Incestuous Narcissism Part 2

indyfromaz|

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. -Old Chinese Proverb.

And these days not only do people get fish, they demand that you catch it for them and/or “the rich” give them their fish because it’s only “fair”.
And if that fish isn’t good enough for them they will throw it back until they get a bigger, better fish that THEY like!
Unemployment insurance prior to the Age of Obama was for 26 weeks. 6 months and was only meant to help you out in between jobs. Not be de-facto welfare.
Or a stimulus, if you remember what Speaker Pelosi said in July 2010:
“Let me say that unemployment insurance… is one of the biggest stimuluses (sic) to our economy. Economists will tell you, this money is spent quickly. It injects demand into the economy, and it’s job creating. It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.”
So unemployment is good for everyone! So nearly 10% unemployment is great!
Aren’t you happy? Don’t you have lots of Hope!?
Now it stretch to 2 YEARS or more. Because Democrats have made finding a job so hard they have to cover their own buts by bribing people.
They call it “compassion”. I call it a bribe. Democrats are very good at paternalistic bribes.
The government pays you not to work. You in turn don’t bother looking. And if you aren’t looking you aren’t one of the statistics on Unemployment numbers because you aren’t looking.
Thus, the government can keep it artificially lower than it already is. Which is very high indeed.
So the Unemployment rate is just another political game to be manipulated.
Meanwhile, you have people just sitting around eating Doritos and hanging out doing nothing and getting paid for it!
And the government doesn’t make it easy to get off the dole either. Whether on purpose or not.
In the first year of unemployment, the size of the benefit check is based on your old salary. You can go right back on unemployment after a temp job, and nothing changes. But federal law requires states to recalculate benefits for the second year. If you worked a few days or a few months, the second year’s checks will be based on that lower earnings total. (Hartford Courant)

So you’re on unemployment, you get a temp job, your benefits get cut. So the obvious answer is to not take the temp job, right?
The government makes you want to stay.
But now Ms. Hanson rues the day she took that work. Why? The Connecticut Department of Labor used her negligible earnings in her part-time job as the new baseline for Hanson’s unemployment benefits. She went from receiving $483 a week to getting nothing.
“Afterwards, unofficially, they said I shouldn’t have taken the job,” Hanson says. (CSM)
Incentives to stay unemployed. Incestuous you might ask? At least I would.
Employers and economists point to several explanations. Extending jobless benefits to 99 weeks gives the unemployed less incentive to search out new work. Millions of homeowners are unable to move for a job because the real-estate collapse leaves them owing more on their homes than they are worth.
The job market itself also has changed. During the crisis, companies slashed millions of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs. That has created a glut of people who can’t qualify for highly skilled jobs but have a hard time adjusting to low-pay, unskilled work…
Many of the applicants he (Mark Sperry of Catepillar) saw at job fairs, he says, were just going through the motions so they could collect their unemployment checks. Some workers agree that unemployment benefits make them less likely to take whatever job comes along, particularly when those jobs don’t pay much. Michael Hatchell, a 52-year-old mechanic in Lumberton, N.C., says he turned down more than a dozen offers during the 59 weeks he was unemployed, because they didn’t pay more than the $450 a week he was collecting in benefits.
It is particularly troubling at a time when 4.3% of the labor force has been out of work for more than six months—a level much higher than after any other recession since 1948. (WSJ)
So what are you to do if Unemployment pays better than the job?
Just game the system.
And the system shall provide.
The disconnect between workers and jobs could constrain the economy for some time. It makes it hard for even small firms, which as a group typically account for an outsize share of job growth in a rebound. (WSJ)
So if you have 99 weeks of unemployment, you go out “looking” for a job but not really, then when it gets to about 95 weeks you get serious about it. But that’s nearly 2 years later!
There was a Swedish study that when they cut the benefit time, the amount of time people kept “looking” decreased in proportion.
Alan Krueger, the current Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and a highly respected labor economist has said in his academic writing exactly that: unemployment insurance causes the unemployed to stay unemployed longer.
In his academic studies Dr. Krueger wrote that “more generous unemployment insurance (UI) benefits have been found to be associated with longer spells of unemployment,” and further finds that “the job finding rate jumps up around the time benefits are exhausted. Most importantly, we find that job search intensity is inversely related to UI benefit generosity for those who are eligible for UI.” In other words, a senior Obama administration official finds that less generous UI benefits cause the unemployed to search harder for new work.
Lawrence Summers, Director of the White House’s National Economic Council has said the same:
“government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a ‘reservation wage’—the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase [the] reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer.”
“Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job.”-Liberal Economist Paul Krugman’s Macroeconomics textbook.
The Same Paul Krugman  recently described Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) statement that unemployment insurance causes individuals to stay out of work longer “a bizarre point of view.”(Heritage.org)
More specifically, In the NY Times:  In Mr. Kyl’s view, then, what we really need to worry about right now — with more than five unemployed workers for every job opening, and long-term unemployment at its highest level since the Great Depression — is whether we’re reducing the incentive of the unemployed to find jobs. To me, that’s a bizarre point of view — but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.
So, like everything with Liberals, it’s all politics.
We, The Democrats, who have the patent on “compassion” will kiss your behind and let you sit on your ass for 2 years. As long as those evil Republicans don’t come in and demand you have some self-respect that is.
Even if they do, the Democrats will trot out their “grandma eating dog food” “they want to cut you off” “they’re heartless” “mean” “Cruel” class warfare hoaries anyhow.
Or as Mr. Krugman put it, “How can the parties agree on policy when they have utterly different visions of how the economy works, when one party feels for the unemployed, while the other weeps over affluent victims of the “death tax”?
Democrats feel your pain (good,sense they are the cause of most of it!). And Republicans are heartless, greedy and obsessed with the kiss up to “the rich”.
Meanwhile, you sit on your behind for up to 2 years eating Doritos and watching Judge Judy.
Who are you going to vote for, the pimp or Mom who says get you lazy ass off the couch?
Unemployment has become a political weapon and a tool, akin to welfare.
You don’t work, we pay you. You vote for us, we keep paying you.
Regardless of the economic and social cost.
Unemployment insurance exists for good reason, and no-one has suggested abolishing it. However, the good that it does also comes with a cost in delaying the return of the unemployed to work. Economists from right to left and in the Obama administration agree about this. Wishing it were not so does not make it true. Congress should consider both the costs and benefits of extended UI benefits when weighing how many years of benefits to provide unemployed workers. (Heritage).
But what we have now is incest at it’s best.

Tax cuts? Moi?

indyfromaz|

The Largest Job-killing, family killing, economy-killing Tax increases are looming.
1/1/11.
But the Democrats are frozen with fear. If they vote to keep the tax cuts they can’t play their Class Warfare envy card,It’s worked for them for decades and gotten them a lot of power, and their base of mindless sheep will sheer them if they do.
They have whole generations of people that are slaves to to their will.
They like that. They want more of that.
But they know it will hurt them politically if they let them them expire.
They know, intrinsically, how much damage it will do.
So they try to mitigate it by trying to have their cake and eat it too.
We’ll only raise them on “the rich”. After all, the class envy weapon is one of their favourites.
Fear, jealousy, envy,greed, dependence. They love them all.
Problem is, that isn’t working either.
So, let’s do absolutely nothing before the election. Then we can give everyone Lame Duck Poisoning.
And it won’t matter. At least to them.
Now, that’s REAL Leadership!
YES WE CAN! DO NOTHING!
FEAR IS HOPE

