Straight Eye for the Queer Guy

BIG HOLLYWOOD

Gay Marriage By Any Means, Except Democracy

by John Romano

It was clear everyone at the Oscars got the memo: “No Obama, no Iraq, but gay, gay, gay, all day.” It’s depressing the Oscars must always have an agenda. What will it be next year?

The people of California exercised democracy twice over the gay marriage issue. Whether you agree or not, at this time, Californians do not want gay marriage, period. As for Proposition 8, I abstained, yet I deplore the tactics Leftists have used since the election. I put forth that gays should be allowed to marry, but it must be accomplished by democratic means.

Legalizing gay marriage will not turn a string of people gay. You either is or you isn’t. Why shouldn’t two committed people have the right to join up fully in the eyes of the state? I get all that. In addition, I’m pretty much for anything that fundamentalist Islam is against. And most of Islam hates gays, so let the cave dwellers add gay marriage to their list of reasons to hate us.

The gay lobby must come to realize that changing hearts is the only true path to equality, not employing fascist tactics and judge shopping. The left have overturned democracy in California before and are quite skilled at it. Another win might embolden them to a point where they no longer fight initiatives until after voted on. Why bother? It’s much easier to get a leftist judge to overturn democracy than it is to win in the marketplace of ideas.

Many think the fight over gay marriage is an attack on the church, and I tend to agree. In California, gay couples already have the same rights as married couples, but if gay marriage becomes legal a church’s tax exempt status could be threatened were they to refuse to marry a same-sex couple. If that comes to pass, I dare same-sex couples to insist on marriage in a mosque. Now that would take courage.

Is equality or “special status” the goal? For instance, if a gay man physically attacks me and calls me a “straight white douche bag,” he’s charged with assault. If I do the reverse, I’m charged with assault and a hate crime. Is that equality?

To channel a little Gary Cole as Mike Brady: ”Sometimes when you win you lose and that makes everyone a loser including you. So Jan, in order to win you must occasionally lose, this way everyone wins. And by losing you become a winner’s winner.”

Where is the gay Gandhi or Dr. King - someone to chill the gay lobby out and inspire the democratic process? 50% + 1 is all you need.

Family Responsibility

We, as a nation, better wake up to the fact that our government, through it's social engineering agenda, is destroying our sense of family, and replacing the concept of family with government control of our children. Families are willingly allowing this take-over, because they do not understand the consequences of giving over their children to state-sponsored schools. One only has to take the time to evaluate the curricula being fostered in today's public schools to realize the danger to our children's mental health and well-being.



This is not paranoia speaking. It's real, and it's happening now.



Everywhere the government intrudes into our lives. And we are allowing this to happen, through ignorance. Better take heed, Americans. It's late in the game, but it's not too late to reverse the political arrogance of big government.

Obama Stumbles Out of the Gate

The Weekly Standard

Geithner Lays an Egg
And that's only one of the problems with the Obama economic strategy.

by Lawrence B. Lindsey
02/23/2009, Volume 014, Issue 22


Elections have consequences. That is what democracy is about after all. Barack Obama is correct when he states that his victory last November gives him the right, or more specifically the power, to have things his way when it comes to handling the nation's economic challenges.

The country, moreover, could use some decisive economic action. The financial system is a mess, unemployment is rising and will keep increasing. The government will likely run a deficit of 10 percent or more of GDP both this year and next--roughly twice the share of the Reagan deficits and roughly three times the size of President Bush's deficits. To fight the credit contraction, our central bank is expanding its balance sheet at a pace that might lead a visitor from another planet to confuse the United States with Argentina.

This makes it all the more frustrating that less than a month into his presidency, Obama has made a complete hash of economic policy, utterly squandering his mandate in a series of missteps that suggest he has not made the transition from campaigning to governing. This, even as Obama never stops reminding us in his constant televised appearances that the economy is slipping fast and time is of the essence.

The problems began with the inexplicable decision by the administration not to submit its own economic stimulus package, but instead delegate the job to Nancy Pelosi and the barons on the House Appropriations Committee. Appropriations is the reptilian brain of the political process. It is where all the back scratching, logrolling, and pork barreling gets done. Macroeconomic coherence is just not part of the skill set of House Appropriations members. So even rebuilding the nation's infrastructure got short shrift. Instead, the package was loaded with largesse for fellow politicians and civil service employees back home. The standard was not the proclaimed "shovel-ready" but "social-worker ready."

