A timeline of the American decline starting with the ascendency of Democrats back to power in 2006, with their empty promises of "bi-partisanship", to their consolidation of power by total MSM complicity; their immediate socialization and subsequent destruction of the American economy; ("Never waste a crisis"); their weakening of the American military and their alienation of our allies and appeasement of our enemies. It's all clearly documented here for those with eyes to see.
* 11/9/06-- "Word of (Democrat Sen. Jim) Webb's win (giving Democrats Congressional majority status), led Democrats to celebrate outside the Capitol, as Sen. Reid of Nevada told a crowd that the Democrats' win in the House and Senate showed it is "time for a change." "It's time for bipartisanship. It's time for open government, transparency, and it's a time for results." --Washington Post
***********************************************
* 03/28/07--Republicans lose Congressional majority status, leaving with an approval rating of 30.8%. (4 years after the 1994 Republican Congressional landslide, Republican Congressional approval rating in 1998 was at 50%. Compare that with the approval ratings of Democrats after only 2 years. See 7/8/08)
* 4/16/08--(Regarding Weather Underground domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, during primary debate with Hillary Clinton)-- "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."--Barack Obama--despite having reviewed Ayer's book on 12/21/97, and despite being the first Chairman of Ayers' Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and continuing on as Chair for 4 years as a direct partner in the distribution of large sums of money for public policy purposes. Obama also later denied having his political career launched from Ayers' living room. (See 11/13/08-Ayers admission). These facts were ignored or glossed over by the mainstream media, (MSM).
* 7/8/08--Congressional approval rating under Democrat majorities for 2 years hits historic low 9%. (See 3/28/07). "Congressional ratings first hit nine percent (9%) back at the beginning of July, marking the lowest ratings recorded by Rasmussen Reports. Ratings hit the same low two weeks later. Congress has not received higher than a 15% approval rating since the beginning of this year." (As of 8/27/08).
* 7/11/08--Congressional Democrats (Franks, Waters, Dodd et al), refusal of Republican insistence on oversight and reform, leads government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to collapse, forcing the U.S. government to assume obligation, contributing to global economic crisis.
*10/19/08--“Mark my words, It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking....I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate, Biden said, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. And he’s gonna need help...we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”--Joe Biden (See: 11/5/08)
* 10/27/08--"Elect us, hold us accountable, and make a judgment and then go from there. But I do tell you that if the Democrats win and have substantial majorities, Congress of the United States will be more bipartisan," --Nancy Pelosi
* As of 10/27/08--Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) set the following records in the 110th Congress: Most times filed cloture--137 times--cutting off debate; most cloture votes scheduled; most times amendments were blocked by an arcane process termed "filling the tree"; most number of times the leader filed cloture on the day the senators received the text of a bill.--Human Events (See: 11/9/06 about bi-partisanship and open government).
**********************************************
* 11/4/08--Barack Obama elected President of the United States. Democrats actually increase congressional majorities. (See: 7/8/08--9% approval rating, and 10/27/08--"Hold us accountable.")
* 11/4/08--(CNSNews.com)– "People who oppose the Fairness Doctrine for talk radio are the same people who, ironically, want the government to step in and keep pornography off the radio or TV"--Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)
* 11/5/08--MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pledged on Wednesday to station new missiles near Poland's border in response to U.S. (Bush) plans for an anti-missile system and proposed extending the presidential term to six years from four. (See: 10/19/08, Joe Biden prediction).
* 11 /5/08--"Wall Street Stocks dived more than 5% in the worst post-election session on record."--NY Post Business
* 11/7/08--President-elect Barack Obama gives his first post-election press conference, during which he mocks Nancy Reagan. He called her later to apologize. Stocks tank. "The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 110 points over the course of the 19-minute-long midday briefing as Obama soberly stressed the hard work required to turn around the sick economy and tipped that he was not rushing to do so. The Dow sank to 8,830 from 8,940 - or about 6 points for every minute the press conference lasted."
Who Got To Ask Questions At The Obama Press Conference?
In order: Nedra Pickler (AP), Lee Cowan (NBC), Jake Tapper (ABC), Chip Reid (CBS), Karen Bohan (Reuters ), John McCormick (Chicago Tribune), Lynn Sweet (Chicago Sun-Times), Candy Crowley (C NN), Jeff Zeleny (New York Times). Which network didn't get a question? Fox News. (So much for bi-partisanship)
* 11/8/08--Since Election Day, major U.S. indexes are down more than 7 percent. For the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI and Standard & Poor's 500 .SPX, that represents the worst ever conclusion to the week of a presidential election.--WSJ
* 11/9/08--President-elect Obama's transition chief said Sunday the incoming administration is looking to reverse President Bush's executive orders on stem cell research, oil and gas drilling and other matters.--AP
* 11/10/08--President-elect Barack Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship imprisoned terrorism suspects from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to the United States to face criminal trials, and to close down Gitmo permanently.--NY Post
* 11/13/08--"We are ready to abandon this decision to deploy the missiles in Kaliningrad if the new American administration, after analyzing the real usefulness of a system to respond to 'rogue states', decides to abandon its anti-missile system."--Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
* 11/14/08--Unrepentent domestic terrorist Bill Ayers writes in a new afterword to his memoir that he and Obama were neighbors and family friends, and confirms launching Obama' s political career from his home, (despite Obama's previous denials). "We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I'd made a small donation to his earliest political campaign," he writes. (This outright admission that Obama lied goes unreported in MSM).
