Sunday, February 28, 2010

Obama Angers Gaia

You notice how many earthquakes there are since Obama ascended to office? Surely the media and progressives would see the connection if Geo. Bush was still in office.

1. READER BRENT KILPATRICK WRITES: “After watching the U.S. 4-man bobsled team win Gold for the first time in 62 years I had a thought. Since President Obama seems embarrassed by ‘American exceptionalism’ do you think he would have preferred a Bronze?”

2. GOVERNMENT AT WORK ? The Department of Energy's latest report on the Weatherization Assistance Program—a $5 billion piece of the now year-old Recovery Act—is disheartening. A mere $368.2 million dollars of the $5 billion have been spent and about 5 percent of units allocated funding across the nation have been completed. Of the top 10 most funded states, only two have completed more than 2 percent of the planned units (as you can see in the chart below), and there has been more time spent taking wage surveys, in accordance with the Davis-Bacon Act, than there has been caulking, stripping and insulating homes.
"In short," the report says, "the Nation has not, to date, realized the potential economic benefits of the $5 billion ... The job creation impact of what was considered to be one of the Department's most 'shovel ready' projects has not materialized. And, modest income home residents have not enjoyed the significant reductions in energy consumption and improved living conditions promised as part of the massive Recovery Act weatherization effort." This bureaucratic failure has churned up significant backlash to the administration's efforts. Some have called this program a stimulus waste; others are asking about the merit of weatherizing homes at all. AND SOON EFFICIENT AND IMPARTIAL GOVERNMENT WILL ALSO ADMINISTER HEALTHCARE!

3. Just as misandry does not exist, men do not exist, unless they commit crimes or do bad things. When they do good things, they are "people" or "personnel." When they do bad things, they are men. Seriously, watch it and see if it rings true. It certainly did for me --and the sudden realization that I was unaware that these things had been slipped by me over the years started to piss me off, as I don't take kindly to being manipulated.

4. OBAMA is what you get when entitlement meets ignorance

Friday, February 26, 2010

WHO WILL PAY

1. Forty years ago the typical American male retiree could expect nine more years of life. Today’s typical American male retiree can expect between seventeen and eighteen years – nearly double that of that not-so-long-ago generation.
More evidence that, in fact, ordinary Americans have become significantly wealthier since the early 1970s.

2. The Mercatus Center’s Vero de Rugy shares some data on the employment effects of ’stimulus’ spending. Bottom line: priming the private-market’s pump with all that fiscal stimulus doesn’t appear to have done much for the private-market’s dynamism.

3. OBAMA KNOWS BETTER THAN THE MARKET AND HISTORY: In 1971, fed up with the steady rise of wages and prices, Nixon had a big idea: Attack inflation by imposing strict controls on wages and prices. A federal board was created to establish guidelines and enforce compliance, on the assumption that government officials were wise enough to decide the correct price for millions of products and the right wage for millions of workers.
The main result was to prove the folly of such intervention. Nixon's own chief economist, Herbert Stein, admitted that the administration eventually had to give up because the program was "a total disaster." Among the unwanted side effects: "Cattle were being withheld from market, chickens were drowned, and the food store shelves were being emptied."
Motorists had to wait in line for hours to buy gasoline. At one point, Americans faced a nationwide shortage of toilet paper. Yes, toilet paper. Oh, and the inflation rate didn't fall. It rose.

4. BUREAUCRATS AS ARISTOCRATS: THE NEW CLASS WAR: “The old social and political divisions have given way to two new classes — rather as on the trains. Those in economy are most of us, paying for the comforts of those in first class. And those in first class are the new political class — all those who owe their advancement and their security and their pensions and their privileges not to their backgrounds or their talents, or even necessarily their political parties, but to the state and our taxes.”

5. “This shouldn’t be a surprise; it should be basic civics. . . . A massive federal government and the crushing debt it produces is exactly what the founders wanted to avoid. Thankfully, 56% of Americans have awoken to the danger of Leviathan. It’s hard to figure out what it will take to get the other 44% to comprehend it, short of total collapse.”

6. A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.”
–Alexander Hamilton

Thursday, February 25, 2010

OBAMA THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

1. ROGER KIMBALL: “The President’s Plan”: All you need to know. “No one should be surprised at the aroma of coercion that is such a prominent feature of Obama’s various proposals to remake this country.”
“the President’s plan” “manages to take the worst of both the House and Senate bills and combine them into something more destructive. It includes more taxes, more subsidies and even less cost control than the Senate bill. And it purports to fix the special-interest favors in the Senate bill not by eliminating them—but by expanding them to everyone.”

2. He is proving he was the Manchurian candidate. Americans are belatedly waking up.

3. President Barack Obama will star in his very own televised entertainment spectacular on Thursday — let's call it Federal Health Care Kabuki Theater. The Republicans wanted to dance. Now they'll have to step lightly. They were foolish to get trapped in his so-called summit on national health care. Or did they actually think they could outperform the skinny fellow from Chicago

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

thought control
1. “It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct. What’s relevant is that his observations are illegal.”–This from the spokesperson for the Openbaar Ministerie, as quoted in this

2. Francis W. Porretto:
The unspeakable truth — unspoken because it’s been ruled illegal, or because the shamans of political correctness have condemned it — is the crux of virtually all political interplay in our time.
– Liberals don’t want to discuss the failure of Big Government and the welfare-regulatory state;
– Conservatives don’t want to discuss the failure of the War on Drugs or the support of “friendly” but dictatorial regimes;
– Libertarians don’t want to discuss the impossibility of an isolationist / open-borders state in an age of global religious warfare;
– Authoritarians don’t want to discuss anything.
We are being silenced by the willingness of those on the losing side of any particular argument to use intimidation and outright coercion to stifle candid discussion of the subject.
“The Fascists cannot argue, so they kill.” — Victor Marguerite
…and the suppression of open discussion of contentious subjects is an express route to fascism.
God bless and keep you, Geert Wilders.
OBAMA FAILS
1. There is mistrust of both parties because that mistrust was earned. People are right to be skeptical, and they should be.

2. Obama is failing because he thinks we need to be herded not heard.
3. BRITAIN WORSE THAN US -ANTISOCIAL ACTIVITY: "However, due to the fact that we believe you were involved in antisocial behaviour, ie taking photographs … then we do have a power under [the Police Reform Act] to ask for your name and address, and for you to provide it. If you don't, then you may be arrested."
There is a section of that act that compels a member of the public to give their details if a police officer suspects them of antisocial activity
4. Imagine the impact on political discourse if the Tea Party threw its weight behind any candidate from any party that takes the Pledge of No.
"If elected I promise to vote "No" on any bill that proposes to expand government power for any purpose. I promise to vote "No" on any bill whose net effect does not reduce government spending. I promise to vote "No" on any bill whose net effect does not reduce federal taxes."
5. ROBERT SAMUELSON: Every advanced society, including the United States, has a welfare state. Though details differ, their purposes are similar: to support the unemployed, poor, disabled and aged. All welfare states face similar problems: burgeoning costs as populations age; an over-reliance on debt financing; and pressures to reduce borrowing that create pressures to cut welfare spending. High debt and the welfare state are at odds. It's an open question whether the collision will cause social and economic turmoil.
Almost every advanced country -- the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, Belgium and others -- faces some combination of huge budget deficits, high debts, aging populations and political paralysis. It's an unstable mix. Present deficits may aid economic recovery, but the persistence of those deficits threatens long-term prosperity. The same unpleasant choices confronting Greece await most wealthy nations, even if they pretend otherwise.
6. For the uninformed, here is the complete list:
ALINSKY's RULES FOR RADICALS
"Personalize it"

Saul Alinsky's rules of power tactics, excerpted from his 1971 book "Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals"

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have. 2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Whenever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counter side.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize

7. James Taranto whimsically notes: “Obama is asking voters to believe that ObamaCare is a good idea and that the reason they think it is a bad idea is that he isn’t good at persuasion. But if he can convince them of that, he can convince them of anything–which means that the claim that he is bad at persuasion is wildly false.” Well, aside from recalling memories of undergraduate philosophy classes, Taranto has a point there: no one is really paying much attention to what Obama says these days.
The formerly sycophantic press has turned grumpy.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Choking hazard

1. American Society of Pediatrics wants “choking hazard’ label on hotdogs, popcorn, grapes and nuts. It seem parents are too stupid to know such things and we must ‘protect the children.’ Nanny stae lives on!

