the bitsy blog

Healthcare is next

2009-04-29T06:03:00.000-07:00

Steve Forbes on the coming fight over socialized medicine:

Let's clear up some of the myths. Both Medicare and Medi-caid are heavily subsidized by privately insured patients, to the tune of $90 billion a year. Federal reimbursement in these two programs is far below cost, which is why an increasing number of doctors are refusing to treat or are substantially cutting back on the number of Medicare and Medicaid patients they see.

Medicare and Medicaid are rife with fraud. Unlike private insurers, the government refuses to spend real resources on routing out the wrongdoing: overbilling, overtesting and charging for visits not made or tests not given.

The health care industry is 17% of our economy, and we are about to turn it over to the government. The results will be a substantial decline in quality of care, long waits for treatment of chronic or terminal illnesses (if you get treated at all), and a decline in innovation. The Forbes editorial brings up the excellent point that in our current medicaid system, treatment for medicaid patients is often subsidized by patients with private insurance. Medicare/medicaid does not pay market value for treatment, and usually makes these payments late. The result is that health care providers are forced to charge more overall for services -- meaning people with private insurance cover not only their own treatment, but the gap between medicaid and reality.

Another facet of reality that gets ignored when liberals start talking about socialized medicine is that European socialized health systems are in fact subsidized by the US taxpayer through our military involvement abroad. The US heavily subsidizes European defense. Most EU countries have little or no capability to defend themselves and they rely on the US military to do it for them. Yugoslavia in the 90's is the prime example of Europe's military impotence. Instead of spending money on their military, they dump vast sums into various welfare programs.

Forbes does a good job of outlining a free market solution, that not only would provide more people with care, but would improve the overall quality of care for everyone:

--Allow mandate-free insurance policies. True catastrophic health insurance--not the current dollar-for-dollar coverage--is very affordable.
--Permit people to buy health insurance across state lines. Removing such barriers would sharply increase competition.
--Make it easier for small businesses to buy insurance in a pool, whether through trade associations or other kinds of affiliations.
--Equalize the tax treatment of premiums. Companies get a tax deduction for health insurance premiums, as do the self-employed. Why not give that break to employees who choose to buy their own individual policies? They would get a deduction or a refundable tax credit (meaning if they don't have a tax liability they'd get an actual check from Uncle Sam). Many small businesses offer no insurance, or those that do may offer policies some workers find unsatisfactory. These folks should have the ability to easily get their own alternatives.
--Raise limits on contributions to HSAs and on permissible deductibles.

Ultimately we have to foster a culture of responsibility when it comes to health. The effects of a great many health issues - obesity, type II diabetes, heart conditions - can be substantially mitigated, if not eliminated through diet, exercise, and healthy life style choices. Without a sense of personal responsibility towards our health, otherwise avoidable health problems could quickly overwhelm any health care system.

Still messing with the font

2009-04-18T07:58:00.000-07:00

I know; I'm a nerd.

States' rights, WOOT!

2009-04-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

On Tea Party day here in Texas, Governor Rick Perry caused quite a stir. Drudgereport and HotAir reported that he had suggested Texas might succeed. The quote they are referring to:

There's a lot of different scenarios. We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot.

Normally, I think HotAir's analysis are pretty spot on, but in this case, I think AP is hyperventilating. Secession talk is pretty typical around here, and it is all really tongue-in-cheek. The annual, and largest, biker rally in Austin is called the "Republic of Texas Rally." Texans are famously loyal to and proud of their state; any wise political is going to heed that sentiment. If it sounds "awful" to out of state ears, then they can go suck an egg for all I care. Personally, I am glad to see someone from our state standing up to D.C. That is his duty as governor. If fending off a challenge from Kay Bailey Hutchinson in the next gubernatorial election is his motivation; it works for me.

There was definitely a strong emphasis on states' rights. "Texans know how to run Texas" as Gov. Perry said. If critics want to interpret that as secession ism, then let 'em. What are they going to do? Have the UN send a strongly worded letter?

Here is the video of his Austin speech:
http://vodpod.com/watch/1530363-rick-perry-at-the-austin-tea-party

Tea Party! Yay.

2009-04-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

I went to my local tea party; it was a blast. IT looks like nation wide they were a smashing success, though CNN, CNBC and others would like to discount them.

So far Michelle Malkin is the best source with regular updates:

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/04/15/massive-tax-day-tea-party-usa/

Gulp

2009-04-09T07:12:00.000-07:00

Just 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism

Fox News in Decline

2009-04-08T11:28:00.000-07:00

The ratings may be up, but the quality of the content seems to be on the way down.

From Victor Davis Hanson:

Footnote. The once insightful Fox News is rapidly devolving into a sort of entertainment circus. That is a tragedy, since the network for years has done wonders in offering an antithesis to the supposedly non-biased biased network news. Each news show now interviews hosts from the other Fox news hours (To save money? Free publicity?). Hawking books (written in short, breezy style, without much analysis) is done on the air rather than as commercials. Anchors show old clips of themselves and invite in analysts to praise their on-air interviews (are they going to be invited back if critical?).

The hosts now constantly blare out their own ratings. Murder and rapine often headline the news in the manner of the local 6PM affiliates. Quiz shows are part of the news; female analysts are almost always either young or blond or usually both, rather than simply insightful. The sober and judicious Brit Hume’s presence is missed. Take away a few top-notch correspondents, and Charles Krauthammer’s sagacity and depth of thinking, and there is increasingly not a lot there. (but I like Neil Cavuto’s business hour and Dennis Miller’s op-eds) All in all, an unfortunate development, since there is no disinterested counterpart to a 60 Minutes or NBC News, and for years Fox offered an invaluable alternative in airing real news deliberately ignored by the mainstream networks.

What is a news junkie to do?

New format

2009-04-08T07:42:00.001-07:00

What do you think? Yeah, I am still tweaking the colors a bit. Is it easier to read?

What the heck is Corporatism?

2009-04-08T06:58:00.001-07:00

Arguing over whether the "change" we are now experiencing is socialism or corporatism feels like rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic, but, then again, what else are you going to do while waiting for a spot to free up on the lifeboats? So here is a thought provoking column from today's RCM on the subject:

Obama and the Reawakening of CorporatismBy Steven Malanga

But we are entering quite a different age right now, one in which the President of the United States and his hand-selected industrial overseers fire the chief executive of General Motors and chart the company’s next moves in order to preserve it. Conservative critics of the president have said that the government’s GM strategy is one of many examples of an America drifting toward socialism. But President Obama is not a socialist. If his agenda harks back to anything, it is to corporatism, the notion that elite groups of individuals molded together into committees or public-private boards can guide society and coordinate the economy from the top town and manage change by evolution, not revolution.

In a rapid, real time illustration of how badly this social/corporate/whateverism is going to crash and burn, GM (henceforth known as Government Motors) teamed up with Segway to produce the first government concept car. HotAir dubs it the Depressionmobile.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

A 200cc 1970's Vespa gets around 80mpg and a top speed in the neighborhood of 60mph. It is 40 year old technology that would kick this things ass. Talk about a giant leap backwards.

Foie Gras Update

2009-04-07T07:45:00.000-07:00

Why Won't Geithner Take TARP Repayments?By Investor's Business Daily

Bailouts: Didn't Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner say that it was not the administration's intent to control private companies? Then why is it reportedly reluctant to accept TARP repayments from some banks?

The Ayn Rand Factor

2009-04-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

I can't get enough of this topic. Here is an insightful column:

Atlas Shrugged Sales Overturn Policy Calculations
By Robert Tracinski

But the sales figures for Ayn Rand's magnum opus tell us an opposite story. In the midst of this crisis, hundreds of thousands of people are turning to a book that glorifies capitalism.

Meanwhile, where are all of the socialist books on the bestseller lists?

Thus, while Obama has launched the de facto nationalization of two whole industries—finance and automobiles—his administration remains oblivious to the depth and strength of public resistance to socialism in America.

Foie Gras de Banker

2009-04-04T07:56:00.000-07:00

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

Wow, Obama firing GM CEO, Rick Wagoner, made headlines last week, but he was also busy intimidating financial executives. Less then a week after AIG exec's publicly endured death threats and ACORN mobs being bussed to their houses, Obama is threatening bank exec's with pitchforks. Nice, so much for rule of law. Realising they had made a Faustian deal, some of them even tried to give the TARP money back, and Obama refused it. Politico has behind the scenes details of the meeting:

Inside Obama's bank CEOs meeting

Dimon also insisted that he’d like to give the government’s TARP money back as soon as practical, and asked the president to “streamline” that process. But Obama didn’t like that idea — arguing that the system still needs government capital.

The president offered an analogy: “This is like a patient who’s on antibiotics,” he said. “Maybe the patient starts feeling better after a couple of days, but you don’t stop taking the medicine until you’ve finished the bottle.” Returning the money too early, the president argued could send a bad signal.

A bad signal for whom, Mr President? Might taxpayers be a little annoyed if they found out that TARP money was being crammed down the throats of banks that didn't want it? Let me offer an analogy:

Several CEOs disagreed, arguing instead that returning TARP money was their patriotic duty, that they didn’t need it anymore, and that publicity surrounding the return would send a positive signal of confidence to the markets.

Sorry guys. He's gotcha where he wants ya.

$3.6T shopping spree!

2009-04-04T07:27:00.000-07:00

The House and Senate approved largely identical versions of the President’s $3.6 trillion budget with hardly any cuts -- except in defense. The good news is they dropped the idea of taxing charitable giving and refused another $250B in bailout money.

Congress Approves Obama's $3.6 Trillion Budget

There was speculation last week that the Dem’s would have to choose between socialized medicine or cap-and-trade, but that no longer appears to be the case. A draft version of the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009” is working it’s way through House committees.

House Democrats release draft energy, climate bill

The bill by Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts would establish a cap-and-trade program curbing U.S. emissions 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, with a midcentury target of 83 percent reductions of the heat-trapping gases. It also creates a nationwide renewable electricity standard that reaches 25 percent by 2025, new energy efficiency programs and limits on the carbon content of motor fuels, and requires greenhouse gas standards for new heavy duty vehicles and engines.

Mathmatical modeling and global warming

2009-03-31T13:17:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has worked with mathematical modeling knows it can be a great tool, but it has to be supported with hard data. That is the huge problem with global warming theories and why they amount to little more than superstitions. They rely solely on models, yet the models fail to produce predictions that support their accuracy.

American Thinker has a great essay with more details:

It's the Climate Warming Models, Stupid!
By Gregory Young

In addition to the difficulties mentioned above, is the late arriving Anthropogenic (man-made) Global Warming (AGW) prejudice that has set the evolution of climate modeling back a few decades. Previously known and accepted climate components have been summarily stripped from the equation -- such as the dominant factors involving the Sun and the importance of water vapor in the atmosphere as the dominant greenhouse gas. This is because in the cause to acquire lucrative AGW-biased government grants, many scientists have opted to blatantly skew their climate models to amplify AGW-favoring evidence and amplify anthropogenic CO2 importance. In this manner, they then qualify to receive funding and ensure publication.

Describing the compounded inaccuracies of these Johnny-come-lately modelers who would rather be funded than scientifically astute, Dr. Tim Ball, a former climate scientist at the University of Winnipeg sardonically clarifies: "The analogy that I use is that my car is not running that well, so I'm going to ignore the engine (which is the sun) and I'm going to ignore the transmission (which is the water vapor) and I'm going to look at one nut on the right rear wheel (which is the Human produced CO2) ... the science is that bad!"

Then they came for middle management,

2009-03-31T12:09:00.000-07:00

But I said nothing because I don't work in the financial industry.

Officials seek new power over financial companies

WASHINGTON – Pointing with dismay to the AIG debacle, the nation's top economic officials argued Tuesday for unprecedented powers to regulate and even take over financial goliaths whose collapse could imperil the entire economy. President Barack Obama agreed and said he hoped "it doesn't take too long to
convince Congress."

Yes, let's hurry up. Afterall, we wouldn't want there to be any time to debate all this. It might dawn on someone that it is unconstitutional.

Beyond AIG: A bill to let Big Government set your salary
By Byron YorkChief Political Correspondent 3/31/09 (Hat tip HotAir)

It was nearly two weeks ago that the House of Representatives, acting in a near-frenzy after the disclosure of bonuses paid to executives of AIG, passed a bill that would impose a 90 percent retroactive tax on those bonuses. Despite the overwhelming 328-93 vote, support for the measure began to collapse almost immediately. Within days, the Obama White House backed away from it, as did the Senate Democratic leadership. The bill stalled, and the populist storm that spawned it seemed to pass.

But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

Lordy, just when I think it is safe to take off, the tinfoil hat, stories like this start spilling out of the internet. How long did it take them to go from CEOs to regular Joes? One week, at the most, how long will it take to make the leap from companies recieving bailouts to any company they feel like? I thought I was wading a bit far into the deep end of the pool when I posted this about manufactured crisis, but it is hard to think of a more perfect example of:

1. manufacturing a crisis
2. expanding government to deal with the fake crisis.

First, they bail out AIG. Geithner knows all about the bonuses, but he doesn't touch them. Next, people become outraged that exec's got bonuses. Obama anounces "we won't reward failure," and now we get all this legislation about limiting bonuses and salaries. If you just let failing companies fail, you don't need to federal legislation to regulate their paychecks, but that's not the idea.

They keep using the same play over and over again. This is exactly the same thing that is going on with global warming. They announce that the world is going to end, and the only way to save it is if they tax you within an inch of your livelyhood.

I am going to need more tinfoil.

More collectivism

2009-03-31T11:36:00.000-07:00

Obama, the nation's CEO

An Obama administration official said the president’s hard-nosed approach will continue. “We’re not going to reward failure,” the official said. “We’re in an economic crisis, which takes shared responsibility and shared sacrifice. The only way that we will recover is if everybody puts a little skin in the game.” (Emphasis added)

Ummm ... excuse me if I am skeptical that we have a shared responsibility to bail out GM. Hard nosed approach, hmmmm, counting down until hardnosed approaches involve camps, out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by barbed wire, 10...9...8. I hear there are some empty cells down at Gitmo. We all know who the REAL terrorists are.

Diagnosis ODS?

2009-03-30T21:12:00.000-07:00

Obama Derangement Syndrome
By David HorowitzFrontPageMagazine.com Monday, March 30, 2009

I have been watching an interesting phenomenon on the Right, which is beginning to cause me concern. I am referring to the over-the-top hysteria in response to the first months in office of our new president, which distinctly reminds me of the “Bush Is Hitler” crowd on the Left.

Speaking of this crowd, have you seen any “I am so sorry” postings from that quarter as Obama continues and even escalates the former president's war policy in Afghanistan and attempts to consolidate his military occupation of Iraq?

Conservatives, please. Let's not duplicate the manias of the Left as we figure out how to deal with Mr. Obama. He is not exactly the anti-Christ, although a disturbing number of people on the Right are convinced he is.

I have recently received commentaries that claim that "Obama's speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history" and "never has a politician in this land had such a quasi-religious impact on so many people" and "Obama is a narcissist," which leads the author to then compare Obama to David Koresh, Charles Manson, Stalin and Saddam Hussein. Excuse me while I blow my nose.

