It's Only Your Money and Our Children's Future!

Gone are the days. (See 1 below.)

Getting stiffed twice. (See 2 below.)

Will anyone ever care? If so, when?

THIS IS A REAL BILLBOARD IN MINNESOTA on I-35, near Wyoming, MN (See 3 below.)

California goes out on a limb regarding health care then may start sawing. (See 4 below.)


Analysis and statistics have a way of getting in the way. (See 5 below.)

Where to hide those two ugly creatures - Fannie and Freddie? (See 5a below.)

Meanwhile it's only your money. (See 5b below.)

Mitchell to Abbas - get with the program, any program just get with something. (See 6 below.)

It's all in a terrorist's days work. Idealistic youth are easy pickings. Hitler gave them uniforms and drums and look what happened - some even turned on their parents.(See 7 below.)

Do deficits matter? Yes, if you care about protecting the nation they might have relevance.

If Obama can bow to foreign leaders why should he not bring America to its knees? (See 8 below.)

Dick




1)The Obama Spell Is Broken
Unlike this president, John Kennedy was an ironist who never fell for his own mystique.
By FOUAD AJAMI


The curtain has come down on what can best be described as a brief un-American moment in our history. That moment began in the fall of 2008, with the great financial panic, and gave rise to the Barack Obama phenomenon.

The nation's faith in institutions and time-honored ways had cracked. In a little-known senator from Illinois millions of Americans came to see a savior who would deliver the nation out of its troubles. Gone was the empiricism in political life that had marked the American temper in politics. A charismatic leader had risen in a manner akin to the way politics plays out in distressed and Third World societies.

There is nothing surprising about where Mr. Obama finds himself today. He had been made by charisma, and political magic, and has been felled by it. If his rise had been spectacular, so, too, has been his fall. The speed with which some of his devotees have turned on him—and their unwillingness to own up to what their infatuation had wrought—is nothing short of astounding. But this is the bargain Mr. Obama had made with political fortune.

He was a blank slate, and devotees projected onto him what they wanted or wished. In the manner of political redeemers who have marked—and wrecked—the politics of the Arab world and Latin America, Mr. Obama left the crowd to its most precious and volatile asset—its imagination. There was no internal coherence to the coalition that swept him to power. There was cultural "cool" and racial absolution for the white professional classes who were the first to embrace him. There was understandable racial pride on the part of the African-American community that came around to his banners after it ditched the Clinton dynasty.

The white working class had been slow to be convinced. The technocracy and elitism of Mr. Obama's campaign—indeed of his whole persona—troubled that big constituency, much more, I believe, than did his race and name. The promise of economic help, of an interventionist state that would salvage ailing industries and provide a safety net for the working poor, reconciled these voters to a candidate they viewed with a healthy measure of suspicion. He had been caught denigrating them as people "clinging to their guns and religion," but they had forgiven him.
Mr. Obama himself authored the tale of his own political crisis. He had won an election, but he took it as a plebiscite granting him a writ to remake the basic political compact of this republic.

Mr. Obama's self-regard, and his reading of his mandate, overwhelmed all restraint. The age-old American balance between a relatively small government and a larger role for the agencies of civil society was suddenly turned on its head. Speed was of the essence to the Obama team and its allies, the powerful barons in Congress. Better ram down sweeping social programs—a big liberal agenda before the people stirred to life again.

Progressives pressed for a draconian attack on the workings of our health care, and on the broader balance between the state and the marketplace. The economic stimulus, ObamaCare, the large deficits, the bailout package for the automobile industry—these, and so much more, were nothing short of a fundamental assault on the givens of the American social compact.

And then there was the hubris of the man at the helm: He was everywhere, and pronounced on matters large and small. This was political death by the teleprompter.

Americans don't deify their leaders or hang on their utterances, but Mr. Obama succumbed to what the devotees said of him: He was the Awaited One. A measure of reticence could have served him. But the flight had been heady, and in the manner of Icarus, Mr. Obama flew too close to the sun.

We have had stylish presidents, none more so than JFK. But Kennedy was an ironist and never fell for his own mystique. Mr. Obama's self-regard comes without irony—he himself now owns up to the "remoteness and detachment" of his governing style. We don't have in this republic the technocratic model of the European states, where a bureaucratic elite disposes of public policy with scant regard for the popular will. Mr. Obama was smitten with his own specialness.

In this extraordinary tale of hubris undone, the Europeans—more even than the people in Islamic lands—can be assigned no small share of blame. They overdid the enthusiasm for the star who had risen in America.

It was the way in Paris and Berlin (not to forget Oslo of course) of rebuking all that played out in America since 9/11—the vigilance, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the sense that America's interests and ways were threatened by a vengeful Islamism. But while the Europeans and Muslim crowds hailed him, they damned his country all the same. For his part, Mr. Obama played along, and in Ankara, Cairo, Paris and Berlin he offered penance aplenty for American ways.

But no sooner had the country recovered its poise, it drew a line for Mr. Obama. The "bluest" of states, Massachusetts, sent to Washington a senator who had behind him three decades of service in the National Guard, who proclaimed his pride in his "army values" and was unapologetic in his assertion that it was more urgent to hunt down terrorists than to provide for their legal defense.

Then the close call on Christmas Day at the hands of the Nigerian jihadist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab demonstrated that the terrorist threat had not receded. The president did his best to recover: We are at war, he suddenly proclaimed. Nor were we in need of penance abroad. Rumors of our decline had been exaggerated. The generosity of the American response to Haiti, when compared to what India and China had provided, was a stark reminder that this remains an exceptional nation that needs no apologies in distant lands.
***

A historical hallmark of "isms" and charismatic movements is to dig deeper when they falter—to insist that the "thing" itself, whether it be Peronism, or socialism, etc., had not been tried but that the leader had been undone by forces that hemmed him in.
It is true to this history that countless voices on the left now want Obama to be Obama. The economic stimulus, the true believers say, had not gone astray, it only needed to be larger; the popular revolt against ObamaCare would subside if and when a new system was put in place.

There had been that magical moment—the campaign of 2008—and the true believers want to return to it. But reality is merciless. The spell is broken.

Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift" (Free Press, 2007).


2) Judge Judy to prostitute; "So when did you realize you were raped?"

Prostitute, wiping away tears: "When the check bounced."


3)The Fundamental Transformation of America

When Obama wrote a book and said he was mentored as a youth by Frank, (Frank Marshall Davis) an avowed Communist, people said it didn't matter.



When it was discovered that his grandparents, were strong socialists, sent Obama's mother to a socialist school, introduced Frank Marshall Davis to young Obama,
people said it didn't matter.


When people found out that he was enrolled as a Muslim child in school and his father and step father were both Muslims,people said it didn't matter.


When he wrote in another book he authored I will stand with them (Muslims) should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.people said it didn't matter.


When he admittedly, in his book,said he chose Marxist friends and professors in college,people said it didn't matter.


When he traveled to Pakistan , after college on an unknown national passport,
people said it didn't matter.


When he sought the endorsement of the Marxist party in 1996 as he ran for the Illinois Senate,people said it doesn't matter.


When he sat in a Chicago Church for twenty years and listened to a preacher spew hatred for America and preach black liberation theology, people said it didn't matter.


When an independent Washington organization, that tracks senate voting records, gave him the distinctive title as the "most liberal senator",people said it didn't matter.


When the Palestinians in Gaza, set up a fund raising telethon to raise money for his election campaign, people said it didn't matter.



When his voting record supported gun control,people said it didn't matter.


When he refused to disclose who donated money to his election campaign, as other candidates had done,people said it didn't matter.


When he received endorsements from people like Louis Farrakhan and Mummar Kadaffi and Hugo Chavez, people said it didn't matter.


When it was pointed out that he was a total, newcomer and had absolutely no experience at anything except community organizing,people said it didn't matter.


When he chose friends and acquaintances such as Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn who were revolutionary radicals, people said it didn't matter.



When his voting record in the Illinois senate and in the U.S. Senate came into question, people said it didn't matter.


When he refused to wear a flag, lapel pin and did so only after a public outcry,
people said it didn't matter.


When people started treating him as a Messiah and children in schools were taught to sing his praises,people said it didn't matter.




When he said he favors sex education in Kindergarten, including homosexual indoctrination, people said it didn't matter.



When his background was either scrubbed or hidden and nothing could be found about him, people said it didn't matter.


When the place of his birth was called into question, and he refused to produce a birth certificate, people said it didn't matter.


When he had an association in Chicago with Tony Rezco, a man of questionable character and helped Obama to a sweet deal on the purchase of his home, people said it didn't matter.


When it became known that George Soros, a multi-billionaire Marxist, spent a ton of money to get him elected,people said it didn't matter.


When he started appointing czars that were radicals, revolutionaries, and even avowed Marxist/Communist, people said it didn't matter.


When he stood before the nation and told us that his intentions were to "fundamentally transform this nation" into something else,
people said it didn't matter.


When it became known that he had trained ACORN workers in Chicago and served as an attorney for ACORN, people said it didn't matter.



When he appointed cabinet members and several advisors who were tax cheats and socialist, people said it didn't matter.


When he appointed a science czar, John Holdren, who believes in forced abortions, mass sterilizations and seizing babies from teen mothers, people said it didn't matter.


When he appointed Cass Sunstein as regulatory czar and he believes in "Explicit Consent", harvesting human organs with out family consent, and to allow animals to be represented in court, while banning all hunting, people said it didn't matter.


When he appointed Kevin Jennings, a homosexual, and organizer of a group called gay, lesbian, straight, Education network, as safe school czar and it became known that he had a history of bad advice to teenagers, people said it didn't matter.


When he appointed Mark Lloyd as diversity czar and he believed in curtailing free speech, taking from one and giving to another to spread the wealth and admires Hugo Chavez,people said it didn't matter.


When Valerie Jarrett was selected as Obama's senior White House advisor and she is an avowed Socialist, people said it didn't matter.


When Anita Dunn, White House Communications director said Mao Tse Tung was her favorite philosopher and the person she turned to most for inspiration, people said it didn't matter.


When he appointed Carol Browner as global warming czar, and she is a well known socialist working on Cap and trade as the nations largest tax, people said it doesn't matter.

When he appointed Van Jones, an ex-con and avowed Communist as green energy czar, who since had to resign when this was made known, people said it didn't matter.


When Tom Daschle, Obama's pick for health and human services secretary could not be confirmed, because he was a tax cheat, people said it didn't matter.


When as president of the United States ,he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia ,
people said it didn't matter.


When he traveled around the world criticizing America and never once talking of our greatness, people said it didn't matter.


When his actions concerning the middle-east seemed to support the Palestinians over Israel , our long time friend, people said it doesn't matter.


When he took American tax dollars to resettle thousands of Palestinians from Gaza to the United States, people said it doesn't matter.


When he upset the Europeans by removing plans for a missile defense system against the Russians, people said it doesn't matter.


When he played politics in Afghanistan by not sending troops the Field Commanders said we had to have to win, people said it didn't matter.


When he started spending us into a debt that was so big we could not pay it off,
people said it didn't matter.




When he took a huge spending bill under the guise of stimulus and used it to pay off organizations, unions and individuals that got him elected, people said it didn't matter.


When he took over insurance companies, car companies, banks, etc.people said it didn't matter.


When he took away student loans from the banks and put it through the government,
people said it didn't matter.


When he designed plans to take over the health care system and put it under government control,people said it didn't matter.


When he set into motion a plan to take over the control of all energy in the United Statesthrough Cap and Trade, people said it didn't matter.


When he finally completes changing America , it might be too late.



Never before in the history of America have we been confronted with problems so huge that the very existence of our Republic is in jeopardy. Don't rely exclusively on television news and what you read in the newspapers for the truth. Search the internet. Yes, there is a lot of bad information, lies and distortions there but you are smart enough to spot the fallacies. Newspapers are a dying breed. They are currently would also like a bailout from the government. Obama praises all the television news networks except Fox who he has waged war against. There must be a reason. He does not call them down on any specifics, just a general battle against them. If they lie, he should call them out on it but he doesn't. Please, find the truth, it will set you free.

