This is my last blog post.
I have explained (or will explain) the reasons why to my friends and family for they are the people I originally created this blog for. For those few ‘anonymous’ readers who found this blog to be an interesting place to stop at on their journey down The Information Highway™ the reasons will remain hidden to you and for that I apologize. All I can say to you is that the reasons are good ones.
What has been posted will remain until Word Press takes it down.
I will update the Blogroll as I find new and interesting websites. The Blogroll has been my “fishing area”-all the links I have posted here have been found somewhere in their contents. It is a big ocean of information out there and those links will serve as guides for you to find the ‘fish’ that you desire. If you find blogs that you like and have the wherewithal to donate a few bucks to them do so, for almost all of them blogging is not their job but something they do because they want people to be informed.
I have done my best and it is now time for you to ‘fledge’ and go fishing for yourselves-be careful out there.
Without further ado here is the last post….
Quote of the Day:
“Sarah Palin has not spent one campaign dollar and she is within 5 points of ObamaRx? The crazy Cajun was right – Dems should be in panic mode.” –Commenter Old School Conservative on Don Surber’s blog.
Must Reads of the Day:
Last month, we detailed the dismal state of the nation’s economy. Now that the Census Bureau has released new poverty figures, we wanted to give you another snapshot of how Americans are faring more than two years after the recession.
- This looks like Sister Mary Penguin’s MSNBC-watching-Democrat-until-death brother’s ‘budget’… Bringing the Budget Numbers Down to Size
Why S&P Downgraded the US:
U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent [April] budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000Let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:
Annual family income: $21,700
Money the family spent: $38,200
New debt on the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Budget cuts: $385Even as a self-described policy wonk, I found this eye-opening. It’s harder to pretend that Washington leadership is serious about restoring fiscal sanity when their budget cuts are seen in this context.
With his shape-shifting policy positions and alignment with Leftist policies, Mitt Romney increasingly strikes me as Obama-Lite.
This is all so Mafia…really. Liberals hang around in the same circles of smut. Therefore, there is that natural attraction. They probably even sniff each other’s butts. (Okay, these images come into my mind when I see Larry’s picture..I instantly think: Dog–sorry.)
Larry is die-hard, bi-polar, atheist, Democrat— although he once professed to be an evangelical Christian after meeting Jimmy Carter’s sister. And for all his babbling about ‘free speech rights,’ the Democrats won’t even let you utter a word that they do not agree with. But THEY can call you Nazi, raciest, and bigot.
Republicans have no free speech rights, but Larry doesn’t care as long as they buy his magazines and go to his clubs. He is THE poster boy for the Democratic Club of whores if I may add.. and will do anything to help them out. Why he is not trying to find dirt on Mitt Romney tells you at least, that he considers Mitt a man of his liking.
- Go for the hilarity, stay to become informed! Elizabeth Warren is the guest of honor at a human piñata party over at Ace of Spades- Red Meat Here is just a taste…
153 Lizzy Borden Warren took a tax
and gave your wallet 40 whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave your assets 41.Posted by: Guy Fawkes at September 22, 2011 11:56 AM
Must See TeeVee! President Zero
Japan and the softly glowing world…
Conversion chart from Heath Canada 
It Is More Than 40,000 ppm Hydrogen Gas, not 10,000 ppm Inside Reactor 1 CV Pipe
And today [September 23; they knew about "over 10,000 ppm" the day before] we went to measure using the meter that can measure up to 4%. It was 4% max. So the work [to cut the pipe] was canceled, and TEPCO made an announcement. I didn’t know, as I’m not very knowledgeable about chemistry, but it seems there’s a chance of explosion if hydrogen gas is more than 4%.
He is wondering if zirconium cladding is still melting and reacting, producing hydrogen.
But as one reader of this blog points out after putting two posts from yesterday together (the one about Reactor 4 SFP water radiolysis and the one about the hydrogen detection in the Reactor 1 CV pipe), it may be possible that the water radiolysis is happening somewhere deep inside the reactor building where boiling water is getting irradiated and generating hydrogen gas.
Highest radiation levels in months inside Reactor No. 1 silt fence (GRAPH)
Large crane above Fukushima reactor goes down during storm conditions (VIDEOS)
The article by Mainichi Shinbun on September 13 (linked below) summarizes the findings well enough. According to the article, the government researchers at Japan Atomic Energy Research and Development Agency and at Tokyo University announced the result of their analysis that the explosion of Reactor 4 reactor building at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant on March 15 may have been caused by a large amount of hydrogen gas produced by water radiolysis – dissociation of molecules by nuclear radiation in the Reactor 4 Spent Fuel Pool
“Good evening! I’m in Saitama.(North to Tokyo) I got soaked up in the rain twice yesterday,I couldn’t help it.
I’ve been suffering from headache since last night.Today I feel sick slightly too.I feel fatigue in the evening recently.have unclear sight too. piles of hair get off from head as well. I’m concerned..”
In Utsunomiya,where is south west to Fukushima,they measured 330 Mbq/km2 of cesium 134.
This is as much as they detected in March,and there was no detection of cesium 137,so some people recognize it to be an error.
http://savechild.net/archives/9208.html
However, just like after the rain in March, yellow powder was found in North Kanto area, where Utsunomiya is.
Radiation level is spiking up around in Tokyo and Fukushima.
- In Kawasaki, 0.05 uSv/h → 0.10 uSv/h
In Futabamachi, Fukushima,it’s 21 uSv/h now.
Wind is blowing from South to North,and it’s very salty.
It’s assumed typhoon is spreading the sea water around.
Radiation is assumed to have come from the sea.
Now typhoon is east of Hokkaido,but still news from Fukushima power is shut down.
At 11PM of 9/21,Fukuichi camera showed a crane was leaning over the reactor 3.
Additionally,reactor 4 was severely damaged even before the typhoon.
We all want to know what is going on in the plant area.
World News:
Lehman Weekend Redux?
Germany Demands “Managed” Greek Default And 50% Bond Haircuts In Exchange For Expanding EFSF, Peripheral “Firewall”
Did Schaeuble Break The Precious Metals And Force Everyone To Raise Cash?
Why did Gold and Silver Plunge? No, It’s Not CME Margin Hikes; What will the Fed do Next?
Four Reasons for Metals Plunge
- Fed did far less than expected
- Mutual fund redemptions
- Margin calls at hedge funds
- China growth story fading
Is Gold No Longer A Safe Haven? Not According To Capital Economics: “Gold Will Surge When Euro Crisis Escalates”
How Gold Performs During A Financial Crash
Really, the basic steps are straightforward:
- Economic/financial crisis leads to asset liquidation and dollar shortage
- Dollar shortage leads to dollar appreciation and gold depreciation (in dollar terms)
- One form of asset liquidation – forced gold selling – leads to gold depreciation (in all currencies)
- Eventual monetary response creates surplus of dollars
- Surplus of dollars causes dollar depreciation and gold appreciation
Gold Says: Short term Deflation with a Worldwide Recession
The charts do not lie as a double top looks to be in place and all of the information leaked via the media thus far does not deflect the idea that the Federal Reserve decision this afternoon will disappoint markets and indicate that an economic contraction is permissible by the banksters to force the political elites to dance to their tune. It is a dangerous game of cat and mouse and will provide a massive accumulation opportunity if the trading range between $1450 to $1575 that could be reached in a matter of weeks would be validated by a move of the US Dollar index above the 80 level. Also, this provides those central banks one more chance to purchase gold at a bargain basement price and to cool the discussions of $2000, $2500, and $3000 gold by year end recently circulating in economic discussions.
There are wild cards which could blow this theory sky high and create what I hate to say would be the “super bull” an unstoppable frenzy to loftier levels…
Snort: Geithner Wants “Decisive Signal” On European Debt
Starting off the day with some humorous talk from a guy who isn’t capable of using TurboTax correctly, and whose boss has racked up 4 trillion in debt in two years
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has called on European leaders at the G20 in Washington to send a “decisive signal” that they have a strategy for tackling the debt crisis.
Mr Geithner said there had been an erosion of confidence and that there was a “huge premium” on early action.
But he added he was confident that Europe would do what was necessary.
Perhaps Geithner should speak to his boss first regarding the US debt. Or, maybe he has, and is sick to death of hearing Obama parrot the phrase “raise taxes, raise taxes. Obama want a cracker”.
EU Synopsis: No Method, No Strategy, No Calendar; Blatant Lies by French Finance Minister
Fear gauge enters the red zone
Europe’s debt crisis risks escalating out of control as the world economy slides towards a double-dip slump with few shock absorbers left to limit the damage.
Nervous Breakdown? 21 Signs That Something Big Is About To Happen In The Financial World
Let me explain. Anyone with a large long franc position also likely has a long gold position as they are (rather were) essentially the same macro bet. Such a massive move in a currency such as the franc would have been so unexpected and such an outlier event that it would have wrecked severe havoc on many portfolios. The central planners knew this and they used it to their advantage to stop gold in its tracks as it was headed to $2,000/oz and beyond. This was no coincidence. It was financial warfare. You MUST know your enemy to survive and win the war because the central planners can win battles but not the war.”
G-20 Pledges Strong, Coordinated (Sisyphean) Response To Global Challenges [UPDATED With Full Text]
Ironically, French minister Baroin says that the G-20 will release a statement in response to sovereign debt risk (after dinner of course). Isn’t it nice when we all get along? Well the response by the markets has been absolutely lackluster so far with after-hours gains being held but not accelerating.
UPDATED with full text of statement
Via Bloomberg:
*G-20 WILL ACT TO MAINTAIN FINANCIAL STABILITY, GROWTH: BAROIN
*G-20 COMMITTED TO ‘STRONG AND COORDINATED’ RESPONSE
*G-20 SEEKS BALANCE BETWEEN GROWTH, BUDGET BALANCING: BAROIN
*G-20 SEES ‘HEIGHTENED DOWNSIDE RISKS FROM SOVEREIGN STRESSES’
*G-20 SEES ‘FINANCIAL SYSTEM FRAGILITY’
*G-20 SAYS EURO AREA WILL IMPLEMENT EFSF STEPS BY NEXT G-20
China, Japan Tell Europe: “No Blank Check For You”
I love the smell of Napalm in the Morning: EURO/USD 1.34 print
TGI Failure Friday: Oslo Stock Exchange Closed For “Technical Difficulties”
The first of what is likely many. “Due to technical disturbances, Oslo Børs’ Equity and Bonds markets are temporary halted. Members may delete their orders in this state. Further information will follow. “
Very rarely in political history has any faction or movement enjoyed such a complete and crushing victory as the Conservative Eurosceptics. The field is theirs. They were not merely right about the single currency, the greatest economic issue of our age — they were right for the right reasons. They foresaw with lucid, prophetic accuracy exactly how and why the euro would bring with it financial devastation and social collapse.
Meanwhile the pro-Europeans find themselves in the same situation as appeasers in 1940, or communists after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They are utterly busted
Technical Perspectives: Global Markets Starting To Un-Hinge
IMF to Bernanke: Thanks For Nothing, As Threat To International Monetary System Looms
We suspect the world was placing a little more ‘hope’ in Bernanke’s willingness to print-and-save-us-all as the IMF just announced the activation of its “New Arrangements to Borrow” for a further six months. Obviously, given the quota subscriptions and the nature of the NAB, we suspect the rest-of-the-world will get pound of flesh (or USD bailout) implicitly. This is not completely unexpected as we have been discussing the rise in borrowing arrangements/facilities at the IMF for a while – what is notable is the timing – given constant chatter out of Europe that all is ‘satisfactory’.
CDS: Blood On The Streets As Contagion Has Been Upgraded To Gangrene
If you think this morning has a September 12, 2008 smell and feel to it… You are right. Complete and total CDS bloodbath in sovereigns and fins means a global bailout may not be imminent, but the market sure demands it as contagion has been upgraded to gangrene. Bernanke has now officially blown it with the twist and Mr. Market demands a $1 trillion+ LSAP, or else…
Europe Opens Weak, Credit Ugly And Financials Floundering
Morgan Stanley’s Exposure To French Banks Is 60% Greater Than Its Market Cap… And More Than Half Its Book Value
Europe’s Communist Past Haunts Euro-Zone
It’s an overlooked aspect of the euro-zone debt crisis and Greece’s probable default: the hand that former European communists (now top members of the European Parliament) had in creating the euro-zone’s command-and-control economic system, along with the trappings of a common (and dubious) European culture. Now it’s all coming apart — a calamity that’s threatening the viability of the euro-zone and rattling the global economy.
The quest for a united Europe — one with a common currency (the euro) along with a single flag and anthem – was in retrospect a project for dreamers. And as euro-skeptics have said all along, the dreamers were European elites with autocratic tendencies.
So perhaps it’s not surprising to learn that a number of the elites who constructed a utopian political and economic union for Europe have something in common: communism.
Orphaned Markets
Story yesterday of “helping” the weakest 16 banks in Europe to recapitalize was met with a strong rally, quickly followed by a sell-off to new lows. The realization that the EU has gangrene and decided to deal with some warts brought back the fear the the governments are once again behind the curve and just don’t get it. Then we rallied into the close because the G-20 would of course save us. So far, not so much. A wishy washy statement is just not enough for a market that has come to expect (if not depend) on more. The BRIC’s are supposed to ride to the rescue, but in Brazil, the currency has been getting crushed, Chinese CDS is hitting new wides. Brazil is busy imposing tariffs on China. Russia is complaining about Chinese dumping. Hardly the signs of a co-ordinated effort to rescue the world.
The Ghost of America yet to come… ‘We Won’t Pay’: Greece’s Middle Class Revolt against Austerity
Small business owners in Greece have long been the backbone of the economy and reliable taxpayers in a country where tax evasion is rampant. That, though, is now changing. Self-employed workers like Angelos Belitsakos have had enough of rising taxes and have begun to revolt.
This Is NOT Sparta As Greece Threatens To Partially Withdraw From NATO Citing Poverty
A Greek ‘Twist’ of Global Deflation?
As I stated before, the “brilliant” economists at the troika are implementing measures which are counterproductive. Instead of focusing on growth, they are slashing wages, pensions, benefits, government jobs and increasing taxes hoping to restore “fiscal sanity.” All they’re doing is ensuring a Greek and European depression.
I ask again, why isn’t troika going after Greece’s biggest tax evaders who have parked billions offshore in Swiss and Cypriot banks and London real estate? I’ll tell you exactly why: because many of the worst tax evaders are corrupt government officials who accepted millions in bribes (remember the Siemens scandal) from rich Greek corporate cronies they’re now protecting. They all have a vested interest in hiding their ill gotten gains and shifting the debt burden on the poor and working poor.
