Spin, Spin, Spin - Lose, Lose, Lose!

Skepticism over Obama's tax credit proposal how could that be?

Obama obviously does not know how to spell "cut spending ." (See 1 below.)

Rahm bombs? Is there a bus with his name on it waiting down the road? (See 2 below.)

The White House keeps dodging 'information bullets' while expecting us to dodge 'real bombs.' Attorney General Holder is an unmitigated disaster. I would put him in the category of Robert Gibbs. (See 3 below.)

You can cry in your beer but 'stop the bed wetting.' (See 4 below.)

I am not saying it will happen but it will be interesting to use this article as a basis for measuring. As I have written time and again whenever Liberals are threatened they respond by trying to destroy the person, their character, questioning their intelligence etc. (See 5 below.)

Massachusetts Liberals vetted Obama - they did what the Liberal press and media have failed to do. Their conclusion - Obama is a fraud. (See 6 below.)

Spin, spin, spin - lose,lose,lose. (See 7 below.)

Dick



1) PROMISES, PROMISES: Skepticism on Obama tax credit
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's push to create jobs includes a new tax credit for small businesses that add employees, an idea that fell flat in Congress last year and continues to have skeptics this year.

The idea has appeal as the nation struggles with an unemployment rate topping 10 percent. But House Democrats left out Obama's proposal when they passed a jobs bill in December because they didn't know how to target the credit effectively. The Obama administration still hasn't provided details on how the tax credit would work, and some tax experts question whether it would.

"It's very hard to know when a company is incrementally adding jobs because of a tax credit, and when they would have done it anyway," said Eugene Steuerle, a Treasury Department official in the Reagan administration who is now co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. "I'm sympathetic to subsidizing low-wage jobs. It's just a question of how you design it."

Congressional researchers say a tax credit for firms that increase payroll could be a good way to increase employment, if the credit is available to all companies, not just small businesses. They cautioned, however, that it would be difficult to administer.

Among the issues raised by tax experts:

_How would the government prevent abuse by companies that artificially increase payroll?

_How would new companies be treated?

_How would a firm be prevented from disbanding and reopening under another name just to claim the credit?

_How would the government ensure firms add long-term employees when the credit is only for a year or two?

_Would firms be willing to add workers to get a tax credit when consumer demand for their products has not increased?

Clint Stretch, a tax policy expert at Deloitte Tax, said the tax break would help companies that shed jobs last year and were ready to start rehiring this year.

"Guys who were ruthless and threw people out on the street will benefit while those who kept their workers will not," Stretch said.

The Obama administration renewed its focus on job creation last week and the president called on Congress to pass a jobs bill that provides "tax breaks to small businesses for hiring people."

Obama first proposed the tax credit late last year, but House Democrats didn't include it in a jobs bill they passed in December. The bill is awaiting action in the Senate. Aides said Obama will focus on job creation in his State of the Union address Wednesday.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently analyzed several proposals to create jobs and improve the economy, and concluded that a payroll tax credit for firms that increase payroll would be among the most effective. However, the analysis said limiting the credit to small businesses would reduce the economic benefits.

Congress enacted a similar tax credit in the 1970s and few small businesses took advantage, the CBO report said.

Two economists have been promoting a job creation tax credit for the past several months: John H. Bishop, a professor at Cornell University, and Timothy J. Bartik, senior economist at the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Michigan.

Under their proposal, businesses that increase their payrolls by more than 3 percent over 2009 levels would get tax credits worth 15 percent of the increase. The tax credit would only apply to the first $50,000 of a worker's salary, capping the amount at $7,500 per worker.

Big and small employers would be eligible, and the credit would be available for existing workers who get raises or more hours, as long as payroll is increased for employees making less than $50,000. The tax credits would be refundable, meaning employers would get them as payments, even if they don't owe any taxes.

Bishop said companies that hire workers, increase hours or increase wages would all be helping the economy.

"We're trying to find a way to lower the cost of adding labor," Bishop said. "The job creation tax credit has the highest bang for buck."

Two senators, noting the "lukewarm" response to Obama's proposal in Congress, have come up with a plan for a payroll tax credit for businesses that hire workers who have been unemployed at least 60 days.

The proposal, by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, would exempt businesses from paying the employers' share of Social Security taxes on those workers for the rest of 2010. The plan would save companies 6.2 percent of the workers' salaries that are subject to Social Security taxes.


