Palin the Populist

She killed. She had him at "Nice to meet you. Hey, can I call you Joe?" She was the star. He was the second male lead, the good-natured best friend of the leading man. She was not petrified but peppy.

Peggy Noonan

PIGGY POLS IN HOG HEAVEN WITH PORK-PACKED PACT

"This is how Washington works," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington research group. "A big pot of pork is their recipe for final passage."

The special provisions include tax breaks for:

* Manufacturers of kids' wooden arrows - $6 million.

* Puerto Rican and Virgin Is- lands rum producers - $192 million.

* Wool research.

* Auto-racing tracks - $128 million.

* Corporations operating in American Samoa - $33 million.

* Small- to medium-budget film and television productions - $10 million.

Another measure inserted into the bill appears to be a bald-faced bid aimed at winning the support of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who voted against the original version when it went down in flames in the House on Monday.

That provision - a $223 million package of tax benefits for fishermen and others whose livelihoods suffered as a result of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill - has been the subject of fervent lobbying by Alaska's congressional delegation.

Some of the pork-barrel measures buried in the financial rescue package had been contained in a bill that previously passed the Senate, but died in the House.

The Congressional Budget Office said the package of breaks - including obvious pork and some more defensible tax-relief measures - will add about $112 billion to budget deficits over the next five years because the bill doesn't contain enough offsetting revenue hikes to keep the budget balanced.

UPDATED:

Frelinghuysen Statement on Economic Rescue Plan

Evaluating Senate Modifications

Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ-11) today issued the following statement on the progress of the economic stabilization package being considered in the Senate:

“All Americans are concerned about the stability of our economy and are worried about the current condition of the financial markets. Our economy is built on credit, and we need to get credit back into the markets to help large and small businesses keep and create jobs!

Congress and the Administration have more work to do, and we should resolve to work every day from now on until we have done what is needed to stabilize financial markets and protect the American taxpayer.

As you may have seen, the United States Senate is taking up its own version of the economic stabilization legislation. I am actively evaluating the package being considered and am encouraged by many of the improvements made. I understand that many people are frustrated by the delay, but it is important that we strengthen this package to protect taxpayers.

Reported improvements include:

• Temporarily raises the FDIC insurance limit from $100,000 to $250,000. America’s depositors need to know that their money is safe.

• Increases Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) exemption sparing millions of middle-class families from an unfair tax increase.

• Tax relief for middle-class families and American businesses. These include tuition deductions, child tax credits, and the research and development tax credits.

• The extension of renewable energy tax incentives.

• Mental Health Parity legislation: This legislation requires that group health plans cover mental illness and addiction the same way they cover other illnesses. I am a co-sponsor of this bill.

• I am also encouraged by actions of the Securities and Exchange Commission to begin rolling back “Mark-to-Market” accounting rules. This move could increase liquidity for banks and other financial institutions.

Some concerns remain from the legislation:

• The legislation still lacks clear parameters and shifts major powers to unelected bureaucrats in the Treasury. Congress will need to have more aggressive oversight.

• The bill needs to do more to get at the core problem which created this mess – a plummeting housing market.

There is clear need for a bipartisan solution, and I feel we are moving toward one. In light of this, I was disappointed to hear of House Democrat’s opposition to extending tax relief for American families. This stabilization package will ask a great deal of taxpayers, and I believe it is important to extend assistance to them as well!”

good stuff

'Un-American' Bailout, Paulson Should Have Quit, Gingrich Says

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September 28, 2008 12:46 PM

ABC News' Tahman Bradley and Arnab Datta Report: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., on Sunday described Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's request for billions of dollars to buy debt from struggling Wall Street financial firms as "un-American" and said the secretary should have stepped down.

Gingrich even expressed concern with Paulson's connections to Wall Street. The treasury secretary served as the chairman of a major global investment banking and securities firm before joining the Bush administration.

"You have the former Chairman of Goldman Sachs asking for 700 billion dollars, and in his initial request, asking for it in such an un-American way that I think he should have resigned," said Gingrich. "I think Paulson has terminally misunderstood the nature of the American system. Not just no review, no judicial review, no congressional accountability. Give me 700 billion dollars, 700 BILLION dollars! 'I'll be glad to spend it for you.' That's a centralization of power that is totally un-American."

