afloat. Already, taxpayers have shelled out $111 billion to the pair, and most analysts hadn’t expected the companies to hit the limit.

Not just the ATM card, mind you, but the PIN to go along with it. Remember: it was the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac having purchased bundles of worthless home loans and mortgages that had been granted under pressure from the Clinton administration that triggered the collapse of the housing market in 2008.

Of course, Our Lord and Savior has his own shady ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well. This from the 2008 campaign:

A group called the Center for Responsive Politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and No. 2 is Sen. Barack Obama.

Now remember, he’s only been in the Senate four years, but he still managed to grab the No. 2 spot ahead of John Kerry — decades in the Senate — and Chris Dodd (the Senator from Countrywide: ed), who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Fannie and Freddie have been creations of the congressional Democrats and the Clinton White House, designed to make mortgages available to more people and, as it turns out, some people who couldn’t afford them.

Fannie and Freddie have also been places for big Washington Democrats to go to work in the semi-private sector and pocket millions. The Clinton administration’s White House Budget Director Franklin Raines ran Fannie and collected $50 million. Jamie Gorelick — Clinton Justice Department official — worked for Fannie and took home $26 million. Big Democrat Jim Johnson, recently on Obama’s VP search committee, has hauled in millions from his Fannie Mae CEO job.

That’s right. Two of Obama’s homeboys were getting filthy rich off Fannie and Freddie while the two quasi-government agencies were swirling in the terlet bowl, so to speak.

Now comes Part Two: Fannie and Freddie, complete with no limit on the ATM card and the taxpayers’ PIN, will once again be buying back bad home loans and mortgages.

WASHINGTON – Government controlled mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said Wednesday they will buy back troubled loans contained in securities they have already sold to investors.

The two companies are repurchasing mortgage loans for which borrowers have missed at least four months of payments. At the end of last year, Fannie had about $127 billion of such loans, while Freddie Mac had about $70 billion.

Fannie Mae, based in Washington, and its McLean, Va., rival Freddie Mac have been run under tight government oversight since they almost collapsed in September 2008. They have required $111 billion in federal aid to stay afloat.Late last year the Obama administration pledged to cover unlimited losses through 2012 for both companies, lifting an earlier cap of $400 billion. That gave Fannie and Freddie more leeway to buy back delinquent loans.

This has epic FAIL written all over it. This is what got Fannie and Freddie into so much trouble they needed a taxpayer bailout to avoid collapse less than 18 months ago.

And it’s not like the taxpayers’ bailout of Fannie and Freddie did much good:

Freddie and its larger rival, Fannie Mae, were among the first big financial institutions to receive massive federal bailouts after the financial crisis hit in 2008. Government officials have been racing to fix bailed-out car makers and banks and are pushing to reshape the financial-services industry. But Fannie and Freddie remain troubled wards of the state, with no blueprints for the future and no clear exit strategy for the government.

Nearly a year and a half after the outbreak of the global economic crisis, many of the problems that contributed to it haven’t yet been tamed. The U.S. has no system in place to tackle a failure of its largest financial institutions. Derivatives contracts of the kind that crippled American International Group Inc. still trade in the shadows. And investors remain heavily reliant on the same credit-ratings firms that gave AAA ratings to lousy mortgage securities.

Fannie and Freddie, for their part, remain at the core of a housing-finance system that inflated a dangerous housing bubble. After prices collapsed, sending shock waves around the world, the federal government put America’s housing-finance system on life support. It has yet to decide how that troubled system should be rebuilt.

Remember: the ones who tried to reform Fannie and Freddie were President Bush in 2003 and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2005. They were rebuffed by the likes of the Senator from Countrywide and the Banking Queen, Bawney Fwank, whose paramour was a top executive with Fannie.

This is a recipe for disaster, another ticking time bomb that will go off at some unknown point. What is known is what effect it will have when it goes off.

Same song, second verse.

Obesity A Threat To … National Security??

At least if you listen to our new national nanny, the First Clydesdale herself.

(CNSNews.com) – At a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the launch of the ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to end childhood obesity in the United States, an epidemic she said is costly and a threat to national security.

“A recent study put the health care cost of obesity-related diseases at $147 billion a year,” Mrs. Obama said. “This epidemic also impacts the nation’s security, as obesity is now one of the most common disqualifiers for military service.”

The ceremony, attended by many officials of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, followed the signing earlier in the day of a presidential memorandum establishing a task force to study the problem and make recommendations after 90 days.