2. Britain is just as bad: Eighty-six Schools which force girls to wear skirts may be breaking the law - because the policy apparently discriminates against transsexuals.
Official guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission says the dress code may breach the rights of girls who feel compelled to live as boys.

3. The 86%percent of people questioned in a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll say that our system of government is broken.

4.. The crisis of government in America is that it does too many things badly instead of doing a few things well.
We don’t need more money for government. We need government to do what citizens struggle to do for themselves. We can debate what that range of activities is. I am on the side that government has taken on too many tasks that we can do as well or better for ourselves. When government takes on too many tasks, it is hard to find money to do the core activities of government well.
Stop subsidizing housing. It’s bad enough that the Feds do it. But there is a vigorous California effort on top of the Federal effort. Stop subsidizing food and rich farmers. Stop policing trans fats. And smoking in restaurants. Stop trying to steer education from the top down. Stop creating programs for retirement and health that give money to rich people. Stop subsidizing rail travel. Stop all corporate welfare. Stop all tariffs and quotas. Get rid of the nanny state.

5. The mission creep of government makes it obvious that government is poorly run. Get out of the things it does poorly and do important things well.
How do we get there from here?
Read. Listen. Educate yourself. Teach your children. Talk to your neighbors. Vote as wisely as you can.

7. I agree with Sandlewood. Obama is an ordinary man who has profited from the myth that he has superior gifts. I don't know who is more deluded, he himself or the media that propagated the myth. But the reality is that Obama is Chauncey Gardner come to life.

8. Well, I think Reagan had an advantage in that his personal philosophy was largely in agreement with the American people. It’s hard to see someone as narcissistic as Obama altering any of his views to match what the greater American public believes.

9. CLIMATEGATE: Another Global Warming retraction: “Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.” But the science is settled.
UPDATE: Reader Chuck Browning writes: “Didn’t President Obama predict the sea levels would cease to rise or something to that effect, if he were elected?” Heh.

10. RESEARCH NEWS: Everything Obama Thought He Knew About Health Cost Control Is Wrong. Apparently the big Dartmouth study they’ve been touting as support for their approach is looking pretty shaky.
I wish I could say I found it surprising, but it seem to me to be of a piece with too many other brutalities in American law. We pass a law with the best of intentions, and find it doesn’t work, and so we pass new regulations and policies designed to crack down on non-compliance, until we are brutalizing the population all out of proportion to the original good we were pursuing.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

POOR REALITY
1. Hate to say it but reality sucks. You live further down the food chain you get what you get. Doesn't mean we can't be nice about it though-- have to agree on that point.

2. I WONDER IF THIS REPLY HAS REALIZED THE DISASTER OF OBAMA’S WHIZZ TEAM OF ELITES. :"When Human socio-political hierarchies are finally reformed and restructured to put the most intellegent [sic] and empathetic members of society - into the highest echelons of power"
REPLY: “Yeah, but first you have to guarantee that people with grandiose visions of socio-political realignment according to their own moralist and elitist Master Plan aren't allowed anywhere near the selection process.”

3. YOUNG VOTERS WANT SPIRITUALITY, BUT NOT NECESSARILY RELIGION. Well, that’s because religion often tells you to do things you don’t want to do, or to refrain from doing things you want to do, while spirituality is usually more . . . flexible.

4. CHARLIE COOK: Health Care Is Obama’s Iraq.
NJ: Many polls have shown that people trust themselves more than they trust the government to improve their lives. Do you think this sentiment is at an unprecedented level?
Cook: I think Americans, by their nature, are distrustful of "big" -- whether it's big government or big labor, we're distrustful of "big." And it does go in cycles. And at the time of Barack Obama's election to the presidency, when you asked the age-old polling question, "Do you think the government should do more to address people's problems, or do you think government is trying to take on too many things?" It wasn't an overwhelming majority, but it was a majority who thought the government should do more.

5. WHY AMERICANS ARE DIFFERENT FROM EUROPEANS: Europeans are descendants of those too afraid to come. They wanted to be taken care of… not to risk it.
But we… we are they who descend from those who struck out, those who lived the less safe but more rewarding life. Those for whom the ability to choose thier life was more important than life itself.
How many died trying to get what we have? And now we throw it away and sell our freedom for the safe and controlled life.
We must rid this country of the forces that are taking our freedoms. And it’s not going to be fun or easy to do that.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

MORE THOUGHTS

1. ERIC HOFFER "The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind."

2. As the late Adrian Rogers said, "you cannot multiply wealth by dividing it." and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

3. DEATH OF ENVIRONMENTALISM LUNACY: As the Post story shows, the mainstream media is now coming to terms with the death. Environmentalists are still trying to avoid pulling the plug, but the corpse is already cool to the touch and soon it will begin to smell. As the global greens move from the denial stage of the grief process, brace yourself for some eloquent, petulant and arrogant rage. Tears will be shed and hands will be wrung. The world is stupid, uncaring, unworthy to be saved. Horrible Republicans, evil Chinese, demented know-nothing climate skeptics have ruined the world and condemned our grandchildren to lives of sorrow and pain. Messengers will be shot; skeptics will be blamed for asking questions and the media (and the internet) will be blamed for reporting the answers

4. the late, great Nobel economics laureate Milton Friedman said in his timeless essay, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”: There is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

5. There are no liberals any longer. The leftists ate them. Leftism is a raging case of Mad Hatter’s disease, where Time has halted itself in 1968.

Friday, February 19, 2010

GOVERNMENT KNOWS BEST

1. Suit: Pa. school spied on students via laptops
By MARYCLAIRE DALE (AP)
PHILADELPHIA — A federal lawsuit accuses a suburban Philadelphia school district of spying on students at home through school-issued laptop webcams.
The suit says Lower Merion School District officials can activate the webcams remotely without students' knowledge. The lawsuit alleges the cameras captured images of Harriton High School students and their families as they undressed and in other compromising situations.
Families learned of the alleged webcam images when an assistant principal spoke to a student about inappropriate behavior at home.
Superintendent Christopher W. McGinley did not immediately return a message left by The Associated Press.

2. What about Joe Biden – if he were suspected of criminal activity, would he even be competent to stand trial? What are his qualifications to be next in line for the Presidency? Nobody ever seems to ask.

3. Republican Mitt Romney launched a withering series of attacks against President Obama Thursday in his first major speech since the 2008 election, saying the president has “failed the American people.”Republican Mitt Romney launched a withering series of attacks against President Obama Thursday in his first major speech since the 2008 election, saying the president has “failed the American people.”

4. IDEAL JOB LISTING FOR OBAMA: "Exelon is looking to provide these proposals to Chinese businesses, so someone who is respectful and understands Chinese culture is preferred. An arrogant American will not work well in this role," the listing read. Who better than Obama dislikes Americans.

