An Exception

TSA to look at Vitter airport incident - CNN.com

CNN managed to do a negative article on a Republican Senator without having "R" in the headline, or even in the article! I must admit to amazement.

I'd guess this would never even make the news at all if it were a Democrat, but never the less, I have to give them accolades for not following their normal pattern.

I did enjoy the inclusion of the 2007 item -- are we going to include that Joe Biden quit a Presidential bid due to plagarism and Teddy Kennedy was involved in the death of a young woman (not his wife)? or maybe they will include "David Geitner -- admitted tax cheat" whenever he does something?

I'm not holding my breath.

Ecclesiastes 7:4

There's No Pill for This Kind of Depression - WSJ.com

KJV says it best: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth."

I think Peggy is back from being "lost", but the Bible verse says it as best as is possible. We are still pretty close to a 50/50 nation in reality. Right now BO's numbers are still high because about 10% of the people that know better are still giving him the benefit of the doubt in hope against hope that this won't be as bad as it looks -- so he is at 60% popularity as opposed to 50. The people that produce, invest, once dreamed of having a future, thought their kids could have a bright future, believed in what had always been America -- those kinds of folks are now mired in a depression that goes beyond mere financial ruin. They see that the core values of America have been squandered and we are careening to being "Really Western Europe", or some yet unknown Pagan Socialist Pauper Nation -- "On Nation Under Nothing" -- or maybe just "Under".

Two, the economy isn't the only reason for our unease. There's more to it. People sense something slipping away, a world receding, not only an economic one but a world of old structures, old ways and assumptions. People don't talk about this much because it's too big, but I suspect more than a few see themselves, deep down, as "the designated mourner," from the title of the Wallace Shawn play.

What I see around me is essentially "the loss of the future". For people in their 40's and 50's, they have seen 12 years of their investing lives go up in smoke, and any last vestiges of job security blow away (if not their actual jobs). They look out at the early wreckage of "the change", and they see no hope of a recovery that allows them to postulate a future any better than most likely a cinder block appartment in a government building where they will essentially be "a ward of the state". The future that looks most likely to them from today is a future that scarcely would have crossed their mind 6-12 months ago.


Meanwhile, our media and the 50% of people that always figured that "things were stacked against them" are in a paroxysm of joy. The wise know that will not last -- that is why gun sales are breaking all records. When the fools realize that yet again, they have duped themselves, they will return again to their natural state of anger. Will BO be able to turn their anger away from where it deserves to be (him) and toward the wise? Who knows, that is why the wise are buying guns.

Gun sales continue up. The FBI's criminal background check system showed a 23% increase in February over the previous year, a 29% increase in January, a 24% increase in December and a 42% increase in November, when a record 1.5 million background checks were performed. Yes, people fear Obama will take away the guns he thinks they cling to, but a likely equal contributor to what The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch called a "gun-buying binge" is captured in the slogan on one firearms maker's Web site: "Smith & Wesson stands for
protection." People are scared.

I think "scared" is the wrong term -- "prepared" is better. The wise are always thinking of preparation -- a year ago it was saving, investing, not buying on credit, doing well at your job. Today it is laying in some cash/gold, supplies and firearms in case BO continues to take the nation in the current direction. We DO want him to fail to destroy America, but he has one hell of a good start if turning us into Kenya or worse is his objective.

"The heart of fools is in the house of mirth".

Democrats Made Off With Madoff

Media Forgets That Wall Street Rip Off Artist is BIG Democrat Donor | NewsBusters.org

One of my airtight rules: If the negative stories about a person don't mention the political party that they are associated with or have contributed to, you can rest assured that they are Democrats.

Ever see which party Madoff associated with? Nope -- Me neither, so it is no surprise that he is documented to have given in the 100s of K to the Democrats.

The MSM keeps a very careful picture of Republicans as "wealthy and corrupt" in front of the eyes of the sheep. Actually, Republicans are pretty much made up of:
 
- Practicing Christians
- working people of modest means that believe in responsibility and independence vs the Nanny State
- middle income folks that are trying to "work / invest their way up"
- nasty iconoclastic independent thinkers that don't believe "what everyone knows to be true"

Most all of the Wall Street Fat Cats, CEOs, "Intelligencia" and "wealthy over $500K" are Democrats, because they can afford to be, and if you are taking everyone's money, it is better if they like you. Basically the top and the bottom are Democrats -- The plutocrats and the teeming masses looking to be gaurenteed happiness by someone else.

Success for BO

The World's Billionaires - Forbes.com

It's working! There is already less income disparity, the billionaires have lost an average of 23% in the last 12 months!!! GREAT!! Of course most of the rest of us that have worked and saved our whole lives have lost more like 50% because we don't have enough money to be nearly as diversified as they are, but Hey -- LESS DISPARITY!!! If we can just all get to ZERO, then we will all be EQUAL!!!

Won't that be grand? I can hardly wait!

Thanks a bunch to BO and his loyal sheep, things are just going wonderfully!

Why Can't the Left Be Happy?

The A-word | Salon

"apocalypse"???? From Salon, a magazine so left it makes the NYT look middle of the road? EEEEEK!!!!

I think the biggest problem with putting the left in charge is that NOBODY is happy! Did Jimmuh Carter look happy to you when he was President??? I know Slick Willie was trying his best to get his mind off how tough things were going with pizza and BJs at the offfice during the day, but I still think that is a sign of shall we say "not being totally into the job". (or at least I think my management would take that view if I was similarly spending my work time).

It is true that the left is never happy, but I think that they are actually as positive as they can get when they are hopping mad at the imperfection of some feckless Republican leader. When are in charge, they quickly descend into despair and it starts to look to them like the world is ending. Heck, we have only lost $26 Trillion in value out of the market SO FAR, and of course the vast majority of that money wasn't theirs anyway since they were mostly long on hemp sandals and hooka pipes.

The Democrat Platform

Quoted off this Wikipedia page:

The Socialist Party candidate for President of the US , Norman Thomas , said this in a 1944 speech: " The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of "liberalism," they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." He went on to say: "I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party . The Democrat Party has adopted our platform."

This guy was early, but he knew of what he spoke. Welcome to Socialist Amerika!

BO's Rove

David Axelrod, Obama’s Political Protector, Is Ever Close at Hand - NYTimes.com

It is nice to be on the left, the media let's you define yourself as you see fit. When you are the Republican version, (Rove), THEY define you -- and they color in the horns and tail that they add in RED to be sure that everyone "gets it". Here? "Political Protector" -- poor BO needs that, because of all the nasty right wingers! See, Bush didn't have ANYONE in the press or on the other side "hoping he would fail" -- nope. There were NEVER any indications of say him being "appointed rather than elected", "most incompetent President ever", etc early on in HIS administration!!