Weeeellll, excuse me while I pick my nose -- guess which finger I am using. His speeches ARE unlike any political speech we have ever heard; they send tingles up the collective leg of the left. The difference between Bush derangement syndrome and Obama derangement syndrome will be determined by history. In the meantime there will be some elections, too. At the moment, Obama & Co. are busy socializing our financial and auto industries and erroding the value of the dollar. Down the road, if we are dealing with an energy crisis, rampant inflation, and looking the other way while Iran churns out nukes, that commentary won't look quite so deranged, will it?

I would love to be cured so I can sit back, chillax, sip my kool-aid, and enjoy the global socialist utopia with the rest of the happy global citizens of UN hemispheric district #6. Just for the record, I don't think Obama is Hitler, Stalin, or the anti-Christ; that is all giving him WAY to much credit. I also don't think he is Ronald F. Lincoln, as he has been marketing himself. I think he is the love child of Jimmy Carter and Hugo Chavez. Ewwww. Bad mental image just then.

Green! Like red but with a hipster cool vibe

2009-03-30T20:18:00.000-07:00

Green! It's the new red. Yeah, I know, someone already made a bumper sticker. I said it first though, dammit! I have also been saying this:

EDITORIAL: Protect us from the EPA
There are lots of good arguments here. One good one:

Having no cars, no air conditioning, or no electricity would presumably be much worse than anything people claim results from global warming.

Uhhg. But then there is this:

COP15, Copenhagen -- United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this year will be the moment in history when humanity can rise to the challenge and decisively deal with the issue. It is beyond the shadow of a doubt that greenhouse gas emissions must be radically reduced to prevent climate change from sliding into climate chaos.

Only the UN can save the world! Kyoto, Copenhagen, the IPCC -- this is all leading one place. The goal is to establish a precedent in which the UN has the authority to levy taxes. I don't recall voting for anyone in the UN. Why do Russia, China, France, etc. get to say what taxes we pay here in the United States? Sheesh. Talk about ye old taxation without representation.

They came first for the CEOs

2009-03-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

Populist Democracy Declares War On CEOs

Belligerent unions are making it a practice to take CEOs hostage in France as police stand idly by. Tour bus operators are taking gawking populists past the homes of executives in Connecticut so they can hoot and take pictures. When and how this behavior progresses from hurling invective to lobbing bricks, as has already happened in England, depends on whether our civic leaders insist on throwing gasoline on the fire. What will it take, a Corporate Crystalnacht, to wake them up to the danger they’re fomenting?

But I didn't speak up because I am not a CEO...

Lhasa in the spring

2009-03-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

Tibet reopens to foreign tourists

The Chinese news agency Xinhua quoted Tibet's head of tourism as saying the region was now "harmonious and safe". But there is still a heavy Chinese military presence in the area, and foreign journalists and human rights groups cannot operate freely.

Northern India, Nepal, and Tibet are near the top of my dream vacation list. Someday, I will have vacation time and money... at the same time. Yeah, dream on bitsyblogger.

Deep doo doo

2009-03-30T06:59:00.000-07:00

How deep in the doo? Two depressing links on the growing debt:

Obama’s Doubling of National Debt in Pictures

President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.

President Bush began a string of expensive financial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.

President Bush created a Medicare drug entitlement that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new government health care fund.

President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. President Obama would double it.

President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already increased this spending by 20 percent.

I was never a fan of "compassionate conservatism." There was nothing conservative, nor particullarly compassionate, about it, but Obama's budget radically amplifies the problem.

Obama's Fuzzy Math
A trillion here, a trillion there . . .
by Stephen Moore

Here are the unhappy totals: the debt is $6 trillion higher from 2010 to 2019 than Obama's forecast. In no single year over the next decade, even when counting the Social Security trust fund surpluses, does the budget deficit fall below $800 billion. The interest on the national debt rises to $850 billion a year by the middle of the next decade, which will be the largest single expenditure item in the budget--eight times more than we now spend on education and four times more than we spend on homeland security. Federal spending remains well over 25 percent of GDP and in some years creeps closer to 28 percent of GDP under the Obama budget, which ironically enough is entitled "A New Era of Responsibility."

I have a plan...

2009-03-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

A little friday comedy relief:

Bitsyblog has the 5th stone! Bwaaa ahahahah ha ahah.

Hattip: HotAir

Collectivism = epic fail

2009-03-27T09:02:00.000-07:00

At the heart of the problem of the entire Obama administration is collectivism. Collectivism has been tried before, and it always fails in a spectacular manner. From Real Clear Markets, here is a good piece highlighting Tim Geithner and the failure of collectivism as a means for structuring our economy:

Once Again, Tim Geithner Gets It Exactly Wrong

Geithner began by blaming Americans in total for the nation's economic difficulties. He wrote in the Wall Street Journal that, “as a nation we borrowed too much and let our financial system take on too much risk.” No, some Americans borrowed too much, and some banks acted in risky ways that were inimical to their health.

Update: Here is another one from RCM that is worth a read:

Beware the Encroaching D.C. Leviathan

Breathtaking. Coupled with the vast expansion of government spending over the next 10 years, this is socialism, pure and simple.

Yes, we know it's unfashionable to use the "S" word. But we're willing to be unhip in the service of the truth.

It's a frightening thing to see a once mighty, and free, capitalist economy placed under the heel of an incompetent government. But that's precisely what's happening now.

Executive pay, the focus of much public fury right now, is only the start. Your pay will be next, rest assured. So hold on to your wallets, sure, but also hold on even tighter to something even more precious that now seems at risk: your freedom.

It does a good job summing up all of the government encroachments on you liberty -- in the last week.

The question that most weighs on me, though, is where does it end?

The EPA, cap-and-trade, and you

2009-03-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

Global warming isn’t about the weather. It never has been. It is about political influence and tax revenue. In his second prime time press conference, President Obama remarked:

I’ve said that we’ve got to have a serious energy policy that frees ourselves from dependence on foreign oil and makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy.

Like any good lawyer, Obama knows how to perform verbal sleight of hand that will make your head spin. He has seized the language of capitalism and twisted it to fit policies that are decidedly anti-capitalist and diametrically opposed to our country’s notion of liberty. Profitable clean energy? Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? Of course, there are two ways to make ‘clean’ energy profitable. You can attempt to make the technologies cheap, abundant, and efficient enough to compete with current technology, or you can use regulation to artificially inflate the price of current technologies to the point at which the ‘green’ energy does indeed become profitable.

The Obama administration has two tools – regulatory machetes – with which to hack at the currently ‘unclean’ American energy infrastructure to pieces and make green energy profitable. Keep in mind, this isn’t profitable in the fun, prosperity generating sense of the word; this is ‘profit’ in the Obama sense of the word. As in: we all have to bend over, grab our ankles, and prepare to ‘profit’ for the greater global good. These twin machetes of massive regulation that president Obama will wield to defeat that evil nemesis, global warming, or as all the cool kids now call it - anthropological global climate change, are the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and cap-and-trade legislation.

A pdf document containing PowerPoint slides leaked to the public drops some hints about the EPA’s agenda. By mid-April, the EPA is expected to issue an endangerment finding labeling carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. Specifically, the EPA findings will declare that CO2 is harmful to your health, citing dangers of global warming such as droughts, floods, really big storms, and icky bugs – which apparently only came along once mankind began to enjoy the benefits of electricity. Things that produce CO2 include: you, your kids, cars, cows, factories, and plasma TV’s. Apparently unaware that they long ago passed the threshold of self-parody, the document also introduces us to the fabulously commie-tastic concept of “environmental justice.” Apparently, evil rich Americans now cause droughts, floods, storms, and bugs, along with all the other woes ever to affect the world.

As a clever political move, for the time being, the EPA will focus mainly on measurement and reporting of CO2 emissions and leave actual regulatory actions for a later date. However, this finding leaves any new activity which will result in increased output of CO2 vulnerable to lawsuits. Of course, they won’t be making any rules just yet; they are only monitoring it. Conveniently, the monitoring and regulatory powers of the Clean Air Act are strictly the prerogative of the executive branch.

Don’t worry, though, Obama assures us all that he prefers a legislative solution in the form of cap-and-trade. Of course he does! He expects to tax CO2 to generate revenue. What better way to infinitely expand the government than to tax you every time you exhale? Obama explained in that press conference:

I think cap-and-trade is the best way, from my perspective, to achieve some of those gains, because what it does is it starts pricing the pollution that’s being sent into the atmosphere.

The way it’s structured, it has to take into account regional differences. It has to protect consumers from huge spikes in electricity prices. So there are a -- a lot of technical issues that are going to have to be sorted through.

Cap-and-trade will amount to an enormous hidden tax on the middle class. CO2 production is implicit in nearly every facet of productivity; for the average citizen, the effects of hyper aggressive regulation will manifest themselves as an across the board increase in cost of products manufactured in the United States, pain at the gas pump, and noticeably higher electricity bills. They will avoid “huge spikes in electricity prices” so as to boil the frog slowly, but you need not worry about all that. It’s technical.

Cap-and-trade systems aim to limit CO2 through an indirect method that is not actually a tax, but the costs are ultimately passed on to ordinary citizens who dutifully pay their utility bills. Typical cap-and-trade schemes arbitrarily select a ‘cap’ on tons of CO2 emitted. Based on this arbitrary cap, the governing body then sells permits to emit CO2 to anyone unfortunate enough to be roped in to the regulations. Any business ensnared in the regulations must own permits for the amount of CO2 they are emitting. If they don’t have the proper permits, they are subject to steep fines and penalties. Should they procure excess permits, they can then sell them, hence the ‘trade’ aspect of the system. In this way, Obama and cohorts can say, “see, we’re using free markets!” However, what they are really doing is distorting free markets for their own financial and political gain.

The stratospheric costs of cap-and-trade legislation may make it a tough sell, even with Democratic domination of Congress. Originally, the White House estimated that the cost of cap-and-trade legislation would come out to around $646 billion, but recently, Jason Furman, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, revealed that the actual cost to businesses and consumers would more realistically be between $1.3 trillion and $1.9 trillion between 2019 and 2019. Other estimates suggest that cap and trade policies will raise US electricity prices by 15 to 30%. Imagine your electric bill and the cost of everything that involves electricity going up 15 to 30%. Any paltry rebate checks the Obama administration will dangle in front of the public won’t even begin to cover the costs.

Of course, if cap-and-trade legislation doesn’t work out, we can always fall back on those EPA regulations – and round and round we go. It can be useful to examine how the specter of global warming has been raised elsewhere to generate revenue, increase political power, and boldly govern what no government has tried to govern before. Carbon rationing won’t stop at the industrial level. Remember, it isn’t just factories, power plants, and cars that produce CO2. Humans exhale CO2 with every breath. Unless we emphatically reject this stealth taxation here and now, it will eventually be applied at every level of society, right down to the individual.

In Australia, one creative environmentalist used global warming to re-open the debate in the west on population control. Using the same logic as the cap-and-trade legislation, that CO2 is a pollutant and that the polluter pays, an obstetrician wrote in a letter to the editor in the Australian Journal of Medicine:

Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and thereby rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour, a “Baby Levy” in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the “polluter pays” principle. Every family choosing to have more than a defined number of children (Sustainable Population Australia suggests a maximum of two) should be charged a carbon tax that would fund the planting of enough trees to offset the carbon cost generated by a new human being.

Yep, we new moms are living large on that financial booty. You see, not adopting awesome reproductive policies like China, would be arrogant. Specifically, Dr. Barry Walters’ plan called for parents to be taxed $5000 for each child after the second and up to $800 per year there after. Couples opting for sterilization and birth control would be eligible for carbon credits.

In 2008, the UK scrapped plans for a controversial ‘carbon card’ scheme. The idea would take carbon rationing down to the individual level. Under the plan, every UK citizen would be given a carbon allowance tracked by the same technology that makes credit cards possible. Ultimately, proponents gave up, for now, because the idea would probably be unpopular. To paraphrase my inner third grader: like duh.

Just in case you think that the brave new personal carbon rationing schemes can never be brought to the United States, think again. Obama’s climate czarina, Carol Browner, is, purely by coincidence, a former member of Socialist International and former leader of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society. The mission of the Commission just happens to be “global governance” and combating global warming. In an interview to US News in early March, she gushed enthusiasm over smart grid technology:

Eventually, we can get to a system where an electric company will be able to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air conditioner won't operate at its peak, you'll still be able to cool your house, but that'll be a savings to the consumer.

I am not sure I understand how making your air conditioner less efficient will be a savings to the consumer. Maybe it is kind of like how record breaking deficit spending is actually an investment. However, it is clear that Obama really has it in for your evil air conditioner; remember this gem from the campaign:

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,"

Clearly, neither of these two has ever been seven months pregnant in Texas in August, or they might understand why one might reasonably want to keep their house at 72 degrees.

True, smart grid technology could represent a much needed upgrade in our electric infrastructure and provide a valuable tool for energy independence; however, given the Obama administration’s combination of zeal for regulating CO2 and hostility towards expanding reliable sources of energy – like natural gas, coal, and nuclear – smart grid technology under his administration is likely to become a rationing device when electricity production fails to keep pace with demand.

The damaging effects of cap-and-trade to our already weakened economy are so obvious that even democrats in Congress are beginning to balk at the idea. Ominously, that won’t slow the power grab down much; Obama can then fall back on the EPA and regulation of CO2 under the Clean Air Act. Unfortunately, reckless expansion of government under the guise of combating global warming is a bipartisan affliction. During the last presidential campaign, John McCain supported measures to curb global warming.

Stewardship of our natural resources and energy independence are worthwhile goals that will lead to a stronger economy and country. However, rationing CO2 emissions fits neither of those goals and will set us on a destructive path towards a weaker economy, and worse, these policies directly threaten our individual liberties. Our founding fathers warned about the perils of surrendering liberty for security, but that is exactly what we are being led to do. Submitting ourselves and our country to these regulations is tantamount to surrendering liberty for security – security from a threat whose existence has not even been proven.

It's not just you

2009-03-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

Michelle Malkin has a great (and scary) column this week:

To GIVE and to SERVE: The $6 billion National Service boondoggle

by Michelle Malkin Creators SyndicateCopyright 2009

Maybe it’s just me, but I find federal legislation titled “The GIVE Act” and “The SERVE Act” downright creepy. Even more troubling: The $6 billion price tag on these bipartisan bills to expand government-funded national service efforts. Volunteerism is a wonderful thing, which is why millions of Americans do it every day without a cent of taxpayer money. But the volunteerism packages on the Hill are less about promoting effective charity than about creating make-work, permanent bureaucracies, and left-wing slush funds.

Yeah, my government finds new ways to creep me out just about every day now. Follow the link to her site and read the whole column.

More on Mexico

2009-03-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

Here is a NYT Op-Ed on the Mexican drug war with perspective from Mexico City.

The Mexican Evolution

While we bear responsibility for our problems, the caricature of Mexico being propagated in the United States only increases the despair on both sides of the Rio Grande. It is also profoundly hypocritical. America is the world’s largest market for illegal narcotics. The United States is the source for the majority of the guns used in Mexico’s drug cartel war, according to law enforcement officials on both sides of the border.

