Chamber of Commerce data

Common sense told me the Chamber of Commerce attack was all BS, but I never was sure how much so. Thanks to Jack Kelly, now I do:

Led by President Barack Obama, Democrats are trying to make campaign finance an issue, by charging — without a shred of evidence — that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funding its advertising campaign in part with foreign money.

The flimsy basis for this charge is the Chamber has overseas affiliates for which it charges dues. Revenue from these dues amounts to less than $100,000 a year. The Chamber's budget this year is about $200 million. The Chamber plans to spend about $50 million on independent advertising this year, mostly on behalf of Republicans.

So calling it BS was an undersell; this was a fairy tale of epic proportions.

Foreign revenue amounts to only 0.0005 (1/20 of 1%) of their overall budget, and .002 (1/5 of 1%) of their advertising budget this year (not all of which is on Republicans, so that overstates it some).

The president has established himself as a hyper-partisan attack dog, but even in that context this fable diminishes him and the office. This level of sleaze is best left for the Alan Graysons of the world.

Mr. President, you're better than that.

The entire column is worth a read, as he also addresses special interests and influence buying in elections. The, ummm, money quote:

The funding of our politics chiefly by special interests is one big reason why we're falling off a fiscal cliff. For an expenditure of millions, special interest groups — be they labor unions or Wall Street bankers — reap billions in taxpayer subsidies.

Our politicians respond more to the special interests which provide them with money than they do to constituents who can provide them only with votes.

This is the problem with the Leviathan state, and why it is the biggest threat to our freedom. It is way too easy to bribe politicians into stealing our money to pay back the bribers.

A rare bit of candor

In case you missed it, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs got caught being honest in an article that appeared yesterday:

"I hear these people saying he's like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs said. "I mean, it's crazy."

The press secretary dismissed the "professional left" in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, "They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we've eliminated the Pentagon. That's not reality."

Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: "They wouldn't be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president."

Not surprisingly, he was blistered by the, uh, professional left for his apostasy. Interesting that he was not there today, I guess they are trying to decide whether or not to cave in to the hard left's desire to Shirley Sherrod him.

Quick hits 5/5

Items of note from my stack of reading material:

The individual who wrote "Dear Lord . . . this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman, Billy Mays. . . . I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor" in a New Jersey teacher’s union memo still has a job. Why is that, exactly?

******

Larry Elder on Michael Steele’s unfortunate decision to play the black victim card as excuse for his own incompetence:

Steele blames his difficulties on the "African-American … slimmer margin for error" — the same hazard that Obama deals with. Honestly. From the traditional media to the punditry class to academia to the monologues of late-night comics, never has any president enjoyed a more groveling, fawning, obsequious, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil, see-no-evil quasi-deification.

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Charles Krauthammer on Obama’s nuclear foolishness:

Under President Obama's new policy, however, if the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is "in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)," explained Gates, then "the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it."

Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker is up to date with its latest IAEA inspections, well, it gets immunity from nuclear retaliation. (Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs and other conventional munitions.)

However, if the lawyers tell the president that the attacking state is NPT-noncompliant, we are free to blow the bastards to nuclear kingdom come.

This is quite insane. It's like saying that if a terrorist deliberately uses his car to mow down a hundred people waiting at a bus stop, the decision as to whether he gets (a) hanged or (b) 100 hours of community service hinges entirely on whether his car had passed emissions inspections. […]

This administration seems to believe that by restricting retaliatory threats and by downgrading our reliance on nuclear weapons, it is discouraging proliferation.

But the opposite is true. Since World War II, smaller countries have forgone the acquisition of deterrent forces — nuclear, biological and chemical — precisely because they placed their trust in the firmness, power and reliability of the American deterrent.

Seeing America retreat, they will rethink. And some will arm. There is no greater spur to hyper-proliferation than the furling of the American nuclear umbrella.

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Mickey Kaus: “It’s getting highly annoying to hear Obama and Senate Democrats pretend that to have effective border control we have to take a package deal that includes amnesty. They’re worse than the cable company when it comes to package deals.”

******

Phil Jackson, on the silly decision by the Suns to alienate more than half their fan base by making a heavy handed political statement tonight:

“I don’t think teams should get involved in the political stuff. And I think this one’s still kind of coming out to balance as to how it’s going to be favorably looked upon by our public. If I heard it right the American people are really for stronger immigration laws, if I’m not mistaken. Where we stand as basketball teams, we should let that kind of play out and let the political end of that go where it’s going to go.”