He never needed a "protector", but he had the shadowy evil Rove in the background!

Hey Hill-Billy, WRONG BUTTON!!

VIDEO: Wrong red button - David S. Cloud - POLITICO.com

For starters, what could possibly be a more reasonable way to try to "improve" relations with Russia than to give them a BIG RED BUTTON!! Let's see now, has there ever been any BUTTON involved in US / Russian relations??? Oh well, as long as we are being stupid, lets just muddle on. Hey, let's denigrate the previous US administration to a foreign government that we might have to do tough negotiations with!!! That's smart, shows the US people elect STUPID PEOPLE from time to time --- er, well, IN THE PAST!!!

Here we are, let me mention my wonderful self Hill Billy, qualified for this post by hanging around a womanizing husband that treated me like crap for a long time. Oh, and of course there is Joe "let me copy your paper" Biden, and the legendary BO, failed community organizer from Chicago.

See, it says RESET !!! Oops??? It doesn't??? You mean our most brilliant in the history of the universe administration can't find anyone that knows the difference between "reset" and "overload" in Russian??? Hmmm, damn!!

Ok, well at least nobody in the MSM or late night TV will make fun of the BO Administration, so that is good. Too darned bad that we haven't cleaned up the rest of the media yet, so no doubt some right wing zealot idiots will pick this up and take it the wrong way. No matter -- soon we will have all that "hate media" off the air and have those wingnuts rounded up and "dissappeared".

Anyway, the new administration is tough, fair, and SMART ... especially SMART!!!

Gotta love this one off another site in passing:

Translation gaffes are nothing new. President Kennedy famously declared himself a jelly donut standing in Berlin. President Carter's translator, wishing to express the commander in chief's enthusiasm upon arriving in Warsaw, mistakenly told the stunned Poles that Carter would like to make love to them.

Let's see here ... Kennedy, Carter, Obama??? Pattern? They are all the "smart ones", right? How could such a thing happen to them? I'm guessing "right wing plot" -- only reasonable explanation.

A Conflict of Visions

This book by Thomas Sowell takes it's place in 3rd position in my all time book hall of fame behind "Closing of the American Mind" and "Ideas Have Consequences". The book is smaller in the scope of ideas dealt with, but much more reachable than than the other two books.

The central theme is that there are two primary visions that people and "schools of thought" have as their initial "pre-analytic models of thinking".

Constrained - Largely the Judaeo / Christian view of man as "flawed, incomplete, incapable of reaching perfection". Social goods must be obtained by providing incentives and disincentives to allow individuals and society in general to move forward. Much of human knowledge is implicit -- buried in traditions, mores, institutions and practices that are effectively unconscious. Trying to make rapid and supposedly "well understood" change due to supposedly superior modern knowledge is likely to destroy rather than improve the situation of most of society.

Unconstrained -- Man is the measure of all things and man's basic character is good and clearly perfectible. Rather than attempting to vaguely move forward via indirect incentives and disincentives, the most intellectually and morally superior people of the current time must take direct action to achieve results. The results desired are clear -- equality of economic OUTCOME, "justice" of all sorts, recognition of each person as a unique, special and worthy individual. Since human kind is moving forward, those alive today are best able to decide what is best -- history, tradition, laws, institutions, cultures, etc are dangerous in that they are always less perfect than the currently most advanced thinking of the current intellectuals. 

Naturally, nobody is purely constrained or unconstrained, but in general, conservatives start from the constrained vision and liberals start from the unconstrained. Communication between those of different visions is extremely difficult. As Sowell says after discussing some common terms like "equality" or "justice":

One consequence .. is that those with different visions often argue past each other, even when they accept the same rules of logic and utilize the same data, for the same terms of discourse signify very different things.

One of those very different things is process vs results. The unconstrained vision person will believe that some good, say "equality of income" can easily be directly achieved by adequately communicating it to the masses, and if needed simply "making it so" via redistribution of some sort. The constrained vision will believe that any such attempt will be highly likely to reduce the overall ability of the society to produce goods and end up leaving all worse off. They see "equality of income" as something barely of any use if the standard of living of the whole of society can be improved more reasonably by having inequality of income.

There are countless examples in the book of how various thinkers -- Rosseau, Smith, Jefferson, Hobbes, Hayek, Mill, Burke and fit into this framework and how it helps make sense of the vast differences in how people look at the same issues. The fact that most people will deny all manner of facts in order to maintain their vision is also covered.

 For example, even though "National Socialism" in Germany had been widely praised by the unconstrained camp prior to WWII, the descent of something that they generally admired into a vicious totalitarian regime forced them to abandon their former name "socialists" and take the one that the constrained vision previously held "liberal". They changed their name, but they never changed their belief -- which of course is what actually led to the disaster in Germany, not the name.

I recommend the book very highly, and it is especially important in these times as the US seems to be shifting from a constrained vision (the one held by our founding fathers), again toward an unconstrained vision as we did under FDR and to a lesser degree during the LBJ "Great Society".

BO Supports Cheney

The Obama Justice Department Adopts the George W. Bush Administration's Legal Stance on Presidential Powers - WSJ.com

I applaud this of course, but it is amazing to watch how the MSM allows the BO admin to say one thing in order to be popular with the sheep, and then do another. GREAT, if the "other" keeps us safe, not so great if the hidden agenda is messing up the economy or opening portals for terrorists.

The Obama Justice Department has adopted a legal stance identical to, if not more aggressive than, the Bush version. It argues that the court-forced disclosure of the surveillance programs would cause "exceptional harm to national security" by exposing intelligence sources and methods. Last Friday the Ninth Circuit denied the latest emergency motion to dismiss, again kicking matters back to Judge Walker.

Yes We Did!

John Yoo Says Barack Obama's Assault on George W. Bush's Antiterror Strategy Will Inhibit Counterterrorism Officials - WSJ.com

But maybe we can't any longer thanks to BO and company? The evil John Yoo, demonized of late in the MSM writes a short sweet article that states the obvious. If terrorists attack on US soil, the US troops aren't going to seek a court order before moving into whatever position they take up for cover. Had US forces followed such rules during the civil war, it could have never have been fought, let alone won by the North, and THEN where would BO be?