This package was marginally improved by the House Ways and Means Committee. Ways and Means gave money directly to workers as opposed to local politicians. It also ramped up the various medical spending conduits, which will push more money to health care providers--though not necessarily provide more health care. But there was no improvement in the tax system, which might, say, encourage job creation and retention by lowering the tax burden on employment or investing.

So the package the House produced was not "stimulus" in any normal understanding of the word. Of the $820 billion package that emerged from the House, only 20 percent would be spent in fiscal 2009 and only another 40 percent in 2010. That left 40 percent of the package to be spent in 2011 or later, when even the more pessimistic forecasters (of whom I am one) expect the economy to be in full recovery. This plan delivers the stimulus at precisely the wrong time.

The package was so bad that it made criticism of the new president socially acceptable, a rare development for the first initiative of a president elected with a large mandate. Alice Rivlin, doyenne of Democratic party policy economists, criticized the lack of macroeconomic benefit in the plan. Her sentiments were echoed by just about every leading economist in both parties who was not employed by the administration.

The new administration fell into this hole by belatedly discovering the fiscal realities of the country. Government spending takes time to get going, and, once flowing, is difficult to stop. During the transition, Team Obama surveyed the agencies for "shelf ready" spending needs and found them woefully inadequate as a credible stimulus package. The incoming Obama policy-makers had been focused on spending, not tax cuts, because they wanted to draw a line between themselves and their predecessors. But, faced with the facts, they made a virtue out of necessity by having the president call for taxes to be 40 percent of the package. This annoyed the more left-leaning Democrats of Congress, who were then appeased by being given the power to craft the spending.

The legislation was written by Democratic committee chairmen with no Republican input. The president covered this up by going to the Hill and meeting with the Republican caucus. But, since Obama had no direct role in writing the package, the signal to congressional Republicans was twofold: Bipartisanship was just a façade the president needed to maintain his approval ratings, and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were the ones with the power, not Barack Obama.

The shreds of comity on which Washington depends were saved by Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who drafted a compromise that eliminated some of the most wasteful spending and sped up other parts. The bill that emerged from conference is close to the Collins compromise and is better than the House one at moving spending into the present. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a quarter of the spending in the conference agreement would leave Washington this year and a total of 75 percent by the end of 2010, a substantial improvement. But it is still not "stimulus," and that fact is going to become apparent later this year. Money leaving Washington for state capitals is different from money actually entering the economy and creating jobs.

The administration released a report by its top economists saying that passage of the stimulus bill would mean that national unemployment would peak in the third quarter of 2009 at about 8 percent and start going down thereafter. Let's just say that we should all hope they are right. The economy will get a pop from the start of stimulus just as the economy got a pop in 2008 from the one-time checks that were sent out. Growth in the second quarter of 2009 is likely to be positive as the first round of stimulus hits the economy. As the rate of new stimulus slows in subsequent quarters, growth will turn negative again. The odds are high that unemployment will still be rising on the first anniversary of the Obama presidency next January with the prospect (but not a certainty) of double-digit unemployment at the time of the midterm elections.

As the stimulus bogged down, a new word crept into the administration's economic policy vocabulary--"comprehensive." The problems would not be easy to solve, and stimulus alone was insufficient. Bank recapitalization and housing mortgage issues would also have to be dealt with. The task for announcing these was delegated to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. But the scripting of the message and indeed the whole "rollout" of the issue was tightly controlled in the West Wing.

Like so much of what happens in Washington, the reasons for this odd locus of decisionmaking authority are less nefarious than meets the eye and more a matter of simple necessity. The first problem is a lack of personnel at Treasury. Geithner is the only confirmed appointee in the department. No deputy secretary, no undersecretaries of either domestic or international finance, no assistant secretaries, no deputy assistant secretaries. The West Wing is the only place where the personnel reside who can make decisions.

The second problem is political. There are no easy answers when facing a trillion-dollar hole in the banking system. Either the banks will fail, or money is going to have to be given to the banks to fill the hole, or the proverbial can will be kicked down the road with enough money being slowly injected into the system to keep it going. The first option is a nonstarter. This brings the essential choice down to writing a big check now to the banks or writing a lot of little checks over time, and bankers are not the most politically sympathetic recipients of federal largesse at the moment.

So there is a political incentive to create a focus on issues that are tangential to the trillion-dollar problem. Make sure that bankers sell their corporate jets! No more bonuses!

The sale of 50 corporate jets in today's market might fetch you $1 billion if you're lucky. End all the bonuses on Wall Street and you get real money--another $18 billion. Put the two together and a $1 trillion problem shrinks to a mere $981 billion one. The administration's hope was that such measures plus the group flogging of the CEOs of the big banks on the Hill last Wednesday would focus the media, Congress, and the public away from the fundamental enormity of the task at hand.

