Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:
We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.
Here is a model separation agreement:
Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).
We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood.
You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.
We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill.
We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.
You can give everyone health care if you can find any practicing doctors.
We'll continue to believe health care is a luxury and not a right.
We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.
We'll practice trickle-down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.
Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you ANWR which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.
Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American
P.S. Also, please take Barbara Streisand & Jane Fonda with you.
“Now is the time to act boldly and wisely – to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about tonight.”“Build a new foundation for lasting prosperity.” OK, what foundation? We already know he really doesn't like capitalism. Is this new foundation really an old one – socialism? Over the past few decades we've certainly seen plenty of examples of socialism's failure to provide any kind of prosperity.
“In the next few days, I will submit a budget to Congress. So often, we have come to view these documents as simply numbers on a page or laundry lists of programs. I see this document differently. I see it as a vision for America – as a blueprint for our future.”A budget as “a vision for America”? Hmm. I could have sworn a budget was something that listed what was going to be spent and where the funds are supposed to come from.
Far too often those offering such bailouts forget human nature, assuming that everyone will behave the way they should, rather than the way they really will. Call it an extension of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Bailout lament: What about me?
"What about people like me who are playing by the rules, who got a mortgage we could afford?" said Carpenter, 52, who programs building management systems for MIT Lincoln Laboratory. "Maybe I'm too old school, but you sign on the bottom line, and you're responsible for it."
Carpenter is among the vast majority of Americans who work, pay mortgages, borrow responsibly, and now find themselves facing the bill to bail out those who didn't. Over the years they lived within their means. Now they're asking: What for?
The anger underscores the dangers government faces in private sector rescues. While such interventions aim to benefit everyone by preventing severe damage to the economy, they also risk encouraging irresponsible behavior in the future. Economists call this "moral hazard."
In other words, if homeowners believe the government will lower their payments if they fall behind, they won't have as much incentive to keep paying mortgage bills on time.
Obama and his crew, I believe with this Stimulus bill and the utterances of him and those around him, have stirred the pot and it is now coming to a boil. For years we've taken the guff, we've been hammered for the lack of sensitivity to accusations of political incorrectness. And now, that patience may well be wearing thin as we see our kids, our grandkids, and great grandkids futures clouded by the cost now being incurred (as well as the "social justice") to bail out those that haven't "played the game" straight as we have - politicians on the other side of the country, local governments everywhere but here (OK, my state of NH has not behaved well at all!), and citizens who make bad decisions that now have now claim on my money just because Obama says so.I spoke with Skip on the phone earlier today and he reminded me of the movie Network, where Howard Beale, played by the late Peter Finch, rants about how we've allowed the media to control what we think.
...the administration has scored a major legislative victory in an extraordinarily short period of time. Less than 700 hours after taking the oath of office, President Barack Obama signed the largest spending bill in American history.It isn't a healthy sign when the administration can't seem to make up its mind, can't do a decent job of vetting nominees, and expects some nominees to go against everything they believe in just to get a Cabinet post. It seems the Obama Administration has divorced itself from reality. Obama was elected to govern, but it has become apparent he may be incapable of doing so. As I've written more than once, Obama is very good at getting elected. But he's never really had to do anything once he got into office. This time it's different. He has to perform. He has to lead. And that's his problem.
Nevertheless, this fast start can't overcome a growing sense the administration is winging it on issues large and small.
Take the vetting of cabinet nominees. Mr. Obama's aides ignored a federal investigation of New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson that started last August for a possible pay-for-play scandal. Mr. Richardson had to withdraw after being named to become secretary of commerce.
The administration treated as inconsequential the failure of its choices for Treasury secretary and White House performance officer, as well as its labor secretary-designate's spouse, to pay taxes.
Team Obama promised Gen. Anthony Zinni he'd be ambassador to Iraq, then cut him loose without explanation. After the Bill Richardson fiasco, it romanced Republican Sen. Judd Gregg for commerce secretary -- then ignored his advice on the stimulus and wouldn't trust him with running the department, moving supervision of the Census into the White House.
From television specials to newspaper editorials, the media are pushing the idea that current economic problems were caused by the market and that only the government can rescue us.And then the government got involved and everything went to hell in a hand basket. The government seems to be expert at taking good things and screwing them up. The housing/mortgage collapse is merely the latest example of government incompetence.
What was lacking in the housing market, they say, was government regulation of the market's "greed." That makes great moral melodrama, but it turns the facts upside down.
It was precisely government intervention which turned a thriving industry into a basket case.
