Category Archives: News

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

Posted on July 24, 2010 | Leave a comment

Forty one cents
Washington spends $1.70 for every dollar they have. Put another way, the federal government needs to borrow 41 cents of every dollar they spend. Still, Paul Krugman, eminent Nobel Prize winning economist and darling of New York Times readers is screaming in near panic that Obama is not spending nearly enough.

Since the Nobel panel has honored Barack Obama, Al Gore and Yasser Arafat with the Peace Prize, it is only fitting to award the prize in Economics to Paul Krugman.

Tax increases you never hear about.
WOR radio host John Gambling reported on a move to require airlines to include incidental third party fees in the price of a ticket. The given reason is simplification for the consumer. Sounds good. The real reason is to increase federal tax revenue. Not so good.

A federal tax of 7.5% is charged on the price of every airline ticket. By including the ancillary charges in the ticket price, the 7.5% will apply to the fees as well as to what the airline charges for your seat. Some of these fees are themselves taxes, in which case, you will be paying taxes on taxes.

This type of tax increase is incremental and goes unnoticed. Neither new legislation nor Congressional approval is required. All it takes is a rule change that falls within the authority of a government regulator. It is taxation by fiat.

Safe sexual harassment.
If a Congressman or Senator sexually harasses a staffer and the staffer brings charges resulting in an award for damages, who pays the bill? The American taxpayer pays the bill. Fines have been assessed approaching million dollars, yet the guilty politician pays not a whit cent of it, not even the legal fees.

Bob B

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LAST WEEK

Posted on July 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

Week ending July 16, 2010

Monday
White House denies NASA remark on Muslim outreach
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden recently told Al-Jazeera network that Obama told him “to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and engineering.”

Tuesday
Salazar continues to fight the law over drilling moratorium
(AP) Rebuffed twice by the courts, the Obama administration is taking another crack at a moratorium on deep-water drilling.

ABC/WaPo poll reveals confidence in Obama has reached a new low.
About two-thirds of all voters say they are dissatisfied with or angry about the way the federal government is working.

Wednesday
Obama calls al Qaeda, racist
Expresses concern over al Qaeda now that they have killed Ugandans in Africa. How many dead Africans will it take before he acknowledges al Qaeda as terrorists? Apparently dead Americans don’t count.

Thursday
Clinton fundraiser gets 12 year prison sentence. Read about it.
Wall St Journal headline “Hillary for President!”
We said it would happen, the headlines, that is.

Friday
Announcement – Bush memoir Decision Points to be released before election day.
Dems not happy. Original release was scheduled for Nov 9th

Obama household cook gets to be a czar
“Sam Kass went from being a 20-something, Windy City gourmet cook – privately paid by the Obamas to feed them – to big-time White House adviser in a matter of months,”
What’s next, Obama’s barber as hair czar?

Bob B

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Posted in News, Political polemics

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THE FRANK-DODD ACT

Posted on July 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

The name of the new package of financial regulations is The Frank-Dodd Act. Given what we know about Barney Frank, there must be more than one good joke there, but we have decided to let it be. We are not going to sully this site by saying things like ‘In naming the law, they were wise to use a dash and not an ampersand’.

By the time you read this, the bill may have been signed into law but it will not yet have been written. We say this because much of it is vague, leaving the de facto law up to the regulators to determine. For example, The Act requires each federal agency to establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion which is to be responsible for all matters relating to diversity in management, employment and business activities. What does that mean? What is the law? It is not yet written. The law will be, what the agency yet to be formed, says it will be.

The Act establishes a Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection with the power to close down a business that the Bureau determines poses a risk to consumers due to some measure of financial instability, instability as determined by the Bureau. In this regard one might say there is no law to observe, no law you must break for the Bureau to be able to close you down.

“No one will know until this is actually in place how it works”. Now there’s a profound truth coming straight from a Democrat, the man who wrote the bill, a man who knew whereof he spoke.

