Being As SImple As Possible

RealClearPolitics - The First Adult -- AWOL:

A good article covering the general shape that the discussion of the budget and debt eventually has to take:

- How big a government do we want? For four decades, federal spending has averaged 21 percent of gross domestic product. An aging population and high health costs mean that average spending, as a share of GDP, will rise by a third or more in the next 10 to 15 years if today's programs simply continue.

-- Who deserves government subsidies and how much? About 55 percent of spending goes to individuals, including the elderly, veterans, farmers, students, the disabled and the poor.

-- How much, if at all, should social spending be allowed to squeeze national defense?

-- If taxes rise, how much and on whom? What taxes would least hurt economic growth?

I'd modify the questions slightly:

1). What is the total tax bill that we are willing to shoulder as a nation in a given year? (Income)

2). How much do we want to pay down the debt in that year? 10% of total income ought to be the minimum ("savings")

3). How do we want to spend what we have left?

Adults start their budget with MEANS and end it with DESIRES, with RESPONSIBILITY in between. Caring enough to write someone a bad check is not really caring -- it is just wishful thinking. Writing someone a check on the backs of future generations is also not caring, it is financial child abuse. We as a nation have been doing a "teen budget" that begins with our wants, throws in whatever income shows up, and ends with a bloated credit card bill. It is no surprise we have ended up where we have.

#3 is a long but worthy discussion. #1 ought to be easy ... something less than 20% of projected GDP gathered as widely as possible, a "flat tax". America of all nations ought to completely repudiate the concept of "eating the rich". The fallacy of doing so is as old as killing the goose that laid golden eggs. The biggest problem with the "tax the rich approach" is that it is merely an extension of the "teen budget" -- "Mom and Dad will bail me out". That form of thinking assumes someone else has infinite resources (they never do), and it allows desires to run wild against an irresponsible and incorrect financial model.

The president keeps promoting an "adult conversation" about the budget, but that can't happen if the First Adult doesn't play his part. Obama is eager to be all things to all people. He's against the debt and its adverse consequences, but he's for preserving Social Security and Medicare without major changes. He's for "tough cuts," but he's against saying what they are and defending them. He pronounces ambitious goals without saying how they'd be reached. Mainly, he's for scoring political points against Republicans.

At some point, we as a nation will have to generally grow up so that BO style blather is seen as the juvenile wishful thinking that it is, and therefore unhelpful. Let us pray it is quick!

Birther Bush AWOL

Debunking the birther claim – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

I love the difference in MSM treatment of BO's double secret Birth Certificate and "charges from some" that Bush didn't fulfill his TX National Guard service.

Normally, the issue with ones military service is honorable discharge, yes/no. Unless you are running on being a war hero or because of something else, the only criteria anyone cares about is if you received an honorable discharge. Flying a fighter and having more than one person remember they saw you while you were there is a plus, and a BIG plus on top of maybe saying you graduated from Columbia, yet nobody recalls you being there. http://reason.com/archives/2008/09/05/wayne-allyn-roots-million-doll
If nobody recalled Bush being in the TX National Guard, might that have been a news story??

Since Trump has brought up the birth issue again, the MSM is out in full defense of BO. Here we have their "airtight evidence":

Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the former director of Hawaii's Department of Health, says she has personally viewed the president's original vital records and verified that he was born in Hawaii.

Former Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, has been quoted as saying, "I had my health director, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records at the Department of Health. We issued a news release at the time saying the president was, in fact, born at Kapi'olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And that is just a fact."

Does ANYONE that ever reads MSM news doubt at all that were BO a Republican, the required level of evidence would be quite simple??? Show the $#%$@ Birth Certificate!!!! There is no way the MSM would EVER take the word of ANYONE if they could raise any question on something like this against a Republican, and they would NEVER give up!!

Just consider the difference with the Bush Guard "issue". It was in no way disqualifying for president under any circumstances. There was no doubt Bush got an honorable discharge. Can you even IMAGINE what kind of media circus there would have been if he was trotting out "people who had SEEN the records of his honorable discharge"??! Dan Rather lost his job over having a full hour special on it in the fall of '04 based on FORGED DOCUMENTS to attempt to influence the election for Bush's second term, and we already KNEW he had gotten an honorable discharge!

Ask yourself: What would the assumption have been if the best evidence of Bush's honorable discharge was identical to this evidence for BO's Birth Certificate?? What would an article in CNN or a show on CBS have said about it in '00 or '04??? 

If it takes you more than a second to answer that, you really do need to think a bit about your partisanship completely destroying your reason. Oh, and BTW, why is it important for CNN to defend BO?? Does BO not have a staff? Is there not a Democratic party?  How many MSM articles / shows did you see DEFENDING Bush on the Guard issue?? 

How Bad Can You Hate Palin?

Wonkette Makes Fun of Trig Palin, Calls Him “Retarded” - Big Journalism

I guess bad enough that you are willing to pick on retarded children -- at least if you are "progressive" enough.

Need anyone really be reminded that if the MSM could find ANYONE that they even DREAMED was somehow "Conservative or Republican" -- like say the koran burning FL pastor or the gay bashing military Kansas protestors from some church, or whatever, it would need to be close to front page news a few hundred times?

This? It has the MSM anonymity it so richly deserves. Wish they could be more even handed about anonymity.

Willie Sutton on Taxes

Review & Outlook: Where the Tax Money Is - WSJ.com

BO and the Democrats like to lie a lot. If they want to pay for all of their vote buying attempts, the people that make from $50K - $500K are going to carry the freight, especially those that make from $100-$200K.

War is now Civil

War on the Weak - Newsweek:

This article is an orgy of misdirection. For one thing, we resurrect an old bogeyman of the left; Ayn Rand. It is always amazing to me after exposure to a constant stream of leftist thinking from grammer school through college, how completely threatening the left finds the fact that some people read one chain smoking dead megalomaniac semi-libertarian. I suspect that book burning would be one of their favorite hobbies if they could get just a bit more control.

Is the thinking of the left so fragile that rather than talk of specific policies, we need to open with a character assassination because somebody has read a book??? One would think that BO's paean to anti-white racism, tribalism, weird ties to old ancestors, soil attachment, drugs and various discredited leftists; "Dreams from my Father", would be more dangerous to read than Ayn -- let alone having it be written by the president!!

Remember Congresswoman Giffords? Shot in the head due to the uncivil rhetoric of Sarah Palin and other Tea Party wackos if you are a Democrat or MSM sheep. BO used the term "an assault on unions" to describe WI Governor Walker's attempt to balance the WI budget. I've renamed my M4 Bushmaster .223 to a "Civil Rifle" in BO's honor!  It really makes more sense -- it is far more likely to be used in defense of my family or the liberty of all than in anything like an "assault".

Here we see "War" used to describe a budget. Is the term "war" now not a "warlike metaphor"??? Isn't this exactly the kind of overheated rhetoric that was so dangerous as recently as January?? Oh wait, that only applies to Republicans -- rhetoric, nasty signs, death threats and vandalism are all "just politics" when they come from the left.

Aside from attempts to tell us how to think, the biggest difference here can be summed up by what your worldview is. If you believe that resources are close to infinite, no matter what the level of debt or deficit is, and "balance" is simply a matter of loading more on the folks that already pay 90% of the total tax bill, then by all means -- spend away. For the most needy, the might be needy, or even the not needy at all, but likely to vote for your party.

If you on the other hand believe that resources are finite, and saving some safety for the most needy even if that means encouraging the close to needy to work, and the not needy at all to just take care of themselves, then you might want to look a the Ryan proposal with something other than an 80% ad hominem attack on his reading history as a reason for rejecting it!

Attacking the man is always easier than making a real argument.

Paying For BO

Phil Gramm: The Obama Growth Discount - WSJ.com

If somebody hadn't screwed up the recovery, history tells us we would be way better off by now. BO and the Democrats actually looked at the tea leaves in spring '09 and felt that the economy would move into growth with no extra spending -- they just decided to shower their cronies with a Trillion in extra spending primarily as a political payback, and with idea that "it can't do anything but help".