An economist specializing in financial markets gave a glimpse of the history of housing markets when he said: "Lending money to American homebuyers had been one of the least risky and most profitable businesses a bank could engage in for nearly a century."
[Researchers] believe the herpes simplex virus is a significant factor in developing the debilitating disease and could be treated by antiviral agents such as acyclovir, which is already used to treat cold sores and other diseases caused by the herpes virus. Another future possibility is vaccination against the virus to prevent the development of the disease in the first place.To use a phrase from Instapundit, “Faster, please!”
Consider his tone and lack of bipartisanship: Obama’s election was supposed to end the “politics as usual,” filled with “divisiveness” and all other sorts of bad things. It was on Inauguration Day, as I recall, when Obama proclaimed “an end to the petty grievances … that for far too long have strangled our politics.” We should “set aside childish things,” Obama suggested, and “choose our better history.”It seems he's working hard to further marginalize the Republicans in Congress, all while showing his pettiness.
So much for that. The first thing President Obama did was allow Nancy Pelosi to write the egregious “stimulus” bill, effectively making it her own personal wish list. When opposition to the bill began to mount, Obama brought Republicans to the bargaining table — only to snicker “I won” to their faces.
Additionally, President Obama’s recent speech to House Democrats was as snide and sarcastic of a national address as you will ever see. It was laced with flippant, partisan attacks on those who dared to question the logic of this massive bill. His administration went on the offensive, campaign-style, impugning the motives of those who have philosophical problems with the stimulus — what he calls “bickering” — while discarding any semblance of bipartisan spirit or grace under pressure.
Fascism, like Socialism and Communism, assumes that politicians are wiser, more far-seeing, and have more integrity and less self-interest than the average person. Also, that the regular person is a feckless dope. Little evidence for that, on average, thus far in history. Politics is just "Hollywood for ugly people," as they say - but also for many who cannot make it in the real world.Indeed. I've met more than a few politicians incapable of holding a real job because they weren't competent enough to do so. A number of them had personal lives that were less than 'great'. Oh, heck, their personal lives were a mess. And we're supposed to let folks like these run our lives when they can't even run their own?
In the seven years Manchester attorney Malcolm Blackwood has been doing bankruptcy law, he has noticed one sad fact: "The vast majority of my clients have paid back every penny they've borrowed several times over."Interesting. They had already paid back many times what they owed, but were still deep in debt. What's wrong with this picture?
But because of high interest rates and fees, they never seem to climb out of debt, he said.
It is nothing less than extraordinary that, less than a month into the presidency of Barack Obama, the warnings are flying that it has embarked on a course of actions that are a danger to the nation and to the world.While being a popular President might be nice, it isn't guaranteed by any means. Sometimes a President will have to make decisions that will not be popular with the electorate. He or she had better be ready to take the heat for those decisions. It goes with the job. But the more I have watched, the more I have seen that maintaining popularity is apparently Obama's primary focus. If that is indeed the case, then he will become far too focused on the polls rather than taking care of the nation's business. That is a recipe for failure and will lead to more problems for the American people, and especially for the economy.
...Kathleen Parker, a columnist for The Washington Post, was lamenting President Obama’s lack of experience and, more importantly, his lack of maturity. “Obama wants too much to be liked…but there’s a price in becoming president. Giving up being liked is the ultimate public sacrifice.” George W. Bush can confirm the truth of that.
...Obama has issued a flurry of executive orders including shutting down Gitmo, but not determining what we do with a bunch of fanatic, stone killers, some of whom have been released and went right back to al Qaeda. Not satisfied with that, he authorized the spending of $20.3 million in immigration assistance to Palestinian refugees—calling them victims—who want to leave Gaza and bring their hatred here.His actions may become examples of how the Law of Unintended Consequences can play a bigger role than the actions that triggered it.
His first call to a “head of state” was to Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Fatah Party. Abbas is not a head of state and Fatah exists only at the pleasure of Israel who needs to appear to be negotiating something other than its own destruction. His first television interview was with Al Arabia. The Iranian response was to demand that he apologize for the “past crimes” of the U.S.
He has ordered all overseas CIA interrogation centers closed and then withdrew all charges against the mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole. Do you feel any safer now?
“Sit down, shut up, and vote the way we tell you to vote, you Republican pigs!”
Thank you for articulating exactly what many of us discern about Obama but are unable to put into words.
When I first heard Obama speak he just seemed "creepy" and I've heard so many others use that same word to describe what they have heard. Obama still seems creepy, but with even more clarity now that I hear him from the position of power.
It seems obvious to me that Obama's hubris and deception cannot carry him through the next 4 years.