But Geithner still had to say something, and none of the various options available was attractive. Buy the assets from the banks? Set the price high enough to bail out the banks and you have a trillion-dollar overpayment. Set the price at current market prices and you have to come up with the same trillion as a bank capital injection. Do what Bill Seidman and the George H.W. Bush administration did during the S&L crisis by nationalizing the banks and then reselling the pieces into the market? Might work, but while Seidman disposed of the thrift industry by selling them to the basically healthy commercial banks, there aren't any basically healthy banks left on the planet to buy an institution like Citibank or Bank of America. Combined, those two institutions have 14 percent of the deposits in the American banking system, and there are plenty of other banks that need help as well.

The Geithner announcement was repeatedly put off while each of the options was publicly discussed. In the end the political decisionmakers decided there was no politically acceptable decision. But expectations had been building, stoked higher with each postponement of the speech. When Geithner finally spoke and by omission essentially admitted that the Obama administration hadn't come up with a solution, the stock market plummeted.

But it wasn't only the stock prices of America's publicly traded companies that collapsed. So did the stock of the Obama administration. A discredited stimulus package followed by an overly hyped but largely vacuous bank-rescue speech proved to be too much. The mainstream media, which had given Obama a free ride since the election, turned on their choice. In the space of just over three weeks, Obama and company squandered the greatest stock of political capital any president since Lyndon Johnson had inherited from an election.

It is certainly not too late for Obama to create a sensible government policy and assist in an American economic recovery. But he has to stop campaigning and start governing. This means fewer speeches (his strong point, and something he evidently enjoys) and more noodling through wonky decision trees and detailed analyses in concert with expert advisers on both the inside and the outside. All presidents in my experience--and I have served four different administrations--have to learn the difference between campaigning and governing. Obama, whose vita contains lots of campaigning for high offices but remarkably little tenure in such offices, has a bigger challenge than most in making this transition. But he is a smart and well-intentioned fellow. Most important, he has a strong survival instinct. Perhaps he'll sense that unless he makes a rapid transition, he will be a one-term president as the economic catastrophe he warns against so often comes to pass.

Lawrence B. Lindsey, a former governor of the Federal Reserve, was special assistant to President Bush for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council at the White House. His most recent book is What a President Should Know .  .  . but Most Learn Too Late (Rowman and Littlefield).

Geithner Unwittingly Stumbles Onto Causal Plane - Quantum Physicists Puzzled

February 11, 2009

Geithner Warns His Talking Could Cause Depression

Markets Plunge on Treasury Secretary’s Latest Statement

In testimony before Congress today, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned that by continuing to talk he might plunge the nation into a depression.

"The nation's economy is in a crisis that could easily turn into a catastrophe," the Treasury Secretary said. "In this precarious state, it is highly vulnerable to my talking."

Mr. Geithner pointed to the Dow Jones Industrial Average's 300-point drop during his previous day of Congressional testimony as proof that his amorphous policy statements posed a serious threat to the nation's economy.

"What further damage could my vague remarks do?" he asked. "The truth is, I don't know."

Overseas markets plunged on the news that Mr. Geithner was talking again, with both the NIKKEI and the FTSE shedding over eight percent of their value.

At a town hall meeting in Indiana, President Barack Obama heard from a housewife, Carol Foyler, 47, who pleaded with the President to make Mr. Geithner stop talking.

"Every time he opens his mouth, I'm afraid I'm going to lose my house," she said.

President Obama hugged Mrs. Foyler and said he would "see what I can do" about the Geithner problem.

"I will do everything in my power to get Tim to stop talking," the President said. "Quite honestly, I already have my hands full with Biden."


Forward to a Friend

Speaking From The Left

Salon.com

By Camille Paglia

Feb. 11, 2009 |

Money by the barrelful, by the truckload. Mountains of money, heaped like gassy pyramids in the national dump. Scrounging packs of politicos, snapping, snarling and sending green bills flying sky-high as they root through the tangled mass with ragged claws. The stale hot air filled with cries of rage, the gnashing of teeth and dark prophecies of doom.

Yes, this grotesque scene, like a claustrophobic circle in Dante's "Inferno," was what the U.S. government has looked like for the past two weeks as it fights on over Barack Obama's stimulus package -- a mammoth, chaotic grab bag of treasures, toys and gimcracks. Could popular opinion of our feckless Congress sink any lower? You betcha!

