The Man With No Plan

Got this one from The Other McCain.

“President Snippy Pants,” as William Teach calls him, evidently believes what America needs is more lectures from him:


While accusing the House GOP of wasting time by, y’know, passing legislation, our Lecturer-in-Chief uses his weekly address to issue yet another iteration of Democrat Party talking points:

Republicans in the House of Representatives just spent precious days trying to pass a plan that a majority of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate had already said they wouldn’t vote for. It’s a plan that wouldn’t solve our fiscal problems, but would force us to re-live this crisis in just a few short months. It would hold our economy captive to Washington politics once again. If anything, the past few weeks have demonstrated that’s unacceptable. Any solution to avoid default must be bipartisan. It must have the support of both parties that were sent here to represent the American people — not just one faction of one party. Now all of us — including Republicans in the House of Representatives — need to demonstrate the same kind of responsibility that the American people show every day. The time for putting party first is over.

One hesitates to spend “precious days” (or even precious minutes) risking this, as the hypocritical falseness of Obama’s rhetoric really ought to be self-evident.

Let us first have done with Obama’s bogus insinuation that he represents the credible voice of “responsibility.” He hasn’t put forward any detailed plan of his own. Instead of providing a budget, he gave a speech — April 13 at George Washington University — in which he dishonestly used the phrase “my budget,” and rolled out the focus-group-tested phrase “balanced approach” (i.e., code for “tax increases”).

In his GWU speech, the president recycled the old-and-busted partisan talking-point that ObamaCare “will reduce our deficit by $1 trillion” (laughably false), and then infamously asserted that his “balanced approach” would “achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over twelve years.”

I say he “infamously” made this assertion, because it stands as a historic milestone in the annals of deceptive political rhetoric.

The first thing to notice is that Obama employed the Large Number Trick, whereby politicians throw out a sum of millions, billions or trillions knowing full well that the average listener will be so awed – “Four trillion dollars! Wow!” — that rational thought ceases. But when our current annual deficit is $1.4 trillion, and the president projects that out over 12 years ($16.8 trillion by simple multiplication), a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation shows he’s actually proposing about a 24% reduction in the deficit, so that the 2024 budget deficit would still be $1.07 trillion.

Beyond the president’s deft use of the Large Number Trick in his April 13 GWU speech, there is the obvious problem of a “plan” (or an “approach” which Obama dares to call “my budget”) that presumes to know the state of economic and political affairs in 2024.

This is what we might call the Future Projection Trick: Make your budget calculations based on some distant point in the future and propose draconian cuts in the latter years of that multi-year span. This permits you to claim to have saved taxpayers a lot of money while not actually cutting much of anything in the near term. And of course, those projected future draconian cuts never actually happen, because future congressmen and future presidents don’t consider themselves bound by their predecessors’ promises.

Even if Obama gets re-elected next year, the 2017 budget would be the last over which he had any influence, so his future-projected deficit cuts in 2018, 2019, et cetera, are even more utterly worthless than every other promise he’s ever made.

Yet the final and most important thing about Obama’s “budget” (or “plan,” or “approach,” or whatever you want to call what he outlined April 13 in his only explicit attempt to address the debt-ceiling issue) is that it was so lacking in specificity that it couldn’t be scored by the Congressional Budget Office.

Here once again we see Obama employing a rhetorical trick — the Virtue of Vagueness — in a phony attempt to claim that he is serious about the budget problem. He employs the “bully pulpit” to present himself as responsible (he used “responsibility” or “responsibilities” 10 times in his April 13 speech), the spokesman for an America that “is generous and compassionate,” and yet utterly fails to provide the kind of numbers that will permit a green-eyeshade accounting of whether he has actually done what he wants listeners to believe he has done, i.e., reduce the deficit.

