Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Is She The Next Anthony Weiner?, without the weiner?



Debbie Wasserman Schultz



 Weekly Standard’s John McCormack

The bad news: she didn’t realize that she was calling members of her own party ‘anti-woman’ before she started screaming to The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack about how people who voted to defund Planned Parenthood are anti-woman!

McCormack: But there were nine [correction: ten] Democrats who voted against funding for Planned Parenthood, so are those, now eleven Democrats anti-woman?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: No, they’re not, because if you, when I declare someone, when I make a broad statement like that, I look at the balance of somebody’s–where their priorities are, the balance of their record. And so one individual isolated vote here and there does not make you anti-woman.

McCormack: So what are the broader votes that make those Democrats who voted on those same issues–on Planned Parenthood on H.R. 3–what makes them not anti-woman?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: I don’t think there are any Democrats.

McCormack: Eleven.

Note that Debbie Wasserman Schultz happens to be the Deputy Minority Whip; I was unaware that the position was a sinecure.  Or that it causes traumatic memory loss among those who have been burdened by the job.  Or that the Democrats simply pick lying suckweasels for the position… actually, no: I was already aware of that one.

Anyway, the good news: at least Wasserman Schultz’s bright enough* not to try to answer John McCormack by either trying to have him arrested, or by shoving him to the ground.  That never ends well.

Seriously, Debbie?  If you’re going to fulminate about Republican Presidential candidates driving foreign cars, don’t own a Nissan, OK?  Particularly since the only places where they’re made in the USA are in right-to-work states.  Guess union solidarity only goes so far, huh?

Black Leaders Rip Obama Claim of Tea Party Racism

Members of the Project 21 black leadership network strongly disagree with President Barack Obama's contention, as reported in the new book "Family of Freedom: Presidents and African-Americans in the White House," that the tea parties are motivated more by the color of Obama's skin than the content of his agenda.


Deneen Borelli

 "As a keynote speaker at numerous tea party events around the country which has allowed me to meet tea party activists from all walks of life, I know it is Obama's progressive politics and not his race that motivates these patriotic Americans to protest our nation's slide toward socialism," said full-time Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli. "By engaging in race-card politics, Obama shows he is willing to follow the lead of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to ignite racial tension as a means of maintaining power and furthering his agenda."

In "Family of Freedom," by Kenneth T. Walsh, it is written that Obama, responding to a private dinner guest in May 2010, agreed there is a "subterranean agenda" in the opposition to his presidency that is rooted in race.

Project 21's Borelli added: "By stooping to this level, Obama is discrediting his position as our nation's leader."


Chairman Mychal Massie

 "Repeating the discredited assumption that race rules the tea parties is the action of a scoundrel and not befitting of a president," said Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie. "For him to wallow in the gutter with charlatans who spurn honest debate for scurrilous name-calling is demeaning to all Americans and sends the wrong signal to all those who aspire to free and open political debate. With so much of the world embracing open discourse, it is a shame our President seemingly wants to cling to the discredited tactics that offended so many abroad."

On Feb. 28, Massie engaged in an "empty chair debate" at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to refute similar allegations about the tea party movement and race made by establishment civil rights lobbyists Al Sharpton, Marc Morial and Walter Fauntroy.

Conservatives Blast Obama 'Appeasement' of China



President Obama and President Hu Jintao



President Barack Obama’s red-carpet treatment of visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao has failed to sweep away growing alarm over China’s no-holds-barred push for military and economic dominance, with one leading conservative expert charging Wednesday that the president’s over-the-top coddling of the Chinese amounts to “appeasement.”

“Cooperation between our countries is good for the world,” Obama declared during a Wednesday afternoon White House news conference featuring both leaders.

Hu was greeting at the White House by Vice President Biden and treated to the honor of a 21-gun salute on the White House South Lawn. Later he will be the guest of honor at a state dinner.

Obama described the relationship between America and the rising Chinese superpower as one of “cooperation, and also friendly competition.”