Why in the cosmos would the new administration, smoothly sailing out of Obama's classy inauguration, repeat the embarrassing blunders of Bill Clinton's first term? By foolishly promising a complete overhaul of healthcare within 100 days (and by putting his secretive, ill-prepared wife in charge of it), Clinton made himself look naive and incompetent and set healthcare reform back for more than 15 years.

President Obama was ill-served by his advisors (shall we thump that checkered piñata, Rahm Emanuel?), who evidently did not help him to produce a strong, focused, coherent bill that he could have explained and defended to the nation before it was set upon by partisan wolves. To defer to the House of Representatives and let the bill be thrown together by cacophonous mob rule made the president seem passive and behind the curve.

Most mainstream American voters are undoubtedly suffering from economist fatigue these days. This one calls for tax cuts; that one condemns them. One says we're wasting hundreds of billions of dollars; the other claims that sum falls pathetically short. A plague on all their houses! Surely common sense would dictate that when Congress is doling out fat dollops of taxpayers' money, due time should be delegated for sober consideration and debate. The administration's coercive rush toward instant action, accompanied by apocalyptic pronouncements of imminent catastrophe, has put its own credibility on the line.

But aside from the stimulus muddle, Obama has been off to a good start. True, I was disappointed with the infestation of the new appointments list by Clinton retreads and slippery tax-dodgers. Nevertheless, I was very impressed by Obama's relaxed, natural authority with military officers on Inauguration Day, in contrast to the early Bill Clinton's palpable unease and exaggerated posturing. I applauded the signal Obama sent to the world by starting the closure of the Guantánamo detention center. Contrary to the rote claims of conservative talk radio, there is as yet no public evidence that every individual being held at Guantánamo is a proven "terrorist"-- whom we would all agree should be severely punished. That is the entire point of a rational process of indictment and trial. If Guantánamo became a symbol of un-American repression, it is the procrastinating, paralyzed Bush administration that should be blamed.

Speaking of talk radio (which I listen to constantly), I remain incredulous that any Democrat who professes liberal values would give a moment's thought to supporting a return of the Fairness Doctrine to muzzle conservative shows. (My latest manifesto on this subject appeared in my last column.) The failure of liberals to master the vibrant medium of talk radio remains puzzling. To reach the radio audience (whether the topic is sports, politics or car repair), a host must have populist instincts and use the robust common voice. Too many Democrats have become arrogant elitists, speaking down in snide, condescending tones toward tradition-minded middle Americans whom they stereotype as rubes and buffoons. But the bottom line is that government surveillance of the ideological content of talk radio is a shocking first step toward totalitarianism.

One of the nuggets I've gleaned from several radio sources is that Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who has been in the aggressive forefront of the campaign to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, is married to Tom Athans, who works extensively with left-wing radio organizations and was once the executive vice-president of Air America, the liberal radio syndicate that, despite massive publicity from major media, has failed miserably to win a national audience. Stabenow's outrageous conflict of interest has of course been largely ignored by the prestige press, which should have been demanding that she recuse herself from all political involvement with this issue.

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Democrats Look to Muzzle Conservative Radio

From newsmax.com

By: Jim Meyers

Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow says she wants hearings on “accountability” in radio, suggesting Democrats are eying a return of the Fairness Doctrine.

During an interview with Stabenow, syndicated radio host Bill Press said conservatives should not be the only voices heard on talk radio and asked the Michigan lawmaker: “So, is it time to bring back the Fairness Doctrine?”

Stabenow responded: “I think it’s absolutely time to pass a standard. Now, whether it’s called the Fairness Standard, whether it’s called something else — I absolutely think it’s time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves.

“Our new president has talked rightly about accountability and transparency, that we all have to step up and be responsible. And I think in this case, there needs to be some accountability and standards put in place.”

Press — former chairman of the California Democratic Party — asked: “Can we count on you to push for some hearings in the Senate this year, to bring these owners in and hold them accountable?”

Stabenow said: “I have already had some discussions with colleagues and, you know, I feel like that’s going to happen.”

Originally instituted in 1949 by the FCC, the Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters using the public airwaves to give equal time to opposing political views. The FCC repealed the measure in 1987.

Since talk radio is overwhelmingly dominated by conservative hosts, and liberal talk radio draws few listeners, the “equal time” provision would likely force many radio stations to pull popular conservative hosts from the air rather than air low-rated liberal hosts.

Michael Calderone of Politico.com, commenting on Stabenow’s remarks, wrote: “Although Obama has been publicly opposed to reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, conservative radio has talked nonstop about the fear of it returning (or perhaps something like it with another name) while there’s a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic majority in Congress.”

