A good compendium of counterattack links is found here. But if that isn’t enough, we also have Warner Todd Huston explaining why Jindal is so important and why the other side feels so compelled to take him down.

One can also watch the 60 Minutes piece on the Governor to realize the significance of Bobby Jindal. His political opponents realize that whatever the effect of one speech, the Governor will be a force to be reckoned with for decades to come and that his rise represents a threat against the established Democratic (note the absence of a small “d”) order. Thus the desperate attacks, launched at a fever pitch, to try to take the Governor down. It’s not working, of course, but that may not necessarily stop the Governor’s political opponents; as far as they are concerned, facts only get in the way when it comes to smearing and sliming Republicans.

Though I am sure that he doesn’t like it, and while the wording of his post tries to keep up a smidgen of controversy about the matter, even Kevin Drum is forced to admit that there’s not that much there there when it comes to attempting to manufacture a Jindal scandal. I would be even less generous, but at least, Drum makes it clear that there pretty much is nothing to the manufactured scandal.

Too bad his is a lonely voice on the other side of the partisan divide. But then, that is what happens when the overwhelming majority of people on the other side of the partisan divide simply choose not to be honest concerning this issue.

So sayeth Mickey Kaus, who points out that the legislation appears to allow federal arbitrators to impose a two-year contract in the event that a newly unionized employer cannot come to an agreement with a new union. This will include “freezing in place hierarchies and job categories both across industries and within individual firms.”

How anyone expects the economy to thrive and prosper when government is empowered to swoop down on individual businesses, tell them that they have to abide by a certain agreement with a union and take away the business owners’ abilities to promote, demote, and set up other elements of the hierarchical structure within the company is, of course, anyone’s guess. The people who wrote the card-check bill obviously have an enormous amount of faith in the omniscience and good intentions of government officials.

Won’t it be something when those people see how disastrously things will turn out, assuming that the card-check bill is actually (perish the thought) passed.

You wonder if Maureen Dowd reads her own paper when she writes things like this: “Mr. Obama called W. on Friday to give him a heads-up about the repudiation on Iraq. Robert Gibbs said the call was not at all contentious.” Should someone tell her it wasn’t contentious because it marked  the fulfillment not the repudiation of Bush’s Iraq policy? (Hence, the decision to leave the most troops possible in place through the next election and leave 50,000 there for a while thereafter.)

–Jennifer Rubin. It’s long been a mystery to me as to why Dowd’s trite, lame, desperate attempts at humor, coupled with her complete ignorance of basic facts, haven’t gotten her fired from the New York Times. I suppose it says something about the newspaper that they keep her there; either the Times feels pity for a columnist who likely won’t be able to write anywhere else, or they are blissfully unaware of the damage they are doing to their reputation by keeping Dowd around.

“Bush probably would have given a very similar speech.”

Do read the whole thing, of course, but that line was worth highlighting. As is the following:

At the risk of heading into la-la land, I think Obama should have tipped his hat ever so slightly today to President Bush, Sen. McCain, and other Republicans who had supported the surge strategy, naming them and thanking them. Of course, there’s no telling how Iraq would look today had the surge never happened, but it’s likely that conditions would be pretty grim and that this withdrawal plan would have the smell of defeat to it, rather than the opposite, as it does.

Obama could have caveated this to death — “I opposed Bush’s decision to begin this war, I opposed how he sold it to America, I opposed the way he prosecuted it,” etc. But he could have recognized that Bush’s decision to change strategies in 2007 is in large part why the security situation in Iraq has turned around more than anyone could have hoped, why we can now begin drawing down our forces with a good measure of confidence, and why our troops now feel more and more that their sacrifice is worth it.

Not only would this have been magnanimous, it would have been smart politics. It would have acknowledged the bipartisanship that underlies the decision to begin bringing our troops home by drawing an important line of continuity through our Iraq efforts of the past two years. It would have disarmed Obama’s more hawkish critics on Iraq by conceding their point on the surge and turning it into an argument for the drawdown, which it is. And it would have shown Republicans that Obama is committed not just to a bipartisanship of style but of substance — not just being willing to recognize when the other side has valid points, but actually incorporating them into one’s own thinking.

The President should have taken Brose’s advice. He would have found much to praise in the Bush Administration’s implementation of the surge and the counterinsurgency strategy. On this issue, see also my contribution to the Arena.