The hatred of Bush lives on and it appears that it will now drive the BO minions and the MSM to tie our hands ever more firmly -- unfortunately, most likely until we fall on our faces and eventually some opportunistic terrorist will put a bullet in the back of our collective head.

Poverty In America

Michelle Obama serves food to D.C. poor and homeless, but... | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times

Gotta love a country where the homeless have cell phones! Man, those 7 years of Bush neglect must have been hell -- suppose the standard after 8 more will be the the homeless have electric cars?

The BO Deception

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Deception at Core of Obama Plans

"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

My sense is that BO and company have no intent of any economic improvement. In fact, I strongly suspect that it fits their plans just perfectly to have the nation descend into the economic abyss and remove every safety catch they possibly can. While the MSM brayed about the "Bush attack on constitutional rights", nobody anybody knew was ever affected at all -- the "constitutional crisis" was completely fabricated.

Now OTOH, the MSM is generally ecstatic, but if one looks closely, BO is in fact deepening the ability to do domestic surveillance and HR 645, to create large camps where civilians can be herded to for "their protection" has already been proposed in congress. Naturally, since the MSM has complete trust in BO, there are no stories that the majority of the people are hearing that would let people be aware that such camps COULD be used as "concentration camps". BO is good, BO is a savior -- he is responsible for good things, anything bad that happens is due to BUSH and "failed right wing policies" -- pay no attention to the market, business results or taxes. The every watchful BO will make us all unified and happy -- heil BO!

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.

What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

As Lenin said, "The Worse The Better"!!! The far left of course constantly harped on how Bush was "using 9-11 to manufacture a crisis and take people's rights". The far left even argued that "9-11 was an inside job". Now we have markets falling like rocks, unemployment rising like a moon rocket, and BO's own chief of staff saying that "the crisis is an opportunity". Meanwhile, they admit (and take gleefull credit for) orchestrating this "Rush Limbagh is the leader of the Republican party" gambit. BUT, the PROBLEM with the Busy administration was that they "played political games" -- or at least so the MSM and the Democrats said. So what does one call a staged fight with Rush??

Why Doesn't MSM Find BO Stupid?

Political Punch: Bullish Obama Suggests Nation Should Buy! Buy!

"What you're now seeing is ... profit and earning ratios are starting
to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if
you've got a long-term perspective on it," the president said on a day
that trading continued to hover under 7,000.

But wait, it is PRICE / Earnings ratio! He said the wrong thing! Doesn't that mean he is STUPID? I'm sure it would have with Bush, but not with BO. I wonder why that is?

Ok, forget what may be a slip of the tongue (I'm CERTAIN that the media would have taken that tack with Bush!). How about "substance"?

Obama said he wasn't focused on "the day-to-day gyrations of the stock
market, but the long-term ability for the United States and the entire
world economy to regain its footing." he compared the Dow Jones
Industrial Average to a daily tracking poll in politics. "You know, it
bobs up and down day to day," he said. "And if you spend all your time
worrying about that, then you're probably going to get the long-term
strategy wrong."

Uh, a "tracking poll"? Where people are just randomly sampled over the phone? Hmm -- actually, the market is people RISKING THEIR LIFE SAVINNGS Mr Financial Fool in Chief!! BTW, I'm betting that this WH pays just as much attention to "daily tracking polls" as any other has. If he had ANY experience in business and investing, he would CERTAINLY realize that:

1. The Market looks primarily SHORT TERM -- 6 months or so. The wild drop since Sept '08 is Business and Investors giving HIM a solid vote of "NO CONFIDENCE"!!!
2. The Market looks only forward -- like we all ought to do in life, the Market plays from today forward. Yesterday is past history. Today and expectations for tomorrow are what matter!
   
3. He apparently throws TRILLIONS of TAXPAYERS dollars into the wind with no thought of where they will land, but investors are using THEIR OWN MONEY, and they tend to place their bets where they believe they will get a payoff.

Had Bush said anything this foolish and dismissive of the half of the population that saves and invests, the fallout in the press would have been devastating. BO gets a pass!! That is what is called an "unbiased media"!

A Black Woman's Election View

Link to the Anne Wortham text

Just read it, I have nothing to add. Brilliant, fearless, inspiring. As long as there are people like this woman, hope will NEVER die!

Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul’s name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival – all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn’t look like them. I would have to be wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration – political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead – and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over – and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to – Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine – what little there is left – for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

Even The Left Gets a Whiff of BO?

Team Obama’s Petty Limbaugh Strategy :: Swampland - TIME.com

Gee, even Time notices that BO's politics is "same old, same old", even as much as having the same folks involved -- Carvelle and Begalla for example.

So why are we talking about Rush? According to Martin, the Rush
"controversy" began as an idea last fall that followed a poll taken by
Stanley Greenberg, who owns the house where White House Chief of Staff
Rahm Emanuel stays when he is in Washington. With his old Clinton
Administration colleagues, Paul Begala and James Carville, Greenberg
realized that Limbaugh was deeply unpopular among wide swaths of the
American electorate. So, the strategists figured, why not turn the turn
Republican Party into a Limbaughesque caricature? Limbaugh, a
consummate publicity hound, was only too eager to help. Earlier this
year, he said he hoped Obama "fails," a reasonable claim in context,
given that Limbaugh's entire worldview is constructed around an
opposition to the sorts of policies that Obama has proposed.

But echoed over the "chatter on the cable stations" thanks to Obama
aides, including Emanuel and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs,
Limbaugh's comment took on a whiff of treason. Limbaugh's rapid
comebacks to the White House assault created what economists might call
a "downward spiral" effect. “It's great for us, great for him, great
for the press,” Carville told the Politico, describing the White House
and Limbaugh. “The only people he's not good for are the actual
Republicans in Congress.”

See, that is what a "different kind of politics is" -- nastier, more subversive, and less interested in the good of the nation than BOs own political gain.

Memo to Post: Bush No Longer in Office!

Bush's Secret Dictatorship - White House Watch - Dan Froomkin's Blog on washingtonpost.com

One would think that BO supporting papers would have more important things to do than go looking at old Bush administration memos that they find to be "whiney", and "unconvincing". In case they have missed it, the economy and the markets are in shambles and we are shedding 100's of thousands of jobs a month. Does that seem like a great time for partisan navel gazing and old wounds? Guess it does:

But Bradbury was also making excuses for them. They were afraid, he
wrote: "The opinions addressed herein were issued in the wake of the
atrocities of 9/11, when policymakers, fearing that additional
catastrophic terrorist attacks were imminent, strived to employ all
lawful means to protect the nation." They were rushed, confronting
"novel and complex legal questions in a time of great danger and under
extraordinary time pressure."

