350% Debt

The number that's killing the economy - CNN.com

Total US private and public debt to GDP ... 350%. 3.5x amount of debt as GDP ... the last 3 years, even though the government hasn't helped any, we lowered it from 370% to 350%

Prior to the great depression? 300% ... 3x.

Prior to 1870's depression? 166%

When you as a people, corporation or government take on too much debt, you have to keep working hard to create wealth and use a good deal of it to pay down your debt. There really isn't any other good alternative.

Note to folks that want to keep spending. 1st rule of holes. When you are in a hole, STOP DIGGING!!!

Facts, Deficit, Default

RealClearPolitics - If Budget Talks Fail, U.S. Does Not Have to Default on National Debt

Nice and short and very clear. Last Bush / Republican budget WITH those horrible tax cuts and two wars ended up with a $161 BILLION deficit, not a $1.6 TRILLION monstrosity like BO and the Democrats.

Why? Less spending and better growth numbers. We MUST get back to those kind of numbers RIGHT NOW and quit braying about "default" if the Democrats can't get some fresh taxes so they can spend 5x whatever they would take in!!!

When Will We STAND UP!!!

TSA stands by officers after pat-down of elderly woman in Florida - CNN.com

If we want government "by and for the people", eventually we have to stand up and be heard!!!! Political Correctness and no profiling have ALWAYS been completely ridiculous and antithetical to a free people. Are some terms offensive? Sure, but not as offensive as making them "hate speech". Can profiling run amuck? Sure, but obviously so can NOT profiling!!! The only difference is that not profiling makes everyone subject to the idiotic whims of the state and it's jackbooted thugs.

90 year old women and 6 year old kids. Old America had the right idea ... tar and feather these TSA thugs and run them out of town on a rail! or put them in stocks in the center of town and leave them stand for a few days and see how smart they look.

When We The People allow INSANITY to become the order of the day, it means that we no longer have the capacity to govern ourselves. BO, the size of the deficits, not drilling but opening the strategic reserve for political purposes, the head of the ATF running guns to Mexico, TSA Abuses ... the list just goes on forever.

WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!

BO For All Seasons

RealClearPolitics - Like Chauncey Gardiner, Obama Is Profoundly Aloof

One looks at our current situation and wonders if anyone is actually awake in the WH? Barone does a good job, but he leaves out a few ... the gun running ATF head? The weird Afgan election strategy against his generals? War Powers Act? ... it just goes on and on. Very well done article "first we have the spring and the summer" ...

TX to the Rescue?

George F. Will: Another Texas governor ponders a run for the White House | Full Comment | National Post

Good column. More jobs created in TX from 2001 - June 2010 than in the other 49 states COMBINED!! Since June '09, TX has created 37% of the US net new jobs.

Wow, the previous governor must have done a great job too -- I wonder who HE was?

People, what WORKS, and what FAILS??? Why oh why do we continue to ignore what works and keep doing what FAILS???

My Ex-Gay Friend - NYTimes.com

My Ex-Gay Friend - NYTimes.com:

Very interesting read, kudos to the NYTs for publishing.  Can Gay's change? Pretty interesting that we would like to think that pretty much any other human behavior is potentially changeable through willpower, faith, psychology, training, rewards/sanctions, motivation, etc, etc ... why not same sex attraction? Can a serial womanizer ever reform? Could Tiger, Bill Clinton, Arnold or Weiner ever reform and settle down?

Which sounds like the more natural evolutionary development? A strong attraction to the opposite sex or a strong attraction to the same sex. Evolutionary experts tell us that "the selfish gene" ONLY cares about being passed on through offspring ... meaning that same sex attraction would be???

America used to be the land that believed in starting over, self-creation, redemption, the new world and the new life ... Gatsby was a model, you could become whomever you wanted in America.

Maybe it is remotely possible you could lose interest in the same sex??