With just weeks to go before the midterm elections, Americans have made it clear they don’t want their taxes raised. So what do congressional Democrats do? Nothing — at least until the elections are over.
For months, Democrats have hammered Republicans for trying to keep President Bush’s tax cuts in place for everyone, not just the middle class and those who no longer pay taxes. That would be a “giveaway to the rich,” they contend. But guess what? Most Americans don’t see it that way.
In a recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll, 63% want the Bush-era tax cuts — now set to expire at year-end — to remain in place. In the latest IBD/TIPP Poll, 48% favor making the cuts permanent vs. 30% opposed. And as for taxes on the rich, an AP-GfK Poll found that 39% support letting taxes go up only on those earning over $250,000, but 44% oppose the idea.
Hence, the Democrats’ dilemma: Either way they vote, they’ll anger a large chunk of the electorate — at a time when they need all the votes they can get to keep from being swept out of power.
So rather than hold an up-or-down vote on a tax bill that reflects their true beliefs, Democrats are postponing any action until after the elections. Obviously they know that what they really want to do will be wildly unpopular, and perhaps cost them seats.
But Americans know what they want, too, and they’ll see through the politics Democrats are playing with the economy at a time we can least afford it.
If they’ve decided to hike taxes during a lame-duck session of Congress after the election, they sure shouldn’t keep it secret. If people feel lied to during the election, they won’t be very happy. Democrats need to let their intentions be known — or face the wrath of the voters later.
If they think they can raise taxes on everyone or slap the “rich” with higher taxes and get away with it, they might be surprised. Ultimately, this will be a politically self-defeating strategy, making their far-left voter base happy but sacrificing middle-of-the-road Democrats who want to see the economy create jobs again.
Taxing the rich sounds good on paper or as a sound-bite in the left-dominated mainstream media, but it’s the rich who create businesses and do most of the hiring in this country. Tax these entrepreneurs and you tax jobs — the last thing we need after losing 8 million in three years.
As economist Curtis Dubay of the Heritage Foundation has noted, tax hikes on the rich “will slow down economic growth and job creation while the economy struggles to recover from a steep recession . .. (and) will hurt Americans at all income levels.”
Running a standard econometric model, Dubay estimates that letting taxes rise just on the rich, as President Obama and Senate Democrats propose, will cost the economy 7 million jobs over the next decade — and nearly $720 billion, or $6,000 per household, in income.
That’s an awful price to pay for envy. Before voting this fall, Americans should pin down their representatives on where they stand on tax cuts. Republicans have put out their Pledge to America, so you know what they stand for. What about the Democrats? (IBD)

And As if that wasn’t enough, The Democrats have decided on an Armageddon strategy as well, poisoning the well.
Leave nothing behind.
Unleash The Democrat A-Bomb.
The Ad-Hominem Bomb.
NewYork Times- WASHINGTON — Democratic candidates across the country are opening a fierce offensive of negative advertisements against Republicans, using lawsuits, tax filings, reports from the Better Business Bureau and even divorce proceedings to try to discredit their opponents and save their congressional majority.
Opposition research and attack advertising are deployed in almost every election, but these biting ads are coming far earlier than ever before, according to party strategists. The campaign has intensified in the past two weeks as early voting begins in several states and as vulnerable incumbents try to fight off an onslaught of influences by outside groups.
Metaphorically and politically, KILL EVERYONE!
If we can’t rule, no one can!
Say Anything, but do nothing.
Now’s that’s real leadership!
And when that doesn’t work, just LIE.

LAS VEGAS – Rep. Dina Titus has been a loyal soldier in pushing the Democrats’ ambitious agenda, voting for health care legislation, extended unemployment benefits, new energy taxes and a repeal of the military’s ban on gays serving openly.
Her campaign signs, however, proclaim Titus an “independent voice” for Nevadans.
Aware that their stock has taken the same tumble as home values, Congress’ most vulnerable Democrats are declaring their independence from their party’s agenda in Facebook profiles, television advertisements, news interviews and campaign websites leading up to the Nov. 2 election. That’s when Republicans hope to retake control of the House they lost four years ago.
Titus and others have raised eyebrows for carrying water for Obama in vote after vote, only to pivot and say they are not beholden to a party.

“I’m an independent”. I voted for every single piece of the radical leftist socialism, but I’m an “independent”.
As an actual, independent I should sue them for defamation of character. The grand fraud they hope to perpetrate with the help of the Ministry of Truth is truly mind-blowing.
So, now,  you’re now too stupid to recognize the fraud, and the lies.

So what was the President’s response to the Republican’s Ideas (remembering that they are the “party of no” and “have no ideas” according to The President, The Liberal Media, and The Democrats) about cutting spending and less government?
“It is grounded in the same worn-out philosophy: cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; cut the rules for Wall Street and the special interests; and cut the middle class loose to fend for itself,” Obama said.

“That’s not a prescription for a better future. It’s an echo of a disastrous decade we can’t afford to relive.”

I could have written it myself and it would have sounded the same. It’s the same old hackneyed class warfare talking points.  Bush’s fault. Nothing of substance.
Yadda Yadda Yadda….
What we can’t afford to relive Mr. President is your last 20 months!

See also:

http://indyfromaz.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/poisoning-the-well-with-lame-duck/

The Dream of Amnesty

indyfromaz|

The wet dream of Liberals, just like their slobbering for government control of Health Care that they’d been dreaming of for 70 years, here comes Amnesty again!
But it’s not straightforward, oh no, never. That hasn’t worked. So now we have to be sneaky again.
The Wolf is trying to sneak in the back door under a false guise. And it’s not even Halloween yet!
As if the Justice Department and ICE office simply not prosecuting illegals for any reason was bad enough, now in a highly cynical and political way, Senate Majority Harry Reid has re-proposed the DREAM ACT (aka Amnesty) but not in the way anyone should think.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has hit a new low by slipping an amnesty plan for illegal immigrants into a defense funding bill. In effect, he’s holding U.S. troops hostage to advance his own political career.
Longtime members of the Senate Armed Services Committee are shuddering at the way the defense budget has become a Christmas tree for political ornaments. Since last year, Democrats have used appropriations for U.S. troops in Afghanistan to attach riders that couldn’t otherwise pass muster.
Now Reid has hung the ugliest ornament of them all — the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act — and has scheduled a vote on it next week.
“This is an all-time low for me being in the Senate, and that’s saying something,” committee member Lindsay Graham told Foreign Policy magazine. “The one area that’s been kept off limits from partisan politics has been the defense of our nation. To say that you’re going to bring up a defense bill and put the DREAM Act on it … to me is very offensive.”
But Reid, D-Nev., apparently couldn’t care less. He sees a political payoff — for himself — by offering amnesty to the children of illegal immigrants via the DREAM Act in a bid to energize the Latino vote.
As representative of the state with the highest number of illegal immigrants (as well as the highest unemployment rate at 14.2%), Reid is hoping he can break away from Republican challenger Sharron Angle in his own dead-heat reelection race by delivering amnesty to that constituency.
He’s also betting that Republicans will be forced to go along because of their strong support of the military. Reid has also slipped in a second rider, this one for ending the Pentagon’s “don’t ask-don’t tell” policy on gay servicemen without waiting for the military’s input.
Both riders stand to wreak havoc in the U.S. if this bill passes. The act is outright amnesty for the children of illegal immigrants, and offers a no-penalty path to citizenship for anyone connected with them.
It says that any child of an illegal who arrives in the U.S. before age 16, spends five years here and completes two years of college or military service in a six-year span without felonies gets a green card ahead of others who have waited patiently for their papers.
They will have access to taxpayer-funded loans and grants, and may crowd out children of U.S. citizens at state and community colleges. They are not required to pay back the loans, learn English or maintain a decent GPA. They can start the process up to age 35, and get six years to finish a mere two years of college or military service.
And once they’ve been granted citizenship, they can bring all their relatives to the U.S. in what will be the mother of chain migrations.
Even worse, there’s no cutoff date on when an illegal immigrant can begin the process, so the bill becomes a dinner triangle to would-be immigrants everywhere to ship their teenagers to the states before they turn 16. Mexican cartels that smuggle illegals for $10,000 a pop must be slavering at the possible new business.
Thanks to an effective propaganda campaign based on sob stories from immigrant lobbies, most of these facts about the DREAM Act aren’t well-known. But make no mistake: The legislation as written amounts to amnesty for almost everyone.
This may be why, despite the measure being around the Senate for seven years, it has never garnered enough votes for passage. It has come close, but public opposition has stopped it when the facts are made known. That should be the result when Reid selfishly tries to get away with it again next week.
But you don’t want to say no to troops, now do you?


WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama assured Hispanics on Wednesday he was not walking away from immigration reform while expressing disappointment that he had not delivered on a 2008 promise to overhaul U.S. policy.
Aka Amnesty.
He blamed Republicans for backing away from reform and urged Hispanics — an important and growing voting bloc — to continue giving him the support they gave during his presidential campaign.
“Now, I know that many of you campaigned hard for me, and understandably you’re frustrated that we have not been able to move this over the finish line yet. I am too,” he told a gala dinner for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, referring to immigration reform.
“But let me be clear: I will not walk away from this fight. My commitment is getting this done as soon as we can. We can’t keep kicking this challenge down the road.”
Be we can utterly cynical and manipulative to benefit ourself and our party, isn’t that right, Mr President?
The Democrats want poor, hispanic voters as a bloc to fight over the rest of you “racists” who don’t want to recognize the magnificence, grandeur, and magnanimity of THE ONE.
In other words, they want SUCKERS!

“But don’t forget who is standing with you, and who is standing against you. Don’t ever believe that this election coming up doesn’t matter. … Don’t forget who your friends are.”
Anyone with a (D) next to their name is not your friend. And many with “incumbent” aren’t either.
Be Involved. Be Informed. Vote.

Recipe for Control

indyfromaz|

I took up cooking, one, because I found I really enjoy it, but also because it’s better for me to control my own food rather than trust it to a heart attack in a box (have you read the fat & sodium contents on some of those pre-prepared meals!).
But the difference between my approach and the First Lady’s Food Police cudgel approach is I’m not preaching and I’m not trying to control other people.
She is. Just like her husband.
I often wonder who’s the more elitist, her or her husband.
“Even if we give parents all the information they need and improve school meals and build brand new supermarkets on every corner, none of that matters if when families step into a restaurant, they can’t make a healthy choice,” Mrs. Obama told them.
So we have to control you at every turn so you won’t be tempted!
So, instead of speaking to parents about moderation, the first lady wants to micromanage menus, making french fries a special order item at fast-food outlets and apples the default side order of choice for kids. Butter and cream must be cut, and whole wheat pasta must replace white.
Harmless advocacy? Perhaps. But Mrs. Obama’s speeches at political rallies and conventions suggests it’s probably more. The gears of government seem to be turning to her cause.
The Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday announced a $31 million program to combat obesity (and smoking) in eight states. It comes with a plan to go coercive: “Use price to discourage consumption of tobacco and to benefit consumption of healthy food/drinks,” the press release reads. As in price controls?
The coincidences pile up as community organizers tied quite closely to the Obama campaign, including the National Council of La Raza and the NAACP, joined the cause. To aid the effort, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation chipped in a $2 million grant.
Fascinating associates don’t you think? La Raza, a racist hispanic group and the NAACP who calls Tea Partiers racists. Fascinating…
Then there’s the anti-McDonald’s TV ad campaign just launched by the Physicians Committee for Responsibility, another pressure group with a vegetarian and animal-rights agenda. In true Alinsky style, they’ve picked a target, personalized it and laid all the problems of obesity on one fast-food operator.
The advert shows a woman weeping over the body of a man in a morgue, with the man still holding a half-eaten hamburger. Toward the end of the advert, the McDonald’s logo appears along with the tag-line “I was lovin’ it”. The commercial then urges watchers to ““High cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attacks. Tonight, make it vegetarian”.
Then you get Michael Moore who hadn’t been getting any attention lately spouting off that McDonald’s has killed more people than terrorists have.
What’s galling about all this is that Mrs. Obama’s anti-obesity campaign — like the policies pushed by her husband — presumes government has all the answers. In reality, it doesn’t.
Bu they think it does, as long as they are in control of it, that is. The Insufferably Superior Left strikes again!
Diets are a personal choice with different impacts on different people. Some children stay fit eating all the fast food they like; others can’t handle a donut. Some effective low-carbohydrate diets don’t restrict cream and butter at all, but minimize fruit. Go figure.
Micromanaging restaurant menus will only drive consumers to the junk food section at the grocery to get the goodies they crave. It won’t end childhood obesity, the causes of which are far more complex and numerous than trips to the Golden Arches.
But then you just drive the junk food purveyors out of business then and TA DA!   Instant Health! And you have Big Brother and Big Mommy to thank for it!
Like any solution imposed by big government, Mrs. Obama’s will harm business, limit choice and politicize the personal — a recipe for failure. (IBD)
You have to assume the Insufferably Superior Left actually cares. I know I don’t.
After all, her husband is frequent photographed (to look less like the elite he is) eating very unhealthy foods and he admits to being…a SMOKER!
Don’t do as I do, do as I say!
But Michelle can’t clean up her husband, oh no, she has to crusade against evil fat and salt to save you all from yourselves!
The Empress has no clothes.
She said it’s also important to change these national eating habits because they end up costing billions in additional healthcare costs.
And they want to take over your Health Care from birth to death. Hmmmm…Fascinating…
“I’m not asking any of you to make drastic changes to every single one of your recipes or to totally change the way you do business,” she said.
Not Yet, at least.
After all, when Liberals start preaching about it “being for the children” watch out!! (since they consider anyone who disagrees with them as “children” anyhow).

So how long before we “recommend” to a private business what they can serve and just force them to serve what we think is best for you?
After all, restaurants that serve crap, close. That’s business. But what if that’s all they are allowed to serve??
While suggestions that eateries serve a side of apples instead of French fries as the default side dish likely won’t go anywhere, there is another way to serve kids fewer calories. Just make the portions smaller.

Smaller portions mean less cost for the restaurant, and can help kids slim down. Charge the same, serve less food. Talk about a win-win! (Entrepeneur.com)

Exactly. The portion sizes today are about 1/3 larger than say 50 years ago.

If you can teach people to eat less, not just control what they eat, then you can lose weight!

After all, you have to burn more calories than you take in to do it.

And I fail but not as often as I used to and I have cleaned up my diet. So a lot of it is   also because of lack of proper regular exercise to on this middle-aged frame. But that’s another story…

But I don’t want to control you.

I trust with proper education and not liberal hysterics and Alinsky scare tactics that you are capable of make reasonable decisions and understand and accept the consequences of your actions.

But I also know that that part is nearly impossible in today’s liberal entitlement and evade responsibility for everything environment.

That’s what has to change. Not the menu.

“The delusion is that we all make free choices,”- Anti-soda crusader Harold Goldstein

* Obesity lawsuit instigator John “Sue the Bastards” Banzhaf lashes out: “All these platitudes about, ‘people should eat less,’ ‘responsibility,’ all this crap!” * Marion Nestle, queen of the food scolds, thinks that “balance, moderation and exercise” have no practical importance. “I don’t support that,” she says.
* Discussing “The Politics of Food,” Skip Spitzer of the radical Pesticide Action Network maintains that “the idea of personal responsibility is a cultural construct.”
* PETA medical “expert” Neal Barnard tells tales of food addiction, arguing that “it’s high time we stopped blaming ourselves for over-eating.”
* Kelly “Big Brother” Brownell advocates “a more militant attitude about the toxic food environment, like we have about tobacco… [smoking] became so serious that society overlooked the intrusion on individual rights for the greater social good.” He also suggests that human beings have no more control over their food choices than animals in a cage.
* Margo Wootan, one of the top killjoys at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), implores: “We have got to move beyond personal responsibility.” And when the World Health Organization added a single, understated sentence referencing the “exercise of individual responsibility” to its anti-obesity strategy, CSPI raged: “Obesity is not merely a matter of individual responsibility. Such suggestions are naive and simplistic.”

