Posts Tagged ‘Obama’

by Trevor Loudon, New Zeal, July 26th, 2010

The now closed down JournoList, has caused considerable controversy in recent weeks. According to its opponents, JournoList teamed up some 400 prominent “progressive” journalists in an effort to smooth Barack Obama’s path to the White House.

There have been accusations that “Journolitstas,” deliberately sought to downplay Obama’s association with the Marxist Rev. Jeremiah Wright and tried to smear conservatives or opposing journalists as “racists.”

This post looks at 106 reported “Journolistas” to look for connections or common threads.

Of the known “Jounolistas” and organizations listed below, many can be linked back to two interrelated groups Democratic Socialists of America, the U.S.’s largest Marxist-based organization and the D.S.A.’s “brain,” the Washington DC-based, far left “think tank,” the Institute for Policy Studies.

Between them, D.S.A. and the I.P.S. dominate or influence several organizations affiliated to JournoList, including:

–SNIP–

JournoList was not just a bunch of “liberal’ journos with too much time on their hands.

It was a network of high level opinion makers, united by a “progressive” vision for America. They believed that their superior judgment and insight obligated them to present Americans with a view of reality that they would be too stupid and reactionary to grasp unaided.

At least a few, perhaps many, were committed Marxists who saw journalism, not as a profession, but as a revolutionary tool.

This disgraceful episode should dispel forever the “progressive” lie that the American MainStreamMedia and its “liberal” core, can be trusted to uphold the objective standards of their profession.

Read more at  http://noisyroom.net/blog/2010/07/26/socialist-journolistas/

by Jason Allardyce and Tony Allen-Mills, The Australian July 26, 2010

THE US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be “far preferable” to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.

Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.

The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.

The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama’s claim last week that all Americans were “surprised, disappointed and angry” to learn of Megrahi’s release.

Read more at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/white-house-backed-release-of-lockerbie-bomber-abdel-baset-al-megrahi/story-e6frg6so-1225896741041

by Deroy Murdock, National Review, July 20, 2010

Team Obama marks 18 surprisingly incompetent months in office.

As the Obama administration marks 18 months in power today, no one should be terribly surprised that it is the hardest-Left U.S. government since that of FDR. For those who paid attention, Obama’s hyperliberal U.S. Senate record pierced like a dive light through the squid ink of Hope and Change that Obama squirted at anyone who demanded programmatic specifics. (At 95.5 percent in 2007, according to the National Journal, Obama was the Senate’s No. 1 Left-liberal.)

However, after Obama’s nearly flawless campaign (rattled by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s racist rants, but little else), the big surprise one and a half years after Obama’s momentous and truly moving inauguration is the staggering incompetence of his government. Like some Americans, I expected a nanny-state, socialist agenda from Obama & Co. However, I thought that at least they would manage things smoothly and professionally, in somewhat refreshing contrast to the general ineptitude of the detached, tongue-tied Bush-Rove years. Instead, what America and the world have witnessed is an extravaganza of frequent gaffes, blunders, and catastrophes:

Read more at http://article.nationalreview.com/438405/a-year-and-a-half-of-president-obama/deroy-murdock

Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright

by Jonathan Strong, The Daily Caller, 7/20/2010

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Read more at http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/

by Robert Pear, NY Times, July 16, 2010

WASHINGTON — When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.

In a brief defending the law, the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.

Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.

While Congress was working on the health care legislation, Mr. Obama refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy insurance, enforced by financial penalties, was equivalent to a tax.

“For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” the president said last September, in a spirited exchange with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week.”

When Mr. Stephanopoulos said the penalty appeared to fit the dictionary definition of a tax, Mr. Obama replied, “I absolutely reject that notion.”

Congress anticipated a constitutional challenge to the individual mandate. Accordingly, the law includes 10 detailed findings meant to show that the mandate regulates commercial activity important to the nation’s economy. Nowhere does Congress cite its taxing power as a source of authority.

Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/health/policy/18health.html?_r=1&ref=politics

By Henry Payne, The Michigan View, 7/15/2010

In the latest stop on his “Recovery Summer” tour, rock star President Barack Obama landed in Holland, Michigan Thursday, insulted its congressman, handed American stimulus dollars to a Korean corporation, and proclaimed Obamanomics a success even as Michigan has lost 94,000 jobs since his Recovery Act was enacted.