2)Chief of Staff Draws Fire From Left as Obama Falters
By PETER WALLSTEN

President Barack Obama's liberal backers have a long list of grievances. The Guantanamo Bay prison is still open. Health care hasn't been transformed. And Wall Street banks are still paying huge bonuses.

But they are directing their anger less at Mr. Obama than at the man who works down the hall from him. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, they say, is the prime obstacle to the changes they thought Mr. Obama's election would bring.

Some observers say Rahm Emanuel is losing favor with liberal Democrats. Could his job be on the line? Kelsey Hubbard talks with WSJ's Peter Wallsten about the future of President Obama's chief of staff.
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The friction was laid bare in August when Mr. Emanuel showed up at a weekly strategy session featuring liberal groups and White House aides. Some attendees said they were planning to air ads attacking conservative Democrats who were balking at Mr. Obama's health-care overhaul.

"F—ing retarded," Mr. Emanuel scolded the group, according to several participants. He warned them not to alienate lawmakers whose votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items.

The antipathy reflects deep dissatisfaction on the Democratic left with Mr. Obama's first year in office, and represents a fracturing of the relationship between the president and the political base that mobilized to elect him. A little more than one year ago, Mr. Obama's victory led some to predict an era of Democratic dominance.

The anger on the left shows that Mr. Obama is caught in an internal battle over both the course of his administration and the Democratic Party.

Many in the party, particularly in the wake of the loss last week of a Massachusetts Senate seat, contend that the White House should chart a centrist approach focusing on the economy. They point to polls showing Mr. Obama's approval rating among independent voters has dropped by nearly 20 percentage points since early last year.

The left has gotten some of what it wanted: a ban on torture, an expansion of children's health insurance and an equal-pay law for women. But liberal activists say those and other measures add up to far less than what they expected.

Cenk Uygur, a liberal talk-radio host, calls Mr. Emanuel "Barack Obama's Dick Cheney." One group has run ads against Mr. Emanuel in his hometown of Chicago. And Jane Hamsher, a prominent liberal blogger, is going after Mr. Emanuel's service—10 years ago—on the board of housing-finance giant Freddie Mac.

For the president, Mr. Emanuel is a useful foil, playing a role akin to that of James Baker, who absorbed attacks from unhappy conservatives while chief of staff to Ronald Reagan. Mr. Emanuel is a centrist cut from the Bill Clinton mold, and his presence is useful as the president tries to cut deals with centrists and conservatives.

The unrest among liberals comes at a perilous political time. Party strategists worry that anger on the left could depress turnout in this year's midterm elections and cost the party congressional seats and state governorships. The most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC survey found 55% of Republicans "very interested" in the November elections, compared with 38% of Democrats.

The tension between Mr. Emanuel and liberals has spurred speculation that he might leave the White House, perhaps to run for office again, something he denies.

After the party's Massachusetts loss, criticism of the chief of staff—not only from activists, but from members of Congress—has increased.

In recent days, the White House turned to two other top advisers, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, to discuss on network television how the Massachusetts defeat will affect the president's agenda.

There have been reports of tension between Mr. Emanuel and Ms. Jarrett, who is more ideologically in tune with the liberal base and close with the Obama family, but several people who have worked with the two say they get along fine.

Matthew Rothschild, editor of the Progressive, an antiwar magazine, wrote this month that Mr. Emanuel has "delivered defeat" for Mr. Obama and should be fired.

The president, he wrote, "needs a chief of staff with the wisdom to help point him down a bold, progressive path."

Mr. Emanuel responds with a reference to the party's base: "They like the president, and that's all that counts."

Allies say the chief of staff's strategy is purely realistic, that compromise is required in order to pass legislation. Mr. Emanuel's defenders note that Mr. Obama campaigned as a pragmatist who would value bipartisanship over ideology.

On health care, Mr. Emanuel negotiated with Republicans, pharmaceutical and health-insurance companies.

He also supported Congress dropping liberal ideas that didn't have enough support, in particular the "public option," a provision in which the government would provide health insurance for a large swath of the population. "Rahm's approach, like the president, is not ideological. It's practical," says Bruce Reed, chief executive of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and a frequent recipient of Mr. Emanuel's phone calls. "The administration's strategy has been to pass health-care reform, not die trying."

John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank with close ties to the White House, says he hears the griping about Mr. Emanuel's health-care strategy all the time, even in his own organization. "He's a pretty skilled practitioner of what it takes to get something done on Capitol Hill," he says. "But by moving in that direction, they've paid a big price on the public side, and the bill is unpopular and misunderstood."

