“I’m no stranger to hard fought campaigns, but what we’ve seen in the past few days is way over the line and reminiscent of the dangerous atmosphere of Sarah Palin’s 2008 campaign rallies. This is not how democracy works in Massachusetts,” Kerry said in a written statement Monday.

“Scott Brown needs to speak up and get his out of state tea party supporters under control. In Massachusetts, we fight hard and win elections on the issues and on our differences, not with bullying and threats,” he added.

Well, at least he’s not reminiscing about Ghengis Khan anymore…

Does make you wonder if the now Sr. MA Senator’s handlers, who ought to be keeping him in touch with the doin’s of the common folk, mentioned that the bullying and threats, as well as physical assaults, aren’t coming from the Brown supporters.

But it’s good for a laugh today, eh?

James Dobbins, who served as a special envoy to Afghanistan during the Bush administration and is now at the Rand Corp., said that Kerry had made many “sensible” points in the speech but that he found the conclusion unsatisfactory.

“The argument seems to be that we’re not going to send more troops until we start winning — which seems to me to be an inversion of the usual sequence,” he said.

This is the moment….when on the same day, Nobel Peace Laureate, President Obama, gave an address at the Naval Air Station Jacksonville, in part to offer a statement on the 14 Americans who lost their lives in two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan.

“I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm’s way. I won’t risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary,” Obama said to loud applause. “And if it is necessary, we will back you up to the hilt.”

The problem I have with this, is that we already have troops in theater in “harm’s way”, in what he claimed as a “war of necessity”; and his top general whom he had chosen is requesting reinforcements. And the dithering Democrat appears to want to vote “present”.

This is the moment, when Senator John Kerry says NATO allies and the UN need to step up and do more to support the efforts in Afghanistan. I agree; and so does NATO, which is backing Gen. McChrystal’s request for the counterinsurgency approach and troop increase:

America’s NATO allies signaled broad support Friday for an ambitious counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, adding to the momentum building for a substantial U.S. troop increase.

NATO defense ministers meeting in Bratislava, Slovakia, endorsed the strategy put forward by Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the U.S. and allied commander. The alliance rejected competing proposals to narrow the military mission to fighting the remnants of Al Qaeda.

This is the moment when Senator Kerry also said:

“Achieving our goals does not require us to build a flawless democracy, defeat the Taliban in every corner of the country, or create a modern economy-what we’re talking about is “good-enough” governance, basic sustainable economic development, and Afghan security forces capable enough that we can drawdown our forces,”

Can anyone say “duh”? Who has ever said we were attempting to build a western-style democracy that looks like our own? Or that we would spend blood and treasure on Afghanistan until its opium fields were magically transformed into pink daffodils, fuzzy bunnies, and cotton candy clouds floating overhead?

“given the balance of our strategic interests, it should give serious pause to military and civilian strategists alike that the current balance of our expenditure between Afghanistan, where there is virtually no Al Qaeda, and Pakistan, where there is, tallies thirty-to-one.”

Here’s failed presidential candidate John ” I served in Vietnam” Kerry, September 14, 2006 at Howard University:

The central front in the war on terror is still in Afghanistan, but this Administration treats it like a sideshow. When did denying al Qaeda a terrorist stronghold in Afghanistan stop being an urgent American priority? How did we end up with seven times more troops in Iraq – which even the Administration now admits had nothing to do with 9/11 – than in Afghanistan, where the killers still roam free? Why is the Administration sending thousands more American troops into the crossfire of a civil war in Iraq but we can’t find any more troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan?

With Pakistan in the midst of cleaning out the hornets nest of Taliban fighters in southern Waziristan, I’d say now would be an ideal time for sending more troops to deny the Taliban any safe havens into Afghanistan and to send out a message that America is resolute in its commitment to see things through.

In regards to the claim of no al Qaeda in Afghanistan, after making big campaign issues out of Afghanistan as being “the good and necessary war” that we had to return to, there might be a minimal al Qaeda footprint there today; but should the Taliban regain power in Afghanistan, is there really any question that the Taliban today is inextricably linked to al Qaeda, and wouldn’t provide it safe haven and continued alliance?

While the Afghan Taliban share many of al-Qaida’s violent goals, including the defeat of the Kabul government, Barrett said, they are more regionally focused and do not hold the same global jihadist views.

Some U.S. military and intelligence officials, however, warn against underestimating the relationship between al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban.