Here’s how noted food critic Robert Shoffner describes their philosophy: “People are children and have to be protected by Big Brother or Big Nanny from the awful free-market predators … That’s what drives these people — a desire for control of other people’s lives.” (consumerfreedom.com)

So they aren’t the Insufferably Superior are they?

You are just children who must be led to do what is best for you.

Just like the fact that the fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet is surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory it is vitally important to get a receipt. (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

John Stossel: For what it’s worth, here is some of the research we dug up to prepare my Michelle Obama discussion:
In his article “Egg on their Faces,” Steve Malanga points out that “Government dietary advice often proves disastrous.”
Starting in the 1970s… the American Heart Association advised people to reduce drastically their consumption of eggs as part of a goal to limit total cholesterol intake to 300 milligrams a day (a single egg can have 250 milligrams). The recommendation, seconded by government and other public-health groups, prompted a sharp drop in the consumption of eggs, a food that nutritionists praise as low in calories and high in nutrients. In 2000, the AHA revised its restrictions on eggs to one a day (from a onetime low of three a week)… To what purpose? A 2004 article in The Journal of Nutrition that looked at worldwide studies of egg consumption noted that the current restrictions on eating eggs are “unwarranted for the majority of people and are not supported by scientific data.”
Furthermore:
As a recent review of the latest research in Scientific American pointed out, ever since the first set of federal guidelines appeared in 1980, Americans heard that they had to reduce their intake of saturated fat by cutting back on meat and dairy products and replacing them with carbohydrates. Americans dutifully complied. Since then, obesity has increased sharply, and the progress that the country has made against heart disease has largely come from medical breakthroughs like statin drugs, which lower cholesterol, and more effective medications to control blood pressure.
Malanga also notes that new FDA guidelines recommend a maximum of 1500 milligrams of salt daily (down from 2300).  One hypertension expert observed  that the government’s salt war is a giant uncontrolled experiment with the public’s health.

Here are a few more reasons why government shouldn’t tell us what to eat:
We’re living longer than ever! 80 yrs today vs. 57 yrs  80 yrs ago
A CDC study found that more people die every year from being underweight than overweight!  And that moderately overweight people live longer than those at normal weight.
Government was once excited about BMI index. (body-mass index) Gov Mike Huckabee had all Arkansas kids tested!  But BMI is a lousy measure of health.  According to BMI: Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger are obese; GWBush and George Clooney are “overweight”
Calorie counts on menu boards don’t work: people STILL don’t take in fewer calories! A study at McDonald’s , Burger King, Wendy’s, and Kentucky Fried Chicken found that people ordered MORE calories after the labeling law went into effect.
What’s junk food?  Chicago’s new candy tax defines sweets that contain flour as “food” – w/o flour as “candy.”  (Hershey bar? Candy. But Kit Kats, Twix, Twizzlers –are “food”) O.j. and apple juice? More calories than Coke! (97 v 120/cup)
“Protect the children?”  Children are the responsibility of their parents. When the state assumes the role of parent, it makes children of all of us.
It’s a good sign that America has food nannies – means were so rich that these are the things we’re worried about!
The food police haven’t jailed anyone yet, but who knows 20 years down the road?  MeMe Roth suggests annual obesity screenings at school; serving soft drinks to only those over 18; child abuse laws for parents with obese kids; taxes on soda and sweetened drinks.


If the government is allowed to dictate our diet, what’s next? Do they start deciding who we’ll marry, where we’ll work?

Thomas Jefferson said “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.”

Insanity

  indyfromaz|

The definition of insanity is doing the same things the same way over and over again, expecting a different outcome.
From BarackObama.com (2009):

• 
  

  Get the economy back on track:

  President Obama signed legislation to jumpstart our economy, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, less than a month after his inauguration. The plan will save or create 3.5 million new jobs, make critical investments in our infrastructure and give 95 percent of working Americans a tax cut.

Barack Sept 2010:
WASHINGTON (AP) – Vowing to find new ways to stimulate the sputtering economy, President Barack Obama will call for long-term investments in the nation’s roads, railways and runways that would cost at least $50 billion.
The infrastructure investments are one part of a package of targeted proposals the White House is expected to announce in hopes of jump-starting the economy ahead of the November election. Obama will outline the infrastructure proposal Monday at a Labor Day event in Milwaukee.
While the proposal calls for investments over six years, the White House said spending would be front-loaded with an initial $50 billion to help create jobs in the near future.
The goals of the infrastructure plan include: rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads; constructing and maintaining 4,000 miles of railways, enough to go coast-to-coast; and rehabilitating or reconstructing 150 miles of airport runways, while also installing a new air navigation system designed to reduce travel times and delays.
Obama will also call for the creation of a permanent infrastructure bank that would focus on funding national and regional infrastructure projects.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this new “stimulus” that can’t be called “stimulus” sound amazingly similar to the one that has already failed miserably?
Officials said this infrastructure package differs from the stimulus because it’s aimed at long-term growth, while still focusing on creating jobs in the short-term.
Wary of the public’s concern over rising deficits, the administration insists a second stimulus plan, similar to last year’s $814 billion bill, is not in the works.
It just sounds like it.

But if we change the name in a very Orwellian fashion this failed duck is not a duck so this stimulus is not a stimulus.
And a permanent Bank of The United States to boot. A new cash cow. After all, who could be against an “infrastructure” bank?
Me.
***********************************
LET THEM EAT CREDIT!
It’s interesting why behavior that we readily recognize, on an individual level, as undesirable, we routinely promote and accept as government and social policy.
What rational person would suggest that being detached from reality is a good thing?
Or what rational person does not want good information when making important decisions?
But increasingly we live in an environment, created by government driven policies, in which the picture of reality we have is false, and the information available to us for making routine decisions is distorted.
University of Chicago economist Raghuram Rajan demonstrates this problem in what he calls “let them eat credit.”
According to Rajan, we have a big problem at the lower end of our income spectrum. Low end incomes not only are languishing, but adjusted for inflation, are dropping. From 2002 to 2008, real wages for the top ten percent of earners increased, but for everyone else they dropped.
What to do?
Rajan points out that the real culprit is education. As the economy gets increasingly sophisticated, the penalty for lack of education gets greater. But we’re failing to deliver this needed education to lower income Americans.
Core to the problem, Rajan argues, is that politicians are more interested in being popular than solving problems. They’d rather offer free money in the form of subsidies and easy credit to low wage earners than take on real problems.
Programs like subsidized mortgages, which contributed much to the housing bubble, make life look artificially cheap and reduce the sense of immediacy regarding the need to get educated.
The rate of U.S. home ownership increased from 1995 to 2005 from 65% to 69%. Over the same period of time home prices doubled, before everything fell apart.
As reported by Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute, in 1992 government backed lending enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were directed to “promote affordable housing” and to do this by enabling down payments of less than 5% and approving credit for borrowers with shaky credit history.
Through the 1990s and 2000s HUD continued to push Fannie and Freddie to relax standards, requiring them, according to Wallison, “to buy increasing numbers of subprime and other risky mortgages.”
The faulty assumption behind all this, which we’ve learned the hard way, is that politicians think they can use taxpayers and the money printing press as a bottomless pit of funds to promote government schemes.
Many low income families, bought homes they couldn’t afford. Not just because of lying mortgage brokers, but because the whole artificial reality that distorted prices and credit was created by government policy. (Now the Government owns 80% of Fannie & Freddie and around 70-80% of all mortgages are written under Fannie and Freddie  so has anything been learned or are we just insane?)
It’s hard to find a place to turn where we don’t deal with a reality distorted by government.
We’re all concerned about runaway costs of health care and health insurance. What’s behind it?
In 1960, 50% of our health expenditures were out of pocket and 50% were OPM (Other People’s Money – Insurance, Employers, Government).
Today, 12% of our health care expenditures are out of pocket and 88% are Other People’s Money.
So what was the solution: National Health Care! Health Care run by the Government!
According to Harvard economist Robert Barro, the current persistent high unemployment rate, helping drag out this recession, is traceable to the unprecedented extension of unemployment benefits from the normal 26 weeks to almost two years. The argument that we are currently in unchartered territory and must do the unusual is not true.
Barro points out that unemployment in the 1982 recession reached 10.8% – higher than today.
The perhaps not so funny joke that neurotics build castles in the air and psychotics move into them is worth thinking about.
The ability to succeed is predicated on both freedom and having good information on which to make decisions.
As we distort, through government policies, reality around us, and citizens increasingly get bad information for matters about which they have important decisions to make, we’re not going to recover. (Star Parker)

