Friday, July 24, 2009
An All Too Familiar Pattern from POTUS
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Last night's press conference followed a path that we should all be familiar with by now:
• It's an emergency! We have to pass this NOW!
Where have we heard this before? It is the Democratic SOP to cry wolf and then insist that legislation be passed without being read. Don't let that crisis go to waste!
• It's the Republicans fault!
OMG. The Democrats have a majority that allows them to effectively silence the Republicans on every single issue. And now it's those stubborn Republicans that are keeping the Democrats from saving the American public. How stupid do we have to be to even listen to this one?
• They're after me personally.
This was used against Limbaugh, Hannity, Palin, etc. until we all started to recognize the Alinsky pattern: personalize and attack. It's not about the issues, it's about personal attacks on the ONE. This is a look-over-here tactic that the Democrats use to change the subject of the discussion from the issues to "they're against me" Obama.
• And finally: You're racist.
All else has failed to get enough votes to push the Democratic majority into voting for government nationalization of healthcare. So, let's remind America of how racist you all are by citing (incorrectly it would seem) an incident in Massachusetts that, on the surface, looks like it could be racist. (Investigation shows that the officer in the case was clearly acting appropriately.) This is nothing but another "look over there" tactic to take the discussion away from the issues at hand.
When will the rest of the American public wake up?
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Obama Removes His Mask of the Great Unifier
It is truly a sad day in America when the president of the United States fans the flames of racial hatred.
The man elected to be president of all the people, in his speech at the NAACP basically said, though America is racist, sexist and homophobic, you can make it in spite of those white SOB's attempts to stop you. Wonderful. How inspiring. The NAACP audience erupted in applause. Obama's condemnation was "red meat" to the liberal, protective of their victim $tatu$,* organization.
"Make no mistake, the pain of discrimination is still felt in America (applause) by African-American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and a different gender; by La-tin-os made to feel unwelcome in their own country; by Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion simply because they kneel down to pray to their god; by gay dead brothers and sisters still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights."
Interestingly, Obama's list of victims did not include Christians and straight white males. This is because it is open season on bashing them. According to liberals, everything wrong in the world is the fault of Christians and straight white males. Case in point, Pulitzer Prize winner Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times in which she demonizes white men... [snip]
Mr. President, as for the victims in your speech; one of those African American women you claim America has victimized used her money, power and influence to help get you elected. White guys did not blow up the Twin Towers, murdering three thousand Americans. Muslims did. So, excuse me if I give them a second glance in an airport. Only illegal Latinos are unwelcome -- just as with every other ethnic group. When an openly gay beauty pageant judge viciously trashes a contestant for humbly saying she believes marriage should be between a man and a woman and much of the media sides with him in publicly ridiculing the woman.
Who is being 'persecuted' here?
Does racism exist in America? Of course it does -- along with every other sin. But are we a racist country? Absolutely not.
Why would our president want to reinforce such a divisive paradigm? And why did the NAACP so enjoy Obama's attack on white America?
All of Obama's accusations against America are untrue, divisive and evil.
[We do have some {some would argue cultivated} systemic racism in this country - but all of it against whites by certain minority groups.
Obama's election proves, literally, that white America has no such systemic prejudice or he could not have been elected.
But the grievance industry is a billion dollar industry - hence the renewed efforts to sell the justification for its continued existence, damn the consequences to our nation.]
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Racial Preferences in the Democrats' Health Care Bill
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Under the Democrats' health care bill, if a medical school wants to increase its chances of receiving many different kinds of grants and contracts from the federal government, it should have a 'demonstrated record' of training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups.
On page 881-882 the bill states:
"In awarding grants or contracts under this section, the Secretary shall give preference to entities that have a demonstrated record of the following: . . . Training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or disadvantaged backgrounds." [yellow = pc-indent black then dr-red]
[Four more instances of above paragraph in different sections given... snip]
Apart from the unfairness to those who are not "individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups", the Democrats' policy will foster the racial preference climate that continues to stigmatize and demean those individuals who receive the preferences.
Worse, it creates a very significant financial incentive for medical schools and other entities to lower admission standards for individuals from such minority groups, if that is what it takes to have the government grant-winning "demonstrated record".
All 1,018 pages of the Democrats' health care bill can be inspected here.
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Defense budget shifts focus from F-22s to cheaper F-35s
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Washington has killed the expensive F-22 Raptor fighter. Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-22 costs about $140 million apiece and isn't flying missions in either Afghanistan or Iraq.
Gates is trying to reshape the military to be able to fight small counterinsurgent wars instead of the Cold War-era slugfests envisioned decades ago. [Like say, Russia - or China.]