Wait, I've seen that movie before!

Brilliant take from James Taranto on the suggestion that Scott Brown is presidential material:

C'mon, Scott Brown? His victory last week was undoubtedly impressive, but let's put things in perspective. Brown is merely a state senator, and by the time of the next presidential election, he will have served less than a full term in the U.S. Senate. What could possibly give anyone the idea that he's experienced enough to go to the White House?

Honest partisans on either side should be willing to admit that the experience and fitness for office of Obama and Palin in 2008, and Brown in 2012, are the same. The dishonesty comes from the Democrat who claimed last fall that Obama was qualified for office but Palin a joke, or the Republican who claims now that Palin would have done a better job than has the comically overmatched Obama.

All.The.Same.

Quick hits 12/19

More links and tweets that have caught my eye, with a bit of commentary:

Telling sentence: “The majorities opposing Obama on the Guantanamo issue are even larger than those that oppose him on national health care.”

Some encouraging medical news.

The green mind at work: Prince Charles used up seven months’ worth of the average British person’s “carbon footprint” yesterday flying to Copenhagen on an executive jet to make a speech on climate change.

Oklahoma City’s Wednesday night shoes

John Stossel: “Someone will ration health care. In America, insurance companies usually do it. In most of the rest of the world, governments do. Costs skyrocket under both systems. Its time we tried the third option: let individuals use their own money to buy health care.”

John Hinderaker: “Don't fall for the pretense that the international ‘green’ movement is about anything other than anti-free enterprise and anti-American ideology.”

Robert Heinlein: “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.”

How many people remember that Obama, during his campaign, promised a net spending cut?

There are still 14 days left, but I’m declaring this the photo caption of the year.

And this the bookstore display of the year.

When the directions say “Roll it on over the head” this is NOT what it means.

Climate change: nature’s way.

Tiger and PC in domestic violence

Why does an attempt to transfer the right to make medical decisions from the people to government surprise anybody? Did you expect a Chicago machine politician to show an enthusiasm for civil liberties?

Foreign Object Damage asks: “Does it concern anyone else that anger is the only emotion that President Obama has displayed in public over the last month?” What, did you think he wasn’t really part of the Angry Left?

Thogocracy update: Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla) wants to imprison a local critic. This idiot exemplifies the police-state mindset.

John Stossel on the matter: “Bullies like Congressman Grayson illustrate the danger of government power; government is the only entity that can legally use force. That makes government a fearsome master. It can use force to take our money, and homes, and our freedom.”

From @Jeff_Jacoby: Ex-soldier finds a gun, turns it into the police, & is promptly arrested for possessing a firearm. Beyond Orwellian.

Happiest state ranking, Texas a disappointing 16th (Austin must be dragging us down).

Ridiculous photo caption editorializing.

Tweets from the wild Mavs-Rockets game I attended:
From STEIN_LINE_HQ: Brace yourself: Mavs found pieces from two Landry teeth embedded in gash in Dirk's right elbow
From STEIN_LINE_HQ: Landry taken straight to hospital. Mavs needed 30 minutes to clean up Dirk's elbow just to get ready for X-rays.
From @kpelton: This Houston-Dallas game will not go down as a monument to quality NBA officiating.
From @MFollowill: Hearing stories the process of picking the teeth of dirk's elbow was quite gruesome. Didn't know if it was his bone or Landry's teeth. Wow!

Quick hits 12/14

John Stossel on Harry Reid: “Accusing someone of being a racist is typically a last desperate measure when someone has lost an argument.” Undeniably true.

Dr. Melissa Clouthier demonstrates that Reid had it exactly backward: “Those who fight the health care legislation fear being owned. They fear that every personal decision from cradle to grave will be manipulated by a nameless, faceless bureaucrat in Washington D.C. They fear easily accessible files, not unlike the IRS, where a government employee can know every private piece of information about the citizen’s life. They fear health care decisions made for financial expedience. In short, those who fight against this health care bill, don’t want to be owned by the government...Harry Reid is all about ownership… the government owns and the taxpayer is enslaved.”

I have used the taxation as slavery comparison before myself, and will again.

