"You don't need to know. You can't know." That's what Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, was told when she tried to ask court officials why, the day before, federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search.
The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris' longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.
The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with - get this- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Kathy and George Norris lived under the specter of a covert government investigation for almost six months before the government unsealed a secret indictment and revealed why the Fish and Wildlife Service had treated their family home as if it were a training base for suspected terrorists. Orchids.
That's right. Orchids.
By March 2004, federal prosecutors were well on their way to turning 66-year-old retiree George Norris into an inmate in a federal penitentiary - based on his home-based business of cultivating, importing and selling orchids.
Mrs. Norris testified before the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime this summer. The hearing's topic: the rapid and dangerous expansion of federal criminal law, an expansion that is often unprincipled and highly partisan.
Chairman Robert C. Scott, Virginia Democrat, and ranking member Louie Gohmert, Texas Republican, conducted a truly bipartisan hearing (a D.C. rarity this year).
These two leaders have begun giving voice to the increasing number of experts who worry about "overcriminalization." Astronomical numbers of federal criminal laws lack specifics, can apply to almost anyone and fail to protect innocents by requiring substantial proof that an accused person acted with actual criminal intent.
Mr. Norris ended up spending almost two years in prison because he didn't have the proper paperwork for some of the many orchids he imported. The orchids were all legal - but Mr. Norris and the overseas shippers who had packaged the flowers had failed to properly navigate the many, often irrational, paperwork requirements the U.S. imposed when it implemented an arcane international treaty's new restrictions on trade in flowers and other flora.
The judge who sentenced Mr. Norris had some advice for him and his wife: "Life sometimes presents us with lemons." Their job was, yes, to "turn lemons into lemonade."
The judge apparently failed to appreciate how difficult it is to run a successful lemonade stand when you're an elderly diabetic with coronary complications, arthritis and Parkinson's disease serving time in a federal penitentiary. If only Mr. Norris had been a Libyan terrorist, maybe some European official at least would have weighed in on his behalf to secure a health-based mercy release.
Krister Evertson, another victim of overcriminalization, told Congress, "What I have experienced in these past years is something that should scare you and all Americans." He's right. Evertson, a small-time entrepreneur and inventor, faced two separate federal prosecutions stemming from his work trying to develop clean-energy fuel cells.
The feds prosecuted Mr. Evertson the first time for failing to put a federally mandated sticker on an otherwise lawful UPS package in which he shipped some of his supplies. A jury acquitted him, so the feds brought new charges. This time they claimed he technically had "abandoned" his fuel-cell materials - something he had no intention of doing - while defending himself against the first charges. Mr. Evertson, too, spent almost two years in federal prison.
As George Washington University law professor Stephen Saltzburg testified at the House hearing, cases like these "illustrate about as well as you can illustrate the overreach of federal criminal law." The Cato Institute's Timothy Lynch, an expert on overcriminalization, called for "a clean line between lawful conduct and unlawful conduct." A person should not be deemed a criminal unless that person "crossed over that line knowing what he or she was doing." Seems like common sense, but apparently it isn't to some federal officials.
Former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh's testimony captured the essence of the problems that worry so many criminal-law experts. "Those of us concerned about this subject," he testified, "share a common goal - to have criminal statutes that punish actual criminal acts and [that] do not seek to criminalize conduct that is better dealt with by the seeking of regulatory and civil remedies." Only when the conduct is sufficiently wrongful and severe, Mr. Thornburgh said, does it warrant the "stigma, public condemnation and potential deprivation of liberty that go along with [the criminal] sanction."
The Norrises' nightmare began with the search in October 2003. It didn't end until Mr. Norris was released from federal supervision in December 2008. His wife testified, however, that even after he came home, the man she had married was still gone. He was by then 71 years old. Unsurprisingly, serving two years as a federal convict - in addition to the years it took to defend unsuccessfully against the charges - had taken a severe toll on him mentally, emotionally and physically.
These are repressive consequences for an elderly man who made mistakes in a small business. The feds should be ashamed, and Mr. Evertson is right that everyone else should be scared. Far too many federal laws are far too broad.