The awful Obama Administration budget and its promises of deficit reduction are premised on the Administration’s belief that we will have robust growth in the economy within relatively short order.

Trouble is that said assumption has no basis in reality:

A sense of disconnect between the projections by the White House and the grim realities of everyday American life was enhanced on Friday, as the Commerce Department gave a harsher assessment for the last three months of 2008. In place of an initial estimate that the economy contracted at an annualized rate of 3.8 percent — already abysmal — the government said that the pace of decline was actually 6.2 percent, making it the worst quarter since 1982.

[. . .]

Yet, in drawing up the budget, the White House assumed the economy would expand by a robust 3.2 percent in 2010, with growth accelerating to 4 percent over the next three years.

“It’s a hope, a wing and a prayer,” Mr. Sinai said. “It’s a return to a sanguine view of the economy that is simply not justified.”

If, as is widely anticipated, the economy grows more slowly than the White House assumes, revenue will be lower, forcing the government to cut spending, raise taxes or run larger deficits.

Oh, and if that is not cheery enough, note that people are throwing the word “depression” around. Chances are that it won’t get that bad but these kinds of predictions do feed on themselves, so perhaps, I am being too sanguine. In any event, given that the D-word is being bruited about and that work needs to be done to fight against any hint of a depression coming along, remind me again why it is that the Administration is raising taxes on anyone?

Remember: Government is presumably “reality-based” now.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

But not to their own facts:

In giving the republican response to President Obama’s speech Tuesday night, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal pointed out fundamental differences in how republicans and democrats see the economy.

Wednesday morning on the CBS Early Show, Vice President Joe Biden asked, “But what I don’t understand from Governor Jindal is what would he do? In Louisiana, there’s 400 people a day losing their jobs. What’s he doing?”

But that claim is wrong if you look at the numbers from the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

“In December, Louisiana was the only state in the nation besides the District of Columbia, according to the national press release, that added employment over the month,” said Patty Granier with the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

“The state gained 3,700 jobs for the seasonally adjusted employment,” Granier said of the most recent figures.

Those numbers are available on Louisiana’s employment website, laworks.net.

To be fair to the Vice President, he probably did not know the website number.

Related to the discussion concerning Bobby Jindal, as Brother Erick writes, everyone and their pet canaries on the other side of the partisan divide are after him and are seeking to lie about the work he did in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. At first blush, it strikes one as amazing that so much of a fuss is made of the person who delivered the GOP response to Barack Obama’s non-State of the Union address . . . until one remembers that Governor Jindal’s work in reviving a Louisiana battered by the corruption and incompetence of a predecessor Democratic Governor, Jindal’s own expertise on a whole host of policy issues–including health care–and his inspiring background and highly impressive intellect make him a tremendous threat to Democratic dreams of electoral dominance.

If the Democrats did not fear Bobby Jindal, they would not be paying so much attention to him. The Governor ought to be flattered.

I think not:

In early October, as the meltdown of the financial industry gained momentum following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 59% of U.S. voters agreed with Ronald Reagan that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Since then, the stock markethas fallen roughly 3,000 points, millions of jobs have been lost, nearly a trillion dollars has been spent so far to bail out the financial industry, an additional $787-billion government stimulus package has been approved, and a new president has taken office who has proposed spending billions and billions more.

Despite all that, a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows that the basic views of the American people have not change: 59% of voters still agree with Reagan’s inaugural address statement. Only 28% disagree, and 14% are not sure.

I have to think that all of this could pay dividends for Republicans if the GOP can win the public relations war over the size of the Obama stimulus package, the budget, the deficits the Administration is running up, the taxes they want to raise, and the way in which the Administration is working to bring back the era of Big Government. Ecstasies over a New New Deal notwithstanding, the public is not in the mood for bigger government and can be persuaded to give a big thumbs-down to the Administration’s efforts to expand government if only White House spin is not allowed to trump the facts of the Administration’s domestic program.

It may be Barack Obama’s White House. But it is still Ronald Reagan’s America. If the latter sees clearly that the Administration’s policy priorities are antithetical to its own, we will look back on talk of the GOP’s decline and laugh.

