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The farm bill was typical pigs at the trough. David Brooks comments first.
… The question amid this supposed change election is: Who is going to end this sort of thing?
Barack Obama talks about taking on the special interests. This farm bill would have been a perfect opportunity to do so. But Obama supported the bill, just as he supported the 2005 energy bill that was a Christmas tree for the oil and gas industries.
Obama’s vote may help him win Iowa, but it will lead to higher global food prices and more hunger in Africa. Moreover, it raises questions about how exactly he expects to bring about the change that he promises. …
… John McCain opposed the farm bill. In an impassioned speech on Monday, he declared: “It would be hard to find any single bill that better sums up why so many Americans in both parties are so disappointed in the conduct of their government, and at times so disgusted by it.” …
Examiner editors next.
Pathetic. Craven. Irresponsible. Unprincipled. Those and similar adjectives apply to every member of Congress who voted for the bloated, anti-consumer piece of legislative corruption known as the Food and Energy Conservative Act of 2008 a k a as “the farm bill.” President Bush has promised to veto the bill. To put it plainly, everybody in Congress who votes to override the coming Bush veto should be retired come November because they will have voted for a measure that is nothing more — or less — than a $300 billion giveaway of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money. This is especially true for conservative Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats who brag about their fiscal rectitude. …
St. Louis Post Dispatch’s David Nicklaus.
It’s hard to find anything to like about the 2008 farm bill, unless you get all misty-eyed when politicians start talking about bipartisanship.
Democrats and Republicans indeed have agreed — in large enough numbers that the House and Senate should be able to override a threatened presidential veto — to spend roughly $300 billion on a bill that subsidizes wealthy farmers at a time when farm income is at a record level. For good measure, this pork-laden bill interferes with trade policy and undercuts environmental goals. …
… As if Congress hadn’t rolled enough bad policies into a single bill, it added a tax break for millionaire owners of racehorses.
“This bill sets a very high standard for pork,” said Washington University economist Murray Weidenbaum. “The basic explanation is the power of tightly knit special-interest groups. This is a very cynical example of public-policy formation.”
When it comes to big, important issues like war, trade and immigration, our nation’s leaders are sharply divided. But when it comes to handing out goodies to the politically powerful, they’re all on the same side.
If this is what bipartisanship is all about, I want my gridlock back.
Hot Air gets to lead off with Obama’s nutty suggestion we should ask the world where we set our thermostats. Corner posts follow.
… “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said. …
Power Line gets in on the fun.
Caroline Glick comments on the unique appeasement style of Barack Obama.
Spin doctors were relabeled “strategists” in the early 1990s. And as Mark Steyn wrote last week in National Review, “Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies.”
The latest attitude to be flouted as policy is indignation. Specifically, Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama’s furious indignation at President George W. Bush’s address before the Knesset last week where he celebrated Israel’s 60th anniversary and extolled the US’s alliance with Israel. Beyond praising the Jewish people’s 4,000 year-old devotion to the Land of Israel and to liberty, Bush used the speech to warn against those who think that Iran and its terror proxies can simply be wished away through appeasement.
As the president put it, “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided. We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
To Israeli ears, Bush’s words were uncontroversial. Israel is beset by enemies who daily call for its physical annihilation and while doing so, build and support terror forces who attack Israel. For most Israelis, the notion that these enemies can be appeased is absurd and deeply offensive.
The only strong reaction that Bush’s remarks provoked in Israel was relief. In spite of the Bush administration’s own participation in the six-party talks with North Korea, its support for the EU-3′s feckless discussions with the mullahs, its paralysis in the face of Hizbullah’s takeover of Lebanon, and its support for the establishment of a Palestinian state run by Fatah terrorists dedicated to Israel’s destruction, at the very least, standing before the Knesset, Bush effectively pledged not to allow Iran to acquire the means to conduct a new Holocaust.
From an Israeli vantage point then, it was shocking to see that immediately after Bush stepped down from the rostrum, Obama and his Democratic supporters began pillorying him for his remarks. Most distressing is what Obama’s reaction said about the Democratic presidential hopeful.
