Thursday, April 30, 2009

Has it only been 100 days?

Listened to Obama's so-called "press conference" earlier this evening. You know, where the prez calls on obsequious reporters who are afraid of being put on the D-List, and then they ask him things like "What have you found enchanting about the job so far?"

Gee, that was a tough one. And from the New York Times, that bastion of hard-hitting, no-holds-barred journalism. Or panderer to the left, whichever seems most appropriate.

Actually, the conference was pretty boring. Softball questions and canned answers. Only one thing kinda ticked me off. One reporter asked Obama something about having a "rubber stamp" congress, now that Arlen Specter has turned coat and run into the loving arms of the majority.

Obama said, and I wrote it down: "I'll have a rubber stamp and that's the way it should be."

No, actually, that's not the way we do things in America. Most democracies in Europe and elsewhere, including England, have a Parliamentary system. Under that system, the political parties have all the power. For example, in England, a member of parliament (MP) in the House of Commons doesn't have to live in the district he or she represents. The parties assign a member to "stand" for election and represent that district.

The Prime Minister (PM.. just the opposite of MP, get it?) is noted to be "First among peers." He or she is a member of the majority party and is elected by fellow party members. Kinda like if Nancy Pelosi was president.

Excuse the pause, I had chest pains....

Anyway, a lot of variations of the parliamentary system exist. Like in England, they still have the House of Lords, populated by actual nobility. They don't do much, though. I doubt there are any instances in living memory when Lords has opposed anything that came out of the House of Commons. And England also has the Queen, of course. Not sure exactly what she does anymore, except pay for British embassies around the world and make good will tours.

Other countries with parliamentary systems have presidents or chancellors or other executive officers of some kind who are elected independently of the legislatures. Not sure what-all they do, though. I'd be reluctant to assume they have the same kind of power the US president has.

As far as I know, the US government is unique in its three separate branches and in the fact that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches acually each have power enough within themselves to oppose and invalidate the actions and decisions made by the other branches.

Anyway, I wrote a term paper about the organization of the British government when I was in school. It occurred to me even then that the parliamentary system is just too "democratic." In that system, the Prime Minister is always the head of the majority party. There's really no effective means to oppose the PM or the majority.

What sets the USA apart is that at heart, the US is NOT a democracy. It's a republic. It's based on the concept of individual rights, NOT the will of the majority.

Obama doesn't seem to understand this. Maybe in all his fancy Ivy League education, he never read the Constitution, or perhaps he listened too closely to radical left professors and cohorts who convinced him that the Founding Fathers were just out of their minds or something when they talked about individual rights.

So, anyway, that kind of ticked me off. He's starting to tick me off in general. He doesn't seem to understand that many people do not like his policies and will oppose them in any way they can. He seems to glory in the idea that he's some sort of emperor.

Go ahead, push that concept to the limit, Mr. Prez. See what happens.

Since butthead Specter discovered that his bread is buttered on the Democrat side, and with blockhead Nancy Pelosi and senate counterpart Harry Reid, who simply looks confused all the time, running congress, Obama will be able to ram through just about anything he wants. Give him enough rope....

And something really funny... When Obama said, "I want to disabuse people of the notion that we enjoy meddling in the private sector."

That really cracked me up. No, they don't want to meddle in the private sector, they want to do away with the private sector all together and replace it with their half-baked marxist vision of utopia.

And today congress agreed to "reconciliation" for Obama's budget for health care and so forth -- with not one Republican vote. If I were president, I'd say that's a rather bad omen of the kind of cooperation Obama can expect from a sizable portion of the population.

So, anyway, if you need any kind of health care, get it done now or you'll probably die waiting for it under the coming-soon socialist rationing system.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Government by frat-boy

Yesterday the Air Force flew the spare "Air Force One" very low over the south end of Manhattan, accompanied by a couple fighter jets. People on the ground were horrified, flashing back on watching those two 747's flying into the World Trade Center towers in 2001.

It seems that someone thought this would be a good photo-op. The FAA was notified and approved this flyover. Even the NYPD was informed, but they were told not to tell the public about it. Not even Mayor Bloomberg knew about it beforehand.

Many people on the streets in lower Manhattan ran in panic, anticipating another terrorist attack.

Some butthead in the White House admitted to approving the event and said he was sorry. Obama, of course, knew nothing about it. He was caught so off-guard, he failed to link this event to the Bush administration.

And may I ask: What kind of photo-op were they going for? Something like, "See, here's what it would look like if Air Force One was hi-jacked and crashed into lower Manhattan. See the fighters? Pretty cool, huh?"

What the hell?

If the police were notified in advance, why were they not allowed to inform the public? I mean, what kind of a reaction did they expect? Did they think no one would notice a 747 and two fighters screaming over one of the most densely populated areas in the USA? Particularly with its recent history.

Same thing with releasing the information about so-called "torture." Obama releases the memos -- proving primarily that the Bush administration did seek legal counsel before they went through with it -- and says he's not going to prosecute anyone for it.

So, why did he release the memos in the first place? Kinda like finding a pair of dirty thong panties in your brother's laundry bag and hoisting them on the flag pole. I mean, what is the point?

Obama doesn't want a congressional hearing or investigation about the memos. I wouldn't either, if I was him.

1.) He's only inviting the same from whomever wins the presidency in 2012, and I seriously doubt that they will be Democrats. And I think they will find plenty of dubious back-room deal-making to crow about;

2.) Nancy Pelosi and maybe a dozen other ranking members of congress from both parties were fully briefed -- about 30 times -- about the "enhanced interrogation techniques" and they raised no objections to them at the time. After lying about being briefed, Pelosi, looking like a deer caught in the headlights, told newspeople there was nothing she could do... Funny, though, how since then she's found the superhuman ability to wave a magic wand and anihilate the health care industry in the USA.

And Arlen Specter is changing parties. Gee, what a shocker. His move is not on principle, however; rather, because he thinks he has a better chance of winning in his district. Oh well, old Arlen probably doesn't want to give up the "cafe-style" health care benefits avialable to members of congress -- and which he and other Democrats are going to deny to every other American citizen ('course, illegal aliens will continue to qualify for them.) I hope the voters in his district are smart enough to recognize that no matter what party label Specter sticks on his forehead, he's still the same old addle-brained weak sister.

These people are some pretty sorry buggers. Frat-boys -- irresponsible, reckless, shortsighted, ignorant, putting on a show for each other and offending everyone else -- and damn proud of it too! They're intoxicated with the idea that they can actually get people to drive them around in Air Force jets, that they can trigger public panic, that they can force their simple-minded and sophomoric programs on hundreds of millions of people. Gee, what a rush! Hey, Ma, watch this!

What next? Obama and the Cabinet speeding along the interstate in a stretch limo with their bare butts hanging out the windows?

What a photo-op that would be.

The end of health care

Just been perusing the London Times about health care. If you're interested in doing some research, go to:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

and search on "rationing" and "healthcare" and you might try "NICE", which is the acronym for the rationing board.

I can't imagine wishing this system on the USA, yet this is similar to what the USA's health care industry will look like when the socialists in Washington finish with it. Or, more simply, put an end to it. Canada has a "single payer" system, which is a little different. In Canada, you can be prosecuted for seeking health care outside of the government-run operation, which pretty much sucks by all accounts.

In England, the policy for many years was that if you accepted NHS (National Health System?) treatments, you agreed you wouldn't seek private care or drugs at the same time. Sort of like if you try to fix your own transmission, the warranty is thenceforth invalid. In one long article in the London Times, one woman with stomach cancer did this -- went to Europe and paid for drugs commonly used in Europe but not in England -- and she was denied NHS treatment. Her case was appealed, and the policy was changed. But she was dead by then.

The NHS is apparently famous for its stinginess in rationing cancer drugs and treatment. Seems they just hope people will die quietly and not screw up their cost-benefit ratios.

For a time in England, too, the NHS promoted home births using midwives to reduce medical and hospital costs. The doctors didn't like this at all. They weren't especially opposed to home births and midwives, rather to the fact that the NHS didn't offer any back-up for care by a physician or in a hospital if something went wrong with the birth.