In addition to the highlighted excerpt, the piece raises several good points concerning the on-going turmoil south of the border. Certainly, the drug gangs are responsible for some terribly brutal murders, but the coverage, as usual, has seemed a little hyperbolic. Much like the war in Iraq, it is impossbile to tell if the drug war is being won or lost from the coverage. The news media focuses on the grotesque and sensational, rarely providing much useful perspective. The upsurge in violence has been due in a large part to the fact that the government forces have successfully put pressure on the drug gangs, rather than just pretending they don't exist.

Update: I don't mean in any way to trivialize the violence. It is terrible; however, I think the assesment of Mexico as a 'failed state' is over the top. This is a serious challenge, but I think the Mexican people will rise to the occaision.

Update 2: Uhhg. I should have seen this coming:
Clinton: US shares blame for Mexican drug wars
Is Clinton suggesting we should have built a wall? How else does she suggest we could have averted 'blame' for the drug war?

'Organizing for America' my ass

2009-03-24T09:34:00.000-07:00

Man oh man oh man. Puuuhleeaze knock on my door. How I would love to give one of these tools a piece of my mind.

Congress isn't feeling much heat from Obama's 'army'

The president's lieutenants tried to open a new front in the "Obama revolution," the grassroots mobilization that propelled the once little-known Illinois senator to the White House last year. David Plouffe, who ran Obama's campaign, now runs "Organizing for America" out of the Democratic National Committee. It uses the same Web-based tactics that won the presidency to mobilize public opinion behind Obama's initiatives in a bid to redefine "business as usual" in Washington.

"The budget that passes Congress has the potential to take our country in a truly new direction — the kind of change we all worked so hard for," Plouffe said in an e-mail alert to Obama followers last week. He asked them to rally people in their hometowns behind Obama's budget.

Over the weekend, Obama supporters knocked on an estimated 1 million doors in all 50 states. Canvassers asked people to sign a two-point pledge saying that they support Obama's "bold approach for renewing America's economy," and that they'll ask family, friends and neighbors to back it.

Hmmmm. Anyone remember this:

Commie Watch

2009-03-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

Commie of the week: Carol Browner

Ms. Browner is Barack Obama’s “global warming czarina.” She is also a full blown socialist. From the Washington Times:

Obama climate czar has socialist ties
Group sees 'global governance' as solution

Until last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama's pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.

By Thursday, Mrs. Browner's name and biography had been removed from Socialist International's Web page, though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group's congress in Greece was still available.

Socialist International, an umbrella group for many of the world's social democratic political parties such as Britain's Labor Party, says it supports socialism and is harshly critical of U.S. policies.

No socialist agenda is complete without a plan to control the minute details of your life. Big brother’s (sister?) latest innovation: smart grid technology. Hooray! From US News:

Carol Browner on Climate Change: "The Science Has Just Become Incredibly Clear"

Were there elements in the administration's "green" agenda and in the stimulus package that Obama has been particularly insistent on?
Yes, the smart grid. If we're going to double renewables—it's taken us 35 years to get as many renewables as we have today—if we're going to double that in the near term, part of what we have to be thinking about is how we're going to move those renewables to where the people are, and a smart grid is a piece of that.

What is the genesis of President Obama's thinking on this?
He talked about it during the campaign, and I think what we've been able to do in the stimulus is really fill that out. So, as I said, it's bigger, better, smarter. Bigger means we need the new high-voltage lines for renewables. Better means we need to take our existing lines and upgrade them. And then, smarter: We need to make sure that we're really moving electricity in the smartest way and using the most cost-effective electricity at the right time of day. Eventually, we can get to a system where an electric company will be able to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air conditioner won't operate at its peak, you'll still be able to cool your house, but that'll be a savings to the consumer. [emphasis added -bb] And so [we will be] giving people and companies a role in the management of how we use electricity.

Right, they are going to save the planet by rationing electricity to your home. Awesome. I bet the Oval Office will be a crisp 72 degrees.

Get well soon, Lance!

2009-03-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

Armstrong hospitalised after fall

A spokesman for Armstrong's Astana team said he appeared to have hurt his collarbone or shoulder. The 37-year-old American was being treated in hospital in Palencia and has withdrawn from the five-day race.

Party like it's 1773!

2009-03-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

The Tea Party movement is growing. The big shuh-bang is April 15th in your hometown!

Obama on business: free markets and magic buttons!

2009-03-17T22:19:00.000-07:00

Business Roundtable Q&A

At the Business Roundtable luncheon, 3/12/2009; Obama gave an address and answered some questions. During the Q&A he explained his overarching economic policy:

Uhhh… I am a strong believer in the ability of the free market to generate wealth and prosperity that’s shared [karate chop motion] across the board [karate chop again].

Got that you greedy capitalists? You can create as much wealth and prosperity as you want as long as you share it. Hee-yah! Karate chop!

He goes on to explain the world financial system:

Uhhh…so government has to intervene in a crisis but the goals should always be to right that shift. And… let private enterprise do its magic… uhhh…there are a series of fairly complex issues around regulation in the financial markets which we believe…uhhh…is necessary. I think we’ve got ummmm…ehh…and I assume that many of the people here agree that we’ve got to update…uhhh…the regulatory framework that was created in the 30’s for global markets where trillions of dollars are spinning around the globe with the press of a button.[spinning motion with hands… wheeeee]

What is this amazing button of which he speaks that sends the trillions spinning around the globe? We keep it in the oval office …Ooops… Hillary already gave that button to the Russians.

VIDEO: Wrong red button

She handed him a palm-sized box wrapped with a bow. Lavrov opened it and pulled out the gift—a red plastic button on a black base with a Russian word “peregruzka” printed on top.

“We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” Clinton said as reporters, allowed in to observe the first few minutes of the meeting, watched.

“You got it wrong,” Lavrov said, to Clinton’s clear surprise. Instead of "reset," he said the word on the box meant “overcharge.”

This what I think they did with all the stimulus money – they stuffed it in a satellite. Get it? It’s like THE button, only, instead of dropping nuclear bombs on the Russians, it will drop trillions of dollars on their heads… from space. Or something.

We are so screwed.

This will brighten your day

2009-03-15T20:42:00.000-07:00

The Tea Party protest movement is growing. Instapundit reports that a protest in Cincinnati drew 4,000-6,000 people. Follow the link, some of the protest signs are hilarious. My favorite:

You can't cure stupid, but you can vote it out.

Honorable mention:

Party like it's 1773

And of course:

Who is John Galt?

There is one near you on April 15th!

The Allegorical Atlas Shrugged

2009-03-15T14:33:00.000-07:00

The Allegorical Atlas Shrugged

As more and more Americans take to the streets to protest the punitive taxation, reckless spending, and forced wealth redistribution that Congress and the White House seem determined to cram down their throats, the question, “who is John Galt?” keeps popping up in public discourse. According to the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights sales of her opus magnum, Atlas Shrugged, have almost tripled since the 2008 election. On the grass roots level, conservative and libertarian bloggers are talking about “Going Galt.” Bumper stickers and T-shirts touting Rand’s enigmatic capitalist hero have been spotted. At the Tea Party protests around the country, Galt’s name is on protesters’ lips and on their signs. For fans of the 1957 novel, John Galt’s charisma is obvious; it feels like we are now living in some lost chapter of Atlas Shrugged.

Authoritarian leftists are quick to bash anyone who dares question the Obama administration or their utopian ideals. With a fierce hatred normally reserved for Joe the Plumber or Sarah Palin, the commenters on the left swooped in to stomp on the meme and crush the Objectivists’ spirit of resistance.

Blogger TBogg writes at firedoglake:

Um. No.

Atlas Shrugged is twenty pounds of shit in a 1200 page book, which makes it less than desirable or "totable" as beach reading. Not that it doesn't have its uses at the beach if, say for example, you needed to weigh down a canvas duffel containing the lifeless body of a libertarian who brought up John Galt one time too many and you needed that bag to stay submerged few nautical miles south of the Coronado Islands...but let's not talk about wish fulfillment.

The natives are getting restless again and are making muttered threats about about [sic] going John Galt and we are left to wonder how we will ever get by when the world grinds to a halt because Doug Bandow, Will Wilkinson, and the Ole Perfesser call in to say they won't be coming into work because they're feeling kinda "Galtish". Who will fill our "here's an interesting post by [fill-in your own obscure think tank professional wanker]" void?

As the kids say: Oh noes!

Um. No. For one thing, paper tends to float then rapidly disintegrate in water so a large heavy book is probably not the optimal object for weighing down a body, but good try; it sounded funny. The veiled death threat against libertarians for daring to espouse a point of view different from his is a nice touch, too. It conveniently makes my point for me.

He then moves on to deride the “natives” and their talk about going John Galt. He provides a link to one such native, Glenn Reynolds, law professor, record producer, and blogger at Instapundit. Clearly, Tbogg didn’t bother to read Reynolds’ post or even look at the giant graphic at the top of the page, or he would have realized that he just demolished his own post. Reynolds’ post displays a graph of the Dow-Jones Industrial Average following the passage of the stimulus plan. Judging by the plunging trajectory, more than a few investors are “going Galt” with the intended results.

The Dow plummeted 1200 points in 16 days.

As the kids say: Oh noes!

At the Village Voice, Roy Edroso writes:

President Obama has proposed ending the Bush tax cuts in 2011, bringing the top rates from 33 percent to 36 percent and from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. The lower of these hikes would apply to individuals making over $200,000 and households making over $250,000.

This is not really news, as Obama has been talking about it since last summer. What is news is the remarkable reaction of some conservatives, who declare that they (or someone else) will "Go Galt" in retaliation for this return to pre-Bush tax rates.

Alright, he gets credit for attempting to use some logic rather than just pure venom to make his point; none the less, his argument falls flat. I don’t think many of the tea partiers are full on anarcho-capitalists, neither was Ayn Rand. They recognize that some government and taxation is legitimate. The protest is not so much over the amount but over the idea that the purpose of taxation is to forcefully redistribute wealth; it is taxation for revenue vs. putative taxation. Yeah the limit is 250K right now, but we have perched ourselves on the top of a slippery slope. Clearly, the message is that success will be penalized.

True, some commenters might get carried away and start talking about generators and bomb shelters or throw out some otherwise silly ideas. Also, I would agree that refraining from tipping is not a good way to go Galt. The waitress earns her tip. However, we are brainstorming via the internet; some silliness is to be expected and welcomed.

On the other hand, rather than addressing the underlying philosophical differences and explaining their affinity for collectivism and their aversion to personal responsibility, opponents of Rand’s philosophy resort to ad homonym attacks against her fans. They gleefully point out: You didn’t invent a static electricity motor! You’re not a captain of industry! You’re just a stay at home mom! You don’t make 250K! If us ‘Randroids’ were all so stupid, it should be a piece of cake to engage the philosophy. Instead they resort to brilliant arguments along the lines of ‘you suck, too.’ It is a curious phenomenon that Rand’s detractors so readily self identify as “parasites” and “moochers.” It says more about them then it does about Atlas Shrugged.

A satirical Facebook page with over 200 members, “Go Galt Go!” popped up, mocking the idea of civil disobedience on the part of capitalists. The description reads:

We proudly salute "Dr. Helen," Glenn Reynolds, and Michelle Malkin, for identifying the only possible response to Barack Obama's victory - 'going Galt.' By withdrawing their creative and intellectual achievements from the economy and stopping tipping waitstaff, the schmibertarian right can surely bring the parasites and Democrats to their knees. We look forward to these three thought leaders striking the obvious first blow, by refusing to blog for the ungrateful masses and withdrawing to a secret compound until the world capitulates to their demands! Only a universal wingnut blogging strike can bring the moochers to their senses. John Galt lives!

After spending 8 years hysterically screeching that Bush is Hitler, Cheney is the anti-Christ, wearing face paint and orange jump suits, staging die-ins, and marching around waving giant papier-mâché puppets, they make fun of Dr. Helen, Glenn Reynolds, and Michelle Malkin for discussing literature and tax policy? “Schmibertarian,” that is so clever; name calling is always a convincing argument. I know critical thinking is a dying art, but who are the real anti-intellectuals, here?

“Only a universal wingnut blogging strike can bring the moochers to their senses. John Galt lives!” Once again, the author didn’t read the whole book and thus completely misses the point. The strike envisioned by Rand did not include a strike on speaking your mind, quite to the contrary. Near the end of the novel, in a scene that would look a little like Rush Limbaugh highjacking every television and cable network during Obama’s State of the Union, John Galt highjacks every radio station in the country to interrupt Mr. Thompson’s speech and delivers his own oration; it spans 56 pages in my edition. The internet wasn’t around when Ms. Rand wrote Atlas, but if it had been, there is a good chance that, in addition to being an engineer, Galt would have also been a talk radio host and prolific wingnut blogger. “Going Galt” means more Limbaughs, Malkins, and Instapundits.

One powerful snippet from Galt’s speech jumps off the page at me, that aptly describes the situation our country is facing:

You did not care to compete in terms of intelligence—you are now competing in terms of brutality. You did not care to allow rewards to be won by successful production—you are now running a race in which rewards are won by successful plunder. You called it selfish and cruel that men should trade value for value—you have now established an unselfish society where they trade extortion for extortion.

Atlas Shrugged’s plot is not to be taken literally; it is an allegory. Rand isn’t really instructing us to build hidden cities in the mountains; certainly, that element of fantasy appeals to the spirit of rugged individualism that many Americans still carry in their hearts. However, for protesters and bloggers “Going Galt” is a metaphor meant to symbolize nonviolent protest in the face of creeping socialism. Galt saw that the government would seize his life’s work. Instead of acquiescing, and surrendering himself to this novel form of slavery, he set in motion a bold course of direct action. Atlas Shrugged artfully declares that socialism is slavery, and the remedy is peaceful resistance.

Don't they have anything better to do, part II

2009-03-12T12:10:00.000-07:00

Obama courts socialites

The White House is "identifying tastemakers in order to help create grassroots interest in some of the programs they are working on," said Washington Life's Michael Clements, who attended the meeting. "They wanted to introduce themselves. It was certainly a departure from previous administrations."

"[Creating] grass roots interest", huh? Is that what the cool kids call 'partying' these days? Just what king of grass are we talking about here, anyway? Sheesh. The hypocrisy-o-meter is in the red. Of course, that might explain this bit of recent news:

Barack Obama 'too tired' to give proper welcome to Gordon Brown

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

Carbon Sinks

2009-03-12T06:37:00.000-07:00

Scientists hope satellites will solve riddle of missing CO2

Even golf courses and suburban lawns serve as carbon sinks.
"Humans dump about 9 million tons of carbon daily into the atmosphere, but only half stays there,'' said David Crisp, principal investigator for NASA's Orbiting Carbon
Observatory. The rest is returned to Earth, but where much of it ends up is uncertain. About a quarter of the recycled CO2 is drawn into the ocean, and land vegetation absorbs another quarter.
"We don't know where the other half is going,''

Here is another half of the science we never hear about in the global warming debate. Plants and other photosynthetic organisms 'breath' Co2 in the chemical process which is the mirror image of combustion and animal respiration. Combustion in cars and power plants consumes O2 and hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) to produce heat, energy and CO2; likewise, animals breath O2 and burn hydrocarbons (sugars) to produce energy to power their bodies and exhale CO2.