Most folks discover drunken disaster and hangovers in young adulthood -- apparently BO is still of the "if some is good, more is better"philosophy.

If we had matched the 1982 recovery rate, today annual per-capita income would be $4,154 higher than before the recession—that's an extra $16,600 for a family of four—and some 15.7 million more Americans would have jobs. That's enough jobs to employ 100% of the 13.5 million Americans currently classified as unemployed. In addition, we would have provided jobs for 30% of both the 2.4 million discouraged or marginally attached workers and the 4.8 million who have totally dropped out of the work force since January 2008.

Dayton Targets Job Creators in MN

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/02/16/wisconsin-unions/

Here we have a mild contrast in press treatment. Mark Dayton in MN has proposed taxes which would make MN the most "wealth unfriendly" state in the US, yet I've yet to hear that called "anti-wealth", or "anti-jobs" in the MSM. In fact, most all the news outlets of an MSM ilk, and especially "unbiased" MPR that draws deeply from the public teat finds it to be a generally positive idea.

Somehow, not so the idea that folks drawing salaries at the public expense, unsurprisingly major supporters of Democrats, government spending in general, higher taxes, and public largesse in most forms taking any sort of a cut at all.

Thousands of teachers, prison guards and students descended on the Wisconsin Capitol for a second day Wednesday to fight a move to take union rights away from government workers in the state that first granted them more than a half-century ago.

"fight a move to take union rights away". Huh? Can we just have "fight a move to steal more private property from wealthy Minnesotans"??? for the opponents of Dayton's tax plan??  Apparently what Dayton and the Democrats propose is ALWAYS about "the budget", if not "the children", or "the most vulnerable"??? I'm CERTAIN they would NEVER just target some group that doesn't tend to vote for them!!

Apparently, Walker and the Republicans just went out to "take union rights away" for no reason other than the standard Republican meanness of heart. Meanwhile, Dayton and Democrats in MN are working to try to improve "fairness", get "appropriate revenues from those most able to pay", etc, etc.

Could we just have the merest glimmer of an attempt to use similar rhetoric for similar things since we are spending public dollars to get this supposed "no slant, no rant" version of the news???

Never Smile At A Crocodile

Budget good will: Vanished without a trace - CNN.com:

As I said in December http://bilber99.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-bipartisanship-is-stupid-for.html, Republicans just plain can't get over stupid!! They give in to BO over a supposed measly $38 Billion in cuts that is in fact less than a billion, so they take all the abuse for cutting without any actual results. One top of that, BO comes out and does a macho campaign speech BEFORE they even vote on it, and the rubes STILL vote it through. Stupid is as stupid does.

Now, I understand that if they had stood up like humans rather than mice and said "hey buster, you want to make a deal that is supposed to be "bi-partisan" and then come out and piss on our tennies before we even vote on it? Sorry, NO DEAL!!! Roll that in your cigarette and smoke it!!!"

Nope, Republicans let BO arrive late to the game, run roughshod over them so the Dems win again, and America loses. I'm starting to think I'm completely stupid for not accepting that this is just plain HOPELESS!!!

The Budget is Least of Our Problems

RealClearPolitics - 'Coming Apart at the Seams'

Sadly, the accelerating leftward slide of America that dominated the 20th century has left us morally as well as economically bankrupt.

These trends mean, just as it is suffering economically, the working class is getting cut off from the richest sources of social capital: marriage, two-parent families, and church-going. More people are falling into a lower class characterized by men who can't make a minimal living and single women with children. Murray argues that America can maintain its national power even if these trends continue. With a growing lower class "increasingly unsuited for citizenry in a free society," though, it will no longer be the country we once knew.

Marriage, Family, Church, Community, Thrift, Delayed Gratification, Personal Responsibility, Maturity, a sense of culture in history (American Exceptionalism), ability to support factually and argue positions with civility .... the list is endless. All squandered without very much of a fight at over decades of statist/leftist/progressive attack.

The CAUSES of American decline are these, and have NOTHING to do with "global competition" or "concentration of wealth". Those bogymen are just excuses from the left for the destruction they have created. Blacks in this country were in better shape in every way -- economically, crime rate, divorce rate, illegitimate birth rate, church attendance, etc, etc BEFORE the mid '60s. Then the "great society" took hold with government replacing god, dad, and personal responsibility, and the black culture fell.

Government is a racially blind destroyer. The destruction of the white American culture is now WELL under way as this article shows. Remove religion as a source of morality (and in fact, make it a sign of "bigotry" as in "gay rights"), encourage children out of wedlock and in single families, promote dependency or the federal government for every phase of life ... creating the idea that being responsible for yourself isn't even a reasonable goal. All of life supposedly requires government involvement. 

and so we reap.

NYTimes Mythology

Budget Battles - Tax and Spending Myths and Realities - NYTimes.com

The NYTimes is expert on mythology. In this particular version, the KEY myth to keep in mind is that the budget is done by the president. In case you are recently returned from another dimension, the last couple of weeks ought to have that firmly in any mind that operates in this universe, but we can see that the Times is exempt from that designation.

Let's start at the top:

Here are two numbers to keep in mind when thinking about the House Republicans’ budget plan: They want to cut spending on government programs over the next decade by $4.3 trillion. And they want to cut tax revenues over the same period by $4.2 trillion.

Actually, the Republicans don't plan to cut ANY government programs over the next decade. They just aim to grow them a lot less rapidly than the Democrats. To claim they want to cut tax REVENUES is just completely stupid -- they want to cut tax RATES and INCREASE tax revenues. ALL the budget assumptions from BOTH sides make assumptions and projections about GROWTH. The fundamental disagreement is about "where does growth come from"? Democrats believe that taxes are a magic form of expense (to the people paying them) that will not affect behavior. While giving people benefits modifies their behavior to vote for those they see as providing the benefit, or increasing the minium wage encourages people to work, and more money given to teachers gives both votes for Democrats and causes the teachers to teach better, taxes are the ONE exception -- no matter how much you raise them, nobody is affected to try to avoid them. Taxes are the magic elixir of Democrats! (well, taxes, union campaign contributions and abortion).

We’ve seen this play before. President Ronald Reagan promised that tax cuts would spur more economic growth and pay for themselves. During his tenure, the deficit hit what was then a peacetime high of 6 percent of gross domestic product, and he eventually decided that he had no other alternative but to raise taxes to try to close the gap.

Remember who controls the budget. Democrats were firmly entrenched in the house from '55 - '95. Anyone that knows enough to ignore the three-card Monty of the Dems and the MSM realizes that "blaming the president" is just done to confuse the rubes. Revenues DID rise under Reagan as he had predicted -- but the Democrats made sure that SPENDING rose even faster. Even crazier,  the "bi-partisan FICA agreement" was a goose that dumped golden eggs on the floor from the early '80s until the early '00s ... one of the reasons for the trouble in the '00s is that the cozy double Ponzi on top of the granddaddy of ponzi schemes (Social Security) of stealing FICA money from BOTH the elderly and the young at the same time is running out. Even scams that are "too big to fail" ala Madoff, have to come to an end. The 900lb invisible gorilla (to the NYT) in this whole discussion is the fantasy of FICA / medicare. 

The Clinton years disproved the notion that higher taxes would inevitably stifle economic growth, or cost politicians their jobs. Taxes were raised in 1993, including higher income tax rates on the wealthiest. The economy was strong, and the stock market surged. Taxes were then cut in 1997 in a deal with the Republican-controlled Congress, but by then the combination of higher tax rates on the wealthy, a strong economy and a rising stock market was boosting revenues significantly.

"The economy was strong, and the stock market surged". Well, no more than the housing market "surged" under Bush. The stock market "bubbled", and it crashed in '00, and Bush came into office in a recession that double dipped on 9/11/2001 -- a small factor that the NYTs seems to have missed, even though given they are in the same city as Wall Street and the now absent WTC, one would think that at least that much of reality would have seeped into their lefty skulls. I guess the Clinton years proved that higher taxes don't inevitably stifle a stock market bubble in the same way that the Bush years proved that lower taxes and a housing bubble don't automatically provide a surplus. From where we are now though, the $167 Billion deficit in '07 that is 10% of what BOs deficits are running makes one wistful for those "failed Bush policies". 