"It's better if everyone on the outside is mad at the chief of staff than mad at the president," adds Mr. Podesta, a chief of staff to President Clinton.

While a number of Mr. Emanuel's predecessors, including Messrs. Baker and Podesta, were considered skilled gatekeepers for their bosses, Mr. Emanuel's résumé is somewhat unique: previous White House experience, a short spell as an investment banker, six years in the House as a representative from Illinois, responsibility for setting national campaign strategy for House races and a reputation as a brass-knuckled enforcer.

From his early days in Washington, Mr. Emanuel, who is 50 years old, was more interested in legislative and political victories than ideological warfare, say friends and critics alike. He saw himself as a "New Democrat," identifying with party centrists who were embroiled in an ideological struggle with liberals. As a senior adviser in the Clinton White House, Mr. Emanuel supported the president's tactic of "triangulation," in which Mr. Clinton joined forces with Republicans to push an overhaul of welfare, crime and illegal-immigration policies.

After winning a House seat in 2002, he was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and was credited with delivering the majority for his party in the 2006 elections. His strategy was to recruit conservative Democrats to run in Republican-leaning districts.

Within weeks of taking up his White House post, Mr. Emanuel was shuttling between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to resolve disagreements over the $787 billion economic-stimulus package. The legislation angered Republicans, but also irked the left, which regarded the package as too small and complained that Mr. Emanuel was intent on negotiating with the party's more conservative members.

Activists and former campaign staff members watched with dismay as Mr. Emanuel and his team pursued a traditional Washington style of Capitol Hill negotiations and deal making. Activists on the left had hoped the administration would use Mr. Obama's grass-roots campaign network, Organizing for America, and its email list with 13 million names to pressure lawmakers into adopting a more left-leaning agenda, such as pushing for universal health-care coverage.

House aides describe Mr. Emanuel's role in legislative negotiations as more involved than any chief of staff in recent times. During tense House votes on the stimulus package, climate-change legislation and health care, Mr. Emanuel barraged skittish members with phone calls and BlackBerry messages. In one case, he tracked down a Democratic member in the showers at the House gym to make sure he was an aye vote, says one congressional aide.

By the spring, civil libertarians and others were pushing the White House to roll back Bush-era antiterrorism policies on matters ranging from Guantanamo Bay to torture. In meetings of senior advisers, Mr. Emanuel was often the loudest voice questioning the wisdom of such changes, according to a participant in the discussions. His concern wasn't so much the substance of the policy, but the political consequences, this person says.

On May 19, civil-liberties advocates joined Mr. Obama, Mr. Emanuel and other aides for a meeting at the White House. They aired their frustrations with the president's policies. The president listened and asked questions.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, who attended the meeting, says he had grown suspicious of Mr. Emanuel, who as a congressman had a largely pro-ACLU voting record. Mr. Romero says he noticed a shift when Mr. Emanuel became "consigliere at the White House," where he focuses "less on the policy outcomes and more on maintaining a Democratic agenda that will keep the party in power."

In the Clinton White House, Mr. Emanuel saw the pharmaceutical industry kill the administration's health agenda. Avoiding that outcome was his goal last year. He and other White House aides assured industry officials that the legislation wouldn't include price controls, and that the administration wouldn't pursue allowing the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada and Europe if the health plan passed.

The discussions with PhRMA, the drug industry's main lobby group, and other business groups angered many liberals, who felt Mr. Emanuel ceded too much ground. They also opposed the White House's decision to pursue support from Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Mr. Emanuel gave early indication that he was flexible on the public option, telling The Wall Street Journal last July that the door was open to alternative ideas to "keep the private insurers honest." That prompted a mass email from liberal group MoveOn.org, which said that "Emanuel's remarks will only embolden conservative opponents of reform" and that he was backing "disastrous half-measures."

"Everyone seems to be waiting around for the Chicago street brawler Rahm, because the one that showed up in the White House has little apparent fight in him," says Markos Moulitsas, publisher of the liberal blog Daily Kos. "Sure, he's quick to attack progressives when they criticize Obama or put legislative pressure on him from the left, but he's far too quick and happy to accommodate the Democratic Party's corporatist wing."

Mr. Emanuel's "retarded" outburst in August heightened the belief among some liberal leaders that the chief of staff was tough only on the left, especially when the health-care debate turned into a conflagration during a series of town-hall meetings.