Surveying the scene from her ceramics shop, Vasso Georgiadou heaves a sigh of resignation. ‘‘When they don’t drink, they are such good kids,’’ she says, adding that by the time the sun rises ‘‘there’ll be hundreds of them’’ wandering the resort in a drunken stupor. ‘‘But it’s not only their fault. Unfortunately, this is the tourism we Greeks have tolerated, we Greeks have gone out of our way to create.’’
Just like towns on Corfu, Rhodes, Kos and Crete, the once peaceful village of Laganas has managed to scale new heights in debauchery.
‘‘This is not the best image, but then Laganas is not Greece,’’ says the Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism, George Nikitiadis. ‘‘Many times it is the system, the tour operators who co-ordinate these bar crawls, which makes these kids act in this way. We don’t want tourists to leave with this experience. Our country has so much more to offer.’’
The Ghost of America yet to come, part deux… Parents take legal action to force son, 41, to move out
After several failed attempts to convince their 41-year-old son to leave the nest, a Venetian couple have hired a lawyer in a last bid for domestic peace and quiet, Italian media have reported.
The parents, whose names were not published, were said to be exhausted by fending for their adult offspring, cooking his meals and doing his washing and ironing, according to the reports yesterday.
A Map of Emerging Global Risks From The Last Two Weeks
Netanyahu Eviscerates UN As “Theater of the Absurd” During General Assembly Speech (Video)
Video: Netanyahu’s U.N. Speech — “The Insatiable Crocodile of Militant Islam”…
Can we trade Obama for Netanyahu? He is a hundred times more pro-America than Dear Leader.
If you haven’t seen this you have to watch it. What a fantastic leader.
ABBAS REBUKES OBAMA – Submits UN Statehood Bid (Video)
Palestinian Officials Say It Will Be Obama’s Fault If U.N. Statehood Bid Fails…
Obama’s the best friend they’ve ever had in the White House and they still crap on him.
“Palestine” to Deny Citizenship to 45 Percent of its Palestinian Residents
This is simply unbelievable. For years, the world has backed a Palestinian state on the grounds Palestinians are stateless people who deserve a country of their own. And now, a senior Palestinian official has announced once they have received a state, most Palestinians will still be stateless – even those who actually live in “Palestine.”
Moreover, the new state won’t provide these residents with any services: It expects UNRWA – or, more accurately, the American and European taxpayers who provide the bulk of that organization’s funding – to continue providing their schooling, healthcare, welfare allowances, etc.
According to UNRWA, some 689,000 of the West Bank’s 2.4 million Palestinians and 1.1 million of Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians are refugees. Thus, aside from the 2.9 million Diaspora refugees, a whopping 45 percent of the new state’s residents will also remain stateless, deprived of both citizenship and services by the country the world fondly imagines is being created to serve their needs.
“If this was 2013, Obama might be in a different groove”
The “occupation” is the cause of all the problems?. Oh wait, Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza and Gaza now is an Iranian missile base. Oh wait, the effort to drive the Jews into the sea started before the 1967 war, indeed, prior to the creation of Israel; just ask the Jews who used to live in the centuries-old Jewish community in Hebron before the 1929 Arab riots and massacre. Oh wait, Hamas does not agree to the existence of Israel. Oh wait, Abbas said just a few weeks ago he never — as in never — will accept Israel as a Jewish state.
Land for peace is risky enough; land without peace is a suicide pact.
Last Year Obama Pushed for a Palestinian State at the UN… This Year? Not So Much
OBAMA REBUKED BY ABBAS: Palestinians to Pursue UN Seat
Libyans flee siege in Gadhafi’s hometown Sirte
Walter Russell Mead: India’s Death By A Thousand Paper Cuts
Venal, arrogant and often incompetent bureaucrats and functionaries testify to the lack of accountability and the poor organization of India’s administrative infrastructure. In many cases public sector salaries are so low in some positions that without bribery the officeholders could not make ends meet. Like many government bureaucracies around the world, India’s government was designed to create patronage jobs rather than to work efficiently.
Many politicians (to say nothing of government workers) will fight tenaciously and cleverly against change. We will be watching to see whether the anti-corruption movement has the stamina to stay in this fight for the long term.
Pakistan Threatens To Stop Being Our Friends Unless We Stop Talking About Their Support For Islamic Militant Groups…
Pretty please? It will save us billions of dollars a year.
With more space needed, U.S. planning major expansion at detainee facility in Afghanistan
Zimbabwe poachers poison water holes
Malaysia: Bikini Contest Leaves Islamists Hot And Bothered…
And as predicted: Putin to Return as Russia’s President
For those of my readers too young to remember the joys of the Carter years, you are getting an unfortunate treat. As for the nation of Russia, the return of Putin all but guarantees a despotic realm where intimidation from a police state now equipped with the best Western technology has to offer shall befall the citizens.
China signs deal for 150 Russian fighter jet engines: Report
China ‘Cancels’ an Entire City
“Chaohu’s development hasn’t been good, but Hefei is industrializing and urbanizing. It needs land, so absorbing Chaohu will benefit Hefei. The government hopes that redistributing the land will improve the entire province’s GDP,” he says.
In recent years, Hefei’s GDP growth has been an average of 17 percent. So this move serves the long-term aim of boosting Hefei’s competitive advantage by giving it land to expand, so it can challenge the more prominent cities of Nanjing and Wuhan.
It’s a pretty harsh message for a country to essentially give up on a city. The state of California recently considered a plan to do something similar in the economically troubled — and some say corrupt — city of Vernon. That plan was rejected by the state legislature, mainly over concerns that its passage would harm the local economy further. It’s tough to say what the exact result will be in the newly enlarged Hefei, but even a modest reduction in the city’s 17 percent growth rate would be hard for Chinese officials to worry about.
Today Canada has a superior tax regime to that of the United States, and a much sounder fiscal situation. They are actually developing their energy resources, which they are happy to sell to us rather than the Chinese, just as soon as we approve the Keystone pipeline. And lately Canada has upset Saudi Arabia with an ad campaign about “ethical oil,” pointing out the unsavory nature of Middle Eastern regimes that oppress women. Seems the Saudis are not too happy about this, and are threatening lawsuits. Thought experiment: imagine how CAIR and Keith Ellison would react if such ads aired in the U.S.
And then there’s this (hat tip: Glenn E):
Red Cross: Obese Now Outnumber Hungry
In statistics used to underline the unequal access to food, the IFRC stressed there were 1.5 billion people suffering obesity worldwide last year, while 925 million were undernourished.
“If the free interplay of market forces has produced an outcome where 15 percent of humanity are hungry while 20 percent are overweight, something has gone wrong somewhere,” secretary general Bekele Geleta [sic] said in a statement.
‘White folk’s greed runs a world in need’ — again. Damn those free markets.
Obviously, fat people must have their access limited, while the undernourished are given greater ‘access’ to food. And either the International Red Cross or the UN should be put in charge of administering that around the world.
Short of that, the clear solution is to give the IRC and UN more money. (After all, their hotel bills alone are astronomical.)
Asia-Pacific director Jagan Chapagain [sic] called it a “double-edged scandal” at a press conference in the Indian capital, adding that “excess nutrition now kills more than hunger.”
Which must mean that food now kills even more people than handguns. So where are the calls for ‘food control’? (That is, apart from Michelle Obama and ‘Mayor Doomberg.’)
Drill, Cuba, Drill: Chinese-built Oil Rig Positioned 50 Miles Off Key West
…Normally, what are called “economic zones” extend 200 miles off a country’s coastline. In some cases, there are conflicts based on resources and geography. In 1977, President Carter signed a treaty with communist Cuba that essentially split the difference and created for Cuba an “exclusive economic zone” extending from the western tip of Cuba northward virtually to Key West. Cuba then divided its side of the Florida Strait into 59 parcels and put them up for lease.
The U.S. Geological Survey recently estimated the North Cuban Basin contains as much as 9 billion barrels of oil and 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Other estimates range from 5 billion to 20 billion barrels of crude. Pools of oil and natural gas tend not to obey lines drawn on a map. It’s certain that at least some of Cuba’s wells will be tapping oil pools that straddle the boundary separating our zone from Cuba’s, meaning Havana will be getting oil that should be ours.But fret not, peons: our thrifty President is carefully investing taxpayer dollars in savvy energy investments like Solyndra.
US News:
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you the ‘surprisingly unexpected’ economic news of the day:
Third Biggest Weekly DJIA Drop In History
Black Friday Arrives: Biggest Weekly Move In 30 Year Bond Since Black Monday
Has Operation Twist Played Out Already? Time to Short Bonds?
Endspiel: Fidelity Says “It Is Clear Now That The Fed Cannot Bail Equity Markets Out Any More”
Uh… did a member of the status quo just tell the truth? “It is clear now that the Fed cannot bail equity markets out any more and any interest rate cuts by the ECB may not have much of an impact on markets” Cue panic?
And that’s your definition of Too Big To Fail right there: the biggest banks are not only getting bigger, but their risk exposure is now at a new all time high and up $5.3 trillion from Q1 as they have to risk ever more in the derivatives market to generate that incremental penny of return.
Stocks, commodities dive on recession fears
The NYSE Will Need A Bigger Rule 48
That’s what we’ve been seeing on world markets since Thursday trading began in Asia; this morning it hit the US with the kind of sickening thud we remember too well from 2008. Amid the general hurricane of bad economic news a few things stand out.
- Chinese stocks fell almost 5 percent and key real estate company stocks were down by double digit percentages as fears grow that the long-delayed bursting of the China property bubble is here;
- the European bank crisis is deepening, with the IMF sticking to its guns about the massive capital losses faced by the continent’s banks and BNP Paribas apparently trolling the Middle East in search of a big capital injection
- the Federal Reserve’s new worries about the economy made a deeper impression on investors than its plans to support growth
- some US banks are starting to look shaky again.
There are many more reasons for concern. The continuing inability of Europe to cope with the euro troubles, the political impasse over economic policy in the United States, and the deer-in-the-headlights immobility of Japan do not inspire confidence. The emerging economies — China, India, Turkey and Brazil — face increased difficulties of their own and will not pull the global economy out of the dumps. That large corporations are sitting on cash hoards or buying back stock rather than making new investments is bad news; that consumers are cutting down debt and doing what they can to increase their savings is good news for the long term, but bad news now. And it seems clear that two years of frantic efforts in Washington have failed to breathe new life into the nation’s housing market.
Welcome To The Collapse Of 2011
Well, America (and the world), you’ve been scammed by the financial institutions and governments for the last 30 years. 2008 was the first spasm of recognition but was short-circuited by…. you guessed it…. even more scams. Rather than demand truth and an end to the games the American consumer lapped up the frauds and schemes of the politicians on both sides of the aisle who conspired with the financiers to rip you off once again.
The opportunity to address these issues as I have been tirelessly attempting to do, was ignored by those in policy roles in Washington DC. Those who have been reading The Ticker are well-aware of my efforts going back into 2007 and through the 2008 Presidential campaign on both sides of the aisle, along with my efforts since.
They’ve been ignored with the political establishment choosing to knob-job the banks and lie to you, the public, rather than address the fact that the entire last 30 years have been one gigantic economic scam and that what they were attempting to do could not, as a matter of mathematics, succeed.
Now recognition of that fact is dawning on people in a convulsive fashion, and markets of all sorts are reacting as one would expect when their entire worldview is exposed as having been a gigantic and intentional pyramid scheme constructed of debt layered upon debt that cannot be paid down. The wrong thing was done in 2008 and there is zero evidence that our government has changed one iota in their singular focus on misdirection and lies in this regard.
Welcome to awareness; I hope you’ve taken the last couple of years to become prepared.
With that established the charts now indicate the crash of ages, has begun. This move could retest S&P 1,000 easily, 840 more than likely, and if it violates the 666 March 2009 low, then the next stop is in the high 300′s.
The Dow? Well, after they remove the shattered remains of former components it could settle nicely around 6,000 or take a trip down memory lane and retest the 1987 highs.
Gold is destined to fall, hold, then turn around as the Fed realize that offering Lewinsky’s to the dollar does nothing and the blue dress is eventually exposed. Look for gold to fall, the Fed to panic and hyperinflate, and all hell to break loose next year. The course of action selected today is ineffective, impotent, and ignorant which means that the final solution, a total, complete commitment to printing until the cows, calves, bulls, steers, and reindeer all come home is their last bullet.
Shifting Deck Chairs on the Titanic Won’t Fix This Mess
Forgive the use of a cliché here, but one can’t help but think of hapless deckhands shifting chairs around the deck of the Titanic. This week’s stock market selloffs come as no surprise.
Borrowing rates are already at their lowest levels in four decades. The average rate for a standard 30-year loan stood at 4.09% earlier this week, according to Freddie Mac, an astonishingly low figure.
How much lower can it get before it prompts skittish buyers off the sidelines and into making what is likely to be the biggest investment of their lives? Who knows?
But that’s the point. Mortgage rates aren’t the problem. The problem is a pervasive fear that has embedded itself in the psyche of U.S. consumers and business owners such that both are afraid make any sort of investment big or small.
The final crisis of capitalism?
But I suspect that this crisis differs from that of the 30s and 70s.
In the 30s, profits were depressed by weak aggregate demand, something which could be cured. In the 70s, they were depressed by labour militancy, and when this was killed, capitalists’ desire to invest was rekindled.
But the problem now is deeper than then. Capitalism has lost its underlying oomph; investment was low, remember, even before the recession. And this suggests that its vitality cannot be restored by policy measures, be they Keynesian (“boost demand”) or Thatcherite (“attack workers“).Herein, though, lies the problem. Even if capitalism is dying – and I say if – there is no-one to kill it off; Marx’s prediction that the working class would become a powerful agent of change was wrong. And there is no well worked-out vision of an alternative. Gramsci’s words fit the bill:
The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
DOOM: Lie to me
We’re Sinking Under Obama’s Policies
Since this president took office, U.S. businesses have shed 3.3 million jobs. We are still 6.9 million below our peak employment reached in January 2008. Ordinarily, more than two years after a recession has ended, well over a million jobs have been added to payrolls.
By any meaningful measure, then, our president has followed the least-successful economic policies of any U.S. leader since World War II. As recession seems ever more possible, the IMF warns of a U.S. “lost decade.”
Whether it’s jobs, economic growth, energy prices, incomes, regulation, weak foreign policy, or the quality of our lives and the nation’s social fabric, America’s current course looks questionable at best.
No wonder the markets are so volatile. They discount not the present, but the future. And the future for investors is murky at best and downright dark at worst.
Peeling back the veneer on American decline
A new conventional wisdom is evolving to explain the causes of the decline and how to address them. Among the key elements of this new orthodoxy are the notions that the U.S. is lagging badly in innovation and education. This diagnosis, of course, leads directly to prescriptions for greater spending on and government support of R&D and much greater emphasis on getting students not only into and out of college but into advanced and professional degrees.
Of course, it is true that U.S. spending on R&D as a percent of GDP has fallen and stagnated in comparison with the glory days of yesteryear and the recent reports on SAT scores certainly seem to confirm that there are problems with U.S. education. And yet, as I consider Germany, I wonder.
