The failure of the Lieberman–Warner bill shows support for global–warming legislation wanes considerably when the costs are compared to the benefits.

Green Jobs or Gone Jobs?

Yesterday the Center for American Progress boldly proclaimed that Barack Obama’s 6-point popular voter victory represented “A Progressive Mandate.” Really? How many millions of dollars did the Obama campaign spend on TV commercials in the closing weeks to convince Americans that Obama would enact policies the Center for American Progress supported? Zero. Meanwhile, Obama did blanket the airwaves with an ad claiming The Heritage Foundation, a well-established conservative think tank, supported his tax policies. Obama’s claims were clearly false. But his campaign’s insistence on airing the ads after our continued objections proves that Obama did not obtain his vote totals by running as a progressive.

Just ask Clinton special counsel Lanny Davis, who writes in the Wall Street Journal today:

This is a man who defended the right to gun ownership under the Second Amendment; who arguably ran to the right of McCain on broader-based tax cuts for the middle class; who defied his left-purist base by supporting (with more controls) the president’s terrorist surveillance program; who talked of pay-as-you-go fiscal policies aimed at restoring balanced budgets; who insisted to black audiences that black men take more responsibility for their families; and who talked boldly of aggressive military action in Pakistan to take out al Qaeda and bin Laden.

There is clearly a yawning gap between the what the left expects from an Obama presidency and the rhetoric that Obama actually ran on. As to who the real Obama is — a pragmatic centrist or a progressive ideologue — our guess is as good as anyone’s. After all, Obama has never governed anything, so there is no track record to make predictions.

Early indications are, that once sworn in, Obama will move quickly on some small bore items such as expanding Medicaid funding, lifting the federal embryonic stem cell funding ban, and extending time limits on equal pay lawsuits. An economic stimulus package will surely be next, and that is where Obama will begin to be tested. Unions will demand their long-sought goal to end the secret ballot be included. Their employees, especially the U.S. auto industry, will also come to Congress with their hand out.

Will Obama give in to his leftist base and pass a stimulus bill closer to the $300 billion Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has been asking for, or the $150 billion Obama campaigned on? With economists projecting deficits in the $1.5 trillion range, will Obama stick to the fiscal discipline he campaigned on, or will he let a Democrat Congress spend like drunken sailors? In almost every speech, Obama promised that tax cuts for 95% of Americans would be a key part of his “trickle up” economic philosophy. Will these promises even see the light of day in Obama’s first economic stimulus legislation?

The voters who gave Obama his margin of victory are not nearly as liberal as Congress. In a poll of 12 swing congressional districts, 11 of which switched from Republican to Democrat, 73% of voters prefer the federal government to focus on “creating economic conditions that give all people opportunities to create wealth through their own efforts” over “spreading wealth from higher income people to middle and lower income people.” The new occupant of the White House and liberals on Capitol Hill ignore these American voters at their peril.

You can be sure that whatever Obama is unable to do middle class tax cut, health care, etc. they will blame on Bush.

It's not a perfect calculator, but here you can put in your taxable income for 2008 and calculate your tax bill, and then do the same for the tax rates of 2000, before the Bush tax cuts went into effect.

They are talking about rolling back the "tax cuts for the rich," so let's see who pays what from the NTU.org website;

Who Pays Income Taxes? See Who Pays What

For Tax Year 2006

Percentiles Ranked by AGI	AGI Threshold on Percentiles	Percentage of Federal Personal Income Tax Paid
Top 1%	$388,806	39.89
Top 5%	$153,542	60.14
Top 10%	$108,904	70.79
Top 25%	$64,702	86.27
Top 50%	$31,987	97.01
Bottom 50%	<$31,987	2.99
Note: AGI is Adjusted Gross Income Source: Internal Revenue Service

Don't forget that around 35% of tax returns are non-paying.

UPDATE: Same-Sex Marriage Supporters Demonstrate...

Hollywood joins the furor...

Schwarzenegger: Don't give up...

The world won't love Obama forever.