Why do people fall under the spell of hyped-up scare mongering like global warmism? Don Surber hits the nail on the head: “a lot of it is a need for religion among irreligious people. The idea of man's sins causing punishment by nature is nearly universal in history...From the ancient Greeks - not exactly a primitive people - to the modern Australian aborigines, the tribes of men share in common a desire to connect their behavior to natural phenomenon.”

Epic win indeed!

Jonathan Abrams on the challenge that is the triangle.

Lest you think that it was only Washington driving the (largely government created) housing crisis.

John Hinderaker busts Obama pretending that “the world recognized” driving Saddam out of Kuwait was a just cause. In fact, the American and international left were bitterly opposed to Bush the Elder on this and Senate Democrats voted 45-10 (including the current VP) to block it.

That said, he may not be lying here, as he has proven to be ignorant of (even recent) history on so many occasions. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and call it ignorance.

Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to say that they've seen a ghost and more than twice as likely to believe in astrology. Democrats are also more than twice as likely to have consulted a fortune teller.

Kim Strassel points out that the EPA’s attempt to blackmail Congress into passing some form of Cap and Tax is a boon for the legislators; they can call the bluff and avoid the wrath of the voters and leave the administration to own it.

The AP assigns 11 “fact checkers” to Palin’s book, 5 to Climategate. Remember when it was a straight news organization?

Is the 3D TV screen at the Death Star the dumbest idea ever? Because, you know, you’re there, if you want a 3D image WATCH THE GAME.

The Senate health care bill amendment to limit attorney contingency fees on medical malpractice failed by a 66-32 vote. That is conclusive proof that the pro “reform” side has no interest whatsoever in controlling medical costs. A primary goal of these various bills is to transfer wealth from doctors and patients to trial lawyers, as a political favor.

Classic dumb criminal story

Ed Morrissey: “Who could have warned us that a man who served seven years in the state legislature and three years in the Senate would not have been prepared for the toughest executive position in the Free World? We did. Repeatedly. So did John McCain, and for that matter, so did Hillary Clinton.”

Least surprising news ever: “New research by Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong at the University of Toronto levels an even graver charge: that virtuous shopping can actually lead to immoral behavior. In their study (described in a paper now in press at Psychological Science), subjects who made simulated eco-friendly purchases ended up less likely to exhibit altruism in a laboratory game and more likely to cheat and steal.”

East Anglia CRU is stepping up their hiding of climate data. These people are as crooked as an old catcher’s fingers.

This is what astroturf looks like

Quick hits 12/8

Some quick tweets and links that have caught my eye:

I do have to give Obama credit for his sense of humor, in making light of the stimulus job fudging fiasco by following his ceremonial Thanksgiving turkey pardon with “All told, I believe it’s fair to say that we have saved or created four turkeys.”

AARP *opposes* the McCain amendment to block any Medicare benefit reductions, with the explanation "The legislation does not reduce any guaranteed Medicare benefits." They don’t even pretend to care more about seniors than they do about Democrats anymore, do they?

Not that that should be construed as me disagreeing with Medicare cuts, but I would like to see them as standalone policy, not as part of increasing government’s role in medical care. The growth of government’s role is one of the primary forces that has distorted the market and gotten us into this inflationary spiral.

From @forumbluegold: RE: Artest and Hennessy. I'm very glad all the stupid s&$#% I did at 19 doesn't end up in magazines. (Amen to that!)

Charles Johnson completes his transformation from right wing extremist to raving moonbat. I’m guessing he went from being a Phillies fan to being a Yankees fan this year as well.

Health care bill gives states incentives to drop out of Medicaid.

A roundup of Tiger Woods jokes.

Don’t know the source of this quote, but it’s money: “You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

Stimulus math.

Another thing government should not be doing.

House of cards tumbling: Australia ditches cap and trade in Climategate's aftermath

Culture of Corruption update.

Your stimulus dollars at work.

Quick hits 12/1

Some quick tweets and links that have caught my eye:

From @mkhammer: Obama rhetoric flashback, March '09: "So, let me be clear...that cause could not be more just."

From @MoRocca via @freeloosedirt: Obama to send 30,002 troops to Afghanistan (congrats, Tareq and Michaele Salahi! This time you're invited.)