The weekly strategy sessions where he made the remark, called the Common Purpose Project, are by invitation only, and participants are sworn to secrecy. Activists say it's a one-way conversation, with the White House presenting its views and asking liberals to refrain from public criticism. Ms. Hamsher, publisher of the Fire Dog Lake blog, calls the gatherings the "veal pen."

One liberal group, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, founded by ex-MoveOn staff member Adam Green, spent $20,000 to briefly air a television ad featuring a former constituent in Mr. Emanuel's House district. "A lot of us back home hope Rahm Emanuel is fighting for people like us as White House chief of staff," said the man in the ad. "But if he sides with insurance companies and undermines the public option, well, he won't have many fans in Chicago."

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat and one of the House's more liberal members, recalls telling Mr. Emanuel the White House needed to apply more pressure to secure passage of the public option. Mr. Emanuel's response, Mr. Weiner says, was always the same: He was open to any idea that could gain a majority vote.


3)Abdulmutallab in 50 Minutes: The more we learn about his 'interrogation,' the worse White House policy looks.
By Fark Viadeo Orkut

The attempted Christmas Day destruction over Detroit of Northwest Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is fading from public memory as a fortunate near-miss. This incident should not fade from view. As more information emerges, the picture it paints about the antiterror mindset of the current U.S. government is—there is no other word—scary.

Last week in these columns, we discussed Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair's Congressional testimony on the Abdulmutallab case. This was Mr. Blair's famous "duh" remark about the government's failure to invoke the new High-Value Detainee Interrogration Group (HIG) to question Abdulmutallab. A remarkable Associated Press story this past weekend makes clear that "duh" was mainly another word for disgust inside the intelligence bureaucracy over what happened that day in Detroit.

Here, compressed, is AP's account of how Abdulmutallab was handled after the plane landed. Read it and weep.

He was taken to the hospital by U.S. Customs agents and local cops, to whom he babbled that he was trying to blow up the plane.

Agents from the FBI's Detroit bureau were called in about 2:15. He "spoke openly" and admitted he was from al Qaeda in Yemen. Under a Miranda exception meant to let officials find out fast if another bomb is imminent, the agents didn't issue the standard self-incrimination warning. He talked for 50 minutes. Then, to let the suspect's medications wear off, the interrogators stopped.

Five hours later, the FBI in Washington said it wanted a new interrogation team to do a second interview. This new group of FBI interrogators is called a "clean team."

The AP explains: "By bringing in a so-called 'clean team' of investigators to talk to the suspect, federal officials aimed to ensure that Abdulmutallab's statements would still be admissible if the failure to give him his Miranda warning led a judge to rule out the use of his first admissions . . . . In the end, though, the 'clean team' of interrogators did not prod more revelations from the suspect."

After he was rested and revived, Abdulmutallab was given his Miranda warning. He never said another thing.

On "Fox News Sunday," Chris Wallace asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs whether the President was told that Abdulmutallab was Mirandized after only 50 minutes of interrogation. Mr. Gibbs said the decision was made "by the Justice Department and the FBI" and insisted they got "valuable intelligence."

This is awful. This talky terrorist should have been questioned for 50 hours, not 50 minutes. More pointedly, Abdulmutallab should not have been questioned by local G-men concerned principally with getting a conviction in court. He should have been interrogated by agents who know enough about the current state of al Qaeda to know what to ask, what names or locations to listen for, and what answers to follow up. The urgent matter is deterring future plots, not getting Abdulmutallab behind bars.

It gets worse. Appearing before Congress last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted that the HIG group essentially doesn't even exist yet. They haven't pulled it together.

Recall that in August Mr. Obama announced the intention to create a multi-agency HIG, transferring lead responsibility for interrogations away from the CIA and into the FBI, with techniques limited to the Army Field Manual.

And worse. As a Wall Street Journal account of last week's Senate Judiciary hearings noted, the HIG team is intended only for interrogations overseas; the Administration hasn't decided whether to use it domestically. In any event, that's moot until there is an HIG team.

We hope the appropriate committees of Congress do not let this drop, for many obvious reasons. We'll make one point:

Ultimately, the national security bureaucracies take their signals from the top. In August Mr. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder made it clear that their war on terror would be fought inside the framework of Miranda and the civilian justice system. Before Justice ordered him Mirandized, would-be suicide bomber Abdulmutallab thus gave us 50 minutes in the mortal war against al Qaeda.

