Category Archives: Opinion

REACTION FROM A READER

Posted on November 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

This came in my email.  Sandy left me backlogged so I am not certain what post was referenced.  However the message is clear.  It is time for courage and reflection.  It is not time to give up.

“I’m on the road today, enroute to London for meetings with underwriters, so am using my iPhone. Since I haven’t figured out how to comment in Random Thots with this contraption (designed by a devout Socialist named Steve Jobs, I might add), I decided to send this comment directly to you.

Today’s message was especially well-timed. I know that most -if not all- of my conservative friends are more despondent and non-communicative than ever before. The Lindbaughs and Millers and Hannitys etc are all screaming “The end of the world is here!” and I’m too stubborn to join them as they jump off the cliff. Many of my friends are truly fearful to even send email comments – fearing the Obama KGB are collecting the data for a planned purge. Not me.

Anyway, I think your message today was enlightening.  It helped me take a deep breath and know that pulling historical messages into the forefront gives people the courage to do the same. I have faith that it is not time to surrender. In my mind, that time is never.”

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“MORE FLEXIBILITY AFTER MY RE-ELECTION”

Posted on November 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

About a year ago President Barack Obama was caught on an open mic saying to then Russian President Medvedev that he, Obama, would have more flexibility after the election.  What the Russian leader heard of course was – Russia will have more flexibility if Obama is re-elected.  And so they have.  And so has Iran, Syria, Libya, Egypt and the whole Muslim Middle East.

Fifty two Americans were held hostage for 444 days during Jimmy Carter’s presidency.  The day Reagan was sworn in replacing Carter as President, Saddam Hussein knew he had lost his flexibility and immediately released all hostages.  Less than a week after Obama’s re-election Syria launched rockets into Israel’s Golan Heights.  It is the same Golan Heights that Syria invaded and started the 7 Day War in 1967.  Now Assad knows all he has to fear is a demand from the U.S. that he stop annoying Israel and a request for negotiation.  America isn’t the only nation that lost the election; Israel lost too.

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THE LAWN SIGN AND BUMPER STICKER PREDICTOR

Posted on November 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

Some polls show Romney clearly in the lead.  Others show the election is still close.  None show Obama with a clear lead.  And the election is tomorrow so the polls are saying Romney will be the winner.  The crowds coming out to Romney and Ryan appearances are huge and growing.  The attendance at Obama’s campaign stops is shrinking.

Ryan is making a great impression on the voters as shown by the huge crowds his appearances are attracting.  Biden continues to make a fool of himself wherever he goes.  The ratio of campaign fund contributions received is far more favorable to Republicans than has been the case for many years.  Obama has lost much of the Catholic vote and has even lost support from the normally solidly Democratic Jewish sector.

There is another observation that I think is very telling although not at all scientific.  It’s the Lawn Sign and Bumper Sticker Predictor.  I live in a part of the country where it takes real courage to show outward support for any Republican.  Think of it as a village of thousands of Chris Matthews.  In 2008, Obama bumper stickers were everywhere while McCain stickers were all but non- existent.  This year Romney’s name is seen as often as Obama’s.  Lawn signs are fewer in number.  Significantly notable to the careful observer is that  the strings of signs promote all of this year’s Democratic contenders often with the exception of Obama/Biden.

Swing voters by definition are the one group that can be depended upon to vote for whomever they think is the best candidate irrespective of party.  Obama’s appeal to voters by promising that if re-elected he will satisfy their desire for “revenge” contrasts sharply against Romney’s promise for a Bigger and Better America.  Swing voters are the last group likely to share Obama’s rage and be looking for revenge.

We are in the last hour and the President looks like toast.  How could he possibly come out the winner?  Voter fraud.  Remember, this has become the Party of Saul Alinsky and Chicago machines, the Party of ends justify the means.  Fraudulent votes do not show up in the polls before the election.  However, the signs are telling me it will be a landslide for Romney/Ryan that will overwhelm whatever voter fraud can be mustered.