While I’m not sure whether an “approach” is supposed to be subject to an accountant’s scrutiny, an actual budget must be. (My “approach” to making money from this blog is to rattle the tip jar and try to hustle up some lucrative Amazon sales, but this Underpants Gnome business model would never pass muster with the CBO.) What Obama avoided through his Virtue of Vagueness Trick was having to say, for example, what the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration budget would be in 2014, or how much would be spent to fund the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in 2015.

Obama’s “approach” is arithmetically nebulous for the very reason that he doesn’t want to have to explain or defend any actual budget reductions. An actual budget must be specific as to the amount of funding allotted to each department, each division, each agency, each program, and this Obama was unwilling or unable to do, so his big “bully pulpit” proposal on April 13 wasn’t something for which the accountants and economists at the CBO could produce a score.

How much money would Obama’s approach save? We don’t know!

And this, I suggest, can only be a matter of cold political calculation.

From the very outset of the debate over the debt-ceiling, Obama was playing a game: Make the House Republicans spell out in a CBO-scored budget proposal exactly what they were planning to cut. Then claim that, by doing so, they were rejecting the “balanced approach” of the “generous and compassionate” president.

The House GOP’s legislation would, by necessity, include specific numbers for agency budget reductions, which could then be employed as campaign attack-ad fodder next year, frightening the ignorant “swing voters” and gullible “soccer moms” with scary-talk about greedy Republicans who want to slash funds for the Bureau of Generosity and eliminate altogether the Department of Compassion.

The president’s not-so-secret-weapon in this political attack strategy is, of course, Harry Reid’s Democrat majority in the Senate which predictably rejected anything that John Boehner could actually push through the House. Thus, Obama’s partisan attack machine not only gets the specific budget numbers with which to smear Republicans as heartless villains in next year’s campaign, but also affords the president an opportunity to claim — as he did today — that this entire ginned-up crisis is due to the ideological fanaticism and partisan opportunism  of those dangerous right-wing GOP extremists.

As usual with Obama, the truth is the exact opposite of whatever he says. He is the one seeking partisan advantage and being irresponsible. It is not the House Republicans but the Senate Democrats who have acted the part of ideologues and obstructionists. And the only question now is whether President Snippy Pants will get away with this transparent trickery.

Obama predictably relies on deceptive sophistry to advance his self-serving agenda. His address today is entitled “Compromise on Behalf of the American People,” which more honestly could be called “Compromise on Behalf of My Re-Election Campaign.” And he might very well get away with it unless Republicans unite and speak with one voice to explain to voters exactly what the president is doing.

Call him out on his phony political gamesmanship, his dishonest partisan rhetoric and his unspeakable hypocrisy in claiming to be “responsible” while abdicating his own responsibility.

25 Quotes About Liberals

Image via Wikipedia

As compiled by John Hawkins:

25) Whenever I read liberals reporting about the goings- on of conservatives I always get the nature-documentary vibe. A liberal reporter puts on his or her Dian Fossey hat in order to attempt to write another installment of Conservatives in the Mist. I've followed this particular brand of reporting for years, it's almost a fetish of mine. Most attempts fail. Of these lesser varieties, there's fear ("Troglodytes!"), mockery ("Irrelevant troglodytes!"), condescension ("I had to explain to them they're troglodytes."), bewilderment ("Why don't they understand they're troglodytes?"), astonishment (Dear God, they're not all troglodytes!"), and a few combinations of all the above. -- Jonah Goldberg

24) There are no bad guys on the left. There are only people who’ve been driven to desperation by conservative evil. -- Allahpundit

23) Words mean nothing to liberals. They say whatever will help advance their cause at the moment, switch talking points in a heartbeat, and then act indignant if anyone uses the exact same argument they were using five minutes ago. -- Ann Coulter

22) Inside many liberals is a totalitarian screaming to get out. They don't like to have another point of view in the room that they don't squash and the way they try to squash it is by character assassination and name calling. -- David Horowitz