A Dirty BO Secret

Obama’s Illegal War in Libya - NYTimes.com

Even the NYTs quietly agrees that the war Libya is illegal under the War Powers Act??? Wow, how quiet can they be? Remember when waterboarding (that we do to our own special forced troops) was declared "torture" by the media and the Justice Dept lawyers (John Yoo, etc) had ruled WITH then President Bush???  Well, this time, the Justice Dept lawyers ruled AGAINST BO and he had to have a WH lawyer provide the ruling, and the WH lawyer promptly resigned. Another "Winning The Future" (WTF) moment!!

FICA Insanity

Raise, Don’t Save, Social Security - NYTimes.com:

OK, FICA is broke, so we ought to RAISE the amount paid under FICA!!  Insanity truly knows no bounds!!!

Beck Viewers Better Informed than Stewart Viewers?

Is Jon Stewart Correct that Fox News Viewers Are "the most consistently misinformed media viewers"? - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

Who knows ... but it appears that the data isn't exactly what at least Stewart would have you believe. The video at the end is really worth a view -- apparently sanity wasn't a 100% phenomenon at the "Rally to Restore Sanity". Hmmm ...

TX vs CA

RealClearPolitics - The Texas vs. California Example

Just read it. This comparison is so obvious and easy that the mind numbs at what it is that liberals are clinging to in their ideology. It seems they are completely willing to take the country to bankruptcy rather than simply admit the extremely obvious truth that their policies don't work!!!

Freedom to Work!

Power Line - Boeing Heats Up

The MSM has pretty much stayed away from the BO administrations vendetta to dictate to Boeing what states it may or may not build multi billion dollar plants in. This is really nothing more than an edict to US business saying "do it the BO way or get the hell out of the country".

I'd rather keep the business and get rid of BO ... and ASAP!!! We need Boeing and others like them MUCH more than we need BO!!

Palin Derangement Syndrome

American Way: Sarah Palin email frenzy backfires on her media antagonists – Telegraph Blogs

Gee, Sarah appears to be a hands on governor and mom, struggling to balance work and family, with strong religious convictions. Who would have thought?

Denigrating Palin has become the replacement for denigration of Bush up till say '10. All the supposedly smart and "in the know" people would throw out some barb from time to time expecting instant approval from all around them. It would just be embarrassing for anyone to admit that they were SO STUPID to defend Bush or now Palin!!!

Well, maybe for some I guess. I always rather enjoyed not going with "the in crowd".

My only criteria for President next year is "ABBO" (Anybody But BO) ... if it is Palin, then I could support her 100%. At least we've established a new low bar for the Presidency with BO.

Republican Tendencies

E-mails show GOP circling Palin in late 2008 - CNN.com:

The MSM is panting and salivating like a starved dog in a butcher shop over the release of Palin e-mails. Let's just review a bit here:

• When Wikileaks brought out the State Department e-mails / memos showing the "real views" on various world leaders, how did they like that? They tried to arrest the guy.
• When hackers got the real climate data records that showed that a lot of Global Warming was a hoax, how did they like that? They tried to arrest the hackers. 
• What was their attitude on getting BO's birth certificate? Columbia or other school records? Information about his time at ACORN? Maybe his e-mails of early Chicago politics would be interesting? Guess not -- I could imagine the Press being curious, but curiosity this selective makes them essentially a palace guard for Democrats. 
• What is the normal position on "invasion of privacy"? 

It is easy to understand of course. They HATE Sarah Palin, and want her out of their sight anyway they can make that happen.

 I always wonder though, if people are born with "Republican tendencies"? Even though all their teachers and classmates are liberal, they somehow see things differently.  They see how Republicans are treated in the media, and the first few times they make comments in maybe history or government class about "personal responsibility", or potentially "how do we KNOW what is really "progress"", the strong disapproval let's them know they are "different"?

I guess it must be true though that being a Republican is a choice --  some day in maybe HS or College Sarah woke up, knowing the way things ought to be and "went Rogue" -- she willfully chose evil over good and thus began on the path of enmity with the American media and elites.

