Obama's Making the Economy Worse

Via Conservative Manifesto:

RELATED: From James Pethokoukis, "Obama suppresses his inner Elizabeth Warren during SOTU speech."

IDF Weapons Instructors

Via Theo Spark:

Who Owns Big Oil?

I'm seeing this ad campaign pretty often, so I checked it out. Here's the homepage, Vote 4 Energy.

Federal Reserve Won't Raise Interest Rates Until 2014: Signals That Full Economic Recovery Still Years Away

Well, so much for all the optimism on the economy.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's not too bullish.

At New York Times, "Fed Signals That a Full Recovery Is Years Away":

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it was likely to raise interest rates at the end of 2014, but not until then, adding another 18 months to the expected duration of its most basic and longest-running response to the financial crisis.

The announcement means that the Fed does not expect the economy to complete its recovery from the 2008 crisis over the next three years. By holding short-term rates near zero beyond mid-2013, its previous estimate, the Fed hopes to hasten that process somewhat by reducing the cost of borrowing.

The Fed said in a statement that the economy had expanded “moderately” in recent weeks, but that unemployment remained at a high level, the housing sector remained in a deep depression, and the possibility of a new financial crisis in Europe continued to threaten the domestic economy.

The statement, released after a two-day meeting of the Fed’s policy-making committee, said that the Fed intended to keep rates near zero until late 2014.

Continue reading.

The economy is expected to grow at a rate of 2.2 to 2.7 percent for this year, and unemployment is expected to remain at 8.2 percent, down from the current 8.5 percent but not at a level that would indicate robust job growth.

Maybe Republicans can make some political hay out of this. Seriously, the GOP will be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory if they lose.

U.S. Navy SEALs Rescue Hostages in Daring Overnight Raid in Somalia

This is rad.

At New York Times, "U.S. Forces Rescue Two Hostages From Somali Pirates":

KHARTOUM, Sudan — American Navy Seals swooped into Somalia early on Wednesday and rescued two aid workers, an American woman and a Danish man, after a shootout with Somali gunmen who had been holding them captive in a sweltering desert hideout for months.

Under a cloak of darkness, a couple of dozen Seals parachuted in, stormed the hideout, killed nine gunmen and then whisked the aid workers into waiting helicopters, Pentagon officials said. The Seals were from the same elite Navy commando unit — Seal Team Six — that secretly entered Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden in May, senior American officials said, though the rescue mission in Somalia was carried out by a different assault team within the unit.

President Obama was closely tracking the raid on Tuesday night, which was Wednesday morning in Somalia, and as he stepped into the House chamber to deliver his State of the Union address, he looked right at Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta standing in the crowd and said: “Leon, good job tonight, good job.”

The hostages were safe and soon flown to an American military base in neighboring Djibouti. No Seals were hurt during the operation, Pentagon officials said.

Mr. Obama seems to have taken a special interest in this case, presiding over several high-level meetings on it since the two aid workers were kidnapped in October by gunmen whom Somali elders said were part of a well-established pirate gang.

Pirates operate with total impunity in many parts of lawless Somalia, which has languished without a functioning government for more than 20 years. As naval efforts have intensified on the high seas, stymieing hijackings, Somali pirates seem to be increasingly snatching foreigners on land. Just last week, pirates grabbed another American hostage not far from where the Seal raid took place.

American officials said they were moved to strike in this case because they had received “actionable intelligence” that the health of Jessica Buchanan, the American aid worker, was rapidly deteriorating. The gunmen had just refused $1.5 million to let the two hostages go, Somali elders said, and ransom negotiations had ground to a halt.

Somali pirates have held hostages for months, often in punishing conditions with little food, water or shelter, and past ransoms have topped more than $10 million. One British couple sailing around the world on a little sailboat was kidnapped by pirates from this same patch of central Somalia and held in captivity for more than a year.

President Obama said that he had personally authorized the go-ahead for the operation on Monday. “As commander in chief, I could not be prouder of the troops who carried out this mission,” he said in a statement on Wednesday. “The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people.”

Also at Telegraph UK, "US special forces team behind Osama bin Laden death rescue aid workers from Somali pirates."