All in all, another day in the life of an increasingly unpopular president who seems to be living in an alternative universe.

That universe insists that government is the source of jobs, and so Obama was in Western Michigan to declare another victory in Washington’s mission to create a new green economy.

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But the green economy looks like a lot of green for the well-connected. The president handed $150 million in stimulus money over to Korean CEO Peter Bahnsuk Kim of LG Chem. LG Chem is an $11 billion Korean conglomerate that hardly seems a candidate for the American Recovery Act. No wonder the program is so unpopular.

Accompanying Obama was Governor Jennifer Granholm - Obama praised her as “one of the best governors in America” even as she presides over the nation’s second highest unemployment rate – who has been complaining that Washington Republicans are denying her the $500 million in stimulus money she needs to plug Michigan’s Medicaid budget hole. So here she was in West Michigan celebrating $150 million for Corporate Korea. Huh?

Obama said his benevolence would create 300 jobs in Holland – but that’s $500,000 per job. At least it’s a bargain compared to the $ $1.25 million per job Obama spent on two solar companies in Arizona over the July 4 weekend.

Read more at http://www.detnews.com/article/20100715/MIVIEW/100715001/1467/opinion01/He-camehe-sawhe-insulted

by Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com Editor, July 14, 2010

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The leader of the Republican party in the House and pro-life organizations are wasting little time in slamming the Obama administration over revelations that it has approved the first set of taxpayer-funded abortions under the new health care law President Barack Obama signed.

The language of the law, and an executive order accompanying it, were supposed to prevent taxpayer funding of abortions Obama and his allies told the public.

But the National Right to Life Committee has uncovered an authorization for a new high risk insurance program in Pennsylvania that will be directly paid for with federal funds via the new health care system — and the funding will cover abortions.

House Republican Leader John Boehner sent a statement to LifeNews.com responding to the news that Department of Health & Human Services is providing $160 million to the state of Pennsylvania to set up a new high-risk insurance pool program that would cover virtually any abortion.

“This is the boldest admission yet from the Obama administration that the President’s Executive Order on taxpayer-funded abortion was a sham. The fact that the high-risk pool insurance program in Pennsylvania will use federal taxpayer dollars to fund abortions is unconscionable,” he said.

Read more at http://lifenews.com/nat6532.html

By Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy In Media, July 16, 2010

Fortunately, some people are paying critical attention to what has transpired.

Our media do not seem to be interested in the curious matter of why the Russian agents accused of trying to acquire sensitive nuclear information from the U.S. Government were so quickly released. Why were they were sent back to Moscow less than two weeks after they were arrested?

It is certainly the case that a continuing spy scandal threatened to undermine U.S.-Russia business “opportunities” and “cooperation.” It is also true that there is evidence that the Russian agents targeted the Obama Administration and former Clinton Administration officials.

Just before the scandal broke, a $4 billion deal had been announced between Boeing and a Russian firm. During the visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to the U.S., Cisco Systems had announced it was going to spend $1 billion in Russia, in part to develop a Moscow version of Silicon Valley. The United States Export-Import Bank had also announced a new deal to underwrite, with U.S. taxpayer dollars, U.S. business exports to Russia.

Plus, Obama had submitted a U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation agreement, backed by powerful business interests, to the U.S. Congress.

All of this was clearly in jeopardy if the Russian spy scandal led to additional revelations of Russian spying on the American government and businesses. So the scandal had to go away—and quickly.

The exchange was hammered out so quickly and was so advantageous to the Kremlin, however, that it should have become apparent to some journalist somewhere that there was much more to the story. But the issue was just as quickly dropped by the media, liberal and conservative alike.

Fortunately, some people are paying critical attention to what has transpired.

Read more at http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-russian-agents-obama-and-the-cover-up/

By Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, Sunday, July 11, 2010

The White House’s official policy of banning the word “Islam” in describing America’s terrorist enemies is in direct conflict with the U.S. military’s war-fighting doctrine now guiding commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

John O. Brennan, President Obama’s chief national security adviser for counterterrorism, delivered a major policy address on defining the enemy. He laid out the White House policy of detaching any reference to Islam when referring to terrorists, be it al Qaeda, the Taliban or any other group.

But Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the man tapped by Mr. Obama as the new top commander in Afghanistan, led the production of an extensive counterinsurgency manual in December 2006 that does, in fact, tell commanders of a link between Islam and extremists.