Our biggest enemy is not China, Russia , or maybe even Iran. No, our biggest enemy is apathy.


4) Liberal California Senators Pass Universal Health Care Legislation
News of the Week

Senate Bill 810, which I discussed last week in my newsletter, has unfortunately passed the Senate today on a 22-14 party-line vote.
The measure would create a single-payer, government-controlled health care plan for Californians. The same government that has mismanaged your money now wants to control your health care.

Does anybody believe a state that bleeds red year-after-year could possibly control the costs of health care?

As I said on the Senate floor today: This plan is to the Left and radical of ObamaCare. It’s this type of big-government idea that caused an earthquake of an election in Massachusetts in recent weeks. Yet, my liberal colleagues in Sacramento don’t seem to care about the needs or concerns of the people or the state of our economy.

The Orange County Register says the Senate Democrats are “tone deaf” to have revived “a $200-billion, government-run, universal health care scheme to outlaw private insurance and subsidize coverage for millions of Californians.”

The San Diego Union-Tribune calls the plan “appalling on one level and bizarre on another.”

The editorial goes on to say: “It is appalling because it amounts to an in-your-face display of contempt for public sentiment.”

And the Oakland Tribune wrote: “The bill would add a huge public cost and create considerable uncertainty at a time when both the state government and the private sector are struggling for survival.”

SB 810 will now be heard in the Assembly, where I hope the Democrats are in tune with the wishes of the people and in touch with the realities of our economy.


5)The Lost Decade
By Randall Hoven

President Obama called the "oughts" (2000-2009) the "lost decade." That was his way, yet again, of blaming Bush. More precisely, it was Obama heeding the advice of Homer Simpson.


The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.


It was like that when Obama got there. The whole decade was lost when he got there.


Or perhaps President Obama was not channeling Homer Simpson, but was channeling James Carville channeling Homer Simpson.


Democrats would not be playing the blame game with one another for the [Massachusetts] loss or for the health care debacle if they had only pointed fingers at those (or in this case, the one) who put Americans (and most of the world) in the predicament we're in: George W. Bush.


Not only did Bush do it, but he did it all by himself: "the one." The world was one of peace and prosperity, birds singing, and children playing, and then, whammo, Bush got selected. All of a sudden, endless war, exploding debt, Great Recession, and torture in Dick Cheney's personal dungeon.


Barack Obama, being more nuanced than James Carville, put it this way in his State of the Union address, also known as his 137th Blame Bush Address.


We can't afford another so-called economic "expansion" like the one from the last decade -- what some call the ‘lost decade' -- where jobs grew more slowly than during any prior expansion; where the income of the average American household declined while the cost of health care and tuition reached record highs; where prosperity was built on a housing bubble and financial speculation.


Compared to other recent decades, he was right. See the table below.



Real GDP Annual Growth Rate (%)

Annual Employment Growth Rate (%)

Real Disposable Personal Income Annual Growth Rate (%)


50s
4.2
2.2
N/A

60s
4.3
2.8
4.5

70s
3.3
2.4
3.5

80s
3.0
1.8
3.1

90s
3.3
1.8
3.1

00s
1.8
0.0
2.5


Data source: St. Louis Fed/FRED, GDPC1 series, PAYEMS series and DSPIC96 series.



But before we go blaming all that on Bush, let's take a closer look. The oughts were a bit uneven. As it happens, Barack Obama was an Illinois state senator in the first half of the oughts and only came on the national scene, first as U.S. Senator and then as president, in the second half. How do those two halves compare?



Real GDP Annual Growth Rate (%)

Annual Employment Growth Rate (%)
Real Disposable Personal Income Annual Growth Rate (%)

Obama in Illinois
2.4
0.36
2.7

Senator & President Obama
1.2
-0.21
1.9



The U.S. economy got significantly worse when Barack Obama entered national politics. Call the Obama era the "lost half of the lost decade."


Before that, Obama was an Illinois state senator. When he started serving in 1997, the Illinois unemployment rate was slightly below the national average: 4.8% versus 4.9%. By his last four years in the Illinois senate, 2001-2004, the Illinois unemployment rate was over 6%, and 0.7% higher than the national average. His tenure as state senator saw his state's unemployment rate rise from 0.1% below the national average to 0.7% above it. Those were "the last eight years" before he entered national office.


Congress changed hands a few times in the last several years. After the 1994 elections, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress through 2000. They had them both again from 2003 through 2006. But in 2001 and 2002, the Senate, with the party-switch of Jim Jeffords, was under Democrat control. And since 2006, both houses were under Democrat control. How did the economy do in these various phases? See the table below.


Real GDP Annual Growth Rate (%)
Annual Employment Growth Rate (%)
Real Disposable Personal Income Annual Growth Rate (%)

All GOP (95-00)
3.9
2.2
3.8

Split (01-02)
1.2
-0.87
2.6

All GOP (03-06)
3.0
1.3
3.2

All Dem (07-09)
0.24
-1.5
0.94



So that "lost decade" was really just five lost years: the years when Republicans did not control Congress. When Republicans did control Congress, all of ten years in the last eighty, the economy did just fine -- better than most recent decade averages.


Let me be clear. We got "lost" only when Democrats took over Congress. That is a fact.


What Obama, Carville, and I are employing is the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy (after this, therefore because of this). Except I'm admitting it, and they aren't.


I say that since the Illinois unemployment rate went down farther (relative to the national rate) the longer Obama was in the Illinois senate, it was Obama's fault. Since the U.S. economy got worse the longer he was in national office, that was his fault, too.


That fallacious logic is exactly what Obama, Carville, and the Democrats have been doing nonstop since 2008 at least, from "the last eight years" to "the lost decade." Since Bush was president when things turned sour in 2008, it was all his fault. And even more magically, they turn one lousy year under Bush -- 2008 -- into an entire decade.