* 11/20/08--WASHINGTON, Nov 20 (Reuters) - U.S. economic and political clout will decline over the next two decades and the world will be more dangerous, with food and water scarce and advanced weapons plentiful, U.S. spy agencies projected on Thursday.
* 11/22/08--Media bias was more intense in the 2008 election than in any other national campaign in recent history, Time magazine's Mark Halperin said Friday at the Politico/USC conference on the 2008 election. "It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war," Halperin said at a panel of media analysts . "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage." (It was the year investigative journalism died).
* 12/2/08--Pentagon announces plans to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe. The American Civil Liberties Union and the libertarian Cato Institute are troubled by what they consider an expansion of executive authority. Domestic emergency deployment may be "just the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority, " or even an increase in domestic surveillance.-Washington Post
* 12/3/08--President-elect Barack Obama selects New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as his commerce secretary.
*12/9/08--Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and Chief of Staff John Harris are indicted for attempting to sell Obama's vacant Senate seat.
--"I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening .." --Barack Obama, friend and ally of Gov. Blagojevich.
--On 23 November, ABC carried an interview on Chicago' s WFLD-TV in which Axelrod claimed matter-of-factly, "I know [Obama] has talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them."
Within minutes of Obama's disclaimer about any such meeting, Alexrod released this statement: "I was mistaken when I told an interviewer last month that the president-elect has spoken directly to Governor Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy. They did not then or at any time discuss the subject."
--On 5 November, KHQA-TV in Quincy, Ill., reported Obama and Blagojevich were about to meet: "Now that Barack Obama will be moving to the White House, his seat in the U.S. Senate representing Illinois will have to be filled. That's one of Obama's first priorities today. He's meeting with Governor Rod Blagojevich this afternoon in Chicago to discuss it."
--On 8 November, the station confirmed, "Obama met with Governor Rod Blagojevich earlier this week to discuss it. Illinois law states that the governor chooses that replacement."
--KHQA has removed the story from their Web site and now denies any knowledge such a meeting took place.
* 1/4/09--Bill Richardson withdraws his nomination to be commerce secretary. Richardson is facing a federal grand jury investigation into whether he exchanged government contracts for contributions to three Richardson political committees. "And what about all the grand promises Obama made after his election about meticulously fly-specking every one of the people he plans to put in his administration to avoid improprieties or even the appearance of them? They vetted Richardson and didn't smell this little federal investigation?"--Charles Hurt, NY Post
* 1/5/09--President -elect Obama picks Leon Panetta to head the CIA.-- "Choosing Panetta to head the CIA culminates liberals' 35-year crusade to take over the agency, humble its operatives and rein in its operations...Panetta will, presumably, curb such practices as waterboarding, rendition and warrantless wiretapping. So we won't gather much intelligence. Over at Justice, Obama is naming four liberals to staff the agency, each determined to rein in effective intelligence-gathering....Bush's legacy shows one clear achievement: He kept us safe after 9/11. Now his successor's policies are about to eradicate that singular achievement. ...these appointments make it frighteningly more likely that we will, indeed, be hit again."--Dick Morris
* 1/9/09- -Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is planning to dispense with some of the House rules instituted by Newt Gingrich. The Republican minority will no longer be able to introduce alternate legislation or offer amendments to Democrat bills and will not even be guaranteed open debate.--Patriot Post ( See 10/27/08--Promises of Bipartsanship)
* 1/14/09--In a direct challenge to President-elect Barack Obama, Osama bin Laden questions whether America "is capable to keep fighting us for more years" in a new audio message attributed to him Wednesday morning on an internet website.--ABC News
* 1/15/09--As congressional Democrats take the lead in responding to the sinking economy, subcommittee and even some full-committee chairmen — who normally wield significant influence in writing legislation — have been forced to wait on the sidelines as monumental bills are written in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif .) office....Many of these members are complaining louder and more often to Democratic leaders that a return to regular order, where bills are written in committee, is long overdue.--The Hill.com
* 1/15/09--NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Al Jazeera Network plans to announce on Thursday that it has signed a deal to run its news on Worldfocus, a syndicated nightly news program produced in New York and distributed throughout the United States. The deal would help the international news network, one of the top services in the Arabic-speaking world, broaden its reach in the United States, where it so far has been available to only a limited audience.
* 1/18/09--WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants an investigation into whether the Bush administration broke the law when it fired a group of federal prosecutors.