No excuse. Not even close.

Good to see that there a "no excuses" for the Bush administration, not even 9/11. One hopes that BO doesn't ever get that type of a test, because I'm not sure we even can envision how abject failure can really be. I'm CERTAIN though that if such comes to pass, the Washington Post will be WAY on the side of "No Excuse for BO"!

BO Exposed

RealClearPolitics - Articles - A Week of Revelation

The "true stripes" are exposed, and we see the mixture of black and white -- a two tone kitty with a white stripe down the back!

But governments do not "invest," they spend. Such spending can be justified or unjustified. It is wealthy individuals, however, who actually invest their capital in job creation. Most have much less capital than they used to. Under the Obama budget, they would have less still. This does not seem to matter in the economic worldview of the Obama budget. Equality is the goal instead of opportunity or economic mobility. And government, in this approach, is more capable of investing national wealth than America's discredited plutocrats -- meaning successful two-income families, entrepreneurs and professionals.

Actually, the real goal is POWER for "The Party" (D)

Obama lied; the economy died

Washington Times - BLANKLEY: Obama lied; the economy died

Very well written, I love this opening, but ignor my little tirade here -- the piece is a MUST READ!

I am trying to capture the spirit of bipartisanship as practiced by the Democratic Party over the last eight years.

What rational person could deny that? The supposed "bipartisan Democrats" used "Bush lied, people died" over and over ad-nauseum. As Blankly points out, Bush didn't lie, he was mistaken. BO clearly uttered "I'm not in favor of larger government" after signing $800 Billion in stimulus, deciding he was going to sign on to $400 Billion from last years Democrats with 9,000 earmarks, and had his $3.6 Trillion largest budget and largest deficit ever by ALL measures ready to roll. To absolutely KNOW one thing and say the other live on national TV talking directly to the nation is CLEARLY "lying to the American People".

When Bush said in the State of the Union of '03 that "The British say that ---", there would have been a "lie" had the British NOT said that -- in fact they DID, **AND** what they said (Saddam was trying to get Yellowcake from Niger) was in fact verified by their own intelligence agency (not ours) to be true.

But, the left was certain that was "impeachable" on the grounds of "lying to the American people". Naturally, since the left is such a bunch of fair minded and impartial people, I'm certain they will be demanding impeachment post haste.

Of course, with the havoc that the Democrat congress and BO have wreaked in just a couple short years, having BO eating off a tin tray would be small consolation for the rest of us eating dog food pizza.

I Come to Bury Reagan

Commentary » Blog Archive » From Thatcherism and Reaganism to . . .

Had BO stated what he obviously intended to do, it is doubtful that he would have been elected.

This is a good summary of the philosophy that BO seeks to repudiate:

The illusion that government can be a universal provider, and yet
society still stay free and prosperous. The illusion that government
can print money, and yet the nation still have sound money. The
illusion that every loss can be covered by a subsidy. The illusion that
we can break the link between reward and effort, and still get the
reward.

Therefore:

• government CAN be a universal provider, ind society will stay free and prosperous
• government CAN print money, yet the nations money remain sound
• losses can be covered by subsidy and "bailout"
• we can break the link between reward and effort -- and still get the reward.
  

Which do you believe? If you voted for BO, you had best believe the latter, because he clearly does!!

Moderate Buyers Remorse

Op-Ed Columnist - A Moderate Manifesto - NYTimes.com

Brooks and his paper, the NYT have been huge BO supporters. Brooks is viewed by the NYT as a "conservative", but as he himself says "he is a moderate" -- which is being very charitable to himself. Essentially he is just less radical than BO, which it turns out is not hard at all to be!

I might wonder what David was smoking that led him to his ideas that somehow what BO said could be trusted -- it has been clear for a long time that BO is a radical lefty intent on "unification" the old fashioned way -- by destroying any other alternative. Now Brooks has seen the error of his ways, but it is far too late and his thinking is far too wishful.

The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the
Obama budget is predicated on a class divide. The president issued a
read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the
American people. All the costs will be borne by the rich and all
benefits redistributed downward.

Welcome to full scale class warfare -- courtesy of BO. It WASN'T riven, but it is now! That ANYONE could have been surprised that this was his agenda all along amazes me.

The U.S. has always had vibrant neighborhood associations. But in its
very first budget, the Obama administration raises the cost of charitable giving. It punishes civic activism and expands state intervention.

Heil BO, comrade! Fascism involves the destruction of the local in favor of the national. Whatever BO calls himself he is a fascist bent on the politicization of all!

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative,
in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it
addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.

One might say "welcome to reality". Sadly, you discovered the truth too late and BO and his minions have two full years to try to make it impossible for those that care about the America of the Consitution to have any future chance -- a couple of the battles to come are "The Fairness Doctrine", which will be used to silence opposition on the right, and massive gun control and registration which will be used to clear away any last hope that the population can rise up and check the destruction of the country.

BO Economy

Our Troubled Economy Is a Response to Barack Obama's Policies - WSJ.com

The market has notably plunged since Mr. Obama introduced his budget
last week, and that should be no surprise. The document was a
declaration of hostility toward capitalists across the economy.
Health-care stocks have dived on fears of new government mandates and
price controls. Private lenders to students have been told they're no
longer wanted. Anyone who uses carbon energy has been warned to expect
a huge tax increase from cap and trade. And every risk-taker and
investor now knows that another tax increase will slam the economy in
2011, unless Mr. Obama lets Speaker Nancy Pelosi impose one even
earlier.

Surprise surprise, being a failed Community Organizer from the political cesspool of Chicago isn't good job training for running the worlds largest economy. Well, duh!!!

Audacity of Nope

The Audacity of Nope - The Daily Beast

Christopher Buckley -- only half as smart as dad, but that is still pretty smart.

Multiply Wealth By Division

Just read the quote, nuff said! (Dr Adrian Rodgers)

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that, my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

Understanding High Taxes

Obama's trade rep pick owes almost $10,000 in taxes - CNN.com

How simple the Democrat love of high taxes is. They have no morals, so they simply don't pay them and leave that up to us foolish Republicans!

I guess I thought that SOME of them paid them, but apparently not. It seems a bit hard to imagine the BO and company could be so foolish as to just pick out the few bad apples unless the problem was virtually universal!

Message In Here Somewhere?

Power Line - Protesting Global Warming in the Snow

It just seems to happen too often for pure coincidence -- Al Gore seems to regularly give his speeches on Warming in some sort of "freaky cold weather".