Bill Press wrote on his Web site: “I’m not a big fan of bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. But if station owners won’t act on their own to offer a mix of voices on the radio, this Congress and this new administration will find a way to force them to do so. And the sooner, the better.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Has the Left arbitrarily assigned itself to the pool of disadvantaged? You know, I am hard put to call this anything but Affirmative Action. If these clowns are so boring they can't get listeners, then they think squelching conservative voices is the way to go.

It would be almost humorous, except it ain't humorous, because they have changed the meaning of accountability and standards to mean, in Typical Leftist Legacy, (and let's keep it real simple) "if it doesn't favor our point of view, then it's just wrong and must be eliminated."

For more on the Typical Leftist Legacy see, Dr. Sanity's take on this particular insanity.

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Leftist Phonies Cash In On Real Crisis

Cleveland Plain Dealer Columnist

America under Obama will see one crisis after another

by Kevin O'Brien
Thursday January 29, 2009

We interrupt this financial crisis to bring you a gargantuan federal power grab masquerading as an economic stimulus.

Tell me, does the following sound at all familiar?

We've GOT to act. NOW! There's NO TIME for debate. We're on the PRECIPICE. We're staring into the ABYSS. The government has to spend BIG and it has to spend FAST, before it's TOO LATE!

Yes, yes. We heard it just a few weeks ago, remember? Right before the government spent big and fast so it could avert the financial crisis. Which continues today, quite unaverted, because no one bothered to require that the government spend WELL or -- yes, I know this was always a long shot -- WISELY.

So we're still in the same mess. And we're not trying to get out of it yet, because for some among us, messes -- especially messes that can be credibly described as crises -- have their uses.

When Joe Biden said during the campaign that President Barack Obama was going to face a crisis right out of the gate, it wasn't a wild guess. He was stating half of the elemental strategy of the Obama administration: Have a crisis.

Biden went on to say that when that crisis arose, Americans should stand shoulder to shoulder with the Dear Leader, no matter what he chose to do, and he warned that "initially, it's not going to be apparent that we're right."

It's true that Biden started out talking about foreign policy, but toward the end of his ramble, he worked his way around to, "This is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets, this is a systemic problem we have with this economy."

Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, gave us the other half of the administration's strategy soon after the election in a talk with Wall Street Journal staffers: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before."

So, have a crisis and use it to get things you want that you couldn't have gotten from people who weren't frightened. Repeat as necessary.

Want to appoint a tax cheat secretary of the treasury? Just tell everyone you're in a big hurry because of the financial crisis.

Want to hand out, in one fell swoop, more pork and more paybacks to more favored political constituencies than anyone has ever handed out before? Write a spread-the-wealth bill like the one the House of Representatives just passed. Just be sure to call it a stimulus.

Want to grow government beyond comprehension and make it the master of health care, energy, education, finance and, through regulation, business? Don't declare the crisis solved until you've passed enough phony stimuli to complete your whole hidden agenda.

There is only one thing that can be done to block the socialist agenda that's so clearly visible just beneath the Rahm Emanuel useful-crisis strategy. Fortunately, it's something every American can do.

Refuse to fear.

If your congressional representative voted for the stimulus, call him up and chew him out. If he voted against it, call to say thanks. Then get on the horn to your senators and demand that they do whatever it takes to stop this cynical power grab. You can get to every one of them through the U.S. Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121.

Obama and company aren't even trying to be subtle. Nancy Pelosi is incapable of subtlety.

These people are telling you exactly what they want to do, and they've been telling you since long before Election Day.

They've even told you that the lever they'll use on you is the crisis.

And by putting forward a plan that's 3 percent stimulus and 97 percent leftist goody bag, what Obama is telling you is that he's not at all eager to make the financial crisis go away. He's going to "fix" lots of other things under the cover the crisis provides.

Then it will be on to the next crisis and the next set of underlying projects.

There's no sense being scared. Angry would be appropriate, though. And vocal: 202-224-3121.

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Postscript to 'America under Obama will see one crisis after another'

Posted by Kevin O'Brien February 02, 2009

Liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne sees the same thing I see; he just sees it in a positive light. Obama and the House Democrats really are using the "stimulus" package as a Trojan horse to further a host of liberal causes that would struggle to pass even a Democrat-dominated Congress on their own merits. (Actually, a reader suggests that "Trojan pig" might be a better description, since the thing is so weighed down with pork.)

Anyway, here's what Dionne has to say, and this should sound very familiar to anyone who read my column of Jan. 29. Where you see emphasis, it's mine. I wouldn't want anyone to miss the confessional phrases:

The real test is whether Obama will fight for a stimulus bill that achieves some of his larger objectives. The aspects of the House bill that Republicans and conservative commentators have so eviscerated are the very ones that take substantial steps toward the president's own priorities.