Germany has higher wages, higher taxes, higher welfare costs, a lower percentage of college and professional graduates, and lower spending as a percent of GDP on R&D than the United States. Yet, in contrast to America’s chronically large trade deficit and high unemployment rate, Germany has a huge trade surplus and a low unemployment rate. What’s going on?
Rosenberg Presents The Three Ways Bernanke Disappointed The Market, And Why It Is Dumping
- between six and 30 years), net interest margins in the banking sector will likely be negatively affected.
- The dramatic decline in the 30-year bond yield is going to aggravate already-massively actuarially underfunded positions in pension funds
- The Fed says it is going to extend this Operation Twist program through to June 2012. This is a subtle hint to the markets that barring something really big occurring, there is no QE3 coming — not over the near term, in any event, and certainly not at the next meeting on November 1-2. So a stock market that has continuously been fuelled on hopes doesn’t have any in this regard for at least the next month and a half.
So How Much “Capital” Really Exists?
Another day, another chance for the BLS to fudge jobs data by revising last week’s claims miss to an even worse number: sure enough last week’s -428K drop was just revised to -432K. Which means that this week’s consensus miss, which was at 420K, is irrelevant, with the weekly number coming at 423K because all headlines will blare than claims actually declined by 9K. The game has become so old (and we mean old: the BLS has been doing this very same fudge for 2 years in a row now) we are stunned anyone falls for it. And one thing that will also most certainly be ignored is that the 423K number is really 427K because as the BLS reported, a -3,776 drop in claims in Texas was due to “Fewer layoffs due to holiday” – well the holiday is over. Lastly, and most troubling for the economy is that another massive 103,000 people dropped off extended benefit claims in one week. Just as troubling is that 1.7 million people have dropped off the government’s dole in the past year as can be seen in the chart below: these are people that haven’t gotten a job, they have just stopped being counted by the govt.
On Eve Of Critical FOMC Decision, Republicans (Re)Send Letter To Bernanke Demanding No More QE
Boehner et al bring up a valid point, which is that the Fed policy now accentuates market uncertainty and promotes trade wars: precisely the topics discussed in an earlier article today. As stated by Boehner: “Our long-term growth depends on restoring confidence and certainty in our fiscal, regulatory, and trade policies — and not on government’s willingness to engage in additional stimulative measures. When asset prices increase due to anticipated Federal Reserve policy rather than economic fundamentals, it increases the potential for speculative action and erodes confidence in the economic outlook, making it more difficult to generate sustainable growth.” Regardless of its actual merit, one thing is without doubt: QE3, and the Fed, just become once again critically politicized, and as such, even more market uncertainty is imminent. All that said, the theatrical optics of this action are quite glaring.
“Very Unusual” Fed Action Fails To Boost Animal Spirits: Dow Drops 285
Bernanke sends stocks plunging
Ben Bernanke issued a death sentence on the PBGC yesterday
Let me be the first to predict that Ben Bernanke just signed the death sentence on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). What’s that you say? It’s yet another masterpiece of central planning, which happens to be bankrupt. Just like Social Security, Medicare, the FDIC, the Federal Highway Trust Fund, and everything else the Statists touch.
All of this means that taxpayers — your kids and grandkids included — will be on the hook for yet another of the Obama Democrats’ epic failures.
Suck It Up Buffett: BRK/A Below $100,000 For First Time In 20 Months
An oldie but worth reposting… The Coming Middle-Class Anarchy
TV has given us the illusion that anarchy is people rioting in the streets, smashing car windows and looting every store in sight. But there’s also the polite, quiet, far deadlier anarchy of the core citizenry—the upright citizenry—throwing in the towel and deciding it’s just not worth it anymore.
If a big enough proportion of the populace—not even a majority, just a largish chunk—decides that it’s just not worth following the rules anymore, then that society’s days are numbered: Not even a police-state with an armed Marine at every corner with Shoot-to-Kill orders can stop such middle-class anarchy.
Brian and Ilsa are such anarchists—grey-haired, well-dressed, golf-loving, well-to-do, exceedingly polite anarchists: But anarchists nevertheless. They are not important, or powerful, or influential: They are average—that’s why they’re so deadly: Their numbers are millions. And they are slowly, painfully coming to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it anymore.
Is The U.S. Government Stockpiling Food In Anticipation Of A Major Economic Crisis?
When he asked about why so much food was being ordered, the government source told him essentially that “you know what is coming”. When pushed further, the government official did not elaborate.
It was unclear whether this was part of a larger food stockpiling program by the government. Perhaps this order was just part of the normal preparations that government agencies make for potential emergencies.
Nobody could blame the government for storing up some emergency food. That is something that we all should be doing.
The truth is that the government is taking emergency preparedness very seriously these days. For example, you can see video of a high-level NASA official urging NASA employees to develop preparedness plans for their own families right here.
But what if this is a sign of something bigger?
We now resume our regularly scheduled programming already in progress…
Senate Has Enough Votes To Defeat Continuing Resolution: Government Shutdown Imminent
As predicted:
- SENATE HAS VOTES TO DEFEAT HOUSE SPENDING PLAN; VOTE CONTINUES – BBG
Next up: headline risk and a push for Bernanke to print more. Why? Because when all is said and done the market will have plunged (even more) on the realization there is no fiscal stimulus coming in the next two years, despite the Chairman’s clever gambit.
The word must be out from the White House: Shut down the federal government on October 1. If true, this would be a last-ditch effort to make Republicans look obstructionist. The president’s re-election efforts are cratering, just as the global economy sinks in the pile of IOUs that governments across the planet have printed in order to pay for socialistic programs. This eerily looks like the collapse of the Soviet Empire some 20 years ago.
President Obama does not want to be left holding the bag, but even I can spot his Prada from a mile away.
Is this whole thing less than ideal? Of course but everything is going to be less than ideal when you have deal with a Democratic Senate that simply refuses to pass a budget framework and a leftist in the White House. We’re simply not going to get fiscally sound polices in the current environment. The only solution to this is get them the hell out of there.
Now the House has dropped this in the Senate’s lap. Do they want to shut the government down and withhold disaster aid they say is desperately needed or do they want to protect green energy companies?
Democrats Reject Disaster Relief Bill For Suffering American Families
Democrats rejected disaster relief to thousands of suffering Americans today by voting down a $3.7 billion bill in the House.
Democrats were upset that the bill cut funding to one of their green projects.
Purported sightings in Texas and California caught on video Plunging satellite debris dropped somewhere over Africa or Canada Exact time and location of satellite not yet confirmed Debris fell to Earth some time between 11.23pm on Friday and 1.09am EDT today Pieces of debris remain property of U.S. with people who find them ordered to hand them back
NASA Unsure About Falling Satellite, 100% Sure Globull Warming Will Kill Us All
So, with all the computers, all the observations, all the long term data, NASA isn’t quite sure. See, it’s complicated
“There are many variables that make predicting where a satellite will fall back to Earth very complicated. The reentry of UARS this evening is consistent with the modeling we prepared at Aerospace,” Dr. William Ailor (director of the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies) added.
Uh huh. But, certain people at NASA tell us with 100% certainty that anthropogenic global warming will warm the planet beyond what is safe for life in 5-100 years, despite all the myriad of causes, such as greenhouse gases, the Sun, volcanoes, ocean currents, glaciers, polar caps, land use, and other things that create climate, as they all interact, being “complicated”.
Hmmm… Massive terror exercise planned for metro area
Airport Insecurity: FBI Investigating Arabic Writing Discovered on Underbellies of SW Airlines Jets
The story doesn’t indicate what the messages translate to, but I’m sure it’s not “Eat at Joe’s” or “Goodyear.”
The reporter must have contacted Janet Napolitano for this last sentence:
The airline denied that the vandalism posed a safety or security threat.
Whew! That should make SW’s customers feel better!
Let me get this straight… they’ve discovered Arabic graffiti on jets, they don’t know how it got there or why, but they’re sure it’s not a security threat? I’m satisfied.
Exclusive Photo: The Ominous Markings on Southwest Airlines Jet Engines
I was sent this by someone who can’t be named. SWA has clamped down on anything coming from internal staff.
All this Arabic markings crap. They all know they are swords. My source says that some flights will only make $20.00 (why they like carry on dogs) and this could cause many to not fly and hurt business.Thought you might like to see a real photo of what they look like. And, they only show when the engine is hot. (See photo at link)
I find it interesting that the ‘usual suspects’ who say they are against capital punishment did not say one peep about Lawrence Russell Brewer getting executed. This is especially surprising seeing as they would have gotten a bonus bashing of Gov. Rick Perry because he signed the execution order. One would think that they would be against ALL executions if they are truly against capital punishment. Hypocrites… White supremacist executed for Texas dragging
Texas Executes Murderer of James Byrd – After NAACP Smeared Bush On Hate Crimes Law
These men were prosecuted and sentenced under George W. Bush. Brewer was executed under the auspices of Rick Perry. Republicans, especially Texas Republicans, take heinous crimes very seriously. Whatever problems Texas might have, being too soft on murderers is not among them, and the hate crime legislation the NAACP used to attack Bush would have had no impact on this case. In fact, I’d imagine that many NAACP activists and most liberals who supported their actions are anti-death penalty, and as such believe that the hate crime committed against James Byrd Jr. was punished too harshly.
I won’t hold my breath for an apology from the NAACP to President Bush and the Republican Party.
Irony: Anti-Death Penalty Protesters Call For Execution Of George Bush
The White House’s Advice for Your Rabbi
As has become its annual practice, the Obama administration on Thursday convened a conference call with several hundred rabbis and Jewish leaders. According to a participant on the call, President Obama promoted his jobs bill—noting that those who have been more blessed should pay their fair share—and briefed the rabbis on U.S. efforts to counter the push for a declaration of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.
I was on another such call recently, the purpose of which—according to the Jewish rabbinical group that invited me—was to help listeners “understand the current state of the economy; learn about the impact of the proposed budget cuts on the poor and disenfranchised; consider the consequences of the increasing gap between the rich and poor in America; and, glean homiletic and textual background to help prepare their High Holiday sermons on this timely topic.”
The agenda of the call organizers was clear. Two speakers, one of whom was a (non-Jewish) Democratic senator, spoke of our country’s need for “raising revenue,” the new code phrase for tax increases. When I suggested that we separate politics from spirituality, a third participant pushed back, saying “the Torah is a political document.” A curious assertion in a crowd that would quickly denounce any invocation of the Bible in political discussions.
Charles Krauthammer: Return of the real Obama
That politician now returns. Obama’s new populism surely is a calculation that his halfhearted feints to the center after the midterm “shellacking” were not only unconvincing but would do him no good anyway with a stagnant economy, 9 percent unemployment and a staggering $4 trillion of new debt.
But this is more than a political calculation. It is more than just a pander to his base. It is a pander to himself: Obama is a member of his base. He believes this stuff. It is an easy and comfortable political shift for him, because it’s a shift from a phony centrism back to his social-democratic core, from positioning to authenticity.
The authentic Obama is a leveler, a committed social democrat, a staunch believer in the redistributionist state, a tribune, above all, of “fairness” — understood as government-imposed and government-enforced equality.
That’s why “soak the rich” is not just a campaign slogan to rally the base. It’s a mission, a vocation.
Class Warfare: American Communists of 1928 Compared to Barack Obama
Barack Obama may not be a communist, but his embrace of communist rhetoric and though from the 1920s on technology causing unemployment and his class warfare rhetoric truly make him the most far left President we have had in this country. It also complicates his re-election.
The model Obama intends to use is the Truman model of running against Congressional Republicans. But Truman gambled that the country was far more a Democrat country than a Republican country and he won. Obama has been gambling throughout his Presidency that the country is a left-leaning country and he has consistently lost as a result. Continuing the gamble will continue his losing streak. The fact is, however much Congress may be hated right now and however much congressional Republicans may be hated, the country is more ideologically on the right than with Barack Obama.
Everyone Must Sacrifice… Michelle Obama Wears $42,000 in Bling to DNC Fundraiser
WINDFALL PROFITS… Obama Supporter Who Was Awarded $107 Million For Windfarm Will Hold $25,000-Per-Person Fundraiser for President
Tom Carnahan, brother of Robin and Russ Carnahan, was gifted with $107 million in stimulus money for his wind farm project in Missouri.
The Carnahans got a windfall in stimulus dollars. We got the bill.
This coming week Tom Carnahan will host a $25,000-per-person fundraiser for President Obama.
It pays to go green.
Obama: My Half-Trillion Dollar Stimulus Jobs Bill Is For the Kids, or Schools …or Something
SCFOAMF… Obama: “I’m A Warrior For The Middle Class”
“Now the Republicans, you know when I, I talked about this earlier in the week. They said ‘well, this is class warfare.’ You know what? If asking a billionaire to pay their fair of taxes. To pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare, then you know what? I, I, I, I, I’m, I’m a warrior for the middle class. I’m happy to fight for the middle class,”
Obama Repeats ‘Intercontinental Railroad’ Gaffe
In July I wrote this post that was really about Obama and the sycophantic media minions: Video: Dimwitted bimbo Sarah Palin claims Abraham Lincoln Built the “Intercontinental Railroad” (No Such Thing!). It was followed by this: Obama’s Intercontinental Railroad Gaffe – Part 2. There is no such thing as an intercontinental railroad connecting either the US to Europe or Asia. Or South America for that matter.
And if Sarah Palin made such a gaffe, she would immediately be labeled a stupid bimbo unfit for any office. Months later, Obama repeats the gaffe.
New Term For an Obama Fib: He ‘Over-suggested’
The competition for minimizing the reality of President Obama’s words and actions in the media is fierce. After all, Solyndra, according to the Associated Press, is an “embarrassment.” Heaven forbid that anyone in the establishment press call it what it really is: a “scandal” and, as described by Andy McCarthy at National Review, a “fraud.”
Then there was the AP’s May description of Obama’s failure to comply with the 60-day requirement to seek congressional authorization for continuing to have U.S. troops involved in Libya under the War Powers Act. In this instance, AP told its readers that Obama was merely “skipping a legal deadline.” Uh, no; he was breaking the law.
In July, Kevin Sack at the New York Times wrote that during the 2008 campaign and the runup to the passage of Obamacare, Obama had “mischaracterized a central anecdote about his mother’s deathbed dispute with her insurance company,” leaving “the clear impression that his mother’s fight was over health benefits for medical expenses.” In other words, he made audiences believe that his mother didn’t have health insurance as she fought ovarian cancer, when she did. There’s a three-letter word for this. It begins with “L,” ends with “E,” and has the ninth letter of the alphabet in the middle.
The Empty Promise of Green Jobs
Crony capitalism–in its full-blown version, national socialism–is always and everywhere a failure. You cannot create wealth by subsidizing the inefficient production of energy–a fundamental rule of economics that the Obama administration, sadly, has yet to learn.