Sharing the Fixed Pie

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Do We Want a More Equal Society?

"Over the past two or three decades, the top 1 percent of Americans
have experienced a dramatic increase from 10 percent to more than 20
percent in the share of national income that's accruing to them," said
Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director. Now, he said, was their time "to
pitch in a bit more."

• US GDP in '82 - $5 Trillion, 90% of 5 Trillion = $4.5 Trillion

• US GDP in '08 - $12 Trillion, 80% of 12 Trillion = $9.6 Trillion

Now, I ask you, would you rather have $4.5 Trillion or $9.6 Trillion? How about if it meant that someone else went from having $500 Billion to having $2.4 Trillion? Would that bother you? If so, why? You more than doubled what you had, why does it bother you if someone else got 5x what they had? How about if the choice was either that, or you got $2.25 Trillion, and they got only $250 Billion? Does that make you feel better, because it is more "just"? Can't you do a whole lot more good with $9.6 Trillion than you can with $2.25 Trillion? If you can just ignore those awful people that got more money?

EITHER, Democrats don't understand growth at all, OR, their envy exceeds their common sense -- or I suppose both.

What they ALSO apparently don't understand is contraction! When their policies seek to "take a little more", the tendency is for all that wealth to simply disappear, because a lot of it is based on expectations for the future. In case you haven't noticed, the market isn't very positive on the future at the moment!

Democrats and Sweaters

George F. Will: FDR's Sweater Fable | Newsweek Voices - George F. Will | Newsweek.com

Do all Democrats have some fascination with sweaters? This little fable does a good job of explaining why things got so bad in the '30s and late '70s:

The factory, which FDR said was the town's only industry, normally
employed about 200 people who "had always been on exceedingly good
terms" with the owners. However, "it was difficult to sell enough
sweaters to keep them going because there were so many sweater
factories" in the nation, all of which had had only about six weeks'
worth of work in the past year. The town, FDR said, was "practically
starving to death." So the people decided that they all could work if
they reduced everyone's wages 33 percent. That would cut the cost of
their sweaters and enable them to undersell competitors. FDR said the
factory's sales agent went to New York and "in 24 hours" sold "enough
sweaters to keep that factory going for six months, 24 hours a day,
three shifts.

A heartwarming triumph of community solidarity over adversity? Not as
seen through the pince-nez of Roosevelt, who pronounced it "bad
business, in all ways." Granted, "they get a good deal of cash into the
community." But "they undoubtedly, by taking these orders, put two
other sweater factories completely out of business." So:

"That brings up the question as to whether we can work out some kind of
plan that will distribute the volume of consumption in a given industry
over the whole industry. Instead of trying to concentrate production to
meet that consumption into the hands of a small portion of the
industry, we want to spread it out … It might be called the regulation
of production or, to put it better, the prevention of foolish
overproduction."

In other words, competition is bad and centralized control can do better! Once one moves to a leveling redistribution strategy, there is no end to what needs to be controlled. Rather than a system that runs imperfectly but well on natural principles, you get one that lurches all over the place on conflicting commands from a bunch of bureaucrats.

The end result has been seen over and over in the world in the past century -- the poor economy starts kicking and hitting itself and running into things like some macabre slapstick clown or failing horror movie robot and soon the wreck that remains is unable to even feed the bulk of the nation that has been so foolish to turn down this path.

Put on a sweater!

Extremely!

Power Line - How Dumb Does He Think We Are?

Some words from our supreme odiferous unifying leader:

These steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who
are invested in the old way of doing business. I know they're gearing
up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this: So am I.

I give BO more credit than PowerLine here -- the OLD "special interests and lobbyists" may not ALL be happy -- but there are certainly a whole bunch new ones that are positively ecstatic! TRILLIONS of pork being larded out is a bounty that hasn't been seen since the Johnson era!

Fight, oh yes, it is clear that BO is way ahead in the fight to turn a $14 Trillion economy into one that is $7 Trillion or much less!

Mission Accomplished

Barack Obama Commits to a U.S. Transitional Force in Iraq - WSJ.com

BO naturally doesn't say anything positive about Bush, but he really doesn't have to -- his actions are speaking louder than words.

Though the headlines from the President's speech mostly focused on his promise to end all U.S. combat operations in Iraq by August 31, 2010 -- and withdraw U.S. forces fully by the end of the following year -- there was considerably more to it than that. For starters, Mr. Obama again acknowledged that our forces in Iraq had "succeeded beyond any expectation," not least his own.

Everyone loved it when BO said "I made a mistake" relative to the appointment of the tax cheating lobbyist Tom Daschle -- but of course he never stated WHAT that "mistake" was, nor did the media see it as worthy to ask.

Based on his direction now, it was CLEARLY a mistake of the highest order to oppose the Surge -- but one that the media is willing to give him a pass on like everything else!

The End of Growth

Economic Scene - Obama’s Budget Plan Sweeps Away Reagan Ideas - NYTimes.com

Remember the 70's? If not, no matter, you are going to get to live at least that level of want again, if not the 30's. Why? Because ideas are important, but reality is even more important. The "genie" that improves all lives is GROWTH, and "income" is just one small part of that improvement. There are lies, damn lies and statistics, and while statistics are a useful tool, they ought to be looked at as being as dangerous as firearms. Guns are fine, but if someone is explicitly using one to do harm, they are very bad indeed. That is pretty much what this article is doing with statistics.

As a result, the average post-tax income of the top 1 percent of
households has jumped by roughly $1 million since 1979, adjusted for
inflation, to $1.4 million. Pay for most families has risen only
slightly faster than inflation.

Before becoming Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers
liked to tell a hypothetical story to distill the trend. The increase
in inequality, Mr. Summers would say, meant that each family in the
bottom 80 percent of the income distribution was effectively sending a
$10,000 check, every year, to the top 1 percent of earners.

This kind of thinking from an economist who is now a top economic adviser is like having his top medical advisor announce that evil spirits cause disease. This is envy incarnate and frightenly wrong! The bottom 80% didn't send ANY check, in fact, the bottom 50% paid nearly NOTHING in income taxes! The income of BOTH groups went up because of GROWTH!!!

Mr Summers HAS to realize that, so his story is a bold faced lie of the most obnoxious kind. What kinds of "income growth" does he expect in a country that is CONTRACTING at 6% a quarter??? Well, he better expect NONE -- in fact, the top will fall faster than 6% and the bottom will approximate the 6% decline, so yes, it reduces "income inequality", but at the expense of everyone having FAR less.