She says that what she calls the politicizing of the Justice Department cannot go unreviewed. House Democrats last week recommended a criminal investigation to see if administration officials broke the law in the name of national security. The report cited the interrogation of foreign detainees, warrantless wiretaps, retribution against critics, manipulation of intelligence and the fired prosecutors.
* 1/18/09--WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants Congress to consider repealing President George W. Bush's tax cuts well before they expire in 2010, in contrast to what President-elect Barack Obama is proposing.
* 1/20/09--Barack Hussein Obama sworn in as 44th President of the United States. He insisted on using his Islamic middle name, though use of it during his campaign was strictly forbidden.
*1/20/09--(AP) Financial stocks, led a huge drop on Wall Street that left the major indexes down more than 4 percent and the Dow Jones industrials down 332 points. Although traders at the New York Stock Exchange paused to watch the inauguration ceremony and Obama’s remarks, the transition of power didn’t erase investors’ intensifying concerns about struggling banks and their impact on the overall economy. The drop in the Dow marked the worst Inauguration Day performance in the history of the industrial average, according to a Dow Jones news service report.
* 1/22/09--WASHINGTON - The Senate Finance Committee has cleared the nomination of Timothy Geithner as U.S. treasury secretary despite his failing to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001-2004!
* 1/23/09--President Obama yesterday issued orders to close the controversial Guantanamo Bay military prison that houses the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks - sparking outrage from families of World Trade Center victims. Obama wants to shut the prison camp in Cuba within a year and require the closing of any remaining secret CIA "black site" prisons abroad. He has also banned harsh interrogation techniques, such as water boarding, that critics claim constitute torture. --NY Post
*1/23/09--WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Friday lifted restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad, reversing a policy of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush.
* 1/26/09--The Democrat-controlled Senate confirms tax-cheat Timothy Geithner to head the IRS as Secretary of the Treasury, (despite Barack Obama's new series of ethics guidelines).
* 1/27/09--President Barack Obama chooses an Arab network for his first television interview.
* 1/27/09--Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make a single nuclear weapon later this year, the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) predicts.
* 1/28/09-- WASHINGTON - The House approved President Obama's $819 billion stimulus plan last night in a partisan vote on legislation loaded with increased spending and tax cuts meant to boost the failing economy. Despite recent efforts by Obama to court Republican support, not a single GOP lawmaker crossed party lines to back the bill, (because they were allowed no input). Republicans charge it's long on unnecessary spending that won't stimulate the economy - and short on tax reduction. Eleven Democrats opposed the measure, which passed, 244-188. The bill contains tens of billions of dollars in grants for states and cities, and a massive expansion of welfare programs, such as food stamps and Medicaid. Only a small portion of the bill is dedicated to the highway and infrastructure spending that was a focus of Obama's original plan. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was pleased that the measure would be seen as the Democrats' bill. "Republicans had their chance," she told the CBS "Early Show." --NY Post
* 1/28/09--Russia has dropped plans to install missiles near Poland after the Obama administration signalled a change in US attitude to the region, a Moscow military official has reportedly said. The official suggested that Mr Obama’s White House had made clear it would not prioritise executing the Bush administration's plan to install a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.--Abe Greenwald (See 11/5/08, 11/13/08).
* 1/31/09--US President Barack Obama's offer to talk to Iran shows that America's policy of "domination" has failed, the government spokesman said on Saturday. "This request means Western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed," Gholam Hossein Elham was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency. "Negotiation is secondary, the main issue is that there is no way but for (the United States) to change," he added. After nearly three decades of severed ties, Obama said shortly after taking office this month that he is willing to extend a diplomatic hand to Tehran if the Islamic republic is ready to "unclench its fist". In response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a fresh tirade against the United States, demanding an apology for its "crimes" against Iran and saying he expected "deep and fundamental" change from Obama.
* 1/31/09--Barack Obama's nominee for Secretary of HHS, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, ponied up almost $128,000 in back taxes this month for using a car and driver that were provided to him by a close friend and business associate over a three-year period after leaving the Senate. "He didn't think to report it to the IRS. He didn't think of it as taxable income, but it came up during the vetting process," said a congressional aide. The Cadillac and driver, which accounted for the bulk of the untaxed income - about $250,000 - were loaned to him by a prominent Democratic fundraiser. The former South Dakota senator also failed to report just over $88,000 in consulting income and whittled down his charitable contributions by $15,000 over the same span, the Finance committee report said. The committee will meet Monday, but the White House says it shouldn't be a road block to Daschle's confirmation.-- With Post Wires
* 2/3/09--WASHINGTON (AP) - Nancy Killefer, who failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help, has withdrawn her candidacy to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government, the White House said Tuesday. Killefer was the second major Obama administration nominee to withdraw and the third to have tax problems complicate their nomination after President Barack Obama announced their selection.
* 2/3/09--Tom Daschle also withdraws his candidacy for Secretary of HHS due to his tax problems, casting further doubt on the Obama vetting process.