Shovel Ready, Part II: Obama Tells Ohio and Kentucky He’s Got a Bridge To Sell Them
These are all mid-range projects, somewhere between two to four years away. It is simply a demagogic lie, and an absurd one, given that he’s told it before and has now eaten crow, to insist that major civil engineering projects requiring at least a year of surveying and planning are ready to produce jobs “right now.”
By his own ever-optimistic projections, we’ll be out of this rough patch of economy by then, anyway. (Riiiight?) So the stimulus aspect is missing, once again.
Incidentally, if he were at all serious about fixing this bridge, he could have, erm, included it in the first “stimulus” package. (In fact, $0 was devoted to the bridge last time ’round.)
If he had, then the engineering and planning work would have been done by now, and, in fact, men would be ready to start welding on the project.
Figures. Obama Touts Jobs/Spending Plan at Ohio Bridge That Won’t Qualify
Obama’s BFF crony capitalist and ‘Jobs advisor’ Jeff Immelt is creating jobs…in China. GE seeking to double Chinese business within three years
NC Dem Senator: ‘No, No There Are Not Any Bridges in North Carolina in Danger of Falling’
The only thing I can conclude from this is Obama is a shameless liar who would use fear to score cheap political points. Why am I not surprised?
Milking It Dry: Obama Mascot and Tax Cheat Warren Buffett to Appear at Obama Fundraisers
Maybe while he’s there he can bring an oversized novelty check for all the back taxes he owes. Is it just me or are you sick of Warren Buffett already?
Obama has spent every free moment this week in New York at lavish fatcat fundraisers, but we’re supposed to pretend he’s a man of the people or something.
Bluff Called… Republicans Demand Buffett’s Tax Returns
Senate Republicans demanded that Warren Buffett, the namesake of Obama’s tax hikes, turn over his tax returns so they can be compared to his secretary’s returns.
Buffett says his secretary pays more taxes than he does.
Someone call the WAAAAAAHbulance for them…. The NYPD Is Arresting Wall Street Protesters for Wearing Masks
Speaking of masks, the mask is really falling off the face of the unhinged radical left. I wonder if these guys will spare all the billionaires that fund them.… Village Voice Critic Calls For Mass Murder of NY Billionaires… To Feed Poor & Pay for Repertory Theater
Video: Sen Tom Harkin (D-IA) Encourages Citizens To Riot, ‘Get Arrested’ To Save Welfare
The predictable result of coerced government dependency
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it…. Millionaire Michael Moore Threatens Violence Against Rich (Video)
In related news… Michael Moore: “Patriotic Americans” Will Wait Longer For Healthcare
When those super-sized Big Mac meal finally catch up with Moore in the form of a heart attack you think he’ll be “patriotic” and wait for care?
Elizabeth Warren, Totalitarian Moron, Translated
‘In a Rush to Meet Your Deadline, We Made an Honest Mistake’
Remember this shrieking banshee from the other day? Looks like she’s already got some problems with the truth. For someone so eager to redistribute wealth she sure looks like she’s been able to cash in on your tax dollars.
What Solyndra, Soc. Security say about liberalism
During the 2008 campaign, Obama said that Bush-style Social Security reform “would gamble the retirement plans of millions of Americans on the stock market.”
In reality, the Bush proposal didn’t involve government gambling taxpayer money. It gave younger workers the option of investing a portion of their payroll taxes in personal accounts, choosing among investment funds rather than random stocks.
But looking beyond Obama’s distortions, his comments have fresh meaning in the wake of the Solyndra scandal and provide insight into what he and his fellow liberals consider appropriate risk.
Obama thinks it’s OK for government to risk taxpayer money on business ventures that he deems worthy of investment. But he’s outraged at the suggestion that younger Americans be allowed to have more control over the allocation of their own tax dollars.
Google is chock full of Obama’s BFF’s and BIG donors to his campaign…. What Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said before testifying at today’s antitrust hearing
But, for what it’s worth, Schmidt himself doesn’t seem concerned about the hearing whatsoever. He’s even said he’s looking forward to the “opportunity to communicate what [Google is] doing.” More than likely, he’s unconcerned because Google does serve its users well — but he might also be nonchalant because he’s covered his political bases. According to The New York Times:
As antitrust scrutiny has intensified, Google has ramped up its lobbying efforts in Washington and its communications campaigns nationwide. The company has shown television ads in some markets … that trumpet Google’s role in helping small businesses and creating jobs.
Plus, as an outspoken supporter of President Obama, Schmidt just this week hyped the need for short-term stimulus measures of the sort the president has proposed.
Remember that OnStar is a GM service and GM is owned by the government… OnStar Tracks Your Car Even When You Cancel Service
Neil Armstrong says US space program ‘embarrassing’
If everyone had always gotten their shoes from the government, writes Rothbard, the proponent of shoe privatization would be greeted as a kind of lunatic. “How could you?” defenders of the status quo would squeal. “You are opposed to the public, and to poor people, wearing shoes! And who would supply shoes . . . if the government got out of the business? Tell us that! Be constructive! It’s easy to be negative and smart-alecky about government; but tell us who would supply shoes? Which people? How many shoe stores would be available in each city and town? . . . What material would they use? . . . Suppose a poor person didn’t have the money to buy a pair?”
Such a bias toward the status quo similarly infects our thinking and debate on space policy. The highest achievement in the minds of many was landing a man on the moon, and such a feat is viewed as the epitome of a human spaceflight program, and the only model to follow. Ignoring the issue of the pork, such thinking resulted in the Constellation plan (“Apollo on Steroids”) and now it’s giving us the disastrous Senate Launch System (as I discussed over at Pajamas Media yesterday). It’s what I have called the Apollo Cargo Cult — in too many minds, if we don’t have a really big rocket developed and operated by NASA, we don’t have a Real Space Program.
Bickering over rescue of Post Office escalates
The Obama administration unveiled its own plan to help the USPS this week. Under that plan, the government would return a $6.9 billion overpayment into a federal retirement program to the agency over a two-year span, while, as in the House GOP bill, USPS would transition to five-day delivery.
But Republicans on House Oversight have questioned the administration’s assertion that its proposals would cut billions, and are skeptical the government should give back the overpayment into the Federal Employees Retirement System, calling that a projected surplus.
An Oversight GOP staffer noted that the costs in the administration’s USPS plan — the retirement overpayment and a deferral of the retiree healthcare payments — would be borne by the taxpayers, while USPS alone would enjoy the proposal’s savings.
The Postal Service does not receive taxpayer money for operating expenses.
With that in mind, Oversight Republicans believe the president’s blueprint actually raises deficits another $10 billion to $20 billion.
The administration, meanwhile, argues that the costs and savings of the USPS proposals should be considered together.
President offers states an opt-out from NCLB — in exchange for more federal control of education
States will receive a waiver if and only if they agree to certain conditions set by the Education Secretary. CNN calls those conditions “credible commitments to close lingering achievement gaps.” Conservatives call those conditions “strings attached” and “legislating through the executive branch.”
Chief among the administration’s stipulations for a waiver: The adoption of college-and-career-ready standards (a.k.a. national standards). National standards and tests might sound sensible in theory, but, in reality, they would strengthen federal power over education and weaken schools’ direct accountability to parents and taxpayers. Moreover, they would most likely lead to the standardization of mediocrity rather than the standardization of excellence.
But national standards are a favored policy proposal within the Obama Department of Education — and, again, with today’s move to introduce a qualified opt-out from NCLB, the president has found a way to circumvent Congress to push through this policy preference and other preferred “reforms.”
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy (except for the UN, of course):
Agriculture Secretary: We Must “Adjust” Our Taste to Please the Government
When the amply-caboosed unofficial Diet Czar Michelle Obama barked ominously about restuarants’ duty to serve us less and worse-tasting food lest children get too chubby, corporate pansies characteristically scrambled to comply. Did they think that appeasement would keep the heavy fist of government from crashing down on their heads? If so, they’ve been proven wrong already:
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told members of the National Restaurant Association on Monday that Americans need to “adjust” their tastes so that they like the kind of food the government believes they should eat — and “we have to make sure that what we do is create the appropriate transition.”
Good News! Obama Wants To Kill Asthmatic Kids
The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.
But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.
Isn’t that wonderful? Punishing those with asthma, forcing them to take more time to go to the doctor for a prescription (which costs money), then going to the drug store and paying more for inhalers that help them breathe better. But, don’t worry, asthma sufferers, Obama cares about you, and just wants to save you from Globull Warming. Also, says The Weekly Standards Greg Hemingway
Well, tough cookies asthma sufferers! You should have written bigger checks to the Democratic party while you had the chance.
The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle, an asthma sufferer, points out that these kinds of regulations almost always lead to worse products.
Anthony Watts says “let the inhaler hoarding begin!” and wonders if the American Lung Association will come out with a new ad campaign against this regulation. I wonder about that too, considering they are freaking out over not enacting globull warming legislation which makes infants in red carriages cough. How about those with asthma, ALA?
Obamacare HHS rule would give government everybody’s health records
It’s been said a thousand times: Congress had to pass President Obama’s health care law in order to find out what’s in it. But, despite the repetitiveness, the level of shock from each new discovery never seems to recede.
This time, America is learning about the federal government’s plan to collect and aggregate confidential patient records for every one of us.
In a proposed rule from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the federal government is demanding insurance companies submit detailed health care information about their patients.
The HHS has proposed the federal government pursue one of three paths to obtain this sensitive information: A “centralized approach” wherein insurers’ data go directly to Washington; an “intermediate state-level approach” in which insurers give the information to the 50 states; or a “distributed approach” in which health insurance companies crunch the numbers according to federal bureaucrat edict.
Surprise! The company that will handle all that information just so happens to be one which is owned by a BIG Donor to the Democratic Party… Obama Donor, Now Medical Records Czar Gets Little Gov’t Job BIG Gov’t Contracts
Judith Faulkner is a woman that is very connected to the Democrat Party, is in deep with Big Labor, has her own electronic medical records company that she thinks should be the only such company to handle the nations records and this is the woman that Obama is asking to be impartial enough to help choose which company should get billions of tax dollars?
Instead of having the market determine which electronic medical records system will work best, Obama and his industry favorites will make the choice for us. It’s just another example of the sort of crony capitalism that Obama has become famous for.
Just in time to combat the negative publicity, our beloved Department of Health and Human Services has cut checks worth $109 million (thankfully, only one-fifth of what the feds spent on Solyndra) to help states “fight unreasonable premium increases and protect consumers.”
I can save them some money. The root cause of these massive premium increases is a bunch of
Statist, totalitarianmasterminds trying to centrally plan a full one-sixth of the economy.This is akin to the task of the Soviet Politburo, circa the sixties, announcing yet another successful wheat-growing season when, in fact, a large portion of the population was starving to death.
Study: Obamacare will jack premiums up 55%-85%
From National Underwriter: “The number with some kind of individual commercial coverage could increase to 7.4%, or 735,000, from 350,000. The percentage with some kind of government coverage, or coverage provided by a private insurer but paid for in whole or in part by the government, could increase to 31%, from 20% in 2010. Although the percentage of residents with coverage could rise by about 7.9%, the price of individual health insurance coverage might rise about 55% to 85%, excluding the impact of medical inflation, the Milliman consultants predict.”
That 55% increase in people getting Medicaid or other government subsidies will be paid by who? The people who will be socked with premium increases of 55%-85%.
Obama administration shelves long-term care plan
The Obama administration has shelved a financially troubled long-term care insurance plan. Officials said Thursday the staff has been cut and it’s an “open question” if the program will be implemented.
Known as CLASS, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was created under President Barack Obama’s health care law as a voluntary long-term care insurance program for workers. Doubts about its financial viability were raised early on and it has since languished in bureaucratic limbo, with Republicans in Congress pushing for repeal or defunding.
Why The Blogosphere Missed CLASS
The CLASS portion of ObamaCare was known to be unsustainable from the get-go, which is why the bill itself required it to be examined after passage before implementation. But, the estimated $75-billion revenues from its early years’ was key to falsely claiming that ObamaCare would not increase federal deficits, before CLASS itself went into huge deficits.
Meanwhile, ObamaCare has step-by-step been entrenching itself within healthcare and its organizations. Early victims are health insurance agents and those many who rely upon them. I’ve yet to find a major blog that has written about this. Their comp is being cut by up to 50%, with more cuts to come, and many are leaving the business and those who need them with lessened defense against ObamaCare or giant insurance companies most interested in profiting from ObamaCare. I wrote about this here, In Defense Of Health Insurance Agents, And You, and here, CBO: ObamaCare Within 5% Of Nationalizing Insurance Companies, and here, Are Health Insurance Agents Worth It: The Canaries In ObamaCare Mine.
There are many more examples I could easily point out. Assuming that after the 2012 elections there’ll be a Republican president and Congress, despite pledges to repeal ObamaCare, we’ll find much of it welded into our spines. The mandate issue is focused upon because it raises libertarian hackles and because it seems the only promising course in the courts. However, even judicially excising mandates may not uproot Obamacare, if found severable despite the ObamaCare bill not including a severability clause. Also, by then, if there is a then at the Supreme Court, many portions of ObamaCare will be so far along, and many aspects of current healthcare so changed, as to be irremovable. Welcome to Falling Skies, the ObamaCare version. Falling Skies next season is next Summer, just in time for the 2012 election season. Will we survive the aliens? Will we survive ObamaCare? Can we reverse the alien harnesses? Will the blogosphere get ahead of instead of behind the ObamaCare issues? Stay tuned.
Americans Say Federal Gov’t Wastes Over Half of Every Dollar
FBI Bows To CAIR’s Demands, Apologizes For Saying “Devout” Muslims More Likely To Be “Violent”…
Why is the FBI caving into the demands of an organization that instructs the Muslim community to “build a wall of resistance: don’t talk to the FBI”?
Judge questions honesty of Interior Department scientists
Wanger was angered by testimony from the two scientists, Frederick V. Feyrer and Jennifer M. Norris, that he said was “false,” “contradictory” and “misleading.” He accused the Interior Department of “bad faith” in providing the two scientists as experts, and claimed their testimony was “an attempt to mislead and to deceive the court into accepting not only what is not the best science, it’s not science.” An Interior Department spokesman defended Norris and Feyrer, telling the New York Times that “we stand behind the consistent and thorough findings by our scientists on these matters and their dedicated use of the best available science.”
Wanger and the Interior Department scientists cannot both be right. The judge’s assessment of their testimony and his conclusion about the agency’s conduct in the case raise profoundly serious questions about the integrity and honesty of all the federal officials involved in the delta smelt case. And if the judge is correct in that case, taxpayers should be wondering whether other government scientists have given impeachable testimony on behalf of questionable federal environmental policies.
Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who represents a large portion of the Central Valley, is right to call for a congressional investigation “into the actions of Secretary Salazar and others at Interior in relation to California water policy. The recent U.S. District Court ruling, citing illegal actions and abuse of power on the part of Interior, must be addressed.”
In the Hilda Solis fantasy-land hypothetical, people only ride the bus because it’s “green,” but it might come as a complete shock to her to learn that in the real world people actually ride the bus to get from point A to point B.
Solis just admitted that these “green jobs” are make-work, economically unsustainable BS — super-expensive buses to nowhere, ridden by noone, with unions getting the money and taxpayers taken for a ride.
‘Stingray’ Phone Tracker Fuels Constitutional Clash
Stingrays are one of several new technologies used by law enforcement to track people’s locations, often without a search warrant. These techniques are driving a constitutional debate about whether the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but which was written before the digital age, is keeping pace with the times.
Abolish the Department of Homeland Security
You’d think that after Sept. 11 we would have focused our spending on securing the obvious terrorism targets, and in some cases we have. Too often, however, we’re not doing that – like when we buy a hazardous-materials trailer for a county in rural Ohio, a piece of equipment that later gets sold because it sits unused in a parking lot and costs too much to maintain. Or when we buy an 80-camera surveillance system to monitor an Alaskan town too small for a streetlight. Or when we satiate officials’ desire for NASA-style command centers and buy 55 flat-screen televisions for a local intelligence center only to find out that the TVs are all tuned to the same news channel.
House Members to Honor Crook Charlie Rangel With Unveiling of Official $64,000 Portrait Today
In December, the House voted overwhelmingly, 333-79, to censure Rangel over rules violations that stemmed from unpaid taxes on a villa he owned in the Dominican Republic, undisclosed financial assets and the improper use of his office for fundraising.
The portrait itself was the subject of controversy. Just nine months into his term as chairman, Rangel asked the Federal Election Commission for permission to use campaign funds to pay for the portrait, which his lawyer said would cost more than $64,000.
When pressed about the pricey picture, Rangel joked to reporters at the time that he would have preferred a mural.
Video Flashback: Charlie Rangel honored in PJTV Salutes Mr. Tax-Law-Writing-Tax-Evader
Last July, Rubin’s wife resigned her post on the commission shortly before she was charged with seven counts of unlawful compensation.
According to investigators, Wasserman-Rubin voted at least 15 times to support of fund grants prepared by her husband on behalf of the Town of Southwest Ranches. In addition to his normal compensation, Rubin reportedly received three $15,000 bonuses for his work on successful grants that were supported by his wife.
Under Florida law, elected officials are not allowed to vote on matters that could benefit them or their spouse.On September 1st, Rubin began his federal prison term.
Perhaps these articles help explain some of the lawless, unconstitutional and unethical behavior of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. She seems to hold the citizens of America in contempt and is willing to lie over and over again to retain her white-knuckled grip on power.
Video of Grassley: Heads Should Roll Over $16 Muffins
You may or may not have noticed that the ruling class throws around our money like wedding attendees throw rice. Case in point: Injustice Department Flings Our Money to the Four Winds
They’ve spared no expense
…the leftist ideologues running the rogue Justice Department — who help drug cartels smuggle weapons and will not investigate civil rights abuses if the victims are Caucasians — pay $16 apiece for muffins to munch on while they sit around conference tables bloviating uselessly.
[An Inspector General audit released Tuesday] found that DOJ employees attended or participated in 1,832 conferences with a total cost of $121 million in fiscal years 2008 and 2009. The Inspector General analyzed 10 specific conferences which cost $4.4 million.
The report revealed, “one conference served $16 muffins while another served Beef Wellington hors d’oeuvres that cost $7.32 per serving. Coffee and tea at the events cost between $0.62 and $1.03 an ounce. At the $1.03 per-ounce price, an 8-ounce cup of coffee would have cost $8.24.”…This from the same government that has been leaning on restaurants to serve us less tasty food for the sake of our body mass indexes.
Dead federal retirees are paid $120 million annually, report says
Improper payments to dead retirees increased 70 percent in the past five years, far higher than the 19 percent climb in overall annuity payments, the report said.
The payments are on the rise because OPM is doing a poor job of tracking potential cheats, McFarland said. In one case, a deceased annuitant’s son continued receiving federal benefits until 2008 — 37 years after his father’s death. OPM learned about the improper payments — which exceeded $515,000 — only after the son died. The agency never recovered the money.
Obamascandal #1-Gunwalker/Fast & Furious/Castaway/Grenadewalker: The Scandal with a Body Count…
U.S. has yet to explain Fast and Furious to Mexico
Mexico’s attorney general also said the U.S. has not apologized for the violence inflicted by guns smuggled into Mexico under the watch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the secret program based out of the ATF’s field office in Arizona. Morales characterized the operation’s main tactic, letting guns “walk” into Mexico, if, she said, that is what actually happened, as a potential “betrayal.”
On a conference call with reporters earlier this week, Rep. Darrell Issa expressed concern that the damage F&F has caused to U.S.-Mexico relations will be all but irreparable. It looks like his concern is well placed. Issa said it’s especially frustrating to be unable to share information with the Mexican government because the Department of Justice will not share the information with Congress in the first place.
The stonewalling has to stop — but it appears the Department of Justice would rather abolish the ATF than answer questions. Not that the evaporation of a government agency in general seems all that problematic to me — but it’s imperative that Issa and Grassley arrive at answers before everyone who knew anything — and who can confirm Eric Holder knew about the program, too — is out of office.
New Fast & Furious audio: Border Patrol agent killed by F&F weapons was “collateral damage”
It’s not an ATF agent who utters those magical words, it’s the Arizona gun dealer who was working with the ATF on Fast & Furious. He utters them to an ATF agent, though, to which she replies with a cryptic “mm-hmm.” Callousness — or strategy?
A Point Without Partisanship — A Scandal Everyone Should Be Concerned About
Now forget all the partisan points for a minute. We have more than 200 deaths attributed to this operation and an ATF agent on tape saying she thought the ATF needed to dig up dirt on a U.S. Senator to stop him from investigating the ATF. At some point we all, left, right, and center, need to recognize when the inmates have taken over the asylum.
This is the federal bureaucracy out of control and it needs a brighter spotlight on it.
Obamascandal #2-Solyndra: “Pay to Play” is “The Chicago Way”
A reader emails Glenn Reynolds:
The question I have not heard asked is, How many Solyndras are there?
How many have already failed? Or on the brink of failure? How many are still being planned?
When I first discovered I can Google my screen name and see posts I wrote from a few years ago, I had two choices: 1, abandon posting my thoughts and therefore my screen name, or 2, post so many thousands of posts no one would bother checking what I have said. I chose the 2nd route, although I have no idea if my strategy has worked.
But when you are talking TRILLIONS of dollars, I would think an overwhelming number of Solyndras would do the trick, as even the most ardent of watchdogs do not have the budget to seek out every Solyndra possible. It will take hundreds of volunteers hundreds of hours, even if they know what they are looking for. How many Social Security checks would these Solyndras pay for? How many Humvees could be armored? It is just disgusting in every way thinkable.
We seniors used to think Congress, specifically the House, controlled the purse. Now it seems as though anyone can start the presses and print up a zillion dollars. It has made our nation fling toward the poor house. My wife and I gave up our home and 4 acres. I weep for my country. I say the pledge with tears in my eyes. Time is standing still due to the thought that they still have time, 7 days a week to ‘good ole boy’ spending into oblivion. Republicans cannot unite even on this one issue, maybe because they too, know it is almost too late to grind out a solution.
President Solyndra and His Mean Green Wealth-Wasting Machine.
The Solyndra bankruptcy, alas, is not an outlier but a harbinger. This is the kind of economic calamity we will see more of unless the Obama administration sheds its ideological blinders—or until it leaves office. Meanwhile, capital will continue to be misallocated through perverse incentives and outright political favoritism, and large amounts of patiently acquired wealth will be wiped out.
New York Times Headline Blames U.S. for Missing Solyndra Warning Signs
The latest New York Times story about Solyndra is fairly open and honest regarding the Obama administration’s complicity in the $500 million boondoggle, but the Times’ headline writer is still in “protect Obama” mode:
The “U.S.” missed warning signs? The Bush administration ultimately voted against giving Solyndra a taxpayer-backed loan. To me it sounded like a sham from the start (as does just about anything into which this administration sinks its teeth and our money). The rest of America wasn’t consulted on whether the loan was a good idea or not — so it’s not really fair to say the entire country missed the warning signs. I guess this particular headline writer’s credo is “if you can’t blame Bush, blame the whole country.”
That said, there is a twinge of accuracy in that headline. Much of the U.S. is to blame for this mess: the part of America that voted to put Obama in the White House.
The Obama Administration’s Crony Capitalism Problem
Between Solyndra and now Lightsquared, it seems that a pattern is emerging in the Obama White House. In the 2000s, the left made a lot of political hay for Republicans over unsubstantiated allegations of a close relationship between Halliburton and the Bush White House. If we don’t make these much more serious cases a problem for President Obama’s reelection campaign, it’ll be a big mistake.
Well, another House hearing on Solyndra came and went this morning. In another Great Moment Of Transparency in the Age of Obama, the Solyndra execs took the Fifth as promised. The Democrats’ erstwhile chief inquisitor and witch hunter of Capitol Hill, Henry Waxman, demonstrated his trademark chutzpah by complaining that the GOP was “badgering witnesses” by having them invoke the 5th.
Subpoenas for Solyndra execs, say… Democrats?
Maybe it’s just me, but it certainly looks like there’s a whole lot of butt covering going on in Washington these days. Some of these folks appear to be positioning themselves to be on the right side of history before a bunch of questions begin coming up which include phrases like, “what did he know and when did he know it?”
It’s one thing to be unaware that all of this was going on, but as the old rule in politics teaches us, it’s always the coverup that gets you more than the actual deed. With Solyndra executives doing their best mobster imitation and taking the 5th, (perfectly legal, of course) they’re leaving the worst possible impression of the White House in the eyes of the public. If any of the President’s allies do anything at this point to give the impression that they’re hindering an investigation or facilitating a coverup, they could well find themselves having to fall on their swords later on. (Assuming that this turns out to be anywhere near as bad as it’s looking so far.)
Axelrod Denies Knowing Obama: ‘I Don’t Know Anybody Associated With Solyndra’
The best and brightest are suffering from some major memory loss.
Solyndra employees speak out about mismanagement and sloppy spending
“After we got the loan guarantee, they were just spending money left and right,” said former Solyndra engineer Lindsey Eastburn. “Because we were doing well, nobody cared. Because of that infusion of money, it made people sloppy.” …
With the loan guarantee in hand, Solyndra built a second, seven-acre factory with 19 loading docks. … Workers told The Post in interviews that they were shocked that summer when [Brian] Harrison, newly installed as CEO, told them that sales projections used to justify the new factory to federal agencies had been far too optimistic.
“Obviously their forecasts weren’t correct,” said Peter M. Kohlstadt, a research engineer. “We just didn’t have the sales we thought we had.” …
Kohlstadt said Solyndra’s collapse leaves him doubly affected.
“I’m being hit twice: As a taxpayer, $500 million, where did it go?” he said. “I’m hit a second time: I’m not getting money that is owed to me and the government hasn’t done anything to look out for us.”
Kohlstadt’s quote is right on the money and worth remembering. This scandal matters because we, the taxpayers, are on the hook for the loan.
And it’s looking more and more like Solyndra executives didn’t just suffer from bad business sense. It appears they deliberately misled the administration about the state of the company’s finances as recently as July of this year.
Here’s the salient point: like Solyndra, Enron was a favorite of environmentalists, and Enron was a huge backer of the Kyoto Protocol. A decade ago, people liked to talk about links between Enron’s chairman, Ken Lay, and President George W. Bush. But they leave out that the main thing Lay was urging on Bush was the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Enron probably would have fared much better under a Gore administration. Enron thought they’d make money on the trading operations from a cap and trade scheme. After Enron’s collapse, an internal memo from the late 1990s came to light that said Kyoto would “do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States,” and concluded that Kyoto would be “good for Enron stock.”
Obamascandal #3-LightSquared: “Pay to Play” is “The Chicago Way” part deux
Color me not surprised by this news. Soros owns Obama and the Democratic Party… Soros turns up in Obama’s LightSquared imbroglio
As Republican lawmakers begin to dig into the White House’s cozy relationship with a startup wireless company and the wealthy Democratic donor who owns it, a new character has appeared on the story’s edges: liberal superdonor, conservative bete noire and controversial investor George Soros.
Soros reportedly invested in the telecom company LightSquared through a hedge fund, and many of the nonprofits he finances have backed LightSquared in regulatory and policy disputes.
LightSquared: Obama’s Dangerous Broadband Boondoggle
Obama in the Bunker:
The Shuttered White House and Its Fantasies
I know exactly what is going on inside the Obama White House; the outside world has been banned and only the true believers are welcome.
This has very little to do with the many unique features of this administration. It is typical of any administration under siege, and it is as understandable and inevitable as it is unfortunate and even dangerous. I know it well, having seen it with my own eyes during the Iran-Contra siege of the Reagan White House 25 years ago, when the president’s men and women concentrated all their energies and all their passions on “saving” the president from what many of them believed was the return of Watergate. I don’t know if the Obama faithful have an historical template for the current crisis, but their behavior, like Obama’s, is altogether familiar. The White House is hermetically sealed to reality and the president simply repeats his mantras and tries to look unconcerned, even confident and feisty.
That there is little room for reality at the highest levels of the administration is all too obvious. The president’s public statements are repeatedly off key, responding to imaginary events rather than real ones, and sometimes totally dissonant, as when he gave a speech about jobs at a company that was closing down, or in his increasingly odd and incoherent efforts in foreign policy.
Obama’s Insidious Approach to America
I once thought Barack Obama was just unqualified and ill-suited by experience and viewpoint from holding the highest office in the land, simply yet another in a long line of democrat party cardboard cutouts who have repeated the same Socialist boilerplate for fifty years, only in a better suit and with better speech writers. The stuff about turning back the rising tides, and bringing peace, brotherhood, and a chicken in every pot was just the sort of thing you’d expect a liberal politician to say. His mantra of Hope and Change was simply a recycling of every political bromide ever uttered since the days of Julius Caesar. Barack Obama, I thought, was always a creation of the Media; just someone with an interesting biography (that someone else wrote for him), or who gave a good speech (written by someone else) who would either grow into the job, by being constrained by cooler heads in Congress or the realities of the Constitutional System.
I was wrong.
Barack Obama, a recipient of Affirmative Action, educated in the Elite schools, politically-connected, who made his previous livings either sucking off the teat of the taxpayer or being paid to do work of no real economic value or benefit to others (Harvard Law Review), and paid for by the fruits of Capitalism, is doing irreparable harm to America. Obama is not a Socialist as we would generally understand the term. It’s much more insidious than that.