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SNIPPETS FROM ELSEWHERE

Posted on November 3, 2012 | 1 comment

Peggy Noonan, always interesting had this to say about the narcissism of Barack Obama.  Considering that his programs are not working, Peggy said,

It is one thing to think you’re Lebron.  It’s another thing to keep missing the basket and losing games and still think you’re Lebron.

That’s our President.  The Democratic Party has gone far astray from the days when the Party’s President kept a sign right on his desk that read “The Buck Stops Here” and he took that very seriously.  In case you are too young to remember who that was, here’s a clue or two.  His adult daughter played the piano and the President lived with his wife in a very modest home smack in the middle of that now disdainful fly-over country.  Mr. Barack H. Obama is the very antithesis of Harry S. Truman.

From Caroline Glick, denouncing the Dunham sex ad designed to appeal to young voters with the message that voting is like a woman giving up her virginity; it should be done with the right man and that man should be Barack Obama, Glick’s response is:

It is demeaning and contemptuous of women. It reduces us to sexual objects. When called on to vote, as far as Obama is concerned, as slaves to our passions, we make our decisions not based on our capacity for rational choice. Rather we choose our leaders solely on the basis of our sexual desires.

Beyond the ad’s bald attempt to impersonalize, generalize and cheapen the most personal act human beings engage in, the ad is repulsive because it takes for granted that what happens in our private lives is the government’s business.

That’s our President.  Here is one more snippet from elsewhere.

“Did you see what President Obama said today? He asked his supporters to vote for revenge — for revenge,” Romney said. “Instead I ask the American people to vote for love of country.”

That’s our next President.  How refreshing.  It is a breath of fresh air coming out of a world of pollution.

 

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Posted in News, Opinion, Political polemics

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OBAMA’S INFRASTRUCTURE DEMOLITION TEAM

Posted on November 1, 2012 | 3 comments

Have you noticed that right up to this hour the President’s campaign is not aimed to appeal to the center?  Class warfare remains paramount in his strategy.  He is sacrificing his likeability in the closing days in an effort to strengthen his appeal is to the far left.  John Heilemann explained the strategy back in May when he wrote “Hope: The Sequel,” for the New York magazine

Stanley Kurtz puts it in simpler words,

He’s shooting for a “realignment.” Obama is trying to shape a new kind of electorate, creating a long-term Democratic majority that would allow him and his successors to stop catering to the center and finally govern decisively from the left.

Obama and his advisors never abandoned their quest to shape a permanent leftist majority, a coalition that would forever put an end to Clintonian triangulation and usher in unfettered leftist Obamaism instead. Obama’s frantic efforts to gin up the women’s vote and the youth vote aren’t only desperate attempts to secure his base. They flow from a deliberate decision not to fight for the center, but to build an independent majority on what is supposedly the “demographically ascendent” left.

Obama is going for broke, the whole magilla, Reno or bust, all or none and he is almost there.  Look at how close the polls have remained.  It’s a strategy guaranteed to lose some votes from the swing voters in the middle.  With polls narrowing to the region of 47 to 49 percent for each candidate, Bill Clinton would appeal to the center to win the prize.  Obama is not about to do that; it’s against his religion, metaphorically so to speak.

The President is counting on voter fraud, community organizing style, to pull him through with little ACORNs working quietly around the country and Somalis being bused in to Ohio to vote.  The Democratic demolition team is threatening the very infrastructure of the American voting process.  Don’t let that happen.  Vote.

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THE INCREDIBLE NEW YORK TIMES

Posted on October 28, 2012 | 1 comment

Ten days prior to election day, or more significantly, after nearly four years of Obama’s governance, the New Youk Times looks at his record and has this to say.