Watch Gingrich's remarks HERE.

I only have one question.

Is the bailout bill constitutional?

Look up the separation of powers and congress's ability
to give someone other that the president this much power
and discretionary spending ability.

I do not believe it is.

From Mike in Turkey

The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in the United States and included banking reforms, some of which were designed to control speculation.[citation needed] Some provisions such as Regulation Q that allowed the Federal Reserve to regulate interest rates in savings accounts were repealed by the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980. Provisions that prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed on November 12, 1999 by a bipartisan, conference committee version of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act signed by President Bill Clinton.

(Michael here: That is from Wikipedia, and very accurate. We're into one of my areas here. I did a major research paper on that depository institution deregulation & monetary control act of 1980. Bill Bradley was a major architect, and it was the most sweeping changes in the financial industry since glass-steagall. Talk to you soon...Mike)

[2:06:33 PM] Michael Roth says: (Michael here again: This is the rest of the page; it is a little long, but this page effectively explains how the situation we are currently in was allowed to happen. But remember, this did not happen due to one event; is has been a chain reaction of multiple events, building up w/increasing speed over the past 2 years...)

Two separate United States laws are known as the Glass-Steagall Act. The Acts (Glass & Steagall) were both reactions of the U.S. government to cope with the collapse of a large portion of the American commercial banking system in early 1933. While many economic histories attribute the collapse to the economic problems which followed the Stock Market Crash of 1929 it is clear that the U.S. banking collapse of 1933, which came three and a half years later, could only have been partially the result of the stock market collapse in October 1929.

The Republican Hoover administration had lost the November 1932 election to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but his administration did not take office until March 1933. The lame duck Hoover Administration and the incoming Roosevelt Administration could not, or would not, coordinate actions to stop the run on banks affiliated with the Henry Ford family that began in Detroit Michigan in January 1933. The Federal Reserve chairman Eugene Meyer was equally ineffectual.

Both bills were sponsored by Democratic Senator Carter Glass of Lynchburg, Virginia, a former Secretary of the Treasury, and Democratic Congressman Henry B. Steagall of Alabama, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency.

Congressional Research Service Summary:

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bankers and brokers were sometimes indistinguishable. Then, in the Great Depression after 1929, Congress examined the mixing of the “commercial” and “investment” banking industries that occurred in the 1920s. Hearings revealed conflicts of interest and fraud in some banking institutions’ securities activities. A formidable barrier to the mixing of these activities was then set up by the Glass Steagall Act.[4]

[edit] First Glass-Steagall Act

The first Glass-Steagall Act was the first time currency (non-specie, paper currency etc.) was permitted to be allocated for the federal reserve. In addition, the G.S.A. separated investment banking from commercial banking, in effect curbing speculation. The resulting FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) insured all bank deposits up to $5000.

The Glass Steagall Act, as well as FDIC, CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), Emergency Banking Act, and the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) were all products of Roosevelts 'Hundred Days', Roosevelt's first one hundred in office.[5]

[edit] Second Glass-Steagall Act

The second Glass-Steagall Act, passed on 16 June 1933, and officially named the Banking Act of 1933, introduced the separation of bank types according to their business (commercial and investment banking), and it founded the Federal Deposit Insurance Company for insuring bank deposits.[citation needed]

Literature in economics usually refers to this simply as the Glass-Steagall Act, since it had a stronger impact on US banking regulation.[citation needed]

[edit] Impact on other countries

The Glass-Steagall Act has had influence on the financial systems of other areas such as mainland China which maintains a separation between commercial banking and the securities industries.[6][7]

Repeal of the Act

See also Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act passed in 1980, the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act deregulating the Savings and Loan industry in 1982, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999.