5. Regarding Obama’s Nominalism “presumably, that it's now going to be more like an improved formula for dishwashing detergent. But don't laugh. It does mean something. It means the President thinks switching labels is doing something.” I assume he has core beliefs--he talks like he does anyway, but he doesn't act on them. He's neither hot nor cold. He isn't living up to liberal beliefs (which admittedly I would hate) but doesn't have the guts to admit he was wrong about anything (Guantanamo? trials in NY?). Really, he's Bush in liberal clothing. He talks the talk, but he doesn't walk the walk. Bush talked conservative ideals but then exploded the government-size.

7. Politics: Proles Have Gotten Under the Egalitarians’ Skin. “Progressivism purports to protect the toiling and exploited masses from the amoral rapacity of big banks, big insurance, big tobacco, and whatnot. It must be exceedingly frustrating to have the toiling and exploited masses turn against the policies you have designed for their own good. . . . The Tea Party proles who reject the interference, reject also the premise that the Obama administration and its progressive supporters constitute a superior class: America’s would-be overseers really are no better than anyone else. For those who profess to care about equality, this must be terribly hard to hear.”

Thursday, February 18, 2010

1. People are incredible. You get more than two of them together and such incredible nonsense happens.

2. this article reminds me that Thomas Sowell somewhere pointed out that it is precisely because we put a man on the moon that other desirable things that might otherwise have been achieved were, in fact, not achieved.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch – or a free space program

3. An idea or plan is useless if it can’t be executed, reviewed and adjusted. Where government differs from a business is that Congress is not all working toward the same goal, which means that getting laws passed is often more important than getting laws that work passed. Maligned federal agencies are simply instructed to build out legislation as an architectural firm might be asked to build a family’s dream house by incorporating every individual family member’s personal preferences

4. tinteardrop says:
1. “You cannot ask ordinary Americans who have no jobs, whose pensions have been ransacked, and whose pay has been stagnant, to keep rewarding people who don’t face the same kind of conditions and risk.”
Bingo!!
0bama’s small Chicago centric mentality simple did not understand the scale of the essence of this statement. Real Americans have watched this creepy little world of unionism with disdain as they have looted the system.
But it took 0bama to try to institutionalize their terrorist tactics as a separate and new form of entitlement to awaken the country to the ultimate danger here.
Americans have an new element to their ballot choices this fall. Is the candidate aligned with this creepy little world? If so…beware.

5. On December 18, the Copenhagen climate change conference collapsed. Heads of state from about 120 countries had flocked to the Danish capital, anticipating a historic photo op that would lead future generations to lionize them as visionary saviors who rescued the planet from the menace of man-made global warming. Instead the world’s leaders participated in an embarrassing diplomatic flop.

6. Joe Biden is jazzed up. Like he said, "people should feel good about paying their fair share." Love his logic.

7. Being a government employee, is in essence, being on the dole. The more people that work for the government, the less people you need to subjugate. This administration is working every angle possible to get their greedy little dick skinners onto and into every aspect of every single persons life. Cass Sunstein would be proud of the "nudging" we are experiencing now. Don't forget, Barry has almost 3 more years to finish his "fundamental transformation". We still have a long way to go, and even more to endure...!

.....not only are they not sharing the burden in terms of unemployment - they are often overpaid (compared to the market rate of their "skill set"), under-worked (union rules, ya know) and beneficiaries of ridiculously generous benefits - early retirement, pensions & healthcare with little or no employee contribution. Things that continue to bankrupt cities and states. And we all know what this type of job security & entitlement results in - workers who perform badly (but just good enough to not get canned), with horrible customer service, and no incentive to do otherwise.

8. Barack Obama is claiming credit for "1. saving" the economy from a full-blown depression based on passage of the stimulus plan.

As with most Obama claims of success, Obama simply is exhibiting his prowess at using strawman arguments.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

ITS’ ALL UNRAVELING
1. ERIC HOFFER "The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind."

2. Exxon, who has been accused in the past of being too conservative in terms of exploration and development, has been finding more oil than it produces for each of the last 16 years, to the dismay of peak oil proponents.”

3. Alan Blinder writes in the WSJ:
“I don’t think any sentient person denies the need for an agency responsible for overseeing system-wide risks, no matter where they emerge. The disagreements come over to whom to give this authority.”.
I deny the need! Total rubbish!

4. Dr. Zero “Who is the worst killer in the long, ugly history of war and extermination? Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Not even close. A single book called Silent Spring killed far more people than all those fiends put together.” A fact academics and politicians are devoted to obscuring in the name of political correctness and environmentalism (the religion).

5. JAMA “25% of children have chronic health problems such as asthma or obesity. Too bad tha Medical Journal has turned into a shill for liberal causes.

6. Hope and Change MEIN KAMPF style

The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses, and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and then to the heart of the broad masses... The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to very few points and must harp on these slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.

The art of all truly great national leaders has at all times privately consisted of this: not to divide the attention of a people, but to concentrate that attention on a single enemy... Therefore a great number of basically different enemies must always be described as belonging to the same group, so that as far as the mass of our followers is concerned, the battle is being waged against a single enemy.

7. The more ponderous the title the more ‘lefty’ the article, Rabbi Lerner's article was originally called:
“Reviving the Spirit after Post-Traumatic Obama Abandonment Syndrome: Developing a Strategy for ailing and despairing Liberal and Progressive Movements in the U.S.” Huff Post turned it into milquetoast with its title ‘Reviving the American Liberal Movement’.

8. Insert any name you want : “he gives it the appearance of insanity, which to him no doubt looks like profundity.”

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

ASH WEDNESDAY THE CHRISTIAN FAITHFUL ARE REMINDED THAT ALL IS DUST But the liberal faithful see all of their idols turning to dust.

1. ERIC HOFFER "The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind."

2. More trouble looms for the IPCC. The body may need to revise statements made in its Fourth Assessment Report on hurricanes and global warming. A statistical analysis of the raw data shows that the claims that global hurricane activity has increased cannot be supported.

3. What is a Global Warming True Believer to do now that their false god is melting away? One is reminded of the old adage of Chesterton’s: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing—they believe in anything.”

4. Just 6% of Americans believe the $787 “stimulus” boondoggle created any jobs according to a recent New York Times/CBS poll.

5. Indonesian authorities removed a statue of President Barack Obama from a park in the capital Jakarta due to a public backlash when it was erected The bronze statue, inspired by a childhood photograph of a 10-year-old. Barack Obama in shorts with a butterfly perched on an outstretched thumb, was moved on Monday to the nearby school the US president attended as a child. It had been targeted by critics since it was erected in the Jakarta park last December.

6. Left wing prof. Goes on killing spree. Headline you will never see. the Boston Herald:
A family source said Bishop... was a far-left political extremist who was “obsessed” with President Obama to the point of being off-putting
Labels: Amy Bishop, Instapundit, left-wing ideology

7. Thomas Sowell : Intellectualism has become the readiness, willingness and ability to call dangerous things safe and safe things dangerous.
Do you think we see a lot of that still today with the attitudes toward international law?

Oh, absolutely. I mean we're doing nothing that is likely to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. If terrorists with nuclear weapons don't focus your mind, nothing will. Yet, not only are we doing nothing, we're doing elaborate, clever nothing. We're going to the United Nations, we're holding conferences. There are resolutions being passed. You know -- a lot of busy work -- none of which has the slightest chance of deterring Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

Monday, February 15, 2010

GLOBAL WARMING, POLITICS AND LOONIES

1. These Congresspersons don't "think for themselves" and they are not opposed to Obama and his leftist policies. They just want to keep their jobs and they are sensing the fury of the citizenry. Anyone who forgives any elected official who ignored public sentiment and voted for the appalling, bankrupting mis-named "Stimulus Plan", the horrendous Obamacare (either version of the bills) or these backbreaking trillion dollar budgets in 2010 and 2011, and then there was the near trillion dollar Cap&Trade scam tax passed by the House. Just revolting.