President Obama has shown a firm commitment to using government to help foster growth. He has formed sensible budget policies that are not dedicated to protecting the powerful, and has worked to save the social safety net to protect the powerless. Mr. Obama has impressive achievements despite the implacable wall of refusal erected by Congressional Republicans so intent on stopping him

In the Online edition a photograph of Abraham Lincoln appears beside that comment.  Subtle, isn’t it.  Those “sensible budget policies” were so outrageous that not one single Democrat voted for the his Budget Proposals.

In the poisonous atmosphere of this campaign, it may be easy to overlook Mr. Obama’s many important achievements, including carrying out the economic stimulus, saving the auto industry, improving fuel efficiency standards, and making two very fine Supreme Court appointments.

Sadly the day is past when the New York Times editors had a little class and knew enough to call their own candidate President and not Mr.

Mr. Obama prevented another Great Depression. Mr. Obama championed [programs] like the $840 billion stimulus bill. Republicans say it failed, but it created and preserved 2.5 million jobs and prevented unemployment from reaching 12 percent. Poverty would have been much worse without the billions spent on Medicaid, food stamps and jobless benefits.

Obama “prevented unemployment from reaching 12 percent.”  Isn’t that just dandy.  Give him another four years and he may do twice as well; he may prevent unemployment from reaching 24 percent.

Foreign Affairs. Mr. Obama and his administration have been resolute in attacking Al Qaeda’s leadership.

Mr. Obama deserves credit for his handling of the Arab Spring.

These statements are understandable if the only news the editors read is what’s printed in their own newspaper.

Civil Rights. The extraordinary fact of Mr. Obama’s 2008 election did not usher in a new post-racial era. In fact, the steady undercurrent of racism in national politics is truly disturbing.

Yes, it’s very disturbing.  And as the Times implies, it has worsened over the last four years, yet this is somehow Bush’s fault.  The editors must have struggled over this one to no avail if the best excuse they could come up with was to blame Bush again.

For these and many other reasons, we enthusiastically endorse President Barack Obama for a second term, and express the hope that his victory will be accompanied by a new Congress willing to work for policies that Americans need (emphasis ours).

The endorsement of the Democrat was fully expected.  The Times endorsed Lincoln and he was probably the only Republican endorsement the paper ever made.  Their star correspondent Walter Duranty did give a hearty endorsement of Joseph Stalin but I don’t think Stalin was a Republican and Duranty wasn’t an editor.

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REAGAN vs. OBAMA ON THE ECONOMY

Posted on October 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

President Obama often asks the voters to understand that he inherited a very bad economy, and he did. But in many ways it was not as bad as the economy Reagan inherited from Carter.

On Reagan’s Election Day in 1980, unemployment was at 7.5 percent and headed for 10.8 percent; inflation was at 12.5 percent, headed for 13.6 percent, and interest rates were at 15.5 percent, headed for 21.5 percent by Christmas, well before Reagan was sworn in.

Obama inherited an unemployment rate of 6.8 percent and no inflation problem. Inflation was only 1.1 percent in comparison to the crushing 21.5 percent left by Carter. By the time Reagan was sworn in in January business men, farmers and home buyers (if you could find one) were paying 23 to 24 percent interest rates on loans.

Reagan wasted no energy on blaming Jimmy Carter. He approached the problem by lowering marginal tax rates in gradual steps over three years. He eased the regulatory burden on businesses, making it simpler to open or expand a business. His infectious optimism reminded people “the best is yet to come.” America was still “the shining city on the hill,” and Reagan reversed the country’s mood from a Carter-induced “malaise” to a can-do spirit.

In stark contrast, Obama did just the opposite with predictable results. He increased the regulatory environment increasing the cost and difficulty of opening or expanding a business. He introduced new law burdening business with new costs that are significant and beyond measurability at the same time. He fought for a return to higher taxes before acquiescing. Obama made his belief clear that America never was a shining city on a hill; it was a country in need of complete transformation. For America’s leader to wear a flag pin on his lapel was to honor a nation that was undeserving of such respect, a country that was in no way exceptional.