I think one could argue, successfully, that Government, especially this one, is not interested in recovery- not really.
Because recovery mean less people dependent on them.
Sure they want to appear to give a crap because appearing not to or looking like you’re failing is also not desired.
So you have to look and sound like you’re succeeding and give every that false sense of reality that works for you.
Reality is an overrated and under-appreciated, well, reality.
One Question: Hows that “War on Poverty” that was started over 40 years ago going exactly? Won yet?

The Political Class

The frustration that voters are expressing in 2010 goes much deeper than specific policies. At a more fundamental level, voters just don’t believe politicians are interested in the opinions of ordinary Americans.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 68% believe the nation’s Political Class doesn’t “care what most Americans think.” Only 15% believe the Political Class is interested in the views of those they are supposed to serve. Another 17% are not sure.
Skepticism about the Political Class interest in voters is found across just about all demographic and partisan groups. However, self-identified liberals are evenly divided on the question.  Eighty-eight percent (88%) of conservatives and 64% of moderates reject the notion that the Political Class cares.
Adults over 40 are more skeptical than younger adults about the Political Class. But even among voters under 30, nearly half (47%) don’t think the Political Class cares what most Americans think. Only 18% of these younger voters think the Political Class does care, while 35% are not sure.(Rasmussen)

America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution

By Angelo M. Codevilla from the July 2010 – August 2010 issue American Spectator
(Excerpts)

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.
When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.
Although after the election of 2008 most Republican office holders argued against the Troubled Asset Relief Program, against the subsequent bailouts of the auto industry, against the several “stimulus” bills and further summary expansions of government power to benefit clients of government at the expense of ordinary citizens, the American people had every reason to believe that many Republican politicians were doing so simply by the logic of partisan opposition. After all, Republicans had been happy enough to approve of similar things under Republican administrations. Differences between Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas are of degree, not kind. Moreover, 2009-10 establishment Republicans sought only to modify the government’s agenda while showing eagerness to join the Democrats in new grand schemes, if only they were allowed to. Sen. Orrin Hatch continued dreaming of being Ted Kennedy, while Lindsey Graham set aside what is true or false about “global warming” for the sake of getting on the right side of history. No prominent Republican challenged the ruling class’s continued claim of superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as irritable children who must learn their place. The Republican Party did not disparage the ruling class, because most of its officials are or would like to be part of it.
Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.
The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century’s Northerners and Southerners — nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, “prayed to the same God.” By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God “who created and doth sustain us,” our ruling class prays to itself as “saviors of the planet” and improvers of humanity. Our classes’ clash is over “whose country” America is, over what way of life will prevail, over who is to defer to whom about what. The gravity of such divisions points us, as it did Lincoln, to Mark’s Gospel: “if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”

The ruling class had sunk deep roots in America over decades before 2008. Machiavelli compares serious political diseases to the Aetolian fevers — easy to treat early on while they are difficult to discern, but virtually untreatable by the time they become obvious.
Its attitude is key to understanding our bipartisan ruling class. Its first tenet is that “we” are the best and brightest while the rest of Americans are retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained.

When Woodrow Wilson in 1914 was asked “can’t you let anything alone?” he answered with, “I let everything alone that you can show me is not itself moving in the wrong direction, but I am not going to let those things alone that I see are going down-hill.”

Sound Familiar? It’s for your own good.  “I”  know better…

March 17,2010: President Barack Obama said he’s confident his health-care plan will pass Congress because it’s “the right thing to do” for the country and that he isn’t concerned about criticism of Democratic legislative tactics.

And anytime this President says he is putting aside politics (for any reason) I want to reach for the barf bag.
As the saying goes, they came to Washington to do good, and stayed to do well.
Confident “knowledge” that “some of us, the ones who matter,” have grasped truths that the common herd cannot, truths that direct us, truths the grasping of which entitles us to discount what the ruled say and to presume what they mean, made our Progressives (the worst form of Liberal Democrats) into a class long before they took power.
Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself. While it stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof. Like left-wing parties always and everywhere, it is a “machine,” that is, based on providing tangible rewards to its members. Such parties often provide rank-and-file activists with modest livelihoods and enhance mightily the upper levels’ wealth. Because this is so, whatever else such parties might accomplish, they must feed the machine by transferring money or jobs or privileges — civic as well as economic — to the party’s clients, directly or indirectly.

Which is why before this blog on chat rooms during the 2006 Congressional and 2008 Presidential campaigns and the Democrats only real thought was to harp on Republican “corruption” I said repeatedly, they just want to replace the republican corruption with their corruption.
Switch out the cronies.
And that’s what we have. You have to be a minority and/or a union worker to get anything from this administration besides the back of their hand.
If you’re rich and successful, you are a demon, unless the government “deems” you useful or wants to take over your business that is.
Like Fannie and Freddie who were excluded from Financial Reform.
The Trial Lawyers were excluded from Health Care Reform.
Both are cronies of the government and the Trial Lawyers are the biggest cronies of Liberals.
As I said last week in a blog, the Liberals love to sue you into submission.

Rasmussen: “The American people don’t want to be governed from the left, the right or the center. The American people want to govern themselves,” says Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports. “The American attachment to self-governance runs deep. It is one of our nation’s cherished core values and an important part of our cultural DNA.”

But self-governed people are bad for the government busy bodies and their cronies who want to run your life for you because you’re an idiot and can’t do it for yourself.
They just know deep down, you’re a moron and they have to take care of you.
So Let Them Eat Cake!
Oh, sorry, Cake is politically incorrect because it has so much sugar in it and that’s bad for you.
So let them Eat Cookies.
Nope, not that either, cookies are the spawn of the devil  and lead to bad health habits…
So Let them Eat Tofu!
Without any help it’s flavorless, bland, or not very appetizing.
PERFECT!