Seems the NHS was promoting the program by reminding British moms-in-waiting that in third world nations, moms simply wandered off to a quiet corner, squeezed out their offspring, and then went back to finish the day's work, no complaints, no worries. The physician who authored this article hoped to reveal that this was not the true story; rather, that the third world has an astronomical mortality rate among preggie moms and newborns that would be unacceptable in England.

In the US, congress is supposed to debate this week on whether to putsch socialized medicine through via a technique called "reconciliation," ("battering ram" might be more appropriate) which would limit debate and requires only a simple majority in congress to pass the legislation.

What the hell is wrong with these people? They propose changes in the entire US health care system, measures that will drastically change the care that's available now, and they want to just jam it through "like crap through a goose," to borrow a phrase from General George Patton. And a an apt description of the process, I must say.

They don't want any debate. They want to limit opposition. They don't want to stop and think about what they're doing. They certainly don't want to look at the statistics of US care compared to socialized medicine, or to tour a British hospital, or even a Canadian one, if they could find one open at this time of year. They simply want to jam this bullshit down the throats of the American people -- no matter what the people might want.

I just don't get it. Whatever happened to America?

These bastards in Washington are just not even anti-American, they're anti-life. Mainly what they want is all of us goose-stepping behind them. They assume, Square One, that we're all incredibly stupid. Actually, they're so stupid themselves they can't even see us. Their minds aren't big enough.

They're a bunch of blockheads. Who elected these clowns? Easy answer: The New York Times and NBC. Moveon.org and other hysterical Big Lie rags.

And why is someone like George Soros pumping so much money into radical left-wing propaganda organizations? Who the hell is Soros? He's rich. Big whoop. He's making sure no one else ever will be, not in America.

Read somewhere that he manipulated the currency of Kenya or Zimbabwe or someplace and totally destroyed that nation's economy. Is this how he gets off? He plays power games? And this is a real person, not some nightmare freak from a sci-fi flick. Maybe he's just too damn old to be capable of anything else. Really, who the hell is this man? Some doddering old fool hell-bent on killing people any way he can. A pathological egomaniac who is compelled to leave his boot prints on everyone's backs? Envisions himself some grand puppeteer, pulling the strings and everyone dances. How is he different from any other petty dictator in his aims and aspirations?

What a slimy pig. Only that's an insult to pigs.

What the hell is his problem? Shouldn't he be locked up for this own good? And Pelosi with him? Call it a national security measure.

And Obama with them.

Friday, April 24, 2009

What? No free lunch?

Our president today announced that there will be no middle-class tax cut.

Apparently it's beginning to dawn on even this pie-in-the-sky administration that "There's no such thing as a free lunch." That is, you can't escape reality, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many Nancy Pelosis you have backing you up, or how many people are sitting in your circle with their fingers in their ears, humming. There is no free lunch.

That tax break is being thrown into the kettle of murky witch's brew to help fund socialized medicine -- which, if enacted, will send the USA into absolute, abject bankruptcy. Toss in cap-and-trade, and the citizens of this great nation are looking at a third-world lifestyle from which we may never recover.... until we vote these buttheads out of office.

Hate to say "I told you so," but....

Nana-na-nana. Told you so.

Have to go to work now. More later, probably, but really have to go look up other countries to move to.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Bankrupt in so many different ways

Leftist rage began while Bush was in office. That's how the Democrats won so many congressional seats in the off-term election and probably also part of the reason why Obama won the presidency. I doubt any Republican could have won, the rage against the Bush administration was so great.

The Republicans misread this rage. They believed the country was taking a turn to the left. I don't believe this. I think the haters were whipped up by a very well-orchestrated propaganda campaign that includes groups like moveon.org and even MSNBC. They went after and recruited teen-aged voters for support, for the same reasons crack dealers recognize this group as potential customers. Certainly Howard what's-his-name, who was Grand Dragon of the DNC promoted this strategy. You remember, the doctor who ran for something (presidential primary?) and made a fool of himself after he'd lost, pumping his fists and yelling in a maniacal fashion about how this wasn't the end by a long shot.

The thing is, I know Dick Cheney was an executive at Halliburton before he became vice president. As vice president, he was accused of contracting some military logistics operations to Halliburton to line his own pockets. I doubt this is true because when any person is elected or appointed to a high-level government job, their investments and all else go into some type of blind trust. It's managed for them, and they aren't allowed to know where their money is for obvious reasons.

So anyway, Dick Cheney was held up as some kind of "suspect" because of Halliburton. I don't know what else he's done that inspired such hatred.

Bush, of course, is responsible for many rather dodgy maneuvers, including locking up terrorists at Guantanamo Bay as POWs, rather than charging and trying them as criminals. Tangled inside this issue is the matter of habeus corpus, which must be invoked for criminals, but apparently can be suspended indefinitely for enemy hostiles. But the people at Guantanamo are considered foreign belligerents, or something to that effect, rather than simply having violated US law. And hey, they declared war on us. Remember?

'Course, Obama and the Democrats are changing that status now, and I suspect they're running into the same kind of problems that the Bush administration did: these people are much more than common criminals, unless you want to charge them with like, 3,000 murders and vandalism on a massive scale -- destruction of the World Trade Center. And conspiring to do much more.

So anyway, one day a liberal-leaning friend of mine made some really nasty comment about Dick Cheney. I was supposed to go, "Yeah. That's for sure." But I don't hate Dick Cheney and I'm not sure why the Democrats and liberals do. I mean I'm really not sure what he's done to warrant their vitriol.

So I asked, "What did he do, anyway?"

Shrugging at my blockheaded stupidity and walking away muttering.

I hardly ever join in with group things just because they're group things. It's caused a lot of problems for me socially, as you might suspect. I don't knee-jerk anything. And I still don't know what Dick Cheney did.

Apart from the shrug, I've been told by others: "Well, he was in [Reagan's/Bush #1's] administration, too."

I suppose that's the in-depth explanation.

Anyway, so now the Democrats are rifling through classified information left to them by the Bush administration. They seem to be going over it with a fine-tooth comb, like those Iranians who seized the US Embassy in Iran on 1979, and took years to paste together mountains of shredded documents in search of some fresh fuel for their hatred of the US, and in order to try to embarrass the US. That's what the Dems are doing now in Washington.

The Dems ran a campaign based on hatred and rage against the Bush Administration, and they've been unable to develop any other direction for their own administration. Seriously, it's amazing.

On the news the anchors will ask even some low-level Dem p.r. flak anything about what Obama's plans are, and the answer always comes down to, "We inherited this mess."

Hey, you know what? Every president inherits a mess. You're supposed to do something positive with it. That's why you were elected. Or that's why people are elected most of the time, anyway.

Even outside the US, the president seems just incapable of talking to foreign leaders about anything else except about how terrible the Bush administration was and how he's going to be all different now.

The Democrats ran on hatred. They were determined to get rid of Bush. Bush would've been gone anyway after his second term... But the Democrats don't seem to be able to get past that. They don't seem to realize that they're in charge now, they're accountable, it's up to them to do something. They don't have Bush to kick around anymore. (Sorry, couldn't help that last.) But they just keep on campaigning.

Economic policy -- Obama reaches back into the past to dredge up programs from Roosevelt's New Deal. You know, many of those were declared to be unconstitutional even while Roosevelt was in office, and the others failed. Obama's Budget Proposal apparently was something written up a couple years before the election and was what he ran his campaign on. He appears to be unwilling and/or unable to change or alter it to suit the new reality of economic devastation.

Advisors -- he re-hires Clinton's old staff, as well as beating the thickets of the radical left looking for people who are generally 1) totally unqualified; and 2) of dubious loyalty to the US. This is change we can hope for?

This administration seems to be still running on hatred for the Bush administration, and by extension, anything American. Jeannine Garofalo is a prime example of their frame of mind. And if I spelled her name wrong, gee, that's really tuff.

Well, you know what? Bush is gone. If the Dems want, they can try him for war crimes, but that would require a considerable waste of time and public treasure, and I don't believe it will yield many results. It might fan the flames of anti-American/anti-Bush hatred for a while, but that's about it.