* 2/3/09--Pentagon officials have leaked word that the Office of Management and Budget has ordered a 10 percent cut in defense spending for the coming fiscal year, giving Defense Secretary Robert Gates a substantially smaller budget than he requested.--Washington Post
* 2/5/09--The financial-disclosure forms filed over the past three decades by House Ways and Means Committee Chaiman Rep. Charles Rangel are full of fuzzy math, according to an exhaustive review released yesterday. The nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation identified 28 separate instances within Rangel's 30 years of congressionally mandated filings where, it says, he failed to report acquiring, owning or disposing of assets. The new report could add more woes for the powerful Democrat, already under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over his finances and possible abuse of authority. "Assets worth between $239,026 and $831,000 appear or disappear with no disclosure of when they were acquired, how long they were held, or when they were sold."
* 2/5/09--"Military judge Susan Crawford dropped all charges against Abdal Rahim al Nashiri, the mastermind of the 2000 suicide-bomb attack against the USS Cole...acting in full compliance with President Obama's executive order halting trials at the Guantanamo Bay terrorist-detention facility."--NY Post
* 2/8/09--The Obama administration is ending the Census Bureau's traditional autonomy – a move that has Republicans outraged over the White House's politicization of counting Americans. Last week, an administration official revealed that the yet-to-be-named director of the Census Bureau will report to the White House rather than Commerce Secretary nominee Judd Gregg, a Republican. That prompted a blistering response from two key Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "Any attempt by the Obama administration to circumvent the census process for their political benefit will be met with fierce opposition as this ill-conceived proposal undermines a constitutionally obligated process that speaks to the very heart of our democracy," California Rep. Darrell Issa wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama. The letter was co-signed by North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry. "Requiring the census director to report directly to the White House and placing responsibility for administration of the Bureau outside the Department of Commerce may even violate federal law," the letter stated. "According to Title 13 of the U.S. Code, the Bureau is to be administered 'within, and under the jurisdiction of, the Department of Commerce.' According to U.S. Code, the Executive Branch is limited to providing support for the Bureau in the form of information and resources." The census counts all Americans every 10 years, and the results are used to allocate congressional seats (redistricting), electoral votes, and some government funding. With congressional elections coming in 2012, the fear is that the 2010 census will be manipulated in a way that results in positive redistricting for Democrats.--Newsmax.com (In 2006, then Rep. Emanuel revealed to USA Today the motivation behind the shift, “If you think redistricting is always partisan and political which it is… it’s going to be on steroids this time.”)
* 2/12/09--The first Cabinet candidate to withdraw from nomination (not due to personal legal problems) is Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who abruptly withdrew his nomination as commerce secretary Thursday, citing "irresolvable conflicts" with President Barack Obama's handling of the economic stimulus and the Obama Administration plans to shift control of the 2010 census from Commerce, to the White House directly, (in order to oversee redistricting). House Republicans have sent a letter to President Obama urging him to reconsider his plan, calling it an “unprecedented politicization of the Census” and stating: “There is no legitimate historical precedent for placing the nonpartisan, apolitical Census Bureau under the control of political operatives on the White House staff.”
* 2/12/09- -The (Democrat-controlled) House votes to table, or set aside, a resolution designed to temporarily remove tax cheat (see 2/5/09) Rep. Charlie Rangel from his post as chairman of the powerful (tax-writing) Ways and Means Committee.
* 2/13/09--The $787 billion stimulus package cleared Congress. The massive spending package cleared the House by a 246-183 vote with no Republican support. Later in the evening it passed by a slim 60-38 margin in Senate. "Here I have 1,100 pages not one member of this body has read. Not one," fumed House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). "We weren't allowed to write even one word of this bill," said Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia , the House Republican whip.-NY Post (See 10/27/08 re: bipartisanship)
“The American people have a right to know what’s in this bill,” Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind) told HUMAN EVENTS after the press conference. “Every member of Congress -- Republicans and Democrats -- voted to post this bill on the internet for 48 hours, 48 hours ago. We’ll see if the Democrats keep their word. (The Democrats finally made the bill's language available around 11 p.m. Thursday, approximately 10 hours before members met Friday to consider the bill and 38 hours short of the time promised Americans to review the bill.) A provision, which attracted virtually no attention in the debate over the 1,073-page stimulus bill, creates something called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, the RAT Board, as it’s known by the few insiders who are aware of it. The board would oversee the in-house watchdogs, known as inspectors general, whose job is to independently investigate allegations of wrongdoing at various federal agencies, without fear of interference by political appointees or the White House. In the name of accountability and transparency, Congress has given the RAT Board the authority to ask “that an inspector general conduct or refrain from conducting an audit or investigation”... The language means that the board — whose chairman will be appointed by the president — can reach deep inside a federal agency and tell an inspector general to lay off some particularly sensitive subject. Or, conversely, it can tell the inspector general to go after a tempting political target. “This strikes at the heart of the independence of inspectors general,” said Sen. Charles Grassley
* 2/14/09--The first United Nations conference on “racism” held in Durban, South Africa, turned into an incredibly vile display of antisemitic hatred, notorious as one of the worst travesties in the UN’s travesty-filled history. The Bush administration walked out of it. The Obama State Department announced late Feb. 14 that it would send a delegation to the Feb. 16-19 consultations for the United Nations-sponsored World Conference Against Racism, dubbed Durban II. Canada and Israel already have announced that they will boycott the conference.
