BO Will "Do What's Necessary"

Obama will 'do what's necessary' to fix economy, aide says - CNN.com

Easy to see why the mood of the country is so bright an cheery now that BO has been elected. Talk about leadership! When is the last time we have had a President-elect with such comforting and insightful leadership as "Doing What is Necessary", and on a specific topic! Thankfully, he had an aide provide the information so BO himself has some plausible denyability in case going out on the limb with such a bold and insightful statement needs to be softened. Sources close to the administration claim to be working on something less restrictive, such as: "Obama is studying what may be hopeful ways to change the economy". Some hard line aides are pushing for "earnestly studying", but feel that would  fail to connect with the rural red state voters.

CNN reporters were gratified to see BO return to "his roots" of "hope and change" rather than the stark and slightly wonkish pronouncement made by Axlerod.

The Market Keeps Voting

CNNMoney.com Market Report - Nov. 20, 2008

The Dow closed on election day at 9,625, today it closed at 7,552, 2,073 points or 22% lower. One thing very nice is that in listening to NPR, they are a lot less concerned now. Market drops prior to the election were all due to Bush, and the 300 point rise on election day was due to BO, but now I guess it is "unimportant". I suppose it is just another sign that evil market economy is a thing of the past and in the age of BO, who needs markets? BO will just wave the magic government wand and we will see jobs created, incomes rise and tax dollars stream in with nary a deficit in sight.

Ah yes, happy days are here again!

Count Every Vote (Democrat Style)

Whistleblower » Blog Archive » One challenge headed to the state so far in Plymouth

It would be really nice if I was joking here, but I'm not. How many times have you heard Demcrats talk about "all they want to do is make sure that every vote is counted" ... which usually means a bunch of ballots of questionable lineage, dating, etc that "the found" that simply MUST be counted.

However, in reality, here is the sort of vote that they feel SHOULD NOT be counted!

BO Could Re-brand America

 Obama poised to rebrand America, experts say - CNN.com

Now here is a really newsworthy piece! Let's see, since he has been elected, the Dow is down 1,600 points, so maybe the "brand" will be more something in a "Wal-Mart to Dollar Store" kind of brand? I wonder why the US reputation has been in decline the last few years? Certainly it can't have anything to do with the MSM and the kind of wonderful reporting they have done. Naturally, at this point, someone that has a few doubts about if it is really Lincoln and FDR that BO will be compared with is seen as "negative". I was alive 8 years ago. The President hadn't been officially named yet and all the media had to talk about was extremely dire predictions. Of course we didn't know about 9-11 yet then, and after that the predictions became apololyptic. Considering where we were then, things were going pretty darned good until the sub-prime blew up.

Should Bush have dealt with that? Absolutely, however in politics (unless you are BO) you usually don't get to play with a Fillibuster proof Senate and huge house majorities. The Democrats successfully protected their lobbyist cash cow and low income vote buyer right into 2008. Since 2006, when they promised "change", they had the actual control of the "go lever", all Bush had was the brake (veto).

So the Dems promised "change" in 2006, and in those two years has anyone noticed any? I'd say they have been pretty darned succssfull -- way more than politicians usually are. We certainly do have change, and now we have BO promising "more change" and the markets seem to be in agreement.

"Re-branding" indeed.

No Justice No Peace

RealClearPolitics - Articles - The Right to Win

Sowell does his usual great job here with the "right" of the "losers" in an election to throw a fit. In this case, his primary targets are the gay activists that are protesting against churches and even blacks, since they didn't agree with them on Gay Marriage.

Reading the whole thing is very worth it (it isn't long), but here are a couple of good teasers:

With all the various groups who act as if they have a right to win,we got to the present situation over the years, going back to the 1960s, where the idea started gaining acceptance that people who felt aggrieved don't have to follow the rules or even the law.

"No justice, no peace!" was a slogan that found resonance.

Like so many slogans, it sounds good if you don't stop and think-- and awful if you do.