China’s Hu responded with praise for President Obama’s policies toward China.

In an exclusive interview with the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post newspapers, Hu appeared to recognize the importance of good relations with the United States.

“The strategic significance and global impact of China-U.S. relations have been on the rise,” he said. “…We both stand to gain from a sound China-U.S. relationship, and lose from confrontation. We should act in the fundamental interests of our two peoples and uphold the overall interests of world peace and development.”

But on Wednesday, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released a statement openly questioning why China’s actions do not appear to match its conciliatory rhetoric.

“Does a responsible stakeholder, as reported in the Western press, allow the transshipment of North Korean missile components to Iran, via Beijing Airport, in open defiance of those UN sanctions which, as a Perm-Five member, it is duty bound to enforce?” she asked.

“Does a responsible stakeholder declare the South China Sea as one of its ‘core interests,’ in open defiance of the navigational and territorial rights of its Southeast Asian neighbors?

“Does a responsible stakeholder admonish the U.S. Navy that it cannot operate in the Yellow Sea,” she added, “in the very waters where General Douglas MacArthur undertook the heroic Inchon landing which turned the tide of [the Korean] war?”

Awkwardly for Obama, the state visit puts him, as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, in the uncomfortable position of feting a Chinese president who continues to imprison Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese poet who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

That odd juxtaposition drew protests from U.S. human rights activists that the administration has been too soft on the Chinese regime.

"It is more important to honor and remember those who cannot attend this State Dinner rather than those who will be in attendance," Rev. Patrick Mahoney, the director of the Christian Defense Coalition, said in a statement. "While the guests are dining on expensive and extravagant food there will be scores who will be oppressed and placed behind bars by the Chinese government because of their faith and political beliefs -- people like Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo, who is in prison."

But beyond China’s apparent indifference to global human rights is its status as a burgeoning Sino goliath that shows no sign of backing down from its rapid military and economic expansion.

Just last week, it surprised U.S. officials by rolling out a new stealth fighter jet, the J-20.


Chinese J-20 Stealth Fighter



China launched a record 15 satellites into orbit last year -- the first time since the Cold War that any nation has matched the number of U.S. satellite launches. It also has developed ballistic missiles that can destroy U.S. aircraft carriers.

Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, tells that Obama’s over-the-top treatment of Hu will inevitably be viewed by the Chinese as kowtowing.

“I believe it is appeasement,” Gaffney tells Newsmax. “At the very least, it is accommodation. And what exactly the distinction is between the two I’m not sure.

“If you wind up incessantly accommodating somebody’s aggressive behavior,” Gaffney says, “it is almost certainly going to be construed by them as acts of appeasement.”

Gaffney says that he sees a link between China’s aggressive pursuit of economic leverage and its military expansion.

China in recent years has inked a plethora of deals to tie up global energy resources for its rapidly growing economy. It also has displayed a willingness to wield its control of rare earth metals as an economic weapon against Japan.

“I think that what China is up to is pursuing a comprehensive strategy for supplanting the United States as the pre-eminent power in the world,” Gaffney declares.

China’s indifference, or actual encouragement, of intellectual property theft and patent infringement, combined with its seriously undervalued currency, causes friction with the American interests as well. Gaffney says China is pursuing what he calls “financial warfare” on the United States.

If so, it certainly didn’t prevent heads of major U.S. corporations from lining up for a meet-and-greet with the Chinese leader on Wednesday. Top CEOs from Microsoft, General Electric, and Boeing shook hands with the Chinese president at the White House, following the administration’s announcement of business deals on energy, jet liners, and other products the Chinese are purchasing. The trade deal is valued at $45 billion.

Those agreements came even as new evidence emerged that the Chinese discriminate against U.S. companies operating on Chinese soil.

According to a new survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, half of U.S. firms feel the Chinese government shows favoritism to their domestic firms over foreign corporations.