21) The reason any conservative's failing is always major news is that it allows liberals to engage in their very favorite taunt: Hypocrisy! Hypocrisy is the only sin that really inflames them. Inasmuch as liberals have no morals, they can sit back and criticize other people for failing to meet the standards that liberals simply renounce. It's an intriguing strategy. By openly admitting to being philanderers, draft dodgers, liars, weasels and cowards, liberals avoid ever being hypocrites. -- Ann Coulter

20) Indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminateness of policy. It leads the modern liberal to invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Why? Very simply if nothing is to be recognized as better or worse than anything else then success is de facto unjust. There is no explanation for success if nothing is better than anything else and the greater the success the greater the injustice. Conversely and for the same reason, failure is de facto proof of victimization and the greater the failure, the greater the proof of the victim is, or the greater the victimization. -- Evan Sayet

19) It was in the 1960s that the left convinced itself that there is something fascistic about patriotism and something perversely "patriotic" about running down America. Anti-Americanism -- a stand-in for hatred of Western civilization -- became the stuff of sophisticates and intellectuals as never before. Flag burners became the truest "patriots" because dissent -- not just from partisan politics, but the American project itself -- became the highest virtue. -- Jonah Goldberg

18) But all liberals only have empathy for the exact same victims -- always the ones that are represented by powerful liberal interest groups. -- Ann Coulter

17) Liberals have created, and the minority leadership has exploited, a community of dependent people, unaware of the true route to prosperity and happiness: self-reliance and self-investment. Instead, people are told that America is unjust, unfair, and full of disadvantages. They are told that their only hope is for government to fix their problems. What has happened is that generations of people have bought into this nonsense and as a result have remained hopelessly mired in poverty and despair -- because the promised solutions don't work. And they will never work -- they never have. -- Rush Limbaugh

16) One of the overriding points of Liberal Fascism is that all of the totalitarian "isms" of the left commit the fallacy of the category error. They all want the state to be something it cannot be. They passionately believe the government can love you, that the state can be your God or your church or your tribe or your parent or your village or all of these things at once. Conservatives occasionally make this mistake, libertarians never do, liberals almost always do. -- Jonah Goldberg

15) Given the religious nature and the emotional power of Leftist values, Jews and Christians on the Left often derive their values from the Left more than from their religion. -- Dennis Prager

14) When one becomes a liberal, he or she pretends to advocate tolerance, equality and peace, but hilariously, they're doing so for purely selfish reasons. It's the human equivalent of a puppy dog's face: an evolutionary tool designed to enhance survival, reproductive value and status. In short, liberalism is based on one central desire: to look cool in front of others in order to get love. Preaching tolerance makes you look cooler, than saying something like, “please lower my taxes” -- Greg Gutfeld

13) Stupidity is a luxury and you will find time and time and time and again that those who are overwhelmingly on the left are those who can afford to be. -- Evan Sayet

12) With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society. -- Ann Coulter

11) If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they--and we all--can be “liberated.” The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions--the vision--which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback. -- Thomas Sowell

10) Liberals claim to love gays when it allows them to vent their spleen at Republicans. But disagree with liberals and their first response is to call you gay. Liberals are gays' biggest champions on issues most gays couldn't care less about, like gay marriage or taxpayer funding of photos of men with bullwhips up their derrieres. But who has done more to out, embarrass, and destroy the lives of gay men who prefer to keep their orientation private than Democrats? Who is more intolerant of gays in the Republican Party than gays in the Democratic Party? -- Ann Coulter

9) End results that work that don't involve government threaten liberals. -- Rush Limbaugh

8) In their zeal for particular kinds of decisions to be made, those with the vision of the anointed seldom consider the nature of the process by which decisions are made. Often what they propose amounts to third-party decision making by people who pay no cost for being wrong--surely one of the least promising ways of reaching decisions satisfactory to those who must live with the consequences. -- Thomas Sowell

