Stock market milestone -- nothing much to celebrate

So, the Dow is at record heights and we’re in the middle of one of the biggest bull-runs on Wall Street in the past several decades. But no one seems all that excited about it.

Conservatives, of course, are not thrilled because this milestone occurred on Barack Obama’s watch. It’s pretty hard to argue that the president is a radical socialist when investors are living it up.

The traders at the NYSE also don’t seem terribly impressed.

"There's no massive sense of euphoria," Kenneth Polcari, director of floor operations for O'Neil Securities, said in a Wall Street Journal story. "Years ago, there was more excitement."

At the Huffington Post, Mark Gongloff offers a nice summary:

“The Dow is now up 118 percent from its bottom almost exactly four years ago, making this the third-strongest bull market since World War II. Throughout these four years there has been little sense of excitement about it. Almost everybody has reason to hate the bull market. Conservatives …blame it purely on easy money from the Federal Reserve, as if that is a novel affront to the natural order -- ignoring the fact that the Fed has had its hand in the market for decades now. The old adage about the Fed ‘taking away the punch bow’ didn't start under Obama or Ben Bernanke, after all.

“Liberals, meanwhile, can hate the rally, too, because it is most rewarding to those who seem least to deserve it: the already wealthy, including the bankers and grifters that got us into the financial crisis. And a rallying stock market is an insult to the 12 million people who are still unemployed amid the worst labor-market recovery since World War II, or the 14 million people whose home prices are still underwater, or an entire nation of wage-earners who have watched their take-home pay stagnate while corporate profits soar.”

Is this a new type of discrimination -- against men in camouflage?

Could it be that in this era of school shootings we must be careful what we're wearing when we enter a school building?
Is there a new form of discrimination, with men in camouflage generating suspicion?
At L'Anse Creuse High School in Harrison Township this morning school officials panicked when a man dressed in military fatigues, a flak jacket and an empty side holster was mistaken for a possible mass murderer ready to shoot up the building. They closed the school and the adjacent junior high and elementary school for the day.
In reality, he was a former student who visited his alma mater after getting off of work at nearby Selfridge Air National Guard Base, where he is an airman. 
Though many Selfridge families send their kids to L'Anse Creuse schools, officials responded to the report of a man in camouflage inside the high school by cancelling school for the day.


Here is the news story by The Macomb Daily:
 
A former student dressed in military fatigues, a flak jacket and an empty gun holster on his side was questioned by authorities after he walked into L’Anse Creuse High School in Harrison Township early Tuesday morning and was mistaken as a possible dangerous intruder.
His presence caused classes to be cancelled by school officials, said Kelly Allen, communications director for L’Anse Creuse Public Schools. Besides at the high school, classes were cancelled at the nearby L’Anse Creuse Central Middle School and Graham Elementary School.

“Classes were cancelled as a precautionary measure,” Allen said. “When an individual walks into a school wearing camouflage military fatigues and a holster there is no way of knowing at the time whether he was armed or not.”
The man, who had just gotten off work at the Selfridge Air National Guard Base, told authorities he went to his alma mater to talk to a counselor about a job recommendation. The man, who wasn’t identified, left the building and went home when told by a janitor that counselor wasn’t in, Macomb County Sheriff Anthony Wickersham said.
L’Anse Creuse High School is located at 38495 L’Anse Creuse Drive in the area off Crocker Blvd. and Metropolitan Parkway.

“This individual has been very cooperative with us,” Wickersham said. “He used poor judgment.”
The man is an airman at the National Guard base in Harrison Township, Wickersham said. He went to the school after work and was met by a janitor at 6 a.m. and was told the counselors were not at work yet.
“The man left on his own and was met by another counselor in the parking who advised him to call later,” Wickersham said. “The janitor told his relief at 6:30 that this guy was in the school and school officials were notified.”

Wickersham said the man’s story checks out. He said the man has been cooperative with his deputies.
“In light of today’s events going around the country, poor judgment was definitely used by the individual coming into school wearing camouflage,” Wickersham said.
Macomb sheriff’s deputies and a canine searched the school and found nothing of interest to law enforcement.
Sheriff’s deputies left the school at 8 a.m. on Tuesday.