In the past 30 years, neither Europe or Japan has achieved "income growth slightly faster than inflation" for the bulk of it's population. The fact that a country of 300 Million has been able to do is AMAZING!!

This has to rank on my new list of the scariest things I've read in the "past month". To not understand that is has been growth that has driven all the good things of the last 30 years for this country and we have now turned to naked redistibution and forgotten the advantages of growth is extremely sad for all Americans.

The Picture Is No Illusion

Barack Obama's Expensive Domestic Agenda Will Cost America's Middle Class - WSJ.com


The picture of BO's broad smile and Joe and Nancy sharing a moment of triumph is very real -- all of BO's tax and balance the budget claims are pure sham.

One of the big dings on Bush and the Republicans is that they were "arrogant" -- I don't think they even got started compared to one address to congress of BO. Nancy and Joe alone would get whistled in the NFL for an "unsportsmanlike end zone display"!!!

That nothing BO proposes as any chance of working really goes without saying. It is my contention that he has no intention of it working! He is seeking failure, the destruction of the US systems, and totalitarian takeover.

Or, he is such a complete clueless buffoon that he simply has no idea of anything at all.

BO Is A Strong 2nd Amendment Supporter

ABC News: Obama to Seek New Assault Weapons Ban

Uh, and he believes in campaign finance funding controls. He is going to close Gitmo the first day in office. He isn't going to put lobbyists on his cabinent ... oh well, the list goes on.

Welcome to Amerika ... Comrade!

Waking Up To Radical BO

RealClearPolitics - Articles - A Radical Presidency

I wish my predictions weren't so correct.

Gov. Bobby Jindal's postspeech reply did not come close to recognizing the gauntlet Mr. Obama has thrown down to the opposition. Unless the GOP can discover a radical message of its own to distinguish it from the president's, it should prepare to live under Mr. Obama's radicalism for at least a generation.

I'd argue that in terms of what America was supposed to be, Reagan wasn't "radical" at all -- he was a mild return to a TINY bit of our roots. He CONTINUED to prop up the corrupt Ponzi scheme called FICA that makes it perfectly common and acceptable for people to live their entire lives saving nothing and often live BETTER in retirement than they did during their working years. Thus we get a savings rate less than zero vs China where people have FAR less and save 30% privately, 50% when national savings are added in.

Living beyond our means and shirking responsibility for our own lives has become "the American way".

BO feels that our tiny feint back toward just a SMALL bit of realization that "delaying gratification / making good decisions in life" can have significant differences in income and overall life results. BO wants to change that and punish those that are successful and reward the failures. The markets are already responding. Why invest and get yourself over the level of government help? All that risk and work for no reward? Why?

Barack Obama is proposing that the U.S. alter the relationship
between the national government and private sector that was put in place by Ronald Reagan and largely continued by the presidencies of Bill Clinton and the Bushes. Then, the private sector led the economy. Now Washington will chart its course.

Mr. Obama was clear about his intention. "Our economy did not fall into this decline overnight," he said. Instead, an "era" has "failed"to think about the nation's long-term future. With the urgency of a prophet, he says the "day of reckoning has arrived." The president said his purpose is not to "only revive this economy."

There we have it. Unless by some MIRACLE some political voice can rise from the right and get a movement going again in a HUGE hurry, we are lost for at least a decade and probably two.

Day of Reckoning

William Kristol - Republicans' Day of Reckoning - washingtonpost.com

Well, I think we already had that --November 3, 2008. We failed as a nation, miserably. Now the issue is just "how deep the damage", and so far the answer is "very deep indeed".

I think the big question is really "can it be survived" at least with anything like even the horribly damaged post New Deal / Post Great Society America that looks nothing like what the founders intended, nor nothing like what is needed to compete in the ever more sophisticated technocratic world.

But it is a good article. BO is indeed "the anti-Reagan". I hope we don't find he is "The Anti-America" as well:

Obama's speech reminds of Ronald Reagan's in 1981 in its intention to
reshape the American political landscape. But of course Obama wishes to
undo the Reagan agenda. "For decades," he claimed, we haven't addressed
the challenges of energy, health care and education. We have lived
through "an era where too often short-term gains were prized over
long-term prosperity." Difficult decisions were put off. But now "that
day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future
is here." The phrase "day of reckoning" may seem a little ominous
coming from a candidate of hope and change. But it's appropriate,
because it's certainly a day of reckoning for conservatives and
Republicans.

Gitmo Carts and Horses

AG Holder says closing Guantanamo won't be easy

"It's going to take us a good portion of that time to look at all of the files that we have to examine, until we get our hands around what Guantanamo is, and also what Guantanamo was," he said.

Uh? A press that wasn't a complete lapdog might point out that doing that kind of analysis might be worthy BEFORE you decide to close the facility!

This paragraph could have been written by Cheney without the foolish "but I'm closing it anyway".

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday the Guantanamo detention center is a well-run, professional facility that will be difficult to close — but he's still going to do it. Holder visited the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Monday and spoke to reporters about his trip during a news conference Wednesday.

A more truthful statement would be:

 "The Bush Administration created a well-run, proffessional facility that will be difficult to close and is needed for our nations defense , but because my boss said a bunch of stupid things to get elected, we are going to waste a few billion dollars and the time of a bunch of people that could be better spent elsewhere to close it so BO doesn't look stupid.

We are thankful to have a liberal press. This would look really bad if we didn't"

State of Survival

Power Line - He is my shepherd

Power Line does a good job of capturing my thinking on the BO speech last night. It was the first time I've sat through one of his speeches, and it will likely be the last. He is still campaigning -- reality has no appeal for BO, although it is my guess that he actually is intelligent and aware, and his true goal is the destruction of America so he can "re-build" it as sort of a Pagan, Communist, Tribal "thing" that nobody would even recognize as what used to be America.

My wife had decided over the weekend that things are iffy enough that we ought to lay in a bunch of bulk staples for survival if it all breaks down, and we got them all unloaded last night. So I sat and watched BO charm the sheep with a big rubbermaid roller container of rice, beans, flour, oil, powdered milk, sugar, etc in front of me. It seemed very symbolically correct.

My God, Joe Biden watching "every dollar" to be sure "none is wasted"! That is like putting the biggest weasel in charge of watching the henhouse, Slick Willie in charge teaching "morality for young women", or having Teddy Kennedy as secretarial combination driving/swiming instructor!! It would be extremely funny if it were not so horribly sad.