Tell me, how did George Bush cause a global housing crisis? In fact, the house price decline in the U.S. in 2008 matched the median decline for 52 countries analyzed by the IMF over that same period. Housing prices declined more in Spain, Ireland, Norway, Australia, France, Finland, Denmark, the U.K., the United Arab Emirates, and eleven other countries than in the U.S.


How did Bush cause a housing bubble from Australia to Iceland, Latvia, and the UAE?


Tell me also, how did Bush cause recessions all over the world, especially when most were simultaneous with ours, or even preceded ours, and most were also deeper?


How was the "lost decade" Bush's fault when for at least the first eight years of that decade, the U.S. fared better than Europe and much of the developed world? According to OECD statistics, real GDP in the US grew 22% over the eight years of 2000 through 2007 (last year of available data). In that same period, the European Union grew 21%, and our friends France and Germany grew 18% and 12% respectively (all Purchasing Power Parity comparisons). Japan grew 15%. If it was a lost decade for the U.S., then it was beyond lost for Europe and Japan.


Just to remind everyone, George Bush was not president of Europe or Japan.


How is it that George Bush, who had a Republican Congress for only four of his eight years, and never with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, could cause housing bubbles and recessions around the globe?


How are Democrats, who controlled both houses of Congress since 2006 and now have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and Obama in the White House, totally blameless? Especially since the really bad stuff of this last decade (see above table) happened in those very years?


If we are all to play by the post hoc ergo propter hoc rules, then Barack Obama increased unemployment in Illinois and made GDP, jobs, and personal income growth worse off. In fact, a Democrat Congress causes economic stagnation, and a Republican Congress causes economic growth.


It may be a logical fallacy, but I consider those conclusions much more plausible than "Bush did it."


By the way, by writing this article, I saved or created one million jobs. (It's a tad liberating to just make up stuff. That must be why Joe "we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon" Biden always seems so at ease.)


Randall Hoven can be contacted at randall.hoven@gmail.com or via his web site, randallhoven.com.

5a)Budget Fun with Fannie and Freddie
By Christopher Chantrill

Remember when liberals used to writhe on the floor in a foaming rage? They were outraged because the Iraq War never got into the federal budget, but got slipped in through the back door with "supplemental appropriations."


Now there's a new game in town. Advanced conservatives are going to class to learn how to throw themselves on the floor about the losses at the government's mortgage giants, Fannie and Freddie: $400 billion and counting. Now that these GSEs are flat broke, why doesn't the president add the $5 trillion in Fannie/Freddie mortgage-backed debt in the National Debt, they ask?


Yesterday, the president published the federal budget for the fiscal year 2011, starting October 1. In that budget, the feds will account for the bailout of Fannie and Freddie. But the cost will not appear in the headline number of $3.8 trillion in spending. Instead, Obama's guys will sneak it into the outlays for the recently concluded FY 2009.


The only place you will be able to see what really happened will be usgovernmentspending.com, which is not a government website.


Our noble rulers have developed not one but two plausible narratives to account for Fannie's and Freddie's losses at the real-estate casino. There's the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) version. And there's President Obama's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) version.


The cunning rascals aren't going to chuck an indigestible $400-billion loss into the budget. And they aren't going to stack the GSEs' debt into the National Debt. Oh no. They are too smart for that.


The CBO, in its August 2009 baseline, began to treat Fannie's and Freddie's operations for the first time "as if they were being conducted by a federal agency" rather than a private corporation. They have estimated that Fannie and Freddie added $291 billion to Federal Outlays in FY 2009. And CBO has estimated $99 billion in spending on Fannie and Freddie for FY 2010 through 2019. That comes in just shy of $400 billion.


Not surprisingly, the president's OMB has found a less costly way of accounting for the Fannie/Freddie debacle.


At OMB they have computed the cost of the Fannie/Freddie bailout merely from the actual cost of buying preferred stock from the mortgage giants. In FY 2009, writes the CBO director, the "[t]reasury provided a total of $95.6 billion in cash outlays to the two entities" for the purchase of preferred stock and warrants to buy common stock. So that is what OMB put into its "final report of spending for 2009."


For the future, OMB estimates a further $65 billion in outlays to support Fannie and Freddie in 2010-2019.


Frankly, I'm shocked.


Leaving aside the minor difference of $229 billion in accounting between CBO and OMB, I'm surprised that the cost to the federal government of righting Fannie and Freddie is so low.


In fact, if I were a politician on the way up -- a young version of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-retiring) or Rep. Barney Frank (D-unashamed) -- I would say, as Barney Frank said back in 2003, that it was time for the government to roll the dice.


I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.


Why not? If the only cost to the federal government of offering affordable housing to millions of impressionable voters is a mere accounting item of two to three percent of GDP once in a generation, what's not to like?


But wait, you say! What about the cost of all the Fannie/Freddie debt that the Federal Reserve System has bought up in the last year? What about the cost of all the banks that the FDIC has taken over? You are right: The costs will be substantial. But they aren't budget costs. They aren't appropriations. They are insidious costs that will diffuse through the economy as inflation and as increased banking fees. How do you explain that in a campaign commercial?


But I am not discouraged. I have faith in the new generation of independent conservative politicians. Someone -- a Palin or a Brown, perhaps -- will figure out how to frame the Fannie-Freddie issue and turn it into a "death panel" for our Democratic friends. Pat Buchanan said it best back in August:


Of Sarah Palin it may be said: The lady knows how to frame an issue.


Of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) the same may also be said. Maybe that's the big difference between a populist like Palin or Brown and a populist like President Obama. One kind knows how to frame an issue. The other kind knows how to strike an attitude.


Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his roadtothemiddleclass.com and usgovernmentspending.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

5b)Pelosi's Last Hurrah
By Jane Jamison

San Francisco's congresswoman of 23 years, the daughter of a Baltimore mayor, has a sense of self-entitlement and extravagance unimagined by most public servants and ordinary folk. Her indulgences charged to American taxpayers are now documented and damning.


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) has spent or authorized spending at least $3.2 million on trips, hotels, food, high-priced liquor, and military jet rides in the past two years.