It has to get better than this. But it won't unless the President throws his weight publicly behind the officials who want to make it better than this.


4)'No Bed-Wetting' : David Plouffe's call to arms.


Even as President Obama makes a show of political modesty after losing Massachusetts, Congressional leaders are trying to rekindle the cinders left among the health-care ashes. Plan B still seems to be to dragoon enough panicking House Democrats into passing the Senate's Christmas Eve bill, and to that end the White House reactivated campaign manager David Plouffe over the weekend.

"No bed-wetting," Mr. Plouffe declared in a Washington Post op-ed. As a call to arms this leaves something to be desired, though it does suggest the political unreality that still prevails among Democratic leaders.

A new poll released yesterday by the Pew Research Center on the public's priorities reveals the real reasons ObamaCare is in intensive care. Jobs and rehabilitating the economy understandably top the list, with 81% and 83% of voters rating these as a "top priority." Reducing health-care costs (57%) fell from 69% in 2008, and is now behind terrorism (80%), education (65%), deficit reduction (60%) and even Medicare (63%) and Social Security (66%).

Our guess is that this decline is because Democrats have tipped their hand in the last year about how they plan to reduce those costs via ObamaCare—namely through central planning and price controls that would limit access to care. Meanwhile, health insurance reform clocked in at 49%, which at least makes it far more popular than the Administration's cap-and-tax global-warming agenda. A mere 28% ranked climate change as a political priority.

This collapsing public support is what's eroding ObamaCare's chances in Congress. Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts is looking like an excuse for many Democrats to do what they have probably wanted to do for months anyway. The toxic political environment became even clearer yesterday with Beau Biden's announcement that he will not run for his dad's old Delaware Senate seat this year (despite reports to the contrary from the Vice President's office on Sunday). Arkansas Democrat Marion Berry also announced that he'll retire this year after seven terms, telling local media that the current health-care debate looks a lot like 1994 to him.

Wednesday's State of the Union may reveal whether the White House is going to stick with its so-crazy-it-just-might-work strategy to save ObamaCare. It would be wiser to pack it in and start over.


5)How Liberals Will Try to Destroy Scott Brown
By Kyle Stone

Three weeks ago, few had ever heard of Massachusetts State Senator Scott Brown. Now on his way to voting in the Senate, Brown has become a national political sensation. Pulling off the "Massachusetts Miracle," Brown is the new poster boy for a GOP resurgence in 2010. But along with his sudden political fame, he will also be the newest target of liberal vitriol and vengeance. After all, he stole what was rightfully theirs -- the Democrats' absolute hold on Massachusetts' Senate delegation. He'd better be ready, as the liberal character assassins are sharpening their knives and devising strategies to discredit the amateur senator-elect.


Liberals typically denigrate individual conservatives by applying one of two pernicious taglines: A conservative can be either scary/dangerous, or an idiot/lightweight. The former group includes Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Tom DeLay, and Rush Limbaugh, as well as neo-cons and social conservatives as a whole. The latter group -- the so-called dunces -- includes Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, Michael Steele, and Glenn Beck. And every once in a while, the liberal heart rejoices in applying both contemptible characterizations to the same conservative; George W. Bush enjoyed this elite status among liberal sharpshooters. (Conservatives, on the other hand, generally discredit liberals by simply calling them "liberals.")


Senator Brown is next on liberals' hit list. A few lefty bomb-throwers have dabbled, without success, in concocting the scary/dangerous characterization of Brown. Rabble-rouser Keith Olbermann, on the night before the Massachusetts contest, told his sparse audience that candidate Brown is "an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees." While leaving out any reasonable rationale for such absurd and vicious name-calling, Olbermann eventually apologized following critiques from members of his own professional and ideological teams. When MS-NBC colleague Joe Scarborough and liberal humorist John Stewart rejected the baseless insults, the scary/dangerous tagline was rendered ineffective. This makes sense. Brown is by all accounts a nice guy, someone Bay Staters found amicable and genuine throughout his short Senate campaign.


But look for a second image-assassination attempt to be coming soon. Indeed, President Obama has already provided a subtle hint as to how Democrats will try to knock Brown off the GOP pedestal. While campaigning for Brown's opponent the weekend before the election, the president feebly reacted to Brown's campaign ads involving his truck by crying, "So what? Everybody can buy a truck." Aside from dismissing Brown's undeniably folksy appeal, the president's reflex was revealing -- he was talking down to the soon-to-be senator. Instead of arriving to the Senate with two best-selling autobiographies, diplomas from Columbia and Harvard, and a so-called expertise in constitutional law, Brown comes with an old truck. This contrast is not lost on many liberals.