The Petraeus doctrine refers to “Islamic insurgents,” “Islamic extremists” and “Islamic subversives.” It details ties between Muslim support groups and terrorists. His co-author was Gen. James F. Amos, whom Mr. Obama has picked as the next Marine Corps commandant and Joint Chiefs of Staff member.

Read more about http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/11/obama-at-odds-with-petraeus-doctrine-on-islam/

Editorial, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jul. 9, 2010

President Obama is in Las Vegas, where he’s holding an invitation-only fundraiser for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, among other closed-door events.

The president is welcome; he should be courteously received.

That said, it’s too bad the president isn’t planning to mingle with average Nevadans and visit our shopping centers incognito, to get a look at what his economic policies have really wrought — what a city with 14.1 percent (official, understated) unemployment looks like, under an administration whose main economic goals seem to be the punishment and prevention of capital formation and business growth.

The president might have gotten an earful, here at ground zero of the Great Recession.

While “Obamacare” doesn’t go into full effect for four more years, taxes to support it kick in this fall, starting with a 10 percent tanning salon tax (why?) and a “1099″ tax that’s projected to suck an additional $17 billion out of private businesses in the next decade by making them file “1099″ snitch forms for virtually everyone to whom they pay a few hundred dollars.

Is that likely to help Nevada’s economy rebound, President Obama? Won’t it drive even more business “under the table,” where workers have less protection, illegal aliens thrive and many continue to draw welfare while paying no taxes at all?

Speaking of illegals, your administration just sued our neighbor to the southeast, Arizona, for enacting a state law that instructs local police to help enforce federal immigration law — despite the fact the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that federal immigration law doesn’t intend “to preclude even harmonious state regulation.”

What’s the political message of this cynical lawsuit? That some 12 million illegals should feel safe continuing to occupy jobs that U.S. citizens have flocked to fill whenever they’ve had a chance, presumably. Just wait for the Democrats to grant you amnesty, invite in your extended family and send you all Democratic voter registration cards — as soon as the heat of November’s mid-term elections has passed — is that it?

Read more at http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/welcome-back–mr–president-98095489.html

by Bill Bischoff, Yahoo Finance provided by SmartMoney.com, 7/07/2010

The so-called Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of the year. Although some of the cuts retain bipartisan support in Congress and may yet be extended, as of now, Washington has some severe changes in store for you and your family.

Higher Tax Rates for All . . .
Higher Capital Gains and Dividends Taxes for All . . .
Return of the Marriage Penalty . . .
Return of Phase-Out Rule for Itemized Deductions . . .
Return of Phase-Out Rule for Personal Exemptions . . .

Read more at http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/article/110005/how-the-expiring-bush-tax-cuts-affect-you?mod=taxes-advice_strategy

And Obama and the Democrats will say that they didn’t raise your taxes. But we know they ALLOWED the Bush tax cuts to expire.

by Andy McCarthy, the Corner at National Review, 7/07/2010

Well whaddya know? It turns out that Rhode Island has long been carrying out the procedures at issue in the Arizona immigration statute: As a matter of routine, RI state police check immigration status at traffic stops whenever there is reasonable suspicion to do so, and they report all illegals to the feds for deportation. Besides the usual profiling blather, critics have trotted out the now familiar saw that such procedures hamstring police because they make immigrants afraid to cooperate. But it turns out that it’s the Rhode Island police who insist on enforcing the law. As Cornell law prof William Jacobson details at Legal Insurrection, Colonel Brendan P. Doherty, the state police commander, “refuses to hide from the issue,” explaining, ”I would feel that I’m derelict in my duties to look the other way.”

If, as President Obama and Attorney General Holder claim, there is a federal preemption issue, why hasn’t the administration sued Rhode Island already? After all, Rhode Island is actually enforcing these procedures, while the Arizona law hasn’t even gone into effect yet.

Read more at http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjkzMmNjMjIxMjIxYWNmODA0OGI3ZTU5MmIyZGUyMjg

by Andrea Tantaros, NY Daily News, July 8th 2010

The Obama administration is getting quite the reputation for bucking the wishes of the people. From pushing through an unpopular health care bill to imposing a moratorium on offshore drilling that’s costing the already-suffering gulf region precious jobs, it has refused to back down when it comes to the will of the masses.