There is no other way to explain Obama and his policies other than to conclude that it’s all been deliberate, and that the deliberation has some ultimate purpose that goes beyond the shallow argument of Capitalism vs. Socialism.
The Most Awkward Embrace Since Al and Tipper Gore…
Note the distance between their bodies, the side kiss, the near grimace of Michelle Obama, how stiff the shoulders and arms of the president appear. (Steve Urkel anyone?) Trouble in paradise? Certainly there have been whispers and the occasional speculative news reports of such. No photo yet though has so clearly captured the seeming truth of such speculation. It is the kind of kiss most often seen given unwillingly by suffering children to the odd and strange smelling older family member during the holidays.
It would appear the economy is not the only thing failing President Obama these days…
Barack Obama’s desperate Hail Mary
Meanwhile, sit back, grab some popcorn and watch Mr. Obama debate Mr. Obama over tax increases during economic downturns. Here he is in a 2009 interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd: “The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just suck up, take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.”
The Republican campaign commercials just write themselves. Mr. Carville says the president should begin firing people, starting with whoever thought this tax-increase Hail Mary was a good idea. It doesn’t even pass the laugh test. They had to know this video of the president exists.
And so the presidential collapse continues unabated. I take no delight in this fact, recognizing it only as the least worst of possibilities, but this administration has become an affront to our liberty rather than a guarantor of it. As such, this president’s problems are of his own making, and history will not judge him kindly.
Given the paucity of investigative information on Obama, given his near absolute lack of a substantial track record, it was natural for Peretz, Brooks, and Noonan to be taken for a ride. Not because they were dumb, but because they were “quality” people.
Now the quality people can see certain kinds of truth, because they are familiar with the sort of data that now alarms them. Now that they can observe the betrayal of Israel, the lunacy of Obamanomics, and the erratic management, the full magnitude of their error becomes apparent. But they didn’t see it at the outset; lurking on the edge of his expression as he campaigned, nor in the little niggling inconsistencies the media was determined to ignore. Now the problems are as big as life: upheaval in the Middle East, the bankruptcy of the country, the scandals of the administration. Now they can use the Bayesian. Perhaps a little late, but better than never. “Welcome back to the fight, Rick. This time we win.”
But there’s one last thing that nice people don’t know. It is that hucksters aren’t confined by the same boundaries they assume everyone else is contained by. They are capable not only of sucker-punching you, but of exceeding limits you never thought could be transgressed. Grifters are in some sense not part of the same civilization that Peretz, Brooks, and Noonan inhabit. Maybe they don’t believe this yet. But they will. They will.
Obama drops $5 dinner raffle to $3 – again
Those of you who paid the $5. Well, you’ve been played. Again. Slurpee not included this time.
2012: The Fork in the Road…
Palin: “Mark My Word, It Is Going To Be An Unconventional Election”
New Tone… Maxine Waters Wants Obama to Drop the “Nice Guy(?)” and FIGHT the GOP, Tea Party
Poll: Obama’s Approval Rating Hits All-Time Low, 36%…
Crash and burn.
I am no pollster and I did not sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but it seems to me that if your man just fell 15 points in job approval in just 6 months, your prospects are dim and getting dimmer. But that is just me. And we are more than a year away. Maybe Obama pulls it off. Maybe Democrats pull off a 1972 and win a few of those seats back.
Oh did I mention that Republican state legislatures redistricted many of those 60 House districts?
Well, good luck, Democrats.
Blacks ‘Strong Support’ Of Obama Down 25%
By the way, remember how Reagan was called a racist who hated black people because black unemployment was so high at the start of his term?
Obama, who will speak before the caucus’s formal dinner this week, has been pushing the passage of his jobs acts and turning a focus to his black supporters. Last week he told a group of black bloggers and advocates that his plan would create jobs in the black community and asked them to “pump up” his plan…
Gillespie said the additional focus on African Americans by Obama and his reelection campaign is necessary. The sag in “strongly favorable” ratings is an important measure of intensity as the 2012 campaign approaches.
“The president cannot rest on his laurels with respect to black voter representation. Given the fact that people don’t necessarily strongly approve of President Obama, that could translate to less enthusiasm for his candidacy,” she said. “That doesn’t mean they will vote for the Republican candidate. It means they will not turn out.”
And what’s worse, they might not even riot if Obama doesn’t get his way.
Of course, there are always the unions.
DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Democratic Party “Natural Home For Jewish Voters”
What exactly is ‘natural’ about Jews voting Democrat? Is Schultz stereotyping here?
It’s time to ratchet up the class warfare and scare the daylights out of granny.
Good News: Obama Lets Biden Loose on Campaign Trail
Have the presidential election rules been changed to “party with the most foot-in-mouth incidents by November 6, 2012 wins”?
Bill Clinton Backs Obama 2009… Breaks With Obama 2011
Solving the Democrats’ Obama Problem
The worst-kept secret in Washington, D.C. is that Democrats are desperate to find a way to ease Barack Obama out of running for reelection, so Hillary Clinton can receive the nomination so carelessly denied her in 2008. But how do you convince a failed narcissist to get out of the way so the grown-ups can take back the party? And how do you keep the most loyal and important voting bloc, blacks, within the tent, while shoving aside the first black president?
On Friday, September 16, Rush Limbaugh said that if the Democratic establishment want to get rid of Obama, they must appeal to his ego and convince him to go on his own. Rush has read Obama’s ego perfectly, and here is roughly how it could be handled.
Hillary Clinton, loyal Democrat that she is, has remained totally silent in public over her boss’s floundering. But behind the scenes, she is or soon will be scrambling from one nation’s capital to another, whispering in the ears of world leaders. Late in the winter, her hard work pays off handsomely.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL! She must think we are as stupid as the people who still support Obama! What is Obama doing in the UN right now? He is doing a total ‘180’ on giving Palestine a state because of what happened in NY-9… Obama’s UN Ambassador Fires Back at Perry & Romney: Don’t Play Politics With Diplomacy
GOP leadership faces possible tea party revolt in 2012
President Snooki BaddaBing… Newsmax: Christie’s thinking of getting in
Senior aides to Christie have been quietly urging his supporters not to commit to Perry, indicating Christie was still mulling a bid and would make a final decision after New Jersey’s legislative races are completed in November.
That last bit suggests either that the story’s wrong or that Christie’s a doofus since the deadline to get on the ballot in Florida is October 31. Anyway: Explain to me again why he’d supposedly be such a gangbusters candidate in the primary. He is, to be sure, a supremely gifted messenger on entitlements and public-employee unions, and he’s already accomplished something significant vis-a-vis the latter. Beyond that, what’s the argument for his candidacy? He’s been governor for just two and a half years, he believes in global warming, he’s questionable on guns, he seems to support comprehensive immigration reform, he backed Castle over O’Donnell (RINO!), etc. That’s not to say he can’t win — if we were willing to nominate McCain, we could nominate Christie — but I’m not sure why anyone thinks he’d necessarily settle far north of, say, 25 percent. He’d be dynamite at the debates, but the debates don’t matter much except to hardcore political junkies like you and me. Why risk running now and flaming out instead of staying put as governor, building a record, and then steamrolling into the 2016 primaries when he wouldn’t have to face a Democratic incumbent in the general?
The Great American Idol Presidential Google Contest!
They had the debates: Romney won: They have a audience to give their opinion: Romney won…and then Romney comes on right away to talk to Fox’s Sean Hannity.
Gee…let’s not do him any big favors.
But the more important revelation is that— The America Idol Presidential Candidate Google Contest has finally come into its rightful place in American elections. Yes America– YOU will pick out the winner with YOUR votes! And WE will know just how to make who WE want to win, say just the right thing to get it!
Fox and Google…working together to bring you the new ”democracy” of online voting. The citizens sent in their video questions and they said that YOU picked the questions. (LOL) Why..you could even give your thoughts online while you were watching
Lucky you citizen! You really do have a voice, comrade!
Debate Analysis: Winners And Losers Of The Fox/Google Debate
In my opinion, the clear winners on Thursday were former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain. Both were interesting, both came armed with great ideas and great one-liners. Cain’s 9-9-9 refrain got a little tired, but part of effective communication is making your ideas stick and his mantra did that. I’ll probably dream in nines tonight.
The headline coming out of the debate may well be Gov. Perry and immigration. It’s a complex issue that he has had to wrestle with as a border state governor, with no help from the federal government and often running against the grain of the party base here and there. Dick Morris tweeted that Perry won’t survive the immigration onslaught he experienced tonight. I don’t agree with that, but I won’t deny that he’ll have some ground to make up.
The Rick Perry of lore needs to show up real soon
I wanted to like Rick Perry and hoped he would be the conservative we had been hoping for. But I didn’t jump on the Perry bandwagon unlike some other conservative bloggers in part because the field was not complete and in part because I didn’t know enough about him.
I brought Katie Thompson on for guest posts over the summer to make the case for Perry and she did a good job. (Note: Katie now is a leader of Students for Perry)
I have been waiting for the Rick Perry of Katie’s posts to show up at the debates. I’m still waiting. The Rick Perry of lore needs to show up real soon.
How Bad Was Perry Last Night? So Bad Even Leading Tea Party Group FreedomWorks Is Saying Romney Might Not Be So Bad After All…
There’s no question about it, Perry was an absolute train wreck last night. FreedomWorks was actually protesting against Romney less than a month ago and now even they’re having serious doubts about the rest of the field.
The Truth About the Booing at the Debate
I was at the debate, in the audience on the right hand side about halfway back (here’s my tweet of the video screen that was right in front of us). The person who booed was just a few rows in front of us. The booing got an immediate and angry reaction from nearly everyone sitting around him, who hissed and shushed at him. Lots of loud gasps, “Shhhh!” “No!” “Shut up, you idiot!” etc.
What Mitt Romney and Rick Perry need to do is tell MSNBC, CNN and Fox News that it is over. No more games. No more audiences applauding death or booing gay soldiers. Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have given them their time, now they and the networks should move on.
A new format of four candidates is needed. The moderator asks a question and the candidates, in turn, answer them. Then they rotate for the next question, with the guy who answered first answering last and everyone else moving up.
These debates are a farce and a detriment to the electoral process. All they do is open Republicans to mocking by a liberal-biased media. To hell with the debates because they do not serve Republicans at all.
Perry: “I Don’t Think You Have a Heart” If You Oppose In-State Tuition for Children of Illegal Immigrants
“If you say that we should not educate children who come into our state for no other reason than that they’ve been brought their through no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart,” Perry said. “We need to be educating these children because they will become a drag on our society. I think that’s what Texans wanted to do. Out of 181 members of the Texas legislature when this issue came up [there were] only four dissenting votes. This was a state issue. Texas voted on it. And I still support it today.”
Romney: If you oppose illegal immigration, it means you have a heart and a brain
Perry’s best defense of his in-state-tuition-for-illegals law is to remind voters that it was a state-level decision, implemented in a state that has to tackle the practical fallout from illegal immigration in a way a state like Massachusetts simply doesn’t. (As a reminder, Texas has ten times the number of illegals as Massachusetts.) Texas DREAM primarily affected the state budget of Texas and Texas taxpayers — and, presumably, Texan voters supported it at least indirectly by electing a state legislature that passed it. Offering in-state tuition doesn’t explicitly erode the rule of law as, say, amnesty for illegals would. If a state wanted to offer in-state tuition to international students, it could. If a state wanted to offer a flat tuition rate to all students, it could. Yes, as Rick Santorum pointed out last night, in-state tuition does nothing to discourage illegal immigration — but that’s not what such a law is designed to do in the first place. It’s designed to incentivize college enrollment (and, presumably, graduation). Whether that’s advisable is certainly debatable, but Perry’s support for Texas DREAM need not cost him the support of those who are strongly opposed to amnesty for illegal immigrants or who strongly support — as Perry puts it — “more boots on the ground” to secure our borders. In other words, Perry should reassure voters he’s not squishy on border security nor does he favor amnesty for illegals — and deflect attention from the Texas DREAM Act as much as possible, not call attention to it with self-righteous pronouncements.
Perry’s Brainless Invocation of Heartlessness
Romney Praises Obama’s “Race to the Top” on Wednesday – Denies It On Thursday (Video)
On Wednesday former Governor Mitt Romney praised Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” program at a campaign stop.
The Politico reported:
At the event, Romney also praised Obama’s education secretary for the Race to the Top program that rewards state education systems for reaching specific goals. “I think Secretary Duncan has done some good things,” he said. “I hope that’s not heresy in this room.”
Ouch!… Rick Perry Blasts Romney on His Disappearing Quotes (Video)
Ugh. Romney Says Perry Is Unelectable – He’s Not Moderate Enough
The Perry camp shot back after Romney released questions he said the Texas governor should answer on Social Security, including details of how a pension system run by states rather than the federal government might work.
“Mr. Romney is again sounding like a Democrat, distorting the truth and trying to scare senior citizens,” Perry communications director Ray Sullivan responded in a statement. “Rick Perry and other conservatives are courageous enough to be honest about federal spending and entitlements, whether Mr. Romney and the liberals like it or not.”
Romney’s Electability Card Is a Joker to Perry’s Four Aces
How on earth will Mitt Romney fare in such a contest? He was born with a silver spoon the size of a thriving auto company, spent his adolescence in a posh private school, spent two years in Paris on the tab of the Mormons, then romped off to Brigham Young and soon landed in the rose garden of Harvard. Since then, Romney has spent nearly all of his adult life flitting from one corporate board room to the next, buying up companies, laying off workers in one downsizing maneuver after another, growing very, very rich on what Obama will say was the suffering of far more downtrodden and worthy souls. And if faced off with Barack Obama, the son of a goat herder and a teenage mom, Mitt Romney will become the white, posh, country-club punching bag for all the new Obama-impoverished voters and their limousine-liberal enablers.
On the other hand, Rick Perry came from genuine hardscrabble roots. Perry wasn’t a bookworm; he became an Eagle Scout instead of the teacher’s pet. But Perry’s no slouch in the brains department. One does not get certified to fly big jets for the U.S. Air Force without some heavy-duty brain power. All in all, Perry seems to have opted for learning the things that apply to real life, while perhaps shunning those things preferred by the eggheads in academia.
It seems more than a little naïve for Governor Romney to see himself as the more easily electable candidate in a face-off with Barack Obama. Evidently, Mitt has hung around most of his life amongst the shallow-civility crowd and does not even see the class-warfare and anti-Mormon dirt that Obama will soon be hurling his way – if he is the nominee.
Cocktail Party Moderation Equals Death
Settling for an “electable” moderate got us Bob Dole.
Settling got us John McCain.
This year, moderation is the difference between careening off the cliff at 60 miles an hour versus 80 miles an hour.
A moderate will not keep us from going over the cliff.