Safe Computing

New scareware sends you to fake Download.com reviews | The Download Blog - Download.com

I spent a few hours over the weekend nursing a virus/spyware ridden relatives PC back to health. I'm probably one of the few Techie Geeks that actually finds this sort of thing kind of like a "puzzle challenge", so the time spent is better for me than most. A few observations:

• The linked article points out that the Viruses are getting more sophisticated, including messing with your links, hosts, etc so you actually end up going to a fake site to supposedly download software to help you!
• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware was one of the tools that I found I needed to use to remove "Antivirus XP 2009" from the machine.
• The other took that I really needed was The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows" (UBCD4W). The box would not run, and most of what was needed to be done could not be done from Safe Mode, at least not in the machines state of infection.
• One of the things that I was surprised had happened to the machine (I assume a virus did it) is that the ability to get to the Task Manager via Ctl-Alt-Del was disabled. Here is a link to the Registry entry to fix.
• I ended up running SpyBot Search and Destroy under the UBCD4W boot from CD then booting and finding out I couldn't get to Task Mgr, so did the registry hack to get that fixed, and then started finding bad tasks running. One thing nice about the net is that as long as you have another working machine (and it is hard for me to even IMAGINE only having one computer!! ;-) ) you can just Google things that "look wrong" and if they are, you go out and do a Registry / Disk Search and try to get rid of any remaining ones. My guess is that for most folks it might be easier to just try another free download of something that you trust rather than the manual approach. Since I "mixed", I can't be SURE that if I'd found Anti-Malware earlier, that might have just done the whole trick rather than me mixing in some hacking around.

Epistemological Modesty

Op-Ed Columnist - The Big Test - NYTimes.com

David Brooks was a big BO supporter, but apparently now he is starting to see where his "hope went wrong".

These experiences drove me toward the crooked timber school of public philosophy: Michael Oakeshott, Isaiah Berlin, Edward Banfield, Reinhold Niebuhr, Friedrich Hayek, Clinton Rossiter and George Orwell. These writers — some left, some right — had a sense of epistemological modesty. They knew how little we can know. They understood that we are strangers to ourselves and society is an immeasurably complex organism. They tended to be skeptical of technocratic, rationalist planning and suspicious of schemes to reorganize society from the top down.

"They knew how little we can know"! There we have it, the crux of the problem! Liberals were always saying that "Bush was arrogant". Why? Well, because he looked like he smirked, and they thought he was too stupid to be President. Did he think that he (or any human) could address ALL of them? No, in no way.

Compare that with this quote from BO:

“We cannot successfully address any of our problems without addressing all of them.”

Uh, hello? Like that would meant that in the SHORT run we are all DEAD!!

It is too bad the following aren't nearly the only possibilities:

All in all, I can see why the markets are nervous and dropping. And it’s also clear that we’re on the cusp of the biggest political experiment of our lifetimes. If Obama is mostly successful, then the epistemological skepticism natural to conservatives will have been discredited. We will know that highly trained government experts are capable of quickly designing and executing top-down transformational change. If they mostly fail, then liberalism will suffer a grievous blow, and conservatives will be called upon to restore order and sanity.

It’ll be interesting to see who’s right. But I can’t even root for my own vindication. The costs are too high. I have to go to the keyboard each morning hoping Barack Obama is going to prove me wrong.

Among the other obvious ones -- we don't recover, we sink into being some sort of "fallen nation" status like many liberals liked to predict would happen after Reagan. BO and company turn us into a totalitarian socialist gulag. Terrorists attack us with smallpox or some other worse bio weapon and the vast majority of Americans die -- who knows what comes out the other side.

The Benefit of Crisis

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Obama's Schadenfreude

In the world that BO, community organizers, and liberals pretty much live in, this is how "wealth" is looked at:

In those worlds, wealth isn't created; it's seen as a fixed pie, and some slice is taken from those who have and given to those who haven't.

It is hard to believe that BO and company would really be so stupid as to do many of the things they are doing now, and I don't believe they are stupid. They are leftists that believe that the country needs to be "destroyed so it can be saved" -- they see the basic American fabric as so corrupt that it has to be "purged" in order to get a "new America" that BO and even his wife can be "proud of".

Here it is from Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" -- the bible for community organizers like BO:

"There's another reason for working inside the system... Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people.They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution."

Push more and more into the system, allow the system to break miserably, blame the engine of the system (capitalism/business) rather than the massive overload of the system that broke the "frame" ( FICA, Medicare, regulation, taxes, more and more federal programs, etc). When the people are hungry and the wrong side is fully blamed, then the left can complete their takeover and make it impossible for freedom to ever return--control the media, collect the guns, round up the "non supporters" and we can have a great "unified system".

 Everyone supporting the "same thing"! Wonderful!

May 7, 1997

Recession Worry Seizes the Day and Dow - WSJ.com



The Democrats "way back machine" has erased all the market wealth creation since '97, a full 12 years worth of investor time. One of the bad things about "spreading the wealth" is that there is always so much less of it to spread once you begin.

But, as Lenin said on the way to communism -- "The Worse the Better". The right always has the problem that we want civilization to be preserved. The left is just fine with it all falling down and starting over -- and you know, they are pretty darned good at destroying things!

You Have to Love Polls

Poll: Politicians trusted more than business leaders on economy - CNN.com

Here we have a HEADLINE poll on CNN tonight that sounds really good for congress and BO. Funny, on the way home this evening, even NPR was pointing out that BOs numbers were DOWN 9 points in 2 weeks, and lamenting that almost ALL of that slip was among Republicans. ONLY 39% of REPUBLICANS now said they supported him, as opposed to something like 50% that hadn't figured out that he was a socialist prior to him ramming his package though with no input from Republicans.

NPR was pretty sad that ONLY 39% of Republicans liked BO. Strangely, I've been listening to them for the last 8 years, and there was nothing at all "partisan" about greater than 9 out of 10 Democrats being against Bush. In fact, PARTISAN meant basically Bush only handing over 80-90% of the reins of Government to Reid and Pelosi. Strange how things seem different now.

I'd say it is a good indicator of exactly how much trouble BO is already in when his friends at CNN go out of their way to gin up a misleading poll and put it as a headline to make it seem like their guy isn't sinking like a stone in the polls.

If Bush had lost 9pts in 2 weeks, the headlines EVERYWHERE would read "Bush Sinks 9 Points in Two Weeks". or "Bush Crashes with Market", "Bush Already In Poll Trouble" ... etc ... in fact we already saw that, and that was just the kind of headlines that the media put out!