The cheaper F-35 aims to replace a raft of aging jets flown by multiple U.S. military branches and countries. The joint strike fighter can be built for as little as $49 million [misdirection: 'built' isn't the cost of deploying], though critics say it's going to cost a lot more and isn't nearly as capable in the air as Lockheed advertises... [nothing is - that's the point]
[There was a time {not long ago} when we promised our servicemen the best possible equipment before sending them into harms way. So what's the 'price tag' we'll ascribe to lives lost due to our military frugality?]
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Palestinian Rights: A Warning
A grave injustice is being committed against the Palestinian people -- perhaps among the greatest in their history. Thousands are being systematically robbed of their citizenship, made stateless once more by a hard-hearted government that pays lip service to peace and the two-state solution, but which seems determined to undermine both.
Israel? No -- the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the monarchy that occupied the West Bank from 1948 to 1967 and which has long had an uneasy relationship with its Palestinian majority. Now, cynically claiming that it has the Palestinians' best interests at heart, the regime of King Abdullah II has begun removing the citizenship of Palestinians with roots in the West Bank...
[I.e., more self-victimization.]
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TIME Denounces Israeli Govt. as 'Prime Impediment to Progress' in Mideast Peace
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So what's the biggest obstacle to Mideast peace? Hamas terrorists who refuse to accept Israel has a right to exist? Perhaps the Iranian government that finances anti-Israel terror operations?
Neither, according to Time's Joe Klein, who insists in a July 20 Swampland blog post the fault lies with... Israel... [the usual, snip]
Although Netanyahu and his coalition government won their February election -- some three months after Obama won his and just weeks after his inauguration-- fair and square, Klein makes clear he has no use for the will of the Israeli people and the decisions of their duly-elected government if and when they peeve the Obama administration...
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WE WANT MORE GOVERNMENT WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT
The easiest way to measure the size of government is to compare the federal budget with the overall economy, or gross domestic product (GDP). The CBO's estimates are daunting. At our current rate of spending:
- Balancing the budget in 2020 would require a tax increase of almost 50 percent from the past half century's average.
- To get from 18 to 26 percent of GDP (spending in 2020) would require another 8 percent of GDP in taxes.
- In today's dollars, that would be about $1.1 trillion, a 44 percent annual tax increase.
Whatever the case, the major causes of the budget blowout are well known: an aging population and rapid increases in health spending...
[We are bankrupting ourselves because folks aren't willing to face reality.]
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For CBO report
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Healthcare Policy, Social Justice and Thugs
The health care crisis in America is not about the quality of health care, but about sticker shock to people who believe in the free lunch.
Politicians are telling us that the only way to achieve social justice is to deliver an equal and adequate amount of health care, directed by a well motivated government central plan. No more crude private system, flawed, uneven, and unfair.... [snip]
These physicians go to college, listen to socialist smart ass professors, come out convinced that the welfare state and Marxism are well meaning and just need more planning and money. We end up with leftist, socialist, welfare state insanity supported by the smartest guys in the health care system... [snip]
All the yakking is a distraction. Even the providers, who know the truth, will join the government plan to save, short term, their economic status. They know 'planning' doesn't control silly overuse and lack of economic incentives. They know the system will never be sensible until people start paying their own bills for service.
The vast majority of the uninsured do not need care -- they are young and healthy or they would already be in the safety net. There is no uninsured crisis. The cost of uninsured care in the United States is less than 50 billion, much less, because the bill of 120 billion is a bill of lost income, not cost. Cost is half of that-- 40 to 50 billion, and the uninsured pay 40 or 50 billion, so one might call uninsured care a wash.
So now the federal government, the same outfit that caused health care insurance premiums to skyrocket by restricting competition across the country, now tells us (with a straight face) that they'll provide everyone with care that's less expensive and of higher quality -- and we're supposed to believe them?
[I.e., how stupid do they think we are? {rhetorical}]
[More {longish} - Highly Recommended > ]
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Recipe for Economic Stagnation
This article will very briefly review Keynes and Friedman's basic economic theories as well as empirical economic data and use this information to explain why the government's actions during the current recession will only act to intensify the downturn and prolong recovery efforts.
Milton Friedman demonstrated that Keynesian economic policy lead to stagflation (the combination of low growth and high inflation). Friedman formulated an alternative macroeconomic policy to Keynesianism called Monetarism, which argues that the government cannot micromanage the economy because business owners, investors and consumers will realize what the government is doing and shift their behavior -- this reaction is known as rational expectations.
Monetarism (or rational expectations) in a simplified sense is like the law of gravity -- what goes up, must come down; likewise, what money the government spends today must be paid for by higher taxes tomorrow.
In a major study, highlighted by Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute, Alberto Alesina of Harvard found that the best way to make an economy grow is to cut government spending while the best way to usher a decline is to increase government spending and taxation. Alesina et al. studied econometric data for 18 large OECD member countries to assess the effects of government spending and taxation on investment.