I can save Old Lard Bucket’s task force time and money: consume fewer calories and exercise more. There. Problem solved. And yes, Michelle Obama is the last person that needs to be lecturing anyone about weight control and weight management. Remember the Obamas’ memorable epic FAIL in Copenhagen? Sure you do. There was a wire service photo taken of her from behind. She was wearing a yellow dress. Two things came to mind:

1. If that were a different shade of yellow, she could be mistaken for a school bus.
2. If she backed up, there should be a beeping sound.

Much of the childhood obesity problems come from two things: a change in the general diet of America’s kids and a change in the general lifestyle of those kids. It’s easier, for example, for harried parents to get high calorie fast food or pizza rather than prepare a balanced meal. Reducing the cost of living by, say, cutting taxes might eliminate the need for both parents to hold full-time jobs and then perhaps one could stay at home to prepare dinner.

Plus, parents could get their kids off the couch, take away the remote control, the TV, the Nintendo or X-box, the computer and get them involved in real activities, like previous generations. Actually go outside and … play. Now there’s a concept. And, our gummint-run skoolz could actually reintroduce the concept of physical education. Gym class. Physical activity. Moving your body through space. Actual games and competition, not touchy-feely self-esteem based activities. Running, calesthenics, sports. Not every kid will excel at everything. But it gets them active. Make ‘em change for gym, like we did. That may actually require a shower. Guess what? They’ll survive. We did.

Bottom line is, Americans don’t need a national nanny nagging on behavior. And certainly not from a bunch of flaming hypocrites in Washington, D.C.

Over at Newsreal, Lori Ziganto writes:

Fat kids are a threat to national security? I don’t think she’s really being fair; her husband is not fat. I suppose now instead of man-made disasters, terrorism will be called donut-made disasters? Besides the stupidity of the “national security” premise, the entire initiative is ridiculous and a waste of OUR money. She goes on to say that we dum-dum parents can’t figure out what food is healthy or not, without the aid of Big Nanny Government. Hey, Michelle? Your husband is Big Nanny Government and he still doesn’t realize that smoking is bad for you.

And Our Lord and Savior indeed is the biggest threat to national security in Washington. Or anywhere else in the United States.

The initiative calls for – surprise – more government spending and expanding government programs:

Some of the goals include ending what Obama referred to as “food deserts” with a $400 million a year “Healthy Food Financing Initiative,” which will bring grocery stores to low-income neighborhoods and “help places like convenience stores carry healthier food options.”

Obama called for overhauling many federal laws and guidelines, including adding $10 billion over the next decade to “update” the Childhood Nutrition Act, which feeds 31 million children at school and would add funding to feed more children.

That’s right. Big Nanny Government in your grocery store. At a prohibitive cost of $400 million a year minimal. And still even more money for government to feed your children at school. Because, after all, you parents are too stoooooopid to feed them properly.

Of course, there’s a beneficiary to all of this: Barack Hussein Obama’s pals at SEIU. Via Michelle Malkin:

Who really benefits from the ostensible push for improved nutrition in the schools? Think purple – as in the purple-shirted army of the Service Employees International Union. Big Labor bigwigs don’t care about slimming your kids’ waistlines. They care about beefing up their membership rolls and fattening their coffers …

What’s in it for Big Labor? SEIU Executive Vice President Mitch Ackerman explains: “A more robust expansion of school lunch, breakfast, summer feeding, child care and WIC [the federal Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program] is critical to reducing hunger, ending childhood obesity, and providing fair wages and healthcare for front line food service workers (emphasis added).” There are 400,000 workers who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more. “More robust expansion” of the federal school lunch law means a mandate for higher wages, increased benefits, and government-guaranteed health insurance coverage (the more luxurious the better now that SEIU has negotiated its Cadillac Tax exemption from the Democrats’ health care takeover bill).

The SEIU’s front group, “Campaign for Quality Services,” is clamoring for “the right to sick days and training” for school food-services workers. Never ones to let a crisis go unexploited, SEIU sent its members to lobby in front of Chicago public schools last year and scare parents into supporting their labor agenda. They accused the school system of “putting our kids at risk” during flu season by resisting the SEIU’s sick day coverage demands. “Without sick days, I can’t take a day off, so I have to bring germs to school,” an SEIU janitor lamented.

Along the same lines, they are casting food-services workers as indispensable saviors. The union has rallied behind p.r. efforts casting them as superheroes “serving justice, and serving lunch.” Opposing the union means opposing children’s health.

Red, White and Conservative’s Jackie Seal weighs in here.

What I gather from this “Let’s Move” campaign by Mrs. Obama is- the American people are stupid.  They’re too stupid to know that sugar and junk food is bad for them.  It appears to be another attempt by the government to control another area of our lives.

