Way to set that example, folks.

Then again, Do as I Say, Not as I Do has always been much more of your strong suit than actually living an example, hasn’t it? (Case in point: PETA’s penchant for protecting everybody’s animals except their own, which they enjoy slaughtering in very large numbers).

Oh, and Open Thread.

PolitiFact.com is keeping track of 500 promises Barack Obama made while campaigning for president. So far, it gives him credit for fulfilling two — not bad for day one on the job.

One of the two (to “Require taxpayers to report more detail on capital gains taxes”) was actually dealt with by Congress as part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, signed by former President Bush on October 3; however, PolitiFact says, “Even though it happened before he took office, we’re going to give him credit for it. He promised it, and it is now the law of the land. Promise kept.”

Two down, 498 to go, 12 of which PolitiFact is counting one as “stalled” (“Create a $3,000 tax credit for companies that add jobs”) and 12 as in the works. In other words, Barack Obama’s got a loooong way to go to live up to his campaign promises.

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It’s great to see the sudden outpouring of pro-Americanism and goodwill from a population which managed to repress those emotions so successfully over the last eight years. President Obama’s inauguration has apparently prompted folks like Ashton Kutcher, Aaron Eckhart, Marissa Tomei, and others to suddenly discover that they want to make themselves better by helping the poor, conserving, working together, and being the best they can be.

Contra what many supporters would have us believe, this doesn’t demonstrate the mythic ability of Barack Obama to inspire folks to come together across the divide and sing kumbayah in harmony; rather, it shows that the take-my-ball-and-go-home-when-I’m-not-catered-to crowd (of which First Lady Michelle “For the first time I’m proud of my country” Obama is one) has decided to come back and play with the rest of us now that The Other is gone and one of “theirs” is in the Oval Office.

To the Hollywood actors, the liberal blogosphere, and my more leftward-leaning fellow Arena contributors: welcome to the party. Most of us recognize that America is America, however much hate you may harbor for its leaders, and have supported it the entire time — through Reagan, through Bush, through Clinton, through Bush again, and will continue to do so through Obama’s presidency. We won’t agree on everything — for example, I hope much of Obama’s domestic agenda fails utterly — but it won’t stop him from being “my president too,” or me from patriotically supporting my own country.

I was encouraged by President Obama’s willingness to address the “Muslim world” as a whole in his inaugural discussion of the need to renounce terrorism and violence and to adopt a more civilized worldview. Despite his clear understanding of the terror networks threatening civilized societies the world over, former president Bush was often reluctant to address the problem of Islamist terror by its name.

We can only hope that Obama’s message to that “Muslim world,” on the other hand, was simply phrased as it was to please his liberal/progressive base, rather than an accurate expression of his worldview. “We seek a new way forward,” Obama said, “based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”

Though the far left often claims that President Bush’s policy was unnecessarily heavy-handed and reckless, the reality is that “mutual interest and mutual respect” was exactly the basis for Bush’s policy with the post-Taliban government and people of Afghanistan, the post-Saddam government and people of Iraq, and with so many others the world over.

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It was likely inevitable that at least one of the many aging leaders of the civil rights movement would use his time in the limelight today to make an effort to keep the embers of the race-based flame wars from being extinguished once and for all. In this case, it was Rev. Joseph Lowery, who used his opportunity to pray before the masses to rehash the long-past ills of a bygone age of racism and inexcusable ethnic discrimination.

“Lord,” said Lowery, “we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around… when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.”

Listening to Lowery, you would never know that today marked the first time an African American was sworn in to the highest office in the land. Rather, you would think America was still stuck in the pre-1955 era — that Rosa Parks had never refused to move to the back of the bus, and that the Rev. Martin Luther King had never made his historic plea for “all” people to be judged not on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character– something today more than any day since then shows is, indeed, possible.

Today was a historic day for multiple reasons. Unfortunately, even with the swearing-in of the first black president in U.S. history, some Americans – and some American “leaders” – are apparently finding it impossible to let their hatred go and to live in the present, rather than in the distant past.

Apparently it’s not just white Pennsylvanians who bitterly cling to things, is it?

We’ve seen the evidence mounting over the last several years of professional journalism’s slide from respectable fourth estate to irrelevant outlet for liberal activism. We’ve seen Dan Rather’s “fake but accurate” forged-document-based assassination attempt on George W. Bush, and Chris Matthews’s tingly-legged assertion that his job as an objective journalist, while formerly being centered on bringing down the Bush administration, is now to ensure that Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House is a “success,” regardless of the facts or the cost.

