Monthly Archives: November 2010

BREAKING NEWS!

Posted on November 20, 2010 | Leave a comment

The party is breaking up. The Democrats are splitting into two factions with Obama on the left and Pelosi and Reid on the left. The Obama crowd on the left continues to rally around the cry- “Bush did it!” The faction on the left, the other left, being more Progressive has decided to Move-On to the slogan “Obama did it! Don’t blame the rest of the party!”

The Dems know the Dude is done. Nancy Pelosi has ordered a new bus from Government Motors to be parked on the White House lawn. Harry Reid is getting the casinos to donate some red and blue pillows to put under the big vehicle. The contract to paint a presidential seal on the rear of the bus is going to an important campaign donor and the words AT LEAST I TRIED will appear in a ring around the seal. As Obama goes under the bus it will be in a style befitting his presidency.

Pelosi is going with the slogan “I did it! And it was all good!” In fact, in a private meeting with her Presidential Campaign Exploration Committee Nancy expressed confidence in her electoral chances, saying “By 2012 all the little people will have come to realize what I have done and vote for me.”

“No more negative campaigning,” she pledged with her characteristic smile. The theme will be forward looking and very progressive. With Obama gone we can pass Card Check to strengthen the labor unions, the DREAM Act to increase the population of Democratic voters and Cap and Trade as an outreach to other nations by making it easier for them to compete with U.S. industry. To reach the useful masses we will cry “Give us your votes and we will reduce your mortgage payments! We’ve done it before and we can do it again!”

They do have a point there. In fact some citizens no longer have to make any mortgage payments at all.

So it's not from Government Motors, but the colors are right

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PELOSI INVOKES HOUSE RULE TO BLOCK UNEMPLOYMENT BILL THEN CONDEMNS REPUBLICANS FOR IT

Posted on November 20, 2010 | 3 comments

Republicans are being condemned for blocking passage of the House bill to extend unemployment benefits. But wait; how can that be when Democrats control the House, the Senate and the Presidency?

The answer is the Democrats under the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi carried out a strategy of presenting the bill under rules that would assure its failure. A credible claim could then be made that Republicans blocked the bill and cut income off to the unemployed at the start of the holiday season. It was a knight’s move in the game of politics.

Here is how it was done. Under the normal standing rules of the House a bill only needs a simple majority to pass. The bill as it was just presented, garnered 63% of the votes, so under the regular rules, it would have clearly passed the House. Two special rules had to be invoked to assure the bill’s timely failure. First of all, amendment proposals were disallowed, and second, a special rule requiring a supermajority for passage was invoked. With these two moves Speaker Pelosi engineered the failure of the bill.

One more step was taken to insure solid Republican voting against the bill. The cost wasn’t funded. It was stipulated that new borrowing be undertaken to meet the cost.

Surely it must be less than 1% of the public that is familiar with the Rules of the House. The press is little more aware of the intricacies of the rules and how they can be employed strategically. The watch dog is asleep. There could be little fear the public would see the ploy. But the fact remains, only the Democrats had the power to kill the bill. This they did. It was an action against the interests of their constituency taken for political gain and the public is none the wiser.

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Posted in News, Opinion, Political polemics

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HEADLINE CORRECTNESS AT CNBC

Posted on November 19, 2010 | 1 comment

Headline from CNBC Online, Nov 18, 2010

Nearly 1 in 5 Americans had mental illness in 2009″

The last line in the article reads,

The survey also found that 23.8 percent of women had some form of mental illness, compared with 15.6 percent of men.

That’s 50% greater mental instability among women than among men. I think the CNBC writers missed a good headline. That is not to say we agree with the results of the survey. We have no idea what the percentage should be.

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Posted in News, Satire

THE BANKS HAVE THE MONEY

Posted on November 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

Banks are currently holding Excess Reserves of more than $1,000,000,000,000, that’s a trillion dollars in cash. Excess Reserves are funds over and above those required to meet mandated capital requirements. In plain English, the trillion is money to lend. It’s inventory, the same way as shoes are inventory in a shoe store.

Shoe shops are in business to sell shoes. Banks are in business to lend money. That’s how they generate a profit. The banks have the inventory; why aren’t the banks lending it? For the same reason as a shoe stores when shoe stores don’t sell  shoes. No customers.

Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker put it this way. “Corporate America isn’t borrowing because business leaders are frightened by the recent legislation”. The fright list includes:

  • Higher cost of hiring due to new health care legislation. How much higher is still unknown.
  • Likely increase of corporate taxes
  • A Congress and an administration that wants to add a carbon tax on business, cost unknown.
  • A Congress and an administration that wants to strengthen the power of labor unions
  • A Congress and an administration that wants to reduce the spending power of consumers by increasing their taxes
  • Disincentives introduced by government dictates on executive pay and use of corporate aircraft
  • Rule of Law being replaced by regulatory discretion

In a recent interview Mr. Becker explained how recent legislation has been structured in a way that substitutes regulatory discretion for the Rule of Law. The result is a lack of a clear set of rules upon which a business can calculate the cost before adding employees and developing expansion plans.

Mr. Becker compiled his list well before November 4th. The election has taken the steam out of many of these fears. Give it a year and if the radical Democrats still look like they have lost control, business and the economy will begin to pick up. Oh yes, and if Europe doesn’t blow up, and if Bernanke’s plan doesn’t backfire.

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111 FAVORS CALLED WAIVERS

Posted on November 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

There is no justifiable reason for the 111 companies to be exempt from Obamacare law while thousands of others are not. The waivers are favors and nothing less.

The message conveyed is that you can avoid the law by making application to the government. Visions of an open door for corruption fly at you with the speed of a lightening bolt. It is also obvious that size matters. Big business has the knowledge and clout for obtaining favors from Washington that smaller companies do not.

The waivers are just another in a series of acts of subrogating the rule of law to executive and congressional dictate. We saw it when Chrysler bondholders were deprived of their rights under established bankruptcy law. We see it when cities and states publicly state their refusal to obey Federal immigration law and no consequences ensue, not even verbal condemnation from the Department of Justice. On the contrary, when a state steps in to carry out the law, federal law, the federal government sues the state!

Breakdown of rule of law is seen at the local level as well. Voter intimidation at the poling place and various police departments refusal to respond to reports of certain crimes are examples. When respect for the law breaks down the criminal element gains and everyone else loses. In order for respect for the law to be maintained, laws must be enforced, corrected or repealed.

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Posted in Political philosophy

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THE POST-AMERICAN PRESIDENT

Posted on November 16, 2010 | Leave a comment

The video is very disturbing. Obama praises India lavishly, asserting it is a land of great innovation but says America is flawed. You know he is referring to the United States when he says we are living in an era of greed with economic injustice that has endured down through the years. Indonesia does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. People from Israel are not allowed to enter the Muslim country today. Yet Obama praises Indonesia for its tolerance while reminding the world of slavery that has been extinguished for a century and a half.

America has made a horrible mistake. We have elected a man who despises us to lead us, a man whose dreams are of his father and whose heart is in his Indonesian and Muslim roots. We have elected as our President a man who sees our dominant status in the world to be a modern form of colonization, a power for bad, not a power for good.

We have chosen a man to lead today’s America who seeks retribution for slavery as though unaware that scourge was ended over 140 years ago, and that we did it from within with great sacrifice of blood, white blood we might add, shed in order that blacks might be free.

We have elected a man to lead us who is dedicated to change, but what he wants to change is not our faults but that which made us great. We have elected as our President a man who has publicly declared the Constitution he has sworn to uphold, along with the Declaration of Independence, are but a meaningless set of words. We have chosen to lead us a man who would subvert us, a man who seeks to take from those among us that which has been earned and distribute it to those who earned it not.

America has made a horrible mistake. And in so doing, we have proven the vulnerability of Democracy.

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To leave you on an upbeat note we close with a musical tribute to the people in our Army, Navy, Marines and Air  Force. It was filmed in Iraq. If we capture the enthusiasm of these men and women who serve us abroad, and I think we have, we will be triumphant in the ideological battle here at home.

Please tell your friends about the messages in this post.

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Posted in Audio/Visual, Political polemics

“ONE AND DONE”

Posted on November 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Douglas Schoen and Pat Caddell, writing for the Washington Post say President Obama should announce “One and done” with respect to his terms in office. These are the words of two Democratic operatives writing in a liberal newspaper.

“[Obama would be] putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones. To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.”

No, the WaPo has not turned conservative; the paper continues to support the liberal agenda. However, it concludes those goals can best be served if Obama announces he will not run in 2012 because he Obama has “lost the consent of the governed.” The authors reason that, with the President out of the race, Republicans would be more “cooperative’ and less opposed to Obama.

