End Of the Old Order

RealClearPolitics - The Crisis of the Old Order

The sub-prime bubble and the rise of BO accelerated the trend, but as Samuelson points out, the seeds of the demise were sown because the assumptions of the post WWII order were just wrong:

1) The Welfare State
2) Government controlled economic growth
3) Benefits of International trade

Now all three are in real trouble. Samuelson covers why -- and after his analysis, all but the committed lefty ideologues can see that "Real Change Is Here".

No 2036

Mark Steyn: Obama the man without a plan | austerity, plan, debt - Opinion - The Orange County Register:

Very sobering but very necessary. To even propose something for 2036 is a profound admission that BO has slipped the surly bonds long ago. We may not make 2012. If he is re-elected, nothing that anyone would recognize as America will be around in 2016.

"If that's the best offer, there isn't going to be a 2036, not for America. As the Europeans are beginning to grasp, eventually 'political reality' collides with real reality. The message from a delusional Washington these last weeks is that it won't be a gentle bump."

BO At His Worst

Charles Krauthammer: Obama At His Most Sanctimonious | RealClearPolitics

I suspect he will get worse yet before it is all over, but we have established a new baseline.

One thing I'd add, apparently, much like Dayton in MN, being a Democrat "leader" doesn't require you to be able to deliver a SINGLE vote from your own party to support what you bargain for. Dayton got zero Democrat votes in MN, BO got zero votes for his "budget" this spring (97-0 in the Senate), and now one of the reasons for the talks breaking off is that he is unable to promise any Democrat votes to cover a "deal".

Boehner is constantly castigated as "lacking leadership" by the left for failing to deliver up virtually all of the Tea Party votes. Yet BO is not required to deliver a single token Democrat.

Drowning In BO

Reality Time by Andrew Klavan - City Journal

It may, on the one hand, be the tactic of second-rung celebrities desperate for more attention, but it may at the same time represent the dismay of yet another generation of leftists waking from yet another utopian daydream to find themselves in a disaster of their own making.

I remember their weird realization on Jimmy Carter, and their weirder hope that "Senator drown your sorrows"  (Teddy) would come to the rescue. Rescue!?  The cruelty of associating the murderer of Mary Joe Kopechne with "rescue" exceeds only the stupidity of same.

The left currently likes the analogy of "Republicans wanting a government so small you could drown it in a bathtub". Thinking that Teddy -- or BO are your "saviour" must mean you want a government so lost it might call it's own bluff, drive off a bridge, and drown itself. It would be OK if we weren't all along for the ride.

This time, the lefties just seem to be getting angrier and angrier at reality and reality based politics.

90 Years of Misunderstanding

How Even Scholars Misread 90 Years Of Tax-Cut History - Investors.com

Like many by Sowell, EXCELLENT!

The real effect of tax-rate reductions is to make the future prospects of profit look more favorable, leading to more current investments that generate more current economic activity and more jobs.

Every time that I see Sowell's super intelligent writing and proud black face, I think; God is truly good and great! Anyone that denies freedom of thought for all is the worst kind of racist possible.

70% Marginal Tax Rate

Michael Boskin: Get Ready for a 70% Marginal Tax Rate - WSJ.com

Interesting little column on how tax rates are actually a bit higher than one is led to believe!

MANDATORY READ!: Rights vs Goods

A Fling with the Welfare State | The Weekly Standard:

A bit long, but if you are alive and intend to be for the next few years, THIS is the dragon that must be vanquished!! I think it is seriously and very well put -- good intentions are well, good intentions, right up to the point at which you realize that your good intentions are killing the country.

"Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt linked “freedom from want” to “freedom of speech” and “freedom of worship,” the left has been talking of everything that it thinks would be nice to have in terms of an utter and absolute right: a right to a job and a right to an income, a right to retire in comfort in Florida, a right to the most advanced health care without paying much for it, and a right to have your children taken care of while you work all day at your job. The problem is that these are all goods and services, though of varying importance, and goods and rights are not the same things. People tend to concur upon rights (except for the speech rights of those who oppose them), and they do not depend upon others to supply and pay for their rights. With goods, there is always a political argument: about the value of the good, who is to get it and who is to pay. And all this comes down to the question of “fairness,” about which there is no end of disputation and grief. "

The closer ... because I know some will not read the whole thing, even though you REALLY should!