The situation appears to be getting worse. Seventy percent of the 346 U.S. companies surveyed said that respect for intellectual property rights and patents in China had stayed the same or “deteriorated” in the past year. That’s up from 61 percent just a year ago.

Still, the lure of the Chinese market -- already the third largest buyer for U.S. exports - is undeniable. Last year saw a record $105.7 in direct foreign investment in China.

Beyond the economic expansion, there are questions about whether the civilian government really controls the Chinese military. In his remarks Wednesday afternoon, Hu said he and Obama agree that open exchange of military information will contribute to global stability. But U.S. security experts say China has yet to back up its friendly talk with greater cooperation, however.

Just last week, a U.S. delegation led by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was unnerved by Hu’s professed unawareness of Beijing’s test flight of China’s new J-20 stealth fighter jet. The high-profile test flight appeared an obvious snub, given the U.S. officials’ mission of urging the Chinese to be more forthcoming and transparent about their military.

“The civilian leadership seemed surprised by the test,” Gates said.

That triggered widespread speculation that perhaps China’s civilian officials were no longer in complete control of their increasingly powerful, high-tech military.

U.S. military spending continues to be about five times that of China, experts say. But China has shown an ability to surprise U.S. officials with their rapid pace of military development, the J-20 jet being only the latest example.

Dean Cheng, Heritage research fellow for political and security affairs, tells that there's a clear division among Chinese leaders – but not necessarily along military versus civilian lines.

“What you are seeing is a real split within the Chinese leadership written large, military and civilian, between those who think China should continue to follow [former Chinese ruler] Deng Xiaopeng’s policy of pursuing a low profile, and continuing to be conciliatory, versus those who believe that China’s day has arrived, and that it can, and should, take a more assertive if not aggressive role,” Cheng tells us.

The biggest threat posed by China may be the mixed signals coming from Washington, Cheng says.

“I think President Obama has in several instances done exactly the wrong things,” states Cheng.

He cites the administration’s flip-flop over sending a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group off China’s shores in the wake of North Korea’s attack on a South Korean frigate.

“When the North Korean sank the South Korean frigate, we were going to send the carrier group into the Yellow Sea -- standard procedure with regards to showing support,” Cheng says. “China protested, and rather than telling the Chinese, ‘The Yellow Sea is international waters, this is an American act in support of an ally in the face of naked, unprovoked attack that deserves a response,’ the administration ordered the American battle group instead to stay to the east of the Korean peninsula.”

Not all the anti-China rhetoric has come from Republicans, either. Speaking on a Las Vegas television program Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid remarked: “I am going to go back to Washington tomorrow and meet with the president of China. He is a dictator. He can do a lot of things through the form of government they have.”

Reid immediately backed off referring to the Chinese president as a dictator. But more push back came from New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer.

He was joined by two other Democrats in introducing legislation to impose penalties, and possibly tariffs, on any nation that manipulates its currency to keep it artificially low in order to discourage the purchase of U.S. products. “China’s currency is like a boot on the throat of America’s economic recovery,” Schumer said.

The administration has been lobbying the Chinese to support its efforts to rein in the rogue nation-states of Iran and North Korea. But with U.S. reliance on China to buy American debt, U.S. leverage on China would appear to be minimal at best.

In another indication China sees itself in the driver’s seat, it announced this week that it is rewarding North Korea with a $2 billion program to aid its energy and infrastructure development.

Socialism by Other Means



Chris Dodd



Barney Frank









As I pondered the direction our Government had taken over the previous year, I looked at the definition of socialism by typing "define: socialism" into Google.  The first definition presented was from Princeton's wordnet and read as follows; "a political theory advocating state ownership of industry."  The definition feels woefully lacking. 

Ownership denotes control, and the state is certainly getting into the business of controlling industry. Over the last year our government has exerted more control over enterprise via legislative fiat than at any other time since FDR's power grab during the Great Depression. From the thousands of pages of ObamaCare, to the thousands of pages of the Dodd-Frank "financial reform" bill, government power is firmly entrenched in business and expanding. The more regulations the state adds the more control it exerts.

