This one’s a puzzler.

The potential 2012 candidate who has the least foreign policy knowledge since George W. Bush is the #1 choice for GOPers when it comes to keep us safe?

More at True/Slant.

Because while today’s protests in memory of the 10th anniversary of the violence at Tehran University drew a lot of coverage from the Western media, it seems as if it didn’t draw very many Iranians.

More at True/Slant.

“There are tens of millions of pro-choice Republicans that are just as good Republicans as I am, and we need to support them. That’s what party building is about, and don’t think that is giving up your principles.”
- Haley Barbour testing the waters for 2012

No doubt this is encouraging, but are base Republicans really ready to listen to this? Especially the highly religious, pro life base. To them abortion is akin to genocide and since it took the GOP decades to wedge those voters to the polls year after year, there’s little likelihood they’ll be able to back away from that play and convince them to focus on other issues.

Here’s more from Barbour…

Party building is about addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division, Barbour said at a party fundraiser in Des Moines. The GOP must be inclusive, he argued, and that idea extends to even the most divisive political issues. To make his point, Barbour pointed out that he helped pass several anti-abortion bills as governor, eventually garnering his state the reputation as “the safest place in the nation for an unborn child.” But he said there are good Republicans who don’t agree with him on the issue. [...]

But if Iowa’s GOP wants to have any chance of defeating an incumbent, it must stick together. The party should also strive to be inclusive, Barbour said, adding that the need to build coalitions and to attract voters means it is not the time to focus on “purity.”

“There are a lot more things that unite us than do divide us,” Barbour said. “Or as President Reagan used to say, remember that a fellow that agrees with you 80 percent of the time is your friend. He’s not some 20-percent traitor.”

Well put. But does anybody really think they’ll be able to turn it around by 2012?

Me neither.

WHAT????!!!!

From NY Times:

WASHINGTON — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said.

In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats said that the agency had “misled members” of Congress for eight years about the classified matters, which the letter did not disclose. “This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods,” said the letter, made public late Wednesday by Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the signers.

In an interview, Mr. Holt declined to reveal the nature of the C.I.A.’s alleged deceptions,. But he said, “We wouldn’t be doing this over a trivial matter.”

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, referred to Mr. Panetta’s disclosure in a letter to the committee’s ranking Republican, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Congressional Quarterly reported on Wednesday. Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee “has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to.”

Genuinely, I don’t mean to make light of this, but after the Iraq war, extraordinary rendition and waterboarding nonsense, you knew these folks were playing fast and loose with the truth.

Still, the Obama administration opposes a call from Dems to open up these sessions to everybody in the Intelligence committees, and I agree. There’s a reason you select a small group of people to share this info with. Loose lips sink ships and all that.

By the way, is it bad that I feel like I should be angry, but I’m not?

Whenever Warren talks, people listen, but my gut tells me that a second stimulus is still politically impossible right now. Especially since nearly 90% of the original $787B is left to spend (which Dems are bemoaning)

Still, he has some entertaining euphemisms for the first round…

“I think that a second one may well be called for,” Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, told “Good Morning America” today. But, he added, “you hope it doesn’t get watered down in many ways.”

Buffett cautioned that a second stimulus package, like the first, won’t be “a panacea,” because stimulus packages take time to work. He criticized lawmakers’ work on the first stimulus package, which contained $787 billion in spending.

“Our first stimulus bill … was sort of like taking half a tablet of Viagra and having also a bunch of candy mixed in … as if everybody was putting in enough for their own constituents,” he said. “It doesn’t have really quite the wall that might have been anticipated there.”

But, again, the second round of stimulus faces stiff competition since Republicans are convinced the first round won’t work…

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., was among the GOP members of Congress who said at a House committee hearing that the $787 billion spending plan had failed to create jobs and hold unemployment at 8 percent.

“I am convinced that it won’t work,” said Issa. “Unfortunately, recent economic data has validated my opposition.”

The jobless rate hit 9.5 percent in June, the United States lost 3.4 million jobs in the past six months as the recession showed greater tenacity than expected.

Hrmm…ya know, after the Iraq debacle you’d think Republicans be a bit more understanding when goals aren’t immediately hit. Sure, many Dems were critical of the war once it started going downhill, but lawmakers kept on voting to fund it because they didn’t want to hamstring the troops.

And let’s remember that ZERO House Republicans voted for the stimulus and by all accounts that decision was based on what the base was saying. Interesting to see how an event like 9/11 can force Dems into a corner, but our entire financial system collapsing, and thus our economy collapsing with it, didn’t seem to make Republicans question their strategies/philosophies/beliefs at all.

