Garden State Patriot

The decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to try Gitmo terrorists in U.S. civilian courts is bad enough. But now we are learning that the AG has a clear conflict of interest regarding this issue and clearly should have recused himself from any involvement in the decision.

What is the issue? Holder’s former law firm, Covington & Burling, represents sixteen Gitmo terrorists. From the firm’s web site:

Guantanamo Bay Detainees

• We represent sixteen men detained at the United States Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.  Most of the men have been detained for approximately seven years.  None have been charged with any crimes, and none have been accorded the protections of the Geneva Convention.  In Boumediene v. Bush, 128 S. Ct. 2229 (2008), where we were co-counsel for eleven of the detainees, the Supreme Court held that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus extends to detainees held at Guantánamo Bay.  Following that decision, we have been preparing for habeas corpus hearings to be held in federal district court Washington, DC, for eleven of our clients.
• The firm has been involved in the Guantánamo related litigation for the last five years.  In addition to the on-going habeas corpus proceedings, our efforts have included: bringing cases for review of enemy combatant classification decisions in the D.C. Circuit under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005; challenging the destruction of CIA torture tapes in federal court; filing amicus briefs and coordinating the amicus effort in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006); filing amicus briefs in support of Supreme Court review in Moussaoui v. United States, 382 F.3d 483 (4th Cir.), cert denied, 544 U.S. 931 (2005); challenging the government’s practice of redacting information from documents given to security-cleared habeas counsel; and challenging the abusive medical and living conditions that the detainees experience at Guantánamo.

It should also be noted that Holder has a history of going to bat for terrorists. When he was Deputy AG in the Clinton Administration he was directly involved in the pardons of FALN terrorists which caused an uproar in the waning days of Clinton’s term in office.

And just to provide some further context, when the Enron scandal broke during the Bush years, for AG John Ashcroft recused himself because when he ran for senate he had received campaign contributions from Enron execs. Ashcroft also recused himself over the Valerie Plame matter because he had allegedly been briefed about the FBI’s questioning of Karl Rove about the incident.

Yet in this case Holder’s former law firm stands to directly gain from these proceedings and Holder neither discloses such facts nor recuses himself? Senate Republicans now need to step up, voice their objection and threaten to investigate this matter. Holder’s actions are completely unethical and he needs to be held accountable.

Cross-posted at CMNJ.

As we all know, Social Security is heading for the proverbial iceberg. And like the Titanic before her, she is speeding up instead of slowing down and turning away.

According to new CBO numbers, Social Security will begin running deficits - not by 2030, not by 2040 or 2050 – but by 2010! Here is the story from Ed Morrissey @ HotAir.com:

Four years ago, George W. Bush attempted to reform the entitlement program Social Security, warning that the system was accelerating into collapse and would soon run deficits.  Democrats scoffed and claimed the Social Security system was solid and wouldn’t have problems for at least 50 years, as Harry Reid told PBS’ Jim Lehrer in June 2005.  Just last year, the CBO — under the direction of Peter Orszag, now budget director in the Obama administration — claimed that the first cash deficits in Social Security would not come until 2019.

Now, however, the CBO has determined that Social Security will run cash deficits next year and in 2011, and by 2016 will be more or less in permanent deficit mode.  Hot Air has exclusively obtained the summer 2009 CBO report sent to legislators on Capitol Hill but not yet made public, which shows that outgo will exceed income for the first time since the 1983 fix on an annual basis in 2010:

See Chart Here

The numbers need explaining.  The number to watch is the “Primary Surplus” number, which watches actual income and expenditures without the interest payments from the general fund.  The interest payments mask the fact that costs have begun to outstrip income on an annual basis (individual months have gone into deficit in the past).   One way to look at this, according to my sources, is to think of this as a mortgage, and in 2010-11, the income can’t make the payments, so the general fund has to cover them.  Since the interest obligation compounds, the debt grows.

As we can see, this trend reverses itself temporarily from 2012-15, but the surpluses are minimal.  By 2016, the deficits return, and begin to accelerate again.  By 2019, the primary surplus runs $63 billion in the red, almost triple the deficit in 2017, showing the rapid decline of the Social Security system.

George Bush, for all his faults, was dead on about this issue while Democrats demagogued it and obstructed, allowing an opportunity to deal with the problem to slip away. Now, while Social Security heads for disaster, Obama & Co. continue to try to ram through asocialized healthcare entitlement we simply can’t afford. To pay for these deficits, there will be no choice but to raid the general fund and bust the federal budget or pass massive tax increases. And guess who is a proponent of that?

Barack Obama thinks that Social Security’s fiscal shortfall is overblown. He opposes private accounts, benefit cuts, or an increase in the retirement age. He writes:

I believe there are a number of ways we can make Social Security solvent that do not involve placing these added burdens on our seniors. One possible option, for example, is to raise the cap on the amount of income subject to the Social Security tax. If we kept the payroll tax rate exactly the same but applied it to all earnings and not just the first $97,500, we could virtually eliminate the entire Social Security shortfall.