Can a business be considered a free enterprise when there are thousands of pages of rules that dictate its every move, from how much it can pay employees, to how much profit it can make? Is a business free when the rule of law is not honored, and the state can summarily declare that some contracts are valid and will be honored while others are not?  Can stockholders or owners say that they run a company when the state makes such important decisions and keeps most of the profits? 

Since the Gulf oil spill was voted the top story of 2010, let's take a look at the petroleum industry.  Several left wing pundits opined that it was a lack of regulation that caused the disaster.  That seems odd considering the amount of government red tape involved in the process of getting oil out of the ground and to market.



Gulf Oil Spill



Big oil has long the favorite whipping boy of grandstanding, self-righteous politicians. The petroleum industry can't drill, refine, or sell without the government deeply involved in every aspect of the business. A petroleum company's pain begins with the search and acquisition of raw crude oil. If a company wants to drill, it has to get permits from the government. This has become a painful process. After the recent gulf oil spill, it has become longer and even more arduous. The Gulf of Mexico, one of the few places left to drill legally, has been essentially made off limits via the permitting process. Where to drill isn't dictated by science, economics, or even common sense. Drilling in the United States is dictated by the state.

If a company is lucky enough to get the oil out of the ground, it then runs into the next problem, refining.  Thanks to lawsuits and over regulation, the last new refinery built in the United States was built in Garyville, Louisiana, when Carter was President.  At that time the United States used 6,978,000 barrels of gasoline per day and by 2007 the US was consuming 9,286,000 barrels of gasoline per day.  In that same period of time gasoline has gone from a fairly standardized product used in all states to a very complex product that requires very precise reformulations to meet the ever expanding set of government rules.  This patchwork of state and federal regulation is so varied that some call the process of creating gasoline "creating boutique fuels."

So while demand for refining capacity has continuously increased, our production capacity has barely been able to grow enough to meet demand.  Most refineries are running at nearly 100 percent capacity around the clock.  This is why small disruptions cause massive price swings.

Leftists continue to make spurious claims that neither regulation nor lawsuits have prevented the building of a single refinery.  Such groups like to point to the Arizona Clean Fuels refinery that the EPA permitted in 2004 after years of work.  Ironically no shovel has moved a single piece of earth in the building of the refinery which was supposed to be online in 2010.  The legal and regulatory battle has brought us more than 6 years into the future without any danger of a new refinery being built.

Once a company has cleared all of the hurdles of getting the oil out of the ground and turning it into a product for market, the tax man comes. For every gallon of gasoline the government collects between 30 to 50 cents in taxes (18 to the feds, and on average 22 to the states and quite often 2-5 cents to a local municipality). In 2007 Exxon made $40 billion dollars in profit, but it paid $100 billion in taxes and royalties. In other words government made 2.5 times more from Exxon's oil production than Exxon and its shareholders did.

Who needs state ownership when the government can make 2.5 times more profit from an enterprise than the enterprise makes itself?  Since the company is allowed to make a profit, it doesn't fit the strict definition of socialism.  Instead we have a system of overregulation that gives a large amount of control over and profit from a business to the state, while allowing the company to keep some share of profit for itself.  I call this system regulationism. People that believe in over regulation and state control of businesses are regulationists. 

Regulationism often brings  disastrous results.  In some cases monopolies were granted by the state, in others competitors weren't allowed to compete.  The cost of air travel and phone service was astronomical.  Thankfully the Reagan revolution helped tear down the regulationism that was in place.  If the regulations from the 70s were still in place we wouldn't have cheap air travel, ubiquitous cell phones, or a host of other advances that a competitive market place offers. 



The goals of regulationism and socialism are the same, control over a company or business.  The end result of regulationism and socialism is also the same, a lifeless economy filled with uncompetitive businesses.  November's election wasn't just a rejection of a political party, or a fight over personal taxes; it was also the rejection of regulationism. 

