It was this past week in which Barack Obama said that deficit spending could cause a double dip recession. Nonetheless, a “New Consensus Views Stimulus as Worthy Step.” That, at least, is the headline in the New York Times as it tries, on its front page above the fold, to push for a second stimulus.

But things are not as they seem.

Remember, Obama says more deficit spending is bad. Then there is this:

Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small. The economy needs a second big infusion, they say.

No, some conservative-leaning economists counter, we were right: The package has been wasteful, ineffectual and even harmful to the extent that it adds to the nation’s debt and crowds out private-sector borrowing.

The Times goes on to say that “more dispassionate analysts [have] reach[ed] a consensus that the stimulus package, messy as it is, is working.” But concedes that only “a quarter of the stimulus money [has gone] out the door after nine months.”

If all of this is above the fold in the New York Times, particularly the last bit, why the heck do we need a second stimulus? Only one quarter of the first stimulus has been used and unemployment continues to rise.

For those attempting to figure out what is in the Senate ObamaCare bill, you are in the company of 99 U.S. Senators who have not seen the bill. At least that is what today’s New York Times is reporting:

“frustration has been growing among some lawmakers over the delay, especially as they are asked repeated questions about a bill they have not yet seen.

“I don’t think the bill text is being shown to anybody,” Mr. [Senator] Nelson said last week.”

According to CNN: “In fact, no one has seen the Senate bill.”

They a have a phrase out West for this — all hat, no cattle.

I call it a vapor bill — all hype, no bill.

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When are the Democrats going to start cracking some heads over those who have been egging them off the cliff called health care reform?

Answer: when they lose some elections.

Oh, they did lose elections in VA and NJ — only twice in the history of Virgina has the GOP taken all three top state positions, and this is one of those two times. And the exit polls show the independents voting for the GOP by a 2 to 1 margin in both NJ and VA.

After the Dems lost these elections, they barely passed health care reform out of the House. And still Sen. Reid and the White House and the House Leadership will not change their pass-health-care mantra.

What is ironic is the Dems have been down this road before, with President Clinton — and they somehow believe that a farther left reform with a government run health insurance plan is going to make everything politically better. But even in Ohio and Connecticut polls show that it is not going to be OK.

The Dems won’t discipline those who got them to this politically painful place because the Democratic party’s pursuit of health care reform is not politically rational. They are all collectively putting their hand in the flame, and will not pull it out.

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While the dollar hits a 15 month low, and gold hits an all time high, and the editorial page editor of the Washington Post (no less) is warning:

“The bill also could take America a step closer to bankruptcy. And for progressives in particular — for those who believe that government has a mission to help the poor and protect the vulnerable — that prospect should be alarming. If federal debt continues rising on its present path, hastened by a $1 trillion health-care bill, it is the poor and vulnerable who will be most harmed.”

This is also why some political risk analysts are connecting the dots between PelosiCare and the value of the dollar:

“If the Reserve Bank of India’s directors had any doubts about the wisdom of buying 200 tonnes of IMF gold — and likely dumping some U.S. Treasuries in the process — they had only to watch last weekend’s legislative activities on Capitol Hill. The proceedings provided plenty of reassurance that the move was a smart play.

“Nothing in the healthcare reform bill that passed the House of Representatives should give investors in dollar-denominated assets any confidence that U.S. policymakers are serious about tackling the government’s structural budget deficit.”

Amazing as it is that the Washington Post would be pointing out the obvious about the Democrats $1.2 Trillion health care spending plan, since liberal and progressive news writers have given aide, comfort and a criticism-free ride for those who are doing the spending.

It is apparent that there is no amount of money too high to spend for the House Democrats on health care reform. CBO confirms the amended House bill spends $3 Trillion.

But now Fred Hiatt has really stepped over the lines — he is “calling out” President Obama for his failure to cut keep his promise about the health bill spending and the deficit.

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I have some suggestions for the New York Times.  When you provide stories like this:

Federal agents on Wednesday fatally shot a man they described as the leader of a violent Sunni Muslim separatist group in Detroit.

The 53-year-old man, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, was killed in one of three raids conducted in and around the city, in which six followers of his were taken into custody.

…there are things that you need to mention.

• If the group that this guy was affiliated with is “a group of mostly African-American converts to Islam, which seeks to establish a separate Sharia-law governed state within the United States,” we need to know that. A story about domestic terrorists is a different story than one about foreign terrorists. It just is.
• Likewise, if Luqman Ameen Abdullah - the leader who got shot - was born with the name “Christopher Thomas,” we need to know that.
• And finally: if the guy is saying things like “Obama is a Kafir. McCain, all the rest of them Kuffars, are Kuffars,” we need to know that.  Especially that first sentence.