Just wait until these fascists get control of Americans’ health care.

Big Labor Attacks The Tea Parties

The network that the White House says is not a real news network, Fox News, continues to earn its real journalistic stripes by doing the job the rest of the sycophant, in-the-tank-for-Obama media refuses to do.

FNC has uncovered evidence that a phony grassroots efforts is being mounted by Big Labor to counter the effective Tea Parties. The astroturfed campaign has a website called The Tea Party Is Over and is being funded by K Street lobbyists, government unions and the purple-shirted thugs from SEIU and channeled through a big-name Democrat lawyer.

A new Web site targeting the tea parties is a part of a complex network of money flowing from the mountainous coffers of the country’s biggest labor unions and trickling slowly into political slush funds for Democratic activists.

A seemingly grassroots organization that’s mounted an online campaign to counter the tea party movement is actually the front end of an elaborate scheme that funnels funds — including sizable labor union contributions — through the offices of a prominent Democratic party lawyer.

A Web site popped up in January dedicated to preventing the tea party’s “radical” and “dangerous” ideas from “gaining legislative traction,” targeting GOP candidates in Illinois for the firing squad.

“This movement is a fad,” proclaims TheTeaPartyIsOver.org, which was established by the American Public Policy Center (APPC), a D.C.-based campaign shop that few people have ever heard of.

But a close look reveals the APPC’s place in a complex network of money flowing from the mountainous coffers of the country’s biggest labor unions into political slush funds for Democratic activists.

Here’s how it works: What appears like a local groundswell is in fact the creation of two men — Craig Varoga and George Rakis, Democratic Party strategists who have set up a number of so-called 527 groups, the non-profit election organizations that hammer on contentious issues (think Swift Boats, for example).

Varoga and Rakis keep a central mailing address in Washington, pulling in soft money contributions from unions and other well-padded sources to engage in what amounts to a legal laundering system. The money — tens of millions of dollars — gets circulated around to different states by the 527s, which pay for TV ads, Internet campaigns and lobbyist salaries, all while keeping the hands of the unions clean — for the most part.

While it’s legal, the campaign is fundamentally dishonest. Once again, the Left claims that the large numbers of ordinary citizens that showed up at town halls over the summer and autumn plus the large numbers at various Tea Party events were “astroturfed,” meaning phony.

The campaign is being run by a pair of leftwing hacks who cloned a number of groups to give the impression that the campaign is grasroots, all the while being funded by K Street lobbyists and union thugs.

Calls and e-mails to the Maryland-based consultant firm Independent Strategies, run by Varoga and Rakis, were not returned.

Outside of that firm, the center of their activity appears to be a single office in Southeast D.C. — 300 M Street, Suite 1102 — which plays host to a sprawling political shell game they have established.

Public records show at least seven political shops listed in Suite 1102, most of which are essentially clones of one another, but all of which have offered money — from measly thousands to game-changing millions — in state-level elections across the country:

-The American Public Policy Committee
-Patriot Majority
-Citizens for Progress
-Oklahoma Freedom Fund
-Mid Atlantic Leadership Fund
-Public Security Now
-Pioneer Majority
-Bluegrass Freedom Fund

The APPC, which developed the anti-tea party ads, has gotten all of its money for 2010 from Patriot Majority and from Citizens for Progress, which is also called Patriot Majority West.

Patriot Majority West sent them $25,000 in January, and Patriot Majority added another $5,000. The groups, both run by Varoga and Rakis, also swap hundreds of thousands of dollars between themselves, money often buttressed by gifts from Patriot Majority Midwest, seen above as the Oklahoma Freedom Fund.

The confusing naming system is intentional, say election law experts, who generally disapprove of the practice.

Once again, there is little if any real opposition to the Tea Party movement, which is truly grassroots. The Left has to use government union and lobbyist money and a bunch of phony cloned groups with innocuous sounding names to create the false impression that Americans are rising up in counter-protest to the Tea Parties, when it’s actually the political establishment that is the opposition.

Get a load of how this slush fund has been set up and is being funded:

The most recent backers of the Patriot Majority and Patriot Majority West, which helped fund the APPC and thus the Tea Party site, form a veritable Who’s Who of the country’s top labor unions: the Service Employees International Union, Change to Win, the Communications Workers of America, the National Education Association, the Teamsters Union, the United Food & Commercial Workers Union and others besides.

But by far the largest donations have come from a collection of unionized government workers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) — which in 2008 alone donated $5.8 million to Patriot Majority and another $4.1 million to Patriot Majority Midwest.

