The Passion Of The Newt

David Brody at CBN:

Newt Gingrich, who is expected to run for President tells The Brody File that he “felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness” over his past marital infidelity and now that he’s at the grandfather stage he is “truly enjoying the depths of my life in ways that I never dreamed it was possible.”

The Brody File sat down with Gingrich Monday afternoon at The Machine Shed Restaurant in the suburbs of Des Moines before the big Iowa Faith and Freedom event.

We’re posting three clips from the interview below with transcriptions.

There will be those Evangelicals who can’t get past Gingrich’s transgressions from earlier in his life. But let’s remember. Evangelicals know all about grace and redemption too and if Gingrich can connect on issues important to Evangelicals (especially in Iowa and South Carolina) then look out. He has a path to the nomination. Don’t write him off. He can compete strongly for the Evangelical vote.

Newt Gingrich: “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.  And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them.  I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness.  Not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness.  I do believe in a forgiving God.  And I think most people, deep down in their hearts hope there’s a forgiving God.  Somebody once said that when we’re young, we seek justice, but as we get older, we seek mercy.  There’s something to that, I think.  I feel that I’m now 67 I’m a grandfather.  I have two wonderful grandchildren.  I have two wonderful daughters and two great sons in law.  Callista and I have a great marriage. I think that I’ve learned an immense amount. And I do feel, in that sense, that God has given me, has blessed me with an opportunity as a person.  Forget about all this political stuff.  As a person, I’ve had the opportunity to have a wonderful life, to find myself now, truly enjoying the depths of my life in ways that I never dreamed it was possible to have a life that was that nice.”

Doug Mataconis:

Newt Gingrich is out with a rather unique reinterpretation of his marital infidelities

Josh Green:

I have greatly enjoyed Donald Trump’s hilarious, boastful attempts to explain why his divorces should not trouble social conservatives. Last week, Trump told the Des Moines Register, “One of the reasons I was divorced is because I worked very hard. And, you know, that’s a good reason. But I worked very, very hard building up a great company.” So I guess that justifies it, right?

I had assumed that this said more about Trump’s Olympian self regard than it did anything about the Republican Party. But after watching David Brody’s interview with Newt Gingrich on the Christian Broadcasting Network, I’m starting to wonder. Here’s how Gingrich explained his divorces: “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”

That sounds an awful lot like Trump’s excuse, and shares the similarity of seeming more concerned with complimenting one’s own hard work, patriotism and overall greatness than with, you know, penitently explaining the reasons why one’s marriages keep falling apart.

John Podhoretz at Commentary:

See, he worked far too hard because he loved his country too much and then he acted wrongly, but fortunately God forgives, plus God blessed him with an opportunity as a person.

I’d spend some time parsing this, seeking to show how he simultaneously takes responsibility and doesn’t take responsibility and how he actually praises himself when he’s supposedly criticizing himself. But what’s the point? He’s a fascinating, and occasionally brilliant, political thinker, but one thing the merciful and forgiving God who has so blessed him did not bestow upon Newt Gingrich was a sense of when to stop talking.

Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

While he is admitting that he did something wrong, he’s also trying to justify his behavior by aggrandizing himself. My own view is, when you’re owning up to something, you own up to it fully. You don’t try to explain or justify it yourself. The problem Gingrich faces when it comes to his personal problems is that the best possible argument a politician can make in these cases is that people should separate personal indiscretions from performance in office. Yet as leader of the effort to impeach President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Gingrich is in the worst possible position to make that argument. So we’ll have to keep a close watch on how this goes over with the base.

In the meantime, I wouldn’t recommend any cheating guys tell their wives/girlfriends, “Sorry honey, I was just acting on my passion for my country.”

Jeffrey Goldberg:

I didn’t want it to happen, of course. No one does. When you take the marriage vows, you take them for life, right? So at first, I suppressed those unwanted feelings. Sure, I noticed her purple mountain majesties as soon as she walked in the room. I mean, who didn’t? Believe me, in a sweater, those purple mountains sure were majestic. And her amber waves of grain? I couldn’t pry my eyes away. So lush and, well, ambery. What was I to do? Maybe it’s because my defenses were down — I was working so hard at the time — that my mind soon wandered to her fruited plains. Bad, bad thoughts! But I just couldn’t help myself.

At first, of course, I didn’t say a word. I tried to confirm my soul in self-control. Oh, how I tried! And she played it straight, even when she caught me staring at her alabaster cities. But then I succumbed. I succumbed to sin. It was a business trip, of course. What a trip! It took us from the redwood forests all the way to the gulf stream waters. I was working so hard! Did I mention that I was working so very hard?

On that perilous night, when I first lifted my lamp by her golden door, she was dressed in broad stripes and bright stars. I was always a sucker for broad stripes and bright stars. It happened after a long day of exceedingly hard work. Boy, was I tired from all that hard work! She knew I wanted her. And I knew she wanted me. In a flash, our clothes fell to the floor, and she whispered huskily in my ear, “Give me your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,” and before I knew it, I saw that golden valley. Oh, the rockets’ red glare! The bombs bursting in air!  In that moment of indivisible union, I screamed out, “America, America! God shed His grace on thee!”

I was hopelessly, irretrievably in love. I guess that makes me a sinner. But it also makes me a patriot.

Wonkette:

“I hope you can forgive yourself, God, for making this country so damn fuckable. Jeez Louise, this country is fucking hot! It’s actually your fault I had sex with women outside my marriages, because you shouldn’t have dressed up the United States in those skimpy borders. What am I saying? It’s not even wearing any clothes!”

Many politicians say they love this country. But few have the strength to admit to the U.S. they want to take it in the back room and cum on its face. THOSE POLL NUMBERS ARE GONNA CLIMB NOW!

 

The Dean Is Dead

Adam Bernstein in the Washington Post:

David S. Broder, 81, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and one of the most respected writers on national politics for four decades, died Wednesday at Capital Hospice in Arlington of complications from diabetes.

Mr. Broder was often called the dean of the Washington press corps – a nickname he earned in his late 30s in part for the clarity of his political analysis and the influence he wielded as a perceptive thinker on political trends in his books, articles and television appearances.

In 1973, Mr. Broder and The Post each won Pulitzers for coverage of the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation. Mr. Broder’s citation was for explaining the importance of the Watergate fallout in a clear, compelling way.

As passionate about baseball as he was about politics, he likened Nixon’s political career to an often-traded pitcher who had “bounced around his league.”

He covered every presidential convention since 1956 and was widely regarded as the political journalist with the best-informed contacts, from the lowliest precinct to the highest rungs of government.

