April 25, 2011

Shell forced to scrap plans to drill in Arctic, due to EPA

Obama is a master of the persuasive lie. For example, he talks about how awful the high gas prices are, and how hard they are on Americans struggling to make ends meet. He talks about ways to bring down the price of oil, and that one way to do that would be to increase production.

Problem is, his munchkins in the bureaucracy--including the EPA--refuse to issue the myriad of permits the government insists they must have before drilling. Case in point:

Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes after a ruling by the EPA to withhold permits related to air quality.

Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars studying geology in the area and developing drilling plans for exploration wells in the area. Shell has already paid the federal government $2.2 billion to lease the area for drilling purposes. Shell geologists believe the area could hold as much as 27 billion barrels of oil--an enormous find.

The EPA claims drilling would be hazardous for people who live in the area. But the closest village to where Shell wanted to drill is 70 miles away from the proposed drilling site.

The EPA also ruled that Shell hadn't considered emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project.

The lead attorney for an environmental group trying to block drilling said that computer models showed "in communities like" the one 70 miles from the drillsite, drilling would increase air pollution levels "close to air quality standards.”

Got that? Not "would make air quality worse than permitted standards." Just "close to..."

The estimated 27 billion barrels of oil that the U. S. Geological Survey believes is in the U.S. portion of the Arctic Ocean would be more than twice as much as has been produce in Alaska's huge fields since they were discovered 30 years ago.

Production on the North Slope of Alaska is declining about 7 percent a year. The famed Trans-Alaska pipeline is carrying only one-third its capacity. If it gets much lower, pipeline officials say they'll have to shut it down.

So next time you're filling your tank and watching the total amount climb toward triple-digits, remember that you could have paid at least a buck a gallon LESS if 52% of the voters hadn't elected an anti-American, anti-capitalism, anti-free-market, anti-energy, anti-prosperity fraud from Kenya as president.

Yep, elections have consequences. If you're tickled with $4 a gallon gas, vote for him in 2012.

Actress claims immigrants pay more taxes than Exxon. Left nods vigorously

This is classic: The leftist website "Think Progress" was doing a political talk panel, and one "Rosario Dawson"--reportedly an actress--was asked a leading question about the wisdom of "tax cuts for the rich" (the Left's renaming of proposals to keep the so-called Bush tax cuts for *everyone*). Dawson ended her answer with,
"I will just say immigrants pay more taxes than Exxon!"
The folks over at Weasel Zippers found this hard to believe, so they (gasp!) looked it up, and found that Exxon paid over $17 Billion in taxes last year. By comparison, the most generous estimate of taxes paid by "immigrants" (legal? illegal? all?)--estimates made by left-wing sites that historically want to find reasons why we should let everyone into this country as long as they vote Dem--was something like $11 Billion.

So the statement was not just wrong, but waaaay false. But of course no one on the left-approved panel was gonna' call Dawson on her ludicrously wild error--whether because they had no idea or because it was something they wanted to believe.

Folks, the little script you just read--and will see in the coming months--is an absolutely standard play from the Left's playbook: Some leftist says something defamatory on TV about, say, Exxon. The statement is totally, ridiculously false, but it says what everyone on the Left wants to believe.

In a day or two it's gone viral--pushed by Leftist sites, and not as "You can't believe what this goofy actress said on TV..." but as "You tell 'em, Ros! You go girl!"

And by election day a full 50 percent of the electorate will believe the statement was and is true--in this case that immigrants pay more taxes than Exxon.

The group believing this would include virtually everyone who voted for Obozo. This prediction is reinforced by virtually every poll that tries to measure how well informed Americans are: except for us political junkies, most Americans are utterly clueless about national affairs. For example, earlier this year 40 percent of Americans polled either believed Obamacare had already been repealed, or weren't sure.

How can you not know something that important? But they could probably tell you who won the last American Idol.

Face it, it's just not possible for our side to out-lie the Left. They're too practiced, too smooth, plus they have the entire Make-Believe Media backing them, suppressing their mistakes, giving huge publicity to mistakes by conservatives (Palin, anyone?) and attacking any conservative who seems to be getting the party behind him or her.

April 24, 2011

How the MSM tars people they hate, part 574

A notorious trick used by newspaper reporters--and allowed to be used by like-minded editors-- is that of reporting a false story published by another outlet and harmful to a political opponent as if it were fact. The malicious reporter doesn't need to actually say the story is true, but by discussing various possible conclusions and logical aspects (i.e. "[Name of enemy] has a long record of criticizing foreign aid [or whatever]") the reader is left with the clear impression that the story is fact.

Case in point: During the '08 campaign a story surfaced that when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin had tried to ban some books in the local library. The story helpfully included a list of the titles.

The "story" was quickly picked up by the MSM/ liberal/Dem media. Here are some of the headlines they used:
Just one tiny problem: The story was a hoax from the get-go. One tipoff was that several of the books on the list were published after Palin was no longer mayor. The one nugget of fact was that a constituent had asked the mayor if it was possible to get offensive books removed from the town's library. The mayor relayed the question to the library staff, but never sought to ban any books.

In fact the list of books Palin allegedly sought to ban was one of the periodic reports of books that anyone had asked to have banned from any library in the U.S. But the MSM got away with the stories, and no retraction was ever published.

As a result, it's likely that the story persuaded a few undecided voters that Palin was--as the MSM had been claiming all along--a neanderthal who shouldn't be elected VP.

Now, I don't have feelings one way or the other regarding Ms. Palin's abilities, but just wanted to call your attention to one of the many ways the media accomplish hatchet-jobs on people they hate.

And of course they never retract the scurrilous stories, let alone apologize.

Don't know about y'all but I consider that sort of behavior...deeply offensive. As in, a capital offense.

Criticizing jihad or sharia equals "crucifying our Muslim brothers"--wacko in MI

“Over 2,000 years ago, a crucifixion occurred — Jesus’. Now some 2,000 years later, our Muslim brothers and sisters are being crucified by...Pastor Terry Jones.” -- Rev. Kenneth James Flowers of the Michigan Progressive Baptist Convention.
Now, I don't know a great deal about Terry Jones, but it's been reported that he wanted to protest against jihad--a term common in Islam, the most common meaning of which is "holy war"--and sharia law--the Muslim code that makes women second-class citizens and allows their husbands to divorce them by reciting "I divorce thee" three times.

Don't know about you but I'm with Jones in having less than great admiration for either of these.

So when Ken Flowers of the Michigan Progressive Baptist Convention says Jones is "crucifying our muslim brothers and sisters," I don't see a single grain of truth there. What I do see is hyperbole.

By the carload.

But hey, that's the progressive way.