And I really don't think the Democrats want to set a precedent for putting past presidents on trial for their policies. If Obama has any foresight, I really don't think he wants to do that.

This whole debacle over the CIA memos only reveals the complete moral and even pragmatic bankruptcy of the Democrats and the Obama administration. They don't have any new ideas. They don't have any real policies except "Throw some money at it and see if it sticks." Their only perceived "value" to date seems to be getting vicious and despicable tyrants around the world to love the US, and trying to get most Americans to hate it.

They're bankrupt all the way around, directionless, ultmately useless. They aren't pro-active, but re-active, and and apparently incapable of reacting in any other but a hateful anti-American way. Hey, you idiots in Washington you are the US government now! Think about it.

But anyway, the liberals really need to let go of the hatred. It's unhealthy for one thing, bad for the heart.

A penny saved is still a penny

Mr. Obama revealed his plan today to slash the budget deficit in half -- he's requested that his Cabinet members cut $100 million from their budgets. Spend $12 trillion, cut $100 million.... I don't know, is it just me, or does it seem that $100 million is not a significant reduction? It's more like .003%.

I'm on the mailing list for the Libertarian Party. In a release dated April 20, they say:

Obama’s budget calls for around $11,755.00 in spending for every man, woman and child in America. But his “cuts” -- which aren't even new reductions -- come out to only around 32.7 cents per person.

I'm trying to think of what you can buy for 32 cents. About half the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes? You can't park at a meter in Chicago or ride a city bus for that anymore. Poor Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, got to try to explain today why $100 million is a lot of money. How would you like his job?

In other news...

Obama gave a speech to the CIA today, apparently to try to make them feel better about his selling them out by detailing the "torture" the US perpetrated upon the terrorists who were trying to blow us all up. He told them that we all have to protect American values, even when it's difficult.

Ya know, Mr. President, I think that's just exactly what they were trying to do. Maybe the CIA was doing that when you were only three months old, Mr. Obama. I'll even bet they have dossiers on some of your close friends.

Not to mention, it's OK for Mr. Obama and select members of his handpicked entourage (I don't know: Cabinet? Czars? Overseers and drivers?) to circumvent the US Constitution whenever they feel so moved to push their socialist agenda, but God forbid the CIA takes any authorized actions in the name of national security.

We certainly don't want the rest of the world to feel uncomfortable about hi-jacking passenger airplanes and flying them into our high-rise towers. That just wouldn't be very nice. They might not like us anymore. They might not ever come back. Obama might lose some potential fans.

Charles Krauthammer says Obama needs applause. That he'll do just about anything for applause. On the surface, this might seem like just a glib, even a bit snide, remark. But you know, Charles Krauthammer is a highly-respected psychiatrist. He was a psychiatrist before he became a journalist. So, based on his background as well as my own observations -- I tend to agree.

So look at it this way: On the one hand we have the president of the US, fresh from a trip to South America where he grinned up into the monkey-like face of a vile dictator who whole-heartedly hates the US and has never been shy about saying so, and this trip comes soon after "holding out an olive branch" to another vile dictator who's occupied Cuba for about 50 years, slaughtering the population willy-nilly and running Cuba's economy into the dirt. Then on the other hand, we have the CIA, whose heroes are represented by anonymous gold stars, having died horribly in some foreign hornet's nest in defense of the nation.

The irony is pretty thick here, isn't it? I mean, which of these entities is more committed to preserving American values? Talk is cheap.

Doesn't he have any shame at all?



Sunday, April 19, 2009

The road to nowhere?

Just briefly, saw a couple news stories about Rt. 101 in New Hampshire being the first project funded by the Stimulus package to get underway. The project involves repaving 9.5 miles of Rt. 101. The final bid accepted for the project is happily touted as being "under-budget." For that reason, I thought the job was already completed. But it turns out, they just started it.

Ray LaHood, apparently a politician from New Hampshire, helped turn over the first shovelful of dirt to start the project. When I was an editor, we used to get at least a half-dozen photos a month of corporate executives all standing around with chrome-finished hard hats gleaming in the sun, wearing suits-and-ties, gold-plated shovels in hand, celebrating the new plant or HQ or something. I used to call these "Men With Shovels" shots. Oh well....

We'll see if the New Hampshire project is still under-budget when it's been completed. And, by the way, when it is completed, what are the contractors and workers going to do? I mean, how long can it take to repave 9.5 miles of highway?

If New Hampshire workers operate at the same rate as highway workers in the Chicago area, they can conceivably stretch this project out to three or four years. It took at least that long to build a new on-ramp to an interstate near my home. I could have done it quicker on my own with a teaspoon and a couple bags of blacktop, but then I didn't even bid on it.

But to get back to the main topic: What are these New Hampshire people going to do when the project is done?

Since the job was under-budget (as bid) by about $2 million, maybe they could do a parking lot or something, too.

And then....????

That's the trouble with goverment projects. They aren't ongoing concerns, they aren't self-sustaining through profitability. You do them and they're done, and then you go home.

So maybe a hundred people will get union-scale pay for however long this one job lasts, and they'll be able to pay their mortgages, they'll be buying lunches and coffee from local vendors, etc etc., for maybe a month or two, if they're honest about it.

And then....????

That's the trouble with government projects.

It's been said that in Chicago, we have two seasons: winter and construction. What amazes me is that the highways are continuously torn up and they never seem to be completed. Ever. Honestly, I know so many back roads into Chicago it's positively amazing, and back roads and alleys are really the only way to get around the city. All the main boulevards and avenues have things planted in them. Really. Take a nice broad avenue and reduce it down to one lane in each direction with brown and dying foliage on a median strip in the middle separating them. It's called "beautification." I think it was supposed to be Mayor Daley's wife's idea. She didn't like Meigs Airport, either. And it's gone now.

In addition, a main artery near my home (six lanes, and right off the interstate) was repaved last year -- or at least the worst parts of it were. Included in that project was an overpass over the interstate, which has been torn up, the lanes rerouted with cement abutments for about a year now. It's like, don't try driving this at night, because there are no lights on it, and driving through these cement barriers is like winding through a Chinese maze. Anyway... They haven't finished that overpass yet, which seems to be part of the artery repave job, and all that new repaving on the artery has already degenerated into major potholes.

So maybe the object really is to not EVER finish it. Just keep pouring more and more and more money into it, do a crappy job that falls apart as soon as possible, so when you finally finish the bridge, you can start repaving the artery again.

Somehow, I don't get it.

But I just love it when they have the signs out: YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK.

Yeah, right, my tax dollars. Not so sure about the "work" part, though.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Obama, EPA: "We don't need no stinkin' congress."

This would be absurd if it wasn't so genuinely frightening.

In passing the president's budget "blueprint," Congress stripped out the cap-and-trade proposal for separate consideration. If you don't know what cap-and-trade is, see my earlier blog "How to End the Energy Crisis" from Feb. 28, 2009. Short explanation: it will turn the USA into a banana republic, without the bananas.

Anyway, Congress put cap-and-trade on a back-burner. The chances of actually implementing this program looked (thankfully) pretty slim.

So on Friday, April 17, 2009, the EPA comes out with a news release claiming that since Congress isn't going to do cap-and-trade, they will, by diktat if necessary. Just like every damn fascist bureau in all of human history. And just bet, they're only following orders.

Here are the relevant sections of the release:

EPA Finds Greenhouse Gases Pose Threat to Public Health, Welfare / Proposed Finding Comes in Response to 2007 Supreme Court Ruling

Release date: 04/17/2009

Contact Information:
Cathy Milbourn, 202-564-4355/7849/ mailto:milbourn.cathy@epa.gov;
En español: Lina Younes, 202-564-4355 / younes.lina@epa.gov

(Washington, D.C. – April 17, 2009) After a thorough scientific review ordered in 2007 by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposed finding Friday that greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare.

The proposed finding, which now moves to a public comment period, identified six greenhouse gases that pose a potential threat.

“This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations. Fortunately, it follows President Obama’s call for a low carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation,” said Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

“This pollution problem has a solution – one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country’s dependence on foreign oil.”