While the Taliban and al-Qaida may have differences, senior counterterrorism officials say that al-Qaida still has strong historical ties to Mullah Omar and that is not likely to go away. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.

Should we cut deals with irreconcilables?

President Barack Obama’s review of strategy in Afghanistan means America will end up making a deal with the Taliban, and tolerating warlords, to end the fighting.

“Moderate Taliban” is rather oxymoronic, isn’t it? And wasn’t it the moment of the third presidential debate in 2004 that John frickin’ Kerry said the following:

When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.

So it wasn’t ok to do business with Afghan warlords then, but today it’s a practical solution?

The Taliban may not have their sights set on waging a global jihad war; but they are clearly one of those who “If they’re not with us, they’re with the terrorists”. An al Qaeda without safe haven is an al Qaeda made impotent.

Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio also warn against the narrower approach that seeks to draw distinctions between al Qaeda and its allies:

if the US and its coalition partners prevent the Taliban and its allies from returning to power in Afghanistan, then this will necessarily weaken al Qaeda’s allies and, in turn, al Qaeda itself. In the military’s view, al Qaeda is not a standalone problem but instead one head of several on a jihadist hydra.

In the piece below, we take a look at the insurgency in Afghanistan more closely – from al Qaeda’s perspective. We do not think that a shift to a predominately counterterrorism campaign utilizing airstrikes and the like is sufficient to beat back the threat to America’s interests. In fact, we argue that such thinking is rooted in a dangerous ignorance of al Qaeda and our terrorist enemies. Al Qaeda was never a self-contained problem that could be defeated by neutralizing select individuals – even though capturing or killing senior al Qaeda members surely does substantially weaken the network.

Instead, Osama bin Laden and his cohorts deliberately fashioned their organization to be the tip of a much longer jihadist spear.

The previous administration has been criticized by the current one for “taking its eyes off the ball” and diverting resources to Iraq “which didn’t attack us” and failing to catch bin Laden.

The current administration can be criticized for reneging on its campaign warhawk stance in a desire to divert resources from Afghanistan to pursue funding and public support for its domestic agenda of “nation rebuilding”. Shoveling socialism down the throat of “that region of the world” that didn’t attack us and had nothing to do with 9/11. As Steve Schippert puts it:

Though I’ve been screaming this in my own mind for weeks and weeks, actually months, maybe I ahve not said it out loud enough. Because it has a 95% probability of accuracy, with a 5% chance pub pressuer can change Obama’s mind —

We will not see an Afghan Surge (TM) for one simple, yet critical, reason. Do you all recall, post-stimulus, the Obama budget forcasts that were eventually blown out of the water by both the CBO and reality? Do you remember whaere most of the budgetary “savings” came from?

That’s right, a draw down in Iraq. Merely shifting these resources in number and cost to Afghanistan will have an even more devastating impact on the already laughable Obama budget projections, and materialize right in the heat of 2010 election cycles. Deficit beyond imagination and so far off Obama forecasts as to appear wholly mindless. the 2010 elections would be an even hotter Hell to pay for Dems supporting the O nonsense.

This was the reality that I saw from the beginning: That Afghanistan will be starved of resources rather than fed them as Candidate Obama assured in his pledges to fight “the real war” in Afghanistan.

It is domestic budget – NOT intellectually considered counterinsurgency v. counterterrorism strategies – which will dictate how this White House conducts the war in Afghanistan.

The trick for them is how to sell not shifting resources from Iraq to Afghanistan as brilliance rather than the domestic policy trickery that it really is.

Our enemies can take heart: This President and his team have greater and more aggressive designs on the American society and its free market-based economy than on them, the jihadists who would slit our throats quite literally given opportunity.

And this budget elephant in the Situation Room is what makes me so angry when folks consider Biden/Levin/Kerry options as intellectually vetted counterterrorism alternatives.

Bull. Look at the budget. Someone go back to spring ‘09 and dig up the Iraq Drawdown accounting in O’s budget as the source for freed funds. Fighting the enemy in Afghanistan? It was bullshit on the campaign trail, and its bullshit now. Iraq Drawdown funds (created or saved) were never – EVER – accounted for as shifting to another theater of war, “real” or imagined. It was shifted to redistribution schemes here at home.

Go ahead. Prove me wrong. Please. Someone.

For John Kerry, the 2004 presidential candidate who served in Vietnam, he has taken all the wrong lessons he learned from that conflict, and is trying to apply them to this conflict. John Kerry’s Afghanistan plan is the same as his Vietnam plan.

