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

Category: Liberals suck

  • That’s not encouraging

    Another eye-catching headline from the Associated Press;

    While the stock market tumbles, unemployment shoots higher, gas prices are rising again but The One “knows” he did the right thing. See, here let me explain to any Democrat philosophy major who has never had a job or a business or invested in the stock market how those things work (because I have a little experience at all three) – those things do well, or poorly, based on the expectations of future performance. That’s why businesses have sales targets and staff economists to project that stuff.

    If it looks like business will be bad, businesses will cut labor – the most expensive part of doing business. If investors think that government is making unfriendly gestures towards the economy, they won’t invest and the market tumbles – businesses shed more jobs so they can stay in business. If taxpayers think their taxes will rise, they’ll stop spending their money to make those balloon payments they expect next year from the IRS.

    The economy today is a result of what people with money think the future looks like. The reason the economy did well under Clinton and Bush is because they knew what the future looked like. The market tumbled after 9-11 because it added uncertainty into the market. Uncertainty that lingered for more than a year until it became apparent that Bush was going to keep the country safe.

    I listened to Obama today yammer on about how change is good for us. That he’s tired of dealing with people who want to do things “the old way”, or words to that effect. Um, “the old way” is the reason we’re the most prosperous and powerful nation in the history of the world. Maybe the people who want to do the things “the old way” are right. “The new way” doesn’t seem to be panning out so well. Change isn’t always good – history is littered with spectacular failures that were considered good ideas until they weren’t so good anymore. Things like New Coke and dirigibles.

    Folks used to criticize Bush because they said he was pig-headed and never admitted when he was wrong. Obama is being a bit pig-headed, too. Jobless rates rising and the stockmarket tumbling while he chants “I know I was right” is not encouraging. Not in the least. I think that’ll reflect in Monday’s market.

  • Why States don’t fight wars

    Jerry920 sent us this article from the Army Times which reports on the efforts of one State Senator of mine in the sorry state of Maryland.

    Sorry? Yes, because they have a long history of being two-faced and populated by morons. They were one of the slave states that remained in the Union during the Civil War having their cake and eating it, too, since the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t apply to them. It was Marylanders that Pinkerton had to protect the new President Lincoln from as he made his way to his first Inauguration. It was Marylanders that hid John Wilkes Boothe until he could cross the Potomac into Virginia. In fact, John Wilkes Booth was a Marylander. Well, you see where I get this intense dislike of my neighbors.

    Back to the article;

    A Maryland state senator is pushing a bill that would require the governor to prevent the mobilization of the state’s National Guard for federal duty unless Congress has authorized the use of military force or issued a declaration of war.

    The bill also would authorize the governor to ask for the return of deployed units in certain circumstances.

    While the sons and daughters of 49 other States fight and die for the security of the chuckleheads of Maryland.

    Madaleno, a Democrat [as if you hadn’t guessed at this point], said he supported the Iraq invasion, although he said he believes there were “serious gaps in how the war was prosecuted after…the first six months.”

    At the same time, he argued, “If we are actually going to be actively engaged in conflicts around the world for a variety of reasons, how do we create a political process that makes sure that the people remain engaged and supportive of the conflicts that we’re in? It shouldn’t just be the executive branch that is solely responsible for that decision-making. We have to create a political process that keeps the public engaged, informed, through their elected representatives.”

    Never mind whether we win or lose, or if we’re secure in our homes – it’s more important that the public remain engaged. It’s all about feelings.

    It’s all a part of the “Bring The Guard Home” Movement which I’ve written about before here. They’re perfectly willing to let other soldiers fight their wars while they feel good about their neighbors sitting out a war at home. There’s probably a movement in your state, too. And Oh, they have the backing of Code Pink, too.

    “By doing it this way, I’m trying to take a slightly different tack than several other states, where they’ve focused solely on the resolution to bring the Guard home from Iraq now,” Madaleno said. “And I’m trying to refocus and broaden the debate a little bit: What are the lessons of this conflict that inform us for the next conflict?”

    This is why States and the US Congress don’t fight wars – they don’t understand that you can’t hamstring your military and the application of military power where and when it’s needed by setting up a series of useless and unnecessary legislative hoops to jump through.