Now, President Obama’s Justice Department has decided to sue the State of Arizona over its new law targeting illegal aliens, when a majority of the public favors the legislation, leaving many to wonder if the increasingly detached White House has gone too far.

The administration says its lawsuit is all about the law; Arizona, it says, is trying to enforce immigration statutes - which is the federal government’s job alone.

It’s hard to believe from a President who has already shaken the finger of moral disapproval at the bill.

Rather, anyone with basic political sense can see the move for what it is: a purely political maneuver intended to invigorate Hispanic voters - a key piece of the Democratic base - in time for the November elections. Obama is hoping that a bloody judicial showdown on immigration will translate into high turnout for Democrats. And that could be enough to sustain Democratic majorities in Congress.

Don’t count on it. For the strategy to work, registered Hispanic voters would need to turn out in droves over what essentially boils down to a nuanced debate between federal versus states’ rights.

Read more at http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/07/08/2010-07-08_obama_vs_arizona_the_president_is_fighting_a_reckless_war_that_will_backfire_pol.htmlackfire_pol.html

Hallelujah! Obama is cheering the news of 1,500 permanent jobs. The only problem is those jobs are going to cost taxpayers $1,333,333 each.

Please consider

Obama awards $2B for solar power, hails new jobs at
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_JOBS?SITE=NJMOR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Found this at  http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/07/obama-hails-new-solar-energy-jobs-at.html

There are obvious actions to speed things up, but the government oddly resists taking them.

By PAUL H. RUBIN, Wall Street Journal, Destin, Fla., 7/02/2010

As the oil spill continues and the cleanup lags, we must begin to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions. There does not seem to be much that anyone can do to stop the spill except dig a relief well, not due until August. But the cleanup is a different story. The press and Internet are full of straightforward suggestions for easy ways of improving the cleanup, but the federal government is resisting these remedies.

First, the Environmental Protection Agency can relax restrictions on the amount of oil in discharged water, currently limited to 15 parts per million. In normal times, this rule sensibly controls the amount of pollution that can be added to relatively clean ocean water. But this is not a normal time.

Various skimmers and tankers (some of them very large) are available that could eliminate most of the oil from seawater, discharging the mostly clean water while storing the oil onboard. While this would clean vast amounts of water efficiently, the EPA is unwilling to grant a temporary waiver of its regulations.

Next, the Obama administration can waive the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from operating in U.S. coastal waters. Many foreign countries (such as the Netherlands and Belgium) have ships and technologies that would greatly advance the cleanup. So far, the U.S. has refused to waive the restrictions of this law and allow these ships to participate in the effort.

The combination of these two regulations is delaying and may even prevent the world’s largest skimmer, the Taiwanese owned “A Whale,” from deploying. This 10-story high ship can remove almost as much oil in a day as has been removed in total—roughly 500,000 barrels of oily water per day. The tanker is steaming towards the Gulf, hoping it will receive Coast Guard and EPA approval before it arrives.

Read more at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575339650877298556.html

By: Byron York, Chief Political Correspondent, Washington Examiner, 7/05/2010

In a far-reaching restatement of goals for the nation’s space agency, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says President Obama has ordered him to pursue three new objectives: to “re-inspire children” to study science and math, to “expand our international relationships,” and to “reach out to the Muslim world.” Of those three goals, Bolden said in a recent interview with al-Jazeera, the mission to reach out to Muslims is “perhaps foremost,” because it will help Islamic nations “feel good” about their scientific accomplishments.

In the same interview, Bolden also said the United States, which first sent men to the moon in 1969, is no longer capable of reaching beyond low earth orbit without help from other nations.

Bolden made the statements during a recent trip to the Middle East. He told al-Jazeera that in the wake of the president’s speech in Cairo last year, the American space agency is now pursuing “a new beginning of the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world.” Then:

When I became the NASA Administrator — before I became the NASA Administrator — [Obama] charged me with three things: One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.

Later in the interview, Bolden discussed NASA’s goal of greater international cooperation in space exploration. He said the United States, more than 40 years after the first moon mission, cannot reach beyond earth’s orbit today without assistance from abroad . . .