Photosynthesis is the reverse reaction. During daylight hours, plants consume CO2 and absorb energy from sunlight to produce sugars and give off O2 as a waste product. The ecosystem has the built in capability to self regulate. "Well," say global warming enthusiasts, "the earth has never seen the kind of carbon output we humans produce." Wrong. This is narcissism wrapped in bacon; a volcano and other natural events can easily dwarf human output. The self regulatory capacity has existed since the dawn of life, long before us humans were even here.

Even if we concede that CO2 driven global warming is a danger (a claim which growing numbers of people are beginning to doubt) then why are the solutions always focused on "capping" CO2 output and hammering our industry and economy in the process? We might make more progress, and avoid crippling our economy, if we focused on enhancing our 'carbon sink' capacity.

Hmmmm

2009-03-11T08:21:00.001-07:00

Barack Obama faces 'revolution' if he imposes tough carbon targets, warns IPCC

The budgetary black hole

2009-03-11T07:37:00.000-07:00

There goes another $410 billion that we will never get back. I think we now have a gov't spending program so dense it warps the fabric of space-time. The more you throw in, the more it sucks up. We need to start talking about this thing using scientific notation because 'billion' and 'trillion' don't really sum it up. $410 billion is $4.10 x 10^11.

Of course, that is just the stop-gap emergency budget. We haven't even gotten to Obama's real budget: $3.6 trillion, ($3.6 x 10^12). But you investors shouldn't worry:

Lawmakers Weigh Need for Second Stimulus to Spur Job Growth

But Mrs. Pelosi suggested she's not ruling out action on another measure if the economy remains weak. "We have to keep the door open," Rep. Pelosi said after a closed-door meeting with several private economists. The speaker stressed the goal of lawmakers is not just to spur job growth, but to shore consumer and business sentiment, as well.

Oh good, Nancy Pelosi is on it. My consumer and business sentiment feels shored, doesn't yours?

Obama 'not a socialist' Audio

2009-03-09T14:11:00.000-07:00

Obama: I am ... uh ... not an ... uh ... socialist ... and uhhh ... you know ... it was all Bush's fault

Okay, I am paraphrasing. The actual quotes are less coherent. Obama gave an interview with the New York Times last week. Following the interview he was so concerned, he had to call the NYT back to emphasize that he is not a socialist.

At least, I think he is trying to emphasize that he is not a socialist. There are so many "ummms" and "uhhhhs" and empty space filler phrases like "I know", "I think", "it's important to note" and "it's ... uhhh .. important to ... uhhh ... emphasize ... uhhh .. that .. uhhh". He is President of the United States and he cannot even articulate his economic philosophy without being fed his lines.

Money quote, "I have more than enough to do ..uhh... without having to worry about the financial system". I guess they didn't have the teleprompter set up on Marine 1.

Violence spilling into US

2009-03-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

The violence from Mexico's drug cartel war is spilling into the US. Phoenix, Atlanta, and Houston have all seen gang violence - shootings, kidnapping, and torture.

Mexican drug war spilling into US

Mexican cartels plague Atlanta

Mexican cartels infiltrate Houston

What we are seeing is a modern day triangle trade of drugs, guns, and illegal immigrants. The immigrants are most often the target of the vicious kidnapping/torture/ransom scenarios. However, innocent bystanders are in danger of being caught in the cross fire. Statements by the authorities that violence is mostly targeted at gang members and illegals doesn't sound too reassuring to me; in fact, it seems pretty lame. This shouldn't be happening in my backyard, period. How long do we have before the trickle becomes a flood?

Further down the rabbit hole

2009-03-09T07:39:00.000-07:00

Manufacturing a crisis - the Cloward-Piven strategy

Make sure your tinfoil hat is securely in place as we take another tour through the world of Obama's shady connections and inspirations. A strategy complimentary to Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" known as the "Cloward-Piven" strategy:

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called "crisis strategy" or "Cloward-Piven Strategy," as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.

Irony alert: looters, and not just in the literary sense.

Regulate, Bail Out, Nationalize

2009-03-08T14:18:00.000-07:00

Is the energy industry in the cross hairs?

One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.”

—Ayn Rand, 1975

Despite the tanking global economy and an aggressive, nuclear Iran on the horizon, the Obama administration still has time to fret about the weather, now verbosely referred to as ‘anthropological global climate change’ and is charging ahead on policies to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

By April, the EPA is expected to issue an endangerment finding labeling carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant subject to regulation under the 1990 Clean Air Act. It would set off the most extensive rule making avalanche is the history of our government, and it neatly sidesteps the legislative branch since regulatory powers under the Clean Air Act are the provision of the executive branch. In the future, these regulations could be extended to any other heat trapping gas. Additionally, the Obama administration plans to level punitive taxes and fees on energy producers in the Gulf of Mexico, ostensibly for the crime of conspiracy to commit global warming. Obama’s budget includes a $4 per acre fee on non-producing oil and gas leases in the gulf while simultaneously levying an excise tax on oil and natural gas produced in the Gulf.

Of course, Congress won’t be left out of the fun. In his address to the joint assembly in February, Obama urged them to aggressively pursue Cap and Trade legislation. Such legislation would force a cap on CO2 emissions and energy companies would essentially have to purchase permits from the government in order to do business. Timelines vary, but this legislation will be a reality by next December at the latest and is already part of the President’s budget.

CO2 production is implicit in nearly every facet of productivity; for the average citizen, the effects of hyper aggressive regulation will manifest themselves as an across the board increase in cost of products manufactured in the United States, pain at the gas pump, and noticeably higher electricity bills. For the energy industry – companies that produce electricity for homes and businesses and fuel for our transportation – these policies amount to a full fledged government assault. The aim is to cripple our capacity to use natural gas, oil, and coal for energy production under the banner of combating climate change. Obama’s plan purports to fill the gap with green energy, but at present, the capacity does not exist. In their current state, alternative energies simply cannot meet our energy needs. Research into environmentally friendly technology to achieve energy independence is a worthy bipartisan cause, but even under the best circumstances, new technological development will not keep pace with the avalanche of anti-energy legislation and regulatory actions bearing down on energy producers as soon as this year.

So with our reliable methods of energy production hamstrung by CO2 regulation, and the promised new technologies – and their accompanying infrastructure – years, maybe decades away, how do we power the motor of the world? President Obama devoted air time on the campaign trail to singling out and demonizing Exxon-Mobile. When his energy plan achieves its stated aims and has brought Exxon-Mobile and other energy producers to their knees, then what? Will we be told they are ‘too big to fail’? Currently, the conventional wisdom holds that the evil, greedy oil companies are recklessly profitable; would you, the tax payer, prefer to spend billions (trillions?) bailing them out? Should we soon expect a ‘Regeanesque’ speech from the Oval Office somberly informing us that our only hope for economic survival is to make another sacrifice for the greater good and nationalize our energy industry?

Of course, maybe I shouldn’t be so worried. I suppose that won’t be so terrible. Nationalized energy has worked out fabulously in Venezuela. Hasn’t it?

Further Reading

EPA/CO2
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/science/earth/19epa.html

Cap and Trade
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/02/25/25climatewire-emissions-bill-needed-to-save-our-planet--oba-9849.html?pagewanted=1

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/25/obama-counting-on-cap-and-trade/

http://cleantech.com/news/4081/obama-administration-could-fast-track-cap-and-trade-rps-09

Oil and Gas fees/treasury sec
http://in.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idINN0454844120090304?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Venezuela
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/venezuela/4938993/Venezuelas-Hugo-Chavez-tightens-state-control-of-food-amid-rocketing-inflation-and-food-shortages.html

Being president is hard, whaa

2009-03-08T05:29:00.000-07:00

Via the guys at Hotair:

Barack Obama 'too tired' to give proper welcome to Gordon Brown

Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

A small suggestion, if he wasn't so busy trying to hijack the economy and picking fights with radio show hosts, Obama might have time to attend to his actual job. Commentors at Hotair are speculating that the "sources close to the White House" means Colin Powell. I think that is at least plausible given the details in the Telegraph article.

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

Like Duh. Being prez is hard work.

Let's ask Hugo

2009-03-07T03:41:00.000-08:00

CHAVEZ CALLS ON OBAMA TO FOLLOW PATH OF SOCIALISM

Caracas - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday called upon US President Barack Obama to follow the path to socialism, which he termed as the "only" way out of the global recession. "Come with us, align yourself, come with us on the road to socialism. This is the only path. Imagine a socialist revolution in the United States," Chavez told a group of workers in the southern Venezuelan state of Bolivar.

Yes, socialism, because it's worked out so awesome for Venezuela. And Cuba. And Russia. And Germany. And Yugoslavia. And...

It depends?

2009-03-07T03:29:00.000-08:00

Are We All Socialists Now?

A specter is stalking America - the specter of socialism.

The once-neglected S-word made a big comeback during the presidential campaign of 2008, and has now become a staple of American political discourse. While the right denounces Obama as a socialist, the cover of Newsweek magazine proclaims, "We are all socialists now." Is he? Are we? Depends on how you define "socialism," of course.

Bill Clinton would also like to add that it depends on what your definition of "is" is. Seriously though, if it looks like a poop, smells like a poop, and is stuck to the bottom of your shoe, who cares if it is a Soviet style poop, a Euro-poop, or some as-of-yet-unclassified poop?

Looters want more

2009-03-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

New York Governor David Patterson attempts to reign in state spending with predictable results from the looters.

BUDGET BACKLASH: Thousands Rally At City Hall

Protestors insisted Thursday that there's a better way. They're asking for what they call "fair tax reform" -- raising state taxes for New Yorkers making $250,000 or more on top of the president's proposed hikes. "For those of you who prosper during boom time, we ask them pay a little bit more. Pay a little more so New York can avoid cutting the services that our most vulnerable need," United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said.

...just pay a little more

...and a little more...

How much is enough? Today it's New York, when will it be your city?

It could be time

2009-03-06T07:50:00.000-08:00

... to start digging that bomb shelter in the back yard and stocking up on canned goods and ammo. Does anyone else get the feeling that the country is unraveling before their eyes?

Bill Seeks to Let FDIC Borrow up to $500 Billion

Dow Falls 281.40, Now Down 25% for Year

Our brilliant president demonstrates his knowledge of the stack market:

Um ...Mr. President, do you use that Blackberry for anything other than playing brickbreaker? It isn't "bobbing up and down" it is plunging. If it is a tracking poll, then the verdict is in: epic fail.

Post-capitalism: and then what?

2009-03-06T07:37:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't go so far as to say we are socialist yet, but I do think you can accurately say we are now a 'post-capitalist' nation. We are talking about nationalizing banks; with enough bailouts, we will have a de facto nationalized car industry. Nationalizing the health care industry is also on the agenda. What's next? With all the CO2 legislation getting rammed through Congress, I am guessing the energy industry (oil, natural gas, coal, electricity producers).

I leave you with the quote of the week:

One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.”

—Ayn Rand, 1975

Socialism working wonders

2009-03-05T11:06:00.000-08:00

Yet another example of the wonders of socialism:

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez tightens state control of food amid rocketing inflation and food shortages

"If any industry wants to ride roughshod over the consumers, with a view to getting better dividends, we are going to act," said Carlos Osorio, the national superintendent of silos and storage. "For the government, access to food is a matter of national security."

Production quotas and prices have now been set for cooking oil, white rice, sugar, coffee, flour, margarine, pasta, cheeses and tomato sauce.

Damn those evil greedy rice farmers! Go get 'em Hugo!

Speaking of bombs

2009-03-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

The Iranian bomb isn't the only one we have to worry about. How about this -- the inflation time bomb!

Bass Says ‘Cluster’ of Sovereign Defaults Is Possible

President Barack Obama is seeking Congressional approval for a $3.55 trillion budget for the fiscal year starting in October that would increase spending by 32 percent, resulting in a deficit of $1.17 trillion as he seeks to kick start the economy. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said costs to rescue U.S. banks may be more than the $700 billion already approved after losses and writedowns globally from the credit crisis exceeded $1.19 trillion.

The “rampant printing of currencies” won’t immediately lead to inflation as banks reduce borrowing and asset values decline, Bass, 39, wrote in the March 2 letter, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News. “The greater concern is the potential inflationary time bomb that grows as governments continue to borrow, print” and stimulate economies.

The U.S. will need to issue $2.35 trillion of new Treasuries this year, and Europe will have to issue even more government debt, Bass said.

This will come in handy:

Hey, I like that song!

2009-03-04T15:09:00.000-08:00

“Do You Realize” by the Flaming Lips voted the Oklahoma state rock song.

Cool.

Just great. Fabulous.

2009-03-04T14:26:00.000-08:00

Obama's Iran Crisis
It's arriving faster than he thinks

money quote:

Iran now possesses 5,600 centrifuges in which it can enrich uranium -- a 34-fold increase from 2006 -- and plans to add 45,000 more over five years. That will give Tehran an ability to make atomic bombs on an industrial scale.

Iran isn't just trying to build a bomb or two; it is aiming for the entire production pipeline -- that explains the Iranian emphasis on centrifuges. They likely could have bought enough fissile on the black market for several bombs. However, their goal here isn't just to bully neighbors with a few bombs; it's to build manufacturing capability.

... but hey, how 'bout that wacky Rush Limbaugh?

Don't they have anything better to do?

2009-03-04T13:06:00.000-08:00

Like, say, meet with foreign leaders (see previous post)?

Rush Job: Inside Dems' Limbaugh plan

Top Democrats believe they have struck political gold by depicting Rush Limbaugh as the new face of the Republican Party, a full-scale effort first hatched by some of the most familiar names in politics and now being guided in part from inside the White House.

Welcome to the perpetual campaign.

Update:

The guys at HotAir beat me to it:

Hope and Change: The Operation Rushbo Distraction

Obama cold shoulders UK PM

2009-03-04T08:39:00.000-08:00

How to alienate allies:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030303660.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Brilliant!

Going Galt

2009-03-04T05:47:00.000-08:00

Galt's Gulch* doesn't exist in real life - sadly - but many are brainstorming ways to create the same effect, basically going on strike, to avoid the oppressive tax regime that is looming on the horizon.

Here is an impassioned rant on the subject:

Going John Galt

Gas lines, unemployment, inflation, problems with terrorists… we have all thisand more to look forward to, right down to the guy in the Oval Office lecturing us that we can’t keep our homes at the temperature we like. At least Carter had the decency to put on a sweater and give the appearance of suffering right along with the rest of us. President Obama can’t even do that. These things are going to happen eventually anyway because the 40% cannot carry the rest of the country, nor should a moral society expect us to do so. My goal is to not extend the misery; to hasten the inevitable crash so we can recover quickly.

Also, Dr. Helen gets it:

Going John Galt

Perhaps the partisian politics we are dealing with now is really just a struggle between those of us who believe in productivity, personal responsibility, and keeping government interference to a minimum, and those who believe in the socialistic policies of taking from others, using the government as a watchdog,and rewarding those who overspend, underwork, or are just plain unproductive.