Interesting, as it moves the timeline back: @senatus: Harkin: We will deliver a health care bill to Obama before the State of the Union (on MSNBC). (via @wonkroom)

Bacon: the gateway meat

The Next Right: “please explain why the Downing Street memo was definitive proof of a rush to judgment and Climategate isn't.”

Why Tiger’s not talking

Why the need to rig climate “science”? Money, of course.

Government in action.

Some quick hits

A lot of the short quotes or links I used to post here now go to my Twitter feed, since it takes so much less effort.

James Taranto: “Why did Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize? Because he pandered to the prejudices of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.”

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JammieWearingFool on the terrorist plot against a GOP congressman: “I blame MSNBC, CNN, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the leftwing blogosphere for fostering this climate of hate against Republicans.”

Consistent standards… no fair!

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Why didn’t Pinch Sulzberger get a cabinet position?

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Jules Crittenden: "It's a sad state of affairs when a Frenchman mocks an American president and you have to go with the Frog."

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Durable goods orders, housing sales dropped in August. Direct result of Cash for Clunkers diverting money from one kind of purchase to another? Probably, every time government incentivizes one kind of behavior it’s at the expense of another.

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“I can recall no other major American speech in which the narcissism of a leader has been quite so pronounced.” In the Washington Post, mind you, on Obama's UN debacle.

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The Empire State Building was illuminated red and yellow for a week, celebrating China's 60 years of communist rule. Really? What a disgusting gesture, celebrating that soul crushing death cult.

Unfair criticism

Rich Lowry:

A buzz-generating Saturday Night Live skit mocked Pres. Barack Obama for not yet having accomplished anything. Not fair. Obama has been on a roll.

In nine months, he has breathed life into the Republican party, boosted pro-lifers, tarnished the reputation of regulation, bolstered traditional values, increased the public’s desire for immigration restriction, and shifted independent voters rightward. If only RNC chairman Michael Steele were so deadly effective.

What's good for Republicans is bad for the country

Politics is full of contradiction. For example, for Obama to have a successful presidency almost certainly requires Republicans taking control of the House in 2010, or at least coming very close to evenly splitting it.

Similarly, if Obama continues to be the epic failure he has been thus far, making Republicans taking back the White House in 2012 likely, it will be disastrous for the country at an extremely dangerous point in history, as Victor Davis Hanson explains:

I am not a fan of the Obama agenda. But I am don’t want an impotent Commander in Chief abroad for three very dangerous years to come. So I am worried that the U.S. will be crippled with a weak, unpopular executive, as happened to Bush (35% approvals) in 2007-8. Our currency is tanking. Our debts are climbing. Our energy needs are breaking us. Our borrowing is out of control. The country is divided in a 1859/1968 mode. And the world is smiling as Obama, now hesitant and without the old messianic confidence, presides over our accepted inevitable decline. The country needs to buck up and meet these challenges head on, since the world smells blood, whether in Iran, Russia, the Mideast, North Korea, or South America, and in a mere 9 months of the reset button.

I think this is exactly right. No matter how misguided Obama's domestic agenda is to you (and to me it's incredibly foolish), we badly need him to find some wisdom and intestinal fortitude in foreign affairs. This is not an era when kicking the can down the road for four years can be overcome.

Obama's Iranian options

Stratfor has a must-read piece up on Obama's options in Iran (and Afghanistan).

Certainly, the naive idea that the problem with Iran stems from the US's refusal to engage in talks with Tehran or just be nicer to them has been thoroughly debunked. So where to go from here?

They suggest three possible courses:

First, he can impose crippling sanctions against Iran. But that is possible only if the Russians cooperate. Moscow has the rolling stock and reserves to supply all of Iran’s fuel needs if it so chooses, and Beijing can also remedy any Iranian fuel shortages. Both Russia and China have said they don’t want sanctions; without them on board, sanctions are meaningless.

Second, Obama can take military action against Iran, something easier politically and diplomatically for the United States to do itself rather than rely on Israel. By itself, Israel cannot achieve air superiority, suppress air defenses, attack the necessary number of sites and attempt to neutralize Iranian mine-laying and anti-ship capability all along the Persian Gulf. Moreover, if Israel struck on its own and Iran responded by mining the Strait of Hormuz, the United States would be drawn into at least a naval war with Iran — and probably would have to complete the Israeli airstrikes, too.