Joel Achenbach:

If there were a more decent and generous journalist in our business than David Broder, I’ve never met the person.

Broder (“David” to everyone in the hallway, the elevator, the campaign filing center, of course) remained the consummate collegial figure long after — decades after — earning the status of “dean of the Washington press corps.” He had no pretense in him. He was a big-name pundit, but, most of all, he was a thing we used to call “a newspaper reporter.” He knocked on doors to the very end of his career, interviewing voters, getting to know the local political organizers, never promoting himself to a rank too exalted to conduct shoe-leather reporting or pound out a deadline story in a cold gym in some remote corner of New Hampshire or Iowa.

Who am I kidding: He loved those gyms! And the tighter the deadline, the better.

He could turn his analytical eye on his own reporting: Read this story by Broder, in which he expresses doubts about his influential report of Ed Muskie becoming tearful in the snow outside the Union-Leader office in the 1972 New Hampshire primary. Maybe it was just melting snow!

Steve Benen:

Regular readers know that I was often critical of Broder’s columns, but my critiques were driven in part by high expectations — the man was a giant of political journalism.

And even when I disagreed with his analysis, it was impossible not to respect his tenacity and his decency.

Best wishes go out to his family and friends.

David Weigel:

Last September, I traveled to Delaware to interview Rep. Mike Castle and his challenger, Christine O’Donnell, about a soon-to-be-infamous primary election. Castle and I talked for a long while he shook hands with voters outside the Arden Fair.

“This is becoming a pretty big deal,” Castle said. “You just missed David Broder. He came up here to interview me about the race.”

Broder, at that point, was about to turn 81 years old. He hadn’t just beaten me to the story, he’d beaten me by a month, traveling up to Delaware to interview Castle and introduce readers to Chris Coons, a “worthy match” who could actually win. After Castle lost the primary, the political press — myself included, reluctantly — spent countless pixels covering O’Donnell. But Coons won. If you had read Broder’s reporting, you would have expected that.

I can think of nothing more satisfying than doing what you love, doing it well, and making your readers more informed about the world because of the information you’re gathering. I’m deeply grateful to Broder for doing that for so many people over such a long time.

Philip Klein at American Spectator:

Broder was working up until the very end, and anybody who covers politics for a living has probably bumped into him at one point or another. I remember covering the Rudy Giuliani campaign during a cold weekend in New Hampshire in November 2007, and Broder, then in his late 70s, was touring along. I noticed him at one event, standing in the back, his hand slightly shaking as he took notes the old fashioned way while younger reporters were running around with digital recorders and scrambling to upload video on their laptops.

I wondered whether I’d still find the campaign trail so alluring when I reached that age.

Jim Newell at Gawker:

A few quick facts about David Broder:

• He was only a car or two behind President Kennedy when he was assassinated in 1963. He was proud of his ability to show no human emotion during this traumatic episode for the country. This is probably how he secured “dean” status, by preventing himself from writing with any sort of sadness or sympathy during the assassination of a golden-boy president several yards away.
• He hated the Clintons and led the moralistic Beltway howl against President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It was the angriest he’d ever been in his life, when he heard about Bill Clinton getting a hummer from Monica Lewinsky.
• He liked compromise and bipartisanship as ends in themselves, had no real interest in analyzing specific pieces of legislation, and was an original proponent of many other familiar Washington media traits, like “both sides do it.” For more, google High Broderism.
• He was an important figure in 1972’s The Boys on the Bus, one of the earliest media-centric books showcasing the depravity of “pack journalism” on the campaign trail.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

The phrase “Broderism” became a signifier in the blogosphere for a certain type of self-regarding faux-centrism which always seemed to side with deficit peacocks over everyone else, and defaulted to the position that the midpoint between any two issues was always the wisest course.

Broder’s book “The System,” about the failure of the Clinton health care plan in the 1990s, is actually a highly regarded work. But for many years, he seemed to have been writing the same column over and over, attacking the extremes of political debate in favor of the sensible center.

Nevertheless, Broder had a very strong pull on national politics, and was considered within Washington as the dean of the national press corps. So his death changes that landscape, however subtly

 

What Happened To Tabitha Hale?

Tabitha Hale at Redstate:

Today, union thugs descended on the FreedomWorks office. It was the middle of the day, and there was some excitement outside as all the buses pulled up and people started to fill the courtyard. We decided to go out and show our support for freedom. Intern Steve was quickly suited up.

We wandered around talking to people, and saw the buses lined up on the street. NEA, AFT, SEIU, and CWA signs dominated – a veritable “who’s who” of union thuggery, to be sure. They all had on matching tee shirts and printed signs, as is to be expected.

I was taking pictures and video with my phone, and I heard my coworker getting into a heated exchange with one of the protesters. I turned on my iPhone camera and headed over to film it. They were going back and forth, the protester called my colleague a “little sh*t” just as I walked up, which is where the video starts. Then he noticed I was filming. Here’s what happened

Basically, it’s ridiculous. I’m a 5′1 female in a dress, and he was standing up on a garden wall above me in the courtyard. He hardly felt threatened. I was stunned, because generally protesters are there to, you know, get their message out. They don’t normally shy away from the camera.

I’m very much okay, and very appreciative of the support from my fellow bloggers and activists today. I am, however, shaken up by the level of sheer hatred I experienced today. The look of fury on his face in the close up is appalling. I had not exchanged a word with him. He didn’t know who I was. He didn’t even know my name, what I do. He had probably surmised that I was with FreedomWorks and that was enough.

This just can’t be tolerated anymore. It’s one thing to be called a violent teabagger. It’s another to be called a violent teabagger while you’re being assaulted. They’ve been comparing themselves to the Egyptians ousting Mubarak. Looks like they’re not too far off, given that they share the tendency to assault women with cameras.

Michelle Malkin:

Thankfully, Hale tells me she wasn’t hurt. But there is no doubt from this video that the CWA t-shirt-wearing goon should be prosecuted for assault.

They said it: “Get a little bloody.” It’s the union way.

Civility police, where are you now?

Instapundit:

And you’d think someone from the Communications Workers’ union would know better than to strike someone with a camera. But take a look at the video and you’ll see the angry, yet impotent face of today’s labor movement — right before the punch.

Jim Treacher at The Daily Caller:

I know Tabitha. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I’m sick of this crap. We get months of “Teabaggers are violent” — hell, years — when in reality, Tea Partiers have been the recipients of violence. Meanwhile, these union guys are ratcheting up the violent rhetoric and now actually assaulting people in broad daylight. Come on, somebody defend this violent jackass. I dare you.