2. If the Democrats had had any respect for the people or what is best for America they would have cherished their majority and behaved responsibly. But they did not. They abused their power and Obama/Pelosi/Reid continue to act with utter contempt for all of us. They clearly believe that they are royalty and we are serfs.

3. Think about it? Obama has the support of almost every single institution in America- schools, universities, newspapers, NPR, NPT, health dept's, most other govt agencies, most media, foreign countries, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN,... Yet, he is losing ground with most Americans. Can you imagine if these institutions were fair and did not have their slobbering love affair with the most high?

4. Odd reasoning why we don’t need a fair new media. “The American educational system abounds with teachers and students incapable of rational thought. Of what value then is a press that provides information enabling an informed decision?”
5. Other environmentalists have undermined the cause with claims bordering on the outlandish; they've blamed global warming for shrinking sheep in Scotland, more shark and cougar attacks, genetic changes in squirrels, an increase in kidney stones and even the crash of Air France Flight 447. When climate activists make the dubious claim, as a Canadian environmental group did, that global warming is to blame for the lack of snow at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, then they invite similarly specious conclusions about Washington's snow -- such as the Virginia GOP ad urging people to call two Democratic congressmen "and tell them how much global warming you get this weekend."

6. The head charlatan knows how to milk any situation : Al Gore, for one, seems to realize it's time for a new tactic. New TV ads released during last week's blizzards by Gore's climate advocacy group say nothing about climate science. They show workers asking their senators for more jobs from clean energy

Sunday, February 14, 2010

MORE THOUGHTS

1. Economic Law that politicians and academics will never understand : Both theory and evidence tell us that you can’t raise wages nationwide through bargaining. (You might raise them in one sector, but only at the cost of lowering them in other sectors, and overall you’ll make people poorer, not richer.) The only way to raise wages is to make people more productive. This means providing them with more and better capital and giving them opportunities to trade.

2. Sweatshop are good : Back in 1992, a ten year old Bangladeshi girl named Moyna was one of 50,000 children who lost their jobs in the wake of protectionist legislation sponsored by the execrable union-backed Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. How does Moyna feel about Americans now? “They loathe us, don’t they?”, she says. “We are poor and not well educated, so they simply despise us. That is why they shut the factories down.” (The quote is from this report by the Bangladeshi activist
Yes, but GREEN things are not necessarily good or truly green.

The car for the Green is the pious Prius. The Prius does 48mpg on a highway, but my Citroen C5 does 57mpg on a highway. (official figures). Thus my car is more Green and does not contain oodles of heavy metals.

3. The energy for the Green is Wind. But wind power produced absolutely nothing during our January cold snap, because we were under a high pressure system. If we had all been Green, we would have all been dead.

4. Green is not good, nor is it rational. Green is a religion - and Cameron needs excommunicating.


5. The Global warming Hoaxsters never give up: Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: “This new set of data confirms the trend towards rising global temperatures and suggest that, if anything, the world is warming even more quickly than we had thought.”
Everyone should perceive flaws! To talk about "sceptics" as the ones who will "seize" upon "evidence" of flaws is unwittingly to make global warming into a matter of religion and not science. It's not the skeptics who look bad. "Seize" sounds willful, but science should motivate us to grab at evidence. It's the nonskeptics who look bad. It's not science to be a true believer who wants to ignore new evidence. It's not science to support a man who has the job of being a scientist but doesn't adhere to the methods of science.
One wonders why the British press is all over this story, yet the US press doesn't cover it?

Is it because the pissing away of UK and EU funds is more advanced and obvious now, or
is it because the US MSM is still provding cover for our statists and their beliefs/goals.
6. From Eric Hoffer quoting R.S. Aldrich, a cleric in 1947: “What a task confronts the American clergy preaching the good news of a savior to people who for the most part have no real sense of sin.” What an insight for today; affluent bored Americans wallow in materialism and pay little attention to Christian religion because they have no sense of sin or shame. This makes them fertile ground for planting the spurious religion of Environmentalism whith sins against the planet, such as pollution. The Christian idea of sin against God and man has been replaced by fuzzy sins against Gaia. As Hoffer maintains there is a need for a movement that you can be subservient to.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

THUMB SUCKING

The nanny state is well and growing. On Friday, President Obama’s ‘Jobs Plan,’ or government make-work plan, was revealed. Great claims were made about the government ‘putting Americans to work.’ Carolyn said, "How would they do that?" I said, "Simple, they will just send government workers out to change everyone’s light bulbs." You think I jest? Saturday brings three, new similar plans from the government. The city of Boulder, Colorado’s plan is revealed in the Wall Street Journal. I heard Chillicothe’s plan on local radio and the Cash 4 Appliances plan on national news. Am I a genius or what!


Boulder, Colorado will send workers to every home and business to change all light bulbs to new energy efficient fluorescent bulbs. All labor and bulbs FREE from THE GOVERNMENT. Chillicothe, Ohio will send fire department personnel to your home to give you a smoke detector and install it. They will also provide ‘free’ batteries for existing smoke detectors and/or come out and install the new battery for those in ‘need.’ Cash-4-Appliances program will give a government rebate to citizens to buy top of line energy efficient refrigerators and dish washers. This program is modeled upon the disastrous Cash For Clunkers that wasted billions of dollars in 2009 and put more people in debt. Some states are limiting Cash-4-Appliances rebates to low income people so they can buy high end appliances that regular schmucks, common workers, cannot afford. Only to nanny government can this make sense; much work, big cost and little value to citizens.

I propose that all citizens who receive such aid be required to wear diapers ( or nappies) and suck their thumbs during the installation of bulbs or batteries. Only by striking a proper, subservient posture will the ‘citizen’ truly understand his position in relation to the nanny state.

In Boulder, they will forcibly replace bulbs that give real light for the yucky ‘green’ dimmer bulbs that leave everyone in semi-darkness. Will armed guards hold the Boulder millionaire population at bay while the bulbs are forcibly changed? As Boulder sinks into twilight, the rest of the nation should not laugh because federal law already mandates that we all march into the new dark age of efficient but useless ‘green’ bulbs by 2012. In Chillcothe, the government says many cannot afford smoke detectors; but I see smoke detectors for $5 and batteries 2 for $1. How low on the food chain is Chillicothe? Regarding, Cash-4-Appliances, I wonder about the effect on normal workers when they see some layabouts getting deluxe appliances as a reward for being non-workers. Outrage?

In New York, we also see how union and government logic, as shown above, can be carried to illogical conclusion. Capitalists see the consumer as the beneficiary of the capitalist system but statists see the worker guarantee of a job as the goal of their statist system. Statists believe consumers are second class citizens. As the free market Blog, Café Hayek, reports: "Labor-union official Vincent Fyfe wants the state of New York to continue prohibiting supermarkets from selling wine. His reason? Supermarket wine sales

will put some liquor-store owners out of business and their employees out of work. Note to Mr. Fyfe: the purpose of the wine trade – like every other trade – is to serve consumers, not to create jobs for producers. If job creation were paramount, then government should not only continue to prohibit supermarkets from selling wine, but should require that bottles of beer, wine, and spirits be hand-delivered to retailers, one at a time, while cradled in the arms of carriers each pulled though the streets in a rickshaw. Of course, such a requirement would harm consumers, but it would also create lots of jobs."