Mr. Scott and Mr. Gohmert have set the stage for more hearings on why this places far too many Americans at risk of unjust punishment. Members of both parties in Congress should follow their lead.
#2
New technologies like the Web, he concludes, "scare legislators because they don't understand them and want to control them, even as they become a normal part of life." Our present crop of legislators are not so much fearful control freaks as time-servers, milking their positions for all their worth. Heaven forbid they learn anything new in order to apply it to legislation.
#3
Hm, something about this isn't right. Typically you can't get the feds out of bed for anything less than murder. Imprisoned for paperwork problems? This article sounds like one of those one-sided bash stories.
Anything that threatens the job security of a public sector employee - particularly a unionized one - is the ultimate crime, and must be dealt with in the harshest terms possible.
Not filling out all the paperwork? Finding some way of doing business that doesn't require some public sector hack's services? You're taking away a profit center from some guy and his work buddies in the Bureau of the Commission of the Agency of Something or Other. If everyone did that, they'd have to get real jobs in the private sector. And that just won't do.
You are a threat to those who worship at the altar of bulletproof job security. How dare you? That's the greatest felony of all.
/sarc
Posted by: no mo uro ||
10/06/2009 6:17 Comments ||
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#5
Being in the orchid biz I see what his problem is. He imported plants that were highly protected as another less protected species.USDA inspectors aren't skilled enough to tell what they are looking at. I found it interesting that he said he didn't get the CITES documents from the USDA. USDA keeps the the originals but you get the copies stamped released by USDA. This is your proof you legally imported the plants. The real irony is that he didn't import the orchid they were looking for.
Some background at http://offpollen.typepad.com/pollenatrix/2004/03/online_orchid_d.html
#6
Over the years there has been a proliferation of federal agencies, bureaus, etc. Many of these have their own police or enforcement arm. Washington being what it is, there is a tendency to increase budgets each year to hire more enforcers to "solve the problem" whatever it is. Of course the problem never gets solved. For example the war on drugs has been going on for a long time and it seems to be getting worse. Solution; hire more law enforcement. Immigration a problem; hire more border patrol agents or immigration enforcement officers. Environment a problem; hire more EPA inspectors/officers. Prison overcrowding a problem; build more prisons and hire more corrections officers. Jobs a problem; hire more government workers....and on and on. Who pays for all this? Hmmmnnn.
[From wikipedia]
In modern usage, legal or administrative bodies with strict, arbitrary rulings and secretive proceedings are sometimes called, metaphorically or poetically, star chambers.
#8
It will come to bullets sooner or later if this does not change. People will not submit forever to such injustices. The government officials, judges and police and legislators, who perpetrate such thuggery may find themselves against the wall for things like these, after a fair and quick trial. Some would call it justice.
Posted by: M Defarge ||
10/06/2009 14:06 Comments ||
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#9
If everyone is a criminal, everyone is controllable.
President Obama said today that the debate on health care has gone on long enough, and now is the time to pass something.
But does Congress, let alone the public, really understand what these bills would mean for the health sector and the wider U.S. economy? In 1994, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a lengthy assessment of the Clinton administrations proposal, covering everything from its distributional consequences to the budgetary treatment of its various moving parts. The public should get same kind of thorough review of what Obamacare would mean before Congress takes any further steps toward passage.
For instance, there hasnt yet been a thorough analysis of what the bills moving in the House and Senate would mean for work incentives among low-wage families. A cursory review indicates that Obamacare would impose a massive new implicit tax on low-wage households, effectively penalizing the family that tries to do the right thing by working their way into the middle class.
According to CBO, family coverage in 2016 is likely to cost about $14,400 under the so-called silver option in the health-care reform plan sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus. In the Baucus plan, a family of four at the poverty line (about $24,000 in 2016) would have pay to about $1,400 toward coverage, with the federal government paying the other $13,000 on their behalf. In addition, the government would also provide $3,500 to reduce the familys deductible and co-payment costs for health services. Thus, the new entitlement provided by the Baucus bill would be worth a whopping $16,500 for a family at the poverty line.