And despite Brown's impressive background and obvious appeal, conservatives and the senator himself should be wary of forthcoming idiot/lightweight charges. As an amateur to the national scene, Brown has some vulnerabilities. For one, even his most fervent admirers acknowledge the political greenness behind his ears. As a Massachusetts legislator, his exposure to public scrutiny was minimal, and his experience before the camera slight (notwithstanding nude layouts in Cosmopolitan).


Judging from his victory speech last Tuesday, Brown clearly still has much to learn. He spoke for too long, mixed his call for action with awkward statements about his daughters' dating availability, and seemed to forget he was making a victory speech and not still stumping. All of this is minor, but it suggests that he must tread carefully as the liberal limelight takes aim at his every word. No longer speaking generally as a candidate, Brown will be required to speak with more detail about the nuanced business of federal policy and budgetary issues. And reporters will test him more than they would a liberal counterpart, like they do with all conservatives who are thrust into the limelight. All it will take is one gaffe or one questionable answer spun by the liberal media as a misstep for the character assassins to pounce.


Brown should settle into the Senate and not seek to be the GOP's answer to President Obama just yet. Unlike the beating that Sarah Palin endured during and after the 2008 campaign, Brown can avoid similar pitfalls, and he should be in no rush to spend his political capital. He should stay away from the network news anchors, who no doubt are salivating at the chance to cut down the rising Republican star. A little seasoning will serve him well. And soon President Obama will fear "the Truck."


Kyle Stone is a practicing attorney in Chicago and serves as Membership Director of the Chicago Young Republicans.

6)A Time to Follow the Red Brick Road to Massachusetts
By Michael Arnold Glueck


It is the irony of ironies that the most liberal state in the union that had one liberal senator for almost a half century could do what the liberal dishonest print and electronic media refused to do. They vetted Barack Obama. They did their homework and studied the man. There is justice in that the patriots from one of the original states in the union might be the same ones who now save our constitution and our free republic.


The voters discovered that Obama is a fraud, a charlatan and demagogue. One year in, he has done nothing but provide aid and comfort to the financial industry (whom he now has made the villain), escalate a war, keep on stuffing the Pentagon, and waste a lot of good will. It took George Bush six years to lead his party to disaster. Obama has done it in one.


All politics is local, especially in Massachusetts, which hasn't had a Republican senator in decades? Elections are rarely about single issues. This one wasn't only about health care. But it certainly was about Obama.


Obama's disaster may have less to do with the American people "waking up," since he's basically continuing Bush's war policies and Congress remains Congress, as always available to the highest bidder. His disaster consists in trying to placate those who will hate him, no matter what he does, while abandoning his supporters and those who were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Nationally, his standing among white males is far lower than Bush's after one year. Blacks are also cooling to him.


If all this leads to a rout of the Democrats this November, as opposed to the predictable setbacks the electorate usually hands the party in power, it will be his fault. Obama has a choice to make. He can continue along the present course and go down in history as a one-term disaster. Or he can man up and do what the people deem important. Obama is not just a fraud. He's also a coward and a pathological liar. A pathological liar (as opposed to a run of the mill liar) is someone who lies so often and so well that he is unaware that he is doing it. As one observes Obama there is shameful disconnect between what he thinks (the need to swap capitalism and freedom for socialism), what he says and what he does. Or is creating chaos his plan?


If somebody challenges him for the nomination in 2012 the signs are that many wouldn't be too unhappy. The question is whether there any Democrats out there willing to avert the Obama train wreck?


What might the Democrats do if they really cared?


1. Keep Gitmo open.


2. Try the terrorists in military courts. To give terrorists more rights at the expense of our own safety and security is abhorrent. Particularly when some of the lawyers who will defend them come from Attorney General Eric Holder's law firm.


3. Drop the Cap and Trade Bill and treat it as the hoax it is.


4. Drop the current healthcare bill proposals. Develop a simple plan to ensure care for those patients who are indigent, uninsurable and who have chronic illnesses. Many writers have noted that the correct number for the truly uninsured is 15 million not 45 million as advertised. Since many of these patients receive care through the emergency rooms now by mandate why not make the process simpler by establishing a fund. Do the math and figure $10,000 per patient. The cost will be $150 billion/year. At $15,000 per patient it would be $225 billion. The amount would be far less than the trillions now proposed and would give dignity to those who can't afford care. We can do this without destroying our current excellent medical system that 85 percent approve.