President George W. Bush and Congress undid that progress with $1.65 trillion in tax cuts, heavily skewed to high earners. The economic recovery of the Bush years was extraordinarily weak by historical standards. By early 2009, shortly before Mr. Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office projected a budget deficit for that year of more than $1 trillion.

One has to be solidly in the left camp to think that "progress" is $1,65 Trillion in extra taxes over a 10 year period. BO and the Democrats must agree, because they haven't raised those taxes even now. One gasps just a bit to think that after 8 years of the illustrious Clinton, we needed a "recovery", but of course those are the facts, plus 9/11/2001. Were that to have happened on a Democrats watch, it would be the excuse to end all excuses -- no level of spending, no level of economic depth would be too much to escape the all-purpose coverage of the 9-11 excuse. 


"heavily skewed to high earners" ... the people over $250K that pay 95% of taxes got 25% of the relief,  the people under $250K that pay 5% of the tax got 75% of the relief.  How is that "skewed"? If you pay over $50K a year in income taxes, your personal amount of tax relief was higher than that for folks that paid $1k. Get it? To a Democrat, that isn't "fair". 


So did we have any elections in '06? Did anything change? Oh, wait -- Congress DID manage to get a budget through in both '07 and '08. What kind of congress was it??? Hmm, a DEMOCRAT Congress. True, Bush signed the budgets, but one would have to agree that he was the lamest of lame ducks by then and in '08, does one REALLY think it was going to help anything to shut down the government to negotiate with Nancy and Harry about lower spending? 


So we don't quote the $167 Billion Deficit in '07 -- Republican President, Republican Congress created. We wait for the '09!!!! budget -- both houses Democrat creating and passing, Bush signing as a lame duck in a bad economy in an election year. Yea, the Democrats and the MSM know all about "fairness" ... not to mention propaganda! 

Budgets, Deficits and Blame

CORRECTED-U.S. fiscal 2007 budget deficit falls to $163 bln | Reuters

Bush/Republicans actual 2007 deficit was $163 Billion. When Democrats run on "change", you can REALLY believe it!

As I'm sure some Democrats and MSM folks are noticing now, the budget of the US Government is the responsibility of CONGRESS, meaning that it has to pass THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES!!! It is true that the President ultimately SIGNS the budget, but the way the MSM works in this country, that has some special meaning:

When a Republican is President, as in Bush 1, and the Congress is Democrat, when President fails to sign a budget and the government shuts down, it is HIS FAULT!! (see 1990 shutdown).

When a Democrat is President, as in Clinton, and the congress is Republican, when the President fails to sign the budget and the government shuts down it is CONGRESS'S FAULT!! (see 1995 shutdown)

So a couple minor points:

1). '07 was really the last Republican budget. While Bush was there in '08, he was the lamest of lame ducks with Nancy and Harry proudly in charge of our nations budget., Bush's only choice would have been to "cause a government shutdown" on top of the explosion of 30 years of Democrat bad loans through Fannie and Freddie killing the markets. Thanks Nancy and Harry! With a belated tip o' the hat to Jimmuh Carter, whose folks thought up the entire brilliant idea of sub-prime mortgages. Where would this country be without Democrats?

2). Stay tuned for the potential of a shutdown, the rules are it will be the "Republican's fault" ... meaning Congress this time. I've leave it to you to figure out WHY that is the rule.

P2P vs WTF

Paul Ryan: The GOP Path to Prosperity - WSJ.com

BO is on the "Winning The Future" (WTF) plan, this article gives a snapshot of the "Path to Prosperity" the chart ought to be etched in every Americans brain.

From Moose Tracks

Budget Suicide

RealClearPolitics - Big Government on the Brink

A little optimistic, but worth the read. The bottom line problem is that VERY few people realize that "The Pig(federal gov) is Dead". They keep talking about "this and that won't work, something HAS to be done". Have none of these people ever seen a loved one die?? It seems "unthinkable" -- we will just need to do this ... or that, or why can't they do THIS, or, or ... . And then it is over, they are gone. You are still here, the world goes on, but it isn't the same world -- what you thought could not possibly happen has happened, and you are sadder but maybe wiser.

We took a wrong turn in '06. The sign said "Dead End" very clearly, but we pushed the accelerator to the floor. We went by a sign in '08 that said "Danger, STOP !! High Cliff Ahead!!!" ... we took a strong swig of whiskey and pushed on the gas even harder. As the darkness falling away into the abyss started to enter our awareness in '10, we hired some folks willing to turn on the headlights. But most folks seem to have just decided to shut their eyes when it comes to painful realities.

We don't HAVE to have our loved ones alive. So surprise -- there is no "law of nature" that we HAVE to have Social Security, Medicare, Defense, a job, any assets, shelter, clothing, enough to eat, etc. **ALL** of those things have to be EARNED!!! If not by us now, then by SOMEONE -- either "wealthier", or from past generations wealth that was saved, or from future generations wealth being borrowed, or by conquest of other nations wealth ... it all comes from somewhere.

So when folks say things like "Paul Ryan's plan won't work because someone will HAVE to do xxx, to cover yyyy", or "Republicans thought that idea X was good in 1970, or 2003, or whenever, but now they seem to have changed their minds, there is a failure to understand the effects of time. Microsoft was a superb stock to buy in 1985 ... it may still be fine now, but it is very unlikely that it is as good now as then. Fixing FICA and helping the economy by doing some sorts of privatization or incentives in even '03 may well have been very helpful, but we missed that opportunity. We have a lot less flexibility now. Ditto with a lot of good ideas on healthcare, if some of the best advice had been followed EARLIER, when the problems were not so deep and the time frame longer. Sadly, the same is still the case -- we are like a drinker that has continued to drink and now the liver is dead. Quitting earlier would have been A LOT less painful -- in fact, maybe we are too late to avoid death.

In any case, the solutions to a system that anyone that wanted to look could see was unsustainable decades ago are FAR more painful now than they were even a few years ago. Why? Because when you are in the final stages of liver disease and you decide that the right answer is to go on a multi-month bender, the end can come very very quickly. That is the course we chose in '06, and accelerated in '08, and now we don't like the pain that is required to have even the very smallest of chances of even a very damaged recovery.

There is always an alternative, it is just that in the final analysis it is always death.

BO's Sorry Now

The Associated Press: WH: Obama regrets vote against raising debt limit

Being a Democrat means that "mistakes" are free. Oh yes, the MSM "reports it", but they don't make it an obsession --- "Dan Quayle ... misspelled potato". George Bush -- "Mission Accomplished, No WMD found, HUGE deficits". Has BO had any deficits yet?

Here is what the guy that was such a great perspecitve president that he made Chis Matthews leg shiver had to say on the subhject of raising the debt ceiling back in '06:

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. ... Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem."

So do we have ANY nice headlines like "Obama Said Raising Debt Ceiling Failure of Leadership" ??? Why not? Did Americans quit liking sensational "Gotcha journalism"? Did our media decide that the president needed to be supported when there was an "important military operation under way"?? (Libya).

Could it be that they are just biases and they really get no enjoyment whatsoever in making BO's job more difficult -- something that they enjoyed IMMENSELY when W was in office? Nah, just listen to NPR, they are completely unbiased!!! They say it themselves, so it must be true!

Is there just a SMIDGE of a chance that BO was completely clueless then and he is completely clueless now???

 

Caring Enough to Write a Bad Check

Paul Ryan Says Democrats Flee 'Adult Conversation' on Budget - HUMAN EVENTS

I'm really concerned about seniors and children, that is why I ought to care enough to write bad checks for both on the kids future checkbooks. One has to ether be a Democrat or an MSM reporter to see that as "caring". But wait, that is not enough -- I need to denigrate those who are trying to make reforms to allow the most vulnerable to actually have a safety net, and while they are doing it on the backs of those that HAVE saved and are able to shoulder more responsibility for their own future retirement by pushing for means testing! The left is denigrating Ryan for working to lead people that are largely in his own voting block -- those who HAVE saved, worked longer, selected a job with a pension, etc so they CAN survive without their whole FICA payment. That still isn't good enough for the left -- they would rather destroy the whole system than admit that what they created is unsustainable, even though it most clearly is.