Jeb Bush's flip-flop on immigration has Washington all aflutter

 

Washington is all abuzz today about former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s flip-flop on immigration reform and whether his change of heart signals that he’s preparing for a presidential run in 2016.

In his new book, Bush wrote that he does not support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., a central tenet of reform proposals being crafted in Congress. Bush has long chided the Republican Party to adopt immigration reform and improve its outreach to minority and immigrant voters. During the 2012 campaign, he said that Mitt Romney’s immigration policies were out of touch.

Many political observers admired his stance as bold and pragmatic. And an effective way for Republicans to reach out to Hispanic voters. But now, he is in opposition to his brother, George W., and he is firmly in the camp he called “the mainstream of conservatism” – the anti-amnesty camp -- that he had shunned in the past.

So, supporters of immigration reform on Capitol Hill and in the GOP were stunned by Bush’s turnabout, indicating that it gives fence-sitting Republican lawmakers, those who were starting to accept reform as the new norm, the political cover to stick to their conservative position.

Bush now says that providing a means for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants to gain citizenship would violate the rule of law. Instead, undocumented workers must first return to their homeland – for as long as 10 years -- if they desire U.S. citizenship, or they can pursue legal permanent residency, he said in his book and in TV interviews he granted on Monday.

In particular, the former governor’s reversal could damage the so-called Senate “Gang of Eight’s” progress on this issue. Leading the charge in that effort is a fellow Florida Republican, Sen. Marco Rubio.

“It's hard to see how Bush's reentry into the immigration debate is going to help a bill forward,” writes ABC’s Rick Klein. “Conservatives in the both the Senate and especially the House now have all the pretext they need to oppose a deal that includes a pathway to citizenship. Strip that from a bill, and Democrats will be under tremendous pressure to scuttle the whole effort - something many Republicans believe President Obama secretly wants to happen anyway, for political gain.”

Which brings us to the really big swirl of speculation out there in political circles: Is Bush trying to get to the right of his former protégé, Marco Rubio, in advance of the next presidential election cycle?

Here’s Univision’s Jordan Fabian: “Allies of immigration reform, who once championed the ex-Florida governor as a model Republican, are left wondering what exactly happened to their old flame. … Just last summer, Rubio was the one holding out on a path to citizenship, while Bush was speaking in favor of it. That's a remarkable shift. Speculation has abounded as to what sparked Bush's reversal, whether it's boosting book sales or jockeying to run for president in 2016. But the more important question is: What impact will Bush's switch have on the immigration reform effort in Congress?

“… One senior Democratic aide, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said: ‘The process here is going to keep moving. He is not a member of Congress.’ Even if Bush's comments don't derail the process, that won't reduce the shock generated by his shift. ‘Jeb was always pointed out as someone who really got it. I assume he still does,’ the Democratic aide said. ‘It is unfortunate and disappointing.’"

Bush's 'colossal political miscalculation' a matter of bad timing?

At the National Journal, Beth Reinhard may have the most interesting take of all about the sudden Jeb Bush turnaround on immigration, which she calls a “colossal political miscalculation.”

This may be all about timing and the nature of book writing.

Reinhard reports that “when Bush and co-author Clint Bolick were writing the book during the 2012 presidential campaign, the GOP was veering far to the right. Republican nominee Mitt Romney had staked out a hardline position against illegal immigration, blasting his primary rivals as pro-amnesty and promoting ‘self-deportation’ for undocumented workers. Bush sent the book to the printer before Christmas – weeks before a handful of Senate Republicans embraced a sweeping overhaul that, like the proposals backed by Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush, would allow illegal immigrants to earn citizenship.”

In other words, Bush's political party moved a lot faster than the book-publishing world.

“He sent the book to the printer at a time when he was anticipating the direction of the debate tilting against citizenship. It is clearly contrary to what he has said before,” Marshall Fitz, director of immigration policy at the liberal Center for American Progress told Reinhard. “In hindsight, Americans have always judged severely efforts to deny citizenship to classes of people. Is this really the GOP's path out of the political wilderness?”