Proverbs 26:24-26 (New International Version)24 A malicious man disguises himself with his lips,
but in his heart he harbors deceit.
25 Though his speech is charming, do not believe him,
for seven abominations fill his heart.
26 His malice may be concealed by deception,
but his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.
Gov. John Lynch said yesterday he will offer a new law to protect New Hampshire businesses from being forced to collect Massachusetts sales taxes.How is it that one state thinks it can force a neighboring state to collect sales tax, particularly when the targeted state has none of its own? Times may be tough for Massachusetts, but do they really think they're going to get away with their move to impose Massachusetts taxes on New Hampshire? Such a move is ironic, considering Massachusetts' past in regards to taxes.
"We need to send a clear message that Massachusetts and other states shall not impose their sales taxes on New Hampshire businesses," Lynch said.
How ironic it is that the state that once had the gumption to start a war over unfair taxation imposed from afar is now trying to spread its tax tentacles beyond its own borders.This isn't the first time the two states have clashed in regards to sales taxes. Back in the 1970's when Meldrim Thomson, Jr. was governor of New Hampshire, he had the State Police arrest and escort Massachusetts revenue agents sitting in the parking lots of liquor stores just over the New Hampshire border, tracking Massachusetts residents buying alcohol in New Hampshire. He knew they had no jurisdiction in New Hampshire and they were told to get out. (Maine tried to do the same thing in the 1990's, stopping cars with Maine registration and confiscating the liquor bought by Maine residents in New Hampshire once they crossed back into Maine.)
That's right: Massachusetts, the state that boldly took on the tax-happy British Empire, is now doing a little imperial number of its own. And instead of depending on musket-toting militiamen, this time we're using hapless store clerks as our frontline troops.
The reaction of the intellectual elite to Sarah Palin was far more provincial than Palin herself ever has been, and those who reacted so viscerally against her evinced little or no appreciation for an essential premise of democracy: that practical wisdom matters at least as much as formal education, and that leadership can emerge from utterly unexpected places. The presumption that the only road to power passes through the Ivy League and its tributaries is neither democratic nor sensible, and is, moreover, a sharp and wrongheaded break from the American tradition of citizen governance.It is many of those same intellectual elite who were the driving force behind the character assassination of Palin. One example: How many times was mention made by the media and leftist bloggers that Sarah Palin's academic credentials were “not of the right caliber,” meaning she hadn't attended a prestigious institute of higher learning (she matriculated from the University of Idaho), and hadn't taken the right course of studies, meaning law, government, political science, or finance. They couldn't possibly allow someone not of the right crowd to attain the second highest political office in the land. After all, she wasn't “one of them.”
We are now seeing the real Obama, not the slick, well packaged media presentation we saw during the election campaign. He promised us change. Unfortunately the change he promised is bringing back the bad old days of FDR and LBJ. The people wanted change, and they're going to get it. But not the way they expected. As the old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.”
“A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into catastrophe.” - President Obama, Feb. 4.
Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.
[...]
After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.
I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.
And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.This is theft on a scale never seen in our history. Even FDR didn't steal on this scale. But we're supposed to applaud the efforts of the thieves and looters in Congress and the White House? Where's John Galt when we need him?
It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.
Buried deep inside the massive spending orgy that Democrats jammed through the House this week lie five words that could drastically undo two decades of welfare reforms.Conservatives and moderates fought for almost 30 years to undo the damage created by LBJ's social experiment, the Great Society, which trapped people in poverty and left them entirely dependent on government largess. The War on Poverty was a disaster, creating far more poverty than it cured. And now the Democrats want to return to that failed experiment, expanding their constituency (it seems those impoverished by the government always seem to vote of Democrats, the very people that made them poor), as well as their control over them.
The very heart of the widely applauded Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is a cap on the amount of federal cash that can be sent to states each year for welfare payments.
But, thanks to the simple phrase slipped into the legislation, the new “stimulus” bill abolishes the limits on the amount of federal money for the so-called Emergency Fund, which ships welfare cash to states.
“Out of any money in the Treasury of the United States not otherwise appropriated, there are appropriated such sums as are necessary for payment to the Emergency Fund,” Democrats wrote in Section 2101 on Page 354 of the $819 billion bill. In other words, the only limit on welfare payments would be the Treasury itself.
“This re-establishes the welfare state and creates dependency all over the place,” said one startled budget analyst after reading the line.
In addition to reopening the floodgates of dependency on federal welfare programs, the change once again deepens the dependency of state governments on the federal government.
There is so much junk in this economic stimulus package that it is designed to fail. Any hopes that people had that Obama would govern pragmatically and from the left-center are now completely out the window.Unfortunately it doesn't take much time to wreck the economy and a long time to repair it.