As the proposed endangerment finding states, “In both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem. The greenhouse gases that are responsible for it endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act.” .... [omitting all the b.s. here about how the fate of the world is hanging by a thread due to cow farts...]

....The proposed endangerment finding now enters the public comment period, which is the next step in the deliberative process EPA must undertake before issuing final findings. Today’s proposed finding does not include any proposed
regulations. Before taking any steps to reduce greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, EPA would conduct an appropriate process and consider stakeholder input. Notwithstanding this required regulatory process, both President Obama and Administrator Jackson have repeatedly indicated their preference for comprehensive legislation to address this issue and create the framework for a clean energy economy.

More information: http://epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment.html


What this means is that Obama found a big loophole in the government structure and he's going to exploit it.

What that means is that Obama is going to shove cap-and-trade down our throats, whether we want it or not, and whether or not our elected representatives in Congress even agree that it's necessary or desirable, which it certainly is not -- and even with or without their consideration and votes.

Can you even imagine the arrogance required to force all this bullshit on the American public, when it's clearly something they don't want.... When it's clearly so potentially detrimental to the nation that even Congress won't act on it?

This is stunning. This is even better than the Reichstag Fire.

You found a way to kill us all and put an end to the republic! Aren't you proud and happy, you sons of bitches?

What in the hell is Obama and the administration thinking? Are they thinking? Or are they just programmed automatons, knee-jerk radical leftists hellbent on wrecking the United States? What is Obama, some kind of Manchurian Candidate? Some people have told me that -- he's just an affable front-man and a stooge for some grander puppeteer. Not sure I believe it -- I don't give the leftist radicals credit for that much brains -- and it doesn't matter anyway.

Mr. Obama and apparently many of those who support him (or pull his strings, whichever explanation you prefer) simply hate America, hate the whole concept of individual rights and political liberty, and are wholly committed to ruining the greatest nation that ever existed on the face of the earth. Mr. Obama at this moment is apparently in South America, kissing the butt of a lunatic dictator who has vowed to destroy America, so I guess we know where they both are coming from.

I cannot fathom the depth of this kind of vile horror. Really, my mind can't even hold it. What the hell is wrong with these people?

Yet they pretend not to understand why concerned citizens are having Tea Parties.

Oh well, according to the head of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, I'm a dangerous right-wing terrorist, so I'm sure I'll be tracked down and burned at the stake in maybe one of the earlier rounds of executions. Fine with me. I won't even resist. I wouldn't want to live in the kind of hellhole this administration is creating. I'd be much better off dead and well out of it. It's those who have to go on living who have my sincerest sympathies. 'Course, most of them will be getting just exactly what they voted for.




Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Mad Hatter at the Tea Party

Susan Roesgen earned the distinction of Grand High Butthead at the Chicago Tea Party today. She asked a man in the crowd what he was protesting. He said taxes. She launched into a reiteration of Obama's policy that he's actually lowering taxes and cutting the deficit in half. See the whole thing here on video -- even the parts CNN will never air:

www.foundingbloggers.com

So is Susan Roesgen now stumping for the White House or what?

She says the Tea Party protesters are at war with CNN. Well, who watches CNN anyway? European socialists?

The president's speech this morning had me screaming at the TV. He stands there like an idiot saying he's lowering taxes. I'm sitting there thinking, This man is either lying through his teeth or a genuine moron.

He has the nerve to promote a $3 trillion budget -- complete with a cap-and-trade program that will absolutely ruin the nation -- and says "But I'm cutting the federal deficit in half." And this on top of the apparently still-unread $1.7 trillion Stimulus bill, and $450 billion in pork.

Maybe Michelle Obama is growing money trees in that White House garden. The USA has run out of other sources of funding... except the next three or four generations of taxpayers.

It's quite obvious that Obama, Roesgen, and those of their kind, think we're all pathetically stupid.

It's kinda like when Obama bowed to the grand chrysanthemum of Arabia -- or whatever -- and then his press secretary fell all over himself trying to explain how it wasn't a bow. Karl Rove asked later, "Who do you believe? The White House or your lyin' eyes?"

So who do you believe about the economy? Obama and Roesgen or your lyin' eyes?

The USA right now is something like $11 trillion in debt. There's not enough money in the world -- and I mean that literally -- to pay that off. That's a lien against the future.... My future, your future, every American taxpayer's future, and their kids' futures, and their grandkids' futures.

Obama and Roesgen are blind to reality, that's all. Like most liberals. They have this view of the world that it's a bunch of people who, through no fault of their own, are all just waiting for a hug and handout. There's no true evil. No one really wants to hurt you. They're just hungry. They haven't had enough hugs. If 9/11, Iran, North Korea, and the Somali pirates can't jar them into reality, nothing can.

And that's fine, if that's what they want to believe. The only thing is... they want to get someone else to pay for their views and to fund the handout.

Liberals are so unbelievably biased their little brains can't even consider another perspective. They believe they're "right" and if you don't agree with them, you're.... let's see... racist, ignorant, backwards, unsophisticated, unread, and more than likely, also unwashed. You certainly are not as good and worthy as they are.

This is recognizably a defense mechanism and it's common among liberals, neurotics, and most other types of loonies. If your interpretation of reality is not based on actual fact, you need a lot of people to support your warped view. If you get enough people repeating the same mantra, liberals believe, it will come true. It's like they're sitting in a big circle, fingers in their ears and humming. If you're not in there humming with them, they just can't figure you out. You're just beyond them. You must be a racist or a hillbilly.

Bill Clinton was the same way. He needed everyone to agree with him. If you didn't, he generally got very nasty and did whatever he could to make your life miserable. He couldn't just fire people, for example. He had to leak some dreadful (and usually made-up) scandal and ruin their lives forever.

This is sociopathic, actually. I mean, it's a diagnosed psychological illness. "You don't agree? Off with your head!" It was once the privilege of kings. People like this can't tolerate a lack of support; sunlight ruins all their cleverly contrived misconceptions and view of the world.

Liberals are almost unbelievably hypocritcal, too. They're all committed 100% to spending other peoples' money, and they like Big Government because deep in their hearts, they're sure they'll be running it. After all, they're so magnanimous and well-groomed. Everyone loves them. When they walk through the streets, people strew rose petals in their paths and reach out to touch the hems of their gowns. They're legends in their own minds.

Hey, silly-ass liberals, look at history. Every dictator who ever lived rose to power supported by an effete bunch of intellectuals, a press that was either bought or biased, and amoral commercial interests who believed if they played along and funded totalitarian projects, they'd at least survive and more likely would get a share of the spoils.

Funny how it never turns out that way. The intellectuals are the first to go -- and I mean go... to Siberia, to Dachau, to re-education facilities. Totalitarians don't tolerate other opinions and they don't listen to advice. The fact that you're arrogant enough to believe you can give advice is enough to convict you.

And the media? Oh yeah, the media will survive, she said, rolling on the floor laughing. Nothing is a surer cause for the death penalty than publicly putting a questionable spin on der fuehrer's remarks. Haven't totalitarian states always been characterized by a free press?

Obama may not be a totalitarian himself -- quite possibly he's just entirely clueless -- but he's creating a government that can easily go that way. He's greasing the skids and fixing the levers of control for a monster fascist government. Others even less committed to the idea of individual freedom will exploit that apparatus. It's totally predictable. It's happened before over and over again. When you nationalize and centralize political and economic power it almost always ends up in the wrong hands. We can already see, looking at Washington DC, that it's become an irresistable temptation. Just cast a glance at Nancy Pelosi, Tim Geithner, and Rambo Emanuel. Most congressman just can't say no to junkets and all the other crap they get as perks from lobbyists.

So, Ms. Roesgen, peddle your b.s. somewhere else. Don't pretend to be unbiased. Fox News doesn't. They tell you where they're coming from. They invite people to dispute their views. Fox is the Number One cable news network. CNN no doubt believes they're Number Two (or Three??) because Americans are crude and stupid.... See... they can't explain a lack of support in any other way. They can't possibly imagine that they could be... dare I say it... wrong and flagrantly biased. And everyone knows it.