"It was not wrong to have a fling with the welfare state sixty-five years ago, when it was a noble experiment that had not yet been attempted. It is wrong to ignore the evidence that in some ways it is failing, that the model set up has become unsustainable, and that renovations are needed if its critical functions are to survive. Goods are not rights. Pensions and access to health care remain social goods that a decent society will try to provide to its -people. But goods are not rights, and the old model, which claimed that they are, is broken. We need a new one, which provides sustainable ways to convey social goods to those who most need them. Good intentions are fine, but without means they are useless. They are the things with which the road to Gehenna is paved."

Barack Obluffer

Mark Steyn: No bargaining with Barack Obluffer - Page 2 - Orange County Register:

Worth a read, it would be more funny if our situation wasn't so sorry. "Don't call my bluff" ... sounds like a campaign commercial to me.

"For the Most Gifted Orator in Human History, the president these days speaks largely in clichés, most of which he doesn't seem to be quite on top of. 'Eric, don't call my bluff,' he sternly reprimanded the GOP's Eric Cantor. Usually, if you're bluffing, the trick is not to announce it upfront. But, in fact, in his threat to have Granny eating dog food by Labor Day, Obama was calling his own bluff. The giant bluff against the future that is government spending."

Make BO's Day

Regime Change May Be Needed To Cut Deficit - Investors.com

$500 in ceiling, $500 in cuts, take it or leave it. See you in '12 ... BTW, your anti-perspirant ain't cutting it.


Good column, worth the read. I hope the Republicans in the house are taking it to heart.

BO Lies About Mother?

Book Challenges Obama on Mother’s Health Care Fight - NYTimes.com

I certainly hope that I'm never the family member of a major Democrat candidate -- they seem to be completely unable to avoid making use of family members for maudlin stories. Gore was a master -- his son, his sister, probably the gerbil he had as a kid for all I know. Edwards could almost make you sorry you didn't feel sorry for him or his kid, wife, etc -- of course it never made him sorry enough to stop boffing some staffer after his teary theatric performance.

I know, I know ... if you are using someone as a stage prop, it is a tiny step to just making it up out of whole cloth. But your mother? on her death bed? If you are willing to lie about that, it is really really hard to imagine where you would draw the line.

I guess nowhere ... and maybe, just maybe that is even enough to give the NYTs just tiny pause to have the supposed "leader" (pouter?) of the free world making up self serving stories about his own mother on her death bed?

Nah, Pinch must have just been drunk and let it slip through -- I really can't believe that the NYT has a conscience at this late date.

"Change" Now "Crazy"

The Republican Crazy Is Not An Act | The New Republic

What a difference 3 years makes. In '08, "Change" was a brilliant mantra. Well, we got that change -- which BTW I and a lot of conserviatives thought was "crazy". What did we get? Long-term 9%+ unemployment after we spent a Trillion dollars we were told would prevent unemployment from rising above 8%. BOcare which is a giant tax increase on top of waves of uncertainly that kills especially small business. Less and less oil production and not surprisingly  rising gas prices, plus general inflation starting with food. Home prices that continue in decline. A new undeclared war -- only this time, with a violation of the war powers act. At least we didn't get much of the change that BO actually promised -- Gitmo is still open, the Patriot Act is still in force, and Terrorists are being tried by military tribunals. It is just that those things are OK with the liberals and media now that their guy is doing them.

Trying to balance a budget though? "CRAZY!!!!". How in the heck are we still talking about "Bush Era Tax Cuts" after the Democrats held both houses of congress for 4 years and the WH for two of those?? Do you remember any sort of budget battle in '07 over raising taxes when the the Democrats were in charge of both houses and Bush was in the WH? Neither do I. In 2009, they owned all three branches -- they could have passed any tax policy they wanted -- Nada. In 2010, still owning both houses, they failed to pass a budget at all.

Now? The Republicans are CRAZY!! The world is all so simple when you are out in space to the left of it. 

 

Hurricane BOnomics

Hurricane Obamanomics | Power Line

Somehow I suspect that if all it took to have a great economy was to spend future generations money, Portugal, Itally, Greece and Spain would have great economies ... instead, they have economies like we are heading for under BO. Maybe a successful economy just takes a wee bit more than massive deficits??? I wonder if Nancy, Harry and BO will ever be able to fathom that??

The Fair Is In August

Not Taking Other People’s Money | The Weekly Standard

Great article, just read it. A teaser:

If our system is not yet “fair,” what will make it so? If the top 5 percent paid 75 percent of the total? Or 95 percent? If they could, would it be ideal for the top 1 percent to carry all the rest of us so we could finally have a tax code that is “fair and balanced”?