A moderate–no matter how slick he is on TV, or how “electable” the LSM says he is, how perfect his hair is, or how “presidential” he looks–is fundamentally incapable of making the piss-everyone-off decisions that are necessary to save this country.
Would Romney Repeal ObamaCare?
Not if it took political capital to do so, says Philip Klein, which it would.
Some of Romney’s many policy reversals have been overlooked in this campaign as old news, so I’ll just provide a brief refresher. Romney ran for statewide office in the Massachusetts twice, in 1994 and 2002, as a pro-choice candidate, only to become publicly pro-life in 2005, just as he was gearing up to seek the GOP presidential nomination instead of seeking a second term as governor of the liberal state. During the 2008 campaign he attacked various opponents for being for gun control, amnesty and campaign finance reform. Yet at earlier points in his career, Romney supported the federal “assault weapons” ban (and signed a state ban as governor in 2004), called the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform “reasonable” and “quite different from amnesty” and supported campaign finance reform measures far more draconian than anything in McCain-Feingold. During this campaign, he’s spent the last few weeks attacking his opponent Texas Gov. Rick Perry for criticizing Social Security too harshly, because he says it’s politically damaging to do so.
Romney, in short, has displayed zero political courage during his career. He has held opposite positions on nearly every issue, with one obvious exception. He still hasn’t disavowed the health care law he designed, campaigned for, and signed with a smiling Ted Kennedy at his side. And it happens to be the forerunner to Obamacare. There’s no reason to believe as cautious and calculating of a figure as Mitt Romney would stake the crucial first months of his presidency getting into a bruising political battle to repeal a law, when he still clings to its underlying policy ideas.
Klein forgets that Romney also refused to either support, or clearly oppose, the Surge in Iraq. A dicey, dangerous proposition at the time… so Romney punted, again.
Gov. Rick Perry Drops the Romneycare Bomb on Hannity (Video)
“You’re going to have a hard time finding a difference between Romneycare and Obamacare.”
Steve Forbes: Rick Perry Will Win the White House
The ‘Palinization’ of Perry. This is not surprising because Perry, like Palin, scares the the Democrats, their leftist allies, and the Yankee/Inside the Beltway ‘Cocktail Party’ wing of the Republican Party (which includes Fox News, BTW). Why? Because they know if either of them wins it means the destruction of their ‘world’… Larry Flynt offers $1 million for proof Rick Perry had an ‘illicit sexual liaison’
Want to know what the Detroit Free Press thought of the GOP field in the debate last night? It can be summed up in one picture that the freep ran in their editorial by Stephen Henderson: Will any candidate rescue the millennials?
Which reminds me of this great Perry line (via Instapundit): “I am actually for gun control: Use both hands.” But I digress. The entire editorial is chock full of the liberal worldview. What will the government to for this person, what will the government do for that person, blah, blah, blah. And every now an then a potshot at Perry. Did you know that Perry wants to poison your water table? Henderson insists that simply lowering taxes and reducing burdensome regulations won’t work because the problem is more “complicated.” How it’s more complicated Henderson never says, but he insists it is. Never mind that Reagan simply lowered taxes, and dramatically at that, and the economy proceeded to create 20 million jobs, and tax revenue to the government actually increased, not decreased.
The ‘New Civility’ (Cont’d): Bristol Palin fights back heckler called her mother “whore,” “devil”
More of that ‘new tone’ we were promised by Democrats in the aftermath of the Giffords shooting in January (an obvious strong language warning): Bristol Palin verbally attacked by heckler ‘YOUR MOTHER’S A WHORE’
You know Bristol Palin is one tough cookie and instead of just ignoring this scumbag who called her mom a whore, she engages him and tries to find out exactly what her mom did to so upset this human piece of trash. Turns out, he’s got nothing and she makes him look ridiculous. But that doesn’t stop him from saying the most horrible things to her face. And no matter how awesome I think she might have handled herself, in all honesty what this degenerate said at the end just really pissed me off.
Media Celebrates Horrible Thug Who Verbally Assaulted Bristol Palin (“Your Mother’s a Whore”) – Who Was Earlier Seen With Levi Johnston (Video)
Look for the Union Label/Whackademia/The Badger Rebellion:
Wisconsin’s long, strange trip
A bloated management, run-away costs, declining market share, imploding volume, a sell-off of assets and investments, headquartered in Detroit – what is it? No, it’s none of the Detroit automakers. It is their former nemesis and current co-owner, the United Auto Workers.
“Two years after the wrenching restructuring of the U.S. auto industry and the bankruptcies that remade General Motors and Chrysler, the UAW is facing its own financial reckoning. America’s richest union has been living beyond its means and running down its savings, an analysis of its financial records shows. Unless King and other officials succeed with a turnaround plan still taking shape, the next financial crisis in Detroit may not be at one of the automakers but at the UAW itself.”
If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you’re familiar with the “aroma in Tacoma” — that infamous odor caused by the pulp mills and cow manure.
Well, there’s a different kind of aroma overtaking the city. It’s the stench of Big Labor intransigence as the public teachers’ union defies a court order to end its school strike. They’re on day six of job abandonment. For the children!
Maryland Democrat Stole Money to Pay for Wedding Expenses
Well, I suppose the upside here is she wasn’t redistributing taxpayers money. She just helped herself to it.
Michigan’s unemployment rate, consistently higher than the national average, soared above 15 percent between 2009 and 2010. No state, not even Katrina-stricken Louisiana, had seen this kind of unemployment in 25 years.
Not all of this is Big Labor’s fault — but much of it is.
Grand Valley State University economist Hari Singh found that if Michigan had been a right-to-work state, the auto industry would have seen a 25 percent gain in jobs since 1965. Instead, it lost 56.6 percent just between 2002 and 2009, shrinking its work force by 165,777. In a functioning market, high unemployment would lead to lower wages. But in Michigan’s auto industry, Singh found, wages actually rose 18.1 percent during that time.
Unions congratulate themselves for protecting workers’ wages, but they have imposed a heavy price on everyone else. Not a single foreign automaker has ever taken advantage of Michigan’s legions of out-of-work but highly trained employees, preferring to train novices in right-to-work states.
‘When You Get to Name Calling That Just Shows That There is No Logic to Your Argument’
Of course nothing will happen to this sniveling little punk because teachers are special and can do whatever they want, apparently.
Kansas State University Slogan Forbidden by Thought Police
University officials asked the school’s band to remove a formation highlighting the slogan “Every Man a Wildcat” from its pregame routine on Saturday.
Those who dislike the slogan say the word “man” is not inclusive. They prefer “Every Person a Wildcat.”
Those fluent in the English language know that “man” in this context means all members of mankind — whoops I mean personkind. Nonetheless the forbidden slogan will no longer be used by the university in any official context.
It’s Unanimous: “The Irvine 11″ All Found Guilty
U.C. Irvine is a hotbed of Muslim extremism.
• Rocks thrown at Jewish students;
• The destruction of Holocaust memorial displays;
• Threats and harassment of Jewish students;
• Recurring swastikas painted on campus;
• Official events including “Zionist Awareness Week”, which promoted antisemitism;
• Exclusion of Jews during “anti-hate” rallies;
• Graduation apparel that offered support for Hamas and other terrorist groups;
• And five other “isolated acts” that could not be addressed because they were reported more than 180 days after they occurred.
In Other News…
Five Ways to Screw Up Your Life with the Internet
One of the odd things about the Internet is that so many people don’t seem to understand that it’s real. Sure, they realize that there’s a computer in front of them, a “series of tubes,” and then…it gets kind of foggy. It’s like they think there are magical pixies from the land of Lulz on the other end, as opposed to their family, friends, co-workers, and old boyfriends who are obsessively poring over their Facebook page.
Granted, they are aware that they do need to be careful about a few things: viruses, hackers, identity thieves, Nigerian princes who want to give them millions of dollars — all the standard stuff. But there are some lesser known dangers of the Internet that can steamroll your life like Paris Hilton stampeding towards a line of cocaine
Sometimes talking with liberals is perplexing. You never know what claim they will make next or what name they will call you. Take David Axelrod’s response to Standard & Poor’s recent credit action: He calls it the “Tea Party downgrade.” Amazingly, he blames the United States’ loss of its AAA bond rating on the one group that has sounded the alarm about our fiscal crisis. How did the president’s leading adviser come up with a label so detached from reality?
Comforting as it would be to dismiss this as a one-off comment, Axelrod’s words spring from the mental universe of liberalism. It is a vast sphere of assumptions that are found nowhere else. In an effort to promote the civility of debate that is so much in demand these days, here is a compendium of the myths underlying some of the strange things liberals say.
The enemies of freedom are not so stupid to try and take our freedom(s) in a big, bold action. It is more effective to cook the American voter like the slowly boiled frog. Unexamined sayings like “from the get-go” are a symptom of the slow creep of authoritarianism, socialism and Marxism into our daily American lives.
Emboldened by the 2008 (D) sweep led by the as-yet-unrevealed Obama (who is not a Muslim), the (D) party rammed Obamacare down America’s throat in the dead of night with very few witnesses on the floor of Congress, and then signed it into law in a tiny White House ceremony. That bold but covert move sparked the TEA Party and the voter revolt that led to a (D) rout in 2010.
The (D) Party learns from its mistakes, and won’t likely repeat their over-step that is Obamacare. Therefore, we are back to the chess game of pawn warfare, where major victories are set up by strategic deployment of pawns taking very little steps.
Rep. Allen West: “We Need Black Fathers, Not Washington D.C.”
“It’s great that we have President Barack Hussein Obama as the first black, African-American President of the United States of America, but I didn’t have to look at someone beyond my own dad,” West said. “When you look at the black family structure right now, less than 33 percent have mother and father in the home. That’s what we have been talking about here. Once upon a time in the black community you didn’t have to look at people outside your home for role models. We’ve have got to get that re-established. So we don’t have to look up to Washington D.C. You can look at your dads.”
A Lurid Look Behind the Scenes of Jesse Jackson’s Grievance Empire
The grievance business has been good to Jesse Jackson, allowing the cheap thug to live the life of a degenerate zillionaire. But what goes around comes around. The same identity politics victimhood that put him on his throne has now saddled him with a lawsuit…
10 Things I’ve Learned About Work
Is Your Choice Of Food A Fundamental Right?
You grow a garden; you expect to be able to harvest the food from that garden and eat it. You raise a cow; you expect to be able to milk that cow and consume the milk. You raise chickens; you expect to gather eggs and eat them. It’s uncomplicated, simple, a fundamental right. Perhaps you wouldn’t feel this way if you lived under some other form of government, but here, now, in America and other democratized countries, this is what you expect.
According to Wisconsin Judge Patrick J. Fiedler, you do not have a fundamental right to consume the food you grow or own or raise. The Farm To Consumer Legal Defense Fund, the pioneers in defending food sovereignty and freedom, recently argued before Judge Fiedler that you and I have a constitutional right to consume the foods of our choice. Judge Fiedler saw no merit to the argument and ruled against the FTCLDF. When they asked him to clarify his statement, these were his words:
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;”“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;”
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice…”
(source)
Talk about hammering a point home.
So in the middle of realizing that school is really just a babysitting service, I became militant. I realized that public school is like Social Security. There is no money to do what we are pretending we are aiming to do. We should just grow up and admit that we cannot have effective public schools for everyone. Just like we cannot have Social Security for everyone.
But parents in the middle class can have one parent working and one parent home with their kids.
I feel like I have no choice. Because while I was waiting for the kids to go back to school, I was reading. And, of course, now my homeschool site makes me a magnet for research about school. And the evidence is overwhelming that schools are not meeting the educational needs of children…
Reason #5752424597 to homeschool your kids… Georgia: Middle School Kids Taught Saudi Women Feel “Very Fortunate To Have Sharia”
Oh yeah, they have it great. Just because they can’t leave the house without a male “chaperon,” can’t drive, can’t work, can’t leave the country, can’t be in the same room with unrelated men and on and on doesn’t mean they have it bad.
It begins: Fort Worth, TX, Honor Student Suspended For Saying Homosexuality Is Wrong
Want to see true intolerance? View the left.
Chicago Union ‘Pensions’ Give $56M To 23
Apparently, here is who is responsible, and the trick they used to quietly slip in these provisions:
Here’s what is clear: In April 1990, then-Sen. Emil Jones presented a bill aimed at increasing pension benefits for city employees in the municipal pension fund.
Lest we forget, Emil Jones was Barack Obama’s mentor in the Illinois legislature. In fact, according to some, Emil Jones made Barack Obama.
Changes to Illinois law often begin with something known as a shell bill, which usually alters one word or date in a specific article and section of the code. Shell bills are a type of placeholder that allows lawmakers to make more substantive changes later in the session, often without scrutiny.
Many of the pension provisions inserted in 1991 had corresponding shell bills that previously altered one word or date of the same article, section and paragraph. Among them was a bill that made a minor change to the exact section and paragraph where the union perk would be codified.
That bill was filed by two men who were state senators at the time: Jeremiah Joyce, a close political ally of former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s, and John Daley, a brother of the former mayor’s and now a Cook County commissioner…
Two days after the pension changes passed the Legislature, the city’s unions lined up to endorse Mayor Daley in his first re-election campaign. He would go on to serve as mayor for the next 20 years with firm support from organized labor…
Of course, the Daley family helped Barack Obama and Michelle throughout their brief careers in Chicago. In fact, they are still helping the Obamas, as Richard’s brother, William Daley, is currently Mr. Obama’s chief of staff.
And of course Obama is still helping the unions in his fashion. It’s ‘the Chicago way.’
Money for Nothing: Phoenix taxpayers foot the bill for union work
The total cost to Phoenix taxpayers is about $3.7 million per year, based on payroll records supplied by the city. In all, more than 73,000 hours of annual release time for city workers to conduct union business at taxpayers’ expense are permitted in the agreements.
The top officials in all of the unions have regular jobs with the city. But buried in the labor agreements are a series of provisions for those employees to be released from their regular duties to perform union work.
For top officers, the typical amount of annual release time is 2,080 hours, a full year of work based on 52 weeks at 40 hours each. They continue to draw full pay and benefits, just as if they were showing up for their regular jobs. But they are released from their regular duties to conduct undefined union business.
Connecticut Governor Enacts Card Check Through Executive Order
Continuing a fiat governance style that is right out of the Obama playbook, Democratic and Working Families Party Governor Dannel Malloy issued two executive orders yesterday that will force daycare providers and home healthcare workers in Connecticut to join unions.
The orders, his ninth and tenth since taking office in January, will force the state’s 4,000 daycare providers to add over $1 million in dues to union coffers, and remove the right to secret ballot election for these workers by instituting a card check process.
Teens Charged, Officer Hospitalized After Brawl
‘Buffett Rule’ a bust in California
If President Obama really wants to see the “Buffett Rule” in action, he should look at California’s tax system. The state has been plagued by it for years.
The revenue stream is unstable and the state budget has been a deficit disaster.