Long time readers of this blog will know that I love his closing here ... my current view is that when asked, something between 80-90% of Americans say Baaaah ! Some Baaah to the right, some to the left, and some to the "mainstream", but the bleat goes on.

When the majority of the people become like sheep, who will tolerate
intolerance rather than make a fuss, then there is no limit to how far
any group will go.

How far do you think the BO bandwagon will rumble before the sheep start to get wise?

The Malaise Returns

The Seven Deadly Deficits

Ah yes, things were just peachy at this time in 2000 and BUSH just messed it all up! For those whose memory of 8 years ago is fuzzy:

• On September 1, 2000, the NASDAQ traded at 4234.33. From September 2000 to January 2, 2001, the NASDAQ dropped 45.9%. In October 2002, the NASDAQ dropped to as low as 1,108.49 - a 78.4% decline from its all-time high of 5,132.52, the level it had established in March 2000.
• On Sept 11, 2001 I think we ALL know what happened. Also, the USS Cole was bombed in October of 2000. Since we have not had an attack similar to the Cole yet in 2008, we will know for sure by Sept 12, 2009 if the Demorats and MSM are correct that "The Bush policies have made us less secure". Since they were SO quick NOT to blame Slick Willie for 9-11, I'm SURE they would NEVER blame Bush for an attack post 9-12-2009!
• Uh, equality deficit? The rich got richer (and so did the poor) under Slick as well as under Bush. Zero was still zero then as now. The top moves more than the bottom -- 10% more income if you make $10K is $1k, it is $10K if you make $100k. It works the other way as well ... -10% of the guy with $100K is $10K, but it is only $1K for the guy making $10K ... BUT, what probably happens is that the guy making $10K loses his job.
  
• Want to read back to me what wonderful things Slick / Al did for the environment? Other than make more noise? Uh, like nothing -- if they had pushed Kyoto through (which they never tried), then they wouldn't been able to complain about Bush not doing it either.
  

Yes, yes, I know this is Mother Jones and they are out there on the left, but it is amazing to read how doctrinaire these folks are, and how much of it is very similar to what you read in the rest of the MSM.

The Bush is Hoover Story

Op-Ed Columnist - William Kristol - George W. Hoover? - NYTimes.com

I think Kristol hits the nail directly on the head. The masses of people operate with a VERY simple story in their head. Something of the nature of "Government Good / Business Bad", "Republicans are for the Rich / Democrats are for the common man", "Republicans bring opportunity / Democrats bring more taxes", "Republicans support values / Democrats are anti-values" ... and on and on it goes.

While there are nuggets of truth in all those "stories", there is also a whole lot of falsehood. The onset of the depression of the '30s is now usually linked to a simple story that goes like "stock market bubble, Smoot Hawley, FDT got us out". Part of the magic of being the dominant majority (which the Democrats have been since that time) is that they get to write the schoolbooks. Oddly, people remember people better than they remember facts, dates, and certainly complex economic theorums. "Hoover bad / FDR saint" is a lot of the core of what they remember ... and they tend to to judge the parties and policies on the basis of that casting.

Note another element -- it is MUCH easier to create a single person scapegoat than it is to explain a complex phenomenon in a story that is simple enough to that the common man can grasp it. Conservatives are also hampered by this horrible problem that they really want their stories to not only be true, but it is important that they actually work for the benefit of the country. Since the Democrats are after raw political power, it doesn't matter to them one whit if the story is even remotely true, nor even if the policies it engenders fail miserably. If it keeps Democrats in power, it is "a success".

Thus we have FDR the hero and Hoover the goat, although FDRs poliices never did work to get the country back on track, that was WWII. As Krisol points out though it did by and large keep Democrats in power for 50 years, so for them it was "successful". The task Republicans face is indeed huge -- we require a "story" that faces facts about what happened, proposes real policies that work to move us forward, AND is something that the common man can understand. A tall order indeed.