AP says Obama wants more U.S.oil output-- won't issue drilling permits

The Associated Press has always been an arm of the Democratic party. So it's no surprise that they're unalloyed cheerleaders for Obama and the Dems.

But sometimes the AP writers pen such absolute howlers--statements that are such transparent shilling--that you wonder how they do it.

Case in point is this article, which hit the wires today:
As he has before, Obama said Saturday there is no "silver bullet" that will slash gas prices immediately. But he said there are things government can do to help make a difference in the long term. They also include boosting U.S. oil production...
Ah yes, the government could indeed boost U.S. oil production. But for those with Net access, it's easy to find that Obama's administration has simply refused to issue drilling permits on oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico, even after being ordered to show cause by a federal judge.

Barack, I've got a flash for ya--and being from Chicago or Hawaii or Kenya you prolly don't know: It's just about impossible to produce oil or natural gas without, y'know, drilling. It's so hard, in fact, that 99.9992 percent of all the oil in the world is produced from, ah, umm, wells that were actually, in fact, literally, drilled by some company.

So when you go talking about "boosting U.S. oil production", but at the same time you won't let your administration issue the necessary permits to actually drill, don't be surprised if 48 percent of voters think you're, ah...umm...being a total hypocrite.

Or just a community organizer who doesn't know which end of the bit goes in the hole first.

Or how many U.S. states there are.

Or what hospital he was born in.

April 23, 2011

More rights taken away by pinhead local judge

Drip, drip, drip... Slowly but inexorably, judges seemingly unaware of the provisions of the Constitution, and case law settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, are trying as hard as they can to take away your rights. Or what used to be rights, at least.

In Michigan, Terry Jones had planned to protest at a local mosque.

Local judge Mark Somers found this intolerable, and ordered Jones to stay away from the mosque for three years. He also required Jones to post a bond, reported by the Detroit Free Press to be one dollar. When Jones initially refused, the judge had him jailed.

The booking officer initially couldn't find a code on which to book Jones. "Attempting to exercise right of free speech despite judge's ban" wasn't on the books. Yet, anyway.

Dearborn Mayor John O’Reilly Jr. said that the city respects the constitution [sic] but said the right to free speech can’t interfere with public safety and the rights of others. He said the city had serious concerns about public safety which is why they did not want him to protest at the mosque. --Detroit Free Press

So let's see if I'm reading you right, judge: If a planned speech might "interfere with public safety," you'll ban it?

But in that case, all that Muslims--or Nazi's, or skinheads, or Democrats--would have to do to suppress speech they dislike would be to threaten violence, right?

In case you don't keep up with federal circuit court or U.S. Supreme Court decisions, judge Somers, this issue has been pretty thoroughly decided in Forsyth County, Georgia v. Nationalist Movement and also more particularly in Morris County, New Jersey v. The Nationalist Movement. The short answer is that "prior restraint" is a no-no. As is forcing would-be speakers to post a bond before speaking.

Judge, we appreciate that you work for the locals, and they don't want Jones providing an opportunity for Muslims to react...shall we say, like Muslims historically do when they feel offended by anyone or anything, and thus giving your wonderful city bad publicity.

Unfortunately, judge, you don't have that power.

Let me sharpen that a bit: You are a god in your little two-bit courtroom, but higher judges with a broader view disagree. Or at least have disagreed with your position in prior cases.

Meanwhile, consider what your decision has just proven conclusively to Muslims--both here and abroad: You've shown them that violence works. All they need to do is threaten violence and soft, liberal judges like you will give them their way, whatever that is.

Nice work, judge. Nice work.

Q: Where was Obama born? Liberal A: It doesn't matter!

Last night at dinner with a liberal friend of ours, the question of Obie’s birthplace came up. And as we listed more and more of the suspicious facts that have either been simply ignored or sneeringly dismissed by the MSM--without ever being answered or addressed--she used what I'm guessing will be the new Democrat defense for 2012:

“It doesn’t matter.”

Say what?

“Yes, it doesn’t matter. Because he was elected president.”

Me: “Wait a second: Do you agree that the Constitution says you have to be a “natural-born citizen” to be president?”

Lib friend: [shrug]

Me: “So what you’re really saying is that it really doesn’t matter what the Constitution says, if Democrats want to do something different. Is that it?”

Liberal friend: “We already elected him, so I’m saying it doesn’t matter.”

==

I've seen this defense advanced by lots of liberal commenters, and I get the impression that rather than claiming the Constitution isn't the supreme law of the land--a tough proposition to argue--their reasoning is more along the lines of fait accompli--because he was elected by a majority, he's president regardless of what any silly piece of paper may require or ban.

Needless to say, I'm less than persuaded by this reasoning.

A second line of argument is "If you wanted to raise this issue, you should have done it before the election. Now it's too late."

Pointing out that the issue was not only raised, but several actual lawsuits were filed--only to be thrown out on the grounds that the filers--American citizens all--lacked "standing" to sue, results in blank stares. It's like you're speaking in Kenyan or something.

Finally, I try saying Okay, how about if we raise the issue NOW, before the 2012 election? This gets the response, "He's already produced his birth certificate."

They are SO well rehearsed. Does no good to try to educate them on the differences between Hawaii's ridiculously uninformative "short form" and the verifiable "long form," which lists the hospital, name of doctor and so on.

It's also amusing to note that the Obama team floated, as a woefully bad trial balloon, the claim that Hawaii had discontinued use of the "long form" by the time Obama was born. This claim lasted only as long as it took for conservatives in Hawaii to find kids born after Obama who were issued long-form certificates.

Conclusion: Though it seems highly unlikely at this point, Obama may indeed have been born in Hawaii. In that case, why has he refused to produce his long-form birth certificate? Seems to me only two conclusions fit: Either he doesn't have one (due to having been born elsewhere), or there's something on the long form that he believes would damage him more than the current stonewall.

April 22, 2011

Obama and Dems to lose $11 Billion tax dollars on GM deal

You may find this hard to believe, but around 18 months ago Obozo ordered you, the taxpayer, to buy $50 Billion worth of stock in General Motors.

You do remember that, right?

This order was part and parcel of a deal in which GM and Chrysler bondholders were paid two cents on the dollar for their bonds, and the automakers' union was simply given a huge block of GM stock.

Wow, sweet deal, huh! At least for the union bosses.

Fast-forward to last November 18th: Nobel-winning economist Barack Hussein Obama said “American taxpayers are now positioned to recover more than my Administration invested in GM.”

That was just five months ago.

Today the Obozo administration is poised to sell its remaining stake in GM--and take a loss of a piddling $11 Billion.

Now, you may be thinking, "What the hell kind of plan did Obama and the Dems have in buying GM stock if they were gonna lose $11 Billion on the deal in just 18 months?"