The bill that ultimately repealed the Act was introduced in the Senate by Phil Gramm (R-TX) and in the House of Representatives by James Leach (R-IA) in 1999. The bills were passed by a 54-44 vote along party lines with Republican support in the Senate[8] and by a 343-86 vote in the House of Representatives[9]. Nov 4, 1999: After passing both the Senate and House the bill was moved to a conference committee to work out the differences between the Senate and House versions. The final bipartisan bill resolving the differences was passed in the Senate 90-8-1 and in the House: 362-57-15. Without forcing a veto vote, this bipartisan, veto proof legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999. [10]

The banking industry had been seeking the repeal of Glass-Steagall since at least the 1980s. In 1987 the Congressional Research Service prepared a report which explored the case for preserving Glass-Steagall and the case against preserving the act.[11]

The repeal enabled commercial lenders such as Citigroup, the largest U.S. bank by assets, to underwrite and trade instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations and establish so-called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, that bought those securities.[citation needed] Citigroup played a major part in the repeal. Then called Citicorp, the company merged with Travelers Insurance company the year before using loopholes in Glass-Steagall that allowed for temporary exemptions. With lobbying led by Roger Levy, the "finance, insurance and real estate industries together are regularly the largest campaign contributors and biggest spenders on lobbying of all business sectors [in 1999]. They laid out more than $200 million for lobbying in 1998, according to the Center for Responsive Politics..." These industries succeeded in their two decades long effort to repeal the act.[12]

The argument for preserving Glass-Steagall (as written in 1987):

1. Conflicts of interest characterize the granting of credit – lending – and the use of credit – investing – by the same entity, which led to abuses that originally produced the Act

2. Depository institutions possess enormous financial power, by virtue of their control of other people’s money; its extent must be limited to ensure soundness and competition in the market for funds, whether loans or investments.

3. Securities activities can be risky, leading to enormous losses. Such losses could threaten the integrity of deposits. In turn, the Government insures deposits and could be required to pay large sums if depository institutions were to collapse as the result of securities losses.

4. Depository institutions are supposed to be managed to limit risk. Their managers thus may not be conditioned to operate prudently in more speculative securities businesses. An example is the crash of real estate investment trusts sponsored by bank holding companies (in the 1970s and 1980s).

The argument against preserving the Act (as written in 1987):

1. Depository institutions will now operate in “deregulated” financial markets in which distinctions between loans, securities, and deposits are not well drawn. They are losing market shares to securities firms that are not so strictly regulated, and to foreign financial institutions operating without much restriction from the Act.

2. Conflicts of interest can be prevented by enforcing legislation against them, and by separating the lending and credit functions through forming distinctly separate subsidiaries of financial firms.

3. The securities activities that depository institutions are seeking are both low-risk by their very nature, and would reduce the total risk of organizations offering them – by diversification.

4. In much of the rest of the world, depository institutions operate simultaneously and successfully in both banking and securities markets. Lessons learned from their experience can be applied to our national financial structure and regulation

from the email pile

Once upon a time, on a farm in Virginia , a little red hen scratched about the barnyard until she uncovered quite a few grains of wheat.

She called all of her Democrat neighbors together and said, 'If we plant this wheat, we shall have bread to eat. Who will help me plant it?'

'Not I,' said the cow.

'Not I,' said the duck.

'Not I,' said the ;pig.

'Not I,' said the goose.

'Then I will do it by myself,' said the little red hen, and so she did. The wheat grew very tall and ripened into golden grain.

'Who will help me reap my wheat?' as ked the little red hen.

'Not I,' said the duck.

'Out of my classification,' said the pig.

'I'd lose my seniority,' said the cow.

'I'd lose my unemployment compensation,' said the goose.

'Then I will do it by myself,' said the little red hen, and so she did.

At last it came time to bake the bread.

'Who will help me bake the bread?' asked the little red hen.

'That would be overtime for me,' said the cow.

'I'd lose my welfare benefits,' said the duck.

'I'm a dropout and never learned how,' said the pig.

'If I'm to be the only helper, that's discrimination,' said the goose.

'Then I will do it by myself,' said the little red hen.

She baked five loaves and held them up for all of her neighbors to see. They wanted some and, in fact, demanded a share. But the little red hen said, 'No, I shall eat all five loaves.'