As incomes rise, however, the Baucus bill cuts the value of the entitlement. A family with an income at twice the poverty line, or $48,000 in 2016, would get $9,072 in federal assistance for coverage stilling a substantial sum. But its $7,400 less than the family would get if they earned half as much. The Baucus plan thus imposes an implicit marginal tax rate of about 30 percent ($7,400/$24,000) on wages earned by families in this income range.
And that would come on top of the high implicit taxes already built into current law. Low-wage families with children also get the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC boosts incomes for those with the very lowest wages, but it is also phased-out as incomes rise. Past a certain threshold (about $21,400 in 2016), the EITC is reduced by $0.21 for every additional $1 earned. Throw in the individual income tax rate (15 percent) and payroll taxes (7.65 percent), and the effective, implicit tax rate for worker between 100 and 200 percent of the federal poverty line would quickly approach 70 percent not even counting food stamps and housing vouchers.
The more Obamacare is rushed through Congress, the more likely it is to produce highly regrettable unintended consequences. Surely even the Democrats in Congress can see how damaging it would be to send signals to low-wage breadwinners that it no longer makes sense to seek a higher-paying job.
#1
the effective, implicit tax rate for worker between 100 and 200 percent of the federal poverty line would quickly approach 70 percent -- not even counting food stamps and housing vouchers.
A boon underground cash economy. It's not like the Feds will miss the tax revenue or anything.
Posted by: ed ||
10/06/2009 10:28 Comments ||
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#2
A boon underground cash economy.
Already underway in Georgia (as it is in most of Europe by the way). CASH IS KING!
#3
The more Obamacare is rushed through Congress, the more likely it is to produce highly regrettable unintended consequences.
Not unintended. Not at all. I think that the Administration and Congress know full well what the consequences are. And to them its a feature not a bug.
The more people are dependent on the Government the better for the DNC.
In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading By Robert Fisk
#3
in the process break the Euro sooner rather than later.
Yeah, I'm a total dumbass, economy-wise or not, but I do read and listen to people who aren't, and for all the (few) free-market economists/thinkers in France, of any affiliation, the euro is doomed to fall sooner or later, as did all other pan-european currencies before (and there were a few). This is something the people gloating at the fall of the dollar seem to blissfully ingore.
#5
The one monetary policy America has allowed to hamper its own economy, short term and long term, is the continued obstruction to the development of domestic energy resources in all forms. And the billions and billions continue to flow out.
1) Some countries (the largest being Spain) are getting into massive debt
2) They cannot devaluate because of the euro
3) While devaluating has a relatively small practical (no need to print new banknotes) and
political cost leaving the euro has a huge one.
4) Because them leaving the euros would shatter the Europa uber alles dream of rich Europe, Spain and friends are counting on being rescued by "First World Europe"
5) That means that those countries don't do any effort to reduce deficits.
#7
Actually, oil imports are not that large a part of the USA's import picture. 12M barrels/day at $70 is $300B/year. That's 15% of the more than $2T the US imports every year and less than half of the US trade deficit.
While it is important to develop domestic (or at least North American) energy sources and save the $50B/year ($200B/year post Sept 2001) the US devotes to keeping Middle East oil flowing, it is more important for the health of the US economy to revive manufacturing. Almost every manufactured thing Americans consume is now made overseas and is leading to pauperdom and a poor future for our children and grandchildren.
The first job is bringing back domestic auto production and all the industries and millions of jobs that rely upon it from steel and plastics to electronics. A 2% tariffs is crazy when our trade partners have 10-30% tariffs plus non tariff barriers that add more thousands to the price of imports.
The second is raising domestic energy production/increased fuel efficiency by 25% (5M barrels/day) to completely eliminate the Middle East as a source of oil imports. That allow us to disengage from the muslims and their corruption of the American political class.
The third is general revival of domestic manufacturing, and with it the office and engineering jobs that go with it. That will allow rising real wages for the middle class (that have stagnated since 1970) and halt the bifurcation of American society. In the end, a society consumes what it makes or eats the seed corn of it's future prosperity.
Posted by: ed ||
10/06/2009 8:57 Comments ||
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#8
energy production/increased fuel efficiency by 25% of consumption
Posted by: ed ||
10/06/2009 8:58 Comments ||
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#9
The first job is bringing back domestic auto production and all the industries and millions of jobs that rely upon it from steel and plastics to electronics.