The point of the "levelers" is that our system would not be "fair" until there was some arbitrarity tiny difference between the top and the bottom -- even if that was achieved by bringing the average down to essentially zero. It would be fine with them -- "fair is fair".

 

Hawaii, Oregon, MN

Top earners cool to paying more | StarTribune.com

Wow, and article in the Strib with actual information.

Currently, only seven states have a higher top income tax bracket than Minnesota, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Adding the governor's proposed 2 percent increase on the 7.85 percent top rate would rank Minnesota third, behind Hawaii and Oregon, both at 11 percent.

We are currently 7th highest, Governor Shutdown wants to make us 3rd.

PROOF Government Must be Smaller!!

If other governors can be responsible, why can't ours? | StarTribune.com

Good article. Republicans voted a 6% budget increase, Dayton wants 11%. Maybe we could just let everyone send in the % raise they got this year. Anything over 10 is a vote for the Dayton approach. Anything less is a vote for the Republican approach.

But on to my title. Dayton shut down Canerbury and the Lottery. Those PRODUCE Revenue!! Doesn't anyone else see that this is INSANE!!! No corporation or non-profit would EVER do anything this stupid!! Why shut down things that bring in revenue?? There are really only two possible explanations:

1). You are stupid beyond belief

2). You are such a rank partisan power hack that you will cut off the states nose to spite it's face and don't care one whit for your constituents -- You ONLY care about raw political power and believe that your best shot at "winning" is to inflict as much pain as possible.

Given Mark Dayton, I'd be tempted to go with #1, but I strongly suspect that the Democrats in the state decided on #2 -- and they realize that Dayton meets criteria #1, so he went along with them.

There is no question anymore -- government has grown beyond any sense of reality, it MUST be reduced ... Republicans ought to submit him a new budget that is a Billion lower and just keep at it on a weekly basis until he signs.

Salting the Warmist Slugs

There has been no global warming since 1998 – Telegraph Blogs:

No news here to anyone that has gone outside rather than staring at a computer model the last decade. "The Map Is Not The Territory" has been known for a very long time, but computer models are really colorful, interactive, and run on really cool computers.

The "fix" to at least the MODELS "global warming" is to have the Chinese burn more coal. Fine with me, but I doubt it will really be fine with the climate nerds after they get over their joy in having their computer model "right" -- meaning it may have a passing correlation to existing data. NOT that it is PREDICTIVE. The warmists really ought to pay more attention to that practical philosopher Yogi Berra -- "Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future".

Physicists do a great job of creating models that are VERY predictive at least within their scope, Even better, they tend to be aware of the bounds of that scope. Other sciences -- not so much, and even worse, they tend to totally not understand that other very important philosopher, Josie Wales ("Outlaw Josie Wales, Clint Eastwood): "A man's got to know his limitations".

So rank speculation based on computer models becomes "settled science" and anyone who disagrees with your model is beyond the pale. "Progressivism" constantly pushes to politicize all aspects of life -- family, death, birth, the weather, how much water you flush in your toilet, EVERYTHING ... even the weather. It used to be that "sports and the weather" were nice safe conversations. Thanks to the progressives, they totally did the weather topic in -- they keep trying to get sports as well with Indian names and such.

Dear God, please do something to free us from the progressives!! 

Never EVER Trust A Democrat!!

Say No To the Dems’ July Surprise | Power Line

Will the Republicans get snookered again as they did just a few short months ago in the BO Christmas massacre?? I really hope not, but I'm not confident at all. With the MSM braying that the Government will "default" before it prioritizes interest and debt payments higher than other spending, the temptation to blink will be large.

How may times do Republicans have to be fooled before they wise up??

BO To Fly Coach?

Obama targets private jets, 'Big Oil' - The Oval: Tracking the Obama presidency

BO flys around in the grandest of private jets, but others should not. He got into that in his 2nd book ... he seems to really have "thing" against private jets as a business tool.

So he takes solid aim at .03% of the deficit with some hard hitting rhetoric on private jets -- and even USA Today notices that this is a complete counterproductive waste of time!!

Is BO more hampered by his Ideology or his Incompetence? It gets hard to judge sometimes. 

WI Bargaining Limits Go Into Effect: Sky Falls

Union curbs rescue a Wisconsin school district | Byron York | Politics | Washington Examiner

Oh, it didn't? It is having a POSITIVE effect on school systems in the state already? Now THERE is a story that really doesn't deserve any media coverage!!