* 2/22/09--Of all the left- wing wish-list whoppers stuffed into President Obama's $787 billion stimulus package, the most consequential may be a subtle rewrite of federal welfare law that could let countless Americans back on the dole. ....To be sure, the stimulus doesn't completely repeal the 1996 reform, which has cut welfare rolls by more than half since then...but it does roll back some of the key mechanisms that made it so effective. Nestled in the bill, for one, is a multibillion-dollar "emergency fund" that would cover fully 80 percent of the cost of each new welfare recipient a state signs up. That's a sure incentive for states to lower their standards - and a big departure from the '96 reform, which encouraged reductions by giving states block cash grants no matter how big their welfare rolls were. The stimulus also shoots holes in the provision requiring half of a state's welfare recipients to engage in some kind of work - a stipulation that's offered countless families a dignified exit from public assistance.--NY Post
* 2/23/09--NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street slumped to a 12-year low on Monday as investors lost faith that the U.S. government will be able to stabilize the financial system. The S&P 500 and the Dow both posted their lowest closes since the spring of 1997 as reports the government may convert its stake in Citigroup into a big common stock holding fell short of what many see as necessary to fix big banks. "It is generally a market 'no' vote to what we're getting from Washington," said Hank Smith, chief investment officer at Haverford Trust Co in Philadelphia, of the reaction to the Citigroup news.
* 2/25/09--Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the longest serving Democratic senator, is criticizing President Obama’s appointment of White House “czars” to oversee federal policy, saying these executive positions amount to a power grab by the executive branch.... “As presidential assistants and advisers, these White House staffers are not accountable for their actions to the Congress, to cabinet officials, and to virtually anyone but the president,” Byrd wrote. “They rarely testify before congressional committees, and often shield the information and decision-making process behind the assertion of executive privilege. In too many instances, White House staff have been allowed to inhibit openness and transparency, and reduce accountability.” --Politico.com
* 2/26/09--Iran thumbed its nose at the Obama administration yesterday by testing its first nuclear-power plant and announcing plans to sharply increase the enrichment of uranium that could lead to atomic weapons. --NY Post
* 2/27/09--President Obama unveiled a mammoth, $3.6 trillion budget yesterday that would dramatically boost federal spending almost across the board - and pay for it with tax hikes of $1 trillion on individuals and businesses over the next decade. Experts immediately tagged the new president's supersized spending plan the most sweeping government overhaul since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society in the 1960s. Marty Regalia, the chief economist at the US Chamber of Commerce, called it "the biggest return to the welfare state that we've seen in decades." The budget would create an eye-popping $1.8 trillion deficit for the 2009 fiscal year - the highest ever in dollar terms - amounting to a 12.3 percent share of the economy, which is the largest since 1945.--NY Post
* 2/27/09--NEW YORK (CBS)--In a swift about face from her views as New York's senator, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now hammering Israel over its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. As First Lady, Clinton raised eyebrows when she kissed Suha Arafat. Since she was then seeking a Senate seat the resulting brouhaha caused her to "re-think" her positions. "I'm a very strong supporter of Israel," Clinton said back in February 2000. On Thursday, as Secretary of State she had yet another about face in the form of angry messages demanding Israel speed up aid to Gaza. Jewish leaders are furious.
* 2/27/09--THE Obama adminstration announced yesterday that it's withdrawing from the UN group preparing for the "Durban II" conference....By joining preparatory work for Durban II, however, the White House has proven not only naive, but destructive. The move isolated our ally Israel, embarrassed our ally Canada (which had already announced its boycott of Durban II) and cut off at the knees several European allies who were on the verge of announcing their Durban II boycotts.--NY Post Editorial
* 2/27/09--"Let me be very clear on the economics of President Obama’s State of the Union speech and his budget. He is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds. That is the meaning of his anti-growth tax-hike proposals, which make absolutely no sense at all — either for this recession or from the standpoint of expanding our economy’s long-run potential to grow."-- Larry Kudlow, Money and Politics.