On the positive side, he is already overreaching and there is only so much patience that this country will have for far-left policies that don’t work. By 2010 or 2012, the people will be sick of these policies, and Republicans, as long as they offer a better vision of the future and policies that make sense, will be poised to regain power. Hopefully, the damage done by Obama and the Democrats will not be irreversible by then.
Your party owns the "American Bankruptcy Act of 2009".
And, don't expect any Republican worth his or her weight in snot to go along for the ride and give you the political cover you so desperately crave right now, thinking it will save your bony ass once this crapfest goes south.
Someone better tell Al Gore.
But what worries me most is that the credibility of science may never recover — and perhaps it shouldn’t. Credibility has to be earned, and once it’s squandered may never be recovered. By now far too many scientists have knowingly colluded in an historic fraud, one that would put Bernie Madoff to shame. We are seeing political larceny here on a truly planetary scale.
Why should scientists who’ve gambled their own reputations on this fakery ever be trusted again? They shouldn’t. Would you entrust your life savings to Bernie Madoff? Right.
I’m not a climatologist. Like most scientists I rarely judge what others do in their fields. And yet it’s been flamingly obvious for years now that the hypothesis of human-caused global warming violates all the basic rules and safeguards that protect the integrity of normal, healthy science. That’s why AGW (anthropogenic global warming) looks like a massive fraud, the biggest fraud ever in the history of science.
A few quick facts about Wall Street bonuses. The pretext for the political outrage was the New York comptroller's report this week on the aggregate data for bonuses in 2008. That "irresponsible" bonus pool of $18 billion was for every worker in the New York financial industry, from top dogs to secretaries. This bonus pool fell 44% in 2008, the largest percentage decline in 30 years. The average bonus was $112,000; bonuses typically make up most of an employee's salary on Wall Street. The comptroller estimates that this decline will cost New York State $1 billion in lost tax revenue and New York City $275 million. Both city and state may have to announce layoffs.Not quite as nasty and greedy as the media, the Democrats, and the White House have made it sound.
Both states are running budget deficits.
New Hampshire's deficit for the biennium ending June 30, 2009 is approximately $100 million. (The state runs under a two-year budget.) If action is not taken by the legislature and governor, the deficit could reach $400 million by the end of the next biennium.This is the first deficit the state has had in decades. New Hampshire has a population of 1.23 million, giving a per capita deficit of $81.30 for the present deficit, and a per capita deficit of $325.20 if the deficit is not addressed for the 2010/2011 budget.
California's budget deficit for the present fiscal year is expected to be over $11 billion, with some officials expecting that number to rise to $40 billion by the end of the 2009-2010 fiscal year. California has a population of 36.7 million, giving a per capita deficit of $299.73 and a projected per capita deficit of $1089.92, assuming the worst-case projections of the deficit for the 2009-2010 fiscal year are correct.
They are taking different paths to solve the problem.
When it was discovered the present New Hampshire budget was $250 million in the hole, the governor immediately ordered across the board hiring freezes and budget cuts in every state department. These actions, plus others made by the legislature and department heads of state agencies, dropped the deficit to $100 million. Most of these actions were additional spending cuts; postponement, scaling back, or cancellation of non-critical state funded projects; and boosting some fees and state taxes. Realizing the deficit could grow to almost $400 million if further measures weren't taken, the governor wants more cuts to be made, including the layoff of state employees if it becomes necessary. New broadbased taxes (income or sales tax) are off the table as the governor has pledged to veto any such measure to reach his desk. (New Hampshire has neither). The governor has also called rare weekend meetings of agency heads, legislative leaders, and the Executive Council to work on the proposed budget, which by law must be presented to the legislature in two weeks.
California, on the other hand, appeared to have a tough time making budget cuts, dialing back state spending. Instead the state assembly raised taxes and fees, while cutting little in the way of spending. To lessen the projected deficit, the governor has proposed spending cuts and tax hikes for the upcoming fiscal year.
The governor's proposed tax hikes will total $4.7 billion, including raising the sales tax from 7.25 percent to 8.75 percent, temporarily, and expanding the scope of the tax. (Does anyone know of any 'temporary' tax that wasn't made permanent?) Proposed spending cuts total $4.4 billion.
The California Assembly has different ideas.
The Democrats want to raise taxes by $8.8 billion and cut spending by $8.1 billion.
The Republicans favor selling off state assets, imposing fees on oil extracted from California oil wells (most states with oil do this), more flexible work schedules for businesses and state agencies, and postponement of new mandatory regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gases.