This law is to the financial industry, what Obamacare is to the health-care industry – an enormous expansion of government control over a significant section of the American economic system. It is ingenious to the extent that it empowers bureaucracies to govern by rule change without the need for legislative action.

Both The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (all one law known as Obamacare) and the Frank-Dodd Act are major advancements in Obama’s march toward the goal of a grand centrally planned state.

Bob B<!– AddThis Button BEGIN –>

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STUDENT LOANS OUTLAWED BY OBAMACARE

Posted on July 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

LIBERTY LOST, ONE BILL AT A TIME

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, includes a provision that eliminates private sector student-loan programs. Preposterous? Nothing is preposterous in Washington.

In a letter to supporters, Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, writes:

[Hillsdale’s resolution to remain independent of government funding] comes at a time when the federal government is increasing its unconstitutional grip on higher education. In the most recent example, sweeping legislation was passed that takes the student-loan business away from private lenders and hands it over to the Department of Education. This measure was tacked onto the health-care bill at the zero hour, and with false and laughable claims of saving billions of taxpayer dollars.

He who controls the purse strings controls absolutely. We are losing our liberty one increment at a time. We are losing it in subtle, almost clandestine ways. Did you know this provision was in the health-care bill? I would venture to say that many, perhaps even most of our representatives who voted for the bill were unaware of it.

Bob B

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FIRST OIL RIG SAILS AWAY

Posted on July 12, 2010 | 3 comments

The Obama Administration falsified a report written by a panel of experts hired to provide their opinion on how to handle the BP oil spill disaster. A paragraph was inserted over the signatures of the experts, a paragraph that recommended a drilling moratorium in the Gulf.

When speaking out and exposing the fraud, the panel, whose recommendation was exactly the opposite of that in the words inserted by the government, warned that rigs would not remain in the Gulf. The day rate is too costly and demand exceeds supply elsewhere in the world. Once gone, it will be years before they return, the best and safest will go first, jobs will be lost and the nation’s dependence on foreign oil will be increased.

It has come to pass as they said it would. The first rig is going to Egypt. Contract terminations are in negotiation for more.

Bob B

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PORT CHESTER, NY ALLOWS VOTERS SIX VOTES EACH

Posted on July 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

Port Chester is a town of about 30,000 people, nearly half of which are Hispanic. Six trustees oversee management of the town. No Latino has ever been elected to a position on that board despite the numbers they constitute of the population. It begs the question, why? The answer is, very few of them vote. That begs another question, why not? For that, no answer is given; it’s left for you to surmise.

One person one vote is the essence of Democracy. It is the law of the land, except in Port Chester, NY., where everyone now gets six votes. The first “sixer” election was held on June 15, 2010 and resulted in placing one Hispanic on the board of six trustees. We don’t have a breakdown of the numbers for this race, but a basic understanding of mathematics reveals it is possible for one candidate to receive more votes than there are voters living in the town.

We are not sure of the intricacies of this weird system called cumulative voting, but we know the objective. It is to enable a candidate to gain public office who would otherwise be unlikely to do so. Port Chester was the first municipality to test this voting method. Others will surely follow.

Bob B

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RUSSIA RISING

Posted on July 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

“For Russia this situation is a challenge and an opportunity. We are living in a unique time. And we should use it to build a modern, flourishing and strong Russia … which will be a co-founder of the new world economic order and a full participant in the collective political leadership of the post-crisis world.” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev

Russia is not letting an opportunity go unexploited. Putin and Medvedev know the United States has a fool in the White House. Obama is America’s gift to Russia, The balance between superpowers is teetering; America is declining, Russia is rising.

With a wink and a nod to the Great Bear, Obama dismantled the East European missile defense system, a move even more significant in what it said than in what it did. In his speech to the United nations he declared “No nation can or should try to dominate another” and decried any “world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another”. Then he placed our big stick on the sacrificial alter with a vow that the U.S. will not use it’s nuclear capabilities even to counter a nuclear attack upon us.

Sarkozy calls Obama “a mad lunatic”. Putin just smiles.