Bush may have made things worse for himself this morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," when he started backpedaling. “If you can craft that in law, where you can have a path to citizenship where there isn’t an incentive for people to come illegally, I’m for it," he said.

Miller blasts Obama for release of immigrant detainees

In case you missed it ...

Congresswoman Candy Miller delivered a blistering attack on President Obama the other day for failing take the blame for the release of hundreds of illegal immigrants from Department of Homeland Security detention centers.
Here's what Miller, the Harrison Township Republican who chairs the House Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, said:

“This past week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement released hundreds of illegal aliens in custody saying they were using a ‘more cost effective form of supervised release.’  When challenged about this outrageous act, the DHS secretary, Janet Napolitano, blamed bureaucrats in the field and the White House did the same.  It seems in the Napolitano administration at DHS and in the Obama Administration at large that the buck stops with lower-level bureaucrats.

“It is not surprising that those lower-level bureaucrats would take such dangerous actions since their leaders, starting with President Barack Obama and extending to his entire cabinet, have been criss-crossing the country for the last several weeks trying to scare the American people and federal workers about the calamity that would happen if the sequester, which represents just 2 percent of all federal spending, were allowed to happen. The results of these actions have clearly frightened federal bureaucrats into making decisions that endanger the American people and put our security at risk.

“This is outrageous.  The sequester was first proposed by President Obama and was passed into law in August 2011.  The President’s sequester has been pending for more than a year and half and yet it is becoming more clear every day that his administration has developed no plan to administer those cuts in a responsible way.  Instead, the president has been peddling threats of gloom and doom if the sequester were to go into place to frighten the American people.  In turn, it appears those who serve in his administration are bound and determined to deliver the gloom and doom he wants while at the same time the president and his administration attempt to avoid any responsibility.  The American people expect and deserve better.

“U.S. House Republicans have twice passed legislation (in the last Congress) that would have replaced the sequester cuts with more responsible reductions in federal spending, but the U.S. Senate refused to take action.  Likewise, the president has offered no alternative cuts and instead simply calls for ever-higher taxes to support higher federal spending.  As we have seen in Michigan over the last several years, local and state governments across the nation have had to implement spending reductions totaling much more than 2 percent of their spending and have done so in ways that don’t threaten the safety of their communities.  It is time for the president to get control of his administration and do what is needed to keep this nation safe and secure while working with the U.S. Congress to get federal spending under control.”

Welcome to the wacky world of Sequesterville

This is a story about a group of 535 people so entrenched in their ways – and, consequently, so incapable of doing their job – that they created a trap door under their feet, with a pond full of alligators beneath, as a means of forcing themselves to act responsibly.
And yet, nearly 18 months later, Congress still stood stubbornly above that trap door and watched it swing open on Friday.
Better to be eaten by alligators than to act in a responsible, bipartisan, pragmatic manner.

Welcome to the wacky world of Sequesterville.

The blame game has served as a congressional staple for decades, if not centuries, but the automatic sequester cuts that took effect raised that smarmy, partisan art form to a new level. Talking points and sound bites -- not casting votes or passing bills -- are now the name of the game.
As our lawmakers drift from crisis to crisis, it’s almost as if Congress no longer consists of two political parties but two competing advertising agencies that are not interested in negotiations or compromise or legislating. The winner in this self-absorbed, finger-pointing spectacle will not be decided until nearly two years from now, when a new Congress is seated in January 2015.The 2013-14 session of Congress that began in January seems already doomed to be a PR contest that further polarizes Capitol Hill.

This is salesmanship, not substance.

The sequester, approved by the president and Congress, was meant to be such an irrational package of across-the-board cuts that no one in Washington would let them stand. But something happened along the way to the circus that is Inside-the-Beltway politics. Sequestration now suits some House members just fine. It’s better than meeting in the middle.
On the right, conservatives point out that the sequestration process requires cuts of just 2.4 percent and that, overall, the federal budget will remain above last year’s levels. On the left, scenarios of doom predict dramatic reductions in government services that will impact every American.
In these two competing advertising campaigns, the Democrats seem to be winning, largely because their product spokesman, Barack Obama, is good at this game and has engaged in a “road show” of political pep rallies.