We’ve seen the shoddy workmanship on the part of Reuters and CNN, which have unquestioningly published faked photographs and videos provided by stringers and terrorist outlets simply because they fit in with those journalists’ worldview by purporting to show innocent Palestinian civilians being massacred by evil Zionist storm troopers.

We’ve heard former CNN head Eason Jordan admit Saddam’s atrocities were swept under the rug by Baghdad-based journalists out of a desire to keep that pointless “news” bureau open, and we’ve witnessed a nationwide mainstream media apparatus in fully operational Death Star mode with regard to a vice presidential nominee who made the mistake of simultaneously being the wrong sex, a member of the wrong party, incredibly popular, and an opponent of the Democratic candidate that media apparatus had decided must, at all costs, become the next President of the United States.

We’ve seen a major news magazine run with a story of the slaughter of Iraqi civilians at the hands of cold-blooded Americans before actually checking those facts, and then drop the topic like a hot rock rather than report that the results of an investigation showed the report, and alleged atrocities, were largely works of fiction from the outset.

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Tomorrow, we will witness one of the great events in human history. Yes, an African-American will be inaugurated president for the first time since America’s founding — and I’ll get to that momentarily — but that’s not what I’m referring to here.

What I’m talking about here is far more underrated, and far more consistently historic. You see, tomorrow we will witness that rarest of political occurrences: the peaceful, non-dynastic transfer of power over the mightiest country in the world, yet again, from the outgoing leader of the past eight years to the incoming leader of at least the next four.

The fact that America’s transitions from president to president are so regular, so peaceful, and so orderly has led us to take for granted this occurrence which, in the context of human history, is an incredibly rare and spectacular event.

This is far more rare, and far more amazing, an occurrence than we ever give it credit for. The ancient pioneers of democracy whose tradition we are carrying (and building) on were not able to continue such a tradition.

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The AP is reporting that “a confidant[e] of the man Barack Obama defeated in November said Wednesday that the president-elect has earned enormous global good will and “a moment in time” to re-engage other nations with the United States.”

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According to Roll Call:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday said everything will take a back seat to fixing the economy during the first 100 days of the Obama administration and that Congress would complete a massive economic recovery package by the Presidents Day recess in mid-February.

(Translation: Everything will take a back seat to ramming $800 billion in new spending through the Congress as quickly as possible.)

Are you curious about what’s in the stimulus bill? We’ve put it online at ReadTheStimulus.org, and have even parsed the 334-page document on this spreadsheet, line by line and page by page, to reveal the hundreds of billions in new spending that this monstrosity authorizes.

Go check it out for yourself — then call your Congressman and Senator, and let them know that things like $1,000,000,000 for new Censuses, $400,000,000 for “habitat restoration and migration activities,” $150,000,000 for “bridge removal,” $800,000,000 more for Amtrak, and $200,000,000 for the “leaking underground storage tank trust fund” aren’t what you want your tax dollars spent on, especially in a supposed effort to “stimulate” the economy, which these programs (and so many others in the bill) decidedly will not do.

Seriously — if you’re surprised, raise your hand. Didn’t think so.

The fact that a far-left activist would be palling around with diehard enemies of freedom in their own countries and abroad isn’t the least bit surprising; it’s what makes the “liberal” moniker the utter oxymoron we all know and love.

Leon Panetta’s daughter is a perfect example. From Mike Waller’s blog:

If the adult daughter of a CIA Director-designate hangs out with sworn enemies of the United States, it’s a matter for the United States Senate to probe aggressively. And so the Senate really has to ask some very pointed questions about Linda Panetta, daughter of President-Elect Obama’s pick to lead the CIA, and her ties to Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

Linda Panetta is a noted anti-military activist who has accused the US military of teaching Latin American officers how to torture. She has also been close to causes hostile toward the United States and friendly to the old Soviet Union, and the regimes in Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. …

This photo shows Chavez with his arm around Linda Panetta, while former Sandinista junta leader Daniel Ortega smiles on, at left. You saw it here first.

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Mary Katharine Ham has the scoop over at The Weekly Standard:

Of seven newly minted freshman Democratic senators, six voted for releasing the second half of the $700 billion TARP funds in what is being considered Obama’s first major test of strength on the Hill. This would be rather uncontroversial had not five of them, to some degree or another, campaigned against the original, unpopular bailout bill to win their seats.