Let’s be blunt: the FBI shut down a proto-cell* of radical fringe Black Muslim domestic terrorists - which is something that’s going to please everybody, with the possible exception of CAIR.  And as can be seen from the links, most news organizations are capable of reporting on this in a forthright fashion… but the New York Times takes until the second-to-last paragraph to even hint at it.  Which is problematical; after all, the idea here is for a newspaper to report on what happened.  Not to make its readers have to go out and find out what really happened…

Moe Lane

*They were still at the ‘criminal activities to fund illegal firearms purchasing’ stage.  I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t read of this particular organizational arc before.

PS: Glenn Reynolds wonders why we’re seeing more domestic counter-terrorism operations these days.  At a guess, I think that we got some very good intelligence a few years ago and started up a variety of investigations.  We are now rolling them up because the targets are starting to look like they’re ready to switch from rhetoric to action, now that Big, Scary Bush isn’t in the Oval Office any more…

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The abortion issue, you may recall, was described by George Stephanopoulos as “the gravest threat” to the health reform bill. The largest concentration of Democratic NO votes on health care reform are because of the abortion issue.

So, naturally, in an article about Speak Pelosi’s efforts to rally votes for ObamaCare, the New York Times actually talked about other issues besides the public option as critical to passage of the bill. Here is what the New York Times said about abortion yesterday:

“House Democratic leaders are still trying to figure out exactly how to limit the use of federal money for abortions.”

In other words, they know that their current language will not satisfy, among others, the Catholic Church, which issued a change it or else threat. But the Democratic Leadership has not figured out what to do. The demands of the pro-life Democrats have been really straight-forward, give us a vote on our amendments to ban federally funded abortions and allow medical providers the ability to refuse to perform or help perform abortions.

What this really means is that the Speaker does not want to compromise and allow pro-life amendments, unless she has absolutely no other choice in the matter.

On that issue, the NYT reports “Ms. Pelosi said she had not decided whether lawmakers would be allowed to offer amendments on the House floor.”

The Speaker will not allow the pro-life Democrats to offer and get votes on their amendments. She has not said yes, meaning she is now at no.

Further, the need to get CBO to score the bill before it gets to the House floor was also acknowledged as another complication, as the NYT reported: “In addition, before taking their bill to the House floor, Democrats need to get a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.” This is no small matter, since scoring takes about two week, once CBO has the language in hand.

There are other issues that are causing intra-Dem heartburn, and one of them is the Democratic Governors who are very concerned about the unfunded mandates the federal government is imposing on State governments. A Medicaid concerns letter signed by more than a dozen (14) Democratic Senators, sent late last week to Senators Reid, Baucus and Dodd, can be found here.

It is useful to note that the Speaker does not have the votes for ObamaCare now, nor will she likely anytime soon. Other vote draining issues on the Democratic side are the cuts to Medicare Advantage, the public option, the spending and tax levels of the bill and whether to give illegal immigrants benefits under the bill.

The MSM would like the American public to believe that the Senate Finance Committee bill was scored by the Congressional Budget Office. After all, WaPo, the NYT and the WSJ reported:

WaPo: “The bill would cost $829 billion over the next decade.”

NYT: “The budget office analyzed the bill … its newly projected cost — $829 billion over 10 years.”

WSJ: “The latest Senate health bill will cost $829 billion over a decade.”

But it is a score of a vapor bill — a bill that has no legislative language — and so with much fanfare and pomp the CBO has delivered a Vapor Score of a Vapor Bill. CBO has stated publicly and repeatedly that it cannot accurately score any bill without the legislative language — which does not exist so CBO cannot have it.

Heritage tagged this correctly its Bait and Switch blog:

As the Politico reported yesterday: “While the media and lawmakers often shorthand a CBO letter as a “score” or “cost estimate,” today’s CBO letter is neither. Because the bill is still in “conceptual,” or layman’s terms, CBO’s letter today was a “preliminary analysis.” For it to be an official cost estimate, the bill has to be translated into legislative language.”

And here is a thought from Ryan Ellis at ATR, the reason the latest ObamaCare bill scores so low is because of all the taxes. Here is the list.

For a more wonky analysis of the Vapor Score, see the blog by Donald Marron, a former CBO economist here, and from which the quotes from the MSM above were taken.