Anybody else find that a bit odd?

Because, let’s face it, 9/11 was horrific, but all it lead to was a bunch of fear mongering and an ill conceived war which we didn’t need to fight. In other words, the aftershocks of 9/11 didn’t really need to have an effect on that many people, but it did because we went into Iraq and far too many Americans and Iraqis died.

On the other side of the coin, we needed to fight the economic collapse because if we hadn’t the financial system would have imploded. I think that’s well established by now, and while I understand any issue will have naysayers…letting those big banks fail would have sent tens of thousands of small businesses into bankruptcy and we would have lost a lot more jobs. I don’t know if it would have resulted in another Great Depression, but things would have gotten bad extremely quickly.

So then, given all this…why is everybody saying the first stimulus won’t work if the majority of this money has yet to spent? True, the administration underestimated how bad the economy was, but the jobs will come back eventually because people will start spending again. Even if this is a jobless recovery, people will still start spending again. Maybe not this year, but in 2010? 2011?

I think it’s a pretty safe bet at this point that we’ll rebound, but feel free to tell me why I’m crazy…

This article may be three years old, but alarmingly relevent today as both countries are ramping up more than just rhetoric…

Daily Telegraph link…

Talked about this recently when Biden admitted that there might be need for a second stimulus package at some point, but that the administration wanted to see how the first round would suss out.

Still, looks like Dems need to get their stories straight because they aren’t saying the same things.

Read more at True/Slant.

I know this is the case because a good friend recently walked away from his home because there was too much paperwork to fix it and the value of the home wasn’t enough to justify saving it. And my guess is if this is happening in Missouri, it’s happening across the board.

From CNN:

The program is beset with problems, say borrowers, housing counselors and even the president himself.

Loan servicers are overwhelmed by the numbers of homeowners applying for loan modifications or refinancing. Borrowers are frustrated that their paperwork is being lost, and calls are not returned. Administration officials are racing to roll out new features to improve the program.

So what does Obama have to say about it?

Refreshingly, he’s not hiding the fact that there are problems…

“Our mortgage program has actually helped to modify mortgages for a lot of our people, but it hasn’t been keeping pace with all the foreclosures that are taking place,” Obama said last month.

Here’s the thing…at least he’s being honest. This administration is admitting difficulties and promising to revise. A far cry from the rosy, dishonest information we were fed the last eight years. And I’m confident that if they’re publicly acknowledging this, they’re already working on fixes to get this moving again.

One of those fixes might be to light a fire under the banks since it seems like they’re seriously dragging their feet…

Even many of those whose applications are deemed complete say they never receive final approval or are told they can’t be helped now because they haven’t missed a payment.

“We are trying to refinance but are getting the runaround from the bank,” Janeen, a Los Angeles homeowner, wrote on a CNNMoney.com Talkback. “[T]hey keep stalling, missing appointments and forgetting to send us paperwork.”

More as it develops…

NY times article…

Nothing has been proven, but it sounds all too intriguing…at least to a cartoonist.

It’s hard to know exactly what Joe Biden is thinking when he makes offhanded remarks about Israel, Iran and the economy. (But let’s save the economy for another day, shall we?) There are few things one can really say about a country like Iran without inflaming some sort of Anti-Western backlash. Yet if our VP said nothing, George Stephanopoulos would stare at him with his soulless eyes and try to goad him into another gaffe with his tricky phrases.

“Look, Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else,” Biden said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. Moments later, he added: “What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world.”

In no uncertain terms, Stephanopoulos asked the VP, “But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?”

“Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they’re existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country,” Biden said.

That last comment was exactly what Iran had been waiting for. While the administration was careful not to get involved during the initial election and early protests – which was a wise move – they’re now stoking the fires. “We warn the leaders of those countries trying to take advantage of the situation: beware. The Iranian nation will react,” Ayatollah Khamenei announced in a televised speech on Monday. “The leaders of arrogant countries, the nosey meddlers in the affairs of the Islamic Republic, must know that even if the Iranian people have their differences, when your enemies get involved, the people… will become a firm fist against you.” Continue Reading…

In America, we tend to laud the optimist and shun the pessimist. Not surprisingly, we are inundated with bromides about positive thinking and self-affirmation. But, turns out, all that stuff might not work. A new study published in Psychological Science argues that forcing positive thoughts can have negative consequences.

I’ve always thought self affirmations were a load of crap. Of course, I get itchy anytime someone tries to convince me that the world is roses and bunny rabbits. It’s my personality. But apparently, I’m not alone. In fact, the positive-thinking study found that:

[U]nfavorable thoughts about ourselves intrude very easily, especially among those of us with low self-esteem — so easily and so persistently that even when a positive alternative is presented, it just underlines how awful we believe we are.