I've worked as a journalist so I've been exposed almost relentlessly to liberals -- and I watch Fox because I value information. The person who tells the story owns the issues. This is just a fact. The very words they use, the videos they use, the background they gather, reflects their bias. There's no way around that. All you can do is to present the other side, which Fox News does.

And thank Rupert Murdoch for Fox, or we'd all be screwed, with nothing but little Susan Roesgens running around trying to convince people that white is black and wrong is right because she says so, or rather the Great Savior Rock Star President Obama says so.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Utopia is not an option

War is never good for anyone. It can be necessary for self-defense, but as Sherman said, it’s “all destruction,” and leaves nothing but death and ruin behind it. This was Europe’s condition after WWII. The allies won, but few had been able to continue to plant food and/or produce other-than war goods for years. Although only part of the USSR was considered to be part of Europe, the USSR also had been devastated by the war.

So this agricultural expert and politician named Lysenko came up with this terrific idea. “Don’t wait until the snow melts, sow the flax seed on the snow,” he said. The theory was that the flax would use the water in the snow to germinate. The seeds would somehow find root under the snow, and the USSR could get a crop out more quickly than nature usually allows.

Actually, this became government policy. Farmers and people who lived on the land and worked every day of their lives by farming, thought it was a bad idea. But Lysenko knew better, he said, and beside, he was part of the government, so the farmers had to do what he “suggested.” They sowed the flax on the snow.

The flax seed became sodden and bloated as the snow melted, and it all rotted. The end result was that not only did the USSR lose the crop that year, but also for many years to come because they’d wasted their seed.

This is one of the saddest lessons of recent history and one that not a lot of people know about. It doesn’t fit into their utopian agenda so they don’t talk about it.

It’s kind of like the US’s Social Security program. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. It doesn’t generate any profits or revenues. It relies entirely on seed money “donated” by taxpayers. The theory behind it is that the “next generation” will always be larger than the number of retirees who are collecting Social Security benefits, so the amount of money paid into the system will always exceed the amount of money paid out.

The Boomer generation screwed this all up by barely replacing themselves population-wise. The Boomers are living longer than any preceding generation. The Boomers also expect more, in terms of income and services. After all, they’ve paid into the system all of their working lives. (Think how much better off we’d all be if they’d been able to invest all that money into a profit-making enterprise – if only their own personal profit-making enterprise.)

So about 1997 or 1998, even Congress couldn’t pretend that Social Security could continue to function. Up until then, the funds for Social Security had been kept in an account separate from the general funds the government collects through income tax and so on. Congress fixed the Social Security problem by tearing down the barrier. They said, basically, “Don’t worry, we’ll pay for Social Security out of general funds if we have to.” This was -- and still is – hailed as the wondrous “rescue” of the Social Security.

If a corporation does this, it’s called “looting the pension fund” and the company would face federal prosecution.

But I digress. Obama made a speech today to the impressionable and apparently not very well educated students at some university. He’s just telling the same ol’ story – “We can spend our way out of this economic disaster, and by socializing medicine, making college available ‘free’ to everyone, and by raising energy costs by orders of magnitude through cap-and-trade, we will lay the foundation for a better future.” This isn’t a direct quote, but a pretty accurate assessment of his remarks.

He keeps insisting that we can have a free and prosperous society built on socialist underpinnings. His “new foundation” consists of government control of key sectors of the US economy. Not necessarily government ownership, but tight government control.

He’s not seeing 1 + 1 = 2. Centralized government control plus heavy-handed regulation does not amount to the preservation of liberty and prosperity. Government control means transferring the decision-making capability of citizens to the government. The government can’t possibly decide case-by-case what you and I and each of our neighbors wants and needs, and what we are capable of doing and getting. The government can only pass one-size-fits-all laws and regulations that put us all in a strait jacket, a sort of dictatorial tyranny of democracy.

The Founding Fathers established a republic – not a democracy – exactly to prevent this result. The USA employs democratic “majority rule” dynamics for legislation, but also is supposed to ensure the individual liberty of every citizen. And these individual rights are more important than the will of the majority. This government was founded to protect individual rights, not to implement majority rule.

Look around, Mr. President. Look at the socialist democracies and the communist states. Most of them are stagnant, allowing only so much growth – through capitalist enclaves and government-approved enterprises – to fund the socialist/communist social programs. The citizens have little incentive to achieve, and it becomes too painful to even to dream about achieving anything. They live with a certain sense of futility, purposelessness, and a biting cynicism. In place of individual rights, they have the assurance of a minimal level of health care, the assurance of subsistence in old age, and educational systems that produce only well-indoctrinated “good soldiers” too intimidated to think freely and creatively.

This is where you’re taking us, not to some kind of heaven on earth. Open your eyes. Look at reality. Utopia is not an option.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

What century is this, again?

Today's Easter.

However, like the rest of the US, I was listening much of today for news of Capt. Richard Phillips, the merchant marine who was taken hostage by Somali pirates. Very glad and relieved to learn that he is now safe. Navy Seal sharpshooters apparently "took out" three of the four doped-up Somalis that were holding him in a drifting life boat, injuring the fourth pirate and arresting him. Capt. Phillips is fine -- and has a lot more guts than I do. People like him give me faith in America.

Anyway, I haven't kept up on the whole pirate cultural thing. When I hear the word "pirate," I still think of Robert Newton as Long John Silver with a peg leg and a ring in his ear, clad in fashion circa 1780 or thereabouts. A young Jackie Cooper tags after him. Though I love Johnny Depp, I've never really sat through the more modern film version of "pirates." I don't think I could spend two hours looking at that guy whose face, literally, is like a pan of worms.

So Somalia occupies the Horn of Africa, wrapping around it like the brass corner fitting on a war chest. It's a good location for piracy, being the southern coast of a shipping lane that leads to and from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. It's largely Muslim, as opposed to neighboring Ethiopia, which is largely Christian. There have been conflicts. The northern part of Somalia was a British colony (or something), and the Brits were reluctant to sink any money into developing it because of the political unrest. The southern part was an Italian colony at one time and it's supposed to be more developed.

But apparently after several decades of civil war, Somalia is primarily run by tribes and warlords.

A leader-dictator-whatever named Barre worked for about 20 years to try to make Somalia a socialist democracy on the order of almost any European nation, but it didn't take hold. Believe Barre was a Marxist, or was that some other dictator? Anyway, Somalia had been on the receiving end of aid from the USSR, Russia, and China for a couple decades, and apparently there was an internecine dispute at one time if Somalia actually could be communist or even socialist, having failed to go through the preceding stages of social-economic development. Or, apparently, any generally recognized process of civilization at all.

Now it's pretty much tribes and warlords. Probably always has been, really, the influence of the British and Italians skipping over the population like a flat stone over the surface of a pond. And everyone there pretty much stays stoned on khat all the time. That's some kind of speed. This sounds like some kind of psychotic fantasy background for a movie on the Sci-Fi Channel.

So actually Russia and France have been attacked by Somali pirates, too, and both have tried to take some action against them. The U.N., that powerful and admirable mouthpiece for the Third World and mechanism for skimming funds and redirecting them to the Swiss bank accounts of petty authoritarians and multinational bureaucrats, says it's OK to defend oneself against Somali pirates if you catch them in the act, but otherwise, no one can touch them.

As though piracy is some kind of legitimate way to make a living and no one has the right to complain about it.

The U.N. are buttheads, too. That's the key reason I find it rather frightening to even suggest letting the U.N. determine US foreign policy. Under U.N. direction, US foreign policy would probably be some version of a large funnel siphoning off American-made products and revenues and "redistributing" them across the scuzzier nations of the southern hemisphere. Like Somalia.

Still bizarre to me -- and this whole piracy thing is a good example -- that some people actually believe it's perfectly fine to rob and pillage other people. Kill them. Take them hostage. Like it's a perfectly rational way to make a living.

This is my test of civilization: If you are willing to kill someone else in order to rob or control them, and somehow you can morally justify this in your twisted and fevered little brain, you've missed a couple steps in evolution. This applies to Al-Qaeda types, too.