In the next election President Obama should have 2 labels to avoid, socialist and regulationist.  Being in either camp is equally poisonous in American politics.

A former Justice Department lawyer hired during the Bush administration alleged on Tuesday that the department scaled down a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party last year because his former colleagues do not want to protect white people’s civil rights.


In testimony before the Commission on Civil Rights, J. Christian Adams, who recently resigned from a voting rights position in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, decried the decision by department superiors in May 2009.

“We abetted wrongdoing and abandoned law-abiding citizens,” Mr. Adams said of the decision to reduce the scope of the New Black Panthers case, which he had helped to develop.

The testimony by Mr. Adams brought new attention to a case that has been used as political ammunition against the Obama administration by some conservative media outlets seeking to flip the script on portrayals of the Bush administration as having “politicized” the Justice Department.

The case arose after two members of the New Black Panther Party stood outside a polling place in a majority-black precinct in Philadelphia on Election Day in 2008. A video of the men, posted online, showed them dressed in paramilitary clothing, and one carried a billy club.












In January 2009, less than two weeks before the Bush administration left office, the civil rights division invoked a rarely used section of the Voting Rights Act to file a civil lawsuit alleging voter intimidation by both men, the party chairman and the party.

In April 2009, the division seemed to win the case by default because the New Black Panthers failed to show up in court. But the following month, a longtime Justice official, Loretta King — who was then the acting head of the division — decided to reduce the scope of the case.

The department dropped the charges against the party, its chairman and the man who was not carrying a club. It pressed forward with the lawsuit against the man with the club, obtaining an injunction that forbids him from carrying a weapon near an open polling place in Philadelphia through 2012.

The case became a cause célèbre in the conservative media world, and the Civil Rights Commission opened an investigation. The eight-member panel, which has the power to issue subpoenas and issue reports, is controlled by a six-member conservative bloc appointed during the Bush administration.

In testimony before the panel in May, Tom Perez, who became the assistant attorney general for the civil rights division in October 2009, said that “reasonable minds can differ” about the case, but that the acting supervisors had concluded that the case had been over-charged.

Mr. Perez said there was insufficient evidence that the party was responsible for the incident. He also noted that the voter intimidation provision is rarely used, and pointed to similar incidents during the Bush years in which minorities were the alleged victims but the division did not file such a lawsuit.

“Although none of the defendants responded to the complaint, the department had a continuing legal and ethical obligation to ensure that any relief sought was consistent with the law and supported by the evidence,” Mr. Perez said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Adams argued that the New Black Panther Party case was solid. He also portrayed the civil rights division as a place where many officials are hostile to the idea of using civil rights laws to go after black perpetrators with white victims.

Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the department enforces voter intimidation laws “based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved.”

The Obama administration took office amid widespread allegations that the Bush administration had politicized the civil rights division. Reports by the Government Accountability Office and the Justice Department’s inspector general found that enforcement of certain anti-discrimination laws dropped significantly, and that political appointees systematically steered career jobs to conservatives in violation of civil service laws.

Mr. Adams, a Republican who had previously worked for South Carolina’s secretary of state, was hired in 2005. But he insisted on Tuesday that his political beliefs had had no bearing on his work.

The investigation has divided the commission. In a statement on Tuesday, one of its two Democratic members, Michael Yaki, called it “incredibly shallow, expensive, and partisan” and a “one-sided farce.”

And one of its six conservatives, Abigail Thernstrom, wrote an article published Tuesday in National Review dismissing the New Black Panthers incident as “small potatoes” and warning that the commission’s “overblown attack threatens to undermine the credibility” of conservative criticism of the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

But Commissioner Todd Gaziano, who is a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, signaled that the other five members of the conservative bloc intend to press forward. And Mr. Adams offered to identify other former officials whom the commission could subpoena.