'Excess profits!' cried the cow. (Nancy Pelosi)

'Capitalist leech!' screamed the duck. (Barbara Boxer)

'I demand equal rights!' yelled the goose. (Jesse Jackson) The pig just grunted in disdain. (Ted Kennedy)

And they all painted 'Unfair!' picket signs and marched around and around the little red hen, shouting obscenities.

Then the farmer (Obama) came. He said to the little red hen, 'You must not be so greedy.'

'But I earned the bread,' said the little red hen.

'Exactly,' said Barack the farmer. 'That is what makes our free enterprise system so wonderful. Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he wants. But under our modern government regulations, the productive workers must divide the fruits of their labor with those who are lazy and idle.'

And they all lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked, 'I am grateful, for now I truly understand.'

But her neighbors became quite disappointed in her. She never again baked bread because she joined the 'party' and got her bread free. And all the Democrats smiled. 'Fairness' had been established.

Individual initiative had died, but nobody noticed; perhaps no one cared...so long as there was free bread that 'the rich' were paying for.

EPILOGUE

Bill Clinton is getting $12 million for his memoirs.

Hillary got $8 million for hers.

That's $20 million for the memories from two people, who for eight years, repeatedly testified, under oath, that they couldn't remember anything.

IS THIS A GREAT BARNYARD OR WHAT?

How A Clinton-Era Rule Rewrite Made Subprime Crisis Inevitable

By TERRY JONES
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2008 4:30 PM PT

One of the most frequently asked questions about the subprime market meltdown and housing crisis is: How did the government get so deeply involved in the housing market?

read the rest here

America Beyond The Point Of No Return

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw

A half century ago, Russian-born writer Ayn Rand warned about the creeping socialism she saw in America even then. In her thousand-page tome, "Atlas Shrugged," Rand told the story of John Galt, a shadowy figure who is so fed up with high taxes, burdensome regulations and interference from government, he secretly recruits the best and brightest of American capitalism - the captains of industry - to withdraw from society to the mountains of Colorado, leaving the growing welfare state without any visible means of support.

Imagine what Ayn Rand would say about the federal government coughing up quantities of cash even career bureaucrats didn't talk about in the 1950s; all to bail out quasi-government entities whose overseers were complicit in the failures of those very institutions.

Republicans and Democrats alike share the blame for this mess. It was largely created out of a misguided need (mostly by Democrats) to feel as though America was actually doing something to help the poor own their own homes. This may be a worthwhile goal, but when people who have absolutely no hope of paying back loans are approved to buy a home, one has to ask, "Who is going to pick up the tab for all this?" Answer: You are, to the tune of at least a trillion dollars, a sum most of us cannot even fathom.

Over the last decade, Democrats like U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-CN, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, have insisted that these ridiculous loans be made. Former Attorney General Janet Reno, carrying out the wishes of her boss, threatened legal action against any institution that discriminated or "redlined." I was very disappointed to hear John McCain say on CBS's "60 Minutes" that he admired New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and would consider him to head up the Securities and Exchange Commission. As Bill Clinton's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Cuomo was up to his eyeballs pushing the sub-prime mortgages that started these dominoes tipping in the first place.

And where were Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in the 1990s when Clinton and his cronies were building this house of cards? The GOP held the House and the Senate during most of Clinton's tenure. After 2000, they also held the White House. Why did this situation continue?

The rule in Washington seems to be this: If you squander your money and fail to provide for yourself, the government will take care of you. If you save, invest wisely and prepare for your retirement, you will be penalized in order to pay for those who did not. A perfect example was the tax increase passed by Clinton and the Democrats who still controlled Congress during the first two years of his administration. Seniors who had saved and invested for retirement, and who made more than $34,000 ($44,000 per couple) received a tax increase under that plan.

read the rest here.

