Cutting the deficit in half
I thought President Obama said he was cutting the deficit in half. Is he not being honest with us? I guess that's why we're not supposed to trust anyone over 30.
(And that's not even to mention the fact that even the CBO's projections, less charitable than the White House's, are still very opmtimistic themselves.)
Geithner: Bush caused deficits by not spending enough money. Huh?
Obama admin says deficit due to Bush not spending enough money:
http://www.reuters.com/article/gc04/idUSTRE5225AP20090304
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on
Wednesday blamed soaring budget deficits partly on failure by the former Bush administration to make needed investments in energy security and healthcare.
"We begin our time in office after a long period in which our government was unwilling to make the long-term investments required to meet critical challenges in health care, energy and education," he said in prepared remarks to the Senate Finance Committee.
And if you're willing to "suspend disbelief" and accept these numbers are even remotely accurate, he's not even making sense - he's off by just a few hundred billion. As we all know, Obama just passed a $780 billion dollar stimulus bill. Giethner says $500 billion is Obama's, so somehow $280 billion of this is inherited from Bush, though Obama signed it and it got 3 Republican votes in both houses???
The Obama administration is projecting a deficit of $1.8 trillion, or 12.3 percent of gross domestic product, in fiscal 2009, which ends September 30. Geithner said $1.3 trillion of that total was inherited from the Bush administration.
This must be the same Obama math that says raising the deficit to $2 trillion and then cutting "spending" (by raising $1.0 trillion in new taxes) is "cutting the deficit in half".
"Hope and Change" for inner city school kids?
The children are Sarah and James Parker. Like the Obama girls, Sarah and James attend the Sidwell Friends School in our nation's capital. Unlike the Obama girls, they could not afford the school without the $7,500 voucher they receive from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Unfortunately, a spending bill the Senate takes up this week includes a poison pill that would kill this program -- and with it perhaps the Parker children's hopes for a Sidwell diploma.
Known as the "Durbin language" after the Illinois Democrat who came up with
it last year, the provision mandates that the scholarship program ends after the next school year unless Congress reauthorizes it and the District of Columbia
approves. The beauty of this language is that it allows opponents to kill the
program simply by doing nothing. Just the sort of sneaky maneuver that's so
handy when you don't want inner-city moms and dads to catch on that you are
cutting one of their lifelines.
Deborah Parker says such a move would be devastating for her kids. "I once
took Sarah to Roosevelt High School to see its metal detectors and security
guards," she says. "I wanted to scare her into appreciation for what she has at
Sidwell." It's not just safety, either. According to the latest test scores,
fewer than half of Roosevelt's students are proficient in reading or
math.That's the reality that the Parkers and 1,700 other low-income students
face if Sen. Durbin and his allies get their way. And it points to perhaps the
most odious of double standards in American life today: the way some of our
loudest champions of public education vote to keep other people's children --
mostly inner-city blacks and Latinos -- trapped in schools where they'd never
let their own kids set foot.
Rumsfeld confirms WMD found
At Powerline,
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, there has been a lot made on Capitol Hill about these chemical weapons that were found and may be quite old. But do you have a real concern of these weapons from Saddam's past perhaps having an impact on U.S. troops who are on the ground in Iraq right now?I guess Bush didn't "lie" after all. I expect apologies to be forthcoming.
RUMSFELD : Certainly. What has been announced is accurate, that there have been hundreds of canisters or weapons of various types found that either currently have sarin in them or had sarin in them, and sarin is dangerous. And it's dangerous to our forces, and it's a concern.
So obviously, to the extent we can locate these and destroy them, it is important that we do so. And they are dangerous. Anyone -- I'm sure General Casey or anyone else in that country would be concerned if they got in the wrong hands.
They are weapons of mass destruction. They are harmful to human beings. And they have been found. And that had not been by Saddam Hussein, as he inaccurately alleged that he had reported all of his weapons . And they are still being found and discovered.
Interrogations for Terror Plot "going nowhere"
The Ron Suskind story in Time on a plot to use poison gas in the NYC subways notes that “the interrogations of suspects” with knowledge of the planned terrorists attack “were going nowhere.”Maybe if we asked the nice terrorists, "pretty please with sugar on top?"
And of course, there was no possibility of increasing the intensity of those interrogations – short of torture to be sure but including sufficient “stress and duress” to achieve results.
No, we’ve ruled that out as unacceptably “degrading.” If that means plots like this one will sometimes be successful and Americans will be slaughtered on the A Train … well, that’s the choice we’ve made, isn’t it?
And of course the New York Times, the U.N., and Amnesty International want to close Gitmo and release any enemy combatants who haven’t committed crimes that can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in an American courtroom.
Meanwhile, the thrust of the debate is over whether “first responders” have sufficient resources to clean up the carnage afterwards. How reassuring.