Will The State Defendent Please Rise

Statement by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer
PHOENIX – “Today I was notified that the federal government has filed a lawsuit against the State of Arizona.  It is wrong that our own federal government is suing the people of Arizona for helping to enforce federal immigration law.  As a direct result of failed and inconsistent federal enforcement, Arizona is under attack from violent Mexican drug and immigrant smuggling cartels.  Now, Arizona is under attack in federal court from President Obama and his Department of Justice.  Today’s filing is nothing more than a massive waste of taxpayer funds.  These funds could be better used against the violent Mexican cartels than the people of Arizona.
“The truth is the Arizona law is both reasonable and constitutional.  It mirrors substantially what has been federal law in the United States for many decades.  Arizona’s law is designed to complement, not supplant, enforcement of federal immigration laws.  Despite the Department of Justice’s claims in paragraph 62 of today’s lawsuit, Arizona is not trying ‘to establish its own immigration policy’ or ‘directly regulate the immigration status of aliens.’  Arizona Revised Statutes § 11-1051(E) states that the federal government, along with local law enforcement officers authorized by the federal government, can only determine an alien’s immigration status.   Subsection (L) of that same section goes on to state that the law ‘shall be implemented in a manner consistent with federal laws regulating immigration.’
“The irony is that President Obama’s Administration has chosen to sue Arizona for helping to enforce federal immigration law and not sue local governments that have adopted a patchwork of ‘sanctuary’ policies that directly violate federal law. These patchwork local ‘sanctuary’ policies instruct the police not to cooperate with federal immigration officials.
“The best thing government can do is to create a stable, predictable environment, governed by an easily understood set of rules or laws. We do not need to make this more complicated than it already is.  We must first and foremost create a secure border. Enhanced trade, economic opportunity and freedom will surely follow.
“I am pleased that President Obama and the Department of Justice did not pursue the baseless claims of illegal racial profiling in the lawsuit.   When signing S.B. 1070, I said, ‘My signature today represents my steadfast support for enforcing the law — both against illegal immigration AND against racial profiling.’ Arizona’s law expressly prohibits unconstitutional racial profiling.  However, words are not enough.  For this reason, I ordered the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (AZPOST) to develop training on the new law for Arizona’s police officers.   AZPOST has completed the training course and has published it for the all world to see at www.azpost.state.az.us/SB1070infocenter.htm.  AZPOST has done its job professionally and served Arizona well.
“I will not stop fighting to protect the citizens of Arizona, and to defend Arizonans in federal court.  I have set up a legal defense fund to pay the substantial legal fees that Arizona has been, and will be, forced to incur as a result of all of these lawsuits.  Contributions to the Border Security and Immigration Defense Fund can be made at www.keepazsafe.com.  My legal team will not hesitate to assert the rights of the State of Arizona in this matter.  Arizona will ultimately prevail against the lawsuits – including this latest assault by the Obama Administration. Our laws will be found to be constitutional – because that is exactly what they are.”
So the President is playing politics with National Security.
The Dept. of Justice that dropped the Black Panther case because of race politics, is now suing Arizona for race politics.
Politics. Politics. Politics.
The exploitation of Illegal aliens reaches a new low.
“Setting immigration policy and enforcing immigration laws is a national responsibility,” US Attorney General Eric Holder said in the statement.
Arizona, the Justice Department said, “crossed a constitutional line.”
However, he added, “diverting federal resources away from dangerous aliens such as terrorism suspects and aliens with criminal records will impact the entire country’s safety.”
Yeah, stopping them coming across a porous border is definitely “diverting”!!
“The American people must wonder whether the Obama administration is really committed to securing the border when it sues a state that is simply trying to protect its people by enforcing immigration law,” Republicans John McCain and Jon Kyl said in a joint statement.
The real problem is that BOTH parties are not interested in securing the border, for different reasons, but neither wants to do it.
But only the Democrats and this President wants to sue a State to prevent anyone from doing something about it!
So the federal government will use taxpayers money to sue taxpayers for wanting security.
America, what a country!
“The nation’s immigration laws reflect a careful and considered balance of national law enforcement, foreign relations, and humanitarian interests,” the suit says.
<>
The lawsuit goes on to say that a “state may not establish its own immigration policy or enforce state laws in a manner that interferes with the federal immigration laws. The Constitution and the federal immigration laws do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local immigration policies throughout the country.”
So if the government wants to ignore national security and border security you aren’t allowed to do anything about it!
We are from the Government and we are here to protect you!
That is, if you’re politically advantageous to us, or we want to pander to you.
Otherwise, screw you!
When U.S. cities and even entire states declare themselves to be “sanctuaries” for illegal aliens, they act outside the law, and by their actions could be charged with a felony for each violation of federal law by “concealing, harboring, or sheltering illegal aliens” (8 U.S. Code, sections 1324 and 1325; Immigration and Naturalization Act sections 274 and 275).
Funny that President Obama and Eric Holder have no problem with “sanctuary” cities encroaching on immigration policy and enforcement.
It’s all Politics, all the time.
We, the Government, aren’t going to do anything about the Border, but you’re not allowed to do anything about it either!
So much for Protect from all enemies foreign and domestic.
Only if they are perceived to be politically advantageous to us.
Doesn’t that make you feel safer!

Crisis Inverted

He’s just so darn presidential. You better know who I’m talking about . . . because if you don’t, I know whose ass to kick.
In a recent interview with NBC’s “Today” show, President Obama said this: “I don’t sit around talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.” Scoot over, Gettysburg Address. There’s a new No. 1 speech in town.
Some have been oddly surprised by the president’s unpresidential approach. Here are a few possible reasons why they’re so shocked:

1. They were asleep when Obama said this in July of 2009 with respect to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr.: “Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts . . . But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly. . . ” (So what if he didn’t have the facts! What’s next, people? Are you going to insist that he read laws before publicly condemning them? You right-wing extremists!)
2. They took their dog for a walk and missed Obama’s commentary in April of 2010 regarding Palin’s critique of his administration’s nuclear policy: “I really have no response to that. The last I checked, Sarah Palin is not much of an expert on nuclear issues.” (Translation: She’s no match for me. She may have run a state and been Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, but did she vote “present” nearly 130 times as a state senator? I think not.)
3. They were busy cooking and didn’t catch Obama saying this to John McCain at the health care summit in February of 2010: “Let me just make this point, John, because we’re not campaigning anymore. The election’s over.” (Translation: I won. You lost. Nani nani poo poo.)
4. They were enjoying a film at the corner theatre and missed Obama saying this in August of 2009: “ . . . I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.” (In other words, hand over your money and shut the heck up.)
5. They were hanging out at a local café and didn’t hear our president’s complete (and disturbing, in my opinion) mischaracterization of the new Arizona immigration law in April of 2010: “ . . . you can imagine if you are a Hispanic American in Arizona, your great, great grandparents may have been there before Arizona was even a state. But now suddenly if you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you’re going to be harassed . . . ” (Translation: I don’t have to read pertinent documents. I went to Harvard. Enough said.)

If you’ve been paying attention since day one, Obama’s tone with respect to the oil spill shouldn’t be in the least bit shocking. I just wish he wasn’t so busy playing the role of big man on campus. Maybe then he would’ve had time this year to hear the majority of Americans oppose his health care law and/or support Arizona’s immigration law. But hey, with golf and Bush-hating Paul McCartney to fit in, let’s cut him some slack.
As an entertaining side note, Obama was recently asked to respond to comments made by BP CEO Tony Hayward, including “I’d like my life back” and “ . . . everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact will be very, very modest.” Hayward’s comments were distasteful at best, but check out what Obama had to say in reply: “He wouldn’t be working for me after any of those statements.” Culture of Corruption author Michelle Malkin must have enjoyed a full-on fit of laughter after that one.
Mr. President, it’s not presidential to make bold public statements based on assumptions, without taking the time to do your research. It’s not presidential to essentially tell a whole bunch of Americans to sit down and shut up. It’s not presidential to condescend to a war hero and long-standing American Senator. And while we’re at it, it’s not any more presidential to repeatedly blast Fox News than it was to have joked during the 2008 presidential campaign that, “I’ll put Mr. Burgess up against Sean Hannity. He’ll tear him up.”
Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I’d like my president to act like one. Save the ass-kicking for someone else.(Jedediah Bila)

