The Super Majority

Is US Default Inevitable?

So said Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein of the financial crisis of 2008. He likened its probability to four hurricanes hitting the East Coast in a single season.

Blankfein was reminded by the chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee, Phil Angelides, that hurricanes are “acts of God.” Financial crises are manmade. Yet Blankfein was backed up by Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, who said, “Somehow, we just missed … that home prices don’t go up forever.”

The Wall Street titans thus conceded they did not foresee the housing bubble ever bursting and they did not consider the possibility of a collapse in value of the sub-prime mortgage securities piled up on their books.

Read the Full Article at Patrick Buchanan

Hey Pelosi, Where are the Jobs?

In August 2003, then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a press statement demanding to know from President Bush, “Where Are the Jobs?” The statement was released in response to the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report, which, at that time showed that over 400,000 Americans had given up looking for work and had left the labor force. It should be noted that today, every job measurement she cited is worse now than it was in 2003. We must have overlooked her similar question for President Obama.

From Pelosi’s statement:

Washington, D.C. — House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ announcement that 470,000 people abandoned their job searches in July and that 3.2 million private sector jobs have been lost since President Bush took office:

Read the Full Article at Big Government

Gingrich: Obama ‘Underestimating’ Difficulty of War Against Terrorism

Few dispute that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 represents a major breach of U.S. security and intelligence systems. But assigning blame for the thwarted Christmas Day attack depends on whom you ask in the highly polarized political climate.
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Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich laid blame for the Dec. 25 incident at the feet of Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on “Good Morning America” today, saying “there’s a fundamental mismatch between the dangers we face and this administration’s inability … to confront how difficult this war is.”

Gingrich, who insists the United States is “in a war situation,” criticized the Obama administration’s plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, repatriate some detainees to Yemen and try others in U.S. criminal courts. “This is just not competent,” he said.

Read the Full Article at ABC News

Harry Reid Playing Santa Claus with Your Money

We are approaching the eve of Christmas and maybe in that spirit, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid morphed into Santa Claus, giving out presents to the little boys and girls who were naughty and (not so) nice this year.

Of course, he was not using his own money.

America’s overused credit card, issued by the Bank of China, may have to be used one more time to pay for Reid’s deals. The majority leader traded to help ensure the votes of Sens. Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Chris Dodd, Bernie Sanders and others representing 11 states by giving them special perks for staying on the health care bus that’s about to drive us all over the financial cliff.

Read the Full Article at CNN

Top SC Prosecutor, Others Probing Health Care Deal

The top prosecutors in seven states are probing the constitutionality of a political deal that cut a funding break for Nebraska in order to pass a federal health care reform bill, South Carolina’s attorney general said Tuesday.

Attorney General Henry McMaster said he and his counterparts in Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas and Washington state — all Republicans — are jointly taking a look at the deal they’ve dubbed the “Nebraska compromise.”

“The Nebraska compromise, which permanently exempts Nebraska from paying Medicaid costs that Texas and all other 49 states must pay, may violate the United States Constitution — as well as other provisions of federal law,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said.

Read the Full Article from the Associated Press

Climate Folly

Has there ever been a more pitiful example of misguided nonsense, aggressive idiocy and functional stupidity than last week’s climate change conference in Copenhagen?

The weeklong orgy of excess — to which most participants arrived in plush, carbon-emitting private jets and were shuttled around in limos — was nothing more than another leftist shakedown of wealthy nations on behalf of “developing” countries. This time in the name of saving the planet.

Promoting panic in the name of global warming is the Trojan horse for those who seek to overhaul the world economy by subverting capitalism and advancing collectivism. There is absolutely no evidence that mandating strict carbon emission standards will do anything at all to solve the perceived problem. Instead, we were treated to another U.N. gathering at which Third World hacks such as Hugo Chavez are applauded while Western ideals are dismissed and derided.

Read the Full Article at Las Vegas Review-Journal

Obama Employs Fear Tactics of Bankrupt US without Obamacare

President Obama told ABC News’ Charles Gibson in an interview that if Congress does not pass health care legislation that will bring down costs, the federal government “will go bankrupt.”

The president laid out a dire scenario of what will happen if his health care reform effort fails.

Obama “If we don’t pass it, here’s the guarantee….your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you,” he said. “Potentially they’re going to drop your coverage, because they just can’t afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year.”

Read the Full Article at ABC News

Ben Bernake Named Time Person of the Year

Time magazine on Wednesday named Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as its 2009 Person of the Year, calling him “the most powerful nerd on the planet.”

Bernanke will be featured on the cover of the magazine that hits stores Friday.

He beat out Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, President Obama, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi among other finalists.

Time said Bernanke was the reason the U.S. financial crisis wasn’t worse.

“The story of the year was a weak economy that could have been much, much weaker. Thank the man who runs the Federal Reserve, our mild-mannered economic overlord,” the article said.

Read the Full Article at CNN

Obama’s Doing the Opposite of Creating Jobs

The first stimulus package is a prime example of Washington’s wrong-headed thinking. So far it has created few, if any, new jobs for two reasons.

First, very little of the $787 billion package has actually reached the economy — only 20%, to be precise. Second, only a tiny piece of that has gone directly into job creation.

The Administration’s latest proposals to increase jobs give with one hand while taking back with the other.

Read Full Article at Marketwatch

Progressives Take on Rahm

Progressives have put the pressure on Democratic lawmakers boldly, at times, during the health care debate, but this goes a shade further, taking aim at the White House: the Progressive Campaign Change Committee has released a TV ad attacking White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, to air in his hometown of Chicago.

Emanuel is seen as a driving force behind the White House’s push to compromise with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and remove the provision in the Senate health reform bill to let 55-64 year-olds buy into Medicare–the bone that was thrown to progressives when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s public-option provision was stripped from the bill.

Read the Full Article with Video at The Atlantic