Eleven Economies

Here is something you rarely see in the MSM, pulled from the depths of a CNN story. One of the things a NONpropaganda news source will regularly provide is CONTEXT. In order to have rational, as opposed to emotional meaning, humans require context. One of the keys to propaganda is emotion--"crisis", "meltdown","debacle" etc don't really tell you anything rational, they only tell you how you ought to feel about it.

In the chart above you see that the "Financial Crisis" in the US is FAR from the worst among all those countries. Note Germany, China, Japan -- consider how large their economies are in comparison to ours and it becomes clear that there is more to what is going on than JUST "poor regulation in the US".

Is our MSM interested in understanding that? Not in the least -- they want to make sure to tar and feather Bush and the whole market based US economy before they even consider looking around for some context. They are interested in providing a "simple story", even if that story has no actual relation to facts, and that acting on it may well be horrible case of mistaken identity. Shooting the Golden Goose as a prowler.

The Hunt

I spent last weekend, Friday evening the 7th-Sunday evening the 9th at deer camp not too far from Preston MN. It was a fairly blustery and chilly weekend with lows in the 20's and highs in the 30's. The pictures in the blog are from last year, this year it wasn't quite as green and I kept my camera in my backpack too long and the cold sapped the batteries. I also managed to leverage the flex time from work to shoot down for an evening hunt on Wed the 12th plus Thursday AM. The bottom line this year for me ... no shots at deer.

Opening weekend however I did get to see 5-10 deer each day and was a little too selective. I had deer in range that I certainly would have shot at had they come by Wed-Thur. We would like to get bigger does and at least "decent" bucks on my friends deer land, so we need to be selective -- no "shoot and release" in the deer hunting game!

The fun of deer camp and the hunt is undiminished for me by not shooting however -- I can punch holes in paper all I want, and while having been raised on a farm with a detailed understanding of "where meat comes from" (including my "pet" calf "Jingles" when I was like 9), there isn't a lot in the killing part that I particularly crave. I'd like to get a big buck someday, and I'd sooner get deer than not get deer, but getting "skunked" on deer is way more palatable than getting skunked on walleye!

A lot of the fun is enjoying the hunt from "The Stump" stand that makes the cold wind not much of a problem. I do think though that post season this year I need to sneak over to Gander and pick myself up some sort of a "2nd stand", harness, etc. The Stump is maybe a bit TOO "genteel" for days other than the really nasty ones. Nice to have the option of being a little closer to the deer. However, I DID get to be very close to watch "the chase" of a year old buck after a year old doe.

About 4 in the PM on Saturday they showed up coming up the draw below me toward the pond that is right below the stand (right to left in the picture that shows the stand and the pond). For the next 20-30 min she led that buck on a merry chase that included SIX extended swims in that freezing cold pond! I don't mean splashes either -- the pond is mostly 10'+ deep and she swam round and round like 3-4 "center laps" on most of the dips. Mr Buck never lost interest and stayed pretty close. Most of the time she would get out of the pond right below the stand, so like '15 yards", shake like a dog, then take off on land -- they were both very tired, but instinct isn't a very forgiving master. Round and round they went and eventually they headed off. It was nice that other hunters in the party were able to see the show from a greater distance and hear the splashes as they went in, so I didn't have to defend my sanity or accusations of falling asleep in the stand and dreaming.

Another good year of hunting, hopefully there will be many more. While the general outlook for '09 politically and economically from our deer camp could be summarized as "dismal", things like deer hunting are comforting along with religion, family and friends to "cling to bitterly" in these times. Now, I don't really see myself as being "bitter" about those things at all, but the nation has spoken, I must be. It is time for me to get my head right, BO just can't be wrong!