Nanny statists believe we are helpless children who need government and elites to guide and protects us. They know that wealth and happiness are gifts from the government. Since they know best they will tell us how to work, when to work and what our reward for working will be according to their deeper insights into what is best for us and society. If you need guidance in changing a light bulb you certainly need guidance in every other aspect of your life. The opposite view, expressed in the many TEA ( Taxed Enough Already) parties sweeping the nation, holds that freedom generates wealth by individuals acting in their own interests and not being sheep of the state. Freedom and wealth for the many is linked to capitalism, the economic system most likely to give the good life to all.


2012 will mark the centenary of Milton Friedman’s birth and the 50th anniversary of the publication of his important bookCapitalism and Freedom." My copy of this slim 200 page work is from Washington High School (1963) but I doubt University Graduate Students today could read and comprehend this work (snide remark about quality of our education system).

If freedom is too much work, you will always let someone come to change your light bulb. But you will still be in the dark.

Friday, February 12, 2010

THOUGHTS AND IDIOCY

1. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on trade from his book, The Dignity of Difference:
In an age of resurgent tribalism, the global market offers—as trade has always done—an alternative script to difference as a source of conflict, and therefore tragedy. It turns difference into a form of blessing from which not only I, but others also, benefit. Adam Smith was not wrong when he invested the market with a quasi-religious significance in speaking of the ‘invisible hand’ by which our individual contributions combine to enhance the general wealth of nations. Economic virtues—hard work, inventiveness, the profit motive—have always seemed tame when set against the heroic virtues of military societies. But military societies kill. Wars destroy. Valour, courage, dying in a noble cause seem heroic from the point of view of victors, but not from their victims.
If the price of war has become too high, which it has, we will have to value the habits of trade—the only thing that—throughout history, has brought tribes and nations together, benefiting from one another and from their several and different skills. The interlinking of nations in a network of trade causes many problems to which I now turn. But it is also our last best hope for peace. Unlike the battlefield, the market is an arena in which both sides can win.

2. Or to quote Lord Acton, “Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is the highest political end.”

3. E.J. Dionne correctly notes that much of today’s opposition to President Obama’s agenda (and to the expansion of government under Pres. Bush) “is a matter of principle” What fuels the grass-roots rage,” Feb. 11) – a principle that, to Mr. Dionne’s bewilderment
This principle, however, is no bizarre obsession of semi-literate Bubbas and Bobbi-Joes who poisoned their brains by inhaling too many NASCAR fumes but, rather, is the foundation of Anglo-American freedom.

4. Charles J. Ogletree Jr., another Harvard law professor and a mentor of Mr. Obama, said, “He can enter your space and organize your thoughts without necessarily revealing his own concerns and conflicts.” The "Obama is all things to all people" meme comes through loud and clear.

5. I said Scott Brown would be a sellout even before he was elected but better than Coakley. “It will be interesting to see how Scott Brown gets re-elected in Massachusetts if he fails to work with the President. He has already thrown the tea party under the bus by correctly pointing out that they were not instrumental in his election.” And he won’t be reelected when he sells out.

6. Victor Davis Hanson: “The strange thing is that these wild swings in civilization are at their bases psychological: decline is one of choice rather than necessity. Plague or lead poisoning or famine did not destroy Rome. We could balance our budget tomorrow without a great deal of sacrifice; we could eliminate 10% worth of government spending that is not essential; we could create our own energy with massive nuclear power investment, and more extraction of gas, oil, and coal. We could instill a tragic rather than therapeutic world view that would mean more responsibilities rather than endlessly more rights. We could do this all right—but too many feel such medicine is worse than the malady, and so we probably won’t and can’t. An enjoyable slow decline is apparently preferable to a short, but painful rethinking and rebirth.”

6. I constantly come across those who profess amazement in essentially these terms: “But Barack Obama is soooo smart! He’s so eloquent, such a brilliant speaker! All of his advisors come from the best schools! They’re all the right people! Why aren’t things going right? Why are they doing things that are…so stupid?” Why indeed. Lead in the pipes and drinking vessels is almost certainly not the answer this time. Drinking the Kool-Aid? Perhaps.


7. “Read His Lips: Middle-Class Taxes!” Or as Michelle Malkin writes, “Don’t believe anything that passes his lips.”

8. Update: Related thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson, who writes, “The Truth Is a Precious Commodity:”
At some point — I think it was around mid-January — the public collectively shrugged and concluded of Obama, “I don’t trust anything that this guy says.” And when that happens in American politics, it is almost impossible to restore any modicum of credibility. All we are left with now is three more years of the president’s “Bush did it” mantra and a buffoonish Robert Gibbs, like some strutting carnival barker, showing off ink on his palm to a bored press corps.

9. Jim Geraghty posits, “Maybe Reporters Should Bring YouTube Clips to Obama Interviews”, given the number of The Won’s promises that have reached, as Jim would say, their expiration dates.

10. It is hardly surprising, however, that many of Palin’s detractors jumped at the chance to blast her for the bracelet without even bothering to confirm the basic facts. It was a case of assuming the worst, seeing what they expected to see. They considered the incident to be only one more piece of evidence confirming what they believed they already knew, and what they feel should be self-evident to any thinking person: Sarah Palin is a stupid, lying, child-exploiting, shameless, opportunistic right-wing nut. That there might be a more benign explanation for any of her behavior does not even occur to them, and therefore no further fact-checking would be needed.
This rush to judgment is not the exception but rather the rule when criticizing Sarah. Palin-hatred is as old — and as persistent — as her presence on the national scene (that’s “hatred,” as distinguished from mere disagreement on issues). There have been countless explanations for it. If anything, the phenomenon is over-determined, representing a toxic brew of class warfare, misogyny, envy (much of this coming from women), and elitism.

11. “no, you do not want someone who’s smarter than you; you want someone who’s smart enough to acknowledge that you’re smarter at what you do than they are. I think Sarah Palin is such a person. The most prominent liberals are vastly, conspicuously not.”

12. "There are kids who are obese in this state who are going to school hungry."--Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado, quoted in the Denver Post, Feb. 12

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Thoughts

1. Pope Benedict: Again and again, we find ourselves confronting the truth that if we try to make godlings of ourselves, our trending moralities, our reason, we do not flourish; we diminish until we disappear. The weakening of the family, the nullification of its importance, the cheapening of human life that has resulted in our thinking of children as chooseable “burdens” rather than absolute blessings worth pursuing, all of this assists in our self-suicide, until we are the merest pinpoint of light (the leftovers of what Divine Flashes of Light we have allowed) surrounded by the empty, dark “nothing” with which we have replaced God, worship, the notion of something greater than ourselves.
2. Bailing out Greece will reward over-spending politicians and make future fiscal crises more likely. In a four-year period between 2005 and 2009, Greek politicians expanded the burden of government spending from an already excessive level of 43.8 percent of GDP to an even more excessive level of 51.3 percent of GDP. Subsidies are rampant, the public sector is bloated, civil service pay is way too high, and entitlements are wildly unsustainable. A fiscal crisis – with no escape options – is probably the only hope of reversing these disastrous policies. So why, then, would it make sense for Germany and other nations to provide an escape option?
Bailing out Greece will reward greedy and short-sighted interest groups, particularly overpaid government workers. Greece is in trouble because the the people riding in society’s wagon assumed that there would always be enough chumps to pull the wagon.

3. Bailing out Greece will encourage profligacy in Spain, Italy, and other nations.

4. In my darker moments, I have sometimes warned audiences of what will happen when a majority of voters in a country or a state become dependent on government.This is what has happened to Greece, and what is soon going to happen in other European nations (and, barring reform, what will eventually happen in the United States). The irony of this situation is that even the folks riding in the wagon should favor reform. After all, a parasite needs a healthy host.