Moe Lane:

Tabitha Hale of Freedomworks is a friend and RedState colleague; which is the secondary reason why there is currently a red haze across my vision.  The primary reason, of course, is because I cannot abide men who hit women.

Robert Stacy McCain at The American Spectator:

In another incident at the same protest, also   captured on video, one of the union picketers made a comment about a lack of diversity among the FreedomWork activists. When a FreedomWorks supporter responded that he was Jewish, this prompted a young woman in the AFL-CIO mob to begin yelling that he was “bad Jew!”

So it would appear, based on this woman’s rant, that Richard Trumka has become the High Priest of Righteous Judaism — which is kind of strange, considering that Trumka’s Italian.

Statements And Resolutions… Wasn’t That A Paul Simon Song?

Colum Lynch at Foreign Policy:

The U.S. informed Arab governments Tuesday that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal.

But the Palestinians rejected the American offer following a meeting late Wednesday of Arab representatives and said it is planning to press for a vote on its resolution on Friday, according to officials familar with the issue. The decision to reject the American offer raised the prospect that the Obama adminstration will cast its first ever veto in the U.N. Security Council.

Still, the U.S. offer signaled a renewed willingness to seek a way out of the current impasse, even if it requires breaking with Israel and joining others in the council in sending a strong message to its key ally to stop its construction of new settlements. U.S. officials were not available for comment, but two Security Council diplomats confirmed the proposal.

Jennifer Rubin:

The U.S., according to an informed source on Capitol Hill, also offered “support for a UNSC fact-finding mission to the Middle East, which the Russians have been pushing.” And there was “some sort of Quartet statement that would reference the 1967 borders.” Israel, of course has made perfectly clear that 1967 borders are unacceptable, and, in any case, that this is an issue for direct negotiations. (That would be the direct negotiations that the Palestinians walked out of last fall.)

This remarkable deviation from past administrations’ treatment of Israel was not lost on Pawlenty. His spokesman provided a statement via e-mail, “The Obama administration has shown an astonishing unwillingness to stand by Israel at the United Nations, an organization with a long history of blaming Israel for just about every problem in the Middle East. It’s time for our UN ambassador to finally show some leadership, draw a line in the sand, and defend our historic ally. Global stability depends more than ever on a respected America that is loyal to our allies and realistic about the malice of our adversaries.”

Pawlenty is exactly right. Because this administration does not want to do what its predecessors did — exercise the Security Council veto to shield Israel from one-sided resolutions seeking to isolate the Jewish state in the international community — it instead has offered to join the pack of jackals that seek, at best, to extract concessions and impose a deal on Israel and, at worst, delegitimize Israel.

Hugh Hewitt:

This is as shocking. For the president to undercut Israel even as instability mounts on all of Israel’s borders is a clear signal that Team Obama is either indifferent to Israel or incompetent beyond even its critics estimates.

The presider-in-chief is presiding over a major and unprecedented turning against Israel.  Allahpundit says it isn’t a “total sellout” of Israel, but it is a major blow to Israel at precisely the moment when Muslim radicals are wondering if they can run the board, and whether the U.S. will stand behind its long-time ally. Ben Smith has some updates.  Even if the blowback forces the U.S. to do what it ought to have done from the beginning –threaten a swift and conclusive veto on any such resolution– no supporter of Israel ought to forget that at a moment of great peril to Israel, President Obama endorsed piling on with statements of disapproval from the Security Council.   Perhaps the U.S. ought to have suggested statements of disapproval of Iran, Libya, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas were all in order first.

John Tabin at American Spectator:

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-New York) gets it exactly right:

This is too clever by half. Instead of doing the correct and principled thing and vetoing an inappropriate and wrong resolution, they now have opened the door to more and more anti-Israeli efforts coming to the floor of the U.N. The correct venue for discussions about settlements and the other aspects of a peace plan is at the negotiating table. Period.

This is a moment of uncertainty in the Middle East, with a wave of protest movements threatening the stability of autocrats across the region. If this leads to the opening of Arab societies, that’s a good thing in the long term (tyranny has bred radicalism; freedom is likely to breed moderation). But in the short term, a more democratic Arab world could be enormously destabilizating; people who have been fed decades of propaganda laden with Jew-hatred will be tempted to embrace a politics of confrontation with Israel. Maintaining Israel’s ability to project strength is the best bet for maintaining peace — Israel must be able to credibly say things like “You don’t like Camp David? We’ll be taking the Sinai back, then.” This is no time to be shy about reminding the world the the US has Israel’s back.

Danielle Pletka at AEI:

Hmmmm, how do we get back to a more “balanced approach”? Aha! The way we always do: Screw Israel. After all, the resolution the Palestinians are pushing is little more than cheap maneuvering. It certainly isn’t going to advance the peace. What the administration fails to appreciate is that this “feed the beast” move is going to have the effect that feeding the beast always has. It will be hungrier. So of course, the White House’s execrable “compromise” has only encouraged Israel’s (and our) enemies to up the ante. Clever.

Israel Matzav:

On Wednesday night, a couple of hours before this report broke, an Israeli Radio commentator expressed amazement that with all that’s going on in the Arab world today, the Arabs are still aggressively pursuing this resolution. After watching what has happened in Egypt, my sense is that the Wikileaks disclosures to which Omri referred reflected the views of the elites and not those of the Arabs on the street. The Arabs may be trying to save their regimes by distracting them with Israel big time. The US is apparently willing to help them out, even at the expense of throwing its most loyal ally under the bus. And the Europeans, as always, are cheering them on.

Maybe the US is hoping the ‘Palestinians’ will once again not miss the opportunity to miss an opportunity by saying that the Council statement isn’t good enough?

What could go wrong?

No Orcs Were Harmed In The Making Of This Trailer

Steven Nelson at The Daily Caller:

FreedomWorks will host a premier of the trailer for the film adaption of Atlas Shrugged at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Since the novel by Ayn Rand was published in 1957, efforts to produce a film version have been attempted. All failed due to a variety of legal and editorial disputes.

Protagonist Dagny Taggart will be played by actress Taylor Schilling, who previously was the lead character in NBC medical drama Mercy.

Atlas Shrugged has been highly influential within conservative and libertarian circles for its support of laissez-faire economics.

David Weigel:

FreedomWorks has been distributing “Who Is John Galt?” signs and merchandise at CPAC, part of an advertisement for a faithful adaptation of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” Clips from the movie have been playing at CPAC. I haven’t watched them all. I have seen the trailer.