Or you may be thinking, "Geez, just five months ago Obama claimed that taxpayers were 'poised to recover more than" he and the Dems paid (using your money) for the stake. And in just five months that's gone south by ELEVEN BILLION DOLLARS??? Whadda dummy!"

You bitter clinger, you. Cuz ya see, this is actually a brilliant move by the Obamites: It keeps this unconstitutional takeover from being as much of an issue--probably ANY issue--in next year's presidential election.

And six months from now, only a few political junkies will remember the entire fiasco anyway.

A year from now, Obama and the Dems will be claiming they MADE $2.857 BILLION on the deal--and only a handful of people with access to internet search engines will have any idea it's a total lie.

Orwell was absolutely right.

Democrats demand Boeing scrap new plant in S.Carolina

Boeing Aircraft Company is one of America's biggest success stories and a huge source of export income. They build great planes and run a good company.

So naturally, the Obama administration wants to destroy them.

You think that's facetious? Read on...

Boeing's main headquarters is in a Seattle suburb. Seattle is a heavily left-leaning city, and almost everything is unionized--including Boeing's workforce. And last year the unions organized strikes against the company, delaying production.

Now Boeing is about to start production of its new 787 jet. The company has invested a couple of billion dollars in development of and has gotten a few hundred orders--representing a huge potential revenue stream. But keeping those orders depends on the company being able to deliver promised jets on-time.

Worried about the possibility of future strikes delaying production and thus killing billions of dollars of orders, Boeing management decided to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a huge production facility in South Carolina to make some of the 787's. South Carolina is a "right to work" state, meaning that workers can't be forced to join a union as a condition of employment.

If you're under 30 or so you may not know that in non-RTW states, all employees of unionized companies are forced to join the union--and pay heavy union dues--to be able to work there. That is, someone puts a legal gun to your head--with the full approval of the government--and takes union dues from your paycheck.

And here you probably thought this was a free country...

Anyway, two days ago a pro-socialist government bureaucracy called the "National Labor Relations Board" ordered Boeing to show cause "why it should not be ordered to have the Unit operate its second line of 787 Dreamliner aircraft assembly production in the State of Washington."

In other words, the POS Democrat bureaucrats want to force Boeing to abandon its brand-new facility in South Carolina and build all the 787's in Seattle.

Please note that they would never admit this. "Why no," they would piously wail, "we're not trying to force the company to abandon a multi-million dollar manufacturing plant. We're Democrats--we would never do that!"

If you pointed out that this would be exactly the effect of the Order they're about to sign, they'd say something like "But the company can sell the plant. It's not like we're taking it away from them or something."

One wonders whether they're really so stupid that they don't understand, or whether they're sneaky and conniving and treacherous and DO understand, and are just playing possum.

If the Democrats get away with this--and given the heavy-handed thug-supporting policies of the Obama administration and his attorney-general, Eric Holder, they almost certainly will--how could any prudent businessman make a major decision without submitting it for political approval?

Which of course is perfectly fine with Democrats, who love big government and hate business.

Folks, that's what trashed the former Soviet Union.

Fun times ahead.

April 21, 2011

NY Times wants me to *subscribe* ???

Yesterday we got a letter from...the New York Times. They were offering us the opportunity to subscribe for less than four bucks per week.

Now, we live in the heart of flyover country--a world away from New York. So I wondered what kind of mailing list we got on to get this offer.

The offer included one of those "Return postage paid" envelopes. So I searched all my blog posts for anything mentioning the Times or idiot economist Paul Krugman, printed 'em all out on six pages of nice, heavy paper and dropped it in the mail.

Here's the beginning:
Thank you, Times marketing department, for your kind offer to subscribe at a bargain price. As someone who lives in flyover country--where everyone around me seems to revel in freedom, love of country, support for American troops, politeness to others, being responsible adults and so on--I feel totally isolated and surrounded by bitter people clinging to their guns and their religion. Receiving your paper would be a lifesaver!

I really need to read articles criticizing the way heartland residents live, and the things they value, in order to feel normal.

I love the Times' anti-freedom, anti-Constitution, anti-capitalist, anti-military, anti-energy and ultra-left slant on every article. It makes me feel there may yet be hope that this lousy excuse for a country can be transformed into a socialist paradise, where everyone has an equal amount of everything, and without having to work for a living.

And I want to thank you for your support for Barack's health care reform act. That was badly needed, because health care in America was so awful before. Now it's getting better, plus it'll save enough money to cut the national debt in half. At least that's what Paul Krugman has implied. And he won a Nobel so he's gotta be really smart.

Oh, and I appreciate your stream of articles critical of that awful Palin woman. Gee, what a moron!

Oh, and your support for laws to ban handguns is brilliant and so logical. I mean, New York City doesn't allow people to own guns and look how well that's worked! I hear that many of the muggers in the city now just hand people engraved notes saying "Because I'm a law-abiding citizen I don't have a gun, but give me your money and your watch because you'll feel better for supporting social justice. Thanks!"
It gets better from there.

Can't wait for the reply.

April 20, 2011

Leftists in full-derangement display

Okay, folks, this is the Left reaching a new low--even for them: It's from one of the bigger liberal/leftist blogs, and you really have to click here and read it to believe it.

It's a fire-hose of hate and evil directed at Sarah Palin. It was triggered by Palin putting up a Happy Birthday to her 3-year-old son Trig, who has Down syndrome.

Leftists and liberals constantly tell us--through the leftist-run media--how they're all about compassion and caring and warm fuzzies. But read the article, and then read the comments (150 or so at the moment). A brief sample:
Enjoy yourself today, Trig. We can hardly wait for 15 years from now, when you will be sent off by your mother’s junta to fight the Union in the Great Alaska War. It’ll be quite a loss. You’re the smartest one in that family.

It has to suck for Trig to have a special-needs mom. Happy Birthday Trig! I hope your parents took you out of the 7-day diaper bag long enough to have some cake.

Trig is by far the least retarded Palin.

Here's to Trig! May he be the first Palin to get a G.E.D.

He's doomed if she drops out of public life...

Trig travels in his own special road case exactly like the ones you have made for expensive props...

They will celebrate the extra chromosome's birfday [sic] tomorrow.

His condition sucks less than having Snowbilly as mom.

The look-I-didn't-abort-this-retard prop baby named after Roy Rogers' horse. Poor little Trigger got dragged to every possible campaign event in 2008...

Q: What's the difference between Mooselini's mouth and her vagina?
A: Only half the things that come out of her vagina are retarded.