Didn’t he remind you of the nerdy kid trying to sound like the tough kid? Or of that bad actor who says his lines with no conviction whatsover?
Now next week, Obama has “summoned” the CEO of BP to his office for a dressing down so that he can look tough.
Problem is, I’ve seen better acting on Star Trek: Voyager (and anyone who knows me how much I hate that show!).
But the Ministry of  Truth will do their best to create Mr. Bad Ass. Mr Can Do. Mr I’m Involved and I Care.
But, like most things with this President, it will ultimately ring very hollow.
I’m not going to defend BP, but they sure as hell are doing more than this President about it.
I mean, this President has refused help from 13 countries! 13!!
President Obama is impeding clean-up efforts in the Gulf by kowtowing to unions and members of the American maritime industry, critics have charged in recent days. At issue is the president’s refusal to waive the Jones Act, a century-old law that effectively bars foreign-owned ships from moving between U.S. ports, a necessary component of participating in the cleanup effort.
When asked why President Obama hasn’t waived the Jones Act — which President Bush put on hold to facilitate Katrina rescue efforts — White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said a suspension wasn’t necessary.
Not Necessary!!!????!!!!
Well, we wouldn’t want to Obama to annoy they only people left who love him, Unions.
That’s vastly more important than actually do everything you can to solve the problem!
Heaven forbid you make the Unions mad at you!
And then there was the enviromental impact study that the government had to take a month to do to study the effects of putting sand berms in the way of the advancing oil and when all was said and done approve less than  what the Governor of Louisiana asked for because of concerns over the long term impact.
Too little too late.
And these are the guys  you want running Health Care??!!
Yeah, sand berms are far worse for the environment that raw crude oil by the millions  of gallons!!
There was a manufacturer in Maine who makes oil booms. He has a million yards ready to go, but neither BP or Obama will buy them!
There was even a Science guy on FOX last night that showed a poly-blended cloth that if you pour oil and water through it it retains the oil and the water is strained out cleanly.
But no one wants to here from him.
Territorial  Political Testosterone at it’s finest.
So one has to conclude that the only reason Obama cares, or appears to at all, is because  of politics.
That’s it.
He doesn’t actually want to solve the problem.
That does not interest him at all.
But the Crisis, now that’s an opportunity!
Never Waste a Good Crisis. — Rahm Emmanuel
“Don’t be fooled by Obama’s ‘incompetence’,” warns Stu Tarlowe in a provocative post at the American Thinker blog. “If you think the Gulf oil spill spells trouble for Obama, you’re just not looking at as big a picture as he’s looking at, and you just don’t realize how much trouble we’re all in.”
Tarlowe cites the Cloward-Piven Strategy, which was developed by two Columbia University sociology professors as a way to use political and economic chaos to achieve their radical ends. When viewed through this lens, what the rest of the nation views as a political disaster for Obama could be an opportunity instead.
“…If the oil spill in the Gulf manages to destroy the fishing and tourist industries in that region, shut down oil drilling, raise the price of oil and of food all over the country, and bring more and more Americans to a financial breaking point and thus dependent on food stamps and other government programs, Obama and Co. will smile and nod at one another,” Tarlowe predicts.
Obama’s own behavior indicates that Tarlowe may be right. The president reiterated his cap-and-trade case yesterday, amid another pitch for ending tax breaks for Big Oil and giving them to Big Environmentalists Doing Alternative Energy Projects to push America back into the 19th century.
“…The only way the transition to clean energy will ultimately succeed is if the private sector is fully invested in this future — if capital comes off the sidelines and the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs is unleashed.  And the only way to do that is by finally putting a price on carbon pollution,” Obama said during a speech at Carnegie Mellon University.
“The House of Representatives has already passed a comprehensive energy and climate bill, and there is currently a plan in the Senate – a plan that was developed with ideas from Democrats and Republicans – that would achieve the same goal.  And, Pittsburgh, I want you to know, the votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months,” the president added.
If Obama is indeed following the Cloward-Piven game plan, he will use the BP oil spill crisis to his advantage by forcing the passage of the ruinous cap and trade bill through the Senate before the November elections. (washington examiner)
The end justifies the means.
Since Global Warming and Global Climate Change have crashed he needs a new champion cry to get Cap & Trade rammed down your throats!
OIL!!
The Agenda is The Agenda.
And they have to get as much done before November as they can.
Anything that puts a greater strain on government services — and the inability of those services, through incompetence and complex bureaucracy to actually improve things – advances the goals of Cloward-Piven. The more desperate and demoralized the American people become, and the more preoccupied we are with simple survival, the better our new “leaders” like it, and the closer they get to assuming total and complete control of every aspect of our lives.
It explains that even the patently unconstitutional laws and policies implemented by the Obama regime are a deliberate part of the strategy, because in addition to using financial crises to bring about the desired changes in our way of life, it is necessary to render our Constitution impotent and irrelevant. (American Thinker)
So when you are paying $8 for gas and your electric bill triples due to new regulations and taxes under the guise of “dealing with our dependence on fossil fuels”-oil specifically, you’ll be politically incorrect and shouted down as insensitive if you want to drill for our own oil off our own shores.
“Green energy” or Bust!
Because, then he has you, literally, over a barrel.
The implications of this are irrelevant. Because it’s all about the power.
And NOTHING ELSE.
Now, that’s Politics, The Chicago Way.

The Power

In his victory speech, {Rand} Paul applauded the tea party movement and issued a stern warning to the political establishment: “I have a message, a message from the tea party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: We’ve come to take our government back.”

“The tea party movement is about saving the country from a mountain of debt that is devouring our country and that I think could lead to chaos,” Paul said grimly, laying in to President Barack Obama for his participation in last year’s Copenhagen summit on global warming and accusing Obama of trying to “apologize for the industrial revolution.”

A political science professor in college taught me a very valuable lesson about politics.
It’s about power.
Not the money.
The money facilitates the power.
So the more money you have the more likely you’ll get the power you seek.
So you always need more power.
More power begets more money.
And more money begets more power.
But it is power that is the ultimate goal.
And the more power the better.
Which explains a lot about Liberalism and their need to control everyone and everything and make them do what they want, when they want, because they want.

And will explain the focus of the Liberal media last night as well.
Last night on MSDNC, for example, it was all about the PA special election for the late pork-king John Murtha’s seat.  The Democrat won that seat, by acting like a republican by the way, and thus they hold that seat.
That power was the most important thing to Mr “tingle up my leg” Chris Matthews and his array of liberal elite pundits.
That and the “establishment” Republican in KY lost to a “teabagger” (a liberal pejorative) which they consider a good thing because they believe they can beat him easier than the old line establishment candidate. So they were happy.
It was about advantage. Political advantage.
Meanwhile, over at MSDNC’s arch enemy, FOX, it was about the people. The people’s anger.
Arlene Specter, who was a Republican for 30 years but switched parties last year for sheer sake of re-election was soundly defeated by another Democrat because of that switch. His opponent beat him up with it.  Specter was supported from a far by the President.
His opponent sounded very “tea party” anti-establishment but that was just for the purpose of winning.
What will be interesting is that opponent now has to face the Republican in November, but he got here sounding like a Republican. So he’ll have to veer left now. Just like the President did in 2008.
So will that lead to his demise?
The dreaded flip-flop!
Time will tell.
Then  there was the race in Kentucky where Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, a “tea party” Republican beat the establishment’s candidate.
Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas is in a run-off for the Democrat nomination because she wasn’t far left-enough but was also one of the key votes for Health Care.
MSDNC really didn’t care much about this one because they felt that neither Democrat was strong enough to win in November so it didn’t really mean anything to them.
The Liberals took no notice of Health Care’s unpopularity at all.

FOX focused on the message of the people.
MSDNC was focused on the power.
It couldn’t have been more stark if you tried.

