Gregg Goes From Bipartisan Symbol to Top Obama Critic

Sen. Judd Gregg, who was President Obama’s commerce secretary nominee until withdrawing his name from consideration, has emerged as the toughest critic of the president’s handling of the economy and has helped galvanize Republican opposition to Obama’s policies.

Fox News
At first, the relationship between President Obama and Sen. Judd Gregg looked like love at first sight, proof that opposites do attract.

Obama is a 47-year-old left-leaning Democrat who believes in the power of government to solve people’s problems. Gregg is a 61-year-old New Hampshire Republican who advocated limited government and made millions through business investments.

Their unlikely partnership seemed destined to transcend partisan lines and symbolize the change that Obama promised to bring to Washington.

But Gregg, who was Obama’s commerce secretary nominee until withdrawing his name from consideration, has emerged as the toughest critic of the president’s handling of the economy and has helped galvanize Republican opposition to Obama’s policies.

He warned on Monday that Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget proposal will lead to unsustainable debt levels and send the country on a fiscal path resembling that of a “banana republic.”

Gregg kept up his attacks on Obama’s budget request Saturday in the weekly Republican radio address, saying the path to prosperity is not the excessive spending proposed by the president but limited spending that holds down the growth of government, taxes and debt.

The senator said Obama’s proposals “represent an extraordinary move of our government to the left.”

He said Obama “is not trying to hide this; in fact, he is very forthright in stating that he believes that by greatly expanding the spending, the taxing and the borrowing of our government, this will lead us to prosperity.”

Like most relationships, this one began with mutual admiration, respect and trust, with flowery compliments flowing between each other.

At their first public appearance together a week-and-a-half before Valentine’s Day, Obama called Gregg “a master of reaching across the aisle to get things done. He will be an astounding addition, a trusted voice in my Cabinet and an able and competent ambassador … I can think of no finer steward for our nation’s commerce.”

In turn, Gregg praised Obama’s economic stimulus proposal to stabilize the economic slide and pull the country out of recession as an “extraordinarily bold, aggressive, effective and comprehensive plan.”

Read the rest:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100d
ays/2009/03/28/gregg-goes-bipartisan-sy
mbol-obama-critic/
In his radio address Saturday, Gregg countered each of Obama’s policy principles:

— “It is the individual American who creates prosperity and good jobs, not the government.”

— “We believe that you create energy independence not by sticking Americans with a brand new national sales tax on everyone’s electric bill, but by expanding the production of American energy … while also conserving more.”

–“We also believe you improve everyone’s health care not by nationalizing the health care system and putting the government between you and your doctor, but by assuring that every American has access to quality health insurance and choices in health care.”

Leave The Lights On: There’s Work To Do That Is Worth Doing, Even If We’re Tired

I am tired of meaningless, symbolic acts and endless political promises and blather and lack of taking responsibility in the year of the Oh-Bombastic.

I am tired of Barney Frank and Tim Geithner…..

And I am tired of just refusing to do the hard work to figure out how we could make America better.

This presidency has become “The Obama Show.”  When does he work and stop talking?

We’ll leave the lights on for THAT, Barack…..

If we work, and leave the lights on, and read and think we mights have some better ideas.

I fear Barack is talking to people with no lights on….

Here are a few more reasons to leave the lights on:

–To figure out how to handle global warming without ending productivity and growth in the USA….or anywhere else…
 U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy

This is a developing essay and not yet finished…..

–To figure out how to have health care reform without having health care rationing….
How Health Care Reform Can Kill Good Medicine

Natasha Richardson’s Story Saves Girl’s Life

–To figure out how to focus upon students and learning and not just teachers and money….

–To figure out, as we just passed the 30th anniversary of Three Mile Island, how to get past our fears of nuclear power (as the French have) and light up our world forever….We are not in the Jane Fonda world of the China Syndrome: just ask the U.S. Navy or any nation with nuclear power….

–To figure out when we’ll drill in the Arctic Reserve….safely… I mean we went to the moon and I am expected to believe Obama’s “Big Oil” lie that we can’t get money and oil out of Alaska without killing the planet?

–To figure out how to get the Republicans in America to wake the f &*^%$# up…….

–To teach the Congress why a 90% tax on anyone is a bad idea…..

Do we want to revive our economy, or do we want to punish the bankers?

As Joe Biden says, “Are you f ^%$#*& ing kidding me?”