Why in Christ does a baby need a tribute? It didn't do anything. It's just a baby. Is it a hero because it is retarded? Is that what we've come to? At least least make the kid compete in a wheelchair race or something before you start handing him
medals.

Trig has had to struggle from the day of his conception with an unappreciative and probably neglectful family, a mentally handicapped mother, and more... but he's pulled through it all with such grace. Stay tough, kiddo. I really wish you all the best. Hopefully you can bring some class to this batch of bumpkins.

After his birthday and special events, Trig gets put back in the closet.
Look on the face of the Left--who amusingly call themselves liberal or "progressive." Maybe I'm missing some ultra-clever satire in the article and comments, but they seem to me to show beyond doubt that those who wrote both are totally filled with hate toward Palin and conservatism--as well as contempt for a child born with Down syndrome.

Now, I'm not at all shocked or surprised to find that Leftists hate conservatives. What I have a problem with is that the Make-Believe Media keep telling me how tolerant and compassionate these people are.

Sure doesn't seem that way to me.

h/t Weasel Zippers

UPDATE: A few dozen conservatives sent a link to the ghastly "progressive" post to a dozen advertisers on the site. All the advertisers agreed that the post was offensive and they quickly pulled their ads from the blogger's site. This action seems to have gotten the blogger's full attention, and they've removed the post.

Why is govt takeover of student loans in the Health Care Reform Act?

What do student loans have to do with nationalized health care (that would be "Obamacare")?

I don't know either, but tucked into one of the 2200 pages of that monstrous bill--now a law, thanks to bribery and parliamentary trickery--is a complete government takeover of the student-loan business.

So why would the Democrats roll this into the health-care "reform" law? Ah, grasshopper, because in theory, by collecting interest from student loans, plus cutting federal education grants, the feds will save $19.4 Billion.

And the reason it's in the health-care "reform" law? Because it enables Obama and the Dems to count an extra $19.4 Billion as part of the alleged "savings" that the American voters are supposed to see from socialized medicine.

If you think that kind of "accounting" is tantamount to fraud, I agree. Welcome to politics, as practiced by the Democrats when they controlled both chambers of congress and the White House--as they did when they passed this outrage a year ago.

April 19, 2011

Media double-standard, part infinity

http://www.aei.org/article/29262

There's a natural tendency among large groups of people to assume that the "leaders"--that's in quotes for a reason--are smarter than the rest of us, and know what's going on and what to do to keep things running smoothly.

This, of course, is complete and utter nonsense.

Not only are our nominal leaders generally not significantly smarter than average (think of Joe Biden, or Nancy Pelosi's "we have to pass the bill to find out what's in it"), the mere fact that they managed to win a few elections imbues most of them with the belief that whatever they did must be right, and thus that whatever they do must always be right.

Hopefully there's no need to point out how ridiculous this "thought process" is (and calling it a "thought process" is being pretty generous).

So pols of both parties make bad decisions--and we're talkin' not just suboptimal here but really, hideously bad. Like, bankrupt-the-country bad. Like trading our relatively great medical care for that of the U.K. or Canada--delightful countries but year-long waits for plain-vanilla medical procedures that Americans get in two days.

Now if you're a Republican senator or rep or president, and you make one of these outrageously bad calls, the liberal media will ask tough questions, cross-examine everyone in your administration and rake you over the coals. And I'm fine with that; I like an adversarial press--as long as they're adversarial to all candidates.

Ah, but if you're a Democrat, you never have to worry about any of this, because the media won't ask you any tough questions, and will in fact write stories praising your decisiveness and talking up how well your decision is working out. Everything is jus' wonderful.

Case in point: Libya.

Now, the War Powers Act specifically bars the president from ordering the use of military force overseas without congressional approval. The one exception is if the folks we're taking on represent an "imminent threat" to the U.S. And as far as I know no one has ever argued that Libya represented a threat to the U.S.

So we have a clear breach of a duly-passed law--and the media just yawns.

Or compare Obama's criticism of Bush for using "signing statements," and his promise when campaigning in 2007 not to resort to that practice. Now, four years later, he uses a signing statement on a bill de-funding 4 of his "czars" to announce that he...well, when you strip out the gobblespeak it's hard to know for sure what he said, but the gist was that he had no intention of obeying any restraint imposed on him by congress.

And the mainstream media? Big yawn.

The mainstream media: Shilling for Democrats since 1939.

April 18, 2011

UN predicts 50 million climate refugees by...last year.

http://dailycaller.com/2011/04/16/the-un-disappears-50-million-climate-refugees-then-botches-the-cover-up/

Way back in 2005 the fact-challenged bureaucrats at the UN "Environment Program" predicted that in just 5 years, "climate change would create 50 million climate refugees."

The agency helpfully added a web page with a detailed map of low-lying islands and coastal areas in which it was predicting this refugee disaster would occur.

Well, the appointed time came and passed, and no reports surfaced of a refugee crisis. So at last one intrepid reporter asked the UNEP what had happened to the prediction.

The bureaucrats scurried back to their rabbit warrens and, realizing that yes, they had indeed predicted 50 million climate refugees, they sincerely apologized and explained that they'd been snookered by all the bogus climate studies released by East Anglia. They also promised to push for more openness in climate model details.

This, of course, is what would happen in a logical and just world. What happened in this one was that the bureaucrats at the UN simply deleted the web page.

Or as Orwell said: "Down the memory hole."

Of course, more industrious and honest beings than the UN bureaucrats promptly recovered the original web page and map from GoogleCache or similar.

Moral of this story is that bureaucrats caught in a bullshit prediction would--like most people--rather coverup the error than admit it.

I believe that should be a firing offense. But being the world's premier bureaucracy, the perps probably got promoted.

April 17, 2011

Wisconsin voters sign petition to recall "fleabag" senator; they're stolen.

You may vaguely recall that about a month ago in Wisconsin every single Democrat state senator fled to an adjacent state while the legislature was supposed to be in session. They did this because for the first time in many years (if not decades) Republicans had won a majority of seats in the senate.

In the normal course of business a vote was scheduled on a bill--a vote the Democrats knew they would lose. But being--not democrats, but members of the misleadingly named Democratic party, these arrogant, lawbreaking, despicable, power-mad bastards decided this "democracy" crap was for losers, and took it upon themselves to simply run away and thus prevent a vote for lack of a quorum.

If you're a Democrat (again, far cry from a real "democrat") there's a good chance you see this as incredibly innovative and funny: "Hahaha! Our guys really outmaneuvered those stupid Rethuglicans, didn't we? Rethuglicans are SO easy to flummox!"

Unless you're a real lover of the Constitution you probably don't appreciate how grievous--possibly fatal--an injury the Wisconsin Democrats have done to a nominally democratic republic. Because the beauty of democracy is that the question of who will control the government for the next year or two is decided by ballots instead of bullets. But for that tacit agreement to work, the party that loses the majority must play "loyal opposition" until the next election.