They have it wrong. They still don’t get it. It is not Obama that Republicans and Conservative oppose; it’s his policies. And as for a promise not to run for a second term, who would trust that? The number of politicians who have made that statement prior to running for office must be in the thousands.

Schoen and Caddell acknowledge a measure of hostility and division coming from Obama without noting any similar animosity coming from his opposition.

“In recent days, he has offered differing visions of how he might approach the country’s problems. At one point, he spoke of the need for “mid-course corrections.” At another, he expressed a desire to take ideas from both sides of the aisle. And before this month’s midterm elections, he said he believed that the next two years would involve “hand-to-hand combat” with Republicans, whom he also referred to as “enemies.”

Could it be they are beginning to get it?

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MILTON FRIEDMAN ON GREED

Posted on November 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Milton Friedman was not only a brilliant economist; he was a great debater as well. He had a knack of going straight to the core of an issue. He spoke in words anyone could understand, a rare talent among those in his profession.

Economics is an in-exact science, comprised less of facts and more of schools of thought. The belief in free markets, the sanctity of private property and the Rule of Law is known in the field of economics as “the Friedman school”. Friedman is a Nobel Prize winner but the highest honor an economist can earn is to have the world  add the word “school” to your name.

Here is Friedman’s response to Phil Donohue’s version of the age old question, isn’t capitalism a travesty on the poor?

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WHAT WILL THE DEMS DO ON MONDAY?

Posted on November 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

Congress re-convenes on Monday Nov 15, 2010; Sen. Reid has retained his seat for 6 more years. But Speaker Pelosi’s control of the gavel and majority support only remains in force for six more weeks. That’s a too short a time to accomplish all the goals left on the agenda. So which one will they pick?

Healthcare is done. Freddie, Fannie and Frank have been saved. Spending the precious allotment of time remaining on old issues like abortion and gun control would be a waste. The big ones still to be done are Card Check (strengthen the labor unions), Carbon Tax (save the environment) and the DREAM Act (save the Party).

Survival being the first instinct of all mankind, the answer is obvious. If Pelosi and Reid see any hope at all for passage of the DREAM Act, that is where they will focus their energies. The provisions of the DREAM Act are designed to increase the population of Hispanic and other immigrant voters and widen the Democratic Party base.

The Heritage Foundation explains how the DREAM Act would provide de-facto amnesty for illegals. The bullet points are:

  • It would reward illegal aliens for violating federal immigration laws by giving them in-state tuition while there are state laws that deny legal aliens on student visas such tuition benefits.
  • It would encourage more illegal immigration by sending the message that the U.S. does not take its immigration laws seriously.
  • It would offer these benefits on taxpayer dollars while out-of-state students struggle to fund their college educations and the economy flounders.
  • It would prohibit the government from deporting anyone who files an application for DREAM Act benefits and would prohibit other agencies (such as the Department of Homeland Security) from receiving the information—essentially giving amnesty to individuals regardless of whether they actually qualify for the act’s protections.
  • It would allow younger illegal immigrants the opportunity, like legal immigrants, to sponsor their immediate family members for a green card. While current law prohibits sponsorship of illegal immigrants living in the U.S., this leaves open the possibility that they could fraudulently, through falsified documents or other means, sponsor their parents who are in the U.S. illegally—creating an even larger amnesty.

Here is a link to the entire Heritage Foundation report. 

If Pelosi and Reid determine that sufficient votes for passage of the DREAM Act cannot be had, we would guess the second choice would be to spend the time attacking the rich and condemning anticipated Republican blockage of Democratic initiatives.

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Posted in Opinion, Political polemics

WASTIN’ AT THE RITZ

Posted on November 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

The Austerity Committee is meeting at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Phoenix, AZ. The Ritz was chosen because the room rates don’t run more than $1,299 per night (double occupancy) and breakfast is included.

The official name of the revelers group is the Stimulus Prevention Committee. Spouses will not be accommodated, the steering committee said, due to the cost of transporting them. “We also must think of the image we project” the chairman said. “Besides, hiring entertainment locally is cheaper and more in keeping with modern politics.”

When the panel meets, probably not before noon, those who show up will discuss waste and fraud. Members have been carefully chosen for their expertise in the matters to be discussed.

CORRECTION
It has been brought to our attention that the name of the committee is the Stimulus Waste Prevention Committee, not the Stimulus Prevention Committee. We have also learned it is not a prime committee. It is a sub-prime committee as it is a sub-committee of a committee estabished by a commission appointed by the Congress who created the Stimulus plan.

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