    Jerry asked me about Minnesota – according to National Review;

    The United States Supreme Court settled this question definitively in 1990, when the then-governor of Minnesota complained that Guard troops from that state had been sent to Central America. In that case — Perpich v. Department of Defense — the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the governor of Minnesota had no such authority over the Guard troops, and recognized “the supremacy of federal power in the area of military affairs.”

    Wikipedia concurs. The actual decision says;

    Congress has provided by statute that, in addition to its National Guard, a State may provide and maintain at its own expense a defense force that is exempt from being drafted into the Armed Forces of the United States. See 32 U.S.C. § 109(c). As long as that provision remains in effect, there is no basis for an argument that the federal statutory scheme deprives Minnesota of any constitutional entitlement to a separate militia of its own.

    So they have no legs to stand on. But, it’s just the idea….

  • Supporting the troops, IAVA style!

    Those of us who served overseas during Operation Enduring Freedom and/or Operation Iraqi Freedom come from all across the political and socio-economic spectrum. But, if there is one thing that binds all of us, besides our service in GWOT, it is certainly our ability and desire to plunk down $250 for an evening of cocktails to be enjoyed with noted Veterans advocates from Hollywood.

    IAVA’s West Coast Heroes Celebration
    This spring, please join us in honoring the nation’s newest generation of heroes and celebrating the successes of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). IAVA is holding the first annual West Coast Heroes Celebration on Thursday, April 30th, 2009. The cocktail reception will be held at the offices of Creative Artists Agency (2000 Avenue of the Stars) in Los Angeles, California from 7-9:00PM.

    We are excited to have Cameron Diaz, Nick Styne, and Norman Lear co-host this special evening.

    Ticket $250
    Sponsor $5,000
    Patron $10,000
    Benefactor $25,000
    Premiere Sponsor $50,000

    I mean, who among us could ever forget Ms. Diaz’s standing up for the veterans during the 2004 election when she said:

    Women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our bodies. We could lo–if you think that rape should be legal, then don’t vote. But if you think that you have a right to your body, and you have a right to say what happens to you and fight off that danger of losing that, then you should vote.

    Well, that really had nothing to do with veterans actually, but I am sure she is spectacular on her caring.

    Since I didn’t know who Nick Styne was, I looked it up:

    High-powered motion picture talent agent Nick Styne is leaving International Creative Management after more than ten years. He’ll be joining the Creative Artists Agency and is reportedly taking major clients like Cameron Diaz, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair supermodel Heidi Klum with him.

    Man, I can TOTALLY see why OEF/OIF vets want to hang with him. I know when I came off the airplane on my return my first thought was “Shit! Where am I gonna get a talent agent now?” Because, if there is one thing a wounded vet without a job needs, it is a talent scout. Don’t believe me? Just run up to Walter Reed and ask for a show of hands on how many have their own, and I bet not a one of them does.

    And Norman Lear, man, that dude is Teh Awesome! Just a few weeks ago he was talking about how he supported the troops of this war, as he had ones in the past:

    But like any great film, and Stop-Loss is a great film, it can help the viewer to experience that “feeling,” if only fleetingly. Stop-Loss did that for me. I feel as never before for the men and women fighting it and for their families.

    During the Vietnam protest days there was an indelible photograph of a group of students lying on the track in front of a troop train. Where, I wonder, is my troop train?

    Dude, I am *SO* down with that logic. I truly am. I like the Red Sox, but until Jimmy Falon played a deranged lunatic member of Sox Nation, I never truly understood. It really does take a movie to make you understand and grasp the importance of an event you took part in, doesn’t it?

    (To his credit, at least Lear is a veteran of WWII)

    I just personally want to thank IAVA for doing this for all of us out here struggling with having $250 of expendable income that we can’t get rid of, and giving us the opportunity to meet the types of counsellors we need the most: ones who can get us into the movies.

    Here is one guy who gets it:

  • Sleight of mouth

    We’ve all heard the yammering recently as the Democrat White House tries to change the subject from it’s own failures to their criticism of what the President calls “cable chatter”. Press secretary Gibbs has been quick to attack CNBC’s Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer for their criticism of the President’s agenda. Gibbs even admits that it’s counterproductive, according to the Washington Times;

    “It may be counterproductive. I’ll give you that,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, when asked about his repeated verbal jousting with Mr. Limbaugh and other media personalities who have criticized President Obama.