If instead they flee the state to deprive the legislature of a quorum, the contract is broken. The folks who won the election see that system is rigged--that Democrats will violate the will of the majority when they lose an election. The logical conclusion is that only fools give up power when they lose the vote.

Do you Dems really want to go there? Obviously you do--since y'all claim you're SO much smarter than conservatives, so you've obviously thought through all the consequences of doing this--or on the national level, of failing to condemn it in the strongest possible terms.

Oh, wait--you believe there can't be any adverse consequences to yourselves--again because we're so good-natured and stupid and easily conned.

We'll leave that for the moment and say this: Democrats (again, clearly not "democrats") can be forgiven for believing conservatives will put up with this forever, because we always have. You steal elections and claim we did. Your beloved congresswhores flee to prevent a vote, and y'all are absolutely delighted at their cleverness. so it's only natural that you think we'll always tolerate your thievery, your corruption, your grievous rape of our beloved and usually reliable system.

Do you just believe these actions will have no consequences, or do seek those consequences?

Is the Civil War such a distant event that you want a second one?


Oh, there's a post-script to this tale: Eventually the fleeing senators returned and business resumed. But just over half of Wisconsin voters were not at all amused, and launched a recall petition for one of the Democrats who fled the state.

In a few days the organizers managed to gather 16,000 signatures--more than enough to force a recall election.

But then a few days ago there was a break-in at the office where the signatures were kept. The thieves stole the signed recall petitions.

Once again, those paying attention learn that if you lose an election, just don't show up for votes you don't want to have taken. And if the voters try to recall you for this malfeasance, simply steal the recall petitions.

Great lesson for your kids, Democrats.

April 16, 2011

Another Obama reversal, part 843,959

"Signing statements" are statements presidents sometimes add when they sign a bill into law, and are often used to identify specific sections of a bill that the president believes are unconstitutional and thus does not intend to enforce. Such qualifiers have reportedly been used as long ago as Andrew Jackson--though if all you read is the New York Times you'd think GW Bush was the first to do so.

Obama campaigned on being the anti-Bush: According to Obie everything Bush did was eeeevil, and Obie swore not to do any of those things. Thus when Obozo was a first-term senator from Illinois--the only national experience he ever had before being elected present-ent--he strongly objected to Bush's use of signing statements.

“While it is legitimate for a president to issue a signing statement to clarify his understanding of ambiguous provisions of statutes and to explain his view of how he intends to faithfully execute the law, it is a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like or as an end-run around provisions designed to foster accountability,” Obama told the Globe. And he *promised* he would never use signing statements "to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.”

Fast-forward to a couple of days ago: The GOP majority in the House had passed an emergency bill to avoid a government shutdown--considered a "must pass" bill. One provision of this bill barred any federal funds from being used to pay for Obama's "czars"--advisors widely thought to have more power than the actual cabinet secretaries, but who don't have to be confirmed by the senate (because the positions weren't envisioned by the Founders).

When Obama signed the bill--as he had to to avoid a shutdown--he added a signing statement saying
Legislative efforts that significantly impede the President’s ability to exercise his supervisory and coordinating authorities or to obtain the views of the appropriate senior advisers violate the separation of powers by undermining the President’s ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

Therefore, the executive branch will construe section 2262 not to abrogate these Presidential prerogatives.

This is word-twisting at its most egregious: Congress isn't objecting to the preznit "obtaining the views of the appropriate senior advisers," as Obozo well knows. What the bill says is that Obozo can't use taxpayer funds to pay the salaries of his unconfirmd czars unless he's willing to submit to the constitutional requirement--one never heretofore questioned--that they appear before the senate, and then win a vote to be confirmed by that body.

Obozo's signing statement clearly, unequivocally and obviously contradicts his position just four years ago. But of course, the Ministry of Truth can't admit that, so they have to claim that the two positions are actually consistent.

Here's how it works: You thought that because Obie spent so much time criticizing Bush for using signing statements, that Obie promised he wouldn't use signing statements.

Hahahaha!! God, you're so gullible! He didn't say that at all! Apparently the loophole language is that Obie promised not to use signing statements "to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.”

Did you catch the difference? Signing statements are perfectly fine. Unless you're George Bush, in which case they're unconstitutional and a threat to your kids.

But of course, the congressional mandate re Obie's czars seems quite clear. So it seems t' me that if any of his czars gets a check after the effective date of the new bill, that's grounds for impeachment.

Of course with a Dem-controlled senate we'd be in for "Clinton-II"--impeachment but senate Dems don't vote to remove him from office.

Might actually be worth it to hear the Kenyan bastard say why he can defy duly passed laws of the land. Sorta like Slick Willy getting away with a clear case of perjury on the grounds that "is" doesn't really mean "is."

Yeah, I'm really lookin' forward to this new video.

"Deficits don't matter." Uh, wait...

If current trends continue, in less than ten years the U.S. will be spending more just to pay the interest on our huge national debt than it will spend on national defense.

Of course you're reading this on the internet--and the NY Times and other so-called "mainstream" papers keep telling you that everything you read on the Net is wrong.

Except the above forecast is from...the Congressional Budget Office's 2010 long-term budget outlook. So now it's only got a 50 percent chance of being wrong.

Point is, this is what you get when idiots--strike that--when the politicians running the country are allowed to spend--during peacetime--more than the government takes in. It's what happens when politicians and their toadies say things like "hey, deficit spending is good." Or "Deficits don't matter."

They do matter. And you're about to see--up close and unpleasantly--how damn much they matter.

This great jetliner of state is screamin' toward mother Earth at ten thousand feet per minute, and we're 5000 feet above the ground. We have about ten metaphorical seconds to haul back on the stick and pray that the wings don't break from the stress, or we're gonna make a big smokin' hole in some field.

"UN prevents spread of atomic weapons," says Obama appointee

The UN--may have been a great idea but has been taken over by marxists, socialists and third-world crap-weasels.

While it offers a way to get lots of pro-socialist speeches on the record, I think most rational, non-marxist adults have long-since realized that the UN is good for damn near nothing useful.

Peacekeeping? What a joke--UN soldiers typically stand idly by as one group rapes or executes another. After all, they don't have a dog in the fight, so why risk getting shot?

Enforcing UN-passed economic sanctions against rogue nations? Don't be silly: The top leadership at that corrupt body was actually taking bribes from Saddam Hussein to ignore Hussein's violations of the sanctions that were levied to try to get him to stop building WMDs after the U.S.-led alliance threw his army out of Kuwait. (If you're under 30 try googling "oil for food".)

