OBAMA:“Unfortunately, over the last decade, we have not done what is necessary to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity. We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has shortchanged investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits.”

THE FACTS: This is partly true. For sure, the costly Iraq and Afghanistan wars have contributed to the nation’s budget deficit — but not by as much as Obama suggests. The current annual deficit is now an estimated $1.5 trillion. But as recently as 2007, the budget deficit was just $161.5 billion. And that was years after war expenses were in place for both the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

Most of the current deficit is due to the longest recession since the 1930s. It has seriously depressed tax revenues while increasing costs to the government — including social safety-net programs such as unemployment insurance and spending by both the outgoing Bush and incoming Obama administrations on stimulus programs and on bailouts of banks and automakers.

The AP doesn’t question Obama’s notion of “investing in our own people” –lib-speak for tax (take money from those who earned it) and spend (on someone Obama, et al, feel is more deserving.)

But this milestone should serve as a reminder to all Americans that the future is ours to shape if we move forward with confidence and commitment.  It should also serve as a message to the world that the United States of America intends to sustain and strengthen our leadership in this young century.

This is the very opposite of what the Democrats preached during Bush’s term.

Only Sen. Joe Lieberman stood strong, and for that the Democrats purged him.

From this desk, seven and a half years ago, President Bush announced the beginning of military operations in Iraq. Much has changed since that night. A war to disarm a state became a fight against an insurgency. Terrorism and sectarian warfare threatened to tear Iraq apart. Thousands of Americans gave their lives; tens of thousands have been wounded. Our relations abroad were strained. Our unity at home was tested.

Our unity was tested because Democrats decided there was no political upside to backing Bush’s policy, despite having voted for the liberation of Iraq.

To explain away the change, they cynically concocted a Big Lie, with full support of the mainstream media: the notion that Bush tricked them.

Thus we endured years of ugly politics brought to us by Michael Moore,  Joe Wilson/ Valerie Plame, assorted Hollywood nitwits, Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, Cindy Sheehan, and Barack Obama himself.

Yeah, our unity was tested.

Incoherent: The president argued that the war had represented a worthwhile cause, asserting that “We have persevered…because of a belief…that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization.” Moments later, however, the president insisted that the war had instead been mistaken: “We have spent a trillion dollars at war…This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits.” The president wants to have it both ways, associating himself with the victory we achieved in Iraq while distancing himself from the costs. As argument, this is incoherent. But of course it isn’t argument. It’s cheap manipulation.

Grudging: “The Americans who have served in Iraq,” the president accurately stated, “completed every mission they were given…They shifted tactics to protect the Iraqi people; trained Iraqi Security Forces; and took out terrorist leaders….Iraq has the opportunity to embrace a new destiny….” In other words, we won. Why? Because in 2007, when many, including then senators Obama and Clinton, insisted that the United States should simply withdraw from Iraq, leaving behind a nation reduced to chaos, George W. Bush instead insisted on a new strategy, the surge. Let me repeat that. We won because President Bush insisted on the surge.

Did President Obama extend the courtesy to his predecessor of saying as much? He most certainly did not.

“It’s well known,” President Obama said, “that [President Bush]…and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.” Support, love, commitment. President Obama could bring himself to credit President Bush with nothing more than mere well-intentioned haplessness. How shabby. How tawdry.

Disgraceful: After having added $1 trillion to the deficit since taking office, President Obama suggested that somehow the $1 trillion the nation has spent in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade “short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits.” Take just a moment to do the math—something of which our chief executive apparently believes most Americans incapable. The cost of the war against radical Islam has averaged $100 billion a year—which comes to one-eighth the size of the President’s stimulus bill, or one-thirtieth of the average federal budget over the same ten years. I have my reservations about the president’s economic advisors, but they know—he knows—that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with our economic woes. He was intentionally attempting to mislead us…

Last night, President Obama did something amazing. He delivered — dare I say it? — a rather neoconservative speech, in the sense that neoconservatism has argued for aggressive American involvement in the world both for the world’s sake and for the sake of extending American freedoms in order to enhance and preserve American security.