    But that hasn’t stopped him. Life long Democrat and Obama supporter Jim Cramer has responded to the most recent attacks against his commentary;

    So I will fight the fight against that agenda. I will stand up for what I believe and for what I have always believed: Every person has a right to be rich in this country and I want to help them get there. And when they get there, if times are good, we can have them give back or pay higher taxes. Until they get there, I don’t want them shackled or scared or paralyzed. That’s what I see now.

    If that makes me an enemy of the White House, then call me a general of an army that Obama may not even know exists — tens of millions of people who live in fear of having no money saved when they need it and who get poorer by the day.

    Ohio Republican congressman John Boehner writes in today’s Washington Post that this has been part of the Obama strategy all along, to distract the public from the malfeasance that’s happening right before our eyes;

    Make no mistake: This strategy did not develop out of thin air. Democratic pollsters began laying the groundwork for this effort last fall. What’s particularly regrettable is that all this is unfolding at a time our nation can least afford it.

    President Obama has said that we must change the way Washington operates in order to address the unprecedented challenges of today. I hope that those inside and close to the administration begin heeding his advice, because the change-the-subject campaign they are employing is the oldest trick in Washington’s book. This isn’t about the leadership of political party officials or the influence of radio hosts. It’s about the need for both parties to work together toward real solutions to end this recession and put Americans back to work.

    Democrats know they’re creating a REAL SEVERE crisis out of a run-of-the-mill crisis by compounding the damage to the economy. Cramer, of whom I’ve been critical in the past, writes that he longs for higher taxes on the rich and greatly expanded environmental projects, but that now isn’t the time. The Democrats won’t wait for the time, though – they learned that in 1993 their grasp of power is tenuous when the people handed Congress to the Republicans for the first time in 50 after Democrats barely failed to enact their healthcare plan. They knew that if they waited to enact their far-reaching socialist plans, they might miss another opportunity to enslave the vote to their will.

    Now Democrats are trying to distract the public from what they know in advance will drive us deeper into a recession, maybe even a depression with their mismanagement of the economy – while in public they attack private citizens who disagree with them and carry out a show-trial against Karl Rove who they suspect of being guilty of doing the same thing they’re doing at the DOJ right now.

    So where are our watchdogs in the media?

  • Gee, ya think?

    This headline caught my eye while I was checking my email;

    Why do you think President Bush called them part of the axis of evil? What do you think they’ve been doing the last several years? Capturing British sailors, supplying the insurgency against US troops in Iraq? Are we supposed to believe it just started this weekend?

    The guy who sat next to me in the turret of our Bradley through the Gulf War sent me this article from Fox News;

    Iran can develop a nuclear weapon within a year and has ready access to enough fissile material to produce up to 50 nuclear weapons, according to a panel of current and former U.S. officials advising the Obama administration.

    William Schneider, Jr., chairman of the Defense Science Board and a former under secretary of state in the Reagan administration, offered those estimates Wednesday during a news conference announcing the release of a new “Presidential Task Force” report on Iran by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

    So are we going to continue to subordinate our foreign policy to the whims of those hags at Code Pink and IVAW? Or are we going to act like grown ups?

  • WSJ: Now it’s Obama’s fault

    The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board writes this morning that the Bush recession has ended, that the market should be on it’s way to recovery. Housing prices have fallen 27%, the planet is awash in capital what with every government lowering their interest rates, stocks were priced for the recession last year, after the damage was assessed. So why hasn’t the economy begun recovering;

    So what has happened in the last two months? The economy has received no great new outside shock. Exchange rates and other prices have been stable, and there are no security crises of note. The reality of a sharp recession has been known and built into stock prices since last year’s fourth quarter.

    What is new is the unveiling of Mr. Obama’s agenda and his approach to governance. Every new President has a finite stock of capital — financial and political — to deploy, and amid recession Mr. Obama has more than most. But one negative revelation has been the way he has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion. Most of his “stimulus” spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.

    His Treasury has been making a similar mistake with its financial bailout plans. The banking system needs to work through its losses, and one necessary use of public capital is to assist in burning down those bad assets as fast as possible. Yet most of Team Obama’s ministrations so far have gone toward triage and life support, rather than repair and recovery.