Read more at http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/obamas-new-mission-for-nasa-reach-out-to-muslim-world-97785979.html

by David Limbaugh, July 2, 2010

The Obama administration grows more arrogant, cavalier and fundamentally dishonest every day. Just in the past few days, we’ve seen a number of troubling examples. Frankly, sometimes it’s hard to keep up.

In a speech in Wisconsin, Obama was bragging about how wonderful the terrible economy is. You’ll recall that during both of President George W. Bush’s terms, Democrats, including Obama, castigated him for destroying the economy, despite the existence of empirically verifiable robust growth during some seven of those eight years.

Now that Obama has been in office for a year and a half and his economy is failing by all objective measures, he and his Democrats demand, once again, that we ignore the empirical evidence in front of our faces and bow down to them in reverent gratitude for ensuring that things are not worse than they are.

Everyone knows Obama promised — he was hardly tentative about his prediction — that if the nation followed him over the cliff with his harebrained “stimulus” scheme, unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. When unemployment soared above 10 percent, he insisted we be patient to allow his plan to work. Now that it stubbornly remains in the high 9s, he tells us that if he hadn’t implemented his stimulus bill, the economy would be much worse (12 or 13 or 15 percent), so we not only are forbidden from criticizing him for this disaster but also must genuflect because only three of the four wheels of the economy are teetering over the edge of the cliff.

Read more at http://www.creators.com/conservative/david-limbaugh/unprecedented-arrogance.html

By PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY, IBD Editorials, 6/29/2010

Barack Obama revealed his goal for the Supreme Court when he complained on Chicago radio station WBEZ-FM in 2001 that the Earl Warren Court wasn’t “radical” enough because “it didn’t break free from the essential constraints placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution” in order to allow “redistribution of wealth.”

Now that Obama is president, he has the power to nominate Supreme Court justices who will “break free” from the Constitution and join him in “fundamentally transforming” America. That’s the essence of his choice of Elena Kagan as his second Supreme Court nominee. She never was a judge, and her paper trail is short. But it’s long enough to prove that she is a clear and present danger to the Constitution.

When Kagan was dean of Harvard Law School, she presented a guest speaker who is known as the most activist judge in the world: Judge Aharon Barak, formerly president of the Israeli Supreme Court.

The polar opposite of the U.S. Constitution, which states that “all legislative powers” are vested in the elected legislative body, Barak has written that a judge should “make” and “create” law, assume “a role in the legislative process” and give statutes “new meaning that suits new social needs.”

Barak wrote that a judge “is subject to no authority” except himself, and he “must sometimes depart the confines of his legal system and channel into it fundamental values not yet found in it.” Channel? Does he mean he channels in a trance, as Hillary Clinton supposedly channeled discourse with the long-deceased Eleanor Roosevelt?

Despite Barak’s weirdo writings, or maybe because of them, Kagan called him her “judicial hero.” Judge Robert Bork, a man careful with his words, says Kagan’s praise of Barak is “disqualifying in and of itself.” Bork said that Barak “establishes a world record for judicial hubris.” He wrote that Barak embraces a judicial philosophy that “there is no area of Israeli life that the court may not govern.”

Read more at http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/538850/201006291834/Constitution-Is-Endangered-If-Kagan-OKd.aspx

Sen. Coburn pressed Kagan today on the limits of the government’s power under the commerce clause.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSoWGlyugTo

Wall Street Journal Review and Outlook, June 26, 2010

Spending our way to prosperity is going out of style.

Today’s G-20 meeting has been advertised as a showdown between the U.S. and Europe over more spending “stimulus,” and so it is. But the larger story is the end of the neo-Keynesian economic moment, and perhaps the start of a healthier policy turn.

For going on three years, the developed world’s economic policy has been dominated by the revival of the old idea that vast amounts of public spending could prevent deflation, cure a recession, and ignite a new era of government-led prosperity. It hasn’t turned out that way.

Now the political and fiscal bills are coming due even as the U.S. and European economies are merely muddling along. The Europeans have had enough and want to swear off the sauce, while the Obama Administration wants to keep running a bar tab. So this would seem to be a good time to examine recent policy history and assess the results.

–SNIP– A better economic policy will have to await a new Congress, which we hope at a minimum can prevent punishing tax increases. But for now the good news is that voters and markets are telling politicians to stop doing what hasn’t worked.

Read more at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703615104575328981319857618.html

Of course its a dead end, WE’RE BROKE!