Just because it says Honda or Toyota or Mercedes doesn't mean it isn't domestic.
However, why stop at manufacturing. Let's go way back to the 'good old days' and implement the Pol Pot program of driving city dwellers back to the land to make a living with subsistence farming? At least everyone was employed. /sarc off
You're typing on a device and communicating on systems that if we had constricted and restricted trade for the protection of domestic jobs, you'd never have had access to. The irony of it all.
That allow us to disengage from the muslims and their corruption of the American political class.
The American political class doesn't need any help from the Muslim to be corrupt. They can do it on their own and have been for a long time.
#10
Just because it says Honda or Toyota or Mercedes doesn't mean it isn't domestic.
You do realize the Automobile trade deficit was $120 billion just a year or two ago? Of course it will be lower this year since there IS NO MONEY left in the US economy. You do realize that if that value was captured by US workers (more than one million direct jobs, additional as that capital circulated in the US economy instead of German, Japan, Korea) that there would have been no need for US taxpayers to bail out GM, Ford and Chrysler. Nor would the Feds have crazy deficits as there would be several hundred billion $ more tax revenue with a balanced trade. You do realize that if that money had stayed in the economy, foreign entities could not have manipulated the US money market and ensured a closeted Communist got elected to the US presidency?
However, why stop at manufacturing.
Isn't that what you are advocating, stop manufacturing? Get your story straight.
Yes, I'm typing on a machine whose components were invented in the USA. But are no longer made in the US. The research was paid for by the US but the value is now captured elsewhere. Good job! The jobs are just not American. Funny how I had computers (PC AT and before) when they were produced in the US, by US workers who had good paying jobs
The American political class doesn't need any help from the Muslim to be corrupt.
I'd rather they be in the pockets of the Chicago mob or Texas oil millionaires than bowing to Saudi sheiks and mullahs. At least the oil TX millionaire doesn't want to cut off my head or rape my nine year old.
Posted by: ed ||
10/06/2009 10:13 Comments ||
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#11
The first job is bringing back domestic auto production and all the industries and millions of jobs that rely upon it from steel and plastics to electronics
#12
Start with import tariffs to give price preference to domestic production. The amount of the tariff varying with the trade imbalance. Add non tariff restrictions on nations that are notorious for them.
For those who think US auto industry is bad now, wait until Chinese auto exports to the US get going.
Posted by: ed ||
10/06/2009 10:50 Comments ||
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#13
...Keep in mind too that by this time next year there will be no General Motors, and probably no Chrysler. CFC had exactly the opposite effect that it was intended and the result is that GM is essentially only making cars for fleet sales. At their current rate of sales loss, they'll be gone by spring. Of course, they'll be back for another bailout with more promises, but the fact is they're history. And even as shrunken as they'll be, suddenly pulling them out of the economy - FOREVER - will be like setting off a nuke in a crowded city. We ain't seen the worst yet.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
10/06/2009 10:51 Comments ||
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#14
Tariffs transfer money from Consumers to Producers.
Each dollar that buys exports has to be used in the us economy to buy something.
#15
The money also stays in the domestic economy buying other goods and services, creating jobs, generating wealth and tax revenues. Unlike the $700 billion that leaves the US economy never to return except as debt.
Posted by: ed ||
10/06/2009 11:24 Comments ||
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#16
Tarifs can't make up for:
(i) Too much regulation
(ii) Too many MBAs and not enough engineers in top management positions.
(iii) Too much sense of entitlement, and not enough of work ethic in labor.
#17
Tarifs can't make up for:
(i) Too much regulation
(ii) Too many MBAs and not enough engineers in top management positions.
(iii) Too much sense of entitlement, and not enough of work ethic in labor.
Maybe, but at the moment the costs from the too much regulation, too many MBA's, and entitlement stuff all gets loaded onto the manufacturers, while the bicoastal elite classes that made the decisions to impose all that dreck chat away on their Chinese-made "Apple" iPhone while pumping Saudi gas into their BMW, all of which gets paid for by selling debt to other countries...