The New York Times, on its corrected coverage of the ongoing fall of ACORN:

ON Sept. 12, an Associated Press article inside The Times reported that the Census Bureau had severed its ties to Acorn, the community organizing group. Robert Groves, the census director, was quoted as saying that Acorn, one of thousands of unpaid organizations promoting the 2010 census, had become “a distraction.”

What the article didn’t say — but what followers of Fox News and conservative commentators already knew — was that a video sting had caught Acorn workers counseling a bogus prostitute and pimp on how to set up a brothel staffed by under-age girls, avoid detection and cheat on taxes. The young woman in streetwalker’s clothes and her companion were actually undercover conservative activists with a hidden camera.

Michelle Malkin grades them for the effort: short version is that they’re still flunking, and will continue to do so until they address the Anita MonCrief [corrected] matter*. Michelle ended her article by welcoming the NYT to the ‘jungle.’ Personally, I prefer ‘Fishbowl:’ it’s more descriptive.  People notice these things now.  They notice, also, when newspaper websites do their best to avoid linking directly to conservative online sources; I’m pretty sure that Big Government wouldn’t have gotten that link if ACORN hadn’t pulled their own statement from their own website.

I don’t actually want to see newspapers go away, seeing as they’ve got structural advantages on news gathering that I envy.  Like actual budgets: when someone like Robert Stacy McCain** decides that he’s going to go down to Kentucky and cover the Bill Sparkman murder, he has to shake the tip jar, write a few posts highlighting the issue, and hope that somebody comes through for his expenses.  The equivalent NYT editor simply calls up the relevant department and has somebody set it up.  The ability to follow stories that easily is a powerful ability; would that the NYT was willing to take advantage of it.

Moe Lane

*Unless you consider one sentence sans link or details at the end of this piece ‘addressing.’  Michelle clearly doesn’t.  For that matter, I don’t think that I do, either.

**Otherwise known as R.S. McCain, Bob McCain, Stacy McCain, or Robert McCain.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The number of likely voters who approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President is at 45 percent. (Note: other pollsters poll “Adults” instead of likely voters. Polling adults inflates President Obama’s approval rating.)

The President’s continued pushing of a politically lethal health care plan is to blame. But the three horsemen of the Democratic Party’s Apocalypse: Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Waxman and President Obama keep on riding the Death Horse.

As the Wall Street Journal put it today: “‘What we’re seeing now, both in terms of numbers and the feel out there, this is how big waves feel early on,” said Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report.”

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It is difficult to understand the degree of the lack of understanding of health care reform politics that could produce the “go it alone” editorial by the New York Times today.

Essentially, the New York Times is advising the Democratic Congress to expose itself to enormous political risk for the sake of health care reform, and gives no recognition that the fundamental political baseline of health care reform has been reset.

The go it alone on health care reform blindly ignores the divides within the Democratic Party on health care reform, and these bill-killing-divisions include:

i) including abortion as a benefit;

ii) cutting Medicare by half a trillion dollars;

iii) to include or not, a public option;

iv) raising taxes (and which ones) to pay for the plan;

v) privacy issues over health care databases, of concern to privacy and second amendment activists;

vi) the personal animosity among Democratic members — the most recent example of which is the Chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health calling his fellow Blue Dog Members of Congress “brain dead,” and that they are pursuing a “right-wing” agenda to get donations from the health care industry;

vii) the deficit and debt and $1 trillion in new spending questions;

viii) the government’s control over all of the health plans that could be offered by insurers through the Health Information Exchange, and

ix) a collection of lesser issues of high concern to individual members that deal with their districts or states, that combined with all of the above, give them the back-bone to be at NO; and,

x) any combination of any of the above.

Political analyst Charlie Cook warned earlier this month that the political situation on health care reform had gotten completely out of hand, and that to expect things to remain the same when Congress returns would be a mistake. He is warning that the broadly based negative reaction by the American public (especially seniors and independents) has political consequences. The New York Times blithely ignores this new reality.

The New York Times seems to think that the change that is needed is not changing the reform proposed by the liberals in Congress, but changing the tactics by which these reforms are passed.

It as if the editorial board of the New York Times is standing in a rainstorm without an umbrella or rain coat and insisting they are not wet.

Furthermore, the New York Times heaps blame on Republicans for the trouble health reform is in now, not on the design of the reform that Americans are loudly and clearly objecting to — which is the height of contortionism. Democrats have a huge majority in the U.S. House, 59 votes in the U.S. Senate (including two independents), the White House, the boot-licking media who keep pushing the reform agenda down American’s throats and Phrma’s millions in ad dollars. But the New York Times blames the Republicans — not the Democrats — for the health reform troubles. After all, if the New York Times did not blame the Republicans, they would have to blame the American people. This, of course, would not help sell newspapers, would it? And the New York Times would have to admit they are on the wrong side of the American public, which would seriously disrupt their strong sense of moral superiority on the health care issue.

