Monthly Archives: September 2012

How’s That Working Out For You?

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Here are some more data on our economic condition:

  • US wholesale prices in August had the largest one-month gain in more than three years
  • The producer-price index, which measures how much manufacturers and wholesalers pay for finished goods, increased a seasonally adjusted 1.7% in August from July
  • Prices for intermediate goods—which are semifinished goods, like lumber or flour, that require further processing—grew 1.1% in August from July
  • Prices of raw materials increased 5.8% in August, suggesting prices for finished goods will rise further in the future
  • [I]nitial jobless claims were up 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 382,000 in the week ended Sep 8.  Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected “only” 370,000 new applications

And these data [emphasis mine]:

The income of the typical US family has fallen to levels last seen in 1995.  Census Bureau said annual household income fell in 2011 for the fourth straight year to an inflation-adjusted $50,054.  …it will be a generation before Americans regain the peak income levels reached at the close of the ’90s

Here’s a graph of what that looks like:

Notice that: Not only is income much lower than the Evil Bush years, it’s still falling.

The monthlies are snapshots, and should be taken with a grain of salt, certainly.  But they also bear watching, especially in light of those falling incomes under the Obama administration, and the inflation trap his Fed chief, Ben Bernanke, is building in with all that dollar injection.

And the guy who sometimes sits in the President’s chair actually said this, as though he believed it,

[W]e have made progress digging our way out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression[.]

Our Judiciary’s Selective Enforcement

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The Ninth Circuit strikes again.  The Ninth agreed with a Federal district court that an Idaho law that lets state authorities bring criminal charges against pregnant women who seek abortions by using medications purchased online would likely be found unconstitutional (the Ninth Circuit ruling can be found here).  The Ninth, however, overruled the lower court’s enforcement injunction, saying it was too broad.  Instead, the Ninth substituted its own injunction: state authorities are enjoined only from enforcing the Idaho law against the particular woman who brought the case, not from enforcing the law everywhere else.

The WSJ‘s Law Blog provides a summary of the case:

In May 2011, Mark Hiedeman, the prosecuting attorney in Bannock County, Idaho, brought criminal charges against Jennie Linn McCormack, an unmarried mother of three, after she purchased medications over the Internet in 2010 to terminate her pregnancy.  There are no licensed healthcare providers who offer abortions in southeastern Idaho and Ms McCormack, who didn’t want to have additional children, claimed the medications were prescribed by a physician outside of Bannock County.

The lower court set aside the case against McCormack and enjoined the prosecutor from enforcing the law against anyone on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.

Set aside your views of abortion for a moment, and consider what this appellate court has done vis-à-vis the injunction.

The law under which Hiedeman attempted to prosecute McCormack was found by the district court to be unconstitutional, and the Ninth agreed: it is likely be found unconstitutional.  Yet the Ninth then overruled the district court’s injunction against enforcing that law at all.

Their logic centers on the premise that the law has not yet, in fact, been found unconstitutional, and so the original broad injunction went too far.  Yet injunctions, by their nature, are temporary—even permanent ones, which can be withdrawn for any number of reasons at any later date when they’re found no longer to be useful.

So where is the harm done by the lower court’s broader injunction?  The state is harmed by not being able to enforce a law that is, nominally, legitimate.  Women are harmed by being threatened with prosecution—and potentially prosecuted and convicted—for acting as McCormack did and who is protected from prosecution for those same actions by the injunction as modified by the Ninth.  The women who are under the gun here, also are in a time-sensitive situation: their pregnancy must be terminated promptly, or not at all.  We the People are harmed by this court’s announcement that selective enforcement of a law, as a matter of state policy, is entirely legitimate.

This is a rule of law question, regardless of what we might think of the legitimacy of abortion itself.

The Obama Economy on the World Stage

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The World Economic Forum puts out annual reports reflecting the quality and freedom of the world’s national economies; their 2012 report is here, and Fox News has a brief summary here.

Here are some of those…highlights…reflective of the performance of the Obama administration’s economic policies.