The storyline goes something like this: America's onetime popularity in the world was squandered by George W. Bush, whose belligerence and unilateralism after Sept. 11, 2001, alienated allies and engendered widespread anti-Americanism. But now, with the election of Barack Obama, America can restore its good name and regain the world's goodwill.

Sure enough, much of the international reaction to Obama's election has been ecstatic. "Legions of jubilant supporters set off firecrackers in El Salvador, danced in Liberia, and drank shots in Japan," the Los Angeles Times reported. Kenya declared a national holiday. South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu exulted: "We have a new spring in our walk and our shoulders are straighter." The Sun, Britain's most popular newspaper, headlined its story "One Giant Leap for Mankind."

For Obama, such worldwide jubilation must be gratifying. He should take it all with a healthy shake of salt, however. Because it isn't going to last.

Antagonism to the United States is as old as the United States. It didn't begin with the current president, unpopular though he is, or in response to American military action in Iraq. Nor is it going to vanish Jan. 20.

As a presidential candidate, Obama argued that America's standing in the world had declined because of the Iraq war and unilateral actions by the Bush administration "emphasizing military action over diplomacy." Yet there will almost surely be times in Obama's administration when the United States will have to use force when others won't, to defend its principles or protect a threatened party. As one notable American has written: "There will be times when we must again play the role of the world's reluctant sheriff. This will not change - nor should it." The author of those words? Barack Obama, in "The Audacity of Hope."

Popularity is nice, but it isn't the goal of US foreign policy. Great nations have great interests in the world - interests that cannot always be secured through patient negotiation or Security Council resolutions. As the foremost military power, the United States must at times be "the world's reluctant sheriff," using force to maintain order or defend liberty. President Obama may speak more softly than his predecessor, but he will still be carrying a very big stick. Like other presidents, he will be loudly condemned when he uses it. As George W. Bush can tell him, the abuse goes with the job.

Michelle Malkin  •  November 7, 2008 06:12 PM

Feel the love.

Romney’s family doesn’t want him to run again?

The night we waved goodbye to America

Of course race mattered

Avoiding Obama Derangement Syndrome

First some definitions. When we talk about ODS, or Obama Derangement Syndrome, we are obviously referencing its precursor, [1] BDS — Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Yes, there are reasons to fear that Obama has a far left agenda, based on his history, some of his own statements, and his associations. There are even reasons to believe that whether he does or doesn’t have such an agenda himself, he will lack the inclination (or perhaps the backbone) to stop the far left agenda of those with the power to pass bills — in other words, the hugely Democratic Congress and its leaders Reid and Pelosi.

But I suggest that everyone stand back, take a deep breath, and wait. Wait, and observe. It will become clear enough as Obama chooses a Cabinet and advisers. And then it will become even more clear as he takes office and begins the work of government. More clarity will come as he handles the inevitable crises and tests that will occur on his watch.

This does not mean that the right should fall asleep at the switch. On the contrary; watchful waiting is the order of the day. The right is correct to start organizing and regrouping and doing a postmortem on what went wrong during this election and during the Bush administration, to avoid future repeats and to emerge stronger. But it only weakens that effort when people fall prey to fears (even seemingly rational ones) and projections.

Once again, I want to emphasize that we are not talking about mere policy disagreements here. We’re talking about demonizing and trashing a person, ascribing to him the worst motivations possible and imagining conspiracy theories everywhere.

Let me say there are parts of the article [If you link to the entire piece] that I do not agree with.

No boosted turnout in this election

Politico reports that estimates of voter turnout continue to decline in this year’s national election.  At first, some predicted a turnout of 137 million.  Now the estimates have declined to the point where the percentage of eligible voters would be the same as in 2004, but only if one accepts the idea that we’re still missing millions of votes from the final total

I wrote about this on Wednesday, when MS-NBC tried to argue that a 20-million vote deficit between the predictions and the total counted to that point would get erased by the West Coast, even though most of those votes had already been counted.  Five days after the election, we still have yet to surpass 123 million votes, and nationwide 99% of all precincts have been counted.  Only Washington and Oregon have any significant number of precincts still out (8% and 3%).  At worst, that might represent 400,000 uncounted ballots at this stage.