Pelosi spent at least $1.1 million of taxpayer funds ushering a delegation of at least 106 people to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (the "global warming" conference where nothing was decided). The entourage stayed two nights. According to CBS News,


For 15 Democratic and 6 Republican Congressmen, food and rooms for two nights cost $4,406 tax dollars each. That's $2,200 a day...


Total hotel, meeting rooms and "a couple" of $1,000-a-night hospitality suites topped $400,000.


Fifty-nine House and Senate staff flew commercial during the Copenhagen rush. They paid government rates -- $5-10,000 each -- totaling $408,064. Add three military jets -- $168,351 just for flight time -- and the bill tops $1.1 million dollars -- not including all the Obama administration officials who attended: well over 60.


Speaker Pelosi would not comment about the expenses to CBS News. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Malibu) was also on the trip, but he says he "did not know" what expenses were incurred.


Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, has just released a report on Speaker Pelosi's extravagant use of government aircraft:


According to the documents, obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Speaker's military travel cost the United States Air Force $2,100,744.59 over a two-year period - $101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol.


•Speaker Pelosi used Air Force aircraft to travel back to her district at an average cost of $28,210.51 per flight. The average cost of an international CODEL is $228,563.33. Of the 103 Pelosi-led congressional delegations (CODEL), 31 trips included members of the House Speaker's family.
•One CODEL traveling from Washington, DC, through Tel Aviv, Israel to Baghdad, Iraq May 15-20, 2008, "to discuss matters of mutual concern with government leaders" included members of Congress and their spouses and cost $17,931 per hour in aircraft alone. Purchases for the CODEL included: Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey's Irish Crème, Maker's Mark whiskey, Courvoisier cognac, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewars scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, Corona beer and several bottles of wine.
•According to a "Memo for Record" from a March 29-April 7, 2007, CODEL that involved a stop in Israel, "CODEL could only bring Kosher items into the Hotel. Kosher alcohol for mixing beverages in the Delegation room was purchased on the local economy i.e. Bourbon, Whiskey, Scotch, Vodka, Gin, Triple Sec, Tequila, etc."
•The Department of Defense advanced a CODEL of 56 members of Congress and staff $60,000 to travel to Louisiana and Mississippi July 19-22, 2008, to "view flood relief advances from Hurricane Katrina." The three-day trip cost the U.S. Air Force $65,505.46, exceeding authorized funding by $5,505.46.
Speaker Pelosi has a history of wasting taxpayer funds with her boorish demands for military travel. And these documents suggest the Speaker's congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is rated #8 of Washington's ten most corrupt politicians for 2009.


House Speaker Pelosi is one of the fifteen richest members of Congress, with a net worth between $33 million and $95 million. (So why does she charge us for her family's Grey Goose martinis on Air Force three? Nancy can afford to BYOB.)


There is a moral "disconnect" in the Pelosi family vineyard business. From Investors.com, 2006:


As Peter Schweizer notes in his best-selling expose of liberal hypocrisy, "Do As I Say (Not As I Do)," part of the fortune of this defender of the working man is a Napa Valley vineyard worth $25 million that she owns with her husband. The vineyard produces expensive grapes for high-end wines. Napa grapes bring up to $4,000 a ton compared with $300 a ton for, say, San Joaquin grapes.


But Pelosi, winner of the 2003 Cesar Chavez award from the United Farm Workers, hires only nonunion workers and sells these grapes to nonunion wineries. Schweizer places Pelosi in a chapter titled "Workers of the World Unite Somewhere Else." UFW members need not apply at the Pelosi family vineyards.


With the above facts in mind, Pelosi voted against the Fence Act of 2006 to build a fence along the American-Mexican border, against requiring ID cards for illegal aliens, against electronic data-keeping of illegal aliens, and for driver's licenses for illegal aliens.


CIA "You Lie": Speaker Pelosi was indignant at so-called "torture" of Iraq war detainees by waterboarding. When the CIA produced memos showing that she attended briefings and gave consent before the interrogation tactics were used, Pelosi publicly claimed that President Bush and the CIA lied.


The CIA's displeasure at Pelosi's self-interested slander has caused months of rumors that Steny Hoyer will replace Pelosi as Speaker of the House next year, if she is reelected and if the Democrats still have a majority. Her leadership is privately questioned by her own party.


Pelosi's Poll Pallor


Rasmussen Reports Poll:


Just 35% of voters nationwide share a favorable opinion of Pelosi, though that is the highest level measured since last May. Fifty-seven percent (57%) view Pelosi unfavorably, down from 63% in December.


Field Poll California, January 27, 2010:


Two-thirds of voters here (66%) disapprove of Congress' overall job performance, while only 24% approve.

By a three to one margin (69% to 23%) Californians disapprove of the way Congress has addressed the health care issue.


Voters also have a more negative than positive view of the job that California Democrat Nancy Pelosi is doing as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Currently, 46% disapprove of her performance while 39% approve.


Madame Speaker bullies on. It's not clear if she doesn't care or is just oblivious to the fact that 57% of American voters think that passing nothing would be better than passing the current health care bill. Pelosi told the San Francisco Chronicle that health care would be passed one way or the other:


We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn't work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people for their own personal health and economic security and for the important role that it will play in reducing the deficit.


From The Less-Significant-But-Still-Very-Weird Department: Code Purple.


Seated behind President Obama at his State of the Union address, House Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Joe Biden were "color-coordinated." Pelosi had a lavender jacket; Biden had a purple-striped tie. Mrs. Obama wore purple. With al-Qaeda terrorists trying to blow up airplanes over American cities with underwear bombs, 10% national unemployment, and a ballooning deficit, why in the world would the second and third in line behind the president have time to think about wearing "matching outfits"?


If Nancy Pelosi were a Republican, she would have been hounded from office on the basis of any of the above. The tail-wagging national media have rarely and barely nipped at any of these Achilles' heels, but that may change soon with the release of the Pelosi expense reports.


Nancy Pelosi's home state now has an unemployment rate of 12.5 %. It has just been announced the state budget, already $21 billion in the red, will likely be out of money by April. Aren't the bluebloods of San Francisco beginning to get at least a teeny twinge of embarrassment from their congresswoman's elitist ramblings and rants? How many sandwiches could be purchased for the homeless people on Market Street in downtown San Francisco with what Pelosi spends boozing on her cross-country flights?