Why can this country not make progress? I see it as pretty simple:

• Everyone has an ideology, it is just that one side doesn't realize it. How can a human with a brain stand up and say "Republicans are holding the budget hostage for ideological reasons by trying to cut abortion funding in the budget"! Huh? If you have no ideology, then simply allow the cuts!!!!! BOTH SIDES, and even those that claim to have "no sides" have an ideology. We all do, it is called being human. Our MSM and the Democrats REGULARLY stand up and make as much sense as Clevon Little does in "Blazing Saddles", when facing the lynch mob, pulls out is own gun, points at his head and says "Nobody move or the N**R gets it!!!". Only thing is that our current situation isn't funny.
  
• Our "sense of history" is now reduced to less than a year. Why are we facing a "budget crisis"? Because BO, Nancy and Harry with large majorities in both houses didn't pass a budget for Sept 10 - Sept 11!!! Our MSM is so bad that only the relatively few that REALLY keep up with a broad media spectrum are even aware of this. Democrats are so confident in general MSM support that they even complain about "Republicans being slow to pass a budget", or "having to provide adult supervision". Huh??? They completely abdicated a basic responsibility of government last year because they were worried about showing their cards on spending and taking responsibility in an election year, and NOW that there ARE some adults working to get the job done, they spend all their time in obstruction and name calling. Meanwhile, a majority of Americans are so duped that they believe this situation is "the Republicans fault". Heeellllooo?????? 

Our situation is desperate. It is way past time to roll up our sleeves and realize that we have to get past rhetoric, look closely at what it is that we truly value, and GET BUSY!!!! Get competitive, get frugal, get responsible, get educated, get down to business, and most of all GET REAL!!! Nobody is going to solve our problem for us. There is no big pot of "the wealthy" that can bail us out. Even our supposed bail outs are largely just printed cash that is nothing but inflation.

Ryan is the best mind to show up on this in a very long time. Is he perfect? -- hell no, but it is high time that we realized that there is no such thing as "savior leadership" in this mortal vale of tears, and learn to work hard with the best leaders we have available. BO and the Democrats have been the biggest failure in US history, take a nice cold look at it and get over it!! Ryan and others like him are the way forward and we had better start getting majorities at the 70-80% of Americans to understand that, support it even when the going is tough, and stand up to the kinds of overheated rhetoric with no solutions we are hearing from the left!!!

Why SOME Liberals Believe

Power Line - The Times Retracts

The ruse is simple, you make something up out of very close to whole cloth "The Koch Brothers Contributed $80K to a campaign". It gets "reported" then repeated. This DOES happen on both sides, but the difference is that the NYTs doesn't generally end up reporting the right wing versions as "facts of record" with retractions deeply buried in misleading ways some days later.

People that only follow NYT, NBC, CNN, CBS, NPR, etc believe, and they believe it when they hear that Fox, right wing bloggers are "just a bunch of liars". Their media sources support each other -- and a certain world view. Since they know no other view, they feel justified.

It is actually quite difficult to look at both sides, be able to argue both sides, and come to conclusions based on a broad view, but if we are a nation that wants to continue to have "democratic" in our Republic, then isn't it a responsibility ?? If enough people demand that BOTH SIDES of the media learn to operate in a fact based, non-partisan manner, then maybe the time could come again when we could LEGITIMATELY trust a one or two sources for all our news and know that we were getting information rather than propoganda!

Blame the Electorate?

American Thinker: Will Ignorance Lead to a Second Obama Term?

Blaming the electorate is generally a bad idea, but this analysis of BO voters seems pretty air-tight to me:

When Obama won in 2008, I wrote an article for AT in which I analyzed the various reasons that people had for voting for a person who was clearly incompetent, unprepared, unpatriotic, and basically void of any substance other than his own ego and disdain for American exceptionalism. The five categories of Obama voters included (i) individuals suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome, (ii) followers with a mob mentality of assuming that if everyone liked the guy, he must be wonderful, (iii) socialists, (iv) people with racial guilt looking for a post-racial America, and (v) those suffering from simple ignorance due to a lack of intellectual curiosity to understand the man who would be king.

Now, with over half of Obama's term complete, the only relevant categories of Obama supporters are those falling under items (iii) and (v)

He does leave out idiots and the insane, but I really think they are pretty close to even on both sides. Who is going to be left to vote for BO? 


I sincerely hope -- and very much want to believe that Americans will pass a basic test of rationality and resist the MSM and the elitist posturing in favor of reaity and common sense! If not however ... although I believe our survival of a single term is still highly problematic.

If Obama represents the level of intelligence of the American people, then I fear our Republic will not survive the "multitude of fools" who may very well hand the prince a second term.

Liberal Libyan Clairity

There’s A Clear Logic Behind Obama’s Libya Strategy—but That Doesn’t Mean It Will Succeed. | The New Republic

One of the great things that Democrat presidents have going for them is a lapdog media that will go to any length to create "strategy" out of randomness:

Put simply, Obama’s Libya strategy is designed to avoid the most undesirable outcomes rather than optimize the chances of a desired outcome, to do something without “owning” the conflict, to maintain maximum flexibility as the situation evolves, and to do all of this in the face of powerful constraints.

There you have it. I'd argue that "Have your cake and eat it too" is neither new, or  "strategy". It is identical to the Stimulus and "saved or created". For those that are terminally MSM addicted, or just gullible at heart, this is how it works ... BO Claims:

1. I took action
2. The situation would have been worse I hadn't taken action. Exactly like "saved or created" or the stimulus in general. BUT, while you can see that "I took action", there is no way to check my figures on "saved or created" or my "flexible outcomes" in Libya.
   
3. I'm brilliant because I did EXACTLY THE RIGHT THING given ALL THE FACTS (many of which I may not share with you) ... no matter what the outcome turns out to be!!
4. If it doesn't SEEM brilliant to you, see "I didn't OWN the conflict" and "powerful constraints".
   

One can easily apply this to anything if you have a supportive media and good set of pliant supporters -- but it you don't, it looks like what it is. Attempting to play both sides of the street only to your favor with no concern over what the actual outcome is, and no accountability for it. Great work if you can get it, but no CEO, sports team manager, or even husband working on a honey-do list can get that work. Imagine this response to a plugged toilet in the basement that remains plugged :

• I got the plunger and shut off the water ( action, could have been worse if not taken)
• I told the kid to plunge it (I'm no longer responsible)
• Plumbers are expensive (constraints) 
• Nuff said!!
  

So, here we see that BO isn't the kind of guy you would hire to unstop your toilet, why would anyone hire him as president, and then have a whole media try to claim this is a "strategy"???

The Two Coming Revolutions

The Two Coming American Revolutions

Essentially the Tea Party wants to have American Revolution redueux, and the left wants to guillotine "the rich". Good article. 

The Era of Literalism

Uncertain minds in an era of literalism | Madeleine Bunting | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:

Another assumption that was briskly dismantled, was the idea that religion offers certainty. On the contrary, argued Gray: "In an age of secular dogmatism, churches have become sanctuaries of doubt." It's a statement that will horrify Dawkins's many fans, but given so few of them ever grace a church's doorstep, how would they know?

Armstrong was offering no certainty even on the existence of God. Existence is far too limited a human concept to apply to God – even the great 12th-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides knew that. Yet modernity has lost this understanding of the limits to human reasoning and our incapacity to describe God, which was evident in all the monotheistic traditions in the past. Uncertainty has, traditionally, always been part of faith.

Mostly had to put this out here so I remember to get the book and read it. I'm convinced that we are beset by people that know "too much" and "too little" about everything from God to Government to Humanity.