Using this arrangement, Varoga and Rakis are managing what NPR called a “never-ending pot of union money” that they dispense among the 527s they run, which in turn pay for ads in hotly contested election districts.

That means that taxpayer dollars, sent up as union dues, have been going to fund a host of Democratic causes and help quash the tea party movement.

What’s more, Varoga and Rakis are not actually present in Suite 1102. That is the office of their lawyer, Joseph Sandler, a longtime general counsel to the Democratic National Committee.

Jennifer Rubin weighs in:

It seems that the Tea Party movement, once defamed and derided, now poses a threat to the liberal establishment, so much so that they are collecting millions to undermine it. Conservatives shouldn’t object to political speech — which this is. But there is certainly grounds to object to the chicanery, the lack of transparency, and the pretense that the opponents of the Tea Parties are themselves grassroots activists. They aren’t — this is Big Labor and assorted liberal-interest groups once again doing the bidding of the Democratic party. And if not for Fox, no one would be any the wiser.

Agreed that this is indeed political speech. What should grab the attention is that those exercising their political speech – namely the liberal political establishment – feels it has to pretend to be something it is not: namely a grassroots campaign to counter another grassroots campaign, one that ironically was defamed and derided by the liberal political establishment as not a legitimate grassroots campaign.

The Ryan 2012 Express Gains Steam

This time, from Matthew Continetti of The Weekly Standard, who described Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as “a congressman with a presidential agenda.”

Continetti is referring to Ryan’s Roadmap For America, quite possibly the only way out of the current fiscal mess we’re in and facing in the very near future.

For Americans under 55, the Roadmap would fundamentally restructure Medicare and Medicaid through means-tested vouchers, while introducing opt-in personal accounts to Social Security. It would replace the corporate income tax with a business consumption tax; repeal the Alternative Minimum, dividend, capital gains, and estate taxes; and reduce the six current tax brackets to two—one at 10 percent, the other at 25 percent. And that’s not all. Other parts of the plan include job training programs, budgetary reforms, and a free-market health care proposal modeled on Ryan’s Patients Choice Act. “This works,” Ryan told me last week. “It solves our fiscal crisis. It turns it around.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office agrees with him.

Unfortunately, as long as Bela Pelosi is Speaker of the House, Dingy Harry is Senate Majority Leader and Our Lord and Savior is in the White House, this has as much chance of becoming reality as the Washington Nationals do of winning the World Series any time soon.

We’d need not only a Republican President but sizeable GOP majorities in both houses of Congress.

Ryan’s political problem is that he’s a congressman with a presidential-level agenda. The Roadmap is a realistic way to clean up America’s fiscal mess, but there is no chance of it becoming law as long as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid run Congress and Barack Obama is president. Moreover, Bush’s failed Social Security reform and Obama’s doomed health bill show that a president has to have large congressional majorities as well as public approval to pass major changes to entitlement law.

That does not mean we give up and acquiesce to inevitable doom. There are elections ahead of us this year and again in 2012, when we can make substantial changes to the makeup of Congress as well as who sits in the Oval Orifice.

Says Continetti about a possible Ryan candidacy in 2012:

He’s young, charismatic, wonky, and well spoken. He’s already held his own against President Obama. His national profile is on the rise. He recently endorsed conservative favorite Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate Republican primary. He’s scheduled to speak at two fundraisers in New Hampshire later this month.

Devin Nunes jokes that he’s the charter member of the “Draft Ryan” club. As the budget outlook grows darker, expect membership in the club to rise. Because sometimes you don’t pick the moment. Sometimes the moment picks you.

That moment may just be arriving.

Meteorologist Freaks Out

Baltimore meteorologist FAIL.

more about “Meteorologist Freaks Out“, posted with vodpod

The Green Jobs Bill Trainwreck

The Democrats in Wisconsin are planning on taking one last dump on the state’s economy before the voters sweep them from power in November.

America’s Worst Governor, Jim Milhous Doyleone, has proposed a so-called green jobs bill that among other things would require 25 percent of Wisconsin’s energy to be produced by renewable resources such as wind or solar.

From the state Commerce Department:

JANESVILLE/BELOIT – Governor Jim Doyle recently launched the Clean Energy Jobs Act, a landmark legislative package to accelerate the state’s green economy and create jobs. New industry-recognized research shows the package will directly create at least 15,000 green jobs in Wisconsin by 2025. Department of Commerce Secretary Richard J. Leinenkugel discussed the plan at press conferences held at Universal Recycling Technologies, Janesville and Kettle Foods, Beloit.