Since the national health care plan is ostensibly to help those same poor, elderly, and "little people" that Democrats are supposedly serving, don't any of Pelosi's liberal friends find this luxurious lollapalooza at public expense unseemly and elitist? Nancy Pelosi's effectiveness and credibility are irreparably harmed due to her own deeds and words. She can't blame Bush. There surely is a liberal "lieutenant" or two in San Francisco to take over the "reign" and run for Pelosi's seat. We can't afford Nancy anymore.


Whenever she retires from the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi will be entitled to her congressional salary and gold-plated health benefits for life, despite the fact she is a multi-millionaire and can certainly afford to fund herself and a small town.


Even so, Nancy Pelosi will be far less expensive for U.S. taxpayers as a retired congresswoman than she is when she is on duty.


Jane Jamison is publisher of the conservative news/commentary blog,

6)Mitchell to Abbas: No more excuses, renew Mideast talks

United States special Mideast envoy George Mitchell has urged Europe to step up pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in an attempt to kick-start stalled peace talks with Israel, the London-based A-Sharq-al-Awsat reported on Tuesday.

"The time has come to stop finding excuses for avoiding a return to the negotiating table," the London paper quoted Mitchell as saying, citing French officials.

Mitchell believed the Palestinians were showing little enthusiasm for talks because as inaction was safer than reentering dialogue when the outcome was so uncertain, the paper said.

President Barack Obama's envoy is said to blame Abbas for frustrating his most recent attempt to coax the two sides into renewed discussions during a trip to the region in January.

According to A-Sharq al-Awsat, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner defended Abbas, urging the envoy to recognize the risk to the Palestinian leader of returning to talks without international guarantees.

Kouchner proposed reassuring Abbas with a clear declaration that the aim of any new talks would be the creation of a Palestinian within a set time frame of anything up to two years, the paper said.

The declaration could come from the 'Quartet' of the U.S., the United Nations, the European Union and Russia ? or from either the UN Security council or an international committee set up for the purpose, Kouchner said.

But Mitchell rejected out of hand French calls for an international conference and for U.S. guarantees to both Israel and the Palestinians.

Instead, he is said to prefer indirect negotiations accompanied by a series of confidence-building measures on the ground in the West Bank.

7)How jihadis Target Western Youth
By Steven Emerson

Enablers of our own destruction?

As the new year begins, al-Shabaab, a terror group fighting to overthrow the government of Somalia, has served notice that it intends to play an increasingly prominent role in international jihad. Al-Shabaab fighters declared their support for Al Qaeda in Yemen following the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253, allegedly by a terrorist linked to that group. And police in Denmark said a man charged with the attempted New Year's Day murder of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard (who drew a controversial 2005 cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad) was a member of al-Shabaab with "close links" to leaders of Al Qaeda in East Africa. Al Qaeda and al-Shabaab made official their alliance in September.

"It was a brave step taken by a brave Somali man; he attacked a devil who insulted our honored Prophet Mohammed," an al-Shabaab spokesman told the London Daily Telegraph. "Surely an honored Muslim brother or sister will kill that devil on the next attack."

On Monday, an al-Shabaab terrorist killed seven people and wounded 11 others during a suicide bombing at a clinic near the Mogadishu airport.

It appears that the group intends to carry on that fight with recruits from the United States. Between September 2007 and October 2009, 20 young men (all but one of Somali descent), left the Minneapolis area for Somalia to fight for al-Shabaab.

Thus far, Congress and the intelligence community have been reluctant to conclude that Americans who train with al-Shabaab could return and stage terrorist attacks in the United States or threaten American interests outside the Horn of Africa.

Perhaps the most detailed discussion of al-Shabaab recruiting efforts in the United States was a March 11, 2009 Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing where Andrew Liepman of the NCTC and Philip Mudd of the FBI expressed doubt that al-Shabaab could evolve into a major threat to U.S. interests.

But Mudd, associate executive assistant director of the FBI's National Security Branch, provided one significant caveat when asked how serious a problem the group is.

"I would talk in terms of tens of people, which sounds small but it's significant, because every terrorist is somebody who can potentially throw a grenade into a shopping mall," he said. Mudd added that information about the number of American recruits for al-Shabaab is "fuzzy" because "[t]here are thousands of people - thousands - going to the Horn of Africa every month. You can go to Kenya to look at game parks, and it's hard for me to tell you if somebody's going to a game park or going to Shabaab. So I am sure that there are people out there that we're missing."

At least six Americans have been killed after going to Somalia to join al-Shabaab. One of those was Shirwa Ahmed, who left Minnesota in December 2007. Ten months later Ahmed blew himself up, apparently becoming the first American citizen to carry out a suicide bombing. Another is Jamal Bana, 20, who in July was reported killed in Somalia. He was studying engineering at two Minneapolis schools when he disappeared in November 2008. Bana's family said it learned of his fate when a photograph of his body appeared on a website. Burhan Hassan, 17, also disappeared from his Minneapolis home in the fall of 2008 and flew to Somalia to join al-Shabaab. He, too, was shot to death in June.

CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

At least 14 people have been charged in federal cases related to al-Shabaab recruitment in America, including attending terror training camps, fighting for - and providing support to - the group, designated a terrorist organization. The Justice Department announced the indictment of eight men alone on November 23.

Four defendants have pled guilty and await sentencing. One, Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, admitted in April to training with al-Shabaab, building a terrorist training camp and learning to fire weapons. In July, Salah Osman Ahmed pled guilty to traveling to Somalia in December 2007 to fight Ethiopians. During his time fighting alongside al-Shabaab, Ahmed built a training camp and learned how to fire an AK-47.

Court documents unsealed by federal prosecutors in Minneapolis on November 23, 2009 provide a detailed look at how al-Shabaab recruits and raises money in the United States. The documents examine the case of Burhan Ahmed, who was part of a group of four men who left the Minneapolis area in December 2007 to fight against Ethiopian forces that had invaded Somalia. He first went to Saudi Arabia to participate in the pilgrimage to Mecca, then joined the other three at an al-Shabaab safe house in Somalia.