Tariffs would help ensure that the misery caused by all the lack of market freedoms in all the other sectors of the economy would be spread around more equally, instead of being concentrated in those of us still trying to manufacture stuff and staying in business by our fingernails. Currently the regulatory decision-making process is one in which the bicoastals always defect while we always cooperate and never retaliate against their defections. As a result we continue to get yentzed by more so-cial-ism
If the pain of so-cial-ism were spread more equally around, we'd probably have less of it.
#18
All the costs associated with Federal and State regulations (EPA, OSHA, etc.,) lawsuits, outlandish executive pay packages, government give-aways domestically as well as overseas, affirmative action, etc. become a part of product pricing and make businesses less competitive. Our industries get eroded and disappear taking with them jobs.
Any time someone advocates 'change' to you on how you are supposed to deal with your financials, I get a little skeptical. Someone, somewhere is pushing this to make money (of some stripe).
The Chinese would love to have the Yuan as the 'big dog', at least for a while until the full ramifications of the 'downsides' to that kick in.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
10/06/2009 17:06 Comments ||
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#20
If the pain of so-cial-ism were spread more equally around, we'd probably have less of it.
BTW, to follow up... Apple today pulled out of the US Chamber of Commerce because they were critical of the whole global warming regulatory schemes.
I can't help but think that they'd probably be behaving a little differently if they had their factories here in the US and weren't selling Chinese-made hardware at an over 100% markup. And that they couldn't screw us out of our jobs and then merrily make the same amount of money selling their Chinese-sweatshop-made iPhones to the chattering classes on the coast.
#21
I have an idea on how to bring manufacturing and engineering back - but it requires a national buy in.... and ends the current corporate formats.... (breaks all the paradigms)
I don't know how to sell a total society wide paradigm breaker. And yes its merges capitalism with a pseudo open source and government sponsored R&D centers of excellence, manufacturing plants that just make stuff, virtual design teams and virtual companies ...
Much more flexible than our current dinosaur companies and gov and science...
Oh and maybe until we recover downtrending NSF and creating an equivalent system for Engineering and Design R&D - designing new stuff, manufacturing, or in better ways that can't be lived without.
Meet the Obama whiners. They did it is the new administrations credo when things go wrong. Most often, the culprit for disappointment in Obamas hope-and-change agenda remains George W. Bush a sort of modern-day fallen angel Azael, whose wickedness is persistent and omnipresent.
Nine months after his departure, the former president insidiously still has his hand in almost everything that seems to plague Barack Obamas utopian plans. At other times the Republicans, the far Right, conservatives, or even the mob have kept America from getting the future it deserves. One would never guess that the Democrats have held the Senate and the House since 2006, own the executive branch, and enjoy the support of the ever-obsequious media.
Instead, demons everywhere are busy at work to stall Obamism.
Civil-rights problems? Cowards! Attorney General Eric Holder yells at his countrymen. Energy stasis? Teenagers! we Americans are, Energy Secretary Steven Chu sermonizes about the ill-informed electorate. More problems with terrorists? The old bogeyman Bush created a global war mindset that served only to validate al-Qaedas twisted worldview or so insists the new terrorism czar, John Brennan.
Persistent joblessness? It can only be the aftereffect of the Bush-induced financial panic of over a year ago not past bipartisan criminality at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, or present failed stimuli, or massive deficits, or the current climate of chronic uncertainty, given that business has no idea of the cost of promised high taxes to come, health-care reform to come, cap-and-trade to come, or anything else to come. We have forgotten that John Kerry ran in 2004 on the notion of a Bush-induced jobless recovery when unemployment was at 5.4 percent, just a little more than half of what it is currently.
Obamas signature health-care reform is being stalled by mob-like right-wing tea parties and town-hall racists who have mysteriously nullified Democratic majorities in Congress. Few fault Obamas insane idea of outsourcing the reform bill to the Democratic House and Senate, which cobbled together an unreadable 1,000-page free-for-all spending mess at a time of a $2 trillion deficit.
The failure to charm Russia, denuclearize Iran, or commit to Afghanistan? All these problems likewise persist because of George W. Bush, who antagonized the misunderstood Putin, wanted to wage war against a troubled Ahmadinejad, and took his eye off the ball in regard to the necessary war against the Taliban. Even when we push the reset button, Bush still manages somehow to confound the new diplomacy and prevents the Russians from helping with a mysteriously stubborn Iran.