“When [Republicans] were in charge, we doubled the deficit, and now with Democrats in charge, they’re tripling the deficit,” Paul said. “What the Tea Party says is there’s bipartisan blame to go around for the deficit and we have to do a better job.”–Rand Paul
Exactly. A Pox on both of your houses.
Now, let’s do something for the people. Not the political Elite.
Problem is, the Political Elite own the majority of the Media, The Congress, And The White House and they won’t go quietly, FROM EITHER PARTY.
Power is the drug, and boy are they addicted. Heavily addicted.
The White House is absolutely, positively correct that there is a divide between America and Washington – but what they fail to appreciate (or, more likely, they appreciate it but want to fake-out the press) is that Washington, D.C. now belongs to Barack Obama.
Just as the student radicals of the 1960s became the tenured faculty of the 2000s, so the worm has turned in the District of Columbia. The gates have been crashed and the one-time insurgents are now comfortably ensconced as the establishment. And with the health care bill, Mr. Obama and his band of former rebels have enacted an extremely unpopular law that they cannot possibly blame on the old guard (But boy they still believe it and try to sell it that way). George W. Bush may have “forced” Barack Obama’s hand on the stimulus, but Dubya had nary a thing to do with the health care bill.
This is why President Obama was wrong to equate the election of Scott Brown to his own victory, and why he’s wrong to push this story now. He is the ultimate insider now. That snappy “Hail to the Chief” he hears every time he walks into a room should be sign enough of this fact.
The White House likely knows this. They just don’t want us talking about how Obama can’t save a single high-profile candidate from a purple or blue state. They don’t want us to realize that his coattails have been torn and frayed by the choices he’s made in the last 17 months.
So focus on the race not the horses. The nags from “the people” and the Thoroughbred from “the establishment”.
The “teabagger” vs Washington Elites.
But in general elections, the dynamic will be very different. Republican challengers and incumbents will tar their Democratic opponents with a simple characterization: “A vote for my opponent is a vote for Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi’s agenda.” Democrats will have no such claim to make against Republicans.(RCP)

But the Liberal Media will come up with something, hopefully more convincing than “the party of no” because, guess what, We The People ARE the Party of NO.
NO more spending like drug addicts after a new high.
NO more government takeovers, bailouts, and patronage to cronies.
NO more government debt piles for the sake of piling.
The National Debt has gone up 3 Trillion Dollars in the 17 months of this administration!
It went up 5 Trillion in 8 years under Republicans.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!

On a lighter note: Rick Bayless, the Chicago superstar chef, (and winner of Top Chef Masters last year, The king of all Mexican food in America) was Twittering from the White House kitchen about today’s Obama White House state dinner honoring Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his wife, Margarita Zavala. Until the Tweets stopped. The White House kitchen is for cooking, not Tweeting.
The White House press operation wanted to downplay the glamor aspect of the state dinner; these are tough economic times. (Chicago Sun-Times)

And undoubtedly, at dinner, Obama will apologize for Arizona being unhappy with all the Mexican illegal immigrants, drug dealers, coyotes, mafia and gang wars going that the Mexican government practically throws at us.
After all, it disgraceful that we are upset about it.
And the same can be said for the political elite in Washington. They are annoyed that these uppity people want to spoil their power trips.
Well, I say it’s time to pull the plug and replace the light bulbs.
This election is too important for you not to care.

Freedom of Information

“You’re are coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter.  With iPods and iPads and XBoxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”
Emancipation?  Curious choice of word there, or was it?

“All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”

The Pressure being that he can’t lie as freely as past generations could.
As Liberals have control of most of the Ministry of Truth they do a good job of trying.
Hence the push for “net neutrality” aka government control of the internet information, the biggest thorn in his side.
People like me.


“So many voices clamoring for attention on blogs and on cable, on — on talk radio. It — it can be difficult at times to sift through it all, to know what to believe, to figure out who’s telling the truth and who isn’t.”–Obama at Hampton University
And, of course, the government is always telling the truth…

But then there’s: “President-elect Barack Obama has repeatedly said how much his BlackBerry means to him and how he is dreading the prospect of being forced to give it up, because of legal and security concerns, once he takes office,” and he did not give it up, he still has it.  So as usual it’s “do as I say, not as I do.” NYT
Perhaps it’s easier these days to spread disinformation, but it’s also easier to correct it. If the president doesn’t know how to use these devices, how does he explain the June 26, 2008, issue of Rolling Stone noting that Bob Dylan, Yo-Yo Ma, Sheryl Crow and Jay-Z were featured on his, uh, iPod.
Maybe it’s programmed for him, like his teleprompters?

In this administration, freedom of speech, press or information is a distraction and a threat. That’s why they sought to impose the doctrine of “net neutrality” on the Internet. In the name of opening up broadband to all, it’s designed to suppress the voices of those who have competed in the marketplace of ideas and won.
Being informed depends on information and the free flow thereof, with no one, especially not the government, being the final arbiter of truth. That’s for the individual to decide. That’s why in words inscribed in a frieze below the dome of his memorial in Washington, D.C., Jefferson said: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
We disagree with what some have to say, but will defend to the death their right to tweet it. (IBD)


Speaking of Free Speech…
“up” Chuck Schumer and  Sen. Van Hollen have introduced legislation (supported by the Obama administration) reimposing the same type of First Amendment restrictions that the United States Supreme Court recently declared unconstitutional in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission  (FEC). In other words, their response to having free speech limitations overturned by the Supreme Court is to roll the same rock back up the same hill.
Under their bill, all contractors with the government and recipients of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds would be prohibited from U.S. election spending. The legislation would impose that same prohibition upon American businesses with as few as 20 percent of shares owned by foreign nationals, or whose boards of directors happen to have a majority of foreign nationals. (No word yet on whether Schumer, Van Hollen or the Obama administration will recognize their error and suddenly amend their bill to except illegal immigrants.)
But note one big-spending group that Schumer and Van Hollen suspiciously omitted from their prohibition: labor bosses.
According to a report in The Hill quoting Loyola Law School election law professor Richard L. Hasen, Big Labor may receive a free pass in the bill:
“Hasen said some of the biggest campaign spending restrictions in the summary would only affect corporations. For example, large federal contractors, recipients of government bailout funds who have not repaid the money and foreign-owned companies would be banned from election spending. ‘There are no foreign-owned unions, and unions are not government contractors,’ Hasen said. ‘The biggest limitations in this bill apply only to corporations because there are no parallels in the labor world.’“
There is simply no logical or ethical justification for exempting union bosses from the same restrictions that would limit their employer counterparts, considering the hundreds of millions in union members’ dues redirected toward union-friendly politicians. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) alone spent approximately $85 million to elect Obama and Democrats in 2008.
That’s 85 hardworking union members that the SEIU could make millionaires using the same money that it instead spent on political campaigns.
Sadly, that enormous campaign spending explains why Big Labor is excluded from the bill.(Daily Caller)
This is the way it used to be and they want it to be again. When the Court struck down the Campaign Finance Law, it wasn’t free speech that the Liberals were mad about, it was the competition.
They were no longer going to be the big stick on the block.
The biggest Bully.
The biggest purveyor of misinformation and disinformation.
And we all how much Liberal hate competition.


The sight of the American flag in America—even on Cinco de Mayo—should not be a source of offense to Americans of Mexican descent, but pride, providing of course that one sees him or herself as an American first. And here is the point that this young woman, the school administrators and a handful of sympathizers seem forever not to grasp. Americans do not want to be an extension of Mexico! Indeed many of us have had a peek south of the border and do not like what we see. The political culture and the values that support it hold little interest for those proud of our flag and “the republic for which it stands.”
Among many Americans, there is a growing sense that immigrants to this country have no interest in becoming Americans. Illegal immigrants are largely seen as people who disrespect our laws, our language, and our traditions. More significantly, they are viewed as taking advantage of everything this nation has to offer and yet refusing to assimilate into our American culture. The political class says that these fears are unfounded, and the elite label such thoughts as bigoted. And yet we are treated to stories like this one, wherein American children are sent home from school for wearing an image of the American flag. Should we believe the political elites? Or our lying eyes? (Daily Caller)


And lying eyes are everywhere…