Her dig at George W. Bush notwithstanding, it is clear that Nancy Pelosi’s veto of any prospect of reviving the assault weapons ban that Eric Holder and the Obama Administration want, demonstrates that despite the election, Second Amendment rights are still very much on the march. This little incident shows a great deal; we see that Congressional Democrats are very much aware of lines that they ought not to cross and that the Obama Administration should not cross, and that the Attorney-General and the Administration did nothing by way of consulting with Congressional Democrats before coming out in favor of the assault weapons ban.

Political clumsiness + a misreading of the sociopolitical situation = potential trouble down the line for the Obama Administration. The Speaker may have pulled them back from a misstep in this particular case, but the Administration’s (pardon the pun) jumping-of-the-gun signals that there could be serious political missteps in the offing.

They really don’t come as blunt as this:

“The taxing aspect of this is worse than Robin Hood,” said economist Peter Morici, a University of Maryland professor. “He’s resurrecting class warfare for political gain.”

Oh, and say hello once again to Ms. Rosy Scenario. She is a lovely lady, to be sure, but quite often, she promises far, far, far more than she delivers.

This is the kind of thing one uses one’s inside voice to comment about. And if one has to speak up about it, one speaks up about it privately.

Pardon my snark, but if Leon Panetta were more versed in national security and intelligence matters–instead of merely being parachuted into a national security/intelligence position–he might have known this. And while I had hoped that his experience as White House Chief of Staff during the Clinton Administration would have been helpful in navigating these policy thickets, it would appear otherwise.

My response. A taste:

Let it never be said that Barack Obama is not a very good communicator. While he has rightly been critiqued as being far better in front of a teleprompter than he is as an extemporaneous speaker, the fact remains that he is an exceedingly good orator when in front of a teleprompter. And since most people don’t bother to make a distinction between prepared speechmaking and extemporaneous speechmaking, Obama’s oratorical legend will likely not take any hits anytime soon.

It certainly will not take any hits after the President’s non-State of the Union address. But while the delivery of the speech was excellent, the actual content left much to be desired.

More here.

I missed this when it first got posted but Eric Posner has a very informative post on the origins of the acquiescence shown by the Office of Legal Counsel to the Office of the Presidency when it came to national security and the prosecution of war. The OLC’s stance on these issues was pretty well established in the Clinton Administration. When you read the following excerpt, keep in mind that a whole host of Clinton appointees have come back or are coming back to the Justice Department now that Barack Obama is President:

The Clinton OLC put into place all the elements of the Bush OLC’s legal justification for war-on-terror activities. The president can go to war on his own authority; he can conduct the war as he sees fit; a war can exist between the United States and a non-state entity such as al Qaida; Congress’s ability to interfere is limited by the president’s constitutional powers, including his Commander in Chief power. International law may be ignored. Legal opinions may be kept secret. And, no, you don’t have to address the Youngstown case. Is there any reason to think that the return of Clinton’s appointees will change all this?

Perhaps, they have learned their lesson and will stand up to President Obama in a way that they never did with President Clinton. One can be forgiven for being skeptical. Consider the “principles” for OLC conduct that [Dawn] Johnsen [who was appointed by President Obama to head the OLC] and her coauthors advocate. OLC opinions should provide “an accurate and honest appraisal of the law” (principle #1) and should “reflect all legal constraints” (principle #2) but should also reflect “the institutional traditions and competences of the executive branch as well as the views of the President who currently holds office” (principle #4)–traditions that encompass broad war-making powers, as the Clinton OLC repeatedly noted. Indeed, “on very rare occasion[s],” the executive branch may “decline[] to follow a federal statutory requirement” (principle #5). Here, the executive branch “typically should publicly disclose its justification” (principle #5)–”absent strong reasons for delay or nondisclosure” (principle #6), for example, as the accompanying text indicates, involving “national security matters.”

One cannot say for certain whether the Clinton-era OLC would always have gone as far as Bush’s OLC when confronted with specific presidential demands for authority during an emergency. But in light of the record of repeated acquiescence in a less dangerous time–and no public evidence that the Clinton OLC ever said “no” to Clinton on a national security matter–the critique of presidential power offered in public from 2001 to 2009 rings hollow. The Clinton officials cheerfully loaded the revolver of presidential power and handed it over to the Bush administration.

And speaking of the Imperial Presidency . . .

Funny enough, the usual suspects are muttering phrases like “King Barack.” I guess they like executive power now.