About the 1960s, this anthropologist named Desmond Morris wrote a book called The Naked Ape. It was about Uganda going through a years-long famine due to a lack of rain. Morris painted a picture for me of a mother who died in a dusty village road. She'd just gotten a cup of tea from one of her neighbors. Her daughter saw the woman fall over in the street and quickly ran to the woman's side to grab the cup of tea before it spilled out and run off with it, laughing gaily. She left her mother in the street.

Morris also noted as a kind of afterward that since he'd completed the book, Uganda had received significant humanitarian aid from the U.N. He said soon after that, the weather improved and the famine could have been over, but by that time, no one was farming anymore. Pumpkins were rotting in the fields. By then, Ugandans apparently had abandoned the idea of fending for themselves in favor of begging from the U.N. And they ended up a few years later with Idi Amin.

Whatever goes around, comes around. No way out of it. You always pay. Can't escape reality.

Doesn't it ever occur that a more positive alternative to piracy and begging is to try to maybe produce something? I suppose in these crummy countries production would be difficult -- anything you produce would be confiscated by the government, or a warlord or someone.

Gee.... doesn't that sound familiar? Kinda like the Democrat blueprint for the USA?

We have so much to look forward to.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Schumer gone wild!

In case you missed it, Chuck Schumer, Democrat US Senator from New York stated during an interview on MSNBC:

But the hard right, which still believes when the federal government moves -- [you] chop off its hands -- still believes, you know, traditional values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy... All that is over.

Don't believe it? Check it out:

http://townhall.com/blog/default.aspx?mode=post&g=1fb95cc0-e4b6-4f00-b476-d3470548056e&comments=true&submitted=true2465e073-c98f-462d-a3bc-243a40726ec1


I think it's also been posted on YouTube.

Hey, I thought that was my line, that "America is over." Only I don't say it with pleasure and a sense of satisfaction. And I'm usually a lot more articulate and precise.

I never did like Schumer. He usually has that same smirky-face thing going that Tom Daschle and Dick Durbin have, kind of a half-smile, and talk ver-y slow-ly and care-ful-ly, so the voters can grasp their lofty thoughts. I think Al Gore popularized this "American-voters-are-stupid-lumps" style of presention.

Funny though, none of these buttheads are smiling a whole lot anymore. The last time I saw a tape of Al Gore, he looked sort of apoplectic. All redfaced and puffy, like he was about to keel over, exhausted by his righteous passion. What a dope. Black baptist preachers are the only people who can get away with that kind of thing with any dignity.

So, has Schumer just spilled the beans, or what? Carrying tales from the closed Democrat committee meetings where they scribble out their 1,000-pages of unintelligible legislative proposals and scheme about how to shove them down the throats of the American public without anyone thinking about them.

Do they think we won't notice?

I think the Democrats are finding out that the American public is not quite as stupid or polite as the Republicans in congress. We will chop off the hands of government; I don't think the Republicans would. They're more likely to take it as "Well, you win some, you lose some." But this is not a fight that American citizens can afford to lose.

And here's an entirely new question, inspired by Congressman Bachman's putting the screws to Geithner in congressional hearings. She kept asking him (and I paraphrase): "Where in the Constitution do you find the authority to dictate to private businesses?'

He said, "Congress authorized it."

You know what? I don't believe Congress can authorize a transfer of power from the legislative to the executive branch. I think they'd have to amend the Constitution to do that.

But Congress does this all the time. Writes a vague and general bill [Everyone must eat popcorn on Friday nights], allocates some funding [$17 million], and then leaves all the rest of the details up to the president to figure out. [Hiring a Tactical Public Recreation Squad in black ski masks, equipping them with microwave ovens a trailer of Orville Redenbacker. They won't leave your living room until you've downed at least two handfuls.]

Anyway, Congress has to figure out the budget for whatever kind of silly crap they perpetrate upon us. All US spending has to start in the House of Reps.

I don't think TARP started in the House of Reps. I do believe it was Treasury who found these billions of dollars just laying out somewhere and decided to divide it up among the bankers. And that's not within the power of the Treasury, which is part of the executive branch.

No matter if it's constitutional or not, though, it's certainly socialist -- even fascist, lacking as it does even the pretense of democratic deliberation. It concentrates all that money and power to make decisions in the hands of a single individual who wasn't even elected.

That's not what our forefathers had in mind.

And the word "fascist" is interesting. One etymology traces it back to the Italian word for "fist."

That seems appropriate.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

"Soylent Green"

Last week I wrote that Obama's Socialist Agenda had passed both houses. That was what had been reported and I couldn't find too many details at the time.

Turns out, the Senate stripped out the cap-and-trade provisions (for now) and made other modifications, but agreed to socialist health care and whatever it is Obama wants for education. But nothing was funded. The media is now calling the bill a "blueprint."

Maybe this is all a stalling tactic, but included in the bluprint legislation is an agreement that the various pieces of it will be legislated under "reconciliation," which means the upcoming bills will require only a simple majority to pass and there will be limited debate.

Let's hope they can fudge all these details until the Democrats lose their majority, and hopefully all the nuts'n'bolts behind Obama's Five Year Plan will just expire in committee.

The question remains: Why do any of this at all? These programs do not provide a benefit to mankind; they're only wrecking a system that's barely limping along as it is -- burdened with busybody giveaways and suffocating under regulation already.

The one thing no one is considering is the free market, and the free market is the only thing that will create the solutions we need.

Why do I feel like I'm trapped inside some kind of "Soylent Green" scenario? In 10 years -- if I'm not dead from lack of health care -- I'll be telling the younger generation what it was like to be free:

"You could get in your car and drive anywhere with no restrictions. Yes, Heather, we had gas-fueled cars. You could go something like 300 miles before filling up. And we 'filled up,' we didn't 'plug in.' And you could actually afford fuel. Not like now, when electricity costs more than gasoline.

"You could keep your lights on all day if you wanted, work on the computer, watch TV. 'Course, it cost money, but we weren't under any rationing or mandates like now.

"You could pick whatever you wanted to study in college. You didn't have to take guidance from the Occupational Directors, building a labor force for the global marketplace.

"Congress used to have authority over the Housing Czar and Energy Czar and Financial Czar. If the czars pronounced some crappy policy that was going to put you out of business, you could write your congressman, and he might have been able to help. You didn't just pay a fine or go to jail for violations, no questions asked.

"We used to be proud of America's concept of 'rule by law, not by man.' That meant decisions that affected the whole population couldn't be mandated by one guy arbitrarily. They had to be debated and approved by Congress. I mean, that's what Congress used to do, but now we've got the czars.

"You could leave the country -- and without being stopped and searched.

"We had cash currency, not just the National Bank Cards. No one could trace cash. You could spend it on anything you wanted and no one knew about it. If people paid you for something in cash, the government would never know. I saved a couple old bills. I'll leave them to you in my will. They're collectors' items now, like Confederate Bonds.

"The grocery stores, the department stores, the discount stores -- they used to cover acres of ground. We used to have so much to chose from... but I guess it really is better to limit our choices. After all, it was only redundant to have 16 different kinds of breakfast cereal and a dozen brands of dish detergent. The current system is so much more efficient in allocating national resources.

"We used to be 'free.' Sorry, kids, I can't explain that to you. What it meant, really, was that the world was your oyster -- you could do anything you wanted, as long as you figured out some way to pay for it. Sure, a lot of people took advantage and got into trouble. But they paid for it, one way or another. Not like now, when if a Czar makes mistake, we're all in the crapper for the next few years. You could go off on your own, explore and do things without being videotaped or stopped and searched or without having to prove your identity.

"Why would I want to do that? Don't you ever just want to stop and reflect? Maybe only to meditate or talk to your God? Or just be peaceful inside yourself? No? Well, I guess it is kind of an old-fashioned notion for people who've been harrassed by cell phones and Twitter all their lives.

"Yes, I suppose you're right. Things are so much better now. You don't have to research things or read and ask questions, weigh and ponder things, you just do what you're told. Maybe the Czars do know better what's good for us; maybe we shouldn't want things we don't have; maybe we should let the neighbors decide what we can do in our yards and patios. And, yes, it used to be very confusing to read whatever you liked. A lot of books and TV programs contradicted each other. Not like now, when all subscribe to a single vision and promote the latest Five Year Plan.