James Joyner:

Last night, the CPAC Bloggers Bash attendees were “treated” to an excruciatingly long preview of the forthcoming “Atlas Shrugged” movie, which will hit a theater near you on April 15. Actually, it’ll just be Part I.  Like the Lord of the Rings, this will be a trilogy.

Judging by the preview, I can fully understand why it took more than two decades to find a studio to produce the flick. This is quite possibly the most boring film ever made — and I include documentaries that are shown in grammar school so that children can request to view them backwards.

Put it this way: I simply do not know enough expletives to adequately express how truly horrible this film was. I would rather be subjected to the “Clockwork Orange” treatment than sit through one part of this. I might well prefer death to enduring the trilogy.

Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

As a long-time fan of the novel and a very discriminating movie viewer, I’ll admit that I’ve had my doubts about this project all along, given its low budget and rushed production schedule. Viewing the scenes that I did – albeit a small sample size – did not assuage my early concerns.

Like the book, the film is set in the near future, though now it’s given the date of 2016. The filmmakers went for a “ripped from the headlines” type vibe, with images of the economy tanking, the country’s infrastructure collapsing, protests raging in the streets, Congress passing statist legislation, and a TV news anchor leading a panel discussion between some of the book’s characters.

The dramatic scenes were true to the book. The problem is that Rand’s characters don’t really speak like normal people, and this can be particularly jarring on film if not handled correctly. I found the dialogue in the parts between Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon to be unnatural and their acting subpar.

I spoke with some fellow bloggers afterword who thought I was being too harsh and others who were outright enthusiastic about what they saw. I felt compelled to write something given the immense interest in this film, but I’ll withhold further judgment until I see the entire movie, which is the first of a planned three-part series.

Allah Pundit:

If anything, to me it feels too generic, like a promo for some new Fox primetime soap about young, beautiful businesspeople. Think “Melrose Place” meets “Wall Street.” Or isn’t that what “Atlas Shrugged” basically is, plus some loooooooong didactic passages about libertarianism? (Haven’t read it!)

Cole Abaius at Film School Rejects:

Who is John Galt, and does anyone care?

For all I know, “meh” is not actually a word, but somehow it perfectly describes the new Atlas Shrugged trailer. This movie has been through true development hell – detailing every incarnation would be a long, strange trip, but for some reason, no one’s ever pulled the trigger on it until now.

Its 40 year ride through development, through Brad Pitt and Russell Crowe, through Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron, has deposited it here – without any big stars and split up into three films.

Tbogg:

Before I begin, no post about Atlas Shrugged is complete if it does not include this:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.- KF Monkey

So, for your Friday evening’s viewing pleasure (courtesy of DougJ  aka A Writer At Balloon Juice, LLC) and pretty much everyone else who has stumbled across this youtube nugget: Atlas Shrugged: The Movie, coming soon to cinema emporium hopefully nearer to you than me.

Trains. Who in America doesn’t want to see more movies with lots and lots of trains in them? And industrialists talking about money and profits. And trains. Let’s go to the imdb description:

A powerful railroad executive, Dagny Taggart, struggles to keep her business alive while society is crumbling around her.

As we can see from the preview, Dagny is going to shut down her train business and that will make America fail. Because America’s trains …. well, I guess they power iPhones or make porn or something. And we all know that America cannot live without those things.

According to someone at imdb who seems to be in the know:

Rand’s dramatic classic comes to the screen after decades of endeavor. Although on a tight budget, it is well cast, and the story is given a modern setting to appeal more to today’s audiences.

If they wanted to update it to appeal to modern audiences then the trains would change into big robots are start fighting each other amidst shit blowing up. Then they could have gotten Michael Bay to make this film. It would still be shitty, but at least it would make money.

The End Of Mubarak And The End Of Fannie and Freddie?

Uri Friedman at The Atlantic:

On Friday, the Obama administration laid the foundation for what is sure to be a fierce debate about the role government should play in supporting homeownership in the United States in the wake of the housing bubble and financial crisis.

The Treasury Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a report to Congress outlining how government can gradually scale back its involvement in the mortgage market and transfer housing finance to the private sector. The report proposes abolishing the government-backed mortgage providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac within ten years and suggests three possible systems to take their place.

Daniel Indiviglio at The Atlantic:

With that said, however, the government’s presence in the housing market will not disappear entirely. In fact, it would certainly remain intact for the affordable housing initiatives through the Federal Housing Authority and other targeted programs, as it had in the past. The big change would be how mortgage funding would be provided for the vast majority of mortgages in the U.S., which have heavily relied on Fannie and Freddie for decades. The Treasury wants the private market to step in and take on most of that funding responsibility and relieve taxpayers of some or almost all of the mortgage market’s risk.

Before getting into the three alternative policy possibilities that it offers, the plan explains how the mortgage market would be weaned off of Fannie and Freddie over a period of time. One change would be to gradually increase the guarantee fees that the GSEs charge, so that private guarantors would be able to better compete. Another change would be to require Fannie and Freddie to obtain more private capital to cover subsequent credit losses. The Treasury also intends to reduce the size of mortgages that qualify for Fannie and Freddie guarantees. Finally, the administration intends to wind down Fannie’s and Freddie’s mortgage portfolios, by at least 10% per year.

The Treasury also provides some guidance on mortgage underwriting and measures to crack down on predatory lending. Perhaps the most surprising assertion was that loans that obtain government backing going forward — excluding those in designated programs specifically targeting lower-income borrowers — should eventually be required to “have at least a ten percent down payment.” The Treasury also stressed the importance of ensuring borrowers have the ability to pay the mortgages they obtain.

Mark Calabria at Cato:

While the report does say a lot of the right things — such as protecting the taxpayer — it is awfully short on any real details.  And in many areas, the report makes clear that the Obama administration intends to keep the taxpayer on the hook for future losses arising from Fannie and Freddie.  For instance, after assuring us that the GSEs will have sufficient capital to meet their obligations, including debt, the report tells us that such capital will not come from investors, but from the taxpayer.  One has to wonder whether this report was written for the benefit of the Chinese Central Bank (one of the largest GSE debtholders) or for the benefit of the U.S. taxpayer.

Equally vague is the discussion of “winding down” Fannie and Freddie.  While that sounds great, how is this to be accomplished? And how long will it take?  Again it seems that this “wind-down” will be financed by the taxpayer.  It is suggested that the GSE guarantee fees will increase.  Again, by how much and when?

Paragraph 2 of Section 1074 of the Dodd-Frank act, which required this study, also requires an “analysis” of various options and impacts.  In all due respect to HUD and Treasury and their efforts, there is nothing in this report that remotely resembles an “analysis” — just vague generalities.