Okay, how about something more serious: Preventing new nations from building atomic bombs. The case in point is Iran, which has ordered, installed and is operating machines whose sole purpose is to enrich uranium.

Enriched uranium has only two known uses: in nuclear powerplants, or to make atom bombs.

Iranian leaders say they're going for the former--and if they had no natural gas that might make sense. But Iran has vast reserves of both oil and natural gas. And in fact whenever you allow oil to flow out of the ground, any gas will come with it. So you have to either sell the gas (which in Iran would require spending hundreds of millions to liquify it), or compress it and reinject it into the underground oil reservoir (which again requires an up-front investment of millions of dollars).

Or you can simply touch a spark to it and burn it in the open air--wasting it. This is called "flaring" and it's done in much of the third world. The waste is considered an acceptable trade to extract the oil.

So...haven't inspected Iran recently but I'll bet they flare a million dollars worth of gas every week--enough to run several gas-turbine powerplants. These are highly efficient and virtually non-polluting. So why wouldn't the Iranians choose gas-fired power instead of far more expensive, waste-generating nuclear, at least for another few decades?

Simple: They're lying. (Shock!) They're really trying to build the Bomb.

And so far the U.N. has done exactly *nothing* to prevent this. (Again, Shock!)

So if a U.S. gubment official boasted that “the U.N. helps halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons,” and that “strong and sustained U.N. action makes crystal clear to governments that defy their international nuclear obligations that they will face isolation and significant consequences,” what would you conclude?

Sure: The official must either be deluded or lying.

The official was Obozo's UN ambassador, Susan Rice.

This is what you get when 52% of voters elect someone with a hidden track record and no practical experience.

Okay, before my wonderful, thoughtful Democrat sibs and in-laws go ballistic over this: I do realize that GW Bush didn't invade Iran to cancel their nuke program either. That would be because Dems had been screaming to high heaven since 2003 about his invasion of Iraq. But Bush's action in the latter at least gave the mullahs in Iran reason to believe that they just might be next on the list.

With Obozo there are no doubts: Everyone knows he'd never respond effectively to a real threat (though he only delayed a couple of weeks before sending in U.S. jets in Libya--which no one ever has believed to be a threat to us.)

Anyway, point was that UN ambassador Rice is either brazenly lying about "we've kept Iran from getting nukes" or else is incompetent.

In other news, "dog bites man."

Poll: One in five Americans unsure if water is wet.

The problem with democracy--where everything is ostensibly decided by majority vote--is that roughly 40 percent of today's Americans seem to be abysmally misinformed about...well, current events and politics, for sure.

Exhibit 1:
According to this this study, more than one in five Americans (22 percent) believe that Obamacare has already been repealed. Another 26 percent were not sure if it had been repealed or not.

No word on correlation between political party or leaning and the individual's response.

Such dismal news suggests the awareness of the U.S. population is deteriorating faster than previously thought. Not good.

Federal budget in terms people can understand

Read the next sentence, then close your eyes and guess: What's the proposed federal budget for the coming year?

(One hesitates to use the word "budget" with such a wildly debt-riddled piece of fantasy.)

To see the answer, highlight the area between the asterisks below.

The federal government has proposed to spend, in a single year, **$3,820,000,000,000**

That's **$3.82 Trillion.**

(How close was your guess? If you got between 3 and 4 Trillion you're exceptionally well informed.)

Okay, how much of that will the government be forced to borrow (typically from China)?

$1.65 Trillion.

Virtually no one can directly comprehend numbers this big. So a blogger at Harvard had an idea to make the federal budget make sense: Divide all the numbers by 100 million. So now the story goes like this:

Say there's a small family spending $38,200 a year. Unfortunately their income is only $21,700 per year, so they've been adding $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to keep buying the things they want or need.

A couple of family members said this wasn't a good thing, that they were just getting further and further in debt. "We have to cut spending," they said. But no one wanted to give up any of the things they liked.

Finally, after an angry, year-long debate among family members, the parents and children agreed to cut their annual spending by $380 per year.

So after this long, agonizing debate, this year the family will only have to put...$16,120 on the credit card instead of $16,500.

Celebration all around! Problem solved! Yay us!


Remember all the smoke and headlines from Washington last week about those nasty, budget-whacking, granny-starving Republicans trying to cut spending? In the scale of the family noted above, this is what the Democrats agreed to: a one percent cut.

In fact the cutters didn't even accomplish that much, because much of the claimed cuts were actually budget tricks and gimmicks. Many analysts say the actual amount of spending reduction is less than two percent of the $38 Billion claimed by congress.

Congress is a joke. As is the administration.

April 15, 2011

Dems want to hike taxes...but can't call it what it is

Democrats--both Obama and top congressional Democrats-- want to raise taxes so they can keep spending far too much money. Labor union president Richard Trumka agrees, as do public employees and their unions.

But to advocate "raising taxes" risks alienating middle-class voters, so none of these groups wants to actually say that this is what they want.

Solution? Go to the Newspeak playbook and...simply call it something else. Example:

“President Obama does not yet have the balance right between spending cuts and new revenue,” said [union] President Richard Trumka, calling for “significant new revenues.”

Didja catch that? What could be the harm in "calling for significant new revenues"? Hey, who could possibly be against that? Sounds so...prosperous.

Except if you're even barely proficient with math (which lets out 52 percent of Americans right there) you realize that there are only two ways to obtain "new revenue": Have more economic activity--you know, the "B-word" that liberals and progressives hate so much--or raise tax rates.

And as Obama and his devoted servant Paul Krugman (nominal economist) have apparently, belatedly discovered, you just can't utter a magic phrase and cause the economy to expand.

Sooo.....that leaves raising tax rates.

Of course the Democrats are soothing middle-class voters by talking about taxing "the rich." And ya know what? I wouldn't waste a single breath opposing that. In fact, if I were the GOP leadership I'd find a freshman GOP senator and ask him to tell Reid and House Dems that the GOP would be willing to accept a big tax increase on the rich in return for more of the illusory spending "cuts" so widely touted Monday night.

Then when the bill came up for a vote, have all the Repubs vote "present." So bill would pass entirely by Dem votes. Which would move thousands of wealthy American liberals into the GOP camp.

But only a few thousand--most rich leftists would be delighted to pay more of their income to the government, because they agree with Dems that the rich aren't paying their "fair share" of taxes.

Which of course is why so many rich leftists write voluntary checks to the gubmint each year to help reduce the deficit.

What? You mean they....they...they don't do that?

But...but...but don't they always say "the rich" are undertaxed?? So I just assumed they'd be, y'know...intellectually consistent.

Yeah, I know: What was I thinking?