Perhaps Obama did not even realize it, but when he said that “as the leader of the free world, America will do more than just defeat on the battlefield those who offer hatred and destruction — we will also lead among those who are willing to work together to expand freedom and opportunity for all people,” he was echoing ideas developed in neoconservative journals over decades of argument about how the United States can best project its power for its own

sake and for the sake of the betterment of the world.

When he said that “we must use all elements of our power — including our diplomacy, our economic strength and the power of America’s example — to secure our interests and stand by our allies,” he was speaking in the voice of those neocons who argue that American geopolitical power is enhanced when we use it to bind our friends closer to us.

And when he said that “we must project a vision of the future that is based not just on our fears, but also on our hopes — a vision that recognizes the real dangers that exist around the world, but also the limitless possibility of our time,” Barack Obama was offering a more secular version of George W. Bush’s assertion that liberty is not something unique to the American constitution, but is “God’s gift to humanity.”

And it meant something too that, for the first time, he spoke heartfelt words about his predecessor. “No one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security,” Obama said, knowing full well that tens of millions of people did doubt it and many thousands of activists who helped him get elected argued the opposite.

Even more stunning, perhaps, is the fact that Obama was willing to use this nation’s involvement in Iraq — which he had opposed so completely and whose extension in the form of the surge in 2007 he argued against flatly — as an example of what America can do when it puts its mind to it. “This milestone should serve as a reminder to all Americans that the future is ours to shape if we move forward with confidence and commitment,” he said.

These are astonishing words to emerge from the mouth of Barack Obama, who has spent most of his public life and his presidency arguing that it is not the place of the United States to shape the future outside our borders — that, in fact, such efforts to shape the future have harmed rather than helped this country and the world.

He went further still, issuing a quietly nationalist challenge to the world. The American victory in Iraq “should also serve as a message to the world that the United States of America intends to sustain and strengthen our leadership in this young century.”

No wonder he was so nice to George W. Bush last night. The speech sounded like Bush. Not as eloquent or as memorable, but, hey, that’s life.

the “shameful breakdown in government” that followed Katrina, which he described as “a natural disaster but also a man-made catastrophe.”

The oil spill in the Gulf may be mostly out of the headlines now but Louisiana voters aren’t getting any less mad at Barack Obama about his handling of it. Only 32% give Obama good marks for his actions in the aftermath of the spill, while 61% disapprove.

Louisianans are feeling more and more that George W. Bush’s leadership on Katrina was better than Obama’s on the spill. 54% think Bush did the superior job of helping the state through a crisis to 33% who pick Obama. That 21 point margin represents a widening since PPP asked the same question in June and found Bush ahead by a 15 point margin. Bush beats Obama 87-2 on that score with Republicans and 42-30 with independents, while Obama has just a 65-24 advantage with Democrats.

During the first half of this year, German and American political leaders engaged in an epic debate. American leaders argued that the economic crisis was so bad, governments should borrow billions to stimulate growth. German leaders argued that a little short-term stimulus was sensible, but anything more was near-sighted. What was needed was not more debt, but measures to balance budgets and restore confidence.

The debate got pointed. American economists accused German policy makers of risking a long depression. The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, countered, “Governments should not become addicted to borrowing as a quick fix to stimulate demand.”

The two countries followed different policy paths. According to Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, the Americans borrowed an amount equal to 6 percent of G.D.P. in an attempt to stimulate growth. The Germans spent about 1.5 percent of G.D.P. on their stimulus.

This divergence created a natural experiment. Who was right?

The early returns suggest the Germans were. The American stimulus package was supposed to create a “summer of recovery,” according to Obama administration officials. Job growth was supposed to be surging at up to 500,000 a month. Instead, the U.S. economy is scuffling along.

