Return to Sanity: October 2014

Friday, October 31, 2014

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Krauthammer: Obama a 'bewildered bystander'

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In his column on Friday, Charles Krauthammer aggregates President Obama's public utterances to the various scandals and crisis where he is always outraged at what his government has been doing. It's an eye opener:

The president is upset. Very upset. Frustrated and angry. Seething about the government’s handling of Ebola, said the front-page headline in the New York Times last Saturday.

There’s only one problem with this pose, so obligingly transcribed for him by the Times. It’s his government. He’s president. Has been for six years. Yet Barack Obama reflexively insists on playing the shocked outsider when something goes wrong within his own administration.

The IRS? “It’s inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it,” he thundered in May 2013 when the story broke of the agency targeting conservative groups. “I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS.”

Except that within nine months, Obama had grown far more tolerant, retroactively declaring this to be a phony scandal without “a smidgen of corruption.”
Obamacare rollout? “Nobody is more frustrated by that than I am,” said an aggrieved Obama about the botching of the central element of his signature legislative achievement. “Nobody is madder than me.”

Veterans Affairs scandal? Presidential chief of staff Denis McDonough explained: “Secretary [Eric] Shinseki said yesterday . . . that he’s mad as hell and the president is madder than hell.” A nice touch — taking anger to the next level.

The president himself declared: “I will not stand for it.” But since the administration itself said the problem was long-standing, indeed predating Obama, this means he had stood for it for 5½ years.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Top Ten Things That Are Racist Because They Require Proper ID

Voter ID laws in United States (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From Brian Anderson at Downtrend

The Supreme Court let the Texas voter ID law stand this week, which of course has the liberals crying racism. Even in her dissenting opinion Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said that requiring people to show proper identification to vote is “racially discriminatory” and that the law has a disproportionate effect on blacks and Latinos.

See, the idea is that a law that applies to everyone is racist because minorities are somehow incapable of getting an ID and can’t be expected to prove who they are. Asking minorities for proof of identification disenfranchises them and denies them their rights according to the left.

This episode has got me thinking that there are many other things in our society that require an ID that are equally racist and should be stamped out if we are ever to truly become a post-racial country. Here’s my top ten list of things that are racist because they require an ID:

#10 Buying alcohol – You can’t legally purchase alcohol anywhere in the United States unless you are at least 21-years old. You also can’t purchase alcohol without showing proper ID, even if you look old enough. Not only is this practice racist because many minorities don’t have identification, but it also promotes ageism and profiling. We can help heal the racial wounds of the past by taking everyone at their word that they are old enough to buy a 40 of malt liquor.
#9 Buying cigarettes – Same deal as with alcohol, only the age requirement varies from state to state. As you know, many smokers are poor and many poor people are minorities so this is doubly racist. In any case, letting 8-year olds buy a pack of Kools is a great way to take a stand against racism.
#8 Renting a car – Can you believe those racist assholes that rent cars actually want to know who you are before they hand over the keys to $40,000 automobile? Rental cars are already covered by insurance; what’s the big deal?
#7 Seeing a movie – Even though the MPAA ratings are not bound by law, movie theater employees will card younger looking patrons before selling them tickets to rated R films. How are minorities supposed to see Tyler Perry and Robert Rodriguez movies when they don’t have the ID to prove they are old enough? It’s like Jim Crow all over again.
#6 Buying a video game – No Game Stop in the country is going to let a teenager walk out of the store with an M rated game without them proving they are at least 17 years old. Denying access to violent video games is something the Nazis did, not a post-racial society.
#5 Bowling – For some racist reason a bowling alley won’t let people bowl in their street shoes. You either have to buy a pair of bowling shoes or rent them from the alley. If you opt for renting, those jerks are going to ask to hold your ID until you return the shoes. This is clearly an example of a de facto tax on the fundamental right to use a large black ball to knock over skinny white pins.
#4 Banking – You can’t open a bank account, write a check, or cash a check without ID. This racist practice of ensuring people are who they say they are and thus should have access to their money is a financial burden on the minority community. If we could eliminate the ID requirement, redistribution of wealth would be easy to attain as the poor would have unrestricted access to much richer folks bank accounts.
#3 Accessing national parks – A few years ago I had to show a valid ID to get on the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty. Earlier this year I had to leave a valid ID to borrow the recorded tour device at Andrew Jackson’s estate. Why can’t the federal government take my word that I’m not going to blow anything up or that I’ll return something that probably cost a couple hundred dollars?
#2 Flying – Restricting free movement is probably the most racist thing of all. You cannot board a plane without ID and that puts minorities at a distinct disadvantage. Instead, the TSA should simply ask flyers if they are a terrorist and if they have Ebola. If the answer is no to both; let ‘em on the plane. Who would lie about these things?
#1 Gun Ownership – Unlike the other things on this list, which are implied rights, gun ownership is a specific right protected by the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. You can’t buy a gun without a valid ID, you can’t possess a gun without valid ID, and you can’t carry a gun without valid ID. If requiring people to show ID to vote is racist, then so is requiring ID to exercise the right to keep and bear arms.
If liberals think voter ID laws are so racist they should advocate the wholesale elimination of identification from our society. People are basically honest, right? If voter fraud is a myth, as they claim, then so must be underage drinking, bad guys with guns, and terrorism. Lets see the democrats try to sell the honor system as means to a safer and more racially harmonious America.