* 3/3/09--As 2009 opened, three weeks before Barack Obama took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9034 on January 2, its highest level since the autumn panic. Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997. The dismaying message here is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem...after five weeks in office, it's become clear that Mr. Obama's policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence -- and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.--WSJ
* 3/3/09--WASHINGTON - Another Obama administration nominee has tax troubles. This time, it's Ron Kirk, the president's choice to be US trade representative. Kirk owes an estimated $10,000 in back taxes from earlier in the decade and has agreed to pay them, the Senate Finance Committee said yesterday. -NY Post
* 3/7/09--Stock prices have plunged faster since President Obama's inauguration than for any new president in nearly a century, an analysis by Bloomberg News found. The Dow Jones industrial average has fallen 20 percent in the six weeks since Obama took office. It's down 31 percent since Election Day. In contrast, stocks have usually rallied or ended up flat after the first six weeks of a new presidency. --NY Post
* 3/7/09--The nation's unemployment rate soared to 8.1 percent - the highest in 25 years as employers cut 651,000 jobs last month, figures showed yesterday. --NY Post
* 3/9/09--WASHINGTON - Reversing Bush policy, President Barack Obama on Monday cleared the way for a significant increase in federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research and promised no scientific data will be "distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda." Obama signed the executive order on the divisive stem cell issue and a memo addressing what he called scientific integrity before an East Room audience packed with scientists. He laced his remarks with several jabs at the way science was handled by former President George W. Bush--NY Post (Completely ignored was the fact that 74 treatments and cures have already been developed from Adult Stem Cells and NONE from Embryonic Stem Cells, and that Adult Stem Cells can now be manipulated into having the same characteristics as Embryonic Cells. The real "political agenda" was Obama's pandering to the pro-abortion lobby).
* 3/9/09--TEHRAN - Iran has test-fired a new air-to-surface missile, Iranian media reported yesterday, in the Islamic Republic's latest display of its military capability. The test was carried out despite the offer by President Obama to engage Iran in direct talks if it "unclenches its fist." --NY Post
* 3/9/09--PRESIDENT Obama's first hosting of a foreign leader, the UK's Gordon Brown, was a diplomatic disaster. Obama failed to hold a joint Rose Garden press conference, the usual protocol when a US president and a British prime minister first meet - a lapse widely noted in Britain and in the diplomatic community. This raised real fears that Obama intends to de-emphasize the decades-old US-UK "special relationship" - fears that seemed confirmed when the White House press secretary referred to a "special partnership." --NY Post
--Brown came to Washington and met a White House and a State Department that were embarrassingly unprepared for his arrival. No state dinner, no joint press conference. But the traditional gift exchange was the capper. Brown presented Obama with a signed first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert's definitive seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill, only to discover that the bust of Churchill given by Tony Blair to George W. Bush had been returned to the British embassy by Obama's staff. Brown then presented Obama with a penholder made from the timber of a warship that combated the slave trade. In return Obama gave Brown a stack of Hollywood DVDs. Brown is blind in one eye and doesn't watch many movies, and unless he knew to buy them in the PAL format, the DVDs are not compatible with British disc players. (He didn't, and they weren't compatible). One ignorant State Department official, when questioned by the London Telegraph, compounded the embarrassment by yelling about the special relationship between America and Great Britain. "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment." If this is a window to how our foreign policy is going to be handled over the next four years, then we have some serious problems coming our way.--Patriot Post
* 3/10/09--The White House on Tuesday dismissed suggestions that two recent bloody attacks in Iraq were a reaction to President Barack Obama's decision to pull out most combat troops by August next year.--Breitbart.com
* 3/11/09--WASHINGTON - The Senate effectively dealt a death blow to a federally funded District of Columbia voucher program that helps send poor and mostly minority DC kids to private schools. By a 58-39 vote largely along party lines, the Democrat-controlled Senate rejected a Republican measure that would remove the requirement that Congress and the Washington City Council reauthorize the program in order to continue funding. --NY Post
* 3/12/09--President Obama once again solemnly promised congressional earmark reform yesterday - even as he signed a deficit-ballooning ($410 billion!) bill stuffed with 8,500 of the critters. Listen to what I say, seems to be his message - and don't watch what I do....
(Obama) stumping against earmarks just last year: "W e can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a member of Congress' seniority, rather than the merit of the project," he said.
"We can no longer accept an earmarks process that has become so complicated to navigate that a municipality or non-profit group has to hire high-priced DC lobbyists to do it.
"And we can no longer accept an earmarks process in which many of the projects being funded fail to address the real needs of our country." That was then. Yesterday is now. Pitiful. Truly pitiful.--NY Post Editorial
* 3/13/09--WHEN it comes to nuclear energy, settled science appears to count for little with the new Obama administration. This week, ostensibly "pro-nuclear" Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced the administration's decision to kill the nuclear-waste-storage site at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. Chu said we need to take a "fresh look" and that "we can do a better job." Good luck. The Yucca site had been studied for more than 20 years, undergoing $9.5 billion of tests by some 2,500 of the nation's leading scientists....Meanwhile, we are dismantling our dams and lessening our hydroelectric capacity. Where are we going to get the power, all from biofuels? Every plausible national energy policy includes building many more nuclear plants. --NY Post
* 3/14/09--Breaking with the George W. Bush White House, the Barack Obama administration on Friday dropped the term ''enemy combatant'' for suspected terrorists and said international law governed the detention of terrorism suspects at the Guantánamo Bay prison, which Obama intends to close.--Miami Herald
* 3/14/09--In an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano rebranded the term terrorism as "man-caused" disasters.