That option would be the largest increase in marginal tax rates in decades—larger than the Bush 1990 and Clinton 1993 tax hikes combined.

Gird your loins, my friends. Gird your loins.

A very interesting post from Gateway Pundit. Setting the Record Straight on AIG–

AIG, Citibank and other companies have come under a great deal of pressure these past few months and have been accused of all sorts of things. The people who are making these accusations are the same ones who had a whole lot to do with getting them in that predicament (i.e. Barney Frank, Christopher Dodd, etc…). Let’s take a look at what really happened.

Up until the fall of 2009, and for years before this, the big banks and other related companies were lending and making a lot of money in consolidating mortgages and selling and buying them on the free market. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were buying the mortgages and bundling them into larger investments which were purchased by a number of entities worldwide. The Clinton administration wanted to enable all Americans to own a home and implemented policies to encourage home buying. During the Clinton administration, Freddie and Fannie lowered their underwriting standards and encouraged banks and brokers to write loans to individuals based in part on their minority status rather than on their ability to repay the loans. Some of the Clinton cronies, (e.g. Harold Raines and Rahm Emanuel) made millions from Freddie during its heyday.

Then things went wrong. The mortgages turned sour. People had been given loans who were not able to pay them back. This had a domino affect throughout the finance industry. Many huge companies were suddenly insolvent or unable to pay on their promises. The largest money market fund shut down for a week, and companies and individuals worldwide began to hoard money in fear that they would soon be unable to get to it or lose it.

The Bush administration went to Congress more than 10 times in the years preceding this disaster (17 times in 2008 alone), asking for a review and changes to Freddie and Fannie with no avail. Bush then stepped in and offered loans to several of these institutions in order for them to stay afloat. The goal was to push liquidity back in the market place. One of the largest insurance companies in the world – AIG, came calling and the government offered them a loan. Loans were given to other entities as well. The key here is that these were loans to these entities.

Along came the election and the swearing in of the Obama administration. One of their first actions, with the assistance of the Democratic Congress, was to write a historic spending bill greater than anything we have ever seen before on this earth. Over a trillion dollars in spending projects were quickly passed through Congress. The Stimulus Bill was not a loan but included grants and pork spending. Unbelievable amounts of money were given to organizations like ACORN and other entities with close ties to the current democratic Congress.

After this atrocity was put into place, the Congress and individuals from both parties began to focus on bonus’s given at AIG. They said these weren’t fair and that AIG was paying these with the government’s money. In a sense this is true, since the government did loan them money to stay afloat. But in another sense this is not true. The government loaned this money to AIG. It was not a gift and is expected to be paid back. And, of course, it was Senator Chris Dodd who slipped in a provision in the spending bill that quaranteed the AIG bonuses.

The AIG predicament is similar to the Chrysler crisis in 1980. Chrysler came to the Carter administration and asked for a loan to stay afloat. The government gave them a loan. Many people said that this was not fair and none of the government’s business. They claimed that Chrysler would never pay it back and it was a waste of taxpayer money. Well, as you may recall, Lee Iacocca led them out of that quagmire and ended up paying off the government debt before it came due.

AIG had a good point when they argued that they had a legal obligation to pay the bonuses to their corporate team. They also have a great desire to keep their team in place while they work towards paying off their debt. They are led by a new CEO who desires to revive the company.

Also, per a letter received from a Gatewaypundit reader, the banking industry as a whole has felt the burden of bank failures. Their fees from the FDIC have risen tremendously over the past few years, both in cash to the Treasury and in transaction costs. Smaller community banks have taken on the brunt of the costs paying a larger share of FDIC insurance for their size than their bigger (too big to fail) brethren because the assessments are based on domestic deposits which are close to 100% of the deposits at small banks but about 50% of the deposits at large banks.

We don’t know yet whether AIG, Citibank and others will repay their loans. Time will tell. We do know however, that the current administration passed spending bills that will never be paid back- ever. This is the real danger. The greedy are not the corporations who pay 35% on their profits to the US government – one of the highest tax rates in the world. Nor are the greedy the banks who keep the economy running. The real greedy are the current group of government administrators and Congressmen and women who take advantage of their positions and implement spending bills to ensure their hold on the US government and instill their liberal ideas on all Americans. They divert attention from their actions when criticizing AIG, yet look forward to AIG’s tax dollars for spending on radical and wasteful ideas.

OK, I know I’ve been tooting my own horn over my post on Dems wanting Bush to fail (if I don’t, who will? ). But you have to admit it’s amazing how one little blogger just futzing around on the Internet could cause a tremor that reached the biggest media outfits in the country.

Now, the latest ramification of my little post is this little ditty from Bill Sammon of Fox News:

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just minutes before learning of the terrorist attacks on America, Democratic strategist James Carville was hoping for President Bush to fail, telling a group of Washington reporters: “I certainly hope he doesn’t succeed.”

Carville was joined by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who seemed encouraged by a survey he had just completed that revealed public misgivings about the newly minted president.

“We rush into these focus groups with these doubts that people have about him, and I’m wanting them to turn against him,” Greenberg admitted.