The German economy, on the other hand, is growing at a sizzling (and obviously unsustainable) 9 percent annual rate. Unemployment in Germany has come down to pre-crisis levels.

Results from one quarter do not settle the stimulus/austerity debate. Many other factors are in play. For example, Germany is surging, in part, because America is borrowing. Essentially, we Americans borrowed from our kids, spent some of that money on German machinery, and ended up employing German workers.

But the results do underline one essential truth: Stimulus size is not the key factor in determining how quickly a country emerges from recession. The U.S. tried big, but is emerging slowly. The Germans tried small, and are recovering nicely.

The economy can’t be played like a piano — press a fiscal key here and the right job creation notes come out over there. Instead, economic management is more like parenting. If you instill good values and create a secure climate then, through some mysterious process you will never understand, things will probably end well.

The crucial issue is getting the fundamentals right. The Germans are doing better because during the past decade, they took care of their fundamentals and the Americans didn’t.

The situation can be expressed this way: German policy makers inherited a certain consensus-based economic model. That model has advantages. It fosters gradual innovation (of the sort useful in metallurgy). It also has disadvantages. It sometimes leads to rigidity and high unemployment.

Over the past few years, the Germans have built on their advantages. They effectively support basic research and worker training. They have also taken brave measures to minimize their disadvantages. As an editorial from the superb online think tank e21 reminds us, the Germans have recently reduced labor market regulation, increased wage flexibility and taken strong measures to balance budgets.

In the U.S., policy makers inherited a different economic model, one that also has certain advantages. It fosters disruptive innovation (of the sort useful in Silicon Valley). It also has certain disadvantages — a penchant for over-consumption and short term thinking.

In the past decade, American policy makers have done little to maximize their model’s natural advantages or address its problems. Indeed, they’ve only made the short-term thinking problem worse, with monetary, fiscal and home-ownership policies encouraging even more borrowing and consumption.

Nations rise and fall on the intertwined strength of their cultures and governing institutions. Despite all the normal shortcomings, German governing institutions have functioned reasonably well, ushering in painful but necessary reforms. The U.S. has a phenomenally creative culture, but right now it’s an institutional weakling.

If you look around the world today, you see that a two-class system is coming into being. Some countries are undertaking fundamental reforms. In those places, weaknesses have been exposed. Orthodoxies have been shattered. New coalitions have formed.

This is happening in Britain, where a center-right government is reining in a government that had spun out of control. It’s also true in Sweden and other consensus-based countries, where there is so much emphasis on consistent, long-range thinking.

In other countries, political division frustrates long-range thinking. The emphasis is on fixing things for next month or next quarter. The U.S., unfortunately, is struggling to get out of Group 2.

Senior executives, on-air personalities, producers, reporters, editors, writers and other self-identifying employees of ABC, CBS and NBC contributed more than $1 million to Democratic candidates and campaign committees in 2008, according to an analysis by The Examiner of data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Democratic total of $1,020,816 was given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks, with an average contribution of $880.

By contrast, only 193 of the employees contributed to Republican candidates and campaign committees, for a total of $142,863. The average Republican contribution was $744.

Disclosure of the heavily Democratic contributions by influential employees of the three major broadcast networks follows on the heels of controversy last week when it was learned that media baron Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. contributed $1 million to the Republican Governors Association.

The News Corp. donation prompted Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association and son of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, to demand in a letter to Fox News chairman Roger Ailes that the cable news outlet include a disclaimer in its coverage of gubernatorial campaigns. Fox News is owned by News Corp.

The state’s slogan is “Don’t mess with Texas.” But the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is doing just that, and at stake is whether the Obama administration can impose its global-warming agenda without a vote of Congress.