For 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate, President Obama, Afghanistan is a diversion; a distraction. I don’t think there’s any question that Democrats would love nothing better than to return us back to the glory days when Overseas Contingency Operations were largely a law enforcement issue, and we suffered the drip, drip, drip of “small-scale” terror attacks.

This is the moment…

Also blogging:
Brutally Honest
The Radio Patriot

Usually, politicians try to keep their wrongdoings shrouded from view in darkened rooms. It’s easier to get away with what you want when the lights are off. For example:

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford went to Argentina to have an affair.

John Edwards fathered a child out of wedlock while his wife had cancer and convinced a loyal aid to initially take the fall. Cue the National Enquirer and federal grand juries.

Congressman John Murtha met in private with undercover federal agents posing as Middle Eastern businessmen during the ABSCAM scandal 30 years ago but avoided prosecution by testifying as an unindicted co-conspiritor. When asked about accepting $50,000 in bribe money, Murtha said he was not interested “at this point” but could be later as they got to know each other.

Former Congressman Mark Foley resigned in disgrace after it was discovered he had sent sexually explicit messages to a former page.

Congressman Barney Frank’s former “roommate” was running a gay prostitution ring out of their DC apartment.

There are many others on both sides of the aisle who’ve had their private sins exposed. Some committed crimes while others committed only acts of paramount stupidity. But all were done in a clandestine fashion for obvious reasons.

That’s what makes Senator Kennedy’s impolitic public pronouncement that he is seeking to change his state’s senatorial succession law in anticipation of his death so shocking in its brazenness.

Democrat-controlled Massachusetts changed the state’s senatorial succession law in 2004. Previously, the state’s governor had the power to appoint a replacement senator until an election could be held. You’ll recall, however, in 2004 the state’s junior senator, John Kerry, was the Democrat nominee for president but the governor at the time was a dastardly Republican: Mitt Romney. So, in an effort to deprive Romney of this power in the event of Kerry’s election, the state legislature changed the rules to require a special election for the replacement.

Fast forward to 2009. Massachusetts now has a Democrat governor and Senator Kennedy’s condition will soon render him unable to serve and the end of his life is hastening. The timing couldn’t be worse for Kennedy because of his career-long interest in the issue of health care for all Americans–unless, of course, your last name is Kopechne.

It’s also poor timing for Congressional Democrats. If Kennedy vacates his seat during the health care reform debate (or is it health insurance reform now? I can’t keep it straight), then the special election must be held between 145 and 160 days after the vacancy. That’s five months of Massachusetts having only one senator and Senate Democrats being short of the filibuster-proof majority.

The Democrat solution to this thorny problem? Change the law back! It sure would be nice to change the system now that someone friendly is in the state house. To that end, Kennedy sent a letter to Governor Duval Patrick pushing for the change already pending in the state legislature. “It is vital for this Commonwealth to have two voices speaking for the needs of its citizens and two votes in the Senate during the approximately five months between a vacancy and an election,” Kennedy said in the letter supporting the legislation to Governor Patrick.

In response to which I posit this query: Why?

Senator Kerry is certainly pompous and windy enough to speak for the people of Massachusetts by himself. Another far-left voice replacing Kennedy’s would add nothing new to the discussion. Kennedy’s letter also suggests the governor, if re-vested with the power to appoint an interim replacement, select someone who commits not to run in the special election. In other words, “Here, warm this seat in the Senate for a few months while we find someone better.” The state would have as much influence if it kept the chair empty. The fact is the Democrats dominate both houses of Congress and control all legislation, whether there are 1 or 2 Massachusetts senators seated. There is virtually nothing stopping them from passing any law they get behind but they are acting as if they have a razor-thin margin.

And yet the health care debate has become a debacle for them and President Obama. The grass roots–and, yes, they are real as I know and hear from hundreds of them–are energized and mobilized to prevent a socialist legislative takeover of the industry. The Democrats’ plans won’t do that in one fell swoop but will be a big step in that direction. The revelation that relatives and associates of chief presidential aides, including David Axelrod, are financially benefiting from the debate is not exactly the kind of “change” President Obama championed during the campaign. Indeed, it’s more of the type of corruption we’ve come to expect. That will do nothing to dissuade the protestors.

But, cancer or no, Senator Kennedy’s attempts to change the law just to protect Democrat power is nothing short of incredible. It is gamesmanship of the most cynical variety with politicians granting and denying powers like demi-gods.

I suppose, given the corruption we’ve witnessed, Kennedy’s acts should come as no surprise. They are just the most fragrant example of our political system’s putrescence and the stench is getting worse. Fortunately (and mercifully) for Senator Kennedy, he’ll shuffle off soon enough and the State Run Media will wring their hands in anguish while lionizing the trust-fund multi-millionaire for his life long service to “The Little Man”. Unfortunately for us, he’ll leave behind arrogant abuses of power, corruption and decay for us to fix.

It might be a good thing for there to be one less senator for awhile. It’ll be one less politician to pick your pocket while shaking your hand. One less politician who conveniently forgets his family while freely dropping his pants for paramours. One less politician looking to have his personal interests and accounts padded with special interest money, sweetheart deals, and exemptions from onerous burdens they strap on you. One less politician to act out of expediency by continuing to raise taxes and increase spending instead of making the hard choices true leaders are supposed to make. One less politician to put power and politics above the people and the Constitution.

Let’s hope the Massachusetts electorate will eventually take the opportunity to fill Kennedy’s seat with someone worthy of the office who’ll listen to and lead the constituents, not abolish their power to satisfy a political lust for hegemonic control.

Crossposted from The Los Angeles Examiner

For example, could you grasp the full impact of Nemo, Cars, Shrek etal by viewing merely a single cel (short for a single celluid frame of film) of the animation? Could you grasp the enormity of the ethics complaint assault on Palin by only learning about one or two of them?

But of course not. And much is the same with Obama’s cinemascope production to destroy the US economy… all using single cel trailers and razzle dazzling us with fuzzy math. And until those cells are edited together, the plot of this morbid “cartoon” does not become clear.

The O’faithful show you a single cel of his spending… ala the Stimulus/ARRA, the TARP bailout decisions, cap and trade, or health care, etc. By throwing out a number we are becoming far too comfortable hearing – a few trillion here and a few trillion there – Joe and Josephine Q. Public, as well as the partisan Congress members, merely shrug it off, assuming we’ll figure out a way to pay China back.

The problem is, until you start viewing all Obama and Congress’ spending in full wide screen version, you don’t feel the impact of the extremely flawed fuzzy math used to advance these programs in the media.

Case in point… let’s start with health care. Today the ever stellar Jake Tapper gives us the summary of the cost of health care to our individual pocketbooks. It’s easy to boggle the minds of the voter when you package “free” benefits and unprecedented spending in one national bill, then promise all those rich people and small businesses making over $350K (at least today…) will be paying for it. “Not I, said the Little Red Hen”. That couldn’t possibly affect me.

But first, take some time and absorb some personal realities about the tax rates Mr. Tapper lays out. I want you to close your eyes, and picture the this… taxpayers in the top 50% of tax brackets pay 94% of the nation’s tax bill. The top 1% earners pay 33.7 percent alone, and the top 5% pay 53.8%.

When you remove these “evil rich types” from the equation, there is a hefty amount of entrepreneurial small business types – who hire most of the US workers – that shoulder the current US tax bill for that 6% poverty group to which Obama caters.

Do you have that picture firmly in mind? That we’re not talking about the Bill Gates and Warren Buffetts only here? Okay…

The current buzz is that Obama’s “only” trying to take the tax rates up for group of Americans that support Congressional spending to 39%. After health care, that’s bogus, bupkis and a serious political whopper.

A study by the non-partisan Tax Foundation finds that the 5.4% surtax on top wage-earners proposed by House Democrats to help fund health care reform would push top tax rates over 50% in 39 states.

“That means government would be taking more than half of every additional dollar from high-income taxpayers,” said Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge. “The lowest top tax rate would be about 47% –and that’s in the nine states that don’t tax wages.”

~~~

The hardest-hit states in terms of the highest tax bracket would be Oregon (57.5%), Hawaii (57.2%), New Jersey (57.1%), New York (56.9%), California (56.8%), Rhode Island (56.2%), Vermont (55.8%), Maryland (55.6%), Minnesota (54.4%) and Idaho (54.3%).

In case you’ve forgotten what I said above, I’ll repeat it again. Small business owners employ the largest % of the American worker… not evil big business and corporations. And it is these employers who fall into these tax categories.

Now, let’s add another cel to the fantasy animation movie Obama is producing and directing… unemployment realities. Of those “hardest hit” states above, four of them are between 7.2 and 12.4 unemployment as of May 2009, and OR, CA and RI all between 11.5 to 12.4%. None of these are improving and, in fact, progressively worsening month to mone with little end in sight.

Needless to say, I’m quite curious as to how they intend to draw blood from the same turnip field they are eradicating by starving the crops for water.

Which then brings me to the Sarah Palin v John Kerry/MoveOn.org battles over Sarah’s op-ed in WaPo that Mike’s A posted in it’s entirety here a few days back. Aside from the irony that Palin’s perspective is printed in MSM’s WaPo, and Kerry finds himself tilting at enviro wind mills on Huffpo and via his own diary atDaily KOs, Kerry’s rhetoric is perpetuating the Obama “single cel” fuzzy math version of a fantasy animation film.

Note Kerry’s main beefs… that Palin doesn’t care about the health of the planet and doesn’t want “… to tackle global climate change which imperils everything from our economy to our national security”… and then refers to the PERI report from the self-described progressive think tank, Center for American Progress to dispute Palin’s claim about cap and trade being a prescription for job loss and economic disaster.

“Palin’s column ignored the entire problem and didn’t even get right the things it did cover,” he says. “For example, she said, ‘Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.’ ”

“This is wrong,” Kerry scolds. “The pieces of energy reform legislation are job-creation machines. A joint report by PERI Center for American Progress Report calculated that $150 billion in clean-energy investments would create upwards of 1.7 million jobs.

So how does Kerry and PERI come up with 1.7 jobs, and why doesn’t he mention that it’s $150 billion *annually*? They optimistically predict 2.5 million job creation (temporary and a few permanent), and contrast that with the same spending that would only create 800,000 jobs in fossil fuels.

As we see in Table 8, an annual $150 billion clean-energy investment level would generate a total of about 2.5 million jobs. By contrast, spending the same $150 billion within the fossil-fuel industry would produce about 800,000 jobs. This is a difference of roughly 1.7 million jobs. In Appendix 2, we break out these economy-wide estimates for net employment expansion through clean-energy investments on a state-by-state basis.

Of course what they forget to mention is that fossil fuel jobs are created at the cost of the oil and gas companies… not the taxpayers. So we could save that $150 ANNUAL billion (times ten or however many years) from the national debt. oops

Yet without clarifying, Obama and Kerry as his minion depend on a dumbed down, uncurious public to accept his word and the PERI report as God’s truth handed down on stone tablets. If that’s not enough, he then employs the Alinsky tact of putting them on watchdog alert against their fellow citizens.

“I’ll be back throughout the fall with specific things you can do to help, but for now — keep your eyes and ears open. When you see something in your local paper that’s wrong, let them know you notice. When your friends or family members say something that’s wrong, let them know the truth,” implores the Massachusetts Democrat who has made global warming a key issue as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Tell you what, Mr. Kerry… you set your prozac wolf hounds on the rest of the population, and those of us who question authority and have a healthy distrust of government and elected officials will keep biting at your ankles with some facts to combat your rhetoric and threats.

And now… a few ditties from Kerry’s “gospel”… i.e. the PERI report analyzing cap and trade. Because I have to say, I wanted to see just where those 1.7 mil jobs were coming from. So first, let me give you one of the pretty pictures and graphs to peruse. You can find the originals in the PERI report linked above.

The first below is PERI’s breakdown in how much of the $150 billion annually (for four? ten?? years) as it relates to job area creation. Note retrofitting taking up the bulk of the $150 bil annual cost. Pg 19 of the PDF report. Suggest you open the PDF and follow along… pics are small…

You do see where the bulk of the “job creation” lies? With mandated “building retrofitting”. This cap and trade is less legislation than it is regulatory changes and Congressional appropriation to implement those changes. And a huge part is brand new “green” building codes. Why how can that hurt, you say? Because all existing buildings must undergo “retrofitting” to meet current codes.

• The bill would implement new standards based on the International Energy Conservation Code for commercial buildings and the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers standards for residential buildings, with the two standards based on “each model code or standard released after the date of enactment of the Act.”3 The bill also requires the federal government to provide financial support for commercial and residential retrofits in order to achieve compliance with the standards.

~~~

Building retrofits
An average-sized single-family home in the United States would require an investment of as little as $2,500 in energy-efficiency retrofits to produce a cost savings in the range of 30 percent per year.7 This would involve caulking to plug air leaks in the house and adding insulation to attics and basement ceilings. For an additional $2,500, further energy savings are available through replacing windows with air leaks and installing energy effi cient appliances.

[Mata Musing: love to know where *they* shop for windows...]

Despite these potential savings, most homeowners have not retrofitted their homes because they are unaware of the costs savings available to them or they cannot afford the upfront expenses and time commitment involved. But these barriers to retrofit investments will come down through the specific government spending programs that finance retrofits, the building codes that establish higher efficiency standards in buildings, and the more general regulatory environment that raises the costs of burning conventional fossil fuels. As the market becomes more extensive and efficient, this will further encourage new investment in retrofits. In particular, banks, utility companies and various types of nonprofit groups will increasingly organize themselves to supply the upfront financing for these projects. [Mata Musing: In a credit crunch market with declining values? see more on this later...] In addition, construction crews will begin to organize their services to take advantage of the expanding opportunities.

The potential market for building retrofits is huge. There are roughly 110 million occupied housing units in the United States, including 80 million single-family detached homes, as well as smaller numbers of attached units, apartments, and trailers. As a rough approximation, assuming an average investment in retrofits would be around $4,000 per unit, implies an overall potential market of $400 billion. We would then add the corresponding market for non-residential structures. The U.S. Green Building Council surveyed the existing stock of these structures in 2008, including all educational buildings, hospitals, retail outlets, and office buildings of various sorts. They estimated the costs of retrofitting all of these buildings at $358 billion.8

It was, of course, this new regulatory “green” code that fueled the half-true rumors begat with a CNS article that said these mandates *may* require upgrades prior to the ability to sell. Media Matters further muddied the half truth when they labeled a FoxNation article (not to be confused with FOX News) saying this could require homes to be upgraded prior to sale as “distorting”.

Housingwire also chimes in presenting it as akin to harmless “labeling”.

A section in HR 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which narrowly passed a US House of Representatives vote Friday, falls short of mandating an energy audit on homes, according to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Section 204 of the cap-and-trade bill establishes a building energy performance labeling program for homes and commercial property. The section would provide potential buyers and investors in those properties a label explaining that property’s energy efficiency.

Much like a nutrition label on the back of a candy bar, the performance labeling program is a consumer right-to-know provision in the cap-and-trade bill, but it is not required, according to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Section 202 of the bill develops the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) program. If the owner of the building — residential or commercial — seeks financial assistance from REEP, the property must pass the energy audit.

Energy savings for residential properties are determined by the Home Energy Ratings System (HERS) Index, and the final score is selected by an objective third party, according to the bill.

After the audit is conducted, state and local REEP programs may grant funds to owners for retrofit improvements on energy efficiency.

But is it distortion, and how does this affect a future sale of an older home? As the bill states, the regulations create a new code and standard, and “… leaving it up to the states to figure out exactly how to do that.”

Have any of you ever tried to sell a home with outdated wiring and unpermitted improvements to buyers that were obtaining lender financing? The fact is, by creating a new “code” that homes will be required to meet, the government gets to step back and allow either the lender or state regulations to be the bad guy, and force the upgrades prior to transfer of vested ownership. Lenders will be the most likely culprit to assume this as a demand prior to funding. They will want to make sure that any home they pile cash into will not incur additional upgrade costs in the event of foreclosure and default.

And while we’re on that track of “sorta mandated” homeowner upgrades, exactly what will the expense of new appliances and weather proofing add to your homes value in a market where home values are anticipated to decline until 2011? [... told you I'd get to this...]

To sort that out, let’s look at the latest stats from the Cost vs Value annual report for 2008. And the ugly truth is, whether it’s a complete kitchen remodel or new windows, you only recoup a national average of 76%-77% of your cost outlay. Meaning that not only does it make your home NOT worth more to a lender or appraiser, but that you’ve just lost an extra 23-24% of the money you just spent to meet the new government codes.

Well ain’t that a pile of manure?

So let’s look at Kerry’s claim of jobs via the PERI report straight up… the single largest “investment/job creation” is manifested by forcing homeowners to spend money for mandated retrofits that will [in all probability] be required by any lender to bring a home up to current code.

And to pay for, or subsidize, those retrofits, they’re blood-sucking *every* taxpayer – homeowner of new homes, or even renters with no homes – to finance everyone’s mandated upgrade.

I swear I am living in a parallel universe.

Now… burning question… what happens to all those “retro fit” jobs when the 80 million homes are retrofitted?

These are not permanent jobs created. They are temporary jobs. Which brings me to the second of the pretty pictures and graphs in the PERI report. The job descriptions of those 1.7 million supposedly created jobs…. Pg 31 of the PERI report.

The “top three” investment categories that are supposed to translate into “job creation” are the retrofitting, building mass transit, and smart grid creation (which doesn’t include the anticipated lawsuit costs that enviros will be filing to prevent solar and wind grids crossing “protected” lands….)

Now look thru those, and how “permanent” are the other categories after retrofitting. Once the rails are laid, the civil engineers are done designing, the train/bus parts built and ordered, what do we have left but a shadow staff to maintain the (mostly rail) transit? After the smart grids are built, how many employees does it take to man those facilities? The same with wind and solar farms?

In short, we’re talking about spending beaucoup cash on infrastructure that in no way justifies it for permanent job creation… not to mention the larger expense of “clean energy” that puts a huge divot in our earning capacity.

But wait! There’s MORE! All these jobs are supposed to be “created” in an economic repression/depression/downturn… what ever you want to call it. And those jobs are supposed to be created by the very people that Obama is robbing more than 50% of their earnings.

And what are they supposed to use to “create” these jobs? Oh right… more taxpayer money. How silly of me. But why bother if they’re raped for half their earnings?

Since this conundrum of less entrepreneurs and new business creation doesn’t make much sense, PERI decides to spin that one too. They, in fact, say that the high unemployment and desperate economy is more fruitful for the job creation while, speaking off the other tongue’s fork, rely heavily on “self-reinforcing investment momentum”…. which I guess comes from someone who has enough left after creaming more than 50% off the top of their earnings.

Starting on pg 21 of the PERI report, they discuss their methodology used for estimating unemployment and GDP growth. And their first sentence is a disclaimer:

The consequences of public policies on U.S. economic growth and employment growth necessarily happen over time. That’s why we cannot know with certainty what the effects of policy will be. That’s also why we rely on economic models and various forecasting techniques to generate estimates of what future outcomes are likely to be.

If I remember rightly, wasn’t this the group who seriously “misread” the economic indicators right out of the gate? Isn’t this also the group who seems to have major discrepancies with CBO estimates? Pardon me if I’m not too impressed with the rosy “models” of the progressive mindset.

But the progressive think take continue the specifics of their model deductions and projections in the current economic decline on page 28. This is when they launch into the argument, “hey, the worse the economy is, the better chance this has to work” schpiel. Which may, in itself, explain Obama’s headstrong determination to destroy the US economy as fast as possible.

Induced job creation

It is more diffic ult to estimate the size of the induced employment effects—or what is commonly termed the “consumption multiplier” within standard macroeconomic models—than to estimate direct and indirect effects. There are still aspects of the induced effects we can estimate with a high degree of confidence.

In particular, we have a good sense of what is termed the “consumption function,” or what percentage of the additional money people receive from being newly employed will be spent. But it is more difficult to project accurately what the overall employment effects will always be of that extra spending. [Mata Musing: you mean like the employment you *don't* create because living expenses are higher for energy, inflating all end-user products? Or the deflated dollar that means higher costs overal? You mean that "induced effect" of non-employment??]

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First, the magnitude of the induced effect will depend on existing conditions in the economy. If unemployment is high, then this will mean that there are a large number of people able and willing to take jobs if new job opportunities open up. But if unemployment is low, then there will be less room for employment to expand—even if newly employed people have more money to spend.

Similarly, if there is slack in the economy’s physical resources, then the capacity to expand employment will be greater—and the induced effects larger. If the economy is operating at a high level of activity, there is not likely to be a large employment gain beyond what resulted from the initial direct and indirect effects.

Given the rapid deterioration of economic conditions over the past 18 months—including rapidly rising rates of unemployment—the U.S. economy is not likely to bump up against this kind of capacity constraint in the near future. Thus we would expect the induced effects to be significant in the current climate. More generally, the U.S. economy has not come close to approximating a full employment economy since the late 1990s, and even then, the tight labor market conditions were sustained only briefly, until the dot.com… stock market bubble burst. Consequently, it is unlikely that the induced effects of a direct and indirect employment expansion will be diminished by excessively tight labor markets in the future.

What a bunch of hockey pucks… “not come close”. Here’s BLS unemploment stats back to the 40s. You can plainly see where it was between 5.4 to 6.9% in the mid 90s, when the dot.com… bubble came in to play… then burst followed by 911. The unemployment went up to a high of 6.0 before coming back down. “Not close” is a real stretch…

But back to this spin that if the economy is humming along, and unemployment is low, the “self-reinforcing investment” incentive is unlikely. Every bit of that belies market demand. If people demand electric cars, the private market provides electric cars. That just happens to be a very small percentile who only drive blocks at a time, and don’t haul critters, boats and toys for recreation.

What the “progressive” think tank relies upon is the Alinsky model of thought… the more desperate the population for jobs, and the less people that have a profitable business (thanks to highway robbery of taxes), the better chance Obama’s plan has of working.

Okay… can’t argue that.

This is the overview. We now know that Obama must sink the US economy to avail a government rescue of the economy. Cap and trade would do some serious damage on it’s own. But is it capable of tanking the economy single handed?

This is where “the full animated film” comes into play. Add the high tax rates for feel-good health care, add in the national debt from bailout after bailout…. the porkulus… the omnibus spending. Ignore the jobs cuts when you reduce military spending and shrink the national defense inventory. Borrow so much from foreign nations that the dollar is not worth toilet paper.

Welcome to the “cartoon” that is Obama’s economic plan. All cels together translate to the rock and hard place we need to be – desperate – for Obama’s “remaking” of America to be complete.

And like lemmings… we’re been led over the cliff because math is simply a lost art, and we are unable to recognize a single cel frame instead of envisioning the entire feature film.

Senator John Kerry, visiting Egypt Thursday during a tour of the Middle East, accused the Bush administration of neglecting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Kerry met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and said they discussed Iraq as well as the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

"I have always believed that the Middle East peace process is the critical issue of the region, and it has not been focused on for the past 6-7 years adequately," the Massachusetts Democrat told reporters after meeting Mubarak. "I think there has been a huge loss of opportunities."

There is a article out in the Chicago Sun Times that speaks volumn’s about the true character of some Democrats.

“This is the story of a military veteran whistleblower. He spoke out against someone he thought was dangerous for the nation, talked to local newspapers, and appeared on talk shows. In return, he was vilified by reporters, threatened by a political operative, fired by his company, and now he’s broke.”

It’s about Steve Gardner, the soldier who actually served on John Kerry’s swift boat

“Gardner’s story is one that bears telling. He volunteered for the Navy, enlisting on his 18th birthday in February 1966. After training, he was shipped to Vietnam and served for two years as a gunner in the swift boat division. His superior, for four months, was none other than Lt. j.g. John F. Kerry.

“I had confrontations with him there. He nearly got us rammed by the VC one night because he wasn’t watching the helm. I heard the motor coming close, turned on the spotlight, and the boat was only 90 feet away, coming fast. The VC was aiming an AK47 at us. I shot him out of the boat. We pulled a woman and a baby off the boat. Kerry wrote it up that we captured two VC and killed four more on the beach. None of that was true. The only thing true on Kerry’s report was the date. The woman was catatonic and wouldn’t call her baby VC and there were no VC on the beach. If we had seen that report before Kerry sent it up the chain of command, he would have been court-martialed and never allowed to run for office. And that’s just the San Pan incident. There was much more. He is a self-aggrandizing bold-faced liar. I believe he caused the extension of that war.”

Yes, I know the election is over with and why should we care about this story anymore….read on young grasshoppers.

“he received a phone call from John Hurley, the veterans organizer for Kerry’s campaign. Hurley, Gardner says, asked him to come out for Kerry. He told Hurley to leave him alone and that he’d never be for Kerry. It was then Gardner says, he was threatened with, “You better watch your step. We can look into your finances.”

Next, Gardner said he received a call from Douglas Brinkley, the author of Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War. Brinkley told Gardner he was calling only to “fact check” the book — which was already in print. “I told him that the guy in the book is not the same guy I served with. I told him Kerry was a coward. He would patrol the middle of the river. The canals were dangerous. He wouldn’t go there unless he had another boat pushing him.”

“Twenty-four hours later, Gardner got an e-mail from his company, Millennium Information Services, informing him that his services would no longer be necessary. He was laid off in an e-mail — by the same man who only days before had congratulated him for his exemplary work in a territory which covered North and South Carolina. The e-mail stated that his position was being eliminated. Since then, he’s seen the company advertising for his old position. Gardner doesn’t have the money to sue to get the job back.”

I am trying to get ahold of the author to find out if there is any fund’s set up for him. I considered him a true hero for his service in Vietnam but after helping to defeat the Great Coward I think we owe him a bit more. For a great interview by Dean Esmay from Dean’s World go here.