Nancy Pelosi Threatens New Revelations Against Newt Gingrich

Actually, her comments are pretty vague, but considering she was out in December with alleged dirt on Speaker Gingrich from his House ethics investigation, it sure seems like a threat.

At The Blaze, "PELOSI: GINGRICH WILL ‘NEVER’ BE PRESIDENT, ‘THERE IS SOMETHING I KNOW’."

And at London's Daily Mail, "'Newt will never become President, there is something I know': Nancy Pelosi issues cryptic threat about Gingrich."

And see the commentary at Legal Insurrection, "Nancy Pelosi’s evil mind games."

Winning the Future Slams Romney in Huge New Florida Ad Buy

At the Miami Herald, "Pro-Gingrich SuperPac announces $6m FL ad buy tying Mitt Romney to ObamaCare." Also at Washington Post, "Super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich makes $6 million ad buy in Florida."

Romney Tax Returns Stoke Resentment in Florida

At Los Angeles Times, "Romney's tax returns sit uneasily with Florida voters."

Reporting from Tampa and Plant City, Fla.—

Even before Tuesday, Mitt Romney was struggling to connect to average voters, suffering from impromptu remarks — proffering a $10,000 wager in a debate, suggesting $375,000 in speaking fees was small change — that gave off a whiff of privilege.

Then came Romney's release of tax returns showing that in 2010 he claimed $21.6 million in income, with an effective tax rate of less than 14%, far less than many middle-class families pay. He also estimated $20.9 million in income for 2011, with a rate of just over 15%.

Jeanne Johnson, a political independent and owner of the Lake Alfred Barber Shop, said that when she heard the news of Romney's taxes on TV, "I thought I was going to throw up."

"It just ruined my day," said Johnson, 51, a single mother of two who has been cutting hair since she was 20. "Like, get a real job."

Others living in her politically crucial area of Florida, where Republican presidential candidates are rushing raucously toward a Jan. 31 primary, took offense not at the sums but at Romney's resistance to releasing his taxes until he was forced.

"He hid his taxes," said Helen Roise, 70, a tax preparer at H&R Block in Plant City, a central Florida hub that bills itself as the winter strawberry capital of the world. "He didn't want us people to know. That's what bothered me."

Even so, Roise planned to vote for Romney, mainly because she is from Michigan and remembers his father, George, as a good governor.

Also at Christian Science Monitor, "Mitt Romney tax return poses a challenge: how to talk about his wealth," and "Mitt Romney's disastrous week ends with collapse in national polls."

Sarah Palin: Chris Christie's 'Panties in a Wad'

At New York Times, "Palin Has a Few Choice Words for Christie."

Gabrielle Giffords Bittersweet Farewell at State of the Union

She's like an angel of hope.

At Los Angeles Times, "Gabrielle Giffords makes emotional return to House floor." And at Salt Lake Tribune, "Giffords a reality check in chamber of politics":

Washington - In a bittersweet farewell, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords accepted bags of chocolates and a big presidential hug as she claimed her seat one last time in the House of Representatives Tuesday night.

Giffords, who has regained much of her ability to speak and walk after a gunshot wound to the head Jan. 8, 2011, will leave Congress this week to focus on her recovery. But first, she wanted to attend the State of the Union she was forced to miss last year in the uncertain days after the shooting.

Just before President Barack Obama was to speak at 9 p.m. EST, Giffords quietly entered the chamber under her own power and made her way the few steps to a seat that had been reserved for her. Hug No. 1 came from friend Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida. Giffords’ colleagues stood and gently applauded her.

"Gabby! Gabby!" some of them chanted.

Limping a little, Giffords beamed around the chamber and raised her left hand to wave. Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, approached with two bags of chocolate, which Giffords took, grinning.

She looked to the gallery to wave at her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly. When First Lady Michelle Obama took her seat next to him, she waved, too.

The president himself swooped in with a big bear hug around Giffords’ tiny frame, grinning widely before climbing to the rostrum for the speech.

She has inspired gestures of bipartisanship. Last year in the tender days after the shooting, members of both parties sat together across the chamber, rather than Democrats to the president’s right and Republicans to his left. Many lawmakers did the same this year.