Everyone has "their angle", "their group" and their "secret sauce" that THEY are certain is the smartest , best, most rational, fairest, most caring, correct and innovative -- along with a never ending host of other positive adjectives. The "other folks", the inverse -- stupid, worst, irrational, unfair, mean spirited .... etc.

"The truth" ... NOT "half way in between" and not "relative" either. More like the X-files "The Truth is Out There". Outside human reach and grasp, but close enough for our spirit to sense when we are very very quiet and very very humble.

The truth is out there, but it isn't human.

Middle Class Welfare

RealClearPolitics - Can We Avert a Social Security Disaster?

A good coverage of the facts of FICA --  there is no "Trust Fund", it DOES affect the budget TODAY, and increasingly going forward, and it IS a form of welfare for the middle class -- one that is very popular and totally unsustainable. MANY unsustainable things are popular -- the only problem with "free lunch" is that it doesn't exist, and any attempts to make it seem like it does are just some form of a Ponzi scheme.
FICA is the Ponzi scheme that may end the USA.

WI Protest Damage

Budget battle: Officials say it'll cost $7.5 million to clean up glue, tape, posters left from protesters - WITI:

Since this was done by liberals, it wasn't much of a story. Any gathering of more than 2 conservatives of any nature is trumpeted by the media as "chilling" -- but of course the left can bluster, threaten and deface with impunity. That is called "freedom of speech"!

Looking In The Lockbox

Charles Krauthammer: It’s still an empty lockbox - Orange County Register

Very sad that this sort of column is still neccesary, but it is. I just heard some "learned analyst" give solemn assurances that "Social Security Is Solvent through 2037", followed by denigration of those that think otherwise as being either "wrong or lying". The fact that this is even a discussion that can be had at all, let alone on something like NPR that keeps wanting to claim it is reality based, is as absurd as them giving a statement that the earth is flat as being obvious, while presenting the "other side" of their "balanced reporting" as being those poor round earthers that clearly don't know what they are saying.

We ought to be VERY thankful that the $2.6 Trillion sitting in the "lockbox" is just paper -- if we really had to pay it, our chances of eventual recovery from the FICA Ponzi scheme would be at least $2.6 Trillion smaller than the tiny chance we have at this point.

BO Against Raising Debt Limit!

Marco Rubio: Why I Won't Vote to Raise the Debt Limit - WSJ.com

"Raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure." So said then-Sen. Obama in 2006, when he voted against raising the debt ceiling by less than $800 billion to a new limit of $8.965 trillion. As America's debt now approaches its current $14.29 trillion limit, we are witnessing leadership failure of epic proportions.

Oh wait, that was in '06, the "epic" hadn't got going yet ... he was going to close Gitmo, thought any use of US forces against mideast dictators was bad (oh, he had more bombastic words than that, but the idea was the same), and thought "transparency" was important. Oops ... different guy, but he is a Democrat, so the MSM seems to find it all OK ."whatever"

It is time for the rest of us to get out of the race to destruction -- good column by Rubio, NOW is the time to turn the debt corner!

 

Doubly Volunteered

Mark Steyn: Do-gooders in a land with no good guys | military, gadhafi, way - Opinion - The Orange County Register

Well written in a humorously cynical manner sure to make BO worshipers cringe. It is sad, sad, sad -- so many good points, so very few ways to see how anyone could defend our current lunacy. This from BO takes the cake though ...

"That's why building this international coalition has been so important," he said the other day. "It is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions that are important not only to us, but are important internationally."

Huh? Our volunteer army -- volunteers to serve and protect AMERICA have been "volunteered by others"? Not BO, apparently he just agreed that folks that signed up to protect their own nation should be selected by some combination of the Arab League and France to go in to dethrone a lunatic that has been just as loony for 30 years. Why now?

There are a TON of good / sad / amazing / observation sin here ... for example.

Four years ago, President Sarkozy hosted a state visit for Col. Gadhafi, his personal security detail of 30 virgins, his favorite camel and a 400-strong entourage that helped pitch his tent in the heart of Paris. Given that London and Paris have the third- and fourth-biggest military budgets on the planet and that between them they know everything about Gadhafi's elite troops, sleeping arrangements, guard-babes and dromedaries, why couldn't they take him out? But no: They, too, decided to volunteer the U.S. military.

Can We Get Real Yet?

The American Spectator : America's Accelerating Downward Spiral

I've been predicting it since we turned the political corner in '06 and put the Dems in the drivers seat. Winning back the house was nice, but the new Republicans are way short of agressive enough on dealing with the problem -- not that they could anyway, with Democrats in the Senate and BO in the WH. I find this guy to be slightly on the optimistic side, but what he points out in the current picture ought to be obvious to everyone drawing breath that isn't just completely in the liberal wacko tank:

• Printing money ("Quantitative Easing") insures high inflation, and in things that matter we are ALREADY in double digit inflation! Been to the food store lately? Fill up your car? Go out to eat? Notice that the new iPad didn't come in with more function AND a lower price as we have come to expect in the tech industry forever? The CPI numbers are actually out showing this fact that was as predictable from the policies selected as night following day ... it is just being hidden by the 30% of the CPI that is housing. (Have you maybe heard that is depressed?)
• Unempoloyment is not really improving -- people are giving up on looking for jobs. During the Bush years, NPR never missed a chance when "ONLY 100K jobs were created in a reporting period" to pronounce 100K new jobs as way too low completely unacceptable, and understating the problem because people were becoming disenchanted and giving up searching for jobs. Oh, and do you remember when every report of new jobs also had to have a big discussion about "how many are GOOD jobs"???!!! Do you notice that sort of derision of new jobs suddenly seems to be missing?  My my how the MSM view of things has changed!
• Every time since 1970 that we have had a spike in fuel prices it has been followed by a rise in unemployment and a downturn in production. When a Republican is in the WH, the MSM is all over that prospect and doing all they can to insure that it happens -- no expense can be spared in getting "better" (Democrat) government if you are in the MSM. Now??? Did someone say that gas was high? Oh well, maybe there will be less pollution. Unfortunately gravity is still in effect -- and the effect is likely to be much worse this time due to the weakness of the current economy and the inability of the current administration to deal with complex economic issues.

Our dependence on the MSM has reached ridiculous proportions, after 8 years of Bush, we got used to a constant drumbeat of negative press even when things were going reasonably well. Now, any blip that could be looked as POTENTIALLY being positive is treated as manna from his worsshipfulness BO, while massive bad news on inflation, employment, federal policies, interest rates, effects of fuel prices, etc is just swept under the rug.

At some point we need to ALL throw politics and partisanship out the window and realize we have dug a deep deep hole of unsustainable policies for at least 80 years (since FDR). We have A LOT of work and a LOT of pain to get this turned around, but if we don't get rolling on in in 2012 and after, it may go so far that the beacon of freedom and prosperity that was bequeathed us by our founders, flickers and dies on our watch, the irresponsible baby boomers who failed in the challenge of keeping the American faith!

Frugal Democrats

RealClearPolitics - Planet Washington

A good description of Democrat "frugality" ... you borrow 40% of a 10K budget to begin with and faced with the obvious need to cut your budget, you offer to spend $28 less!

 

 

But given their terror of forcing a government shutdown, Democrats were forced to counteroffer with a cut of $10.5 billion, or 0.28 percent of the federal budget.

Imagine you have a budget of $10,000 (about 40 percent of it borrowed on a credit card), then "slash" 28 bucks. That's what it's like to be a frugal Democrat.

 

Remember Gitmo?

Obama restarts Guantanamo trials - Yahoo! News

Remember when having Gitmo open was a horrible stain on the US? Remember when military tribunals were a HORRIBLE idea?-- even though FDR and others had used them? Well, we now have proof that Gitmo nor military tribunals ever really were a problem to the MSM/Democrats/left -- both of them were merely ways to harp on a subject and help to lower the popularity of Bush and Republicians in general. Why in the world do Democrats even have to spend a dime on political campaigns when they have the MSM working for them 24x7?