Reagan’s policies worked. By the end of his first term, inflation was down, employment was up, the economy was in good shape again and the mood of the nation had gone from morose to bright and cheery. In the bid for a second term, Reagan won every state with the sole exception of Minnesota.

Today we are where we are because of the president we picked in 2008, not because of what he inherited.

This post was adapted on an article by Peter Hegseth.

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Posted in Economy, Opinion, Political philosophy, Regulation

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THE PATIENT DIED BUT THE OPERATION WAS A SUCCESS or How to Measure Success Like a Community Organizer

Posted on October 21, 2012 | Leave a comment

Thanks to The Foundry for this report:

So far, 36 green companies that received federal support from taxpayers have either gone bankrupt or are laying off workers and are heading for bankruptcy. This list includes only those companies that received federal money from the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy. The amount of money indicated does not reflect how much was actually received or spent but how much was offered. The amount also does not include other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies, which push the amount of money these companies have received from taxpayers even higher.

The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:

  1. Evergreen Solar ($24 million)*
  2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
  3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
  4. Beacon Power ($69 million)*
  5. AES’s subsidiary Eastern Energy ($17.1 million)
  6. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
  7. SunPower ($1.5 billion)
  8. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
  9. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
  10. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
  11. Amonix ($5.9 million)
  12. National Renewable Energy Lab ($200 million)
  13. Fisker Automotive ($528 million)
  14. Abound Solar ($374 million)*
  15. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
  16. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($6 million)
  17. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
  18. Schneider Electric ($86 million)
  19. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
  20. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
  21. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
  22. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
  23. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
  24. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
  25. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
  26. Thompson River Power ($6.4 million)*
  27. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
  28. LSP Energy ($2.1 billion)*
  29. UniSolar ($100 million)*
  30. Azure Dynamics ($120 million)*
  31. GreenVolts ($500,000)
  32. Vestas ($50 million)
  33. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($150 million)
  34. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
  35. Navistar ($10 million)
  36. Satcon ($3 million)*

*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy.

Only a government could compile such a list of economic failures.  Chalk it up to economic ignorance if you wish but that is being charitable.  Taking Solyndra and A123 as examples, considerable sums of money were legally channeled away from taxpayers, to the US Treasury, to Solyndra and A123 and their founders, to the coffers of Democratic campaign funds.  That money is not going back.

Community organizing activities are constantly in need of money to support their agenda.  We learned from the book Radical-In-Chief that community organizers consider any program that brings in money to support their activist  agenda is considered a success.  Whether or not the program accomplishes its ostensive goal, in this case green energy, is secondary.

Obama scored points for himself and all Democrats for showing moral responsibility and smart government when they heralded the financial support given these companies.  Very fewof those points were  lost when the companies and programs failed.

The Party solidified its base for at least trying to do something for the environment and raised some money for campaign funding.  It’s has been a win-win for the Party, a lose-lose for the taxpaying public.

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Posted in Energy, Environment, Opinion, Political polemics

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A LOOK BACK AT OBAMA’S FIRST 18 MONTHS

Posted on October 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

Have you heard the one about the mosquito who starved to death in a nudist camp?  There were so many opportunities she couldn’t decide where to start.

That’s my problem.  There are so many things to remind people about Barack Obama that I can’t decide where to start.  And like the life of a mosquito, the useful life of an Obama bash is short.  I have no interest in condemning the man; I just want to save my country.

Barack Obama had been in office a year and a half when I published the post repeated below.

SHOULD WE WISH OBAMA TO SUCCEED?

Originally Posted on July 7, 2010

Rush Limbaugh took a lot of flak when he said of Obama on Inauguration Day, “I hope he fails”. Bombastic, irreverent, self aggrandizing though he is,  Limbaugh is worth a bit of one’s ear because, for insight, he has no peer. Many are the times I have dismissed his presumptions only to see with the passage of time his vision was correct.