I am tired of capers like the stimulus: my money gone and congress didn’t have time to read the bill and the president said it was a really super-duper crisis like all his others…. so we have NO HOPE of getting it right…. like Afgahanistan and now we have adopted Pakistan too?  I thought this was the anti-war president?

Obama Stimulus Job Numbers for Massachusetts “Manufactured in Washington DC”

I’m tired of class warfare….

Class Warfare? Obama Tears Down Rich Instead of Inspiring Others To Get Rich

I am tired of looking at my children and grandchildren while I know I am living a lie because they will have to pay off the debt someday….and my house is paid for…I’m talking about the Obamadebt….
The Democratic Congress’s Cover-Up; Our Biggest Danger

I’m tired of fakes who lip synch and are praised as entertainers…. and for giving a complete show….

Britney Spears delivers a complete show

Michelle Malkin:
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/0
3/28/leave-the-lights-on-celebrat
e-human-achievement-hour/

At the top of the U.S. government we have this guy, Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden.  Really?

Drama on China’s high seas casts U.S. as adversary

China’s flash of maritime muscle against a U.S. Navy ship this month has put its neighbors and America on watch against a bolder push to exert sovereignty in regional waters.

After a decade of increases in defense spending that averaged 16 percent a year, China has the military means to enforce claims in the energy-rich and trade-heavy South and East China Seas — and to challenge U.S. activities there, as it did March 8 when five Chinese vessels confronted the U.S.N.S. Impeccable.

By Dune Lawrence
Bloomberg

“China is looking to expand” its sphere of influence toward Guam and to the Philippines, says Tai Ming Cheung, a senior fellow at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation in La Jolla, California. “The maritime arena is one of the most fluid and strategic for China in terms of how it’s going to defend and expand and protect its interests internationally.”

China’s move reflects its increasing international political and economic clout, which may lend it confidence in challenging the United States — and complicate America’s response. President Barack Obama needs China’s support in dealing with North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear programs, not to mention its financial help in the form of continued purchases of U.S. government debt to support stimulus plans.

“There are much bigger factors at play, notably the need to keep China on board in cooperating in resolving the financial and economic crisis,” says Tim Huxley, executive director in Asia for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Just eight weeks after Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the Chinese boats crowded “dangerously” close to the American surveillance ship and demanded that it leave waters about 120 kilometers, or 75 miles, south of Hainan Island, China’s southernmost province, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, which sent a warship escort.

China said the United States broke international law by spying close to its shores. The United States said its activities were allowed under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

For Shane Osborn, the dispute seemed all too familiar. Osborn piloted a U.S. Navy surveillance plane that collided with a Chinese fighter jet over the same area in April 2001 — just weeks after the start of George W. Bush’s first term as president. The Chinese pilot died. Mr. Osborn made an emergency landing on Hainan, a beach resort and military base, where the Chinese detained him and his crew for 11 days on the ground that they had entered China’s airspace without permission.

The Impeccable’s encounter “was a little bit like déjà vu,” says Mr. Osborn, 34, now state treasurer of Nebraska. While tension died down soon after the 2001 incident, Mr. Osborn says he is concerned that will not happen this time, and he is quick to point out how China’s military has changed in the past eight years.

“They’ve made large investments in upgrading their equipment, and it’s starting to show now,” he says. “They were just at the beginning of it” then.

Read the rest:
http://www.iht.com/articles/20
09/03/24/asia/letter.php

China, Japan Cancel Summit: Islands, Oil Remain Sticking Point

Japan’s Premier Taro Aso will not visit China this month, Japanese government officials said Tuesday, following earlier reports that Tokyo and Beijing were trying to schedule a summit in March.

“We’ve been coordinating with China to hold the meeting as soon as possible, but we now recognise that realising it in March is difficult,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told reporters.

AFP

No firm dates had been announced by either government, but Japanese officials had told reporters both sides were trying to schedule Aso’s meetings with China’s President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao for late March.

The foreign ministry denied a Japanese media report Tuesday that China had postponed the meetings because of anger over Aso’s recent comments on the disputed Senkaku Islands, called the Diaoyu Islands by China.

“Between Japan and China, top government officials have visited each other on five occasions since last year,” an official said. “Foreign Minister (Hirofumi) Nakasone also visited Beijing earlier this month.”

“The relationship between China and Japan is very good right now.”

