Obama lied; the economy died

Washington Times - BLANKLEY: Obama lied; the economy died

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Come to Bury Reagan

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

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

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

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

Therefore:

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

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

Moderate Buyers Remorse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BO Economy

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

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

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

Audacity of Nope

The Audacity of Nope - The Daily Beast

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

Multiply Wealth By Division

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

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

Understanding High Taxes

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

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

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

Message In Here Somewhere?

Power Line - Protesting Global Warming in the Snow

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

Sharing the Fixed Pie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democrats and Sweaters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Put on a sweater!

Extremely!

Power Line - How Dumb Does He Think We Are?

Some words from our supreme odiferous unifying leader:

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

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

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

Mission Accomplished

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

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

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

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

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

The End of Growth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Picture Is No Illusion

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


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

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

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

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

BO Is A Strong 2nd Amendment Supporter

ABC News: Obama to Seek New Assault Weapons Ban

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

Welcome to Amerika ... Comrade!