Supposedly outspoken generals like Stanley McChrystal are fouling up administration policies in Afghanistan, getting dangerously close to tipping the balance between civilian and military authority not at all like the noble revolt of the generals during the Bush-era controversy over the surge, when dozens of high-ranking officers, present and past, took turns, candidly or stealthily, trashing the chief executive.
Obama jetted in to Copenhagen to lobby for a Chicago Olympics. He spent a little over an hour there. Both he and Michelle wowed Europeans with inspirational stories from their Chicago neighborhoods. Most of the anecdotes proved implausible or inane: Michelle sitting on her fathers knee (at 20?) watching Carl Lewis, or learning from her dad to throw a right hook (at a time when the world was watching YouTube snippets of a wild Chicago street slugfest). Obama found himself playing the role of a 19th-century Irish pol finagling for the home tribe at a time when the natural consequence of his serial apologies and postmodern transnational rhetoric would be the selection of Rio as host to the 2016 games.
No matter. It was Bush who lost Chicago its sure-thing bid literally, according to Illinois senator Roland Burris. He claimed that the judges were still angry at Bushs America, rather than peeved that Europeans were being treated by Barack and Michelle almost like teeny-boppers at a Beatles concert who were supposed to weep in adulation and seek autographs.
State Rep. Susana Mendoza (D., Chicago) added, I feel in my gut that this vote today was political and mean-spirited. I travel a lot. . . . I thought we had really turned a corner with the election of President Obama. People are so much more welcoming of Americans now. But this isnt the people of those countries. This is the leaders still living with outdated impressions of Americans.
The president unwisely boasted upon coming into office that he would close Guantanamo within a year. He apparently forgot that Bush had wanted to phase out the detention center since 2006, but faced a bad/worse choice of having to put unrepentant out-of-uniform terrorists somewhere else.
So when Obama soon discovered the same existential challenges that had plagued his predecessor, his administration immediately came up with a Bush did it excuse. Here is Obamas Guantanamo czar, Greg Craig: I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national-security objectives. Craig still has not fathomed that it was a Congress controlled by the Democrats that balked at the administrations promise.
Throughout the campaign Barack Obama called for an end to the Dont ask, dont tell policy on gays in the military. That won him ample support from the homosexual community. And now? The two Bush wars apparently prevent him from following through on that promise as well. The national-security adviser, Gen. James Jones, complains that there is an awful lot on his desk. I know this is an issue that he intends to take on at the appropriate time. Apparently we were not fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan when Obama made his grandiose campaign pledge.
There is a growing credibility problem with this young administration. When Barack Obama promises a public option in health-care reform, or the passage of such legislation before the August break, or a renewed commitment to the necessary war in Afghanistan, or an end to lobbyists in government, or a new transparency, no one believes any of it anymore. Even worse, we know that the broken promises and policy mishaps will always be someone elses fault.
The problem with all this is that while Americans may tire of duplicity, they hate whining with a passion. Harry Truman became a folk hero for not blaming others for the myriad of crises that he inherited. In contrast, Barack Obamas legacy is shaping up as The Buck Passes Here.
#2
The obvious remedy is for Dear Leader to give a daily two minute broadcast across all the networks where we can vent our state-directed hate against Emmanuel Goldstein. Er, sorry. I meant George Bush.
Narcissistic personality disorder
NPD is defined more specifically as a pattern of grandiosity (exaggerated claims to talents, importance, or specialness) in the patient's private fantasies or outward behavior; a need for constant admiration from others; and a lack of empathy for others.
WASHINGTON -- In the Niagara of words spoken and written about the Obamas' trip to Copenhagen, too few have been devoted to the words they spoke there. Their separate speeches to the International Olympic Committee were so dreadful, and in such a characteristic way, that they might be symptomatic of something that has serious implications for American governance.
Both Obamas gave heartfelt speeches about ... themselves. Although the working of the committee's mind is murky, it could reasonably have rejected Chicago's bid for the 2016 games on aesthetic grounds -- unless narcissism has suddenly become an Olympic sport.