“Addressing climate change is not just an environmental issue, it’s about creating green jobs,” Governor Doyle said. “The Clean Energy Jobs Act offers new standards to help accelerate Wisconsin’s green economy. I am calling on the Legislature to update renewable portfolio standards to generate 25 percent of our fuel from renewable sources by 2025 and set a realistic goal of a 2 percent annual reduction in energy consumption by 2015.”

The Clean Energy Jobs Act, State Senate Bill 450 and State Assembly Bill 649, implements the recommendations of Governor Doyle’s Global Warming Task Force to address climate change and grow the state’s green economy through several key measures:

• Enhanced renewable portfolio standards – A new 20 percent standard would be set for 2020 and a 25 percent standard would be set for 2025. The current 10 percent standard would be accelerated from 2015 to 2013. By advancing our current renewable portfolio standards, and setting new standards, we will ensure more of our energy dollars stay in the state, creating thousands of jobs for Wisconsin families in fields like construction, manufacturing, and agriculture.
• Enhanced energy efficiency and conservation efforts – Graduated statewide electricity savings goals would be set, leading up to a 2 percent reduction by 2015 and annual reductions thereafter. The cheapest way to lower carbon emissions is through energy conservation. By setting achievable conservation goals, this bill will help reduce energy costs in businesses and homes across the state.

A comprehensive economic assessment of the Clean Energy Jobs Act found that the package would directly create at least 15,000 green jobs in Wisconsin by 2025. More than 1,800 jobs would be created in the first year alone. The assessment also found that between 800 and 1,800 construction jobs would be created each year from 2011-2025, and more than 2,000 manufacturing jobs would be created once the laws are fully implemented.

Anyone want to do some math? I realize on a snow day all across southeastern Wisconsin, the last thing products of gummint-run skoolz want to do — presuming they even can do — is math.

But let’s look at something being touted in that bill, shall we? The proponents say this legislation will create 15,000 new jobs by 2025. That’s a 15-year span. That’s a piddling 1,000 jobs year. Never mind that for each so-called green job created, 2.2 real jobs are lost. That means we’d lose 33,000 real jobs in that span. And that’s on top of all the real family-supporting jobs that Doyle and the Democrats have driven out of the state since 2003.

The headline to this story is far more accurate than the lede. Unless you’re Jeff Neubauer or S.C. Johnson Wax (meaning you’ve been bought off with pork and earmarks in the bill), you’re opposed to the green jobs bill:

[T]he state’s largest business lobbying group, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, said the new mandates will increase energy costs and hurt businesses, especially large electricity users.

“With 9 percent unemployment, we should be focusing on ideas to create jobs like cutting taxes, controlling spending, controlling red-tape, and clamping down on frivolous lawsuits,” said Scott Manley, director of environmental policy for WMC.
Twenty-three of the state’s largest business groups, representing contractors, home builders and fuel retailers, sent Doyle and lawmakers a letter last month citing a study that said the proposal will result in a loss of more than 43,000 jobs and cost billions of dollars.

The rest of it is utter nonsense. First, I am not opposed to use of renewable resources such as wind, solar and geothermal, but anyone who thinks these can power the American economic maching are looney tunes at the level of Ed Begley Jr.

Take a look at what happened to wind turbines in Minnesota during the recent cold snap (via Fred at RDW). The turbines, made in Mexifornia, froze.

Like a lot of California transplants, 11 newcomers to Minnesota are having a hard time adjusting to our winters.

They are wind turbines, erected last fall by 11 metro and outstate cities. The green-energy machines were expected to be spinning before Christmas, but so far their blades have been largely motionless, apparently paralyzed by frigid weather.

The turbines sit idly in Anoka, North St. Paul, Chaska, Shakopee, Buffalo and six other cities, all members of the Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (MMPA). The refurbished, 115-foot towers had operated on a California wind farm, where they didn’t have to worry about cold hydraulic fluid turning to gel and oil lubricants getting too sluggish.

The same thing will happen in hot, humid days in the summer with little or no wind.

The facts are clear and indisputable except in the minds of certain alternative energy moonbats: We are a country driven by the use of coal, oil and natural gas. Our vehicles are powered by gasoline and diesel. Our business and homes are powered by all three. Our economy is powered by all three, not by stuff fancied by a bunch of pinhead granola-eaters in labs working in theory.

Alternative energy pipe dreams, meet reality. Solar energy FAIL. Wind energy FAIL. Geothermal energy FAIL.

Alternative energy epic FAIL. That is, unless you’re intent on destroying the state and national economy.