Obama placed a heavy bet during his campaign on a promise to reform the heath-care system. To the great consternation of conservatives, the House stimulus bill takes big steps toward broadening the number of Americans government would help to obtain health insurance. Will those provisions be protected in the final bill?

The president has spoken passionately about the inadequacy of our schools and the increasing difficulty that young Americans are having paying for higher education. The House stimulus bill includes a lot of education money. Will students be thrown overboard in pursuit of a nebulous cross-party comity?

No doubt our supremely calm president is certain that, in the end, all will be well. But Rahm Emanuel, his spirited chief of staff, had it right: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Just how high a price is Obama willing to pay for a handful of Republican votes?

Read his whole column, if you're so inclined.

Dionne didn't have anything like the space it would take -- or, perhaps, the interest in being terribly thorough -- to enumerate the many, many more liberal-Democratic wish-list items this phony stimulus bill contains. But he does admit to the basic strategy at work here, he applauds it and he counsels congressional Democrats to go it alone to pass it, if necessary. This "stimulus" bill IS a big leftist goody bag, and the goal of stimulating the economy with it -- thereby alleviating the financial crisis -- is at best one among many priorities.

That's what Dionne says. I seriously doubt that alleviating the economic crisis is more than a low priority, because the sooner it eases, the sooner the Democrats will lose the camouflage they need to perform their feats of legislative legerdemain.

People who thought I was saying the financial crisis was fabricated need to re-read the column. The crisis is real; what's phony is the play-acting at solving it while the administration and congressional Democrats use it to push a social engineering (and flat-out socialist) agenda.

On Sunday, President Barack Obama said in his weekly radio address:

Americans know that our economic recovery will take years -- not months. But they will have little patience if we allow politics to get in the way of action, and our economy continues to slide.

Well, of course it will take years if we're going to get around to taking action to fix it only after the Democrats are satisfied that they've done everything they've wanted to do with social policy for the last 40 years. Politics is getting in the way of stimulative action, all right. And that politics is coming from the Democratic side. The Republicans are right to try to block it, or at least to blunt it, because the "stimulus" bill's lack of stimulus and its long-term costs in money and in changes to American society are simply intolerable.If the Democrats want to make big changes in federal health care, environmental, energy, education, labor and social policies, then the Democrats ought to propose those changes in stand-alone bills for debate in Congress, not hide them in a legislative behemoth and call it a stimulus plan.

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Greg Gutfeld, The Offending Angel

BREITBART: Boycott Greg Gutfeld's 'Red Eye'
Andrew Breitbart
Monday, January 26, 2009

"Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld" on the Fox News Channel must be boycotted or taken off the air. Its sexist, misogynist, homophobic, racist, speciesist and self-hating host must be maimed, lynched and/or killed.

If not, someone might be offended. And that cannot happen - especially now that President Obama is poised to make everything really great.

In an era of extreme political correctness, when almost everyone is offended by almost everything, and with self-appointed advocacy groups organized to find offense on behalf of almost everyone - offensively, without the majority in the group's consent - it's nice to know that there's a place to go where everyone can be offended almost all of the time.

Even if it's hidden on the offensive cable news network, according to offensive liberal watchdog David Brock's Media Matters, and shown at an offensive hour - Monday to Friday, 3 a.m. EST.

Two years into its late, late, late-night (or early, early morning - depending on your biological clock) cable news run, "Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld" has solidified itself as television's most reliably absurdist, unpredictable and laugh-provoking news hour.

It's less a comedy competitor to "The Daily Show" - the budget's too low, and Gutfeld isn't a marm at heart - or an insomniac's "The O'Reilly Factor" (Who cares what people who wake after noon think?) than it is a surrealistic "Fernwood 2-Night" (Fred Willard rocks!)

No topic of discussion - ethnic houseboys, torture pits, cannibalism as a "lifestyle choice," seedy tricks in parks, allusions to drug abuse, etc. - is off-limits, and no ideology is predetermined. Show regulars Bill Schulz, a liberal; Andy Levy, a libertarian; and Mr. Gutfeld, a conservative, ensure that the show's point of view isn't rigged.

That means, unlike all other cable news shows, participants aren't pitted to hate one another for disagreeing over farm bills, sex dolls and first-family fist bumps. It's also the go-to show for the rigid and the joyless - those poor wonks at watchdog blogs whose only way of income is creating a universe of make-believe offensiveness.