The pollster added with a chuckle of disbelief: “They don’t want him to fail. I mean, they think it matters if the president of the United States fails.”

“The most influential Republican in the United States today, Mr. Rush Limbaugh, said he did not want President Obama to succeed,” Carville railed on CNN recently. “He is the daddy of this Republican Congress.”

Rush responded today himself:

“The difference between Carville and his ilk and me is that I care about what happens to my country,” Limbaugh told Fox on Wednesday. “I am not saying what I say for political advantage. I oppose actions, such as Obama’s socialist agenda, that hurt my country.

“I deal in principles, not polls,” Limbaugh added. “Carville and people like him live and breathe political exploitation. This is all a game to them. It’s not a game to me. I am concerned about the well-being and survival of our nation. When has Carville ever advocated anything that would benefit the country at the expense of his party?”

Just classic. More liberal hypocrisy. I really think these people think we’re all stupid.

The Internet is an amazing thing. With all of the hullabaloo over Rush Limbaugh’s comments I started wondering if I could find evidence of Democrats wanting Bush to fail. Lo and behold Fox News did a poll in 2006 and asked that very question. An article on the poll appeared in the NY Post by Craig Charney, a former Clinton pollster (I found the text of the article at sistertoldjah.com). Check this out.

A recent Fox News poll gets at the disturbing truth: A majority of Democrats say they want to see the president fail. Such deep hatred is bad news for the country at a time when America needs to bridge the partisan divide. It’s also bad news for the Democrats, who risk repeating the Republicans’ mistakes of a decade ago, driving away the centrists they need to regain power or going too far if they do manage to win.

Fox’s question was revealing: “Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?” Democrats said “not,” 51 percent to 40 percent – where the public at large wanted success by almost two to one. [See page 4 of this document for the poll in question.--ST]

In other words, the rage extends way beyond the lip-pierced Deaniacs, aging hippies and other fringes of the Democratic Party. Lots of otherwise sensible people – suburban moms, hospital orderlies, schoolteachers, big-hatted church ladies – detest George W. Bush.

When these Democrats say they want Bush to fail, might this mean that they simply reject what they see as his far-right religious and corporate agenda? If so, it’s hard to see why independents – hardly right-wing zealots – hope he succeeds by 63 percent to 34 percent. Sadly, much of the Democratic Party wants to see this president crash and burn.

In fact, the fury against to Bush has reached unprecedented levels, even compared to the animosity among Republicans to his predecessor. Not long ago, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that “strong disapproval” of Bush was 10 points higher than that recorded for Bill Clinton at any point during his presidency, including his impeachment. (That wasn’t during a war, either.)

[CORRECTION] Following quote from Betsy Newmark’s blog post.

Remember, for better or for worse, George W. Bush will be our president for more than two years. Hoping that he’ll fail is really hoping that America will fail. These people detest Bush so much that they don’t mind America getting a setback across the globe if it will weaken Bush.

Of course, there’s a key difference between then and now. Wishing Bush would fail meant wishing the country lost in Iraq. Wishing Obama fails means rooting against socialistic policies that threaten everything the country was founded on and our future prosperity.

Do you think the MSM, considering their whining about Limbaugh’s comments, would think to look something like this up now and then report on it? Nope, that would actually mean really reporting on something and adding some context. That would mean they couldn’t marginalize and demonize him.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

[UPDATED 3/9/09]

Quite a day! I had no idea this would ever happen. I actually e-mailed the story to Rush last week, but it wasn’t until Gateway Pundit and Little Green Footballs picked up on it that it got out there.

Amazingly, even Fox News picked up on this and ran a story flashing back to the poll.

Again, I didn’t do anything special here. A little light bulb went off and said let me check around and see what I can find. Any reporter for any media outfit could have done the same. The fact that they didn’t says alot about the mainstream media and their agenda.

Here’s the transcript from Rush’s show.

Bret Baier – Political Grapevine!

O’Reilly’s Talking Points!

Here’s Sean Hannity running with it!

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. –Barack Obama, from his Inaugural Address 

Unfortunately, Obama’s supporters failed to exemplify these words today. During today’s ceremonies Obama’s supporters displayed the very childishness and vitriol that they have shown towards George W. Bush for the past 8 years. There were boos and choruses of Steam’s famous song “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”

Despite one’s feelings about Bush as a President, the man did nothing in his 8 years to deserve the hate and disrespect that so many on the Left hurl his way. George W. Bush, and the Office of the Presidency, deserve more respect than what these citizens have shown.

If these Obama supporters really believe in change, maybe they can start by acting with more dignity and class than they have displayed today and during W’s terms in office.

This speaks for itself. God bless our troops for defending America.

We won. The Iraq War is over.

I declare November 22, 2008 to be “Victory in Iraq. Day.” (Hereafter known as “VI Day.”)

By every measure, The United States and coalition forces have conclusively defeated all enemies in Iraq, pacified the country, deposed the previous regime, successfully helped to establish a new functioning democratic government, and suppressed any lingering insurgencies. The war has come to an end. And we won.

Read the rest here.