5. Vodkapundit: Every morning I wake up and read some tremendous news about how some pond-sucking incumbent is in trouble because the voters in his or her (eh, let’s just say its) district have finally woken up to the fact that they’re being represented by a pond-sucker. And then as you click through the links at Real Clear Politics or Instapundit or Drudge, you find even more good news about voter attitudes, or that the most-recent Stupid Pond-Sucking Bill is now about as popular as Extra Itchy Charmin

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Lead by Lilliputs

1. The President is a man of principle. The WaPo reports:Obama said he told House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) that his core goals — lowering health-care costs for businesses and individuals and expanding coverage to the uninsured — remained non-negotiable.Maybe he should pick “core goals” that are compatible instead of ones that in direct conflict with each other.

2. How could such smart people do so many stupid things?" asks Michael Barone. The "smart people" are President Obama and his men:The same people who directed the campaign that defeated Hillary Clinton and routed John McCain, a campaign that raised far more money and attracted far more volunteers than any before it, have within a year come up with a legislative program that is crashing in ruins and that, to judge from recent polls, has left the Democratic party weaker than I have seen it in almost 50 years of closely following politics.

3. What exactly is the job that the FCC is looking to do under Waldman's charge? Mr. Waldman says: "We are looking at it in terms of preserving certain functions, in which I do include accountability journalism." Here's the rub. It is not really the FCC's job--or generally within its delegated jurisdiction--to preserve "accountability journalism," or even to define it. Indeed, despite Waldman's appropriate nods to First Amendment sensitivities, free speech concerns are necessarily implicated when the government categorizes different kinds of media content and worries about preserving some content and not other.That said, the term "accountability journalism" is somewhat tainted. As we have chronicled in many columns, the Associated Press adopted it as a slogan a few years ago. To the AP, what it has meant in practice is the injection of much more opinion into news stories, usually (though not always) reflecting a bias in favor of liberals and Democrats and against conservatives and Republicans.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Progressives and progress


1. That is the essence of it all. That is the key to it all. That is the siren’s call to the “Progressives” of the world: “I can be greedy in the name of compassion and equality. Therefore I am not really greedy. And people who don’t put on the mask that I do must really be bad people despite their actions.” It’s all about the masks. The idea that it might really just be all about what the mask conceals is a disturbing concept to them.

2. It was the Progressive movement that successfully argued government is inherent benevolent and trustworthy. Our Founding Fathers instead feared the normal sinfulness of human beings. A trust but verify attitude was deemed nonnegotiable with dealing even with our most virtuous fellow citizens. Progressives believed that well meaning elected officials and government employees possessing advanced degrees behind their names could never go astray. Regrettably, I am not exaggerating. In their heart of hearts, this is what they truly believed. The same, of course, holds true for today’s Obama administration. Our “elites” are supposedly incapable of sinning. These individuals are our secular saints.

3. If the feds would just stop actively dissuading businesses from creating jobs, it would be a good start.

4. Prison is full of brilliant scholars. I have not seen anyone with enough pure intellectual force that can compensate for other qualities of leadership that are vital to a successfull presidency. To date, Obama appears to be a combination of Carter and Nixon's worse characteristics, and impulses. While Regan was called a dunce, he was always clear what his value and belief system was, and even those who opposed him could respect it. Integrity is a rare quality in an individual, the ability to discern an issue, stating your beliefs, and taking a risk in acting on those beliefs.

5. You could say Obama has integrity if it weren't for the fact he tends to say one thing, then do another, or rely on the teleprompter to speak, or having to backtrack on things because he shot before taking aim (lack of discernment).

6. My problem is I can never distinguish between those who know that they are inconsistent in their principles, and those who are the True Believers with zero self-awareness.

7. In a brief op-ed in USA Today, White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan charges that critics who question the Obama administration's decision to grant Miranda rights to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are "serv[ing] the goals of al Taeda." WE ARE SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION!

8. It is obvious, therefore, that in order to be effective, a doctrine must not be understood, but has to be believed in... A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength. ( Obama’s communism, socialism, liberalism, statism, disguised as hope and change). Mass movements can rise and spread without a belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. ( guess who? George W. Bush and conservatives)

Monday, February 08, 2010

PUBLIC SERVICE ALERT (Feb. 8, 2010)

1. The Federal government is closed today in the National Capital Area. Please let me know if you notice.
END PUBLIC SERVICE ALERT

2. Today’s tax system was shaped by sadists who were trying to be nice.

3. At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs? “I believe that the individual human life matters. I believe that human freedom is a constituent element of a good life — of human happiness — and is, consequently, intrinsically valuable.”

4. Regarding Tea Party Convention : One caller to C-Span – which aired nearly the entire convention – said the sight of primarily white and older self-described “patriots” frightened her. She said the gathering looked like a lynch mob.

5. TENNESSEE TOWN TAKES DOWN TRAFFIC CAMERAS BECAUSE THEY’RE LOSING MONEY: Michael Silence comments: “But I thought the cameras were put up to save us from ourselves.” Only if it could be done at a profit. . . . UPDATE: Reader Andrew Smith writes: “How funny would a suit against the city to force the cameras to remain – in the name of public safety? Double-edged sword, certainly, but forcing those companies into greater losses would be a thing of beauty.” Heh.

6. Just as Sarah Palin is being treated as the political equal of Barak Obama, Congressional Republicans are now the political equals of Congressional Democrats.

7. Jay Cost: “America is not ungovernable. Her President has simply not been up to the job.”

8. Why are liberals so condescending?" Gerard Alexander asked over the weekend in a much-discussed Washington Post op-ed. To the extent that liberalism has come to be synonymous with the belief that government should impose "academically improved solutions" on an ignorant public, Alexander is dealing in the realm of tautology. He might as well ask why liberals are so liberal.

9. The words "retarded" and "retard" feel threatening, she said. Eglé identifies herself this way: "I am a powerful leader with an intellectual disability." I agree with the last part

Sunday, February 07, 2010

TRUST YOUR LEADERS?

1. “The joke here is that we elect conservatives to state office because we don’t want them to spend our money, and liberals to national office because we want them to spend other peoples money” Robert Port of North Dakota

2. Regarding Obama’s qualification to comment on Einstein theory: “Sorry Dr. Tipler, but you must be wrong, you are only a physicist , Obama is a god.”

3. Now another headline grabbing IPCC scare story is melting away. A report in Sunday’s London Times highlights new humiliations for the IPCC.
The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.
There is however one teensy-weensy little problem. As Professor Chris Field, the lead author of the IPCC’s climate impact team has now told reporters that he can find “no evidence” to support the claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report.

4. Carolyn McLaughlin opines : Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary at the beginning of World War I said that “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” Yes, I say, the lamps of sanity and reason are going out all over America; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime, unless the sparks of the conservative revolution, “young, fresh and fragile (in Sarah Palin’s words) are not kept alive and allowed to flame.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

There is no truth in Washington, only political ambitions

1. Obama is sounding more and more like the captain of the Titanic.

2. What is significant about this is that "corpsman" is a military term. Obama knows little or nothing about the military; it is as though he said "col-o-nel" instead of "kernel." There are corpsmen stationed in the White House, but, after more than a year, Obama apparently doesn't know who they are, what they do, or how to pronounce their job. God help Dan Quayle if he had done something as stupid as saying "corpse-man." He never did. Will Obama be laughed out of the Presidency? The jury is out.

3. Yet even the Seattle Weekly shows that it isn't beyond bias. The headline reads: "Gay, Mentally Challenged Biracial Male Cheerleader Claims Discrimination." What if Grundy were straight, mentally unchallenged, uniracial and female? In that case, we'll bet it would be simply: "Cheerleader Claims Discrimination."