I appreciate the administration’s stated desire to move us closer to a private market solution, but we’ve heard these empty promises before.  Remember that financial reform was going to end “too big to fail” and bailouts?  Health care reform was going to “bend the cost curve”?  It is past the time of fluff.   We need actual details and an actual plan.

Ezra Klein:

Beyond the basically insane structure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — private institutions with lobbyists, profit motives, and the protection of an unarticulated but widely acknowledged government guarantee to cover their big losses — the administration’s diagnosis of what went wrong in the housing market speaks much more to issues dealt with in the financial-regulation law than issues included in their three options for reform of the government’s system of housing finance and insurance.

The story they tell begins in the consumer market, where inadequate protections and incompetent regulatory oversight allowed the brisk trade in bad mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them to take off. It then moves to the opaque and underregulated finance system, where the banks were packaging products they didn’t understand into securitized bonds and selling them off so quickly that they stopped worrying about how risky they were, and where regulators didn’t see what was going on and thus didn’t demand the banks hold enough capital to protect themselves from the inevitable reckoning.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were part of this story, of course. But they were late to the party. They only got into the riskier stuff in 2006, while the rest of the financial industry had been playing in the mud since 2001. Reforming them can help mitigate a housing crisis in the future. But given this chain of events, it can’t prevent it.

The root causes will be fixed — or not — in Dodd-Frank. It’s up to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to strengthen the weak consumer protections that allowed these mortgages to be sold in the first place. Regulators will have new powers to force financial players — particularly the megafirms whose failure threatened the whole system — to hold more capital as a buffer against bad times. Banks won’t be able sell off all their risk because the law says they have hold five percent of the risk of any product they originate — though as Bethany McLean notes, that’s not true when the product consists of “qualifying residential mortgages,” and it’s up to the regulators implementing Dodd-Frank to define what a qualifying residential mortgage is.

That’s not to say reforming the way the government structures its presence in the housing market doesn’t matter. It does. But the government isn’t looking to dramatically change the role they play in the housing market. They’re just looking to get away from poorly designed institutions like Fannie and Freddie. The real action — the work that could prevent another crisis — is still in Dodd-Frank, where many of the questions central to how the housing markets works going forward haven’t been answered, and where many of the rules that might stop it from blowing up again have yet to be written.

Arnold Kling:

Incidentally, the more I think about it, the more outraged I am by the sketchiness of their proposal. It takes up only a few paragraphs, and those are quite vague. It is the sort of thing that, if somebody tossed it out at a meeting or in a blog post, you would say, “Might be interesting, but I am not quite sure how you would do it. Do you have a background paper on it somewhere?” In the form that it is presented in the report, I think that it is irresponsible to even call it a proposal. Shame on Treasury for putting something so half-baked at the center of their report.

This puts me in the strange position of defending Freddie and Fannie. My first choice would be for government not to hand out any goodies. But if you are going to have the government hand out goodies, the ability of regulators to control the costs and mitigate the risks will be much greater if we revert to Freddie and Fannie than if we try something new. Under any arrangement, the hard part will be what I call “staying off the booze,” meaning keeping the government from guaranteeing riskier mortgages (second mortgages, cash-out refis, loans on investment properties, loans with low down payments, etc.) when house prices start rising again.

Monica Potts at Tapped:

It’s far to ask whether we’ve been over-promoting homeownership, and, as Alyssa Katzdoes in the latest issue of the Prospect, what we maybe should do instead. Alyssa will have more detail on what happens after Fannie and Freddie on TAP Monday, but for the meantime, I’d like to point out what a symbolic victory this is for conservatives. Whether Fannie and Freddie should have been preserved probably wasn’t considered lightly, but conservatives have been vilifying the agencies as the cause of the crisis since the beginning. They weren’t, they were simply the last to ride a wave that started on Wall Street. That doesn’t mean the weird private/public limbo in which they did business wasn’t also a bad thing, but it does mean that conservatives will point to their demise as proof they were right.

Joseph Lawler at The American Spectator

2.5 Is The Number, Baby!

Jon Ward at The Daily Caller:

A number of the House GOP’s leading conservative members on Thursday will announce legislation that would cut $2.5 trillion over 10 years, which will be by far the most ambitious and far-reaching proposal by the new majority to cut federal government spending.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, will unveil the bill in a speech at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday morning.

Jordan’s bill, which will have a companion bill introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, would impose deep and broad cuts across the federal government. It includes both budget-wide cuts on non-defense discretionary spending back to 2006 levels and proposes the elimination or drastic reduction of more than 50 government programs.

Uri Friedman at The Atlantic with a round-up

Tina Korbe at Heritage:

Jordan, who serves as chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said the SRA would immediately return spending to 2008 levels and eventually cut non-defense discretionary spending to 2006 levels, as well as implement a hard freeze through 2021.

“I have never seen the American people more ready for the tough-love measures needed to put our country back on a sustainable path,” Jordan said. “The question today is: Will the political class rise to the standard the American people have set the last year and a half? … I think the answer is yes.”

Jordan authored a Washington Examiner op-ed with Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) detailing the proposal, which also eliminates unused stimulus money and severs the government’s ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It’s one of several priorities for the RSC this year. Jordan reminded the Heritage audience that the RSC exists to ensure that Republicans act like Republicans.

Following shortly after the spending proposal, the RSC plans to unveil a Welfare Reform Act — something Jordan said he feels especially strongly about, as he ran for office in large part to strengthen the institution he considers the country’s bedrock: the family.

Jim DeMint, Jim Jordan, and Scott Garrett at The Washington Examiner:

Known as the Spending Reduction Act, this bill makes major strides toward resolving the debt crisis by cutting $2.5 trillion of spending between now and 2021. Here’s how it works:

In the short term, the Spending Reduction Act makes $125 billion of immediate rescissions, which target money already approved by Congress, by cutting current spending back to 2008 levels and repealing the remaining funds from Obama’s failed “stimulus” package.

The largest step toward spending reduction begins with the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1. On that day, the bill further cuts non-defense discretionary spending to 2006 levels and implements a hard freeze through 2021.

This alone will save taxpayers $2.3 trillion. A portion of these savings come from reducing the size and cost of the civilian federal work force. Attrition will trim the work force by 15 percent, while salaries will go without automatic pay increases for the next five years.

Our plan’s overall reduction specifically targets more than 100 separate budget items and spending reforms, ranging from the elimination of duplicative education programs (saving $1.3 billion annually) to a 50 percent reduction of the federal travel budget (saving $7.5 billion annually).

These specific savings, when combined with additional reforms like ending Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s taxpayer bailout, total approximately $376 billion over the next decade.