In the 41 sentences of her remarks, Michelle Obama used some form of the personal pronouns "I" or "me" 44 times. Her husband was, comparatively, a shrinking violet, using those pronouns only 26 times in 48 sentences. Still, 70 times in 89 sentences was sufficient to convey the message that somehow their fascinating selves were what made, or should have made, Chicago's case compelling.
In 2008, Obama carried the three congressional districts that contain Northern California's Silicon Valley with 73.1, 69.6 and 68.4 percent of the vote. Surely the Valley could continue its service to him by designing software for his speechwriters' computers that would delete those personal pronouns, replacing them with the word "sauerkraut" to underscore the antic nature of their excessive appearances.
#1
...Why is this news? They were doing the same doggoned thing during the campaign.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
10/06/2009 12:08 Comments ||
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#2
Mike, it's ok to talk about it now because they are tanking badly. Expect to hear more of the same as people across the board vent their frustration with this pair.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
10/06/2009 13:22 Comments ||
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#3
If he's tanking badly, you'd never know it from the polls. His approval rating is still hovering around the 50% mark.
GOP needs to hammer harder on issues important to us peasants. Even the biased liberal media will have to take notice if enough noise is made.
#6
The First lady is just putting herself and her needs first! Outfits, sentences, her style of shoddy is about as endearing as unpedicured hammer toes in open toe sandals! Pucker up press.
#8
geez, LH, are we to take from your posts that you've not really looked at or listened to these people since they appeared out of nowhere two years ago? these preposterously unfit and embarassing people make the Clintons look intelligent and emotionally healthy
#1
Obama's gotta save money for Obamacare somewhere.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
10/06/2009 0:32 Comments ||
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#2
This is just the beginning. Money for green programs, increased budget for Congress, czar salaries, and health care has to come from somewhere. The money isn't coming in since unemployment is high.
This IS new information that was personally handed to us from the ATG Vets and the General's involved. This IS new information that the MSM does NOT have. Therefore a NEW story. I have over 400 + documents stating facts and not opinion. But if your policy has been breached, so be it. I was not promoting my site - I was promoting the Men & Women of the ATG. Sorry for taking your time
You Can't Say That
At the UN, the Obama administration backs limits on free speech.
The Obama administration has marked its first foray into the UN human rights establishment by backing calls for limits on freedom of expression. The newly-minted American policy was rolled out at the latest session of the UN Human Rights Council, which ended in Geneva on Friday. American diplomats were there for the first time as full Council members and intent on making friends. Making friends with the wrong people. We already have inroads to freedom of speech here. It's called Hate Speech. Very bad move, Obumble.
President Obama chose to join the Council despite the fact that the Organization of the Islamic Conference holds the balance of power and human rights abusers are among its lead actors, including China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia. Islamic states quickly interpreted the president's penchant for "engagement" as meaning fundamental rights were now up for grabs.Few would have predicted, however, that the shift would begin with America's most treasured freedom. If ya don't have the cojones to fight em, join em.
For more than a decade, a UN resolution on the freedom of expression was shepherded through the Council, and the now defunct Commission on Human Rights which it replaced, by Canada. Over the years, Canada tried mightily to garner consensus on certain minimum standards, but the "reformed" Council changed the distribution of seats on the UN's lead human rights body. In 2008, against the backdrop of the publication of images of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, Cuba and various Islamic countries destroyed the consensus and rammed through an amendment which introduced a limit on any speech they claimed was an "abuse . . . [that] constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination." With Islam that constitutes almost anything.
The Obama administration decided that a revamped
freedom of expression resolution, extracted from Canadian hands, would be an ideal emblem for its new engagement policy. So it cosponsored a resolution on the subject with none other than Egypt--a country characterized by an absence of freedom of expression. As that late 20th Century Philsosopher, Gomer Pyle, said, "Surprise, surprise, surprise".