There is hope of redemption though. Look at Arianna Huffington. She had a short stint as a conservative commentator in the early '90s during which she was seen as a complete air headed idiot by the left. She subsequently "went left", and is now viewed as one of the most brilliant women in the world, taking in $315 Million on the sale of her Huffington Post far left web site.

So while some things about humans are innate, others can be put on and off like fashions. It is a good thing we have the liberal elites to tell us which are which!

Liberal "Fact" On Deficits

Tim Pawlenty’s Economic Plan: Lies and Lunacy - The Daily Beast:

Last month, the CBO released a little-noted document, which I first encountered via Bruce Bartlett, breaking down the debt this country has accumulated since 2001. The grand total of debt is $11.8 trillion. Of that, more than half, or $6.2 trillion, was added because of lost revenue, while $5.6 trillion was added because of spending. Now you may look at those numbers and say, well, spending is almost half. And yes, it is. But what’s interesting in this chart is that the lost revenue figure matches exactly the actual current deficit.

For those who reside in the world of fact, it’s beyond question that the decrease in tax revenue because of the Bush tax cuts and the economic meltdown that resulted from conservative deregulatory policies has done more than spending to create the crisis. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world of fact. We live, instead, in a world of right-wing ideological lunacy. And so we get things like Tim Pawlenty’s jaw-dropping economic plan, which ignores completely our revenue reality.

Here is a link to the "little noted document":
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12187/ChangesBaselineProjections.pdf

In the liberal world, you willfully declare the sub-prime meltdown to be a "Republican problem due to de-regulation", completely ignoring the fact that the whole creation of the sub-prime market was a Democrat program to give folks without good enough credit a "deal" on homes. That is exactly like creating crack cocaine and blaming lack of drug laws / enforcement for there being problems caused by it. Was sub-prime abused? Helllllooo ... what else would you expect!!! Government programs are ALWAYS abused, they create a false and unsustainable reality, just like cocaine ... that is why a smaller government is MUCH safer!!

Then you make up numbers:

• The hated "Bush tax cuts" were supposedly responsible for $1,186 of the $6,220 ... you do all you can to make it sound like those were the culprit, they were 1/6th of the problem 
• "Tax Act of 2010" $354 Billion, ... Democrats in control of all 3 branches ... 1/4 the size of those horrid tax cuts. Bush??? Hate to say it, he left office in Jan '09!!
• ARRA = TARP ... 2009, $253 Billion, BO, 60 votes in Senate, big house majority. Bush? I don't think so.
• Note 2007, last year of Republicans in control of house/senate. Total deficit $161 Billion. One of the best kept secrets in the American media!
• Total deficits 2008-2011 after Democrats took over House / Senate followed by WH in 2009 $4,565

There you have it. Your own party is hugely ('08) and TOTALLY ('09 -'11) responsible for the numbers (unless of course you want to give Bush / Republicans credit for the surplus in 2001, they did have both houses from '94-2006), but who is it that is a "lunatic and a liar"??? The folks responsible for $1,635 B out of $6,200 B ... SIMPLE!!!!

Does anyone really need any more to understand why this country is over the cliff and falling like a rock??? Vast sections of the media and electorate have a willful disregard of fact.

"Change" in Perspective

The Factory of Selective Moral Outrage - Page 1 - Victor Davis Hanson - Townhall Conservative

Good summary of a few of the selective outrages on various topics, financial meltdown, Patriot Act, the wars, etc. a lot of media outlets, entertainers and people have shifted 180 degrees on exactly the same issues now that their ideology is in the WH.

As it says at the end; General "Betray Us" is now up for head of the CIA and the left is just fine with that!

Debt Ceiling Sanity

Our Salutary Debt-Ceiling Scare - Charles Krauthammer - National Review Online: "and"

Charles nails it, nothing to add, a worthy column.

Can America See Through BO?

RealClearPolitics - Seductive Beliefs: Part II

Good column by Sowell.

Obama is politically savvy enough to know how to get his point across without blowing his cover.

The fate of the United States of America may depend on how savvy we the people are in seeing what he is doing-- and how soon, before the situation becomes irretrievable.