This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Economy

  • Washington Tea Party live blogging

    I’m at Lafayette Park, doing my photography thing. Here are some of the first pictures. I’ll be updating this post all afternoon with pictures, videos and commentary when I can.

    Joe the Plumber is here;
    Tea Party 030
    He was a big hit, but he said he was there to do interviews for Pajama Media and he did – he probably interviewed ten people between shaking everyone’s hand.
    (more…)

  • Kerry wants to regulate corporate fun

    In the Wall Street Journal this morning they recount the story of fully profitable Northern Trust who accepted $1.6 billion in TARP money and last week decided to continue with their sponsorship of a PGA event called the Northern Trust Open. It probably wasn’t a good idea to test the regulatory waters like that in the current political environment, but John Kerry’s reaction is a bit over the top.

    Senator Kerry’s solution to this “idiotic” decision is to outlaw fun. “Kerry’s TARP Taxpayer Protection and Corporate Responsibility Act,” the Senator’s press release announced, “would prevent any recipient of TARP funds from hosting, sponsoring, or paying for conferences, holiday parties and entertainment events.” Penalties would include fines and forced reimbursement of TARP funds. A bank could still throw a party for customers, provided it gets a “waiver” from the Treasury Secretary, who has 30 days to issue his golf and chardonnay diktat.

    Having spent some time among the moneyed class, I know that there is a return on an investment like Northern Trust’s wining and dining clients and employees, otherwise, trust me, they wouldn’t do it. Yeah, it was probably wrong to do it just now and give some ammo to the emotional Democrats (who are well-versed in the concept of tossing money around just for fun – but not for you and me).

    However, Kerry’s solution is just ridiculous – it’s the governmental equivalence of asking teacher if you can go outside for recess. It’s also indicative of how Democrats see the world full of circumstances that they can regulate. And I’m pretty sure the Secretary of Treasury has nothing else to do but investigate and approve every little event some financial institution wants to involve itself in.

    I wonder if Kerry would like that kind of scrutiny on his own office expenditures.

  • Varney confronts ACORN crank

    Take your BP meds before you watch this video of Stuart Varney confronting Bertha Lewis of ACORN (found at Hot Air)

    Maybe if more media outlets would confront these completely vacuous “activists” (who are really nothing more than race-baiting thugs) we could have a real discussion about a solution to this problem instead of throwing other peoples’ money at it.

    Related is Michelle Malkin’s exposure of ACORN’s poster child fraud in Baltimore who bought her house for $87k in 2001 and within a few years refinanced the house for $270k and spent it and now can’t afford payments for her follies. Michelle has the whole story and, characteristically, all of the documentation.

  • Obama to halve deficit by 2012

    Have you ever been to one of those department stores which claim they’re selling merchandise at half off, but when you get there you discover that they increased the prices the week before so they could charge you regular prices as “half off”. I think we just saw the same trick played on us on a national scale;

    How hard will it be to halve the deficit when it just exploded last week? Of course Obama blames Bush for the problem;

    “This administration inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit, the largest in our nation’s history, and our investments to rescue our economy will add to that deficit in the short term,” Obama told the gathering at the White House. “We cannot and will not sustain deficits like these without end.”

    Then why did he just double that deficit?

    I heard this same kind of talk in 1993 just before we got slapped with the largest tax hike in history. When the Clinton Administration decided that the rich included Social Security recipients and anyone that had a job. We’re all about to discover that we’re Joe Biden’s kind of patriots – those who pay their taxes and shut up about it.

  • Obama tells employers to fork over our whopping tax cut

    Obama told employers to start giving us our tax cut in April in his weekly radio address today. So that weekly extra thirteen bucks will begin flowing into the economy sooner. Now that money will be burning a hole in our collective pocket, we’ll be able to pay our mortgages, buy gas for our cars…heck, now we can even afford a new car. All thanks to Obama (praise be to him).

    Oh, by the way, that’s thirteen bucks if you’re married and filing jointly – six bucks if you’re not married. And I don’t care what the media says, the way I read the whole “tax credit” thing, it works out to a buck-and-a-half if you’re in the 10% tax bracket (under $60k/yr combined income).

    I’d rather see the contribution limits raised for qualified IRAs and 401ks – that’s the main reason my taxes are lower by more than half since 2001 (and I make twice as much money as I did then). Not only that, it’d help me recover some of my losses from last year in my retirement accounts – it also puts my earnings out of reach of the government for a few more years.

    Yesterday, Obama tried to bully the governors by threatening them if they squandered their stimulus money, and today it’s employers. Who is going to be next?

    How about threatening those people who aren’t paying their mortgages and credit card bills?