The paper provides support for newer forms of psychotherapy that urge people to accept their negative thoughts and feelings rather than try to reject and fight them. In the fighting, we not only often fail but can also make things worse. Mindfulness and meditation techniques, in contrast, can teach people to put their shortcomings into a larger, more realistic perspective. Call it the power of negative thinking.

In other words, we need to learn to cope. Trying to force ourselves to be positive and happy just makes us realize how negative and unhappy we actually are. That’s not to say we should mope around and drink all day. But it is saying we shouldn’t feel bad for not being happy. Being functional is good enough.

And isn’t that wisdom for our new age?

Years from now, I wonder how we’ll remember Sarah Palin. Politicians are an odd lot to begin with. But, even in that club, Palin is unique in her peculiarities. How can any office holder suddenly resign and then be surprised and offended when people try to uncover some hidden scandal? Hidden (or very public) scandal is by far the leading cause of office holder resignation!

Palin is still being coy about whether she is planning a 2012 run at the presidency. To me, this reservation is ridiculous. There are only two passable reasons for her not to finish her term as governor. 1) She is 100% done with politics. 2) She wants a head start on getting her party’s nomination. As for 1, if she’s done, she should succinctly say so, leaving no room for wiggling. If she’s running for higher office, she should also say so – forget the typical politician habit of denying a presidential run until the fifteenth visit to Iowa. You can’t just give up your governor’s seat and not admit to your future plans. “Erratic” is not a quality Americans look for in a president.

Palin has certainly been the recipient of some nasty, petty attacks in the past. But the criticism coming out after her resignation is not some smear campaign by her critics. It’s the inevitable result of her odd decision and the rambling, unfocused explanation she tried to give. Palin may want to play the victim here, but, this time, she has no one to blame but herself.

More large institutions are suddenly finding ways to cut a tremendous amount of money from their bottom lines?

Fact or fiction?

From Wash Post:

The nation’s hospitals agreed last night to contribute $155 billion over 10 years toward the cost of insuring the 47 million Americans without health coverage, according to two industry sources.

The agreement that three hospital associations reached with White House officials and leaders of the Senate Finance Committee is the latest in a series of side deals that aim to reduce the cost of revamping the nation’s health-care system and to neutralize influential industries that have historically opposed such reforms. [...]

“Getting health-care reform is absolutely critical,” said one hospital negotiator, who was not authorized to speak for attribution about the deal before the official announcement. “This is our attempt to act in good faith.”

So here’s the question…how is this happening? Because Obama was able to get insurers to cut $2 trillion in the next 10 years, and that’s a hell of a lot of money.

Again, how are these companies finding this money?

More as it develops…

After I read Matt Taibbi’s piece about Goldman Sachs gaming the oil/gas marketplace and wrote my own response, I started to think about the massive $24.3 billion budget deficit in California, and I wondered, “How could they get that far in the hole?”

Sure, the global economy has tanked the past couple years and revenues aren’t coming in like they were, but how can the gap be so vast? Because we’re not talking a couple billion dollars. This took some doing and I had a really hard time believing this was due to simple revenue shortfalls or excess expenditures on infrastructure, health care, welfare and schools.

Read more at True/Slant.

I wrote about this last week and I was pleasantly surprised with the number of people who’ve applied so far. Lots of great submissions and selecting the best has been difficult indeed.

However, since this is vacation season I wanted to make sure we weren’t missing anybody, so I’m posting this list of qualifications and expectations one more time just in case:

• You must understand the basics of blogging (linking to other sites, embedding pictures and video, etc.), and having a blog is preferred but not absolutely necessary.
• Good grammar and punctuation skills are a must.
• You can be affiliated with any political party or none at all. However, realize that this is a site that hews closer to the middle, so if you believe that the government should take over all means of production or perhaps you think the US should be converted into a religious state, well, you may not want to apply.
• You should be willing to commit to a minimum of 5 posts per week.
• If you’re engaged in multiple social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Digg, etc.) and are willing to use them to promote your posts, that would be a big plus.
• Be able to interact with the commenters on your posts and keep the conversation on track.
• Stay true to the spirit of the site and always make sure you keep your arguments sharp and your language clean.
• Opportunities for compensation may develop as we get closer to election season, but for right now these spots are unpaid.

So, if you’re interested, drop me at line at justin at donklephant dot com and let’s talk. I’ll be making my decision on who will join the team this week and will announce it next Monday, July 14th…the 4th anniversary of the site’s launch!