OBAMA’S RESPONSE to Bush’s speech was an effective acknowledgement that appeasing Iran and other terror sponsors is a defining feature of his campaign and of his political persona. As far as he is concerned, an attack against appeasement is an attack against Obama. …
Roger Simon reacts to Tom Friedman’s “Obama and the Jews” so you don’t have to waste your time.
As a non-subscriber, I don’t keep up with NYT op-eds the way I used to, so I didn’t read Thomas Friedman’s thumbsucker “Obama and the Jews” until today. And I don’t read Friedman much anymore anyway, finding his unchanged (for decades) views so predictable my head falls onto the page (or computer screen) in near sleep by the time I have read the second paragraph. …
Jennifer Rubin starts a series of Contentions posts on Obama and his ideas.
This remarkable bit of footage from Barack Obama’s appearance in Oregon last night is now floating around on YouTube. It might be useful as an undergraduate course exam: how many errors can you spot? Obama apparently believes that Iran and other rogues states (he lists Iran, Cuba and Venezuela) “don’t pose a serious threat to the U.S.” Iran, specifically, he tells us spends so little on defense relative to us that if Iran “tried to pose a serious threat to us they wouldn’t . . . they wouldn’t stand a chance.”
So, taken literally, he seems not much concerned about Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, its sponsorship of terrorist organizations, its commitment to eradicate Israel, its current actions in supplying weapons that have killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq, and its role in eroding Lebanon’s sovereignty through its client Hezbollah. …
Abe Greenwald continues with his reaction to thermostat-gate.
… In other words, now our domestic policies have to pass a global test, too. And not just our domestic policies, but our individual domestic lives. Barack Obama has rendered the American hearth and home subject to world opinion. We can’t “eat as much as we want” and hope to be popular. We can’t sit comfortably in our warm domiciles and hope to build alliances with other countries. Only as a nation of shivering hungry supplicants will America, it seems, reclaim its dominance on the world stage.
And to the Dem confusion about Obama’s positions.
Jennifer Rubin again …….
And once more …..
Linda Chavez reacts to “Lay off my wife.”
… Michelle Obama doesn’t just show up at fundraisers or make the occasional, canned surrogate speech. She is, as The New York Times noted here, involved in shaping campaign strategy, and her speeches have sometimes generated as much attention as his. Why shouldn’t she be fair game for speculation, dissection, and criticism?
Michelle Obama is an Ivy League-educated lawyer with strong opinions and an activist career. The last First Lady with a similar pedigree ended up using the hitherto ceremonial role to launch her own political career.
More random thoughts from Thomas Sowell.
… It would be hard to think of a more ridiculous way to make decisions than to transfer those decisions to third parties who pay no price for being wrong. Yet that is what at least half of the bright ideas of the political left amount to. …
… At one time, to call someone “green” was to disparage them as inexperienced or immature. Today, to call someone green is to exalt them as one of the environmentalist saviors of the planet. But it is amazing how many people are green in both senses. Some people who think it is wrong to tell children to believe in Santa Claus nevertheless think it is all right to tell adults to believe that the government can give the whole population things that we cannot afford ourselves. Believing in Santa Claus is apparently bad for children but OK for adults. …
… Whoever said that overnight is a lifetime in politics knew what he was talking about. Just 6 months ago, the big question was how Hillary and Giuliani would do against each other in this year’s presidential elections.
Debra Saunders is losing sleep over the prospects for Clinton Dems.
… Before Iowa, when the Clintons were the party’s power couple, the faithful quickly became indignant at any criticism, deserved or not, of either Clinton. As Obama racks up more delegates, Republicans and Democrats can say anything they want about either Clinton, and there is no outrage. Worse, it is now apostasy to criticize Obama.
Even if they were white, middle-aged and living in mostly white enclaves, Clintonians had a quick ticket to the votes of black America. If a Republican said something that could be construed as racist, they did not hesitate to pull the race card.
Now the First Black President and his missus, Hillary, are the race-baiters. The world is upside-down. …
… Poor, poor Clinton Democrats. Now they know how it feels to be Republicans.