Between December 2007 and February 2008 the men moved "from northern Somalia to an al-Shabaab training camp in southern Somalia, staying at multiple al-Shabaab houses along the way," according to a criminal complaint by FBI Special Agent Michael Cannizzaro. "The trainees were trained by, among others, Somali, Arab, and Western instructors in, among other things, small arms, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and military-style tactics. The trainees were also indoctrinated with anti-Ethiopian, anti-American, anti-Israeli, and anti-Western beliefs."

Several of the Minnesota men dropped out of the program after a week or two, but Ahmed completed the entire training course. He subsequently took part in an armed ambush of Ethiopian troops. On October 29, 2008, he died in one of a series of coordinated suicide bombings that day targeting Ethiopian, Somali government and United Nations facilities in Somalia. More than 20 people were killed. Ahmed, who drove a truck into an office of the Puntland Intelligence Service, was identified by a fingerprint on a severed finger recovered at the scene.

The criminal complaint alleges that Cabdulaahi Ahmed Faarax and Abdiweli Yassin Isse played key roles in recruiting for al-Shabaab. In explaining the case against Faarax and Isse, it quotes extensively from interviews with three "confidential witnesses" - individuals who have already pled guilty to conspiracy to commit murder outside the United States in connection with supporting al-Shabaab.

Recruitment was accomplished through personal meetings held in the Minneapolis area, emphasizing the need for participation, and the resulting camaraderie. At one, held in an unidentified Minneapolis mosque, according to the complaint, the men called a co-conspirator in Somalia who "explained the need for CW #1 [confidential witness # 1] and his Minnesota-based co-conspirators to travel to Somalia and fight against the Ethiopians."

Speaking about his own work for jihad, Faarax allegedly told another witness that he "did his part for Islam" while fighting in Somalia. But during three interviews with the FBI, he denied fighting or knowing anyone who fought in Somalia. The complaint contradicts this, alleging that during a meeting in the fall of 2007, Faarax "told his co-conspirators that he experienced true brotherhood while fighting in Somalia and that travel for jihad was the best thing that they could do." Faarax also told the co-conspirators that traveling to Somalia to fight jihad would be fun and not to be afraid. Faarax also explained to his co-conspirators that they would get to shoot guns in Somalia."

Some travel to Somalia was financed by deceptively seeking funds from the community for trips to Saudi Arabia. Witnesses said they saw Isse make the claim while soliciting members of the Somali community, telling them the travel was to study the Koran in Saudi Arabia to study the Koran and not mentioning the Somali jihad.

Isse and Faarax were last seen at the U.S.-Mexico border on the morning of October 8, 2009. The pair, who were dropped off by a taxicab at the San Ysidro border crossing near San Diego, carried tickets for a flight from Tijuana to Mexico City. They crossed into Mexico and their whereabouts are unknown.

In a related case, the Justice Department announced in November that charging documents were unsealed against Mahamud Said Omar, who is accused of conspiring to provide financial support and personnel for al-Shabaab. Omar, who has been in custody in the Netherlands, allegedly gave money for young men to travel from Minneapolis to Somalia to fight with and train for al-Shabaab. He is believed to have "visited an Al-Shabaab safe- house and provided hundreds of dollars to fund the purchase of AK-47 rifles for men from Minneapolis."

The Omar indictment alleges that he "committed and caused" nine men to leave Minnesota for Somalia to fight for al-Shabaab. Of that group, "two are believed to have died in Somalia, three have returned and pled guilty to terror charges, and four are still believed to be in Somalia," Minnesota Public Radio reported.

The role of local mosques in al-Shabaab recruitment is shrouded in mystery. Some relatives of the missing men - among them Osman Ahmed of Minneapolis, whose nephew Burhan Hassan was killed in Somalia in early June - contend that the youths were radicalized at the Abubakar as-Saddique mosque in Minneapolis. They point to the fact that many of the young men who went to fight for al-Shabaab attended the mosque, among them his nephew and Shirwa Ahmed. As noted above, the criminal complaint against Isse and Faarax alleges that a jihadist recruiter called a co-conspirator in Somalia from a Minneapolis mosque, but does not name the mosque. Officials at the Abubakar mosque deny any involvement and say they oppose anyone going to Somalia to fight.

Authorities believe one al-Shabaab recruiter was Zakaria Maruf, a charismatic former Minneapolis resident who is thought to have gone to Somalia to fight for al-Shabaab and has worked as a recruiter. Maruf was indicted in August for supporting the group.

INVESTIGATING JIHADIST RECRUITMENT ON BOTH SIDES OF THE BORDER

Al-Shabaab recruitment appears to be growing in Canada, too. Five Somali men in their mid-20s disappeared from the Toronto area between September and November, spurring anxiety among Somali Canadians and triggering investigations by authorities. The first to leave the country was 22-year-old Ahmed Elmi, who vanished in early September. He called his parents a month later to say he was in Kismayo - a Somali city controlled by al-Shabaab. Canadian officials have expressed concern that 20 or more people may have left the country to join al-Shabaab.

"This is a potential menace," said David Harris, former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Harris told the Investigative Project on Terrorism that departures to Somalia could turn into "a developing and metastasizing threat" that could prove dangerous on both sides of the border.

"No one should take comfort from the fact that it is five or six or 20" who have gone to Somalia, he said. "It could easily be 200 or more in the near future" and "it is just a matter of time" before someone who went abroad comes back to North America in an effort to carry out an attack.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Commissioner William Elliott apparently agrees. In a speech last October, he said his agency is concerned about Canadians who travel to Somalia "to fight and then return, imbued with both extremist ideology and the skills necessary to translate that into direct action."

In a January 6 interview with Ottawa radio station CFRA, Harris noted there are "clear indications" that "there are transportation networks in America that would take kids to Somalia where they are impressed into service by al-Shabaab. There is no reason to imagine that the Ottawa community would be immune from this, and it would seem to me very much in the interest of Somali-Canadians of good faith to cooperate with the authorities."