A movement self-confident in its place in American society would not have made Joe the Plumber a bigger story than he actually was. Since its very beginnings as a movement, conservatism has bought into liberalism’s dominant place in the American political process. They controlled all the major institutions: the media, academia, Hollywood, the Democratic Party, large segments of the Republican Party, and consequently, the government. Liberalism’s image of conservatives in the ’50s and ’60s as paranoid Birchers gave birth to a conservative movement self-conscious of its minority status. As in any tribe that is small in number and can’t fully trust its most natural allies (i.e. the business community or the Republican Party), the meta-debate of who is inside and outside the tribe is magnified exponentially.

The legacy of that early movement — alive and well at CPAC and in the conservative institutions that still exist today — is one driven inordinately by this question of identity. We have paeans to Reagan (as if we needed to be reminded again of just how much things suck in comparison today), memorabilia honoring 18th century philosophers that we wouldn’t actually wear in the outside world, and code-word laden speeches that focus on a few hot button issues that leave us ill-equipped to actually govern conservatively on 80% of issues when we actually do get elected.

This culture of identity politics means we get especially defensive about the Liberal Majority’s main lines of attack, because we think of our position as inherently fragile. The one that spawned the Cult of Joe the Plumber was the meme that Republicans want tax cuts only for the rich and that we don’t stand for working Americans. When find a highly visible figure who contradicts this notion, we swing into action. And we go on to press the argument to the point to absurdity, replete with plungers and custom “Joe” yard signs to prove our working class chops. These are the not the marks of a movement that assumes it operates (or should operate) from a position of political and cultural supremacy.

–Patrick Ruffini. Or to put matters more succinctly: Joe must go.

“Budget reconciliation” is an important phrase for government wonks and it has a particular meaning in a parliamentary setting. In the Senate, items that are included as part of a budget reconciliation bill get placed on the fast track to approval because those items do not need to overcome filibusters to be voted on and voted into law. While the time limit for debate is oftentimes exceeded when omnibus packages are part of the reconciliation process, generally, debate for reconciliation matters is limited to only 20 hours in the Senate.

Seeing as how Senate Democrats are oh-so-close-but-not-quite-there when it comes to having the 60 votes necessary to invoke cloture and overcome Republican filibusters, budget reconciliation is a tempting way for Democrats to get around the sixty vote requirement and pass items on their wish lists without worrying about compromising in order to pick off Republican votes. Senator Barbara Boxer wants to put carbon emissions regulations into a budget reconciliation bill and pass the regulations more easily.

There is a problem with this approach, however. Only a certain number of items are supposed to be part of the reconciliation process. As the link above mentions:

. . . The Budget Act also maintains that reconciliation provisions must be related to reconciling the budget. For example, section 313 of the Budget Act, more commonly known as the “Byrd Rule”, provides a point of order in the Senate against extraneous matter in reconciliation bills. Determining what is extraneous is often a procedural and political quagmire navigated in part by the Senate Parliamentarian. The Byrd Rule and other points of order in the Budget Act may only be waived in the Senate by a three-fifths vote. Furthermore, the Budget Act prevents reconciliation legislation from being filibustered on the Senate floor.

Boxer and allies say “to heck with this” and itch to pass a non-budgetary carbon emissions package as part of the reconciliation process. But amazingly enough, a number of Democrats are standing up and saying “nyet”:

Read More →

A brouhaha has developed concerning Bobby Jindal’s critique of the decision to include funds for volcano monitoring in the recent stimulus package. “Surely,” the critics cry, “we need to monitor volcanoes!” And presumably, government does volcano monitoring best.

Of course, this argument suffers from the fact that the private sector got there before the government did. Perhaps the real problem with the Jindal’s discussion of volcano monitoring was that he did not mention that government–the supposed, efficient, all-purpose guarantor of our safety–failed to get in on the act in time.

It is kicking the stock market while it is down:

Stocks fell on Wednesday after President Barack Obama warned of stricter oversight for Wall Street, raising the specter of greater regulation that investors fear could sap profits.

Obama’s comments near the market close rattled investors when he said financial institutions that pose a serious risk to markets should be subject to serious government supervision.

“Whenever there is a question about how large the government role will be … the market doesn’t like that,” said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Equity Markets in Jersey City, New Jersey.

“As we came close to the bell we got the curveball: our president came on TV,” he said.

Trade was choppy on Wednesday, with stocks buffeted by uncertainty over Washington’s plan to shore up the banking system and weak housing sales. The market had turned briefly positive after the government gave details on stress tests of banks’ capital levels, with investors betting that banks would be able to withstand the news tests with relative ease, before finally falling in late trade.