Aso last month said in parliament that Japan would ask the United States to defend the East China Sea archipelago, which is also claimed by Taiwan, in case of an attack, drawing a sharp rebuke from Beijing.

Aso and China’s leaders are set to attend the April 2 Group of 20 financial summit in London, where they could meet on the sidelines.

Related:
 China Violates Accord with Japan, Continues Oil Work At Sea
.
China Warship Rushes to Disputed Islands, Oil Beneath: Ace To Other Nations’ Claims?

China drill at sea

 
A file Philippine Air Force photo shows Chinese built structures on the Mischief Reef in the disputed Spratly islands in the South China Sea. China on Monday defended its move to send a patrol ship to the disputed Spratly islands, saying it was not a violation of an agreement to maintain the peace in the area.(AFP/PAF/HO/File)

My Hope Doesn’t Allow Me To Swallow Obama The Way the Media Has…

There is just too much on the plate here to swallow.

As Andrew Malcolm wrote in the L.A. Times today:

Listen for more such positive tweaks in coming days. It’s bad. But we’re strong. If we can go to the moon, we can automate all medical records and cover everyone with health insurance and reform the country’s education system and stop foreclosures and expand the war in Afghanistan and create a federal deficit with more zeroes than most civilian calculators contain and then cut the deficit in half by giving 95% of Americans tax cuts and sticking it to a few rich people. And the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

That and, perhaps, China calling in all its loans at once.

Oh, and cure cancer, solve global warming (if it is the disaster Al Gore claims) and rid ourselves of oil, gas and coal.

Frankly, my dear, I do give a damn.

And I give a damn about working on jobs, banks and the economy first: without fixing the “cisis” we cannot afford to fix the rest of the country and the world…..

And the swallow Obama media can’t be too smart: many of the newspapers that got behind Obama early and without criticism are now going out of business.  Even consevative talk radio guys that haven’t had the impact of the “Obama boost” inthe form of Rahm Emanuael’s orchestrated attacks, like Rush Limbaugh, are failing.

So here is the recipe for future success:

Mitch McConnell and other Republicans need to fight the Obama plan, slow down all non essential legislation, and get people to listen.

Then need to set down principles the way Newt did in the “Contract with America” and they need to stick to them the way Ron Silver did even when Hollywood wouldn’t hire him.

It’s the economy, stupid.

Principles, sticking to principles and getting the word out will work.  It worked before.

Republicans: If You Can’t Agree On Core Values Now, Commit Harakiri

Arch liberal Bush hater Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) was on the conservative Fox News Channel today to say, “Our country is being looted.”

If he can get this: so can all Republicans.

This is time for Republicans to stand united or die trying.  And for some that are on the fence like Maine’s Snowe and Collins and Arlen Specter of the Keystone state: we say adieu or seppuku.

Health care?  Good luck: but try to stand united.

Schools should be federalized and the White House is writing the legislation?  No brainer.

Spending at the rate of $1 billion an hour?  Unsustainable generational theft.  Even China is worried.

Energy: are you with Al Gore or against him?

Foreign policy?  Do you believe Iran, China, North Korea and the Taliban will play nice?

Terrorism: a word Obama has removed from the lexicon, is still maybe a threat?  What say you.

Corruption: Republicans want an end of corruption and total truth and honesty in government.  Right?

Time to ressurect the Newt style contract with what’s remaining of America before it is too late guys and gals….

****************

Daniel Flynn writes in today’s American Spectator, “If fiscal restraint, individual responsibility, the protection of human life, support for the 2nd Amendment and a robust military, and an abiding believe in American exceptionalism, are unpalatable to the likes of Frum, the left will certainly welcome him as the latest intellectual quisling, and exploit him for their own political designs.”

http://spectator.org/archives/200
9/03/13/frum-right-to-wrong

**************************

Related:

 China’s Economic Might, Arrogance Should Cause Caution in the West

Japan Ready To Shoot Down North Korean Missile

Obama’s Poll Numbers Are Falling to Earth

 Obama’s Schools Will Have To Follow Federal Rules, Like Socialist, Communist Schools

Obama’s mythical mystique of government and science and their inherent moral benevolence

Culture of Corruption: Many Americans Losing Trust in Government?

Obama’s mythical mystique of government and science and their inherent moral benevolence

Presiden Obama is now on track to federalize schools, health care, some aspects of the media, science and just about every aspect of your American life.

Alarmist?