Though there have been complaints among some Somali Canadians that the CSIS has been unfairly targeting them, Harris says investigations have been far from excessively intrusive. Canadian security services "are effectively handcuffed in doing their job" when it comes to investigating jihadist activities. Canadian intelligence has been weakened by a series of investigations into alleged human rights abuses that have had "an unbelievably chilling effect on the intelligence services." Canadian intelligence officials now have to ask themselves whether aggressively investigating potential threats is worth "spending the next five to 20 years in court" dealing with government inquiries. This situation means "the enemy has achieved a massive victory."

Terrorism experts on both sides of the border point to Abu Mansour al-Amriki, an American al-Shabaab operative who has lived in the U.S. and Canada. Amriki, a 25-year-old native of Mobile, Alabama, was born Omar Hammami. He grew up as a Baptist before converting to Islam and becoming president of the Muslim Students Association at the University of South Alabama at the time of the September 11 attacks. "Everyone was really shocked," he told an interviewer at the time. "Even now it's difficult to believe a Muslim could have done this." Hammami warned about the possibility of misguided retribution against Muslims.

Hammami dropped out of school in 2002 and went to Toronto two years later. He stayed for a little over a year and made it to Somalia in 2005. He has since become one of al-Shabaab's top commanders and a fixture on recruiting videos like this, in which he denounces human rights and democracy for being at war with Muslim traditions such as stoning and cutting off hands.

Militant Islamists regard the West as "Al-Harb, the land of war," Harris says. "There's…a lack of respect, a profound view that we are a happy, effete civilization. And we are proving it - by allowing them to recruit, we reinforce this stereotype. We reinforce the growing impression among Somalis that the Shabaab writ runs in our backyard, not the democratic governments of the United States and Canada."

Steven Emerson is an internationally recognized expert on terrorism and national security and considered one of the leading world authorities on Islamic extremist networks, financing and operations. He now serves as the Executive Director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, one of the world's largest archival data and intelligence institutes on Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

8)Deficit Balloons Into National-Security Threat
By GERALD F. SEIB


.The federal budget deficit has long since graduated from nuisance to headache to pressing national concern. Now, however, it has become so large and persistent that it is time to start thinking of it as something else entirely: a national-security threat.

The budget plan released Monday by the Obama administration illustrates why this escalation is warranted. The numbers are mind-numbing: a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, $1.3 trillion next year, $8.5 trillion for the next 10 years combined—and that assumes Congress enacts President Barack Obama's proposals to start bringing it down, and that the proposals work.

These numbers are often discussed as an economic and domestic problem. But it's time to start thinking of the ramifications for America's ability to continue playing its traditional global role.

The U.S. government this year will borrow one of every three dollars it spends, with many of those funds coming from foreign countries. That weakens America's standing and its freedom to act; strengthens China and other world powers including cash-rich oil producers; puts long-term defense spending at risk; undermines the power of the American system as a model for developing countries; and reduces the aura of power that has been a great intangible asset for presidents for more than a century.

"We've reached a point now where there's an intimate link between our solvency and our national security," says Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior national-security adviser in both the first and second Bush presidencies. "What's so discouraging is that our domestic politics don't seem to be up to the challenge. And the whole world is watching."

In the 21st-century world order, the classic, narrow definition of national-security threats already has expanded in ways that make traditional foreign-policy thinking antiquated. The list of American security concerns now includes dependence on foreign oil and global warming, for example.

Consider just four of the ways that budget deficits also threaten American's national security:

• They make America vulnerable to foreign pressures.

The U.S. has about $7.5 trillion in accumulated debt held by the public, about half of that in the hands of investors abroad.

Aside from the fact that each American next year will chip in more than $800 just to pay interest on this debt, that situation means America's government is dependent on the largesse of foreign creditors and subject to the whims of international financial markets. A foreign government, through the actions of its central bank, could put pressure on the U.S. in a way its military never could. Even under a more benign scenario, a debt-ridden U.S. is vulnerable to a run on the American dollar that begins abroad.

WSJ's Jerry Seib previews his column in tomorrow's Journal in which he writes the federal budget deficit has become so large, it's time consider it a natural-security threat. Plus, the News Hub provides a February market outlook and also discusses the findings of a new autism study.
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Either way, Mr. Haass says, "it reduces our independence."

• Chinese power is growing as a result.

A lot of the deficit is being financed by China, which is selling the U.S. many billions of dollars of manufactured goods, then lending the accumulated dollars back to the U.S. The IOUs are stacking up in Beijing.

So far this has been a mutually beneficial arrangement, but it is slowly increasing Chinese leverage over American consumers and the American government. At some point, the U.S. may have to bend its policies before either an implicit or explicit Chinese threat to stop the merry-go-round.

Just this weekend, for example, the U.S. angered China by agreeing to sell Taiwan $6.4 billion in arms. At some point, will the U.S. face economic servitude to China that would make such a policy decision impossible?

• Long-term national-security budgets are put at risk.

This year, thanks in some measure to continuing high costs from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. will spend a once-unthinkable $688 billion on defense. (Before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, by contrast, the figure was closer to $300 billion.)

Staggering as the defense outlays are, the deficit is twice as large. The much smaller budgets for the rest of America's international operations—diplomacy, assistance for friendly nations—are dwarfed even more dramatically by the deficit.

These national-security budgets have been largely sacrosanct in the era of terrorism. But unless the deficit arc changes, at some point they will come under pressure for cuts.

• The American model is being undermined before the rest of the world.

This is the great intangible impact of yawning budget deficits. The image of an invincible America had two large effects over the last century or so. First, it made other countries listen when Washington talked. And second, it often—not always, of course, but often—made other peoples and leaders yearn to be like America.

Sometimes that produced jealousy and resentment among leaders, but often it drew to the top of foreign lands leaders who admired the U.S. and wanted their countries to emulate it. Such leaders are good allies.

The Obama administration has pledged to create a bipartisan commission charged with balancing the budget, except for interest payments, by 2015. The damage deficits can do to America's world standing is a good reason to hope the commission works.

Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com