President Obama’s EPA is already well down the path to regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, something the act was not designed to do. It has a problem, however, because shoehorning greenhouse gases into that 40-year-old law would force churches, schools, warehouses, commercial kitchens and other sources to obtain costly and time-consuming permits. It would grind the economy to a halt, and the likely backlash would doom the whole scheme.

The EPA, determined to move forward anyway, is attempting to rewrite the Clean Air Act administratively via a “tailoring rule,” which would reduce the number of regulated sources. The problem with that approach? It’s illegal. The EPA has no authority to rewrite the law. To pull it off, the EPA needs every state with a State Implementation Plan to rewrite all of its statutory thresholds as well.

Where are the voices wailing about the “shredding of the Constitution.”

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Chairman Bryan W. Shaw saw the tailoring rule for what it really is: a massive power grab and centralization of authority. They are fighting back, writing to the EPA:

“In order to deter challenges to your plan for centralized control of industrial development through the issuance of permits for greenhouse gases, you have called upon each state to declare its allegiance to the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently enacted greenhouse gas regulations – regulations that are plainly contrary to U.S. laws. … To encourage acquiescence with your unsupported findings you threaten to usurp state enforcement authority and to federalize the permitting program of any state that fails to pledge their fealty to the Environmental Protection Agency. On behalf of the State of Texas, we write to inform you that Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Read it all.

President Obama may be on vacation this week at Martha’s Vineyard, but as with all Presidents, it’s a working vacation.  That’s good, because the people who rely on fishing in the Northeast Atlantic have a message for Obama, which is that they don’t think that fewer jobs is better for their industry.  The Boston Herald highlights a little-covered aspect of the administration’s efforts to impose top-down economic policies, this time on fisheries to solve a problem that’s mainly resolved anyway:

Leaders of the recreational and commercial fishing industry are planning a boat protest against federal policies Thursday outside the harbor of Vineyard Haven on Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama and his family are summer vacationing.

The protest is being organized after a bipartisan, bicameral coalition of federal lawmakers — including the core of the President’s Congressional base on banking and health care issues — have given up hope of working productively with Obama’s top appointee for oceans and fisheries, Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The White House and Lubchenco want an end to private commercial fishing and have taken steps to eliminate “freelancing,” for lack of a better term.  Instead, they want to close the fisheries into “commodities markets” where the government essentially licenses fishermen and then allocates the catch based on a predetermined distribution plan.  The “commodities markets” will kill many fishing-based jobs and essentially turn fishermen into government employees, and they’re not happy about it.

In an economy where jobs are already scarce, how does the Obama administration justify the destruction of these jobs?

In a statement to the Times soon after her confirmation by the Senate, Lubchenco’s office said her goal was to see a “significant fraction of the vessels … removed.”

With the stocks rebuilding strongly, fishermen wonder at the need to reduce the size of the work force. …

Lubchenco has argued that consolidation, which has consistently followed catch shares, produces fewer but better jobs while giving the government a stronger hand in conservation.

So the new mantra is “fewer, but better jobs”?  I’m certain that the fishermen stuck on land will appreciate the beauty of the jobs they no longer hold.

The new policy has already been put in place in New England for groundfisheries, and the command economy approach has already produced its usual results:

New England’s groundfishery, America’s oldest continuing industry which had harvested commonly owned resources, was converted to catch share principles on May 1 — with a total allocation divided and distributed to fishermen as catching rights that [can] be bought, sold or traded.

But the minute size of the total allocation and the eccentric mixes of quota from the 15 species and 20 stocks in the groundfishery have pushed many businesses into — or close to — insolvency, a development that earlier this month brought a proposal from a bipartisan coalition of U.S. senators for a $100 million buyout.

Let’s get this straight.  The new policy of this administration is to encourage the kind of commodities speculation in fisheries that we saw in mortgage-backed securities?  And doesn’t that system favor large corporations who can afford to speculate with their capital over the small businesses and independent operators who can’t afford to buy rights to fish in these “commodities markets”?   Get ready for higher prices and more unemployment.