    Instead of “investing” our tax money in the private sector where jobs are created, where tax revenue is generated, where our wealth lives, the Democrats, with the president in their van, are making threatening gestures at the pharmaceutical industry, and the healthcare business, in general. They’re spending the money on grasshopper research and bee insurance while plotting to grab up the private student loan business.

    Earlier, I wrote that the president’s press secretary dismissed investors as “a small audience” – even though over half of Americans are invested in stocks and mutual funds. Gibbs said that Obama is working for a “larger audience” – how much larger of an audience do investors need to be to merit the administration’s attention?

    James Taranto in Best of the Web Today recounts a nearly Stalinesque atmosphere in the White House with feted artists and lavish parties on the taxpayer’s dime and chiildish dismissals of our concerns;

    The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down more than 50% since its October 2007 peak, and some 30% just since Election Day*. The president’s response? As we noted yesterday, he dismisses this relentless decline as “fits and starts.”

    WSJ’s editorial concludes;

    Listening to Mr. Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, on the weekend, we couldn’t help but wonder if they appreciate any of this. They seem preoccupied with going to the barricades against Republicans who wield little power, or picking a fight with Rush Limbaugh, as if this is the kind of economic leadership Americans want.

    Perhaps they’re reading the polls and figure they have two or three years before voters stop blaming Republicans and Mr. Bush for the economy. Even if that’s right in the long run, in the meantime their assault on business and investors is delaying a recovery and ensuring that the expansion will be weaker than it should be when it finally does arrive.

    All for the sake of erasing the Bush legacy.

  • White House targets citizens in attacks

    I’m feeling a bit nervous here. We were accused of stifling dissent during the last eight years. What’s-his-face-Mr.-Sarandon complained that there was a chill wind blowing that kept him silent – from the podium at the National Press Club. Those poor Dixie Chicks only made several million dollars on their tour because of the evil Republicans. But all the while, the White House was actually silent about the controversies that surrounded all of the cranks who claimed they were being persecuted by the Bush/Cheney cabal.

    But now we get a new administration, and they specifically target private citizens, attacking them in their public forum, from the White House bully pulpit. First, they went after Rick Santelli of CNBC a week or so ago. Last weekend, they decided to go after Rush Limbaugh. This morning Dave Poof (or whatever the hell his name is) Obama’s campaign manager, has an uncontested piece in the Washington Post singling out Limbaugh and stapling all kinds of false interpretations of Limbaugh’s speeches to Republicans and Conservatives.

    Today we read that the White House has decided to take on CNBC’s Jim Cramer, a lifelong Democrat for saying this (the best part begins at about 3 minutes into the video);

    Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

    So here comes Gibbs again (at about 2:50 into the video);

    Gibbs calls investors “a small audience” – 50% of Americans are invested in stocks or mutual funds. I’d hardly call that a small audience.

    This is unprecedented in our history – the president, through his staff, attacking private citizens for expressing their opinions. I feel a chill wind so where’s Mr. Sarandon now? Where’s my news conference at the National Press Club?

    Added: I guess Democrats are taking their cue from Hugo Chavez, who announced a media war this weekend.

  • Hoyer ignores White House on earmarks

    According to the Washington Times this morning, our new president is having trouble keeping his free-spending Congressional cohorts in line so he can keep the promisies he made to voters last year;

    House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer became the second leading congressional Democrat in a week to push back against Mr. Obama’s drive to curb member-directed earmarks on spending bills.

    Saying he was open to the president’s “suggestions” about how to reform the spending process, the Maryland Democrat told reporters, “I don’t think the White House has the ability to tell us what to do. I hope you all got that down.”

    His remark echoed a warning from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, that the earmarks process is a congressional prerogative.

    Emphasis is mine – in other words, Congress is going to do what it wants – despite the president. I guess they still think it’s Bush up there in the White House.

    Yeah, here’s what Obama said in the campaign;

    In case you missed it, this line was in there;

    Obama and Biden will slash earmarks to no greater than year 1994 levels and ensure all spending decisions are open to the public.

    Apparently Reid, Pelosi and Hoyer missed that part of the campaign. Are any of them looking around at the economy outside of the Beltway? Next year’s elections are going to be so much fun to watch.