4. .It's like David Icke pointed out: "Problem, Reaction, Solution" The controllers create a problem, then use the media to scare the public to have the reaction and the solution always is more money to them, less freedom

5. And among the truly quirky findings about happiness: People report that they prefer unpleasant certainty to positive uncertainty. Consider the happiness of Americans at the beginning and late stages of the economic crisis that erupted in late 2007. "Happiness levels were higher in June 2009 than in January 2008, although living standards were markedly higher in 2008," says Graham. That's because in early 2008 no one knew the size of the economic storm the country was sailing into, Graham suggests.Graham has found a similar phenomenon in fast-growing economies: People prefer stability to break-neck growth. When a country such as Brazil experienced double-digit growth, "that was a very destabilizing experience," says Graham. "Things are changing rapidly, rewards are changing; people around you are making big gains, so even if you're gaining it doesn't seem to be as much. The uncertainty bothers you."

6. I'm sure I'm not the first, but I've been saying to people for quite some time that Obama's speeches are illogical and that he constantly contradicts himself. If his speeches are written by committee, with different parts being written by different people, perhaps no one on his staff takes the time to reconcile the different portions. Why Obama doesn't see the contradictions himself is important because it reveals a lot about the intellect of the man.

7. He finished by sighing that in Greece, the people spend their time either devising ways to get government money or scheming to avoid the tax collectors — or, preferably, both.

Friday, February 05, 2010

Look behind the survey

A Gallup Poll reports that a majority of Democrats, 53%, have a “positive” image of socialism, which includes independents who lean toward the blue party. Only 17 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaners hold socialism in a positive light. In total, more than one-third of Americans, 36%, have a positive image of socialism. Also viewing socialism positively: 61% of liberals, 39% of moderates and 20% of conservatives. If you’re confused, you should be. Remember, a survey is useless. The devil is always in the details of daily living and surveys. Behind, into, through or under this survey lurk questions. How many citizens know the ideology and goals of socialism? Or care? Even asking whether higher taxes are good or bad, depends upon whether the person surveyed pays taxes ( and how much). So surveys serve an agenda. Surveys fudge and skew numbers. Employment studies, global warming data, school successes or failures, you name them - suspect that information somewhere in the details is false.

How to look behind the words can be exemplified by a recent statement by President Obama that a woman who worked for him in his campaign, who didn’t have health insurance, lost her fight with cancer. Boo hoo? No, no! Implicit in Obama’s tale of woe is the fact that the poor woman had no health insurance because it was not provided by his campaign budget to its workers. No no! Impossible? Yes, yes, predictable. Nothing says contradiction, hypocrisy and double standards like a liberal. Obama denies being a Bolshevik, a member of the Communist party or radical Communist because hidden behind the B word is the ‘s’ word. Socialism means public collective (government) ownership or control of the basic means of distribution and exchange with the aim of operating for use rather than for profit and of assuring each member of society an equitable share of good, services and welfare benefits as a system of social and economic organization. Socialism under this ‘guise’ seems desirable to too many people. A survey will prove it.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Hope is not a plan. Change is not always good.

1. Cutting a federal program is next to impossible because there’s usually somebody who cares much more about keeping it than the White House does about making it go away.

2. My own favorite target for extinction is a $9 million annual appropriation for museums and educational programs that highlight the “shared culture and tradition” of Alaskan Natives, Native Hawaiians and “children and families of Massachusetts.” In other words, whaling.

3. The long lines at passport control and the post office, along with the indifferent “service” typically rendered there, are too common not to be symptomatic of government supply. When customers neither pay directly for what they receive nor have the option either of not paying for the product at all or of seeking an alternative supplier, government employees have little incentive to respond to the wishes of the people they are allegedly employed to serve.

4. AN ODD STATEMENT BY OBAMA:
Obama said he would attempt to convince his party’s left wing to take a less ideological approach to economic challenges.
“We’ve got to make sure that our party understands that, like it or not, we have to have a financial system that is healthy and functioning, so we can’t be demonizing every bank out there,” Obama said. “We’ve got to be the party of business, small business and large business, because they produce jobs.”
Like it or not? Who wouldn’t like a “healthy and functioning” financial system? According to Obama, the answer is . . . Democrats.
Who writes this stuff?

5. “Even the leadership of Greenpeace UK understands that low scientific standards and reckless disregard for the truth are destroying the credibility of the global warming community, and John Sauven has the courage and integrity to speak up about it. Al Gore, who shared the Nobel Prize with Rajendra Pachauri and the increasingly discredited IPCC, has a special responsibility to environmentalists and others in the United States to clearly state that bad science and poor judgment have no place in the leadership of the movement to stop climate change.” Hold your breath until Gore recants!

6. REVOLVING DOOR ALERT: Washington Post’s Thomson the 14th Journalist to Join Obama Administration.

7. UPDATE: “These rats are so dumb they jump to a sinking ship.”

8. Bush was not the problem. Obama is not the solution: one year after the arrival at the 1. White House of a Democratic president, disenchantment is mutual on either side of the Atlantic. The Allies are discovering — if indeed they were unaware of it before — that misunderstandings go beyond individuals.

Having denounced Mr. Bush's imperialism, Europeans are criticizing Mr. Obama for his impotence. They are complaining of his not being able to bend China at the Copenhagen summit on the fight against global warming. "We overestimated his room for maneuver," said adviser to the French executive; "The Chinese were facing a weakling", said a person close to Mr. Sarkozy in an accusing voice.

9. Another update, from the New York Times' Steven Erlanger: "the palpable sense of insult among European officials" … "something they said that President George W. Bush would never have done."
American officials said that Mr. Obama felt that the previous major American-European summit meeting, last June in Prague, was a waste of time, and European Union officials said that the president even skipped a leaders’ lunch at the smaller European Union-United States meeting in Washington last November, sending Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. instead, something they said that President George W. Bush would never have done.

10. What's interesting is that Obama's egalitarian "J'accuse!" movement was largely supported by those who — logically, at least — were precisely the individuals Obama was railing against: people earning more than $200,000 a year who make x-times more than their lowly coworkers.

11. POLL: Obamanomics: 42% said it made things worse, only 11% say better. Don Surber: “That means 8 in 9 people think spending $787 billion on a stimulus made no difference or made things worse.”

12. So the U.S. government, majority shareholder of General Motors, is aggressively regulating Toyota, which is to say, its competition. How can owners of Toyota cars be sure Washington is looking out for their interests and not its own? Such is a pitfall of the "public option" in the auto industry--and in other industries as well.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

IS REALITY REAL


1. Officials at the Justice Department now arguably want to institutionalize bad lawyering. Justice is advertising for prospective trial attorneys in its Civil Rights Division. The ad specifically says that the department encourages applicants who suffer from “mental retardation” and “mental illness.” It is one thing to accommodate those with illnesses that do not otherwise render them unfit to serve in a highly demanding and elite corps of DOJ attorneys; but to seek out those who are “mentally retarded” for special consideration is certainly novel.

2. Reporting from Denver - The Air Force Academy, stung several years ago by accusations of Christian bias, has built a new outdoor worship area for pagans and other practitioners of Earth-based religions. But its opening, heralded as a sign of a more tolerant religious climate at the academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., was marred by the discovery two weeks ago of a large wooden cross placed there.
On the weekend of Jan. 17, Weinstein said a client of his organization who is based at the academy spotted a cross, constructed of railroad ties, propped against a rock at the center. The client reported it, and the Office of Special Investigations began an inquiry.

3. From Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit:“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
Politicians’ and interest-groups’ conversations about taxes and spending are childish for the very same reason: the money they spend belongs to other people.
From Donald J. Boudreaux”
Politicians’ and interest-groups’ conversations about taxes and spending are childish for the very same reason: the money they spend belongs to other people.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
4. “Few politicians, in my lifetime, have raised such hopes. When I covered his presidential campaign, I met legions of supporters who told me that Barack Obama would remake America and solve a surprising number of their personal problems. “ NOTE ‘SOLVE A SUPRISING NUMBER OF THEIR PERSON PROBLEMS”, WOW!