“Going Galt” doesn’t have to involve some kind of radical survivalist adventure. It can be anything that denies the government of a few hundred bucks of tax loot. Small actions add up. If enough individuals make a small decrease in the amount they hand over to the government, the resulting drop in gov't revenues will send a loud message to the White House.

(*The picture at the begining of this article is of the San Juan mountains, the inspiration for the setting of Galt's Gulch)

The Obama Buck

2009-03-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

I know how we can solve this economic crisis! Print our OWN money! If Obama and congress can do we it, why not the rest of us?

Speaking Truth to Power

2009-03-03T07:32:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of WSJ:

The Obama Economy
As the Dow keeps dropping, the President is running out of people to blame.

Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on. But after five weeks in office, it's become clear that Mr. Obama's policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence -- and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.

The Democrats who now run Washington don't want to hear this, because they benefit from blaming all bad economic news on President Bush.

Amen!

Obama - Confidence Man

2009-03-03T06:52:00.000-08:00

The cover of the March 2 edition of Newsweek boldly titles itself:

The Confidence Game: How Obama can talk us out of a depression

From the wikipedia entry for "Confidence Game":

A confidence trick or confidence game (also known as a bunko, con, flim flam,gaffle, grift, hustle, scam, scheme, or swindle) is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence.

The term con man originated from the longer term confidence man, and a confidence game is a scam. Personally, I would say that is a pretty apt description of Obama's political career so far, but somehow, I doubt that is what the editors of Newsweek meant.

Grain of salt warning...

2009-02-17T07:24:00.000-08:00

It was pointed out to me that the source I linked to on my last post about the fairness doctrine contains mainly anonymous sources, point taken. Consider this your official warning to take "The Prowler" article and it's anonymous sources with a big fat grain of salt. However, here is a non-anonymous democratic source on the fairness doctrine:

More good news!

2009-02-16T07:40:00.000-08:00

The dawning of the great American Utopia is upon us! There are just a few things we have to clear up first.

Like that pesky constitution, why does it have all those annoying amendment thingies. For example, this first amendment business. How are we going to implement change if people can just say or write whatever they want? Obama said it himself: "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and expect to get things done."

Hey guys, let's bring back the fairness doctrine! This time though, let's make sure we include the internet:

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/02/16/in-all-fairness/1

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is also looking at how it can put in place policies that would allow it greater oversight of the Internet. "Internet radio is becoming a big deal, and we're seeing that some web sites are able to control traffic and information, while other sites that may be of interest or use to citizens get limited traffic because of the way the people search and look for information," says on committee staffer. "We're at very early stages on this, but the chairman has made it clear that oversight of the Internet is one of his top priorities."

Yeah, those evil neocons are so evil with their well organized and coherent blogs! Give the angry and incoherent a chance, too!

And don't even get me started on that dang 22nd amendment, I mean, change can't always happen overnight. It might take more than 8 years to implement true social justice! Just ask Hugo Chavez.

H. J. RES. 5

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.

Thank you 111th Congress!

Good news!

2009-02-16T07:01:00.000-08:00

That whole liberty thing was a little tiring wasn't it? I mean, freedom is great, but that whole personal responsibility deal really blows.

Hilarious - until you realise this is happening in your country.

About the light posting...

2009-02-16T06:56:00.000-08:00

Posting has been light; we are welcoming a new member of our family to the world. It turns out babies are a lot of work.

Change! Yippee.

2008-11-07T09:08:00.000-08:00

To steal a phrase from my favorite news anchor, Kent Brochman (who has more credibility than any non-animated news anchors, these days): I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords. You can laugh or you can cry; I prefer to laugh.

Here are some funnies to get you started. Click the links to read the entire column:
Election Analysis: America Can Take Pride In This Historic, Inspirational Disaster

So for now, let's put politics aside and celebrate this historic milestone. In his famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial 45 years ago, Dr. King said "I have a dream that one day my children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Let us now take pride that Tuesday we Americans proved that neither thing matters anymore.

Southpark weighs in: http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/207897/

And one last thing! Palin 2012! Stop dissing Sarah Palin. Her selection as VP was the best thing about the McCain campaign.

Ann Coulter and I agree:
THE REIGN OF LAME FALLS MAINLY ON MCCAIN

Like Sarah Connor in "The Terminator," Sarah Palin is destined to give birth to a new movement. That's why the Democrats are trying to kill her. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is involved somehow, too. Good Lord, I'm tired.

and

For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president.

Starting tomorrow, if not sooner.

Welcome to the next four years! My sunny predictions for what HOPEANDCHANGE will look like: 1) more war, not less, in the Mid East, with a good possibility of out right nuclear warfare between Iran and Israel; 2) massive energy shortages in the US - the gas line and the rolling blackout are the new breadline; 3) another terrorist attack or a slew of smaller ones; and 4) a whole lotta disappointed dems when they figure out they still have to work for a living and pay their mortgage. The beauty of being a conservative is, if my world view is correct then in a few years I get to say "I told you so" and enthusiastically support Sarah Palin in 2012. If my world view is wrong, then I still get to enjoy the socialist utopia along with everyone else -- that is, unless Billy Ayers gets those re-education camps up and running in less than 4 years. Gulp.

Speaking of slippery slopes

2008-10-19T09:06:00.001-07:00

Here is a scary one from ... nope, not North Korea ... the UK.

Human tissue could be taken from the infirm without their consent and used for research

On Wednesday MPs will vote on a bill which would allow the creation of human/animal hybrid embryos to be used for stem cell research, change the conditions for granting IVF, and possibly liberalise the abortion laws.

The passage through Parliament of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has been dogged by controversy. Failed attempts to outlaw late abortion have dominated the debate, while scientists, medical ethics experts and religious leaders have clashed over the hybrid embryo issue.

Defenders of the bill have repeatedly stressed the importance of gaining consent from anyone whose tissue is taken for the creation of human/animal hybrid embryos.

It can now be revealed that a Government amendment, agreed after the main parliamentary debates, would allow tissue to be used from people who lack the "mental capacity" to give consent, children whose parents give permission, and anyone who has previously donated samples to hospitals for medical research but can no longer be traced.

read the rest

What is the big deal with taking tissue from people "who lack mental capacity" to create human/animal hybrid embryos for medical research? I mean, how could that possibly go wrong?

RACIST !!!!!111

2008-10-16T15:29:00.000-07:00

Joe the plmber is concerned that Obama will hike his taxes; obviously, he is a racist republican SPY!#$$!!! He even compared Obama to another black man! OMFG!@#@!! He also mentions Britney Spears, clearly another racist code word.

From the Huffington Post:

Joe the (unlicensed) plumber's two money quotes to the NYT include:

"You know, I've always wanted to ask one of these guys a question and really corner them and get them to answer a question...."

"I'm kind of like Britney Spears having a headache."

By the way, the extended quote on the first comment helps flesh out and inform Joe's expression in the photo -- squinty Joe in the white light and the earnest Obama literally in the dark. From The Times:

"You know, I've always wanted to ask one of these guys a question and really corner them and get them to answer a question ... for once instead of tap dancing around it. And unfortunately I asked the question, but I still got a tap dance."

He added, "Almost as good as Sammy Davis Jr."

Shades of Mark Halperin's post back in March, Wurzelbacher's intent to "corner" the celebrity tap dancer was motivated by racism. If the McCain campaign had done it's homework before tossing this guy into the national spotlight -- and whether they did or they didn't is a bit concerning either way -- you'd think the chip on Wurzelbacher's shoulder would have been pretty easy to flush out.

He also has a shaved head; clearly he is a skinhead. Only racist skinheads would question the effect of Obama's tax policies on their small business.

If your virus software is up to date and you care to wade on over to the dailykos, where they have a plethora of loosely based accusations (no, I won't do the courtesy of a link):

He may be an unlicensed plumber.
He might be a REGISTERED REPUBLICAN PRIMARY VOTER!
Either that, or he might not be registered to vote.
Maybe he owes back taxes.
He suspects Obama might be a socialist.
He is considering NOT voting for Obama when the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters already endorsed Obama!!!
He could be related to Charles Keating of the KEATING 5.
And... he might even have family ties... TO ALASKA!!!!11

We really have to watch out for all these faux independent racist skinhead small business owners... from Alaska.

The short slippery slope to Socialism

2008-10-16T13:13:00.000-07:00

Wheeeeee.... It's like a waterslide, but that's your liberty going down the hole!

Just stop paying your mortgage

While angry voters have labeled the package as a bailout for Wall Street, it is more akin to a “Get out of Jail Free” card for anyone who acted irresponsibly during the boom. Here's why.

Nobody likes foreclosure, least of all politicians. The new law clearly indicates that the government will make major efforts to reduce foreclosures through “term extensions, rate reductions and principal write-downs” of the troubled mortgages that it buys from the private sector. In other words, your new landlord will bend over backward to keep you in your home. The legislation telegraphs this by including a provision that extends until 2013 the exclusion of loan reductions from taxable income.

When a financial institution holds a mortgage, homeowners must live with the fear of foreclosure. Private institutions only have obligations to shareholders. In the case of a defaulting borrower, they will look to recover as much of their principal as possible. If foreclosure is their best option, they will take it in a heartbeat.

The government has no such obligations. Its only goal is to keep voters happy. After supposedly bailing out the fat cats on Wall Street, no politician wants to be accused of evicting struggling families. Once you understand this, all of your anxiety should melt away. Why pay your mortgage if foreclosure is off the table, and if you know that lower payments, and possibly a reduced loan amount, would result? A tarnished a credit rating is a small price to pay for such a benefit.

Pay attention, this is where the "bailout" plans are headed kids.

If you do get the opportunity to live for a while with no mortgage payment, don't make the tragic mistake of using your extra cash to pay down your credit cards. As the growing level of credit card defaults will soon push credit card companies into bankruptcy, we can expect a similar bailout plan for American Express and Discover Financial. When that happens, expect massive balance reductions for Americans who can demonstrate the inability to pay. The bigger your balance, the greater the benefit.

Taxpayers, however, will not be so lucky. The savvy investment strategists who see the government turning a tidy profit on its mortgage purchases have not factored in the incentives that will discourage nonpayment. The only way the government will be able to profit would be to buy the mortgages at deep discounts to actual loan values. However, if the purchase prices are too low, the plan will bankrupt the institutions it is trying to bail out. On the other hand, if it substantially overpays, which seems far more likely, it will bankrupt the nation.

In any event, as more and more borrowers succumb to the allure and safety of nonpayment, look for the number of troubled assets to swell. This will ensure that the $700 billion merely represents the first installment in what will be a multitrillion-dollar plan. Just as government policies provided the primary impetus in blowing up the housing bubble earlier in the decade, its latest attempt at market manipulation will only result in making a terrible problem far worse.

Yup. We have a real problem in our society right now with stating the obvious; instead we want to name some nebulous whipping boy. Home foreclosures aren't caused by "greedy wallstreet fatcats"; they are caused by people taking out loans they can't afford. Like the obesity epidemic in this country, obesity is NOT caused by McDonalds; obesity is caused by people stuffing hamburgers in their face at a greater rate than their body can burn them.

I leave you with this sunny quote:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. --Attributed to ALEXANDER FRASER TYTLER, LORD WOODHOUSELEE. (1747-1813) Unverified.

Anyway, it's been a nice 232 years.

Obama: I did not have sex with that terrorist.

2008-10-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

CNN Debate Transcript

Last night's debate definitely has to go to McCain. Obama is too slick for McCain to land a clean knockout or get him completely rattled, but I would judge it a TKO. Where has this McCain been?! Apparently, if enough people at his own rallies tell him he can't out-socialist Obama, he will figure out he can't out-socialist Obama and will turn out a decent debate performance. McCain also gets bonus points -- I only heard "my friends" twice during the whole 90min.

Obama, on the other hand, proved for all to see that he can lie like a Clinton. When confronted about launching his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist* Obama looked into the camera and straight faced, flat out lied:

McCain: Well, again, while you were on the board of the Woods Foundation, you and Mr. Ayers, together, you sent $230,000 to ACORN. So -- and you launched your political campaign in Mr. Ayers' living room.

Obama: That's absolutely not true.

McCain: And the facts are facts and records are records.

Obama: And that's not the facts.

Ummm... yeah, Obama those are what we call 'facts.' Of course, Obama runs into trouble when real facts contradict his wish facts. Obama also issued a bold faced lie on the 'born-alive' act. There was not an identical bill on the books -- that is why a living infant ("pre-viable" in Obama-speak) died in a dirty linen closet in an Illinois hospital -- and the bill specifically contained a clause stipulating that it was not to overturn precedent (i.e. Roe v. Wade). These real facts are a matter of public record. These facts are highly inconvenient for Obama and he wishes they would just go away; therefor, according to wish facts, there is a highly nuanced reason to vote against a ban on killing babies that only Obama is clever enough to figure out.

*Note on Bill Ayers: "unrepentant domestic terrorist" is way, way too much of a mushy PC term for my taste; I believe the more accurate term is "homicidal traitor." Ayers should have gotten the needle right along with Timothy McVeigh; the only difference between the two is that Ayers was less skilled at building bombs but better at eluding the feds.

Prez debate liveblog II

2008-10-15T19:27:00.001-07:00

discussions without preconditions with Chavez... FARC terrorists... another good shot by McCain.

Abortion: I guess Obama got a raise; abortion is suddenly within his paygrade.

Education: McCain missed a chance to land one last good blow in regards to Ayers and radical leftist ideological indoctrination of Chicago school kids.

Well, people asked for it; McCain came out swinging, but it may be too little too late. McCain wins on issues (taxes!!!); Obama wins on general telegenic qualities. Unfortunately, telegenics counts way more than it should. Overall winner: Joe the plummer.

Last Prez debate

2008-10-15T18:45:00.000-07:00

8:46 central

Wow... McCain has gone at least 30min without saying "my friends." Debate practice must have included electroshock therapy.

He is delivering some body blows - no knockouts - but body blows. Keep hammering on taxes, man. He brought up Ayers skillfully. Obama outright lied... he DID launch his polititcal career in Ayers livingroom.

"I admire Senator Obama's eloquence" heh.

Good column from the Telegraph

2008-10-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

Financial crisis: We're all socialists now, comrade

I am such a ray of sunshine today!

Wisdom from our betters

2008-10-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

"I had learned not to care. I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though. ..." -- Barack Obama

Just Not Smack! That's my philosophy, too.

"Asked how she feels about Bill Clinton's use of the phrase 'fairytale' to describe her husband's characterization of his position on the Iraq war, (Michelle Obama) first responded: 'No.' But, after a few seconds of contemplation, and gesturing with her fingernails, she told the reporter: 'I want to rip his eyes out!' Noticing an aide giving her a nervous look, she added: 'Kidding! See, this is what gets me into trouble.'" -- WorldNetDaily

Clarification: I think Obama wrote the first one before he met Michelle; or not, I don't really know, actually.

"The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more." -- Michelle Obama

Thanks for pointing out the obvious!

Weeeeee... the next four years are going to be fun! Blogging will be a cakewalk, though, until they send me off to the re-education camp -- or is the correct term "sensitivity training"?

Quotes from: http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/10/barack_obama_in_quotes_version_2.php
Hattip: www.littlegreenfootballs.com

Tue Night's Debate

2008-10-09T07:08:00.000-07:00

And the winner is...

