Category Archives: Randoms

RANDOM THOTS – THE COLUMN

Posted on July 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

Inflation
Don’t look now, but inflation is peeking around the corner.

We are getting a very, very sharp rebound in core inflation and much more than the Fed had bargained for.”  Eric Green, chief economist at TD Securities in New York.

Overall consumer prices were up 3.6 percent from a year earlier,   Reuters

Last months drop in gasoline prices masked the increases in everything else. The wholesale price of cheese is up 23% since year end, butter 45%. Grocers are absorbing much of the price increase but that won’t prevail very long.

The debt thing
Obama says the American public is crying out for higher taxes. It’s just stubborn ideologues in Congress who are opposed to paying more income tax. He may be 45% right. That’s the number of people who pay no taxes but still enjoy benefits paid for by those who do.

The President says Congress is ignoring the will of the people by keeping taxes down. The solution is simple; add another line to the income tax form so all the unhappy people can add whatever extra amount makes them happy.

Big oil profits
ExxonMobil’s has operations in more than 100 countries around the world. The part of the business that refines and sells gasoline and diesel in the United States represents less than 3 percent – or 3 cents on the dollar – of Exxon’s total earnings. For every gallon of gasoline, diesel or finished products the company manufactured and sold in the United States in the last three months of 2010, Exxon earned a little more than 2 cents. That’s not a typo. Two cents.

Large oil companies risk capital, have big holdings confiscated by nations, transport crude from well to refinery, refine or pay for refining and transport the final product to thousands of service stations.  For that they make about 2 cents a gallon.  Federal and State governments do none of it, yet they make an average 50.1 cents per gallon in taxes.  Then the demagogues call the oil companies rapists.

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Posted in Economy, Energy, Opinion, Randoms

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JUST SOME RANDOM THOTS

Posted on July 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

If you visit quality blogs, you will find many quality comments. This is particularly true for sites that do not publish anonymous comments. What follows below is but a sample. It was submitted in response to a Power Line article about the Muslim Brotherhood and the Grand Jihad.

Ken Willis · University of Denver

The Obama Doctrine in the opposite of the Truman Doctrine. The latter was containment of Communism, the former is containment of the United States.

The Obamanists believe the U.S. is a militaristic, patronizing international bully that must be reined in. Friends and allies of the United States represent obstacles to the Obama mission of transforming the country. Enemies are seen as convenient sources of assistance to the final accomplishment of changing America’s role in world affairs from an aggressive, arrogant nation lecturing others on such things as democracy and freedom to a communal and co-equal partner with other nations. According to Obama, “any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.”

The decline of the United States is seen as a positive development by Obama. A suggestion that the United States has been a force for good in the world is seen merely as proof of its arrogance.

That the Grand Jihad is an effort of one group to dominate others is conveniently ignored, or seen as America getting its just deserts.

The term “civil service” isn’t used as much as it once was. When I was a toddler, civil service meant low pay, low workload and early retirement with lots of security. They were positions of service to the civilian community. Today they are high pay, low workload and early retirement jobs with lots of security. They no longer qualify to be called a service. From what I see, many of the workers no longer qualify to be called civil either.

Obama said he had campaigned in all 57 states. He said it twice. Now southern California wants to split with their compatriots in the north. Could it be that Obama knew something the rest of us didn’t? Perhaps he was just off on the timing. Obama also said Hillary’s home state of Arkansas bordered on Kentucky and his state of Illinois did not. He gave that as the reason Hillary was polling better than he was in Kentucky. That would require some border changes too. Hmm…

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Posted in Opinion, Political polemics, Randoms

RANDOM THOTS BIRD DOG

Posted on May 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

The Random Thots Bird Dog points to current items of special interest. Occasionally, he flushes something out from the past that merits fresh attention as well. We recommend you use the links to read the full articles.

Fed Up with the Fed?  by Thomas Sowell
Dr. Sowell presents some examples of propagandic.

It was an act of war when we started bombing Libya. But the administration chose to call it “kinetic military action.” When the Federal Reserve System started creating hundreds of billions of dollars out of thin air, they called it “quantitative easing” of the money supply.

When that didn’t work, they created more money and called it “quantitative easing 2” or “QE2,” instead of saying: “We are going to print more dollars– and hope it works this time.”

Sowell has this to say about the government’s strategy of digging deeper to get out of the hole.

Those who are true believers in the old-time Keynesian economic religion will always say that the only reason creating more money hasn’t worked is because there has not yet been enough money created. To them, if QE2 hasn’t worked, then we need QE3. And if that doesn’t work, then we will need QE4, etc

Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, said confidentially to fellow Democrats in 1939: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.”