Finally add some tort reform into any new healthcare plan. Americans are increasingly angered by 3000 and 2200 page bills that have devilishly detailed medical reforms without one word of legal reform. Only those with the most twisted of logic, bizarre thinking, greed and supreme arrogance could write legislation this inequitable. So it goes with the trial lawyers who fiercely fought even minimal reform.


It is a thoroughly "Modern Massachusetts Miracle" that a normally blue state saw red and voted the same. If President Obama can't face a 33 point electorate cross-over in one year then what will he see and do?

7)The Obama Watch: Obama Prepares to Squander Another Year
By Andrew Cline

Watching the Obama administration commit political suicide is not as much fun as it should be. Self-important blowhards ought to be brought down a notch or two on principle alone. And a week ago, pickup-driving Massachusetts state Sen. Scott Brown did that to the most self-important of them all, our President.

That was satisfying. But in the week since, it has been painful to watch the Obama administration try to spin its way out of the hole in which it has, to its great surprise, found itself. It is becoming more apparent with every passing month that the President (his mouthpieces speak his words, not theirs) really does believe that he has a magically persuasive tongue. It's as if he thinks of himself as a Dungeons and Dragons character with plus-25 persuasion powers.

And so we saw last week a string of administration and Democratic Party officials, including the president himself, going to the press to say that the message from Massachusetts was that the American people need more messaging.

As Obama put it in his ABC News interview:

"If there's one thing that I regret this year, is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us, that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values. And that I do think is a mistake of mine. I think the assumption was, if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on the, you know this provision, or that law, or are we making a good, rational decision here, that people will get it. And I think that, you know, what they've ended up seeing is this feeling of remoteness and detachment where, you know, there's these technocrats up here, these folks who are making decisions."

The president who spoke almost non-stop to the American people for an entire year -- more than 400 speeches and other direct communications -- says the people don't "get it," meaning understand the good he's trying to do them, because he hasn't communicated to them enough.

And so adviser David Axelrod went on the same network on Sunday and delivered the same spin Obama delivered a few days before (and for the months before that). The American people demand the health care reform that is in their legislation, but the problem is that the people just haven't been told how good the legislation is. The evil insurance companies have lied to them so much that the administration simply hasn't had the ability to counter the misinformation.

No one who has been paying attention to the health care debate for the past year can possibly believe this. It simply isn't credible. And that is belied by Axelrod's claim later in the interview that Congress simply has to pass the bill for the good it contains to become known:

"And let me tell you, as a political matter, the foolish thing to do would be for anybody else who supported this to walk away from it, because what's happened is, this thing's been defined by insurance company -- insurance industry propaganda, the propaganda of the opponents, and an admittedly messy process leading up to it.

"But the underlying elements of it are popular and important. And people will never know what's in that bill until we pass it, the president signs it, and they have a whole range of new protections they never had before."

Mull that for a moment. Axelrod actually claimed that the most powerful man on earth is completely powerless in the face of "insurance industry propaganda" -- so powerless that the only possible way the American people can ever understand how beneficial to them his health care reform bill will be is for members of Congress to simply take the president's word that it will do what the president claims it will and pass it.

If that is not an admission of defeat in the war of words over this health care bill, then nothing is.

Which brings us back to the point at the beginning of this column. It's not fun watching the administration stubbornly refuse to acknowledge reality because the stakes of this mistake are so high. One year into Obama's presidency, and he is still selling the health care bill with exactly the same spin he used when he began selling it.

On Sunday, Axelrod invited Scott Brown to join the administration in working to achieve the administration's priorities on health care. If that sounds familiar, it's exactly the same invitation Obama extended to Republicans early last year -- join us in passing our agenda. It was, and remains, an invitation to a beheading.

And so we have lost a year of work on the economy, on terrorism, on entitlement reform and on two wars to the president's hubris, and we are about to lose another. Scott Brown's win was highly enjoyable to behold. But that brief pleasure is outweighed by the frustration of seeing this president continue to gaze lovingly in the mirror while the nation claws its way toward a recovery and prays the national security apparatus doesn't let another bomber through.