When we last checked in with Codepink, the group was swooning over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian president was in New York to speak at the UN, and the “women for peace” organization got an audience with him in order to condemn American aggression and to praise Iranian goodwill. A convivial time was had by all:
The CODEPINK women proposed inviting American and Iranian artists to build a “peace park” in Tehran, a memorial dedicated to people-to-people commitment to peace and diplomacy between our two countries.
They also proposed a plan to invest funds in an Iranian business, one that produces green and sustainable products, such as bicycles. This grassroots investment would be the opposite of efforts by the Bush administration and Congress to tighten sanctions, a move which CODEPINK thinks would only hurt ordinary, everyday Iranians. Such a symbolic CODEPINK investment in a green, sustainable business would challenge U.S. regulations blocking trade with Iran and would show how diplomacy and trade are preferable to war and sanctions.
Speaking of green and (one hopes) sustainability, Codepink’s flattery of Ahmadinejad renders the group diametric enemies of the Iranian protesters now challenging that peaceful fellow’s reelection. Interesting that a group of peace-loving American women now find themselves standing foursquare with the mullahcrocy and riot police trying to beat down the internal forces of reform. This wholesale embrace of tyranny and oppression, however, does explain why the lead headline under “breaking news” at the group’s website is “Israeli Police and Military Brutalize Peaceful Protesters at Netanyahu’s Speech,” and why not a word about unrest in Iran is to be found.
Why did we ever think that a man who used the words of a 25 year old speechwriter ever had any idea of what he was doing?
Jennifer, I like ya’ but I wouldn’t go counting out the O’s budget quite so fast.
He’s going to motivate his little O-bots, and he’s going to try to gin up support for the budget just like he did for the first “stimulus package.” Recall he was on the sidelines, and everyone was saying he should step in, or outright threaten to veto it. But what did he end up doing? He went to the mattresses for it, and it was Pelosi and Reid responsible for it.
Well, it finally happened, trillion dollar ($926 bn) deficits as far as the eye can see…
But don’t worry, Obama has a supple intelligence, a nuanced grasp, and the evident skill to make you happy that he’s trimmed spending, and found all the line-by-line savings to produce this plan limiting the 10-year deficit to just over $9 trillion. Aren’t you satisfied?
Like Dan I’m not sure that this will go away very easily. I think we are going to have to work on it.
Something you have to give the Obamatons, at least they are willing to put some muscle in it.
So… if we need to crush AIG employees for violating the public trust chiefly by running a huge organization into the ground and threatening the global financial system by almost defaulting as a result, then I have to ask: what should we do to Congress?
So we know what it is (huge deficits as far as the eye can see), now we’re just negotiating over price. Sigh.
Spending cuts mean different things to Democrats and Republicans. Watch for the meat cleaver to be taken to the DOD budget — and for veteran’s benefits to keep being sighted in on an annual basis.
$9.27 trillion? This is not too much, considering the scale of
the New New Deal socialist-environmentalist-unionist agenda:
expand bureaucracy in all directions, suppress enterprise and
innovation, retard economic growth, increase the price of energy,
dumb down education by eliminating choice and accountability, replace quality
health care with rationed health care, make everybody a ward
of the state.
So much lasting harm cannot be done on the cheap…
At this rate Obama seems more likely to render himself impotent than to enact his program, though that wouldn’t mean that he and his friends can’t do a tremendous amount of damage and cause a lot of turmoil in the meantime. In other words, the CBO numbers may be politically relevant, but, relative to what actually is going to happen, they’re probably as fanciful as Obama’s numbers.
Bernanke seemed to believe that further massive bailout legislation – beginning with TARP II – was necessary, but at the same time it also seems that opposition to bailouts has intensified. I guess the question is whether there is a unity position available or whether skepticism, distrust, and disagreement, domestically and internationally, are already making major effective additional action on the financial crisis impossible.
Is there anything that amounts to a functional conservative policy position in such a situation? When the President was claiming that the opposition consisted of people who thought we should “do nothing,” it was untrue. I wonder if it’s still untrue – or if a lot of the do-something brigade on the right has been converted to laissez-faire by the spectacle of modern liberalism in power – just as having this crew in charge has got to affect how “national greatness conservatives” think about American power and its uses.
C.K.McLeod, I’ve been converted to laissez faire. It seems to be the only policy this administration has the competence to enact.
If Obama doesn’t beat Congress into submission on this one, despite the CBO report, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.