5. “....his most ardent fans—the kind of people who bought pictures of him riding a unicorn—Mr Obama's presidency has been a failure. “

6. “.....claiming the Democratic nomination in June 2008 Barack Obama declared that "generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless … when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth." It truly would take a Messiah to fulfil such soaring promises.” I SEE US SINKING, WHAT HAPPENED TO OCEANS RECEDING?

7. And as a rhetorician, Obama is skilled in weaving alternate realities. For you reader, his recent exegesis of his broken promises to put the health care debate on C-SPAN (it was sort of aired, didn’t you know that, dummies) was preposterous. But admit as well that such a bold alibi came right out of the mouth of Saruman in his Orthanc — mellifluous, assured, seamlessly shameless. It would make even Tartuffe proud. Obama’s art is more than just teleprompted eloquence.

8. “Rarely has the Left so ambitiously and brazenly set out a statist agenda, to radically transform America by establishing such gargantuan deficits that a variety of tax increases to prevent bankruptcy will mean that the nation’s entrepreneurial class will pay between 60 and 65% of their incomes in taxes —“spreading the wealth” in pursuit of “redistributive change.”

9. Rarely has the Left so ambitiously and brazenly set out a statist agenda, to radically transform America by establishing such gargantuan deficits that a variety of tax increases to prevent bankruptcy will mean that the nation’s entrepreneurial class will pay between 60 and 65% of their incomes in taxes —“spreading the wealth” in pursuit of “redistributive change.”

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

OUR LEADERS LOVE US and have our interest at heart.

1. Political Correctness on the enviormental effects of school choice:“We find that eliminating district-wide school choice (i.e., returning to a system with neighborhood schools only) would have significant impacts on transport modes and emissions, whereas in many cases proposed shifts in school choice and bus-provision policies would have only modest impacts.” But if that’s so good why not restrict more. Hey guys, you know what else can yield “larger increases in private-vehicle emissions”? Choice of grocery store, choice of dry cleaner, choice of shopping mall, choice of residential neighborhood, choice of restaurant, choice of romantic encounters, choice of entertainment, choice of visiting relatives, choice of basically any kind in which use of an automobile is implicated.

2. “...but I think ( Adam) Smith’s text supports view that it is the government cronyism, not commerce per se, that breeds corruption. You say that Smith believed that a healthy society “requires care for the poor.” Yet you neglect to mention that Smith remains entirely silent on the matter of tax-financed poor relief. A curious silence in the otherwise quite comprehensive Wealth of Nations. You say that he believed a healthy society “requires regulation.” Well, Smith clearly favored government “nightwatchman” functions. He also made numerous specific exceptions to the liberty principle, some of which are much vaguer than left-interpreters claim. But, at any rate, he treated exceptions as exceptional, bearing the burden of proof. I think Jacob Viner (1927), one of the early cataloguers of Smith’s exceptions, got it right when he said that Smith propounds a presumption of liberty. All in all, I think that classical liberals and pragmatic libertarians are on pretty solid ground in claiming Smith.

3. The other big problem in your piece is that you associate classical liberal views with greed, selfishness, being “uncaring.” Though inveterate in some quarters, such association is illegitimate, and renders several of your paragraphs non sequitur.”

4. Were Zinn still alive, I would ask him why the very same government that he believes scurrilously, cold-bloodedly, and deceptively sends young people off to die in unjustified wars is to be trusted on the home front with the task of rearranging America’s own economy and society.
Seems to me that an evil brute pointing guns at foreigners remains an evil brute when he turns ’round to point those guns at fellow citizens.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

5. As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said today during a commercial space telecon organized in response to the budget request, “There are certain members of congress who cannot be swayed by any rational argument. They simply want the answer to be that funding continues in their district independent of any sound basis for it.”

6. UPDATE: Economics professor E.F. Stephenson takes a healthcare lesson from the Obama Administration’s space policy: If human spaceflight—a technically challenging endeavor—need not involve NASA, then just maybe health care need not involve the meddling feds either.
Good point!

7. On the other hand, if graft is what it takes to kill cap-and-trade, maybe it’s worth it, especially if the offshore-drilling stuff stays in. Hey, you don’t expect those guys to do something good for the country without graft, do you? This is Congress. When you’ve got something valuable, you don’t just give it away.

8. If you stop listening you'll start imagining they're reasonable intelligent people, you need to listen for constant reminders of how corrupt and stupid they all are.

9. Government reports that Food Banks are overwhelmed by hungry Americans during this downturn and that Michelle Obama will head up new task force to combat the epidemic childhood obesity . Do I sense a contradiction here?

Monday, February 01, 2010

OBSERVATIONS

1. While at the Davos World Economic Forum, David Ignatius was apparently surprised that “When Sarkozy had finished his anti-capitalist rant, he got a standing ovation from an audience made up mostly of wealthy capitalists”

2. I mean really, when Obama says “God bless America.” during SOTU, does anyone think he really means that?

3. Ugh. I can’t read past the words “social justice”. A religious commie is no better than an atheist commie.

4. Whence came Obama : So the media, academia, the unions, the foundations, and the elite on Wall Street kept waiting for the Great Stone Face to appear — the saintly deliverer who would at last have the requisite skill and pedigree to bring a benevolent liberal statism to the unwashed, who for so long in their ignorance and selfish, petty agendas had resisted what was good for them

5. Obama knew little of Middle America and had little desire to learn. His idea of the nuances of the United States was gleaned from the university seminar and the federal payroll. Hyphenated racial-self-identity had always proved lucrative and was not to be abandoned. Postmodern indifference to the truth and facts ensured that much of what the President asserted, in reality, was not merely inaccurate but the exact opposite of what he claimed

6. The hypocrisy of left-wing redistribution politics and the enjoyment of the high-life, brought about by the fruits of capitalism, is a heavy anchor for Obama. Tim Geithner does not like to pay high taxes. Nancy Pelosi does like nice jets. Barack Obama likes junkets. So does Harry Reid. Charles Rangel likes hiding income on resort property. John “two nations” Edwards likes “John’s Room” in his mansion, and Green Al Gore enjoys his most ungreen estate. In other words, “progressivism” is easily identified as cynicism, as a condescending plaything of the well-off, who are exempt, either by government largess or private capital, from the very strictures they would impose on less knowledgeable others.

7. “We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space."

8. Because white liberalism carries within it the illness of low expectations, it will be non whites who explain to the educated Western elite that the radical Muslims really mean what they have been saying for 1,400 years, that George Bush did not go back in a time machine and write the 9th sura so he could justify could a war for oil.

9. In my grandfather’s view, no liberty was safe in the hands of a Progressive

10. DEFINITION OF A BLOWHARD: “ I think he ranks with the best speakers in my lifetime, and by far the best of the modern presidents. What Obama has done, and is doing, is rehabilitating rhetoric itself. When he gives a major address, such as Wednesday's State of the Union, you hear a leader actually thinking through a difficult issue in public, taking a skeptical, even critical audience down a careful line of reasoning toward a new way of thinking. It is, traditionally, one of the central roles of statesmanship”.
11. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND DISEASE: Amity Superintendent of Schools John Brady said he is frustrated and shocked. His dilemma began last year when the district — which serves Bethany, Orange and Woodbridge — received a letter from the state Department of Education. The state told Amity it has too many white students who are diagnosed as autistic when compared to other racial subgroups. Amity last year had 38 white autistic students, one Asian and one black.