Nor is Russia about to let a crisis go to waste. Reagan was able to bring down the wall of Russian domination because socialism had bankrupt the economy of the USSR. Therefore, it must be with some delight that the Kremlin sees the “capitalist” West going down the same road they once trod to ruin. The Euro is mortally wounded and the dollar has lost its lure. The ruble cannot replace them but a new world currency designed and supported by the strength of the the world’s rising superpower might make it as the standard for world trade. One world currency is the path to one world government and that is the goal.

Here is the coin that Medved has offered as an example of what might be minted. He distributed them to delegates to the G-8 conference last year. Curiously the inscription is entirely in English.

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LAST WEEK

Posted on July 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

Week ending July 2, 2010

Monday
Russian spies arrested, 11 of them.
This stuff is no limited to the movies.

Paul Krugman warns we need to go deeper in debt to avoid a Depression
And he won a Pulitzer Prize in economics They should have given it to Joe the Plumber..

Senate gives Obama the power to close of your access to the Internet.
George Orwell should have called the book “2010”.

Tuesday
The stock market drops 268 points.
The Consumer Confidence index fell from 62 to 52 in one month.

Wednesday
Democrats deny Republican request to visit the oil spill, logisical problem.
As Yogi would say, Republicans can’t go there any more, it’s too crowded.

Congressional Budget Office projects debt to reach WW II levels by December
Krugman cries more! more! Poor Paul is puzzled, we dig and dig more, but still don’t reach the top of the hole.

Thursday
The New York Times reports Hillary warming up to Ukraine now that they have a more pro-Moscow president.

KIEV (Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may initiate renewed U.S. interest in Ukraine after a flurry of pro-Russian moves by its new leadership when she visits the ex-Soviet republic on Friday, analysts said.

Clinton’s stop in Kiev, at the start of a five-country regional trip, is the first to Ukraine by a top U.S. official since President Viktor Yanukovich was elected in February, ousting pro-Western leaders and tilting policy toward Russia.

Friday
Random Thots takes a break

Bob B

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Posted in News, Political polemics, Satire

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SENATOR ROBERT BYRD, R.I.P.

Posted on June 28, 2010 | Leave a comment


West Virginia has lost an icon. Robert Byrd was one of the most colorful members ever to take the Senate floor. One of his most memorable actions was the time when he stood at the mike on the floor of the Senate for 14 straight hours reading passages from the bible and favorites among his grandmothers cooking recipes.

Those were the days when the rules of the Senate required the continuation of active debate to maintain filibuster status to block voting on legislation to which you were opposed. Freedom to frame those arguments howsoever you choose is basic to our principles of government. Sen. Byrd applied the principle of freedom of speech and made a fool of the rules. You must respect the old curmudgeon for that.

Few people knew it, but until his death, as Secretary Pro-Temp of the U.S. Senate, Sen., Byrd was 4th in line for the Presidency. In practical terms it is little more than an honor as there has never been a tragedy requiring us to need to reach to the 4th on the ascendancy list.

In life we were adversaries, after his death we are not. We are glad his vote has been lost but sad his life has come to an end. We would not have had it this way. His inimitable elegant diatribes shall be missed. May he rest in peace.

Watch and listen to the video and meet a Robert Byrd you never knew to exist.

Bob B

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LAST WEEK

Posted on June 25, 2010 | Leave a comment

Week ending June 25, 2010

Monday
Speculation goes public that Rahm Emanuel will leave White House by November
Burn out, disagreements over strategy, Obama is uncompromising… or it may be Blagojevichgate

Tuesday
UK raises the VAT from 17.5% to 20%
A VAT is akin to a national sales tax. It This European invention will be coming to our shores.

Wednesday
MacChrystal is gone, Petraeus gets the duty.

Thursday
Obama and Medvedev do Burger King
Well, it was Ray’s Hell Burger’s, a sort of upscale Burger King

Friday
The New York Times expresses their “glimmers of hope” for the Democrats in November
They can hope, but what is coming is change.

Gallop reports
Self proclaimed Conservative in America outnumber self proclaimed Liberals 42 to 20

Bob B

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