7) That is one reason "feelings" and "compassion" are two of the most often used liberal terms. "Character" is no longer a liberal word because it implies self-restraint. "Good and evil" are not liberal words either as they imply a moral standard beyond one's feelings. In assessing what position to take on moral or social questions, the liberal asks him or herself, "How do I feel about it?" or "How do I show the most compassion?" -- not "What is right?" or "What is wrong?" For the liberal, right and wrong are dismissed as unknowable, and every person chooses his or her own morality. -- Dennis Prager

6) In their haste to be wiser and nobler than others, the anointed have misconceived two basic issues. They seem to assume (1) that they have more knowledge than the average member of the benighted and (2) that this is the relevant comparison. The real comparison, however, is not between the knowledge possessed by the average member of the educated elite versus the average member of the general public, but rather the total direct knowledge brought to bear though social processes (the competition of the marketplace, social sorting, etc.), involving millions of people, versus the secondhand knowledge of generalities possessed by a smaller elite group. -- Thomas Sowell

5) Everyone moralizes. The suggestion that liberals aren't moralizers is so preposterous it makes it hard for me to take any of them seriously when they wax indignant about "moralizers." Almost every day, they tell us what is moral or immoral to think and to say about race, taxes, abortion — you name it. They explain it would be immoral for me to spend more of my own money on my own children when that money could be spent by government on other people’s children. In short, they think moralizing is fine. They just want to have a monopoly on the franchise. -- Jonah Goldberg

4) If you can somehow force a liberal into a point- counterpoint argument, his retorts will bear no relation to what you've said -- unless you were in fact talking about your looks, your age, your weight, your personal obsessions, or whether you are a fascist. In the famous liberal two-step, they leap from one idiotic point to the next, so you can never nail them. It's like arguing with someone with Attention Deficit Disorder. -- Ann Coulter

3) My analysis is that most faith based systems depend upon an absolute moral order. The declaration of things as absolutely evil or absolutely good, as sin or virtue, puts liberalism into a horrible position because it's founded on no judgment on anything. As a result, any faith that is seriously practiced or understood is a challenge to the politics that depend on constituencies that would rather not be told that their choices are bad and their lives are not virtuous. -- Hugh Hewitt

2) The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else? -- Thomas Sowell

1) To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. -- Charles Krauthammer

Buried in a Sea of Regulations

Image via Wikipedia

Jim Lacey, a professor of strategic studies at the Marine Corps War College, wrote a great piece that was just published over at National Review Online. Thought it was worth sharing.


End Regulatory Overreach

Regulators regulate. In the absence of adult supervision they still regulate.

Think about that a moment. Every morning tens of thousands of persons (no one really knows how many) go to work, with no higher calling than making regulations that the rest of us have to live with. Who voted for them?

How busy have these thousands of regulators been? The numbers tell the story. The first Federal Register was issued in 1936. It contained eleven pages! For the first 147 years of the nation’s existence under the Constitution we somehow managed to get by with only eleven pages of regulations. During that time we went from an insignificant state to the most powerful and economically vibrant nation on the globe. By 2008 the Federal Register contained 31,879 documents and 79,435 pages, while the Code of Federal Regulations comprised 163,333 pages in 226 individual books. Rules have been accumulating at a rate of nine pages a day since 1936.

This is nothing compared to what the Obama administration has in store. The Federal Register has grown 20 percent in just the last two years, and there are another 4,225 rules already written and winding their way through the system. And this does not even include what Obamacare and Dodd-Frank are going to do. Just policing the regulations already in place costs $55.4 billion a year. But this pales in comparison to the $1.75 trillion hidden tax that regulations place on the economy every year.