And third, Obama could choose to do nothing (or engage in sanctions that would be the equivalent of doing nothing). Washington could see future Iranian nuclear weapons as an acceptable risk. But the Israelis don’t, meaning they would likely trigger the second scenario. It is possible that the United States could try to compel Israel not to strike — though it’s not clear whether Israel would comply — something that would leave Obama publicly accepting Iran’s nuclear program.

And this, of course, would jeopardize Obama’s credibility. It is possible for the French or Germans to waffle on this issue; no one is looking to them for leadership. But for Obama simply to acquiesce to Iranian nuclear weapons, especially at this point, would have significant diplomatic and domestic political ramifications. Simply put, Obama would look weak — and that, of course, is why the Iranians announced the second nuclear site. They read Obama as weak, and they want to demonstrate their own resolve. That way, if the Russians were thinking of cooperating with the United States on sanctions, Moscow would be seen as backing the weak player against the strong one. The third option, doing nothing, therefore actually represents a significant action. [...]

In Iran, Ahmadinejad clearly perceives that challenging Obama is low-risk and high reward. If he can finally demonstrate that the United States is unwilling to take military action regardless of provocations, his own domestic situation improves dramatically, his relationship with the Russians deepens, and most important, his regional influence — and menace — surges. If Obama accepts Iranian nukes without serious sanctions or military actions, the American position in the Islamic world will decline dramatically. The Arab states in the region rely on the United States to protect them from Iran, so U.S. acquiescence in the face of Iranian nuclear weapons would reshape U.S. relations in the region far more than a hundred Cairo speeches.

If his history holds, Obama will choose weakness, but I still hold out hope that he will come to support tough sanctions backed by a credible threat of military action.

This is, oh, about 1000x more important than crafting and passing a health care bill, but never underestimate the tendency of this president to dust an end table while ignoring the elephant in the room.

"President Pantywaist"

It can't be a good sign if even Euros are starting to notice your spinelessness:

Obama has done more to restore Russia’s hegemonial potential in Eastern and Central Europe than even Vladimir Putin. . . . If the word is out that America is in retreat, it will soon find it has no friends.

Obama's approval ratings are sinking here, but through the roof with our enemies!

Presidential hate

Jay Nordlinger takes on the (frankly absurd) notion that hate directed against the president is on the rise in this administration:

Let me make a couple of predictions: I predict that the chairman of the Republican National Committee will never say, “I hate the Democrats and everything they stand for. This [politics, basically] is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.”

Howard Dean said that about the GOP: “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for. . . .”

I predict that an editor of a conservative magazine will never write a piece called “The Case for Obama Hatred,” beginning, “I hate President Barack Obama.”

A New Republic editor did this, about Bush.

And there is increasing worry about assassination: that someone will take a shot, not just at the president, but at the first black president, which would be extra-catastrophic for the country. A few protesters have carried signs urging violence against Obama, or smacking of violence. Let me make some more predictions:

I predict that a network talk-show host will not show a video of President Obama giving a speech and put the following words on the screen: “SNIPERS WANTED.”

Craig Kilborn of CBS did that to George W. Bush.

I predict that U.S. senators will not joke about killing Obama.

In 2006, Bill Maher had a conversation with John Kerry. He asked Kerry what he’d gotten his wife for her birthday. Kerry said he had treated her to a vacation in Vermont. Maher said, “You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone.” Kerry replied, “Or I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone.” [...]

I predict that a New York official will not tell a graduating class about assassinating President Obama.

Also in 2006, comptroller Alan Hevesi said to students at Queens College that Sen. Charles Schumer, his fellow Democrat, would “put a bullet between the president’s eyes if he could get away with it.”

I predict that no columnist for a leading European newspaper, and leading world newspaper, will write, “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?”

Charlie Brooker of the Guardian did that to George W. Bush.

I predict that no major writer will write a novel debating the morality of killing President Obama.

Nicholson Baker did that to Bush, with Checkpoint.

I predict that no filmmaker will make a “fictional documentary” that fantasizes — and I’m afraid that is the word — about murdering President Obama.

Some Brits did that to President Bush with Death of a President.

Dear readers, I have made very, very safe predictions. If a CBS talk-show host pictured President Obama and said “SNIPERS WANTED,” he would lose his job, of course. He would never work in the media again. I wonder what else would happen to him.

I could go on, but you’ve heard enough. [...]