"Red Eye" guarantees that their shrill cries of outrage keep their fridges stocked with hummus for another day.

When Pigs Fly

FORWARD OBSERVER
Monday, Jan. 26, 2009
by George C. Wilson


Dear President Obama:

The military-industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned about in his farewell speech to the nation 48 years ago this month is now taking us to the poor house in Cadillacs that have little, if anything, to do with fighting the here-and-now threat of terrorism.

Your Defense secretary, Robert Gates, said as much several times while working for former President George W. Bush but didn't cancel anything big.

It's time, Mr. President, to use your awesome powers of persuasion to convince the American people and their hired hands in Congress that we'll never get out of this recession, or depression, unless the Pentagon is forced to join your crusade to cut costs.

Far too many generals, admirals, senators and representatives have fallen in love with these luxury weapons. The politicians who oversee Pentagon spending no longer care what these weapons cost as long as jobs back home are attached to them.

The way Congress oversees the Pentagon "has certainly become dysfunctional," House Appropriations Chairman David Obey told me. "Congress instead of being the watchdog is the dog that has to be watched."

The defense agenda you put on the White House Web site (www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/defense/ ) shortly after your inauguration, Mr. President, was hardly comforting to taxpayers looking to get more bang for their bucks. With the possible exception of missile defense, your posted agenda signals more, more, more.

More Army and Marine troops: 65,000 more for the Army, 27,000 more for the Marines; "greater investment" in manned and unmanned aircraft; "recapitalize our naval forces;" counter "possible threats to U. S. space assets, modernize the National Guard and reserves." Where was the call for the Defense Department to make cuts to help pull the nation out of the recession? A long list of fallen dictators armed to the teeth testifies to the reality that national strength depends more on the economy than on planes, tanks and guns.

Sure, I realize no politician, including you, wants to look weak on national defense. But cutting fat out of the military budget and insisting on accountability for cost overruns on weapons are not signs of weakness.

Your reviewers of major weapons will not have to look hard to find waste and mismatches between the weapons the Pentagon is buying and the threats America faces.

The Pentagon's Selected Acquisition Reports are one place for them to look, while the high stack of GAO reports documenting how military procurement is wildly out of control is another.

The cost of major weapons has skyrocketed so high that no military service, despite Bush's record peacetime defense budgets, can afford to buy enough of them to cover the world's hotspots. No Cadillac of a weapon, no matter how fancy, can be in two places at once.

A new book, America 's Defense Meltdown published by the World Security Institute's Center for Defense Information, includes a chapter by long-time Pentagon executive Thomas Christie, who spent decades in the sand fighting the procurement bull.

"The overall decision process is broken and in need of far reaching, even radical, remedial actions," writes Christie, who worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations. The basic problem is that contractors and defense executives underestimate what a weapon on the drawing board will cost and overestimate how much money the Pentagon will have to pay for it, the veteran analyst says.

Please insist, Mr. President, that your reviewers zero in on the costs of the Cadillacs and ask on your behalf how they would combat the most likely threats facing our country. Also, it would impose immediate accountability and inspire reform if you told the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps that their procurement budgets will be cut by the amount of their cost overruns on weapons. No more hitting the spare parts budget to make up for the overruns.

Among the many Cadillacs worth challenging are these:

· Army Future Combat Systems. The Pentagon estimates in its latest SAR that 15 systems in the Army program will cost $159.3 billion, or $10.6 billion for each system. The FCS has all kinds of problems.

· Air Force F-22 fighter. In another example of a mismatch, the F-22 has not been deployed to fight terrorists. The Pentagon's own price tag for this plane, designed to take on the now-defunct Warsaw Pact air forces, stands at $351 million a copy, according to the Pentagon's SAR figures, which include research and development costs.

· Navy Littoral Combat Ship. Can you believe, Mr. President, the cost of this supposedly simple ship for brown-water operations is now priced at $1.4 billion each?

· Marine V-22 Osprey. Several Defense secretaries tried to cancel this $118 million aerial taxi cab but got rolled by Congress. Why keep buying such an expensive limo?

CBO calculates the cost of national defense, including nuclear bomb-making by the Energy Department, has climbed to $600 billion this fiscal year not counting the second supplemental of about $70 billion on the way. That total of $672 billion, Mr. President, works out to spending almost $77 million an hour for our protection.

There is an old saying in the military that the commander who tries to be strong everywhere is weak everywhere. The numbers are shouting out, Mr. President: " Houston, we have a problem."

George C. Wilson, former national defense correspondent for The Washington Post, is the author of six books on military affairs. He currently writes the Forward Observer column for CongressDaily.