Throughout the speech, Republican Rep. Jeff Flake, sitting at Giffords’ side, repeatedly helped her stand as her fellow Democrats applauded Obama.

Giffords’ presence may be the only element about the event above politics.

Obama used the highest-profile pulpit in the land to reclaim the spotlight from Republicans battling for the right to face him in the general election. He was speaking to a Congress cranky after a year of the most bitter partisan fighting in recent memory and the public’s widespread disapproval.

He’s weaving a narrative about economic fairness and zeroed in on the richest Americans who pay a lower tax rate than those who bring home a regular paycheck. Obama didn’t say it, but Republican hopeful Mitt Romney, a multimillionaire who released his tax return for 2010 and an estimate for 2011, is one of the nation’s wealthiest in this category.

Billionaire Warren Buffett has said it’s unfair that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does. Emphasizing the point, Buffett’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, attended the address in Michelle Obama’s box.

Gabrielle Giffords is a light unto the world of American politics. I hope she's able to return to politics and give the Democrats a lesson in civility when she comes back.

See also: "Obama SOTU Address 'Rejects' Class Warfare in Call for Millionaires to Pay Their Fair Share of Taxes."

Lea Michele 2012 Candies Photo Shoot

She's on Twitter here. 

And at Hollywood Reporter, "'The Glee Project': Lea Michele to Serve as a Guest Mentor."

Men Cope With Rape

At New York Times, "As Victims, Men Struggle for Rape Awareness" (via Instapundit):

Keith Smith was 14 when he was raped by a driver who picked him up after a hockey team meeting. He had hitchhiked home, which is why, for decades, he continued to blame himself for the assault.

When the driver barreled past Hartley’s Pork Pies on the outskirts of Providence, R.I., where Mr. Smith had asked to be dropped off, and then past a firehouse, he knew something was wrong.

“I tried to open the car door, but he had rigged the lock,” said Mr. Smith, of East Windsor, N.J., now 52. Still, he said, “I had no idea it was going to be a sexual assault.”

Even today, years after the disclosure of the still-unfolding child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and the arrest of a former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach accused of sexually abusing boys, rape is widely thought of as a crime against women.

Until just a few weeks ago, when the federal government expanded its definition of rape to include a wider range of sexual assaults, national crime statistics on rape included only assaults against women and girls committed by men under a narrow set of circumstances. Now they will also include male victims.

While most experts agree women are raped far more often than men, 1.4 percent of men in a recent national survey said they had been raped at some point. The study, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that when rape was defined as oral or anal penetration, one in 71 men said they had been raped or had been the target of attempted rape, usually by a man they knew. (The study did not include men in prison.)

And one in 21 said they had been forced to penetrate an acquaintance or a partner, usually a woman; had been the victim of an attempt to force penetration; or had been made to receive oral sex.

Other estimates have run even higher...

Continue reading.

One in 33 men report having been raped. The statistics are probably higher, because men are likely to under-report cases of unwanted sexual contact, for fear of being branded as effeminate and unable to stand up for themselves.

The Scientific Wonders of La Brea Tar Pits

An cool piece, at New York Times, "Preserved in Tar, Relics From Long Before Freeways":

LOS ANGELES — No one expects to stumble across a cache of Picasso’s works in the middle of a desert. So who would think that just off bustling Wilshire Boulevard, tucked between the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the national headquarters of the Screen Actors Guild, lie buried some of the most exquisitely preserved fossils in the world?

The fossils of the La Brea Tar Pits are just that. They were first discovered in Maj. Henry Hancock’s asphalt mine in the 1870s, when Los Angeles was but a village. Since the early 20th century, more than one million bones have been excavated from the pits; when reassembled, they provide an extraordinary time capsule of the creatures that roamed Southern California 10,000 to 40,000 years ago.

Interest in these animals today, however, is more than a matter of prehistoric curiosity. Many of the species found at La Brea disappeared altogether as the planet warmed at the end of the last ice age. The reasons for their demise are not yet fully understood, but may be especially pertinent to understanding the effects of climate change on animal populations today.

The tar pits have so many fossils precisely because of the tar, which one can still see bubbling to the surface in spots throughout Hancock Park. The gooey asphalt that trapped and entombed the animals turns out to be a great preservative. Thousands of perfect skulls and nearly complete skeletons representing more than 200 vertebrate species have been retrieved from the death trap.

