A lot happened over the past week, so there are nine items I’d like to touch on in this week’s blog. Here goes.
1. President Obama has picked Elena Kagan to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens – a liberal replacing a liberal (a lot like Sotomayor replacing Suter last year). You could argue therefore that it’s a wash; but from a conservative’s point of view – what a missed opportunity. To replace the liberal lion Stevens with a conservative along the lines of a Scalia or an Alito would have been a joy! But alas, elections have consequences, and therefore Barack Obama is doing the picking, so we have a liberal who will pick a liberal to replace another liberal. Oh, the horror!
The Cincinnati Enquirer’s front page article on the pick was revealing. The headline claimed “Supreme Court pick touted as persuasive.” The sub headline was “Solicitor General led Harvard Law.” And a second sub headline stated “Obama hopes Kagan can sway Justices.” All three are basically positive statements. If the Enquirer had wanted to demonstrate even a semblance of balance, one possible sub headline could have read “Nominee has no previous judicial experience.” (Although I’m fully aware that some other previous Supreme Court Justices had none either.) Another possibility might have been something along the lines of “Controversial decision to ban military from Harvard Campus may concern some.” I’m just saying…
2. You probably remember a TV ad recently with GM’s Chief Executive boasting that they’d paid back their TARP loan from the taxpayers, ahead of schedule, and with interest. Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (the one who didn’t pay his own taxes, but thinks that we should all pay more) said “we are encouraged that GM has repaid its debt well ahead of schedule…” The ad and Geithner’s statement just didn’t sound right to me. (I voted against the auto bailout and against the TARP bank bailout by the way.) Well it turns out GM and Geithner were misleading us (lying). A headline in the Cincinnati Enquirer (taken from a New York Times article) this past Saturday proclaimed “GM repaying taxpayers with their own money.” All they did was take money out of one taxpayer funded TARP account and put it into another account. Hardly paying back the taxpayers, much less ahead of schedule, and with interest. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the taxpayers will still lose approximately $30 billion on the GM bailout. The New York Times article ends with the following statement: “employing spin and selective disclosure is no way to raise taxpayers’ trust in our nation’s leadership.” Amen.
3. In the Democrats’ much-touted financial reform legislation now being considered by Congress, two of the biggest offenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were left completely uncovered by the legislation. Democratic leaders like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Maxine Waters said Fannie and Freddie didn’t need to be reformed; shortly before they collapsed and were bailed out by the taxpayer-funded TARP bank bailout package. (I voted against it.) Democrat Franklin Raines, who headed Fannie, made off with over $90 million. Well, an Enquirer business article researched by Bloomberg News appeared yesterday with the headline “Fannie posts more loss, asks U.S. for $8.4 billion.” They haven’t wasted enough of our money, they want even more. NO MORE BAILOUTS!
4. The spending is so out-of-control in Washington nowadays, that it’s looking more and more like the House won’t even pass a budget this year. This would be the first time this has happened since the modern budget law was enacted back in 1974 – so for the first time in 36 years! Families across America have to make tough spending choices every year, but not Congress. Current Democrat Chairman of the Budget Committee, John Spratt, back in 2006, when Republicans were struggling to put a budget together (Republicans passed one) said back then, “if you can’t budget, you can’t govern.” Exactly.
5. Faisal Shahzad, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, recently tried to blow up a vehicle in Times Square to kill Americans. The bomb didn’t explode. The Obama Administration’s knee-jerk reaction was that “he was acting alone” and that “it was an isolated incident.” Our feckless Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano described the attempted bombing as a “one-off” which according to my extensive research (Wikipedia) means “limited to a single time, occasion, or instance; a happening that occurs only once and is not repeated.” Of course we now know differently. Obama’s own Attorney General Eric Holder has had to admit that “we know that the Pakistani Taliban helped facilitate it; we know that they helped direct it. And I suspect that we are going to come up with evidence which shows that they helped to finance it. They were intimately involved in this plot.” So much for an isolated, acting alone, one-off.
But that’s been the pattern with this Administration. Remember the Fort Hood shooter, and the underwear bomber; both initially described as acting alone. Nothing to do with Jihad here; except that it has everything to do with radical Islam’s war against America, and everything we stand for. Unless this Administration gets serious about being at war against Terrorism (a word they no longer even use) they’re going to get a lot of Americans killed. We’ve been lucky so far. But we can’t count on that lasting forever.
6. Remember when Obama, Pelosi, and Reid promised that their so-called health care reform bill (which Steve Driehaus voted for) wouldn’t cost more than a trillion dollars? Well, not surprisingly, they were wrong. This morning’s Enquirer had an article headlined “Health law could cost $115 billion more.” The gist of the article is that now that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has taken a closer look at the new 2700+ page bill, it’s going to cost well more than a trillion dollars. My prediction – if the bill is not repealed or substantially changed, it will cost far more than even these new higher estimates.
7. In case you missed it (which is quite possible since FOX News seems to be the only network covering it) St. Pelosi is now telling Catholic bishops and priests what they should be preaching about at the pulpit. And that happens to be support for her liberal immigration plan (which of course amounts to amnesty.) This is the same Pelosi who rabidly promotes the ACLU-version of COMPLETE separation of church and state, not even a hint of prayer in schools, etc. And it’s the same Pelosi who a few years back was rebuked by Catholic Church leaders for arguing that the Catholic position on abortion, and when life begins, is unclear and open to debate. Pelosi needs to stay focused on running the House of Representatives (which she doesn’t do particularly well) and leave what is preached in our Houses of Worship to priests, ministers, and rabbis.
8. On a lighter side, the Primaries took place last week, and it was good news for the Chabot Campaign. Votes cast for Steve Driehaus and his primary opponent Eric Wilson together were 23,116. Votes cast for Steve Chabot were 32,151. So that’s 57.6% for us and 42.4% for the Democrats. The primary votes cast are usually fairly indicative of the turnout that might be expected in the general election, which of course is still six months off. What’s not accounted for in these numbers are Independents. Back in the 2008 Year of Obama, polling showed that Independents were favoring Democrats over Republicans 60% to 40%. This year polling shows that Independents are favoring Republicans 65% to 35%. So the political environment looks much better for Republicans this time around than last, but a lot of hard work remains to be done.
9. And finally, on an even lighter note, the new and improved 2010 Chabot Cups are in – just in time for the festival season which kicks off this weekend with St. Catharine’s festival at Harvest Home Park in Cheviot. See you there!