FDR 2nd Inaugrial Bill of Rights

Republicans tend to focus on individual responsibility, Democrats tend to focus on rights. Democrats tend to enumerate lots of rights, but relative to responsibility, they are less precise. In the Democrat world, rights accrue with no stated responsibility, however, closer examination finds there are always a lot of "others" that at least tacitly somehow have the supposed responsibility to fund all those "rights"-- Wall Street, The Rich, Big Business, etc.

The Democrat view of the world tends to be somewhat like endless childhood--the individual has a lot of rights and someone else has the responsibility to pay the freight to make them operable.

The following is FDR enumerating some in his 2nd inaugural:

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all--regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are: 

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; 

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; 

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; 

The right of every family to a decent home; 

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; 

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; 

The right to a good education.

Unfortunately, unlike the right to speech, keeping and bearing arms, being able to keep your personal property, freedom from search and seizure and the right to opportunity, these are "rights" that require dollars in order to make them happen. Where does that come from? How do you guarantee a right that someone has to pay for?

Good old FDR listed a lot of rights there, but whose responsibility is it to fund all those rights? Even worse, actual "responsibility" means that one would take the action voluntarily -- a coerced action is not really something for which you are "responsible", it is something that you are compelled to do. It isn't a choice of your free will.

So in a nutshell, Democrats believe that "someone else" (corporations, the rich, etc) ought to be FORCED to provide for all the of the "rights" that they believe are meant to be theirs. Free people could choose if they wanted to contribute to the list above, how much they wanted to contribute, and in what conditions. That is what is known as "chairity". If these are truly "rights" however, then everyone is entitled to them, so someone will need to be coerced to pay for them. To date they have largely restricted themselves to confiscation of income or a percentage of assets on sale or death. There are rumblings about going after assets like 401Ks under the theory that people with money there had "too preferential of a tax status" to save that money.

What of the right to private property, honoring contracts and other aspects of the rule of law? It seems that Democrats are always willing to see the real Constitutional rights suffer in order to create some new rights that they feel will get them more votes. What will the BO "Bill of Rights" be? Somehow, I don't think it will motivate a lot of economic growth.

Al Franken, God Spoke

I subjected myself to the Al Franken movie "God Spoke". One really big question would be "what was the point"? I assume that Al thinks it puts him in some sort of a good light. Al knows that all his "facts" are true, but everyone else is lying. Right now he is saying that "Bush is going down, and we are going to elect President John Kerry" ... however, every prediction about the war in Iraq that turned out not to be correct is a "lie".

One nice thing about Al is that he uses the "F word" constantly, and I suppose in his mind "well". He showed some 2004 election day gloating based on the exit polls ... how one of the stories of the election was "Air America", how he would abuse Bush the next day with "You blew it just like your Daddy", or makeing fun of Karl Rove being a "genius", when of course Al thought that the election would be won by Kerry.

Then we get to see the disbelief when Bush wins. He's close to tears when Kerry concedes and he stares in shocked disbelief as Bush accepts the victory. Then he starts talking about running against Norm Coleman.

I suppose what a lot of lefties would like about this is that he "gets his digs in" on Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reily, Bush, Cheney, Hannity, etc, but it would seem to me that it puts just a wee bit of a dent in their supposed "less partisan view". It also seems that the neither Coulter, Limbaugh, or Hannity ran for Senator in a state with an excellent chance of stealing the election.

So much for MN nice!

Tolerance, Cooper Firearms

Politics prompted her assault, Augsburg student says

Cooper Ousts CEO for Obama Support

One of the members of the Board Of Directors of Cooper Firearms happened to be at the same Deer Camp that I was at this past weekend, so I learned of the Cooper situation. I shared the fact that a Cooper Board Member happened to be at camp and immediately heard of the "horror" of the "infringement on free speech" that the Cooper story entails from a Democrat.

To make a slightly longer story simple, the Founder and President of Cooper Firearms decided to donate $3K+ to BO and did an interview indicating that he was going to vote for him. Cooper employees, customers and stores that carry their products started to indicate their displeasure, up to and including canceling orders and not wanting to do business with Cooper. The Board of Directors asked for and received the Presidents resignation. Democrats and Media types were immediately apocolyptic about "McCarthyism" and "infringement on free speech". Here is an example from the USA Today Article, they make sure to "tell us how to think" about the Cooper incident -- nobody is quoted as explaining why one may want to remove a gun company executive that is poking his customers in the eye.

"It's a really McCarthyism at its worst," said Bob Ricker, executive
director of the American Hunters and Shooters Association, which has
endorsed Obama. "That's really why our organization was formed, was to
deal with this craziness. If you're a gun owner, but you have a
contrary view to some of these wackos, they will go out and try to
destroy you."

Now, in the top article, a young woman at Augsburg is assaulted by 4 other women, receives a concussion, and we get relatively straight up reporting until close to the end we get:

"She was surprised by how politically active the campus was," Annie's mother said. "She got a lesson right off the bat." 

In October, a 20-year-old McCain campaign volunteer in Pennsylvania
made up a story of being robbed and having the backwards letter "B"
scratched on her face in a politically inspired attack. 

Police and Augsburg University say they have no reason to suspect Grossmann was not assaulted.

Seems VERY important to point out that a month ago a McCain campaign volunteer made up an attack, right? I mean, Tawana Brawly famously made up a rape charge, so I'm sure that every article about a young black woman claiming rape properly includes a reference to that famous hoax. Right?

Not a lot of concern about the young woman beat up for wearing a McCain button, but lots of crocodile tears for a CEO whose constituency disagrees with his politics. Let's take a look at this a bit closer.

First of all, remember the important quote from Ronald Reagan; "A Liberal will defend your right to agree with them to their dying breath"! The "liberal" idea of "free speech" is that people can say anything that they want that is agreement with the standard liberal position, and NOBODY ought be able to respond in any negative way.

Conversely, if anyone is making speech that is out of step with the liberal opinion, their speech ought to be muzzled (EG "Fairness doctrine") or with either actual or implied violence (Union Card Check). Liberals are unconcerned with someone being beat up for showing support for McCain. It is something that they can at least "understand"--how could a "decent person" be a supporter of McCain?

Think about Joe Lieberman. How much do Democrats enjoy HIS "right to free speech"? Not so very much I think. How well do Democrats tolerate Clarence Thomas as a black man not holding the views that "blacks ought to have"? Is their animosity for him even stronger than say a Scalia or a Roberts? I think it is pretty clear. How do you think Democrats and abortion supporters would react to an official of Planned Parenthood sending money to and saying they were going to vote for a Pro-Life Republican??? I think we don't need to think very long on that one.

"Free Speech" means that EVERYONE is free to respond LEGALLY to your speech!!! If a gun CEO decides to support Obama and enough of his "constituency" wants him removed, then that is a LEGAL result of his "speech decision". We don't have freedom at all if those hearing your speech aren't allowed to respond LEGALLY to your speech. But note the difference -- there is little concern, and even the suggestion of "untruth" to a young woman being beaten for her rather paltry wearing of a button as speech. Democrats LOVE to boo down Republican speakers (they were doing it at the convention), for some reason Republicans rarely boo or protest even though those actions can be legal. They are often "tacky" and in many cases downright boorish.

Republicans tend to do things like write letters to the board or company, indicate that they would rather not do business with someone that they see as likely aiding and abbedding the destruction of their constitutional rights. This however is seen by the MSM and the left as "McCarthyism". We seem to be entering a new phase of Democrat dominance where their natural tendency to suppress the speech of those they disagree with as "hate speech", "racist", "religious" (to get it removed from the public square) or simply "biased" (as in "fairness doctrine"). Bias is of course a view that isn't "liberal".

Where Do Republicans go from Here?