Maybe.  You judge for yourself.

The point is: some people do not believe that federal government rules for our schools will lead to better education across the board.

Some people do not believe that government control of health care will really mean better “care.”

Some people do not believe it is time to tax coal and gas and oil companies while we harvest the wind….There might still be too much hot air in the energy/climate change discussion….

Some people no longer beliive our national intelligence system: they said there were weapons of mass destruction is Iraq, they missed the fall of the Soviet Union, they now say what about Iran and nukes and the president wanted an anti-Isreal and pro-China guy named Freeman for a key intelligence job. Politicized?  Maybe.

Some people do believe that the spending, taxing and socialist trends we are now seeing will lead to a bankrupt America with the social life the Netherlands or Sweden.

And some people suspect that when the White House Chief of Staff engineers an assault on a private American citizen speaking his mind (Rush Limbaugh) and some folks talk about  ……  free speech will be curtailed before long.

I no longer believe in the benevolence of government.  And I surely suspect trouble in the promised benevolence of science, government and stem cell research….

And I just don’t believe in the promises of Barack Obama: the post-partisan, post-racial hope-filled future was a lie….

*****************

By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post
March 13, 2009

Last week, the White House invited me to a signing ceremony overturning the Bush (43) executive order on stem cell research. I assume this was because I have long argued in these columns and during my five years on the President’s Council on Bioethics that, contrary to the Bush policy, federal funding should be extended to research on embryonic stem cell lines derived from discarded embryos in fertility clinics.

I declined to attend. Once you show your face at these things you become a tacit endorser of whatever they spring. My caution was vindicated.

Preident Bush had restricted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to cells derived from embryos that had already been destroyed (as of his speech of Aug. 9, 2001). While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, President Obama replaced it with no line at all. He pointedly left open the creation of cloned — and noncloned sperm-and-egg-derived — human embryos solely for the purpose of dismemberment and use for parts.
I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research — a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of “science” and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.

That part of the ceremony, watched from the safe distance of my office, made me uneasy. The other part — the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on “restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making” — would have made me walk out.

Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.

What an outrage. Bush’s nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few …

Read the rest:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy
n/content/article/2009/03/12/AR20
09031202764.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03
/12/laughingstock-president-doom-
does-a-180-cancels-fear-mongering/

Obama’s Hope, Post-Partisan, Post-Racial Promises Were All BS

Never Wrong? U.S. Intelligence Says Iran Does Not Nave Any Highly Enriched Uranium
.
http://johnbrodigan.com/2009/03/12/epi
sode-v-the-republicans-strike-back/

Republicans: If You Can’t Agree On Core Values Now, Commit Harakiri

Fleeing Obama’s Taxes in Switzerland

The tidy towns and mountain vistas of Switzerland are an unlikely setting for an oil boom.

Yet a wave of energy companies has in the last few months announced plans to move to Switzerland — mainly for its appeal as a low-tax corporate domicile that looks relatively likely to stay out of reach of Barack Obama’s tax-seeking administration.

Reuters

In a country with scant crude oil production of its own, the virtual energy boom has changed the canton or state of Zug, about 30 minutes’ drive from Zurich, beyond all recognition. Its economy was based on farming until it slashed tax rates to attract commerce after World War Two.

It still has a chocolate-box old town with views over a lake to the high Alps, but is now surrounded by gleaming corporate offices — including commodity trader Glencore and oil refiner Petroplus — shopping malls and housing developments.

Local authorities say about 13 percent of full-time jobs in Zug canton are in the raw materials sector.

Over the past six months companies including offshore drilling contractors Noble Corp and Transocean, energy-focused engineering group Foster Wheeler and oilfield services company Weatherfield International have all announced plans to shift domicile to Switzerland.

“Switzerland has a stable and developed tax regime and a network of tax treaties with most countries where we operate,” Transocean Chief Executive Bob Long said in a statement in October, when it announced its move. “As a result, the redomestication will improve our ability to maintain a competitive worldwide effective corporate tax rate.”

Read the rest:
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssEnergyNews/
idUSL312427120090312?feedType=RSS&feedNa
me=rbssEnergyNews&rpc=22

Card Check, Earmarks, Nancy’s Air Travel Cloud Giant That Could Eat Obama, Ruin America: The Economy

Stupid games like card check are not good for the economy: so why are we playing them now?
.
Time to end stupid games and business as usual.  It’s the economy, stupid.