Andrew Breitbart's Answer to Hollywood Leftist Agenda

January 5, 2009

BREITBART: A million stories to tell

By Andrew Breitbart

On Tuesday, I launch Big Hollywood (bighollywood.breitbart .com), a big group blog that will feature hundreds of the big minds from the fields of politics, journalism, entertainment and culture.

Big Hollywood is not a "celebrity" gabfest or a gossip outpost - it is a continuous politics and culture posting board for those who think something has gone drastically wrong and that Hollywood should return to its patriotic roots.

Big Hollywood's modest objective: to change the entertainment industry. To make Hollywood something we can believe in - again. In order to give millions of Americans hope.

Until conservatives, libertarians and Republicans - who will be the lion's share of Big Hollywood's contributors - recognize that (pop) culture is the big prize and that politics is secondary, there will be no victory in this important battle.

Hollywood is no longer an American industry. And it took a prolonged war in which the studios and most of the stars didn't show up to fight for America to draw attention to this hard truth.

American corporations, the FBI, the CIA and elected U.S. officials are the bad guys in flicks these days. Radical Islamists are seldom vilified while the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines are smeared too often.

Film production - and countless jobs - have been steadily shipped abroad for cost-cutting purposes. Standing ovations at Cannes and Golden Globes - not American popular opinion - determine who wins the Oscar. And homegrown actors are hailed as First Amendment heroes for speaking out against the United States.

The anti-hero rules this celluloid world. Nihilism is packaged as edginess. And there's zero sense that anyone's watching out for quality control. Even the respected awards are often given to the most outlandish and gratuitously deplorable.

In 2003, Meryl Streep told the Wall Street Journal: "We export the crap. And then we wonder why everybody hates us and has a distorted picture of what Americans are."

In the period since Sept. 11, 2001, international box office receipts have steadily exceeded domestic numbers. Film financing now usually begins with international investors and creative decisions are crafted to geopolitical sensibilities rarely simpatico with our own.

Big Hollywood box office analyst Steve Mason will explore these trends and be the first national reporter to crunch the movie numbers throughout the week. Politicians need to pay attention to the results as close as studio executives. Or elections beware.

Globalization explains a good portion of the Hollywood leftward lurch but alienated and demoralized Americans turning off and tuning out further undermines the case for inserting proud Western ideals into entertainment product. We are now giving the world what we think it wants as we turn our heads in disgust. That's not a good formula for a civilization to survive.

Most heartbroken by this cultural and financial sea change are those who ply in the powerful trade of make-believe, who got into show business, for among other reasons, to carry on Hollywood's patriotic mission. It's hard to believe, but not everyone in the business thinks Sean Penn is a gonzo genius.

Hidden amid the "dissent is patriotic" glitterati are thousands of deeply concerned artists and industry players who have mostly privately and sadly watched Hollywood reflect ideals that are not their own.

Non-left-leaning writers, producers, directors and "below the line" members of the creative community will slowly begin to tell "flyover country" that their values are shared - even in glitzy Los Angeles. In fact, to foreshadow its big message, Big Hollywood will be an invitation to aspiring conservatives to drop their political dreams for the grueling Hollywood grind.

Returning veterans of the current war, please move to the head of the line.

Big Hollywood also will offer politicians, think tank brains, pundits and sundry wonks the opportunity to show another face to the conservative movement and the Republican Party. No longer will "South Park" and Dennis Miller carry the load alone in pointing out the absurdities of the modern left.

On Day One, Congressman Thaddeus McCotter invokes the Beatles' "Dear Prudence," inviting Hollywood's "closeted" conservatives to "come out and play." Actor and raconteur Orson Bean remembers that the hopeful movies of his childhood during the Great Depression gave him and many other Americans the will and drive to succeed.

We need to discover that spirit again.

If conservatives don't figure out popular culture soon, the movement will die a deserving death. If Hollywood liberals can't learn how to play well with those with whom they disagree, Big Hollywood will have a field day at their close-minded and intolerant expense. The days of open bullying in the marketplace of ideas are nearing their end.

Consider this a warning.

Editor in Chief John Nolte is veteran of the film blog world, and a director in his own right. His love of the best of Hollywood - yes, there still is great product - will keep the readers and the writers enthusiastic about the future.

I will be writing and recruiting like the madman that I am.

Hollywood may not be completely anti-American yet, but it is certainly no longer pro-American. And no one has put up a public fight to change that.

Until now.

Andrew Breitbart is the founder of the news Web site breitbart.com and is co-author of "Hollywood Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon - the Case Against Celebrity."