To wish Obama continued success is to wish for more of what he already has done. He has subjugated the rule of law to the will of his own. He has dictated private property be diverted from the hands of its rightful owners to be given to labor unions having no legal claim on the assets. We have seen the creation of powerful czars who report to no one but the president. We have seen limits set on executive incomes in private industry at the whim of Obama.

We have seen Senators brazenly bribed to change their votes in order to enact legislation the American people clearly and fervently made known they did not want. We have seen the will of the majority ignored in wanton disregard for the spirit of democracy. We have seen expansion of government control over the care of our health and the advent of socialized medicine forced upon us.

We are watching a president inherit a recession then repeat the methods of Franklin Roosevelt who inherited a recession and turned it into a depression.

We have elected a president who has alienated our allies, Great Britain, Israel and Poland and chosen to appease our adversaries, Russia and Iran. We have chosen as our protector and Commander in Chief, a man who lays down our strongest arms in a vow not to employ our ultimate defense even in response to a nuclear attack.

We are led by a president and supported by an Attorney General who will not acknowledge the existence of Islamic terrorism, a president who appoints as a White House spokesperson a woman who names a genocidal dictator as one of the two philosophers she most admires, a president who nominates for a deputy position in the Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools, an activist for public school teaching of homosexual activity among young boys.

We have elected a president who travels abroad bowing and apologizing to nations for the role America has played in the world. We have entrusted our States now United to a man who promised  healing, but instead, waters the seeds of unrest, who upon seeing conflict between states, acts not to quell the dispute but to join in the fight.

To wish Obama to succeed is to wish for more of what we have seen thus far and more of what Obama still dreams, – visions of card check for unions, cap and trade for industry, reparations for minorities, single payer health care for us all and the dimming of our light that has shined so long and so bright proclaiming and defending freedom for all.

Bob B

I urge you to question the observations in this post. Google is a great tool for the job and readily available to all. Here are some links where you may start, (listed in random order, of course).

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/White-House-puts-UAW-ahead-of-property-rights-44415057.html

http://charlesrowley.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/june-10-2009-barack-obama-loots-chrysler-bondholders/

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTA5ZTE2MGFkMzNmNGNjNDNmNTg2ZmJkNDlkM2NiNTU

http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/25/do-obamas-czars-rule-america-oil-czar-ray-mabus-brings-total-to-37-according-to-daily-caller-count/

http://www.examiner.com/x-30890-Sarah-Palin-Examiner~y2009m12d22-Buying-votes-for-Senate-heath-care-bill

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/11/the-100-million-health-care-vote.html

http://bungalowbillscw.blogspot.com/2010/04/obama-says-us-will-not-use-nuclear.html

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-reparations-black-farmers/2010/02/21/id/350458

http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=33737

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/05/eric-holder-jihad-what-jihad.html

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2009/10/18/anita-dunn-mao-establishment-press-predictably-mostly-muzzled

http://biggovernment.com/publius/2010/06/17/clinton-obama-admin-to-sue-arizona-over-immigration-law/

There are many more, but these will get you started.

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LET’S CALL IT A DRAW

Posted on October 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

President Obama needed a clear win to stem the slide.  He didn’t get it.  As in the Biden-Ryan debate, the Republican came across as a gentleman, the Democrat as more articulate and assertive.  It is difficult to judge the net effect on the election without knowing how well informed the undecided are.  Polls show unwavering support for each candidate at around the 47% level.  It is the relatively small group of undecided voters who will determine who the next president will be.

Right out of the box Obama painted his administration as one that gave strong support to the increased use of coal, the pipeline to Canada and made expansion of exploration and drilling for domestic oil and gas a priority.  Every one of those assertions is exactly the opposite of the truth.  But how many of the undecided viewers know that?  Obama also said that what we need is efficient energy.  How many undecided voters know that wind and solar are the least efficient and that’s why they need government subsidies to exist?  How many know the Solyndra story, not just the headlines but the full story?

Two down, one to go.  If the third is anywhere close to a draw, Obama’s record on the economy will cost him the election as well it should.

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