RealClearPolitics - Articles - The GOP Looking Glass

No real answers in this column, but a decent job of laying out the problems. Bush never was a "Reagan Conservative" and in many ways, neither was Reagan--the legend took on conservative luster over time. Reagan had his share of tax increases (FICA in '82, Income in '86), he certainly didn't have a balanced budget and Sandra Day O'Conner certainly wasn't a very conservative Judge. All that said, Reagan is my favorite conservative figure--he just happened to be human.

Bush did "No Child" with Teddy Kennedy (getting the feds in education), perscription drug, signed campaign finance, Sarbanes/Oxley and worked on immigration reform that was awful close to amnesty. Throw in the stimulus packages and a few other things and Bush did an awful lot of "triangulation" just like Slick Willie. The difference is that the MSM and the Democrats aren't going to give a Republican any "points" just because he does what one would think they would like -- Democrats HATE Republicans and it IS personal! "Policy" is great, but Democrats are driven by POWER, a policy that kills people or destroys their lives is FINE if it gets Democrats in POWER!!

Apparently, such was not so with at least some Texas Democrats, and Bush got the false impression that he could work reasonably with Democrats. VERY bad idea in Washington! I don't know if Bush learned that lesson, but the rest of us sure ought to have! It appears however that such is not the case:

In one corner, there are a large number of bright, mostly younger, self-styled reformers with a diverse -- and often contradictory -- set of proposals to win back middle-class voters and restore the GOP's status as "the party of ideas" (as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it).

In another corner are self-proclaimed traditional conservatives and Reaganites, led most notably by Rush Limbaugh, who believe that the party desperately needs to get back to the basics: limited government,low taxes and strong defense.

What is fascinating is that both camps seem implicitly to agree that the real challenge lurks in how to account for the Bush years. For the young Turks and their older allies -- my National Review colleagues Ramesh Ponnuru, Yuval Levin and David Frum, the Atlantic's Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, New York Times columnist David Brooks et al -- the problem is that Bush botched the GOP's shot at real reform. For the Limbaugh crowd, the issue seems to be that we've already tried this reform stuff -- from both Bush and McCain -- and look where it's gotten us.

So how would one "reform" and deal with Democrats when all they want is you out of Washington, and don't really care what it costs them, their consituency or the world in general in blood and treasure as long as they end up in power? What part of what has happened to Bush and McCain is it that the "reformers" still haven't understood? They want to give the Democrats guns rather than knives and THEN see if they make nice with Republicans?

Unfortunately, someone still needs to come up with a set of ideas that some CURRENT leader and CURRENT set of voters will rally around. Demanding that we get Reagan and Reagan's ideas back has at least one very clear hole (unless we are going to clone him or something), and likely two, since without the USSR/Cold War and likely more than a few other problems (like Reagan's deficits in todays dollars would make even the biggest pro-deficit Republicans blanch), that strategy is all about "wishful thinking". Yup, the "old days" of Reagan may have been grand, but today is today, not 1980!

Ready To Rule on Day 1!

Hey, this might be "chilling" if BO were a Republican, but since he is a "D", I guess "rule he will"!!!

My how perspectives change for the MSM and the liberals.

Uninteresting Election Fraud

FOXNews.com - Minnesota Ripe for Election Fraud - Opinion

I've been noticing that all the "new votes" in the MN election seem to be for Al Franken. Nothing unusual, dead and imaginary voters are something like 97% Democrat. What is just a bit unusual is that the local press here seems to have no interest in what is happening "somehow" the Coleman spread just seems to keep shrinking and the recount hasn't even started.

I'm predicting a Coleman loss  by at least a thousand votes. There tends to be very little limit on either the dead or fictional voter, and given the preponderance of Democrats in the camp, they seem guaranteed to prevail. Can you imagine there being much curiosity in the press about a Franken victory? Some sort of an investigation by the BO justice department? How about a call for an investigation by the MSM?

Me neither -- little fairness doctrine to get Fox on the run and even this kind of "nuisance reporting" ought to be history. "Unity" -- the kind of America where everyone can vote -- but only the "good people win!