Paul Krugman, are you listening?

Some headlines worth a Google

No immediate boost for Obama in the polls

Bin Laden living in the same house for 6 years

The couriers‘s fatal phone call

Waterboarding gets the credit

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RANDOM THOTS 4-17-11

Posted on April 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

Che’s okay, Christians nay in the UK
If you think the attacks on Christianity are bad here, check this out from the UK. Posters of mass murderer Che Guevara are approved but an eight inch cross made of palm leaves on the dashboard of your truck ‘sends the wrong message’ and may get you sacked.

After chaos comes Al Qaeda?
We know about organized community organizing, but could there be such a thing as serendipitous nation organizing? in the Mid-East?
ABC reports.

Without Bush to blame, iPad takes the hit.
The Luddite Society has a new spokesman, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr (D-IL). Jesse, who owns an iPad says the iPad is killing jobs. Article and video here, courtesy of Real Clear Politics.

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RANDOM THOTS

Posted on January 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

OLBERMANN’S FALL FROM DISGRACE
Upon reading something about a 30 million dollar contract, my thought was… hate pays, but only in money. If reports are correct, Olbermann’s personality is the same off-camera as on. When off-camera his anger radiates in all directions we’re told, not just toward the political right but to staff and management as well. Keith Olbermann, by all appearances, is an angry and hateful man. Hate eats a person from the inside out. Hate is cancer of the soul.

Bush and Palin were favorite targets of the MSNBC star. These are two obviously very happy people. Olbermann is not. Targets of hate can rise above it because it comes at them from without. Haters are stuck in their own misery because one cannot rise above that which dwells within.

IMMELT’S REWARD
President Obama chose Schenectady for his nationally broadcast “jobs” speech. Schenectady has long been a home to General Electric. Jeffrey Immelt is Chairman and CEO of GE. The company is dominant in the city because it is the largest and oldest of the major employers in the region.

As he spoke, Obama highlighted what he had done to create jobs for MSNBC. Correction – for GE, the owner of MSNBC. In fact he said, the very reason he went to India was to negotiate a contract that will bring 1200 new jobs to General Electric’s manufacturing operation in this city in upstate New York.

Why Schenectady? Why GE? One cannot help but wonder, was it Immelt’s reward?

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Posted in Opinion, Political polemics, Randoms

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WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

Posted on October 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

Paul Mirengoff at the Power Line blog disputes the presumptions of Harvard historian James Kloppenberg who has written a book called Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition, in which Kloppenberg compares Obama favorably to the founding fathers. Mirrengoff’s post is a very interesting read.

I don’t know where she got it, but Blonde Sagacity posted this photo with the suggestion – CAPTION IT. Click the image and study each ones eyes.

From  Charlie Daniels‘  Soapbox
“It happened in Greece, it’s happening in France and it will happen anywhere the ugly serpent of socialism raises it’s head, including the United States of America.

Socialism is flawed by design. It discourages competition, over taxes the productive, and in its feverish effort to bring all society down to the lowest common denominator, eventually destroys everything in its path.”

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AT RANDOM

Posted on March 8, 2010 | 1 comment

Topsy turvy
The dictionary says, in a democracy the majority rules. In a republic
the people choose representatives to rule for them.

Every poll shows a clear majority do not want any of the proposed health care bills. Democrats named their party after the concept of democracy. Therefore, it should follow, that in as much as a majority of the people oppose Obamacare, the party of democracy should be bound by their creed to oppose Obamacare also.

Republicans, on the other hand, named their party after the concept of representatives who are authorized to make decisions for the citizens. Once elected, they are not bound by their creed to follow the will of the people on any particular issue.  It follows then, that if one of the parties is taking a stance of its own, apart from the expressed will of the majority, it should be the party of republicanism.

Could it be that the names got mixed up at the hospital?

Some aphorisms
You cannot help the poor, by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak, by weakening the strong.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man, by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage, by taking away man’s initiative and independence.
William J. H. Boetcker (1873 – 1962)

I don’t know who Boetcker was but he obviously was not a Democrat.

From Thomas Jefferson
[If you are thinking Congress is a lot of talk without action,] how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?  That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.

Let us pray
The Bible exhorts us to pray. Let us pray for President Obama according to the dictates of Psalm 109 verse 8 (108:8 in the New Catholic version)

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Posted in Political philosophy, Randoms

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