Political Risk

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Ah, the first “Is [INSERT GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION HERE] [INSERT PRESIDENT'S NAME HERE]’s Vietnam?” article written about a Presidential administration.  Always a magical time.

Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam?

WASHINGTON — President Obama had not even taken office before supporters were etching his likeness onto Mount Rushmore as another Abraham Lincoln or the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Yet what if they got the wrong predecessor? What if Mr. Obama is fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson instead?

Naturally, the NYT is mostly concerned with Afghanistan as it relates to American domestic policy - the idea that the situation might have either national security or humanitarian implications that might affect the decision-making process is carefully ignored - but that’s not unexpected. As the article itself references (but does not admit), the Left has never been interested in Afghanistan as Afghanistan: it was a convenient club with which to try to beat the (Republican) President with, and now that there is no (Republican) President in office the progressive wing is abandoning the illusion of caring, with happy sighs all around.

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With the massive union and Phrma spending in support of President Obama’s health reform bill, supporters have outspent opponents five to one, according to the New York Times:

Supporters of Mr. Obama’s plan to overhaul the system have outspent opponents, with $24 million worth of advertising, compared with $9 million from opponents. An additional $24 million has been broadly spent in support of overhauling the system without backing a specific plan.

While President Obama is attempting to lay blame for his health care reform plan loss of support among the public because of health industry money, the big money, Phrma and the unions, is on his side: $48 million for Obamacare to $9 million against.

So, why is support dropping for President Obama personally? His health care plan specifically? And Democrats generally on the issue of health care, if the White House has a five to one dollar advantage on ad buys?

I’d say its the same reason the American public no longer trust the Democratic-boot-licking-national-television-media on health care reform, and the same reason that President Obama went after emails on the web — the American people know they cannot trust the mainstream media on health care reform. Similarily, the majority of Likely Voters now trust the GOP more than the Dems on health care.

So, the opponent’s message is getting to the American people via the web, and American public are tuning out the national-Obama-boot-licking-media.

In fact, the beginning of President Obama’s health care troubles began with his multi-hour ABC NEWS health care infomercial, when opponents took his quotes and began emailing them to their friends.

So when the liberals and the media and the Democrats start blaming the health care industry for blocking change, it’s not true, the health care industry is backing President Obama’s health reform at a rate of $5 in pro-Obama TV ad, for every $1 spent against.

Paul Krugman is a respected economist and writer - and a Nobel Prize winner. He’s also the intellectual leader of the Democrats’ push for bigger government. From his perch at the New York Times, he pontificates on economics, politics, society, foreign affairs, and a whole host of issues.

But how much stock can you put in an ‘intellectual leader’ who seems to stifling dissent and refusing to admit when he’s wrong?

Yesterday Krugman wrote this on his blog:

It’s no secret that the reaction of a significant number of Republicans to the presidency of Barack Obama has been a bit, well, insane. And don’t start making false equivalences by talking about some video someone once posted on MoveOn’s web site, or some comment someone once posted at Daily Kos. Did any U.S. Senators compare the Bush administration to Germany on the eve of World War II? I don’t think so.

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Hey, grandma, hurry up and die so that Obamacare can pay for healthcare for more worthy, younger folks. That seems to be the message that The New York Times is selling in order to smooth the waters for the nationalized healthcare system that president Obama is trying to peddle to us all.

The Times is running a series titled “Months to Live” in order to help spread the sort of end of life issues that are helpful to Obama’s healthcare agenda, one of which seems to be the idea that elderly should forgo any sort of heroic measures to keep them alive so as not to waste those resources that might be able to go to younger, more vital patients.

In a July 8 article reporting on the end of life care afforded Catholic Nuns in Pittsford, New York, the Times hailed the “dignified” way that nuns end life there with particular emphasis on how many of them refuse extraordinary efforts to keep themselves alive. Apparently, the Times thinks we should emulate the nuns and just let ourselves die without trying too hard to keep on living.

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For all those Americans looking to put more money in their pockets and give less money to health insurers, a Health Savings Account is the plan for you.  You pay a lower premium, and put the cash that would have been going to an insurer in a tax-free account with your name on it.  You own the money, which you spend tax-free to meet your health insurance deductible.  HSAs, which have been around since 2004, and have grown by 31 percent from 2007 to 2008.  Eight million Americans now have an HSA.