  • MSNBC’s Santelli draws ire of Democrats

    In case you missed it the other day, MSNBC’s Chicago trading floor reporter, Rick Santelli let loose on the air Thursday over the “stimulus” bill. I could recite some his points, but it’s much better if you watch him give them;

    Well, it must have had some effect because yesterday, press secretary Gibbs mentioned Santelli by name six times (from the Washington Times);

    A day after President Obama’s housing foreclosure plan was battered by a cable network reporter, the White House on Friday launched a bullish retaliatory attack, saying CNBC reporter Rick Santelli’s “rant” was uninformed and dangerous.

    “I’m not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives, or in what house he lives,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said, mentioning the reporter six times by name and holding up a copy of the fact sheet the White House released to back up its foreclosure plan.

    “I would encourage him to read the president’s plan and understand that it will help millions of people, many of whom he knows. I would be more than happy to have him come here and read it. I would be more than happy to buy him a cup of coffee – decaf.”

    Maybe they should buy us all some de-caf coffee (maybe it’s already in the stimulus bill to buy us some de-caf), because everyone I’ve talked to gets just as exercised about the whole thing – including people who voted for Obama.

    Mr. Gibbs refused to accept the stock market as a valuable measure of White House policies.

    “I think it is very safe to assume that what is being priced into the day-to-day fluctuations of the market is not just what happens or is announced at the White House or on the road by the White House,” he said.

    Of course, he’d say that, look at what the market has done since the election;

    Investors don’t bet on the economy in the stock market based on day-to-day events, they bet on what they think the future looks like – and the future under Obama looks grim. Obama says so himself almost every day.

    Firing back at Mr. Gibbs on Friday, Mr. Santelli – more staid than during his Thursday performance – said all he was asking for was more specifics and that he appreciated the offer to read the plan. But he chided Mr. Gibbs over the massive $787 billion spending bill, spanning hundreds of pages, which Congress passed and Mr. Obama signed within a matter of days – and before most lawmakers had a chance to read it.

    Mr. Santelli also said he was happy to be invited to the White House, though he had a slight change for Mr. Gibbs’ plans for coffee: “I’m not really big on decaf, though. I think I prefer tea.”

    Here’s Santelli on Hardball with some doofus who tries to make Santelli’s rant political instead of based on economics;

    Instead of addressing the points of Santelli’s rant, Matthews minimizes the accuracy by claiming Santelli is partisan and “iconized” like Limbaugh and Hannity. Pathetic partisan hack that Matthews is.

  • Everything is officially racist

    Some Republican Southern governors are planning on not accepting stimulus bill money, remaining true to their conservative principles. They have said they’re worried about restrictions and “strings” the Federal government would impose are unacceptable to the sovereign States. (Washington Times)

    Republican governors Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Rick Perry of Texas expressed reservations this week about accepting their states’ shares of the stimulus package because they are worried that the federal government will impose conditions on how it can be spent.

    As a self-styled staunch conservative, Mr. Sanford, the new head of the Republican Governors Association, aggressively opposed the stimulus plan. However, in a Thursday morning interview on CBS’ “The Early Show,” Mr. Sanford said his state would accept money from the stimulus bill. Opposing the plan “doesn’t preclude taking the money,” said Mr. Sanford.

    Well, like everything else in the past month, not excepting the money from the federal government would be considered racist and a “slap in the face” to Black America according to Jim Clynurn, congressman from South Carolina (Fox News);

    The highest-ranking black congressman says opposition to the federal stimulus package by southern governors is “a slap in the face of African-Americans.”

    Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina said Thursday he was insulted when the GOP governors of several states said they might not accept some of the money from the $787 billion stimulus package.

    How silly is that? And how racist is it to insinuate that these funds are targeted to help Black Americans? Are the only people who’ve lost their jobs and their homes Black? Is Obama just the President of Black America? Is all of his legislation just to benefit Blacks?

    Of course, if you google Clyburn, you’ll find everything that he says is somehow an indictment of someone being a racist somewhere. Just another race pimp.

    Thanks to Ray for the links.

  • Now they’ve done it

    The Democrats went and pissed off Chuck Norris. He goes medieval on their collective ass at Human Events today;

    Former President G.W. Bush pushed the first trillion-dollar bailout upon America. Nothing happened. Obama now has pushed the second trillion-dollar bailout upon America. Why should we believe there won’t be a third, fourth, fifth or sixth so-called government stimulus? What other recourse do they have?

    We’re in the tank for trillions. And Congress’ only solution is to print more money and make more loans.

    Haven’t they seen the movies? Don’t they know about the ass-whoopin’ they’re about to receive? There’s only 535 Congressmen and Senators – Chuck usually kicks that much ass in the first five minutes of his movies.