In recent months the regulatory assault has reached new heights. Does anyone really believe it is a good idea to allow a few bureaucrats to close down oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, at a time when we feel it necessary to release oil from the country’s strategic reserve? Is it truly possible that four unelected functionaries on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) can order Boeing to scrap a billion-dollar investment in South Carolina, because they want Boeing’s production plant built in a more “labor-friendly” state? Not satisfied with this, the NLRB’s gang of four went on to unilaterally change rules for voting for union representation that had been settled for more than 60 years. The NLRB was supposed to be the neutral arbiter that would bring labor and management together. Now it has chosen sides, and, if the gang of four get their way, it will have all but ensured a renewed era of union/management warfare.

We also were recently informed that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is subpoenaing Google’s records to see if it is misusing its search dominance. The news came at an interesting time, as IBM was celebrating its 100th birthday. Most of the news articles celebrating this milestone mentioned that what made IBM’s longevity a true wonderment was that it had survived numerous assaults on it by our own government. Does anyone remember the posters featuring the $200 million the United States spent trying to wreck Microsoft before 2001, compared to the zero dollars spent hunting Osama bin Laden? If you want jobs to come back, you need a government that can refrain from putting successful businesses into its cross-hairs.

When Congress created the NLRB, I doubt that it meant for the agency to declare war on American business. Likewise, no one in Congress assumed the FTC would launch a crusade targeting the most successful American companies. Did anyone in Congress guess, when it created the Energy Department, that it would take as its priority mission to reduce the amount of energy resources available to Americans? And did anyone in Congress ever guess that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would work day and night to drive a stake through the heart of American industry?

The worst part of it is that none of the bureaucrats making these economy-crushing decisions can be held accountable for their actions. We can’t vote the NLRB’s gang of four out of office. We can’t throw out the heads of the EPA, the Energy Department, the FTC, or any other regulatory agency. And even if we could, the tens of thousands of bureaucrats they command would continue churning out new regulations from now until doomsday.

What is required is that Congress take charge and be responsible for its creations. After passing a new law, Congress can no longer be permitted to hand the regulatory implementation of it off to a faceless government agency, and by doing so wash its hands of the outcome of its laws. Instead, every regulation must be presented to Congress before it takes effect. Congress must vote to approve or disapprove every regulation within 90 or so days of its submission by the regulatory body. No vote, no regulation. Moreover, any regulation that has a projected economic impact (positive or negative) of over $100 million must be voted on individually and not be included as part of a regulatory bundle. I would go even further and require that every regulation already in place that has an economic impact of over $100 million must also receive Congress’s blessing within a year or be rescinded.

Such a requirement will make Congress accountable for everything it enacts. It will also tell the voters whom they can hold responsible when regulations run amok. Lawmaking by regulatory bureaucrats must come to an end. The Constitution gave the power to make laws to Congress. Congress needs to reclaim that power.

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Congressional Job Description

Image via WikipediaFound this over at Grouchy Old Cripple and it was too good not to share:

Job Description for Members of Congress

A member of Congress is an elected public parasite who accumulates pork for the state or district he or she was elected to represent in either the House of Representatives or the Senate. The House of Representatives has 435 various criminals, idiots, loons, posers, wastrels, and frauds, and the Senate has 100 similar harrumphing, condescending posturers, two from each of the 50 states.

Job Responsibilities
The Congress has varying degrees of responsibility, but primarily its purpose is to burden the legal system, complicate tax codes, stifle both domestic and foreign trade, pretend to maintain a fully funded military, and vote to declare war on other nations when it is proposed by a president it happens to like. A member of Congress usually pontificates and obfuscates on various committees. A few of interest and popularity are the House No-Ways and Improper Means Committee that oversees tax irregularities, the Senate Banking Committee that interferes with and then bails out the nation's banking industry, and the U.S. currency and the Senate Finance Committee, one of the oldest committees in the congress, which systematically steals from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid funds and has extensive oversight powers into indecipherable health care regulations and unfathomable tax and trade policy, as well as the ability to obscure and confound existing laws and regulations. Many members of Congress find this committee to be the most fun and personally profitable through graft, corruption, and bribery.