Ten Conservative Principles

Link to the full text

There is more detail around each one and it is worth following the link to read it all. How important it is to read such things in the current world!

First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.

Second, the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. It is old custom that enables people to live together peaceably; the destroyers of custom demolish more than they know or desire.

Third, conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription. Conservatives sense that modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time.

Fourth, conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence. Burke agrees with Plato that in the statesman, prudence is chief among virtues. Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity.

Fifth, conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety. They feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions and modes of life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical systems.

Sixth, conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability. Human nature suffers irremediably from certain grave faults, the conservatives know. Man being imperfect, no perfect social order ever can be created.

Seventh, conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked. Separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all.

Eighth, conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.

Ninth, the conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions. Politically speaking, power is the ability to do as one likes, regardless of the wills of one’s fellows.

Tenth, the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world.

Best to just ponder with no extra comment from this quarter -- if you have extra time, go read the rest.

Did He Say How?

Obama pledges to halve budget deficit in 4 years | Reuters

BO seems to be out on the campaign trail again trying to shore up his already sagging approval ratings (-9 in two weeks). Campaigning is the only thing that he knows how to do, so I suppose he might as well do it. Unfortunately, he tends to make a lot of promises when he campaigns, and here is another one by a guy that apparently has no idea what he is saying.

So we JUST decided to spend $800 Billion, and we will be VERY lucky if next years deficit isn't in excess of $2 Trillion, rather than the $1.2 Trillion that BO is quick to point out that he "inherited". Interesting how the role of congress drops to zilch when it is a Democrat congress isn't it?

So, spending at the rates of Trillions of dollars a year is "pressing on the gas" for the economy about as hard as we possibly can. While I disagree with how much and where, the idea that the gas must be pressed in a recession seems sound.

Now we have "halve the deficit in 4 years???". Say what? How pray tell would one do that? Drastic cut in spending coupled with tax increases? Uh, but that is stepping on the BRAKES!!! Why drive with one foot hard on the gas and the other hard on the brakes? Isn't that about the most STUPID way possible one can drive???

Sensor Drift

Well, there was a solid NSIDC prediction that in 2008, the North Pole would be ice free! Only the evil "disbelievers" had an doubt at all. OOPS, small problem, the sensors were off and it didn't melt -- and now the ice in 2009 is tracking ahead of 2005-2008. Hmmm.

"The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has been at the forefront of predicting doom in the arctic as ice melts due to global warming. In May, 2008 they went so far as to predict that the North Pole would be ice-free during the 2008 'melt season,' leading to a lively Slashdot discussion. Today, however, they say that they have been the victims of 'sensor drift' that led to an underestimation of Arctic ice extent by as much as 500,000 square kilometers. The problem was discovered after they received emails from puzzled readers, asking why obviously sea-ice-covered regions were showing up as ice-free, open ocean. It turns out that the NSIDC relies on an older, less-reliable method of tracking sea ice extent called SSM/I that does not agree with a newer method called AMSR-E. So why doesn't NSIDC use the newer AMSR-E data? 'We do not use AMSR-E data in our analysis because it is not consistent with our historical data.' Turns out that the AMSR-E data only goes back to 2002, which is probably not long enough for the NSIDC to make sweeping conclusions about melting. The AMSR-E data is updated daily and is available to the public. Thus far, sea ice extent in 2009 is tracking ahead of 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008, so the predictions of an ice-free north pole might be premature."

Free Speech Lefty Style

NAACP calls for firing of N.Y. Post cartoonist - CNN.com

BO's own book is full of "how he would like to get the white blood out of his system" and the "World in need run by White Man's greed" actual line and thinking.

His new AG says that we are "a Nation of racial cowards".

I suppose we ought to be thankful -- they aren't rioting in the streets and killing folks like the Muslims did over a cartoon.

Yes, yes, white folks are bad, black folks are good. In fact, they are so good, that if they just FEEL offended, people ought to lose their jobs over it. What kind of "freedom of the press" does one have in that sort of a world?

Oh, that's right, NONE -- the whole idea of Campaign Finance, Fairness Doctine, etc is the unilateral disarmament of "speech that the left doesn't like".

That is how we get "unified".

Why The Market Sinks

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Is It Any Wonder The Market Continues To Sink?



Most of this has been covered in the Blog, but a good summary list. The picture is worth a thousand words.

Markets care very little about the past, it is the future that people (used) to invest in. The Palin nomination / McCain uptick gave them a ray of hope, but that hope is long gone now.

We desperately need some hope that is "old and real" -- responsibility, paying personal and national bills, the people that earn the money keeping the money, real risk and real rewards -- simple things like that. We are back to the 70's -- now the questions are how long, and must we REALLY go all the way back to the 30's or an even worse place before we realize the basic truth.

There never has and never will be a free lunch!!!!

A Rant For the Ages

Rick Santelli's mortgage rant - THE WEEK

Somebody had to say it, said the Colorado Springs Gazette in an editorial. The government is sending the message that people who bought houses they couldn't afford win, and those who live within their means foot the bill. Santelli's rant was one "for the ages, full of wisdom and truth," by a man who "understands the danger of a country that rewards failure, by taxing all success."

Finally, at least SOME people are starting to awake to the disaster that we have brought upon ourselves with 2 years and running of "change"! The core of Democrat change is always "Punish those that do good, and Reward those that do evil!"

BTW, the Republican version of that is not "the opposite", but rather "Man is a poor judge of good and evil -- seek God, markets and other higher powers".

Hey, It is Possible to Fail on All Fronts!

RealClearPolitics - Articles - 'Kick Me' Diplomacy

The left found it very unimpressive that post 9-11 we didn't have a single attack on US soil, and until a year after the Democrats took over Congress, we generally had markets that were rising.

Well, now are markets are in the tank and the world is treating us like a weak skinny kid with big ears and broken glasses. Of course, our MSM is unwilling to even acknowledge the vote of "no confidence" from the markets, but they are completely silent on the decline in the American position abroad.

Sorry folks, it is VERY possible to be broke AND be attacked by foreign powers. One just needs to vote in a clueless and generally unsuccessful community organizer from Chicago as president, and the outcome is all too predictable.

BO Agrees with ... Bush???

Obama administration keeps Bush view on Afghanistan detainees - CNN.com

Wow, What is up with this?? Here we have Bush, the "worst President in US History", and BO, the "greatest US president ever" -- and what? The best agrees with the worst on a critical issue relative to the War On Terror??

How surprising!