Soaking the rich — relying heavily on them for income taxes — has resulted in a precarious revenue roller coaster ride. It’s either boom or bust in Sacramento, depending on how the wealthy are faring in the stock market and their other investments.
MSM Forgets to Obsess on Race
As readers should have assumed, she is black; otherwise they would have given her race. Funny how the only time the media isn’t obsessed with race is on the rare occasions it is truly relevant, as when describing criminal suspects.
Terrific!… New “Air Claire” Billboard Welcomes Passengers to St. Louis Airport
Complementing the billboard campaign is a statewide radio advertisement, which uses real audio of McCaskill responding to questions about the private jet issue. Both the spot and billboard are part of the American Crossroads www.TruthAboutClaire.com campaign, and can be viewed and listened to here.
“We’re going to make Air Claire famous because McCaskill’s private jet symbolizes everything that’s wrong with her candidacy: living large on the public’s dime, dodging taxes while voting to raise ours, and being out of touch with everyday Americans’ lives,” said American Crossroads president and CEO Steven Law.
McCaskill is widely considered one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats up for re-election in 2012.
Educrats Confiscate Old Glory From Autistic 12-Year-Old
Theresa Stevens, of Dover, says her 12-year-old son, Shawn, brought the small flag to school to show friends. He had received it as a gift from a family friend whose son is in Afghanistan. …
“I got the phone call at 8:30 [Wednesday] morning,” she said. “‘This flag needs to be immediately removed from school because it can be considered a weapon.’ I don’t understand how an American flag can be considered a weapon.”
Black Man Admits Sending Threatening KKK Letters to City Hall
Another fake hate crime.
A black man in Illinois sent this to the local police and city hall: “Get all the blacks from Chevy Chase Apartments from out of O’Fallon before we burn the hole(sp) complex down. KKK warning.”
Jerry Brown Surprised He Still has to Work with Republicans
Needing a photo ID to drive a car, buy a bottle of booze or a pack of cigarettes is not considered to be a hardship or racist but asking for photo ID to vote all of a sudden becomes a hardship that smacks of racism… Photo ID Laws: Welcome Back, Jim Crow?
What is preventing these “voters of color” from acquiring a photo ID card? In what way are they different from their “White counterparts”? These are the kind of questions every black American should be asking, not just a handful that includes me. Where is the righteous indignation at being portrayed as helpless children? The only people who should take issue with voter ID laws are those who intend to perpetrate a fraud. No responsible, law-abiding citizen should have any problem with such laws.
It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out why liberals engage in such hyperbole and condescension. Ninety percent of black voters choose Democrats, and if portraying them as eternally oppressed victims of racism and bias gets them to the polls, so be it.
Only Non-Smokers Need Apply At Baylor
Yet Another Reason Not to Buy Levi’s
If you aren’t boycotting Levi’s yet, you probably haven’t seen their “Go Forth” ad campaign, which glorifies the sort of rioting vermin that recently caused such havoc in Britain.
Handicapped Kids…Better Off Dead
Imagine for a second eight years down the road when Bryan, bound to a wheelchair but otherwise functioning and interacting as a typical pre-teen boy, gets into an argument with one of his friends. Without thinking, his friend shouts out something like, “Yeah, well, at least my parents wanted me!” Perplexed, Bryan does a little digging and question-asking, and he eventually finds out that his parents were so upset at the thought of having to deal with him as he was that they would have preferred to kill him. How many of the left’s cherished “self-esteem” classes will Bryan have to sit through to overcome that devastation?
For its part, the Palm Beach Post editorialized against the lawsuit. Andrew Marra wrote for the paper:
The problem with their lawsuit is its premise that their son is more flawed or somehow worse than a person with four fully formed limbs[.] … Certainly, Bryan will face challenges that few have to consider, and that is tragic. Whether these obstacles mean his life is not worth living should be up to him to decide, not to Ms. Mejia and a jury of her peers.
While Marra is barking up the right tree, he doesn’t take his condemnation of this case far enough. After all, there is nothing logically different about what Mejia and Santana are saying from what the left has said for years about the whole right to choose abortion. Why should we be surprised when two people say that their son’s physical disabilities make him unworthy to live? For years we have been condoning the left’s lie that an inconvenient child can be killed legally — so why not a handicapped one? Surely if the financial burden, emotional strain, or psychological stress caused by an unplanned pregnancy is enough to justify abortion, the kind of grief provoked by finding out your child will face physical challenges should be as well, right?
MSM Circus and Celebutard Side Show:
In the email below, sent in January of 2011, McGinniss reveals that his manuscript, then under legal review at Crown/Random House, could not prove its most headline-grabbing allegations. And yet, many of these “salacious stories” that lacked “proof” (in McGinniss’s own words) ended up in the book, and on televisions everywhere during the author’s current media tour … without proper sourcing, and without any apparent new evidence to support them.
McGinniss’s panicked state is evidenced by the identity of the recipient to whom he sent his email of distress. Jesse Griffin was the author of an obscure, low-rent, and now-defunct anti-Palin blog that obsessed over Trig Palin’s maternity–claiming, without any evidence, that Sarah Palin was not Trig’s mother.
Was Random House aware that its prized author was making a desperate overtime bid to save face? And if so, why did it allow him to come forth with most of those tawdry accusations without proof or proper sourcing?
Cop-Killer Is Media’s Latest Baby Seal
With death penalty opponents so fixated on Davis’ race — he’s black — it ought to be noted that all the above witnesses are themselves African-American. The first man Davis shot in the car that night was African-American.
I notice that the people so anxious to return this sociopathic cop-killer to the street don’t live in his neighborhood.
There’s a reason more than a dozen courts have looked at Davis’ case and refused to overturn his death sentence.He is as innocent as every other executed man since at least 1950, which is to say, guilty as hell.
MSNBC Anchor: Republicans Think “Slavery Was Cool”…
No low is too low for MSNBC.
Every election season, a variety of newspapers and other entities set themselves up as arbiters of the accuracy of politicians’ statements. These “fact-checkers” nearly always turn out to be liberal apologists who don a false mantle of objectivity in order to advance the cause of the Democratic Party. Maybe there are exceptions, but I can’t think of one offhand.
Oh Brother… Liberal CNN Reporter: Obama Has Morphed From Clark Kent Into Superman
Washington (CNN) — What did you do over your summer vacation?
If you’re President Obama, you’ve had a bit of a transformation. That is, from the mild-mannered Clark Kent into, well, Superman.
Or something like that.
Cool depended on liberalism. In fact, it was an offshoot of it, suckling on the mother’s milk of Keynesian economics. As long as there was plenty of deficit spending to go around, we could all be cool. Life would be one long evening at Max’s Kansas City.
Of course, it’s not. In today’s pay-as-you-go world, being cool is a luxury few can afford. This accounts for the extreme discomfort we may be seeing in our media and, to a lesser extent — they still have more money — Hollywood. Our media, our journos, depend on being thought cool and, consequently and perhaps more importantly, thinking of themselves as cool. When they suspect they are not, they begin to behave like worker bees when the queen is killed. They tend to run around and act out. After a while, they seem lost. Their numbers dwindle.
This is just because cool depended on a hive mind in the first place. It was little more than fad. We are well rid of it.
Sullivan is long past the point where things that do not feed his paranoia and conspiracy-mongering leave much of an impression. The former maverick is increasingly a one-trick pony.
Video: Actor Morgan Freeman Attacks Tea Party As Racist
Perhaps most ironically, Freeman himself has now been institutionalized within the liberal plantation
Morgan Freeman Admits Hollywood has Failed Its Progressive Mission
Is that what it shows, or does it show that people – not just those in the Tea Party – have lost faith in this President?
Obama’s poll numbers continue to sink. This includes amongst reliably Democratic supporters such as Jews and African-Americans?
Have Jews and African-Americans suddenly become black haters?
The reality is that more and more people – even some in the media, perish the thought – are coming to the conclusion that Barack Obama was totally unqualified for the job as president, and that his performance in the past 32 months proves it.
What folks like Freeman don’t get is that there’s nothing racist about such feelings, and to make such an accusation is, well, racist.
Of course. But just for the sake argument, let’s assume Freeman is right — that America is a racist cesspool. What role does his industry play in shaping that? 60 years of films such as Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones and Guess Who’s Coming Dinner. 20 years of Freeman himself alternating playing either God or the President. All for naught. If Freeman is right, then Hollywood has failed in the role that his fellow progressives set out for it. And he has failed in his choices of film roles.
Blocked by Alec Baldwin; Plus: Laughing at liberal hate
I’m attaching the very best and brightest in liberal hate tweets at the end of this post for your enjoyment (language warning, as usual). Long-time readers of my blogs, columns, and books know that I’ve been exposing prog intolerance/racism/sexism/bigotry for 20 years now (see here, here, here, here for fun flashbacks). Twitter just makes it more accessible.
MSM and entertainment rag coverage of Baldwin’s Twitter meltdown and mob followers has downplayed and whitewashed just how crazy their “new tone” is. As Kurt Schlichter pointed out, Baldwin used the Troy Davis story to trash American military leaders and troops and outrageously taunted MacPhail’s family to call for the death penalty against the Bush administration. Baldwin jeered: “Wonder if the McPhail (sic) family will seek death penalty for US leaders who killed thousands of US soldiers and countless innocent Iraqis.””
This is the link to that last appalling tweet. As you can see from clicking, he apparently deleted it. (The Atlantic also made note of the tweet and linked to it, but the link is dead.)
LOLOLOL! I find this kind of crap funny because all these “I’m moving’” leftards who said that they would leave because of Bush never left but during the Obama regime more Americans have left the country and renounced their citizenship then at any other point in history… ‘I Might Have to Move to Canada’
This could be the best reason to hope Sarah Palin runs for and wins the presidential race. Anything to rid us of this little turd.
“She’s 9 points behind Barack Obama right now. She’s looking good and she’s not even in the race,” said Johnston, who clearly hadn’t seen yesterday’s numbers that had Sarah within 5 points of the prez. “It’s scaring me a bit. I might have to move to Canada. If she’s running, you better believe I’m voting for Obama.”
Global Warmening:
This is the sort of land grab that probably happens all over the world; kleptocratic rulers of mainly poor, but land-rich countries “cooperate” with corporations to make deals involving the land, then use their police or military forces to evict the landowners. Then the rulers take heft financial kickbacks from the corporations as payment for their assistance.
So, no big deal right? This is the kind of corrupt dealing that goes on all the time. True, but what makes this so disgusting to me is that the perpetrator of this particular land-grab deal is a company that claims what they’re doing is good for the environment.
Another Smoldering Stogie of Misinformation from the Lung Association
Of course, this whole ALA crusade is a good example of groups that need to change their mission as time moves on, and becoming an adjunct of the left is usually the easiest way. The ALA was founded more than a century ago to fight tuberculosis. When I was a kid growing up, the ALA was mostly about convincing us to quit cigarette smoking. Now that that mission is nearly accomplished, they have to move on to something else. Trouble is, air pollution is going to prove a fading issue, too, because in another two or three decades there isn’t going to be much left here in the U.S.
Climate Weenies Say A New Approach Needed To Make Others Reduce Their CO2 Output
The Warmists will also surely go bat guano when the rolling blackouts turn the heat off, leaving them shivering with an indoor temperature of 40 and unable to have their fancy schmancy cocktail parties where they complain about deniers.
The solution put forward by the Sierra Club is a move away from coal to ‘grasping the opportunity for expansion of renewable energy initiatives including solar and wind power’.
The report rejects the myth that the world needs coal and states, “Down one path lies a dangerous future of impoverished people and an imperiled planet. Down the other is a new way forward made possible by harnessing the limitless and cost effective power of the wind and the sun.”
So, it seems that the alarmists are going to focus on eliminating coal, which provides roughly 50% of the world’s power supply. Just to play my well worn cassette, none of them ever suggest that they themselves practice what they preach. They just want to make others pay for their unhinged and anti-science beliefs.
The Sock Drawer:
Happily feather after: The hairless baby penguin rejected by its parents who grew a new coat
Studies suggest two waves of ancient Asia settlement
The second study was published online by the American Journal of Human Genetics. David Reich of Harvard Medical School and colleagues studied DNA from 243 people representing 33 populations in south and southeastern Asia, Australia and islands in the region. They looked for genetic signatures of ancient sexual encounters with Denisovans, a poorly understood relative of modern humans known only from DNA recovered from a Siberian cave.
Traces of Denisovan ancestry had previously been found in present-day inhabitants of New Guinea, but the new work also found it in aboriginal populations in Australia and the Philippines, and people from Polynesia, Fiji and eastern Indonesia. But no such trace appeared in western Indonesia or among mainland East Asians or particular ethnic groups from Malaysia or the Andaman Islands.
This result suggests that Denisovans ranged into Southeast Asia and interbred with the ancestors of some of today’s populations at least 44,000 years ago, a date suggested by archaeological finds, Reich said. When researchers used their findings to estimate mixing between ancestors of the present-day populations at that time, they found no sign that ancestors of today’s mainland East Asian populations were present. So those ancestors must have shown up in a later migration, the researchers concluded.
Organized American Mayhem — 4,000 People and 750 Balls
How “Probiotic” Microbes Control Your Mind
The Ruins of Dead Social Networks
Take the exit at the pot of gold: End of the rainbow is discovered… in the middle lane of the M25
No wonder he looks confused: The mystery creature that nobody can identify
Why Even Resolute Dieters Often Fail
How To Survive A Gunshot Wound
Jumping Off a Building With Bubble Wrap
Elderly man dies of ‘spontaneous human combustion’ in his sitting room
Just landed, the perfect cure for (non claustrophobic) stranded air travellers… the Sleepbox
How To Fix a Car Paint Scratch
10 Star Trek Episodes We’re Glad They Never Filmed
Cruise ship holidays are enormously popular. According to the Passenger Shipping Association, 1.7 million cruises will be taken in Britain this year (many will be repeat cruises by the same holidaymakers). But what is happening to all these passengers who simply vanish while at sea, never to be seen again?
Are they the victims of a sinister crime wave? Have they had a mishap at sea and fallen overboard, or perhaps chosen to take their own lives?
The sad fact is that, in many cases, no one knows. And for the family and friends they left behind, that only compounds the heartache.
By electing Democrats, by electing liberals, by putting them in charge, what it’s done to the moral fabric of the country, what it’s done to the social fabric of the country. So I want to change the focus here. I want to change the way we look at this. Rather than “it’s time for the rich to pay their fair share,” it’s about damn time the Democrats paid their fair share. If we’re gonna start assigning blame, and Obama started it and that’s what this is all about, okay, let’s be honest about the blame. Anybody with a capital D after their name got elected, guilty. Anybody voted for ‘em, responsible. Therefore, your taxes ought to go up! Besides, you’ve been voting all these years for other people’s taxes to go up.