Let’s add the 400,000 to the current vote totals.  That would make the vote total 123,176,039 votes cast for the presidential race — far below the estimates given by so-called experts even today.  With over 121 million votes cast in 2004 and over six million new voters registered in the last four years, that’s a rather disappointing conclusion to the longest presidential race in American history.  That would mean that only a third of new voters bothered to cast ballots, or that a lot of previous voters withdrew from the process this time.

So what happened?  Obama got six million more votes than John Kerry and John McCain got slighly under five million less than George Bush.  Given the efforts at new registrations, it looks like Democrats turned out well, while a significant chunk of Republicans stayed home.  Democratic GOTV efforts worked better than in 2004, but it didn’t produce a landslide.  Republican GOTV efforts had been in full swing, but in the end, the ticket simply didn’t produce the excitement needed to carry the GOP to victory.

This doesn’t delegitimize the victory that Barack Obama won on Tuesday, but it does help demythologize it.  Obama didn’t inspire any boost in participation in the election process throughout the entire population.  The nominal gain seen will probably show as a slight decline in percentage participation among elegible voters from 2004, once the dust settles.

Obama to target Bush executive orders in first days

Barack Obama wants to find ways to make his mark quickly in the opening days of his presidency and reverse the legacy of George W. Bush.  Obama will focus his efforts on the list of executive orders that shaped White House policy, reversing them quickly.  That does not require legislative approval, but it could bring the most contentious issues to the forefront immediately and create more polarization than post-partisanship (via Jazz Shaw)

The other top two targets will enrage the pro-life lobby.  Obama plans to end the federal ban on funding for human embryonic stem-cell research (hEsc) and upend the Mexico City rule that forbids federal foreign aid to be used to promote abortion. He can expect a big controversy on both.

The hEsc order annoys researchers who can’t get money for their projects elsewhere, but that’s because the technology has surpassed hEsc.  Scientists have since developed plenipotentiary stem cells from adult tissue, ending the need to destroy embryos at all.  If hEsc really held out any promise apart from other technologies, it would not need federal funding at any rate — it would have private donors lining up to invest in it, as other stem-cell research does.

While American voters feel some ambiguity on abortion, they overwhelmingly do not want their tax dollars paying for or facilitating abortions.  The Mexico City rule forbade federal funds to be used to facilitate the acquisition of abortions by groups abroad, much as the Hyde Amendment prohibited federal funds to be used in the same manner domestically.  If Obama rescinds it, he can expect a great deal of outrage from pro-life groups and a reopening of the debate over the use of tax money to procure abortions anywhere.

These aren’t exactly low-hanging fruit, nor are they the acts of someone who professed to find middle ground between pro-life and pro-choice groups.  These are the acts of a pro-abortion absolutist, and they presage the sponsorship of Planned Parenthood’s Freedom of Choice Act.  So much for governing from the center.

Islamophobe (is-slahm-o-fohb) - A non-Muslim who knows too much about Islam.

Islamophobia is a fear of losing life or liberty to Islamic rule merely because the laws, sacred texts, and modern practices of Islam demand the submission of culture, politics, religion and all social expression. It tends to afflict those most familiar with the religion, while sparing the more gullible.

And many more...

Islam offers a little something for everyone

Ten Reasons Why Islam is NOT a Religion of Peace

Is the Qur'an Hate Propaganda?

While rumors of a Qur’an desecration or a Muhammad cartoon bring out deadly protests, riots, arson and effigy-burnings, the mass murder of non-Muslims generally evokes yawns. In the six years following 9/11 more than 10,000 acts of deadly Islamic terrorism were perpetrated, yet all of them together fail to provoke the sort of outrage on the part of most Muslims that the mere mention of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo inspires.

This critical absence of moral perspective puzzles many Westerners, particularly those trying to reconcile this reality with the politically-correct assumption that Islam is like other religion.  The Judeo-Christian tradition preaches universal love and unselfishness, so it is expected that the more devout Muslims would be the most peaceful and least dangerous... provided that Islam is based on the same principles.