Pork?  Slash it.  Nancy’s aircraft: wanton waste of taxpayer money.  Don’t let them eat cake: fly commercial, bitch!

Dumb and Dumber: I’m starting to think this is Obama and Geithner

“It is time for President Obama to focus his considerable leadership and communication skills on the financial crisis – to speak candidly with the people about the magnitude of the problem, to embrace a solution commensurate with the problem, and to do whatever it takes to persuade Congress and the people to accept it,” wrote William Galston, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, in The New Republic.

Barack Obama should forget about spending billions of dollars on education and everything else and read a little recent history.  Recent economic, political and world history.

Money is power.  It’s the economy, stupid.

That phrase, coined by James Carville, got Bill Clinton into the White House.

The “we can have it all” thought process of Barack Obama might not get us what we want.  Be careful what you wish for.

I’ll join the team of Warren Buffett who suggests that the president needs to go to war to save the economy and deal with health care, education, climate change, energy and the rest later.

Just today, Thursday, March 12, 2009:

—The number of initial claims for jobless benefits rose last week, while the total number of people continuing to receive benefits set a record high, the government said Thursday.

— Foreclosure filings in the U.S. climbed 30 percent in February from a year earlier as the worsening economy thwarted efforts by the government and lenders to prevent homeowners from losing property.

—The net worth of American households fell by the largest amount in more than a half-century of record keeping during the fourth quarter of last year.The Federal Reserve said Thursday that household net worth dropped by a record 9 percent from the level in the third quarter.

Some economists say the unemployment rate could reach 10 percent by the end of this year, from its current level of 8.1 percent.

And our unemployment measures don’t see relatively highly skilled and highly paid workers now cleaning toilets….

The stock market may be up today but we all know it is down hugely since last fall.

Except on education the president should read a little history.  LBJ tried to do it all while the economy was shakey and he lost everything. 

The casino Barack Obama is spending our money in is the world and China, which holds much of the U.S. debt, and China could break his legs…..

But before China bearks Obama’s legs something else happens: because China sees an economically weak America and a President it perceives as weak, America and Obama will be tested.  Again and again.

And not just by China.

Related:
China Making It Clear: Won’t Roll Over, Do Tricks for Barack, Hillary
.
 Barack, Hillary: Moronic “Reset” Idea for Relations With Russia

Buffett: Obama not at war; has toxic message machine on economy

53% Say It’s Likely the U.S. Will Enter a Depression

Obama Reelection Effort Begins

Obama: Playing not to lose

See:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/2
0090312/ap_on_bi_ge/economy

http://www.bloomberg.com/ap
ps/news?pid=20601206&sid=a
qtJdtiZTJtk

http://michellemalkin.com/2009
/03/12/threat-of-card-check-legi
slation-sends-wal-mart-stock-down/

Obama Wasting America’s Strategic World Power; China Surges Despite Economy

While President Obama has spent $1 billion in borrowed money each hour in his first 50 days as president, and more spending is in the offing, what did America gain?

Well: Obanma may have bought himself a second term and there may be some feel good relief to people and businesses, which is real — but what did America gain?

In the time since Barack Obama took the oath of office, Russia and China have strengthened their common interests, which are rarely shared with American interests, Russia has denied America Manas air bas which is key to the War in Afghanistan, China has bought up oil and other commodities at bargain basement prices, China has sent a strong signal of intolerance toward the U.S. in an at sea incident, and North Korea, with China’s undoubted blessing, has rattled its saber….

China has used this period of economic decline to improve its future.  Almost any American will tell you our future is uncertain or certainly worse than before.

Yet the president insists there is a lot of spending yet to be done on education, health care, energy (wind), climate change and other projects.  Yet he saw no need to stop congressional pet projects (earmarks) in the omnibus spending bill he signed in solitude yesterday.

Lets just flush money and America’s future down the toilet…..

Massive debt-spending is called generational theft for a reason….

Related:
Pelosi’s Stimulus II? Lawmakers Propose No Cost, High Employment Energy Package

China Buying Oil, Uranium, Gold, Other Products At Bargain Prices

Russia, “Desperate For Cash,” Sells Oil to China In “Very Bad Deal”
Even Democrats Showing Signs Of Economic Despair, Worry at White House Inertia

Pelosi: Congress Needs to ‘Keep the Door Open’ to Second Stimulus Package