... Bob Barr

McCain didn't win this round. True, he landed some good body blows: cronyism, links to Fannie and Freddie, and taxes, but there were no knockout punches on Ayers, Obama's plans to send billions of $$$ to corrupt dictators via the UN, or his excessively waxed eyebrows. [Last debate Obama had 'evil wizard' eyebrows... this time he had 'who me?' eyebrows -- valuable political commentary, I know]

Even McCain's grating repetition of his signature verbal tic "my frieeends" wasn't enough to sink it for him. No... this is what made me sick:

So this rescue package means that we will stabilize markets, we will shore up these institutions. But it's not enough. That's why we're going to have to go out into the housing market and we're going to have to buy up these bad loans and we're going to have to stabilize home values, and that way, Americans, like Alan, can realize the American dream and stay in their home.

WTF?!? Why on earth should the government be involved in setting housing prices? Why should my tax dollars bail out greedy 'mainstreet' idjits who bought houses they couldn't afford? Call me a jerk, but I always though, 'if you can't afford to pay for something, then you don't get to have the thing' was sort of like a basic part of being an adult.

Anyhoo... McCain ultimately lost in my mind because he failed to make a basic defense of American capitalist values against a radical left wing socialist. I expected some hand waving populism to appease those elusive centrists, but McCain went way to far. I was briefly excited about McCain after the Palin nomination, but I am not certain that her presence in the VP slot is going to be enough to help me swallow McCain's $300b bitter pill.

My state is nowhere near any kind of swing state so I feel safe casting a protest vote. Maybe it will register with someone, somewhere in the GOP and we see more fiscally conservative, libertarian minded candidates in 2012.

Huh... what?

2008-10-07T18:49:00.000-07:00

Watching the pres debate...

~8:45 pm central; Did Obama just say that 'government scientists invented the computer' and throw in something garbled about the defense department communicating with itself?

Wow! I didn't realise that Al Gore was a gov't scientist.

*****

McCain seems pretty on tonight. His attacks are sharp. He keeps saying 'cronyism' and gesturing at Obama... burn. Also, if you are playing a drinking game at home, you should be trashed by now; McCain has said "my friends" at least 50 times.

A handy dandy timeline of disaster!

2008-10-07T07:33:00.000-07:00

Obama, ACORN, and our economic meltdown.

Question: what does a community organizer do?

I wish that we could just laugh at this like it was some meaningless bit of fluff Obama inserted into his other wise sparse resume. The truth is, Obama is both highly experienced and devastatingly effective at community organizing; unfortunately, it's not the kind of organizing that most peace loving, self reliant Americans want going on in their communities.

Over at the National Review, Stanley Kurtz has an excellent analysis of the role of Obama and ACORN in the current subprime mortgage meltdown.

Planting Seeds of Disaster
ACORN, Barack Obama, and the Democratic party. By Stanley Kurtz

You’ve got only a couple thousand bucks in the bank. Your job pays you dog-food wages. Your credit history has been bent, stapled, and mutilated. You declared bankruptcy in 1989. Don’t despair: You can still buy a house.” So began an April 1995 article in the Chicago Sun-Times that went on to direct prospective home-buyers fitting this profile to a group of far-left “community organizers” called ACORN, for assistance. In retrospect, of course, encouraging customers like this to buy homes seems little short of madness.

Militant ACORN
At the time, however, that 1995 Chicago newspaper article represented something of a triumph for Barack Obama. That same year, as a director at Chicago’s Woods Fund, Obama was successfully pushing for a major expansion of assistance to ACORN, and sending still more money ACORN’s way from his post as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Through both funding and personal-leadership training, Obama supported ACORN. And ACORN, far more than we’ve recognized up to now, had a major role in precipitating the subprime crisis.

I’ve already told the story of Obama’s close ties to ACORN leader Madeline Talbott, who personally led Chicago ACORN’s campaign to intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to low-credit customers. Using provisions of a 1977 law called the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), Chicago ACORN was able to delay and halt the efforts of banks to merge or expand until they had agreed to lower their credit standards — and to fill ACORN’s coffers to finance “counseling” operations like the one touted in that Sun-Times article. This much we’ve known. Yet these local, CRA-based pressure-campaigns fit into a broader, more disturbing, and still under-appreciated national picture. Far more than we’ve recognized, ACORN’s local, CRA-enabled pressure tactics served to entangle the financial system as a whole in the subprime mess. ACORN was no side-show. On the contrary, using CRA and ties to sympathetic congressional Democrats, ACORN succeeded in drawing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the very policies that led to the current disaster.

The above article gives a good timeline of the social engineering programs that led us into this mess.

1977 -- Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)-- Passed by Jimmy Carter, calls on banks to increase lending to poor and minority neighborhoods. This legislation is used by ACORN to intimidate banks into providing subprime loans through a two pronged approach. One, they were able to file CRA complaints to block bank mergers and expansions. Two, they directly intimidated bank employees and executives in what they euphemistically term "direct action." The article describes it:

ACORN protesters will break into private offices, show up at a banker’s home to intimidate his family, or pour protesters into bank lobbies to scare away customers, all in an effort to force a lowering of credit standards for poor and minority customers.

1989 -- Savings and Loan Bailout -- included provisions requiring lenders to compile and make public statistics on race, gender, and income of mortgage applicants. The miracle of statistics provided groups like ACORN even more ammo for their bank intimidation tactics.

1989 - 1991 -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- Until the early 90's local banks were able to fall back on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to avoid making risky loans. Smaller banks could FMae and Fmac's refusals to purchase risky debt as political cover against ACORN's tactics.

1991 -- ACORN representatives testify before congress claiming loan bias and racism, and Democratic Congressmen pressure Fannie and Freddie to loosen lending practices

1992 & 1993 -- $3.5 billion committed by Fannie and Freddie to low income housing; $10 billion "affordable housing loan program" announced by Fannie. ACORN continues to complain of racism and strong arm smaller banks using CRA. Eventually, local banks join the chorus to pressure Fannie and Freddie to loosen lending standards to escape pressure from ACORN and allies.

1993 - 2002 -- Obama serves on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago. ACORN recieved the following grants from the woods fund under Obama's tenure: $45,000 (2000), $30,000 (2001), $45,000 (2001), $30,000 (2002), and $40,000 (2002). [ http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-and-the-woods-fund/2/ ]

1993 -- Billy Jeff becomes prez, woo hoo, good times. ACORN reps get monthly meetings with Clinton Housing Secretary Cisneros.

1995 -- Clinton announces the "National Homeownership Strategy" a series of regulatory changes which simultaneously forces Fannie and Freddie to lower standards for potential buyers while making it harder for banks to get a favorable (i.e. non-racist) CRA rating. [More reading on Clinton's Nat. Home ownership Strategy: How A Clinton-Era Rule Rewrite Made Subprime Crisis Inevitable ]

Up until this point subprime loans represented a trickle, but Clinton's home ownership initiatives opened the subprime flood gates and were certainly a "success." They certainly opened up "home occupation" (can it really be called ownership if they have no hope of ever paying off the mortgage?) to huge segments of the population through risky lending practices. A relevant snippet from the IBD article gives a good example:

Among those decisions were changes that let Fannie and Freddie get into subprime loan markets in a big way.

Other rule changes gave Fannie and Freddie extraordinary leverage, allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments, vs. 10% for banks.

Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks due to implicit government guarantees for their debt, the government-sponsored enterprises boomed.

With incentives in place, banks poured billions of dollars of loans into poor communities, often "no doc" and "no income" loans that required no money down and no verification of income.

By 2007, Fannie and Freddie owned or guaranteed nearly half of the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market — a staggering exposure.

Worse still was the cronyism.

Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of-work politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. An informal survey of their top officials shows a roughly 2-to-1 dominance of Democrats over Republicans.

Subprime lending and low-income housing schemes also provided a nifty way to funnel tax dollars into Democratic dominated voting blocks.

The Bush administration and the Republican controlled Congress are guilty of the sin of inaction. They could have put the breaks on Freddie, Fannie, and the ensuing housing bubble, but despite a few week attempts, they failed to do so. But then, who wants to get called racist. The voters are to blame, as well, everyone was happy as long as their home values increased at rates drastically above inflation.

It is said the devil's greatest trick is convincing man he doesn't exist. It seems that Socialism's greatest trick is convincing the American electorate that a disastrous experiments in wealth redistribution are somehow the result of Capitalist markets run amok. Meanwhile, Obama seems poised to pull off the biggest trick of all -- convincing the electorate that he had absolutely nothing to do with it and that more wealth redistribution, i.e. "Tax Fairness," is the solution.

Homer Simpson Endorses Obama

2008-10-03T06:37:00.000-07:00

... but votes McCain

D'OH!

Via Hotair, here is a leaked clip from the Nov2 Simpsons episode:

No it doesn't really make sense; it's the Simpsons.

The MV Iran Deyanat

2008-10-01T14:11:00.000-07:00

Somali pirates hijaked an Iranian cargo ship off the horn of Africa, and now they are dropping like flies from a mysterious illness:

Mystery surrounds hijacked Iranian ship

A tense standoff is underway in northeastern Somalia between pirates, Somali authorities, and Iran over a suspicious merchant vessel and its mysterious cargo. Hijacked late last month in the Gulf of Aden, the MV Iran Deyanat remains moored offshore in Somali waters and inaccessible for inspection. Its declared cargo consists of minerals and industrial products, however, Somali and regional officials directly involved in the negotiations over the ship and who spoke to The Long War Journal are convinced that it was heading to Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia's Islamist insurgents.

It was business as usual when speedboats surrounded the MV Iran Deyanat on August 21. The 44468 dead weight tonnage bulk carrier was pushing towards the Suez and had just entered the Gulf of Aden - dangerous waters where instability, greed and no-questions-asked ransom payments have led to a recent surge in piracy. Steaming past the Horn of Africa, 82 nautical miles southeast of al-Makalla in Yemen, the ship was a prize for the taking. It would bring hundreds of thousands of dollars - possibly millions - to the Somalia-based crime syndicate. The captain was defenseless against the 40 pirates armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades blocking his passage. He had little choice other than to turn his ship over to them. What the pirates were not banking on, however, was that this was no ordinary ship.

And a description of the illness:

The MV Iran Deyanat was brought to Eyl, a sleepy fishing village in northeastern Somalia, and was secured by a larger gang of pirates - 50 onboard and 50 onshore. Within days, pirates who had boarded the ship developed strange health complications, skin burns and loss of hair. Independent sources tell The Long War Journal that a number of pirates have also died. "Yes, some of them have died. I do not know exactly how many but the information that I am getting is that some of them have died," Andrew Mwangura, Director of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Program, said Friday when reached by phone in Mombasa.

Follow the link above, the whole article is worth reading.

Obama Youth

2008-10-01T14:00:00.001-07:00

A Youtube musical tribute to Our Dear Leader...

Obama's gonna swoop down from Washington DC on his magic unicorn, Toodles, and bring us all candy and toys. Yipee.

Little Fascists up early this morning...

2008-10-01T05:56:00.000-07:00

The Little Fascists are up early this morning with some double plus good ways to make your life miserable:

Meat must be rationed to four portions a week, says report on climate change

People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns.
The report, by the Food Climate Research Network, based at the University of Surrey, also says total food consumption should be reduced, especially "low nutritional value" treats such as alcohol, sweets and chocolates.

The general level of agreement in the comments section is equally disturbing. Do these people like being miserable? It kind of reminds me of something... what was it... oh yeah:

We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK
--Barak Obama, May 2008

Good morning! Big Brother is watching you!

Posting a bit slow

2008-09-30T06:28:00.001-07:00

... sorry for the slow posting, faithful readers (all 2 of you, hi mom and dad!) har har...

I've been trying to wrap my brain around this impending economic doom business; not being a banker, it's taken me quite awhile (and still is, I don't claim to fully understand it). Also there was the first pres debate; all fertile blogging ground which I have largely missed. Oh well.

Starting with the presidential debate last week. I don't know who won. I was so disturbed by the opening round in which both the candidates displayed zero leadership and zero grasp of the situation that I almost turned the dang tube off. A true conservative would have used the opening of the debate to defend free markets and capitalism and acurately describe this crisis as the product of social engineering and political correctness run amok. Instead we got regurgited populism from McCain, and apocalyptic incoherence from Obama.

At least I have the dim satisfaction of knowing I voted for the wacky Mormon in the primaries.

Briefly, on impending economic doom 2008 / New Great Depression, I am starting to wonder if this isn't a crisis a whole lot like global warming, as in -- one more excuse for a big socialist power grab. Weren't we all supposed to be roasting alive, choking on carbon dioxide, and drowning in the boiling ocean by now, anyway? Actually, you would think Democrats would be cheering this development. If the world economy grinds to a sceeching halt, they'll get their cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, no messy cap and trade scemes needed, and we will all be saved. Hooray.

Backing up my suspicions over this whole crisis is this quote from French president Sarkozy:

The idea of an all-powerful market without any rules and any political intervention is mad. Self-regulation is finished. Laissez faire is finished. The all-powerful market that is always right is finished.

As a general rule of thumb, I think it's usually a good idea to do the opposite of whatever the French are advocating. Is the government really the all knowing, all powerful wise and benevolent force that is going to save us all? Call me skeptical.

Anyhoo... here is a music video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5Vzrfkg-HY

shudder

2008-09-12T08:43:00.001-07:00

From the transcript of last night's presidential forum on CNN, in his own words, here is yet another good reason NOT to vote for Obama:

And so part of my job, I think, as president, is to make government cool again.

Go back to sleep children; don't worry, being a government tool will be soooo cool.

A wee bit of sanity

2008-09-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

Red-State Feminism

by Kay S. Hymowitz

Feminist Cat Fighting

2008-09-09T06:59:00.000-07:00

Hysterical denunciations of Palin as an Anti-feminist and smears against her family continue to pour out of the media. Today's winner of the Palin Derangement Syndrome daily column contest actually hails from Canada:

A Mighty Wind blows through Republican convention
By Heather Mallick

Here are some juicy tidbits.

She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

Wow... how... um... enlightened.

It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. They're unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas call out to each other in the jungle night? I mean, I know men have their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously.

My vagina is recoiling in horror at the thought that women like this claim to speak for all women. As far as Republican men being sexual inadequates... don't knock it 'til you've tried it, sistah. Additionally, I would bet good money that Todd Palin is more handy around the house and better help with the kids than Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Al Gore combined. And John Edwards... Okay, okay, I won't even go there.

I'm a feminist who understands that women can nurse terrible and delicate woman hatred.

... written without a slightest hint of irony...

Palin was not a sure choice, not even for the stolidly Republican ladies branch of Citizens for a Tackier America. No, she isn't even female really. She's a type, and she comes in male form too. John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls Palin an Alaska hillbilly.

...and they wonder why they keep getting called elitist.

Here's a thought: maybe, just maybe... McCain nominated Palin cause he likes her stance on issues and her track record of reform. That 80% approval rating as gov prolly didn't hurt either. I'm just typing off the top of my head here, but what if... Republicans aren't the raging misogynists they are reputed to be. What if... they are so energized about a women candidate because they love seeing a woman with a family succeed at home and at politics -- like it justifies their belief in family values and personal responsibility, or something. Nah ... they were clearly trying an eeeevil ploy to pander to Hilary voters.