  • Since 2008, the United States has slid from No 1 in the world in “global competitiveness” to No 7 this year.  Out-ranking us are Switzerland, Singapore, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany.
  • We’ve slid from 41st to 54th in “public trust in politicians.”
  • We’ve fallen from 50th to 76th on government regulation.
  • On government debt, though, we’ve not fallen so far; we already were near the bottom: from 97th to 140th.

James Gwartney, Economics Professor at Florida State University has the right of it:

The slide in the global competitiveness report is almost certainly due to … policy-related factors[.]

Yet Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama objects to serious reform.  He and his surrogates spent all of last week castigating those evil Republicans for their proposals that would address this slide, all while proposing nothing of his own.  Other than another cynically nebulous “promise” to cut our deficit [sic] by $4 trillion over the next four years.

Censoring Appeasement

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These tweets are from the US’ State Department via the embassy in Cairo just prior to and during the initial rioting and American flag desecration at the embassy, and on the same day that American diplomats and staff were murdered in Libya:

We condemn the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—
US Embassy Cairo (@USEmbassyCairo) September 11, 2012

and this:

U.S. Embassy condemns religious incitement ow.ly/dCxwY—
US Embassy Cairo (@USEmbassyCairo) September 11, 2012

Try that link.  The material on the other end is “File not found.”  Hmm….

And this:

This morning’s condemnation (issued before protest began) still stands. As does our condemnation of unjustified breach of the Embassy
—
US Embassy Cairo (@USEmbassyCairo) September 11, 2012

Which the Cairo Embassy deleted from its Twitter account.  Except that tweets last a while, as Twitchy notes.

And this carefully deleted tweet:

@BrianGriffiths we did not apologize to anyone because we did nothing—
US Embassy Cairo (@USEmbassyCairo) September 11, 2012

Follow this Twitchy link to see more that the Obama administration has deleted.

And this Cairo Embassy statement—oddly, no longer found, also; try the link:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.  Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy.  Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy.  We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others

But not a word of condemnation for those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt us.

What else is the Obama administration covering up?  What else have they tried to censor from the public’s eye concerning these despicable attacks and their timid response to them?

Can our nation afford four more years of this?

Still Equivocating

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Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama continues to soft pedal our government’s reaction to the atrocious attacks on our embassies and our personnel.

Fox News reports that in a call Tuesday to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, Obama had this to say:

…he rejects efforts to denigrate Islam…there is never any justification for violence against innocents.

Still caveating, still being squishy.  Still more concerned with the hurt feelings of thugs than with the safety, the honor of Americans and America.

And this, in a who-cares statement (indeed, throughout his entire prepared statement, Obama merely recited his lines, consulting his note cards more than the faces of his audience, with no emotion other than evident boredom, no outrage fueling his statement):

While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.

No.  No conditioned statement is necessary.  No caveats.  How do you “balance” the murders of innocents against anything?

There is never any justification for violence against innocents.

Period.

Addendum:  “We tragically learned that [Ambassador Stevens] had died.”  Tragically learned.  Not learned that [Ambassador Stevens] had tragically died.  Oh, no.  It’s Obama’s tragedy, not Stevens’ and his family’s.

Think I’m being too hard on Obama for a misspeak?  Watch the video.  He was reading from his prepared script.  He knew what he was saying.

Update: from Fox News this morning:

Secretary of State Clinton issued a statement strongly denouncing the anti-Islam video that is purportedly the cause of the violence as the administration sought to pre-empt further turmoil at its embassies and consulates.

“The United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video,” Clinton said before a meeting with the foreign minister of Morocco at the State Department. “We absolutely reject its content and message.”

Duck and cover.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  Apologize for having interrupted their fists with our face.  Don’t even think of denouncing the riots, the desecrations of our flag, the murders of our citizens, unequivocally.  In an actual statement of condemnation (hopefully accompanied by concrete action) that pulls no punches and that contains no other comments at all.  No, just point the finger at someone else.  Anyone else.  Especially at those evil Americans exercising their right of free speech.