America’s debt problem wasn’t created overnight, and implementing a complete solution will take both time and perseverance. With a healthy dose of courage from elected leaders, however, we can get America moving on the right track again.

Over the long term, balancing the budget will require lasting private sector job creation and robust reforms to entitlement programs that still operate on outdated demographic assumptions.

After passing the Spending Reduction Act, Congress must work to tear down barriers to job creation and make our safety-net programs sustainable for the 21st century. Only when all Americans have ample opportunity to earn success and build prosperity on their own will we enjoy lasting fiscal and economic stability.

David Weigel:

The proposal does what Republicans have been talking about for two years — “repeal” of remaining stimulus funds (now $45 billion), privatizing Fannie and Freddie ($30 billion), repealing Medicaid’ FMAP increase ($16.1 billion), and what they estimate at $330 billion in discretionary spending cuts. Highlights of these projected annual savings:

– Cutting the federal workforce by 15 percent through attrition, and do this by allowing only one new federal worker for every two who quit.
– Killing the “fund for Obamacare administrative costs” for $900 million
– Ending Amtrak subsidies for $1.565 billion
– Ending intercity and high speed rail grants for $2.5 billion
– Repealing Davis-Bacon for $1 billion
– Cutting annual general assistance to the District of Columbia by $210 million, and cutting the subsidy for DC’s transit authority by $150 million.

Reforms that go after their own perks:
– Cutting the Federal Travel Budget in half, for $7.5 billion
– Cutting the Federal Vehicle Budget by 1/5, for $600 million
– Halve funding for congressional printing – $47 million annual savings
– Ending the death gratuity for members of Congress

And cuts that get revenge for Juan Williams: $445 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $167.5 million from the NEA, and $167.5 million from the NEH.

“Everything on this list pales in importance to saving the country,” said Rep. John Campbell (R-Ca.). “We are much closer to the Greece-Ireland-Spain precipice than any of us would like to believe.”

Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

I’m still awaiting a more detailed breakdown of the proposal, which the RSC tells me won’t be released until later today or tomorrow, but in a press release and an op-ed by Sen. Jim DeMint, and Reps. Jim Jordan and Scott Garrett, they claim the proposal would save $2.5 trillion over 10 years. It’s not clear how they get to that number, but I would imagine it’s largely a result of the spending freeze, which would lower discretionary spending relative to projections. The problem with relying on spending freezes is that you still have to figure out down the road where the actual savings are coming from, especially as time goes by and inflation makes it more challenging to meet those annual spending targets. And as we know, we won’t get the long-term debt under control without a serious effort to reform entitlements. That said, at first blush, I don’t see anything in the above list that would not be worthwhile to cut.

As the authors acknowledge, “On its own, passing the Spending Reduction Act will not get us over the finish line — but we will get a $2.5 trillion head start.”

Nick Gillespie at Reason:

If you want to get serious about cutting spending, you can’t be talking about going back to 2008 levels, a favorite GOP ploy since it focuses attention on the Obama years. Yet as readers of this site well know, the ramp up started with George W. Bush and the GOP Congress.

Doug Mataconis:

The fact that the plan doesn’t even touch to two biggest items on the budget is troublesome, and it’s worth noting that $2.5 trillion over ten years amounts to no more than 6.5% of the total amount of anticipated Federal spending over that period. Nothing to sneeze at, but hardly the solution to our problems. Nonethless, it’s a good start. Let’s see them put this in legislative action, get it passed, and dare the Senate not to be fiscally responsible.

Will He Bring Good Things To Life?

Jeffrey Immelt at WaPo:

President Obama has asked me to chair his new President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. I have served for the past two years on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and I look forward to leading the next phase of this effort as we transition from recovery to long-term growth. The president and I are committed to a candid and full dialogue among business, labor and government to help ensure that the United States has the most competitive and innovative economy in the world.

Business leaders should provide expertise in service of our country. My predecessors at GE have done so, as have leaders of many other great American companies. There is always a healthy tension between the public and private sectors. However, we all share a responsibility to drive national competitiveness, particularly during economic unrest. This is one of those times.

Ed Morrissey:

The new CJC will help Obama politically in a couple of ways.  First, the new board will showcase a new priority on jobs, a “pivot” Obama began promising in December 2009 and the lack of which contributed to the midterm beating Democrats took two years ago.  Second, membership on the board will apparently include a number of CEOs in a more high-profile advisory capacity than earlier outreach efforts.

The White House has to hope that the increased reliance on private-sector executives will improve Obama’s relationship with the business community as well as answer critics who have blasted the administration for its dearth of real-world business experience.  But it also comes as a rather large coincidence.  The White House just announced the start of its re-election campaign efforts, which will be run out of Chicago, and which will be tasked with beating the $700 million in contributions Obama raised in the 2008 campaign.  He will want businesses to get involved in that effort; his sudden interest in what CEOs think at least has the appearance of self-interest more than a change in economic philosophy.

Hopefully, Obama actually takes their advice and puts pro-growth economic policies in place while pulling back hard on regulatory innovation.  I suspect, however, that this is more intended as window dressing while Obama pursues the same economic policies that have led to stagnation and persistently high unemployment.

Joe Klein at Swampland at Time:

Gotta admit I’m not too pleased by the departure of Paul Volcker from Barack Obama’s circle of adviser. He was one of the few, along with Elizabeth Warren, in the current administration who had a proper perspective on the outrageous behavior that the financial community considers business as usual. And while the appointment of his replacement Jeffrey Immelt, of General Electric, signals a desire to snuggle up to the business community–at least Immelt comes from the manufacturing sector. He has experience actually making products, a skill notably lacking among every one of Obama’s other economic advisers.

Again, I’ll repeat: the important distinction here is between the business community, which should be encouraged to create more jobs, and the financial community, which should be shamed for its casino-gaming shenanigans and kept away from the inner circles of economic policy-making.

Chris Horner at The American Spectator:

Let the 2012 Re-Elect begin. Obama is now monomaniacally promoting non-enforceable rhetoric about jobs’: a WSJ editorial trumpeting a non-enforceable executive order to look back at olds regs, fogging the mirror so we can’t focus so well on the orgy of new regs which is actually what threatens the economy; and today’s gesture, another executive order establishing a new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness led by none other than General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, of “We’re all Democrats now” and “The government has moved in next door, and it ain’t leaving. You could fight it if you want, but society wants change. And government is not going away” fame.