I'm counting down until Steinem, Mallick, etc. come out with the big "it was all satire, stupid Rethuglicans" line once they reread their own writing.

No, it's not from the Onion

2008-09-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

Hippies Mourn Dead Trees

Just Asking

2008-09-05T16:42:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the snark, but this is really starting to annoy me.

Every single last critique of the Palin pick has employed some form of the hysterically typed: Sarah Palin is soooo inexperienced and she is a 72 year old heartbeat away from being president!!!

SO WHAT?!? If Obama is elected then the inexperienced one will actually be president. And what if Biden dies? Obama will be really screwed then. It's really just a veiled way of saying, McCain is old... nyah nyah. Who cares? Biden is old too. Nyah nyah.

Besides, I don't understand the fetish with the youth vote. I would be much more focused on the old people vote. If P. Diddy's yoot vote was worth a bucket of dog poo than eighteen year-olds would be able to legally drink beer. Instead, they can get drafted; meanwhile, old people get money from the government just by virtue of being old. Who's got the whole voting thing down here?

Okay, rant off.

Feminist Face Off

2008-09-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

The self proclaimed feminist elite aren't happy with Sarah Palin's VP nomination. Gloria Steinem writes yesterday in the LA Times:

Palin: Wrong Woman, Wrong Time

The claws come out quickly and Steinem proves she can be every bit as catty as your average third grade girl:

This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need.

She criticises Palin as an affirmative action pick, apparently completely unaware of the irony. Usually, it is conservatives opposition to affirmative action that liberals use to label them as racist of sexist. To be fair to Steinem, she does acknowledge the sexist slant to the liberal criticisms of Palin:

I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father.

However, Steinem displays a curiously lopsided notion of women's liberation when she spends most of her column smearing Palin as a tool of the "right-wing patriarchy" for holding conservative views. Apparently, it is inconceivable that a liberated, free thinking woman might sypathise with the socially conservative view.

Palin's main offense against Steinem's particular feminist sensibilities seems to be that she is pro-life. Steinem drips venom when she writes, "she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs." I don't completely agree with Palin on the abortion issue, myself, but I think it is disingenuous to characterise her views as supporting government control of women's wombs -- just as it would be unfair to claim that Steinem supports killing babies. No one advocates government mandated womb control or infanticide. The abortion debate centers around competing fundamental rights of two distinct individuals: the fundamental right of the unborn baby to live versus the equally fundamental right of an adult to control their own body. How you think these two rights should be balanced determines whether you call yourself pro-life or pro-choice. To say that pro-choice is the only feminist option is absurd.

Equally absurd is Steinem's claim that disbelief in anthropological global warming is somehow an anti-feminist view point:

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming.

The creationism bit is pure MSM fabrication. When Palin's comments on the subject are taken in context, she supports a teacher engaging the class in a scientific discussion if a student should bring up the subject of creationism -- rather than telling the poor kid to shut up. Otherwise, she supports the typical libertarian sentiment that school curriculum should be determined by locally elected officials. Furthermore, one's opinion on global warming is based on their knowledge and interpretation of scientific facts. How, by any stretch of logic, does holding a different scientific opinion from the majority of women qualify as anti-feminist?

According to our feminist masters, if a woman rejects the Democratic party platform, she is not liberated. Conservative women are to be marginalized as poseurs or pawns; women are only valuable when they vote Democratic and promote socialist agendas. Women must be delivered from the cruel patriarchal clutches of their fathers, husbands, and ministers and into the open and liberating arms of the state. Steinem wants to paint Palin as a victim and pawn of the "right-wing patriarchy," but she fails to explain how she herself is no better than a toady for the left wing grievance machine.

Palin a Neo Libertarian?

2008-09-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

I sure hope so!

This almost got missed in the general hub-bub of the last few days, but it's a point that I am really happy to see made:

The Libertarian Case for Palin

We will have to wait and see if over the next weeks of interviews and debates whether or not she truly governs from a libertarian perspective. If she does consider herself a libertarian then she would have to be a "neo-libertarian" -- definitely the direction I would like to see the Republican party head.

Mark Steyn kills me!

2008-09-04T10:35:00.000-07:00

Big funny over at the corner.

Well, um... wow

2008-09-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

First there was the Obama - Clinton DNC drama and a hurricane bearing down on the opening day of the RNC, I thought that was as exciting as things were going to get! Man, could I have been more wrong?

McCain unleashes Sarah Palin, his bombshell of a VP pick (pun totally intended - love the beehive and naughty librarian glasses). The leftwing blogosphere shifts into warp drive: She faked her pregnancy; Trig isn't Sarah's baby... he's Bristol's! Frenzied Daily Kos diarists published reports with highly scientific evidence 'debunking' the pregnancy like tiny pixelated pictures of the governor wearing all black and *gasp* she doesn't look preggo at 5mo! Michael Moore demands DNA evidence. In his blog, Liberaland, Fox News commenter Alan Colmes (of Hannity and Colmes) becomes completely unglued and suggests that Palin is an unfit mother and second guesses her obstetrician. Bloggers and the commentariat all over the left have asserted that because she has five children she cannot possibly be a good mother and VP. The Democratic party supports working mothers, but only if they don't have too many kids or get too ambitious.

Next plot twist, the Republican campaign announces that, in fact, 17 year old Bristol Palin is pregnant. Without skipping a beat, lefty smears about the youngest Palin are dropped in favor of the McCain-didn't-vet-his-VP meme, quickly followed by odd fantasies that 'evangelicals' will reject her. Alan Colmes has to pile on one more completely original smear:

Alan Colmes: Conservative Family Values

In her speech in Dayton today, Gov. Sarah Palin announced that she and her husband are celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary, which means they were married on August 29, 1988.

On April 20, 1989 – less than eight months after they eloped – their first son, Track, was born.

I think I can guess the real reason why they eloped, and it wasn’t to save money on an expensive wedding.

Sooo ... Sarah Palin had pre-marital sex and then married the baby daddy? That's scandalous? What century is Colmes blogging from, the 1800's? Actually, marrying your high school sweat heart, finishing college, having five beautiful children, and celebrating a happy 20yr marriage, all while leading a blazingly successful career... those ARE conservative family values.

Interestingly enough, rap star P. Diddy offers by far the most balanced and least sexist commentary coming out of the left. Language alert, lots of f-bombs, it also might make you motion sick.

Diddy Blog #16 - "John McCain Is Buggin The F%^k Out'"!

Best quote:

Alaska, mother fucker? What is the reality in Alaska? There's not even no crackheads in Alaska. There's not even no black people. There's not even no, like, crime, or like foreign policies."

Yup. You heard the man correctly: reality = crackheads = black people = crime = foreign policy. That's Diddy's theory; not mine.

Whew. Did you get all that? I'm still soaking it up. I have to give a nod to Obama for doing the classy thing and issuing this statement:

I think people's families are off-limits, and people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president.

It sounds like, suddenly, the left is afraid, very afraid. Last night, we got a little taste of why:

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

Ouch.

We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers.

And there is much to like and admire about our opponent.

But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate.

This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy ... our opponent is against producing it.

Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit.

Jab. Jab. Right hook. Jab. Uppercut.

Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions.

Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights? Government is too big ... he wants to grow it.

Congress spends too much ... he promises more.

Taxes are too high ... he wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan, and let me be specific.

The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes ... raise payroll taxes ... raise investment income taxes ... raise the death tax ... raise business taxes ... and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. My sister Heather and her husband have just built a service station that's now opened for business - like millions of others who run small businesses.

How are they going to be any better off if taxes go up? Or maybe you're trying to keep your job at a plant in Michigan or Ohio ... or create jobs with clean coal from Pennsylvania or West Virginia ... or keep a small farm in the family right here in Minnesota.

How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy?

Knockout!

Personal disclosure: I was jumping on the couch and cheering about halfway through this speech. I was wondering what it was going to take to get me excited about the Republican ticket. Sarah 'Cuda just might be my hero.

Update
Dangit! The P. Diddy video just disappeared from Youtube! Conspiracy!

if Orwell could blog...

2008-08-28T06:01:00.000-07:00

Supa cool! George Orwell's diaries are being posted to the day, 70 years later, as though he were a blogger.

Background:

The Orwell Prize, Britain’s pre-eminent prize for political writing, is publishing George Orwell’s diaries as a blog. From 9th August 2008, Orwell’s domestic and political diaries (from 9th August 1938 until October 1942) will be posted in real-time, exactly 70 years after the entries were written.
Orwell’s ‘domestic’ diaries begin on 9th August 1938/2008; his ‘political’ diaries (which are further categorised as ‘Morocco’, ‘Pre-war’ and ‘Wartime’) begin on 7th September 1938/2008.
The diaries are exactly as Orwell wrote them. Where there are original spelling errors, they are indicated by a ° following the offending word.

The entries so far are mostly weather and gardening; the good stuff should start in a week or two. This is definitely worth keeping an eye on!

Bookmark this link:
Orwell Diaries

Anarchist Riots in Denver

2008-08-26T12:45:00.000-07:00

A group of radicals/anarchists calling themselves "Recreate '68" are attempting to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in Denver. They wear black and cover their faces; their tactics include hurling rocks and bags of urine at police officers. Their main agenda seemed to be disrupting fundraisers and other functions in downtown Denver related to the convention. Of course, denied the opportunity to do that, they resort to petty vandalism.

These new age brown shirts aren't confined to this event. They (ne'er-do-wells dressed in black intent on rioting and inflicting property damage in the name of the cause-du-jure) make appearances at other evens such as meetings of the WTO and G8 in the US and Europe. They have also announced plans on the internet to disrupt the Republican National Convention, as well. They are fuzzy on their ideology; these gangs are usually made up of an odd alliance of communists and anarchists. Their overarching grievance is usually euphemistically phrased as "anti-imperialism" or "anti-capitalism" of course we see in this case, the real result of their actions is to interefere with the legitimate democratic process.

Blogger and citizen journalist, Zombie, was in Denver and has reports posted on littlegreenfootballs. Follow the links for pictures and excellent commentary:

Zombie: The Denver Games - Opening Ceremony
Zombie: Recreate 68 Finally Lives Up to Its Name: Riot in Denver

Best caption:

An unfortunate side effect of announcing your riot on the Internet is that the police can see the announcement as well. As a result, squads of cops milled through the crowd, looking for troublemakers.

Bummer

2008-08-26T06:30:00.000-07:00

Jimmy Carter didn't speak at the Dem convention yesterday; that's like the summer Olympics without the speed walking or the synchronized swimming! Think of the missed entertainment opportunity.

Link: Carter won't speak at Dem convention

FYI Obama: You’re Not Reagan

2008-08-25T07:37:00.000-07:00

But you’ve got that Jimmy Carter thing down

Obama would like to think of himself as the liberal’s Ronald Reagan, and his campaign would love to invoke the image of the Reagan 1980 electoral landslide in the minds of voters. Obama frequently compares himself to Reagan in stump speeches, and why wouldn’t he? Reagan rode a wave of public discontent to a historical political landslide. He appealed to voters in both parties to engineer a nationwide political realignment that still shapes today’s political landscape. He was a celebrity idealist and sunny optimist whose only apparent weakness was his image as an inexperienced Hollywood lightweight. Obama kicked off the Reagan comparisons early in the primary season with this widely quoted interview with the Reno Gazette Journal Editorial Board on Jan 14, 2008:

I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different is the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I mean, I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America, in a way that, you know, that Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.

Unfortunately, as has been a trend with Democratic candidates in the last two presidential elections, Obama underestimates the intelligence of the average voter. The majority of Americans are more sophisticated than the Democratic campaign gives them credit for. Issues and character inform the average voter and direct their ballot – not slick photo ops and snazzy logos. The Obama campaign and its supporters are tragically focused on the latter and fail to recognize that it was common sense policies and strength of character that fueled Reagan’s political appeal amongst both Republicans and Democrats. Some superficial similarities to Reagan aside, Obama has much more in common with Jimmy Carter on deeper levels of policy and political thinking. Whether it is taxes, foreign policy, or even racial politics, similarities to the Carter administration are strikingly evident.

First on taxes and the economy, hoping to deflect criticism of Obama’s policies, Chuck Raasch wrote last month in USATODAY.com, “Democrats had ridiculed Reagan as an actor who had crazy economic theories.” It is a convenient narrative for Democrats to point out that Reagan was criticized for promoting “voodoo economics” much as Obama is being ridiculed for his taxation policies today. However, the ridicule is where the similarities to Reagan end, and in terms of taxes, Reagan and Obama could not be further apart in their respective philosophies.

Reagan was an adherent to supply side economics that promoted strategically adjusting capital gains and income taxes to encourage production and thus maximize tax revenue. In our modern tax climate, this means cutting taxes. Obama, on the other hand, advocates raising taxes to make things more “fair.” His campaign dubs its policy, “Tax Fairness for the Middle Class;” of course, Obama would be our grand arbiter of fairness. During the Democratic primaries in the ABC debate against Senator Clinton on April 16, 2008, Charles Gibson challenged Obama on his capital gains tax policy. Gibson pointed out that, historically, lowering the capitol gains tax actually increases government revenue so why would Obama favor increasing capitol gains tax? Obama responded, “I would look at raising taxes for purposes of fairness.”

Additionally, taking a page directly from the Carter playbook, Obama also advocates a revival of the disastrous Windfall Profits Tax. In stump speeches, Obama calls out Exxon-Mobile by name and sneers at their supposedly unseemly profits to finagle public support for this bill. Of course, Obama fails to mention that this tax decreased domestic production and increased dependency on foreign oil while failing dramatically to produce expected revenues. Reagan finally succeeded in repealing this tax in 1988.

Likewise, we see eerie echoes of Carter foreign policy in the Obama campaign. The most striking example is their mutual fumbling on questions of American policy towards Iran. During the Iran hostage crisis, Carter’s bungling resulted in hostages being held for 444 days and a botched rescue attempt which still holds propaganda value for terrorists to this day. Obama isn’t Commander in Chief yet, but his current stumbles on the campaign trail may foreshadow future debacles. During the YouTube/CNN Democratic primary debate, a participant asked the candidates the following question:

Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during your first year of your administration in Washington, or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

Without hesitation Senator Obama responded affirmatively, and for bonus points, threw in another Reagan reference:

I would, and the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of [the Bush] administration is ridiculous. Now, Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to the Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire… [Iran and Syria] have been acting irresponsibly up until this point, but if we tell them that we are not going to be a permanent occupying force, we are going to be in a position to say that they are going to have to carry some weight in terms of stabilizing the region.

No one is really sure how, exactly, Obama would convince Iran and Syria to “carry some weight in terms of stabilizing the region,” or how announcing a retreat of the US military would encourage regional strongmen to act more “responsibly”. The Obama campaign never really clarified the points, either. However, there is no doubt that Ahmadinejad, or any other Iranian leader, would milk a face-to-face meeting with a US president for all the propaganda value it was worth, and furthermore, meeting without preconditions would only reinforce present bad behavior by the regime.