great Churchill quotes

• History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
• In war it does not matter who is right, but who is left.
• The biggest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter.
• We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm.
• If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.
• I am prepared to meet my maker; whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
• Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
• A nation trying to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to pull himself up by the handles.
• There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.
• The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.
• A modest man, who has much to be modest about. (Referring to Clement Attlee)
• A sheep in sheep’s clothing. (Referring to Ramsay MacDonald)
• He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. (Referring to Sir Stafford Cripps)
• He is the man who brought pederasty into disrepute. (Referring to Tom Driberg)
• He looks like a female llama who has been surprised in the bath. (Referring to Charles De Gaulle)
• If you wanted nothing done at all, Balfour was the man for the job. (Referring to Arthur Balfour)
• Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if I were your wife, I’d poison your tea.
  Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it
• Bessie Braddock: Sir, you are drunk.
  Churchill: And you, madam, are ugly. But in the morning, I shall be sober.
• Young man (after seeing Churchill leave the bathroom without washing his hands): At Eton they taught us to wash our hands after using the toilet.
  Churchill: At Harrow they taught us not to piss on our hands.
• Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
  Woman: My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course…
  Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
  Woman: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
  Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

What in the world is going on here?

You've seen the headlines, and you heard of the failures and buyouts. Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, AIG; all big names and all in big trouble. Then those mysterious quasi-government agencies with names like Freddie and Fannie become wards of the state and you learn that you and your fellow taxpayers are potentially on the hook for tens of billions of dollars. At the end of the week Washington Mutual is looking for a buyer, and you start to wonder about the security of your own bank and your own savings account. Let's change that ad copy to WaMu -- boo hoo. Somewhere in the back of your mind you understand that this is all tied somehow to bad mortgages. If you start reading a bit further to enhance your understanding you run into terms like Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) and credit-default swaps, whatever in the world those are. Read further and you find out that a combination of falling home prices and mortgage defaults have put many investment banks and other financial institutions in deep puddin'. All this reading, all this watching the talking heads on TV, and you still don't really know what in the world is going on here. Fear not. I'm here to help. I know … I'm just another talk show host; but the fact is that when the stage was being set for the problems we're seeing today I was making most of my money as a real estate lawyer .. closing loans for some of the very institutions that are the tank today. This rather unique combination – closing lawyer and radio talk show host – gave me a front row seat to the politicization of mortgage loans that led us to today's headlines. OK .. so we all know that a lot of really bad real estate loans were made. The political class would sure love for us to believe that the blame here rests squarely on "greedy" (try to define that word) mortgage brokers and lenders. The truth is that most of the blame rests on political meddling in the credit decisions of these mortgage lenders. Twenty years ago the buzz-word in the media was "redlining." Newspapers across the country were filled with hard-hitting investigative reports about evil and racist mortgage lenders refusing to make real estate loans to various minorities and to applicants who lived in lower-income neighborhoods. There I was closing these loans in the afternoons, and in the mornings offering a counter-argument on the radio to these absurd "redlining" claims. Frankly, the claims that evil mortgage lenders were systematically denying loans to blacks and other minorities were a lot sexier on the radio than my claims that when credit histories, job stability, loan-to-value ratios and income levels were considered there was no evident racial discrimination. Political correctness won the day. Washington made it clear to banks and other lending institutions that if they did not do something .. and fast .. to bring more minorities and low-income Americans into the world of home ownership there would be a heavy price to pay. Congress set up processes (Research the Community Redevelopment Act) whereby community activist groups and organizers could effectively stop a bank's efforts to grow if that bank didn't make loans to unqualified borrowers. Enter, stage left, the "subprime" mortgage. These lenders knew that a very high percentage of these loans would turn to garbage – but it was a price that had to be paid if the bank was to expand and grow. We should note that among the community groups browbeating banks into making these bad loans was an outfit called ACORN. There is one certain presidential candidate that did a lot of community organizing for ACORN. I won't mention his name so as to avoid politicizing this column. These garbage loans to unqualified borrowers were then bundled up and sold. The expectation was that the loans would be eventually paid off when rising home values led some borrowers to access their equity through re-financing and others to sell and move on up the ladder. Oops. Right now this crisis is being sold to the American public by the left as evidence the failure of the free market and capitalism. Not so. What we're seeing is the inevitable result of political interference in free market economics. Acme bank didn't want to loan money to Joe Homebuyer because Joe had a spotty job history, owed too much money on his credit cards, and wasn't all that good at making payments on time. The politicians told Acme Bank to figure out a way to make that loan, because, after all, Joe is a bona-fide minority-American, or forget about opening that new branch office on the Southside. The loan was made under politicial pressure; the loan, with millions like it, failed – and now we are left to enjoy today's headlines. So … why aren't you reading the whole story in the mainstream media? Come on, are you kidding me? Do you really expect the media to blame this mess on deadbeat borrowers and political interference in the free market when it is so easy to put the blame on greedy lenders and evil capitalists? Remember … there's an election going on. One candidate is decidedly anti-capitalist. Do the math.