Top Ten Things That Are Racist Because They Require Proper ID - Downtrend

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Everything Millennials Need To Know About Politics And Economics in 25 Quotes

English: Portrait of Milton Friedman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1) No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems — of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind. — Thomas Sowell

2) We tolerate, even promote, many things we once regarded as evil, wrong, or immoral. And then we seek “explanations” for an act that seems beyond comprehension. Remove societal restraints on some evils and one can expect the demons to be freed to conduct other evil acts. —Cal Thomas

3) What would you think of a person who earned $24,000 a year but spent $35,000? Suppose on top of that, he was already $170,000 in debt. You’d tell him to get his act together — stop spending so much or he’d destroy his family, impoverish his kids and wreck their future. Of course, no individual could live so irresponsibly for long. But tack on eight more zeroes to that budget and you have the checkbook for our out-of-control, big-spending federal government. —John Stossel

4) As my father-in-law once said, when they talk about taxes it’s always for teachers, firemen, and police – but when they spend your taxes, it always seems to go to some guy in a leather chair downtown you never heard of. —Glenn Reynolds

5) America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to “the common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance–and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way. — Ayn Rand

6) If there is no moral foundation for a system of laws, then the law is reduced to “These are the rules. They’re the rules because I say so, and I control all of the guys with guns.” We can ask those who survived Pol Pot, Stalin, or Mao how that worked out…
So the law is either codification of morality or it is thuggery. The real argument is about which moral code will be implemented by the law. To claim to reject a moral underpinning for the law is either a wish to live in a place where the law is whatever one guy says it is today, or else it is a disingenuous attempt to substitute your own moral code for the one that has already been codified. —Beregond

7) A rising tide (in the economy) lifts all boats. — John Kennedy

8) I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. —Ben Franklin

9) When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union — like public housing in the United States — look decrepit within a year or two of their construction… —Milton Friedman

10) Repeatedly asking for government help undermines the foundations of society by destroying initiative and responsibility. It is also a fatal blow to efficiency and corrupts the political process. When everyone gets something for nothing, soon no one will have anything, because no one will be producing anything. —Charles Koch

11) Right now, politicians have the power to suddenly decide to tax us all at 100% and then spend the money replacing all of our roads with a high-speed rail system. What keeps them from doing that? Common sense? Come on, look at the morons we have in government – Congress is filled with idiots who couldn’t run a lemonade stand and who have grand visions to transform the nation. No, the only thing stopping them is that they’re divided into two parties who viscerally hate each other. If they ever got along, a big new government overreach like the Patriot Act or a giant boondoggle like Obamacare would be passed every couple weeks. By the end of the year, we’d have the government spying on our every movement as we lived flat broke in shanty towns, eating our government-allotted corn cob half we’d get every other day. —Frank J. Fleming

12) Far from having the 21st-century equivalent of an Edwardian class system, the United States is characterized by a great deal of variation in income: More than half of all adult Americans will be at or near the poverty line at some point over the course of their lives; 73 percent will also find themselves in the top 20 percent, and 39 percent will make it into the top 5 percent for at least one year. Perhaps most remarkable, 12 percent of Americans will be in the
Read the rest:
Everything Millennials Need To Know About Politics And Economics in 25 Quotes - John Hawkins - Page 1

Friday, October 24, 2014

Friday Funnies

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Remember These Quotes on Election Day!