Figure 1. Change in Private Consumption and Investment versus Change in Government Spending due to The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as projected using the Smets-Wouters model employed by Cogan et al.
The authors reached three important conclusions:
1. Increased government spending reduces profits while decreased government spending increases profits;
2. Increased taxation reduces profits while decreased taxation increases profits; and
3. Economic growth is implemented by spending cuts while economic decline is implemented by increased taxation - most importantly, these trends hold even for large fiscal expansions and contractions.
During the depression, 15 new government agencies were created, government spending increased by 220%, taxes increased by 68%, and the deficit increased to 24 billion dollars.
Friedman postulated that the tremendous government intervention only perpetuated the depression -- a view that has been validated over time. He stated that,
"far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of the government."
To paraphrase Mr. Einstein - to repeat the same mistake over and over again is stupid - so stupid that you might start to think it's being done intentionally...
[Recommended > ]
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TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE, WASHINGTON WANTS YOU TO TAKE A BUS
The Secretary of Transportation wants to "coerce people out of their cars"
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has declared that he wants to "coerce people out of their cars." One might be inclined to dismiss these words as overkill -- except for recently introduced legislation by some congressional heavy-hitters that would take us down this road, says Gabriel Roth, a research fellow with the Independent Institute.
The three politicians behind the recently introduced legislation include: Jay Rockefeller (D., W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation; Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation; and James Oberstar (D., Minn.), chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
- Rockefeller and Lautenberg aim to "reduce per capita motor vehicle miles traveled on an annual basis."
- Oberstar wants to establish a federal "Office of Livability" to ensure that "States and metropolitan areas achieve progress towards national transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals."
- The cost of travel could be increased by raising the prices of vehicles or fuel.
- Travel time could be increased by not expanding the highway system.
The most likely way to increase the cost of travel would be by increasing [just] fuel taxes to as much as $4 per gallon, as some have suggested...
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Mexican gangs target outspoken priests in drug war
Mexican drug traffickers fighting a brutal turf war are attacking priests and preachers who denounce cartel violence, shattering clerics' untouchable aura and breaking honor codes in the world's second-biggest Catholic country. Gunmen killed a Catholic priest and two seminary students as they left a church in southern Mexico in early June.
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Mexico's Midterm Elections
In Mexico, every registered voter has an official ID card, complete with photograph, fingerprint and a holographic image. It's not just the existence of the card that's important, but how it is used.
At the Mexican polling station, there is a book containing the photographs of every voter in the precinct. When a Mexican voter presents his card, the poll worker looks up his photo to see if it matches up. If it does, a mark is made next to the photo in the book, and the voter is allowed to cast his ballot.
After voting, the Mexican voter's thumb ink is applied to his thumb. That way, if he shows up at another polling site to vote, they know he's already voted elsewhere. (The ink wears off after a few days.)
In contrast, U.S. voter registration is a joke. In many states, it's not even necessary to prove one's citizenship, or even one's identity! Registrars have been instructed not to be inquisitive about applicants' citizenship - or lack thereof.
It should come as no surprise then, that the last few years have seen more and more examples of voter fraud coming to light, including the casting of ballots by non-citizen voters.
Whenever Americans try to require photo ID, it typically gets opposed by Hispanic activists who say it's discriminatory. That's ironic, since photo ID is a requirement in Mexico, which is the world's biggest Hispanic country.
The solution for U.S. states is to adopt a Mexican-style photo voter ID system, at government expense. Why not? We spend money on all sorts of things, why not a secure voting system?
[Because we've a major political party committed to leaving our system as susceptible to fraud as possible.]
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Why Not Manage Universities, Mr. President?
If the federal government regulates salaries at companies accepting TARP funds, then why doesn't the government intervene to run our universities, which consume huge amounts of government money?
Think about it: Few things in our society are as costly as college education. From the moment parents look into their newborn's eyes, they begin saving for college -- the single greatest expense in their child's life. Entire life savings are dumped into college educations. Even then, that's not enough; student loans, with interest, are necessary.
My master's degree alone cost me so much -- after my parents poured everything into undergraduate educations for my brother, sister, and me -- that it took 10 years at almost $1,000 per month to pay it off. Homes in California are bargains compared to our nation's colleges. The cost of a degree is obscene.
And what about the product -- assuming the product graduates? Economically speaking, few graduates will achieve the hourly salary of their professors. Educationally speaking, these degreed citizens perform miserably in basic civic and economic literacy. (Check out the recent survey by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.)
And yet, consider the salaries of those running these universities, particularly those accepting the most government funding. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, 59 public-university presidents received salaries exceeding $500,000 in 2007-8, up from 43 the previous year -- a healthy salary jack while many parents grappled with job losses.