So he’s focusing on gummint jobs, direct or indirect, regardless, they’re the looming boomlet will be of jobs paid for by political dictate and out of your pockets. Not quite markets at work. Which is really the kind   he promised the Obama economy would be built around. In a word: bubbles. Great.

emptywheel at Firedoglake:

I noted the other day that GE had signed a big deal with China that will involve us sharing our jet technology with China, which will ultimately help China compete with both GE and — China has said explicitly — Boeing. Then there’s the fact that, even as Immelt has been calling for manufacturing in the U.S., his company has been shutting U.S. plants to move the work to China.

While Immelt was calling for manufacturing to stay in the U.S., his company was at the same time shipping manufacturing jobs overseas by canceling an order with an American-based wind turbine maker, ATI Casting Service in LaPorte, Ind., so that GE could instead buy the parts from a factory in China.

Recently, ATI made $30 million worth of investments to buy, convert, and modernize a shuttered factory in economically ravaged Michigan so the company could provide more parts to GE as the green economy expands with federal stimulus funding. But a Chinese firm underbid ATI, and the factory faced having to lay off 302 union workers and shutter the plant.

In an aggressive bid to keep the factory open, ATI offered to match the price of the Chinese producers. GE once again said they would prefer to buy from China. The ATI plant is now closed, the jobs gone.

Then there is Immelt’s call for Free — not Fair — Trade in his op-ed announcing the Kabuki Council.

Free trade: America cannot expand its manufacturing base without greatly increasing the volume of goods it sells overseas. That is why I applaud the free-trade agreement recently concluded between the United States and South Korea, which will eliminate barriers to U.S. exports and support export-oriented jobs. We should seek to conclude trade and investment agreements with other fast-growing markets and modernize our systems for export finance and trade control. Those who advocate increasing domestic manufacturing jobs by erecting trade barriers have it exactly wrong.

And then, finally, there’s the little detail that GE managed, alone of “manufacturing companies” in the U.S., to turn itself into a Too Big To Fail overleveraged finance company in need of a $16 billion bailout from the government (as has happened with all the TBTF finance companies, bailouts have made GE’s financing business profitable again).

In short, no matter how many times Immelt gets up on a podium or in an op-ed and feigns an interest in American jobs, his actions make him the poster child for everything wrong with the U.S. economy right now.

And that’s what Obama is rolling out, as he moves into campaign mode, to convince Americans he’s going to do a damn thing about jobs.

Richard Pollock:

This morning the president will sign an executive order creating a new “Council on Jobs and Competitiveness” that will be led by General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt. The new panel will replace the President’s “Economic Recovery Advisory Board” and White House economic czar Paul Volcker is out. Politico blandly says Volcker is leaving “as its mission ends.”

Why does this sound like something out of 1984? Or something that Pravda might have penned? Just substitute the term Kremlin for White House.

So…the creation of a new bureaucratic body to generate jobs is the president’s latest exciting BIG IDEA.

John Cole:

Does this council have any power, or is it just something to titillate the villagers like the SS commission? Who is this Immelt (other than a GE exec)? How do they expect to put people back to work without a jobs program, which no one will pay for in our new ages of austerity? Is this just another wet kiss on the lips for our corporate overlords? Did the DNC need some GE donations? What gives…

Today We’re Gonna Party Like It’s 2009

Elspeth Reeve at The Atlantic with a round-up. Reeve:

House Republicans will vote to repeal the health care law Wednesday–a vote widely expected to go nowhere, because the Senate won’t pass repeal, and if it did, President Obama would repeal it. But is the vote more than symbolic? It certainly won’t be the last we hear of the health care debate, The New York Times’ David M. Herszenhorn and Robert Pear report. Not by a long shot. Lawmakers will be fighting for the next two years over the government’s proper role in the health care system, and so will 2012’s presidential candidates.

The House began debating repeal Tuesday. Republicans argue that the Congressional Budget Office is underestimating the future cost of the law. Democrats say the CBO might be overestimating the price tag, because the law is meant to improve the delivery of care and thus slow the growth of its expense. Another major point of contention is whether the law will create or destroy jobs.

Andrew Stiles at The Corner:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) continues to challenge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to take up the Republican repeal of health care reform in the Senate once it (presumably) passes the House, where a vote is currently scheduled for 6:30 this evening.

“We have [s]aid that we are going to be a results driven Congress,” Cantor told reporters this morning. “So I have a problem with the assumption here that somehow the Senate can be a place for legislation to go into a cul-de-sac or a dead-end.”

“The American people deserve a full hearing,” he continued. “Let’s see the votes.”

Reid has said he has no plans to bring repeal to the Senate floor, in part because it has no hope of passing. Cantor has urged the Democratic leader to put his money where his mouth is. “If Harry Reid is so confident that the repeal vote should die in the Senate, then he should bring it up for a vote, if he’s so confident he’s got the votes,” Cantor said Tuesday.

Jennifer Rubin:

The conventional wisdom (i.e. the consensus of wishful-thinking, generally liberal elite opinion makers) is that it then goes nowhere. But don’t be so sure. Senate leadership advisers tell me there is always a way, through amendments and other procedural efforts, to get votes. They point out that filibusters also can be mounted. That is precisely why filibuster reform is going nowhere.

The Republican Senate leadership does not expect any Senate Democrats to flip sides on the vote for an out-and-out repeal. The consolation prize is that Democratic senators such as Jim Webb, Claire McCaskill, Ben Nelson and Bill Nelson will have to defend those votes in 2012.

On votes on discrete issues, there is a high likelihood that some provisions — e.g. the massive paperwork burdens on business — will draw Democratic votes. Likewise, there may be difficult votes for Democrats on everything from Medicare Advantage to the individual mandate.

Red state Democrats up for re-election in 2012 will have a very tough time of it — back the president or help their own re-election prospects? And as this goes on, the House will be holding hearing after hearing on ObamaCare to, in Nancy Pelosi’s words, find out what is in it.

Jimmie Bise:

For reasons I can’t quite fathom, progressives have decided that one of the big stories this week should be whether or not Speaker Boehner will change the name of the “Repealing The Job Killing Health Care Law Act”. Apparently, “job killing” is now verboten speech, lest some barely-hinged right winger mistake a Democrats for a job and kill…wait…mistake a Democrat for Obamacare and…

…okay, I’m baffled here. I don’t know why this is a story except that it involves the word “killing”, which is violent rhetoric, and violent rhetoric is wrong.

To Boehner’s credit, he toyed around with a few alternate phrasings, such as “job crushing” and “job destroying”, but they didn’t send the requisite tingle down Chris Matthews leg so he went back to the original name.

However, I am in possession of a super secret, ultra-classified list of names the GOP had considered to replace the “Repealing The Job Killing Health Care Law Act”. At the risk of running afoul of Dick Cheney’s Haliburton Ninja Death Squads, I will share them with you now.