wealth redistribution= communism

"We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people,"

Biden said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

what you won't hear on the news

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Print Version

September 9, 2008 5:30 AM

Politics and the Fannie Mae Piggy Bank
Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, and some very cooked books.

By Byron York

Editor’s note — The impending federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has shed light not only on the seriousness of current housing market conditions but also on the mismanagement and corruption that helped cripple the mortgage giants. Although political figures from both parties have profited mightily from Fannie Mae, it has been a particular favorite of former officials of Democratic administrations, as NR’s Byron York found out when he looked into the situation in the summer of 2006.

Hit Print version above to read the article.

read and learn Charlie Gibson

Charlie Gibson's Gaffe

By Charles Krauthammer
Saturday, September 13, 2008; A17

"At times visibly nervous . . . Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of 'anticipatory self-defense.' "

-- New York Times, Sept. 12

Informed her? Rubbish.

The New York Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.

There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration -- and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.

He asked Palin, "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?"

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, "The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism," I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine.

Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush declared: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." This "with us or against us" policy regarding terror -- first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan -- became the essence of the Bush doctrine.

Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq war was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.

It's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge in his inaugural address that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.

If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.

Not the Gibson doctrine of preemption.

Not the "with us or against us" no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.

Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.

Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed "doctrines" in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines which come out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few other contradictory or conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.

Such is not the case with the Bush doctrine.

Yes, Sarah Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage.

Very funny and just a little scary

The significance of 1947

Some of you will recall that on July 8, 1947, a little
over 60 years ago, witnesses claim that an
unidentified flying object (UFO) with five aliens
aboard, crashed onto a sheep and cattle ranch just
outside Roswell, New Mexico. This is a well known
incident that many say has long been covered up by the
U.S. Air Force and other federal agencies and
organizations.

However, what you may NOT know is that in the month of
April 1948, nine months after that historic day, the
following people were born:

Albert A. Gore, Jr.
Hillary Rodham
William J. Clinton
John F. Kerry
Howard Dean
Nancy Pelosi
Dianne Feinstein
Charles E. Schumer
Barbar a Boxer

See what happens when aliens breed with sheep?

I certainly hope this bit of information clears up a
lot of things for you.
It did for me.

No wonder they support the bill to help illegal
aliens!
Now You Know

incredible

more liberal facsism exposed

barack and the abortion cult

Obama is so slavishly obedient to the abortion lobby's cultish protection of a woman's right to terminate her own offspring's life, that he opposed measures designed to protect an already-born baby's chances to survive. And you wonder why we say pro-abortion liberals have made abortion a ritualistic religious sacrament!

On "Hannity & Colmes," Democratic strategist Bob Beckel indignantly stated: "Are you suggesting Barack Obama wants babies to die? . . . I've never thought the Republicans would go this far . . . This is about as low as you can go."

Yes, Bob. Barack Obama was the only member of the Illinois Senate to speak against a bill that would have granted legal protection to already-born babies still alive after a failed abortion. He used his power to prevent those innocent babies from having the best chance to survive. The evidence speaks for itself. It doesn't get much colder than that.

In the face of this latest smoking gun, Obama and his beleaguered defenders have no arrow left in their quiver except to attack their accusers and label them as "swift boaters."

Because swift boating really amounts to truth telling, the targets of those accusations should consider this an affirmation that the Obama forces know the charges are true.