Emphasis added. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) actually ran an ad during the campaign in which he slammed opponent Gordon Smith (R) for voting in favor of the original TARP bill; however, like the Udalls (Mark, D-CO, and Tom, D-NM), Mark Begich (D-AK), and Kay Hagan (D-NC), Merkley’s opposition to TARP during the campaign (or, like the Udalls, in the House), didn’t stop him from checking that position at the door when it came time to authorize Barack Obama use of the second half of that cash he’d opposed George W. Bush having access to.

All in all, it looks like not much has Changed in Washington, particularly on the Left side of the aisle. Ah well; there’s still Hope, I suppose.

Only three years into George W. Bush’s eight-year tenure as President of the United States, BDS-afflicted lefties, led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., were branding Bush an “environmental criminal” who would “go down in history as America’s worst environmental president.”

“When the Republican right managed to install George W. Bush as president in 2000 [Auth: Remember, he was Selected Not Elected!], movement leaders once again set about doing what they had attempted to do since the Reagan years: eviscerate the infrastructure of laws and regulations that protect the environment,” Kennedy wrote.

By 2007, the verdict was unquestionably confirmed in the mind of the far-left environmentalist movement: Bush and his policies have become “an outright catastrophe for greenhouse gas emissions and future generations,” wrote liberal website Climate Progress.

The latter of those was referring to the increase in U.S. carbon emissions from 5,888 million metric tons in 2006 to 5,984 MMTCO2 in 2007 (a rise of 96 MMTCO2, or 211.6 billion pounds of CO2).

So here’s a question for you: if a rise of 211.6B lbs of CO2 nationwide in a full year makes Bush an “environmental criminal,” then what does an output of 575 million lbs of CO2 in one weekend, because of one person make the individual responsible for that output?

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Wonderful irony, how you entertain us. In a 2005 effort to help do its part to reverse global warming and to cool the overheated planet back down, Minnesota’s state legislature passed a law requiring that all diesel fuel sold in the state to contain at least 2% biodiesel.

Apparently the Gopher State’s wise and environmentally-responsible government did its job too well, as the recently-Chapter-11′d Star Tribune reports:

All schools in the Bloomington School District will be closed today after state-required biodiesel fuel clogged in school buses Thursday morning and left dozens of students stranded in frigid weather, the district said late Thursday.

Rick Kaufman, the district’s spokesman, said elements in the biodiesel fuel that turn into a gel-like substance at temperatures below 10 degrees clogged about a dozen district buses Thursday morning. Some buses weren’t able to operate at all and others experienced problems while picking up students, he said. …

Backup buses were sent out, but four of the district’s 10 backup buses were also affected, Kaufman said.

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In June 2008 amidst an energy crisis and the highest gas prices since the Carter years (not counting the few days after Katrina), President Bush an executive order banning new U.S. offshore drilling. Three months later, a federal moratorium on OCS drilling was allowed to expire by Congress for the first time since the Regan administration. A ban on shale oil was allowed to expire, as well.

Now, the Obama administration and the Democrat Congress, both of whom pay lip-service to making America more energy independent, are seriously considering once again legislating utter American dependence on foreign countries like Venzuela and Saudi Arabia.

Ken Salazar (D-CO), Barack Obama’s nominee to be Secretary of the Interior, has “said he will consider restoring parts of an expired federal ban on offshore oil drilling,” according to CNSNews. When asked how extensive a ban he thought it best to impose, the utterly informed, qualified, and prepared nominee reportedly said, “I have no idea.”

Perhaps, like his prospective boss, Salazar is leaving his then-confident campaign and confirmation rhetoric on the trail and in the hearing room, and is waiting until he is actually in office to “start the process of deciding what to do.”

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Allow me to take a quick departure from politics and policy to offer thanks for the skill of America’s airline pilots. As you have undoubtedly heard, a U.S. Airways Airbus A320 lost its engines due to a bird strike about an hour and a half ago. The pilot managed to maneuver and glide the flying bus into the correct position to make a belly landing in the frigid Hudson River — the only place around that was wide, flat, relatively shock-absorbing, and devoid of people and buildings.

In guiding his plane into the Hudson, in other words, the pilot not only saved the lives of every one of his passengers and crew, but inarguably saved at least a few lives — perhaps hundreds — by not landing in on New York City’s terra firms.