I really don't even understand the kind of mind that makes something like Gitmo/tribunals a major issue, and then is completely unconcerned about it when their party takes power. If there was ANY shred of interest in these items as a issue, they would have to be an issue under BO as well as under W, but it is absolutely clear they are not. Nobody in the MSM / Democrats / left cares one whit if BO ever gets Gitmo closed, nor that he as returned to using military tribunals. The only explanation that works for me is that it is TOTALLY "politics and power above ALL else" -- prosperity, security, freedom, character, truth ... nothing else matters!! There is NOTHING more sacred than "politics and power" -- but I just don't get it. To me, it is ONLY the principles/values that matter --  politics and power are ONLY a MEANS to hopefully move us toward more/better freedom, security, prosperity ... and to LESS poltics and power, because individuals have more liberty and responsiblility, so the government can have LESS!

 

Know the Facts on Publlic Unions

A Union Education - WSJ.com

One of the saddest things in America today is how much of the country has been convinced that "there are two sides to every story, and everyone has their facts". In fact, every side has N sides and there is no shortage of "facts" to support nearly any world view. The primary questions in life are actually of the sort "faith, world view, ideology". Those are the questions that allow the selections of which facts we prioritize, and even more imporantly, what we DO as a result of the important input from reality provided by facts.

Even when the facts are scrupulously and fairly presented, many world views that are not in alingment with them will continue -- difficult facts will be ignored or minimized, old information will be used rather than new, rosy projections will be presented as reality -- standard stuff. The problem with this story is that most of the MSM is effectively lying:

1. Very few people are aware that Federal public unions do NOT have the collective bargaining right.
2. Very few people understand the power of a union in a monopoly where the money from the union influences the monopoly 

I'd rather we started fixing the nation by dealing with entitlements, but we are broken in a lot of places. Educating Americans on what is wrong with public unions is critical, this article does a good job of starting that process:

Why? Because unlike in the private economy, a public union has a natural monopoly over government services. An industrial union will fight for a greater share of corporate profits, but it also knows that a business must make profits or it will move or shut down. The union chief for teachers, transit workers or firemen knows that the city is not going to close the schools, buses or firehouses.

Mind Control In MSM Clothing

Opinion: The Left's Unhealthy Koch Habit

It is never enough for the left to have a discussion of issues. It must always be some sort of strange conspiracy, some "assault", in which making things up, running away, creating conspiracies out of whole cloth -- or ANYTHING, including violence is justfied because of "morality" of their cause. There can be no god but leftist mamon, since it is certain there would be more than one case in which he would not agree with them, and that may not be countenanced. You MUST buy the leftist view, or you will be declared apostate and destroyed. You have been warned! Get your mind right (er, left) !!

Good column, just read it.

What's really going on here is an attempt to silence people whose views liberals disagree with. After all, they don't have a problem with billionaires using their money to influence policies and public opinion when the money is being spent by the likes of George Soros, a left-winger who, among other things, helps fund the Think Progress site.

End the Privileged Class

End Unions and End the Privileged Class - The Daily Beast

Here here! Well thought, well written, and to the point!

The primary purpose of public unions today, as ugly as it sounds, is to work against the financial interests of taxpayers: the more public employees are paid in wages and uncapped benefits, the less taxpayers keep of the money they earn. It’s time to call an end to the privileged class. And the White House makes a mistake if it thinks it can grow a manufactured and uncivil unrest into a popular movement. Voters will not follow those who flee.

Loving Revolution

Niall Ferguson: Americans and Revolutions - Newsweek

 

Ferguson is an academic, not an idealogue, I generally find the quality of his thought to be high, and this is no exception.

In the absence of an American strategy, the probability of a worst-case scenario creeps up every day—a scenario of the sort that ultimately arose in revolutionary France, Russia, and China. First the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East could turn much more violent, with a death toll running into tens or hundreds of thousands. Then they could spark a full-blown war, claiming millions of lives. Worst of all, out of that war could emerge an enemy as formidable as Napoleon’s France, Stalin’s Soviet Union, or Mao’s China.

Yes, Americans love revolutions. But they should stick to loving their own.

 

Trusting The Government

RealClearPolitics - Who Benefits From Government Unions?

Democrats are always telling us that more government is the answer -- to the poor, to the old, in education, more laws, more regulation; why just recently they solemly told us that even our health care was better handled by the government, and they were so certain that was true that bypassing the fillibuster rules in the senate to shove their bloated legislation through was required. According to the MSM and tax funded Public Media, it was even courageous!

Why would it be that this government that we are all told to trust so much is not qualified to bargain individually with the people that work for it? I thought this government was benevolent, trustworthy, competent, big hearted, patient, good at listening, and a whole host of other positive characteristics too numerous to name. THat same government that we are to continue to hand ever increasing amounts of our cash, freedoms, choices and childrens protentials for a future over to must be bargained with collectively? Do we need a "tax payers union" that negotiates our taxes, and we can simply have a tax strike legally if they don't meet our demands?

We CONSTANTLY hear from the Democrats -- well, if you don't like something, just vote the other party out -- but wait, they don't follow the rules of government even when we DO vote them out, and based on the WI example, they are very willing to just run away to prevent the will of the voters from being carried it if that will doesn't agree with theirs.

Just read the Barone article -- the bottom line though is very very plain. Public sector unions are a built in way that Democrats can collect campaign money from taxpayers -- even those that vote against them. That is just too sweet a deal for them to allow to be sacfificed. As with the poor, the Dems could care less about public employees, but they DO care very much about where their political power and money comes from. Thus, civility has been left behind and Democrats have finally found somethng worth going to war for!

Follow the money, Washington reporters like to say. The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party.

 

 

Assaulting Civility

Obama joins Wisconsin's budget battle, opposing Republican anti-union bill:

BO calls the WI governors budget bill an "assault" on unions. Can we re-name "assault" rifles to "civility rifles"? No reason to ban those I guess. Let's see, little over a month ago, it was "The Tea Party and Sarah Palin" that were the cause of violence in AZ because of their "harsh rhetoric". Now we have screaming, chanting union workers, teachers calling in sick ad showing up to protest (some bringing clueless students with them), all sorts of signs of Walker as Hitler, Walker with a crosshairs on him, Walker as "Madison Mussolini" ... etc, etc.

Somehow the MSM seems suddenly and oddly muted on the whole "civility thing". Wassup wid dat??? Certainly can't be bias!!

Unlike the tea partiers, the union folks are blocking halls and screaming about their "rights". I'm thinking that "collective bargaining" is another one of those "rights" that is in the same general area of the Constitution as "abortion"?

Funny isn't it? "Liberals" (regressives) find a number of "rights" that they hold dear, but things like the right to bear arms, or the right of ALL to speak (as in even spend MONEY as speech), the right to private property (Kelo, Income tax, etc) even though clearly written are "questionable" and need to be "carefully controlled" -- and only thought to be "simply understood" by the supposed simple minded conservatives.

Not so abortion on demand (ideally government funded), health care, a "living wage" and yes, collective bargaining. Those rights, even though they are nowhere to be found in the actual document are somehow "unalienable".

Watch the union protesters and think about what the attitude of the MSM would be if those were Tea Party folks!

Anti Union, Anti Wealth? Take a Powder?

Thousands protest anti-union bill in Wisconsin | Minnesota Public Radio News

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Thousands of teachers, prison guards and students descended on the Wisconsin Capitol for a second day Wednesday to fight a move to take union rights away from government workers in the state that first granted them more than a half-century ago.

Gee, the first guy that started hammering JD in the AM in college may have been one of the first that "quit" as well -- either because he was dead, or his liver was. It is a SURPRISE that the state that first got the stupid idea of having public employee unions might be the first to quit them? Duh.

Let's see, we need unions to counteract the "greed" of business owners and large corporations? But wait, isn't this government "of, by, and for THE PEOPLE???" -- if THE PEOPLE can't be trusted to treat their employees reasonably, then who can we trust? Isn't it just a TINY bit disengeuous to take sick days AND drag the students you are supposed to be teaching along so you can protest the potential end to your yearly shakedown of the rest of your neighbors? I guess we need one more lesson entitlement and corruption are without limit, while resources ALWAYS have limits!