A Gallup poll released the other day showed Obama with a 4-1 advantage over House Speaker John Boehner and the Republican leadership in spreading their competing sequester messages. “Bad” and “disaster” were among the words used by voters to describe Congress’ failure on the issue.
Yet, Obama and his crew are guilty of false advertising. Not only have they overstated the potential effects of sequestration cuts, they have slipped into falsehoods to make their case to the nation.

The Republicans, already in disarray, have yet another problem as the tea party has created a chasm between the GOP’s deficit hawks and the defense hawks. The rudderless Republican Party, by inexplicably accepting cuts that the Pentagon believes will be devastating, drifts toward the radical Ron Paul school of foreign policy.
What remains to be seen is whether the sequester cuts will be as damaging as Obama claims, or the public eventually views them as a minor nuisance. The upper hand in Washington lies in whether sequestration shows that spending cuts can be accomplished relatively pain-free, or that even small budget reductions disrupt Americans’ lives.

Meanwhile, beyond the sequestration stage, this was truly an absurd week in national politics.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the most popular Republican in America, was not invited to speak at the annual conservative Republican conclave known as CPAC. Christie has an astonishing 74 percent approval rating in a deep Blue State, but he bashed the House Republicans and Boehner for delaying Hurricane Sandy disaster relief funds for his state and he praised Obama for taking the lead on assistance for the devastated shoreline.
A top conservative who oversees the CPAC conference, scheduled for later this month, explained that CPAC is an all-star lineup and Christie was snubbed because he didn’t have a very good year. Really?
Among the invitees are Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michelle Bachmann, both of whom ran presidential campaigns that flopped. Former congressman Allen West, who lost re-election after claiming dozens of his House colleagues are members of the Communist Party, will be at CPAC.

And then there’s invitee Mitt Romney, who ran for president for five years yet lost twice, including a defeat last November in an election that no Republican had any business losing.
Is this an all-star team, or just a lineup that kow-tows to the ultraconservative creed?
The knock on Christie, despite his spectacular success, is that he’s relatively conservative on some issues but not so much on others. Just like normal people.
No wonder the GOP is unable to come to terms with the results of the 2012 elections. They are living in Sequesterville.

Next, we had the battle between Bob Woodward and the White House. Woodward wrote this past week that the Obama administration was “moving the goalposts” by falsely claiming that the alternative to sequester cuts was always intended to include a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases.
The White House PR machine hit back hard and Woodward, a great reporter with an ability to cultivate sources that is second to none, regrettably succumbed to the non-stop Washington food fight. He implied that a high-level administration official had threatened him, saying Woodward will “regret” his comments on this issue.
As a result, we have conservative Republicans praising Bob Woodward of The Washington Post as a truth-teller and liberal Democrats trashing him for the way he presented the White House reaction to his column.

Sounds like we’re in Crazy Town. But no, it’s Sequesterville.

Presidents typically close each speech by saying, “God bless the United States of America.”
With the state we’re in, I would suggest a more proper closing would be: God help us.

Johnson taking up where Brewer left off

The Michigan Democratic Party's new chairman, Lon Johnson, is taking up where former chairman Mark Brewer left off -- delivering fire-breathing press releases bashing Republicans, in this case Gov. Snyder. Some may say that Johnson lacks the Brewer touch for bombast, but see what you think:

"Today, Gov. Snyder has decided to unilaterally take over control of the city of Detroit from its democratically elected leaders.  This is nothing but a hostile take-over; we would expect this from a CEO, but not from a governor. 

"There are real problems in Detroit, but we will only solve them with everyone at the table. We should trust in the democratic process. The process advocated by our governor is one of subtraction - removing elected leaders, removing stakeholders, removing the voices of the people.

"What Detroit needs, what Michigan needs, is a governor who is committed to the politics of addition -- bringing all elected leaders to the table, bringing all stakeholders to the table, and bringing the voice of the people of Detroit to the table.  

“This is a hostile take-over.  This overthrow of the democratic process is a deeply disappointing moment in our state’s history.”