Iraqi's React to Zarqawi's Death
Most Iraqi's, being human beings, rejoiced at the death of the animal Zarqawi, whose favorite past-time seemed to be slowly sawing off the heads of living people:
"When my young son came and brought me the good news, I did not know what to do out of joy," Eqabbi said of Zarqawi's death. "I took my motorcycle and went to the traffic police sector over here where I work. I was shouting in the street and could see the people in the street with joy on their faces, for each family here has lost someone because of this guy. We thank God for what happened to him."
Back at Madhloom's restaurant, Sawsan Abdul Qadir, a nurse, reflected on losing his own brother in another car bombing. "He was a father of three kids," he said.
When Abdul Qadir heard about Zarqawi's death, he called his brother's wife. "She was so happy, and she told me, 'The Americans got revenge for my husband. I feel just like they brought him back alive for me.' Her oldest son was saying, 'They killed my father's killer.'
"Today, I forget all the sadness of losing my brother."
Still this quote from a Sunni is telling:
"Zarqawi was the one who put a limit to Shiite influence and all the killing of Sunnis," said Saad Saleem, a 32-year-old laborer. "It is a big loss. Who will fight the Americans the way he used to fight them? They were ready to leave the country because of his operations. Now there will be no one like him who will be able to push the Americans to leave Iraq. There will be no one to stop the Iranian Shiites. Al-Qaeda must look for a good replacement for Zarqawi. Otherwise the Sunnis will lose everything in Iraq."
"Ready to leave"? Where would he get that idea? Maybe from America's opposition party and reporting of opinion polls of Americans fatigued by daily media reports of inconsequential (to a strategic victory) violence.
Here is clear evidence, albeit anecdotal, that our media and our anti-war politicians are perpetuating the idea that America is about to withdraw from Iraq, and thereby encouraging the resisntence in Iraq.
And then the same people blame Bush for not having an effective war plan, when, it is my hypothesis, that if the hysterical critics were not actively creating a divided America, we would have succeeded in Iraq long ago.
The Great Haditha Hoax?
The American Thinker has a piece casting some doubt on the accuracy of the reports of a "massacre" in Haditha, going so far as to call it a hoax. In particular, Clarice Feldman notes many inconsistencies in the stories, and that all of the "reporters" involved have well-documented anti-American sentiment, and that the few military "witnesses" weren't even there and/or had axes to grind.
Now I really don't know how much of this is true and how much of the media reports are true. And neither do you. And neither does Time magazine, Newsweek, Rep. Murtha or the Democratic party.
That's why we usually an investigation before we decide what happened and who is guilty of what.
When will we Support the Troops?
I'm sure self-righteous, smug Michael Duffy and Time magazine would say they Support the Troops.
Though this doesn't prevent them from declaring them Guilty until proven innocent in their disgusting "expose" on the alleged "massacre" at Haditha: "The Shame of Kilo Company." With a headline like that, I guess we may as well cancel the investigation -- Time magazine has already decide the outcome and is using their sensationalist, Micahel Moore-esque reporting to impugn the valiant effort of all of our brave soldiers, and slander America in the eyes of the world.
Michael Yon responds:
In the absence of clear facts, most people know that a rush to judgment serves no one. What word, then, properly characterizes the recent media coverage of Haditha, when analysis stretches beyond shotgun conclusions to actually attributing motive and assigning blame? No rational process supports a statement like: “We don’t know what happened, but we know why it happened and whose fault it is.”
Yon, who has actually observed action on the front lines in Iraq puts this in the proper context: Brave, real-life Americans are dying in order not to put Iraqi civilians in danger. For example, Sgt Ben Morton whose wife Elaina later committed suicide:
On many missions when I tagged along, the commander would say things like, “Be careful about throwing flash-bangs [grenades without fragments] into rooms. Don’t throw them unless you really have to. Practically every Iraqi house has children, and flash-bangs can kill the small kids.”How is that for context, Michael Duffy. Reporting like yours changes the political equations, and gets soldiers like Sgt Morton killed.
There was hot intelligence that some terrorists were in a certain location. I watched part of the mission unfold from the TOC, but had left before Recon platoon hit the house. SGT Ben Morton from Wright, Kansas, who lived just next to me in Mosul, was a fine soldier, a highly respected young man who earned two Bronze Stars with V (for valor) and a purple heart. Ben’s Recon platoon was conducting the hasty raid in Mosul. The intelligence was correct.
Ben was the first up the stairs, and he took four bullets. Only then did his buddies throw flash-bangs and eventually shot down the terrorist who killed Ben. All the Iraqi kids were fine. But Ben Morton died. Soldiers cried that night.
But I know, you support the troops. I'm sure you're proud of yourself.