"Damn, though, it used to be fun just to be alive! But maybe you're right. Better to just follow the herd. I mean, we're all just stupid and lazy and incapable of making our own decisions. And heaven forbid, you don't want to act like you're better than anyone else or deserve more than what everyone else has. Stick your head up, you'll probably get it shot off. Why should anyone make exceptions for you? Washington knows better, right? They've got the Czars and the Experts. And you're probably right, it's our duty to serve as cannon fodder for their plans. After all, they promise a better future, right?

"A better future for whom, though?"

Ya know, Utopia is not an option. Never has been. Never will be.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

"The Plan" exposed

Please take a look at my blog for March 19. I claimed that all the uproar over the AIG bonuses was a big scam that was probably instigated by the government. And surely it was supported by the government, with SEIU union members and apparently Acorn people being those protesting the loudest. The whole thing just didn't look spontaneous, though why even Obama's government would fire up such a flap was something of a mystery.

Well, apparently the truth is coming out. On Fox News, Judge Napolitano (not the Homeland Security person, but a federal judge who is a frequent commentator) said he'd spoken to a banker who attended the meeting Obama had with bankers. This was around the time of the anti-bonus protests.

This banker doesn't want to be identified for reasons that may become apparent.

The banker said that at this meeting with Obama, the bankers were told to take TARP money or they could face a five-year audit. And the audit would likely cast a cloud over the bank and frighten off customers and shareholders.

A reportedly direct quote from Obama: "My administration is the only thing separating you from the pitchforks."

"Pitchforks" seems to refer to the SEIU anti-bonus protesters, as well as the Acorn members who hired a bus to tour the private homes of executives who had received bonuses from AIG. That is, shake their sorry little fists in the front windows of these people, who received bonuses according to existing contracts, and with government approval only weeks before.

If all this is true, it's criminal extortion. Particularly given Tim Geithner's direktif that he believes he has the authority to fire and/or replace any executive at any bank that accepted TARP money, as well as any other corporate executive he decides to pick on.

I think he has a Napoleon complex. Like a lot of very short people get to be very aggressive over-achievers to compensate for their lack of height. I suspect Geithner was a star in his high school's Chess Club and probably hated gym. He gets defensive and overly aggressive when questioned.... Hmmm not sure of himself, or not sure of his legal ground?

A number of banks have tried to give back the TARP funds, but the government now won't let them. They should put the money in some kind of escrow account, and when Tiny Tim tries to push them around, just offer to return the money -- and invite the press to cover the incident. The networks probably wouldn't, but maybe Fox would.

Judge Napolitano said he wanted the bankers to come forward and speak up, even possibly file charges against Obama. They should.

This is a genuine outrage. Another one. They're getting tedious.

Meanwhile, Obama himself was over in Europe, not only kissing prominent butts there (or actually, not kissing, even when it would have been appropriate), but also selling out the USA. US financial institutions now are supposed to comply with regulations set by some European authority. Who, I don't know. The UN? That's probably the most corrupt political organization in the world.

Apart from the UN's accounting difficulties and the phenomenon of its disappearing funds, I haven't yet forgotten that France and apparently Germany were sending Saddam Hussein's Iraq supplies in trade for oil -- in violation of UN sanctions. This should have been a real scandal, but the press hardly touched it. I think it was one reason, maybe the primary reason, that France and Germany would not join the USA in opposing Hussein. They were on the gravy train and apparently willing to let Al Qaeda bomb even their own citizens in order to keep the gravy coming.

So, the USA now is going to become "1 of 20" petty trash socialist democracies?

Thank you, Mr. Obama. You've given me another reason to do as much as I can to try to defeat every damn thing you do.

We must vote out the Democrat majority in the next election before all this crap becomes so entrenched we can't get out of it. And keep our fingers crossed that the Republicans will be any better.

Our freedom is at stake. It really is.

Friday, April 3, 2009

You say you want a revolution?

Have you ever considered why we have governments at all? I know some anarchists -- not the ones who march around in ski masks, but people who really believe government is such a danger to human life that we're better off without it. They say with no government at all, individuals would have to become more self-responsible because the consequences for misbehavior would be so terrible......

Anyway, I usually point out that no anarchist societies exist on earth, and apparently they never have. If anarchy was viable, surely we'd have some examples of it somewhere. The thing is, human beings are capable of doing just about anything so we need rules for behavior. Most often these rules have been imposed top-down from some kind of monarch, imam, patriarch, nobleman, tribal chieftain, lunatic authoritarian -- someone.

In the US, the Founding Fathers decided that majority rule was the best way to determine the rules, with the caveat of the Bill of Rights, which lists "unalienable" rights that even the democratic process couldn't violate or nullify. The concept of individual rights is also enshrined in the US Senate, where each state gets two votes, no matter the size of its population. And the Senate is the "upper house." It has more authority than the House of Representatives.

Ha ha. Wouldn't Madison be laughing if he could see what a mess we've made of all that!

At any rate, the Founding Fathers went with democracy -- majority rule -- and a congress with two houses as the forum for national debate. They also stated that any spending bill had to be introduced in the House of Representatives because the House is supposed to be closer to the people and it's the people who fund any governmental spending.

The idea behind congress is that representatives debate the issues in a supposedly coolheaded and civil manner and make laws that everyone can live with. The key concept here is debate and the exchange of ideas to hammer out policy acceptable to all. If you can't reach an agreement, you don't legislate.

Bear in mind that these guys had just finished a 30-year struggle against a government that they regarded as non-representative of British subjects living in the colonies. They believed that King George and Parliament were so remote and disconnected from the colonies that they couldn't make fair and just decisions. The King and Parliament instead legislated to promote their own programs and ambitions, without taking into account the impacts these programs would have on the colonies.

So after the Revolution, the colonials went with democracy, especially open debate on policy and spending issues. They also divided up governmental authority into three branches -- the legislative, executive, and judicial. Each branch has the authority to nullify the decisions and actions taken by the other two branches.

That's a lot of roadblocks to exercising federal power, but the Founding Fathers didn't think the government should do much. By limiting the authority and reach of the federal government, they believed they were ensuring that ordinary citizens would have a huge amount of personal liberty -- more personal freedom than the citizens of any other nation in all of human history. They believed people were better off being free to make their own decisions, get their own living, pay their own bills, raise their own families, etc etc.

So nowadays we have Democrats very literally steamrollering a staggering socialist agenda and budget through both houses of congress, allowing for what? maybe eight minutes of debate?

This isn't just a spending bill. Obama's socialist agenda establishes public policies that will affect every citizen in ways that we can't even predict. Not to mention that it lays a debt of about $130,000 upon every American citizen.

And most of the time the bill spent on the floor, Barney Fudd was slobbering over it, making stupid and irrelevant responses to the objections raised by the bill's opponents. Apparently for ol' Barney, democracy is just one big joke. (Who the hell elected this clown?)

Forget the bill for a moment. The process by which it was passed completely undermines the US Constitution. In addition, this bill grants extensive autocratic authority to the executive branch of government, which means the decisions the president makes -- or his gophers like Tim Geithner -- will have the force of law without being considered by congress.

Obama's socialist agenda wipes out the USA and replaces it with something more on the order of a fascist state.

Do you like that? Did you vote for that in November? Or are you like that silly ass Rebecca (mentioned yesterday) who believes that all this bullshit will have no impact on our freedoms?

I'm sorry, Rebecca, et al., you can't have authoritarian government and personal freedom. You can't have personal freedom guided and controlled by the government. That's a contradiction in terms: liberal double-speak, exactly like something out of 1984. It's not a possibility. It cannot happen. It's like saying red is blue, green is yellow.

Why is this so hard to understand?

You know, Rome was republic at one time. But by the time Julius Caesar came to power, the republic had been pretty much obliterated. The Roman Senate still existed, but they didn't do anything but rubber-stamp Caesar's edicts.

Sound familiar?

But here's the worst thing. The very best thing "good" government does is to bring citizens into the process -- either directly or through representative forums. People usually will compromise and cooperate with each other for the sake of peace and maintaining an orderly society.