Shake it Off: Obama Version (w/ Remy)

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Hump Day Hunnies

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Obama 'seethes' Over Obama Administration's Inept Response to Ebola

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First, some good news: the first group of people exposed to Ebola Patient One, Thomas Eric Duncan, have reached the end of their quarantine periods, and none of them appear to have contracted the virus. That’s at least 48 sets of prayers answered. Let us hope the first Ebola scare ends with only the two Duncan nurses infected, and they both make full recoveries.

Such a happy ending would not excuse the government’s spectacular ineptitude in the face of the first Ebola contact on American soil. For the past couple of weeks, government elites and their media courtiers have been sneering at the American public for supposedly over-reacting to the Ebola threat. There has, unsurprisingly, been a bit of hysteria here and there – human nature remains unchanged – but it’s nothing like the cyclone of hysteria portrayed in certain media outlets. What most people are concerned about is the fumbling, stumbling response of the authorities, especially the ultimate authorities in Washington, although there’s also been some head-shaking about whatever went on at Texas Presbyterian Hospital.

The average man on the street in, say, North Carolina or South Dakota isn’t shopping for hazmat suits and expecting a cloud of Ebola to come boiling down Main Street this Halloween, leaving a trail of corpses in its wake. They’re asking how the response could have been so confused, how the huge federal agencies charged with responding to such a crisis could have gotten everything wrong, how they could spew talking points about “abundance of caution” while making ridiculously careless mistakes, such as allowing health care workers exposed to the deadly disease hop on airplanes and cruise ships without going through prudent isolation and observation periods. Watching some of these decisions changed in mid-stream, after risk had been needlessly extended to additional people – leading to such spectacles as the cruise-ship standoff off the coast of Belize – only enhances that perception of haphazard confusion. Bottom line: even if this first Ebola drama reaches the happiest possible ending, a huge amount of consternation could have been avoided by taking steps the average person would probably have scribbled on a notepad, if asked to prepare a list of 10 Things the Government Should Do After An Ebola Exposure.

Read more:
Obama 'seethes' over Obama Administration's inept response to Ebola | Human Events

Monday, October 20, 2014

Top Cyclical Forecaster: “Yes, A Mad Max Event Is Possible”

Cover of Mad Max (Special Edition)

His computer forecasts are so accurate that in 1987 he took out a full page ad weeks in advance warning Americans of the coming Savings & Loan scandal and subsequent stock market crash. He pegged the crash to the very day it happened. A couple of years later in 1989 his “intelligent” computer models screamed warning signals about the coming collapse of the Japanese stock market, which he said would drop at least 20,000 points over a ten month period. He was, once again, dead on.

The destruction of the Russian ruble in the 1990′s, the rise and fall of the dot.com bubble, and the collapse of the U.S. economy in 2007-2008 were all verified predictions that he made well in advance of the events happening.

His models, which are based on historical cycles dating back thousands of years and take into account everything from economic statistics and capital flows to government regulations and daily sentiment, led to such accurate forecasts that he was accused by the U.S. government of manipulating global stock markets. It was an accusation that left him imprisoned without official charge or trial for over half a decade, presumably because he refused to give away his computer model programs to intelligence agencies.

Whether you’ve heard of Martin Armstrong or not, his record speaks for itself. And if you have missed his insights and forecasts over the last several years (even those he wrote prior to his release from prison), it’s time you start paying attention.

Among his current forecasts Armstrong has argued that stock markets may drop a little in the near future but the Dow Jones is likely to go as high as 30,000 points. He says real estate will continue to collapse not just for a few years to come, but decades. And he says that a major cyclical turning point will take place in the Fall of 2015 (2015.75) wherein numerous sub-cycles will converge to create a perfect storm. It’s an event that doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it often changes the very face of the planet is it relates to politics, geographic borders, and economic influence.

Armstrong’s bottom line: Get ready for the end of the world as we have come to know it over the last several decades. Things are about to change – drastically.

Read more:
Top Cyclical Forecaster: “Yes, A Mad Max Event Is Possible” -