Oh, BTW, here in MN we have Gov Mark Dayton wanting to raise taxes on the "wealthy" to the highest levels in the nation. If the measure in WI attempting to gain control of the budget is "anti-union", why would the MSM not cover the Dayton proposal as "anti-wealth"? It certainly IS anti-wealth, and it is much more likely to harm everyone in the the state of MN than hiring, firing and paying teachers on the basis of credentials, capability and results rather than the universal union techniques of payola for those who support you (Democrats), fleecing your marks (the public) and getting your salary and job security on "time and grade".

Now we discover that the Democrats in the Senate have fled the state to avoid a vote on the issue! Holed up somewhere in N IL, Land of BO and Bears that still suck! This wasn't supposed to be Greece, Italy or France YET -- but it appears that we may be much farther down the road to serfdom than most were aware!

Purity and Martyrdom

RealClearPolitics - Mitch Daniels' Moment, and Dilemmas

"Purity and martyrdom is for suicide bombers," Daniels told his audience. "Change of the dimension we need requires a coalition of a dimension no one has recently assembled." But the thrust of his speech, at the aptly named "Ronald Reagan Banquet," was a comparison between today's debt crisis and the "red menace" of Reagan's day.

Great quote, great guy.  He would be such an improvement over BO that there is a chance that we could avoid decades of decline and despair! Not MUCH of a chance mind you, but this is probably the only guy that really gives us any chance at all given the massive hole that Nancy, Harry and BO have managed to plow us into!

4-star general, 5-star grace - CNN.com

4-star general, 5-star grace - CNN.com: Good news, even about a 4-star general, on CNN no less!!

Very much the kind of servant attitude that is worth risking the deadly sin of envy over!

I REALLY enjoy being able to report something positive on our MSM!

MEOW, WTF?

Obama wants to 'Win the future.' (That slogan may not help.)

You know, "Moral Equivalent of War" -- Jimmuh Carter, 1977.

At least ONE MSM outlet seems willing to mention that the great BO might not be quite up to super genius standards on deep thought relative to sloganeering, and so sadly (for the left), the assumed brain damaged from birth Sarah Palin pointed it out. Even the "Wisconsin Tourism Federation" was finally forced to realize that in these days of the WWW, Twitter and youth evolved with quad thumbs, the acronym rules.

The article didn't cover them all, or provide the appropriate derision for the Republican attempts. "WIN" was treated with unimaginable disdain in the '70s. Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" was hammered without mercy. Remember "A Thousand Points of Light"? or how about "A Kinder Gentler" conservatism / Republican party? As if the party of the Constitution vs the party of Cronies and ACORN Crime was somehow going to be helpful through unilateral surrender.

One more example of how sadly we miss at least half the humor in the world by the knee jerk reaction of the MSM and especially the entertainment industry to somehow take Democrats more seriously.

The universe is just too good though -- it is HARD to beat "WTF" for BO and "MEOW" for Jimmuh!

Why Everything Starts with Repeal - Charles Krauthammer - National Review Online

Why Everything Starts with Repeal - Charles Krauthammer - National Review Online

This is as clear as it gets. Why oh why can't we have a national discussion that makes this clear to all!

Hatred on Planet Krugman

Climate of Hate - NYTimes.com

One really need not go any farther than this column to see that rhetoric and reason are all too often easy to separate. A rational person really doesn't have to look at much Krugman to get a "sick feeling in the pit of their stomach". He as left reason and moderation behind long ago and exchanged them for some form of rage that makes one wonder if he can hear himself at all.

In the nadir of Republican power in the spring of 2009, KRUGMAN was all for elimination of Republicans!!

Remember BO saying that Democrats ought to "punish their enemies"?

Nutcases will ALWAYS shoot up the place ... be they John Hinkley, or wackos in Finland, England, Australia ... or you name it.

Regressive Hate

http://michellemalkin.com/2011/01/10/the-progressive-climate-of-hate-an-illustrated-primer-2000-2010/

Nice little history of some of the highlights of  Regressive Hate, in case one feels snowed under by the current AZ snow job.

Ft Hood vs AZ

Journalists urged caution after Ft. Hood, now race to blame Palin after Arizona shootings | Washington Examiner

Well done column on the the obvious. WHY is it somehow important to give a guy who clearly WAS an Islamic extremist every possible benefit of the doubt and beyond, but to jump precisely the other way and go to rather stupid lengths to try to link a guy that is obviously mentally ill with US politicians and political rhetoric?

Shameless Prejudice and Bigotry

Lawmakers: Time to cool the political fury - CNN.com

Certainly "prejudice and bigotry" are bad, but to equate them with 'political rhetoric" and somehow attempt to link a guy that believes in some form of mind control from the government as somehow being related to the Tea Party or any other sort of political movement that might want a smaller government is just one more sign of how common prejudice and bigotry are.

I remember well when Ronald Reagan was shot. I personally knew multiple people that were convinced that Reagan was going to "get us all nuked", and all sorts of crazy articles about his "Dangerous Cowboy attitude" and "Nobody builds a bunch of nuclear weapons unless they plan to use them" sorts of gibberish were being spewed. Even by 1985, the left was at least claiming to STILL be extremely afraid of nuclear war, and not at all above heated rhetoric and dramatizations that claimed that the policies being followed were going to get us all killed. Last I checked, we are still here and the USSR isn't exactly in the ascendancy. Apparently Hinkley was actually in love with a movie actress and trying to impress her when he shot Reagan, but I didn't hear much concern for movies contributing to insanity at that point either.

During the Bush Administration, we had "Fahrenheit 9-11" and "The Assassination of George Bush", along with regular marches and protests about the two wars still going on and Gitmo. The two wars are still in progress and Gitmo is still open, so I think it is pretty safe to say that all the heated rhetoric on those subjects was very much about politics and a prejudice much more against Bush than the supposed targets.

Were one actually anxious to "cool the political fury" rather than to shamelessly use a tragic action by an obviously mentally unstable individual to further expose your prejudice and bigotry against political views that might disagree with yours, this would be a GREAT time to leave politics out of it and just mourn the victims and maybe say a little prayer for the mentally ill young man and his family as well.

Mascots

Mascot Politics - Thomas Sowell - Townhall Conservative

I need to go over and read the longer article, but this one is well worth the couple minutes it takes. Right now the MSM could care less about the homeless or the poor in any sort of situation -- that only comes out when there is a Republican president. Welcome to France -- how long before people start torching cars for a good time on weekends?

Bias In Action

The Northeast Snowstorms: One More Sign of Climate Change - TIME

But while piles of snow blocking your driveway hardly conjure images of a dangerously warming world, it doesn't mean that climate change is a myth. The World Meteorological Organization recently reported that 2010 is almost certainly going to be one of the three warmest years on record, while 2001 to 2010 is already the hottest decade in recorded history. Indeed, according to some scientists, all of these events may actually be connected.

Read that again a bit more closely and think a little harder. The article is pointing out that "weather isn't climate". OK, but then why would it be remotely interesting that 2010 is or isn't one of the hottest years on record? or that even a decade was very hot? A SCIENTIFIC view would be to "define climate", and in EITHER case, warming or cooling, point out that "it isn't weather".

"Climate" must be longer than hundreds of years, because the Medieval Warming Period, from like 800-1300 when GREENland got it's name as being a nice place for Vikings to farm and live, nor the "Little Ice Age" from 1300-1850, when there were "years with no summers" in major parts of Europe and the US, don't count as "climate". We will need to get warm enough so crops can successfully grown on Greenland in order to even get back to the Medieval Warming Period -- but even if we do, THAT will not be proof of "climate change", because not even those swings in the past count as "Climate Change" according to current definitions.

A purely politically biased view says that it is foolish to look at current cool conditions as having anything to say about warming, but it is perfectly reasonable to look at current warm conditions as being proof of warming. It seems absolutely clear that the political biased view is largely all we hear from the MSM -- "proof" of a change of "Climate" will involve warming going on for 100's of years ... like half a millennium or more as it it did in the Medieval Warming Period, and followed by a less long and cool cooling period than the Little Ice Age following it.