* 3/17/09--THE Obama administration has offered to talk to America's enemies across the globe, especially in the Middle East. So far, though, the offer has few takers. Iran has called for "substantial changes in US foreign policy" as a precondition for talks. Syria wants the US to shut down the UN investigation into the murder of Lebanese ex-Premier Rafiq Hariri and insists on reviving its domination of Lebanon before "substantive talks" with Washington. The Taliban insists on "the complete withdrawal of foreign troops" from Afghanistan before it will consider talks. Well, if your enemies won't talk to you, why not talk to your friends? But this is precisely what the new administration doesn't want to do - for that would look like continuing the Bush administration's "failed policies." Notably, President Obama did not respond to greeting messages from America's Mideast allies until weeks after he'd entered the White House. The Iraqi leadership had to wait three weeks. Afghan President Hamid Karzai waited 40 days. Leaders of traditional allies such as Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia didn't wait as long - but got only protocol calls devoid of political content. Obama's emissaries to the region have made it clear that the new administration is keener on cultivating its foes than courting its friends.--Amir Taheri, NY Post
* 3/17/09--President Obama joined yesterday in the clamor of outrage at AIG for paying some $165 million in contractually obligated employee bonuses. He and the rest of the political class thus neatly deflected attention from the larger outrage, which is the five-month Beltway cover-up over who benefited most from the AIG bailout. Taxpayers have already put up $173 billion, or more than a thousand times the amount of those bonuses, to fund the government's AIG "rescue." This federal takeover, never approved by AIG shareholders, uses the firm as a conduit to bail out other institutions. After months of government stonewalling, on Sunday night AIG officially acknowledged where most of the taxpayer funds have been going. Since September 16, AIG has sent $120 billion in cash, collateral and other payouts to banks, municipal governments and other derivative counterparties around the world. This includes at least $20 billion to European banks....This needless cover-up is one reason Americans are getting angrier as they wonder if Washington is lying to them about these bailouts.--Wall Street Journal
--Republicans seized on the provision in the stimulus bill to paint Democrats as hypocrites.
“The fact is that the bill the president signed, which protected the AIG bonuses and others, was written behind closed doors by Democratic leaders of the House and Senate,” Iowa Senator Charles Grassley said in a statement. --Bloomberg News
* 3/19/09--The Obama administration is taking steps quietly to shut down the program that qualifies commercial airline pilots to carry firearms in jetliner cockpits in order to ward off another 9/11-type attack. The administration recently diverted $2 million from a program to train and certify pilots to carry firearms safely while on duty. Instead, it is using the money to hire additional field inspectors to help discipline pilots who step out of line, according to a report in Tuesday’s Washington Times. A Times editorial condemned the Obama administration's action, calling it “completely unnecessary harassment of the pilots.”
Since Obama took office, the approval process for certifying pilots to carry firearms has ground to a halt, the newspaper reports. Pilots are afraid to speak out about the behind-the-scenes maneuverings, for fear of retaliation, according to the newspaper. No cases have been reported in which pilots have brandished a weapon inappropriately or otherwise abused their eligibility to carry firearms. --Newsmax.com
* 3/20/09--Helicopter Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve is dropping trillions of fresh paper dollars on the world economy, the President of the United States is cracking jokes on late night comedy shows, his energy minister is threatening a trade war over carbon emissions, his treasury secretary is dithering over a banking reform program amid rising concerns over his competence and a monumentally dysfunctional U.S. Congress is launching another public jihad against corporations and bankers. As an aghast world — from China to Chicago and Chihuahua — watches, the circus-like U.S. political system seems to be declining into near chaos. Through it all, stock and financial markets are paralyzed. The more the policy regime does, the worse the outlook gets. The multi-ringed spectacle raises a disturbing question in many minds: Is this the end of America?--Terence Corcoran, NationalPost.com
* 3/20/09--Attorney General Eric Holder announced this week that detainees, whatever they're called, may end up being released inside the U.S. For "people who can be released there are a variety of options that we have, and among them is the possibility is that we would release them into this country," Holder said. "That process is ongoing and we've not made any determinations or made any requests of anybody at this point." --Patriot Post
* 3/21/09--AP-Congressional Budget Office figures released yesterday predict that the deficit will grow by $9.3 trillion between 2010 and 2019. That's $2.3 trillion more than the administration predicted just last month.
* 3/22/09--(AP) TEHRAN, Iran-- Iran's supreme leader yesterday rebuffed President Obama's latest outreach for peace. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was responding to a video message Obama released Friday in which he reached out to Iran on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian new year, and expressed hopes for improved relations after 30 years of hostility....Khamenei, whose regime is racing to develop nukes and has threatened to destroy Israel, said there will be no change between the United States and Iran unless Obama puts an end to US hostility toward Iran and brings "real changes" in foreign policy.