5) The “We’re Not Going to Grind Gramma Into An Edible but Nutritious Slurry Act”.
4) The “Sarah Was Right; There Really Are Death Panels Act”.
3) The “Dear God in Heaven, What Were We Thinking Act”.
2) The “We’re In Charge, So How Do You Like Us Now Act”.
1) The “Happy Cuddle Puppies Nuzzle Wuzzle Act”.

I’m glad they stuck with the original.

Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

Of all the arguments liberals have been making during the health care debate, among the most tenuous is the idea that Republican members of Congress who accept government sponsored health insurance are being hypocrites for favoring repeal of government-sponsored health insurance for other Americans. Today, bloggers over at Think Progress post what they evidently think is a clever video of them challenging Republican members to explain why they accept government health care benefits.

The explanation for this is quite simple. Most Americans receive their health insurance through their employers, and members of Congress are employees of the government. Hence, the government helps pay for their coverage.

To extend the logic being used by liberals would mean that if Democrats were to propose a law in which the federal government sends $100,000 checks to every lower-income American, any Republican members who still collected their salaries would be hypocrites for opposing it.

Peter Suderman at Reason:

Here’s Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s latest defense of the administration’s health care overhaul: If it were repealed, according to the headline from an HHS press release yesterday, “129 million Americans with a pre-existing condition could be denied coverage.” That’s roughly half of all Americans under 65 who might “be at risk of losing health insurance when they need it most, or be denied coverage altogether,” according to the release.

Or maybe it’s a little less. OK, perhaps even a lot less. The release quickly qualifies the headline estimate to indicate that it may be that as few as 50 million Americans—just 19 percent of the non-elderly population, rather than half—under 65 have “some type of pre-existing condition,” which apparently means everything from cancer to high blood pressure. It’s all rather hard to pin down, you see. 50 million. 129 million. It’s somewhere in there. With precision estimates like these, you know they’ve got the goods.

Fine. 50 million is still a big number. Should we seriously worry that almost 20 percent of Americans will lose their health coverage without the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act?

Not really. As the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon points out, a 2001 study by none other than HHS noted that only 1 percent of Americans have ever been denied health coverage for any reason. And according to a just-published study in the health policy journal Health Affairs, “the fraction of nonelderly uninsured persons…who would be rated as actuarially uninsurable is generally estimated to be very small, less than 1 percent of the population.”

Scott Johnson at Powerline:

Putting Obamacare out of its misery is the critical mission that must be carried out be Republicans in the coming years. It seems to me to raise in a profound form the question Lincoln asked regarding Douglas’s professed indifference to slavery: “I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and endorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this Government into a government of some other form.” The form of the question suggests that the answer is yes, as I believe it to be in both cases.

In “Buck up and stop Obamacare,” Dr Milton Wolf asserts: “Obamacare has become ground zero in the fight for America’s future.” And that’s the spirit in which the task of killing Obamcare must be approached.

And The Last Unemployment Report Of 2010 Says…

Jared Keller at The Atlantic:

The national unemployment rate dropped from 9.8% to 9.4% in December, its lowest level in nearly nine months. The Labor Department reported that the economy added 103,000 jobs, while the agency also revised estimates from the two earlier months, reporting that 210,000 jobs were created in October instead of 172,000, and 71,000 in November, instead of 39,000.

Ross Kaminsky at The American Spectator:

Interestingly, the unemployment rate dropped for adult men and for whites, but not substantially for adult women (already doing far better than adult men, at 8.1 percent unemployment versus 9.4 percent for men), teenagers (an astounding 25.4 percent), blacks (15.8 percent), and Hispanics (13 percent).

According to BLS, “Employment rose in leisure and hospitality and in health care but changed little in other major industries. Since December 2009, total payroll employment has increased by 1.1 million, or an average of 94,000 per month.” There was a small gain in retail employment after a surprise loss in November. The goods-producing sector was essentially unchanged in December, down 2,000 jobs after being down 5,000 jobs in November. There were small gains in mining and manufacturing, offset by losses in construction, including civil engineering and residential building

Steve Benen:

For much of 2010, this was important because of the sharp differences we’ve seen between the private and public sectors. Most notably, the rise and fall of Census Bureau jobs can offer a skewed picture — some months, such as May 2010, look better than they should, because the monthly total is exaggerated by hundreds of thousands of Census jobs. Other months, such as June 2010, are distorted in the other direction, looking worse than they should.

But that period is just about over. In December, while the public sector lost 10,000 jobs, the private sector added 113,000 jobs, the 12th consecutive month of private-sector growth, which is nice, but not as nice as more robust job creation. The totals for both October and November, however, were revised upwards and appeared more at least slightly more encouraging.

Doug Mataconis:

It’s impossible to say we’re even anywhere close to recovery in the jobs market until the number of new jobs created, net of jobs eliminated, is at the 150,000 per month level and above. And that rate is going to have to be sustained for many, many, many months before the long impact of the Great Recession is really behind us.

So, yea, this is good news, but let’s not fool ourselves here. The jury is still out when it comes to jobs.

Update: Over at his own place, Dave Schuler is puzzled about the new jobs numbers:

Riddle me this. How can the U-3 unemployment rate fall sharply, the U-6 unemployment rate fall sharply, the number of long-term unemployed remain essentially the same and the economy only create 100K jobs? Inquiring minds want to know.

Indeed, and this was one of the first questions that went through my mind when I saw the figures this morning. It’s actually the second month in a row that we’ve had an odd jobs report. Back in December, the November jobs report initially came in with only 39,000 jobs created. That number was revised today to a net job creation of 71,000, nearly double the amount first reported. It leads one to wonder if there isn’t something odd going on at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Felix Salmon:

There’s no doubt that the headline payrolls number is a disappointment. The economy just doesn’t seem to be creating jobs: we need to see 150,000 new jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth. But is there some good news, at least, on the unemployment front?

I’m not sure. While unemployment is down from both December 2009 and December 2010, it’s down only for those who have been out of work for less than 26 weeks. The ranks of the long-term unemployed are still rising

Tom Maguire:

So, Team Obama gets a good headline today, probably borrowed against subsequent reports in which job creation will improve (we hope!) but the unemployment rate will stall or even rise (as discouraged workers find hope and look for change in their status).

Ezra Klein:

The fine folks at the Hamilton Project sent me this (frankly terrifying) graph showing how long it would take to reverse our job losses at various rates of payroll growth. Note that every line on here is showing vastly more job growth than we’ve seen for any sustained period thus far in the downturn: