Obama doesn't get what freedom is about

David Boaz contrasts what Reagan and Obama said about freedom in their speeches abroad. He concludes:

President Obama said some important things to the Chinese students. But his continuing failure to mention the virtues of productive enterprise in a commencement address or to note the centrality of economic freedom in the American experiment could easily lead listeners to conclude that he really doesn’t care much for business and economic liberty.

Or, as Veronique de Ruby aptly puts it, Obama "doesn't truly get what freedom is about."

She adds,

By the way, the same can be said about the way Obama uses words like competition, accountability, or fiscal responsibility. Obviously, the president doesn't understand the full or true meaning of these words, either.

Iran has absolutely nothing to fear from this president

My president:

Iran has taken weeks now and has not shown its willingness to say yes to this proposal ... and so as a consequence we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences.

What?

This is a total joke. The consequence is that we have begun discussing the importance of consequences?

We elected this man president?

I've really tried to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, but this is beyond parody.

I'm disgusted.

Iran has absolutely nothing to fear from this president.

Unions block teacher bonuses

Boston Herald:

The Boston Teachers Union staunchly opposes a performance bonus plan for top teachers . . . insisting the dough be divvied up among all of a school’s teachers, good and bad.

There you have it. Teachers unions in a nutshell. Performance bonuses must be given to everyone, even those who don't perform.

Any questions?

"Saved" jobs in New Hampshire

Via Instapundit:

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Recovery.gov shows money flowing to nonexistent Congressional districts. “Recovery.gov also shows 2,893.9 jobs created with $194,537,372 in stimulus funding in New Hampshire’s 00 congressional district. But, there is no such thing. The site also shows $1,471,518 going to New Hampshire’s 6th congressional district, $1,033,809 to the 4th congressional district and $124,774 to the 27th congressional district. In fact, New Hampshire only has two congressional districts; inviting confusion about where the money listed for the 00, 4th, 6th and 27th districts is going.”

Where was the fact checking of Obama?

The AP fact checks Sarah Palin's new book.

That's all well and good, but I don't recall them giving this level of scrutiny to Barack Obama. Perhaps if they were more interested in the inaccuracies and misleading statements in his books, speeches, and debates, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. At the very least, we might have had a clearer picture of who this guy was.

Update: Powerline fact checks the fact checkers.

It appears to be a tribute to the factual accuracy of Palin's book that eleven hostile AP reporters can't come up with anything better than this.

Wealth redistriubtion increases povery

Just came across this, from Katherine Mangu-Ward in 2007:

In theory, redistribution of wealth is supposed to benefit the least fortunate. In practice, it doesn’t necessarily work out that way. In a new study, Matthew Ladner of the Goldwater Institute and Paul J. Gessig of the Rio Grande Foundation crunch census data for the 1990s and find that the poor did much better in states with low taxes and low spending than in states with higher taxes. Big-spending, high-taxing states saw increases in poverty rates, despite a national economic boom. On average, big spenders in Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wyoming saw a 7.6 percent increase in poverty rates, while cheapskates in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas saw their poverty rates drop nearly 10 percent.

As evidence continues to mount that large government programs, supported by high tax rates, is a recipe for failure, we continue to put our trust in people like Obama, who, after having spent trillions in just a few months, intends to spend even trillions more.

I'm beginning to doubt that Americans will recognize this logic gap in my lifetime.

Time for Obama to stop whining about Bush

This, from Victor Davis Hanson, is too concise to parse, and short enough to post in its entirety:

George W. Bush inherited a recession. He also inherited the Iraq no-fly zones, a Middle East boiling after the failed last-minute Clintonian rush for an imposed peace, an intelligence community wedded to the notion of Saddam's WMD proliferation, a Congress on record supporting "regime change" in Iraq, a WMD program in Libya, a Syrian occupation of Lebanon, Osama bin Laden enjoying free rein in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a renegade Pakistan that had gone nuclear on Clinton's watch with Dr. Khan in full export mode, and a pattern of appeasing radical Islam after its serial attacks (on the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers, U.S. embassies, and the U.S.S. Cole).

In other words, Bush inherited the regular "stuff" that confronts most presidents when they take office. What is strange is that Obama has established a narrative that he, supposedly unlike any other president, inherited a mess.

At some point, Team Obama might have at least acknowledged that, by January 2009, Iraq was largely quiet; Libya was free of WMD; Syria was out of Lebanon; most of the al-Qaeda leadership had been attrited or was in hiding; a homeland-security protocol was in place to deal with domestic terror plots; European governments were mostly friendly to the U.S. (unlike during the Chirac-Schröder years); and the U.S. enjoyed good relations with one-third of the planet in China and India.

The fact that in the Bush years we were increasingly disliked by Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chávez, Kim Jong Il, Morales, Ortega, and Putin, may in retrospect seem logical, just as their current warming to the U.S. may prove to be cause for alarm, given the repugnant nature of these strongmen.

Bottom line: Obama's second year as president is coming up, and it is long past time to move on and let historians judge the Bush years.

Yep, exactly.

I don't get it

So I'm watching Fox News, and they are talking about how Kahled Sheikh Mohammed, the guy who planned the murder of 3000 Americans on 9/11 will be tried in a federal courtroom.

I'm baffled. This guy didn't live in America. He did his planning from a foreign country. He was captured in a foreign country. Why is he entitled to constitutional protections? As far as I'm concerned he shouldn't be allowed to set foot on American soil. If gets a trial, it should be a military trial. This has nothing to do with our criminal justice system or our constitution.

Equally baffling is why this guy should be getting a trail at all. The banner on Fox read "Confessed mastermind of 9/11 to face federal trail in NYC." He confessed. He did it. Everyone knows he did, and he admits he did it. So what's the trial for? And why is Attorney General Eric Holder on my TV saying KSM will stand trail for the acts he "allegedly" committed? Seems to me, once a guy has confessed we can stop all this alleged nonsense.

This is so wrong in so many ways. And now his lawyers are going to put the US on trial. We'll spend a year documenting every detail of how this guy was treated and how immoral America is. The world will get turned upside down, with KSM being the victim and evil George Bush being the bad guy.

The country doesn't need this. It's a distraction from what matters. It's an insult to Americans. And it's a moral outrage.

The man confessed to murdering 3000 Americans. It's pure insanity that he's still breathing. Put a bullet in his head and lets move on.

Plus, this:

Trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda, tie up our courts for years on issues best left to the president and Congress, and further cripple our intelligence agencies’ efforts to fight terrorists abroad.

KSM and his co-defendants will have all of the benefits and rights that the U.S. Constitution accords those who live here, most importantly the right to demand that the government produce in open court all of the information that it has on them, and how it was obtained.

Tax facts

McQ runs down some tax facts from by the Tax Foundation. Everyone should keep these handy and reread them periodically. An excerpt:

Fact 3: High corporate taxes punish workers.

As the new study explains, there is a growing body of evidence that a large share of corporate taxes is really borne by workers—most of whom are not wealthy. Using statistical methods, the new study found that for every $1 rise in state and local corporate tax collections, real wages in that area fell by $2.50 five years later. The reverse is also true: wages rose by $2.50 for every $1 reduction in state and local corporate income taxes.

If wages are depressed in your particular state or locality, check out the corporate tax rate – as we’ve pointed out for years, corporations don’t pay taxes, they pass them on.

Blue states struggling under financial woes

KnoxNews.com has a couple of simple graphics showing that the states that are in the worst financial trouble are those that voted for Obama.