* 3/22/09--The AIG bonuses, alienating our allies, that Special Olympics crack on "The Tonight Show" there's certainly plenty of competition, but this was probably the worst week of President Obama's nascent administration....Allowing a taxpayer-owned collapsing company to pay $165 million in bonuses including retention bonuses to employees who have left hardly reflects competence. The shifting account of who knew what and when hardly looks like honest politics. Adapting a posture of outrage only after the public outcry was heard and after the bonuses were approved hardly looks like new politics. And as far as making us all feel the love evoking America's "glittering ideal," and calling "us back to our highest selves" Americans today are left furious at our government, resentful of AIG bonus babies, distrustful of Congress and the White House. The mystique has crumbled. And with it, the fabled Obama coalition is disintegrating. Obama's bad week was paved for him last Friday, when word leaked that AIG paid out hundreds of millions in bonuses. Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner knew about these bonuses ahead of time, but the President decided to dedicate his weekly Saturday radio address to discussing food safety....What followed was a week of muddy and shifting stories, both on the old Nixon-Watergate question what did the administration know, and when did they know it? and on the question of who stuck the bonus-protection provision into the stimulus....When the U.S. House rushed through a bill on Thursday, grabbing back most of this money through a 90% tax on 2009 bonuses paid by bailed-out banks, Obama applauded the measure as "a strong signal." But most observers winced at the spectacle. "There are third-world juntas that would think twice before doing this," liberal writer Noam Scheiber wrote in The New Republic.--Timothy P. Carney, NY Post Editorial
* 3/24/09--The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document. The government at present has the authority to seize only banks. Giving the Treasury secretary authority over a broader range of companies would mark a significant shift from the existing model of financial regulation, which relies on independent agencies that are shielded from the political process. The Treasury secretary, a member of the president's Cabinet, would exercise the new powers in consultation with the White House, the Federal Reserve and other regulators, according to the document.--Washington Post
* 3/24/09--WASHINGTON- The Environmental Protection Agency now says that carbon dioxide and other climate-warming greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare, according to a White House Web site. In an about-face from its stance under President George W. Bush, the EPA on Friday sent the White House an "Endangerment Finding for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act" a required step before the feds can use the act to regulate climate-warming emissions. "This finding will officially end the era of denial on global warming," Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who heads the House Climate Change Committee, said in a statement. "Instead of allowing political interference in scientific and legal decisions, as was the case in the previous administration, the Obama administration is letting the sun shine in on the dangerous realities of global warming." --Reuters
* 3/25/09--WASHINGTON -- Turning from the "Global War on Terror," Obama administration officials have coined a new term for their efforts that isn't nearly as precise and that they believe won't hurt as many feelings. Now, it's the "Overseas Contingency Operation." The edict came in an e-mail to the Pentagon from President Obama's Office of Management and Budget, The Washington Post reported.--Charles Hurt
* 3/30/09--JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq. Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh. President Obama has nominated Koh -- until last week the dean of Yale Law School -- to be the State Department's legal adviser. In that job, Koh would forge a wide range of international agreements on issues from trade to arms control, and help represent our country in such places as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. It's a job where you want a strong defender of America's sovereignty. But that's not Koh. He's a fan of "transnational legal process," arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish. --Meghan Clyne, NY Post Editorial
* 3/31/09--"Well, at least now we know who's running General Motors. The Obama White House, in an extraordinary expansion of the government's reach, Sunday demanded and got the head of Rick Wagoner, the automaker's embattled chief executive. In doing so, the president brushed aside GM's board of directors, selected by shareholders and entrusted with the power to hire and fire executives, and assumed that role for himself. ... Shareholders can read the handwriting on the wall -- this isn't their company anymore. That's the risk you take when you go hat in hand to Washington. It ought to be a red flag for other companies and industries that might be thinking a federal bailout is the answer for surviving the recession. President Barack Obama is using the $13.4 billion in federal loans as leverage to re-create GM in the image of a Washington with little apparent affinity for manufacturers. ... The president also needs a scalp to wave before both a Congress growing queasy about federal bailouts and the automaker's bondholders, who aren't happy about granting a huge discount on their GM debt. The trick now is to find someone to run the automaker. Good luck with the headhunting. How many top-notch corporate executives will jump at the chance to lead a company that is sinking like a rock? Who will be willing to share the corporate suite with federal bureaucrats? And by the way, the job pays a buck a year, and if you need to fly, it better be coach. Running a tobacco company has to have more appeal." --The Detroit News
* 3/31/09--"There has always been a line... which no president would cross, with respect to the distinction between the public and private sectors. Obama has now crossed that line. There is no limit to government's destruction of private activity or control over it." --radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh
--"We are seeing the biggest power grab by politicians in American history. The idea that they would propose that the Treasury could intervene and take over non-bank, non-financial system assets gives them the potential to basically create the equivalent of a dictatorship." --former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
--"If you listen to the principal spokesmen for U.S. economic policy -- Obama and Geithner -- they grow daily ever more explicitly hostile to the private sector and ever more comfortable with the language of micromanaged government-approved capitalism -- which, of course, isn't capitalism at all." --columnist Mark Steyn (Quotes taken from Patriot Post)
No comments:
Post a Comment