Job Opportunities
Each state holds elections to select its ineffectual representatives and senators.
Candidates must first decide to become a career criminal and believe in their ability to safely embezzle or misappropriate public funds for the betterment of their home districts and their own life styles. Experience in some form of shakedown or extortion racket is helpful, whether it be in mob-related activities or local union leadership. Members of Congress are contemptible public officials and most have committed numerous offenses ranging from public intoxication and lewd behavior. Members of the House of Representatives are elected to two-year periods of impunity for crimes against common sense and national security, and members of the U.S. Senate are allowed six years to accumulate vast fortunes for their retirement years. Should a member of Congress not be able to amass the desired number of golden eggs in a single term, no limit is set on the number of following terms to which he or she can be re-elected.

Qualitative Requirements
Article 1, Section of the Constitution states that anyone running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives must be at least 25 years old, have been a U.S. citizen for at least seven years and must reside in the state they wish to represent. Article 1, Section 3 of the Constitution states that anyone running for a seat in the Senate must be at least 30 years old, have been a U.S. citizen for at least nine years and must reside in the state she seeks to represent. Generally speaking, these requirements are not verified for candidates seeking election as Democrats.

Educational Requirements
There are no educational requirements to serve in the Congress.

Average Compensation
According to usgov.info, members of the House of Representatives and the Senate receive obscenely inflated annual base salaries of $174,000 with outrageous lifetime benefits in health care along with virtual assurance of huge compensation in gifts, bribes, fraud, misappropriation, free travel, expense accounts, and outright theft.

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Welcome to Jimmy Carter’s 2nd Term

Cover of Jimmy CarterThis is a great article over at The Washington Times by Charlie Hurt.


It has taken three decades, but Americans are finally living through Jimmy Carter’s second term.


Now we’ve got Jimmy Jr. barking at us from the White House about eating our peas and ripping off our Band-Aid. He might not even let us have our Social Security checks.


These are just the latest in a long line of nagging lectures. Already, we have been taught how we should sneeze into the crook of our arm. We need to drive less. And we need to caulk up those drafty houses of ours.


What ever happened to the soaring rhetoric and big bold ideas President Obama promised us in that historic election of his?


Is this what he meant by a new kind of politics? If so, no thanks. Oh, and it is not new. Jimmy already dragged us through all this once and we just barely survived it.


Read the rest of the article here: Welcome to Jimmy Carter’s 2nd Term

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A Holiday Story from the Future -- Maybe.

Image via WikipediaI don't know who wrote the original of this - but it seems to hit the nail on the head.

"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband.

"In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered. Actually Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington . Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the rest of the world", Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting. Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in.

It was more the thought of eating another Tofu Turkey. Even though it was the best type of VeggieMeat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce, and mincemeat pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey.

And ever since the government officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020, to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster. Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the Tofu Turkey look even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold.. Ever since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all thermostats - which were monitored and controlled by the electric company - be kept at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter.

Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the family.

Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she had used up her legal allotment of life-saving medical treatment. He had had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was forced into the government health care program. And though he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. "The RHC's resources are limited", explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke with on the phone. "Your mother received all the benefits to which she was entitled. I'm sorry for your loss."

Ed couldn't make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of 2021 outlawed the use of the combustion engines - for everyone but government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too far, and Ed didn't want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere between here and there.

Thankfully, Winston's brother, John, and his wife were flying in.

Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added "inconvenience" was an "absolute necessity" in order to stay "one step ahead of the terrorists."

Winston's own body had grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling Act of 2022. That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for "unequal scrutiny," even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls, train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become almost routine.

Almost.

The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the law intact. "A living Constitution is extremely flexible", said the Court's eldest member, Elena Kagan. " Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their example", she added. Winston's thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him.

Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got over it.

His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the bird flu, terrorism, or any of a number of other calamities were "just around the corner", but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. 

It didn't help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5,000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of QE13. The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to "spur economic growth. This time, they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful.

Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement. At least, he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before government promises to make life "fair for everyone" realized their full potential.

Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn't happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them. He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2011, when all the real nonsense reached a tipping point.

"Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if we'd just said 'enough is enough' when we had the chance," he thought.

Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so…

The Debt Ceiling Fiction

Image by Skibum415 via FlickrBy Alan Caruba over at Warning Signs

When asked why someone said something idiotic or some group is advocating something moronic, I am apt to wearily reply that there is no defense against stupidity.

There is a defense and it works over the long run. It is called the truth. 

It is interesting to watch how “the truth will out” as they say in detective novels. In our society, so in thrall to the mainstream press and media, the truth circulates swiftly through that portion of the population that first suspects something is amiss and then outward to the general population that can no longer ignore it.

That long, slow process occurred with the Watergate scandal that ultimately forced President, Richard Nixon to resign in 1974. It began with a 1972 break-in at the Democrat headquarters in Washington, D.C. and then just unraveled a little bit each day. It enshrined two young reporters from The Washington Post in journalism’s pantheon of heroes and probably caused a goodly number of college kids to change their major to journalism.

The Founding Fathers who fashioned a federal government after the Articles of Confederacy proved a failure for the new nation not only knew history, they were an unusually brilliant collection of scholars; even if self-taught as was common at the time. What they knew well was human nature and they knew that men were inclined to criminality and stupidity. Thus, the Constitution deliberately divides the powers vested in the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive. It also deliberately slows down the legislative process.

The system largely worked until eleven southern slave states became so incensed over trade laws passed by northern states and the growing abolition movement that they decided to secede from the Union in 1860. Abraham Lincoln said no. Then he sent a huge army to back it up. 

If they had had a crystal ball, all would have known that technology would replace slave labor in a remarkably short time. If they had any sense, they would have worked out a compromise, but the stupidity factor interfered. Even the Founding Fathers “four score and seven years” earlier knew that the issue of slavery would threaten the new republic.

Big problems and big issues cannot be ignored forever.

To give you an idea how big the problem is, a CNSnews story reported that “Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner oversaw the largest increase in the national debt of any Treasury secretary in American history, presiding over a $3.7 trillion increase in debt…In fact, the debt accrued under Geithner is greater than all federal debt accrued in the first 204 years of the nation’s history.”

The United States now finds itself less than a month away from defaulting on its loans because, in just two and a half years, the current President has allowed the debt to increase to $14.2 trillion, an amount that equals the entire annual Gross Domestic Product. That’s not break even. That’s broke.

Top 10 Obama Attacks on Capitalism

Image via Wikipedia

by  Human Events 07/02/2011

President Obama occasionally cozies up to the corporate world, especially during fund-raising time, and delivers a modicum of support for business.  But have no doubt about it, this is a man who honors the power of government over the marketplace.  Here are the Top 10 Obama Attacks on Capitalism:

1.  Spread wealth around:  This famous utterance—“I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody”—to Joe the Plumber during the 2008 presidential race, remains the saying that most succinctly sums up Obama’s worldview, that of a community organizer, which is that accumulated wealth is to be reviled and rectified through redistribution.  Nothing could be more antagonistic to entrepreneurship, free markets or business investment than to have the government seize the rewards of sound economic decisions in order to try and engineer social equality.

2.  Capital-gains “fairness”:  During a 2008 presidential debate, Obama gave us another plank in his Socialist mindset by explaining his view on tax-policy fairness.  When asked by moderator Charlie Gibson whether he would favor a cut in the capital gains rate if it led to higher revenues as it did during previous administrations, Obama said:  “Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”  Seizing higher percentages of earnings from those who made wise investments is preferable to Obama even if it means less tax dollars for his precious government programs.