Regular readers may be sick of hearing this story — I think I’ve told it twice — but let me tell it again. I tell the story, not because the person featured in it is evil, but for the opposite reason: She is basically wonderful. She just had a fever, that hate-Bush, kill-Bush fever.

I was at an Upper East Side dinner party, and talk turned to 9/11. I mentioned that the “Pennsylvania plane” was apparently destined for the Capitol or the White House. My hostess said, “I wish President Bush had been killed that day.”

The school speech wasn't so innocent after all

I'm shocked, shocked to read this:

"When critics lashed out at President Obama for scheduling a speech to public school students this month, accusing him of wanting to indoctrinate children to his politics, his advisers quickly scrubbed his planned comments for potentially problematic wording."

Thus the claim that the only objectionable thing was the Department of Education's (later removed) indoctrinatory lesson plan is debunked.

Line of the day

From a Powerline reader:

I had to chuckle when I read Van Jones's assertion that he "received encouragement from across the political spectrum to 'stay and fight.'"

Yeah, right, from the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks and even the Trotskyites!

Okay, it was really yesterday, humor me.

Another contender: An Inconvenient Truther.

We're (almost) all neocons now

Jennifer Rubin:

“Politics is replete with irony but none greater than the sight of a president, who rose to power decrying the ultimately successful effort in one battlefield in the war on terror, looking now to those dreaded neo-con pundits and Republican lawmakers for support against the pre-9/11 mentality he was all too happy to promote on the campaign trail. . . . Maybe Obama should put aside the anti-Bush venom for a moment and give his predecessor a call—he might learn something about the lonely obligation of a commander in chief to resist the howls from the likes of Will, Hagel, and the netroots.”

I find it fascinating that the one issue on which he ran to the left is the one on which he has lurched right. On everything else, he ran as a faux centrist and governs as a hard leftist, but on Afghanistan he's downright neocon.

Of course this also means that he campaigned honestly on...well, nothing.

Editors on strike?

How did this make it past the NYT's intrepid editorial staff?!?

Although the investigation began and largely ended during the Bush administration, top Obama administration officials held a news conference on Wednesday to celebrate the settlement, thank each other for resolving it and promise more crackdowns on health fraud.

Somebody's gonna get fired!

What happened to candidate Obama?

Jennifer Rubin:

Obama’s candidacy was defined (to the exasperation of conservatives) by idealism, appeals to bipartisanship, and competency. He is now short on all three — which explains why his support among voters and especially independents (who were susceptible to pledges to end old-style politics) has plummeted.

As for the idealism, no president has sunk so far so fast. Candidate Obama chastised Washington as a place where good ideas died. He summoned young voters with high-minded slogans and Kennedy-esque rhetoric. Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush were mere politicians; he was the leader of a whole new era in politics.

Now? Opponents of health care are stooges, evil-mongers, and villains. Citizen activists are to be reported to the authorities for spreading misinformation or ridiculed. The candidate with the superior temperament has devolved into a peevish president exasperated that mere citizens would question his wisdom or stand in his way.

Even for those of us who realized that the whole post-partisan, even-tempered candidate thing was a mountain of bovine excrement, his transformation has been a bit of a shock. I expected him to lurch left, but not to turn into the modern-day Richard Nixon.

The other big lie

Accompanying the denial of a desire to nationalize health care is the denial of intentions to raise taxes on the middle class. This one doesn't even pass the laugh test with Americans with even a basic knowledge of politics, pure common sense tells you that their agenda cannot be enacted without massive tax increases.

So why keep the charade going?

John Hinderaker makes the argument that it's an attempt to fool the most gullible among us:

So what's going on here? I think the Democrats know (as both Geithner and Summers essentially admitted) that broad-based tax increases will be necessary if their legislative agenda passes. Right now, though, that agenda is teetering on the brink of disaster. Cap-and-tax may be dead and Obamacare is looking tenuous at best. If the administration were to admit that these programs mean higher taxes on more or less everyone, they would have no chance of passage.

So Obama and his minions are doing what they think they have to do: they are misleading the public about the fiscal consequences of their legislative agenda, knowing that if they are successful, there will be a day of reckoning in the not-too-distant future. At the moment, their disarray is such that they are willing to take their chances with an electorate that will surely be enraged if Obama violates his iron-clad pledge not to raise the taxes of those who earn less than $250,000 a year.