In a shocker poll, there is a health care plan that nearly three quarters of those using them would recommend to their friends and families:  it is an Health Savings Account.

84 percent of HSA owners say more Americans should be able to have an HSA.

91 percent say HSAs should remain an option for all Americans.

About 80% of the survey participants said the ability to save for future health care expenses is the primary reason for using an HSA.

For those who do not believe Medicare will be in the same shape it is in now, mainly because of the baby-boomers who are beginning to hit the system, then perhaps sending less cash to insurers and keeping some of it for your future health care expenses is a good idea.

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The New York Times, of all places, ran an article about the debate among the top experts on pandemics if it is better to get the Swine Flu now or later.

“The idea has arisen from the history of the 1918 Spanish flu. A mild spring outbreak was followed by two deadly waves in the early and late winter of 1918-1919. Some believe, although there is little evidence beyond anecdotal reports in old newspapers, that those who got sick in the first wave were less likely to get sick in the second and third.

Many cite as the source of their thinking the book “The Great Influenza,” a history of the 1918 pandemic by John M. Barry.

Mr. Barry, in a telephone interview, said he had never publicly suggested deliberate self-infection, “but I used to joke with my wife, and I may have jokingly said it in speeches, that if a virus emerged and looked mild, I’d be on an airplane to Indonesia.”

He referred to Indonesia, he explained, ‘because that’s where the action is with [Bird Flu] H5N1.’”

The New York Times dig at it’s own profession, “old newspapers,” is especially hilarious because you can bet the “old newspapers” had a much higher chance of being accurate in a real life-or-death situation than those in today’s media who are consumed by fear-driven-hysterics about the mild Swine Flu.

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One would think that The New York Times is purposefully putting American’s in harm’s way with its latest travel section vacation suggestion. If it isn’t doing it on purpose, it certainly is acting almost criminally negligent over its reader’s safety abroad. Back on March 22, the Times suggested that Americans vacation in Deptford, one of England’s most dangerous, crime infested areas. And why would the Times want to send Americans into such a seedy and dangerous place? Because it’s “hip,” man. What else?

The suggestion by the NYTimes for American tourists to visit Deptford brought all manners of jaw-dropping, guffaws from the British press this week. The disbelief is thick over there because Deptford has some of the highest crimes stats in the country — the tenth most violent according to Britain’s Home Office — and Britons simply cannot fathom why The New York Times would willingly send Americans unawares into the heart of such violence and crime.

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The New York Times is squeezing its hard-pressed, low-and-middle income union workers for wage concessions it needs to keep the Boston Globe from shutting down. Its stock price is collapsing like a house of cards, and it’s hemorrhaging cash. And the papers’ editors have crusaded against excessive compensation - especially for firms faring poorly. But apparently none of that is enough to prevent the paper from awarding generous bonuses to its wealthy executives:

At a time when New York Times managers are forcing all employees to take a five percent pay cut, and demanding even larger sacrifices from the NYT-owned Boston Globe, top executives of the beleaguered newspaper received substantial bonus and fringe benefit payments over and above their salaries, according to a proxy statement released on March 11…

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Promoted from Diaries - Moe Lane.

This is priceless:

WASHINGTON – President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.

Admiral Blair sent his memo on the same day the administration publicly released secret Bush administration legal memos authorizing the use of interrogation methods that the Obama White House has deemed to be illegal torture. Among other things, the Bush administration memos revealed that two captured Qaeda operatives were subjected to a form of near-drowning known as waterboarding a total of 266 times.

Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past,” he wrote, “but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.”

A spokeswoman for Admiral Blair said the lines were cut in the normal editing process of shortening an internal memo into a media statement emphasizing his concern that the public understand the context of the decisions made in the past and the fact that they followed legal orders….

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22blair.html?hp

Where to start? A little schadenfeude always is a great place to start.

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Once again The New York Times unleashes a not-so-hidden agenda on its reading public. Here the Times is regurgitating the debunked claim that “90%” of Mexico’s recovered guns used in crime south of the border are from U.S. gun dealers. There is a lot of misdirection in this piece against gun dealers and gun shows, as well. Contradictory claims are made with no proof offered but the say so of The Times.

The Times begins its tall tale by talking about Mexican gun smugglers that find it easy to buy “military style” weapons at U.S. gun shops to be smuggled into Mexico. The story talks of these “lightly regulated” gun dealers and blames them for the smuggling apparently because no records are kept or buyer’s identities ascertained. And near the top half of the story is the debunked “90%” claim.

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