Sometime about 3000 AD, our climate science ought to be getting close to being more scientific and less political.

BO Regressivism

Obama and the State of Progressivism, 2011 | Hoover Institution

A rather long but worthy discussion on the past and current thinking in "progressivism" -- or as I like to refer to it, "regressivism". If allowed to proceed, the "progressive" agenda will make us Serfs as before the enlightenment, only this time it will be to a set of Harvard elites and their Union Boss cronies. It is definitely worth breaking out the firearms before kneeling to the modern would-be "rulers"!

This little quote from an older progressive (Croly) pretty much sums up the folks who Thomas Sowell calls "The Annointed":

“the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat”

Got that? Democracy would be great, but the people are too stupid! Therefore, we have to use the courts and subterfuge to FORCE them to do what they really would do if they could just be as smart as the elite! We poor gun clinging religious red state country bumpkins need the likes of his most brilliant eminece, the ever pungent BO to light our way!!

Empire

"The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power" by Nial Ferguson.

Dr Ferguson remains one of my current favorite living historians and this book does not disappoint -- me at least. I suspect that many would find it "a bit dry".

I was very interested in the question of "why Britain"? relative to the creation of the huge empire. The key answers seem to be:

• A flexible rule of law -- The big picture principles of freedom and civil society were followed and bequeathed in the main, but significant detours, up to effectively condoning piracy early on, were important to success. "Do the right thing as quickly as you can" might be a reasonable motto for the Empire. 
• The willingness to colonize -- which meant that a reasonable number of English pulled up roots and left home, often forever, in order to be the backbone of a world wide civil service.
• Timing -- Spain had pretty much sewed up the "plums", England got stuck with some "poorer colonies", North America at that point being particularly bad. Therefore, rather than just move in and plunder, the English needed to make something out of what they found -- which involved colonization, application of technology, management, global finance, trade, etc. They got rather good at it -- the Spanish just got good at walking in and taking anything that looked like gold. 

The devastating effects of the Maxim automatic weapons on African tribesman and Mideast Dervishes was something that I was not aware of. I think Ferguson does an excellent job of telling the truth, but is very careful to put things in context -- sudden and younger death from many causes including violent ones was a much more common situation then. Does this "excuse the slaughter"? No, but it didn't happen in a vacum either. It is quite interesting to me how the name "Rhodes" as in "Rhodes Scholar" is still considered positively, yet Cecil Rhodes was about as ruthless as anyone could be in the killing of native peoples and the taking of land, diamond and gold mines, and anything else that suited his fancy. He was "an imperialists imperialist", but there is little attempt to besmirch his name AFAIK unlike say "The Robber Barons" on the US, which did MUCH less damage (and far more good)  at about the same time in history.

In talking about the good effects on world GDP, advancement of countries and rule of law, this little list of positive elements for growth and development could bear reading by many folks in our own government:

1. Secure rights of private property (encourage saving and investment)
2. Secure rights of personal liberty (against tyranny, crime and corruption)
3. Enforce contract rights.
4. Stable Government (publicly known in advance rules --- HELLOOOOO ???)
5. Responsive Government
6. Honest Government (no rents for favor or position ... again??? BO???) 
7. Moderate, efficient, non-greedy government (hold taxes down, reduce governments claim on surplus)

Many interesting personalities and events are discussed during the course of the book, but one of the things I like about Nial is his capacity to link the elements together into a unified whole that is more understandable having read the book.

Basically, Britain created the first case of "globalization" through Empire. While it had problems, it was a civilizing factor on the globe and made the world better for many many people, not just the British. WWI and WWII destroyed that version of globalization and Britain essentially traded her Empire in order to fight the tyrannical Empire building attempts of Germany and Japan.

Today the US is the sole remaining superpower, but we don't really do "Empire" -- what this means is that without colonization or some other form that replaces it in securing investment in the undeveloped world, the gap between the haves and have nots gets bigger and the risks of conflict between the "integrated" and "non-integrated" gets larger, as in 9-11.

A very worthy, but somewhat difficult read.

The Conservative Scrooge Myth

Liberals Give 'Til It Hurts (You) - Ann Coulter - Townhall Conservative

Liberals hate Ann Coulter, but she is kinder and gentler than Al Franken (she never called anyone a "butt boy"), and she has the good grace to not be a US Senator.

Anyone with a sense of humor is really going to like this column -- but since a sense of humor involves being able to not take yourself too seriously, I've never met a liberal that had one. The column points out the obvious that has been covered in study after study and would be very easy for the MSM to cover if they wished, since many candidates have to make their tax records public. The MSM loves any hint of hypocrisy from any Christian, but if your religion is liberalism? Go ahead and just transfer OTHER peoples money to your favorite voting blocks and call that "caring" while personally making Scrooge seem like a philanthropist!

My favorite teaser quote ... but there are a number of good ones:

In 2005, Vice President Cheney gave 77 percent of his income to charity. He also shot a lawyer in the face, which I think should count for something.

2010 Political Meaning

RealClearPolitics - The Year That Humbled the DC Establishment

 

Good short read, good set of links to predictions from the MSM that fell on hard times.

 

Ishmael, By Daniel Quinn

Another of the many attempts to come up with some sort of new mythology that replaces thousands of years of western spiritual and philosophical life with a pagan pseudo-religious view of the universe and mans place in it.

In this story a man answers an ad in a newspaper by a "teacher" looking for a "student" that has a desire to "change the world". It turns out the teacher is a telepathic gorilla named "Ishmael", and the "lesson" is that "Mother Culture" (Western Culture) was created by "the takers" and is a planet and life destroying disaster. 

The world is divided into two; those that divide the world in two, and those who don't (little joke). "Leavers" ... essentially "hunter gatherers" and all the other animal species on the planet, and "Takers", farmers and the entire culture that was created because of people living in a fixed place, raising surplus crops so time could be spent on thought and technology.

Some of the random thoughts from the book:

• The planet is being "destroyed", but maybe the end result will just be that man will be destroyed. The point is "we have no choice" -- getting rid of these "takers" is an emergency!
• There ARE some sort of "rules" ... the book postulates "gods" that set them up. The pinnacle of "success" according to these "rules" is held out as the American Indian. 
• Leavers / Hunter Gathers good ... Takers / Farmers bad ... and of course the "mark of Cain" is the "maggot colored white man". 
• Man has no "original sin", it is the "taker culture" that is responsible for all ill. Yet another version of the "Noble Savage" myth.
• "We all live in a prison" -- returning to some version of "leaver culture" will repair all ills. Our "culture" creates the "fish not knowing about being wet" problem  (I suspect a little time spent in the woods with a loincloth eating grubs might make the "leaver culture" slightly less desirable) 
• Naturally, the distribution of wealth and power in "the prison" is unjust in the extreme ... and again, the problem is those nasty white males. 

That covers most of the main points.

What amazes me about books like this is how completely common they are and how much their basic world views are IDENTICAL ( here is a Thom Hartman ... anything by him is about the same). The view is essentially:

1. Some version of a "Nobel Savage" myth ... "return to nature and all is good". 
2. No need for God -- either this is all there is, or the next life is cool with whatever you do here ... maybe unless you like work hard and create things or something evil like that. 
3. Everything is currently screwed up, but it is "the fault" of "western culture, white men, corporations, money, technology or ... "something"". It can be "fixed" by throwing away pretty much all of current culture, taking off our clothes and having some sort of back to nature free love thing. 
4. "Somehow" ... if we just tear down what is, things will get really really good -- "trust us". 

BO actually summarized it pretty well -- "Hope and Change" don't ya know!

What is clear to me is that man has a "Christ shaped hole", and once Christ is rejected he is prone to believe in just about anything -- however it always ends up having a "shape" that pretty much looks like Lucifer for some reason -- maybe in an ape suit, maybe a cute lass with some minimal fern trim, or maybe just looking like a snake peddling an apple.

The road to Hell has never been hard to find!