Privately, other Western governments were taken aback and watched the weeks of negotiations with dismay as it became clear that American negotiators wanted consensus at all costs. In introducing the resolution on Thursday, October 1--adopted by consensus the following day--the ranking U.S. diplomat, Chargé d'Affaires Douglas Griffiths, crowed:
"The United States is very pleased to present this joint project with Egypt. This initiative is a manifestation of the Obama administration's commitment to repression of critiscism multilateral engagement throughout the United Nations and of our genuine desire to seek and build cooperation based upon mutual interest and mutual respect in pursuit of our shared common principles of tolerance and the dignity of all human beings." If it was genuine mutual respect and tolerance fine. It aint. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
His Egyptian counterpart, Ambassador Hisham Badr, was equally pleased--for all the wrong reasons. He praised the development by telling the Council that "freedom of expression . . . has been sometimes misused," insisting on limits consistent with the "true nature of this right" and demanding that "the media must . . . conduct . . . itself in a professional and ethical manner." Ethical meaning "Do what we say! No critiscism!"
The new resolution, championed by the Obama administration, has a number of disturbing elements. It emphasizes that "the exercise of the right to freedom of expression carries with it special duties and responsibilities . . ." which include taking action against anything meeting the description of "negative racial and religious stereotyping." It also purports to "recognize . . . the moral and social responsibilities of the media" and supports "the media's elaboration of voluntary codes of professional ethical conduct" in relation to "combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance."
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
10/06/2009 09:01 ||
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#1
I get the impression this guy thinks of himself as a man of the world first and an American second or third or fourth. He seems to have more respect for the traditions of Fidel Castro and the Soddy King than he does for those of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
#2
1 I get the impression this guy thinks of himself as a man of the world first and an American second or third or fourth. He seems to have more respect for the traditions of Fidel Castro and the Soddy King than he does for those of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
Benjamin and Thomas who?
Posted by: Barak The O ||
10/06/2009 13:03 Comments ||
Top||
#3
The price of joining the In Crowd.
Privately, other Western governments were taken aback and watched the weeks of negotiations with dismay as it became clear that American negotiators wanted consensus at all costs.
#4
Add this to the new FTC regulations on blogs and you can see the shadow of government takeover of all communication. Censorship thy name is Obamanation!
NEW YORKWhen American diplomats sat down for the first in a series of face-to-face talks with their Iranian counterparts last October in Geneva, few would have predicted that what began as a negotiation over Tehran's nuclear programs would wind up in a stunning demand by the Security Council that Israel give up its atomic weapons.
Yet that's just what the U.N. body did this morning, in a resolution that was as striking for the way member states voted as it was for its substance. All 10 nonpermanent members voted for the resolution, along with permanent members Russia, China and the United Kingdom. France and the United States abstained. By U.N. rules, that means the resolution passes.
...
The resolution calls for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. It also demands that Israel sign the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and submit its nuclear facilities to international inspection. Two similar, albeit nonbinding, resolutions were approved last September by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
...
Since then, however, relations between the Obama administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, never warm to begin with, have cooled dramatically. The administration accused Tel Aviv of using "disproportionate force" following a Nov. 13 Israeli aerial attack on an apparent munitions depot in Gaza City, in which more than a dozen young children were killed.
Mr. Netanyahu also provoked the administration's ire after he was inadvertently caught on an open microphone calling Mr. Obama "worse than Chamberlain." The comment followed the president's historic Dec. 21 summit meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Geneva, the first time leaders of the two countries have met since the Carter administration.
...
Also factoring into the administration's thinking are reports that the Israelis are in the final stages of planning an attack on Iran's nuclear installations. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who met with his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak in Paris last week, has been outspoken in his opposition to such a strike. The Jerusalem Post has reported that Mr. Gates warned Mr. Barak that the U.S. would "actively stand in the way" of any Israeli strike.
...
An Israeli diplomat observed bitterly that Jan. 20 was the 68th anniversary of the Wannsee conference, which historians believe is where Nazi Germany planned the extermination of European Jewry. An administration spokesman said the timing of the vote was "purely coincidental."
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NEW YORKWhen American diplomats sat down for the first in a series of face-to-face talks with their Iranian counterparts last October in Geneva, few would have predicted that what began as a negotiation over Tehran's nuclear programs would wind up in a stunning demand by the Security Council that Israel give up its atomic weapons.