As an FAA-certified Control Tower Operator and an almost private pilot (not to mention the son of a 21-year airline pilot who few for the USAF for 13 years before that), I can vouch for the skill involved in conducting the sort of emergency landing this U.S. Airways pilot did this afternoon, recognizing not only the hazards around him, but knowing exactly how much altitude he could trade for airspeed and horizontal movement before having to put his aircraft down in the safest place possible.

While the A320/737 has a glide ratio of approximately 15mi/1,000ft, turns like those the pilot made to maneuver his plane into the safest landing position eat up altitude at a much higher rate — and this aircraft had very, very little altitude to work with in the first place.

Between the pilot’s incredible skill — a testament to his ability to work under pressure, as well as to airlines’ selection standards and rigorous annual recurrent training — and the admirable performance of the passengers and crew, as well as the quick response on the part of several Hudson ferry drivers to grab the passengers from the frigid water, what could have been an utter tragedy today in terms of human life ended up being a near-miss in which the only real loss was a completely replaceable metal object.

In other words, this could have been very, very bad, but it wasn’t. We should all be incredibly grateful for that.

On Monday, Mexican President Felipe Calderón met with President-elect Barack Obama. What was said, while not a matter of controversy, is being reported differently by papers on either side of America’s southern border.

Here are the headlines:

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Congress is currently debating legislation that would force Americans to pay billions of dollars to take an unpopular taxpayer-funded program for poor children and expand it so that non-poor, non-children will be granted access to benefits.

The program is the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), a taxpayer-funded health coverage program that provides federal dollars to states in an effort to give children in working (and nonworking) poor families a health insurance safety net. SCHIP, which was created in 1997 as a supplement to Medicaid, has grown since its inception, with 41 states raising the minimum income required for enrollment and over 10 percent of the 6 million enrollees nationwide being over the age of 18.

SCHIP and Medicaid together, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, currently insure 45% of all children in America.

Now, Congressional Democrats are moving to expand that number to as close to 100% as possible, not just by covering previously uninsured children with the expanded program, as they claim is their goal, but by crowding out private insurance providers by implementing a massive incentive (not having to pay for coverage) to those holding private policies to bolt that coverage and enroll in an insurance program that is funded by their neighbors.

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hat tip to Ben Domenech on this one.

I just want to apologize for all the “unrelenting personal attacks launched from right-wing Catholic [though it's not limited to that, of course] keyboards-blogs (and bloggers) so coarse and uncivil they make the insults of talk radio sound like actual journalism” that have got you so down right now.

I also want to apologize for “right-wing” zealots’ inability to overlook Obama’s pro-abortion positions, which, as you have said, “obscure[s] what Obama shares with the church: concern for the poor; support for the average family; a commitment to ending an unjust war; and respect for our environment.” (Ooh, and with regard to the second-to-last one of those points: I suppose I should apologize to you on behalf of the Obama administration for their decision to abandon you on that one).

The biggest apology I owe you, though, is for all the talk on the blogosphere about Obama and the “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA), which would, if passed, “completely nullify the national ban on partial-birth abortion that the Supreme Court upheld on April 18 in Gonzales v. Carhart.” I know you’re sick of hearing right-wing fearmongers like us attempt to link Obama to FOCA, even hinting at it being a top priority for his new administration.

You cleared up the matter for us with your very plain, unmistakable statement that this is all in our heads when you wrote, “Blog lies to the contrary, there is no real legislative interest in FOCA.”

Again, I humbly apologize for mischaracterizing the icoming administration’s interest in the abortion-legalization bill. All I can say in my (and our) defense is that it wasn’t our idea in the first place; we got it from this guy:

VP-to-be Joseph Biden (D-DE) came out of hiding this week to boast that he and his boss will be following the post-Iraq-conflict blueprint drawn up by the Bush administration to a T.

At an appearance in Baghdad today, Biden said that “the new administration will stick to the timetable in the [U.S-Iraq Status of Forces] agreement.” As AP writer Robert Reid points out, “Obama pledged during his election campaign to withdraw all American combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office” (naturally he misses the fact that Obama actually sponsored legislation that would have removed all troops from Iraq by March of last year). The SOFA, though, provides for combat troops to remain in Iraq until 2012, with the possibility of an even longer stay if the situation on the ground warrants it.

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