Among them are many giant beasts, including mammoths, mastodons and the short-faced bear. (Only its snout was short; the bear stood more than 11 feet tall, much larger than today’s grizzly, polar and brown bears.) There are two species of bison — one of them with seven-foot horns — and some animals not typically associated with North America, including camels that stood taller than modern dromedaries.

Big cats, too, are well represented. Most famous is Smilodon fatalis, better known (but misleadingly so) as the saber-toothed tiger, a powerful predator named for its protruding seven-inch canines. More than 2,000 of them have been extracted from the tar pits.

And there was an even larger predator, the American lion, 25 percent bigger than the modern African lion. Imagine meeting one while jogging in Malibu.

These big animals and their relatively recent demise raise some big questions. How did they get here? What are their relationships to living species? And why did they all go extinct, and so close together in time?

Continue reading. (A bunch of shilling for action on climate change at the link.)

I need to take my little guy here. He loves this stuff, and I'd forgotten about it myself.

Obama SOTU Address 'Rejects' Class Warfare in Call for Millionaires to Pay Their Fair Share of Taxes

I personally love the pomp and circumstance of the State of the Union address. It's fascinating to see nearly the entire U.S. government in attendance at the House of Representatives. Of course it's a lot more fun to watch when you're cheering your own team, so I'm especially looking forward to next year's speech. As for this year's, frankly, by the time Barack Hussein got around to his economic proposals I was thoroughly bored --- I'd say peeved but I'm way past the point of being irked at this man's fake calls for national unity. He's a bloviating partisan hack in over his head who's proposing more of the same, only this time in a desperate appeal to restore "fairness" to the economy. "President Occupy" goes to Washington, no doubt.

Here's the news, at the Los Angeles Times, "Obama delivers a confrontational State of the Union address," and at Wall Street Journal, "Obama Makes Populist Pitch: President Uses State of the Union to Outline Economic Programs, Kick Off Campaign."

Plus, at The Atlantic, "In a Politically Charged Speech, Obama Says He's No Class Warrior."

Right.

Not a "class warrior."

Check Bloomberg for more on that, "Obama Calls for Higher Taxes on Wealthy to Make Code ‘Fair’":

President Barack Obama called for the nation’s wealthy to pay more in taxes as part of a bargain to restore fairness to the U.S. economy and rein in the deficit, in a State of the Union address that hit the populist themes he’ll be repeating in his campaign for a second term.

Invoking a tax idea named for billionaire Warren Buffett, Obama said the law should make sure million-dollar earners pay at least 30 percent in taxes.

“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by,” Obama said in the text of his nationally televised address before a joint session of Congress. “Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

He also called for incentives for companies to return jobs to the U.S., development of domestic natural gas reserves and alternative energy sources, and providing American workers with better training.

Changes to the tax code would require approval by Congress, and Obama is unlikely to get major legislative initiatives enacted before the November election, which will also decide control of the House and the Senate. He’ll be constrained on spending by efforts to contain the national debt. Last year’s deficit of $1.3 trillion was third-highest as a share of the economy since 1945.

Obama's a damned freak.

He gave a combative partisan speech all the while appealing to the "stitches" of our national unity. F-king Democrat "civility" bull. November can't come soon enough.

The Collapse of the Work Ethic Among Young Americans?

I've never studied the data, so this seems a little incredible to me, but with so much youth support for Occupy Wall Street, I'm sure we could find some larger empirical patterns with research.

An interesting clip, via Kenneth Davenport.

The Obama Memos

From Ryan Lizza, at The New Yorker, "Barack Obama, Post-Partisan, Meets Washington Gridlock."