The Dow Jones industrial average (DJI:^DJI – News) was down 80.05 points, or 1.09 percent, at 7,270.89. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (^SPX – News) was down 8.24 points, or 1.07 percent, at 764.90. The Nasdaq Composite Index (Nasdaq:^IXIC – News) was down 16.40 points, or 1.14 percent, at 1,425.43.

And how many more days of this is the market supposed to take? Once again, cast your minds back to 2000-2001, when Democratic leaders were accusing George W. Bush of “talking down the economy.” Isn’t that what the Obama Administration is plainly doing?

This:

Even before a gang of heavily armed men burst into his house and forcibly evicted him from his land, farming had become a hazardous business for Malcolm Clark, a 66-year old Zimbabwean who has made his living as a farmer since 1962.

During the last two years electricity shortages have made it virtually impossible to irrigate, reducing output at the 92-hectare holding north of Harare where Mr Clark cultivated a range of vegetables and seeds.

“I didn’t think I would survive,” said Mr Clark describing last month’s attack, which farmers’ organisations say forms part of a “final push” by supporters of President Robert Mugabe to drive the country’s remaining 700 commercial white farmers from their land.

Attacks and legal actions – Mr Clark was accused in September of illegally occupying the land and must appear in court to hear the eviction order against him – are on the increase.

It bears asking anew: In this context, how can any governing coalition that leaves Robert Mugabe in power be countenanced by Zimbabweans and by the international community at large? If Morgan Tsvangirai thinks that sanctions against Zimbabwe will or should go away merely because he is prime minister, he will likely have another think coming. Having the Movement for Democratic Change in power is useless so long as these land grabs–and the brutality that accompanies them–continue.

While the Obama Administration flirts with the idea of bank nationalization–and bank stocks suffer as a consequence because of fears associated with the policy and because of the uncertainty concerning what the Administration will ultimately do–Ben Bernanke has taken it upon himself to calm some nerves:

Stress tests of big US banks that start this week are not likely to lead to any of them being seized by regulators and nationalised outright, Ben Bernanke told Congress during testimony on Tuesday.

Mr Bernanke said “none of the major institutions are subject at this point” to the kind of regulatory intervention used to address banks on the brinks of failure.

The Federal Reserve chairman’s comments provided the clearest signal yet that US authorities hope to support the major banks as going concerns – with partial nationalisation occurring as necessary.

Stocks rose in response. By the close in New York, the S&P 500 index was up 4 per cent from the previous session’s 12-year lows. Wells Fargo was up nearly 17 per cent, while Goldman Sachs was up nearly 15 per cent.

Mr Bernanke said he does not believe that full nationalisation makes sense today.

“I do not see any reason to destroy the franchise value or to create the huge legal uncertainties of trying to formally nationalise a bank when it just is not necessary,” he said.

The Obama Administration might learn something from this. Being forthright about the risks of nationalization and about the fact that it is not needed–intellectual fads in the world of punditry notwithstanding–will do a lot to boost troubled markets and with the markets, general confidence in the economy.

Why doesn’t the President place the Fed Chairman on speed dial so that the next time the President wants to make a speech about how the sky is falling, he can call the Fed Chairman beforehand and be talked out of the idea?

As a special assistant to President Johnson, Bill Moyers–who is celebrated by our friends on the other side of the partisan divide as an exemplary journalist and voice of the forgotten–did the following:

1. He sought to ferret out gay staff members in the Johnson Administration and tried to get J. Edgar Hoover to investigate whether there were gay staff members in Barry Goldwater’s campaign.
2. He played a part in eavesdropping on Martin Luther King, Jr.
3. He shamelessly sought to plant questions at White House press conferences–so many, that members of the press objected loudly and vociferously.

As a “journalist,” Moyers decries “scripted” Presidential press conferences, even though he once one of the most zealous scripters of Presidential press conferences in history. His accusations of “scripting” against the Bush Administration rest on a joke made by the former President that Moyers conveniently chooses to take oh-so-seriously, while never revealing to his audience that there was never anything facetious about his efforts to script press conferences. And of course, Moyers has nothing to say about the fact that Barack Obama also “scripts” his press conferences.

Jack Shafer’s piece is titled “The Intolerable Smugness of Bill Moyers.” Well put.