In a rebuttal to the same question, Senator Clinton avoids falling into the trap:

Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year; I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high of a level before you know what the intentions are. I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes; I don’t want to make a situation even worse.

Before even securing his party’s nomination, Obama hands the Iranian regime a needless propaganda victory.

Like taxes and Middle East policy, even race politics came up back in 1980, and once again, Obama comes out looking a whole lot more like a Carter than a Reagan. Speaking on August 4, 1980 to the Neshoba County Fair outside Philadelphia, Mississipi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964, Reagan delivered what he intended to be a standard stump speech about restricting the size and influence of the federal government, but he unwisely used the term “states’ rights” to reference this concept. It is true that the term “states’ rights” has an ignoble history in the South. The States’ Rights Democratic Party ran Strom Thurmond for president in 1968 on an anti-segregation, pro-Jim Crow platform; however, in 1980 it was Jimmy Carter who first played the race card when he accused Reagan of racism. Speaking to the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia on September 15, 1980, Carter told the audience:

You’ve seen in this campaign the stirrings of hate and the rebirth of code words like “states’ rights” in a speech in Mississippi in a campaign reference to the Ku Klux Klan relating to the South.

Reagan already had a long and well documented history of supporting states’ rights—in the small federal government meaning of the phrase—in a completely non-racial context as governor of California. Certainly, the use of the term was an insensitive gaffe on Reagan’s part made by a Californian out of his element in the deep South, but to construe his statement as a secret message to white supremacists, as Carter did, is race baiting hysteria.

Fast forward to 2008, McCain has not yet made any such slip, yet Obama pre-emptively accuses him of running a racist campaign. Speaking at a campaign stop in Missouri on July 30, 2008, Obama warned supporters to be on guard for racist attacks:

What they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

After the Obama campaign initially denying that his comment was about race, David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, conceded the obvious, that Obama’s remarks were about ethnicity, making the Obama campaign the first to play the race card. The race card may have helped nudge Obama ahead of Clinton in the primaries; however, Reagan weathered these types of attacks in 1980, and they ultimately reflected poorly on Carter. Likewise, this line of attack is unlikely to bear fruit for Obama in the 2008 general election.

Finally, Obama sought the ultimate Reagan-esque photo op and hoped to cement the image of himself as the liberal Reagan with a speech at Berlin’s Brandenburg gate in front of a crowd of cheering Germans. After expressions of concern from German chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama was forced to move his rally to the Berlin Victory Column. Obama did indeed get his photo taken in front of thousands of cheering Germans; however, in a speech smattered with no less than sixteen wall references, Obama never once achieved the clarity and impact of Reagan’s imperative, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Instead, Obama’s wall metaphors ran together into a bland string of platitudes because he utterly lacks the character, precision of thought, and sound principles that Reagan articulated in one simple sentence.

It was not Reagan’s clever use of a good line that riled the crowd; it was Reagan’s unambiguous rejection of tyranny against an undertow of moral equivalence that awed Germany and America. Sadly, from his questionable associations with Raila Odinga, to his vote on the Iraq war and opposition of the surge, right up to his timid and ambiguous statements on the Russian invasion of Georgia, Obama has shown Americans that he is all too willing to tolerate tyranny and embrace moral equivalence. Furthermore, Obama’s tax policies and even his use of the race card in the current election bear a much closer resemblance to those of Carter in 1980 than of Reagan. With Jimmy Carter speaking on Monday night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, the electoral analogy comes around full circle – but clearly not in the way that favors Obama.

3AM Obama Central

2008-08-23T05:13:00.000-07:00

Like a needy ex-girl friend drunk dialing from outside some cheesy frat boy bar, the Obama campaign texted its VP announcement to supporters just after 3AM (eastern) early Saturday morning.

Drumroll please... the winner is Joe Biden!

The Obama campaighn promised that supporters would be the first to learn of the VP text and would find out by text message (wow... Obama is just soooo cool). Unfortunately, Obama's pick was leaked to the media late friday forcing the campaighn to send the 3am message.

Obama selects Biden

A/C = Bush = eeeevil

2008-08-21T08:21:00.000-07:00

Does air conditioning make people vote Republican?

Wow. Just wow. The author attempts to make the case that A/C is responsible for the rise of the eeeevil "Bush dynasty," John McCain, and the all around degenration of the idustrial Northeast. Yep. A/C is resposible for all our social ills, chief among them the fact that more people are voting for conservatives:

As we observe Air Conditioning Appreciation Week, we should thank A/C for reducing malaria and infant mortality, for allowing pollen sufferers to breathe in the summer and for cooling the labs that produce our computer chips. But we should also talk about the unintended consequences of a machine that pumps out cold air.

Let's start with the Bush dynasty.

So... we have fewer dead babies and no one dies of malaria... BUT people are voting for George Bush! Unintended consequences, indeed.

In 1966, Texas became the first state in which half the homes were air-conditioned. That same year, George H.W. Bush was elected to Congress -- from Houston. Coincidence? Or does air conditioning make people vote Republican? After all, the GOP's rise in the South coincides with the region's adoption of air conditioning.

Yep. A/C, definitely eeeeevil.

It's easy to write this now because we've had a cool summer in Chicago. The temperature has never topped 91 degrees. On Monday night, I turned on the bedroom fan for the first time all of August. But I moved here on the day the Great Heat Wave of 1995 spiked. I nearly fainted carrying furniture up a flight of stairs. Over 500 people suffocated to death inside their apartments. Air conditioners would have saved lives, but it's too simple to say the heat wave victims died just because they didn't have them. Most were old, alone and afraid to open their windows. Some died not because they lacked air conditioning, but because they lacked it in an air-conditioned society. The traditional method of cooling off in a heat wave -- camping out in the parks -- is no longer acceptable. No one looked in on those people because, in the age of air conditioning, it's hard to remember that a heat wave can cull the weak and the elderly.

Okay, try to follow this logic: 500 elderly people suffocated to death in their apartments (in Chicago), they were too afraid to open their windows or go out into parks (in Chicago), and no one checked in on them (in Chicago). All of this is the fault of "air-conditioned society" a.k.a. Bush, Texans, and Republican voters in the south. Did you follow? No? Well, you are obviously a dumb redneck.

Update -- Chicago Annenburg Challange

2008-08-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

They're friends. So what?

Via Ed Morressey at Hot Air: Obama hiding behind Daley's skirts?

Morressey links to Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass, who provides an informative quote on the issue from Chicago's mayor Richard M. Daley:

When Daley says shhh, library is quiet on Obama

"Bill Ayers--I've said this—his father was a great friend of my father," the mayor said. "I'll be very frank. Vietnam divided families, divided people. It was a terrible time of our country. People didn't know one another. Since then, I'll be very frank, [Ayers] has been in the forefront of a lot of education issues and helping us in public schools and things like that."

The mayor expressed his frustrations with outside agitators like Kurtz.

"People keep trying to align himself with Barack Obama," Daley said. "It's really unfortunate. They're friends. So what? People do make mistakes in the past. You move on. This is a new century, a new time. He reflects back and he's been making a strong contribution to our community."

Oops! I bombed the Pentagon!

So what? The voters get to decide what matters--not Obama and his buddies. With a resume as light as Obama's; his friends do matter. Now, we may never see the records though. The common consensus seems to be that if Kurtz, or anyone, ever does receive the documents, they will have been sanitized beyond recognition.

McBain for President!

2008-08-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

Cute, Simpsons themed McCain parody:

Obama, Taxes, and Fairness

2008-08-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

From William McGurn at the Wall Street Journal:
For Obama, Taxes Are About Fairness

McGurn presents some good analysis about the Saddleback Church debate, and concludes with a good followup question:

Mr. Warren, a man of the cloth, has done us a great service by asking the candidates to answer a pretty secular question: What kind of income makes an American "rich"? Maybe in the more secular setting of an upcoming debate, one of our nonpastor moderators could ask the candidates the moral question: What specific rate of individual taxation would it take for the rich to be paying their fair share?

I don't know how John McCain or Barack Obama Jr. would answer this question. However, Barack Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr. has given us his opinion:

Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed. ( http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=302137342405551 )

Note: One of Obama's two autobiographies was title Dreams from My Father. Apparently, Obama's dad was dreaming of a whole lotta taxes.

Update: Chicago Annenberg Challange records

2008-08-19T13:38:00.000-07:00

Will we find out what's in those 132 boxes of documents before the election? Maybe not.

Bill Burton, a UIC spokesman, says "The university has not received ownership rights to the Chicago Annenburg Challange collection. The university is aggressively pursuing an agreement with the donor, and as soon as an agreement is finalized the collection will be made av to the public." Burton would not disclose the donor, but did confirm that the donor was not Bill Ayers. Near the end of the interview, Burton reveals "If it can't be done [an ownership agreement] then the material will be returned to the owner."

Link:
Annenberg Records in Grave Danger
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmQ2NmI3NTEzMTA4YWI1NzYxZDFiZTAzMDNmN2JmMjQ=
Radio Interview:
http://www2.nationalreview.com/dest/2008/08/19/billburtonuicrepphonecallaug191.mp3

Latest Nutroots Nuttiness

2008-08-19T11:52:00.000-07:00

The buzz over at DailyKos is whether McCain is making up his story about a Vietnamese guard drawing a cross in the sand outside his cell during one of his Christmases in captivity. There is no way to prove whether or not McCain is making this story up. Of course, the bigger picture is: McCain spent five and a half years enduring beatings and torture in the service of his country while during the analogous period in his life, Obama was chillin' with Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. Somehow, that point goes blazing straight over the nutroots pointy little heads.

Here is a link to a dailykos journal outlining their 'evidence' that the story is fabricated:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/17/122230/161/239/569299

I was watching the forum last night and decided that since I hadn't eaten yet, I would try to listen to John McCain speak. I was doing OK with the "my friends" and the evil chuckle when I heard him talk about his POW story of the cross in the dirt. That was when I couldn't take it anymore.

rickrocket's diary :: ::
It just sounded so fake and so contrived, so I did a little research about it. Someone on here said it sounded like a scene from Ben-Hur, so I did a google search about Ben-Hur and cross in the sand and such. No dice. But I searched around a little bit more and here is what I found. A story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn from his times in the Soviet Gulags.

Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His life appeared to be nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation. The intense suffering reduced him to a state of despair.

On one particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much for him. He saw no reason to continue his struggle, no reason to keep on living. His life made no difference in the world. So he gave up.

Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.

As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

The silver lining to all this? Lefties reading Solzhenitsyn!

What's in the Chicago Annenberg Challange records?

2008-08-18T21:05:00.000-07:00

Will we ever find out?

Obama's relationship with Weather Underground terrorist and unrepentant Pentagon bomber, Bill Ayers, came up during the Democratic primaries, but the press has been lax on following up on the details of this relationship since Obama dismissed Ayers as some guy who lives in his neighborhood.

On Obama's short resume, his Chicago community activism plays a central role. According to wikipedia Obama served on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challange (CAC) from 1995 to 2002, including a four year stint as chairman of the board. Bill Ayers founded the CAC and wrote the charter grant in 1993 and served as a co-chair with Obama.

During the Democratic primary debates, the question of Obama’s association with Ayers came up and Obama dismissed it casually:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."

An extensive collection of records of the CAC are currently housed in the J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Writing at nationalreviewonline.com, Stanley Kurtz outlines the potential significance of these documents:

That document cache contains the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The records in question are extensive, consisting of 132 boxes, containing 947 file folders, a total of about 70 linear feet of material. Not only would these files illuminate the working relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers, they would also provide significant insight into a web of ties linking Obama to various radical organizations, including Obama-approved foundation gifts to political allies. Obama’s leadership style and abilities are also sure to be illuminated by the documents in question.

Kurtz contacted the library and obtained written permission from library officials to view the records. As Kurtz was boarding a plane to Chicago to examine the records, he received an email that his access had been revoked!

Kurtz’s expedition into the depths of the UIC bureaucracy to view the enigmatic CAC records can only be described as Kafka-esque. The whole tale is detailed here, and it reads like the plot line of a political thriller – all it is missing is a car chase and a couple of shootouts:

Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown?

It is well worth the time to follow the link and read Kurtz’s full account. He sets loose an avalanche of questions; whose answers may have major implications in the upcoming election. Why was Kurtz’s access to these files abruptly revoked? What do these records have to say about Obama’s relationship with Ayers? What else might they tell us about Obama? Who is suppressing their release? It’s possible that this is dead end, just a bunch of ho-hum meeting minutes of some obscure education committee, but if so, why go through all the trouble to hide them from the public?

Russia, not so tiny

2008-08-15T12:37:00.000-07:00

The Russia/Georgia conflict continues to heat up; Putin is clearly not taking the weekend off. Currently, headlining over at The Drudge Report:

Kremlin Warning: Poland Takes the Shield

MOSCOW (AP) - A top Russian general said Friday that Poland's agreement to accept a U.S. missile interceptor base exposes the ex-communist nation to attack, possibly by nuclear weapons, the Interfax news agency reported.
The statement by Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn is the strongest threat that Russia has issued against the plans to put missile defense elements in former Soviet satellite nations.

Poland and the United States on Thursday signed a deal for Poland to accept a missile interceptor base as part of a system the United States says is aimed at blocking attacks by rogue nations. Moscow, however, feels it is aimed at Russia's missile force.
"Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike—100 percent," Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, was quoted as saying.

In the immortal words of Scooby Doo, “Ruh-row.” I am also reminded of some other immortal words from Our Dear Leader from a few months ago:

That’s what Reagan did with Gorbachev; that’s what Nixon did with Mao. I mean, think about it; Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union! They don’t pose a serious threat to us, the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us, and yet, we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, “we’re going to wipe you off the planet.” And ultimately that direct engagement, lead to a series of measures that helped prevent nuclear war, and over time, brought about the kind of opening that brought down the Berlin wall.

First off, I would like to give Senator Obama props for recognizing that the USSR was actually a threat to US security prior to 1989. However, putting Obama’s tiny-ness to threat ratio aside, if Obama has any “direct engagement[s]” or “series of actions” he would like to suggest that would onvince Russia to take a chill pill, right now might be a good time to speak up. I mean, think about it; Russia isn’t such a tiny country. And lastly, Obama, you might be a celebrity, but you ain’t no Reagan.

WWII According to Quentin Tarantino

2008-08-15T08:30:00.000-07:00

World War II not gory enough for you? Never fear! Concerned that there are not enough blood and guts WWII movies available in cinematic archives, Quentin Tarantino endeavors to fill the void:

Quentin Tarantino signs Brad Pitt to star in gory World War II movie

Cult moviemaker Quentin Tarantino is poised to make a blood-spattered World War II epic starring Brad Pitt as the leader of a maverick U.S. unit of Jewish soldiers which scalps Nazis.

Tarantino, in Berlin this week scouting locations for ’Inglorious Bastards,’ begins directing the film at the famed Babelsberg Studios on the outskirts of the capital on October 13.

The director of ’Pulp Fiction,’ ’Reservoir Dogs’ and ’Kill Bill’ wrote a 165-page script in record time about a no-rules squad of desperadoes operating behind enemy lines in the war.

I always thought that Brad Pitt looked kinda Jewish!