3.  ObamaCare by any means:  When battling for his signature health care legislation, Obama saw fit to carry out daily attacks on insurance companies.  Even the liberal Washington Post called him out, with an article reporting:  “The near-daily demonization of the insurance industry is an attempt by the White House to play to Americans' anxieties about the health-care system.”  Typical of his attacks was a speech containing 22 castigations against the insurance industry, such as, “How much higher do premiums have to rise, before we do something about it?"  We are still waiting, Mr. President.

4.  Bondholders equal speculators:  When negotiating the bailout of General Motors, Obama called the automaker’s bondholders “speculators” who were "refusing to sacrifice like everyone else."  Apparently Obama’s definition of shared sacrifice didn’t apply to his campaign-backers at the United Auto Workers, which were handed partial ownership of the company saved from bankruptcy by taxpayer dollars.

5.  Chamber of Commerce attack:  Obama demonized the Chamber of Commerce during the midterm election campaign, accusing the business group, with no proof, of using foreign money to influence the elections.  “Just this week, we learned that one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign corporations.  So groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections,” Obama said on the stump.  “And they won’t tell you where the money for the ads comes from.”  Going into campaign mode against corporate America with such silliness even had the New York Timescomplaining.

6.  Class-warfare tactics:  In January 2010, Obama stumped for the Massachusetts Senate campaign of Martha Coakley, asking the crowd to make a false choice:  “When the vote comes on taxes, and there’s a choice between giving more tax breaks to the wealthiest few and corporations that ship American jobs overseas or giving them to the middle class and businesses that create jobs here, who’s going to be on your side?”  We all know how well that campaign rhetoric worked, don’t we, Sen. Brown?

7.  Student-loan penalty for private sector:  Obama laid out a new student loan program in his 2010 State of the Union address where those who choose a career in public service (working for the government) get special treatment over those who enter the private sector. "Let's tell another 1 million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10% of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years, and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service.”  Do we really need more incentives for government workers?
8.  Stop making money:  It just pains the President when someone is successful in the financial world.  During his campaign to pass the Dodd-Frank financial reform monstrosity, Obama let his true feelings show:  "We're not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that's fairly earned.  I mean, I do think at a certain point you've made enough money.”

9.  Boeing silence:  That Obama doesn’t want to talk about the National Labor Relations Board’s Boeing action speaks volumes.  The Obama-packed NLRB suit to deny Boeing’s attempt to open a new plant, creating jobs, in South Carolina because it is a right-to-work state strikes at the heart of our capitalist system.  But when asked about the ruling, White House spokesman Jay Carney said:  “We do not get involved in particular enforcement matters of independent agencies.”

10.  Leave corporate America:  Michelle Obama, during the 2008 presidential race, described her and her husband’s philosophy on the superiority of public service over the business world:  “We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we're asking young people to do.  Don't go into corporate America.  You know, become teachers.  Work for the community.  Be social workers.  Be a nurse.”  Because, you know, community activists are so much more valuable than corporate leaders.

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Speaking from Both Sides of His Mouth

Image by SS&SS via FlickrFound this interesting article at American Spectator:

An Obsession With Corporate Jets

By Andrew Cline on 6.30.11 @ 6:09AM

Who knew that straw men could fly jets?

To justify his destructive economic policies over the past two years, President Obama has set fields full of straw men aflame. Not surprisingly, the economy continues to struggle. Burning political props, it turns out, doesn't create jobs. Alas, the president has not noticed.

During his press conference yesterday, the president presented his newest straw man: the tax-escaping corporate jet owner. The tax-escaping corporate jet owner is such a bad person that President Obama mentioned him six times during his press conference. He portrayed these people as "millionaires and billionaires" whose big tax breaks stand in the way of Washington adequately funding college scholarships and child safety programs.

"I've said to some of the Republican leaders, 'You go talk to your constituents -- the Republican constituents -- and ask them," Obama said, "are they willing to compromise their kids' safety so that some corporate jet owner continues to get a tax break? And I'm pretty sure what the answer would be."

But how are corporate jets preventing Washington from keeping children safe?