April 14, 2011

Islamic fanatics execute man acquitted of blasphemy

In Pakistan one "Mohamed Imran" was accused of blasphemy against Islam. He was tried and acquitted, and returned to his home.

Two weeks later, gunmen ran into a shop where he was talking with friends and executed him.

This wasn't random, and wasn't a robbery, so CNN (that bastion of communists and Islamists) concluded he was executed by...Muslim fanatics.

CNN also notes that so far 30 people *acquitted* of blasphemy charges have been similarly executed by Islamic fanatics. The government of that shithole country has never charged anyone with any of the murders.

You really need to read the CNN article to grasp how utterly insane these people are.

Why do our self-styled elites keep saying Islam is a "religion of peace"?

April 13, 2011

NY Times scrubs article critical of Obozo

See if you can spot the change: NY Times yesterday:

At a time when the economy should be rebounding the latest GDP number for the first quarter of 2010 shows that the Obama economic policies have failed.

When 2011 began, Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting company, expected that America’s economic output would shape up to rise at a 4.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the highest pace in over a year.

But economic reports coming in over the last few months have been increasingly disappointing.


NY Times today:

And the year started out so very hopeful.

When 2011 began, Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting company, expected that America’s economic output would shape up to rise at a 4.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the highest pace in over a year.

But economic reports coming in over the last few months have been increasingly disappointing.


Isn't that precious? Someone at the Slimes inadvertently let the truth slip, and it sat there for a whole day before higher-ups realized it and...promptly flushed the offending phrase down the memory hole!

George Orwell got it right.

Anyone on the left still want to try selling the utter lie that the media are unbiased?

(h/t Gateway Pundit via Weasel Zippers)

April 12, 2011

The new, improved Constitution--as rewritten by Dems

Liberals and so-called "progressives" don't seem to have much good to say about this country. In fact, they seem to delight in doing things that virtually everyone else would immediately recognize as harmful to our nation.

A bit of thought suggests that they simply don't like many of the provisions of our Constitution. So herewith, a new Constitution of the United States of America, as re-written by liberal Democrats and "progressives:"


I. Every person in the United States has the right to an equal share of the nation's wealth (defined as the total production of all persons and corporations in the country). And "every person" includes citizens of other countries who may suddenly find themselves here without documents. This is only fair, because the idea of citizenship in just one nation is so last-century.

II. You are entitled to this equal share even if you choose not to work--because equality and fairness are two of the most important things to Democrats.

III. This Constitution is a "living document." This means its meaning is always changing. Change is good. Why would anyone want to be tied to the stodgy, fixed ideas of White males who died 200 years ago? We Dems are really big on Change.

IV. Because it's always changing, the actual legal effect of this Constitution at any given time cannot be determined simply from the words it contains--since those are obviously fixed. Instead, the meaning at any given time will be determined by the Democratic party, through its duly elected members of congress, and Democrat-appointed judges.

V. All citizens are encouraged to work and pay their taxes. Of course it hardly needs to be said that anyone who actually gets rich from hard work will be required to pay a much higher percentage of their income than people who don't work, or who work just enough to get by. This policy is obviously good because all wealth is amassed through theft. Plus it's just not fair that some people choose to work harder than others. And as we noted, Democrats are really committed to the idea of fairness.

VI. As long as you keep voting for Democratic control of Congress, we'll continue to cut taxes for the poorest 80% of Americans. If you already don't pay any federal income tax, you'll get a big fat check. To pay for both these things, we'll raise taxes on the rich, since they're only rich because they're white and had rich parents. Remember, Democrats are all about fairness.

VII. Everyone knows that war is bad. We Democrats have always said war is never the answer to anything. So in order to reduce war in the world, we hereby promise that the U.S. will never again go to war, for any reason. Accordingly, why in the world would we need a huge military? So we will cut the Pentagon's budget by ten percent every year, and use the savings to hire more public-school teachers.

VIII. Capitalism is bad. Corporations are beyond bad--in fact we'd call corporations evil except progressives aren't really comfortable with that whole notion of "good and evil." Accordingly, we promise to strip corporations of all rights. When we're done with 'em, the only thing a corporation will be able to do is pay taxes. And create well-paying, dignified jobs for every American who wants one.

IX. All sexes are now equal, in every respect. Because the terms "miss" and "ma'am" carry an implication of a woman's marital status and are therefore potentially offensive to women, from now on those terms shall be illegal. Instead all people will be addressed simply as "citizen." This will also end the hurtful practice in some states of calling dislocated travellers who may not have all their documentation "illegal immigrants."

X. All rights not explicitly granted to the states or to the People in this document are reserved to the Federal government.

XI. A well-regulated Army now being unnecessary, and guns being responsible for the death of so many innocent people, the possession of firearms by anyone except bona fide law enforcement officers or government agents is prohibited.

XII. Everyone knows that totally free speech can often be hurtful. This is particularly true in political races. Accordingly, all advertisements, bumper stickers, editorials, blog posts and "other communications, whether print or electronic" must be approved by the Federal Election Committee before publication or dissemination. Republicans or conservatives submitting any political ads for approval are advised to allow at least six months for the Committee to approve or disapprove your submission. So plan accordingly.

XIII. All members of Congress are hereby exempted from compliance with any law passed by Congress. (We've been running things that way for decades anyway but were starting to hear some complaints, so we thought we'd put it right in the Constitution.)

April 10, 2011

Congressman Ed Markey, idiot and liar

Why do I get the impression that many Democratic pols are not just liars, but totally disconnected from reality?

Well, this video may explain. It's a Dem congresswhore claiming that within the last week or so Republicans wanted to "shut down the internet"--seriously, that's what he claims. Oh, and they also "want to shut down the federal government."

Really, congressman? And you base that claim on...what, exactly? Perhaps that the GOP leadership refused to cave to the Dems on *every* point, and instead held out on one or two slim principles?

Congressman, you're an idiot. And a liar. And someone needs to do you great electoral harm.

But of course you're from Massachusetts, so your seat is probably safe forever.

Trump gets Obama birth controversy into the Times

Okay, this is fabulous: Donald Trump is both a New Yorker and famous. So when some moronic reporter at the New York Slimes writes something derogatory about him, and Trump decides to respond, the paper can't very well ignore that response without looking--scared.

So...a week ago Trump said that while he hoped Barack Obama was indeed born in Hawaii, he thought there were lots of legitimate questions about why Obama had refused to release his actual, "long form" birth certificate.

That would be the one that shows the name of the hospital where he was born, name of the doctor and head nurse and other information that could actually be verified.

Alert! Alert! Liberal media damage control team to the press room, stat!