Stay tuned…

This is an incredibly significant step because it paves the way for an actual revolution.

From Times Online:

Iran’s biggest group of clerics has declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election to be illegitimate and condemned the subsequent crackdown.

The statement by the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom is an act of defiance against the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has made clear he will tolerate no further challenges to Mr Ahmadinejad’s “victory” over Mir Hossein Mousavi.

“It’s a clerical mutiny,” said one Iranian analyst. “This is the first time ever you have all these big clerics openly challenging the leader’s decision.” Another, in Tehran, said: “We are seeing the birth of a new political front.”

This has a few practical effects.

1. It puts the Supreme Leader in a nearly indefensible positions and calls into question his authority.
2. These clerics can now claim the moral high ground and possibly unseat the Supreme Leader
3. It’s unlikely that Mousavi will be arrested at this point, even though Khamenei has called for it.

Also, let’s not forget that even though the protests were quashed last week, folks will be coming out in about 20 days to mourn the deaths of the protesters who died during the first round. And this could lead to more deaths, which will lead to more protests, etc. And that’s how the revolution in 1979 happened, so there’s a possibility it could happen again.

More as it develops…

Kevin Hassett (whose American Enterprise Institute affiliation probably tells you all you need to know about his economic opinions) has written a skewering critique of Obamanomics. But what’s interesting is not that he calls the Obama administration the most fiscally irresponsible in history, but that he uses California’s monetary problems as evidence that moderate Democrats are likely to balk at authorizing the kind of spending necessary to pass Obama’s health care reform.

Recently, due to a massive budget shortfall, California has had to release billions in IOUs rather than paying real cash to those who’ve done business with the state. Hassett blames the budget crisis on California’s habit of giving the voters whatever they want without ever making the hard choices necessary to pay for new programs. This is not an unreasonable assessment. And Hassett is right to worry that the federal government is on the verge of turning the national system into a monstrous version of California.

Unless, of course, moderate democrats like Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Tom Carper and others end up opposing the public option in health care reform – an option whose costs are likely to give pause to anyone with even a breath of fiscal conservativism inside of them. But, without the public option, will there really be any reform?

That’s the quandary for moderate Democrats. Do they risk not reforming health care and upsetting voters or do they risk getting the nation into the kind of debt which will sabotage our economic future? Or is there a way to fix health care without huge expenditures?

We’ll see. But I do agree with Hassett that the astronomical costs of a public option for health care is going to make it hard to pass the bill – even with 60 Democratic votes in the Senate.

He’s not alone in expressing that Obama is doing too much too soon, but his voice definitely carries more weight because he may have done more to swing independents and moderates towards the President than anybody else last year.

From AP:

“The right answer is, ‘Give me a government that works,’” the former secretary of state said in a television interview to be aired Sunday. “Keep it as small as possible,” added Powell, who said he has spoken recently with Obama and stays in touch with him. Powell, a Republican, endorsed Obama last year over the GOP presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Obama wants to overhaul the health care system and take on climate change while also helping the country emerge from the recession.

“I think one of the cautions that has to be given to the president - and I’ve talked to some of his people about this - is that you can’t have so many things on the table that you can’t absorb it all. And we can’t pay for it all,” Powell said.

“And I never would have believed that we would have budgets that are running into the multi-trillions of dollars, and we are amassing a huge, huge national debt that, if we don’t pay for in our lifetime, our kids and grandkids and great grandchildren will have to pay for it.”

Powell’s words aren’t lost on me, but let’s look at what Obama’s facing:

• Two wars,
• the near collapse of our financial system,
• a deep recession,
• once-in-generation unemployment,
• a genuine threat of deflation,
• unstable energy costs,
• global warming,
• unsustainable health care costs,
• a crumbling infrastructure,
• a failing education system,
• North Korea, Iran, Russia, Sudan,
• and I’m sure I’m missing something else.

So while I understand the concerns of my Independent and Republican friends, the price to fix these problems will only continue to go up while the likelihood that we’ll be able to reach a legislative consensus on how to fix them will go down.

However…

Shifting gears for a moment, and I’m talking to Republicans specifically now…do you want to win in 2012?

Well, here’s your guy. He can take the party in a sustainable direction. I don’t know that he’d run, but if he did he would crush all other GOPers with the swing voters.

And let’s be very clear…McCain didn’t lose Virginia, Indiana and North Carolina because the base didn’t show up. The voting demographics are shifting, and unless the GOP can field a candidate with mass appeal, well, it’s going to be a long bumpy ride in 2012 and 2016.

Just food for thought…