This is a progressive puff piece that paints the GOP as the polarizing bad guys and the Dems as jilted suitors in some woefully lost post-partisan nirvana. Despite assessing political science data, Lizza doesn't appear to have considered that today's Democrats are socialist partisans with a demonizing agenda or that this administration long ago abandoned any hopes of post-partisan happy talk. What the Lizza piece does do is provide a smokescreen for the MFM and progressive left. They can gleefully point to this article --- and many more like it no doubt on the way --- to tar Republicans as "obstructionist" and "racist" when in fact it's exactly the opposite that's true. See, for example, Victor Davis Hanson's piece at National Review: "Obama's Racial Politics":

Obama has mainstreamed the practice of profiling friends and enemies on this reactionary basis of racial identity. In a Democratic National Committee video in April 2010, Obama called on “young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women . . . to stand together once again.” Are those not included in his categories, then, not to stand “together” again? Shortly before the November 2010 congressional elections, Obama suggested told a huge audience in Philadelphia that Republicans “are counting on black folks staying home.” In one of his most surreal speeches before the Congressional Black Caucus, Obama in affected fashion adopted the supposed patois of Black America in defining collective interests by shared race: “Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do.” Separately, he appealed to Latino voters not to stay home from the 2010 election, but instead to “punish our enemies” — and not to fall prey to the Republicans’ “cynical attempt to discourage Latinos from voting.” I don’t think a president of the United States has ever, at least since the pre–Civil War era, openly called on a racial group to join with him to punish political adversaries.

I would love to see Hanson just destroy Lizza in a debate on this. What's funny though is folks like Lizza are actually convinced they're right. They've got data to prove it! Perhaps. But what they don't have is honesty and common sense, and that decency gap is going to come back and bite them in the ass in November.

If Only We'd Listened to Paul Krugman We Wouldn't Be in This Mess!

I was genuinely cracking up here a couple of times.

That's Dan Joseph. He used to have Blogspot blog that I linked frequently. He's at the Media Research Center now and was out with a book a couple of years ago, Generation Right: The Young Conservative in the Age of Obama.

Via SDA, "The Mindless Talking Points of the Clueless Left."

Syria Reportedly Spurns Arab League Peace Plan

At New York Times, "Stalemate Deals Grief and Fury in Syria."

And from the Wall Street Journal, "Spurned Offer Raises Syria Tensions" (via Google).

DAMASCUS—Syria's rejection of a surprise Arab League road map to ease President Bashar al-Assad out of power deepened a split between Syrians on the most viable way out of their country's nearly yearlong bloody conflict, with neither international pressure nor domestic overhauls offering much hope for halting further violence, said many Syrians and analysts.

The Arab League plan called on Mr. Assad to hand over power to his deputy and form a national unity government. It marked the first formal call by the Arab world's highest-profile diplomatic body for Mr. Assad to relinquish power.

The League also said it would ask the United Nations Security Council to endorse the plan, underscoring the basic approach by the Syrian regime's outside opponents: attempt to deal with the crisis through international forums while sidelining the regime. But the move is a sign the window for a regionally brokered domestic solution to Syria's conflict may be closing.

Syria's government on Monday derided the proposal as a "blatant interference in its internal affairs" and evidence of the "conspiratorial scheme" the country faced.

Syria's rejection of the plan "just speaks again to the fact that [Mr. Assad is] thinking about himself and his cronies, not about his people," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, adding, "We would like to see a Security Council resolution that firmly reflects the conclusions of the Arab League report."

Protests continued to roil parts of the country on Monday, with armed conflict between government forces and their opponents moving closer to the capital. On Monday, as many as 100,000 people marched in funeral processions in Douma, 12 miles from the capital, to mourn victims of more than three days of fighting there between army defectors and the military, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Activists said the crowd was the largest the restive suburb—one of several protest hot spots that encircle Damascus— has seen since protests broke out in March.

An Arab League observers' mission to Syria, criticized by Syria's opposition and human-rights groups, appears to be in place for a second month. The League recommended a one-month extension that was valid under the original deal. Syria's government didn't mention the mission in its denunciation of the Arab League plan.

We should have sent in the Marines: "Regime Change Syria."

Michael Coren Interviews Mark Steyn

Via Blazing Cat Fur:

Trial of Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich Ends With Plea Deal

Background at LAT, "Marine's trial ends without a conviction in 2005 Iraq killings."

Pamela reports, "Plea Deal Ends Haditha Blood Libel Trial." And at Michelle's, "The trial of the last Haditha Marine: SSgt Wuterich takes plea deal."

And see Bruce Kesler as well, "Wuterich Vindicated (UPDATE: The Plea)."