However, when government officials just shove programs and taxes upon citizens, imposing them upon the public arbitrarily, forcing citizens to abide by decisions they never made, and decisions that most reasonable people understand are destructive to their own well-being... You take away that civil forum. You anihilate the democratic process. You leave the general population only one alternative to stop government action: violent revolution.

This is what the Democrats are stirring up. Unless we can somehow restore the ideals and practices that the USA was built on, all that's going on now will probably all result in some kind of civil war. Citizens will have no other means to defeat unpopular and destructive government policy.

Civil war has happened before in America. It cost 620,000 lives and left parts of the nation in total rubble. There's no reason it can't happen again. The Democrats seem to be working deliberately toward that end.

But then I suppose to Democrats, civil war looks like just another huge opportunity to promote their socialist agenda.

The next sound you hear...

Do you hear that hammering? I think it's Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Fudd, et. al., sealing the coffin lid over the Republic.

They jammed through Obama's socialist agenda last night.

I'm looking for some way to contact those Taliban terrorists who had a plan to blow up Washington. I'll give them my credit card numbers so they can buy some plane tickets. You can decide whether or not I'm joking.

Or perhaps that hammering is the FBI or someone from Homeland Security preparing to haul me away now. Well, f*** them, know what I mean? We used to have a 1st Amendment. God knows if that's in effect anymore.

On Hannity the other night they had this idiot woman named Rebecca as a Democrat commentator. She was very pretty, very loud and aggressive, and a member of the school of thought that holds that if you repeat something over and over again, it somehow becomes true. Conversation with her was difficult to say the least. She didn't listen, only talked. And kept insisting that we can have socialism and capitalism at the same time.

Actually, I think she's pretty typical in that kind of thinking (though I hesitate to called it "thinking.")

So, OK, you've got nine guys on the diamond and a batter up.

No... Wait. Lets make it a triangle. We don't need three bases and home. Two bases and home and the game will go faster.

Then let's think about that nasty-looking bat. Surely we can do something with that. Maybe the man at the plate can hold up a shield or something, like a Roman gladiator.

Oh boy. If we take away the bat, we should probably also re-think the ball. Those fast balls burn in at sometimes almost 100 mph. So let's do a Nerf thing with the ball. And the pitcher can only throw underhand. We don't want anyone to get hurt.

And if we've got a triangle instead of diamond, we don't really need a 2nd baseman, either. But maybe let's keep the shortstop.

Scoring... hmmm, always problematic. We don't want to give anyone an inferiority complex. Everyone should get their picture on a Wheaties box. Let's just say if the batter can swat the Nerf ball past the baseline, he scores.

But it's still baseball, right?

God damn fools.

If those silly shits in Washington truly believe they can come up with something better than what Jefferson, Adams, Madison, et. al. devised -- their hubris is boundless...

And I hate to tell ya -- ENTIRELY BASED ON SOCIOPATHIC FANTASY. These people are friggin' dangerous.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

G20 - An exercise in futility

George Soros in the Financial Times, talking about the G20 meeting:

“It’s really a make-or-break occasion. That’s why it’s so important. The chances of a depression are quite high — even if that is averted, the recession will last a long time. Look, we are not going back to where we came from. In that sense it’s going to last forever.”

Actually, nothing ever comes out of the Gxx meetings. The various heads of state meet, an international army of self-proclaimed victims riot and litter, and then everyone goes home. What has ever resulted from a Gxx meeting?

But while I'm on the subject, Soros's remark reminds me of something our illustrious president said while he was trying to sell the Stimulus Package. He commented that the nation was in danger of going into an economic depression that would be "irreversible" unless congress acted immediately.

What the hell does that mean? If the banks fold up the American people will all just stay in bed all day and suck their thumbs until they die of starvation? Without government help, that is.

I thought this was a very telling statement from the prez, telling about what he really thinks and how he views the world. If citizens don't have government assistance, they just curl up and die?

Why would that happen? It's absurd.

Free individuals -- who were often pretty distant from any form of effective government -- were the people who built the US, not the government. Government actually generally stands in the way of creativity and innovation because stuff that does not yet exist can't be regulated, and all government does is regulate. Government tends to discourage creativity and innovation precisely because government can't regulate these things.

Our government, as defined by the Constitution, exists only to preserve the rights we're born with and to prevent us from killing each other. That is, the government is supposed to leave us alone and interfere only when one citizen violates the rights of another, or when the nation is under attack from a foreign power.

When people are free of oppressive government and political control, they flourish. The USA has proven that. People congregated in the US from all over the world, from all different kinds of cultures, people of all races and religious backgrounds. The only thing they all had in common was the freedom they found here, under protection of the US Constitution. And look what they built. It's really amazing.

So what happened to that? Are we all now born brain-dead?

Does our president seriously believe that we are all so dependent upon government direction and support that we're completely helpless without it? We wouldn't be able to figure out how or what to eat and couldn't set up a tent somewhere? I mean, really, how stupid does he think we are?

Typically what happens when a business -- particularly a large business -- gets into trouble, it begins selling off non-critical assets. It cuts staff to the bone and often lowers compensation rates. It may even chuck its primary products and services and move into another direction. This happens over and over and over again every day without the assistance or even the notice of the federal government. Do we need Tim Geithner and the Treasury Dept, or some disjointed "community of nations" to fix these problems? Do these buttheads even know what they're doing? How many of them have ever run a business?

People aren't stupid, and all but the genuinely psychopathic have enough self-interest to make some kind of effort to keep themselves alive. We do this all on our own. We don't need the government for this. In fact, we're better off when the government stays out of it.

Survival requires being able to move pretty quickly to respond to an ever-changing environment. (And I don't mean climate change.) We have the inborn capability to perceive our surroundings and need to be able to decide how to react to it. This is freaking biological, not a political decision.

We have to be able to do this independently and individually. This can't be legislated or regulated. There's no government in the world that could contrive a code of laws that could fairly and effectively tell every single individual how to act in every possible situation. This is not even a remote possibility. We need the freedom to act independently in order to survive.

Government only gets in the way of this by imposing regulations and rules of behavior that may or may not be applicable to our situations, and may or may not support our own goals and aspirations.

So, rather than admitting that it can't control every situation and meet everyone's needs, what government does is restrict human activity to keep it within the scope of government control. This is totalitarianism. When a government begins trying to micro-manage its citizens, it steps off down a highway that can only end in totalitarianism.

History provides so many examples. In fact, this march toward oppressive and coercive and destructive government is almost a common trend among any government in any nation. That's where the US Constitution broke with tradition -- by limiting government.

So what the hell is the purpose for undoing that now? Who's going to gain anything at all from an expanding government, or by adding a layer of international government? Maybe a few politicians will live large for a while, until they piss someone off, or turn their backs, then it's over for them, too. Like every dictator in history. How many of them died peacefully of old age?

And about the G20....

Germany and France, having suffered from hyper-inflation, don't like the idea of spending more money. No, they're going for more and more regulation. Apparently regulation that has some kind of authority that supercedes any national government. And who or what would this be? God?

It would have to be God. No one else could do it. And I, for one, am not willing to accept some cosmic (?) authority that's entirely unaccountable to myself as a voter.

So hopefully G20 won't accomplish anything more than providing a photo-op for the heads of the participating nations and making a big mess in downtown London. And that's bad enough.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Another perspective

About 15 years ago I knew a political activist who made a very good point. I don't want to use his name because I don't know if he'd want to be associated with this blog (!). Anyway, he said something I've never forgotten:

"If you think of yourself as a 'taxpayer,' you've already lost half the battle."

That is to say, you've already assigned yourself the role of paying... and paying... and paying. You'll have to overcome your inertia before you can overcome anyone else's.

Not only that, but the label implies that paying taxes is your primary function in the universe. Is it?

Maybe assign yourself the role of "citizen." That gives you a position of enormous strength in the political environment. This USA was made for citizens, not for the government. It was founded to protect your rights and freedoms, not promote an overweaning and blustering "political class," to borrow a phrase from Rasmussen Reports.

Citizens don't yield to the government in the USA; it works the other way around. When the government becomes a burden to the citizens, it's time for the government to go. Remember that.

Hopefully this administration will come to realize that, too, while something still remains of our freedom.