And so the Times allowed reporter Gail Collins to tar Trump as a "birther"--the cutesy derogatory term by which liberals have been able to deflect any serious investigation of the question of the actual birthplace of the preposterous imposter in the White House.

Trump was having none of it, and fired a response back at the author.

But where the same letter from you or me or any of the dozen experts on this matter would be totally ignored by the Times, they couldn't get away with that with Trump. And the result is a delightful summary--printed in the Times--of the very controversy the Times was trying to keep from the public.

Gotta love it.

Liberals are idiots, part 8,465

A Nevada college student walking through a campus parking lot after class was accosted and raped.

She'd been a gun owner for years and had a concealed-carry permit. But because her university--like virtually all universities--had declared the campus a "gun-free zone," she was forced leave her gun in her car to attend class.

She's now a very vocal advocate for allowing qualified students to carry weapons on campus. And as you can guess, professors--virtually all of whom are liberals--are howling with outrage. "How dare we allow women the capability to defend themselves?! After all, by banning guns on campus we've ensured that an attacker won't have a gun either. We've established a "gun-free zone," see? Levelled the playing field, so to speak. What more could anyone want?"

The utter idiocy of this argument should be self-evident.

Oh, just FYI: her attacker had a gun. So much for academics passing rules to supposedly ensure a gun-free campus.

Idiots. Morons. Fools. Pompous, posing pencil-necks. "I am King Croesus, and I command the tide not to come in!"

How many demonstrations do these morons need to finally realize that criminals and thugs and rapists and sociopaths cheerfully ignore signs saying "This is a gun-free zone"?

But for the full effect of liberal stupidity you need to go here and read the comments.

Note how many commenters are viscerally opposed to allowing people to defend themselves.

One wonders: If their daughter was attacked and raped, would they get the message, or would they continue to insist that signs and decals will cause criminals to go elsewhere instead of attacking women they know are unarmed?

The notion that criminals will comply with signs is wishful thinking at its worst--and from what I've seen, all too typical of liberal thinking. "We'll make a rule/pass a law, and that will solve the problem."

How's that working out for ya, morons? Yeah, didn't think so. And yet you persist.

Oh, that's right: Y'all are so much smarter than the rest of us.

April 09, 2011

Why the federal government is out of control and won't rein in spending

Once upon a time our nation had a Constitution. It was a wonder, the product of years of careful study by some of the best minds in the land.

The document still exists, but the United States no longer honors it--and in fact stopped doing so decades ago.

When politicians got away with violating the Constitution the first time, and weren't executed or imprisoned for life for doing so, the game was over--the Constitution was effectively dead.

That sounds very dramatic, so you're inclined to think it's just a metaphor, but it's literally true: If no agency is willing to enforce the Constitution--and severely punish any pol who violates it--then how can anyone possibly imagine that document still has any actual effect?

By all accounts most of the Founders were not only extremely smart but also keen observers of human behavior. They knew that the people elected to represent the citizenry were simply human, and that many would be inclined to pass laws that would increase their own power and importance. So in crafting the Constitution the Founders took great pains to limit the power of the central government.

They thought they'd succeeded.

And they gave the courts the task of striking down any law that violated the Constitutional limits of that power, trusting that the courts would do as they were instructed, thus keeping the president and congress within the bounds set in the founding document.

But in less than a century that marvelously crafted architecture--the brilliant system of checks and balances so carefully devised to keep government in check--was destroyed, by politicians and judges who valued immediate political gain over some relatively ancient principle they either didn't believe or didn't fully understand.

Politicized or corrupt judges failed to strike down unconstitutional measures that they felt would help their party or the nation. If the latter, at least it's more understandable, but still shortsighted.

So now that the Constitution is effectively dead, what does the future hold for us?

You may have heard that the U.S. spends more on Social Security and Medicare than on national defense. That's true, and slated to get much worse as our population ages.

You may also have heard that the federal government is spending so much more than it takes in that even if we cut every gubmint program except SS and Medicare, we still wouldn't have a balanced budget. Which means the only way back from the brink is to shrink those two vast programs.

But given Democrat resistance to any cuts whatsoever, this isn't gonna happen unless the GOP gains control of both the Senate and the White House--and possibly not even then, given the RINO-ish tendencies of so many nominal Republicans.

So when it comes to the financial crisis set in motion by stupid or partisan or self-serving pols, I don't see our current government resolving the problem other than the devastating way of printing more money. Which will destroy the middle class, as it did in Weimar Germany.

It's not that there aren't any good people in congress. It's just that they're outgunned by the bad ones. Thus after Republicans finally win a majority in the House of Representatives, promising to *initially* cut spending by $100 billion, they're blocked by Dems in the Senate and finally forced to settle on $38 billion in cuts. While that's certainly far, far better than previous congresses, it illustrates how powerful the big-spending, big-government faction is--and it's largely made up of Democrats.

I find it amusing that congressional Dems are always whining about how the eeevil corporations get huge handouts from the administration, and often pay no taxes, and how this is an outrage!!! So why don't they fix that? Why not offer to match the GOP's $38 billion in cuts with similar cuts in handouts to corporations? Surely Democrat voters would welcome that, right?

But of course the Dems in congress do no such thing. They'd rather bitch about the situation than fix it.

Wonder why?

Obozo's 'solution' to $4 gasoline? "Buy a new car."

A couple of days ago the nation's ineligible president appeared in a public Q&A session. One guy said gasoline prices had doubled in two years and asked Obozo if they were likely to ever come back down.

This put the Kenyan con-man in a bind: He couldn't argue that he was doing everything possible to bring gas prices down, because his administration had essentially ended drilling in American waters in the astonishingly prolific Gulf of Mexico. (Which prompted several of the huge, expensive, specialized floating drilling rigs to leave the Gulf and head for sure work off Brazil.)

He couldn't reasonably argue that it was all the Republicans' fault, since the GOP has always pushed for more drilling here in the U.S.

What to do, what to do??

So he made what he considered a joke: "If you're getting 8 miles per gallon, buy a new car."

In case you didn't realize that was a joke, the official White House transcript added "[Laughter]"

Mark Steyn wasn't amused:
America, 2011: A man who gets driven in a motorcade at taxpayers' expense sneers at a man who has to drive himself to work. A guy who has never generated a dime of wealth, never had to make payroll, never worked at any job other than his own tireless self-promotion cannot comprehend that out there beyond his motorcade's outriders are people who have to drive a long distance to jobs, and whose economic viability is greatly diminished when getting there costs twice as much as the buck-eighty-per-gallon it cost back at the dawn of the Hopeychangey Era.

So what? Your fault. Should have gone to Columbia and Harvard and become a community organizer.

Hope. Change. I hope we can change presidents in 2012.