Here's a question for Senator Chuck Schumer's staff: Have you compared the wage of these folks to the custodians who clean their offices? How about professors in Feminist Studies at Cal-Berkeley or at Columbia Teachers College vs. the stiffs who prepare their food in the cafeteria? The typical tenured professor spends under 10 hours per week in the classroom, and gets at least five full months of paid vacation. No one, from the little library lady to a GM fat-cat, enjoys those perks.
And I ask liberals: What could be as un-progressive as a mom and dad in Iowa, with a combined income under $60,000, sending their daughter to an elite Northeast university -- with their life savings not enough -- to float a bunch of PhDs who've accumulated more cash in 10 years than "mom and dad" in a lifetime?
So, why isn't President Obama reining in our colleges? Why isn't Nancy Pelosi demanding accountability?
Alas, here's the dirty little secret: Liberal Democrats see no reason to investigate universities. Why? Because colleges serve as the popular front for advancing the left's agenda. They are essentially recruiting grounds for Democratic Party voters and activists... [snip]
A 2007 study by sociologists Neil Gross of Harvard and Solon Simmons of George Mason University found that liberal faculty outnumber conservatives by 11-1 among social scientists and 13-1 among humanities professors. That's consistent with a long line of surveys, which tend to find self-identified liberals around 80-90% and conservatives around 10%.
It has been that way for decades. I have a folder jammed with studies. One of my favorites is an early 1990s poll that found 88% of "public affairs" faculty identifying themselves as liberal, 12% claiming to be "middle of the road," and, remarkably, 0% opting for the conservative label.
A 2003 survey by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture found these ratios of Democrats to Republicans: Swarthmore: 21-1. Bowdoin College: 23-1. Wellesley College: 23-1. Brown University: 30-1. Amazingly, the study couldn't identify a single Republican at the faculties of Williams, Oberlin, MIT, and Haverford, nor a single Republican administrator at Penn, Carnegie Mellon, or Cornell. Analyses of Cornell found 166 liberals compared to six conservatives; at UCLA, 141 liberals vs. nine conservatives.
Remember that academia champions "diversity."
Nope, there will be no demonization of rampant "greed" in this sector of the American workplace. There are only angels running our universities -- liberal angels...
[More, Recommended > ]
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House Democrats muzzle GOP on sensitive issues
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WASHINGTON (AP) - In their zeal to protect their members from politically hazardous votes on issues such as gay marriage and gun control, Democrats running the House of Representatives are taking extraordinary steps to muzzle Republicans in this summer's debates on spending bills.
On Thursday, for example, Republicans had hoped to force debates on abortion, school vouchers and medical marijuana, as well as gay marriage and gun control, as part of House consideration of the federal government's contribution to the District of Columbia's city budget.
No way, Democrats said... [snip]
For decades, bills have come to the floor under an open process that allows any member to try to amend them. The tradition has often meant laborious debates. But it has allowed lawmakers with little seniority to have their say on doling out the one-third of the federal budget passed by Congress each year.
It was a right the Democrats zealously defended when they were the minority party from 1995 through 2006... [snip]"What they want to do is they want to avoid tough votes on appropriations bills,"
said Rep. David Dreier of California, senior Republican on the Rules Committee. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., himself acknowledged in a brief interview that one reason for restricting amendments is to save members of his party from having to cast 'politically painful' votes.
Republicans complain that unless a member of their party is one of the 60 members of the Appropriations Committee, he is essentially blocked from having any say in shaping the budget...
['Democracy' according to Democrats.]
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Republicans Remain Ahead on Generic Ballot for Third Straight Week
Republican candidates continue to lead on the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot as Democrats fall to their lowest level of support among voters in recent years.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 40% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 37% would choose the Democratic candidate.
Support for both parties dropped one point over the past week, with Democrats reaching their lowest level support in over two years of polling. Support for Republican candidates is just one point below its highest level over that same time period.
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ABC's 'Cougar Town': 'Under-dressed Divorcées Prowling for Younger Men'
Looking for some wholesome entertainment to share with the kids this fall?
Well, don't turn on ABC, for in that prime time slot will be a new sit-com called "Cougar Town."
Yep, you guessed it: another show about mature divorced women seeking men half their age for -- ahem -- dates.
[A 'values' posting, having nothing to do with my being an old fart.]
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Teen Outsmarts Doctors In Science Class
When doctors didn't give a Washington state high school student the answers she wanted, she took matters into her own hands.
Eighteen-year-old Jessica Terry, brought slides of her own intestinal tissue into her AP science class and correctly diagnosed herself with Crohn's disease...
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You call that a knife?
A Stanley knife wielding bandit had the tables turned on him when he attempted to rob a Brisbane convenience store attendant who was cutting vegetables.
The attendant, who had a much larger kitchen knife, chased the man out of the Cut Price Supermarket store and the bandit did not make off with any money or goods.
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